Ravenswing

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I recently got Integration at 16 (with only a single DO Health enhancer at the mo) and it is a big end-drain

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Is QR 3-slotted yet? With SOs? No, because you just got Integration. There is a massive and significant difference between QR with DOs and QR with SOs.

Crow runs with QR 3-slotted. He currently has Stamina 3-slotted, but that's liekly to drop to 1-slot. Running Integration constantly in both cases (I've tested the 1-slotted version) causes no endurance issues at all.

Now, I'm not saying that Quills won't push you over the edge into 'endurance debt', but you'd be amazed at how effective SO-slotted QR is in yanking your endurance back up.

What's your primary? If you're going for MA then I don't think you need Stamina since I don't think MA is heavy on the endurance usage. You probably don't need Hasten either since you can put together a perfectly good attack chain without it.

Regen now has the advantage that it only has one toggle to run, so pretty much all your endurance can go on attacks. You're likely to struggle using only QR, until you can slot it with SOs, but you wouldn't really be able to get Stamina much before that either.

Personally, I have Health and Stamina on my main (kat/regen scrapper). I like being able to stand up to most things without even turning on Integration, and I like only running out of endurance when facing electric Freak en mass, Sappers and Ringmistresses. However, I don't think I need them.

You want more? Well, maybe, if I get time.

Okay, finished writing a story, some input to this thread.

I don't find it difficult to play women, though there's a possibility I only play a couple of types well. I think Shadowplay said it: you play a character, not a stereotype. You try to match certain feminine characteristics, but you play to the character you've created rather than 'playing a girl.'

I don't put anything in my character's bio to suggest the sex of the player, though I've known people who do. it avoids confusion, but is less necessary in an environment such as CoH where sex is not specifically on the agenda.

I have, however, shocked one player who was amazed to find a man driving a short girl in a shorter skirt. Which amazed me since I thought just about all the female toons had men behind them, and assumed everyone knew that. CoH has one of the highest proportion of female players I've seen in a game.

(( The story below gives some of the events of Jason Caine's recent trip to London in search of information for a plot developed by Wordmaker. It is, however, as much a piece of personal plot as anything else and it helps to know that Jason lost his girlfriend a short while ago. ))

“Good morning, Mister Caine.” The librarian smiled as he showed her his pass. Jason smiled back, his eyes flicking over her nametag. “Welcome to the British Library. If I can be of any assistance while you’re here…”

“That’s fine… Samantha, I’ve been here before.” He smiled again and walked off across the reading room floor, heading for a small door that very few people ever used. It was marked ‘Admittance by Appointment Only,’ and Jason opened it without thinking, passing through into a darkened staircase that lead down. He took the steps calmly, marching down six flights until he came to a second door bearing the words ‘Restricted Collection 4’ in faded letters. He opened it and passed in.

Jameson had not changed one bit. He looked up from his newspaper and nodded politely. “Mister Caine. It is a pleasure to remake your acquaintance. Is there something specific you are looking for?”

“I’m researching a demon, name of Orin, and a group sacrificed to him. ‘The Defiled’.”

Jameson nodded. “Try section 413,” he paused, apparently thinking, “and you may wish to check section thirteen.”

“Thirteen? Really? That bad.” Jason got a nod in reply. “Okay, let me in.”

There were none of your modern buzzers or electronic locks, Jameson stood up and took a large key from his belt. He unlocked the heavily barred door and opened it. Jason passed through and Jameson locked the door behind him. Ahead lay rank after rank of heavy, wooden shelves stacked with books, manuscripts, even a few clay tablets. Restricted Collection Four held books on magic, some of them dangerous enough that they were chained to the shelves for the protection of the reader. Some people who were admitted wondered at the apparently lax security. Jason had known Jameson since the collection was founded in 1540, long before it had been moved to its current location, and was well aware of his capabilities.

Jason passed on into the room, looking for section 413.

***

“Did you find what you were looking for, Mister Caine?” Jameson unlocked the door to allow Jason out. He had been in there for five hours, but showed no sign of fatigue.

“Yes and no. There were some interesting references. I need to visit the Williamson Collection. I’ll go there tomorrow.” Jason headed toward the door to the stairs.

“Take time to see Justina as well, Mister Caine,” Jameson advised, “and check the collection at the Bellington Club while you’re there.”

Jason turned and nodded. “Always helpful, Jameson.”

“Always a pleasure, Mister Caine.” Jameson didn’t smile, but watched Jason leave the room. Jason had never seen Jameson smile once.

The reading room was emptying. It was after five on a Friday and even the dedicated readers were packing to leave. At the desk, Samantha was putting on her coat, covering up the white silk shirt and mid-length green skirt with a thick, black coat. He couldn’t blame her, it was dark outside and the temperature was probably heading towards freezing. He looked at her appraisingly. She was his height, very slim, but with an ample chest and long legs. He shrugged briefly and walked up to the desk. He opened his mouth before he could change his mind. “Samantha?”

She looked around, and smiled. “Mister Caine. How did your research go?”

“Not too badly. I have some other places to go tomorrow. Would you like a drink?”

“Um… yes,” she looked a little startled, but smiled brightly. He smiled back and lead the way out onto the street.

He hailed a taxi and requested 20 Ham Yard. They drove down Regent Street, full of Christmas shoppers largely ignoring the display of lights overhead, discussing the Library and her work there. By the time they were swinging through Soho the lights had changed to proclamations of ‘Girls, Girls, Girls’ and Samantha giggled as they passed one woman dressed in far too little for the climate sitting in a doorway. At the end of Ham Yard, the taxi pulled over and Jason paid the driver.

The front door of the Bellington Club was unimpressive. That was the whole point. Only a small brass plaque indicated that the building was anything other than a private house, if a very large one. Jason opened the door and walked in, holding it open for Samantha. A young woman dressed in a Victorian maid’s uniform appeared apparently from nowhere to take their coats. “Your bag arrived from the airport, Mister Caine,” she said, “I took it up to room twenty-four.”

“Thanks, Jenny. Would you arrange access to the Club’s collection for me? Tomorrow, around six o’clock?”

“Of course, Mister Caine.” She turned and walked through a section of panelling which swung closed behind her leaving no sign that there was a door. Jason opened a second door and walked through into a panelled atrium.

Two attendants looked up from their desks as Jason and Samantha entered. Both nodded politely and returned to their work, apparently satisfied that Jason needed no assistance. Jason continued on to another panelled door and opened it, indicating that Samantha should lead the way. The bar was respectably genteel, just as Samantha had expected. She was currently having trouble reconciling the place against the man she had arrived with. What was a young man like Jason Caine doing in a gentleman’s club straight out of the pre-war years? They obviously knew him, the barman was already reaching for a bottle as Jason entered behind her.

“What would you like?” Jason asked her, heading for a small booth near the back of the room.

A couple of other patrons looked up from their card games or newspapers as she followed him. One older man smiled in a leering sort of way and then quickly turned back to his cards. “Gin and tonic?” she responded, sitting at the seat across from him. Jason nodded to the barman, saying nothing, but she noticed the man reaching behind him for a gin bottle. “This place… doesn’t seem like you,” she said.

He smiled. “A little old for me? I’m older than I look.” The barman arrived, carrying a tray with two drinks on it. He placed them on the table, nodded to Jason, and smiled at Samantha. Her eyes widened and, as the barman walked away, Jason grinned again. “Barker is a rather odd man, but an excellent barman.”

“H-his teeth…”

“He’s not entirely human. His mother was a werewolf, I believe. He has exceptional hearing.” His voice was matter-of-fact, as if describing how to get back to St Pancras on the bus.

She blinked a couple of times and took slightly too large a sip from her gin. When the coughing subsided, she said, “I’ve seen heroes and one villain, of course. I’m just not used to having weird things under my nose.”

“The Bellington Club is a place where weird things go to be with other weird things, Sam. There’s been something like it in London under similar names since 1680.”

“Are you a weird thing, Jason?” She looked into his eyes. She had attractive, green eyes, he found himself looking rather too closely at them.

“I was one of the founder members,” he finally replied.

“That would make you… over four-hundred and twenty-five years old.” Somehow her voice seemed calmer than might be expected.

“I’m a little older. Let’s just say there isn’t a lot of history I didn’t get to see.”

She smirked slightly, her expression something like that of a child discovering a very interesting bug in the garden. “I’m sure you must get this a lot, but I’ve never met a hero before.”

He laughed, and she prodded him to tell her stories of his past. Her interest in the thousands of years of his life seemed unbounded and he was unsurprised to discover that she had studied history at Cambridge to Doctorate level. Her speciality had been the fifth century and they spent hours going over the difference between the reality of the time and what she had discovered in her research.

“It’s the magic,” she said “We never take into account the magic. It must have made a lot of difference back then.”

He nodded. “I don’t think it has had such an effect on general society since then. Even now it’s not like everyone knows a magician who lives nearby. Magic has become something the bad guys use to most people. The heroes who use magic are almost treated as something else. Back then, magic had too much influence on everyday life.”

“Too much?” She took a sip of her fifth gin. Her speech was slightly slurred, though she had not noticed yet.

“Imagine a life where you were constantly performing little rituals to stave off evil spells. Your cattle might suddenly grow sick for no reason and you had to find something to pay the local witch to cure them. Even mundane things start to be explained by magical influence, everyone gets paranoid that everything is a curse. Strangers are murdered lest they bring the evil eye upon the village. It was a lousy time to be alive. Without the magic it would just have been… dull.”

“You’re a fascinating man, Jason Caine.” She said, and hiccupped. She had a pretty blush, which emphasised the flush from the alcohol.

“They serve an excellent breakfast in the restaurant,” he said.

She giggled. “Are you propositioning me, Mister Caine?”

Smiling, he replied, “Yes, I am.”

“Then I accept.”

***

Jason opened his eyes. It was eight in the morning, the thin light of dawn was sneaking in around the curtains. He slipped out from under the bedclothes and moved to one of the lounge chairs near the window, retrieving a PDA from his jacket in passing. He spent several minutes entering notes into an encrypted notepad application before looking over at the bed and the young woman lying in it.

Her eyes opened and she looked over at him. Smiling, she sat up, the sheets falling to her waist. “Have you been awake long?”

“A little while.” He closed the notepad and put the PDA aside. “I was making notes. I have a few places to go today.”

“Could I… tag along?” She changed position, lifting her knees and wrapping her arms around them. He was slightly disappointed.

“It’ll be boring, and you’ll see some more weird things.”

“I think I can cope. What is it you’re doing in London, Jason?”

He stood up and walked around the bed so that he could stand beside her. His fingers traced the line of her jaw to her ear and she shivered. “Moving on,” he said and bent down to kiss her.

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I think the best I've seen so far is Ravenswing.

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I shall come up with some suitable sage words once:

a. My head has shrunk back to its normal size.
b. I get back home from the shopping I have to do.


Gideon is pretty good at it as well, I should say. I was massively fence-sitting on the actual sex of Sara Aegis' player until I actually got to find out.

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You have to bubble yourself to protect from the reactors radiation

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Actually, I don't. Regen scrapper and all that. The radiation damage just vanishes.

See, Z, I told you Sophie couldn't harm War Crow.

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That was a technical note. I fail to see why you two are still at this.

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Because we find it interesting? Always good to appreciate a fellow RP'ers differing view

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But you aren't. You are (as Wordy said) going around in circles, rehashing the same argument over and over. This seems to be the fate of most threads. They reach a point where a few people are continuously producing the same stuff over and over again until everyone gets bored.

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point: I'm not sure if we should be calling it a disease, really. Is virus a better word? I'm honestly curious, I always get it mixed up

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You're thinking of baceria and virus, Wordy. 'Disease' is a generic term that covers both.

Considering the effects of the disease, it seems likely it's actually a retro-virus, something similar to HIV.

That was a technical note. I fail to see why you two are still at this.

Fine. Going to stop now.

You think you have to accomodate everything that happens in the game, and you think it's fun to do that.

I'd rather simply ignore events I don't find fitting for the character than have to worry about rationalising things that are simply going to come over to me as stupid, so I don't.

And the argument has, I think exhausted its supply of interest. *waves*

Ah, well, War Crow grew up in mid-Wales, had never heard of Lusca or the Hollows until after he moved to the US. Now, this is one of my rationalisations of the poor RP environment. I do exactly the same in LARP, because an alarming number of people won't provide basic background information on a world because you "have to roleplay to find stuff out."

So, I deal with it via a rationalisation. My hero/wizard/grunt trooper, doesn't come from around here. That's why he doesn't know much about the Hollows, or Kings Row, or the local legends of pumpkin men in the woods. Or, for that matter, the religion commonly held by the natives of the place he's living in, much about local geography, who the king is... Roleplayers can be such snobs at times.

His idea of Paragon City history is what you could expect to get in a tourist guide (which is about what Cryptic have published) or from learning 'History' in school in Wales. World events are covered, yes. Local detail isn't.

But that's a rationalisation, or accomodation. I created the toon that way because you have to go through the content, read all the History plaques, play the game, to find out half the stuff you would need to know to play a native of the city.

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I mean, can you believe I once had a guy talk to me in character, who insisted that yes, our characters' names do in fact float above their heads?

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How do you think Glory does it?

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War Crow was born (I assume) in the same world that Paragon City and the game exist in; therefore, he'll have gone to school learning about Reichssmann & Statesman's titanic battle, and probably knows where he was on the day that the Rikti Invasion happened. Therefore, there's always threads from his pre-creation life that can be brought in to keep the plot back on track.

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Ah, right, got it.

Oh, no, you lost me again. I have no idea why that was relevent to the topic we were discussing.

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Why spend all that energy fighting against the world when you could just be having fun within it?

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Um, you're fighting it, mate. I just ignore it. You're the one seems to feel you need to justify patently stupid events because you want a stunning RP environment from a game design incapable of providing it.

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The game world is where you were born, so War Crow Junior will have had to grow up in Paragon, or it's shadow; so he's already had to live through some of these 'problems'.

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You totally lost me with that one. Sorry.

You talk like I haven't rationalised this kind of rubbish before, SW.

The point is: Do it when you want to, not just because some random event happened on an RP mission and it's an RP mission, so it happened IC, so I have to angst over it for the next ten hours (IC and OOC).

RP is supposed to be fun. When you have to spend all your time coming up with fantasies that largely don't fit the facts, I don't think it's fun anymore.

Now, your Terra Volta example is fine... ignoring the fact the Weasel probably ought to keel over and die just from setting foot in Terra Volta (the zone, never mind the reactor). I generally use magicians as my characters. They look at Terra Volta as an interesting application of science which has about as much effect on magic as throwing tooth-picks at a demon (who is, I might add, not vulnerable to a thrown tooth-pick). I'm sure I can justify saving the TV reactor, I'm not sure why I should bother coming up with a reason why that should make my powers change. I am sure I don't need to, because my toon is a magician, and can simply change the spells he commonly uses.

Having to justify every in-game event IC is going to stretch credibility, a lot, and I really doubt you do it all the time too.

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angsty once the surface of her personality is broken

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Cool. I think there are a lot less angsty villains about than heroes. People seemed to like the idea of CoV because they get to play evil characters, so the 'tragic villain who really doesn't want to be evil' has given way to the 'REVEL IN YOUR BADNESS!' school of bad guy... except in CoH where they get press-ganged into Licensed Hero duty.

Yes, and I can make silly things like that up too. That's character background colour.

(Anyway, she's less lonely now, she always has two friends.)

What I don't need to do is try to justify spending an hour defending the Terra Volta reactor to gain "a respec". Particularly when I'm a magic origin. I don't really want to spend time running around collecting pointless components for some nerd to give me a Dr Vazilok reject body part and tell me I can now glow. I don't need Serge to tell me I can now buy a second costume.

Roleplay missions are fun, but I think they get taken to extreme. Example: Full team wipe, we spend the next 30 minutes trying desperate ways of getting out of a CoT prison block. Question once we finally get out: "What do we say happened?" Now, since my character wasn't there IC and he was the one with SS, Hyperphase and Recall Friend who actually pulled them to safety, I'd have said "let's just forget it happened." I did say that, IIRC. But no... Hey ho, I didn't have to put up with the IC consequences.

I'm with Augury on that one.

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Er is a she btw, both IC and OOC

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Thank you. As Zortel pointed out, the avatar is a giveaway, but I wasn't sure and wasn't going to pick.

lol.

Hum. Clasically, the people who actually make the change are 'immune' to the effects (in fiction). Physics would probably not give the option.

However, in reality, some of the more drastic effects we see in fiction are also pretty implausible. Take the recent time travel disaster movie (bsed on a book) where someone treads on a butterfly in the Jurassik period and when they get back, the world is overrun with dinosaurs. In practice, the events leading to the demise of the dinosaurs would have happened anyway; a butterfly can't stop climate change, massive volcanic activity and incoming meteorites.

Less massive, go back and kill Hitler to stop the second world war. Probably wouldn't work since Hitler wasn't exactly responsible for WW2, someone else would have set it in motion instead.

However, the real issue is that it wouldn't be that tough to change something that would stop time travel being invented... so how did you get there?

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but accually afecting change ? no, because if you change something you would never have gone back to change it in the first place

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Pah! Total tripe. There's ways around that one.

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really ?

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Well, there is in comic-book reality. Possibly in real reality, but it tends to rely on certain people. I worked out a system for a character I created, started playing with and dumped. Within the "GG Universe" there's ways to solve it.

Influence/Infamy and now Prestige are painful concepts. Everyone equtes them with money, which they aren't supposed to be. Unfortunately, even Cryptic get it wrong and use Inf in a way that makes it represent cash.

Part of the problem is that Cryptic don't get the stuff right half the time. One example is the two different Warwolf origin stories.

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in practice though time travel is impossable with out applying a superspace branching theory.

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Ignore that bit... just bibbling...

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In that you are really jsut shifting to a diffrent verion of super space, rather than ever changing anything as all possabiltys happen anyway,

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hmmm... pretty enormous assumption there.

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the reson to do thing is to try to propagate that out come across as meny verions as possable. and for every shift you make, you will shift other people too, it's impossable not to.

but accually afecting change ? no, because if you change something you would never have gone back to change it in the first place,

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Pah! Total tripe. There's ways around that one.

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unless some how you exist extraious to the universe, at which point why would you care about what happens in that universe ?

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Dumb question.

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the time line is involate, it can't but changed, you can only change the path you follow through it. so i try to leave time travel alone, it way to messy and complcated.

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Clearly hasn't got a damn clue what he's going on about. Nothing to worry about then... Now, where did I leave the TARDIS?

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time travel. It's not actually possible, anyway,

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It probably is, actually. Perhaps only for photons, perhaps requiring a power source to vast to ever build, yadda, but there's nothing in physics says you can't have time travel.

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you can say against Statesman

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Statesman isn't even close to Superman's level of power. Superman is almost every non-magical hero in the DC universe rolled up and squshed together. Statesman is a rather overblown Inv/SS Tank.