Is there such a thing as too skilled or versatile a character?

[CarlManvers2019]

This is something I kinda get from reading Sword & Sorcery stories

These guys have skills in multiple fields like stealth, espionage, medicine, leadership, battlefield tactics, hunting and all manner of weaponry ranging from bows, spears, swords, axes, halberds, hammers, maces, knives, parkour and even have the gall to be actually skilled/graceful instead of dangerous berserkers with a more forward/simple moveset of hack, slash and smash into the opponent until they're a bloody pulp

Question is, even if they do have trouble in fighting, would this by any stretch make them "sues" of a sort by virtue of having so many skills that they can do "quests" solo instead of having a team that can act as support or complement lack of specific skills?

 

[Shipmaster Sane]

This is something I kinda get from reading Sword & Sorcery stories

These guys have skills in multiple fields like stealth, espionage, medicine, leadership, battlefield tactics, hunting and all manner of weaponry ranging from bows, spears, swords, axes, halberds, hammers, maces, knives, parkour and even have the gall to be actually skilled/graceful instead of dangerous berserkers with a more forward/simple moveset of hack, slash and smash into the opponent until they're a bloody pulp

Question is, even if they do have trouble in fighting, would this by any stretch make them "sues" of a sort by virtue of having so many skills that they can do "quests" solo instead of having a team that can act as support or complement lack of specific skills?

It depends entirely on their background, if it's a believable part of their skill set, and portrayal. There's tremendous overlap in a lot of weapons and skills, knowing how to handle any melee weapon gives you a leg up on training with basically any other melee weapon, at least compared to someone with no training starting fresh, Hunting and Stealth overlap significantly, for another example. People can learn a wide variety of skills, consider that a modern american soldier is expected to be able to handle a variety of rifles, shotguns, and pistols all with different quirks and functions, explosives, various squad level equipment, vehicles, radios, computers, squad tactics, individual tactics, stealth, scouting, etc etc, all at a high level of competency.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

It depends entirely on their background, if it's a believable part of their skill set, and portrayal. There's tremendous overlap in a lot of weapons and skills, knowing how to handle any melee weapon gives you a leg up on training with basically any other melee weapon, at least compared to someone with no training starting fresh, Hunting and Stealth overlap significantly, for another example. People can learn a wide variety of skills, consider that a modern american soldier is expected to be able to handle a variety of rifles, shotguns, and pistols all with different quirks and functions, explosives, various squad level equipment, vehicles, radios, computers, squad tactics, individual tactics, stealth, scouting, etc etc, all at a high level of competency.

TBF, the kinds of characters I speak of, seem to have gained these skills via experience adventuring solo

Instead of having em all via lots of training before their first big adventure

Experience>Training

 

[Shipmaster Sane]

TBF, the kinds of characters I speak of, seem to have gained these skills via experience adventuring solo

Instead of having em all via lots of training before their first big adventure

Experience>Training

Experience is a good teacher, but is not an actual substitute for training. Point being, you can do something incorrectly for a very, very long time.


Who are you talking about? Do you have an example?

 

[CarlManvers2019]

Experience is a good teacher, but is not an actual substitute for training. Point being, you can do something incorrectly for a very, very long time.


Who are you talking about? Do you have an example?

I finished pretty much all the REH Fantasy stories and some other Sword&Sorcery books, currently am reading Karl Edward Wagner's Kane

Kane's pretty much immortal and has been for thousands of years a guy who's like a more evil Conan, guy was a king, a general, a mercenary, a bandit, a thief, an assassin, a spy, a sorcerer and even a beggar

Dude even up to the last volume I'm reading now has surprising trouble against guys millennia his junior somehow in things like melee. Though it's noted the guy is a physically powerful yet graceful monster on the battlefield

 

[Bear Ribs]

Sue isn't a function of how powerful the character is, it's a function of how the world reacts to the character's power.

I recall being given a book on cartooning once in which the author explained it, not in relation to sues but action, but it made a lot of sense. He showed "his most powerful character" who had the ability to not react to things. Then he did a two-page spread of massive, overmuscled supervillain striking said character and her not noticing. His point being that you can't establish that a character is powerful by how they act, you must show their power by how the environment reacts to them.

Pulp heroes tend to be omni-capable. Indiana Jones is a brilliant archaeologist; clever thinker; athletic; skilled with fist, gun, and bullwhip; etc. He doesn't seem sueish because the world reacts to his strategems appropriately: equally brilliant enemies outwit him, he gets the tar beaten out of him by physically stronger enemies, and when he does succeed the enemy changes their strategy to compensate and overcome him.

The TL;DR is that power of the hero is always good if the setting fits and reacts appropriately. Gypsy Danger is way too powerful in a police procedural but just right during a Kaiju invasion.

 

[Shipmaster Sane]

I finished pretty much all the REH Fantasy stories and some other Sword&Sorcery books, currently am reading Karl Edward Wagner's Kane
Kane's pretty much immortal and has been for thousands of years a guy who's like a more evil Conan, guy was a king, a general, a mercenary, a bandit, a thief, an assassin, a spy, a sorcerer and even a beggar
Dude even up to the last volume I'm reading now has surprising trouble against guys millennia his junior somehow in things like melee. Though it's noted the guy is a physically powerful yet graceful monster on the battlefield

Yknow theres a cap to how good you can get at a thing, or at least exponentially diminishing returns. A 1000 year old immortal swordsman would probably not be meaningfully better than a 100 year old immortal swordsman.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

Yknow theres a cap to how good you can get at a thing, or at least exponentially diminishing returns. A 1000 year old immortal swordsman would probably not be meaningfully better than a 100 year old immortal swordsman.

Before, the very idea of a cap in skill even after so much hard work and experience would sound insulting

But these days, I think you might just need to get “good enough” to be even somewhat a problem for a veteran fighter

 

[Shipmaster Sane]

Before, the very idea of a cap in skill even after so much hard work and experience would sound insulting

But these days, I think you might just need to get “good enough” to be even somewhat a problem for a veteran fighter

Its a thing that decreases, think about it logically, theres no magic at work, how hard you hit or how fast you move is based on mechanics, if you do the thing the same way it works the same way. A boxer with two years of experience is more different compared to a boxer of one year, than a ten year boxer is to a five year boxer. Theres still a difference, but it's less.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

In my experience, whether or not a character is perceived as a "mary sue" depends a lot on the 1. how normal are they for their setting, and 2. can they just effortlessly resolve the plot?

In Trails in the Sky (long running JRPG storyline, very light novel/shounen anime-esque), one of the good guys, Cassius Bright, could be classified as a Mary Sue in other stories. Cassius was a young officer in the Kingdom of Liberl's army. When Liberl was invaded by the Empire, 4 of the 5 cities fell quickly, leaving just the capital and Leiston Fortress. Cassius planned out the use of using airships to carry out special forces operations and retook the Kingdom, becoming Liberl's hero. He then quit the army to join the adventurer's guild and became an S-rank bracer, the fourth ever in the organization's history. He is renowned as one of THE highest power level characters in the setting. He is best friends with everybody and is connected to pretty much every important power in the setting. He is a genius mastermind who can predict everything the bad guys do (the entire plot of the first game revolves around the bad guys being so scared of him, they created a crisis in another country trying to lure Cassius Bright out Liberl, so the bad guys can try to accomplish their real objective in Liberl before Cassius finishes adventuring in the Empire and comes back and stops them). You can't go 15 minutes in the Sky games without some character worshipping Cassius or him being hyped up as this uber dude. And the story and characters also keep going "poor Cassius; he lost his wife, he's a single father now. He has the weight of the world on him. He has selfconfidence issues. Pooooor Cassius!"

But I've never heard anybody call him a mary sue. Probably for two reasons: 1. the conflict of the story can't really be resolved by Cassius. Sure, Cassius can pretty much trivialize any enemy the heroes face, but a lot of Trails' conflict revolves around character relationships, and problems that can't really be solved with brute force (in Trails of Cold Steel, the main character, Rean, pretty much becomes another Cassius, but he nonetheless struggles as he gets blackmailed by the authorities - who are evil - into working for them. Rean is physically powerful, but he can't really just fight his way out of that). The other reason why Cassius works is that he isn't really that special; there are about half a dozen other characters who fulfill the same role as him in the setting (Zin Vaythek, Victor Arseid, Arios MacClaine, Matteus Vander, Aurelia LeGuin, later on Rean Schwarzer, etc). So it's not like he's the only uber strong warrior and legendary hero. We also understand that they attained their strength, wisdom, and connections after having gone through many adventures.


Compare that with Rey. Rey is an anomaly because there isn't really any precedent for a character in the Star Wars films being as ridiculously strong as her. Anakin was the chosen one and not even he performed feats like what she did. Furthermore, Rey didn't earn her power or skills. She hadn't gone on adventures before where she learned how to use the Force or become a strong warrior. At most, she was just a good salvager. It gets ridiculous when within 10 minutes of walking onto the Millenium Falcon, she fixes a problem that Han couldn't figure out for years, on a ship that is ridiculously complex having been jury rigged by Hans for decades. Furthermore, due to Rey's fighting strength, and the fact that the story can be resolved through violence, Rey pretty much just resolves the story by beating everyone. Whereas in prior Star Wars films, the characters were strong but they couldn't just resolve the story by beating up the bad guys. The prequels was all about trying to figure out who the new Sith master was (can't defeat a Sith overlord if you don't know who or where he is), and TES and RotJ were about the relationship between Luke and Vader. Luke could have defeated Vader and the Emperor, but the plot wasn't about defeating them physically.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

Its a thing that decreases, think about it logically, theres no magic at work, how hard you hit or how fast you move is based on mechanics, if you do the thing the same way it works the same way. A boxer with two years of experience is more different compared to a boxer of one year, than a ten year boxer is to a five year boxer. Theres still a difference, but it's less.

Fair, plus Sword&Sorcery isn't like One Piece wherein enough training can result in you being able to cut apart mountains

Nor would you always take the risk of trying to only use a table knife against guys with actual swords, just to show off how good you are

 

[Bear Ribs]

Before, the very idea of a cap in skill even after so much hard work and experience would sound insulting

But these days, I think you might just need to get “good enough” to be even somewhat a problem for a veteran fighter

Eh, consider it from a modern viewpoint.

You have two people, one an experienced hunter guide, the other a veteran military sniper. Both are expert shots and can hit a target at two thousand yards. Ultimately due to both of them having shot hundreds of thousands of rounds in practice and in the field, their limits of accuracy are now less about skill but rather how finely machined their rifles are. Adding another hundred years shooting experience to the soldier won't actually make him better at shooting things than the hunter because they've pretty much hit the peak of possibilities for shooting. They may be differently skilled in other areas, perhaps the hunter is better at tracking and the soldier at hiding, but they've both hit the limits of shooting.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Its a thing that decreases, think about it logically, theres no magic at work, how hard you hit or how fast you move is based on mechanics, if you do the thing the same way it works the same way. A boxer with two years of experience is more different compared to a boxer of one year, than a ten year boxer is to a five year boxer. Theres still a difference, but it's less.

One thing I find interesting is that - in most stories where the protagonist is trying to become a physical stronger, more skilled warrior to defeat the bad guys - there is the presumption that while the good guys are training, the bad guys aren't getting stronger too. It's sorta like video game logic, where the levels of all the enemies you face a preset, while you and your party members are the only beings who are leveling up.

This is... sort of insane. If you decide you're going to become a basket ball player and you're going to train hard and beat Kobe Bryant (RIP), that's... well, that doesn't really make sense. Because while you are training to become better, so is Kobe. He is also playing games. He is also practicing. Unless you can somehow train and become a better player at a faster rate than Kobe, you're never going to catch up to him.


This also brings me to another point. Many times, you have this old, legendary warrior who hasn't fought in a long time. He then gets recruited into the protagonist's party, and then suddenly he's just as strong as he was back then. Realistically, his skills should have degraded tremendously since he last fought (unless he was still training/practicing/putting his skills to use). I was surprised when Trails of Cold Steel brought this up, where Rean walks in on Aurelia training, and she points out that if she doesn't keep practicing, then she's going to lose her uber swordsmanship. Or how in FFXIV Shadowbringers, you meet a former dark lord (who became a bartender) who was feared by powerful heroes... but since she hadn't fought in like 100 years, she straight up tells you that she is a now a useless fighter and would get stomped by a generic town guard, and surrenders to you.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

@Val the Moofia Boss
TBF, I think there's also a degree of talent in play, some people just might not have that instinct that makes them relatively quick into learning or memorizing skills into their muscle memory

MangaDex - See you soon!

mangadex.org

MangaDex - See you soon!

mangadex.org

MangaDex - See you soon!

mangadex.org

MangaDex - See you soon!

mangadex.org

And sometimes those with "talent" need only to know the moves, the rest is them being really good at said moves

This dude started training at 15 and was 21 in this pic, his master's probably like 3-4 decades older and looked well built regardless of his age