Some lessons D&D should learn from the Teen Titans

[Lago_AM3P]

I am talking about, of course, the cartoon. The comic can just suck my cock when it comes to game balance. Because seriously, any team that is trying to get me to believe that Beast Boy and Robin belong on the same team as Superboy (who can take on every one of the Titans without breaking a sweat) and Impulse (who can take on all of the others, except for Superboy, but makes up for it since he can take a day off and memorize everything in the New York Library) is going to get smacked upside their piezy-ass head. Plus, the comic book version of Starfire is a skank.

Ahem.

I am going to break contention here and say that Starfire, despite having the ability to be near-invincible in battle except for some plot-convenient stupidity, is the weakest member of the team. Not because she's useless in combat, but because that's her entire schtick.

Beast Boy- Has the druid's wildshape ability, but on angel dust and steroids. He can change size between a eukaryote and a blue whale as a free action, and his animal forms are stronger than the actual animal. On the fan boards, people who say that he's the weakest member (when he, if he was a munchkin, would usually steal the show) apparently have never seen the sheer terror of a druid.
Robin- He is Batman's friggin' disciple, the original king of non-combat schticks. He's like Sherlock Holmes and James Bond together.
Raven- Can scry, look through other people's minds, and can move things around with magic. Can teleport the party out of danger.
Cyborg- He is a cyborg. This means that his super strength is better than Starfire's and can pretty much make any computer or electronic system his bitch. Since the series takes place in the near future, there are a lot of computers. Also can make a futuristic car from scratch.

Starfire- Has generally useless knowledge of unknown things (Raven and Robin's is better), can fly and scout (Raven's is better), and can make light.


Combat pair-ups:

Beast Boy- See above comment on wildshape, only his power is (or rather should) be more frightening.
Cyborg- Better super strength than Starfire's, unlike her. Also is a very good meat shield. Also has a laser cannon. Really, the only thing she has on him is that she can fly. And since he is a CYBORG, there's really no reason to believe why he shouldn't have rocket shoes installed right this instant, other than intruding on her schtick.
Robin- The fastest Titan where it counts. His devices ironically cause the hugest explosions; even though he should be a ranged attacker, he's untouchable in melee. If only he had super strength...
Raven- Has really strong and fast telekinesis. That'd be more than enough, but she can also cause materials to erode and can protect her teammates. Can also fly.
Starfire- Flies and shoots lasers. Has super strength, but it's functionally useless since she doesn't know martial arts (unlike Robin), cannot block or avoid attacks (unlike Raven, Robin, and Beast Boy), and can't take hits (unlike Cyborg).



So what have we learned from this exercise? It's that:

1) Simply having high numbers for your schtick (Starfire's melee was the second highest, her rate of fire was the highest, and she flew the fastest) isn't enough. You have to do something other than have the biggest numbers.

2) Characters should not be given the option of having no non-combat schtick.

3) While some overlap is fine, a character should REALLY have the opportunity to do needed things different than from what everyone is doing.

4) Just because your party is better with you than without doesn't mean that you're pulling your weight.

5) As Seanbaby put it, simply being able to fly isn't all that unique, even if you're the only one doing it.

[Catharz_Godsfoot]

I have no idea about the comic, but in the cartoon Raven can totally kick anyone's ass. As you already said, she can Scry, Teleport, and TK, which on it's own is enough for ambushes.
With TK alone, she already has every ability that that terra chick had.

She also can create (seemingly at will) Shadow illusions, which can range from spontanious shadow SNAs to a globe of invulnerability.

So in summary, she has the ultimate movement capabilities, the ultimate intel ability, the conjure/evocation ability of a Shadowcraft mage on crack, the ultimate defensive ability, and TK to top it all off.

What does this make Raven? A primary spellcaster in a group of secondary spellcasters/tanks/rogues.
It just goes to show that when you let the power paradigm get that unbalanced for primary spellcasters, you end up with one character who (with the exception of useful skills in the D&D sense) can do everyone elses job but better. And as we know, skills come cheap. Especially when you haven't even finished college.

[Lago_AM3P]

It really shouldn't even be that way. Cyborg, for example, is a friggin' Cyborg and should totally be updating himself. He doesn't even have rocket boots or invisibility, which is inexcusible, since the BBEG (who is not a cyborg) certainly does. Cyborg's like a 1st-time orc cleric with the war and strength domain but is too bored to hunt through his spell list.

Ditto Beast Boy, who turns into a RABBIT to evade enemies and a GORILLA when he wants to smash things. A rabbit?! A gorilla??

Robin is the disciple of Batman, who pretty much invented the comic-book combat mode of debuffs and counterschticks. There's no reason why he shouldn't rock any opponent (except for Slade) he's faced twice, and he should be finding solutions to take down opponents in the middle of the battle. When he was the Red X, he pretty much rocked the socks of his entire team, so there isn't any excuse.


Starfire, unfortunately, has pretty much reached her potential, for reasons I outlined.

[Lago_AM3P]

Holy crap, dudes, I am SUCH a fanboy OMG SO LONELY I WANT TO DIE

[Oberoni]

I have to admit, that show is growing on me. Also, you crack me up, Lago.

Anyways, I agree on your assessment of Starfire. She got a power upgrade in the show to fire energy blasts from a different part of her body. Now, I like heat vision as much as the next guy, but considering that she already fires energy blasts, it was kind of not useful.

If they'd give her some schtick that nobody else had, they'd be on to something.

In general, party dynamics work best if:

1) everyone has something to do in and out of combat.
2) everyone has something they do best.

Pretty simple.

[rapanui]

Nitpick:

In your first post you said "eukaryote", I think what you mean is prokaryote, since a eukaryote is (with exceptions like yeast) a multicellular organism (and, obviously, they vary in size quite a bit).

[Username17]

Since eukaryote just means "has a nucleus", I don't think it's worth nit-picking. While the blue whale is a eukaryote, so is every surviving creature in your guiness. So I think it's fine.

Anyway, Raven is not quite all that, power wise. While she is certainly the most attractive, and she has in many ways the most combat versatility, it does have significant limits. When she makes a shadow field to stop incoming blasts, this actually stops less damage than Cyborg or Starfire intercepting their body, and is about as likely to stop a big attack as Terra raising up a wall of earth. When she covers the world with shadowy figures in order to get people to have their attacks auto-miss a bunch of times, this is indeed awesomely powerful - but is actually a little bit worse than when Robin busts out one of those smoke bombs, because the shadow duplicates are knocked over by attacks, Raven can't attack while maintaining the effect and Robin's attacks get better after a smoke bomb, and Raven seems to be a little bit depleted after using it and Robin seems to be able to pull that trick all damn day.

So, is Star Fire the worst? Yes. Yes she is. Cyborg's rocket boots are enough to do short flights/long jumps and are plenty to do most of the combat effects you need Flight for, and Beast Boy can be a Pteradon any time he wants (which is turn capable of actually carrying other party members - even Cyborg - despite weight ratios, because Beast Boy turns into hard-core green versions of all animals), which neatly handles any other use of Flight you can think of.

But she's not quite enough the worst to make her unplayable. She's a good example of a character who spent her chargen points badly. All her knowledge skills are wasted, and she ended up getting pretty redundant combat and non-combat schticks. The thing she contributes most to the party is: optimism, and royal lineage, both of which have gotten them into and out of several situations. The optimism manifests as a good diplomacy check, but I think she got the royalty for free.

-Username17

[User3]

[Begin Fanboy rant]

Actually, Starfire performs a pretty important role. She's the Paladin.

She:

A. Smooths over the relationship's between all the other characters, and eases Robin's madness/rage. If it weren't for her, the TTs couldn't function as a group.

B. She soaks attacks and damage. Plus, with her stength/invulnerablity/blaster abilties she can remove most most debuff conditions like entanglement or being bound by blasting herself free.

C. The power level on her blasts ranges from "massively powerful single shot to nail one enemy" to "distributed spread that counters an enemy attack."

Like the Paladin of old, she heals, Dispel Magics(without a 2e Holy Sword, but only vs Conjuration and some Abjuration and Evocation effects), and soaks damage(like a FF XI Paladin).

As for who is most powerful, then its hands down Robin. I think that everyone else is basically a part of the cohort function his Leadership feat. He can kick all their asses simple because he's three levels higher than them. However, he has the other team members to round out his stuff. He needs a spontaneous toolbox mage(Raven), a Paladin(starfire, for the abover reasons), a fighter/druid(minus healing, is Beastboy) and a fighter/cleric(cyborg does light medic duties and also does some light toolboxing in addition to his bruiser status) to round out his own rogue/barbarian/monk abilities.

His stuff is not even "more powerful" than Starfire. Her blasts often take out monsters that resist his explosions. He does a rogue/monk type role where's he's doing Crippling Strikes and Stunning Fists, and he's letting the bruisers like Beastboy or Starfire do the actual coup de grace. His "tools" are basically the function of his use of Use Magic Device skill. Vs big monsters, he gets nailed. He only rocks on minions and crap where a Sneak Attack/Expert Tactician/Feint combo can autokill them.

Raven is a Sorcerer with Dimension Door, Shadow Magic, Shadow Conjuration, Telekinesis and a few other spells like some unique Enchantment spells and self buffs.

[/End Fanboy rant]

[Josh_Kablack]

I feel really old reading this thread.

[Maj]

Why?

[Josh_Kablack]

Because I can remember what a shock it was when Terra turned out to be a traitor in the comics in oh 1983 or so.

[User3]

I disagree Frank (although you're right about the nucleus thing... internal membrane strustures in general really).

Lago said:
"He can change size between a eukaryote and a blue whale as a free action"

That seems like he's trying to establish a size range for the shapeshift. However, "eukaryote" is ambigous in that context (since eukaryotes come in a wide variety of sizes). Prokaryotes however, come in one variety: fvcking tiny. That would therefore establish a size range: from something tiny to something the size of a blue whale.

Yay or nay?

[Username17]

Well, even prokaryotes come in a variety of sizes (the largest one is the size of this period: "."), but to an extent yes. However, eukaryote also has a common usage in which it just refers to yeast. The yeast researchers I know all say "I study eukaryotic genetics", which is technically true.

So it's not an incorrect usage, just ambiguous and subject to misinterpretation.

-Username17

[Catharz_Godsfoot]

1097042388[/unixtime]]The yeast researchers I know all say "I study eukaryotic genetics", which is technically true.

Not really my business, but how many yeast researchers do you know???

[Username17]

Not really my business, but how many yeast researchers do you know???

Like five or so, unless you count all the damn TAs I've had who have also at some point worked in one or more of the yeast labs. I go to UCSC, we do the genome project, and my intro to neuroscience class is held right underneath the computer banks which hold the entire sequence information for... the mouse I think. The human genome is held kind of down the hall a bit.

You can't swing a cat without hitting some kind of genetics researcher. It's what we do.

-Username17

[MrWaeseL]

Can anyone give me a halfway informative linking of what the hell you're talking about?

[Maj]

Since I have no clue what information you're actually asking for...

Eukaryotes and prokaryotes describe the structure of cellular organisms (ie: things with cells). Eukaryote comes from the Greek "eu" meaning good/true" and "kary" meaning nut -> nucleus, so eukaryotes are organisms with a central hub in the cell. "Pro" in this case means "before", so prokaryotes are cells with no central hub. They're considered to have existed before eukaryotic creatures did.

The problem with eukaryotes is that they range in size from people to yeast - which is to say really big to really small. So saying that Beast Boy can turn into one could be construed as utterly meaningless. However, Eukaryotes is often considered a classification term for creatures in the Kingdom Protista and thus largely refers to single-cell organisms rather than things like people.

Frank is speaking from a scientific POV, and guest is speaking from a literal POV. Both are correct.

All of this stems from an episode of Teen Titans where Beast Boy reenacted the movie Fantastic Voyage (episode 30 - "Crash") by shrinking down into some sort of unicellular organism and fixing one of his team-mates from the inside.

[fbmf]

[TGFBS]
Now that we've established that, can we slide back to the topic of the Teen Titans and there ability to deal with challenges appropriate to their level? Thank you.
[/TGFBS]

[Lago_AM3P]

I used the word eukaryote because I was playing SimEarth and I wanted to be all 'ooo, look at me, I play SimEarth and I'm so smart! S-M-R-T!'

In that game, eukaryotes are the next phase of evolution from prokaryotes, and will effectively start the evolution era where animals and shit come out. Jesus.

Anyway.

Actually, Starfire performs a pretty important role. She's the Paladin.

Eh, what?! I'm saving point A for last, since I am going to be sensational about it.

B. She soaks attacks and damage. Plus, with her stength/invulnerablity/blaster abilties she can remove most most debuff conditions like entanglement or being bound by blasting herself free.

She doesn't, however, soak or block damage as well as Cyborg or Raven. And since Beast Boy and Robin already are pretty much untouchable in melee, this is sort of a useless ability.

And for blasters, yeah, that's not really anything. Raven is the one who mass debuffs the party. Since her bolts hurt things, she can pretty much only get herself out of the condition. Which highlights another D&D point:

One of the reasons why a monk's defensive abilities don't amount to much is because they pretty much only protect themselves. Spell Resistance, despite being show-stopping for monsters, isn't all that good if only one member in your party has it (and isn't the target). All that speed and spring attack amounts to nothing if the rest of your party is getting hammered.

C. The power level on her blasts ranges from "massively powerful single shot to nail one enemy" to "distributed spread that counters an enemy attack."

Since Cyborg's attack is a RAY that does just as much hurting, there's no reason to believe why he can't do that (by turning the cannon on and off at various intervals, which he has been shown to do).

In fact, since Cyborg can do both, he's at an advantage. The only thing Starfire has on him is that she has two-weapon fighting and can throw star bolts from both hands and can fly. And again, there's no reason to believe why Cyborg can't do this, other than narrative convenience.

Like the Paladin of old, she heals, Dispel Magics(without a 2e Holy Sword, but only vs Conjuration and some Abjuration and Evocation effects), and soaks damage(like a FF XI Paladin).

No, she doesn't. Or if she does, it's an extreme stretch of the definition; everyone else can do her roles.

As for who is most powerful, then its hands down Robin.

For straight-out raw min/max power, I agree. He has stuff on his character sheet that isn't all that obvious, like his ability to shoulder throw a stone golem (cinderblock) and a climb speed.

He's like a rogue who can sneak attack everything by himself but with fighter BAB.

I don't think he has a monopoly on the ability to advance the plot or solve the adventure, or even the greatest ability (he's been beat in that category by everyone except Starfire), though. Which is what D&D should be--people who min-max their characters obsessively shouldn't hog all of the spotlight.

Also, even though Robin has no superpowers or magical ability or anything, the system that they're in doesn't hamstring his potential just because his schtick doesn't have a supernatural origin. Unlike D&D, where a rogue with a +60 to his hide skill is encouraged to be inferior to some schmuck with the invisibility spell.

His stuff is not even "more powerful" than Starfire. Her blasts often take out monsters that resist his explosions.

Starbolts are stronger than a birdarang or his mines? Since when?

His "tools" are basically the function of his use of Use Magic Device skill. Vs big monsters, he gets nailed. He only rocks on minions and crap where a Sneak Attack/Expert Tactician/Feint combo can autokill them.

As been shown, Robin is more than adequate in single-combat. I agree that the only kind of monsters where he doesn't rock them immediately are huge guys (but no one does); hell, he was able to take on all of the members of his team when they had adequate preparation and they would've died if he wasn't holding back.

A. Smooths over the relationship's between all the other characters, and eases Robin's madness/rage. If it weren't for her, the TTs couldn't function as a group.

And it is a damn shame that Starfire has to do what is basically Robin's job. There's no reason why he wouldn't be able to do it, other than his self-destructive extremely homoerotic (and I'm not one to use that term lightly) obsession with Slade.

It took seriously 50 years for Robin to drag himself out of the endless black abyss of hot pedophilic manboy slash, struggling against Akira Goldman's stupid movie and Adam West and countless SNL sketches. And it took like three episodes for Slade to knock him back in.

Damn this show. (I still love it, though.)

[Essence]

Isn't it kinda silly to say "Cyborg *could* fly or shoot spreads, but doesn't"? If he doesn't, then, if for no other reason than narrative consistency, he won't -- and if he won't, you can't count that toward his power level or usefulness.

[Lago_AM3P]

Isn't it kinda silly to say "Cyborg *could* fly or shoot spreads, but doesn't"? If he doesn't, then, if for no other reason than narrative consistency, he won't -- and if he won't, you can't count that toward his power level or usefulness.

I know. It just feels extremely dumb. I mean, he's got the rocket boots and firing a large amount of beams rather than one ray, so it doesn't feel like a stretch.

I mean, Terry from Batman Beyond could fly and have nightvision and shit, and while it isn't a stretch to imagine Robin having this, it would require actually adding something to the show, rather than just untapped potential.

I mean, it's sort of like calling Beast Boy weak because he changes into mouse when he wants to sneak around, rather than a cockroach or a turtle when he wants to deflect an attack rather than an ultrasaurus. Or in D&D terms, calling the druid class weak because a certain druid wants to dual wield flame blades.

[Username17]

Cyborg's Rocket Boots allow him to jump long distances or to fly for short distances. They also allow him to fall from any height and catch himself if he's ready for it ahead of time.

If he actually needs to get on top of the flying tunneller drone, he needs beast boy to carry him. Of course, beast boy can carry him, so there you go.

If he needs to get to another planet, he needs to get into a space ship, which he can build (and has).

If he needs to grab a flying enemy, then he can rocket boost to give himself a single chance to nab them unless they are "very high" - in which case only Star Fire or Raven can deal with them.

-Username17

[rapanui]

I'm getting into yeast genetics myself. That shit smells, but hey, better than n. vitripenis.

[MrWaeseL]

I just meant the Teen Titans.

Thanks, Maj.

[User3]

I think Beast Boy is the weakest Titan. His use to the team seems limited to "watch the writers find excuses to not blast holes into him" and "watch him not be a T-Rex this combat even though its his only useful form."

However, I wonder if he has some kind of "team karma Bless" skills since he is the comic relief of the team.

Stupid tofu-eating fighter/druid.

------------------------

I think Starfire is Superman without the homoerotic Superman/Batman connection from Superfriends/
The Authority.

I also think that as long as Starfire is Robin's girl, he gets to be as homoerotic with Slade as he wants. As a Paladin, she has "Cure Sex-role Confusion 3/day" in place of Cure Disease.