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Author: Yerushalmi

Apr 3rd 2016 at 1:36:08 AM

@FactoidCow
This trope is all about your second paragraph, not your third. The clear assertion "Oh, this is a high-Power Level power because it's good at killing people, and not the other way around" is, in fact, the point of the trope.

The Xanth example was the Ur-example for me. In the earliest Xanth books, the term "Magician-class" is always used to describe people whose magic talents were particularly useful. A person whose power was massive weather control was Magician-class; when that person's power was weakened with old age and he could barely bring up a few storm clouds, it was suggested he might no longer be of that class.

But the utility of a massive-weather-control spell is very different from the *strength* of that spell. Let's say there Bob's magic talent is to always have a sunbeam pointing directly at his head. Clearly not Magician-class. But if the aforementioned magician attempted to create a cloud over Bob, would he succeed? In earlier Xanth books, he might or he might not; there's no way of knowing whose talent would be victorious if they went head-to-head.

But *later* Xanth books decided that Magician-class talents were also *more powerful* than other talents. So the aforementioned Magician would always be able to override Bob's sunbeam talent with his storm clouds.

Basically, in Xanth there is no such thing as a person whose talent is simple and useless yet cannot be overridden. In that world's rules, it seems, if a person's talent is less useful then it must also be weaker.

It was only after noticing this in Xanth over a decade ago that I realized it was true for D&D as well. As I wrote in the trope, the mass version of a spell is more useful because it affects more people, which causes the game developers to place it at a higher level, which in turn means it has a higher saving throw, which means it is more difficult to overcome. It's very clear that the order of causality is as you described: It's high-power level *because* it's good at killing people, and not the other way around.