Titan Network
Community => City of Heroes => Topic started by: Ankhammon on January 04, 2015, 04:34:39 AM
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For every Thor, there is a Moon Knight, for every Superman there is a Batman, for every Hulk there is a Daredevil.
Throughout the comics there have always been "greater" and "lesser" heroes. Lesser heroes were those whose ability was not earth shattering, but still they found a way to get the job done. Heroes whose bread and butter was not found fighting Darkseid but in battling for the soul of the city against Kingpin or fighting for the average person in the neighborhood against a group of thugs.
It seemed to me that most everyone playing CoX was interested in making their hero/villain into as much of a "greater" hero as they could. I know I tried with most of mine.
In your time in CoX, did you ever set out to create a lesser hero (or villain)? What was he/she like? What powersets did you choose? What made him a lesser hero?
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One of my favorite characters was my Ice/Ice/Ice Blaster. Her story was that she lived in a crummy neighborhood and was perpetually sick. Because of this as she got older she was offered to take part in some testing to discover what was wrong with her and drug trials to see if anything could cure her. She decided to do it to help pay for college. Through a combination of experimental treatments and an industrial accident she was cursed with being constantly sickly, but gifted with being able to inflict her 'cold' on the world around her. She worked for whatever agency put her skills to good use and had the best health coverage.
Staying with the theme, she used no melee attacks but was still one of my most capable characters. I played her more like a Dominator before Dominators even existed. She had SJ as a travel power with the explanation that she'd sneeze and launch herself through the air. She seemed oblivious to the actual temperature but was always cold so she wore a lot of coats and scarves. Her super hero outfit was actually more like an insulated armored hazmat suit.
My wife said she was like a klutzy Spleen who sneezed and coughed on people instead of farting. As silly as she sounds, it was a serious character and a lot of fun.
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I made one once called "Door Sit Lad" but never got invited much to teams or TF's.
But I did have a few I played just for fun - I didn't care about getting to 50 or grinding XP with.
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Naughty Farm Girl
She grew up on a farm just outside Enterprise, Kansas (Population 855). Now at the mature age of 18 she ventured off to Paragon City to put that country life behind her. When she got to Paragon...she realized the only people that would hire her were "Gentleman Club's." She figured if her only choice was to sell her body she would do it on her terms...doing what she knew best...farming. So she threw on a pair of Daisy Duke shorts and her cherry red bikini top...and she farmed...with 7 men staring at her the entire time. Being the smartest girl in her Algebra class in High School...she knew she could charge these guys 1/4 of what she would make from a lap dance and still make almost double!!!!
So she farmed...and farmed...and farmed...and... well she farmed a lot. After farming for around 5 years she retired by going off to New York City to pursue her other dream...as an actress....
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i had Healing Anchor (or something very similar to that, it's been a while) on Freedom as a lesser hero. Powersets of Empathy/Doesn't Matter, was being built as the stereotypical h34lz0rz who skips buffs as long as possible and takes the Medicine pool. (You can tell a true healer because they have two rez powers to reduce waiting time.)
The bio: "Healing, that's all I do. On a competent team that understands how CoH works I am an anchor slowing the rest of the team down. On a team that can't go two feet without a dedicated healer I supply the anchor that holds the team together. If you want healing I've got it." Search message was something like "dedicated heals".
Sadly i couldn't live down to the expectations set by the concept all of the time and had a second build that focused on being a well-rounded support build for teaming with people i knew.
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Hmmm......my character was a super healer. I crafted whatever gave me more healing skills than all others.
She had an Bow but was like a kid shooting nerf arrows :-X Absolutely no value as damage and very squishy.
had to stay in the back.
But Venus was fun; felt like the designated driver on teams...always was invited on TF's after developing a reputation.
So I am not sure what category this is....guess super and side kick-ish. :o
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I had a few...
Magic Gus
Doctor OCD
Chuckles the Barbarian
and
Abe Vigoda
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I made a villain named "Thinks He's a Hero". Smiling face, traditional hero outfit. He'd rob banks under the impression he was doing it for the good of all mankind. Uber fun to roleplay.
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I made a villain named "Thinks He's a Hero". Smiling face, traditional hero outfit. He'd rob banks under the impression he was doing it for the good of all mankind. Uber fun to roleplay.
Loving it.
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I had a few.
Broadsword/Ninjitsu Stalker, blue side. He had the power to sense minor magical objects and attune them for his use. He would wear them as his costume so he was a mish mash costume disaster.
Kinetics/Radiation defender, blue side. She was satisfied being a team player and side kick. She enjoyed weakening the bad guys so the rest of the team looked better and more powerful.
Spines/Elec Armor scrapper, blue side. He used a suit that gave him non-lethal weaponry, ie tasers and tranquilizer injections.
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I fear you may have already given away your name in the OP
but to answer your question, I have never set out to make a "street level" toon all of mine were extremely super human and some intruded upon the domain of gods(of destruction)
I haven't given away the name, but someone got veeeery close in the funny names thread.
as far as your extremely super humans, that's kind of how I saw that the game evolved. Almost any character could be made to such heights that I think you had to go out of your way to create one that wasn't a near immortal greek god kind.
Most of mine were that way.
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Broadsword/Ninjitsu Stalker, blue side. He had the power to sense minor magical objects and attune them for his use. He would wear them as his costume so he was a mish mash costume disaster.
Love that you had a rationale for a costume disaster... just awesome. :)
Reminds me that I never did come up with a powerset for my backwoods moonshiner zombie who was riddled with cockroaches. It screamed for something like necro/dark or something like that, but I really wanted to go the other way. Like maybe street justice/Energy Aura simply because it would look hilarious.
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I had a few.
Broadsword/Ninjitsu Stalker, blue side. He had the power to sense minor magical objects and attune them for his use. He would wear them as his costume so he was a mish mash costume disaster.
You want to see a costume disaster, I had a toon called Captain Colorblind. He *thought* he was wearing all black... But, I believe I used nearly every color in the chart somewhere in his costume.
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I think the Hero I made that best fits this category would be Roses' Mom. She was a Kin/Psi Defender that Usually was the chaperone to Wild Rose (inv/Eng Tank) and Red Rose (Eng/Eng Blaster). Two young cheerleaders that like to lay the smack down on criminals with their Pom Pom's o' Doooooom.
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You want to see a costume disaster, I had a toon called Captain Colorblind. He *thought* he was wearing all black... But, I believe I used nearly every color in the chart somewhere in his costume.
I remember that guy. I used to see him around a lot.
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You want to see a costume disaster, I had a toon called Captain Colorblind. He *thought* he was wearing all black... But, I believe I used nearly every color in the chart somewhere in his costume.
I once saw an NPC passer-by say, "Nice threads, Captain Colorblind!" I thought it was a generic insult, like "Smart move, Einstein!" I hadn't known, at the time, that there was a player-character by that name.
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I once tried to make a "regular Joe', who had no powers, but had simply taken to the streets to fight crime. I forget exactly what other abilities I gave him, but I know that I had used the Fighting power pool. The result tended to be kind of like an office desk jockey going up against professionally-trained fighters, even in the Skulls and Hellions. As I recall, I gave up on him when I ran out of "ordinary abilities" to give him, instead of powers outside of human capability.
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I once tried to make a "regular Joe', who had no powers, but had simply taken to the streets to fight crime. I forget exactly what other abilities I gave him, but I know that I had used the Fighting power pool. The result tended to be kind of like an office desk jockey going up against professionally-trained fighters, even in the Skulls and Hellions. As I recall, I gave up on him when I ran out of "ordinary abilities" to give him, instead of powers outside of human capability.
So I take it you were never in the petless MM crowd. :)
I actually knew someone who level up a thugs petless MM to 50. All I could ever say was ouch.
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I think that hero type is a lot more common than people think and there are actually loads of lessar heroes in mainstream comics; Batman, Green Arrow, Hawkeye Blackwidow just to name a few.
I'll admit most of my masterminds tended to be lesser villains with very few actually possessing powers. Only exception being Doctor Ordo (Tech genius in a mech suit) and The Zombie Zoologist (who's name should be pretty self explanatory. :P)
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I had a character, Blue Cloak that was basically a non-powered Archer team in one slot. (I would switch costumes that were completely different people depending on where I was. AP and KR was one person SC and SKY was another) Their whole gimmick was they would take the missions that other so called "super" heroes would pass up. Which made the new AP storyline funny as hell to me when he was ranting at you for not paying attention to the lesser crimes.
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I stopped reading when you called Batman a Lesser Hero..
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I stopped reading when you called Batman a Lesser Hero..
LOL! I did forget the time that Batman threw a submarine at Joker. :)
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I think that hero type is a lot more common than people think and there are actually loads of lessar heroes in mainstream comics; Batman, Green Arrow, Hawkeye Blackwidow just to name a few.
I'll admit most of my masterminds tended to be lesser villains with very few actually possessing powers. Only exception being Doctor Ordo (Tech genius in a mech suit) and The Zombie Zoologist (who's name should be pretty self explanatory. :P)
As I understood it, the term "superhero" would apply to those with powers outside human capability (mutants, aliens, science experiments gone awry, etc.), and heroes such as those that you mentioned would be called "costumed crimefighters", who are simply highly-trained humans (physically and mentally) aided by gadgets. I certainly wouldn't count them as "lesser" heroes, just because they don't have powers.
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As I understood it, the term "superhero" would apply to those with powers outside human capability (mutants, aliens, science experiments gone awry, etc.), and heroes such as those that you mentioned would be called "costumed crimefighters", who are simply highly-trained humans (physically and mentally) aided by gadgets. I certainly wouldn't count them as "lesser" heroes, just because they don't have powers.
My terming them "lesser" was simply an oppositional term to "greater". It really had nothing to do with powers. For instance, Ironman is a "greater" hero even without any powers.
To me, a "lesser" hero is one whose focus would tend to be more naturally non world shakers. That's why Batman (historically) is considered lesser even against the outcry of Heatstroke. :)
Even though Joker, Penguin, Riddler could all have nukes hiding around every corner of the US, they don't and so they don't get on the list of "greater" villains either.
Speaking of which, the guy playing Cobblepot in Gotham is just doing an awesome job. He could be a little more sharp (not caught off guard as often), but otherwise A+.
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I think that hero type is a lot more common than people think and there are actually loads of lessar heroes in mainstream comics; Batman, Green Arrow, Hawkeye Blackwidow just to name a few.
I'll admit most of my masterminds tended to be lesser villains with very few actually possessing powers. Only exception being Doctor Ordo (Tech genius in a mech suit) and The Zombie Zoologist (who's name should be pretty self explanatory. :P)
Of course, just having no powers doesn't necessarily make for a "lesser" character - see Lex Luthor and Dr. Sivana, the latter of whom inspired my first MM, Bots/Storm. He was certainly larger-than-life with universe-conquering goals (and, thanks to Incarnate powers, well on his way to realizing them) despite having no powers of his own.
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Going the comic book character route can get you pretty close to achieving a Lesser Hero goal.
I had an Olive Oyle knockoff for a while, with WP/Super Strength...Jab, Punch, Sands of Mu, KO blow. Took only the regeneration powers from WP. Jump into a mob, trigger a key bind saying "How DARE you strike a LADY!" then KO blow, and while the thug is flying through the air key the second key bind saying "You BRUTE!" She was a blast to play.
Then there was my Daffy Duck clone of "The MASKED EVENGER!" Complete with yellow mask, hat, chaps and a cobbled together duck bill. Oh, and a pair of 45's.
And, finally, Pop I. Man, did he ever look like the genuine article....
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So I take it you were never in the petless MM crowd. :)
I actually knew someone who level up a thugs petless MM to 50. All I could ever say was ouch.
I had one of those, Michael Thugless.
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yezz....I remember teaming with a toon, Foghorn Leghorn.
It was difficult to heal people when he battled, Human tush on a white Rooster,
....I kept laughing so hard.....couldn't help it. ;D