P&P RPG Powers in CoH: Rebirth

[BradleyIFV]

In addition to superhero comic books themselves, I will often look at some of the pen & paper role-playing game books that I have (some quite old) to see what hasn't already been added to City of Heroes: Rebirth, to see if they could conceivably work in City.

To start this off, I'm looking at the Mutants & Masterminds RPG, 2002 edition from Green Ronin Publishing, which used a variant of the D20 system rules started by Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition.  They had a Shapeshift power that I thought might be a starting point for a Mutant Epic AT (non-aligned versus Hero Kheldians and Villain Arachnos Soldiers/Widows).  The actual change of appearance ability I thought could be handled as a type of Stealth/Invisibility/Hide power, where the character activates one power that gives them the appearance of a given enemy unit, similar to existing Halloween costume powers.  On activation of any aggro'ing power, the character's appearance reverts to normal and they generate aggro as normal.  Establishing or resetting the power would require selecting an active or defeated enemy and then activating - I would probably want to see the toggle suppression being developed for Kheldians to work here, rather than necessarily trying have someone figure out how to get all of the player power effects to work on all enemy models.  Personally, I don't think this aspect is TOO far out of bounds, although whether a given disguise would work against all enemy groups within a given area might bump into suspension of disbelief issues (i.e., I wouldn't want to force a player to constantly reset their Disguise power(s) whenever they meet another enemy group on a given map).

The M&M Shapeshift power also has "extras", other types of powers that can be added onto a given power under a single point cost.  One of the "extras" for Shapeshift is Mimic, which allows the character to copy and use an enemy's specific powers.  I think this would be an absolute nightmare to code, so I'm not really even wanting to bring it up, but I wanted to make sure you knew that I knew about the concern.

I've got more after this, but I figured to get this started here.

[SilverAgeFan]

Hi there! This is an interesting proposal.

I'll make sure the powers folks are alerted to your idea. I know at least one of our devs has looked at the challenges of a mimicry power (not so much for visual shapeshifting, which honestly *might* be the easier part) but rather more for a Rogue-(the-mutant-not-the-game)-like powerset for absorption.

There are loads and loads of technical issues making powers absorbable within CoH. Trailing shortly behind that are loads of balance concerns. Not necessarily on the higher end of the power scale, but ironically, as we looked at it on the lower end. Like what is an absorber/mimicry character to do when they run into a pack of Rikti monkeys or the only enemy left standing to absorb and ready yourself for the next fight is a weak minion? Do you get their assault rifle or other weapons? Or do you just get certain attributes?

Anyways, despite these design challenges, know that some of what you describe are things that other devs have expressed a degree of interest in. Will these highly ambitious ideas ever bear fruit within CoH and our efforts?

Hard to say. Definitely not any time super soon!

However, our dev team does have lots of great things we do know are feasible and up to now have never been seen in CoH. And they are in active production. So even in a powerset like you describe doesn't make it to Rebirth, know that there are many exciting things coming over the next year!