Zombra

Oh I've never disagreed that using any of COH's power on people could have all kinds of traumatic effects. Really that's a whole different question and I doubt anyone would argue with you on that. My concern was about the invisible, longer-term environmental impact that is a concern unique to Radiation type powers.

Yes. Because radiation is the unique power type that is popularly understood to leave behind invisible death, which is a good reason to use a different standard for suspension of disbelief. You nailed it buddy! I'm confused but grateful you actually gave a legit answer to the original question. Not a very satisfying one but good enough. Thanks 😄

There are many assumptions about the COH world that come from the real world. The sky is blue, except where something extraordinary is affecting it. People (usually) have two arms and two legs. Streets and buildings are laid out in a reasonably familiar way. While not a perfect replica, Paragon City is built upon the images of real world cities, and our familiarity with the real world gives us some familiarity with the setting. Likewise, if we don't see something on the screen, we assume that things happen "offstage" in a way similar to the real world. For example, although you never see an NPC eating food, it's reasonable to believe that they do. Yes, outlandish, completely fictional things happen in the setting, and we can see with our eyes what those fictional things are and come to an understanding of how they work. If we see someone lift a huge axe, we can intuitively understand that physics-defying super strength is a thing here like in comic books. If we see a Fire Blaster shoot a wall and it doesn't catch on fire, we can intuitively understand that the wall did not catch on fire. What we can't see is whether invisible fallout from weaponized radiation is contaminating the environment, as it can in the real world. It's fine if you want to assume all radiation must be benign, and I'm not trying to yuck your yum; but to me, it is not intuitively obvious and again, I don't agree that there is a universal assumption in comic book settings that all radiation is benign. Again - even in comic books, it's not insane to wonder if weaponized radiation has harmful side effects.

See, this is great. (I love Palladium in general ) They gave radiation characters explicit abilities to use their powers safely, knowing that some of their audience would have reasonable concerns about radiation powers having possible side effects that other powers don't have. Hmmm, but wait - I'm sure some of our friends here will deny that Palladium Heroes Unlimited exists - there's no way a comic book setting could portray radiation as possibly contaminating the environment!

I promise I am (though I admit a bad faith actor would probably say that either way 😄). Your position seems to be that in comic books, it is implicitly understood that there is no such thing as environmentally damaging radiation. I don't agree with that. As I said upthread, "It's a comic book setting therefore absolutely nothing makes any sense", which you seem to be advocating, is not the same thing as "Some things are easier to believe than others." Not everything in every fictional setting is only explained by "a wizard did it". The COH setting has many aspects that are consistent with the real world. To state that it is an "entirely fictional" setting is not true. ----------- Let me set y'all a hypothetical situation. I agree that hypothetical situations are never perfect for making an argument but please just think about it for a sec. Suppose you are moving to Paragon City. You don't have a lot of money and you only find two apartments you can afford. At apartment #1, the property manager says, "A group of gangsters lived here. They were all shot to death last week, right here, by a vigilante superhero with an assault rifle." At apartment #2, the property manager says, "A group of gangsters lived here. They were all killed last week, right here, by a vigilante superhero shooting blasts of harmful radiation." Without further information, would you really think to yourself, "It doesn't matter which I choose - they are definitely equally (un)safe"?

What you're ignoring is the popular understanding that radiation can have lasting effects that are not visible. When a Fire Blaster's Blazing Bolt animation is finished and nothing is burning 3 seconds later, anyone who has ever heard of fire knows that once you no longer see the fire, it is because there is no more fire. It's intuitively obvious. When a Radiation Blaster's Neutron Bomb is finished, anyone who has heard of atomic or radioactive weapons has a good reason to wonder about lingering, harmful radiation, even though you can't see it any more. Intuition alone is not enough to justify an assumption that the danger is over. This is a substantial difference. As much as everyone wants to say "Ahhh no powers make sense, everything is equally unbelievable," this is simply not the case.

This is an important point. In the absence of an explanation, to me radiation sounds potentially much worse than fire, bullets, or a punch in the face. Really this is why this thread exists at all. It felt like Radiation powers need enough of an explanation to say "It's OK, these powers don't actually irradiate the environment or leave behind residue." We can intuitively see that Fire powers don't burn anything down, but we can't see that Radiation doesn't leave behind invisible contamination. No story ever about radioactive weapons said "And everything was fine and safe the next day," yknow?

Sure, I can suspend disbelief for anything if I really want to. The point is that it's harder for some things than others. Again, none of the things you mention have a half-life. Yes, a demon is scary. But when you open a portal, a demon comes through, and the portal closes, you're done. The demon may do bad things, but when it's over, it's over. There's no particular reason to think that lingering death is left behind when the demon is gone, unless you decide to make it up. With radiation, it's not made up. Hard radiation in the real world can have very bad lingering effects. That's where the disbelief comes from. All I was looking for here was a better reason to suspend it than "don't worry about it". Sidebar, if we want to go there, I'm not crazy about "heroic" characters who summon demons in the first place. I get it, let anyone have any power set, fine, but ..... players who choose to do that and want me to believe they're good guys had better have the most amazing backstory I've ever read. For about the sixth time, innocuous, harmless radiation is not what I'm talking about. How many of those things you mentioned function primarily to knock humans out? Radiation Blast has a primary function of knocking people out (or killing them, if your character is a meanie). Which kind is more harmful hmmmmmmmm It's not insane to imagine a possible connection between weaponized radiation and the potential for lasting environmental damage.

Because we tend to think that blasts of radiation that can incapacitate a person in less than 1 second might be the dangerous kind.

Anybody else remember the time before ragdolling in COH? Weird to think about. OK, derail finished.

Yeah. I feel like this thread has kind of run its course, but I'm happy to answer again. Bullets and fire are bad, but don't leave invisible death behind that can render an innocent looking place a deathtrap for the next thousand years. It's a different kind of danger.

I love all this. Thank you so much. I can make my new Blaster without guilt now 😄 I just looked it up, there's a term for people like me. "Radiophobic" - thinking that radioactive contamination is dangerous. 😄

You tried to tell me what words I already knew mean, and I explained to you that there are different kinds of words. You're welcome.

Yes, smart guy, I'm aware that 'radiation' the English word can mean anything that radiates any kind of energy, such as visible light (or the energy emitted by a rotting banana, as was pointed out above). What I'm talking about is the game City of Heroes, in which powers such as Radiation Blast, that's a game term not an English word, constantly spray around a particular type of radiation; that is, a kind harmful enough to instantly incapacitate people. It's easy to handwave away the high lethality rate radiation that strong would have on its immediate targets, because all enemies in the game have some sort of super powers. What is harder to handwave away is the huge amount of invisible and lethal residue that would be left behind, rendering the city completely uninhabitable for hundreds of years at best.

My issue is that residual contamination from radiation is invisible. Citizens know what to do when their house is on fire, but if their neighborhood is contaminated with harmful radiation they might not even know it. And if they did know it, would they know what to do about it? I suppose if we can handwave that Fire Blasters haven't burned down the city, we can handwave that all that harmful material scattered everywhere a Radiation Blaster goes gets cleaned up by somebody. I hope safety inspectors are well paid in this universe.

I'm trying to make sense of a new hero concept of mine, and I want to use Radiation powers, but it just seems completely insane to go around shooting dangerous radiation everywhere. How is it possible that Paragon City is even livable with this happening every day in every neighborhood? Is there any common consensus as to why this is fine? What's your headcanon that makes Radiation Heroes just as safe and helpful as an all-natural environmentally approved martial artist? I'd rather have 100 Fire Blasters and Demon Summoners go through my neighborhood than a single Radiation Defender.

This is it. It's a huge deal, very cleverly done to give you a very easy option to headcanon it any way you want. Yes the ragdolls get out of hand sometimes, but this is just nitpicking. Honestly (in my head) very few of my characters are mass murderers, even redside. Remember that even Hellions have super powers. Just like your own characters, enemies in the game can take a beating and be fine, if you choose to look at it that way. My unarmored natural martial artist has been shot with enough bullets to supply all the wars of history, not even mentioning getting blown up with rocket launchers, but he's still fine. If you can roll with that, you can roll with anything.

Different game.

I just got suckered by this mission and I hate it a lot. Not only does the ambush appear out of thin air right on top of you with no explanation, it's the kind of ambush that are 100% aggroed on you no matter what wherever you go. I was killed instantly by the alpha strike, knocked away so they couldn't see me, rezzed and they all instantly alphaed me again, no time to even pop inspirations (not that I had many left after the brutal 2x illusion warden guarding her), and then of course GW died in seconds. Some AV. In general the relentless bloodhound aggro mode is awful; compounded with a nuclear powered instantaneous ambush AND a failable mission, what you get is ....... not great. Why can't they at least run in from down the hall, like every other ambush in the game, to give the player a nonzero amount of time to respond? I carefully picked through this mission on high difficulty for over an hour, and then it gave me this gotcha failure, and then the contact chided me for being so weak. I don't talk back out loud to video games often but this elicited a heartfelt "Fuck you." Game design where you have no chance to succeed without prior knowledge is bad game design.

I still want this 🙂

Great. This makes the Superior Conditioning power much better than it appears at a glance.

Of course. I think that's true to some degree of all fictional creations everywhere - they reflect their authors in some way. Let me reframe the question. There are alignments in the game, including Alignment Missions that offer decisions to be made, which are meant to reflect player character (←important) worldviews. The writers on the development team were given parameters on how to shade the mission text. Without it needing to reflect on your personal opinions of right and wrong, can you speculate on the developer intent for approximately where the lines are between different alignments? For example, one recurring theme I see in most blueside Alignment Missions is that a Hero will (generally) not accept the loss of a single innocent life, even if it causes larger problems down the road. A Vigilante is more of a "big picture" person who will let one neighborhood be blown up for the "greater good" of stopping the bomb-maker from setting 10 more bombs tomorrow. I feel like this observation is evident without my personal upbringing coming into it. To the game, these are clear aspects of "Hero" and "Vigilante".

Exactly why I hope to see some different perspectives I might not have already thought of. Not trying to find the One True Answer here. So what do you think? ... based on your upbringing of course 😇

Above all, it's about what you want to emphasize about your character's story. As @TheMoneyMaker posted above, any Origin can fit psychic powers. Almost any Origin can fit almost any power type. You just gotta wiggle it a little. A well-trained soldier with a prototype of a super advanced assault rifle might be Tech. A very similar-looking soldier who was trained by the greatest warriors on Earth for 20 years and also has some advanced weaponry veers more toward Natural. Same concept, but what do you want to emphasize? I would say to the OP, since you don't seem to have a character concept other than "he has powers", that sounds to me like Mutant. Some guy was born and it turned out the part of his brain with psychic potential was way more active than a typical citizen. That's very Mutant.

You ever have those D&D conversations back in the day like, "What's the difference between Neutral Evil and Chaotic Evil really?", or, "How can anyone really be True Neutral?" Do you love those little detailed differences between Principled and Scrupulous in Palladium? Even Paragon vs Renegade has sparked some interesting discussions over the years. Well now's your chance to have another ridiculous, picky conversation about a game that attempts to pigeonhole the vast spectrums of morality and philosophy into just four pigeonholes! Just kidding. We know these alignments aren't supposed to strictly define just 4 personality types where everyone within each type is identical. Every superpowered entity is unique, except maybe for clones and duplicate robots. Still, since games have rules and we try to fit our stories into those rules, systems like Alignment can be instructive (and entertaining!) to talk about. So: what do you think are the traits that all Heroes share? What about Vigilantes? Rogues? Villains? What really makes a Hero different from a Villain? How are Vigilantes and Rogues similar? Best of all, how about you simply make a list of all four and tell me what you think each one means? I have some thoughts of my own, but first I want to read your alignment rants. Rant! Rant! Rant!