I hate Mega-Att 5 characters. Haaaaate them. Some hard numbers-crunching Whitearrow did only helped reinforce that for me. If I'd thought of it in the beginning, and if I could have done so with impunity, I would have capped Mega-Atts at 4, and only for one character, to boot.

Why? Why do you hate them so? This question is for anybody who does btw. Just curious as I contemplate my first entry into the 200X Universe...

No comment???

I could see playing a M-Dex 5 character, that could get interesting. A person who didn't even act human at all. Just because they are too fluid and too graceful. Honestly, M-Dex 5 would be creepy as hell unless the person with it actively resisted displaying their abilities. They actually went over it in(of all places) the Vampire: The Masquerade Player's Guide, when talking about having stats above 5.

As far as the other abilities are concerned, here we go.

M-Str: No problems with it from my perspective. If you look at "Ticket To Graceland" here on the boards, it gives a pretty good example of what it's like to have M-Str 5. You would have to be careful not to crush or obliterate everything that you cane in contact with.

M-App 5: Much like strength, in its own way, see "Ticket to Graceland"

M-Dex: See above.

M-Sta: I don't see the point of this on this kind of board, but hey. As far as why it's bad to have, I don't know why. All it would do was make it so you really didn't get hurt. Might lead to a bit of alienation, but among novas, not really.

M-Int, M-Cha, M-Man - These are the only ones I really have a problem with them being at 5 just because there is no way to really even approximate their being at 5 on the boards. M-Stat 1 is beyond human means, and M-Stat 5 is to 1 what Stat 5 is to Stat 1(Slick as shit politico vs. Biff Thuggson) Even approximating them is an exercise in futility, but whatever. If you can suspend disbelief long enough, or simply come up with a reason for your nova to 'hold back' then go for it.

Daniel is in the hospital. His karma has made a speedy payback for what he did to alice. In case anyone is interested.

BTW Fox, your charsheet needs more detail. You dont list the dots for your powers and havent added the new megas. A cost breakdown is usually consisdered standard as well.

Let me check that. I was in a rush at work. Had too much stuff going on, may have messed up the post.

Thanks TF. Went back and checked and I hadn't added any of the Megas to the sheet.

Also added the point cost of what was added.

Sorry for the delay. I wrote up a very nice post on the subject this morning, and then the forum ate it, and for whatever reason, any further attempts to use this site met with dramatic failure. No clue why. Chat crashed, too.

Anyway, Fool, to answer your question:
It's fine and good that you want your character to be good at something. It's fine and good if you want them to be fucking spectacular at something. Being fucking spectacular does not require M-Att 5, although in a vacuum, you could make a case for their being no harm in it.

However, we don't play in a vacuum. We play in an established canon that has hundreds of NPCs with full write-ups, and if you look carefully at those write-ups, you'll notice a sort of bell curve for M-Atts that seems to start around 0, spike at 2, and taper off to virtually nothing at 4. The number of established characters who have a M-Att of 5 could be counted on your fingers with enough left over to give someone the Shocker. So when you compare the characters throughout the established canon to your new character who has M-Int 5 or M-Cha 5 or whatever-you-like, the trend that emerges doesn't speak of a player wanting to be fucking spectacular at whatever, it speaks of them wanting to bludgeon the rest of us over the fucking head with their primacy. At M-Att 5, you have established yourself as the fastest, the smartest, the strongest thing in creation, Pax and Mal (possibly!) aside, and the reason I frown upon it is because it is not necessary.

In short form, because it's the sort of ego-stroking, powergaming, "LOLI'MTEHBESTTEHBESTTEHBEST!!" bullshit that I punish people for in TT games.

What were the numbers that whitearrow crunched on you? Did he hurt you???

I'm sure he'd be willing to share his findings with you, or at least I hope, since I don't have his numbers. Basically what he found is the bell curve I mentioned before. There are very few published novas with M-Atts of 5, and not even as many as you think that have 4 or even 3. A M-Att of 3 is, in most cases, enough to make you peers with the highest-statted novas on the planet. Which just makes 5's even more gratuitous and unnecessary, to me.

I can see your popint, but then again we have a bell curve here as well. You can start out with 1 NP and bioluminessence and build from there or you can start at 50 and be on the higher end of things. It sounds to me like just a personal preference/style kind of thing...

What I am saying, though, is that it's explicitly not a personal preference/style thing for the very reason that this game exists in a game world that has established trends and hundreds of statted NPCs. My point is that a gallery of PCs with M-Att 5s does not jibe with the rest of the world. Someone with M-Per 5, for example, is not simply the most perceptive character on the forum: they are literally the most perceptive being on Earth, including all novas, everywhere. That's not a "style" difference.

What I meant was its a "style-of play" preference on behalf of the player. Some will want to play the elite, others will prefer lesser fare. Doesn't bother me either way.

Most people take a 5 in something simply because their minds are not actually able to grasp what a 5 means. Be it a skill or an attribute 99% of baselines in the world never achieve anything higher than a 4 without the aid of pharmaceuticals. The peak of human capability is 4 dots in Aberrant.

Now I know some cock gobbler is going jump up and say: "But I'm not human, I'm a nova!" To which I'll reply "Shut the hell up and let me finish."

Quantum powers and mega-attributes are for Novas what every day capability is to humans. It's not 'style of play", it's fact. A nova who has achieved a 4 or a 5 in a quantum power or a mega attribute is a fucking god even among gods. They have accomplished something that even other nova respect and revere.

To most players, it's just another dot, which bives them another technique in their suite , and the only reason they have a 5 there is because they couldn't have a 6.

People don't think about what the dots mean when they put them on a character because all they are interested in is being the best, most powerful, unmatched, never going to fail at a task in their life character.

Exceptions exist of course but my jaded opinion has been rooted ever since someone said their character with Temporal Manipulation of 5 just 'dabbled' and was picking up 'the basics'.

On top of that, why do characters need a 5 in a mgea att? What can you do with a 5 that you cannot do with a 3 or a 1? You've just short changed yourself on accomplishing anything that anyone would be impressed with.

Most people with an excessive amount of 5s on the sheet only have them because they have to be best at or the first with a 5. Especially in the case of mega atts. God forbid someone be faster, stronger, prettier, or able to out class them in some way.

The human ego just doesn't allow it, and gamer egos are the worst.


On a side note:


So... two fictions and he gains 26NP worth of powers?

I call... Bullshit.

Being beaten by a bat doesn't grant Mega-Appearance unless he has mega ugly, nor does it grant you Mega-Manipulation because if it had they would have beaten themselves and not figured out why. I have no idea where you pulled mega-wits from.

Flight I understand since that was introduced slowly and during the Borrowed Weekend. Mega Stamina sure, he was beaten so his node could react with tempering his frame.

Just thought I'd voice my opinion on that.

How about regular attributes of 5 when the person has hit superhuman levels? Bill has Strength and Stamina of 5 but he's hit superhuman levels with both of those. Am I up in the night to figure that before he can squat 2 tons that maybe he should be as strong as a human can be?

Makes sense.

temporal Manip 5 *is* just the basics yanno...it takes one getting to Q8 before one can actually time travel...

And I dont think Fox is bullshit. Novas develop in all kinds of ways..let the man play his character the way he enjoys, hes not hurting anybody...

*takes a deep breath and counts to ten*

Re: Daniel.

Daniel started with a grand total of 10, nova points. I don't think anyone on the boards so far started lower than that. The way this game was set us was that we can raise what we want up to the cap. How many other folks started with only 10 nps?

The way I was looking at the scene is being like a second eruption. No, 'by the book' there is no such thing as a second eruption, I am aware of that, but then there's no reason there can't be either. That's how I was imagining it. If more than just Rev has a problem with this, I will retcon the scene and change it. Otherwise I won't. I may be a mod, but my characters will still be by the rules, so speak up if you have a problem with what I've done with Daniel and I'll change it.

I will state that I have no problem with how it occurred. Part of the reason that I joined this board despite my hesitations was the emphasis on 'story' over the 'rules.' The story of Daniel's increase of power was dramatic and interesting, so that is a mark in the 'win' category, because that's what is a win is to me: a good story that amuses the writer as much as the readers.

Of course, part of my amusement comes from the fact that Alice being the villian why he erupted in the first place, and his 'second' eruption was caused by her being a victim. Nice juxaposition.

Re: Daniel
Just stating my opinion, y'all do it however you want. 26NP in damn sitting is a bit damn much. If you wanted him to have all that stuff you should have purchased it in the begining.

You could have just as easily said "He has it, but doesn't know it, or can't use it."

26NPs of improvement and no one sees anything a bit skewed with that.

Whatever.


You completely missed the point of what I was getting at, but that's okay because you're an idiot and fall into the category of gamers that bug the hell out of me anyways.


Certainly not. Nova's seem to be more commonly able to achieve levels of human perfection with relative ease, after all they are next step in human evolution.

But as I said, most people don't understand what I'm trying to say when I explain the difference between one dot and 5 dots. It's all just another die pool it seems and the higher it goes the better.

What the fuck was that for? And here I was wondering why this board gets periodic flame wars, and you wonder why people react poorly to you.

Oh sure... You claim "I dont sugar coat" but use that as an excuse to be bellicose. There is a HUGE difference between "sugar coating" and "lets just insult someone because I feel like it."

Dude, that's kind of obtuse. Temporal Manipulation is Temporal Manipulation and Time Travel is Time Travel. Two different powers. 5 dots in one is not "the basics". It's the whole kit and kaboodle. It's mastery of Temporal Manipulation.




It's not about hurting. It's about whether what he is doing reduces the veracity of our shared universe. Just because someone enjoys something doesn't make me or Rev a prick for disagreeing. It's our playground too.

We're in the Aberrant Universe and are following the Aberrant Universe setting.

There is no magic.
There are no aliens.
There are no "second eruptions".

Yes, it's a superhuman powers universe but bad writing is still bad writing (not directed at you specifically Fox).

Bra fucking vo, Dave. Thank you for taking the time to articulate what I simply could not be buggered to bother with.

What's being discussed currently is one of the aspects of 2018 that I absolutely despised, and one of the reasons my participation in 200X has been waning drastically. The need for super-powered stats and abilities to either compete with existing characters, or to preclude anyone else from surpassing said characters, is ridiculous. This is supposed to be an author's forum for interesting and immersive stories- not a playground for powergamers or people who want to bludgeon people with the sheer AWESOME factor of their character. The worst part is, most of the worst offenders here don't realize or won't admit that's what they're doing.

But at least we have some sort of limit this time around. It can only get so bad. You'll never have to deal with another Ultimax or Wakinyan.

Rev. The name calling needs to stop. Jumping TF and calling him an idiot was unprovoked. Don't be a dick. See rule #1.

You're right. Make things simpler all the way around. I'll do that then.

I have to go to bed soon, so I don't have time to write up everything I was going to, but for now I'll post the "crunchy numbers" that I hit Seph with that apparently started this entire debate.

How I got these numbers: I went through all of the books (except for Expose: Aberrant, which I don't have) and counted statted-out novas only. There were lots more novas listed, but they didn't give numbers. There are two exceptions though, and those are Divis Mal and Caestus Pax. Both of them are described in some detail in WWP 1, specifically in regards to mega-attributes, so I went ahead and counted them as well.

After I counted all of the novas in the books I counted the novas listed in the Profiles section (I've had to update this count a few times since I first went through and did this, since new players have posted since then).

So, to clarify, the "grand total" number of novas was obtained by looking at statted - and only statted - novas throughout the books, and here on the 200X board.

I used this Grand Total number as a "Set" representing "nova-kind" as a whole. The Grand Total was 176 in total, which is 2.93% of the 6,000 novas supposedly running around in 2008. For comparison, if you assume 6 billion humans (just to round things out), then we'd need a "Set" of 176,000,000 humans to obtain results as comprehensive as the ones I've compiled.
A "Set" is a total number of occurences/objects/"things", and it's basically what we're considering to be 100% in this case. So if 18 of the novas in this list all share some characteristic, that equal out to slightly more than 10% of the Set we have to work with (10x18=180, 4 more than 176).
Since this Set represents all of the hard data we have to go on, as far as what sorts of statistics novas have as a group, this is what I'm using to determine how common or rare it is for any nova to have a given statistic. Basically, I'm using the 176 statted novas I have access to as a cross-section representing all of the 6,000 novas running around right now (ICly).

Hopefully that all makes sense, and hopefully I'm not wasting my time trying to explain things to a bunch of folks who already knew all that, and some more stuff besides.

The Results:

Grand Total: 176
Mega-Strength: 1: (30) 2: (20) 3: (10) 4: (7) 5: (3) Total: (70)
Mega-Dexterity: 1: (41) 2: (25) 3: (15) 4: (7) 5: (3) Total: (91)
Mega-Stamina: 1: (43) 2: (22) 3: (22) 4: (13) 5: (4) Total: (82)
Mega-Perception: 1: (42) 2: (17) 3: (11) 4: (3) 5: (1) Total: (74)
Mega-Intelligence: 1: (30) 2: (11) 3: (12) 4: (3) 5: (3) Total: (59)
Mega-Wits: 1: (34) 2: (24) 3: (10) 4: (2) 5: (4) Total: (74)
Mega-Appearance: 1: (25) 2: (12) 3: (7) 4: (1) 5: (2) Total: (47)
Mega-Manipulation: 1: (16) 2: (6) 3: (3) 4: (5) 5: (1) Total: (31)
Mega-Charisma: 1: (21) 2: (7) 3: (7) 4: (1) 5: (1) Total: (37)
Actual Count: 1: (115) 2: (85) 3: (72) 4: (40) 5: (21)
*Bolded numbers are the dots that a nova would have in the appropriate attribute, while numbers in parenthesis are the number of novas counted who had that particular attribute at that particular dot rating. The "Actual Count" at the bottom represents the number of novas who possessed one or more mega-attributes at the listed rating (so Geisha, who has two mega-atts with 5 dots in them is only counted once on the [Actual Count 5:] list).

Mega-Strength: 39.77% of novas have it. 17.05% have 1 dot. 11.36% have 2 dots. 5.68% have 3 dots. 3.98% have 4 dots. 1.68% have 5 dots.
Mega-Dexterity: 51.7% of novas have it. 23.3% have 1 dot. 14.2% have 2 dots. 8.52% have 3 dots. 3.98% have 4 dots. 1.68% have 5 dots.
Mega-Stamina: 46.59% of novas have it. 24.43% have 1 dot. 12.5% have 2 dots. 12.5% have 3 dots. 7.39% have 4 dots. 2.27% have 5 dots.
Mega-Perception: 42.05% of novas have it. 23.86% have 1 dot. 9.66% have 2 dots. 6.25% have 3 dots. 1.68% have 4 dots. .57% have 5 dots.
Mega-Intelligence: 33.52% of novas have it. 17.04% have 1 dot. 6.25% have 2 dots. 6.82% have 3 dots. 1.68% have 4 dots. 1.68% have 5 dots.
Mega-Wits: 42.05% of novas have it. 19.32% have 1 dot. 13.64% have 2 dots. 5.68% have 3 dots. 1.14% have 4 dots. 2.27% have 5 dots.
Mega-Appearance: 26.7% of novas have it. 14.2% have 1 dot. 6.82% have 2 dots. 3.98% have 3 dots. 5.68% have 4 dots. 1.14% have 5 dots.
Mega-Manipulation: 17.61% of novas have it. 9.09% have 1 dot. 3.41% have 2 dots. 1.71% have 3 dots. 2.84% have 4 dots. .57% have 5 dots.
Mega-Charisma: 21.02% of novas have it. 11.93% have 1 dot. 3.98% have 2 dots. 3.98% have 3 dots. .57% have 4 dots. .57% have 5 dots.
Totals: 63.34% have 1 dot (3,800 novs) . 48.3% have 2 dots (2,898 novas). 40.9% have 3 dots (2,454 novas). 22.72% have 4 dots (1,363 novas). 11.93% have 5 dots (716 novas).

A few things to note: Almost 100% of novas seem to have at least a single dot in at least one mega-att, so that 63.34% number in the "Totals" count (above, in the 1 dot section) might be a little misleading. The 63.34% means that's how many novas had a mega-att with only 1 dot in it. The other 36.66% had mega-atts with more than 1 dot in them (minus the, I think, 2 or 3 novas who had no mega-atts at all).
In ascending order, from least common attribute to most common, we have: Manipulation, Charisma, Appearance, Intelligence, Strength, Perception and Wits (tied), Stamina, and Dexterity.
Interestingly, Mega-Manipulation is the least common attribute, with Mega-Charisma being the second least common (not really what I expected for some reason). Unsurprisingly, Mega-Dex is the most common attribute.

This list is not as accurate as I'd like it to be as there is obviously a tendency to pubish and stat-out the more remarkable novas within the WW books. One of the most obvious indicators that this list isn't perfectly accurate is the listing for Mega-Intelligence 5. That figure of 1.68%, when applied to the 6,000 novas around the world in 2008, equals out to just over 100 novas. Clearly, this is too much, or at least, that's what we're given to believe based off of flavor material throughout several of the books.


Now I'm really tired so I'm going to go to bed. I think tomorrow I'll try and sit down and write up some of my thoughts on how to approach each of the various mega-attributes, but for now enjoy the cruncy numbers, and make of them what you will.

What I said was mostly tounge in cheek Bill. Although from an IC perspective I see temp manip and time travel are the same power but on different scales. Similar to Celerity and temporis for those who know about those...


See, that right there is a very slippery slope my friend. Again it comes down to personal styles of play. Just like one table top group will enjoy playing differently than another. Novas are adaptable..thats what eruption is. So maybe it wasn't a "second eruption" but his node did react to save his ass. I bet some of the abilities he already had and just didnt know it yet. There is the genre staple of "secodary mutation" as well.

What I am getting at is that it doesnt matter how many NPs he spent. The premise from the beginning was you could increase or decrease or tweak even so long as you did it ICly. I don't think Fox threantened anyones veracity. There are other worse offenders that we talked about in chat earlier. This is one of the things that concerned me from the begining, the idea that players who prefer different types of storys are going to come down and give people shit because they would have done it differently. It doesnt help that some people here can be less than tactful in expressing those opinions.

As a style of play factor, take Ausrine. Mega Appearance 5...*someone* in the game world is going to have it. What is wrong with Whitearrow for choosing to explore what that concept means? Soooo many gamers are used to the "level 1 then grow" old school DnD approach that I think they look down upon starting at higher levels in point buy systems. If you prefer the gritty closer to human level, fine. In fact, more power to you..I love reading Odysseuses stream of consciousness. But try not to be so judgemental about the people playing in bigger leagues. If their writing sucks maybe then you can bag them, although the nicer thing to do would be to offer help and watch them get better. And if their writing is good and entertaining, then why would anyone be upset?

Or am I misunderstanding the problem???

I give up. You guys do whatever you want. The point I was trying to make has apparently shot waaaaaay over most people's heads.

It's easier than percentages, and apparently more difficult than common sense.

You all have fun.