Question regarding character traits/bio vs gameplay reality

[biostem]

Let's say, for instance, I created a mercenary mastermind who is supposed to be the leader of an "elite" squad of covert ops soldiers.  Especially in the early levels, it won't really appear as though my character and her soldiers are "elite" at anything.  Besides handwaving the poor performance away as her being "new", how do you handle such discrepancies?  Maybe she's having a bad day, or is being forced to work under a series of constraining conditions, due to having to keep up appearances or abide by some agreement between her PMC and the Paragon City agency dealing with superheroes?  I'd love to hear your thoughts.  Thanks!

[johua]

It doesn't really matter outside of an RP team or PVP, to be honest.

I very rarely take level into account and I don't think that power selection needs to have a 1 to 1 equivalency with roleplay.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

What I would suggest and am hoping this doesnt come across as telling you how to do anything, is make your bio a living thing and update it as you lvl.

 

For example in the bio of my character T'Keron Valmaz I make it very clear T'Keron was a war wizard second only to Infernal in power on their native world, and Valmaz is ofcourse the Lord of Demonkind. However the same event that brought Infernal to primal earth also fused T and V into a new unholy being. Unlike a being like venom however, they are not now a instant super being, but instead Valmaz must exert his demonic will heavily to maintain control over the body, a body he is also no longer certain of its capabilities nor if it can survive channeling his true demonic powers.

 

He starting at lvl 1 makes sense and while being a fusion of two extremely powerful beings, is instead now having to relearn the limits and slowly expand the powers he uses while doing so. This is a remake of my oldest lore based character on live made in year one. So I will be leveling pretty quickly as I am trying to get him back to what V1.0 was but this kind of concept makes the nature of leveling and growing ones power makes sense.

 

Keep in mind security level is a part of the game world. Its not simply a meta game aspect. a lvl 1 hero is still miles above a common person. So there is nothing wrong with calling your character and pets an elite black ops group, compared to those in the army etc you are elite. But when compared to hero PCs etc your the equiv of a special forces group going after wolverine. Basically as bad a day as any soldier could have.

 

A great many RPers I knew on live and most who I play with now on everlasting take lvl into account because one of the most brilliant things the coh devs did in its making was make so many normally meta aspects of an RPG be natural parts of the game world.

[Coyotedancer]

I started off describing my main, Kaikara, as an apprentice rather than as the full-fledged Death Mage she would eventually become. That just seemed like a reasonable thing to do...

 

When I made White Thorn, her heroic "alter ego"/secret identity, I described her as 'learning how to be a hero' (Kai Prime is a Rogue-), getting to know Paragon City and trying to establish a reputation from the ground up. 

 

When I made  the time-traveling 20+ years older "grown up" version of that same character, I leaned on an idea that had already been established IC with her younger self... Time travel has always messed with Kai's magic. It takes a period of adjustment for her to realign with the forces she draws on to power her spells.

 

Artemian the Madness Mage? His experiences in Dark Astoria shook him badly. Enough to make it difficult for him to focus his mind like he once could. He's having to mentally pull himself back together and re-gain the confidence and will that almost being devoured by Mot took from him.

 

Ashton Fletcher? Well, he was trapped in a Circle of Thorns soul crystal for several hundred years... You can't blame a ghost for being a little rusty with his swords after that. 

Edited October 23, 2020 by Coyotedancer

[VoidTek]

if you absolutely can't square it with a simple "i'm not actually an elite leader of crack supercommandos YET, but I will be SOME DAY", which is what I would generally recommend, there's probably a couple narrative hooks for this specific instance you could try:

 

-you were a leader, but fell out of favor with somebody higher up and got busted down to a lower rank.  now you're saddled with a bunch of rookies! you don't have to take this sitting down, you'll work your way back up from nothing and show that bastard/bitch/indeterminately gendered expletive. cue the level 1-20 sewer training montage.

 

-a recent mission saw you betrayed by your old team and left for dead.  now you're gathering a new team of mavericks on the edge with nothing to lose, laying low until you're in just the right position to execute your revenge.

 

-yeah, okay, you've got an elite squad. best you could find! you've built up quite a reputation, among standard human soldiers. but that elite squad of normal human grunts still ain't much in the face of, for example, ancient societies of ghost wizards. apocalyptic death-god worshipping cults. psionically powered robots. SNAKES THAT CAN PUNCH YOU. don't think of your level 2 soldiers as being pathetic weaklings, think of it as them being the top of their game, but now it's time to stop playing checkers and move on to, like, quantum death chess. forge those guys into a kill team capable of machine gunning a god into incorporeality.

 

-the good old "yeah I COULD destroy you any time I like, but I choose not to / I want to give you a fighting chance."   even better if this is played up as being a complete self delusion, imo.

 

Edited July 30, 2019 by VoidTek

[Six-Six]

You guys are awesome!

[Zumberge]

Generally, I'd like to believe that people would look at your character and understand what you're going for because everyone else has to deal with the same issue on some level.

 

Game mechanics are the map, not the territory.  If it was a full-fledged narrative independent of the game you wouldn't suddenly have new soldiers appearing once you hit arbitrary thresholds of power, which in turn were determined by an arbitrary number of defeats or accomplishments, and caused by getting advice from someone who got their powers from a magic belt and is also surrounded by at least a half-dozen people at all times.  The truck or the APC or whatever would roll into the city hall parking lot with the full cadre and you'd fill out the paperwork and start, uh... arresting groups that were commensurate with your organization's respective power level.

 

Provided that there's not a world-shaking amount of ludonarrative dissonance, the vast majority of people would be fine with it. "Elite mercenary leader?  Are there soldiers?  Are they shooting things?  Yes?  Looks legit."

[justicebeliever]

The nice thing about Bio's in the game is that they are editable, and thus the character can evolve as you play...I really like the answers by @VoidTek and @Coyotedancer

 

If, the game is about the journey (I am not talking about PL vs grind)...then evolution should be a part of the characters make up...

 

Sadly, in the Big 2 Comics companies our heros seldom evolve, but we all know the truly best stories are the ones where the characters grows as the challenges mount.

[JackWolfe]

Or  you can go with the skill set and the power level you want and just ignore the limits of the game.    RP and story telling fall outside the mechanics and limits of the game.  Several of the classic tankers like Ascendant were Superman  class characters,  scrappers in RP where Wolverine class healing machines in RP.  The fact the gameplay requires you to me more careful than thos characters in comics in incidental.  As long as the people stories are about and the folks you impact are ok with it, live it up in RP.  Also as someone said, even at level 1 you're a pretty elite team compared to the foes  you face.  Leveling doesn't have to be how powerful YOU are, but how powerful the enemy is and what skills/powers you've always had in your RP you need to defeat them.  A Zeus titan just means I have dig deeper into my bag of tricks, not that I suddenly got a larger bag of tricks. 

 

[Flashtoo]

It occurs to me that there is a mechanical precedent for character level not matching RP concept already present in the game: Consider a team of eight T4-in-everything Incarnates that decide to run a Posi I. They have no access to the majority of their powers and may even lose set bonuses, depending on what they have slotted, for the duration of the task force, because they get automatically sidekicked to 15 for that piece of content. Granted, they're still a bit stronger than your average lowbie at that level because the powers they do have are still fully slotted and they keep access to their power picks up to level 20, but that's still far, far below their ordinary strength. 

 

But why? 

 

There's no time travel draining their power. There's no reason to hold themselves back so severely against the Circle of Thorns, an enemy group they could regularly take on at full strength, nor Vazhilok's undead creations. Why aren't they one-shotting these level 15 enemies, if they're so strong - why is the content still a challenge at all? There's no reason it should be, judging by what they can normally do - there's no reason to think they can't still do that. They have exactly the same challenge as a group of much lower level, and it gets even less sensible when you consider a team of mid-levels (high enough so their major powers up to 20 can be fully slotted, but still well below 50) with one Incarnate buddy running that content together. If Incarnate Bob is supposed to be so much stronger than everyone else around him, why then, if the team gets into a bad fight, can't he drop the sidekick act and save them all (it's a TF, so he can't break team to get his level back)? 

 

So, with that in mind... I say screw it! If a level 50+3 Incarnate can be on temporarily equal footing to a level 5 just because he decided to join a DFB, mechanics barely matter at all outside of maybe what you plan for your build to eventually be. The Hour Thief is immortal and therefore one of the Midnighters' go-to guys for handling stuff in Dark Astoria, nearly impossible to catch, and effectively inexhaustible, and that doesn't have to change just because right now he's level 35 - and it doesn't have to change for your characters either. 

[Extor Prime]

I rewrote my characters' bios several times as they leveled. My main went from a street vigilante to a major force for the blueside and his bio reflected it. My Mastermind, who has always been a robotics genius, was a new arrival to Rogue Isles when I made him, and built crappy robots because that's all he had parts for. But as he leveled up, he stole and acquired more and more money and tech and his creations improved.

[C/Calliope]

I think that when you RP and you interact with more players and fellow RPers over time, as the game evolves, your character evolves.

My old alts, sometimes I rewrote their bios to account for changes in their personality and their identity as a hero/villain. I always kept the general backstory, though, so no matter who read it, people understood the backbone and foundation of my character. And of course, the more people you play and RP with, the more of an identity and reputation you form in the community. RP can become more organic, and so too can your bio if you choose to edit it over time or what have you. Thankfully, this game gives you that freedom. 

 

Edit: Forgot to say that regardless of how painful it gets for me in the game, I have always prioritized the powerset with the background of the character. (See my mind/emp controller, but with her bio, its what makes sense.) Plus it comes down to my personal play style (love playing support roles) and RPing preference. Its what's fun for me, even if leveling is rough. 😁

Edited September 26, 2019 by C/Calliope
Adding information

[JetMalakai]

My experienced mercenary (DP/Devices Blaster) became a hero right after refusing an offer to join Malta, which ended with him running away in a hail of gunfire and spending a month recovering in the hospital. Part of his physical therapy to regain his former battle prowess was taking on low level missions against people who he'd have curbstomped before the hospital stay, and he also had to rebuild most of his old tech.