Trope Talk: Conservation of Ninjutsu
It's that thing where one bad guy is really scary but ten bad guys are an absolute joke. You know, that thing.
Comments (6)
The first time I saw a Watsonian explanation in the wild was a Wolverine-vs-ninjas fight where he monologues about the ninjas having to be careful of their teammates while he can just lash out in any direction...
This is also referenced briefly in the Star Wars "Wraith Squadron" novel - it's mentioned that kill scores go down as the number of starfighters in the battle increases, because you spend as much time watching your back and evading as you do attacking, and there's too much going on to really focus on someone long enough to score a kill.
ty also something I'm trying to get an answer for is worldanvil compared to campfire. Which one would you say is better for a writer? Or am I comparing a car to a car?
I'm not much of a writer, but if you're looking for opinions, I like worldanvil more, just because of it's layout
One Watsonian interpretation I tend to favor is that it's easier to get weaker things in bulk. It just stands to reason that there are more people who graduated from the 6-month ninja boot camp than there are grandmasters who've spent decades perfecting their martial skills. Both are ninjas, but you can easily get a horde of the former but maybe a handful of the latter. Or your factories can pump out a hundred cheap battle droids at the same cost as one droideka with its very expensive lightsaber-proof forcefield. Of course, that assumes a distinction between opponents that perhaps wasn't the point of what Red was discussing. We can't assume the lone ninja who gave the hero so much trouble has all that experience or that the horde are ninja noobs if there's no visual distinction between them. At that point I guess it's comparing faceless goons versus different tier of faceless goons, or faceless goon versus tertiary adversary.
That answer makes sense, you could also have a group of disposable goons, but have them accompany a more serious threat to provide backup. One specially designed monster of the week leading a squad of putty patrollers if you will.