Lazarus

Anna sat down with her knees pull up and head supported by her hands beneath her chin. Her lizardly tail swished on the floor behind her, signalling impatience.

Kathode ignored the wind up mouse that zipped by and kept an eye out for Rosalind.

Naga stopped chasing Rosalind and kneeled down, sitting on her haunches as her legs didn't allow her to sit cross-legged like the other children. She looked up at Archlich with inquisitive eyes.

Anna was startled by the sudden teleportation. "Wah! Ask before you do that!" She said crossly. Kathode caught site of the dog running around and took cover behind an piece of furniture, looking back out with her ears folded flat and tail bushed out.

Cobalt forgot about her brief exchange of fire with Toy when she saw Vanessa. The pigtailed girl walked over and sat down next to her, staring that her mechanical arm and comparing it to her own prosthetic left hand.

Seeing Rosalind, Naga released her toothy grip on Schizo's leg and dropped to the floor, where she began to chase the puppy around and mimic her barking.

Toy's energy bolt hit Cobalt in the back and sent her flying on her face. "Meanie!" She yelled at him as she tossed a grenade from her backpack at him, which promptly exploded in midair and covered Toy with silly string.

Meanwhile, Naga made another pounce at Schizo. Her lizard legs were much better at leaping than human ones, and as such she sailed high into the air and intercepted the flying boy. Opening her jaw wide, the lizardgirl chomped down on his leg and refused to let go.

Both Anna and Kathode seemed distressed, each clutching their ears. "What is that noise?"

"What's with this rabbit food?" Kathode complained when she saw the snacks which had been laid out.

"Where's the sugar? We want sugar!" Anna started chanting.

"Master! Help!" Mini-Bot cried as he ran through the room as quickly as he could. Hot on his heels was Cobalt, brandishing a screwdriver and a mischevious grin.

Anna and Kathode ceased their fighting for a moment and both charged towards the snack table.

Cobalt walked in slowly and looked at all the robots and other machinery present. Over her shoulder she carried a small black backpack which looked very worn. A little spider-legged robot crawled out of it and came to rest atop her head.

Naga went invisible when the shreiking began. Suddenly the invisible lizard-girl pounced into the air and tackled Schizo while shouting "RARRR" at the top of her lungs.

*DING DONG!* The doorbell rang.

Standing outside was a man of middle height who was dressed in baggy pants and an elaborate martial arts robe. His exposed arms were shiny and black, overlaid with red circuit patters. A large black coolie hat obscured his face, which was competely covered by goggles and a breather mask. A katana was set in its sheath and strapped to his belt.

He was a rather famous hero in Paragon City, the one known as the Iron Samurai. At his feet were four small children.

The two oldest ones, Anna and Kathode, were rolling around on the ground in yet another fight. Kathode had a grip on one of Anna's horns while Anna was using both hands to twist Kathode's tail.

The other two were being docile at the moment. Cobalt had bright green hair tied into pigtails, a cybernetic left hand and right eye, and was busily manipulating the red hair of Naga into a style matching her own. The little lizard-child was not showing any signs of objecting as she sat on the ground and looked around with her large, copper-colored eyes.

The samurai waited patiently at the door with his charges.

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I also find it more effective to slot the toggles as opposed to the attacks with end reducers, and slotting them twice (once you have the ability to do so) before slotting the attacks even once.

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Uh, no.

Your defensive toggles do not take nearly enough endurance per second to be worth slotting two endurance reducers into as the diminishing of returns kicks in right after the first SO. For example, if one SO brings Fire Shield from 0.13 end/sec to .10, a second one only brings it down to 0.08. That is an insignifigant amount of savings.

If you're talking about slotting two endurance DOs, then it makes sense as two DOs equals about one SO. But two SOs is a waste. I've tried it before on test and saw no difference in endurance savings.

Your attacks, on the other hands, use far more endurance in a second than your toggles do. While Fire Shield uses about 0.13 in a second, Smite uses 6.86 (numbers from SherkSilver's Character Builder) in the same second. Spamming attacks will drain end far quicker than running toggles, therefore a better return will be seen from slotting an endurance reducer into your attacks. For best results, slot one in both toggles and attacks.

As for fitness, you can take longer on Stamina as long as you pick up Dark Consumption at 18 when it becomes available. Then you can still get Acrobatics at 20, and have more attacks in the pre-20 levels, then still get Health and Stamina in the early 20's without having to put off Soul Drain. Adding Consume can wait until the early 30's, but I wouldn't delay getting Midnight Grasp. This way you can still have Tough before level 40 as well.

As for Blazing Aura, I found that it's usefullness diminishes a lot by the later game. I found myself using it very infrequently and eventually respecced out of it in the 40's to get Touch of Fear and Siphon Life into the mix.

Touch of Fear is essential in the late game when Elite Bosses are coming out of the woodwork. That massive to-hit debuff goes a long way towards making them soloable.

I recommend double slotting everything for Accuracy by the 40's as well, especially powers like Touch of Fear, Consume, Soul Drain, Siphon Life, and Dark Consumption. The less you miss, the less you need to swing, the less endurance you burn while fighting the same number of foes. Plus CoT with -acc powers piss me off as well.

Alright, here we go. I hope you packed a lunch as it may be a long list.

Anna Nethema
System Syn - Burning Out
Primer 55 - Loose
Primer 55 - Introduction to Mayhem
Chemlab - Suicide Jag (Mark Blasquez Remix)
Sister Machine Gun - Burn
Gravity Kills - Enough
Battery Cage - Anti-Angel
Pitchshifter - Condenscension
Cesium 137 - Flashpoint
Machines of Loving Grace - Lilith/Eve
The Parallel Project - Alchemy
Dismantled - Exit
Imperative Reaction - Arrogance
Skrew - Dark Ride
KMFDM - Beast
KMFDM - Rubicon
Spineshank - Transparent

Cobalt Stinger
State of the Union - Timerunner
Chemlab - 21st Century
Pitchshifter - Genius
Pitchshifter - Hidden Agenda
Hanzel und Gretyl - Robot Logik
Machines of Loving Grace - Perfect Tan (Bikini Atoll)
Killing Joke - Mathematics of Chaos
Fluke - Atom Bomb
The Chemical Brothers - Block Rockin' Beats
XP8 - The God Particle
Dismantled - Armed and Ready
Ned's Atomic Dustbin - Plug Me In
Ned's Atomic Dustbin - All That I Ask Of Myself Is That I Hold Together
Tears for Fears - Everybody Wants To Rule The World
Stromkern - Televised
KMFDM - That's All
KMFDM - Power
Course of Empire - The Information

Naga Obscura
Hanzel und Gretyl - Take Me To Your Leader
Beastie Boys - Sabotage
My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult - The Velvet Edge
My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult - Badlife
Nature - You Only Live 2x
Dismantled - Purity
Dismantled - Dystopia
Dismantled - Survivor
Dismantled - Circular
Dismantled - Hypersleep

Kathode
Fear Factory - Shock
Fear Factory - Edgecrusher (Urban Assault Mix)
Primer 55 - Violence
Acumen Nation - Parasite Mine
Sister Machine Gun - The Antagonizer
Gravity Kills - Falling
Professional Murder Music - Slow
Machines of Loving Grace - Content?
The Parallel Project - Glimpse
Dismantled - The Last Excuse
Warrior Soul - The Wasteland
The Scorpions - Rock You Like A Hurricane
Insolence - Death Threat
KMFDM - Rules
Spineshank - Synthetic
Spineshank - New Disease

You could try looking up the artists on Amazon and see if they have samples of the songs in the track listings for the albums.

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I also try to fashion some of my characters after cliches. Like Archlich, the evil all powerful undead mage who wants to but can't take over the world for spit.

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So Archlich is Skeletor?

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((...Though a Cobalt Stinger plushie would be one of the cutest ever. Second only to Mini-Bot.))

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Hey, what about Naga Obscura? Is she not cute enough to get a plushy? Heck, even Cthulhu has one.

Are you asking the Entity to nerf them?

I try to avoid 'railroading' my players as much as possible. My style is to set the rules, present the scene, and only introduce plot devices when needed to nudge the players in certain directions while incorporating the ideas that they bring in with them as long as they do not stray to far outside the constraits of the setting.

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Anyhow, how do those of you following AH101 like the adventure in the abandoned lab so far?

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Could use more descriptiveness. Your post tend to be concise, which can be fine for character reactions, but when setting up a creepy abandoned underground lab with creepy people running around it. It could use more flavor. Taste, smells dust, indistinguishable sounds, blood trails, mysterious piles of excrement with belt buckles and watches still in them(depends on the critters there). The setup with the lab and the storm was a great opportunity for horror mystery. The mystery is still there, but it has basically devolved into a quick fist fight. Now I know you probably have a lot more planned and don’t intend to have them stroll up to the surface all easy like, but I like flavor.

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Well, no offense to anyone, but when I set up scenes I expect the others to contribute to it as well. So far Darkstorm is the only one doing that with the scratches on the wall thing and seeing the eyes watching from the woods.

Maybe I'm just used to my old group, where I could set the basic scene and they would go ahead and fill in such 'flavor' details on their own. It gets tiring for me when I feel like I have to explain every single little detail, then it begins to feel more like I'm writing a novel than GMing a RP.

Especially tiring when I have to start calling out the names of all my attacks. I thought the descriptions of the powers being used were enough, then again I work under the assumption that everyone participating has played CoH/V enough to recognize such described effects.

Or maybe you're just expecting Resident Evil when I'm trying to deliver System Shock instead.

Ok BurningBrawler, here it comes.

My problem with Blightlord is that the man comes across as a walking pissing match. I have this issue with Reikoff somewhat but he's not a regular in AH101 so it's not a big deal.

Whenever Blightlord shows up I know it's going to eventually come to a never-ending game of one-up-manship. I mean, how many zombies do you need for crying out loud.

I just prefer characters which have 'realistic' limits within the constraints of the game world. I like to know that the fight can end rather than dreading an encounter with someone who is going to constantly pull a solution to everything out of his back pocket and drag a fight out forever.

Anyhow, how do those of you following AH101 like the adventure in the abandoned lab so far?

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I find Ella funny, especially whenever she learns a 'new word.'

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But she still doesn't know what [censored],[censored],[censored],[censored],[censored],[censored] mean ?!?

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You could just have her ask Anna, she'd tell her. Though first she'd need to know which [censored] is it.

I can't be bothered to write accents myself. Originally Cobalt Stinger had a slight Russian accent but I dropped it as I never bother to try to portray it. I do have to watch myself when writing Montressor's dialog and proofread it every time to make sure I don't drop his gentlemanly way of speaking by accident.

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Ah, here's something I had been wondering.

My favorite thing to do is scenes like this:

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Blightlord opened the gym doors, Grime and two Grave Knights behind him.

He walked across the room, and straight into Mr. Big's office without even knocking.

"Whadda you want?" he asked, nose curled in disgust.

"I want you to give the children a specific excercise, one to prepare them for a field trip they will be taking," Blightlord calmly responded.

"Pft. I got my own lesson plans for makin' the brats miserable, so beat it."

"I think you may want to reconsider," he responded, tossing a file onto Mr. Big's desk.

The short man cleared away the wrappers and crumpled papers all over his desk as he opened the folder.

"Why the hell should I care what-" he stopped, and what wasn't covered by his mask turned deathly pale. "How... how did you get this?"

"I have my sources. Now, I believe we were discussing how you would be conducting your gym class tomorrow..."


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If I don't do something along these lines once in a while, I swear my head'll explode. So, what do you think of 'em? Could they use work? Do they need to be more... villainy?



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Other than that it hastens along to the point where Montressor will throw Blightlord off the island? I honestly do regret letting you bring him in as a teacher. My fault for not researching the character before making the decision.

It's nothing personal, everyone has a character that some people just plain wish didn't exist, that makes them groan whenever he/she/it shows up in a thread. Happens to us all.

Good luck. I tried to do this a couple times with a Mephit theme and it grew like wildfire for a couple weeks but then people stopped logging them on and ended up dissolving the SG due to severe inactivity.

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Men in black with blank identities, and deadly women with a dozen passports.

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Huh, what women agents?

A relatively small spacecraft drifted along the comets and other icy debris that circled in a massive cloud around the edge of the Sol system. At this distance it would take thousands of years to complete a single lazy orbit around the nearby star, but the vessel and its occupant would not be here for that long.

With the spacious control room of the vessel stood a humanoid creature who walked on her clawed toes, the sole occupant of the spaceship. Scales as black as oil contrasted with red hair that was tied up in a pair of pigtails on the sides of her head. Large, sensitive eyes looked out through the window at the end of the dimly light chamber at the field of ice floating in the ocean of the night.

A light on the communication console flashed, indicating an incoming message. Stepping over to the console she saw that it was on a private channel, from a coded tranciever she had left back on Earth. The language was English.

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"Hello everyone!
I'm sorry for doing something as informal as a form letter, but there are just so many people I want to invite, Dr. West suggested it would be more efficient this way.

I hope this letter finds you well!

Anyway, I wanted to invite you to a small get-together at the laboratories of Repliforce Paragon on XX/XX/XX. It is the sixth anniversary of my creation. My 'birthday' so to speak. Dr. West is being very kind and arranging a party for me, and said that I could invite as many of my friends as I wanted.

So I am inviting you!

Please come to the address indicated on the back of this letter. The party is at 2 PM. Refreshments of many varieties will be served.

Please do not bring gifts. The greatest gift you can bring is yourself! I look forward to seeing you at the party!

Deepest affections and kind regards,
Unit S6 'Essex' "

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The lizardgirl smiled with her inhumanly wide mouth and set in a course, soon the spaceship was rocketing towards the third planet from the sun at the center of this system. Naga Obscura was going to a birthday party.

Bah, the devs just load the game in development mode where the Character Creator has a selection for what level you want to begin at.

I'm still in no hurry to get my main to 50, not with all the bugs that still plague CoV from level 40 onwards. If the next patch on test, which fixes a lot of them, is not up on live before then I'll be spending time on new alts instead if I play at all that weekend.

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Hmmm... I wonder if the Double XP thing also Double your Prestige?

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I'd be more worried about if influence is not doubled as well.

If it's not, I forsee a lot people complaining about how poor their characters are when they are leveling faster and needing to replace enhancements sooner.

Anna will be there and eventually Cobalt and Naga as well. Can't have all three at once unless I can get some people to remake them exactly and come play them.

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My biggest issue is that there is no hero equivilent requirement for an accolade. Even the hardest of badges to get (eg monkeys, illusionists, masks), can be farmed in a single night. This badge will require weeks of afk'ing. Not cool in my book.

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/sign

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i agree, either make heroes have the same ridiculous(SP?) requirements for accolades or tone ours down

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I truly have to ask the devs W..T..F when I see things like this, like the Masrhall badge.

Why do the Heroes get accolades with such minimal buffs so easily while the Villains have to work their [censored] off for the same thing. I can get Atlas Medallion well before level 40 on a Hero, but getting Marshal is impossible for a Villain before then would be impossible as they have to complete a post-40 strike force.

So either take out the requirement for the Annihilator badge, or make the endurance buff a good amount more than the Atlas Medallion provides for so much less work.

Oh, and what the hell is with some Villain Accolades requiring PvP badges when the Heroes don't even need to ever set foot in a PvP zone for the same kind of rewards?