The .38 Specials

[TemporalVileTerror]

A thought struck me after having a discussion about player-character deaths, so I figured I would post it in the forums, and cross-reference it here:

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/20878-community-project-the-roleplay-scale/?tab=comments#comment-342120

[Grindingsucks]

@TemporalVileTerror I'm just crawling out of bed on this lazy Sunday morning, but I want to read the entire topic, which looks very helpful to what we're thinking about doing with our group- so thanks for linking that!  👍  I'll reply in depth, later, after my coffee has kicked in and I've had more time to digest my reading.  😉

 

With regard to creating characters, while I do hope to get a wide variety of AT's to explore AT roles in team tactics, I do think it's more important (initially, at least) that everyone just makes the character that they're interested in playing, whatever that might be.  I want the group to thrive, members to stick around because they're having an enjoyable time, and I just feel that's more likely if you have the freedom to play the exact character that you'd like to play (within our self-imposed level/slotting limitations, of course).  So make whatever you like!

 

I'm hopeful that, in time, we'll have enough members that all AT roles (tanking, control, buffing, dps, etc.) are well covered. 

Edited March 28, 2021 by Grindingsucks

[Grindingsucks]

Also, a few comments on play times and character alignment:

 

1) Don't worry too much about your time zone.  I'm a stay at home parent, so I have wide latitude with regard to play times.  If nothing else, people on the Pacific Coast or in Greenwich Mean Time ought to be able to partner up with my character(s) part of the time.  But, if you try the group on for size, and just get bored because there aren't enough players on when you're logged on, that's fair enough; you can leave the group, no judgement.  Nobody that's into team play wants to solo most of the time.

 

2) The main thing about morality/alignment is that I want us all to be the same alignment so we easily have access to the same material and isn't left out of a specific TF, or whatever.  Yes, you can always run to Pocket-D and change your alignment back and forth, but it's a bit of pain in the rear, and everyone will have to wait for you to do it, if you forget before starting a TF, mission, or what not.  Also, just as importantly, having the same alignment makes the RP dovetail more neatly, since characters have similar outlooks, expectations, and goals regarding crimefighting.

[TemporalVileTerror]

I may not be correct, but I'm fairly sure if everyone is either Rogue or Vigilante, then they'll all be able to team up for all content together, other than PvP.

[Grindingsucks]

Ah.  Well, that may well be a misunderstanding on my part, then.  In that event, you may disregard the first part of #2.  

 

Morality conflict may still be an issue, though.  Not that there's anything wrong with a bit of that, as long as it doesn't keep members from teaming together or lead to disgruntled players.

[Coyotedancer]

Tam's 38 and SOed out now... and I switched her over to Vig. 

 

At some point I may make the "other half" of the pair. (I've always made my Elysion in pairs. It's a tradition that goes all the way back to Palrah and Ty'ree, the first ones I played back on Liberty-) Since we're a little short on melee so far I'll probably go scrapper or tank if I do end up building that one.

 

RE: timezones and such. I'm in Seattle, so Pacific time zone. I'm on at all kinds of odd hours. The only "typical" playing time I'm not  available is Saturday afternoon. That's reserved for running around with the Wolfepack. (Family team... Me & Mr. Coyote, Sib-in-law and the CoyoteNephews. 👍 )

[Grindingsucks]

I think this is gonna be my dude (barring any eventual alts, of course):

 

[Grindingsucks]

I think this is gonna be my dude (barring any eventual alts, of course):

 

 

EDIT:  By the way, @TemporalVileTerror in regards to your topic on RP and Character Death...

 

Roleplay:  I would say that I fit pretty comfortably into RP2, RP3, and RP 4.  RP1 is too casual and RP 5 is too rigid (for my purposes).  

 

Regarding scale of continuity: I think Episodic is more practical for online play with people in different time zones, though I'm not opposed to more long-term, serialized plot-lines.

 

Scale of Immersion:  varies for me, depending on mood, story format, and who I'm interacting with.  Too much exposition can slow down play and cause other players to grow bored and disengage.  Too little breaks immersion.  I sort of play it by ear.

 

Grim vs Noble:  For the comic book genre, I think Noble works better.  I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise by a good argument.

 

Bright vs Dark:  The genre is quite flexible and can go either way, even within the same series of comics, and/or story arcs within those comics.  Obviously, the particular character I'm thinking of starting in the group with would lean more strongly towards Dark (being inspired by things like Ghost Rider, Etrigan, John Constantine, and so on.  Of course, even Hellboy has its moments of whimsy and dark humor).

 

Character Death:  I think that question is best answered for any particular character, by that character's player.  For me, there is always (at least) the idea that the character is mortal and "can" die, although, practically speaking, I would want the character to survive for as long as I'm interested in exploring the character in play.  Of course, in the comic book genre, characters often escape certain doom or destruction, over and over again.  If they do die, they may return at a later date through various means, so death need not be permanent.

 

The player is, of course, well aware of this (just as readers and writers of comic books are), but the characters themselves must always (in my opinion) believe that injury and death are a very real and imminent threat, unless they are immortal gods, demons or fairies, or some such.

 

[Coyotedancer]

'Went ahead and built Asari (the other half of the Elysion bird-thing pair), but haven't leveled him yet. As of this morning he's a mighty level 1 WP/Broadsword Tank, but I'm still debating the final Tank vs. Scrap question. 

[Grindingsucks]

12 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

'Went ahead and built Asari (the other half of the Elysion bird-thing pair), but haven't leveled him yet. As of this morning he's a mighty level 1 WP/Broadsword Tank, but I'm still debating the final Tank vs. Scrap question. 

 

Cool.  I play scrappers more often than tanks, but both are fun.  👍

[Coyotedancer]

It's been awhile since I had a WP tank running without IOs, but my memories of Palrah at that level (He was my WP/DB tank back-in-the-day, and was leveled with SOs only-) put him more in "heavy scrap"-territory than Seriously Tough Tank anyway, so the difference is likely just going to be a matter of how much damage he can do. 

[Grindingsucks]

That's true. 

 

But I figure you can probably still get S/L into the 50 to 60 range, even without IO sets.  Regen will be excellent, and Psionic resist much better than most anything except, possibly, Ninjitsu. 

 

The main advantages I think that you'll have playing at lvl 38, is two-fold: endurance management, which can become quite challenging when you're running toggle heavy powersets as I am with Pennance, as Willpower just handles this more easily thanks to Quick Recovery and your Mez Protection, since Willpower offers robust coverage against anything that gets thrown at you. 

 

I've noticed that fire has two or three mez vulnerabilities that I struggled to address and my build is endurance hungry, so if Consume misses its target (or, I just forget to fire it), I've got serious risk of toggle collapse and impending doom.  😁

 

This is fine with me.  This focus here is on team play, and relying on your teammates to help mitigate your weaknesses by developing team tactics to compensate for them.  In other words, all part of the fun!  👍

[Coyotedancer]

Yep. In the end I went with the Scrapper option... I figured he'll still be pretty survivable at that level, with Rise and Confront to pull at least some of the aggro if he needs to. And though I'll definitely be missing the extra END that my WP types usually pick up from Physical Perfection, QR and a couple of procs (Perf Shifter and Numina's, I'm thinking) will definitely help.

 

Otherwise... yeah. As toggle-heavy as the set is he'd have issues in a drawn-out fight. Broadsword being as slow as it is actually works to his advantage there. I remember all too well how much "fun" it was playing Summer Moon (Claws/WP Scrap) in his mid-levels on an SO build way-back-when. He grew up to be the Tasmanian Devil, but for awhile there... Yikes. Burned the blue like mad. 😝

 

ETA: Given that END issues may be something we all face to some extent with SO builds, I should probably switch out Tam's Veng for Victory Rush. That's a nice little boost if you kick it off on a boss.

Edited March 29, 2021 by Coyotedancer

[twozerofoxtrot]

I made a thing....

 

 

 

(and of course I'm noticing the typos now..)

[Coyotedancer]

Tamenaten (bright-phase Elysion Time/Fire Defender, whose name means "Blessing of the Sun") and her brother Asari (dark-phase Broadsword/Willpower Scrapper, whose name is the Sumerian's translation of Osiris)

 

 

 

 

No real biographies yet, since I haven't played them and so don't really know them. 

 

 

Edited March 30, 2021 by Coyotedancer

[twozerofoxtrot]

On 3/28/2021 at 5:06 AM, Grindingsucks said:

Enhancements are limited to SO's, but you can also slot individual Proc's and Globals from enhancement sets.  No more than one proc or global of each type may be slotted (including universals).

 

To be clear, one of each of the following is okay?

• Panacea +HP/End
• Miracle +Recovery
• Performance Shift Proc

 

Just doing a quick check here, since I had already planned an all Basic IO build before you laid out the rules. No SOs, but also no Set IOs. So I'm in the middle of a rework. Being able to slot these alone should make endurance management a lot less painful; but I don't think it will be non-trivial. At least for my character.

[Coyotedancer]

I did the Numi/Perf pair on my two, with a few other favorite procs and specials for fun... but no sets and no more than one of anything that allows multiples (Like the Perf Shifter +END).

[Grindingsucks]

34 minutes ago, twozerofoxtrot said:

 

To be clear, one of each of the following is okay?

• Panacea +HP/End
• Miracle +Recovery
• Performance Shift Proc

 

Just doing a quick check here, since I had already planned an all Basic IO build before you laid out the rules. No SOs, but also no Set IOs. So I'm in the middle of a rework. Being able to slot these alone should make endurance management a lot less painful; but I don't think it will be non-trivial. At least for my character.

What I ought to have said, is you may only slot the procs and globals from each set.  No partial or full sets.  Where something like LotG is a universal and you can get the bonuses from more than one enhancement of that type (in the same set) you can only have one from that set.

 

Example:  You can have Panacea +HP/End, Miracle + Recovery, Performance Shift Proc and Luck of the Gambler + recharge.

 

You may not slot 2 or more enhancements in the Panacea set, or multiple LotG+recharges, or Hamidon Enhancements, or Standard IO's.

 

Any remaining slots must be filled with Single Origin Enhancements.

 

Do keep in mind, I'm open to alternative suggestions.  I just felt this would be a good place to start.  If we begin play and feel the characters are too strong or to weak, we can adjust the build parameters as needed.  Having tested Pennance slotted this way, I find that he can handle +3/1 content pretty reliably and +4/1 content with a great deal of difficulty.  +4/2 would probably not be viable for him to solo.

 

Obviously, depending on your individual AT and build you may find you perform slightly better or worse than myself, but I think this is a pretty good balance of challenge to start with and should allow for us to enjoy equally challenging team combat.  We'll have to test it, of course, but I'm fairly confident it will be close to where we want to be. 

 

For further clarification, here's a screen shot of my enhancement screen:

 

 

EDIT:  Also, when that new update to 2nd Chances goes live, with all the travel power updates (which look awesome!  If you haven't read the update, there's a lot of great stuff coming down the pipe, including the ability to choose Story arcs from LFG, just like trials and TF's.), I imagine we'll be all be doing a bit of minor respecing.

Edited March 30, 2021 by Grindingsucks

[Coyotedancer]

I actually built my birds with the travel changes already in mind. 😆

[twozerofoxtrot]

16 minutes ago, Grindingsucks said:

No partial or full sets.

 

This was not my question, but you did answer it, thanks.

[Grindingsucks]

11 hours ago, Coyotedancer said:

I actually built my birds with the travel changes already in mind. 😆

 

Cool.  😎

 

11 hours ago, twozerofoxtrot said:

 

This was not my question, but you did answer it, thanks.

 

No problem.  👍

 

 

Also... just a general FYI:  I went ahead and created the SG (The .38 Specials wasn't taken.  Woo!).  I'm working on building the base presently (something that I very much enjoy doing and feel that I've gotten quite competent at, over time).  Setting-wise, I placed the base in Boomtown.  It's both an above and below ground base, although the base proper (meant to be an old, abandoned base that we reoccupied and are in the process of refurbishing) is almost entirely underground.  The above ground bits are just the blasted cityscape that Boomtown became, after the Rikti attack.

[Coyotedancer]

Nice catch on the SG name. 👍

[Six-Six]

Another awesome project idea. why am I not surprised that "the usual suspects" are in this thread 😃 . You guys got me hooked bait, line, and sinker. Already rolled a toon. But with my house being remodelled IRL, I'm afraid I can't commit to playing for the next month or so. (as some of you have noticed with the Issue 0/ 2004 group). 

[Grindingsucks]

22 minutes ago, Six-Six said:

Another awesome project idea. why am I not surprised that "the usual suspects" are in this thread 😃 . You guys got me hooked bait, line, and sinker. Already rolled a toon. But with my house being remodelled IRL, I'm afraid I can't commit to playing for the next month or so. (as some of you have noticed with the Issue 0/ 2004 group). 

 

No problem.  I'm not looking for anything so binding as commitments- just people interested in joining the group.  Whenever you finally get some down time, we'll be here.  😉 👍

[Grindingsucks]

Someone logged in as Ultramarine shot me a tell with a SG invite request last night.  I was base building and didn't notice until they had already logged off.  If you happen to be reading this, Ultramarine, my apologies.  I'm happy to send you an invite if you're still interested.

Edited March 31, 2021 by Grindingsucks