What can Muggles do?

[Brother Oni]

You can't whammy another human with 5 minutes of conversation so they'll follow you until death. But you can certainly live with them in a way that sustains their loyalty. It's not fire-and-forget, it's systemic practice.

Another example - loyalty of samurai towards their lords. While it's certainly variable and it's mostly viewed with rose-coloured glasses, the culture was there to instil loyalty, sometimes in a manner that would be completely alien to us today.

As an example, there were enough cases to warrant the prohibition of junshi, a form of ritual suicide where a samurai followed his lord, due to it being considered a waste of good manpower. The most famous case of junshi are the 47 Ronin.

There's also plenty of cases where troops were fanatically loyal to their commander, for example Caesar's 10th Legion who demanded to be decimated for cowardice after they fled a battle (each individual squad would draws lots - the one who drew the short straw would be beaten to death by his squadmates).

[Eldariel]

I think the big powers of muggles come down to:

1) Personal. This is where you have your Conan, Achilleus, Hector, Ajax, Siegfried, etc. It generally comes down to perfection of self, one way or another. Where magic is defined as an inner power you can impose upon the world, mundane as its counterpart is the perfection of self to the point that few things, magical or mundane, can meaningfully affect you. On the other hand, magic tends to come with a built-in weakness; effects can be unraveled through mundane means (while obviously magical, Ryougi Shiki [Kara no Kyoukai] is an excellent example of this, called "the bane of magic" precisely because she so excels at unraveling magical effects of any sort). This is kind of a necessity in a world where mundane creatures are expected to fight on par with magical beings; where librarians have to spend their eternity mastering the warp, a marine masters themselves. Physical perfection can of course mean different things: mostly you have the fast hero or the strong hero. A fast one is impossible to pin down, amazing at remaining unnoticed, etc. while a strong one is impossible to affect, an unstoppable juggernaut.

2) Social. This is a big one. A great muggle can be a superb orator or a born leader inspiring nations to surpass themselves or speaking an army to surrender, losing people in the swamps never to return or whatever. The key thing is, not using magic is a massive advantage in this regard, since magic can be detected and knowing something was done with "help" might considerably lessen its effect on people. Here you have your Alexander the Great, your Pyrrhus, your Hannibal, your Caesar, your Nikephoros II, your Hermann Balck. It is possible to make others able to do immense feats with merely words and a certain kind of presence. It's also possible to turn others to your cause, both Alexander the Great and Hannibal are noted for constantly bolstering their ranks with their conquered enemies and Hannibal in particular is one nobody seems to have had anything bad to say about, serving with joy (Alexander had his problems with his close elite macedonians towards the end).

This kind of power can, again, just as easily be turned outwards to talk your way out of an impossible situation, convince armies to lay down and surrender where their victory in combat would be all but assured, be imposing enough that a would-be assassin has second thoughts and becomes your willing servant ratting out his employee even though you never noticed them, etc. In particular this kind of power would seem an appropriate reward for the just and the reliable; servants of evil rulers might be much more willing to jump the ship if they know they won't be unfairly treated or punished and that they'll be protected from retribution.

3) Technology. Obviously, using technology and improving upon technology and developing technology are different things but generally a muggle has more time to spend on their equipment and thus they should be able to make more out of their equipment than someone who spends their time studying forbidden tomes instead. They should also be able to build more efficient mundane tools. These are inevitably overshadowed by magical equipment but certain mundane discoveries can go together with magical ones and create something combining the best sides of both. Note, this obviously includes weapon and combat technology too: there should be no reason you couldn't also play your MacGuyver-sort of character, perhaps an "alchemist" (who is really just a chemist).


Obviously of course you have your Perception and Knowledge-related abilities, which muggles can pull tremendous feats in. They alone don't suffice but they are key parts in enabling muggles to do what they set out to do. They are tools that enable bringing your means to bear, whether it be by noticing a flaw in an illusion, being exceptionally aware of peoples' facial micro expressions, being able to spot weak points in armor or a structure or whatever, being able to figure out how a given contraption works, or any such thing.

Then, the one place where muggles can "invoke magic" without it feeling unmugglelike is crafting or craftsmanship. I don't have a problem with mostly mundane dwarves or humans in Tolkien's works producing weapons capable of cutting a wraith's ties to this world or indestructible armor. Indeed, I find a smith should be superior in crafting than a magician pretty much invariably and I don't necessarily buy that you'd need to be a magician to craft magical objects. Magic can be invoked from the essence of the material itself, or from ambient energies, during the creation of the object.

[Max_Killjoy]

I think the big powers of muggles come down to:

1) Personal. This is where you have your Conan, Achilleus, Hector, Ajax, Siegfried, etc. It generally comes down to perfection of self, one way or another. Where magic is defined as an inner power you can impose upon the world, mundane as its counterpart is the perfection of self to the point that few things, magical or mundane, can meaningfully affect you. On the other hand, magic tends to come with a built-in weakness; effects can be unraveled through mundane means (while obviously magical, Ryougi Shiki [Kara no Kyoukai] is an excellent example of this, called "the bane of magic" precisely because she so excels at unraveling magical effects of any sort). This is kind of a necessity in a world where mundane creatures are expected to fight on par with magical beings; where librarians have to spend their eternity mastering the warp, a marine masters themselves. Physical perfection can of course mean different things: mostly you have the fast hero or the strong hero. A fast one is impossible to pin down, amazing at remaining unnoticed, etc. while a strong one is impossible to affect, an unstoppable juggernaut.

This is one we've been discussing on the most recent "martial vs magic" thread, and really, it blurs the line a lot. "Perfection of the self" to the point of gaining fantastic abilities is, effectively, magic.

[Clistenes]

I think the big powers of muggles come down to:

1) Personal. This is where you have your Conan, Achilleus, Hector, Ajax, Siegfried, etc. It generally comes down to perfection of self, one way or another. Where magic is defined as an inner power you can impose upon the world, mundane as its counterpart is the perfection of self to the point that few things, magical or mundane, can meaningfully affect you. On the other hand, magic tends to come with a built-in weakness; effects can be unraveled through mundane means (while obviously magical, Ryougi Shiki [Kara no Kyoukai] is an excellent example of this, called "the bane of magic" precisely because she so excels at unraveling magical effects of any sort). This is kind of a necessity in a world where mundane creatures are expected to fight on par with magical beings; where librarians have to spend their eternity mastering the warp, a marine masters themselves. Physical perfection can of course mean different things: mostly you have the fast hero or the strong hero. A fast one is impossible to pin down, amazing at remaining unnoticed, etc. while a strong one is impossible to affect, an unstoppable juggernaut.

Achilles was a demigod with invulnerable skin and armed with god-forged weapons and armor... not really a muggle...

Ajax was the great-grandson of Zeus, and, according to some versions, he had invulnerable skin, just like Achilles.

Siegfried started sorta normal, but he got invulnerable skin too after bathing in dragon's blood, he was able to understand the language of animals, and he owned a ton of magical weapons and tools...

[Mechalich]

1) Personal. This is where you have your Conan, Achilleus, Hector, Ajax, Siegfried, etc. It generally comes down to perfection of self, one way or another. Where magic is defined as an inner power you can impose upon the world, mundane as its counterpart is the perfection of self to the point that few things, magical or mundane, can meaningfully affect you. On the other hand, magic tends to come with a built-in weakness; effects can be unraveled through mundane means (while obviously magical, Ryougi Shiki [Kara no Kyoukai] is an excellent example of this, called "the bane of magic" precisely because she so excels at unraveling magical effects of any sort). This is kind of a necessity in a world where mundane creatures are expected to fight on par with magical beings; where librarians have to spend their eternity mastering the warp, a marine masters themselves. Physical perfection can of course mean different things: mostly you have the fast hero or the strong hero. A fast one is impossible to pin down, amazing at remaining unnoticed, etc. while a strong one is impossible to affect, an unstoppable juggernaut.

Ryougi Shiki has a magical power: the demon eyes of direct death. That power is highly effective against the abilities of Nasuverse characters who are 'mages' and use a specific kind of magical power. In no way does that make Ryougi Shiki non-magical or 'mundane.'

There are distinct limits on the kind of things human beings can do without supernatural or technological boosts. For instance, no matter how hard you train, you cannot develop bulletproof skin. If you shoot John Wick, he bleeds. If you shoot Aquaman, he doesn't.

[Kitten Champion]

Honestly the only thing I can think of is rapport with other Muggles and - potentially - a more grounded perspective. In real-world politics it's often a strategy to appeal to the majority with displays of homespun authenticity and whatnot, and similarly in fiction the regular person can garner trust and get people off their guard the way the Superhuman cannot. To use a Dragonball example, the heroes of the story are all semi-hermits who so dwarf humanity in terms of power that it's much easier to relate to and sympathize a merely modestly exceptional person like Hercule Satan. Even if he's kind of a boastful idiot he's still on their level, which, especially in reference to the Harry Potter universe, if you recognize what Wizards can do and the kinds of horror they can casually inflict upon you, the comfort you feel in dealing with someone who abides by the laws of your own logical understanding of universe is reasonable. In the case of DBZ, when Satan makes an appeal for everyone's help in fighting the big bad they're receptive, especially compared to the people who've been spending their lives training out in the middle of nowhere or fighting away on distant alien planets and wield powers that confuse the hell out of 'em.

Then you have someone like Togusa on Ghost in the Shell - at least the anime - where he's the normal, competent police detective in an organization of peerless cyborg special agents. Togusa's valuable because he's not like the others and thus provides a different perspective, both in terms of having no cybernetics and because he's a regular family man who wasn't involved in the murky world of geopolitical shadow conflicts or espionage. This is something generally true in RPGs in my experience - mostly from expectations - it's very easy to get lost in the tangle of the fantastic new abilities your characters wield and forget that mundane things still happen for mundane reasons and can be equally or more important.

[Mechalich]

Then you have someone like Togusa on Ghost in the Shell - at least the anime - where he's the normal, competent police detective in an organization of peerless cyborg special agents. Togusa's valuable because he's not like the others and thus provides a different perspective, both in terms of having no cybernetics and because he's a regular family man who wasn't involved in the murky world of geopolitical shadow conflicts or espionage. This is something generally true in RPGs in my experience - mostly from expectations - it's very easy to get lost in the tangle of the fantastic new abilities your characters wield and forget that mundane things still happen for mundane reasons and can be equally or more important.

GitS is a pretty good example of a universe with a cap on abilities though. The Major is a full-body cyborg with all kinds of upgrades, she's about as advanced as it gets for a human-sized package in that universe, but there are distinct limits on her capabilities (she rather famously loses to a tank in the OG film). Togusa's perspective therefore retains great value because the agents can't simply manhandle their way through everything society throws at them. There's a key difference between a character who's sufficiently enhanced that it requires an unreasonable amount of mundane resources for society to bring them down (in the various iterations of GTA you can rampage awfully hard, but eventually the military will turn you to paste), and one no amount of mundane resources can bring down.

And, of course, as technology increases, the amount of resources available to mundane society increases dramatically. There's a very good example of how this interaction plays out in The Nightmare Stacks by Charles Stross in which a completely mystical army around the size of a single modern combined forces corps invades the English countryside around Leeds and ends up being opposed almost entirely by conventional weapons. The resulting interactions get weird, but 21st century weaponry allows for resistance in a way that, for instance, 19th century tech would have completely failed to provide. The more technology you have, the more supernatural power you can allow to compete with it. It's very possible to imagine a character who'd be utterly invincible in 0 CE, only mostly invincible in 1500 CE, and still loses to a tank in 2000 CE.

[NichG]

Replacing the Major with Saitama from One Punch Man would have, if anything, made Togusa even more critical. Their goal wasn't to beat up all of the corrupt members of the government, it was to expose the conspiracy and remove the suppression of the better cyberbrain sclerosis cure.

[Tanarii]

To use the classic options, either of:
- build a castle, hire soldiers, and eventually (if you're good) conquer yourself an empire.
- found a guild of like minded shady folks to either murder, steal or possibly sing your way to greatness.

Holy non-muggles get a temple and a small (but free) force of warriors, but they're basically half-muggles in terms of raw power.

Full on non-muggles get either a tower and freedom, or a regular stipend and a ruler's ear. Plus a few apprentices.

Of course, RPGs have evolved a little since then.

[Mechalich]

Replacing the Major with Saitama from One Punch Man would have, if anything, made Togusa even more critical. Their goal wasn't to beat up all of the corrupt members of the government, it was to expose the conspiracy and remove the suppression of the better cyberbrain sclerosis cure.

Replacing the Major with Saitama means the story falls apart, because the universe now has superman in it and everything has to re-align according to that new reality. A character whose personal powerful overawes that of the collective power of society changes the story to revolve around them - even when it's someone like Saitama who doesn't really have any ideological goals.

[NichG]

Replacing the Major with Saitama means the story falls apart, because the universe now has superman in it and everything has to re-align according to that new reality. A character whose personal powerful overawes that of the collective power of society changes the story to revolve around them - even when it's someone like Saitama who doesn't really have any ideological goals.

Power is irrelevant without a coherent purpose. The sun is powerful, it's surface conditions would kill any human on Earth even with the best protection our technology can achieve, even at 1AU distance it causes sun burns, skin cancer, etc. Our civilization has not rearranged itself with the goal of destroying the sun just because it is there and has parameters which exceed our capabilities along some axes.

'Because Saitama exists, we must fight him/we must measure our capacities by our ability to compete with him in his area of strength' is an error.

Add Saitama to Ghost in the Shell and basically nothing about civilization changes, because the problems faced by humans in that setting have very little to do with punching out kaiju. Saitama's existence doesn't cure cyberbrain sclerosis; it doesn't answer questions of identity in the face of increasing ambiguity of the form and function of the mind, it doesn't determine the growth pattern of personalities and philosophy of newly formed artificial intelligences; it doesn't remove nepotism, cronyism, or profit motive from government; it doesn't resolve underlying nationalistic vulnerabilities which can be manipulated in order to create a flash movement.

If you believe that the only story to be told once you've added Saitama to GitS is his story, you've missed the point of GitS.

[Cazero]

To use the classic options, either of:
- build a castle, hire soldiers, and eventually (if you're good) conquer yourself an empire.
- found a guild of like minded shady folks to either murder, steal or possibly sing your way to greatness.

Those sound like feats. Or a "Lord" class. Maybe a PrC, or some sort of class "upgrade" that have an impact on the source of your power like the 4e parangon paths.
If past level 9 Wizards stopped gaining any magical ability and gained weapon proficiencies instead, there would be outrage because changing how the class grows denature it. The same holds true for the martial classes.
If your sense of verisimilitude demands that all-natural Fighters don't grow beyond a certain point, enforce a level limitation on that specific class.

[Frozen_Feet]

If you believe that the only story to be told once you've added Saitama to GitS is his story, you've missed the point of GitS.

You've also missed point of One-Punch Man. Because society doesn't realign itself to deal with Saitama. No matter how many monsters he punches to oblivion, circumstances conspire to make him look like a total nobody.

If Saitama was put in GitS, no-one would realize how powerfull he really is. Ever.

[Berenger]

Those sound like feats. Or a "Lord" class. Maybe a PrC, or some sort of class "upgrade" that have an impact on the source of your power like the 4e parangon paths.

I don't like the idea of locking social rank and relationships to other people behind feats, sub-systems and prestige classes. Just make the necessary leadership skills class skills for everyone and give out an extra skill point or to per level so that player characters can have a fair shot at gaining followers and nationbuilding if desired.

[Brother Oni]

GitS is a pretty good example of a universe with a cap on abilities though. The Major is a full-body cyborg with all kinds of upgrades, she's about as advanced as it gets for a human-sized package in that universe, but there are distinct limits on her capabilities (she rather famously loses to a tank in the OG film). Togusa's perspective therefore retains great value because the agents can't simply manhandle their way through everything society throws at them. There's a key difference between a character who's sufficiently enhanced that it requires an unreasonable amount of mundane resources for society to bring them down (in the various iterations of GTA you can rampage awfully hard, but eventually the military will turn you to paste), and one no amount of mundane resources can bring down.

Expanding on Kitten Champion's points, one key thing that's overlooked is the sheer amount of maintenance that Kusanagi and other full body cyborgs require - they're essentially enslaved to PSS9 as they can't exist without the government's infrastructure and resources, not without giving up their cutting edge cyborg bodies.

Togusa is vital to the team, not just because of his skills, knowledge and viewpoint as a former police detective and family man, but because he's also a barely augmented human. The first film has a conversation between Togusa and the Major where they discuss all this, including an interesting point about over-specialisation breeding in weakness.

[Cluedrew]

What are some things that could be or have been accomplished by individuals through supposedly mundane means? Especially if they can impact the plot of a game, or you thought that they were cool, but you couldn't do them in most RPGs?

Land a craft with people in it on the moon and bring them back.

So anything that has been accomplished in real life. The social options are probably the most interesting. I would also like to throw out a note that in a democratic society (one with voting) the muggle might have an actually advantage because they would be more relatable than the one with strange and kind of scary power. This might just be me, but I would have a harder time trusting someone who can modify memories than a normal person. And this is even ignoring the possible opportunity cost of developing magical abilities in the first place.

[awa]

You've also missed point of One-Punch Man. Because society doesn't realign itself to deal with Saitama. No matter how many monsters he punches to oblivion, circumstances conspire to make him look like a total nobody.

If Saitama was put in GitS, no-one would realize how powerfull he really is. Ever.

one punch man is also a comedy that doesn't follow anything remotely resembling real world logic.
In our world or the ghost in the shell world for that matter they would notice that crater on the moon the mountains getting punched into oblivion and so on. Regardless of what they decided to do about you can bet they would care about it and it would alter their society as they tried to protect themselves from it or have guy start jogging and doing sit ups to replicate it.

[Max_Killjoy]

Expanding on Kitten Champion's points, one key thing that's overlooked is the sheer amount of maintenance that Kusanagi and other full body cyborgs require - they're essentially enslaved to PSS9 as they can't exist without the government's infrastructure and resources, not without giving up their cutting edge cyborg bodies.

Togusa is vital to the team, not just because of his skills, knowledge and viewpoint as a former police detective and family man, but because he's also a barely augmented human. The first film has a conversation between Togusa and the Major where they discuss all this, including an interesting point about over-specialisation breeding in weakness.

Even Togusa has a cyberbrain at the end of the day.

I always thought that a person with no augmentation, no cyber-brain, who can't be hacked, or tracked in some of the ways that hackers and state actors have come to rely on, would be an interesting character in that setting. Someone who can literally just "go dark" from the perspective of all the online activity and move unseen. Make it a point of discussion when the character is using manual interfaces with computers instead of plugging in.

For added fun, make the character's field partner an upgraded AI android from the "admin pool" in SAC. (We see them providing hacking backup, flying the tilt rotors, etc).

[Pauly]

I think the big powers of muggles come down to:

1) Personal. This is where you have your Conan, Achilleus, Hector, Ajax, Siegfried, etc. It generally comes down to perfection of self, one way or another. Where magic is defined as an inner power you can impose upon the world, mundane as its counterpart is the perfection of self to the point that few things, magical or mundane, can meaningfully affect you. ... .

Conan is the best example cited there. Yes he does perfect his body, but in the original stories by Howard it’s his cunning and willingness to do anything to survive that allows him to defeat wizards and magical critters and overwhelming numbers.

Batman and other pulp era heroes (The Phantom, The Shadow, Mandrake the Magician, Doc Savage etc. and if you want to stretch the definition it can include Alan Quartermaine, the Scarlet Pimpernel and Sherlock Holmes) can defeat super villains, magical enemies and organized gangs more by dint of intelligence and skills more than being trained to the peak of physical conditions. Being at peak physical condition allows them to fast forward through the hired goons, but defeating the BBEG usually depends on them being smarter or wiser.

For Homer, Odysseus is the guy you want, not Achilles or Ajax.

[Tanarii]

Those sound like feats. Or a "Lord" class. Maybe a PrC, or some sort of class "upgrade" that have an impact on the source of your power like the 4e parangon paths.

Nope. A natural consequence of leveling. Until 3rd edition D&D, the assumption was the ultimate endgame was war gaming, and all your adventuring was about leveling up your heros to buy armies. Unless you were a Thief or Magic-user, in which case you were either pointless or battlefield artillery (respectively).

D&D used to be unapologetic about changing it's nature as you leveled, starting off as dungeon crawling, then hex crawling, then moving into war gaming / dominion ruling, possibly followed by exploring the planes then challenging demon princes / devil lords / avatars of gods (or immortals). Interestingly 5e gives a nod to this with Tiers of Play, but sadly never gives explicit rules for a lot of the stuff.

If past level 9 Wizards stopped gaining any magical ability and gained weapon proficiencies instead, there would be outrage because changing how the class grows denature it. The same holds true for the martial classes.
If your sense of verisimilitude demands that all-natural Fighters don't grow beyond a certain point, enforce a level limitation on that specific class.

You've missed the point. AD&D Fighters didn't stop growing. They were the only ones who got the tools necessary to play the high-level game.

Although as noted, Clerics had a little bit of that, with their religion order follower units. But they were half-Fighter / half-Magic-User, so that makes sense.

Thieves were in the same boat as Magic Users. All they got was progression of their individual power to ludicrous levels. Unfortunately, that didn't count for much. But that's not something the majority of people seem to understand. They always get it backwards, thinking that the personal power is the most important, not the least.

[Cazero]

-snip-

I know all that.
I'm just saying that it was a very stupid way of doing it and proposing simple fixes.

But that's not something the majority of people seem to understand. They always get it backwards, thinking that the personal power is the most important, not the least.

Considering character level directly correlate with personal power in the entirety of play where you're supposed to actualy use the character, that's a more coherent interpretation than the intended one.

[Bohandas]

I can't take any discussion that uses the word "muggle" seriously.

I agree, even in the Harry Potter novels it sounds aggressively ridiculous, like the kind of word that would be more at home in a Dr.Seuss book.

[Kaptin Keen]

I allow muggles to do a substantial number of things through alchemy - from bombs (of a sort) over traps and burning blades and arrows to potions. Like, vikings allegedly eating mushrooms to run amok.

In a similar vein, I allow machinery and engineering to be rather very deadly indeed to arrogant PC's. If you disrespect siege artillery, you will likely be rerolling. But it isn't necessarily pointing a ballista at the overconfident mage - traps (again) don't need magic to function, lead or gorgons blood blocks certain spells (meaning more such techniques certainly exist), and so on.

Mass attacks from muggles can and will eliminate high level enemies (because I generally allow only so many magic items, and play at only so high a level).

Also, no reason mundanes cannot have very high skill modifiers.

[Brother Oni]

I always thought that a person with no augmentation, no cyber-brain, who can't be hacked, or tracked in some of the ways that hackers and state actors have come to rely on, would be an interesting character in that setting. Someone who can literally just "go dark" from the perspective of all the online activity and move unseen. Make it a point of discussion when the character is using manual interfaces with computers instead of plugging in.

For added fun, make the character's field partner an upgraded AI android from the "admin pool" in SAC. (We see them providing hacking backup, flying the tilt rotors, etc).

Completely un-augmented people are actually a plot point in the first series of SAC since The Laughing Man couldn't camouflage himself from them. Unfortunately with the ubiquity of technology, a completely un-augmented person may suffer enough issues during normal day to day life that any advantages would be outweighed by the disadvantages.

Hopefully any upgraded admin pool gynoid (they're all externally female, so android isn't really the correct term) would have upgraded logic processing so they couldn't be broken with a simple logic paradox...

[Max_Killjoy]

Completely un-augmented people are actually a plot point in the first series of SAC since The Laughing Man couldn't camouflage himself from them. Unfortunately with the ubiquity of technology, a completely un-augmented person may suffer enough issues during normal day to day life that any advantages would be outweighed by the disadvantages.

Hopefully any upgraded admin pool gynoid (they're all externally female, so android isn't really the correct term) would have upgraded logic processing so they couldn't be broken with a simple logic paradox...

I tend to treat "android" as generic when I don't stop to think about it, I think my brain is latching on as if it's "anthro" rather than "andro". But yeah, I was thinking of enough of an upgrade/expansion that the "paradox trap" gimmick would be useless.

[Beleriphon]

Land a craft with people in it on the moon and bring them back.

So anything that has been accomplished in real life. The social options are probably the most interesting. I would also like to throw out a note that in a democratic society (one with voting) the muggle might have an actually advantage because they would be more relatable than the one with strange and kind of scary power. This might just be me, but I would have a harder time trusting someone who can modify memories than a normal person. And this is even ignoring the possible opportunity cost of developing magical abilities in the first place.

Like the entire bit in Incredible Beasts where the wizards decide its good to mind wipe the entire population of New York? And the supposed good guy of the story casually does so to regular people, because hey why not? Nothing says we're trustworthy and albino Johnny Depp is actually the bad guy like mind control. In the end the official wizards and Grindewalde are equally bad, just in in different ways. I can only hope this gets addressed in the third movie, but I'm not expecting much when we get instead get Jude Law and Johnny Depp to shoot green-screened magic at each other.

[Eldariel]

This is one we've been discussing on the most recent "martial vs magic" thread, and really, it blurs the line a lot. "Perfection of the self" to the point of gaining fantastic abilities is, effectively, magic.

True, but where the line is drawn depends on the settings. It's not implausible that a mundane human in a given settings can reach things that no human on record in our world is capable of. There's a certain limit set by physics, of course, but somebody being able to do something nobody in the history has been able to accomplish shouldn't be much of a problem.

Achilles was a demigod with invulnerable skin and armed with god-forged weapons and armor... not really a muggle...

Ajax was the great-grandson of Zeus, and, according to some versions, he had invulnerable skin, just like Achilles.

Siegfried started sorta normal, but he got invulnerable skin too after bathing in dragon's blood, he was able to understand the language of animals, and he owned a ton of magical weapons and tools...

Sure, but the greatest deeds of Achilleus had little and less to do with his invulnerability (only his death did, ironically). His defeat of Hector, for instance, was simply a feat of arms - being better than the best. He didn't get stabbed and shrug it off, he beat him fair and square.

Same with Ajax. And many other Greek heroes for that matter; while they supposedly have this or that divine lineage, that doesn't actually manifest in the story and their deeds. The only one to really put his divine blood to use is Heracles.

Ryougi Shiki has a magical power: the demon eyes of direct death. That power is highly effective against the abilities of Nasuverse characters who are 'mages' and use a specific kind of magical power. In no way does that make Ryougi Shiki non-magical or 'mundane.'

Obviously, that wasn't my point. My point was that much like Ryougi sees the "death" of magical effects, there should be no reason that this wouldn't apply to magic more broadly and be available for a mundane character to exploit. Cut a magical effect just right and you can end it. Or alternatively, a natural antimagical material much like iron ("cold iron" in D&D terms) wrt. to fae in the Celtic folklore. This way you can instead come from the other direction and make a steel blade something magic is naturally weak to (many games do that to a degree, but mostly with creatures rather than with the magical energy proper, even though interacting with magical energy would be much closer to the folklore origins of the effect).

[Max_Killjoy]

True, but where the line is drawn depends on the settings. It's not implausible that a mundane human in a given settings can reach things that no human on record in our world is capable of. There's a certain limit set by physics, of course, but somebody being able to do something nobody in the history has been able to accomplish shouldn't be much of a problem.

That's already been covered in the other thread, repeatedly.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...e-Martial-Down

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...5#post23857425
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...8#post23857448
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...5#post23858455
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...1#post23860121
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...0#post23860140
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...8#post23860238
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...1#post23861201
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...5#post23861315
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...0#post23861550
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...5#post23861575
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...4#post23865524

[Frozen_Feet]

In our world or the ghost in the shell world for that matter they would notice that crater on the moon the mountains getting punched into oblivion and so on.

Saitama, if put in our world or GitS world, would have no reason to ever crack mountaints or alter shape of the moon. All of his impressive feats of destruction exists in reaction to other superpowered folks.

He'd be the guy who occasionally stops a cybernetically augmented robber etc., but everyone would dismiss it as a fluke since he has no training or history that'd justify suspecting he's anything special. His training regimen is a joke and nothing noteworthy even in his own setting. In GitS, anyone would be able to tell that Saitama's fitness routine could not explain his powers & trying to repeat it wouldn't work.

[awa]

Saitama, if put in our world or GitS world, would have no reason to ever crack mountaints or alter shape of the moon. All of his impressive feats of destruction exists in reaction to other superpowered folks.

He'd be the guy who occasionally stops a cybernetically augmented robber etc., but everyone would dismiss it as a fluke since he has no training or history that'd justify suspecting he's anything special. His training regimen is a joke and nothing noteworthy even in his own setting. In GitS, anyone would be able to tell that Saitama's fitness routine could not explain his powers & trying to repeat it wouldn't work.

its true his training regime is a joke, but the first time he punts a runaway tank into orbit the government if not the world would notice. They aren't dumb enough to see that and think its just a coincidence (like they do in his own world) and that assumes a best case scenario of the character keeping to his original roots and not trying to actually do anything with his power. A non joke character would probably want to do something with their godlike power which would cause the world to take note and then bends the setting around him.

sit ups might not be able to replicate his strength but you can be sure they would try and figure out his secret even within his own setting a few people do that.