Helping Would Be Killstealing

"If you seek to aid everyone that suffers in the galaxy, you will only weaken yourself... and weaken them. It is the internal struggles, when fought and won on their own, that yield the strongest rewards. You stole that struggle from them, cheapened it. If you care for others, then dispense with pity and sacrifice and recognize the value in letting them fight their own battles. And when they triumph, they will be even stronger for the victory."

—Kreia, Knights of the Old Republic II

You are in trouble. Big trouble. It is painful—emotionally, physically, or both. You could come to harm, maybe you could even get killed.

There is this person. He has power, he is able to help you. And it's not like he's too busy to be able to spend the time on you.

But he cares about you and wishes you well. And that's why he won't help you. Because he thinks that you need the experience. Or self-confidence. Or reputation. Because he thinks that solving your problems for you would be bad for your growth. Or that showing doubts in your ability would be impolite. And so, you are on your own.

Although this trope is about passively letting bad things happen rather than actively setting them up, it can apply to a Stealth Mentor or other Trickster Mentor that has set things in motion and then remain in the background while reminding himself that he mustn't step in. Might become a very reluctant Deus Ex Machina that is really sorry he gave the protagonists that vital information instead of letting them find it themselves, or regrets that he removed That One Obstacle. One of main tools of the Sink or Swim Mentor.

The trope is named after a common derogatory epithet in MMORPGs.

Compare This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself, where something is left to The Hero because he has an emotional stake in it.

Contrast Kill Steal.

Examples of Helping Would Be Killstealing include:

Anime and Manga

• This is one of the basic principles of teaching martial arts in Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple: it's repeatedly said that a martial arts mentor must not interfere in his (or her) disciple's fight with a non-master fighter, even when the disciple's life is in danger. However, mentors sometimes break a sparring (i.e. friendly) match when a disciple is in a serious danger. (It happened once to Takeda and once to Kenichi.)
• An explicit rule in Squad 11 of Bleach's Thirteen Court Guard Squadrons. The Blood Knights who compose Squad 11 follow that battles are one-on-one and never will any squad member step in to help a comrade.
• One of Meta Knight's favorite excuses for not helping Kirby is that he needs the experience.

Literature

• Aahz in Myth Adventures taught Skeeve on an "as the need arises" basis and allowed him to deal with everything they met, keeping his interference as slight as possible unless the situation was very life- and purse reputation-treatening.
• In Tall Tale America, Pecos Bill says that, when he revamped cattle ranching, he

"[M]ade some of this work tougher than I had to, just to make sure we'd weed out the cry-babies. But I figured that with all these hardships to overcome, the cowpunchers would develop in time into a bunch of rootin'-tootin' heroes. It'd be enough of a challenge, you see, so we'd have a line of work a man could be proud to do. (...) It'll be a fine life, you see, if you have the good luck to live through it."

Live Action TV

• Jacob in Lost. Played straight on the island: He doesn't interfere, because he want everyone to figure out the right thing to do on their own. Subverted in the outside world, as Jacob seek out Kate in her childhood and save her from a problem that would likely have been a important life lesson.
• Giles in the sixth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He chose to abandon Buffy because he feel that she's making herself smaller than she is by clinging to him in a immature way.
  • In principle he had good reasons, but the fact that he chose to make his stand right in the middle of a crisis, and forbade everyone else from helping Buffy as well, can only vaguely be justified by him following musical logic at the time.
• In Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger and Power Rangers SPD, once the Rangers' commanding officer becomes a Sixth Ranger they start feeling that they can slack off and let him do the dirty work. Once he discovers this he refuses to bail them out of trouble until they wise up.
  • Completely averted in an episode of Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, where a returning character (Fuuraimaru)'s Big Damn Heroes moment includes completely destroying a Monster of the Week who was curb-stomping Gokai Silver. Of course, in the very next episode Fuuraimaru becomes a permanent addition to the team.

Mythology/Theology

• This is one of the main solutions to the theodicy problem, the question of how God can be Good, Omniscient and Almighty and still allow the world to become as horrible as it is. God is able to make the bad go away, and He does want the bad to go away—but this desire is counterbalanced by His desire that we will learn to solve our own problems and grow stronger in our free will and virtue.
  • And the other half of it is that if God always stepped in to prevent people from being dicks to other people, then there's practically no ability to choose to be a dick. Which is basically pissing all over human free will and forcing us to do what He wants.
  • Then there's the median between the two, that God is able to make the bad go away, and He does want the bad to go away—but He refuses to do so because humanity rejected him in Eden. He actually does intend to eventually make the bad go away during Christ's thousand-year reign, but is continuously waiting until the last possible moment so that the maximum amount of people will have a chance to turn good and be eligible for saving; meanwhile, humanity's screw-ups prove that we need God.

Video Games

• MMORPGs such as EverQuest are the Trope Namer. In these games, killing monsters is a main source of personal growth for your character. If a monster attacks you and hurts you, you normally do NOT want someone to save you. If someone else attack the monster before you do, then that person has "stolen your kill".
  • Averted in the upcoming MMO Guild Wars 2 though, where everyone gets full EXP and loot when a monster dies. In this case, helping becomes actually helping even if you're only in it for yourself.
  • In World of Warcraft, the first person to attack a monster gets the experience, loot and credit for any relevant quests. This often leads to people waiting for a monster they need for a daily quest to spawn, and then trying to get the first attack in to get credit, or grouping up to share the kill. An upcoming patch will enable all players who attack the Tol Barad quest bosses to get credit for killing them.
• Also occurs in FPSs and other games where kills equates to points, ranking and sometimres bonuses and experience. Even in team games where theoretically it doesn't matter who on the team gets the kill, the individual rewards can motivate this.
  • Modern Warfare 2 for example gives powerful killstreak rewards for achieving a certain number of kills in a single life. Some players will get more annoyed at teammates who "help" by killing opponents than at the opponents themselves, especially when they "just needed one more kill for Harriers".
• This is pretty much the only reasonable explanation for why in the climax of Pokémon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum the much more qualified Cynthia doesn't step up to beat the Big Bad into a pulp- even though she's literally standing right next to you- and lets you handle him instead. The Pokémon Special manga averts this by nerfing Cynthia so she can take on Cyrus and lose.
  • Subverted by Alder in Black/White who actually DOES take on N. Since N had captured Reshiram/Zekrom and Alder was out of practice due to having been retired, it doesn't go so well.
  • In Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald, neither Wallace nor Steven step up to help you against the Big Bad, despite being Champion-caliber trainers.
• Kreia lampshades this in Knights of the Old Republic 2, when you help people too much; by taking their burdens, you deny them the opportunity to grow strong by themselves. In Jade Empire, Smiling Mountain makes a similar point when he explains that the Open Palm and Closed Fist philosophies don't necessarily correspond to good and evil (a distinction sadly lost for most of the rest of the game). He explains that a pragmatic follower of the Closed Fist can force people to handle hardships to grow strong, while an Open Palm practitioner might help everyone around himself to keep them dependent on him.
• In Fallout 3, this is the reasoning that certain companions give for not being willing to turn on the irradiated water purifier, despite being immune to radiation. The DLC fixes this, with Fawkes the Super Mutant stating that while he would initially say this, you've changed his life so much that he might as well change yours.
  • Despite this, the ending cinematic still calls you a coward for not stepping into the chamber yourself. Since when is refusing to die unnecessarily considered cowardice? Mind you, this is a case when no one has to die.
  • Incidentally, companions helping is literally killstealing; you don't get XP for people they kill. This was thankfully rectified in Fallout: New Vegas.
• As a meta-example, this is why Crutch Characters are so looked down upon by the Fire Emblem fandom. While attacking and defending alone give modicum experience, you get much more from kills. Also, experience gained scales by a mix of level and rank; a lvl 5 paladin only gains a fraction of experience a lvl 3 cavalier would. Units that start at low levels also have greater potential than their veteran counterparts, so using nothing more than that paladin or general the game literaly hands you for the first few chapters will leave you woefully unprepared for the larger scale battles later in the game.
• Subverted in Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories: When you frequently summon Kurtis to help you in battle, he eventually responds that you need to learn to stand on your own...and then decides to help you anyway, since you can't learn this lesson if you die in battle.

Visual Novel

• This is Forte's reasoning on not directly helping Chitose's inability for flexible thinking. Left alone, she will cause disaster sooner or later, as evidenced in the aftermath of a particular mission where she froze up, never expecting the freighter she rescued was an enemy in disguise, despite nigh-blatant clues. However, telling her directly would most likely backfire, as Forte herself puts it:

Forte: "If I do tell her 'suspect everything beforehand', she will start suspecting even the regular coffee she drinks, thinking it is poisoned. It's not something you learn from the Academy; she's got to do this on her own."

Web Comics

• Klaus Wulfenbach of Girl Genius happily dumped almost any sort of problem into his son's lap as a "test", and even made up some when he had no real crisis at hand to shove Gilgamesh into.

Western Animation

• What happens to the team in Young Justice. Red Tornado, their guardian, points out that they need to solve their problems as a team, rather than have the Justice League come in when things get tough. It also handwaves why the team is on their own so much, even when the League can easily response to a crisis within minutes.
  • Averted however in "Downtime" when the team was curbstomped by Clayface and Batman arrived to save them.
• On Futurama, this is the reason God says He doesn't interfere in events too much, and why when He does, it's subtle enough that people can't tell for sure if He did anything.

Real Life

• There are those who consider it a social problem that many parents are so-called "Helicopter Parents" who stunt their children´s growth by "hovering overhead" and solving all their problems for them.
  • This even applies to germs. It used to be that kids would play in the dirt, the sand, and McDonalds ball pits. They wouldn't always wash their hands. They would find things on the floor and stick them in their mouths. All this stuff wasn't quite germy enough to make them seriously ill, but it did help them develop the antibodies that lead to a strong immune system in the future. But now, many parents spray everything with Lysol, wipe their kids' hands with antibacterial wipes ten times a day, and don't let them play in even semi-dirty environments. This means that children are exposed to so few germs growing up that when they do get sick, their immune system is so unfamiliar with germs that it doesn't know what to do.