More heroic heroes, please

I've been thinking about this for a while.

I had a blaster and I gave him fire powers simply because I thought they looked cool. But it caused problems for me, because to keep my interst, I have to have a good "feel" for the character, often semi-roleplaying them in my head. Given that this blaster was a teenager and a kind of Peter Parker personality, I really didn't think it fit him to go around burning people to death. I came up with some really lame excuse that he was burning off the oxygen around his opponents, causing them to black out without any lasting harm done. Weak.

I remade him as an energy blaster, figuring he could control the concussive force, not doing to much harm to weaker opponents. This was an old character who I recently started playing again.

Anyhow, the whole situation got me thinking about the powersets and thinking about the newer sets and the upcoming ones. They added things like dual-blades and are adding pistols. I'd love to see more non-lethal options. We can currently burn people, shoot them full of holes, slice them into pieces and just otherwise arrest them to death (yeah, I know I can use "the flat of the blade", but come on...)

I would have liked to have bokken under katana options, or escrima sticks under dual blades, but I am told the devs said they would never do that. I'm not sure why. I think dual blades would be great with non-lethal weapons. A staff set would be nice too, but I have seen that asked for a number of times and it seems that a majority of people have no interest in it.

Does anyone else think it might be nice to have new powersets that allow us to not kill opponents? Or am I in the minority, thinking that heroes don't need to kill?

One of the reasons I like Martial Arts is that it's much easier to imagine it being non-lethal than some other power sets

We don't kill them. As far as I know, they are transported to a hospital or infimary in the Zig. I know it's hard to suspend reality while playing a video game where we fly, teleport, shoot fire from our hands, and seemingly pull weapons out of thin air, but we all try.

Don't worry about killing the bad guys with your flame powers. Paragon's hospitals are the best in the nation. I'm sure they'll name a burn ward after your blaster someday. Seriously, more non-lethal options would be nice. There are a couple of non-lethal powerset suggestions floating around, like pole-arms.

well, the short answer is, we defeat opponents, not kill them, in fact, we often get to chat with them post fight in the clues section, and often fight them again and again. The longer answer is that having heroes defeat bad guys with weapons that should be killing them is a time honored tradition in comics, cartoons and movies. outside of the original comics, the ninja turtles rarely killed, despite using a pair of katanas, shuriken, and several other weapons that should rip opponents apart. gi-joe (the cartoon at least)reach absurdist comedy with how a full military engagement could have no fatalities whatsoever. and the reason for that is very likely the reason for why coh is as it is. weapons look cool when used correctly, if all katana was was swatting people with the flat of the blade, it would look cumbersome, but some people, myself included, feel a little queasy at the idea of disemboweling someone over a purse snatching, so the devs pretty much lampshade it by mentioning defeats. If youd like to use my justification, the mediporters can restore heroes from any form of damage instantaneously, after beating a bad guy down, who is to say that you dont toss a bunch of portable detention mediporters and port the beaten enemies into a modified version that ports them safely, though under a power dampening field, into the zig? Its a game, the descriptions are your own, even on seemingly brutal sets like assault rifle and thorns(rubber crowd control bullets and acupuncture accurate spine shots). as another option, as gg said, there is the martial arts set, overlooking the trauma that kicking a person hard enough to launch them across a street would cause, you cna pretend you are using a nerve point paralysation technique and all the baddies are merely sore after a mission.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

You're super powered, fighting other super powers. They can take a frying and keep on going

And as soon as Talsorian staffs were unlockable, we'd be flooded with "d4r7h m4u1" avatars

You've never heard of the Human Torch? Really?

I guess this point is doomed to come up again and again. As far as I'm concerned, I'm happy we don't really make much of a distinction between lethal and non-lethal damage here. We've all seen what the results of that are in cartoons and comic books. For instance, in the 90s Fox cartoon X-Men, Wolverine spends the bulk of his time KICKING people, and on the off chance he tries to slash them, he gets grabbed by his wrists like a woman. In the immortal words of the great poet: lame!

Look at how the game goes - you shoot a thug with a deer slug in the face, and he just gets up and clubs you in the head with a fire axe. Sum total? You both end up hurt, and it makes for an interesting fight. What's more, what IS non-lethal, anyway? Is Energy non-lethal? Since when? First of all, it's energy damage, which by its very nature is deadly, and concussive force enough to budge 10 feet tall, 10 feet wide giant robots. Or how about Super Strength? Yes, it punches, but those are punches that can topple buildings. Slamming someone hard enough to send them flying 10 feet up, Johnny Cage style is NOT non-lethal. In fact, where does this idea that concussive force is less deadly than direct injury come from? In a lot of fiction, getting knocked clear across a room and through a brick wall is completely safe. At most it might sting a little. But even getting stabbed with a pen knife is VERY LETHAL!!!

We're not really going to get wooden swords and staves for cutting weapons. Damage type is fixed for each power in each powerset, and you can't really have a wooden sword and expect it to beat, rather than cut. It will still cut and pierce, it'll just look like a really, really sharp, really sturdy wooden sword.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

It's traditional in superhero RPGs to treat damage as non-lethal by default, unless the player explicitly defines it as lethal. This is because in games, it's harder to control mortality the way a writer can, and mortality just isn't a strong issue in most superhero stories.

So I can live with the conceit that our characters aren't doing lethal damage, at least in CoH. It seems that many missions CoV side do assume some killing's going on, and earlier I took cybernetic parts off of four people's apparently still living bodies.

I'm all /signed for more weapon skin options, though

And what that lot above me said ^^ heh

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

It would not hurt to have less lethal weaponskins for weaponsets no. For pistols and rifles. This is Hi Tech, so why not have your guns loaded with gelrounds that knock somebody out, not kill them?

For that matter, I assume my hero got special rounds for special occasions. Like silver bullets for werewolves and rounds that can disrupt spirits. So, I assume that I use non lethal rounds, unless I am miffed.

I also assume, that the baddies got working emergency teleporters just like we do. There is a reason there are endless hordes of willing baddies.

With the current color customization you can run a fire blaster... color the fire green or blue or something along those lines... and just claim it isn't fire. Perhaps some kind of energy-leeching force or gaseous entities that attack once before fading back to their original forms...

The last time a thread like this popped up, things went to crap quick.

That said, you are fighting beings that can dish out and take what you throw at them.

Maybe this is why I like playing redside so much... I can much more easily not care what happens to the people I'm fighting. He's a family goon... whether he ends up in the morgue or jail or hospital, he still made the wrong choice of waking up this morning.

Arachnos is the survival of the fittest thing. Not my fault I'm more fit than them.

And don't get me started on Longbow. With all their nasty tricks I'm happy to put a few of them down.