I mean, there is another route - magic items. Bard was just a dude, but the Black Arrow he killed Smaug with would definitely have been a magic item in D&D terms; the same is true of the barrow-blade Merry used to soften up the Witch-King for Eowyn.
Magic items are only a solution if you have a class feature that automatically grants them to you. Which is not an entirely unreasonable option.
For other Tolkien examples, I'd go looking in the Silmarillion, particularly the story of Turin, who was, AFAIR, not of any elven ancestry. (But it's been a long time.) If I were inclined to go looking for other examples, I'd try samurai and martial arts movies.
Wuxia is basically the same genre conventions as anime, so if you take offense at anime I doubt those examples will help.
Nah. Bard is a legit example. Magic items in Tolkien are rare and unusual, of significant craftsmanship. There is absolutely zero indication in the book that that was anything other than his lucky arrow, and dude one-shotted a dragon with it and nothing else but his marksmanship.
His lucky arrow... that was forged to be unbreakable by Dwarven master smiths and passed down through his family for centuries. It's a magic item.
If this image loads, I imagine it is something a normal person really shouldn't be able to get away without repercussions.
I mean, without any context that could be anything from a 1d6 cantrip to Thulsa Doom's Heightened Chain Lightning. Also, having lots of HP is a pretty ordinary Barbarian thing. Any more info?
Magic items are only a solution if you have a class feature that automatically grants them to you. Which is not an entirely unreasonable option.
The game itself expects PCs to have them eventually - see DMG 37, "Tiers of Play." You can deviate from that expectation if you want, but then you only have yourself to blame when the martials in your campaign underperform.
If this image loads, I imagine it is something a normal person really shouldn't be able to get away without repercussions.
I mean, without any context that could be anything from a 1d6 cantrip to Thulsa Doom's Heightened Chain Lightning. Also, having lots of HP is a pretty ordinary Barbarian thing. Any more info?
Has Conan ever done anything clearly beyond human limits?
And that image of Conan doing a thing is clearly beyond human limits......that's about all I got on a basic search of things I vaguely remember happening. Any more research on my part is going to require that I care enough about the debate to continue it (I really don't) or that I wish to derail the thread about Psionics further (I also don't).
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"The mongoose blew out its candle and was asleep in bed before the room went dark." —Llanowar fable
Nah. Bard is a legit example. Magic items in Tolkien are rare and unusual, of significant craftsmanship. There is absolutely zero indication in the book that that was anything other than his lucky arrow, and dude one-shotted a dragon with it and nothing else but his marksmanship.
His lucky arrow... that was forged to be unbreakable by Dwarven master smiths and passed down through his family for centuries. It's a magic item.
OK, I'd forgotten that bit. It might be a magic item. He doesn't know, but it could well be.
For other Tolkien examples, I'd go looking in the Silmarillion, particularly the story of Turin, who was, AFAIR, not of any elven ancestry. (But it's been a long time.) If I were inclined to go looking for other examples, I'd try samurai and martial arts movies.
Wuxia is basically the same genre conventions as anime, so if you take offense at anime I doubt those examples will help.
It overlaps, but it's its own thing IMO. I'll leave arguing that sort of detail to serious film scholars, though. Anyway, "anime" isn't a single genre with a single set of genre conventions. It's not all Dragonball Z. Record of Lodoss War is IIRC literally based on a D&D game. There's certainly no shortage where major characters are explicitly normal people. But then, not all martial arts movies are wuxia, either.
So yeah, I don't exclude anime as a class from the discussion. But this isn't likely to be a productive argument, because it's too easy to argue that a character who does exceptional feats is not a normal person because they're doing extraordinary feats, so I foresee it mostly going "Yes they are" "No they aren't".
It overlaps, but it's its own thing IMO. I'll leave arguing that sort of detail to serious film scholars, though. Anyway, "anime" isn't a single genre with a single set of genre conventions. It's not all Dragonball Z. Record of Lodoss War is IIRC literally based on a D&D game. There's certainly no shortage where major characters are explicitly normal people. But then, not all martial arts movies are wuxia, either.
So yeah, I don't exclude anime as a class from the discussion. But this isn't likely to be a productive argument, because it's too easy to argue that a character who does exceptional feats is not a normal person because they're doing extraordinary feats, so I foresee it mostly going "Yes they are" "No they aren't".
You're right that not all anime is equal, but the specific rebuttal that took us down this path was:
If this image loads, I imagine it is something a normal person really shouldn't be able to get away without repercussions.
For some reason I had to stop myself from yelling "I HAVE THE POWER" when I saw that pic, I know it is the wrong guy/toon but that's just what popped in the noggin LMAO thanks for the flash back.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
It overlaps, but it's its own thing IMO. I'll leave arguing that sort of detail to serious film scholars, though. Anyway, "anime" isn't a single genre with a single set of genre conventions. It's not all Dragonball Z. Record of Lodoss War is IIRC literally based on a D&D game. There's certainly no shortage where major characters are explicitly normal people. But then, not all martial arts movies are wuxia, either.
So yeah, I don't exclude anime as a class from the discussion. But this isn't likely to be a productive argument, because it's too easy to argue that a character who does exceptional feats is not a normal person because they're doing extraordinary feats, so I foresee it mostly going "Yes they are" "No they aren't".
You're right that not all anime is equal, but the specific rebuttal that took us down this path was:
And I think we can agree that Naruto has very different genre conventions than both Record of Lodoss War AND printed D&D.
A good example of anime where there's no overt supernatural stuff in play but the MC's are clearly performing superhuman feats is Rurouni Kenshin; there's a bit of talk about things like chi, but it's just a few passing mentions not given emphasis as a power source like in Dragon Ball. It's pretty well spelled out that what makes the MCs so dangerous is training, experience, and natural aptitude.
There's a legitimate argument for making psi into ki/discipline point effects rather than spell slots, psi really comes out of new age mysticism which is heavily influenced by Eastern monastic traditions.
A good example of anime where there's no overt supernatural stuff in play but the MC's are clearly performing superhuman feats is Rurouni Kenshin; there's a bit of talk about things like chi, but it's just a few passing mentions not given emphasis as a power source like in Dragon Ball. It's pretty well spelled out that what makes the MCs so dangerous is training, experience, and natural aptitude.
Sure but that just brings us back to "what do they do in RK that we can't already do in D&D?"
Nonlethal attacks - check; alchemically setting your sword on fire - sure; your attack temporarily immobilizing your foe - okay; attacking so fast they can't dodge it... that's just rolling high? So what's missing?
A good example of anime where there's no overt supernatural stuff in play but the MC's are clearly performing superhuman feats is Rurouni Kenshin; there's a bit of talk about things like chi, but it's just a few passing mentions not given emphasis as a power source like in Dragon Ball. It's pretty well spelled out that what makes the MCs so dangerous is training, experience, and natural aptitude.
Rurouni Kenshin is the same problem as Conan: sure, people are doing impressive stuff on a human scale, but no-one is fighting fifty foot dragons.
There's a legitimate argument for making psi into ki/discipline point effects rather than spell slots, psi really comes out of new age mysticism which is heavily influenced by Eastern monastic traditions.
I mean, they tried using Ki as a pool for an assortment of powers with Four Elements, and that was pretty widely panned. Ki makes a good secondary resource, but if too many of your core features depend on it you can burn through the pool fast. Imo the model we've seen with Soulknife and Psi Warrior works best; it enhances a class that already has its bread and butter features established with a repertoire of psionic options. But of course that's not a full psion class, but it raises an important point: what exactly would the "core" of a psion be? What's their default, non-resource-consuming combat action?
There's a legitimate argument for making psi into ki/discipline point effects rather than spell slots, psi really comes out of new age mysticism which is heavily influenced by Eastern monastic traditions.
I mean, they tried using Ki as a pool for an assortment of powers with Four Elements, and that was pretty widely panned. Ki makes a good secondary resource, but if too many of your core features depend on it you can burn through the pool fast.
Yeah, but that's not a problem with the idea, as much as the power-costing or the resource pool size. Or perhaps the problem of trying to give a melee class effective combat spells.
Imo the model we've seen with Soulknife and Psi Warrior works best; it enhances a class that already has its bread and butter features established with a repertoire of psionic options. But of course that's not a full psion class, but it raises an important point: what exactly would the "core" of a psion be? What's their default, non-resource-consuming combat action?
What's the default, non-resource-consuming combat action of any casteresque class? A free power that does damage. Probably hitting something with TK or some kind of psychic zap if they're telepathic. (If they're something else, the nature of the something else will make it clear. Any power type that doesn't do combat damage isn't going to be a viable class focus because D&D is D&D.) If the class or subclass is more weapony, then it's an attack, maybe a melee weapon at range (TK), or a close-in stab enhanced with psychic energy or some such.
Given any class model, the answer's gonna be obvious, but designing the class around the cantrip is probably not the best choice.
There's a legitimate argument for making psi into ki/discipline point effects rather than spell slots, psi really comes out of new age mysticism which is heavily influenced by Eastern monastic traditions.
I mean, they tried using Ki as a pool for an assortment of powers with Four Elements, and that was pretty widely panned. Ki makes a good secondary resource, but if too many of your core features depend on it you can burn through the pool fast.
Yeah, but that's not a problem with the idea, as much as the power-costing or the resource pool size. Or perhaps the problem of trying to give a melee class effective combat spells.
It's not automatically bad, but the first two points you've raised are going to be intrinsic challenges to any such model, and part of the problem is that what is "balanced" can vary sharply by how a table is run. There's already a lot of contention over Short Rest refresh for things like Ki and Pact Magic, and if it's a single pool for the day for your primary array you've basically reinvented spell slots/points.
Imo the model we've seen with Soulknife and Psi Warrior works best; it enhances a class that already has its bread and butter features established with a repertoire of psionic options. But of course that's not a full psion class, but it raises an important point: what exactly would the "core" of a psion be? What's their default, non-resource-consuming combat action?
What's the default, non-resource-consuming combat action of any casteresque class? A free power that does damage. Probably hitting something with TK or some kind of psychic zap if they're telepathic. (If they're something else, the nature of the something else will make it clear. Any power type that doesn't do combat damage isn't going to be a viable class focus because D&D is D&D.) If the class or subclass is more weapony, then it's an attack, maybe a melee weapon at range (TK), or a close-in stab enhanced with psychic energy or some such.
Given any class model, the answer's gonna be obvious, but designing the class around the cantrip is probably not the best choice.
Which returns us to the point that we already have options that do 90% of this with Psionic flavor, so why are we trying to develop a parallel system that will need to go through all kinds of additional testing rather than just build on the already fairly solid foundations we have?
Which returns us to the point that we already have options that do 90% of this with Psionic flavor, so why are we trying to develop a parallel system that will need to go through all kinds of additional testing rather than just build on the already fairly solid foundations we have?
There are literally 400 posts in this thread arguing that very question. (Well, maybe 200 in total, once you exclude all the ones missing the point, deliberately missing the point, yelling about how 1e and 2e psionics were crap, and, for some reason, arguing about the martial-caster divide and whether badass martial characters have to be inherently magical.)
To summarize the summary of the summary: not everyone agrees that the foundations are solid for this purpose.
To summarize the summary of the summary: not everyone agrees that the foundations are solid for this purpose.
Yeah, we get that there's disagreement, but the point of a debate is to figure out why and what could be changed to arrive at something both sides can agree on.
No one has refuted or even rebutted the problems prior iterations of psionics have run into, the additional testing and pagespace that "separate but equal" psionics would require, nor explained what it is that makes the current foundations insufficient for their purposes. It's just been a lot of yelling that everything is spellcasting so this should be different for novelty's sake, which to comes across to me like people saying "Man, all these submarines people keep making out of metal are boring, we need something new! I'm going to make MY submarine out of bread!" Yeah that's certainly novel, but maybe it's worth examining why the designers have gravitated toward certain common foundations over time - because they work.
A good example of anime where there's no overt supernatural stuff in play but the MC's are clearly performing superhuman feats is Rurouni Kenshin; there's a bit of talk about things like chi, but it's just a few passing mentions not given emphasis as a power source like in Dragon Ball. It's pretty well spelled out that what makes the MCs so dangerous is training, experience, and natural aptitude.
Rurouni Kenshin is the same problem as Conan: sure, people are doing impressive stuff on a human scale, but no-one is fighting fifty foot dragons.
I seem to recall Conan climbing the equivalent of Olympus to take on his god, Crom, directly. I seem to recall at least one dragon sized snake and that Lovecraftian elder who shows up later in Doctor Strange, Shuma-Gorath? Conan, with Crom, took him on.
So no actual dragons that I remember, but beings of comparable size
There's a legitimate argument for making psi into ki/discipline point effects rather than spell slots, psi really comes out of new age mysticism which is heavily influenced by Eastern monastic traditions.
I mean, they tried using Ki as a pool for an assortment of powers with Four Elements, and that was pretty widely panned. Ki makes a good secondary resource, but if too many of your core features depend on it you can burn through the pool fast. Imo the model we've seen with Soulknife and Psi Warrior works best; it enhances a class that already has its bread and butter features established with a repertoire of psionic options. But of course that's not a full psion class, but it raises an important point: what exactly would the "core" of a psion be? What's their default, non-resource-consuming combat action?
I agree about the Soulknife and Psi Warrior. This was the best part of Psionics 3e. I’m low-key disappointed that the 5e Monk didn’t go this route.
I also agree that it is a good idea to ask ourselves (for whatever reason Aberrant Mind is sucktacular) _what_ is the core of the Psion?
At this point in the discussion, I’d give my eye teeth to just be told clearly and concisely what makes the aberrant mind so sucktacular of a pasión.
2 things.
1. It uses magic
2. Yurei thinks it's icky.
That seems to be the whole damn thing. Oh sure there are some other arbitrary arguments that they've made about how they aren't kinetesistic enough for them and how you are "punished" for hyperspecialization, but those two points are the only ones that consistently crop up.
Meanwhile, I'm sitting here just thinking to myself that If I wanted to I could argue that literally any character class could be described as "psionic" if you put enough spin on it.
I seem to recall Conan climbing the equivalent of Olympus to take on his god, Crom, directly. I seem to recall at least one dragon sized snake and that Lovecraftian elder who shows up later in Doctor Strange, Shuma-Gorath? Conan, with Crom, took him on.
So no actual dragons that I remember, but beings of comparable size
A bit of Google says he was dead / in spirit form for that encounter, and that fighting Crom earned him his life back along with some Cursed With Awesome. So not exactly human at the time, and possibly not even since.
Magic items are only a solution if you have a class feature that automatically grants them to you. Which is not an entirely unreasonable option.
Wuxia is basically the same genre conventions as anime, so if you take offense at anime I doubt those examples will help.
His lucky arrow... that was forged to be unbreakable by Dwarven master smiths and passed down through his family for centuries. It's a magic item.
I mean, without any context that could be anything from a 1d6 cantrip to Thulsa Doom's Heightened Chain Lightning. Also, having lots of HP is a pretty ordinary Barbarian thing. Any more info?
The game itself expects PCs to have them eventually - see DMG 37, "Tiers of Play." You can deviate from that expectation if you want, but then you only have yourself to blame when the martials in your campaign underperform.
Well, since I was more answering this:
And that image of Conan doing a thing is clearly beyond human limits......that's about all I got on a basic search of things I vaguely remember happening. Any more research on my part is going to require that I care enough about the debate to continue it (I really don't) or that I wish to derail the thread about Psionics further (I also don't).
OK, I'd forgotten that bit. It might be a magic item. He doesn't know, but it could well be.
It overlaps, but it's its own thing IMO. I'll leave arguing that sort of detail to serious film scholars, though. Anyway, "anime" isn't a single genre with a single set of genre conventions. It's not all Dragonball Z. Record of Lodoss War is IIRC literally based on a D&D game. There's certainly no shortage where major characters are explicitly normal people. But then, not all martial arts movies are wuxia, either.
So yeah, I don't exclude anime as a class from the discussion. But this isn't likely to be a productive argument, because it's too easy to argue that a character who does exceptional feats is not a normal person because they're doing extraordinary feats, so I foresee it mostly going "Yes they are" "No they aren't".
You're right that not all anime is equal, but the specific rebuttal that took us down this path was:
And I think we can agree that Naruto has very different genre conventions than both Record of Lodoss War AND printed D&D.
For some reason I had to stop myself from yelling "I HAVE THE POWER" when I saw that pic, I know it is the wrong guy/toon but that's just what popped in the noggin LMAO thanks for the flash back.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
A good example of anime where there's no overt supernatural stuff in play but the MC's are clearly performing superhuman feats is Rurouni Kenshin; there's a bit of talk about things like chi, but it's just a few passing mentions not given emphasis as a power source like in Dragon Ball. It's pretty well spelled out that what makes the MCs so dangerous is training, experience, and natural aptitude.
There's a legitimate argument for making psi into ki/discipline point effects rather than spell slots, psi really comes out of new age mysticism which is heavily influenced by Eastern monastic traditions.
Sure but that just brings us back to "what do they do in RK that we can't already do in D&D?"
Nonlethal attacks - check; alchemically setting your sword on fire - sure; your attack temporarily immobilizing your foe - okay; attacking so fast they can't dodge it... that's just rolling high? So what's missing?
Rurouni Kenshin is the same problem as Conan: sure, people are doing impressive stuff on a human scale, but no-one is fighting fifty foot dragons.
I mean, they tried using Ki as a pool for an assortment of powers with Four Elements, and that was pretty widely panned. Ki makes a good secondary resource, but if too many of your core features depend on it you can burn through the pool fast. Imo the model we've seen with Soulknife and Psi Warrior works best; it enhances a class that already has its bread and butter features established with a repertoire of psionic options. But of course that's not a full psion class, but it raises an important point: what exactly would the "core" of a psion be? What's their default, non-resource-consuming combat action?
Yeah, but that's not a problem with the idea, as much as the power-costing or the resource pool size. Or perhaps the problem of trying to give a melee class effective combat spells.
What's the default, non-resource-consuming combat action of any casteresque class? A free power that does damage. Probably hitting something with TK or some kind of psychic zap if they're telepathic. (If they're something else, the nature of the something else will make it clear. Any power type that doesn't do combat damage isn't going to be a viable class focus because D&D is D&D.) If the class or subclass is more weapony, then it's an attack, maybe a melee weapon at range (TK), or a close-in stab enhanced with psychic energy or some such.
Given any class model, the answer's gonna be obvious, but designing the class around the cantrip is probably not the best choice.
It's not automatically bad, but the first two points you've raised are going to be intrinsic challenges to any such model, and part of the problem is that what is "balanced" can vary sharply by how a table is run. There's already a lot of contention over Short Rest refresh for things like Ki and Pact Magic, and if it's a single pool for the day for your primary array you've basically reinvented spell slots/points.
Which returns us to the point that we already have options that do 90% of this with Psionic flavor, so why are we trying to develop a parallel system that will need to go through all kinds of additional testing rather than just build on the already fairly solid foundations we have?
There are literally 400 posts in this thread arguing that very question. (Well, maybe 200 in total, once you exclude all the ones missing the point, deliberately missing the point, yelling about how 1e and 2e psionics were crap, and, for some reason, arguing about the martial-caster divide and whether badass martial characters have to be inherently magical.)
To summarize the summary of the summary: not everyone agrees that the foundations are solid for this purpose.
Yeah, we get that there's disagreement, but the point of a debate is to figure out why and what could be changed to arrive at something both sides can agree on.
No one has refuted or even rebutted the problems prior iterations of psionics have run into, the additional testing and pagespace that "separate but equal" psionics would require, nor explained what it is that makes the current foundations insufficient for their purposes. It's just been a lot of yelling that everything is spellcasting so this should be different for novelty's sake, which to comes across to me like people saying "Man, all these submarines people keep making out of metal are boring, we need something new! I'm going to make MY submarine out of bread!" Yeah that's certainly novel, but maybe it's worth examining why the designers have gravitated toward certain common foundations over time - because they work.
I seem to recall Conan climbing the equivalent of Olympus to take on his god, Crom, directly. I seem to recall at least one dragon sized snake and that Lovecraftian elder who shows up later in Doctor Strange, Shuma-Gorath? Conan, with Crom, took him on.
So no actual dragons that I remember, but beings of comparable size
At this point in the discussion, I’d give my eye teeth to just be told clearly and concisely what makes the aberrant mind so sucktacular of a pasión.
I agree about the Soulknife and Psi Warrior. This was the best part of Psionics 3e. I’m low-key disappointed that the 5e Monk didn’t go this route.
I also agree that it is a good idea to ask ourselves (for whatever reason Aberrant Mind is sucktacular) _what_ is the core of the Psion?
2 things.
1. It uses magic
2. Yurei thinks it's icky.
That seems to be the whole damn thing. Oh sure there are some other arbitrary arguments that they've made about how they aren't kinetesistic enough for them and how you are "punished" for hyperspecialization, but those two points are the only ones that consistently crop up.
Meanwhile, I'm sitting here just thinking to myself that If I wanted to I could argue that literally any character class could be described as "psionic" if you put enough spin on it.
A bit of Google says he was dead / in spirit form for that encounter, and that fighting Crom earned him his life back along with some Cursed With Awesome. So not exactly human at the time, and possibly not even since.
Well, it has the word "spellcasting" in its features, and spells suck, you see. Also a few of its potential origins are icky or something.