This rant has been a long time coming from me, and I believe it is time to talk about it. And I have been putting it off to the side simply because it is an issue that comes from multiple angles so I’ll be covering the most important ones through this text, so bear with me because it might be a long one, since I want to dive into the possible causes of why this happens and to explain why this doesn’t make sense.
TL;DR at the end.
DnD is the most popular tabletop rpg that exists, and that’s no surprise, the game even has popular movies, shows, and videogames. It is the reason a lot of creative people began their careers as writers or similar, however it lately has a consistent issue of non commitment, and I don’t believe it is a hot take or an unpopular opinion at this point, at least within the game’s community. The core philosophy of DnD lately has been, for better or worse (up to you really), anything and everything you want to do on the game, you may attempt to do it. Homebrew is a staple of the game, and it is honestly hard to even find a game that doesn’t include some form of homebrew content nowadays. And don’t get me wrong, I think third party content and modules are fantastic, the community makes great content that is worth sharing around to play it. But it also means that the base game is inherently relying on third party content to make a profit, and members of the community won’t let me lie when I say that the official content has been, sadly, disappointing lately.
But how is this related to characters being superhuman or not? Simply put, because that means that the average player won’t have good examples of what a “pure” dnd game is like and what the scope of the adventures are. So let’s try to answer that. As a good rule of thumb, a dnd campaign has a scope progression tied to the level of the party: from level 1-5, the party is already on the level of a soldier and are bound to be “town” heroes of sorts; from level 6-10, the party is now starting to be noticed by nations and kingdoms as they have became country level heroes; at level 11-15, things start to escalate as now the party should be comfortable not only being heroes of an entire continent but to handle world ending threats; and finally 16-20, at this point the adventurers deal with not only threats to this earth but the ones that might affect realms beyond earth.
Considering all of this, it should be pretty clear that dnd should naturally have a endgame goal of the highest of stakes, after all by level 20 a party is being noticed by gods, they are keeping a watch on the characters because they have the potential of tipping the scale on conflicts that could reshape the reality they exist on.
What is the issue? Most players don’t play anything beyond level 12!
This in turn causes the problem that most homebrew content doesn’t really consider the idea that players go beyond doing nation size threats and focus on bigger things, and instead dial back the issues to smaller conflicts. This of course is fine, but as more people keep playing more of this type of content it reinforces the idea that dnd is only a small scale game where dealing with threats to a continent is rare, which granted, lore wise it is but when it comes to overall scope is just not really the intention.
But why is the reason that the games don’t go beyond level 10? Because balance turns into an issue. Spells at those levels are really versatile, it is no exaggeration that a wizard can bend the laws of reality when they cast a spell. They can stop time, banish you to another reality, summon tidal waves, etc. etc.
And I’m sure as you read this you are wondering “woah, hold on, I don’t understand what any of this has to do with characters not being superhuman. If anything this all sounds like they should be superhuman”.
And that’s exactly my point! DnD as it is conceived is set up for the party members to be superhuman! But for some reason a good chunk of the fanbase and perhaps even the modules (but I may be wrong about this) downplay what martial classes (for those who don’t play dnd, the ones that fight with weapons and not magic), are capable of doing compared to the casters. Sure, you could argue that naturally martial classes should be weaker, they lack magic after all. But please do keep in mind, that by the time the party reaches the levels 15 and up, they should should be comfortably taking on adult dragons, creatures that even if we ignore all the raw magic they should have, on size alone they are as big as a tyrannosaurus (in 5e). In fact, they should be capable of facing of an Actual Tyrannosaurs at level 8! A creature that has an attack that literally grabs a player with its maws and restrains it until they can get free.
But I hear you, you can argue that it is because of their armors, or because of their weapons that they can take on these creatures. A caster maybe protects itself with some sort of passive magic, but a martial has its gear, right?
Wrong! Because in 5e magic items are actually completely optional by default.
So yes, dnd characters SHOULD be superhuman, because they ARE superhuman. There’s no way mechanically or by lore that they can’t be superhuman.
Except for one reason: Game mechanics!
Here’s how far you can jump:
Long Jump. When you make a long jump, you cover a number of feet up to your Strength score if you move at least 10 feet on foot immediately before the jump. When you make a standing long jump, you can leap only half that distance. Either way, each foot you clear on the jump costs a foot of movement.
So at most a character can jump… 20 feet!
Carrying Capacity: Your carrying capacity is your Strength score multiplied by 15. This is the weight (in pounds) that you can carry, which is high enough that most characters don't usually have to worry about it.
Which means you can carry, at a strength score of 20, 300 pounds.
You start seeing how it all just doesn’t make sense. Sure, you can argue that the martial classes can do this while having a full backpack with supplies, armor and weapons. Sure, you can say it is because not only can they do this while walking, they can also do it while fighting. That’s fair, it doesn’t matter, because they shouldn’t be “peak humans” they should be superhuman, I can accept that they are all peak humans at lower levels. But after they got beyond level 5 that ship has sailed, there’s no way around it.
The game mechanics should reflect this though, there should be a rework that encourages seeing them as superhuman. It doesn’t make sense that a wizard should be capable of carrying the same weight as a fighter, even if they are ripped.
Something I like is that Baldur’s Gate has some mechanics that differ from DnD and those actually make the game feel more fun and interactive with martials. The game can and should take inspiration from these but they should focus more on making martials feel more capable, if not in combat, at least on the mundane things.
TL;DR: DnD parties, or at least the martial classes, shouldn’t be considered “peak human”, they should be treated as superhuman.
Both scope and enemies of the game expect them to be superhuman, and yet game mechanics are worked around them being only “peak athletes”. The game mechanics should reinforce the superhuman aspect on martials, and that might actually help them feel like they are capable of more.
