That Delicate Balance Between Concept and Capability
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2010-02-24 01:28 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
I would like to talk about my main character then... Elizabeth Bathory (or as she uses in-game Bathory Erzsebet)... Based upon the real countess from history I made her a vampire and a witch. An origin that best fits...
What does a vampire has for powers?
fly/hover
turning to mist
regeneration
coming back to undead life
control over lower living beings
gaining strenghth by drinking blood
slight superstrength
turning in a bat
stealthy
mind tricks
So... how do I re-create that..? First thought was a corruptor or Brute. But the witch powers i wanted to add didn't work out that well.. and I liked to try the master mind. So it became a Necromancer/Dark Miasma.
fly/hover
Added hover and fly as a vampire should have that.
turning to mist
The turning into mist was resolved with the costume switch 'Presto Change' where you turn in smoke. In combo with Shadow Fall.
regeneration
IO sets where able to resolve this.. I build on regen and HP... gaining 402% regeneration.
coming back to undead life
Self ress was not pussible... But I always carry wakeys and Howling Twilight helps her able to ress others.
control over lower living beings
I have the temp power 'Nectar' for that. But hardly use it.
gaining strenghth by drinking blood
Twilight Grasp is where she gains life from others... 'Life Drain' is in the set but I sacrificed that power for 'tp foe'. The life gaining I already had.
slight superstrength
IO sets are also adding HP. HP in her case is upped from 800+ (for mm) to 1040+ (what a corruptor has). Dark Embrace of the Ghost Widow set makes her highly ressistent.
turning in a bat
A second costume slot is a giant bat with the draconic wings and a furr matching her hair color. The 'Presto change' does the rest.
stealthy
Shadow Fall add stealth. I combine that with a stealth IO on a sprint power. Stacked it becomes 500+ stealth which is almost invisibility.
mind tricks
Fearsome stare is my friend here. Looking at Liz will make you shiver. And it is a great power to debuff a huge mob. Nectar temp power can be used for the vampiric alluring abilities.
Leaves the rest of the powers like Soul Storm, Soul tentacles and the zombies to the Witchcraft abilities.
- The Italian Job: The Godfather Returns #1151
Beginner - Encounter a renewed age for the Mook and the Family when Emile Marcone escapes from the Zig!
- Along Came a... Bug!? #528482
Average - A new race of aliens arrives on Earth. And Vanguard has you investigate them!
- The Court of the Blood Countess: The Rise of the Blood Countess #3805
Advanced - Go back in time and witness the birth of a vampire. Follow her to key moments in her life in order to stop her! A story of intrigue, drama and horror! Blood & Violence... not recommend to solo!
Possibly my Dual Pistols character on test. I made her DP/Psi, but really she would best be served by DP/SR with a few psi powers added in, most likely the immob, stun and probably psi scream and shockwave.
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
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Performance always comes first for me, but I'm not just some heartless minmaxer who doesn't care about concept, quite the contrary actually.
When I make a toon I pick powersets first, and then based on the powersets I create a concept that explains his origins. Take for instance my Defender, an ordinary cricket that one day jumped into a discarded radioactive powersuit wasting away in a pond in Crey's Folly, which mutated him into a (semi) intelligent superhero. His powersets? Rad/Sonic of course 
I'm for capabilities all the way.
All my alts take CJ, SuperSpeed,Stamina.
I realize by doing this I'm gimping my playing experience but don't worry...I won't ever complain to you how I do not get enough out of this game.
Besides...for ME...concept is only playing it halfway.
Concept..for ME...is laying the foundation for full fledged RP.
Yes..yes..I'm n00b...& you're right.
But you know what?
It's okay.
I wish I could say that concept trumps performance, but the power gamer in me simply can't accept that for the most part. Gah!!! I admit it! Even with my most beloved Pen and Paper RPers, I tend to make them as powerful as possible.
There are some concepts that I love....with intricate back stories...
Dr Parasite-Mind/Kinetic Controller
Soul Ninja-Katana/SR Scrapper
Solipsis-Peacebringer
Noctus Grandinosus-Dark/Ice Defender
...for just a few examples..yet I've min/maxed them quite a bit. I'm a concept failure I'm afraid......
I hit a ton of concepts where I have to tweak it a little for gameplay. Mostly because I tend to go for weird power sources/themes like Entropy.* Power customization helped a bit, since now I can do things like give my pollution-based Corruptor some pretty good green clouds for her attacks. Still, it can be a bit hard to figure out what attack set a character whose powers stem from good luck should have, or how to best represent plant melee...
*Especially for Science/Mutant heroes. Any time I try to roll, say, a mutant-origin cold/cold blaster, a very snarky part of my mind goes "Oh, let me guess, her last name is coincidentally Frost and she dresses like it's Winter all the time just because."
Having Vengeance and Fallout slotted for recharge means never having to say you're sorry.
I'm stuck firmly in the Rule of Cool trumps concept and playability camp. Concept is mutable, and as long as I can get a decent amount of performance my primary interest is in the coolness of the powers. I take Stamina because it makes everything easier but that's about it. All my characters use Super Jump for Travel regardless of whether it makes sense because I enjoy Super Jump. My AR/Dev Blaster is tweaked to the gills in terms of slotted IOs but his power selections are shifted heavily in favor of powers I want (for example Gun Drone and LRM Missile) rather than powers that would actually increase his performance. Heck, I took Surveillance for his last power primarily because I love the animation.
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This is pretty much how I do it too. I fit the concept to the build I want to make, so I've rarely run into a situation where concept clashed with playability. When that happens then I go with what I need/want for the build, then challenge my imagination to modify the concept/bio to fit, as the main reason I write bios is for the creative challenge and fun of writing them - and, like Adeon says, concept is mutable. Rarely the concept comes first, often because I've deleted a character but wanted to re-use their concept (or a major part of it) for something else.|
Originally Posted by Silverado
Performance always comes first for me, but I'm not just some heartless minmaxer who doesn't care about concept, quite the contrary actually.
When I make a toon I pick powersets first, and then based on the powersets I create a concept that explains his origins. |
This became the case with a Storm/Psychic Defender I originally had in I7-ish called "The Psyclone Ranger", a boy cloned by Crey from one of their rogue agents whose dominating psychic powers turned him into a megalomaniac (which is the concept of my L50 Mind/Psi Dom, Agent Godwin). The concept was that the boy was being "developed" as a more controllable pawn for Crey, but at this early stage he couldn't focus his psychic powers properly; this created unintended telekinetic disturbances around him, almost poltergeist-like, which he struggled to guide as storm-like effects.
I played him to L20, didn't really enjoy it, but I couldn't bring myself to delete him until I was able to remake him as a Psy/Mental Blaster when the archetype gained those powersets. I still kept the same name/bio/concept/costume, rationalising the "cyclone"/storm references as referring to Psionic Tornado. Sadly I didn't really like Psychic Blast either (partly because of the differences from the Defender version, partly because only having psi damage was rather limiting when so many enemies resist it heavily), so I remade him as an Energy/Mental Blaster which I was much happier with gameplay-wise (admittedly he's still been marooned at L20 for the past 2 years, as I don't play blueside much), but at first sight the new primary doesn't really fit the original concept.
The new concept makes the Energy/ part fit by just modifying a single line in the bio (bolded below) which also manages to explain why the character is wearing what looks like some kind of high-tech armour (which was always part of his costume design, but wasn't explained by the original concept) - so it all worked out ok in the end. This is the updated bio, which hasn't been changed much from the original except for the bolded part:
Creys illegal genetics program was an unsubstantiated myth until Back Alley Brawler discovered one of the cloning labs. In a locked test chamber he found a frightened young boy and a nearby computer revealed that the boy was a clone of ex-Airborne Ranger Steve Godwin, a Crey Agent recently arrested for misusing his psychic talents.
Rescued from that lab the young clones telekinetic ability was wild and dangerous, Crey having tampered with his genes to augment psionic potential. Sister Psyche taught the boy to better control his powers, but his raw emotions still caused unintended storms of telekinetic activity around him, until Positron built a containment suit that converted the excess TK emanations into kinetic energy which could be stored and subsequently released as focused power blasts.
Eager to emulate his saviours the clone has named himself The Psyclone Ranger and he is keen to investigate Creys operations, though Countess Crey still denies all knowledge of the program that created him.
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Same here, it can be pretty cool trying to think to think of a concept to whatever you just made, and it's even easier now thanks to power customization.|
Originally Posted by Lord Mayhem
This is pretty much how I do it too. I fit the concept to the build I want to make, so I've rarely run into a situation where concept clashed with playability. When that happens then I go with what I need/want for the build, then challenge my imagination to modify the concept/bio to fit, as the main reason I write bios is for the creative challenge and fun of writing them - and, like Adeon says, concept is mutable. Rarely the concept comes first, often because I've deleted a character but wanted to re-use their concept (or a major part of it) for something else.
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I've also had several "broad" character concepts transfer over to completely different ATs, such as one I have from my Mind/Thorns dom onto my Arch/TA corr. The character concept was just "vain world-class thief with a demon motif", so it's not like that's tied down to a specific powerset.
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Anyone have any ideas for what would be good to simulate the ability to control time?
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Super Reflexes could work, the character dilating their personal perception of time to easily dodge things.|
Originally Posted by Scythus
Anyone have any ideas for what would be good to simulate the ability to control time?
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Or Grav/Mind Control, representing them outright stopping their enemies in time and such (some powers would have obvious problems).
Getting less strict, you could go comic book science and just call your Energy Melee/Energy Blast/Energy Assault/Whatever 'chronal energy' or something. Those punches totally don't hurt people, they just hurl them forward through time a few days so they pass out from dehydration and a sudden lack of sleep or something! I guess! It's comic science, man, don't ask me.
Superspeed and Hasten would just be givens, of course.
Having Vengeance and Fallout slotted for recharge means never having to say you're sorry.
My character creation process is pretty free-form. Sometimes I start with a concept, sometimes I start with interesting powerset combos, sometimes the concept evolves over time and there are some characters I've yet to develop a concept for.
That said, a couple come to mind...
When I first started playing, I wanted to create a dark, creature-of-the-night scrapper... think Batman with mystical powers. I chose DM/DA. I enjoy the character, but he didn't start to click for me until after he got stamina and some of the higher level powers in his powersets. Before that, endurance woes diminished the coolness for me.
I also have an energy/devices blaster who is my highest level character. His concept has changed over time as the character's capabilities evolved; I still haven't finalized a concept for him. The lack of a character concept hasn't lessened my enjoyment in playing him, though.
I have other characters, of course, who are in various states of development. Even when I don't start out with a character concept, I still try to create one that logically explains how the character got the way he is.
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Kinetics comes to mind with its ability to speed characters up and slow them down.|
Originally Posted by Scythus
Anyone have any ideas for what would be good to simulate the ability to control time?
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Gravity control also seems like it could fit. For example, a hold could be considered some kind of temporal stasis. Also, you might be able to create a backstory involving space-time, which lends itself to gravity.
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I have a Dual Blades/Super Reflexes Brute. She's a "time hopper". Super Reflexes is taken as her jumping in and out of sync with time, or simply hopping from one parallel timeline to another for very short durations, making her simply 'flicker' in an out of existence, which would make her harder to hit.
Originally Posted by Scythus
Anyone have any ideas for what would be good to simulate the ability to control time?
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Originally Posted by Kelenar
Super Reflexes could work, the character dilating their personal perception of time to easily dodge things.
Or Grav/Mind Control, representing them outright stopping their enemies in time and such (some powers would have obvious problems). Getting less strict, you could go comic book science and just call your Energy Melee/Energy Blast/Energy Assault/Whatever 'chronal energy' or something. Those punches totally don't hurt people, they just hurl them forward through time a few days so they pass out from dehydration and a sudden lack of sleep or something! I guess! It's comic science, man, don't ask me. Superspeed and Hasten would just be givens, of course. |
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Originally Posted by Nova Knight
Kinetics comes to mind with its ability to speed characters up and slow them down.
Gravity control also seems like it could fit. For example, a hold could be considered some kind of temporal stasis. Also, you might be able to create a backstory involving space-time, which lends itself to gravity. |
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Originally Posted by Bright Shadow
I have a Dual Blades/Super Reflexes Brute. She's a "time hopper". Super Reflexes is taken as her jumping in and out of sync with time, or simply hopping from one parallel timeline to another for very short durations, making her simply 'flicker' in an out of existence, which would make her harder to hit. |
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Grav/Kin, or Grav/Psi if you want to hit things. Gravity already toes the line of time manipulation due to it's space/time control in Wormhole and Propel. Psi makes a decent imitation due to it's -rech effects, and you can always recolour in line with Grav (hurrah for power customisation!)|
Originally Posted by Scythus
Anyone have any ideas for what would be good to simulate the ability to control time?
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Heck, I made a grav once just so I could totally be this guy using the ST hold that suspends the enemy following up with Propel.
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/Psi? What set is that?
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Originally Posted by Tangler
Grav/Kin, or Grav/Psi if you want to hit things. Gravity already toes the line of time manipulation due to it's space/time control in Wormhole and Propel. Psi makes a decent imitation due to it's -rech effects, and you can always recolour in line with Grav (hurrah for power customisation!)
Heck, I made a grav once just so I could totally be this guy using the ST hold that suspends the enemy following up with Propel. |
As in Psi Assault if you wanted to go dom.
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Ah... I see. Nah. I play heroes sometimes too.
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Originally Posted by Tangler
As in Psi Assault if you wanted to go dom.
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One of my first characters was gimped for concept.
Anemone was a superstrong, resilient teleptahic mermaid, basically Aquaman powers. I made her a sa Mind Control/Kinetics Controller to get the telepathic powers, with Air Sup and Jump Kick for superstrength and no Levitate.
I knew Levitate was a great power on paper, but it was impossible to justify concept wise. I'm probably not the only Mind Controller to make this decision, since the powerset is 7 telepathic/2 telekinetic powers.
I've also ran a human-only Scrapper with no travel power way before Ninja Run. I resisted even taking Combat jumping until the 30s.
I've made a few concessions to effectiveness too - I've reluctantly taken Fire Sword Circle on characters who have no right to be carrying or creating a sword.
Some more custom animations would fix this dilemmma, hint hint! 
Being a Artist I have the unique capability to make a concept around anything this game has to offer.
Im pretty sure im the not the only one capable of this.
I commonly dont play all the time.However when I make a new character.I will sit there for a hour or two.Sometimes more playing back and forth with ATs, Power Sets, Costumes, ect.
Then when Im finally done making a costume to match the image im wrapping around the build.The hard part begins.
Naming the Character.
Sometimes even the name can have me going back to redo some of the finer points of a costume before I finally create it.
I find the capability this game gives to make a image connected to the powers a 9 out of 10.They would get a 10 if they went the extra mile to give players more costume options.
The options I speak of are Quivers for Archers.Customizable Jet Packs for those that want to use Technology to fly around instead of magic or some mutation to fly around.Yes I know there are rocket boots, but adding those to a jet pack would be bonus coolness either way.
Giving us the option to carry our weapons in our hand as a toggle would be cool.No matter what they are in a standing or walking as well as sprinting possition.Id like to see my axe, sword, gun, or bow without looking like im ready to use it by crouching forward.Just to have it dissapear when I relax.
People in a Costume Contest wouldnt have to ask if they can have there weapons out while being judged for overall costume.Normally that answer is No Weapons by many Judges.
Anyhow.That how I do it.
All my alts are conceptually powerful.
Active 50's
Darklocked (dm/sd Brute)
Wardman (Fire/sd Scrapper)
Congealer (ice/cold Corruptor)
Peroxisome (mind/psi Dominator)
Evil Thing (Fire/Kin Corruptor)
Proud Member of Repeat-Offenders
Mostly, I go for concept to hinder capability. To gain capability at anything doesn't require that much thought for me whereas trying to get blood from the stone that is concept does. Usually I have to find something of a niche from that concept.
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
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I did the same thing with my Mind/Storm until power customization made it possible to make Levitate look more like the various wind powers in Storm Summoning. Telekinesis is still off the table, though.
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Originally Posted by DrMike2000
I knew Levitate was a great power on paper, but it was impossible to justify concept wise. I'm probably not the only Mind Controller to make this decision, since the powerset is 7 telepathic/2 telekinetic powers.
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I think it's safe to say that a good amount of concepts go beyond what the game allows us to make, or leave us wanting in a few areas in terms of effectiveness.
I figured it might be nice to share stories of builds constructed around concepts, Concepts Constructed of builds, concepts sacrificed for gameplay, and just have a general discussion of the interaction between character concept and gameplay.
Anyone Who wants to argue about my usual foolishness can find me here.
https://twitter.com/Premmytwit
I'll miss you all.