What is your method for character creation?

Either I have an idea for a character(s) and assign a powerset and costume to that idea or I feel like playing a particular powerset and the character emerges while messing around with the costume creator for an hour or so.

Here and there in this thread I have seen people mention that they start with concept first and never minmax or start with power effectiveness or what-have-you. And thats cool. But I just wanted to say that starting with powersets first does not mean you are a dirty min-maxer (not that there is anything wrong with that). It also does not mean that story and roleplaying are thrown out the window.

I like superstrength. Not because of effectiveness, just fun and concept. I like the idea and the powerset enough that I have made space in my character list slots for most of the permutations of super strength. However, I wait until an idea strikes me. I dont just make a character and graft on a shape or costume or story later.

From a story perspective, I like thinking about origin stories, and how they interact with personality. I will look at one of Sam's examples to contrast. He started with a tough gal personality with a sword who jumped around and was gruff but had a good heart. Then he worked in powersets and movement and everything else from there. For me, I dont know the personality until the end, because for me, a characters personality is shaped by their background before receiving powers, the powers themselves, and the experience of getting them.

Think of someone who was a mutant with gravity powers who was a bit confused by it all when her powers kicked in. However, she met a mentor who guided her and so now maybe she is a tough girl with a heart of gold whose confidence sometimes falters but she finds it within herself to prevail. Compare this to a gravity mutant whose powers were triggered due to torture and experimentation. That person will have issues. Now picture someone who touched a magic stone which had an evil being in it and now he has to share his body with a murderous entity with gravity powers. Will the character struggle for control or give in to the base cravings of the entity? What about someone who sacrificed 1001 innocents to an elder alien god in a deliberate bid to get power, and they have gravity control now?

I start at powerset, but it is the intersection of person, powers, experience, and transformation that drives the kind of story and character I will choose to make.

I mean, what would a professional golf player do if they could summon demons after picking up a strange magic ring that grafts itself to his body? What about a religious housewife? What about a politician? What about a little kid? What about an ex-con determined to go straight?

For me, thats where its at. There are lots of powerset combos I want to play, but what will those powers mean for those who get them?

Lewis

For me, it starts with finding a good name.
I'm picky about avoiding forced misspellings, letter substitutions and odd punctuation.

The name then goes a long way towards defining the character.

Here's my most recent:
Ophthalmologist + Thaumaturgist = The Ophthaumaturgist

With a name like that, he had to be an Illusion Controller.

It sounds very Victorian Steampunk to me, so there was my concept. I decided he would be a gadgeteer, so Trick Arrow made sense to me as a secondary.

Then I did the costume and saved it.

Next, I took him to Mids and put together what I think is a solid build. It doesn't have to be completely min-maxed, but it has to be something that I'm going to feel good about playing solo x4 to x8 after 50. He was built for recharge and perma Phantom Army.

Finally, I wrote a background story.

Everything seemed to mesh well, so I made the character.

I guess I didnt quite convey what I meant, since you (Sam) just said that min-maxing is fine, but doesnt work for you and that you have to have story and character instead.

What I am trying to say is that it is NOT the case that you are either a minmaxer xor (exclusive or) a story guy. I view it as a bitfield. Costume, poweset, minmaxer, name, storyguy, and oldcharacterfrom1981 (nostalgia) are all different bits that can each be set individually to 1 or 0. Minmaxer and storyguy are not the 0 and 1 association in the same bit. They are entirely different bits.

I am just hoping I can get some credit for being at least somewhat multifaceted.

Btw in the Motivation bitfield of costume, powerset, minmax, name, story, nostalgia, I would have mine set to 010011.

Lewis

I usually start with a name or a costume idea (either can lead to the other), then develop the power selections from there.

I do try to create a background for every character I make, and even if there's nothing typed in the window, I guarantee there's something in my head--like my Dual Pistols/Radiation Corruptor, The Polonium Kid; he's an 1800s cowboy who got cancer from smoking too much, heard about a shaman that could heal people with a "magic glowing rock" and decided to steal it... and now he's accidentally immortal. None of that's in the text box, because I've had trouble phrasing it... actually, that's the best way I've ever put it. I should try to revist that box tonight. >_>

I tend to make "throwaway characters" with really goofy names every time a new Booster pack comes out. With the Animal Pack, it was Falcon Paunch, the overweight man-bird boxer. With the Steampunk Pack, it was Pot O' Brass, the steampunk leprechaun (complete with shillelagh!). I actually came up with another one today... a werewolf security guard--The Maul Cop.

When it inevitably comes time for me to delete these throw-away characters, I always save their costume files and copy their backgrounds to a text file, just in case I ever want to use them in an AE arc in the future.

I tend to focus my play time on just a few characters. Though I obviously like to make more, I generally don't play them beyond level 15 or so. I've been in the game for well over seven years, and I only have 5 level 50s between my two accounts.

-----
Random Aside: Right now, the only Tanker I've got is The Depressable Sulk; Seuss Sanders was a clinically depressed middle-aged office worker who had an experimental gamma radiation therapy treatment, which reacted poorly with the holistic medication he was treating himself with and transformed him into a giant blue juggernaut! "Don't make him sad... NOBODY likes him when he's sad!"

I had a Stone/Stone Tanker at one time named The Incontinent Bulk, a former sanitation engineer named Goose Ganders who had an accident in the sewage of Crey's Folly, but my friends threatened to disown me if I didn't delete him. (I still saved the costume file and background text, though! )

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

First, I try to get a name that I absolutely must have. If it's not available, I come to the forums and write a long ranty post about what a slap in the face it is and that the devs need to run the script to free up the good names. I might even threaten to ragequit....

Actually, I don't have a pattern. My last character, for example, was based on the fact that I wanted to play a controller with the plant and cold sets. Everything else came from that. His name is Al Pine and he looks like he's made of wood and leaves. His lower legs are a rich green and he gradually goes through fall colors to white hair (snow).

My previous character was made after reading a comic about Schrodinger's Cat. She a peacebringer catgirl named Quantum Qat.

I've actually got an example, because I made a new character last night. (I'm really going to have to buy slots when 21 comes out... sigh.)

When I want to just try out a powerset, I usually just make another version of a character I already play. I tweak the colors and whatnot so that it appears consistent with other versions - is there any reason a Dark/Dark defender who already knows how to control dark energies can't learn to punch? Ok, Dark/Dark scrapper version!

But when I make a full blown new character, I have to have a seed idea and then choose powers as they are appropriate to the concept.

So last night, my husband and I are running One Good Spider, me on my kin/will scrapper and he on his fire/thermal corruptor. And he wonders aloud whether there's some sort of duty roster where heroes have to sign up when they go on duty, to let the Zig know to expect guys on fire - have an extinguisher handy! - for the next 8 hours or so. I said well, there's probably enough fire heroes out there that one more doesn't make a difference, they'd have to be prepared for anything.

But it occured to me that, holy crap, the teleport bay of the Zig must be the scariest, highest-stress workplace EVER. It's got to be a disaster preparedness infirmary, PLUS have armed guards constantly grappling down those who are strong enough to fight, while they try desperately not to let the dudes with third degree burns and swords through their bellies die.

...and then I had an idea for a character.

Seriously how messed would you be after working there for any length of time? You'd need to staff it with the Freedom Phalanx not to be losing employees left and right. Plus, on the job injuries would be rife. The place has to look like Mother Mayhem's map, but worse.

And I INSTANTLY got a picture of this character. She'd have to basically dress like a Crey medic, you'd be spattered with god knows what. But I knew I didn't want her to have a gun - I'm not a fan of the assault rifle powerset, it never "catches" me, and I already have a Dual Pistol and one of those is PLENTY.

I didn't want to call her "Nurse" or "Doctor" anything, but I wanted some name that would have a medical association. So of course, Florence Nightingale comes to mind. So I think "Black Nightengale," no, that will totally be taken, everything Black is taken. But I think Grey would be better anyway. And if Grey is taken, I'll try Gray. And if both those are gone then I'll run the color spectrum and tweak her costume as appropriate, but I really WANT grey for this character.

So I try "Grey Nightengale" and dang, my first choice is taken.

But wait, did I mispelled that word? I window out, check google. Yup, Nightingale is with an I, not an E. Well, surely the CORRECT spelling is taken, but I try anyway. And I got it.

So even though misspelled characters are usually created AFTER the original name is taken, not in this case!

And I knew I wanted to use /pain and be a corruptor, even though I already have a /pain character, because you'd have to be /Pain to work in the basement of the Zig and also that set is incredibly awesome. I've considered rerolling my Emp/Dark more than once, just because I like Pain better, but she's my original character and I can't do it.

But having found "Nightingale" as a name, I was able to settle on Sonics as my attack set, which I've never gotten to use before but always wanted to.

Tah dah! New character! She's sitting in Praetoria, I'm trying to decide if I actually want to level her through there (the idea to having worked for Mother Mayhem and then gone to work in the Zig after she got to Primal Earth intrigues me) or wait til 21 comes out and send her through the new tutorial.

usually 3 possible options.
1. i think of a good pun
2.chase and cinder call me and have a group idea so i make one to fit.
3. i buy a new music cd and there is a song that carries a theme that i like.
now those arent the end of it, i will usually brainstorm pretty heavily to make the character, their backstory and such make sense, i kind of welcome the challenge if they are the pun characters, to make them work as something other than a dumb joke. but yeah the majority of characters began as a simple emotional reaction to some song, then id see a powerset that kind of looked like it worked, then the rest is layered into place.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

Well, since I'm not really good with names, it's usually the last thing that I find. Most of the time, I'm stuck at the last section of the character creation (register ID) and go search the interwebs for something that would git whatever character I've decided to make.

Now, as for what makes me want to create a new one?
Usually, a concept. Sometimes, a single word. Right now, I have Stormlord stuck in my head. It's been there for over a week.
But how do I go at making a 'Stormlord' ?
What exactly is my idea/concept around it?

You can probably guess that the reason why it's been a week or so and I still haven't created a character based on the single word, is because I had no idea for the costume, power set combinations, or even archetype!

To further detail how I end up deciding, I'll put a few thoughts that have come up throughout the week.
For a start, I loathe Ball Lightning. So I wanted to skip that, in any way possible.
The Electrical Blast sets are out.
So, Electrical Melee? Electrical Control? Electrical Assault?
Most of the Electrical Melee sets end up with Ball Lightning in whatever EPP I might take, this tosses them out rather quickly, but they are still sets that I want to consider, mostly because of Lightning Rod.

Onto the Electrical Control and Assault sets. Electric/Storm and Electric/Electric are the obvious first choices.
The moment that a combination hits, it's time for some Mid's and some reading.
I also like to ask around, because no matter how good something might look, it might not work as good as it looks.
Eventually, I ended up hearing that Elec/Elec is somewhat good, but that it's simply fun to 'watch the baddies without blue bars' and nothing comparable to some of the other combinations.
Now, even though I've never been dead-set on min/maxing my characters (I've always given in to concepts), I tend to like hearing that 'it's really good, you should try it -you'll see'.

So, after a week, where am I now?
With a concept, an archetype and powerset combination, but no costume or name.
I've tried a few times to get a costume going, but I don't know if it'll make it; I always end up wanting to make another character and derailing my 'creation'.
For example, I've been thinking of a Dark/Dark/Dark Fender and Ice/Ice/Ice Blaster, mostly because of this!

In short, it starts with a concept, an idea or even simply a word/name. Sometimes it's inspired by other players' costumes, or by an already existing fictional character, but no matter what, the name is usually among the last things that I end up finding and if I can't find a costume by then, it might just not work.
Even shorter version: find combination that fits concept, play in Mid's, ask in-game and sometimes on the forum, bail out at costume creation. Start again.

First, there's the input. Power Sets, Costumes, customization options, combinations of primary and secondaries, inherents. Then there's there's ideas witnessed elsewhere from other media and so forth.

This all enters the proving grounds of the imagination, and is whirled around with other memories of characters and ideas that haven't quite worked, been scrapped or wanting different interpretations on. A proto-idea is formed and sent to the proving grounds:

Proving Ground 1: Mid's Hero Planner. Gives me a basic idea of the progression of abilities, the scope, and what to expect. This gives me a basis to work on.

Proving Ground 2: The costume screen, this is where ideas are formed and moulded into a proper character.

Proving Ground 3: The powers screen. They're tweaked here to look just so.

Finally, we get onto the name section. An idea will be in my head at this point, be applied, and then suddenly, bang! A character is formed.

Generally, through play the rest of the character ideas will fall into place and I'll end up with a nice character. Otherwise, they get scrapped if it turns out they don't 'work' well with what I intended.

Puns.

Quite often my character names are puns. I'll be talking rubbish in Global Chat and then someone will say something, then I'll go roll it.

Maiden Voyage has, so far, been my most successful pun character. I purposefully chose sets which are intended to destroy things (Sonic/Mental Blaster...) in large quantities.

Strangely since dinging her 50 over a year ago, I haven't touched her owing to RP, game developments, and being a social butterfly (life can be so tough sometimes ). Her costumes were designed to provoke comments such as: "Aaaargh!" and "Kill it with FIRE!".

I have RPed with her twice. Once dressed as a robotic Pamela Anderson (complete with wooden peg leg and bionic skeletal arm...) and the other time in a bizarre assortment of ill-fitting and horribly bright-coloured costume parts.

My main's name, Arctic Princess, was a sort of 60s pastiche of femme fatale characters. She's Russian and cold and strong and deadly. She also became my first proper RP character here and I find I have a much better time playing characters when I am also RPing them.

I do have a lot of ideas for characters and some of them even make it past level 6. Those that don't more often than not are currently sitting in my AE tab of characters, waiting to be cast in a story should I ever get round to writing one.

And costumes depend on the Era I'm creating the character in. Some start off with the classic unitard, with occasional additions. Others are complex creations of as many big parts as possible to create different-size looking avatars, others still often use a few items from the latest pack.

And finally, I do like to try powersets that are unfamiliar to me. I still can't get into a rhythm with Warshades and Peacebringers, and Dominators are the next on the list of ATs I find frustrating to play. Lore-wise, I try to stay away from the Hero Epics. I was proud to get a Claws/WP Brute to 50 because it had only just come out (a Double XP weekend plus being able to solo on higher difficulty helped here). He also had a background and I RP'd with him a couple of times.

I start with powersets, then costume/concept forms kind of in tandem, with character name hashed out at the end depending on theme and what hasn't been used already. Sometimes the name part starts the costume/concept part over if I come up with a cool name that fits the powersets but kind of destroys the costume/concept part. Or I'll come up with an even better powerset combination that goes with the costume/concept, and I'll have to tweak things around.

On a few occasions, I had a concept first and then matched up from there. But mostly it goes more like this: "Ooh, I bet X and Y would be fun to play together! Let's make a new character!"

The ability to go back and forth within the "pages" of the character creation process was a GODSEND, let me tell you. I can spend anywhere from 2 minutes if everything flows together perfectly to almost an hour flipping back and forth between pages just to create ONE CHARACTER.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

It varies. Sometimes I'll pick out a power set I haven't played, like with Instigator Delores. I wanted to get around to a Dual Blades character. I then tried to figure out what secondary to pair with it. I eventually settled on Ninjitsu. Then I went to Mids to see how those two sets might work together. This initial build concept never makes it to actual game play, in the course of playing the character I'll find that certain powers don't work the way I've expected them to, but I like to do it anyway.

After I got Delores's powers picked out, I started working on her costume. This is frequently a breaking point. If I can't find a costume I like, I'll just stop making the character. But eventually I'll find something I like and move onto the name. Usually I'll have some idea of what I'm going to name a character by the time I've finished the costume. In her case I knew I wanted a title (descriptive of her duties) and a name. Delores had the right feel because it just seemed like a name for someone in an office somewhere. "Just turn the papers over to Delores in accounting"

When making Energy Pump, I got the power sets then the name, then worked towards the costume. He's Electric Armour/Energy Melee. The concept was just pushing down on a lever and energy comes pouring out. The trouble then just came with a costume.

It's weird. No matter how much time I spend designing a costume, it seems that the very first thing I do, after going through tutorial, is go over to Icon. Sure, I could re-roll, but that seems like so much more effort. And besides, how else am I supposed to use those veteran costume tokens?

I had my usual long-winded reply replete with some examples of recent alts
I'm currently running, but their lame-@$$ forum software logged me out while
I was editing it.

So, you get the brief version.

Here's how I make an alt.

1> It starts with a concept - either for character or powers/stats

2> I always make a backstory for the concept to cover why they're here in PC/RI

3> I typically put together a Mids' build to serve as a powers/slotting plan
(I am a min/maxer - not hardcore, but never casual either).

4> A Name. This is usually the easiest part for me. I usually get it as a part
of simply researching the concept.

5> Costume. This is usually quick, often because the designer, as good as
it is, can't make what I want, so "close" usually has to suffice, and/or I
tend to play stealthed toons, so it doesn't matter all that much to me
anyway...


Regards,
4

I have a concept for a Demon Summoning/Poison Mastermind scientist that has some hideously mutated rats, but I can't get it to work because I have neither a name nor a costume. The one name I have for it is The Amazing Maurice, from Terry Pratchett's book, because he'd have educated Rodents.

I do not, however, at this time require another cat character. I've already go Admiral Whiskers and Dame Frisky Tibbles.

If I could get a costume, I'd probably be able to figure out a name. If I could figure out a name, I might be able to get an appropriate costume. But without one or the other, I'm stuck.

Usual method: A name comes to me, and I see if it's free. If it is, I snap it up so nobody can take it from me while I solidify the costume and power sets, then save the costume and power customization. I then delete the name-holder and zip through character creation with the Load button and fill in the bio later. My characters Plasmette, Paindemic, Hour Thief, Illumineer, Power Balladeer, Caffeind, Argent Provocateur, and Geiger Contessa came from this method.

Otherwise: I'm a costume hobbyist and sometimes I come up with something I think is amazing while I'm playing in the tailor. The costume sits in my Saved Costumes folder until I can think of something to do with it, which might be immediately and might be a long, long time. Sometimes they get tweaked slightly and used on a method-one name grab (Plasmette had this happen), sometimes the costume is specific enough to inspire a character all by itself (my escaped-product-of-mad-science Fortunata, my power-armor-anime-space-lizard-princess BS/Shield Scrapper, my evil-ocean-spirit Dark/Storm Corruptor, my djinn Fire/Dark Scrapper).

Very occasionally: I'm doing something that's not even remotely CoX-related and I get a flash of inspiration for a concept from whatever it is I'm doing, without a name or anything more than a general costume idea to go with it. From this I have gained a sentient black hole (Grav/Rad troller), a noble knight and his retainers who still fight to protect their lord's family despite being dead for about a thousand years due to a sacred oath that was perhaps worded somewhat poorly (necro/fire MM), a mutant with a power over fungus that was pretty useless utnil she was infected with this (Mind/Thorns dom), a bright and shiny magical construct (Kin/Shield scrapper), and a mech pilot (AR/energy blaster swapping between petite female and maxed-out Huge costumes using Science pack).

And sometimes I make a character who's supposed to be part of an NPC faction: Sideshow Suzy the Steel Strongwoman, Mistress Leonette the demon tamer (inner demons are even worse when they've been psychically moved to the real world and are literally breathing down your neck!), Archon Stuart the Galaxy soldier (surprisingly, I see very few Council warshades), Menders Lathrop, Epoch, and Zeal who are even more thinly-veiled references to things that aren't CoH than the Mender NPCs, Allorast the Circle of Thorns mage, Silk Talon the Tsoo madam, Nurse N33dl3z the Freakshow Meat Doctor with stolen Arachnos tech (Crab pack!)... this method is especially fun for villains, as I'm sure is apparent by now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Texas Justice If you played on Virtue instead of Justice, you'd likely have many, many more cat characters than you currently have.

I play on Virtue but my only two cat characters exist on Triumph, because there's no bloody way I'll ever have the name Macavity (Claws/SR stalker) or Great Rumpuscat (Claws/DA herobrute) on my usual stomping grounds. They were both made by Method 3, by the way - picked up a copy of Old Possum's Book fo Practical Cats when I was bored in my church library, and realized that "The Awefull battle of the Pekes and the Pollicles" clearly ends in superheroic intervention, and if I'm lucky I can make that character, and if I'm really lucky I can make the one who clearly must be his nemesis as well... think it's legit to do so, too, since the costumes draw zero inspiration from Andrew Lloyd Weber and the original poems when not adapted for a musical are (I think) public domain now. Rumpuscat's bio states that he's actually the Rum Tum Tugger possessed by the spirit of Fireforefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell, so that's probably far enough removed from the plot of the musical that I'm safe.