Howard

Gender: Male

Species: Pure Human

Height: 7'?" (no exact recording)

Weight: Approx. 1 ton (including armour)

Age: Unknown

Faction ties: High-ranking soldier of unannounced human army.

Role in Game:

Antagonist. Is among the human forces that invade Mobius in the LoM-era Cycle, and as such is a target for anyone defending the planet. What happens after the Cycle is prevented is anyone's guess, though.

Abilities:

Artificially enhanced super soldier. Howard's strength is demi-godly compared to the typical furry, and can send some targets flying over a full mile away from the impact of his best blows. He also wields a suit of power armour with its own complimentary damage-dampening shield which partly nullifies a certain amount of damage for him until it needs to recharge, allowing him to comfortably advance right through enemy attacks and projectiles in minimal discomfort. Finally, Howard is adept in a wide variety of weapons both archaic and sophisticated, and carries a versatile armoury of guns on his person at all times.

Personality:

Howard is a strictly no-bullshit kind of guy - if it means securing a position of victory, he'll interrupt mid-fight speeches, use unnecssary force and just generally act out the personification of "GUESS AGAIN" whenever he's called out to fight something. Besides that, Howard is a very difficult person to read - he's only rarely seen without his face-obscuring helmet, and has almost never communicated with enemy personell even to respond to mid-fight banter.

Summarization of Fighting Style

Howard's greatest strength is also one of his biggest weaknesses - he punches like a freight train, sending victims soaring unfathomable distances at a time, but it also makes his attacks very difficult to chain into each other fluidly. His energy shield prevents him from flinching to a certain degree, though, making him best suited to high-pressuring tactics, dashing madly through enemy attacks and keeping up the attack to ensure they don't get enough blows in to damage Howard significantly.

Primary Attack

Plasma Gauntlets. Basic hand-to-hand melee attacks that deal heavy damage and high knockback. The angle of knockback may occasionally allow for small juggling chains, but otherwise these attacks are nearly impossible to combo into each other. They also have limited arcs of influence, which can make them simpler to dodge, and can take a while to swing - this disadvantage is nullified by Howard's anti-flinch shield, making his attacks difficult to punish nonetheless. By holding the attack button down for most attacks, Howard can delay his attacks in exchange for the ability to coat his attacks in searing plasma, doing additional damage.

Secondary Attack

Slayer Katana. The Slayer has large, wide-arc swings, making it easier to attack smaller, evasive targets. Although it lacks the knockback of his fist-based attacks, the sword has a lot of follow-through lag, making it difficult to follow up on nonetheless. On occasion, the lag may still be lenient enough to allow some slight alternation between Slayer and fists for small combos and vice-versa, but for the most part the player is still required to be very aggressive and persistent to dominate rather than rely on combo attacks.

Special 1

Sawn-off Shotgun. The majority of Howard's limited chaining ability relies on this weapon, as not only is it the only attack he can pull off quickly, it also has a wide spray effect, nullifying the need for precise accuracy. The shotgun is best used to follow up a knockback attack to shoot enemies out of the sky like a self-serving skeet shoot session, but on its own it can be useful to fall back on when Howard's shields need to recharge and he needs a split second of breathing room.

Special 2

Sticky Grenade. Howard hurls an explosive device powered by a Chaos Drive, causing moderate damage to anything caught in the blast radius. Splash damage is decent enough to disrupt a crowd, but the real beauty of the Sticky Grenade is the ability to, well, stick to enemies, exploding on them after a short delay and dealing them the full force of the explosion's damage. Just make sure they're already incapacitated (read: knocked into the air) when it's due to go off, as enemies can shake the grenade off if given the chance, and the knockback is just low enough to add an additional attack or two afterwards.

Climax Mode

Shield Lock. Howard becomes completely invulnerable to damage and flinching for a very brief period of time, allowing him to advance through any and all attacks completely unopposed. The short duration of this climax requires very strict timing to be considered useful, and may sometimes still be best used defensively to negate heavily damaging enemy attacks and climaxes when the situation allows.

Climax Attack 1

Battle Rifle. Howard unholsters the rifle and unloads the entire clip diagonally upwards, juggling enemies in the air for the duration of the move. The attack can be aimed similarly to a typical Special move midway through, but the knockback caused on the horizontal axis knocks enemies on their back and makes it difficult to hit multiple times, making it recommended against bigger groups of enemies only.

Climax Attack 2

Shield Overcharge. Howard sacrifices his shield charge and discharges it into a splash damage attack, heavily damaging and knocking back any enemies nearby him. Because the attack drains his shield reserves, he is vulnerable afterwards if there are enemies who managed to avoid the attack, but the beauty of the move is in that it can be used virtually any time, cancelling out other attacks to get a cheap second hit in or even unleashing an attack while he's otherwise incapacitated by enemy attacks. Despite the attack ordinarily draining shield reserves, the overcharge can still be used as a panic move if Howard's shields are already empty, at the cost of taking even longer to recharge.

Climax Finisher

Also undecided. I figured I'd let Howard think this one up, but he hasn't gotten back to me on that. Bah, I'll think of something eventually.