Situational Superiority (Patreon)

Fancy words for "Don't take a knife to a gunfight."

One side might be stronger than the other side and win 99% of the time. But that one time? That one time when the underdog stepped up and won? A great story. David and Goliath level story. Every likes that story, (except for Goliath's side.) Often the little guy wins because in this situation, he had an edge.

A lot of stories use the idea. 

The 300 spartans were the right guys in the right place at the right time, and 99% of the persian army sat twiddling their thumbs while the greeks killed a chunk of their army.  The Dirty Dozen where a ragtag group uses stealth, traps, and preparation to do a huge amount of damage. Davey of course was fighting way outside of his weight class, but he got an attack at range. Extra damage for a heavenly shot? Who knows, but the big guy died and the little guy reaped the experience and became king.

Every gamer knows you stack as many modifiers in your favor for important fights. And a loophole is just a strategy the system put there for you to find.

I use this a lot in BoG.  The workers do win a lot, the story wouldn't really be enjoyable if the underdogs got beaten all the time. It's HOW they win that matters

Ozzy fighting a fire mage and walking away barely singed made him look like a bad-ass.  But if that had been a mage using Ice Spells, he'd have been in trouble. Fire just burns. But Ice is sneaky, traps you, puts up walls, makes it hard to run. Meanwhile the guy is putting ice spears into you.  He'd have still lasted a long time because of his health, and he had some mitigation, but each shot would have hurt like hell.

Delbert really needs to get some better spells. Maybe after five years he'll sneak off to The Frozen Cathedral and learn some real spells. But he came in handy against the glue daemon. Situational superiority.