Weaknesses

vorshoth

Just a thought for future heroes...
We need weaknesses.

"But Mr. Vorshoth! Why exactly would we want to gimp ourselves?"

Ah, that's very simple, little imaginary person I made up! To become MORE POWERFUL! Ahehehehe.

"what."

Oh, trust me. This'll work.

Okay, so, say you've got your fire type. Bit of a hothead, isn't he?
What if he was weak against cold? So, you pick your weakness in a menu, and you pick cold.
But why would you be weak against cold? Why wouldyou purposefully get those cold people the satisfaction of defeating you?

Well. That's where things get a bit awesome.

It means that for all other powers, you are slightly stronger against. The best comic book analogy for this is Superman. He decided to take Weakness: Kryptonite (which obviously we can't have an analogue for since there's no Kelvarite growth power set unless you pretend with ice (how would that even work, I don't know)), which then, due to its increasing commoness as comics went on, meant that he was basically almost immune to everything else. But that's pretty extreme.

The Hulk, took Weakness: Magic (that's the ENTIRE magic system), and Weakness: Mind-based.
Really weak against those particular power sets, but it gives him strength against everything else.

So, what does this actually mean for the game?

Well, it means that people would pick a weakness to a specific power set. Let's say that... Oh... A bulletproof vest wearing cop character actually wanted to be bulletproof.

So, they take the Weakness: Mind, Weakness: Elemental, which then lowers their resistance to mind and elemental powers. Maybe.

This increases their resistance to munitions damage, and also magic and other forms of damage.

You don't HAVE to take a weakness, by any means, but it could be interesting to see people building characters specifically in a way that means they are resistant to certain powers, for example, the mystic mentalist is unlikely to be phased by a psionic attack on their mind, and draining their soul via dark magics could be tricky due to their wards, taken in character, but shooting them with a gun will bring them down in no time.

Anyway, just felt I'd throw that out there.

Maybe all of this could be worked into specialisations, with one branch available to everyone being Weakness, where you can pick a weakness from one of the options available. I'm not sure if specialisations has enough slots for every powerset though, so it might need to be a bit more general (like Weakness to Might meaning Might AND martial arts) if a UI change is not desired.

cybersoldier1981

Considering the way this playerbase moves and works, people would just take weaknesses from worthless and unused power trees and it'd break PvP even more. Seriously, people would take immunity from 'sword' and we'd never hear the end of it.

cerebellum

Actually, one of the characters I want to make would be weak to sharp objects.

jonsills

That's how things work in the PnP, more or less - you get points to buy powers, skills, and stats, and if you need more points (and you usually do), you take Disadvantages.

In Champs terms, Superman isn't point-balanced, but he's taken Psychological Limitation: Code vs. Killing (extreme), several different Hunteds, both Secret ID and Public ID (to reflect the fact that while he does have his jealously guarded Clark Kent thing, everybody knows Superman), Competent DNPC (Lois), Normal DNPC (Jimmy), Vulnerability: Kryptonite (the high-point version, where merely being exposed to it will kill him quickly), and a global limitation on his defenses such that they don't apply to magic. Oh, and Psychological Limitation: Code of Honor (must protect all civilians, everywhere, all the time). And possibly a few others I didn't think of; but remember that the third and fourth Disads of the same type are only worth half the points, and after the fourth that type of Disad doesn't give any more benefits.

Personally, I'd love it if I could pop a few Disads to give my character more Advantage points or Talents to use; for instance, Backfire's background as a former VIPER agent could give him Hunted by VIPER (11 or less), in exchange for two or three Advantage points or one Talent (his choice). Then, in about half his missions there would be a squad of VIPER agents who would just pop up, kind of like Nemesis Minions, and try to take him down in the middle of everything else...

Probably be a nightmare to code, sadly, but a man can dream.

bobgreenwade

Jon pretty much nailed it (citing older editions of the rules, but the principle remains). In the PnP game we can take Disadvantages (in 6th Edition, Complications) to get more Character Points than our basic allotment, and use those Character Points to have more Powers, Skills, or whatnot.

The main thing being considered here is a character who is weaker against certain types of damage; there are currently 12 Damage Types in the game, so it shouldn't be too hard to allow a "Weak versus [Damage Type]" Weakness in exchange for getting an extra Power, slightly higher Characteristics, or some other bonus.

As for cybersoldier's concern that people would take Weaknesses to little-used Damage Types to stand up better in PvP, wouldn't that just encourage more people to take those Damage Types so they could beat those people?

Also, if certain villains are more vulnerable to certain damage types, it could change the texture of PvE: heroes that solo a lot can equip themselves with a wider variety of Powers, and different heroes in groups can take point against different opponents.

sorceror01

jonsills wrote: »

That's how things work in the PnP, more or less - you get points to buy powers, skills, and stats, and if you need more points (and you usually do), you take Disadvantages.

In Champs terms, Superman isn't point-balanced, but he's taken Psychological Limitation: Code vs. Killing (extreme), several different Hunteds, both Secret ID and Public ID (to reflect the fact that while he does have his jealously guarded Clark Kent thing, everybody knows Superman), Competent DNPC (Lois), Normal DNPC (Jimmy), Vulnerability: Kryptonite (the high-point version, where merely being exposed to it will kill him quickly), and a global limitation on his defenses such that they don't apply to magic. Oh, and Psychological Limitation: Code of Honor (must protect all civilians, everywhere, all the time). And possibly a few others I didn't think of; but remember that the third and fourth Disads of the same type are only worth half the points, and after the fourth that type of Disad doesn't give any more benefits.

Personally, I'd love it if I could pop a few Disads to give my character more Advantage points or Talents to use; for instance, Backfire's background as a former VIPER agent could give him Hunted by VIPER (11 or less), in exchange for two or three Advantage points or one Talent (his choice). Then, in about half his missions there would be a squad of VIPER agents who would just pop up, kind of like Nemesis Minions, and try to take him down in the middle of everything else...

Probably be a nightmare to code, sadly, but a man can dream.

It'd be pretty neat, though, but yeah total nightmare. As it stands, we don't even have stuff like Secret Identities or significant NPC's that are unique to individual PC's, so anything associated with that is right out the window so far.
But who knows? Maybe somewhere down the line, we'll get a Disadvantages/Weaknesses system. We got the pretty neat Specializations system, which was probably no small wonder to cook up; why not this, in a few years' time.

theravenforce

vorshoth wrote: »

Just a thought for future heroes...
We need weaknesses.

"But Mr. Vorshoth! Why exactly would we want to gimp ourselves?"

Ah, that's very simple, little imaginary person I made up! To become MORE POWERFUL! Ahehehehe.

"what."

Oh, trust me. This'll work.

Okay, so, say you've got your fire type. Bit of a hothead, isn't he?
What if he was weak against cold? So, you pick your weakness in a menu, and you pick cold.
But why would you be weak against cold? Why wouldyou purposefully get those cold people the satisfaction of defeating you?

Well. That's where things get a bit awesome.

It means that for all other powers, you are slightly stronger against. The best comic book analogy for this is Superman. He decided to take Weakness: Kryptonite (which obviously we can't have an analogue for since there's no Kelvarite growth power set unless you pretend with ice (how would that even work, I don't know)), which then, due to its increasing commoness as comics went on, meant that he was basically almost immune to everything else. But that's pretty extreme.

The Hulk, took Weakness: Magic (that's the ENTIRE magic system), and Weakness: Mind-based.
Really weak against those particular power sets, but it gives him strength against everything else.

So, what does this actually mean for the game?

Well, it means that people would pick a weakness to a specific power set. Let's say that... Oh... A bulletproof vest wearing cop character actually wanted to be bulletproof.

So, they take the Weakness: Mind, Weakness: Elemental, which then lowers their resistance to mind and elemental powers. Maybe.

This increases their resistance to munitions damage, and also magic and other forms of damage.

You don't HAVE to take a weakness, by any means, but it could be interesting to see people building characters specifically in a way that means they are resistant to certain powers, for example, the mystic mentalist is unlikely to be phased by a psionic attack on their mind, and draining their soul via dark magics could be tricky due to their wards, taken in character, but shooting them with a gun will bring them down in no time.

Anyway, just felt I'd throw that out there.

Maybe all of this could be worked into specialisations, with one branch available to everyone being Weakness, where you can pick a weakness from one of the options available. I'm not sure if specialisations has enough slots for every powerset though, so it might need to be a bit more general (like Weakness to Might meaning Might AND martial arts) if a UI change is not desired.

Even though your idea is practical to me as an RPer, Seeing as people arent forced to take a weakness...this could get real messy. Besides some people may just pick worthless weaknesses, such as weakness to telepathic powers, knowing full well most telepathic heroes are some how TK based and not particularly Knock resistant and just knock them straight out of the park.

Also it's this would be difficult to implement as in, if a telepath is vsing a might character who is all brawn and little brains, given the current state of Crowd control etc and telepathy in general atm, it wouldnt be very gripping sadly

Don't by any means get me wrong I love the idea of weaknesses, it makes sense, but I think alot of things would need to be changed especially in terms of defenses to make this work.

Also another concern I would have is, as I view CO mainly from an AT perspective (I have been gold several times before) would AT's have weaknesses slotted in and predetermined? Like for example:

Behemoth - Weakness - Psychic/Mentalist Damage

Mind - Weakness - Physical/Crushing Damage

Inferno - Weakness - Cold Damage

Tempest - Weakness - Physical/Earth Damage

Specialist - Weakness - Elemental Damage

etc. If so there would be so much more breakage in any remnant of PvP which is left. Example, Behemoths would never vs minds and vica versa.

Also wouldnt defensive/support passives, heck passives in general be reworked to support this? Or would the weaknesses provide defense penetration to self?

This idea would make CO more intresting on a RP level but in the PvE world...it could present a real problem...

rugrothrumbor

I had this same idea an year or so ago. I like the idea but it shouldn't be too major like giving you complete invulnerability to that particular damage type. And nothing like protecting you from major damage types like "physical" because physical consists of piercing, crushing and slashing damage types. The damage resistance granted shouldn't be too high somewhere around 30% or so after all even Superman was tiring out from Doomsday or Darkseid's punches even without the exposure of Kryptonite.

So for one damage type that will deliver 30% more damage to you, you would be able to pick a damage type that will deal 30% less damage to you. And of course you can stay neutral and have no strength or weakness. For example pick piercing damage to be strong against but you're weak against ice. Your power choices would have nothing to do with it.

Also I don't think this would change the tide in PvP too much but actually work against flavor of the month builds because any power that becomes overpowered there would be someone with strengths against it. Actually this might make combat more interesting. Players would have to analyze what damage is not doing much against the enemy and switch their tactics or take a trip to the Powerhouse.

I could think of this Strength/Weakness feature being something you can retcon (with a cooldown of two weeks at least because then people would pick certain strengths that work against certain mobs in PvE and keep switching around) or just be permanent so you can't change your character's Strength/Weakness unless you delete him/her and start from scratch.

sanmerci

Based off of rugrothrumbor's idea... maybe you could take a couple weaknesses in order to gain immunity to a single damage type? And maybe 3-4 in order to make, effectively, an 'absorb damage type'?

My biggest worry, here, would be that everybody and their dog would finagle things so that they absorbed crushing damage (or piercing- whatever's more common) so they never even got hurt in PVE content...

rugrothrumbor

I found particle, slashing and magic damage the most prevalent damage types though.

sanmerci

lol. I see you get the point, though...

rokurocaris

I don't really see why we need extra weaknesses. They are basically built into our passive and block powers already.

Prime example: Electricity
Electric Form grants resistance only to energy damage. Electric Shield grants less resistance to physical damage than other block powers. This makes Electricity characters weak against physical damage.