scrape_r_rational/data/cache2/3iertz.md

The implicit rules of popular characters

• Author: u/None *

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• Score: 41

• Created: 2015-08-26T01:22:49

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u/protagnostic [+24] (an hour later)

Most popular characters have an implicit rule preventing the use of their abilities for major personal gain: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ReedRichardsIsUseless

or alteration of the status quo: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StatusQuoIsGod

u/None [+7] (5 hours later)

If StatusQuoIsNotGod, you need an explanation for why whatever you're changing now hadn't already been changed before.

Seven dragonballs to grant a wish? Why is Earth/Namek only being attacked NOW?

u/Putnam3145 [+18] (5 hours later)

Seven dragonballs to grant a wish? Why is Earth/Namek only being attacked NOW?

Believe it or not, this is actually explained in-story; the only reason the existence of the dragon balls is leaked out to the universe at large is because Raditz kept his communicator on when Krillin, Bulma etc. were talking about them after Goku died. Earth apparently had no aliens heading there before Raditz who weren't too young to remember anything different and Namek apparently kept their secret really well.

u/Terkala [+3] (2 days later)

Namekians were shown refusing to answer trivial questions about the dragonball while their entire village was in the process of being extrrminated.

So thats also well backed up in canon.

u/Kumquatodor [+1] (a month later)

I actually buy that Reed Richards is Useless.

I mean, even if you can make tech that advanced, that doesn't mean anyone else could. How would you mass produce it?

u/protagnostic [+1] (a month later)

Duplication ray.

u/Kumquatodor [+1] (a month later)

So, in order to make the ridiculously advanced tech, you'd need to make more advanced tech? And I'm really not an economist (so I could be wrong), but wouldn't it devalue a thing to have it easily clone-able?

Besides, what if the ray is stolen? That could be very bad.

u/protagnostic [+2] (a month later)

In order to mass produce it yes, but in order to make it in the first place no. In any case, I was being flippant. Duplication rays are such a common plot device in comics that it seemed the obvious solution.

"devalue" in the sense that the price in dollars would go down, but not in the sense that people would derive less value from using it. Computers are hugely cheaper now than they were thirty years ago, but they're also more useful. Keeping the duplication ray private would admittedly allow you to capture a much larger portion of the value created for society, but it wouldn't change the amount of value so created.

While there are potentially dangerous or harmful uses of a duplication ray, I'm much less worried about them than I am about the harmful uses of, say, a nuclear warhead.

u/LiteralHeadCannon [+22] (2 hours later)

In rational fiction, these implicit rules should either be discarded or explicitly brought up and explained.

u/CuriousBlueAbra [+22] (3 hours later)

Of course, but they're often so ingrained in the characters it's rare to see them until you really sit down and think about it. I wanted to make a thread dedicated to that element, noting the weird meaningless restricts characters obey beyond the traditional "No immortality", "No ambition", etc. etc.

So another example might be the implicit rule everyone in the X-men unvierse has that the mutant issue can only be addressed monolithically. The guy whose entire power is growing spikes is utterly irrelevant in the discussion about what to do with the kind of person whose brainfarts can exterminate mankind. Yet they're always lumped in together like it's the same category of problem.

u/Geminii27 [+9] (6 hours later)

they're often so ingrained in the characters it's rare to see them until you really sit down and think about it.

Sometimes, it only becomes clear after you think "If there was a completely different character starting from scratch with the same powers/resources/setup, who thought about things rationally, what might they do with those resources?" It can help with not subconsciously filtering the resulting answers so they fit the personality/MO/backstory of the canon character.

(It can also help to cycle a number of previously existing characters, including ones who tend to use resources to hand in unexpected ways, through the starting position. The result may not be comprehensive, but it can often generate a larger starting set of ideas and lead to some interesting directions of thought.)

u/None [+1] (22 hours later)

The guy whose entire power is growing spikes is utterly irrelevant in the discussion about what to do with the kind of person whose brainfarts can exterminate mankind.

Is it? I think the first might be able to quite aptly answer the second, given a chance.

u/Salivanth [+3] (a day later)

I think this is from the point of view of non-mutants. If you had to decide what to do about mutants, you would probably treat existential risks (like Brainfart) very differently to someone whose only power is countered by an assault rifle. (like Spike)

What you would likely not do is entangle Brainfart's fate with Spike's, so that if Brainfart was too dangerous to live, Spike needs to be killed too, or if Spike can be set free, so can Brainfart.

u/None [+4] (a day later)

Oh, yes. I misunderstood you.

However if I knew there was a "mutant gene" that was heritable, and caused unpredictable levels of unknown existential destructive capacity ranging from planetary scale mind control to the ability to call colony drops to reality manipulation, I might try to find a way to remove all copies of that gene from the gene pool. After all, it's not like just because Spike is weak, the offspring of him and some other apparently weak mutant would also be weak. The power level is unpredictable and uncontrollable.

u/Salivanth [+2] (a day later)

This is also a fair point. I'm not actually familiar with X-Men, so I'm not sure which one it is, but in your scenario, I agree, Spike is potentially much more dangerous than the sum of his powers.

u/Terkala [+2] (2 days later)

In xmen, mutant children often have related powers. Though all of the main characters are exceptions to this rule.

A shapechanget has a child that can teleport.

A magnetic field controller has a speedster and a demigod(can manipulate reality at will, though frequency is related to effect).

This demigod is scarlet witch, and at one point she simply rewrites reality to fit her whims, and then falls into a coma.

u/Roxolan [+3] Head of antimemetiWalmart senior assistant manager (2 days later)

What you would likely not do is entangle Brainfart's fate with Spike's, so that if Brainfart was too dangerous to live, Spike needs to be killed too, or if Spike can be set free, so can Brainfart.

I would totally expect this from the average person, and from the politicians who cater to them.

You can see a sliver of that in how people treat mental illnesses. And that's when the worst possible consequence of being too nice is getting attacked by a foaming lunatic, not your entire city being levelled.

And even if the friendly neighbourhood mutant tells you that all he can do is grow itty bitty body spikes, you can't actually know that he's telling the whole truth.

u/Salivanth [+2] (2 days later)

I agree on all points. When I said 'you', I was referring to the poster specifically.

I fully expect that if this happened in real life, politicians would point to the most or least harmless mutants, and use this to support their political positions towards all mutants. And considering how a 'mere' terror attack like 9/11 went down, the first time a mutant DID cause large-scale destruction, it wouldn't go well politically for the mutants, even the ones who wouldn't or couldn't do such things.

I mean, we went to war against Iraq, an entire country, because we thought they MIGHT have WMD's. There are mutants who walk around with that kind of power in their back pocket. (I think. I am not familiar with X-Men, but if we're talking about people on the level of Brainfart, we can turn that down a couple of notches for Pocket Nuke.)

u/PeridexisErrant [+30] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (an hour later)

Voldemort: one plot per year, to coincide with the end of the year. No mind magic. No competent followers. No contact with or inspiration from muggles whatsoever.

u/noggin-scratcher [+11] I am a happy tree (9 hours later)

No mind magic.

Which is kind of weird given all the talk about how lots of people were under an Imperius in the first war.

u/PeridexisErrant [+12] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (10 hours later)

Yet somehow this highly effective strategy is abandoned the second time around - aside from maybe the Minister, but that's tactical use rather than as a terror weapon.

/wizards

u/sir_pirriplin [+4] (11 hours later)

Malfoy tried to get the McGuffin in the fifth book by casting Imperius on a member of the Order. That's how they found out the McGuffin drives anyone who touches it crazy, except for the protagonists.

u/PeridexisErrant [+5] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (13 hours later)

Good point.

Here's another Voldemort rule I thought of though: "All conflict must be within the laws and customs of war". This rules out terror campaigns, most attacks on neutral civilians, certain classes of weapons and tactics... And it's almost always upheld in fiction, even by the worst (human) villains.

u/sir_pirriplin [+8] (13 hours later)

That also happens, just off-screen.

Supposedly, Dementors were feeding on muggles and "breeding" uncontrollably, and giants destroyed a bridge or something.

Of course, we never get to see any of that stuff, but the Minister of Magic assures the Prime Minister that that's happening, and obliviators are working overtime.

u/gbear605 [+3] history’s greatest story (2 days later)

All of that is attacks against muggles however. I guess a better rule would be "All conflict against wizards must be within the laws and customs of war"

u/MugaSofer [+2] (3 days later)

Isn't torturing and killing civilians against the laws and customs of war? And weren't the Dark Mark attacks essentially terrorist in nature, even if they were often targeted at the enemy's allies?

u/pleasedothenerdful [+6] (12 hours later)

all the talk about how lots of people were under an Imperius in the first war.

I always understood this as "Death Eaters just don't use mind magic, or at least not with any regularity or effectiveness, but 'I was Imperiused!' was the excuse all the rich, powerful, smart, good-looking, or upper-crust Death Eaters like Lord Malfoy used to dodge any consequences, while all the poor, dumb, or weird-looking rank-and-file Death Eaters like the Lestranges went to Azkaban, and everybody damn well knows it but what can you do."

More of a two Magical Britains thing than an actual use of Imperius by Death Eaters thing.

u/noggin-scratcher [+6] I am a happy tree (12 hours later)

I'm sure I remember someone talking about "The dark days", and how terrible it was to not know who you could trust because they could be under Imperius...

Maybe Moody in the 4th film (can't remember if the same scene occurs in the book) when he was demonstrating the Unforgivables to the class, although saying that he would have been Barty Crouch Jr at the time so maybe not quite as reliable a source as if it had come from actual-Moody.

u/MugaSofer [+3] (a day later)

No mind magic.

I'm pretty sure there was mind magic in Deathly Hallows. They had a puppet Minister for a while, stuff like that.

Also, Imperius was used extensively in Goblet of Fire, albeit mostly by proxies, and Voldemort broke an Obliviate in that book -albeit using Crucio, which is ambiguously mind magic.

u/None [+1] (3 days later)

Imperius doesn't work that well in the books - remember than 4th years can resist it, so it's not quite as strong as it might seem.

u/ansible [+10] The Culture (13 hours later)

I guess it depends on the version of Batman, but most of those rules have been broken at some time or another by 1990s movies Batman, Batman Beyond, etc.

But yeah, I agree with /u/LiteralHeadCannon that these rules should have some reasoning behind them.

the Green Lantern has an implicit rule against creating any construct whose effect would be too brutal (no turning his enemy's brains to mush via razor wire up the nose, no blinding his enemies with retina-destroying brightness, no railgun constructs launching pebbles at mach 3 at the enemy's skull).

You might enjoy what a DC Comics-savvy Orange Lantern originally from our universe has been up to:

https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/with-this-ring-young-justice-si-story-only.272850/

u/Frommerman [+2] (a day later)

I am LOVING this series, and I'm not even a comics fan.

u/None [+10] (16 hours later)

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u/Quietus42 [+6] (17 hours later)

• The Flash will not use his super speed to throw things at .9c.

Well that does tend to leave quite the mess.

If course, a relativistic punch would also be a nuclear weapon.

Re:

no railguns

This is how you Lantern.

Edit: formatting

u/FuguofAnotherWorld [+2] Roll the Dice on Fate (20 hours later)

Well that does tend to leave quite the mess .

Sometimes a mess is just what you need. Not often, but it happens. You could bolt that guy onto a spaceship and make him into a relativistic canon.

u/Quietus42 [+2] (21 hours later)

Sounds like a possible existential risk to single planet organisms.

How large of an object can he accelerate? Oh! Could he accelerate a object containing a black hole or antimatter?

u/FuguofAnotherWorld [+3] Roll the Dice on Fate (22 hours later)

No idea. He draws power from the 'speed force', allowing him to ignore all sorts of physical laws where they might be inconvenient. Little things like friction and momentum and there not being enough gravity to keep him on the ground and air particles hitting him in the face.

If you want to figure out to get infinite power or destroy the world or time travel, I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard with that power. Wouldn't even need to think particularly hard.

u/None [+9] (a day later)

[deleted]

u/MadScientist14159 [+1] WIP: Sodium Hypochlorite (Rational Bleach) Eventually. Maybe. (3 days later)

Yup.

The whole "You can summon hurricanes, stop complaining that you can't also shapeshift." thing. Forget an average group of monsters, Percy can level a city if the mood takes him.

u/None [+1] (4 days later)

Honestly, a lot of the new introduced characters in that second series felt so superfluous. They were just retooled Percy Jackson with inferior powers-- Jason, Frank, even Leo to some extent, felt redundant. Though Leo could build things, so he was pretty cool.

But so many moments in that series I just wanted to shout ""Percy you have split a Glacier in half, cracked a bridge in half, held up the sky, and fought armies of monsters. There's nothing to fear here (except in Tartarus.)"

My favorite moments of that series were in Tartarus, with Percy and Annabeth, because they were by far the best characters in that series.

u/MadScientist14159 [+1] WIP: Sodium Hypochlorite (Rational Bleach) Eventually. Maybe. (4 days later)

Exactly.

Percy is very powerful. If you have a decent sized group of similarly powerful allies with him you seriously need to up the threat level of his enemies.

u/None [+1] (4 days later)

Yeah that's why Tartarus rocked. Percy and Annabeth were both constantly at edge, they were always weakened but still had some great showings, Percy controls poison and other Rivers of Underworld and shows off his dark side, and their relationship is really shown in a great light.

Another thing that bothered me about the second series was Calypso's story-line. I mean, its true that Percy forgot about her, but he had: lost his memory, been killing giants and titans, and had ZERO time off from his mission to save the world. Also, at some point, we should see consequences for the Gods breaking their Styx vows and not freeing Calypso like they promised Percy. Instead it all falls on Percy.

I'm really hoping or the next series to have some sort of massive rebellion against the Gods. Like Percy and campers and random allies uniting against the Gods and killing off the Olympians because they seriously, absolutely, suck. It would also fit with the themes in Greek myth of sons killing fathers, so ....

u/ArgentStonecutter [+7] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (10 hours later)

Star Trek's Federation implicitly has a rule banning elective cybernetics

They also have rules about not deliberately "waking up" holodeck characters despite the fact that it happens all the time by accident. Building self-aware robots is really hard, and they spend a lot of resources on trying to figure out why, but you can get the same result with a hand-sized "holo-emitter" and a bit of software.

and beaming enemy crews into space

Can't beam through shields unless it's necessary for the plot.

u/IllusoryIntelligence [+6] (18 hours later)

To be fair the federation actually has explicit rules regarding transhumanism. Doctor Bashir's storylines in DS9 sometimes involved his own illegally modified nature.
The federation taboo against transhumanism being decidedly irrational is a different matter, though not unrealistic given their last serious attempt at it almost ended in genocide.

u/ArgentStonecutter [+2] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (18 hours later)

So the holodeck protocols that keep holodeck characters from being self-aware are kind of like the Butlerian Jihad?^* How disappointing.

So, what about Data?

^* ^Now ^I ^want ^to ^see ^a ^good ^Federation/Culture ^crossover ^more ^than ^ever.

u/IllusoryIntelligence [+2] (19 hours later)

Unfortunately Data has an much less rational story to him. His positronic brain is the irreproducible product of a lone genius who refuses to create more.

u/ArgentStonecutter [+1] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (19 hours later)

But do "they" (the SMotF) approve of him not?

If not, why do they give him so much leeway?

If so, why not just manufacture more portable holoemitters?

u/IllusoryIntelligence [+2] (19 hours later)

If I remember correctly originally the federation weren't terribly happy about him and didn't consider him to have legal personhood at first. His being irreproducible was a key factor in not destroying him. Holo AIs as I understand it could reproduce as they didn't require unique hardware to function making them a greater threat.
 
I should specify that it has been some time since I last watched TNG I may be off in my recollection here, I'm not sure if the matter of reproducibility was made explicit or something I inferred.

u/ArgentStonecutter [+2] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (19 hours later)

Holo AIs as I understand it could reproduce as they didn't require unique hardware to function making them a greater threat.

So they put them on every starship and space station in the Federation, with only ludicrously inadequate Safety Protocols keeping them from burgeoning into full sapience. BECAUSE PLOT TOKENS.

u/redrach [+1] (20 hours later)

I think you're overestimating how many holodeck characters turned sentient. It's a vanishingly rare occurrence, at least until Voyager and its Doctor (who was mass-produced).

I'm not sure whether the holodeck safety protocols have anything to do with it. As far as I know those are only in place to ensure that nothing on the holodeck is lethal (and even then as a convenient plot token to have them malfunction and cause tension).

u/ArgentStonecutter [+2] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (20 hours later)

I think you're overestimating how many holodeck characters turned sentient.

Two in TNG, three incidents with multiple characters in Voyager.

• Moriarty
• Redblock
• The Doctor
• Leonardo
• The holodeck characters Janeway gave to the Hirojens, who seem to have all "woken up" (though maybe it was only the survivors).

I didn't really follow any other series. But that's two crews and maybe three ships (I don't recall which enterprise Redblock happened on), and they had multiple incidents on each. If you look at Star Trek rationally, that's actually a pretty high incidence.

I'm not sure whether the holodeck safety protocols have anything to do with it.

I can't argue against that, but given how often it happens it's likely there is some specific mechanism. I just used "safety protocols" because that's the usual handwavium.

u/redrach [+1] (22 hours later)

There's another on DS9, a holo-singer who is aware that he's a hologram and is perfectly content with that.

Despite all these cases I still maintain that it's a rare event. The show tells you as much, and the characters certainly act as if it is. This doesn't strike me as unreasonable because all of them happened in special circumstances.

The Enterprise-D's computer has been stated to be unusually powerful, as befitting its status as the Federation flagship, and that's the reason given for its ability to generate sapient holograms. That combined with the relatively-new holodeck technology resulted in the inadvertent creation of Moriarty and Redblock.

The Doctor was never designed to be sapient, but deliberate modifications were made to his programming by the Voyager crew to allow him to attain sufficient complexity that he could be considered self-aware. They only did so because they had no one else to fill the role of ship doctor, so they were forced to upgrade their emergency hologram into one.

Leonardo seems to have been allowed to attain sapience because of the Voyager crew's boredom. Weak justification there, but I can't think of anything better.

The Hirojen have been stated to deliberately tweak the holodeck's programming to create realistic prey. They actually wanted self-aware holograms to hunt and kill, so where the creation of sapient life was seen as unethical by the Federation in their case it was actually what they were aiming for.

To sum up it isn't that the Federation has some sort of ironclad rule against creating AI, or deliberate safety protocols against it. They just see it as unethical and a hassle to deal with when it happens by accident. In situations where they do need AI (most notably Voyager) they're willing to go along with whatever's needed to keep them functioning.

u/ArgentStonecutter [+2] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (a day later)

Despite all these cases I still maintain that it's a rare event.

That's not rare. Out of three installations depicted, it happens by accident in all three. And that's just the cases where it's been noticed. If some WWII soldier hologram woke up half an hour before being gunned down by Lt. Paris in a D-Day sim, would anyone know about it?

My point is that if it's that easy to happen by accident, why aren't they doing it deliberately? AI is clearly not hard. It doesn't take a lone genius to make a positronic brain to get AI.

The answer is, they've got rules against it.

Someone else in the thread asked why the other, what, hundred and fifty races (species?) in the Federation don't have rules against it. That one doesn't bother me so much. Humans are the ten ton gorilla, that's why.

But then there's the non-Federation races...

u/redrach [+1] (20 hours later)

The Federation has rules against genetic modification of humans because of the wars that were fought on Earth over that prior to the discovery of warp travel and the subsequent formation of the Federation. Apparently those events have left them so traumatized that they refuse to even consider genetic manipulation.

So it's a Butlerian-Jihad-rule in that sense. But they do not have any rules against the creation of AI that I'm aware of. Data is the one of the few androids in existence because apparently creating AI is very hard. That doesn't stop others from trying, though.

The reason that holodeck characters coming to life is seen as problematic is that you're effectively creating sentient life forms that you're then responsible for when you weren't trying to do anything of the sort. Almost like an unplanned pregnancy, except worse, since they're 'born' fully sentient.

u/ArgentStonecutter [+1] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (20 hours later)

The reason that holodeck characters coming to life is seen as problematic is that you're effectively creating sentient life forms that you're then responsible for when you weren't trying to do anything of the sort. Almost like an unplanned pregnancy, except worse, since they're 'born' fully sentient.

Of course, you don't want to have that happen accidentally, especially when they're based on simulations of fictional criminals, but given how easy it seems to be... there's got to be some reason they don't do it deliberately.

u/MugaSofer [+1] (3 days later)

There was that one AI - well, more of a partial upload - that they made on TOS, which was plugged into a spaceship and then proceeded to kill a bunch of people. Might have put them off the creation of AI, although it clearly wasn't entirely illegal.

u/JackStargazer [+1] Primordial Apologist (21 hours later)

It wasn't even the Federation as a whole's attempt, just Humanity which was scarred by the Eugenics Wars (which at the time of DS9 are older than the Hundred Years War is to us.) That's a lot of baggage to hold onto.

u/STL [+3] (13 hours later)

In-universe, it's very likely that beaming an enemy crew into space the moment that their shields collapse would be considered a war crime. The Borg wouldn't be constrained by such petty morality, but they want more drones.

u/ArgentStonecutter [+8] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (13 hours later)

If you can beam them into space, you can beam them into the brig. Directly into sealed closed-cycle containment suits playing "Lost In Space" 24 hours a day. OH THE PAIN!

u/CuriousBlueAbra [+3] (18 hours later)

My original plan was to beam their brain stems into space as a "more humane" alternative. Beaming them to the brig is a better idea.

u/None [+3] (22 hours later)

I don't understand why you have to beam them TO anywhere at all. You're shooting energy weapons at them to try to kill them. You're converting their matter into energy to transport them. Just hook the suck end of the transporter to the pew end of the phasers and shoot them with their own weaponized selves.

u/CuriousBlueAbra [+3] (22 hours later)

Taking everything we're told about how transporters work literally, they give the Federation read write control of reality. They could become gods trivially.

So I just sort of accept transporters don't really work like they say, and instead are a form of folding space or something. Though that's another implicit rule now that I think about it: Transporters are only ever for bulk movement of cargo or persons, not direct destruction or movement of subparts.

u/Evan_Th [+2] Sunshine Regiment (a day later)

Let's not forget the multiple episodes in TOS about transporters. Kirk gets split into his evil and good selves, Kirk gets beamed into Feminist Expy's body, Scotty finally does beam the enemy into space at "maximum dispersion," but only when it's the evil spirit ahem incorporeal entity which possessed Jack the Ripper...

u/Quillwraith [+3] Red King Consolidated (2 days later)

That's an implicit rule of episodic fiction in general: the monster|MacGuffin|character|phenomenon of the week cannot be used or contacted later, no matter how relevant it may seem.

The degree to which the rule is followed is of course proportional to how episodic the story is - many stories will sometimes re-use plot devices, but not as often as would seem sensible from a rational in-story perspective.

u/clawclawbite [+2] (4 days later)

In space tactical terms, beaming is a slow process, and trying to hit an actively maneuvering target would take even longer to 'lock' on a target. An energy weapon attack is fast, and reliable.

u/JackStargazer [+3] Primordial Apologist (21 hours later)

Don't forget the explicit rule against genetic engineering, even research thereof.

And it seems to work about as well for them as the War on Drugs does.

It's cultural baggage from the Eugenics Wars for humans, but that doesn't explain why none of the other 150 races have a seperate opinion on it.

u/None [+4] (22 hours later)

Klingons tried it, got mixed results.

Ferengi deadlocked it by patenting everything.

Romulans do use it, but can't get good results from it.

Cardassians use it for weapons.

Borg genetically engineer all their children, but don't change their assimilees. Your biological distinctiveness will be added to their own.

Species 8472 is made of it, and has it under their conscious control.

u/MugaSofer [+7] (a day later)

• The Flash cannot use weapons at superspeed; he must use solely his own body's movement at those speeds, even when it makes no sense (I'll vibrate through this wall!) Actually, this seems to apply to all speedsters; I have no idea why.
• Superman can only use his superspeed for travel and, occasionally, preserving his secret identity or performing a mundane task faster. (Otherwise he'd make the Flash seem useless.) Nor can he use his heat vision at any appreciable range, despite possessing telescopic sight.
• Wonder Woman has to block bullets and such with her bracers, because she was originally closer to a Batman-style "badass normal".
• Nobody can ever use a sniper rifle, even when they're supposedly demonstrating the power of mundane technology/ingenuity. You can use a goddamn nuke, but not a sniper - it's unsporting to shoot someone in the back.
• Science-based superheroes can't deliberately attempt to create other superheroes. No replicating freak lab accidents, no sharing powered armour with other people. Mundanes can steal your tech, or attempt to copy your origin; but if they become a hero, they'll never do it again to anyone else.
• No using FTL drives for time travel, or even mentioning the possibility. The only exception I know about, surprisingly, is the original series of Star Trek (which was closer to technobabble anyway.)
• If "Deals with the Devil" are a thing, nobody will ever use them for altruistic purposes. You can summon demons for altruistic purposes, sometimes, but the traditional Deal is a purely selfish thing.
• Superheroes are not allowed to keep super-tech from the villains they beat. They can't even release them to the public, or something. Even when they were stolen! Even when they were stolen from the superhero in question (I'm thinking of Iron Man, here)!

u/Quillwraith [+3] Red King Consolidated (2 days later)

Science-based superheroes can't deliberately attempt to create other superheroes. No replicating freak lab accidents, no sharing powered armour with other people. Mundanes can steal your tech, or attempt to copy your origin; but if they become a hero, they'll never do it again to anyone else.

This, averted, is the premise of one of the stories I am gradually working on.

If "Deals with the Devil" are a thing, nobody will ever use them for altruistic purposes. You can summon demons for altruistic purposes, sometimes, but the traditional Deal is a purely selfish thing.

Would the Devil accept an altruistic deal? Doing so seems counter to his goals.

u/MugaSofer [+1] (3 days later)

Would the Devil accept an altruistic deal? Doing so seems counter to his goals.

Well, he does get your soul for eternity. I definitely remember CS Lewis' Screwtape writing something about how well-being on Earth is irrelevant, because it's nothing compared to suffering in Hell.

I was thinking of setting where you get to name your price for the deal. (Actually, on thinking about it, I think this rule applies to wishes rather than merely DwtD - why do so many supposedly-altruistic people get genie or fairy wishes and never consider helping anyone with them either?)

Actually, I just thought of an aversion of this rule: in the Ghost Rider film, the Devil shows up and offers to cure the protagonist's father in exchange for his soul. Crucially, in this case the Devil named his terms, rather than the other way around.

u/Wiron [+3] (8 days later)

If "Deals with the Devil" are a thing, nobody will ever use them for altruistic purposes. You can summon demons for altruistic purposes, sometimes, but the traditional Deal is a purely selfish thing.

That happens in Polish legend about Mr. Twardowski. He asked devil for knowledge and magic powers, but then used them to help people. In one version of story thats what saves him from hell.

u/E-o_o-3 [+5] (a day later)

The hero almost never calls upon cops, alerts the army, hauls in a scientist or two, or otherwise makes use of the various institutional forces that might majorly help them in their situation.

They rarely even bother recruiting a secret band of close friends and family members.

u/MugaSofer [+3] (a day later)

Star Trek's Federation implicitly has a rule banning elective cybernetics and beaming enemy crews into space ... the Green Lantern has an implicit rule against creating any construct whose effect would be too brutal (no turning his enemy's brains to mush via razor wire up the nose, no blinding his enemies with retina-destroying brightness, no railgun constructs launching pebbles at mach 3 at the enemy's skull).

The Federation explicitly has laws, albeit unclear ones, against human enhancement - this was a major plot point on DS9 at one point, and is usually strongly implied to be related to the Eugenics Wars.

Green Lanterns are forbidden from killing; if you kill someone with a Green Lantern ring, it will immediately shut down. I haven't read it, but I've heard this restriction was removed during one plotline (Sinestro Corps War) and they began sniping people at superluminal distances and whatnot.

u/callmebrotherg [+2] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (2 days later)

Green Lanterns are forbidden from killing; if you kill someone with a Green Lantern ring, it will immediately shut down. I haven't read it, but I've heard this restriction was removed during one plotline (Sinestro Corps War)

If I recall correctly, Sinestro's aim with said war (or at least one of his aims) was specifically to drive the Corps to a point where the Oans would remove the restriction and thereby be more effective.

u/Frommerman [+2] (a day later)

Green Lanterns' limitations stem from blocks put on the rings by the Guardians in order to prevent exactly those situations. Green Lanterns literally cannot kill their enemies or mess with their minds using their rings.

u/eaglejarl [+1] (a month later)

You're generally right about your rules, but there are some exceptions. These are just off the top of my head and I'm sure there are other examples:

All projectiles must be thrown

In Young Justice he takes Clayface down with a taser. (It's actually a Moment of Awesome; the superpowered members of YJ have just been beaten unconscious by Clayface, who is about to finish them off when Batman comes through the skylight and takes him down in seconds.

No power armour, cybernetics, or other technologies that would render him largely immune to gunfire

In The Dark Knight Returns, an old and retired Batman puts on powered armor and takes Superman to school.

The Batmobile is a method of transport, not a valid source of tactics in and of itself

In the Justice League cartoon, he drops freeze bombs from his Batjet in order to shut down an alien nanofactory. In The Dark Knight Returns he uses the Batmobile for starlight rounds and rubber-bullet machineguns to take down a crowd.

The only way to incapacitate an enemy is via beating them unconscious.

He uses gas to take out opponents, and has used sonic attacks / kryptonite / etc against Superman on multiple occasions. He's also used explosives quite a lot -- off the top of my head, C4 to take out a rebuilt Amazo and (on a different occasion) Metallo. He only uses them on enemies who can take it, though, and most of his enemies are squishy humans.

The reason for all the rules is because Batman is supposed to be the shining light for the viewer -- he doesn't have magic powers, or a mutant gene, or alien godhood, or even power armor. He's simply human, and vulnerable. Unlike almost all superheroes he suffers pain. Despite that, he still fights in the top tier alongside people like Superman and Wonder Woman, who can tank howitzers, fly, and rip through steel with their bare hands.

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