Weird rules you make for yourself

Many of my characters have preferred enemies. They'll go after story arcs and missions featuring those enemies first.

Riffle (level 40 widow) does missions randomly. I select a random contact, and select a random mission from the contact if more than one is offered. (I'm not sure how to fit in tip/alignment missions yet.) Riffle also must attempt to defeat every enemy in a mission, which includes activating all known ambushes.

When doing Radio missions, Birdy (level 50 tanker) always selects a hostage rescue mission if available. My other characters typically avoid those missions, but Birdy is dedicated to saving innocent people.

I saw many that were similar to my rules.

-No sharing influence between characters. The only exception to this rule is for new characters, who get a million. Other than that, each character must attain his own influence

-Once I begin playing a new character, I do not stop playing as him until I hit level 50.

-No powerlevels, at all. I hate missing content, especially Croatoa.

-No repeating powersets across the same AT. (I'm really thinking about breaking this rule though)

-No female characters. I'm sorry, but other than fighters, RPGs, and Dynasty Warrior type games, I just can't play as them.

I have more, but these are my top ones.

I created a peacebringer based on Brian Blessed. He will only visit female trainers. He's not training, just showing off.

I never use blatant misspelling or goofy punctuation in names. Stuff like Spectre/Specter is okay, and hyphens are the only punctuation I'll use.

Powersets have to sync up visually by animation and color. For example, stuff like Rad/Rad and Rad/Kin work. Ice Blast/Dark Miasma, and, say, Fire Melee/Elec armor are out.

No Shields unless it's paired with a weapon, but the elemental scimitars count.

Always log out in a Day Job location. If forces beyond my control hinder that, go back to the character and get them in a Day Job location.

Can't really explain why, but I got into the habit of never doing the hero tutorial and always doing the villain one.

No common IOs or full IO sets before lvl 47. I've been pushing up my usage of IO sets though. Used to be that I didn't bother until the late 30's, now I start tinkering with them in the late teens and/or early 20s.

I also have a couple costume design elements I stick too, and there are a lot of pieces I'll never ever touch, but those "rules" are too difficult to explain here. >.>

good luck D.B.B.

Male or female characters isn't a big deal to me. A quick glance shows most of my characters are male, but it's nice to have a character you would care what happenned to in real life. In that respect, big muscly guys tend to be filed under 'whatever, they can take care of themselves' while my monstrously deformed female character is one of the few I actually feel an emotional connection with. If only she weren't driven by hate.

I just made up a new rule for myself. Whenever I do a patrol mission (with the severe exception of PvP zones and TF's. I MUST use Walk!

Also, when I get GR all of my sideswitchers must not only reach at least level 20 but they must also have completed the I17 arcs from their sides.

1. My grav/rad troller, meant to be a sentient black hole, never touches the ground unless forced. I took the Flight pool solely for Hover on him - his travel power is Teleport.

2. My sword/shield scrapper only uses the powers in her Flight pool when she's in her first costume, her winged powersuit.

3. No hokey workarounds when it comes to names. If all accepted spellings of a name are taken, I can't have that name. This nearly killed a character for me once when I couldn't think of an alternative!

Let me see... a few fairly common rules, like no doubling up on powersets across alts... I suppose my oddest would be that my characters as a whole have to be balanced - an equal number of males and females, heroes and villains, vigilantes and rogues, Praetorian moderates and extremists, and no duplicates of any AT until I've got one of each of the others.

1. Never use 'Death' 'Black' 'Blood' or any other cliche word while making a character.

2. Never substitute a different letter for another letter or like capital i and lowercase l. It's 100% tacky. Same goes for non-english characters unless absolutely necessary for the name.

3. Never play Fire Control or Kinetics again. Sadly, they are both over used and don't make me feel unique.

4. Never call a Defender/Corruptor a healer. Immediately inform others why not to do it either.

5. No AE. Ever. Farming is for easymode kids. This game is easy enough. if you want it even easier, why play the game at all?

6. Never talk in Atlas. Only the stupid say more than 5 words in Atlas.

7. Give out buffs (if any) to everyone. Even passerbys.

8. Only help someone take down an enemy if they are in need of help. Otherwise, don't interfere.

No purchase of GR until my existing project characters are "done".
Also, no creating new alts until after GR.

I have a very few...

All characters must have a full bio

All characters must have an 'origin' costume. (A costume relating to their original creation, or original costume.) Every Costume should have a different function if at all possible.

No costume should be used two missions in a row, unless the area seems to dictate it. (i.e. roman duds in rome.)

All characters must have complete names, without letter/number substitutions or extraneous punctuation

All characters' primaries, secondaries, travel powers, and epic pools must relate to their origin. If there was no relatable epic pool, they have to use a gadgety pool that could be simply a found device.

I will never quit a team mid-mission. Ever, no matter how bad. If I accept an invite, I will not leave until I've helped the team with a minimum of one mission.

I will write in complete words, and will correct myself if I make a typo.

...the last is just for my own sake, as it helps me keep my typing in shape, despite being hunt and peck.

"I am not Jeffrey."

This is the phrase that my wife and I repeat whenever we are headed into OCD territory.

Jeffrey was the most OCD person I have ever met.

OCD has no place in my life.

1) No matter how bad, or disagreeable a person is I try, try ,try not to kick them from a team. I still managed to end up on someone's "blacklist" though...lol.

2) I must charge heedlessly into next (necessary) mob. It just doesn't seem very super not too.

3) If someone sends a global friend request, I feel obligated to take it. (Then when I'm up at 3am drop them from the list).

4) If its a Masters run and people are getting snippy, I feel obligated to get into the next cut scene and stand next to the AV.

5) I always go to the same WW/BM person, I don't know why, I just feel they understand me and we have a bond now.

1) I must fight one spawn by myself on every team.

2) After a period of 4 seconds, I must engage the spawn regardless of what my team is doing.

1) Always /em talk when talking to a contact and always /em cellphone when calling them. It's easy as I have them bound, but people still ask about it.

2) Always make my character busy when going AFK. This too is bound, "em newspaper$$afk" for example.

3) Always use the back-left elevator.

4) UI window borders must be coloured to match the character.

5) Walking or running characters must stick to sidewalks. If crossing the road, one should look for a nearby crossing. If there are none nearby, looking both ways and crossing when the road is clear is acceptable. Back alleys may also be used.

6) Heroes with Superspeed must stick to the road for the safety of the public. For the same reason, heroes with superjump should stick to rooftops, avoiding roads and sidewalks.

7) Unless the character hovers or flies, they must use stairs to travel up or down in mission rooms.

8) When in sewer maps, characters must avoid touching the waste if at all possible.

9) If the characer wouldn't have it, they don't have it in their tray. Vet powers, ninja run, mystic fortune, secondary mutation, jetpacks and costume code powers all fall into here. I've hardly any characters with any of them.


I don't know if these really fit as 'rules'. During the ninety-five percent of the time I'm soloing, these are absolute rules. When I team however, anything that slows me down by anything more than a smidge isn't considered necessary. Rule number nine is also forsaken on task forces. The team comes first.

Hmm. I always thought I had rules, but I see I'm nothing compared to a lot of people out there!

I try not to repeat powersets, especially within the same AT. This isn't a hard and fast rule, but I tend to stick with it unless I really really like the powerset in question,the proposed combo is so different from the previous one that they wouldn't play at all similarly, or the previous version never got out of the teens. So far, outside of those exceptions the only thing I've repeated is storm summoning, which I guess isn't surprising.

If a character doesn't have a concept and a good name (which includes not using cheap tricks to get around one that's taken), they don't get made. I don't RP, and the concept may well never even be written down in a bio or elsewhere, but I have to have at least a vague idea in my head of who this character is or I just can't get into them. Now, this can cause some headaches sometimes since the impetus behind a new character tends to be a AT/powerset combo I want to play rather than a new concept that needs an AT/powersets. For example, I haven't made my huntsman yet despite wanting to make one for months, since I haven't come up with a concept.

If a character doesn't have a satisfactory mids build (complete with enhancements) fully plotted out to 50 in advance, they don't get made. To me, characters are systems, and half the fun is meticulously planning and constructing the rules of my system to make it do what I want it to. If I can't get it to do that, I won't have fun playing it. It's why my MA/SR scrapper has been in limbo for more than a year even though I like the concept and sets, since I can't come up with a build that satisfies me.

Both of my level 50 heroes went to train up at Castle, since I sympathize with all the crap we here put the poor guy through. That may not remain a rule forever if a character has a more thematically appropriate trainer to use, but so far it's stuck.

Every character has to have swift or its equivalent, just because I can't stand running so slow in combat. The only character without is my shield/mace tank, and only because I couldn't make her build work any other way. It still annoys me, and she slotted a bunch of GotA: runspeeds to make up for it.

If I can't yet make a character I want to (because of incomplete proliferation), I won't make any character using the powersets of the proposed character. This is sorta like rule one, but in a future sense. Can be annoying sometimes - I've really *wanted* to play dom energy assault ever since they buffed it, but I can't until they proliferate illusion...

Every character should get an appropriate badge title as soon as feasible. Sometimes this is easy, sometimes has to wait due to being too low a level, the requirements for the badge being time consuming, or simply until I get a better feel for the character's theme, but they all do get one sooner or later (hello miss power armored shield/mace tank 'The Overcharged Indestructible Nova Rising, Bright Star'! ).

Interesting thread

Some rules I have for myself:

Creation
Name and costume must work on a (golden age) comicbook cover. When you see a comic cover with Wonder Woman on it, you know right away it is Wonder Woman, even without looking at the title, because of her looks: a distinct costume and color combinations. I want something similar for my characters, so that means a noticeable pattern, color combination, matching gloves/boots/belt and (usually) chest symbol. I imagine when I fly down to rescue a civilian, they should go, hey, blue and black costume with a golden symbol.. that is Sunwind.. hooray! A bit silly maybe, but there you have it

Something similar for the name, it has to sound good in a title like: "The Amazing Adventures of Sunwind", also I prefer single word names. The name also has to be somewhat related to either the powers or her origin.


Concept
While I don't roleplay really, I tend to think and act in concept. As such, all the powers have to make sense on why that character has them. Even if the concept is something simple like hit by radiation blast triggering latent mutated DNA strings, it has to fit (for me anyway).


Game mechanics
While the concept rule above is binding, the character also has to be at somewhat effecient in combat (since I love combat). So I always try to work the concept into what powers are available in the game, and find a happy medium between the two. I realize what the game can do, and work with what is available for my concept. That means some concepts never leave the planning stage, since the game mechanics simply won't allow it to work at a level I expect from my characters.

As for what I expect from a character in combat effeciency:
- has to be able to solo at what I consider a reasonable speed, and be able to defeat any EB a mission throws at me(temp powers are ok if its not a common thing)
- has to be fun both in solo and team setting (for example, I hate playing a Kin in a team, simply because I hate buffing, I guess I burned out on that on my Cleric a long time ago in the Dreadlands)
- for my melee characters: has to be able to do the RWZ Challenge with a success rate of at least 50%. Anything above that is nice but not needed.


Me
I play the game from the perspective of 'what if I had superpowers'. As such, all my characters are in a way an extension of me, projected into the game world. So no males, robots, monsters, aliens, non-humans etc. I tried playing those, but ultimately I didn't feel comfortable, and none of those got passed the teens. *shrug*


Combat
In a mission (solo), never ignore a spawn if I see it. That means, while I don't threat all missions as a defeat all, I usually fight my way to the objective, and any spawn I see on the way, has to be fought. No exceptions. If it is there, I fight it, even if the mission is already completed.

Never be the first to leave a mission (team). So for example on an ITF, second mission, last cyst is down and mission completes. If there are still mobs, I keep on fighting, at least until the team leaves. More often then not I keep fighting until kicked out because the next mission is selected

Never quit a fight. Unless the team as a whole decides to quit, I will never give up, even if it seems impossible.

Never quit a team during a TF or while a (single) mission is running. There are some exception, like extreme rude/sexist behaviour, but luckily, it never has come to that yet. Finish the fight, then quit if not having fun.

My Fire/Rad controller was a leaky Steampunk bot. He wasn't allowed to use his combat powers in City zones except in extreme circumstances, so I levelled him pretty much exclusively in Hazard Zones up to level 30 (he's a Streetsweeper Extraordinare)

Then the second Rikti War kicked off and that was recinded due to it being an extreme need (as long as he wore a modifed Emergency Medical TP that would relocate him to the SG base if it was detected that he was "Going Critical").

I've never repeated a Powerset within an AT, although I have played Dark Miasma on a Mastermind and a Defender, and Claws on a Scrapper and a Brute.

Oh, and a strong aversion to "thematic" combos of sets for some reason. I'll tend to always try to avoid [Element]/[Element] like Fire/Fire and try and mix them up. As it turns out this tends to result in characters I find more interesting as well. The only exception I have is my Necro/Dark MM. It's not a rule, just something I've noticed when I look over all the characters I have

I always make sure to not spend much time making a character's first costume. That way it ends up kinda crappy and at level 20 I can make a much better one, which gives a stronger impression of the character improving.

No matter what AT and sets I'm playing, I have to rush in as if I'm an unstoppable killing machine. Any other play style is wrong.

Last but not least, if I realize what I'm making is horribly overused and generic and cliche, I make it anyway because what matters is that it's fun to me. SO THERE!