Origins Pack - Natural Auras and Capes

This is one of the reasons I dislike the Magic Origin. I really don't get why it's all lumped into one origin while there are 4 "Scientific" origins. Why is the guy in a magic suite of armor the same as a highly trained Mage but a guy in a robotic suite gets a separate origin from a highly trained Soldier?

I ponder about this a lot. Yeah from human point of view this seems hi-tech weapons/armor. If you think about a cave man and modern day police then that police is also hi-tech character, as well as cowboys... heh even a guy with box of matches.

For the sake of confusing others more I'm throwing in my dominator, Grotesk.

He is a Mind Control/Earth Assault dominator with mutant origin. Here is how he gained his powers so go figure the right origin for him.

Grotesk is a mutant with reptile like body and super-adaptation abilities. (Mutant)

His brain has been replaced by a scientificly enhanced alien brain whose natural abilities were psychic. (Science/Natural)

And lastly his right arm, left hand and feet replaced with robotic parts to give him super human strength. (Technology)

Nice ain't it

Point is; your character is what you see him or how you adapt his background story to one of in-game origins. So any hero can be any origin which is only explainable by creator.

For booster auras or capes. You have new shinny things to use no matter what origin is your character. More options, more happy players.

My take on power, which seems to be reasonably supported by game canon, is as follows:

Each full-blown dimension has, in addition to the forces and energies that modern human scientists recognize (gravity, electromagnetism, etc.), a supply of power of a different sort. Where it ultimately comes from is a mystery; it might be the echo of the song of creation, or the kinetic energy of our 3-brane crashing through 19-dimensional space, or whatever. As far as anyone has ever been able to tell, the source ultimately doesn't matter... the energy is mutable and has what might be considered analogous to fluid-like properties at a metaphysical level, in that it tends to take the shape of its container.

This supply is immense, but not infinite. Normally, it is to gravity as gravity is to electromagnetism; weak locally, but capable of affecting things over tremendous distance and time scales (this bit is somewhat more speculative). It is unclear whether it is a truly renewable source; there are some indications that if it is, the renewal is slow (on human time scales at least).

In many dimensions, the majority of the inhabitants are not even aware of it, and it lies largely untapped.

In some, one entity becomes aware of the power and able to tap into it, and with the rush of power becomes that dimension's first and only god. Sometimes it shatters or diffuses them, and they become what might be considered a dimensional-scale genius loci, having left their mark on the "flavor" or manifestation of the energy but no longer interacting with things on a merely humanoid scale; they have become "one with everything" to the extent that they are no longer capable of associating with anything in particular. In borderline cases, you can end up with a deity that is usually a diffuse cosmic phenomena, but can with effort focus their will on areas of special importance to their psyche, such as the homeworld of their original species. In other cases, usually extremely driven and focused individuals to start, they manage to retain enough individuality in the flow of cosmic power to become an incarnate god; usually weaker in total power, as they have let some of the power flow past them to retain their individuality, but capable of operating as a more traditional sentient but with vast powers. This doesn't mean they are conventionally sane, of course, whether or not they started that way; and some grow addicted to the rush of power and seek to conquer other, fallow dimensions.

In other cases, the power is unlocked by a group, who share in the flood; in some cases, their individuality is largely lost, resulting in what is basically a single cosmic entity but with disparate personalities or aspects depending on which of the original personality shards of the composite entity is at the fore at any given time. More commonly, whether due to careful planning or in desperate self-defense under the deluge of power, each individual focuses on what makes them different and what they are good at; this tends to result in pantheons of deities with powers and abilities organized into spheres (god of war, goddess of nature, etc.). Depending on the balance of the initial group, they may be well-matched or have considerably disparate power levels.

In a few comparatively rare cases, an entire species or other large group manages to unlock the power; thus distributed, the effects are less "godlike" and more "planet of hats", where you end up with an entire race of beings with thematic hereditary powers that defy ordinary physics.

In the case of CoH "Primal" Earth, it appears that all humans have the latent ability to tap into this force, but require some special focus or ritual to "wake up" their access to power. (Speculative: It is at least possible that this is the result of all modern humans having at least some genetic heritage from the original gods and / or archmagi). There are references to early gods of considerable power, and the discovery by humans of "magic" (a far more potent force than what is referred to as such today) is probably the first systematic way of humans tapping into the force. For whatever reason, the thing that is special about Earth is that the dispersal of it tends to be cyclical; in most other cases, once a being / group gets hold of the power, they're set for eternity.

So, down to the modern day... the power had been largely untapped for quite some time, possibly due to being deliberately shut away. Esoteric martial artists, hermit mages, prophets of legend, and others may have been able to occasionally draw upon faint leaks of the power, but the unifying theme was that it took *some* sort of enormous focus, dedication, and ritual . The Well of Furies incident changed all that; with the floodgates tapped by multiple, largely unprepared individuals who lacked strong focus, most of the power rushed through or past them. The two openers, fighting to stay coherent in the rush of power, become self-stereotypes of the most iconic parts of their personalities; and those stereotypes proceed to color much of the energy unleashed; it is far easier to tap into the power if you at some level "buy in" to the ideology of Statesman or Lord Recluse.

The released energy is no only far more freely available, but is somewhat "pre-formatted" not only for humans of skill, but with a certain set of psychological memes embedded including a tendency to solve problems via adventure and force, due to the influence of the openers. Currently, one can tap into the power via several different routes: the single-minded inventiveness of the engineer with unorthodox ideas, the zen focus of a superior martial artist, the trauma of an unusual accident, primal reveling in one's mixed-species genetic heritage, and so forth. At an underlying level, the power is from the same well, but the methods used to access it shapes and colors the forms it can take; and the mentality of the user (conscious or not) is a strong determining force (with the mentality of Statesman and Lord Recluse lurking as a hidden influence, like the watermark on a seemingly blank sheet of paper).

Controlling the power takes both skill and probably some sort of metaphysical capacity; people develop at different rates, but it seems that in general most humans have approximately the same underlying maximum power draw available to them. With considerable effort some can make better use of the power than others, whether through long skill, economic application, or careful management of usefully-cumulative effects; but in general most people's ultimate potential is similar; and it doesn't really matter much what sort of focus (martial arts, guns, firebolts, super strength) they have used as their lever and theme for their power.

The new Incarnate system is going to be about those individuals who, by whatever means, break through or around the "normal" human limitations on access to power, and find ways to call upon more power than has recently been available.

tl;dr: A "natural" character's martial arts training is as much a power-access ritual as a "magical" character's spells or a "tech" character's engineering diagrams. Everyone draws on the same force of underlying power and gets access to about the same amount of it, but the ways it manifests are determined by the ways it was accessed. Incarnates will be those who can go beyond those limits.

Aliens = beings from another planet.

How on earth - do pardon the pun - would we know what an alien being's "race's normal abilities" would be? We would not, they are not indigenous to our planet. What looks to us like "power armor" might be something they were born with, i.e. grew.

Too many potential kinds of aliens in the Universe to lump them in with Natural humans, or maybe that is just me.

Because we are either OOCly the omniscient creators of the race or ICly the Alien has disclosed that information when registering with the FBSA or Arachnos.

Naturally.

--NT

Oh, I don't dislike the auras...I just felt it was an odd departure from the to-date party line on what natural is.

Personally, I prefer Natural for my sorcerers and magicians because the end enhancement set for magic involves gathering power directly from various entities, which is a rather specific variety of magic myself. I prefer the Dresden approach where it is your own force of will, not the favor of Hermes or something.

eh, from what i read from various beta testers of coh pre launch, it was supposed to be basically your "class" . magic artifact origin characters could take certain powers that others couldnt, same with mutant, same with others. really with io's origin is largely a rp thing,as post 35 at the latest its best to ditch the so's entirely and just load up on nonspecific (and non silly, how many vambraces can you put on with two arms?) enhances . i like writing semi-coherent bios, so they matter to me, but i also try, falteringly at times, to not go insane about it. we have 3 natural epic at's. commandos with cool backpacks or a hive mind, psychic ninjas and space tapeworms, that on its own should tell you how much variety there is.

What's the party line on Natural? After all, Superman is a Natural origin. So is Harry Potter.

The internet is for arguing about trivia. You've used it, you know that.

I think it's blindingly obvious what would go in there: beings who aren't from Earth. Everything in CoH is centered around how powerful characters are relative to a human norm. After all, the term is "meta-human". Yes, it's technically valid to say an alien mutant should be classified as mutant origin*. But honestly, how often does that come up in the genre? Unless it's particularly relevant to a plot, a mutant alien is, most likely just classified as an alien. (Plenty of aliens have unusual powers for their species that a pretty much never explained at all.) In contrast, Marvel's "mutants", just one clear exemplar of the mutant origin, are clearly mutant humans.

As I pointed out in an earlier post above, there's often a radical difference in fiction between a baseline alien and a baseline human. In CoH, we can have otherwise baseline humans, who through nothing more than sheer tenacity, will and introspection learned to do things like fly, control fire, or shatter trucks with their bare hands. To lump such a human being in the same category as an alien being who can do the same things because every member of their race is born able to do that with no little or effort seems to clearly gloss over the human's achievement. Lumping them all in the same bag is technically valid but, for some of us, conceptually dissatisfying. That's what the "Alien" origin would be good for - a category defined in a human-centric context for distinguishing ridiculously extraordinary humans from non-human beings who, often, are fairly representative members of their own race. See: Peacebringers.

* Edit: Actually, it dawns on me that the game's definition of the Mutant Origin, as given in the Origin of Power missions, is defined in a rather (Primal) Earth-specific (and thus, probably human-centric) way. In specific, we're told that the Mutant Origin was undocumented before the first atomic weapons were used on Primal Earth.

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SUPPORT - IT'S NOT JUST A GROUPING OF ATs
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More Than a Game
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This is pretty much the death knell of any story which wants to be taken seriously ever again. Once you start ascribing mystical cosmic origins to simple things like "I had an idea of how to make better lasers!" you pretty much kneecap your entire story, because nothing is ever again interesting. It's all the consequence of some larger force at work. Yes, that's pretty much what the Origin of Powers storyline suggests, but there is a reason why it's so often considered fan discontinuity: because it sucks more *** than those vacuum toilets they have on the space shuttle. It's a horrible plot device that not only hamstrings every person who ever wrote a character in City of Heroes, but it introduces Midichlorians to a universe which REALLY didn't need them. Not like there's a fictional universe which ever did.

Tapping into cosmic powers as an origin is fine. As ONE origin out of many. Sometimes you do indeed stumble upon great power and capitalise on it. Sometimes, however, you're just that awesome that you don't NEED a cosmic mcguffin to give you your powers. You may be born a badass, you may be a really smart guy who makes cool machines, or you may have mutated by chance, or a whole host of other things that DON'T include a single origin for all "supers" in existence.

It's not a bad idea, mind you, for a single standalone story, or as one optional path among others. But once you root that as the cornerstone of every character ever made by developer or player, you castrate the story in pretty much the worse way it can be castrated short of crippling gameplay changes.

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.

You are wrong. The wording of the descriptions may be like this, but the wording of the descriptions is older than the game itself, and has been proven to be inaccurate when Natural was extended to read:



They are called "something-human" because it's the only non-stupid thing to call them, and because the phrasing was written into the game before someone woke up and realised how limiting this was. It could have been Jack, because his was the statement that Superman would be of the Natural origin here, and he's not human. Not to mention that the description of the Natural origin itself says "or perhaps you are not human at all." The world of City of Heroes is far too densely populated with aliens, extra-dimensional travellers and extra-planar creatures to divide characters into human and non-human.

"Alien" is not a legitimate origin, because the origin describes where the character's POWER originates, not where the character himself comes from. A person in power armour is of the Technology origin not because he IS technology, but because he USES technology. His powers are what is technology, not the person himself. To say a character should be of an "Alien" origin just because he's not from Earth is unintuitive, especially when that "alien" may be not too dissimilar from humans and instead use human technology. Or, hell, even magic. What, Earth is the only place magic exists?

You just quoted the single biggest piece of garbage in the entire game, Guy. This is by leaps and bounds the worst story this entire game has ever seen, and I'm counting the retcon to make Ubelmann's story about someone's grandma. I'm counting "The Statesman's head is so big that two of them can't exist in the same dimension." angle. I'm counting being sent to appear at a sci-fi convention in an abandoned warehouse in Crey's Folly. The Origin of Powers takes the cake, hands down. And it's quite obvious someone up top agrees, because we have never gotten an expansion on this storyline ever since, and it's been long enough. How much do you want to bet that, come Incarnates, they'll be explained as something OTHER than another origin?

More importantly, the contacts themselves are full of hot air, and they are written to be. Sister psyche babbles about there being no mutants since before the splitting of the atom... And then admits there actually were. Only they weren't mutants, they were psions or whatever that was. So what about all the mutants since before that that weren't psychic?

Furthermore, Virgil Tarikoss will tell you that humans "invented" magic and taught it to the gods while War Witch will tell you that the gods "invented" magic and taught it to humans. Positron will make an *** of himself by spinning theories of how we are all tied by an ethereal power of technology that people tap into when they invent things, pretty much taking a huge dump on what could otherwise have been pretty cool concepts, and Leon Brass eats people like me for breakfast, I assume saving people like himself for lunch and dinner.

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Origins are intentionally left vague so as to be subject to interpretation, bound only by what they CAN mean, and never by what they CAN'T mean.

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.

No, Sam, I'm not wrong. You're wrong for claiming it's even possible to be wrong on this topic. You go on to claim I'm wrong by claiming that I've based my wrongness on things actually said in the game, just because you don't like them and have other examples of contradictions, even though you have no evidence which contradictions are right. There are only contradictions which support either of our claims - none are proof.

I do not think I could have written the post you responded to in a way that made more clear that it was about opinion. I stated more than once that there's technical validity to classifying alien powers as "Natural", exactly for reasons like what you bothered to post an image of. (The posting of which, I might add, was needless given my granting of that point, but which also failed to actually rebut several other things I actually said.) I addressed that and moved on to why I feel classifying Aliens with Natural meta humans that is not satisfactory. My opinion about the validity and desirability of an Alien origin is most certainly not wrong. You don't get to tell me that what I would prefer about a non-balance element of the game's backstory is wrong, just because you don't prefer it.

I consider lacking an Alien origin adequate but not desirable. Just because we can lump aliens into a natural origin doesn't mean, for me, that we should. I believe that the origins should reflect a more human-centric view on origins of power, because I like the idea of that. It's fine that you don't, but don't try to tell me I'm wrong for feeling so. Because you'd be wrong to do so.

I can't BELIEVE they wouldn't give us an infinite number of new options PLUS ONE!

I'm sure we'd figure it out. I mean, come on, they paired Mutant and Magic together, for goodness sake. It's already clear to me that they kind of ran out of ideas there.

Clearly we need more alien opponents. Clarifying spoilers aside, it could be argued that Rikti would drop them, at least sometimes, but that would probably muddle the story of their true nature.

None of which lets most of us punch holes in cement walls, or emit fire or beams of energy from our hands. Not without resorting to tools (arguably technology) or modification of your body (arguably science).

For me, Origins aren't about having cleanly defined buckets in which to categorize people's powers, because fuzzing at the boundaries between origins is more the rule than the exception. For me, Origin definitions are more about having clear exemplars. Things like this.

Technology: Iron Man
Science: Spider Man (radioactive bite explanation), Fantastic Four, Hulk
Magic: Dr. Fate, Doctor Strange, probably Captain Marvel (DC)
Mutant: X-Men, particularly the ones who never had surgical/medical augmentation

Who are the sorts of exemplars we have in comics for "Natural" characters? While I think a lot of people could be talked into it, I don't think most folks would think of Superman or the Martian Manhunter here. If they can even think of an example quickly, most of them would be regular, if possibly well-trained and/or really smart humans. A possibly poor exemplar who comes up on the forums a lot is Batman. Most of the examples we'd come up with can't approach the levels superhuman achievement that the exemplars of the other four origins can. When they do hit superhuman levels, it's hard to find examples of them who don't do it by resorting to things that, arguably, belong in other origins. Batman, again, is a great example of this. For the "truly" natural humans, we have a few examples where they mange to compete with other-origin supers (some good examples were given in this thread) but they're pretty rare.

It's here that CoH as a game universe steps a bit outside the genre. Here, otherwise normal humans can learn to punch as hard as a Colossus, Hulk or Iron Man, unreservedly. I just think that says something worth of distinction from people who are, as a rule, able to do that "out of the box". It's purely a matter of the fiction in the sense that Origin is basically just a label we attach to our characters. Truthfully, I could care less what it would do to DOs, because it's kind of clear to me that they're not that well thought out anyway. I just like the idea of it better.