What's Your Favorite Concept Toon?

She started off as a joke, but has turned into a really good character...

Way back when, some rp friends and I decided to colonize a new server and try a particular storyline thing. The specifics of that don't really matter so much (although one of the assertions was that we were supposed to be descendants of former heroes...)

Anyway, I created Tawny... my first tanker.

One day, Tawny was out for a walk. And some thugs tried to take her purse! The nerve! So she cried out for help, but unfortunately all the heroes that passed her by were just tooo mighty and involved in whatever plots they were involved in.

So this thug kept on tugging and tugging, and she kept on tugging and tugging...

Then, finally, she snapped, and decided that if the heroes weren't going to help her, she'd have to do it herself. So she reared back and wailed on the guy. Bam!

Next thing you know she's taking self-defense courses, and registering as a hero. Even though it's negligible (or zero) XP, she still saves purse-snatchers.

She uses her real name (Tawny Mistell) because she wanted to leverage that into a brand. She's been working for Icon as a fashion designer.

(she's an Invuln/SS Tank. If WP had been available then.... but nope.)

Every alt comes with a concept, I can't roll a new one here without one. Character creation is just one big character sheet and set of crayons, I can't help using them!

As for my favorite concepts, well...

Second runner-up is Six Alarm. She was an angel who didn't Fall or Saunter Vaguely Downward as much as she Jumped Going Wheeeeeee All The Way. Now she's the Minor Demon Of Children With Matches, stuck in Paragon City after a turf fight with the Oranbegans went horribly wrong. Not that she's too unhappy, what with the target-rich environment of the Rogue Isles.

First runner-up would have to be Death Wish Upon A Star, the Fairy Cop on the Edge. Formerly a detective with the Anaheim PD, now she's a strange fairy in a stranger world courtesy of the Portal Corporation. At least they have the right ammo for her favorite assault rifle here.

But the winner has to be the one and only Flamethrower Ferret. A pet store ferret mutated into a flame-wielding superhero - or at least that's the history he was programmed with. In reality, he's an amusement park's attempt to cash in on a wildly successful cartoon superhero show via the power of animatronics. Only he gained full sentience. Now he's Paragon City's foremost G-rated superhero!

All of my characters are concept toons too, although maybe in a weird way. Although most are based on some kind of pun, I think if superheroes existed in real life most wouldn't be super serious all of the time anyway.

I have a lot of characters I like but somehow a few tend to stay with me more than others. One is The Cold Reader. Bio has been modified slightly to foretell his change from Mind/Ice Dominator to Dark/Something Controller or Dom. His in-game bio is below:

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Evan Trueday was once a phone "psychic" who manipulated callers into believing he could read their futures for $4.99 a minute. In truth, he had no powers at all. His secret was a technique called "cold reading," in which a hoaxter uses clues learned in conversation to impress his marks.

The tele-psych gig worked great for a while, but then Evan started receiving strange interception on his headset. It was picking up calls from a mysterious source. Aliens? Ghosts? Government agents? No one knows for sure, but they speak only to Evan, and by heeding their demands he gained the ability to summon occult shadows and intense cold.

While Evan retains a mind of his own, his loyalty to anyone but the strange voices is questionable at best. However, he still occasionally pauses to take a call from old, faithful customers who plan their lives around his "amazing" foresight, as well as pay his way.
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There is also an in-character letter from this character posted on the RP forum here that contains a bit more detail, and shows off the character's voice: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?p=4071202


The character's costume is relatively simple, loosely based on the idea of TV charlatan given real power. I hope one day to be able to include the mini-mic headset.

Four of my toons come to mind.

1. Nyx Tempe. The original Nyx Tempe was a DM/WP scrapper but with the opening of the US servers to players from the EU (and vice versa) I have this name on all servers and basically play her with different power combos on each server. To me all the Nyx Tempes are alternate-earth versions of each other and/or dimension-hoppers!

2. Dollman. Short little villain Thugs/Traps MM. He is intended to be psychotic and a collector and manipulator of people. He even sports the "Toy Collector" badge under his name.

3. Ladybeetle. FF/energy Defender. Best looking toon I have. Not too powerful in attacks as you would expect but with massive survivability and crafts the most wonderful pink bubbles!

4. Chaos Machine. A large fire/fire brute with a retro and rusty robot body and a glass dome head alwasy on fire. Essentially he's meant to have been created by a blend of 1940s nazi science and witchcraft. However, once built, like Frankenstein, he turned on his masters. Not a hero in any sense (he still exists redside) but quite solitary and pursuing his own agenda.

Two of my characters are my favorite for concept.

First is Shortspark, my first hero and my namesake. She's a fire/fire tanker, who causes her anger to manifest as fire-based powers. She's the oldest of three sisters who all have anger-fueled fire powers in the same vein.

Nemesis Plothole, a much more recent arrival. He's a StJ/Reg scrapper, and exists simply to be the monkey-wrench in Lord Nemesis' plans. He appeared shortly after Nemesis became active, and has persisted in his heroic activities ever since.

Many(most) of my characters have a very lose concept at creation, but I tend to do it backwards...

I don't (often) come up with a concept, then pick an Archetype/powerset/costume to match that concept. I come up with the powerset/Archetype combo I want to play first, then make a concept to fit them. The costume design stage can occur either before or after the concept forms, depending.

I rarely actually write a backstory/bio though (because I'm a terrible writer), so the vast majority of these concepts only exist in my head.

My current favorite is my Time/Fire Defender, Archmage Beornan:

(I need to get an updated Pic of him, since I unlocked the Celestial stuff. For the most part all I did was add a back piece though.)

He was an Oranbegan from the time of the Mu wars, but rather than accept a pact with the Prince of Demons he cut ties with the Circle of Thorns and fled into exile.

From the relative safety of exile he bore witness to the horrific acts of the Oranbegans and their Demonic cohorts/manipulators, and ever since then he's devoted himself to looking for way to destroy the pact and free the souls of his fallen people.


My other favorite concept character hadn't existed on live for years, cause I didn't really like the way Grav/FF played, but I remade him in anticipation of the Gravity update.

Forcesphere (Grav/FF Controller)

(I'll be swapping his Aura to Magnetic once I unlock that for him.)

He's a product of Crey Industries' Revenant Hero Project, who went on to be a major part of Project Forcesphere, a secret operation involving construction of a fortified lunar research station (yay Moonbase!).

He was being used maintain the base's force dome, and maintain earth-standard gravity before he was liberated from the laboratory by a group of heroes.


I need to flesh out the concept more (like I said, I didn't like how Grav/FF played(mainly the Grav/ part)). I know that when he's first released He'll have been a bit... unstable, and I know he'll be a villain for a time (Need to get him Scorpion Shield), before eventually settling more as a Hero-leaning-more-towards-Vigilante (Particularly where Crey is involved).

He's a work in progress,.. for many years.

@Oathbound & @Oathbound Too

Playing in Perez Park, I suddenly remembered my only Warshade:

Her name is Dolores Perez ("yes, of THOSE Perezes).

I made a decision that there's a powerful Perez family in Paragon City, much like the Rockefellers of New York. (Yes, I know the out-of-game reason why Perez Park is named Perez Park, but it's got to have an in-game reason too, right?)

Anyway, Dolores's sister (Hillary) is sort of like Paris Hilton. Dolores is more of a wallflower. Still, when a Warshade came to her and offered her its deal, she took it.

Mostly I really like the "of THOSE Perezes."

The majority of my characters are concept-based. When I first started out, it was more along the lines of "I like the idea of playing an X/Y, how can I finagle a story out of this?" Nowadays I tend to come up with the story alongside the powersets, or end up swapping powersets around until I fit the concept.

My latest creation is Madam Magnetic, an Elec/Stone Dominator Hero. I had initially planned on the name "Lady Lodestone" but that was taken. I'm not entirely sold on the idea yet, as I'm not sure if the concept is really clear enough for people to understand right away without explaining it. I just wanted to make a character based on lodestone/magnetism.

The character who gets the most compliments is without a doubt Ectofreak, my Dark/Rad Defender Hero. I managed to color all his powers in a really awesome neon green and black color scheme, making it look very Jack Kirby-esque IMO, and people always comment on how cool my powers look and that it works perfectly as ectoplasm. So I'm really proud of that one.

Quote:

Originally Posted by OmniNogard

You should meet my Dark/Poison Corruptor Villain: Blood Plague. He was a mutant with regenerative powers until his mutation advanced to it's final stage, when his blood cells became viral and began eating him alive while simultaneously rebuilding the damage. Now a twisted, skinless horror he's learned to revel in the pain and share his disease with others, controlling his viral blood as though it were some sort of hive mind linked to his own. Obviously all his powers are colored blood red.

like many others here all my toons are concept toons, and I really tend to like them all. However I was very surprised and pleased with my latest concept toon as I had no idea on how it would play out. M. Sensei is simply what I envisioned myself to be as a toon without bias towards an Archtype. I am a teacher, and I have a good voice that can really carry (much to the dismay of an unruly classroom). I didn't want to deviate much from the realm of possibility (lol) of the things I might actually encounter when it comes to origin so that ruled out magic and science off the bat. Because I wanted to use my voice as a theme for at least one of my power sets it pretty much ruled out natural as well, because as loud as my voice can be it isn't super powerful. Normally I would have ruled out Mutation, but being that I live about 100 miles north of Fukushima Daiichi, the reactor that went meltdown last March I decided Mutation wasn't too much of a comic book stretch and went that way. So as a result of being bombarded by certain fallout elements from the FDI meltdown, my vocal chords, throat, and diaphram were mutated allowing me to project my voice in a number of ways, from setting up a damaging vibration to lulling people to sleep.. Sonic Attack. But I wanted to also capture something about the nature of the classroom, and I thought about how funny time seems when you are in a classroom. If things are interesting, time flies, if things are boring, time crawls. So expanding on that idea I granted the mutation also triggered some kind of temporal control (poor poor students). So with sonic attack and time control my AT options were limited to defender or corrupter. My choice here really had to do with my idea of how the sonic attacks worked, which is by vibration, and I thought that it would make more sense that if the structure of the target weakened the damage caused by the vibration would become more severe, hence the scourge dynamic was more appealing to the concept. So now I have M. Sensei, a semi-retired English teacher who has returned to the States to take the villains to the school of hard knocks, a sonic/time corrupter. I'll admit the concept itself was not so deep, but trying to make it a semi-honest approach was interesting (semi-honest in sticking to traits I either actually possess or are reflections on human experience rather than what I would like to envision my alter ego as aka some kind of scrapper or brute). What made it even more interesting to me was the gamble involved as I only have one ranged AT that has ever made it higher than 20 (ill/storm bound air elemental), the rest being melee ATs. I have been happily surprised with how well this toon plays to my standards of solo-ability. The toon looks enough like me that when I asked my 3 year old who that toon on the screen was she immediately replied "Daddy".

Honestly when first contemplating this toon, I was immediately drawn to Mastermind, because it was the easiest connection to make. And honestly if I could have customized the costumes on thugs into Japanese jr. high school uniforms, I would have made him a thugs/time mutation MM in a heartbeat. But I doubt that even if you could customize MM pets, that any kind of school uniform would ever be a possible choice. Still I get a chuckle when I think of it.

All of my characters are 'concept' characters, made with stories and built along a matching theme.

That said, my favorite is Dreameater, my Mind/psi/soul Dominator.



She started as a young orphan with mild psychic abilities, but has gained power and abilities through draining dreams, taking the mental drive and using it to sustain herself.

There's probably more about her in the link above than anybody would care to see, but she is fun to play. Drain psyche and soul drain function perfectly to reinforce her story and concept.

Has to be one of my oldest toons, and my ID on the forums. Ace of Hearts, my mind/kin controller

"Although he looks like a mind controller, Ace of Hearts mutant ability is quite different.

This bisexual mutant is actually capable of raising the levels of hormones, testosterone and oestrogen in his body and projecting the affects great distances. what this means is that he is actually able to make any person (man or woman) lust after him and even fall in love.

Furthermore, by picking up on the hormonal levels in a persons body he can detect what "turns them on" and use that power to his advantage. The affects are similar to mind control. He can render foes immobile as they are mesmerised by his beauty, force them to attack their own allies or do anything to please him - even go to sleep! Ace of Hearts ability is not just limited to his foes. He can use his power to make his team mates feel euphoric and therefore stronger and faster.

This man is not just a love machine - he is a human drug! "

Wanted to post a picture but dont know how to do it

Fullthrottle is a Spines/DA scrapper. Back story involves how she and her team of mercenaries was murdered by the Malta. In hell, Fullthrottle was selected to be an agent of the devil. She was given Spine powers and the ability to take and store the souls of her victims within herself until bringing them to back to hell for judgement. The rest of her team's souls was sentenced to stay in a void, a gulag where prisoners are trapped there for eternity.

Fullthrottle's first target were the Malta, payback for their brutal murder. Upon completion of her task, she brought the Malta's souls to the void where she saw the ghosts of her former teammates roaming about, crying in anguish. She takes it upon herself to free them and slays the gulag guard, a Kraken-like creature. She then absorbs the souls of each one of her former team and flees like a bat out of hell.

Now Fullthrottle has dozens of souls of her former team within her. Releasing them for a long period of time would eventually take them back to hell. The same result if Fullthrottle were to die again. So the souls are within her, only released to protect her by taking the lives of anyone wishing to do them harm.



The original idea for this costume came from a costume posted by Cheeze Head last year. I really wanted to go for the crystal or slate spines but the clipping on the Medusa hair is horrible and only works well with metal spikes. I like the Fire/Ice 2 back piece, I imagine that's where the souls erupt from during battle. The carnival of light masks works well with this costume IMO. Made a lot of incarnate powers trying to keep within it's concept. Pyronic/Void, Phantoms/Polar Lights and Reactive/Spectral.

I'd say all my toons are concept toons, but here are my three faves (WW's employee added for scale)

Here's the Exalted version of my main (my actual main is on Infinity and has the name I had to settle for instead of the name I wanted):




Here's my second toon ever. I got the idea when my main was running thru the city and a civilian who was getting mugged/robbed shouted "I need a hero!" So whenever this toon hears a civilian say that, she has to stop and lend a hand, even if on the way to a mish or the bad guys con grey. (Ok, I don't do that while teaming, only soloing.)



This guy's my problem child, I love the concept, i just can't seem to decide on an AT or powersets. He started as an Inv/SS tank, but my main is an Inv/SS so I re-rolled him as an NRG/WP brute. I was underwhelmed by Energy Melee, so I re-rolled him as Dark/WP which is this iteration. But I've already decided to re-roll him as StJ/WP, but here he is till then.

Currently, my latest iteration in my canon Cobalts is a TW/WP, which was a follow-on to my VEAT Bane.