Which superheroes/villains would lose to a real world SWAT team if they were stripped of plot armor?

[u/Historical_Ostrich]

The SWAT team will employ real world tactics and resort to deadly force if necessary. Whoever they're facing off against has their standard gear and will resist to the best of their ability, but they don't get any of their standard plot armor.

[u/Burgess-Shale]

We can start off by saying any superhero who is just some guy, even with impressive gadgets, is cooked. Batman, punisher, Hawkeye, deadshot, Captain Boomerang, all cooked. I'd add to this characters that are just barely superhuman or have superhuman skills: kingpin, daredevil, iron fist, bullseye, taskmaster, captain america. No chance! There are limits to how much dodging one can do against multiple trained armed opponents working in tandem. I'm sure they could take a few swat guys out but I don't see them surviving a full raid.

I'm gonna add to the cooked pile some characters who I think of as "gun tier", characters with powers that don't offer any serious protection from firearms and are basically just a unique weapons: cyclops is my main archetype for this. He's got a good weapon but he's not bulletproof and he's susceptible to being outnumbered. Many other X-Men would also fall into this category: angel, pyro, rogue, gambit, mystique, beast, havok, would all fall to conventional weaponry and tactics, albeit probably with a lot of casualties. (Please let me know if I'm wrong, I know some of the X-Men have variable ass powers.

Also in this category are MOST of the heroes and villains from my hero academia, notable exceptions being some of the strength types who can tank conventional attacks and higher tier elemental attackers who could just clear a battlefield. Tape elbows guy? Froppy? Uravity? Honestly I'm surprised how much of combat is dominated by supers in MHA given how not bulletproof they all seem.

Similar to this are characters with special high tech weaponry or tools that give them unusual combat capacity but don't really protect them from conventional weaponry: captain cold, mirror master, Falcon, gonna go ahead and add ant man to this list. I think their arsenals, however fantastical, aren't actually a great deal stronger than multiple enemies with modern guns and armor

Characters that I think are fun edge cases, in ascending order of how well I think they'd do: -nightcrawler: he has so much maneuverability that I can imagine him avoiding and taking out swat guys one at a time, but one slip up means death -deadpool/sabretooth: regeneration, but can still take damage. I think sustained shots to the head and limbs could actually weaken him enough to be put into restraints of some sort. Since his skull isn't bulletproof, shots to the head would actually scramble his brain and stun them. Wolverines adamantium skeleton and claws I think would carry him to the bloody finish -spiderman: insanely strong nimble, but not bulletproof. His Spidey sense means that he's always got a bit of plot armor, but is he really faster than a bullet? How about hundreds of bullets from different directions all at once? I personally think spiderman could take this fight but the "without plot armor" makes me wonder, cuz frankly Spidey gets a Looot of plot armor in movies and comics alike.

Fun prompt!

[u/8dev8 → u/Burgess-Shale]

I’d argue being fast enough to dodge bullets gives you a good fighting chance, since once they close to hand to hand there’s not really much shooting going on.

But antman? They are gonna shoot the ant or smaller sized man running and jumping around?

[u/vegetables-10000 → u/8dev8]

There should also be a category for hax abilities too. Since outside super durability/strength, haxs like time manipulation or even mind control can be advantages too.

[u/Kiyohara → u/Burgess-Shale]

In fairness to MHA, it is set in Japan where guns are very rare to start with. I'm willing to bet the US group of heroes either has a high percentage of high durability/invulnerable types or else they wear more body armor than you do in Japan.

[u/Burgess-Shale → u/Kiyohara]

Very fair point. My hamburger poisoned mind cannot imagine a world not dominated by guns

[u/silviesereneblossom → u/Burgess-Shale]

A lot of this depends on where the fight starts, which is not really specified by the prompt. If it's an open field, I agree, most of the chars here get folded for the reasons you state. However, in a lot of other situations, mid-tier SWAT teams might get picked off and defeated in detail if they don't move together at ALL times. Terrain becomes a factor too. It goes worse for the SWAT team the less they can concentrate their firepower. Cyclops would lose in a straight up shootout but if they can never fight him straight up, they lose. Same thing with Cap or Batman, they absolutely lose trying to solo the entire team, but neither of them would ever let it get to that point and the SWAT team gets defeated in detail. Same is true for Spidey except he can also potentially brute force it, as you said.

[u/SisyphusRocks7 → u/silviesereneblossom]

Cyclops could be readily defeated by a SWAT sniper. But absent surprise, if he wasn’t holding back to protect civilians, he’d defeat a small army let alone a SWAT team. He has leveled small mountains (along with armored Sentinels in front of them) by taking off his visor and fully opening his eyes.

A lot of the X-Men are similarly glass cannons. Havok has somewhat similar blaster powers. Jubilee can create the equivalent of a tactical nuke at max power. Storm can create hurricanes and lightning storms. Etc. But all are vulnerable to snipers when unaware. If Professor X or Jean Grey or Emma Frost are with them, they are likely aware and know roughly where the snipers are.

[u/vegetables-10000 → u/Burgess-Shale]

Good take for this prompt too.