Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy

[Max_Killjoy]

Personally, I just want people to stop telling me I shouldn't be allowed to participate in high level play because I prefer more grounded characters. I want to fight dragons, I want to save the world, I want to destroy evil artifacts and foil the schemes of wicked gods, I want to battle evil archmages and defeat the Lich King and his undead hordes, I want to be a hero; I just want to do it as an underdog who succeeds through skill, courage, and determination rather than a demigod who succeeds through overwhelming displays of power.

This is a perfect example of the "inverted guy-at-the-gym" I mentioned upthread.

If you want to play "an underdog who succeeds through skill, courage, and determination", then that campaign needs to stay at lower levels of D&D, or use a different system entirely.

Characters who are thoroughly grounded in a "largely like real world' setting (see, D&D's quasi-medievaloid published and implied settings) just don't function as high-level characters on the power scale of 3.x or 5e, without simply throwing credibility and coherence out the window.

Batman and the Punisher work because their foes aren't throwing around massive supernatural power, or because they're in fiction and have massive amounts of authorial fiat on their side, or both. Go to HERO, which was built for a wide scale of superheroic campaigns based on different character point totals for the builds, and put an objectively-statted Batman or Punisher in a game with a bunch of objectively-statted superhumans, they come out to a lower point total, and the player of that PC has to work a LOT harder to keep up in a campaign built around the other characters. But then, HERO has zero "story" Powers, and authorial fiat amounts to raw fudging on the part of the GM to protect the lower-point-total Batman or Punisher PC.

It becomes more stark in that system because power level and progression aren't all muddled up as "character level" in the HERO system -- power level is dominated by initial character point totals (75-100 for "heroic" campaigns, anywhere from 250 to 500 for various sorts of "superheroes" campaigns), and progression is say 3 to 6 CP/XP at a time.

Modelling D&D's progression curve into HERO would start characters out at 75 points, and then quite unevenly take them up into several hundred points, with different classes getting big chunks of points at different points along the ladder. At some point, the "underdog who succeeds through skill, courage, and determination" character just runs out of things that the player can justify spending points on.

No offense, but FATE and other narrative / story games do nothing for me.

D&D isn't perfect, but (aside from 3E) it works well enough; and the rules are abstract enough that you can imagine a wide variety of descriptions for it.

Problem is, a comic book character who is a "peak human" keeps up with massively powered superhumans in large part via "narrative fiat".

Who is trying to telling you how to play your character concept?

I can't speak for Talakeal, but responses in the past have included "don't tell me how to RP my character" and variants, I guess under the assertion that things like concept-mechanics-setting intersection are "roleplaying".

[Talakeal]

Problem is, a comic book character who is a "peak human" keeps up with massively powered superhumans in large part via "narrative fiat".

Right. Which is why a lot of people consider HP to be a measure of "plot armor" rather than meat, which is exactly the sort of thing the OP seemed to be rallying against.

[Rhedyn]

This is all really specific to WotC D&D. Basically all forms of OSR side-step this.

I would agree that "grounded" concepts just are not high level. That's why most OSR games end at level 10 and games like Godbound require "martials" to have divine powers. You could be a demi-god of Might, Sword, and Endurance, but by virtue of being a demi-god, you can wield the mightiest form of magic, divine miracles.

"The Guy at the Gym" is great rule short-hand to determine what a character can do without needing tons of rules. But you sometimes need to break that. Once your Fighter is slaying multiple castle sized dragons in melee combat at once, they are not regular dudes. The rules are silly if they do not capture your new prowess (hence why most OSR games end at level 10 where your HP is still low enough that most high falls still kill you).

In Stars Without Number, your level 10 Warrior will probably die fighting 12 one HD guards. A Heroic Warrior would slaughter them, but he could also sacrifice HP to bypass obstacles like the metal door through heroic effort.

I'm just saying, your rules are dumb and you are expecting the GM to fix that. (Or your rules are so cumbersome that the GM ignores them in favor of verisimilitude being a lot easier to run)

[malachi]

If you want to play "an underdog who succeeds through skill, courage, and determination", then that campaign needs to stay at lower levels of D&D, or use a different system entirely.

Or, if the intent is to literally be an 'underdog', you should intentionally play a lower level PC (and possibly intentionally choose not to level up).

Why does ensuring that all classes at level X can meaningfully contribute to campaigns designed for a party of characters at level X mean that you can't choose to play a character of lower than level X in order to play an underdog?

This, of course, is assuming that people mean something along the lines of "someone who is known to have disadvantages compared to their competition". If, instead, people mean something more along the lines of "someone who is objectively weaker than their competition but is able to use guile, cunning, luck and other hard-to-model qualities to overcome", that doesn't sound like it fits the class concept of a fighter/barbarian/ranger/paladin/monk - although it could sometimes fit the class concept of a rogue (except for the key components of luck and other hard-to-model qualities).

With that second definition of an underdog, I envision lots of interactions with the environment - coupled with corny one-liners.
The character that best embodies that definition of an underdog, to me, is Caiaphas Cain from some of the Warhammer 40k novels. His role in the military is to basically be military police / morale enforcement (typically by shooting anyone in the head who shows signs of low morale / running away). His primary goal in life is to survive long enough to retire. He frequently ends up outnumbered, outgunned, and runs away - only to happen across some fortuitous circumstances that allow him to turn the tide of his original predicament (and look like the smartest and most courageous hero around). That does sound like a concept that would be plenty fun to play - but I don't see anything in D&D that is particularly suited for mechanically implementing it outside of DM fiat and setup. However, that character could have that concept mechanically implemented in a game like FATE (from my memories of briefly reading through the Dresden Files version of FATE).



This brings to mind the party that Quertus brings up occasionally: Basically-Thor, a sentient potted plant (that may or may not be able to communicate or move), and some number of other players (probably 10+, if I recall his normal group size).
In a game like D&D, would Basically-Thor and the potted plant be represented as having the same level?
In a game like HERO / GURPS, would those two have the same number of ability points (or whatever the unit of character-building currency is in that game)?




For those who want to play underdogs (and see that as a reason for maintaining a large disparity between contribution levels of classes at any given level), are you talking about my 1st or 2nd definition of underdog, or are you talking about some other definition?

[AntiAuthority]

This is a perfect example of the "inverted guy-at-the-gym" I mentioned upthread.

If you want to play "an underdog who succeeds through skill, courage, and determination", then that campaign needs to stay at lower levels of D&D, or use a different system entirely.

I have to agree, though I'd imagine a normal person traveling with higher level characters to be what that would look like.

---

Right. Which is why a lot of people consider HP to be a measure of "plot armor" rather than meat, which is exactly the sort of thing the OP seemed to be rallying against.

Where are the holes in what I said about HP? I know it varies from person to person, but so far, nobody has pointed out why there's an issue with the way I described them as meat.. And I have several questions on why Cure Wounds is called Wounds instead of Plot Armor and what's being damaged when something beats a character's AC?

You're free to play however you want, I'm not going to try to force my opinions on anyone, and you can rightfully ignore me if I start trying to dictate to you how you play your characters. I have no intention of being that person that demands everyone play my way. I was just pointing out that such character concepts work better at lower levels than higher levels.

I do have to ask though. Why are you so against me saying high level martials are far beyond what a normal human or even action hero can do? I've been putting out reasons for why I believe they are, why I think they could be better and you keep telling me what D&D is and isn't. Like how D&D is a high fantasy swords and sorcery genre that should keep martials bound by realism because otherwise they'd be stepping on a Monk's toes... And it isn't a superhero game... So, how is that different from you trying to force your preferred style of play onto me?

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This is all really specific to WotC D&D. Basically all forms of OSR side-step this.

I would agree that "grounded" concepts just are not high level. That's why most OSR games end at level 10 and games like Godbound require "martials" to have divine powers. You could be a demi-god of Might, Sword, and Endurance, but by virtue of being a demi-god, you can wield the mightiest form of magic, divine miracles.

"The Guy at the Gym" is great rule short-hand to determine what a character can do without needing tons of rules. But you sometimes need to break that. Once your Fighter is slaying multiple castle sized dragons in melee combat at once, they are not regular dudes. The rules are silly if they do not capture your new prowess (hence why most OSR games end at level 10 where your HP is still low enough that most high falls still kill you).

Agreed, I'd probably start letting characters do blatantly superhuman stunts around the time they can reliably murder giants and only come out of it slightly injured. Or getting bitten/grappled by large animals and coming out of it pretty much fine. Or having a pissed off dragon freeze people in solid blocks of ice but my character, who was closer to the dragon's breath, being ok (this happened with a small white dragon once, it was the hardest fight of our character's lives up until that point).

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Or, if the intent is to literally be an 'underdog', you should intentionally play a lower level PC (and possibly intentionally choose not to level up).

Playing an under leveled character would be the perfect example of playing an underdog that has to rely on their grit, luck and cunning to beat superior enemies. It adds challenge to the game and doesn't break immersion too, as you're the same level as a real world person but are fighting against things far outside of what you should be able to handle (aka fighting a higher level enemy).

[Talakeal]

When I see "Guy at the Gym Fallacy," it normally reads to me like an argument against the "Captain Hobo Problem". As someone who prefers martial characters, this always strikes me as telling me that I am having badwrongfun at their expense.

Spoiler: Captain Hobo Problem Definition

Show

Captain Hobo Problem

A theoretical character in a system which generically surcharges game effects based on their utility and directs the player to fluff their effects post-hoc. He's used as a shorthand for the dangers of assigning weak fluff without regards to its relative in-game effect; Captain Hobo's super-speed is described as being the side-effect of 'too much energy drinks and vodka', his 12d6 attack (the max he's allowed to buy out of chargen) is a broken chair leg, his toughness is described as 'layered clothes from Goodwill with cardboard and tape', etc.
The problem with Captain Hobo is that merely by existing he makes everyone else's character less cool. Your badass magical martial artist with mastery over the four elements is only as effective at superheroics as a drunken smelly guy. A less extreme but no less illuminating example would be someone playing a James Bond clone whose PP7 could do more damage than the mortar shots of Artillery Man or someone playing a Conan clone who could outwrestle someone's Superman expy.
Stop by Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards and Magician Superhero Problem to see what can happen if you naively attempt to avert the Captain Hobo problem.

Where are the holes in what I said about HP? I know it varies from person to person, but so far, nobody has pointed out why there's an issue with the way I described them as meat.

Ok, I got one for you: Why is it (virtually) impossible to kill a hill giant by falling damage? Regardless of the height, the odds of a hill giant dying from a fall are significantly less than one in a million, yet from everything we know about physics, a larger person should be significantly more susceptible to falls from extreme heights than one of ordinary size.

Is the hill giant super humanly tough?

If so, then why is a super humanly tough fighter killing a super humanly tough giant any easier for you to believe than an ordinary fighter killing an ordinary hill giant?

Like how D&D is a high fantasy swords and sorcery genre that should keep martials bound by realism because otherwise they'd be stepping on a Monk's toes... And it isn't a superhero game... So, how is that different from you trying to force your preferred style of play onto me?

From my perspective, you are removing character options from the game while I am trying to add to them.

A monk is someone who uses chi to enhance themselves and reach a state of perfection that transcends humanity. Fighters are masters of armed combat who utilize tools (usually magical ones) to enhance themselves beyond what is ordinarily possible.

If you want to merge them, D&D has you covered, multi classes exist, so do sword sages.

But by saying that every high level fighter has to be more than merely human and able to perform shonen style feats, you are mushing together two separate archetypes and telling people who want to play the pure thing to take a hike or stick to the kiddie table.

Again, this is just how I hear it, not some statement of objective fact.

Stating that D&D is a high fantasy game not a super hero game isn't really me stating a preference, its an objective fact. Just google D&D and look at the first summary that pops up, and then do the same to Champions or Aberrant or Mutants and Masterminds.

Or, if the intent is to literally be an 'underdog', you should intentionally play a lower level PC (and possibly intentionally choose not to level up).

Why does ensuring that all classes at level X can meaningfully contribute to campaigns designed for a party of characters at level X mean that you can't choose to play a character of lower than level X in order to play an underdog?

This, of course, is assuming that people mean something along the lines of "someone who is known to have disadvantages compared to their competition". If, instead, people mean something more along the lines of "someone who is objectively weaker than their competition but is able to use guile, cunning, luck and other hard-to-model qualities to overcome", that doesn't sound like it fits the class concept of a fighter/barbarian/ranger/paladin/monk - although it could sometimes fit the class concept of a rogue (except for the key components of luck and other hard-to-model qualities).

For those who want to play underdogs (and see that as a reason for maintaining a large disparity between contribution levels of classes at any given level), are you talking about my 1st or 2nd definition of underdog, or are you talking about some other definition?

It is mostly a narrative thing; the idea of someone who has to overcome hardships to defeat a great evil is to me much more compelling than a demigod smooshing everyone who doesn't agree with him. Batman beating up Bane seems heroic, Superman beating up Bane just looks like a bully.

From a mechanical perspective, I would like everyone to be more or less equal, but if there is an imbalance (and there will be) I prefer to be on the weaker side of it. D&D tends to already have a mechanical bias against non casters, I don't see any reason to compound this by capping them at low level.

From Merriam-Webster...

Definition of superhero
: a fictional hero having extraordinary or superhuman powers
also : an exceptionally skillful or successful person

Thor and Superman are also labeled as super heroes and they do have powers.

I can't prove an 8th level Fighter has super powers. You can't prove they don't.

I can prove a high level fighter is expected to fight high CR enemies, where a regular human being would probably be dead within a few seconds.

I can prove that a high level fighter is able to last for extended periods of time against creatures far more powerful than regular human beings, where a regular human being would be dead really quickly. Whether through being incredibly skilled at dodging or just tanking the blows. I haven't seen anyone poke holes into my explanation of why HP isn't that yet, but I'm open to hearing why it's wrong.

I can prove that a high level fighter can do incredible amounts of damage to fantastic beasts that would kill a normal man several times over, where a regular human being might not be able to even hurt them, regardless of how trained they are.

The entire reason I brought up the Superhero title in the first place is because you typed...



I responded to something you said, about original D&D and medieval superheroes to show it isn't just high fantasy and sword and sorcery genres.

Ok, so Super Heroes typically have powers but not always. Let's get away from that term then. What I am saying is that D&D typically models itself on stories where the majority of the characters are more or less ordinary humans like Conan or Lord of the Rings, while a setting where the everyone (who matters) has super powers will start to resemble a different genre more like something you see in superhero comics.

My memory is terrible at recalling things on the spot, but I'll go with the most recent example.

In 5E, I've made a Totem Warrior (has Bear Totem for first two Totems) Barbarian with a high strength and Great Weapon Master. With the Bear Totem, your carrying capacity is doubled to what it already is. We've been killing plenty of giant monsters, and the DM has put us into a dungeon with (some) metal doors.

Me: I'll cleave it in half.
GM: Is your greataxe magic?
Me: No...
GM: You'll just break your sword then.
Me: But I'm doing a lot of damage...
GM: And you'll destroy your sword by hitting it against a metal door. (This same issue comes up against stone doors too)

Also in 5E, someone activated a trap while exploring a dungeon. I can't remember the exact details, but it was a battering ram type trap, and we weren't sure what other pressure plates would activate.

Me: As it's going in, I'll try to break its mechanisms by pulling on the log.
GM: Well, you crushed your hand.
Me: But my strength and Bear Totems...
GM: You're not strong enough to do that.
Me:...

I think there was another time when this came up in 5E, but I'm drawing a blank at the moment.

There was also a time in Pathfinder where a fellow player of mine wanted to pull off some amazing ninja moves by "backflipping from the ground floor to the roof." He rolled really high on the dice, the GM said, "You're not able to do that." Admittedly, he was a low level character, but the GM made it clear that even if he were a much higher level (even Level 20), it still wouldn't have worked.

When I pointed out my current thoughts on the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy, the GM said, "Do you wanna play D&D or not?"

There's also also this lovely thread on Reddit.

I wasn't there, but both of those examples all sound like a DM just trying to play by the rules and comic up for reasons why you couldn't just bypass the mechanics for disabling devices rather than an active attempt at limiting martials.

As for the Reddit story, that just sounds like a jackass DM. There is no excuse for being a stickler for the rules when it comes to martials but letting magic users ignore the rules. Also, I am pretty sure a "guy at the gym" could run 25' in 5 seconds and could easily bullrush someone through a glass window.

[Tvtyrant]

When I see "Guy at the Gym Fallacy," it normally reads to me like an argument against the "Captain Hobo Problem". As someone who prefers martial characters, this always strikes me as telling me that I am having badwrongfun at their expense.

Spoiler: Captain Hobo Problem Definition

Show

Captain Hobo Problem

A theoretical character in a system which generically surcharges game effects based on their utility and directs the player to fluff their effects post-hoc. He's used as a shorthand for the dangers of assigning weak fluff without regards to its relative in-game effect; Captain Hobo's super-speed is described as being the side-effect of 'too much energy drinks and vodka', his 12d6 attack (the max he's allowed to buy out of chargen) is a broken chair leg, his toughness is described as 'layered clothes from Goodwill with cardboard and tape', etc.
The problem with Captain Hobo is that merely by existing he makes everyone else's character less cool. Your badass magical martial artist with mastery over the four elements is only as effective at superheroics as a drunken smelly guy. A less extreme but no less illuminating example would be someone playing a James Bond clone whose PP7 could do more damage than the mortar shots of Artillery Man or someone playing a Conan clone who could outwrestle someone's Superman expy.
Stop by Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards and Magician Superhero Problem to see what can happen if you naively attempt to avert the Captain Hobo problem.

Ok, I got one for you: Why is it (virtually) impossible to kill a hill giant by falling damage? Regardless of the height, the odds of a hill giant dying from a fall are significantly less than one in a million, yet from everything we know about physics, a larger person should be significantly more susceptible to falls from extreme heights than one of ordinary size.

Is the hill giant super humanly tough?

If so, then why is a super humanly tough fighter killing a super humanly tough giant any easier for you to believe than an ordinary fighter killing an ordinary hill giant?



From my perspective, you are removing character options from the game while I am trying to add to them.

A monk is someone who uses chi to enhance themselves and reach a state of perfection that transcends humanity. Fighters are masters of armed combat who utilize tools (usually magical ones) to enhance themselves beyond what is ordinarily possible.

If you want to merge them, D&D has you covered, multi classes exist, so do sword sages.

But by saying that every high level fighter has to be more than merely human and able to perform shonen style feats, you are mushing together two separate archetypes and telling people who want to play the pure thing to take a hike or stick to the kiddie table.

Again, this is just how I hear it, not some statement of objective fact.

Stating that D&D is a high fantasy game not a super hero game isn't really me stating a preference, its an objective fact. Just google D&D and look at the first summary that pops up, and then do the same to Champions or Aberrant or Mutants and Masterminds.



It is mostly a narrative thing; the idea of someone who has to overcome hardships to defeat a great evil is to me much more compelling than a demigod smooshing everyone who doesn't agree with him. Batman beating up Bane seems heroic, Superman beating up Bane just looks like a bully.

From a mechanical perspective, I would like everyone to be more or less equal, but if there is an imbalance (and there will be) I prefer to be on the weaker side of it. D&D tends to already have a mechanical bias against non casters, I don't see any reason to compound this by capping them at low level.



Ok, so Super Heroes typically have powers but not always. Let's get away from that term then. What I am saying is that D&D typically models itself on stories where the majority of the characters are more or less ordinary humans like Conan or Lord of the Rings, while a setting where the everyone (who matters) has super powers will start to resemble a different genre more like something you see in superhero comics.




I wasn't there, but both of those examples all sound like a DM just trying to play by the rules and comic up for reasons why you couldn't just bypass the mechanics for disabling devices rather than an active attempt at limiting martials.

As for the Reddit story, that just sounds like a jackass DM. There is no excuse for being a stickler for the rules when it comes to martials but letting magic users ignore the rules. Also, I am pretty sure a "guy at the gym" could run 25' in 5 seconds and could easily bullrush someone through a glass window.

The basic issue is that the "guy at the gym" requires keeping everyone else down to that level, or letting that player just be worse then everyone else. 3.5 did the latter, 4E did the former. You simply cannot balance the person who summons groups of T-Rex's bolstered by demonic energy with the person who benches 500 lbs. Either the magic guy has to be limited in what they can do, or the latter has to accept being inferior.

Other classics include a mundane scout vs. a druid in hawk/insect form, falling and not dying vs people who can fly, etc. Personally I prefer taking casting out of normal abilities and making them rituals with long casting times, and people's abilities are all mundane, but that only works if people don't want to play Harry Potter style wizards.

[malachi]

When I see "Guy at the Gym Fallacy," it normally reads to me like an argument against the "Captain Hobo Problem". As someone who prefers martial characters, this always strikes me as telling me that I am having badwrongfun at their expense.

Spoiler: Captain Hobo Problem Definition

Show

Captain Hobo Problem

A theoretical character in a system which generically surcharges game effects based on their utility and directs the player to fluff their effects post-hoc. He's used as a shorthand for the dangers of assigning weak fluff without regards to its relative in-game effect; Captain Hobo's super-speed is described as being the side-effect of 'too much energy drinks and vodka', his 12d6 attack (the max he's allowed to buy out of chargen) is a broken chair leg, his toughness is described as 'layered clothes from Goodwill with cardboard and tape', etc.
The problem with Captain Hobo is that merely by existing he makes everyone else's character less cool. Your badass magical martial artist with mastery over the four elements is only as effective at superheroics as a drunken smelly guy. A less extreme but no less illuminating example would be someone playing a James Bond clone whose PP7 could do more damage than the mortar shots of Artillery Man or someone playing a Conan clone who could outwrestle someone's Superman expy.
Stop by Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards and Magician Superhero Problem to see what can happen if you naively attempt to avert the Captain Hobo problem.

Ok, I got one for you: Why is it (virtually) impossible to kill a hill giant by falling damage? Regardless of the height, the odds of a hill giant dying from a fall are significantly less than one in a million, yet from everything we know about physics, a larger person should be significantly more susceptible to falls from extreme heights than one of ordinary size.

Is the hill giant super humanly tough?

If so, then why is a super humanly tough fighter killing a super humanly tough giant any easier for you to believe than an ordinary fighter killing an ordinary hill giant?



From my perspective, you are removing character options from the game while I am trying to add to them.

A monk is someone who uses chi to enhance themselves and reach a state of perfection that transcends humanity. Fighters are masters of armed combat who utilize tools (usually magical ones) to enhance themselves beyond what is ordinarily possible.

If you want to merge them, D&D has you covered, multi classes exist, so do sword sages.

But by saying that every high level fighter has to be more than merely human and able to perform shonen style feats, you are mushing together two separate archetypes and telling people who want to play the pure thing to take a hike or stick to the kiddie table.

Again, this is just how I hear it, not some statement of objective fact.

Stating that D&D is a high fantasy game not a super hero game isn't really me stating a preference, its an objective fact. Just google D&D and look at the first summary that pops up, and then do the same to Champions or Aberrant or Mutants and Masterminds.



It is mostly a narrative thing; the idea of someone who has to overcome hardships to defeat a great evil is to me much more compelling than a demigod smooshing everyone who doesn't agree with him. Batman beating up Bane seems heroic, Superman beating up Bane just looks like a bully.

From a mechanical perspective, I would like everyone to be more or less equal, but if there is an imbalance (and there will be) I prefer to be on the weaker side of it. D&D tends to already have a mechanical bias against non casters, I don't see any reason to compound this by capping them at low level.



Ok, so Super Heroes typically have powers but not always. Let's get away from that term then. What I am saying is that D&D typically models itself on stories where the majority of the characters are more or less ordinary humans like Conan or Lord of the Rings, while a setting where the everyone (who matters) has super powers will start to resemble a different genre more like something you see in superhero comics.




I wasn't there, but both of those examples all sound like a DM just trying to play by the rules and comic up for reasons why you couldn't just bypass the mechanics for disabling devices rather than an active attempt at limiting martials.

As for the Reddit story, that just sounds like a jackass DM. There is no excuse for being a stickler for the rules when it comes to martials but letting magic users ignore the rules. Also, I am pretty sure a "guy at the gym" could run 25' in 5 seconds and could easily bullrush someone through a glass window.

I think there's some miscommunication happening here.

AntiAuthority started the thread by saying something I interpreted as "Because people cite GATG, certain characters arbitrarily have their class features removed. To stop this removal of class features, we should realize that all PCs at a certain level surpass the limits of what is physical on earth." One example was comparing the maximum falling damage dealt to increasing HP values (a class feature), or comparing various situations (fighters can kill dragons with scales that are better than platemail in a relatively short amount of time, but can't break down a stone or metal door).

The suggested solution to this discrepancy between the game mechanics and our understanding of what PCs can and cannot do is to say "Characters that are only expected to contribute to encounters/situations that real-world humans could contribute to should have a certain level-range. Characters that are expected to be equal to the challenge of contributing to encounters/situations that would be expected to end in a quick and grisly demise for any real-world human should have a different level-range."


Talakeal, it appears that you hear this as "You are wrong for wanting to play characters with only the capabilities of real-world humans" and/or "The only characters that should exist in D&D-like games are ones who eventually grow beyond the capabilities of real-world humans." I do not believe that AntiAuthority is saying that, and I personally do not believe that.

Talakeal, you also said that you get the impression that concern about being held to GATG levels of capability actually comes from a concern that having a non-supernaturally-powered character at level X makes all of the supernaturally-powered characters at level X look bad. I'm trying to rephrase your questions to adequately determine if I understand them: am I roughly in the right direction of interpreting your last post?

When you brought up the scenario about the hill giant, I think that you're getting AntiAuthority backwards. AntiAuthority has no issue with thinking "something about the hill giant is different than expected with our world's physics, because it can survive a fall that should have creamed it". He also wouldn't have an issue with a supernatural fighter taking on that supernatural hill giant in one-on-one combat. What he does have an issue with is when a character can get hit for 20d6 damage (which coincidentally happens to be the maximum falling damage) in combat without being instantly killed, but would be killed by DM fiat if the same character took 20d6 damage from falling.

One example AntiAuthority brought up was having non-supernaturally-powered characters being unable to break down a metal door - despite that door 30 HP / inch of thickness and 10 hardness (so a power-attacking fighter should be able to break it much faster than they could kill a dragon, yet one action is allowed and the other is not) - simply because no one from our reality could (according to some DM) break down a metal door with a sword.



You answered my question by stating:

It is mostly a narrative thing; the idea of someone who has to overcome hardships to defeat a great evil is to me much more compelling than a demigod smooshing everyone who doesn't agree with him. Batman beating up Bane seems heroic, Superman beating up Bane just looks like a bully.

From a mechanical perspective, I would like everyone to be more or less equal, but if there is an imbalance (and there will be) I prefer to be on the weaker side of it. D&D tends to already have a mechanical bias against non casters, I don't see any reason to compound this by capping them at low level.

The part in bold looks to me like you think that any given character of level X should be roughly comparable to another. That's a point of agreement between you and I.
The part in red looks like what you think I was recommending. I am not recommending that non-casters or any other class be restricted to a certain level cap. What I am saying is that a certain set of classes (typically those without an overtly supernatural power source) tend to be told "no, you can't do that" when the rules either explicitly say that they can do that (fall over 200 ft and survive, break down a metal door) or that they can actually do more difficult things - or sometimes simply imply that they should be able to do a thing.

I believe that the intent of the mechanics for 3.5, 4e, and 5e was that a character of level X should be roughly comparable to another character of the same level, regardless of class, on average. I also believe that the implementation of 3.5 (in particular) fell far short of that due to a combination of either over-valuing the worth of at-will options or getting hung up by something along the lines of the GATG fallacy.


Let me ask you another question. Which of these scenarios do you think fits the "underdog" goal you had earlier? (NOTE: I don't have access to 3.5 stuff, so I'm using guidelines from 5e)
(A) A level 10 fighter fights a wyvern and wins (deadly encounter)
(B) A level 10 wizard fights wyvern and wins (deadly encounter)
(C) A level 5 fighter fights a wyvern and wins (3x deadly encounter)
(D) A level 5 wizard fights a wyvern and wins (3x deadly encounter)
(E) A level 10 fighter fights a wyvern and wins (deadly encounter). Later, the fighter levels up to level 20.
(F) A level 10 fighter fights a wyvern and wins (deadly encounter). Later, the fighter finds out he has raw magic running through his veins, and eventually becomes a Fighter 11 / Sorcerer 9.
(G) A level 20 fighter fights a wyvern and wins (easy encounter)


In this, I think that all cases but (G) qualify as an "underdog" encounter (regardless of whether the character has magic or not, or later grows stronger, or develops magic).
In that, the intent isn't to cap anyone at any level. If a PLAYER wants to be an underdog, they have the choice of player at a lower level than the other characters, but they could just as easily be an underdog Wizard as an underdog Fighter (of course, there are other things that could make someone an underdog, like bad stats or an intentionally wrong build; but something as core as the CLASS should not be provided simply as an underdog option for players).

[AntiAuthority]

When I see "Guy at the Gym Fallacy," it normally reads to me like an argument against the "Captain Hobo Problem". As someone who prefers martial characters, this always strikes me as telling me that I am having badwrongfun at their expense.

Spoiler: Captain Hobo Problem Definition

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Captain Hobo Problem

A theoretical character in a system which generically surcharges game effects based on their utility and directs the player to fluff their effects post-hoc. He's used as a shorthand for the dangers of assigning weak fluff without regards to its relative in-game effect; Captain Hobo's super-speed is described as being the side-effect of 'too much energy drinks and vodka', his 12d6 attack (the max he's allowed to buy out of chargen) is a broken chair leg, his toughness is described as 'layered clothes from Goodwill with cardboard and tape', etc.
The problem with Captain Hobo is that merely by existing he makes everyone else's character less cool. Your badass magical martial artist with mastery over the four elements is only as effective at superheroics as a drunken smelly guy. A less extreme but no less illuminating example would be someone playing a James Bond clone whose PP7 could do more damage than the mortar shots of Artillery Man or someone playing a Conan clone who could outwrestle someone's Superman expy.
Stop by Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards and Magician Superhero Problem to see what can happen if you naively attempt to avert the Captain Hobo problem.

About Captain Hobo... I looked that up on Google, nothing about that came up at all. Did you coin the term or is it pre-existing?

Ok, I got one for you: Why is it (virtually) impossible to kill a hill giant by falling damage? Regardless of the height, the odds of a hill giant dying from a fall are significantly less than one in a million, yet from everything we know about physics, a larger person should be significantly more susceptible to falls from extreme heights than one of ordinary size.

Is the hill giant super humanly tough?

If so, then why is a super humanly tough fighter killing a super humanly tough giant any easier for you to believe than an ordinary fighter killing an ordinary hill giant?

... You're asking me why the fantasy giant that lives in the fantasy world isn't conforming to the laws of our world? Why the fantastic creature that would probably be suffering the square-cube law in our world isn't suffering from it in a fantasy world?

Second, yes, I would say something like that would be superhumanly tough. You could even use it being superhumanly tough to explain how it doesn't have glass bones, blood pressure issues or having severe trouble being able to even stand upright without external help like the a real person of a much shorter height would be would be. I remember reading the world's tallest man had a host of health issues, including not being able to stand on his own, and he was much lighter than a Hill Giant would be.

Third, yes, I can see a superhuman fighter killing a superhuman giant when he's dealing out more than enough damage to kill a regular man 10x over. A Commoner has 4 HP. A hill giant in 5E does 3d8+5 damage, that's enough to kill a Commoner nearly twice over even if the giant rolled all 1s. Yes, there are frail people in or world, but I doubt a regular human being is going to be able durable to take that much damage without instantly getting splattered or maimed so bad that the fight's over then and there... Much like how getting hit by a regular size club could potentially mess up a normal person, a giant one would probably be worse.

Slight tangent, but a lot of monsters in fantasy wouldn't work in real life. Dragons wouldn't be able to fly, and they'd need hollow bones. Trolls would be walking tumors or withered husks that would almost certainly die before they reached adulthood. Invisible creatures shouldn't be able to see anything since light is passing through their entire bodies. If you want to bring real world physics into it, congratulations, a lot of monsters in D&D are now dead, blind, incredibly fragile and generally harmless.

From my perspective, you are removing character options from the game while I am trying to add to them.

Yeah, from your perspective, that's not what I'm doing though. I'm trying to add more options, but you're telling me I'm doing it wrong.

A monk is someone who uses chi to enhance themselves and reach a state of perfection that transcends humanity. Fighters are masters of armed combat who utilize tools (usually magical ones) to enhance themselves beyond what is ordinarily possible.

So it's ok when you force your preconceived ideas of what a Fighter is onto me, but wrong when someone else does it? Alright then.

But by saying that every high level fighter has to be more than merely human and able to perform shonen style feats, you are mushing together two separate archetypes and telling people who want to play the pure thing to take a hike or stick to the kiddie table.

Actually, I've presented evidence that a high level fighter is more than a regular person, but you keep ignoring it.

Stating that D&D is a high fantasy game not a super hero game isn't really me stating a preference, its an objective fact. Just google D&D and look at the first summary that pops up, and then do the same to Champions or Aberrant or Mutants and Masterminds.

I googled it, and what came up is, "Dungeons & Dragons is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. It was first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc."

Yes, it's a fantasy game, nobody is arguing against that. It also had the Superhero title in it, but you also ignored that too because it was convenient and your only reason was, "Batman and Punisher don't have superpowers... Even if they're the exception, the title has to apply like it would for them.". It also has ki using monks in it, but you ignored that too. I'm getting the impression you're going to ignore everything else I say, even if it's in the game itself like "8th Level Fighters are called Superheroes, there's ki using Monks, eldritch abominations and plenty of other things."

Ok, so Super Heroes typically have powers but not always. Let's get away from that term then. What I am saying is that D&D typically models itself on stories where the majority of the characters are more or less ordinary humans like Conan or Lord of the Rings, while a setting where the everyone (who matters) has super powers will start to resemble a different genre more like something you see in superhero comics.

Like AD&D has Superheroes in it? Doesn't matter, you'll ignore that it can be a superhero game even if it says "Superhero". Where were superheroes in Conan and Lord of the Rings? I loved when the Superman expy turned back time by flying around the world really fast when it looked like Frodo was about to lose.

Like D&D has psionics in it? Doesn't matter, you'll ignore it can be a sci-fi game. Where were all the psionics in Lord of the Rings and Conan? My favorite part of that movie was when the Carrie expy made the Balrog's brain explode.

Like D&D has Monks in it? Where were all the ki wielding, Eastern themed warriors in Conan and Lord of the Ring? I don't recall the Wuxia character doing flying kicks dozens of meters into the air and oneshotting Orcs with ki strikes, but I must have not seen that in the background during the Battle of Helm's Deep.

As far as I'm aware, none of those exist in the stories you cite D&D is meant to replicate. It's almost like you're inserting your personal biases into the game and trying to pass them off as facts to me... Essentially telling me how to play the game. But it's different when you do it, right?

Burden of proof falls on you. I've presented things from older editions of the games, features in the game, etc. All you've done is say you feel it's not right. So please, present concrete evidence that I can debate you on.

And about superheroes... Batman and Punisher are the exceptions. Punisher isn't really a superhero, so much as an anti-hero. You decided, based on the same preconceived ideas I covered in my OP, that a Level 8 Fighter must be like them, instead of like the vast majority of people called superheroes that have super powers. But I suspect you'll ignore this too. You're taking the two that would be considered outliers and asserting that it MUST mean this.

And as an aside... I'm still not forcing you to do anything. You came into the thread and started saying I was trying (or heavily implying it) to force you to play character concepts that you didn't want to play. You can leave the thread at any point in time, I can't make you do anything you don't want to.

I've said multiple times that you can just play a low level character if you want to be the underdog in a party. You could play a high level character concept, just don't go trying to enforce to people online that it's still a low level character concept as an objective fact. You can do whatever you want. You could leave this thread, but that you keep coming back and trying to enforce your personal interpretation of the game onto me is very confusing, especially when you haven't presented anything concrete on why your way is objectively true beyond you saying it is. You can do what you want, just don't try to act like it's a fact without anything backing it up.

I'll just ask this. Do you have anything to say beyond your personal feelings on why such and such is this? Because that's all you've been doing this thread. I've been presenting rules (like damage and falling rules, which you ignored), character titles (which you ignored), feats (like smashing boulders from the air), things that fall outside of traditional fantasy already being in the game (like monks and psychics). All you've done is say how you feel things should be with no evidence beyond what appears to be your personal feelings. So, please present something concrete that I can argue against, otherwise it'll just continue this cycle of you making baseless claims, me refuting them with a simple Google search, then you ignoring them and saying the same thing in a slightly different way. Or you could just leave, as I'm not forcing you to be here or play a different character concept than what you want to play.

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You simply cannot balance the person who summons groups of T-Rex's bolstered by demonic energy with the person who benches 500 lbs. Either the magic guy has to be limited in what they can do, or the latter has to accept being inferior.

But why must the person that can summon dinosaurs be superior? I'm a supporter of superhuman warriors myself...

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Spoiler: Spoiler Tagged for Length. You got me to a T.

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I think there's some miscommunication happening here.

AntiAuthority started the thread by saying something I interpreted as "Because people cite GATG, certain characters arbitrarily have their class features removed. To stop this removal of class features, we should realize that all PCs at a certain level surpass the limits of what is physical on earth." One example was comparing the maximum falling damage dealt to increasing HP values (a class feature), or comparing various situations (fighters can kill dragons with scales that are better than platemail in a relatively short amount of time, but can't break down a stone or metal door).

The suggested solution to this discrepancy between the game mechanics and our understanding of what PCs can and cannot do is to say "Characters that are only expected to contribute to encounters/situations that real-world humans could contribute to should have a certain level-range. Characters that are expected to be equal to the challenge of contributing to encounters/situations that would be expected to end in a quick and grisly demise for any real-world human should have a different level-range."


Talakeal, it appears that you hear this as "You are wrong for wanting to play characters with only the capabilities of real-world humans" and/or "The only characters that should exist in D&D-like games are ones who eventually grow beyond the capabilities of real-world humans." I do not believe that AntiAuthority is saying that, and I personally do not believe that.

Talakeal, you also said that you get the impression that concern about being held to GATG levels of capability actually comes from a concern that having a non-supernaturally-powered character at level X makes all of the supernaturally-powered characters at level X look bad. I'm trying to rephrase your questions to adequately determine if I understand them: am I roughly in the right direction of interpreting your last post?

When you brought up the scenario about the hill giant, I think that you're getting AntiAuthority backwards. AntiAuthority has no issue with thinking "something about the hill giant is different than expected with our world's physics, because it can survive a fall that should have creamed it". He also wouldn't have an issue with a supernatural fighter taking on that supernatural hill giant in one-on-one combat. What he does have an issue with is when a character can get hit for 20d6 damage (which coincidentally happens to be the maximum falling damage) in combat without being instantly killed, but would be killed by DM fiat if the same character took 20d6 damage from falling.

One example AntiAuthority brought up was having non-supernaturally-powered characters being unable to break down a metal door - despite that door 30 HP / inch of thickness and 10 hardness (so a power-attacking fighter should be able to break it much faster than they could kill a dragon, yet one action is allowed and the other is not) - simply because no one from our reality could (according to some DM) break down a metal door with a sword.



You answered my question by stating:


The part in bold looks to me like you think that any given character of level X should be roughly comparable to another. That's a point of agreement between you and I.
The part in red looks like what you think I was recommending. I am not recommending that non-casters or any other class be restricted to a certain level cap. What I am saying is that a certain set of classes (typically those without an overtly supernatural power source) tend to be told "no, you can't do that" when the rules either explicitly say that they can do that (fall over 200 ft and survive, break down a metal door) or that they can actually do more difficult things - or sometimes simply imply that they should be able to do a thing.

I believe that the intent of the mechanics for 3.5, 4e, and 5e was that a character of level X should be roughly comparable to another character of the same level, regardless of class, on average. I also believe that the implementation of 3.5 (in particular) fell far short of that due to a combination of either over-valuing the worth of at-will options or getting hung up by something along the lines of the GATG fallacy.


Let me ask you another question. Which of these scenarios do you think fits the "underdog" goal you had earlier? (NOTE: I don't have access to 3.5 stuff, so I'm using guidelines from 5e)
(A) A level 10 fighter fights a wyvern and wins (deadly encounter)
(B) A level 10 wizard fights wyvern and wins (deadly encounter)
(C) A level 5 fighter fights a wyvern and wins (3x deadly encounter)
(D) A level 5 wizard fights a wyvern and wins (3x deadly encounter)
(E) A level 10 fighter fights a wyvern and wins (deadly encounter). Later, the fighter levels up to level 20.
(F) A level 10 fighter fights a wyvern and wins (deadly encounter). Later, the fighter finds out he has raw magic running through his veins, and eventually becomes a Fighter 11 / Sorcerer 9.
(G) A level 20 fighter fights a wyvern and wins (easy encounter)


In this, I think that all cases but (G) qualify as an "underdog" encounter (regardless of whether the character has magic or not, or later grows stronger, or develops magic).
In that, the intent isn't to cap anyone at any level. If a PLAYER wants to be an underdog, they have the choice of player at a lower level than the other characters, but they could just as easily be an underdog Wizard as an underdog Fighter (of course, there are other things that could make someone an underdog, like bad stats or an intentionally wrong build; but something as core as the CLASS should not be provided simply as an underdog option for players).

Yeah, you pretty much nailed my position to a T there. It's me wondering, "How isn't my dude a heap of broken bones after getting hit with basically a tree?" Then me wondering, "Why am I now a heap of broken bones after falling?" Then me killing 5 giant monsters but being unable to cut through a metal door without risking breaking my weapon. Stuff along that nature.

[Tvtyrant]

But why must the person that can summon dinosaurs be superior? I'm a supporter of superhuman warriors myself...

Right, that is the point I was making.

• Fighters can be superpowered and balanced with superpowered wizards.
• Fighters can be mundane and not balanced with superpowered wizards.
• Wizards can be mundane and balanced with mundane fighters.

You can't take mundane fighters and superpowered wizards and expect any form of balance. In 3.5 a Wizard could summon/bind better fighters then the fighter while also still being a wizard. In 4E they were balanced because the Wizard was mundane. You could make a game where fighters are super and balance it with super wizards (say Tome of Battle and a Beguiler.) But mundane and super don't balance together, which is why the Guy at the Gym is seen as a fallacy. It expects one person to accept real world rules and another not to, and also that they play nicely together.

[AntiAuthority]

Right, that is the point I was making.

• Fighters can be superpowered and balanced with superpowered wizards.
• Fighters can be mundane and not balanced with superpowered wizards.
• Wizards can be mundane and balanced with mundane fighters.

You can't take mundane fighters and superpowered wizards and expect any form of balance. In 3.5 a Wizard could summon/bind better fighters then the fighter while also still being a wizard. In 4E they were balanced because the Wizard was mundane. You could make a game where fighters are super and balance it with super wizards (say Tome of Battle and a Beguiler.) But mundane and super don't balance together, which is why the Guy at the Gym is seen as a fallacy. It expects one person to accept real world rules and another not to, and also that they play nicely together.

Sorry I didn't catch that sooner, but I agree. One of my favorite posts on this idea is from the Paizo forum...

You can bring martials up to the level of Cu Chulainn or you can bring casters down to the level of characters like Thoth-Amon or Gandalf, but trying to maintain a world where Gimli and Naruto are best buddies who go from level 1 to level 20 together is a huge part of why martial/caster disparity exists in the first place. Gimli manifestly does not belong in the world of Naruto Shippuden, and Naruto obviously would have annihilated the enemy forces of the Lord of the Rings. These two concepts and types of fantasy are practically anathema to each other they're so different. If you want to balance martials and casters, you have two directions, or a middle ground compromise.

[Mechalich]

Right, that is the point I was making.

• Fighters can be superpowered and balanced with superpowered wizards.
• Fighters can be mundane and not balanced with superpowered wizards.
• Wizards can be mundane and balanced with mundane fighters.

You can't take mundane fighters and superpowered wizards and expect any form of balance. In 3.5 a Wizard could summon/bind better fighters then the fighter while also still being a wizard. In 4E they were balanced because the Wizard was mundane. You could make a game where fighters are super and balance it with super wizards (say Tome of Battle and a Beguiler.) But mundane and super don't balance together, which is why the Guy at the Gym is seen as a fallacy. It expects one person to accept real world rules and another not to, and also that they play nicely together.

This is all true. I would add that another reason why Guy at the Gym thinking propagates is that fantasy worlds of the middle type: mundane fighters who are not balanced with superpowered wizards, are the most commonly encountered form in fantasy fiction, especially serious or 'adult' fantasy fiction. Worlds of fantasy supers - with super fighters, super wizards, or just everyone being super for some reason, tend to be poorly structured with bad worldbuilding and are often targeted at 'young adult' audiences (shounen manga is literally defined by the 'boy' demographic). Likewise, bringing wizards down to the mundane level and balancing them with warriors requires massive nerfs (4e reduces wizards, but also buffs warriors 'healing surges' and the like are anything but mundane) and severely restricts their powers, especially within the sort of quick-use timeframe most games demand. A 'wizard' whose powers take weeks to invoke isn't really a playable character.

So instead fantasy fiction produces worlds with wizard supers and nominally mundane fighters and then utilizes a variety of storytelling devices to provide an illusion of balance and they usually codify the wizards as sufficiently rare such that the mass of the population serves as a balance measure at the worldbuilding level. Neither of these methods work in games, unfortunately.

This creates a major problem in that tabletop RPGs are often trying to translate a fantasy universe that is not balanced into the form of a game that is, giving the designers an impossible task. The Wheel of Time, for example, was made into a d20 system RPG, even those people who can Channel are supers in that world and those who cannot Channel are not. D&D, has much the same problem, in that it drew upon source materials - the works of Tolkien, Robert Howard, Fritz Leiber, and Jack Vance especially - that had mundane warriors and super wizards.

What this means is that, if you pick a fantasy universe that has this imbalance in place and convert it into a game you have to determine which role the characters are going to play and all characters need to play that role in a given campaign. For instance, if you run the Wheel of Time, either everyone in the party can channel, or no one can, and the campaigns on either side of the divide will unfold very differently.

[Cluedrew]

Stating that D&D is a high fantasy game not a super hero game isn't really me stating a preference, its an objective fact. Just google D&D and look at the first summary that pops up, and then do the same to Champions or Aberrant or Mutants and Masterminds.

Yes but that isn't to say it has nothing common with a superhero game. Or anime or mythology or any other gene that people have used to dismiss fixes to D&D. Admittedly considering how broad superhero stories and anime are that's actually pretty hard to avoid. So if we cut out the entire overlap with either, we probably don't have content left.

Point of this rant. What exactly are the things from the superhero gene that you don't want to see? I would further ask if any of them are associated with particular power levels because... I mean you can only be so grounded when a team of 5 can save a nation from its otherwise inevitable doom.

• Fighters can be superpowered and balanced with superpowered wizards.
• Fighters can be mundane and not balanced with superpowered wizards.
• Wizards can be mundane and balanced with mundane fighters.

I think you are mixing up plausibility and power level. ... I guess because we are arguing between mundane/grounded and low-power vs. fantastic and high-powered this might be a nitpick but the mundane wizard, low- or high-powered, is probably an entertainer. And the high-powered mundane fighter is probably a famous UFC fighter whose main power is by their large social media presence.

[Lord Raziere]

Sorry I didn't catch that sooner, but I agree. One of my favorite posts on this idea is from the Paizo forum...

Well what to do expect, when you don't give enough thought into empowering the gimli? you can't perfectly emulate any character from fiction anyways and have to accept compromise when it goes beyond the scope of the fiction its based on. a gimli-personality is nothing hard to do fluff wise, nor is someone wielding an axe, heck there is an entire naruto village that are a bunch of stubborn earth-magic users from a land of stone with a miniature kage. its called Iwagakure, just change the name to Gin Li, give him Earth release and a big axe on his back, allow him to shoot spiky needles from his beard using the same jutsu jiryaiya does for his hair, and you have a good concept for an Iwa jounin at the very least.

[Tvtyrant]

I think you are mixing up plausibility and power level. ... I guess because we are arguing between mundane/grounded and low-power vs. fantastic and high-powered this might be a nitpick but the mundane wizard, low- or high-powered, is probably an entertainer. And the high-powered mundane fighter is probably a famous UFC fighter whose main power is by their large social media presence.

I'm using mundane to mean "things that can be done in RL." Almost everything a 4E wizard does outside of rituals can be replicated with a bunch of grenade cannisters. Flashbangs, smoke grenades, tear gas cannister, fire bombs, etc.

A 3.5 wizard can turn into almost anything, fly, teleport, bind things stronger then them, create any material or item in the world, etc.

[Max_Killjoy]

Right, that is the point I was making.

• Fighters can be superpowered and balanced with superpowered wizards.
• Fighters can be mundane and not balanced with superpowered wizards.
• Wizards can be mundane and balanced with mundane fighters.

You can't take mundane fighters and superpowered wizards and expect any form of balance. In 3.5 a Wizard could summon/bind better fighters then the fighter while also still being a wizard. In 4E they were balanced because the Wizard was mundane. You could make a game where fighters are super and balance it with super wizards (say Tome of Battle and a Beguiler.) But mundane and super don't balance together, which is why the Guy at the Gym is seen as a fallacy. It expects one person to accept real world rules and another not to, and also that they play nicely together.

This is all true. I would add that another reason why Guy at the Gym thinking propagates is that fantasy worlds of the middle type: mundane fighters who are not balanced with superpowered wizards, are the most commonly encountered form in fantasy fiction, especially serious or 'adult' fantasy fiction. Worlds of fantasy supers - with super fighters, super wizards, or just everyone being super for some reason, tend to be poorly structured with bad worldbuilding and are often targeted at 'young adult' audiences (shounen manga is literally defined by the 'boy' demographic). Likewise, bringing wizards down to the mundane level and balancing them with warriors requires massive nerfs (4e reduces wizards, but also buffs warriors 'healing surges' and the like are anything but mundane) and severely restricts their powers, especially within the sort of quick-use timeframe most games demand. A 'wizard' whose powers take weeks to invoke isn't really a playable character.

So instead fantasy fiction produces worlds with wizard supers and nominally mundane fighters and then utilizes a variety of storytelling devices to provide an illusion of balance and they usually codify the wizards as sufficiently rare such that the mass of the population serves as a balance measure at the worldbuilding level. Neither of these methods work in games, unfortunately.

This creates a major problem in that tabletop RPGs are often trying to translate a fantasy universe that is not balanced into the form of a game that is, giving the designers an impossible task. The Wheel of Time, for example, was made into a d20 system RPG, even those people who can Channel are supers in that world and those who cannot Channel are not. D&D, has much the same problem, in that it drew upon source materials - the works of Tolkien, Robert Howard, Fritz Leiber, and Jack Vance especially - that had mundane warriors and super wizards.

What this means is that, if you pick a fantasy universe that has this imbalance in place and convert it into a game you have to determine which role the characters are going to play and all characters need to play that role in a given campaign. For instance, if you run the Wheel of Time, either everyone in the party can channel, or no one can, and the campaigns on either side of the divide will unfold very differently.

Well said, on both parts.

Exactly what I've tried to say in the past when this has come up -- "something has to give" and "an RPG is not authorial fiction, just because something works in a book or move, doesn't mean it will work in an RPG."

The fourth option that comes up is "Fighters can be called mundane on the fiction level, but be balanced with superpowered wizards on the mechanical level"... and what gives there is any notion of coherence. And yet in past discussions, that's been the option some posters very vocally and vehemently said they'd take... and insist that everyone else take, too, I guess, expressing some degree of disdain for any other listed option, dismissing them as utterly unnecessary.

[Son of A Lich!]

One of the things I love about M&Ms is that it comes with a standard scale that everyone can play too (The game assumes Power Level 10), and you can scale down or up for difficulty.

The real difference here between M&M and D&D is that M&M always has a counter, and it's usually cheaper then the gimmick. For a conjurer, you could take the power effect Create and limit it too walls or domes, then add regeneration and vulnerability to fire for a Wall of Wood Spell, AOE Damage for a wall of Fire Spell, Impervious and Affects Incorporeal for a Wall of Force or just have a lot of wall for a Wall of Stone. After the initial purchase, each would be 1 pp more. If the Caster is stunned in combat, he loses the wall just like D&D (By setting the duration to Concentration). A bruiser, barbarian type of character could always punch through it with enough of a focused effort. Casters are encouraged to theme their spells to their party and help as needed, with things like limited or full immunity [Fire] and affects other or an Area of Effect and Selective.

But most importantly, they cannot upstage their companions - Your summons fall with one hit, if they don't, they are too weak to actually do much but hassle the opponent, if they are heroic and equal level to the party, they disappear when you try to do anything else (As you can't array your Summons without losing the Summon) and it is so expensive at that point you don't have other options. At my table, I house rule that minions, side kicks and the ilk share your turn - You can choose a move action between you or your pet, but not both. The benefit of getting to choose an attack with your companion is well worth the points put into it.

So if you want to simply attack creatively, a bruiser type character is perfectly fine. If you want to shape shift into animals, that's cool. but since 1 turn per player and PL limits are a thing in Mutants and Masterminds, a wizard is never able to just create a wall that cannot be undone unless another wizard says so.

Hell, Cinnamon Top in the webcomic I'm working on is a monk with 9 different alternate forms based on the different martial arts types he is practicing at the time. She can jump well in Lolipop, but she can literally teleport Caffine, Fly with Red Hot and can break items with a touch using Jaw Breaker.

Winter Crunch has a number of different abilities dependent on what terrain he is in and what he is fighting - Because he's a ranger, and it just makes sense that he has plans in place for anything he encounters.

Ironically, Sour Grape, the warlock/wizard/witch guy has the LEAST variation in his build, because he doesn't need it. He can move people around the battle field, fly and go ghostly with a blast attack and a deflection shield he can give to other party members. He can develop new powers he may need with the Ritualist advantage, but that functionally saves him a Hero Point that literally anyone in the party can use on the fly.

---

But yeah, in D&D, you have to account for the variability that wizards and other casters bring to the table and it's ability to drastically swing the fight to their side, especially if you aren't giving the same capacity to everyone in tandem. It's not about how much damage a wizard can do, wizards shouldn't be doing damage. Wizards shouldn't be taking damage. A wizard can see a group of enemies and by himself ask the question of how do you deal with him plus the group. A wall of fire completely changes an encounter, a fog cloud changes the encounter, invisibility changes the encounter, and the enemies only hope is to have a mage on their own side which then brings up the counter issue that the only thing that fights a mage is another mage and makes the non-casters feel like they are playing on the side lines of everyone else's game.

I think the best thing WotC could do to balance the tides, at least a little bit, is create a list of PC spells that they can learn on their own, Rare spells that have to be encountered and learned with help of a tutor, and vile spells that should only be cast by Villains and some extremely powerful allies which the players are never expected to learn. Having to earn Fireball makes it feel like earning a magic item, and helps put them on par with fighters who are very Magic item dependent. The Vile Spells could possibly be awarded as Boons in some scenarios.

[SIDE NOTE: I just realized that this would also help expand level 20+ play, as a wizard could go his entire career without learning a spell he really wants to add to his repertoire and never had the chance in the game play up to 20. That's kinda cool, it would have to be fleshed out a bit more though]

And you can expand this idea with common things various classes need (Like Barbarians needing a counter charm effect, for example) and have the players approach the GM and say they were looking for thing XYZ and the DM can put it into the lore of the quests they are on. Not to mention it just fits Monks so well to travel to monasteries to learn their techniques from masters. I could even see a way to help the MAD characters get less dependent on their oft-maligned stats (Like a paladin that learns combat damage and attack bonus with his charisma - interestingly enough, this would make the temptation into Hexblade a bit of a character development moment; Does he wait for his boon? or does he take the easy pact?). And Fighters could just learn cool maneuvers that simply are not available to the other PCs like Disarming or... well... just feats without ASIs.

I dunno, it would be a bit of a home brew project, but I think I would rather just stick with M&M for ease of use and execution.

[Kaptin Keen]

I only saw the original movies and some scans from the comics, but based on everything I know about him, Hellboy would be a mid-level character with an artifact (his stone hand).

Reason why I think he's mid-level is because the creatures he fights (and struggles against) are also things that a mid-level fighter would be able to defeat without an artifact.

He killed giants in melee, so could a mid-level fighter.

He was able to defeat his way through a group of skeleton warriors (Draugar, I presume), which a midlevel fighter could also do.

He can get chewed on by a hydra, as could a mid-level Fighter.

He gets knocked out by an explosion while falling, a higher level Fighter wouldn't.

A high level character would probably be strolling through the above.

He would still be defeated by a high level Wizard, unless there's something I'm missing.

But I am curious, how powerful are these god-like entities? Like omnipotent, city busters, planet busters, etc.?

It's more to show the differences in concept levels.

This is super relevant to what you're saying. May he rest in peace.


Agreed, but if two characters are of the same level, I feel there's a problem if one is vastly more powerful than the other.

Well, the stone fist is more of a trademark, I feel. Sure, it punches hard, but it's not like it's some sort of all-powerful superweapon. I've only seen the movies, never read the comics, but I feel he mostly uses it to bust open doors.

Hellboy fights what is basically the cthulu mythos. Tentacly things from beyond the universe of reason and sanity. And he does so in a very fighter-esque way. Giant fist, giant revolver, giant sword (I think he grabs that one from a statue, actually), giant pool of HP. But the point is that he doesn't have any powers to alter reality - except for such changes as may be seen from punching someone repeatedly in the nose with a stone fist. Other's have those powers - Hellboy just wades in, delivers grumpy rebuke, and wins. He's everything a fighter could ever dream of being: Extremely hard to kill, and able to solve most problems by punching them until they go away.

And such is the case for most of our heroic mundanes. Conan does this, Roland of Gilead does this, Batman (kinda) does this. And it's what the fighter and other melee classes should be - conditionally unstoppable juggernauts that casters need to fear, primarily because they do not stop, and you're in trouble if they tie you down long enough to begin punching you.

[Rukelnikov]

I read most of the thread (I skimmed some of the lengthiest posts), and there are multiple things being discussed here, and in many cases what seems to me as missconceptions in a lot of posts.

I'll start by the titular subject the (in)famous "Guy at the Gym Fallacy". What the OP mentions in hisopening post is strictly in contrast to what the original (maybe the term existed before idk) thread mentions, a thread which I read quite some time ago but skimmed a bit today when I found such discrepancies.

The GATGF doesn't talk about "no human could jump 10 meters up in the air, so you cant jump 10 meters", the GATGF doesn't talk about """real world""" limitations, but about innate humanoid capacities limitations: Humans can't fly.

Quoted from the thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...-Gym-Fallacy):

"They do things we can do. Not that we can do them as well. We can jump; they can jump 50 feet. We can shoot a bow; they can shoot a man at 500 yards with a crooked sight. We can swim; they can swim across the ocean. You know... maybe if the guy doing laps at the gym could.

This mindset forms the core of the Guy at the Gym fallacy. Because they do things that we can do, they cannot do things we cannot do. It's that simple!"

I have to say this is the first time I encounter the "fallacy" being used fo what is basically house rules, since most of the examples in the OP are just that, they dont follow RAW, and thus cannot be considered a problem of the system. I did find it invoked many times for the kinds of things Bekeleven used it for.

Having explained what I understand the "fallacy" speaks about (and such examples have been used in this thread intertwined with the DM house rule nerf ones), I consider it a fallacy in the sense that the reasoning he uses to explain the validity of such supposed fallacy is faulty, and contradicts himself.

Bekeleven started his post with: "No matter how high level a Barbarian or Rogue get, picturing them being able to heal the injuries/afflictions of others for instance, or raise the dead, strains disbelief."

Thats a valid invocation of the suppossed fallacy, a "mundane" cannot raise the dead.

But he also wrote the following: "In other words, for nearly every justification of why mundanes can't do something, there's equally valid fluff for why it makes sense without magic. I made a class that's so genre savvy he can spot illusions by "what doesn't make dramatic sense." How is that less reasonable than a man being fast enough and buff enough to take out a small army? How is that less reasonable than a man with a sword running 20 feet, jumping in the air, and his landing strike cleaving a house in two?"

This is not a valid argument, since his starting point is one not covered by the "fallacy" itself. Humans dont have a measurable capacity for genre-saavyness that can be turned up to 1001. He is using something not mundane to support his point that the supernatural can be achieved mundanely without stretching disbelief.

In my view of this situation, if for whatever reason a character can create a universe or plane (not the flying ships :P) it stops being mundane. Anything that is beyond the scope of human but arbitrarily powerful as I want can be considered a finctional mundane in a "Like real life, but..." setting, which dnd mostly is, or tries to be in what have been their (semi)canon settings across editions. So a character with the powerset of The Thing can be a perfectly "mundane" character, but a character with the powerset of any other of the FF is not.

A point which has been touched in the thread is the system agnosticity of this subject, and I fully believe it is system agnostic, since the same can happen in WoD or M&M, spend all your PPs and dont get a single power, not even device if you wanna go full puritan, Batman Costumed Adventurer and Martial Artists, are examples of this in that book. However, notice how both these settings are the type of "Like real life, but...".

Compare it with the Land of Ooo from Adventure Time, or the world of the Looney Tunes, in such a setting a mundane can easily achieve feats that would be considered supernatural in other settings, like being crushed like a piano in the living room, and the next second entering said living room from the kitchen door. Consider how such an event is treated in universe, and you can easily tell what is supernatural in each setting and what is mundane. Elmer may seem annoyed at Bugs resiliency to his many attemps at hunting him, but he still perceives Bugs as a bunny, because in such a setting, he is. If something like that happened in a "Like real life, but..." setting, people would be freaking out as they cant comprehend what is going on, a clear clue that such an event is far from mundane.

This last part of the analysis though, relies on the poorly defined notion of when a setting is "life real life, but..." and when it isn't. So my stance is that, while I cannot categorize settings in properly defined sets, I can tell there is a treshold upon which the GATGF is a valid claim, like in Looney Tunes ones, "why can't I blow some air into the crushed character and bring it back to life mundanely?", and others where it is not, for instance Middle Earth.

This begets the question, are Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk settings where coming back to life is seen as something mundane? In my opinion, no, they are not. And thus the opening line of Belekeven's post that coined the term of the GATGF defeated itself, by using an example of wanting a mundane perform something seen as supernatural in-setting, and still be able to call it mundane. (Such characters though, could probably try to travel to whaterver afterlife the dead characters rests in and try to bring them back to the world of the living, and still be mundane, because that is in compliance with the settings rules)

This went on longer than I thought it would, so I wil just write a line or two about the other subjects I've seen touched in this thread and planned to addressed. PCs above certain levels are definitely superhero material, this is supported by rules and lore, and has been this way since at least 2e. The signature I like the most from this forum depicts this perfectly, even when what the sig aims at is another comparison, paraphrasing "In 2e a 20th lvl fighter can survive a fall from the atmosphere and be in perfect condition a month later or two, in 5e a 6th lvl wizard can survive a fall from the atmosphere and be combat ready an hour later". That's the rules support of superhero material since at least 2e, for the fluff support, look no further than 3e's Legend Lore:

"When completed, the divination brings legends (if any) about the person, place, or things to your mind. These may be legends that are still current, legends that have been forgotten, or even information that has never been generally known. If the person, place, or thing is not of legendary importance, you gain no information. As a rule of thumb, characters who are 11th level and higher are “legendary”"

I don't remember what else I was gonna write about.

[Talakeal]

I can't speak for Talakeal, but responses in the past have included "don't tell me how to RP my character" and variants, I guess under the assertion that things like concept-mechanics-setting intersection are "roleplaying".

Are descriptions of how your character does things not part of playing the character?

The basic issue is that the "guy at the gym" requires keeping everyone else down to that level, or letting that player just be worse then everyone else. 3.5 did the latter, 4E did the former. You simply cannot balance the person who summons groups of T-Rex's bolstered by demonic energy with the person who benches 500 lbs. Either the magic guy has to be limited in what they can do, or the latter has to accept being inferior.

Other classics include a mundane scout vs. a druid in hawk/insect form, falling and not dying vs people who can fly, etc. Personally I prefer taking casting out of normal abilities and making them rituals with long casting times, and people's abilities are all mundane, but that only works if people don't want to play Harry Potter style wizards.

The thing is, games are not real life. Just like in authorial fiction you can use plot armor and narrative contrivinces, game mechanics can tinker with probability to make things seem a lot fairer than they would in a perfectly realistic simulation.

Imagine, for example, a super simple game: Both characters describ their characters however they want within the context of fantasy adventurers living in the forgotten realms. Then, when they fight, both roll a dice and add their level. Whoever rolls higher wins, and the DM narrates that victory however they like.

[Max_Killjoy]

Are descriptions of how your character does things not part of playing the character?

Not when the player tries to describe the character doing something that is flatly impossible for that character within the context of the campaign's setting, and not when the player's description of the actions is in direct conflict with the player's description of the character.

That is, the player does not get to say "my character is a peak human who succeeds on sinew, grit, wit, and steel"... and then describe the character doing things that are blatantly extra-normal for such a character in the setting and situation at hand.

They don't get to say "I'm playing Frank Castle" via what they tell the GM and what they put on the character sheet... and then describe their character in-play as if it was the Hulk or Thor or Dark Phoenix. They don't get to say "I'm playing Conan" and then chin-block Meteor Swarms.

[AntiAuthority]

Well, the stone fist is more of a trademark, I feel. Sure, it punches hard, but it's not like it's some sort of all-powerful superweapon. I've only seen the movies, never read the comics, but I feel he mostly uses it to bust open doors.

Apparently he can turn into a giant version of himself in the comics, wasn't quite sure what to make of that or what level he'd be at that point lol. But yes, Movie!Hellboy's hand is a really effective bludgeon.

Hellboy fights what is basically the cthulu mythos. Tentacly things from beyond the universe of reason and sanity. And he does so in a very fighter-esque way. Giant fist, giant revolver, giant sword (I think he grabs that one from a statue, actually), giant pool of HP. But the point is that he doesn't have any powers to alter reality - except for such changes as may be seen from punching someone repeatedly in the nose with a stone fist. Other's have those powers - Hellboy just wades in, delivers grumpy rebuke, and wins. He's everything a fighter could ever dream of being: Extremely hard to kill, and able to solve most problems by punching them until they go away.

Going by what I remember from the movies, they aren't really on the same level of power as the creatures from the Cthulhu Mythos. In Hellboy, they're treated as really big, slimy monsters, but remind me if I'm misremembering that.

In Cthulhu Mythos, you have big, slimy monsters, but they're more than just that. They can drive people mad by simply being looked up, drive people insane through their dreams, shapeshift and a whole host of other things. Even when Cthulhu was "beaten" it was because the ritual wasn't completed and he'd reform at a later date. Then at the upper tier are essentially concepts such as Yog-Sothoth being space-time itself... And then Azathoth, who has to constantly be played music to stay asleep, because if he wakes up, the universe itself will end because it's just a dream he's having.

I think Hellboy could handle the big monsters, as could a mid-level fighter, but I don't see them being able to take on concepts like the Outer Gods or things that could drive them insane if they just looked at them.

I know it won't translate over perfectly, but...

Even a Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath is only CR 12 in 3.5E. I'm sure Hellboy could take something like that with a sword and raw strength.

A Star-Spawn of Cthulhu is also a CR 20 enemy, but it would depend on if Hellboy is capable of resisting Insanity.

A Daughter of Shub-Niggurath is a CR 20 creature, and he could get through the DR. But the Daught has access to 8th level Druid spells. Not sure Hellboy could fight gravity being reversed or being unable to hit the Daughter because of Sanctuary. Then are the pheromones...

Cthulhu himself is CR 30, and could likely drive Hellboy insane unless he has mental resistances to things of this nature. Along with not being able to truly kill Cthulhu, as he would just reform, and if slain again would just go back to slumber because he's not entirely on the physical plane. And Cthulhu could just leave if he wanted to through Greater Teleport whenever Hellboy gets close to actually destroying his physical shell. This is assuming Cthulhu didn't decide to just drive him insane while Hellboy's sleeping.

The Outer Gods that are above them would be outside of Hellboy's league, as in the Lovecraftian Lore, they terrified the god of dreams so much that he promised to never sleep again... But eventually gave into sleep and died.

Went on a slight rant, but Hellboy seems to be a mid-level character because he's struggling against beings that are just really big but don't have any of the insanity-inducing, metaphysical shenanigans going on that the Cthulhu Mythos has in it.

If he had ways to resist the mental effects, shut down their ability to just teleport away and permanently kill an immortal being that exists on another plane of exist, maybe. But with everything I've seen of Movie!Hellboy, he probably couldn't take on anything too high from the Cthulhu Mythos, as the Great Old Ones are probably out of his reach, literally as they could just leave... Or in the case of Rhan-Tegoth, Movie!Hellboy would get hit by Imprison and trapped somewhere underground, with possibly no one able to free him.

... Now I'm just thinking about Cosmic Horror and want to play Bloodborne again.

---

Well what to do expect, when you don't give enough thought into empowering the gimli? you can't perfectly emulate any character from fiction anyways and have to accept compromise when it goes beyond the scope of the fiction its based on. a gimli-personality is nothing hard to do fluff wise, nor is someone wielding an axe, heck there is an entire naruto village that are a bunch of stubborn earth-magic users from a land of stone with a miniature kage. its called Iwagakure, just change the name to Gin Li, give him Earth release and a big axe on his back, allow him to shoot spiky needles from his beard using the same jutsu jiryaiya does for his hair, and you have a good concept for an Iwa jounin at the very least.

That... Actually fits rather well. But yeah, it's not a perfect fit to replicate a character in a game, but it can get pretty close.

[Mechalich]

Hellboy fights what is basically the cthulu mythos. Tentacly things from beyond the universe of reason and sanity. And he does so in a very fighter-esque way. Giant fist, giant revolver, giant sword (I think he grabs that one from a statue, actually), giant pool of HP. But the point is that he doesn't have any powers to alter reality - except for such changes as may be seen from punching someone repeatedly in the nose with a stone fist. Other's have those powers - Hellboy just wades in, delivers grumpy rebuke, and wins. He's everything a fighter could ever dream of being: Extremely hard to kill, and able to solve most problems by punching them until they go away.

And such is the case for most of our heroic mundanes. Conan does this, Roland of Gilead does this, Batman (kinda) does this. And it's what the fighter and other melee classes should be - conditionally unstoppable juggernauts that casters need to fear, primarily because they do not stop, and you're in trouble if they tie you down long enough to begin punching you.

Hellboy has a lot of immunities that mostly derive from simple being Hellboy. Batman, likewise, has 'I am Batman!' written on his character sheet with a whole bunch of miscellaneous bonuses attached. Conan also has similar traits that he gets by virtue of being a Cimmerian (and due to certain baggage attached to the author that forum rules prohibit discussing), though he does get ganked by wizards on a semi-regular basis.

Now, building a system whereby mundanes gain immunity to magic as they gain experience is an option, though it can be mechanistically tricky. Star Wars Saga Edition uses this method, and the utility of damaging Force Powers swings wildly depending on level. It also creates worldbuilding implications - if only the heroes can resist magic, then the wizards can still go all Jafar-snake-staff on the Sultans of the world. In the Hyborean Age of Conan it is actually strongly implied that this is the case for many of the kingdoms of the world. This isn't necessarily bad, many famous fantasy series have gone this route, but it is something that matters. AD&D 2e, with it's flat save values and magic resistance was much closer to this than later editions, and (somewhat amusingly) for Drow was exactly like this. Drizzt, for instance, had something like 85% MR in 2e, spells just bounced off him. However, this method doesn't eliminate the advantages casters gain through utility abilities like flight or shapeshifting, and tends to be bypassed by summoning, so it only really works if certain abilities are banned.

The thing is, games are not real life. Just like in authorial fiction you can use plot armor and narrative contrivinces, game mechanics can tinker with probability to make things seem a lot fairer than they would in a perfectly realistic simulation.

You can only use plot armor and narrative contrivances in a game if the game has rules for such things, as in through some form of metagame currency like Fate Points, otherwise you're just engaging in favoritism, and this doesn't really solve balance issues between concepts because everyone gets these things.

Imagine, for example, a super simple game: Both characters describ their characters however they want within the context of fantasy adventurers living in the forgotten realms. Then, when they fight, both roll a dice and add their level. Whoever rolls higher wins, and the DM narrates that victory however they like.

Sure, you could have a game like this, but if one character has fantastical powers and the other does not, the GM is going to have either describe the character with fantastical powers as an idiot, ignore some of their abilities, or utilize some other form of chicanery and it probably won't be satisfying to the audience. I mean, you could write a comic book in which Hawkeye defeats Dr. Doom in single combat, but it would involve monstrous amounts of cheese (comics do regularly invoke cheese at such levels, once you learn to spot it, it becomes immersion-breaking in a hurry).

[Quizatzhaderac]

As I see it, any game with a leveling system has one (or more) huge unrealistic element in it. Any armed melee combat system where fights last more than three seconds has a huge unrealistic element in it. My preference is to just bite the bullet and have HP be one ridiculous thing upfront.

Regarding author fiat and "merely improbable" characters: The regularity of rules breaks these. If we run any king of simulation on Sergeant York we realize that he was very lucky. When we try to run we almost never get the same outcome. If we want the same outcome, we need to stick in extra rules like "Germans have -5 to spot" "Five times per round, a 20th level rifleman can call for a re-roll of any shot directed at him".

It Reduces Levels to Completely Arbitrary Numbers.

For the sake of enumerating all of the possibilities:

It's possible to have the levels not matter, in some aspects of the game, but not others. For example these are "regular" people outside of combat. If we're doing this in a balanced way, we're say that rogue can't jump over a ten foot wall (world records is 8-ish), but also that a fireball isn't able to ignite it.

I'm not actually saying this is good (and IMHO largely defeats the purpose of having a game with interpret-able rules).

Basically there are several ways to produce a fictional world.

Method One: the world fundamentally follows the same rules as our own with regard to physical laws in ordinary circumstances, but there are extraordinary circumstances were those laws can be violated. I would summarize this as 'Normal, but...' This is the most common way to build a fantasy world and the overwhelming majority of settings are built this way.

Method Two: the world is fundamentally different from the known universe and follows a completely different set of laws. It's an outright magical world. However, whatever the rules to this world might be, they apply everywhere. There's no 'magic' there's simply the powers that exist in this world according to the new physical laws. This method is common in 'everyone has magic' types of fantasy settings. Jim Butcher's Codex Alera setting, where every object is tied to a 'fury' based around one of the classic elements, works this way.

Method Three: the world is fundamentally different from our own at the level of physical laws and there's ways to violate those laws too as a form of 'magic.' Settings of this nature tend to have major coherency problems, because it is often difficult to tell what is responsible for what. Warhammer 40K probably qualifies as a good example. Many isekai anime also do this - as the fantasy world will have some particular rule set and the titular character will have the special ability to violate those rules because they're from another world.

Method Four: screw the rules. Worlds of this nature simply do not have internal consistency. There are no laws of physics there is only what the narrative demands. This is more common then you might think and includes new worlds created in stories heavy on folklore (many of the works of Charles de Lint), magical realism (Pan's Labyrinth), or cosmic horror (HP Lovecrafts dreamlands stories).

For game purposes you're generally making a world using either Method One or Method Two. The trick here is that building a world with any sort of decent verisimilitude using the latter is really, really hard (Codex Alera, which I mentioned above, if a fun set of action-adventure novels, but totally fails this test). Outright magical worlds are therefore more common in video games, which can drastically limit the ability of characters to interact with their worlds and therefore simply shunt everything that doesn't make sense off-screen. JRPGs do this all the time.

I would say that method two is really the default. Fantasy intentionally draws from pre-modern literature and worldviews such that many fantasy tropes pre-date our conception of them as unrealistic. In fact, I'd say the worldview and magical thinking (or at least deconstructions thereof) are defining aspects of fantasy. In absence of a compelling story/style reason the authors will pick something consistent to history, literary conventions, or reality. IMHO, it's the difference between one and two is just really a matter of degree of stylization and how much implications are thought out.

As an example, LotR: It isn't "normal" until Gandalf casts a spell. It's abnormal in every scene that contains a hobbit.

Three just seems consistent with your definition of magic. If you're glossing over how the narrative frames those differences from our world, Star Trek's warp drive is just as magic as Troy's telepathy, as Q's omnipotence.

Regarding four and magical realism, I think that's a tremendous example of how narratives frame things. Pan's Labyrinth is a story about a girl with an overactive imagination who gets shot by her fascist stepfather; absolutely nothing unrealistic or magical there. Except the previous statement is obviously stupid. The movie presents the faeries, Pan, and the labyrinth as completely real and merely allows the possibility of rationalizing it away. Likewise John Wick frames constant improbable things as realistic. The Ulster cycle was not written about a different world or a demigod, it's just that literature had different standards of credibility back then and people didn't see Cu Cuchulain's actions as supernatural.

In fact, "supernatural" wasn't a word yet. And that word comes from philosophy, so we specifically know someone was creating a new concept and not just using a different word. "Magic" meant "that stuff Persians do".

It is quite unreasonable to assume that as a character gains levels of ability in his or her class that a corresponding gain in actual ability to sustain physical damage takes place. It is preposterous to state such an assumption, for if we are to assume that a man is killed by a sword thrust which does 4 hit points of damage, we must similarly assume that a hero could, on the average, withstand five such thrusts before being slain! Why then the increase in hit points? Because these reflect both the actual physical ability of the character to withstand damage – as indicated by constitution bonuses- and a commensurate increase in such areas as skill in combat and similar life-or-death situations, the “sixth sense” which warns the individual of some otherwise unforeseen events, sheer luck, and the fantastic provisions of magical protections and/or divine protection.

First note that he doesn't actually say what hit points represent. He says they aren't exclusively health points, and listed several vague and contradictory options.

Second: The issue of representing this is in the rules. As the OP covered, the rules consistently treat it as health points, regardless of never using the term.

In 5E, I've made a Totem Warrior (has Bear Totem for first two Totems) Barbarian with a high strength and Great Weapon Master. With the Bear Totem, your carrying capacity is doubled to what it already is. We've been killing plenty of giant monsters, and the DM has put us into a dungeon with (some) metal doors.

Me: I'll cleave it in half.
GM: Is your greataxe magic?
Me: No...
GM: You'll just break your sword then.
Me: But I'm doing a lot of damage...
GM: And you'll destroy your sword by hitting it against a metal door. (This same issue comes up against stone doors too)

Also in 5E, someone activated a trap while exploring a dungeon. I can't remember the exact details, but it was a battering ram type trap, and we weren't sure what other pressure plates would activate.

Me: As it's going in, I'll try to break its mechanisms by pulling on the log.
GM: Well, you crushed your hand.
Me: But my strength and Bear Totems...
GM: You're not strong enough to do that.
Me:...

I think there was another time when this came up in 5E, but I'm drawing a blank at the moment.

There was also a time in Pathfinder where a fellow player of mine wanted to pull off some amazing ninja moves by "backflipping from the ground floor to the roof." He rolled really high on the dice, the GM said, "You're not able to do that." Admittedly, he was a low level character, but the GM made it clear that even if he were a much higher level (even Level 20), it still wouldn't have worked.

When I pointed out my current thoughts on the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy, the GM said, "Do you wanna play D&D or not?"

There's also also this lovely thread on Reddit.

If you want to be a wise-***, here's what a player could say.

Although I agree with Talakeal that the situation of "DM just doesn't want the door/trap bypassed" needs to be considered; are the casters getting to blow through doors? Although I guess they could maybe say "These doors are no ordinary metal".

Second example:
Player: Well what is my strength score?
DM: Huh? it's on your sheet.
Player:The number on my sheet says I can lift a log, you just said I'm not that strong, so my sheet must be wrong.

However and equally wise-*** DM could respond.
DM:You're right, reduce your total strength to 18.

The linked example:
Player: Is it a plexiglass window?
DM: No, it's just regular glass.
Player:The 50's kind we never use to make windows with anymore because kids would accidentally break them all the time?
DM: whatever they had in the 15th century.
Player: They didn't put glass in windows then. Pre-industrial glass isn't clear and is basically a semi-precious stone in terms of expense.

[Max_Killjoy]

Any armed melee combat system where fights last more than three seconds has a huge unrealistic element in it.

Um... I think the people who are recovering the armed combat techniques of the past would really, really disagree with that statement. Some fights last 3 seconds, some last notably longer, from what I've seen of their work.

[Arbane]

I wasn't there, but both of those examples all sound like a DM just trying to play by the rules and comic up for reasons why you couldn't just bypass the mechanics for disabling devices rather than an active attempt at limiting martials.

"As always, magic is limited by your imagination - if you can imagine it happening, it does. And martial powers are limited by your imagination - if you can imagine a reason why it can't happen, it doesn't." - LightWarden

Like AD&D has Superheroes in it? Doesn't matter, you'll ignore that it can be a superhero game even if it says "Superhero". Where were superheroes in Conan and Lord of the Rings?

And about superheroes... Batman and Punisher are the exceptions. Punisher isn't really a superhero, so much as an anti-hero.

Try the Silmarillion - that's where Tolkien put all the REALLY over-the-top mythical stuff. (Sauron used to be the sidekick of the Silmarillion's main baddie.)

Batman and the Punisher DEFINITELY have superpowers - mostly dodging bullets and surviving beatings that would leave a normal person in an iron lung.

[Lord Raziere]

"As always, magic is limited by your imagination - if you can imagine it happening, it does. And martial powers are limited by your imagination - if you can imagine a reason why it can't happen, it doesn't." - LightWarden

Speak for yourself.

I can imagine a guy punching space to make portals, punching time to travel through it, want to conjure? punch through possibility to grab a thing before it exists and pull it into existence. I can imagine a punchy guy doing anything and I don't care for why they can't. ya'll are shooting yourselves in the foot.

[Max_Killjoy]

Speak for yourself.

I can imagine a guy punching space to make portals, punching time to travel through it, want to conjure? punch through possibility to grab a thing before it exists and pull it into existence. I can imagine a punchy guy doing anything and I don't care for why they can't. ya'll are shooting yourselves in the foot.

Which makes "I punch stuff" a just different special effect for the same sort of powers that "I make rude gestures and say strange words" guy has. Your "martial" character is now doing broad-meaning magic. No amount of "but my character just punches stuff" will change the fact that "I punch stuff" guy is doing exactly the same things as the spellcasters, and is just as extra-normal as any spellcaster who can do the same things with different special effects.

(Remember that "magic is as magic does" thing I used to say, that people hated? This is exactly where it comes from.)

Also, I think you're missing the point of Arbane's post... it appears to be snarking against the same double-standard that your comment is openly rejecting, and not at all embracing or endorsing that it.

Of course, some of that double-standard comes from, well, the players who don't want any icky "magic" or "extra-normal" or "superhuman" on their Conan beating up sorcerers characters (see, inverse-guy-at-the-gym-fallacy mentioned previously).

[Lord Raziere]

Which makes "I punch stuff" a just different special effect for the same sort of powers that "I make rude gestures and say strange words" guy has. Your "martial" character is now doing broad-meaning magic. No amount of "but my character just punches stuff" will change the fact that "I punch stuff" guy is doing exactly the same things as the spellcasters, and is just as extra-normal as any spellcaster who can do the same things with different special effects.

(Remember that "magic is as magic does" thing I used to say, that people hated? This is exactly where it comes from.)

Also, I think you're missing the point of Arbane's post... it appears to be snarking against the same double-standard that your comment is openly rejecting, and not at all embracing or endorsing that it.

Of course, some of that double-standard comes from, well, the players who don't want any icky "magic" or "extra-normal" or "superhuman" on their Conan beating up sorcerers characters (see, inverse-guy-at-the-gym-fallacy mentioned previously).

I also hate the double-standard, yes. But at the same time, without clarification quoting that can sound like a confirmation of the concept, than a deriding of it.

Again, what you consider magic and not magic is your problem. and what you consider "the same" is also only your problem, because the differences are in the margins. if you don't make enough differences in the margins, of course they're going to seem the same, you just have to make the two have different limitations rather than more limitations than the other.

[Max_Killjoy]

I also hate the double-standard, yes. But at the same time, without clarification quoting that can sound like a confirmation of the concept, than a deriding of it.

Again, what you consider magic and not magic is your problem. and what you consider "the same" is also only your problem, because the differences are in the margins. if you don't make enough differences in the margins, of course they're going to seem the same, you just have to make the two have different limitations rather than more limitations than the other.

So what's the "margin" between making a rude gesture and saying a funny word causing a hole in time and space to open up... and punching reality so hard that it causes a hold in space and time to open up?

In both cases an act of dubious causality has caused the seemingly impossible to happen.