Perhaps I'm mistaken, but it doesn't seem like there is any objection to the existence of climbing rules as much as there is a question of the upper limit of what a character who regularly battles and defeats dragons should be able to accomplish under a "simulationist" ruleset.
Yeah, this is a real benefit of 4e IMHO. And while it DOES have some rules that do things like regulate how far you can jump, they at least scale with level. We found that it was pretty easy to portray a more significant sort of scaling as well, like in terms of all the different factors of say "leaping a chasm", which at level 1 might be a 15' wide gully in the floor of a cave, and at 30th level might be a cosmic rift filled with elemental energies and demonic beasts that is 150' across.
There isn't even any thunder after a lightning bolt spell. That's like IRL lightning 101.
It isn't an edition war thing... 4e simply handled it somewhat better. The game flat out explicitly tells you from square 1 that your character is magical and exceptional. The Martial Power Source is not 'non magical', it is just a different kind of magic! There's no 'Dispel Magic' in 4e, at least not in a classic D&D sense, because EVERYTHING is magical! So, is your fighter magical? Yup! How far can he jump at level 1? Well, with a 20 STR and Athletics, AT LEAST 10 feet, and as much as 30 feet. That's actually not completely unrealistic, but of course it will increase, so at level 30 he's probably got a +30 to his Athletics checks, minimally, and will thus jump from 30 to 50 feet, assuming no magic, feats, powers, etc. (which he will almost surely have if jumping is something he's got any interest in whatsoever). Most 4e fighters at level 30 can actually cover more like 80' and can probably muster a 150' leap in a pinch.
Sure, but I would point out that Glaurung (or that is Tolkien) used some REALLY bad tactics against these dwarves. Plainly the dragon should have simply taken to the air and either murderized the dragons from that invulnerable high ground position, or simply gone to some other part of the battlefield where enemies more matched to his capabilities (like most of the Noldor) were located. Its a great epic picture, but it doesn't hold water for 20 seconds as an actual "how this could play out."
Glaurung wasn't a winged dragon. It couldn't fly.
What I think is that you can take the baseline position "society looks like a pastiche of modern tropes about medieval life" and then just sort of assume that anything like dragons, clerics, whatever, all just kind of cancels out. Where it gets pretty dicey is when play reveals specific attributes of one of these things, at which point we're just hanging out there in a place where the "this doesn't change things" cannot be sustained, but we choose to ignore it and continue. Now, when someone says "but why can't I do the same thing with my fighter's jumping distance" it really isn't all that consistent to say "no, you are not allowed to do unrealistic things!" I mean, go ahead and say 'no', but at least acknowledge that it isn't realism that is driving that! Its just a genre trope, not a logical one, not one that can withstand examination, but one that can be upheld in play precisely because we 'squint' as the OP says. Nothing is wrong with that, I just think it is a misuse of the term to call any of that 'simulation'.
Well that's not very realistic!
ACKS. Best worldbuilding rules in the industry, IMO.
