Changing the "Caster beats Mundane" paradigm

[Cluedrew]

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Either way, a level 20 fighter (or equivalent) should be able to be impossible or fantastic without being magical. The thing that really has me stumped is why people refuse that possibility. Anyone know?

There are multiple reasons, depending on which subset of these people you're talking of.
[...] 1) people who want to play realistic humans and aren't interested in a game where their characters leave that category.
[...] 2) people with ill-realized or conflicting desires. They want a character that is realistically human. They also want a character that can keep up with impossible badasses. These people cannot be pleased untill you get them to drop one of their desires or find a working synthesis of them.
[...] 3) people whose verisimilitude is broken when dude who is not wearing a funny hat, waving a wand and growing a beard (etc.) does something fantastic.
[...] 4) people who want to play a game based on specific work of fiction, where fantastic fighters aren't a thing, but some other type of fantastic characters are. These people get sad if fighters break the rules of their favored fictionland.

For the most part, my thought in in general is "but then why are you playing D&D?"

First off I should clarify what I think D&D is supposed to be about. Its the everything fantasy RPG, it tracks the "zero-to-hero" (actually, I have some questions about the zero part) journey of about a dozen different archetypes from their humble beginnings to the best X in the world. What is X? Whatever you want it to be. At high levels it is supposed to be the setting where the epic fighter teams up with the epic rogue and takes on the epic wizard and the epic monk. Now maybe that isn't what they were trying to do, and that would explain why they are so far off sometimes, but that is the feel I get.

With that in mind my general feeling about each of the four groups:

1. They want E6, that is the feeling D&D provides at low levels. Ideally just recognize the cut off and stop there.
2. Special case of 1, that realizes what trying to play that low level game in D&D will entail and doesn't like it. Or maybe doesn't realize and is surprized when it happens. I'm not entirely sure.
3. Ars Magica. Go play it. Seriously it sounds exactly what they are asking for.
4. Umm... This one I can't conveniently point at the system that you should be playing instead. If you lucky there is a system for it, otherwise try GURPS, FATE or some other generic system that can be adapted to your particular setting. D&D don't have a particular setting, but it isn't generic either.

There is also some people who argue against the idea of fantastic fighters, but they might just be over applying their particular disinterest.

What I'm refusing is the idea that you can have a setting in which all three of the following are true:

• Fighters can do things that are fantastic or impossible from the POV of our reality.
• Those things are also fantastic from the POV of the fictional reality; that is, they're something special and reserved for a handful of "special" persons.
• Fighters are not "magical" in that setting. (Note that "magic" DOES NOT MEAN "spellcasting".)

I defiantly want one (not all the time, but for here) but the other two I have questions about. Essentially what does special and magical mean? Is Tony Stark magical because he is the only one who can get the Iron Man suit working? He may not be a fighter, but he is defiantly not a wizard.

If a Fighter ''must not use magic'', then what ''must'' a Wizard ''not'' use?

Well I tend to blend the two myself, but if we examine the two archetypes I would say anything that requires physical strength, coordination or endurance. You ever wonder why it takes Spell level + 1d6 pages, or whatever it was when they tracked that, to write out a spell? Because their hand writing is just that bad and inconsistent, you would think they have Parkinson's. OK, only the first and last sentence of this paragraph were meant seriously, but I hope I have gotten my point across.