The Natural Secondary Blues

I cannot meaningfully explain the amount of times I have set out to create a character concept and been left with either devices/traps or the wildly popular trick-shot (ahem) as the only possibly (barely) plausible secondary options.

Just wondering if anyone else has run into this creative roadblock multiple times? You create a character and you simply don't want/need the secondary to be some fantastical cosmic esoteric energy set... but you are sooo tired of traps/devices... and the thought of your concept standing there holding a bow and arrow makes zero sense.

I'm not saying I have a balanced solution - but I swear I would take a grossly underpowered simple pistol set or something just to keep things on theme... especially since as it stands now if one of my concepts is strong enough I simply don't tray the off-point secondary powers anyway.

I suppose I am alone in the feeling?

Poison would work for buff/debuff sets, and energy and dark can both work for blasters depending on coloring and powers picked. I used Dark Melee for my natural brawler long before power customization and alt animation for MA, let alone street justice. I can wik with minor adjustment if you ignore the dark fists or just explain it away as throwing sand or gas for "dirty" fighting.

No, you're not the only one, but I do think the problem stems (perhaps) from a misinterpretation of "Natural" in this game's context. While people with no truly metahuman powers qualify as "natural", so do people who can do unexplainable, superhuman things, like throw fireballs or fly. The trite examples usually stem from Asian influences - people who have tapped some inner chi (often martial artists) but also things like Hindu mystics or even Arab mystics. The human (but still ridiculously powerful) characters from Dragonball Z or the main characters of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (who could fight on open water) come to mind for the martial arts side. There's an in-lore example: Soldiers of Arachnos. While I admit that Bane Spiders seem more tech than natural (especially Crabs), the Widow side of things is pretty acceptable as "natural", and they have ridiculously superhuman capabilities. Even the most non-Psi-wielding of Night Widows play like some kind of Primal Earth Jedi/Sith, sans the lightsaber of course.

And then there's always the notion, long ago specifically mentioned by Statesman (a.k.a. Jack Emmert) that aliens (from space or other dimensions) with superhuman powers would fall under the "Natural" origin classification. See: Peacebringers.

So if you really, really want a Batman-style hero, I agree your choices are limited. But if what you want is "Natrual" as the game world seems to interpret it, there's a lot of leeway.

Energy Melee for mele-ers and Energy Manipulation for Blasters both work for me for non-powered characters.

The visual FX are no more "real" than than the green numbers over people's heads when I hit them, or the way my head glows different colours when I dig deep into my reserves. (ie Inspirations) And they can probably be toned down a lot.

Tsoo Ink Men use it, and they can be considered to be primarily martial artists with a bit of magic.

Buff/debuff sets are pretty thin on the ground, I agree. Arachnos Soldiers work well for that though - one of my favourite non-powered characters was a gun-toting leader played as a Huntsman build.

Ya know I do appreciate the "take this power and pretend its this power" advice... it's just I've done all of that seven ways to sundown - for many years - and for many toons - coupled with the fact I see more literal options being introduced in other areas all the time - so it fuels my desires and hopes even more. I think my problem is I have been turning a blind eye and walking the fine line of plausible make-believe for a long time when it comes to having things make sense in my mind. Just wondered if others secretly dream of getting a little more love in the "more grounded secondary" department.

More of an issue is that damn trick arrow secondary always just staring me in the face like "You know I'm the only thing that makes sense - even though you're boy never even went to summer camp". I mean it doesn't get more natural than that... but a bow and arrow is a pretty specific and rare and exotic weapon in the world of comics. I can think of a half dozen items that are far more commonplace in the genre that would be a far more universal fit for themes and concepts - so I think it's existence is what makes the absence of other choices more glaring to me.

And keep in mind I am not talking about batman only concepts - I often find myself running into ideas where I don't want/need the hero to be uber on both sides (primary and secondary) and that's when things get hairy. Obviously you go to traps and bow instantly but as my OP states - it's getting a little old for me now-a-days.

For example I have several concepts where I've tried a hero that controls weather - or an ex-circus performer with a great mass hypnosis power - or an apprentice of illusion character... the secondary choices never truly feel just right or are just way off.

I used to run into this a great deal with my tankers scrappers - but Willpower was a game-changer for me in that regard. That was a good day, and the minimal fx made it even juicier. Maybe I am always hoping for that sensation when it comes to the defenders and controllers and such. I always dream that there is some neutral universal general secondary like WP that the DEVS will come up with to calm these waters.

Anyway - I know this is a very personal point of view - but still good to know others have felt at least a bit of a pang when confronted with this specific speed bump during the character creation process.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr Harmony Arachnos Soldiers work well for that though - one of my favourite non-powered characters was a gun-toting leader played as a Huntsman build.

Never even considered this - I might have to drift into this territory (new for me). Kind of sad in a way because I do selfishly feel like what I am talking about is a void that could be corrected a bit... but GREAT call none-the-less... could really help me keep my sanity over this issue.

It isn't a matter of taking x and pretending that it's y. It's taking x and being able to justify it as natural through whatever means. I've got a natural ice/ tanker whose concept I quite enjoy, as well as a natural earth/storm controller. At no point did I say to myself, "well, these are normal people but they can manipulate the elements because they found a particularly potent key fob in the gutter one day." Natural is absolutely the widest possible origin, even surpassing magic in my opinion. If you can't think of a natural justification for x/x, sleep on it and try again.

It is personal preference, for sure.

I find a Archery/Energy Blaster played as a bow-wielding martial artist like Connor Hawke much more believable than a Willpower tanker who's just a tough normal guy but can stand in the middle of a pack of 20 nazis with machine guns and grenades and somehow survive.
The fact that one powerset name suggests energy powers and the other just suggests sheer guts doesnt tie in with what the two characters actually do in game.

For the circus hypnotist type character - Mind Control would work pretty well, right? Its not too flashy and even has the "you are getting sleepy" hand movements for Confuse. I guess, as you say, the problem is finding a secondary.
( I made a Mind/Sonic natural telepath once who "numbs" or amplifies other peoples sensory input to do the -res/+res powers, but she was very science-fictiony. )

I guess what I'm asking is, what do you imagine these secondaries doing, and what archetypes are they secondaries for? Do you have any examples of the kind of sets you'd like to see?
We've already got a few flavours each of guns, bow, gadgets and martial arts. What else could a natural human do to compete in a superhuman world?

Yeah, I don't want to belabor it too much, but the game doesn't support the "truly natural" character that well in lore or execution, because our "natural" ranged characters are shooting bows or swinging their fists at dimension-shattering demigods, 50' tall robots firing rockets back. We can point to stories (in comics and elsewhere) where that is explained as luck, skill, etc., but beyond a point, if you keep doing it, the truth is that you're superhuman.

That the game only really supports those kinda of battles at high levels perhaps deserves its own complaint department, but that horse is pretty far out the barn door at this point.

It reminds me of Hawkeye, who constantly belabours that he's a totally normal, natural human being. Because if he didn't, nobody would believe he is.

Heroes, Villains ♦ Reviews ♦ Retrospect

This sounds like it's mostly for Blasters and/or ranged characters.

Make a character with power gauntlets and that becomes their weapon, and they remain natural concept.

I'm guessing when you say natural, you mean human. And with that, what's really left? Martial Arts, Street Fighting works for hand to hand. Swords, Pistols, Archery, Assault Rifle, there's the weapons.

Ninjitsu, there's a good melee secondary for natural.

Wouldn't the power gauntlets be their power? Tech or magic?

This is what gets up my nose about characters like Manticore. The body armour, the compound bow, the many, many arrows, they're not actually part of his powers. Nooooo.

Heroes, Villains ♦ Reviews ♦ Retrospect

Trick Arrow really isn't "natural", it's tech.

Natural would be doing amazing things with a case of arrows you bought at Walmart.

Trick Arrow has:
- A body-encompassing net that somehow fits on the head of an arrow.
- An arrow that encases your target in ice.
- An arrow that emits a high pitched noise that somehow reduces your enemies damage resistance.
- An arrow that holds enough glue to cover a 40 square foot area.
- An arrow that contains enough oil to cover a huge area of floor with a thick enough coat to make people slip and fall.
- And and arrow that contains an EMP.

Those don't sound very natural to me. If you want to be a natural human as part of your concept it would mean you can do the same thing with off-the-shelf equipment that you can do with your own personal equipment. If your personal equipment is something that cannot be purchased at an appropriate store, you've crossed over into tech.

You could justify it as your character just being highly skilled with a bow, and able to be effective with one that he picked up off the ground somewhere. But the Trick Arrow powerset itself isn't inherently "natural".

Tech and Natural Origins can easily overlap to be one or the other.

Archery is really using a piece of equipment. So is a blade. So is a pistol. They're all forms of tech.

Using the power guantlets can just as easily be seen as natural origin. In fact, that's how Back Alley Brawler uses his Power gauntlets with his Natural Origin.

I tend to look at what overlap Dual Origin enhancements have when justifying a character's origin.

Natural overlaps with Tech and Magic, meaning they could use gadgets (Batm... Manticore) or magical artifacts (Tsoo, Hellions, Batman using Nth.. Manticore using Enchanted Impervium arrowheads) to give themselves an edge, without changing their core nature.

Similarly, a Mutant crosses over with Science (its a physiological change that can be objectively studied) and Magic (how exactly did Storm evolve a natural ability to control the weather over a single generation?)

The single origins are telling too. Technology is cybernetics. Tony Stark, Positron, here are some guys to whom science and natural talents are important, but being part machine is a defining characteristic. I suppose a Robotics Mastermind wouldn't have to be a cyborg themselves to think of them as a technology origin, but all those upgrades could be said to be in the robots themselves.

Under those terms, I would say the Praetoria Police are Naturals, they put on their gauntlets for a day's work of getting clobbered by firedude074, they're not permanently attached.

I myself don't usually think about that though during character creation. I just go here http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Titles and see which ones have alliterative or thematic synergy with the name I wish to use. I can write a biography that justifies the origin later.

Yeah, I would definitely go with Energy and play it off as having "energy gauntlets". I would also pick a good costume option to fit the concept.

My main problem with this complaint is that, as far as completely natural, 100% ordinary, non-chi/ninjutsu/spiritual powers of whatever variety (which could be argued not to be natural, as an aside) humans go, there really... just aren't that many things people can do that could qualify for super heroic. In the game, we have pistols and machine guns, bows, melee weapons of several varieties (and more on the way), two different unarmed fighting sets, two different "cool gadgets" based sets, and even two pet class sets that are (arguably) totally mundane. There honestly isn't that much more room for lateral expansion on the "totally normal guy" theme.

About the most I could really see adding at this point would be some kind of Traps-esque Control set, maybe some kind of Leadership-y Support set, and melee/unarmed themed Blaster and Dominator secondaries.

I24 Proc Chance = (Enhanced Recharge + Activation Time) * (Current PPM * 1.25) / 60*(1 + .75*(.15*Radius - 0.011*Radius*(360-Arc)/30))
Single Target Radius = 0. AoE Non-Cone Arc = 360.

OP hopefully shows this wasn’t a “complaint” - or an acknowledgement of solution – just reaching out to see if I was alone in a feeling.

I have also noticed a great deal of strides on the games part over the years to put more and more options and customization in the hands of the player’s – so I don’t think anything being discussed is out of line.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Supernumiphone First off I must admit that having concept be this important a part of character creation is a bit foreign to me, so I may just not "get" what you're talking about.

Completely understood and I believe you are wholly in the majority, hence my wondering if I were alone. Alas my enjoyment and gaming vibe is passionately rooted in these “foreign” things. To be honest I was surprised to see others poke their heads out to say they are of the same school. To give you more insight into my play-style I’d say I am in game 20% of the time and in Costume Creator 80%. Another factoid that puts me even deeper in the minority I know.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr Harmony For the circus hypnotist type character - Mind Control would work pretty well, right? Its not too flashy and even has the "you are getting sleepy" hand movements for Confuse. I guess, as you say, the problem is finding a secondary.

Bingo!

Although I purposely wanted to keep things vague and general I know that can sometimes create more confusion than open discussion - so I should probably narrow down a bit.

I realize now I shouldn’t have used the word “natural” since I wasn’t speaking about an origin or even a race (human)… In fact I often create alien characters (think good ‘ol fashion blood and flesh retro aliens) and take the natural origin since they are perfectly natural on their planet. So what I more specifically meant was non-godlike powers.

Furthermore I do think the melee sets are dialed in pretty good as far as secondary/primary balance, options and being “theme-able” friendly. So the areas where I find myself wanting something else would definitely, as many of you identified, be with the Controllers, Some of the Master Mind sets without a “matching themed” secondary, and to a lesser extant blasters where having god-like powers in both primary and secondary doesn't make sense for the idea. And then of course the villain side AT’s that are in line with these.

Honestly if I were forced to start coming up with solutions I would probably first offer things I’ve done with the tools available to pacify my situation to help give an idea of what I’m after. I very often don’t tray the secondary power at all and then will take powerpool fighting, fitness (in the old days), leadership and even medicine and actually slot and use these as my secondary. This actually works fine for me except the nagging feeling of knowing a secondary opportunity was wasted.

As far as what’s currently available – again I think Willpower really closed a lot of gaps and enabled a lot of concepts to flourish. I also think Ninja Run (another game changer for me) is brilliant and corrected the issue of providing a worthwhile travel power that is non-godlike to fit a bevy of hero profiles. And don’t get me wrong I also think Devices, Traps and Trick Shot do fill this need I am speaking of perfectly and probably exist for this void I feel. It’s just that I find myself having to take them constantly. So I naturally (in a non-godlike way) wondered if there could be one or two more tossed in the mix at some point – and if they could even perhaps be more of a common or broader power than say a tech bow and arrow - and therefore fit a wider range of character concepts.

So where does that leave me (us?) – I dunno, I just wanted to explain my “feeling” a bit more, see if anyone empathized and maybe get some ideas brewing.

As far as my personal sandbox – I REALLY didn’t want to turn it into this because each one of these can be dissected a million times over and probably deserves a separate post. But here are a few things that have danced about in my noggin on occasion that sort of show the hole I find myself trying to fill every other alt or so. Maybe a scaled down secondary pistol set (pistol so much broader of a prop than the bow). A set that somehow highlights super-intelligence. A vastly scaled down street justice or beefed up fighting pool set (I can’t imagine the massive amount of concepts this would polish up – and I actually know of even a few blasters who would pounce). A Dagger/Knife secondary. A Tycoon power set that modifies INFL and Enhancements earned. Actually I’ve often desired a Primary that better syncs up with Storm Summoning (as much as Fire matches Thermal, etc).

A gadget based control set would be nice... maybe something that focuses on gas grenades, bolas, stun guns, and so forth. It'd still be very much comic book physics (real nonlethal weapons are actually pretty unreliable) but no more so than Trick Arrow. And I'd like to see a leadership-based buff set: lots of PBAoE buffs and toggles, maybe a fear or to-hit debuff based on demoralizing the enemy, and so on. Unfortunately we already have a ton of buff / debuff sets and you can pretty much make a Leadership Corruptor by playing a VEAT so I don't see the second one happening any time soon. But we're kind of due a new control set (and a new MM pet set, but those take so many resources to develop that I'm not holding my breath) so who knows?

I am not sure I can help. I have mental quirks in this area.

I consider chi martial arts to be magic. BatGod is a tech hero. SuperDude is a natural hero. A barbarian with a sword that can hurt superpowered beings is a tech hero ... albeit low tech. Anybody "without powers" that can fight a level 50 foe is certainly not natural .... unless the members of his race are simply all like that.

You could decide that, like BatGod, you carry a gadget or 10, but that your predominant focus comes from natural talent (despite the gadgets). The line between natural and tech in this sense is pretty blurry.

Lewis

The Energy Gauntlet approach is a good way to shoehorn a power set into a natural origin, especially if your character is a praetorian. The PPD energy gauntlets are issued to every ppd officer and are the equivalent a tactical sidearm in the real world. And those gauntlets are in the character creator for anyone who has going rogue.

See I see the origins like this:

Mutant: Powers come from naturally occurring quirks in DNA from evolution (Jean Grey, Wolverine, etc)

Science: An experiment or accident has granted abilities of a superhuman nature to the individual (fantastic four, the hulk, spiderman, captain america)

Magic: The character is a spellcaster, magically attuned being or someone whose powers are derived solely from a magical artifact (Dr. Strange, Classic Vampire/Werewolf type characters, The Juggernaut)

Tech: Powers come from highly technical devices that require little innate ability on the user's part or possibly the being is itself an advanced piece of technology such as an artificially intelligent android or an organic being with inorganic parts such as a cyborg. (Iron Man, Steel, Vision, Data from TNG, The Bionic 6)

Natural: Natural character have innate strengths that are sometimes bolstered with other things from the tech, science and magic origins. Aliens can also qualify as Natural characters because any innate abilities they have are considered "natural" for their species. (Hawkeye, The Punisher, Batman, Superman... yes Superman is NATURAL... for a Kryptonian)

The key thing to realize about natural origin heroes is that if you strip away any external devices or talismans they still have innate gifts that are still extraordinary. Take away batman's utility belt and gadgets and he's still an incredibly intelligent man who has worked hard to get his body into tip top fighting shape, learned unarmed combat and has honed agility and marksmanship. Take away Hawkeye's Bow and fancy Arrows and he's still an incredible marksman. Sure he needs a bow to capitalize on that but that doesn't mean all his extraordinary ability comes from his bow. Aliens as I said have innate abilities perfectly normal for their race.

At least that's how I perceive it.

Also consider there is some mix and match between origins. Wolverine is a mutant but his claws for example while technically part of him are enhanced via science by being laced with adamantium. The Scarlet Witch and Magik are mutants but also use magic as well.