Form-Changer archetype: if you use take any qualities, may you switch them around or are you stuck with that for all of your forms? Based on my reading of the rules, I would think that you cannot change your qualities during the archetype creation step. However, that may be an overly literal interpretation of the rules
Elemental Manipulator archetype: for several abilities you take damage from your power; if you take the Energy Alignment or Energy Redirection ability, can you use the damage you take (from throwing a lightning bolt with Backlash for example) and channel it into something beneficial?
My involvement with the game has (so far) been limited to creating characters, but no actual gameplay.
That’s correct rules as written, and probably rules as intended. OTOH, you might be able to talk your GM into allowing you to do so if you can make a strong argument for it. If (say) you took Acrobatics or Stealth as a Form-Changer quality, but one of your forms is unlikely to be able to use it because it doesn’t make sense narratively I could see making an exception. For ex, if you’re an agile wind, water or fire spirit that takes Acrobatics rather than a power in the archetype step, but sometimes turns into a stone form with no mobility powers at all, I’d probably allow you to to use your Acrobatics die as some power like Vitality or Size-Changing instead. A more restrictive GM might insist you swap to a different quality instead, maybe Fitness.
As always with Form-Changers, you want to be careful about locking yourself out of abilities in certain forms. It’s a supremely versatile archetype but already has limitations on how many of its abilities it can access at one time, and if you shut yourself out of ones from your power source or Red zone picks it makes that even worse.
Yep, that’s functioning as intended. The combination is probably the main argument in favor of taking those kinds of abilities, since you’re otherwise having to hope the enemy is using the matching energy type to your ignore/invert ability. Having said that, there are some energy types you can reasonably expect to run into as narrative elements, like fire or electricity in an urban environment. Pulling a high-tension wire down on yourself to heal from the power grid is an old stunt, and fire damage inversion is a good perk when rescuing people from burning buildings/cars/etc. You could also coordinate with fellow heroes during character creation to have energy immunities for powers they possess. Not likely to run into “natural” sources of, say, infernal damage very often, but if your team has someone with a multi-target Attack ability that just happens to do infernal they might as well include your immune self as one of those targets while they’re sweeping up minions and give you some healing that way.
Just watch out for abilities that deal irreducible damage, which can’t be inverted into healing that way. For ex, Blaster archetypes can’t avoid self-damage from Heedless blast even if they have the right Energy Immunity.
And yes, if you’re willing to use two Red abilities on the combination of Eruption and Improved Immunity it is pretty darned good. It better be for that opportunity cost.
