D&D 5E Merlin and Arthur or Batman and zatana

[EzekielRaiden]

I guess that till 2024, all threads are doomed to shift into the casters vs martial debate!

I think you will find that this is true pretty much anytime casters and martials are discussed in the same thread.

 

[Oofta]

You have continued the focus on "a fight." Wizards and their spells can do far more outside of fights than they do inside them...and they can easily end fights in one or two rounds with a spell! Hence why I referenced things like illusions.

I would absolutely expect a game where all of the participants are famous actors or voice actors would be heavily driven by who does the speaking. Further, CR isn't a great example, because a lot of it is at least partially pre-scripted. Meaning...it literally is more like LotR, where characters are variably important by authorial fiat.

According to the cast, CR is not pre-scripted.

 

[Oofta]

And quite often, a less confident player does NOT say "I cast X". They say nothing until a confident player says "Why doesn't Bob cast X?".

In games I play I don't care who executes the details of the plan, making the plan is the important bit. I can't count how many times that Jo says "Hey Bob if you could cast X or do ritual Y..."

Then again I don't care about "balance", different members of the team contribute in different ways.

 

[Chaosmancer]

The Batman/Superman comparison is a lot more useful though, and is part of why it gets brought up so much. Batman IS, to a meaningful degree, meant to be one of Superman's peers. That's an intentional part of the storytelling. Further, Batman has several "powers" that Superman doesn't. Political and business connections, fear factor (few villains fear Superman, despite knowing his vast strength), vast fortunes that can be funneled to "black projects" without people noticing (seriously, the Watchtower was a hidden line-item in Wayne Enterprises' aerospace division budget!), and (depending on canon) greater intelligence and superior observational skills (sure, Superman has x-ray vision, but he overlooks stuff Batman wouldn't.) It's also at least implied that Batman is more resistant to mind-control and possibly magic, whereas magic is one of Superman's only weaknesses. And, narratively, they fill very similar roles in the story, rather than being radically different like Merlin and Arthur or Sam and Gandalf.

I wanted to take a moment to look at this, and point out a rather fundamental... flaw sounds wrong, an assumption, if you will.

Let us take Darkseid for a moment. Darkseid is not from Earth, has the resources of at minimum an entire planet, and is strong and fast enough to fight superman blow for blow.

Look at those "powers" you list for Batman.

• Darkseid doesn't fear Batman, that's ridiculous.
• Batman's political connections and business connections are rather meaningless in the face of an entity that conquers worlds with relative easy. What does getting the Mayor of Gotham to listen to you do when the war can obliterate gotham as a statistic?
• What does money do? Nothing much. What you would need is to put in weapons development. But, there is a fundamental problem here, what weapon that can be made by earthly hands can kill Darkseid? Guy is just as invulnerable as Superman, but he has no kryptonite.
• What use is observational skills against an enemy that doesn't care if you see him? Why would Darkseid even attempt to mind-control Batman? What value does that hold for him?

And I think this is a fundamental problem that doesn't get addressed very often. Batman cannot stop Darkseid. The absolute best he could do is have someone else build super tech that might give him a fighting chance. So, in an adventure focused around "stop Darkseid" there is nothing Batman can do other than distract the monstrous god of evil while Superman tries to punch him.

Now, take a moment to consider Zatana. Zatana isn't a magician, she is a reality-warper. Her spells can literally do anything, and she has fought things that erased all of existence. If she says "I have an orbital laser" she has an orbital laser. Batman has to leverage existing resources, he has to use money, he has to use connections. Zatana creates new resources. She runs into a problem and can come up, on the spot, with whatever tool or ability is needed to solve that problem.

So, if you have Superman, Zatana and Batman in a fight against Darkseid... Zatana can fight. She has to be careful, she has to be clever, but she can put up a fight... and is more effective than Batman. The only way Batman can contribute is if A) He has been secretly building an Anti-Darksied Plot Armor weapon or B) if he is given a DIFFERENT MISSION to accomplish. Which is fine if Batman's player is cool with it, but if he wanted to take down the BBEG... he can't. He just doesn't have anything that is applicable to the situation, and his best hope is being given a solo crafted side-mission, which can't be done by Supes or Zatana... because they need to keep fighting the real threat.

Batman gets plot armor all the time to stand up to the level superman is at, but the real show comes when you take some of the most iconic villains from both sides. Batman can't touch Darkseid or Doomsday or Mongul. Sure, he can fight some of the others, like Toyman or Lex Luthor, but there are a lot he cannot stand up against.

Is there a single iconic villain from Batman's gallery that would actually be a challenge for Supes? Joker sure isn't. Penguin, Mr. Freeze, Killer Croc, Clayface, Riddler, none of these villains could actually do anything to stop Superman. He'd destroy them in moments

Having powers others don't is only applicable if the situation allows for those powers to be used, and when faced with overwhelming power, you get very niche cases where specific types of power can be reasonably and consistently stacked up against each other.

 

[Chaosmancer]

The issue of Batman and Superman as an example for games is that the former can only compete because the latter lets him and is too much of a good guy to win in any of the hundreds of ways he could. In a game with a murderhobo player controlling Superman, it'd go like this:

Also this. People vastly underestimate how powerful super speed is. Flash, Wonderwoman and Superman are the strongest because they are also the fastest.

 

[Zubatcarteira]

Batman did fight Darkseid one time with a super suit the Justice League helped him build, and he had an anti-Justice League suit he used successfully against a good chunk of the League when they were mind controlled by the Joker.

I guess writers don't wanna turn him into Iron Man witht he suits all the time, but these are a reasonable explanation on why he could fight the super beings way above his level. On D&D terms, I guess it'd be like the Fighter who's not super powerful himself but has 37 magic items to make him keep up, but then it ends up looking like the items matter more than the one using them, at least Batman has a hand on making most of his stuff, even if he gets help.

 

[Zubatcarteira]

Is there a single iconic villain from Batman's gallery that would actually be a challenge for Supes? Joker sure isn't. Penguin, Mr. Freeze, Killer Croc, Clayface, Riddler, none of these villains could actually do anything to stop Superman. He'd destroy them in moments

Ironically, the Joker has defeated and mind controlled Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash and Aquaman in one go off-screen. He's busted sometimes.

Poison Ivy has also mind controlled Superman, and I think Riddler once beat the Injustice League by himself. Comics are wacky.

 

[Haplo781]

Super hero teams are probably the best analogy for D&D groups in fiction.

In the Justice league cartoon each of the heroes is competent and generally about equal in the fights. Green Lantern is about as good as the Flash who is about as high powered as Wonder Woman etc. Batman gets to that level and does it through his awesome mortal combat skills, using his bat grappling hook gun to get out of the way, sometimes some explosive batarangs, amazing acrobatic dodging, etc. and a bunch of powers that come up outside of combat such as his detective skills, his intimidation, his monetary resources, his ninja stealth, and such. Also a bit of plot armor.

Generally they are about the same level, get into regular combats that they win, and have unique schticks of powers and abilities.

 

[MichaelSomething]

And I think this is a fundamental problem that doesn't get addressed very often. Batman cannot stop Darkseid. The absolute best he could do is have someone else build super tech that might give him a fighting chance. So, in an adventure focused around "stop Darkseid" there is nothing Batman can do other than distract the monstrous god of evil while Superman tries to punch him.

Since we're posting DC cartoons now...

 

[EzekielRaiden]

And I think this is a fundamental problem that doesn't get addressed very often. Batman cannot stop Darkseid.

He does stop Darkseid though, on multiple occasions, or at least frustrate him, which for such a massive literally godlike villain is an actual feat. He specifically says in he DCAU that no one has ever evaded his Omega Beam, meaning Batman achieved something literally no one else has ever done. (This is immediately before the deservedly famous "world of cardboard" speech from Superman.) Then, later on in the DCAU when Darkseid is up to his usual tricks but with Kara instead of Clark, Batman's intelligence (and, to a certain extent, Darkseid's belief that the human Batman is capable of ruthlessness that Diana and Clark are not) is what saves the day and defeats Darkseid; the physical power and ability to resist Darkseid's assaults pales in comparison.

So even here, at least depending on medium, Batman holds his own. He does so by changing the rules of the game. In the former case, he knows he can't directly stop Darkseid but he can distract and slow him while the others get their own work done. "That man won't quit as long as he can draw a breath. None of my teammates will." Evading the Omega Beam is a neat, canned example of him changing the rules by running just long enough to get a sacrificial enemy (a Parademon mook, in this case) to take the hit in his place. Defeating Darkseid in the latter case involved being smart enough to hack through Darkseid's security protocols protecting Apokolips' supplies of WMDs...and programming them to all go off simultaneously unless Batman countermands the order.

There are some other cases which involve actual combat victories, but those are from comics I haven't read (and usually involve some kind of special weapon that exploits a weakness a la kryptonite or a fancy power suit that bridges the power gap.) But it's worth noting that Batman is one of only three superheroes Darkseid actually plots around and against, the other two being Superman and Wonder Woman. And according to at least one comic run I've heard about, it was Batman that Darkseid tried to clone into an army to serve him, not Clark or Diana. That, likewise, seems a particular mark of respect or even admiration.