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View Full Version : Comparing Protagonist-class Beings (and Defining Tiers of Reality?)



Quertus
2020-01-04, 08:11 AM
So, a while back, we had a thread comparing Wizards in various media (in which it was shown that the D&D (3e) Wizard was rather mediocre compared to the average concept of "Wizards").

In this thread, I'd like to expand that comparison to all characters, not just Wizards.

Note, we are only comparing Protagonist-class beings - so, for example, in a gritty WW2 movie/RPG, it doesn't matter if a creator God exists, as we are only comparing the abilities of the protagonist soldiers. Unless we're playing something like Scion, in which case the protagonists of WW2 are the gods.

Anime, movies, books, RPGs - all are fair game in this thread. What is the (system-agnostic, whenever possible) top end of protagonist power in various media?

Perhaps we'll even get around to trying to group them into "tiers". For example, DBZ characters routinely blow up planets in a single attack, and, from the previous thread, IIRC, by the end, one anime had beings throwing galaxies at one another. And it feels like your standard WW2 soldier or pulp fiction hero would have a difficult time leveraging their combat capabilities in a party with one of those characters.

So, Playground, what can the protagonists from your favorite (or least favorite, or anything in-between) bit of concept space accomplish?

Lord Raziere
2020-01-04, 12:19 PM
DC and Marvel are going to be near the top of the list. those realities have ridiculous stuff that make DBZ and other anime look tame. also throwing galaxies isn't anything special to current Dragon Ball power in DB Super, Goku can destroy universes at the very least and his power can shake and thus affect an infinite world of nothing but void.

the highest levels of DC power aren't even physical or conceptual in power, but narrative as one of the assumptions of DC is that the more you understand about the universe the more powerful you are within it and a character can indeed figure out that they are in a comic book and gain ultimate power through meta-narrative control. on the Marvel side of it, Deadpool once had a story where he tried to kill all of fiction to free everyone form being trapped in stories and figured out that since nothing was working, HE was the one who was actually creating all the stories around him as an unconscious meta-narrative god and thus tried to kill all deadpools only for canon deadpool to kill him instead- because all deadpools have the same met-narrative power over reality.

so yeah, prepare for ridiculousness. your top tier is going to be narrative tier beings who literally know they are in a story and can control it fully.

DeTess
2020-01-04, 03:20 PM
There's some other interesting twists to this question as well, namely power vs. agency. In a show or series or whatever where the status quo is mostly retained, there could still be planet-shattering characters, but they somehow never shatter any planet that matters, or when they do, its fixed by the end of the show. If you compare that to a gritty semi-realistic war movie where everyone is limited to normal human powers, any individual character could still have a far bigger impact on the world of their narrative just because the movie is about changing the status quo (war to peace, or losing to winning).

So, in this rough example, who'd be more 'powerful'? The planet-breaker that can't change the status-quo because of the kind of narrative they are part of, or the grunts whose whole job was to do the impossible and end the war with nothing but guile and non-futuristic guns.

Anymage
2020-01-04, 03:42 PM
So, in this rough example, who'd be more 'powerful'? The planet-breaker that can't change the status-quo because of the kind of narrative they are part of, or the grunts whose whole job was to do the impossible and end the war with nothing but guile and non-futuristic guns.

In an RPG, the planet buster probably isn't constrained by narrative justifications unless something in the system or world explicitly says as much. A Kryptonian character could declare himself god-emperor of earth, and not be stopped unless someone with equal power. (Which could be Batman level brains and access to kryptonite just as easily as it could be another cosmic level power.)

SimonMoon6
2020-01-04, 05:38 PM
Pre-Crisis DC had some ridiculously powerful Kryptonians. The ones since then have been rather feeble and weak.

Here's Superboy, flying through space, carrying over a dozen planets with him:

https://www.bing.com/th?id=OIP.Ai4HBgr2axj8fGlvhPaZhwHaDt&pid=Api&rs=1

Here's Superman using his breath alone to move a giant star through space:

http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/uploads/GerryTurnbull/2008-03-04_174521_breath.jpg

Here's Superman struggling to move the Earth:

https://comicvine1.cbsistatic.com/uploads/original/11130/111304339/5500767-superman-moves-earth%20%281%29.jpg

Here's Superboy moving the Earth with his breath alone:

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/superman/images/2/20/Super_Breath_Earth.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20081106214700

But one of the interesting things about comics (particularly DC but sometimes also Marvel) is that what is a "protagonist" can be up for grabs. The Spectre was a protagonist when he had godlike powers (given to him by The Voice who might be The God). In one story, he grows to a size large enough to grab a planet and hit his equally large enemy with it. He also helped stopped Earth One and Earth Two from colliding into each other by virtue of his great powers.

Then, we get into more interesting protagonists. In Neil Gaimain's Sandman comics, Sandman is the living embodiment of sleep and dreams... not just for one human culture (like a mere god) but for all cultures throughout all the universe. And he is one of several such beings, the Endless. He is Dream, while his siblings are such things as Death and Destiny (yes, their names all begin with "D"). These are the protagonists of our stories. Death doesn't get to be the protagonist very often, but... she is Death. Not just a god of death, but Death itself, personified. Obviously stories involving such characters are rarely about combat and "who'd win" fights but about characters and personalities. But still, Dream, Death, and maybe even Delirium could be considered protagonists (Destiny is more of a narrator than an actual protagonist). And they can't be fought. (Well, Dream was imprisoned for a while, but that's about it...)

And then you have people like Doctor Manhattan (who in Doomsday Clock is seen being able to alter reality as he chooses, changing the past to see the effects on the present) or Superboy Prime (who was able to punch reality so hard that reality changed).

SimonMoon6
2020-01-04, 06:07 PM
Also, defining power can be tricky. One could say that being able to hit someone with a galaxy or a planet... well that's just stuff that a "mundane" character can do. Where's the versatility? Hitting someone with a planet is just Tier 5 power level. Where are the Tier 1 characters?

But comics have lots of those. Most magic-using superheros tend to have no particular set limit on what they are able to do. Nobody knows the exact list of what Doctor Strange can and can not do. The same is true for Doctor Fate or the Spectre. And when Zatanna joined the Justice League, the writers quickly realized they needed to give her some more limitations, since her power was being able to say anything backwards and have it happen. Anything. There are only so many stories that can be told that involve making her unable to speak. So, they gave her a limitation along the lines of only being able to affect the four elements. But that was boring, so once she left the Justice League, she was back to being able to do anything she wanted.

And yet, some will say that these spellcasters are weaker than 3.x's spellcasters since they don't make use of layers of protection or contingencies or anything like that. And it's true that they often don't have the narrative-killing plot-destroying abilities that most 3.x D&D spellcasters eventually gain. But if they ever need to do any one particular thing? They can do it, no problem. (Also, they don't run out of spell slots and they don't need to go research a new spell when they want to do a new thing, they can just do it. )

But that's not to say that DC doesn't have anyone who uses contingencies. The pre-Kyle Green Lantern rings were incredibly versatile items. Much like the spellcasters mentioned previously, they could do *anything* subject to the imagination of the wearer. Green Lantern could become invisible, go through walls, shrink people and store them in the ring, read minds, etc. And yeah, he could *also* make green objects and fly through space, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. And the writers of the Silver Age Justice League comics took this further than did the writers of Green Lantern's own comic. In Justice League comics, Green Lantern would often have a contingency that he would give to the ring along the lines of "If we happen to be defeated then do X and Y so that we aren't actually defeated." Naturally, that would only be revealed once the Justice League had been defeated by the bad guy of the month. So, DC does have that kind of power level available.

SimonMoon6
2020-01-04, 06:59 PM
There's some other interesting twists to this question as well, namely power vs. agency. In a show or series or whatever where the status quo is mostly retained, there could still be planet-shattering characters, but they somehow never shatter any planet that matters, or when they do, its fixed by the end of the show. If you compare that to a gritty semi-realistic war movie where everyone is limited to normal human powers, any individual character could still have a far bigger impact on the world of their narrative just because the movie is about changing the status quo (war to peace, or losing to winning).

So, in this rough example, who'd be more 'powerful'? The planet-breaker that can't change the status-quo because of the kind of narrative they are part of, or the grunts whose whole job was to do the impossible and end the war with nothing but guile and non-futuristic guns.

But here's the thing: characters gain a lot more agency when they're in an alternate reality. People in the main DC universe(s) or the main Marvel Universe can't do very much, but any *other* universes have characters able to do anything they want. (Often, we're talking about antagonists more than protagonists but it's the same general idea.)

The comic "What If?" was notoriously bad about this. Almost always, the story ended in disasters that never would have happened in the main universe. An example on a small scale was "What if Captain America had been elected president?" And what happened? He was assassinated. Yeah, someone (The Red Skull, I think) just shot him. And he died. And he didn't come back. And a friend of mine at the time who was a big Captain America fan was like, "But that would never happen in the real Marvel Universe" and it wouldn't. The Red Skull doesn't have the agency to actually make that sort of change in the Marvel Universe. (Let's just ignore that time that Captain America and Batman were both killed, but only temporarily because they weren't really killed but just sent back in time, kind of sort of, which happened to both heroes at roughly the same real world time).

On a grander scale, consider DC's post-Crisis "pocket universe" where three Phantom Zone villains (pre-Crisis power level Kryptonians) were able to kill everyone on Earth. But in the main DC universe, that never happens. The Phantom Zone villains are just bumbling fools who never cause much damage despite their great power in the main DC universe.

So, to have agency, a character has to know whether they're in the "real" universe, the one that matters.

Lord Raziere
2020-01-04, 07:19 PM
So, to have agency, a character has to know whether they're in the "real" universe, the one that matters.

That sounds more like canonical universes are biased battlegrounds with fate-like powers to keep itself going rather than actual things worthy of consideration. if this an evaluation of protagonists, then their universes should be discarded from consideration as any protagonist in that light is the most powerful in their home universe because the main universe will find a way to protect itself. therefore canon agency is antithetical to a fair assessment of ability.

MoiMagnus
2020-01-04, 07:31 PM
In an RPG, the planet buster probably isn't constrained by narrative justifications unless something in the system or world explicitly says as much. A Kryptonian character could declare himself god-emperor of earth, and not be stopped unless someone with equal power. (Which could be Batman level brains and access to kryptonite just as easily as it could be another cosmic level power.)

In a RPG, protagonist are constrained by narrative, though those constrains are slightly different from stories. If the table (or the DM?) decide (usually implicitly) that "we're not playing that kind of game", then the character cannot do it.
It goes from respecting cinematographic codes like "not interrupting a monologue" or "not giving the finishing blow to the arch-nemesis", or to more practical conventions like "do not split the party" or "no PvP".
[I'm not saying all tables have those codes/conventions, I'm just taking examples of codes/conventions I've encountered.]

I've even seen a DM (secretly) hands an OP character to a player (a literal angel during a low-fantasy investigation story) under the implicit restriction that he will play it subtle, and keep the reveal for when a bad guy of similar power appears.

Quertus
2020-01-05, 05:18 AM
Perhaps we will ultimately decide to measure tier along multiple vectors. Who knows? For now, we can start by attempting to define/describe what various characters can do.

The Spectre, Dream - yes, those are definitely protagonist-class characters. And, I expect, could help define some of the higher tiers.

I'm glad I missed "limited to elements" Z~. :smallfrown:

Marvel facerip tells us exactly what Doctor Strange's powers are: "everything printed in this book, at Unearthly(100) level of power" (plus a unique custom "luck/experience drain" power). :smalltongue: Which, with several hundred powers, one of which is "Nova", which lets you add your ranks together for a single shot, that technically should let Strange one-shot "anything with stats" (for reference, "immunity" is 1000 ranks (which translates to "ignore the first 1000 damage from each attack of this type", like Fire Resistance 1000 in 3e parlance), and the highest "stats" go to 5000 before hitting sideways 8). (Note: even if Strange cannot do so, one of my PCs could, so "one-shot anything with stats, even using elements to which they are immune (and which is limited to our reality's stats, which cap 'HP' at '20x immune' (before going to infinity))" is well within the range of "protagonist power levels" (if not, perhaps, expected protagonist power levels).


That sounds more like canonical universes are biased battlegrounds with fate-like powers to keep itself going rather than actual things worthy of consideration. if this an evaluation of protagonists, then their universes should be discarded from consideration as any protagonist in that light is the most powerful in their home universe because the main universe will find a way to protect itself. therefore canon agency is antithetical to a fair assessment of ability.

Poking at this from a different angle, D&D characters are (were) expected to be able to kill gods by, what, the early teens (Queen of the Demonweb Pits), and to ascend to godhood themselves shortly thereafter? But that doesn't necessarily make them the equal of all gods in all universes, and "ascension" isn't a property of the character themselves.

So, I suppose the question is, is "bound by fate" a property of any of the characters themselves, or simply of the worlds in which they live? I think that I'm in agreement that, for most characters (exceptions like Scion exist), it's a property of their world.

Which, of course, begs the question, do any protagonist-class beings have access to that power and, if so, could they transfer it to other worlds?

Destiny was mentioned earlier (as "not really protagonist-class"). I personally suspect that his power is best described as narrative control over one particular reality.

Some game systems explicitly give the PCs/players certain amounts / types of narrative control. So, if we break things down by multiple vectors, I suspect that they would be higher tier than most characters in that particular vector.

Guizonde
2020-01-05, 09:37 AM
i'm just gonna say lucky luke has in the past shot through comic book panels. that makes him pretty powerful.

real shocker, i know. frankly, i don't get how everyone is on board throwing out obviously op characters like it's nothing, where any sane dm or writer would just go ahead and say "shut up the plot demands it". i mean, if a character is limitless in power, how is that applicable to a tier list? there's s-tier, god-tier, and now plot-tier. when i read quertus' original post, i'd've expected there to be characters like conan, geralt of rivia, maybe even lucifer from the tv show, not going straight to pants-on-head-silly plotlines in dc and marvel where the trope "new powers as the plot demands" is the norm. perhaps it's time to straight up define two tier lists, one that is "limited" (by factors such as "impossible" is a thing) and one where things are limitless. we obviously can't have the heroes in band of brothers and superman be in the same league. it's too skewed in favor of reality-shattering otherwise.

Lord Raziere
2020-01-05, 09:57 AM
i'm just gonna say lucky luke has in the past shot through comic book panels. that makes him pretty powerful.

real shocker, i know. frankly, i don't get how everyone is on board throwing out obviously op characters like it's nothing, where any sane dm or writer would just go ahead and say "shut up the plot demands it". i mean, if a character is limitless in power, how is that applicable to a tier list? there's s-tier, god-tier, and now plot-tier. when i read quertus' original post, i'd've expected there to be characters like conan, geralt of rivia, maybe even lucifer from the tv show, not going straight to pants-on-head-silly plotlines in dc and marvel where the trope "new powers as the plot demands" is the norm. perhaps it's time to straight up define two tier lists, one that is "limited" (by factors such as "impossible" is a thing) and one where things are limitless. we obviously can't have the heroes in band of brothers and superman be in the same league. it's too skewed in favor of reality-shattering otherwise.

well DC and Marvel DO have protagonists in them were plots happen, so......they count for protagonist beings that someone could possibly want to play in an rpg. those characters you listed are relatively easy to tier in comparison. Geralt and Conan are like street-tier in power, I don't know about that particular Lucifer, but I tilt my head at the listing beside those first two given who Lucifer IS.

also when I say meta-narrative powers, I don't mean anything ambiguous. I mean people who just straight up say "I know I'm a story and I control it". I'm not talking about one-off uncommented instance or whatever these are people who explicitly get narrative control over the the story in universe, completely in character, not out of character not from a certain point of view, but explicitly in story without any drawbacks to it.

Quertus
2020-01-05, 10:12 AM
when i read quertus' original post, i'd've expected there to be characters like conan, geralt of rivia, maybe even lucifer from the tv show, not going straight to pants-on-head-silly plotlines in dc and marvel where the trope "new powers as the plot demands" is the norm. perhaps it's time to straight up define two tier lists, one that is "limited" (by factors such as "impossible" is a thing) and one where things are limitless. we obviously can't have the heroes in band of brothers and superman be in the same league. it's too skewed in favor of reality-shattering otherwise.

That is very much largely my point, yes - I would love for people to post and discuss the capabilities of protagonist-level characters from the Conan universe, for example. Well, really, I'd love for people to describe top-end protagonists from everywhere - books, movies, anime, RPGs - and begin looking for patterns and natural gradations. Would Conan be on par with PCs from a gritty WW2 simulator, or the characters from the Dungeons and Dragons TV show? Well, what can each do?

Speaking of describing & discussing, I've done a terrible job of explaining the Marvel facerip Nova power. So, sure, in theory, Dr Strange could Nova, and one-shot anything with stats. But then he would be useless immediately afterwards, as the power drains all his powers and characteristics down to 0. He would slowly recover back to his former self over the course of, eh, an hour maybe? Whereas my optimized Nova PC could, at best, recover to full power over the course of maybe a minute (however, what they actually used their Nova to accomplish was not an attack).

Point is, there's a definite tendency to describe things in terms of its advantages, while leaving out the downsides necessary for a full comparison that even I am not immune to. So, not that Marvel facerip Doctor Strange is the peak of Marvel protagonist power or anything, but, when evaluating his power, it's still good to realize that Nova is generally considered a suboptimal tactic in facerip for a reason, despite how powerful it sounds when described as "one-shot anything with stats".

Leon
2020-01-06, 07:03 AM
Anything codified by a strict set if rules is going to seem mediocre compared to something with much more fluidity to it. Over the holidays ive been trying to create characters for 3.5 inspired by some of my favorite Servants in Fate: Grand Order and its a struggle to come out with a character that matches what many of them do under the limitations of the 3.5 rules (there are undoubtedly better systems for this than 3.5 but its what i know and have many of the book for)

stack
2020-01-06, 07:55 AM
Opposite reality bending, galaxy tossing, and the like, you have something like Watership Down, with weak protagonists (non-anthropomorphic rabbits) just trying to survive. Not getting eaten becomes an adventure.

Quertus
2020-01-06, 08:49 AM
Opposite reality bending, galaxy tossing, and the like, you have something like Watership Down, with weak protagonists (non-anthropomorphic rabbits) just trying to survive. Not getting eaten becomes an adventure.

The Lee of the Stone is the ultimate super power. :smallbiggrin:

SimonMoon6
2020-01-06, 11:45 AM
Top level protagonists from Lovecraftian horror stories:

Um, they're like, you know, ordinary people who then either go insane or die.

I mean, sure, there's that one guy who killed Cthulhu temporarily by hitting him with a boat...

And there's Randolph Carter who is pretty much the most successful adventurer-type that I can think of in Lovecraftian horror stories.

SimonMoon6
2020-01-06, 11:55 AM
define two tier lists, one that is "limited" (by factors such as "impossible" is a thing) and one where things are limitless. we obviously can't have the heroes in band of brothers and superman be in the same league.

Here's one of my pet peeves: people thinking of Superman as being all-powerful, capable of doing anything. (I'm not sure if you were implying that or not, but I'm gonna talk about this anyway.)

Superman is not all-powerful. Not even the pre-Crisis Superman is all-powerful. He is very powerful, yes. He is ridiculously powerful, yes. But not all-powerful. Someone like the Spectre might be argued to be all-powerful, but not Superman.

There are things he can not do. Pre-Crisis, young Superman was unable to prevent his adopted parents (Ma and Pa Kent) from dying from a disease that he exposed them to. He did everything he could, traveling through all of space and time looking for a cure even. But nothing he did was good enough and they died.

And even in terms of physical power, he is not the greatest. He has lots of equals (in the other surviving Kryptonians), but he also has to deal with his superiors in physical strength, such as Validus or the Galactic Golem.

I often see people snidely saying, "Superman's a terrible character. He's so powerful that he can't be challenged." And I disagree. I've read thousands of pre-Crisis Superman stories. And he was challenged often. He can be challenged mentally, he can be challenged morally, he can even on occasion be challenged physically without always relying on the crutch of exploiting his weaknesses (green kryptonite, magic, gold kryptonite, red sun rays, red kryptonite, gravity, etc). I lump these people in the same awful category as the people who can't run a D&D game past 1st or 2nd level because it's too hard to challenge the PCs once they get even a single special ability.

Lord Raziere
2020-01-06, 12:28 PM
Superman is not all-powerful. Not even the pre-Crisis Superman is all-powerful. He is very powerful, yes. He is ridiculously powerful, yes. But not all-powerful. Someone like the Spectre might be argued to be all-powerful, but not Superman.


This. Superman's incredibly powerful, able to destroy universes and such, but he ain't all-powerful or limitless. its just that Marvel and DC have long ago passed DBZ or even DB Super levels of ridiculousness in their scale. the problem with such scales of power is not whether a protagonist can be within it, but figuring out how to mechanically represent it without the system breaking (though to be fair much of the time all this supposed world-breaking power is rarely ever shown for any character, even when reality warpers are involved. like, you have people who can probably just snap planets back into existence, you can cut loose.)

But yeah to speak of relatively more reasonable scales:

normal shonen hero scales:
y'know things like early Naruto, MHA, HxH, Bleach things like that. protagonists who are powerful for cool anime fights but not enough to destroy planets.

SimonMoon6
2020-01-06, 04:14 PM
Another genre: outer space science fiction TV shows (and movies)

This is somewhat interesting because the characters are typically mostly normal humans, some having the occasional mild exceptional ability, and then there's usually one munchkin character with all the cool stuff.

Like, you've got Kirk (normal), Bones (normal), Scotty (normal)... and then there's Spock, with superhuman strength, various telepathic abilities, a special Vulcan nerve pinch, and no particular drawbacks to balance all of that (other than because of his superior logic, he does not excel at certain emotional Charisma based skill checks).

Or, you've got Picard (normal), Riker (normal), Worf (slightly better fighter), Troi (normal with a useless empathy power), LaForge (normal with special vision powers balanced by the drawback of being blind), Wesley Crusher (normal... except supergenius and becomes godlike when he's no longer going to be a protagonist anymore)... and then there's Data with superhuman physical abilities as well as superhuman mental abilities with no drawback other than the same one that Spock has.

The game they're playing must really put a premium on having a good charisma. Otherwise, there's no way that Spock and Data could afford all that stuff and still be considered equal to the other PCs.

Even Star Wars is like, "Okay, there's Han Solo who's a skilled human, Leia who (until the stories involving her are mostly over) is pretty much a normal but competent hero, C3P0 who has one useful talent (languages) and nothing else, Chewbacca who is clearly made by a newb (he puts point into having a great strength and then specializes in ranged combat? Who does that?)... and then there's Luke who gets vast superhuman powers, including telekinesis powerful enough to lift a spaceship, plus he gets the best weapon in the game, a super laser sword that can deflect lasers shot at him even (he can deflect things moving at the speed of light? wow.) It's like Luke is being played by the GM's girlfriend.

R2D2 might also be in the "god tier" for this game, but he at least has the drawbacks of "being a slave" and "not speaking a language that most people can understand".

Sinner's Garden
2020-01-08, 12:02 AM
If you really want to go top end, it's not even Marvel or DC. I'd pick Shin Megami Tensei or Umineko for that. Both of them are really crazy stories where characters of higher levels literally exist on a higher dimensional plane. The godhead in either of them isn't fallible and personalized the way it is in DC and Marvel, and even more than that, SMT's Alice can overthrow the godhead to create her own nature of existence, to the point where she considers people who are bound by the laws of physics to simply be too stupid to play along and can't understand them. I don't want to go into all the crazy details like catboxes and goats, but the short version is that super-dimensional and meta-textual top tiers that redefine the cosmology, people like the Empty Hand and Mister Mxysptlk, are the standard.

I'd also use Homestuck as an example of a high-concept meta-textual setting, because the protagonist fell through a plot hole (literally) and outside of comic space, enabling him to compete with the primary antagonist, who literally cannot be defeated and was only "removed" from the equation by destroying everything that could ever exist and ending the story outright and moving on before he could recover. Elder Scrolls, for that matter, also fits into this space, and Type Moon's works qualify even if many of the on-screen events of the franchise proceed at lower levels, and you can pull from Hindu mythology if you want to go old school and make sure the subject matter is recognizable.

These are all legitimately enjoyable stories and aren't great because of their power levels, but conversely, their power levels don't make them bad, either. It's all in how you tell it, and at their best, these are very strange, unique, and memorable franchises that I would be and have been willing to revisit many times. Do they have their weak points? Yes, any long-running series or established franchise will falter, will show flaws, will perhaps create gaps and misunderstandings between creator and audience. Some of them can recover from this, can handle it better than others. Marvel and DC, in fact, are the most notorious examples, due to the endless stream of new creative ideas and directions handling not only the same setting, the same characters, but even the same plot lines. The fact that it's not perfect doesn't mean it's not good; look at how many people on this very forum still discuss Dungeons and Dragons!

Prime32
2020-01-10, 08:23 PM
This is somewhat interesting because the characters are typically mostly normal humans, some having the occasional mild exceptional ability, and then there's usually one munchkin character with all the cool stuff.
Maoyuu Maou Yuusha is a good example.

Every few centuries, a Demon King shows up who can casually explode mountains, followed by a human Hero of equal power who travels to their castle and slays them. Except the Demon King this time around secretly never performed the ritual which would imbue her with the powers and ambitions of past Demon Kings, and as a result has zero combat ability. When the Hero shows up, she convinces him to work with her to institute reform from behind the scenes, so that they can finally break the cycle and forge peace between their peoples.

Unlike the Demon King, the Hero can still explode mountains with his power... but for the goals they're pursuing that's rarely actually useful, and he often feels left behind by his lack of political savvy. In fact initially he's little more than a glorified taxi, using his teleportation magic to transport the disguised Demon King around while she does all the heavy lifting.

Lord Raziere
2020-01-10, 09:23 PM
goals and circumstances don't really matter to power though, if you can blow up mountains....you can blow up mountains. the fact that it doesn't apply to a situation is irrelevant, because stories can bend any character into being irrelevant no matter how powerful and bend any weak character into being relevant, there is no inherent power in one character being useful more often, thats just chance being altered to make them that way by an outside force without the character's own actions being involved. take Frodo for example, the only reason he is the one carrying the ring is because Tolkien thought a humble weak guy would be better carry this symbol of power to destroy it and that others would be corrupted by it, when....thats just his opinion, we don't know for sure if there is someone else from some other background or circumstance that could've done just as a good a job as Frodo, the Ring fell into his possession by chance and on a lot of his journey, he is just plain lucky that the wrong two halflings got taken to Isengard, or that Boromir didn't succeed in killing him with superior strength and skill, or that Sauron kept focusing on the wider war that everyone else was doing a distraction than just turtling up and putting am ambush in Mount Doom or something. or the part where Gandalf and his eagles just show up to luckily save him.

how about a different kind of logic for discussing this:
your level of power is inversely proportional to the amount of logic you are bound to. the more power, the less external logic your bound by. thats why someone who can use both ice and fire is better than someone who can just use fire for thematic fire reasons, because there is less logic limiting the former person and thus more versatility given to him, and thus the more logic you hold something to, the less powerful it gets.

SimonMoon6
2020-01-11, 09:02 AM
how about a different kind of logic for discussing this:
your level of power is inversely proportional to the amount of logic you are bound to. the more power, the less external logic your bound by. thats why someone who can use both ice and fire is better than someone who can just use fire for thematic fire reasons, because there is less logic limiting the former person and thus more versatility given to him, and thus the more logic you hold something to, the less powerful it gets.

I'm not sure about that.

Consider Green Fury, the character that was later turned into Green Flame who turned into Fire.

Green Fury (who was a businesswoman) had fire powers. She could breathe fire. That's it. Except... she could breathe out cold fire because that's a thing, right? And she could snort fire out her nose to allow her to fly. And she once breathed her fire at someone's head... but she didn't kill him or anything; she caused the fire to use up all the oxygen around his head so that he would pass out. And she also had hypnotic fire powers too because why not.

Fire aka Green Flame (who was never a businesswoman but was instead an ex-spy) had fire powers. She could breathe out 6 inches worth of fire and that was it. Then the gene-bomb (from Invasion!) happened and she gained different fire powers. She could basically turn into fire and fly around. Plus she could hurl flame (and more than six inches away). And since she was now made of fire, solid objects would pass through her. (But how can a person be made of flames? That doesn't make any sense or have any logic to it.)

I'm not sure that either of these are more logical and sensible than, say, Equinox the Thermodynamic Man (with fire and ice powers) or Celsius of the Doom Patrol (heat and cold powers). They really don't have special gimmicks other than fire and ice or heat and cold. (Well, Equinox has a few weird gimmicks but none of them make him powerful; his appearance is constantly changing and his icy areas are actually hot while his fiery areas are actually cold.)

DeTess
2020-01-11, 10:40 AM
I'm not sure about that.



Maybe it would be better to say "your level of power is inversely proportional to the amount and strictness of rules you are bound to. the more power, the less rules you are bound by and the less strict you are."

It seems that green flame was bound by some very strict rules for example, while green fury wasn't really (basic thermodynamics, for example, seem to not apply to her).

MoiMagnus
2020-01-12, 05:00 PM
Maybe it would be better to say "your level of power is inversely proportional to the amount and strictness of rules you are bound to. the more power, the less rules you are bound by and the less strict you are."

I think it depends on whether you care about "maximal power the character is allowed to use within the rules of the universe" or "maximal power the character is de-facto allowed to use".

Because one of the basic tip of story-building is that "the more vague and unconstrained is the power, the least it should be used to actually solve problems".

It follows that characters with very constrained and rule-bound power are sometimes given much more liberty to exploit the limits of it, while characters with hand-waved limits are prevented by hand-waved reasons to actually use their power (sometimes being the personality of the character, stuff like "I'm not supposed to interfere with the fate of mortals", or just their actual power depending on what the plot need them to have without any real consistency).

Lord Raziere
2020-01-12, 05:03 PM
I think it depends on whether you care about "maximal power the character is allowed to use within the rules of the universe" or "maximal power the character is de-facto allowed to use".

Because one of the basic tip of story-building is that "the more vague and unconstrained is the power, the least it should be used to actually solve problems".

It follows that characters with very constrained and rule-bound power are sometimes given much more liberty to exploit the limits of it, while characters with hand-waved limits are prevented by hand-waved reasons to actually use their power (sometimes being the personality of the character, stuff like "I'm not supposed to interfere with the fate of mortals", or just their actual power depending on what the plot need them to have without any real consistency).

and those aren't real rules within a world, those are out of universe rules made by writer to limit them artificially, they don't count.