There is no reason for each fable’s story to be the same, if people choose Janus then they will have shorter story and thats that. Remember the essence of COG is always “choices”.
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I will say PM is a bad fit ability for Janus since that is not anyway link to mythology. Even though this is story of different world but the purpose of using the name of real world myth is to have some small similarities, and PM is definitely not Janus. Also PM is considered trickster ability and you already has WuKong as trickster archetype, Zeus as a arrogant fighter type, Arthur is dark paladin, etc.
Another point is PM is not a real ability. Think about it, let’s say in a fight Janus increases the probability of Cloud missing the attack, but there must be a force to move Janus away or directly effect Cloud attacks.
If you really want to rewrite Janus ability, I would recommend “ Cause & Effect “ kind of like Final Destination. The weakness can be the same and you can still write the fight normally
Me personally, I like different characters routes feel different, so I am fine with shorter fight.
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My opinion?
Write yourself some short fight scenes with all the powers and go with what you think is the most fun and makes the most sense. What plays with the already-built story beats better? What power do you have the most fun writing? Which power lets the fight roll right out of your mind and into the story?
They all sound like viable and decent options. The most important thing, even before fan-base opinion, is what you find to be the best for the story you have in mind. I honestly kind of saw this kind of thing coming and in my mind, I just figured Janus’s fights would be rather one-sided and short.
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Personally I don’t mind a slightly shorter fight you can still make it interesting like imagine how stunned the enemy would be if we were always predicting their movement mid fight like ultra instinct and you can still get hit or overwhelmed we see multiple future time lines after all and some AOE attacks might be impossible to doge entirely or maybe us doing well actually hinders us in some way just to spittball some ideas its the writers choice ultimately and im cool with whatever just seems a shame to get rid of the whole path as is whatever you choose much support and cheering on my end.
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I voted for him keeping his current power but I can see where it would make writing the rest of the story way more complicated, since he would probably just end up skipping a bunch of plot points. The other options IMO make it seem like his power is just an “I win” button instead of making use of the fact that he has the highest intellect stat.
My idea for bringing Janus in line with the rest of the cast would be to lean into the doorway/gate aspect of Janus instead and have him be some sort of teleporting tactician.
Teleportation gives you a powerset as destructive on a large scale as the rest of the fables (for example being able to teleport an office tower on top of the praetors and dropping it on their heads) while keeping a similar weakness (he has to “see” all at once every different potential place a teleport target can go, and it’s enough information to cause hallucinations/dissociation if he teleports too many things in succession or tries to send them too far away).
It’s relatively easy to nerf/buff teleportation by adding rules so that he can’t just teleport people’s heads off their necks for example, or add range limits so he doesn’t just send Timur to the moon as soon as he spawns in. For the Haley plot point maybe she has Yoru/Kaizo held somewhere else so he can’t just instantly teleport them to safety, since he doesn’t know where exactly the teleportation target is.
My other teleportation idea was to have hi make portals (god of gates/doors after all) so that he, for example, puts a portal in front of a freight train and sticks the other end in front of the Dawn Praetor so she gets hit by a very fast and heavy locomotive, or redirects her attacks to shoot at cloudy boy instead. And he could still drop buildings on people by sticking a big one at the foundation and the other end on top of his target. Also gives him some funny hand-to-hand options like being able to portal himself to stomp on top of people’s heads like goombas.
Also, this makes the Haley plot point harder for Janus to instantly solve while preserving the same situation of having a hostage exchange take place. If Haley’s goons are holding Yoru/Kaizo up, putting a portal below them is not going to teleport them to safety since they would have to fall down for that to happen, and obviously putting a portal above or beside them won’t help while they’re being restrained.
I think no matter what writing Janus will be difficult because almost every other fable has enough raw firepower to solo a modern army, which means most of their solutions for problems will involve brute force, but Janus wouldn’t really feel like Janus unless he was abusing a power that isn’t directly combat-focused.
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Good point on the door way lore that idea isn’t half bad surprised it never crossed my mind. I can picture doc strange portal shenanigans like the movie supporting others and redirecting attacks.
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I don’t mind the change of power (the MP hasn’t been seen much), but I hope it’s handled well
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This seems to be the problem here, Janus’ power isn’t just OP, it’s thematically different from the other fables.
- Ishtar - Invincible Flying Brick
- Zeus - Lightning Bringer
- Lucifer - Gaslighter.
- Wukong - Shapeshifter with Weird Staff
- Arthur - Weird Swordsman.
- Pele - Living Volcano
All of these abilities affect the physical realm, even Lucifer’s (considering emotions come from the body) - in essence, they are material powers.
Janus, on the other hand, has abstract powers. They can see the future, therefore can also mold it to their will.
As Petrichor pointed out, changing the power isn’t necessarily the solution to your dilemma.
You must approach this the same way that writers approach Superman, or Contessa, or some other superpowerful fictional character I haven’t heard of. Most depict them as these extremely powerful individuals, but it’s the story that makes them compelling.
That’s why Janus is the most interesting fable to me. They had all the time to rule over existence, but chose not to - why?
The problem isn’t that Janus is powerful, it’s that you want their path to conform to what you’ve already written. Which isn’t a bad thing per se, but this becomes a problem because Janus is fundamentally different, as pointed out.
So the solution is that you either completely change Janus, turn their power from the abstract to the physical, like dsling’s example of teleportation - or, you embrace what you made of Janus, you lean in on their seeming invincibility, and you make one hell of a story path out of it.
This is ultimately your story, you write the best way you know how. I have been here since the beginning and I know how well you incorporate reader’s suggestions (like my suggestion of Ishtar’s weakness) whilst not losing sight of your vision.
That being said, if there’s a part of you that rebels deviating Janus from their counterparts, then by all means change their power - change whatever you want to make their path work for you. But if you’re primary concern is worrying about Janus being too OP to be unappealing, then let me say that most of us probably will still probably find their path compelling.
Great job with the current paths so far!
Erratum:
oh no.
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You forgot our dear Pele
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Walking Volcano? The fruit of love between a star and an electric stove?
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The problem with OP characters who appear to be superpowered don’t have a personality or opponents on their level (or that could be a threat). Janus still has their past and weakness to compensate, all things considered.
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I’m just spitballing here so I’m not sure if this would solve the problem or not. But what if Janus’ power wasn’t seeing the future as much as living some futures.
What I mean by this is that when Janus “opens the veil” what they are really doing is setting a fixed point in time to return to. That way, when they die, their soul returns to the point when the veil was opened with the knowledge of that failed future. While this would look like they’re seeing the path to the perfect future to an outsider, in reality it’s a good enough future thanks to throwing enough crap at the wall until something sticks.
This could also have some other interesting things connected to it. For example their weakness could be reliving these deaths again occasionally, like an extreme phantom pain. Of course if you count the time they rewind they could be far older than the conventional idea of time suggests, maybe making them older than humanity.
I’m not entirely sure how that would work narratively. Maybe make it so they only receive the knowledge of these failed timelines like a radio transmission instead of living it, but that sounds more shaky to me.
Whatever the case, I hope the author is able to find a solution.
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Dang that’s a pretty cool idea.
That… that’s actually kinda awesome.
Soo just like Subaru in re-zero, with his return by death ability
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See I know most people are talking about Janus right now, but I’m beyond excited for the Pele branch he’s my favorite fable 
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I was thinking more like a slightly different zero escape morphogenetic field, but your description fits better.
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Manipulating probability still has a chance to backfire or has limit since as they say ‘risk 0 doesn’t exist’.
Meanwhile ‘lock in’ is basically outright deciding the plot.
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I hate to rehash this, but as one potential option, you could always just replace Janus with a different myth. If Janus proves difficult to write the way you want, sure it would take longer, but you could.
I think many of us do like Janus though, I think folks would understand.
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wise point tbh, i think the problem also lies with how limited each fable is to certain skills e.g: janus = int, mokey king = pow, arthur = tech…etc, ishtar = cha…etc. if the player was given the freedom to distribute the stats among his favored fable as he wished all of this separate chapter for each fable could’ve been easily avoided