History Main / PlotTailoredToTheParty

* OlderThanRadio: The Grimm Brothers' tale ''The Six Men Who Went Far in the World'', where an unemployed soldier teams up with a [[SuperStrength strong man]], a [[TheGunslinger keen-eyed sharpshooter]], [[SuperSpeed a super-fast runner]], a man who can [[BlowYouAway blow gale-force winds]] out his nose, and a man who can [[AnIcePerson generate a field of cold]] by straightening his hat to con a king out of a warehouse full of treasure.

* Played straight most of the time on ''GalaxyRangers''. 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.

** Perhaps unintentionally (and definitely ''annoyingly'') subverted in ''Goldeneye,'' where Q spends some length describing Bond's new ride, a BMW Z3, in which Q proudly proclaims has Stinger missiles behind the headlamps. What pivotal role does this vehicle play? About 30 or so seconds of James Bond driving in it before he exchanges it with Jack Wade for a plane.

* FinalFantasyX masterfully uses this for the battle system, with each character being especially effective against one enemy type: Tidus can hit nimble/evasive enemies, Wakka takes down flying targets, Auron and Kimhari can pierce the defences of armoured enemies, Rikku can dismantle mechanical enemies, Lulu deals with enemies that are weak against magic, and Yuna is your primary healer (and her summons are ideal for facing or finishing off bosses).

* Subtly used in AssassinsCreedII. Each thief, courtesan, and mercenary guild in Florence and Venice will help Ezio with at least one assassination target.
** Less subtly used in AssassinsCreedBrotherhood, where each guild helps Ezio with exactly one target. However, when [[spoiler:preparing to assassinate Micheletto, the thieves pull out last-second, "forcing" Ezio to use his own Assassin guild instead.]]

* FinalFantasyX masterfully uses this for the battle system, with each character being especially effective against one enemy type: Tidus can hit nimble/evasive enemies, Wakka takes down flying targets, Auron and Kimhari can pierce the defences of armoured enemies, Rikku can dismantle mechanical enemies, Lulu deals with enemies that are weak against magic, and Yuna is your primary healer.

* The Russian folk tale ''The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship'' follows this model perfectly, making this OlderThanPrint. On his way to win a princess' hand in marriage, the Fool is obligated to pick up anyone who asks to come along with him. Each person he meets has a different bizarre skill, and each one saves his life once when he reaches the Czar and is subjected to various death traps and {{Impossible Task}}s.
** Similar situation: the fairy tale ''The Seven Simons'' is about seven brothers named Simon, each of whom has one skill at which he excels?building an unbelievably fast ship, for example, or retrieving a piece of game no matter where it fell. Very specialized brothers, they are, and each skill just ''happens'' to be essential to winning the hand of a princess.
** As well, ''The Seven Chinese Brothers'' tells about seven brothers who are all identical, and each of whom has a powerful ability (hearing, strength, [[WhatKindOfLamePowerIsHeartAnyway weeping]]) or immunity (to fire, to cold, etc.) All of these powers allow them to evade execution and live happily ever after.
** Yet another variation on this theme is the Grimm Brothers' tale ''The Six Men Who Went Far in the World'', where an unemployed soldier teams up with a [[SuperStrength strong man]], a [[TheGunslinger keen-eyed sharpshooter]], [[SuperSpeed a super-fast runner]], a man who can [[BlowYouAway blow gale-force winds]] out his nose, and a man who can [[AnIcePerson generate a field of cold]] by straightening his hat to con a king out of a warehouse full of treasure.

* Subverted in both CityOfHeroes and ChampionsOnline. Especially in the latter game, due to the ability to take almost any combination of powers, there's really no "default" team setup or even default set of powers that designers can rely upon.

* In the ''Game/MegaMan'' series, and the following ''MegaManX'' games, all of the end level bosses have specific weakness to weapons that you get from other bosses. This ensures that even the most useless weapons for fighting through the stages have a specific use. However, since bosses in some games are selectable in any order, they CAN be beaten without the specials. It's just a lot tougher. Playing ''2'' for the first time and thinking "I'll try going against ''Quickman'' first." is a sobering lesson in ''NintendoHard'' level design. Messed with in ''X'', wherein the bosses had a particular order of weaknesses, but the special items (boots, armor, etc.) had a ''different'' optimal order. To get all the armor pieces without backtracking, you had to completely disregard the boss' vulnerabilities.
** A stage in MegaMan 8 takes it further, though. After clearing the first four Robot Masters, you face four more before tackling Wily's base. Sword Man's dungeon gets special mention for the first half of it is testing your skills in using your new powers: Ice Wave to freeze fire pillars below the pathway to cross, Tornado Hold to push the hover switches up and open pathways, Flash Grenade to see where you're going in the dark rooms, and Thunder Claw to swing around chasms.

* In ''HarryPotterAndThePhilosophersStone'', the defences set up by the Hogwarts staff to guard the Stone count as this. Each of the Golden Trio had to demonstrate their abilities at least once or twice as they passed through each room. For example, Harry had to be the one to get onto the broom and catch the key due to his Quidditch Seeker skills. He also faced off against Quirrellmort in the final room. Hermione had to figure out the potions riddle using logic, her forte. She also dealt with the Devil's Snare at the beginning of the series of rooms. Ron, the skilled chess player, ended up directing and winning in the chess room. He probably would have fought the troll, having already beat one, if Quirrell didn't deal with it first. Quirrell also dealt with Fluffy (temporarily), although Harry & co. developed a plan for that, as well.
** Of course, many fans [[FridgeLogic like to point out]] how unlikely it is that a trio of first years were able to get through the teachers' defences and face off against the BigBad of the series. This leads to the theories that the defences weren't that good, that Quirrellmort had weakened them beforehand, or that [[EccentricMentor Dumbledore]] [[TheChessmaster had planned for them to go through]], [[StealthMentor as a test of sorts]].
** On a less damning track for Dumbledore, it has also been suggested that Dumbledore made the defenses weak not to let first-years in, but to ensure Voldemort could get in... where he would become enamored by the Mirror and be trapped there until Dumbledore could deal with him. Harry showing up nearly ruined a perfectly good trap. Basically the idea is that mirror trap was foolproof (only someone with innocent intent could obtain the stone and it was damn powerful magic). The other traps just needed to keep out troublemaking students (oops).
** Alternatively, it could be seen that the first-years' success lay in their vastly different strengths and teamwork, whereas a lone person would be less likely to have all of the skills required to get past all of the obstacles (most powerful dark wizard, like, ever aside).

* The PlotTailoredToTheParty nature of many DungeonsAndDragons modules, coupled with the fact that many PC parties lacked a thief (the least combat-effective class in 1st and 2nd edition D&D) required the game to provide commonly-available ways for thief-less parties to do all the things you nominally needed a thief to do (''Knock'', ''Invisibilty'', ''Detect Traps'', ''Spiderclimb'', ''Comprehend Languages'' and ''Silence 15-foot Radius'' were all fairly low-level spells that duplicated thief abilities, often more effectively; the Chime of Opening, Boots of Elvenkind, Cloak of Elvenkind, and Ring of Invisibilty were all very common magic items that did the same thing). Which lead to a situation where thieves were completely unnecessary unless you needed someone's pocket picked, as that was pretty much the only thief skill there wasn't both a spell and a common magic item to duplicate.

* [[WildArms1 The]] [[WildArms2 first]] [[WildArms3 three]] games of the ''WildArms'' series will let you use the entire party members to do a specific task, like jumping, finding things with the use of a radar, changing gems, and so on and so forth. The latter games however ditched this concept.

* Every ''X-Men'' movie.

* The JamesBond movies feature a variant type; whatever [[ShoePhone inventions]] Q cooks up for 007, they're always [[ChekhovsGun precisely what he needs for the mission]]. He never finishes the movie with an unused gadget, and he never needs more than one copy of a given device.

** The animated series, ''JamesBond Junior'', did the above in practically every episode. Though the gadgets were received from IQ, not Q.

* ''MissionImpossible'', in which the characters tailored their abilities to TheCaper at hand

* Parodied on ''{{Kablam}}!'' in the ShowWithinAShow, ''ActionLeagueNow!'' with Meltman - with the power to...[[WhatKindOfLamePowerIsHeartAnyway melt]]!

* In an episode of ''TeamKnightRider'', the team figures out where a group of thieves is going to strike by finding the one place that would require all their individual skills. One of them was a contortionist.

** Less subtly used in AssassinsCreedBrotherhood, where each guild helps Ezio with exactly one target. However it is slightly subverted when [[spoiler:preparing to assassinate Micheletto. The thieves pull out last-second, "forcing" Ezio to use his own Assassin guild instead.]]

* Comicbook/{{Aquaman}} of the ''{{Superfriends}}'' gave rise to [[ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman an infinite number of such plots]]. {{Superman}} is a member of the ''{{Superfriends}}'', and arguably pretty much every plot which involves him is kind of an inverse Eigen Plot, as they have to use Kryptonite or otherwise disable him somehow to give everyone else something to do.

* One episode of ''Wolverine and the X-men'' invoked 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 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.

* ''StargateAtlantis'' usually has pretty blatant examples; a typical episode usually involves [=McKay=] having to come up with some insane plan using HollywoodScience, which needs a sneaky plan to pull off that only Sheppard can come up with, which involves a lot of violence which is of course Ronon's specialty. The episode "Quarantine" [[SubvertedTrope subverted]] it when everyone is locked in various rooms and each person has a part of the skills that they need to get out of the situation, except no one is in a situation where they can use those skills: [=McKay=] (TheSmartGuy) doesn't have a computer, so Sheppard (TheHero) has to do all the technical stuff; Ronon (TheBigGuy) is forced to do nothing; and Zelenka (another SmartGuy) has to do the dangerous air vent crawl that is pretty much Sheppard's trademark.
** And they often need a diplomat at some point, which is where Teyla comes in.

* ''Series/TheATeam'' was intended to be one giant EigenPlot-slash-spoof.

* The EigenPlot nature of many DungeonsAndDragons modules, coupled with the fact that many PC parties lacked a thief (the least combat-effective class in 1st and 2nd edition D&D) required the game to provide commonly-available ways for thief-less parties to do all the things you nominally needed a thief to do (''Knock'', ''Invisibilty'', ''Detect Traps'', ''Spiderclimb'', ''Comprehend Languages'' and ''Silence 15-foot Radius'' were all fairly low-level spells that duplicated thief abilities, often more effectively; the Chime of Opening, Boots of Elvenkind, Cloak of Elvenkind, and Ring of Invisibilty were all very common magic items that did the same thing). Which lead to a situation where thieves were completely unnecessary unless you needed someone's pocket picked, as that was pretty much the only thief skill there wasn't both a spell and a common magic item to duplicate.

* {{Lampshaded}} in an episode of ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans''. Control Freak, a teenage TV addict super villain comes up with an EigenPlot featuring a trial for all of the Teen Titans. He is upset to find that they're out of town and a secondary team is in their place. As the challenges were tailored to the exact limits of the main cast, the secondary team easily manages them. He has a temper tantrum and then returns with specific challenges for the substitutes.

* Played with in an episode of ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'' where Finn and Jake enter a dungeon at different times, and go different paths. Finn winds up facing a lot of challenges that are nearly impossible for him, but would be child's play for Jake -- Physical challenges, fights against large monsters, and a seemingly undefeatable cat monster who only fears dogs. Jake, meanwhile, winds up facing challenges that only Finn would be good at--Picking a sandwich over a sword to fight a guardian, a spitting contest, and so forth. The episode is an example of what happens with your ensemble is missing a member that the EigenPlot was designed around.

* ''OnePiece'' uses a fair number of these to drive home the theme of [[ThePowerOfFriendship relying on friends]]. Every arc will have several fights and situations that will show off the varied skills (combat and otherwise) of the protagonists.

** {{Trine}} '''attempts''' this; with the Wizard able to create objects and move then with the power of his mind, the Thief's grappling hook and ability to jump higher leaving the Knight to take out the numerous creatures that attacks the group. Only the Thief also has a bow which can be very powerful once upgraded a few times leaving the Knight to be rather useless.

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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 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 his ability]].

Named for the concept of "eigenvectors" in linear algebra. If you speak Math, the people at [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenvector the Other Wiki]] will share their thoughts with you on the topic. If you speak less Math, ''IrregularWebcomic'' [[http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2011.html may help more.]] In English: the team's composition is both ''necessary'' and ''sufficient'' for navigating from the start of the story to the {{Denouement}}; if you removed any team member, there would be at least one challenge that the remaining team members couldn't handle, but if you added an additional person to the team, then at least one team member would end up being unnecessary for the plot in question.