Basic Trope: The abilities of characters who would ordinarily be vastly different are balanced in a Crossover.
- Straight: Untrained street ragamuffin Bob and elite dragon slayer Charlie fight on even ground.
- Exaggerated: A Physical God and a puppy fight on even ground.
- Downplayed: Powerful characters remain powerful and weak characters remain weak in the Crossover, but Curbstomp Battle is mostly averted.
- Justified:
- A higher force overseeing the story artificially equalized the characters' power.
- Charlie uses a fighting method different from what he uses in his profession, and Bob proves a quick learner despite being physically weaker. So they are on equal ground.
- Trope Fighter 's Middle Weight Fighter Charlie and War Troops ' Sniper Albert are playing Chess in the crossover. Neither can make much use of their normal strengths.
- Inverted: The gap between the Super Weight of characters gets larger in the Crossover.
- Subverted: Charlie later reveals that he was just holding back.
- Double Subverted: ...and so was Bob.
- Parodied: A little kid who was a mere Tag Along Kid becomes a Physical God in the Crossover.
- Zig Zagged: Two series cross over, and while most characters have been balanced, some are more/less powerful than others. Not necessarily more or less powerful depending on how good at fighting they originally were, though...
- Averted:
- Characters' effectiveness in-game is congruent with their Power Level and competence in the canon material.
- Enforced:
- Gameplay and Story Segregation - Any kind of Game-Breaker isn't very fun, even if it fits canon.
- "Yes, I know this guy slaughtered entire armies, but this is a one-on-one fighting game! Make him weaker."
- Lampshaded: "How can you be standing up to me now?! You couldn't even touch me in our own world!"
- Invoked:
- A Wizard Did It - the entity making the crossover possible in-universe decides to make it harder for any characters to overwhelm others without using certain strategies.
- The higher-ups of Trope Squadron and War Tropers chose competitions that play no favors to either force to keep the Inter-Service Rivalry friendly.
- Exploited: Bob uses their now fair footing as what's possibly his only chance to get revenge on Charlie.
- Defied: Charlie uses all of his power, rules be damned!
- Discussed:Charlie (after a fight): "You... You've become really strong all of a sudden, huh?"Bob: "Nah, yer' just not all yer' cracked up t'be."
- Conversed: "Wasn't Bob that one Ensemble Dark Horse who you could kill in one hit in his own game?"
- Deconstructed:
- In-Universe: Because Bob and Charlie are unnaturally balanced, it lead to a literally unbelievable (as in implausible), unrealistic, and rather unsatisfactory battle. Charlie is quite understandably angry, baffled, and beyond unamused when someone had intentionally and unscrupulously rigged their battle(s) just for the sake of a self-centered, appallingly hedonistic audience that is quite unlikable who have a disagreeable, twisted sense of fairness.
- Due to this artificial balance as a result, Fridge Logic and the others are brought up in genuine outrage beyond pettiness. Open-minded people with a wholehearted focus on objectivity know for sure that without any asinine, forced and unrealistic means of balancing both Bob and Charlie, Charlie would have unambiguously and objectively won against Bob. Since Real Life isn't like in video games and literature, there would be no game mechanics and the like to affect Charlie with. This made many people beyond upset at this poor attempt on balancing Bob's and Charlie's abilities.
- Reconstructed: The strange ability of this inter-dimensional arena to "balance" its contestants is well-known, and acknowledged by the characters in the work. Some powerful beings absolutely relish the opportunity to spar with Weak, but Skilled warriors they'd normally overpower, whether so they can be better prepared to face the few foes able to meet them in raw power outside the arena, or just because it's a welcome challenge.
- The challenge is specifically one of skill in the first place and involves facing each other in unfamiliar contexts. Thus it is more a question of "would Alexander the Great or Napoleon win" rather than the armies of the two. The latter would have far superior technology and outnumber the former.
Go back to Power Creep, Power Seep. We can't have them getting disproportionate amounts of views, now, can we?
