I recently got called a weak writer and that I deserve no respect because I "nerfed" a character . Nerfing being stripping a character of his/her abilities or powers. Like taking magic away from Harry.

He said that it ruins a story and damages characterization. I argued that its interesting because of the inner/outer conflict it supplies and the exploration of a different facet of the character perhaps never before seen.

Apparently nerfing ruins all stories, and that's a fact.

I don't know. I tend to disagree with those kind of statements.

Your take?

 

Nerfing ruins all stories, and that's a fact.

It feels to the reader like the author is cheating, reaching down into the story and manually manipulating the "settings" to achieve some desired outcome, rather than conflict naturally evolving out of character interactions. If an author has to cheat and nerf a character to create conflict, then they've made a mistake in the set-up of the premise.

Moreover, the reader feels like they've been lured into the story on false pretenses. They're reading the story because it features a certain type of protagonist that they like to read. If you've promised the reader one protagonist but then deliver another, you've failed as an author and probably made a reader angry that they wasted time on something that isn't suited to their preferences.

The exception to this is if nerfing is the starting premise of the fic and is advertised upfront. In principle, that can make an interesting story, but I'm not sure if it's true that such a complete "nerf" as removing Harry's magic entirely can be successful.

Harry Potter without magic is basically worthless; magic is the one thing about the story that makes it unique. Without the unique setting it's just the typical Jesus-hero plot filled with one dimensional characters.

Without magic, Harry is just a Muggle. A Muggle without an education or a job, without a social circle and indeed without any interesting aspect to him at all. He's an orphan who has a bit of cash who is brave. That's all you've got to make a story from. Sure, I guess you could tell some sort of interesting tale of a Muggle orphan trying to make his way in the Muggle world, but at that point you might as well be writing original fiction.

What could work is a "semi-nerf" where you place some interesting condition on Harry's magic use. The 5-spell challenge is an example of this.

 

Good point.

I was just interested in seeing how the character would interact with other people and situations if, for a short time, he was bereft of the thing that was most familiar to him. In my opinion, that is a great way of delving into the basic nature of the character.

Yeah, the nerfing was temporary. The reader jumped the gun on Chapter 3 out of 18.

 

Depends on the execution. I find nerfing to be unelegant, since I usually see it done to "solve" power levels.

I gave Frodo a gun, but he still can't beat Sauron. Uh, guess the Nazgul are only immortal unless faced with sufficient force.

There should be better ways. But if it's for the sake of character exploration and done well, why not.

 

I saw the thread title and thought, "Oh my dog! Someone else shares my love of Nerf blas - ah, shit."

On topic, Taure is right - an HP story where HP has no magic from the outset removes the Hp-ness from the tale and makes it about as much fun as Captain America without genetic manipulation.

If, on the other hand, the point of the story is that Harry loses his magic, and the rest of the story is about dealing with it, and possibly getting it back, then you've got yourself a story that could be worth reading, especially if he's the only character that loses it. As long as magic remains an essential part of the universe, you're probably okay.

 

Reader might jump to gun but it still Authors fault I mean look at from readers pov. Why shouldn't he jump to gun? Did you establish yourself as succesfull author? Did you create strong hook and good writing at the start of the story so reader is compelled to read? If not then it means you come too strong or early. Reader wasn't invested enough to read on when he hit that part.

There was this anectod that one author of BTVS fic gave; She wrote a story where Buffy was well "bashed" isn't right term but close enough. Acording to her she had this awesome reveal that first evil bodyjacked Buffy but most readers jumped ship by then because they didn't trust her.

Same thing here. You might have planned this awesome scene where Harry gains his power back but reader has no way of knowing that. What you should have done is delay that part. Show readers that this story is interesting, hook them up with stong characters, good intereactions, tease them with mysteries then you can pull nerfhamer. It will fuel the fire at that point.

Tl;dr of it you need to gain readers trust. Don't expect to have it from start.

 

The thing is that Harry is already hopelessly outclassed by Voldemort and most of his death eaters too. There can be no nerfing. Literally. If you remove his magic, Harry loses... Unless you buff up something else. His intellect, his ability to attract fucktons of witches as his personal slaves, whatever.

But as I said, that's not actually nerfing as much as shuffling his powers around. In another series, it might work better, especially if an otherwise interesting character has a power that breaks the narrative or doesn't make sense.

 

Just to clear it up, its not Harry Potter being written here.

Everything else is great advice!

 

A successful ability-handicap premise requires masterful planning and implementation. You need to have a reason for the handicap that is relative to your plot, skills that are developed in response to the handicap that provide the protagonist with an advantage over those who still have said ability, and a point of resolution that evens out the protagonist's skills with your antagonist's.

Navi in Codex Alera is a fantastic example of this.

In a general sense, ability handicaps are similar to slash characterizations. It's the emasculation of your protagonist, leaving him vulnerable and in need of aid from supporting characters. This allows for a deeper emotional response, leading to a big ball of hurt and comfort.

Using these handicaps as your primary plot only expands on this emasculation. As the main plot of the story, most discussions will tend to revolve around your character's disability. Sympathetic characters will try to help, antagonists will try to use the handicap to harm and the ailing protagonist will be receptive to neither. This is either resolved through acceptance after stages of grieving or the author suddenly loses the handicap, becoming awesome due to the skills he developed in the meantime to outweigh his/her disadvantage.

TL;DR: It's a bad road to head down.

 

My favourite animal is an ocnopus and my favourite month Ocnober.

 

If you can't think of how to make the story go forth or make the fight interesting without hard nerfs, you fucked up and are fucking up. Nerfing isn't the answer. Especially that level of nerfing, which is the equivalent of making someone an amputee just for the story.

Nerfing in general is a terrible idea, especially when what really needs to happen is a buff, or the mechanics accepted and a certain thing declared superior, and just go from that. Once you nerf something in a videogame series, you will end up having to nerf this, then that, and then all of a sudden the main character/cast is effectively weaker in game than in game one, with little explanation as to why and most explanations being stupid. ME1 to ME2, instead of making the AI more ruthless and carry more firepower, they made ammo be a thing, and destroyed biotics entirely. The result is that ME1 Shephard could apparently just roll the combined might of ME2 cast and beyond. A sure thing with help from just Wrex or Ashley.

In Halo, it eventually led to the introduction of recoil mechanics on all/many guns. For no reason save balance. It led the UNSC to not having guided Missile Launchers as standard, and it led to a bunch of other crap. And I suspect it had something with the aiming reticle jumping away from center screen to whatever. And it led to the Chief having a progressively weaker throwing arm for grenades as the series went on.

While wearing Nuclear Powered Armor.

In Halo 1, the shotgun was actually useful and it was feared. The Assault Rifle needed a desperate buff for accuracy and a scope of its own. The shotgun became a joke. A pointless joke.

In Halo 2, getting a hold of the Sniper Rifles, in skilled hands, meant you where about to slaughter everything beyond ten feet, and within that range, having the Sword meant you could sprint really fast, close the distance, and inflict terrifyingly lethal damage almost instantly. The Sword made you feel like a badass Elite killing machine. And the Sniper Rifles being a Finger of God in skilled hands made sense, what with near-aimbot supersoldiers in the SPARTANS wielding them. In Halo 2, they generally nerfed Elites, especially allied ones, for....no reason save not getting to watch a pack of bad motherfuckers tear everything up. It could have had clash of the titans with the Arbiter along for the ride, but sadly not really. Although those levels were still awesome.

In Halo 3, the Snipers were slowed down in ROF, the shotgun was rendered utterly and completely useless, and Rocket Launcher lost its lock on, etc etc, and the Battle Rifle ended up eclipsing everything ever. Especially since Plasma Rifle only had reasonable projectile velocity in game one. Past game one, you could manually dodge them.

In Halo Reach, it took noticeable time to bring out the sword, and if you swung while sprinting, you slowed down noticeably first. Making the melee weapons utterly pointless.

In Harry Potter, the verse desperately needs power/class tiers or something, because a bunch of half educated and inexperienced kids should not put up any sort of fight against powerful, highly experienced and ruthless wizards and witches, or pose any threat towards the Law Enforcement equivalent. Its just pure silliness. So develop a scale, and keep to it.

In general, nerfing is terrible, what is usually required is a buff here and there, and keeping a scale tier handy. Voldemort/Dumbledore/Grindelwald at the top, Extremely reknowned badass a good bit below them, such as Bellatrix?Lucius/Moody, then down to the highly capable such as Severus Snape/Lupin and then below them the rank and file competent fighters, which encompasses Aurors and most Death Eaters, and then, skipping a tier or two, most 7th Years at Hogwarts who bother to learn dueling, then below that, exceptionally skilled and knowledgeable OWL level students such as Harry and Hermione and maybe Draco what with tutelage from Lucius, and then all the other reindeer.

Saying the Aurors are coming or Death Eaters have arrived should be terrifying to 5th year Harry, or at least for the average wizard/witch, since Aurors should be able to handle the average violent offender(s) quite adeptly, and the Death Eaters able to fight them off and generally able to successfully assault most Wizarding homes. They shouldn't be, in most actual fights, just uniformed mooks.

It makes everyone else look really fucking stupid.

 

Wasn't Harry's powers coming back near the end no? Before sadly it wasn't updated in like fourty years.

 

Most of those "badasses" look really fucking stupid in canon. They are only terrifying because the wizards generally are mooks. Faceless, weak, sheep. For the Death Eaters and Dumbledore to be terrifying, they need to be buffed - mainly, their intelligence needs to be buffed a lot. From Dumbledore and Voldemort on down they act in canon as if they had trouble pouring piss out of a boot with the instructions written on the sole. Overly complicated and plain stupid planning on both sides.

Of course if you actually made aurors and death eaters smarter than the acerage newt the whole canon plot gets derailed.

With regards to nerfing in general, there's also the reverse nerfing that can ruin a story for some readers. Like in a Buffy story where everyone but Buffy gets DC JLA superhero powers. Buffy is not technically nerfed, but for all that matters she went from strongest fighter on the team (until Dark Willow) to sidekick and doughnut fetcher. A number of HP stories can suffer from that too, where one character - usually Harry - is buffed so far in every area, every other character is sidelined since their strengths do not matter anymore.

It generally goes over better with readers if they know from the start what to expect, and don't get suckered into it, and then punched. Like stories that advertise themselves as humor, start well and go on for dozens of chapters, and then descend into tragedy and angst.

 

I would honestly say it doesn't make you a weak writer. Simply a bit of a weak storyteller. That being said, I've never read your stuff so I couldn't say if you are a good writer or not.

Now as for nerfing, I'm of the opinion that it is a viable plot device or premise, but simply using it as an easy way to remove an element of a character that doesn't work in your story is absolutely awful. To do nerfing properly requires quite a lot of skill in story telling in order to weave the idea into the narrative in a believable manner. Unfortunately most can't do this, and the story loses a great deal of the immersive aspect of a good story.

Basically Sesc said it best.