One Man Party: Difference between revisions

A (typically) RPG and [[Strategy RPG|SRPG]] Trope, wherein the engine allows a single character to become vastly stronger than the rest of the team, but then either not be punished for this, or the punishment fails to counteract the practice. An alternate form of this Trope is a game that allows characters to fall through the cracks and become vastly ''weaker'' than the rest of the team, and require special effort to fix.

 

 

This is often cyclic, with one character becoming slightly stronger, making it more likely for them to land the finishing blow, or survive the boss's attacks, leading to them gaining more levels and strength, making it easier for them to kill the enemies and survive and so on...

Some RPG players take advantage of this trope in order to do a [[Solo Character Run]], a variety of [[Self-Imposed Challenge]] that has the player go through a game using only one character out of an entire party.

 

 

{{examples}}

 

== [[Fighting Game]] ==

* ''Skullgirls'' has a variation in the form of the Ratio System. Each player, instead of being forced to select three characters for a full team, can either select one, two, or three, and the game adjusts damage and health accordingly. So if Player A chooses only one character while Player B uses three, Player A will have much more health and damage, but won't have access to assists or extra characters.

** ''[[Video Game/Capcom Vs SNK|Capcom Vs SNK]] 2'' previously used a Ratio System to govern its battles; players had access to a total of four points, with a maximum team size of three, and characters were handicapped in terms of offense and defense in accordance to the Ratio assigned them. Thus you could have a split of 2-1-1, 2-2, 3-1, or 4. Boss fights were always against one opponent at Ratio 4.

* A properly built Cyrus in ''[[Dawn of War]] 2'' is capable of soloing entire maps, though this requires a lot of player skill.

 

* In [[MARDEK]], the titular character becomes this in Chapter 3, due to the fact that [[Can't Drop the Hero|you can't take him out of the party.]]

* ''[[Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles]]: My Life as a King'' suffers from this a bit, as the difficulty level of the dungeons goes up quite fast, and any weaker characters tend to get left in the dust.

** Not to mention the fact that whoever completes any behest that involves killing a boss (ie. most of them that aren't just "explore location x") is awarded a medal that either changes one of their AI traits or increases their base stats by a varying amount depending on the relative difficulty of the boss they killed. Since the stat-boosting medals are available in unlimited quantity, the stronger the character, the more likely they are to kill the boss and because all the medals are awarded only to the party leader, this is a far bigger factor in making a single character stupidly overpowered.

** The first game can be an example of this if you don't have a spare GBA or two for multiplayer

* In ''[[Final Fantasy IX]]'', the main character Zidane eventually does orders of magnitude more damage with his standard attacks and is much faster than Steiner(without his secret weapons) or Freya. Vivi can eventually outmatch him once he gets Doublecast, but at the cost of ludicrous amounts of MP.

** Unless Freya has her Dragon's Crest ability and the party has killed enough dragons, in which case she winds up dealing 9999 damage every turn, regardless of enemy defence, for a paltry MP cost.

* In ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'', [[Can't Drop the Hero|Sora]] gains experience at the same rate and at times is a lower level than Goofy. However, he gains more abilities to fight with, can use all the spells Donald can and has stronger weaponry than either. The reason for adding [[Limit Break|Limit Attacks]] in the sequel was to actually give a purpose and need to different party characters.

*** Not really. When it comes to beating the game with a one mon army, there are only two things that matter: they should not be weak to the stronger Elite 4 pokemon - as in, able to survive a few hits - and have a movepool diverse enough so you can hit almost everything by neutral damage.

** In the earlier Pokemon generations, it was entirely feasible to beat the game using only a single Pokemon (plus "HM slaves") in the ''first playthrough'', particularly if you were young, had little RPG experience, and/or were not very interested in the tedium of equally leveling your mons.

*** In all the generations the Water starter can obliterate the game with ease if you train him alone just by beating all the trainers around. They have balanced stats, have a wide movepool that allows them to hit grass-types for double damage and at least neutral on everything else, and have only two weaknesses, electrics who are damn frail and grass, wich are owned by Ice Beam, an attack that all the water starters can learn.

** There are also a few ways to level up Mons outside of battle, but they'll still end up weaker than ones who leveled up via battle.

* ''[[Persona 3]]'' and ''[[Shin Megami Tensei]]'' games avoid this, as your monsters and Persona level up very slowly compared to your main character, who can just summon stronger ones as needed. Certain monsters do stick around, for example the ones based on Deities or with special attacks or immunities, but are quickly outclassed by the other monsters due to sheer levels.

** But it also plays it straight in that, for example, your party healer has a high likelihood of never leaving the team, and so winding up being second only to the main character in experience points. Doubly so if your healer has one of the "Growth" abilities, allowing them to gain XP even when not in active combat.

*** Allies who are significantly lower in level than the protagonist gain XP much faster than normal, so it's not too tough to make them competitive again if, say, you need to swap someone out due to their elemental weakness against a bosses attacks

** Nocturne plays this straight with the Fiend class of demons. You need to beat some powerful bosses and collect some rare items from the bonus dungeon before you can summon them, but they're well worth it. Thanks to their ridiculous resistances and special abilities, these demons tend to stick around FAR longer than anyone else you can recruit.

** Of course, a far more obvious application of this trope in ''Persona 3'' is the main character himself. The simple fact that he's the only character capable of using multiple personae makes him FAR more powerful than any other character, largely because none of the other have access to more than one elemental attack (and some have none). Even more ridiculous if you start a New Game + game, where he retains his level from the previous play through as well as all his top-end equipment and access to all the powerful personae he had in his Persona Compendium. He can literally smash any monster in the first half of the game in 1 blow.

*** Averted in ''[[Persona 4]]'', where the main character ''doesn't'' keep his levels. (He ''does'', however, keep the Compendium, his money, and his social stats, which erases a ''lot'' of the scrambling around from the first playthrough.)

*** Each game's Valkyrie is the source of DME ([[Life Force]]) for her entire party and her companions will quickly dissipate if she isn't on the field.

** A modified version of this comes up in ''Silmeria'', as by the endgame, one optimally-equipped person has a much higher chance of slaying enemies alone and outnumbered than with a full party with similar equipment. Dylan, for example, when alone and properly equipped, can take out seven levels of the [[Bonus Level of Hell|Seraphic Gate]] without any special buffs (such as Fencer's Familiarities, which increase a stat). Also, with the exceptions of Alicia and Rufus, every other main character is gone from the party at some point, and most do not return until the bonus dungeon.

** This gets really nasty at end game where normal enemies can insta kill Paula, rendering her offensive skills moot.

* In the ''Star Wars: [[Knights of the Old Republic]]'' games, the player character is forced to be by his or herself numerous times, and they wind up learning combinations of abilities that the others can't learn and don't even fight the final boss with them.

** And in the second game...the player character even gets their own PRESTIGE CLASS. Sith Lord and Jedi Weapons Master wind up outclassing all the other characters, many of which become jedi.

* ''[[Fallout]]'' games have frequently suffered from this, even more so in the modern FPS-based versions - sure, you can take on that pack of Deathclaws, but is anyone else in your party really going to survive?

** Since party members are [[Killed Off for Real]] when they die, solo adventuring is practically mandatory in the deadlier zones if you feel any affection at all for your companions.

*** The companion control interface in ''Fallout 2'' actually lampshades the party members' tendency to shoot the player in the back in the previous game. When giving the NPC instructions on when to use burst fire, the safest option is "Be Absolutely Sure You Won't Hit Me."

** [[Fallout: New Vegas]] rewards the player for having a follower or two (the [[Arbitrary Headcount Limit]] restricts you to 1 humanoid and 1 non-humanoid, however), which each follower bestowing a "Companion Perk" that helps you in some way (for example, letting you target cloaked enemies in V.A.T.S., slowing the rate of item degradation, or increasing the effectiveness of healing items). The ''Lonesome Road'' DLC adds the "[[Title Drop|Lonesome Road]]" Perk, which increases damage and V.A.T.S. accuracy, but only appears when you have no Companion Perks.

* ''[[Suikoden]]'' tends to make sure this doesn't happen too badly. Your protagonist is always in battle and stays a few levels above the rest of the party, but the way the experience scales tends to make sure new additions, latecomers, and those who were gone for a while get up to speed soon enough, often gaining multiple levels per battle until they reach the appropriate ballpark. Given the series' propensity toward [[Loads and Loads of Characters]], this is pretty much the only way they could have pulled it off.

* Due to the party make-up mechanics in ''[[Final Fantasy IV]]'', [[The Hero|Cecil's]] transformation (and accompanying level reset) [[Heel Face Turn|into a paladin]] was likely an attempt to avert this, as otherwise he'd likely get a dozen or so levels above the rest of the party without trying hard and stay there.

* In ''[[Shadow Hearts]]'' the main character so dwarfs everyone else that the main discussion about what groups to use to fight the endgame bosses is limited to "Who is the best item caddy for Yuri?"

* Crono of ''[[Chrono Trigger]]'' is the hero and party leader. He can't ever leave the party voluntarily, so every time you switch out characters he gets stronger in relation to his companions. It's not really a big deal: there are only eight "Techs" (abilities) for each character, and every character earns these techs at exactly the same level of work. Once you've maxed out the whole party (which you have probably done by the end of the game as a matter of course,) the whole point is moot. Even if you haven't maxed out everyone, the active party only holds three people and you're practically guaranteed to have three high-level badasses by then.

** Of course, once he leaves the party ''involuntarily'' {{spoiler|(via eradication by [[Big Bad]])}}, it's pretty much anything goes. You can have him on the bench for the rest of the game and still make it through.

* ''[[Dragon Quest III]]'' makes this easy as all party members other than the main character are optional and XP is split between party members instead of copied; you can reduce your party to just the hero and be earning 4x the "normal" XP, allowing the main character to level up enough that it doesn't matter that he's alone. A character of the Sage class can also be something of this, as they can cast both Priest and Wizard spells but with better weapons and armor than either of those classes.

** ''[[Dragon Quest IX]]'' does the same, plus the XP split is weighted in favor of the stronger characters. If someone falls behind because their class needs more XP to level up than another guy's, they're not going to start catching up until the others start hitting the level cap.

* Averted in ''[[.hack GU Games|.hack//G.U]]'' where characters that aren't in your party can still gain levels after certain events have passed.

* Actually averted for the most part in ''[[The Reconstruction]]'', where {{spoiler|Moke}} is really the only character who can hold their own against all comers, since everyone else can only inflict two kinds (or even only one kind) of damage. {{spoiler|Moke}} isn't really an example though, since his Soul attack is very difficult to use and he has terrible stats. There is one character who stands out, though: Santes. She's widely considered a [[Game Breaker]], due to the fact that she has some really good healing spells as well as what is quite possibly the strongest direct damage spell in the ''entire game''. However, she can't inflict Body damage, so she's kind of at a standstill if she's facing a high-Soul, low-Body opponent.

** ''[[Phantom Brave]]'' goes to some lengths to try to avert this. Aside from main character Marona, who tends to have weak attack stats, all your characters can only stay on the battlefield for a certain number of turns, so if you try to rely on a single, powerful attacker to win fights, you'll fail. On the other hand, you can also improve your weapons in addition to your characters, so you could easily end up with a single [[Infinity+1 Sword|Infinity Plus One... Fish]] that makes its wielder much stronger than anything else on the battlefield. (Of course, given that the enemies in the game can steal items from you, this can be a double edged fish, although there are precautions you can take to lower the chances of that happening.)

* ''[[Ogre Battle]]'' has a system that causes an enemy squad to flee back to their base if their squad leaders are defeated, wherein they regen to full and charge right back into the fray. Ergo, if your defensive units can kill a squad leader but not the rest of the squad, they will gain a rather large amount of experience, rather quickly, as the squad plays ping-pong between your squad and it's base. The game attempts to fix this by causing higher level characters that beat weaker level enemies to slowly turn evil and lowers their charisma, which [[Affably Evil|even evil classes need]].

** Not forgetting a spell that allows a character to be transformed into a weapon with powerful stat enhancing properties.

** Similarly, Orlandu joins the party with the ability to learn every single special sword attack in the game, but knowing few other skills. <s> With a little work,</s> Orlandu easily surpasses the other characters and stays way out ahead.

*** Particularly notable in that Orlandu not only possesses all the attacks of a previous character, AND the attacks of an enemy (Who cannot join your party), but the attacks of a character who has yet to join your party. Despite being VERY powerful, Melidoul is never used simply because Orlandu beats her to the punch and does it better, and has abilities that work on monsters (who you fight a lot of later in the game)

*** Really, Orlandu is the epitome of the One Man Party, as he's widely considered the resident Game Breaker. He's basically the I Win button. (Guess there's a reason why he's referred to as Thunder God in the story)

*** And he comes equipped with Excalibur, which grants Haste, and allows him to go first and absorb Holy damage. So when paired with the mentioned Math Skill/Holy strategy... Instant Win period.

** Any character can be made into an extremely potent [[One-Man Army]] with the [[Game Breaker|Math Skill command]]. It is often possible to nail the entire enemy force on your first turn with a powerful Holy spell. Since Math Skill can hit enemies anywhere on the battlefield, almost every story fight can be finished before your character is put in any danger at all.

** In ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics Advance]]'' it was entirely possible for an Assassin, due to her [[Game Breaker]] status, to become one of these without trying very hard. The Assassin has access to an attack called "Last Breath", a One-Hit KO spells. Like most spells of its kind, it is supposed to be balanced by its low accuracy. However, it is fairly easy to have an Assassin level as an Archer until it learns the Concentrate ability. Concentrate is a support ability that raises the accuracy of all abilities (Even non-archer ones) to around a 90-99% success rate. As you might be able to guess, Concentrate is nerfed into a much more moderate increase in the sequel.

 

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[[Category:CRPG Tropes]]