The End of 4e D&D.

[Psychic Robot]

Stop quoting TVtropes. That site is a pile of bullshit that glorifies the worst aspects of storytelling. The Badass Normal, as you describe him, is nonsensical rubbish.

I would link you to the Tropes Are Not Bad article as a gesture of contempt, but I have a feeling the irony would be lost on you.

[RandomCasualty2]

The Badass Normal, as you describe him, is nonsensical rubbish.

Not at all.

The badass normal is an accepted trope. Batman is a badass normal. He fights against people with all kinds of crazy schtick, and all he's got are some gadgets and his martial arts training. Yet he's somehow on par with superheroes with actual powers.

I mean hell, the badass normal embodies what a lot of people think of as a hero. Some guy whose up against people with crazy supernatural abilities armed with his wits and courage. When Ripley goes against the Aliens, that's notably more heroic than when the predator does it. Some people want to play that sort of character.

[Mask_De_H]

It's so nice seeing you guys fight like dogs over metaphorical games that are thinly veiled stand ins for your own personal and highly specific tastes again.

I almost forgot that reasonable discourse over certain poster's fetishes are impossible on this board.

One more thing: TVTropes is a horrible site for a lot of reasons, but cataloging the well-worn cliches of fiction is not one of them.

[Hieronymous Rex]

Batman is a badass normal. He fights against people with all kinds of crazy schtick, and all he's got are some gadgets and his martial arts training. Yet he's somehow on par with superheroes with actual powers.

Except that he isn't. He cannot beat Superman or Superman's villains. He mostly sticks to street level enemies. Whenever he faces metahumans, its by special agency: he builds robots, jumps in a super-suit, etc..

When Ripley goes against the Aliens, that's notably more heroic than when the predator does it. Some people want to play that sort of character.

The reason that Ripley is heroic is because she is completely outclassed by the the xenomorphs. She defeats them by cunning, which, in a RPG, is represented by the players own cunning, not some pandering game mechanic.

[Ganbare Gincun]

One more thing: TVTropes is a horrible site for a lot of reasons, but cataloging the well-worn cliches of fiction is not one of them.

Can you please elaborate on this?

[TheWorid]

The Badass Normal, as you describe him, is nonsensical rubbish.

Not at all.

The badass normal is an accepted trope. Batman is a badass normal. He fights against people with all kinds of crazy schtick, and all he's got are some gadgets and his martial arts training. Yet he's somehow on par with superheroes with actual powers.

I mean hell, the badass normal embodies what a lot of people think of as a hero. Some guy whose up against people with crazy supernatural abilities armed with his wits and courage. When Ripley goes against the Aliens, that's notably more heroic than when the predator does it. Some people want to play that sort of character.

What you're describing is the "Batgod", a perjorative term for what Batman becomes when bad writers wank over how awesome he is and dilute his actually interesting exploits by shoehorning him into situations he has no business dealing with. It's a bad thing, not something to be emulated.

[TheWorid]

(Doublepost)

[Maxus]

It's also extremely difficult to do in a tabletop game, where there's rules and, usually, chances of success and failure.

If you intentionally try to play someone overmatched by the odds, you're going to lose more than you pull it off.

[Koumei]

What you're describing is the "Batgod", a perjorative term for what Batman becomes when bad writers wank over how awesome he is and dilute his actually interesting exploits by shoehorning him into situations he has no business dealing with. It's a bad thing, not something to be emulated.

This. Next time Batman goes up against anything with powers, he should just flat-out lose. And not "lose on his terms" or keikaku doori or anything, but actual BAM, Batman is knocked out/killed, the powered villain wanders on and does its thing and a real superhero needs to deal with it.

[Psychic Robot]

Can you please elaborate on this?

TroperTales. Read at your own peril.

[Juton]

It's also extremely difficult to do in a tabletop game, where there's rules and, usually, chances of success and failure.

If you intentionally try to play someone overmatched by the odds, you're going to lose more than you pull it off.

Since we are talking about the Batman I was going to bring up Mutants and Masterminds because it was explicitly designed to deal with this shit. But I think we hit a paradox, if Batman is normal, he can't fight metahumans, but since he can fight metahumans he isn't normal.

Batman can function at street level, but he can also hang in with the Justice League which is decidedly super. So in a game system he'd have to have the mechanical abilities to be able to defeat a powerful metahuman, since his physical attributes are going to be limited we have to use some type of handwavium to let him participate.

I think everyone agrees that handwavium has to be there. It can be gadgets, or you could even go meta and allow some type of plot armour or author fiat for a character, like giving extra hero points. There are probably dozens of options, but what type can we give a normal Fighter and not have the neck beards throw a conniption over.

[Doom]

But, Batman DID beat Superman in the Miller comics...was rather an important commentary.

I think it has to do with some gadgets ("magic items") that he conceived and designed and built, rather than gaining super-powers, though.

[Juton]

Batman did beat Superman in the Dark Knight Returns, he used a super-suit if I remember correctly. Superscience seems like it's a power source acceptable for normals to have (Lex Luthor, Tony Stark, Rusty Venture) but unfortunately it doesn't fit into a fantasy setting.

[Mask_De_H]

One more thing: TVTropes is a horrible site for a lot of reasons, but cataloging the well-worn cliches of fiction is not one of them.

Can you please elaborate on this?

Think of the kinds of people who would slavishly devote themselves to disseminating and cataloging well worn cliches of fiction.

Let these people converse with each other on their own lives in the confines of these cliches. As well as discuss subjective tastes with the same fervor that we're discussing ours in this thread, but with more passive-aggressive hugboxery. And recommend fanfiction to each other.

And superscience works in fantasy settings: it's called "alchemy".

[TheFlatline]

The problem is, there's inherent hypocrisy in the "classic fantasy" argument. Let's take Tolkien, since that's where everyone goes. Magic was so low-key in that setting that even the equivalent of an archangel (Gandalf) used a sword most of the time.

How many fantasy settings have Mages more powerful than a 10th level D&D Wizard in D&D? I've read bits of Raymond Feist, Robert Jordan, Terry Goodkind and of course Tolkien, I don't thunk any of them can Teleport without some magic item, I haven't read about any divination as powerful as the TO use of Contact Other Plane.

In fiction the only entities with power equal to or exceeding a Min/Maxed level 20 Wizard are Q from ST:TNG and Mister Mxyzptlk from Superman. If D&D is birthed in Fantasy how did Wizards get so fucking powerful?

There are instances in Wheel of Time where characters pull off epic level shit, and in general a lot of their weaves could be considered to be relatively high-level D&D equivalents. Hell, Balefire is perhaps one of the nastiest spells evar. Not only do you auto-kill anyone who fails their reflex save, but it undoes everything they've done, sometimes hours into the past.

That and at the end of the latest Wheel of Time book Rand almost destroys creation. That's a nifty trick (though he uses Sa'Angreal to push his abilities up into where epic would be).

Other than that, you're right, I can't think of anything really. Even the Wheel of Time RPG took the absolute upper limit of what channelers could do in the text and said "this is level 20 dammit" and worked backwards from there.

And maybe *that* should be our starting point. Maybe we should set power levels as end-game characters, and then work backwards from there, instead of building from low levels.

[sake]

He used:
Supersuit
Air to Surface Missiles
A Tank
A kryptonite Arrow
A City's entire electrical grid
Sonic eeapons
A Nuke (well, he didn't actually launch it, but Supes had been weakened by it just hours earlier)

[TheFlatline]

Archmage: the thing is? D&D is about the only system that DOES the high-power Greek Epics/Gurren Lagann/Slayers thing.

Not really. You can't draw parallels between the greek epics and a 20th level D&D caster. You really can't.

[Hieronymous Rex]

But, Batman DID beat Superman in the Miller comics...was rather an important commentary.

Batman did beat Superman in the Dark Knight Returns, he used a super-suit if I remember correctly. Superscience seems like it's a power source acceptable for normals to have (Lex Luthor, Tony Stark, Rusty Venture) but unfortunately it doesn't fit into a fantasy setting.

I'm aware of this. Come to think of it, DKR is probably the source of the widely held but incorrect belief that Batman can fight high level villains on even terms.

[Lago PARANOIA]

As well as discuss subjective tastes with the same fervor that we're discussing ours in this thread, but with more passive-aggressive hugboxery. And recommend fanfiction to each other.

The hugboxery is what really makes that site a waste of time. If I am not allowed to call Enterprise or Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 or Part II Naruto xenophobic/buggy/sexist garbage despite having ample evidence for it because some fans can't stand the thought that they like something that sucks then the entire point of cataloging cliches and tropes is useless. I'm allowed to say that FATAL is horrible drek but I'm not allowed to say that Naruto, which sometimes gets just as bad in its portrayal of women, is horrible drek?

Give me a fucking break.

[sake]

I'm aware of this. Come to think of it, DKR is probably the source of the widely held but incorrect belief that Batman can fight high level villains on even terms.

It was actually Grant Morrision's JLA series that really started the batgod meme. In the first story arc Batman singlehandedly beat an entire team of Superman level guys with little to no gear or prep time...

...except that those guys were helpfully extremely vulnerable to fire, so, really even Jimmy Fucking Olsen could have beat them with a lighter and a can of hairspray.

[Koumei]

That's the source one friend always draws from when he wanks on about Batman. I can't tell you the number of times he's mentioned it and that "He is just a man" with a bloodied Superman grinning at them.

[FatR]

Are you retarded? The point of the Badass Normal is that he's so incredibly skilled that he can keep up with the supernaturals in spite of his limitations.

Unfortunately, putting Badass Normals against supernatural foes usually leads to bullshit with granting them as much superpowers as the plot demands if they are sufficiently popular. Goddamn Batman, if we take the most triumphant example, suddenly grows enough super-strength, invulnerabilty and super-reflexes to not be instantly reduced to a bag of broken bones by a graze from any enemy that can possibly inconvenience Superman, nearly every time he acts as a part of Justice League. Even action heroes, including most of the other Badass Normal supers, usually do things that are flat-out impossible to do with mere skill, but pull through by plot shielding and having endurance/aiming skills that are actually superhuman, but not superhuman enough to crush the audience's suspension of disbelief.

[Username17]

Back to the solid iron demon and the fighter. If you want the fighter to be able to do jack fuck all against the demon, you have two choices:

• Nerf the demon. The demon is not made out of iron or something equivalently as strong. The demon is just some dude with wings that a normal sword propelled by a normal human arm is perfectly capable of wounding.
• Give the fighter some fucking super powers. The super power to, for example, break shit made out of solid iron!

There is no fucking option 3. If you think there is an option 3, it is because you are clinically retarded. It's just like the question of magicking up the fighter or stopping advancement. Again an still, there is no fucking option 3. Giving the fighter some hard core magicking but making it contingent on sucking the DM's cock for a super suit or a power ring is still magicking up the damn fighter. Saying the fighter can hurt the demon without any powers is still nerfing the fuck out of the opposition.

And furthermore, this is true for the adventures themselves, not just the major villains. It's not just that you cannot pierce the enemy's invulnerability without giving impressive powers to the knight or nerfing the crap out of the BBEG's invulnerability. It's that you cannot pierce the cloud castle's unassailableness without giving impressive powers to the knight or nerfing the crap out of the cloud castle's unassailableness. You cannot get to the wicked shadow kingdom without giving impressive powers to the knight or nerfing the fuck out of the wicked shadow kingdom's remoteness.

Without the power to do amazing things that a normal human could not do, you cannot have adventures where the opposition has abilities of such import that a normal human could not beat them. Period. No option 3.

-Username17

[FatR]

Lago, you need to chill the fuck out. Then you need to read this so you can understand what I'm talking about.

Half of this page, including the great majority of really powerful characters, consists of people who are explicitly superhuman, just haven't received their powers through magic/superhero transformation. Fuck, it actually lists people like Guts, who are explicitly superhuman and received superhuman powers through magic (suviving the Eclipse unlocked supernatural potential in Guts' case, if anyone cares).
In short, it proves my point, that this trope leads to bullshit once you try to stick it where it doesn't belong.

[FatR]

Can you please elaborate on this?

TVTropes really annoy me by polluting the trope pages with references to the most idiotic bullshit fanfiction imaginable. What Lago calls "hugboxery", i.e., not allowing me to deface the page for, say, Exalted, until it bleeds tears of blood can be irritating as well, but I've learned to cope with the fact that not everyone shares my hatreds .