Balanced

If it's a reference to anything other than the symbol for iron, I would guess Ferro/Ferro Lad from the Legion of Super-Heroes. Iron Man doesn't have a metallic form, and Ferro does.

Thanks for catching the ones I missed. I must have been sleepier than I thought when I posted.

I'll hit a few that I see as references:

Mutant = X -->X-Men/the X gene
Claws = WX -->Weapon X (Wolverine)
Shrinking = PY -->Hank Pym (Ant-Man, Yellowjacket)
Infectious = IL -->Infectious Lass
Magnetism = MG -->It obviously fits directly, of course, but it also fits Magneto.
Weather Control = ST -->Storm
Military = NF -->Nick Fury
Light Control = DZ -->Dazzler
Water Control = AQ -->Could just be "aqua", but fits Aqualad best.
Detective = DC -->Detective Comics
Transmutation = FS -->Firestorm

I could be wrong on some of those, and I may have missed others, but that's my take.

Some of them are cute that way. That's one reason why I played with the example I did--Mutant is X and Claws are Wx. However did they get those symbols?

This is, after a fashion, how I think of the mission drop feature when playing redside. Beyond a certain level, I assume the character has acquired some Invisible Idiot ("out of sight, out of mind") flunkies, hangers-on, or even groupies, and he sends them to take care of something he doesn't want to mess with. If the character isn't high enough level, or has a background for which that doesn't make much sense, then he either subcontracted it or tricked someone into doing his dirty work for him. He only gets a bit of infamy and experience from arranging it; the bulk of those go to his flunkies. (Heroside, I treat it as calling in favors from other heroes, requesting help from whatever organizations the character has ties to, and similar things.)

A system for subcontracting jobs to your other characters seems awfully complex (and probably fragile) for the amount of good it would do. There might be a different way to expand on my approach, though. I picture a new "Item of Power" type item for bases (by which I mean an item that conveys a benefit to the entire SG). The item takes the form of NPCs that hang out in the base part of the time--they're flunkies, junior members, the Legion of Substitute Heroes, whatever is appropriate--and the benefit they convey is letting you drop more missions and/or increase the inf reward for dropped missions. Instead of going to the contact to drop a mission, you talk to one of the flunkies and get the option to drop any of your current missions. Once you select it, all of the flunkies currently in the base run to the exit and disappear, and your mission is marked completed. (If you pick an undroppable mission, the flunky will tell you that they don't think they can handle it.) The flunkies will stay gone for a while, then respawn in the base (a nice touch would be having some of them show up in the rez station, if the base has one). They'll have a cooldown period before you can send them out again (with various explanations like being off-duty or still recovering from the last mission).

Ideally, you'd be able to use a bit of the MA tech to design your own NPC flunkies. Also, certain pre-made flunkies, or flunkies with special effects beyond mission drops, might be unlocked or awarded by particular badges. Some possible "special" flunkies would be spies (who will mark mission objectives on your map), publicists (who increase your inf gain from a dropped mission), and sidekicks (who give you a temp power that lets you summon them in the mission).

Another idea would be tying it into the difficulty system. If you have your difficulty cranked up, you need more flunkies in the base to handle the mission. You might have to wait for all of them to come back, and they might stay out of the action longer for tough missions.

If you have a solo SG--or if we ever get individual quarters/bases--you could make them specifically your flunkies.

How long can the Redacted costume set take? It's just a bunch of rectangular black boxes overlaid on the model.



Well, the Science Booster does let us change a character's gender with costumes. If they're okay with that, it seems unlikely that they'd balk at an androgynous look. On the other hand, we've been asking for cigars for girls and shoulder pets for guys for ages....

I think it might be possible to do this with existing power effects, but it would be tricky, and have some serious downsides. It would have to:
Be a 1-degree cone,
Impose an immobilize (without knockback/repel resistance) on the target,
Create an invisible pseudopet at the far end of the cone (putting it directly behind the target from you),
Make the pseudopet target your target with an auto Repel power,
Impose an unresistable or super-high-mag immobilize on you to keep you from moving around and screwing everything up,
Disable all of your other whip powers for the duration (or maybe all of your other clickies, since many of them would interrupt the animation).

So, even assuming it could be made to work, you're immobilizing yourself and giving up all of your click powers for several seconds to...what? Drag one target into your Hot Feet/Burn area? It doesn't really seem worth it.

It would be awfully cool to drag someone off a ledge into a lava pit or something, though.

Bah, I say! I unlocked Kheldians with a defender. An almost exclusively solo Empath! You whippersnappers who "earned" your EATs with scrappers and brutes and such just haven't put in enough work. Turn in your squids and spiders at the door, and come back for 'em when you've paid your dues.

One notion I entertained on reading that was that ghouls might grant a temp power on defeat--an auto Taunt aura with a large radius that only works on ghouls. Even nastier, maybe they could grant a power that automatically summons a Teleport Foe-like pseudopet, which taunts once, then vanishes, passing its aggro to the summoner--that way, the taunt effects could stack.

Of course, if we're going to try to guess powers from flavor text, we can play with some other bits, too. "It's only when the shadows are deep and the tunnels are quiet that you should worry" and "you can't frighten them" could mean they have Shadow Fall, with its group stealth and massive fear resistance. That's probably reading too much into it. (Though I'm sure they'll have high fear resistance/protection of some kind.)

Hence, "every exploration badge he can without ever gaining any xp". I'm not trying to get every badge for him, or even every exploration badge, just the ones in zones he has access to. I was reasonably satisfied with his collection of city zone badges, but even some of those are simply unreachable without travel powers. Now that the hazard zones have been opened to him, I'll go after those as well. The fun is in finding ways to navigate extremely deadly territory and reach the badges without using any powers, not in the collection for its own sake.

I don't have a claustrophobic character, but I've got Agoraphobic Man. He's not actually a hero; he has access to the mediport system because he's an outpatient on an experimental therapy for a congenital immune system defect. He grew up in a plastic bubble and is terrified of the outdoors...so he's trying to desensitize himself by exploring the city. The only powers he uses are Sprint and his bubble (PFF).

His purpose is to collect every exploration badge he can without ever gaining any xp. I need to dust him off again and go after the hazard zone badges that he can access now.

Maybe dear old Dad got around? And got a deal on a crate of amulets for birthday presents?

Not at all. Mezzing them is the easiest way to deal with them, and the approach I usually use. They don't spawn fast, though, so just smashing them quickly and mopping up the vamps is a viable tactic.

Dispersion Bubble alone is a non-trivial team buff--not so much for the defense, which isn't huge on its own, as for the mez protection. People who don't play ATs without their own mez protection may not appreciate how much good always-on AoE protection does. Of course, with the prevalence of defense-centric IO set builds among squishies, the defense from Dispersion Bubble will help some characters more than you'd think. (It sounds like the defender in question had such a build.)

That said, the individual bubbles contribute a lot to survivability for most characters. Even if I decided to make a solo build that skipped them, I'd make a second build with them specifically for teaming. I wouldn't kick/yell at/rant about/insult someone who didn't take them for concept reasons, though. (Though I'll admit I might whine a bit in SG chat.)

Actually, in canon, Holmes is presented as almost preternaturally strong and fit. The specific example that comes to mind is in "The Adventure of the Speckled Band"--a visitor bends a fireplace poker into a curve in an attempt to intimidate Holmes. After the man leaves, Holmes casually straightens it again (a more difficult task than bending the iron rod in the first place).

As for fighting, Holmes battled Moriarty directly above Reichenbach Falls. Holmes explained his victory in that fight as the result of his mastery of a martial art--"baritsu, or the Japanese system of wrestling, which has more than once been very useful to me". The implication is that he is a trained fighter, and has had occasion to use that training on a number of occasions. ("Baritsu" never existed, by the way--it's speculated that it was a reference or typo related to "bartitsu", a mixed martial art introduced in England not long before the publication of "The Adventure of the Empty House".)

Watson, for his part, was a war veteran and an excellent marksman. Despite his role as an assistant surgeon, he was wounded in battle at least once in Afghanistan, and possibly twice. Whatever his personal feelings on violence, his service revolver saw use fairly often in the original stories. He was also a former collegiate athlete, though he feared his physical condition had deteriorated since.

Certainly, the movie was far more action-intense than the originals, but I didn't really find the characterizations that much of a stretch, and I rather liked the way they portrayed Holmes' advantage in a fight as the result of his ability to plan detailed strategies in an instant.

It's your prerogative to hate it, of course (I certainly hate some movies with far less reason than you seem to have here), but I disagree with your reasons for doing so. I suspect that you're bothered less by differences from the canon than by differences from earlier adaptations (which have no more intrinsic validity than this one).
</threadjack>

<ahem>
So, animated tails! At least one of my characters should get to ditch the piece of wire sticking out of her spine, and that's a good thing!

Sorry, they're really going to be undead, and I've been hoping to make the character pretty much since the launch of CoV. The concept is for a character in service to the restless dead, ordinary people who have fallen to war and crime, bereft of justice or vengeance. He doesn't coerce the dead, he merely provides the means for them to strike back. So, just remember that those "icky" creatures are decent, honest people being given one last chance to find peace.

And yeah...they're still icky. Corpses don't smell so good. I don't suppose you've got a couple of barrels of air freshener handy?

But then we wouldn't have Hami-Os, the Breakfast of Champions!

Actual availability of Hami-Os on Champion server may be limited. Check your local Auction House for details. Use caution when applying milk to Hami-Os. Do not taunt Happy Fun Hami-Os. Hami-Os are (or were) people (or person).

This is actually addressed in one webcomic that I know of--Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures. Somewhere on the site (I forget where), there is a diagram showing how jeans work with tails--basically, there's a gap in the waist for the tail, and a flap that closes over it and buttons down.

The comic also lampshades the "furry=deviant" foolishness at one point with a character who's a fangirl of humans. She points out that she's not attracted to humans, just fascinated by them.

Why would the other monsters have Ambrosia? (Or Essence of the Earth, if that comes up.) The fact that Hamidon and the Crystal Titan do nonstandard (or untyped) damage is a big deal in a dust-up like this; the other monsters are resistant to the normal damage types, but not to what these two can dish out, as far as I know. Really, the only question is whether or not the Titan attacks often enough to overcome the other monster's regen with its unresisted damage; I would guess that it does against most of them. Hamidon (as a whole, and probably the nucleus by itself) certainly does. So, the top two slots are probably:

1) Hamidon
2) The Crystal Titan

Beyond that, you've got slugfests. All else being equal, most of the monsters are going to be pitting heavily resisted damage against huge regen. If Jack and Eochai are anything to go by, monsters of roughly equal base level aren't going to make much headway against each other. Lusca might be an exception to this if she can bring all of her tentacles to bear on a single opponent; even so, the individual tentacles' damage isn't that impressive, and is likely to be the most resisted type for most of her opponents. On the other hand, if you pit a monster from one of the higher zones against one from the lower zones, the higher-leveled one has an edge, because their base level affects their total hit points (and, by extension, their regen). The Kronos should easily stomp the Kraken, for example.

As a rule of thumb, I'd rank the rest by their base level, with Lusca getting a slight bump for the extra tentacles. There are several indeterminate matches as well; I would guess that Deathsurge and the Ghost of Scrapyard are unlikely to be defeated by most of the others, simply because they won't stick around to get beat on. Similarly, the Arachnos Flier is likely to bubble up and fly away before getting smashed. On the other hand, they won't defeat monsters close to their level that way, either.

So, who's my pick?
*Holds up "Save Sally!" sign.*