"Strong" is used to mean both high offense and high defense. I am ok with that but if someone isn't, of course feel free to refine it.
"I have to go but yes, if you want hard hitting speedster, you will have to describe them in the trope and not just add something like "put them here it's fine"."
I don't think it says a quick "put them here it's fine" at all. The trope description does not exclude hard-hitting speedsters, and then it specifically describes that kind of situation at the end. It totally describes the hard-hitting speedster archetype in the trope, and Tyoria has made that even more explicit.
Please don't say what "you" have to do. The question is put to "we".
"Wow this argument has gotten petty..."
Vehemently disagree. It is the opposite of petty. Only in the last few pages was the actual objection identified. Does anyone feel aggrieved?
The definition should be nailed down before pruning examples for not fitting the definition, imo.
edited 13th Nov '10 3:02:38 PM by rodneyAnonymous
Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.I liked the Muscles Are Meaningless suggestion and it seems to fit well next to Acrofatic and Fatter Than A Speeding Bullet for the "unexpectedly strong" type instead of the "unexpectedly fast" type.
I'd really like to get started on cutting those bad examples from the second section. Trouble is, I'm not familiar with the source for many of them, so the only way I know they're bad is if they're specifically identified as having low stamina. But since we haven't come to a consensus yet, they're just sitting there for now.
edited 13th Nov '10 2:17:15 PM by Tyoria
I think there is unanimous consensus that Lightning Bruiser means "high defense" and any examples with explicitly low defense should be cut from that page.
Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.All right. There's examples I can cut because they're clearly bad, but there are others that sound like they might be bad but I'm not quite sure. Which is not even to mention the ones that scarcely elaborate at all, and/or focus on the offense/speed side without touching the stamina issue. Without being familiar with the work in question I have no way of knowing unless I do some serious research into each and every questionable example. Eyeballs on the second section — the video game portion in particular seems to be the largest concentration of bad examples — would be appreciated.
The video game section is also the largest concentration of examples period, it is sort of a video game trope (not exactly).
Made a modest pruning pass. I am unfamiliar with a lot of the examples, especially the video games and anime. It seems like there is a lot of natter. True?
edited 13th Nov '10 9:59:20 PM by rodneyAnonymous
Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.I took the liberty to change the description to fit our idea of the trope better. Am I wrong in thinking that, for us, a Lightning Bruiser should be any character that is strong, fast and sturdy, and not just subversion of Mighty Glacier and Fragile Speedster ?
So to fit that description, I modify the second paragraph and add a category "unsorted". It's not beautiful, but they are character that are Lightning Bruiser and looks like The Mario (or at least, doesn't seems at first glance to be a Mighty Glacier or a Fragile Speedster). I start to trim the examples of the second category(I didn't finished them, there is still the video game entry). The example who didn't go into the unsorted category (and are so deleted) are :
- Soifon and Yoruichi Shihouin from Bleach.
- Lenalee from D.Gray-Man.
- Sanji from One Piece qualifies as well. Having a rather fragile build he might be the second-fastest member of the Strawhats, losing only to Luffy himself. All while his kicks are powerful enough to send giants and seakings flying, destroy huge buildings and deflect a full-powered Bazooka performed by Oars.
- Quicksilver has given one or two demonstrations of this. His most recent (and arguably most notable, given fan reaction) is his utterly flawless and justifiably arrogant takedown
of Mr. X in a recent Thunderbolts issue.
- Tau hammerheads. While not as durable as, say, a Leman Russ tank, the 10pt multi-tracker upgrade lets the Tau pilot blaze 12" (quite a bit on tabletop, where that's the maximum distance most infantry can move in a turn; well, it was in 4th edition anyway) and still fire all its guns. Did we mention that the main weapon on a Hammerhead is frequently a gun the size of a telegraph pole, capable of reducing the toughest non-superheavy tank to scrap metal in one shot?
- According to the fluff, it doesn't usually destroy the tank; it liquefies the crew from the air pressure created as the pill-sized slug goes clean through the tank.
- Unless you roll a 5 or 6 on a penetrating hit (which railguns are quite good at doing). In this case, it hits the ammo stockpiles or something, and the vehicle is reduced to a crater.
- The Eldar Falcon is possibly a better example of a Lightning Bruiser, and definitely an example of The Mario. Its movement capability is a little more versatile than the Hammerhead, being able to move up to 12" and fire all guns, or up to 24" and fire fewer guns, it can transport a squad of up to six guys (who can be anything from guys in light armor with infantry-shredding weapons to a miniature Amazon Brigade with power swords to a band of psykers with magic flamethrowers, but are most commonly heavily armored troops with short-ranged anti-tank guns), though it might have slightly less raw armor than the Hammerhead when given the proper upgrades it is much harder to hit and damage, and its weapons are rather less powerful than a railgun but it has more of them and better secondary guns.
- Hell, a Wave Serpent is just as fast, more survivable, and can pack weapons capable of burning clean through almost any non-superheavy in the game, but it's still a primary troop transport. Twin-linked bright lances have a 75% chance of hitting and almost never a worse than 50% chance of damaging an enemy.
- And both can now move up to 30" in a turn [but do nothing else] and they both have forcefields. The Wave Serphent makes your weapons strength capped at 8, as well as making a mockery of your meltaguns and ordinance weapons, while the Falcons forces you to roll two dice and then pick the lowest on the vehicle damage table.
- Hell, a Wave Serpent is just as fast, more survivable, and can pack weapons capable of burning clean through almost any non-superheavy in the game, but it's still a primary troop transport. Twin-linked bright lances have a 75% chance of hitting and almost never a worse than 50% chance of damaging an enemy.
- The Dark Eldar Ravager is possibly the single most durable thing in the Dark Eldar list (discounting the Talos, but the Talos is friggin' slow), and has three, count them, three weapons capable of blasting a Land Raider (the yardstick by which heavy armor is usually measured) into scrap with a single shot. Granted, the chances of actually doing so given clear line of sight and no cover are about one in nine, but still. Most lighter tanks stand no chance.
- But with the new Dark Eldar Code, it now has paper-thin armour, and medium-strength weapons can destroy it, never mind anti-tank weapons.
- Good luck trying to hit it.
- But with the new Dark Eldar Code, it now has paper-thin armour, and medium-strength weapons can destroy it, never mind anti-tank weapons.
- Tau hammerheads. While not as durable as, say, a Leman Russ tank, the 10pt multi-tracker upgrade lets the Tau pilot blaze 12" (quite a bit on tabletop, where that's the maximum distance most infantry can move in a turn; well, it was in 4th edition anyway) and still fire all its guns. Did we mention that the main weapon on a Hammerhead is frequently a gun the size of a telegraph pole, capable of reducing the toughest non-superheavy tank to scrap metal in one shot?
Doing a bit of a jump here
Honestly, Lightning Bruiser does not imply defense at all. It implies a strong, fast hitter
I would like to recommend the following:
o = Neutral (Only used for the Mario)
- = Weak/Average
+ = Strong
PDS (Power/Defense/Speed)
--- = ???
+-- = Glass Cannon/Squishy Wizard (Cannons do bring up an image of a clunky device that takes a while to reload)
-+- = Stone Wall/Magic Barrier (?) (I saw people saying Stone Walls can be fast. I still find that ridiculous. The image of a stone wall isn't something that zooms all over the place)
--+ = Fragile Speedster (I can not think of any situation where magical speed and physical speed are different in any way)
ooo = The Mario (Of course)
++- = Mighty Glacier/Armoured Wizard (?)
+-+ = Lightning Bruiser/Speedy Warlock (?) (Lightning Bruiser conjures up an image of a fast, strong guy that may or may not be able to take a hit (Once again, - can also mean average)
-++ = Rolling Boulder/??? (A Boulder rolling down hill would get fast and hard to stop. So in this case, if it is strong, it is only because it is essentially using its speed to cause a case of the brick wall ramming into the truck)
+++ = Master Jack (Play on Jack of All Trades)
Anybody like this?
edited 16th Nov '10 7:12:29 PM by Icalasari
I wonder what a strip tease from a creature made of souls would be like?"Honestly, Lightning Bruiser does not imply defense at all."
Yes it does. Your skip is skipping over the part where people talk about that sort of plan (
) being a bad idea. Check it out.
Read the trope description, it's looking pretty darn good.
edited 16th Nov '10 7:28:07 PM by rodneyAnonymous
Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.I find it amusing that someone else independently suggested the same organization around power/speed/defense that was already discussed, especially since it seems that Rodney is the only one who was really strongly against that in the first place.
I still think there are at least two "scales" for these related tropes to go on.
Glass Cannon, Fragile Speedster, and Stone Wall all emphasize one trait (offense, speed, and defense, respectively) at the cost of another (defense, defense, and speed, respectively). There are other combinations possible, obviously, but I don't think we need to spell them out unless they're popular enough character types on their own.
The Mighty Glacier is strong and tough, but slow. In effect, he's defined by his weakness. If we decide we need them (there may not be enough examples to make it worth it), then "fast and powerful but fragile" and "fast and tough but weak on offense" would go here as well.
The Lightning Bruiser is fast, tough, and powerful. They're defined by a different weakness — perhaps range, learning curve, difficulty in unlocking the character, or something else. If they don't have any drawbacks, then they're a Game-Breaker and should go there instead.
To put it another way, the first scale is defined by how you play the character — a Fragile Speedster uses either rapid-fire combos or intermittent hit-and-run attacks, a Glass Cannon has to avoid damage until it gets an opening to deliver a powerful blow, a Stone Wall simply outlasts his opponent. The second scale is defined by how you play against the character — a Mighty Glacier is tough and strong, so to beat him you need to exploit his lack of speed (a low-defense character you'd have to overwhelm with attacks, a low-offense character you'd have to grind down slowly over time). A Lightning Bruiser, naturally, you'd have to exploit whatever it's own unique weakness is (stay out of his effective range, interrupt his complicated attacks, target his Achilles' Heel).
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
Lightning Bruiser can definitely overlap with Game-Breaker. It doesn't necessitate that the character be balanced in some other way. They often are, but not always (particularly when it's an antagonist character). Also, the Stone Wall sacrifices offense, not speed.
Re: Lightning Bruiser, I realize that it can overlap with Game-Breaker as written, but is that a good idea? "Character is just better at everything" is basically what a Game-Breaker is, I think there's too much overlap unless we specify "character is balanced in some other way". In reference to "antagonist" characters — NPCs can't be Game Breakers, can they?
Re: Stone Wall... huh, you're right. Then why the hell is it called Stone Wall? Stone Wall implies it's hard to damage but can't move (ie, is slow). A good-defense-bad-offense character would be a Damage Sponge (edit — which is already a trope? Eh, it's a redirect to Damage-Sponge Boss. We could co-opt it if we wanted to).
edited 17th Nov '10 9:59:26 AM by NativeJovian
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.Concerning Stone Wall, he may need a rename to accept fast build, though if Nimble Mountain is made as a subtrope of this, I think that the problem would be solved, at least partially : the only non intuitive example in Stone Wall would be the apparently Wall Banger Stone Wall/ Fragile Speedster combo.
Concerning the organization in term of damage/durability/speed, the consensus is that we will do something similar : the two new tropes will be subtropes, which means that we don't have to change the description of Glass Cannon, Stone Wall and Fragile Speedster and still have the classification you suggest.
On the subject of Lightning Bruiser :
I eliminated two more example from the videogame entry. Lot of them seems dubious (only speed and damage mentioned) but I don't know the majority of these games. (link
)
deleted example
- The Point Man and Michael Becket from the FEAR series have superhuman speeds (thanks to their special Slo Mo bullet-time powers), and are also strong enough to kill a well-armored soldier with a single well-placed slide kick to the 'nads.
- {{Wild ARMs 1}} has Jack Van Burace. He was likely supposed to be the Fragile Speedster, especially considering his "Accelerator" ability that allowed him to act first in the turn, but in practice, his Fast Draw skills could just about match Mighty Glacier Rudy's damage output. In Alter Code F, his strength was toned down considerably to emphasize Rudy's, but obtaining all his Fast Draw skills boosts his stats back up to "just about as powerful as Rudy" level.
- Note that he has extremely limited MP, although there were workarounds in both the original and the remake.
edit : Game-Breaker has nothing to do with a character build. Absolutely anything can be Game-Breaker : a Fragilespeedster that you can't damage is a Game-Breaker, a classic Stone Wall who can heal faster than you can damage him is another one, and a Glass Cannon that can kill you before you react is a last one. Lightning Bruiser can be Game-Breaker or not : in RTS, for instance, there are a lot of Lightning Bruiser who are not Game-Breaker simply because their cost match their utility. The little advantage that one of the specialist build have over the Lightning Bruiser may be sufficient to balance the game, and made the Lightning Bruiser The Mario.
edited 17th Nov '10 10:13:26 AM by VioletOrange
I'd say that the name Stone Wall implies that it's all about defense. It was apparently broadened to include people who use a speed based defense to simply dodge everything.
Fight smart, not fair.Well, speed-based defense is still defense, so I don't have a problem with that (if you can dodge like crazy but your attacks are still slow — for example, Captain Falcon from Super Smash Bros is very quick on his feet but has very slow attacks — then you would be have good defense but low speed according to our "scale"). What bothers me is that Stone Wall implies "high defense, low speed" but is currently defined as "high defense, low attack".
If by "all about defense" you mean "high defense, low attack, low speed"... well, I could buy that too, but I don't know how many examples we'd get.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
That's the problem with trying to assign speed to these. The speed which Stone Wall is talking about isn't the speed it moves at and it isn't about it's attack power. A Stone Wall is a Stone Wall because it has a high defence but the speed at which it deals damage is very low. That can be achieve either through low attack power, or by low speed, but both of which have the same throttling effect on damage output.
edited 17th Nov '10 10:53:17 AM by shimaspawn
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. DickIt makes me think of the "turtling defense" that's mentioned. No matter what, the Stone Wall simply tries to outlast it's opponent.
Fight smart, not fair.![]()
Stone Wall as-is doesn't mention speed at all. It just says "high defense, low attack". The problem is that "wall" implies low speed, rather than low attack. The kind of speed I'm talking about isn't DPS (which seems to be what you mean by "speed at which it deals damage"), but rather how quickly you can make attacks (whether that depends on a speed stat, as in an RPG, or has to do with the character's attack animations themselves, as in a fighting game).
Short version: "attack" is how much damage you do per hit, "speed" is how often you can hit, and "defense" is how many hits you can take.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
I completely disagree with your version of speed. While it can be good for some RPG like Pokemon or fighting game, speed in games is often simply the speed with which you can go from point A to point B. That parameter is as vital as health or damage if they are ranged attack, possibility to dodge, long map...
But yeah a wall is usually quite slow, so Stone Wall can be misleading
More broadly, the Stone Wall sacrifices offensive power for defensive power.
Also, I would not say that I was the only one against it. I was the most vocal. That is not the same as being alone. (Also also, others were vocal.)
Just because a mistake is obvious doesn't mean it's not a mistake. The basic objection is that these should all be broad categories, and a scale like that makes them narrow instead.
edited 17th Nov '10 12:53:22 PM by rodneyAnonymous
Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.

Made edits to paragraph three, cut paragraph four (which exclusively focused on the muscular aspect). Suggestions?