Balanced

Zombie Man is one of a band of agents dedicated to the holy purpose of battling ignorance. Part of his role in the ongoing struggle is City-related ignorance. He's not the only member of this shadowy cabal who posts here, either.

They will never rest as long as someone is wrong on the Internet.

This came up in the "All Things Art" thread, and after some discussion, David had this to say:

1. Do you favour the idea of being able to solo EBs/AVs/GMs, if so/not, why?
EBs, definitely. AVs, maybe, if you play a character tweaked to do so. GMs, only under very special circumstances*, for the most part. Mind you, I have no grief with the players/characters who can currently solo AVs and GMs, and don't want any changes to stop them from doing so.

2. Have you ever soloed an EB/AV/GM, and if so how did you feel afterward?
I have soloed most of the EBs in the game, including downgraded AVs, with my empath. (He also beat a GM solo once...but it was the Kraken, and he was level 50--see Lemur's talk about the purple code.) My reaction ranges from "Meh, that was dull" to "Another one bites the dust" to "I laugh at your pain, scrappers" (that last was after swatting Protean). It depends on the EB and my mood at the time.

3. Do you think the dynamic will change after the implementation of the Incarnate system?
Not really. Soloing the more powerful categories may become more common, but only at L50. The Incarnate boosts don't work if you exemp down at all. Soloing AVs and GMs will still be dull**.

*I would like to see a mission or set of missions in which your character gets empowered specifically to do battle with a giant monster or megamech. I picture a map with all the buildings, cars, and so forth reduced to about 1/3 scale, and all the destructible objects from mayhem missions included. Your goal is to take out a giant monster (with a model scaled down to normal size) that's threatening the city. The overall effect should be that your character appears to have been enlarged to giant size for the battle. Add in a bunch of temp powers--some ranged attacks, like Throw Car, and some melee, like Clobber With Telephone Pole, that do massive damage, but are flagged to only work on the GM in the mission. You also get a major damage buff to your regular powers, and an aura that debuffs the GM's knockback resistance.

**I have long felt that the big sack o' hit points approach to AV design is obnoxiously boring. I'd like to see them with more normal hit points, solid resistances, and a set of long-recharge powers that mimics a tray full of inspirations. So they pop purples to up their defense at the beginning of the fight, and use greens for one-shot heals when they start to get beaten down too far. Different AVs could get different mixes, tailored to their personalities. Tweak the numbers right, and AVs would remain just as much of a challenge, but the fight would be more dynamic. Plus, teams that currently have trouble overcoming an AV's regen could potentially wear them down--make it run out of "inspirations", then rush to finish the fight before they start to recharge.

Tiny question from the massive walls of text:

For Endurance, you seem to be looking chiefly at the character's ability to boost or restore their own health and/or energy, and at powers that would help them resist environmental effects (like Resist Elements or Temperature Protection). That seems intuitively correct, based on the system you're working with.

Why, then, is Absorb Pain on the Endurance list for Empathy? It damages the user, makes them briefly unable to heal, and doesn't restore any energy. Did you mean Healing Aura?

ETA: Also, when calculating bonuses from enhancements, how do you account for enhancements with multiple aspects. HOs should be pretty simple--they would count as one of each aspect. Set IOs might be more complicated.

From my in-game namesake:

Back when my drunken illusion controller, Djinn Rumi, could have two Phantasms, I referred to them as "Delirium" and "Tremens". I've also been known to call his Phantom Army "the ADD Brigade", but that's not character-specific; I use "Spooky" and "Fluffy" as general names for Spectral Terror and Dark Servant, too.

Great minds think alike, Doc...and so do ours.

Given the parallels, I think the two concepts could be merged. There are some conflicts, of course, the main ones being the differences in respawning and death penalties. It would take some lore work to get your advancement crunch to fit with the alternating play sequence I described, but I think it's possible. Maybe there's a psychic aspect to the zombie plague (which would fit with your Headcase critters), and the zombie collective "remembers" your role? Or maybe you can have multiple zombie builds and have the option to pick one every time you die.

(Maybe Steelclaw should have given the thread a more descriptive name. Ah, well, one bump won't hurt.)

Normally, I go concept first, name last. Occasionally, I decide to try a build, then come up with a concept for it, but the name still comes last. The exception is punny names--when I think of one, I often feel compelled to come up with a concept and build to go with it.

That's how I wound up with Djinn Rumi, Thinking Violet, Liberty Valence, Heir Power, and the Toothpick Fairy. Some of them still languish in the lower levels, but Rumi was actually my second level 50.

The problem is that zombie apocalypse scenarios tend to run their course very quickly once the walking dead reach a certain threshold. In real-time, it takes years to produce a new combat-capable human, and only minutes to hours to turn one into a zombie. It's not sustainable. Also, once the vast majority are zombified, they won't have as much to do. Plus, many people may not be interested in playing zombified characters.

To make things sustainable, you need to have a way for people to respawn their characters as humans. If we posit a sci-fi scenario, we can take a leaf from Eclipse Phase, and have mental backups that can be downloaded into newly constituted human bodies in safe areas. How about this:

The zombie apocalypse has already happened. The bulk of the surviving human population now lives in space, and a strict quarantine is enforced--the few remaining humans on the planet can't leave, and dwell in heavily armed enclaves. They haven't been completely abandoned to their fate, however; the human civilization in exile provides technology and material support. The biggest breakthroughs have been cortical backups and nanofabricators. The former creates and stores a backup copy of a human mind, and can download it into a "blank" body. The latter are essentially replicators--given raw materials, a template, and power, they can build practically anything (including blank bodies).

Given effectively unlimited ammo and massive fortifications, the enclaves are safe zones. Decontamination procedures and other treatments ensure that the zombie infection can't get started inside an enclave (though some early enclaves were lost to such catastrophes). People venture out of the enclaves to scavenge for raw materials (the fabbers can't transmute matter, so if you need rare-earth magnets, you need to fetch rare earths), fuel (the fabbers need power), and other supplies. They also go out on research expeditions, trying to determine the source of the infection and looking for a way to take back the Earth.

The storyline progresses as you level, eventually leading to the development of a counteragent. To be effective, however, the counteragent must be deployed in centers of intense infection. The late game features strike forces and raids into the heart of infected territory to do so; in addition to personal rewards, successful raids convey bonuses to the enclaves of the participants. The counteragent works, but will require many years of repeated raids to wipe out the zombies.

Mechanically, human characters go out on expeditions. If they get infected, a timer starts ticking down. If it runs out, or if they die, before returning to an enclave, they zombify. At this point, they have two options:

1) Play as a zombie until killed. Zombies ambush expeditions and attack enclaves, mostly. In non-PvP regions, there are NPC expeditions and enclaves. NPC enclaves can actually be overwhelmed, but PC enclaves cannot. Zombified characters level as zombies--effectively a second build for the character--and accumulate "grue". When the zombified character is killed, a cortical "sample" is sent back to the enclave. This sample enables the enclave to restore the character to a human body with memories of the fatal expedition (i.e. "no death penalty"). The human character benefits from the accumulated grue; it provides resistance to infection, as experience of zombie existence enables you to better avoid transmission. Grue is persistent; spend enough time as a zombie, and it will be almost impossible for low-level zombies to infect you. (Infectiousness increases with the level of the zombie.) This provides two distinct types of advancement--a powerful, highly skilled character who almost never dies might be acutely vulnerable to infection at high levels, for example.

2) Respawn. Your character awakens in a vat of nanogoo back at the enclave with no memories of the fatal expedition (i.e. as a death penalty, you forfeit all xp and rep gained before dying). The character's corpse rises as a formidable NPC zombie. If you hunt down and destroy your zombified prior body, you regain the lost xp and rep the next time you return to an enclave.

As an additional option for both PvE and PvP, there could be renegade enclaves that fight over certain scarce resources. Renegades could even mount "rescue missions" in exchange for supplies or favors (i.e. renegade missions).

Fun idea. I think a Zombie MMO could be done.