Help me with a character concept before my head explodes

I killed probably an hour of Viking's time with this last night, but there's a certain character concept I've been sort of pondering for a while that I'm really stuck on in virtually every respect. I got kind of burned out on City of Heroes after running through Dark Astoria about four times in a row, so I tried playing other games... And they were all terrible! So, I'm back to City of Heroes and I really need something new to shake up the game for myself. Enter "this character" that I haven't even named yet. Let me describe "it" and see if you can help me make this a reality.

"This character" is a member of a race of creatures whose primary defining characteristic is that they're generally pretty stupid, but tough and VERY long-lived. They live in a world ruled by superstition, ritual and essentially clueless blundering, surviving on their hardy physique and thick heads more than anything else. At one point, these creatures received a gift of great power and knowledge, but while the others used their new power to wage war and conquer, this character instead took the time to marvel at the beauty of nature, to sample the fruits of culture and to generally try to understand the world, so that it doesn't seem as scary and confusing.

Unfortunately, the great power waned, and these creatures grew stupid once more. No longer able to comprehend, the world once more felt alien, nature looked ugly and culture seemed... Well, stupid and pointless. But the memories of those times remained with this creature. It may not have been able to understand why the sun rose every morning, but it remembered that this COULD be understood, at least. Having dealt with the pain of losing its great intelligence, this creature emerged with the gift of great wisdom, knowing that there was more to life than basic instinct and primal fear. It set out to learn, to experience and to define its own existence, aware of its low intelligence, and having accepted it.

With hard work and dedication, over many centuries of its long life, the creature studied, it learned, it contemplated and conversed, and eventually regained... If not the supernatural intelligence it had lost, then at the very least the perspective that had once inspired it so. In the end, the quest for knowledge gave way to a much less straightforward one - the quest to use this knowledge and in turn help others define their own place in life.

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Now, it might seem like I already have a character written and ready to go, but... That couldn't be farther from the truth. What I have is an idea, but I don't actually have a character to put it to AND I need to tread carefully so I don't end up remaking a character I already have. Here are some of the things I don't know or don't have about this character:

Gender: Serious question here - should this character be male or female? That actually puts the story in quite a different perspective depending on which direction I go, just because it's a lot easier to paint a man as a dumb brute without putting much thought into it.

Race/Appearance: I have no idea what this creature would actually look like. From speaking with Viking, we established that I want the creature to be organic, biological and to have been "born" in some way. I don't want to work with artificial intelligence or magical constructs because these put a whole extra layer of existentialist self-awareness questions that I don't want to get into as they'd dilute the "intelligence vs. wisdom" duality that I'm shooting for. I also don't want an "orc" or any other kind of "green skin" because I already have one of those. She's the face in my sig.

Level of intelligence: I'm not sure how intelligent I want to have this creature eventually become. Obviously, I don't want godlike omniscience, but where do I draw the line? Do I make the creature still stupid, just more self-aware, or do I reward its efforts and make it nevertheless highly intelligent enough to lead an intellectual debate? Make it into a scientist, possibly?

Brains vs. Brawn: How much of the creature's "power" do I want to come from the might side of things and how much should it stem from intelligence? Should I involve technology of some kind, or go more bestial?

Powers: Not a clue in the world, other than I want a Scrapper, a Brute, a Stalker or a Mastermind... Actually, scratch that. No Mastermind, just Scrapper, Brute or Stalker. And when that's done, what powers? I've done so much with these ATs that repeating myself is a real danger.

Appearance: What should this thing actually look like? Big? Small? Tough? Scrawny? I want to put it in clothes of some kind, but what kind? Regular contemporary, future sci fi, power armour, what? Should it have wings? A tail, maybe? Should it have a face with a mouth?

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Basically, I'm desperate on this one. My foray into "other games" was so depressingly negative that this is all I have left to save my desire to play games. I need a good idea because, at the end of the day, that's what I play for - good ideas I can make something out of. And if I can't make something out of this one soon, my head maw actually explode. I'm already hearing it tick.

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.

The first thing that sprang to mind while reading that was the Morlocks ( HG Wells Time Machine) >Then letting my imagination go , i could envision a race of "created" workers on a parrael earth. These new " humans" were far more bestial bred in labs for work, sports, etc.

But despite there nature and the control exerted on them by there "masters" these let us call them Proto-Humans were still intelligent enough to eventually realize they were abused and mistreated and threw down there over lords destroyed the labs and there they lived until Portal corp Discovered their dimension.

Well that's the imagery i got reading what you told us most likely not the most original but what is anymore!.. maybe it will help!

So based on that.. I would see them as Brawn over brain.. but enough brain to problem solve ( think early human) Brutes or stalkers.

Technology and clothes : Because they overthrew their more advanced master i could see them using items and clothing from there former controllers maybe Hi-Tech mixed with animal skins? Or.. or ! Like a Noble savage look!

Powers: well i would say right off Brute.. maybe mace nothing to fancy like STJ or martial arts but SS would be good..

Origin could go Science or natural...

That's not a bad idea, actually, and it reminds me of something I forgot to mention that I REALLY should have. It's just something of a rule of thumb of mine - I'd like to try to make this creature as inhuman and weird as I can while still retaining a humanoid and at least somewhat sympathetic look. To me, characters with fantastical alien magic backstories immediately lose a lot of their specialness when they look like humans, and this is a bias I developed from old sci-fi shows that made heavy use of "rubber forehead aliens." It's easier to just cast people and put some minor make-up on them, especially for older shows, than it is to use puppets or animatronics or even CGI that didn't exist for a lot of those.

A human character is kind of like a human face - we're all the same when you get right down to it, so I instead have to reach pretty far to make a human character truly unique. It's a lot easier to pull off with an alien-looking creature because no-one really has any preconceptions of how these should look, thus just the unique look is enough personality. I mean, check out my 13. She's a ridiculously simple design - all red robot with breasts - but because you don't see that many of them, THAT is a large part of her personality.

*edit*
I'm not sure how I feel about a "slave race," though. See, the thing is I want to work with something that's stupid naturally. When you start getting into the "great legacy" side of a story - and that's an awesome story, by the way - you sort of end up cheating, so to speak. All of a sudden, this character isn't learning through hard work and dedication, it's learning because it's simply unlocking its own lost potential. That's good for its own story, as I said, but for this one I really need someone whose potential is a dead-end street, thus this person can go above and beyond his or her own limit. It's what the story hinges on.

*edit*
And again, I reject nothing when I make these posts I greatly appreciate the insight, and you forced me to consider several angles I'd never even thought of.

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.

Maybe, no matter how hard he/she studied, no matter how dedicated he put his mind to it, he could still never attain the same amount of intelligence he once had? Therefore driving him to search for it in this "City of Heroes" he's read so much about. With all the magic users here, seems like a good place to start.

In terms of appearance and what not, perhaps his opening costume is the bare minimum, cloth and fur? And once you reach 20, you give him actual clothes, 30, armor, 40...good armor? Just something to show progress in how they've gone native. More specifically in appearance, you mentioned no orc, troll or anything green-skinned like that, but perhaps someone that's really tall, like a Giant race? Or hell, really short? Dwarfs come to mind with that.

Powers wise, well, SS/Inv immediately comes to mind. But to get a bit more creative, Titan Weapons would be awesome for a giant man. If they're a race of giants, than it'd only make sense that they're swords seem bigger than ours. Or if a dwarf, small guy wielding a huge blade only emphasizes his strength more. For secondary, i think you're looking at either Inv or WP, thematically.

In terms of intelligence, it'd be REALLY interesting to see someone whom after all this time, still pales in the intelligence department compared to that of an eight year old. Basic reading and math remains, but it's not enough, it just isn't. In this search for something better, it truly gives him a justified goal and us the audience, someone to root for.

But yeah, I'm out of time and need to get to work, but in closing comments, you'd have here a specimen whose nature of brute force, would constantly be in war with his nurture of intelligence. Hope this helps a bit.

As an "odd" looking person wandering around in our world before finding Paragon City, it seems to me the character should have some way to blend into the background to avoid bumping up against the "authorities", not to mention prejudice and persecution, and generally trying not to draw attention.

So, Stalker covers this fine (hide). If you go scrapper/brute, Energy Aura and Dark Armor give you stealth.

Semi-natural attack methods suggests to me either War Mace (club/pipe/bat) or perhaps Spines or Stone Melee (rock clubs).

Stone Melee/Dark Armor (colored for "earth control" vibe) could go together well. Fault + Opp. Gloom stack well. OG could be worked into the story based abilities well, probably.

As far as gender is concerned, while I'd likely go with a Huge body for basic shape, I'd consider it gender neutral.

Well to start where along this creature's journey does it find itself in Paragon/ The Isles?

You said with hard work and dedication over it's many centuries of life it regained perspective. This implies to me that the character should have basic intelligence at the least. Perhaps being overly inquisitive similar to Socrates. Always asking questions, so much so that people might get annoyed.


Gender: could go either way though I think female might be more appropriate. (this also has the advantage of a wider costume selection.)

Race/Appearance: Now i'm not sure why but as I was typing this something similar to the Queen of Blades(from Starcraft) popped into my head. Probably because that's a decent representation of strength and mind. So I would work from there.

Intelligence: I spoke about earlier,basic intelligence but overly inquisitive even asking about simple things. "How is it that water comes from this metal tube?" when seeing someone use a faucet.

Brain vs Brawn: Depending on where in the journey this character is should tip the scale here, but i think a medium of using brain for offense/defense and using brawn for the opposite would strike a good duality.

Powers: I think Scrapper or Stalker fit better than Brute and both would allow the duality I suggested earlier. I'd need to know which sets you've already done on both to give more direct advice.

Appearance: For clothing a mixture of exposed and armored areas. Armor favoring joints and exposed favoring muscles. This reinforces that duality.

Hope that helps

Ok, here goes...

The level of intelligence issue... I thought of Rain Man. Hear me out. An idiot Savant(sp?). Highly intelligent, yet the through put, or way of expressing said intelligence is gated and impaired. Think of, "it's right on the tip of my tongue" moments. Or lean towards Einstein, brilliant, but can't tie his shoes.

Sex... A-sexual. Go plant based. This is a ironic twist to being scared or confused by nature. Also can allow for what AT...

The AT... Stalker. Fearful and easily confused, leads to fight or flight. Stealth and deception can allow for a superstitious race to avoid most threats perceived or otherwise.

I guess what I'm getting at is, look at how animals (insects and plants) react to their surroundings. Even the higher intelligent ones are bound by instinct.

Just my 2 cents

I rather like the gender Neutral..this adds a whole other level of naivete..Not only does this being not understand its world around it. but does not understand the complexities of gender interaction.. sex, love, etc could all be alien concepts..

Race: Dinosaur. It alternates between frantic activity and extended hibernation. While sleeping it processess everything it encountered while awake, and maybe even psi-scans the surrounding minds to continue learning. Most recently it woke up in an Egyptian tomb that looked pretty comfortable when it entered it a few thousand years ago. Archaeologists woke it up and sent it to Paragon City, because what else do you do when you open a mummy's sarcophagus and find a dinosaur napping inside?

Whatever you choose, just make sure you can fit a judgement power in there somewhere so we don't have to re-figure it out 50 levels from now.

Sam, I like your base idea a lot, so I’m going to show you an example of my own alien.

I wanted something that clearly stated “alien” so I started, first, with the sliders. They are a mix of maxed out or completely minimized. In this case, she is as tall as possible, as skinny as possible, with a thin face and large eyes. My base image was “a really tall Grey alien”.

http://www.wingedscarab.com/ra/maaseruat.png

Then I went through all the faces. I wanted her to have three eyes. Unfortunately, the Third Eye under Detail 1 looks like a normal human eye. That’s something I have to live with. Right now I’m considering a change to one of the Carnival Masks but I’m not certain how well it will work. I used the Veil on her to mask her lower face. Instead of normal eyelids she has an “iris” type fold that “shutters” over her eyes. The base creature idea is Insectoid-Reptile. She doesn’t eat in front of others, and eats a ground meat protein paste.

Her skin color. Here’s where I wanted colors that don’t normally go together, so I went with a Lavender/Rust mixed. Used the Reptilian skin, Chitin for arms and legs, and Monster legs with the insectoid claws. A Reptilian tail gave her a good mix of Reptilian/Insectoid. The Mohawk hair is defined as a “Fin” and I used the large Bat ears (iirc) for additional fins as well as the Illium on her shoulders. These fins glow different colors depending on her mood since she cannot show emotions using her facial expressions.

Also, her hands were something I could not show in the costume creator, but it is clearly stated on her info. There are five phalanges per finger, and she has three fingers and a thumb, ending in short nubs.

It’s really amazing what you can do in the character creator these days, and this character was built several years ago. With the new things that have come out, from Organic Armor and Bioluminescent, you should be able to find something that gives that otherworldly appearance. Stray from the human skin tones and green or red, and you should be able to come up with something. Just remember that some skin colors don’t play well with other colors in the costume palette, which can hamper your clothing choices.

For Gender I’d choose female simply because there is a greater choice, costume-wise. However, do check out the heads in male, as there is a marvelous alien one there that females do not get (I think it’s under monstrous) that has no eyes and a huge, toothy smile. Another reason to go female is I know they have the insectoid claws under the Boots, but I’m not sure men do, so you can have skirts or such with the legs unlike with the Monstrous legs.

Powers and AT: I have never played a Brute, but have plenty of stalkers and scrappers. One thing you can do is utilize the effects of some of the powers to be even more alien, like spines. Defining what the home planet climate is like may tell you what kind of powers the character has. My alien, above, is a dark/dark/electric. Her powers are a sandy-teal, and the planet surface has a lot of massive electrical sandstorms. It’s a large, low-gravity, three sunned planet that is extremely hot and most creatures live underground. Only the really scary and dangerous creatures live aboveground.

Intelligence: I like the idea of someone who has learned a great deal, but not necessarily how to apply it. They know the method of how to tie a shoe, but, not needing shoes, has never actually tried it. My character, above, is an exiled diplomat who crashed to Earth. The damage she sustained in her crash knocked her three brains out of synch from one another, so for a long time she spoke in three distinct voices that took turns in speaking. It made communication for her difficult and, though quite intelligent, made getting her ideas or points across to others difficult. Even now, with her minds in synch, she still has to think about what she is saying as English is so completely foreign to her.

Brains and Brawn: If the character base idea is brutish and warlike, then I see this as a basis of the powers as well. I am not certain what powersets you have already played, but you can mix it up. You could have the primary be something like War Mace followed up with a more intelligent secondary, like Super Reflexes or Shield Defense. I, personally, have always wanted to try an Electrical Melee/Shield Defense scrapper. Shield Charge + Lightning Rod? I’ve seen two separate characters use these powers against the Devouring Earth for the Eden trial. I was laughing hysterically as the DE exploded in a shower of fragmented crystals.

Overall, I think you have a great idea for the character to start, you just need another push. Play in the character creator, mix and match things you would think are the most obnoxious possible combination, and see what you can develop. You need to decide a few things still, though. Instead of human, what is the basis? Reptilian? Amphibian? Aquatic? Insectiod? Living Rock or Tree? Then the climate of the home planet may guide you more.

As for the name? I hit my Ancient Egyptian dictionaries and came up with a mix, calling her “Ma’aseruat”. It’s an alien sounding enough name without being too far out there. Most people call her Ma for short.

I like the idea of a gender neutral person, but remember they are 'born', so there has to be some kind of sex types involved, so with that in mind, I'd imagine that female would probably be best in the regards to trying to use more empathetic and thought provoking techniques rather than bruting through things.

Now for AT's, they are strong to begin with, then they had the gift of power, even if it disappeared, so I think scrapper or brute. Though on the other side of the coin, stalker could be a natural race progression for a people that tends to be afraid of anything they percieve as different, but for power sets I think could work I'd go with maybe scrapper.

Power sets, mace/shield. Use a club or something, as a not that smart but powerful race, picking up something and swinging it would be the most likely choice of weapon. But as a show of intelligence, she would think that hitting things may not be enough, so she picked up something, maybe the first thing she came across like a manhole cover, and uses it for protection.

For looks, I agree with other post's that it should start of basic then progress to some more armor type clothing as she maybe not think of it on her own, but notices that other heroes do it for more protection and adopts it.

*edit*

As for intelligence, I think maybe it should start of as a show of mimicry, acting like she see's the people of the new world act, and have it slowly start becoming more natural for her to think of things on her own than waiting to see what others do.

I wanted to quote-answer, but there's too much to address, so let me see if I can freehand this.

There seems to have been a miscommunication about the level of intelligence of this creature. I meant for it to have started out stupid many centuries ago, but to be quite intelligent by this point. I really don't want to deal with a fool or a "fish out of water" sort of thing, like Wonder Woman not being able to pump gas or use credit cards. More, my quandary is between having this creature just simply intelligent in an academic sense, or outright genius to the point of using and creating advanced technology.

As a bit of a reference, I'm basing this very loosely off the character of Gar, the world's most intelligent orc from Arcanum. He lives in a museum and acts like an idiot, like "Gar smart! Gar can add two plus two is four!" When pressed, he admits it's all an act and he's actually quite smart and fluent, only putting up the act because racist visitors to the museum would freak out if they heard an orc speak intelligently. He was actually an orc born from completely human parents, he guesses because they had an orc in their family tree somewhere along the line. As such, he was raised like a human, educated and brought up well.

This is sort of the base level of intelligence I'm shooting for - someone who's smart and aware enough to discuss existentialist matters, to read, write and possibly even compose, but also someone who had to start from absolute zero and teach itself everything. The original source of the idea was actually what Pandora's Box does to the Trolls in SSA2.1, in how they start asking questions like "Why we want power?" and answer them like "Power mean we don't have to be afraid." or some such. That's how it starts, but I want to put this in this creature's backstory and start the character off as intelligent enough to be able to teach others. After all, that's why I'm making it a hero - it's smart enough to realise that knowledge for the sake of knowledge is pointless, and it only matters if you use it to achieve something greater.

I also think it could work as a neat allegory for the state of education decay in modern society when an ostensibly stupid creature could teach itself intelligence and then be smart enough to teach it to humans who should be smarter than this just by existing in a modern civilised society. And we all know human kind is not at all devoid of clueless fools

Anyway, that's the range of intelligence I'm shooting for - not impaired in any way and quite intelligent to start off. The question is if I want to go far enough to use intelligence as a power through the use of technology, since that changes the character drastically one way or the other.

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Infested Kerrigan is also not a bad idea for appearance, though I fear I might have already done that. Still, having something that's more inhuman than a basic orc or troll is not a bad idea. Someone suggested dinosaurs and that caught my attention, but I hope to not have to use the Monster heads. I already have a lizard, plus if I go with a female character, then those look TERRIBLE. Whoever did the scaling on those dropped the ball, because those heads are beyond too tiny.

Slight detour for a moment - after playing the AWFUL Blades of Time, I had a fleeting urge to make a dragon lady like the really badly done one in that game. I found myself failing at this since it's either "stock dragon" of all scales, dragon wings and dragon head or bust. That, and I kind of already have a lizard lady. The reason I dropped the dragon concept, though, is less because of the costume - I could have figured something out - and more because the concept I tried to use for the character, I'd already done almost word for word in a demonic-looking alien empress of my own from 2007, who even gave rise to what I consider to be my first serious story.

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When it comes to powersets, I've done everything for Scrappers, Stalkers and Brutes so repeats are inevitable, I just worry about repeating whole combos. SS/Inv I've done TWICE, so that won't happen. I've done Sword and Shield twice, Axe and Shield twice and Mace and Shield only once. Basically, though, I have 50 characters, most of whom are Scrappers, Brutes or Stalkers, so even I don't remember what I've done with whom. Essentially, if I can find a powerset combo that I haven't done for this AT, I'll use it. Or if you can come up with a very good argument for why I'd be using a particular combo, I might do a repeat.

Here's the thing, though - I kind of want to go with something that's physical. You know, that whole shtick I went through with Xanta and her Incarnate power? Like that, but for powersets. I'd like to avoid using magic if at all possible, but technology is not out of the question. It might put the character a bit too close to my Marxist-Leninist elf who abandoned his magic monarchy to work as a mechanic for a socialist state, but I think it's the aspect of the rise of intelligence that keeps it just far enough away to be different.

I don't, however, have a problem with going with a Stalker. I wasn't planning on it originally, but you have a point - a "brute force" approach doesn't have to be literal. This thing could still be a clever stealth fighter. Even ostensibly unintelligent creatures by human measures can still be quite stealthy. After all, cats can't do long division, but they're great at sneaking up on small rodents in the dead of night. No reason I can't use that.

What else...

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Oh, yeah, gender: I REALLY don't want to go with something genderless. For some characters, this may work. For instance, my own Bodyshop is just an intelligent pile of cancerous tissue that can adopt any body shape, so it has one costume that's male, one that's female, one that's huge and so on. This, however, adds an extra layer of monstrosity and inhumanity that makes the character harder to sympathise with and write for, requiring the story to do more to make the character work. This, in turn, tends to usurp the central point about the rise of intelligence and the aspect about hard work. I've botched more than enough stories to know how easy it is to get bogged down in the setup for the story I want to tell and either never get around to the actual story or make it so contrived it becomes silly. That's why I'm trying to streamline the design of this concept so much.

Also, when I said making the character male or female would make a difference, I wasn't making a comment on genders in general. Rather, I'm going to try to use as much set precedent definition with this one so that I have to do as little as possible to characterise this creature. The point, as it were, is to make people ask themselves what they would do in this creature's place. What if one day you too lost the ability to read and understand your surroundings? Or, alternately, what if you really COULD be smarter and make a difference in the world? This is much easier to do with a more person-like creature than with a pile of dead leaves. Or a sentient cancer, for that matter, and I did consider rerolling Bodyshop as this

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Sadly, I'm still drawing a blank here. I guess a costume might help, maybe even just a face, or even just a gender. However, I just can't seem to make the switch from idea into reality. I'm leaning towards a female of some sort, possibly a Stalker since I have very few of those, possibly using technology of some sort... Bur I've done tech versions for all melee weapons. Well, except claws. I don't have a Claws Stalker, and the Mecca Armour set has a nice set of energy claws I could maybe possibly use.

That still leaves the question of race open, though. And I'd rather not do dragon/dinosaur, personally, since I kind of already have that, plus I'd want something smaller. Some kind of imp, maybe? Or an animal type creature? I don't know...

Either way, this is really giving me something to think about. Keep it coming, folks, it's helping!

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.

*head explodes*

Do you know what I HAVEN'T used that I really seriously meant to? Staff Fighting. For any AT in any combination with anything. Does that sound like something "this character" could use? If so, that's actually a very solid grounding because Staff Fighting has a very specific "style" to it that assumes a very specific character and it comes with a very specific weapon selection that assumes a very specific technological level. Think we can work with this?

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.

Gender neutral does not necessarily equal monstrous. The J'naii from Star Trek the Next Generation, for instance.

But if you're wholly tied to the concept of gender, the big dumb (and occasionally bestial) male who turns out to be smart has, in my estimation, been done quite a bit. However, it seems like you want the character to have some reason to be judged as unintelligent based on appearance, which may be difficult to pull off with a female form.

When I read the initial proposal.. it really leaned towards more of a neanderthal or chaka from Land of the Lost, giant killer ape sort of visual. Big, brutish but hiding an intellect. Something that doesn't look smart and would use that to its advantage.

The character would be male and would use the huge male body. Facial wise I would use the Feral head. For the clothing.. if its modest more of a patch work leather look, if its not then use the barbarian clothing, or just put it in the briefs and use a few accents like maybe chains or rings or something of that nature. Furry I see it as furry.

Weapon a few things say brutish to me.. SS is one but its over done a lot. Titan weapons (using the concrete block) or Mace (using the bone) is where I would lean towards offensively. Titan Weapon has that nice SMASH BASH WHACK feel to it, and you are using a massive weapon so it implies strength and lack of subtle motions. So I would lean towards titan weapons.

Defensively something that highlights the longevity of the species as well as the rush and bursting nature of capabilities over its long life. Regeneration is the sort of secondary that I would go with. It fits with the long life and can be very brutish as they don't care if they get hurt because they will just keep going.

The APPs None of them really fit your concept though the energy APP might come closest..highest senses, perfect self and the like. A more passive approach verses an active one. Though with its understand could have come with it a means to manipulate matter in some manner. Pyrokinesis wouldn't be out of line in that case. You could also play off the entire given man fire sort of aspect to it.

Pool wise.. the presence pools would work, something that inspires a natural fear makes sense. Travel would be jumping. Leadership pool to show off his learned intelligence.

AT wise... Scrapper. I was thinking Brute at first but I like the scrapper for this because of what Critical Hits can be used to represent.. the critical can be used for just sheer power, and at the same time they can be used to represent a knowledge of when and where to attack something and at what time.. like exposing an opening. It conveys both power and intellect all in one concept.

Origin... Science. Seriously this creature is like the perfect Guinea Pig that I can see it starting out as an experiment in evolution. Think about how it gains and loses knowledge.. something was doing tests on it.

For starters, there's a reason feline aliens are a standard of Sci-Fi. I'd go with a feline base, then make it a bit "off". The Bio-Armor tail from the mutant pack and the old style, larger clawed feet would help. If you don't want a full feline face, the "Feline" normal face may do it for you (especially if you give him a scarf or mask to cover the lower face).

Gender? I'd say make it something that passes for male at first glance, then shift the male/female expectations a bit. Maybe some members of that race are born in a somewhat male form, but unable to reproduce? Add in a heightened instinct to defend its clan/pack/etc, and you also have a reason why it would want to teach others what it knows.

AT? Any of them would work well, though if you're going BIG I'd suggest avoiding Stalker. You don't want to drift into the realm of silly, after all. Staff should work just fine in any AT, though.

Personality? I like the idea of him asking "Why?" a lot. I could see him being SORELY tempted to press any odd buttons he finds, just to see what they do. After hearing about Mentos and Diet Coke, he had to run to the store to get the supplies to try it himself that night. Carrying a notebook at all times is a must, and he surely has shelves full of old notebooks filled with odd facts and observations he's made in his day-to-day life.

Your character somewhat reminds me of the book "Flowers for Algernon".
Hear me out here.
You said the race received a "gift", and because you said they're very superstitious this leads me to think that they're somewhat religious. Could they possibly believe in a God(s) that would grant them this gift? Much like how our main character of the book was granted his intelligence as a gift from scientists? Near the end of the book, he becomes aware that the effects are waring off and he's losing his intelligence, much like your character's people... But... If they believed in a God, could it be possible that they had their gift taken away as punishment of their war? It could be like the God was experimenting with them as well to see how they would react with a heightened intelligence.

Now, because your character turned away from all the war and began to study the finer things in life, every time he takes time to do the things that made him happy when he was smart it would make him remember more, and slowly recover bits of his intelligence.

Hopefully this makes sense haha, I'm not always very good at describing my thoughts.

Also, when I picture your character... I picture a Huge body-type with a staff (so yes, the Staff Fighting power would be good imo... OR Titanic Weapons) and a hooded cloak. No shirt. He has white skin... like mystically white. I like the genderless idea too.

So that's basically how I see your character. A brute with a big heart, always wanting to better himself and learn, even if he may never reach the level of intelligence he once had. Possibly a geek among his race but still incredibly strong among us humans.

It seems to me that a race which is "generally pretty stupid, but tough and VERY long-lived" might just heal really quickly, making Regeneration a possible option.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Now I'm picturing The Rock in a remake of Kung Fu. And that's really difficult to unsee.

Sure is. Ow. Ow ow ow. Staff fighting does sound like a workable choice, though.

Here are a couple of more points I want to address:

On intelligence: It occurs to me that I'm still not explaining this as well as it sounds in my head, so let me try for an example. When I say this race is "stupid," I don't mean to imply they're somehow mentally impaired or subhuman or anything. I say this since it seems we're all heading there. So let's shoot for an example - the Freakshow. These guys are, for all intents and purposes relevant to their intelligence, completely human. They are still complete idiots above and beyond being insane and hopped up on Excelsior. They're the kind of people who thought it was a good idea to replace their arms with clawed prosthetics so they can't wipe their own *****, which puts them in that butter zone of intelligence where they're still higher-intelligence beings and at the same time complete idiots still.

The dynamic I was looking for with this character was less like Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels (yes, I watched as a kid) and more what you see between the Freakshow students and the Freakshow hardliners that have come to wreck their school. Specifically, what impressed me about that situation where that one student says to a Freakshow "You guys think you're fighting the status quo but you've BECOME the status quo!" to which the Freak spews out some garbage in leet about "smashing nerds" or some such. Granted, the Freakshow are not superstitious, I don't think, but it's that kind of care-about-nothing mentality that looks at intelligence with disdain that I was looking for. And the level and type of intelligence I was looking for is somewhere on the level of the Freakshow student, at the very least - someone who realises he knows nothing and is willing to learn, as opposed to being adamant in his belief he knows everything.

Arcana was actually the closest to the social dynamic I was after for the species of "this character" by describing them as Internet trolls. That's what they are, more or less - a violent, ignorant race more concerned with posturing and infighting than with civil discourse and cooperating towards the greater good. In fact, when they receive this incredible power, "this character" is the only one to not immediately rush off and try to conquer new lands and take slaves or some nonsense like this. The others got this power and they saw strength and conquest. This character, instead, saw enlightenment and a brighter future.

Arcana also brings up a good point with the question of what kind of knowledge. Now, I teach computer science in the university, and I teach it to people who barely know what a computer is and don't own or have access to one. As you can imagine, this is not a positive proposition, and it makes my job quite difficult. I know my students will never remember the exact details of what I'm teaching them, so what I try to have them learn is how to teach themselves. You know, how to approach a computer system, how to go about figuring it out, what to try and what not to try, where to look for certain things. This has given me a rather different view on what "knowledge" constitutes, and I like to call this the knowledge of problem-solving unfamiliar problems.

The reason self-determination features so heavily in so many of my stories is more or less based around this simple truth: Oftentimes, learning how to solve problems is more important than solving a particular current problem. THIS is the sort of knowledge I would want "this character" to want to teach others. No specific field of science or philosophy so much as the habit of approaching the world around them intelligently and openly and thinking for themselves. The great irony here is that a character who went from complete uneducated savage to a well-spoken intellectual would be better qualified to talk about intelligence and how to go about acquiring it than the people who are ostensibly born with it and then proceed to never use it.

Again, maybe that's just me, but my teaching profession puts me in contact with so, SO many otherwise bright, intelligent people who nevertheless completely refuse to use their brains for anything but camping out Facebook. As a computer tech, in addition to this, I've had the misfortune of trying to explain to people from the "previous generation" about how their computers work and be repeatedly told that they can't do this despite them clearly not even wanting to have a look.

To turn this slightly around, THAT is the kind of low intelligence I'm talking about - not people who are physically prevented from being smart, but people who could have been smart, but intentionally chose not to because they didn't feel like bothering to think. These are people who could do better, but instead choose to do worse because it's easier and because... Well, why bother with social structure and science and philosophy when I can bonk my neighbour over the head and take his stuff for my own, right? This character comes from a race of lazy self-entitled ******** whose first instinct upon receiving great power is to go beat other people up with it and take their stuff. And this character simply wants to be better than this, even though no-one will take it seriously.

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Onto more practical concerns - going with Staff Fighting writes a lot of the character for me. Staff Fighting's animations are quite quick and agile, so "big and burly" is more or less out of the question. Not that it can't happen, but I wouldn't want to be the one doing it, and I think I can do better with a nimble character. That really doesn't solve the question of gender, but it does bias the situation towards a female one. As I said, I'll go with cliché conventions on this since I feel I'm defying them in other ways and trying to break all conventions at once is about as bad as trying to break none at all. I could also still go towards a fast agile dude, of course, kind of like Ben 10's Spider Moneky, but this is... Let's just say that one convention I WILL break is remaking the Monkey King, because I got sick of seeing him remade over and over again.

I've actually been looking for an excuse to reuse the Monk lady from Diablo 3, and this seems like a good opportunity. Killing two birds with one stone it is.

This still doesn't settle AT or secondary powerset, but... Well, I kind of want to make a Regeneration Brute. All three ATs I listed make sense, but Brutes are the only one with physical-looking secondaries that I have never used. None, I have no Regen brutes. I do have a few Regen Scrappers and one Stalker, though. Why a Brute if this character will be fast? Eh, nothing says a Brute has to be slow and lumbering, just hard to kill. I said these creatures were survivors, and that could well be because they heal fast. It'd also keep them from ageing, so that's bonus points in tying things together.

I wanted to go with a more tech-looking type of style, but sadly Staph Fighting doesn't offer any decent tech weapons. There's that one Tech Staff, of course, but it looks like it has a blade that it doesn't cut with, which is disappointing. I guess staff choice will inform the rest of the look. If I can go tech, I'll probably shoot for tech gear over a bare skin body, though I'm still not sure what that skin might be. If I have to use a more basic staff, like the pure metal one, I might go for more contemporary street clothes. Like those robots from the Animatrix that dressed up like humans (and the ******* humans proceeded to mock), I imagine this character trying to fit into human society and meeting with only limited success.

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So... Welcome to my head. That's more or less how my brain works. I'm still not ready to go forward with this, but I think I now have something less abstract to work with. Mind you, at this point anything but Staff Fighting and the general concept are up for grabs. I'm making arguments for these, but nothing is set in stone.

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.