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Originally Posted by
Cosi
That's not what I said. What I said is that I want to be able to tell stories at a particular power level. I gave a bunch of examples of stories like that. Maybe you could look at those examples.
I have. None of them are defined first and foremost by their power level. Heck, the only decent characters I can think of defined primarily by their power level are side characters built as ideals for the protagonists to look up to and Saitama...and the latter only works because the
entire story is built around it (things like how being that powerful makes him feel, and how it doesn't get him what he wants, and whatnot).
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That was a summary.
Summaries generally go over the parts which are considered most important. The fact that you only talked about how much overwhelming power your character had in the summary is, I feel, quite telling.
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This is a thread about what the power level of the game should be--
Actually, it's not. It's about ways to make sure that everyone in the game is at the
same power level.
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I'm not sure what you want here. It's clearly not "what kinds of powers does this character have", because I said that -- "nature powers" and "demon powers" -- and you kept right on trucking.
...
It's clearly not "a set of stories you can tell that are particular to that character rather than similar ones", because you have rejected "stories with that character work differently" as an answer to your question.
So what exactly are you looking for?
Did...did you
read my post?
I'm looking for a reason why your character can only exist with that particular set of powers, if the concept for his powers is just "nature powers and demon powers". I
never argued with the existence of those two powersets or their inclusion together, only why that needed to be the set of powers you mentioned and why the sheer power was so danged important to you that it was all you mentioned in your summary.
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Yes, it does. Your character is not just a list of beliefs. It's also the actions he takes. The abilities you have matter because they change how your character can be actualized. If you take away Tony Stark's engineering talent, he's not the same character even if he still has the same personality and desires.
That much is true. However, he's essentially the same character whether his engineering talent extends to semi-practical inventions which he uses to defeat down-to-earth criminals, physics-shattering giant mecha which he uses to punch out lesser gods, or anything in between. Moreover, I'd argue that what makes Tony Stark Tony Stark (and not, say, Bruce Wayne or Bulma Briefs) is his personal life outside his powers--things like his hedonism and how his actions lead to him not trusting in uncontrolled vigilantes like himself.
TL;DR: If your character concept doesn't rely on being able to raze kingdoms, shatter armies, and slay the gods' greatest servants, power level doesn't matter. Stop conflating power
level with power
set.
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Because if he doesn't have that engineering talent, when he's locked in a cave and told to make weapons he f****** dies. Because the abilities matter.
So, wait. You think it's
absolutely critical to the story of Iron Man that he was, specifically, locked in a cave, told to make weapons, and broke out with a suit of power armor strong enough to deflect bullets? Is this true, or am I reading something wrong?
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Do you understand what "buff" means? It doesn't mean "make the characters exactly the same", it means "bring them in line with everyone else". Fighters and Barbarians will be able to punch out gods, and they'll have powers that let them change the course of battles, but they'll still be badass.
First...do you know what "strawman" means? I have
never argued that all characters should be exactly the same; in fact,
I've argued the exact opposite! I'm starting to suspect that you don't actually care what I'm saying, aside from the fact that it's opposed to what you believe.
Anyways, the problem isn't that martial characters can't do everything that the casters can; it's that the casters can do more stuff than the martials, and do it better. Martial characters will never be able to single-handedly raze a kingdom, nor defeat any but the smallest or stupidest of armies, and they certainly can't defeat the greatest servants of the gods (let alone the gods themselves), no matter what you assert. If they could do those things, tiers wouldn't exist. (Probably.)
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Telling me "you can have your character, you just can't raze kingdoms" is not a solution if the story I want to do is The Incursions. Because the ability to raze kingdoms (actually, worlds) is a prerequisite to be involved in that plot (as a PC). Telling me "you can have your character, you just can't travel to other planes" is not a solution if the story I want to do is The Chronicles of Amber. Because the ability to travel to other planes is a prerequisite to be involved in that plot. Telling me "you can have your character, you just can't fight the gods" is not a solution if the story I want to do is Dominions. Because the ability to fight other gods is a prerequisite to be involved in that plot.
Remember what I was saying about Iron Man's story? This is what I'm talking about.
Incursions (if it's the one I think you're talking about) isn't just a story about a few people going around destroying worlds. It's a story about a catastrophe which threatens everyone, where all parties involved fight and destroy each other in order to try and keep their own group alive a little longer. Aside from the "cleaning up our jumbled multiverse" angle, the same story could have been told on a smaller scale. Off the top of my head: An apocalyptic titan has come, and it will destroy anywhere that doesn't make enough blood sacrifices to it, so different nations start raiding each other. Or a kingdom starts to freeze, so people start killing their neighbors and burning their houses.
Chronicles of Amber isn't just about world-hopping, though if it was a few seconds' thought would reveal that the same could be accomplished by travelling to different places within one world/galaxy/unusually large city/whatever. But beyond that, it's a story about a man with amnesia discovering his past and claiming the power he feels should be his, then defending his realm from outside threats. Yes, this involves going from world to world to get things he needs or to deal with threats, but it shouldn't be hard to see that the actual
location of these things is hardly essential to the plot. It would be much the same if Avalon and the Courts of Chaos and Earth and whatnot were replaced by different islands around the continent of Amber, or if they were different planets in a space opera, or even if they were different cities scattered across a harsh wilderness.
If the Dominions you're talking about is the one I found when Googling "dominions kill gods," well...its story is basically equivalent to Civilization or Age of Empires, crossed with a divine succession crisis. You could make a 4X game loosely based on the Westeros plot of A Song of Ice and Fire and have it work much the same, narratively and mechanically. Focusing on narrative, most of
these works could fit the bill.
You seem to have a bad habit of latching onto some cool, surface-level element that you like and assuming that it's a core part of the narrative. But it's not, any more than skin color is a core part of skeletal structure. Sure, skin color has some indirect impact on the skeleton--they're part of a complicated interconnected system--but you can have essentially the same skeleton under any color of skin.
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If you don't want the game to support my concept, fine. But be honest about it. Don't insist that you can take powers away from a character and have the same character because that is obviously false.
...What?
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Yes, and you can justify having the abilities I've described. But where exactly are the calls for the system excluding people who don't have polymorph? Because I'm not making those calls, and as far as I can tell I'm taking the most radically pro powerful characters position in this thread.
I'm not sure what you're talking about here, either. Though given that I didn't understand your argument here in the first place, that's not surprising.