keyguardactive

I created Crimson Sentinel back on live, but he's pretty different on Homecoming, so I've decided this Crim is a legacy character, taking up the mantle from his previous counterpart. In my head, his sub-title is the Arcane Archivist. I play him like he's collecting dangerous magical artifacts, returning them to their people of origin if he can and extradimensionally storing them if he can't, because the good people at MAGI have proven to be... less than reliable at doing the job. Name: Crimson Sentinel Affiliation: None Civilian Identity: Alan Hendrickson Origin: Magic Archetype: Scrapper Primary Powers: Street Fighting Secondary Powers: Regeneration Other Powers: Sorcery, Blaze Mastery Professor Alan Hendrickson was born and raised in the city of Astoria. During it's fall, as if rejected by it's dark master, he was teleported to Galaxy City. It was there that his powers, fire manipulation, manifested. Unable to control his abilities, Alan was placed in a pair of metal cuffs by members of the Midnighters. These cuffs, the so-called Bands of Brigid, channeled his abilities into raw kinetic energy. Wearing them later lead to their creator, the Celtic goddess Brigid, to select Alan as her Champion and granting him the powers of an Incarnate. Crimson Sentinel balances his time between teaching American History at Paragon University and patrolling Founders Falls. With the rise of the Council, the recent return of the 5th Column, and the incursions from Emperor Cole's authoritarian regime from a parallel earth, there's never a shortage of fascist thugs to defeat.

I know this would be controversial in some circles, but just removing the fire sword model from the hand, and leaving the "my hand is on fire" effect, I think, would let the moves operate fine as a flaming punch with no other edits. "Fire Sword" looks like an upper cut, and Fire Sword Circle leaps up in the air, spins, and punches the ground, so that seems to work fine, too. The biggest problem is "Greater Fire Sword" but if you're willing to accept your capstone as a flaming karate chop I think it's okay, too. If Martial Arts can have powers called called Storm Kick that can be flavored as a Gut Punch, I think this would be good too.

It helps that lots of my characters are idiots. Like, Crimson Sentinel is a magical Mythology professor collecting dangerous artifacts. He doesn't know much about aliens or power armor. But he's one of those guys who is an expert at one specific thing and it makes him think he's probably brilliant at everything. Never questions himself. It's probably his most fatal flaw. Besides, in the moment, in the heat of what's happening, the characters probably don't GET to think too hard about lots of things that would bother me, the player. We're always operating on a time crunch to stop something bad from happening.

Water Blaster, tint it red. Blood blaster.

Maybe Countess Crey is even responsible for Sister Psyche's "death" on some level. Maybe she set up a contingency to capture Shalice's mind if she attempted to project it into another body again. She has it stored somewhere, now, another chip she can use to get herself out of trouble. Plus, she needed the wife out of the way if she was going to seduce and corrupt Paragon's greatest archer. Not everything is a Nemesis plot, but when it's not, make sure to check if the Countess is involved.

I think we let Marcus Cole stay dead, but I wouldn't mind a Legacy story where someone else takes up the mantle, Reign of the Supermen/Battle for the Cowl style. Maybe Tyrant even IS one of the Statesmen running around. Miss Liberty is Stateswoman. Eventually it goes to, I don't know, Foreshadow.

Eh, based on the map there's a little space around each of the zones that's inaccessible. You can get away with playing with the borders a little.

The world of comic books if FULL of either different people taking over a mantle from the original. I've had multiple characters who I re-created the outfits of to have the sidekick take over the mantle. Or, conversely, how comfortable are you with a retcon? You can do an in universe one, where thanks to Time Travel or some sort of Crisis, things have always been this new way. That's probably how I would handle it. Worst case scenario you find that you CAN'T square that circle and you change everyone back.

There was a pitch once, and it would solve essentially all my problems, about having a wand or staff in your hand as an Aura option that sounded good to me. Or a Spellbook floating near me? I don't know. My main is a wizard of sorts. Most of my alts are Magic origin. It's just the theme that appeals to me.

Like Biostem, I would want some more Mutants, as I don't feel like they have enough representation. Mid to high level, story wise they're partly former Outcasts who are reorganizing under an Immortal metal skinned mutant that we would be able to meet and work with in Cimerora before he becomes an Archvillain in the present. I'm thinking they're sort of a terrorist group, using chemical bombs to try and activate people's latent mutant genes. Mechanically the bombs would release green smoke and NPCs caught in it would turn into minion level enemy mobs. Maybe they even mutate Twinshot of the Shining Stars, looping her back in from low level content. They would keep using the elemental powers like the outcasts, but they would also get things like savage mele and spines and things like that. The mutations should get a little weird and varied.

I think you could get away with a puff of smoke as you got on or off to handwave getting on and off the broom.

I would like something like the Jester mask without the nose. A sort of a 3 dimensional domino mask to put on top of other things? That would be perfect. Similarly, the ability to layer the different mask types? Something that would let me recreate the general style of The Phantom, domino surrounded or over another type.

My main, Crimson Sentinel, is the chosen of the Celtic goddess Brigid. One of his flavor-but-not-mechanical powers is Psychometry or Object Reading. He hunts magical artifacts to get them out of dangerous hands. So I tried to create some of that here, along with a little fire damage so the pool covers most of what he is. Crimson Strike - Single target melee, fire damage Mark of the Goddess - AOE reduces enemy resistance Burst of Clarity - Clears one instance of Blindness from a target Heat Strike- Melee Dot, fire damage, deals extra damage to targets using stealth abilities Flame of Brigid - The capstone ability automatically marks all glowies on the map once per hour.

I have a half-assed fantasy about, like, City of Heroes Beyond. Like Batman Beyond, Neo Paragon City is a neon and smoke filled future, cyber punk, Blade Runner, and flying cars and stuff. Old man Manticore is the guy in the chair giving you missions for an arc or two. Ms. Liberty has become Stateswoman. The Rogue Islands are annexed into the city proper so heroes and villains aren't cordoned off. The Circle of Thorns have raised Perez Park into a flying mote city. Maybe some more stuff that was rumored as possible future updates that never happened. Run it through Oroboros as just a possible future. Or make it in the style of Gold side where you can run a character up to 20 levels and then they get sent back in time to ensure their timeline comes to pass by stopping the Oncoming Storm. But yeah, that's what I would want. If we're jumping the city forward in time, lets JUMP it.

I probably would, because regardless of mechanics it's an interesting quirk. My main is a street fighter scrapper with fire based Epic and and Incarnate powers. The story there is that he developed uncontrollable Fire powers as a kid and the Midnighters fit him with an artifact that shut it off, chaneling the power into powerful punches. As he got stronger he learned to control it. So it would make sense that he would be afraid of, and therefore weak to, fire attacks, at least in his early levels. Maybe once I took the first power in the Epic pool I would change it to being weak to Psionic, because of the concentration he needs to use the fire. Maybe in exchange for the weakness I could get a buff to Smashing damage to go along with the artifact thing? That would be kind of fun and would give me an extra thing to think about in character creation.

I did wonder about that. I've seen you be hard line about weapon sets having to have weapons, but people can be contradictory. Live your best life. I would probably roll a dual blade scrapper if I could use batons or escrima sticks instead of swords. Just feels more like a thing I would enjoy playing.

I would love to have it back, and if we got it, I'd want it to be a series of directly connected, coherent arcs like they have in Faultline. "Complete the stories of these 4-6 contacts to get the story of Galaxy City." Just spitballing, but maybe it's an unlockable starting zone? Like, in the olden days you had to fully level to 50 to unlock the Peacebringer. Maybe you ding 50 and then you can make an alt that lets you start in Galaxy?

Even if it doesn't change the models, I would be happy with some color customization? Like, if I want my Ninjas mastermind to match her minions, I've got a limited color pallet I can use. But if I could make them orange? Yahtzee.

Oh, those crystal arms on both sides would let me do some cool things. I would also like this.

While coming out of stealth isn't technically teleporting, it could give that appearance to those who saw you do it, so I'd go Stalker rather than Scrapper.

I consider my "home forum" a now defunct pro-wrestling board from the early 2000s full of trolls and, frankly, doxing before there was a word for it. Based on that metric, the moderation here is incredibly even handed. I appreciate that once things have spiraled in a thread you tend to show up and say "things have run their course" and lock it. That feels like the right answer. I think deleting posts for anything short of hate speech or revealing someone's personal information should probably be a no-go, but I'm not manning the rudder on this boat and I don't want to. It's fine. I don't care. I'm old and tired.

Also, I suspect there would be a license problem. Like, they would have to get the ok from Sony, and Microsoft, and Nintendo to make that happen, and I can't imagine the deal to keep the game online covers putting it on consoles.

I think of Longbow as reflecting their leadership. They are run by a superpowered teenage girl, so they are by their nature idealistic, short sighted, and reactionary. If I had the pencil on this, the story would be that NATO and Freedom Corps decide to go in a different direction and appoint Lt. Tendaji the new Director. He takes over and elects to re-focus their efforts. They're a support network for the heroes, but their also a militia. They get the players involved by appointing us leader of a battalion. We would be able to send our squad on missions, to raid Arachnos warehouses, to stop low-level villain plots, what have you. Your hero decides if they're on a constant noble path, or if they're also occasionally knocking over a HeroCorps warehouse or interfering with a Wyvern mission. There would be a list of choices. (this is all things selected from a menu and then done on a timer. Idle stuff happening in the background while we're doing other things) When you see the missions list, it tells you the % chance that they'll succeed. If they're successful they bring back enhancements or invention salvage or whatever. More success levels up your squad and unlocks missions with better rewards. Every X number of successful raids we send our battalion on, it unlocks a mission where we lead a pair of Longbow NPCs to take down a slightly bigger threat. Maybe we stack those up too and after X number of bigger missions we face an archvillian. I'm spitballing. Then Longbow is what you make of it. You want them to be Paragons of Virtue? Awesome. You like that they're a little dirty? Be our guest. Did I just propose an entire new system for the game? Yes. Is that reasonable? Absolutely not.

Competitive missions sound cool on paper, but I think it would be hard to co-ordinate two teams on opposing factions starting at the same time. Plus, there's a known Villain Player Deficit, so it gets even harder that way, too.