srmalloy

For a while, until the temp power Sands of Mu expired, my DM tank could make a rotation out of Shadow Maul, the temp Sands of Mu, and the prestige Sands of Mu. It made for amusing fights, where she'd jump into a spawn, taunt, and then hand out cone beatings until the number of targets reduced to where that was inefficient.

For the first one, it would be 4 if the mentor applied magic to the character to give them the ability to learn magic; if it was learning magic as a transfer of knowledge, without any actual magical imbuement on the part of the mentor, it would be 1. Strip Dr. Strange of his various magical items, and he's clearly a 1; before he was accepted into Kamar-Taj, he was just a normal human. I can't think of a character I could point to who'd be a 4 by imbuement, but the D20 PnP gaming system has a spell, "Imbue with Spell Ability", that allows the caster to give someone the ability to cast a limited number of spells. For the second one, it would depend on whether the character needed to retain possession of the book in order to be able to cast the spells contained in it. The stock D&D magic user, for example, had to memorize their spells from their spell books, and once they cast a memorized spell, it was 'forgotten', and they had to spend time re-memorizing the spell to be able to cast it again; that would clearly make them 2.

Mad Science means you never have to ask, "What's the worst thing that can happen?"

I wrote and discarded my first reply. However, I feel I should point out that a large part of the side traffic that allows people to hear what you say -- tone of voice, facial expressions, body language, etc. -- disappears completely when all you have is text, and while you may see "I don't like it; I don't care how it works; I think it should work this way instead; I don't like it, no matter how long it's been this way; it's just one of a bunch of things I don't like" as just expressing your opinion, it can easily be read as a rant on the subject with varying degrees of self-entitlement.

The AH, email, and mule characters are the only places that you can store recipes in, though.

Not at all. You pay a fee to the AH when you list something for sale; you can fill up your entire AH limit with stored items and not pay anything.

It doesn't matter whether you think its description is user friendly or not; it's the way the mechanics work, and it's hard-coded into the game that way. The original game design built knockback and knockdown as ranges of effect on a single spectrum, and unless you can convince the HC devs that your pique about it not working the way you want it to is enough reason for them to rewrite a chunk of the code, it's not going to be changed.

Back when I was still doing Twinshot's arcs, I would take the mission to go talk to Blue Steel, who would give me a mission to defeat 10 Skulls, and Shauna Stockwell, whose first mission sends you to Genevieve Sanders by the hospital, who also hands you a 'defeat 10 Skulls' mission, and double-dip that way. There are a number of places through the contact tree where you can double up on 'defeat N' missions, and if you're careful, you can triple up with a door mission that has the mobs you need to hunt. Unfortunately, the 'defeat N [group] in [zone]' missions have to be street sweeping; door missions don't count, even if the door is in the right zone.

Membership in a known criminal organization. Beyond that, it comes down to the joke alluding to putative police "[BLAM] [BLAM] Stop, or I'll shoot!" policies.

No. There are powers that do knockup, and there are powers that do knockback/down. Knockback and knockdown are the same effect; only the magnitude is different. If you hit a mob with a power that does knock*, and the final adjusted magnitude of the knock effect is greater than 1, the mob is knocked back; if the final adjusted magnitude is less than 1, the target is knocked down. The KB->KD IOs apply a large divisor to the KB magnitude of the power they're slotted in. On the other side of the equation, if you're attacking a lower level mob, or one that is weak to KB (like Clockwork), that can increase the magnitude of the effect to the point where a power that normally does knockdown does knockback.

... which has always annoyed me with my AR/EM Blaster, going all the way back to Live, when I'd fire off M30 Grenade, and all the mobs in the AoE would fly away from me... including the ones that were between me and the mob I'd targeted; if KB worked the way it should, those mobs should have been knocked toward me.

On Homecoming, one of my MMs is still the only character I've been able to do Lady Grey's mission solo in Mender Ramiel's incarnate Alpha slot unlock arc.

This has amusing effects if your character has Invisibility running; looking through your character causes any number of visual effects to disappear.

You're listing it for six million; if anyone listed one for less than six million, it would sell before yours, even if the selling price is 100 million -- remember that when someone bids more than one of the reserve prices, they buy the lowest-reserve item for their bid price. That's why people list high-ticket items for 1 inf -- they risk selling it at an extreme lowball price, but their listing will be the lowest of the ones up for bid.

Or the cape unlock, where you got to run all over hell's half acre to talk to various people -- the police officer in south Skyway, someone in the ass end of northwestern IP, etc.

Not the way set bonuses are worded. The set may have Range in the IOs the set contains, while the set bonus could boost the range of all your powers, or just your teleport powers, or just the power the set is slotted in. The set bonus text will say "increases the X of all your powers" or "increases the X of all your Y powers" where 'X' is an aspect, like range or accuracy, and 'Y' is a category, like fire or electricity.

I'm never going to see another hit like the one I got with my Katana/Regen scrapper during the testing of inventions, the beneficiary of one of the most awesome bugs that ever appeared in the game (unfortunately fixed before it went live)... The second bugged version of the Touch of Lady Grey: Chance for Negative Energy Damage. The first one was more "chance for negative damage" -- when it proc'ed, it did a negative amount of damage to the target, healing it. The second? "Chance to One-Shot" -- when it proc'ed, it did a rudely absurd amount of damage (scaling with the target's HP, making it worse). I had gotten the recipe, crafted it, and slotted it in The Lotus Drops. After the first bug was 'fixed', and I saw what the second bug was, I took the character off to Crey's Folly and found Jurassik. Getting lucky with the first shot, the proc hit for 6.0841e+43 points of damage, one-shotting Jurassik. And I found out afterwards that I wasn't close to the biggest hit with that bug. It's still amusing to know that CoH will seamlessly roll over into scientific notation if a number gets too big.

Yes, well, Blue Steel gets away with things the other trainers can't.

I still remember the 'explanation' for the rework of Regeneration, that they had tested it on their internal test server, and a Claws/Regen Scrapper was able to easily defeat +4 spawns for an eight-man team (this being before Inventions and ED). And the widespread calls of bullshit from the players. And the nerf went in, and only some time after did the devs admit that their internal test server was bugged, and didn't have the 'purple patch', so their test scrapper was hitting several times as often for several times the damage he should have, and likewise wasn't being hit as often or for as much damage -- but the nerf to Regen was necessary, and would stay in the game.

And pets -- the buff pets and MM pets -- can appear, too. It was funny when my Demon/Plant MM had the mission from Mathew Habashy to infiltrate the Hellion safehouse, where she got a Girlfriend from Hell disguise with her Demonling following her, to the point where I used one of her costume slots to make a recreation of that outfit.

Most of my characters do Matthew Habashy's arc, get introduced to Sondra Castel, and then do her arc, leaving them in Argosy Industrial over on the west side of AP having just been introduced to Aaron Thiery, and invariably have a level to train, and BAB's right there... But that leaves them with empty slot(s), and the vendors are halfway across the zone. Putting a Hero Corps vendor nearby would address that.

And this should go into the typo thread, too, because it's "unctuous".

Or you could do what I did with my Rad/Katana Brute and use the 'Fire and Ice - Elemental' weapon customization, colored appropriately to make a 'radiation blade'. For an ice blade, the 'Fire and Ice' weapon customization, again colored appropriately. And then your entire powerset -- Broadsword, Katana, or Dual Blades -- uses the weapon you picked.

That's too on point -- you want a name like "Break Your Bones" or "Will Break Your Bones" and let them fill out the rest of the aphorism in their head.

If they're running, though, you only follow them as fast as they're moving -- you don't catch up with them, and if they slow down, so do you.