jwbullfrog

I'll put a vote in for /rad as a good pairing.

For me, the debuff capabilities of /rad match up well with the disintegrate effect. A little farther down the chain /rad also has a targeted AoE slow effect which can be used to give you more time to let beam rifle do its work.

I'll agree that the passives (FF, Sonic) are also good choices depending on your playstyle.

My highest lv stalker (38) did quite well without placate for a long time. Even now that I have it, the fear effect from AS means that I don't have to use it that offen.

If I can't have all of the above, I'll vote B. It just screams...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEXvs...eature=related

Can't beat the classics.

I'll vote for simplicity on this one. C please

not sure we need this as an AT but, as a costume idea, I'm all for a hoodie

I don't think of it as deletion, I see it as digital reincarnation.


Actually, I'm pretty brutal with characters. Due to one reason or another, quite a few of them never reach 20. But parts of them live on. A costume design here, a name there, a concept over there, and, of course, any and all objects of value they might have aquired.

Once they get past that point, chances are they will stay put. They might sit idle for long periods of time but they have job security.

The most inviolate of all are my lv 50's. These are the ones that have proven to have the strongest character concepts, or are continually fun to play. They tend to become the focal point of the server they're on and the repository of 'stuff that nobody else needs right now'.

So, deleting a 50? Not sure I see that happening here any time soon.

I'll throw in a vote for the B option. It has that nice pulp comic feel to it.

The skies over Mercy Island were gray and cloudy as Captain Kane stepped out on to the main landing deck sixteen minutes later. It wasn't raining yet but, judging by the feel of the wind off of the ocean, she knew that it would be before too long.

The main deck was, basically, the roof of Fort Darwin. Arachnos had chosen the simplest design possible for the Fort and, instead of building a dedicated landing facility, they just reinforced the roof and added landing lights. For years the this had been the main arrival and recruitment point for hundreds of Paragon City's criminals. Now it served as Longbow's only uncontested access point on Mercy Island.

The Media and Longbow's P.R. division had trumpeted the capture of the base as a great triumph against the forces of evil. From Captain Kane's point of view it was a pointless waste of time, resources, and personnel. Longbow already had a perfectly functional, strategically located, and far less politically troublesome, base at Agincourt in the Nerva Archipelago. Mercy Island, she felt, was a lost cause and had been for years.

"Ten Hut! Officer on Deck!"

Rebecca Woodley had long ago perfected the parade ground voice that was required of all Sergeants. At her command, fourteen pairs of boots snapped to attention and fourteen pairs of eyes looked straight ahead. Captain Kane had to keep from smiling since she knew that Becky had stolen it almost tone for tone from old John Wayne films.

Longbow field teams operated much like military special forces so, instead of having hundreds of soldiers under her command like she would have in a Army rifle company, Captain Susan Kane had direct control of two, seven man rifle teams. That was fine with her. She knew she could get better results with her Fourteen than other commanders (i.e. most of the command staff of Fort Darwin) could with ten times that many.

"At ease," she said as she strode the final few steps across the deck to her unit. "Attention to orders. Our mission is the pursuit and apprehension of persons unknown who infiltrated this facility and used one of the teleporters to travel to an unspecified location in the area of..."

"We know exactly where they've gone, Captain," interrupted Captain Montcalm as he walked across the deck to stand directly behind Captain Kane. "If you'd watched the video, like you claimed you had, you'd know that one of the criminals said they were going to some place called 'Diagon alley."

Susan Kane did not move. "Master Sergeant," she said calmly. "Was such a place mentioned in the recording?"

"Yes, Ma'am"

"And, are you familiar with this location?"

"Yes, Ma'am"

"And, where would this place be?" Susan Kane asked. Although Montcalm could not see it, her eyes were tightly shut. Not because she had been caught in a lie, but if she made eye contact with any of her squad at this point, they would all start laughing. They all knew that Becky Woodley had a Ravenclaw scarf in her footlocker.

"Just outside London, Ma'am"

"London?" Montcalm said. "That's impossible.Teleporters can't reach that far."

"That is correct Captain," said Captain Kane. "That is one of two reasons we chose to ignore that particular bit of information."

"And the other one?"

"Sergeant, please elaborate for the Captain." Susan Kane was an extremely patient woman but she was setting close to the point where she was going to either to start hitting him or laughing at him. She wasn't sure which.

Master Sergeant Woodley drew herself up to full parade rest before answering. "Sir, Diagon Alley is a location created by noted author Joanne Rowling in her book "Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone. In her fictional world, it can be reached magically through an alleyway in London. It was here that Harry Potter first learns..."

"Thank you Sergeant, that's quite enough." Susan Kane did not have to see Montcalm's face to know that he was furious. She could feel the heat radiating off of him through the back of her skull. Before he could explode, she opened her eyes and turned to face him.

"Given that the video clearly shows the suspect was smiling when he said that, I believe he was making a joke, Oswald," she said trying to defuse his temper. "One of the first things we did during our investigation was run a trace on transporter activity. We did learn where they went but we deemed it unwise to follow them directly."

"Why? Trying to get out of doing your duty?"

Susan Kane once again reminded herself that, as satisfying as it would be, throwing an idiot like Oswald Montcalm off the deck into the ocean would not make her life easier. She was pretty certain that she would have fourteen witnesses who would swear that he slipped on a stray patch of motor oil and fell over the side in a very tragic accident. She might have risked it, if it weren't for the paperwork it would create.

"Because the the Mechanized Omni-band Unmanned Scout we sent through to take a look gave us three seconds of video before being shot to pieces by what appeared to be an Arachnos Crab spider. We did get reliable GPS coordinates on where that Crab Spider was standing at the time, though.

Only a desperate fool or a madman makes a blind teleport jump," Captain Kane stared directly into his eyes before continuing, "And only an idiot does so when he knows that it's suicide. I have better uses for my people than that."

Any reply Montcalm might have made was lost in the sound of two massive rotors roaring to life. Longbow's preferred mid range troop transport was a modified Boeing CH-47. Captain Kane had already received permission to use one to move her team. At her gesture, her Sergeants started moving the team through the open loading doors at the back.

After holding his gaze for a few more moments, Susan Kane turned her back once again on her fellow officer and walked away without another word. Oswald Montcalm would surely be making a list of petty things he could do to her in revenge, but she couldn't worry about that now. She had a job to do.

Her people were already strapped in and ready to fly as she reached the top of the ramp. Even before her feet cleared the ramp, the Loadmaster started closing things up for the trip.

"Everything OK?" the Captain asked Sergeant Woodley as she settled into her own seat near the flight deck.

"Yes, ma'am. All our gear is stowed and ready. The special equipment you requested will be waiting on site. The flight crew have the coordinates and clearance from ground control. All we need is your word to go."

Susan Kane sighed quietly in relief. "Ok, lets get this started." She reached up to activate the microphone at the throat of her suit.

"Strike to flight," she said connecting to the pilots ahead of her, "Take us to Galaxy City."

You had some very good and useful suggestions there. I'm just presenting an alternative for those folks who just cannot justify incarnate powers in their character concept.

I can honestly say that I've met very few people who's character idea is so rigid that they cannot, under any circumstances, take incarnate powers. Most people are players before they are role players and they want to play with the shiney toys up there at 50+.

So, lets open this up a bit, forum readers. Like the man said at the beginning, how do you work near godlike abilities into your character concept? Do you just ignore it and play on? Do you work it into your story some how? Do you have a specific plan?

As I mentioned in one of my bits of fiction recently...

"They may be Super, but they're still human."

In a comics based world, all of that contrast is normal.

For a person living in that world you just accept that there are mundane and explainable things like helicopters and cars, and nuclear weapons, and toasters, while at the same time you accept that there are people walking around with quark beams, and zero point generators, and all sorts of exotic weirdness. It just comes with the territory.

What a lovely, lovely idea. I fully endorse this.


Then again, I'm one of those odd players who keep whatever recipes or salvage I can use and sell the rest.

What this sounds like to me is that anything could be a potential big moneymaker depending upon when I sell it, simply because someone else would like to gamble with it for an even bigger possible profit.

You know, that doesn't sound bad to me.

There is another perfectly logical way of dealing with this problem....


Don't take incarnate powers.

Yes, I know that in the eyes of some I have just uttered blasphemy, but think about it. Your character concept has them as a mere mortal. A well trained, equipped, whatever mortal but still only human. If you feel that dealing with the Well of the Furies (i.e. incarnate powers) would violate that concept, well, as we said in the 80's, JUST SAY NO.

This won't work for everyone, particularly those who enjoy the incarnate content, but it is an option.

Besides, in comics, Nuclear weapons are just too ... ordinary. Sure they're devestating but really, do you think Lord Recluse would rely on something as pedestrian as a nuclear weapon??

YAWN

In addition to the aforementioned lethal subordinates he has...

Legions of beautiful women who are all trained assassins and/or psychics

Tarantulas (creepy psychic spider women)

Floaty, lightning throwing Mystics

Crab spiders (don't know about you but they intimidate the heck out of me)

A mad scientist who has figured out how to power an island with a captive demon (and made liver flavored algae paste, yum)

Yeah, a man with all of these toys would nuke you only if he really didn't care.

"Oh, it's you. I don't have time for you.... BOOM"

I would hope that, if they are doing well, that they would be putting some of their money into the hardware. You know, updating the actual technology behind the game.

I'm hoping they're improving the servers they use, the cables connecting things, faster processors, all of the things that even make the game possible. That way, the game will be running at its best no matter what content they bring out for us.

I think, as a counter argument, you just proved the point.

I must admit that, colorwise, it's pretty interesting. Now find a way to add eggs and pancakes to that bouquet, and then we're talking.

I've got it, I know just how to fix this.


Hm, I suppose that Manticore could cut a deal with the devil to bring Statesman back to life, the only cost being that Sister P would never remember that she married him or his secret identity......


Wait a minute....


I've seen this plot before....



/toggleoff snarkmode

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