biostem

I had made a frog-girl not too long ago, (though she's more of a human with frog features) - "Lil' Poison Dart" EDIT - I know, technically, frog's don't have tails... but she is a mutant, after all...

When he checks the dip stick and finds he's down a pint...

When creating a character, (except for Kheldians and Soldiers of Arachnos/Widows), you can pick any faction you want, (Hero/Villain/Praetorian), and start in their respective zones. You can enter Pocket D at any time and talk to Null the Gull to switch between hero and villain, (or rogue/vigilante), whenever you want. The "natural" way to switch between these is to do a series of morality missions that gradually take you down one path or the other. There are various guides on how to generate wealth in-game, but the main use for currency, (influence, infamy, or information, depending upon the faction you're with), is buying enhancements, recipes, inspirations, and other such items off the auction house. AFAIK, the devs seed some items into the AH to keep prices somewhat level.

What about a pyrotechnic/nature controller - dazzling lights, hypnotic spores, groovy healing abilities and dissolving floral pods...

An aging hero, from a bygone era, unable to sit idly by as new foes rise up to threaten Paragon City, "Coherent Ray" dons his powered armor and beam rifle once again...

This may seem counterintuitive, but certain GUI elements, specifically things like name labels for other players, place an unusually high demand on systems - even ones decades newer than when the game came out. Particles/PhysX, if enabled or set to a high value, also impose an unusually high performance penalty. Disabled PhysX and drop particles to the minimum, and set other player names to only appear when selected or on mouse-over, and see if that helps.

I think @Renatos1023 has the right idea - make "minimal FX" the default for power sets with such obtrusive graphical effects - the majority of "big blocky ice cubes" I see applied to characters aren't even tinted, so it is my guess that those players didn't even bother to alter their powers in any way, so if they really wanted said FX, they could go and select them during character creation or at any tailor...

A friendly alien that just so happened to be in the neighborhood, and decided to share her "electric personality" with the "locals" - she's "Shockbody":

So when I play CoH on my desktop, WIN+D works as expected and brings me back to the desktop without issue, but when I try the same thing on my laptop, it either does nothing or seemingly only changes the cursor back to the regular Windows one, leaves COH running in the foreground, but I cannot interact with anything unless I hit ESC, (at which point the cursor goes back to the CoH one). I've tried running the game in regular 1366x768, 1366x768 [Desktop], and 1366x768 [Display1], and all yield the same result. Running it in windowed mode works as I was expecting, but there's a pretty significant performance hit when doing so, and the actual window elements eat up a lot of the limited screen real estate. The laptop is using a Ryzen 3 CPU/GPU, (the desktop has a dedicated Nvidia GPU for reference). Any suggestions? Thanks in advance!

Yeah - click the (i) in another pane, (though sometimes you have to scroll down a bit or play with the vertical scrollbar in order to see or expand everything).

A supermodel whose life was cut short when she got caught between warring Circle of Thorns factions, now brought back as an avenging spirit: "The Macabre Invective"

"Active" means you have to put in the work - announce what you're running and recruit those interested. "Passive" means you just click and hope things work out for you.

Maybe give Requiem actual Nictus powers, or better explain why he's so different from the rest...

So my suggestion is fairly simple; Add a special emote command, which only works with looping emotes. When used, it causes said emote to re-apply, should something cause you to be forced out of it, (such as others applying buffs to you). It could work something like this: /rtle stancevillain2 The above would cause you to go into the 'stancevillain2' emote, and if someone were to apply a buff or something else that would force you out of said emote, it simply reapplies it... Of course, this would only apply while outside of combat, as being forced back into an emote mid-battle would be quite troublesome...

Blasters do get weapon model options - for AR, BR, archery, and DP. That being said, (and I realize this would be a big kludge), but I wonder if they could sort of create a clever "wand-like" implement that is held in the same stance as the rifles or pistols, yet have a distinctly wand or organic appearance. It wouldn't be perfect by any stretch, but especially for beam rifle, might just work...