"Syndrome" Syndrome: or the Fallacy of "Special"

[Umbran]

Well, that's your problem right there. The Incredibles doesn't dismantle that position at all. In fact, I think it's the primary message of the movie; it's an anti-political correctness rant couched in an entertaining superhero action drama.

Yes. The major point of the quote is that Syndrome is wrong - he is the villain, you know, so his philosophy is supposed to be flawed. Dash is wrong, too, when he says as much - the difference being that Dash learns, and Syndrome does not.

 

[crazy_monkey1956]

IOW, it's not about holding Dash back: it's about giving Dash a field full of speedsters to race with.

I'd revise this slightly by saying that it's not about holding Dash back in the foot race; it's about Dash learning to use his gifts to benefit the team (his family).

The Incredibles (the family) can be used as something of an analogy to a 4E adventuring party. Each has a role to play and a different set of gifts. When they work together they truly are greater than the individual members of the team. A finely tuned 4E party is much the same, with each character having a role to play toward the team's overall effectiveness.

 

[Remathilis]

Whatever your, or my, experience with wizards and clerics pre-4E, I'm convinced it's pretty clear they can "cheat" with relative ease in ways other characters can't. IMO, the designers appear to have leaned toward viewing the pre-4E spellcasters' experience during play as "more special" than other characters' experience during play. Spellcasters had meaningful choices: Which spells do I memorize/prepare today? Which do I cast right now? Non-spellcasters, IMO, had fewer meaningful choices.

So I think that's what 4E is addressing: giving all characters similar abilities to gain the spotlight in the way that pre-4E spellcasters tended to, and by extension giving all players similar chances to make meaningful choices

Without going too deep into a anti-4e rant, I must comment part of the way they balanced all classes was not just to give fighters and rogues "meaningful choices" but to REMOVE many of the "meaningful choices" wizards and clerics had. So if (on a versatility scale) fighters were a 3 and wizards a 10, they balanced both by making them both a 5.

 

[Marius Delphus]

@crazy_monkey: I'm on board with that.

 

[Marius Delphus]

@Remathilis: For the purposes of this discussion, I'm not trying to say anything beyond "this is what I think the 4E designers did." How, why, and whether they should have is a completely separate topic.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

You speak as though that is a problem; I find that it stands to reason that those who can rewrite the laws of reality by will alone or who act as conduits for the power of the divine should be more potent than those who cannot. The ability to pick any lock is nice, but is demonstrably inferior to the ability to make the lock cease to exist, or to simply warp space such that it no longer provides an obstacle. Being able to defeat any man in a duel is an admirable talent, but how can it compare to being able to banish your foe to another plane?

There are ways to model spellcasters being more powerful that don't require you to make them more powerful by level.

The first thing to do is to not treat the game rules as world simulators but as rules for a "fair" game. They do not model the world.

So, Wizards are more powerful in the game world. Maybe most Wizards are described as higher level characters than non-Wizards. But by the game rules, getting to a be a high level Wizard is just as easy or tough as becoming a high level Fighter.

If the game rules were in fact the world simulation rules, than everyone would become a Wizard. No one takes a level in Commoner if he can pick between Wizard and Commoner.

We already say "there are rules that work differently from the player side then from the game side. NPCs don't get to choose to become Wizards or Clerics. Sometimes they become Minions or Commoners or Experts.

If you follow this approach consistently, you get good results. Inside the game world, high level NPCs are typically spellcasters, not fighters or rogues. They get the reputation of being very powerful because they are. In the game rules, it is just as easy to create a high level spellcaster as it is to create a high level fighter.

 

[mmadsen]

There are ways to model spellcasters being more powerful that don't require you to make them more powerful by level.

The first thing to do is to not treat the game rules as world simulators but as rules for a "fair" game. They do not model the world.

That is an important, if subtle, point. For instance, you could run a Lord of the Rings-style campaign not by making elves über as a character race but by making a typical elf 10th level.

It's the player who chooses race and class, so those decisions should arguably be balanced, in order to have a good game, but within the game world certain races and classes could clearly outshine others.

 

[Belen]

IMO, the designers appear to have leaned toward viewing the pre-4E spellcasters' experience during play as "more special" than other characters' experience during play. Spellcasters had meaningful choices: Which spells do I memorize/prepare today? Which do I cast right now? Non-spellcasters, IMO, had fewer meaningful choices.

I disagree. They had different choices. A lot of players do not enjoy a class with heavy resource management. They prefer a simple rather than complex character.

This is a meaningful choice.

Again, it is all about style of play. In the current edition, everyone has to manage resources. The style has been standardized. This has advantages, but also serious flaws as the game becomes less accessible to varied personalities.

It has nothing to do with cheating.

 

[Desdichado]

Huh? two people had that position. Dash, a petulant child who just got told "No", and Syndrome, the mego-maniacal supervillian. Not the best vectors to deliver a message.

Dash isn't "a petulant child", he's the voice of the movie. He's voicing the same thoughts that Bob has hidden, in an attempt to "fit in;" to "be normal." Dash's inability to cope with the mixed message of "do your best" while simultaneously being told, "don't be better than other people, though" is at the heart of the movie. When Syndrome expresses his desire, along with supervillian chortling, to make that bleak situation a reality for everyone, the ridiculousness and untenability of the scenario are highlighted.

At the end of the day, it also doesn't matter which character voiced the thought; the plot itself presents that as the main human drama conflict to be resolved, a bigger conflict in many ways than the more surface conflict with Syndrome and his organization; the real conflict is the ideology represented by Dash (and Bob) vs. that of Syndrome.

At the end, the superheroes are justified; they're allowed to come out of hiding and resume their superheroing duties, because victory over the tyranny of political correctness causing them to hide or not use their powers for fear of being better than the average person is assured.

Obsessing with who said a given line is completely beside the point.

 

[Desdichado]

Yes. The major point of the quote is that Syndrome is wrong - he is the villain, you know, so his philosophy is supposed to be flawed. Dash is wrong, too, when he says as much - the difference being that Dash learns, and Syndrome does not.

If they're wrong, then the plot resolution is a tragedy. Their views/fears are entirely justified by the way the plot resolves.