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Message: <blockquote data-quote="awesomeocalypse" data-source="post: 4984994" data-attributes="member: 85641">He uses his powers when the story need him to in order to make for a good story, not when he needs to in order to be as effective as he logically could/should be. Superman almost never operates at anywhere near full capacity--and the fanwanked justifications like "he holds back a lot most of the time" completely fall apart when that "holding back" results in innocent people dying. The justification is blatantly plot-driven: there need to be some sort of stakes, and villains who can actually go toe to toe with Superman going all out in a realistic way are hard to come by, so Superman simply obeys limits the story demands but that he logically shouldn't. And an entire comic of him doing nothing but flying into the atmosphere and using supersight, x-ray vision and heat vision to systematically take down all of his enemies from orbit would be boring--even though he can clearly do that, if you simply look at the really high level stuff he's shown himself to be capable of when the plot demands. This happens with a huge number of other heroes in serialized action fiction containing supernatural elements (i.e. the sort of fiction which most clostly resembles D&D story structure), and not even the massively overpowered ones. Cool super moves simply get used less often, whether a justification that holds water in a simulationist sense is offered or not. Encounter powers exist for a story-driven reason: characters seem more badass, and fights are more interesting, when they have cool moves, but cool moves are only cool when you can't spam them all the time. So characters will get a few cool moves to use a fight, but they won't be usable completely at-will--and the really powerful ones will only be usable fairly rarely, not even once a fight.Its that simple. Now, you may not want to tell stories that follow the conventions of that sort of fiction--if you want to play an odd medley of Milton and torture porn horror movies like others in this thread, or indeed any other type of game, it is doable with enough effort and creativity, and I hope you have fun doing it.But I think it is pretty clear that that sort of fiction is where 4e got the inspiration for its power structure. It might not resemble the kind of narrative you like, but its still narrative-driven.</blockquote>

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