A Fantastic Character

[Ultimo]

So, I've posted about this before, and I'm still kind of struggling with a character.  He's meant to be based on Mr. Fantastic, Reed Richards... but of course, there's no stretching in the game, so I'm having to fudge a bit to reflect what he DOES with the stretching.

 

Looking at Reed, in the comics he has two powersets, his stretching (which provides durability, melee and control feats) and his inventions.

 

My current version is a Blaster, Beam Rifle (representing his invention... we often see Reed produce a giant weapon of one sort or another) and Atomic Manipulation (which has some melee and some controls).  I like it... but he's just so flimsy, and Reed should be better able to stick in melee.

 

So once again, I'm wondering how people might build a character to reflect Mr. Fantastic and his abilities.

 

Any thoughts?

[smnolimits43]

Awhile ago i saw a character that looked like the Invisible Girl, however she had a Bots MM, can't remember the secondary.  Perhaps you could go in that direction as Mr Fantastic.  I tried making a Homage to Thing, but the devs thought it was too much, and genericed me.  

[Ultimo]

9 hours ago, smnolimits43 said:

Awhile ago i saw a character that looked like the Invisible Girl, however she had a Bots MM, can't remember the secondary.  Perhaps you could go in that direction as Mr Fantastic.  I tried making a Homage to Thing, but the devs thought it was too much, and genericed me.  

Ya, a lot of my characters are based initially on existing characters... but I always try to move them somewhat away from them.  I'm sure sometimes I'm more successful than other times.  Captain America, for example, is hard to make an homage to, because there's only so many ways you can do a character in red, white and blue.

 

In any case, I did consider making Mr. FF a bots Mastermind (he's called Mister Mech, after all), but it didn't quite feel like Mr. FF, who tends to personally use gadgets rather than sending bot minions into battle.  As I think about it, in a fight, Mr. FF gets personally stuck into melee, and uses his gadgets as support and as finishers...

 

He's hard to simulate.

[Parabola]

Grav/traps troller? Maybe with quite a bit of the fighting pool (and a lot of imagination!).

[Ultimo]

I made another version of him that was Electric Controls and Traps, but I rather dislike the Traps set.  So many of the traps are really difficult to get anything out of.  Poison Trap?  Oh look, the enemy all went the other way, or the team already wiped them out.  The Devices set for Blasters is a little better... but only a little.

[Yomo Kimyata]

I think of Mr. F, I think of him stretching and gyrating to stay away from harm.  Super Reflexes.

 

?Beam Rifle/SR? sentinel

[Ultimo]

Hrm.  Went back to my Electric Control/Traps Controller version of him...  I do kind of miss the big gun, but he does FEEL more like Mr. FF, if that makes any sense.

 

Is there a temporary power that I can get that could simulate the big gun?

[Ultimo]

Nope, played Positron with the Controller (Electric Control and Traps), and he was less than useless.  The traps take so long to deploy and take so long to recharge that they were almost never useful.  On those one or two occasions I was able to deploy them usefully, they did so little to help that they might as well have not been there.  Most times I tried to deploy them, I was killed while doing so, because the Controller has very little health and no defenses.  Sure, there's the bubble drone, but it doesn't reduce damage taken, so if I get hit, I'm dead (and with 20 bad guys shooting at you, you're getting hit.

 

So, back to the drawing board.

 

Once again, what does Mr. FF bring to his team?

 

Thing is clearly a Tanker, perhaps a Brute.  In fact, as I consider it, he's defeated a lot in the comics... that suggests he's not as tough as he is strong.  Probably a Brute.

Torch is most likely a Blaster.  His whole thing is big damage, and he's usually depicted as being rather fragile.

Invisible Girl is likely a Defender, though this is an inexact matchup.  She really has only the one power set, Force Fields, which she does a variety of things with.  Perhaps Psychic Blast.

 

This gives the team a Tank, DPS and Support.  That leaves... what?  The Holy Trinity is there already, what role does Mr. FF fill?

 

Mr. FF usually hangs back, sweeping enemies away or binding them up with his arms or body, pummelling them with enlarged fists, then produces some gadget to defeat them in one fell swoop.  So... he's a melee fighter who hangs back... and a big DPS weapon user.  Binding enemies suggests controls of some kind, but Controllers are incapable of substantial damage or significant melee.  Big DPS weapons suggests Blaster.  Blaster also has some melee capability, but he's awfully fragile.

 

So, I'm stuck again.

 

[Without_Pause]

You won't be getting decent recharge on a Posi anyway. Not to say Traps doesn't have this as an issue. I'm saying it is worse in that situation. I ran Posi I & II tonight and in all honestly I felt like I was doing better soloing higher level content than I was on those TFs.

[Ultimo]

Honestly, I'd love to see them devise a pool to reflect the inventions many comic characters create... Mr. Fantastic, Iron Man, Batman... there are plenty of characters who make clever gadgets, tailored for the situation.  Not sure how they would do it, but it would need to be better than Devices, Traps or Experimentation, all of which blow big beefy bear chunks.

[arcane]

You aren’t actually judging builds by their performance in a Positron TF are you? Characters kinda get much much better than that and all…

[Frozen Burn]

As others stated, a posi TF is not a good judge of the build and what it can do - you're too low level for all the goodness you'll get to.  however, going by concept-wise, I don't think an Elec/Traps controller is Mr. FF'ish anyway - it's a little more Dr. Doom to me with the lighting and control.

 

To go back to your original thinking of a Beam/Atomic Blaster, maybe go a Beam/Rad Sentinel instead?  You'll get your gadget and a decent armor set to make you sturdy.  Then with Mace or Ninja Mastery, you'll get more gadgets and control.

[Ultimo]

Ya, I know Positron isn't the best measure, but I just found the character rather frustrating to play, and it's not just in Positron.  It just crystallized the experience.

 

My original thinking was that his stretching would be "simulated" by having ranged attacks (ie. Mr. FF attacks from a safe distance by extending his limbs).  The problem lies with the devices, which are universally underwhelming.  This leads me back to going to the opposite arrangement, where the gadgets are represented by a big gun with a few different effects.  I went with Beam Rifle, it's techy enough and I was able to fit it into the concept for the character:

 

He's a scientist whose body generates subatomic particles.  He created a "portable" particle accelerator, which he uses as a weapon (ie. a big gun).  His secondary was Atomic Manipulation, which represented his control of his atomic particles.

 

At least, that was the rationale.  It's not quite like Mr. FF, except for the fact he's a scientist, and he uses a big gun.  Ideally, he'd have more variety in his devices.  He's tough to make work as I like.  I mean, the Blaster character is pretty effective, he just isn't quite like Mr. FF.  I suppose the question is, is he ENOUGH like him to be an homage?