Lazarillo

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.

At the very least, I think it's a step in the right direction, and helps to at least acknowledge the problem. I dig Dominators, but they do feel a little overly reliant on Incarnates and Perma-Hasten and such, to the point that I lose some enthusiasm for them because it feels like they only "work" at 50. There's also the weird way Dominators kinda interplay with alignment more than any other AT, since by being a pure villain, they can instant-charge their bar once every few minutes in case of slip-ups (or before starting off). So to get the "most" out of the AT, you also end up locking yourself redside.

He's basically a Crab Spider build with some unique animations/pet models.

There's honestly too many weird, specific float texts as it is.

You start with Mender Ramiel's arc in Ouroboros. From there, you have the Apex Task Force, followed by the Tin Mage Task Force. After that, you move into the Incarnate Trials, in "story order", they go: BAF -> Lambda -> Keyes -> Underground -> TPN -> Minds of Mayhem After Minds of Mayhem, you get to do a short little "diversion" through the Dark Astoria arcs, culminating in the Diabolique Dilemma Incarnate Trial. Once Diabolique's handled, there is a short prelude arc to the next Incarnate Trial through Belladonna Vetrano (who I believe is the contact for both factions, but could be recalling incorrectly on this). Then you finish the arc with the Magisterium Incarnate Trial. The Praetorian arc also gets some epilogues through Number 6 (who is Incarnate specific) and Provost Marchand (for heroes)/Mr. G (for villains), who technically can be done at level 30, if you like getting your ass kicked, but are basically Incarnate content, too. Most of the story arc and Task Force stuff is actually laid out in terms of story during the arcs and TFs proper for people who bother to read the clues and mission text. The Incarnate Trial story stuff is more hidden, but can be accessed by talking with Prometheus in Ouroboros about your various Praetorian targets.

I feel like if you're taking long enough to kill enemies low-level enough relative to you that something with a 2-minute recharge causes "instant vaporization", you might, um, need the crutch? Judgements do just under the amount needed to defeat an even-level minion at 50 unless you combine them with a Musculature/Intuition Alpha, or hit them with a debuff first. Criticals can push them over that limit, but only have a 20% chance of hitting.

I mean, that just kinda says to me that primaries/secondaries aren't where they should be if such a crutch is "needed", I guess?