Luminara

The Hold is a one-shot application. The cage is a separate, player/pet-only effect that doesn't affect critters.

Very few critter-affecting powers are flagged not to aggro. Perception debuffs (Smoke, Smoke Grenade, Flash Arrow) and Confuses are a couple of examples. Teleport Foe, and its replacement, are treated as attacks, thus causing aggro. If a critter is far enough away from the spawn point, and not near other critters, and nothing is looking in that critter's direction (critters have visibility limitations (specifically, the general AI underlying basic critter behavior has a cone of sight, outside of which it's coded to ignore players and their actions completely)), it can sometimes be attacked without aggroing the rest of the spawn, but that's not a guaranteed result. When performing what counts as an attack with any power not specifically flagged to prevent aggro, expect the entire spawn to bring the party to you. Yeah, it's been fiddly since the game went live. Teleporting repeatedly as quickly as possible (queueing teleports by selecting a destination before the current teleport activation has completed) tends to cause it to occur more frequently. They're working on it. Of course, so was Cryptic, then Paragon, and it's still wonky, so... *shrug*.

New players also won't have several dozen or hundred characters, and since they're new, they won't have the sense of ennui toward exploration badges that comes from having played for years, nor a feeling of not having the time to collect them for all of their characters. If anything, being new, they're going to pursue those exploration badges like slavering saltwater crocs at a migration ford, eager to sink every 5 merit bonus into their IHASAFIDDY fund. And you know what else they won't have? A reason to complain about not having a slash command to instantly warp to their base, specifically because they're new and won't have ever used it, or even know it existed unless someone mentions it. They'll have the free zone/base/hub teleporter, and quite satisfied with that, they're definitely not going to storm the forums or quit the game because it's not /enterbasefrompasscode. Then these changes are extremely positive for new players, since it gives them free teleportation to explored zones, bases, social areas and transportation hubs in addition to the merits they'll be saving. They have their fast travel options, they feel even more rewarded and incentivized when they find exploration badges, and they're saving merits and inf* they otherwise might have spent on an over-priced P2W luxury. Oh, and they won't have to worry about a dangerously exploitable command, which someone could use to seriously mess up their day, being left active. That sounds like a win all around for new players.

Well, there's the problem. Cave Johnson bought all of the moon rocks.

Yes, characters are stored on the servers. Everything will be as you left it when you finish re-installing. Note that binds, saved costumes, saved power customizations, window positions or customizations, or third party mods will be gone, as those are stored on your computer, but your characters will not be naked, or in different costumes. You'll need to redo your bind files, your UI in the game, things of that nature, but again, I emphasize, your characters will still be there, just the way they were before you wiped your HDD.

That actually traces back to the Prohibition era. Making and moving alcohol illegally was a ticket to big payoffs in that period. Moonshine makers/runners used it as a means of getting by, criminal organizations in cities used it to amass wealth and power, and the government blundered on, unaware of the mess they were creating (organized crime and political corruption reached incredible highs due to Prohibition). When and where government officials found liquor, they'd smash barrels and bottles, destroy stills and arrest/fine everyone they could charge with an offense. This led to people referring to government officials as G-men or Feds. They were more hated and feared than tax collectors, who were already considered "the bad guys" by many. The Roswell incident, which all evidence indicates really was just a weather balloon, did help cement the idea of men in black being secretive government officials, but the foundation for the idea was born during Prohibition. ... I did mention that my interests were diverse. >.>

*ring ring* "Hello?" "Hi, I'm with the IRS, we'd like to audit your filings for the last seven years." *terrified screaming ensues*

Squirrel Girl.

Super baking, super knitting, super kissing, super ventriloquism... I'm still 99% convinced that Crisis on Infinite Earths was really a cover to retcon some of the goofiest powers Superman developed over the decades. George: "And then, he uses his super kiss to defeat-" Marv: "That's it, I'm destroying the universe."

Jessica is very intelligent, and easily spooked, so she's cautious about spiders. She doesn't display the same ferocity with spiders as she does harmless insects, and as far as I've been able to tell, she hasn't eaten one yet. Usually, if it moves, it's going down the gullet. May... she's still so young, she doesn't know what to do with bugs, including spiders. She stands back and watches her foster big sister deal with crawly things.

I didn't program it, I just tested, manipulated and abused it.

I can grow more onions, and my neighbors are always giving away eggs.

All three whip attacks in the Demons mastermind primary, Sleet, Freezing Rain, Tar Patch, Melt Armor, Slowed Response, Acid Mortar... these are all external, so I'm not seeing that precedent. Some powers, like Enervating Field, Sonic primaries and secondaries, other powers with sonic effects, would cause internal damage, but it would be very slow, taking hours, days, typically months or years. Even the most acute doses of radiation poisoning ever experienced by human beings, weakness and frailty didn't set in instantaneously. A massive microwave transmitter, a sonic cannon, nothing actually causes this kind of debilitation right away, or within seconds. By the very nature of the game, we're stepping outside of the boundaries of real world effects and pretending that they can be devastating in an instant, so Entangling's -Res doesn't need a special explanation or bending of logic, nor does it need to comply to anyone's imagined rules for what can or can't cause an effect. That's what our character bios and individual imaginations are for. I covered this exhaustively several pages back. The horse is dead, let's move on.

Clay has been eaten for thousands of years. Or, it has by several animal species. The minerals supplement their diets. At least one species of monkey has been seen and filmed eating charcoal and/or charred wood to aid digestion and ease stomach ailments.

Sauté the Spam/Treat/whatever in a skillet. Flip, sauté the other side and remove when both sides are slightly crispy. Lightly caramelize some rough-diced white or yellow onion in the same skillet. When the onion is nearly finished, push it to the side and fry up a few eggs, over easy. Serve the eggs over the Spam/Treat/whatever, top with the caramelized onion. Season to taste. I recommend going light on the salt, the canned meat is already going to be pretty salty. The caramelized onion will counter that with sweetness, both flavors complement the egg.

Knockback has always been vectored, or at least always since '05, with the character or pseudo-pet's position being the vector point.

Now I find myself wondering what kind of insane hilarity would occur if someone with a Repel PBAoE were to use Fold Space...

Some veins and deposits happen that way, typically when superheated steam or water passes through ore deposits. Some are organic in origin, deposits from single-celled organisms which utilized a mineral or element while alive, sank to the ocean floor when they died and were later buried under more layers, then tectonic activity, and brought to or close to the surface tens or hundreds of millions of years later. Some are caused by natural separation of materials, heavier minerals and elements sinking lower in a magma pocket while lighter ones rise to the top, creating veins and layers naturally. One process of vein and deposit formation is even happening right now, with single-celled bacteria eating rock, concentrating things like gold in their guts and leaving behind veins when the bacterial colony dies. Well, the process of diamond formation isn't quite the same as the process of coal formation. Diamonds require significantly higher heat and pressure to form, to such a degree that real diamonds aren't actually found in coal mines, they're found in the remnants of extinct volcanoes and ancient magma deposits. That's what a kimberlite pipe is, the trace remains of the magma corridor which fed a volcano, carrying things like diamonds when magmatic upwellings occur. When diamonds are found on or near the surface, it's because weathering has eroded the stone which brought them to the surface and trapped them. In the abyssal formation of diamonds, it's not actual pieces of carbon material being crushed together, rather, it's carbon gases, like CO and CO2, compressed and heated and molecularly altered until the carbon atoms bond with one another in a very specific way. Coal forms at lower temperatures and pressures, through the repeated deposition of layers of carbon-rich organic material (plants, animals, poop (fossilized poop is called a coprolite)). A peat bog is a coal seam that never quite finished, for instance. >.> <.< I have a diverse range of interests.

They're repulsive. Come on. No-one got to that before I did? Slow morning, apparently. They'd be more utilitarian as location-targeted AoE area denial powers.

Yeah. I deliberately used the floors as modifiers instead of treating lieutenants and bosses as immune to the -Special to emphasize how little it would improve Flash Arrow. In actual play, it doesn't do anything at all unless they've got more resistance than the floor. I suppose I could've just said that, but I'm rarely a practitioner of brevity. Underlings would have the same floor as minions/players. -300% is the lowest possible value with the clamps in place (all buffs and debuffs are clamped at the top and bottom), presuming that is the clamped value (could be -400%, but unlikely). So against +3 minions, Flash Arrow's mastermind value of ~17.55% (after slotting with +56% -ToHit) would drop to ~11.41%, and with Acid's -Special it would only rise to ~14.37%. Slightly less than a 3% increase. Underlings would be slightly more impacted by the final -ToHit value (~14.04% and ~18.53%), as they con -1 to the rest of the spawn, but the gain from Acid still wouldn't be much, ~4.5%. It's also worth noting that those +3 minions and +2 underlings would have higher hit chances, so that ~3-4.5% would be of even less final value in the hit checks. That may make it more worthwhile for some players, since it is, in fact, doing something, even if that something is almost nothing, while others, such as myself, will choose to skip it. Might still be worthwhile for the -Def, considering that the T1 henches are -2 to the mastermind and might need that extra hit chance, but for mitigation, it's just not valuable from my perspective. There are too many other alternatives available to increase mitigation, or hench hit chances, without sacrificing PGA's Sleep, even if the mastermind is allowing the henches to run willy-nilly.

I was thinking about that earlier today. It would be thematically viable. Inhaling acidic vapors doesn't tend to be healthy. Acidic vapors cause watering of the eyes, difficulty breathing, pain in the throat, eyes and chest, and a build-up of fluid in the lungs. Among other things. But I wouldn't expect it to be an appreciable amount, likely no more than 5-10%. I still wouldn't bother with it in my solo builds at those percentages. Especially if it's affected by the purple patch.

Can't. -Res is a very strange mechanic. It's resisted by Resistance, it's buffed by +Damage, and it doesn't have a -Special counterpart because of those interactions. It would take a lot of extra work to create a mechanic to buff -Res without doing something odd, and a lot more time testing and straightening out issues. For instance, it might cause incoming damage on the target to be buffed, above and beyond the -Res applied, because of the way +Damage buffs +Res and -Res. Or it might cause -Res to drop Resistance values below the floor. Or, hell, it could even cause enemy attacks to be buffed in some way. -Res is one of those things best left alone.

Acid only applies 36% of the Special debuff to lieutenants and 32% to bosses, so you'd increase Flash's -ToHit from ~17.55% to ~23.87% on lieutenants and ~23.17% on bosses. That's presuming +0 foes. If you're fighting +3 foes, you're looking at something more in the range of going from ~11.41% to ~14.08% on lieutenants and ~13.78% on bosses. Basically, ~2-6% extra -ToHit, level differential dependent. Weigh that against the potential to keep every minion in your PGA awake with Acid's DoT. With a slightly improved debuff on minions (minions have a 300% -ToHit resist floor, as opposed to lieutenants (10%) and bosses (20%)), the higher the difficulty setting the lower it's going to be (purple patch) and the larger the spawns, the more attacks made and the more hitting you and your henches. Acid's going into my secondary build on all of my characters, including my masterminds, for teaming or AV/GM combat. For soloing, the DoT and lack of any broadly applicable Special debuffs in every-spawn-usage make it counter-productive. PGA's Sleep is more effective at reducing incoming damage than Acid's -Special -ToHit.

Interesting kink.