Powerup/Transformation Workshop

[Orion]

I know this idea has been difficult to implement in this setting, but I would be very keen to get one working. I have a few ideas.

1) Use it similarly to Focus boosting an Ability: you would increase certain physical/mental attributes of your character, but only for one scene, and it would consume Focus to do so. It would be somewhat a 'soft' upgrade, where it allows you to hit harder, tank better, move faster, etc. but without putting exact numbers on it. Once the scene is over, it's gone. It could also be changed to consume more Focus (maybe 2 or 3) in a scene since it improves on multiple attributes at once.

2) Have it be a Consumable: it could be similar to a Revival Consumable, where you can only have one at a time, and it has a decent cost (not too big but not small either). Perhaps there could be ranks in this system, where you get a greater boost (maybe Basic, Moderate, Advanced?) but it costs more for each one. You could include a cooldown so that it takes longer to purchase the more powerful boost again than the mid or basic one.

3) Build a transformation: using Essence, you purchase a Transformation Ability, which you can then add Effects to (Damage, Speed, etc.) You could have a separate cap for the number of Ranks an Effect could have in a Transformation, much like there is a cap for them now. I'd see it as being a blanket improvement on Abilities that have the same Effect that is in the Transformation. You could, say, buy a Damage+1 to your existing Abilities, but the cost of Damage would be higher (eg. 300 per rank, maybe more?) It could also consume Essence to use and have cooldowns involved.

Happy to discuss if any of these ideas are possible or what would need to be done to rework them into something viable.

 

[Ridley]

To discuss this one a little further...

1) Focus boosting abilities actually used to be something you could do, buying things for certain abilities and the like, especially for things like fusion. this has since been scrapped due to the fact that it somewhat polluted the point of focus - it was to give you much more narrative freedom in a scene to pull out something intense that falls out of the normal scope of how your abilities worked, rather than its equivalent on earlier sights where it was a straight power-up.

While this doesn't make the idea bad in and of itself, and stuff like artifacts are clear exceptions, that was the original line of thought on nixing that idea, if I remember correctly.

2) this is already somewhat accomplished with the 'Exceptional' affinity, which allows for you to buy 5 extra ranks on top of what you normally do via consumables and flavor it as a 'transformation' of your character. of course, it could also be an external item that you utilize for some boosting effect even outside of the purchase. It could certainly be discussed on whether or not this needs to be linked to an affinity or if it could be made better with other tweaks, though!

3) This... somewhat falls into an earlier issue of 'effect stacking' that people'd found a lot earlier. The problem comes into the issue where transformations become something 'required' in order to compete with others, when many characters just don't really transform. with the original idea of this system, much of it was meant to correct what was a problem with the OV as far as freely creating a character. Supermoves and Transformations were among the things on the site that, powerwise, started to 'feel required', in order to have the strongest character, as well as giving moves a giant host of downsides to ramp up power. the current effects system stands to correct that, and the current lack of transformations or supermoves outside of using consumable to cap usage is around for the same reason. If you want to do the work to make yourself super saiyan, you can, but as it stands stuff like this allows you to have a strong character without needing to transform just to compete with other people when it comes to your character's strengths.


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Seperate from all these ideas, as far as things that I think make transformation difficult to implement:
The essential issue of transformations becomes the fact that if we make them able to elevate you above your traditional cap, they start feeling required, and it requires us to make either a separate fatigue system for or use focus - which is not intended for this use - to then cap it in order for there to be some fairness. some peoples character ideas dont gel with having an SSJ equivalent.

of course, the other issue is that we have the rank caps where they are for a reason - adding more ranks increases the power level of the setting, and reduces the power advantage consumables and bases are meant to have, which helps trivialize the point of buying such things. As a result, it might require rebalances across the board to introduce in that fashion.

This doesn't mean I think there's no way transformations can work, but I think a more nuanced addition would be required to make them work well, without losing the advantages current site systems have.

 

[Orion]

Thanks for the feedback.

1) Focus boosting actually is still around. I've seen a few people use it in DA:C (sometimes its just used to stay alive or give a boost, true) but one instance I can think of is Altanis using a stronger version of her telepathy to stop projectiles hitting a large group of troops. This is what I mean by using it for transformations, it's a bit more wibbly-wobbly in its implementation and just gives you a vague 'boost' to your physical abilities. I can see what you mean behind the original idea of using Focus, but to me this is pretty similiar, just with a different flavour.

2) Yes Exceptional does fill this void, but my issue stems from how it's implemented (please correct me if I'm wrong). If I want say to increase Orion's basic punches when he goes Super Saiyan to Damage 10, I would have to purchase 10 Damage ranks in order to do so. This irks me since I already have Damage 6 for punches in his 'base' form, and I feel like it should be that I only need to purchase the extra 4 Damage ranks to hit 10 for the 'powerup.' This also ignores that I might have other abilities, like Ki Blast, which I would also want the Damage to go up on, but I would need to purchase separately as well. So to have a 'true' powerup, where my abilities with Damage in them are all brought up, I would have to spend a lot of coin. And that's excluding Protection, Speed, etc.

And then that's only for one scene.

3) I didn't think this idea would get much attention, because as you said, we had something similiar initially that was ultimately discarded. While I completely understand that some characters don't lend themselves to powerups, and/or it's seen that powerups are a must-have, I feel here more than OV that isn't necessarily the case. I could be a Super Saiyan with high stats against a common swordsmen, but I wouldn't win a PvP fight based on the damage I output. My understanding was that Abilities, regardless of the Effects in them and especially in comparison to others, were for fleshing out your character, not an essential part of fighting where you have to constantly one-up everyone. That was definitely the OV, and I know we've made specific strides to avoid that same outcome.

In my mind, we had done that, and me having Damage 10 didn't matter if my opponent only had Protection 2. If they outwrote me, I still lost the fight. My strength was only to add to the situation of the fight (ie. fighting someone who can hit hard), not that it gave me any competitive advantages.

But yeah, doing 3) would take some rejigging of Rank caps and other things, which probably makes it not worth the effort.

 

[Ridley]

alright, moving through this...

1: yes, this is true, using stronger or different ways of powering attacks is baked into the system. the idea is to explore the narrative idea of what the power is, using focus, without having to actually be fully restricted to what it's stated to do by just damage ranks and etc.

Another example of doing something 'stronger' that's already noted in the system is someone like hulk using move object to pick up a giant object and, despite not having the normal ability to convert that to damage, smash someone through a building with it. The thing is... It's meant for the narrative flexibility to show off your powers for a moment.

It's also noteworthy that, in DA, there's a somewhat different context due to the collars inhibiting abilities, so they end up being a bit of a transformation... via letting you unlock higher ranks of your abilities. The telepathy into necromancy is one example.

The fact these are untyped and built to create narrative weight that lets you bend the rules is the main power of focus. putting that into a numerically bound transformation pushes us a little farther away from what spontaneity and power the idea's supposed to promote.

2: to be quite fair on this one, I think that's one thing I like about it. you can't transform every battle, you have to hold back power, and turning into some special form or using a one-shot ability and having justification to only pull it out when the battle gets really messy is narratively interesting to me. It does cost a lot of coin - but that's also one of the cheapest applications of it, costing far less than trying to build up minions or bases in exchange for being far more temporary. It gives a reason to actually obtain coin for the average adventurer uninterested in building a house or making a death-squad, and that's valuable for the site. It also probably feels worse given the lack of crawls and other bonuses to really obtain it from, and I'll agree it's imperfect, but with most effect values on site essentially doubling every level? you're paying a lot to hit something like 32x your normal weight, so it's understandable.

3. so, this is all true, and honestly the positions you're arguing from are the same positions I have an issue with it.

Even in the OV, stat advantages didn't have a technical effect on the fight - quality was usually what was judged in a fight and OM didn't factor in so much in most cases. However, they do have a level of narrative flair that comes with them, and as far as things that were a problem on the OV....

The weight of adding drawbacks to moves was constantly, constantly noted, as time went on. It became a real problem when it came to actual site management, and people feeling like they needed it to measure up to everyone else.

That's the antithesis of what we wanted here, where restrictions are mostly for cost and if you want to be the beefiest boy at all times - you can manage it, and it's not particularly expensive.

What transformations add is - if, say, you wanted to be a strong swordsman on the site with a blade that cuts like the wind - your blade is always a step behind anyone else's sword with a transformation, and that's an advantage they're allowed to push now. If your narrative flavor puts it as a high-end weapon, no matter how strong, it'll always be inferior to someone else's sword if they attach the transformation to it, so you'll feel pushed to either - feel inferior - or - Grab a transformation that affects the sword.

And at that point, we've entered into the very most minute and basic problem the OV ever had - having to weigh being the strongest vs consistency and not being allowed to have both.

 

[Orion]

1) I think we might have got our wires crossed on this point. I'm advocating that a 'transformation' would happen in the same way as these narratively enhanced abilities do, it's just focused on making a character stronger, tougher, faster, etc. For example, I could use Focus to make Orion go Super Saiyan (which while some people don't think transformations add anything narratively, in my mind they absolutely do) without having any hard numbers. I completely agree with everything else you made in your point here. I think that if I could get anything 'transformation' related, it would be this. Really it's still acting in the same system as the narratively boosting Focus abilities, just with me being a little more particular that, in the narrative, it's a transformation.

2) I agree with you about using Coin. I just have issues with how exactly it's implemented, and that might be because I'm not a consistent writer (and I have a bad habit of switching characters), which means I don't often pile up Coin, but I understand that others do, and the rules aren't just there for me. I appreciate that this is still kinda an option, especially with Rank cap increase as an option, and I could take the Exceptional affinity to make it a power-up. If this is the only option I'll end up having, I guess I'll use it? But it won't be for a long, long time (probably years).

3) Fair enough. Like I said, I know something similar was here previously and it was scrapped, and I understand the reasoning. Just thought I'd put it out there.

 

[Ridley]

1) the problem is the fact that the Super Saiyan transformation is something specific, which is... not what the focus is for. it's meant to vary the broad amount of tools you have as a writer with the stuff you've already bought, rather than work as one specific thing you can do you've obtained beforehand.

I'm not saying transformations add nothing narratively, but I am saying that the idea behind focus isn't something like a super saiyan transformation. it'd be more similar to Goku setting delayed kamehamehas in the water to hit Frieza with - something done with established tools you wouldn't otherwise do that adds a shade of cleverness and surprise to your writing. something people aren't expecting just by looking at your sheet by itself. Making something specific and sectioned on your sheet, like a transformation you pick up, that you use instead somewhat takes away from what the system encourages.

2) Well... As Jeff's pointed out, you can buy all of that even right now, in order to pull off such a thing. Consumables are much cheaper than any other option with no multiplier due to simply how fast you obtain it. Right now it'd be fairly easy to grab stuff - and as Jeff has stated, personal stories you can use consumables without issue (as long as it's not a competitive situation like a fight or an attack on an enemy base). While I understand the issue with switching characters and the like, part of the reason this is in place is so that people feel rewarded and better for spending more time posting and working on the site itself, rather than it simply being given out. but I don't think you'll have too much issues making enough coin for a transformation or two.