A Rogue's Evasion is a great example of a Charles Atlas Superpower and also a great example of why Charles Atlas Superpowers will never be good in a role playing game.
Evasion lets you take no damage when you would have taken half damage. That could have been a magical forcefield or the protection of invisible spirits or whatever, but in this particular case it is defined as Phlebtonium-free. What are the consequences of the fact that it has no associated Phlebtonium instead of having some sort of phlebtomic source?
First of all, it means that people bitch about it working in confined spaces; like
all the damn time. If it was a magical forcefield, instead of being constantly under threat of having MCs throw a fit and take your Evasion away because "it doesn't seem realistic for it to work in this situation", it would just work as printed all the damn time and MCs would never give you any shit about it.
Secondly, it means that it can never be used for anything
more than what it says it can be used for. If you had a magical forcefield that protected you from all damage when you made your save, you could plausibly argue that you should be able to use it to hold things that are on fire or protect valuable documents with your body or something. In various non-combat situations where saving throws weren't specifically required, you could make a plausible sounding argument that your forcefield should help you in some way and
sometimes the MC would agree.
In short: the fact that a Rogue's Evasion ability has no associated Phlebtonium means that it is in actual play only as good as its literal combat text
or less. While if it was written with associated Phlebtonium it would in actual play be as good as its literal combat text
or more.
Caedrus wrote:The pushback seems much less pronounced in Science Fiction settings, however, since people don't seem to demand that elite veteran special operatives be utterly ignorant of the sufficiently advanced technology used to wage wars, yet seem to have a sort of cognitive dissonance when it comes to the exact same character archetype in a high magic fantasy setting.
I would argue that this is because in most Science Fiction settings, pretty much every character is actually accessing the same Phlebtonium source: Science! Pretty much anyone can science the tech to achieve whatever can be achieved in the setting, so there isn't a Phlebtonium gap between characters.
Those settings which
do have a Phlebtonium gap tend to treat everyone without the favored Phlebtonium as second class citizens. For example: in Star Wars, very little is ever accomplished or accomplishable by sciencing the tech, so if you aren't a Jedi you'd better have some pretty comfortable knee pads.
-Username17