Let me say up front that I doubt this could be implemented at this stage, and maybe this has come up somewhere and I missed it. But anywho, I had an idea about a simple shield/force field mechanic that could make for some interesting play.
Say your character has the power "Force Field." A single click on the power activates a personal force field that surrounds the player like a second skin. HOLDING the button down expands the field in a sphere around the character, but with a (skewed) logarithmic decline in power. So the "second skin" personal field is at 100% of it's damage absorption rate, but as it expands the amount of damage that gets through goes up. As long as you hold the button the "bubble" expands slowly (over a few seconds) until it reaches max size. BUT, you can stop its expansion anywhere in between by letting go the button.
This way a player could put up a bubble around his whole team and shield them all a bit, or just the tank, or just save their own skin (so to speak.) This could work either as a straight "absorb X% of damage" or "reduce to hit by X%." The expansion would continue out until it reached 0%. The range, as well as the percentage curve, would need testing and tweaking and I'm not qualified to discuss the necessary math. :)
A player could slot to increase it's size or damage, I'd think. Or it might be easier to simply increase the overall effectiveness and make one a function of the other.
Whaddya think? Is this an old idea that got beat down already? Would this be too "twitchy" for some folks?
The primary difficulty I see with such an approach to a power is that it effectively becomes three powers in one. Thus, rather than having three powers that shield the character, shield another person, and shield the team (and possibly an active mitigation shield in a limited PBAoE) the player gets only one power. While this is not in itself a bad idea, I expect it will complicate the development of such a set and will create expectations for similar powers/utility in other sets.
In addition, the dynamic of turning a powerful personal shield into an AoE shield may well be something that falls under Momentum.
And yes, if holding the button half a second too long (or not long enough) creates a shield that is too large (or too small) it does add an element of action combat that the devs are likely to want to avoid.
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