Hazard Pool

One of the things I love about City of heroes is that it makes "death" a transient and many times very viable tactical option. Attacks, buffs, and debuffs that need a dead target. Rezzes that buff the recipient or attack or debuff the enemy. They all make dying in the right moment a pretty good thing.

But I got to thinking, the NPCs have one thing that players don't have (yet). That is OnDeath triggered powers. Be it the Nemesis version of Vengeance, or the Carnies' death scream, or the Ghouls regeneration auras, for the bad guys, sometimes cool things happen when they die.

So I got to thinking that it would be cool to make a new power pool with some OnDeath and OnRezz auto powers. It also occurred to me that a slottable more versatile version of Self Destruct would fit well.

I think it would be a good pool to have 5 powers in, and to use the same kind of rules that apply to Soldiers of Arachnos powers. In other words, you can pick one OnDeath Power and one OnRezz power, but no stacking multiples.

So here were my rough ideas. I have more than 5 though and honestly cant decide which I like most:

Spectacular Death: When the character goes down, he tends to do it noticeably. So notably that the enemies are often distracted momentarily. AoE Taunt, short duration, with a ToHit roll. Purpose: distracts the enemy from the characters teammates.

Noble Death: an automatic version of Vengeance that fires off automatically, just like when Nemesis Lts go down. Make it weaker than normal Vengeance, maybe give it different effects, but let it stack (if multiple players go down).

Shrapnel: When the character goes down, automatic systems kick in to possibly take others with them. A minor DoT and debuff that hits anything nearby. Not a big attack but maybe enough to finish off a few weakened minions.

Spectacular Return: When this player gets up to start fighting again, the enemies are shocked and may lose their composure. AoE fear.

Toxic Resurrection: the revival process does something to this character's body and they emit a toxic cloud that reduces the enemies damage resistance for a short time.

Immolation: A slottable version of Self Destruct that has a much shorter animation time, but most of the same downsides. No body left to target and rezz, but area effect or self rezzes will work.



In the end, I just wanted to put these ideas out there to maybe change things up a little. Now that Fitness is inherent, there's a bit more wiggle room in some builds, but there still aren't that many great options among the Power Pools. I think this kind of pool would allow for some rewards for a different sort of playstyle, and at the same time make things more interesting.

/sign, as it gives me hope that my dream of a Kamikaze powerset will come to fruition

This sounds like fun, and I firmly believe that we need more power pool options.

I dig it.

/signed

Thanks for all the great comments everyone! It's appreciated.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gemesis My only question for you is, is this that way you'd want them to be tiered? Tier 1 : Noble Death, Shrapnel Tier 2 : Spectacular Return, Toxic Resurrection Tier 3 : Immolation

It would be something like this yes. Taking Noble Death would lock out Shrapnel, for example. Then taking Spectacular Return would lock out Toxic. Then someone could take Immolation.

I guess the ordering would really depend on which powers ended up being "stronger" It may likely work out that the On Rezz powers are deemed weaker, since you need another method to get on your feet in order to Trigger the effect.

Part of me wants a long drawn out Death animation, kind of like Paul Ruebens in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie.

Not sure on the effects of the ondeath and onrez. but i do love the idea of it.

/sign

Yeah in the back of my mind I was thinking it would end up being some kind of invisible Pseudo Pet to manage the effect. I wasn't going to get bogged down in the technical side of it, it's just ideas.

Is my memory playing me false, or did the Radiation Emission power "Fallout" used to work this way, a long, long, long time ago? I could swear that, before it became "use your dead teammate as a bomb," it was originally more along the lines of the classic "Captain Atom's containment foil is breached" scenario - your radioactive hero dies and, in dying, goes up in a giant (well, actually quite puny, these are CoH player character-scale power effects) nuclear fireball, taking the surrounding bad guys with him. I remember being quite taken with that, and disappointed to find it didn't work that way when I got my Rad/Rad Defender to the level where he could take that power.

(Edit: Aha! It did. It's in the original City of Heroes game manual that way: "Fallout (click) After you fall in battle, you can activate this power to deal massive damage to any foes near your body." So apparently it wasn't automatic, but it was still a tactical-deadness power. I can find no indication that this was changed in Issue 1, so it may actually have been a power that didn't survive beta but was changed too late for the manual to be corrected.)

Wouldn't shock me if it was, and it wouldn't shock me that it got changed. I don't think having powers like that in your Primary and Secondary is a good idea. However I'm all for giving people the option to take some Pool Powers to make the idea of Tactical Death more appealing.

I think about this every time I play my energy blaster. I took the entire leadership pool, save the last power, because I am more likely to die before my teammates.

I like it!

I have to say as a player who factors his death into his playstyle (whether or not I wanted to die) this could be a very useful pool......especially since I could claim my constant deaths as calculated falls.

A friend of mine has Rise of the Phoenix as part of her attack chain.
I'm only half joking.

Lemur, you make me proud, this is the best idea I've heard since group buffs... and I heard the group buffs idea years ago. It fits the genre so well I can't believe noone else has thought to implement something like this before. The Devs are going to love you.

The only concern I have is that they create a obsolescense to already existing dead powers, such as Veangence and Fallout. As you know, these powers are alot of fun for the people that take the effort to spec into them, I would hate for them to become useless. I suppose, making the on-rez portion impotent if some other "dead body power" was used might make the difference.

Definately think that vengeance should be changed to passive mode, so that if you die, you give it, rather than trying to get others killed so you can cast it. You know who I am talking about Of course that ruins Power Boost Vengeance. Or as you say, make it stackable.

Well that's why I suggested that a different sort of buff (or a weaker one) be applied when using the Veng Like power.

If they followed the standard rule that Auto powers are X% weaker than activated versions, it wouldn't step on the toes of people with "real Vengeance" at all. But it would be a really cool way for the last guy standing to get a nice big buff from other people that went down.

I also don't think it should interfere with other powers. Notice I deliberately didn't put any form of self rez into the pool You still have to get up on your own or with the help of someone else, and even if you generate some kind of effect when someone rezzes you, it shouldn't interfere with whatever buffs or attacks they cast on your dead body.

I really appreciate the positive feedback and thoughts though folks. Keep them coming.

Every time I look at the Power Pools we have now, I try to come up with new options. I love that the devs are expanding existing pools and I hope it keeps happening. But I also think that even given the generic nature of the Power Pools, there's room for more pools to be added. Especially now more than 7 years ago. I think they've gotten so creative with the powers system that it's an untapped gold mine to go back and look at Power Pools and revitalize them.

They make it easier and easier to fit what we want and make efficient and variable builds. They should give us more choices to go along with that. Make it harder (in a good way) to decide how to make an awesome character. Give us incentives to use 2nd and 3rd builds and get some real variety in our favorite characters.

I'm not a huge fan of this but I guess I can see it. It's well thought out and sort of interesting but I don't particularly like having to die to use a power. I already think Vengeance was a bad idea that introduces perverse strategies (dying on purpose to take advantage of an effect). Nice ideas overall though. Obviously the OP spent some time thinking about it.