If level 20 casters are all reality warpers then what should level 20 fighters, rangers, rogues, monks and barbarians be able to do?
 Ape Out Shirt $21.68 |
 |
Ape Out Shirt $21.68 |
If level 20 casters are all reality warpers then what should level 20 fighters, rangers, rogues, monks and barbarians be able to do?
And paladins. Forgot about them.
Not everyone wants to warp reality.
Then stop leveling up once you hit level 15.
hit things real good
track things real good
sneak and backstab real good
i've got nothing
hit things real good
>i've got nothing
reach nirvana and transcends reality
>transcends reality
try slaps the reality warpers b***h ass.
Just make action economy more taxing for casters and the problem suddenly disappears
As a wizard main if this happened I would literally stop playing. What a brainlet take.
>I would literally stop playing
Good
casters are always fricking babies
That's illegal
They polymorph the baby in to a t Rex and then mind control it in to consenting. All perfectly legal.
>nosenseofrightorwrong.png
good, don't need brainlet casters leaving their dndumbshit containment
>castergays would quit
sorry what's the downside supposed to be here exactly
Good
>maining in a role playing game
Terminate your own existence.
I will always play a Monk and you can't stop me. I will spend the rest of my life perfecting the fist on my journey to punching things in the face.
Frick off theater kid.
Unironically? Good.
My fix would be that casters can't move and cast anymore. Gotta sit still. Maybe even use the full turn. Knock up some of those casting times to two turns - start on one, end at the start of the next. Get hit? Too bad. Make only a few spells actually bonus actions and even fewer as reactions.
This way a wizard needs to prep and think before they sling their "end the encounter" ability. They need to put effort into positioning to avoid being hit. More of their toolkit gets moved to out of combat stuff - rituals, prep, and the like. Maybe even give them a discount version of Contingency that does less, like an incredibly long held action, that lets them turn a damage spell into a trap that pings on enemies swinging on them.
Casters are Batman, Martials are Superman, basically.
Pathfinder 2e did this and all the Casters are crying how they can't win encounters in one hit anymore and cry about how useless spellcasters are Even though the game is designed for them to actually encourage team work
It's pretty weird, they aren't underpowered at all is just that they can't insta win the encounter with a single spell, and somehow that's bad?
Really tells you what kind of people pick casters huh?
I had a player in 1e who outright told me if I didn't let her pick Sacred Geometry multiple times I was hindering her character and making her arbitrarily worse than martials on purpose.
>her
Checks out.
damn homie, I played a fire sorcerer and enemies started having 20/30 resist and at least +20 reflex past level 10
I didn't really care all that much cause by then I had my personal favorite spell in the game wall of force and just started spamming that
>pewpew caster
You know you were hindering yourself hard, right?
I played a focused specialist conjurer, I stopped playing full casters after that, it made me sick how broken that shit was.
>You know you were hindering yourself hard, right?
sure, but the casting I still had outside my specialization was still so good that I didn't even really give a shit when my main specialization was hard countered
>abrupt jaunt and cloudy conjuration
don't remind me
thats not why casters are unfun in pf2e, it's just the spells themselves which are neutered
is magus fun in pf2e? I was thinking of playing it
as long as I can hit things with my magic sword I'll be happy
d&d should abandon vancian casting and incorporate the mana system into the game
>b-but spell points
cut out your tongue you moron.
In magic you slowly build your mana base to cast bigger and better spells, if a spell like wish, a true combat ender was something you had to build towards during combat (or out of combat via ritual, no problem with that) then most of these problems would be solved because not only would you remove the issue of a wizard ending the combat in one turn but because mana is restored during your turns after you build it up then players wouldn't need to sit there whining for a long rest after 2 little fights. It would also allow wotc to add more exciting and potentially even stronger combat spells because they're gated by mana
Mana systems only work in video games.
TT campaigns typically only handle a handful of encounters per meeting. So the spell point system is a better abstract way of tracking 'stamina' than a mana system.
Mana works better in a video game context because the PC is going to fight more targets, more often. But your average evening of play isn't going to achieve that volume, pretty much ever.
Both Beowulf and Guan Yu could lift very heavy objects and hold their breath for a long time. I’m okay with fighters doing that.
Guan Yu could also fistfrick entire armies as a passtime activity
In order:
Fighter becomes what The Romance of 3 Kingdoms says all their generals were
Rangers become the divine huntsmen of ancient turkic myth
Rogues become your average Romanian citizen
Monks become Wuxia characters
And barbarians become Atilla the Hun
Behold, level 20 Fighter
>Rogues become your average Romanian citizen
jej
So Level 20 Barbarians die of nosebleeds?
What, you wanna live forever?
No.
Nosebleed.
Die.
He didn't die of nosebleed, he most likely died of stroke. Nosebleed was just one of the symptoms. The other symptom was dying.
Marcellinus says "He suffered a nosebleed, then died."
Checkmate. Nothing personell.
>Tell me you need 4e without telling me
That's what Epic Destinies were for.
They weren't executed flawlessly, but
>Rogues stealing abstract concepts
>Bards inspiring the utter shit out of the party
>Fighters becoming so hard to deal with, they might as well be a wall of force that also attacks you
>The Jack of all trades multiclasser finally masters them, and gets an even wider scope
And so on and so forth.
Ofc everybody went Demigod because getting 2 stats.
the swordmage from 4e was cool and I want it back
Back to your containment thread 4rry.
Being mortal and not magical at all, they are instead the warrior kings and emperors of the world. The idea in the original D&D/AD&D game was that at level 10 they usually got a castle, lands, soldiers and that they then spend the next ten levels enlarging their holdings and political power until by 20th level they are a legendary warrior kings able lead armies into battle and decide the fate of entire civilisations. Your DM does let you do that Anon, i hope? By level 20 your fighter shouldnt still just a wandering hobo. If so, you have really missed out. Read some of the Belgariad series, the adventures of Conan or the story of Alexander the Great for the right ideas.
Rangers basically becoming Robin Hood was kino and I am tired of not having the fantasy version of seal team six to command.
>Your DM does let you do that Anon, i hope?
No, no they do not. They claim you should be wandering and fighting without a base. Mostly because the DM doesn't want to deal with the logistics of a non combat oriented story.
Why the frick would I turn a TTRPG into a wargame? Frick that shit.
You are free to not play D&D.
The bulk of the games I run or play aren't D&D, but saying D&D has to be a wargame is a moronic braindead take. It hasn't been that in decades and good riddance.
>Doesn't play D&D
>Has opinions on what D&D should be
ISHYGDDT
>Plays a game that originated in a wargame and is basically a wargame involving a few less units than the usual wargame.
>Someone suggests he give more units in the wargame to the fighter player to balance out the power of casters.
>"No! this isnt a wargame!"
You should work on your math skills anon, so you can deal with bigger numbers.
Bigger numbers = slower combat = the worst part of TTRPGs being dragged out.
Have you heard of such a thing as multiplication or percentages? They allow you to manage large numbers of things just as easy as a single thing. You can control huge armies just as easily as a single character, either by working out the chance of say an archer firing a bow and then extrapolating the effects of 1000 archers;
18+ needed to hit, so thats 3 in 20, or 15 percent, meaning 150 archers out of a thousand hit.
Another way (if you like randomness) is to count each dice roll to represent 10, 100 or 500 archers firing.
Only a no maths moron would roll to hit 1000 times.
That is entirely counter to the point of table top play.
Otherwise you could apply that to any PC based on their stats. Because you can just calculate the average % chance of an event happening and skip the dice rolling all together.
>That is entirely counter to the point of table top play.
The point of table top play is to play a game on a table top, not necessarily to roll dice
The dice rolling is what adds color and motion to the events. So that the game isn't just solved or lost before it ever began.
Color and motion are photography terms, nothing to do with playing games. I bet you’re one of those types that always sat in the back of the bus
Color and motion are easily understood euphemisms for dynamism and a sense of events actually happening at that moment. Rather than being just a predetermined sequence of events.
They have everything to do with why people play table-top games. To experience that sense of risk and potential for loss that comes from having to roll a die for an action or event.
Given your inability to understand that, I'm wagering you were a shortbus kid, weren't you?
Wow you are a special frickin autist ain't ya?
Because it's kino. Tbh transitioning from RPG to Wargame and back is the only reason to play Dnd
It's much easier to have a spell that does some dumb bullshit on the fly than having the DM create a kingdom for every martial.
Fighters dont have spells anon. This is away for fighters to have around the same power instead.
Everything was ruined the moment magic became something usable at will with no price.
DCC, Warhammer and videogames like Dominions shows how to do magic good: something that corrupts you, requires blood and death, and can (and will) probably turn on you on a tiny mistake.
Incredible skill for rogues, barbarians, and fighters, that almost seems super natural, complimented by their magical items.
Monks, Paladins, and Rangers are semi-magical beings at level 20
Stop playing shit editions
>just wait until level 9 when most games are already over or basically over bro
>remember how in pre-3e martial were chads who benchpressed mountains
No. No I don't. Mostly because, no, no they weren't.
A Level 20 Barbarian in 3.5e can reach 28 STR if he goes full STR on his ability score improvements and gets an Inherent Bonus of +5. Give him the Natural Heavyweight feat and let him rage for another +8 on his STR for a final amount of 36 STR.
With that in mind, he can lift 7360 pounds above his head. Not exactly mountain-tier but it's pretty superhuman and no magic is involved whatsoever.
Optimize that to Barbarian 12 / Frenzied Berserker 8 and he can hit a STR Score of 44.
That's 22400 pounds above his head (or 44800 off the ground)
Not full barbarian but I did go into str 50+ with a shifter barb/warshaper/weretouched master (before the nerf) WITHOUT magic items. Shit was amazing
25600 pounds, your character was a low-tier marvel superhero.
Now compare that to a 5e character who can't even break Eddie Hall's 500kg lift without some serious magic backing him up.
(In comparison a Level 1 character with 18 STR and the natural heavyweight feat can do that in 3.5e)
There's also Stoneblessed into Mountain Rage ACF. All (Ex). It'll get you the same STR but 2x the carrying capacity from being Large.
Now fit a Hulking Hurler in and you have a purely mundane character that can hurl around tons.
(Mundane as in everything he does works in an Anti-Magic field).
Weaker than Spider-Man
Spiderman is not within the level range of a non-epic martial character. If you allow low-epic levels then Spiderman's strength is doable without magic shenanigans whatsoever.
Maybe by lifting capacity but not in terms of agility or raw power
An Elephant has 104 HP.
A Level 17 Warblade with Strike of Perfect Clarity can do that with one punch (and its an Extraordinary Ability).
If kung-fu bothers you, a Power Attacking Fighter can do the same with a two-handed weapon.
Agility and Reflexes is a very weird subject because you can easily have a Reflex Save of +20 and higher by Level 20, but nobody knows what that means in actual reflex speed.
Nevertheless, as I said you cannot really replicate Spiderman in all his aspects (Power, Speed, etc) unless you hit epic levels or go into magical territory.
What are ways to get +5 inherent? That's usually from like, wish stacking isn't it?
Manuals of +1/+2/+3/+4/+5, which yeah, need Wish as a prerequisite to craft iirc.
>remember how in pre-3e martials were chads that bench-press mountains by level 15
No, because that didn't happen, and whoever wrote that post should be shot and killed. The childish hyperbole is what destroys the martial-gays pathos and credibility. No one wants to listen to an autistic hyperbolic child like that. They just want to trick him into playing in traffic to save society a few tax dollars. No one want doing any of the ridiculous marvel/anime-tier feats that post speaks of in AD&D 1e or 2e, or in B/X, or in OD&D. That didn't happen. Those games were far more grounded. As the game should be. At least when magic does anime-tier shit it has the excuse of magic. Having fighters do it is just fricking moronic. Ideally, spellcasters' most egregiously game-warping spells would be removed, but that's unlikely to happen since the developers are currently revising the game for the umpteenth time and have no interest in returning it to what it once was.
>...be able to do?
swing a stick moderately good
Nothing, they should be doing what they did at 5th level. Stuff like jumping over a montain in a single leap, diverting a river with a punch, hold the celestial dome over your shoulders, separate Africa and Europe with your hands, strangle a impervious to weapon damage Lion, etc is just from Anime, it came from Anime and we don't want that in our Western Fantasy.
>Stuff like jumping over a montain in a single leap, diverting a river with a punch, hold the celestial dome over your shoulders, separate Africa and Europe with your hands, strangle a impervious to weapon damage Lion, etc is just from Anime, it came from Anime and we don't want that in our Western Fantasy.
This is such utter Bullshit! A lot of it also came from mythology.
Even more recent than that. The first recorded instance of a swordsman's blade felling a target with the wind shockwave off its edge is in fricking MacBeth. Do that in a tabletop game and people will be screeching about weeaboos.
Paradise Lost has angels fusing with each other, going and fighting at FTL speeds and other such "anime" things.
...anon did the sarcasm completely passed over your head? I literally only used Hercules' trials as examples
Frick I said Africa and Europe and then said it only appeared in Anime...
Nothing because they fricking suck. They got to be strong at lower levels, frick off.
>they got to be strong from 1st to 4th (maybe) levels that means they have to suck from 5th to 20th level
k
If you can't, on average outdamage a level 7 wizard with a level 7 fighter you either fricked something in your build or you have a shit DM that runs like 1 encounter per session/day.
>he thinks damage per turn is important
When you can singlehandedly turn an encounter into a cakewalk damage means shit, why does it matter it takes 5 more turns to kill something that can't hurt you?. I can as a level 7 wizard literally turn all the encounter into a joke, I did many times with 1 or 2 spells. More than enough for 5 encounters per day, at 7th level you have like 10 spells at worst
If anything level 7 is the tipping point. That's the level where a Wizard can cast Polymorph once and Summon Fey thrice. If your DM is running 6-8 Medium or Hard encounters as the book recommends, then you have plenty of AoEs as well as a Giant Ape in order to sort out any big solo threats.
The question is not if a Fighter is helpful in that situation, but it he more helpful than doubling that number of spells? Is having 2 martials and 2 casters ever more useful than than just having 4 casters and doubling how many spell slots you get that trivialize encounters? That's twelve 3rd level slots and four 4th level slots. Once you hit level 8, that's eight 4th level slots.
That should be more than enough to handle 8 encounters per day as long as the party is remotely coordinated about pacing out their spells.
D&D is a functionally broken system and the spell mechanics escalating into GM fiat territory proves that. At what point does high level play even appeal on a narrative or conceptual level anymore? Ever read a book or play a game where the hero is a God? Can't be killed? Who gives a shit. No, stories are about knights, thieves, and strong men making to the edge of their natural abilities and a bit of luck. Even stories of wizards tend to have magic leashed to some degree of scale or comprehension.
>Ever read a book or play a game where the hero is a God? Can't be killed? Who gives a shit. No
yes moron. some of the best shit ever written is stories like The Sandman where you follow an immortal godly being
nobody gives a frick about your pulp garbage.
Fricking marvel superheroes dwarf the popularity of cringe garbage like Conan
the oldest and most popular stories are mythologies about literal gods and their children waging epic battles.
Nobody "wants" to be human, they crave more that's the entire human condition to be the master of fate instead of its pawn. That's the entire motivation for all of civilization
the reason you want mudcore fantasy where you die in the dirt like a dog is because you're a fatalist golem and like the black hole of misery you are you're desperate to drag everyone down to your level
but that's just not going to happen because people naturally seek to be more than what they are
WotC looked at all the previous editions and games that sprang from D&D's decapitated corpse, where Fighters would gain followers and become generals and kings and so on (ACKS is all about this, before anyone asks, but it was a thing in pre-3e D&D also) and decided that was too confusing, too cumbersome, and too hard to "balance" for while they were trying to card game-ify D&D's rules so Fighter would always be the dumbest, simplest class for new players and they'd "balance" things by making the fighter tougher and having a few extra attacks... Even though nothing the Fighter will ever do will be as effective as Fireball Nuking a 20ft radius.
Level 20 fighters should just be able to cleave the moon in twain with a single slash. All the way from earth. They could also juggle between 30 different weapons (both ranged and melee) and attack with every one of them of them 6 times a turn.
>If level 20 casters are all reality warpers
They're not really though. People always blurt this shit out but it is not supported by the rules.
A Level 20 Caster (3.5e D&D) can cast Miracle, Wish, Genesis, True Creation, Time Stop... not reality-warping enough for you?
You pick those spells, you can choose to not pick them.
>just don't use your class features bro
So... is there any spell in a Caster's spell list that isn't considered reality-altering magic?
What are you going to tell me next? That I have the option not to play music with a bard?
>Fighters
strike half a dozen times in the blink of an eye, mow down anyone close to them with a single swipe of their sword, have a complete mastery of tactics and weaponry
>Rogues
Move without a sound, deceive any who they speak to, strike with unmatched precision, be basically invisible in darkness
>Monks
Move faster than the eye can track, leap through the air as if flying, kill someone in a single blow, avoid blows like a moving river, basically be peak physical performance with no impurities or flaws to their bodies.
>Barbarians
Channel fury rivaling the gods, split a mountain with a single stroke of their blade, shrug off even the most powerful blows and most potent of magics with no effort, lift a mountain with no effort
>Rangers
>Paladins
Not real martials. They're half-casters, so they're casters.
Nothing: everyone should be a caster.
Casters are braindead.
>Fighter
Nothing. Fighter players have all agreed don't want options that aren't swinging a sword. Any cool features, from being able to trip people and fight dirty to abilities that demigods like Heracles would have enjoyed belong with players who don't enjoy picking the trap option.
>Ranger
Warp reality. They literally have spells dumbass.
>rogue
Warp reality in ways related to sneaking and fighting dirty. Rogue powers seem to be supernatural anyway, and rogues already have magical subclasses anyway.
>monk
Warp reality in john-wu style ways. Monk ki is just magic by a different name, but with less restrictions.
>barbarian
Warp reality in angry ways. Barbarian rages are often magic anyway already, depending on the subclass.
"Reality warper" is a completely fricking meaningless term.
> Fighter 20
Unparalleled defense of themselves and their allies. Can negate the attacks of a small army. Will completely lock down their surroundings, only the most suicidal will try to get past him. A veteran of thousands of battles, he makes the impossible possible and the difficult easy by just ignoring most penalties. Has a large warband under his command, and has become surprisingly good at Diplomacy. Can scan the battlefield and identify weaknesses, give effective orders and predict outcomes as if they were prophecy. A master of his equipment, able to get more out of it than anyone else. A bane of casters and hunter of beasts, able to shut down any attempts to use magic and bullshit abilities inside his range. A superhuman athlete with boundless endurance.
> Monk 20
A whirlwind in the enemies' midst, able to weave through a mob without a worry, redirect enemy attacks back or into their allies' faces, accompanied by a flurry of their own blows. Can use dozens of martial techniques to stun, maim, silence, blind, exhaust, paralyze, etc. Mastery of ki techniques grant him longer lifespan, superhuman strength and speed, a body hard as iron, strikes that can pierce stone and metal, the capability to walk on water and walls and even in the air. Individual ki techniques can create many effects normally reserved for arcane casters.
> Rogue 20
A master thief and assassin. Can infiltrate a stronghold, kill a target and escape afterwards in fifteen different ways. Such a convincing con man that they can emulate most class features. Has a vast network of contacts, mostly of ne'er-do-wells, across the world and the planes. Has the Devil's own luck. Can kill most things with one well-placed stab, if he doesn't want to disable their limbs or inflict a dozen bleeding wounds first. Impossible to find if he doesn't want you to. If he finds himself in combat, he will tumble away from any danger, as hard to pin down as a shadow.
These are the ultimate evolutions of the distinct character archetypes each class is meant to embody,
this is homogenised garbage where everyone is equally magic and special.
>going to the logical extreme of the archetype is good
>going back to the mythological ideal, which these archetypes are from, is bad
what are you trying to argue here
Mundane classes were never based on demi-gods, they're not going to suddenly turn into Heracles or your favorite anime character who can steal the sun or cut death.
>monk
>mundane
I don't know many mundanes who literally have magic fists
A monk has an entirely different kind of power than the magic of wizards, clerics and sorcerers, and the inspiration for that archetype is grounded in kung-fu movies and ninja dojos, not the sword and sorcery genre, of course they are going to be different from fighters and rogues - who have the progression from guy with a sword to guy at the head of a thousand swords and two-bit cutpurse to legendary assassin.
Wuxia movies have clearly a supernatural factor, the people in there jump dozens of meters, walk over water and up walls, break shields with their hands and parry swords with their teeth. It might not be your medieval western fantasy but is clearly not mundane
I gave you the benefit of the doubt the first time, but you persist in trying to weasel your way around the actual point you collossal fricking Black person homosexual.
What are epic levels?
>Mundane classes were never based on demi-gods,
At least read a player's handbook, anon.
Sure, there's plenty of non-godly examples of fighters, but that raises the question of why we're letting the anime protagonist / demigod caster be in the same party as a mortal man. It's poor design and worse thematics when one exceeds their legend early and one's never allowed to meet it.
Hell, a paladin can't do half the shit the knights of the round table could, and that's their explicit inspiration.
As a continuation of the point: The 2e fighter, in obtaining an army, DID live up to the archetype of the non-demigod fighter: A general. This was fine, he lived up to his legend. However, as all WotC D&D has removed this, the demigod route remains the only other option.
>However, as all WotC D&D has removed this
leadership feat was good
especially when you recruited a cleric of your god to just shove buffs up your ass
Leadership was better on a cleric than a fighter than, though, since "special power" and such were positive modifiers to leadership score. Hardly the fighter fantasy when the caster still does it better.
Level 15 was considered demigod status in 2e.
>be 20 level martial in 5e
>check my jump distance/height...it's less than sophomore athletes do in midwestern schools
>check my lifting capabilities...not even enough to classify into olympics
>check my climbing skill...will die if I try to climb anything randos do on their free time
>phb says I'm a "demigod"
top kek, who designed 5e? a fatfrick?
Yeah it's pretty hilarious how fantasy characters can't match real world physical strength in 5E.
Then why is it fine for spellcasters to get as strong as they do when every mythological spellcaster of any note was a demigod too.
I personally have always been a fan of wrestling giant beasts.
>the dragon can't use his breath weapon if you clasp his jaw shut
Given that 99% of archetypical casters in mythology and such are gods or demigods, it's only fair to let higher-end martials do demigod-level feats as well. The fighter can dig rivers and chop mountains, the ranger can land shots from the far end of the continent, the rogue can steal the sun out of the sky, etc.
>archetypical casters in mythology and such are gods or demigods
why the frick are you referencing gods and demigods for the starting position of casters for your game?
Every class is inspired by characters in myth and classic fiction, anon. Have you never read a rulebook?
Pictured is the section from the D&D 2e rulebook which states that mages are inspired by Merlin (a cambion, effectively a demigod), Medea and Circe (demigod children of Helios). For reference, the Ranger is stated to be based on Robin Hood and Jack the Giant Killer as much as it is on Orion and Diana. Obviously, the mage is also based on Gandalf (an angel) and the ranger on Aragorn (a man), but they had trouble with the Tolkien estate or something and couldn't write that out.
Most D&D casters exceed these demigod inspirations in power and versatility before level 10. Casters are gods. The modern game really ought to be balanced with this assumption.
Craig Cochrane? Is that you?
Iaijutsu draw mountains in half.
Punch a crater into the ground to use the debris as an AoE.
Run over the surface of water without magic.
Multiply their jump distances by their character level.
Wield increasingly oversized weapons and armor.
Increase their skin's Hardness by their character level.
Move their full movespeed for 5 foot steps.
Make a will save or charisma roll to get a second wind and recover.
Execute esoteric martial techniques that could be mistaken for magic.
Level 20 martials should look like Metal Gear Rising, Devil May Cry, and tokusatsu.
The best take ITT.
You need to go full tabletop wargame with high level martials or they cease to justify their own existence. D&D is literally derived from tabletop wargaming and is inextricably linked to its origins even today.
In Warhammer 40k, right now the current consensus on Psychic shit is that it's widely underpowered and not worth taking and many units are overpriced or even have it as a detriment. Magic is not simply always better than non magic shit, if I can spend 500 points on tanks and guns that blow your army off the fricking field I don't need to pay for overpriced wizards with fireballs. The problem is that modern D&D asks you to spend 200 points (or enough XP to hit 20th level) to get a martial character who should be worth maybe half that. That's a problem with points balancing and nothing else! If level 20 martials were unchanged but it took casters the same XP as currently to hit only level 5, nobody would play one! Why would you? Only an idiot lets himself get ripped off! When 10th edition 40k launched Skitarii were 125 points for 10 despite being worse guardsmen, you didn't have tons of moronic wienersucking drones say "WELL THEY'RE MEANT TO BE SIMPLY WORSE THAN SPACE MARINES PAYING 14 POINTS PER MODEL FOR TWICE AS MANY WOUNDS AND BS/ARMOR OF 3+!" no, people just said "wow lmao these things are overpriced pieces of garbage" and didn't include them in their army!
If modern D&D insists on unified experience tables across classes, then equal amounts of experience points should buy you roughly equal amounts of power. To anyone who's played ANY wargame or literally any strategy game of any kind, this is incredibly obvious and not controversial. But D&D players are battered housewives who will insist it's okay for a fifteenth level wizard to be worth more than three fifteenth level monks because, uhhh, "they don't have magic"
motherfricker a leman russ doesn't have magic, that doesn't mean that if it costs 150 points it shouldn't be comparable to a 150 point wizard
>people paying hundreds of dollars for grams of plastic
>only an idiot lets himself get ripped off
correct, you should not be paying MSRP for virtually any current games workshop products especially if you're not a resident of perfidious albion since their international markup is atrocious
This. Unified experience tables and ditching the progression of martials into leaders without appropriately adjusting the power scaling was a huge mistake.
>level 20 monks be able to do
>martial cucks still seething
kek love to see it
Fighter can warp reality by hitting it really hard
Rangers can warp reality by hitting it from really far away
Rogues can warp reality by looking useful to a team
Monks can warp reality by reaching elightenment
Barbarians can warp reality by speaking latin perfectly suprising the roman officials enough to not notice the ambush coming from behind
Reliably defeat CR 20 monsters while consuming some but not all of their available resources (about 1/5th) when working as part of a team of about 3-5 total, as is expected of 20th level characters.
Beyond that it really doesn't matter.
>defeat CR 20 monsters
why casters can deal with CR 20 encounters but martials can only deal a subset of that?
>why casters can deal with CR 20 encounters
They can't. A CR 20 monster should absolutely wreck a single 20th level wizard.
A pit fiend has phenomenal saves, damage resistances, high movement speed, frightening damage per round, and magic resistance. In one round of attacks, assuming they all hit - and with an average result of 24, they will - it can deal an average of 99 damage, or in other words, most of a wizard's hit points, which probably top out at around 140 for a particularly robust (Con +3) wizard.
It also has Int 22 and Wis 18. It's actually smarter than than most wizards. If it fights a wizard, it'll be at a time and place of its choosing.
A single 20th level wizard against a competently run pit fiend is just as fricked as a 20th level fighter would be.
Assuming you're talking about 5e, I think you're overlooking one small factor.
Namely, that a level 20 Wizard can True Polymorph themselves into a Pit Fiend. Or any other CR 20 monster for that matter.
That is not how true polymorph works in 5e
Creature into Creature: If you turn a creature into another kind of creature, the new form can be any kind you choose whose challenge rating is equal to or less than the target's (or its level, if the target doesn't have a challenge rating). The target's game statistics, including mental ability scores, are replaced by the statistics of the new form. It retains its alignment and personality.
Does this mean that a caster who polymorphs himself into a CR20 creature with intellect similar to his own could choose to then become a wizard again, stacking his class level on top of being a fricking superdemon over time?
Strictly speaking, a Wizard could True Polymorph into an Adult Gold Dragon and then use the dragon's Change Shape feature to turn back into a CR 12 Archmage.
Of course, that's relying on a lot of caveats and favorable rulings. Still, high CR metallic/gem dragons are a good option for still being able to change into a humanoid form rather than being stuck as a massive monster.
Rather, CR20 monsters (such as the pit fiend) are such without even being a class. Their power stems from their creature statblock and supernatural abilities. But if a Wizard decided to Polymorph into a Pit Fiend and let it stick, would he be able to gain class levels? On top of being a Pit Fiend? Could he then reach level 20 *again*, becoming a level 20 Pit Fiend Wizard?
RAW there’s nothing saying that you can’t level up as a creature instead of a playable race. What if you gain XP as the pit fiend and tell the DM you would like to put it in 1st level fighter.
I expect the main issue there would be the question of what happens if the True Polymorph gets dispelled and the Wizard goes back to being a Wizard. Is he now a Wizard 20/Fighter 1?
I would expect the answer to be no, and likewise be the thing preventing a True Polymorphed Wizard from gaining levels, at least during an ongoing campaign.
I'm assuming you return to being a 20 Wizard, because "Replace" is pretty clear.
That's exactly how it works in 5e. The CR of the creature merely needs to be equal or less than the creature you're changing. And if you don't want to risk concentration, you simply need to True Polymorph in the morning and concentrate on it for the full duration so that it sticks.
And then proceeds to have it suppressed -if caster is still concentrating- or dispelled -if not as then its duration exists from its own effect that just got suppressed- by a beholder or CR13 caster npc, 12th even if DM is using the anti-standard-party monstrosities mercer made.
>enemy spellcaster dispels your true Polymorph (requiring a roll)
>turn back into a 20th level PC
Oh no. Anyway.
And I don't think a level 20 Fighter is going to have a much better time fighting a Pit Fiend and a Beholder at the same time when their magic sword suddenly turns off and they're dealing half damage to the flying beatstick with 300 hitpoints.
But of course, we weren't talking about a Pit Fiend plus a Beholder, we were talking about a single CR 20 monster. But suddenly this Pit Fiend needs backup because the Wizard did something unexpected, and that's supposed to be evidence that spellcasters can't deal with CR 20 threats?
This isn't even something outlandish like Wish+Simulacrum cheese. This is just a very straightforward use of True Polymorph.
AMF needs no roll, it auto dispels it due to suppression of its duration change, which means that Ab Champ or Beholder is about to get some munchies in if its a pure wizard 20.
And regular dispel magic cant interact with a finished true polymorph at all, the active spell has ended and for some reason 5e dispel magic cant end magical effects, only ongoing spells.
What fricking schizo strawman did you build up? How did you even get there from the point that a full 20 caster using true polymorph loses it including everything gained when transformed the moment the party faces any easy encounter that might still give them any xp.
>High level casters don't shit on martials because you can use another high level caster to counter it therefore not broken
...what?
If Batman can survive being punched through a wall by a wrecking ball with only his gums bleeding, why can't he breath in space?
(he can)
>wrecking ball
Lol that's small time for him, he got puched through an entire city, 10km wide, by Gods and he barely even broke sweat. He also beat two fullpowered kryptonians by punching them, and he has no super powers. It's been decades since the writers gave a rat ass about portraying him as anything but the most powerful creature in DC, he's faster than lightspeed, he can bend universes to his will, etc
Pic related is him after reentrying Earth's athmosphere and hitting the ground at mach40+
Ok Ganker has arrived, it's over everybody!
Nah, JK, but does anybody here actually run level 20 campaigns?
>lvl 20
doesn't matter though, casters already are breaking reality at 17th level when they get access to 9th level spells. Prior to that they can already create demiplanes or teleport from one side of the plane to another, summon force cages, force walls, etc.
People say "level 20" but casters already get their best stuff earlier, at 20th level they only get more uses of their best stuff which is good, but doesn't remove the fact that they have been using it already prior to 20
Fighters, monks, barbs and paladins should be able to withstand any spell, any hit, resist any mind control
If you lean into the 'its a magical world of magic' angle, then even pure Martials access the weave because it's part of the physics of that world. They don't do it like the Wiz or druid, but some of their attacks gain magical properties and some of their abilities are more than physical.
The gods exist and they may have chosen you to be a champion, without any great revelation or obvious manifestation. Your actions succeed not just because of your valour but because the gods witness your valour and deem your cause just. A glancing blow from your fist finds a pre existing fracture in your opponents skull shattering it like glass. You visualise a near impossible shot and loose, finding the arrow take the exact path your mind had envisioned, burying itself in the heart of a monster.
Alternatively, If you want your Martials to be unpowered Conan types, and ignore the possibility that reality itself and all the very real gods may be tipping the scales in your favour, then you just become mostly unstoppable in your chosen field, but a well thrown rock to the head will end you.
Those are the terms of what you signed up for.
Honestly I think Martials should level up faster than Casters and have their feet firmly planted in the realm of the mundane. Casters being "literal gods" should never come up in a game or if it does the Martials should still be a certain amount of levels ahead since learning to hit shit is way easier than learning how to bend over the rules of reality.
If martials are going to ultimately boil down to being stat sticks then they should have more stats to compensate for having less utility.
>If level 20 casters are all reality warpers then what should level 20 fighters, rangers, rogues, monks and barbarians be able to do?
Nothing. The fricking hyperbole on this board needs to stop. "LE WARP REALITY" is just embarrassing to read. You are acting hyperbolic over fantasy which is the very act of hyperbole. No, spellcasters already shouldn't be able to do those things. Level 20 is fricking cringe because after level 10 the game loses all scope. In fact at level 10 the campaign should be transitioning to domain-level play anyway, something that is impractical with the stupid homosexualry magic is capable of in nu-D&D. Anyway the biggest issue is that spells like mirror image, fly, greater invisibility, and summoning mean that fighters don't need to protect spellcasters anymore. And 5e giving them d6 hit die, and Pathfinder giving them d6 hit die AND +1 hit point per level from favored class, made that even worse. 5e also gives them shield so they can just negate attacks against them a lot of the time. When you've done what I've done and been the only "frontliner" in a 5e campaign and see all the spellcasters hold their own, you realize the old ways are gone. There shouldn't be anything level 20 fighters are able to do besides what's already in the book. Spellcasters should be nerfed. You don't need to buff fighters. Especially since for modern homosexuals who watch anime and YouTube cartoons they think that level 20 fighters should do fricking flashing-lines wide-eyed japanese death scream and deal 200 damage to everything within 200 feet. That is just exhaustingly stupid. These fat adult manchildren whose idea of fiction is that of children's superhero cartoons. Not even Marvel goyslop is as bad as anime. But that is the conception of what a high level "martial" should be to 95% of this board. It's pathetic.
Level 20 fighters should, as people have MANY, MANY times pointed out, be basically one-man armies able to do feats of mythological heroes.
Weirdly enough, fricking Shadowrun (4e) seems to have a better progression for martials. As a street samurai, you go from being basically a random dude with a knife/gun who can (and WILL most likely) die in a singular hit, to a walking cyberabomination who can tank a full magdump to the face and cut through an entire army in a few turns.
Now if only they'd frickin' let you swing more than once per turn.
The other classes should start doing anime shit. When your fighter wracks up as much damage in a turn as a weak fireball, mention that it's an incredible fricking combo
A level 20 fighter should be able to punch God in the dick and survive his counterattack.
>Pic
No class should break the game at any level. If that happens it only means the game reached is conclusion.
A level 20 ranger should be able to shoot the wings off a mosquito at 100 yards. A level 20 barbarian should be able to cleave a mountain in half. A level 20 monk should be able to leap so far he passes the horizon twice. A level 20 fighter should be able to break the speed of sound with his weapons. A level 20 paladin should be commanding a cohort of literal angels.
But no, D&D designers think if you're not a full caster, you don't get to do anything cool, ever. Either you're a trip monkey, an Ubercharger, or you just stand there and full-attack. At level 20 you play exactly like you did at level 1, just your numbers are larger. Because frick martial characters.
I know this board hates critical role, but I actually think Grog was a perfect example of level 20 Barbarian in that he just could not be stopped regardless of how much damage was inflicted, could not fail strength checks, and could successfuly push over entire towers. Endless strength might be simple, but hey barbarians are simple
Endgame martials either become magic in their own right/supernatural or become irrelevant. You can't compete with magic in the long run without some of your own and will never be able to. Magic triumphs all in the end. Hercules was only Hercules because of magic, not because of lifting weights.
Hercules was Hercule because of milk
Chi isn't magic.
You posted Goku, but in DBZ magic and chi are different and completely distinct things.
They should be able to try not playing D&D
The game you're presumably refering to?
It has a book.
A tome in which the answer to your question resides.
It will tell you, in detail, what fighters, ranger, rogues, monks, & barbarians should be able to do in the context of that game.
Is the answer to that question unsatisfying?
Try a different book, perhaps an earlier edition, perhaps a different author, perhaps a different publisher.
If none of those satisfy, then making your own or collaborating with others you trust and rely on to collectively produce one is also an option.
The inequity of the base concepts and their execution is a conversation that has been had, is had, and will be had until the Ganker servers die; there is little that can be done about this.
But the genuine, sincere, and actionable answer is
Read The Fricking Book.
4th edition had a good answer to this with its epic destinies. 3.5 and 5th edition is just like "you get an extra attack" or "here's some more sneak attack dice" etc.
outside of dnd i havent really seen many good solutions either. 4th edition dnd is the only system i've played that gave martials meaningful shit at the end game, weather it was becoming a demigod, becoming the leader of an "i am spartacus" style group, an assassin so proficient in death dealing that they've become too dangerous for the gods to frick with so he just never dies.
Every time I see this thread I wonder why people just don't play Exalted if they want the martial demigod power fantasy. Not that it wouldn't be nice to have it in D&D, but unless you're playing 4e, fixing Martials would take more effort and time than just learning a different system.
> Fighters
Impossible feats of strength and weapon skill: leveling hills by cutting/bashing them, parrying area attacks, cutting/bashing abstract concepts
> Barbarians
Impossible feat of strength (as above) and resilience: surviving decapitation and incineration, cleanse lethal venoms with a nap.
> Rogues
Impossible feats of finesse, dexterity and stealth: run vertically, upside down, or on mist, hide behind the air, steal pick locks and pickpocket impossible stuff (like the air from your lungs)
> Monks
A themathic mix of the above explained with inner magic.
> Ranger
A thematic mix of the above explained with nature magic
>cutting/bashing abstract concepts
That shit never made any sense other than to pander to the types of homosexuals that did circlejerk powerwanks and cried but my invincible shield as you shoved their face in dogshit for trying to ruin fun games.
Sure, a barbarian should be able to lift a city and yeet it at someone relatively nearby at 20 and fighter to "i am the storm that is approaching rules of nature" insanity assuming their weapon survives instead of ending up charred, molten or crunched up, but "i cut time" or "i use my pike to poke the idea of polynomial functions" means fricking nothing, hell not taking a action at all is more useful as then at least you can act as if the character had a stroke.
>pickpocket air from your lungs
That is called stabbing, garroting, choking or rib smashing someone, but silently.
'Cutting time' is a bad example because it seems possible in reality.
> That shit never made any sense
Sure, if you take concepts that have nothing to do with something that affects you directly. But cutting time so that a you don't age? Cutting space to cross longer distances? Cutting a soul? that should be doable to a 20 level fighter. (I will concede that these are tecnically not abstract concepts, i should have said "cutting stuff that cannot technically be cut").
> That is called stabbing, garroting, choking or rib smashing someone, but silently.
If i'm a common human? Sure. If i'm a 20th level thief? I can boop your nose and you start suffocating.
In bulk of ttrpgs souls are a (relatively) physical real thing, not a concept shared through global monomyth.
Aging slower by """physically""" fighting time with the sheer resilience of perfecting control over your body and cells fair but oriental classes generally already do that (if 3e age categories were still a thing in 5e D&D, id add the same extra class feature i had back then that at 10 if they pick or picked a "Improved x" or "skill focus" for a physical they can freely swap a number of them around based on age category (5 down to 1) and at 19 age penalties cease applying like with dragons).
And hard no on the thief. Sure they could pull off a elaborate plan with auto success prep of "steal entire monument form some country" and appear to have vanished in plain sight with nothing around, but the pseudo magic bullshit of "suffocate someone by stealing their air" firmly belongs in the category of weapon, chokeslams and throwing things so hard in the air or into the ground/water that the environment (or in the first place, sudden case of "lack of lungs") does that job. I could see a thief that is skilled in surgery or something (and with appropriate numbing agents) getting to do live sub minute organ harvesting tho.
Qi/Chi is fricking magic. Its magic in irl myth, in DB its fully interactive with magic both regular and divine and even has same combat rules of of "my number bigger so your attack doesnt work" and its even magic in most of the stupid modern wuxia "i swear this is more impressive than same thing i did last time" nonsense that has that DBZ flavor (a subgenre that works of sophistry, sheer idiocy and lack of system analysis that honestly is a disgrace to original over the top martial arts acrobatics part of the fantasy genre).
>what should level 20 fighters, rangers, rogues, monks and barbarians be able to do?
Example:
Gigabased. This and unironically.
This should be levels 10-15ish before you get to the 'parry nuke' phase.
Reality warping is just another name for fricking magic
A barbarian should be able to do this at lvl 20 no if ands or butts. It's so stupid how only Casters get to scale.
That dude is literally only able to do that because he has a supernatural devil fruit ability that makes him absurdly strong, though. It may as well be a magic power.
Okay a lvl 20 Barbarian should be able to do this smartass.
Here's your level 20 fighter
https://app.demiplane.com/nexus/pathfinder2e/classes/exemplar-playtest
No.
They should be able to be bodyguards and servants of the aforementioned gods.
Assuming we're talking about D&D, I have no issues with casters being strong and I like the idea of martials being superhuman but not marvel superheroes. I want high level casters to be Merlin and high level martials to be Beowulf or maybe Conan.
Beowulf is literally marvel tier super hero, maybe not Thor, but he's far above Captain America
I haven't opened a comic book in nearly 15 years, but Captain America is pretty much on par with Batman, which is to say functionally indestructible, capable of moving multiple tons without breaking a sweat, and able to fight literal gods in single combat and hold his own. Compared to MCU slop Beowulf is certainly a tier above, but the comic books have Captain America doing far greater feats than have been put on a screen.
>Hold on guys don't kill the monster yet I need to spend 9 turns charging up so I can cast wish
Beowulf swam an ocean, teared a troll's arm out of its socket with a single hand (said troll literally turned 50 soldiers into a mush, no swords or spears did shit to him, etc), and choked a dragon to death and other stuff. Dude would fit perfectly in a Marvel comics, at worst he is Marvel Knights' tier (Blade, Daredevil, Punisher).
All of those are things martials should be able to do
>should be able to do
Sadly they don't. Specially the tearing a troll's arm out of the socket or choke a dragon to death. You need magic and way more str for the unarmed damage necessary for that, at least in D&D
In every edition prior to 4e it was possible. The actual acts of choking out a dragon and ripping arms off trolls being somewhat borderline as feats of strength except in 3.X, they could still be fought in single combat and it would have been largely considered a fair fight. I wouldn't really mind not having the explicit ability to do either if they could be reasonably killed by a high level fighting man on his own.
Dragon has like DR 10+, unless you're a monk I have my doubts you can deal any realiable unarmed damage to actually kill it with a choke. And clearly not everybody is a monk, surely not Beowulf
Choke kill would be suffocation which has some ok options in 3e flavor wise even if only the triple check from i think mini handbook since they realized "oh wait, if enemies can hold their breath for 20-40 rounds this is pointless, lets just stun the enemy for a round or knock them out for 1d3 or 1d4 with caveats on how they react/what ends it, not neck snap (which would be death attack/assassinate/precision damage).
if you want to balance the game then all classes need to eventually develop magic.
Fighters should become gishes and so on like that. If you're one of those people who go "but I don't like magic I want to be the town guard who also kills god!" then you should take a shotgun, put it in your mouth and pull the trigger
swords will never beat guns so why would you expect them to beat magic?
>Fighter
Achilles
>Ranger
Aragorn
>Rogues
Sinbad
>Monks
Jackie Chan
>Barbarians
Conan the Barbarian.
Gargle the caster's ballsack.
Ask their nearest caster for help doing whatever they think they are best at
>Fighters
Wuxia heroes
>Rangers/Paladins
Half-casters so warping reality like casters, just with added martial power
>Rogues
Stealing concepts (breath, autonomy, sight, shadows, souls), moving so fast as to seem like they're teleporting, becoming completely invisible in shadow
>Monks
Xianxia heroes after 10000 reincarnations of nonstop cultivation
>Barbarians
Lifting and throwing entire buildings / Gargantuan enemies, pulverising foes to dust with just their bare hands, leaping over mountains in a single bound, invincible flesh
Level 20 martial characters are reality fixers, as opposed to reality warpers