Fighting Style & Alignment

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.

My Widow is fully blue. As she's naturally equipped with sharp chitinous claws and venom glands courtesy of the Arachnos scientists that grew her, it's difficult for her not to kill an opponent in hand-to-hand combat, and physically restraining anything organic is impossible for her because she instinctively panics when touched by other sentient beings (it's a psychic interference thing). So, when playing in-character, I switch her to Fortunata mode when teaming for missions that aren't chock-full of demons, robots, Devouring Earth, or undead, so she can use her mental powers instead. Her RP history includes that her sense of morality is still developing (she's only about six months old) and before she joined the supergroup she's in, she would leave a much wider trail of bodies that were either dead or brain-dead.

My blue MM's robots have their blasters set on Stun, like her pulse rifle.

My temporally-themed Grav/Kin troller COULD age you to death with his powers... but he won't, unless you force him. He's a tiny bit sinister, but still properly heroic, as befits a Midnighter, which he is.

My Kin/Shield scrapper is a magical construct built to take out threats to the land of Oranbega (before all the evil stuff went down). She does not have true free will, and therefore cannot make moral decisions, but her process is generally Warn -> Subdue -> Kill, with subsequent steps coming into play when previous steps fail. I play her kinetics melee as "undifferentiated magical force," which is a nebulous enough way of calling it that no suspension of disbelief is needed for subdual vs. killing.

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!

The whole super-soldier-serum thing inclines me to call Cap a science-origin...

Well, I think some of it comes down to CoH limits.

Wolverine has those claws, but has the option to brawl it out.

CoH's brawl option doesn't give the same option as found in Comics. You're just not going to take criminals with the brawl power.

Those with pistols can easily say they're skilled enough to make called shots to areas that are hard to target in RL, but in a comicbook world, they're skilled enough to make them on the fly.

Rubber bullets works too.

I'd consider the Punisher to fall into line with the Vigilante alignment.

Vigilante alignment in CoH, doesn't fall inline with being a vigilante in the comicbook universes of Marvel/DC.

Spider-Man would fall in line with Hero alignment, but going by his actions, he wouldn't be the type to register either which labels him as a vigilante (but not the alignment).

Within the game isn't it the case that the hospitalisation/Zig-away teleportation network means that no-one is ever dead unless your imagination dictates otherwise?

So a hero can reasonably use powers that would be lethal to a civilian (if they existed in RL) with no worries about actual loss of life. I guess that the difference between heroic and villainous intentions would be just the intentions and possibly whether minimum force/suffering is used or if the metahuman has a sadistic streak.

The mediport system is only available to registered heroes, not civiliains - the new hero arc in I19 actually deals with that part of the lore.

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

Heroes will kill when they have to. It's very, very hard to be Vash the Stampede.

In response to the idea that claws can't be non-lethal, I think that's just silly. You don't need to dip into the fighting pool or get flurry or jump kick just to justify conceptually that your claws guy isn't ripping people to shreds. All it takes is a willingness to visualize that he's pulling his punches, or aiming for non-vital areas, or not driving his claws deep enough to kill, only to incapacitate.

Saying weapon sets can't be played as non-lethal is a limitation on your part, not the game's. There's not even any blood shown. What the game shows visually does not have to be taken as absolute.

So yes, feel free to say your claws, sword, and gun users are killing their enemies, but do it because it's your concept, not because you feel the game is forcing you. Cuz it's totally not.

Anyone can absolutely play the game their way, and if they want to lean toward the realistic and gritty, that's fine. But lore provides an easy out to any character not wanting to kill their enemies, no matter what their method.

I'd also like to join in with those that say CoH is based on comics and superheroes. Certainly in real life, stopping violent crime without loss of life is amazingly difficult. But in the world of superheroes, it's not a big leap.

I'll finish this post by saying that this "schism" for lack of a better word between those whose characters kill and those whose characters don't can have major implications on RP teams and supergroups. If Gritty McKillsalot joins a team of arrest-not-kills, the clashing of concepts could lead to a bit of a situation. I don't really have any good way of fixing this other than the rather drastic solution of leaving the team, but I thought I'd just throw it out there as food for thought.

Kill them all, let the mediport sort them out.

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 always assume all the enemies has some form of "base" resistance, either through some spell, armor, or close force-field. Even with no defence or resistance added, this base is what we still have to wear down before they are rendered unconcious. What kills it is the fact that the civilians are impervious to everything. I can't really complain though as the alternative would be having to be careful of civilian casualties with AoEs and such.