How do you balance adaptive regeneration in a non-superhero game?

Real question though. How do you balance adaptive regeneration in a superhero game? It's just so open for abuse that any self-respecting optimizer would jump into the proverbial meat grinder until they're fairly resistant to most damage.

>>51451611
Throw in a sanity system tied to how powerful your power gets.

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>>51451642
This actually happens with Crawler in Worm. Except it isn't a proverbial meat-grinder, it's a proverbial incinerator.
And it isn't proverbial at all, it's an actual incinerator.

>>51451611

You can only have a set limit of resistances (not proofs) at any given time. You can choose to take a new resistance when a new adaptive opportunity presents itself, but you have to forget one of the old ones to learn it, and can only regain it if you encounter it again.

>>51451642
A few easily come to mind:
>Adaptive regeneration means your pain receptors are never dulled. Roll against CON to willingly harm yourself past small cuts.
>It takes a lot of damage to build a resistance.
>You don't have very many offensive options so you're basically a really good punching bag.

>>51451611
Make it temporary.

>>51451611
No fucking clue. Let's come up with a bullshit system then!
You gain X number of adaption points depending on how powerful the ability is. When you are attacked or otherwise would adapt to damage, you gain a new resistance point to the damage and lose the oldest point.
You've been hit with swords a lot recently? You're super tough against swords but have lost any fire resistance you would have had recently.
Get hit by everything a little bit and you're generally slightly resistant.

Utterly useless in how impractical it would be to keep track of. Might be good in a vidja though.

>>51451611
>>51451642
One easy solution:
It still hurts like hell and the character isn't a masochist.

You can only apply a few resistances at a time. So you have a mental archive of all your resistances, which may deteriorate over time, and have access to like three at a time.

>>51451611
Couple of things in tandem:

>Your body cannot be resistant to more than one type of damage at a time. You are essentially a chameleon - you can be red or green, but you can't be both red and green at the same time.
>Changing your resistance type changes your body at the fundamental level. As such, this is an incredibly painful and time-consuming process - while it can be done multiple times a day if needed, it isn't something that can be switched at a moments notice.
>While not guaranteed, resistance to one type of damage may increase vulnerability to another type of damage. Kinetic damage from bullets might do more damage if you're adapted to reducing the effects of energy damage, because your body has hyper-specialized its resistance.

This way it's useful and still valuable, but it's not a get-out-of-jail-free card for the player and still requires smarts to effectively utilize.

>>51451686
>>51451728
As somebody raised on plenty of whip and very little sugar - you get used to the pain, it's human nature that we are adaptive. For better or for worse we get used to things. You will not like it still, but it will, for the lack of better expression, subjectively hurt less with time.

>>51451611
each mutation has unintended side effects, like the rock hard carapace hat deflects stabbing weights 60lbs

>>51451926
>That post.

Gonna need more context and possible story for why you were raised with a whip.

>>51451728
What about one who is a masochist being a villain for greater 'punishment'?

>>51451611
Make it like the Borg

>no resistance whatsoever to the first shot or two
>after that it's no dice
>still subject to physical force (trips, tackles, throws)

>>51451962
Sugar and whip are figurative for punishment and reward, it's a rather common expression.

>>51451695
I like this one. The power quickly adapts but also quickly forgets. Either in the sense that the latest type of attack / resistance overwrite the previous one or in the sense that once learned it only lasts so long (though I can see PC making morning flagellation part of their daily routine just to build up for the day).

>>51452074
I'm from the south and have heard it plenty. Maybe it is just a southern thing. Are you from the southern USA?

>>51452097
Europoor actually.

>>51451642
When you gain one resistance, you lose another. Boom. Balanced.

>>51451611
A. The adaptiveness is not all encompassing. (You will never be immune to a lack of oxygen, or brain-death, or fire, or what the fuck ever looks appropriate.)

B. The adaptions are random and/or not perfectly beneficial. (You might become immune to radiation, but now you're built like a lead block and movement itself is next to impossible. Or you're now immune to sword level cuts, but your sensory organs have hardened over and you no longer feel through your skin.)

C. It requires energy. Hey, guess what? Regeneration is a pretty resource intensive process, and a human body doesn't have overwhelming amounts of them.

>>51452074
The equivalent phrase from where I am from is the carrot and the stick.

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Every hit builds Resistance until you hit 100% and become Immune.
Build up takes time and exposure to the effect
Magic and Natural separation fireball =/= flamethrower
Some effects can not be overcome like a lack of oxygen or being atomized
Still sort of obeys physics so tripping,trapping,grabbing or otherwise detaining and occupying the subject still works -- Doomsday the poster boy for Adaptive Resistance was detained for hundreds if not thousands of years before he managed to escape

>>51452148
This. You can only have a certain number of resistances at once. In a non-superhero game, this number may be as low as 1.

They have to make saves to not pass out from pain nor reflexively pull away.

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>>51451611
Put it on the bad guys/monsters.

Watch your player's terrified reactions.

>>51452148
Or it fades fairly quickly meaning you can't build a stable of them.

>>51451642
I don't care how invincible you are if I throw you into orbit

Take a page out of Boku no Hero Academia, resistance doesn't mean immunity and you can still overcome it with sufficient X even if the guy is resistant to it.

>>51451695
>>51452074
I agree and I want to add that if it's on a regular basis (like in masochism) it should 'give' a small permanent bonus and larger temporary bonus that fades over time, but at a price of permanent health. The book of vile darkness actually has such thing that a masochist could sacrifice 10 permanent HP in order to scar his body to harden his skin for +1 AC.

>>51456417
In that book you can also be a cancer mage and get infinitely increasing daily STR (without increased aggression) and infinitely increasing AC (without bony plates).

>>51451611
How about the opposite?
>Spam same spell = -1 spellpower per spammed spell.
>+1 Per when you melee.
>DEX goes down when you dodge.
>STR goes up when you dodge.
>INT goes down every smart action.
>CHA goes up instead.

>>51451611

Depends on the game system, since damage and resistance work differently in different games.

IIRC GURPS has this option in Powers. It's just a variant on DR.

>>51451955

This, if they try to abuse it, turn it into body horror. They become immune to stabbing by being covered with a hard, immobile shell and they can't move anymore. They can survive drowning by not requiring oxygen anymore, but if they don't their muscles can't function. So if they get drowned they are just conscious and immobile underwater. Be more creative than me at it and you could end up writing a Cronenberg film.

>>51451611
For every point of resistance, they gain a point in a weakness.

>>51451611
It's not really that hard and you have plenty of options.

Scale how powerful it is, maybe there's a maximum limit to how much of damage you can resist or you can play around with how quickly the resistance builds up, it doesn't matter if you become stab-resistant if you're already bleeding out from all the stab wounds.

You could have the resistance be temporary, fading after a few minutes and needing to be built up again or have a limited range of resistance like only being able to resist one type of damage at a time or have a limited pool of resistance to spread among a few damage types.

>>51451611

Basically >>51451695, whether it fades with time or only one resistance can be had at a time (So if you adapt for fire resistance but then start getting beat up with swords you may resist cutting but when you do you'll be fire vulnerable again.)

>>51451664
Oh yes, Crawler.

>repeatedly stuck his hand into a nano-disassembler field; gained retractable nano-disassembler claws from it
>had venom that trumped super-toughness by breaking down amino acids in skin and tissue into corrosive compounds
>was immune to most weapons, and could deal with being shot in the head by anything he wasn't out and out immune to because of redundant central nervous system
>immune to damn near literally everything, wanted to fight someone that could still hurt him
>didn't want anything else
>just a masochist

>>51451611
They regenerate harder than before, like meta cooler, or some other thing I can think of

>>51456149
Fairly quickly meaning "when combat ends" or possibly even during a single combat encounter.

>>51451642
>Resistance actually takes the form of visible mutations (eg. thicker skin, thicker bones, maybe boney growths on their skin)
>Overuse risks turning them into a horrifying monstrosity of flesh

>>51464759
>Implying anyone minmaxing that shit actually cares

>>51464759
So basically Crawler?

Had an NPC in a game that was basically this. Precognitive adaptive regeneration. It reached about a week or so into the future and would finish growing in new adaptations less than a day prior.

She died. Her adaptation reached a point of no return when it registered that she would be encased in a truly staggering amount of explosives, and just kind of shut her down into a coma-like stupor to keep all of her vital systems in a sort of low-energy state to keep their function from being overly damaged by the explosion. Her powers always grew in just before they were needed, and this basically rendered her into a vegetative state at which point her brain shut off.

Instead of Nerfing it into oblivion like >>51463363
>Because I'm resistant to cold I now have a NPC follower dependent on me.
Just give them what they want. Exactly what they want, just expensive. Because it DOESNT MATTER. A character whose immune to harm or can become immune to harm isn't very effective in combat when they have very few damage dealing options because they blew their proverbial load on eventually becoming invincible.

>>51465063
So what you're saying is that we shouldn't make their regeneration useless because they're already useless in combat?
Oh I see! You mean that they already paid for their improved defenses over time by sacrificing a lot of resources at character gen!

What if the adaptive regeneration also adapted on a mental level?

The Regenerator doesn't like being hurt at first so the mind adapts to masochism and enjoying the pain.

As the Regenerator fights enemies, the mental toll that killing has slowly starts making him adapting to be more unhinged, not only not minding if the enemies die a particularly painful death but also much easier coming to the conclusion that violent murder is the way a problem should be solved.

Perhaps the Regenerator is a recent parent and taking care of a baby is quite exhausting, the Regenerator starts having an easy time just ignoring the babies cries and not caring enough to feed it if he doesn't feel like it.

>>51465585
>Perhaps the Regenerator is a recent parent and taking care of a baby is quite exhausting, the Regenerator starts having an easy time just ignoring the babies cries and not caring enough to feed it if he doesn't feel like it.
That's not how being a parent is like. Not at all. There's this thing called unconditional love, also motherly love if they're the mother. Which would get kinda weird if a baby looked at >>51451664
And thought "Mama!"

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Just because they can regenerate doesn't mean they can't die. Three easy steps:
>Make it expensive
>Make the regeneration speed is a separate cost.
>Make it so that it's WORTH IT to start out crippled but eventually become the juggernaut.