Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy

[digiman619]

Whenever someone tries to pull the 'that's physically impossible' card to stop a martial from doing something that the rules say they should, my preferred response is "Other than gravity and magnetism working most of the time and humanoids being able to breathe air and eat to survive, what makes you think physics exists?"

[Keltest]

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.

They are using spellcasting to do it. It just looks different than what you think of as spellcasting.

[GloatingSwine]

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.

The problem you're encountering is that you're confused as to the nature of reality.

In fantasy RPG games where there are wizards, they are part of reality. They aren't breaking the laws of physics with magic, magic is part of the laws of physics where they live.

And if someone can via the combination of training and experience represented by many levels of punch-guy, punch a hole in reality it is because reality is more punchable* where they live.




* Such as it is in the DC Universe, where Superboy Prime did, in fact, punch reality and cause all sorts of retcons to happen.

[Keltest]

The problem you're encountering is that you're confused as to the nature of reality.

In fantasy RPG games where there are wizards, they are part of reality. They aren't breaking the laws of physics with magic, magic is part of the laws of physics where they live.

And if someone can via the combination of training and experience represented by many levels of punch-guy, punch a hole in reality it is because reality is more punchable* where they live.




* Such as it is in the DC Universe, where Superboy Prime did, in fact, punch reality and cause all sorts of retcons to happen.

Explain to me the difference between casting a spell by wiggling your fingers and chanting, and casting a spell by punching the air and grunting.

[GloatingSwine]

Explain to me the difference between casting a spell by wiggling your fingers and chanting, and casting a spell by punching the air and grunting.

They have to be learned different ways, and require different training and muscle memory. That's what makes one a wizard and the other a punchguy, all the other steps they took on the path to getting to the place where they can make holes in reality.

[Keltest]

They have to be learned different ways, and require different training and muscle memory. That's what makes one a wizard and the other a punchguy, all the other steps they took on the path to getting to the place where they can make holes in reality.

I just want you to understand that from where I sit, it seems like youre waving two different brands of electric drill at me and insisting that because theyre different brands, that makes them entirely different things.

Sure, theyre superficially different, but when you get down to the fundamentals, what are they actually doing to distinguish themselves from each other?

[Ignimortis]

I just want you to understand that from where I sit, it seems like youre waving two different brands of electric drill at me and insisting that because theyre different brands, that makes them entirely different things.

Sure, theyre superficially different, but when you get down to the fundamentals, what are they actually doing to distinguish themselves from each other?

It's more of a fundamental on the level "those two tools are both powered by electricity", but one is a drill and the other one is a jackhammer. The wizard uses their knowledge of the magical formulas inherent in the world, builds a spell contour with those words and gestures, sends in some magical energy he has learned to accumulate, and a hole between two places appears. The punch guy punches hard enough to compress space and time by the sheer force invested in their movement, also creating a hole between two places.

Can you drill a hole in a wall? Sure, if you pick the right points to drill and then give the wall a light push, a part of it will just fall out. Or you can break through it with a jackhammer.

[GloatingSwine]

I just want you to understand that from where I sit, it seems like youre waving two different brands of electric drill at me and insisting that because theyre different brands, that makes them entirely different things.

Sure, theyre superficially different, but when you get down to the fundamentals, what are they actually doing to distinguish themselves from each other?

Because one's a hammerdrill with a chisel head and the other's a normal drill with a flathead screwdriver. They're different tools, arrived at in different manners and for different applications.

To which you might say "but they're both power tools", and I would say "yes, they both represent player characters".

Being far beyond the normal limits of the world isn't the domain of "magic" in fantasy RPGs, it's "being a PC or narratively significant opponent thereof". (Were that not the case there would be no need for adventurers, they are by definition special cases).

[Keltest]

Because one's a hammerdrill with a chisel head and the other's a normal drill with a flathead screwdriver. They're different tools, arrived at in different manners and for different applications.

To which you might say "but they're both power tools", and I would say "yes, they both represent player characters".

Being far beyond the normal limits of the world isn't the domain of "magic" in fantasy RPGs, it's "being a PC or narratively significant opponent thereof". (Were that not the case there would be no need for adventurers, they are by definition special cases).

Ok, let me put it this way. Do you believe the cleric and wizard are both spellcasters? If so, why is this reality-puncher not a spellcaster?

[GloatingSwine]

The cleric and wizard both pre-prepare their effects from a broad range of selections. They have not learned to take a few specific arts to levels which produce superhuman effects, but effects still defined by a narrow range implied by their means of application .

They have taken a different path and arrived at a different place to our putative reality-puncher, even if some of the things they can do are the same.

(In D&D terms we'd be talking spells vs. spell like or Ex abilities)

[Lord Raziere]

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.

That is a "at your table" problem not a design problem. stop bringing your personal table issues into this.

[Max_Killjoy]

Whenever someone tries to pull the 'that's physically impossible' card to stop a martial from doing something that the rules say they should, my preferred response is "Other than gravity and magnetism working most of the time and humanoids being able to breathe air and eat to survive, what makes you think physics exists?"

Whatever rules underlie the setting's reality, those are its physics.

They might not be our world's physics, but in most D&D settings they're producing a quasi-medievaloid world that looks and acts very much like our world does in most cases.

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?

No, actually, they're NOT independent of setting.

Saitama, Superman, and a host of other characters can't even exist in some settings. Bring Aang or Katara to "one punch man world" and they're just a martial artist, there is no Bending. Bring a D&D wizard to a world without magic, he's just a guy in a funny robe and hat wigging his fingers and flinging bat poo while reciting gibberish. Bring Saitama to our world, and he's just a funny-looking bald guy who does a lot of exercising.

That is a "at your table" problem not a design problem. stop bringing your personal table issues into this.

A player who selfishly tries to force their wildly inappropriate and misplaced PC into the campaign and then cries about everyone else supposedly ruining his/her fun is a problem at any table.

"But I wanted to play my DBZ expy" is not a valid complaint when someone has already agreed that they're playing in a gritty heist or espionage or crime campaign. At that point, they can make a character who fits, or find another table.

One of the core issues underlying "GATGF" is exactly this -- "but I wanted to play a character who breaks the setting's internal rules by being utterly not-superhuman but doing superhuman things".

[Satinavian]

They are using spellcasting to do it. It just looks different than what you think of as spellcasting.

Magic and spellcasting are not the same thing.

If the dragons flying ability and fire breathingare justified through magic then the same works for reality-punching.

[AntiAuthority]

Ok, let me put it this way. Do you believe the cleric and wizard are both spellcasters? If so, why is this reality-puncher not a spellcaster?

Hm, to be honest, this extends to what's in the OP in a way. A lot of things superheroes do would be physically impossible.

Take a super strong character lifting a huge object, realistically, they'd sink into the ground.

The reason I'd consider Superboy Prime to not be magic is it's not considered magic in-universe, he did it through being stupidly strong (Which makes sense, as he's essentially what the earliest versions of Superman was when he was essentially sneezing away solar systems by accident, as compared to the more "grounded" versions of the Superman character he's facing off against), and his abilities would continue to work in an anti-magic field. Yes, he's warping reality in the sense that he's doing something outright physically impossible, but it would still work in an anti-magic field both in D&D and in DC's universe because it'd be considered science in the latter... Comic book science, but science.

The Flash is also, technically, a reality warper from our perspective as he's able to operate within the span of an attosecond, move faster than the speed of light while being able to see and not turn into a fireball that's destroying the environment every time he runs that fast and outrun instantaneous teleportation, but it's considered him just being that fast in-universe as opposed to using magic.

Technically all of them would be considered reality warpers, but Superboy Prime and Flash are just really strong/fast while someone like Dr. Fate has a power that is explicitly called magic, would probably not work in an anti-magic field, etc.

[Max_Killjoy]

Ok, let me put it this way. Do you believe the cleric and wizard are both spellcasters? If so, why is this reality-puncher not a spellcaster?

Magic and spellcasting are not the same thing.

If the dragons flying ability and fire breathingare justified through magic then the same works for reality-punching.

I'd say that spellcasting is a subset of magic.

Whether or not "punch a hole in reality" is a spell or not, it's still magic -- if it's not, then there are some serious implications that need to be explored.

[Lord Raziere]

A player who selfishly tries to force their wildly inappropriate and misplaced PC into the campaign and then cries about everyone else supposedly ruining his/her fun is a problem at any table.

"But I wanted to play my DBZ expy" is not a valid complaint when someone has already agreed that they're playing in a gritty heist or espionage or crime campaign.

One of the core issues underlying "GATGF" is exactly this -- "but I wanted to play a character who breaks the setting's internal rules by being utterly not-superhuman but doing superhuman things".

No thats a table problem, because somehow you didn't communicate that in the first place, none of those campaigns have anything to do with heroic fantasy. nor do have anything to do with god wizards, your the one who somehow doesn't communicate enough to give people the wrong impression enough to make these characters going in, what do you say to these players that give them this impression?

you keep making this strange "players that want to be wildly out of place" complaint about players that makes absolutely no sense if your smart and want to avoid it, the only reason I can see you'd keep encountering that kind of player is if your incredibly inflexible or incredibly bad at communicating. what is your process? with someone as outspoken as you, I have a hard time imagining anyone getting the wrong idea about you and saying "yeah this guy likes anime heroics." because honestly you sound a bit controlling in your preferences and that you would state them outright for all to know from the beginning, so how are you failing to get these people out in the first session?

[GloatingSwine]

Whether or not "punch a hole in reality" is a spell or not, it's still magic -- if it's not, then there are some serious implications that need to be explored.

The existence of "magic" raises the same implications already though.

Either reality can have holes or it can't. If it can, then "magic" and "sufficiently advanced punching" can both be acceptable ways to achieve them.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I'd say that spellcasting is a subset of magic.

Whether or not "punch a hole in reality" is a spell or not, it's still magic -- if it's not, then there are some serious implications that need to be explored.

If the books label it as an extraordinary ability, in d&d it's not. And that's why fighters are in that world seen as non-magical.

They do of course have abilities in their world that would absolutely count as magic if you brought them into ours, like becoming twice as tough and learning quantum mechanics by punching a big and scary enough person until they run away.

I think we all pretty much agree that a fighter can have those abilities, we're just arguing semantics at each other. But I like semantics, so here I am.

[AntiAuthority]

No, actually, they're NOT independent of setting.

Saitama, Superman, and a host of other characters can't even exist in some settings. Bring Aang or Katara to "one punch man world" and they're just a martial artist, there is no Bending. Bring a D&D wizard to a world without magic, he's just a guy in a funny robe and hat wigging his fingers and flinging bat poo while reciting gibberish. Bring Saitama to our world, and he's just a funny-looking bald guy who does a lot of exercising.

Then every single crossover event in history is also doing it wrong. That also means Marvel vs Capcom is also doing it wrong, because they have characters from different universes still using their powers in an entirely different one. The Ben 10 Generator Rex crossover is also wrong, as they're explicitly different dimensions, but Ben Tennyson can still transform into aliens.

The type of things you're thinking of only really works when a character is specifically noted to be dependent on the powers of their universe, such as the Infinity Stones being just shiny rocks in one of the various Marvel and DC crossovers, while everyone else keeps their powers. I'm not talking about something along those lines.

These abilities don't need to be analyzed or asked what sort of physics it operates in this thread. This isn't the the world building sub forum.

[Keltest]

The existence of "magic" raises the same implications already though.

Either reality can have holes or it can't. If it can, then "magic" and "sufficiently advanced punching" can both be acceptable ways to achieve them.

In general, "sufficiently advanced punching" without magic or an equivalent, means that reality is literally self destructing from the punches, since youre taking one aspect of "base" reality and using it to damage another. Which gets back into the implications for worldbuilding that Max was talking about.

[Cluedrew]

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

I think the issue of characters' fantastic abilities is definitely related to world building, but they are not the same thing. I think world building is about places, technologies (including made up ones you might call magic) and society. Which totally includes people in it but in a sense not particular people. So if I create a character to represent a group or to fill a role the world provides, that might be world building. But if I just flush out a character who just exists within the setting than its not really world building.

Mind you the characters do tell us about the world they live in and the world tells us things about the people who live in it. But I wouldn't call architecture interior design despite the fact they do effect each other. And that's why I don't think this is a world building problem the focus is different.

Ok, let me put it this way. Do you believe the cleric and wizard are both spellcasters? If so, why is this reality-puncher not a spellcaster?

D&D style clerics and wizards are both spell casters, and most other types of wizards are as well. But on the other hand I could see a cleric whose only fantastic ability is to call down divine attention on something or channel divine power without really controlling how it comes out. To me this is not a spell nor are many physic abilities. Because spell-caster means someone that casts spells, which are particular forms by which you manipulate magical forces to achieve some end. In other words free-form magic abilities, like the elemental control of Avatar: The Last Airbender, don't qualify.

I also use the broader term magic-user, which includes anyone who uses magical forces. Pre-arranged, free-form or semi-subconsciously* its all good. So the channelling cleric now qualifies, as do physics and benders. But maybe still not the reality-puncher. Because what is a magical force? ... To avoid a lengthy definition can we just agree two objects hitting each other is not magic. Great so the reality-puncher punching something isn't magic... at least as long as it stays in the physical realm. I'm not sure how you justify the transfer of force from object to fabric of reality but I'm going to guess something more than kinematics is involved so its probably magic.

On the other hand if the reality-puncher just goes at a particularly durable punching bag no magic need be involved. Maybe its magic or maybe its just stronger muscles. The justification makes the difference here.

OK so why did I spend so many words on this? Because these flavourful worlds are important. Spells, magic, wizards and so on, we get do define them in a setting but not leveraging people's existing understanding a bit is wasteful.** So using these terms in ways that align as closely to people's basic understanding of it. Outside of these pedantic/deep diving forum debates I have very rarely needed more than a sentence to justify my choice of terms.

So when I say hunter Grel can sense attacks from behind without sight or sound to give them away and its not magic I don't mean a real human could do this. I mean its not something he learned in a book, their isn't a magical field around him nor did a spirit whisper a warning into his mind. I mean he has a fantastic (of fantasy) danger sense that means every once in a while he just knows someone is attacking him. And other times he turns around for no visible reason.

* Its never actually come up how subconscious it can be.
** For instance, does sorcerer feel more evil than wizard? I'm trying to pick a magic-user world that carries some negative moral judgement for a setting right now so I have actually been thinking about that.

[MrSandman]

Either reality can have holes or it can't. If it can, then "magic" and "sufficiently advanced punching" can both be acceptable ways to achieve them.

I would say it's more like "weird gestures and words" and "sufficiently advanced punching" can both be acceptable ways to achieve magic.

I hope I'm really misunderstanding what the argument is here, but it seems that people are arguing that it is feasible that a character might be able to punch through reality and that's not magic while the wizard is totally magic. But by the same token you could just say that the wizard's ability is simply normal sleigh of hand, it's just he's so good at it that he can steal from reality's fabric itself. Could you make a setting with that assumption? Certainly. Would that warrant a distinction between the wizard who is totally mundane and the sorcerer who does the same but is totally magic? I highly doubt it.

[Satinavian]

Then every single crossover event in history is also doing it wrong. That also means Marvel vs Capcom is also doing it wrong, because they have characters from different universes still using their powers in an entirely different one. The Ben 10 Generator Rex crossover is also wrong, as they're explicitly different dimensions, but Ben Tennyson can still transform into aliens.

The type of things you're thinking of only really works when a character is specifically noted to be dependent on the powers of their universe, such as the Infinity Stones being just shiny rocks in one of the various Marvel and DC crossovers, while everyone else keeps their powers. I'm not talking about something along those lines.

Crossovers work best between settings that are similar enough to support the same archetypes. And even then they still tend to hurt continuity. That is why you get so many superhero crossovers, because their authors don't treat the settings serious anyway and superpowers of one universe are not that different from superpowers of another.

But you will never have an episode of Downtown Abbey or House of Cards or even Game of Thrones where the fully powered Superman shows up.

[Cluedrew]

I would say it's more like "weird gestures and words" and "sufficiently advanced punching" can both be acceptable ways to achieve magic.

But magic means different things in its different uses of magic:

• The literary definition of magic: Anything possible in the story which is not possible in ours. This appears to be the definition you are using.
• The aesthetic definition of magic: Harder to pin down but refers to things that have the traditional look and feel of magic. So punching reality so hard it breaks is just as implausible as wiggling your fingers to bend reality around. But one feels more like "magic" than the other.
• (At least three others that are probably not important here. Actually might be four.)

A funny way to describe the guy at the gym fallacy would be uniting these two definitions. That is to say everything possible in the story but not in reality has to have the look and feel of magic. I'm believe (and many in this thread seem to be as well) that something can be one and the not the other. Hence sufficiently advanced punching (love that phase by the way) and magic are in fact different things. Despite both being types of magic.

Also note that when I say magic I usually mean aesthetically (not in that last sentence however). Out side of these threads I find the literary view of magic to be so broad I usually don't have to refer to it. And in this thread I have mostly been saying the world fantastic (with of fantasy afterwards).

To Satinavian: And most superheroes exist in the same setting. Or one of the two main settings for superheroes. Neither of which makes a ton of sense but it does mean you aren't damaging it further by doing a crossover. In fact it would probably make less sense if all those superheroes living in New York never talked to each other.

[Max_Killjoy]

No thats a table problem, because somehow you didn't communicate that in the first place, none of those campaigns have anything to do with heroic fantasy. nor do have anything to do with god wizards, your the one who somehow doesn't communicate enough to give people the wrong impression enough to make these characters going in, what do you say to these players that give them this impression?

you keep making this strange "players that want to be wildly out of place" complaint about players that makes absolutely no sense if your smart and want to avoid it, the only reason I can see you'd keep encountering that kind of player is if your incredibly inflexible or incredibly bad at communicating. what is your process? with someone as stubborn and outspoken as you, I have a hard time imagining anyone getting the wrong idea about you and saying "yeah this guy likes anime heroics." because honestly you sound a bit controlling in your preferences and that you would state them outright for all to know from the beginning, so how are you failing to get these people out in the first session?

There is NO difference between the agreement to play in "a campaign in a setting where humans are largely like real world humans, unless they have some sort of magic (spellcasting or otherwise)" and the agreement to play in "a campaign about espionage in a gritty real-world-like setting".

There is NO difference between a player who demands to play a "not at all extranormal" martial character who still somehow can do things that are blatantly extranormal for people in that setting, and a character who wants to play their precious DBZ expy character in a gritty espionage game.

I've encountered that player -- as often as a fellow player as when I was the GM -- because there are too many players who don't read the setting materials, or who know what they're doing and think they can impose on the existing relationships and other peoples' desire to get along to get their way, or because they believe that their fun is simply more important than anyone else's.

But MOST gamers I've gamed with, I've never had this "but I wanted to play a space marine in your medieval setting" sort of silliness come up, because they want to make a character who fits the campaign.

And it's not "players who want to be wildly out of place", it's "players who want characters who are wildly out of place" -- though if someone can't tell the difference between those two statements, that would explain a lot about why they feel like their precious identity is threatened by not being allowed to play their DBZ expy in a heroic fantasy game, or feel like everyone else is just being big unimaginative meanies when they say "your space marine doesn't fit in the Forgotten Realms".

Which brings me back to this nonsense I'm seeing about "but it's FANTASY, that means I get to live out my FANTASY"... as with many of these discussions, that's two different usages of the same word being mashed together to win an argument. Just because the campaign takes place in a fantastic setting, of the sort that's often seen in the "fantasy" subgenre of speculative fiction, does not mean that it's a "fantasy" of the sort that implies anything the player can imagine is fair game and limits are somehow "infringing on their agency".

[Max_Killjoy]

Then every single crossover event in history is also doing it wrong. That also means Marvel vs Capcom is also doing it wrong, because they have characters from different universes still using their powers in an entirely different one. The Ben 10 Generator Rex crossover is also wrong, as they're explicitly different dimensions, but Ben Tennyson can still transform into aliens.

The type of things you're thinking of only really works when a character is specifically noted to be dependent on the powers of their universe, such as the Infinity Stones being just shiny rocks in one of the various Marvel and DC crossovers, while everyone else keeps their powers. I'm not talking about something along those lines.

These abilities don't need to be analyzed or asked what sort of physics it operates in this thread. This isn't the the world building sub forum.

I wouldn't look to superhero comics as a good inspiration for worldbuilding OR game balance, they run on ludicrous levels of authorial fiat. And fighting video games are even worse.

And most crossovers are garbage. The answer to "which would win, the Executor or the Enterprise?" is "it doesn't matter, they'll never encounter each other, neither one even functions in the other's reality".

If the books label it as an extraordinary ability, in d&d it's not. And that's why fighters are in that world seen as non-magical.

They do of course have abilities in their world that would absolutely count as magic if you brought them into ours, like becoming twice as tough and learning quantum mechanics by punching a big and scary enough person until they run away.

I think we all pretty much agree that a fighter can have those abilities, we're just arguing semantics at each other. But I like semantics, so here I am.

As far as I'm concerned, magic is as magic does -- just because it's not spellcasting, doesn't mean it's not magic.

I'm not arguing that a Fighter should never have abilities that are blatantly fantastic -- I'm arguing that you can't have all of the following at the same time:

• Fighters with abilities that are blatantly fantastic.
• Fighters that aren't extranormal for their setting (that is, fighters who are "guys at the gym")
• Humans (or humanoids) who are enough like real-world humans as to have very similar limits.
• A setting that retains any sort of internal coherency and consistency.

One of those has to give -- a few posters have said explicitly "to hell with the setting, I'm going to play whatever I want to, you're just trying to ruin my fun".

And, that's also why worldbuilding cannot be separated from this discussion.

[Arbane]

Whatever rules underlie the setting's reality, those are its physics.

They might not be our world's physics, but in most D&D settings they're producing a quasi-medievaloid world that looks and acts very much like our world does in most cases.

I'd argue that in D&D, what produces the quasi-medieval setting is the WRITERS, not the Rules. (And treating D&D rules as physics leads to madness and 20-page essays on the True Meaning of Hit Points, but I repeat myself.)

[Max_Killjoy]

I'd argue that in D&D, what produces the quasi-medieval setting is the WRITERS, not the Rules. (And treating D&D rules as physics leads to madness and 20-page essays on the True Meaning of Hit Points, but I repeat myself.)

In this case I'm not talking about the rules, I'm talking about the settings and how the fact they look a certain way implies that they have physics that lead to them looking that way.

[AntiAuthority]

No, actually, they're NOT independent of setting.

Saitama, Superman, and a host of other characters can't even exist in some settings. Bring Aang or Katara to "one punch man world" and they're just a martial artist, there is no Bending. Bring a D&D wizard to a world without magic, he's just a guy in a funny robe and hat wigging his fingers and flinging bat poo while reciting gibberish. Bring Saitama to our world, and he's just a funny-looking bald guy who does a lot of exercising.

To understand what you mean better, I have a question. If I took a Plasma Grenade or Spartan Laser and put it in Lord of the Rings, would the weapons work or stop?

[Max_Killjoy]

I actually have a question about world building. If I took a Plasma Grenade from Halo and put it in Lord of the Rings, would the weapon stop working?

The honest answer is, I don't know enough about how a Halo plasma-grenade is supposed to work, or about whether Eä / Arda works on similar enough physics to the Halo universe and/or the real universe, for it to work.

But I wouldn't simply assume that it works based on its "essential nature as a grenade".