Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy

[Psyren]

Do I have to repeat my question again? Because if your going to be unhelpful and not answer it straight...

If you're going to throw a tantrum and block the whole forum then just do it. But it doesn't change the fact that magic items are still a form of magic, and the Fighter class does not function at high levels in D&D without them.

And no, those teams don't contribute "equally." They do all contribute. Black Widow is not 1v1-ing Thanos, but she's the one who gets the scepter from Loki or who backstabs Proxima Midnight so that Scarlet Witch can take on Ebony Maw without being distracted. Contributing does not have to mean contributing equally.

[Lord Raziere]

If you're going to throw a tantrum and block the whole forum then just do it. But it doesn't change the fact that magic items are still a form of magic, and the Fighter class does not function at high levels in D&D without them.

And no, those teams don't contribute "equally." They do all contribute. Black Widow is not 1v1-ing Thanos, but she's the one who gets the scepter from Loki or who backstabs Proxima Midnight so that Scarlet Witch can take on Ebony Maw without being distracted. Contributing does not have to mean contributing equally.

Your the one not answering my question. I have been having civil conversation with all the people who do answer them instead this constant loop of "but world-building" "yeah bu-" "no world-building!" "there are other things to think about and not everything is about that-" "No worldbuilding!!!".
I feel like I'm being led around in a circle and talking to walls. I'm just trying to focus the conversation and see if you can stay on topic.

instead, your claiming "I'm throwing a tantrum" and not giving me any answers, just like your not giving AntiAuthority any answers. I thought you could be reasonable and answer a straight question.

I gave Max three chances for his answer to not be something rude, stubborn to give me a straight answer instead of trailing off into various other unrelated topics around his worldbuilding focus and to engage in good faith. he didn't do that. guess I was setting myself up for disappointment. oh well. that happens sometimes.

So are you going actually engage instead of trying this tantrum nonsense? Who I block or don't is none of your business. and whether its a good idea or not for me to do so, is also none of your business. So you are we going to actually discuss this topic, or are you going to trying and paint me as having a tantrum? Please not the latter?

As for superhero universes, they are equality incarnate. and really? no one 1v1's Thanos. because he is a big bad villain. thats why all the fights were team efforts. no one 1v1's him, thats why its equal.

[Psyren]

I did answer you. Do you agree that magic items are a form of magic? Do you agree that D&D expects high-level Fighters to have them? If not, why not?

And there are characters that can 1v1 Thanos. Both Captain Marvel and Scarlet Witch did it. Stormbreaker Thor as well, before he got depressed and out of shape. They are demonstrably not on the same tier as folks like Black Widow and Hawkeye. That doesn't make those latter two characters useless, or not Avengers.

Or if you don't care for comic book examples, how about the ur-example of an adventuring party, the Fellowship of the Ring? Do you think the hobbits were the same "tier" as Gandalf? As Aragorn? As Legolas?

[NNescio]

Or if you don't care for comic book examples, how about the ur-example of an adventuring party, the Fellowship of the Ring? Do you think the hobbits were the same "tier" as Gandalf? As Aragorn? As Legolas?

But Gandalf was the DMPC.

[Florian]

@Lord Raziere:

One thing has already been mentioned, which is breaking down "magic" and redistributing it. Psyren is right to point out that in a very flawed way, that is already happening, taking the form of magic items and the WBL chart. Problem is two-fold here, because
a) On the mechanical side, all classes gain the same WBL, but again, caster class get more benefits out of it.
b) On the emotional side, WBLmancy is, again, an external power source that doesn't really mesh with "might" or "skill".

One possible solution is to go the Fate route and relegate everything to just being fluff covering conflict resolution mechanics.

[Lord Raziere]

I did answer you. Do you agree that magic items are a form of magic? Do you agree that D&D expects high-level Fighters to have them? If not, why not?

And there are characters that can 1v1 Thanos. Both Captain Marvel and Scarlet Witch did it. Stormbreaker Thor as well, before he got depressed and out of shape. They are demonstrably not on the same tier as folks like Black Widow and Hawkeye. That doesn't make those latter two characters useless, or not Avengers.

Or if you don't care for comic book examples, how about the ur-example of an adventuring party, the Fellowship of the Ring? Do you think the hobbits were the same "tier" as Gandalf? As Aragorn? As Legolas?

Yes they are form of magic. what is expected is that fighters have a lot of wealth. it does not necessarily mean thats what they spend their wealth UPON, even if its the vast majority of things available.

All true, but consider this:
thats all writing. not roleplaying. the author can guarantee such narrative role protection of usefulness. the game cannot if people are unequal. these people were useful because they weren't simulated, just as Thanos didn't get actually beaten by either Scarlet Witch or Marvel, because if they did, then why did anyone even show up? these are narrative stories and no matter how much you cite the simulated world portions of them, the weaker ones are consistently held up by narrative things guaranteeing that they get to be useful. the only difference between DnD and say Fate, is that Dnd expects this narrative burden on the GM, refusing to codify or acknowledge it. where Fate does and makes sure that narrative protection is there.

look at the solutions of "lots of things to kill" or "lots of anti-magic fields" or "engineer various situations where it turns out the fighter is useful"- all of these are narrative solutions, warping the world around the party to fit their talents artificially. it doesn't hold up to any idea of world-building at all, because you have actively change the world to fit the character rather than building the world so that a badass normal character already fits into it without needing to make special challenges they can do for them.

similarly look at the Lord of the Rings: given how similar in mentality all the races are, there should be no actual reason why anyone can't carry the Ring and throw it into mount doom with enough discipline and sense, a hobbit is just designated the special one who can because tolkien wanted it that way. so that is held up a lot by narrative. it would not work for an rpg. how lucky that these four small people decided to come along and turned out to be more vital to stopping all this than a freaking wizard-angel.

an equal team is just whats sane to make sure a campaign doesn't devolve into the narrative forces that some people hate so much just in a GM form without the mechanics, or get taken over by some people who are more powerful than others because they can setting/system-exploit to the max without the vital narrative protections. so I'm just acknowledging whats already there. DnD isn't, and lays it all on the GM, whether they realize it or not, whether they believe what they do is a narrative or not. if you set up your dungeon so that it just so happens they have the solution to it with their spells they picked out before you made the dungeon.....sorry dude! thats a narrative solution, just in reverse! an invisible one that Dnd players don't want to look at.

if you roll completely random and such with everything, telling what threats really there regardless of their level and roll for everything on the tables and still have fun, great, you can wear that particular badge for whatever pride it gives you. for everyone else, there are strings being pulled, and this does not concern you, for I am not concerned with pure random roll sandbox campaigns, because thats the only way your avoiding narrative ANYTHING, even if there is no narrative mechanics involved.

[Satinavian]

All action heroes constantly suffer injuries that should be fatal or debilitating, and certainly would leave bigger wounds than are shown on-screen. They run farther and faster than any human body ever could during chase scenes. They easily take on dozens of simultaneous foes when even the best-trained fighters in real life are unlikely to win a 1v2 against average adults. They fire guns with robotic accuracy.

Nobody cares because that's just how stories work. Certain ways of bending reality strike us as intuitive; others stand out to us as nonsensical. Some of that distinction is based on how humans perceive the world, but a lot of it is just based on genre.

Honestly i really hate when they do that.

I mean, i can live with robotic accuracy (lucky shots are possible and you can have a couple in a row) and fighting against multiple opponents successfully has been done often enough historically. But when a human in an action movie shows clearly superhuman strength or speed i dislike that quite a lot. And if they get serious/fatal injuries and don't behave like they have them, it annoys me enough that i tend to lose any interest in the rest of the movie/story because i can't bring together enouggh suspension of disbelief anymore to actually care what happens in the fiction next.

Now, if the person in question is clearly and explicitely not a real world human and instead e.g. a vampire, i can forgive all of that and enjoy the show.

Now my dislike for certain kinds of action movies because of versimilitude is not shared by everyone. But i would certainly oppose moves to make the fantasy RPGs i take part in more like those.

I also don't like the superhero genre very much because of the plethora of plot holes and the tendency to have every kind of plot come down to some form of fisticuffs and also having a plethora of powerful powers with tremendous utility and mostly only exploring how to fight with them. But i have not really any problems to port certain superheros and their powers into fantasy RPGs if their origin gets updated to fit the world. Only the superhero genre conventions have to stay out.

[Morty]

It's not really in question that the intent for high-level D&D was for wizards/mages and other full casters to be the real heroes while their sidekicks (fighters, rogues et al) get cleanup duty or do things that the heroes are too distracted to do. What is in question is whether or not this is a good idea and what to do about it if it isn't. But it has been in question for more than a decade now and there seems no solution that people would actually agree on.

As far as superhero movies or LotR go - Hawkeye, Black Widow or Pippin don't have players who can feel upset or sidelined by their characters' role. A high-level fighter or rogue do, so the comparison is pretty flawed on the outset. LotR is a story about how a common hobbit's good heart and fierce loyalty, rather than the strength of arms or magic, won the day. That's not likely to happen in a TTRPG.

It's also true that D&D non-casters become superhuman (superelven, superdwarven, etc.) fairly quickly, but they do so in such a way that allows people to deny it and insist they're mundane and should stay this way.

[Lorsa]

I disagree.

I repeat my question, you have a third time to answer, make it count, there won't be fourth:
how do you make a nonmagical fighter useful? Assuming DnD setting at level 20 and discarding all others.

It's from the last previous page but...

This post makes you sound as if you are a school teacher trying to question a student on a very simply question during an exam or something like it.

If you disagree, why not explain how you would make the nonmagical fighter useful? Right now you got an answer which was essentially "you can't, but if you really want to try you need to XYZ". Your response was "I disagree, try again". What sort of reply is that? It seems to me as though you are looking for a very specific answer from others, rather than just providing the answer you want yourself.

I mean, you asked how to make a nonmagical fighter useful to someone called Max(imum?)_killjoy, and then got upset when they were a killjoy?

Your question also has some problems that might make it hard to get the answers you are looking for.

As Max_killjoy said, the fighter already is useful, in the literal sense. Useful isn't a very good descriptor here, as basically any contribution whatsoever can be deemed useful.

"So, in the fight vs. five Ancient Red Dragons, you did a total of 5 hp damage. That was useful..."

Where do you draw the line of usefulness?

Then you say "assuming a D&D setting". What setting is that, specifically? Planescape? Eberron? Forgotten Realms? Greyhawk? My own homebrewed setting that I use for D&D? Do you mean a setting where everything in all D&D rulebooks (of a given edition (which one?)) is allowed and all monsters in the MM are present?

Then you say "setting at level 20". What is a level 20 setting? Every character in it is level 20? Or do you simply mean that the fighter is level 20? What is the level of the other party members?

Because one obvious answer to your question is: have a level 20 fighter in a party with level 6 spellcasters.

[AntiAuthority]

If I'm understanding correctly, I believe Lord Raziere is asking, regardless of settings, "How do you make a character that is useful as Level 20 Characters that are expected to be able to hold their own against a Level 20 Threat without relying on another class's (like a Wizard's) power to remain relevant?" from a mechanical point of view without having to rely on magic items that were created by a caster. Not fluff, setting, or justification for why this character can do superhuman things but the mechanics of what a character should be able to do to be properly scaled to their level and not be a sidekick.

EDIT: Feel my own answer could use some elaboration, but a Level 20 Fighter is covered in magic gear... They haven't created that gear themselves, and are essentially just borrowing power from a Caster. As a Level 20 Concept, they, if properly scaled to Level 20, should be able to stand on their own two feet without having a Caster assist them either directly or indirectly. If they can, great, if they can't, they're not really a Level 20 character and just have a bigger number that say Level 20 but without any of the power of a Level 20 Character.

Such as a teleporting enemy... A Wizard, alone, could just cast Dimensional Lock (a spell a Wizard could learn from leveling up), and the enemy can't run away. A Fighter against a teleporting enemy, has no real way of stopping the enemy from just leaving whenever they feel like it through things they gain from their class... If I were to give the Fighter something useful here, I'd let them "pin" the character to their current location by piercing the teleporter with a weapon or just grapple the enemy and force them to stay where the Fighter wants them to stay.

[Satinavian]

And the answers are :

a) You can't

b) If you don't like external magic because that is like caters helping you, use internal magic. Use a race/templates with innate magic abilities that are still relevant or use a class that that provides magic abilities that are not spellcasting

c) D&D is not good for that, use another system. Even if that means that "lv 20 fighter" has no meaning anymore.

[Quertus]

It should perhaps tell us something that quite a few of those scenarios involve not empowering the Fighter, but rather the GM no-selling the Wizard's magic by deliberate and specific situational setups, or deliberating holding back while playing a Wizard.

Balance to the table. Set a power / contribution / whatever level, and build characters - both Fighters and Wizards - who are within the group's range of that balance point. Yes this means that the Wizard - and the Fighter - need to be holding back from truly optimal.

Most of them also fail to account for the fact that in high level D&D a full caster can summon/call/otherwise produce a combat-focused minion who will be very close in capability to all but the most optimized of fighter builds for any purpose for which a fighter is required. I mean, any chaotic evil full caster with access to Planar Binding can just be assumed to have a Glabrezu on hand as a bruiser as a matter of course.

Balance to the table. If the Wizard is a Minionmancer, it should be because a) their Minionmancy places within the group's balance range, and b) the Fighter is also within that range.

I mean how do you make wizards useful? You have situations where their abilities are useful.

Hmmm… although this may be one of the best answers I've seen, let me purpose two possible improvements / additions:

1) how do you make Wizards useful? You give them abilities that are useful in your world / setting / system.

2) how do you make Wizards useful? The same way you make everyone else useful: by including scenarios that do not reference or require buttons on their character sheet.

There are plenty of ways to have fighters NOT be balanced and the game still be fun for everyone, notably, noone playing fighter.

Or, everyone accepting and wanting that imbalance. Give me OP Fighters any day!

these superhero teams are in fact a prime example of equality.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Perhaps you should start by explaining just how you are defining "equality", when most of us are looking at those superhero teams, and seeing anything but.

Yes they are form of magic. what is expected is that fighters have a lot of wealth. it does not necessarily mean thats what they spend their wealth UPON, even if its the vast majority of things available.

Yes, anyone can choose to be suboptimal. Balance to the table. Be suboptimal to the extent that it creates the desired level of balance.

All true, but consider this:
thats all writing. not roleplaying. the author can guarantee such narrative role protection of usefulness. the game cannot if people are unequal.

Games with string niche protection tend to disagree. Your "level 1 Fighter (Street Samurai)" still has a role to play in a party with a level 20 Face, and a level 20 Driver.

look at the solutions of "lots of things to kill" or "lots of anti-magic fields" or "engineer various situations where it turns out the fighter is useful"- all of these are narrative solutions, warping the world around the party to fit their talents artificially. it doesn't hold up to any idea of world-building at all, because you have actively change the world to fit the character rather than building the world so that a badass normal character already fits into it without needing to make special challenges they can do for them.

Wrong on three counts.

1) build a world with consistent world-building, then ask, "where (and when) in this world is there a scenario that would be fun for the players to have their characters play through?". You get the advantages of both consistent world-building, and narrative contrivances. Rather than consistent world-building, coupled with random starting points, and (not) telling 1st level characters "you start in Pompey, on volcano day", or "you start Atlantis, 10 minutes before it sinks beneath the waves", you intentionally choose a fun starting point. Yes, there is contrivance: I've picked a scenario I believe that the party could enjoy, rather than one chosen at random. But it doesn't make the world feel contrived or the experience cheap for me to do so.

2) "lots of things to kill" is… kinda expected for D&D. Much like removing WBL, if you are deciding to change this fundamental balance concept, the results to game balance are undefined. But I suspect that they won't be terribly friendly to a class named "Fighter" (or any other character focused on the "combat" pillar).

3) your BNC, as I understand it, would simply die in any of my worlds. Balance to the table. Unless you can compensate with player skills - like, say, the skill of Armus - your BNC has failed to be balanced to the table.

an equal team is just whats sane to make sure a campaign doesn't devolve into the narrative forces that some people hate so much just in a GM form without the mechanics, or get taken over by some people who are more powerful than others

Balance to the table. Yup. And those are the two logical outcomes of not doing so. Yup. Although do note that "the OP Fighter taking over the game" is a desired end result by some, and not just "a bad thing", as you have painted it.

because they can setting/system-exploit to the max without the vital narrative protections.

Balance to the table. If the Fighter is the weaker chassis, then they need to "setting/system exploit to the max", or near enough to successfully balance to the table. And if Monk is OP at your table, then they need to not do so.

so I'm just acknowledging whats already there. DnD isn't, and lays it all on the GM, whether they realize it or not, whether they believe what they do is a narrative or not.

About that. I'm a lazy GM, and pass that buck straight back to my players. And, as a rule, they step up, balance to the table, and bring characters who can contribute.

if you roll completely random and such with everything, telling what threats really there regardless of their level and roll for everything on the tables and still have fun, great, you can wear that particular badge for whatever pride it gives you.

"Completely random" and "sandbox" are not synonymous.

I do, however, believe that "completely random" is a great metric for measuring whether or not the players have succeeded at "balance to the table". If the PC does not measure up to "completely random" then they are a failure, plain and simple. The player has failed to balance to the table.

In a sandbox, as I run them, the players/PCs can choose what they do. I've done my world-building, you start here, go! You want to explore the lollipop woods? Mine the gumdrop mountains? Extend the rainbow bridge past peanut acres? Cover the world in eternal frosting? Interact with one or more of the storylines I've got running (like the fight between Roy G. Biv and the lollipop guild (who are trying to add a color to, and remove 5 of the existing colors from, the World Path, respectively), or the displaced Taffy monsters (whose home has been overrun with a "toxic" chocolate syrup))? Awesome! Let's do that.

I let the party decided what they think they can do, what they want to contribute, and how they want to contribute it. That's how I define a sandbox.

for everyone else, there are strings being pulled, and this does not concern you, for I am not concerned with pure random roll sandbox campaigns, because thats the only way your avoiding narrative ANYTHING, even if there is no narrative mechanics involved.

So, in what way does my sandbox involve strings being pulled, or narrative (fiat? contrivance?)?

[Quertus]

a teleporting enemy... A Wizard, alone, could just cast Dimensional Lock (a spell a Wizard could learn from leveling up), and the enemy can't run away. A Fighter against a teleporting enemy, has no real way of stopping the enemy from just leaving whenever they feel like it

The Fighter can apply liberal helpings of the "dead" condition. That tends to stop people from teleporting, IME.

[Cluedrew]

Thor is literally a god, he has "god of lightning magic" and "Asgardian prince magic".

But he is not a wizard! Has anyone else read any actual Norse mythology (OK so it was a translated version)? The most caster like thing he does in any of the stories I know is causing storms and that is not something he controls, it just happens when he enters the moral realm.

how do you make a nonmagical fighter useful? Assuming DnD setting at level 20 and discarding all others.

Depends on what you mean by "nonmagical fighter". As pointed out in the first post of this thread scaling the guy at the gym doesn't really work. But what will you accept as non-magical solutions?

• Super-human attributes in things like impossible strength, agility, toughness and reflexes.
• Ultimate techniques that shouldn't work in real life but have a kind of physical logic to them. (EX: The sword in wall as a brake thing.)
• Magnified interpersonal abilities, to lead, direct, curry favour with, deceive and understand other people in the story.
• Semi-Mystical abilities that are kind of magic but not academic magic. Includes simple counter magic, breathing techniques, magic through construction and so on. (More non-caster than non-magic.)

LotR is a story about how a common hobbit's good heart and fierce loyalty, rather than the strength of arms or magic, won the day. That's not likely to happen in a TTRPG.

You could make such an role-playing game. Its not likely to happen in the current mainstream role-playing games but you could build one where your mental "resist the lure of evil" stats are really important.

[Max_Killjoy]

But he is not a wizard! Has anyone else read any actual Norse mythology (OK so it was a translated version)? The most caster like thing he does in any of the stories I know is causing storms and that is not something he controls, it just happens when he enters the moral realm.

First, we were talking about the MCU Thor specifically, who DOES have the ability to summon lighting, both before and after losing Mjolnir.

Second, spellcasting is just a subset of magic, a character can have ZERO spellcasting and still do magic or be deeply magic -- I feel like this has been covered A LOT. Mythological Thor is literally a god, and therefore not a "non-magical Fighter". MCU Thor, as noted, is in no way a "non-magical Fighter".

Depends on what you mean by "nonmagical fighter". As pointed out in the first post of this thread scaling the guy at the gym doesn't really work. But what will you accept as non-magical solutions?

• Super-human attributes in things like impossible strength, agility, toughness and reflexes.
• Ultimate techniques that shouldn't work in real life but have a kind of physical logic to them. (EX: The sword in wall as a brake thing.)
• Magnified interpersonal abilities, to lead, direct, curry favour with, deceive and understand other people in the story.
• Semi-Mystical abilities that are kind of magic but not academic magic. Includes simple counter magic, breathing techniques, magic through construction and so on. (More non-caster than non-magic.)

1, 2, and 4 are magical, and 3 can get there easily -- they're just not spellcasting as such.

Every time I've said that the Fighter could have non-spellcasting magic as a way to balance with spellcasters, it has been vehemently rejected by some participants.

If I'm understanding correctly, I believe Lord Raziere is asking, regardless of settings, "How do you make a character that is useful as Level 20 Characters that are expected to be able to hold their own against a Level 20 Threat without relying on another class's (like a Wizard's) power to remain relevant?" from a mechanical point of view without having to rely on magic items that were created by a caster. Not fluff, setting, or justification for why this character can do superhuman things but the mechanics of what a character should be able to do to be properly scaled to their level and not be a sidekick.

Taking all those parameters as true??

Without some form of magic (broad meaning, don't conflate with spellcasting specifically) ??

You can't.

Balance to the table.

D&D doesn't lend itself to "balance at the table"... it comes with a heavy dose of explicit and implicit "this is Balanced" and "this is universal for any fantasy RPGing", leaving gamers with the impression that if something is in the books, it's already ready to go and fully fair the way it is. The DM who attempts to address the issues discussed in this thread "at the table" will often get pushback... and potentially in different directions simultaneously. See, the previously discussed "fighter uber alles" vs "wizard uber alles" tension in the playerbase.

Contrast with systems like FATE, HERO, or GURPS, that openly put the onus of setting parameters for the specific campaign on the GM.

So, in what way does my sandbox involve strings being pulled, or narrative (fiat? contrivance?)?

It doesn't.

But evidently appealing to the setting, character, and concept side of the non-mechanical layers is "bad", but appealing to the narrative/plot side of the non-mechanical layers is "good", because of how the two might hinder or help someone's personal fantasy...

[Psyren]

Yes they are form of magic. what is expected is that fighters have a lot of wealth. it does not necessarily mean thats what they spend their wealth UPON, even if its the vast majority of things available.

What else would they spend it on? Outside of Magic Arms & Armor, Wondrous Items, and Rings, Fighters can use very few magic item categories, so there should be no confusion there. And if you're attempting to argue that all that wealth is intended to be spent on non-magical items, the math (both in terms of item cost vs. wealth, and in terms of monster statistics at high levels) does not bear this out at all. Foes that you need magic weapons to deal with show up as early as CR 3, and it only gets worse from there.

If the concern is that this form of magic "feels" bad because it isn't inherent or innate to the Fighter (as Florian mentioned), that is a valid concern, and the game designers have come up with ways to address that - whether that's alternate gearing systems that do make this power more innate (e.g. Automatic Bonus Progression, Kensai/Relics, Weapons of Legacy or Scaling Items), or giving Fighters the ability to harness magic item creation and become the best at it due to all the extra feats they have to spare (e.g. Master Craftsman and Item Mastery). The tools are there to make Fighters less wallet-dependent at high levels without ripping up the entire system and starting over - use them.

(Or you can freely choose not to - there are plenty of other good systems out there besides D&D after all.)

All true, but consider this:
thats all writing. not roleplaying. the author can guarantee such narrative role protection of usefulness. the game cannot if people are unequal.

And this is where you and I fundamentally don't see eye-to-eye; I don't view "equality" as a main concern for this game at all. I cited works like Lord of the Rings and Avengers because they have compelling group dynamics and contributions without every character needing to punch in the exact same weight class. It's not wholly arbitrary either - it's backed by convention and audience expectation. I wouldn't expect an archer or a spy using kung-fu to be able to solve all the same problems that an archmage or demigod can, and D&D is no different. That doesn't mean all of them aren't vital to the overall group's success, which is what these stories do well - and which D&D can do well if the GM leans into that.

similarly look at the Lord of the Rings: given how similar in mentality all the races are, there should be no actual reason why anyone can't carry the Ring and throw it into mount doom with enough discipline and sense, a hobbit is just designated the special one who can because tolkien wanted it that way. so that is held up a lot by narrative. it would not work for an rpg. how lucky that these four small people decided to come along and turned out to be more vital to stopping all this than a freaking wizard-angel.

"Tolkien wanted it that way" isn't the only concern for a story to work, it has to be credible to the audience. The idea that a hobbit's greatest strength when handling an evil artifact is their guileless and parochial nature wouldn't have worked if it didn't resonate with an audience (both in Tolkien's time, and for decades afterward) that has seen all too many examples of absolute power leading inexorably to corruption. Yes, Tolkien made it work that way, but ultimately it was the audience who chose to accept it, and we did. Just like the audience (well, the vast majority of us anyway) chooses to accept the decision that a Fighter shouldn't be able to flex his muscles and rewrite reality.

We do have an example of a game that tried to do what you describe - putting the Fighter and the magic users on equal footing. It was called 4th edition, and it didn't work out very well.

[AntiAuthority]

Taking all those parameters as true??

Without some form of magic (broad meaning, don't conflate with spellcasting specifically) ??

You can't.

Mythological Thor is literally a god, and therefore not a "non-magical Fighter".

1, 2, and 4 are magical, and 3 can get there easily -- they're just not spellcasting as such.

Every time I've said that the Fighter could have non-spellcasting magic as a way to balance with spellcasters, it has been vehemently rejected by some participants.

You're limiting characters by saying, even if indirectly, "Only magic can do these amazing things."

Hulk isn't magic, Thor just uses magic weapons (like a returning he's just freakishly strong, neither is Spider-Man, Wolverine, Goku, Superman, or the Flash. By the standards of their own universe, they're not considered to be using magic.

That's the "Guy at the Gym" Fallacy, just phrased differently.

[Keltest]

You're limiting characters by saying, even if indirectly, "Only magic can do these amazing things."

Hulk isn't magic, Thor just uses magic weapons (like a returning he's just freakishly strong, neither is Spider-Man, Wolverine, Goku, Superman, or the Flash. That's the "Guy at the Gym" Fallacy, just phrased differently.

Magic by another name is just as supernatural. They might not call it magic, but none of those heroes are the Guy at the Gym.

[AntiAuthority]

Magic by another name is just as supernatural. They might not call it magic, but none of those heroes are the Guy at the Gym.

Yeah, but I feel it's also appropriate to look at how the characters are viewed in-universe.

Psychics like Professor X can do many incredible feats, but his psychic abilities are distinct from a wizard like Dr. Strange.

Dr. Strange is a master of both science and magic, but the Marvel universe draws a line between the two.

If a character from this universe were brought to ours, they'd look magic, yes, but they aren't considered to be magic in the context of their own universe.

Otherwise there's no real line between magic, science, ki, or whatever and everyone in fiction is considered magic. Even Iron Man with his high tech suits, the Green Lantern rings being able to create hard light construct through willpower, Trunks' time machine is considered magic, and... Well... Everyone in every fictional universe that doesn't obey the laws of our own can be called magic.

[Satinavian]

You're limiting characters by saying, even if indirectly, "Only magic can do these amazing things."

Hulk isn't magic, Thor just uses magic weapons (like a returning he's just freakishly strong, neither is Spider-Man, Wolverine, Goku, Superman, or the Flash. By the standards of their own universe, they're not considered to be using magic.

That's the "Guy at the Gym" Fallacy, just phrased differently.

Hulk and Spiderman and Wolverine are weird science. Buzzword based technobabble about Gamma-rays, radioactivity and mutations for people who don't know enough about actual science to instantly reject that.
Goku and Superman are aliens with alien powers. Thor is magic. I don't know where Flash gets his power from (i don't really care about superheroes and don't want to research him) but it is probably similar.

None of those characters is a human who just gets those powers by training. If tried to model in D&D, they all would get their power via a high - ECL- race or via powerful templates. (and the technobabble would be replaced with magobabble, making them all magical in nature) Not from character levels in fighter or barbarion or whatever.

Goku is not a high level fighter. Yamcha is closer. But Mr. Satan is probably the best example of "human high level fighter without magic" in the Dragonball universe.



But what is with all those superhero examples all the time. Can't you just take a superhero system if you want to play superheroes ? There are dozens of them out there.

[Morty]

This discussion might be going in in circles a little less if people didn't use completely contradictory language. Instead of quibbling about what is and isn't magic, the question we're asking should be this: is it or should it be possible to achieve/unlock power to rival high-level spells and monsters using physical, martial or mental training? If yes, then how, and why doesn't everyone who trains long enough unlock it?

Needless to say, if we're expected to play a class like a fighter or rogue (or a hypothetical well-designed class, but never mind) to high levels, then the answer to the question is yes. I'm not going to spend months developing my characters only to end up as the wizard's sidekick. But then we're facing the second question, which D&D has never particularly tried to answer or address. 4E sort of did, but the effort was half-hearted. Bearing in mind that "martial" characters have always become blatantly superhuman, just in a way that couldn't hold a candle to spells and monsters.

Now, another matter is that instead of asking "can we make high-level fighters/rogues/whatever match high-level wizards" we should instead ask "should we make high-level fighters/rogues/whatever match high-level wizards". And to me, the answer is no, because even with 5E toning them down, high-level D&D full casters are absurd and have no place in a healthy game.

[Willie the Duck]

Do I have to repeat my question again? Because if your going to be unhelpful and not answer it straight...

You complain that you feel you are in a situation where people just repeatedly shout over your arguments with the same point again and again ("but world-building" "yeah bu-" "no world-building!"), and then do this? Do you not see how it is the same behavior?

First and foremost, this is pretending that answering your question is required of others for their points to be pertinent. Second, people have done so on more than one occasion, and/or asked questions about whether XYZ would count/qualify, apparently in good faith, and that for some reason all of these were not acceptable. Even within the answer-space of your specific question being made the primary thread topic, it's not clear what answer you would consider valid, nor what exactly you are trying to achieve. I'm inclined to agree with Lorsa -- I don't know what answer you're looking for, what do you think the answer is? That would honestly move this discussion forward a lot quicker than the rest of us poking around trying to figure out where you are going with this.

If I'm understanding correctly, I believe Lord Raziere is asking, regardless of settings, "How do you make a character that is useful as Level 20 Characters that are expected to be able to hold their own against a Level 20 Threat without relying on another class's (like a Wizard's) power to remain relevant?" from a mechanical point of view without having to rely on magic items that were created by a caster. Not fluff, setting, or justification for why this character can do superhuman things but the mechanics of what a character should be able to do to be properly scaled to their level and not be a sidekick.

That's a reasonable proposition, although if that's the question, some very reasonable responses to that question have been put forward.

My take is: You would have to constrain the types of L20 threats to a subset of possible L20 threats, particularly/moreso if the non-wizard is constrained to GATG parameters. The default edition of this discussion seems to be 3e, and most other editions do a better job* by making the non-wizard comparatively actually quite good at the subset of tasks they are assigned. However, in the end, the larger situation does seem to be this tension others have mentioned between the oft-cited goal of inter-character type balance and what people envision as acceptable capabilities of each of the roles.
*Excluding that in all the TSR editions, the non-wizard needs magic items to damage most high-level foes.

EDIT: Feel my own answer could use some elaboration, but a Level 20 Fighter is covered in magic gear... They haven't created that gear themselves, and are essentially just borrowing power from a Caster. As a Level 20 Concept, they, if properly scaled to Level 20, should be able to stand on their own two feet without having a Caster assist them either directly or indirectly. If they can, great, if they can't, they're not really a Level 20 character and just have a bigger number that say Level 20 but without any of the power of a Level 20 Character.

This is where my grognard roots show. For me, a L20 fighter covered in magic gear isn't borrowing power from a Caster, they've rightfully won that power from a dungeon (probably populated with gear made long ago in a different age by someone with some magic behind their craft, but that's all pretty abstract). A Level 20 (or 36 if you're playing BECMI) fighter had a golf bag full of magic items (often intelligent weapons that had their own spells/day) and that worked fine. The dominance of fighter-benefiting items on the magic item treasure table was clearly part of the class features. I think 3e moving away from that was part of why the martial-caster divide seemed to ratchet up so much in peoples' minds. Of course that version of L20 fighters is leagues away from the guy at the gym, so I agree that it might not be particularly thread-pertinent.

But he is not a wizard! Has anyone else read any actual Norse mythology (OK so it was a translated version)? The most caster like thing he does in any of the stories I know is causing storms and that is not something he controls, it just happens when he enters the moral realm.

I say with quite a bit of confidence that somewhere between 49 and 99% (probably closer to the later) of thread participants have. It's a pretty normal nerd pastime/subject However, Marvel Thor and Norse Thor have a pretty huge divergence (and MCU Thor even more).

[AntiAuthority]

Hulk and Spiderman and Wolverine are weird science. Buzzword based technoballe about Gamma-rays, radioactivity and mutations for people who don't know enough about actual science to accept that.

They're comic science, but technically possible in that they're all really strong guys with healing factors. Not real world science, but considered science in their comic universes.

Goku and Superman are aliens with alien powers.

Goku's an alien, but he uses ki, which is something found in every living being in his universe.

Superman's powers come from yellow sunlight... So comic book science.

Thor is magic.

He uses magic equipment, but this has me wondering. Why does being a god have to make him magic?

I don't know where Flash gets his power from (i don't really care about superheroes and don't want to research him) but it is probably similar.

The simplest explanation is a dimension of pure speed... Or something.

None of those characters is a human who just gets those powers by training.

Discounting Goku, as he's not a human...

Krillin, Yamcha, Tien (maybe? the third eye is a little iff) all get to be planet busters because they trained in their key, despite being regular humans. Krillin went from a punching bag to being able to hold off Imperfect Cell/being able to at least contribute in the Tournament of Power against the multiverse's best fighters, Yamcha is... Yamcha, I don't know what to say about him, and Tien managed to hold off Semi-Perfect Cell. They all did this through training their ki. None of them were born with that level of strength.

In Shonen anime, it's not uncommon for human characters to gain what would be considered superpowers through just training really hard.

Not from character levels in fighter or barbarion or whatever.

Hulk is probably close to a Barbarian that gained levels in Fighter during his Planet Hulk/World War Hulk days and became even more deadly because he could use his rage in addition to his refined fighting style. Essentially he gained levels.

Goku learned how to use his ki better, increasing his power to the point where he can fight a god. It's a plot point that training in Dragon Ball makes you stronger, as opposed to you just having a base amount of strength and never growing in it.

Goku is not a high level fighter. Yamcha is closer. But Mr. Satan is probably the best example of "human high level fighter without magic" in the Dragonball universe.

About Goku, he's literally faced off against gods (he lost, but still), is considered stronger than the none combative gods (Elder Kai, Supreme Kai, etc), defeated/stalemated Eldritch Abominations that are a threat to all of existence like Majin Buu, can travel across different locations/planes of existence, and such, so I'd argue he's a high level concept in that he'd fit right in with a Level 20 Wizard, only he's specialized in combat.

Yamcha can still blow up a planet, or at the very least a moon... But isn't considered important enough in strength to be invited to the Tournament of Power.

And Mr. Satan is strong, but he's not considered worthy to be taken along with the characters in serious matters like someone who's expected to be able to defeat high level concepts would be able to. He's not even treated as a serious member of the team like Black Widow or Nick Fury, as he's completely out of his depth against people with Ki. He'd be able to hold his own against mid-level threats (he can punch through hard substances and pull buses IIRC), but anything at a high CR would probably beat him senseless. Come to think of it, have we seen Mr. Satan fight against anything that wasn't an immobile object? I'm not sure whether he's mid-level or high low-level.

[Max_Killjoy]

You're limiting characters by saying, even if indirectly, "Only magic can do these amazing things."

Hulk isn't magic, Thor just uses magic weapons (like a returning he's just freakishly strong, neither is Spider-Man, Wolverine, Goku, Superman, or the Flash. That's the "Guy at the Gym" Fallacy, just phrased differently.

In the context of the superheroic grand mashup anything-goes kitchen-sink, they're all superhuman, and in the broad sense they all have "magic" of some kind, such as Hulk's "gamma radiation magic" and "fueled by rage" magic. They might as well be magic for all the internal grounding, coherence, or consistency they have (realism doesn't even enter into it, we're talking entirely internal here). The superheroic genre as a whole really doesn't demand more than the most threadbare of fluffiest explanations, and superheroic comics make for BAD inspirations or examples for coherent worldbuilding, non-contrived writing, or quasi-medievaloid fantasy settings.

(And I say this as someone who has played a TON of Champions, created and GMed his own superheroic setting, and loves the HERO system.)

In the context of both most of the explicit D&D settings, and the implicit setting implied by the D&D rules texts, yes, "only magic can do these amazing things". Where else would a character in Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk or Eberron or the implicit setting get the ability to grossly exceed the normal limits of human(oid)s in those settings?

At this point I have to once again stress that magic and spellcasting are not fully synonymous or interchangeable, terms or identical matched sets on a Venn diagram. A character without a single spell to their name can still have magic or be magic. Related to both the Marvel characters and the D&D settings, this is why in previous iterations of this general topic, we tried to move to using "extra-normal" or a similar term, instead of "magic", because for too many posters, they can't shake the idea of "magic = spellcasting". But we keep seeing posts that assert the caster-martial divide from D&D as broader fact, that insist that because a character doesn't cast spells, they're "not magic", and therefore what that character's abilities "count as something non-magic characters can do"... a sort of deliberate ignoring of anything that's extra-normal or supernatural but doesn't have the specific trappings of spellcasting. I don't know if this is deliberate or memetic, but it's aggravating as hell and just makes these discussions go in circles.

"The guy at the gym" character being limited to what a peak ability and fitness person could do in the context of their setting is not a fallacy in the first place -- if they can sprint the world record, and lift the world record, and endurance run the world record, and so forth, they're already pushing the limit because those are normally specialized things. If you want a character to far exceed those limits, then you need a reason beyond "he's awesome" or "she worked really hard". Hard work might be part of it, but what's different or even special about that character's "work really hard" that doesn't end up quite a few of the other guys also "at the gym" doing the same thing?

[Psyren]

You're limiting characters by saying, even if indirectly, "Only magic can do these amazing things."

Hulk isn't magic, Thor just uses magic weapons (like a returning he's just freakishly strong, neither is Spider-Man, Wolverine, Goku, Superman, or the Flash. By the standards of their own universe, they're not considered to be using magic.

That's the "Guy at the Gym" Fallacy, just phrased differently.

The whole point of "Guy at the Gym" is referring to a level of power that a mundane being can gain purely through training or self-improvement. None of the characters you listed (no, not even Goku) got where they were purely through training. It might not be called "magic", but whatever it is is still something you can't get from a gym.

It's telling that the true Guy at the Gym who achieved preternatural power - Saitama - is a joke character, which shows how farcical this very idea even is.

As far as superhero movies or LotR go - Hawkeye, Black Widow or Pippin don't have players who can feel upset or sidelined by their characters' role.

Why is a player being upset at their own choices the game's problem to solve? I don't think it's realistic to expect "high-level martial" and "high-level spellcaster" in any game to be on even footing in terms of problem-solving. We've had decades of RPGs (and not just tabletop ones) to set that expectation.

[Cynthaer]

[...] If all you are working from is Beowulf, Marvel superheroes, and hollywood movies, then I can see how someone might think that way. But stories really don't have to work that way. They can work on a level very based on "realism" even as there is magic, dragons, and whatever strangeness you want to explore in a game. The heroes can be injured, be captured, get sick, etc. Not all heroes are the type you describe above.

It is just that D&D really isn't the game that supports that sort of play, so I don't disagree with you there.

I think we're in agreement on all of this. There are plenty of ways to tell stories, and plenty of genres and subgenres with varying degrees and types of realism and/or verisimilitude.

Regarding TTRPGs specifically, there's plenty of room for games whose mechanics support any and all of these types of stories, and there's plenty of room for settings that lean one way or another.

D&D's (base) mechanics, as you say, happen to place it firmly in the (sub)genre where you do expect a normal, non-magical person to hit harder, run faster, and take more of a beating than a person in real life ever could.

However, I don't see how it would be possible to actually do much in the way of playing (at high level) if all classes were brought up to the power level potential of full casters. What would really challenge a party like that? I am one of those people that don't even see how running a game with characters like that would be worth doing. It seems like you would either totally dominate everything you ran into... or be dead. Just doesn't sound like anything interesting. Obviously others have a different opinion though.

In 3.5e, this felt like a big issue because of the whole linear-fighter-quadratic-wizard thing. In 5e, though, it really does seem like it's just...not a real problem that people have.

I mean, I don't disagree that full casters in 5e have more world-changing abilities built into the class. But from a practical standpoint, I've been hanging around the 5e boards here for several years, and it seems universally agreed upon that 5e classes don't have "tiers" the same way 3.5e does, and threads aren't dominated by discussions of how to fix the disparity between high level fighters and wizards.

In other words, I don't have a real answer here, but I'm satisfied with pointing to 5e and saying, "seems to work well enough".

Honestly i really hate when they do that.

[...]

Now my dislike for certain kinds of action movies because of versimilitude is not shared by everyone. But i would certainly oppose moves to make the fantasy RPGs i take part in more like those. [...]

And that's a perfectly valid personal preference. I don't expect everybody to enjoy superhero movies or action tropes in their movies and games, any more than I expect everybody to enjoy "gritty realism".

But the fact remains that these are very popular genres, and D&D in particular intentionally caters to people who want to play some of these archetypes, including "mundane human who got so good with a sword she could fight a dragon".

You don't have to like it, or play it — and indeed I hope you don't ever find yourself trapped in a game style you don't like just because it's popular, because that's not fun. But it is what it is.

[Cynthaer]

The whole point of "Guy at the Gym" is referring to a level of power that a mundane being can gain purely through training or self-improvement. None of the characters you listed (no, not even Goku) got where they were purely through training. It might not be called "magic", but whatever it is is still something you can't get from a gym.

It's telling that the true Guy at the Gym who achieved preternatural power - Saitama - is a joke character, which shows how farcical this very idea even is.

I mean, there's a whole TV Tropes page dedicated to characters that specifically and exclusively trained to the point of having superpowers.

[AntiAuthority]

In the context of the superheroic grand mashup anything-goes kitchen-sink, they're all superhuman, and in the broad sense they all have "magic" of some kind, such as Hulk's "gamma radiation magic" and "fueled by rage" magic. They might as well be magic for all the internal grounding, coherence, or consistency they have (realism doesn't even enter into it, we're talking entirely internal here). The superheroic genre as a whole really doesn't demand more than the most threadbare of fluffiest explanations, and superheroic comics make for BAD inspirations or examples for coherent worldbuilding, non-contrived writing, or quasi-medievaloid fantasy settings.

In the context of both most of the explicit D&D settings, and the implicit setting implied by the D&D rules texts, yes, "only magic can do these amazing things". Where else would a character in Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk or Eberron or the implicit setting get the ability to grossly exceed the normal limits of human(oid)s in those settings?

I understand what you're saying, but you're still saying, "Only magic can do these amazing things." Superman is especially known for his vulnerability against magic... Well, not so much being vulnerable, as he's just as vulnerable to it as a regular human being. But he's not considered magic in his own universe.

Yes, any fantastic (martial or magic) character from a different universe, if they appeared in ours with all their incredible power, would appear to be magic to us... Even if what they're doing is some highly exaggerated feat of what's theoretically possible like bench pressing a mountain or running faster than light.

---

The whole point of "Guy at the Gym" is referring to a level of power that a mundane being can gain purely through training or self-improvement. None of the characters you listed (no, not even Goku) got where they were purely through training.

Hm, ok, I won't use Goku for this example.

In Dragon Ball, Krillin, Yamcha and (supposedly) Tien go from regular humans to being strong enough to bust planets.

They trained their ki, and everyone in the Dragon Ball universe has the potential to use their ki to become far stronger than an ordinary human being in our reality. It's even the plot of Dragon Ball Online that Gohan published a book called "Groundbreaking Science" that explained what ki was to the general populace, explaining why there are so many human player characters able to use ki in that continuity.

[Willie the Duck]

Why is a player being upset at their own choices the game's problem to solve? I don't think it's realistic to expect "high-level martial" and "high-level spellcaster" in any game to be on even footing in terms of problem-solving. We've had decades of RPGs (and not just tabletop ones) to set that expectation.

Honestly, there's no fundamental 'rule,' 'law,' or universally accepted 'best practice' reason that it has to be the case. As mentioned before, Ars Magica makes absolutely no pretense that martials can compete with spellcasters.

It's only when you add on an additional (also non-rule, non-law) gamer preference, balance, to the situation that you run into conflicts.

That said, balance has been declared to be a gamer goal for quite some time. Gary put references to balance being an important design principle into the AD&D PHB and DMG (obviously the concepts of balanced differed at the time, and wizards being supreme at high levels, but fighters ruling at low was a lot more palatable to more players at the time. Likewise, wizards getting the best abilities at levels where most games were supposed to have transitioned to lord and commander playstyle was also considered part of the balance).

What WotC-era D&D did that makes balance at least seem like a goal they were attempting were things like having all the classes use the same experience table, and have things like xp granted per CR of opponent defeated be based on the level (not "class-adjusted level," or the like) of the party members. This suggest (and perhaps there is actual statements in various articles, if anyone wants to do an archive dive) that the game is intended to be balanced between the martial classes and the caster classes.

However, yes, you are right, unless there is an additional goal of inter-class balance, even footing between casters and martials is not inherently a problem.

I just suspect that balance is a concern for a lot of people.

[Max_Killjoy]

Honestly, there's no fundamental 'rule,' 'law,' or universally accepted 'best practice' reason that it has to be the case. As mentioned before, Ars Magica makes absolutely no pretense that martials can compete with spellcasters.

It's only when you add on an additional (also non-rule, non-law) gamer preference, balance, to the situation that you run into conflicts.

That said, balance has been declared to be a gamer goal for quite some time. Gary put references to balance being an important design principle into the AD&D PHB and DMG (obviously the concepts of balanced differed at the time, and wizards being supreme at high levels, but fighters ruling at low was a lot more palatable to more players at the time. Likewise, wizards getting the best abilities at levels where most games were supposed to have transitioned to lord and commander playstyle was also considered part of the balance).

What WotC-era D&D did that makes balance at least seem like a goal they were attempting were things like having all the classes use the same experience table, and have things like xp granted per CR of opponent defeated be based on the level (not "class-adjusted level," or the like) of the party members. This suggest (and perhaps there is actual statements in various articles, if anyone wants to do an archive dive) that the game is intended to be balanced between the martial classes and the caster classes.

However, yes, you are right, unless there is an additional goal of inter-class balance, even footing between casters and martials is not inherently a problem.

I just suspect that balance is a concern for a lot of people.

Plus, the very idea of Levels, especially with matched XP values, STRONGLY implies balance. If a game says "here's a Level X Fighter, here's a Level X Wizard, they both needed the same XP to get this this Level", there's nothing naive or unreasonable about a player concluding that the Fighter and Wizard are supposed to be balanced against each other.

I understand what you're saying, but you're still saying, "Only magic can do these amazing things." Superman is especially known for his vulnerability against magic... Well, not so much being vulnerable, as he's just as vulnerable to it as a regular human being. But he's not considered magic in his own universe.

Yes, any fantastic character from a different universe, if they appeared in ours with all their incredible power, would appear to be magic to us... Even if what they're doing is some highly exaggerated feat of what's already possible like bench pressing a mountain or running faster than light.

It has nothing to do with whether they "appear" "magic" in our universe, that's irrelevant.

To whatever degree superheroic comic characters are actually relevant to the fantasy-genre discussion... there's something about Thor, and Superman, and Wolverine, and Hulk, and Vision, and even Captain America, that makes them extranormal. They exceed the normal human limits within there setting, and there's some flimsy "explanation".

When it comes to superhero comic universes, it all might as well be "magic" because it's all just handwavium and phlebotinum -- even "I trained really hard" is just another form of magic, in that context.

But we can stop using that word "magic" because again it seems that people are getting stuck on it as a specific aesthetic rather than the deeper/broader meaning. We can use supernatural, or extranormal, or another word, whatever gets the idea across that these are not just "guys who trained hard", without stumbling over ridiculous aesthetic hangups.


Now, putting examples from different genres entirely aside (no Superman, no Thor, no etc)... when it comes specifically to both the explicit and the implicit D&D settings, I have yet to see ANY explanation for extranormal/superhuman abilities other than magic of some kind... whether that's the external magic of the Wizard and Cleric, or the internal magic of the Monk, or the rage-fueled magic of the Barbarian, or the oath-fueled magic of the Paladin, or whatever.

So what is it, in these explicit and implicit D&D settings, that gives the Fighter their already-extranormal abilities at higher levels, even RAW, even before we start trying to compensate for the imbalance inherent in the system? Are they just doing what Monks do but without formal training or intent? Are they tapping into their emotions and dedication to draw on the magic infused through those worlds the way Barbarians and Paladins do? What is it that the higher-level Fighters have done that thousands and thousands of other soldiers and sell-swords and duelists have not, what did their training and experience unlock inside them that the same training and experience did not for all those other characters?