History Main / PlotTailoredToTheParty

* Fred Hicks of ''TabletopGame/SpiritOfTheCentury'' and other [[UsefulNotes/{{FUDGE}} Fate RPG]] system games fame referred to this as "the secret language of character sheets" in a blog post. To summarize, it means that the contents of a character sheet should be read as a player's vote for what kinds of things they want to do in a game. As an example, if nobody took stealth skills then don't rely on a stealth sequence as mandatory to advance the plot - let people bash, charm, bribe, or even magic their way around an obstacle instead, if those are the abilities they focused on. As well, if only one person took a particular ability, why, there you have a perfectly tailored way to put them into the limelight.

* Same goes for ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'' {{licensed game}}s for UsefulNotes/GameBoyAdvance. Player always controls up to 3 characters out of minimal roster of 4. When and only when you get a new character, you start getting puzzles for him.

** ''Film/XMenFirstClass'': [[Characters/MarvelComicsProfessorX Xavier]] or [[Characters/MarvelComicsMagneto Magneto]] probably could have found the Hellfire Club's submarine on their own, but Banshee can do it more easily by using his MakeMeWannaShout power as sonar. [[Characters/MarvelComicsBeast Beast]]'s power isn't an obvious counter to Azazel's, but he's agile and strong enough to hold off Azazel, who is beaten [[spoiler:when [[Characters/MarvelComicsMystique Mystique]] tricks him by turning into Shaw]]. Banshee and Havok team up to fight Angel.

** In ''Film/XMen1'', to stop the machine, they needed both [[Characters/MarvelComicsStorm Storm]]'s power and [[Characters/MarvelComicsJeanGrey Jean]]'s finer control to get Wolverine up to the torch, ComicBook/{{Wolverine}}'s claws to land and to break the machine, his healing to bring [[Characters/MarvelComicsRogue Rogue]] back from near-death, and [[Characters/MarvelComicsCyclops Cyclops]]' long-range Eye Beams as a back-up plan.

** ''Film/{{The Avengers|2012}}'' has an interesting variation on this. Every member has a specific connection to the plot, but it has little to do with their actual powers. Film/IronMan was already the team consultant and his tower is used by [[Characters/MarvelComicsLoki Loki]], [[Film/CaptainAmericaTheFirstAvenger Captain America]] had a previous engagement with the Tesseract, Film/{{Thor}}'s brother Loki is the mastermind behind the plot, ComicBook/{{Hawkeye}} has been brainwashed by Loki and knew of his plan, ComicBook/BlackWidow is sent out to find and retrieve Bruce Banner, and Bruce is tasked with finding the Tesseract since it emits gamma radiation and he is an expert in that field. Banner's involvement is extra interesting since, while the other members' special skills and powers are seen as a huge plus by S.H.I.E.L.D., Banner is meant to be brought in as a scientist and they try to make sure he won't turn into the [[Film/TheIncredibleHulk2008 Hulk]] (not that they are successful, mind you).

* ''WesternAnimation/XMenTheAnimatedSeries'': Inverted at least once, wherein Xavier and Cyclops -- the normal team leaders -- are completely uninvolved, Beast has abandoned his GeniusBruiser ways and gone on a literal RoaringRampageOfRevenge, Wolverine has come up with an ingenious and non-violent way to defuse the situation, etc. The only one still up to her usual tricks is [[Characters/XMen90sMembers Jubilee]], who [[LampshadeHanging snarkily points out the fact nobody's acting normally]].

* The French fairy tale ''Literature/{{Drakestail}}'' has the titular duck swallowing a fox, a ladder, a river and a wasp nest[[note]]The latter three being AnimateInanimateObjects[[/note]] en route to demand his money back from the king. The king tries to murder him in various ways, but Drakestail is rescued every time by one of his companions, who just so happens to be suited for facing the problem at hand.

* The French fairy tale ''Literature/{{Drakestail}}'' has the titular duck swallowing a fox, a ladder, a river and a wasp nest[[note]]The latter three being AnimateInnanimateObjects[[/note]] en route to demand his money back from the king. The king tries to murder him in various ways, but Drakestail is rescued every time by one of his companions, who just so happens to be suited for facing the problem at hand.

* ''Manga/The100GirlfriendsWhoReallyReallyReallyReallyReallyLoveYou'': Chapters 97-99 feature Rentarou's Family participating in a Quad Town Public Sports Festival. A rival town's mayor has done everything within his power to rig the games in his favor. The pro athletes hired to be ringers dominate the mens' division of the competition but, after some initial difficulty, the girls manage to make up the gap in the womens' section. This is in part because the rival mayor's attempts to cheat are exactly countered by the girls participating in the respective events. Seemingly impossible demands in a costume creating contest and scavenger hunt are thwarted by Ahko's creativity and Uto's talent for sophistry. Substituing a a slice of bread in a bread eating race for a full loaf doesn't slow BigEater Kurumi down for a moment, while Mei can run a blindfold race better than her opponent with a see-through blindfold due to already having her EyesAlwaysShut. The final event is a 19-person relay race, which exactly matches the number of girlfriends in Rentarou's Family at that point in time.

** ''Film/XMenFirstClass'': [[Characters/MarvelComicsProfessorX Xavier]] or [[Characters/MarvelComicsMagneto Magneto]] probably could have found the Hellfire Club's submarine on their own, but Banshee can do it more easily by using his MakeMeWannaShout power as sonar. [[Characters/XMenTheOriginalTeam Beast]]'s power isn't an obvious counter to Azazel's, but he's agile and strong enough to hold off Azazel, who is beaten [[spoiler:when [[Characters/MarvelComicsMystique Mystique]] tricks him by turning into Shaw]]. Banshee and Havok team up to fight Angel.

** ''Film/XMenFirstClass'': [[Characters/MarvelComicsProfessorX Xavier]] or [[Characters/MarvelComicsMagneto Magneto]] probably could have found the Hellfire Club's submarine on their own, but Banshee can do it more easily by using his MakeMeWannaShout power as sonar. [[Characters/XMenTheOriginalTeam Beast]]'s power isn't an obvious counter to Azazel's, but he's agile and strong enough to hold off Azazel, who is beaten [[spoiler:when Characters/{{Mystique}} tricks him by turning into Shaw]]. Banshee and Havok team up to fight Angel.

* Happens coincidentally in ''LightNovel/NyarukoCrawlingWithLove'', when an alien from a game company holds Mahiro's high school captive and offers to release the students if Mahiro's group can beat him. "Agent Smith" picks the games at which he excels, not realizing that the heroes completely outmatch him in every one; in Daifugō he faces Nyarko, who can create an infinite number of Joker cards, and in Darts he faces Mahiro, who has ImprobableAimingSkills when it comes to [[ForkFencing throwing forks]].

%% Please see thread to discuss a replacement.

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[[caption-width-right:300:[[VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosBrawl Choose your fighter!]]]]

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'''Knight Boat:''' “Incorrect. Look, a canal.\\

->''"So the Khrimalith defenses are keyed to disable when someone does the thing that Khrima's greatest foes do best?"''
->''"Remember who we're talking about here."''
-->-- '''{{Webcomic/Adventurers}}''' "Hanging a lampshade"

* ''LightNovel/TheUnexploredSummonBloodSign'': In the first volume, the information that the main characters possess on the villains' plot would only be useful for [[TheHero Kyousuke]], something even {{lampshade|Hanging}}d in the narration. Justified, as the BigBad, [[spoiler:the White Queen, is [[{{Yandere}} completely obsessed with him]]. She specifically arranges things to get him involved, sometimes even giving him information directly. For the same reason, Kyousuke is the only one capable of (temporarily) defeating her, as she always holds herself back to avoid killing him]].

* The [[NonActionGuy protagonist]] of ''LightNovel/CookingWithWildGame'' makes food. Not magical food, or [[Manga/FoodWars epic-level food]], just food. So around the 11th volume or so, the plot starts stretching a bit to keep him relevant to it. Of course, when your premise is about a rural village of warriors who ''don't'' leave their village and live a relatively normal day-to-day life, unlikely OutsideContextProblem[=s=] are necessary for there to be any plot at all.

As a plot, it's a double-edged sword; don't do it, and someone gets left out. Do it too often, and it looks like the bad guys are conspiring with the good guys to tailor their defenses to the heroes' strengths. Also, when one of the heroes has a [[WhatKindOfLamePowerIsHeartAnyway lame power]], there has to be [[ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman a really bizarre obstacle in there to require their ability]].

** Again with one of Characters/DoctorDoom's death traps for Reed, a simple corridor that keeps getting narrower and narrower, doors progressively sealing the way back. Reed is forced to push his stretching abilities to their limits in order to keep going... only to find a dead end.

* Creator/TheBrothersGrimm

* {{Lampshaded}} in ''Literature/TheInvisibleLibrary'' novel ''The Untold Story'': Irene thinks she needs a Dragon, a Fae and a human to [[spoiler: get past the secret founders of the Library]], but it turns out that what she ''actually'' needed was her friends, and their species was almost but not quite irrelevent. [[spoiler: Kai is determined enough to fight the Dragon King even though he's outmatched, hoping that the King wouldn't kill his own grandson; Vale's nature as a GreatDetective means that he cuts through the narrative spun by the Fae Storyteller, demanding solid facts; and Catherine, the Fae who wants to be a small-l-librarian more than anything, is able to argue against the justifications of the human founder that she's keeping books safe, saying that a mere hoard of books is ''not'' a library unless people can read them.]]

* Fred Hicks of ''TabletopGame/SpiritOfTheCentury'' and other [[TabletopGame/{{FUDGE}} Fate RPG]] system games fame referred to this as "the secret language of character sheets" in a blog post. To summarize, it means that the contents of a character sheet should be read as a player's vote for what kinds of things they want to do in a game. As an example, if nobody took stealth skills then don't rely on a stealth sequence as mandatory to advance the plot - let people bash, charm, bribe, or even magic their way around an obstacle instead, if those are the abilities they focused on. As well, if only one person took a particular ability, why, there you have a perfectly tailored way to put them into the limelight.

* At the climax of ''VideoGame/NeoTheWorldEndsWithYou'', the plan to [[spoiler:stop the Soul Pulvis from destroying Shibuya]] involves all of the protagonists' abilities. There is, however, one exception-- [[spoiler:the protagonists note that Beat's Soundsurf is useless and basically gives him the job of fighting the Noise.]]

* One episode of ''WesternAnimation/WolverineAndTheXMen2009'' invokes this trope explicitly. A ship carrying mutants to Genosha is attacked by pirates in search of mutants with useful powers. They end up kidnapping all of the adults and leaving the kids behind on the sinking ship. The kids' abilities are: breathing underwater, making "sticky goop", talking to machines, making things shatter by focusing on them, and butterfly wings. Initially, they mope around on the ship because they believe their powers are useless, but [[Characters/XMen70sMembers Nightcrawler]] appears to show them that no-one is useless. At Nightcrawler's direction, they shatter some cargo crates and have the underwater-breathing kid glue them onto the breaches using the sticky goop. The girl who talks to machines navigates the boat, and the girl with butterfly wings makes and puts up a flag of questionable usefulness. Then they chase after the pirate ship, where Nightcrawler uses ''his'' powers to duel the pirate captain and save the grownups.

** In ''Film/XMen1'', to stop the machine, they needed both [[Characters/MarvelComicsStorm Storm]]'s power and [[Characters/MarvelComicsJeanGrey Jean]]'s finer control to get Wolverine up to the torch, ComicBook/{{Wolverine}}'s claws to land and to break the machine, his healing to bring [[Characters/XMen80sMembers Rogue]] back from near-death, and [[Characters/MarvelComicsCyclops Cyclops]]' long-range Eye Beams as a back-up plan.

* Played straight most of the time on ''WesternAnimation/AdventuresOfTheGalaxyRangers''. There were usually computers to hack, hostile environments, something that could usually be psychically "read," and a need for the captain to coordinate things. However, the show also loved AbsenteeActor, so just as often they'd end up short a teammate who would have been really handy at that particular moment.

* {{Lampshaded}} in ''Literature/TheInvisibleLibrary'' novel ''The Untold Story'': Irene thinks she needs a Dragon, a Fae and a human to [[spoiler: get past the secret founders of the Library]], but it turns out that what she ''actually'' needed was her friends, and their species was almost but not quite irrelevent. [[spoiler: Kai is determined enough to fight the Dragon King even though he's outmatched, hoping that the King wouldn't kill his own grandson; Vale's nature as a GreatDetective means that he cuts through the narrative spun by the Fae Storyteller, demanding solid facts; and Catherine the Fae who wants to be a Librarian more than anything is able to argue against the justifications of the human founder that she's keeping books safe, saying that a mere hoard of books is ''not'' a library unless people can read them.]]