What RPG can give you the real feeling of being an average guy with no superpowers but a lot of grit and determination who can still kill elder dragons and demon lords?
What RPG can give you the real feeling of being an average guy with no superpowers but a lot of grit and determination who can still kill elder dragon...
How do you kill elder dragon's with grit and determination? These don't hurt anything.
I dunno, getting grit in your eye can be really irritating
Show them how they shamed their parents until they commit sudoku?
A gutsy plan where everything has to go right and that a normal person can pull off if hey’ve got the minerals to go through with it.
The dragon can not breath fire on you if you set up a stalagmite plummeting into the top of it's skull.
>f hey’ve got the minerals to go through with it.
Minerals alone don't cut it. I mean, it's an elder dragon. You're definitely gonna require more vespane gas.
>Can You Beat An Elder Dragon On Brutal Difficulty With Marines Only?
Unironically DnD. Just be a Fighter.
>"just play this feature-bereft class that falls off before even the later levels and requires you to have decent luck with loot or a forgiving DM in order to get equipment to even remotely make a difference"
D&D brainrot. Many such cases.
Reminder people have beaten Tomb of Horrors with npc classes. Being low-powered in D&D is entirely doable so long as you play smart.
>Source: my ass
Tomb of Horrors is mostly about the sort of trial-and-error and problem solving that any player with a pulse can do, that's sort of the floor level for a character's ability to contribute to the party. If that's basically *all* a class can do, it's still a bad class.
Most of Tomb of Horrors lethality comes from traps that are outright "guess right or die" with literally no stats or rolls involved. Class is irrelevant through most of it.
no. in this case it is in fact exactly what OP asked for. a shit-tastic mediocrity that still manages to be snowflake powerful without being supe-rpowered or magical. despite the core conceit of d&d being that pcs are well above average by virtue of being a pc just to start, and having class levels IS having super powers.
do you fricking want superpowers or not? if not, then take the shit class and do plans, just like the bat dude you like so much. if you actually want superpowers but they are flavoured as "i plan for everything" then play a wizard and say stuff like "i planned for this and prepared a firetrap right there" when you cast fireball. in both cases shut up.
You can have features without them being super powers, but this requires not having D&D brainrot.
D&D 5e is literally just a superhero system disguised as fantasy. Literally what OP asked for.
By the way hating popular things does not make you appear more intelligent or interesting.
>D&D 5e is literally just a superhero system disguised as fantasy.
lol no.
Superheroes are (or used to be before western comics/movies were ruined) about finding creative solutions to problems either using their powers or not, staying, for the most part, in their city (with few exceptions where they dimension-hop or travel through space), accepting little to no reward for their good deeds, and delivering important messages through various themes of responsibility and consequence.
Solving every problem by violently blasting it or sending it to the no zone with one of hundreds of magic spells, traveling the world, blowing every coin wrung out of each client on stupid shit that was bartered for, and having no in-system way of effectively delivering themes is the literal opposite of what superheroes are about.
By the way, liking popular things doesn't make you appear more intelligent or interesting, and a thing's popularity is never an argument outside of specifically addressing how many people like it.
>feature-bereft class that falls off before even the later levels
Literally objectively wrong if you are playing 5e. You are actually factually fricking wrong. Go lynch yourself. I'm not even kidding you should fricking be kileld for posting this kind of shit eating meme spewing garbage. If this is bait, good, because I'll be fricking putting some on a fishhook and sliding it into your eye nice and slow and making your drink the juices while calling me daddy then rape your mother for shitting out such a fricking cheeto dust coated meme spewing walking mountain of cringe.
hytnpdnd?
>all those words
>yet no arguments
Why even bother?
Wrong in every edition other than 3.5, and even then, it's only when a single class, unoptimized fighter who takes random useless feats is the default assumption, which it should never be.
Also, when he says "feature," he means either super powers or gay named attacks from anime/wuxia/video games/4th edition. Fighters have always had features, most of which just made them really good at fighting, which is precisely what he's asking for. The idea of "features" has retroactively made fighters seem boring, because it used to be that if you wanted to do something other than "just attack," you would just say what you wanted to do and have the DM tell you what to roll and what happens (and often there were plenty of guidelines, sometimes optional, for those things). Likewise, people expect things like Perception to do everything for them, because "I feel along the wall for a hidden door" is apparently impossible now, because it's not a Feature.
i dont see how expecting you to get good loot is bad. like thats one of the aspects of the game. this is such a weird criticism
>i dont see how expecting you to get good loot is bad
Because that's not what's bad.
What's bad is the class is completely worthless without the exact loot that's right for a given situation, whereas any caster can just pick their advantages whenever they level up.
>Thread asks what game allows for someone who is underpowered with enough tact and mental aptitude to beat clearly worse odds
>Person says fighter
>Proceeds to list (off of bullshit assumptions) the EXACT reason why fighter would fit the desired role
Even if you're not wrong (which you are thematically, and logically) your argument would just show that fighters explicitly because of the reasons you listed would essentially be required to be the characters op describes
>thematically wrong
Which one out of the billions of possible themes are you referring to? It's also funny how you cite theme when the theme of D&D is almost entirely the opposite of the themes superhero stories go for, as I explained in (
).
>logically wrong
Citing factual flaws with D&D's construction is actually very much correct and logical. Sorry you can't handle that.
I'll say it again: you can give classes things to do without making them magic or super powers.
I'll say this again, too: if you can't handle your precious brain worm being criticized, go to any one of the millions of echo chambers devoted to its praise on the internet. It isn't that hard.
Getting good items is not "luck" in D&D. First, the DM's job is not to frick you over. Second, if you want an item, you ASK FOR IT.
>"I want to go ask Sage McSageington where I might find a sword (or the means to craft one) capable of wounding powerful demons."
Good job, you now can get a +5 sword if you succeed in your adventure, and the DM can plot hook you into literally any adventure he feels like. Everyone wins. This is how the game is intended to be played.
Why doesn't anyone on /tg/ ever read a DMG? ffs
->
I find it funny how people keep neurotically linking the one post without reading its replies or any of its responses.
To add to (
);
>"Getting good items is not "luck" in D&D."
"What the frick are loot tables?" - t. someone who thinks he's very smart.
>"Second, if you want an item, you ASK FOR IT."
"Begging daddy DM for things essential to your performance when none of the casters have to do it is good gameplay" - t. someone who thinks he's very smart, and who was likely never an actual player.
>"Everyone wins."
Except for the non-casters who have to beg for what they need every time they need something, instead of just getting it.
>"This is how the game is intended to be played."
"A thing doing what it intends to do automatically makes it high quality and excuses all of its failings." - t. someone who thinks he's very smart, and possible owner of an iPhone.
Many. Such. Cases.
An average guy with no superpowers but a lot of grit and determination can't kill elder dragons and demon lords. So you need a badly designed game, or one that hides your superpowers where you don't notice them, or giant monsters with glaring weaknesses and no initiative that sit there and spit out weak minions while you work up to pushing the button (Call of Cthulu).
D&D 4E
Whats the manlet in the bottom left doing?
I think he's training to be a contortionist
His best
Battling his demons
I don't get how a game that makes every class feel the same is supposed to evoke the feeling OP described.
Does every class play the same in 4e?
The roles play differently from one another but the classes within each role play identically. i.e. two "controllers" are identical regardless of class
How is this possible?
It is how it was designed. There are only four classes which are the roles. Everything else is just decoration.
and there are also only two foods to eat on earth. plants and animals. and all plants are identical, just as all animals are identical. everything else is just decoration.
When you have severe brain damage, making all sorts of wild claims is possible.
>Swordmage: low hp arcane defender that summons magic shields to protect allies from a distance and teleports to their punish attackers
>Warden: high hp primal defender that tries to attract as many enemies as possible and transforms into animal hybrids/elementals to make sure they can't escape
>these play identically
sigh
>The roles play differently from one another but the classes within each role play identically. i.e. two "controllers" are identical regardless of class
but thats wrong you moron
have you actually played 4e, or just read the memes about it?
None, because that's fricking stupid.
WHRP 2e
it's unironically a special snowflake self insert mentality for these kind of people. They want to have their cake and eat it too, they want to be a normal completely mundane average guy with a sword who is simultaneously capable of going toe to toe with dragons and demon lords and giants, and they want to be able to win without using any superhuman feats of strength or "anime shit" when doing so.
It's literally the "I'm just an average japanese high school student" equivalent of tabletop gaming. BY DEFINITION being able to stand against a dragon or demon lord or whatever means your character is ridiculously exceptional and superhuman, you can't jerk off the "mundane" fantasy when you're regularly dunking on immortals. It's unironically more of a self insert power fantasy to want to be the guy who defeats a dragon with zero magical powers, zero divine blessings, zero anything other than "me sword gud" and still somehow survive direct hits from breath weapons and six claw, bite, wing, and tail attacks than it is to play something like a druid who turns into a fricking wooly mammoth before stomping on the dragon's face. If you can accomplish what the other people need magic to do without magic, you're still fricking superman by comparison.
If any regular moron with a crossbow could kill dragons without being special in some way like these mudcore homosexuals fantasize about, then the world and gamewouldn't need heroes and adventurers to begin with and LE LOCAL LORD with his men in full harness would just go kill all the dragons themselves.
This.
Its people who want to be glorified for their mediocrity somehow being special but also average.
Try again without copypasta.
https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/85021035/#85033694
It bears repeating
No it doesn't.
I think OP want something that he can win with planning alone, not a sword or a crossbow, but tbh, if the balance is so against you, because what you're up against is so powerful, the "planning" is gonna depend on a lot of deus ex machina, and such a strong luck, that the character is gonna feel more like a mary sue than a self insert anime protagonist in a power fantasy.
The above being said, you might be able to find something in mutants and masterminds, simce you can spend character points buying shit like personal, bases, vehicles, resources and shit like that instead of powers, and even when you buy actually powers, you can make so they are tech equipment instead of magic and mutations, so you might be able to adapt some shit and get something closer to what you're looking for
>survive direct hits from breath weapons and six claw, bite, wing, and tail attacks
If you are doing it this way, then you aren't doing it right.
actually i am.
Not regularly dunking but think more like John Constantine from Hellraiser. Supernatural beings fear and respect you. You swindle demons with their own contracts. Deities owe you favors.
>Bat ears aren't even stylized to direct strikes away, its just shitty weapon catches.
Your premise is moronic. Normal people cannot kill demons and elder dragons, no mater how plucky and stubborn they are. That's like saying if I piss really hard and I believe in myself enough, I can put out the sun. It just doesn't work that way. Either you want gritty low fantasy or you want to do high fantasy heroics.
>Normal people cannot kill demons and elder dragons
prove it
>prove a negative
You make the claim, you prove that they can.
ok
Shadow of the Demon Lord? Most fully martial PCs don't get much in the way of superheroics but rather just martial skill and training, you start as an average person, and while things like Elder Dragons are monstrously tough you can still take them on. Maybe even win too. The Demon Lord is a god, but Demon Princes fill the standard lowercase demon lord vibe and can also be defeated. Again, very hard.
every setting that provides you with means to enhance your own strength to absolutely inhuman levels, like being able to buy (or steal) an RPG-7 and enough blessed ammo to kill giant monsters and supernatural threats.
In the end you were maybe an average guy, but modern settings allow you to wield the strength of thousands of humans poured into bullets and explosives. But in that case you'd have to suspend your disbelief far enough to not question why the other side doesnt seem to make use of similar tactics
WHFRP
Surprised it took so long for someone to say what this guy said
WFRP non-magic characters (assuming you're not a troll slayer) never get that crazy powerful.
Dragons in WFRP one or two shot you in 2e, we don't talk about 3e, and in 4e is a guaranteed one shot.
With preparation, teamwork, and a good plan you can shred the dragon with traps/emplaced weaponry before it even knows what's going on.
>With preparation, teamwork, and a good plan you can shred the dragon with traps/emplaced weaponry before it even knows what's going on.
No, you can't. Its toughness is too high, its wounds are too many.
>and in 4e is a guaranteed one shot.
Say that to my +12 LoS on defence and free Riposte attacks. Dragon, more like gayon.
In the Dresden Files, there's a frost giant who dueled and defeated Thor. Like, the god Thor.
He gets unceremoniously one-shotted by an M72 LAW from a normal human.
Why aren't more games like this?
Because that sucks in the context of a game.
I mean, lancers thought the same thing when they got wasted by machine guns tbh
Yes, and they were correct. What's your point?
>He gets unceremoniously one-shotted by an M72 LAW from a normal human.
Because when the DM works really hard to make an enemy sound cool and powerful and then they die like a punk then it feels really sad and lame for the DM and also for the players.
It's not dying like a punk.
It's simply a sign that mythological gods are still no match for a good old fashioned anti-tank weapon. It's basic HFY.
I bet you're one of those guys who thinks that realism = good and the more realistic something is the better
Its normal to enjoy fantasy, but I refuse to believe that other parts of the fantasy have power over me that the average man cannot fight against.
Which ironically means that your ideal fantasy world is one in which everything is weaker than that in the real world, since IRL there are very much things that have power over you that you can't fight against.
You can fight against it. That's a world away from "shoot down beings from beyond your realm with a mundane missile launcher, instantly killing them" though. A godly being who kills a thousand men in a single fight but falls to the thousandth and one is more acceptable, and both maintains the feeling of a powerful, respectable fantasy setting and the common mans grit and ability to fight against the odds.
HFY very frequently fails to satisfy any reasonable amount of respect to either party and just becomes "humans are the coolest and always win because everything else sucks", which doesn't make anyone sound cool at all. No one's impressed and it isn't fun.
A Javelin can one-shot an M1A2 Abrams, my good man.
An Abrams can also be stopped by rough terrain. Terrain that the gods themselves created.
It's not about the numbers, it's about respecting the romance. A god doesn't die because he falls down some stairs. You can't casually kill a god. You can't have a character say "maybe I'll kill some gods today" in your story, unless this is intended as some sign that the order of the world has gone horribly wrong.
The difference between a story where a hero slays a dragon and some guy knocks off a big lizard is the romance element. What's so frick yeah about humanity when what they're doing is at most pest extermination?
This isn't even HFY. This is just an endless circlejerk of characters dying pitiful deaths. Does the cop then get stabbed during a routine broken tail light stop? Does the driver then fall down the stairs the next day? How many layers of grit can you possibly extract from this before you realize it's dull as frick?
>She was standing next to her Harley, and the box labeled CAMPING SUPPLIES was wide open.
>I watched her draw out a round tube with a couple of grip points and a control pad, painted olive drab. She extended the tube, flipped up some kind of little doohickey on it, lifted it to her freaking shoulder, and settled her fingers lightly on the control pad.
>“You fight like a woman, seidrmadr,” Svangar snarled.
>“Hey, drittsekk!” Murphy shouted.
>Svangar turned his head toward her, his expression furious.
>One corner of her mouth crooked up in a smile and her blue eyes were cold. “Me, too.”
>And she fired the weapon.
>I don’t know a lot about military hardware. But if you’re going to fight a Jotun, it seems to me a bazooka is about the right caliber.
>I didn’t really see the rocket fly. That’s not how those things work. They move at about the speed of a handgun bullet. There was simply an explosion followed almost instantaneously by another explosion in the hollow of Svangar’s throat. CrackBOOM.
>Resisting fire was a nifty trick, but in the end, again, Sir Isaac will always weigh in on matters. Fire is an absolute, a collection point of energy, and it can always get hotter. Eventually, as with any defense, there’s a limit to what it can do, a point of catastrophic failure—and Murphy’s rocket found that limit.
>Ever see a watermelon get smashed with a sledgehammer?
>It was sort of like that.
>Flesh and blood exploded from the Jotun in a cloud of aerial chum. I could see Svangar’s cracked and blackened collarbone and his freaking spine through the hole in his neck. The Jotun staggered, his shoulder smashing into a building, raised his axe one last time—and fell as it dropped from his suddenly nerveless fingers.
>The giant’s body crushed two cars and knocked over a streetlight as it came down. One outflung hand landed not three feet from my toes.
>And suddenly the street was silent and very still.
It's basic HFY.
Labelling something as HFY is literally the lamest thing you can do. Nobody who is cool feels the need to call themselves cool all the time.
Obviously. But it's always fun to watch the apes chest thumping.
This is painful.
I am normally against gatekeeping but I would march in the streets to keep this bullshit OUT of fantasy.
Even worse than I thought it would be. He wrote freaking twice. If this is basic HFY then it's enough reason to write the whole thing off.
There is nothing wrong with the word "freaking."
Do you have a tumblr blog to contribute to?
Ignore what that guy is saying about the Dresden Files. That scene is from an arc-climax book that's supposed to shake up the status quo - Balor's daughter discarding supernatural secrecy and launching an open invasion of Chicago.
Not only did that frost giant never kill any gods, but in DF metaphysics even *gods* can't kill other gods except through super-specific means that they don't always have access to - the best you can hope for is to imprison them somehow then wait a few eons for them to wither away.
In fact there are multiple gods present on the battlefield at the time doing all kinds of insane bullshit to the point where reality is collapsing around them and needs another god to hold it together.
>dude tanks are like the same as gods! frick yeah humanity is unbeatable!
>dude tanks are like the same as gods!
"God" doesn't mean "omnipotent."
it does when you spell it with capital G
How many times are you going to repeat that "talking point"?
>DOOOOOD THE ONLY WAY YOU COULD SURVIVE A ROCKET LAUNCHER IS BY BEING OMNIPOTENT HUMANIT FRICK YEAH DOOOD!
Look at gods from Greek, Norse and Japanese mythology.
>Casually turning people into snakes and mice
>Casually being able to see into the short-term future and dreams of mortals
>Casually strike mortals dead if they displease them
>Casually cleave mountains in half
>Casually kill dragons or dragon like beings
>Casually curse people with debilitating effects
>Casually defy all mortal measure of what a ''Person'' should be capable of
If you think a god should be one shot by tanks and RPGs, you are the kind of person who fundamentally misunderstands the very idea of dramatic tension, stakes and set up, pay off
Many real world gods wouldn't pass the test to be fantasy setting gods. The norse gods, for example, are LITERALLY just people with cool stuff. They only have long lives by keeping eating more fruit of immortality, without it they would age and die like any man. Thor cannot pick up Mjolnir without both his strength boosting belt AND his strength boosting iron gloves, otherwise it is too heavy even for him. Odin had no magical power until he went and risked his life and traded his eye and suffered to get magic.
The Norse gods are essentially just a family of high level player characters that were worshiped rather than innately divine beings.
Have you read Neil Gaiman's American Gods?
i don't read shitty books for ugly people sorry
Capital G "God" as you spelled it there literally does mean omnipotent being, and small g gods, usually the personification of some conceptual or physical phenomena are partially immaterial supernatural beings and nearly always immortal. Tanks are powerful physical machines, not expressions of abstract worship and divine personification of phenomena, you homosexual. Atheist physicalists cannot into the immaterial even in imagination it seems.
yes it does.
Well I'm glad you've at least admitted your fragility and insecurity, anon 🙂
Hey anon, I just made up a new fantasy monster just for you.
It's a 20-feet-long lizard that is immune to all physical weapons. Bullets, missiles, MOABs, nuclear bombs, hydrogen bombs, they can't even scratch him. Also he's constantly hunting for you. Specifically you.
You have absolutely no way to stop it and when he gets to you, he'll fricking eat you.
Fun how fiction works, huh?
also his name is Jeremy McRapevore
And nobody will give a shit, there's a good reason why most people like to see humans win and persevere.
G.K. Chesterton was a Christian, something most HFY-tards aren't, because the idea of humbling themselves before anything, even God, is antithetical to their beliefs.
then fantasy is not the right genre for you, try something else, like Pulp Sci-Fi comics from the 60's
>It's simply a sign that mythological gods are still no match for a good old fashioned anti-tank weapon
Since mythological gods and all other fictional supernatural creature don't need to abide to the laws of physics and are by design as otherworldly and pwoerful as the author desires, there's no real reason why mythological gods should be no match for anti-tank weapons. It's not logical, it's just one option that the setting's author can choose to go for or to avoid. So stop treating it as if it was an inherently superior or more logical choice, you're just revealing that you're too dumb to grasp the basic rules of genre fiction.
>basic HFY
So, trash.
Do you know how strong a LAW is, let alone a Javelin?
Nash, it's more a sign that you can't actually consider it worthy of being called a god.
>It's basic HFY.
So it's shit.
>HFY
opinion discarded
>It's not dying like a punk.
No, it is.
It's no more HFY than me stepping on an ant.
Narrative purpose is different to game purpose. Barton Fink is a fine film, but would be lousy to play as a board game. Unless you can really play it for laughs, or having them fight the thing that killed them, or otherwise having some kind of escalation occur instead of a letdown, it just doesn't really serve any purpose in the game.
At it's worst, you're just gonna come across as a railroader,a dmpc wanker, or otherwise just screwing around with your players for your own means. At bare minimum, expect them to go straight out to get some LAWs and begin trying to solve problems with them.
Most games ARE like that. Shitty, anticlimactic, and unsatisfying.
Like, why even bother with the fantastic if you're just going to bring it down like that? What you described doesn't come off as some kind of fist-pumping HFY moment of triumph, it's just makes frost giants and Thor sound like worthless garbage. Every time I hear about Dresden Files it just makes it sound like the urban fantasy equivalent of the Boys. Is the author by some chance a bitter Irish c**t with hateboner for supernatural creatures like Ennis has for superheroes?
At least when Buffy did it with the Judge, they spent time making shooting him with a rocket launcher seem like a last ditch, unconventional solution to to exploit what is, in hindsight, a fairly obvious and glaring weakness.
>What you described doesn't come off as some kind of fist-pumping HFY moment of triumph
The normal human who shot the LAW was Karrin Murphy, one of the main characters of the whole series. Literally seconds after she explodes the legendary frost giant god-hunter, she gets shot in the neck and killed by an unremarkable, crooked cop with a pistol.
It's a gritty urban fantasy series.
But it literally fits what the OP post is saying.
>What RPG can give you the real feeling of being an average guy with no superpowers but a lot of grit and determination who can still kill elder dragons and demon lords?
It's LITERALLY an RPG... a rocket propelled grenade that can kill a legendary frost giant who fought Thor.
>they spent time making shooting him with a rocket launcher seem like a last ditch, unconventional solution to to exploit what is, in hindsight, a fairly obvious and glaring weakness.
My dude, you are talking about gamers vs normies here. To a long time frpg gamer yeah... totally obvious and not unconventional at all... to your average normie (who the show was targeting) it was so outside of their box of reference it would seem hilarious and totally out of the blue. So yeah... most games are totally like you say, I mean look at Stalking the Night Fantastic (Bureau 13) it's been around for-fricking-ever and it was custom BUILT around that trope because you play a member of a secret gov't organization whose job it is to use modern tech and such to hunt down and kill the paranormal threats. It's sort of like X-files only from a more proactive and "we know the truth and it's our job to keep people from learning it" sort of thing. They even bring in sci fi tech like a gun called the "weathermaker" which is called that because it's a man portable rail gun that accelerated flachette rounds at near light speed and firing it creates a slip stream of vaccuum that looks like a tornado. Hard for a monster really stand up to shit like that.
Can rocket launchers kill gods?
That's why Bureau13 created BANE kits. Basic Aggressor Neutralization/Elimination kit.
I've opted to include a copy of the base B.A.N.E. kit's inventory here. And to answer your question. Given that it includes a MCND round (Magically Contained Nuclear Detonation) I'd say... yes, buy only small or demi gods which are vulnerable to thermo nuclear weapons.
BANE?
If you wield a weapon massively superior than that of a god which for some reason your opponent cannot also use, you HAVE superpowers, moron. Or you are just shooting at unintelligent wild animals and then patting yourself on the back for how gritty and resourceful you are.
That sounds really gay
cause that's dumb and gay
>a frost giant who dueled and defeated Thor. Like, the god Thor. He gets unceremoniously one-shotted by an M72 LAW from a normal human.
He didn't defeat Thor. His big boast was that he fought Thor and *survived*.
He also doesn't give any context for how they fought, so for all we know it was "Thor killed a bunch of frost giants and didn't realise one was still alive under the pile of corpses".
Someone literally posts high fantasy Batman but no one suggests a superhero system that's literally designed to emulate this to a T?
Unisystem. If you don't take any powers or magic and just use guns, you still can take down most things with enough prep. My favorite superpower was a .45 and maxed out dex with acrobatics. Nothing beats jumping onto a monster and emptying my load all over it's skull. Pic unrelated
D&D 5e. Play a caster but refluff your magic as complex but mundane planning and preparation.
Delta Green is kind of like this where you're a normal dude against impossible odds, good luck actually killing anything though.
No such game exists outside of your imagination. Fortunately, your imagination is cost effective.
>average guy with no superpowers
>can still kill elder dragons and demon lords
Pick one. This is an oxymoronic and outright moronic request.
Batman has ninja and detective superpowers shut up.
Fricking this.
The greatest flaw in this mentality is that it pretends anyone without explicit magic or superpowers is just an "average guy".
Batman isn't an average guy in a costume, he's a captain of industry with more money than God, a supergenius, the world's greatest detective, an olympic level athlete and a master of every single martial art in the world.
A monster hunter who has spent his entire life autistically studying the occult isn't an average guy.
An elite mech pilot who has become one with his machine and can do tricks nobody else can isn't an average guy.
The thing is you can theoretically become an occult expert, martial arts master, billionaire, or mech pilot IRL. You can never become superman nor goku no matter how many weights you lift or how much you train or scream
>Batman
>Billionaire
>Super genius
>Master detective
>In peak of physical conditioning
>Has elite training from grand masters of various styles
>Has elite training from mystic ninjas and assassin's
>Has Access to cutting edge technology and manufacturing capabilities
>Has Access to alien cultures, knowledge and science
>Best friend is a literal living WMD
>"Average Dude"
Kek
all doable except the last two
>billionaires exist IRL
>super geniuses exist IRL
>master detectives exist IRL
>people in peak physical conditioning exist IRL
>martial arts masters exist IRL
>you can technically learn ninja shit but that just really amounts to fighting like a japanese peasant
>science exists IRL
I propose we create a new genre and we call it Humanity Frick Off.
Godzilla really is the penultimate anti-HFY story.
MommyZilla. Also yes, I cant fricking stand HFY, the sooner a none cringe counter movement starts against it the better
That's Lovecraft
Weak, effeminate pussies afraid of conquering their White Whales detected.
But the whole point was Ahab's obsession ensured his own destruction and only led to suffering.
You’re the kind of moron who thinks killing all the Sparrows because they dare eat our grain in the fields is a wise decision.
No, the weak effeminate pussies are those who seek in HFY literature the validation they can't find in real life, and have therefore the pathological need for their 'gritty underdog everyman' character to always come out on top no matter the circumstances, and also possibly have an harem.
You realize the whale you're referencing wins his fight, right?
>HFY advocate references cornerstone piece of western literature the entire point of which is that man cannot even comprehend, let alone battle and conquer, the divine as some kind of argument in his favour
At least it tracks that you're a moron.
Moby-Dick dragged Ahab and the entire Pequod (save Ishmael) to their briny deaths .
But anon I'm already doing your mom
Literally Gurps
>Elder dragon
Prepare a siege ballista for when the dragon come out of his den to hunt and shoot in his vulnerables.
>Demon lord
Always defeated by some deus ex machina anyway, literally just embark in a quest to find the holy relique or awaken your faith in god (true faith is an advantage that makes you untouchable by demons and such).
For the Demon lord you can just luck out on an exorcism crit
Warhammer Fantasy. I've only ever played 4th edition and It's to me the most readily accessible, It literally enables a story about being a dirt farmer thrown into horrible circumstances to becoming an empire-famed hero. Or dying in the process, because you're still just a dirt-farmer.
2nd Edition was also suggested in this threat. Either works, they're both good from what I know.
I've not played Shadow of the Demon Lord, but a friend of mine swears by it. It's a game that's like D&D, with a d20 system that has you start as a 0th level character.
If you want a more old-school style, Dungeon Crawl Classics starts you off with three 0th level characters because it expects at least one of them to die, most likely two of them in "Meat grinder Dungeons" aimed at 0th level characters. Then the players pick from the survivors, and then pick their class in a very old school system.
>can play an achilles or hektor
>plays normal noname john smith to self-insert instead
LMAO'ing at your life
Some people just like the underdog archetype, is it so unthinkable?
>underdog
But you don't actually want to be an underdog, you're asking for Bilbo Baggins to defeat Smaug in an open confrontation rather than keeping his wits about him. How the frick is your character an "underdog" when he's killing dragons and demon lords?
>How the frick is your character an "underdog" when he's killing dragons and demon lords?
Like this
? There's nothing inherently heroic into carefully planning to take down the dragon with a siege ballista.
see
Ok then just assume that to maneuver the ballista is OP's nobody character, or OP character managed to enroll a band of mercs and multiple ballistas strategically put around the den exit ready to shotthe dragon. Seems more an black ops mission rather than a proper heroic quest.
Such a character wouldn't be a part of a pnp rpg, but a book, anon.
Its where you get nonsense like 'I killed a greater daemon with a knife because EXPLODING CRITS XXDDDD!!1!' idiocy.
literally the opposite moron
Alright, describe your scenario.
>Have i to remember you that smaug got killed by a literally lucky shot?
By a man who was descended of heroes, with a magical relic arrow passed down the line of his fathers.
No one actually cares about underdogs; who killed Achilles? Most could not tell you who.
>By a man who was descended of heroes, with a magical relic arrow passed down the line of his fathers.
Irrelevant, games where this scenario is viable exist and they model it over a down to earth approach as in, for example, a bunch of cavemans hunting down and killing a mammoth.
>No one actually cares about underdogs; who killed Achilles? Most could not tell you who.
Parides, but who the frick cares who care? Op cares to have this kind of game and this kind of game is perfectly possible using the right instruments, or is it that you have a problem with that because is badwrong fun?
>Such a character wouldn't be a part of a pnp rpg, but a book, anon.
Depends on the game
>Its where you get nonsense like 'I killed a greater daemon with a knife because EXPLODING CRITS XXDDDD!!1!' idiocy.
Again depends on the game. Eg: in gurps a 180lbs ballista makes 16d6 cr damages, more than enough to kill an ytarrian monstrous dragon (22hp & DR7) if the strike is aimed at the vitals.
Have i to remember you that smaug got killed by a literally lucky shot?
Bron works because everyone and everything in GoT is on a similar playing field/power level. Bron wouldn't work in something like a high fantasy setting where everyone else is basically a superhero, there's too much of a gap between their abilities.
I can accept an underdog applying a strategy to overcome a far far superior opponent.
Making a habit of specializing in the killing Dragons and Demon Lords in that sort of light though, is capeshit dreck tier. Killing a Dragon should be the most notable achievement in their entire life, not just another weekend.
David killed Goliath through a divine miracle. Characters consistently winning aren't underdogs.
>underdogs can't beat overdogs because winning makes them not an underdog
t. 50 IQ
>one of the most capable, experienced, devious men on the entire continent
>on a first name basis with peers of the realm
>underdog
>wanting to be a character in a story rather than a character in a world
Plot significance and general gravitas should not be a factor in how strong an opponent actually is. Attributes and advantages yes, plot armor no.
considering you posted medieval batman I assume you actually mean an extremely exceptional person with no superpowers
It's Batman. He literally has a recovery factor, is immortal and can bend reality to some degree. He can also tank hits from people who make Superman bleed without getting whatever body part's being targeted turned into a shower of gore. That's just the standard package for a superhero.
Calling him a normie is like calling Musk's career a Rags-to-Riches story.
Depends on the comic.
It's kinda funny how that one time he got his back broken became a fixed theme of the character that got repeated in Kingdom Come and Batman Beyond.
... pretty much any given fantasy-themed TTRPG?
You just wanted to post that shitty image, didn't you?
>What RPG can
GURPS
Unironically GURPS.
if you kill a legendary monster by shooting at it, you arent an underdog, you ARE an hero. all the examples itt, from Bard to that GoT guy to dresden files, are from settings that do NOT have legendary heroes with superpowers that set them completely apart from the common people. sure there are magical creatures in there, but they are creatures that die if you shoot them, which means you arent really that under of a dog. more importantly, they are moron without actual weapons or organization, or literal unintelligent animals
sure, if you like a world where demon lords and dragons live in caves doing nothing and come out when you make noise only to get shot in the face by the ballista you spent an hour placing there, more power to you i guess.
>you ARE an hero.
Wrong. You BECAME an hero.
yeah exactly. it doesnt mean anything, its just boasting, just like the legendary status of the animal you killed was boasting too. you are an hero because the other heroes and monsters in your world are already all shit
>All the salty magegays in this thread
Jesus christ you people are fricking awful. "Muh magicman is invincible to arrows and swords because... uhhhhh.. magic! How dare you imply that magic has reasonable limits and not render me- I mean Demon Lords completely invincible to jock- I mean a normal guy with a sword."
Wanting this kind of power fantasy is no different than one involving magical abilities and equipment. Its a difference of taste. Except magicgays get really upset when anyone threatens their fun for some reason.
There's nothing unreasonable about making yourself impervious to the most common weapons in the world.
And what makes you think that its reasonable to actually achieve? Even with magic? Blah blah DnD does it, so fricking what? Becoming "Invincible to weapons" is just as mary sue bullshit as becoming able to wrestle a dragon without magic. Frankly "Invincible to weapons" is worse, because it smacks of that kid on the playground who says "nuh uh, you can't hit me because I have an untaggable forcefield". At least the dude wrestling the dragon supposes he might lose.
>Dragging out the old HFY boogeyman
There hasn't even been a thread on that in fricking years. Give it a rest already. I get that you're triggered by having faith in yourself and not depending on Marvel superheroes to save the day, but some people like being able to depend on their own abilities and power, not borrowing it.
>boogeyman
b***h people have mentioned HFY as their aspiration or excuse multiple times in this thread
There is nothing wrong with HFY. It's a celebration of humanity.
It's a celebration of all the worst impulses of humanity. It's thumping our chest and pretending we're at our best when we're acting like violent, spiteful, self-destructive cavemen.
That is when we're at our best, pussy.
>humanity is at its best when acting like a bunch of primitive savages, like disgusting orcs and beastmen
Yes, homosexual.
Then by all rights they should be hunted and subjugated like the animals they are.
try it b***h Black person
But let me guess, when any other species act like a bunch of hyperaggressive crackheads, they should be destroyed for not being as civilized as humans?
People like the gay you're talking to make me think Lovecraft was right. There is nothing special or unique about man except his insufferable self centredness in a universe so vast it would fry his monkey brain
nah everyone else who isn't human should be killed because they're not human regardless of anything else
But let me guess, when any other species act like a bunch of genocidal maniacs, they should be destroyed for not being as peaceful and moral as humans?
Avatar is over a decade old, when are you going to stop seething about fake humans being beaten by fake space cats?
protection from normal weapons, moron
magic has no limits, moron
>All the salty HFYgays in this thread
Jesus christ you people are fricking awful. "The ancient Demon Lord dies like a b***h to some random guy because... uhhhhh.. muh grit, muh wit! How dare you imply that modern firearms aren't invincible god-slaying weapons and would not allow me- I mean Humanity to skillessly overpower any opponent."
Wanting this kind of power fantasy is no different than one that involves jerking off to "human spirit" and techical specs on Wikipedia. It's a difference of taste. Except HFYgays get really upset when you suggest a mundane human might lose a fight, for any reason.
Fantasy?
Nothing, as anons have already explained in detail up thread.
If you want to be a normal guy trying to kill ancient beings with basic weapons, balls and planning though, play Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green.
Dungeon World.
It's a powered by the apocalypse game, which potentially allows you to beat a dragon at level 1 if you are smart, crafty and creative enough.
This, considering it's one of the worst games in the powered by the apocalypse family. Try it.
Abilities: High agility, intellect, perception. Good toughness, might, willpower.
Talents: high investigation, streetwise, covert. good science, tech, vehicles, medicine.
Powers: blind fighting, danger sense, martial arts, strike, weakness detection, determination, armor, blending, blind, stun, danger sense, lightning reflexes, dazzle, deflection, swing line, evasion.
RIFTS
Just put macguffins in your game or massive weaknesses in your enemies that they can exploit with a lot of planning.
Or be very willing to indulge some hairbrained schemes.
>10 levels of Champion Fighter
>10 levels of Thief Rogue
>literally D&D Batman
Dark Heresy.
Conan 2d20 if nobody makes a sorcerer. Sorcerers have nifty spells and alchemical formulas but at the end of the day a good sword or bow kills things the best way.
>an average guy with no superpowers
>but a lot of grit and determination who can still kill elder dragons and demon lords?
Only if you consider 'magic anyone can learn to do' no superpowers.
Otherwise your 'elder dragons' and 'demon lords' are just bigger animals/humans. Which admittedly is still impressive if your dopamine receptors haven't been blown out by modern fantasy.
momster hunter
Monster Hunter hunters are themselves bioweapons, made to fight other bioweapons. That's why they don't immediately die when a dragon swats them off a cliff.
nah
An average guy couldn't do any of those things. An average guy would just die.
An average guy one-shotted King Richard the Lionheart, the world's best fighter (literally level 20) at the time.
lol no, the best any real human can ever be is around level 5
Hero System.