D&D General The Crab Bucket Fallacy

[Tony Vargas]

What you are doing is, in fact, using the straw man fallacy. The primary opposition from people that oppose creating a Fighter with "all the same abilities" as a Wizard is not that no one would play a vanilla fighter; instead, it's because there are people that do not want those abilities in a martial character.

TBF, I doubt any hypothetical Warlord has ever peen proposed that would have "all the same abilities as a Wizard"
rather,

Here's a draft of the Warlord -- it gets all these powerful cool abilities but I think it's fine because they aren't really better than the Wizard's spells at those levels.

In this case, he's even suggesting that the Warlord get spells (tho, y'know, a Fighter sub-class in the PH does get spells, already), just "powerful cool abilities" - they might be maneuvers, like a souped up BM, they might be something else, entirely.

A straw man fallacy (sometimes written as strawman) is the informal fallacy of refuting an argument different from the one actually under discussion, while not recognizing or acknowledging the distinction.

Personally, I think Cleric or Bard would be a better point of comparison, but it's a hopeless case, the Warlord, in 5e. It's design space has generally been colonized, or razed & salted.

People often refer to "logical fallacies." It is rarely a good thing in terms of a improving a conversation.

Most of the time, they are discussing one of the many informal fallacies (such as the argumentum ad vercundium or the argumentum ad hominem). Informal fallacies may be important to pay attention to, but are not necessarily incorrect in argument (ethos, logos, pathos) and are often useful as heuristics. For example, the appeal to motive is ad hominem, but it is common and accepted to both weaken an argument ("Of course she's providing an alibi- she's the wife!") as well as strengthen an argument ("He's a stalwart company man, but he admitted they poisoned the river.")

Whether it's a fallacy or not, I think the basic issue the OP is getting at is just the entrenchment of the Martial/Caster Gap (npi). People are able to claim, with a straight face, that the Fighter (or Rogue or Barbarian) is equal to the Wizard (or Cleric, Druid, etc), but, when it comes to introducing a new martial class that even approaches the utility of a full caster, it's deemed "OP"
That judgement can't come from comparison to the yet-more-powerful full casters, it can only come from comparison to the benighted non-casters.

That's a double standard. (Which does not seem to be a named fallacy that I could quickly find, formal or informal, so there's that)

 

[Vaalingrade]

Also, this Crab Bucket is entirely based on the underlying assumption that martials are underpowered and casters overpowered.

So basic observation.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

That's a very resonable opinion, and a worthy consideration for someone interested in game design. But it has nothing to do with logical fallacies.

That's why it should probably be called the crab bucket argument or something, but since the name "argument" does not carry any information about whether it is valid or not, I opted for fallacy instead since it is clearer on that point. Much like Oberoni fallacy and Stormwind fallacy et al.

 

[Gorck]

That's why it should probably be called the crab bucket argument or something, but since the name "argument" does not carry any information about whether it is valid or not, I opted for fallacy instead since it is clearer on that point. Much like Oberoni fallacy and Stormwind fallacy et al.

The Crab Bucket Conundrum sounds rather catchy.

 

[SteveC]

Spells are a good example. You propose a spell which sucks the life out of an enemy and transfers it to you. Someone points out that your spell is way better than vampiric touch, and is therefore obviously OP; in fact, of course, vampiric touch is one of the most pathetically underpowered spells in the game, so any similar spell that is reasonably balanced will look grossly OP by comparison.

This is a very good point and applies to every class feature, across the board. Some classes, sub-classes, spells, feats and so on are just not well designed. Few people pick them. As a result, they restrict the design space for similar effects.

I've recently watched a lot of videos and read a lot of guides about spells to create a character. There is considerable variation in some areas, but some stuff is near universally seen as bad. I hope that WotC takes the chance to make these options better, not just because they give players more reasonable options, but because they open up what can be designed in the game as well. "This spell is WAY BETTER than a spell that no one picks or uses." Sounds like that's a problem for that spell and not something that should restrict other parts of the game.

 

[billd91]

I'm trying to avoid talking about specific solutions because I don't want to see this as a balance discussion. In fact as I state in reply to another poster here, you could strip away the classes and class categories I mention entirely and formulate it something like this:

"If you want to claim that a particular class is imbalanced against another class, you must compare against ALL classes. You can't just arbitrarily decide that only a subset of the classes are valid for comparison."

But class vs class overall isn't the only thing that needs to be considered. You might also want to compare a single power with similar types of powers - defensive power vs defensive power, offensive power vs offensive power, weapon vs weapon, power granted at 3rd level vs power granted at 3rd level, etc. And, honestly, gaining resistance to almost all damage at 3rd level was pretty potent. If nearly everyone's taking it, it's either too powerful or the alternatives aren't powerful enough. And that would be true even if you didn't think the barbarian stacked up to the wizard overall.

 

[Deset Gled]

That's why it should probably be called the crab bucket argument or something, but since the name "argument" does not carry any information about whether it is valid or not, I opted for fallacy instead since it is clearer on that point. Much like Oberoni fallacy and Stormwind fallacy et al.

I would humbly recommend changing the name, then. Claiming everyone who disagrees with one's opinion to be committing a logical fallacy is a poor way to make an argument clear. In the long run, tactics like that often end up communicating more about the poster than the argument the poster is trying to make.

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

Obviously, I recommend changing the name, then. Claiming everyone who disagrees with your opinion to be committing a logical fallacy is a poor way to make an argument clear. In the long run, tactics like that often end up communicating more about the poster than the argument the poster is trying to make.

No I think the name is apt because the people using that argument are using a bad argument.

I wouldn't have made this thread if it wasn't something that I saw used multiple times. The form given in the OP is more complex than the most common form, which was like this:

1: Bob proposes a buff to a martial class
2: Caesar says that the buff makes the class OP, because the buff makes it stronger than some other martial class

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

While I agree with this, I think it's going both ways. We routinely see arguments about balance that are proxies for the actual discussion "martial abilities should be like Y" with both sides discussing something other than what's actually at stake. There is no common ground or hope for rhetorical change if we actually had the root discussion, so no one bothers.

Well, having seen this discussion play out approximately (checks notes) One Hundred Million Billion Times per month on EnWorld (numbers are approximate, yet also completely true), I think that the reason that there is no common ground on this issue is that because, at root, it goes down to deep-seated preferences.

In the end, it's fine that people have different preferences. Really! Seriously, there are those that want their martials all mundane, or, at most, a little Conan-y. And there are those that want Martials goin' all Wuxia and wielding swords that are four times the length of their bodies and jumping up 200 feet to bash a demon lord in the face.

There is no wrong preference. Problem is, people feel the need to argue that their preference is a universal "correct" way to do it, usually by asserting various collateral arguments (anything from verisimilitude to balance to tradition to the need to change with the times to whatever) when those aren't going to sway people.

People like what they like. You can't force someone to like something. You can expose them to it, but if they don't like it, that's they way that it is. You can't talk them out of it, no matter how often, and in how many threads, and no matter how many different ways you make the same point.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well, having seen this discussion play out approximately (checks notes) One Hundred Million Billion Times per month on EnWorld (numbers are approximate, yet also completely true), I think that the reason that there is no common ground on this issue is that because, at root, it goes down to deep-seated preferences.

In the end, it's fine that people have different preferences. Really! Seriously, there are those that want their martials all mundane, or, at most, a little Conan-y. And there are those that want Martials goin' all Wuxia and wielding swords that are four times the length of their bodies and jumping up 200 feet to bash a demon lord in the face.

There is no wrong preference. Problem is, people feel the need to argue that their preference is a universal "correct" way to do it, usually by asserting various collateral arguments (anything from verisimilitude to balance to tradition to the need to change with the times to whatever) when those aren't going to sway people.

People like what they like. You can't force someone to like something. You can expose them to it, but if they don't like it, that's they way that it is. You can't talk them out of it, no matter how often, and in how many threads, and no matter how many different ways you make the same point.

Also, some of these preferences are for practical purposes mutually exclusive, partially due to difficulty in balancing very different options, partially for tone and asthetic reasons for a particular campaign. You just can't always have both.