So why don't they make high level martials on the same level as Hercules or Gilgamesh?

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Because it's not "martials", it's "fighters".

The other martials already get magic powers and can perform crazy shit. But, there's nothing wrong with wanting a class that keeps pace with super-powered people just by relying on the limits of human physique combined with wit, skill, technique, and a measure of luck.

It's not even that hard to balance, and hardly stresses the suspension of disbelief if done with the understanding that this guy is still a hero even if he doesn't have any inherent magical abilities. With or without magical assistance in the form of items and allies, it's a welcome niche to explore and not one that needs to be eliminated because you think Hercules wasn't a half-god.

>hitting someone with a pointy stick should be equal to throwing a fireball at someone

Nigger what? You mundane fags are so retarded.

Theme and depth issues.

Thematically, it's usually easier to maintain a "realistic" or "serious" setting with magic than with physical prowess. As an example of this, Wuxia often as relatively little magic, but it's clearly recognizable as a fantastic genre; you'd never throw it in with westerns or victorian drama as "realistic" or "gritty" or the like. Similarly, Hercules redirecting an entire river in combat has a different, generally more outrageous vibe to it than Gandalf bringing the sun up faster, even if the latter is arguably way more powerful and world-shattering.

Depth-wise, caster vs martial issues are often about doing cool shit more than having big numbers, so even if the martials are all literal gods you're still going to have issues regarding whether or not they have anything interesting to do in battle or in town beyond hitting things, again. Additionally, you're often talking about relatively separate methods of power, so trying to brute-force balance them tends to result in weird situations where the same enemies physically can't harm martials and can one-shot casters, or go down in one punch to martials and are physically invulnerable to casters, and so on. In addition to being wonky as hell, this then tends to whittle down on the awesomeness of casters because all of their invisible flying eyelaser turning people to stone stops working so good, and if that were a valid option we wouldn't be having this conversation because casters wouldn't have any fancier toys than their meatshield brethren.

Protagonists should be equal to protagonists.

>>Wiggling your fingers and sleight of hand should be equal to stabbing someone.

Naga please, you magicfags are so retarded.

It's safe to give fighters more means of damage and deefenses, it can always be justified as mundane. A level 20 fighter can survive like a hundred arrows, but you shouldn't say that he's being hit by every arrow really.

Of course it strains disbelief for people to be "that fucking good" after a certain point, but that's only if you insist on seeing him as something believable out of a high fantasy context. There doesn't need to be a reason for it, just close your eyes and take a breath and tell yourself he's just fucking awesome and not to question it.

All protagonists are equal. It's just that some are more equal than the others.

If you know where the line is from, give yourself a cookie.

Who the fuck hasn't read Animal Farm

Animal Farm isn't exactly the most esoteric of high literary references, buddy.

Watching the Captain America movies really makes me want to make a high level fighter

whoa man that is some obscure shit. you must have read like 30 books

>what is animal farm

Damn, I really want a cookie but unfortunately I never did any of my assigned reading in the fucking 9th grade.

man, you just schooled me with your next level shit user. if you would deign to tip your fedora in my direction i would be forever greatful

>you must have read like 30 books

my sides

>animal farm
>the book literally assigned to children as young as the 6th grade to read

That's a really clever way to increase cookie consumption. Who do you work for?

Damn, forgot I'm in American prime time, is the book really baby's first assigned reading for you? It was basically samizdat back when I was doing primary.

Also, cookies.

Pretty close. It is generally late middle school/early high school fare. So about ages 12-15. I read it in my first year of high school at 14.

my iron curtain brother

>1/1/17: The Day the Great Cookie Conspiracy was Uncrumbled
damn dude someone take this shit to /x/ before the government takes it down

With the epic deflection/reflection feats martials can knock away any missile from arrows and boulders to spells and even send them back at their source.

>samizdat
Yeah, burgers all read that book in grade school. It's cool that you got to see it in a place where it was pretty hidden instead of shoved down your throat. It probably makes the book seem a bit more profound.

It just makes logical sense for a magic user to be more powerful than a fighter. I mean, historically speaking, magic has been able to do all kinds of things.

>historically speaking, magic has been able to do all kinds of things.

Historically speaking, magic isn't even real. So by default martials are the winners.

I think he was being facetious.

Historically speaking martials have been able to fuck up the most "powerful" spellcasters despite all their fancy tricks.

Why is there such a rigid distinction?

Gandalf was handy with a sword and staff

Are you sure? Magic could very well be as real as you are.

So despite being Amerifat I was never forced to read it. I read it and 1984 of my own accord, basically because I just read anything I heard was good. Animal Farm was way better, if only because it didn't try to cram an entire textbook into its second third.

D&D is pretty much Wuxia past lvl 12.

Name one instance in real life where a high level martial defeated a powerful mage.

this one time an old man told me he was a wizard and I punched him in the face

Too late...

Now not to make myself sound too special, by the time I was reading it the book was perfectly legal. It was home-copied version of the book though, that somebody donated to the library after it became legal.
Our assigned reading stayed the same for years
after the country shifted to democracy, they just crossed out the most blatant propaganda pieces but didn't add anything new (Western) until much later.

We were supposed to choose own reading in the last grade, but it was quickly called off because the guys tired to be cheeky and the first two tributes turned out to be some blatantly pornographic novel by Oscar Wilde and Mein Kampf. After that it was back to Dostoyevsky.

Darth Vader vs Obi-wan

>implying it wasn't two gishes
>implying Star Wars is real

No less realistic than people shooting fireballs out of their eyes or giant flying lizards that can exhale lightning. Why should the ability of fighters be bound to real world constraints when literally no one else is?

I don't mean that fighters should get spells, that's exactly not the point. A high level fighter should be an epic hero who can split a boulder in half with a single stroke, who can deflect a lightning strike with his shield, who can pin a moonbeam to a butterfly's wing with an arrow from one hundred paces.

Cocainum versus Carey Fisher

Yeah but it's realistic for magic to do that stuff. It's magic!

Then why can't a first level wizard stop time, immediately obtain perfect knowledge of the entire world, and remake the universe as he sees fit, spending infinite time doing so.

Because of course he does not age, grow bored, or need sleep.

I can't

fuck, I think you're right

Because you're hungover
youtube.com/watch?v=5_nYgeYc90g

youtube.com/watch?v=d5P5Tz3VH94
The dumb part is I still linked the wrong song but one appropriate for the post.

And the original
youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dLhFDYQHDQY

>Extraordinary Abilities (Ex)
>Extraordinary abilities are nonmagical, though they may break the laws of physics
>They are not something that just anyone can do or even learn to do without extensive training

I will never fucking understand why everyone, including the designers, is so insistent on Fighters being limited to real world physics when Extraordinary abilities exist and are built right into the system. The goddamn Rogue gets several Extraordinary abilities including but not limited to I-can-dodge-a-bomb-strapped-to-my-neck and actual precognition.

Anyone who thinks D&D/Pathfinder operates under the same physics we do has not actually read the rules.

The days are long. It has been weeks since I lost track of my time, here.

Hope is a luxury I can no longer afford. The longer I am here, the further detatched I feel. My food stores will run dry soon. Every passing hour I think to myself "surely this must be the day," but that time never arrives. The madness creeping into me bays at the fringes of my psyche like a pack of ravenous hounds out for blood. I long for death, but that, too, refuses to come.

No. This is what I deserve. My penance for trusting the wrong people, and in my own foolhardy beliefs that we can change.

My mission is a failure; that, I accepted long ago. Now, my only salvation is death, and it will rescue me from this hell.

If you are reading this, don't mourn me. Just learn from my mistakes. Tell my mother I love her, and my brother George that he has my respect.

Above all, tell the world what I've learned here at my post so no further life is wasted here: there will never be a day that this thread isn't reposted on Veeky Forums.

...

Funny enough Merlin was supposed to be the anti-Christ

It's an important discussion to have.

I'm guessing you're referring to Evasion and Uncanny Dodge right?

I'd add to this pic that casters are often more powerful than gods in mythology. Only Hindu gods can compare with them in versatility and power, Greek gods are complete shmucks to wizards.

That's a really broad claim. Hindu is the most bananas one, true; but still, what mythologies do you refer to?

and Veeky Forums still falls for it

You sort of raise an interesting point about Hercules: if we can play the retarded offspring of a hobbit and an orc, why can't we play a demigod? I don't think demigods are even common in D&D.

In case of Greek heroes, Hercules included, thier demi-god status was little more than their "I'm special" card. Essentially, just an excuse to have a PC class

Greek, Norse, Babylonian, Slavic. What particular divine power can't powerful caster emulate here? Zeus literally throws enchanted magic weapons as lighting bolts forged by cyclops.

The problem is not fighters, the problem is wizards. Even if a fighter is Hercules a high level DnD wizard can do more things than Zeus or Odin could in the myths.

Now why nobody seems to want to address the fact that DnD has become a bloated high fantasy mess is another matter entirely. Its gone far, far beyond the 'power level' of most of the fantasy and legends that inspired it.

I'll point out that "casters", as we think of them in DnD, don't tend to really exist in historical literature. The only guys with legends of people running around throwing around fireballs were legends of ninja.

>Lancelot killing a dragon with a branch
Now that's just crossing the stories, he killed a (fully armed and armored) knight with a branch and he killed a dragon, but I don't think he didn't kill a dragon with a branch. He used his sword properly.

My bad, I wanted to write 'surpass' not 'compare with'.

>whoa man that is some obscure shit. you must have read like 30 books
I've read over 34, but I've never read that one.

Clerics do, as basically every cleric spell is stolen from biblical miracles and such

Fox's Cunning ain't in the Bible, mang.

So why don't you stop playing RPGs? Surely that solves the problem with every autist reviving this idiotic debate.

It's like blacks and slavery - you just gotta keep bringing it up don't you?

Short answer: because wizards would still be stronger.

All of the legendary martials from myths were either half gods or had spectacular magic weapons doing most of the work for them. In DnD, half god isn't something you can start as except in really high power settings, and the strongest magic weapons in DnD don't even hold a candle to the ones in myths. Excalibur's scabbard made its wearer literally invincible in combat, for example. Meanwhile, DnD wizards can outperform gods just by their natural progression, and are way the hell stronger than any actual mythical wizards.

It works like that in the good versions of D&D.
Too bad not many of you play those.

>So why don't you stop playing RPGs?
Memery aside, this is more of a "have you tried not playing D&D" thing. Off the top of my head I can think of a good number of games where there's not a caster/martial dichotomy.

Literally what you're asking for is giving only the Martial Characters Mythic Ranks, as far as Pathfinder goes

That MAY work, maybe there's still a good chance is right here.

>Play Anima
>Problem solved

Was it that hard, user?

Well, it does require playing a shitty system.

Then again, so does almost every edition of D&D.

No, it wouldn't solve anything. People would just complain about their fighter not being able to cross dimensions by flexing hard enough. You can see this happen in systems where casters and martials are more or less even in combat, such as D&D 5e.

You don't see that in systems where Fighters and Wizards have similar out-of-combat capability, like 4E, where most non-combat stuff is in skills or rituals (Wizards still have a bit of an upper hand but not much)

At first is a pain in the ass, but once you get used it works pretty well though it's perfect. And the three main powers are sort of well balanced even in higher levels, which is nice.

Honestly I could really go for something like that:

Like a Warrior that has the ability to do shit like strike the ground to emanate a 160 ft long cone of Earthquake in front of him. Can be done multiple times a round as a Full-Attack against the ground. Pointing out some reminders for the hitpoints of 5ft worth of stone to see how far you burrow a hole through the ground. The Reflex DCs are determined by your Attack Bonus used to strike the ground, generally somewhere at in the low 30's end game, which is about normal followed up by 3 more saves at 5 less like full attack.
Could be a reasonable ability option at 15th or 16th level, which sounds reasonable if you tack it to a resource, given that Wizards would still just innately have more utility, there's no way around that.

Sticking to just a normal point pool of KILLFUCKSOULSHITTER points like we already have Panache or Grit is just unimaginative

His resource is Burn, a la the Pathfinder Kineticist, where you start piling up Non-lethal damage that can't be healed from the sheer strain of these acts.
It's basically like a shitty mix of blood magic and DnD 3.5 Psi points, effectively taking the worst points of both, but I like the flavor of it.

Abilities like the Grendel's ability to make checks to dismember grappled targets, and then being considered proficient with severed limbs and treating them as anything up to a +3 Anarchic Flail, scaled to your level.

End game abilities would be shit like immunity to death effects if your burn doesn't exceed your hit points, instead taking the partial effect of the spell, a sizable amount of burn and being considered dying but staggered instead of unconscious for a few rounds.

Imagine getting your fucking head cut off by a Vorpal blade and that only making you even angrier.

What if I don't like programmable calculators?

Because that's a 9th lvl wizard spell

You mean fighters really get nothing, no cleave so heavy it can split hills, no unstoppable charge? No brief immortality from being stabbed a hundred times? Just "I hit it with my sword"?

>Just "I hit it with my sword"?

They have to spend a very limited resource just to be good at that.

Unironically? Casters are fun and interesting and I want them to be good. Rogues get honourable mention status.

Fighters are boring shitballs and should be hireling NPCs.

Here's the expanded one.

Give the non-casters the option to become Mythic adventurers.

paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/mythicAdventures/mythicHeroes.html

Gestalt the Base Mythic Abilities table onto extant tables, with the non-martials gaining a Mythic Tier at 2nd level and every other level thereafter. For example, the Fighter ends up looking like pic.

Because in the early days of D&D TSR was constantly receiving letters about how bullshit it is that even if a magic-user only had his fastest spells prepared that day, any semi-optimized fighter could easily tank the lightning bolt before making sure the caster never casts another spell ever again.

Seriously, go look at old dragon mags if you want examples.

Back then taking any damage interrupted a cast, and while casting you had to stand in place the whole round, so no AC adjustment from dexterity or movement based magic, and no running and casting.

Are there any DnD-likes other than Dungeon Crawl Classics that encourage fighters to be the "Do Awesome Shit" class? I think the key is that they all need something like Mighty Deeds of Arms.

Just use fucking Tome of Battle

Or better yet play something other than 3.x D&D.

Gilgamesh was 2/3 god.

Try to figure that one out.

Demons and angels are on a whole different lower powerscale than being the SON OF THE HEAD GOD OF A FUCKING PANTHEON.

But he needs _something_ to keep up. And that's experience. A high-level fighter is (should be) a veteran who's seen it all, and sees attacks coming before their foe knows they're attacking. If targeted by any kind of attack - spell, melee, arrow, etc. - they can sacrifice their next turn to take action just before the effect happens. Limited per-encounter resource: being able to still take their next turn, also usable for taking several pre-emptive actions per turn. Secondary reserve as per-day actions, to allow tough encounters to drain the character.

So a high-level fighter is a methodical killing machine who will murder you before your blow can land. Or perhaps they simply step away from your clumsy attack and kill one of your minions. Or bullrush the healer out of the fireball just before it goes off. Or...

High-level fighter is in control; they don't just stand there like an idiot taking a beating or rely on their reflexes, they fight with their brains (barbarians fight with their hearts), and this the easiest way of simulating the character knowing in advance what their foes will do.

Rasputin got stomped by those noblemen