Judgement power for a brutish non-magical Troll woman?

They become Huge trolls. Where else do you think the player model comes from?

Hey! I like Cryonic. But this is my judgement of choice for my storm summoner sorceress. She's always been imbued with all elements of the natural storm, so wind, water, rain, sleet, ice, lightning, thunder, snow and fog/cloud. She gave up her power over lightning so cannot use direct shocking attacks but her power over thunder lets her call Lightning Storm clouds. She also gave up her power over wind sheer but can manifest typhoons using combinations of her other powers. The timeline of the character says she eventually gives up her power over rain and snow as well but she'll never give up her power over ice which is her strongest and deadliest of powers. I actually have 2 tier 3s of Cryonic and waiting for the components to get her the tier 4...I plan to have both tier 4s on her to swap as she sees fit.

Ionic and Pyronic are indeed fun. Although I'm still working on upgrading to tier 3s, my Dragon Knight uses every judgement power but Vorpal because his abilities allow him to summon dragon skeletons to manifest their power while they are alive. Not only can he breath fire, cold and poison himself, he can summon greater dragons to breath pyronic, ionic, void and cryonic judgement on his foes...yeah, his specialty is destruction so it goes without saying he's my one incarnate who has and swaps to any Judgement power.

But enough about Dragoon, for Xanta, I smell a possible angle with your magic smith friend. What's his background? Does he have any enemies that would try to break her magic artifacts or steal them? What type of magic does the smith know? I ask because maybe his powers can be 'elaborated' as being either demonic or divine in nature...well, maybe not demonic, just *really* 'arcane' and the most arcane thing ever is fire...everyone knows that

But yeah, maybe after an incident, he had to put a bit more power into Xanta's equipment or perhaps a battle with one of his detractors unlocked a latent power in the magic ensorcelled armor and therefore, when [insert trigger] (I'd say when around others with strong incarnate power) power builds up and she is later taught/learns how to release the build up as a mass of divine or arcane power.

If that were the case, I suddenly have more interest in Xanta and her equipment and her past acquaintances

Another of my incarnates, my werewolf/were-cerburus uses Void. It's not a black hole. Even for my Dragoon, Void is more like a dragon maw coming up from the ground around him and all nearby and breathing the black fog of death on them. For my werewolf, Void is actually him manifesting his blood-letting ability in an AoE. He slices people up with his claws, their blood starts coming out and he just forces it to happen at a super accelerated rate, drawing out their blood everywhere, weakening them and drowning them in their own and their allies' fluids. He also has a variation on this ability where he draws out some of their blood and drinks hit to gain power (Energy Drain).

Colored dark red similarly to his Energy Drain, and it fits his abilities without needing to expand further.

I think the point comes to the character though. For some characters, Judgement powers won't fit their concepts, you don't have to force it unless you have an idea what you want. My main Kat/SR was going to get Void as a kind of 'cut into reality' type attack but instead, I just started amassing more Alpha incarnates. He's suppose to be super adaptable so it fits him that he'd be able to adjust his body to better fit his situation.

But starting now, I'm starting to make new characters with the premise of incarnate abilities. I think of super strong powers they may have before making them and leave that open for incarnate powers in the future. This makes it easier to fit for later if you desire. Of course, you probably created Xanta before incarnates were released as a Broadsword character, right? Yeah, same with my Kat/SR. No Judgement fits him so I use other powers instead.

What if you take Spring Attack and always use Void after SA, and conceptualize it as a bonus damage effect of Spring Attack, like extra radial damage around the impact point? Its not perfect because Void's animation is so long, but it could work. Just color tint it to something appropriate if you don't like the black hole-like effect.

Or you could just squint your eyes and say she's swinging her sword around really fast.



...that's all I got.

I'm still holding out on another round of judgments.

I actually managed to trap Nuclear Toast for about two hours yesterday, and we had a long discussion on just this subject - should characters "evolve" when they reach the Incarnate level, or should I keep trying to stick them to their original abilities but just stronger. I don't really have a clear answer for you in terms of a general rule of thumb, but I decided "evolve" Xanta just the same because we came up with a pretty cool way to do that. Well, a pretty basic way - MAGIC! - but with a cool spin on it that's still based around the character's physical prowess as opposed to spellcasting ability.

As I said before, Xanta has a suit of magical armour, and so I postulated that the Incarnate level of magic is something that's so physically taxing it would outright KILL most people if they tried to use it. This is partially why Ionic held such appeal to me - not everyone can call and then redirect lightning yet live to tell the tale. Basically, magic this powerful needs a very sturdy individual to survive using it, hence why it's magic, but it doesn't take away from Xanta's core strength, which is... Well, strength. Her ability is still based on how strong and tough she is, it's just now partially expressed through being able to survive hitting herself with the same magical attacks she's hitting her enemies and basically shrug it off.

And this is where we differ. I'd sooner delete a character than break concept. I'll always use whatever wiggle room there is, but as soon as I come up against hard limitations that define why I made the character in the first place, I can compromise no longer. In the case of Xanta, I'm limited to a relatively slow, incredibly physically tough and strong fighter. So long as I don't violate or supplant that, it's OK.

My apologies, I didn't mean to badmouth Cryonic, especially when it fits the concept. If ever an AT I play gets access to two ice sets, then you can bet I'll be taking the Cryonic Judgement, myself. All I meant to say is that it seems lower-key than powers which already exist in powersets, like Snow Storm or Blizzard. When you're talking godlike powers, I'd have expected something bigger than a spray of icicles, so it's really not something I'd pick unless ice as a theme were part of my concept - which it's not. I really don't think there are any BAD Judgement powers, but there are ones with greater visual appeal than others. Pyronic is one of those.

Jonah, the Mystic Smith doesn't really have a backstory that I've given him. I originally only intended him as a sort of father figure and used him to provide an excuse for why Xanta's fighting with a sword as opposed to a gun or her bare hands. That's back before she even wore medieval armour, since her original gear was more of a professional wrestler's kit, and she was a Broadsword Scrapper. I always treated the armour and the sword as more like costume elements than crucial character concept plot points... Until about a week ago when a story I was telling sort of went that way. I had one of my Mary Sue characters try to act tough and deliver a super-strength punch to Xanta, which she blocked with her sword. Instead of shattering like it should have, the sword glowed with magic runes as I was reminded of a scene from Samurai Jack, of all places. It's from the bridge episode where Jack attacks the Scottsman's sword and remarks about how his technique should have shattered his sword. "Magic runes, laddie!"

Essentially, that's a roundabout way of saying you make a very good point. As I said above, I think I'm ready to advance Xanta's story a bit and make magic a greater part of her toolkit, and in a way that still relies on strength of body first and foremost. The Tsoo actually give me a good idea with their "forbidden techniques." OK, theirs are forbidden because they're evil and not very nice, but suppose Jonah, the Mystic Smith knew a few of his own. Supposedly, he learned from from an ancient tome that Xanta brought up from a Circle of Thorns library, meant to enchant the battle gear of the gods. They're forbidden because the enchanted armour becomes deadly to any mortal who tries to wear it just because it takes such a tremendous toll on the user's constitution. It's HORRIBLY heavy, it drains your essence and it channels its energy directly through your skin, so if you're just Average Joe and you put this on, it'll kill you.

Well, here's the deal - Xanta's been getting stronger. A LOT stronger. She's tangled with Recluse, she hit Rula-Wade with a sword until his head broke open and he exploded, she hacked her way back out into the real world through Mot's insides with nothing but a blade and her own two hands, she's trod in lava, been shot enough times to qualify as a regular armed force and she only seems to grow tougher and stronger and more determined. Maybe, just maybe, she's finally strong enough to use armour imbued with those forbidden techniques. Maybe she's strong enough to handle Zeus' Lightning and Tielekku's Barrier and Rularuu's apparitions, just as a form of comparison. You see, what "unlocks" this power isn't so much something that creates the technique, so much as her being tough enough to use it without killing herself, essentially.

Hmm... Let's see... Think of it as Muad'dib drinking from the Water of Life that would kill pretty much anyone who wasn't Kyle MacLachlan.

I made her in... Gosh, 2005? 2006? So, yeah, a while before Incarnates. This was one of the big things I discussed with NT last night - should I make the step of adapting characters into their Incarnate forms by altering their concepts (within reason), or should I keep trying to represent concept through adapting Incarnate powers? For Xanta, this proved to be doable via some degree of spin, but in general, it means both a core rethinking of essentially all my concepts AND a much different mentality when creating new ones. The more I have to worry about when making a new character, the less likely I am to find cool concepts since making them becomes more work, and that's a problem.

But, you know what? I've been writing character concepts as a serious past time for eight years now. I like to think I've gotten pretty good at it by this point. In a way, NOT planning for Incarnates (in case I die of old age before the character gets there) and then figuring it out on the fly when the time comes is the kind of challenge I enjoy, speaking from a writer's perspective. Sure, it meant a couple of days of pain and anger trying to figure out what to do with Xanta, but the solution you guys and Nuclear Toast and I came up with pleases me greatly. In the end, I learned a couple of things - the less I have to bend the game to fit my concept the more better, and when it comes to Incarnates, it's next to impossible to keep a character using ONLY physical powers. Sooner or later I'll start getting pets and shields, after all. It's not completely impossible, mind you, but it comes close.

So, when the time come to figure out how to progress a character to make them into an Incarnate without violating the character's core identifying characteristics, I'm confident I can figure it out on the spot.

You're both right, and you point out something that I really should have given more thought to - colour-tinting Incarnate abilities to make them look like something they're not. Void coloured yellow does kind of look like Spring Attack and I guess I could have used it as your typical "hulking out" move where a strong character under a dogpile of enemies will get up and toss them all away at once. Were I choosing yesterday, I would very likely have gone this route and just pretended it wasn't dealing negative energy damage. However, since then, I've decided to expand the concept and I'm now pretty sold on introducing powers to Xanta which are decidedly magical in nature, so I'm less concerned about making Incarnate powers fit.

I'll probably do that for my other characters who get to that point, though, if they need to stick to a more physical look. Hell, I might even do that to Xanta at some point, but the conceptual gain to be had from "magic" is too great to resist, I think. I might even be convinced to swap her Epic into something more magicky... If I didn't absolutely NEED Energy Mastery to offset Titan Weapon's energy cost Or had the slots for it.

By FAR my favourite skill from Diablo 3's Barbarian is the "Charge" attack, which essentially has my big chunky overly-armoured Barbarian lady take off running in a straight line, running THROUGH enemies and objects in the way. I got the Grave Buster achievement from charging through a graveyard full of zombies and trampling around a dozen tombstones along the way. In fact, one of the skill's runes is actually called "Trample."

I tell ya, if I can have this skill in City of Heroes, I will drop what I'm doing, abandon my Judgement and start making that IMMEDIATELY, because it's probably the coolest thing I can think of for a big character to do That's essentially what the Juggernaut Headcrush is from Marvel vs. Capcom and the like. The Juggernaut rushes forward, head down, and basically bowls and tramples his enemies. Because he's unstoppable It's sort of like what Vinnie Jones did in the third X-Men movie while running through wall after wall. Yeah, I want an attack that's like that Maybe a very slow teleportation which animates our character model running forward between current location to teleport location, attacking enemies in a cone centred on us, THEN teleporting us with a two-second delay?

I don't know, I'd just like to have that

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.

Your base origin doesn't change, but that also doesn't change the fact that being Incarnated means being fed power by a massive, basically magical entity. There may be some Greek Gods who were essentially really big, really strong humans, but they also weren't being fed power from a vastly more powerful external source that allows them to manifest fire or lightning from their hands.

If you wanted to stay 'all Natural', then you don't get Incarnated. It's that simple. It's the path to Godhood. Anything you do as an Incarnate is implicitly because "the Well is pumping me with power". It is inherently not Natural. Neither is any origin to begin with of course, but Incarnation is going beyond your unassisted limitations by getting power from the Well. Remember all that story stuff about how at some point after Cimerora the last Origin seemed to have died out? How there used to be another Origin? Remember what that was? Oh right, yeah, it was Incarnate. Which is what you are now.

You're asking for a 'have my cake and eat it too' situation where you want all the gameplay benefits of being an Incarnate, but stubbornly refuse to allow your own story to fit into the setting in which it lives. Your base origin may affect how your characters Incarnate powers manifest, such as Natural characters perhaps having a preference for Vorpal as an expression of their natural speed, strength and skill, but they can still only do that because they poked the Well in the face and it lent them power. You don't get to rewrite CoX to service your story, you write your story to fit into CoX. Hell, you've kind of completely missed the point, since it's in-universe supposed to be a difficult decision due to Incarnation inherently being lent power by a completely inexplicable external force of mind boggling power that would seek to control you.

'City of Heroes Judgement Vorpal'. Seriously, you're not bothering to make the slightest effort and want to complain when what you need is clearly right there for you. When it gets down to it, you don't see much in a showcase of the Vorpal animation because there isn't actually all that much to see.

Fixed that

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Eh, true ;P Probably why you shouldn't have so many different writers.

... Then we look at Spiderman.

ONE. MORE. DAAAAAAAAAAAY~!

I'm not sure what you're referring to. If you're just against the concept of the Well, then I agree, though this seems to be slowly phased away in favour of Ascension. The powers ARE a bit... Magic-looking so low-key, physical characters are harder to sell, but this seems less related to story and more game design. I do feel it's fixable, though, by letting us turn off the visuals of non-Judgement Incarnate powers and giving us more physical-looking versions of the others.

If, on the other hand, it comes off as me arguing against the concept of having non-Incarnate characters wielding Incarnate powers, I'm actually completely the other way around. I highly dislike the "Well" angle and Ascension seems to account for having powers that look like they might be our own. I do have a problem with squinting and pretending powers are something different than they really are, but that's purely restricted to my own characters, in that I'll always try to find an alternative that doesn't have me redefine powers basic concepts. But as far as other people go? I take the "your dime, your time" concept. If you made the character, then I have no place to tell you how you should write for it.

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.

If that is what happens behind the scenes or not, thankfully it is never made a point of in the game. Your character does not dial up 'the well' and order a Nerve Radial Paragon, with extra pepperoni. No, you collect or learn things as you go along.

Feeding on the well is only figurative. You're not consuming anything. *THAT* part *IS* left vague for a reason, thankfully. Exactly what you're doing to obtain the well's attention is what's the important plot point here.

If you're going to be a whiny git about lore and enforce the limitations of the story, you forget something: you're not allowed to change origins. That little origin symbol does not morph into incarnate later on nor can it be changed from natural to tech or somesuch.

Incarnate is a status. A title. One doesn't have to reject their character's origin for it and this is coming from someone who uses 'the well' lore and doesn't try to correct it for my personal preference.

But you can't just 'become' a God. You either always have been or you never will be one. The path to Godhood lined with godlike power leads just to that: being 'godlike'. But being 'like' a god isn't actually being one.

It's not even figurative, the Well has been sidelined in the main storyline, and for good reason. Run the Large Breasts Trial and speak with Papa Smurph - he'll tell you about people ascending to become wells themselves, drawing power equal to, or even greater than that of the Well of the Furies, but without ties to any entity but the person's own nature. These are referred to as Ascendants and constitute essentially self-made gods drawing on nothing more than their own power. So much above Incarnates are these, that even Prometheus - the guy who's actively encouraging us to pursue our Incarnate destiny - is pretty blunt about not allowing us to become Ascendants, going as far as to threaten death and violence against any who would so much as attempt this. He and his "agents" are part of a group of gods whose primary duty appears to be to prevent people from Ascending because that's too much power for any one individual to wield, essentially more than practically anyone else has.

If ever the plan was for the Well of the Furies to be the sole source of our post-50 progression, this has been dropped in light of the OVERWHELMINGLY negative response that storyline has received from players. I've seen the occasional player who praises it, but most either don't give a crap about the story so long as they keep gaining levels or find it insulting that they're being hamstrung into serving an amoral, untrustworthy, controlling entity that has thus far brought no good to any of the people who've associated with it and whom everyone warns us not to trust. It's like if Architect Entertainment were the only post-50 progression and involved selling your genetic material to Crey and Aeon Corp. - people aren't buying it.

The Well of the Furies is a stepping stone, and an unreliable one as Tyrant stands to evidence of. It can give power, but it can also take power away, it will try to control you and people can still defeat you anyway. Mot has the right idea - consume enough raw energy to become a veritable Well himself, but without the need to have agents to use his power or worshippers to worship him. Essentially, this is ultimate, personal power, and that's where the storyline seems to be leading us, confounding Ramiel, Prometheus, Silos and possibly even the Letter Writer.

With all of that said, "you get your power from the well" is no longer a valid argument, when it's pretty clear we're fighting for a future where we're not.

*edit*
Per chance my harsh tone may not show it, I actually agree with you, Leo

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.

Best Samuel Tow post in a long time. /applause



TL;DR: The Well can bite me.

That has knockback? Damn, I should have paid more attention to the power stats, I guess. I already have a Judgement power made, but I can conceivably make a new one. Seems like basic Common Incarnate powers are fairly trivial to make, coming at just the cost of a couple of arcs, so swapping shouldn't be such a big problem. I bring this up because you do make a very strong argument.

Actually, what you make is a very strong sell The way you describe Void is just about exactly how I would imagine a might-based power working, and the animation does lend itself well to this. Yesterday, I picked Ionic because, erm... Thor, really, but I'll be the first to admit it's a major break with how the character would normally fight. Void, coloured something else, can still be interpreted as some kind of magic energy attack (it's Negative Energy, after all) so I can remain in-keeping with the character progression I've planned (i.e. where Xanta is now strong enough to survive powerful magical artefacts) but it does seem slightly more appropriate than shooting lightning at people. Mind you, if Ionic looked like Statesman and Tyrant's version, I wouldn't really have a problem with it, but it looks more like Thunderous Blast. I'll log back into the game to check out my options.

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.

I can't understand why a super strength theme judgement was not added when they fisrt came out.

I thinking have that as a judgement would be great.

You could select between the ground punch animation that Marauder currently uses or the footstomp animation. That way...people can have their Judgement power be different than their "Footstomp" power from SS if they wanted.

You make a strong point, actually. Someone already gave me by far the most convincing sell for Void, in that the animation combined with the right kind of colouring could make this look a lot like the typical strong man attack, only magic. What I mean by this is you see the character rise up and throw her hands in the air, a lot like what you'd see in your typical dogpile breakup. That just about made me hop out and start making Void.

That is, until I sat down and looked at my options, and until I looked at the power stats. Void with knockback sounds like it's not a bad choice, but that's until I remember I don't really like PBAoE knockback. In terms of stats, Void and Ion have almost the same numbers, considering how I plan to go about them - damage and more damage. It's what Xanta does.

In terms of visuals... This is tough to call, but I just can't... I can't get myself to like Void, not as anything but a black hole. I know it can be made to not look like that, I went through a lot of colour combinations. A yellow Void looks pretty good, as a point of fact, and it IS kind of cool to have this "Graaarh!" moment where Xanta rears up and explodes everyone around her... But for some reason, I still prefer the look of Ionic for her. Void looks like smoke no matter what I do. It looks like gas. It's cool if that's the point, and I have characters for whom this will DEFINITELY work, but for Xanta, lightning from the sky just works better. Even if it's not Zeus' Lightning, it still works the best of them all. I've tried it by this point, and it works. It looks divine and it looks brutal, which is all I really want.

Mind you, there are no real right and wrong decisions here. It all comes down to preference and "feel," and to me me Ionic feels more direct.

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.

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.