New Powerset Ideas

I already posted this in Lady-Jade's Power Suggestion Box, but let's see if I can get more feedback by posting independantly....

For all the Indiana Jones/Castlevania fans out there:

WHIP (Melee)
Available to: Stalkers, Scrappers, Tankers
Set Color: Beige
Animation Notes: 'Flashy' is definitely appropriate for this set, especially as you go up in levels - Dual Pistols overdid it, though.

Whips do inferior damage compared to other Melee sets, but make up for it in speed, low endurance cost, and limited range – the whip has the greatest reach of any Melee powerset, but note that it does not benefit from range Enhancements.

1) Snap – a quick, basic attack with your whip. The stinging pain will temporarily reduce the target's damage resistance. Damage: Minor Lethal Recharge: Very Fast

2) Lash – a stronger but slower attack than Snap that reduces the target's damage resistance. Damage: Moderate Lethal Recharge: Fast

3) Flog – a harder, slower strike with your whip that leaves a deep, bleeding wound, dealing additional damage over time. Damage: Moderate Lethal Recharge: Moderate

4) Trip (Scrapper) – trips your foe, knocking them down and causing them to take damage from the fall. Damage: Moderate Smashing Recharge: Fast
OR
Assassin's Lash (Stalker) – signature Stalker attack. Damage: Special Lethal Recharge: Slow
OR
Taunt (Tanker)

5) Build Up

6) Confront (Scrapper)
OR
Placate (Stalker)
OR
Trip (Tanker)

7) Loop – you swing your whip in a circle around you, damaging all nearby enemies and lowering their damage resistance. Damage: Minor Lethal Recharge: Moderate

8) Crack of Doom – you put all your focus and artistry into this powerful and agonizing attack that reduces the target's damage resistance a great deal. Damage: Superior Lethal Recharge: Moderate

9) Death Spiral – You spin your whip in a wide arc around your head, causing a sonic boom so powerful that it deals heavy Energy damage to and disorients all enemies around you. Damage: High Energy Recharge: Slow

You may notice I didn't give Brutes Whips. That's because they get....

CHAINSAW (Melee)
Available to: Brutes
Set Color: Dark Yellow
Animation Notes: Should be the near-antithesis of Dual Pistols flashiness. Simple, harsh movements, with the exception of Brandish, which is all about giving an exaggerated display.

The Chainsaw is a slow and unweildy weapon with a penalty to accuracy, but the damage it deals is second to none. It leaves hideous wounds that heal poorly, retarding their regeneration rate, and sometimes bleeding for additional damage.

1) Thrust – a simple, relatively quick attack with your chainsaw that slows the target's regeneration rate. Damage: Moderate Lethal Recharge: Fast

2) Carve – a slower and stronger attack than Thrust that leaves the target with a horrible wound that regenerates more slowly. Damage: Superior Lethal Recharge: Slow

3) Mangle – a gruesome attack that wreaks havoc on the victim's natural healing processes, severely reducing their regeneration rate and causing them to bleed for additional damage over time. Damage: Extreme Lethal Recharge: Slow

4) Build Up

5) Whirl – you spin your chainsaw around you, assaulting all nearby enemies and leaving them with nasty wounds and a reduced regeneration rate. Damage: High Lethal Recharge: Slow
6) Taunt

7) Brandish – you rev your chainsaw loudly and wave it around menacingly, causing enemies around you to cower in terror. Recharge: Slow

8) Gore – a devastating attack so traumatizing to watch that nearby enemies may enter a state of shock, snapping out of it if they themselves are attacked. If the target survives, its regeneration rate is drastically slowed, and it suffers a terrible wound that deals additional damage over time. Damage: Extreme Lethal Recharge: Slow

9) Massacre – You swing your chainsaw in an arc, attacking all enemies in front of you, lowering their regeneration rate. Damage: Extreme Lethal Recharge: Slow

Something I think we've needed for a long time:

TOXIC BLAST (Ranged)
Available to: Corrupters, Defenders
Set Color: Pea Green
Animation Notes: Even more than other Ranged sets, this set demands a few different animation options for each power, so you can spit acid, shoot toxic waste out your hands, or just vomit.

Scour your enemies with venom, acid, or toxic waste. This set does average damage compared to other Ranged sets (much of it damage over time), has inferior range, and lacks a sniper power, but makes up for it with crippling debuffs and effects.

1) Acid Spit – a basic attack that corrodes your target's defense. Damage: Minor Toxic Recharge: Fast

2) Venomous Blast – a moderate attack that weakens your target's damage. Damage: Moderate Toxic Recharge: Fast

3) Toxic Cloud – you send forth a cloud of poisonous gas that harms a group of foes and may sicken them into helplessness. Damage: Moderate Toxic (DoT) Recharge: Moderate

4) Neurotoxic Breath – you spew forth a neurotoxin that slows your enemies' movement and attack rates. Damage: Moderate Toxic (DoT) Recharge: Moderate

5) Cobra Venom – assaults your target's eyes with poison; damage is only minor, but their chance to hit will be greatly reduced and they are likely to be completely blinded. Damage: Minor Toxic Recharge: Fast

6) Power Boost

7) Slime Wave – a short-ranged cone attack that does a lot of damage and reduces enemy damage resistance. Damage: Superior Toxic (DoT) Recharge: Moderate

8) Chemical Spill – you cover a patch of ground with toxic waste. Those who pass through it are contaminated, taking serious damage and dealing less damage themselves (this effect persists even if they leave the area). Damage: Extreme Toxic (DoT) Recharge: Slow

9) Venusian Miasma – You saturate the air around you with carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid, creating conditions much like the atmosphere of Venus. Enemies in this miasma take massive Toxic damage over time, are slowed, have their defense massively corroded, and are likely to begin choking. This power costs you all of your endurance, and halts your endurance recovery for a little while. Damage: Extreme Toxic (DoT) Recharge: Very Long

THROWING (Ranged)
Available to: Blasters, Defenders, Corrupters
Set Color: Sandy Grey
Animation Notes: Should be simple and quick, for the most part. Area of effect powers can be more showy.

You have superhuman skill with throwing weapons. While your damage and your area-of-effect capabilities aren't as good as other ranged powersets, you are very fast and very accurate.

1) Rock – you throw a simple stone at your enemy. Damage: Minor Smashing Recharge: Very Fast

2) Card – you throw a playing card with deadly accuracy, leaving a vicious papercut that reduces your target's damage resistance. Damage: Minor Lethal Recharge: Very Fast

3) Potato – you peg your target with a large potato, dealing moderate damage and possibly disorienting it. Damage: Moderate Smashing Recharge: Fast

4) Throwing Knife – you throw a knife with exceptionally deadly accuracy; this attack doesn't have the range of your other attacks, but it does better damage and causes a bleeding wound for additional damage over time. Damage: High Lethal Recharge: Moderate

5) 52 Pickup – you assail your enemies with a hail of playing cards, dealing damage and lowering resistance in a cone. Damage: Minor Lethal Recharge: Moderate

6) Aim

7) Needle – a needle deals little damage, but you can throw it with such incredible precision that it punctures a vital nerve or other vulnerable point in the target, paralyzing it. Damage: Minor Lethal Recharge: Moderate

8) Superball – the superball ricochets from enemy to enemy, gaining momentum and increasing in damage each time it hits. Damage: Special Smashing/Energy Recharge: Slow

9) Vortex of Knives – you launch a volley of throwing knives in a circle around you, dealing superior damage, and possibly landing a lucky shot for even more damage. Damage: Superior Lethal Recharge: Slow

DISEASE (Buff)
Available to: Masterminds, Corrupters
Set Color: Medium Dark Hazel
Animation Notes: No comment, really. Diseases are hard to see.

Diseases can be devastating (or in a few cases, helpful), and are usually contagious, but with the exception of Computer Virus (and Rabies in the case of certain Masterminds), robots and machines are immune to their effects.

1) Creeping Cold – infects the target with a relatively mild, but highly contagious, strain of the common cold. Their speed and chance to hit are decreased for a little while, and nearby enemies are very likely to contract it in turn. Recharge: Moderate

2) Antibodies – incites target's immune system to purge whatever ails it, healing the target. Recharge: Fast

3) Computer Virus – infects an electronic or robotic target with a vicious computer virus that may have any number of devastating deleterious effects. Damage: Special Recharge: Moderate

4) Influenza – reduces the target's speed, damage, and defense. The flu is extremely contagious and may sometimes develop into pneumonia, causing victims to choke helplessly. Recharge: Moderate

5) Vaccine – cures a target of all deleterious effects affecting it, and inoculates it against future effects. Recharge: Fast

6) Invoke Symbiosis – stimulates a defeated ally's mitochondria, reanimating it and protecting it from debt for 90 seconds. The target will benefit from increased endurance recovery for a while after reanimation. In addition, whatever germs and parasites were residing in the character's body are prompted to seek out new hosts, generating a cloud of pestilence that lowers the defense and resistance of nearby enemies. When these effects wear off, the subject will suffer from decreased endurance recovery and attack speed for a while thereafter. Recharge: Very Long

7) Polio – Causes complete paralysis in a target. Nearby enemies may contract a milder version and become immobilized. Recharge: Slow

8) Ebola (Corrupters) – infects the target with a horrible flesh-eating virus that gradually deals massive damage. Nearby enemies may contract a much weaker version. Damage: Extreme Toxic (DoT) Recharge: Very Long
OR
Rabies (Masterminds) – you infect one of your own henchmen with a rapidly-advancing form of rabies (or a software analog, if your henchmen are robots). The target's movement, attack rate, and damage are all drastically increased, but it slowly takes damage and dies. Recharge: Very Long

9) Plague – Unleashes a terrible plague epidemic on your enemies, starting with an initial target and spreading rapidly and at longer range than other contagions. Victims are subjected to slowing, severe endurance loss and retarded recovery, decreased accuracy, and random outbreaks of minor Toxic damage. Damage: Special Toxic Recharge: Very Long

Magneto fans rejoice! I made this not only because I thought it would be interesting to make a Control set that did Lethal damage, but also to give Dominators something to call their own until such time as they get Illusion Control.

METAL CONTROL (Control)
Available to: Dominators
Set Color: Steel Blue
Animation Notes: I think it's pretty self-explanatory.

Imprison and torment your foes by controlling, summoning, and even animating metal.

1) Bear Trap – Sharp shards of metal latch onto your opponent's legs, preventing them from moving. Damage: Moderate Lethal Recharge: Fast

2) Iron Maiden – entombs your opponent in sharp shards of metal, holding them. Damage: Moderate Lethal Recharge: Moderate

3) Needles – summons hundreds of needles from the ground beneath your foes' feet. They are greatly slowed and take some damage over time. Damage: Minor Lethal (DoT) Recharge: Moderate

4) Dominate Machine – Severely damages and disorients a mechanical or robotic target. Damage: High Special Recharge: Moderate

5) Shrapmetal – sprays jagged fragments of toxic metal in a cone toward your foes. The metal's toxicity causes neurological damage that slows victims' attack rates, and in rare cases may result in confusion. Damage: Moderate Lethal/Toxic Recharge: Moderate

6) Electroplating – holds multiple enemies in coffins made of metal shards. Recharge: Very Long

7) Halt Metal – while this power is active, you generate a field that repels metal, significantly increasing your defense against Lethal attacks. Recharge: Moderate

8) Mercury Storm – you cause fountains of mercury to gush up from the ground in the area you target. Not only are enemies in the area slowed and likely to slip on the liquid metal, but some of them will succumb to mercury poisoning, causing confusion. Recharge: Very Long

9) Dancing Weapons – summons 2 random flying metal weapons (either broadsword, katana, battle axe, war mace, chainsaw, or machine gun) to attack your enemies. The weapons are capable of only simple attacks, but they are immune to Psionic damage and very resistant to all other attacks and effects except Energy, which they are only somewhat resistant to. Recharge: Very Long

and of course...be The Doctor!

TIME CONTROL (Control)
Available to: Dominators, Controllers
Set Color: Gold
Animation Notes: Should be the epitome of subtlety. Stasis, for example, should be nothing more than the controller pointing a finger and the target freezing in mid-animation, as though the game crashed for it.

Command the spacetime continuum itself! Time Control is exceptionally powerful, but also very draining. Its powers cost more endurance than other control sets.

1) Relativity Drain – Retards a target's progress through the timestream relative to the rest of the universe. Being cut off from the normal flow of time slows the target and damages the fabric of its reality. Damage: Moderate Negative Energy (DoT) Recharge: Fast

2) Stasis – freezes a target in time, rendering it helpless, and damaging the fabric of its reality in the process. Damage: Moderate Negative Energy Recharge: Moderate

3) Deja Vu – traps the target in a causality loop, causing it to experience “rubber banding” and take damage over time. Damage: Moderate Negative Energy (DoT) Recharge: Moderate

4) Zeno's Arrow – immobilizes enemies in an area of effect centered on you and limits their attacks to melee range. Recharge: Slow

5) Spacetime Rupture – dissasociates a group of enemies from the spacetime continuum, rendering them intangible. This state plays havoc with the fabric of their reality, slowly damaging them while they are trapped. Damage: High Negative Energy (DoT) Recharge: Slow

6) Time Stop – mass hold of superior area and duration Recharge: Very Long

7) Total Perspective Vortex – As Krishna revealed the Truth to Arjuna, you expose your enemies to the totality of spacetime and the infinity of alternate possibilities which extend from every point in every direction. The experience is literally mind-blowing, dealing damage and rendering them incapable of action. Those with this power are unnaffected by others' use of it. Damage: Moderate Psionic Recharge: Slow

8) Tempus Fugit – While this power is active, all nearby enemies' attack and movement speeds are greatly slowed, while you and your allies are hastened to the same degree. Maintaining this power is very strenuous. Recharge: Very Long

9) Doppelganger – You travel a few seconds forward in time, effectively doubling yourself. Due to the incredible strain and risk of cheating time in this manner, your future self can only use your most basic Time Control powers, but can use all of your secondary powers. A side effect of your future self being slightly out of tune with the time around it is that your future self benefits from increased damage resistance and defense. When you are attacked, your future self is subject to that attack as well. If you receive healing or buffs, your future self also enjoys those effects. Recharge: Very Long

What do you think? Watch this space for further ideas and feel free to post your own!

So very much to go into...

Whips: There's likely to be an assault set created before too long, or a melee set, or whatever, due to the Whips coming into play via the MMs for Demons.

Chainsaw: Aside from this being over-the-top cheesey, I think the idea of a set with -Regen as its secondary effect is brilliant. We really need one like that.

Toxic Blast: No opinions

Throwing: That's a joke, right? Hillarious! I especially like the patatoes!

Diseases: This is awesome! I would love to see this in game. It wouldn't be too hard to balance right either, I don't think. On the other hand, the idea of contagions might be very difficult to implement. The powers would have to have "Grant's power: Contagious" or something like that.

Metal Control: I'd think this would be too situational or too cheesey, sorry.

Time Control: Looks like you've done a great job of making a concept that would be either impossible or way over-powered into something quite reasonable. Very well done.

Obviously there would be a ton of balancing issues to address but that's the case in every new set concept. Over all I think these are very cool (or entertaining in the case of Throwing). Kudos.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha ...I have the patience of a coffee-fueled flea...

I like Whips, but that is unlikely.

Chainsaw: Can we have a hockey mask as a costume piece too?

Time Control I like.

Rest are kinda lame, In my opinion.

First off, there is a stickied thread just for this kind of thing, and I'm more than certain all of these sets have already been suggested.

As said before, Whips aren't likely to happen. The animations are simply too labor intensive. It's not the devs trying to make the animations all pretty (if you actually look at the whip animations for Demon Summoning, they're actually rather simplistic), it's that there are a crapload of points of articulation to animate through and, if they want to make it look even remotely realistic, it's got to look as such.

Chainsaw is probably unlikely simply due to a teen rating and theme. While the Chainsaw may be a mainstay of horror movies, it's definitely not a mainstay of the hero genre, much less very entertaining without massive amounts of blood flying everywhere. You're also designing a set that, without horribly long animation times, would be disgustingly overpowered, not to mention saddled with a secondary effect that is largely useless against all but a tiny portion of targets in the game (in which that effect is pretty much overpowered).

Toxic Blast is pretty much just a rehashed Radiation Blast with a different animation type and a couple powers changed. Functionally, it's the same. I'm also not entirely sure the devs would provide a set that does almost 100% of the rarest damage type in the game. It would likely result in something akin to Psychic Blast: painfully low numbers in PvE thanks to high levels of NPC resistance and lots of heavy handed rebalancing of the set to make it not-so-overpowered for PvP. There's also the problem of Toxic not being a defense type, so you generate some problems of being more accurate than it should. Altogether, a commonly suggested idea, but not entirely likely to happen.

The Throwing set isn't likely to happen. While you may have designed it with the idea of Gambit and Bullseye, the only one of them that it actually resembles is Bullseye (honestly, when was the last time you saw Gambit throw a potato?). If anything, it's an amusing joke set, but I doubt the devs would put forth all of the effort of designing a set and all of the animations for a set that is, even as you described it, a joke.

Disease, while an interesting idea, is both a very narrow concept and a similarly specific function. The contagion effect, while possible (it would grants the target a power that attempts to hit their allies with the additional debuffs without affecting themselves, this is how the purple Contagious Confusion proc works) could easily be incredibly overpowered. Having the set so focused around dealing more damage while being a buff/debuff set is similarly out of whack. The set seems less designed as a support set and more like an amalgam of a control set, a damage set, and empathy.

Metal Control, while a rather common suggestion, isn't likely to appear in that form, much less be specific to just Dominators (the devs have shown a strong preference towards giving sets to as many ATs as possible in order to get the most play out of their work). The powerset is pretty standard except for the cone damage attack and the personal defense power, neither of which are likely to happen. There is some existing precedent for a pure attack in a control set, but, as a cone, not likely. The personal defense power, even if it were just against lethal damage, is similarly not like to happen simply because there is no precedent and you're not likely to make the case that a control set needs some personal survivability to be playable/interesting.

Time Control has some mechanical problems with it. A power selection can't grant immunity to a specific power even without activating without creating a second power that comes along with it automatically that provides explicit immunity (which would require the power in question to perform an if check to determine if the target has the power every time the power is applied). You might as well remove the "immunity" clause from Total Perspective Vortex, if only because it's only there for a very narrow thematic reason and most enemies that have access to such a power would likely be immune to a single application of the power thanks to rank based mez protection. For Spacetime rupture, intangibility isn't particularly popular, especially when it's AoE, and I'm not entirely sure that you can attach a damage effect to it thanks to intangibility providing immunity to damage from non-phased targets (though, I say "not sure" because some intangibility effects are capable of applying mez effects piggybacked onto the intangibility). The Doppleganger is problematic for a couple of reasons: making the pet operate with your primary and secondary powersets might be possible (Dopplegangers from I17 demonstrate some ability for the system to create an enemy based on you but we don't know whether player activated powers would be capable of doing so), but making the pet perform using more of your secondary powers than your primary powers is simply a bad idea (especially since you don't have access to all of your secondary powers when you first get the pet, anyway). If you didn't know, the basic AI goes a bit wonky when it has too many powers to use. There is a pretty good reason why most pets only have upwards of 4 activated powers. The other big problem is that there isn't a way to enforce paired effects (the part where you want anything that happens to 1 to happen to the other). Implementing that would likely require a great deal of coding for very little actual benefit, especially if you want it to apply to more than just damage and healing.

Well i like everything except Throwing. It seemed lame and personally, i think Throwing Knives could be it's own thing. I guess Whips won't work out well. The rest look pretty cool.

I read somewhere on the forum where one of the devs said a whip set isn't happening any time soon because of how much work went into the three attacks they did add.

New idea:

Be Ghost Rider, or (since he's not a Villain) Jacob Marley maybe? Or maybe a certain video game character....

CHAIN ASSAULT (Assault)
Available to: Dominators
Set Color: Reddish Dark Grey
Animation Notes: Since a chain is a series of rigid links rather than a continuous thread (and I was thinking the links would be fairly big), shouldn't this be a lot easier to do than whips? Different animation options should allow for choosing between a more natural or supernatural feel.

You torment your foes with one or more wicked spiked chains. While you do not quite have the range of other Assault sets, the chain's weight and your skill make it more accurate.

1) Score – a straightforward ranged strike that leaves a deep, nasty wound that bleeds for additional damage over time. Damage: Minor Lethal Recharge: Fast
2) Garrote – a melee strangling attack that deprives the victim of some endurance and slows its endurance recovery. Damage: Moderate Lethal Recharge: Fast
3) Sweep of Scorn – a powerful melee attack that knocks your target away from you. Damage: Moderate Lethal Recharge: Moderate
4) Scarring Strike – a stronger ranged attack that leaves a hideous wound that bleeds for additional damage over time. Damage: Moderate Lethal Recharge: Fast
5) Torment – a cruel follow-up attack of moderate range that increases your accuracy and damage for your next few attacks. Damage: Minor Lethal Recharge: Slow
6) Constrict – attempts to squeeze the life out of your target, dealing a great deal of damage over time and leaving it gasping for breath, deprived of a great deal of endurance and with its future endurance recovery slowed. Damage: Superior Lethal (DoT) Recharge: Slow
7) Scorpion Lunge – you harpoon your target and yank it into melee range. This traumatic maneuver usually leaves the victim disoriented. Damage: Moderate Lethal Recharge: Moderate
8) Touch of Hades – a short-ranged attack that enervates your victim, depriving it of endurance and lowering its recovery and damage. This attack has a very good chance to do a great deal of additional Negative Energy damage. Damage: Moderate Lethal Recharge: Moderate
9) Dancing Chain – a section of your chain animates of its own accord, hovering over your shoulder like a serpent and making independent attacks against enemies within range. Damage: Moderate Lethal Recharge: Very Long

In regards of the Chain set. Firstly, an all-power comment: WAY too much animation time to make it work, since it would basically requires as much or more detail than the Whip powers from the Demon Summoning set.

Now, power by power.

Score: Nice power, actually!

Garrote: Impossible using the game's current engine. It wouldn't be possible to make a visual link between yourself and the target to choke them for any length of time. Add to this that many enemies are of varying sizes and some don't really have necks (Robots of all stripes, but particularly the council and column hovering robots. Assuming the tech could be designed to allow it to choke out "Humanoid" enemies it would still look ridiculous if the foe moved towards the dominator, away from the dominator, or around a corner. Since the chain would spontaneously grow, shrink, or reach straight through the wall.

Sweep of Scorn: Nice. Single target KB power. Personally I'd have made it into a cone AoE KB.

Scarring Strike: Not a bad idea.

Torment: Works fine, so far as I can tell.

Constrict: Same as Garrote. Which brings another question! How long do the animations for these powers last? Do they hold the enemy? If so, can a player not attack until the held enemy is able to move again?

Scorpion Lunge: Trademark Infringement and impossible. there is no "Reverse Knockback", the game simply doesn't understand it. You can't "Pull" an enemy with anything shy of a teleport effect. If that's what you meant: No problems, really.

Touch of Hades: Not a bad power, overall. Though the random chance for negative energy damage seems to come from nowhere, as the rest of the power set focuses on lethal damage and a more "Natural origin" powerset.

Dancing Chain: Impossible within the game's engine on multiple fronts. First: it couldn't occupy your square. Second: It couldn't create an "Over the Shoulder" costume piece, since not all bodies are the same size/shape. Third: We're left to wonder which powers it uses which could point back to "Garrote" and "Constrict" problems.

-Rachel-

Made a couple of alterations to Disease.

You might be right on the Wolverine's Claws copyright thing. However NAMING it after the character would almost certainly get you into trouble. Which was my actual thought. not so much the move itself as the name.

Reverse Knockback is impossible because the engine wasn't designed with it in mind. It would require a full reworking of dozens of systems and subsystems just to get that functionality in. Followed by months if not years of testing and tweaking since you'd almost undoubtedly break other systems already in place by altering it.

It's been said (by the Devs) that they could create a knockback "Pet" as a ground target Area of Effect to KB enemies toward you (since the KB would be coming from the pet and you could put it behind someone) the problems with that are: It becomes an AoE KB effect knocking multiple targets in a 360 degree radius and that if the target is in lateral motion (in relation to your position) it could wind up knocking the target to the left or right, rather than towards you. There are other considerations to consider, but these are the primary reasons the Devs have avoided Knock-Toward power attempts.

As for the explanations behind Garrote and Constrict: Could work. Looking over the Demon Summoning set I've found one power that actually looks like it's doing that: Hell on Earth. Could apply a short-duration hold while the power is going off... But that still doesn't help against robots or the Hoverbots.

The Snake option is basically your best option on the "Pet Power" since, as I said before, your pets can't occupy your space. However it would require a whole new animation design unless the Devs feel like shrinking the Mercy Island Snake skeletons and using one for the chain.

But even with all these concessions it doesn't answer the Dev response of: Too much effort for too little gain.

-Rachel-

And now for something completely different.


There are a lot of ways this set could easily be changed if necessary.

ASTRONOMY (Buff)
Available to: Defenders, Corrupters, Controllers, Masterminds
Set Color: Dark Indigo
Animation Notes: It would be neat to see just how good a job they could do on Rings of Saturn. I think it would also be cool if they could base some of the sound effects on Holst's "The Planets" symphony, at least loosely - I *think* it's public domain.

You can conduct the Music of the Spheres to empower your allies and scour your enemies. Though their power is vast, the heavens are distant and indifferent allies, and most of the powers they grant do not come easily, costing a great deal of either time or endurance.

1) Swiftness of Mercury – agitates the molecules in you and your allies' bodies, granting you a modest bonus to movement speed, recharge rate, and Fire and Smashing resistance. Recharge: Very Long
2) Clouds of Venus (Controllers, Corrupters) – you surround your targets with a thick cloud of carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid, blinding them and corroding their damage resistance. Living targets who remain in the cloud for too long may be overcome by oxygen deprivation, putting them to sleep. Recharge: Long
OR
Guidance of Venus (Defenders, Masterminds) – you invoke the power of Venus, the Morning Star, to guide you and your allies. While this power is active, you and your allies benefit from a slightly increased chance to hit and increased defense against Toxic damage and sleep effects. Recharge: Moderate
3) Tilt of Uranus – the eccentric force of Uranus tilts spacetime around an enemy at an odd angle, to its detriment and your benefit. The target and enemies near it will experience a severe reduction of their defense and resistance against Energy, Negative Energy, and Psionics, as well as a smaller penalty to their resistance against all other types of damage. If the attack succeeds, your personal defenses and resistances are increased to the same degree. Recharge: Slow
4) Dust of Mars – While this power is active, you surround yourself and those near you with a Martian duststorm. Enemies will have a hard time picking you out of the cloud, and thus your defense against ranged attacks is increased. At the same time, the dust hones and cleans weapons and scours flesh, greatly increasing the damage done by you and your allies' Lethal attacks, as well as slightly increasing the damage of all your other attacks. Recharge: Moderate
5) Winds of Neptune – you direct a mere wisp of the strongest wind the solar system has to offer at a hapless foe. So long as you keep this power active, the target and other enemies near it are slowed, have their damage resistance severely reduced, and are frequently knocked back. Recharge: Slow
6) Rings of Saturn – coalesces rings of sharp rock and ice around a target ally that damage nearby enemies. Damage: Moderate Cold/Lethal (DoT) Recharge: Very Long
7) Force of Jupiter – You can invoke Jupiter's mighty magnetosphere to shield your comrades from harm. While this power is active, you generate a powerful magnetic field that provides nearby allies with incredible defense against all damage types except Psionic and Toxic, and against hold, immobilize, and knockback effects. Maintaining this power is very strenuous.
8) Radiance of Sol – While this power is active, all nearby allies benefit from increased damage, damage resistance, and regeneration and recovery rate. In addition, nearby enemies are burned over time. Damage: Minor Fire (DoT) Recharge: Slow
9) Kingdom of Pluto – summons a swarm of small Kuiper Belt Objects to harry your enemies. The objects' attacks do minor Smashing/Cold damage and one random additional effect: accuracy debuff, defense debuff, slow, knockdown, weak confusion, or additional Toxic damage. The objects are very difficult to destroy by any means, but cannot be healed or buffed. The objects mill around you wherever you go, but you have no control over them beyond that. They will only serve you for a limited time before they tire of the heat and return to their distant home. Recharge: Very Long