CanaDixieMan

When I play this game, I try to forget about mathematics and immerse myself in the mindset of the character. In 3 years of fairly contant play, I am just beginning to vaguely understand the process of making a toon incredibly powerful. I have done no real PvP aside from one encounter, where my guy Hawk-Owl was slain instantly by an unseen Stalker, who added salt to the wound by saying "WTF? *Claws*?". Ouch...

Though it's the heart of the game, & the reason we are not allowed to make Blaster Tanks a la Iron Man, or other multi-Origin types, I have done very little teaming lately, due to the birth of twin sons. So I take my fun from CoX when & where I can find it, and am grateful that this incredible game exists at all. Keep in mind that I'm 53, a comics fan for 47 years, and being freed from pencil & dice to play out super-adventures on what I call the "Poor Man's Holodeck" is far more amazing to me that it might be to a younger, more tech-savvy person.

I can appreciate that folks want many rewards and more power--this is normal. I enjoy being able to put two or three ultra-enhancements together & feel clever, but on the other hand, I don't mind playing with a high-level but underpowered respec-ed toon who's patiently huntng down more INF & better enhancements to fill his / her vacant slots. Nor do I mind trying to stay alive with a character who's so Natural that he / she refuses to take Bonus powers which involve magic, mutation, or the like, or strength enhancements which involve a Hulk-like level of power--i.e. hurling chunks of concrete or earthquake stomps. I just assume that a high-damage Natural Tanker or Scrapper knows WHERE to hit an opponent to best use his / her peak-human strength, or employs some kind of off-screen cunning to get over. Even the Death-God Thanos backed down from Captain America.

I agree with the original poster that CoX would be a better game overall if everyone wasn't into instant gratification, but I also realise that means it would be better for US, not for the people who want Instant Godhood, etc. If you paid to play, you have the right to use the game as a first-person fighter game, or a "Monty Haul" grab-the-loot game instead of a superhero role-playing adventure. It's your dime, after all.

Still, to those who are concerned more with the destination than the journey, I can only say that if this was "Pantheon of Deities" instead of City of Heroes, and your toon started the game as a God, he or she would still probably begin as a rather minor God. Can you say Bes, God of the Hearth, instead of Osiris, Lord of the Dead? ; ) Like Osiris, even Lord Odin had to go through some rather unpleasant & challenging circumstances to become head of the Norse Pantheon. I doubt, however, that most players would care to pluck out an eye or hang on a tree for 9 days to get Odin-level power.

With the Incarnate system coming, we do indeed have a Godlike adventure ahead of us. I don't mind waiting. But as the old Southern US saying goes, "the trouble of it is" that in r/l, we have only so much time & energy, & what if we uh, you know, actually, like, uh, DIE, before we get Hero X to Level 1,1000?

Don't worry about it. If even ONE OF your toons is alive and adventuring, you have already won.

Again--

There are no losers in this game! Enjoy yourselves. Because, after all, YOU CAN'T LOSE.

Leapers don't spend as much time trapped in bus stops as my Super Speeders do. :P[/QUOTE]

LOL. I thought I was the only one who kept doing this, then looking around to see if anyone had noticed a 3-year vet making a fool of himself yet again. It might be fun if passerby commented on this. "Hero X just ran into a bus stop!"

OK, I can see that it might hurt if you landed badly, but it doesn't seem fair to penalise Leapers when Flyers never run into buildings and Speedsters never hit cars. (Nor do Teleporters ever materalise inside brick walls). Leaping is the only Travel Power that can result in personal damage.

I'm not all that concerned about it, actually, but it's just one of those game mechanics that makes me scratch my head. Ideally, I think any form of Travel Power should be chancy if you're not careful. Adds realism. Then again, it would be a pain in the butt.

Any comments?

"Sexism" was indeed probably a bit strong & overly PC comment re: costumes, but it wasn't meant to be an accusation of a vast ongoing conspiracy, just an observation.

Some points I enjoyed hearing:

1) Lots of players REALLY want hair with their hats. Right now, the only way to get that is choose the "swabby" hat, but unless your hair & hat aren't vastly different colours, the hair sort of fades into the hat.

2) You can indeed give your male toon "fishnets" by properly manipulating "mesh" Mesh is lots of fun. I think the player who worried about the game being "overrun" by transvestites should costuming go totally unisex need not be concerned. A guy in fishnets doesn't strike much fear in the hearts of evildoers. Or maybe he would, depending, lol.

3) Good point that a "huge" skeleton might present a problem so far as "witch lace", etc. Yeah, there are some things that just won't work, like a "super foxy" hairstyle with a helmet.

4) Guys can't have "cloud bracers"? I never knew, not having tried it. This is senseless; think of the chop-socky costume possibilities.

5) One player showed us a good handful of fairly darn famous male comics characters with extremely long hair. This is what I mean by ONE male "long hair" (which is actually medium long) just not being enough. I was re-reading some graphic novels earlier today and was struck by the sheer intensity of the nearly waist-length hair of everyone's favourite Marvel Mutant Ninja, "The Gorgon". The guy looks BAD-A$$.

6) I personally would never put a male toon in a pencil skirt, but what about loincloths? Again, a unisex choice. Conan, Elektra, Shanna, Hercules, etc. I also agree that females have a very limited choice in skirts, and tops as well, when you come to creating a "Civlian ID Alt." Shirts for femmes also seem to be vastly limited.

I could go on, but basically was struck by the number of responses to this issue, most of which were highly thoughtful, and some which gave me cause to rethink my complaints. As always, I will end my ramblings by saying I feel grateful just to have CoH as a stress reliever and alternate-reality immersion system. Just think if our costume choices were as limited as those of the very first "Smackdown!" console game! (Shudders...)

Cheers...

Someone has probably commented about this before, but I haven't seen it, so I thought I'd weigh in. While I'm sure most male players aren't interested in being able to wear skirts or dresses, (if you do, I'm not saying there's anything WRONG with that) why can't male toons have various styles of shorts, other than "briefs"? Why can't any toon of either sex have any available hairstyle? There is only one real "long" style for male toons, which wouldn't look that good on, for instance, a character like Thor. It's actually a "medium long" hairstyle which barely touches the shoulders. The comics abound with males who have hair to their butts. I also don't see why a male toon can't wear a "tiara", which would actually be a "headband". There are some tough metahuman males with metal headbands out there. "Makeup" doesn't seem to be available to male toons, but check out The Joker, Creeper, et al.

I suppose there are design reasons why things are the way they are re: costuming, and I realise we have vast choices, so I may sound spoiled, but what I'm really asking here is 1) Who thinks this is a coding / dev issue which no one has bothered to address, since we have so much other cool stuff coming all the time, and 2) Who thinks this may be a more "political" issue, purposefully instituted to keep the game tamed down so we don't have dozens of Rocky Horror-style Frank-n-Furter types running around?

Understand that I myself have no desire to ceate a male toon with fishnet stockings, but someone might. I just dislike the idea of limitations when there's no real reason for them.

Of course, I realise this issue may be the result of a combination of both the above factors, coding & "correctness". CoH is a great but sometimes schizo sort of game, in that it appeals to both kids & adults, and having kids, I can understand the thin line when it comes to what's "appropriate", even in using highly obscure "bad names". I recently was suspended for 3 days for "bad-naming" a female villain, and I won't even say it was unfair. Yet the GMs don't mind that she continues to run around dressed like a 5th Column dominatrix. (With short hair, because she wears a military style hat. I got the basic toon at random, and the hat itself sent me off down her path of origin. In this case, the toon herself is a no-nonsense Loyalist jerk, so the short hair doesn't bother me. It fits her style.)

I can't leave without mentioning the "hat issue". I'm sure that someday this will be addressed by the Devs, but currently it seems that if you choose to wear a hat, you MUST have short hair. So many toons would look vastly cooler with hats plus various lengths and styles of hair, regardless of sex.

Someone out there is saying "this guy wants the world!", but don't we all? Lol. Actually, I wrote this because the servers have crashed on a Saturday morning, & I'm killing time 'til they go back up.

Cheers...

Thanks, folks! I can wait... ; )

OK, I buy all the expansion packs, plus I understand there are some new auras in the game anyway. While playing with a 40+ toon who is Fire-based, I happened to notice that "Snow" is now an available aura. Not for my Fire / Fire lady, but for my Ice Goddess, definitely. So I go back with 37-lvl Ice / Ice toon (who already has earned "aura" and uses "icy sparkles"), looking for "snow"; no snow. I think "Well, this toon is under 40th lvl, maybe that has something to do with it." I look again with all my lvl 40s who have auras already. No snow, just "cryogenics", which wasn't what I was looking for.

Did I hallucinate "snow" as an available aura? Did I not have the toon talk to the right person? Is it a Nemesis plot? I figured asking and looking like a newbie idiot is better than being quiet & disappointed. (Not to suggest all newbies are idiots; I'm 3 years in and still feel like a newbie.)

Purloined purse restored
in Atlas. Zero INF gained
Honor my reward

@NaughtyDragon

Purportedly, a curious idiot once asked the Buddha: "Are you a God?"
Buddha replied "No."
"Are you a Prophet?"
"No."
"Are you a great religious teacher?"
"No."
"Are you a Guru? A Mahatma? A Magician?"
Buddha replied in the negative to these and many more idle questions.
Exasperated, the man finally asked, "Then what the %$#^ ARE you???"
Buddha smiled. "Awake."

In CoX terms, Buddha, having already fought off the Goddess of Illusion, Maya, would be utterly invulnerable to Psionic coercion of any kind, and I'm forced to think his "powers" would run along the line of helping other people wake up and/or avoid/escape mental snares. A natural Controller or Defender, he would have a simple costume of robe and staff, but no, he wouldn't be a jolly fat guy. That would be Ho-Ti, the Chinese God of Luck, who is often mistaken for the more ascetic & slender Siddhartha Buddha by gwai-los & gaijin (that would be us western barbarians). As far as Offensive powers, if I translated Buddha as a CoX toon, he would probably use a Power we don't have access to in the game--that of talking greedy thugs & murderous mystics into realising their Karmic Actions will ultimately take them to the Zig, the morgue, or at least not contribute to their real happiness in the long run. Hmmm. Maybe "Reform Other" should be available to high-level Controllers & Defenders.

So, even Buddha, who founded a fairly large & impressive School of Philosophy (not really a "religion"), and IS worshipped as a God by some more literal-minded folks, is not really what we mean here by a "God". I was just amused by the "Ghost Busters definition of Godhood, so I wanted to throw in a funny story. As a Zen-loving sort, I find it funny, anyway...

Anyway, to the meat--after 30 months of playing CoX, my highest-level toon, Pyrogasm Girl, is only Lvl 43. Though a frequent player, I enjoy variety, have 30 or so toons whom I all love for different reasons, & with twin infants lkely to start howling at any instant, I rarely feel comfortable enough these days to join a team, because my personal code of honour tells me that dropping out of a mish in mid-BIFF! BAM! KRAKADOOM! is impolite to the other players, despite urgent r/l reasons. Putting a team together ranges from moderately irksome to outright tiresome, in any case, & is something I only do if I have plenty of thumb-twiddling time on my hands. So, as opposed to many players, I have no toons who are anywhere near "God" level; at higher levels, it takes forever to go up doing solo missions, especially as I rotate my play-time for each toon.

Pyro-Girl, a mutant, is a Fire/Fire Blaster whom someone once told me sounded square in the X-Person tradition, given her very mildly lascivious origin, scanty attire, & thrill-seekig attitude. She is not the first toon I ever created, though--that would be Alberta Winter, a Cold/Cold Blaster of Magic origin. I created Alberta as a nod to my adopted Province, and before the idea of "Avatars" became an official expansion to the game, I considered Alberta, whose powers came directly from the First Nation Goddess, Nelvana of the Northern Lights, an "Avatar of Winter". (btw, Nelvana once had her own book during WWII, along with Johnny Canuck. There were lots of "home ice players" in Canada before Logan, after whom I have named my younger twin. Yep, you're dealing with a true fan-boy here, lol.)

Alberta is teetering on the edge of Lvl 40, and I do plan to run her as a budding Goddess, especially now that the "Avatar Issue" is coming off the presses. An Avatar, after all, is the human incarnation of a God / Goddess. Being stuck in a human body slows down a God just a bit, but Godhood is a lot like Arthur C. Clarke's observation that an extremely advaned technology is indistinguishable from magic. Perhaps there are planets (like that of the "Asparagus People", all of whom were slain by the Avatar of the Phoenix before we got a chance to know much about them), where an average Earthling would appear as a God or Hero.

I try to play fair wirh myself when running a toon. There's no way I can talk myself into thinking that a Technology Blaster should have Magic Fortune, or that a Natural Pistolero should be able to blow himself up a la a Cyborg. There are exceptions, like Iron Paranoid, a Technology Tanker whose innate mutant genes were tweaked into life by the nanotech pill that turned him into organic steel, thus giving him Secondary Mutation. In some cases, I will even handicap a toon who otherwise deserves to possess an ability, such as Campus Crusader. She's a Magic Tanker with a great big flaming sword, who believes that her powers come from the Biblical Abrahamic God. CC could quite legally use Mystic Fortune, but the character herself believes that the Tarot is "evil occultism", so let's hope she's right about her true origin, and gets good rolls with a little help from On High...

Before I lose my grip on the actual topic completely, I will first say that by my own self-made rules, which I don't urge on any other player, only toons with "Magic" origins will strive to be Avatars in my version of the game. After all, "Magic", the non-Arthur Clarke kind, comes from supernatural entities of various types; Gods, if you will. Pyro-Girl might get to be pretty hot stuff (har har), but her flame is genetic. Alberta Winter, on the other hand, could eventually "channel" Nelvana. The same is true of "Hawk-Owl", a First Nation Shaman whose powers come from Inuit Gods; "Little Sister Death", whose Big Sister IS the Avatar of Death, and who considers herself an apprentice; "Blues Man", another Magic Christian; "Midnight Diamond", who got her powers from an odd gemstone while serving in Iraq, and is still unsure of which God is involved, and all of my other Magic Toons.

Like anything I say here, I speak only for myself, and I'm sure many players could find a reasonable explanation for turning a Tech Blaster into the Avatar of the God of Projectile Weaponry, etc. To them, I wish "no-prizes" for ingenious loopholes. CoX is such a flexible game that almost anything will fly, but in my case, I always imagine trying to sell the concept to an imaginary comics editor...

"You say that "Night Machine" is a Magic Tanker? Kid, he's a ROBOT!" "But, Chief, he's actually a GOLEM created by a descendent of the Rabbi who created the original Golem of Prague out of clay. This descendent's own astral body powers Night Machine! No reason he should be made of clay when his inventor is a roboticist as well as a Jewish Quabbalstic magician, eh? Of course he has Mystic Fortune--the Tarot is BASED on the Quabbalah--but he can Self-Destruct as well. A roboticist could easily slip in a 'take one for the team' program & a mini-bomb. Maybe he can even blow himself up by a magical act of will!" Editor crushes out his 20th cigar of the day, frowns, and says "We'll give it 4 issues, & if the sales don't warrant, he's history. And don't call me Chief!"

In any case, it's gonna be fun. CoX expansions usually are. Thanks for reading.


"God forgives. Pagans don't." --motto of the Pagans Motorcycle Club

Woo! This turned into a very interesting and deep thread. I find myself in agreement with a lot of observations, such as a Hero can kill and still be a Hero. The original Bob Kane / Bill Finger Batman did shoot people & toss them off buildings. Somehow, though, he got rebooted fairly early, and came to hate guns "and the cowardly scum who use them". These days, Batman refuses to kill despite, in my opinion, this making him responsible for each murder the Joker commits when he breaks out of Arkham. On the other hand, would Jim Gordon have come to trust Bats as much if he was a reckless killer / extreme torturer in the Punisher mold?

A cop on the street is indeed in danger if he / she thinks he can get by without ever having recourse to lethal force. But would Superman do anything other than laugh at robbers with guns? Even Captain America would not be overly discomfited, although as I admitted, he did kill during WWII, & once had to kill some terrorists to save innocents; there was simply no other stratagem. (Note: as the Winter Soldier arc has shown us, Bucky actually killed a lot more JapaNazis during the Big One than Cap did.)

Sadly, comic books are so pricey (and badly distributed) in this part of NW Alberta that I have missed a number of issues of my favourite Horn-Headed Ninja, though I knew DD was now leading the Hand. That him being in such a position would lead to Matt becoming responsible for murder or homicide is not surprising. DD has really become more of a classic Vigilante in recent years; surely in his rain-soaked battle against 100 Yakuza, he had to have injured a least a few of them so severely they were permanently crippled. But that's what I mean about "being so good you don't have to kill". His foes were out to kill him, but DD stopped them all without any exploding-heart punches or swords in the gut. I can believe he may have hamstrung a few of them or even caused some permanent brain damage, however.

I agree that Wolverine, Master of Claws, could surely pull his jabs / slices and cause a foe to ultimately collapse from sheer shock, pain, and blood loss. He could also eschew the claws entirely and stick to bar-brawling, which is sadly under-represented in CoX. If you want a "realistic" Natural Tanker, give him / her Fighting, Health, and Willpower, Speed for Flurry, Jumping for Jump-Kick, but NOT any Hulk-like palm-clapping or giant cement-chunk throwing. Even Cap couldn't do that. Stick with jabs, punches, haymakers, knockout punches, etc. And yet at what number does genuine "super-strength" really begin for a Tanker? The game is not designed to reflect, say, Batman strength vs. Spider-Man strength; we can't pick up cars or rip lamp-posts out of the ground, though some Tankers could obviously do just that.

As many have noted, in a number of cases "comic book combat" simply doesn't translate to CoX style fighting, and we are left to use our imaginations, which is fine with me. I might not have seen the grapple gun you used to jump up on a roof, or the batons you tossed at a foe instead of throwing knives, but if you see them, hurrah! The same applies to imagining you have caused some Tech Brute's power-armor to malfunction, or that you actually fly using an invisible plane. We have been gifted with great graphics to stir our imaginations, but imagination is the overall reason to play CoX. Otherwise, I would have no reason to care about what happened to a bunch of pixellated images, or wonder about their codes of conduct / backgrounds / attitudes. In CoX, we are basically recapitulating Mythology for the modern day, and we get out of it as much as we put in.

I'd like to stress again that I brought this subject up mostly out of my own curiosity, and not to run a Gary Gygax-style "if it ain't played by my rules, it ain't really D&D" set-in-stone rant. I have been convinced that Heroes can and should sometimes kill, that Rogues are in it for the money primarily, and that it's a thin line between Hero & Vigilante. I understand that the overwhelmed beat cop had better spend plenty of time on the pistol range, both in r/l and especially in Paragon City.

I'll leave you for the moment with this query: could a toon be an absolute true Villain who is motivated primarily by money, power, and personal manipulation, yet still go out of his / her way to try never to kill? Assume the Villain is one of those "I want you to live to understand how humiliated and defeated you have become" types. Or are true Villains so evil that their first impulse is a casual disregard for life? Just hunting for some opinions, because as a wise person said here, we can always kill 'em all and let the mediport sort 'em out, lol.

"We must believe in our free will. We have no choice in the matter." --Aleister Crowley

I've heard a lot of good comments here. For instance, the average cop is in good shape (we hope) and no stranger to physical combat, but he /she isn't Bruce Lee or The Bride. Thus, as Ironblade notes, a cop needs access to lethal weaponry in extreme situations. I would still consider the ideal cop to be a Hero despite having recourse to projectile weapons, though of course, any society also has Vigilante, Rogue, or even Villainous people working under colour of Law.

I have read and heard that the average r/l gunfight is fairly sloppy. Most firefights take place in dim ares, and last from 5-35 seconds. During that time, the shooters are so full of adrenaline that their sight actually narrows to tunnel vision, their hearing cuts out, and if anyone gets hit it's a matter of taking time to aim at center mass & emptying the gun. Of course, that's in "reality", not Comics World; most r/l cops never fire their weapons.

It's true that Wolverine is a vicious enough fighter to take plenty of foes out without benefit of claws. It seems to me that Logan actully uses his claws to either inflict death on total black-hearted villains, destroy robots or other non-organic beings, or cause intense fear and trepidation. I can't think of him as Villain, though; he is noble of heart. As a living weapon who goes his own way, and isn't very amenable to "Lawful Good" orders, I think we'd have to consider Logan to be a Rogue, unless he just saved your butt. then you might think of him as a Hero. (Personal opinion only, like all opinions set forth here).

I agree that Captain America must be considered a Science Hero, given the Vita-rays and Super-serum. I like the idea of a peak-level human, but wasn't happy during the time the writers gave Cap a modicum of super-strength. This made Steve just another strongman, whereas my fascination with him is based on his incredible combat abilities and utter will to win. Seems to me that if he had kept the super-strength, Cap might have come to rely on it too much, and gotten sloppy.

I've enjoyed several explanations here of who, what, why, & how some players' toons operate. We don't get enough room in our bio sections to explain our toons fully, & I always enjoy a good backstory. I can easily see how one could set out to be a Hero, be forced to take human life, yet remain a Hero. Cap killed during WWII, and in modern days was once forced to shoot a terrorist to avoid the deaths of a dozen or so innocents. He was saddened, but there was no moral choice--one dead bad guy vs. a bunch of dead civvies was a no-contest choice for him.

Presently I have some straight-up Vigilantes (The Creeping Skull, a 40s-style disgruntled cop who employs judicious Dual-Pistol police brutality in his spare time; Governess, a rifle-toting avenger; Naughty Dragon, whose cheerful approach to slicing baddies up with a katana is rather chilling given her young age). I also enjoy running utter goody-goodies like GraviTeen, whose gravitational powers allow her to slowly squeeze the bad guys into unconciousness. She has an intense respect for authority and chain of command, so it would be hard for me to decide to take her in even a Vigilante direction. Brain Brat, however, is a bit of a snot, and despite her Psionic abilities, I can imagine her going Rogue. Not that she would seek to kill, especially, but as a nose-thumbing punkette, I don't see BB happily taking orders from Longbow or even the principal of her school, lol.

Good note that dying bad Guys are also teleported to the Zig infirmary. Perhaps when a critical claw slash or through-and-through bullet wound gets through a foe's defenses, instead of casuing death, it simply triggers the mediport. I can imagine the mediport malfunctioning on occasion, though, which might lead to a storyline concerning blood-feud vengeance. I know a lot of people would dislike it, but perhaps there should be a "hardcore play" option to turn off the mediport, and if your toon dies, well sayonara--we'll be sure to put up a statue to you in Atlas Park ; )

Lots of interesting comments on this issue. Thanks very much for sharing your views!

"A Neo-Conservative is a Liberal who has just been mugged. A neo-Liberal is a Conservative who has just been arrested." --Urban Motto

Yeah..... Doesn't this at least partially invalidate your earlier statements? Or are you deliberately spending some time arguing each side in order to start the discussion? [/QUOTE]

Ironblade: you are exactly right here--I am deliberately spending some time arguing each side, because I think the concept is interesting enough to discuss. I also agree that Punisher has put DD down, hard, at least once, and I thoroughly enjoyed it: He used sonics to knock DD out, chained him up, gave him a pistol, and allowed Matt to decide whether or not to shoot Frank in the head to stop him from killing a Mafioso. As it turned out, Matt went for the head shot, but the pistol wasn't loaded. Frank scored an incredible moral victory. Great stuff!

On the other hand, Frank respects Captain America so much (or feels shamed enough by his presence) that he has stood there and taken a beating from Cap rather than retaliate or even defend himself.

I will note that the Punisher is a totally Natural Blaster, while DD has actual superpowers, and Cap is the acme of human perfection, perhaps slightly more than just a "Natural Scrapper".

It's all very much open to discussion, and to me, it adds dimensionality to the game to think about exactly how your toon defeats his foes. Thanks very much for commenting!

I've been thinking about it, in the midst of all this very interesting Alignment shuffling, and wonder if others might agree with me that what makes any particular toon more likely to become or remain a Hero, Vigilante, Rogue, or absolute Villain, has a great deal to do with his / her attack powers, and how they are used.

If your toon is conceived as a traditional Hero, for instance, and you wish to play him / her AS a Hero, but you choose Dual Pistols or Automatic Weaponry as your main attack, some thought should be given to exactly how you use these attacks. When sent to "arrest" some Hellions or Council goons, perhaps your toon uses nonlethal rubber bullets. A "real" Hero is so good that he or she can afford not to kill. Look at Captain America, Daredevil, or Batman. True, Cap has killed, but in general he doesn't have to. This is partly what being a Hero is about--you are so excellent at combat, you can avoid inflicting actual death on your foes. True, they might spent a few weeks in the hospital...

Then there's The Punisher. It's been shown he can't stand up to Cap or even Daredevil in a straight fight, and to accomplish his purposes--killing as many bad guys as possible--he uses the most lethal attacks available. For the sake of argument, let's say that Frank is basically a Rogue. He is far more vicious than even the average Vigilante, but one can't call him a true Villain. He doesn't kill cops, innocents, or those whom he he considers more naive in their crimefighting.

The Human Torch is a Blaster with potentially lethal powers, but he doesn't kill organic sentient beings. Let's say the most Johnny would do is singe you severely. But then there's Blaastar, who has no compunction about destroying sentient life, and is obviously a true Villain.

Wolverine. He has to be mentioned here. If your main and most lethal attack are razor-sharp claws, how could you avoid doing lethal damage if you struck a bad guy hard enough to hurt him? Like blade-wielders or axe-swingers, perhaps a player could create a toon with cutting, crushing, or stabbing abilities, and still have him or her be a Hero. As some have mentioned, we can use our imaginations in many cases. A Hero could pretend that he or she cut a chain holding a big weight that came crashing down and knocked out the bad guy, or used the flat of his sword, or put her claws to the villain's throat and literally scared him / her senseless. A Vigilante or Rogue could consider that yes, he / she killed the baddie by deliberate frontal lethal force.

My main point is that your attack powers could possibly affect your alignment to some degree. It's easier for a Controller to be a Hero than it is for a Brute--"Go to sleep" vs. "I'll put my fist through your chest!" If you have chemical, fire, or cold ammunition in your pistols, you might want to think about why. It obviously isn't there so you can shoot guns out of the hands of your foes; an incendiary bullet would do very nasty stuff to human flesh.

Ghost Rider could be considered a Vigilante, perhaps, and his "Penance Stare" a form of intense Fear. On the other hand, nothing says a Hero can't produce fear and panic merely by his presence. I'm reminded of Captain America telling a group of terrorists: "You know who I am and what I do. If you want to be able to tell your grandchildren about meeting me, you'll drop those guns NOW." Which they did, lol...

I'm not at all suggesting a cut and dried formula which must be followed here, just throwing out a few conceptual ideas. The Hero "Windchill" might leave you shivering and with minor frostbite. The Vigilante or Rogue "Windchill" could send you to the hospital minus a few fingers and toes, with life-threatening hypothermia. The Villain "Windchill" probably turns his foes into frozen statues and smashes them.

Just food for thought. This game is mostly about the individual imagination of the player. Nothing I've said should be taken as inflexible. In fact, the very flexibility possible in CoX is part of what makes it so enjoyable. Will you be a Psion like Prof X., who reluctantly uses his abilities and does as little damage as possible, or use your mental powers to toy with your foes, and scar them psychologically? Are you Hopalong Cassidy, a trick shot who uses his guns nonlethally, or a disciple of the Saint of Killers, who prays for instant death with each bullet he fires?

As Alan Moore said at the conclusion of his seminal "Watchmen" graphic novel, I leave it entirely in your hands. The subject is just something I felt worth discussing, and I'm interested in seeing if anyone wants to weigh in with their own ideas on this concept.

Thanks, as always, for listening.

I once did a door mish in Independence Port wherein a ship's door led to a CAVE! The only way I can see getting a "no-prize" out of this is to assume that in going through the door, my toon was teleported to a nearby cavern. Otherwise I would have to assume an insane level of laziness on the parts of the Devs, and they have done so many other things right, I hate to dis them on this abberation. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel...or a very shallow cave.

I also agree that most CoX caves are not "natural" in their design, i.e. created by flowing water & other geologic causes. I'll let the "improved caves" containing Council or Circle of Thorns go by, assuming that the Bad Guys simply improved on what they found.

Let's just say it's a good thing this game isn't called "City of Spelunkers"...

For me, it depends entirely on the toon I'm playing. If she's a Fire/Fire Blaster, naturally, I want all kinds of inferno-rific graphics. Yet I also enjoy playing a dumb galoot of a Natural Tanker who is not invulnerable in the traditional sense, but who simply won't back down, and excells at basic punch-in-face brawling. If I must hop down on one side of the fence or the other, my ideal of a REAL fight is the the kind of stuff Charles Bronson did in "Hard Times" (with James Coburn, directed by Walter Hill). In-close, cussing, sweating, gritty alley fighting. I also like the idea that one good knife in the heart will drop anyone who isn't invulnerable.

However, I realise that CoX is not a MMA or wrestling game, nor even a simple 1st person shooter. Much of the time, a player must decide if he or she is trying to create a nascent Superhuman or a SUPERIOR human at the outset. Or at least, this is what I do--a sort of interior roleplaying. Pyrogasm Girl is a toon I expect to hit 50 as sort of a demigoddess of Flame. Captain Nashville is a big strong guy who hits hard, but I will not choose "Hurl Chunks of Ripped-Up Earth" for him. He simply doesn't have that kind of power, and never will. Captain America-level is the best he'll ever attain (not that it's a simple achievement.)

I think it would be very nice if a player could choose "Gunnery" as a Power, and have access to both pistols & rifles. The Punisher obviously isn't going to stick to two handguns or one long gun. Maybe in the future, along with "Street Fighting" as opposed to "Martial Arts".

All right! Comics books AND theological debate, right up my alley. I would note that while there is a great deal of Christ-symbology in Superman (only son, etc.), the idea that Godhood is achievable by creating a Universe was debated hotly long ago by early Gnostic Christians & Manicheans, amongst others. It was the belief of some (later to be pursued as heretics) that THIS particular Universe, being so obviously flawed and full of woe, was created not by the real actual Big Time God, but by what was called a "Demiurgos", sort of an apprentice Godling who didn't get it quite right. On that level, the question is open to endless debate.

This aside, if the question "is Superman God of DC?" is being asked as a metaphor for "who has the most revered Iconic status at the Company?", it's still open to debate, but Supes is generally who a non-comics fan (an atheist?) thinks of when one mentions DC Comics. Unless the person has just seen a Batman franchise film, that is...

If we are asking the question amongst us True Believers, I think we'd end up with the Holy Trinity--Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. They are three, but indivisible. Supes obviously has the raw power spot as Father, Bats has the Suffering Avatar chops to be the Son, and WW is the Spirit of Sophia. Or at least, some Mystic Christians see The Holy Spirit as feminine, and we can make it fit for the sake of argument.

Really, though, if you want to know who the TRUE God of DCU is, you must fnd out just Who it was that gave The Spectre his powers. He's the only character whose powers were plainly given to him by GOD HIMSELF. He could also crush Superman like a ball of tinfoil (no protection against magic = Spectre gestures, turns Kal into living Kryptonite, Mr. El is killed by his own composition.) Luckily there is no plot so convoluted as to pit the Spectre against Superman. What? You say you have one in your bottom drawer? I should have known...

I would add one last codocil--raw power doesn't equal Godlike Goodness of Spirit. We have seen the lesser-powered Supes stand against the mad Darkseid, and Captain America lift the hammer of Thor, as well as face down Thanos. Purity of spirit trumps power, at least in the comics (and it should be that way in r/l too, but the Demiurgos screwed up...)

Next question: who's God and/or the Holy Trinity at Marvel? Personally, I think it would take the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, with its Ten Spheres in 4 worlds at once, and 22 paths connecting the Spheres, to fully explain comic-book theology.