Frost-class warframe
Context
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
Frost is a warframe with “cold powers”. One gets the impression that it is a mix of :
- Spraying some sort of transparent gas or fine aerosol to serve as a medium for his energies.
- Sufficiently advanced technology allowing him to slow molecular motion.
Frost is chiefly seen as a perimeter lockdown expert. Warframe missions are usually mobile, if only to deny the opposition the possibility of building up forces. But in some cases, it is necessary to defend a perimeter.
Typical examples would be exfiltrating a warframe found in suspended animation – doing so safely takes time. Or defending a captured enemy terminal whilst hackers remotely crack its security.
However, Frost is also fully capable of mobile combat. It is just that his static defence abilities are impressive.
Capabilities
The most distinctive abilities of Frost warframes are :
- Erecting a defensive energy bubble, nicknamed the “snow globe”. Ranged attacks cannot penetrate the field’s perimeter, though they can damage and eventually collapse it. Furthermore, enemies within the bubble are greatly slowed down. Storming an area locked down by a Frost-class frame is thus a daunting proposition.
- Frost frames are typically reinforced to be able to generate bigger, harder bubbles. This has the side effect of making them physically more durable.
- A variety of cold-based attacks. Though they all boil down to “shoot ice”, more detailed applications include :
- Freezing a single opponent in place, and making some kinds of armour plating more brittle.
- Wide-beam cold-based attacks that also leave slippery, jagged, treacherous ground behind. It is even more low-friction than frozen water.
- Big lethal waves of cold and ice that also sap bits of energy from the opposition’s system. The stolen energy can be used to harden the shields of Frost and his team.
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Tell me more about the game stats
Frost warframe
DEX 08 STR 07 BOD 10
Powers:
Cling: 04, Damage capacity: 12, 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:
Enchant: 01, Force wall: 13, Friction control: 05, Ice production: 09, Neutralise: 12, Vampirism: 08
Bonuses and Limitations:
- Enchant is Combined with Ice Production, and can only be used thus.
- Enchant can only add one AP of Sharpness, and only to attacks hitting a target currently encased by Frost’s Ice Production.
- Force Wall is always a bubble, and is (mostly) transparent to gas, sight and sound.
- Force Wall is Hardened and Can Attack Thru. However, the Can Attack Thru bonus is only for attacks from within the bubble.
- Friction control only to lower friction on exposed surfaces.
- Friction control can be Combined with Ice Production, and active throughout its area of effect.
- Ice production can only perform Physical attacks, and the encasing application.
- Ice production’s encasing cannot last more than two Phases. If done again to the same subject, this limit becomes one Phase.
- Ice production’s Physical attack can have an Area of Effect (2 APs).
- Neutralise is Combined with Force Wall, and can only be used thus. It is active within the entire Force Wall bubble.
- Neutralise can only attack DEX or Superspeed. Though by extension, it can lower other AVs – for instance, of STR/STR is used to attack an immobile obstacle, Neutralise can be used to attack the AV.
- Neutralise’s RAPs are instantly Recovered outside of the Force Wall bubble.
- Vampirism can be Combined with Ice Production, and can only be used thus. It can be active through Ice Production’s Area of Effect.
- Vampirism cannot be used along with encasing attacks, or along with Friction Control.
- Vampirism can never score more than one RAP per target.
- Vampirism’s RAPs can only be funnelled toward the Damage Capacity of a warframe, or other piece of Orokin technology.
Skills:
Acrobatics: 07, 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: 12, 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
Some of the Powers here assume access to Syndicate mods, and liberal use of armour-enhancing mods to bolster Snow Globe.
As always, things are simplified and mushed together so it’s not *too* complex. Though Frost’s stats ended up being more complex than I’d have liked. So feel free to pare them down into more generic ice powers if you prefer.
One less AP of Acrobatics to represent Frost having a slow sprint speed. One less AP of Running would be overdoing it. In-game, Frost keeps pace with the rest through bullet jumps and the like. He doesn’t lag as far behind as halving his speed — one less AP — would indicate.
Source of Character: Warframe vidjagame.
Writeup completed on the 7th of April, 2019.