So how do you give martials cool abilities without it breaking "versimilitude"?

That's their most basic feature.

Adjusting the power curve is also necessary in my opinion.
While transition of martial from level 1 to level 20 is that of a mook to a Hercules, the transition of a caster from level 1 to level 20 is from a powerful mage to literal god.

Level 10 caster is rougly equivalent to level 25 martial in terms of power level. So adjust the power curve accordingly.
Either make casters gain experience at drastically lesser rate, or make martials gain power at better rate.

Lots of legends and folklore have martials performing inhuman feats despite being non-supernatural human beings. It's about as realistic as magic existing, so it fits. Just take an example like that guy who can cut through flying airsoft pellets with a katana and exaggerate it.

That's another part of the double standard which is highly aggravating. You get people bitching about how some scummy soldier shouldn't be able to do x, y and z, but if that's what you're comparing it to then a baseline caster should be a hedge wizard who knows a handful of 0th level spells. I'd much rather adjust up than adjust down, where the baseline characters are already interesting, competent heroes in their own right while still allowing plenty of room to grow from there.

>without it breaking "versimilitude"?

Take it outside and kick it to the curb. Some say the violation of physical limits is the strict purview of magic. Fuck that noise.

Conan never let it stop him. Odysseus was just a mortal man, keen in mind and martial talent. Gengis Khan clawed his way from obscurity to being on of the most infamous warlords ever.

Of course there are stories where heroes were more than human. Where you couldn't separate their deeds into purely magical or martial. That begs the question, does that divide really matter?

>Bard with Perform (Jazz Hands)
>Wears their bathrobe everywhere
>Nobody can tell the difference between them and a wizard
>Even wizards are fooled
>"I can't tell what spell those hand movements belong too, he must be extremely powerful indeed!"

Step 1: Make anti-mages great for once
Step 2: Distribute magic across classes instead of letting mages monopolize it.
Step 3: Incorporate fighter feats (especially the low level ones) into the fighting system as basic mechanics and replace them with cool shit.

Boom, done.

Boom, done

fpbp
/thread

Having a completely nonmagical limited-to-real-world-physics class in settings where magic is commonplace and physics are a soft guideline at best breaks verisimilitude far more than just giving martials cool abilities.

Fighters should be able to train past normal human limits and wrestle dragons by being Just That Good, or have specialized access to buff spells for the same result.

Don't play with autists who "versimilitude" gets broken so easily.

If you have magic enough that a fucker with a sword and his wits can't reasonably be able to beat, then only letting the fighter do mundane ass shit is verisimilitude breaking.

Watch a bunch of anime and copy what their martials do into what your setting's martials can do.

This man is enlightened everyone listen to him

are there any systems that do this and still have fun dangerous adventures like DnD?

>All those basic martial combat tricks that would otherwise be gated behind classes or feats should be baked into the base combat system in a way that anyone with decent martial competence can make use of them.
Mutants and Masterminds allowed anybody to take tradeoffs between accuracy, damage and defences (i.e Power Attack and so on) up to +/- 2 as baseline. Taking a Advantage (i.e. feat) allows you to go up to +/- 5.

so that's already tried and works really nice.

>tfw this scene never happens in the anime itself

>without it breaking "versimilitude"
Who gives a shit? Don't we have dragons and shit in fantasy?

>Short term fix: Take your (FIGHTER)/(ROGUE)/(BARBARIAN) Classes. Simultaneously level up in all three. Now you are strong, fast, crafty, and know your way around weapons and armor. An actual commando if you will.

>Long Term Fix: Restructure system.
Firstly, the idea of Mundane/muggle being up there with super-beings, throw that right out the window. There is nothing mundane about that person anymore so, no. They are adults now, time for a power source. If you have power sources, you have rules. If you have rules, you have mechanics, but if you have some player accessible rule 0 garbage, all you have is a broken mess.

Call it what you will. KI, Prana, Ether, Ruach, Od, Mitochondrial energy. The higher mysteries of the body are unlocked by the martialist. They are keenly in tune with themselves, and can use various techniques to squeeze the best performance possible from their bodies.

>Honestly a maneuver system like TOB is ideal, but instead of it's classes, It could have been one class, and had some of the things rolled into the styles.
>Feats work for passive abilities, but they should be rolling for the ideal adept. The way wizard is with spells, the martial adept should be with "non-magic" abilities. A total combat genius.

>Magical/psionic/ect alternate gish in a can.
It should be just as easy, taking an archetype and reducing maneuver progression a little,to take on magic use.
That is your paladin, ranger, magus/duskblade/hexblade, psychic warrior.
None of those are a different class. They are all the same class using different sources of power and applying them towards a cosmetic difference.

>Essentially there should only really be two classes, mage and warrior, and within the two are schools, where you can be orthodox/traditionalist, or unorthodox/generalist. From school specialization the different "types" make themselves evident.

>verisimilitude
That's subjective, and basically just comes down to keeping all playable classes somewhere in the same ballpark as each other at any given level / XP total / etc.

If you mean you want to keep non-mages realistic, then your martials are limited by what similar people can do in the real world, so you need to give them actual options in combat other than "attack" (give them feints, haymakers, defensive options, etc), and you should probably keep magic classes to around the same power level (because players tend not to like being overshadowed).

Really, the main thing is to give them actual things they're good at (and let them be good at many of them at the same time) so playing one is at least approaching the level of complexity of playing a caster.

By taking another system? Why are you all obsessed with repairing DnD instead of just moving on?

Have you ever considered adding stances? martial forms that warriors and the like can learn as they travel?

The Long Term Fix is good.

I mean, magic and the supernatural are intimately tied. Being able to do physics-breaking feats is a form of magic, it's just that martials will usually learn it from training with weapons and such.

You make that casters can only perform parlor tricks

Dungeon Crawl Classics

Which was my answer to this thread, make martials more like Dungeon Crawl Classics. Warriors have an action die that allows them to do any action movie stunt you can think of--want to break down a door, swing from a chandelier, disarm, trip, blind, call a shot? You can attempt /anything/ you convince your GM to try, once a turn, as a bonus action to your attack. No feats, no fuss, and your action die grows to be so good you're all but guaranteed to at least marginally succeed at most your stunts.

It also makes magic incredibly dangerous, so that brings wizards down a bit to help make things more even. I love the shit out of this system.

>Being able to do physics-breaking feats is a form of magic

Not necessarily

Is this a "psionics totally isn't magic, despite being pretty much identical" post?

Extraordinary features break laws of physics and aren't magic or supernatural

It's just a comment that not everything which breaks the laws of reality as we know it needs to be magic. In some settings, sure, but in others it explicitly isn't, and there are precise definitions of various sources and effects of supernatural power. In Wuxia, the use of Chi to perform extraordinary martial manoeuvres is described to be as natural as breathing.

Something can break the laws of nature, without doing so being outside of nature?

The natural laws contain things which they do not contain?

Yeah, and technically magic and religion can be separated.

Okay, if the term magic is going to be annoying to people... let's call it bob.

You have bob, these are the things that break the laws of nature.
You have arcane bob, which is used by wizards and such.
You have divine bob, which is used by clerics, etc.
You have psionic bob, which is used by psionists.
And you have martial bob, which is used by fighters.

There may be other forms of bob out there, but let's stick to this.

Evasion is a physics breaking non-magical ability.

But that's just meaningless and silly.

If your game goes for versimilitude, being a kinda badass fighter should already be cool.
If your goes does not go for versimilitude, neither should a fighter be required to.

Even right now in reality we don't know the extent of laws of nature. So yeah, metaphysically speaking you can break the laws of physics without breaking the laws of physics

Dragons can fly and breathe fire, Giants walk around in full defiance of the Square-Cube Law. Fix your autism or get out of my game.

Different settings, different laws of nature, different human limits.
Assuming realistic physical laws in high magic fantasy worlds never made sense to me.

It doesn't make sense. Unfortunately some people try to shove 'realism' everywhere, including places it absolutely does not belong.

In which case magic need not be supernatural. The entire idea of supernatural is effectively meaningless here.

What would your preferred name for these breaks from the natural world and the force behind it?
Mantra? Medicine? Heka? Qi? Pneuma?

Why does it need a name or some sort of discrete categorisation?

I play a character in GURPS with weapon master, a skill of 22 in a weapon or two, extra attack, dual attack technique and supplementary techniques for flavor, possibly including a few combos.

Then I go all-out attack double with rapid strike, followed by a dual attack and my extra attack for a minimum of five attacks in one turn (second).

So it's supernatural without breaking physics.

Ignoring this contradiction, where does the rogue get this power from? (Presumably monks get it from Qi, the force that permeates the universe and can be manipulated by a practitioner's will.)

Because I want a punchier term than "that power that allows you to circumvent the laws of nature" and apparently magic isn't the name for that?

>that power that allows you to circumvent the laws of nature
Supernatural.

Again, why do you need a specific way to categorise it? If it's a high fantasy setting it's just part of what happens, so roll with it.

Also,
>implying laws of nature are universal between settings
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

By not being a worthless faggot, mostly.

Tripping/Pushing/Holding/lifting is a Minor action.

Size limits removed and replaced with simple DC checks.

There, I fixed everything.

You really fucking didn't.

Name the problems then?

But then what about those non-supernatural abilities that break the laws of nature?

Then what's the problem with it being called magic?

If you can jump really high, does it matter if to do it you chant an arcane ritual, pray to your god, meditate on the power of mind over matter, channel the breath of the universe through your body, or to marshal your inner reserves of strength?

I maintain magic is as good a name as any for all these things together.

There's no problem with it being called magic in some settings.

The point is that it doesn't always need to be. Depending on a settings metaphysics and such, it could have many names or not need a name.

Read the fucking thread

"Supernatural" is by definition "above the nature".

If you do something that isn't supernatural, it doesn't break the laws of nature by definition.

>Open up the Ability to physically Pin, Throw, Wrestle and hold down enemies even the size of Dragons
>All while not sacrificing their damage or ability to do other things.

I fail to see how anything else in this thread has resolved the issue of Martials not being able to be the Heroic legends of Myth.

Retards like Just fail to understand the Language behind it.

Supernatural can mean magic or not, it just means "More than the Natural."

So tell me, What stops Martials from being strong with cool abilites if you remove their inate weakness of not being able to do anything physically besides full damage?

But the character being able to do it means they explicitly aren't circumventing the laws of nature. They are acting within nature, but a nature where things like that can happen.

Verisimilitude.

Oh, and before you sperg out: the same thing can be within or without of the realm of the laws of nature, depending on the setting's metaphysics.

Just because it can't be done in real world doesn't mean it can't be done in that setting.

Yeah but apparently things like evasion break the laws of physics without being supernatural.

Oh, the "It HAS to be mundane because I just can't get it up otherwise, despite how little sense it makes calling it mundane!" crowd's arrived.

Nope. Nice bullshit strawman though.

Post of the day, hell, probably even post of the week material right here.

Only because the term Supernatural has been co-opted by Morons who think Supernatural means magic.

Only that's exactly what you're doing.

God I'm glad I'll never have to play with a faggot like you.

No, I just accept that you don't have to carry your high school science class baggage into a fantastic setting.

I understand the language behind it, but I'm saying the limits being placed on it are ridiculous.

Okay, since I'm a retard, explain to me: what is magic in D&D terms, and what distinguishes it from psionics and other things?

4E, is that you?

Has this been done: martials use precision and skill to pick apart their opponents and set up successively more powerful strikes? Inflicting debuffs and self-buffs with their attacks to build momentum? At highest levels attacking like a Platinum Games protagonist.

Nope.

Nobody is insisting things have to be mundane. They're just pointing out that they are necessarily magical, supernatural or otherwise either. It's about nuance and how things vary from setting to setting, you blithering fucknugget.

So, comboing and success spiral.

Outside of D&D and its shadow, yes. Within it, not that I've seen.

I suppose. Maybe balanced by combos being easier to disrupt the higher they go?

Cool, any particular systems you know?

Ah okay, I accept that then.

Legends of the Wulin's entire combat system is somewhat momentum based, with fighters racking up Ripples on each other that translate into more and more serious injuries as time goes on. Everyone has access to a few core debuff abilities that anyone can use without any investment, but Warriors in the system also get some specific techniques and abilities to enhance them, as well as letting use tactics and insight to get one over an enemy.

I love the system, but it's rather clunky and the core rule book is unfortunately awfully edited, which makes getting into it and understanding it a real fucking pain.

Magic is a specific method of invoking the supernatural. It's like asking the difference between paintings and artwork. All paintings are artwork (in the general sense, not in the colloquial sense), but not all artwork is in the form of paintings.

Mundane or Magical vary with the setting.
Why does a fantasy setting needs to have real world physics?
Why is that the PnP rpg comunity finds Charles Atlas style superpowers so baffling?

No idea. That's exactly what I'm advocating.

Invocation of certain arts that perform the supernatural.

Make magic how it was presented in the olden days rather than how modern day wannabe weebs perceive it.
Back to the times where the real mage was the master smith.
You rarely heard of anyone casting a fireball or destroying whole armies at a time with a single OP spell. They rarely were thought to fight directly.
What they could do is transform (Fafnir, Otter), see the future (Odin, Oracles), scry and spy, curse, teleport/summon rescue (Medea) and SOMETIMES conjure. I think Medea or Merlin were the only ones to directly kill with magic.

Okay... so magic is invoking the supernatural via particular actions.

Exactly.

Just like how a Fighter Drop-kicking a Hydra into a volcano is no doubt Supernatural, but not magic.

It's the difference between rowing a boat and Swimming.

Both move a person through water ( Do supernatural things ) but are different methods. ( magic uses Magical arts/bloodlines/godpower, Martials use their physical body )

>Just like how a Fighter Drop-kicking a Hydra into a volcano is no doubt Supernatural, but not magic.

In some settings it might not even be supernatural, depending on the default state of things in that particular world and set of metaphysics. Not saying it has to be one way or the other, just pointing out the option that it could be either.

Exactly. There's also simply supernatural states of beings, where things are supernatural all the time and don't have to invoke it. E.g., a ghost isn't magic, nor is a dragon, but they are supernatural.

If psionics and other alternate invocation forms didn't exist, I'd say that magic simply was invoking the supernatural, and that supernatural phenomenon that did not require invocation are not magic. Hell, I'd define psionics as a form of magic the same as cleric, warlock, and warlock magic, but some people don't truck with that.

So, someone drop-kicking a hydra into a volcano is magic... as long as they asked their god before hand/chanted a bunch/had a dragon for a great-great-great grandfather?

I always use "natural" as a state of normalcy. Sure people CAN become Hydra drop-kicking badasses, but your NORMAL joe doesn't.

Now see, you raise a good point here... because if magic is the usage of particular actions to invoke the supernatural... wouldn't that apply to psionics?

If the thing that specifically allowed them to dropkick the Hydra into a Volcano was God/chanted/Dragonblood given. Then yes.

If they did it with their balls to the wall strength? Then no.

Maybe. If the chanting or asking the God actually granted them the power to drop-kick it into a volcano, then yes. If they could do so without those actions, and just performed them as a spiritual kiai or focusing method, then no. For the dragon blood, depends on if they did so through the dragon's inherent strength, or by calling on supernatural power through their Draconic blood.

Source?

See, this just makes me want a Dragonblood Monk Archtype, who instead of manifesting the magical skills of a dragon, manifests their physical prowess.

Ah, so a demigod is magical?

But... wait... said that dragons aren't magical.

But someone who is descended from dragons is?

Gods aren't magical either?

No, Gods Dragons and Demigods are not inherently magical, They are however Supernatural.

Dragons themselves aren't, but they have the innate ability to use magic. Their giant size, scales, and fiery breath aren't magic, but when they invoke the supernatural it doesn't stop being magic just because they're a dragon.