Pretty false.
Heavy Armor Master
Defy Death
Iron Root Defense
Three class based or feat based skill or efforts that allow you to reduce the damage that GWF can do.
Can anyone reduce the damage? No. But training or effort does exist.
here is an existing 3rd party product that includes ship building rules. It treats starships as psudo-characters, a d4 hull is probably a fighter with a d12 hull being a capital ship.
http://www.rpgnow.com/product/109425/High-Space-Core-Rules-(v10)
You are right, the game is not one thing to many people, it is in fact many things. 4e narratively freed up people IMO with fluff being mutable. But in this instance with how the universal system worked, adding the lines about being able to combust object in every single power with the fire...
The thing is, 4e did it differently. It had a universal power block, and also had (after errata) a universal catch all for targeting objects. After that, it did not need to individually put in all the instances where something may need to target objects.
I used 3e because it's arguably the largest. The idea still stands though. 4e with its standardized power block would have had been a lot more bloated with lines on what each and every power could or couldn't do. So they fixed it with the line about creature targets can also be objects.
I wonder if its such a big deal because 3e magic users are not used to having to ask a gm for things. So naturally they take it as proof that they cannot do things.
Or that it could be a very small vocal minority. I wonder which is more likely... large wide scale play testing surveys or the threadcrapping by the same 4 posters.
Ah, well it's an argument of your own designs and terms, I guess it's only right that you get to choose what counts and what doesn't. I guess all errata for any other game doesn't count as fixing any rules as well right? 3rd edition is one gigantic mess because 3.0's books were never recalled...