In the midst of a book known as Judges, there is a story of a man with incredible strength.  He would frequently stand alone against armies of his enemies, and kill them all.  On one occasion, he is said to have killed a lion in bare handed single combat.  In the end, he brought down the house, toppling the support pillars so that the roof would collapse on the enemies who had captured him.  His name, of course, is Samson.

  If you know the story of Samson, you probably know that his strength was in his hair.  Actually it wasn’t, really.  His strength came from the fact that he was dedicated to God, and that dedication was displayed by the fact that he had never cut his hair.  We have a long story in which the beautiful Delilah keeps nagging him for the secret of his strength, and he keeps inventing something, and she does that to him only to discover that that’s not it.  Finally he tells her that it’s because his hair has never been cut, so when he is asleep she shaves his head, and he has no more strength, and is easily captured by his enemies and made a prisoner and a spectacle until his hair grows back and he does his little demolition scene.

  Hold that thought.

  Greek mythology tells us of another man named Achilles.  According to this story, somehow mom found her way to the shore of the river that separates the dead from the living, known as the Styx, and she dipped her infant son into its waters.  She was very careful not to touch the waters herself, and so she had to hold him by some part that would not itself be immersed in the water.  She chose to hold him by his heels.  The consequence of having been dipped in this river, of having been that close to death and life at the same time at so young an age perhaps, was that Achilles was invulnerable.  No weapon could pierce his skin; no attack seemed able to harm him.  He became a great warrior.

  In the end, however, he was killed in battle.  Someone found his weak spot, his Achilles’ Heel, as it has been known since then.  An arrow pierced the one spot his mother had been unable to protect.

  We spoke of The Scottish Play back in the article on Prophecy, and how MacBeth thought himself invulnerable because no man of woman born could harm him, and the wood would never come to Dunsinane.  He most clearly illustrates my thought.  He believed himself invulnerable, and he acted like it.  Achilles, too, thought himself indestructible, and suffered the consequences of overconfidence.  I mentioned Samson first, because I can’t help thinking that he, too, thought himself undefeatable, someone who could always take all comers.  I’m not convinced he actually knew that he would lose his strength if Delilah cut his hair.  He had never been without his strength.  He probably said this to placate her, but did not realize he was selling himself to the Philistines.  The text tells us that when Delilah woke him and told him that his enemies were upon him, he charged into them as if he fully expected to defeat them once again.  Since it seems doubtful that someone who had never once in his life cut his hair didn’t notice that his head had been shaved while he was asleep, he must have thought that that thing about the hair was just another way to get the woman to be quiet and let him sleep.  His weakness was a complete surprise.

  From these three examples, at least, it would appear that people who believe themselves invulnerable will take greater risks.  As they do so, they uncover their vulnerability.  It is inevitable, in a sense.  If you think yourself indestructible, there is less reason for caution.  If there is a weakness of which you are unaware, eventually you will find it, or someone else will find it for you.

  I’d wager this has appeared at the gaming table of more than one of my readers.  It has at mine, and not just in Multiverser games.  Players who perceive that for one reason or another their characters aren’t going to die will often push the envelope, to see how far they can go and get away with it.  I have seen players send their characters on nonsensical quests, attack overwhelming adversaries, attempt impossible feats.  Some, like The Last Starfighter’s Navigator First Class Grig, perhaps always wanted to fight a desperate battle against incredible odds.  There are those, however, who just want that feeling of invincibility afforded them by a quirk in the rules.

  Maybe that’s all right.  For some, it’s a viable way to play, a way to boost self-confidence through the illusion of success against the reality of the impossibility of failure.  Yet you might find it more interesting to give these characters Samson’s hair, MacBeth’s charm, Achilles’ heel–that something of which they are unaware that will bring them down abruptly and unexpectedly.

  Then just let it play out.

  In the movie Unbreakable, Samuel L. Jackson tells Bruce Willis that every superhero has a weakness.  It seems to hold true in the comics.  Kryptonite can kill Superman, and the Green Lantern is helpless against (of all the possible silly things) the color yellow.  It is not unreasonable for a powerful character to have a hidden weakness, nor even for that weakness to be unknown and even completely unsuspected by himself.

  This gives a wonderful plot up to the moment when someone stumbles on the weakness.  Of course, that might not be the end even so.  Achilles and MacBeth died when their weak points were uncovered; but Samson survived as prisoner long enough to recover his strength and take vengeance.  Superman has been exposed to kryptonite enough times that his arch nemesis Lex Luthor suffered radiation poisoning from handling it (for those who didn’t know, apparently it wasn’t entirely safe for humans as had so long been thought); yet each time he survived, escaped, and triumphed.  The character whose weakness is uncovered is in some ways the stronger character:  he now knows that he’s got a vulnerability, something he must protect, whether by keeping it secret or by defending it particularly or by some other means.  He is the not quite invulnerable character who has just enough fear to make him interesting.  He is the more interesting because he once thought himself invulnerable, and others may still believe it, but he has discovered that he is not and must deal with that fact.  Whether it is someone seeking his aid who doesn’t understand his reluctance to face a danger that doesn’t seem significant to someone so powerful, or someone trying to find a weapon to use against him, the secret becomes central to who he is.

  Next week, something different.

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M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc.  His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.