How to balance design and power?

[RepresentingWrath]

Drip.? ?Power.? ?Balance. ?

Ehem, it's me again, and I have another question about writing. I never thought about it while writing, since I didn't write fantasy or sci-fi yet. Yet I plan to do it, and as I was looking at a powersomething thread by @OP1000 () I thought of something. I recalled an old title. That title was notorious(at least in my opinion) for coming up with very cool powers, very fitting, interesting designs for characters, but couldn't balance it at all. That's why there was disrepancy between the lore of characters and actual battles. This guy is very powerful, but he has to lose for plot to progress, so some kind of bullshittery happens and he loses. And it happened more than once.

Obviously all of it can be dealt with if you simply plan everything. You make plot, and then you make characters to fit this plot. That way, you can write how this character was outsmarted, this one was countered, and so on. Make it work. HOWEVER, that approach won't work for everyone and won't work all the time. For example, if you are a pantser, or if you create characters first, a moment when two characters that shouldn't have met and fight will come, and they will meet and fight. More than that, if you don't kill your characters right away, what is going to happen? They can meet again. Yes, all kinds of training and power ups can happen, but it's not panacea.

Lastly, this might not be a problem if you write a rigid, hard magic system. But what if you want to make every power unique? Like in shonen manga. Even though you will have some kind of metric, it is much harder to balance.

So my question is in the title of the thread. How to balance design of your characters and their powers, and actual battle power? Maybe you have some tricks? You can also state your thoughts about it, maybe what an author should avoid doing, good examples, bad examples, and so on.

 

[SORAhasGONE]

Would also love to learn something about this balancing.

 

[Jerynboe]

I’ve had some luck loosely organizing my combatant characters into power tiers, with each tier equalling (in my head) about a doubling in power. I reference the tiers in the text but generally not during fight scenes.

So 2 tier 1 fit but untrained civilians would be able to plausibly threaten a tier 2 town guard/mook if they could leverage their numbers, because to my knowledge fighting two people at once is much harder than fighting one.

That’s just how I keep things relatively consistent, and it breaks down at extremes. 512 randos could theoretically threaten a tier 10 demigod but only if the situation somehow allowed all 512 to attack at once effectively. 256 mooks with pistols attacking in an ambush, maybe?

Within a tier it becomes a judgement call based on if one or the other has an obvious advantage, or if I am pantsing as hard as I can I actually just roll 2d20 and let the dice decide. So many of the twists in my story come from me committing to random dice rolls.

 

[Deleted member 84247]

I’ve had some luck loosely organizing my combatant characters into power tiers, with each tier equalling (in my head) about a doubling in power. I reference the tiers in the text but generally not during fight scenes.

So 2 tier 1 fit but untrained civilians would be able to plausibly threaten a tier 2 town guard/mook if they could leverage their numbers, because to my knowledge fighting two people at once is much harder than fighting one.

That’s just how I keep things relatively consistent, and it breaks down at extremes. 512 randos could theoretically threaten a tier 10 demigod but only if the situation somehow allowed all 512 to attack at once effectively. 256 mooks with pistols attacking in an ambush, maybe?

Within a tier it becomes a judgement call based on if one or the other has an obvious advantage, or if I am pantsing as hard as I can I actually just roll 2d20 and let the dice decide. So many of the twists in my story come from me committing to random dice rolls.

Tiered power is a good idea.

Drip.? ?Power.? ?Balance. ?

Ehem, it's me again, and I have another question about writing. I never thought about it while writing, since I didn't write fantasy or sci-fi yet. Yet I plan to do it, and as I was looking at a powersomething thread by @OP1000 () I thought of something. I recalled an old title. That title was notorious(at least in my opinion) for coming up with very cool powers, very fitting, interesting designs for characters, but couldn't balance it at all. That's why there was disrepancy between the lore of characters and actual battles. This guy is very powerful, but he has to lose for plot to progress, so some kind of bullshittery happens and he loses. And it happened more than once.

Obviously all of it can be dealt with if you simply plan everything. You make plot, and then you make characters to fit this plot. That way, you can write how this character was outsmarted, this one was countered, and so on. Make it work. HOWEVER, that approach won't work for everyone and won't work all the time. For example, if you are a pantser, or if you create characters first, a moment when two characters that shouldn't have met and fight will come, and they will meet and fight. More than that, if you don't kill your characters right away, what is going to happen? They can meet again. Yes, all kinds of training and power ups can happen, but it's not panacea.

Lastly, this might not be a problem if you write a rigid, hard magic system. But what if you want to make every power unique? Like in shonen manga. Even though you will have some kind of metric, it is much harder to balance.

So my question is in the title of the thread. How to balance design of your characters and their powers, and actual battle power? Maybe you have some tricks? You can also state your thoughts about it, maybe what an author should avoid doing, good examples, bad examples, and so on.

I would say that the main thing is comparison. If the average person is tier 1, then it's all about figuring out everything else. A guard might be tier 2, court wizard tier 3, king tier 4, and dragon tier 5.

Though to be honest, I suck at balance. One of the first stories I made had sins/virtues as powers, but the very first virtue introduced had a power that in retrospect was absolutely broken. Basically, by meditating on the kindness of his actions, and the world around him he would gain strength. Envy was also pretty broken. She would gain people's power and knowledge by defeating them (a proportion equivalent to the envy). The reason these were broken is because the average person was akin to Earth stone age/early bronze age.

This is why I say the AVERAGE PERSON needs to be taken into account.

 

[RepresentingPride]

Drip.? ?Power.? ?Balance. ?

Ehem, it's me again, and I have another question about writing. I never thought about it while writing, since I didn't write fantasy or sci-fi yet. Yet I plan to do it, and as I was looking at a powersomething thread by @OP1000 () I thought of something. I recalled an old title. That title was notorious(at least in my opinion) for coming up with very cool powers, very fitting, interesting designs for characters, but couldn't balance it at all. That's why there was disrepancy between the lore of characters and actual battles. This guy is very powerful, but he has to lose for plot to progress, so some kind of bullshittery happens and he loses. And it happened more than once.

Obviously all of it can be dealt with if you simply plan everything. You make plot, and then you make characters to fit this plot. That way, you can write how this character was outsmarted, this one was countered, and so on. Make it work. HOWEVER, that approach won't work for everyone and won't work all the time. For example, if you are a pantser, or if you create characters first, a moment when two characters that shouldn't have met and fight will come, and they will meet and fight. More than that, if you don't kill your characters right away, what is going to happen? They can meet again. Yes, all kinds of training and power ups can happen, but it's not panacea.

Lastly, this might not be a problem if you write a rigid, hard magic system. But what if you want to make every power unique? Like in shonen manga. Even though you will have some kind of metric, it is much harder to balance.

So my question is in the title of the thread. How to balance design of your characters and their powers, and actual battle power? Maybe you have some tricks? You can also state your thoughts about it, maybe what an author should avoid doing, good examples, bad examples, and so on.

In my story, all characters have unique abilities, since it's a cultivation story, the power of their abilities come from the amount/power of their qi/mana/chi/howerver you want to call it.

 

[Jemini]

So, in answer to this, I have been fan-gushing on Worm ever since I've read it. This is because Worm just does a whole lot of things right.

Power balancing is one of these things. The theme of the series is it's a cape universe. As in, super heroes in costumes and such. The powers exhibited are granted by some kind of alien entity that is essentially using humans as a testing field to experiment in pitting these powers against each other so they can learn and grow their own techniques.

As such, each power has the potential to defeat any other power if used well enough. That said, powers are divided into 12 types by the people in the world. One of the powers is one called "brute," which just makes a person stronger and tougher. However, not that many people have powers that include the brute categorization. They just have perfectly normal human bodies instead and have to manage with that. Despite this, people with other power types are beating the brutes all the time.

What actually winds up being one of the absolute most powerful abilities in this setting is a category of powers called "thinker" powers. The "thinker" classification describes anything that gives the person information, which they can then use as they will. It's things like remote-viewing, increased thoughts speed, precognition, or just plain improved ability to think.

The MC of the series has the ability to control bugs combined with fairly low-tier thinker powers, and while that doesn't sound that powerful, the thinker component of that, even as low-level as it is, actually makes her incredibly capable, just because she has the extra information she gets from sharing the sensory information of her bugs.

The Parahumans universe used in Worm is a really good way to get an idea of power balancing and how to apply strange and varied powers well, and in ways that make a great deal of sense. It gets brutal, and the author puts the entire list of trigger warnings on it, but if you can brave your way through how brutal the series is it can be very good for your growth as an author to read it.

 

[LilRora]

My opinion is, power levels are bullshit.

If it's ranks like A-rank, S-rank, then it's fine; it's a worldbuilding-friendly way to say someone's stronger than someone in general. But it's a faulty method. It works for humans, but once we try to generalize to other beings, go into detailed ranks, or even worse if we go into numbers, it quickly loses any meaning.

It always pisses me off when I see an E-rank goblin and D-rank ghost, although the ghost is an enemy not suited for D-ranks cause it's a non-physical entity and can only be hurt with magic. Even worse, if it's purposefully made weaker than it should be to match its rank.

The reason for that is simple. If you try to compare the strength of two humans, you can say one is B-rank and the other is A-rank, and everyone knows it means the latter is stronger than the former without going into unnecessary detail, like how much they can lift (which is another ridiculous thing I sometimes see, but we're not talking about that). Now, though, what happens you compare a spirit with a human? You can, technically, say that since the spirit is more dangerous in some way, it's got a higher rank. But how the hell do you measure that?

My answer to that is, you don't. I tried implementing probably tens of various rankings and systems for my stories, but I got dissatisfied with all of them because each had its own caveats, edge cases, and exceptions. What I'm doing now in one of my currently unpublished stories, is that each person has skills (obtained from cards, but that's a lot of unnecessary information so I won't try to explain) that have no ranks or anything of the sort, but that people of the world classified by themselves into rough categories not based on power level, but level of advancement.

It roughly means that, for example, earth manipulation and soil manipulation are two abilities of the same type with the first one being of higher rank as it has a wider scope, while earth manipulation and earth creation are two completely unrelated abilities that are not compared by rank, but the latter is still more valued as it's much less common. You might have noticed there was nothing about strength and power in my examples, because that's the point - strength is a personal thing that can change both with time and due to various circumstances.

Hopefully it's obvious that while my answer is about skills, the same principle can be applied to people as well.

With that said, going back to the first question of how I balance them.

...Well, we don't do that here. When I create a power, I first try to come up with a cool concept, then look for its boundaries. What can we do with that power, how it can be developed, how it can be limited, how it compares to other powers. Majority of cases results with powers that are absolutely blown out of proportion, but hey, that's why we have growth. Characters aren't generally strong just because. If a power is overpowered, make it underdeveloped, or make its user young and inexperienced. If it's weak, maybe see what a master could do with it. It can be adjusted freely. So it's not like I balance the powers and characters. I just try to find that spot where a character fits nicely into the story, then look for ways to push it forward.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

In my story, all characters have unique abilities, since it's a cultivation story, the power of their abilities come from the amount/power of their qi/mana/chi/howerver you want to call it.

How do you balance it?

So, in answer to this, I have been fan-gushing on Worm ever since I've read it. This is because Worm just does a whole lot of things right.

Power balancing is one of these things. The theme of the series is it's a cape universe. As in, super heroes in costumes and such. The powers exhibited are granted by some kind of alien entity that is essentially using humans as a testing field to experiment in pitting these powers against each other so they can learn and grow their own techniques.

As such, each power has the potential to defeat any other power if used well enough. That said, powers are divided into 12 types by the people in the world. One of the powers is one called "brute," which just makes a person stronger and tougher. However, not that many people have powers that include the brute categorization. They just have perfectly normal human bodies instead and have to manage with that. Despite this, people with other power types are beating the brutes all the time.

What actually winds up being one of the absolute most powerful abilities in this setting is a category of powers called "thinker" powers. The "thinker" classification describes anything that gives the person information, which they can then use as they will. It's things like remote-viewing, increased thoughts speed, precognition, or just plain improved ability to think.

The MC of the series has the ability to control bugs combined with fairly low-tier thinker powers, and while that doesn't sound that powerful, the thinker component of that, even as low-level as it is, actually makes her incredibly capable, just because she has the extra information she gets from sharing the sensory information of her bugs.

The Parahumans universe used in Worm is a really good way to get an idea of power balancing and how to apply strange and varied powers well, and in ways that make a great deal of sense. It gets brutal, and the author puts the entire list of trigger warnings on it, but if you can brave your way through how brutal the series is it can be very good for your growth as an author to read it.

Never say never, but I'm not sure I will ever read worm. Anyway, I don't think this answers my question. What if power sources are different? I understand that it all depends on how characters uses their powers, thus smart characters or characters that have more info wins. But the point is, what if they are equal in terms of smarts and info, but their powers are absolutely different? Basically, one has magical powers, the other has technology, both have the same level of intelligence. How to balance it?

Maybe I missed something besides your recommendation, so if you can paraphrase the missed part, I will be grateful.

My opinion is, power levels are bullshit.

If it's ranks like A-rank, S-rank, then it's fine; it's a worldbuilding-friendly way to say someone's stronger than someone in general. But it's a faulty method. It works for humans, but once we try to generalize to other beings, go into detailed ranks, or even worse if we go into numbers, it quickly loses any meaning.

It always pisses me off when I see an E-rank goblin and D-rank ghost, although the ghost is an enemy not suited for D-ranks cause it's a non-physical entity and can only be hurt with magic. Even worse, if it's purposefully made weaker than it should be to match its rank.

The reason for that is simple. If you try to compare the strength of two humans, you can say one is B-rank and the other is A-rank, and everyone knows it means the latter is stronger than the former without going into unnecessary detail, like how much they can lift (which is another ridiculous thing I sometimes see, but we're not talking about that). Now, though, what happens you compare a spirit with a human? You can, technically, say that since the spirit is more dangerous in some way, it's got a higher rank. But how the hell do you measure that?

My answer to that is, you don't. I tried implementing probably tens of various rankings and systems for my stories, but I got dissatisfied with all of them because each had its own caveats, edge cases, and exceptions. What I'm doing now in one of my currently unpublished stories, is that each person has skills (obtained from cards, but that's a lot of unnecessary information so I won't try to explain) that have no ranks or anything of the sort, but that people of the world classified by themselves into rough categories not based on power level, but level of advancement.

It roughly means that, for example, earth manipulation and soil manipulation are two abilities of the same type with the first one being of higher rank as it has a wider scope, while earth manipulation and earth creation are two completely unrelated abilities that are not compared by rank, but the latter is still more valued as it's much less common. You might have noticed there was nothing about strength and power in my examples, because that's the point - strength is a personal thing that can change both with time and due to various circumstances.

Hopefully it's obvious that while my answer is about skills, the same principle can be applied to people as well.

With that said, going back to the first question of how I balance them.

...Well, we don't do that here. When I create a power, I first try to come up with a cool concept, then look for its boundaries. What can we do with that power, how it can be developed, how it can be limited, how it compares to other powers. Majority of cases results with powers that are absolutely blown out of proportion, but hey, that's why we have growth. Characters aren't generally strong just because. If a power is overpowered, make it underdeveloped, or make its user young and inexperienced. If it's weak, maybe see what a master could do with it. It can be adjusted freely. So it's not like I balance the powers and characters. I just try to find that spot where a character fits nicely into the story, then looks for ways to push it forward.

First of all, yes. I probably won't use any strict classifications or rankings.

Secondly, I didn't talk about power levels at all. When I mentioned balance, I was talking about, how to make it so that lore power and actual battle power are the same.

I will give you a small example. Warhammer 40000. There are space marines, you probably know them, right? In books and lore, space marines can handle a lot of enemies, A LOT. But when you play the tabletop, they can be defeated by 5-10 basic human soldiers. Those soldiers shouldn't even be able to penetrate the armor of space marine, yet they can kill him. The same thing that happens with space marines, this disrepancy in power, can happen in my novels, so I ask how to avoid it.

As for last part, yeah, this is what I described.

You make plot, and then you make characters to fit this plot.

Obviously I didn't phrase it well enough, but one of the meanings I implied here is what you wrote here I just try to find that spot where a character fits nicely into the story, then looks for ways to push it forward. I don't want this method since I know about it. I don't want to squeeze character into a plot but I want to designs a bunch of characters and make plot around them. The question is, how to balance designs of those characters and the power they will have. Where to make concessions, and so on. Maybe you have some tips or tricks for this.

 

[RepresentingPride]

How do you balance it?

I've created three realm of cultivation with five ranks in each. Depending of the rank, there a limited amount of the energy called crystal essence, that a cultivator can have.

Taking that into consideration, I've implemented a term called crystal strength which are the result of the ability of a character, his physical strength and crystal essence. The result are normally the same as the crystal essence for "normal" cultivator.

All are just number to let readers understand somehow the strength each character have, for exemple, in the first rank, cultivator start with 1 crystal essence and the limit are 100, so the crystal strength are in that range too but can be influenced a bit if the cultivator have a strong ability or learned strong technique, resulting on the crystal strength higher than the limit of their rank.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

I've created three realm of cultivation with five ranks in each. Depending of the rank, there a limited amount of the energy called crystal essence, that a cultivator can have.

Taking that into consideration, I've implemented a term called crystal strength which are the result of the ability of a character, his physical strength and crystal essence. The result are normally the same as the crystal essence for "normal" cultivator.

All are just number to let readers understand somehow the strength each character have, for exemple, in the first rank, cultivator start with 1 crystal essence and the limit are 100, so the crystal strength are in that range too but can be influenced a bit if the cultivator have a strong ability or learned strong technique, resulting on the crystal strength higher than the limit of their rank.

Ok.

 

[Corty]

I usually have a tier system; my current one has 9 tiers of mages. To keep the balance, I always made sure that we followed the MC as she grew up and always matched her to the same tiers. Maybe 1 tier up. I try not to go overboard and not create 9 tiers in 9 layers in 9 worlds, etc. That sucks. But I made sure that the MC usually goes against people of the same level and has parents and friends who are above a tier and they deal with problems the MC has no logical sense doing so. Or made the main group lose to said higher-tiered people and serve as a lesson. That way even if everyone has unique gifts keeping them in their own tier for the story makes it balanced, and they get stronger as the story advances.

Tl;dr:

Tiers override unique gifts. Tier 4 unique bloodline super mega uber fighter gets curb stomped by Tier 5 unique training super mega giga fighter. But the Tier 4 special guy can curb stomp Tier 5 regular Joe but not Tier 6 regular Joey.

 

[Jerynboe]

It’s worth noting that, in something like a military setting or when you’re dealing with an experienced adventurer or what have you, almost everyone will have some kind of counter for almost everything if they know it’s coming. If you are a Bronze Age army and the enemy can summon stone golems, you are going to find a counter or you are going to fold fast and very quickly get conquered.

That counter might be runic warhammers. It might be circles of salt that disrupt the magic. It might be specialized assassins who kill the wizards controlling the golems.

Iirc I read that the official strategy for a bunch of imperial guardsmen vs a chaos space marine (assuming they can’t retreat) is for everyone to focus fire and try to make the 1 in a million shot through his visor through sheer dumb luck. It might be a bad idea, but any competent faction vs a known enemy will have thought about it and come up with SOMETHING unless it’s very new or they are already losing the war.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

I usually have a tier system; my current one has 9 tiers of mages. To keep the balance, I always made sure that we followed the MC as she grew up and always matched her to the same tiers. Maybe 1 tier up. I try not to go overboard and not create 9 tiers in 9 layers in 9 worlds, etc. That sucks. But I made sure that the MC usually goes against people of the same level and has parents and friends who are above a tier and they deal with problems the MC has no logical sense doing so. Or made the main group lose to said higher-tiered people and serve as a lesson. That way even if everyone has unique gifts keeping them in their own tier for the story makes it balanced, and they get stronger as the story advances.

Tl;dr:

Tiers override unique gifts. Tier 4 unique bloodline super mega uber fighter gets curb stomped by Tier 5 unique training super mega giga fighter. But the Tier 4 special guy can curb stomp Tier 5 regular Joe but not Tier 6 regular Joey.

Balance from a cultivation story. Jokes aside, it only works if everyone have similar source of power.

It’s worth noting that, in something like a military setting or when you’re dealing with an experienced adventurer or what have you, almost everyone will have some kind of counter for almost everything if they know it’s coming. If you are a Bronze Age army and the enemy can summon stone golems, you are going to find a counter or you are going to fold fast and very quickly get conquered.

That counter might be runic warhammers. It might be circles of salt that disrupt the magic. It might be specialized assassins who kill the wizards controlling the golems.

Iirc I read that the official strategy for a bunch of imperial guardsmen vs a chaos space marine (assuming they can’t retreat) is for everyone to focus fire and try to make the 1 in a million shot through his visor through sheer dumb luck. It might be a bad idea, but any competent faction vs a known enemy will have thought about it and come up with SOMETHING unless it’s very new or they are already losing the war.

This is good advice, but I was mostly talking about 1v1, and setting where you can't easily bend their powers.

 

[melchi]

I think table top RPGs are a good place to start.

Like for example a very high level fighter in dungeons and dragons won't miss against normal armored town guards much. However there still is the crit / fumble rules. If the high level fighter rolls a one then there is a chance for the town guards to not die in one shot.

Also a 20 rolled is always a success. Even if it is mathematically impossible for them to roll high enough to hit though the fighters armor class.

Still with me here? The next step to a possible victory for the lowbie guards is tactics.

What does a fighter need most of all to be deadly? A weapon.
In dungeons and dragons there are grappling rules. While in a grapple only small blades can be used and the grapple is opposed strength checks.
So here is where the possibility of success for the guards come in and it is entirely because the guards outnumber the high level fighter who can still one shot them.
Step one : success in initial grapple, 1/20 chance so if rng is neither on their side or against them then 20 guards should be enough.
Once a character is in a grapple any other character can join without needing to beat the AC of an actual hit.
Now the fighter can out grapple one opponent but the check is the combination of all opponents. So unless the fighter has something prepared for this situation the repeat fails of the strength checks will cause him to run out of hp as subdual damage piles up.

TLDR: Tactics is how to do it.

 

[Jemini]

Never say never, but I'm not sure I will ever read worm. Anyway, I don't think this answers my question. What if power sources are different? I understand that it all depends on how characters uses their powers, thus smart characters or characters that have more info wins. But the point is, what if they are equal in terms of smarts and info, but their powers are absolutely different? Basically, one has magical powers, the other has technology, both have the same level of intelligence. How to balance it?

The entire point of Worm and the parahumans universe is that everything is asymmetrical. It's not perfectly balanced. That being the case, you can't actually predict who's going to win by looking at stats on paper on who has the more resources or power.

By continuing to use normal human bodies and capabilities as the standard by which this series always keeps comparing back to, with only the brutes, breakers, and changers (all power types that can change the way a person's body functions) being able to weather hits that would leave a normal human dead, and all powers being more or less static aside from improvements in technique, victory or defeat in these conditions winds up being based less on "who has the stronger power" and more on who can find the other person's weakness first and take the initiative to strike at it faster.

One of the things that keeps coming up in Worm is that heroes are at an innate disadvantage because they have to protect things. This means that the villains are the ones who get to decide and plan their angles of attack, seek out weaknesses proactively, deal with known quantities, and force the heroes to deal with whatever they've thrown out there without having to worry about such things themselves. Meanwhile, the advantage that heroes have over villains is that the heroes all work together. There are more villains, but the heroes are all a single unified team. This allows them to coordinate better.

So, that's one major area of asymmetry in the parahumans universe that keeps getting driven at. The advantage of the first move Vs. the advantage of the unified front.

It is actually the fact this series takes the importance of those two things into account so incredibly well that causes the thinker power to become such an advantage in the series. Because, IRL, information really is just that important, but most series that just deal in slug fests never get to show just how important information can be. This portrayal of the asymmetry between the first move Vs. unified front advantages though, these things wind up making information incredibly important. If the heroes can get more information, they can notice an attack coming, and therefore take away the villain's first-move advantage. Meanwhile, if the villains can get an information advantage, they can find a critical weakness to exploit that can punch a hole in the heroes' unified front.

Bottom line, even if you have the same technology and the same smarts (which is a near impossibility to begin with,) your objective and starting positions in the encounter can also tip the balance. If one side has the win condition of defending a target and capturing the other side, and the others have the win condition of destroying the target and disappearing, the situation is definitely not even, no matter what other factors may be in balance.

 

[Jerynboe]

This is good advice, but I was mostly talking about 1v1, and setting where you can't easily bend their powers.

I mean, it still applies there. Just to a lesser extent. Batman’s effective “tier” is dramatically higher than what you would expect from what he is physically capable of. Taylor in Worm is similar; both of them have (by the time they reach their peaks) a lot of skill at adapting to people with unusual/unique abilities and are far more able to deal with enemies that are known quantities because they have developed counterplay.

Their strategic superiority lets them punch above their weight, which naturally means they are more dangerous the more exposure they have had to a specific enemy or type of enemy. The 5th master of the Dragon style of magic kung fu will usually be less intimidating than the first unless he’s a GRANDmaster of Dragon style.

 

[LilRora]

First of all, yes. I probably won't use any strict classifications or rankings.

Secondly, I didn't talk about power levels at all. When I mentioned balance, I was talking about, how to make it so that lore power and actual battle power are the same.

I will give you a small example. Warhammer 40000. There are space marines, you probably know them, right? In books and lore, space marines can handle a lot of enemies, A LOT. But when you play the tabletop, they can be defeated by 5-10 basic human soldiers. Those soldiers shouldn't even be able to penetrate the armor of space marine, yet they can kill him. The same thing that happens with space marines, this disrepancy in power, can happen in my novels, so I ask how to avoid it.

As for last part, yeah, this is what I described.

You wrote:

How to balance design of your characters and their powers, and actual battle power?

I assumed that was more or less synonymous to power levels. If not, then my bad. Though they're closely related and I could say quite a few same things about both, so I would say I'm not entirely wrong.

And frankly, my answer doesn't change much. In my opinion, balance shouldn't be done on the expense of realism and logic, but through circumstances and time. If someone's armor can't be penetrated, it shouldn't be penetrated; there are things that can't really be compared and that have yes/no answers rather than some ratios or relations, like most games do for balance.

A good example is in a story titled Young Flame, where the main character is literally made out of fire, and poisons just don't work on her on principle. It's not some SSS-tier resistance, there's no resistance because there's nothing poison can affect - although many games would make her just highly resistant for balance, and that's precisely what I think should be avoided like fire.

I think that discrepancy in power (I'm assuming the discrepancy is when something's power in the lore is different from game/story) is to some degree essential, because without it you won't have nearly as much tension and all exciting things unless you're an absolutely amazing writer. Rules can be bent to some degree, but at some point they get broken, and my way to bend them without breaking is considering a single moment in time - usually it's the narrative present - and matching everything to fit there. Once that's done, I develop the situation in a way that seems most logical from that point of view, not my general view over the whole outline of the story - if need be, I can kill off characters that might become too strong, or add some special events, conditions, or items to change the balance between some forces.

 

[Cipiteca396]

Trying to balance different powers is mostly a waste of time. Real life isn't balanced, so neither should a story be.

If you need a character to survive for plot reasons, then you'll need to alter the narrative so they don't get in a situation where they can die. A true pantser will never be in a situation where that happens though, since you shouldn't need a character to survive for plot reasons... Just kill them.

In the end, there's no real meaning to trying to balance things. A top rank archmage could get stabbed in the kidneys by a cutpurse on the streets and it wouldn't be unreasonable. If the power disparity is closer, then it's even more likely for an upset to happen.

There's only one case where balance should occur, and that's in GameLit or - to a lesser extent - LitRPGs. The game is meant to be balanced, so things can happen that don't make sense because that's how the developers made the game. You have the numbers, so use them. A ten strength character should never win a strength contest to an eleven strength character unless they cheat.

Just do what feels right. If you struggle to improvise, then create weapon triangles or tiers to help organize your thoughts. Or something.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

I think table top RPGs are a good place to start.

Like for example a very high level fighter in dungeons and dragons won't miss against normal armored town guards much. However there still is the crit / fumble rules. If the high level fighter rolls a one then there is a chance for the town guards to not die in one shot.

Also a 20 rolled is always a success. Even if it is mathematically impossible for them to roll high enough to hit though the fighters armor class.

Still with me here? The next step to a possible victory for the lowbie guards is tactics.

What does a fighter need most of all to be deadly? A weapon.
In dungeons and dragons there are grappling rules. While in a grapple only small blades can be used and the grapple is opposed strength checks.
So here is where the possibility of success for the guards come in and it is entirely because the guards outnumber the high level fighter who can still one shot them.
Step one : success in initial grapple, 1/20 chance so if rng is neither on their side or against them then 20 guards should be enough.
Once a character is in a grapple any other character can join without needing to beat the AC of an actual hit.
Now the fighter can out grapple one opponent but the check is the combination of all opponents. So unless the fighter has something prepared for this situation the repeat fails of the strength checks will cause him to run out of hp as subdual damage piles up.

TLDR: Tactics is how to do it.

Obviously all of it can be dealt with if you simply plan everything. You make plot, and then you make characters to fit this plot. That way, you can write how this character was outsmarted, this one was countered, and so on.

I'm not asking how to make a character win. I'm asking how to make tarrasque be worthy of its lore descriptions, but at the same time not break the plot. Worthy of lore, not the stats.

I mean, it still applies there. Just to a lesser extent. Batman’s effective “tier” is dramatically higher than what you would expect from what he is physically capable of. Taylor in Worm is similar; both of them have (by the time they reach their peaks) a lot of skill at adapting to people with unusual/unique abilities and are far more able to deal with enemies that are known quantities because they have developed counterplay.

Their strategic superiority lets them punch above their weight, which naturally means they are more dangerous the more exposure they have had to a specific enemy or type of enemy. The 5th master of the Dragon style of magic kung fu will usually be less intimidating than the first unless he’s a GRANDmaster of Dragon style.

I think somewhere in the middle or replying to people I went in a different direction and probably confused you. Sorry. My question is not who is going to win, or how to write a believeable win. My question is, how to make it so that actual battle power corresponds with lore. And how to make it with more than a single character. You have ten characters, each one is a legendary being. I don't know, let's say Doomsday, Darkseid, Superman, Dr Manhattan? I don't know who else. How to NOT kill them off after a single brutal fight, yet make them clash constatnly, and be worthy of their lore? Without bullshittery and breaking the plor. It's not a death tournament.

The entire point of Worm and the parahumans universe is that everything is asymmetrical. It's not perfectly balanced. That being the case, you can't actually predict who's going to win by looking at stats on paper on who has the more resources or power.

By continuing to use normal human bodies and capabilities as the standard by which this series always keeps comparing back to, with only the brutes, breakers, and changers (all power types that can change the way a person's body functions) being able to weather hits that would leave a normal human dead, and all powers being more or less static aside from improvements in technique, victory or defeat in these conditions winds up being based less on "who has the stronger power" and more on who can find the other person's weakness first and take the initiative to strike at it faster.

One of the things that keeps coming up in Worm is that heroes are at an innate disadvantage because they have to protect things. This means that the villains are the ones who get to decide and plan their angles of attack, seek out weaknesses proactively, deal with known quantities, and force the heroes to deal with whatever they've thrown out there without having to worry about such things themselves. Meanwhile, the advantage that heroes have over villains is that the heroes all work together. There are more villains, but the heroes are all a single unified team. This allows them to coordinate better.

So, that's one major area of asymmetry in the parahumans universe that keeps getting driven at. The advantage of the first move Vs. the advantage of the unified front.

It is actually the fact this series takes the importance of those two things into account so incredibly well that causes the thinker power to become such an advantage in the series. Because, IRL, information really is just that important, but most series that just deal in slug fests never get to show just how important information can be. This portrayal of the asymmetry between the first move Vs. unified front advantages though, these things wind up making information incredibly important. If the heroes can get more information, they can notice an attack coming, and therefore take away the villain's first-move advantage. Meanwhile, if the villains can get an information advantage, they can find a critical weakness to exploit that can punch a hole in the heroes' unified front.

Bottom line, even if you have the same technology and the same smarts (which is a near impossibility to begin with,) your objective and starting positions in the encounter can also tip the balance. If one side has the win condition of defending a target and capturing the other side, and the others have the win condition of destroying the target and disappearing, the situation is definitely not even, no matter what other factors may be in balance.

Same here. Sorry, I think I missed the point of my own question. How to make a character be worthy of lore, but at the same time not break the plot?

Example. I make a character that is a living legend. Nearly indestructable, super smart, super powerful. And I have MC who is somewhat powerful. Unfortunately I wrote myself into a corner and they have to fight. MC HAS to win for plot to progress and for the story to continue. However, MC is weaker and dumber, and there are no allies nearby. MC can't flee, MC can't outsmart, MC can't win.

I'm not asking how to plan. As I said, I know that if you plan, you can make everything work, but not every writer plans everything. I'm asking, what mistakes to avoid when you create a characters cast, so that you won't write yourself into a corner from my example? Where should I make consession for characters strength, that is crucial to their designs, so it won't break my story as much? Or some tips or tricks, your approach, something like that.

I don't know if it's true or not since I didn't read the story. And I don't remember who it was, but someone told me here that one character in Jujutsu Kaisen was killed off-screen simply because he was insanely OP and author probably didn't know how to fix it. How to avoid this problem? Or at least how to not make it as big. Without planning.

 

[Deleted member 84247]

They'dn't've mergedn't