Rudra

They aren't followers in the comics either. I'm rather partial to @Greycat's take. The ones that want to be rescued follow through stealth. The ones that don't require you to actively manage them. Either by dropping stealth, or assigning a pet to toss 'em over a should and go, or anything. I'm even willing to take a hit on stealth effectiveness and lose the non-combat defense bonus from stealth powers on top of that while you have a friendly NPC in tow. For crying out loud though, there are combat NPCs that can't even follow your character through any form of stealth. Most can, but some can't.

One of the things about stealthy characters in comics, is that when they have to move with a non-stealth character they still guide that non-stealth character while maintaining stealth. Even panicked NPC rescuees know to more or less keep their mouth shut when Batman or another sneaky hero is guiding them to safety. (Edit: And manage to follow the hero sneaking them out.) And while those rescuees' stealth is poor, they are more stealthy while the stealthy hero is guiding them. Edit: Sure, Batman and others just typically clobber all the baddies so the hostages can run for their lives or whatever, but on the occasion a stealth hero is sneaking a hostage to safety, that is how it goes in the animated shows and comics. Edit again: So maybe having an NPC escortee impose a Stealth penalty on the character would be in order.

According to data on the Mole Man, he would be a (low level) Staff Fighting Scrapper. Data on the Red Ghost places him as a CoX Mastermind though. However, he can be argued as a low level Blaster too. Edit: Data on Yellow Claw places him as a Martial Arts Scrapper.

Maybe change all escortees to be able to follow through stealth? Seriously, you can't just grab the NPC's hand and pull him/her along in your Steamy Mist or what have you? If you fight while stealthed, well, the NPC can plainly see what mobs are suddenly bleeding or flying uncontrollably away, the direction of your <insert damage type> blasts, or hear you yelling to get over there when the fighting dies down. (Edit: Also, you become visible while fighting anyway.) Edit again: I've got no problem with having some of my characters buy a dozen leashes or so and leashing the NPCs with shock locks to keep them from taking the leashes off until I get them out.

And if you're up against a melee heavy AV with a ranged character? Jumping around like a methamphetamine over-dosed frog launching a hail of ranged attacks keeps the AV from doing anything more than turning in circles and screaming for you to stand still! 😆 (Edit: Just make sure you fire after launching yourself....)

The Echo zones were stripped of all mission content because those zones as they stand don't exist any more. Those contacts and missions/arcs only exist in the current version of the zone. So most likely? The Echo zones are not going to get any mission content.

I personally hated old school Defiance. In order to use it well the character has to ride the knife's edge of defeat? Better to ignore having the inherent than bother using it. And ignore having it I did. If the Brtue's proc, either one, worked like that? It would be a phenomenal waste of the set. Edit: The players that used old school Defiance and loved it still leave me wondering what drugs they were on....

Jump-firing is great! Want to pull a mob without getting everything with him? Line up your shot and jump behind cover as you attack! Half the time, enemies are left looking around in confusion while your target races to you alone. Once you are already in motion, the attack animation happens without locking you in place.

The same can be said of any mastermind. Is why I said Masterminds would have worked just fine as a power pool. Their ability to lead and manipulate others is not related to their combat capabilities which branches into the blue side ATs. Any mastermind in any comic is not just his or her minions. Sure, the minions do a lot of the heavy lifting, but the mastermind himself or herself is quite capable even without minions. Whether the combat monster Darkseid, Kingpin, or Doctor Doom are (scrappers, tankers, and sentinels); the scheming manipulator quite capable of talking you into suicide or some form of surrender like Lex Luthor (controllers), or the mental giants of the psychic I can't currently remember the name of (blasters or controllers). Mastermind is a role they play. It is part of their tactician and strategist role. They don't actually need any followers or teammates to do things; they are still very capable characters in at least one other aspect which would be the better basis of what type character they are. The followers and teammates simply make things easier, safer, or provide more options including distance from the event for deniability or to outmaneuver an adversary. At least, that is my take on comic-CoX interfacing.

Ah, the episode where he waffle-stomps Darkseid and proves he is more powerful until Darkseid pulls a fast one on him. 👍

Sure, he taunts. However, most of the time Spiderman taunts, it is to anger his foes and keep them off-balance. Also because of his personality. With the side effect of he gets the enemy's attention while teaming. The Scrapper's confront power, given that Spiderman taunts enemies individually to rile them up rather than aggroing everything at once, fits better. There are also times when Spiderman doesn't try to taunt his foes, usually while teaming with others, and instead focuses on picking off enemies. I would argue that Spiderman's schtick is to anger his opponents into frothing, blind rage to limit their combat effectiveness, rather than him being a tank. (Edit: Then again, it has been years since I read any comics, so my data is likely out of date.)

Good idea, but not sure missions/tasks can be layered like that.

That is where I am getting that characters withdrawing anything would pay anything. My comment would be my preferred approach to charging for use of the SG bank.

Tanker using Mastermind power pool. Edit: Sure, he's super strong, but he's also ridiculously tough. A willpower or invulnerability tanker.

Gotta agree with @The_Warpact on the Spiderman bit. He's scary strong and insanely difficult to pin down/hit, but he's pretty squishy to be a tank. Super Reflexes tanks in comics are also at least moderately resilient, more so than Spiderman is typically shown to be. Gotta disagree on Batman though. Batman is a multi-role character. He has a plethora of ranged attacks plus a robust mix of melee. Further complicating it is that he fights openly. He may open with an ambush attack to take down specific foes as he progresses, but he is just as capable at taking them down as quickly without the ambush. He gets no bonus for attacking from Hide. (Edit: Any Blaster or Scrapper, more likely Scrapper, with Stealth or just being sneaky enough to use terrain to mask their approach and drop their targets to avoid aggroing the rest of map would actually match Batman as a character type.) He's a scrapper-blaster hybrid. (Comes from being a gadgeteer type.) Wolverine is a full on Scrapper that overlaps heavily with Tank. Not a stalker. Agreed on Captain America and Juggernaut. Abomination is a tank with scrapper overtones. Incarnate types are... uhm... well... ... moving on.... The problem with trying to classify comic characters into CoX ATs is that when you look at it, Brutes are basically a subtype of Tankers or Scrappers. It is just that as a Tanker or a Scrapper, they have some mechanic that boosts their combat ability while in combat. Typically based on Rage. Which is why all the calls about Brutes 'stepping on Tankers' toes' or on Scrappers comes up so often. Brute as a separate intentional archetype does not exist in comics but are defined by their combat style, tendency to lose control, blood-thirstiness, or combination of those traits. Also, Stalkers are specialist Scrappers and Sentinels are the blaster-tanks you see in characters like Doctor Doom (just cut off from his national supply of minions) and Iron Man. In CoX terms, Mastermind as an AT could simply have been a power pool any AT could have taken given the variety of comic masterminds.

The concept of the brute in comics is very narrow. You could even say niche. As far as melee characters go, you have the scrapper type and the tank type. (With a lot of overlap between those types. Especially when you get into solo characters that either don't mesh well with teams or can safely fill a variety of roles on that team if they get into cross-over team up issues.) Some characters within those types are also subject to some form of fury boost, but still stay within the realm of scrapper or tank. Even Stalkers don't really exist in the comic world, since they are simply Scrappers, Blasters, Controllers, or Tanks with added stealth capability. Which the comics has shown any character in the comic world can also use to some extent, especially if guided by the stealth character. They don't do any more damage when attacking from stealth than they do when attacking openly. They are just as 1-hit deadly in regular combat as they are in ambushes. It's like looking at Controllers and Dominators. You have the control characters, and out of those characters, you have some that specialize in domination but are still controllers. The red side ATs except for the Mastermind don't really exist as separate entities in comic books. And even masterminds can be broken down into controllers, blasters, tanks, or blaster-tanks with the command of some sized support force. The red side ATs exist because the devs wanted red side ATs that weren't what blue side players already got. And players thoroughly enjoyed those ATs, so the ATs were proliferated to all sides so red siders could have their actual tanks and blasters, and so blue siders could get their masterminds and stalkers.

If you want your lower levels to be getting the inf' and all you want is a way to dump inf' on your zillionair characters, then a straight inf' dump, maybe with a processing and handling fee a la the AH for posting the deposit, would be both simpler and not require the cash-strapped lower level to find the money to get the money. Possibly by taking out a small withdrawal to be able to pay for progressively larger withdrawals until they get what they went to the SG bank for in the first place. Point being if you want to dump inf', making the characters that need the money pay for it works counter to my understanding of the OP.

Marvel's best known Brute: The Hulk. Strength: Unearthly (100) - Shift Z (500) Health: 250

Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of the suggestion? Why not just make it so that characters that want to get rid of inf' can just dump it into the bank for other characters to withdraw?

I'm with @Bertg58. You see Veles blow up his factory in King's Row, then he disappears leaving himself and his little sister Morganna free. Then the next time you even hear about them, it is in a task being performed by 2 New Praetorians in the Provost Marchand arc where they are apprehending all 3 of the Petroviches and Veles (presumably) is unbeatable until you find and disable an empowerment device on the map you are on. At least getting the opportunity to learn the official story line for what happened with them in between those points would be nice.

If that is what they want, works for me.

Or maybe adjust Fury so that it doesn't have an effective cap of 90% no matter how many enemies you surround yourself with? If a scale goes from 0-100% and damage is figured and balanced on that curve, then why is Fury so insanely hard to build up? Why has every Brute I've played or seen others play cap at 90% of their scale while buried under a sea of enemies attacking the Brute? With that Brute also spamming attacks as fast as he/she can. If the scale goes to 100%, then Brutes should somehow be able to reach that limit. (If someone can reach that limit? Please enlighten me as to how. Thanks.)

I think that is @Snarky's point. The fact you would have to underdevelop some sets to make use of the proposed change while other sets would greatly benefit from it with no change in build required.

It is the loyal part I was mostly asking about. Thanks though.

This is the part I find weird: Getting a Praetorian character to level 50, as a Praetorian, and doing the incarnate content/end game content fighting Praetoria.... That doesn't seem weird to anyone else? Bear in mind, I don't care if players take their gold side characters to level 50 staying Praetorian. I've tried to. And at the end of the Night Ward content when I found there were no more arcs for me, I went Primal. So I get the desire to want to get to level 50 as a Praetorian without having to go Primal. The weirdness is the immediate jump into incarnate content fighting Praetoria. So say you're a Loyalist all the way to 50. Would you now also want an incarnate trial to oppose the BAF and Lambda iTrials? Where you stop the Primals from destroying those facilities? Would you want to continue that all the way up to getting trials to counter the Underground and negate the Magisterium? Someone please explain this to me. Maybe I'm just overly focused on progression and linking stories across a character's existence, but doing a sudden jump from Loyalist Praetorian to aiding the Primals strike at your home is weird. I'm not against a Praetorian TF. As long as it does not invalidate current content. I'm not against having the ability to level from 1-50 strictly as a Praetorian. (Which would be much easier to do if the current story were to be progressed so the Praetorian Hamidon could be dealt with and a post-Hamidon Praetoria could be set up for playing through.) I would like something to justify that jump at the end though. Even if the justification is an arc that for levels 49-50 explains why your Praetorian character would be willing to side with the Primals over Cole and Scott.