Agreed. I think it's from a materialist buried assumption that 'this game should be realistic except where it isn't and... hey, magic can do anything, so whatever.'

Personally, for high fantasy, I take a page from ancient heroes of legend, like Hercules, Cú Chulainn (Hey, got very close to spelling that right without looking it up yay me), Monkey King, and so on.

And for low fantasy, which I ALSO like, I prefer magic a LOT more constrained except for McGuffin-level 'calling down the moon' shit.

Quote from: tenbones;800114The CATCH here is I would like to make *any* class have access to Martial Arts (much like OA). So here's the "thing" - Why can't you have universal Archetypes? Why not just make Archetypes that are not class-specific? Think about it - it gives us a chance to mine a *lot* of good ideas and marry them to mechanics that will allow any GM to indulge in their snowflakey ideas.

The beauty of this concept is that an Archetype is much easier to backwards engineer than say a class in terms of "balance" (to what degree you care) - and leverages a *lot* of what 5e has to offer without re-writing the core of the design and should be pretty conservative on bloat-factor while getting to the essence of what we're trying to do.

2) The side-effect of this idea is that it still does not *require* a character to have Martial Artist Archetype to pick up and learn Martial Arts - since those would be rolled into the Feat System.

This is what I hoped Will was aiming at by reducing the number of character classes.  Four classes (although they don't always have a different feel, divine and arcane casters should be different) with choices from many archetypes but no multiclassing seems better than a dozen classes each choosing from usually two to three archetypes specific to the class, especially if these work with multiple feats for further customization.  The hard part might be making up enough class-independent archetypes.  Also, some archetypes might be bounded (an oath of vengeance once the specific vengeance is achieved, or a pact that the character wins free of).

The Fantasy Trip had two classes, hero and wizard, which differed entirely in the cost of skills (double cost to wizards, except for a few common ones like Literacy) and spells (triple cost to heroes).

QuoteAny thoughts?

Ultimately the character has to trade something for the goodies:

• XP (of some sort, whether awarded for playing time or for general success or for specific quests/goals/accomplishments, which might be specific to the desired advantage) that can't then be spent on levels (or inflicting a higher XP cost to go up levels);
• randomly acquired benefit, corresponding to finding powerful magic items;
• money, however acquired;
• a resource generated by advancing levels (e.g., one archetype/feat point per level, with varying costs for given feats or archetypes, maybe depending on class);
• a fixed resource that the player should not expect to acquire any more of;
• game world time, including the inconvenience of traveling far away from where the action is (which might translate to real world time as the character has to sit out adventures);
• roleplaying, as in acquiring a commitment (like a Pact archetype versus a Bloodline archetype to acquire magical power) or persuading an NPC teacher;
• random selection of an appropriate disadvantage (in the GURPS sense) to counterbalance (e.g., vulnerability to iron in return for some magical power up).

You probably covered all of these already.

Quote from: rawma;800214This is what I hoped Will was aiming at by reducing the number of character classes.  Four classes (although they don't always have a different feel, divine and arcane casters should be different) with choices from many archetypes but no multiclassing seems better than a dozen classes each choosing from usually two to three archetypes specific to the class, especially if these work with multiple feats for further customization.

I don't have a lot to add, but basically, yes.

From my outside looking in perspective it seems like most folks are looking for a Class based fix for the issue.  I wonder if the real issue is the limitation of the Level based Hit Point model?  I ask because I've never seen any of the issues described here ever occur in games like GURPS or HERO (and there are a LOT of HERO players that have NEVER used it for supers).  A fairly realistic translation of Bruce Lee (the person, not any particular movie role of his) for HERO 5e came in at 375 points! (350 was the suggested starting points for supers).

*I also own a copy of Oriental Adventures but never had a chance to put  it to use.  I've only played a smattering of AD&D1e and 3.5 over the years (with the Baldur's Gate PC game 2e rules in between).

Quote from: Elfdart;800032Going into detail about boxing vs wrestling vs pankration vs karate is pointless bullshit like detailing different fencing styles.

It's not "pointless bullshit" at all.  It's just a matter of degrees of granularity.  Some people don't want any detail beyond "I roll to hit the guy" and "How much damage did I do?"  Some gamers want rather more than that, and if you're one of those gamers, you forfeit the right to bitch that there are yet more gamers who want yet more complexity than you do.

Quote from: Ravenswing;800381It's not "pointless bullshit" at all.  It's just a matter of degrees of granularity.  Some people don't want any detail beyond "I roll to hit the guy" and "How much damage did I do?"  Some gamers want rather more than that, and if you're one of those gamers, you forfeit the right to bitch that there are yet more gamers who want yet more complexity than you do.

Don't we have an inalienable right to bitch about how other people play let's pretend games? I'm sure that's in the Constitution somewhere. Or maybe that was the Declaration of Independence...

QuoteWe hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, the pursuit of Happiness, and the right to bitch about how other people play RPGs.

Quote from: Bren;800388Don't we have an inalienable right to bitch about how other people play let's pretend games? I'm sure that's in the Constitution somewhere. Or maybe that was the Declaration of Independence...

I was thinking it was a clause in the Treaty of Westphalia, or else that sneaky bastard Mirabeau snuck it past Lafayette into the Declaration of the Rights of Man.  Something like that.

And yeah, you got me.  :duh: