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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9106511" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Because, as I have argued many times over the years, the point isn't actually being true to the fictional world these things appear in.The point is to be true to the player's intuitions about what is physically possible here on Earth. These intuitions need not have any special relationship with what is physically possible here on Earth. Many, for example, think Legolas-type archery is completely impossible for human beings. It isn't. There's a guy who has spent quite a bit of time trying to reconstruct Antiquity and Medieval archery, particularly Mongolian horse archery techniques. The stuff he does is pretty much the same as Legolas' allegedly impossible archery feats. &quot;Mundanes&quot; are not limited to what should theoretically be doable in a fantastical world where things like owlbears and displacer beasts are &quot;mundane.&quot; Instead, they are limited to less--often much less--than what Olympic athletes can do IRL.And this problem is nigh-infinitely compounded by the fact that many of the same voices who call for such limitations on &quot;mundane&quot; characters are also the voices who call for removing, as much as possible, player-side tools from the rules--forcing players to be dependent on whatever they can negotiate for from the DM.The &quot;invisible rulebooks&quot; tend to be full of an awful lot of junk. But it's a lot harder to correct an invisible rulebook than a visible one.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 9106511, member: 6790260"] Because, as I have argued many times over the years, the point isn't actually being true to the fictional world these things appear in. The point is to be true to [I]the player's intuitions[/I] about what is physically possible here on Earth. These intuitions need not have any special relationship with what is physically possible here on Earth. Many, for example, think Legolas-type archery is completely impossible for human beings. It isn't. There's a guy who has spent quite a bit of time trying to reconstruct Antiquity and Medieval archery, particularly Mongolian horse archery techniques. The stuff he does is pretty much the same as Legolas' allegedly impossible archery feats. "Mundanes" are not limited to what should theoretically be doable in a fantastical world where things like owlbears and displacer beasts are "mundane." Instead, they are limited to less--often [I]much[/I] less--than what Olympic athletes can do IRL. And this problem is nigh-infinitely compounded by the fact that many of the same voices who call for such limitations on "mundane" characters are also the voices who call for removing, as much as possible, player-side tools from the rules--forcing players to be dependent on whatever they can negotiate for from the DM. The "invisible rulebooks" tend to be full of an awful lot of [I]junk.[/I] But it's a lot harder to correct an invisible rulebook than a visible one. [/QUOTE]

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