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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8792623" data-attributes="member: 6801228">And different adaptations can be VERY different stories.So, he has a Lazarus Pit in the Batcave now? And that allows... him to come back from the dead, with insanity. Okay. But someone has to drag his corpse to the pool. Freeze's Gun isn't nearly powerful enough to make a difference.But let us take something he could clearly have and that would make a significant difference. The Yellow Lantern Ring. Cool. He has that in his back-pocket. Why doesn't he use it to take down villains in Gotham? Maybe there is some sort of cost to it. Okay, that's fair. Why doesn't he use it when there are hundreds of lives on the line, or someone sets up a dirty bomb? A tense situation that he could actually solve faster and with less risk to the civilians by putting on the ring and using it. And, if he is just going to be using the Yellow Lantern ring.... what makes him different from any other Lantern Corp member except that since he is also Batman he is just flat out better than the Green Lantern? Finally, maybe the writers can find that balance, that the cost of using the ring is so high that he'd never use it except in the most dire of circumstances.... which means any time we see him NOT using it, the circumstances aren't actually that dire. This is actually one of the most challenging parts of the tropes surrounding powered up forms or super-powered artifacts. If they become the emergency button, then any time they aren't used it isn't an emergency, and that means the hero was holding back the entire time. Do you see how these factors start to become a major problem for the story? The only real answer is... suspension of disbelief. You just ignore the fact that the character could be doing something else. The problem with this in an RPG setting is though, well, you are looking at your character sheet. You are the one holding back. And... well, you don't have to. If you really think the chips are down, you pull your trump cards, because that's what you do.Sure, this could work. But there are two things to consider here. 1) What is the difference between "gadgets" that can do anything and "magic" that can do anything? 2) This changes the analogy. Now we can't consider Batman as allegorical for the non-magical rogue or fighter, because he is effectively just using different magic. And if Batman is just using different magic, then what do we use as an allegory for the CURRENT non-magical classes? Because currently the Rogue can't make a roll to change the context of the adventure, and the only way they are allowed to is via magic, because that is what DnD has. So, is your position that Batman is a bad allegory and we need a DIFFERENT hero to compare with, to make the proper comparison?Lumping this all together. Because you are basically saying that the rules of an RPG do not need to lead to a coherent story. If I am playing Batman, then I treat a thug with the knife with the same sense of danger and urgency as Doomsday, because they are equally threatening to me. With pure will I can survive blows that shatter mountains, all while having no durability powers that would allow me to do so, because that's the story. But, at that point, you aren't making a story. You are making fanfic vignettes that are not connected to each other beyond having the same main character. Because while it doesn't need to make sense in our real world, it needs to make sense IN THE WORLD IT TAKES PLACE IN. There is actually a perfect example of this in Dragonball Z. During the Cell saga Goku and Gohan train in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber and emerge able to maintain their Super Sayain forms indefinitely. Krillin, Goku's friend, is musing about how they must be constantly ready for combat and so strong that even while they are sleeping they must be able to deflect attacks. So he throws a rock at Goku. Now, at this point, Goku has gotten strong enough to break planets. However, the rock hits him in the head and it hurts. Why? That makes no sense right? Well.... it actually does in-universe. Because Dragonball works on the concept of Ki, and Ki has to be ACTIVELY used. Goku was really relaxing and sleeping, so his defenses were completely down. He was hurt by the rock, because unless he is conscious and using his power, he is only as tough as a normal person. But DC doesn't work under that system. Batman doesn't become invulnerable just because he's strong-willed, because he isn't invulnerable all the time. But Superman is. And it again leads to the same problem. If Batman can just ignore attacks through willpower, his bones refusing to break because he is just that determined.... why does he ever break bones? He just... wasn't feeling it that day?  Uh huh, but here's the thing. Why are you sending Darkseid against him, if you need to give him the Hellbat armor so he can compete? Wouldn't it make more sense to send someone like Poison Ivy or Mad Mod? This is like saying that you see no problem with sending an Ancient Dragon against a level 1 fighter, because that fighter will get armor of invulnerability and a sword of insta-slaying dragons, so he totally can win the fight. The better encounter is one that you don't need to adjust the scales for, rather than the one you have to drastically power-up the PCs for. And it is especially bad if you are heaping items and boons on one player, while the other player gets nothing, because of the imbalance between them.While completely and aggressively ignoring the entire point of the comparison.And I can make an encounter where a completely mundane rat swarm utterly destroys a group of level 20 DnD characters. Doesn't mean that it makes much sense, or that I wasn't just utterly breaking things to make it happen.So are firefighters. But somehow when Darkseid was attacking the city, we didn't see the heroic firefighters shooting him with water hoses that short-circuited his tech. Power levels do exist in that world. That's the entire point of discussing things in terms of "are these power applicable"What do you mean as good as new? When that character climbs out of the pit, they aren't as good as new, they are still missing a chunk of their hit points. Do you mean as good as new the next day? After they receive magical healing? What do we mean. As for surviving a fall into a 60 ft pit and landing on spikes, that's fairly easy. I don't need to give them anything they wouldn't already have. They fail the save, falling into the pit, they try to drive their sword into the wall, managing to only slow their fall, and they land on the edge of the spikes, one of them piercing through their armor and through their side. They are injured, bleeding, but they are a hero and that doesn't stop them.  How is this difficult? Flash has super-speed. That is his power. Batman does not have super-speed. He explicitly does not have that power. So, who is faster, Batman or Flash? Flash. Because Flash has super-speed, and Batman doesn't. If suddenly Batman is moving faster than Flash can react to... then the writers are turning off Flash's powers to make Batman look cool. Because otherwise it doesn't make any sense that Batman is faster. It doesn't matter if Flash got his powers from being hit by lightning, from interdimensional forces, or from eating his spinach. That isn't the part that matters for it making sense. The part that matters is that super-speed is faster than a normal human can move, it is beyond human limits. If it weren't, it wouldn't be super-speed. It would be human speed.Missing the point.Which means it makes no sense. No matter how "good" I am at running, I can't break the sound barrier. No matter how "good" I am at punching, I can't shatter titanium with my bare fist. No matter how "good" I am at taking a punch, I can't survive being at ground zero of a nuke. You can't just "be that good" in a world where they have explicitly laid down the line between human and superhuman.Depends. If he built the thing, then yes. If he just found the the thing that someone else built, then no.</blockquote>

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