Ember-class warframe
Sequence
This article is about a warframe fighter in the Warframe video game. Some other articles might be best read before it :
- The article presenting the Warframe setting, if you aren’t familiar with the game.
- The “base camp” article about what warframes are and how they work. This one is recommended even if you’re well familiar with the game. It has the design notes, for starters.
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Overview
Ember warframes are incendiary weapons. They are heavily skewed toward offense.
As such, they must be deployed carefully. An Ember frame fighter will likely annihilate lightly-protected units. But heavily-armoured and/or fireproofed opposition can be difficult to fend off.
Ember warframes perform most of their feats by spraying a highly inflammable liquid. The diffusion varies (from thin, fast aerosol to high-pressure vapour projections with quasi-explosive effects), as does the exact chemical mix.
Since Ember clearly cannot store that much fuel, this too hints at some kinds of ammunition being teleported into the field. Perhaps the “Ember cocktail” is two highly efficient liquids that are inert, but become highly reactive once mixed.
An Ember frame’s primary weapon will typically be a flamethrower, such as an Ignis.
Capabilities
(This profile was done a few months before Ember’s 2019 rework. It thus reflects the old, “world on fire” version).
The most distinctive abilities of Ember warframes are :
- Hurling fireballs. Using weapons is generally more efficient, but Ember’s fireballs leave a fiercely burning area. This is useful for interdiction.
- A powerful, 360° spray of chemical accelerants. Between the force of the expulsion and the liquid’s properties, this isn’t unlike a concussive explosion centered on Ember. Such a discharge is usually followed by the use of a flamethrower against the accelerant-soaked enemies.
- An explosion of fire centered on, but not harming, the Ember warframe.
- Super-heating the air in a large area around the frame, moving as she does. This might be done using a different kind of aerosol.
This is the most distinctive ability of an Ember frame. She just runs around and everywhere she goes is fried to a crisp, unless it’s sufficiently hardened against heat.
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Tell me more about the game stats
Ember warframe
DEX 08 STR 07 BOD 10
Powers:
Cling: 04, Damage capacity: 06, Gliding: 02, Invulnerability: 12, Jumping: 03, Radio communications: 16, Running: 06
Bonuses and Limitations:
- Cling can only be maintained for 3 Phases (if running) or 1 Phase (if stationary).
- Cling doesn’t work on surfaces at more than a 100° angle from the ground (such as ceiling, or protrusions along walls).
- Gliding can only be maintained for 3 Phases.
- Invulnerability – see below.
- Jumping has the Catfall Bonus.
- Radio coms includes video. It also allows The Lotus to anchor her Eye of Cat Power to a warframe. It usually links to the Orbiter and/or Landing Craft, which acts as a relay to the network.
Warframe-Specific Powers:
Bomb: 10, Enchantment: 01, Flame project: 09, Shockwave: 07, Temperature control: 10
Bonuses and Limitations:
- Bomb has No Range, and uses a Flame/Heat Descriptor.
- Enchantment can only affect the EV of flame/heat-based attacks.
- Enchantment can only bolster attacks conducted against targets hit by Ember’s Shockwave power within the last minute or so. Unless the accelerant is somehow washed off in the meanwhile.
- Flame project has a 0 APs Area of Effect.
- Flame project leaves said Area of Effect burning for a minute or so. This area has 7 APs of Flame Being.
- Temperature control is Heat Only, but has a +5 Special Volume Bonus.
- Temperature Control can be maintained with but an Automatic Action, but each Phase it is active – including the initial one – is Minimal Marginal.
Skills:
Acrobatics: 08, Medicine (First aid): 05, Thief (Security systems, Stealth): 06, Vehicles: 07, Weaponry: 08
Bonuses and Limitations:
Medicine applies to warframes without penalty.
Advantages:
Area Knowledge (Real-time mapping and positioning), Leadership, Schtick (Paired weapons (all), Fast-Draw (all)).
Equipment:
SHIELDING [BODY 02, Damage Capacity: 08, Bonus: Damage Capacity has Instant Recovery].
Reviving
Invulnerability has Ammo: 04. The Hidden Messages quest in the game implies that it as a shorter range than most Transference functions, but there’s no other context. Maybe 100M kilometers (41 APs) – it’s a round, reasonable number.
If you are using our hypothesis that “revives” mean supercharging the Infestation within, each use would make the warframe visibly more overtaken by the Infestation. It would then have to be scrubbed and repaired in the orbiter’s “Infestation seat”.
Design notes
Though the Ember toolkit is variants of the same general idea, we do not need to oversimplify it. Since it can be written up fairly cleanly in DCH, unless you reject the proposed new Powers as impure and blasphemous creations from lesser minds.
Still, the Shockwave mixes aspects of Accelerant and Firequake.
The EVs are *slightly* lowballed to represent Ember being more crowd control than DPS at the higher levels. As of this writing — a rework is being discussed — her damage doesn’t scale up that high. As with every scaling decision for Warframe this is endlessly debatable.
Source of Character: Warframe vidjagame.
Writeup completed on the 6th of April, 2019.