Help me reroll another 50

Yeah, I'm at this again, and I promise this will be the last time. The rest I can figure out on my own. In fact, the only reason I'm asking is because I seem to have some more options open up as I reroll.

The character in question is Princess Inna Inamen, as can be seen here:



To make her long story shorter, Inna is an alien who inherited the power of creation by right of birth, which gives her technically unlimited energy and the ability to fashion entire worlds out of nothing... In time, when she has gathered enough of it, spilled across the universe as it is.

Originally, I made Inna a Blaster - Energy/Energy/Force, to be precise - but I've grown badly unhappy with the AT and I'm slowly rerolling all of mine into something else. The original plan was to simply reroll Inna from an Energy/Energy Blaster into an Energy/Energy Brute, despite my dislike for Energy aura, or my possession of another 50 Energy/Energy Brute already. But then I saw that, unlike before, I had options, and I'm no longer sure what to pick. Energy Melee is a given, that will not change, but I have a few options for a secondary. Those are:

Energy Aura - The obvious choice, but a set which suffers from performance issues, and of which I already have a double. It's true to the concept, and the visuals aren't bad, but I keep thinking I can do better. Overload is a definite plus.

Invulnerability - An easy choice for a supposedly invincible alien. She's just very tough to kill, which would correspond to having great power, though more indirectly. It's also nice in that I don't have to bog her down with dense auras. Unstoppable is a definite plus.

Willpower - In the same vein as Invulnerability, but even closer to the original concept, one would expect that a creature with the power of creation would be functionally unkillable given enough strength of will to continue existing. And after several billion years of doing just that, it's justified. Visuals are nice, in that they can be turned off, but the lack of a "god mode" power (and Strength of Will doesn't really count) is a definite minus here.

I have no plans to remake Inna any time soon, so there's no time pressure on this redesign. Still, I'm lost in indecision and unlikely to be able to move forward without any outside assistance, so any opinion on the matter are welcome and appreciated.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Why not Dark Armor as a use of Dark Matter and/or Dark Energy? Personally I don't like the set but conceptually it might work.

Here's the first thing; don't use "random" for generating costumes.

If she can create worlds out of nothing, why not make her an Illusion/Force Field controller or something?

As for your secondary for a melee character, Electric Armor might also work in funtion and theme.

I'd say Willpower would probably suit your concept better. It gets good regen and a self-rez which works for an immortal concept, the resistances aren't that bad, +perception works nicely for your concept too, and unlimited endurance is good for a "theoretically unlimited power" character. A childlike mind wouldn't necessarily be more vulnerable to psi attacks, especially if it's an alien mind. Psi users are used to affecting human minds after all. Maybe her mind is just too different.

Have you thought about Electric Armor? It's essentially another energy-type armor, and if you can get it to fit your concept it has a damage aura, which will somewhat make up for Energy Melee's rather craptacular AoE damage.

Edit: Someone beat me to the Electric Armor suggestion, but yeah. It can't be minimized but it is a brightly colored armor by default.

Electric Armour has Power Sink and Energise, which should cover anything you would have wanted from EA's Energy Drain and Conserve Energy.

I have both a Willpower and an Electric Armour (both Tanks rather than Brutes, but the basic idea should be the same) and I love them both. Both are nigh invulnerable (the Willpower regenerates at near-AV levels; the Electric Armour might be more invulnerable due to being coupled with Dark Melee, though.)

Electric's Tier 9 probably fits that idea of "energy being" best; Power Surge changes your character's appearance to a being of electricity for its duration, so that could be her unleashing her "true self" or some such. It still looks like electricity, though.

I realize you said you are stuck on Brute, but you may want to consider a Regen Scrapper. This fits the hard to kill, doesn't stay dead and MOG makes you very tough when you need it. Also through the roof Stamina Brutes only wish they had .

I am not even going to attempt to compare damage between the two, you don't need 10 pages of debate. lol

Don't forget that by changing colors you can actually make sets look very different than they were designed so that they mimic different powers. (i.e. a white beam can be passed off as an ice power even if it isn't)

Sounds like you have it mostly in hand though.

On Scrappers: They don't have anything which can really pass for Energy, and I'm not much of a fan of Vanguard weapons standing for energy manipulation. They do look the part, but they're still weapons, and not very big ones, at that, especially for women. They look more like tech, and I have more than enough tech on Inna Neither Dark Melee no Fiery melee, nor indeed Electrical Melee are appropriate, I'm afraid.

On Electric in general - I didn't consider Electric Melee or Electric Armour for the simple fact that they're electricity, and that's a bit too specific without decent explanation, which I'm not sure I want to go through. Energy Melee, and to a large extent Energy Aura, are about as pure as energy gets without being specific to what kind of energy it is. Even Dark powers are more specific than that, since they're NEGATIVE energy, and to do with the Netherworld, at that.

Generally, I don't like to pass one thing off as another, such as posing Dark powers as Sand powers. There are damage types to contend with, there are power descriptions to contend with, and then there are just power themes that work as they are designed to. That's one reason I don't want to use Fire coloured as energy. Even blue fire that passes for the "energy of destruction" as I have it on Inna's counterpart is still a destructive force and still more suited to a different concept. That's why I stopped at Energy Aura, Invulnerability ans Willpower. One is energy, the other two are "undefined" for the most part. Not a fan of mixing elements into what they aren't.

All of that said, I still don't have a good argument on Electrical Armour, other than the aesthetic one. It looks like electricity, it sounds like electricity, it has the properties of electricity and it's represented by bolts of electricity. I'm more looking for a Dragonball Z take on power here (even though their energy auras looked like fire), which is a simpler, cleaner glow that blows up. Either that, or nothing at all, which is No FX.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

As a visually-focused person myself (Eiko looks like Eiko, thus why I use a screenshot as an avatar), I think "it looks wrong" is completely valid as a reason to not use something.

Do you have the Origins Booster? (Or the Alpha aura from GR:CC?) If you do, check out some of the auras, and set them to hands only/combat only. If you match the color of the aura with the colors of the attack animations, some of the fist striking sets can give a look similar to Energy Melee. Try it with Kinetic Melee.

In regards to concerns about bright effects... I usually hate that too. On one toon it can be attractive - on an 8 man team of them, it's just a hot mess (and in a cave, you'll see nothing BUT effects.).

If you use the "bright" color customization palette, and use the darkest gray (top left corner), the effect comes across white, but the brightness is toned down a lot. I use that on a lot of stuff I wish had no effect at all.

Conversely, you can use an aura on top of the innate one you have toned down, to mask the unwanted effect as well. If she's an all-powerful energy being, I sort of suspect she would have some type of "look" to her, like some kind of shimmer, or all-body halo effect which could be achieved in-game via some sort of aura, possibly muted down to more of a shimmer than a HEY LOOK AT MY AURA thing.

(As an aside, I feel your pain. I've never been able to think up a character and find a powerset - or even proper costume, for that matter! - which satisfies the concept. When I've tried to approximate, I've never really felt more than "meh" about the character. It feels sort of like a fake, or something. Now I go about characters the other way around - that is to say, I think of a set that sounds fun to try, and then think about what kind of a being would have such powers? Sometimes, have even looked at a set and felt I knew just who should be playing that, too. 'Course, now I have a ton of beloved alts I never play because they have stupid powersets. )

Anyway, good luck, keep us updated, ok?

On costume auras: I agree with you guys, to a point. The pic I listed above has the Alpha aura applied to only one hand. Originally, my idea was to use the new "one-handed" animations for Energy Blast that came in I19... Only that's not what actually came with I19. Oops! Inna's original concept had her lose an arm when crashing on Earth in quite a violent explosion, hence the big robotic arm. As with most of the characters I've been rerolling, her concept is many years old, and she was my fist asymmetrical design, and I did all I could to capitalise on it, which is a robotic arm, the off-centre Gladiator shoulder, a single shoulder cape, and now the right-arm-only Alpha aura.

Luckily, Alpha on the hands looks remarkably similar to the effects of Energy Melee, the "pompoms of death," provided I match the colour schemes, which is doable. I'm not sure how I feel about it now, however, considering the only one-handed attack Energy Melee has is Stun. I can get rid of that if you guys feel it looks weird, or use something that's on both hands (which is everything other than this).

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Originally Posted by _eeek_ As an aside, I feel your pain. I've never been able to think up a character and find a powerset - or even proper costume, for that matter! - which satisfies the concept. When I've tried to approximate, I've never really felt more than "meh" about the character. It feels sort of like a fake, or something. Now I go about characters the other way around - that is to say, I think of a set that sounds fun to try, and then think about what kind of a being would have such powers? Sometimes, have even looked at a set and felt I knew just who should be playing that, too. 'Course, now I have a ton of beloved alts I never play because they have stupid powersets.

That's a big problem for me, as well, and in almost every instance. For the most part, I think in abstract concepts, so pinning them down to a particular practical implementation is always a hard process, one usually solved not by picking what I want, but by excluding everything I don't want, which is why it may seem like I'm shooting down ideas all the time. Thing is, if I shoot down all other options, the one that's left has GOT to be the right one, right?

What causing a quandary here is the broadening of the spectrum of options. When I was making Inna as a Blaster, I had no choice - it was Energy/Energy or bust. Even to this day, Blasters have remarkably few decent secondaries, and Inna was made in the time before powerset proliferation or customization. Remaking her NOW opens up several new options and opens her implementation to re-imagining. Do I really want to just go Energy/Energy like I did last time, or is there something more appropriate? What was my initial idea? How much of it was driven by the game's limitations? How much do I want to change? After all, I rerolled an AR/Dev Blaster into a Bots/Traps Mastermind already

For Inna, though, I think I'll stick to the basics and just go with Energy/Energy, my other Energy Brute be damned. She's a villain and she's using red powers in a dark theme, plus she's human and ground-bound. I've been thinking of possibly redesigning her costume, as well, as I did with the Rook, but I don't think I'll go with that. Just because some pieces are old doesn't make them bad. I want that big fat robotic arm, and not much other than Tech Wired fits with it. I may have to swap to the Resistance shoulder, we'll see how that goes, but I probably won't. May have to think about different clothes, but again, chances are I won't. I like the look a bit too much

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Sorry to bump my own thread like this, but I think I finally found a solution to the conundrum, in the form of something I completely overlooked.

Enter: Energy Cloak. You know the power - decent stealth, some defence, complete model transparency. Here's my problem, though - I don't like the transparency, and unlike Cloak of Shadows, I can't set it to No Fade or Pulse. But more than that, it reminds me of how I wrote and played Xandra, my original Energy/Energy Brute. Much of her entire shtick was the fact that she was stealthy and able to act as an unseen bodyguard for her master.

This is not something I want for Inna. Her "thing" does not include being stealthy. "But, Sam" I can hear you saying "Just don't take the power!" I could, yes. Or I could pick a powerset from which I can take all powers, and which works just the same. Or how about "So what if she's a little stealthy. Just play it as good tactics." The problem is that not only is Inna not stealthy, she is not someone I would ever characterise as subtle. Not in power, not in personality. That's not to say Energy Aura can't be played in a non-subtle way, but more that Willpower works just as well, AND it doesn't present me with this conundrum.

That, and the animation for Strength of Will has her raise her giant metal hand. Can't beat that

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.