Crasical

'Zen and the art of profile bonsai: Cutting your concept down to the essentials, and making the most use out of your 1024 characters.'

People say 'Don't, it's bad' when they talk about mayo on french fries too, and I love them that way. They're entitled to their opinion, you're fully free to just... roll that character. You don't gotta go on the forums and ask permission first.

I know some people feel that way, but until we get a consensus on 'Knockback in any form is Griefing', I don't feel like anyone has any right to go around telling other people how to play or build their characters. Going to Null and say 'hey don't let people use Mystic Fortune on me' does not inhibit their ability to use and enjoy Mystic Fortune. Putting a -KB option in Null is so you can tell *other people* to go change their settings. There's a difference.

Is there a way to have an enemy 'Escape', with that teleport effect some mobs (like Professor Echo) do, or to turn untargetable and run away? Or am I limited to having them ragdoll and say 'Mediporter, one to teleport' on defeat?

The problem I feel is that the other Null toggles are saying 'You can do this but I don't want it to effect me'. Which is more than fair! Curate your experience. But there's not really a way to implement a "You can use knockback but I don't want it to effect me" flag; this suggestion would just lead to a lot of "Hey go change how YOU play because it annoys ME", which is more intrusive than I think a Null flag should be.

This is the most nitpicky thing and I apologize but shouldn't that be 'waifu'

So you don't roleplay in City of Heroes.... but you DID come to the roleplay section of the forums, to tell us you don't roleplay, because everyone is 15 year olds power tripping... but you're not sure they're actually doing that, because you don't roleplay. Okay. Anyway those power-tripping 15 year olds are 25 years old now, post-shutdown.

After reading An Overly Long Post Talking About Lore, Canon, and Headcanon (TM), particularly Chapter 7. This is a Video Game, I decided to come back here to talk about the grinding gears between Chapters 3 and it's neighbors, and how you can get your sleeve caught in them if you're not careful. Prelude: Roleplaying with Strangers: I'm going to right off the bat say that a lot of this can be worked around if you have a supergroup or a small group of friends you consistently roleplay with. If you're not, though? You're going to be telling stories with randoms. That's not necessarily a bad thing, it's a great way to meet people and have fun and the Everlasting community is pretty chill, but it means that not everyone is going to be up-to-date on how you've written around things. The gap between Chapter 2 and Chapter 3: Are you a friendly neighborhood Spiderman? A street level protector of Kings Row? Great! Turn off exp at level 25, you're done with leveling on that character! What, does that sound unreasonable? It is. Their roleplay power level shouldn't influence their game level. But Try it the other way: If what your character can achieve in game has *no* bearing on their roleplay power level, you can just make a character and leave them at level 1. I, personally, have a lot of trouble taking people who do this seriously. So how do you solve this? I... unfortunately, don't have a really good answer for this one. Saying that your IC and mechanical power levels never touch is one, but it's weird and uncomfortable when your level 1 godling gets face-planted by a hellion with a sledgehammer, or your street-level-saves-cats hero obliterates a whole fireteam of highly-trained anti-metahuman soldiers (Take your pick from Council, Malta, and Nemesis). You can just declare the actual missions you do non-canon, and never do any mission RP with anyone, but it can be limiting if you ever want to do anything other than nightclub roleplay if you can't even do any AE missions. The simplest explanation may be to acknowledge that your character CAN punch above their weight class if they need to, but for whatever reason prefer not to; because it's dangerous, expensive, exhausting, or just unpleasant for them. Or just give up on City of Heroes as a game and just use it as a costume creator/slash-chatroom with lore. The gap between Chapter 3 and Chapter 4: Let me call in my friend Bane Spider Ruben for this next bit: Put it another way: You make a Super Fighting Robot. He's immune to bullets (made of metal), he's immune to psychic attacks, and he's immune to poisons, diseases, knockout gasses and the like, being a robot and all. The game is, repeatedly and at times emphatically, going to tell you "No he's not!". Stuff down your pride and listen to the game. Not just so people on your team don't ask awkward questions when you get tear-gassed and gunned down by Malta, but so that you're not stepping on the toes of the mind controller, poison defender, and dual pistols blaster. Nobody likes "I'm immune to your powers and I'm going to be a dick about it" guy. Even if they're not Double Cosmic and talking about how they're so far above your mortal concerns, and how could a mere human with a gun possilby touch them, or they're not rubbing it in everyone's faces, It's a game about superpowers. Let people have their superpowers and let them have some effect, you're not too cool for it and the game mechanics don't back you up on this. Now, this one has two corollaries : Corollary A: But you can get real chonk in this game: I'm aware. And if someone came in and started lording their Veteran Level 1000 or how they can solo those 800-whatever AE arcs over me as proof of their divine transcendance and using the game to support my impotence against them, that'd suck. That hasn't happened to me, personally, though, so I think that the advice in general holds true. Be humble, say 'Yes' to what other roleplayers say they can do and what the game itself is telling you. Corollary B: I hate being mind controlled: Y'know what fair enough, you've got me there. I don't think anyone should ever push you unwillingly into roleplay that you find uncomfortable. If you never-ever want to be mind control because the lack of agency is boring or triggering or the person doing the mind control is being weird, cool! Just try and communicate that. Anyway, in summary, City of Heroes is just a game, but I think that WITH allowances for stuff that is 'just game mechanics', you still should use the game to inform your view of the in-game universe. I mean, you're playing it.

Buff LRM Missile

I have only done a few scenes with him, but I have a character, 'Mister Krampus'. Mafia mage, kidnapper, blackmailer, extortionist. Like the fairytale monster, he's got a basket on his back with one or more kids trapped in it; he openly admits that they're the kids of PPD and Longbow officers that he's holding for ransom, or until their parents pull the plug on operations designed at disrupting The Family, he self-describes as an 'Evil Wizard'. But he's given out good advice on life, relationships, and unwanted magical transformation origin stories, he's a good drinking partner and *apparently* so polite and charming that nobody has ever really called him on being not only a criminal, but blatantly going out of his way to target children and the helpless. I always walk away somewhat disoriented after playing him, and I'm never sure if the people I've been talking to are weirdly forgiving, or if the bar has been pushed so far with other, viler and more murderous villains that Mr. K seems positively benign. I suspect it might be the latter, one person asked if he was going to use the kids for human sacrifice and when he said no they basically calmed down to 'well that's all right then'.

I'm conflicted because I have a character, Sable Tentacle, who's just hit 43 who'd be perfect for this set and I'd have to reroll 'im. Plus side: It'd be perfect for him Con side: He's 43 and I'd have to reroll him

Conditioning is boring but it's a useful bonus; don't strip it out. Especially with SoA's being kind of end heavy in the first place.

This is Jungfrau. Natural origin Trick Arrow/Archery Defender, blueside. Swiss olympic archer with a grudge against the Council, her left arm is a memory-metal prosthetic than can snap out into a bow to let her fight crime with a variety of gadget arrows. I'm not feeling entirely satisfied with her costume and I'm not really sure why. Suggestions, critiques, improvements all welcome.

That's a big list of how to do it wrong, can you give some examples about flaws done right? A lot of this seems to build on flaws 'as seen in a tabletop rpg', and CoX as an MMO is a different medium.

Look, don't get me wrong. I actually enjoy doing some research for my characters to make them hew closer to factual accuracy. But to really portray my roster, I'd have to be an expert in: Prison culture, drug addiction, christian theology, computer programming, Mexican luchador wrestling, foraging and wilderness survival, 'comic book mad science', New York geography, herbalism, roman history, modern arms and armor, volcanology, Gaelic mythology, traditional hand-drawn illustration and cartooning techniques, military culture, and the ability to speak Spanish, Tibetan, Italian, Japanese, and Hawaiian It's a bottomless rabbit-hole, and since 'the greatest roleplayer ever to live' isn't a paying gig, you don't have time to research all those things, *ESPECIALLY* to the degree needed to get not break the immersion of an expert in the field, much less impress them with your immersive portrayal of Himalayan basket weaving techniques. now gimme my cookie

That would do it, mystery solved.

Cosmic Cow. I felt like I had to rep my space-invader, raygun-toting cow after all those bull puns.

Some bugs I noticed doing the reworked seasonal content, 'The Widow in Red'. Ritual summoning circle spawns with Council Mission vs. Countess Crey rewards vanguard merits for some reason? Red widow doesn't despawn after (or before) the cutscene with Lord Recluse and remains on map, but invincible.

IIRC damage debuffs are resisted with typed resistance flags.

I like the idea of Backlash, but I feel like it only works for Scrappers. Brutes and Tanks would prefer a more consistent taunt aura.

I used it as an example because A) It's a close analogue, in being a PBAoE debuff aura, without having to factor in Weirdness like Hurricane's repel. B) It's a set I'm also familiar with alongside Poison Time is indeed pretty top-tier, but I think that's because it has a lot of very solid, very impactful powers; I wouldn't say Time's Juncture is what comes to mind when people think of Time being really strong. IMO, it's not enough of an outlier to disqualify it as a point of comparison, and that comparison is that it's got some measurable advantages in the mitigation department compared to Venomous Gas, something that is a gameplay-altering capstone that comes online 30 levels later.

Here's my issue: Time's Juncture. Venomous Gas provides (Defender Values) -18.75% Damage -12.5% ToHit Versus Time's Juncture's -25% Damage -15.625% ToHit Now, yes. that's deliberately a lopsided analysis: Venomous gas also does a -12.5% Base Defense debuff and a -25% Resistance debuff, which is *really nice*. That much can't be understated. But time controllers get a lot of other mitigation and survival tools (Farsight), their aura is ten feet bigger, and Time's Juncture is available at level four. Essentially I wish the safety net was a little wider for Venomous Gas, since it's asking you to jump into the fray like that, and the rest of the set is so bare of personal protection.

People would make really obnoxious characters with this. But that’s on them, and cool people might get some good use out of it, so signed.

I just unlocked the badge, can I have their nifty unique shoulderpad and belt, now?