Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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I mean, even "high magic" is a relative term. It can mean there's a wizard for every town, or just that the relative handful of wizards in existence compared to the population at large advertise their existence and can do some impressive stuff. Magic being well-known as a part of life doesn't mean it's actually super accessible.
The basis for discussion IS a low-magic world (btw as I started "reading the rulebooks" in 1978 I think I understand them as well as most). Even in a "standard" D&D world spell casters need long rests, material components...wizards can be killed by nonmagical means. It would depend heavily on how many spell casters there were compared to the general population. You are free to disagree, there are multiple sources of fiction that support any version of this discussion.
Specifically, if 1 in 100 is some kind of spell caster it's like you propose. At 1 in 1000 it would be much different, at 1 in 10000 spell casters would have to watch their step very carefully in my opinion anyway.
You might try to temper your snark when replying, it's unseemly.
DND was started by some guys who were wargaming large scale battles and asked "what if i could play a single combatant?" The game they created shifts the focus on a single person, and rebalances reality so that battles are no longer a meat grinder. One character can reasonably expect a good chance to live to see the end of the war.
WW1 was a meat grinder that peaked at six thousand combatants killed each day. The Battle of Sommes had some units suffer 90% casualty rates in minutes. Thats not a "game" by any definition. You are talking about outcomes that are basically "roll initiative. On your turn, roll d20, if you roll a 10 or lower, youre dead"
Artillery is the 9th level spell Meteor Swarm, but cast hundreds of times. Chemical and biological weapons is Stinking Cloud, but homebrewed to do more damage when upcast to level 9, also cast hundreds of times. Machine guns lay down a cone shaped aoe that does 8d6 every turn, and can go for a ful minute. The ranges on all these is miles for artillery and 500 yards for machine gun fire. That wont fit on the 4 foot combat map where 1inch is 5ft
If you want to play that scenario as something resembling a game, you will want to wargame it, with large units of soldiers, not an individual adventurer.
If you want to play an individual adventurer during the great war, you have to get away from the front lines. DND does that by moving pcs from the battle of helms deep and putting them into a dungeon where the tactics is small scale, room to room, and the ranges fit on a 3 foot map.
Call of Duty might be a better option
Hobbyist historian here, I take particular interest in the Bronze Age, the Classical age and Renaissance generally speaking.
D&D generally seems to make conventional weaponry of all types (Cannons, Muskets, rifles) exceptionally weak compared to magic. Like a Cannon does 8d10 damage which is barely stronger than a base level fireball. These are weapons designed to destroy castle walls and fortifications and by DND logic it's the equivalent of being hit by a pike 8 times. From a historical perspective I think DnD represents most modern weapons poorly. Particularly Siege Weapons.
My misgivings aside, I think you can make a fun WW1 inspired campaign in DND. I personally am tired of the same medieval high fantasy setting, so I usually don't run Forgotten realms campaigns for that reason. Anyways, I had a diversions in one of my campaigns (it was my own setting) based on the Bronze Age that toyed with the idea of civilizational resets and featured a World War 1 inspired aspect to it. It was received well though admittedly, I was only really dipping my toes into that type of setting. I tended to use some hombrew to address some of my misgivings on how more conventional weaponry is represented however. (That is just my personal preference.)
You can absolutely run a WW1 type setting with DND mechanics ofc, I've delved into it myself with my last campaign with a variety of different periods. I wouldn't let anybody here discourage you from it, good campaigns are founded on passion and ambition. You can absolutely use the base rules to explore that type of setting with success.
Damage in D&D has always had some wonkiness because the game isn't designed to have everything render your character into goop with a single hit. Especially 5E.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Yeah; really there's no fundamental reason why a Fireball exploding point blank next to you can a) be survivable at all, b) leave you in a functional state, c) be something you can potentially dodge half the damage it would deal based on your agility even when there's no cover to get behind, and d) possibly have you completely avoid its effect altogether because you're "Evasive" and yet tanking anything you'd see in a typical Call of Duty game until your HP runs out- which is exactly how CoD gameplay works- is somehow a bridge too far.
There is no context for how hot the flames generated by a fireball is. But yeah I am absolutely going to tell you that a fireball is not comparable to a cannonball striking a wall with such absurd amount of force it shatters several chunks of stone. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that is several tiers higher than a fireball.
Every single game in existence utilizes some degree of suspension of disbelief, congratulations on discovering that just now. We all suspend our suspensions of disbelief for the games we play and endure mechanics that don't make 100% sense to get immersed in a game.
Yes I am telling you that tanking a literal cannonball/Catatpult rock to the face and brushing it off like it is nothing is extremely ridiculous, most COD games don't in fact have you tank through a literal artillery piece to the face like it is nothing.
That said, it's not even the issue I have. The issue I have is with how they balance siege weapons, the issue is how ludicrously underpowered every piece of siege equipment is. It's the equivalent of adding a howitzer to a cod game and make it do 2 ticks more damage than a M-1 Garand bullet. Which seems to fall in line with the whole design philosophy of severely underpowering mundane things to make the magic things cooler looking. That said, that's just my own personal disagreements with the damage system. You may run your games as you prefer.
A cannon does 8d10 damage compared a fireball's 8d6, I dunno what you’re talking about how a baseline Fireball beats it in damage? Also damage thresholds help with making objects feel bigger and heavier.
To be honest, the game's simply not designed around it, siege weapons are all multiple crew objects and are more designed for DMs to use against pcs than to be realistic. It’s not fun to get insta killed by a random cannonball at a level where you fight adult dragons, but they still do enough damage to be a significant concern at tier 1 or 2.
I think I mentioned it was barely stronger, which is an exaggeration. A single fireball does however, outclass a Catapult and Trebuchet pretty handily. I've made no secret that I strongly disagree with this.
I do agree though, getting one shot by a cannon is not fun, which is why when I run I try to turn large gatherings of siege equipment into strategic objectives. In any instance they are present, the party was presented with the information and made aware of how lethal they were. It led to a sort of psuedo stealth mission where the majority of the cannons were surgically destroyed through the clever use of spells, which I personally felt was a neat change of pace. I try to avoid having the siege equipment being used as a way to deliver instant death and for them to be treated more as a dangerous impediment in the same way an Adult red dragon camping near the only bridge out of town might be.
Semantics. If you're point blank to something that's intense enough to ignite anything flammable in the area from a single burst, you are quite literally cooked IRL. And yet, in D&D a character might literally ignore all effects of such a combustion, and even if they don't they fail to suffer the debilitating effects of 2nd to 3rd degree burns across much of their body, including their lungs from breathing the superheated air after. Getting into a measuring contest of just how much you'd resemble a pile of butcher shop offal after experiencing one vs the other is irrelevant. And yes, shockingly enough the game that's specifically focused on fantasy spends more time detailing fantastic elements than how people throw big rocks at one another. That doesn't preclude using the core bones of the system in other contexts.
dnd is based on fictional worlds like Lord of the Rings where gods walk the earth, dragons sleep for centuries on piles of gold, wizards are mysterious, unknown monsters lay in wait for those who stumble into their lairs, and heroes are legends of their times, risking their lives to save the world.
There is plenty of mythos and magic to grant some level of handwaving for why the legendary hero survives the fireball.
Ww1 was the industrial revolution applied to war. Mechanical efficiency of assembly line automation applied to fighting. A million casualties at the battle of sommes for little to show for it in the end.
If you side was gassed with no masks, you died or were severely and permanently injured. If you stood up while the machine guns were sweeping no mans land, you died or risked severe infection and possible amputation. If you were in the wrong place when artillery started raining down, you died.
There is no myth or legend there. Certainly nothing magical.
To create that in dnd, simply have everyone max out at 2 hitdice even as they level up, ban all magic, and require one week of rest to roll a hitdie.
As for call of duty, i didnt say i liked the game.
No, it's not semantics. Temperature and the amount of time the person is set alight for matters. If it's just a half a second of burning and it's the same temperature as a bonfire then yes you can survive it. This is why there are videos of people with gloves quickly cutting their hand through molten metal and having absolutely no damage from it. Duration and temperature matters. I mean unless we're going by video game logic and stepping on a bonfire ends up cooking half your health. The point is here a lot more of this is up to DM interpretation.
When you are a Dm you can absolutely explain away getting out of a fireball with minimal damage. You character could have leaped away at the last second, could have fell to the ground prone to avoid an airburst fireball. Plenty of valid explanation to those willing to work a bit with the mechanical results. It's the DM's discretion, could be that very little of the blast hit you because of your quick reflexes and dodging most of it, using your shield to absorb most of the blast. Ect, I think you get the point.
Also, the point here was how under powered siege weapons are at the core of it.
Shockingly, there are some players in this game that like sword and board and swinging a sword or using a pike and making an impact. Since when is a game being a fantasy an excuse to say, hey all you fighters and knights out there, you don't deserve to be as cool as all the mages. What a poor justification for imbalance. You see the game is fantasy so every other aspect that might appeal to other people? Yeah I guess we just need to totally throw it out and ignore it now. Inherently a lot of people like the mundane stuff still, so yes, it is valid to say some of the mundane stuff can be a bit underpowered. How dare I question DND design and mechanics I guess.