Origins Pack - Natural Auras and Capes

You don't talk to Sunstorm because he doesn't fit the aspect of the Natural origin they wanted to emphasize for the arc not because he doesn't fit the origin as a whole. If they were ever going to add an Alien origin they most likely would have done it when they implemented Kheldians.

Someone (not a developer) once said that Pandora's Box only affected characters ON EARTH and created super powers ON EARTH. If you have characters from outer space, then by all means, write them as having had powers since before Earth even existed.

Personally, it's an approach I like, if for no reason other than because it adds discontinuity to the Origin of Powers nonsense without actually adding discontinuity to it. Yeah, it's there. Yeah, it sucks. It doesn't have to apply to you.

However, it still begs the question - if people not from Earth are free to have powers and origins not limited by Pandora's Box... Aren't Earthlings are a narrative disadvantage? Why can't Earthlings have gained powers from sources OTHER than Pandora's Box? Why do we need Medichlorians to explain why smart people are smart? Can't aliens have different origins among themselves, like magical aliens, green men from Mars, the Zerg, etc.?

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.

Pandora's Box isn't a power source, it's a power drain.

The box isn't used to explain how they got powers, in the novel Dark Watcher has powers prior to the box being opened. Its used to explain why a world in which super powered individuals exist doesn't have a huge divergence from our history.

OK, that sounds plausible, and not really all that bad. Well, until you think about it too close - how does a "power drain" make people dumber?

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.

If I recall correctly, its described as siphoning off human potential and seems to cause the characters to be less "motivated." As I mentioned, Dark Watcher already has his powers but never really considers himself as being capable of changing the world around him until after the box is opened. Monica isn't magically made more athletic, she's just less willing to play the damsel in distress, learns martial arts so she can defend herself and finds she very good at it. We're never really given any indication James St. John-Smythe's intellect increases. There's every indication that the characters very much could have been super heroes before the box is opened they just don't make use of that potential.

Well if human potential is the strive to evolve, it would make sense that the old Gods would want humans to remain stagnant and focused in their worship of them. It would also make sense that by creating a population of super humans, they could use that admiration of them as replacement of direct worship.

Here's the thing, though - we keep coming back to HUMAN potential, whereas humans are hardly unique in being super even just sticking to written official lore. Just off the top of my head, Calystix the Shaper has been consistently super for over 14 000 years, possibly longer than even the Circle of Thorns have been consistently super. The Snakes in general and Stheno in particular have been very much super for at least a few centuries, as well.

And we can't really argue that they never played a role. The Snakes were prominent in the Isles and worshipped as gods and Calystix has shown up many, many times over the aeons. The Banished Pantheon seem to have been active during the Civil War. And, lest we forget, Nemesis has been terrorising the world for 180 years now, and we can assume he was an active genus at least a few years before that just building up a base of operations to become the world terrorist he is remembered as. I'm not sure if Nemesis doesn't count as human, though, being that that's what he originally was.

Basically, Pandora's Box feels more like a plot device than something we want to integrate inside ongoing stories.

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, I'm not.

Yes, it is.

This is simple logic, Sam. PCs and combat NPCs in this game are called meta human. It's a trademark-friendly version of the term "super human". There's a reason for that, and it's not simply semantic.

If we transplant all the original inhabitants of Krypton to an unpopulated Earth, they'd all have Superman's classic powers. While Kal-El might still manage to grow up to be a heroic person in such a world, and possibly develop into an excellent example of prime Kryptonian health, training and physique, he would not be "super" (or "meta") compared to his peers.

Superman or any comic superhero with true super powers has what we call "super powers" because they are doing things the vast majority of human people cannot do. If everyone could do them, there would be no need for super heroes, because the cops and army and everyone else would easily be on par. (Something they probably overdo a bit in the game, to be honest.) Someone like The Abomination would be a dime thug, because every cop on the beat would be able to go mano-a-mano with him.

Meta human nature is set relative the basis of human norms, even on Primal Earth, where it seems you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a Meta. That's because it's a combat-centric video game, and they have to have a target rich environment for us. The canon is that most of the world's Metas were lost in the first Rikti War. It makes sense that this really hasn't changed in six years - we make new characters faster than new heroes would really appear.

Sam, I'm sorry, but at this point your argument earns a great big "DUH." I understand what the game says right now. My position is about whether I find that position satisfactory. I do not. Do not answer my dislike of the current canon with the canon. It's dumb.

No, frankly. I mostly get Science drops off of them.

Why would you think I would want that for you? Right now anyone who wants to can make a Mutant origin character and then fill out their backstory as a magic using cyborg. I don't care what you do with your own characters. I want an Alien origin for my characters. I don't see a problem with your existing characters having two places to be filed, and leaving the choice of which to use up to you. As long as they leave the existing description of "Natural" alone, you could continue to file your characters there. It's not like we don't have overlap today. A demonic Fire/Fire Scrapper can easily be filed as either Natural or Magical, and that doesn't cause grief.

I think they should, but I have no place enforcing that on you. I think it sucks that we have no choice but to categorize them that way, assuming we care at all about making backstories and canon mesh at all. I would like the canon to be expanded to offer a separate categorization. I realize that's such a minor thing to worry about that it's almost certainly never going to happen, even if the devs totally agreed with me. I'm discussing it because you started arguing with my statements about it and telling me I was wrong.

The difference, Sam, is I never said you were wrong to want aliens to be filed under natural. I just disagree with your opinion. I'm debating it with you because I think there are things in game that support my opinion.

I do, however, believe that there are simple facts that make you wrong in your assertions about how "meta human" applies (or in your view, does not apply) from a baseline human perspective. I actually think that's ridiculous. The game is about Earth. It's about a fantasy version of our earth with impossibly super beings people in it, but the baseline assumptions for the world as a whole are clearly about baseline humans. Metas are the exception in the world canon, not the rule. They just feel like the rule to us, because our characters are Metas, and they interact with other Metas constantly. The Rogue Isles and Praetoria are a lot closer to being Meta-centric, but that's because Metas are in charge - places like them are themselves exceptions in that sense. (Well, Praetoria is a whole world of its own, but its the exception relative to the original baseline of Primal Earth.)

Of course now one must ask, mightn't they have been more super, more active, with out the box? If your "super enough" then reducing you potential still put you above everyone else.

In order to qualify for the Natural Origin, you just need to have not done anything that makes your powers stem from any of the other origins. If your training included reading magical incantations that channeled extradimensional energy that a human would never otherwise have any way to channel, it's Magic. If you were bathed in Impossiblicide and it made you able to do this, it's Science. If you were born of human parents with no such gene, but ended up with a gene that unlocked this potential, you're a Mutant. And if you could only achieve it through what we'd consider modern technology, well, I think you get the idea.

I see none of those as bagging together "origins" that are so terribly conceptually unrelated as Karate Kid and Superboy. There are plenty of existing exemplars in fiction and comics to get psychic powers from the five existing origins (and an Alien one, if it was added). I don't see a lot of people twitching when told that the fundamental origin of a robot and a suit of power armor or a coating of sentient nanites are all something called "Technology". But in contrast, I think that anyone would look at you funny if you sat down and said that Superboy and Karate Kid (assuming they had any idea who the heck Karate Kid was) got their powers from the same place. They'd want you to explain that. They might buy into it, but I think many would not. I also think only the geekiest would bother to argue the point. And yes, I do understand what that means

Except I don't think it covers this case fine. And I think what you were doing there was a fallacious case of argumentum ad absurdum. That can be a valid way to argue a point, but I think you introduced a false dichotomy, because I don't think introducing the Alien origin would imply the popular demand for proliferation you suggest.

It really comes down to my earlier comments on having clear exemplars. Comics are full of examples of superhuman beings who are superhuman solely because they are aliens. The desire for distinction arises because CoH includes a category of superhuman beings that comics don't often - humans who transcend to superhuman abilities without tapping into any of the other origins (and, by definition, not being aliens).

Back in 2004, Jack explained that we never saw cops fighting any villains because even the lowest, most common street thug was super powered. Civilians, villains, contacts and a few mission briefings cite how you can't round a corner in Paragon City without running into a super hero. And this is not a new phenomenon. In the Tsoo Shenanigans - a Launch arc - the named Tsoo boss Mr. Mann has the following conversation with his Troll companion:

Supers are an integral part of life in City of Heroes, to the point that City Hall is home to hero management agencies and Hero Corps has a reason to exist. Supers are not rare, nor - from everything I can see in the actual game - are they intended to be rare. In fact, their powers seem more measurable against each other than measurable against normal people. In fact, I'm not sure we can even claim that Primal Earth is a HUMAN world, considering how many non-humans there are all over the place.

But OK, let's grant you that much. Let's assume supers' powers really are measured by ordinary humans. Does it not strike you as obvious why that would be? Because Paragon City is a human city with human organisations in it. For immersion purposes, those would have to be human-centric. But even if character power is measured off what is human, there are still fine intricacies in how this power differs from hero to her. To lump all aliens of all origins into a single Alien origin reminds me of an old Sesamy Street skit, where that thing which lives in a garbage can was told to sort old toy cars. He had a pile for cars with missing wheels, a pile for cars with working horns and a pile for cars with broken windows. He eventually got a car which had a broken window, missed a wheel and had a working horn and was baffled as to which pile to put it in.

Let's ground this a little bit more. When people complained that Demon Summoning was too magic-centric, it was either Castle or BABs who explained the following: Yes, demons are magical. However, origins do not define the NATURE of the power but the ORIGIN of this power. So while your power may indeed be magical demons as defined by the powerset itself, nothing defines the origin of the control you have over the demons, themselves. You could be controlling these magical demons with mind control chips, with your strong will or because you have the mutant power to do so.

This is easy to extrapolate to an alien power. Yes, the power is alien, in that it comes from another world. But your origin does not define the nature of your powers, but rather defines how you GOT these powers. If a character did not get his powers to begin with, but was rather born with them, then that character matches the descriptions of both the Natural and Mutation origins, and it's up to the player to specify and explain which of the two fits better. All Origin describes is how one obtained his powers, or to be more precise, how one obtained the one power that truly defines him, for lack of multiple origins.

I suppose if you want to stick to semantics, we can say that characters are measured by an ordinary human in the most formal sense, in that that's how City Hall would measure them. But I still disagree that the game's actual lore treats them as such, because the entirety of the lore is written from the point of view of a super living in a society of supers of all races from all places. It's not written as thought told by or to an unpowered human spectating these weird creatures. More specifically, it's not told with an "us vs. them" mentality where "we" are humans and "they" are not. Obviously, most writers are human, but that doesn't mean stories can't be written with a non-human viewpoint.

As an abstract example, take something like Darksiders or Soul Reaver. They are written from the viewpoint of super creatures only and solely involved in their own stories with other super creature with humans either all dead, buried and forgotten or entirely inconsequential. In City of Heroes, we exist in a society of humans, but WE are not humans, and our stories are told from our perspective, not theirs.

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All of that said, I have no problem with you having options. My problem is that I don't like a job part-done. Yes, this was called an artificial slippery slope, but I find it to be no less slippery. The origins we have now are generic. An Alien origin, by contrast, is specific. If we're going to go down the road of specific origins, then there are a fair few I'd want to see added - namely robot and elemental, and possibly divine. The game itself makes a clear distinction between the power of the divine, that is to say the power which gods seem to have naturally, and the power of magic, which is what Tielekku either invented or discovered, and which consists, as close as I can tell, of spells and incantations. If I were making the avatar of a god, wouldn't it be natural that I'd want a Divine origin to put that character in?

Like I said before - I have no problem with an Alien origin in general. I have a problem with adding one to the current framework, because it'll be one specific origin to five generic ones, creating a highly lopsided system, and that just bugs me on a subconscious level.

Please understand I mean no offence when I say this, but this would make Natural the dumbest, most boring, least interesting of all the origins, particularly since that, in large part, equals dead meat in the high levels where you have to take high-explosive rocket swarms to the face and punch out giant robots. In fact, the only reason I started using the Natural origin AT ALL was because it was ret-conned to include "Or maybe you are not human."

First of all, an origin does not describe "what place" you get your powers from, but rather "what method" you get your powers by. "Training" covers both Karate Kid and Superboy, I dare say. Secondly, I would wager a fair few people would raise an eyebrow if you suggested that both the Punisher and Dr. Doom got their powers "from the same place," yet both of them would fir the Technology origin, at least from what I've seen of the Punisher. What's more, a lot of people (if they're like me) will raise an eyebrow if you told them that the Green Goblin and the Hobgoblin shouldn't have the same origin. The Hobgoblin is just a punk in a mask with cool tech, whereas the Green Goblin - at least in the stories I've seen - gets the bulk of his strength and wit from that serum he takes. Lastly, almost everybody will question you if you suggested that a person who was injected with a mutagen which gives super powers was not, in fact, a Mutant, but was instead of the same origin as the guy who MADE the serum. Weird, huh?

Comics are also full of examples of superhuman being who are superhuman solely because they are gods, such as Thor. One can ask for a God/Divine origin based on that. Comics are also full of examples of superhuman beings who are superhuman solely because they are robots, such as Ultron. The line you draw is not as clear as you present it.

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.

For as much as I can tell, the devs seem to keep changing what Incarnates actually are. Given some of the newer comments from them on how one becomes one and which characters are Incarnates, its really hard to actually see it as an Origin anymore.

Originally, Incarnates were supposed to be a new AT. I don't know if that was ever official or just fan wank, but that's what was said at one point. Then Incarnates were an origin, the one crossed out on that tablet in that mission from that stupid arc. Now Incarnates are more levels on top of our existing ones, and I dare say we'll see plenty of Technology Incarnates and Natural Incarnates and so forth.

Come to think of it, though - and I do know that "incarnate" stands for "an incarnation of a deity" - but basic English actually plays out the new use of the term very well. When my Technology Blaster earns his Alpha Slot, he will become Technology Incarnate. I like the sound of that!

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.

As I understand it, it was once slated to be an EAT, you can check the EAT at WW (or something like that) thread for sources.
last indication was that, though there are many paths to it, the well of the Furies being the best know, there is one entity from which the Incarnates draw their power so we'd technically be an incarnate of that, canon wise at any rate.

Marvel has a great term to differentiate that; "Mutate" or someone that was mutated instead of being born with a mutation.

"Dang," said Superboy, "I forgot that I can move at Faster-Than-Light Speed and could punch Karate Kid 30,000 times a second, even if I were not already invulnerable to any physical attack he could make!"

"Blast," said the Silver Surfer, "I forgot that I can alter my molecular structure to be stronger than hardened steel and unbendable by any human, much less than I can reduce T'Challa to a pile of smoking cinders if I wanted!"

"Tell me about it," murmured Doctor Doom, "I forgot that if the writer wants it, Squirrel Girl will kick your freakin' butt... but, of course, She's Just That Good."

It is enough to make Troy Hickman weep.

You know, I took one glance at the description of Stone Armor, and said "no, this character will be making actual armor by pulling rock from around him!" then wrote a backstory as such. (For those who don't know, Stone Armor says that your character changes their skin to stone.)

Or that. Let me make this clear - if one day the guys upstairs decided to remove all origins and replace them with a single text field that said "Origin" and let you type, say, 10-15 symbols in it, I would not complain one bit. It will be much easier to let everyone define his own origin in his own words (or rather, word) than to try and set specific definitions when there really is no meaningful game balance that hinges on them.

My beef is with adding things on top of what we have now. If you remove what we have now and start from scratch... Eh, why not? Or you know what? JUST scrapping Origins altogether would be fine by me. Especially if that took the Origin of Powers arc to hell with it.

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.

"Alien" is an origin the way "Cleveland" is an origin, meaning "not at all."