Quote:
Originally Posted by WingedKagouti
One thing that seems almost universal between Shonen protagonists is Will 16+ and HT 16+ or Unkillable 1. Once they set their mind to something they almost never give up, they can take beatings that would kill almost anyone else and still stand up and beat down the bad guy. This should probably be toned down if you want to challenge the players in combat.
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It also leads to the question of whether it should be more of a campaign feature.
The following has some vague
spoilers, including some references to even more series for comparison (and I apologize if this seems tedious but I have had so much spoiled for various series, I still get a bit paranoid about labeling such things).
Of the three series the characters currently being discussed were pulled from, One Piece seems to make
everyone harder to kill than normal, possibly to help keep the series from getting bogged down in "action scenes", since as strong as the non-minor characters are, the body count from them fighting would become obscene otherwise. However this incredibly endurance has gotten to the point where tragic back story character deaths (let alone any seeming deaths on screen) are worth calling into question even apart from the series' fantastic elements, and unintentionally make the characters that do end up dying look unlucky or fragile. I definitely think something like the old 3e Stun rules are in effect here (and please forgive me for not knowing the equivalent 4e rules).
Fairy Tail isn't quite as bad, but that may just be because it isn't as old of a series, and magic is more prevalent so when someone is saved by such intervention, it just feels like a part of the campaign setting. It had one character who died as part of the typical "tragic back story" revived due to editorial fiat, plus again to keep the high collateral damage heroes from becoming monsters, everyone (even minor NPCs) seems to be quite lucky and/or durable. ^^
Hunter X Hunter, by comparison, then seems almost sadistic because of how many characters are killed (and usually for keeps). I was going to make a joke about Attack On Titan level body counts, but that isn't actually too far off. The series begins seeming like your typical shounen title, after a few episodes you realize that anyone that isn't one of the four main characters seems to have better odds of dying than living. Enough characters are introduced that it isn't as bad as it might seem (plus the general background population of the setting is more robust), but fans of HxH like me are learning that if you like a character other than the main four, you hope they are used sparingly or never seen again, for the character's own sake!
Sometimes I think that is why the main four characters of HxH regularly split up and do stuff off camera, sometimes be absent entire arcs. Many characters take leaves from the "main group", and sometimes the action follows only one while the others are doing their thing "off camera". Suspension of disbelief might be broken if we saw all four constantly hanging out together and surviving. XD