Critiquing the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy

[Satinavian]

Yes, but the completely mundane song does not open holes in the fabric of reality or vanquish Cthuluh. So why should punching get those abilities but not singing ? Or literally every other mundane ability one could specialize in ?

[Kaptin Keen]

Why should punching get some special treatment ?

Because it's a game?

Yes, fights that Hellboy fight are designed to be winnable by Hellboy. And games with Fighter should feature fights winnable by Fighter. I'm not convinced I see your point - are you saying that you, as GM, would toss Fighter into a fight he couldn't possibly win, then laugh uproarioushly at him for picking a class that cannot win such a fight?

Because then, at least, we have a genuine disagreement: I consider my job to be to entertain, and present manageable challenges.

[Morty]

I'm all for mechanics and lore, but can we stay focused on how it relates to the Guy At the Gym Fallacy, the types of powers high level martials would have, etc.?

This seems to be moving more towards world building than that.

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.

[GloatingSwine]

Because it's a game?

Yes, fights that Hellboy fight are designed to be winnable by Hellboy. And games with Fighter should feature fights winnable by Fighter. I'm not convinced I see your point - are you saying that you, as GM, would toss Fighter into a fight he couldn't possibly win, then laugh uproarioushly at him for picking a class that cannot win such a fight?

Because then, at least, we have a genuine disagreement: I consider my job to be to entertain, and present manageable challenges.

Which is where we come back to the crux of the problem.

If you have a Fighter and a Wizard at the same time, the sort of big problems that are a challenge to the Wizard are totally inaccessible to the Fighter if you insist that the Fighter must be limited to the physical capabilities of the guy at the gym.

Therefore either you can't have those sort of problems, and those sort of Wizards, or you need to make the "nonmagical" characters able to strongly affect Big Magic Stuff in a way that makes them feel consistent with what they already are, without relying on a Wizard at any point in the process.

[Max_Killjoy]

I'm all for mechanics and lore, but can we stay focused on how it relates to the Guy At the Gym Fallacy, the types of powers high level martials would have, etc.?

This seems to be moving more towards world building than that.

ONE of the problems underlying "GATGF" is the worldbuilding, the lore. GATGF-characters are very often characters who violate the lore of the setting.

"But I want to play a character who gets by on wits and steel, don't you dare say he's superhuman or extra-normal or magic in any way! I don't care that all the other characters are demigods and archmages, he should be able to outshine them all on grit and determination alone!" or "I want to play a barbarian rogue who bests sorcerers and demons without any of his own magic!"... in a high-magic setting, something like high-level 3.x or 5e.

The reason worldbuilding and setting and lore come up is because GATGF is often a result of a player saying "screw everyone else's enjoyment, and all the work the GM put into the campaign, I want to play my anime-expy and I'm going to play my anime-expy"... and then complain about how THEIR fun is being "ruined" when the GM says "save that character for another game, it doesn't fit in here at all".

[Cluedrew]

The main point of the thread was pointing out the flaws of claiming martial characters are bound by the rules of realism at higher levels, and to have people argue for or against it for reasons as to why they are or aren't bound by the limits of people in our world.

If it were to have a secondary objective, it'd be giving such characters level appropriate abilities to help them reflect the level of power at that level. Whether it be someone strongly argue how such characters are bound by realism and giving them abilities on that level, or giving evidence for such characters being far beyond the realms of realism and giving them the abilities to be relevant at high levels.

I'm going to try collect up this and a few other ideas, let me know what you think.

All fantastic (aka of fantasy/fiction) abilities should be treated equally. That is any deviation from reality has the same set of concerns, roughly establishing the new rules and figuring out the consequences of those rules. For fantastic abilities the particular concerns are things, what can you do with them, costs to using them, who can learn them and how do they learn them. I would argue that from this perspective magic, super martial arts, physic powers or just being better than the best are identical. In that you have to ask yourself the same questions, the answers will be different. And that is just for the new rules, but the process of figuring out what these new elements do to the setting is the same as well.

For picking a set of fantastic abilities to give the PCs there are a couple of concerns. If you can build the right setting you can stick any group of thematic abilities together so really I think this comes down to balance and expression. That is picking different types of abilities so people can pick the ones they like and making sure they fit together. Balance is a pretty impressive topic in its own right and there is an ongoing thread about it.

In other words for all abilities we have the same 3 step (and overly simplified) process: pick the ability, make them work together and update the setting to fit.

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.

[AntiAuthority]

What Hellboy fights are other-dimensional, reality altering monsters of godlike power. They are, for what it's worth, entirely equivalent with the Old Gods or Great Old Ones - also, quite obviously, inspired by them to the point of copyright infringement.

I had to rewatch scenes of the movie for context, so let me if I'm misremembering anything.

The thing is, when did the squid display god-like powers beyond being really big? The Right Hand of Doom was blotting out the sky, not the squid. When was it warping reality?

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.

After reviewing the posts, you are correct, but my main concern was that the world building aspect was starting to overtake the concept of character levels, abilities, etc. As long as it stays focused on the "Guy At The Gym" Fallacy it's fine, but it seemed to be going more into world building implications as it went on.

[Max_Killjoy]

I think it's that there are certain abilities that are, in and of themselves, story components. Raising someone from the dead is a very good example. I mean, in the classic story centered on this ability - that of Lazarus - it's literally the only action in the entire tale, everything else is people talking about it. And it's these sorts of abilities - ones that interact with the story directly, that are the hardest to balance mechanically.

Very roughly, abilities can be divided into tactical and story (or strategic) abilities, with the latter being much more difficult to manage than the former. Tactical abilities that operate only in the tactical environment - they are used to eliminate/bypass/ameliorate or otherwise push the party past obstacles on the way to achieving the designated objective(s) for that operational environment. Many games have a distinct 'tactical map' into which characters are dumped where they utilize these skills.

Story abilities are those that, entirely on their own, change the story when used, or, if they have become ubiquitous, change the nature of the story entirely. Raising the dead, for example, either changes the story by being able to overwrite a seemingly significant outcome in the death of a character, or renders death itself more like a temporary 'time out' rather than an actual loss (Schlock Mercenary, through its gradual embrace of ever more transhumanist concepts over time, represents a surprisingly good example of exploring this sort of impact at the moment it propagates through a fictional universe). Likewise teleportation is either a way to bypass whole chunks of story and/or significant time barriers, or it drastically changes how logistics, movement, and strategy work in a fictional universe. The Wheel of Time, where all the major factions gradually acquire a sort of teleportation circle capability as the story proceeds, includes good examples of how this drastically changes its fictional world.

Martial type characters, traditionally, get very few if any story level abilities. That's largely because 'hurting people' in all its many forms, is a tactical ability pretty much no matter how you slice it (yes at certain truly extreme (ie. nuclear) levels of damage this breaks down, but most settings with any attempt at being serious will cap damage well below this). You attack something in order to damage, disable, or kill it, all of which are objectives. This is similar for roguish characters, sneaking, hacking, sleight-of-hand, these are all actions that work in service of an objective (your average heist film might include hundreds of uses of specific rogue-type abilities, all in the service of a single theft), but it is highly unusual that they are a story element on their own.

Balancing different character concepts is much easier when you're just talking about tactical abilities. Many tactical RPGs, where all action is confined to the tactical map and everything else is cutscenes, do this quite effectively. Even in D&D, if you confine the characters in the tactical frame the way D&D video games do, class balance improves drastically.

Obviously, it's not a good idea for a tabletop RPG to confine characters solely to the tactical frame (among other things, video games already provide that experience, arguably in a superior fashion), but it's questionable whether they should have story abilities, and it's quite ridiculous to have characters like Tier I casters who have all the story abilities available to be accessed as needed. For the purpose of action heavy epic fantasy in the D&D style, characters in the Tier IIi-IV range like Rangers and Dread Necromancers who each have a couple of highly specific story abilities, make more sense. In the world of comics, most characters who have a story-level ability usually have just one as their entire schtick - like Weather Wizard or the Purple Man.

It would probably serve game designers working on magic systems well to consider this, and move "story component powers" over to Rituals rather than Spells, and restrict Spells to the "tactical powers". This would make the "story component powers" a bigger deal to cast, and maybe open them up to non-spellcaster characters. The Fighter PC can't cast spells in combat, but he can learn the day-long ritual to summon the spirits of the dead (see, Odysseus).

When I saw that 5e had "ritual casting", I thought maybe they were going to make this split, but it turned out to be just a way to cast spells without using spell slots. Meh.

I had a long post earlier in the thread about proportionality that goes into this in detail, but I'll try to summarize quickly.

First, unarmed combat is a thing that humans can naturally do, casting spells is not. Second, because unarmed combat is a thing people can already do, it has a pre-established baseline. We can measure what kind of capability a person in average shape with no training can do. Because casting spells is not a natural trait, it has no pre-established baseline. That means, as a designer, I can set the baseline anywhere I want. Specifically, I can set it to zero and have people with no magical training at all have absolutely no ability to do magic. This extends into training. We can measure the capabilities of a person who trains in martial arts over time. We can even divide this training into levels of capacity if you want and while the levels themselves will be arbitrary they can still grade progress effectively. For magic, because there's no pre-existing numbers, as the designer I can set the progression of mastery however I want.

So if you increase the capabilities of humans at something like unarmed combat past pre-existing values, what happens is that you stretch the entire known curve of capability to the right. This has even happened historically. World records in sports are newly set continually, but they don't happen in a vacuum. Even as the point at the furthest edge of the curve extends, the overall curve shifts. Olympic track runners are faster now then they were fifty years ago, but so are high school students due to shared advances that can be traced mostly to technology.

Consequently, if you simply increase the boundaries of human physical achievement, you get a whole batch of follow-up effects. If even one person can just train to become One Punch Man, then tens of thousands of people can train to become Captain America.

Now, critically, this doesn't happen if the explanation behind the same increase in achievement is a supernatural one. If the guy with kung-fu sufficient to punch holes in space-time isn't just 'really strong' but is instead 'channeling ki' then the problem disappears because ki channeling has no natural analogue and you can once again set arbitrary break points like 'you must train under a waterfall for seven years to unlock the true essence of ki manipulation.' Naruto (amazingly) is actually a good example of this - as all Naruto powers, including running really fast and punching really hard, are based on 'chakra manipulation' which is just magic by another name.

When you have the arbitrary ability to set an innate talent level to 0, you can take advantage of the power of multiplying by 0. Infinite Effort X Zero Talent = Zero Development, but as long as you have some inherent talent level you can't do that.

And that's what I mean when I say it resolves the worldbuilding issues if there's a "threshold" that has to be crossed before the person can do these extra-normal things. So as your examples note, there's no level of simply "punching stuff" that will ever allow someone to open a hole in spacetime, but if they've "unlocked their inner energy" and learned the correct technique, then they can do it.

Of course, that also requires the player to accept that in this setting, in this campaign, if they want their character to be able to punch holes in spacetime, the character has to have crossed that threshold into the extra-normal.

[Lord Raziere]

ONE of the problems underlying "GATGF" is the worldbuilding, the lore. GATGF-characters are very often characters who violate the lore of the setting.

"But I want to play a character who gets by on wits and steel, don't you dare say he's superhuman or extra-normal or magic in any way! I don't care that all the other characters are demigods and archmages, he should be able to outshine them all on grit and determination alone!" or "I want to play a barbarian rogue who bests sorcerers and demons without any of his own magic!"... in a high-magic setting, something like high-level 3.x or 5e.

....But DOES that violate lore? does it really?

because here is the thing, all the settings that fantasy is based on....whats the usual most basic protagonist? not some wizard, shaman, dragon or whatever.

its some guy. with a sword. often from some little village, often farmer. the most common and basic thing you can be in a medieval setting. and thus, the most relatable and down to earth. it grounds the whole thing with a perspective, an origin of commonality.

even if they don't end up being magical, they often end up becoming king with armies and such. but they still were once the farm boy.

its a common desire, because its basically a rags to riches story but with feudal nobility and knighthoods. you pick up a sword, go out and fight a monster, and the king is like "your awesome at fighting these things, here have a knighthood" they work their way up until they become king. its as fantastical and unrealistic as a modern person becoming rich through pure hard work.

yet, DnD is nothing BUT a rags to riches story. its all about that money, that status, that achievement. that moving up. its a human desire, probably as old as classes and castes. so of course, a wizard being god-well thats a bit more rich than being a mere king eh? why can't the fighter do the same, see? and if it ain't your hard work, it doesn't appeal.

so given that DnD is rags to riches story and therefore a world, constructed to serve the purpose of facilitating that story in many forms, how can a fighter getting to the top-most possible place of wealth in fantasy-godhood-NOT be in keeping with its setting? to not achieve this I'd say, violates the lore much more!

[Rukelnikov]

....But DOES that violate lore? does it really?

because here is the thing, all the settings that fantasy is based on....whats the usual most basic protagonist? not some wizard, shaman, dragon or whatever.

its some guy. with a sword. often from some little village, often farmer. the most common and basic thing you can be in a medieval setting. and thus, the most relatable and down to earth. it grounds the whole thing with a perspective, an origin of commonality.

even if they don't end up being magical, they often end up becoming king with armies and such. but they still were once the farm boy.

its a common desire, because its basically a rags to riches story but with feudal nobility and knighthoods. you pick up a sword, go out and fight a monster, and the king is like "your awesome at fighting these things, here have a knighthood" they work their way up until they become king. its as fantastical and unrealistic as a modern person becoming rich through pure hard work.

yet, DnD is nothing BUT a rags to riches story. its all about that money, that status, that achievement. that moving up. its a human desire, probably as old as classes and castes. so of course, a wizard being god-well thats a bit more rich than being a mere king eh? why can't the fighter do the same, see? and if it ain't your hard work, it doesn't appeal.

so given that DnD is rags to riches story and therefore a world, constructed to serve the purpose of facilitating that story in many forms, how can a fighter getting to the top-most possible place of wealth in fantasy-godhood-NOT be in keeping with its setting? to not achieve this I'd say, violates the lore much more!

Simple, because the rules of the setting are what dictate what is "mundane" and what is not. Creating life out of thin air is not (in dnd canon-ish settings), if you can do such a thing, you are not mundane.

[Max_Killjoy]

....But DOES that violate lore? does it really?

because here is the thing, all the settings that fantasy is based on....whats the usual most basic protagonist? not some wizard, shaman, dragon or whatever.

its some guy. with a sword. often from some little village, often farmer. the most common and basic thing you can be in a medieval setting. and thus, the most relatable and down to earth. it grounds the whole thing with a perspective, an origin of commonality.

even if they don't end up being magical, they often end up becoming king with armies and such. but they still were once the farm boy.

its a common desire, because its basically a rags to riches story but with feudal nobility and knighthoods. you pick up a sword, go out and fight a monster, and the king is like "your awesome at fighting these things, here have a knighthood" they work their way up until they become king. its as fantastical and unrealistic as a modern person becoming rich through pure hard work.

yet, DnD is nothing BUT a rags to riches story. its all about that money, that status, that achievement. that moving up. its a human desire, probably as old as classes and castes. so of course, a wizard being god-well thats a bit more rich than being a mere king eh? why can't the fighter do the same, see? and if it ain't your hard work, it doesn't appeal.

so given that DnD is rags to riches story and therefore a world, constructed to serve the purpose of facilitating that story in many forms, how can a fighter getting to the top-most possible place of wealth in fantasy-godhood-NOT be in keeping with its setting? to not achieve this I'd say, violates the lore much more!

Yes, it does. Because none of that is the lore in question. The lore in question is "how does this world work?", "what can magic do and not do here?", "what are the people here like?", etc.

And D&D is, ironically, a horrible system for those "stories". It's not rags to riches, poor farm boy to warrior-king -- that's not the setting or story that the system shows us. It shows us a setting full of "hero to demigod" stories, dominated by a plethora of magics.

Not that I really think those sorts of "stories" are all that common in gaming...

[Lord Raziere]

Yes, it does. Because none of that is the lore in question. The lore in question is "how does this world work?", "what can magic do and not do here?", "what are the people here like?", etc.

And D&D is, ironically, a horrible system for those "stories". It's not rags to riches, poor farm boy to warrior-king -- that's not the setting or story that the system shows us. It shows us a setting full of "hero to demigod" stories, dominated by a plethora of magics.

Not that I really think those sorts of "stories" are all that common in gaming...

1. that is your problem since you don't count the rags to riches thing being apart of the world when it is. it totally is, its your problem that your ignoring it, not mine that I'm including it.

2. which is the point of arguing for balance, to make it less horrible for them.

3. yes they aren't, but they are desired, which is why some things need to be changed to amtch those desires.

[AntiAuthority]

We posted at the same time, lol, I decided to just make this its own post.

All fantastic (aka of fantasy/fiction) abilities should be treated equally. That is any deviation from reality has the same set of concerns, roughly establishing the new rules and figuring out the consequences of those rules. For fantastic abilities the particular concerns are things, what can you do with them, costs to using them, who can learn them and how do they learn them. I would argue that from this perspective magic, super martial arts, physic powers or just being better than the best are identical. In that you have to ask yourself the same questions, the answers will be different. And that is just for the new rules, but the process of figuring out what these new elements do to the setting is the same as well.

Pretty much, except I'm not too concerned with what the abilities would have on such settings. I may be misunderstanding something, but I'm pretty much just saying not to go too far into emulating what a society of such characters would have on the effects of the world... Sort of like how Watchmen established what effect superheroes would have on the world, as opposed to what sort of abilities a character of X level could accomplish or what being a character of X level meant in regards to power.

Dr. Manhattan is an amazingly powerful character, but I'm not too concerned with what his abilities would have on society like being turned into a walking WMD because of the government for this thread... Or the glory that is the Tippyverse and what such characters of that level would have on society at large, but not for my thread. Admittedly, the things in this thread weren't there, but I was starting to worry it would get derailed to that point.

[Keltest]

I'd just like to point out that a rags to riches story has absolutely nothing to do with what class you are in D&D. Its perfectly possible to start as a farm body who found grandpa's scroll of magic missile in the basement one day, and end up as Supreme Archmage of the Realm, slayer of 10,000 dragons, demons, devils and other nasty things that start with D.

The problem is that Lord of the Rings style fantasy where everybody is basically just a heroic guy (ignoring that everybody except for Boromir is explicitly superhuman in some way) caps out around level 5 or so. Past that, youre beyond heroism and into superheroism, in deed if not in power. But the fighter wants to keep pretending that its still just Aragorn or Boromir even though theyre getting into adventures that Hellboy would be struggling with.

[Satinavian]

Because it's a game?

Yes, fights that Hellboy fight are designed to be winnable by Hellboy. And games with Fighter should feature fights winnable by Fighter. I'm not convinced I see your point - are you saying that you, as GM, would toss Fighter into a fight he couldn't possibly win, then laugh uproarioushly at him for picking a class that cannot win such a fight?

Because then, at least, we have a genuine disagreement: I consider my job to be to entertain, and present manageable challenges.

No, in a game with a fighter i will make sure there are enough challenges, problems and plot hooks for a fighter. But i won't change the setting in a way that the central conflicts and problems of the setting are something than can be solved with a sword.

So depending on what the setting exactly is, it is very likely that a fighter is not the most important person around or at least he is not important because of his fighting abilities.

Also i don't play D&D and won't actually have a Fighter. But i might have characters with strong melee skills. But considering that a significant number of adventures cebter around investigation or environmental hazards or politics or mysteries or exploration, "punching things" is not particularly often useful. And that is fine.

[Max_Killjoy]

1. that is your problem since you don't count the rags to riches thing being apart of the world when it is. it totally is, its your problem that your ignoring it, not mine that I'm including it.

Again, not the sort of lore in question. The lore in question isn't someone's precious story, it's the facts of the setting.

2. which is the point of arguing for balance, to make it less horrible for them.

You're not really arguing for balance, you're arguing for a system to be built (or contorted) around a very narrow and particular type of "story". "I want to play the story I want to play, no matter what" is just a different version of "I want to play the character I want to play, no matter what".

But D&D could easily be balanced, if the designers and fans were willing to give SOMETHING up.

• The scope and scale of magical power that spellcasters gain access to.
• The idea that Fighters, etc, must be "non-extra-normal" while still being balanced.
• The notion that "non-extra-normal" characters are valid PCs for D&D, particularly at higher levels.

Instead, D&D tries to have it all, to eat the cake and have it to, refuses to decide if it's a system for a Conan to LotR sort of campaign, or an over-the-top superhuman slugfest campaign where EVERY PC eventually has some sort of extra-normal capability that sets them apart from most people in the setting campaign, or whatever... and so we go around and around and around.

3. yes they aren't, but they are desired, which is why some things need to be changed to amtch those desires.

Personally I've never met anyone who wanted that "story", and it seems rather niche in online discussions.

I'd just like to point out that a rags to riches story has absolutely nothing to do with what class you are in D&D. Its perfectly possible to start as a farm body who found grandpa's scroll of magic missile in the basement one day, and end up as Supreme Archmage of the Realm, slayer of 10,000 dragons, demons, devils and other nasty things that start with D.

The problem is that Lord of the Rings style fantasy where everybody is basically just a heroic guy (ignoring that everybody except for Boromir is explicitly superhuman in some way) caps out around level 5 or so. Past that, youre beyond heroism and into superheroism, in deed if not in power. But the fighter wants to keep pretending that its still just Aragorn or Boromir even though theyre getting into adventures that Hellboy would be struggling with.

Exactly.

Which is why, when this subject comes up, I point out that the problem is at least as much about the inverse of the fallacy -- the assertion that the Fighter, etc, must be purely not-extra-normal, not-magic, not-superhuman, not-etc.

If people are holding the Fighter to the what the "GATG" could do, then it's often because both the game and some players insist that their Fighter is, in fact, THE GUY AT THE GYM. If they don't want the Fighter to be held to GATG limits, then all they have to do is stop insisting that's what he is no matter what. Let the Fighter, etc, be extra-normal when the progression takes the game into blatantly extra-normal territory.

[Talakeal]

@Max Killjoy:

I agree with most everything you are saying about setting consistency, but I think you are taking it a little too far.

A perfectly consistent setting is completely impossible for a multitude of reasons.

Personally, I am content to see a story that reasonably could have happened, rather than demanding that it be something that was likely to happen.

What does everyone think a Level 10+ character should have in terms of abilities to reflect them being on that level of power?.

Are you familiar with the Tome of Battle? If so, how do you feel about the powers it provides?

[Max_Killjoy]

@Max Killjoy:

I agree with most everything you are saying about setting consistency, but I think you are taking it a little too far.

A perfectly consistent setting is completely impossible for a multitude of reasons.

Personally, I am content to see a story that reasonably could have happened, rather than demanding that it be something that was likely to happen.

I'm not looking for perfectly consistent, just internally coherent, and not continuously trying to get a noose around the neck of my disbelief.

"Reasonably could have happened" is a perfectly valid standard for the whole story, but what I see happen instead is "it could have happened' used for every little thing until it's a pileup of the hypothetically plausible.

[Cluedrew]

Pretty much, except I'm not too concerned with what the abilities would have on such settings.

I guess what I'm trying to say (to everybody) is that it doesn't matter. Regardless of what your standards for world building or how little work you want to put into explaining your fantastic abilities, it doesn't matter what type of fantastic abilities you have. Wizards can break a setting's logic just as easily as martial artists, but if you put the work in both can be made to fit into an internally consistent world. In other words I agree that most world building is actually off topic for this thread, because it is an orthogonal issue to the one proposed in the first post of this thread.

Now if someone want's to argue they aren't orthogonal that is something we can talk about. I could see arguments in that direction but most are cleanly countered by "choose fantastic abilities appropriate for the story/setting you want to create". But if no one has any of those I think we should finish this world building aside.

[Morty]

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.

[AntiAuthority]

as for me, I dunno, how wizards got so powerful is by taking every wizard they can and accumulating them and what they do into a generic archetype, so I guess to emulate that we start by taking every martial and what they do that we want and just lumping them all into a single archetype?

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. The specific characters will be put in bold, as I'm aware links can become broken with time.

Spoiler: Composite Martial Character

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Such a character would have nearly limitless strength (being able to bench press mountains/continents/planets/the universe and hitting things that are just as heavy as the universe if not threatening the stability of the universe) (Sun Wukong can carry two mountains, Superman can tow planets around on a chain and "lifted eternity" (if that's quantifiable), The Incredible Hulk (616) has limitless anger in that he can get infinitely stronger with anger, Asura from Asura's Wrath can also become infinitely stronger with rage, and Goku and Beerus were supposedly close to destroying the universe/several realms during their fight in Dragon Ball Super), wrestle titanic beasts (Mythological!Thor wrestled the World Serpent while it was disguised as a cat), the ability to just leap to places instantly to follow teleporting enemies (The Incredible Hulk's preferred method of travel, Spider-Man can also do this but to a lesser extent, same with Saitama from One Punch Man), cause natural disasters by hitting things (not even the ground) really hard (Hulk and Red She-Hulk and the shock wave ended up destroying the planet they were on), know virtually every language in existence (Batman is fluent in several languages, along with Wonder Woman), so skilled they can essentially do things that are technically humanly possible if a human had a reaction time so low that things would be standing still for them (Cu Chulainn can thread a needle through the eye of another needle 50 times, 616 Captain America can dodge bullets because he "sees faster", 616 Spider-Man can knock poison tablets out of several people's mouths as they're activating, and Superman read several medical books within an extremely short period of time), becoming immune to being killed the same way twice (Berserker!Hercules from Fate series; Doomsday from DC Comics), enter a berserk state (Wolverine's Berserker State that turns him into a more vicious killer, 616 Thor's Warrior Madness that increases his strength 10x, Mythological Cu Chulainn's warp spasm, Mythological Hercules' fits of rage, God of War's Kratos' Spartan Rage, any Berserker-class servant from the Fate series had to have gone berserk at some point in their lives resulting in a boost to their physical stats at the cost of their sanity) intimidate things that technically shouldn't be able to be intimidated like constructs (Mythological Thor terrified a golem this badly, Mr. Fixit/Grey Hulk traumatized a shark and terrifies people in general... Including the representation of a man's inner evil), scare people so much with their battle cries that lesser warriors just fall over dead from fright (Mythological Cu Chulainn did this), have a super computer for a mind (Superman can read several books in an instant; Batman is the world's greatest detective; Sherlock Holmes being able to piece together clues from observation; 616 Captain America can learn virtually any weapon within seconds, has a photographic memory, can apply any military tactic to a combat situation in real-time), be able to sense ill intent (Goku from Dragon Ball has the power to detect evil, and Naruto from... Naruto has the power to detect malice as well, allowing him to find shape shifters that had infiltrated the Shinobi Allied Forces), have knowledge of all fighting styles and weapons (Batman knows supposedly every martial art on the planet, Kratos from God of War can use virtually any weapon he can put his hands on, Captain America can learn how to use any weapon, Yujiro Hanma from Baki the Grapplier knows many fighting styles), can learn a new fighting style relatively/very quickly and often times improve upon it (Task Master from Marvel Comics can learn by watching others, Yujiro Hanma can learn a martial art by watching it/fighting against it and use it more effectively than the person he was copying it from) use ki to enhance strength (Goku from Dragon Ball, Iron Fist from Marvel Comics), use ki to create fire balls (Goku's iconic Kamehame Wave in Dragon Ball, Ryu's also iconic Hadouken from Street Fighter), use ki to fly (anyone in Dragon Ball), use ki to slow down aging (Hamon in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure seems to be heavily inspired by the concept of ki, as is Nen from Hunter x Hunter, and both slow down the user's aging process, allowing them to stay in their primes for longer), move so fast they create after images (Ryu Hayabusa from Ninja Gaiden, speedsters from comics also tend to do this), move so fast that people can't perceive their movements (616 Spider-Man can move faster than the eye can follow, Conan can as well in an illustration where the narration says the woman can't see him slashing off an ape-like monster's arm, any speedster character in anime and comics) , move faster than lightning (or light itself) (The Flash once made a bet with two power entities that he could beat them in a race back to Earth from where they were, and they agreed as, "Nothing can move faster than instantaneous teleportation"... The Flash won the race. The Flash literally outran teleportation), move fast enough to block dozens/hundreds/thousands/millions of projectiles at once (Sun Wukong once blocked millions of attacks, Wonder Woman herself also blocked stingers from bee-men that were (according to The Flash) moving at "1500 rounds per second"), be able to hear conversations across town/miles/other planes of existence (Cu Chulainn could hear conversations across various distances while Sun Wukong can hears conversations in Heaven while he's on Earth), if polymorphed or turned into a statue they can continue to move and keep fighting enough to still injure normal people (or whatever transformed them) despite being in a much smaller/weaker body and packing a punch many times heavier than something of that size is capable of/being able to move at all as an inanimate object (616 Thor was once transformed into a frog... But he still retained his super strength as it was his "birthright as Thor" and could still injure humans in his frog form by smashing himself into them way harder than a normal frog could; Vegito from Dragon Ball Z was once turned into a piece of candy and, unlike every other instance this happened, was still capable of movement and started beating the one who turned him into candy with his new form, essentially he was a candy bullet), swim across the ocean (Beowulf swam for about 7 days straight), drink toxic substances like molten metal/poison (Sun Wukong drank molten metal and was more or less fine), drink so much that the geography changes (Mythological and 61 Thor both drank so much water that it lowered the sea level), be fine getting stabbed by armies of mortal men (Sun Wukong seems to ignore such attacks, the the Grey Hulk (the weakest one) has knives shatter on his skin, Superman has bullets bounce off of him), survive getting dipped in the sun (Two Supermen flew Superboy Prime through a red sun... It didn't kill them, but it did severely weaken them), be fine getting stabbed by armies of gods (Sun Wukong didn't seem too bothered about the armies of gods trying to murder him with weapons or the elements), be invulnerable except for one tiny spot (Achilles was invulnerable except for his heel), plow through armies of men and monsters (Cu Chulainn, Sun Wukong, pretty much any video game character ever), smash the weapons of gods in a single blow (Sun Wukong once broke a god's weapon in this manner), be able to be boiled alive by fire so hot that it can set a mountain range on fire (Sun Wukong, once again did this, but he was being boiled by this same heat source for over a month and only came out with a few burnt hairs), resistance to magical effects (Any Saber-, Archer-, Rider- and Lancer-Class Servants in that magic can bounce off them), be able to actively shatter magical effects (616 Thor shattered one of Loki's illusions with Mjolnir, Asta from Black Clover possesses an Anti-Magic sword that lets him cut through spells/constructs/summons), being able to see through like they're not even there (Sun Wukong could see through someone who was shapeshifted), will metaphysical entities out of existence through disbelieving in them (Conan did this once to a demonic bear), the ability to resist telepathic probing capable of brainwashing entire groups of people as well as actively hurt the person reading their mind over the mental link through a form of psychic backlash/psychic avatar (616 Spider-Man had "mental anti-bodies" that appeared as various Spider-Man to attack the intruder (the intruder made it clear he wasn't even sure how he ended up inside Spider-Man's mind), 616 Wolverine had a psychic try to enter his mind only to be put into a dark hallway where Weapon X/Berserker Wolverine killed his psychic avatar (the intruder ended up catatonic as a result), 616 Thor was only a little dazed by a psychic capable of "leaving a civilization senseless"), have perfect immune systems that are incapable of getting sick and any poisons/genetic weapons introduced being destroyed by the immune system within the span of a few weeks to about a few moments (616 Bruce Banner claims he's never been sick since becoming the Hulk, 616 Wolverine adapted a resistance to a DNA weapon), force their way out of dimensions through sheer strength (Super Buu from Dragon Ball did this by screaming), destroy other dimensions through brute force (616 Hulk did this to the Dark Dimension), go to other planes of existence by punching their way through the walls of reality (Superboy Prime once did this, and effectively reset reality... Sidenote, he also hit someone hard enough that they started remembering things from other dimensions), steal from the gods themselves (Prometheus did this in Greek Mythology, but he was a Titan...), talk their way out of any problem, have such precise aim that they can hit a fly by the wings from a long distance while also turning the strike into what amounts to missile (Archer from Fate did this by sniping Berserker in Fate Stay Night), walk into the underworld and beat up the god of death in a fight/beat the god of death in a contest until their loved one is brought back to life (Hercules did this in the Disney movie, I also remember him doing it in the mythology for a loved one), punt other people into the sky through hitting them that hard (Spider-Man once did this to Grey Hulk), destroy people's souls (Beerus of Dragon Ball Super is capable of using his godly ki to destroy a person's soul), their soul is able to continue beating people up if removed from its body (once again, Sun Wukong did this when his soul was removed from its body), the ability to survive fatal wounds like having their hearts torn out and living for a few more minutes (One more time, Sun Wukong can be just fine as a head and regenerate his body, Cu Chulainn managed to gather his innards), be able to resist time manipulation (Goku in Dragon Ball Super could resist Hit's Time Skip, while Tatsumi from Akame ga Kill essentially resisted being frozen by Esdeath's time stop), give them the abilities to heal/regenerate from almost anything from the span of a few hours to about 5 seconds (Spider-Man has a healing factor that lets him sleep off things like broken bones, burned eyes and can flush out foreign substances very quickly... He has to take way more pain killers than the average person as a result), rally people behind their causes with a few inspirational words, wrestle and kill aspects of reality itself like old age, death and fear (Mythological Thor wrestled with Old Age, Kratos from God of War killed Thanatos/the God of Death, absorbed the souls of Hades, and Fear!Zeus) and to top it all off... And they can do this for a month to almost a year before needing to rest for a little bit because they only need to sleep every few months, and only then, for like a few hours at the most (Ultimate Captain America only needs "an hour or two of sleep every week", Guts from Berserk can run for days on end, Sun Wukong mentioned he only needs to sleep about once a month, and 616 Thor can engage in battle against beings for months at a time). And if fate itself is trying to murder them, they can go, "Lol nah fam" and do their own thing... Or just technically fulfill their destined death then come back like it doesn't matter by just willing themselves alive (Asura from Asura's Wrath is killed multiple times over the story, and ends up forcing himself back to life through his overwhelming rage and determination, each time getting shorter and shorter before he just came back). If someone tries to force them out of existence, said character can go, "No, screw you, I like existing." (Jack Rakan from Negima was essentially reduced into nothing but molecules and just sort of forced his way back into existence. Sol Badguy from Guilty Gear had his past self die, but continued to exist despite the time paradox because he willed himself to continue existing).

Adding on their gifts/magic, they'd be able to turn invisible (Cu Chulainn had this spell), have items that boost their strength (Thor's belt that doubles his already prodigious strength), be even more nigh invulnerable (the fur Hercules made from the Nemean Lion's pelt, the Golden Fleece that can reflect attacks), have a weapon far too powerful for a normal man to ever hope to use, wield weapons far too heavy to use (Guts' Dragonslayer is far too heavy for a regular human being to use as a regular weapon, Sun Wukong's staff weighs about 9 tons), be able to shapeshift (Sun Wukong once again), create clones of themselves (Sun Wukong pops up on this list alot, but Naruto is also capable of doing this through chakra), ask the gods for divine help, take the weapons of the gods they've killed and use them like they've been training with said weapon for all their life (Kratos in God of War usually does this), be able to stop time (Dante can do this at will, Kratos can at certain locations, the Prince of Persia can do this through the Sands of time), armors that will let them keep fighting until every single drop of blood is drained from their body (The Berserker Armor from Berserk), upgrade their weapons by killing more enemies, a sword capable of cutting through space (Yamato from Devil May Cry has this ability), soul devouring weapons (Molag Bal's mace from The Elder Scrolls comes to mind) and mess with the strings of fate (Kratos again).

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

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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.

Not really the point of the thread, you don't need to understand the implications of how Ki affects societies or lore in Dragon Ball, it just works. Harry Potter has magic in it, but the world is basically ours with magic thrown in, despite the wizarding world being incredibly old.

I'm not talking about world building, I'm talking about characters, their level of power and arguing why they are or aren't this way based on what they're expected to contend against. The reasons for why can vary based on raw talent, magically reinforced bodies, radioactive powers, mutations, genetic modification, ki, chakras, psychic abilities, divine power, being the reincarnation of ancient warriors, etc. The thread isn't about talking about what sort of world would produce such characters, but what kind of powers a character of this level would need to be able to remain relevant at a concept of this level.

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Are you familiar with the Tome of Battle? If so, how do you feel about the powers it provides?

I haven't really read it, but I have read a little bit of Path of War, I keep getting distracted whenever I try to. Going to get around to it.

[Kaptin Keen]

But i won't change the setting in a way that the central conflicts and problems of the setting are something than can be solved with a sword.

And my point is that there are no things that cannot be solved with a sword.

[Mechalich]

The 'Guy at the Gym' issue is, ultimately, an issue of worldbuilding and setting consistency.

In a pure mechanical sense you can match up numbers any way you want, regardless of how absurd the results may be. Disgaea is a good example of how this works. In Disgaea a can make a character who can, completely unarmed, punch a level 9999 demon lord in the face and destroy them utterly. At the same time I can make a mage character who casts 'Tera Star' and watch an animation play out that implies detonating a supernova on the face of the same demon lord and do zero damage. This happens because Disgaea is completely controlled by a set of mathematical formulas and the visual effects are completely and totally arbitrary. Which is why you can turn them off to speed up the game and not change the gameplay experience in any way.

You can absolutely build a game system in which a character can cut the Earth in half with his sword 'because reasons.' If you don't care about the plausibility of the outputs, then the issue simply disappears. Video games do this a lot, as anyone who's every complained about their inability to open a locked door while carrying a massive rocket launcher knows. This is linked to the 'Captain Hobo' idea on the inputs end - if the game doesn't force characters to define powers within some set of plausibility guidelines then you can produce characters whose abilities come with an aesthetically absurd backdrop. A useful reference frame here is imagine statting out Looney Tunes characters. You can explicitly do this in generalist point-buy systems like GURPS, but bringing a 500-point version of Bugs Bunny to adventure alongside 'Spellmaster the Lich-Lord' produces absurd results.

I would stress, again, that absurd results are not, in any way, inherently bad. There are plenty of great works of art that are surrealist in origin, absurd in presentation, or simply completely disregard trying to present a coherent fictional world, because the existence of such a thing is beside the point they are trying to make. In fact, sometimes the absurd results are themselves the point - as in parody or comedy - OOTS is a modest example of this, while Disgaea waves its 'this is a parody, demands for rigor will be beaten with squeaky hammers' flag high.

'Guy at the Gym,' therefore, represents a shorthand for portions of the setting design process. The reason it's described as a fallacy is that the idea itself is based on assumptions that may or may not hold in a given setting or may apply.

Some of those assumptions:
1. The setting contains an in-universe means to bypass basic human limits - this will hold in most speculative fiction settings, but it doesn't always. Historical fiction or alternative history may mandate that normal limits remain in place all the time. Likewise games that allow improbably outcomes through the use of metagame currency after the fashion of the more restrained class of action film (ie. John Wick 1, not John Wick 3) may claim that humans are humans without stretching plausibility too much.
2. The ability or abilities to bypass human limits is both non-universal and non-technological. In a setting where literally everyone has some sort of phlebotinum-based powers, there are no guys at the gym (meta-stories about 'un-sorcerers' excepted), there are just people who are weaker or stronger in the use of whatever form of powers there happen to be. Likewise, if the powers in question are technological in nature, then their distribution becomes a matter of in-universe economics and politics, not any inherent character trait.
3. The ability or abilities provided by phlebotinum are more powerful than what a person without such abilities could ever achieve - with particular relevance to achievements in whatever core experience the game is expected to deliver (for example, in a game about mecha pilots, the ability to shoot lasers from your eyes might not be all that helpful). Note that technological assistance plausibly increases the capabilities of the people without phlebotiliminum to match the people with phlebotinum (note that this means technology that is integrated into the setting, not phlebotinum based one-offs like Iron Man's armor or Ant-Man's suit). The Punisher, for example, is far better able to match a wizard character with the exact same stats in the 21st century with his massive arsenal of military hardware than if you dump him into the tenth century and make him fight with swords and bows.
4. Characters without phlebotinum are intended to work along side of, or represent individual level threats too, characters with phlebotinum. That is, ordinary people aren't simply background noise. Meaning Hawkeye and Black Widow are expected to be viable concepts in a system that also allows Dr. Strange and Thor.

D&D, of course, meets all these assumptions, but not every setting does. There are a number of space fantasy settings, notably, that allow advanced technology to make up the gap against Phlebotinum-based superpowers. Warhammer 40K, for instance, does this at least in principle (it's a weird setting and I'm not particularly familiar with the mechanics, but I believe this is at least the idea) or to a certain degree. Likewise, there are a number of game setups where all characters will have phlebotinum from the start and explicitly be operating on a different level than that of the ordinary puny mortals, Exalted, for example, is very much produced in this vein.

You can eliminate the problem by overriding essentially any one of those assumptions. You can make a game where everyone is a normal human or one where everyone has powers, or one where all powers are technological in nature, or where powers aren't strong enough to beat out the normals, or where the normals are irrelevant. None of these things are hard to do. However, all of them have setting consequences. Making everyone a normal restricts character options - if all wizards are just stage tricksters like David Copperfield then you don't get to play with magic. If all powers are technological then economics and politics take up a huge place in your game structure (read the Eclipse Phase books, they're free, for a good idea of how this applies). If the powers available aren't stronger than what normal people can do they tend to be extremely limited in scope, highly esoteric, or just unsuited to the pace of tabletop gameplay. If ordinary people are reduced to background noise, you've created a world ruled by the supers and the implications of that are usually unpleasant. And of course you can always eliminate the problem by sacrificing setting coherency, because it simply doesn't matter at that point.

The problem D&D has is that all these assumptions hold and D&D generally (Planescape is the exception) wants to pretend to having coherent settings. This doesn't actually work and D&D settings hold together only through a combination of authorial fiat and special pleading even in the published setting materials never mind at an actual table with the gloves off, and the consequential result has been that certain concepts the game claims to support aren't actually powerful enough to function within a large portion of the designated gameplay space (depending on edition approximately levels 10 and above). This was never a conscious design choice, its an accretion of decisions made over the history of the game, with a very messy ultimate result.

[Lord Raziere]

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.

*snip*

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

Thank you. this is good demonstration the real source of fictional OPness: its not about magic, its about the accumulation of deeds, the building up of history. dnd 3.5 wizards are just the most noticeable accumulation. with this method, its not about what wizards or fighters should be able to do, its the acknowledgment of things that fighters have already done, and simply making them all options that you can choose among many. none of it would be required and a GM would be allowed to limit them as they would limit spell lists for their specific campaign, but the point is for fighter to be open to any source to draw their history and inspiration from, no matter how many people like or dislike a single source.

a GM can limit a wizard by simply altering the spell lists so that aren't as ridiculous, with this method, a fighter will the same level of mutability an optional yet utilizable power. so that at a theoretical optimization level they are just as powerful as wizards, yet in practice a GM would limit them as they would limit a wizard.

Thus this solves all problems: anyone who dislikes the power such fighters would have can feel free to GM to gate it. for everyone else, the options would be there, across many splatbooks.

[Keltest]

And my point is that there are no things that cannot be solved with a sword.

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

[Willie the Duck]

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

Enough uses of the sword will eliminate their need for food.

[Lord Raziere]

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

I mean.....all food is technically just well-prepared corpses of other life, so its just a matter of finding something big enough and killing it to bring back....

[Keltest]

I mean.....all food is technically just well-prepared corpses of other life, so its just a matter of finding something big enough and killing it to bring back....

Coincidentally, I actually happen to know something about hunting for your food (many of my family members and friends hunt), and for the most part you cant really just kill a dragon and haul its carcass back to the town a day away and get anything usable from that. Even assuming that the whole thing is edible (a dubious claim by itself) youre looking at maybe a day, at most, in warm and/or wet conditions before the meat becomes dangerous to eat even after cooking. You basically have to prepare it on the spot, almost immediately after killing it. And frankly, just due to the added mass, I think killing a dragon sized deer for food would actually yield significantly less edible material in the long run than killing enough deer to make into a dragon sized pile of meat. You just wouldn't be able to cool it down fast enough to save it all.

[Mechalich]

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

I mean.....all food is technically just well-prepared corpses of other life, so its just a matter of finding something big enough and killing it to bring back....

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.

Now, the general priors for speculative fiction suggest that to solve this particular story problem a 'martial' character will have to conduct the quest, while a 'caster' character will handwave the problem via story abilities. However, that's purely a matter of tradition. The warrior could simply slice open the sky and cause it to rain down manna, while the wizard might engage in a complex and multi-stage quest to track, slay, and retrieve a great beast for provisions. In some ways the Guy at the Gym Fallacy is a form of slavish adherence to priors that conflate a concept, in this case 'warrior' with a certain ability set.

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).

It's probably worth noting that the tactical vs. story ability issue - which has major implications for game balance - can occur without any explicit supernatural powers at all. A good example is the stories of Sherlock Holmes. In those stories Dr. Watson actually has quite a few tactical abilities - he's a doctor, he's got combat experience, he tends to get along well with people, and he's a man of good social standing. Holmes, meanwhile, is usually a curmudgeonly misanthropic jerk with a compulsion to offend, showboat, and otherwise irritate just about everyone he meets, but he's got the 'figure it all out' story ability and that's why his character is the one with the name in the title (this is being slightly unfair, Sherlock puts in a good deal of detective work in many stories, but I think the example remains useful).

The implication here is that even very weak story abilities can balance out a strong set of tactical abilities. In fact, this is how DC typically handles Batman v. Superman - by giving Batman the 'knows things' story ability as a counter to Superman's tactical invincibility (though this works better when Oracle takes up the 'knows things' role and isn't actually on-site and forced to dodge death blasts a normal human can't actually dodge). However, when tactical characters are limited to the abilities only a human being could possess without augmentation, they can be sidelined almost completely by characters with even very weak supernatural story abilities. For example, the actual vampire powers (the disciplines) given to a starting character in VtM are actually rather weak (especially if you spread out the dots), but they immediately outclass mortals who don't get any of them in terms of one to one ability to contribute to gameplay.

[Lord Raziere]

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.

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.

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.