I never had a problem with 4e's setting in itself. I had a problem with it replacing the previous iterations. The retcon was always the issue.
I had thought you weren't much of an FR guy. Or is this about Dark Sun?
A thing that exists in one edition of the game. Martial power has never expanded beyond 4e.
Or we could recognize it as planting a flag and being a turning point. It's not like 3e hadn't presaged (or should I say preswordsaged) this development with the
Book of Nine Swords, and PF's ample 3PP has continued that trend. Having martial people who can do things that aren't strictly natural is not alien anymore. It's represented, in a lot of things.
I have seen people WITH SUPERPOWERS perform feats of strength, speed and/or intellect that are less impressive than Batman (in some comics), so... I reject that Batman is "mundane" under the definition of Mundane that is "achievable by ordinary humans"
And I don't. What he does is achievable by ordinary humans in his reality. It's just that the vast, vast majority of ordinary humans do not have the
actual superpower he possesses, which is his inviolate iron will. (It doesn't hurt that he's also a genius, an Olympic-level athlete, and incredibly charismatic, of course.) Other humans COULD do what he does, and a small number (Oliver Queen/Green Arrow, Selina Kyle/Catwoman, Ben Turner/Bronze Tiger, Dick Grayson/Nightwing, Jim Harper/Guardian, Charles Szasz/The Question, Ted Kord/Blue Beetle, Ted Grant/Wildcat, Helena Bertinelli/Huntress, Sandra Wu-San/Lady Shiva, Richard Drakunovski/Dragon) do more or less the same sort of thing, with variations. Some of them are wealthy (e.g. Queen, Kyle, Grayson), some are highly intelligent (Szasz, Kord), some are Eastern or Western martial arts masters (Turner, Grant, Wu-San, Drakunovski), some are acrobats or (ex-)thieves (Kyle, Grayson, Drakunovski), etc. All are presented as being otherwise-ordinary humans with high dedication, and training that any similarly dedicated, healthy human could complete.
Right, 4e epitomized this idea that exceeding mundanity was not an aspect of playing the correct class, but simply of gaining levels, of becoming a paragon or a reaching your Epic Destiny. The mundane is low level, not a feature of being a fighter.
Potayto, potahto. You say it "doesn't exist." I say it's still absolutely there the whole time--it's just that being "mundane" doesn't mean "weak" or "limited" or "incapable" or "restricted."
The bolded is untrue of the vast majority of us. We are just saying that once you exceed those limits, the ability becomes supernatural.
That's...that's what I said though. To such folks, transcending the limits means you've ceased to be mundane. You are now supernatural. Period. Whatever you were before, you're supernatural now.
That's something I reject. I think someone can still be mundane--still only be using the tools and skills and such that a healthy, dedicated person could learn naturally--but have achieved a
degree of skill with those things that surpasses what limits our feeble understanding projects onto them. "There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Yea, I agree here.
I'm with
@EzekielRaiden in that I'm totally good with a farmboy growing up into a demon-slaying badass who can swing a sword and destroy boulders with the shockwave. No problem with having One-Punch Man in D&D. I love the whole general idea of "martial power."
But being able to do those things is obviously supernatural. The terminology problem I have is that people often equate "supernatural" with "derived from magic, especially arcane magic". Being able to chop through boulders with your sword is not something that can be counterspelled, or removed by an antimagic field.
Within the fiction, the type of magic used by wizards, clerics, warlocks, etc., is only a small fraction of the expanse of magical and supernatural abilities that exist within the default D&D setting.
That is in fact how the word "supernatural" is used in a D&D context, yes. Anything supernatural is necessarily magical. It may not be spellcasting, but it's definitely magical
in some way. You can thank 3e for that; that's how [Su] powers are
defined. If you're going to tell me that transcendental mundane powers are "supernatural," I cannot--ever--accept, unless we also re-define "supernatural" in a way that...includes everything
natural, which kind of defeats the point.
I still maintain, however, that there is a difference between the transmundane and the supernatural. The latter is spooky-action-at-a-distance stuff. The former retains extremely relevant characteristics from its mundanity. It is still linked in some meaningful way to
physical action. "Research" or "meditation" alone cannot advance it, only practice and skill development can do that (though it doesn't
hurt to do your research, of course). It cannot be transferred to another in any way other than imparting a lesson and then having the student drill on those lessons. It cannot be limited by any of the things which would normally stop or forestall supernatural powers (e.g. it is completely immune to any form of "antimagic field" or "dead magic zone" or the like). Etc.