Am I being unreasonable?

This is a serious flaw I find with D&D. Fine size is a pretty crazy example, but it's part of a wider issue.

Monsters are cool. They're crazy. They do at least one thing really well. Some of those monsters do that thing so well that no PC could ever reach their skill level without abusing RAW or stacking source books. Players don't get to have DR, SR, Immunities, +30 to stats, at-will spell-likes etc. yet some monsters have all of these.

Player races are boring and plain, when compared to the many creatures out there. This allows players to fill in their own narratives easier, but there's a finite amount of uniqueness available to any <humanoid> <class>.

By sacrificing class levels, players can opt to take "powerful" races or templates at the DM's discretion. A campaign has to start at a level above the level adjustment(CR in Pathfinder) of the race or template. The players have to judge whether that hit to their level is going to make them useless. In the case of a 1st level game, players can only access these templates later in the campaign, via expensive magic sources like Wish.

Players can't simply earn a template in lieu of a class level. There's no easy way to achieve these fun bonuses that are common in fantasy literature. There are constant complaints about D&D's poor class balance in regards to high level magic. Casters get access to all the fun things, just as monsters do. Non-caster classes don't get access to any of it, and thus they're left in the dark.

If you're trying to have a gritty, human experience, D&D and Pathfinder core rules allow for that. It doesn't handle the fantastical so well.

I don't think the particular example of a Fine size creature is a good idea. That's no fault to the player's imagination. It's D&D that's done a poor job of handling anything outside of medium-ish size human-ish swingy-casty-bowshooty-thing.

If your game isn't supposed to break the norm, then your player should adapt. Don't feel ashamed to break the D&D rulebooks if your group wants to have fun, though. So many of the rules are strictly "No Fun" and often should be ignored.

/r/rpg Thread