Not Tropeworthy: Strength

There are six pages about the six ability scores from Dungeons & Dragons, i.e. Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. Each page is a list of speculations of how characters from a wide range of fiction might map to the D&D scale of these ability scores. So basically, a "list of all fictional characters ordered by physical strength", and so forth.

Remember The Great Character Alignment Debate? We used to have nine pages of the D&D alignment with speculation on whether Batman is lawful neutral or chaotic good, until it blew up and we made a rule not to do that.

Simply put, this is not a trope. Can we map Goku's strength on the same scale as Batman's? If so, how? Since neither character is from D&D, how can we tell that they have a strength of 18 on the D&D scale? Should Goku's strength be 20, 40, or 60 on that scale; and if so, why? And of course, depending on which edition of D&D you're using, the scale goes from 8-30 or from 3-20. At the very least, this is highly subjective. At worst, it belongs in Troper Games or on the cutlist.

Obligatory wick check: there are 20 entries on the page, but four are duplicates. So out of 16 entries, 4 are correct, 1 is dubious, and 11 are misuse. That's 68% misuse (i.e. non-D&D characters given a speculatory or wild guess D&D stat). But even if restricted to canonical D&D characters, a list of all characters ordered by strength is still not a trope.

Edited by Spark9 on Jul 13th 2020 at 10:27:56 AM

Opening, per moderator discussion.

Move to Strength.

Move all six ability scores away to Just for Fun.

Edited by eroock on Jul 17th 2020 at 12:58:03 PM

“TV Tropes ranking the strengths of characters” is already covered by Super Weight.

I'm down with eroock's idea of just sending them to JFF.

Yeah, this is obvious Just for Fun material. If we move the pages there, though, what will happen to The Six Stats, which links to all six of them? Will we move that to JFF too, or just dewick these pages?

I agree.

I think The Six Stats should also be moved to Just for Fun, along with the stats' own pages.

Actually, do we need individual pages for each stat? They seem redundant.

Hrmm. The Six Stats starts off with "The six typical stats of a character". If that is true it's a trope, not a JFF anything. I don't really see what Strength has for JFF value. Given the anemic wicks and inbounds I'd cut or redirect (to The Six Stats) Strength rather than moving it to JFF.

It's JFF in that it's trying to assign RPG stats to characters who aren't from RPGs. I think that might be an interesting concept for a JFF page.

Looking at the examples on that page, The Six Stats seems to be "The specific six stats system originated from Dn D is also the mechanics used to quantify characters in other works", which is potentially a trope. It probably needs a rename to emphasize that aspect of the trope.

Is The Six Stats for character traits what Character Class System is for character classes? In that case, the former could stay as a trope page but should probably drop the overly specific number ranges.

I wouldn't mind making The Six Stats RPG-character specific and making a JFF equivalent for non-RPG characters.

I think that The Six Stats is a valid trope for both tabletop RP Gs and computer RP Gs; that's why I didn't base the thread on that page.

Given these six pages' lack of edits and inbounds, I don't think that "assigning D&D stats to non-D&D characters" is going to lead anywhere, except to edit wars. The various editions of D&D themselves can't even agree on what the upper and lower bounds of characters are. For instance, player character stats in third edition go from 1 to approx 40; in fourth edition they go from 8 to about 30; and in fifth edition they go from 3 to 20.

So I'd say cut the six individual stat pages, and keep (or rename) The Six Stats.

Now that you mention it, edit wars and arguments over statistics were what got Sliding Scales Of Obscurity cut. That said, do these pages have that problem?

Either way, I think keeping The Six Stats for in-universe stat systems would be fine.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jul 25th 2020 at 12:25:14 PM

I believe The Six Stats would be a different discussion compared to the subpages. The subpages should all be moved to Just for Fun, but The Six Stats should be reworked into discussing the primary stats in any roleplay system, like this page from The Other Wiki. It could be doing a much better job than it is right now.

I agree with saving The Six Stats itself for a separate thread (if it needs one), especially since Spark only intended for this thread to cover the individual stats.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jul 25th 2020 at 6:21:24 AM

Made a crowner using the options that were suggested.

What happens if "Make The Six Stats specific to works that actually have stat systems", "Turn the subtropes of The Six Stats (Strength, etc.) into redirects to The Six Stats itself", and "Move the subtropes of The Six Stats (Strength, etc.) to Just For Fun" are voted up? JustForFun/Strength would exist to hold examples without that stats system, but Main/Strength would redirect to The Six Stats?

Didn't think of that, but the intention was for the two subtrope options to be mutually exclusive.