History ConservationOfNinjutsu / Other

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* Theatre example from ''Police Cops In Space''. After the two Police Cops blast their way through the robot army to face their leader, he sneers: "You may have taken out a thousand robots, but now let's see how you cope with...'''one robot'''." And in the ensuing fight he kills one of them, and would have won were it not for time-travel shenanigans.
* UsefulNotes/MiyamotoMusashi said in the Book of Five Rings that "one man can beat ten men. Just as one man can beat ten, so a hundred men can beat a thousand, and a thousand men can beat ten thousand. In my strategy, one man is the same as ten thousand".
* One of the few straight examples in {{Real Life}} is aerial combat. The larger the fighter formation, the more unwieldy it is, as problems with coordination and friendly fire mount. Smaller fighter formations, on the other hand, coordinate better, and against a large swarm of fighters can very successfully default to "Shoot everything that's not my buddies". And then you throw in things like superior equipment, superior skill, and AWACS support... For examples, see the failure of Big Wing tactics during WWII and the Israelis [[CurbStompBattle curbstomping]] the Syrians over Bekaa Valley.
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* UsefulNotes/MiyamotoMusashi said in the Book of Five Rings that "one man can beat ten men. Just as one man can beat ten, so a hundred men can beat a thousand, and a thousand men can beat ten thousand. In my strategy, one man is the same as ten thousand"

* This trope is sometimes combined with PlotTailoredToTheParty. Multiple characters who attack a specific enemy may get their asses handed to them not necessarily because they're weak but because they're not the suited ''people'' to fight that specific foe. A token enemy can easily overwhelm a group of heroes, but a one-on-one will be much harder fight.
* [[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/MiyamotoMusashi Miyamoto Musashi]] said in the Book of Five Rings that "one man can beat ten men. Just as one man can beat ten, so a hundred men can beat a thousand, and a thousand men can beat ten thousand. In my strategy, one man is the same as ten thousand"
* Whenever lions and hyenas decide to fight each other over food and territory, this ends up occurring. Normally, one would expect the lions to win due to being larger and stronger. However, the hyenas (due to being Africa's most common carnivore) tend to be more numerous and therefore can work as a team to take them on.

* By themselves, individual people may be quite intelligent and capable of making rational, informed decisions. A group of people can be surprisingly easy to [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_hysteria fool]] or [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mob_psychology manipulate]] by comparison. And when we scale up to "the public" ...This may be one of the most extreme cases of Conservation of Ninjutsu.
* This trope may be averted in RealLife conflicts by the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanchester%27s_laws Lanchester's laws]]. with the important proviso that when ''all other things are equal,'' the numerically inferior side will suffer both numerically and proportionally greater losses than the numerically superior side... but things seldom are equal in RealLife - that is why quality can and often does prevail over quantity.
* Aerial warfare. Only a little difference in quality - most importantly pilot training or tactics - can tip the scales on the side of quality against the quantity, resulting in ConservationOfNinjutsu. The most extreme example of this must be that over Karelian Isthmus 28. June 1944. AcePilot Hans Wind (75 victories) and {{Wingman}} Nils Katajainen (36 victories) attacking ''twosome'' a formation of 100 enemy planes and scattering it. (Both pilots survived the encounter).

* When [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgKg0Hc7YIA 3 expert fencers take on 50 novice fencers]], this trope seems to be in effect in that the expert fencers had great success even though outnumbered, until the the number of novice fencers dwindled and they suddenly became much more capable. Eventually, it is [[spoiler:the novices]] who win.

* This may be more realistic in actual close combat than one might at first realise. Observe the behaviour (and success) of the 50 fencing novices against 3 fencing masters [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgKg0Hc7YIA here]], especially as their numbers diminish.

* This trope is completely averted in the RealLife conflicts by the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanchester%27s_laws Lanchester's laws]]. It basically states that when all other things equal, numerically inferior side will suffer both numerically and proportionally greater losses than the numerically superior side.
** With the proviso ''all other things equal''. They seldom are in RealLife - that is why quality can and often does prevail over quantity in RealLife.

* Aerial warfare. Only a little difference in quality - most importantly pilot training or tactics - can tip the scales on the side of quality against the quantity, resulting in ConservationOfNinjutsu. The most extreme example of this must be that over Karelian Isthmus 28. June 1944. AcePilot Hans Wind (75 victories) and TheWingman Nils Katajainen (36 victories) attacking ''twosome'' a formation of 100 enemy planes and scattering it. (Both pilots survived the encounter).

* Aerial warfare. Only a little difference in quality - most importantly pilot training or tactics - can tip the scales on the side of quality against the quantity, resulting in ConservationOfNinjutsu. The most extreme example of this must be that over Karelian Isthmus 28. June 1944. AcePilots Hans Wind (75 victories) and Nils Katajainen (36 victories) attacking ''twosome'' a formation of 100 enemy planes and scattering it. (Both pilots survived the encounter).