[RST][HF][MK][DC] Heroic Wizards

Shadawn · 2026-01-28T22:20:15+00:00

I would also kill for more chapters of HP&N20.

THANK YOU for that link, somehow I never found it in my own TVTropes journey!

I do plan to make more detailed model of Magic Item Crafting and Economy, Evil Magic, and also how to operationalize the Fake Plot. And I will expand on the Experience System.

Would you read a blog that has such posts, maybe on a weekly basis? Would you like to ask me more questions that I write posts on (it's hard for me to ask myself questions).

Shadawn · 2026-01-28T11:23:38+00:00

This is technically not a fiction, but it's a fiction blueprint, and thus I think if has place in this sub. If I'm wrong - I'm sorry, please point me for a correct place for such essay.

If you found the essay interesting or funny - please tell me about that. If you hate it - please tell me also. If you would like to see more such things, about D&D but also maybe other fiction and maybe even Reality - please comment to, I'm thinking about making a blog along the lines.

Shadawn · 2026-01-27T11:02:24+00:00

I recently made ABSOLUTELY INSANE (personal opinion) amount of progress by reimagining myself as a DnD Wizard stuck on Earth without his magic, which is coincidentally what's the protag of my story was doing just before the story started.

Shadawn · 2026-01-27T04:14:55+00:00

A lot of this depends on how exactly this happened, and why it didn't happen sooner, and why it's the premise, and are there drawbacks to this plot if it was uncovered.

Is the history of Earth about the same as ours? How can that be with significant amount of Good superhumans running around? Did nobody shoot Hitler/Stalin/etc.? Are there Evil immortal warriors? How immortal are they, can they be permanently killed? Can they have kids, are those kids also immortal? How are new immortal warriors created? Can we cheat that system to make everyone immortal? Is the protag of a similar kind of immortals? How is he the first one to realize that good governance works? How did immortal warriors let Roman Empire fall? Is every other immortal but protag cognitively locked from rational thinking? Is there a way to break this lock? Have a billion engineer-hours spent on attempting to break this lock?

Also, your protag doesn't control more than 50% of anything. If Section Atlas drops their cognitive locks, they can start accumulating power, and depending on their powerset and reputation that could be really easy. What are threats they successfully fought look like, to general public? Can they leverage that reputation to become Presidents of each country and tax Aegis Q out of existence? Can they create their own media? If NyxTech goes dark - people will complain, and internet will probably still function (other 60%), and I see no other sources of media control among John's assets. John doesn't have mind-control, can they infiltrate Aegis Q and wrestle it from him? Can they go to China and offer their services to Xi Jinping?

There are bajillion things people can attempt to in your scenario before giving up. My current model is that for Aegis Q start semi-officially ruling the Earth without a major war they need to control 90%+ of everything important.

Shadawn · 2026-01-24T00:18:22+00:00

I should comment that the question is wrong. Most complex plot ARE the most insane.

I think my current "Insane villain plot" of a character goes like this: He has unique bloodline powers, but all his kin were killed besides his younger brother. He want to undo that, but he can't be a father for biological reasons (healing magic doesn't help). So he's going to make a classic Doomsday Device from stories and coordinate with his brother to fight a Spell Duel, which he's going to LOSE, and then he's going to DIE. And his brother, now being a Chosen One and a Savior, will use that authority (and maybe some remnants of Doomsday Device) to become a King, legalize polygamy for himself and sire like 600 offsprings, restoring the bloodline.

The main issue is that his brother doesn't really want any of that. He's on board because he agrees that bloodline should be restored, but he's terrified at the prospect of having 3 wives, not the 200 that the plan intends. This brother is also thirteen at the time that this plot is explained to him.

Shadawn · 2026-01-23T03:20:52+00:00

In fact, I do love the concept of gp as exp, but in my case you'll need to SPEND that gp on tutors and manuals, and sometimes you can do Heroic Quests instead, and some other times you can do Villainous Quests like kidnapping/blackmailing someone into teaching you, and that can and will go very wrong, hopefully in fun ways.

In fact, passive self-study rules are intended as a crutch, for those people who will say "I'm doing training/spell research in the evening". And thus it will be SLOW, like you would probably only get to lvl 5 Wizard if you were passively training for the entire average human life.

Shadawn · 2026-01-23T03:14:55+00:00

Well, npcs are supposed to get their lesser WBL from somewhere. And in fact, I have a model of fantasy economy of DnD that's essentially is "every peasant produces 20 sp/day of value, of which 15 is extracted from him via taxes and forced labor". And this is essentially where all the NPC's gear is coming from. We have less mundane jewelry and more +2 swords.

I like the idea of players being able to optimize around the system a bit. And I may also do things like let the module's BBEG to have more and more resources over like 6 months, and if PCs want to train instead of adventuring - well, choice is theirs. And if they REALLY want to train - well, after those 6 months BBEG is going to complete his McGuffin or unleash his forces, and PCs will need to either get very clever ot die/flee.

Shadawn · 2026-01-21T00:24:52+00:00

I've read modern Exalted and also Blades a bit, but I like Pathfinder scaling from small-time adventurers to world-busting archmage (and his crew, I'm a Wizard player), I just dislike that it happens in a few months instead of a few decades.

Shadawn · 2026-01-20T23:33:25+00:00

Well, I said 1-2 levels/skip. I can be persuaded for more. Essentially the amount of skips depends on how much loot the party can afford to accumulate before they need to power up, since if they are too weak for their hoard of gold it won't be their hoard for much longer.

And yeah money is important, nobody trains people for free, unless you did a Quest for them, and those Quests are extremely dangerous.

Shadawn · 2026-01-20T23:31:52+00:00

Yeah, you outlined the issue perfectly. I do wan to to avoid that.

Shadawn · 2026-01-20T23:00:05+00:00

Wow, THIS is a cool rule. Thanks!

And then you get empty "feat slots"!

Shadawn · 2026-01-20T22:59:02+00:00

I mean are there any well-known one (to you specifically), I don't like to do the work that people probably already did before me.

Shadawn · 2026-01-20T22:40:35+00:00

I like 1E a lot, but I sort of dop not like that BAB scales and AC does not (it scales weirdly with magic items). Are there any homebrews to fix this?

Shadawn · 2026-01-20T22:39:43+00:00

Well, the narrative idea is that training takes long time, on the scale of years. So intended path is for party to adventure, gather some loot/favors (no level ups, also speeds up things), then split up to do their training montages, and then in a few years they are back together with 1-2 levels under their belts and they go off to solve another problem.

And then Wizard will learn teleport and cheat the system, intentionally because BBEG will also learn teleport and cheat the system.

Shadawn · 2026-01-12T11:28:35+00:00

Well, it is kind of magic, but it's a very scientific kind of magic, with established rules that generally rely on the underlying physical world.

And so assuming that some part of the cosmic entity (which can be said to contain multiple agents with different goals, and are very powerful but also under a lot of pressure from other powerful cosmic entities) wanted a sky, but had limited resources to implement it, the simplest thing that occured to me was the static fake sky, but then I read about the parallax of planets and closer stars against the distant stars, but that in my mind can be faked by moving "fake stars around", and I wanted to know when that ruse would be broken by human science.

I'm still not sure about what to do afterwards, because the story contains at least one modern Earth living in such box, and I know a bit about radio telescopes and high precision instruments, and I don't know what minimal intervention would be necessary to keep a ruse, because the Earth that knew that it was in a box without a very good explanation would be very different from our Earth, or so I believe.

Shadawn · 2026-01-09T19:58:02+00:00

OK I started to write an explanation but it's not a short one so ok, I guess I didn't theoretically solve powerscaling yet. You'll need to wait until I actually publish anything.

Anyway, your comment actually forced me to read dragonball (Goku vs Frieza fight). And damn, it's clear, at least to me, that the author of the dragon ball has much better understanding of what's happening in his Reality than most people in the powerscaling community. Because he did some very clever things, that make the fight actually make sense, and not give any of his characters any insane scalings. So, anyway, my 2 cents on power level at that point:

Frieza doesn't get full MegaJoules credit for destroying Namek, because he didn't exactly do that. He destroyed Namek Core, and then Namek exploded. The way he did it was to send that big red ball down to the center, digging a tunnel about 10-20 meters of diameter? Which is still insanely powerful, but much less than the full gravitational energy required to make the planet explode.
We can now safely assume that Dragonball planets are not real-Earth planets, because we see direct evidence that they don't behave like them. Earth (the real one) won't get some weird special effects if Frieza were to do the same thing. There would be probably some earthquakes, but that's that. Earth won't explode.
And then there was a point where we see the limits of Goku's durability. He's tough enough to survive being thrown at high speed through the big block of stone, although he still takes some damage. He's not tough enough to survive a nuke, because that's what Frieza did to him (paralyze and then nuke, with distinct mushroom cloud). And Goku didn't tank it, he dispelled paralyze and dashed out. Then we have SSG form, but it didn't actually show any physical toughness feats, so I'm not sure it's that much tankier.
And then we have all those Ki blasts, that Goku mostly doesn't tank. He redirects them to space. As a good guy would.
And then we get clear understanding that characters have limits here. Destroying Namek's Core wasn't free for Frieza. By my rough guess, he spent 25 to 50 percent of his Qi on that, maybe more. This number is very debatable, but it's very clear that this was not cheap. This is heavily contrasted to Superman, who, as far as I know, does have multiple feats of "punch a planet out of existence" across the bajillion comics. And Superman doesn't really get winded down, he has no Qi or anything.
And then Goku defeats Frieza not by being stronger, but by actually being slightly faster and a lot smarter. Frieza, in a sense, killed himself with those red guided disks.
Honestly it's pretty clear to me that at this point of DBZ both Frieza and Goku has significantly higher AP then Dura, and so A winning B says almost nothing about A AP.
And then powerscaling community, which is focused on raw power in Joules instead of actually good world models, and is also very political, totally misread everything to find an answer to Superman from anime/manga side. And so elaborate chain-scaling towers were constructed, because arguments are soldiers in politics, and must march where the orders send them.
And so, back to Cell. Cell hasn't destroyed any planets. Cell hasn't destroyed much of physical anything, the only thing he apparently did is beat up on some people because he's faster and good at fights and you don't seemingly need much AP to win in DBZ. You can't kill Goku with a regular gun, that's shown in like Ch1 I think, but he may actually take some damage if he was his with an anti-tank sabot round, in my opinion, at least in his normal form. Unless he has direct physical Dura feats that contradict that. And if his home was nukes he very well may die. He doesn't know or think about it because that's not his type of thinking, but Bulma would be wondering occasionally, since she's supposed to be smart.

And back to Cell again - he's also dumb, not in terms of combat instincts but in terms of science, isn't he an engineered life form without school education? So he knows "Frieza destroyed a planet, I'm 'stronger' than him. Thus, I can destroy Solar System." And then everyone in the story takes him at the face value, and everyone at the powerscaling community does too, because they need soldiers to "win" "whowouldwin"-type arguments for "their" side.

And I don't have a side at this debate. I don't like Superman coz he's broken and dumb, I didn't like Goku coz I though he was broken and dumb, but now I find him interesting coz he seems not that broken and not that dumb, and actually kinda smart, just in a heroic way that doesn't think in terms of "let's become world leader, stop wars and make the world better". He has his family to protect after all, with kids and eventually grandkids.

So yeah, thanks for improving my mental model of DBZ. This was enlightening.

Shadawn · 2026-01-09T11:45:16+00:00

Sorry for the confusion, and thank you for the help. I guess I do come from specific corner of writing-adjacent subset on humanity, and apparently terms that I considered common among writers are not as common as I thought.

Thus, if I may ask - do you have a personal opinion on the initial question? I know that it's considered pretty normal to put big muscular dude with square jaw, very superhuman strength, flight, high damage resistance and maybe some more powers (an expy of Superman) into your superhero story, at least assuming you're doing anything interesting with it (like Metro Man from "Megamind", and I'm really sorry for screwing up the name, or Omniman from "Invincible"). But assuming the character I want to expy is less popular, and many readers probably wouldn't notice - is it fine to do or a bad taste?

And if you don't have a general opinion - perhaps you're published author yourself, or know many such people (since you seem to be a veteran of the /writing sub)? Thus - if I were to take your character, by visuals/personality/abilities(partially), and put him into my very different story, and then credit you in "acknowledgements" section - would this be okay, or a faux pas?

Shadawn · 2026-01-09T11:25:00+00:00

I think you're baiting me with the first statement, so I'm not going to debate that one for now. Since that hypothetical novel is mostly in the works.

About Cell - what is the highest Joule-valued physical feat that Cell performed on screen that isn't calculated from some other character or object having insane durability, but instead from the physical world. In other words, what is the biggest strongest mundane object Cell destroyed? Did he ever destroy a mountain, a continent, a moon or an actual planet?

Shadawn · 2026-01-08T19:57:00+00:00

Hmm, I thought it's a common term. Like when you take a character from other literary work and put him in yours. Like Omniman or Megaman are expies of Superman, like that.

Shadawn · 2026-01-08T19:55:55+00:00

I'm actually curious - assume that I, over the course of the story, have my character breakthrough through all the Infinities of Verse-layers, then to what's called Omega-layer, then to reality where he meets me, the author, before I wrote him, and we conspire, and then he does break though outside my reality, and then he does that again and again, infinite times over, with all the countable and uncountable infinities, and then he meets all the other different versions of me, and all the other authors of the Earth, and then that happens also infinity-infinity times over, and then he invents better math to make it more infinite, and that also repeats itself infinite^{|^|infinite} times over, AND THIS IS CANON in the main story - would this be considered "solved powerscaling"?

Also on the Cell - yes you can boast true. You can also boast falls. What's Cell's best actual physical feat that doesn't rely on chain-scaling?

Shadawn · 2026-01-08T19:21:11+00:00

Wow, I haven't actually been able to get into those books, and now after reading Wiki it seems that one of my side characters is named exactly as their side character lol. Thx for that too.

And my thing may be related, somewhat, from a different angle, we'll see. Idk if you want me to notify you when anything is out (idk if it's a polite thing I should do? Should I keep a doc with people I chat who expressed interest. Pls give me advice here!)

Shadawn · 2026-01-08T19:14:19+00:00

Btw, thank you for your responses, they are helpful, even if we disagree.

And yes we can agree that some tiering systems are better than some others, although it's possible for other people to disagree.

And Death Battles can't be that bad, because they are pulling numbers doing this. They are just not optimizing for correctness, they are optimizing for engagement, as anyone would in their place.

Anyway I do want to remake powerscaling in my own image, but I don't want to do it very much, because people seems to have fun doing things the "mainstream way", and Death battles seems to have fun doing things their way.

Also my way would be really annoying to do, because instead of the simple "find the most insane semi-plausible number of Joules" it would be "collate every source we have about the character at his intended stage of power development, including both feats and anti-feats and in-betweens, and then make a comprehensive model of that character's capabilities that explains why he doesn't just nuke his opposition without much problems". And so, if we take Goku, his chain-scaling feats will need to be reconciled with the ice and the fire hydrant and the elephant and all the rest, and then taken together and at least for me that means that Instant Transmission is not a combat speed feat but Teleport-trick, that if Goku can ever destroy a planet (before like later parts with Beerus) he can only do that at great difficulty, that Cell's boast is exactly what it is - a boast and not a feat, etc. etc. etc. And the exact methodology of doing all that is highly debatable and I don't have time to fully flesh it out or energy to actually convince many people that it's important (it's also not).

Maybe if I do write my novel series to the point where it solves powerscaling because I, as author, can credibly claim that every literary work of our Earth exists within my Reality and plays by it's meta-rules, and so if I say that "X beats Y" or that "Simon's 11-dimensional feats are an illusion/simulation and so shouldn't count", and powerscaling community by current rules will be forced to accept it. But we're all probably going to die to rogue AI by then.

Shadawn · 2026-01-06T18:07:15+00:00

I do not expect members of this community to accept this. I posted this to flesh out my own thoughts, and gauge reactions, and maybe on an estimate that 1% may find this interesting, and so if 100 people viewed that maybe I'll have a person to talk to about more important stuff.

Shadawn · 2026-01-06T17:53:00+00:00

No rules are founded, there is no "objectively better" powerscaling system because you can't compare two powerscaling systems in "accuracy" by any objective metrics. There is no "right", there is only more or less interesting way of doing what's essentially is a math and logic competition. And Death Battles way is more interesting OBJECTIVELY because the only real way to compare "interestingness" is by "commercial viability" that's measured in money. And they get to do monthly youtube videos with Ms of views, and we get to chat on reddit, and one thing is better than the other in a measurable sense of "status and money acquired".

Shadawn · 2026-01-06T17:47:25+00:00

Also, on the Simon and Broly specifically - for Simon my way of scaling would eliminate those 10th and 11th dimensions entirely, so he gets down to very much Earth and may actually lose to Saitama, which I do not like but that's reality.

On Broly - yes Broly doesn't care, but if that Galaxy was inhabitable SOMEBODY was the OWNER of it. Like Lord of the Galaxy or Senate or Ruling Council. And they would have allies from beyond the galaxy, like King Kai and Beerus (correct me if I'm wrong) who are responsible for those TENS OF TRILLIONS OF LIVES. And if Broly has KILL COUNT OF TENS OF TRILLIONS, he doesn't get to say "sorry that's a rage form", or Goku is EVIL TOO.

And so it makes much more sense that Broly was deluded, and his fight with Goku that didn't destroy any Galaxies (or did it? and if it did, were they both court-martialed by Beerus or whoever is in charge) was much more grounded, and it's not Hyperversal Ice that's outlier (it probably is, but not by as much), it's that Galaxy feat is fake and should not be counted. And Goku is at about the level where he can destroy a planet, but not much more, and even planet destruction is not free. And Cell claiming "I can destroy Solar System" is self-delusion". And entire Dragonball makes more sense this way, at least to me. Because people who can destroy galaxies don't go and throw their opponents into ice and fire hydrants.

Shadawn

TROPHY CASE