Badass Normal/Playing With

Basic Trope: A character who, despite lacking the magical enhancements of the main cast, still holds their own in a fight.

• Straight: Bob is the only character on the Five-Man Band who cannot use any sort of magic. Despite only having a sword (because he's the hero), he is more than capable of being competent in a fight.
• Exaggerated:
  • Nearly everyone, including animals, can use magic...except for Bob. But he doesn't let this get him down.
  • Despite everyone else having reality-altering supermagic, Bob (who has no magic or fighting skills of any sort whatsoever) is a One-Man Army.
• Justified:
  • Bob lacks The Gift that allows people to use magic, but trains really hard to make up for it.
  • Alternatively, anyone that uses Magic is a Squishy Wizard.
  • Bob's four friends, Alice the Big Badass Bird of Prey, Dave the King of Beasts, Charlie the Cool Horse, and Emily the Big Badass Wolf, are all Fully Dressed Cartoon Animals, and only animals can use magic. Bob, the Token Human, learns to imbue his sword with spells, creating physical elemental attacks.
  • Magic Is Evil
• Inverted:
  • Bob is the only person on Earth who's capable of using magic.
  • OR: Bob, the one non-magical character, is completely useless and considered The Load.
  • Badass Abnormal
• Subverted:
  • Bob can use magic - he just keeps it secret so he can bust it out unexpectedly during a fight.
  • OR: It's revealed Bob's proficiency at martial arts and physical fighting has a magical origin.
• Double Subverted: Turns out that his magic is in the form of pre-made magical reagents that he can not make himself.
• Parodied: The people who use magic aren't really that good at it, and Bob is a world-class fighter capable of using several different martial arts. However, Bob moans about his lack of magic at any given opportunity.
• Deconstructed:
  • Bob finds himself being outperformed by his allies who have access to magic. This causes him to stop fighting altogether.
  • Bob's lack of magical prowess is viewed as a handicap by his magic-using peers, given what they face. Whether or not this actually restricts him depends on the degree of cynicism of the story (What? Not every deconstruction needs to be doom and gloom).
  • Reality Ensues: magic users have a tendency to learn martial arts and tactical thinking as well, in order to give themselves an even greater advantage over others during a real battle. The natural result is that when Bob encounters an enemy who is both equally combat skilled and magically talented, Bob's magical handicap ultimately becomes his undoing and gets him quickly vaporized with no fanfare.
• Reconstructed:
  • However, when it looks like he's going to be outperformed, he starts training much harder to compensate.
  • Bob understands the limitations of magic, and can exploit them to his advantage.
  • His Roaring Rampage of Revenge after coming Back from the Dead destroys all the enemies.
• Zig Zagged: Bob can use magic, but he's not very good at it. At least, that's what he claims...
• Averted:
  • Bob can use magic.
  • OR: Bob is an ordinary Muggle and can't hold his own in a fight against magic users.
• Enforced: "Well, crap - every other character on this show has some generic magic power, but I can't think of any new powers to give to Bob." "How about you just write it to where he's a really good martial artist?"
• Lampshaded: "Why haven't you used your magic yet?"
• Invoked: Knowing that he doesn't have magical skills like everyone else, Bob trains harder and becomes a martial arts expert.
• Defied: Bob decides to try to learn magic.
• Discussed: "Bob's martial arts skills must be incredible if he can't use magic and is still able to keep with the rest of his team!"
• Conversed: "Have you ever wondered how guys with no special abilities can still fight magically-empowered villains and win using nothing more than kung fu?"

---

Back to Badass Normal.