Power Equals Rarity: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

That's not the case with games, though. Generally, for balancing purposes, the more powerful an item/mon/etc. is in a game, the harder it is to find. While various reasons are given in the plot (if at all) as to ''why'' these things are so rare, in the meta-sense, it's for balance. If the player has unlimited access to game-changing stuff, then the game is tipped entirely in their favor.

 

 

Generally speaking, people have come to associate rarity with power, and vice versa. In any collectible game which have common, uncommon, and rare items, it's generally understood that the rarer individuals ''should'' be the most powerful; mechanics which would only be okay as a rare are considered incredibly powerful as uncommons, for example. Even in games where the creators actively say that rarity means crap in relevance to power, people will ''still'' associate rarity with overall power, [[Promotional Powerless Piece of Garbage|even when]] [[Junk Rare|it isn't]]. In certain TCG formats, the disproportionate distribution of power between the common and rare cards could lead to [[Fake Balance]].

 

Contrast [[Junk Rare]] and [[Promotional Powerless Piece of Garbage]] for the "rare" and "promo" inversions of this trope. Compare [[Game Breaker]] for a retroactive application of this trope, for when something is so broken you might only be able to use one in a deck/army/etc. Often present in games with [[Level-Locked Loot]]. Related to [[Commonplace Rare]], when a useful item that by all logic ''should'' be easy to get turns out to be extremely difficult.

{{examples}}

 

* ''[[The Dresden Files]]'' justifies this by using explaining that the more people use a certain ritual, the less power one can draw from it. The White Council often publishes texts like the Necronomicon for the sole purpose of robbing them of their power.

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

*** Notably averted in the famous "War of the Lance" campaign for the [[Dragonlance]] setting: it is possible for the party to come into possession of four Orbs of Dragonkind over the course of the campaign. Since each one is an incredibly powerful artifact, this has the potential to be a real [[Monty Haul]] campaign; on the other hand, they all do the same thing.

* ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]'' actively tries to avoid this, at least in some regards. Traditionally, the most powerful cards in the game have not been rares, but uncommons. Still, there are many powerful rare cards as well, which end up being the most expensive cards because of both their use and rarity, and there are quite a few common cards that are considered game-breakers. (This is chiefly because the metagame relies hugely on [[Boring Yet Practical|efficiency]], while rares tend to be [[Awesome but Impractical]].) Many feared that, with the introduction of a fourth level of rarity, Mythic Rare, ''Magic'' would go the way of ''Yu-Gi-Oh''; these fears, though, have generally been for naught, as many of the Mythic Rares have proven far-and-away ''worse'' than most rares and several uncommons.

** ''Magic'' uses rarity to control its Limited formats, where players build a deck from a random or semi-random pool on the spot. As such, spells that require a specialised response tend to be rarer, so players who didn't have access to that special response aren't completely screwed. Many of these spells, though godly in Limited, are poor to useless in Constructed as they [[Awesome but Impractical|cost too much mana]]. Rarity also controls the complicated-ness of a card: if a card is confusing or just mixes strangely with other cards (but is still [[Rule of Cool|awesome]] enough to keep), it's put into rare so that the problem comes up less often.

** Most Magic sets are printed on three large sheets that are cut into individual cards: a common, uncommon, and rare sheet respectively. Some sets add a land sheet as a fourth "extremely common" rarity, and recently an ultra-rare sheet is used. There were some oddities in the rarity in the first few sets. The first set (Alpha) had two (normally common) islands on the Rare sheet, and the first few expansions had only two sheets, but had some cards appearing twice or more on their sheet. For example, an U2 card appears twice on the uncommon sheet, and is thus less uncommon than an U1.

** Hello [http://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=195297 Jace the Mind Sculptor!] It's a Mythic Rare. And so powerful that it was practically compulsory to run multiple copies in any tournament capable deck while it was legal. As a result the price of the card soared.

* Wizards of the Coast has been pretty good about averting this trope in their miniature games as well. Sure, Rare/Very Rare pieces are going to be the most powerful, but they are not necessarily the most efficient or the most highly sought-after. Discussion threads in both their Star Wars and D&D Minis forums had long lists of competitive armies that could be built using only Common and Uncommon pieces.

* In ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay]]'', all magic items are pretty much unique due to time and labour expenditure involved in their creation: Rules for crafting 'generic' magic weapons appears in the Winds of Magic splatbook, where only dwarves can do it and it takes ''years'' of off-time to make a single one (and tradition forbids runesmiths from mass producing or making more than one of any particular magic weapon: Only one runesmith ever did it and was stuck with the epithet 'The Mad' for having performed such blasphemy). Even nonmagical weapons and armour tend to be rarer the more powerful they are, but in most cases it's justified by these being cutting-edge and not yet having entered mass production, or simply being unavailable for civilian purchase. Higher-quality versions of regular equipment are also harder to acquire, due to having been hand-crafted.

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

** You can not-entirely-infrequently find the second best category of loot in ''stores''. This [[Fridge Brilliance|makes some sense]]: if every other adventurer out there finds and sells as much blue/purple loot as you do...

** The effects are much more pronounced in co-op play, possibly to cut down on infighting.

** Less notorious but even worse to get is the Gutsy bat. 1/128 droprate dropped by the strongest single enemy in the game, the Bionic Kraken. Also extremely rare, spawns in only one place so you'll probably go through the entire game without seeing one, and so close to the end of the game that all you can use it for is the final boss. It is satisfying to see every other hit be a [[Critical Hit|Smaaaaash!]] though.

* Most weapons in the ''[[Disgaea]]'' series can be of common, rare, or legendary quality ([[Infinity+1 Sword|The best weapon]] of each type is always legendary). The better the quality, the better the item's base stats will be, and the degree to which its stats can be boosted in the Item World will be much higher, as well.

* ''[[Billy vs. SNAKEMAN]]'' has this, not at the level of individual pieces of equipment (The way equipment works in the game means that [http://bvs.wikidot.com/items:billycon-emblem rare gear] doesn't have to be any more powerful than [http://bvs.wikidot.com/items:chakra-armor common gear] to be worth the extra effort), but in the ''kinds'' of bonuses that they give. A full set of equipment gives somewhere in the neighborhood of + 40-60 of the inherently diminishing rewards bonuses, but Strength, which can make challenges auto-win in great enough quantities, gets only +16, and Successes, an even ''more'' "[[Game Breaker]] in excess" bonus, has a mere + 3.

** Also of note are items that ''were'' rare boss-only drops, but became regular enemy drops in the DLC stages. These include Simon's Plate (previously exclusive to Hard mode Dracula, now available from the numerous and ''much'' easier Hellmont of Chapter 11), Berserker Mail, and Death's Robe. However, the latter two are still somewhat annoying to get because they drop from mini bosses on [[Marathon Level|Chapter 10]], and both are a ways into the level. Still easier than trying to get them from Hard mode Death, as the Chapter 10 versions also drop on Normal.

* ''[[Einhander]]'' has the Flash Weapon Pod, a [[Guide Dang It]] to obtain normally and can only be obtained twice in an entire game. It's one of the strongest weapons in the game, firing out a pink laser that penetrates enemies and does massive damage in general.

 

== [[Real Life]] ==

* This actually comes in to play fairly often with bleeding-edge military technologies, because highly precise, sophisticated equipment often requires manufacturing processes which preclude effective mass production. There were, for instance, only 21 B-2 Stealth Bombers ever produced, each costing over $1.7 billion. They are, however, the most effective low-observability planes currently in existence. The F-22 is going a similar way, with its production currently capped at less than 200 planes, whereas cheaper, less advanced and effective planes such as the F-16 have had production runs of 4500 planes and counting.

* As Comrade Stalin says "Quantity has a Quality all its own."

* While stronger life forms tend to out-compete weaker ones within their own species (or niche), small species tend to be more numerous than large ones, and prey tend to be more common than the predators that eat them. This comes down to available energy. A general rule of only 10% of the energy that goes into an organism is transferred to the organism that eats it, the rest is used up by the prey species' own life processes. This limits the amount of energy available to predators thus reducing the possible number of the predator.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Acceptable Breaks From Reality]]

[[Category:Game Tropes]]

[[Category:Weapons and Wielding Tropes]]

[[Category:Power]]