Quote from: VisionStorm on October 03, 2023, 03:53:28 PM
No matter how much the OStaRd defends D&D, the fact of the matter is that when pressed on the issue almost everyone admits that 1) D&D has HP bloat at higher levels (even in earlier editions), and 2) HP at starting levels are too limited, to the point where a RAT can kill a normal peasant with a single bite--leading many to start their campaigns at level 3. Which pretty much proves that there's at least some consensus that D&D HP are out of whack.

To be fair to them, it represents lower levels well enough. It's a system more inherent to shleppy low level play upscaled to heroic fantasy, which is where it really fails.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on October 03, 2023, 03:04:29 PM

Quote from: jhkim on October 03, 2023, 01:16:22 PM
By their nature, D&D hit points make skillful dodging the same as being ridiculously tough, which often has counterintuitive results.

I think the simple answer is that the D&D rules go past being cinematic and into something more like epic poetry. If one wants a game to be more grounded and realistic, then one should change the rules.

For example, I had a giant shark (a polymorphed PC) thrashing about in a cave biting a vampire in my D&D game on Sunday, and it was great fun. I kept a thin veneer of there being a reality - describing how the shark was trying to thrash up from the salt pool it was in. But I don't think the results were at all realistic.

Realism understood as sticking to the real world reality is vastly overrated in Sci-Fi/Fantasy games.

Realism understood as sticking to the game world reality on the other hand is something to strive for.

When I play/run D&D I'm not trying to simmulate the real world, I'm trying to "live"/create a "living world" in the game world.

Yes, high level PCs ARE superhuman, which is why at certain levels you're out there cavorting on other planes or even becoming immortals/gods.

Like with many things, I don't think it has to be either one or the other (realistic or not). I can play in a closer-to-reality vikings game where there are no fireballs or dragons, but at most a prophetess who relays messages from the spirit world, and characters are swinging simple axes in small-scale raids and wars. I also can have fun with more over-the-top stuff, like the 8th-level ranger being polymorphed into a giant shark to fight the vampire.

As I read it, that was the OP's point. It's fine to have megafauna, but when doing so, acknowledge that even the supposedly non-magical warriors are superhuman.

Quote from: jhkim on October 03, 2023, 06:50:58 PM
As I read it, that was the OP's point. It's fine to have megafauna, but when doing so, acknowledge that even the supposedly non-magical warriors are superhuman.

Superhuman is a broad term. It could mean Batman* or Superman or Spiderman or Iron Man*.

Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark are nearer to "normal" than someone like Superman, but have some features that make them exceptional and arguably superhuman.

Is a charater in D&D more like Batman or Superman? That's been in flux since the hobby started.

I tend to leave the line between human and superhuman blurry because as soon as you start explicitly giving fighters "magic" some people I know start throwing hissy fits about how they can't play a mundane person as a PC.

It's absolutely weird to me, but it's real. Other classes can have magic to bend reality, but give a high-level fighter innate superhuman strength (vs. coming from a magic item) and some people start losing their shit. Others get bent out of shape when the system actually includes mechanics for how their superhuman ability works, demanding it be up to the DM what they're allowed to do that is superhuman.

There's a reason why "the fighter can't have nice things" is a meme.

In my own head, everyone in a magic-saturated world develops some degrees of innate magic related to the tasks they most perform. For fighters that would be superhuman physicality (strength, stamina, reflexes, etc.). For a thief it would be superhuman hand-eye coordination and stealth, and so forth.

However because everyone who applies themselves heavily has this happen to them, it's regarded as "mundane."

Quote from: Chris24601 on October 04, 2023, 08:01:34 AM
I tend to leave the line between human and superhuman blurry because as soon as you start explicitly giving fighters "magic" some people I know start throwing hissy fits about how they can't play a mundane person as a PC.

I can understand the argument. Sometimes a person wants to play a normal human who is simply above average, or even the tip top of human ability. Conan springs to mind. Once you give them explicit supernatural abilities, it changes the nature of the character from really good to supernaturally good.
I can go either way myself. Depends on the game and what I want to play.

Another way to put OP's point is that martials have zero versatility outside of combat, whereas magic-users can cast a spell tailor-made for a ridiculous variety of problems. HP bloat defeats the point of having levels to begin with. Martials' combat itself is incredibly boring compared to a console game like Shadow of the Colossus, God of War or Mortal Kombat. You just whack monsters over and over until they die, with no tactics or any kind of interesting description.

Your only limit is the human imagination. But the human imagination seems to be inferior compared to an effing video game. You can't run up the dragon's back and stab it in a weak spot? Really?

These are longstanding problems of the ttrpg medium that nobody has been interested in solving. Which is probably why the genre is dying and the oldest publishers are desperately moving to predatory and unethical microtransaction hellscape VTT schemes or whoring their IPs in video game licenses to survive. (None of those schemes are actually working, mind you.)

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 04, 2023, 09:46:12 AM
Martials' combat itself is incredibly boring compared to a console game like Shadow of the Colossus, God of War or Mortal Kombat. You just whack monsters over and over until they die, with no tactics or any kind of interesting description.

Must suck to play with a GM that is that bad and players with IQs of a green slime.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on October 04, 2023, 08:25:37 AMI can understand the argument. Sometimes a person wants to play a normal human who is simply above average, or even the tip top of human ability. Conan springs to mind.

Absolutely reasonable when it's not a class choice put alongside "Mega-Wizard".
It's like playing a superhero game and picking buddy the friendly barber and play him alongside Superman and the Hulk and go against mega galactus.

As for batman, his superpower is being favored by the writers. It would be like playing buddy the friendly barber and slipping the GM 1,000 bucks on the slide per session. So Superman and the Hulk always end up in implausible problems, while all the villians are allergic to barbers sheers (and only weilded by a barber of at least 20 years so superman can't edge in)

Quote from: jhkim on October 03, 2023, 06:50:58 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on October 03, 2023, 03:04:29 PM

Quote from: jhkim on October 03, 2023, 01:16:22 PM
By their nature, D&D hit points make skillful dodging the same as being ridiculously tough, which often has counterintuitive results.

I think the simple answer is that the D&D rules go past being cinematic and into something more like epic poetry. If one wants a game to be more grounded and realistic, then one should change the rules.

For example, I had a giant shark (a polymorphed PC) thrashing about in a cave biting a vampire in my D&D game on Sunday, and it was great fun. I kept a thin veneer of there being a reality - describing how the shark was trying to thrash up from the salt pool it was in. But I don't think the results were at all realistic.

Realism understood as sticking to the real world reality is vastly overrated in Sci-Fi/Fantasy games.

Realism understood as sticking to the game world reality on the other hand is something to strive for.

When I play/run D&D I'm not trying to simmulate the real world, I'm trying to "live"/create a "living world" in the game world.

Yes, high level PCs ARE superhuman, which is why at certain levels you're out there cavorting on other planes or even becoming immortals/gods.

Like with many things, I don't think it has to be either one or the other (realistic or not). I can play in a closer-to-reality vikings game where there are no fireballs or dragons, but at most a prophetess who relays messages from the spirit world, and characters are swinging simple axes in small-scale raids and wars. I also can have fun with more over-the-top stuff, like the 8th-level ranger being polymorphed into a giant shark to fight the vampire.

As I read it, that was the OP's point. It's fine to have megafauna, but when doing so, acknowledge that even the supposedly non-magical warriors are superhuman.

You could also play a game of spies with ZERO magic or superscience, you seem to think you're arguing against my point while proving me right:

"I don't think it has to be either one or the other (realistic or not). I can play in a closer-to-reality vikings game where there are no fireballs or dragons, but at most a prophetess who relays messages from the spirit world,"

So you NEED to tinker with the game world and make it VERY LOW fantasy? Whodathunk it!?

And that game world is very different from one where the PCs wield magic, intelligent Dragons exist? I would have never thought that LOW fantasy isn't the same as Fantasy as High Fantasy, as Realistic, as Pulp...

Yes, you should be able to leap six hundred feet and suplex Godzilla. Martials should do cool shit and games should be fun.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on October 04, 2023, 02:04:07 PM
You could also play a game of spies with ZERO magic or superscience, you seem to think you're arguing against my point while proving me right:

I didn't claim I was disagreeing. I think we may be on the same page. Certainly one can play a game with no magic or superscience.

That reminds me, I do have a technical counter-example to the OP's point. I had a campaign based on Naomi Novik's Temeraire novels of domesticated dragons in the Napoleonic Age. There was no magic, and humans were relatively human. A human couldn't possibly go toe-to-toe with a dragon. However, half of the PCs were mega-fauna dragons, so that's how it balanced out.

https://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/korea/

Quote from: GeekyBugle on October 04, 2023, 02:04:07 PM

Quote from: jhkim on October 03, 2023, 06:50:58 PM
Like with many things, I don't think it has to be either one or the other (realistic or not). I can play in a closer-to-reality vikings game where there are no fireballs or dragons, but at most a prophetess who relays messages from the spirit world,

So you NEED to tinker with the game world and make it VERY LOW fantasy? Whodathunk it!?

And that game world is very different from one where the PCs wield magic, intelligent Dragons exist? I would have never thought that LOW fantasy isn't the same as Fantasy as High Fantasy, as Realistic, as Pulp...

When you say "tinker with the game world" -- that implies that my game world started out high fantasy and I tinkered to make it low fantasy. But the baseline for my game world was historical vikings, and my tinkering was developing an alternate history and adding in a bit of magic.

But I think we're on the same page that different games have different settings and principles. If one wants mega-fauna like dragons in the world, there are some choices:

1) Have supposedly non-magical characters like fighters actually be superhuman

2) Possibly equivalently, only have magical character types
2a) This could include a magical fighter-like option, like "empowered hero" with strength-based magic

3) Don't have magic or superhuman abilities, but have dragons/megafauna as PCs or PC resources

Quote from: jhkim on October 04, 2023, 04:33:26 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on October 04, 2023, 02:04:07 PM
You could also play a game of spies with ZERO magic or superscience, you seem to think you're arguing against my point while proving me right:

I didn't claim I was disagreeing. I think we may be on the same page. Certainly one can play a game with no magic or superscience.

That reminds me, I do have a technical counter-example to the OP's point. I had a campaign based on Naomi Novik's Temeraire novels of domesticated dragons in the Napoleonic Age. There was no magic, and humans were relatively human. A human couldn't possibly go toe-to-toe with a dragon. However, half of the PCs were mega-fauna dragons, so that's how it balanced out.

https://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/korea/

Quote from: GeekyBugle on October 04, 2023, 02:04:07 PM

Quote from: jhkim on October 03, 2023, 06:50:58 PM
Like with many things, I don't think it has to be either one or the other (realistic or not). I can play in a closer-to-reality vikings game where there are no fireballs or dragons, but at most a prophetess who relays messages from the spirit world,

So you NEED to tinker with the game world and make it VERY LOW fantasy? Whodathunk it!?

And that game world is very different from one where the PCs wield magic, intelligent Dragons exist? I would have never thought that LOW fantasy isn't the same as Fantasy as High Fantasy, as Realistic, as Pulp...

When you say "tinker with the game world" -- that implies that my game world started out high fantasy and I tinkered to make it low fantasy. But the baseline for my game world was historical vikings, and my tinkering was developing an alternate history and adding in a bit of magic.

But I think we're on the same page that different games have different settings and principles. If one wants mega-fauna like dragons in the world, there are some choices:

1) Have supposedly non-magical characters like fighters actually be superhuman

2) Possibly equivalently, only have magical character types
2a) This could include a magical fighter-like option, like "empowered hero" with strength-based magic

3) Don't have magic or superhuman abilities, but have dragons/megafauna as PCs or PC resources

4) Have non magical Dragons (meaning they breath fire but can't cast spells), magic is rare and dangerous, the PCs are like characters in Conan. I mean the original REH writtings, where the main characters don't use magic unless they are the villain.

No, I didn't want to imply your game world started as X and you had to tinker to make it Y, I meant tinker during world building to have a world that complies to whatever restraints you impossed on it.

For instance I start with Earth circa 1950, then assume it's the future 1950s enviosioned in the Pulps, then add Pulp like characters (both PC, NPC and enemies [which doesn't mean NPCs or mooks are at the same level as the PCs]), then add whatever monsters I deem fit the world.

You could start with a different world, one you created from scratch, then add whatever fits YOUR vision of how things should be.

Quote from: Domina on October 04, 2023, 03:24:24 PM
Yes, you should be able to leap six hundred feet and suplex Godzilla. Martials should do cool shit and games should be fun.

Fun and cool are subjective ideas, and tastes vary even with the same person depending on their mood.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on October 04, 2023, 05:28:27 PM

Quote from: jhkim on October 04, 2023, 04:33:26 PM
But I think we're on the same page that different games have different settings and principles. If one wants mega-fauna like dragons in the world, there are some choices:

1) Have supposedly non-magical characters like fighters actually be superhuman

2) Possibly equivalently, only have magical character types
2a) This could include a magical fighter-like option, like "empowered hero" with strength-based magic

3) Don't have magic or superhuman abilities, but have dragons/megafauna as PCs or PC resources

4) Have non magical Dragons (meaning they breath fire but can't cast spells), magic is rare and dangerous, the PCs are like characters in Conan. I mean the original REH writtings, where the main characters don't use magic unless they are the villain.

Cool. I'd agree with that as a fun option. Martials can deal with mega-fauna by collapsing rocks on them, driving them over cliffs, etc.

 

I think this topic peaked after that Scooter video of an African hunt showing thrown reach weapons and sheer numbers obliterating megafauna like driver ants harvesting the jungle's creepy crawlies.  At this point it's not even academic, the topic's premise doesn't stand. And yet here we are debating wanting even easier pretend battles.

I'm... bemused.  Like bowling with bumpers filling the gutters. But please, carry on!