Megajoule

Most of you will be familiar with the unfortunate case of Dr. Stephen Fayte, who gets kidnapped almost as often as Bentley Berkeley, even though he is merely a gifted surgeon and nothing more. Some, however, persist in the absurd belief that he is actually a powerful sorceror. So which is it for your characters?


Miss Megajoule, V-Max, Sky Raider X, VERB and the Stellar Champion all agree that Dr. Fayte is only a gifted surgeon, and nothing more. (X even taunted his Thorn abductors for being so dumb as to think otherwise.)


the Watchmaker: "Yes, of course. And I am a harmless inventor." *chuckle*

the Spirit of the Row: "C'mon, Doc, it's me."

the Star of Justice: [... Extraordinary. Your secret is safe with us, sir. Now, let's get you to safety.]

(Taxibot Gamma is an unusual case; while unaffected by the charm, he's naturally extremely credulous and has no reason to doubt the doctor's claim.)

I already had one evil twin - Max Thunder, counterpart to the heroic V-Max - who turned up on Primal Earth a couple of years back to help scout out this dimension for Marauder. Right now I'm playing out his backstory in Praetoria before deciding how I want to move forward with the character as he is today.

I do have some ideas on some of my other characters might have turned out under Cole's regime, but none that I feel like playing right now.

I do hate the game (which was added on to what I still consider to be the real game), but have been told I am wrong to do so. So now what?

* I only play on Virtue. (Purely experimental characters may be rolled on Test or, rarely, Infinity.)

* I have characters, not "toons." Every one has a name, a personality, goals, and a backstory.

* No imported or "inspired by" characters that just don't fit the superhero genre or setting of Paragon City/the Rogue Isles.

* All of my characters must be physically and mentally capable of teaming with others. (I added this one after realizing that my first attempt at an Elec/Elec brute, a sociopathic android, would be incapable of cooperating with... well, anyone if played fully IC.)

* I try to avoid deliberate misspellings, punctuation, etc whenever possible. I do not believe that all of the good names are taken. In a few cases, however, the concept demanded a certain name; in two of those, I added an unostentatious period at the end, and in the last (a larger-than-life character with a short name) I put it in all caps and spaced it out, as it might appear on a marquee. I do check from time to time to see if the unpunctuated forms have opened up.

* All of my characters have badge titles that suit them somehow.

* I don't re-use powersets (one notable exception: I have an Inv/SS tank and a SS/Inv brute).

* All of my characters start with or acquire in the course of their careers one or more NPC enemy groups (Vahzilok, Sky Raiders, Longbow, etc) as personal foes.

* My characters train level 50 (and often many others) by visiting a trainer that has some special significance to them - usually Ms. Liberty or the Brawler, but sometimes another.

* I always try to log off in some Day Job location, even if it's only the top of the tram.

* I don't farm and I don't play the market; I sell my drops and buy what I want for my characters, that's it.

* If my character has/needs a travel power that doesn't fit within the rest of their concept or powersets, it's roleplayed as a gadget or something. (For example, one of my defenders has a SERAPH-issue remote control for the city teleport grid to explain Recall Friend. Another, a natural stalker, used her Zero-G pack until it finally ran out and then bought SJ defined as the same thing. Yet another would not use Ouroboros ICly, but has his own method of rapidly getting from one part of the city to another.)

* Whenever possible, I slot IOs of levels 30-40, preferably 35, for the best balance between replacing SOs and retaining set bonuses when exemplared (below 32, I won't have all of my primary or secondary anyway). Until then, I slot SOs and sometimes DOs; the bonuses offered by TOs and the time spent in that range are usually too little to matter.

* I almost never go to Pocket D. Most of my characters have better things to do with their downtime, let alone their "working hours."

* I only have Hasten on two characters - one's a speedster, and the other has a short-term overdrive mode. Concept over being "uber." (I also don't build for perma-anything.)

One thing you'll have to deal with is that horror is a genre about powerlessness. That means that if your audience is playing powerful beings, you have to get creative. Put them up against something they can't blast or punch, or something so much bigger that they can't face it head on.

Dangit, Steampunkette, stop being so reasonable. Don't you know you're in S&I???

How sad is it that I saw the red stripes and immediately knew it was from the 181st?

Ah, that's good. Thank you very much.

I was never really part of "the Park scene", but it's good to see some familiar faces/names in this thread.

IMO, Praetoria is pretty much all villain content. You just get to choose your particular flavor. It's not a place for heroes.

For me, it's pretty much as others have said on this thread: the punching and blasting is the game, the market is not. The latter is something that was added to the game, and has its own rules; I participate in it as little as possible, selling my (uncrafted) drops and getting back into the fight. My fantasies are of being a superhero (or villain), not a shopkeeper or stockbroker. I'm very glad that the new merits will allow me to mostly opt-out of the market mini-game while still enjoying the benefits of IO sets (not purples or PvPs, just "regular" rares).

That said, I do have an actual on-topic question about these merits:
Will I be able to buy recipes from the vendors at any level (say, 35) or only at the level of my character, as is currently the case with reward merits? If it's the latter, I suppose I'll need to park a character in the mid-30s and turn off XP...

Inspired by some feedback from Eva Destruction, I've added a little more "flavor" to this arc - more clues, more patrols, more side objectives, etc - and tweaked a few things. So if you haven't run this arc in a while (or at all), I encourage you to give it a look. It's four missions "Long", but they're on small maps and go by quick.

Okay, then let me vote "no" on that second posting/idea specifically.
NO.

Yes, actually.

While I'm glad that I'm now able to buy an endless supply of work-anywhere jetpacks (for the cost of about an uncommon piece of salvage each), the temp power is slower than my ex-Sky Raider's slotted, level-scaled Flight. So rather than respeccing out of the latter, I continue to rely on it most of the time and only turn on the Raptor Pack for RP, costume contests, etc.

What would be absolutely ideal for me would be to be able to buy or unlock a costume piece for the back slot (ala capes, wings etc) which animates when I activate Flight and Hover, but does not in itself convey those powers. However, I'm very aware that this is a highly ideosyncratic need/request, and so I haven't bothered to make a thread for it.

I have a sentai character, but I've been able to realize him pretty well in-game with the existing pieces (especially once they added half-helmets with goggles/visors, back in one of the single-digit issues). Not really seeing the need.

And a firm NO to costumes having any actual effects or bonuses. Keep it all cosmetic, thanks.

You want to be playing an FPS instead. Got it.

No matter the developer, the company, the game, or the year, it will always be the case that the stuff you think is vitally important will be put off and ignored in favor of "stupid boring stuff that no one cares about." Always. It's uncanny.