Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy

[Lucas Yew]

@Max Killjoy: (and to the whole thread too post-first comma)

While I get that the crux of your belief is that the inverse-GATG Fallacy is more problematic than the straight one, I still believe that the latter (plain GATGF) is the bigger problem. It's mainly because of this tidbit:

The straight GATG Fallacy seems to be more prevalent in the developer community, if not the player one.
{ex. Monte Cook (obviously), (and maybe) Skip Williams (who seemingly hates the "simpler" sorcerers), etc.}

As such, the fallout is way more destructive for the roleplaying game environment than it's supposed difficulty for getting fixed quickly, and hence all these forum debates that while educative are also quite depressing.

[Ignimortis]

You know, I liked this concept and spent a while writing a list of characters from various forms of fiction to show what a composite character would look like... But I let my laptop go into standby for a second, tried to post it, and all of it was lost... I don't feel like today was a productive day lol.

But anyway, I noticed repeating patterns with the abilities of such a "composite martial" character that wasn't specialized but could emulate all martials in virtually any fiction, much like a D&D Wizard can.

*snip*

So... Yeah... Sounds pretty OP.

That's a good post. I'll bookmark it for future use. If you could supply the sources for those, I'd be very happy as well!

[Satinavian]

This is actually a good example of the divide between tactical and story abilities.

A tactical ability character could indeed, as Lord Raziere notes, solve a famine by marching out into the wilderness, slaughtering something large and edible, and hauling it back (and if they can cut through dimensions they don't have to worry about environmental depletion either). However, it still involves going through a process of meeting multiple tactical objectives: locate food source, successfully approach within range, subdue food source, return food source to base; in order to fulfill the overall story goal.

A story ability character, by contrast, just uses the 'create foodstuffs' ability and the problem is solved.

That mostly happens because D&D does not really care about what you call story abilities and handles them as some kind of "it's not fun, let's make it a spell to get it done" mechanism. In many other games, supernatural story abilities are way more fleshed out and better balanced. Creating large amounts of food or usable raw materials is not an easy thing for casters and a thing like fabricate simply does not exist and is replaced by a large number of weaker crafting magic, if at all. Repair is considered an extremely useful and powerful magic. But i wouldn't say that those systems have weaker magic, they just value things differently, pay attention to non-combat application of supernatural abilities, flesh them out, actually value them for what they can do and balance them.

This set of assumptions is much more prevalent in Western tradition than Eastern tradition (probably for religious reasons that are not to be discussed), and martial types in Eastern settings tend to have far fewer hang-ups about grabbing some phlebotinum and bypassing natural human limits. It remains normal for people without phlebotinum (often ki, or chakra, or some similar source of 'spirit energy') to still be bound by said limits. It's also common in Eastern traditions for there to be seemingly a greater degree of comfort with settings where only a tiny super-human elite determined everything that's important (probably for cultural and political reasons that are not to be discussed).

The eastern tradition assumes that everyone has ki (or language variations of the same idea). There is no real distinction between supernatural heroes and normal people, the latter only didn't train enough, don't have the knowledge to use it or can't put themself through the often ascetic life that is needed for selfimprovement.
There is no wizard vs. martial. They both just train their ki and then can do ridiculous things, There might be preferences of use or secret arts or pacts with other supernatural beings, but basically they are all the same.

I mean....

this is assuming the fighter isn't some godlike super-speedster/hunter tracker who can fell big beasties in one blow and knows exactly where to get one of those on earth and can do the whole thing in two seconds.

which is equivalent to what a high level wizard can do in some regards. its still same level of power, just requires a different train of thought.

First you would have to assume that such beasts exist in the first place. That is not a given, expecially if the world has is to have a somewhat believable ecology. Second, in a famine those beasts tend to get hinted anyway, so what does one more hunter contribute ? Third, preparation is not that much a problem as others make it to be. You would hunt those in groups and then have enough hands to actually prepare the meat in far less than a day. That is how hunting big animals for food is traditionally handled.

Still, even if all of that works, "Hunting" is a very different set of skills than "using a sword".

Edit: or that the create foodstuffs ability doesn't have as many steps as the ones you outline just in different forms, and that your framing the foodstuffs ability somehow bypasses their own knowledge of how to make food or anything, knowledge of chemistry, physics, quantum mechanics, the amount of energy needed to make sure the food exists, how much big of a ritual circle you need to draw, whether it needs a special ink from a special monster, how much research and calculation it takes to make all this work and so on.

like, wizards are supposed to be smart and hard working right? why do they get to skip over all the nitty-gritty details of how their powers work? there is more to creating food than just the food just suddenly appearing, there is an implicit bunch of factors underneath that.

There are many other systems where it is as complicated to solve this stuff via magic and you have to consider all those small details.

There are also quite commonly rules for hunting that boil down to "reach number x to get y rations with your hunting/survival skill", so it is not as if the nonmagical way never gets simple rules.


And i also don't like the habit of D&D to take every supernatural ability of stories and make a wizard (and maybe sometimes a cleric) spell out of it. It does not only make the wizaed stupidly overpowered, it also leads to "I hav this character from a story with a supernatural ability, how do i build it" -> "Make a wizard and pick the right spell". But that also is mostly a D&D problem as many other systems use way more specialized casters. And often semi-casters that can choose their few abilities from a very wide list.

[Lord Raziere]

First you would have to assume that such beasts exist in the first place. That is not a given, expecially if the world has is to have a somewhat believable ecology. Second, in a famine those beasts tend to get hinted anyway, so what does one more hunter contribute ? Third, preparation is not that much a problem as others make it to be. You would hunt those in groups and then have enough hands to actually prepare the meat in far less than a day. That is how hunting big animals for food is traditionally handled.

Still, even if all of that works, "Hunting" is a very different set of skills than "using a sword".

Guy at the Gym Fallacy right there. nothing says that the Fantasy Fighter can't do all tha in two seconds, just as a wizard can't suddenly cast any spell from any school of magic to instantly solve the problem.

we can also say that the conjure foodstuff might not exist as well. we can also put a bunch of limitations on that through logic. anything else is just a double standard.

[Satinavian]

Guy at the Gym Fallacy right there. nothing says that the Fantasy Fighter can't do all tha in two seconds, just as a wizard can't suddenly cast any spell from any school of magic to instantly solve the problem.

The divine avatar of the Hunt can, the mundane human can't. The "Fantasy Fighter" can be one of them or something between.

we can also say that the conjure foodstuff might not exist as well. we can also put a bunch of limitations on that through logic. anything else is just a double standard.

There is no double standard. Either "conjure food stuff" magic exists or not. If it exists, it is a useful ability.

[Lord Raziere]

The divine avatar of the Hunt can, the mundane human can't. The "Fantasy Fighter" can be one of them or something between.

There is no double standard. Either "conjure food stuff" magic exists or not. If it exists, it is a useful ability.

The divine avatar of all the magic can, but a fledgling apprentice can't. the "Wizard" can be one of them or something between.

Either the monster exists for the fighter to kill or it doesn't, if it exists, its a useful corpse to eat.

both of these things depend on the GM allowing them, there is no difference.

[Satinavian]

The divine avatar of all the magic can, but a fledgling apprentice can't. the "Wizard" can be one of them or something between.

Either the monster exists for the fighter to kill or it doesn't, if it exists, its a useful corpse to eat.

both of these things depend on the GM allowing them, there is no difference.

Don't see a problem with any of that.

Except that i don't like DM fiat and the rules should give you those results instead.



I don't have any problems with martials (people fighing with weapons as main shtick) getting cool supernatural stuff. I do have a problem with that supernatural stuff being declared to be a completely normal and not at all supernatural or magic ability. You can't punch holes in reality just by punching harder. But if a fighter wants to learn teleport magic or aquire some innert teleporting ability from a monster by getting its teleporting organs crafted on. Or finds a ritual that lets him bind his soul to some other plane which allows him to take shortcuts through it giving him teleporting abilities ... all of that is fine.

But not teleporting via punching. Or teleporting via singing or teleporting via cooking or teleporting via needlework or ... teleporting via any other ability that has nothing to do with teleporting. And yes, that does include magic as well. There will be no teleporting via fireballing either.

[Lord Raziere]

Don't see a problem with any of that.

Except that i don't like DM fiat and the rules should give you those results instead.



I don't have any problems with martials (people fighing with weapons as main shtick) getting cool supernatural stuff. I do have a problem with that supernatural stuff being declared to be a completely normal and not at all supernatural or magic ability. You can't punch holes in reality just by punching harder. But if a fighter wants to learn teleport magic or aquire some innert teleporting ability from a monster by getting its teleporting organs crafted on. Or finds a ritual that lets him bind his soul to some other plane which allows him to take shortcuts through it giving him teleporting abilities ... all of that is fine.

But not teleporting via punching. Or teleporting via singing or teleporting via cooking or teleporting via needlework or ... teleporting via any other ability that has nothing to do with teleporting. And yes, that does include magic as well. There will be no teleporting via fireballing either.

So.....do you just not have GMs in your games or what? cause you can't really escape that.

No, THAT is unacceptable magic copying to me. more than any reality-hole punching. with reality-hole punching I know that the results from the characters own efforts.

with your method, the fighter is nothing but a magic-super soldier, which is separate character concept than a fighter.

[Satinavian]

So.....do you just not have GMs in your games or what? cause you can't really escape that.

We do have GMs. But i mostly play systems that are not D&D and are also not mostly about combat but at the same time very crunchy, so that you have tremendous rule support for mundane non-combat activities.

No, THAT is unacceptable magic copying to me. more than any reality-hole punching. with reality-hole punching I know that the results from the characters own efforts.

with your method, the fighter is nothing but a magic-super soldier, which is separate character concept than a fighter.

Well, if the fighter doesn't want to be a magic super soldier, he will obviously be limited to the human possible. And stay significantly weaker than a magic-super soldier in many ways. But if the system is balanced, he might be able to invest his build ressources elsewhere, maybe getting social skills or influence/status or learn a craft or compliment his fighting with other mundane options.

The only means to go over mundane (= worldly, like in this world) limits is to aquire explicitely supernatural abilities.

Or to warp the world that what would traditionally supernatural is actually explicitely natural there, but somehow i doubt what you want is a world where creatures called humans despite having little in common with our humans have telepotation and other stuff as innate abilities and the fighter can just train to get more reach with it than the average guy.

[Kaptin Keen]

How are you going to create food for 300 hungry townsfolk whose crop failed this year?

Any number of ways. The most obvious has to be 'kill a large monster and eat it.'

But your question fails to be of relevant scale. You should ask 'how are you going to kill Valmordra the All-Ender, whose very skin is adamantium, and whose breath sears flesh from bone instantly?'

It bears mentioning that ... oh, let's say Valmordra lives atop the Mountain of Regrets, which is both literally and metaphorically the place every bad thing that ever happened to any living thing goes to die. This isn't reachable by any mortal means, and also it's on fire. Just because.

So our hero, Fighter McGuy sets out to kill Valmordra because of reasons. It's an impossible quest, but he decides first that being able to pierce adamantium skin seems relevant. So he kills Hathmog the Orc King, who carries Sever - a vorpal blade. That done, he finds a potion of stoneskin. This takes some doing, because potions are only level 3, and stoneskin is level 5. But Gwarlyn the Old, the First Treant, can brew such potions, and does so in exchange for a white lilly from a distant mountaintop where his first love - a patch of frost lillies - still grows.

Ok, now Fighter McGuy can actually fight Valmordra. He still needs to get there. No mortal means can reach the Mountain of Regrets - but divine ones can. So he finds a local god - let's call her Skithula the Witch Queen (a demi-goddess of hags, swamps and foul smell) - beats her up, and tells her to open a portal to the foothills of the Mountain of Regrets.

By pure happenstance, he inherited a ring of fire resistance from his dad, so fire isn't an issue.

Queue climactic battle. The end.

[Lord Raziere]

We do have GMs. But i mostly play systems that are not D&D are are also not mostly about combat but at the same time very crunchy, so that you have tremendous rule support for mundane non-combat activities.

Well, if the fighter doesn't want to be a magic super soldier, he will obviously be limited to the human possible. And stay significantly weaker than a magic-super soldier in many ways.

The only means to go over mundane (= worldly, like in this world) limits is to aquire explicitely supernatural abilities.

Or to warp the world that what would traditionally supernatural is actually explicitely natural there, but somehow i doubt what you want is a world where creatures called humans despite having little in common with our humans have telepotation and other stuff as innate abilities and the fighter can just train to get more reach with it than the average guy.

1. No, the fighter can be just as strong just with training, the arcane soldier isn't stronger, they're just tapping into a different source of strength.

2. making a lot of assumptions there

3. see, this a train of logic that comes up a lot: your not flexible. you either demand one thing or demand another with no in betweens. this is why you'll never fix this, both of these possibilities invalidate the desired character concept of this discussion. until you can accept a world where a person who with training become extraordinary without magic, yet does not suddenly make everyone just as strong as him by the fact he merely exists, your never going to understand, and you might as well forget discussing this ever again, because your solution does not solve this to me, and never will. all your doing is demanding conformity to your logic, not considering possibilities outside of it.

its a my way or the highway, "super soldier or aliens" mentality. you think that just because its not this supersoldiers it has to be aliens and there is no other explanation. the training could be secret and kept secret so that random kids don't go becoming super-strong and crushing boulders irresponsibly, people might simply not care about being super-strong superman despite a logician proclaiming the contrary there is more important things in life than power after all, and you'd be surprised by what people don't care about. lots of this fiction involving such physical training just make the fighter community a separate one that exists right alongside normal society and normal people being afraid of fighting just don't go near places with fighters, considering them a different class of people that is dangerous to associate with.

your assuming every single human is a knowledge- hungry person obsessed with power and that society will inevitably grab for all secrets and share them to the world in an inexorable march of "knowledge wants to be free" and determined to spread all improvements everywhere just like our own. that is not human nature. its quite easy to make a culture that won't automatically upend what it means to be human with new knowledge, real humans had successfully been doing that for thousands of years until what, a couple centuries ago?

its a common worldbuilders fallacy: "any change to the world must automatically be universal and affect everyone on every level". with no thought on how the change can be limited or controlled so that society can continue to function as it always has without being irrecoverably radically changed forever.

[Satinavian]

Well, that would exactly the Eastern method i commented on above.

Everyone has ki-powers. Those are the basis for pretty much all the impressive things the heroes of the stories do. But most people don't train it to that extend because that is timeconsuming and bothersome.

But those powers are not Nonmagic because eastern magic uses the very same concepts. There is no difference between an eremite sage casting a spell that does x or an eremite sage doing a secret martial arts technique that does x. Those are literally the same things. (That, theoretically everyone could do with enough dedication and time).

[GloatingSwine]

Everyone has ki-powers. Those are the basis for pretty much all the impressive things the heroes of the stories do. But most people don't train it to that extend because that is timeconsuming and bothersome.

And the ones that do we call "player characters".

No matter what fluff words you use to explain it, player characters in RPGs are not normal humans, because they inhabit realities where the limits of physiology are much much more generous. With a few levels under their belt, and without any items, the "mundane" D&D fighter is faster, stronger, and more skilled than an earth-human will become with a lifetime of practice and training.

That's what fundamentally makes the guy at the gym fallacy a fallacy, because earth-human standards do not apply to RPG player characters, not even ones in "mundane" settings really because they learn faster, heal faster, and become more capable more broadly.

[Satinavian]

And the ones that do we call "player characters".

No matter what fluff words you use to explain it, player characters in RPGs are not normal humans, because they inhabit realities where the limits of physiology are much much more generous. With a few levels under their belt, and without any items, the "mundane" D&D fighter is faster, stronger, and more skilled than an earth-human will become with a lifetime of practice and training.

That's what fundamentally makes the guy at the gym fallacy a fallacy, because earth-human standards do not apply to RPG player characters, not even ones in "mundane" settings really because they learn faster, heal faster, and become more capable more broadly.

Don't generalize "player characters in RPGs" from D&D. A character in Shadowrun is hardly more skilled than an earth-human with a lifetime of practice and training and also stops to be faster and stronger or more resiliant if you take his equippment and implants away. An investigator in Call of Cthuluh is also not faster, stronger and more skilled than your average human, not even with experience.

And that is actually the more common way human PCs are modelled. As well within the bounds of humanity.


But yes, if the setting and system would be using ki, it is likely that those humans that train it, are in the focus of character creation.

[Lord Raziere]

And the ones that do we call "player characters".

No matter what fluff words you use to explain it, player characters in RPGs are not normal humans, because they inhabit realities where the limits of physiology are much much more generous. With a few levels under their belt, and without any items, the "mundane" D&D fighter is faster, stronger, and more skilled than an earth-human will become with a lifetime of practice and training.

That's what fundamentally makes the guy at the gym fallacy a fallacy, because earth-human standards do not apply to RPG player characters, not even ones in "mundane" settings really because they learn faster, heal faster, and become more capable more broadly.

Exactly. This whole discussion of world-building ignores that this is about empowering the PCs, not about screwing up their worlds. they can keep their worlds however they want as long as I can keep my unique PC, and if I or any other person wants their unique PC to be batman or saitama solar exalted-esque guys, one has a right to play them no matter what other people complain about it, they don't want to play with that, thats just not their preference. its not my preference that the optimizers play god wizard, but its not right for me to stop them from playing that. its only fair the people who want god fighter get that as well, is all I'm saying.

[Mechalich]

But most people don't train it to that extend because that is timeconsuming and bothersome.

This justification method is difficult to balance correctly. After all, if the time-consuming and burdensome magical practice produced outcomes inferior to the conventional practice, for example if forging a sword with magic produces a worse sword than the typical hammer+anvil approach, then no one would bother to learn it at all, because it would be useless. On the other hand, if the time-consuming and bothersome method produces superior outcomes, the level of burden has to be immense to prevent widespread adoption. This is difficult to configure without either requiring all potential magic-users to be fanatically obsessive, in which case your world is one in which all wizards are insane, which obviously have rather significant consequences. Or demanding a time investment such that only the rich can undertake magical study because everyone else is too busy working to avoid starving. This has significant consequences too, and it is tied to a socially elitist system wherein, if the magic is actually real (as opposed to BS that Chinese scholar-gentry thought would make them immortal) provides a tangible reinforcement behind a supernatural-powers caste system.

That's not to say that this can't work. In fact it can work well when the powers that result from such prolonged and extensive study are limited to esoteric endeavors that have no real world equivalent and aren't easily adapted to replace and known form of labor. Settings wherein anyone can study to hunt ghosts, for instance. This also can work if the esoteric powers provide an outcome that is functionally equal to the conventional method, for instance if martial zen makes you just as good as a veteran soldier, but not better than one, which allows a game to utilize aesthetics that wouldn't actually work in the real world (in which an unarmed guy in a smock is no match whatsoever for one in plate armor with a halberd) while not imposing a major world-building burden.

Don't generalize "player characters in RPGs" from D&D. A character in Shadowrun is hardly more skilled than an earth-human with a lifetime of practice and training and also stops to be faster and stronger or more resiliant if you take his equippment and implants away. An investigator in Call of Cthuluh is also not faster, stronger and more skilled than your average human, not even with experience.

And that is actually the more common way human PCs are modelled. As well within the bounds of humanity.

Quite. And, equally important, even if the PCs are 'special' for some reason and get to bypass human boundaries, this doesn't eliminate human boundaries as a measure in the setting because NPCs bound by those limitations will continue to exist and the rules need to be able to represent them just as effectively as they do the PCs. If human characters without any form of phlebotinum appear in a setting at the character level (meaning the players aren't representing gods or something) and interact with PCs directly it is important to know what the limits to their abilities are. Vampire: the Masquerade games are not intended to ever have human PCs, but the vampires make tests against fully human NPCs all the time and GMs may even need to build dozens of such NPC stat blocks during a campaign.

its a my way or the highway, "super soldier or aliens" mentality. you think that just because its not this supersoldiers it has to be aliens and there is no other explanation. the training could be secret and kept secret so that random kids don't go becoming super-strong and crushing boulders irresponsibly, people might simply not care about being super-strong superman despite a logician proclaiming the contrary there is more important things in life than power after all, and you'd be surprised by what people don't care about. lots of this fiction involving such physical training just make the fighter community a separate one that exists right alongside normal society and normal people being afraid of fighting just don't go near places with fighters, considering them a different class of people that is dangerous to associate with.

your assuming every single human is a knowledge- hungry person obsessed with power and that society will inevitably grab for all secrets and share them to the world in an inexorable march of "knowledge wants to be free" and determined to spread all improvements everywhere just like our own. that is not human nature. its quite easy to make a culture that won't automatically upend what it means to be human with new knowledge, real humans had successfully been doing that for thousands of years until what, a couple centuries ago?

its a common worldbuilders fallacy: "any change to the world must automatically be universal and affect everyone on every level". with no thought on how the change can be limited or controlled so that society can continue to function as it always has without being irrecoverably radically changed forever.

Any new method that is economically superior in the aggregate to the existing method for producing its intended outcome has extremely strong pressures in favor of its adoption and eventually complete erasure of the old method as anything other than a curiosity. This is a natural process, namely evolution. It's also something that we've seen happen countless times in human history - changes in agricultural practices following the 'discovery' of the Americas by Columbus, for example. Yes, existing processes, through a position of a priori advantage can use accumulated assets to prevent the adoption of a new one. However, this depends on some sort of barrier being in place to prevent a change from triggering a evolutionary cascade and it tends to eventually fail (it took Europe a while to adopt potatoes, but eventually, they were everywhere, even in France, they were just too useful to discard).

If a person can 'just train' to unlock new abilities then there's no barrier. The argument from myself, and I believe from Satinavian as well, is that 'learning to manipulate ki' or 'learning to cast spells' or any other sort of pre-requisite breakthrough serves to produce exactly the sort of barrier you intend. And generally that barrier needs to be pretty substantial. Humans are willing to dedicate vast amounts of energy on a personal and societal level in the completely futile search for supernatural powers. In a scenario where those powers actually exist and can provide demonstrable results, the level of effort that would be input should increase exponentially.

Super-strength, by the way, is probably the best candidate for an ability to inevitably spread as far as possible, because it has vast utility in almost every field of manual labor. In fact an overwhelming fraction of the tools humans have invented throughout history from the lever to the front-end-loader have been for the purpose of providing mechanical advantage to increase available strength. If a method to reliably train humans to utilize super-human strength, even something modest like doubling the generalized strength based athletic tests of a person, that ability would be massively game-changing today in the 21st century and every country on the planet would be forced to adopt the technique in industry and military applications or face destruction within a generation.

Exactly. This whole discussion of world-building ignores that this is about empowering the PCs, not about screwing up their worlds. they can keep their worlds however they want as long as I can keep my unique PC, and if I or any other person wants their unique PC to be batman or saitama solar exalted-esque guys, one has a right to play them no matter what other people complain about it, they don't want to play with that, thats just not their preference. its not my preference that the optimizers play god wizard, but its not right for me to stop them from playing that. its only fair the people who want god fighter get that as well, is all I'm saying.

Yes, all supported concepts within the framework of a specific game should be able to reach equal levels of power within the game framework. Of course that's true. However the game design is under no obligation at all to support an specific maximum power level or any particular concept. It is perfectly acceptable to make a fantasy world with traditional wizards who wield nearly cosmic power and warriors who are utterly ordinary humans who no ability to exceed natural limits at all - it's just that in the game built around that world all PC characters will perforce have to be wizards. This isn't even unusual - that's the framework for Harry freaking Potter.

If you bring a concept to a game scenario that the setting does not support the GM is under no obligation to allow concept and has in fact very good reasons to forbid it as it will likely be destabilizing.

[Satinavian]

Exactly. This whole discussion of world-building ignores that this is about empowering the PCs, not about screwing up their worlds. they can keep their worlds however they want as long as I can keep my unique PC, and if I or any other person wants their unique PC to be batman or saitama solar exalted-esque guys, one has a right to play them no matter what other people complain about it, they don't want to play with that, thats just not their preference. its not my preference that the optimizers play god wizard, but its not right for me to stop them from playing that. its only fair the people who want god fighter get that as well, is all I'm saying.

You can play your unique PC as often as you want. You just need to find a campaign where it fits. If you can't do that, tough luck.

[Max_Killjoy]

@Max Killjoy: (and to the whole thread too post-first comma)

While I get that the crux of your belief is that the inverse-GATG Fallacy is more problematic than the straight one, I still believe that the latter (plain GATGF) is the bigger problem. It's mainly because of this tidbit:

The straight GATG Fallacy seems to be more prevalent in the developer community, if not the player one.
{ex. Monte Cook (obviously), (and maybe) Skip Williams (who seemingly hates the "simpler" sorcerers), etc.}

As such, the fallout is way more destructive for the roleplaying game environment than it's supposed difficulty for getting fixed quickly, and hence all these forum debates that while educative are also quite depressing.

My argument is not so much that the inverse is a bigger issue, but rather than it is to point out that the inverse is one of the root causes of the GATGF, and one of the major impediments to fixing it.

That is, those in the overall game community who demand that the "Fighter", etc, be completely "non-extra-normal", "non-supernatural", etc, and yet able to keep up with or defeat the most powerful magic-enabled characters (spellcaster or otherwise) are one of the causes of system and setting elements that look like or are GATGF in the first place.

To me, this is simply a matter of some gamers (and developers/designers) wanting incompatible and mutually exclusive things in the same system and/or setting, and the entire thing could be resolved by just letting go of the character-concept kitchen sink and acknowledging that not all characters are suitable for all settings or campaigns.

The player who likes playing ultrawizards can't do it in the most recent (and officially endorsed) Conan system/setting, the mechanics aren't there and the setting doesn't support it. Magic is dangerous to use and limited in effect.

I wouldn't be able play a shadow-bender in a canon Avatar:TLA campaign.

The player who wants to play a gunslinger wouldn't be able to in a historical bronze-age campaign.

The player who wants to play a normal (if peak ability across multiple aspects) human will hit a ceiling in D&D where the character either has to accept being beyond human abilities and into the "extranormal", or stop leveling up and accept being a literal underdog to the rest of the characters. Even with the balance problem Fighters have, they eventually reach "this guy ain't normal" territory -- to actually keep up with the spellcasters as those classes stand now, the Fighter would need even more "this guy ain't normal".

You can play your unique PC as often as you want. You just need to find a campaign where it fits. If you can't do that, tough luck.

Exactly.

There should be discussion about what sort of campaign and setting and system is going to be used between all the players before things get started, involving all the players (GM and everyone else). But once that's agreed on and work on the campaign starts, everyone needs to honor the terms of the agreement, or bow out. Demanding to play a character who is blatantly misplaced in a campaign or its setting is violating that agreement.

[AntiAuthority]

About the Guy at the Gym Fallacy being a world building issue, it's not, it's a, "I don't believe a real world person could do this sort of thing, so this fictional character with tons of bonuses shouldn't be able to either." It's essentially forcing limitations of humans from our world onto an entirely different. I agree, this partially ties into world building, but it sounds more like a problem with the GM's/player's sense of immersion being broken by having super martials.

If you want to talk about world building, the types of powers that could exist in such a setting, why the general population doesn't have access to this type of power, etc. just start your own thread on what sort of world or universe could produce someone that can bench press a planet, shout until reality sits down and listens to them, run faster than light and justify why not everyone is doing it or what the use of magic would be in a world where training can get you this far.

I'll probably post on it, but can we focus on arguments for or against, "Characters are at this level of power at Level X"? Or, "Why these characters should and shouldn't be bound to the rules of our reality"? Independent of the setting or what sort of justifications the author gives, what sort of power should a character of this level possess?

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That's a good post. I'll bookmark it for future use. If you could supply the sources for those, I'd be very happy as well!

Went ahead and put some examples from fictional characters in bold, as links can get broken with time. Also removed and added some examples, as well as putting it in a spoiler tag.

[Max_Killjoy]

About the Guy at the Gym Fallacy being a world building issue, it's not, it's a, "I don't believe a real world person could do this sort of thing, so this fictional character with tons of bonuses shouldn't be able to either." It's essentially forcing limitations of humans from our world onto an entirely different. I agree, this partially ties into world building, but it sounds more like a problem with the GM's/player's sense of immersion being broken by having super martials.

If you want to talk about world building, the types of powers that could exist in such a setting, why the general population doesn't have access to this type of power, etc. just start your own thread on what sort of world or universe could produce someone that can bench press a planet and shout until reality sits down and listens to them.

I'll probably post on it, but can we focus on arguments for or against, "Characters are at this level of power at Level X"? Or, "Why these characters should and shouldn't be bound to the rules of our reality"? Independent of the setting or what sort of justifications the author gives, what sort of power should a character of this level possess?

It's inherently a setting issue because "humans here are significantly different from the humans in our world" or "humans here can do X to greatly exceed the limits we have in our world" are core fundamental setting elements with both immediate and far-reaching effects.

The only "solution" to the problem being discussed that doesn't have an impact on the setting is the one that says "internally consistent and coherent setting doesn't matter, every character and their powers are an island, and whatever explanation we want to give them is fine, even if those explanations all conflict." It's the kitchen-sink-uber-alles, rule-of-kewl, Dragon Ball Stupid option. And it doesn't have an impact on the setting because at that point you don't have a setting, you have a cheap 2d backdrop.

And then there's the irony of the gamer who says "I don't care about your setting crap"... while demanding that others care about their precious snowflake character concept.

[AntiAuthority]

It's inherently a setting issue because "humans here are significantly different from the humans in our world" or "humans here can do X to greatly exceed the limits we have in our world" are core fundamental setting elements with both immediate and far-reaching effects.

The only "solution" to the problem being discussed that doesn't have an impact on the setting is the one that says "internally consistent and coherent setting doesn't matter, every character and their powers are an island, and whatever explanation we want to give them is fine, even if those explanations all conflict." It's the kitchen-sink-uber-alles, rule-of-kewl, Dragon Ball Stupid option. And it doesn't have an impact on the setting because at that point you don't have a setting, you have a cheap 2d backdrop.

And then there's the irony of the gamer who says "I don't care about your setting crap"... while demanding that others care about their precious snowflake character concept.

What I'm saying is, take Saitama for example. He's a character of X Level. Put him in any other setting, and he'd still be a character of X Level. He has the abilities of a character of X Level. He lives in a world with other superhumans, yes, and his strength is unusual because

Spoiler: One Punch Man Spoiler

Show

he broke his limiter,

but he he's still a character of X Level.

I feel the simplest way to get rid of the Guy At the Gym fallacy would be for the rule books to just say, "Yeah, characters in this world aren't bound by the same limitations as ours."

You're trying to create a coherent world with high level characters, I understand, a story I'm writing has the same question. I can understand your desire to make a logical world, but this isn't the thread for that. Start your own thread on the world building of such a world if you want to talk about it in great detail.

And it doesn't have an impact on the setting because at that point you don't have a setting, you have a cheap 2d backdrop.

EDIT: You're right, this isn't a setting. It's about power levels and characters of X Level having this level of power.

[Cluedrew]

There is no double standard. Either "conjure food stuff" magic exists or not. If it exists, it is a useful ability.

OK, something character-ability focused for me to grab on to. I'm going to unpack all the assumptions in the statement "If it exists, it is a useful ability." So can conjure food stuff help feed a village of 300 in a time of famine if it exists:

• Even if it exists the caster at the village may not be able to cast it at all. It may be outside their area of practice for instance. We will assume that they can.
• Even if they can cast it may not produce enough food. If it doesn't produce enough food it must be able to be cast repeatedly (no once a day limit or something) and the caster must be able to cast it enough times (if it produces food for one person, that is a serious concern). We will assume that it can just be scaled to produce however much food it needs.
• Any required facilities must be either be present or be able to set up in time. If no facilities are required its fine, a simple magic circle could be set up in time. A high grade magical laboratory might be out of scope. We will assume that any required facilities are trivial to prepare.
• The ingredients to activate the spell must be able available. Which is to say they must be more readily available and expendable than food. Discarding anything like human sacrifices if it requires raw food (being a preparation spell) or expensive/rare ingredients than the village might not be able to acquire enough. We will assume that there are no ingredients.

Under these assumptions than yes, it is useful.

As a final note this may actually be separate from the point Satinavian was trying to make because I think it was about upper bounds and best cases, but here you can see what would go into that best case as compared to a more nuanced and restrained magic system.

That's just the thing. You cannot just focus on this (rather dubious to begin with) fallacy or "high level martial powers", never mind that "martial" has ceased to mean much in those discussions by now. It's all connected to mechanics, lore and world-building of the game.

Could you elaborate. Besides guy at the gym is not actually a logical fallacy I don't understand what you are saying.

There's not much to elaborate on. The point is that you can't discuss giving purportedly non-magical people superpowers without having to discuss the world-building and lore implications of it.

I will agree that if we were making a system that is a conversation we should have. But we are not doing that so I think it is fine to zone in on a particular section to discuss it in more detail. Besides the world building cannot really happen until we have figured out what fantastic abilities the martial has and we are not at that point yet. Also could you elaborate on why martial has lost its meaning.

[Max_Killjoy]

What I'm saying is, take Saitama for example. He's a character of X Level. Put him in any other setting, and he'd still be a character of X Level. He has the abilities of a character of X Level. He lives in a world with other superhumans, yes, and his strength is unusual because

Spoiler: One Punch Man Spoiler

Show

he broke his limiter,

but he he's still a character of X Level.

I feel the simplest way to get rid of the Guy At the Gym fallacy would be for the rule books to just say, "Yeah, characters in this world aren't bound by the same limitations as ours."

You're trying to create a coherent world with high level characters, I understand, a story I'm writing has the same question. I can understand your desire to make a logical world, but this isn't the thread for that. Start your own thread on the world building of such a world if you want to talk about in great detail.



EDIT: You're right, this isn't a setting. It's about power levels and characters of X Level having this level of power.

I'm not talking about A setting, I'm talking about ANY setting, for ANY game. This is at the theory / meta level, not about any particular setting, but about how settings integrate with everything else in the campaign -- system, character, etc.

Put "one punch man" in other settings, and he... wait you can't because he doesn't fit those settings.

"Characters in this world aren't bound by the same limitations as ours"... is a statement about the setting, or rather a hanging set of questions AND consequences. As soon as you make that statement, you're unavoidably telling us something about the world the characters live in.

If you ignore the setting issues, you'll never address all the root causes of the problem being discussed here.

[GloatingSwine]

Don't generalize "player characters in RPGs" from D&D.

D&D is where the guy at the gym fallacy is most relevant because there's a wide delta between what can be done with and without "magic".

In games where the delta between abilities of otherwise similar characters is narrow, the conflict which generates it doesn't exist anyway.

[AntiAuthority]

I'm not talking about A setting, I'm talking about ANY setting, for ANY game. This is at the theory / meta level, not about any particular setting, but about how settings integrate with everything else in the campaign -- system, character, etc.

Put "one punch man" in other settings, and he... wait you can't because he doesn't fit those settings.

"Characters in this world aren't bound by the same limitations as ours"... is a statement about the setting, or rather a hanging set of questions AND consequences. As soon as you make that statement, you're unavoidably telling us something about the world the characters live in.

If you ignore the setting issues, you'll never address all the root causes of the problem being discussed here.

I feel there's a miscommunication. Saitama is an X Level character. He is an X level character, regardless of setting. He's able to take on X Level threats.

His specific abilities might not fit with any random setting, but he's still an X Level character. Same as how Superman is an X Level character, he would still be an X Level character if he were put in Dragon Ball, even if his powerset didn't quite mesh with that setting. Goku is an X level character, regardless of if you put him into Pokemon. They have abilities on par with an X Level character. Crossovers and vs debates work on the same logic, the character doesn't lose their powers just because they're in a new setting, they still have that level of power.

Character Levels/power levels are independent of setting.

EDIT: Probably the best way I can explain it. As per how D&D/Pathfinder works, imagine a Fantasy Kitchen Sink with whatever you want thrown in, the entire bestiary too. Based on what you know about CR, Levels and such in D&D's rules, scaling them to the types of threats they're expected to face, what sort of abilities do you expect a high level martial character of X Level to have?

[MeimuHakurei]

I feel there's a miscommunication. Saitama is an X Level character. He is an X level character, regardless of setting. He's able to take on X Level threats.

His specific abilities might not fit with any random setting, but he's still an X Level character. Same as how Superman is an X Level character, he would still be an X Level character if he were put in Dragon Ball, even if his powerset didn't quite mesh with that setting. Goku is an X level character, regardless of if you put him into Pokemon. They have abilities on par with an X Level character. Crossovers and vs debates work on the same logic, the character doesn't lose their powers just because they're in a new setting, they still have that level of power.

Character Levels/power levels are independent of setting.

The correct way of addressing the issue in D&D is to play a Cleric/Wizard and fluff/play him exactly like a Fighter... who happens to be several order of magnitudes more competent at Fightering than actual Fighters. Maybe then people might get an inkling about what's going on.

[AntiAuthority]

The correct way of addressing the issue in D&D is to play a Cleric/Wizard and fluff/play him exactly like a Fighter... who happens to be several order of magnitudes more competent at Fightering than actual Fighters. Maybe then people might get an inkling about what's going on.

Long ago I realized, "Why is the squishy caster better at simulating Thor than the really strong Fighter/Barbarian?" And I came to understand there was something very wrong with the scaling of levels for certain classes as a result.

[Talakeal]

Isn't the whole topic about worldbuilding at its core?

There is literally not ability that couldn't be given to a martial if you are ignoring setting concerns.

[Keltest]

Isn't the whole topic about worldbuilding at its core?

There is literally not ability that couldn't be given to a martial if you are ignoring setting concerns.

Indeed. If youre willing to let somebody punch a hole in reality by literally punching, that person is in practice a wizard, even if they look more militant when they do it.

[Ignimortis]

Indeed. If youre willing to let somebody punch a hole in reality by literally punching, that person is in practice a wizard, even if they look more militant when they do it.

How are they a wizard if they're not using spellcasting to do it? This issue often exists, because there are at least three ways of looking at things.

1) Everything that's not possible in our world is magic.
2) Everything that's possible by the physics of the setting isn't magic, magic is when those physics are broken by an external interference (usually spellcasting).
3) Everything that's possible is possible to do through several power sources, and magic is just another word for spellcasting.

GATGF heavily relies on 1, because if martial characters are defined by not doing magic, and if everything that breaks IRL physics is magic, then they can't do that, and thus magic is inherently superior, because it can break the laws of the world

If we take 2 as the base instead, the issue becomes less prominent, if not non-existent, because that means martials can do IRL-impossible things while staying "non-magical" in-setting.

Take Final Fantasy XIV, for example. It's a world that functions somewhat similarly to ours as in there are planets and suns and people usually die from a sword to the gut and can't jump twenty feet up willy-nilly. However, its' physical base is entirely different - everything that is operates on Aether, a sort of mana mixed with lifeforce.

Why does something become a desert? Overabundance of fire-aspected aether in the area. Why do some creatures take a lot of damage before dying? Their personal aether reserves are high and so their lifeforce can sustain them longer. How do martial characters do things they do without using mana, ley lines, spells and magic implements? They utilize their own aether, aspected to their specific skill-set. Warriors can cleave so hard the air waves cleave the target five more times, or strike the earth and make it rise up as a giant shield of mountains. Dragoons can jump 50 feet high while decked in heavy armor. Samurai strikes echo in snow or cherry blossoms.

If we take 3 as the base, then the issue doesn't exist, because training super hard or using your own soul as your power source can produce the same things (or things of the same level) as magic.