If You Could Give Your Character a Weakness....Woukd you?

[Waljoricar]

Back when CoX was in its infancy, I recall an interview in which a dev desbribed a proposed gameplay system where you could ascribe your character a specific weakness (Psycbic/Fire/Physical/Etc) that, in doing so, would net you buffs against other damage types.

 

I may be misremembering, but I've always liked the idea of such a system.

 

If you could, would you give your character a specific weakness? If so, what? If no, why not?

 

What kind of resistance would you want in return?

 

Do you think such a mechanic would work in-game?

Edited Sunday at 12:30 PM by Waljoricar
Grammar/Spelling

[Psyonico]

Armor sets already work this way, to an extent.

 

Ice armor, for example, is weaker against Fire and Psi, but in return has superior -recharge resistance.

[keyguardactive]

I probably would, because regardless of mechanics it's an interesting quirk.

 

My main is a street fighter scrapper with fire based Epic and and Incarnate powers. The story there is that he developed uncontrollable Fire powers as a kid and the Midnighters fit him with an artifact that shut it off, chaneling the power into powerful punches. As he got stronger he learned to control it. So it would make sense that he would be afraid of, and therefore weak to, fire attacks, at least in his early levels. Maybe once I took the first power in the Epic pool I would change it to being weak to Psionic, because of the concentration he needs to use the fire. Maybe in exchange for the weakness I could get a buff to Smashing damage to go along with the artifact thing? 

 

That would be kind of fun and would give me an extra thing to think about in character creation.

[MonteCarla]

I don't know if a system based purely on damage types would work in an RPG like CoH, because players would just min/max.

 

e.g every Fire Tank could afford to take a weakness to Fire to bump up their other resistances, and still sit above the cap.

Or, take a vulnerability to a damage type that you rarely face, eg Cold or Toxic, and ignore enemy groups that use that type.

[Waljoricar]

8 minutes ago, MonteCarla said:

I don't know if a system based purely on damage types would work in an RPG like CoH, because players would just min/max.

 

e.g every Fire Tank could afford to take a weakness to Fire to bump up their other resistances, and still sit above the cap.

Or, take a vulnerability to a damage type that you rarely face, eg Cold or Toxic, and ignore enemy groups that use that type.

 

I mean, min/maxing already exists; the people that do it in CoX will always do it.

 

I find the idea of people avoiding certain enemy groups interesting though, as that borders on RP - if I'm weak to Toxic damage, I stay the Hell away from the Vahzilok - just common sense really.

[Waljoricar]

12 minutes ago, keyguardactive said:

I probably would, because regardless of mechanics it's an interesting quirk.

 

My main is a street fighter scrapper with fire based Epic and and Incarnate powers. The story there is that he developed uncontrollable Fire powers as a kid and the Midnighters fit him with an artifact that shut it off, chaneling the power into powerful punches. As he got stronger he learned to control it. So it would make sense that he would be afraid of, and therefore weak to, fire attacks, at least in his early levels. Maybe once I took the first power in the Epic pool I would change it to being weak to Psionic, because of the concentration he needs to use the fire. Maybe in exchange for the weakness I could get a buff to Smashing damage to go along with the artifact thing? 

 

That would be kind of fun and would give me an extra thing to think about in character creation.

 

 

Yeah, exactly! It's a nice way to layer your character's backstory if you want to. Having fire powers but also being weak to fire damage is a really fun concept, I think.

 

[Snarky]

this seems to favor armor set types, squishies being more vulnerable to a damage type so they get...  what again?  oh right, nothing useful....

[DoctorDitko]

Back in the PnP TTRPG days, Champions had Advantages and Disadvantages.

We had the "universal PC disad" of Irrational Overconfidence. 

Why else would you get out of bed in a place like Paragon City?

 

[TheMoneyMaker]

It may seem counter intuitive but a weakness doesn't have to mean increased damage from a specific damage type

 

a weakness could also be thematic such as damage from a specific origin source, like a Superman style weakness to magic or maybe you've got a problem with technological attacks getting through your defenses. Perhaps your weakness is that healing effects (such as anything outside your base regen, including other player heals and even inspirations) have reduced effectiveness for you. Maybe your weakness is decreased resistance to a certain status effect like maybe you're more easily knocked down (the AV Tinder in the DFB comes to mind) or you take longer to come out of sleep or taunt effects. Maybe a specific type of attack could have an additional effect on you such as debuffing your damage when exposed to cold, for example.

 

There's all kinds of ways weakness could be implemented beyond just "I'm weak against X damage type but I'm stronger against Y damage type."

[Scarlet Shocker]

My characters already have an inherent weakness

 

The person behind the keyboard 🤣

[MoonSheep]

2 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

My characters already have an inherent weakness

 

The person behind the keyboard 🤣

 

haha, i was just going to make this joke also

[KC4800]

I have a defender that has not taking any self healing powers, and turned off any green inspiration drops. Can only heal via resting. Not really a weakness, just a self imposed restriction to work around. It is fun to solo this way.

[MTeague]

I've occasionally been annoyed at missions that tell me that I've been poisoned, when on my Fire/Fire/Fire sentinel who, headcanon, literally no longer has flesh or blood. He's a creature off living steel and fire. So how exactly did you poison me?  But I get mission writers cannot foresee these things, and even if they could, they'd have no way to tell when a character is organic vs robotic vs extra-planar vs non-corporeal vs other.

 

Maybe such a system of quirks, both positive and negative, could allow for such. But really, no one is going to go back and scour every existing mission and look for ways to refine them, the mission text, NPC speech etc, to tailor it to your character. So, from an RP perpsective,  I don't see it accomplishing much.  Headcanon items will remain headcanon items that the game does not account for, and that's that.

[Scarlet Shocker]

4 hours ago, MoonSheep said:

 

haha, i was just going to make this joke also

 

who's joking?

[Waljoricar]

I've considered rolling a character that is permanently afflicted with the Vahzilok Wasting Disease for RP purposes, but they would be a real challenge to play. I wonder if anyone has done that...?

Edited Monday at 08:22 AM by Waljoricar
Spelling

[MTeague]

17 minutes ago, Waljoricar said:

I've considered rolling a character that is permanently allifcted with the Vahzilok Wasting Disease for RP purposes, but they would be a real challenge to play. I wonder if anyone has done that...?

I never have. But in theory....

• dedicate a costume slot, select the character aura that has flies buzzing around you.
• never slot Stamina (may or may not want to do a build for this, so could turn on/off by switchhing builds)
• do not use Panacea proc or anything with free periodic +endurance.

Not my personal cup of tea, but if I was minded, that's how I'd approach it.

[Zep]

It really depends. Without specifics it is hard to say yes or no.

 

I have played various pen and paper RPG's like Champions - now named Hero, GURPSS, and am currently in a Savage Worlds (SWAID), campaign. All three of these, and no doubt more I have not played, have disadvantages (aka quirks) built into character creation. They serve a purpose, adding build points, making for RP opportunities, Like my SWAID guy, a 17 year old High School boy dropped into a fantasy, swords and sorcery, world. He thinks he is making tech, like his Ray Gun (BOLT and STUN spell/power), his wrist device (detect/conceal arcana) scanner, and force field belt (protection spell). He's just a beginner and as he levels up will get a lot more spells and gadgets. SWAID has something called Bennies - which are earned various ways but largely by Role Playing your Quirks/Weaknesses. 

 

In session 0 I made sure to communicate with the other players I would be role playing him with those 1950's Leave it to Beaver values, including the mild misogyny of what women cant do - I was, and will continue to be sure to remind people this isn't what I, the player, believe, just this character.

 

From the OP's tone I am gathering they were meaning something more numerical than behavior, though J.T. (my SWAID gut) does get some minuses to certain rolls, I dont think its quite the same.

 

With an MMO, till AI gets a whole lot better, we just don't have the same level or kind of RP and no GM monitoring all chatter between characters to award bennies, so I question how it would work. It would definitely need to be part of character creation and have some sort of offset, say Fire Resist hard caps at 50% and 25% increase to outgoing cold damage, kind of thing.

[BurtHutt]

Most builds will have a flaw somewhere aka a weakness. 

 

I am guessing OP may mean like a true Achille's heel but that would be something else.

 

I'd rather see a CoX version of the Nemesis system where we create are arch-enemy and have them pop up from time to time. 🙂 

[MTeague]

17 minutes ago, BurtHutt said:

I'd rather see a CoX version of the Nemesis system where we create are arch-enemy and have them pop up from time to time. 🙂 

I would love an option where I could flag X many of my redsiders to show up as Elite Bosses that my bluesiders have to fight at the end of a mission, and vice/versa. Even better if the flagged alt would show up including ALL of their set bonuses, and (if lvl 45+) ALL of their incarnate abilities, so I had to deal with facing a foe with softcapped defenses and ridiculous DDR when facing off against one of my Super Reflexes characters. An actual fair face-off. 

 

But I would definitely want it to be my characters vs my characters only, and I would want it double opt-in.

• Flag each character to be an eligible opponent for another one off my characters of opposite alignment.
• Flag each character to actually have such encounters / boss fights in their missions.

Because at certain level ranges this would just be extremely obnoxious.

It might work better for a tip-mission environment vs normal missions, too.

Edited Sunday at 10:11 PM by MTeague

[Biff Pow]

Most of my characters have a weakness to Radiation debuffs.

[Scarlet Shocker]

2 hours ago, BurtHutt said:

I'd rather see a CoX version of the Nemesis system where we create are arch-enemy and have them pop up from time to time. 🙂 

 

That can work spectacularly well, but it can be a colossal failure.

 

Many many years ago a group of friends and I played a long running AD&D campaign. There was this arch-nemesis team that would periodically turn up and invariably kick our butts and take our stuff. Sometimes we'd manage to beat the crap out of them and do better.

 

But it did become tedious although our GM was good and tried not to overdo it but after a while it just stopped being fun so there needs to be a way to control it for the players.

[Greycat]

Well. I like sets already having a weakness (and hate the thought of them losing that and homogenizing the game,) so at times I already aim for this - or do so in slotting or something.

 

So, yes. Even without a corresponding buff of some sort. If it fits the character, I'd absolutely give them a weakness. I tend to find the "I recharge everything in 1-2 seconds, do a quadrillion damage and have so much defense that if something tries to hit me, it hits itself instead" boring as hell.

[Waljoricar]

16 hours ago, Zep said:

It really depends. Without specifics it is hard to say yes or no.

 

I have played various pen and paper RPG's like Champions - now named Hero, GURPSS, and am currently in a Savage Worlds (SWAID), campaign. All three of these, and no doubt more I have not played, have disadvantages (aka quirks) built into character creation. They serve a purpose, adding build points, making for RP opportunities, Like my SWAID guy, a 17 year old High School boy dropped into a fantasy, swords and sorcery, world. He thinks he is making tech, like his Ray Gun (BOLT and STUN spell/power), his wrist device (detect/conceal arcana) scanner, and force field belt (protection spell). He's just a beginner and as he levels up will get a lot more spells and gadgets. SWAID has something called Bennies - which are earned various ways but largely by Role Playing your Quirks/Weaknesses. 

 

In session 0 I made sure to communicate with the other players I would be role playing him with those 1950's Leave it to Beaver values, including the mild misogyny of what women cant do - I was, and will continue to be sure to remind people this isn't what I, the player, believe, just this character.

 

From the OP's tone I am gathering they were meaning something more numerical than behavior, though J.T. (my SWAID gut) does get some minuses to certain rolls, I dont think its quite the same.

 

With an MMO, till AI gets a whole lot better, we just don't have the same level or kind of RP and no GM monitoring all chatter between characters to award bennies, so I question how it would work. It would definitely need to be part of character creation and have some sort of offset, say Fire Resist hard caps at 50% and 25% increase to outgoing cold damage, kind of thing.

I was definitely imagining a relatively binary system (weak against X, resistant to Y), for the sake of simplicity, but I love the idea of a system that could accommodate more nuanced and RP-centric. There are plenty of heroes with notable "weaknesses" that extend beyond an actual physiological deficiency; Storm has their claustrophobia, Green Lantern their agoraphobia and Martian Manhunter their Pyrophobia, etc.

I guess stuff like that can simply be RP'd without the need for a game mechanic to accommodate it (how would that even work?), though I'm in no way against the idea!

[Seldom]

I actually was thinking about something like this. What if part of the 'incarnate' system would be to give your character a buff, but with a weakness?
It all started with me thinking of my main character, whose story is that she she 'feeds' from psychic energy while she dream and they dream. The idea would be, what if my character couldn't deal psychic damage unless both she and enemies were sleeping , but in return she could cast attacks while sleeping, her own sleep control could affect herself, and her attacks wouldn't wake foes on first hit while dealing extra damage? Obviously none of these would work for any other characters, so no luck building in a character-specific weakness. But it got me thinking of similar weaknesses with strengths:

• Control incarnate: all control powers get a bonus to both control magnitude and a containment-like bonus to damage against controlled foes, but with a debuff to all their damage. End result: better at control, better at damage against the controlled, but worse at damage on the fly.
• Affliction incarnate: Similar to the above, all debuffs add a special effect that make the debuffer deal more damage to them, but the debuffer also gets their base damage reduced.
• Benevolence incarnate: All buffs that usually only affect other allies partially affect yourself, but with an across the board debuff to yourself to damage and debuffs.
• Elemental incarnation: Buffs all cold/fire/energy damage, debuffs any that aren't.
• Mental incarnation: All psychic powers reduce psychic resistance and do more damage, but all other damage types are debuffed.
• Physical incarnation: All slashing/smashing attacks have a chance to bypass all resistances to the same, but all other damage types debuffed.
• Resilience incarnate: as health declines, regeneration, defense, healing, and resistance are all buffed, but damage is debuffed.
• Speed incarnate: recharge is buffed, as is recovery, but damage is debuffed, allowing characters to throw out many more attacks, while also needing to do more attacks.
• etc!

Could this be gamed? Absolutely. But I like the idea that players could specialize their playstyle more, and differentiate their characters from the next character of the same power combo.

Edited Monday at 03:39 PM by Seldom

[BZRKR]

I wouldn't.

I think that things like specific weaknesses in the way you are describing work best in a more analog, more roleplaying-oriented game environment. With a GM that is taking the Player Character group's weaknesses and strengths into account when designing scenarios and settings, weaknesses can be awesome, and a great way to make a moment more poignant (The Hero braces themselves and runs into the super-freezer to save the hostages, despite having no protection from cold!). However, when designing content for an MMO, how do you make missions or quests that don't make people regret building their character a certain way? I think the "come one come all!" aspect of an MMO means that specific and dramatic weaknesses would require so many content options that players can choose to skip content that punishes their character choices more than they are willing to tolerate. Of course, finding teammates whose abilities cover for your character's weaknesses is a great solution, but sometimes doesn't work out. Having uneven strengths against different kinds of opponents, but not having Kryptonite-level weaknesses is probably the best compromise. And here on HC, you can use the Ouroboros difficulty settings to mimic being weaker or Design an AE mission with the kind of foes you want to fight, all without affecting anyone who isn't on your team.