| abstract | - A (typically) RPG and SRPG Trope, wherein the engine allows a single character to become vastly stronger than the rest of the team, but then either not be punished for this, or the punishment fails to counteract the practice. An alternate form of this Trope is a game that allows characters to fall through the cracks and become vastly weaker than the rest of the team, and require special effort to fix. Frequently these games only award XP for characters who actively participate in battle, meaning that the powerhouse is the only one gaining experience after an early lucky break. Alternately, some RPGs and SRPGs randomly give out skills or stat increases, which accomplishes much the same thing. The powerhouse, due to the quirk of the engine, typically becomes an invincible, instant killing monster long before the experience curve cuts them off, leaving them on an entirely different playing field than their teammates and the NPCs. This is often cyclic, with one character becoming slightly stronger, making it more likely for them to land the finishing blow, or survive the boss's attacks, leading to them gaining more levels and strength, making it easier for them to kill the enemies and survive and so on... In some instances the game will attempt to fix this by lowering the experience given by killing monsters if your character is too overpowered compared to them. This just causes plateaus to occur during the leveling process as the character instant kills enemies, but doesn't gain anything from it until later maps are unlocked. This tends to happen to the main character of a game, especially if he can't be removed from the party. As a consequence, since you may be switching in and out other party members to suit the situation, the main character may very well be several levels ahead of everyone else. Can be particularly jarring when you have to specifically avoid doing this, by simply avoiding using your heavy hitters so the rest of the party can gain experience. Some RPG players take advantage of this trope in order to do a Solo Character Run, a variety of Self-Imposed Challenge that has the player go through a game using only one character out of an entire party. In recent years, this trope has been intentionally invoked by Fighting Game makers as a form of balance -- by placing a character that is intentionally overpowered in a team-based game, but balancing this by making the overpowered character take up multiple character slots, the equilibrium is maintained. The overpowered character may be very strong, but any opponents will have multiple tries at defeating him. Interestingly, this is the typical way bosses are balanced in these types of fighting games. A subtrope of Game Breaker. For the storyline version of this, see Can't Catch Up, One-Man Army. For a character that appears to be a One Man Party but is later Put on a Bus, see Crutch Character. For the more overreaching version that covers play styles or balance issues, see Unstable Equilibrium. Examples of One Man Party include:
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