Random Mutants and powers

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Well, Magic (or Magery) is a Power Talent, so it cannot normally benefit from a Source Modifier. I would allow Mutant to be combined with Magical though to represent a mutant ability to tap mana and shape it into abilities.

Magery 0 is kind of the exception to the "power talent" argument, being the raw ability to use magic. I should have been clearer about that.

I also wouldn't use Basic Set magic for a comics universe, instead using syntactic, realm, or Sorcery/Powers, depending on the breadth of the character's ability.

[Otaku]

Originally Posted by whswhs

"Plausible" is not the measure of whether something is science fiction...

I am not sure if it matters, but in this case, I meant "appropriate to" when I used the word "plausible". Maybe that is how you took it: that I was saying a significantly toned down version of Cyclops or Ice Man's powers could be appropriate for a science fiction tale, but now how they have ever been presented in Marvel comics. The power-sets of Beast, Marvel Girl, and Professor X would be appropriate for science fiction, and Beast might even work for "hard" sci-fi.

So, to be clear: X-Men is fantasy, or science fantasy (at best), not science fiction.

Originally Posted by Phantasm

QFT! And when you get into folks like Illyana Rasputin and Wanda Maximoff, it's possible to slap a Mutant (-10%) power modifier on their Magery advantages!

Check out my Marvel Reboot thread, post 2, for power mods I use. Not exclusive, either, as there are options that may show up in edge cases (like Spirit PM).

Yup. The merry Marvel manner is to take whatever is "hot" at the moment, and rework what you've got to fit. During the X-Men rise to prominence in the 90's, everybody seemed to suddenly be a mutant. IIRC, Bruce Banner's intelligence was at one point suggested to be a minor mutant "power". Johnny Blaze's affinity for magic/mystical stuff was as well (he wasn't Ghost Rider at the time, but they made it so he could still borrow some of the power...).

Mutant/psychics are a common, common combo for Marvel as well... in fact, I think it is just a given that there are no "vanilla" psychics in Marvel comics. Either you're a mutant, an alien, genetically engineered super-being, etc. I am not sure how Marvel handles it, but I am inclined to treat a lot of the overlap as just "You take both, either counters you." and leave it at that. I mean, even if psychic is never on its own, but NPC's have psychic-specific countermeasures that work regardless of the other modifier, still seems like game balance could be preserved. Then again, that isn't firsthand experience talking. ^^'

[AlexanderHowl]

Heck, I think that Mutant is just Marvel's synonym for Psychic.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by Otaku

Mutant/psychics are a common, common combo for Marvel as well... in fact, I think it is just a given that there are no "vanilla" psychics in Marvel comics. Either you're a mutant, an alien, genetically engineered super-being, etc. I am not sure how Marvel handles it, but I am inclined to treat a lot of the overlap as just "You take both, either counters you." and leave it at that. I mean, even if psychic is never on its own, but NPC's have psychic-specific countermeasures that work regardless of the other modifier, still seems like game balance could be preserved. Then again, that isn't firsthand experience talking. ^^'

Well, that kinda excludes the most powerful non-Mutant telepath/telekinetic out there: Heather Douglas/Moondragon, who essentially gained them as part of her enlightenment from ancient alien (Titanian Eternal) martial arts! That also excludes Mantis's psychic empathy (the comics Mantis was human, not alien); again, a result of alien martial arts (in her case, Kree, or more accurately Cotati, a race of plants hailing from the Kree homeworld). To date, no one has ever (to my knowledge) suggested that either character was a mutant.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Heck, I think that Mutant is just Marvel's synonym for Psychic.

Yes and no. Many Mutants are rather physical in their powers (Beast, Angel, Colossus, Wolverine). That 99.44% of the Psychics happen to be Mutant does not make all Mutants into Psychics, after all; not all rectangles are squares, though all squares are rectangles.

[Otaku]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

Well, that kinda excludes the most powerful non-Mutant telepath/telekinetic out there: Heather Douglas/Moondragon, who essentially gained them as part of her enlightenment from ancient alien (Titanian Eternal) martial arts! That also excludes Mantis's psychic empathy (the comics Mantis was human, not alien); again, a result of alien martial arts (in her case, Kree, or more accurately Cotati, a race of plants hailing from the Kree homeworld). To date, no one has ever (to my knowledge) suggested that either character was a mutant.

Knew I should have included magic/mystic arts as well as martial arts.

...

No, really; I think Dr. Doom had a mind swap technique learned in a similar manner. @_@

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Otaku

I am not sure if it matters, but in this case, I meant "appropriate to" when I used the word "plausible". Maybe that is how you took it: that I was saying a significantly toned down version of Cyclops or Ice Man's powers could be appropriate for a science fiction tale, but now how they have ever been presented in Marvel comics. The power-sets of Beast, Marvel Girl, and Professor X would be appropriate for science fiction, and Beast might even work for "hard" sci-fi.

So, to be clear: X-Men is fantasy, or science fantasy (at best), not science fiction.

I think that's a completely misleading use of the word.

Categories, including genres, are not properly defined by what they lack, but by what they have. For example, "vertebrate" is a meaningful term, including a group of animals that all have backbones, and that have other anatomical traits in common, and that have a common ancestor sometime around the early Paleozoic. But "invertebrate," traditionally used for all the other animals, includes such diverse animals that they have almost no traits in common (not even multicellularity, if you go by the older classifications that counted protozoa as animals). The few exceptions are traits so general that they are also found in vertebrates. And the common ancestor of all invertebrates is an animal that lived so early that it was also the ancestor of vertebrates. So you have really said nothing informative when you've called an animal an "invertebrate."

Now, "fantasy" has a narrow meaning: literature including extraordinary events for which suspension of disbelief is obtained by appealing to myth, legend, folklore, or fairy tales, or to the kinds of things (such as magic or supernatural beings) that appear in such tales. It also has a broad meaning as literature of the fantastic, literature including extraordinary events in general—which includes science fiction, all science fiction, as one case. But it's not meaningful to define a category of "all fantastic literature that's not science fiction" and give it a name; and it's still less meaningful to say that literature that would otherwise be classed as science fiction, if it's defective, gets shoved out of science fiction and into fantasy, despite having no supernatural elements, no magic, and otherwise none of the elements of myth and legend and so on (and neither Cyclops nor Iceman had such traits). At most the name for such writing is "bad science fiction" or "failed science fiction."

(Though I don't think implausible powers exclude something from science fiction. Wells's invisible man, his giants in The Food of the Gods, his men who took the New Accelerator, all have quite implausible abilities, and later writers such as Van Vogt and Bester were sometimes even further over the top, but at least Wells is one of the genre's classic figures, and both Van Vogt and Bester were highly regarded.)

As for "science fantasy," I'll accept it for a story that has both fantastic elements justified by appeals to science and technology, and elements justified by appeals to myth, legend, and the like, such as Andre Norton's Star Gate, which colonists from Earth on a distant planet travelling to a parallel time line and dealing with the powers of that planet's three gods. But I don't think it's meaningful for a story that looks like science fiction but doesn't approach its fantastic elements rigorously; I think such a story is either bad hard science fiction (if it tried for rigor and fell badly short) or non-hard science fiction (if rigor wasn't its goal). And I think that as originally published, the Fantastic Four, the X-men, Iron Man, Ant-Man, and Spider-man were all non-hard science fiction, unlike Dr. Strange, who was clearly weird fantasy, or Thor, who may well have been science fantasy (he fought aliens, but he was a Norse god).

[Phantasm]

Anyway, I tend to look at Super, Mutant, Psychic, and Mutant Psychic as overlapping power modifiers. All four of them have Technological Countermeasures (-5%) and Anti-Power Countermeasures (-5%). Mutant and Psychic are both subsets of Super, and Mutant Psychic is a subset of both Mutant and Psychic; normally, all four are -10%, but there's argument for an extra -5% to -10% (for a net -15% or -20% respectively) for multiple types of the same class countermeasures affecting a power. This would make Mutant Psychic a -15% (since it covers two different sources) and Super a -20% power modifier (since it covers all three and then some). For simplicity sake, I don't charge more than the -10% for all four power types.

Elemental, which explicitly states is able to stack with Super, I permit to also stack with Psychic, Mutant, Mutant Psychic, Magical, Divine, and Demonic (the infernal counterpart to Divine, lacking the "don't take away in life-threatening situations" and "major penance for restoration" clauses). Stacking with Psychic and Mutant are implied (in Powers and Supers, respectively) with those two being subsets or reskinning of Super; stacking with Superscience (also in Supers) is also implied, but I haven't had anything with a Superscience power modifier yet (the various Lantern Corps power rings in the DCU would be the most notable examples of the Superscience power mod, IMO).

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Otaku

So, to be clear: X-Men is fantasy, or science fantasy (at best), not science fiction.

"Superhero" is its own distinct genre. It can cross over with fantasy or science fiction or both. As for random mutants you could do worse than just to download
http://www.rpgnow.com/product/177913/Faserip (freebie) and use the randomly generated characters as a basis to design a character.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

"Superhero" is its own distinct genre. It can cross over with fantasy or science fiction or both.

Basically that's true. Individual superheroes can have science fictional or fantastic premises; for example, the Justice Society had the Flash (exposed to strange chemicals) the Sandman (carried a gun that put people to sleep), and Hourman (took pills that gave him special abilities), but also the Green Lantern (wore a magic ring), Hawkman (a reincarnated ancient Egyptian warrior), the Spectre (a ghost), and Dr. Fate (master of the mystic arts). But as this example shows, the two can coexist. Where sf or fantasy is often "one-miracle," superhero universes in the comics tend to have any number of miracles.

And sometimes they blur together into all being "super." Back when the Justice League was new, one of their first adventures involved their powers being stolen by a criminal scientist and implanted into his android, Amazo. That was Flash's powers from a lab accident, Green Lantern's from an advanced alien device, Wonder Woman's from whichever supernatural power source she had back then (plus Amazon training), Aquaman's from being half Atlantean, and J'onn J'onzz's from being Martian. (Apparently Superman's Kryptonian invulnerability meant his powers couldn't be stolen, though that happened to him often enough in his own titles!) Anyway, despite those diverse backgrounds, they were all treated as being "super" and subject to power theft by an advanced scientific process.

[Drakyrias]

Since we've gotten slightly off subject I thought I'd ask an unrelated X-men question

My world includes many various elements. One of which being Highlander style immortals, which has prompted the question: Is Logan (Wolverine) an Immortal? Could he be one in addition to being a mutant?