'mundane-flavored superpowers'

[lans]

I think using the heal skill to raise dead a person, attach grafts, Heal people, and make drugs that give benefits.

Craft skill that lets you build scaffolding fast enough that your buddy can stab the dragon in the throat.

A jump skill that if it doesn't give flight changes formula so at 20 ranks your jumping 5 feet per point on your result, instead of the other way around.

Ranks in swim giving you a swim speed equal to your land speed after a certain amount of ranks. Even negating penalties for fighting underwater.

Same with climb skill.

Ride skill that gives the bonuses of the Wild Cohort feat.

A freaking Burrow skill that lets a person ground hog his enemies.

Faster/stronger/hardier characters.

[Prak]

I think we need to figure out what we consider to be the height of human achievement (represented by stat numbers), and then say "Level [x] fighting men can go beyond even that." So, for example, we say that Michael Phelps is an Expert 4 with 7 ranks of swim. He could conceivably reach 10 or 13 ranks if he went around killing some fools to level up, but stuck with Expert, and that that 10 or 13 ranks is the height of normal human achievement (with non-human achievement figured through just ability mods to things), and that you have to have 14 ranks before Swim actually gives your Barbarian11 a swim speed.

[ishy]

So, I could beat Phelps some of the time in a swimming contest with my +1 to swim?

[RadiantPhoenix]

So, I could beat Phelps some of the time in a swimming contest with my +1 to swim?

Only if:

• He didn't take 10
• The difference in your die rolls is at least 18

So, three times in 400 when he's not taking 10.
(+7 ranks, +4 STR, +3 Skill focus, +2 Athletic, +2 Misc)

[sabs]

Well, I'm pretty sure Phelps doesn't take 10 in an Olympic race. He's definitely rolling the dice. But also, his dm isn't using a fucked up game system like D&D that fails.

Also, MPhelps probably doesn't have an 18 str. He's got a 16, but with some swim specific feats.

Increased Swim Speed.
Improved Initiative.

[MGuy]

I don't think rolling for swim, climb, fly, whatever should be necessary if you have any ranks in it unless the situation warrants it. That way Phelps and other Olympic swimmers would just have a swim speed and when they roll against each other they are just rolling opposed checks to see who wins the race.

Otherwise rolls would just be made in bad swimming conditions, being hit, stunned, r some other thing when you're swimming, climbing, etc.

[Ice9]

That's how I was thinking of making Climb work. You get a speed based on your ranks. Different surfaces modify that speed. If something happens to you while you're climbing (attacked, avalanche, wall breaks, windstorm, ...) you make a check.

[Foxwarrior]

Well, of course if a speed is important to the game, it should be written down: you wouldn't want to trust Walking to a Walk skill, would you?

[Username17]

The whole premise of this thread is fucked. A power that is "mundane" is by definition not one that is "super". Indeed, no mundane ability will ever be accepted as such if it can compete vaguely in the same ballpark as one that is actually super in the vast majority of areas of endeavor. Speed, reaching heights, shooting fire, and such will always by definition be stronger in "super powers" than mundane abilities are capable of being.

There are however areas that can potentially scale indefinitely or at least extremely far while still maintaining a mundane flavor.

• Precision. There is in fact a maximum precision, which is defined as hitting your target in exactly the place you want to hit them. That is entirely possible for a mundane person to achieve, so precision effects are essentially uncapped. Provided for the moment that your weapon is capable of doing meaningful damage to your target, a mundane "accurate guy" can plausibly land a killing blow. You can see this in the D&D Rogue - people don't really get overly bothered most of the time that the Rogue is inflicting level appropriate damage with a dagger, because it seems plausible that a mundane character could kill a man or beast with a dagger.
• Diplomancy. Diplomatic goals and actions aren't really different in a council of village elders, a council of emperors and kings, or a council of gods. Convincing others to help you or not help your enemies is of essentially equal importance whether you are low level or high level because the potential enemies and allies can be halflings or dragons.
• Stealth. There is a maximum result from stealth: your opponents can not notice that you are there. And mundane people pull that off all the time, sometimes without even trying. Tactically, stealth has a utility that scales pretty smoothly to any possible level of play, because "getting the drop on them" is roughly speaking equivalent whether you are striking a frost jarl with a god's hammer or smacking a town guard with a half-brick in a sock.
• Research. Sometimes you need a piece of information in order to continue the plot. Finding something out, or already happening to know it for whatever reason, is entirely plausible at any level of mundanity for virtually any factoid.

There are of course many others. But in general, any ability where the criteria of "success" is scalable and plausible for someone without super powers is one which can potentially play at the same table as actual super powered characters in the hands of a mundane character. You would not be wrong to note how many of these actions are essentially "Batman" abilities. Batman can escape detection and solve the riddle and so on and so forth. Really, the character has no problem contributing to Justice League scenarios until it comes time for old fashioned punchups, where his lack of super strength and nigh invulnerability make his continued presence strain suspension of disbelief.

-Username17

[Prak]

In the vein of Batman abilities, what about Planning and Inventing?

[Username17]

In the vein of Batman abilities, what about Planning and Inventing?

"Invention" is basically a super power that is arbitrarily categorized differently than many other powers in many settings. In Lord of the Rings, you can make "stuff" that is far more powerful than any person's personal super powers are allowed to be. In Heroes, you can't.

Planning is basically diplomancy. You can have a "plan" that causes anyone to do anything that any of their super powers let them do, which makes planning arbitrarily capable of competing at the level of any super powers in the setting. The problem of course, is that any Xanatos Gambit you lay down, normally has to be given a lot of buildup in order to be credible. This means that while "planning" can compete at the level of any super powers in the setting, it can't do so very often. The guy with super strength he can use every round is still better than the super planning guy, even though the super planning guy can trick the super strength guy into destroying the dam. Because "at will" is still better than "once per episode".

-Username17

[Red_Rob]

Esssentially, you just have to pick a power level for your game and stick to it. If you want magic to be able to do the impossible easily, every character has to be able to do the impossible easily. If you want action movie heroes to be viable you need everyone to be restricted to doing things that a tough and smart guy could reasonably pull off.

[Username17]

Esssentially, you just have to pick a power level for your game and stick to it. If you want magic to be able to do the impossible easily, every character has to be able to do the impossible easily. If you want action movie heroes to be viable you need everyone to be restricted to doing things that a tough and smart guy could reasonably pull off.

This isn't remotely true. Everyone has to be able to do something "level appropriate", but those things do not have to be on the same perceived level of power or perceived level of plausibility. They have to be equally useful in the game.

Let's consider "being sneaky and good enough with a crossbow to kill a dude". That isn't very powerful at all. It's not impossible or even particularly difficult. That's seriously something a normal person could be expected to accomplish. But as long as the numbers keep up with the various defenses of your enemies, that could be a playable character for as long as the enemies are still capable of being killed by quarrels and combats are still small enough that enemies can be expected to be in crossbow range. But that can still be true when your enemies are Merlin, Shao Khan, Bavmorda, and Jafar.

If you need to be able to resist Bavmorda's "use magical spell defense or turn-to-pig lolgtfo" spell in order to have your archetype work (for example: you expect to be seen at any point while you are assaulting Bavmorda's castle), then you need to have anti-magic-magic. If you don't have it, then you have to lolgtfo because you've just been turned into a pig. But seriously, sneaky guy with a crossbow could just sneak in and shoot her in the back of the head from a tower or something. That would probably work. Sneaky guy with a crossbow can keep being relevant even after your enemies start having lolgtfo magic without actually being able to do anything supernatural himself - because the ability to sneak up and do something reasonably fatal to an opponent before they know you are there (and thus haven't had a chance to do whatever fucking reality bending bullshit they are capable of) is something which automatically is a valid throw of scissors in virtually any RPS throwdown of any conceivable power level.

Just because your enemies or the other people on your team have the ability to defy logic and reality doesn't mean that you need to be able to do that in order to compete with them. But the farther beyond physics the other super powers get, the less "mundane" shticks are viable. Sneaky crossbow guy may stay relevant against Bavmorda when Mad Martigan clearly does not, but he doesn't stay relevant in Justice League. The moment a majority of your opponents are immune (or even highly resistant) to crossbows, the whole thing falls apart. Huntress has a very hard time staying relevant in a team that has Powergirl on it. Mostly she has to justify herself with investigation and spying and computer hacking during legwork periods.

-Username17

[tussock]

Voss, representative of the audience: How excessive are you willing to let nonmagical characters be* before it's just too much?

*Before magic items or other advanced equipment.

Hi, I'm not Voss, but I am a person who didn't like the Bo9S (and 4e by extension) because the fighter's spells are all wrong. Also, the mechanics and naming conventions and stuff, but that's not the point at hand. Horrible power names. Awful. Bad for D&D. Where was I?

Right, a big part of what put me off the Bo9S is I read it in order, so the first power set I saw was Desert Wind. I got to Salamander Charge before pitching a fit and giving up on it.

Now, later, when someone convinced me to crack the book again, I found Diamond Mind, Iron Heart, Stone Dragon (conceptually if not in execution), and Tiger Claw just dandy. Even White Raven and Devoted Spirit kinda work, for shouty leader types, especially if they're divinely powered.

Shadow Hand is totally something they should just give to high level Rogues and Assassins, because they are already magical (and attached to Shadow-magic in my home stuff). They should probably be spells and use the spell slot system, but whatever.

But fuck Desert Wind. When the Gish does that stuff he's using his spells, not his swordyness, and the swordy man doesn't have spells at all. Still fills me with irrational disgust for the whole work.

You can do anything, it's just got to be fluffed so it doesn't read like what a Wizard does, or even a Cleric. You don't heal yourself, you just find more hit points, an inner reserve. You don't create a fiery sword, you just do +2 damage for a while. Don't tell me Doom Charge cloaks me in an aura of shielding-hurty darkness, just tell me I'm having a Chuck Norris moment and no one can touch this right now.

Fuck, don't call them encounter powers, say they only work against critters who haven't seen you do that trick yet today (so are effectively only once per encounter). Don't give a Fighter daily limits at all, unless it's some sort of a fatigue pool thing, combined with the once per group limit to make people use different ones if they go nova. Warblade refreshes annoy me because they aren't fluffed right: you need to take a moment to study your opponents for new ways to do the old tricks again.


I mean, the idea of replacing +4 bullrush-trip-stike combos forever with a free automatic bullrush-trip-strike once per fight is a fine one. Especially if I'm not stuck with it for life. The Bo9S and 4e powers are a good idea, it's just, I can't really re-fluff all the bad out of it all, and the mechanics kinda suck anyway.



I'd rather the plane-shifts and anti-magic was item- or site-based, even when that's not as sound of a mechanic. Some sort of a chakra limit on items is fine anyway, as are items that only bond to Fighters and totally seek you all out at level 8. No problem with magical things being magical. But if I can make my friends feel strangely confident by shouting at them, or run through walls in a way that leaves a hole in the wall and maybe hurts quite a lot, well, I'm already stabbing house-sized dragons to death and cliff-diving onto rocks for fun and profit, 's not a problem. I'm a superhero, covered in magical charms, almost impervious to harms magical and monstrous, just a mundane type.

Rant spoilered for board sanity. Too sleepy to rant well.

[Voss]

So where would you cap magic, Voss? And/or scale things?

Big question, but...

three things really have to go.

'I win' buttons, particularly when no one else has one. When one character has a 20+ round fight to whittle away at hit points, and the other just has to get the target to fail a single d20 roll, things are just fucked. Part of this is just system failure, where damage doesn't scale naturally, and hit points scale out of all sense.

Summoning shit that can functionally replace the mundane guy. It doesn't have to be a perfect match, but pocket fighters are a major problem when the fighter is right there. It is even a net benefit, because you don't have to waste resources on keeping the pocket shit in fighting trim.

Perfect skill duplication. Especially with the existence of scrolls, wands and shit, this is just ridiculous and insulting, and that they are all pretty low level effects makes it worse.

[tussock]

I quite like that game has a win-button class. Of course, AD&D had a lot of drawbacks and complications to that which made it work better. Monsters had better saves, spells could be interrupted easily, the best spells were dangerous or of dear cost to cast, and it took all of three full days to get all your spells back at high level, so casting stayed naturally rationed.

Summoning stuff tended to get you killed. Casting up rogue skills was too costly at low level and never needed once the Thief hit 95%+ on everything.

3e nerfed the mundane and boosted the casters. 3e Wizards with more spells, easy to learn, easy to cast, easy to recover, no risks, no downsides, and still every one a win button: that doesn't work. Especially not when the fighters can still miss an attack and the rogues still fail a skill check at higher levels, unlike in AD&D.

[ModelCitizen]

Perfect skill duplication. Especially with the existence of scrolls, wands and shit, this is just ridiculous and insulting, and that they are all pretty low level effects makes it worse.

If you're going to try to role-protect skills, the first step is to make sure the skills are actually good. You don't see every low-mid level wizard running around with Knock prepared, or Disguise Self, or Invisibility or Spider Climb, so clearly those spells are balanced against other spells of their level. When you then find that they're not balanced against skills, the problem is that the skills suck.

[shadzar]

Perfect skill duplication. Especially with the existence of scrolls, wands and shit, this is just ridiculous and insulting, and that they are all pretty low level effects makes it worse.

If you're going to try to role-protect skills, the first step is to make sure the skills are actually good. You don't see every low-mid level wizard running around with Knock prepared, or Disguise Self, or Invisibility or Spider Climb, so clearly those spells are balanced against other spells of their level. When you then find that they're not balanced against skills, the problem is that the skills suck.

that isnt even a problem with spells, just that the thief class has always sucked and should have never been created. he didnt exist originally, and was created as a specialist, though his "skills" that he specializes in ANYONE else can do, or should be able to. meaning the only REAL class-skill that separates the thief from other classes is "backstab"

[Aryxbez]

So what's wrong with Charles Atlas Superpowers? It's basically just the idea of the non-magical doing the magical. Maybe this "magic" or sources of power in the universe that can be tapped, are categorized as like: Arcane, Divine, Martial (Ki, BA-ness,SOULS,etc on naming conventions). So sure Arcane does rigorous Mental studies, while Martial merely does rigorous physical studies. Though there might be some overlap, that's where "rigorous" comes in, sure some Arcane person probably picked up swordsmanship, or some daily aerobics, but it's not the level of the Martial training. So what the big deal that it's being called "martial" or mundane? Can still just have it do impossible effects, even though it'll force the Conans out there to update themselves with super powers and like (make new PC altogether, or stop playing at that level).

As Avoraciopoctules has mentioned earlier about Dark Sun Psionics, idea of what is the norm, can be quite different in a world where people can and do train to "jump good", Toss houses at each other, and so on. Setting like One Piece, for example, just has dudes who train so hard, and so BA, can do such impossible feats, even though they're not called "magic".

If I'm missing something on the parameters of this discussion that I don't recall being set by Avoraciopoctules (Thread Poster) here.

[Username17]

So what's wrong with Charles Atlas Superpowers?

They get stealth nerfed all the time and when you want to use them to do something "outside the box" you can't. Basically with Charles Atlas powers you are accepting a fluff/mechanics discrepancy where the fluff is weaker than the mechanics. And that means that:

• Sometimes the MC is going to fuck you over because some nebulous "extenuating circumstance" is going to get the MC to rule based on the fluff instead of based on the mechanics, and then you are fucked.
• Sometimes you're going to want to do something that isn't explicitly defined in the mechanics, and then you are going to be the weakest link.

Charles Atlas super powers can be just as good or better than explicitly magical abilities in board games, computer games, card games, and anything else where there is no interpretation, no out-of-the-box actions, and no MC. In any open-ended storytelling scenario, Charles Atlas superpowers are underpowered by definition.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

In any open-ended storytelling scenario, Charles Atlas superpowers are underpowered by definition.

Personally, I don't think it's by definition. I think it's just the cultural inertia of Sleeping Beauty. If you were GMing a One Piece game and you said on the message boards that you didn't allow an otherwise plain-jane human to use sheer force of will to shapeshift or fly your fellow compatriots would first ask what was the power level of the game. And if you said something like 'past the CP9 arc' they would call you a control freak dick going against the spirit of the series.

Granted, One Piece isn't a perfect exemplar of the viability of Charles Atlas superpowers. Even though it's more likely than not to say 'fuck you, that's why' as to why a sword trained itself to shapeshift into an elephant, still shows some 'stuck in the past' thinking. But the fact that it exists at all makes me wonder if the Charles Atlas Superpower project can't be done.

[Avoraciopoctules]

I could see a setting where you had 2 ways to get powers, "Training" and "Magic". "Magic" powers come cheaper or can be learned faster, but have a bunch of extra ways to be countered.

So the Throw Fire power could come from meditating in a volcano for a month and paying 5 XP, and then you can punch a fireball at someone.

You get the same power for just 3 XP, but then it has the "Magic" tag and can be countered. Maybe someone throws salt in the way of your fireball, you are in a Null Mana field, or it's the Winter Solstice.

Perhaps some powers would be only available as "Training" or "Magic" tagged. Summoning a Dust Devil is caster only, say. But so long as "Training" lets you contest the summoner for control of the Dust Devil, that shouldn't tip things into being too unbalanced.

This would result in a setting where arbitrary extenuating circumstances would mess with the Magical types more than the "mundanes".

[RadiantPhoenix]

I think that one trick that would help with getting Charles Atlas superpowers accepted and understood would be to make sure that some of the more "over the top" spells are duplicated as Martial powers, and to make sure that there's a sidebar in the PHB reminding people that they do, in fact, give (approximately) the same results, and that they are intended to. (Not all powers would be duplicated, obviously, but enough for a player to easily make the case that they're intended to be just as good)

[Mask_De_H]

In any open-ended storytelling scenario, Charles Atlas superpowers are underpowered by definition.

Personally, I don't think it's by definition. I think it's just the cultural inertia of Sleeping Beauty. If you were GMing a One Piece game and you said on the message boards that you didn't allow an otherwise plain-jane human to use sheer force of will to shapeshift or fly your fellow compatriots would first ask what was the power level of the game. And if you said something like 'past the CP9 arc' they would call you a control freak dick going against the spirit of the series.

Granted, One Piece isn't a perfect exemplar of the viability of Charles Atlas superpowers. Even though it's more likely than not to say 'fuck you, that's why' as to why a sword trained itself to shapeshift into an elephant, still shows some 'stuck in the past' thinking. But the fact that it exists at all makes me wonder if the Charles Atlas Superpower project can't be done.

Lago, your examples aren't Charles Atlas Superpowers. That's power granted by the token mystical shit (Devil Fruits) or the token mystical ki analogue (Haki/Doriki to an extent). Even the purely effort-based combat system (Rokushiki) is blatantly supernatural and based on vaguely defined internal energies.

Now people will abide someone kicking so hard their leg catches fire, and people will abide being able to shoot energy from extremities, but once you get to the kind of sequence-breaking shit "traditional" magic can do, you have to up the stakes for the punchy people. Because it's all well and good if you can cut a mountain in half, but what do you do when you reach a challenge you can't reasonably cut?

It's easier to just say "fuck it, you are a swoleomancer, your power source is X" then cling to this Charles Atlas super-but-not-really chestnut. The only one stuck in the past is you, mate.

[Mistborn]

Mundane guy is a 5 level concept

Charles Atlas Superpower is a 10 level concept at the most.

Can we please grow up and stop trying to shoehorn low level concepts into high level playspace. The only way for swordguy to be on the same team as the guy who warps reality at high levels is for him to warp reality with his sword. At witch point we're just arguing semantics.

So can anyone give me a compelling reason that high level mundane types should get "mundane superpowers" instead of facing reality and having them switch to a powersource that isn't asinine.