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Message: <blockquote data-quote="chaochou" data-source="post: 6148664" data-attributes="member: 99817">One option is to extend the bounds of what a 'mundane' ability allows you to do.For example, we know that people can't run up walls. But in Wushu / kung-fu fighters can run up walls, up cliffs, across treetops and over lakes. This isn't considered 'magic' but the attainment of a level of physical and mental perfection.If you model this with very specific abilities, such as 'Once per day a fighter can run up a wall of height 5' per level of the fighter' you have a very restrictive model similar to a very low powered spell.What HeroWars (for example) did was simply set a DC (like 25) for running up walls using an appropriate skill, such a 'run'. Running across a lake? DC 45 for 'run'. Run across the treetops? DC 35 for 'run'. Outrun a lightning bolt? DC 60 for 'run'. What this means is improving 'run' doesn't just take 0.1 sec off your 200m time. As it improves you open up whole new ideas and options.I think this is fertile ground for characters who are supposed to be heroes. It means recreating, say, Aragorn doesn't rely on writing lots of specific, closed powers for each individual thing he did in LoTR. A character with sufficent tracking can hear Orcs a day's march away, just like Aragorn, or see how a battle unfolded from the footprints in the aftermath.In balance terms what you then have is magic being guaranteed but tightly defined and 'mundane' abilities being inconsistent but broader in application. In a world of myth and magic there's no reason to limit the upper level of what is considered 'mundane'.</blockquote>

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