Have you ever rolled a toon ONLY because you thought of a cool name?

I have done this once a loooong time ago with a character called 'Shocking Blue'.
Made her into an Elec/Elec Blaster, didn't like. Then a Corruptor. But again... Even made her into a Brute until I found out that Elec/Elec brutism wasn't my cup of tea.
But always kept the name around until I'd find the right character. Lo and behold, Going Rogue brought forth a new powerset! So now (for now anyway) she has become a Controller! If that fails to please me, next step is a Dominator.

I just can't shake that name, especially with the Venus chest Emblem

Oh yes, made quite a few based on a name/backstory that sounded good... and deleted quite a few of those as well, either from not playing well, or not being played at all.

Hour Thief, Grav/Kin troller.
Plasmette, Elec/Fire dom.
Criminal Scum, Thugs/Poison MM.
Tornadocane, Elec/Storm corr.
Zoombie, Claws/Dark brute.
Illumineer, Ill/Rad troller.
Lumenvoid, PB.
and Argent Provocateur, who I still haven't even rolled properly because I dunno what AT to make her.


tl;dr - Yes.

In short, all the time.

Two recently actually...

Hour of Darkness and Dirge of Malevolence.

Both of which I have on Virtue but still haven't decided on a character.

All the time! I've filled around eight slots with toons with names I thought I was cool.

Virtual Terror
Ordnance Unleashed
Overload Extreme
War Weaver
Night Beat X
Corsair V
Clockwork Samurai
Lord Obscura

All of them have been deleted saddly

Yes, all the dang time. Cases in point: Trauma Hawk, Mechanical Edge, Shortest Straw, Dice's Mercy, Unpronounceable, Malachi Gidon, Diessence. That's not counting some of the deleted ones that never made it to level 10. Or the ones that I wanted to create but found my "awesome, unique and super-neat name" had previously been thought of. :P

I rolled a claws/regen scrapper named "Inevitable Cat-Girl" as a joke. (Bio: "Everyone rolls one sooner or later!") But I ended up really liking the combo and played her all the way to 50.

Yes, The Introduction of psionic blasters and the world of confusion power had me rolling a GL knock-off named 'Pink Ring'.
Yes he was in-character as somewhat camp, yes he had an outragious bio parodying the GL-lore and him being bestowed a pink ring by a dying alien and reporting to Ooh-ahh for training.

To be honest, the parody became tiring after a while, even if he did get quite a few "LOL !!!" pm'd to him on sight. Deleted out of boredom tbh.

I haven't personally made a new character just for the name--but I have seen some awesome names that I would have done if I had thought of them.

The most significant one being this guy that made a character using the clockwork parts... named 'A Clockwork Orange'

Best character name I ever saw.

MWUAHAHAHAA! I just nabbed Captain Epic on Union!

----- Union's finest underachiever -----
Farewell CITY of HEROES
The First, the Last, the One.
Union: @ominousvoice2059

I find naming to be the hardest part of character creation.

Quote:

Originally Posted by VoodooGirl [*]Watching out for the Spinning Disco Portal of D00M!*

A lot of my characters have been made in the following process:

Think up a cool name->figure out what powersets would fit it->roll character->figure out concept (concepts tend to come to me after I've played the character for a few days.)

Off the top of my head, all the following characters of mine were born name-first. Several of them proceeded to hit 50:
Inchoate
Shatterware
Shardwave
Magatama
Entropy Dagger
Scrap Dragon
Sorrow-Weave

Plenty of characters happen concept or powerset first, which usually results in me spending a few days trying to think up a name I like. But a name I'm satisfied with is pretty critical for me sticking with a character, particularly if it's a heroic/villainous pseudonym instead of just their name.

A friend of mine was looking for a type of hat the people wear in mexico, but not a sombrero; more Zorro style. Since he couldn't find it, he just found a backwards baseball cap. Slapped the clockwork body on, and called it finished. The name of this character? Mechsican.

I'd say upwards of 75% of my characters start with a name and then the concept comes after that, most notably "Scarlet Shocker" who very quickly became a blaster

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

I tend to make characters one of two ways:

1) I think of a terrible pun or other form of joke, and then the character has to be made.

2) I get sucked into reading someone's post on a particular set or combination, and their enthusiasm sells me enough to go ahead and try the combo. When you spend more time than is probably healthy on the forums this is a real risk.

Of the two I tend to play the 1st type of character more, mostly cause I get a good snicker when I log in to the character select screen.

Yes. In fact, my first Praetorian was made based purely on a name I liked: "Chaos Babydoll".

I don't remember how I came up with the name, but when I was sitting in the character creator trying to figure out what would go with the name, I decided the "Chaos" portion would be from the Chaos Space Marines of Warhammer 40K. Now I've got a Demon/Pain MM who was the result of the union between a daemon and a Chaos worshipper who had gotten lost in the Warp. The resulting hellspawn then got thrown out of the Warp and landed in Praetoria, the poor dear.

She still worships the Dark Gods, but she's lost in a universe where nobody else has even heard of Warp storms, much less her gods and her people. Fortunately, she's able to summon some of her childhood friends from the Warp, if only for a short time.

...

And now I have Cultist-chan in my signature, which is actually a total coincidence. I'm serious!

My names are usually taken from somewhere in RL.

Hideous Exuberance is from a flier I saw posted in the East Village for a local band. He is now my new Electric controller.

.

"The Musician"

Immediately made a Sonic/Sonic.

Daystar Bright (Complete with co'opted theme from "Rainbow Brite" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sENkUgkjRAk)

He's a rad/mental blaster.

This thread makes me want to roll a character named "Skittles, the Bright Dragon" but the name is too long

This is Skittles:

Image © Wizards of the Coast