Are Mechanics Physics

Cursory examination quickly causes this thesis to fall apart. For example, every soldier in Creation does not have Dexterity 5, Melee 5.

This is insane.

These people will go out and fight other soldiers. That's what they do for a living. If they are unsuccessful in this endeavor, even once, they will die. They'll probably die horribly, of sepsis. At best, they'll likely be crippled for life. So it behooves them to be as good at their job as humanly possible. Because if they're not, they'll die as soon as they meet someone better. Hell. They'll die if they're not good enough to deal with a target shield.

It's utter madness for them to raise anything other than those two traits, until they're maxed.

Instead your average soldier in Creation has, I dunno, Dex 3, Melee 3? Do they not care? Do they not want to live? Of course they want to live. So why no Melee 5? Abilities aren't that expensive.

Well, they're just not that good.

This would be a tautological mess, except that the game rules aren't a physics simulation. There's no rule saying "if you just don't have a knack for it, you can't raise a trait past this level." And yet, they don't go past 3.

This is not because of the rules screwing up their behavior, or their behavior screwing up the rules. It's the rules expressing, "these guys are soldiers of middling talent. They're not bad, and they have decent Drill even; but they're also no Musashi, even if some of them wish they were."

Likewise, your PC can invent a new Charm within whatever span of time the corebook provides for inventing a new Charm, because that seems about balanced and fair for the game. This is not the universal invention rate across Creation. It took the Solars decades, maybe centuries, to figure out how to do Extended Life Prana—not a few weeks. They ran into dead ends. They got stumped for years. They went off down bad development paths. This is not reflected in the rules but certainly exists in the setting.

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