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

[EzekielRaiden]

In a DnD session, for an external viewer that don’t know much about the game,
The most important character would be the one that speak most, is often spoken to,
to whom other players ask advice or ask to have the final word on dilemma.
The external viewer will also consider cheer up, and rewards shown between players.

This seems to be saying that characters who don't speak very much, but who do a lot of things (e.g. a Wizard too haughty to talk to others, but who uses illusions to deceive opponents and kills three or four opponents with a fireball) could not possibly be seen as more important.

I don't think that that's accurate. Speaking time certainly matters, and can skew results. But combat doesn't involve a lot of speaking, and spells are quite flashy and impactful even if the Wizard character never speaks a word.

 

[Krachek]

This seems to be saying that characters who don't speak very much, but who do a lot of things (e.g. a Wizard too haughty to talk to others, but who uses illusions to deceive opponents and kills three or four opponents with a fireball) could not possibly be seen as more important.

I don't think that that's accurate. Speaking time certainly matters, and can skew results. But combat doesn't involve a lot of speaking, and spells are quite flashy and impactful even if the Wizard character never speaks a word.

No special effects and orchestral peak in DnD. Strategic gain, fun, importance and satisfaction, are all in the heads of players and DM. If they don’t express and emphasis it
an external viewer may not catch up what’s going on.

To make a link with movie and novel, in LoTR movie a lot of new comer into fantasy find Gollum the most interesting character, not because of its power or strategic importance in the movie, simply because of filming, scripting, visual effects around the character.

 

[Blue]

Then you have games like Marvel Heroic Roleplay that embrace both that Hawkeye and Thor are not nearly at the same power level, but you can have a great RPG session with them having a buddy night out on the town. And yes, getting into super-powered trouble.

Even in games like D&D where inter-character balance is a big thing, it really has two complementary meanings. Characters are supposed to be balanced in how much they contribute in combat, and how much spotlight they get out of combat. No one expects all charactrers are balanced in wildreness survival and tracking, or all characters are equally good in navigating urban squallor and the people of it - but as long as everyone gets spotlight time, it's okay that the ranger tracks better than the wizard, and the wizard decodes the ancient language they find at the end of it.

So where combat isn't as a threat and primary focus, it's easier to have Gandalf and Aragorn. They each excel at different parts of the narrative, have spotlight, and give it up to each other.

I run a Masks: A New Generation game, it's about teen supers discovering who they want to be. Aurora, our Nova, could literally incinerate the rest of the team if it came to PvP. That said, because the stories are about more than just combat, all of these characters are fun to play together and no one feel left behind.

 

[Blue Orange]

When those characters were created, they weren't designed to be balanced for a game.

And today lots of characters from comics are "nerfed" when they are adapted into a videogame, and more when this is a PvP with optional characters.

And Gandalf and Merlin hadn't to worry about "Paradox". They are "awakened" from Mage: the Ascension (my favorite one from World of Darkness).

Kind of a nitpick, but Mage awakened characters are the ones who do have to worry about Paradox; all the other supernaturals exist in consensus reality as superstitions. Even hedge-mages (who aren't fully Awakened and have a much more limited set of skills) get off. This is a bit handwavey as people don't really believe in witchcraft less than they do in vampires and werewolves, but the alternative was to stick Paradox rules in Vampire and Werewolf where the existing fanbase wouldn't have wanted them for intellectual consistency.

Otherwise agree; fictional characters aren't balanced for a game. The exception might be the fantasy novels that started out as homebrew D&D or other RPG campaigns--Wild Cards was apparently from Superworld, the Malazan Book of the Fallen was based on GURPS, the Lies of Locke Lamora was based on a Star Wars game, Record of Lodoss War (anime) was clearly based on BECMI D&DM Riftwar and Vlad Taltos were based on homebrew games, and a few others.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

No special effects and orchestral peak in DnD. Strategic gain, fun, importance and satisfaction, are all in the heads of players and DM. If they don’t express and emphasis it
an external viewer may not catch up what’s going on.

That's...not what I'm talking about. I'm saying that you emphasized characters who speak, rather than characters who act.

Casting spells is powerful, but doesn't require the player to speak the words the character uses, if there are any at all. Spells are quite powerful, and it's usually pretty easy to tell how impactful a spell was--even if you don't know any of the rules, you can easily see how a single spell can completely solve a given problem.

To make a link with movie and novel, in LoTR movie a lot of new comer into fantasy find Gollum the most interesting character, not because of its power or strategic importance in the movie, simply because of filming, scripting, visual effects around the character.

Okay...but that has nothing to do with gaming. My point is about someone observing a game, where there are rules you can invoke that accomplish powerful things without ever having your character speak.

E.g., people observing chess can quite quickly tell that the queen is by far the most powerful piece, even though none of the pieces actually speak, and pieces like pawns and knights generally do a lot more moving than the queen does (because she requires other pieces to get out of the way first.

 

[Haplo781]

Gandalf is not balanced against Sam, Batman is not balanced against Superman. This is because they are characters in fiction, not characters in tabletop role playing games. Fictional characters are not "balanced".

Uh...

 

[Krachek]

That's...not what I'm talking about. I'm saying that you emphasized characters who speak, rather than characters who act.

Casting spells is powerful, but doesn't require the player to speak the words the character uses, if there are any at all. Spells are quite powerful, and it's usually pretty easy to tell how impactful a spell was--even if you don't know any of the rules, you can easily see how a single spell can completely solve a given problem.


Okay...but that has nothing to do with gaming. My point is about someone observing a game, where there are rules you can invoke that accomplish powerful things without ever having your character speak.

E.g., people observing chess can quite quickly tell that the queen is by far the most powerful piece, even though none of the pieces actually speak, and pieces like pawns and knights generally do a lot more moving than the queen does (because she requires other pieces to get out of the way first.

You’re right, DnD is a game where acting, in sense of action obviously, matter more than speaking.

 

[Garthanos]

Uh...

Loved The Dark Knight

 

[Garthanos]

I want you to remember the one man who beat you....

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Uh...

Well, it is worth noting that that's a Batman who spent--as he explicitly says--"years and a fortune" for that one moment. Ten minutes, in which he exploited the psychology and weaknesses of Superman, where he had everything planned out to the Nth degree, even faking his own death at a carefully-timed moment.

But that's the difference between Batman and Superman. I'm not so much trying to diminish your point as add nuance to it. Batman is, and has always been, a Crazy Prepared Detective. He plans, he prepares, he weaves plots within plots, has contingencies for every occasion.

Batman is the Odysseus to Superman's Hercules, or perhaps Achilles. That is, Odysseus doesn't have particularly special strength or speed (though he is quite good with a bow), but he is, as the Romans put it, Ulixes sapientissimus graecorum, "Ulysses, craftiest of Greeks." (Technically it can also be translated as "wisest of Greeks," but the force of the phrase is very much emphasizing that he's wily as hell; other descriptors include audacissimus, "the most audacious/daring.") Hercules was also crafty on occasion, as when he tricked Atlas into taking back the job of holding up the sky, but craftiness wasn't his stock-in-trade. The two never had a showdown as far as I can tell, but it's certainly implied that Odysseus could pull off some pretty crazy shenanigans purely through being ridiculously intelligent, guileful, and well-prepared.

In a straight fight, with no prep work, Batman gets completely flattened by Superman. His only hope is to somehow run fast enough to escape. But Batman almost never permits a straight fight, and Superman--absent stuff like mind control--is too much of a Boy Scout to stoop low enough to exploit a total lack of preparation.

If allowed to prepare to his heart's content, Batman will beat Superman. Raw strength isn't enough. We see this quite clearly in a very different context, All-Star Superman, near the end where he's fighting a super serum-boosted Lex Luthor. Luthor fights like a dumb brute, solely using his strength, and gets outwitted several times by Superman--ultimately, having his powers whittled away by Superman's gravity gun. An unusual case where it is Superman himself who must use cunning, planning, and trickery to defeat someone bearing his own nigh-invulnerable powerset, but without resorting to Kryptonite along the way. But, as with the previous, there's little reason Superman would have to let Batman prepare to his heart's content, if a contest between them has to occur.

So that leaves us with an inherent unsolvable question. On the zero-prep end, we know that Batman loses. On the 100%-prep end, we know that Batman wins. But where does any given story fall? The openness of the question is exactly what makes the confrontation interesting. There is no universally-right answer. "There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer."