Incredible Cosmic Power... Itty-bitty living space.

I don't think I've got any 'cosmic-level' characters. I've got one big ol' troll, but you can't punch the universe in half. More 'human'-level characters have always held more appeal to me than a dude who can break continents in half with his little finger - heck, nearly all my characters don't even have full control over their powers.

Blue Moon went into a coma when she last used the full extent of her physics-control powers against the Clockwork King, and that's just normal hero-level stuff. Venus Green can't stop her creation powers constantly making everything she touches grow. Buck's got a tendency to go a bit berserker in battle (which doesn't stop him from making eloquent quips, he just shouts them louder )

Maybe I should roll up a literal god, could be fun...

By the title, I gather we're talking mainly about incredible cosmic power contained within the tiny space of a humanly body, pros and cons and the best ways to play them if at all we think they should or can be played right. In some ways I agree with Birdy. Why would you want to play a God when basically, the majority of people you're supposed to be playing with would frown upon the practicalities. By all means one can do it if they must but I imagine he or she would be avoided by a lot of other roleplayers.

The CoX universe is written by the game devs and I find it easier for maximum acceptability to just play within those rules and cannon suggested by the game stories. This may mean being only as powerful or as weak as can be represented in-game, and also in scale to the actual uber-powers you must face in-game.

According to the existing lore, the most powerful characters are incarnates like Ganymede, Ms. Liberty, Trapdoor, Infernal in a way, Imperious, Romulus in some ways, Tyrant, Statesman, Reichsman and Recluse. Facing the latter five and winning (most likely through teamwork) are currently the greatest accomplishments available to players and characters within the CoX universe. They and other incarnates are basically cosmic power contained within the tiny space of a humanly body, likely due to a strong connection with a God. There are gods and demon-gods like Zeus (Statesman's origin), Eros (Ganymede's origin), Tartarus (Recluse's origin), Stheno & Medusa (Snakes origin), Hequat (Mu's origin), Ermeeth (Circle of Thorns origin), Merulina (Corolax origin), Hera (Ms. Liberty's origin), Baphomet, Envoy of Shadows, Prince of Demons, Lilitu, Caleb and even Banished Pantheon's Tielekku, Rambetu, M'teru etc.

So my point is, its fair practice to play an incarnate or some such, much like the other demigods within the game, but caution should be taken not to actively over-power them beyond what is represented in-game. So an incarnate or demigod character that can maximise all his energies to explode and burn down a dozen mortals in an inferno can be done in-game. The teenage mutant standing next to you can probably do the exact same thing but that’s where it comes down to what was said earlier, you're super, but so is everyone else and they plausibly can be just as super as a demigod.

I'm reminded of a recent episode of the excellent American TV drama 'Supernatural' where two mundane brothers Sam and Dean are fighting off an apocalypse. They get kidnapped by a group of gods including Kali, Ganesh, Odin, Baron Samedi, Baldur, Mercury and Zao Shen who are all pissed off about the Judeo-Christian apocalypse approaching and they decide to use Sam and Dean (Lucifer and Archangel Michael's earthly vessels respectively) as bargaining chips. Sure they're gods but in one scene, Dean attacks Zao Shen (who was once mortal) with an arcane blade and could've killed him. So again, incarnates, demigods and knife-wielding idiots can fight on the same level if done properly, but properly is a hard standard for most people to achieve, and what you end up with is Pocket D full of egotistical RP'ers who may be unaware that they're god-moding or power-gaming.

Now on a more personal level, my character Pious (angelic name now revealed as Elli) is a priest born of an angel, who like Zao Shen (the kitchen god) or Ganymede (Ganymede was a mortal who impressed the gods so much he was made the cup bearer of Zeus), impressed the Heavens so much with his heroic and priestly work that when he died just recently, was ascended to the ranks of angels. Why do I want to play an angel at the risk of being frowned upon? Well, I understand that just because he's now an angel doesn't mean he's a godly power. Pious is a glass cannon, even though he has countless elemental skill and ammunition. He's as fragile as the next guy and judging by the embarrassing losses both in Gladiators and more recently against Kahn, he can't actually fight.

Apart from offering psychotherapy to everyone with a problem, what the Priest is good at, is leading a team out in the field. Apart from the weapons he wields, his main power is the magical control of fire, water, earth and air at the expense of spiritual and physical energy. This is represented in-game through multiple cartoons and so to explain the 'logging out' disappearance needed to change powers (if ever I had to), I write that he must briefly return to a distant plane to re-energize and is often displaced upon return. Besides, I'm a sucker for trying out new powersets but can't be arsed to make a whole new concept character, so a new cartoon of Pious is the easiest way to go.

So anyway, there is one example of an incarnate with grossly limited cosmic power who is no more powerful or capable than the ninja with a killer blade. I'm not the best RP'er around so I do make a lot of mistakes but I think at least I got the 'no god-moding/meta-gaming characters' thing on lock. Besides being KO'd out of his senses, if a player requested to know all the unique weaknesses of Pious or any other of my characters, I'd happily make it available. Despite that, I still get people who criticise me for Pious's power, my countless cartoons of him and the recent resurrection. Just can't please everyone and there will always be misunderstandings, IC as well as OOC. But on incarnate characters, I would always advice the easier option, try to work in the in-game limitations we have.

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My biggest problem is that even when you DO try to stick to roughly game-level power, you can get called out as a God-moder.

For example, because I love real numbers I had my Kheldian (who is also a scientist) claim that they can have an output of around 500 megajoules (the output of a typical bolt of lightning) per second (because I can fire off an uninterrupted attack chain of such blasts without my endurance bar budging).

For this I was called a god-moder because they claimed that was a ridiculous amount of energy (500 MJ/s is also roughly on par with the output of a good sized nuclear power plant or 250 pounds of TNT going off every second).

Call me crazy, but I don't think being able to shoot a bolt of lightning is overpowered for this game. One of my villains who does equivalent damage to my Kheld can vaporize an armored car with one shot inside the bank missions so even the 250 pounds of TNT doesn't seem out of line really.

But using real-life numbers for things like lightning bolts is apparently enough in some circles to be labled a god-moder... which is quite frustrating and highly annoying.

Couple of things...

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Originally Posted by Titan_III For example, because I love real numbers I had my Kheldian (who is also a scientist) claim that they can have an output of around 500 megajoules (the output of a typical bolt of lightning) per second (because I can fire off an uninterrupted attack chain of such blasts without my endurance bar budging).

A lightning bolt, a real one, is way more powerful than the energy output of a Kheldian, or a Electric Blaster, for that matter. That's not god-modding, it is probably over-estimation of the power output.

Quote:

Call me crazy, but I don't think being able to shoot a bolt of lightning is overpowered for this game.

The only character in the game who can shoot real, god-level lightning bolts is Statesman. So you're saying something he does rarely, you can do constantly.

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But using real-life numbers for things like lightning bolts is apparently enough in some circles to be labled a god-moder... which is quite frustrating and highly annoying.

It's not god-modding, it's bad estimation. However, you will always get people saying that you are god-modding because they don't like what you're saying. Sometimes, they're right, and sometimes they aren't.

As I said before;

No one else I know has ever made 52 copies of the same char.
It's just...one of those unwritten rules, I guess.

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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.

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

It's very interesting, really - I've been involved in this sort of discussion before, and it does tend to go the same way:

Some players insist on the right to play whatever power level they want, and others insist that the game-world should set strict limitations on character abilities.

Now, I'm not saying that any particular version is more correct than any other, but since we RP by consensus (generally speaking), it's an interesting thing to consider.

Take my main, for example - if we consider the different versions of him that I have sitting on Union, he's got over a hundred levels. Does that make him more powerful than any level 50 toon out there? Not by a long shot! I try to play his capabilities within the bounds of the game-world (in fact, in some respects he's weaker than the in-game representation of him would suggest).

There is no quick and easy ruling that anyone could make that will determine if a toon is as powerful as someone chooses to represent them (though I would goggle at someone playing a Level 1 toon claiming to be "teh most powurful being alive"), and we don't have the right to try and enforce some arbitrary limits on anyone.

However, the game itself sets limits. We are limited by our powers, powersets, power pools, enhancements and so forth. I've lost track of the number of times I've been tempted to say "okay, back that up" /arenalist.

There are Cosmic Powered toons that are for full-on RP, and that's good, as long as the player remembers that they've made the choice to ignore the game-mechanics and focus on characterisation, and there are toons that can stand toe-to-toe with Reichsmann and win (okay, I'm guessing here - I've never actually seen an RP toon do this).

At this point I'm going to introduce a term that I've tried to avoid using too much because it is a loose phrase, but it strikes to the heart of the matter: God-modding the world.

I define this term to mean "any character whose abilities allow them to do things break the limits set by the game world". This means either game-mechanics or lore.

Here's an example: Phase Shift. By rights, Phase Shift should allow a character to walk through walls. However, that's not true, in the game. You can walk through other characters, no problem, but you can't pass through objects. But any character can say, for RP purposes, that their phase-shift ability lets them walk through walls, but that effect is not replicable in-game.

Please note, super-senses tend not to fall under this category, since everyone has a 200 foot radius "I can hear/smell/taste anything" effect, defined by local chat range. Sight even moreso, because that's a limit of your draw-distance. I don't know of anyone who has ever said "I can see what you're doing all the way over there outside my visible range". It's up to individual players to delimit their own characters to what they think their character can do, within those boundaries.

Another example of god-modding the world would be a character saying "my character is Statesman's long-lost, more powerful, twin brother". All of the game-lore says this cannot be true, but you can bet your bottom dollar that someone, somewhere, thinks it would be a good concept to play.

With the huge story holes that exist, it's quite easy to find a way to introduce any character you'd care to mention into CoH, and that's not a bad thing in its own right. It potentially becomes a problem when the player starts reinterpreting the game-world to suit their own needs.

For example, one thing that's been brought up on Union many times is the so-called "Hero License". I'd been rping for quite some time before Fanservice brought up the fact that there is no such thing. Heroes register, to be compliant with the CCFA and FBSA regulations, but registration is not a license. That required quite a paradigm-shift in my own appreciation of what my heroes were actually doing. They're not strictly fully deputised law enforcement officials. They have simply registered their abilities with the appropriate government department, and have the tacit agreement of the law to act as they see fit to prevent lawlessness. They have the right to arrest criminals, and a legal protection that prevents them as an individual being sued by criminals for harm they cause to those criminals when they act in their heroic identity. But that's it. They neither have the obligation to fight crime, nor any specific right to do so, beyond their right to arrest.

On Union, though, for the longest time, there were many people who referred to their "Hero License" as if it were a free pass. Some still do. This is game-world modding at its most subtle, because it looks like it should be true. But it isn't.

There are a huge number of other "game world modding" situations out there - pretty much as many as there are players - and because of this, we all have a responsibility to try and make sure our characters fit within the boundaries.

Someone might think "Well, what's the problem if my character can walk through walls?" and the answer is simple: Prove it.

Now, I have a character who can walk through walls (in case you hadn't guessed, I'm using that as an example for a good reason). I cannot prove it. I am as guilty of god-modding the world as anyone else, for this simple ability. Why did I bother? Well, partly for concept reasons - the character was always meant to be able to do it, but with a price. That price is quite personal to him, and not one that will affect any other character, but the simple fact of the matter is that he is scared of doing it. As a result of this, he avoids doing so, and only tends to do it as a last-ditch resort option. He can theoretically do it in combat situations, but I hand-wave away his inability to do so by saying that in a fight he's too focused on the here-and-now situation to remember that he can.

That may be me trying to justify an ability I have no right to claim. I'm really not sure. As long as I'm careful to avoid breaking plots, it's not going to negatively affect anyone. But I do appreciate that it's a plot-breaking power.

Which brings me to the point of this rambling, which is to ask what people think are problems with game-world modding. Feel free to post specific examples, but as usual, no naming and shaming, and if it's possible to disguise the characters and players you're referring to, that would be good. I don't want this thread to turn into "he said" "yeah, but he said..." situation. If you have something you want to bring up regarding another player, it might be an idea to PM them first and get their agreement to be entered into this discussion: I'll just blanket say now that I have no problem with anyone saying anything they want about any of my toons. I will defend them, their characterisations and their powers, but I hope that I will avoid being defensive about it.

Excellent post Shadowe ..and very interesting points made

On the game world modding theme ..we are all sometimes caught by the limits of the game , for example … many Missions will ask us to access /hack a computer ..yet there is no such AT ability .. when then we come top RP /Plot time a Character may claim to have “super computing” powers , and as Shadowe say ..can you prove it ..

Now if this was a PnP game we would have a GM to rule on all this ..something we cant really have for most RP ..which is why we all need to look closely at the casual claims we make for our Toons , as we are clearly going beyond the games limits with our RP .

I have a couple of characters that can be considered CP.

One of them is The Knightmare. He is, quite literally, fear made flesh. The concept is that over eons all phobic emotion since the dawn of consciousness coalesced into a semi-sentient entity called the Phobos Omniscia. It's still passive though, existing as the fears of other beings, nothing more, nothing less. To mere mortals (and many immortals) it would appear to be supremely intelligent, however as omni-dimensional beings go the Phobos Omniscia is much like a curious child. This curiosity led it to create an avatar; the Knightmare, in order to exist in the physical plane.

The Knightmare has the potential for world conquering influence, capable of playing the planets population like puppets, however that potential has yet to be reached (and never will be in the lifespan of the game). The avatar needs to maintain its physical cohesion and gain power by drawing fear from the indiginous consciousnesses.

What I have to make clear is that I'm playing within the avatars limits, not the cosmic entity's. I purposefully gave the character traits that can be replicated in game (minor imbellishments notwithstanding). Being a DM/DA brute, the fear powers are covered. Knights is capable of making characters like Statesman tremble before him (he can and has done this in-game). The AT's hp and damage output replicate the indestructible nature of his form and more importantly, that he's bound the laws of the physical universe. Whilst he is technically indestructible, he can be defeated temporarily by destabilising his physical form i.e. hit him hard enough and often enough. The result is that ultimately he is no more powerful than an above average meta, in a purely physical sense.

The dodgy part is interacting with other RPers. Knights has the power to tap into the Phobos Omniscia and access the deepest fears of anyone. This is something I personally am very careful with and ensure that inteactions of this sort are entirely with the consent of the other player(s). Pocket D's McGuffin of power supression has proved to be quite handy excuse for his power not to work, but that's only in PD. Lately I've tied the magnitude of this ability with the level of power he's acquired. So he's capable of making your average thug die of fright, but only succeed in making Rularuu a little bit anxious, certainly not enough to make any difference in combat.

In all honesty though I find him a bit dull to RP, as he's more a situational character and needs a good plot to make his psychological nature shine.

----- Union's finest underachiever -----
Farewell CITY of HEROES
The First, the Last, the One.
Union: @ominousvoice2059

If he's willing to put the hours in, and he's already used an IC idea to explain why he can't use all the powers at once, then what's the problem?

Changing powers, requires him to leave meditate somewhere and then return, that's hardly plot breaking.

I mean in most situations, buggering off some where for a five minute chant, is going to count as a loss any way.

It's less broken than

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dial_H_for_Hero

World tweaking... yeah.

Nitoichi claims to be a dab hand with pistols and a sniper rifle. These are abilities only ever used in fiction, I've never even roleplayed them. She's a fairly good hacker, another ability there's no way to demonstrate. She also has the ability to cross the planet in a heartbeat and enough money that she never has to worry about it.

Gunwitch has degrees in electronics and cybernetics at the age of 21. She designed her own guns and cybernetic implants. All abilities she can't demonstrate, as such.

None of this is particularly world breaking, but I have done that in the past. I've tended to give up the drastic stuff as I simply don't find it that interesting. If anything, Gunwitch is a step down in power from Nitoichi. She's planned to be very much a street-level hero, though I hope to see her rise above the lowly existance I've been painting in fiction to date.