Her card's infamous for having a P/T that doesn't line up with her creature type. What about others like:

Surrak, Caller of the Hunt
Surrak Dragonclaw
Cabal Patriarch
Phage the Untouchable
Tasigur, the Golden Fang
Anafenza the Foremost

They all seem pretty big for humans. Thoughts?

Seton, Krosan Protector was introduced as a hulking mountain of muscle towering over even Kamahl.

Anafenza and Surrak aren't really problems in my eyes. 4/4 is big for a human, but not impossible. Especially not if she is summoned alongside her chariot. 6/6 is gigantic, but maybe Surrak Dragonclaw is huffed upon some strength enhancing magic on his card?

Combat skill and some magical abilities go a long way to justifying and p/t. It's only really a problem, in my eyes at least, when the lore explicitly describes people as wimpy who are then portrayed as hugely powerful (Emmara) or as immensely powerful only to be given wimpy cards (Seton).

Yeah the thing with Emmara is that basically nothing about her in Return to Ravnica jived with her character in Agents of Artifice.

I mean I can probably dig up the threads honestly but it really boils down to her having a ridiculous set of stats ON TOP OF an elemental creating ability that wasn't really her thing in previous materials ON TOP OF suddenly being Selesnya again ON TOP OF there actually BEING a freaking Selesnya at all ON TOP OF suddenly having a thing for Jace despite previously being like lolnope humans r gros

I don't think it's really accurate to say that she's infamous for having weird stats vs creature type... she has weird stats and literally everything else vs her established character.

Now Teysa is infamous for having weird freaking stats.

Emmara and that elemental switched places at the last minute, so she was meant to be smaller or something.

That was my impression of it, yeah -- that Emmara was singled out because there was a metric ******-tonne of weirdness surrounding the character and her presence in the situation of Ravnica, which was also weird.

I think Surrak is completely excusable because he punched a freakin' dragon in the face. That kind of style adds a couple of power/toughness points to a person.

I recently been looking at Mikaeus, the Unhallowed for making an EDH deck for a friend's birthday and a 5/5 seems a bit high for someone who's pretty much an undead pope, who's mostly into helping other people.

I would just explain it as undead strength, or maybe his holy powers transferred into death.

From a flavor standpoint, the Patriarch could literally kill with a touch.

Phage was the corrupted Planeswalker Jeska, before her spark ignited. Before that she was a Pit Fighter. She deserves to be a 4/4.

She also had the most potent deathtouch of all touches to cause death.

Surrak OHKO a Dargon.

The only one on that list that I really think is awkward there is Tasigur. And his card was more design than flavor.

Also, that said, designers have don't always align creature stats with their flavor. They have been doing a LOT better with this lately, but there are still awkward exceptions.

My question is: is it okay to translate a character's magical prowess into creature stats?

Unless it is direct offensive magic, magical ability should be represented with activated or triggered abilities.
If p/t is supposed to be some sort of political power or ability to manipulate others, it should translate as token bodies.

Yeah it feels kind of weird that suddenly it's supposed to represent having political influence when like it 99% of the time... doesn't? I think the only time I've ever seen it described that way actually is right here in this discussion, whenever it comes up I mean--it's always in relation to Emmara and Teysa.

Of course that said I'm not actually opposed to it... I just think that if that's going to be the new status quo it needs to be, you know, the actual new status quo. 4/8 advisors for everybody!

Thinking about this a little deeper, I think this is one of those things that stems from the Acceptable Power and Toughness Range being pretty small. I didn't do any math about it, but the APTR runs from a 0/1 to a 6/6 or so, but that's a very small range. If you want to show a character as being physically impressive or strong or something, you are putting a human into elephant or dragon territory really quickly. If the APTR went from a 0/1 to a 10/10, you could have 5/5 humans without too much trouble, because dragons would be 9/9s.

That doesn't excuse Emmara, but it could solve some minor problems on this front.

There's also the thing were playing a 5 or 6 mana 1/1 or 2/2 feels really bad, so if they want to give a certain character a cool static ability (like Mikaus or Teysa) it needs to cost a certain amount of mana. Being a 2/2, however, makes your cool creature really vulnerable to removal. It's outrageously easy to get rid of any 2/2 because two damage or giving creatures -2/-2 is somewhat of an upper limit for repeatable low-cost effects.

I think Toughness could maybe swerve a little higher (for removal's sake) without it feeling too off... Toughness has always felt a little more abstract to me than Power and seems to account more for a will to survive.

I assume Tasigur is actually followed by two dozen undead retainers when you summon him.

Nah, just the one, super charged with the power of potassium!
Because it has a banana on its head.

My take on the Tarkir folk is that living on a plane like that makes you a bit hardier than someone from, say, Ulgrotha or Mercadia (well, the humans living atop the mountain to be specific). But, like Barinellos, I always felt magical prowess is best communicated through activated abilities.

Yeah. While I was typing up my post I was thinking about my previous commander, Momir and how I didn't like his stats from a mechanical standpoint, even if they make sense for the character, but how I don't mind the rather high toughness on my current commander, Vorel. Toughness seems to get higher before it looks completely off. And I guess this makes some amount of sense. People have survived encounters with wild animals that they had no chance of killing without weapons.



I kinda feel if that is the explanation, he should just create Zombie tokens.



Doesn't this explain too much? And it doesn't quite explains why Tarkir folk is way stronger than anyone else, but Zendikari or people from Jund aren't.

Surrak is explicity mentioned as being VERY tall for a human.

We're talking Garruk stats, here, and Garruk is over 8 feet.
I think it's more interesting that he's weaker in the dragon timeline. I'll bet Atarka found his strength unsettling, and deliberately "taught him wrong" or some such to keep him on a leash.

So does that mean normal humans p/t range makes them about 2 foot tall?

No, just that the "average" human in Dominia is probably in the 5-6 foot range in average shape without years of military training/murderpunching dragons in the face to beef up their stats.