thread: 2005-03-23 : Strong Stuff Indeed
On 2005-03-25, Ninja Hunter J wrote:
John said,
a character ("Farslayer") was a telepath who among other powers had the power to kill virtually anyone in the world by remote mental attack. I don't have the character sheet anymore, but it was statted out. He never actually used it. So by your view it was pointless. But I contend that it was FAR from meaningless. Quite the opposite. That he was constantly not using it was extremely meaningful.
The system didn't support that. If your pointed nonuse of that power didn't give you resources, it was just a point sink. You might as well have written it down as a character note on the back of the sheet and taken the points in Aikido.
If, on the other hand, you didn't use it and got bonus points for not using it, for instance in the form of Great Responsibility dice, that would be a different thing. If, furthermore, using it would give you Great Power dice, then you have an interesting choice to make about the character on a decision-to-decision basis.
What you were doing with your character was really neat. It's something I've done: the character concept is, 'I have a tremendous power I'll never use.' For that reason, I wanted to play a dragon on the run in D&D at one point. The idea was, he'd shapeshifted into a human to get away from other dragons. He had all this awesome dragon stuff, but couldn't use it. I couldn't play that character. The system only supports balls-to-the-wall power use and increase thereof. Holding back for your own reasons doesn't do anything for you at all. You're reliant on the GM totally sharing your vision, which goes along with the Impossible Thing Before Breakfast in most systems.
