Originally posted by razsolo:
The only time her limits ever came up previously was when it was convenient for the story, otherwise she could pretty much magic anything out of her hat she needed to...
Yeah, that's pretty much my problem with 'magic' characters in the comic books.
If you play a magic based character in a superhero RPG, you write up a series of spells, and go with it. Even playing Zachary Zatara, in a recent game, I wrote him up with primarily a transformation / object animation power.
The White Witch, in her very first appearance, says it took her *hours* to prepare a dramatic interplanetary range teleportation effect, and, not too long later, she's teleporting an entire Legion cruiser, with zero preparation, and complaining that it's hard. Hard? You said it took
hours to teleport *yourself!*
Lightning Lad has the power to throw lightning. If he gets clever, he might be able to use it to lock up someone's muscles and paralyze them, or short out a control panel to open a door, or magnetize a metal object. And that's *cool,* when that sort of thing happens. (Granted, Garth hasn't exactly been much of an 'outside of the box' guy).
But magic-using characters are, too often, IMO, turned into plot devices.
Zatanna was introduced with the suggestion that her magical powers were mostly about animating and transforming unliving matter, like her father (and, later, her brother). Then it was said that she was best at manipulating elemental forces (air, earth, water, fire), changing her role on the team from 'not really Sargon the Sorcerer' to 'not really Crystal of the Inhumans.'
And then it was decided that the JLA had been mind-wiping villains for years, and, hey, Zatanna is a magic-user, so she must have been doing it, since magic can apparently do anything... (Despite it being arguably out of character for her, in addition to not what her powers were supposed to be all about!)
Now, I'm obviously totally biased about this sort of thing, since I've been playing D&D for three decades, and I'm used to magic having rules, even if they are 100% different than the 'rules' that govern science.
IMO, it's always a narrative failure when any character becomes a deus ex machina.
*Saying* the character has limitations, but then ignoring those limitations in later appearances, doesn't count.
As much as the idea of Dragonmage appeals to me, what little I've seen of him online suggests that he's 'incredibly powerful' and makes big explosions. Well whoopty-crapity-do. That's what we have Wildfire, Lightning Lad and Sun Boy for, isn't it?
A magic character, IMO, is best when it has specific 'spells' or tricks, such as the Crimson Bands of Cytorrak or the various stunts that Brother Voodoo used to perform. The more random 'whatever power the plot requires today' stuff gets pulled out of a magical character's hat, the more likely that character is going to get sidelined (like Mysa), depowered / killed (like Dr. Fate) or just flat out mis-characterized (Dr. Strange in the Avengers, suddenly unable to do any of the things he did casually as a Defender, because it would wreck Bendis' street-level plots designed to challenge people like Spiderman and Wolverine and Ronin and Echo and the rest of Team Ninja).
Taking this back to Tyroc (or Chemical King, or Kid Quantum 2, or other 'magic' characters with unspecified abilities), I'd rather see the character shortchanged initially by calling their power 'sonic powers,' and then, only in the hands of the actual Legion writers who know what they are doing, developed to allow 'quantum vibrational whatchamahoozie,' than have a situation like when the Rom the Spaceknight scribe had no freaking clue what Alpha Flight's powers were and had characters doing ridiculous things (Shaman flying, Aurora shooting wind blasts, etc.).
Calling Tyroc's powers, which might allow him to cause all sorts of freaky effects by manipulating vibrations and resonance frequencies (such as making things explode, freeze solid, burst into flames or shed light), a 'sonic scream' for the sake of simplicity might be a better choice, since Paul Levitz is not going to be the last person to use the Legion, and we've already seen how spectacularly a non-Legion-writing pro like Geoff Johns can mess things up...
Same with magic characters. Give a 'mage' a half dozen specific effects that she can use spells for, and then show her developing new tricks from time to time, in the same manner that Brainy can occasionally come up with a new gadget, rather than arbitrarily allow her to do anything the plot requires, even if she explicitly couldn't do that last week, and miraculously won't be able to do it three weeks hence, because it would wreck the plot...
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