This week on Terrible Powerset Theatre: Trash control.

[stuck talon]

Possible powers to include:

Trash Missile, which fires a random bit of junk at the enemy

Garbage Armour, which forms a protective layer of debris around the user.

Trash Flood, which sends a wave of junk coursing along the ground at high speeds, potentially knocking enemies over and dealing damage.

Trash Compactor, a hold that attempts to catch the enemy in the constrictive grasp of junk.

Junknado, an area damage effect of whirling garbage.

Garbage Golem, which produces an exceptionally durable summon that is not otherwise exceptional, except possibly in terms of odor.

Sludge Hammer, a big, round area of effect that deals smashing damage and knockdown.

[coral kite]

Ah, so lots of toxic-type damage 😄

Actually, on second thought, a pool dealing heavily in toxic-type would be a neat mix-up.

[stuck talon]

Mostly toxic and smashing I would think.

[dense mesa]

The Scrapyarders do have at least 1 power where they throw trash at you when you get in aggro range 😄

[stuck talon]

That's good, this power set could use that.

[dense mesa]

well it doesn't do much damage though - it's somewhat like those low level powers of each class (mutagen, tranqu darts, throwing knifes, ...)

[stuck talon]

I mean yeah, but that's adjustable, if you're going to stick it on a character. I mean more like the animations are ready to roll and the art assets already work with being used to hit people.

[lofty raven]

Everyone’s favourite gravity power “Propel” as an entire power set? I love it.

[stuck talon]

Definitely better than putting in a powerset called Autodetonation with ten powers, all of which are named for synonyms for 'explode', and using any of which deletes the character!

[plush lynx]

But how does one determine which materials fall under this powerset's purview? That broken microwave might be trash to you, but I was going to strip it for parts. One man's trash, etc.

Edit: Propel skips past this by simply not GAF about where the ammo comes from. Was that forklift being used? Did that AC unit come from a poor family's apartment in downtown Kings Row? Who cares! It's DPS now.

[stuck talon]

Landlords have cape insurance for a reason.

[shut ravine]

Pet for this pool: Summon Slag Golem.

[stuck talon]

Hm. one more summon and it'd be a MM powerset

Trashbots: A disciplined and well-trained unit of rats piloting miniature junk mechs that attack with adorable little garbage-fueled flamethrowers(fire/toxic damage) and recycled submagineguns.

[coral kite]

Personally I'm thinking something like those golem things from the Ghostbusters game. Assorted appliances cobbled together in something vaguely like a humanoid shape, and with different damage types depending on their base appliance. So the oven one does fire damage, the lamp one does lightning, the sludgy one does tox/bludgeon, and so on. (Which actually would be a cool twist for a MM, where their pets do differing damage types depending on which tier)

[stuck talon]

That might be fun. How about the ones that come in groups come in multiple types, and summon in a fixed order?

like, if you only get one, you always get the one with a chainsaw, but if you get two, you get one with a chainsaw and one with a flamethrower?

Third one has a haunted skull and deals spoopy damage

[coral kite]

Well, if we're suddenly doing a MM powerset, then we already have tiers we can incorporate, according to how easy it is to resist or what have you. Plus it fits a 'trash' theme, it's comprised of odds and ends for damage types, all lumped together.

[stuck talon]

We do have tiers to incorporate, but I wonder if a MM set could have, like, something other than 3/2/1 minions. like maybe tier 1 is a meatwall minion that just grows progressively meatwallier as you level up, the mid-level one is a support thing that throws little heals and buffs at its allies, and the top one is a pack of skirmishers that rain hell on your opponents and regularly need to be put back together by the mid-tier.

[coral kite]

Kinda like mercs where one of the first tier is a medic, or bots where second tier are bubblers. Or thugs where second tier has some leadership, and third tier works like a brute. There's lots of precedence to have different roles for each tier, that could also fit with different damage types.

The result would be adaptable for a mastermind, throwing about toxic and able to play tank and buff and dps at the same time. If they micro well, of course.

[stuck talon]

that's masterminds for you

[dense mesa]

If there was a trash-themed MM Powerset it could contain:
1st tier - 3 Scrapyarders who throw trash and deal smashing melee dmg with shovels.

2nd tier - 2 Demolitionist Scrapyarders who are ranged throwing scrap bombs (lethal/knockdown) and dynamite(lethal/fire) and can defend in melee only using their fists (different from the original Demolitionists).

3rd tier - tanky slag golem who hurls debris that deals smashing dmg that has a chance to disorient targets, slashes foes with the junk sticking out from their fists causing the target to bleed (DoT).

If the set includes some kind of Sludge power that adds the 1st tier enchantment to the pets the tiers would receive additional/changed powers:

• 1st tier pets: pickaxes instead of shovels now dealing lethal dmg and reducing the defense of the target (not stacking)

• 2nd tier pets:: instead of only using their fists in melee combat they get their Jackhammer that causes smashing damage

• 3rd tier pet: would gain an aura that sometimes taunts the targets in its closer range and makes them a bit sturdier

The Upgraded Sludge would gift the pets with yet another set of abilities or upgrade the existing ones:

• 1st tier: dual wielding pickaxe AND shovel but both with their original dmg reduced but coming with their -defense and +disorient debuff

• 2nd tier: the jackhammer deals more damage and has a chance of stunning a target

• 3rd tier: the golem can AoE-vomit sludge on nearby team members and heal them for a small portion of their HP but not himself

[stuck talon]

My only objection is that scrapyarders are human and not constructs produced by a mad scientist, unhinged engineer, or junk sorceror, and that what you describe sounds more like a Scrapyard Unionist powerset than Trash Control.

[coral kite]

That's why they're literally animated piles of trash and junk. Maybe emphasize that a bit, so they don't have fists or what, but a jagged chunk of metal like a pickaxe or scythe, or swinging what looks like a rusty crane hook in which part of the crane is the arm, or 'limbs' end in literal manhole covers they bash with. And the tanky one is visibly covered with random pieces of sheet metal and so on to give the impression of being heavily armored tanky. Trash golems on the attack. Of course as awesome as it could be it's a full thing to model/rig/animate/power/etc, but still could be cool, particularly if it's diverse and unique enough.

[stuck talon]

i suspect you could use the models of those hydra blobmonsters, or the skeleton jelly things, and stuck a bunch of existing in-game garbage assets to them. still takes time, obviously, but recycling both reduces the amount of work involved and is appropriate to the theme

I'd use manhole covers or car doors as shields for the defensive ones.

[coral kite]

Maybe actual sledgehammers out of the arms in place of hands for bludgeoning. Something that looks like 'gonna smash you' and also removes the idea it's actually a person covered in junk so much as a bunch of random trash "magically" held together. I am also digging the whole different roles thing, and vastly different damage types. MMs sometimes have a little of that but they spread out. Maybe if the first tier was tanky and slow but not so damaging and more worth keeping up versus skirmishers at a higher tier it'd be a vastly different play than existing powersets where you can easily generalize all tiers by damage and survivability.

[stuck talon]

Maybe the tanky ones could take a share of the damage dealt to nearby friendlies? Like even if they're awful at attacking, they keep getting between their master (and teammates and other minions) and incoming fire

[shut ravine]

Junk being a 'thing' could be an old radio sonic buffer (like the bubbler t2) and a tv doing to-hit debuffs

[stuck talon]

oooh, a junkbot that's mostly one of those huge, ancient CRT televisions that just picks an opponent and blasts hem with TV static to distract them and make them whiff a lot.

[shut ravine]

Yes!

The last pet is a Junk Golem that has a smaller version of Jurassic's car club