RPG metric, simplified version

[Max_Killjoy]

What I'm seeing now in the thread is a lot of attempts to poo-poo complaints about the rules as being motivated by things other than the shortcomings or failures of the rules themselves -- that is, trying to flip the issues with the rules to be instead a character failing on the part of the person presenting the complaint.

I wish I could say I was surprised, but I've been around here for a while.

[kyoryu]

What I'm seeing now in the thread is a lot of attempts to poo-poo complaints about the rules as being motivated by things other than the shortcomings or failures of the rules themselves -- that is, trying to flip the issues with the rules to be instead a character failing on the part of the person presenting the complaint.

I wish I could say I was surprised, but I've been around here for a while.

At least for my point of view, I think that's a mischaracterization.

I think there are some rules that are just bad.

I think that there are some rules that are fine unless someone is looking to exploit them.

The existence of the second category does not mean the first doesn't exist.

[NichG]

The discussion of bad actors and bad rules moves the goalpost I think.

A metric like the ones in this thread helps to try to identify a reason why a particular group of players would find playing the way they want to play more difficult or unpleasant in some systems than others.

So yes, these metrics are not objective measures of rule goodness.

But if you're playing with someone like that, understanding that perspective should help you make gaming choices that will make that player more comfortable. Finding a gaming environment unpleasant doesn't make someone a bad actor, and the source of that unpleasantness isn't necessarily universally a 'bad rule'. But saying 'just deal with it' does nothing to recognize or empathize with that discomfort. It reads to me like saying 'I want to play with players who go out of their way to accommodate my tastes, but I don't want to have to accommodate theirs'. If they played things straight with the mechanics and ignored your setting fluff because that's how the world makes sense to them, would you be okay with them saying 'just deal with it', or would that make them 'bad actors' to you?

Every person who runs a game is a system developer and a setting designer. Even without patching the rules, you choose what system to run, what optional elements to include, what your setting looks like, what characters in the setting do, etc. And you can in fact patch rules or even just remove them.

The direction doesn't even need to be towards 'locking everything down'. Adding decorators that explain the region of validity of a rule and just say 'outside of this, results are unpredictable' could increase consistency without delineating more and more specifics. 'HP only represent the part of injury that puts you into shock - large or specifically injurious events can have specific consequences that go beyond HP damage, but are difficult to intentionally achieve against targets that are defending themselves' changes the calculus of whether Lv20 fighters should take shortcuts of casually leaping off of 200ft cliffs on their way home or whether it makes sense to ignore a guy taking you hostage with a dagger to the throat. It isn't even a rule that people at the table have to remember. And I'm not by any means saying it's perfect - I'm not going to defend details of this example - but it's a starting point you can float and see how your players respond and adjust to taste.

[PhoenixPhyre]

The discussion of bad actors and bad rules moves the goalpost I think.

A metric like the ones in this thread helps to try to identify a reason why a particular group of players would find playing the way they want to play more difficult or unpleasant in some systems than others.

So yes, these metrics are not objective measures of rule goodness.

But if you're playing with someone like that, understanding that perspective should help you make gaming choices that will make that player more comfortable. Finding a gaming environment unpleasant doesn't make someone a bad actor, and the source of that unpleasantness isn't necessarily universally a 'bad rule'. But saying 'just deal with it' does nothing to recognize or empathize with that discomfort. It reads to me like saying 'I want to play with players who go out of their way to accommodate my tastes, but I don't want to have to accommodate theirs'. If they played things straight with the mechanics and ignored your setting fluff because that's how the world makes sense to them, would you be okay with them saying 'just deal with it', or would that make them 'bad actors' to you?

Every person who runs a game is a system developer and a setting designer. Even without patching the rules, you choose what system to run, what optional elements to include, what your setting looks like, what characters in the setting do, etc. And you can in fact patch rules or even just remove them.

The direction doesn't even need to be towards 'locking everything down'. Adding decorators that explain the region of validity of a rule and just say 'outside of this, results are unpredictable' could increase consistency without delineating more and more specifics. 'HP only represent the part of injury that puts you into shock - large or specifically injurious events can have specific consequences that go beyond HP damage, but are difficult to intentionally achieve against targets that are defending themselves' changes the calculus of whether Lv20 fighters should take shortcuts of casually leaping off of 200ft cliffs on their way home or whether it makes sense to ignore a guy taking you hostage with a dagger to the throat. It isn't even a rule that people at the table have to remember. And I'm not by any means saying it's perfect - I'm not going to defend details of this example - but it's a starting point you can float and see how your players respond and adjust to taste.

I don't think I've ever said "just deal with it"...outside the context of sources of discomfort you've actively searched out[1]. If there's discomfort, fix it. But don't expect that changing the rules will always be the answer. Or even the setting. Most of the time, discomfort comes from people. And any multi-person activity requires give and take, requires realizing that a lot of things are squishy and any one of many options will work as long as we don't insist on one true way.

So it's less "just deal with it" and more "realize that some things just don't matter and change so they no longer bother you. Or change the situation and/or who you play with if they're actually a bother that makes it not worth it and the others aren't willing to accommodate your preferences." Realizing that most of what we call "bad rules" are really just symptoms of other things--those same rules in a different setting, among a different group of players, or in a different context wouldn't be so bad. Or might actually be good. Often, changing how you interpret "rules" makes all the difference; viewpoint matters.

Don't put the responsibility to change on the developers of the written rules; don't stigmatize "house rules" and "rulings" or favor RAW (and often hyper-literal interpretations of it). Find something that works for the people at the table, and the internet and forms can go hang. What someone out there thinks is utterly irrelevant if your table is having fun. Are you playing D&D (or <system X>)? Doesn't matter.

Coming back to the original point--"is it an RPG?" is an utterly useless question. Categories matter only as much as we let them. And insisting on categorization often impedes having fun. And that's the entire point of it all. Not forum discussions or "good rules" or "coherent settings" or anything else.

[1] If you went looking for discomfort and found it...well...that's on you. Not much sympathy here. Just like I don't have much sympathy for people who intentionally hammer nails into the electrical wiring in their walls, put pennies across their fuse box, or do other such things and complain when their houses burn down. No system can stop people from doing dumb things with it or finding holes--people are just that good at finding "holes", whether there's actually any hole there as far as anyone else can tell.

Edit: I've been at tables (for many games of different types) that worked well and many that didn't. And in none of those cases was the difference between working well or working poorly the rules we were using or really the game we were playing. In the only cases where changing the rules would have had any impact on the discomfort, it was because people were arguing about the rules and the only way to solve it without kicking one or both parties out would have been to completely give in to one side or the other. And that'd have only solved part of the problem. The rules weren't the problem, the rules were the battleground for people problems. I've been at a bunch more where the setting was the problem for me personally, but mainly because the setting was one of uninspired (and thus boring) or cobbled-together and flat. But I'm a self-admitted snob about settings, so it's my place to decide whether playing in the other person's setting and with that group is worth the setting not being up to my taste. Sometimes it was, sometimes it wasn't. But those were me problems, not them problems. The ones that worked well? Had people who gelled together and mostly wanted the same things or were willing to bend because they wanted to play together. Those that didn't? Had people who wanted different things and weren't willing to compromise.

People problems predominate in my experience. Rule problems tend to be extremely minor in the scope of things and real rule problems just get a side-eye "we don't like that, do we? Lets do <other thing> instead" and they're done. And are pretty rare. Setting and plot problems are common, but I find that most of them come from thinking too hard about it and expecting too much and are best just ignored unless they're critical. People problems are sticky and break up tables. But trying to fix them via other means just makes them worse, most of the time. It's at most a bandaid over a gaping chest wound.

[NichG]

I don't think I've ever said "just deal with it"...outside the context of sources of discomfort you've actively searched out[1]. If there's discomfort, fix it. But don't expect that changing the rules will always be the answer. Or even the setting. Most of the time, discomfort comes from people. And any multi-person activity requires give and take, requires realizing that a lot of things are squishy and any one of many options will work as long as we don't insist on one true way.

So it's less "just deal with it" and more "realize that some things just don't matter and change so they no longer bother you. Or change the situation and/or who you play with if they're actually a bother that makes it not worth it and the others aren't willing to accommodate your preferences." Realizing that most of what we call "bad rules" are really just symptoms of other things--those same rules in a different setting, among a different group of players, or in a different context wouldn't be so bad. Or might actually be good. Often, changing how you interpret "rules" makes all the difference; viewpoint matters.

Don't put the responsibility to change on the developers of the written rules; don't stigmatize "house rules" and "rulings" or favor RAW (and often hyper-literal interpretations of it). Find something that works for the people at the table, and the internet and forms can go hang. What someone out there thinks is utterly irrelevant if your table is having fun. Are you playing D&D (or <system X>)? Doesn't matter.

Coming back to the original point--"is it an RPG?" is an utterly useless question. Categories matter only as much as we let them. And insisting on categorization often impedes having fun. And that's the entire point of it all. Not forum discussions or "good rules" or "coherent settings" or anything else.

[1] If you went looking for discomfort and found it...well...that's on you. Not much sympathy here. Just like I don't have much sympathy for people who intentionally hammer nails into the electrical wiring in their walls, put pennies across their fuse box, or do other such things and complain when their houses burn down. No system can stop people from doing dumb things with it or finding holes--people are just that good at finding "holes", whether there's actually any hole there as far as anyone else can tell.

I agree that 'is it an RPG?' is an utterly useless question and have said so. What isn't a useless question is for someone to ask 'what is it about some games that makes me feel like I'm not playing an RPG?'. It's also useful to be able to explain one's tastes in a concrete enough way that someone who isn't you can understand them. 'Why don't you change so it no longer bothers you' is erasing that person's tastes in favor of your own, which is the same kind of pushback that Quertus rightfully got for trying to push that no one should consider 4e an RPG. It's basically the same attitude, just from the other direction.

Taste is real, and it isn't arbitrary - there's structure and causality behind it. Being able to be specific about taste is useful. Being able to explain exactly why something does matter to you when it might not matter to others at the table is useful. Being able to understand someone else whose taste differs when they explain their taste to you is useful. Being able to analyze the system, setting, table culture, etc to figure out where exactly the pain points are, and to determine if there is a compromise that would satisfy everyone is useful.

So don't erase people who say e.g. 'it fundamentally bothers me that the rules dissuade people who are good at something from contributing to it when there's someone better at it nearby' or 'it fundamentally bothers me that the smart thing to do whenever a villain opens their mouth to monologue is to shoot them before they can say a word, but our table culture is to let the villain speak'. Even if you feel those are trivial things that people could just ignore, it doesn't mean those things are trivial for everyone or that people who notice them are being bad actors. You're by no means obligated to run a game that people like that would like or to play with them in your group of course.

[Max_Killjoy]

"This rule/mechanic does not do what it says it does" or "this mechanic does not produce results within the same general range of outcomes that the in-world circumstances would lead us to expect" is not a statement of bad faith, nor does it show unwillingness to engage or whatever, on the part of the person pointing it out.

If the rule for how high a character can jump or how fast they can run or whatever... produces results that are completely out of scale for the type of character being depicted... calling that a failed mechanic doesn't make someone a bad person, and telling them "oh that doesn't matter just deal with it" doesn't solve any of the problems, with the rules themselves or with the mismatched expectations between various players that are possibly going on at the table.

[kyoryu]

"This rule/mechanic does not do what it says it does" or "this mechanic does not produce results within the same general range of outcomes that the in-world circumstances would lead us to expect" is not a statement of bad faith, nor does it show unwillingness to engage or whatever, on the part of the person pointing it out.

If the rule for how high a character can jump or how fast they can run or whatever... produces results that are completely out of scale for the type of character being depicted... calling that a failed mechanic doesn't make someone a bad person, and telling them "oh that doesn't matter just deal with it" doesn't solve any of the problems, with the rules themselves or with the mismatched expectations between various players that are possibly going on at the table.

Agreed, so long as the rule is being used with reasonable inputs.

If that is happening because someone has changed some of the numbers used by the mechanic outside the normal expected range due to some improbably combination of rules widgets? Then it's an edge case and you just say "no, don't do that."

If that is happening with reasonable inputs, within reasonable bounds? Then it is a bad mechanic and should be fixed.

If the normal expected Athletics skill is like 15-20, and someone manages to jack it up to 45 and the math gets wonky? I don't necessarily consider that a "failed" mechanic. But if it produces insane numbers at 19 (or, frankly, even 25)? Then, yeah, fix your broken rule.

[Telok]

I'd also posit that not having a rule (or only having partial rules) for a common in-game occurance is a negative instead of a positive.

As examples: Starfinder had (early on, may have been solved in the last few years) a spaceship upgrade for adding door locks that increased the DC to hack the doors on the ship, but no rule on what the base DC was. Dungeons the Dragoning 40k has a "expert tracker" feat and a "heightened senses" feat, but no rules or guidelines on tracking or perception. D&D 5e has, as mentioned, nothing about running in combat instead of the "combat jog" speed.

As always a DM can butt-pull a number or house ruke or something. But many (personal experience, not including experienced forum hounds) either aren't comfortable with just making up numbers without some base/guideline number or choose wildly off numbers if they haven't analyzed & internalized the system's math. Like with D&D 5e jumping past the strength score where it just says "can go further with a check", I"ve seen extra jumping distance answers from "yes", "no", DC 10+total distance, to DC 15+additional distance. Sometimes with different answers from the same DM and sometimes with different DMs differing on the same jumping distance.

And the result of that has been players not doing those actions (ex: nobody ever retreats from a fight because movement is invariant making escape impossible), DMs not allowing the actions (ex: a 5e DM ruling no jumping past the base distance at all), and people stopping playing the game (ex: had a DM rage quit two games, different systems, over players "trying crap over and beyond the rules"). None of which is good for the game, players, or any attempts to roleplay & match fiction to rules.

[Witty Username]

I thought 5e running was the dash action?

[Telok]

I thought 5e running was the dash action?

Good question. Math check time.
60 feet * 10 rounds/min *60 min/hr is... 36000 feet/hr is... 6.82 mph...

That right?

Feels right. When I was working 3 mi away and walking/biking I could do it in about 30 min alternating a fast walk & short runs. Wasn't athletic then, but also unencumbered except steel toe boots & a heavy coat.

[icefractal]

Seems a bit slow for a maximum - "the six minute mile" isn't easy, but a lot of people can do it. Certainly, I'd expect an athletic type with high Con to be able to do it. And that's 10 mph.

TBF, this is somewhat off in other editions too. In 3E, running hits a bit better pace (~14 mph), but you can only maintain it for a fairly short time, nowhere near six minutes. If we assume a very fit person (Con 15, so the best in the elite array) and average results on the Con checks, they can run for 18 rounds. Assuming the rest is hustling, that's a 7-8 minute mile - worse than I'd expect out of someone notably above average in fitness.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Seems a bit slow for a maximum - "the six minute mile" isn't easy, but a lot of people can do it. Certainly, I'd expect an athletic type with high Con to be able to do it. And that's 10 mph.

TBF, this is somewhat off in other editions too. In 3E, running hits a bit better pace (~14 mph), but you can only maintain it for a fairly short time, nowhere near six minutes. If we assume a very fit person (Con 15, so the best in the elite array) and average results on the Con checks, they can run for 18 rounds. Assuming the rest is hustling, that's a 7-8 minute mile - worse than I'd expect out of someone notably above average in fitness.

Do a six minute mile carrying 100 lbs of gear, over broken terrain, without modern gear (especially shoes). Note that (in 5e) an average person can carry 149 lbs before slowing down at all. And that gear isn't nicely strapped to you (no modern inner-frame backpacks with integral latches and supports and ...) but jangling all around.

Average "metrics" of athletic performance have generally increased, mostly due to better training and (especially) gear. Modern shoes make a huge difference when running, for instance. And runners generally are specialized at that--the body-builder isn't likely to be doing 6-minute miles on a regular basis, nor is the nerd. Similarly with lifting--doing a deadlift in a gym, on a proper floor, with proper gear and a proper barbell, under competition standards, is very different than lifting that statue on a cracked stone floor in pre-modern shoes, when you're not focused on those movements. The musculature built up by a swordsman or archer is going to necessarily be quite different than that of a powerlifter.

Specifically, the rules presume adventuring situations. They're not physics; they're "adventurers can do X unless they have something special". Things like "running a footrace in proper modern shoes and gear on a track" just aren't part of D&D's intended scope. Should they be? YMMV. But that's not really applicable to the adventuring scope. Any system will break down at the edges; the only question is "what are the edges" and "is this situation near the edges".

Edit: oh, and nutrition. The runners I know (including my family) stress that how you eat (and hydrate) makes a huge difference. Adventurers out in the field aren't eating carefully balanced things and drinking all their properly measured amounts of water, getting their right rest, etc. The rules present what you can do even when you only slept 6 hours (on a rough field bed), ate trail rations and drank...mostly enough. Which is not exactly race conditions.

[Telok]

Specifically, the rules presume adventuring situations. They're not physics; they're "adventurers can do X unless they have something special". Things like "running a footrace in proper modern shoes and gear on a track" just aren't part of D&D's intended scope.

Thats why I think all the fussing about modern runners is missing the point. D&D by the rules doesn't care about shoes, nutrition, or balanced loads. You can run & jump just as well in track shoes & shorts as in 50 lb. lead boots and a woven gold wire evening gown + corset. And by those same rules the modern athelete gets to dash the same 60' as the 8 str, 8 dex, 140 lb carrying wizard and the 20 str, 20 dex, expert athlete fighter. If you want anything in between the combat jog & "miles per day overland", then you get to use any numbers the DM makes up.

The effect of having nothing for in combat movement other than the standard combat jog, that I've seen, is a total inability to move faster than move+dash and therefore a total inability to run away from anything. Basically the rules don't say you can so DMs say you can't because it would break the golden calf of balance.

[kyoryu]

Thats why I think all the fussing about modern runners is missing the point. D&D by the rules doesn't care about shoes, nutrition, or balanced loads. You can run & jump just as well in track shoes & shorts as in 50 lb. lead boots and a woven gold wire evening gown + corset. And by those same rules the modern athelete gets to dash the same 60' as the 8 str, 8 dex, 140 lb carrying wizard and the 20 str, 20 dex, expert athlete fighter. If you want anything in between the combat jog & "miles per day overland", then you get to use any numbers the DM makes up.

The effect of having nothing for in combat movement other than the standard combat jog, that I've seen, is a total inability to move faster than move+dash and therefore a total inability to run away from anything. Basically the rules don't say you can so DMs say you can't because it would break the golden calf of balance.

I don't think retreating should be handled by standard in-combat movement anyway, so....

[PhoenixPhyre]

I don't think retreating should be handled by standard in-combat movement anyway, so....

I agree. At that point you do one of
a) let them go (no rules needed)
b) if you're going to chase them and (fictional) speeds are roughly the same, move the battlefield but stay at "normal" speeds
c) transition to chase rules (which balance different needs and so have different values than in-combat movement)

Trying to stay "in combat" while also doing things that need very different parameters seems fraught with peril. Rules aren't universe simulation tools. It's fine if it's a patchwork. At least in my mind.

[Telok]

I agree. At that point you do one of
a) let them go (no rules needed)
b) if you're going to chase them and (fictional) speeds are roughly the same, move the battlefield but stay at "normal" speeds
c) transition to chase rules (which balance different needs and so have different values than in-combat movement)

Trying to stay "in combat" while also doing things that need very different parameters seems fraught with peril. Rules aren't universe simulation tools. It's fine if it's a patchwork. At least in my mind.

Yeah, probably good enough for most small maps, people on foot, & near ranges. I think this whole thing may be suffering from D&D's binary nature (and screwing up calvary again). Its all on/off, hit/miss, perfect health/dying. When everyone gets default lumped into combat time & combat speed without any sort of official allowance for some people not fighting... yeah, I've seen how being used to D&D "all fight, no running" can cause problems.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Yeah, probably good enough for most small maps, people on foot, & near ranges. I think this whole thing may be suffering from D&D's binary nature (and screwing up calvary again). Its all on/off, hit/miss, perfect health/dying. When everyone gets default lumped into combat time & combat speed without any sort of official allowance for some people not fighting... yeah, I've seen how being used to D&D "all fight, no running" can cause problems.

The curse of caring about specific ranges (ie things measured in concrete ranges) rather than abstract "zones" is that dealing with a wide range of battlefield sizes gets...cumbersome. On the flip side, it allows different play. Tradeoffs, tradeoffs everywhere.

[Max_Killjoy]

Agreed, so long as the rule is being used with reasonable inputs.

If that is happening because someone has changed some of the numbers used by the mechanic outside the normal expected range due to some improbably combination of rules widgets? Then it's an edge case and you just say "no, don't do that."

If that is happening with reasonable inputs, within reasonable bounds? Then it is a bad mechanic and should be fixed.

If the normal expected Athletics skill is like 15-20, and someone manages to jack it up to 45 and the math gets wonky? I don't necessarily consider that a "failed" mechanic. But if it produces insane numbers at 19 (or, frankly, even 25)? Then, yeah, fix your broken rule.

I'd say that there's a problem if the mechanic breaks with scores too far outside of range... and it's possible to get scores that far outside of range in the first place.

In your example, it shouldn't be possible to get a score of 45.

Either the rules have a fault that allows this, or the players have deliberately gone out of bounds.

[kyoryu]

I'd say that there's a problem if the mechanic breaks with scores too far outside of range... and it's possible to get scores that far outside of range in the first place.

In your example, it shouldn't be possible to get a score of 45.

Either the rules have a fault that allows this, or the players have deliberately gone out of bounds.

Both. The flaw has to exist, and players need to take advantage of it. And yes, it seems we are in agreement.

I do think that those things are fairly common, though, especially in systems with fairly crunchy, deck-building, "put these widgets together" style character creation. The combinatorial complexity is just so huge that it can be really difficult to find all of the exploits, especially after content is released for years.

Even in that case, it's still a flaw in the rules, even if near unavoidable. But that flaw in the rules is just better handled, I think, with "don't do that."

if a core rule produces bad results outside of that kind of thing? Yes, it's a bad rule and should be fixed. However, i think the former is a lot more common.

[Telok]

I'd say that there's a problem if the mechanic breaks with scores too far outside of range... and it's possible to get scores that far outside of range in the first place.

In your example, it shouldn't be possible to get a score of 45.

Either the rules have a fault that allows this, or the players have deliberately gone out of bounds.

Depends on the game & intent.

A supers game where 'normal humie' is d?+ 15 to 25 and super strength is d?+ 45 is fine. Something D&D-like where the 45 is a bery temporary & limited spell or high end martial ability with a drawback that keeps it not being always on, thats fine. Something like 5e D&D where its totally unintended for PCs to get there but a grneric caster can nab it for several hours each day with no downsides? Then it will a problem because the entire system was designed for bounds but someone wrote something out of bounds.

Generally anything in keeping with the system intent & matching fiction will be OK even if it "breaks the math". If the fiction & intent are for occasional (or even constant) use of super stats then its probably fine that someone goes off the charts on occasion. It would be better to account for it in the system, but as long as the game flexes enough to keep playing & funning then no problems.

The problem is usually D&D where someone writes a strength 45, cr 2, triple attacking dinosaur with hands, and then it gets into multi-hour druid windshape & wizard polymorph at mid-level. And then you just get sad fighters & confused adventure writers & unhappy DMs who weren't expecting Dr. Strange characters all up in thier Conan adventures.

[PhoenixPhyre]

The problem is usually D&D where someone writes a strength 45, cr 2, triple attacking dinosaur with hands, and then it gets into multi-hour druid windshape & wizard polymorph at mid-level. And then you just get sad fighters & confused adventure writers & unhappy DMs who weren't expecting Dr. Strange characters all up in thier Conan adventures.

Agreed. Which is one reason I really don't like effects that allow monster-book diving (polymorph, wildshape, etc). I allow them, but curate the lists.

[kyoryu]

Agreed. Which is one reason I really don't like effects that allow monster-book diving (polymorph, wildshape, etc). I allow them, but curate the lists.

Monster-diving is especially egregious because monsters aren't usually written with an eye towards balance as PCs, since they're, well, monsters.

But really any kind of book-diving can lead to these issues. It's just a combinatorial complexity issue.

[Max_Killjoy]

Depends on the game & intent.

A supers game where 'normal humie' is d?+ 15 to 25 and super strength is d?+ 45 is fine. Something D&D-like where the 45 is a bery temporary & limited spell or high end martial ability with a drawback that keeps it not being always on, thats fine. Something like 5e D&D where its totally unintended for PCs to get there but a grneric caster can nab it for several hours each day with no downsides? Then it will a problem because the entire system was designed for bounds but someone wrote something out of bounds.

Generally anything in keeping with the system intent & matching fiction will be OK even if it "breaks the math". If the fiction & intent are for occasional (or even constant) use of super stats then its probably fine that someone goes off the charts on occasion. It would be better to account for it in the system, but as long as the game flexes enough to keep playing & funning then no problems.

The problem is usually D&D where someone writes a strength 45, cr 2, triple attacking dinosaur with hands, and then it gets into multi-hour druid windshape & wizard polymorph at mid-level. And then you just get sad fighters & confused adventure writers & unhappy DMs who weren't expecting Dr. Strange characters all up in thier Conan adventures.

A literal "supers game" system should take the entire range of possible scores and results into account. Scale matters.

But yeah, the problem I keep seeing with D&D is that there's a paucity of effort put into knowing how the pieces can go together.

[KorvinStarmast]

Specifically, the rules presume adventuring situations. They're not physics; they're "adventurers can do X unless they have something special". Things like "running a footrace in proper modern shoes and gear on a track" just aren't part of D&D's intended scope. Should they be? YMMV. But that's not really applicable to the adventuring scope. Any system will break down at the edges; the only question is "what are the edges" and "is this situation near the edges".

Edit: oh, and nutrition.

Wait, Iron Rations are not good sports nutrition? Who knew!

I think this whole thing may be suffering from D&D's binary nature (and screwing up calvary again).

Mounted combat didn't get the love it needed, yeah.

Agreed. Which is one reason I really don't like effects that allow monster-book diving (polymorph, wildshape, etc). I allow them, but curate the lists.

As do I, likewise with summoning: pre agree a few packages so that play does not slow down.