Elemental kheldians

[trogenion]

How would khelds work based off of other elements. Ie cold fire psy. Not just energy and neg energy,?

[MTeague]

It would dispense with a lot of existing Kheldian Lore, or at least have to be retconned in.

 

But the real killer I think?  It would require *Considerable* artwork to make it happen.  I'm not sure that's the best bang-for-buck in development time.  I don't think it's a bad idea, I just think it's fairly low in the "It would be nice if" pile, and not so much in the "there is a pressing need for" pile.

 

[Roderick]

5 hours ago, MTeague said:

It would dispense with a lot of existing Kheldian Lore, or at least have to be retconned in.

Not really.

 

The natural form of a Kheldian is a ball of energy (similar to a Nictus), that can't exist in most environments, so it bonds to a host to survivein their environs. The Nova and Dwarf forms are memories of previous hosts; future Kheldians will be able to mimic the forms of humans.

 

The official lore reason that all Kheldians have the same set of forms is that all Kheldians on Earth came from the same place, and had the same types of previous hosts.

 

If Kheldians arrived on Earth that had had a different set of previous hosts, they could have different forms. However, the base powers would still be the same; the blasts and shields are part of the natural Kheldian powers, and there would be no Nictus versions, unless some group captured and expeimented on them like the 5th Column did on the original Peacebringers.

[SeraphimKensai]

 Actually in the lore, the Nictus were Kheldians that diverged in the sense that they became cannibals feeding off the life force of living things and other Kheldians. That's what prompted the war. Peacebringers were Kheldians that organized to fight back the Nictus. During the war, the Nictus experimented on themselves and corrupted themselves. They developed a weapon that could drain Kheldian life force with an interstellar range, which really fueled the war between the Peacebringers and Nictus.

 

Warshades are Nictus that saw the light and redeemed themselves. Kheldians have been on Earth as early as ancient Egypt if not earlier. The Nictus led by Arkham and Requiem infiltrated the 5th Column, and taught the 5th Column about Kheldians, started experiments which led to the creation of Vampires, Werewolves, Galaxy troops, and Void Hunters. They also distributed quantum guns to help others cull the Peacebringer population.

Edited February 7, 2020 by SeraphimKensai

[Saiyajinzoningen]

how about opening the epic power choices to kheldians? choosing one would give u that element which determines the secondary effect of all your powers.

[SeraphimKensai]

1 hour ago, Saiyajinzoningen said:

how about opening the epic power choices to kheldians? choosing one would give u that element which determines the secondary effect of all your powers.

As a huge Kheldian lore geek, I can totally support allowing Kheldians to use ancillary power pools (from a balance perspective, SoA's can unlock patron power pools, I feel this makes sense limiting Kheldians to APP's if granted access).

 

That would allow you to have some elemental flair as a Kheldian could merge with an existing superhero, but due to the nature of Kheldian lore, I would advise against altering the damage/secondary effects of existing Kheldian powers.

[Chris24601]

For Khelds that bond with existing heroes... a luminous/umbral ranged, melee, assault and armor sets might be some low-hanging fruit in terms of reusing existing art assets.

 

Ex. The PBs Luminous blast set includes a light, medium and heavy single-target blast, a cone and targeted AoE, a build-up and a nuke... throw in maybe the flare and photon seekers and you’ve got all nine powers for a ranged set.

 

While it may look a little short on melee attacks with just Radiant Strike, Incandescent Strike and Solar Flare, it would also need a build-up power and several melee sets include a short range cone and blast so Gleaming Blast and Photon Scatter with 40’ ranges could be added bringing it to six and a generic taunt/confront bring it seven. It really the just needs a tier 1 and 2 light and heavy strike and... coincidentally, the dwarf-form attacks have animations that show up on the human-form model in the power customization screens so it’s two single-target melee attacks could be pulled from there to round out a “Luminous Melee” set.

 

A blaster secondary using the three melee strikes and another build up plus some of the other support/self buff effects; essence boost, conserve energy, reform essence and quantum flight gets you to eight powers; one more as a passive buff and you’d have it done.

 

An Assault set would just need to pull from the ranged and melee sets above.

 

An armor set is pretty much already done too, you just need to figure out where to slot mez protection into it.

 

It’d be more work, but adapting the Kheldian bubbles with force field animations, plus the glowing touch heal power and fx could probably create a buff set of some type that mixes resist with heals.

 

Warshade versions of the ranged, blaster secondary and armor sets, plus a control set (maybe a debuff set) would also be real contenders for having enough art assets to create.

 

* * * *

 

The point of all that though is that you could then mix and match those with sets on every non-epic AT to reflect a Kheldian who has merged with an existing super-powered being and has a mix of both powers.

 

Or you could use two sets together on some ATs to create a human-only Kheld who has specialized in the particulars of an AT instead of the generalist tri-form.

 

... Or be a mad scientist who’s built a suit that channels the same cosmic power as the Kheldians do. It’s City of Heroes... anything’s possible.

[Erydanus]

Just concept wise it sounds really fun. I don't think it's do-able but if there was a full active commercial development team imagine what a shock it would be if suddenly Fire and Ice variants of Peacebringers and Warshades showed up and revealed there was an entire group of them that the Kheldians we knew were unaware of with an involved backstory that expands the lore … it would be very comic-book-y to expand them that way.

 

Another thought I had that would be interesting would be Kheldian epic pools - where the character is a super hero already and they bond with a Kheldian and primarily retain their original super powers, but the Kheldians give them a few powers and that's their epic pool. Again, too much work, but kind of a fun concept. You might be able to pull it off using the existing Energy and Darkness pools and just make it a concept. 

[Replacement]

Can someone explain to me, without a wall of text, why this would go against fiction of Khelds?

 

I mean, if Kheldians are what gave us the basis for people turning into wolves, and we're already in a Kitchen Sink world of magic and aliens... why would it be lore-breaking to have a Peacebringer whose energy is more like sunlight (burns) and a Warshade whose "shadowy" powers saps energy (cold damage)?  What is so specific to Kheld lore that makes it so their beams have to deal energy damage instead of psy damage?

 

I don't know how you'd do this mechanically (sidenote: these powers are all already customizable, right?  So I don't think we really need any new art assets... maybe some new default energy colors).  I cannot imagine there's anything in the fiction strong enough to shoot this down, but by all means, I'm keeping an open mind to any arguments.

[Saiyajinzoningen]

i don't think it goes against per se, just doesn't currently fit in the current models of kheldian lore.

[biostem]

5 hours ago, Replacement said:

Can someone explain to me, without a wall of text, why this would go against fiction of Khelds?

 

I mean, if Kheldians are what gave us the basis for people turning into wolves, and we're already in a Kitchen Sink world of magic and aliens... why would it be lore-breaking to have a Peacebringer whose energy is more like sunlight (burns) and a Warshade whose "shadowy" powers saps energy (cold damage)?  What is so specific to Kheld lore that makes it so their beams have to deal energy damage instead of psy damage?

 

I don't know how you'd do this mechanically (sidenote: these powers are all already customizable, right?  So I don't think we really need any new art assets... maybe some new default energy colors).  I cannot imagine there's anything in the fiction strong enough to shoot this down, but by all means, I'm keeping an open mind to any arguments.

From my understanding, all current Kheldians "remember" having nova and dwarf forms, (or just being a light/dark empowered human for those that don't take those powers).  Theoretically, a Kheldian could have visited some star system where there were fire or other elemental-based creatures, whose forms they "remembered" instead...

 

Roleplay-wise, there's no reason you couldn't roll another AT and make clever use of different costumes and binds to simulate them.  For instance, a sentinel + fighting + mystic flight could mimic both nova and dwarf forms pretty convincingly...

[Replacement]

Hmm, I just realized I may be imagining something different than everyone else.

 

I was thinking literally, all the powers are the same, and you're just trading out Energy for, say, Fire damage or Psi damage.  Trading out Negative energy for Cold or Toxic.  Maybe some adjustments to some secondary effects.  Emphasis on "some."  

But yeah, I'm all for different forms to go along with it.  I'd love to see Kheldians expanded out into some more generic shapeshifter forms (even if just a list of 4 "heavy" models and 4 "flier" models -- it'd be a start!), and what @biostemis saying about remembering other forms could be a cool justification for it.

[biostem]

11 minutes ago, Replacement said:

Hmm, I just realized I may be imagining something different than everyone else.

 

I was thinking literally, all the powers are the same, and you're just trading out Energy for, say, Fire damage or Psi damage.  Trading out Negative energy for Cold or Toxic.  Maybe some adjustments to some secondary effects.  Emphasis on "some."  

But yeah, I'm all for different forms to go along with it.  I'd love to see Kheldians expanded out into some more generic shapeshifter forms (even if just a list of 4 "heavy" models and 4 "flier" models -- it'd be a start!), and what @biostemis saying about remembering other forms could be a cool justification for it.

Honestly, perhaps a more generalized shapeshifter AT would be better...

[trogenion]

1 hour ago, biostem said:

Honestly, perhaps a more generalized shapeshifter AT would be better...

perhaps, grab some shift AT base it somewhat of of kheldians (use existing models, if no custom ones could be done, i suppose) get a primary with some elemental support and or human form powers, in both primary and secondary, could even put in some soft control forms.

heck the forms could be full on elemental embodiment forms ala when iceman goes ice skin, human torch goes flame on, ect  

[Greycat]

Honestly? What you want sounds like something I suggested back on live in a way (not exactly, but...) Namely, creating some non-set IOs that give some percent of a damage type 100% of the time. So if you wanted your Fire blaster to also (for whatever reason) do Cold damage, it would... assuming you slotted one of these IOs. Unique to each other (so you couldn't load a blast with fire, cold, negative, etc. - you had to pick one,) but you could use as many as you wanted across powers (fire brawl, cold lvl 1 blast, neg level 2, etc or fire in all of them.)

[Saiyajinzoningen]

5 hours ago, Greycat said:

Honestly? What you want sounds like something I suggested back on live in a way (not exactly, but...) Namely, creating some non-set IOs that give some percent of a damage type 100% of the time. So if you wanted your Fire blaster to also (for whatever reason) do Cold damage, it would... assuming you slotted one of these IOs. Unique to each other (so you couldn't load a blast with fire, cold, negative, etc. - you had to pick one,) but you could use as many as you wanted across powers (fire brawl, cold lvl 1 blast, neg level 2, etc or fire in all of them.)

this is an interesting idea, how would the secondary effects work? for example a dark blaster changes their damage to say sonic would the attack have negative to-hit debuff or resistance debuff? would an ice blaster with elements changed to fire do fire dots? what about the slowdown effect naturally built in? Im not saying this is a bad idea just wondering how the effects would play out.