Lazarillo

I mean, the way the original post seemed to be describing, the whole idea seems to be nipping the "troll" problem in the bud before anyone can feed them in the first place. Or at least, that's the intent. As often seen, particularly in text, things can seem like an insult even when they're meant in a less harmful fashion, and vice-versa.

You don't have to rethink your tactics, though. They can't hurt you either when they're PFF-ed. The new tactic they inspire is "eh, go take a break and refill your drink". Multiplying To-Hit is meaningless when the guys benefiting from the multipliers do almost no damage in the first place. There are no tactics, ultimately, as effective against Nemesis, as going afk. Which isn't exactly what the game should be encouraging.

Nemesis in general are just the "time-sink" faction, which is a shame. Personal Force Field and Vengeance stacking makes them take longer to kill, but adds little-to-nothing to their own lethality, so there's no added challenge beyond finding something to alt-tab to for a couple minutes until the effect goes away. The group as a whole deserves an overhaul, because storywise, Nemesis is danged cool, but not cool enough to overcome the boredom of fighting his lackies.

Sentinels have Ninjutsu and Blasters have Devices, both of which give you a stealth power and a damage bonus for your first attack from stealth, so they're probably the closest. The Blaster will do closer to Stalker-level damage. The Sentinel will be a bit more survivable (and have mez protection).

I was under the impression fall damage doesn't count for badge purposes? On topic (maybe), it's not a nonexistent map but I'd love to see the Cavern of Transcendence map added to AE so I didn't have sub in the Bat'zul prison for my Hollows-related story arc.

[Forum being weird multi-posted and won't let me delete.]

I mean, Kheldians don't exist in Praetoria, despite having been on the planet for centuries on Primal Earth, and even without the aforementioned "twist" of co-time-travelers, Romulus was described in other parts of the lore as "the first Nictus" on Earth. So Praetorian Cimerora probably was different from Primal Cimerora. Heck, that might have been the true divergence point of the two dimensions, even.

Yeah, sorry if I didn't make clear I was thinking about it from the perspective of an option. I didn't use that exact word, but I guess I expected the mention "mode where you flagged yourself" would make it clear, but it might not have.

Seems like a bad idea. Just makes things cost more.

I guess, and I'm not trying to be snarky here, but...I kind of got the impression people were unhappy with the way a lot of those same viable tactics make them find the game too easy. So setting it as an optional mission mode seemed to me like a way to give them that different approach.

This isn't necessarily something I'd want, but it seems popular in various other RPGs. I've been playing Radiation Armor lately, and it's been making me think about all the people find the game to face-roll-y with spamming Judgment powers, Destiny, etc, so thinking about how Ground Zero has an effect on both allies and enemies (just different effects), I started thinking: for the people that want a "challenge", what would you say to a mode where you flagged yourself to be hittable by your own allies AoEs, your group buffs buffed enemies, etc? Y'all think that would be implementable, and if so, would it satisfy the ones who want to take things a little more...strategically to have to assess how safe it was to use their powers in certain places? Doubly so if it applied to enemies, so things like "Don't kill the Immunes Surgeons, stay near them!" might become a new ITF mantra, and such.

Honestly, the thing that always got me is that despite a couple points in the lore claiming that they only have 100 members, there was never a badge for defeating at least 101 on a single mission with the text "The rumors about the numbers of the Knives of Artemis are definitely untrue. You checked."

Unstoppable needs a look. All the "godmode" powers need a look. But outside of that, I got no real beef with Invulnerability. To the contrary, a lot of times I wish other sets had its capabilities. Stacking, layered defenses that supplement each other, a wide range of resistance to debuffs, no gimmicks, not especially slot hungry in my experience, and heck, the Psi "hole" is one of the easiest to plug. Invulnerability's only real, well, vulnerability, in my experience, is Confuse and Terrorize, which are fairly uncommon outside of certain bits of endgame content.

I'm not so sure. After all, as noted by my original post, precedent seems against that because Rebirth and Ageless both lack a permanent visual indicator that the buff is in place, for example.

Sunstorm is respected by both groups, so they're following his lead.

As per topic. Clarion makes you and your friends run around covered in squiggles, and Barrier gives everyone their very own hamster ball, but it'd be nice to have an option to not have a "permanent" effect after the powers animate, like with Rebirth and Ageless.

But if it can be made better by avoiding particularly flagrant things, why not take advantage of that? And in fairness, it was totally internally consistent for most of the game's life. It was only in the last couple of issues where they just kinda started not caring.

They might be, but they're not alignment story agnostic, as previously noted with Katie Douglas. What I'm looking to do is avoid other such...glitches in the storytelling.

First Ward definitely wouldn't, since Diabolique and Vanessa DeVore are both involved in those stories, and the former survives (as much as someone who was already dead can, anyway) all the way to the penultimate iTrial. Not sure about Night Ward since I haven't played that, though. Are you sure that's not just the Belladonna arc (which occurs in Night Ward, but is not part of the other arcs per se)? I guess it could be the same shambles of "continuity" that puts the iTrials before the death of Statesman, but after Mender Ramiel's and Maria Jenkins' arcs, which are after the death of Statesman. And even then, I'd expect Katie to be a little less of a jerk to the person who was her biggest ally ever. It's enough to ruin my own immersion at least; I dunno, maybe I'm too picky, but I'm just looking for a way to enjoy it that won't bring me out of it. Since, as you noted, the story treats one's previous allegiances as irrelevant, I'm just looking for which character wouldn't have actually done anything that could be relevant, so that there isn't such a potential for those kind of breaks in immersion. If that makes sense.

So I've never done much with First Ward...only completed it once, back in the old days, and only even started it once on HC...and I've never even started Night Ward at all. I've been thinking I should do that one of these days, so I'm wanting to try it as a Praetorian-starting character and just go straight from Neutropolis to the Wards. However, I need a little more help deciding what kind of the four possible starting Praetorian arcs would fit best. Warden seems right out, since from what I've heard, Katie Douglas doesn't remember you, and thus gives you her constant hate and put-downs, which kinda kills the cohesion of the story for me. From what I recall, Crusader wouldn't be much better because they're enemies in the early part of First Ward and again, there's not any real acknowledgment of fighting your old allies. That leaves one of the two Loyalist options, but I don't know enough about the Wards and their arcs to know whether either of them would have similar "troubles". I could see a Responsibility Loyalist fitting in for the "protect people" side of things (particularly if they swapped to Resistance in the last moral choice), or a Power Loyalist doing a sort of "deep cover" assignment, but I'm not sure if either of those would create problems? Anyone more familiar with the stories can offer advice?

There's not a one button on/off switch, as convenient as that would be. However, you can remove it (and any other channel) and/or set it however you want it to be: Right click the tab, choose "Edit", find General in the list on the left, and hit "Remove".

Was running around Imperial City grabbing badges, and after picking up Going Rouge, I clicked on Rita, thinking "I know Icon Tailors will turn away Praetorians, I wonder if she'll do the same for my Primal character". Sure enough, she does, and more. My costume window started to appear, then the game just flat-out booted me. Logged back in, did it again to see if it was just a fluke, booted again. Clearly, Rita is the Emperor's greatest weapon, designed to eliminate the chaos Primal miscreants once and for all!(?)

In fairness, even though they expanded story stuff across all the level bands, it wasn't until late in the game's original life that they stopped respecting the "the story progresses as you level" rule. Roy Cooling was the first (or at least, the first really egregious) instance that I recall, but then the SSAs started and everything just kinda went to pot. Really, it was the whole "let's kill Statesman" bit that just completely ruined continuity. So now we have things like Maria Jenkins' arc taking place before the iTrials but after Statesman is dead, but Statesman being alive during some of the early iTrials (notably, Underground).

Honestly, Blasters' is a great idea, it's just really...underpowered. Can only proc from one power, and only gives mag 1 protection when most controls are mag 3 (I believe that applies to enemies the same it does to players, at least). Honestly, just changing it to work like Stalkers' chance-for-buildup would probably work pretty well with a high enough proc rate. Basically, the blaster keeps protected as long as they keep blasting. Feels very "defiant" to me.

Hey, man, you're the one selling your soul for power. Own it.