You're attempting to move the goalposts here. Not only are you suggesting that the self-titled "martial" abilities aren't, well, martial at all, but that now one's emotions and state of mind are somehow held in discrete reserves, and are necessary to performing a physical action. That doesn't solve the underlying problem, it just moves it to another area.
What goalposts? Martial powers in 4e are presented as associative mechanics, with daily and encounter powers (mechanics) that are explained as exhausting 'deep reserves' (in-game reason).
You are trying to disprove that.
In doing so, you decided to add 'physical' to deep reserves in an attempt to invoke a realism argument that actually worked against you.
Yes, you can. Unless you're saying that there's something inherently different on a fundamental level regarding how things like "swing a sword" work, then this excuse doesn't have any appreciable level of being reasonable. You're saying that the nature of killing a kobold will be so different from any particular physical action in the real world that it operates by fundamentally different rules regarding the physical nature of the task. That's not only unintuitive, it's unbelievable.
I didn't say killing /a/ kobold, but a number of them in six seconds flat. Really, in one 'action' which is less than six seconds. You could, say, in a turn, open a door, move 30' to w/in 15' of six kobolds, draw them to you with a cunning trick, and kill all six of them, all in six seconds. Is that comparable to anything IRL? No. Is it comparable to something Inigo Montoya did in Princess Bride? You betchya.
Yes, what heroes can do in a fantasy story is radically different from what real people can 'reasonably' do.
On the contrary; not only is my invocation (which is the book's invocation) of real-life physical abilities valid (and it really is), it flat-out supports my assertion, while denying yours.
Your assertion is that 'deep reserves' IRL must necessarily be generic such that exhausting the ability to perform one exceptional mundane task so that you can't do it again necessarily exhausts the ability to perform any and all other exceptional mundane feats, and, if it doesn't, then the original task /must/ be repeatable.
Everyday experience disproves your assertion, since it's possible to be to fatigued to continue with one - even ordinary, mundane - task to continue doing it efficiently, while still being able to engage in a different one.
In pursuit of that, it limits character options to a degree that impacts the game-world to a degree that the characters are aware of, without providing an in-game rationale for why that's so. Hence the dissociation - trying to force people to play to a "genre convention" impedes on their ability to attempt anything.
You can't model a genre without somehow modeling it's genre conventions. It's certainly /easy/ to model genre conventions through a 'plot point' sort of mechanic where players are given 'author' or 'director' stance agency, and doing so is pretty likely to result in a very good, but definitionally 'dissociative' mechanic.
Making that 'associative,' means positing a world where the realities of the world result in genre conventions happening as if they were some sort of emergent property. Taken to extremes, this gets you a Terry Pratchet series.
Taken to less extremes, it gets you things like AEDU, with associative explanations for the EDU parts, by Source.
It's also far less valid and consistence than "generic" reserves (whatever those are, as you haven't defined them yet).
Again, they're your invention. You claim that the full range of things that can be done by martial characters must necessarily, always, be enabled by 'reserves' that could be used for any of those things, regardless of relative power (level) or nature of the exploit.
We have been through this - I've already explained that Vancian casting is not dissociative because magic is not dissociative, whereas physical abilities with limitations that have nothing to do with how physical actions intuitively work are dissociative. Ergo, my definition of dissociative can refer to limits.
You're actually seeing the reflection of one of your own problems. Martial powers presented as abilities in heroic fantasy settings need to have an in-game explanation greater than "because genre."
Why is there magic in D&D? "Because genre." Because genre is an acceptable reason for eschewing undue realism.
You presume that somehow physical fatigue is discrete to each physical action that you perform - which is a huge break from the most basic of agreements as to how reality itself works
Yet again, martial is not limited to the purely-physical. And, there is no huge break here. You can reach a point of exhaustion and diminishing ability in one activity, while still being able to perform well in another. That's reality.
Reality isn't relevant to fantasy, but even if it were, it doesn't come down on your side.
It's also incredibly disingenuous of you to suggest that a power that's clearly labeled "advice" somehow relates to that ability at all, since it's clearly associating itself with something else (though if that's a limited-use power, I look forward to your explanation as to why a ranger can't give advice to someone more than once a day).
Per encounter. They're both encounter utilities. I would assume that Crucial Advice, which interrupts an ally's failed skill check and allows him to succeed - require a remarkable level of focus and decisiveness that can't easily be repeated right away. That could fall under 'deep reserves,' which, afterall, is a fairly broad idea. And, you can clearly see how that wouldn't stop him from some physical exertion later.
That's a very clear example of a martial exploit being more than the all-physical strawman you are basing your arguments on.
Suggesting that "balance" has anything to do with enforcing genre conventions, of course, is largely laughable, considering that the definition of "balance" itself is so mutable.
Games need to be balanced. Games that emulate a genre need to enforce the genre's conventions. Sometimes those are at oods and need to be resolved.
I like to use a consistent definition of balance: A game is balanced when it maximizes meaningful, viable choices. Note that this means a game can be imbalanced by a single obvious-best (often called 'broke' or 'overpowered') choice, but that a few non-viable or meaningless choices only degrade balance a little.
Hey, since I promptly defined a term you seemed to think was being used fluidly, you could finally do me the courtesy of defining your version of 'dissociated mechanics.' Preferably in a source-neutral way (though I understand that may not be possible, given your personal prejudices).
Regardless of the definition used, you can't claim that martial powers are presented as being wholly natural abilities, and then discard that definition whenever it's convenient and with no further examination simply by invoking the term "preternatural."
You could substitute 'extraordinary' (a term used the same way in d20), or super-human, if you like. Preternatural's a perfectly good word, though. Martial abilities in fantasy are often super-human, extraordinary, incredible or any of a variety of adjectives that describe something that is both outside the blandly mundane, but not actually supernatural.
Really, in a fantasy setting, powers that would be supernatural in any other context could be wholly 'natural.' The power of primal characters in 4e, for instance, comes entirely from the natural world (unlike Divine powers that come to some degree from the Gods in the Astral Sea, or Arcane powers, the nature of which is left entirely undefined).
If something is a power beyond what mundane, real-world forces can achieve, then it's non-natural by definition, and can play by its own rules. But you're trying to say it's both. That doesn't work, no matter how you try to slice it.
If you want to consider extraordinary abilities as somehow non-natural, and that helps you accept that the mechanics used to model them are associative, by all means do so.
But, applying the standard of "mundane, real-world forces" to a fantasy world is innately invalid. The world in which D&D characters exist is fantastic, not mundane, and imagined, not real.
Really, at bottom, your objection to the way in which limited-use martial abilities are associated is wholly based on a completely invalid appeal to realism.
You might as well be arguing against the inclusion of dragons, elves and wizards.
