Why do stories go out of their way to justify the team wimp?

[The 13 Wise Buttlords]

So anyway. You've got this kickass story about a band of plucky children/teens/young adults/old men (Metal Gear Solid only) and you're putting people into the team. They've got diverse powers and shit and can use their skills to one day defeat the BBEG and his Ginyu Force.

And they always insist on putting this character on the team.

1) The wonderkids are all on paper equally powerful, but the writers of the story decide to single out one of the kids for being a perpetual combat buttmonkey. Yumi and Starfire, for example.

2) They saddle the character with a plot-necessary power or ability but retain their uselessness in combat. The gang still has to bring them along until the completion of the adventure, but when the action starts they kick little to no ass. Maki and his gay little power of heart and Joseph Joestar, for example.

3) In the worst and most common case, the character is a complete wimp and they let them tag along anyway. Kicking this character out probably wouldn't prevent success; it'd delay it in the worse case and in completely egregious instances would actually make them succeed faster at their goals. Way, WAY too many to count, but Haruno Sakura and Usopp for recent examples.

So anyway, this contrived lesson invariably comes along. The character feels useless or left out and mopes about for a bit. BUT BEHOLD!!! the plot will somehow twist in a way that their unique talents are required or they get a chance to shine. The story puts them back in their position of inferiority but they learn not to complain about it for the rest of the story. If they were particularly good sports, they might even get an Upgraydde, like shooting lasers out of their eyes AND their hands or learning swordplay even though their buddies can drop mountains and tornados on people.

Thank fucking God D&D at least makes an attempt towards scuttling this stupid trope. The actual results vary big-time, but you can at least see the attempt. Your human fighter inferior to that ogre fighter because ogres are born stronger than humans? Then gain some more levels, get back in there, and beat him with your superior hate, you fucking pansy.

Anyone mind explaining what's up with this? What kind of crooked lesson is that, ignore the inequality and it'll go away? Have there been any stories when the buttmonkeys of the team just realize that they're loads and that nothing is ever going to change that?

[SphereOfFeetMan]

Anyone mind explaining what's up with this?

I am not familiar with your specific examples. However, this is an archetypal trope in children's cartoons. Most children feel powerless or inferior at one time or another. So the moral of the story is that you are special, and if you persevere, you will eventually win/be competent/fairy tale ending/etc.

[Psychic Robot]

I blame Communism and retarded concepts like "self-worth."

[Absentminded_Wizard]

There's also the unwritten rule that every adventure story must have comic relief. Often, the team member who fills that role does so by a combination of uselessness in combat and earnest desire to be good in combat.

[Koumei]

So the moral of the story is that you are special, and if you persevere, you will eventually win/be competent/fairy tale ending/etc.

So as to set them up for an awesome sucker-punch from life.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

To be fair, I think the most important message for the kids is the "be competent" part. Though most kids won't grow up to be super awesome, they'll generally have more skills than they did at ten years old.

[Roy]

Comic relief like... the CG guy in an all good party who decides the correct way to deal with a prisoner having a 'sinister aura' is to whip out his axe and cut him in half in the middle of a holy temple. Then the LE NPC has to tell him off for being too violent... this being after said CG PC witnessed this NPC jumping on, and beating the shit out of a sorcerer who was about to burn down the building the PCs were in.

[Username17]

It's way simpler than any of that. See in a single-author story you have no objective standards for power. So for a character to be impressive they have to have an available foil to compare themselves against. Angel has to have Gunn around to demonstrate the fact that he's not merely good at fighting and dedicated but has demonic strength and hundreds of years of experience. So Gunn is described as a good fighter with strong muscles and a focused mind. And Angel is just a lot better than he is over and over again in order to show how awesome Angel is.

In a role playing game, Angel could just have a Strength of 33 and you'd all know that meant that he had the lifting power of 20 men or whatever. And because of that knowledge, you wouldn't need members of the team who sucked in order to show how much of a badass he was - the numbers would do it on their own.

I mean, single author fiction also has to establish how powerful the enemies are so that the eventual victory of the heroes will mean something. And the only real way they have of doing that is for them to kick the living crap out of Krillin over and over again before Goku has a shot at them. You could do something involving having some kind of rotating ass kicking around the team in order to demonstrate how knife edge the team winning is, but that's a lot harder to do and way less formulaic.

As to actual Communist cartoons, they aren't really like that at all. An example is Krteček. Generally every animal contributes with their abilities. The main character is a mole, who has ideas and helps others.

-Username17

[Psychic Robot]

I was just making a joke about the Communism.

[Cynic]

Frank, there's a difference between your comparison of Gunn and Angel which is a comparison of two competent people on different powerscales and then comparing two planeteers such as Earth and Heart where one is competent and one is incompetent.

Earth kicks butt. Heart sits there.

Heart has to be given a story book reason to kick butt.

Gunn is competent on his own, in fact, he takes on vampires on his own. He just can't take on the high-level demons on his own like Angel can. Correct me on this if I am wrong. I'm not big on Angel-mythos.

I think the Earth V Heart case is the discussion rather than the Angel V Gunn discussion.

I can see the whole giving kids a "reach-for-the-stars" goal with these sit-there characters. It kinda sucks in a way but I can see it. They do it horribly most of the time.

[CatharzGodfoot]

I was just making a joke about the Communism.

[Cynic]

I was just making a joke about the Communism.

Really?

[MartinHarper]

In a role playing game, Angel could just have a Strength of 33 and you'd all know that meant that he had the lifting power of 20 men or whatever. And because of that knowledge, you wouldn't need members of the team who sucked in order to show how much of a badass he was - the numbers would do it on their own.

You don't know that having the lifting power of 20 men is badass unless there's someone else in the story who has the lifting power of one man. Thus, you really can have a situation where the monk in the party makes everyone else feel good. That's part of the reason some folks want to have games where the fighter inherently sucks.

[Cynic]

You don't know that having the lifting power of 20 men is badass unless there's someone else in the story who has the lifting power of one man. Thus, you really can have a situation where the monk in the party makes everyone else feel good. That's part of the reason some folks want to have games where the fighter inherently sucks.

Wait, what? That's retarded!

[SphereOfFeetMan]

You don't know that having the lifting power of 20 men is badass unless there's someone else in the story who has the lifting power of one man. Thus, you really can have a situation where the monk in the party makes everyone else feel good. That's part of the reason some folks want to have games where the fighter inherently sucks.

Wait, what? That's retarded!

http://www.montecook.com/cgi-bin/page.cgi?mc_los_142

Ivory Tower Game Design
0
When we designed 3rd Edition D&D, people around Wizards of the Coast joked about the "lessons" we could learn from Magic: The Gathering, like making the rulebooks -- or the rules themselves -- collectible. ("Darn, I got another Cleave, I'm still looking for the ultra-rare Great Cleave.")

But, in fact, we did take some cues from Magic. For example, Magic uses templating to great effect, and now D&D does too. (To be clear, in this instance, I don't mean templates like "half-dragon," so much as I mean the templating categories such as "fire spells" and "cold-using creatures," then setting up rules for how they interact, so that ever contradictory rules for those things don't arise again, as they did in previous editions.)

Magic also has a concept of "Timmy cards." These are cards that look cool, but aren't actually that great in the game. The purpose of such cards is to reward people for really mastering the game, and making players feel smart when they've figured out that one card is better than the other. While D&D doesn't exactly do that, it is true that certain game choices are deliberately better than others.

Toughness, for example, has its uses, but in most cases it's not the best choice of feat. If you can use martial weapons, a longsword is better than many other one-handed weapons. And so on -- there are many other, far more intricate examples. (Arguably, this kind of thing has always existed in D&D. Mostly, we just made sure that we didn't design it away -- we wanted to reward mastery of the game.)

There's a third concept that we took from Magic-style rules design, though. Only with six years of hindsight do I call the concept "Ivory Tower Game Design." (Perhaps a bit of misnomer, but it's got a ring to it.) This is the approach we took in 3rd Edition: basically just laying out the rules without a lot of advice or help. This strategy relates tangentially to the second point above. The idea here is that the game just gives the rules, and players figure out the ins and outs for themselves -- players are rewarded for achieving mastery of the rules and making good choices rather than poor ones.

Perhaps as is obvious from the name I've coined for this rules writing style, I no longer think this is entirely a good idea. I was just reading a passage from a recent book, and I found it rather obtuse. But it wasn't the writer's fault. He was just following the lead the core books offered him. Nevertheless, the whole thing would have been much better if the writer had just broken through the barrier this kind of design sets up between designer and player and just told the reader what the heck he was talking about.

To continue to use the simplistic example above, the Toughness feat could have been written to make it clear that it was for 1st-level elf wizards (where it is likely to give them a 100 percent increase in hit points). It's also handy when you know you're playing a one-shot session with 1st-level characters, like at a convention (you sure don't want to take item creation feats in such an instance, for example).
Ivory Tower Game Design requires a two-step process on the part of the reader. You read the rule, and then you think about how it fits in with the rest of the game. There's a moment of understanding, and then a moment of comprehension. That's not a terrible thing, but neither is just providing the reader with both steps, at least some of the time.

While there's something to be said for just giving gamers the rules to do with as they please, there's just as much to be said for simply giving it to the reader straight in a more honest, conversational approach. Perhaps that's what the upcoming D&D for Dummies book will be. I hope so.

[Draco_Argentum]

Ack, thats horrid game design for a cooperative game.

[MartinHarper]

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with designing an RPG that has an element of skill in it. The dumbness is twofold: deciding that a key element of skill is going to be 'discovering that longswords are better than shortswords', and thinking that you might accidentally create a perfectly balanced game.

4e consciously aims at balance, to the extent that it is too symmetrical for many people. There are still good builds and bad builds, and good powers and bad powers, and players can still feel smart. The difference is that the smart player no longer wins the encounter on their own, and the dumb player can still hit stuff.

So, it sounds a lot to me like after-the-fact rationalisation for screwing up.

[K]

In a sense, you need weaker characters and enemies to prove how hardcore some characters are.

But, when I convert some characters to "Head DnD", I start with the assumption that characters are balanced and the figure out where some characters fit.

For example, when I fit Teen Titans into Head DnD, Starfire actually strikes me as a viable character who runs around combat negating people's attacks. Yes, she runs into combat and shoots small laser beams and punches guys pretty hard, but her main job is to get people to toss chunks of building at her because she alone can survive that. If she wasn't around someone would toss a truck at Beastboy and he'd be out of the fight (or dead), but if she is around she gets out of the combat for a few rounds then pops up to do it again.

Other shows obviously have something different happening. Inuyasha, Angel, and Buffy obviously have this one awesome character and a bunch of people who do useful things but are made out of tissue paper. This mechanic is the inspiration for the Warlord mechanic I'd been toying with for TNE.

The mechanic works like this: a Warlord is a tactical genius who uses people in such a way that they are more than the sum of their parts. So, when Angel wants to do some sharpshooting he calls on Wesley to use his Sharpshooting Attack, and when he wants someone to hold the line in a melee he calls on Gunn to use his Hold the Line attack. Each of the powers is one of Angel's powers, but he can only use them through his followers.

This means that Angel has fewer Vampire and Dark Avenger powers, but gets Powers off the other lists and so has overall more versatile powers. Wesley can use his Sharpshooting when Angel isn't around, but he's a human level character with 20 HPs who does human damage without Angel so he shouldn't be mixing it up alone that often.

[The 13 Wise Buttlords]

I never understood how a character class whole sole or even main schtick of 'make other peoples' characters stronger' can be balanced.

I don't think fighter x 3 + warlord should be inherently stronger than fighter x 4 or even fighter x 2 + cleric 2.

[Manxome]

Lots of games use the assumption that you can have synergistic and anti-synergistic groups of characters, kind of like a given character can have synergy or not within his own build.

If you're starting with the premise that all groups of a given size and level should be equally powerful regardless of composition, then sure, Fighter x3 + Warlord shouldn't be any better than Fighter x4. But I don't see how that means that the Warlord can't be balanced. It means that his contribution shouldn't change based on the size of the group (or rather, should change in precisely the same way as a fighter), but that's relatively easy to accomplish as long as you aren't concerned with groups smaller than 2-3 people.

But most games don't consider that a goal, and thus, it usually doesn't happen.

[K]

I never understood how a character class whole sole or even main schtick of 'make other peoples' characters stronger' can be balanced.

I don't think fighter x 3 + warlord should be inherently stronger than fighter x 4 or even fighter x 2 + cleric 2.

It wouldn't be. The idea is that a Warlord 6 would run around with some Fighters 1 who occasionally pop off level 6 powers (and would even share a common HP pool). As the fighters get knocked out of combat or killed, the Warlord gets fewer characters to use his Warlord powers out of.

So a Wizard 6 runs up and fights a Warlord 6. The Wizard wants to use fireball because that could take the Fighter 1s out of combat and the Warlord wants to surround the Wizard with his F1s so he can use his Combat Grapple attack that requires three or more pawns to surround the target.

If the Wizard gets his attack off, the Warlord's F1 are killed and the Warlord can use some of his powers. If the Warlord gets his attack off, the Wizard can't cast Somatic spells.

[JonSetanta]

TVtropes calls the phenomenon "Badass Normal".
They make the heros look good.

Focus on the wimps is probably overcompensation for Mary Sue(s) in the story.

[Judging__Eagle]

Comic relief like... the CG guy in an all good party who decides the correct way to deal with a prisoner having a 'sinister aura' is to whip out his axe and cut him in half in the middle of a holy temple. Then the LE NPC has to tell him off for being too violent... this being after said CG PC witnessed this NPC jumping on, and beating the shit out of a sorcerer who was about to burn down the building the PCs were in.

That person isn't CG.

They're CN, CE really.

[Roy]

Exactly. Just the fact an evil character alone is telling you off for being too violent says something.

[Harlune]

TVtropes calls the phenomenon "Badass Normal".
They make the heros look good.

Focus on the wimps is probably overcompensation for Mary Sue(s) in the story.

No, 'Badass Normal' is for the Batman in Justice League, Robin in Teen Titans, Captain America in the Avengers type characters. The human guy that , often despite all logic, kicks just as much ass as the superpowered guys.

This trope is more 'What kind of power is heart anyway?' Which is kind of funny in itself since Heart was actually insanely powerful. In rpg terms, that guy would have been a premade diplomancer character given to the new guy who'd never played before and had no idea what the character could do beside have shitty combat stats.