Trinity-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
Trinity is a defensive support warframe. She manipulates energy fields to stun and drain opponents whilst hardening the shielding of her fire team.
Deploying a Trinity-class frame isn’t a common occurrence. On most operations, it is better to stack on firepower to eliminate the enemy ASAP. But when even a Tenno fire team cannot overwhelm the opposition through superior firepower, a Trinity greatly augments their staying power.
A Trinity frame can also provide invaluable offensive support. This is done by supplying her team with energy drained and redirected from the enemy. With this abundant power, the commando team with Trinity can keep using their most powerful offensive abilities without running dry.
This too is outside normal parameters for special forces tactics. But it allows a Tenno commando to succeed against much denser enemy forces that would otherwise swarm them.
This mostly works when Trinity is partnered with big-firepower fighters, such as Mesa frames, Ember frames, Revenant frames…
A Trinity-class warframe built to no-frills, mostly-stripped-down modern standards.
Powers & Abilities
Trinity is a light frame, not a brawler. There’s little armour by warframe standards, to have room for her energy manipulation systems.
Her “powers” are :
- Briefly stun a target and force it to vent its energy stores. This works even on living creatures fuelled by Void energies. The Trinity warframe will then remotely absorb this energy and dispatch it between herself and her allies. Which allows for markedly heavier power use.
- Hardening her own shields. When this is up the shielding is no longer ablative, and instead performs like the plating of a heavily-armoured frame, such as a Valkyr.
Furthermore, Trinity will create energy tethers, linking her to up to three nearby enemies. Energy that impacts her hardened shield (including kinetic energy) is redirected along these tethers. This is a “stop hitting yourself” sort of defence. - Hardening her allies’ shields. This has 50+ metres range and makes beneficiaries highly resilient to damage. But it doesn’t form tethers to vent the impacts, so the hardening will usually last under 20 seconds per cycle.
However, part of the energy from attacks can be used. It is redispatched to the warframe’s self-repair systems, allowing to work far faster than they normally would. It also repowers ablated shielding.
The effect requires the beneficiaries not to run around too much – the area of effect doesn’t move along with Trinity. Thus it is mostly useful in a defensive situation or pitched battle, rather than a storming action.
(This is a simplified and massaged version, which gets simplified further in the TTRPG stats. Warframe toolkits are full of synergies and minor effects and whatnot. I’m also merging her 1 with her 2 and 4, since her 1 seems to see very little use).
Description
Trinity’s faceplate has scrolling characters displayed on it. This *can* evoke a visual effect from The Matrix. And her name *might* thus be a reference to the movie’s Trinity. Possibly.
A signature part of her silhouette is her bustle. Which is a kind of crinoline – hoops under a skirt or dress that shape it into a stylised silhouette. Bustles (or tournures in French) exaggerate the volume of one’s derrière.
As part of Warframe’ odd aesthetics, Trinity’s bustle seem made of organic plates, a bit like a lobster.
A Trinity-class warframe built to full Orokin-era specifications. So she still has her skirts, bustle, hoops, upper radiators evoking XVIIIth Century aristocratic hair styles, etc..
DC Heroes RPG
Tell me more about the game stats
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:
Damage transference: 03, Flash: 08, Force field: 02, Reflection/Deflection: 09, Regeneration: 06
Bonuses and Limitations:
- Damage Transference has No Risk of Injury and No Time Limitation.
- Flash’s effects last for two Phases at most.
- Flash isn’t resisted by Shade, but is resisted by Drain Resistance and similar.
- Force field is selective. Trinity can pick who receives the RV boost within its Volume.
- Force field has a +15 Special Volume Bonus.
- Force field doesn’t move along with Trinity. But she can recreate it where she stands by spending a Dice Action.
- Regeneration and Damage Transference both are Combined With and active throughout the Force Field. They too are selective.
- Reflection/Deflection also works against hand-to-hand attack.
- Reflection/Deflection requires an Automatic Action every Phase to be maintained.
- Reflection/Deflection’s Reflection component has a Range of but 01.
Skills:
Acrobatics: 07, Medicine (First aid): 07, Thief (Security systems, Stealth): 06, Vehicles: 07, Weaponry: 08
Bonuses and Limitations:
- Medicine applies to warframes without penalty.
- Medicine can be Combined with Regeneration. All Regeneration beneficiaries can thus receive First Aid at no Action cost.
Advantages:
Area Knowledge (Real-time mapping and positioning), Cheerleadership, Schtick (Paired weapons (all), Fast-Draw (all)).
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
When it comes to the Force Field range, I assume that Trinity is running the Vazarin focus school.
Trinity could have Power Drain. I opted against it because the effect is short and preventing power use is seldom telling. So Flash is good enough at modelling what happens.
The Cheerleadership Advantage approximates Energy Vampire – and Trinity not taking a lot of Actions in combat because she’s busy cycling her 2, 3 and 4. If your game makes ample use of Hero Points, it’s not a bad approximation (especially since Trinity’s healing means that HPs can be focused on offense).
Casting her 4.
Source of Character: Warframe vidjagame.
Helper(s): Darci.
Writeup completed on the 23rd of August, 2019.