Protagonist Power Levels

 Yesterday finished A History of What Comes Next! And supposedly there’s going to be a big announcement for Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla on Monday! Let’s see if I can get the game working by then.

The idea of doing a Note on Spider-Man and why the MCU version struggles to gain cookie points with me was considered, but a quick look through my Google Drive showed me I had already written a Note to that effect back in August 2019. I may revisit that topic, but I think it might be best to first watch No Way Home. Though it may devolve into gushing how amazing Into the Spider-Verse is.

Also I started jotting ideas for another Note but then saw I did that one too. Maybe I’ve written about this too and forgot, but who cares? We’re doing this.

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Protagonist Power Levels

So I’ve been working on my Iron Druid sporkings again and once again, I’m struck by something very frustrating with Atticus as a character: he’s way too powerful to start with. Even if we ignore that in the second chapter of his debut book he’s made practically immune to death (I’m not kidding) he’s still absurdly powerful from the get-go. And he’s more intelligent by miles–the villains are really bad at coming up with plans to kill him. The final battle with his longtime enemy, Aenghus Og, has him reveal that he’s so much more skilled at swordplay and so Atticus quite easily dispatches his foe.

It’s pretty stupid.

Really good hero/villain confrontations require the writers to work out a delicate balance of power. If the antagonist is not a challenge to the protagonist’s on physical terms, he must be in some other way. I’m not saying that the protagonist has to be a wimp compared to the antagonist–though it’s more relatable to the average reader I think–but being more powerful right off the bat? Probably not the right track. Hounded tries to hide this by having a lot of stupid subplots that kill the time until the finale.

Part of the difficulty of writing Superman, for instance, is writing a story in which he fights someone because, well, he’s Superman. When he fights someone, it tends to be someone who is in his weight class, power-wise, like General Zod, Doomsday, or Mongul. Or someone with kryptonite. And then there’s Lex Luthor, who isn’t as strong as Superman, but is wickedly intelligent and uses that brain of his to start evil plots that Superman has to stop. Also he carries a butt-ton of kryptonite (which actually gave him cancer in the DCAU).

In the conflicts in which his strength isn’t enough (which is more often than people think), Superman has to think of some other way to defeat the villain.

Or in the case of long-running serieses, it’s good to see how the protagonists grow over time. In something like the webseries RWBY. When we start the series, the main cast members are all incredibly skilled fighters by normal people standards, and the usual monsters they mow down with ease. But they’re still teenagers, and as the show goes on and they come across bigger monsters and other humans who are much more experienced, they’re very clearly outclassed. It’s not until about Volume 8 or so that our heroes even come close to fighting Neo on something like even footing–and even then, it’s a team effort. The only ones who clearly manage to completely trounce her are someone with godlike magical power, and someone who has decades of experience on her.

I think a good balance is Dresden Files? Harry Dresden is a very powerful wizard, and can take out mooks easily enough, but he’s still mortal, and many of the villains he faces aren’t, and are several levels above him. Most of the big villains are nowhere near characters he can beat on his own–and if they are, they’re smart enough to not face him alone. Again, it’s not about being able to out-magic his enemies, being more powerful than them. It’s about out-thinking them on many occasions, and he has to think of ways out of the conflict that don’t involve a straight-up fight. Sometimes that involves invoking the enemy’s weakness (like with faeries and iron), or it’s about getting someone else to take care of the problem (like summoning Mab or the Wardens to clean up a problem).

The point I’m making is: you absolutely cannot have your protagonist be superior to your antagonist in every way and still make it feel like a satisfying story. Maybe your hero is stronger than your villain! But then you have to work out why that villain still poses a challenge to the hero, in a way that’s not “Because the Plot refuses to let them meet until the end.”

And this doesn’t mean your heroes have to be weak to begin with! But there’s a difference between ‘hero starts out strong,’ and ‘hero starts out, and continues to be, able to curbstomp his problems with no difficulty.’ Leveling up the hero as the story goes on is one way to do it. Making your hero have to outsmart or outmaneuver the enemy is another.

Just don’t try working with an invincible hero from the start. It’ll either be really boring or really annoying.

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