FunstuffofDoom

Doesn't Archvillain Resistance mean that those powers aren't terribly useful, anyways?

I wish I could say this were the truth. When I'm actually panicking, though, it's more like "Moment of Glory, Dull Pain, Instant Healing, three large purples --wait, I just burned through what?! Haw, crap."

And then everything around me dies.

That's... actually, that's a surprisingly aware answer. I think I'm going to be keeping that in mind, in the future.

I've never liked that saying. It's always struck me as needlessly childish. That aside, your post was quite eloquent.

Frankly, your initial comment befuddled me. Is there a particular reason why you feel this way, or have I simply managed to overlook some forum rule for a long period of time?

If you're worried about a flame war, my experience dictates that the Roleplaying section might as well have been built with asbestos.

I think I agree with you, but I didn't want to overplay my hand, so I took a stance that's a bit easier to defend. Such situations in comics are easier to point out, and tend to be rather pronounced.

You're asking the wrong question. Death is a tool. Admittedly, one with a very narrow range of application, but it's a tool nonetheless, and that means that the killing in and of itself is no moral moral than what was accomplished by the act itself.

The question you should be asking is not "Will killing a killer make me as bad a person as the killer I killed?" That's irrelevant. The question you need to ask is, "Will killing this killer make society a better place than it was before I had the opportunity to kill him?" That's not so slippery a slope, I don't think.

In a Comic Book world, there occasionally come times when an individual faces a situation where the 'wrong' thing from the perspective of the individual would benefit more people in the long run. If Superman killed Lex Luthor, if Spiderman went out of his way to ensure Norman Osbourne stayed dead, they'd angst about it good and proper. Society would probably tell them they'd done a bad thing. But society would also, privately, I think, agree that at least it won't be a problem they'll ever have to face in the future. What is a vigilante? Efficacy varies from individual to individual, but for me, a vigilante is a person who is willing to morally take one for the team, in order to do something necessary.

...

Does that mean what I think it means?

See, I've got defense bonuses on my /Regen, and they're high enough that when I close my eyes, I almost could be a /Shield scrapper. Then I open my eyes, and the nightmare fades away.

It's strapped to Ms. Liberty's belt.


Which, on second thought, would give you plenty of excuses to get all up in that. Well played sir, well played.

I agree. I think the Knives are pretty cool, and if they weren't so persistent about dropping caltrops, they'd probably be my favorite group.

Also, I heard somewhere that they cyber in their base. All the time.

Huh. Cool.

Uh... really? The brunette? Can I get a link on that?

Whose side are you on?

True, the heir apparent will probably be his closest living descendant. However, as I recall, Dominatrix killed her mother, so that would make her it, no? However, it's a really good point that any of her kids by him would be closer descendants than she is. I hadn't thought of that.

Thing is, though, we don't know how Tyrant's government picks an heir. Historically, it tends to be based on relatives. But, if Tyrant's government is a meritocracy, and it certainly seems there's an aspect of that in there, then that might switch things up a bit, no?

Fair enough. I'll concede.

*tips hat*

Actually, Spartans did engage in a ridiculously brutal training regimen. Which was the point you were trying to make, I'm sure. Suggesting that Tyrant arbitrarily and pettily decided to wipe out nine-tenths of an already-trained army just before he went to war would be fallacious, erroneous, and just plain wrong.

You're ragging on a draft system? Really? Out of every possible grievance, that's the one you think deserves airtime?

I think Thermopylae vindicates my opinion that a smaller group of highly trained, specialized soldiers trumps a larger host of lesser-trained individuals.

Why? Primal Earth is proof he's right. Supers were allowed into the wars, and the highly trained ones tended to survive. The less-trained ones... didn't.

I dunno. Does the number of "disappearing" families exceed the number of casualties an invasion would cause?

Oh. Right. I guess I was just hoping there was a running gag somewhere of Synapse getting ganked when he went scouting, not just the one instance.

Let's assume for the moment that your worse-case argument is correct. Super-powered training is so brutal nine out of ten inductees die. Tyrant can be called many things, but I think we can all agree he is efficient. He keeps his populace in a potentially-Utopian society, and he has shown a dedicated interest in maintaining, at least superficially, that status quo.

So, then, if he's not looking to waste resources, would it not stand to reason that his training is brutal because it's necessary? That is, he's not trying to kill off people with powers -- And why would he? By your arguments, he's already got a dedicated psychic network to reprogram them as needed. -- he's fighting battles intense enough that a nine-in-ten mortality rate is the only one that can adequately prepare soldiers to fight for him?

If that were true, it would seem to me that decreasing the mortality-in-training rate would simply weaken his army in the long run. So, I ask you, what's worse? A high percentage of a small group of soldiers dying in training, or a moderate percentage of civilians dying, and the rest living in hell because their potentially-Utopian society was razed.

Think long and hard about the math before you answer.

I don't get it...