Fix Up Example Indentation Wherever It Is

It's a known issue. Hopefully it'll get fixed soon.

Series.Power Rangers Samurai, under Humongous Mecha. I'm trying to wrap my head around how to fix up this case of subbulleted tropes.

Edit: Also, there are other work pages like it, too!

Edited by Berrenta on Dec 12th 2019 at 7:46:43 AM

Usually when I come across trope "outlines" like that, I fold the subbullets into the parent bullet, putting them all in one line. But since I don't know this show and they're ZCEs, I don't know how to describe these.

So many video game work pages with Video Game Settings trope list subtropes like Green Hill Zone or Palmtree Panic in sub-bullets beneath Video Game Settings, like

• Video Game Settings:
  • Big Boo's Haunt
  • Gangplank Galleon

And according to Example Indentation in Trope Lists it's a bad way to sort.

Those pages need some cleaning.

Edited by namsan on Feb 7th 2020 at 1:03:44 AM

I would like a little advice. I was going to reorder the Games Workshop examples on Unskilled, but Strong and would like to know which of the following indentations would be correct (or if both are wrong and I need to do it different):

• Games Workshop games
  • Blood Bowl: Big Guy players, such as minotaurs and ogres, are typically have a high Strength characteristic but a low Agility score, resulting in them being able to crush most opposition when Blocking one-on-one but lack the skill to handle the ball. Additionally, Big Guys usually have easy access to the Strength skill list while lacking access to the more technical Pass skill list.
  • Necromunda: The fighters of House Goliath prefer simple weapons and brute strength over all other forms of combat. In all editions of the game Goliath fighters have easy access to the more physical skill sets such as Brawn/Muscle, Combat and Ferocity rather than the more intelligence driven skill lists such a Cunning/Stealth and Savant/Techno.
  • Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000 & Warhammer: Age of Sigmar: The larger greenskin races of orcs, orks and orruks don’t normally train, rather they just get into a scrap with their kin to pass the time and have a Might Makes Right philosophy that encourages strength over tactics and skill. While there are some exceptions, such as the orks of the Blood Axe Clan, the most common fighting style employed by such races are no more sophisticated than smashing their opponent into a bloody pulp.

Or

• Games Workshop games
  • In all the games that they appear in, the larger greenskin races of orcs, orks and orruks don’t normally train, rather they just get into a scrap with their kin to pass the time and have a Might Makes Right philosophy that encourages strength over tactics and skill. While there are some exceptions, such as the orks of the Blood Axe Clan, the most common fighting style employed by such races are no more sophisticated than smashing their opponent into a bloody pulp.
  • Blood Bowl: Big Guy players, such as minotaurs and ogres, are typically have a high Strength characteristic but a low Agility score, resulting in them being able to crush most opposition when Blocking one-on-one but lack the skill to handle the ball. Additionally, Big Guys usually have easy access to the Strength skill list while lacking access to the more technical Pass skill list.
  • Necromunda: The fighters of House Goliath prefer simple weapons and brute strength over all other forms of combat. In all editions of the game Goliath fighters have easy access to the more physical skill sets such as Brawn/Muscle, Combat and Ferocity rather than the more intelligence driven skill lists such a Cunning/Stealth and Savant/Techno.

Edited by SebastianGray on Mar 21st 2020 at 9:57:37 AM

I pulled these from Loading Screen because they need to be split up into individual examples rather than being sub-bulleted under a common theme:

• The Sims and some of the SimCity games spoofed the idea of a loading screen explaining what it loads by including ridiculous actions such as "hyper-activating children" and the ever popular "reticulating splines." More realistic in SimCopter, where the stuff that you see during the loading screen is probably close to what's done when preparing a helicopter for a flight.
  • Spore does this as well ("disinfecting germ cells...", "reticulating spines"), so much that it's fun to see when it's saying what it's loading and when it's a joke. It also shows a "You may encounter" list of cells/creatures/buildings/tribes/vehicles/spaceships/etc. at the bottom of the screen.
  • So does World of Goo on startup, listing its status variously as placating publishers... arguing games as art... testing ozone...
  • This also shows up in The Impossible Quiz 2, which even includes the "reticulating splines" message. This is immediately followed by a message saying "Stealing loading messages from The Sims..."
  • This is also seen in Don't Starve, where the loading screen has messages like, "reticulating pines", "generating spiders", "inserting Wilson's beard", and "framing a keen sense of despair"
  • Bookworm Adventures does this too: Dividing by 0..., Not crashing..., Crying over spilled milk..., Generating Lex's voice..., Lying about cake...
  • Also mocked by Homestuck, as shown below.
  • Before version 13 (current), Garry's Mod had phrases for what it's actually doing during a load screen, but if it takes more than a few seconds to load something it'll start showing nonsense like "Breaking update" or "Delaying Episode 3".
  • Many games using the Source engine has the ability to display a loading screen, and a loading bar with the actual loading messages for debugging purposes. Garry's Mod's load screen can get a little confusing because sometimes it echoes the actual loading message, and other times it shows nonsense. However, the real loading message is also helpful in showing why it's taking so long (it may be downloading a multi-megabyte custom map with several custom models and sounds from a congested server if you're playing online, for example).
  • The LucasArts game Afterlife (1996) does it as well ("Love is: never having to say XX% loaded...").
  • Certain Facebook games do this as well, two examples being Zoo World 2 (making the cheetahs honest, tocking the ticks) and Cat Rescue (stalking a mouse).
  • Some games running on Quake III: Arena's engine do this for multiplayer as well - later games in the Dark Forces Saga for instance say they are loading various items and whatnot, ending by loading data from each player currently in the server before finally initializing the map.
  • Kerbal Space Program has "Patching Conics..."
  • Banished says things like "Putting clouds in the sky", "Pollinating flowers", and "Avoiding a tornado" while generating the game world.
  • The OUYA game console does this while installing patches.
  • Terraria does this during world generation to include items to let you know which part of the generation process it's on like "Putting dirt in the rocks" which are dirt patches deep underground and "Putting rocks in the dirt" which are stone patches underground or on the surface. Notably, you can tell if the world will have Corruption with "Making the world evil" or Crimson with "Making the world bloody" (although the 1.3 update made even easier to tell it by making the progress bar either purple or red, respectively).

Noticed while going through the page for quote formatting that the Foreshadowing entry on Freefall.Tropes E To J is probably not in great shape. (The page as a whole could probably use work, being one of those older pages from the earliest days of the wiki, but that's what we happened to notice today.)

Don't think anyone's actually watching this thread, but it's worth asking anyway: we have a question about the indentation in this example from a Discord RP

• Kill It with Water:
  • Something that comes with Moon and Rose somehow being Octolings is that physical contact with any water-based fluid, no matter how little, risks killing them immediately. A discussion between Moon and Libre at the cafe reveals some holes in the logic, mainly how anyone who is an Octoling can still drink water just fine.
  • This becomes a semi-crucial clue in the first trial — Since Libre's death likely involved blood splattering if the evidence is anything to go by, this deconfirms Moon being a possible suspect of his death, as blood contains water that would kill them if it splattered at them.

It came up again in the second trial, and while we were adding that info, our thought was that, since this is really one example of Kill It with Water, it should be on one bullet, even if it comes up repeatedly throughout the story. Is that right, or does being relevant on multiple distinct occasions make it multiple distinct examples?

I agree. It really should be combined into a single bullet point.

On MiraculousLadybug.Tropes A To D, there's this weird tree of ???

How should we fix this?

• By the Power of Grayskull!: The Miraculouses requires a line to activate (and can also be deactivated early with a similar line). In the French, they are all "Transformez-moi" ("detransformez-moi" to change back)^note "Transform me" and "De-transform me," respectively. In the English dub, though, they each have a unique line:
  • Ladybug: "Tikki, spots on!"
    • "Spots off."
  • Cat: "Plagg, claws out!"
    • "Claws in."
  • Butterfly: "Nooroo, dark wings rise!"
    • "Dark wings fall."
  • Fox: "Trixx, let's pounce!"
    • "Let's rest."
  • Turtle: "Wayzz, shell on!"
    • "Shell off."
  • Bee: "Pollen, buzz on!"
    • "Buzz off."
  • Rabbit: "Fluff, clockwise!"
    • "Counterclockwise."
  • Dragon: "Longg, bring the storm!"
    • "Open sky."
  • Monkey: "Xuppu, showtime!"
    • "Nap time."
  • Peacock: "Duusu, spread my feathers!"
    • "Fall my feathers."
  • Snake: "Sass, scales slither!"
    • "Scales rest."
  • Horse: "Kaalki, full gallop!"
    • "Dismount."
  • Mouse: "Mullo, get squeaky!"
    • (phrase unknown)
  • Eagle: "Liiri, wings of liberty!"
    • (phrase unknown)
  • Pig: "Daizzi, rejoice!"
    • (phrase unknown)
  • Tiger: "Roaar, stripes on!"
    • "Stripes off."

Lemme go try and fix that real quick
EDIT: Would something like this work?

• By the Power of Grayskull!: The Miraculouses requires a line to activate (and can also be deactivated early with a similar line). In the French, they are all "Transformez-moi" ("detransformez-moi" to change back)^note "Transform me" and "De-transform me," respectively. In the English dub, though, they each have a unique line:
  • Ladybug: "Tikki, spots on!"/"Spots off."
  • Cat: "Plagg, claws out!"/"Claws in."
  • Butterfly: "Nooroo, dark wings rise!"/"Dark wings fall."
  • Fox: "Trixx, let's pounce!"/"Let's rest."
  • Turtle: "Wayzz, shell on!"/"Shell off."
  • Bee: "Pollen, buzz on!"/"Buzz off."
  • Rabbit: "Fluff, clockwise!"/"Counterclockwise."
  • Dragon: "Longg, bring the storm!"/"Open sky."
  • Monkey: "Xuppu, showtime!"/"Nap time."
  • Peacock: "Duusu, spread my feathers!"/"Fall my feathers."
  • Snake: "Sass, scales slither!"/"Scales rest."
  • Horse: "Kaalki, full gallop!"/"Dismount."
  • Mouse: "Mullo, get squeaky!"/???
  • Eagle: "Liiri, wings of liberty!"/???
  • Pig: "Daizzi, rejoice!"/???
  • Tiger: "Roaar, stripes on!"/"Stripes off."

Edited by Wafer on Nov 12th 2021 at 8:27:16 AM

I'd like to bring Guild Wars 2 page for a review for having a horde of "* Trope: Example ** Another example (often multiple)", comment-like examples, examples marked as YMMV, and 5 cases of tropedashing.

Marvel Strike Force has a very high amount of examples in both the first and second bullets.

SuperpowerLottery.One Piece is pretty huge and meanders all over the place in terms of what level of bulletpoint has examples of what level of specificity. I am planning to give it a revamp but I'd like some second thoughts on whether the structure I have in mind is kosher.

It would look something like this

Edited by Adannor on Jan 19th 2022 at 4:20:49 PM

Makes sense to me.

YMMV.Toy Story 1 has a few different entries about Sid under Alternative Character Interpretation that look disjointed. Can someone take a look?

• Many fans don't think that Sid is necessarily evil. He's just a kid who is wildly creative and inventive. Though he may have a destructive streak, he isn't just out to blow up toys. He wants to see what makes them tick, and how to make them cool and different; some have gone on to say that the Mutant Toys are, in fact, art pieces with very deep meanings. If you really think about it, Sid had no idea the toys were alive, and his parents don't seem to pay much attention to him and Hannah. He is probably acting out for attention.
  • In fact, aside from the cruel but darkly hilarious prank he plays on his sister, Sid doesn't do anything wrong. His destruction of toys comes out of both creativity and Parental Neglect. He does seem to love his dog.
• When Woody reveals to him the true nature of toys, Sid is traumatized because of what he's been doing. He's rambunctious but not sadistic, as evidenced by his love for his dog, so when he realizes that everything he's done was happening to living things he understands his actions and completely freaks out (assuming he wasn't freaking out over the realisation that he was about to get his comeuppance).
• Sid also has multiple locks on his door and the one scene where a parent is shown, his dad could be seen as being drunk or hungover. Victims of abuse often lash out at others, and Sid's disturbed "play activities" with his toys could be his way of taking out his feelings of vulnerability and helplessness, especially since he is always the one "in control" of his imagined scenario.
  Sid: I want to ride the pony...
• The creators were fully aware of this and like to joke that Sid is "the kind of kid who would grow up to be an animator." They give an adult Sid a brief cameo in Toy Story 3, where we see him working as a garbageman. Though he comes off as something of a metalhead, there's no indication that he grew up to be anything other than a normal, well-balanced adult.

Having a bit of trouble correctly indenting this example from Recap.Futurama S 2 E 6 The Lesser Of Two Evils without making it a Wall of Text:

• Future Imperfect: The Past-o-Rama theme park (supposedly based on the year 2000) is probably the best example: in a commercial, cowboys with surfer accents and hover-mopeds hunt mammoths with harpoons, and Albert Einstein and Hammurabi (who ruled Babylonia c. 2000 BCE) are seen disco dancing in a hot air balloon, and Hammurabi uses the catch phrase "Dy-no-mite!" from Good Times. In one exhibit, Gerald Ford is credited with inventing the automocar, which is built by primitive robots (who dress and behave like human cavemen) and runs by burning fossil fuels (as in actual dinosaur bones rather than petroleum biproducts). An ad in the re-created subway seems to assume that "Spanglish" was an actual language.
  • Fry, who is actually from the past, is either not believed when he tries to correct the errors, or just makes them worse with his unique perspective (What were those booths on the road used for in your time? Bathrooms). This is despite several living heads of people of 20th century people with their memories living in the time and even winning election.
  • To put things in perspective, the difference in time between Einstein (who was from the 1900's) and the year 3000 is four times smaller than that between Einstein and King Hammurabi. The people of the year 3000 seem to have a decent grasp of the past millennium or so of their history, but collapse any and all human history before that into a single homogeneous, garbled mess.

Here's my attempt, where I cut down some natter and merged the two. How'd I do?

• Future Imperfect: The Past-o-Rama theme park (supposedly based on the year 2000) is probably the best example: in a commercial, cowboys with surfer accents and hover-mopeds hunt mammoths with harpoons, and Albert Einstein and Hammurabi (who ruled Babylonia c. 2000 BCE) are seen disco dancing in a hot air balloon, and Hammurabi uses the catch phrase "Dy-no-mite!" from Good Times. In one exhibit, Gerald Ford is credited with inventing the automocar, which is built by primitive robots (who dress and behave like human cavemen) and runs by burning fossil fuels (as in actual dinosaur bones rather than petroleum biproducts). An ad in the re-created subway seems to assume that "Spanglish" was an actual language. Fry, who is actually from the past, is either not believed when he tries to correct the errors, or just makes them worse with his unique perspective (What were those booths on the road used for in your time? Bathrooms). This is despite several living heads of people of 20th century people with their memories living in the time and even winning election.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Mar 31st 2022 at 10:46:17 AM

Should this be split into sub-bullets, or is it fine as is?

• Added Alliterative Appeal: In "Seeds of Solace":
  … lattices of glass clean enough to kill a cardinal.
  
  … the gap between base and balustrade …
  
  … a fog-like swelter, soaking flesh and fabric as they stepped out of a rust-red rental.
  
  Everything reeked of rot …

According to Example Indentation in Trope Lists, separating quotes with blank lines is acceptable at least some of the time, but "should be used only rarely."

How should this Alternate Character Interpretation example on YMMV.Carmilla The Series be indented?

With paragraph breaks?

• Are Laura and the others (Carmilla, Perry and LaFontaine) who fled Silas at the end of Season 1 a bunch of Cowardly Lions who can be viewed as the Designated Hero? Or are they the only sane people there for trying to escape while an eldritch abomination was breaking free?
  On the one hand, while obviously not the bad guys, they up and abandon Silas when a literal Hellmouth opens because of their actions, only returning after much hardship only for a gnoll in a mountain to bring them "home" again. She also doesn't acknowledge the fact that the Summer Society, Alchemy Club, and Zetas actually stayed and helped to try and provide for or protect the simple, average students having no idea on what the hell is going on.
  On the other, the group had just been finished dealing with the already mighty forces the Light and Carmilla's mother provided, part of which involved Carmilla, the badass vampire, very nearly dying. It's hard to think of a way they could have fought against said Hellmouth when dealing with just a fraction of it was so difficult, and they had no way of knowing that the abomination inside would get stuck coming out. Laura is genuinely remorseful about the state that everything is in, and her first response upon learning about the power struggle is to try and get some genuine authority involved. When that fails, she resolves to help fix everything, despite all the crap she'd endured from the start of Season 1 and after. Also, the Zetas, Summers, and the Alchemy Club are so focused on fighting for territory that they aren't actually doing much good.

Or with subbullets?

• Are Laura and the others (Carmilla, Perry and LaFontaine) who fled Silas at the end of Season 1 a bunch of Cowardly Lions who can be viewed as the Designated Hero? Or are they the only sane people there for trying to escape while an eldritch abomination was breaking free?
  • On the one hand, while obviously not the bad guys, they up and abandon Silas when a literal Hellmouth opens because of their actions, only returning after much hardship only for a gnoll in a mountain to bring them "home" again. She also doesn't acknowledge the fact that the Summer Society, Alchemy Club, and Zetas actually stayed and helped to try and provide for or protect the simple, average students having no idea on what the hell is going on.
  • On the other, the group had just been finished dealing with the already mighty forces the Light and Carmilla's mother provided, part of which involved Carmilla, the badass vampire, very nearly dying. It's hard to think of a way they could have fought against said Hellmouth when dealing with just a fraction of it was so difficult, and they had no way of knowing that the abomination inside would get stuck coming out. Laura is genuinely remorseful about the state that everything is in, and her first response upon learning about the power struggle is to try and get some genuine authority involved. When that fails, she resolves to help fix everything, despite all the crap she'd endured from the start of Season 1 and after. Also, the Zetas, Summers, and the Alchemy Club are so focused on fighting for territory that they aren't actually doing much good.

Characters.A Certain Magical Index is probably something I'll have to surgically operate on, to give an example...

So Synchronicity has suggested that I take things here in regards to a certain section in Squishy Wizard, which I brought up during the Edit Banned thread regarding indentation.

Quite simply put, the Dungeons & Dragons Wizard Character Class section has some major problems involving both indentation and Walkthrough Mode and needs some major help. According to Synchronicity, there's quite a lot of minutia about the Wizard over a good number of editions that has been getting sub-bullets, mixed in with examples that don't involve the Wizard at all, such as one note about Psions and two examples involving monsters. There's also a Filk Song example that either I or someone else added way back when that needs to be moved to the Music section of the page:

• Dungeons & Dragons: The Wizard Character Class always has the smallest Hit Die (often a 1d4), and gets one of the smallest pools of Hit Points among classes. They also start with no armor, and have the worst attack bonus available. A Wizard wearing armor they aren't proficient with prevents them from casting spells, (and in the earlier editions, wizards could wear no armor at all, and could only improve their AC using magic items like Bracers of Defense or certain spells such as Shield). This cuts down on mage survivability at lower levels, especially since the AC system that D&D uses determines how hard you are to hit rather than damage. By the same token, Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards is in full effect in most editions of D&D, as the Wizard's low survivability at early levels is made up for by being a walking death machine at later levels because of how absurdly strong that spells get.
  • How squishy was the early edition wizard?
    • Maximum HP at first level was not in the rulebooks and was a house rule. Rules as written, the characters' hit points were rolled on a four-sided dice, resulting in an average of 2.5 hit points. The character's Constitution and Dexterity were rolled on three six-sided dice, and had to be 15 or more to improve armor class (AC) or hit points. This meant that in appx 81% of cases, the character had no bonus to hit points or AC.
    • This meant that the default wizard character was AC 10 (the worst allowed a player character, and it could not go higher except with magic or magic items as mentioned before), HP 1-4. This also meant a goblin attacking them has a better than 50% chance to hit. The goblin rolls a six-sided die for damage. This means the goblin has somewhere between a 50% and 100% chance to deal damage equal to the character's entire hit point total. Even worse, if you got dropped to zero hit points, you were dead — period. There were no Death Saves or death at negative HP like in later editions; Critical Existence Failure was the default rule. So the very first attack from one of the weakest monsters in the game had about a 40% chance to instantly kill a first-level wizard who was rolled up rules as written.
    • And all this assumes the character did not roll so poorly for Constitution that their hit dice wasn't a d4-X, minimum 1; or so poorly on Dexterity that their AC was an 11 or higher.
  • The Rules Cyclopedia, the definitive resource for Basic D&D, tells you straight out on page 19 where the Magic-User class is introduced about how a mage should not adventure alone and that his survivability is rather low without others to protect him. It also has Elf as a class that can use all armor but can only use up to fifth-level magic at their highest level (10th) unlike the mage who can get up to level 36 with up to ninth-level magic.
  • Jinx of Jinx.com wrote a D&D Filk Song called "Always the First to Die" about the Squishy Wizard problem.
  • 3rd Edition's Psionics Handbook had aversions by way of some Psion subclasses, there was one for each statistic, including Constitution. They were later nerfed in 3.5 edition to uniform squishiness for balance.
  • This changed a little in 4th Edition. Controller classes (of which the only one in the first book is the Wizard) get the lowest number of starting HP, the lowest rate of HP gain per level, the fewest number of healing surges, and are only proficient with the worst armor in the game. While it is possible to overcome these deficiencies with feats, it takes a lot of investment that could be spent elsewhere. Of course, they are also the only class that has a number of Area of Effect abilities. You can add your Dexterity bonus OR your Intelligence bonus to your AC when wearing no armor or light armor. Guess what's the wizard's primary ability score. Plus, wizards get numerous defensive and evasive spells. Overall they're not nearly as squishy as rogues.
  • 5E improves things for wizards a bit by upping their hit die from d4 to d6... which is still the lowest among the classes, plus it has few protective options at low levels and no armour proficiency. This is also the edition that introduces the concentration mechanic, an attempt at Nerfing buff spells, by only allowing one active concentration spell at a time and making it so said spells can be interrupted by taking damage.
  • Class features aside, magic-using classes use mental stats to cast spells (Wizards have Intelligence, Clerics have Wisdom, and Sorcerers have Charisma, etc), so any magic user is going to want to keep these stats high. But this usually comes at the expense of physical stats, which their classes don't use.
  • The 5th edition Tyranny of Dragons adventure has Blagothkus, a cloud giant wizard. Compared to a typical cloud giant he has less health, lower Strength and Constitution, weaker saving throws, and less accurate melee attacks, in exchange for an arsenal of spells that can inflict high damage. Mind you, he’s still a giant with superhuman levels of strength and durability, so his squishiness is relative.
  • The two species of arcane dragons are more magically powerful but much less physically robust than other dragons, dealing less damage with their physical attacks and possessing only a fraction of the hit points expected of their Challenge Rating.

Since it shouldn't be long before I get my editing privileges back, I'm going to do something of a first draft of what needs to be done here:

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • The Wizard Character Class is the Trope Maker in regards to tabletop RPGs. Throughout the editions, the Wizard has the smallest Hit Die of any playable class and thus one of the smallest pools of Hit Points. The Wizard also starts with no armor to speak of, and has the worst attack bonus possible. A Wizard wearing armor they aren't proficient with prevents them from casting spells, and in the earlier editions, wizards could wear no armor at all, and could only improve their AC using magic items like Bracers of Defense or certain spells such as Shield (which because wizards and other magic-users in this game use a Vancian Magic system often takes away from spells needed to help out the rest of the party). This, as you can imagine, cuts down on the class's survivability at low levels, especially since the Armor Class system that D&D uses determines how hard you are to hit rather than damage—in fact, a first-level wizard in the early editions of the game, created using the standard character creation methods of the time, stood a very real chance of being killed in one attack by a goblin, one of the weakest monsters in the game. By the same token, however, Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards is in full effect in most editions of D&D, as the Wizard's low survivability at early levels is made up for by being a walking death machine at higher levels due to how absurdly powerful higher-level spells can get, and how many spells that high-level wizards are able to cast.
    • This changed a little in 4th Edition. Controller classes (of which the only one in the first book is the Wizard) get the lowest number of starting HP, the lowest rate of HP gain per level, the fewest number of healing surges, and are only proficient with the worst armor in the game. While it is possible to overcome these deficiencies with feats, it takes a lot of investment that could be spent elsewhere. Of course, they are also the only class that has a number of Area of Effect abilities. You can add your Dexterity bonus OR your Intelligence bonus to your AC when wearing no armor or light armor, the latter of which is the wizard's primary ability score. Plus, wizards get numerous defensive and evasive spells. Overall they're not nearly as squishy as rogues.
    • 5th Edition improves things for wizards a bit by upping their hit die from d4 to d6... which is still the lowest among the classes, plus it has few protective options at low levels and no armor proficiency. This is also the edition that introduces the concentration mechanic, an attempt at Nerfing buff spells, by only allowing one active concentration spell at a time and making it so said spells can be interrupted by taking damage.
  • 3rd Edition's Psionics Handbook had aversions to Squishy Wizard syndrome by way of some Psion subclasses — there was one for each major statistic, including Constitution. They were later nerfed in 3.5 edition to uniform squishiness for balance.
  • The 5th edition Tyranny of Dragons adventure has Blagothkus, a cloud giant wizard. Compared to a typical cloud giant he has less health, lower Strength and Constitution, weaker saving throws, and less accurate melee attacks, in exchange for an arsenal of spells that can inflict high damage. Mind you, he's still a giant with superhuman levels of strength and durability, so his squishiness is relative.
  • The two species of arcane dragons are more magically powerful but much less physically robust than other dragons, dealing less damage with their physical attacks and possessing only a fraction of the hit points expected of their Challenge Rating.

So how does this generally look in regards to formatting, and if possible, what else needs to be done here?

Edited by Dravencour on Sep 11th 2022 at 12:00:46 PM

Your rewrite looks alright, formatting is fine and it's a lot more readable. I can't give feedback on the information itself because I don't know much about D&D but I think your rewrite looks solid.

My first issue with the D&D example is that we really should be indenting by which rules system is being described. I think someone started a short-term project with that as the goal, but I can't recall at the moment. Right now the example jumbles everything together. Secondarily is the minutiae irrelevant to the average reader of the wiki, aka Walkthrough Mode. In other words, we are supposed to be writing these things so that someone unfamiliar with any RPG can understand what it means that the wizard class is a "Squishy Wizard" instead of focussing on fans of the franchise.

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • ("Early editions", which is treating three or more different systems as the same ruleset): The magic-user class, also called the wizard, starts off with a health pool created by rolling a four-sided die (d4), which is modified based on their Constitution score. Their minimum starting health was 1. The default magic-user couldn't wear armour, and had to supplement their basic defenses by using their small pool of spells and by finding specific items. This was theoretically the "balancing factor" behind their powerful spellcasting at later levels.
  • Basic D&D's The Rules Cyclopedia: On page 19, players are directly told that the magic-user class should not adventure alone because their survivability is rather low without others to protect them. The class goes up to 39 levels and has access to the highest-level spells in the game.
  • 4th Edition: Controller classes (of which the only one in the first book is the Wizard) get the lowest number of starting HP, the lowest rate of HP gain per level, the fewest number of healing surges, and are only proficient with the worst armor in the game. In exchange, they specialized in the ability to affect many enemies at once with Area of Effect spells. They could do damage or inflict status effects that made it easier for the more physical classes to eliminate the threats.
  • 5th Edition:
    • The wizard class still has the lowest hit die, but it is a d6 instead of d4. They have proficiency with the weakest armour, and cannot cast spells while wearing armour they are not proficient in.
    • The Tyranny of Dragons adventure has Blagothkus, a cloud giant wizard. Compared to a typical cloud giant he has less health, lower Strength and Constitution, weaker saving throws, and less accurate melee attacks, in exchange for an arsenal of spells that can inflict high damage. Mind you, he’s still a giant with superhuman levels of strength and durability, so his squishiness is relative.

@crazysamaritan: I was going by Synchronicity's suggestions in regards to the edition examples, but if even that is too much clutter, then it's really best to cut the edition examples altogether and just go with a general summary of things. Here is the version of things I'm currently running with for Squishy Wizard:

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • The Wizard Character Class is the Trope Maker in regards to tabletop RPGs. Throughout the editions of D&D, the Wizard has the smallest pool of Hit Points of any playable class. They also start with little to no armor, meaning that they frequently have the worst Armor Class (which determines how hard you are to hit rather than damage in this game) of all starting Player Characters. This results in the Wizard being the least survivable of all PCs at low levels — their ease of being hit by enemies because of their AC combined with their low HP makes it incredibly easy for them to die, especially in earlier editions where Critical Existence Failure was the norm and it was very possible for a starting wizard to be a One-Hit-Point Wonder. This is balanced against the practically godlike power that the Wizard can achieve at high levels, provided that they can live long enough to reach that point.
  • 3rd Edition's Psionics Handbook had aversions to Squishy Wizard syndrome by way of some Psion subclasses — there was one for each major statistic, including Constitution. They were later nerfed in 3.5 edition to uniform squishiness for balance.
  • The 5th edition Tyranny of Dragons adventure has Blagothkus, a cloud giant wizard. Compared to a typical cloud giant he has less health, lower Strength and Constitution, weaker saving throws, and less accurate melee attacks, in exchange for an arsenal of spells that can inflict high damage. Mind you, he's still a giant with superhuman levels of strength and durability, so his squishiness is relative.
  • The two species of arcane dragons are more magically powerful but much less physically robust than other dragons, dealing less damage with their physical attacks and possessing only a fraction of the hit points expected of their Challenge Rating.

In the meantime, I've been cleaning up indentation in both Squishy Wizard and "Instant Death" Radius, but the entire Dungeons & Dragons section in "Instant Death" Radius, which is the only section left to do on that page, needs even more of a rewrite than the D&D section of Squishy Wizard, which I have taken care of.

Edited by Dravencour on Sep 13th 2022 at 7:05:55 AM

There are problems other than just indentation with your version. Aside from the Walkthrough Mode mentioned by Synchronicity, there's also unnecessary averted trope and lack of context.