Category: Character Design

And a Million Zillion Sonics, too. All of whom are named things that include the word “Sonic,” “Shriek,” “Noise,” “Scream,” etc. Or for the former, things that include the word “Bow,” “Arrow,” “Shaft,” etc. Or, of course, misspelled/cleverly-spelled versions thereof.
Or there’s always my own contribution (on Triumph), Big Lungs. Guess what type of blaster she is …

Or at least that’s what Avo said when he notice me with yet another new alt.
In this case, both Margie and I have them. New alts on Champion.
On the left is Margie’s, a creature named Araware, a “dust spirit” of some sort (she can provide more detail) who happens to be a Spines/DA Scrapper.
On the right is mine (and the trigger for this change), Fazenda. A stage magician, who actually performs her tricks (and protects the city) with impossibly high-tech gadgets. (Insert mysterious backstory here.) As a hero, she’s an Empathy/Energy Defender.
Fazenda existed as one of my “pilot” characters over on Triumph for a few months before I got a sudden yen for an Empathy Defender. (It’s been a common secondary for my Controllers, and it’s my second production Defender, after Truly Unstable. Well, there’s another, but she’s not in public as yet.)
Since we don’t have server transfer, that meant a couple of characters had to be retired. For me, the answer, sadly, was Sister Chinook — fun backstory on her, and I liked her outfit, but the Ice Controller thing just never quite solidified for me (so to speak), nor did I ever find a compelling voice for her. It’s a shame to have one of Puck Bunny’s countrymen leave, but that’s how it goes.
Margie decided to drop SC’s cohort, Toxic Sister, since she was looking to do another spine scrapper anyway.
Easy come, easy go (of 9 and 10 levels of character), I guess.

In an odd mood last night, so we played Velvet and P-siren. And, y’know what? They kicked ass. Still feel ponderously slow, but, damn, some big damage numbers rolling up the screen, and not a lot of damage in return. Granted, we were clearing some old mishes, but even the new stuff worked out pretty nicely.
Makes me want to continue working with them.
Meanwhile, the CC was filled with the Big MH Turn to Evil Smackdown. Which was occasionally entertaining to listen in on, but which pretty much monopolized the channel for a couple of hours at least, which was probably *not* a good thing.
Had fun anyway.

Got Psi-clone up to 32 (for real, this time), munching through Devouring Earth and Council sorts. Yay!
So now I get my Ultimate Power! My Pet! My … Phantasm!
Who is …
… well, imagine the most inept and annoying energy blaster you’ve ever had on a team. Not a clever, helpful, and suggestable one like Avocet, but a really annoying one who attacks before the team is ready, knocks-back the mobs you’ve carefully clustered, and then shunts off the aggro onto you.
Hrm.
Actually, the Phantasm is too bad. He does pack a whallop, he’s good when the balloon goes up, and he does add to our general firepower. He’s also good at tackling the little “debris” monsters, like Rubble. I just wish he understood some basic commands, like, “Heel!” and “Down!” and “Play Dead!” Like a dog.
Hmmm. I’ll have to give him a name.

Mr & Mrs Azure dinged 12 tonight (after starting off a pip above 11). Yay. We’re both on the Leaping track, but at the last second I decided rather than take Combat Jump (as the Missus did), I went for Jump Kick — which as one of the more annoying animations in the world, but will be something better for my combat chain than Brawl (it does comparable damage, out of the box, to some of my other kicks).
We’re running at Rugged right now, and still managed to make our way through two Marrowsnap iterations full of numerous orange patrols and the Purple boss himself without any deaths or real problems. Well, except for the orange patrol ambush in the lobby the first time we went in.
We continue to enjoy the characters, both for their gameplay and for the RP we can do, tossing out odd questions, malapropisms, and enthusiastic greetings.

Lynn Calodo dinged to 11, and got invited into the Allies. Now, at least, I can hear the chatter, even if Lynn’s not the type to actively go out and seek same. Have to find a way around that.
More importantly, Amorpha and Psi-clone both dinged 30, which feels like a huge milestone (though 32 will be bigger). Did a lot of SKing to higher level folks, which helped (hopefully we each contributed to the causes as well).
For the record, Amorpha beat Psi-clone there by at least 24 hours.
Toyed with the idea of a new costume for Psi-clone, but couldn’t come up with something I liked.
Did a respec on Psi-clone, since he had two in the hopper. Dropped (pushed back to later) Rez in favor of Air Superiority, and droped Assault in favor of Tactics. Also dropped Haste (until later) in favor of Maneuvers. Did some play with that pair last night, and it seemed to work well, though Amorpha’s such a force of nature it’s hard to tell if she’s gotten even more lethal.
It’s actually an interesting evolution in PC, moving a more away from the Controller side (esp. in groups) and into more of a “Defender in Denial” — beefing up the Empathy, taking the Leadership pool, etc.
Would have been handy tackling Inferno the other night. Yikes.
As I plotted PC out toward 50, I realized that I needed to take Hasten after all — I was 6-slotting too many things for recharge. But up until now, I really haven’t made use of it.

Since Honeygun‘s disappearance, we’ve been tentatively duoing Kazima and Torchielle — to very mixed results.
The problem is, both of us are damage-dealers — scrapper and blaster — and both of us draw a lot of aggro, one-on-one. Which is great for Kazima, since she’s an Invuln Scrapper. Not so good for Torchielle, who’s a Blaster, and whose flame attacks are aggro-pulling to begin with, and often AoE. The Energy Manipulation secondary helps (as a “keep away from me!” knockback/disorient sort of thing), but not nearly enough. Plus, she was an Endurance hog.
Margie burned her free Kazima respec last night, beefing up some of the latter’s defenses, complete with plenty of bite-me auras. I re-evalled some tactics, after not having played her for a while.
We went back into a Tsoo door mish which kicked our asses last time. Mostly even-level mobs, with occasional variation +/-1. But, aside from a few major flurries, we actually did okay. Kazima did the original rushing, drew what aggro she could, played the field to catch strays; Torchy did a few pulls, focused on her single-target attacks off Kazima, saved the AoE when the baddies were fully engaged, and usually only had to deal with one mob on her at a time. Hell, I actually saw some mobs do the run-toward-me-then-go-back-to-the-glowy-scrapper deal, which was awfully nice.
Result: tentative approval of the duo. We’re going to have to be careful, and they may still be better suited for teaming up with others, but I’m pleased.
Hmmm. I have a real yen to touch bases with Kinetica to find out how she deals with being a squishy blaster.

Both P-siren and Velvet got costume changes last night. No pics thereof, for some reason, though.
Velvet went for a “classy” costume (as defined, of course, by her). I actually think it looks pretty good, a combo of stylish and some little accents that tie into her “regular” costume. I replaced the slot I’d redone for her swim suit pics, since I wasn’t ever able to get together with the swim suit issue photographer.
Yeah, I could have used that money for an SO or two. Oh, well.
P-siren went for something more casual for her second outfit.
General fun running around mish-cleaning with Avocet and Phed-X last night. Stayed up too late.

Margie and I have finally gotten around to doing a husband-and-wife team — Mr. and Mrs. Azure. He’s an MA/Reg Scrapper, she’s a Mind/FF Controller, and together THEY FIGHT CRIME.
Actually, they have a rather fun backstory, but for the moment they just appear to be super-spy agent types who engage in the sort of romantic byplay and rhetorical quipping of Nick and Nora Charles and similar husband-and-wife teams. (I actually have another pair in mind, but I don’t want to belabor the matter too much.)
(While I’m sure someone will draw a parallel to Mr. and Mrs. Smith, it’s completely coincidental. The Thunderclaps were an earlier version of this duo/concept.)
We spent a fair amount of time over the weekend running this pair, getting them up to 8. Lots of deaths — hey, I’m playing a scrapper — but so far I’m pretty pleased by how its going.
Actually, in some ways, this pair is the opposite of Psi-clone and Amorpha, power-wise at least. Mind and Illusion Controllers are pretty similar, power-wise (though having the bubbles vs empathy does make a diff), and DM and MA Scrappers have a lot of close parallels as well. A very different dynamic, personality-wise, but from gameplay I can understand what Margie’s doing, and she can follow my own issues and problems, and we both have ended up advising each other on character builds.
Next thing up for them will be getting them into the Alliance (since I think their chatter will be the most fun with them). I’d been planning on bringing them into the Consortium, just for sake of ease, but Margie was mentioning going in as Allies. Either would work; we’ll see.
And, hrm, yeah, we need to get some pics posted … (we did get some nice tells about their matching uniforms while we were running about yesterday).
More info on our weekend gameplay here
UPDATE: Hess and Citadel TF story written up here.

Okay, her origin story is so lame that even I can’t take the time to dress it up with a straight face. Something about a California vintner father, an experimental (Crey? Why not?) fermentation system that she became trapped in, strange alteration of body chemistry that gave her both powers (Science origin, don’tcha know) and required an external droid assistant to monitor and stabilize said chemistry (and to whisper sweet nihilistic nothings in this little goth’s ear). Now she’s a hero with a ‘tude off in big Paragon City, etc., etc., blah, blah, blah.
(Wanted an origin that was something other than Magic. So I took Science — could’ve done Technology — and of course immediately ended up fighting Vahzilok all the time, dammit.)
That, and all sorts of wine-related puns apply. She’s robust. She’ll knock you on your ass. She’s young and harsh, but might mellow with age. Etc.
Her intent is — aside from scrapperly fun — to have someone I can run off and solo with in any spare non-Margie-around-to-duo-with time (and then not worry that I’m getting out of level balance with her or something). Though Margie notes that scrapper-scrapper duos are also fun …
Dunno if I’ll put her in the Consortium. She is definitely not the sort that would want a team name floating over her head, let alone something pompous-sounding like “Consortium of Justice.” Miss the channel chat, though. Maybe I’ll eventually get her into the Allies.
Assuming my interest in her, vs. all my other alts, is maintained …

I’ll assume you were new at this …

1. Communication is your friend.
2. Tell people before you invite them in.
3. After people join your team, greet them.
4. Set a mission. Talk about what we’re doing. Don’t just run there.
5. See #1. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
6. Keep the team together. Stay with the team.
7. Lead from the front. No reason why you should be the last person up the elevator (by a minute), or out of the mish (as same).
8. Remember #1? Yeah, try that one again.
9. If half the team quits after the first mish, that might be a sign that something’s wrong. Or maybe it’s a coincidence. But …
10. If you run across someone who quit your team, issuing another blind invite and doing a local tell, “Follow me,” is probably not going to do the trick.
11. RETURN TO 1

This has been a public service announcement …

Katherine made up another character on Guardian (Get it? We’re her guardians, so we play with her on Guardian? It was Margie’s clever idea), Storm Ice Girl, which is not very catchy, but pretty much describes what kind of Controller she is (Ice primary, Storm secondary). She loves to blow people away with the gust of wind …
She’s not adept at the mouse yet, which I man, but she handles the nav keys and the fire keys for the powers. Oh, and she bounces a lot.
And as long as she only wants to wear that Metal Witchblade Bikini in-game, I have no problem with it.
Meanwhile, I have, as Margie gleefully puts it, caught scrapperitis, characterized by the need to build and run scrappers. To that end, I’ve sadly dropped Suzy Atom (who was really an energy tanker I was trying to run as a scrapper), and built the goth “problem child” Lynn Calodo, a Dark/Invuln scrapper with a bad attitude.
Doyce, at least, will get the joke.
Pictures to follow.
LC is intended (for a while at least) to be an afternoon “solo” character, on those occasions between my getting home/off work with Kitten and Margie getting home. I don’t really have many other good solo characters — I think Scrappers lend themselves best to that, and OFFICER is still having power problems.
And, hell, I’ve fallen in love with the Dark Scrapper powers (but intentionally avoided the Dark/Regen and Dark/Dark pairings that Margie has already “staked out”). Kittenyboo is a Dark/SR, but I don’t play her that much, for obvious reasons.
We’ll see how she does.
UPDATE: Oh, so true …

One of the biggest challenges of the multi-alt world I play in is keeping up different character voices, particularly in the comm channel chatter. (It’s important on teams, too, but since Margie and I duo so much — subject for another thread — it’s a bit less so. I’m afraid we don’t get into that much roleplay with each other …)
Anyway, what I’ve noticed:

1. Quiet, reticent, and/or brooding characters are a lot of fun to write about (and tend, amazingly enough, to be what I write), but are a lot more difficult to play. This is true in F2F RPGs, of course, but it’s even more true when most RP comes about through conversation on the comm channels. If you don’t speak, you aren’t visible; that’s probably a rule for life, too. You need to find something to talk about. Which leads us to …
2. Humor is always good for a quick tell. Which is difficult if you’re playing a quiet, reticent, and/or brooding character, as noted above. So …
3. Come up with a character voice: something to talk about, visual distinctions of voice, and a sense of humor.

So, for my characters …

• Velvet: Jokes about most stuff, distinctive accent (or spelling, at least). Always chatty, and generally friendly, if a bit touchy at times. The easiest character I have to RP on the comms.
• Psi-clone: Speaks much more formally. Dry wit, and a love of wordplay. Always willing to blather at length. Second-easiest for me to play, assisted by the fact that he’s an exagerration (I hope) of myself, so I just have to ask what I would say if I were a hero.
• Torchielle: Friendly, but I don’t have her “voice” yet. Makes references to her family a lot. A fair amount of tentative stammering (“um”) to make her comms distinct. Not sure about her sense of humor, which is a problem. Need to play her more.
• Honeygun: Strong, sarcastic sense of humor. Pretty easy to play, though she seems to have been off the comms for a while …
• Truly Unstable: Fun and easy to play — just (a) act Daffy Duck crazy, and (b) mix contemporary slang with Rennfaire-like pronouncements. Toss in the occasional dark-and-angsty lament just for spice and to throw people off. Need to do more with him …
• OFFICER: Haven’t gotten on the comms yet with him. No sense of humor, but may start developing on. Problem is, there’s any number of “I am not human, but, like Data, am trying to learn how to behave like one” folks out there on the com lines, which makes him a lot less distinct of a character. Visually, though, since half his words are in all-CAPS, it may work. We’ll see. I’m not 100% happy with the power set at the moment, so he may be dropped some time soon.
• Sister Chinook: My problems with her last night provoked this post. I don’t have a good voice for her yet. She’s cynical and a bit sarcastic, but also one of those “quiet” characters. Since she’s Canadian, I need to remember to throw in an “eh?” here and there, for visual distinction. Or, if I can, spell some of my “-or” words as “-our”. Stuff like that.
• Suzy Atom: She was easy (announcement coming). Wide-eyed, enthusiastic naif, a combo Silver Age Supergirl (cough) with season 1 Mary Richards. Openly friendly, prone to saying “gee” a lot. Never long on enough to make that much of an impression, I fear (most of my RP with her was actually at the Consortium party).

One problem I have to watch is the non-verbal stuff. While I don’t keep my cross-dressing multi-alt gameplay a secret (see Google), I also don’t broadcast it, even in OOC comms. If people think my alts are run by completely different (and infrequently present) players, I’d be delighted, though it’s not worth to me a huge amount of effort make it so. To that end, though, I have to be careful about always using the same verbal tells between characters — like, “Heh.” Or how I flag OOC material. Or, it occurs to me, always giving an /em wave when I run across people.
(I also try to usually have a gap between when my character says hello/goodbye on the coalition chat and when Margie’s does.)
Actually, how you enter/leave the comms (or great/farewell other characters) is another signature. Velvet tends towards a “Howdy”/”Hey, kids, what’s shakin?” sort. PC tends toward more formality and jovial bonhomie (“Greetings, all. How goes the war?”). Others do more curt addressing folks by names — but, again, curtness is hard to pull off since it usually goes hand in hand with, well, not talking. And when you don’t talk, you’re not visible.
Anyway, enough blather of my own here. Just stray thoughts to put down.

Decided to go with the alts last night, so we dug out Sister Chinook and Toxic Sister and put them through their Level 10 paces.
Must … get … travel … powers … sooooooon …
Actually, it was hard going at first. Deaths. Many (or more than usual, even discounting the recent grey-bop-fest) deaths. Scrapper deaths are not uncommon. Controller deaths, not so much so.
SC seems a lot squishier than PC, even though both are controllers (with Empathy) with single-target focuses. Or maybe TS isn’t quite as shock-and-awe-inspiring as Amorpha (yet). Or maybe it was just the plethora of toxic vomit.
That began to turn-around mid-evening, as SC dinged to 10, and I contemplated my new power. I’d been planning on getting Resurrection (always popular at/in parties), but I did some quick flipping through my file folder on SC and …
… hmmmm … maybe …
Oh. Yeah. Shiver. Very broad cone, decent range, minimal endurance, quick recharge, serious opponent slowing.
Suddenly, folks are running away. Or charging me. Or fleeing TS’s spines. And suddenly the fire rate of the baddies goes way down.
And it stacks. Between the slows of my other ice attacks, and TS’s toxins, those folks were hitting whatever slow cap there was.
Much, much easier time of it. Still died once (squishy, close quarters, too many obstacles blocking my LoS and powers, Shiver in particular), but more than made up for it.
We went from struggling through Kings Row-level sewer mishes to street hunting around Steel Canyon. Felt much better by the end of the evening.

Introducing the one, the only, the dire portent of Things to Come …
Kitty Shoulder!
Designed by Katherine. Named by Katherine. Bubbler/Energy Defender.
She’s the one on the left.
She likes to jump.
Too. Much. Fun.
And where would she be without her boon companion, the black cat scrapper, Kittenyboo? (She was to be Princess Kittenyboo, but that exceeded the name length restrictinons.) Katherine helped design her, too. She’s the one on the right.
Too. Much. More. Fun.
Katherine plays KS on Margie’s lap. Margie does the navagating, Katherine does the blasting. And bouncing.
On Guardian, naturally.
There’s even role-play, as Kittenyboo doesn’t like to go into water — but Katherine protests that even though Kittenyboo is a cat, she doesn’t have to be played like a cat all the time. On the other hand, Shoulder Kitty is half cat (or so we are told), and likes to swim in deep water.
And so it begins …

Only had a brief time to run with Margie tonight — between a late business dinner and Champion crashing for several minutes, not much time to do anything.
So Velvet — vying to get over 23 so that she can do the Terra Volta thang, went soloing, slowly, slowly, slowly, waiting for an invite …
… and, after about 20 minutes of nada, she got an unsolicited invite, a Coalition-based request for help, and an SG-based request for help. When it rains …
Ended up with the Coalition one, helping Vangarde (LF) and WillO’Wisp (FP). We were 23, 25, and 27, so I SKed to Will (the higher), which meant I could do the Tanky thing without too much problem. Will, as an Ice Controller, could lock down most crowds anyway, which meant that Van’s blaster fire didn’t have to hit every time.
Worked out well, if later than expected — but all three of us dinged.
So now Velvet has to figure out her level 24 power. I’d originally slotted Stamina there, since she’s now chronically running out of end (particularly if she has both Temp Invuln and Unyielding running). But Doyce asked the other evening about her having Invincibility, which was slotted for 26 — but is a kick-ass power.
Hmmmm.
I replaced one DR in each of those two toggles with a EndRedux, and that helped a bit, but not enough. Even with Will’s various kinetic hoohahs, my End was pretty dicy most of the evening.
So, short of having some great revelation about how to do it differently (I do have a respec in my pocket, after all, and plenty of infl to replace DOs), I’ll probably stick with the original plan — Stamina at 24, Invincibility at 26. But that’ll be lovely when I get it …

When I got home last night, Margie was busy running Toxic Sister, trying to get her to level to Sister Chinook so we could try that combo.
I’d reached one of those decisions I never realize I’ve reached until the cusp comes and went ahead and (sniff) deleted Selene (after passing on her worldly possessions ot Toxic Sister. She was the second character I did, but she just wasn’t working for me.
Then I rebuilt onto Champion Suzy Atom, the Inv/Energy tanker I’d played with on Infinity, and went around trying her out. I’d done some research and come up with most of the build I wanted for her, at least in the first dozen levels or so. And I had a lot of fun up through Kitten’s dinner time.
Well, Margie swung by and saw what I was doing. And when I said that Suzy would be good to duo with a squishie, if she had a character in mind, she built on to Champion Star Protector, a Dark/Storm defender. And while I was up seeing Kitten to bed, got him levelled up to Suzy. Then we spent the evening carving through Hellions like butter.
I think the team-up is going to work.


The second half of the evening was getting into some Consortium play. Suzy and Star were out levelling in front of Galaxy City HQ, when I spotted someone whose name was familiar …
Ah. That someone, Synoptic, had applied to join Consortium, with a fun backstory, and with Hyperthermian (whose player I know) vouching for her. Now I’ve been assuming that most of the applicants I get are alts, so I was kind of thinking Synoptic was an alt of Hyperthermian’s character — but, it turned out, not, as Hype’s player not only chatted with Margie while I was chatting with Synoptic, he later joined us (as did Avocet, making it quite a party).
Suzy said a few things, went inside, and Psi-clone made a hurried appearance. We RPed the interview more than I was expecting, and, in the end, enlisted Synoptic as a new member. Woo-hoo.
Still have no idea who she is, though I now know more of who she isn’t. The “faces behind the masks” aspect of CoH is always kind of interesting to me.

Rrg.
Somehwere, somehow, I got the impression that server transfer might be on the table for Issue 4 — shifting heroes between servers. But it now doesn’t look like that’s the case (or, at least, I can’t find any reference to it).
I’m sure there’s some very good reason for that, but it’s irksome. Because it means that if I want to (a) play some of the alts I’ve rolled up lately and am intrigued by, and (b) play with the friends and groups on Champion that I’m used to, I need to (c) free up some slots on Champion.
Who’s staying …

• Velvet Jones – No chance. She’s a fixture. And fun. And she just picked up a new casual outfit from Icon.
• Psi-clone – Again, definitely staying. Way too much of an investment. And I like the powers. And he’s making a name for himself.
• Torchielle – I like her. I like the power set, the look, the character. She’s staying.

Who’s (probably) staying …

• Truly Unstable – Fun. Crazy. Rad/Rad. Short and frenetic and oversexed and going insane. What’s not to enjoy?
• O F F I C E R – Also fun, and doing pretty well, even if I’m just not Scrapper material as a player.
• Sister Chinook – I got inspired as to Ice as Margie was looking at some guides, so I’m going to give SC (who I like, visually) another chance.

Who’s (probably) going …

• Honeygun – If I want a blaster, I’ll go with Torchielle. I’ve decided that AR/Dev is just too annoying as a power set.
• Selene – Trying a respec on her, but it might be easier just to do something different altogether. If I want a scrapper, I have OFFICER.

Who’s (probably) coming …

• Molly Magpie – Grav/Bubble. She’s fun, she’s sweet, she’s enjoyable to play, I like her visually ..
• Taste of Honey – Honeygun’s “replacement.” She went down into the caverns … and came back … changed …
• Suzy Atom – The power-packed mighty maid of, um, mighty power. Perky. Inv/Energy Tank.

Those are the three alts I generated that I’ve been thinking of the most, which makes them most likely to come on board. Though, as you can see, I have three of them, and only two “sure” slots to replace. Yes, that is a problem.
And this doesn’t even count the “Mr. & Mrs. Thunderclap” pair that Margie and I want to play, or the Princess Kittenyboo I have in mind.
And that doesn’t mention the question of how to find time to do all of these concepts justice …
I’m sure I’ll think of something.

With word that all characters would be getting First Anniversary Free Respecs today, Margie and I spent last evening cranking out a truck-load of alts (which seems a bit ironic to do — creating new characters with an eye toward respecs — but, what the heck).
Lots of fun, and I didn’t take nearly the number of pictures I should have. Such may-someday-be-greats like Yore (the Lost Viking), Captain Antares (“To the future!”), Warbolt (“Zap evil!”), Stormdark (“Using the Dark Arts in the service of the Light since 1873”), Suzy Atom (all primary colors, all the time), and, last but not least, Scritchy-scratch (the inevitable cat girl).
That’s not all of them. And that’s not counting the alts that Margie was working on, many of which are fun, too.
I ended up filling up my remaining slots on Triumph (where other characters are already waiting in the wings) and spilling over onto Infinity. And, just to be fair, I ran all of them through Outbreak (and, in a couple of cases, beyond).
The problem is, of course, I want to play with them all. Most of them have some fun backstories. And I still have a number of vibrant and enjoyable alts already as my mains.
Ah, well. Someday …