Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy

[Morty]

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.

That may be, but D&D, and Western fantasy in general, have fairly consistently portrayed spell-casting as the be-all, end-all of supernatural powers - for player characters/protagonists, at least. Not exclusively, of course, take for instance the various alternate power sources of 3E's later years. But "magic = a person with a book or holy symbol casting spells" is a deeply-ingrained assumption that leads to circular discussions like this one.

Compare that to superhero settings which, as silly as they might be, at least provide many avenues to becoming a super - mutation, radiation, technology, actual magic, psychic powers, whatever.

[Arbane]

TL;DR whenever folks bring up the likes of Heracles or Cú Chulainn or Odysseus in threads like this and say "see, mundanes can break physics too!" I'm always compelled to squint and say "uh, mundane? You know who those guys actually are, right?"

Good luck finding five people in Greek myth who AREN'T related to the gods. If Zeus could keep it in his toga about 90% of their stories would never have occurred.

Which is why Beowulf is my go-to for these interminable arguments.

[Max_Killjoy]

That may be, but D&D, and Western fantasy in general, have fairly consistently portrayed spell-casting as the be-all, end-all of supernatural powers - for player characters/protagonists, at least. Not exclusively, of course, take for instance the various alternate power sources of 3E's later years. But "magic = a person with a book or holy symbol casting spells" is a deeply-ingrained assumption that leads to circular discussions like this one.

Compare that to superhero settings which, as silly as they might be, at least provide many avenues to becoming a super - mutation, radiation, technology, actual magic, psychic powers, whatever.

More's the pity.

But I guess that takes us back to trying to get a word like "extranormal" used, as we have in past threads.

I made a big edit to my last post on the previous page -- http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...1#post24235441 -- starting to get into that.

Good luck finding five people in Greek myth who AREN'T related to the gods. If Zeus could keep it in his toga about 90% of their stories would never have occurred.

Which is why Beowulf is my go-to for these interminable arguments.

Beowulf does stand out as not related to the gods and not blurring the lines (see also, Celtic mythos), but still also does blatantly superhuman things... so I have no idea where to slot him in.

[AntiAuthority]

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.

Agreed.

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.

...

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?

For the same reason that reading books lets you affect reality, that praying to a deity makes you able to replicate mythological feats, communicating with nature allows you to become an animal/slow your aging, all without having a drop of divine/otherworldly blood inside them... The reason behind it doesn't need to be explained to get to a level of that power. Maybe everyone in the fictional world is capable of doing it, or only a select few, it doesn't matter to me that much.

EDIT: Up to you to decide the source of the character's power, as it could easily be just training or they're some weird combat martial mutant once in an era prodigy or something, give them class abilities that would make them balanced with a high level caster.

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TL;DR whenever folks bring up the likes of Heracles or Cú Chulainn or Odysseus in threads like this and say "see, mundanes can break physics too!" I'm always compelled to squint and say "uh, mundane? You know who those guys actually are, right?"

Just saw this because of the above quote, but I feel my OP covered this, as I'm not aware of any caster-type characters starting out really weak in mythologies and becoming living reality warpers later on either. Merlin was part demon/the Anti-Christ or something along those lines...

[Max_Killjoy]

For the same reason that reading books lets you affect reality, that praying to a deity makes you able to replicate mythological feats, communicating with nature allows you to become an animal/slow your aging, all without having a drop of divine/otherworldly blood inside them... The reason behind it doesn't need to be explained to get to a level of that power. Maybe everyone in the fictional world is capable of doing it, or only a select few, it doesn't matter to me that much.

Divine/otherwordly blood is not core to the question.

The reason has to be settled on or explained... or you get the disconnect we're discussing in this thread.

While it's up to the player to pick the source / explanation, their choices are constrained to those valid within the setting. "Just trained a lot" isn't valid if the setting doesn't support it.

Just saw this because of the above quote, but I feel my OP covered this, as I'm not aware of any caster-type characters starting out really weak in mythologies and becoming living reality warpers later on either. Merlin was part demon/the Anti-Christ or something along those lines...

That's a fairly late change to Merlin, from the Vulgate Cycle, and not a universal thing -- https://youtu.be/i_jgF-S746o?t=597

[Lucas Yew]

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.

This is probably why I'm so emotionally invested in fixing the D&D LFQW problem in the first place; a fair XP economy, of sorts. I just can't stand the supposed XP prices for each class levels being wronged by being unbalanced in gameplay performance and player satisfaction...

[The Insanity]

When designing more fantastical - closer in power to casters - martials we should look at the Monk class for inspiration, IMO.

[Max_Killjoy]

When designing more fantastical - closer in power to casters - martials we should look at the Monk class for inspiration, IMO.

The Monk is a good starting point because it disposes of the notion of the martial character as purely-not-extranorrmal, and explicitly explains the how/what underlying the Monk's extranormal capabilities.

Depending on the setting, the names can be filed off "Ki" and the like, and the "eastern" trappings removed.

[Lucas Yew]

When designing more fantastical - closer in power to casters - martials we should look at the Monk class for inspiration, IMO.

True. Actually, tristalt Fighter, Monk and Rogue then you finally end up with the least viable excuse of a proper Wuxia story (mid-high grade) protagonist representative.

[Psyren]

Which is why Beowulf is my go-to for these interminable arguments.

Beowulf does stand out as not related to the gods and not blurring the lines (see also, Celtic mythos), but still also does blatantly superhuman things... so I have no idea where to slot him in.

Except we know next to nothing about him, not even who wrote the poem. I'm sure if there were more stories we'd have found out he was related to some deity or other.

But even if we take him at face value as a true "badass normal," what did he really do? Beat up two monsters? Get his ass kicked by a dragon? His feats seem well within a current mid/high-level Fighter's resume to me, so what's the problem?

[AntiAuthority]

Except we know next to nothing about him, not even who wrote the poem. I'm sure if there were more stories we'd have found out he was related to some deity or other.

But even if we take him at face value as a true "badass normal," what did he really do? Beat up two monsters? Get his ass kicked by a dragon? His feats seem well within a current mid/high-level Fighter's resume to me, so what's the problem?

There's not really much to say one way or another if it would have been revealed if he was related to a god or not.

Also, he ripped a giant's arm off, swam in an ocean for 7 days, swam down and fought said giant's mother while still underwater before using an enchanted sword... And he lost to the dragon, but to be fair, he was an old man at that point and still stalemated the dragon. If anything, I'd say him being an old man is what allowed the dragon to stalemate him.

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Divine/otherwordly blood is not core to the question.

The reason has to be settled on or explained... or you get the disconnect we're discussing in this thread.

While it's up to the player to pick the source / explanation, their choices are constrained to those valid within the setting. "Just trained a lot" isn't valid if the setting doesn't support it.

Hm, could you envision a setting-neutral (if that's a thing) martial character and give them abilities based on class abilities or something?

[Pex]

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).

I can anecdotally agree with that. A long time ago in a sci-fi convention far far away I once ran a one-shot 2E D&D adventure purposely designed not to have a combat. I thought it would be a fun change being anti-conventional. It was in the middle of running the game I came to realize how dumb this was. With bias I don't think the adventure itself was boring, but were we really playing D&D or was it glorified House & Tea Party? I knew never to do that again, and thankfully I've long since forgotten what the adventure was. By coincidence for this particular convention players were purposely asked to write down feedback. Everyone wrote "more combat".

LARPing didn't exist back then, but now it does. I don't know much about it, but it sounds like that type of game is more suited for those people who don't want a lot or any combat.

[Max_Killjoy]

Hm, could you envision a setting-neutral (if that's a thing) martial character and give them abilities based on class abilities or something?

Not really.

Whatever abilities you gave them would imply a setting -- see 5e D&D, which implies a setting where magic exists, where deities exist, where strange or infernal entities exist that can grant strange powers, where oaths and dedication and emotions can tap into "something" to grant extranormal abilities, where monsters and spirits and extraplanar beings to be summoned or fought exist, where extraplanar locations exist, and so on, and so on; every Class and Race and Background and so on implies something about the setting even if the authors never come out and say it.

Not that I'd even know where to start without a setting and intended "power scale and scope" to work from.

[Morty]

More's the pity.

But I guess that takes us back to trying to get a word like "extranormal" used, as we have in past threads.

I made a big edit to my last post on the previous page -- http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...1#post24235441 -- starting to get into that.

Yes, well, trying to get people to change widely baked-in terminology isn't easy. I generally agree with the gist of it, even if I'm more lenient towards a "they're just that good" explanation. And leaning far more towards god-wizards of D&D and modern fantasy not being a thing worth trying to keep up with.

Beowulf does stand out as not related to the gods and not blurring the lines (see also, Celtic mythos), but still also does blatantly superhuman things... so I have no idea where to slot him in.

Slot him in as "people who wrote and told stories about mighty heroes back in the day didn't think about it in those terms". For better or worse, TTRPG settings do think about it in those terms. Sometimes I feel like it's for worse, but so it goes.

[Max_Killjoy]

Yes, well, trying to get people to change widely baked-in terminology isn't easy. I generally agree with the gist of it, even if I'm more lenient towards a "they're just that good" explanation. And leaning far more towards god-wizards of D&D and modern fantasy not being a thing worth trying to keep up with.

My personal preference leans away from "god wizards" and "5d chess on an amphetamine cocktail", but for the purposes of this thread I'm trying to stick to theory rather than specifics.

If we can't change the terminology, AND the term used keeps getting conflated with a far more specific subset, then we're going to always go around in circles... they're going to insist on calling all the extranormal stuff "magic", AND insist that magic == spellcasting.

[Cynthaer]

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.

You can do whatever you want with the aesthetics, but at the end of the day, many people will still want to play characters with "Charles Atlas superpowers" — that is, literally just being "guys who trained so hard they got superpowers".

You don't have to create settings where that exists, but it's a perfectly valid kind of character in many genres, with a rich tradition.

[Psyren]

There's not really much to say one way or another if it would have been revealed if he was related to a god or not.

Also, he ripped a giant's arm off, swam in an ocean for 7 days, swam down and fought said giant's mother while still underwater before using an enchanted sword... And he lost to the dragon, but to be fair, he was an old man at that point and still stalemated the dragon. If anything, a young Beowulf probably would have destroyed said dragon.

Got it, so he's really strong and has a high Swim mod + Con mod. Again, stuff a high-level Fighter (or perhaps more accurately a Barbarian) can do just fine. As mythological figures go, pretty meh. And yeah, he needed help to kill a dragon, so his strength was low enough that the age penalties made a difference, he's not Superman.

You can do whatever you want with the aesthetics, but at the end of the day, many people will still want to play characters with "Charles Atlas superpowers" — that is, literally just being "guys who trained so hard they got superpowers".

You don't have to create settings where that exists, but it's a perfectly valid kind of character in many genres, with a rich tradition.

Have you actually read that page? Outside of anime, most of the examples are pretty weaksauce by D&D terms. Batman uses WBLmancy, Kingpin gets plastered when Spiderman stops holding back, and Chris Redfield pushed a whole boulder, oooh.

[Morty]

My personal preference leans away from "god wizards" and "5d chess on an amphetamine cocktail", but for the purposes of this thread I'm trying to stick to theory rather than specifics.

If we can't change the terminology, AND the term used keeps getting conflated with a far more specific subset, then we're going to always go around in circles... they're going to insist on calling all the extranormal stuff "magic", AND insist that magic == spellcasting.

I'm pretty sure that, yes, those discussions are doomed to going around in circles as long as they're on a public forum. I've accepted that with some resignation. It's part of why high-level balance concerns me much less than mid-level balance, and cracks already start to show there.

[Max_Killjoy]

You can do whatever you want with the aesthetics, but at the end of the day, many people will still want to play characters with "Charles Atlas superpowers" — that is, literally just being "guys who trained so hard they got superpowers".

The funny thing is, the TV Tropes page goes straight at several of the issues involved and doesn't shy away from the inherent "What the heck?" and total BS involved there, from "the average person only uses X% of their whatever" nonsense to "this is just physically impossible."

You don't have to create settings where that exists, but it's a perfectly valid kind of character in many genres, with a rich tradition.

I'm not against the Fighter having extranormal abilities -- I'm against players who insist on playing the "guy at the gym" but having extranormal abilities. If they don't want to be restricted to the "guy at the gym" scope and scale of ability, they should stop insisting on playing the "guy at the gym"; and if they want to play the "guy at the gym" and not be outclassed, they should play a setting, system, and campaign that enable that.

I'm not against training giving a character extranormal abilities -- that's effectively what the Wizard is doing.

I'm concerned with the "OK, so how does training give this character extranormal abilities, when that same amount of training gives most people nothing of the sort." What's different, what's special, what happened? Not everyone who studies a tome becomes a Wizard, not everyone who trains really hard becomes a high-level Fighter; despite the balance issues between them, they're both blatantly extranormal... so what is it?

[AntiAuthority]

Got it, so he's really strong and has a high Swim mod + Con mod. Again, stuff a high-level Fighter (or perhaps more accurately a Barbarian) can do just fine. As mythological figures go, pretty meh. And yeah, he needed help to kill a dragon, so his strength was low enough that the age penalties made a difference, he's not Superman.
[/COLOR]

It's not a perfect 1 to 1 comparison, as D&D won't perfectly emulate everything, but... Yeah, he was probably weakened from old age. Maybe not the exact same age penalities in D&D, but yeah.

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I'm concerned with the "OK, so how does training give this character extranormal abilities, when that same amount of training gives most people nothing of the sort." What's different, what's special, what happened? Not everyone who studies a tome becomes a Wizard, not everyone who trains really had becomes a high-level Fighter; despite the balance issues between them, they're both blatantly extranormal... so what is it?

You might be too focused on the explanation of why and how rather than the end result.

[Max_Killjoy]

You might be too focused on the explanation of why and how rather than the end result.

I'm not looking to explain the mechanics, I'm looking to explain the character's fiction-level abilites and the have the mechanics reflect the character.

IMO the balance needs to start before the mechanics even enter into it, or the effort will just lead to the roundabout we see in these threads.

[Psyren]

It's not a perfect 1 to 1 comparison, as D&D won't perfectly emulate everything, but... Yeah, he was probably weakened from old age. Maybe not the exact same age penalities in D&D, but yeah.

I mean, -6 strength is a LOT when you're meleeing a dragon, especially in a low-magic setting, so I could easily see it being that.

In any event, the point stands - if the best example of "true badass normal" that people can cite is a guy who would make a moderately above-average Fighter or Barbarian in the current D&D status quo, that's not exactly a rallying cry for high-level human fighters being wildly miscalibrated.

[Morty]

I'm concerned with the "OK, so how does training give this character extranormal abilities, when that same amount of training gives most people nothing of the sort." What's different, what's special, what happened? Not everyone who studies a tome becomes a Wizard, not everyone who trains really hard becomes a high-level Fighter; despite the balance issues between them, they're both blatantly extranormal... so what is it?

In fairness, a wizard going from an apprentice/beginner (depending on edition and how we see a 1st level one) to an arcane powerhouse in a year of adventuring (possibly less) can also be jarring, given how studying magic is supposed to be a lifelong labor. D&D's level curve is just kind of crazy this way.

[AntiAuthority]

In any event, the point stands - if the best example of "true badass normal" that people can cite is a guy who would make a moderately above-average Fighter or Barbarian in the current D&D status quo, that's not exactly a rallying cry for high-level human fighters being wildly miscalibrated.

The same could be said for why Wizards are allowed to surpass a lot of purely mortal, mythological magic users in terms of power. If they can do that, it seems fair for martials to be able to do the same thing.

[Psyren]

The same could be said for why Wizards are allowed to surpass a lot of purely mortal, mythological magic users in terms of power. If they can do that, it seems fair for martials to be able to do the same thing.

At the risk of sounding callous, I genuinely don't believe "fairness" is as useful of a design goal as folks like you and Raziere seem to. If D&D were a one-on-one PvP experience like a fighting game then it would be, but it's not. Fighters being less capable than Wizards doesn't make them useless, nor even not useful.

Again, we have a game where the Fighter was put on even footing with everyone else. It failed miserably, and WotC backtracked to where high level spellcasters pull out in front again - albeit to a lesser degree than they were in 3.5, which is all I really wanted.

[Satinavian]

Just saw this because of the above quote, but I feel my OP covered this, as I'm not aware of any caster-type characters starting out really weak in mythologies and becoming living reality warpers later on either. Merlin was part demon/the Anti-Christ or something along those lines...

Because Western tradition decided around the 13th century at the latest that humans never have magic on their own and magic must come ultimately from the devil. That is what basically every western fairy tale assumes. The only exceptions are from antiquity or have fey as origin of magic power.

Western tradition does not really have wizards getting magic by studying books.

For various reason (not least devil panic and trying to exclude religious ideas), that is mostly wrong for the western modern fantasy. The fantasy wizard does not come from folklore, even if some spells do.


That all said, Eastern tradition does have wizards getting their power by studying and learning how to use their ki to do magic and get longvity and all sort of other things. But what eastern tradition has not, is a clear distinction between ki-users casting spells and ki-users doing martial arts.

[Cynthaer]

Have you actually read that page? Outside of anime, most of the examples are pretty weaksauce by D&D terms. Batman uses WBLmancy, Kingpin gets plastered when Spiderman stops holding back, and Chris Redfield pushed a whole boulder, oooh.

I'm not saying all of these characters map directly to D&D fighters or whatever. The point is just to demonstrate that it's a known character archetype, so it's no surprise that many people want to play that type of character.

The decision of whether to justify it in-universe is a question of tone and genre, not a failure of storytelling.

The funny thing is, the TV Tropes page goes straight at several of the issues involved and doesn't shy away from the inherent "What the heck?" and total BS involved there, from "the average person only uses X% of their whatever" nonsense to "this is just physically impossible."

Sure. We all know it's physically impossible in real life. It's just that most people don't have a problem with that, depending on the tone and genre of the work in question, and the nature of the BS.

We could go back and forth about which specific explanations are done well or poorly, but that's beyond the scope of this discussion and partially personal taste.

I'm not against the Fighter having extranormal abilities -- I'm against players who insist on playing the "guy at the gym" but having extranormal abilities. If they don't want to be restricted to the "guy at the gym" scope and scale of ability, they should stop insisting on playing the "guy at the gym"; and if they want to play the "guy at the gym" and not be outclassed, they should play a setting, system, and campaign that enable that.

(Emphasis mine.)

I mean, that's what I've been saying, right? There are some settings, systems, and campaigns where you can just get so good at fighting that you can go toe-to-toe with a demon, and some where you can't.

Hell, let's take a specific example. D&D 5e, Adventurer's League, Forgotten Realms, official modules/hardcovers. About as close to "vanilla D&D" as you can get.

You can play a single-class Champion Fighter with a +1 sword (to overcome some resistances/immunities) all the way to level 20, and you'll still keep up with the rest of the party just fine. Less out-of-combat utility than most, obviously, but you'll probably be the highest damage dealer by a wide margin, and one of the toughest members of the party.

Yeah, sure, you've got a magic item or two, but so does everyone else. You're shredding through foes and tanking fire blasts better than they are because you're real good at hitting things and being hit. And why are you so good at it?

The archetypal Champion focuses on the development of raw physical power honed to deadly perfection. Those who model themselves on this archetype combine rigorous training with physical excellence to deal devastating blows.

As I've been saying, you're free to dislike this answer, and require more justification in your own settings. But if you argue that nobody should play a character like this, you're fighting against other people's expectations and the assumptions built into D&D's core design.

[Quizatzhaderac]

I'm concerned with the "OK, so how does training give this character extranormal abilities, when that same amount of training gives most people nothing of the sort." What's different, what's special, what happened?

My headcannon is that human physical potential is on a normal exponential curve rather than a normal curve. What this implies is that the average and standard deviation is similar, but the outliers are very different. Also (sometimes) willpower has a very different level of diminishing returns, so a person that tries extraordinarily hard is going to have a much bigger advantage over the lukewarm person than they would in reality.

correction: wizardly incantations are NOT things that "everyone can do" they are things that only people with high enough intelligence can do, assuming they get the proper education. or sorcerers with genetics can do.

I would say it's something "anyone can do" in the sense that "anyone can land a plane, with pilot on the radio talking them through it".

The wizard can design the ritual to contact Tiresias; and tell the anyone to follow these exact steps, with these exact materials, in this exact place, on this exact phase of the moon. If the party has a wizard, they can just go there and wing it. Without a wizard they can still do it, by getting directions from the old hag; but they can't do it again, or do anything slightly different because they don't understand what they did.

These various parts are all separate objects.

Total aside: but that's where as GM I'd draw the line. You don't get to define what is and isn't an object for magic purposes. It is linguistically one object and it's already treated as one object in the mechanics. The fact that it is multiple objects for some other purpose is irrelevant.

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

Decide exactly what fantastical things a fighter can do and what magic can't do.

As for what magic can't do, my general philosophy is that magic shouldn't work reliably and straightforwardly. Some potential limits for magic:

1) Many of the spells in the players hand book should have a little disclaimer on them that says: "This spell may not exist in every setting, or have setting specific limitations; dealing with this uncertainty is a price of using magic."
2) Utility spells have fine print. You can teleport, but you must know where you are going, and long range teleports are only accurate within a mile. If you try to use a spell for other than it's intended purpose, it might fail for an obscure reason. If fact, If I was doing the rules online, most of the magic rules would be fine-print and limitations.
3) Antimagic is easier than magic. So if a caster wants to stop a particular magic thing, they'll probably succeed or make things difficult even for a more powerful caster. Maybe some antimagic things can even be used by people that don't understand what they're doing, like a ring of salt /running water in Dresden files, or a holy symbol in vampire movies; after all they're not doing something, they're interfering with something.
4) Creatures and objects that cannot use or directly be effected by magic. One could likewise have items limit your ability to use of be effected by magic.
5) Making items that can be enchanted is much harder than actually enchanting them. That +5 katana requires ten thousand folds and daily meditation for a year from someone who knows how it's used. The ring of water breathing must held continuously for a year by a non-enchanted, living human who is not breathing (not the same person, they pass it around). The star-metal sword involves no magic to create, but it does require a magical material. If there's a PC item creation system, it also should be balanced between the classes.

[Max_Killjoy]

Because Western tradition decided around the 13th century at the latest that humans never have magic on their own and magic must come ultimately from the devil. That is what basically every western fairy tale assumes. The only exceptions are from antiquity or have fey as origin of magic power.

Western tradition does not really have wizards getting magic by studying books.

For various reason (not least devil panic and trying to exclude religious ideas), that is mostly wrong for the western modern fantasy. The fantasy wizard does not come from folklore, even if some spells do.


That all said, Eastern tradition does have wizards getting their power by studying and learning how to use their ki to do magic and get longvity and all sort of other things. But what eastern tradition has not, is a clear distinction between ki-users casting spells and ki-users doing martial arts.

Which is why in both my "fantasy" settings I take liberally from all over the place, file off all the names, do a lot of "compare and contrast" rearranging, and then use it all as inspiration for coherent systems -- that don't feature dissonant wizards.

3) Antimagic is easier than magic. So if a caster wants to stop a particular magic thing, they'll probably succeed or make things difficult even for a more powerful caster. Maybe some antimagic things can even be used by people that don't understand what they're doing, like a ring of salt /running water in Dresden files, or a holy symbol in vampire movies; after all they're not doing something, they're interfering with something.

Magic-on-magic interaction, countermagic, defenses against magic, and magic dueling in general are grossly neglected in D&D.

[AntiAuthority]

At the risk of sounding callous, I genuinely don't believe "fairness" is as useful of a design goal as folks like you and Raziere seem to. If D&D were a one-on-one PvP experience like a fighting game then it would be, but it's not. Fighters being less capable than Wizards doesn't make them useless, nor even not useful.

Again, we have a game where the Fighter was put on even footing with everyone else. It failed miserably, and WotC backtracked to where high level spellcasters pull out in front again - albeit to a lesser degree than they were in 3.5, which is all I really wanted.

Not to sound rude myself either, but why would you bring up martials being about equal with Beowulf as a reason for why they shouldn't be made stronger, then dismiss it when casters get to ignore their mythological inspirations? It sounds like you were making a point that if "Beowulf is this strongest mortal fighter people have mentioned, since Fighers are around the same level of power, they're not in need of re-calibration" then when I point out that casters don't follow the same logic, ignore it when it's inconvenient. That sounds like a double standard and moving goal posts.

And about D&D 4E (I'm assuming that's what you're talking about), I have no opinion of it, only things I've heard about it.

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Because Western tradition decided around the 13th century at the latest that humans never have magic on their own and magic must come ultimately from the devil. That is what basically every western fairy tale assumes. The only exceptions are from antiquity or have fey as origin of magic power.

Western tradition does not really have wizards getting magic by studying books.

For various reason (not least devil panic and trying to exclude religious ideas), that is mostly wrong for the western modern fantasy. The fantasy wizard does not come from folklore, even if some spells do.


That all said, Eastern tradition does have wizards getting their power by studying and learning how to use their ki to do magic and get longvity and all sort of other things. But what eastern tradition has not, is a clear distinction between ki-users casting spells and ki-users doing martial arts.

Hm... This is very well said, I have to say! It explains quite a few things.