Incarnates and your character's backstories.

I'm playing a Natural Arrow/Fire blaster. He's perfectly human. What about the /fire people asked. I said it was intensive training under martial arts masters who unlocked his inner fire, training him in how to utilize how body's natural Chi energy to achieve specific results.

Incarnates would just further this, more intensive training under even more mysterious masters.

While I love the implementation of the Incarnate system, I really do dislike the backstory and assumptions around it. For people who RP that really seems constraining. It would be much better to just let us have the powers and work our own stories around them. For people who don't RP they don't care, it's just another system.

People who do can likely make their own stories as to their power or lack there of.

Basically, I'm going to totally ignore the backstory for Incarnates and my main and several others will never claim to be one despite having those powers.

I've always said that your Origin details precisely and only where your powers COME FROM. Where you go after you enter Paragon City at level 1, and what you do to further your powers and access new ones, has nothing to do with what your origin was in the past. If you are a Magic Origin, you can pick up a Jet Pack or a Revolver and use its powers, if you are a Technology Origin, you can pick up a Wedding Band or the Sands of Mu and use those powers.

And even Origin is limited. I have a robot character that is powered by occult energy, which I created specifically because he could NOT be classified as either Technology or Magic. He is both, and I could have chosen either. But just because he's a robot, that doesn't stop him using magic, and just because he uses magic, that doesn't mean he can't augment his technological body.

Putting it another way, your Origin is the core of your powers. If you take the Patron Powers, it's stated in the game lore that you're "borrowing" power from the Patrons. You could role play it as an extension of your own powers, of course, but then it's not a Patron Power, it's just another form of APP. You're just (assuming you even care about concept) choosing something that's closer to your concept than the other APPs available.

As for Incarnates, it's my understanding that Incarnates are the "original Origin" that the Origin of Power arc was talking about. There is no Origin for Incarnates, it's a whole new Origin all its own. So if you're a Natural, you would become a Natural with Incarnate powers. Honestly, some of my skill-based Natural heroes might not want to become Incarnate for that reason, he wouldn't trust such absolute power. On the other hand, if the only way to fight absolute power is with absolute power, he might take the chance that he can keep from being corrupted by it. Or at least keep the corruption to a minimum.

If I decided to role play it, I might decide my Natural hero chose instead to find some other way to augment his powers to the same level. Some of my other characters I might ignore the official canon as well, while others might embrace it, just like the Patrons. Since I have few enough characters that have even gotten to 50 in the first place, I'm not sure that it's an issue to me.

For me, this just isn't a big deal. Even for characters with highly developed backstories, having the game dictate things is just a fact of its being a game and an MMO. When I want absolute creative control over something, I'll write it myself. Surrendering a little bit of that control seems like a fair price to me to use the game's art assets, community, etc.

Your Mileage May Vary.

My Merc MM is natural so the whole introduction to incarnate will be easy, he found the well / remnents of what was within the well and over time his own natural skills and powers fused with the "Natural power of the incarnates" should be fun soon the game should be called "City of gods"

I'm just hoping that with the in-game "look" of the Incarnate powers, we still have options that fit in people who don't have laser vision or shoot energy blasts everywhere.

The other thing is... you're not godlike as an incarnate. You can't reshape reality to your whim. You don't just run missions by walking in the door and snapping your fingers and teleporting the bad guys into a jail. Even with your Omega slot and huge glowing yellow hair that's 47 feet long... Malta Sappers will ruin your day. You know, those average humans? Who just beat your demigod ***?

Yeah.

Them.

They're still going to suck.

So I take it all with a grain of salt that you'll suddenly be godlike.

Something I hope is that they make the animations on some of the powers interesting and able to fit with characters. The Judgement AoE? Is that going to be a straight energy blast or will you be able to, say, on your dual blades scrapper cut the air so hard you make a shockwave?

The only thing this really affects in my primary villain's backstory is that becoming Incarnate, with all the power and potential immortality that goes with it, was his entire goal from the start. He's an ex-military-gone-mercenary commander and who is quite capable of whipping up chemical weapons midbattle -- basically, a Natural Mercs/Poison MM. Several other characters of mine will probably jump at the opportunity to become an Incarnate, my Praetorians being the most notable.

It doesn't fit every one of my characters, so if it's inconvenient I'll ignore it and just chalk it up to them becoming stronger or something. I really have no issue both ignoring -and- integrating concepts like the Incarnate or Origin of Power as I see fit. Along with a healthy helping of what Chase_Arcanum is saying, too, for the most part anyway. Though I would have no issue ignoring (but still using) future power-based things they might gain if I felt it inconvenient to a character.