Spellcasters are already demigods, you either have to gut spellcasting or elevate everyone else.
Gut spellcasting. Nobody plays at demi-god levels anyways, so bring everyone down to a reasonable power level and maybe, just maybe, DMs will run games up to those levels.
Even if you mechanically weaken them the fact is they are still summoning rocks or fire or whatever to hurt people. The idea of the mundane man next to that is silly.
Wizards and Knights have appeared next to each other in fantasy for a long time. To call them mundane is not really fair. They are peak human, sometimes crossing into superhuman.
A game is a system of rules and limits, there has to be some control. Without it we are just standing around telling each other stories that don’t even match up in tone or theme. If you want to have Goku next to your medieval knight that’s cool for your story, but it will literally break the game.
The moment you have a wizard next to your medieval knight you've broken the game. If you're going to have wizards killing people with giant rocks from heaven you're no longer in the scope of a 'medieval knight', you're in the scope of Heracles redirecting major rivers to clean the Augean Stables.
So everyone's a demigod?
A fighter can beat a 50 ton armored lizard to death with a stick. They are demi gods, people just seem to get upset when its obvious instead of hidden behind numbers.
when he was little goku fought dinosaurs with a staff or bare handed, so this all tracks and circles cleanly back to monk. nice.
So kid Goku was at least able to solo CR8 Dinosaurs without much trouble. Some of that comes from the fact he is a broken race/species by Dnd standards that might have something to do with it, but he was probably at least a lvl15 monk. This is a child before DBZ. By the first battle of DBZ he was well into epic level play. What’s funny is Mr. Satan might be stronger than a lvl20 dnd character and he is suppose to represent the peak mundane of DBZ.
Id totally be down for them to get some dragon ball power. they have been weak for so long let them be a bit stronger ,dw fighter and wizard will still be king. but you know it would be sick if they got viable ki blasts did good dpr and could do stuff like blind on a reaction or something like that
it would be interesting to see a workable mechanism whereby the character begins glowing and shouting in the middle of a localized gust of wind, every round gaining a bigger MA die. at max for their level they emerge into a calm moment with Haste and a free single-use of Misty Step to join battle.
...if the fight isn't already long over.
Don’t forget that 5 minutes in DBZ can take 5 episodes, so over 100 mins. So all that yelling for a minute in the anime could actually only be 3 seconds or less. I wouldn’t want actual DBZ monks in the game. Something close to it in the in the game is Sun Soul Monk. They dropped the ball on the range of the radiant bolts, it should have been 60ft. The power of the 11th level feature needs to scale and let you spend more ki as you level. Maybe allowing you to spend up proficiency bonus Ki on it would make it better. Sun Shield should also add 1d4 radiant damage to all your attacks. Once that’s done it’s a good proxy for a Dragon Ball.
you don't have to play them, and I didn't say it shouldn't be balanced . just reeks of weird fun police attitude. db for example took ideas from journey to the west and superman . nothing wrong with getting inspiration to add more flavor . also sun soul sucked . i would agree if it actually had a little power but man that thing was a dud.
It’s not fun police, it’s theme and tone police, the moment Goku shows up we aren’t playing a Medieval Fantasy Game anymore. Also sun soul does suck but is inspired by DBZ, but scaled to fit the tone and them of the game.
dnd isn't just a medieval fantasy game anymore. DMs can limit its scope if they want, but you got bird people, Technomagic kingdoms, planar battles, walking with gods, Airships, teleporters, original cultures, elf space, psychics, cthonics. It draws on whatever it wants really.
A game is a system of rules and limits, there has to be some control. Without it we are just standing around telling each other stories that don’t even match up in tone or theme. If you want to have Goku next to your medieval knight that’s cool for your story, but it will literally break the game.
The moment you have a wizard next to your medieval knight you've broken the game. If you're going to have wizards killing people with giant rocks from heaven you're no longer in the scope of a 'medieval knight', you're in the scope of Heracles redirecting major rivers to clean the Augean Stables.
So Merlin and King Author aren’t from the same fantasy setting? I just leaned something new.
King Arthur is affected almost as much by magical ability in the Arthurian tales as Merlin is. Dude's carrying holy relics and getting blessed by angelic beings every other week. Probably takes a prophecy every afternoon with his tea.
D&D Martial classes, including the Monk, are absolutely supposed to be handling these types of superhuman challenges as they progress in levels. And while it's easy to flavor anything, sometimes that needs to be mechanically acknowledged.
Martials currently have problems because as early as 5th level D&D is basically a game about medieval superheroes and classes like the Fighter, Rogue and Monk are largely treated like they have no agency. By level 20, yes Herculean feats should be the standard for Martial classes. Gods should be challenging them to tests of skill, strength and endurance. Because at level 20, that is exactly what is being encountered.
In the original Journey to the West, Son Goku the Monkey King is very notably not a deity - at least initially. He's a mischievous prankster with far above-average cunning. And in recognition of that, the pantheon elevates him to godhood. Then strips him of it as punishment.
The part of the game where players are average humans dealing with human and peak human problems ends around level 10. They're still doing superhero stuff, but starting at tier 3 and especially in tier 4 you need to be treating players as superhumans, demigods, etc because that's what the spellcasters are doing - and if only the Spellcasters get to be superhuman then why bother playing a Martial class?
Short version: eventually spellcasters might be warping reality on an hourly basis, but by that point Martial characters need to be incarnations of Hercules, Achilles, Son Goku, King Arthur, Gilgamesh and Enkidu etc. Because that's the only kind of hero that can justify a problem so large that you need to fight it with a Wish spell.
Spellcasters are already demigods, you either have to gut spellcasting or elevate everyone else.
Gut spellcasting. Nobody plays at demi-god levels anyways, so bring everyone down to a reasonable power level and maybe, just maybe, DMs will run games up to those levels.
Even if you mechanically weaken them the fact is they are still summoning rocks or fire or whatever to hurt people. The idea of the mundane man next to that is silly.
So the Lord of the Rings, World of Warcraft, the Witcher, and Arthurian novels are all silly/ridiculous. Good to know.
eventually spellcasters might be warping reality on an hourly basis, but by that point Martial characters need to be incarnations of Hercules,
At level 11, a Fighter, Paladin, or Barbarian can easily wrestle an adult dragon to the ground, a Rogue/Ranger with Expertise has a 30% chance to be able to beat an impossible skill check (DC 30). A Paladin or Barbarian can kill a hydra single-handedly, and they could kill a Fleecemane Lion (the not-nymean lion) in 1 round.
At level 11, a Fighter, Paladin, or Barbarian can easily wrestle an adult dragon to the ground
Not without enlarge/reduce or similar to get within the necessary size class they can't; only Path of the Giant or Rune Knight can do that on their own (or an Eldritch Knight if they grab enlarge/reduce as one of their unrestricted picks). Even then, your DM should arguably be imposing advantage (to the dragon) and/or disadvantage (to the wrestler) for the remaining size difference (unless you can manage the double boost to Huge), either that or using the climbing onto larger creatures rules.
Depends on the DM/tone of the campaign though I guess.
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eventually spellcasters might be warping reality on an hourly basis, but by that point Martial characters need to be incarnations of Hercules,
At level 11, a Fighter, Paladin, or Barbarian can easily wrestle an adult dragon to the ground, a Rogue/Ranger with Expertise has a 30% chance to be able to beat an impossible skill check (DC 30). A Paladin or Barbarian can kill a hydra single-handedly, and they could kill a Fleecemane Lion (the not-nymean lion) in 1 round.
Yes, and those are good things! But the problem arises when you need to start applying these abilities to more abstract concepts. Because a Spellcaster can eventually just start violating causality at will. But if you want to clean the Augean Stables or try to leap out of the Buddha's Palm or shoulder the Earth and the Heavens in place of Atlas the mechanical features of the classes rarely facilitate that while Spells mechanically become increasingly flexible in their abilities as players gain higher and higher spell slot levels.
Spellcasters are already demigods, you either have to gut spellcasting or elevate everyone else.
Gut spellcasting. Nobody plays at demi-god levels anyways, so bring everyone down to a reasonable power level and maybe, just maybe, DMs will run games up to those levels.
Even if you mechanically weaken them the fact is they are still summoning rocks or fire or whatever to hurt people. The idea of the mundane man next to that is silly.
So the Lord of the Rings, World of Warcraft, the Witcher, and Arthurian novels are all silly/ridiculous. Good to know.
You kind of prove my point more than disprove it with your examples. Either the warrior types do have super human magical abilities or the wizard is more of a DMNPC sometimes with the party.
Even then, your DM should arguably be imposing advantage (to the dragon) and/or disadvantage (to the wrestler) for the remaining size difference
That is NOT RAW! If your DM is doing that tell them they are unfairly punishing martials because that is not the rules. If your DM is biased against martials and makes HB rulings that cripple their above normal human skills then someone needs to talk to them because that is not how the game is supposed to work.
If this is all your guys takes on this, then we might as well just delete all non-fullcaster classes right now. If "Magic breaks the world such that is doesn't make sense for martials to exist along side them" is the accepted interpretation of D&D magic then just get rid of martials all together. You have said it yourselves, martials don't make sense therefore get rid of martials.
If you think every spellcaster in Dr. Strange then why are we even discussing buffing martials? Dr. Strange could handily destroy any other superhero no matter how "powerful" they might be, because he freaking trapped a god in a time loop! So if that is your standard then I give up, you'll never ever be happy until there is no game at higher levels because what even is the point? There is no challenge if everyone can just cast Wish every day and now the entire reality is one where every person has hotdogs for fingers, or everyone is reduced to being a sentient rock. Just go play a rules-less make believe where anyone can do anything.
That is NOT RAW! If your DM is doing that tell them they are unfairly punishing martials because that is not the rules. If your DM is biased against martials and makes HB rulings that cripple their above normal human skills then someone needs to talk to them because that is not how the game is supposed to work.
Yes it is, because literally any ability check can have advantage or disadvantage at DM's discretion (see also the DMG), and trying to a wrestle a Huge, adult dragon is a perfectly appropriate reason to do so. And it has nothing to do with biasing against martials; allowing characters to trivially wrestle dragons is the opposite, it's biasing against legendary creatures that are supposed to be impressive threats rather than comedic nuisances.
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so, how does this apply to the monk class? should the dev team lean more into the fantastical for subclass tiers 3 & 4? examples being the new world tree barbarian who can 'rainbow bridge' teleport his party to other planes or the path of giants barb who eventually just becomes huge because they ...never gave up? and the former totem barb who can fly for the same reason birds can fly: rage.
should they? or should the class / subclass bones be mundane for those who desire it more down-to-earth, then 'flavor is free' for the rest? every campaign is different.
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For the Monk, yes, it should lean into the more fantasy bent of unarmed fighting. Full fantastical wuxia, ATLA, etc. But with a neutral or western presentation for the main rules (to fit the primary emphasis of the game: I love the various iterations of eastern settings, but the bread and butter of D&D tends to be western).
For the Barbarian ... sorta ,but with an emphasis on rage fighting. More like Pro Wrestlers than Wuxia.
For the Fighter ... less over-the-top, and more like a "skilled normal", but still has to be able to keep up in the later levels.
For the Ranger and Paladin: somewhere between the Fighter and Monk, as options derived from Fighting Style and feats. Each should basically be channeling Primal and Divine magic (respectively) into their unarmed fighting if that's the direction they take. And the Monk should have a Ranger/Druid-ish subclass for "animal styles", and a Cleric/Paladin style subclass for the more priestly/spiritual emphasis.
Everyone else? the ability to be purely mundane unarmed fighters, in the same way that they can be purely mundane dagger/staff wielders. They just chose boxing or wrestling over stabbing.
so, how does this apply to the monk class? should the dev team lean more into the fantastical for subclass tiers 3 & 4? examples being the new world tree barbarian who can 'rainbow bridge' teleport his party to other planes or the path of giants barb who eventually just becomes huge because they ...never gave up? and the former totem barb who can fly for the same reason birds can fly: rage.
should they? or should the class / subclass bones be mundane for those who desire it more down-to-earth, then 'flavor is free' for the rest? every campaign is different.
The first job of classes and sub-classes IMO is to provide interesting mechanics that you can build a character around; sub-classes can add more new or supplementary mechanics to allow for specialising in different ways or to change up the base class. They can absolutely both provide theming, but that's the part that's optional as players are free to use mechanics to represent anything they like.
One thing that's annoyed me with Monk is that Ascendant Dragon and Sun Soul are both very similar to Four Elements, while failing to solve Four Elements' problems (namely the strength of abilities vs. the Ki and other costs, because if something takes an action then it's not just the Ki you've spent, it's the three or four attacks you could have done instead). So that's three sub-classes that really could have been represented by one sufficiently flexible one; the updated Four Elements has some decent ideas to be fair in terms of being a basic framework for players to theme how they like.
For the class, the balance to strike is in providing abilities that are reasonably general purpose; this doesn't mean we need to lose cool abilities, they just need to function mechanically in a way that can easily be reflavoured as either skill/technique or magic/mysticism as the player prefers. It's the sub-classes that can then double down on one aspect or another, along with appropriate theming (which the player can ignore if they wish).
This is why all the talk about Dragonball etc. is misleading; on that front all we need is a sub-class that can do energy blasts and empowered punches while remaining competitive, the player can then choose what exactly that represents to them (DM permitting). Spiky hair and shouting a lot are free.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
If this is all your guys takes on this, then we might as well just delete all non-fullcaster classes right now. If "Magic breaks the world such that is doesn't make sense for martials to exist along side them" is the accepted interpretation of D&D magic then just get rid of martials all together. You have said it yourselves, martials don't make sense therefore get rid of martials.
If you think every spellcaster in Dr. Strange then why are we even discussing buffing martials? Dr. Strange could handily destroy any other superhero no matter how "powerful" they might be, because he freaking trapped a god in a time loop! So if that is your standard then I give up, you'll never ever be happy until there is no game at higher levels because what even is the point? There is no challenge if everyone can just cast Wish every day and now the entire reality is one where every person has hotdogs for fingers, or everyone is reduced to being a sentient rock. Just go play a rules-less make believe where anyone can do anything.
It is not us that put up the weird restrictions its the martial players where whenever a spell caster does anything at all magical it breaks things for them as they solved a problem with magic. They had to roll to climb the hill the wizard just levitated. I've seen people complain about plane shift and not for the one save banish but because how dare the spell caster transport the party to the adventure. Same with freaking water breathing. Oh no the wizard solved our drowning problem that is broken, my con of 16 ability to hold my breath for a ludicrous time is now trivialized. Like I said earlier its not the numbers, a fighter can knock out great numbers in damage etc in a fight and even if that was quadrupled martial characters would still complain because the spell caster cast dimension door to cross the ravine. So go ahead play in your magicless fantasy world.
so, how does this apply to the monk class? should the dev team lean more into the fantastical for subclass tiers 3 & 4? examples being the new world tree barbarian who can 'rainbow bridge' teleport his party to other planes or the path of giants barb who eventually just becomes huge because they ...never gave up? and the former totem barb who can fly for the same reason birds can fly: rage.
should they? or should the class / subclass bones be mundane for those who desire it more down-to-earth, then 'flavor is free' for the rest? every campaign is different.
The first job of classes and sub-classes IMO is to provide interesting mechanics that you can build a character around; sub-classes can add more new or supplementary mechanics to allow for specialising in different ways or to change up the base class. They can absolutely both provide theming, but that's the part that's optional as players are free to use mechanics to represent anything they like.
One thing that's annoyed me with Monk is that Ascendant Dragon and Sun Soul are both very similar to Four Elements, while failing to solve Four Elements' problems (namely the strength of abilities vs. the Ki and other costs, because if something takes an action then it's not just the Ki you've spent, it's the three or four attacks you could have done instead). So that's three sub-classes that really could have been represented by one sufficiently flexible one; the updated Four Elements has some decent ideas to be fair in terms of being a basic framework for players to theme how they like.
For the class, the balance to strike is in providing abilities that are reasonably general purpose; this doesn't mean we need to lose cool abilities, they just need to function mechanically in a way that can easily be reflavoured as either skill/technique rather than magic/mysticism. It's the sub-classes that can then double down on one aspect or another, along with appropriate theming (which the player can ignore if they wish).
This is why all the talk about Dragonball etc. is misleading; on that front all we need is a sub-class that can do energy blasts and empowered punches while remaining competitive, the player can then choose what exactly that represents to them (DM permitting). Spiky hair and shouting a lot are free.
I think classes should have access to their own skill DC tables that change at certain levels. I don't remember if they stuck with DC 15 to hide in the latest UA as we did not play test a rogue or sneaky type. But if at level 5 the rogues got a DC 20 hide allowed them to hide in lesser concealment/cover at level 10 a DC 25 hide in plain site, at level 15 a level 30 DC check where when they hid people even forgot they were there. Fighters and barbarians might have grapple 2 sizes larger at level 5 or 10, they might gain access to smash through walls with a athletics test, a one mile jump at level 15. Playtest the extents, levels and DCs but at levels 10+ their skill tests should be super human even if its just a athletics jump test.
If this is all your guys takes on this, then we might as well just delete all non-fullcaster classes right now. If "Magic breaks the world such that is doesn't make sense for martials to exist along side them" is the accepted interpretation of D&D magic then just get rid of martials all together. You have said it yourselves, martials don't make sense therefore get rid of martials.
If you think every spellcaster in Dr. Strange then why are we even discussing buffing martials? Dr. Strange could handily destroy any other superhero no matter how "powerful" they might be, because he freaking trapped a god in a time loop! So if that is your standard then I give up, you'll never ever be happy until there is no game at higher levels because what even is the point? There is no challenge if everyone can just cast Wish every day and now the entire reality is one where every person has hotdogs for fingers, or everyone is reduced to being a sentient rock. Just go play a rules-less make believe where anyone can do anything.
It is not us that put up the weird restrictions its the martial players where whenever a spell caster does anything at all magical it breaks things for them as they solved a problem with magic. They had to roll to climb the hill the wizard just levitated. I've seen people complain about plane shift and not for the one save banish but because how dare the spell caster transport the party to the adventure. Same with freaking water breathing. Oh no the wizard solved our drowning problem that is broken, my con of 16 ability to hold my breath for a ludicrous time is now trivialized. Like I said earlier its not the numbers, a fighter can knock out great numbers in damage etc in a fight and even if that was quadrupled martial characters would still complain because the spell caster cast dimension door to cross the ravine. So go ahead play in your magicless fantasy world.
Water Breathing is not changing the nature of the reality, plane shift is just a "spend a 7th level spell slot to continue the adventure" button. Same for Teleport though with the added bonus of chance to fail and ending up teleporting the whole party inside a Roc nest -> yes this happened in our campaign and yes it was super fun! Our casters spent both their 7th level spellslots just to get us back where we started, with a ton more bumps, bruises, and Roc-claw-marks.
I don't get this whining over utility casting, do you really want to RP walking for 3 months across the continent as level 15 adventurers? And how is a caster having to save their most powerful spells to do something as basic as be a shuttle bus or provide food, water, and shelter to the party game breakingly powerful?
I am a martial player (The classes I have played the most are: Rogue, Paladin, Monk, Barbarian), and I find myself arguing against all the spellcaster lovers trying to turn the martials into knock-off casters all the time.
A game is a system of rules and limits, there has to be some control. Without it we are just standing around telling each other stories that don’t even match up in tone or theme. If you want to have Goku next to your medieval knight that’s cool for your story, but it will literally break the game.
The moment you have a wizard next to your medieval knight you've broken the game. If you're going to have wizards killing people with giant rocks from heaven you're no longer in the scope of a 'medieval knight', you're in the scope of Heracles redirecting major rivers to clean the Augean Stables.
So Merlin and King Author aren’t from the same fantasy setting? I just leaned something new.
Merlin is by no means a D&D wizard.
The sword and sorcery standard for how magic works, which the Arthurian myth cycle basically obeys, is that doing anything impressive takes substantial time and elaborate preparation, and often has substantial prerequisites as well to make it work at all, all of which means the plucky martial heroes are important to either disrupt it or accomplish the prerequisites, depending on whether the wizard is a villain or a hero. If wizards can do anything significant spontaneously, it's pretty near cantrip level.
A game is a system of rules and limits, there has to be some control. Without it we are just standing around telling each other stories that don’t even match up in tone or theme. If you want to have Goku next to your medieval knight that’s cool for your story, but it will literally break the game.
The moment you have a wizard next to your medieval knight you've broken the game. If you're going to have wizards killing people with giant rocks from heaven you're no longer in the scope of a 'medieval knight', you're in the scope of Heracles redirecting major rivers to clean the Augean Stables.
So Merlin and King Author aren’t from the same fantasy setting? I just leaned something new.
King Arthur is affected almost as much by magical ability in the Arthurian tales as Merlin is. Dude's carrying holy relics and getting blessed by angelic beings every other week. Probably takes a prophecy every afternoon with his tea.
D&D Martial classes, including the Monk, are absolutely supposed to be handling these types of superhuman challenges as they progress in levels. And while it's easy to flavor anything, sometimes that needs to be mechanically acknowledged.
Martials currently have problems because as early as 5th level D&D is basically a game about medieval superheroes and classes like the Fighter, Rogue and Monk are largely treated like they have no agency. By level 20, yes Herculean feats should be the standard for Martial classes. Gods should be challenging them to tests of skill, strength and endurance. Because at level 20, that is exactly what is being encountered.
In the original Journey to the West, Son Goku the Monkey King is very notably not a deity - at least initially. He's a mischievous prankster with far above-average cunning. And in recognition of that, the pantheon elevates him to godhood. Then strips him of it as punishment.
The part of the game where players are average humans dealing with human and peak human problems ends around level 10. They're still doing superhero stuff, but starting at tier 3 and especially in tier 4 you need to be treating players as superhumans, demigods, etc because that's what the spellcasters are doing - and if only the Spellcasters get to be superhuman then why bother playing a Martial class?
Short version: eventually spellcasters might be warping reality on an hourly basis, but by that point Martial characters need to be incarnations of Hercules, Achilles, Son Goku, King Arthur, Gilgamesh and Enkidu etc. Because that's the only kind of hero that can justify a problem so large that you need to fight it with a Wish spell.
I don’t think you understand how much stronger Anime Goku is than all the others you named by the start of DBZ. Honestly by the start of the King Piccolo Saga in Dragon Ball I think Anime Goku far exceeds anything playable in DND. King Authur is easily handled as a fighter with a legendary weapon, Hercules is handled by playing an Orc, or Goliath for powerful build and combining that with the 5e totems 6th level ability that doubles your carrying capacity. Son Goku JttW is tough to create in dnd as well mainly because he is a high level multiclass at the start of JttW. Or maybe you didn’t know we were talking about anime/manga Goku. I typically call Son Goku JttW “Wukong or Sun Wukong” to avoid confusion. As from my understanding Wukong is what you get when you translate the Chinese to English and Goku is what you get if you translate the Chinese to Japanese.
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Wizards and Knights have appeared next to each other in fantasy for a long time. To call them mundane is not really fair. They are peak human, sometimes crossing into superhuman.
So kid Goku was at least able to solo CR8 Dinosaurs without much trouble. Some of that comes from the fact he is a broken race/species by Dnd standards that might have something to do with it, but he was probably at least a lvl15 monk. This is a child before DBZ. By the first battle of DBZ he was well into epic level play. What’s funny is Mr. Satan might be stronger than a lvl20 dnd character and he is suppose to represent the peak mundane of DBZ.
dnd isn't just a medieval fantasy game anymore. DMs can limit its scope if they want, but you got bird people, Technomagic kingdoms, planar battles, walking with gods, Airships, teleporters, original cultures, elf space, psychics, cthonics. It draws on whatever it wants really.
King Arthur is affected almost as much by magical ability in the Arthurian tales as Merlin is. Dude's carrying holy relics and getting blessed by angelic beings every other week. Probably takes a prophecy every afternoon with his tea.
D&D Martial classes, including the Monk, are absolutely supposed to be handling these types of superhuman challenges as they progress in levels. And while it's easy to flavor anything, sometimes that needs to be mechanically acknowledged.
Martials currently have problems because as early as 5th level D&D is basically a game about medieval superheroes and classes like the Fighter, Rogue and Monk are largely treated like they have no agency. By level 20, yes Herculean feats should be the standard for Martial classes. Gods should be challenging them to tests of skill, strength and endurance. Because at level 20, that is exactly what is being encountered.
In the original Journey to the West, Son Goku the Monkey King is very notably not a deity - at least initially. He's a mischievous prankster with far above-average cunning. And in recognition of that, the pantheon elevates him to godhood. Then strips him of it as punishment.
The part of the game where players are average humans dealing with human and peak human problems ends around level 10. They're still doing superhero stuff, but starting at tier 3 and especially in tier 4 you need to be treating players as superhumans, demigods, etc because that's what the spellcasters are doing - and if only the Spellcasters get to be superhuman then why bother playing a Martial class?
Short version: eventually spellcasters might be warping reality on an hourly basis, but by that point Martial characters need to be incarnations of Hercules, Achilles, Son Goku, King Arthur, Gilgamesh and Enkidu etc. Because that's the only kind of hero that can justify a problem so large that you need to fight it with a Wish spell.
So the Lord of the Rings, World of Warcraft, the Witcher, and Arthurian novels are all silly/ridiculous. Good to know.
At level 11, a Fighter, Paladin, or Barbarian can easily wrestle an adult dragon to the ground, a Rogue/Ranger with Expertise has a 30% chance to be able to beat an impossible skill check (DC 30). A Paladin or Barbarian can kill a hydra single-handedly, and they could kill a Fleecemane Lion (the not-nymean lion) in 1 round.
Not without enlarge/reduce or similar to get within the necessary size class they can't; only Path of the Giant or Rune Knight can do that on their own (or an Eldritch Knight if they grab enlarge/reduce as one of their unrestricted picks). Even then, your DM should arguably be imposing advantage (to the dragon) and/or disadvantage (to the wrestler) for the remaining size difference (unless you can manage the double boost to Huge), either that or using the climbing onto larger creatures rules.
Depends on the DM/tone of the campaign though I guess.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Yes, and those are good things! But the problem arises when you need to start applying these abilities to more abstract concepts. Because a Spellcaster can eventually just start violating causality at will. But if you want to clean the Augean Stables or try to leap out of the Buddha's Palm or shoulder the Earth and the Heavens in place of Atlas the mechanical features of the classes rarely facilitate that while Spells mechanically become increasingly flexible in their abilities as players gain higher and higher spell slot levels.
You kind of prove my point more than disprove it with your examples. Either the warrior types do have super human magical abilities or the wizard is more of a DMNPC sometimes with the party.
That is NOT RAW! If your DM is doing that tell them they are unfairly punishing martials because that is not the rules. If your DM is biased against martials and makes HB rulings that cripple their above normal human skills then someone needs to talk to them because that is not how the game is supposed to work.
If this is all your guys takes on this, then we might as well just delete all non-fullcaster classes right now. If "Magic breaks the world such that is doesn't make sense for martials to exist along side them" is the accepted interpretation of D&D magic then just get rid of martials all together. You have said it yourselves, martials don't make sense therefore get rid of martials.
If you think every spellcaster in Dr. Strange then why are we even discussing buffing martials? Dr. Strange could handily destroy any other superhero no matter how "powerful" they might be, because he freaking trapped a god in a time loop! So if that is your standard then I give up, you'll never ever be happy until there is no game at higher levels because what even is the point? There is no challenge if everyone can just cast Wish every day and now the entire reality is one where every person has hotdogs for fingers, or everyone is reduced to being a sentient rock. Just go play a rules-less make believe where anyone can do anything.
Yes it is, because literally any ability check can have advantage or disadvantage at DM's discretion (see also the DMG), and trying to a wrestle a Huge, adult dragon is a perfectly appropriate reason to do so. And it has nothing to do with biasing against martials; allowing characters to trivially wrestle dragons is the opposite, it's biasing against legendary creatures that are supposed to be impressive threats rather than comedic nuisances.
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so, how does this apply to the monk class? should the dev team lean more into the fantastical for subclass tiers 3 & 4? examples being the new world tree barbarian who can 'rainbow bridge' teleport his party to other planes or the path of giants barb who eventually just becomes huge because they ...never gave up? and the former totem barb who can fly for the same reason birds can fly: rage.
should they? or should the class / subclass bones be mundane for those who desire it more down-to-earth, then 'flavor is free' for the rest? every campaign is different.
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
For the Monk, yes, it should lean into the more fantasy bent of unarmed fighting. Full fantastical wuxia, ATLA, etc. But with a neutral or western presentation for the main rules (to fit the primary emphasis of the game: I love the various iterations of eastern settings, but the bread and butter of D&D tends to be western).
For the Barbarian ... sorta ,but with an emphasis on rage fighting. More like Pro Wrestlers than Wuxia.
For the Fighter ... less over-the-top, and more like a "skilled normal", but still has to be able to keep up in the later levels.
For the Ranger and Paladin: somewhere between the Fighter and Monk, as options derived from Fighting Style and feats. Each should basically be channeling Primal and Divine magic (respectively) into their unarmed fighting if that's the direction they take. And the Monk should have a Ranger/Druid-ish subclass for "animal styles", and a Cleric/Paladin style subclass for the more priestly/spiritual emphasis.
Everyone else? the ability to be purely mundane unarmed fighters, in the same way that they can be purely mundane dagger/staff wielders. They just chose boxing or wrestling over stabbing.
The first job of classes and sub-classes IMO is to provide interesting mechanics that you can build a character around; sub-classes can add more new or supplementary mechanics to allow for specialising in different ways or to change up the base class. They can absolutely both provide theming, but that's the part that's optional as players are free to use mechanics to represent anything they like.
One thing that's annoyed me with Monk is that Ascendant Dragon and Sun Soul are both very similar to Four Elements, while failing to solve Four Elements' problems (namely the strength of abilities vs. the Ki and other costs, because if something takes an action then it's not just the Ki you've spent, it's the three or four attacks you could have done instead). So that's three sub-classes that really could have been represented by one sufficiently flexible one; the updated Four Elements has some decent ideas to be fair in terms of being a basic framework for players to theme how they like.
For the class, the balance to strike is in providing abilities that are reasonably general purpose; this doesn't mean we need to lose cool abilities, they just need to function mechanically in a way that can easily be reflavoured as either skill/technique or magic/mysticism as the player prefers. It's the sub-classes that can then double down on one aspect or another, along with appropriate theming (which the player can ignore if they wish).
This is why all the talk about Dragonball etc. is misleading; on that front all we need is a sub-class that can do energy blasts and empowered punches while remaining competitive, the player can then choose what exactly that represents to them (DM permitting). Spiky hair and shouting a lot are free.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
It is not us that put up the weird restrictions its the martial players where whenever a spell caster does anything at all magical it breaks things for them as they solved a problem with magic. They had to roll to climb the hill the wizard just levitated. I've seen people complain about plane shift and not for the one save banish but because how dare the spell caster transport the party to the adventure. Same with freaking water breathing. Oh no the wizard solved our drowning problem that is broken, my con of 16 ability to hold my breath for a ludicrous time is now trivialized. Like I said earlier its not the numbers, a fighter can knock out great numbers in damage etc in a fight and even if that was quadrupled martial characters would still complain because the spell caster cast dimension door to cross the ravine. So go ahead play in your magicless fantasy world.
I think classes should have access to their own skill DC tables that change at certain levels. I don't remember if they stuck with DC 15 to hide in the latest UA as we did not play test a rogue or sneaky type. But if at level 5 the rogues got a DC 20 hide allowed them to hide in lesser concealment/cover at level 10 a DC 25 hide in plain site, at level 15 a level 30 DC check where when they hid people even forgot they were there. Fighters and barbarians might have grapple 2 sizes larger at level 5 or 10, they might gain access to smash through walls with a athletics test, a one mile jump at level 15. Playtest the extents, levels and DCs but at levels 10+ their skill tests should be super human even if its just a athletics jump test.
Water Breathing is not changing the nature of the reality, plane shift is just a "spend a 7th level spell slot to continue the adventure" button. Same for Teleport though with the added bonus of chance to fail and ending up teleporting the whole party inside a Roc nest -> yes this happened in our campaign and yes it was super fun! Our casters spent both their 7th level spellslots just to get us back where we started, with a ton more bumps, bruises, and Roc-claw-marks.
I don't get this whining over utility casting, do you really want to RP walking for 3 months across the continent as level 15 adventurers? And how is a caster having to save their most powerful spells to do something as basic as be a shuttle bus or provide food, water, and shelter to the party game breakingly powerful?
I am a martial player (The classes I have played the most are: Rogue, Paladin, Monk, Barbarian), and I find myself arguing against all the spellcaster lovers trying to turn the martials into knock-off casters all the time.
Merlin is by no means a D&D wizard.
The sword and sorcery standard for how magic works, which the Arthurian myth cycle basically obeys, is that doing anything impressive takes substantial time and elaborate preparation, and often has substantial prerequisites as well to make it work at all, all of which means the plucky martial heroes are important to either disrupt it or accomplish the prerequisites, depending on whether the wizard is a villain or a hero. If wizards can do anything significant spontaneously, it's pretty near cantrip level.
I don’t think you understand how much stronger Anime Goku is than all the others you named by the start of DBZ. Honestly by the start of the King Piccolo Saga in Dragon Ball I think Anime Goku far exceeds anything playable in DND. King Authur is easily handled as a fighter with a legendary weapon, Hercules is handled by playing an Orc, or Goliath for powerful build and combining that with the 5e totems 6th level ability that doubles your carrying capacity. Son Goku JttW is tough to create in dnd as well mainly because he is a high level multiclass at the start of JttW. Or maybe you didn’t know we were talking about anime/manga Goku. I typically call Son Goku JttW “Wukong or Sun Wukong” to avoid confusion. As from my understanding Wukong is what you get when you translate the Chinese to English and Goku is what you get if you translate the Chinese to Japanese.