Changing the "Caster beats Mundane" paradigm

[Max_Killjoy]

Heh. They forgot to explicitly state "everything that just happens to be calibrated to light-speed was also changed to match" to their base assertions.
But then without those extra changes it would pretty much do nothing.

Is it a matter of "just happens", or is it more interconnected than that?

Dude. You already asked me that question. And I already picked 1).

And then seemingly refused to actually follow through with the implications of your pick... which makes seem as if you said "1" and then did "3".

And yes, I'm using fiat when saying it doesn't need to have major consequences to the specie as a whole. But then you use fiat when claiming those consequences must happen, so we're pretty much even.

So the structural limits of bodies made out of proteins and calcium-based bones and so on, are just "fiat"? Interesting.

How is it that whatever you're changing doesn't change anything but exactly what you want to change (the limits)? How does changing what humans are made of, or the properties of what they're made of, only change that handful of people, and not everyone?

I don't need a word for it. I'm talking about enabling the concept of the guy who isn't using any of those.

And there's nothing wrong with playing a guy who doesn't use any of those, but it leaves you with several choices:

1) change humans so that the range of capabilities is higher up the scale to raise the limit for "trained hard guy" to balance what the spellcasters can do -- and follow through in your worldbuilding
2) change humans so that the range of capabilities is higher up the scale to raise the limit for "trained hard guy" to balance what the spellcasters can do -- and not follow through, thus accepting that you have an internally incoherent and inconsistent setting
3) reign in the spellcasters and other users of "magic" to balance with the limits of "trained hard guy"
4) accept the imbalance between "trained hard guy" and whatever sort of high-end 3.5e-style spellcasters (and other magic-tappers) that are in your game

Previously, you said you chose "1", but your subsequent comments all went towards "2".

...Unless I'm mistaken, the whole point of your argument is to force the GM to pull a similar line.

Nope. The whole point of my argument, repeated many times now, is that you can't have everything. Even if having a setting that's internally coherent and consistent doesn't mean anything to you, that's still what you've chosen to give up if you establish that in your setting, most humans are just like humans in our world, but a handful of them can via utterly mundane/non-"magic" means far exceed the basic raw physical limits of the stuff that humans are made of, and that this is somehow supposedly explained by "I trained harder" or "I have more willpower" or "I'm just that awesome".

Or to quote one of my favorite songs, "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."

I'm for the option being available, not mandatory.

OK. That really doesn't change anything, you're still asking for mutually exclusive things to be simultaneously true.

You're effectively asking for steel to normally be just like steel in our world, but then suddenly in a few special cases be like unobtainium (or admantium or mithril or your mythical metal of choice), but also still be steel and nothing but steel and totally just steel... and have this absolutely not involve "extranormal" or "supernatural" or "magic" stuff in any way at all.

Stop and think about that for a minute.