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Feb 11, 2010 -- 1:04PM, MieoraBloodsong wrote:

technically its still heroic fantasy.  It's not tolkien's heroic fantasy, obviously, so its not pure gold and the standard to which all other fantasy is held.  But a movie can still be heroic fantasy (and is.)  so Aragorn falling off of a cliff does count.  Its not as good of an example as it would have been had it been from said golden pen, but then, not everything can come from tolkien. 

(not sarcasm.  Tolkien is GOD.)

There are a lot of things about it which make it very much a product of its time. It was considered High Fantasy at publication but with decades of authors (and games) pushing that envelope, it is pretty milquetoast by today's standards. Even still, the CLASSIC archetypes are portrayed in the LOTR books (and The Hobbit for that matter) and in many ways is the founding writ of all current fantasy either by emulation or by rebelling against it. Rambling... getting... to ... the... point...

Point being, when describing the characters of Aragorn or Frodo, their portrayals in the movies (while close in a lot of ways) are pretty far from the mark when compared to the source materiel. So much so, that an instance of clumsiness that is cited as a justification for critical misses in the Gran-daddy of all fantasy works NEVER EVEN HAPPENED IN THE BOOK. It was the result of Jackson having to transplant materiel from the first book into the second.

Feb 11, 2010 -- 1:08PM, Feyberry wrote:

Doesn't matter if it was in the movie or book.  Still fantasy.  Any time a character gets their weapon stuck in a corpse.  Critical miss and I know that has happened in plenty of novels, movies, and tv shows.

True, it does happen in Modern Fantasy. This notion of bumblefarking your way though adventure is a relatively recent idea. Richard Rahl (Sword of Truth series) did not get ANYTHING right other than a few key things per book. Its an excellent example of a person failing their way to the top. The books have other redeaming factors but in that case, it was such a hack plot device that became very transparent in the last three books.

The stories and books that our modern fantasy and D&D were founded on had competent hero's, their flaws were in their misplaced trust (King Arthur), decades of inaction (Aragorn), exceedingly cautious aproach(Gandalf), greed (Thorin), self deprication (Bilbo and Frodo) and many, many other examples. Not saying that things don't sometimes go horribly arwy, but it is not unreasonable to expect a base level of competence from hero's which MOST (not all) critical fumble rules/tables actively undermine.

I have no issue with comedic circumstances, but quite frankly, breaking ones weapon, tossing it into the drink or shooting one's own foot are not all that funny. This is not saying that the hero's must be perfect, because that has NEVER been the case in any classic legend or story, but they were competent.

Feb 8, 2010 -- 5:41AM, Rian_king wrote:

For example if your DM made twinstrike a 2(w) damage effect both hits happen because he thinks getting your weapon bonus twice is broken( i heard this one somewhere on the forum and it made me go What!?

This is actually a really good fix.

This is actually a really good fix.

I'm with you. Nerfing twin strike is step #1 to making Rangers interesting, and an absolute necessity if you're playing with other non-ranger strikers in the group, particularly if they aren't optimized.