Lycanus

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  1. Lycanus

    Kraken vs Lusca



    "Me versus myself?? Okay...hmm, I wonder if I grab myself through a wall? People don't go through walls when my tentacle grabs them...Well, unless the wall breaks, but if the wall doesn't break then I just keep pulling and pulling and banging and bashing and they never pass through the wall...then I have to get another tentacle to get them to go around the wall...oh, oh...and don't forget to desummon the first one, because they don't like to let go...or is it I? anyway...and then you have a tug o tentacle war and that's annoying....I don't think the prisoners like it either and....ooo, I see Naiki over there! Bye!! Naiki!!! I'm over here! Did you come to find me?! SQUEEEE!!! So cute."
  2. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Haze3k View Post
    Yeah well, the APP's they gave MM's access to are screwed up anyway. There's way too many ranged attacks in them(specifically with Field and Heat). MM's already have ranged in their primary(and so many skip them). There should have been a bit more melee. I thought the point of APP's was to round out a character a bit more. Maybe they could retweak those at some point.
    there are some of us who feel that the APPs were designed the way PPs should have

    like the fighting pool...those powers would be serving the original purpose more if blasters, controllers and defenders got more benefit out of them than a tank or scrapper would

    as it is, fighting is mostly used by melees to round out their s/l and rarely if ever used by the squishies to fortify themselves, which was Tough and Weave's original intention

    anyway back to the undead and MM question

    yeah, MMs have the only primary where you can ignore three of its powers and still be very effective at the game...that's the sort of design I'd expect from a secondary power set...and even then, I mostly don't end up ignoring large segments of my secondaries either
  3. Quote:
    Originally Posted by SA7_Grail View Post
    Sure, but if MM attack powers make up a third of the set, its pretty important they aren't the same as EPP/PPP powers.

    But as for the main thrust of the set?

    Certainly this; the set feels really derivative and your need for undead soldiers can be solved with the above, and, the need for ancient warriors and heroes can be solved with necromancy. They may not look heroic, but its really not that challenging to make a backstory for a heroic necromancer, its really no different than a hero with Dark Miasma or Dark Blast.
    The only reason I hadn't suggested that was because the MMs generally appear to be designed not to resemble existing villain sets. The Croatoa/Boat spirits were my first thought and discounted them because they already exist.

    Then I thought of the Spirit Army in LotR and the undead army in Dresden Files
  4. the "symbiote" has always been a misnomer, probably by someone who had limited biological understanding
  5. Quote:
    Originally Posted by SA7_Grail View Post
    You do realize you get Power Blast and Energy Torrent in Field Mastery right?

    http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Field_Mastery
    immaterial to the topic, the attack powers are secondary to the main thrust of an MM set
  6. right now all we have are the rotting, skeletal knights, zombies and liches...I'm wondering if it would be possible to broaden those out some

    spirits a la Lord of the Rings, mummies, ghost soldiers, etc

    the only problem I'm looking at is in the vomit attacks...one of the things I'd like in a new variety of undead is to have something other than the vomit attack...perhaps not change it mechanically, but alter the animation to something just as lengthy...

    what we got is good for Evil Dead/Army of Darkness style undead types

    but if we wanted to do a mummy villain, they'd be rather too wet

    if you wanted to a person who called the restless spirits of fallen heroes (now that we can start with heroic masterminds), it's even worse

    Actually, a fallen heroes MM would be interesting:


    1 - Power Bolt
    2 - Restless Soldiers
    3 - Power Blast
    4 - Anchor Spirits
    5 - Energy Torrent
    6 - Fallen Warrior
    7 - Banner of Valor
    8 - Ancient Hero
    9 - Ancestor's Blessing

    Restless Soldiers - summons up to three semi-translucent soldiers to fight for you, random appearance, two soldiers, third is an officer....soldiers have rifles and a rifle butt melee attack, officer has a pistol and a sword...possible leadership on upgrade (but he'd die fast being a minion)

    assortment:

    1770s-1850s - muskets and cavalry sabre
    1860s-1930s - rifles and cavalry sabre (Turkish officer with scimitar possible)
    1940s-1960s - rifles and marine sabre (Japanese officer with katana possible)

    Fallen Warrior - summons up to two warriors wielding bows and melee weapons (swords, maces and axes)

    Chinese army, European knights, Japanese samurai, etc...the cosmetics wouldn't affect the mechanics, though using katana and broadswords would be unlikely since it creates animation issues possibly

    Ancient Hero - tank style meleer....Greco-Roman, Viking, Asian, other...ancient culture....Heracles, Susano-O, Beowulf, etc...possibly the new street justice set of moves
  7. Lycanus

    Ghost Story

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Forbin_Project View Post
    Sigh, don't have a group to game with anymore. Moved away and haven't found anyone new. But I still buy games that interest me.
    I have a group that I can't get interested in playtesting my settings for me.....

    and unfortunately, I'm only a good GM face to face, on PbP I suck...which is weird, because my writing is quite a bit higher scale than my speech
  8. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Anti_Proton View Post
    I give you the long-dead "It must be Thrown!" thread. Seems to be along the same lines.

    http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=240853
    and here was mine:

    http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=264226

    complete with video of an anime character tossing random stuff around
  9. seriously, I've been one of the people repeatedly suggesting this as well....

    would love to be able to throw different things...that was one thing that CO had that was entertaining, even if the rest of the game gave me a headache
  10. Quote:
    Originally Posted by BigBoss Eyepatch View Post
    Im down with this, different objects would be awesome, heck Ive been stood on sand and done hurl and instead of blasting my target with a cloud of harmless sand, no, he got a chunk of concrete...

    so from my perspective I wouldn't give a monkeys if Im in an office building and suddenly a forklift gets tossed at the enemy.
    Let me throw a barrel at him!
  11. Lycanus

    Ghost Story

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Forbin_Project View Post
    Enjoyed the new novel and I also picked up the Dresden Files RPG. I love the commentary in the margins between Harry, Billy, and Bob. They have me constantly laughing.
    we played a campaign of that recently

    I played what originally was going to be a shinto-Greek flavored ghost-whisperer but when our sorcerer went AWOL turned into a full out wizard...

    I had...warden issues....not the least of which being that none of them would soulgaze me to prove that I WASN'T a warlock and stuff kept happening with my character's brother making it look like I had an army of yakuza mooks at my beck....annoying
  12. Lycanus

    Alphas

    can't read this title without thinking "William and Georgia"
  13. Lycanus

    Ghost Story

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by docbuzzard View Post
    The latest Dresden Files book came out Tuesday. I finished it yesterday.

    I'm surprised there's not been a thread yet here.

    No spoilers, though I will comment that there was something in the book that made it pretty obvious that Butcher does play CoH.

    Good book, and not the end of the series.
    yeah, he's mentioned he plays DRESDEN in CoH
  14. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Olantern View Post
    I've noticed this about alternate history/continuity stories in general, not just in What If ...? and other comics. For instance, "Nazis win World War II" stories are common, while "World War I never happens" stories are rare. I think it's because, like any other kind of story, such a story has to have conflict, and it's difficult to have a conflict about a "changed" reality unless that reality itself somehow threatens the characters.

    Examples from comics that break this mold include DC Elseworlds stories that are more or less transplantings of their existing characters to other settings (think "Gotham by Gaslight") and an interesting What If ...? special from a few years back that included a Soviet Fantastic Four, Daredevil as a historical, manga-like figure, and Captain America fighting in the Civil War (with a really neat outfit and interesting uses of Bucky and the Red Skull). There was also a series of What If ...? one-offs around the same time that more or less restricted their scope to single characters, which made for far fewer world-ending messes.

    Oh, and my favorite What If...? story of all time, "What If Dr. Doom Became a Hero," is also an exception to this rule.

    As you can tell, unlike a lot of forumites around here, I like alternate history stories.
    I'm writing a novel right now where one of the setting big-bads is the Empire of Myanmar, which rose out of the end of World War II to take over most of South East Asia, South China and (within the last 30-40 years) much of India

    Soviet Union collapsed due to economics and Warsaw Pact sort of stayed together, but the entire collection of Warsaw Pact countries has devolved into various civil wars...with nuclear weapons in Russia that everyone's afraid will get launched eventually

    the US has three States in Asia: Kyushu, Okinawa and Shandong...a strong part of why they're US territory is because Burma is afraid of the US and having US soil in the area made them hesitant to attack that way

    the strongest countries of the "Free World" are US (of course, being that the author is American), Free China, North African Alliance (focused out of Egypt) and Australia (which received an upswing of power when nuclear energy became more preferred since they have a lot of the deposits required for the fuel)

    other political elements that are going to be important:

    Avalon, a group of basically modern paladins with mercenary as a cover

    Psyche, provides financial and social support for the world's hidden psychic community

    Path of the Golden Dawn, a secret society that has devolved into seeking power for power's sake

    Yomi, originally an extradimensional disaster shelter, now home of the Demons, oldest known sentient Terran species

    Nirvana, an extradimensional colony, now home of the Gods, another ancient sentient Terran species

    Yomi and Nirvana rebels, who want to overturn their leaders' policies of fitting in with humans and go back to being what they are, the Immortal rulers of the planet...and to go back to trying to kill each other as well
  15. Lycanus

    Fairy Mastermind

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Remaugen View Post
    I can see easily Red Caps as a villainous alternate pet set for the full on heroic Fairy/Pixie pets. . .
    the reason I said no red caps is not because they wouldn't fit thematically, but that in the game Lore, they're too independent for me to see them as a power set summon.....Lore summon certainly...but not a power set
  16. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Captain_Photon View Post
    Is this in any way a surprise? It may be the least out-of-character feature of this premise.

    Also, wow, a What If...? that doesn't inevitably lead, from even the most trivial of background changes, to the end of the world? That's unusual.
    I've seen a couple like that....one was "What if...Wolverine, Agent of SHIELD." where Wolverine gets tapped by SHIELD before the X-Men and ends up taking over for Nick Fury after a successful assassination attempt by Hydra remnants (or at least a Baron Strucker android) killed the Colonel....

    the world ends up much less chaotic, and much more mutant/super friendly than it ends up with Charles taking the mutant lead



    though I should notice that apparently at the end of 114, the kids get back to Earth to find that it had been overrun by Sentinels
  17. ....What if #114

    heard about it online and had to look it up because of the last of the new characters I'm going to mention

    basic premise, at the end of the Secret Wars, the heroes and villains fail to return to Earth and are stuck there

    they end up have kids who form a new avengers:


    Wolverine and Storm's daughter: Torrent

    Thor and Enchantress's son: Bravado

    She-Hulk and Hawkeye's son: Mustang

    and

    Captain America and Rogue's daughter: Crusader

    who can fly...has super strength....knows how to use the shield....and is apparently worthy enough to wield Mjolnir


    ....

    ....

    ....

    I'm not sure whether the concept is awesome or Mary Sue

    http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/earthbattleworld.htm
  18. Quote:
    Originally Posted by ebon3 View Post
    Yep, 1st Ed Unearthed Arcana - It had the barbarian, thief-acrobat, and cavalier (of which the paladin became a subclass instead of being a subclass of the fighter)
    but it is also true that all of those appeared in Dragon magazine well before Unearthed Arcana was released.
  19. Lycanus

    Fairy Mastermind

    well, Fairys come out Faerie which is Old French for describing the supernatural realm and goes as far back as latin words describing the Fates...the Irish referred to them as "the Sidhe"

    this may have also been confused with such terms as "The Fair Folk" used to describe the fae

    "The Fair Folk" is used because people in general do not want to insult the Fae/Sidhe, because they are well known for being dangerous, powerful and easily provoked

    Faerie themselves are not what I would call either good or bad...the collected stories about them do not have them responding in ways that are easily predictable if you stick to common conceptions of good and evil.

    Fae are dangerous, and that is about the most accurate description you can get

    that said, a fae summoner would be interesting...given game lore, I'd avoid the Red Caps, but having others would be interesting

    knockers and goblins or maybe pixies for minions, not sure for lieutenants, maybe fetches or such...and the problem we run into is that the most bad-*** fae are the fae ladies, and though I doubt we'd get a full out fae-queen as the boss summon, I could see a fae lady

    question would be: summer or winter?

    you'd almost have to split it into two power sets to do it right.

    A summer set with fire and plants and a winter set with cold and dark

    of course, the fact that this, done right, just about guarantees a female minion might get this put down


    they still haven't given us female ninja or mercs yet
  20. I wonder how hard it would be for each tileset to have a select group of "things to hurl" for SS hurl
  21. Quote:
    Originally Posted by TwoHeadedBoy View Post
    If I die or someone else dies, so what? It's not like they can never play their character again.
    Because when some people die they get annoyed. When people die for something that had nothing to do with their choice, then many people are even more annoyed.

    My death is inconsequential, there is no death penalty in this game worth mentioning. Other people care when they die, especially for no reason.

    My fun should not come at the expense of another's fun.

    And "they should have built better" or "should learn to deal with it" or "there's no real death penalty" or anything else isn't a worthy answer for if my actions caused someone else to die and they found it annoying and since I can't predict when they'll find it annoying easily, I prefer not to cause any death to my teammates

    if I'm on a PuG and people are dying left and right, I'm less likely to have fun, because I'll feel guilty each time, though I won't comment since I know there are people who prefer that

    but it's not a playstyle I'm comfortable with outside solo....and you can get groups in solo just as large as teams...that's what the +4 x8 is for....
  22. Quote:
    Originally Posted by TwoHeadedBoy View Post
    There is no right or wrong way to do that, and for you to suggest that you are the "ultimate player," which is sort of how you're coming across right now, is just ignorant and self righteous.
    I said "our ultimate" and was careful to say "our" in order to specifically limit it to our playing philosophy.

    and as to your answer...I do not go off on my own in group play because I do not feel I have the right to put other people at risk....as long as it's my own neck and no other at risk, fine, I am not got going to indulge that desire when amongst others who may or may not appreciate it

    and yes, I'd love it if Fallout and Vengeance were replaced with something else, but going back to look at my list of suggestions, I think I may have complained about them more than once, but I don't think I've ever called for them to be removed because I know people play with them...

    I just don't understand it.

    which is to say, I admit that some people do not have my own playstyle and do not find it as fun to do things the way I do, and thus, I will play the way they desire to.

    which is also one of the reasons that I rarely if ever PuG...

    and the reason for the limits is because this game, by and large, is too easy
  23. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Edana View Post
    Hence '+Max flyspeed'; the +defence is a nice touch, though it makes hovering on afterburners a rather big survivability bonus for being completely stationary 6" above the ground.

    Are there any details on the jump attack?
    if it has significant KB, my SS brute might be taking it
  24. Quote:
    Originally Posted by McCharraigin View Post
    What kind of scrapper? I know all the builders of uber builds will cringe in absolute horror at what I am about to say, but in my experience, you might be able to drop Weave.

    I know, I know..you don't believe me....

    Lisa backs out of the thread before people can throw rotting prunes at her.
    Indeed, scrapper doesn't need as firm mitigation as a tank if the team performs right.

    I'm ambivalent on whether a satellite or torpedo scrapper needs mitigation more

    the satellite is going to be grabbing leakers, clearing minions around the tank and pretty much acting as second-tank....so they might most often catch the aggro over-flow when doing a room aggro, in which case they need the mitigation more

    the torpedo is tracking specific targets within the field (status effect types) and is less likely to be facing hordes...but they're going to be stealing aggro more often since they'll be further away from the tank

    if you're running the dragon formation, (claws-two scrappers/brutes on point, body-tank to catch leaking, wings-support buffing/debuffing, mouth-ranged providing artillery) then Weave is a must for the claws probably.

    but yes, scrappers have more flexibility on that than tankers and brutes do

    I am wondering about the leap attack from Superleap...I might see if I can take it for my ss/wp brute depending on whether it has enough KB to it
  25. Quote:
    Originally Posted by TwoHeadedBoy View Post

    Dying isn't even that big of a deal in this game. Sometimes it can be fun to get in over your head and test your character's limitations. The only way to find out how much you can handle is to bite off more than you can chew.

    After you start to play this way and find out your character can take the heat nine times out of ten, it becomes addicting. You'll constantly be testing your limits. A lot of the time it works out great for you and everyone involved. Other times one or two people die, and you utilize vengeance. Other times, you die too.
    Indeed, it is personal preference.

    I prefer to test my limits, bite off "more than I can chew" as well.

    If I'm alone, fine.

    And yes, Keyes (which I have yet to do, unfortunately, circumstances always get screwed up when I try to get a trial, plus been leveling a brute a lot recently), and Apex have designed things that pretty much guarantee death.

    Two situations where death is less than unexpected do not warrant putting in powers which encourage sloppy play in the rest of the content.

    If I'm on a team, and our team likes to push its plans up to the point where the first two spawn encounters pretty much occur for the purposes of powering us up via soul drain, fulcrum and so on, before tackling the last. And we much prefer to play at +4, x8, AVs.

    In the early days, we refused to use SOs until they started adding in enemy groups that justified them. The ideal is purple boss trying to run for it within 1-2 seconds of contact.

    If something has M o content, we make a go for it on principal.

    We also have a team of alts where if someone dies and is not resurrected by either a secondary or primary power within 5 minutes, then a new character must be rolled for that team.

    But our determiner of ultimate success is perfect survival, not mere completion.

    The perfect tactic, the perfect preparation, no one lost.