What exactly is the "guy at the gym fallacy"?

[PhoenixPhyre]

OK, just to give this one final go, to make the point clear, and then on this subtopic I'm just walking away and letting people believe whatever they want to believe.

The materials that make up the body have been tested, alone and together, to determine the hypothetical limits of those materials in isolation and as a system.

The material that makes up bones cannot be made strong enough, while fitting inside a human body, to support 50 tons, it breaks long before that, even if hypothetically optimized. Muscle fibers, no matter how optimized, shred themselves long before exerting enough force to lift 50 tons.

Your hypothetical gene would literally need to change what the body is made of to enable the 50 ton lift you posit.


This is what it actually takes to lift 50 tons -- I don't think this will fit inside the human body, even if this single gene manages to give the person steel bones and hydraulic muscles:

Yeah. Biology as we know it just can't handle that. Same with "giant" (ie horse-sized) spiders. Or gigantic flying creatures. Anything close to super-heroic (on the 50 ton scale) requires rewriting most of physics and chemistry.

[Heliomance]

I'd consider the falling rules more likely to be a fault in that system, rather than as proof of anything within the setting itself.

On the internal vs external consistency question... at least from my POV, this is an internal consistency issue:

* A setting which asserts an enabling fact for a particular character or small subset of characters, and doesn't follow through across the setting in general, risks losing internal consistency.
* A setting which asserts that a character is "a totally not-fantastic person" while showing them do utterly fantastic things, and not showing other characters doing the same things, either has an inconsistency within that character, or an inconsistency in what "totally not-fantastic" means.
* I simply do not buy the assertion that you can blow the upper limit off the distribution without changing the rest of the distribution, unless your setting creates an explicit two-or-more-tier distinction of some kind that maintains a "soft limit" for most people.

No-one's responded to my argument that what limits it could very easily just be that training is hard. Most people have no reason to attempt to reach their physical peak potential. It's gruelling, exhausting, time consuming work. Most people aren't Olympians, because becoming an Olympian requires far more effort than most people are remotely willing to put in. Yes, a lot of people simply don't have the genetics to compete at that level, but I bet you there's a hell of a lot who could but just don't have the burning drive to work for it.

If you remove the cap on human physical potential, you don't get more Olympians, but your Olympians become demigods.

The material limits of real-world human musculature and bone aren't particularly relevant. It doesn't need to be magic for reality to not work quite the same way.

[Rhedyn]

Okay, seriously? I understand getting feisty with Max. However, inferring that you have any idea what his real world genetics knowledge is because he called out your example as farfetched is inference beyond any supporting evidence. Microgravity inducing a positive mutation that increases some physical performance by whole number amplification, much less orders of magnitude, does sound closer to the X-Men understanding of mutation*, or maybe the reddit article everyone's loopy relative loves to forward them, than to a real world understanding of science. Sure, there is plenty we don't know about genetics. That's the scientific process in a nutshell. Using that to justify massive order-of-magnitude shifts in the rules is what goes into speculative fiction, and away from the real-world-(as we know it)-like version of fiction Max is drawing a line around.
*Or perhaps Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter/Barssom novels, since that's how they work, minus a discrete call out to genetics.

People can reasonably disagree about what level of realism one wants in our friggin' elfgames without implying that the other is ignorant of basic science or the scientific method.

I didn't suggest anything like that. Certain environmental factors can cause genes to be up-regulated and expressed. We do not understand much of what our genome does and there is more than even just our genome to consider when it comes to what genes are expressed and the pathways that get there. No one has grown up in such an environment, so we do not actually know how that will work out (or even if it would, it might not be possible for humans grow up in low gravity without dying). The rabbit hole is very deep and anyone claiming they know exactly how it works is just full of ****. I do not need to know the limits of his understanding because he claims knowledge where there is none.

I took umbrage in his confidence at how absurd he thought a far-fetched concept would be, which such confidence only displays ignorance of the subject matter (being genetics, if his guffaw was just over material properties, then I misinterpreted).

[Rhedyn]

OK, just to give this one final go, to make the point clear -- and then on this subtopic I'm just walking away, because I don't know how else to address this sort of claim constructively.

The materials that make up the body have been tested, alone and together, to determine the hypothetical limits of those materials in isolation and as a system.

The material that makes up bones cannot be made strong enough, while fitting inside a human body, to support 50 tons, it breaks long before that, even if hypothetically optimized. Muscle fibers, no matter how optimized, shred themselves long before exerting enough force to lift 50 tons.

Your hypothetical gene would literally need to change what the body is made of to enable the 50 ton lift you posit.


This is what it actually takes to lift 50 tons -- I don't think this will fit inside the human body, even if this single gene manages to give the person steel bones and hydraulic muscles:

Spoiler: Yes, these were specifically chosen as being rated to 50 tons.

Show

Ah so instead of genetics, you moved on to statics.

The first and easiest way is for our large human to sit on a lever arm to lift the weight. The human must survive long enough to withstand the weight of existing at full gravity for the time it takes to lift the 50 tons.

Second, lifting without leverage. Bone has a compressive strength of 170MPa or 24656.4 PSI, so 4 in^2 of bone could support the weight. I did not specify that the human had traditional dimensions, we are talking about an unknown human developed in unknown conditions, its dimensions are also unknown. Supporting the weight, for a time, is with-in the material structure limits. Muscle calculation take more time than I am willing to invest in checking this, so take your internet points for now.

[Max_Killjoy]

No-one's responded to my argument that what limits it could very easily just be that training is hard. Most people have no reason to attempt to reach their physical peak potential. It's gruelling, exhausting, time consuming work. Most people aren't Olympians, because becoming an Olympian requires far more effort than most people are remotely willing to put in. Yes, a lot of people simply don't have the genetics to compete at that level, but I bet you there's a hell of a lot who could but just don't have the burning drive to work for it.

If you remove the cap on human physical potential, you don't get more Olympians, but your Olympians become demigods.

The material limits of real-world human musculature and bone aren't particularly relevant. It doesn't need to be magic for reality to not work quite the same way.

Here's why I say what I've been saying, why I disagree with that approach -- and if people want to disagree with my conclusion or how I got there, that's fine, but I'd appreciate it if some of them would at least stop insinuating that it's stupid or narrow-minded or whatever it is they're trying to insinuate.


Look across the world, Olympic, college, and high school results for various track-and-field events, and you'll find that the results don't drop off like a rock, but slowly taper downwards.

The current record in the men's 100m for high school is between 10.13 and 9.98, depending on the level of verification you want. 1000s of kids compete in those events every year, and they're competitive if not quite that fast. Compare to the current world record of 9.58, and you've got a very roughly calculated 5% variance from the fastest person in the world, to people competing at the amateur after-school level.

That kid cannot dedicate his every waking hour to training for the sprint, he has classes and homework and other things that take up his time -- and yet he's within about 5% of someone who sprints for a living and can dedicate every day to training as hard as he wants and with all the help modern science can muster (no, not drugs/steroids, not what I mean).

Make your Olympians and world-record holders into "demi-gods" simply as part of the natural potential of the human body, and your equivalent to high-school kids will be running times and throwing distances and jumping lengths that also blow away the current IRL world records.


If I've come across as too aggressive about this point in these recent threads, I apologize.

---

Spoiler: That other tangent about lifting...

Show

I didn't suggest anything like that. Certain environmental factors can cause genes to be up-regulated and expressed. We do not understand much of what our genome does and there is more than even just our genome to consider when it comes to what genes are expressed and the pathways that get there. No one has grown up in such an environment, so we do not actually know how that will work out (or even if it would, it might not be possible for humans grow up in low gravity without dying). The rabbit hole is very deep and anyone claiming they know exactly how it works is just full of ****. I do not need to know the limits of his understanding because he claims knowledge where there is none.

I took umbrage in his confidence at how absurd he thought a far-fetched concept would be, which such confidence only displays ignorance of the subject matter (being genetics, if his guffaw was just over material properties, then I misinterpreted).

That's mistaking "we don't know everything about how it works" for "therefore we cannot have any concept of what's impossible".

My reaction was based on the notion of a single gene making all these changes to the human body, AND the notion of any genetic change resulting in the human body being made of the materials necessary for this "50 ton lift", AND to the notion of a human body ever being big enough to accomplish said lift.

Ah so instead of genetics, you moved on to statics.

Genetics, biomechanics, physics, chemistry, statistics, etc -- they're all standing in the way of your "human lifts 50 tons" thing.

The first and easiest way is for our large human to sit on a lever arm to lift the weight.

I could lift 50 tons with a sufficiently long and robust lever. Bringing mechanical aid into the discussion now is... a completely irrelevant tangent, at best. We've been discussing unassisted direct lifts by human beings up to this point, and I have to wonder why exactly it is you're suddenly adding levers and such to the mix.

The human must survive long enough to withstand the weight of existing at full gravity for the time it takes to lift the 50 tons.

Objection -- asked and answered.

Second, lifting without leverage. Bone has a compressive strength of 170MPa or 24656.4 PSI, so 4 in^2 of bone could support the weight. I did not specify that the human had traditional dimensions, we are talking about an unknown human developed in unknown conditions, its dimensions are also unknown. Supporting the weight, for a time, is with-in the material structure limits. Muscle calculation take more time than I am willing to invest in checking this, so take your internet points for now.

Compressive strength isn't the only relevant limit on bone strength, unless you're only using the bone to hold up a weight placed directly on top of it.

Plus, your math might be wrong.

[Psyren]

It doesn't. Druids can work as "choose either good casting or good wildshaping", my own game has a player who only plays druids or necromancers, and he seems to be happy enough to have minor wildshaping and good nature magic. Summoners too - they summon hordes of mooks or one big strong mook. The problems begin when those summons are just outright better than what a martial brings to the table. If you just focus on summoning meatshields and brutes and so on, I don't think there's anything much broken with that. Just don't have those things overshadow the fighters. Same with necromancers - they usually end up with hordes of skeletons and zombies which aren't good in a real D&D fight anyway. The point isn't that you can't have those things - you can, but not all at once, and if all at once, then remember that your options ARE going to be weaker than someone who builds with single purposes in mind.

Come now - even 5th edition lets Druids wildshape into combat forms (especially Circle of the Moon) and be primary casters (9ths), and 5e is wildly successful by every measure. Bards (College of Valor) and Clerics (War Domain) in 5e can also be primary casters and melee frontliners.

As for necromancers, you're right that armies of mooks tend to be weak, so replace that with one or two heavy bruisers and my point still stands.

Eh, I might've used the wrong word. There isn't much out of combat utility after level 11 or so. You're really good in combat, that much is true. But you don't get the gamechanger things (teleport is the primary offender here, but I'm sure there are some other spells that don't really need to be in PCs hands, like wish, etc).

Well, even short-range teleportation has gamechanging utility - bypassing all locks, traps, sentries etc - and initiators get that. They can also become incorporeal/ethereal briefly.

To be fair, I'd prefer those things to be deleted entirely rather than hand them out to everyone. Just make full casters 2/3 casters, give them some class features to compensate. Former 2/3 casters go to 4-level casters, and I don't think a 4-level caster like Ranger and Paladin is a real niche that needs downscaling. Nothing bad in Magus being the Paladin's equal in magic. Ban Teleport or limit it to things like Helm of Teleportation. Ban Planar Binding because it's a high ritual, not something a person does solo. Drop some major spells into rituals that everyone can do, like augury and scrying and so on. Magic doesn't need to be in mages' hands only.

I'm not against reducing all casting to 6/9 - in fact, Starfinder does this, and the abundance of technology there also raises the martial floor considerably. But that is closer to a Star Wars paradigm where a skilled bounty hunter can still be a worthy challenge for a Jedi master.

Whether it is 6/9 or 9/9 casting though, I agree with you where things like scrying and planar binding. I would want a caster to be the one who can initiate those though, rather than everyone.

[jayem]

You obviously do not know enough about genetics to know how much we don't know. (If I am being pedantic, you didn't even understand what I said)

You do know that all the educated do not posit something like that would happen. That is not the same thing as it being impossible.

Which is the classic problem of structuring the upper limits of mundane ability around your understanding of reality when no one actually has a firm understanding of what is "really possible".

Bone has a compressive strength of about 170MPa (wikipedia). Or about 2 tonnes per square centimeter. A 50 tonne static weight is basically straight out crushing their ankles to powder. So anything above that is basically absolutely not happening without major (beyond achievable by training) restructuring somewhere. Realistically any lift would require applying forces to snap the bone, and at some point the force would have to go through the (much slimmer) tendon attachment points, so actual capabilities would (unsurprisingly) be much lower.

For what it's worth the items in the pictures will have a massive over-engineering (factor of 10?), and the 'weak point' is the much slimmer chain. The lifting arm has to carry 50 Tonnes at 10 meters horizontal distance with potential shock loading and so has a lot of extra funny forces going on. Limbs of steel probably would be about doable if you were to make a 50 Tonne capable robot (similar theoretical limits of which are probably a nice point for a boundary between merely 'biological impossible'-superhero and 'physically impossible').

That would give 'sociologically implausible' (which we can more or less extrapolate from current records, say about 3m jump height)
'Physiologically implausible' (which we guess by looking at the likely mode of failure, probably about 5m)
'Biologically implausible' (in which you go for something more fundamental, but use realistic values, jumping 80m would easily break our bones)
'Physically implausible' (by the point at which superman has to be filled with rocket fuel)
'Logically implausible' (flight)

[Arbane]

Since one of the many things that triggers the Guy At The Gym reflex in gamers is 'doing anything someone in Middle Earth couldn't do'...

Doesn't the Silmarillion have some guy who got his chariot stuck in the mud so badly that he raised the land level of the ENTIRE CONTINENT trying to pull it out? Never mind all the people fighting legions of Balrogs and whatnot, we all agree that's perfectly OK, as long as you do it WITHOUT SUPERPOWERS.

[Segev]

I agree in so much as that's one of the possible resolutions to the conundrum at hand, yes.

It happens to be my preferred one, and I think is in line with the hidden assumptions a lot of people who disagree with your general arguments unconsciously make.

As an aside, I'm not that much interested in the AMF as a test, as it can easily be set up in a system/setting combo to only interfere with external uses of magic, such that magic that both comes from within and is being used within a character, and is thus fully internal, is not affected. Thus, dragons don't fall over dead in an AMF, but spellcasting dragons can't cast their spells. Thus, magic items don't fall apart in an AMF, but wands can't be used to toss fireballs. Thus, a monk can do purely internal things, but wizard or cleric drawing on external power is boned... and the sorcerer's day depends on how you read the various kinda conflicting blurbs and other text. Etc.

My point with mentioning "AMF" isn't a setting-specific version which may or may not work on ki when it does work on wizard spells but you need APF to work on Betazoid psychic hate-beams. My point in bringing it up is in whether it is even a meaningful concept wrt the extraordinary abilities. That is, is there something you can say, "When I turn off magic, X stops being possible?"

If there is, then "AMF" is a meaningful concept, here, whether it means "Genoshan collars turn off superpowers" or "the Outlands Spire turns off magic" or "without the divine blessing of He-Mancules, human flesh and bones just can't handle weights in excess of 2000 lbs."

I'm arguing that it is possible to have an internally-consistent setting - fantastic and possibly filled with magic - where the lack of He-Mancules's blessing doesn't result in RL limits to human capacity.

Where, yes, even your body, Max_Killjoy, could be trained to demigod status, with no upper limit, if you start training and work hard enough; talent only governs, in this hypothetical world, how fast you can improve, not your actual final limit.

And none of this is dependent on any "thing" that could be termed "magic," in that you can't put the "suppression collar" on and have it all go away, leaving the "normal" person who's "really" there behind. Because the extraordinarily-strong pseudodemigod Olympian is "non-magical" for the setting. Extraordinary, but non-magical. An immense outlier, stronger than statistically-practically 100% of the rest of his race, but there's no identifiable "magic" to it. No "ki," no "Nen," no "chakra," no "One Power," no "divine gift," no "Gem of Cyttorak," not even "psychic bolstering." Just a body refined by trial, toil, and effort into something harder than the hardest steel and strong enough to lift a battleship (if not magical enough to make that not cause the battleship to break apart around the too-small area by which he's gripping).

This is what I bring up "AMF" for in these discussions. Not for setting-specific "some magics are AMFable, and others aren't," but to define the difference between "extraordinary but not 'superpowers'" for the setting and "superpowers."

OK, just to give this one final go, to make the point clear -- and then on this subtopic I'm just walking away, because I don't know how else to address this sort of claim constructively.

The materials that make up the body have been tested, alone and together, to determine the hypothetical limits of those materials in isolation and as a system.

The material that makes up bones cannot be made strong enough, while fitting inside a human body, to support 50 tons, it breaks long before that, even if hypothetically optimized. Muscle fibers, no matter how optimized, shred themselves long before exerting enough force to lift 50 tons.

Your hypothetical gene would literally need to change what the body is made of to enable the 50 ton lift you posit.

You probably mean this for a very specific "we don't know these are the limits in the real world" rebuttal, in which case, ignore this next sentence. In my hypothetical examples, these tests of what human flesh and bone and the like are limited by would be meaningless, because the fantastical world I'm hypothesizing would not find these same results when performing these same tests. At least, not as they tested more and more honed "not-technically-super"-men.

[Psyren]

I agree in so much as that's one of the possible resolutions to the conundrum at hand, yes.


As an aside, I'm not that much interested in the AMF as a test, as it can easily be set up in a system/setting combo to only interfere with external uses of magic, such that magic that both comes from within and is being used within a character, and is thus fully internal, is not affected. Thus, dragons don't fall over dead in an AMF, but spellcasting dragons can't cast their spells. Thus, magic items don't fall apart in an AMF, but wands can't be used to toss fireballs. Thus, a monk can do purely internal things, but wizard or cleric drawing on external power is boned... and the sorcerer's day depends on how you read the various kinda conflicting blurbs and other text. Etc.

Indeed, and these details can be easily resolved by tagging various abilities as Na/Ex/Sp/Su during the development phase. So a dragon won't fall over dead and can even still fly on a dead magic plane (physics be damned), but loses access to spellcasting, shapeshifting, and breath weapons.

All we would need to haggle over at that point would be which tag to use for a high-level martial and caster's abilities. To the sorcerer point, some bloodlines do get Ex stuff, but the majority should be Su/Sp.

Doesn't the Silmarillion have some guy who got his chariot stuck in the mud so badly that he raised the land level of the ENTIRE CONTINENT trying to pull it out? Never mind all the people fighting legions of Balrogs and whatnot, we all agree that's perfectly OK, as long as you do it WITHOUT SUPERPOWERS.

Aren't the First Men in Tolkien's world (and a lot of settings really) essentially superheroes by our standards? That's part of what would be needed to hash out with our credibility coin. If the game in question is set during those proto-mankind ubermensch times then these kinds of feats should be expected. You could even have a PC that is a throwback to that, but then they wouldn't exactly be a normal human, closer to a demigod.

It's not just Tolkien too - the Nephalem from Diablo, the Azlanti from Golarion, the Netherese from Forgotten Realms, the Bible, there's a bunch of different examples.

[Segev]

Indeed, and these details can be easily resolved by tagging various abilities as Na/Ex/Sp/Su during the development phase. So a dragon won't fall over dead and can even still fly on a dead magic plane (physics be damned), but loses access to spellcasting, shapeshifting, and breath weapons.

I'd even go so far as to say that the (Ex) tag is actually only useful to us in the real world, as a call-out that, yes, the game or writers or whatever acknowledge that this is not something that could happen IRL, but that it's perfectly natural (if still quite extraordinary) in the fictional setting.

There is no difference, in-setting, between "Natural" and "(Ex)" abilities. They're both "natural." No magic, no special energies tapped from other planes that can be shut off, no risk of dispelling or AMF or null-psi interfering. Dragons fly because the physics of the world allow them to, and it's perfectly natural. Constructs were animated and infused with magic to begin with, but most are now operating on entirely natural (if unusual) principles (barring those which can be dispelled or shut down by AMFs).

[JMS]

I'd even go so far as to say that the (Ex) tag is actually only useful to us in the real world, as a call-out that, yes, the game or writers or whatever acknowledge that this is not something that could happen IRL, but that it's perfectly natural (if still quite extraordinary) in the fictional setting.

There is no difference, in-setting, between "Natural" and "(Ex)" abilities. They're both "natural." No magic, no special energies tapped from other planes that can be shut off, no risk of dispelling or AMF or null-psi interfering. Dragons fly because the physics of the world allow them to, and it's perfectly natural. Constructs were animated and infused with magic to begin with, but most are now operating on entirely natural (if unusual) principles (barring those which can be dispelled or shut down by AMFs).

Very high level Factotums would disagree, but otherwise, yeah.

[Florian]

{{scrubbed}}

[Tvtyrant]

Since one of the many things that triggers the Guy At The Gym reflex in gamers is 'doing anything someone in Middle Earth couldn't do'...

Doesn't the Silmarillion have some guy who got his chariot stuck in the mud so badly that he raised the land level of the ENTIRE CONTINENT trying to pull it out? Never mind all the people fighting legions of Balrogs and whatnot, we all agree that's perfectly OK, as long as you do it WITHOUT SUPERPOWERS.

Yeah but the number of people who read the Sil are a lot smaller, and it has stuff like Huron killing 70 elephant sized trolls in a battle to hold off an entire army. He is Hercules, which is of course unacceptable.

[Florian]

Since one of the many things that triggers the Guy At The Gym reflex in gamers is 'doing anything someone in Middle Earth couldn't do'...

Doesn't the Silmarillion have some guy who got his chariot stuck in the mud so badly that he raised the land level of the ENTIRE CONTINENT trying to pull it out? Never mind all the people fighting legions of Balrogs and whatnot, we all agree that's perfectly OK, as long as you do it WITHOUT SUPERPOWERS.

Look closely and you will find a recurring pattern. What "Man" was able to do back then and what "Man" is able to do now don't match up. Then again, the impact an Alexander or Napoleon, both don't match up with a lot of things.

[Talakeal]

Since one of the many things that triggers the Guy At The Gym reflex in gamers is 'doing anything someone in Middle Earth couldn't do'...

Doesn't the Silmarillion have some guy who got his chariot stuck in the mud so badly that he raised the land level of the ENTIRE CONTINENT trying to pull it out? Never mind all the people fighting legions of Balrogs and whatnot, we all agree that's perfectly OK, as long as you do it WITHOUT SUPERPOWERS.

One of the major themes in Tolkien's work was that the world was diminishing and that the events of the first age were no longer possible by the third age, and even the feats of the third age would soon be gone.

So the events of the Silmarillion are not reasonable for Middle Earth as most people know it, during the era of The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings.

[Florian]

One of the major themes in Tolkien's work was that the world was diminishing and that the events of the first age were no longer possible by the third age, and even the feats of the third age would soon be gone.

So the events of the Silmarillion are not reasonable for Middle Earth as most people know it, during the era of The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings.

Let me offer you a different POV: Tolkien was the child of two World Wars and he witnessed the transfer of power between monarchies and democracies in his lifetime. What people like Alexander or Napoleon managed with the centralized power invested into them can not really be repeated in our times and at our terms. We are long beyond the point of a Hitler or Stalin, basically the last examples of absolute power, therefore the world seems diminished because we are way past the simplicity of the master / servant relationship.

[Mechalich]

Yeah but the number of people who read the Sil are a lot smaller, and it has stuff like Huron killing 70 elephant sized trolls in a battle to hold off an entire army. He is Hercules, which is of course unacceptable.

It's perfectly okay for a character to be Hercules, there's nothing wrong with that, but there are consequences to a world where a Hercules type personage is walking around.

In the Greek myths, the consequence is active, meddlesome, and frankly rather jerk-face gods toying with mortals more or less at their whim and a genuine inability for ordinary humans to accomplish great deeds without direct divine patronage. In the Silmarillion - which is the mythic backdrop to later events in Middle Earth, the entirety of the world has mythic properties and ordinary everyday life is bizarre (and for the most part ignored, actually, Tolkein wasn't interested in things like how the elves managed to feed themselves in their fortresses, something that later writers like GRR Martin have specifically called out). If you want to tell stories in a mythic reality that's fine, it's extremely popular actually, the MCU is a modern mythic reality and it's market evaluation is something like 'all of the money.'

Mythic settings do, however, require certain kinds of active management that other games lack. If my character is Hercules, he can walk into a town composed of ordinary people and murder them all. This doesn't happen in mythic tales written by ancient or modern authors, because it would ruin the story and annihilate the themes, so the possibility is simply discarded, but in a game it can happen the minute a player decides to do it. In single-author fiction Superman and Brightburn are two completely different things, in a tabletop game system, they're two different players, or in fact the very same player on a good day versus a bad day.

Mythic settings also inherently have massive world-building problems, because trying to represent a believable alternate reality is not their purpose. The MCU is not believable and it is not intended to be. They are analogous and metaphorical in nature, not intended to stand on their own (in the case of the Silmarillion the metaphors in question are explicitly Christian in origin). This can be troubling in game because the other players aren't likely to bring the same framework to the game as the GM. A game rule system or game setting that only works if you 'play it the right way' will fail, and mythical settings more or less inherently demand this. Every setting ever created by White Wolf has this problem and every setting every created by White Wolf is a massive failure on world-building terms.

That's not to say that you can't play games in a mythic setting. You absolutely can, but for the most part rules-light systems, narrative heavy systems, or just plain freeform role-playing work better than cumbersome and complex systems like D&D. The powers of mythic characters simply fluctuate too much from story to story and even scene to scene to remain functional within the boxes demanded by the game, instead the GM will have to actively compensate, and in fact, to circle back to the 'guy at the gym' issue, in a mythic setting there will be certain classes of being who are limited by 'guy at the gym' restrictions on what humans can do, and there will be those who are not, and the divide will often be quite arbitrary based on thing's like the inverse ninja law or whether or not they have a cool name, or even how spiky their hair happens to be.

[Psyren]

I'd even go so far as to say that the (Ex) tag is actually only useful to us in the real world, as a call-out that, yes, the game or writers or whatever acknowledge that this is not something that could happen IRL, but that it's perfectly natural (if still quite extraordinary) in the fictional setting.

Well, Na/Ex does matter for some other things (like shapeshifting). So it's not just a IRL callout. But I do agree that the nature of those abilities can be similar (e.g. Ex/Na flight.)

Jepp. That's what's so grating about this kind of discussions. "If not specifically stated, everything works as in the real world" is just a necessary step to avoid creating a full-blown simulation of an entirely different set of physics. Can be done by a serious science fiction author, is not feasible for playing a game. The (Ex) tag is a simple reminder that fantasy physics are different from ours, that dragons can fly, that some roars are so loud as to deal sonic damage and so on.

Honestly, that's also the reason why I'm so terminally annoyed by Max and some others. We create worlds that are vastly different from our own reality. As creators, we decide how all of this works and how the physics in this game reality are modeled. Looking at our reality can be interesting, but it´s definitely no guiding principle when the initial decision is that things in the in-game reality of our world can exceed the limits or barriers of our real world by far.

I mostly agree but there has to be a line for the martials, unless of course we're playing Exalted or something where everyone is basically a caster.

[Max_Killjoy]

{{scrubbed}}

[Milo v3]

The weirdest thing about this fallacy to me is that martials in something like D&D already have a handful of abilities that are extraordinary things that are basically martial-magic and people seem to be with it, yet aren't fine with that concept being followed through on to allow level-based rpgs with CR systems to actually have characters of the same level be of the same power-level and scope.

When a Rogue uses his evasion to dodge an explosion that completely surrounds him, that's extraordinary even though they are completely engulfed in fire, because they're just that good at dodging.

When a Barbarian gets stabbed in the gut unarmoured and takes no damaged because of their damage reduction, that's extraordinary because they're just that tough.

When a Monk runs at 80 km/h or 50 mph because of their Fast Movement ability and Run Feat, that's extraordinary, because they're just that fast.

When the Ranger just disappears while your staring at him, while he's in an open field in the middle of a clear day with zero cover to hide behind, that's extraordinary, because they're just that good at hiding.

When a Monk can talk with spiders, dogs, dragons, primordial critters from beyond time without sharing a language, that's extraordinary because they're just that attuned with the world.

When a Druid can scull the poison of the world serpent as if it was water because they're immune to all poison, that's extraordinary because they've built up just that good of a tolerance to poison.

And that's just 3.5e players handbook stuff. All of which is 100% non-magical (the monk has magical abilities, but things like their super speed, immunity to disease/poisons/age, spell resistance, tongue of the sun and moon, evasion, etc. are all considered non-magical in 3rd edition).

[The Insanity]

Has anyone here seen Glass?

[Florian]

Sorcerers say hi

.... And are exactly as f**ked as Wizard when standing in an AMF. So "inborn"? Total failure at modeling that.

[Ignimortis]

Come now - even 5th edition lets Druids wildshape into combat forms (especially Circle of the Moon) and be primary casters (9ths), and 5e is wildly successful by every measure. Bards (College of Valor) and Clerics (War Domain) in 5e can also be primary casters and melee frontliners.

Because most people who play 5e never actually get beyond level 10 or 12, where the differences between martials and casters aren't as obvious. A Fighter kinda feels ok until level 9 or so, and the casters usually feel slightly weak before level 5, so in most campaigns it balances out. Even on this forum people usually say that they don't play beyond early tens.

As for necromancers, you're right that armies of mooks tend to be weak, so replace that with one or two heavy bruisers and my point still stands.

So give the necromancer bruisers. The player just has to understand that if he would sic his creatures onto the party's martial specialist and leave them without his spellcasting support, they're dead meat (again). As in, they by themselves can't do what a PC martial does.

Well, even short-range teleportation has gamechanging utility - bypassing all locks, traps, sentries etc - and initiators get that. They can also become incorporeal/ethereal briefly.

Yes, and most of these effects are gained before level 10, back when they're still supremely useful. That's why I said PoW starts off strong.

I'm not against reducing all casting to 6/9 - in fact, Starfinder does this, and the abundance of technology there also raises the martial floor considerably. But that is closer to a Star Wars paradigm where a skilled bounty hunter can still be a worthy challenge for a Jedi master.

Whether it is 6/9 or 9/9 casting though, I agree with you where things like scrying and planar binding. I would want a caster to be the one who can initiate those though, rather than everyone.

What's bad with the paradigm where everyone is a threat to everyone of the presumed equal skill level? Why not let an experienced martial hero cut down an archmage if he so wishes?

I mostly agree but there has to be a line for the martials, unless of course we're playing Exalted or something where everyone is basically a caster.

But why? What about casters makes them so special that limits don't apply to them? Why does someone who has magic DESERVE access to bigger and more significant powers? Wouldn't it be better if everyone was on somewhat even playing ground? Why are martials second-class by default? I hate this kind of rhetoric, I really do.

[Psyren]

.... And are exactly as f**ked as Wizard when standing in an AMF. So "inborn"? Total failure at modeling that.

If it makes you feel any better it's not just them Psions, Wilders, Bloodragers, Monks with their ki pools...

And yeah, it means that a sorcerer's innate powers are just as useless in an AMF as a wizard's purely external ones... but such is game balance.

[Psyren]

Because most people who play 5e never actually get beyond level 10 or 12, where the differences between martials and casters aren't as obvious. A Fighter kinda feels ok until level 9 or so, and the casters usually feel slightly weak before level 5, so in most campaigns it balances out. Even on this forum people usually say that they don't play beyond early tens.

So you think the reason the disparity doesn't matter is because... nobody's managed to make it that high? In half a decade?

So give the necromancer bruisers. The player just has to understand that if he would sic his creatures onto the party's martial specialist and leave them without his spellcasting support, they're dead meat (again). As in, they by themselves can't do what a PC martial does.

To alliteratively paraphrase myself from earlier - the measure of a minion is the monster manual, not being as good at fighting as a fighter. There's a lot of problems you can solve with a zombie dragon, and none of them particularly care that a barbarian could handle them 10% better.

Yes, and most of these effects are gained before level 10, back when they're still supremely useful. That's why I said PoW starts off strong.

And they're not still useful after? Healing, teleportation, incorporeality, things like that?

What's bad with the paradigm where everyone is a threat to everyone of the presumed equal skill level? Why not let an experienced martial hero cut down an archmage if he so wishes?

They can. Maybe not a forum-spawned Batman-mage like we theorycraft here, but D&D (and fiction in general) are full of examples of the martial overcoming the mage. It just takes a bit more effort/luck.

But why? What about casters makes them so special that limits don't apply to them? Why does someone who has magic DESERVE access to bigger and more significant powers? Wouldn't it be better if everyone was on somewhat even playing ground? Why are martials second-class by default? I hate this kind of rhetoric, I really do.

I'm not sure what to tell you. As I said before, it sells, and I believe it does so because people find it believable / understandable. There are plenty of other systems where the level playing field you want exists however.

[Mechalich]

So you think the reason the disparity doesn't matter is because... nobody's managed to make it that high? In half a decade?

Indeed, and it should be noted that 'guy at the gym' type limitations on character capability don't matter until other characters are regularly exceeding such ability limits. In D&D, at low levels, offensive spells aren't actually that powerful. At level 1 magic missile, perhaps the iconic low-level attack, does less damage compared to a sword hit, and even when you make it up to fireball, 3rd level spells aren't overwhelming in their damage output (5d6 save for half isn't actually that much, if you make the save that averages out to 8 dmg, and a sword attack could reasonably top that in average damage).

In a system or setting where magic is weak, the fact that martial types cannot exceed the generalized limits presented by the humanoid body may not actually matter, and if you through in additional technology the amount of magic can be increased. A blaster wizard needs far more magic to outperform in the ranged anti-personnel role when compared to a soldier with an AK-47 rather than one with a longbow.

In various D&D editions the classes that interact with the limits imposed by biology don't hit those limits at level one, they hit them a bit further up. In 3.X it's around levels 6-8 depending on optimization and how you read certain rules. In 2e it was around level 10, and while I don't play 5e it may be around there for that edition as well. Below a certain point on the power scale, the 'guy at the gym' remains a relevant contributor and if you cap the power level at that point, then the whole issue more or less vanishes. Now, this has consequences of its own. Characters who can't exceed normal human limitations can only do so much and are very vulnerable to getting swarmed under (depending on the kind of game you're trying to run this may be either a feature or a bug) or ganked by an unlucky role - in E6, for instance, a single bad crit from a farmer with a scythe might be all she wrote for even the most powerful of characters.

[Talakeal]

The weirdest thing about this fallacy to me is that martials in something like D&D already have a handful of abilities that are extraordinary things that are basically martial-magic and people seem to be with it, yet aren't fine with that concept being followed through on to allow level-based rpgs with CR systems to actually have characters of the same level be of the same power-level and scope.

When a Rogue uses his evasion to dodge an explosion that completely surrounds him, that's extraordinary even though they are completely engulfed in fire, because they're just that good at dodging.

When a Barbarian gets stabbed in the gut unarmoured and takes no damaged because of their damage reduction, that's extraordinary because they're just that tough.

When a Monk runs at 80 km/h or 50 mph because of their Fast Movement ability and Run Feat, that's extraordinary, because they're just that fast.

When the Ranger just disappears while your staring at him, while he's in an open field in the middle of a clear day with zero cover to hide behind, that's extraordinary, because they're just that good at hiding.

When a Monk can talk with spiders, dogs, dragons, primordial critters from beyond time without sharing a language, that's extraordinary because they're just that attuned with the world.

When a Druid can scull the poison of the world serpent as if it was water because they're immune to all poison, that's extraordinary because they've built up just that good of a tolerance to poison.

And that's just 3.5e players handbook stuff. All of which is 100% non-magical (the monk has magical abilities, but things like their super speed, immunity to disease/poisons/age, spell resistance, tongue of the sun and moon, evasion, etc. are all considered non-magical in 3rd edition).

I would have a lot less contempt for EX abilities if the game gave any explanation for explaining how and why they work, or even what is happening beyond a platitude like "He's just that tough / good".

[LibraryOgre]

The Mod Wonder: Oh, look, we can't play nice, so the toy gets taken away.


AS A REMINDER, since have apparently reached the season where we need these reminders in thread:

1) Discuss people's ideas, not the people themselves, nor your perception of their attitude.
2) We all have different playstyles and different thresholds for realism, verisimilitude, and Rule of Cool. Respect that, sometimes, someone else's threshold will be different and that difference is not a sign of moral or intellectual deficiency.
3) If you need moderator attention, report the thread, either with the report button or by PMing a mod. If you PM a mod, include a link to the thread, and, possibly, the specific posts you want to call out. If you tall me to go look at the "gym" thread, you're going to get "What gym thread?". And if you report a thread, do not be surprised if the mod reviewing the thread notices YOUR bad behavior, as well.
4) If you find someone entirely intolerable, BLOCK THEM. Several of my message boards are greatly improved by blocking people for a variety of reasons; political, social, mechanical. It is simple, it is fun, and it improves message boards greatly to make people shut up in your feed. And if you block them, you don't have to listen to them.