Samuel_Tow

How about this: What if I took Soul Mastery and took... I don't know what they're called, the pastel darkness attacks from there? I'm sure there are at least three of those. Do you think that would be enough "darkness" to at least somewhat mimic the feel of a "Dark" character? Probably not, not really, but how close do you think it would get? Because that's kind of what I want to do.

Of course, that might also mean I'll want a secondary which doesn't require so many slots, and Willpower... Isn't one such secondary, regrettably. Regen is, though, from what I remember. Technicality may be in favour of it, though it does lack the psychic protection Willpower does... Even if healing should theoretically cover all damage types.

Again, I'm not sure which way to go, but I think Regeneration of Willpower is a good choice... Or Energy Aura? How about that? I haven't seen it brought up, but would that work, do you think? It certainly has the look down pat, though it lacks a "no pulse or fade" option for Energy Cloak. And it is kind of specific to energy more so than physical protection or elemental protection. And it does kind of have "psychic hole." I hadn't thought about it, though.

That's where I was in First Ward, as well. This isn't helped that they're introduced in the 11th hour and all of a sudden take on the role of major baddies. It is like Tami Baker says: "Oh, it was random person A who was behind it all along." All of a sudden *BOOM!* Character I've never seen walks in, dumps a load of "you should know this already" exposition and unleashes the Talons. They look like winged women, I kick their *****, go finish my arc and "O noes! The Talons are so scary! We are all doomed!" Why? They're winged women with bows and swords. How is that scary?

Now it's only towards the end of the whole story that I start to get an idea about WHY they're scary... And it's the T virus, essentially. The monsters aren't all that bad (unless they have rocket launchers grafted to their arms), but they infect you with madness cooties. Which is dangerous, I guess, but these women are treated like a military threat to be defeated by military means. No-one at any point makes any effort to strengthen the MINDS of himself and his compatriots, because clearly that's where the Talons are the most dangerous. Because they sure as **** ain't dangerous in combat. They don't look the part, they don't act the part and they don't feel like a major threat. Hell, the way the whole story of First Ward is set up, I find the Apparitions to be the much bigger threat because those are consistently show to wipe out entire facilities AND they have a plausible reason about how they're doing it - they're immaterial.

The Talons are badly presented, and I feel their general idea is misused. There used to be a time when City of Heroes had no mindless monsters. Everything which looked like a cliche mindless monster - Clockwork, Devouring Earth, etc. - proved to have a deeper, personal story. Even the seemingly card-carrying villains like the Circle of Thonrs and the Rikti had backstory and depth. The Talons have neither. They're boogiemen... Boogie women, whatever. Just try and think what story you would tell that's ABOUT the Talons of Vengeance. Mind you, not someone else's story that just happens to involve them, I mean a story ABOUT the Knives of Vengeance. It's like trying to write a story about the the air. It's there, and we can examine what it's made of, but it doesn't make for a very good story. Yeah, I know the History Channel has this awesome series about "How the Earth was made," but the Talons don't have enough material for even that, as they don't have a story to speak of.

They just exist, and they're bad, yo.

That's not a problem with the old blue-side content. That's a problem with trying to GET to the old blue-side content while being baragged with introduction missions which weren't necessary when the things they were introducing weren't seven years old.

Old blue-side content doesn't need to "go." It needs to be restructured so players are never forced into those padding missions unless they choose to.

That's not a bad way to spin it, actually. A passive resistance set as opposed to an active reaction set... Not a bad angle, though what concerns me with Invulnerability is that it's pretty much defined as physical toughness. That is to say, if I'm Invulnerable, I'm mostly resistant to getting beat up and shot at, but I get hurt bad by in-standard attacks. Fire, ice, radiation, psychics...

Hold the phone, that's something I want to think about. If this thing is godlike and so powerful, wouldn't it make sense it would be protected from everything? Granted, literally "everything" is impossible, but... How close CAN I get? That, ironically, is a very strong argument for Willpower - it protects from practically everything, including psychic attacks. Stone Armour notwithstanding, is there another set that's as comprehensive?

How do you figure? The thing is mostly punches, and it has one of the game's most spastic punching attacks - Dark Maul. I mean, I guess we could focus in Touch of Fear, Syphon Life and Midnight Grasp, but most of what my Dark Melee Scrapper ever did was punch people with darkness.

That's not to say it's a bad set, of course. My Dark/Dark Scrapper just has a really crappy costume. Curse you, Enforcer! I thought you were so cool when you came out! Ahem... That's not to say Dark Melee is bad. Far from it. It's a solid set, and it doesn't look bad. I just really wish the effects coloured better and could be made denser and darker. If Dark Melee looked like Darkness Control, I'd make the set without a second thought, but I guess I'll have to armwrestle Tunnel Rat and Dink over it. Possibly at the same time.

Dark Melee is one of those sets that, while my logical brain says it's good, it works, it's appropriate, my irrational brain just says "But remember how much you hated it last time!" and I just wind up playing something else. "Last time" was also my first run of Admiral Stutter, so that might have something to do with it.

Holy tangent, Batman!

Long story short: Dark's not a bad idea, but I'd have to think about it.

That's actually easily explained, and I have it both in Kim's story and in Praxis' writeup. She can't simply re-write the world because she is imprisoned and her power is contained. Why bother saying she has that much power when I'll never let her exercise it? Meh. Why not? Same reason I gave Stardiver a Fire Sword that doesn't deal fire damage. I like the story. Besides, I can use that as a deus ex machina where necessary. A lot of City of Heroes stories are pretty good about not trying to explain why our characters are able to do certain things and some of the ones that do explain can work pretty well if you swap a single plot point.

I know what introducing an all-powerful being does to a story, because that's one of my favourite types of stories to both tell and hear. That means I know a lot of the pitfalls and trust me - I won't fall into them. At the end of the day, I still need someone I can tell a good story about, and that means the story can't be broken. Trust me, I can spot a broken story

That's not true. I said my idea was for a Dark/Dark Brute, but that idea came up AFTER I made the thread and saw a few responses. I knew the first few responses would be for ATs I don't play, so I put this as a disclaimer, but what I HAD decided ahead of time was that I most probably wouldn't be making a Mastermind. To that effect, I should probably have excluded Masterminds from the list, but what's done is done. I didn't have a good reason for why I was doing it at the time, the prospect just "bugged" me, and I have since done my best to try and explain why that my be. The fact of the matter is I want someone with personal power, and Masterminds just aren't it. AT design is just like that. Now, that doesn't mean I couldn't be convinced to go with a Mastermind, but it would have to be an argument that clicks with me, and I just didn't find that. I'm not saying the arguments were bad - far from it - they just weren't for me.

Thinking about it now, I might have balked at a Stalker, as well, just because I'm still living in the past and feel like Stalkers are weaker than they really are. Kim proves just how awesome Stalkers can be, so my initial reaction might have been to resist, but I could have been convinced. I never gave Scrapper and Brute any real thought, and the reason I cited a Brute over a Scrapper is because I already have a Dark/Dark Scrapper in the 40s and because Inna - my previous god-powered alien - is a Brute.

I know you get the impression that I wanted to make a Brute and was just looking for an excuse, but the truth of the matter is I simply didn't want to make a Mastermind and that's all everyone suggested. That's why it came off like I'm going with my own thing. No-one that I recall suggested a Stalker or a Scrapper. I would have argued for those, because that's actually the big question - if I decide to go with melee, WHICH melee class? My breakdown of the ATs is still the same: Brutes are hard to kill first, Scrappers are dangerous first, Stalkers play dirty. You can make an argument for all three ATs, and there's nothing saying I won't change my mind and go with an Electric/Willpower Scrapper, instead. I don't have one of those. I have an Electric/Regen, though, but if I'm not making a Brute, then the need to use Regeneration is much less pronounced.

As I said, I most often work by a process of elimination. If I reject an offer, that's not a bad thing. Unless I say "yeah, I considered that already" - and I WILL if I have - then you're giving me a new idea I hadn't considered and me rejecting it is a GOOD thing. It narrows down the options and makes the choice easier. I don't know what I want to make, that's why I brought it to the forums in the first place. When I first came in here, what I had in the original post is quite literally the extent of what I had planned ahead of time. Yes, seriously.

I generally don't like to do this, but for Praxis, I'll make an exception. What are her motivations? We don't know. We can't know. I don't know, and I'm writing for her. I've found that when you start dealing with matters of above-cosmic levels of significance, trying to explain the rules or explain the motivations just serves to undermine the grandeur of it all. We're afraid of that which we don't understand and we respect that which simply works. To explain Praxis' motivations would be the equivalent of humanising her, and I don't want to do that.

The only thing that matters is Praxis wants to be free. WHY she wants to be free and WHAT she wants to do with this freedom, I don't know. I can't know - it's unknowable. And, really, it doesn't matter. If she gets free, we're screwed and nothing matters. As long as she stays imprisoned, then what she wants doesn't matter. It's the unknowable evil that's scary, and I like to be scared by my own characters occasionally

Which is precisely what I don't like. And I'm not a big fan of the Terminator, either. I mean, it's a good horror movie, but I'm much more a fan of Terminator 2, because that adds a lot more depth to the plot, between skynet, the cyborg duels, the questions of changing the future and so forth. Even Sky Net is presented as less of a one-dimensional monster since it's at least cunning to some extent.

If this were just about a killing machine killing people, it would be considerably less interesting, and that's exactly what the Talons are. They're generic villains with a generic reason to be villains. They're a missed opportunity in the sense that much more interesting villains could have been used, instead.

See, one of the things I really liked about the original City of Heroes mythos is that - say what you will about the execution - everything had depth to it. Circle of Thorns: Evil demon-worshipping cult of evil mages. Turns out they have a LONG backstory. Rikti: Evil dogmatic aliens. Turns out they have their own unique culture and society. Hell, even something as simple as the Hellions turns out to be patsies for a larger crime ring.

To make the Talons just card-carrying villains who want nothing but to essentially kill everyone for any reason they can come up with seems like a missed opportunity. They could have been actual characters. Instead, they're just NPC critters.

That's not a bad idea at all. That's kind of what I was after - less something thorny and veiny and complicated and more just... Well, consider that when I had Praxis show up in my story, she showed up as a ball of yellow light. So, yeah, I'll experiment with this, definitely.

Sorry I put you through this, NT As I said, I need to have something workable for Praxis before I can even long in to chat in-game. But your costume idea isn't bad at all. I'll get on that when I have some spare time.

To be honest, in this case I'm willing to break a few rules and make a few decisions in bad taste. I'd rather have Praxis be omniscient and omnipotent so that I can use this in my own storytelling. I'm well aware that I can't do that in-game, but again - I'd rather have her be all-powerful in principle and come up with ways to limit that power on a practical basis than just limit the scope of her power in general. Again, I intend for praxis to be a unique character among mine, so I can "cheat" in her favour more than a little bit.

That said, I really don't want to use existing deities. I generally don't like to use stories from myth or popular culture, but in this case that's twice as true because Praxis really isn't a "god" in the traditional sense. I treat her in those terms just because this is the closest concept to what I have in mind, but this thing is no god of legend. This is something else entirely that simply has, potentially, considerably above godlike power.

Besides, traditional gods come with a lot of baggage - worshippers, ritual, politics and suchforth. Praxis really isn't like that. If anything, she's more like a Lovcraftean horror, only prettier and SERIOUSLY limited in how much of her full power she can use. It pays to be "mysterious" to achieve that effect, and going off a known god - even if it's an obscure one - works against this.

That's actually a pretty good idea. The only problem is I kind of already did that As well, I want Praxis to be as "hands-off" as I can manage, which I know is not going to be easy when I'm going for melee. However, what I CAN do in this regard is not give her weapons of any kind, even elemental ones. Weapon sets in general act like tools, and this thing shouldn't need tools.

One would think this makes a good case for Masterminds, but thinking about it, most of those are weapon-based. Demons, as has been suggested numerous times, have that fire whip. Yeah, it's pretty cool and yeah, it's made of fire... But it's still a whip. I need something bare-handed at the very least. What this all makes a good case FOR, really, is Controllers and Dominators, but I want a character I actually want to PLAY, not just see looking pretty at character selection

I think you just did the best job of all selling me the on the idea of Electric Melee. I was originally planning to go with a kind of bright purple lightning, but Dark Electricity is even better. I can do Dark Electricity, right? I imagine dark blues and purples... And I could even alter colours between attacks, why not? Yeah, that was very well said

Really, the only reason I suggested regeneration is I don't have a Regen Brute. However, I can do Electric/Willpower, yeah. To my eyes, Regeneration and Willpower are pretty much the same set, really, at least in concept. Willpower can't be killed unless the user loses the will to live and regeneration can't be killed until some arbitrary limit is reached. I can spin either one either way, so if you say Willpower and I say Regen, that's an easy sell either way.

Mind you, I see them as much the same thing CONCEPTUALLY, they don't play the same at all. And I don't see them as LITERALLY the same thing, but more so as two sets I can spin to the same ends, though in different ways.

Brutes don't have any of the same Epics as Scrappers. What they have the same Epics as is Tankers. When villains got Epics and heroes got Patrons, Stalkers traded with Scrappers, Brutes with Tankers and Masterminds with Blasters. I don't know about the other ATs, but it should be fairly obvious.

Technicalities aside, you're absolutely right - who gives a crap about Dark Mastery when I have Soul Mastery? That's better, and it has Soul Storm! I really like that, actually.

Haven't missed a day, so I'll go check. Thanks

Then you'd have police and rescue workers who drive like grannies, too.

-That building is burning! Hurry!
-I'm hurrying! I'm almost breaking 20mph! What do you want from me!

I can imagine crooks on foot outrunning police cars if they drive like Paragon City traffic

I agree. Masterminds are awesome But then, so are Brutes, Scrappers and Stalkers... OK, maybe not as overpowered, but you know what I mean. It's choosing between them that's the problem, and the thing is I have a nasty habit of giving my characters undefined abstract powers when I initially write about them, which makes it hard to pin them down to a powerset.

That's a great idea! Unfortunately, it's so great I... Kind of already have it It's actually for much the same concept, as well, and born of much the same origin. My Energy/Willpower Brute is Inna, the heir to the energy of those creators I mentioned. Hers by right of birth, this energy will naturally flow to Inna, giving her the ability to do nearly anything. As with most things, however, she's not practically godlike because this energy is too scattered throughout the cosmos, thus she only has access to a fraction of it. But, yes, Energy Melee/Willpower was the choice I went with after that.

I'm not COMPLETELY against repeating powerset combos within the same AT, but... I have to draw the line when it comes to repeating a powerset combo for what amounts to the same concept all over again I do have a habit of stealing other people's ideas, but it gets kind of sad when I start recycling my own.

That said, you're not too far off from where my head has been going. A melee set using energy doesn't have to be literally Energy Melee, as Electric Melee also works. It's a bit less eldritch, but it does have that tasty Lightning Rod to make up the difference. I don't think I can quite replicate the concept of Willpower, though I have a slightly different interpretation of the concept. To me, Willpower is less John McLane tough and more someone whose existence is defined by a power which he needs the will to maintain, thus this someone CANNOT be killed unless his will is broken. Having a goddess whose power comes from her will to exist is good on the one hand... But then I remember something else, which might actually change the name of the game:

I suddenly remember that we're not describing and defining the power of Praxis. Her power is indescribable and unknowable. And we'll never know, because she CANNOT be set free. What we're describing is the power of her avatar in the physical world, and I have no problem at all with making this avatar able to regenerate from any injury. It simply depicts Praxis' ability to maintain her projection irrespective of bodily harm. Yeah, it does limit the variety in her abilities somewhat, but I hope I can offset this with some kind of spectacularly-coloured form of Electrical Melee. Or, hell, even Energy Melee, why not? I only really have two characters like that.

*edit*
I should note that Regeneration's single-minded focus on... Well, regeneration might actually play to concept. See, this is a being of infinite patience and infinite resources. She's not going to care about protecting that avatar. You break it, she makes a new one, and so on until you die of old age, because she is eternal. So while it might seem like Regeneration's lack of actual protection abilities would be a problem, to me it just says that the owner simply doesn't care about the avatar's protection. The avatar doesn't feel pain and it can simply be remade if broken. It makes sense, and I actually rather like it

*slaps head* Of course! Regeneration, why didn't I think of that? Dark Regeneration can work wonders, and it would be an excellent powerset. Hard to hill, hard to keep down, will always return if destroyed. That's actually BETTER than Dark Armour, since Dark Armour relies on draining power from enemies to a great extent, which Praxis shouldn't need.

The real kicker is Praxis should, theoretically speaking, not need anything. As I mentioned before, she is a higher being that exists beyond the bounds and limits of our entire reality, and was powerful enough to damn near overwhelm the entire race of creatures which made everything. She doesn't need anything but to be free, and any people she corrupts along the way are just obstacles removed.

To be honest, the reason I gave Praxis a cadre of literal gods as servants is more to push her concept and underscore her power than it was to give her a meaningful tool to act with. I also want to make those gods as actual characters, and I want to give them some degree of independent thought and unique personality. I wouldn't focus on them, they're sideways of the real concept, because Praxis IS with or without them.

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On a side note, yes, I would avoid using horns and other demonic imagery. I'll try to shoot for something very simple, actually. I want less overt menace and more a feeling of unknowable power, something which looks like what we'd expect to see, but doesn't actually make sense when you think about it. I'd probably go for one of the mouthless faces, but I'm not sure what headgear I want. Hmm... Didn't the Carnival have those glowing head pieces?

I don't disagree with you, but it looks like I'm just not able to express myself very well. That's my fault and I apologise. I did find a clip from a show that long ago served as my inspiration which I wanted to share. However, since it's not a YouTube video (all the ones there seem to be in Spanish or German), I can't give you a link with a time code. Still check out this episode and just fast-forward to around 17 minutes in, that's where the portion I'm talking about starts, more or less. Without giving too much information away, Suul (the blue guy, and the namesake of the Gaussian boss Su'Uul) is a sorcerer of considerable power, and thus ruining the future that Kanaletto (red bird beak guy, and also the namesake of Gaussian's Gen. K. Alito) is an immensely powerful being plotting a plan to free himself. The line at the end: "I am not as powerless as you think!" is more or less what got me interested in this kind of concept to begin with, way back in... 2007? 2006? I forget.

Given the above, what I have consistently failed to express is that I don't foresee this "goddess" acting like a traditional god, which is to say gathering followers and having them do her bidding. This "thing" cares for no-one and needs no-one, and if at all possible, will default to her own power directly. She is the three-dimensional player in a two-dimensional game, able to reach around the walls through the background and foreground, limited only by the bonds put on her power, but able to cause unimaginable devastation if she strains hard enough even through all her restrictions.

What I want to express through Praxis is essentially infinite personal power. I did mention servants, yes, but these are not what defines her power. There is nothing too common or too low for Praxis to do personally, because she IS all-powerful and all-seeing. Consider, for instance, the sort of things that Bruce Almighty used his own divine powers: For the most part, it was to make a Mexican stereotype climb the fire escape of his building and hand him a freshly-made cup of coffee.

Praxis is a creature without shame or pride, and a creature who places absolutely no value on anything within any aspect of our world. I don't really have a plan about exactly what she's after aside from being "free," because I will simply never allow her to BE free. If I did, that's an instant game over for everybody everywhere. This thing is more a cosmic force than a single being, as any time I give her a physical representation, it's just an avatar of her power. If it's destroyed, another one can be made eventually. That's why she doesn't need servants - because that avatar is her tool of interaction with the world.

See... I'm making it both very generic and yet very specific... Which is why I don't have an easy answer In other cases, I might not be so finicky, but this case is special. This one is... A bit different from what I usually do.

I don't really have a problem with the concept of hitting people, really. This is hardly the first divine, ridiculously powerful being I've made, and the previous one (still ambitious, just not this much) was an Energy/Energy Brute. So that concept in itself isn't a problem. What I dislike about Dark Melee and Dark Armour is that... To be honest, they're ugly. Very ugly. If the powersets looked less like just smoky punching and more like they were using the power of the netherworld via shadowy tentacles, softer hits with more dark effects and so forth... And if they looked more like Darkness Control, then I'd go with them without a second thought. Dark Melee, especially, just looks so pedestrian.

Then again, I may not need to go with Dark Melee at all... Energy Melee, as someone suggested, is pretty dang cool, even if it's still a bit on the "common" side other than Lightning Rod, and I really don't have nearly as much of a problem with Dark Armour, or haven't since Cloak of Darkness was given a No Fade or Pulse option. Of course, that robs me of Dark Regeneration and Dark Armour isn't exactly endurance-kind without it, but... That's an option. And Electric Melee even has quite a few non-direct attacks.

That's still just a concept, though. Like I said, I don't mind going with a Mastermind, but I really can't justify explaining any of the primaries as just aspects of the goddess's power. For instance, if you take a Control powerset, the inevitable pet is just a walking, punching version of whatever power the character is using anyway. That's awesome, and it would be perfect... Except both ATs that use Control sets are pretty much squishies, and I DO NOT WANT THAT. I've tried. I've tried playing Controllers... That didn't last long. I tried playing Dominators and that wasn't too bad, but nowhere near as fun as Brutes. Not anywhere near as ego-boosting, to boot, and being "unstoppable" is a large part of what I want for this goddess.

Like I said - the options are many and varied and I really don't have any solid arguments on the matter. Please don't interpret my method of character creation as me just shooting down your ideas. That's far and away not true. My primary goal is to get a working idea, and the process of exclusion works almost every time. Figuring out what I DON'T want to use is almost as valuable as figuring out what I DO want to use.

I misspoke. You're right about the Furies, in that we don't know enough about that. What I meant to say is I don't like the TALONS as a concept. The Furies may well have their own personalities and motivations, but the Talons, as presented in storyline, are just one step removed from zombies. They have something they have to do and they're gonna' do it. And if they can't do it, they'll up and die. That's actually a plot point in Dark Astoria.

I guess I could see this for the grunts on the front lines since, like that Knives woman says "I kill five and ten more appear," so it's easy to assume the grunts are expendable, but at least the Mother Keres could have shown some potential intelligence. No, it's the same indoctrinated drivel as the rest of them. It just seems like a wasted opportunity, honestly.

The pack was free the moment it was released and stayed free for a week or two. Then it was sold for 400 points for about a day, after that it was taken off the Market for something like a week, then sold for... What was it? 240 Points?

If we got a Staff Pack for free for a while, then it was made purchasable, I'd be all for it.

See, this is something I said as early as Issue 6 - trying to get players into PvP who don't want to PvP, but are there for PvE rewards is a mistake. All this does is get players who want to AVOID PvP and will get angry if they're killed while making PvP players come off as villains for killing them. That practice of getting people into PvP zones who don't want to fight other players, thus forcing them to do something they don't want, is responsible for a LOT of the bad blood around here.

You're wrong. Police Stations started showing up in Paragon City when detectives first showed up to hand out Police Scanners for Scanner/Safeguard missions. This was Issue 8. Police Stations as a building with an interior first showed up Issue 7 when City of Villains received Paper/Mayhem missions, where they served as the interior for the jail break side mission.

I believe the Uber Guy is right. These things first showed up as places to raid, which justified the sirens - the building was on alert. They simply copy-pasted the interior wholesale, sirens included. I never liked those sirens, myself.