[Moved this from Gamer Talk, where it had no takers and was being pushed down by other threads]
I am not that familiar with all the old stuff, but I cannot think of too many examples where 2+ good guys fight 1 bad guy.
I can think of:
- Beowulf and a sidekick vs. the dragon (dragon dies, Beowulf fatally wounded)
- Herakles and a sidekick vs. the hydra
- Anyone shooting Smaug uselessly and Bard killing it. Was anyone shooting besides Bard?
- Aragorn, Boromir, and Gandalf against the balrog. Only Gandalf engages with it. The other guys were moving up when the bridge fell.
- Merry and Eowyn against the King of the Nazghul
Are there others from stories from before, say, 1960? Did I mischaracterize the ones I listed?
- Bramstoker's dracular. He has some gypsy sidekicks but in the end it is the group vs dracular
- Theseus + Minos' daughter vs Minotaurus
- Japan vs Godzilla (original from 1954)
- depending on whether you see him as bad guy: King Kong vs many humans.
Edit:
- Odin, Vili und Ve fought Ymir
Thanks for the examples. I'm was thinking how the advice for boss fights is often "add some help to even up the action economy." That got me wondering how many times I've seen:
heroes vs. big + help
heroes vs. big
hero vs. big
in direct combat (everyone "rolling initiative") in Old Stuff (say LotR and earlier).
It's pretty common, especially in superhero comics. The Coalition of Freedomjustice throws themselves against the implacable Villain of the Week, only to get smacked down. I see it in a lot of fantasy literature as well, though the Final Battle tends to be one-on-one.
Superheroes, yes. That's the big one in modern stuff.
Qui-gon and Obi-wan vs Darth Maul
Anakin and Obi-wan vs Count Dooku
Anakin and Obi-wan vs Count Dooku again.
Sarah Connor and Kyle vs Terminator
T-800 and Sarah vs T-1000
Superman and Batman vs Composite Superman
Thank you for the many modern examples and for the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950).
Oh, and I thought of another one: the three professors vs. the Dunwich Horror. That's a solo nasty outsider vs. 3 PCs. And the story is pretty old (written 1928, published 1929).
Anime loves it too. T he whole Dragon Ball Z group vs. Vegeta, vs. Freiza, vs. Cell, etc.
They don't fight at once. They take turns flinging themselves one-at-a-time to die pitifully like extra ninjas in a Bruce Lee movie.
Maybe if they actually did coordinated strikes as a team the entire series wouldn't be "Roll 1d100. Results: 1-7 Vegeta defeats the badguy in the end, 8-50 Goku defeats the badguy in the end. 51-100 one of the other characters dies like a b!+*# and reroll"
Good point about the Justice Society. I should go back and look at comics for designing PCs vs. Solo Baddie fights. Especially the magic heavy JSA stuff from the Golden Age.
Maybe I can cook up a villain, say...Floda Reltih, who can have some magical items that create a dominate person field to keep those pesky PCs out of his business. It's worked before.
A few older ones...
Odysseus and crew vs the Cyclops
Gilgamesh and Enkidu vs The Bull of Heaven
Jason and the Argonauts vs various
Thor and Loki vs Prymr
Almost every single episode of Power Rangers/Super Sentai.
Good point about the Justice Society. I should go back and look at comics for designing PCs vs. Solo Baddie fights. Especially the magic heavy JSA stuff from the Golden Age.
Maybe I can cook up a villain, say...Floda Reltih, who can have some magical items that create a dominate person field to keep those pesky PCs out of his business. It's worked before.
To be fair, solo baddie fights aren't something that you want to make too common in PF. If it has reason to be rare in fiction and mythology, it's doubly so in PF.
As for my contribution, take a look at video game rpgs (it's become ritualized.) They make use of some methods of boosting the action economy like making different parts of the boss' body seperate foes in and of themselves. (example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXT80F1I4z4 )
Of course, this isn't so revolutionary, considering it kinda goes all the way back to the mythical hydra.
Thanks, Bali. The Cyclops story I knew of but had forgotten. I didn't know about the Gilgamesh and Enkidu vs. the Bull.
Thanks, Bali. The Cyclops story I knew of but had forgotten. I didn't know about the Gilgamesh and Enkidu vs. the Bull.
I believe Gilgamesh and Enkidu also tag team Humbaba.
Pretty much any Venoms era Shaw Bros movie.
In fact Quite a few martial arts films, it almost seems to be a staple where the surviving good guys HAVE to team up to fight the main bad guy because he's just that good.
Now that I think about it? The final fight in the first THE RAID film with Rama (the lead) and Andi vs. Mad Dog is one of the best recent examples of the heroes pretty much being out classed and out fought by a tougher and more skilled opponent.
another really good example is the end fight of the underrated Shaw Bros classic MAGNIFICENT RUFFIANS.
This fight really kicks into high gear at around the 2:28 mark. They try to each take the bad guy individually before that but realize at a certain point that they have to try and take him together.
Pretty much any ship encounter with a kraken, giant octopus, whale (Moby Dick), sea serpent, or other such large-scale creature.
In Clan of the White Lotus, it opens with the main character and his brother fighting the bad guy (or was it the bad guy's brother?) fighting. Eh, it's been a while, if you couldn't tell.
I wasn't a big fan of the Lethal Weapon film series, but the ending of part 4 has a great fight were Riggs and Murtaugh have to fight Jet Li (as Wah Sing Ku). Neither one of them is anywhere near being a competent enough hand to hand fighter to beat him by himself, but they double team him, get the s@#% kicked out of themselves in the process, and just barely manage to win.
It takes two commonly used action tropes - "the hero can defeat any enemy" and "martial arts master can fight a dozen foes at once" - and does away with them. As awesome as Jet Li's character is, he can only defend himself so well against two opponents. They just need to keep from getting killed long enough to wear him down.
Oh, and Link and Zelda vs Ganon.
Iron Man 2: Iron Man & War Machine vs. Vanko
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Watchmen:
Rorschach and Nite Owl vs. Ozymandias
Shadowrun: In one of the very first novels it takes a whole gang to gun down a dragon. Because, y'know, it's a friggin' dragon. And I think it was the CEO of some company...
Though this WAS in a Shadowrun novel, so the "good guys" part is debatable.
And now stuff after 1990 because I feel like it.
Warcraft III:
Thrall and Grom Hellscream vs. Mannoroth
Angel:
All the time. They usually get their asses handed to them and it gets resolved another way. Most notable:
Faith + Wesley vs. Angelus (though most of the time Faith does the fighting IIRC - for those who don't watch the series: Faith is a slayer (=superhuman strength/endurance), Angelus a vampire and Wesley...a normal human. Go figure.)
The whole gang vs. The Beast (not that it really helps them)
Buffy: All the time. Most notable is probably the season 5 finale.
In season 4 they channel all their powers into one person, so that does not count.
In season 5 they have to battle a god - though they mostly try to weaken her to make the fight winnable for the slayer.
Batman: Brave and the Bold
In Clan of the White Lotus, it opens with the main character and his brother fighting the bad guy (or was it the bad guy's brother?) fighting. Eh, it's been a while, if you couldn't tell.
Yeah, at the beginning Hung Wei Ting and Hu Ah Biao are fighting and defeat Pai-Mei. It's Priest White Lotus, Pai-Mei's classmate who comes after them for revenge later on and sets off the chain of events for the rest of the film.