"A Wizard Did It" for noncasters

[Libertad]

This whole "non-magic equals mundane" is what got us Caster Supremacy in the first place.  The D&D idea that noncasters can't replicate or interact with magic stuff needs to die in a fire.

In D&D, magic is part of the world.  It permeates the planes and interacts with people on a physical, mental, and spiritual level.  A person without magic to a spellcaster is like someone without sight: limited, and does tasks the spellcaster does routinely with great difficulty (or not all).  Through training, a blind person can make up for the loss of sight, but it would take lots of work and even then he can't discern details which require vision.  Animals with poor eyesight use echolocation and can maneuver around their environment, but they still can't see.  It is expected in fantasy fiction for magic to be more powerful and "beyond" the "Muggles."

"A Wizard Did It" is a very common excuse in fantasy games, used to justify all manner of stuff which we won't do with non-magic stuff.  I propose a second thing to go alongside this: "She's Just That Good."

I've talked about in a thread on The Gaming Den about letting D&D characters replicate magical effects through skill.  I once said that a smart character might be able to replicate divination spells through planning, investigation, and deductive reasoning.

Here's an example, from the shoot-em-up Anime Black Lagoon.

Eda's (the nun with sunglasses) plan is pretty much guesswork and theory based upon the motivations of the runaway girl and the criminals, reinforced through some careful planning beforehand.  She has no guarantee that the thugs will approach the girl and chase after her in such a way, but it happens according to plan.  In a way, her recollection of events is similar to the Augury and Scry spells, and can be replicated this way in D&D.

"But wait, Libertad, couldn't PCs normally do this through player skill?"

Yes, but it should be a special ability with game mechanics.  Lots of times we play PCs who are smarter, wiser, and more well-spoken than we are.  Additionally, making players think up of plans the normal way makes it reliant upon DM Fiat.  Giving a Sherlock Holmes PC Divination-like abilities both reinforces the character concept, and gives the player a useful option when he can't think up a plan the old-fashioned way.

For more "physical" effects, there's Samurai Jack in the episode "Jump Good," where he trains among a civilization of sapient primates to jump so high that he might as well be flying.

The Barbarian claps his hands together to make a cone-shaped sonic attack because he's just that strong.

Samurai Jack can jump really high because he's just that skilled at jumping.

Eda the Nun can make assumptions about the actions of people who are not immediately present because she's just that good at deductive reasoning.

"But this sounds like magic!"  Right.  That's exactly the point.  Mimicking spell-like abilities is all fine and dandy, and we need this kind of stuff in D&D to encourage people to play noncasters, especially at high levels.

How did they breed an Owlbear?  A Wizard Did It.

How does Sherlock Holmes know that the ground beneath him concealed a secret tunnel?  He's Just That Good.

[Shinkuro]

i agree with this wholeheartedly. the Book of 9 swords was just the first step here.

but we should also have something akin to real world fighting styles that add different kinds of utility so that every fighter out there isn't a longbowman, a reach lockdown tripper, or ubercharger.

maybe some differentiation in the perks of weapons beyond damage type, damage die, crit range and crit multiplier

it could be as simple as bludgeoning weapons stunning a foe for a number of rounds equal to the wielder's strength bonus on a critical hit without a saving throw

Slashing weapons being able to sunder limbs or other appendages

and piercing weapons inflicting bleed damage on a critical hit equal to the wielder's strength bonus without a saving throw

[Libertad]

The BO9S was indeed a great book, and I'm unashamed to say that I'm biased in favor of anything from it.

It had some "Supernatural" stuff in it, but it was so simple in making all but two schools "Extraordinary" that I'm surprised that other products didn't try to replicate this.  Tiger Claw guys can jump fast and high, Iron Heart Surge can disable magical effects, and the Crusader heals his comrades.  People criticize the Crusader for this, but think about it: do we demand the same from magical effects and healing?  Who's to say that the Crusader fights so good that he actually encourages his comrades to get a second wind and speed up the healing process?

Most importantly, I believe that this needs to go beyond just combat maneuvers, even beyond 3rd Edition.  Don't get me wrong, it's my favorite Edition, but look at D&D today.  3rd Edition fans are congregating around Pathfinder.  The 4th Edition guys are doing a better job at drawing in new blood than us and the "Old School" folks.  In bookstores and game shops, Pathfinder and 4th Edition books are the ones being produced and sold.  And WotC is throwing 4E by the wayside in favor of D&D Next.

And the Pathfinder designers have shown again and again that caster/noncaster balance is against their interests.

If we want to get noncasters on par with casters in the grand scheme of things, we need to go beyond this Edition.  Maybe run it by the designers of D&D Next.  The only function is that we'll need to find a way to word things to convince gamers.

Any ideas?

[Unbeliever]

Personally, I am completely and utterly unmoved. 

This idea that magic permeates the world and essentially changes the laws of physics exists in some fantasy settings, but it's far, far from ubiquitous.  I can only think of one or two where the analogy between magic and sight would hold up at all. 

To the extent caster supremacy exists, it is best viewed as a game artifact.  It's not a statement about the world unless I want it to be a statement about the world.  There is absolutely nothing in the default fluff of the game worlds/D&D that indicates the OP is the case. 

Samurai Jack, for instance, is in the style of anime, where doing crazy shit like jumping a ridiculous height is de rigeur.  That would seem pretty far out of place in, say, my Birthright campaign.  If you want to, go nuts, but you're taking a particular read on fantasy literature. 

To be clear, the thing I'm really disputing in the first 2 paragraphs in the OP.  The rest is a question for mechanics and implementation given a particular theme or approach to a campaign/game world. 

[Childe]

Libertad and Shinkuro, I'd actually encourage you to check out Legend. It's an OGL d20 game with many similarities to 3.5 (making it an easy enough transition), but spells/spell-likes/supernatural/extraordinary abilities are all brought to equal footing, which sounds like what you're asking for.

You can find the beta version here (free): http://www.ruleofcool.com/get-the-game/
The official 1st edition is forthcoming but will be out soon (also free, for the digital Core book).

Sorry if this seems intrusive, but it seemed relevant to your concerns, if not to the D&D IP itself.

[FlaminCows]

Libertad, what you are describing already exists in D&D. You can do Samurai Jack style jumping in 3.5, it isn't even difficult to do. You can also track a frog over bare rock after heavy rainfall, and lift an elephant over your head. The problem here is that:

This whole "non-magic equals mundane" is what got us Caster Supremacy in the first place.

...is not true. It has never been true, and part of the reason the discrepancy continued is that both players and designers believed it to be true, and everyone thought that if you just gave the martial characters the ability to perform some impossible things all the problems would be solved.

In D&D, non-spellcasters can and do perform incredible actions. The problem is that "doing incredible things" is just a fluff ability. Being able to jump really high is almost completely useless in this game. What makes casters broken is pure mechanics, numbers. Most of what makes casters broken isn't even impressive, in the sense of superpowers.

Samurai Jack would be Tier 5 in this game. He does one thing reasonably well, but lacks anything in the way of versatility.

[Libertad]

My Samurai Jack example was less "high Jump modifier" and more "Flight," which is something very hard to get for noncasters without magic items or mounts.

The idea was that
1. the most powerful things in the game are spells, so

2. give noncasters abilities which mimic spells: Scrying, haste, burrowing and water walk, being able to fly.  These things are not really present in 3.X noncasting classes except as situational class features and even only a couple at the very most.

[veekie]

This idea that magic permeates the world and essentially changes the laws of physics exists in some fantasy settings, but it's far, far from ubiquitous.  I can only think of one or two where the analogy between magic and sight would hold up at all. 

It exists even in real myths and legends though. A lot of magic refers to superior skill, knowledge or craftsmenship, along with inherent virtues. Magic being separate and instant in invocation is a relatively recent idea, becoming more popular around when the scientific method started stripping the mystery from many processes.

[RobbyPants]

"A Wizard Did It" is a very common excuse in fantasy games, used to justify all manner of stuff which we won't do with non-magic stuff.  I propose a second thing to go alongside this: "She's Just That Good."

People have been making this argument for years. And while I agree with it (I want the PCs all on a similar power level at all times), the people who don't like it won't like it for the same reason that they don't like fighters having nice things.

You can re-fluff it all you want, but in the end, they want their mundane fighter guy, and they want to believe he can keep up with a wizard all the time, or if they admit he can't, they want to tell you that you're just playing the game wrong and it's not competitive.

If I were rewriting D&D, I'd probably have the fighter in there as a five-level class, and explicitly state that anything sixth level and beyond is some combination of magical and/or "just that good", and be quite unapologetic about it.

[Unbeliever]

This idea that magic permeates the world and essentially changes the laws of physics exists in some fantasy settings, but it's far, far from ubiquitous.  I can only think of one or two where the analogy between magic and sight would hold up at all. 

It exists even in real myths and legends though. A lot of magic refers to superior skill, knowledge or craftsmenship, along with inherent virtues. Magic being separate and instant in invocation is a relatively recent idea, becoming more popular around when the scientific method started stripping the mystery from many processes.

Maybe.  I take it you had some examples in mind? 

I was mostly thinking of fantasy literature, though, rather than say Greek and Anglo-Saxon myths.  Conan and Fafhrd are explicitly non-magical, and when people around them do "impossible" (sort of, heroes defy the reasonable realms of possibility with regularity) it's noteworthy.  That's what I would consider the "default mode." 

Note that this isn't a statement along the lines of fantasy heroes should be constrained by what actual people can do.  Nothing of the sort.  I would not bat an eye at an Elven Duelist snatching arrows out of the air with her bare hands.  But, I take it that is something far different than what Libertad is proposing.

And, just to reiterate, I think any caster supremacy is a function of rules idiosyncrasies rather than anything deeper.  And, if you were going to muck with the system I'd personally prefer to just target those idiosyncrasies rather than overhaul the fluff. 

[Libertad]

People have been making this argument for years. And while I agree with it (I want the PCs all on a similar power level at all times), the people who don't like it won't like it for the same reason that they don't like fighters having nice things.

You can re-fluff it all you want, but in the end, they want their mundane fighter guy, and they want to believe he can keep up with a wizard all the time, or if they admit he can't, they want to tell you that you're just playing the game wrong and it's not competitive.

Like in online political discussions, trying to convert the ideologues opposite you is an exercise in futility.  The people you should convince is everyone else reading the thread.  So what if 3 guys vehemently oppose you, when there's 300 unique thread viewers?  And when people start using your posts to support their arguments, it's a good sign.

Despite the seething hatred Edition Warriors have for 4th Edition, a lot of 4E gamers are happy that Wizards and Fighters are on a more level playing field (even if Wizards get rituals and Martials don't); and many posters on rpg.net are very aware of where 3rd Edition failed.  So it's definitely not a lost cause.

And, just to reiterate, I think any caster supremacy is a function of rules idiosyncrasies rather than anything deeper.  And, if you were going to muck with the system I'd personally prefer to just target those idiosyncrasies rather than overhaul the fluff.

I think that it's also reflected in the fluff to an extent.

Most of the high-level guys in settings are spellcasters.  And the most prosperous ancient civilizations were ones with ubiquitous spellcasters.

One more thing I'd like to note:

When one thinks of spellcasting in D&D, they usually think of the Wizard, Cleric, and similar classes instead of anybody with any supernatural powers at all.  Many gamers do not consider the Monk a spellcaster, even though the class has multiple supernatural features.  The Rogue cannot cast spells, but they have Use Magic Device and are thus capable of utilizing spells found in items.

A good compromise might involve giving the "noncasters" ways to interact with magic and supernatural abilities, while keeping the art of spellcasting a distinct form of supernatural aid (from the Gods with a Cleric, through study with a Wizard, through ancestry with a Sorcerer, etc).  The Fighter might learn a couple of tricks to reach out into the spirit world (learned through meditation, first contact with spirit possession, etc) to attack incorporeal opponents, but he still doesn't prepare and cast spells.  It is definitely supernatural in nature, though.

At higher levels, the the amount of magic increases in the game, whether it's in the form of items, monsters, or environments.  It's plausible that regular interaction with these elements might cause noncasters to pick up some nifty tricks (sort of like the Spelltouched feats in Unearthed Arcana).

[Unbeliever]

And, just to reiterate, I think any caster supremacy is a function of rules idiosyncrasies rather than anything deeper.  And, if you were going to muck with the system I'd personally prefer to just target those idiosyncrasies rather than overhaul the fluff.

I think that it's also reflected in the fluff to an extent.

Most of the high-level guys in settings are spellcasters.  And the most prosperous ancient civilizations were ones with ubiquitous spellcasters.

This is very Forgotten Realms centric.  And, I think even there there exist scads of high level warriors (there's some dark elf guy, I can't remember his name ...).  Furthermore, you have to realize that you're reaching there.  Lost magical civilizations are the stuff of fantasy legends.  It's its own trope.  And, notably, they are all off-stage, long-dead civilizations. 

What you're talking about is all warriors will be Soul Reapers, all thieves will be Naruto-style ninjas.  That's not the default for a fantasy game.  People like me, don't necessarily like that as a setting, as I'd like to sometimes play a guy who isn't a mystical swordsman, just a swordsman. 

Furthermore, conceptually non-magical characters have ways to "do magic."  It's D&D's ever-ubiquitous magical items. 

That's my criticism, you want to put non-magical character concepts on the chopping block, which I think is a radical move, and one that I don't exactly think is justified.  I'd reiterate that if you were to do that, an easier way, practically-speaking, would just be for everyone to play magical character from the get go.  Have everyone be gishes, etc.  If your players are happy with a magic-saturated world, then go nuts. 

[zugschef]

why can't people just accept the fact that noncasters die at level 6? because giving non-casters abilities which do what spells do, makes me wonder why you don't just give this dude to cast a fuckin' spell. just call it spirit or whatever: it works like magic, looks like magic, tastes like magic, but chuck norris says it's fuckin' spirit, thus it's fuckin' spirit.

[veekie]

This idea that magic permeates the world and essentially changes the laws of physics exists in some fantasy settings, but it's far, far from ubiquitous.  I can only think of one or two where the analogy between magic and sight would hold up at all. 

It exists even in real myths and legends though. A lot of magic refers to superior skill, knowledge or craftsmenship, along with inherent virtues. Magic being separate and instant in invocation is a relatively recent idea, becoming more popular around when the scientific method started stripping the mystery from many processes.

Maybe.  I take it you had some examples in mind? 

I was mostly thinking of fantasy literature, though, rather than say Greek and Anglo-Saxon myths.  Conan and Fafhrd are explicitly non-magical, and when people around them do "impossible" (sort of, heroes defy the reasonable realms of possibility with regularity) it's noteworthy.  That's what I would consider the "default mode." 

Well:
Cuchulainn could become so angry he literally boils water to steam, not to mention some rather serious facial gonk, glowing and generally acting while fatally wounded.

Heracles shifts a river by sheer brawn alone. A good many of his Trials would probably count.

Norse dwarves forged the weapons of the gods using freakish levels of skill and implausible ingredients. Note that these are not fundamentally spellcasters, that particular secret is not theirs. This particular angle extends to smiths and other craftsmen for quite an age, the skills to turn stone to metal and weak metals to strong alloys and unformed material into fine tools was pretty damned magical.

Healers as well, though they rarely get famous, most of them worked with potions and poultices, using medical knowledge to help the body heal, elevated to the supernatural as someone who would have died did not.

Shaolin monks were associated with the ability to jump so well it resembles flight, skin like iron, and more such feats developed through discipline and secrets of training.

There are more, but the older the source, the less difference there is between the mystical and the world itself. Aborigine myths just describe the deed and the outcome in one go, reality being fairly malleable when only limited knowledge of it is available.

Instanced magic though, comes in originally, when supplicating a divine or other supernatural being to do it for you. Spellcasting in that sense is simply a form of prayer, and then the god or spirit does it the old fashioned way. Later on how this is done gets more handwaved.

[Unbeliever]

why can't people just accept the fact that noncasters die at level 6? because giving non-casters abilities which do what spells do, makes me wonder why you don't just give this dude to cast a fuckin' spell. just call it spirit or whatever: it works like magic, looks like magic, tastes like magic, but chuck norris says it's fuckin' spirit, thus it's fuckin' spirit.

B/c a lot of us play non-casters at 15th level ...

@Veekie:  those were more or less the examples I was thinking of as well.  But, as I noted, those are not the standard settings for most D&D games.  And, a lot of those are still relatively limited.  Cuchulainn could, arguably, be a Barbarian with a single feat and a lot of tall tales, for instance.

[ImperatorK]

Umm... all this is already in normal D&D. Monk has supernatural abilities from "mundane" training. There are many PrCs that are mundane, but have one or two SLAs or Su Abilities that they gain through mundane training and can do them because they're just that good. Some of the high level things a completely mundane character can do with skills or feats is beyond mundane.
If you're saying that there should be more and better such a bilities then I agree, but how do you propose should we add them? Houserule them into classes? As feats? Maneuvers?

[Nickname Jr.]

The Barbarian claps his hands together to make a cone-shaped sonic attack because he's just that strong.
Eda the Nun can make assumptions about the actions of people who are not immediately present because she's just that good at deductive reasoning.

The magic system in Michael Stackpole's trilogy The Age of Discovery is like this.  Anyone and everyone has a chance to poke through into the realm of magic if they're sufficiently skilled at anything.   Swordsmen, for example, study under a master for years the hard way, and then one day during practice they and those around them feel a tingle of jaedun as they are suddenly able to contort their body super fast to make a normally impossible riposte.  They've connected with the generic magic that's an underlying part of our world.  It will now take their skills to the next level, and they are henceforth known as mystics.   They can't focus the magic into brand name spells from schools like Evocation or Necromancy because they're not yet a sorcerer and so cannot bend the magic into whatever form they wish, but they can use a magically enhanced flourish of skill to produce the needed effect (within their skill set).  And this can happen in every profession.  Mapmaking, for instance.   Cartography mystics draw the world so accurately with their maps that powerful magic is released onto the world to enforce the mapmaker's perception of things so that his maps now DEFINE the landscape instead of merely describing it.  The world begins to conform to what appears on the chart...  if they add a rocky shoreline to their ocean charts, sailors soon begin to report that they nearly sunk their vessels against a shoal of rocks they swear didn't used to be there.  To which the mystic would reply, "Well make sure next time out you use my charts, since they're the best and most up to date, the only choice for those who want to avoid susprises like that and come home safe."    (Btw, The first book should be skipped due to too much courtly scheming from characters you don't even care about yet,  the 2nd has wild magic zones with living valleys and jade forests if that's anyone's thing, plus discovering you're a god; 3rd has the scheming of gods & big battles.)

[veekie]

@Veekie:  those were more or less the examples I was thinking of as well.  But, as I noted, those are not the standard settings for most D&D games.  And, a lot of those are still relatively limited.  Cuchulainn could, arguably, be a Barbarian with a single feat and a lot of tall tales, for instance.

But tall tales are exactly what we're working with here. Spellcasters at the least, are running on the tallest tales, a sizable chunk of spells are based on prophet/deity-grade miracles, and even more on random slapstick effects, whereas for martial types, they can't even fight at a real human-achievable level due to reality being unrealistic.

Consider the feats and ability scores necessary to supply the fighting abilities and style of a modern soldier. Stealth, survival, perception, equipment maintenance, fighting with rifle, bayonet and unarmed. This is no less varied than professional warriors from older eras, if the priorities are spread differently.

What we have here for martials is instead, the conscript, while spellcasters are getting any and all tales attributable to them.

[Unbeliever]

^ I think this post is arguing for two not necessarily mutually-exclusive things.  There's the option for what would be called "skilled warriors."  And, then there's the OP's idea of magic permeating the world. 

As an aside, I'm pretty against slapstick effects in general. 

[veekie]

Well you could take the term Mana itself, though it's been appropriated by many games. Mana was supposed to be your innate degree of luck and greatness, and allowed you to perform greater deeds, while it could be won or lost through conflict. There's more but you probably got the point already.

Mythical spellcasters don't work on the degree D&D casters do, even gods don't usually get that kind of variety, speed and flexibility, at least not all at once. Individual gods might pull off maybe 10 spells or so, if they are especially magical.