Vorlonagent

"he's dead, Jim."

BIG IF: If magic works in Magus' world the way Magic works in EGS, at least as far as magus getting spells appropriate to who he is, maybe most of his magic is melee combat spells similar to ASMA moves but without shouting the attack names. Or maybe he's really enjoying having a body again so he's simply favoring physical stuff just for the feel of it. A query to Dan might be appropriate....After all Elliot has this shiny new spell in his book and I keep expecting it to be important at some point...

This one, actually. My complaint is that Elliot has only been put in unwinnable situations for a long time now. Voltaire isn't trying to kill him and he's still completely overpowered and marginalized. Maybe a better way of putting it is Elliot takes a back seat even when he's center stage. Against the bulldog dragon he's just the damsel in distress. With Dame Tara, it's Ashley that gets the de-conflict ball rolling as it were. Elliot is again helpless and in need of saving. Current story, Elliot's contribution is a Cheerleadra transformation that was used to tell us how weak he was. yes confrontations in EGS are rare, which is what underlines the problem for me.Elliot doesn't get many chances to shine and each time he gets sat on by the GM to give the spotlight to someone else.

Elliot got one-shotted to show how tough the bulldog dragon was and to give Noah a good entrance . Elliot was chased around the mall to show how dangerous the griffin was and to give Ashley a moment of awesome. A few weeks back Magus catches a Cheerleadra punch without effort. None of these are bad of themselves, just as no single time Worf gets beat up (or the Enterprise-D is nearly destroyed) is itself bad. It's when the dots are connected and it's happening over and over again. This last one also sets up a universe mechanic that really bothers me: the idea that you have to be a man to really be a butt-kicker. Previous evidence suggested that magic was a great equalizer of gender differences and suddenly it isn't. I don't mind that Magus' world works this way, but the implication is that EGS-Prime's magic works this way too. Not only does that short-shrift Elliot whose abilities are dominated by female transformation, and Nanase to a lesser degree, it's also potentially sexist.

Yeah Elliot needs a little help. Dan's made the point that he's in a whole different league now. But Bulldog dragon, Griffin, and recently Magus. ALL that happens to Elliot as Cheerleadra is he gets overpowered. I'd like to see him at least lose better...

I'd like to see Elliot step in. Dan's kind of used him as the Worf of EGS...he gets beaten up or shut down to show how tough someone else is.

I found myself thinking, "well, this is the sort of threat Magus trained to fight..."

Actually not as such things go. Some thing do get better with automation.

when I visited Scotland a few years back my very patriotic scottish tourbus driver told us that the movie Braveheart rekindled the scottish sense of self as "scottish" rather than as british. The Scottish independence vote was mere days away, which might also have something to do with it. He complained about being ruled by people two hundred miles away as if that were some huge distance. I repressed a snicker. As a Californian,, my *state* government is 200 miles away. Washington DC is 3000 miles away. But the real distance is mental not physical. My tourguide left me the impression that the mental distance was a very wide gulf, as if the british empire were long gone but the imperial mindset still lived on.

"The 'd"? II suppose I could say the reference flew over my head...

Maybe Elliot had just watched "The Increibles"...

I worked on The Realm, a proto-MMO put out by Sierra On-Line about the same time Ultima Online came out. We were silly and naive enough to think letting players pick the pocket of other players was a good idea. We quickly learned how wrong we were...

Personally, I also think somewhere along the line Sauron ate a power source bigger than his/her/its head.

Nobody lives up to their hype, especially not Sauron. "Melkor's dead! I'm the new Melkor!" Saying it don't make it so. Especially if you can't even defend your home from random numenorian punks or keep them from lopping off important appendages sporting the key to the entire plot. If the Evil Overlord List doesn't cover this it should. Sauron really needed a copy.

Damned art thieves. This is all Saruman's fault. "Hobbit bait? Who need to put out hobbit bait? Let them breed out of control. It's not my problem. " It sure turned into your problem, mate. Hobbits, they get into everything and gum it all up. For all their destructiveness Maiar are easy to deal with. A regular spraying is all you need. Once an infestation of hobbits gets going they're far worse than any valinorian pest you could name. Worse than mimmoths, even...

Ellen! Watch it! that golem is an antique!

Now I and 3/4 of the fanbase are thinking Hanma is how Greg got his case of ASMA...

Coking with Daleks... http://fav.me/d8gs8lp (deviantart link)

Cute Shoulder Dragon is usually a +2 for males, +4 for females. I think that's a Cute Shoulder Dragon...of Doom.

Minor correction, Geraldine Ferraro was a candidate for vice president... to have a good female president we first need a choice to vote FOR rather than someone whose whole premise is "I'm female and the other guy's worse." If you want a ovarian Prez just to have one, I've already addressed that. We makes fewer mistakes being meritocratic, but it's a perspective that can be depressing especially when applied to politics...

Novelty is a poor reason to vote for a candidate.

...and there was much rejoicing.

I did similarly. I had characters with deep stories, sketches of stories and experiments in powerset combinations. As I contemplate a midlife shift from the tech sector to writer, I find my pen and paper RPG characters and my CoH characters are a great reserve of story characters.

You and me both. There is Paragon Chat if you at least like the looks of your characters. And a group of enterprising individuals have announced a very basic reverse engineer of a CoH server they intend to build on. The costume run I'm describing was before there was an Icon in Atlas park, so I had to make my way carefully through Kings Row and then VERY carefully through the little bit of Independence Port between the Kings Row Gate and the icon store. The character who wanted the reductions was about 8th level and a Brute to boot, so the Cap au Diable run wasn't so bad. I may have already had her working on the zone. Mercy Island and Port Oaks were low-level zones I just got through as quickly as possible. Cape was always a fun place.

That tracks. I don't think I've ever outright won an argument with a character. But I think there's one time when I didn't completely lose either.. Sometimes online characters argue or ask for stuff. In City of Heroes I once carefully navigated a level 4 character through a level 21+ zone to get a costume change she absolutely wanted.. I've had another demand a boob reduction. Twice. A different character absolutely refused to wear any costume I made for her but the first one. The last time a character asked me for something was about a year ago on Guild Wars 2. An Asura I was playing wanted to level up the cooking skill. She didn't need it. I had other characters with cooking maxed out, but she wanted it, dammit, and bugged me about it until I gave it to her. The irony is she doesn't do anything with it now.