Hey guys. *waves* So I've been following along since this started in the hopes that I'll be able to join in once real life allows, and I can't help but have a few concerns with Dag's latest post.

To start, Dag's character is already stronger than Drall's, and has a massive advantage in the areas of durability, adaptability, and ranged attacks (advantages that he also has over every other character in the RP), and now when he's faced with an opponent who would normally be much faster than himself (unless I'm mistaken, Mifune would have to move at more than 500 mph to achieve the effect stated in his bio), he randomly grants the character a speed boost in the form of a rune gift from his patron god (not something his bio says he can do, unless it's not in the character section). This speed boost apparently makes the stronger, massively more durable and adaptable, powerfully ranged character just as fast as the one focused solely on speed. Is that really gonna fly?

Well, there are such things as superior opponents. My character was completely outclassed, but i fought Herriman anyways. I believe, each person should be able to respond to, or even choose not to fight, their opponents. When someone is outclassed, abd they choose to fight anyways, that is a fault on their end a well. Herriman was also mentioned to be ALMOST as fast as Mifune, so he still does not outclass him in that aspect.

You still do have a valid point, i think that the speed blessing (since already used, and responded to) should have a time limit or expiration of sorts, to balance it since we cant pretend it didnt happen anymore. Were several post too deep for that.

I have intents to later on (if im allowed) apply with a character that will have physical and ranged advantages across the board, but a major mental disadvantage, and equipment disadvantage. Im just working on specs and balancing it. I bring this up to point out that there are more aspects to make a character superior, such as a mental advantage, or even personality. Mifune apears to be calmer and more collected, plus seems to be built as a glass cannon. He seems to rely on singular high power strikes at close range. Herriman may make a single false move that ends the entirety of the fight when Mifune counters.

Just have the moon godess debilitatingly smite Herriman for calling her a bitch. :P

Vordak said
Just have the moon godess debilitatingly smite Herriman for calling her a bitch. :P

What A Gmthing to do... Wait a second... That would start a war amungst the gods for certain! Buut... Were already fighting their wars for them... Hmmm this shal certainly need to be settled. THIS CALLS FOR MORE CHAMPIONS TO FIGHT TO THE DEATH! Let us take these matters to the arena! HUZAAAH!

That would have been so hilarious

"So your bitch goddess can-" *SPLOTCH*

But seriously, I can't have been the only one to come up with the idea of getting a blessing from your god to better match your opponent. Besides, after that was one, built-up attack w/follow-up, Herriman's not going to be going that fast anyways.

To be honest, I think Herriman is actually naturally a tad bit on the "possible overpowered" side, since his power comes from being able to do something new every turn, and adapt to the situation. At least with the eyes, he can keep up with Mifune, but trust me, he's going to start slowing down soon. There's an art to beating someone with super-speed, and its way beyond me.

To be clear, Herriman is a lot more than just a tad bit overpowered compared to the rest of the characters. His animal skin alone means he only takes the damage you want him to take, since there are no limits or restrictions on what it can and can't block and how much. It's a Deus Ex Machina that can save him from anything you can't think up another counter for.

And then there's the magic. Which has no limit on how much he can use or what he can do with it. Based on what you describe in his bio, he could destroy a planet and still be within his "limits".

Next we have the shapeshifting. Which also has no defined limits. If he so wished, Herriman could make himself two hundred feet tall and just stomp anyone in the arena to death. Or get rid of his vital organs and weak spots by altering his interior biology to be more like that of the planarian worm.

Each of these alone would allow him to outclass every character he's fought thus far, but they're not why I brought this up. I brought it up because Dag PGed when he gave Herriman the speed boost. It doesn't matter what you think of in an arena setting if that thing isn't allowed for by your CS. If I had a character with super strength fighting a water monster, and thought of turning it to steam with fire breath, it does me no good whatsoever unless my character was accepted with that ability.

Put simply: You can't just make shit up on the spot because you're afraid your opponent might beat you.

If you want to use blessings, that should be a trait given to all the characters and their gods and specific blessings added to each CS, not made up on the spot to remove your only physical weakness, especially when you already outclass your opponent in every single other area.

And since you bring up receiving blessings to better match your opponent, does that mean Mifune should receive massive blessings in strength, durability, and magical powers? Because that's what it would take to even come close to "better matching" Herriman.

(getting a little frustrated, since this is the second time I've tried to post this)

Okay, listen up folks, I'm about to teach someone how to read a character sheet and be reasonable. Before I even begin, allow me to bring up the fact that my character was, in fact, accepted as he is now, with the other characters no doubt taken into mind. If Light felt that Herriman was a bit out of proportion to the other characters, he/she would have no doubt let me know.

1. The animal skin provides protection like a suit of invisible, magical armor. Seeing as how everyone here is the champion of a freaking god, I figured generic "magical armor" would be par for the course, almost a token item. I didn't specify its degree of protection, because I assumed magical armor was going to be a standard. If not having everything perfectly cut out for you to digest has you frothing at the mouth, (and the fight with Herriman and Mifune hasn't given you a single clue) here's the specifics: The animal skin protects Herriman like a suit of enchanted plate armor, except invisible and much lighter (as light as a bigass beast pelt could be). The visible armor around his body is mostly there just for show, made out of mundane iron, something that should be like cardboard to the champion of a god.

Also, I find it funny that you say it can block whatever I want it to, when Mifune's sword clearly penetrated it to cut Herriman on the side. Just saying.

2. The magic. I have nothing to say on this, other than you seem to have the words "Potent" and "Can destroy a planet without pushing his limits" greatly confused.

3. I really like how you mislabeled the mutation ability as "shapeshifting". Makes it sound so much easier to bash on. A mutation is a change or modification, in it's simplest terms. Granted, I did say he can "alter himself in terrifying and dramatic ways", but he's done nothing greater than changing his left arm, growing hooks on his flesh, or growing eyes. Now, a normal human being would take these and be all "huh, that is pretty dramatic. Hell, if I could grow eyeballs all over my body, it'd also be terrifying". If I could have done any of the stupid overpowered crap you said I could do, I still wouldn't have, because I'd get lynched in the OOC.

You pulled "growing 200 feet tall and crushing his opponents" completely out of your ass, and used it against me like it was evidence. Please don't insult everyone here with baseless bullcrap like that.

4. I built Herriman with "Champion of a great god" in mind. If everyone else decided they want to be kung-fu college-aged boy wizards (with no armor that relies on quickness), samurais (with no armor that rely on quickness), and a pair of teenage nature girls (Champions or not, these girls would never be able to reach Herriman's level of physicality anyways), that's on them, and that's their decision. Trying to call my character overpowered when everyone else made characters like these (no offense meant to anyone here, all your characters are great!) is a moot point. Trying to use that in an argument against me is pants-on-head retarded.

5. Finally, we come to the blessing. Do I even need to justify this? EVERYONE HERE IS THE CHAMPION OF A POWERFUL DIVINE ENTITY! Is it such a goddamn stretch of the imagination that any one of could ask for a quick speed/strength/whatever boost prior to a battle? Herriman's little speed blessing only lasted one round. one round, and it still wasn't enough to get Mifune. All it got Herriman was a cut on the side.

In a combat role play that isn't based on stats, it's hard to make sure that everyone is on an even playing field. But since none of you can really DIE, and you aren't particularly antagonistic to each other, it's not so much an issue. I do have other events and characters planned to balance out some rather powerful abilities your characters might have.

Ultimately you guys will be allies, or at least that's plan right now.

you probably should have hinted at that BEFORE Herriman called Mifune's wife a bitch.

I guess I wasn't clear enough in the first two posts.

The issue I raised was never about the stuff in Herriman's CS. That stuff was approved and since I'm not a GM I don't have any ground to criticize that decision.

The only reason I specifically brought up the abilities listed in the CS was because you first brought up the use of divine blessings to "better match" your opponent. The only purpose I had in bringing up the abilities in the CS was to demonstrate that Herriman already vastly outmatched Mifune, whether he was slow or not (even if we take Herriman's demonstrations of power thus far to be his absolute limits, which I'm sure they aren't). Arguing that blessings should be allowed in order to better match an opponent would only work against you.

All that said, I don't give a rat's ass how you use the abilities in your CS. For all I care, you COULD grow to 200 feet tall and wipe out a planet. That's something for the participants and the GM's to hash out. What I DO care about is whether or not writers in this RP are allowed to make up new abilities on the spot with apparently no limits or guidelines in order to gain an even greater upper hand than they already have. I care about this because it will have a fairly strong effect on my desire to join this RP. For some people, fighting an opponent who can randomly receive new and powerful abilities that effectively cancel out their only disadvantage might be their cup of tea, but I prefer combat RP in which both combatants have pre-specified abilities that they can use, and they stick to those abilities (with room for creative license. Such as a fire and earth manipulator making lava, but not someone with super-strength suddenly breathing fire, as mentioned previously).

Statless can be great fun, but it's not the same thing as lawless. It's not an even playing field that concerns me (just ask Drall, I've fought him while at a physical disadvantage before and it was great fun), but the apparent lack of any sort of binding structure regarding character abilities.

yeah schradingers right, and he's a mad good writer. He managed to pretty much finish of my Boy Aureo with some weapon X girl, and he managed to keep Gemini at bay even when severely outmatched in strength.

Player parties don't always have to love each other. I'm in a Pathfinder group where one of our party members ended up betraying the rest of us, almost died at our hands, left on his own adventure, and then came back. And now we're allies again. Character development happens and it would be boring if everyone happily held hands all the time.

Yes I do think that randomly gaining new powers such as mid-battle is something that shouldn't be. Technically, the things Herriman has shown to be able to do are not in conflict with his CS, but if other players feel like he's a bit to powerful, I would ask that you tone it down Daglobster.

Eventually you will be more commonly fighting together rather than against each other, allowing a bit more freedom in gaining and expressing more power. And of course I'll simply scale the difficulty of your enemies to match.

Light said Yes I do think that randomly gaining new powers such as mid-battle is something that shouldn't be. Technically, the things Herriman has shown to be able to do are not in conflict with his CS, but if other players feel like he's a bit to powerful, I would ask that you tone it down Daglobster.

I reiterate again (three cheers for redundancy!), I have no issue with how Herriman has used the powers in his CS. It's the massive speed boost Dag gave him (which ISN'T allowed for in the CS or the RP's pre-stated mechanics, only inferred from the setting), that concerns me. You pretty well just said that doing that is not going to be allowed, so that should take care of that concern.

Thank you. :)

Schradinger said
It's the massive speed boost Dag gave him (which ISN'T allowed for in the CS or the RP's pre-stated mechanics, only inferred from the setting), that concerns me.

Every player's Champion is the servant of a powerful being, one who could easily grant such a boon. Instead of banning such a thing in the future, I would like to state that it should be an option available to all players. However I would ask that such a blessing be used tastefully, and not abused.

Light said
Every player's Champion is the servant of a powerful being, one who could easily grant such a boon. Instead of banning such a thing in the future, I would like to state that it should be an option available to all players. However I would ask that such a blessing be used tastefully, and not abused.

My proposal for such a thing would be to add a Blessings section to each CS, and have several pre-accepted blessings that a character can have bequeathed upon them once per "day" (the days would likely be each series of matches). That way you allow room for the blessings without flying in the face of common dueling courtesy. I would also recommend that the blessings have time limits relative to their overall power.

Without an allowance in the rules for such a thing, calling it a blessing doesn't change the fact that it's still PGing and really poor sportsmanship.

Yeah a Blessing section would be pretty good. I'll work it into the CS template tomorrow. Other than that, Schradinger, please feel free to make a CS if you want.

Yo schradinger you should bring Arthur and make him Adrian's champion just for LOLZ.

Light said
Yeah a Blessing section would be pretty good. I'll work it into the CS template tomorrow. Other than that, Schradinger, please feel free to make a CS if you want.

I'm actually working on one now.

Arthur would pretty much clean house with any of the fighters here. He's just as fast as Mifune, likely stronger and tougher than even Herriman, and can kill just about anyone with a single touch. All that in mind, I'm thinking up a new character who'll probably be the champion of Hephaestus.

forge god eh? im guessing heavy armor.

You'll have to wait and see. ;)