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Reply Subj: Re: That's a bit cold. Posted: Sun Apr 11, 2010 at 09:46:12 am EDT (Viewed 496 times) | |||||||
Quote: Quote: I suspect there must be more measured methods out there. Psychologists seem to have techniques that allow them to say of patients "he has the brain capacity of an eight year old" or whatever.Quote: They usually combine cognitive/I.Q. tests (which Anna would score very high on because her memory and reasoning skills are exemplary) and appropriate emotional response. Anna would probably score somewhere in the middle on the emotional response, which means she still lets her fears and her temper control her too easily. At the encouragement of others - most notably the always rock solid Psychic Samurai - she's learning to overcome that rapidly.So far her levels of maturity seem to vary. I'd still rate her a minor. Quote: Quote: The less a hero can rely on her power and the more she has to rely on her wits, guts, and choices the more it'll be a story and the less a set of baseball stats.Quote: That's why I try not to define powers *too* well. Once you attach numbers or comparisons and draw a thick black line around the "rules" it becomes a tabletop role-playing game with dice, and it loses all its abstract charm and character.But once ranges of powers are broached readers will always be asking "why doesn't she just use power x to get out of that?" and it gets really tedious having to explain each time why power x isn't applicable. It's like the early Thor strips where Mjolnir developed new powers every second issue to conveniently solve a problem - nega-bolts and time travel and magnetic control and dowsing and so on. Or how Superman used to gain extra vision or breath powers as required. Once established as within the characters' range it becomes a real pain to write around. But where it really becomes a problem is in a team situation, where each member has to make a contribution to make the narrative work. If Superman can run as fast as the Flash, calculate faster than Batman, fly faster than Hawkman, etc. then really he's become quite a problem. Quote: For instance never ask me how many volts Lara is capable of generating. That's a quantitative question that'll lead to how many are required to kill villain x, and whoops, she doesn't have enough. And now I can't go back and change her maximum. I prefer to have fun with it instead, and say Lara doesn't really know, and she's afraid to find out.There's a difference between the scope and the magnitude of powers though. I'm all for clever applications of super-powers, and for those "supreme push" moments when heroes go beyond their usual limits in a moment of heroism. I worry when characters get secondary power-sets that threaten to obscure the theme of their primary powers - like when Captain America was given "limited super-strength" or Superman became electrical. | |||||||
