Dante

I went Cardiac on my SS/Fire/Pyre Brute and it helps an awful lot. Yes, I have Consume but with the Cardiarc I hardly ever touch it now. The Uncommon will boost help the lower Resist values a little as well.

Of course, given that you can swap Alpha boosts in and out, you could always craft a Spiritual too and swap them in and out depending on what you need.

I had a great time both chatting and getting my hands dirty with some IC PvP practice. Thanks to all those who organised the meet and whooped my *** in the arena. I might have to give some serious thought to whether I still want to enter Pyralith against that lot.

I didn't know that there was a prize fund being collected but next time I'm around, I'll happily contribute something as well.

Glad you had a good first night. Here's to many more.

Welcome aboard Solar Punch. Welcome to the first and the best Superhero MMO.

Pretty much everything that needs to be said has been said. If you have any questions, the forums are very friendly and there are plenty of excellent guides out there as well as the Paragon Wiki of course.

Level up, enjoy the ride and if something confuses you, feel free to ask either here or in game. The community is mostly very friendly and willing to help.

I hope you enjoy yourself and find a home here.




BTW, Fire/Shield rocks. Be sure to pick up the Fighting pool some time, it stacks nicely.

Okay, the vampire was a bad example. But the point I was getting at was that the if the character has some mitigating reason for doing the 'evil' acts, then it can act to make them a sympathetic character just as the thief who steals for money can be argued to be worse than the theif that steals to feed his family. A character driven by species imperitives to fight, breed and consume is not the same as a character who knows what the 'correct' action is and chooses the opposite.

As for the Complete Monster? Well, maybe. I guess that what I see mostly in RP are Rogues, characters who do questionable things for money and their own empowerment. I might not necessarily want a completely reprehensible character (I tend to agree that these are loners and not very popular) but someone further down the scale towards the real 'evil' rather than the 'cheeky scallywag' that some Rogues can be. Just because the character does reprehensible things, does it mean they can't be sociable? Or are they mutually exclusive? How much is too much?

EDIT: To follow up on Spec's post, yes antagonists do promote good plotlines but their existence is limited. I've brought in evil NPCs to run plots before but only so that they can get their just deserts in the end. Would you say that it is possible to create an evil antagonist and keep them as a constant character rather than a throwaway NPC once that plot has ended?

There should be a few more after tonight. A few of us will be meeting up in PD to discuss our entry IC.

Interesting, I always assume that most folklore is common knowledge but that could just be me making assumptions again. I love folklore, it would explain why I have three Sidhe characters, a werewolf and two revenants. Hey ho.

Although I hadn’t intended this to be a discussion on what is evil, I guess that’s really what this is all about. Frankly, I have been having a whale of a time on a new character who without even RPing, I know is completely evil. However, I had no idea how I knew this so wanted to get other people’s perceptions on how they play their ‘evil’ characters. The other question I wanted to try and answer was whether such a character had a place in Union RP or whether he would come across as just another snarling, insane barbarian that ended up on a lot of ignore lists. Playing a cliché is just too easy sometimes and Rogues seem to be constantly in favour.

So far, I seem to have been able to narrow his ‘evil’ down to a few criteria:

1) He knows right from wrong. A bomb doesn’t ruminate over who it is going to kill (unless it’s in Dark Star) and the same goes for a robot programmed to destroy its targets. Evil seems to indicate choice, of knowing the difference between what is acceptable behaviour and what is not and choosing to behave in a way that is deemed illegal or immoral.

2) He doesn’t mitigate the acts with any sort of explanation or rationale. A soldier kills people as part of his job but his moral choice has been made by his commanding officer. Likewise, a vampire (seeing as they are the monster of choice in this thread so far) can point to their need for blood as being the reason why they have to eat people. These almost relieve the character of the moral burden of their choice and in the case of the vampire can make them a sympathetic character rather than a monster. Whereas real evil seems to know full well what they are doing and offer no explanation or justification for doing so other than that was what they wanted to do.

3) He enjoys it. This is a tricky one. I was going to add a fourth point: Insanity trumps everything, but Pyralith isn’t insane. I think there is a fine line between the cackling villain who laughs as he cuts up his victims and the illicit thrill of doing something you know is ‘wrong’. Real insanity has a disjointed perception of reality whereas an ‘evil’ character is fully aware of their actions and why they are doing them. Where is the line between a sane person choosing to do evil and the person who is mentally ill? It seems to be a fine line but I would argue that an insane person has the recourse of being declared ‘unwell’ and not ‘evil’.

It seems that being truly evil without crossing the line into insanity is a tricky one to walk. Cliches abound when it comes to villains so trying to get the balance right is going to be a real struggle. I shall have to try harder. Regardless of his choices, I don’t see any reason to remain unsociable as was discussed earlier in the thread. An archetypal mad genius would probably be reclusive but I don’t see why someone with the above qualities could not socialise. Hmmm… now I’m rambling but I’ve certainly got a lot to think about…

Karnac spoke to a few people, hoping to find out something about what had happened. Unsurprisingly, not that many were happy to see him. This area of Skyway was a stronghold for the Lost and there were many sympathetic to their ways of life, if not their obscure cause.

Beginning to lose patience, he began to make his way up the overpasses, leaping up to each one with a huge bound. If the observers could see him coming, he was on his way, speaking to anyone he could find.

Aha, found it:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...hlight=costume

Not the first time it's been suggested but I support it every time.

When I suggested it a few years back, one of the responses was that they would have to recode the costume change interface. As it is, the five costumes almost cover your screen so they'd have to alter the window so that it could either be scrolled along or make the costume pictures smaller.

Either way, very, very signed.

Karnac arrived on the scene only a few minutes after leaving his apartment in Founders Falls. The combination of his teleport device and his superhuman leaping meant he could cross the city far faster than public transport.

He idly strolled up to the scene of the crime, smiling and anyone he passed as if to reassure them that he wasn't a threat. What remained of the evidence didn't seem to suggest much to him. The scorch marks seemed logical enough given Frostfire's powers and he was familiar with the latent radiation coming from the marks left by the Lost's plasma weapons but something seemed to be amiss.

Brian was no crime scene specialist, but within the two years since his recovery, he'd seen enough of them to get some sense of what to expect. And for a fight involving multiple assailants it seemed too... clean. He took out his PDA and re-read the PPD report he'd requested. Something was bugging him. The same sense that bugged him whenever he walked into Perez Park for his daily meditation, especially the place where... he pushed the thought out of his head. He was a scientist and should approach it with a scientific mind.

"So... plenty of walkways and vantage points," he muttered, staring around at the overpasses, "so someone must have seen something. Something that explains how a gang of Lost took on one man and put him in a coma with barely a shot fired..."

Karnac's brow furrowed, barely perceiving the slow, ever presesnt transfer of energy to him through his feet from the earth below.

He'll head to the site of the incident, to see if there are any clues as to what happened. If there's anything that would explain Frostfire's coma, he'll look for that too.

*Dives in for the second time tonight...*

"I am not a hero."

Unfortunately, Brian Mackenzie's reflection disagreed with him. Standing over nine feet tall and almost the same again wide, his huge, muscular frame filled the dark green spandex outfit to create an imposing figure. The polished metal shoulder pads framed his form, matching the dark brown that was woven into his outfit. He didn't need them of course, since his recovery from the Devoured Earth had left him with skin as resilient as granite but they finished the outfit perfectly.

Despite his appearance though, inside he still felt like the timid, nervous genetics professor he had been back when he was 5' 9" and unable to open a beetroot jar without help. He glanced over at the television where the news report was talking about Frostfire's defeat of a large gang of the Lost and raised his eyebrows. He'd spent ages looking over the finest points of the Will of the Earth virus, he'd not spent much time reading on the Lost 'disease', it could prove to be a handy distraction.

Pulling his image-intensifying goggles down, he stopped briefly to bow towards the small altar he had grudgingly put up in his front room before stepping out of the door. And he did his best to recite the mantra in his head that he had taught himself.

"I am not just Brian Mackenzie, I am not just a scientist. I am Karnac, I am the strength of the Earth... I am a hero."

*Takes a deep breath and plunges in*

The Amber Banshee has signed up, there may be more coming just as soon as we can get a team organised.