| abstract | - This trope is very common due to the numerous storytelling considerations fueling it. Drama thrives off of conflict, and having the few put up a fight against the many is basically a free conflict coupon that's automatically viable during any few vs. many confrontation. Why have the superhero team curb stomp the villain if you can make him powerful enough to force them into Teeth-Clenched Teamwork? Why have the dozens of Mooks club The Hero unconscious three seconds into an encounter if you can let him take down seven or eight of them before he collapses, to show how much of a Badass he is? That would be letting some perfectly good dramatic tension go to waste. As the number disparity grows larger, another factor comes into play -- there's strength in numbers, but also anonymity, which in fiction is a crippling weakness. Characterization is a precious, rare resource that is difficult to set up, which means most characters are not going to get any. Since characters often travel in homogeneous packs in terms of characterization depth, the larger a group is, the less characterization its members probably have. In other words, if Team Meager is up against Team Gargantuan, we probably know something about Team Meager and at least care how well they're going to do in this fight -- maybe we even outright sympathize with them and root for them to win. Team Gargantuan, on the other hand, is likely a faceless blob of Mooks or Red Shirts that we don't care about on any personal level. Letting Team Gargantuan steamroll over Team Meager in this scenario would be anticlimactic; not letting Team Gargantuan do that means playing this trope straight almost by definition. Hence, you end up with the few gaining an almost-automatic boost to their capabilities when pitted against the many. Extra points if, when presented with their multiple adversaries, one character notes that "We barely were able to handle one, how on earth are we going to handle this many?" right before successfully doing just that. This can, of course, apply to Elite Mooks other than ninjas. Vampires are particularly susceptible to Conservation Of Ninjutsu, as are werewolves, alien monsters, Special Forces commandos and Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids. There are a few conceivable ways in which this trope can be Justified. The most obvious one is adhering to Magic A Is Magic A -- if you consistently portray someone as powerful enough to take on a large number of people by their own and put an explicit limit on what they can and can't do, the Willing Suspension of Disbelief will not suffer nearly as much. How to establish the superiority of small numbers in concrete terms is another issue. One way to do it is to emphasize how small groups fare better in sneaking around and putting up an ambush. Another is to introduce some superior technology or art, available to the small group but not the larger group, that evens the odds (think the armies of Saladin vs. an M1 Abrams Tank). Despite all of those possible justifications, this trope is clearly a result of the Theory of Narrative Causality more than anything else -- fights are won one way or the other because the plot says they should and not because of any relevant In-Universe factors. In Real Life, there is strength in numbers more often than not; large groups of fighters have probably been trained to fight as a group and take advantage of their superior numbers if they ever manage to corner a single foe, and in some creations of mother nature this is a natural-born instinct (as a pack of wolves would be happy to demonstrate on any unfortunate prey). Quality over Quantity has lost a great many more fights in reality than it has in fiction. See also Too Many Cooks Spoil the Soup, Strong as They Need to Be, Distribution of Ninjutsu and The Worf Effect. Compare Conservation of Competence and Kill One, and the Others Get Stronger. This trope is a reason the Zerg Rush may fail. Beware, however, in case Reality Ensues, and this trope doesn't apply. If the system doesn't use this, The Minion Master will capitalize on it, as will the Wolfpack Boss. Contrast Elite Army ("in the that one Ninja is a deadly threat", while an army of them are almost invincible.) and One-Man Army (for characters who are strong enough to take on large numbers of enemies). An aversion may result in a Bolivian Army Ending. Also known as The Law of Inverse Ninja Strength: Threat Per Mook = O(1/N) where N = number of Ninjas (or other "Elite Adversaries"), that is, the threat per mook tends to decrease fast enough so total ninjutsu cannot grow, assuming arithmetic additivity of threat. NOTE: This obviously does not apply when the hero had some superior advantage against a big group (like, say, a gun or magic powers) and then lost it and had to go hand-to-hand for the last few guys. Let's not get carried away. Examples of Conservation of Ninjutsu include:
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