On a moments notice you could change and leap into action, saving the day.
I would have problems with that, which is why my hero Talos wears no spandex. You would really have to trust that your clothing, wallet and keys would still be wherever you hid them. I'm just not that trusting.
some heroes have great costume change emotes like Wonder Woman....but a lot of us don't. Talos just trusts to Raybans and gloves and keeps his stuff with him.
Another option is to keep you stuff at home and use a secret entrance and just patrol. No spur of the moment rescues, but no ID theft either.
There are good reasons for secret IDs. I just have second thoughts about risking mine at the spur of the moment.
Not to mention clothing tears all the time...and that Spidey suit is unmistakable.
[img]https://s15.postimg.cc/z9bk1znkb/Black_Falcon_Sig_in_Progess.jpg[/img]
That would depend a lot on the individual character but most likely I would work in a way where they could make a full "swap" or their clothes and either carry the other set in some form of pack or summon/desummon it at will.
Thinking about it, I realize that very few of my main characters wear spandex. Most of them don't bother with secret IDs.
Perfect Perry basically turns the idea on its head, maintaining a 'public persona' as a hero and simply acting and dressing ordinary when he's more private. Because he's public about his ID, anyone who messes with him when he's not wearing the 'uniform' gets what they deserve.
Black Valkyrie and Astarte are both too old for that 'crap', being nearly divine spellcasters with thousands of years of experience. They wear 'costumes' for the same reasons why some snakes are brightly colored - it's a warning that they are deadly.
Kitten Dreams... well, Kitten isn't actually 'real' in the usual sense, so she wears pink pajamas just because that's how she envisions herself. The idea of changing her appearance to suit some 'standard' seems ridiculous since she is herself and none other.
One of the few who wears a 'super suit', Starlight Saint, does so more for protection than disguise, although it does have that effect. His 'secret ID' as a college professor is worth protecting, but so is his Skin and super-scraps are full of nasty abrasive experiences, so he wears body-armor.
Rogue Nightwolf... well, he's eight feet tall and a 'werewolf', so what's the point of a disguise? With his legs being 'backward' and his feet the size of manhole-covers, pants and shoes are plainly out of the question, so he wears a kilt and a long coat. Spandex would just look silly!
Be Well!
Fireheart
This. Also, is the costume [i]only[/i] spandex? Is there armored pieces involved? Bulky accessories?
In the case of outed heroes, like myself, would this even be a consideration anymore?
Heroes get remembered, but Legends never die.
Protect the pack kid, no matter how much it hurts. If everyone else in the pack is safe, you can carry on or die knowing you've done your duty. - Fanfiction
An 'outed' hero could still wear the 'uniform', they just might be able to show their face without consequences.
Perfect Perry is publicly a hero and privately a multimillionaire industrialist.
[URL=http://s105.photobucket.com/user/fireheart5150/media/Perfect%20Perry/PerfectPerryFacePreview2_zpsf5b4e637.png.html][IMG]http://i105.photobucket.com/albums/m207/fireheart5150/Perfect%20Perry/th_PerfectPerryFacePreview2_zpsf5b4e637.png[/IMG][/URL]
Be Well!
Fireheart
I had a neat idea for a secret ID. The character would be an actor/stunt person who plays the part of the hero they actually are.
So like, if Batman existed and Adam West played Batman on TV but Adam West was also Batman.
Who would suspect that the actor who plays a hero on TV was that hero? Then if anyone discovers your costume well... You're the guy who plays that hero on TV. You're either on your way to a shoot, back from one, or were doing some kind of charity thing.
It's the perfect cover!
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
Always thought the costume helped as a status symbol to those the hero rescues as being "Help is here!"
In plain clothes, it becomes, "Who the hell is this? Trust you? You look like every other Joe Smoe out there. Yeah right, you can't save us, you're just crazy."
:p
There's also the idea of "Oh, so you want to act the superhero, but not wear the outfit, but for some reason, can't join an organization, like the police or military or feds, who do sort of the same thing in more normal clothes"
If the ID is public, why would the bosses let you off work?
"I don't care if the building is burning down. We need to get this building up before the inspector shows up in two weeks, and we can't do that, with you constantly leaving. Don't say you don't, your face is all over the news."
"Sorry, I don't care how beautiful you are, you can't model for this show, when you keep leaving every show for a hero emergency. What? Bella? She doesn't leave the show to save the day, she's just binged a few to many pounds. What do you mean that's a lie and she's the mask crusader, Masked Fox? They don't look a like at all."
<_< Also, yes, that was a bad hero who tried to out Masked Fox. :p
I don't use spandex either for my characters, usually. The only exception is a character named Azimov's Shield who might wear something like that if she ever got up to the mark 3 version of her forcefield generator suit. Mark 1 and 2 will be too bulky for that. She'll have to wait for when Primary: Defense. Secondary: Ranged is available, though.
Edward flips his jacket inside out to reveal his logo on it, and switches shades for a little stupid hide-your-cheekbones mask. He has no secret identity, but the mask let's people know he's not a bystander. It's either that or a cape, and the mask is less trouble to keep on him. Plus, enemies can't use it to pull him around. We'll see what other options the game has, though.
Miles has wings. Also, he's half-Russian half-Somalian with a Ugandan accent. I don't think anyone's mistaking him for someone else.
Biotope is a scale-covered monstrosity with spiney growths, a snake-like face, and a rat tail. I don't think spandex would help.
Dash, my comedy relief guy, is going to be an alien doing a reality show. He might wear spandex, but only if it's good for ratings. More likely, his fashion sense will be similar to Elvis.
Pretty much all my heroes are classic spandex clad heroes. I do prefer a costume that also doubles as clothing though. I also have a hero who's never not in costume.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
I would. I actually wear compression tights under my clothes in RL, lol. I am a workout junkie. A lot of fitness or sports people wear tights or compression clothing in layers. I guess the gym rat is my secret id lol.
As a child, I thought my name was handsome, cause that is what everyone called me.
Gym Rat, character concept
Buff half human half rat that loiters around gyms and wears clothes that are way to small for him.
Every movement that requires effort causes a grunt and Gym Rat must always carry a 1 gallon jug of water with him.
His weapon of choice is a barbell with at least 100 pounds on it
The Carnival of Light in the Phoenix Rising
"We never lose our demons, we only learn to live above them." - The Ancient One
Avatar by lilshironeko
One of my late City of Heroes concept characters was a Stalker that I named [b]Golden Blonde[/b] who used the Kinetic Melee/Energy Armor powersets (never got her too much past 30 before the game closed though). I dressed her in the ornate wedding tuxedo costume parts with pinstripe slacks and spats shoes using a yellow-gold and red-gold color scheme, where the whole point and purpose was that her powers required a catalyst in order to function ... and that catalyst was GOLD (atomic number 79). So in order to make sure that she had "sufficient" gold on her person at any time, she'd wear clothes made out of gold lame fabrics [i]at all times[/i] as her standard wearable attire.
[img]https://www.candh.co.uk/images/gold-paper-lame-fabric-p3026-2285_image.jpg[/img]
Her "day job" was as a commodities trader specializing in precious metals ... ensuring that she always had a supply of gold needed to replace costume parts that "wore out" due to being consumed (as a catalyst) by her powers over time. Needless to say, all of her Kinetic Melee attacks used golden yellow hues, while her defensive auras used a mixture of red-gold and yellow-gold hues for them.
Golden Blonde was perhaps the "flashiest" Stalker concept I ever came up with.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]