Crasical

Our seed 17 and heroic Mastermind is a transdimensional Czech and Portal Corp employee, Dr. Oleg Makovic, better known in the hero community as Comrade Utopia. Oleg was born on an alternate earth where corporations eclipsed governments in power and became the law unto themselves; Caped heroes were little more than advertisements for the corporations that sponsored them, and the greatest measure of one's personal worth was the size of their bank account. Wealth inequality was staggering, with ever-more of the population falling into poverty every year. Those living in the outskirts, the slums and backstreets of the big city were squeezed for every eurodollar, forced to toil in dead end jobs with no hope of advancement, or to constantly move between part-time positions. Many turned to crime just to make ends meet and avoid being rounded up by the street sweepers as homeless, sent off for 'processing' and never seen again. Whole 'academy towns' sprung up outside the gates of the corporate enclaves of desperate aspirants hoping to study for and pass the incredibly stringent examinations to become a cog in the great machines, to ascend to the arcologies and live a life of security and comfort. Oleg was clever and a fast study, gifted. He was always a few steps ahead of his fellow students, even before his mutations expressed. Once they did, he was practically a living computer; neurons and nerves rewired with supercooled organic metal allowed for speed and reaction far greater than even peak human ability. The half-semester he missed as his body painfully reworked itself into a frigid vessel of intellect was made up for in days. Oleg passed the entrance examination to the Prague arcology with flying colors, and tried to ignore the feelings of guilt he felt, the resentment and jealousy directed his way. Life in the arcology was infinitely safer and more comfortable than the dangerous squalor of the backstreets, even in the relatively clean and controlled academy town. Working as a maintenance engineer, Oleg kept the arcology running, performing simple routine inspections and fixes to the systems and machines around him, including the arcology's force of robotic drones. These simple robots became a subject of fascination for him, something he felt internally conflicted about: Every robot replaced a job that one of his comrades from the academy town could have worked; and yet, those drones did dangerous and dirty work; would it better to have one of his learned, studious colleagues here with him but relegated to scrubbing the floors? The questions grew and grew, and Oleg became increasingly dissatisfied. He was here on the strength of his natural gifts, his position felt unearned. Why was he living in comfort while others starved outside? When Oleg shared his thoughts with other arcology dwellers, they laughed his concerns off. The people outside hadn't done anything for the corporation, so why would the corporation throw away money keeping them safe and fed? Wasn't it arrogant to think that doing nothing entitled you to pay? Wasn't it arrogant to think that being alive entitled you to keep on living? Communism was, in Oleg's world as on Primal Earth, as failed ideology, unworkable. The nickname 'Comrade' he received from his fellow engineers was, then, not a flattering one. Contact with Primal Earth scientists, though it happened half a world away, sent shockwaves through society. Other earths, other dimensions, existed. This other earth had a 'portal corp' dedicated to exploring them. A bidding war erupted amongst the megacorps, who demanded that Primal Earth sell them the technology, this new competitive edge to their enterprises. No amount of money seemed to tempt the scientists, however, and they retreated into the portal from whence they came, declaring Oleg's native earth to be a 'Dystopic Dimension', one that would not be contacted again for security reasons. In time, the excitement died down, and with no breakthroughs forthcoming, dimensional travel was decreed to be just as much of a financial dead end as space travel, and all research projects were officially abandoned. Unofficially, the information galvanized Oleg. He had long given up on his own world, but if others existed, perhaps in one had succeeded where his had failed, and created a society based on the principles of liberty, equality, peace, justice, and progress rather than the endless naked greed and drive for profit that his own represented. Researching in secret, Oleg spent years assembling a prototype dimensional transport harness. After dozens of failures, he managed to create an unstable warp suit, hurled between different dimensions trying to find his dreamed-of utopia. None of the other worlds he found met his criteria, many were dead or dying after a civilization-destroying disaster, some were fascist dictatorships, or primitive, savage and even crueler than his native dimension. The closest he ever found was Praetorian Earth, where despite the tyrannical reign of Marcus Cole, he found the vast proliferation of robot labor and the extremely high quality of life for its citizens inspiring. With Praetoria's destruction, the last few rays of a setting sun vanished, and he chose to evacuate to Primal Earth with the rest of the city. With the remaining people of Praetoria living here, as well as the offices of Portal Corp, he has chosen to put a temporary end to his aimless wandering, instead assisting the displaced Praetorians as a Clockwork technician, and to assist Portal Corp in exploring other dimensions, hoping that somewhere out there, a better and more perfect world exists. Comrade Utopia is a Mutant Mastermind with Robotics and Cold Domination as his powersets. His ancillary set is Chill Mastery, with pool picks in Super-Speed, Leadership, and Medicine. His notable powers are as follows: [High Speed Thought] An across-the-board boost to many attributes. Medicine, rapid repair of his machines, optimized combat routines, and more. [Roboticist] Enhanced mutant intelligence has a great many benefits, but the swarm of custom robotic servants and bodyguards that surround the doctor are the most obvious example of his genius. Equipped with a steel hammer-fist and MKVI 'Sickle' laser weaponry, the robots original roles acting as lab assistants and cooking and cleaning as robotic maids have been largely superseded by their duties as bodyguards and soldiers. [Supercooled Nervous System] The other half of High Speed thought, Oleg has a low-gade superspeed, his nervous impulses traveling faster along supercooled metal nerves, while his muscles and skin are reinforced to operate at subzero conditions. This lets him run without tiring and at great speed, as well as a dodging most physical attacks thrown at him. However nimble he is, however, he is still only a Mastermind, and is unsuited to frontline battle. [Cryonic Emanation] Oleg eschews weapons and simply projects beams of extreme cold, should he deign to personally engage enemies. These attacks weaken, slow, numb and expose enemies, more suited for finishing off weakened enemies or opening strong opponents up for his robots to dispatch. [Cryonic Bloom] While his robots are designed to benefit from Oleg's mutations, with exposed heat-sinks that he can drain to keep the laser weapons from overheating and their defensive forcefields working at optimal levels, Cryonic Bloom is the focused culmination of his abilities. Creating a spark of absolute cold that expands into waves of frost like a blooming flower, Oleg can supercool himself and his robots, letting them achieve optimal performance for a brief period of time while subjecting his opponent to bitter, hostile conditions.

This is definitely a great way to make it seem like you have a well reasoned argument and aren't just whining.

Coming in hot off the block at Seed 16 is Samuel Hain, though his friends just call him 'Sam'. Or they would, if he had friends. To be fair: It's not easy to make friends when you're an unseelie fey, evil trickster, and creature of darkness. Sam is minor fairy nobility, a liminal spirit and barrow-guardian, having authority over the festival of Samhain. In practical terms he's a supernatural border patrol officer, keeping dangerous creatures from the spirit world from sneaking into the mortal plane, and warning humans away from accidentally wandering over to the Oher Side during periods when the worlds grow too close. Or at least, he's supposed to. In actuality Sam is bored of his vigil and open enough to being paid off to let travelers cross over illegally, both ways. He's always willing to bargain, and often enough to cut a deal that seemingly favors the other party: A minor magical enhancement in exchange for not eating a specific candy, knowledge of a hidden passageway to the spirit world in exchange for carrying and never losing a pretty stone, or magical tutelage in exchange for a tithe of Halloween candy gained trick-or-treating. What Sam actually gets out of these banal pacts is the right to enforce them: Specifically, the right to cross over into the mortal world and make sure the other party is holding up their end of the bargain. The bargains are largely pretext for him to abandon his post and go roaming about causing mischief. Unfortunately, Sam's sense of mischief is defined by a inhuman fey sense of morality. While he might find harmlessly wandering about shapeshifted into the Headless Ghost of Statesman amusing, he also thinks that a whole squad of Longbow agents waking up in the hospital collectively wondering 'What the actual fuck was that' after a sudden and savage attack is equally funny. Generally, seeing the scarecrow out and about means one of three things: Either he's shirking his duties guarding the borders off the spirit realm, he's fulfilling one of the many bargains he actually has to put some effort into himself, or it's Halloween. While the first case is hard to predict, as what happens to amuse Sam from moment to moment is subject to his strange whims, it's increasingly common to see him bound to a particular task: The Cabal, M.A.G.I., The Midnight Squad and Arachnos have all entered pacts with him in the past to deal with a specific problem. Sam has been fairly free in allowing himself to be summoned and is starting to regret it; The day when he starts try and wriggle out of some of his more time-consuming and onerous obligations is fast approaching. Ironically, the method he currently favors is to make a new bargain, with the required payment being preventing someone else from fulfilling the terms of their obligation to Sam so the earlier contract is nullified. The drawback that this leaves him with the same number of contracts doesn't dissuade Sam, he pacted and pledged his way into this mess and by the high throne he's going to pact his way out of it. Being a spirit of Samhain, it's not a surprise Sam is very active during Halloween, but during the month he's generally unusually focused on his actual job, catching up on months of backlog while the proximity to the spirit world throws the world into chaos and spirits cross back and forth freely, throwing the world into eternal night as they do. While unseelie hunting bands cross over to earth with Eochai and Jack of Irons in tow, or powerful Hollow Reapers stalk the streets for souls to harvest, he must work to keep his position within the Courts. Sam is a Magic Dominator with Darkness Control and Savage Assault as his powersets. His ancillary set is Primal Forces, with pool picks in Concealment and Fighting. His notable powers are as follows: [Shadow Manipulation] Darkness moves at Sam's command, simultaneously the least and greatest of his abilities. His opponents will find their shadows rise up as murky tentacles or grasping hands, in a single petrifying binding or a whirling maelstrom of darkness that blots out the senses. [Spirit Conjuration] Sam rarely is entirely alone. Drawing in shadows, he can create temporary vessels for lesser unbodied Unseelie to inhabit, ranging from wispy ghosts to terrible stalking black dogs to murders of crows that swarm and peck. Sam can also manipulate his opponent's shadows to open the up to possession by this same cadre of malicious fey. [Shapeshifting] Sam can take on many forms, some more convincing than others: While he doesn't expect appearing as Ms. Liberty to fool anyone for very long, it might be good for a laugh. Similarly, he often appears as different monsters when in combat: An alien beast, a frightening clown, a hockey-mask wearing slasher. [Claws] Despite his shapeshifting. Sam's combat forms generally have the 'tell' of long, sharp talons. While more than willing to savage and maim his foes, Sam isn't truly equipped for a fair fight with a dedicated melee combatant, and he tends to only approach to put these natural weapons to use once the enemy is helpless with fear. [Jumpscare!] Sam likes to lurk about unseen and pick his engagements: He often starts fights by appearing from nowhere in a burst of shadows and cackling laughter, terrifying his opponents. Even during a fight he blends concealment and speed to rush up to opponents in a flurry of claws, appearing suddenly in front of or on top of a foe already attacking. [Curse of Annihilation] Sam tends to hold this attack in reserve, as the weight of evil summoned by this attack is so powerful that it causes a backlash or recoil, withering and corroding his own body when used, his hands harmed by the same eerie green light he uses to smite his opponent. However, it provides a potent 'tankbuster' attack against enemies that are resistant to his claws. making it a risky but viable strategy. [Sturdy] Sam has some of the eerie, dreamlike inevitability of a nightmare. fists, blades, guns and the like seem to always do less damage than they should. However, while it's enough to delect some panicked, glancing hits and increase his aura of fear and invulnerability, Sam is a Dominator and remains relatively frail.

I have kind of a lot of alts. I say 'kind of' because I know there are people who are going to say that 26 isn't actually that many, but I wanna clarify none of these are throwaway characters, I've dragged most of them to 50 the slow way. Regardless, it's enough that "I'm a lot of people." has become sort off a recurring stock response to people remarking "Oh, You're [Character]?!" So I've been sort of on and off been thinking of making one of these threads, but never quite got around to it. Well, I've realized that I have a whole toychest of action figures here: Might as well smash 'em together and go 'pchoo pchoo crash bang'. That's right: It's a character list in the form of a tournament. I've gone ahead and seeded characters based on the sum of their archetypes' Survivability, Ranged and Melee damage, based on that graph that pops up when you're picking the archetype. Those are, of course, only very broad suggestions at best and outright misleading at worst, and variable on powerset picks, so we're likely to see some upsets here. As it is, it seems like the general ranking seems to be Blasters > VEATs > Brutes > Scrappers > Stalkers > Tanks > Sentinels > Dominators > Masterminds > Corruptors > Defenders > Controllers Which, we'll see how that bears out. Also yes, this is excluding the HEATs, because it turns out I kind of don't like playing Kheldians. So they're being excluded, which does constitute bullying but I don't care. There's two of each archetype, one hero, one villain, except for the VEATS who are both villains, so team evil has a very slight edge in this showdown. I suppose that's it for the ground rules. Next post will start off the tournament proper.

Uh. Hmmmm. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I dunno! It seems like something I should be using just given the character theme and the spore cloud from bio armor, but.

Bad news, the issue seems to also be happening on my bane spider. It is visible if set to sheathe on the back, but doesn't load in if you set it to appear when drawn normally.

Worth noting that Beanbag is not Disorienting Shot, so it doesn't seem there are any changes to the Sentinel version of that power.

Scepter of Stheno fails to render on a DP/Ninja/Mace blaster

If it would be possible to bring it back in some more controlled fashion, I would appreciate it, yeah. It's fun, goofy, and mostly harmless. I think it'd be a good option for the Aether Shop since it can't be done 'legitimately' anymore.

'Boomtown Brat' is a great character name.

You're right. Let's nerf martial arts and Street Justice. /s

Venomous Gas gives -12.5% ToHit and -18.75% Damage with a 15 foot radius as a T9 power. Time's Juncture gives -15.625% ToHit and -25% Damage with a 25 foot radius as a T3 power. Now, Venomous gas has -25% Resistance and -12.5% Defense, but they don't help if you're dead! Venomous Gas asks you need to get in melee and the *no* skills to give you any survivability. Your T9 is less 'safe' than the power you can get in /time at level 4, and Time has a bunch of other support to keep you alive while Poison has none. The set's lack of personal protection, making you work without a safety net, is my main problem with the set. Giving Envenom and Weakness some actual AoE so that you can just *go all in* on debuffing whole spawns to the point where they can't kill you is a great direction to go in. Maybe make them leave clouds or puddles or something.

Scarlet and Dahlia don't seem to have had the gender lock applied, Scarlet spawned as a male widow for me during this mission.

War mace/ Energy Aura. I'm both Strong and Pretty.

Doesn't have an animation for use when flying. You drop down as if standing on an invisible solid surface when in midair.

Surveillance is actually good, Freeze Ray and Sleep gas are boring but functional (Though I always questioned Freeze ray in what's basically a 'military hardware' patron pool, it seems too futuristic), which basically leaves LRM and Body Armor as the problem children. Body Armor probably just needs its numbers jiggled a little, but LRM is kind of a mess of a power that doesn't really know what it wants to be. Looooong recharge, looooong cast time, interruptible, and the damage isn't quite enough to justify the previous three issues. I have it and I use it, but not because it's a *good* power.

Bump.

Transferred my Merc/Traps over from live, noodled around a little bit doing the repeatable missions in dark astoria. Definitely feels like I'm doing more damage due to my henchmen attacking faster, though the incarnate BP still tore my ass open even through all my layered defense, resistance, and healing. The gimmick of the soldiers going from using SMGs to Assault Rifles when upgraded appears to be gone, they just get more and more attacks as they get upgrade. Does focus fire do much? No, not really, at least not versus standard bosses. Vs. AVs and EBs, it will probably be more impactful. It's a small 'gravy' bonus for having the attacks more than a huge change in and of itself. If you didn't take the attacks prior, I don't expect this to change your mind, but if you already took one or two, it's an add-on. Does the slotting change for Equip Mercenary and Tactical Upgrade change much? Also not really. The extra 8-9% resist from swapping over from an Endred IO (that I didn't need) to a +Res IO was nice, as was the small amount of extra defense. Serum is actually good now! I still have it muling the resistance IOs, but it's a fat +Res/+dam boost for the whole team, and it mez protects against things that my FFG doesn't (Namely, knockdown: I can pop serum to keep my guys from ragdolling everywhere or getting clowned by an ice slick). I found myself using it reactively more than anything, and it was up when I needed it. Nice. It's a couple small nice things, plus the mercs getting reworked to be more aggressive/faster attacking. It's nice.

How much is the new slottable Ranged/AOE Defense in Tactical Upgrade?

It really is in kind of a weird place where it's not a PBAoE but it's got no range to be used as a TAoE. It either needs more or, weirdly, *Less* range to be used with comfort.

Could you point me in the direction of those? A quick search didn't find them.

And playing with one hand tied behind your back! Which I imagine is going to be a necessary skill because the only way I can imagine getting a team to do this is to have them handcuffed to your radiator.

'A squawk from an arachnos headset', Vig-to-villain tip, Brittany Fairchild spawns using a male arachnos model. This may have happened due to playing with solo bosses disabled, as she is a downgraded boss.

The titan weapon greatsword is literally called 'Razor Sword'. https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/File:TW_Razor_Sword.jpg There's also Excalibur, and several forms of energy sword, all of which do lethal damage when another set uses it. It's not the literal definition of the weapon in the powerset name, it's not the damage type, and it's not based on any historical factors as to the use of weapons. Hence my summation that it's purely based on vibes. Rename Dual Blades to Dual Weapons if it makes adding some blunt options more palatable, why not.

There are a few options for Assault Rifle (The retro scifi rifles) that don't have any sort of barrel or visible aperture for bullets. Dual Blades has a few axes as weapon options. Titan Weapons has nearly half its options being large, bladed weapons despite the set doing smashing damage. So if it's not weapon shape or damage type, what is the deciding factor for if a particular weapon is suitable? Generally, the strict definitions on what can be a weapon skin for a given set seem to be loosening, and if we're judging just off vibes, I don't see why we can't have a dual-blades character using twin tonfas or telescopic batons.