"OK. What about the same story, but instead of bows, spears, and daggers, it is Stunners, Ganglia Zappers, and Plasma Blasters? These things are fake. No one has the knowledge for assigning relative difficulties or credibility tests and no one can look it up. It has to be stat'ed out, at least in basic terms, by the GM."
What genre are you playing? If it's Space Opera the credibility test is could Han Solo do it? If you don't know watch more Star Wars or read more E.E. Smith. Not a lot of need to stat out weapons.
If it's hard Sci-fi, would it happen in an Asimov story? Credibility here is based more around whether someone can come up with something that doesn't sound like it would violate the laws of physics as things don't tend to in his stories.
You can even have multiple genres in the same game world. Characters in Glorantha can be low life (read more Oliver Dickinson) without super powers at one extreme or scare Gods for lunch (read more Celtic myths). So the point here is: Does the player's description of what their character invoke some emotional response in you? Whether it's "I can see that..."
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