D&D 5E 2024 D&D is 2014 D&D with 4E sprinkled on top

[EzekielRaiden]

That all.sounds like Magic to me.

Like, this guy didnt just get strong from a bunch of push-ups.

It emphatically is not. Nothing in the text of these works indicates even the slightest bit of magic.

And isn't Saitama literally a demonstration of this in action? As I understood it, One Punch Man just has insanely stupid strength and skill, without anything even supernatural involved. Having looked it up, he consistently claims that his ridiculously intense training regimen (which allegedly caused his hair loss), and every attempt to identify a supernatural source for his power has failed. (He's also not absolutely superhuman: others have beaten him at other things, e.g. he can't really handle spicy noodles.)

If you devalue supernatural by reducing it to nothing more than magic, then of course this will sound like magic. Supernatural stuff is much bigger than magic, and it includes things like the transmundane, which are no longer merely mundane (though exclusively rooted in the mundane), without being any form of "magic".

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'd have to read up on both to refresh but here.



Magic.



Magic.



Magic, certainly.



Magic.



Magic.



They are not 'purely martial' if they are doing things which are literally impossible.

Nope. Those things are, in the story itself, explicitly and purely things a crazy-skilled hero can do. No magic involved. Beowulf simply is not magical. He's just So Gorram Good that he can do things that no mere mortal can achieve.

And this is one of the most foundational pieces of Medieval literature.

 

[Scribe]

It emphatically is not. Nothing in the text of these works indicates even the slightest bit of magic.

And isn't Saitama literally a demonstration of this in action? As I understood it, One Punch Man just has insanely stupid strength and skill, without anything even supernatural involved. Having looked it up, he consistently claims that his ridiculously intense training regimen (which allegedly caused his hair loss), and every attempt to identify a supernatural source for his power has failed. (He's also not absolutely superhuman: others have beaten him at other things, e.g. he can't really handle spicy noodles.)

If you devalue supernatural by reducing it to nothing more than magic, then of course this will sound like magic. Supernatural stuff is much bigger than magic, and it includes things like the transmundane, which are no longer merely mundane (though exclusively rooted in the mundane), without being any form of "magic".

If something is impossible, like Saitama jumping to the moon, its impossible, and you can call it anything you want but its not mundane, and its 'magic' by some other means.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

If something is impossible, like Saitama jumping to the moon, its impossible, and you can call it anything you want but its not mundane, and its 'magic' by some other means.

Sure, it's not mundane.

It isn't magic. Not even with scare quotes.

That's the point here. “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

 

[CreamCloud0]

That all.sounds like Magic to me.

the key difference being that it isn't magic.

Like, this guy didnt just get strong from a bunch of push-ups.

no, it was crunches, squats and running too!

edit: i don't know if your reference of saitama was meant to be ironic or not because the joke behind his ludicrous power IS that his training regimen was entirely 100% totally mundane stuff you'd do for the gym.

 

[Scribe]

the key difference being that it isn't magic.

no, it was crunches, squats and running too!

edit: i don't know if your reference of saitama was meant to be ironic or not because the joke behind his ludicrous power IS that his training regimen was entirely 100% totally mundane stuff you'd do for the gym.

Right, if anything it was the running...but really, it's not the answer, because if martials are mundane, and mundane can be trained, he's quite clearly not mundane.

Call it whatever you want. Magic is not a 4 letter word, but if you are doing stuff beyond the realm of possible? It's magic, divine, mutation, tech, whatever.

It's a genre specific thing, because mundane it is not.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Right, if anything it was the running...but really, it's not the answer, because if martials are mundane, and mundane can be trained, he's quite clearly not mundane.

Call it whatever you want. Magic is not a 4 letter word, but if you are doing stuff beyond the realm of possible? It's magic, divine, mutation, tech, whatever.

It's a genre specific thing, because mundane it is not.

this is irrefutable because it's just circular reasoning

how are we meant to give examples of extraordinary martials if you discount every example of extraordinary things a martial does as not martial?

 

[Scribe]

this is irrefutable because it's just circular reasoning

how are we meant to give examples of extraordinary martials if you discount everything extraordinary a martial does as not martial?

Thats just it. You cannot. Extraordinary, is beyond the means of mundane, and is therefore some source not mundane.

Wuxia, whatever, its not mundane.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

this is irrefutable because it's just circular reasoning

how are we meant to give examples of extraordinary martials if you discount every example of extraordinary things a martial does as not martial?

Precisely. It's a No True Scotsman argument.

We present something that isn't magic in-story, explicitly is recognized as non-magic, and (in at least some cases) actively contrasts against things that ARE magic.

But apparently it's still magic, no matter what.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Thats just it. You cannot. Extraordinary, is beyond the means of mundane, and is therefore some source not mundane.

Wuxia, whatever, its not mundane.

Why?

Why is it so impossible to accept that there are stories--even in foundational European tales, the very things that inspired Tolkien himself and thus 99.9% of D&D's milieu!--where there are people who explicitly, emphatically DO NOT use ANYTHING "magical", and yet still do things that should be impossible?

"Magic" is far, FAR more specific than "things that aren't physically possible with completely mundane skills." Magic means curses, or alchemy/potions/elixirs, or spells (which, in D&D, have mostly absorbed curses), or enchanted items, or explicitly divine "boons" or the like. None of those things describe Atalanta, or Odysseus, or Beowulf. They just, flat, don't.

The only conclusion one can draw, which doesn't contradict the explicit text of the stories involved here, is that you can have things that are not "magic"--they aren't any of the things that fall under the meaning of that term--but which are beyond-the-natural. That it is possible for someone's prowess or skill or speed to become so great, it manages to break the rules, even though none of the practice that went into developing that power ever broke the rules itself.

"Magic" is not the only thing that can break the rules of nature. Other things can too. Transmundane abilities are among them. Such explicitly non-magical breaking-of-nature's-rules is rife in fiction the world over, going back thousands of years to the very foundations of storytelling.