[OOC] Baybridge™: Era of the Old/New Gods™ [COMPLETED]

[FernStone]

Everyone else managed to make weaknesses based of other PCs - just sayin

[TheWizardLizard]

I would definitely agree that a character's powers are important to their character, but I preferred to think of it in terms of the effect it has on them. Take my character, for example; what I find compelling and what I want to explore about Nick aren't the nitty gritty mechanics of his powers, but rather the kind of person they have led to him becoming, the things that have happened to him as a result of them, the way he lives because of them, and so on and so forth. That's the sort of thing the RP's about, I think.

Although, on the subject of actively exploitable power weaknesses, perhaps someone could help me come up with one for my other character, as I've hit something of a block. The power, in essence, allows her to turn off friction and slide around at high speeds - it does this by projecting a field close around her body (so it also works on skintight clothes), which doubles as a minor shock absorber so that she doesn't immediately die when she crashes into something (still hurts, though).

The obvious weakness is that it's difficult to control and not really as good as just flat-out super speed, but I'm not sure if that's enough, so. If anyone has any input, that would be appreciated.

[Eyeruption]

@Nosuchthing
Well, i'm in no position to actually argue in here since i'm not even playing, but i'd want to know that exactly because they aren't shown. I would be equally okay with them both having weaknesses matching their powers or not having any, but either way i'd know that it settles in the In-Game world neatly and justifiedly.

[FernStone]

@TheWizardLizard maybe something to do with overheating due to the extreme speeds? Not great, haha. I'll try think of a possible weakness to help - it can e difficult to do without hitting a wall

[TheWizardLizard]

@Nosuchthing
Well, i'm in no position to actually argue in here since i'm not even playing, but i'd want to know that exactly because they aren't shown. I would be equally okay with them both having weaknesses matching their powers or not having any, but either way i'd know that it settles in the In-Game world neatly and justifiedly.

@Eyeruption

I'm going to be honest, I cannot conceive of why it matters. Like, the In-Game world has characters that are super-powerful without obvious weakness, just like it probably has some poor schmuck whose power is that he can, I don't know, hold his breath 33% longer than the average person. We, as players, don't play the former because it damages drama and narrative and creates a power arms-race of the same type that has been ruining Marvel and DC, where the characters are always in superpower flex-offs and narrative and careful storytelling are trampled in, again, DBZ style 'muh power level' nonsense.

That all makes perfect sense, right? I don't see why this is hard.

[Keksalot]

@TheWizardLizard
Is the conservation of momentum already a part of his power, or can your guy go from 100 to 0 whenever he wants without any ill effects? If the former is correct than it is a great weakness in and of itself.

[TheWizardLizard]

Yeah, the power's all about conservation of momentum - she doesn't lose any speed as she GOTTA GO FASTS, but she can't break into a 100mph slide unless she has some other way of moving that fast. And I thought about overheating, but I decided against it both for reasons already stated and because, well, friction is what causes things to overheat when they move too fast.

It's not that strong a power, but the weakness is mainly it's limited scope and its difficulty of use rather than an active weakness. It's tricky, but maybe I'm overthinking it.

[Nevis]

Before I go and fully develop a character around it, I want to make certain this power works.

The ability is essentially complete control over all himself in the body and power sense. He can control the speed at which his cells replicate, heal by hastened regeneration and alter and rewrite his DNA at will. This enables him essentially change what he is genetically-grow new appendages or completely change his species-and, theoretically, enables him to write in other abilities into himself. This latter technique, though, can only be used once his body has learned the genetic code for an ability, which generally requires ingesting genetic material (assuming the ability is carried in their genetics, rather than something else) granting the ability. This generally means devouring some or all of the original carrier and comes with the inherent limitations both of the original use on top of his own. Beyond this, most ability genes tend to conflict or require the same point in the genetic sequence in him, making using multiple simultaneously difficult to impossible.

The major weakness is that he has to obtain sufficient energy and nutrients to do this; increasing the rate of cell growth means increasing metabolism and growing entirely new body parts or such means ingesting quite a great deal, pounds on pounds while also taking into account waste, energy efficiency and so on. While he can, obviously, improve his ability to digest food and such above usual human levels, he has to actually get said food and take the time to digest it-meaning that if he were to grow another appendage, for example, he will have to devour the necessary nutrients to do so-and then again to grow back to his default. This means that doing much with his abilities other than healing generally takes time and a lot of eating-and it often adds up toxins faster than he can remove them, and the ratio is worse the faster he runs it, increasingly pushing him closer to Ashing. For other 'abilities' taken on, he generally has to expend more physical exertion than the original on top of the process necessary to rewrite his genetics to use it, given the base physical nature of his ability.

In addition to/besides that, for a character with the ability above or another, I am wondering if I may play a character who is/was a Eugenics experiment by the Hands of Science, the Founding Family or some other nefarious group as an attempt to make said 'perfect being'?~<3

[Keksalot]

@Nevis
Refer to the Gutmadder a couple dozen messages back. "Time and resources" isn't a very good weakness because it'll be rare to come up in the scope of the game.

@TheWizardLizard
No, no. My english is broken so i'm bad at explaining.
I meant like, the major weakness of the guy is that after speeding up he can't just STOP like for example Flash does. When he goes up to high speeds, he must slow down really carefully and gradually in order to not smear himself on the pavement and such - so when he is in a super high-speed chase and the guy he is chasing suddenly stops, he will have to run for additional half a mile before being able to stop and change direction to the opposite one.

[Eyeruption]

I don't get this whole conversation, I'm just going to be blunt here when I say not going to start enforcing weaknesses to NPCs. Because it's honestly fucking redundant. And it's going to get even more redundant as I start introducing more villains/etc.

I'm going to be blunt here and say that it really feels like you two are coming after me to have some argument because I pretty much won't let your characters have whatever you want. If you guys don't like it, then I don't care.

@Mr Allen J

<Snipped quote by Eyeruption>

I'm going to be honest, I cannot conceive of why it matters. Like, the In-Game world has characters that are super-powerful without obvious weakness, just like it probably has some poor schmuck whose power is that he can, I don't know, hold his breath 33% longer than the average person. We, as players, don't play the former because it damages drama and narrative and creates a power arms-race of the same type that has been ruining Marvel and DC, where the characters are always in superpower flex-offs and narrative and careful storytelling are trampled in, again, DBZ style 'muh power level' nonsense.

That all makes perfect sense, right? I don't see why this is hard.

@TheWizardLizard

Ah, now i get it.
I am really sorry for the misunderstanding.
It's just after reading the premise i thought that the biggest theme of the game is "realistic" depiction of superpowers in the world, i.e. simulationism prevailing over narrativism in all things including all that goes behind the scenes. I think now i get what are the strongest themes of the game.

[Punished GN]

Although, on the subject of actively exploitable power weaknesses, perhaps someone could help me come up with one for my other character, as I've hit something of a block. The power, in essence, allows her to turn off friction and slide around at high speeds - it does this by projecting a field close around her body (so it also works on skintight clothes), which doubles as a minor shock absorber so that she doesn't immediately die when she crashes into something (still hurts, though).

The obvious weakness is that it's difficult to control and not really as good as just flat-out super speed, but I'm not sure if that's enough, so. If anyone has any input, that would be appreciated.

@TheWizardLizard

This drawback might be a stretch, but what if her power also daps into the other side of the friction spectrum to a limited (and uncontrolled) extent and she unintentionally enhances friction sometimes. Like, she could put on some socks, and burn herself, or she could accidentally set something ablaze because she enhanced the friction of it. Get the gist?

Otherwise, you can say that she has piss poor mobility or has trouble adjusting herself once she gets started - so no sudden turns or stops.

Before I go and fully develop a character around it, I want to make certain this power works.

The ability is essentially complete control over all himself in the body and power sense. He can control the speed at which his cells replicate, heal by hastened regeneration and alter and rewrite his DNA at will. This enables him essentially change what he is genetically-grow new appendages or completely change his species-and, theoretically, enables him to write in other abilities into himself. This latter technique, though, can only be used once his body has learned the genetic code for an ability, which generally requires ingesting genetic material (assuming the ability is carried in their genetics, rather than something else) granting the ability. This generally means devouring some or all of the original carrier and comes with the inherent limitations both of the original use on top of his own. Beyond this, most ability genes tend to conflict or require the same point in the genetic sequence in him, making using multiple simultaneously difficult to impossible.

The major weakness is that he has to obtain sufficient energy and nutrients to do this; increasing the rate of cell growth means increasing metabolism and growing entirely new body parts or such means ingesting quite a great deal, pounds on pounds while also taking into account waste, energy efficiency and so on. While he can, obviously, improve his ability to digest food and such above usual human levels, he has to actually get said food and take the time to digest it-meaning that if he were to grow another appendage, for example, he will have to devour the necessary nutrients to do so-and then again to grow back to his default. This means that doing much with his abilities other than healing generally takes time and a lot of eating-and it often adds up toxins faster than he can remove them, and the ratio is worse the faster he runs it, increasingly pushing him closer to Ashing. For other 'abilities' taken on, he generally has to expend more physical exertion than the original on top of the process necessary to rewrite his genetics to use it, given the base physical nature of his ability.

In addition to/besides that, for a character with the ability above or another, I am wondering if I may play a character who is/was a Eugenics experiment by the Hands of Science, the Founding Family or some other nefarious group as an attempt to make said 'perfect being'?~<3

@Nevis

Hmmm... The power could be fine. Those weaknesses aren't really all that exploitable, or debilitating, to be honest.

You could say something like he's weak to energy/heat based attacks, altering his genetic structure weakens him for awhile, it's painful, and the sudden and extreme biological changes wreaks hell on his internal structure (Maybe shit like immense pain, organ failure, sudden penis explosion, etc).

[Eyeruption]

@Mr Allen J
How about a power that transfers any sort of harm done to the Metahuman to all people in the radius of 50 or 100 meters? If it's not extremely OP, what would you say is it's weakness?

[Punished GN]

@Mr Allen J
How about a power that transfers any sort of harm done to the Metahuman to all people in the radius of 50 or 100 meters? If it's not extremely OP, what would you say is it's weakness?

@Eyeruption

Yeah, that's pretty ridiculous. Since not only will your character be immune to everything, he'll basically be able to reflect all damage against him to anyone else. I mean, you could probably beat him in other ways, but I'm not fond of the power.

[Eyeruption]

Yeah, maybe good for a villain but not a PC.
What about an ability that allows all people in it's range to evenly share out all harm done to any one of them amongst the whole group?

[Punished GN]

I'm just not really fond of everyone instantly getting injured, nor damage reflection.

[Punished GN]

Anyways, I plan on starting the IC after I'm done my last character, and write up a few NPCs.

[Nevis]

The idea is that the speed is a pretty severe limitation-growing something like an extra arm-sized appendage would take several minutes if he did it fast. I understand, though, and have ideas for a handful of other issues.

First, the relative slowness of his ability makes him extremely susceptible to any form of ambush. It generally takes a long time for his adaptable abilities to morph to react to or counter an assailant.

Second, when he notably increases the speed and especially when he quickly goes through multiple transmutations, this also increases the rate of replicated cells and results in cancer and thus produce virtually any kind malady such as nausea, pain, tumors, spilled acids eating away at flesh and so on. While he can always heal this, that requires time-often significant time-at minimum several minutes and up to much longer depending on the size and complexity of the mutations.

Third, any abilities with particularly 'chaotic' effects-mind abilities that cause confusion or distorted perception, elemental abilities that can cause any sort of biological misfiring rather than just destruction (electric abilities being a common example) can easily trigger mutations in his extremely malleable nervous system or cause him to run wild in a maligned mental state.

Aside from that, what of the background bit I mentioned? He need not actually be 'perfect' at all-just the result of a science project aiming to create such is what I want.

[DJAtomika]

@Mr Allen J Okay, so I had an idea about a character I could bring back.

I remember I was in an RP with Lord Wraith as GM once, and I made an accelerated regeneration character.

Other things I'd like to make are a cryokinetic, or maybe a blood manipulator.

[Punished GN]

@Nevis The background part is fine with me - in fact, I can totally factor it with my newest character. Those drawbacks sound fine, but I still need to see a full sheet.

@DJAtomika All of those abilities sound fine (Even though I'm hesitant when it comes to blood manipulation).

Wait, there's already a cyrokinetic (Kei... Idk if Fern put up his sheet yet).

[Punished GN]

@FernStone Get off yo' bitch ass and post Kei.