City of Heroes – My Cast

So what’s a game of City of Heroes if you can’t show off your characters? I tend to rotate through these guys, which keeps me from getting any one person up to a higher level very quickly, but also keeps things more varied for me. I’ll usually play one through a mission or up to a level before going on to the next.

All these folks, by and by, are on the Champion server, if you’re looking for them.

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At the top of the list is Velvet Jones (science-based tanker – invulnerability, super-strength, jumping). She’s my highest character at the moment, 10th level (huzzah), and in a lot of ways my favorite, as she can just run in there and start whomping on the baddies. No muss, no fuss, and everyone loves a tanker (a nigh-invulnerable whomping machine) in the group.
She’s originally based, game-wise, on an NPC in my original Justice Squad game (who eventually became a PC played by Tracy), a bad girl who let herself get boosted up by Dr. Dread, but later turned on him and, kinda-sorta, fights for the good guys now. Visually, she’s inspired by one of the Steve Jackson “Cardboard Heroes: Modern” chars.
Doyce’s comment is that she has the advantage of being highly visible to healers during battle.
I have a starter-variation on her, Velvetty, over on Pinnacle server, just in case Champion goes down.

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Next on the list is Selene, the white tiger woman from the novel that no, I haven’t finished it yet, dammit I’m working on. She’s a magic-based scrapper (claws, regeneration), at 7th level. She’s the one Lee recognized (appropriately enough), and one that Doyce had dummied up a copy of early on in a way that made me seriously jones to play CoH, and, thus, her.
She’s missing her tail, annoyingly enough (it’s one of the “pants” options, and I didn’t even think of it until I’d already invested enough time in her levels to to make me unwilling to recreate her). She’s been a problematic character, more vulnerable and less effective in combat than I think she should be — I need to do some further work on her tactics, get her in some teams, etc.
Those few who’ve read the story will hopefully find the screencap as eerily appropriate as I did when I ran across it.

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Snipehunter is up at 8th level (mutant-based blaster, energy blast, energy manipulation, flight), and another character I’m struggling a little with. So far, Snipehunter holds my personal records for being knocked out of battle and going into debt. Blasters are a lot of fun, zapping from afar (and now he has Sniping, which was the original idea), but they’re fragile as hell after a point unless backed up by an appropriate team.
I have done some team runs with him, which went fine until the team got run off to “find someone who can get us more xp” and instead got us into the hospital. I need to do some more that are a bit more successful …
I like the costume (though I’d tweak a couple of the patterns a slight bit if I had the chance). I can’t wait until he can fly at a more decent clip, since hover is a real time sink to use effectively.

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Torchielle was the first of my next wave of characters, after I’d been playing the first three up five or six levels.
She’s similar to Snipehunter (mutant-based blaster, fire blast, energy manip), but I’m having more fun with her. For one thing, I like fire blast better than energy blast (just for the effects, if nothing else). Second, I really like her visual appearance — the leather gloves and boots, the suede-like tunic and tucked pants. And the red hair, of course. She looks like someone who works around fire. I think my initial visual inspiration was Tess Turbine, a visiting character in a Powerpuff Girls comic I read to Kitten that evening, but the powers and colors are fairly different. At any rate, she’s one of the least garish characters you’ll see running around Paragon City (some of whose denizens make Velvet look dull and muted).
Backstory (for what it’s worth) has her the child of two of the previous generation of supers, their “logos” incorporated into her own.
She’s up to 5th level now, and I’m looking forward to playing with her more.

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Blue.Shield was an interesting experiment. You can create male characters, female characters, or “huge” characters (who, lacking breasts, are basically male). Selene should have been (as I envision her) a huge character, not as svelte as she is, but that wasn’t an option. Blue.Shield, a crippled cop in a cybersuit, is my one huge whomper. I was going to do a scrapper, but ended up with a tanker (because having someone that big and armored who can’t take punishment just doesn’t make sense), so he’s a tech-based tanker (invulnerability, battle axe), 5th level.
Basically, he goes around and hits stuff. Hard. I think he’s visually really, really fun. The only thing that doesn’t quite work is the axe, which I picked up based on a guide recommendation for something that did faboo damage; someone like him should have a club or just hit with his fists. Ah, well.
Biggest problem I have with him, though, is his size. It’s hard to see past him to the villains — especially when they’re tiny folk like the Clockworks. I keep having to adjust the camera angle up and down over him. For all that, he’s pretty darned impressive, and fun. Seeing him pound his way through the streets or jumping off bridges should give him some sort of “aw, crap!” advantage over the bad guys.

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For some reason, I don’t have a screen shot of Ground-Pounder. He’s a magic-based scrapper of some sort, simple green t-shirt and jeans. He’s Marine who got a blessing from his Irish grandma before going off to WWII, leaving him a hella bruiser and much longer-lived that he ought to be.
He’s turned out, though, to be a lot less differentiated from the others than he ought to be, a lot less interesting to play, and at the top of the list of characters I’m likely to drop (reflected in his only being 3rd level).

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Last on the list is Psi-clone, who’s my first mentalist-type of character (mutation-based controller, illusions/empathy). He’s up around 4th level now, and a lot of fun, since he basically tricks the villains (so far) into fighting each other, or else standing still while he sics damage-causing illusions on them. It’s slow, but it’s effective, and oh-so-fiendish. Eventually, with his healing powers and the like, he should be good for some team-ups.
I don’t know what inspired me visually here. Kinda goofy-looking, if you ask me. Though he does blend in with a crowd on the streets of Paragon City (which, I think, sometimes leads other heroes to poach on my targets). He’s not my favorite character so far, but I have a warm spot for him nonetheless.