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Have you ever thought about how tough Tony Stark must be to get knocked around inside that armor?
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How is the Wizard vs Warrior Balance Problem Handled in Fantasy Literature?
- Thread starter Iota
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Have you ever thought about how tough Tony Stark must be to get knocked around inside that armor?
Oh, I'm not saying he isn't tough or driven. It's just that, stripped of his armor or tech he can MacGuyver, he's not a major combat threat. A brown-belt from the local dojo could mop the floor with him.
If he gets out of your LoS in the Apple Store, however, he'll find a way to make a Uni-Beam out of an iPad or repulsors out of the latest iPhones.
JoeGKushner
Adventurer
And there's the geist of it.
Claiming to be a 'normal human' when you can routinely do everything that the 'super humans' do is silly to me.
"Well, Batman is only human, but with access to this technology that doesnt' exist, he can stand with the best of 'em!"
In a game, the mechanics would either serverly penalize playing Batman and the GM would really have to go out of his way not to squish him like in say, Heroes Unlimited, or in Champions, he'd effectively be the same but probably with better combat stats to represent the whole 'glass ninja' bit where higher dexterity/combat mastery couped with martial arts has him doing the same damage as the guy who throws tanks around.
The actual effect of being human is sum zero.
JoeGKushner
Adventurer
Ah, but even that's not really true anymore.
He's had hand to hand training from Steve (Captain America), which usually only comes into play when he's armorless and these days, between Extremeis Virus, which lasted up til Secret Invasion, and his new Repulsor technology... human probably isn't the right word anymore.
When published comic book heroes* (and those characters obviously based on them) have been released for HERO in various publications, those like Bats have the limitation "Normal characteristic maximums", which means to exceed those maxima, you pay double.
In Heroes, Unlimited, he'd be created under the "Training" rules.
Either way, neither game truly penalizes you for playing the archetype. Now, obviously, you'll just lose if you go toe to toe with someone who benches 60 tons...which is why they don't. You avoid his blows- maybe you don't even get close at all- and use your wits to get you the victory.
* Off the top of my head, I know I have magazines including HERO stats for the X-Men & Magneto, the Justice Machine, and the Teen Titans. I may have others, and I doubt that I have all such articles.
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Well good on him! About time he stopped using his armor as a crutch. (I stopped buying most comics back in the 1990s, and haven't bought any since 2008.)
JoeGKushner
Adventurer
In Champions, you'll find only a handful of super heroes take the limitation. For example Seeker in 4th ed. Normal human but he doesn't take the penalty.
Most of the people who DO take the penalty work around it with power armor. Which irnoically enough the rules tell you to pretty much shut down because a limitation that isn't a limitation isn't a limitation and worth zero points.
And in Heroes Unlimited, since the game has zero balance, it proves my point. Unless the GM is catering to all the players, like a good GM should mind you, the normal humans are going to go squish. I've seen enough 'car stoppers', which actually do 1d4 M.D.C. damage in Heroes Unlimited, used in this manner to take care of such normals.
The same is also true for Marvel Super Heroes FASERIP edition which tried to balance such characters with martial arts allowing them to sun people they couldn't otherwise effect but the same was true. Daredevil, meet Kurse. Kurse, hit Daredevil twice for Unearthed Damage each time. What's that you say? His Incredible Dexterity didn't keep him from going quish? A fight like the one where Spiderman beats the crap out of Firelord simply wouldn't happen in the game.
In terms of balancing warrior vs wizard, Batman is the greatest wizard there is. His equipment, 'preperation' and other bits are his spells. "I must use the Bat Thingamigerick to temporarily stun him and then move him into these areas where I've set up these high-tech devices that don't exist and then strike him in the spots that he has no weakness in any other comic to claim victory."
Mind you, I'm not saying I don't like Batman at all. I even dig the new old Robin as Batman with Batman's evil cloned son whose shown to have sold his soul to the devil when he becomes Batman in the future.
But in terms of what Batman can do? He's gotta be the least 'normal' human this side of Doc Savage.
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JoeGKushner
Adventurer
If you used to enjoy comics, I've found the digital subscription Marvel offers allows a pretty vast backlog of comics (8,000 +) so I'm usually a few months or more behind but it's pretty cool.
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
"Normal Humans" aren't fantasy heroes.
The two concepts are mutually exclusive.
If you're a fantasy hero, you're not just a normal human, no matter how many tortured paragraphs are dedicated to your supposed normal humanity, no matter how often you say "I'm just a guy doing a job, folks." As a fantasy hero, you will do things that normal humans could never do.
If you are a normal human, you're not capable of being a fantasy hero, no matter how much money, time, practice, or madness you have. No matter how dramatic your history, no matter how lofty your dreams, no matter how idealized your future, you will never be a fantasy hero, and you will only ever do things that, while they may be impressive, are limited by forces beyond your control.
This is the difference between REALITY and FANTASY.
D&D warriors have been forced into some elite version of the former for most of their history; D&D wizards have only ever been the latter, because magic, by definition, makes it a fantasy.
The balance has been handled in literature by never really making the mistake of presuming that your fantasy warrior needs to only perform things that talented athletes can do while simultaneously letting your wizards grant their own wishes and forge their own demiplanes and go to heaven for a weekend's vacation.
So even if your D&D warrior is just "some farm boy," he should be capable of killing dragons, saving princesses, surviving volcano dungeons, rising from the dead, eating the heart of a dragon, cutting down mountains, standing strong against a million arrows, being a destined savior of a cursed town, wrestling a river, being invincible, receiving gifts from gods, taming tornadoes, killing Superman, and picking his teeth with the bones of the gods while sitting on a throne made of the skulls of all who dared oppose him.
Because while he might say "I'm just a farm boy, folks!", the fact is, he's not a farm boy, he's a fantasy hero, which means he can do more than climb pretty good if he's lucky. It means he gets to do things that no normal person gets to do.
Not within the context of the fiction. What guys like Bats do is within the capabilities of anyone willing to commit to 15 years of training all day in a comic book martial arts style.
And if that person has also been artificially enhanced by DC's version of a super-soldier serum to be ACTUALLY superhuman, Bats loses. We saw that when Deathstroke took him down (way, way back in Deathstroke's own series)...twice.
BTW, he's also proven himself to be a rival to Bats in planning. Hired to take down the Teen Titans in something like TT#2, and TT was into its 40s before the plan was realized...
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