Victoria Provost

 

Level:	20
Origin:	Natural
Archetype:	Defender
Powers:	Force Field/Energy Blast
Server:	Triumph
Player:	Altus Vir

THEME
Victoria Provost is a former Suppressor for the Praetorian Police Department. Consequently, her costume and powers are made to resemble the PPD and TEST officers in Praetoria. she's also spent much of her early hero life fighting gangs, rescuing kidnapped people, and cleaning up the streets.

ALIGNMENT
She starts out her career as a hero in Paragon City, still learning to use her prototype TEST gear. As time goes on, she'll become more of a vigilante as she has a distrust for authority and a hatred for corruption.

POWERS
The source of her powers are in two prototype 'defender' gauntlets being developed by TEST labs for military purposes. They were designed to create force fields to protect field operatives, but Victoria has also learned to channel the force energy into beams of concussive blasts. At its highest setting, the gauntlets can create a short-range force field around Victoria that is nearly impregnable, but this limits her ability to use her offensive powers or create force fields for her allies.

TRAVEL
Victora Provost's primary method of travel is just running around with academy-trained Stamina. If she needs to, she can even run through hostile territory protected in a force field, but she can not engage opponents while it is on. Although she has a TEST teleporter unit, it has been damaged in a backstory event and as of this writing she has not yet got the darn thing working. (Maybe in a few more levels.)

SOLO
Victoria lacks the ability to directly heal or inflict very much damage, but she is capable of protecting herself and others. Although most of her force fields are useless for protecting herself, she can keep enemy forces at bay with an impressive assortment of knockback powers. One on one, she can defeat almost any foe. However, just two or three higher level foes can create problems with her if she insists on standing her ground. A protective two-way force field can be extended around herself if she wishes to avoid conflicts.

TEAM
Victoria frequently has to restrain herself when fighting with a squad. She is trained to protect her squad-mates and her powers allow her to do that very effectively, but when she goes on the offensive things can get out of hand. Her foes get knockbacked all over the place creating a troublesome battlefield. Energy loss results in dropped force fields. It gets ugly. Her best performance is when she's running close behind her allies, keeping them under a protective bubble and using her leadership training to keep them from danger. Her knockback abilities come in useful for temporarily disabling opponents that attack her squad from behind. While her abilities and training have made her very effective, it requires a lot of restraint and sometimes she does tend to lose track of her allies or get carried away with bombarding enemies into the next room.

VISIBILITY
This issue is kind of important to me. When I'm on a team, I like my teammates to know that I'm there and I'm helping them out. When I played on a team with Electrona Sparks or Frosty Protector, I would sometimes wonder if the scrappers and tankers even knew I was in the room. This is one of the reasons I wanted to make a "buff" character rather than a "debuff". Victoria Provost is definitely visible. She's got a huge bubble around her - you can see her from half way across the city. She's a little TOO visible, given that her knockback powers can be frustrating for melee-oriented allies.

I had to change the colors of several bubbles so that its easier to tell which allies are buffed and what kind of buffs are on whom. The dispersion bubble tends to have an annoying effect in that it washes the battlefield with psychedelic green, obscuring my vision and sometimes probably that of my allies, too.

STYLE
I tried to stick with the dark blues and bright golds that mark the Praetorian PPD. She's designed to look like a very feminine Enforcer, but she doesn't wear the helmet. Since leaving the police force, she has instead taken to wearing a mask and letting her long red hair flow freely behind her.

Since joining Fusion Force, she also has a version-2 outfit that she wears while in SG mode. Even in this mode, however, she wears the same Enforcer-like gauntlets that are the source of her powers.

Much of Victoria's background involves undercover work or off-duty crimefighting experiences, and eventually I do want to set her up with "civilian attire", which will likely involve biker leather and could double up as a "Pocket D" outfit. I'm going to try to setup a keybinding so that none of her primary or secondary abilties appear on the power tray, since she won't be wearing her gauntlets. (Don't ask me where she puts them.)

LEVEL
As of the time of this writing, Victoria Provost has just turned level 15. Although her background is Praetorian, I've started her off in Paragon City and she has been a Hero since level 1.

EVALUATION
Although I designed this character to be a learning experience in team play, I rather like her both in terms of gameplay and as a character. I kind of wish I could respec to give her Radiation Blast instead of Energy Blast, but I also kind of like the backstory idea that the gauntlets were never designed to be offensive at all but that Victoria is an inherently offensive-minded ex-cop who bombards people with force fields. It's especially cool when the bad guys try to get away and they get knocked face-first into the pavement.