@Crimson Raven Hmm. Sibling pair might be okay, depending on your choice of classes.
As for starting weapons, there aren't any real weapon rankings - weapon quality is divided by material (bronze, iron, steel, silver) and higher materials are more rare but better for enchantments. When I say to be reasonable, I ask what your character would probably have; iron is what you're most likely to have, maybe steel if you're really well off.
A unique or named weapon you start with can have a unique design, but won't function too much differently than a normal weapon of the same material aside from one minor trait (maybe it stays sharp better or is built for your specific fighting style - you would specify when you create it). A weapon that 'gains power as the user does' is probably just a little too much.
@AquaAzura Really, wherever we can work them in. If they are meant to be of a higher level, then they're likely to show up around the time units would reach that level.
One's backstory will be reviled I.C. I decided not to go with a custom class because there were already classes that fit perfectly.
Name: Marcone Raith
Race: Beorc
Age: 25 Appearance:
Taller of the two at 6'5".
Class: Tactition Proficient In: Swords Tomes Features: Terror: Units hit take more damage from this unit and do less damage to it.
Strength - C Agility - D Constitution - C Mentality - C Skill - C Inventory:
and a Nosferatu
Personality: Marcone is laid back to the point of lazy. A brilliant strategist, but also an antisocial wiseass who is skilled at deception and a good liar. Sharp tongued and often pessimistic, he doesn't seem like a very nice guy, yet has a strong sense of loyalty and often goes out of his way to help people. He is rational and analytical even when under extreme pressure and has momentous stubbornness that is often mistaken for resolve. His humor is so dry that it dehumidifies the air around him, but all too often goes unappreciated. This comes with a purposefully irritating personality that leaves little room for friends.
He has a darker side to his personality, he can be merciless and sometimes cruel. He enjoys the thrill of battle, testing his strength against others and beating them.
Biography: He is a very mysterious person who has a long dark history that he would rather forget. He won't talk about it with anyone. Recently, he joined his younger brother and they are now traveling together as free-lance mercenaries.
Additional Info: Tends to stay up until late at night.
Strength - C Agility - C Constitution - C Mentality - D Skill - B Inventory: Folly: A broken black katana. Iron Sword
Personality: Aris is a highly skilled swordsman who aspires to master the sword. At first, he seems to be a serious, no non-sense person, but he has an excellent, subtle sense of humor and a grin that is rare and mischievous when it appears.
Biography: Born in the snowy north in a nameless village with his older brother, Marcone, to a very poor family. Their parents died from sickness, forcing them to live on the streets and steal to stay alive. As they grew up, they learned how to fight and trained day after day. The brothers were nigh inseparable, always covering for each other. But one day, a band of some Bandits took over the town and subjugated it. But after only six months, most of the people rebelled and tried to dive them away. The fighting was fierce and the town was soon ablaze. During the chaos, the brothers were separated in a burning building. Aris got out safely but Marcone was nowhere to be found. In the aftermath, most of the bandits and the townsfolk were dead and town was burned to the ground. Aris decided to try to make it to a city to make a living somehow. Unfortunately he never made it, the cold was too much and he collapsed in the middle of a blizzard. But, as luck would have it a mercenary band called Silver Falcon was traveling through. They found him, saved his life and took him in. He lived with the band for many years and they taught him all about the arts of war. Many years later he decided to leave the band and go off as a freelance mercenary where he quickly built a formidable reputation as a very reliable merc. All that time he believed his brother to be dead, but one day, out of nowhere, his brother found him and approached him. They now are traveling together.
Additional Info: Horrible morning person, and as a result is very fond of coffee.
Ok, just got back from work everyone, I'll get on the fixes ASAP.
EDIT: Alright, keeping the class feature intact as it is, fixed the stat spread, and hopefully fixed the image. Not necessarily all done in that order.
Features: Quality over Quantity- When nearby enemies outnumber nearby allies; Setce gains 1 rank in Skill and Constitution.
Stats Strength - B Agility - D Constitution - C Mentality - E Skill - A
Inventory: Iron Axe, Vulenary
Personality: Setce is a no nonsense kind of girl. Always straight to the point and usually as blunt as a hammer she says what she thinks and thinks what she says. She's always eager to make a new friend, sometimes overly so, but despite her seemingly flightiness she can be trusted with anything. Once Setce sets her heart on something there's very little that can stop her. Despite her friendly attitude and willingness to help she's used to being different and has developed a bit of a thick skin. Setce tends to not like people such as cowards, liars, and lazy people as she has dealt with more than enough of them.
Setce was born a branded and sadly like most branded, was not raised by her parents. Instead she was dropped off and raised by an elderly old man who had lost his wife several years ago and was living alone on the edge of town. Though he quickly learned of her 'condition' he still cared for her like she was a daughter. Setce grew up doing a lot of housework and the like as her 'grandfather' had some difficulty with it in his old age. Often times it was chopping wood so she learned how to use an axe, other times it was simply fetching water from a nearby river so naturally she developed some muscles as a result.
Whenever Setce headed into town the other children seemed to avoid her for some reason. Curios to know why she asked, her grandfather explained the situation to her as he saw no point in hiding it. Though she couldn't understand why her being a halfbreed made others not like her she accepted it. In Setce's case her Laguz traits manifested in her unusually feline face and heightened senses, as well as a mark on the back of her neck; usually covered by her hair. This treatment towards her only got worse as she got older, eventually her grandfather began worrying about what would happen to her when he was gone. He told Setce that after he was gone that she was to take what money was in his strongbox and travel, see the world, work odd jobs and the like. When the old man eventually meet his time she reluctantly did as she was told, taking the money and following the road from town to town. Never staying in one place for too long.
She ended up with some experience joining a militia for some time before leaving to serve as a caravan guard. After seeing her skills fighting off a nasty bunch of bandits one of the other guards offered her a place with a mercenary group that he worked with. Thinking that at the very least it was another job for a while, and even more perhaps that she could stay there, after all mercenaries basically had to be pretty accepting right. Before that after a month or some people for some reason started to become wary of her, as though she had overstayed her welcome, Setce longed for a place where she was welcomed.
@Eklispe The stat values read 4, 3, 3, 1, and 5 respectively- that adds up to 16. That puts you only one point over, since you chose just one proficiency. No big deal, just subtract one rank from any stat (except Mentality) and you're good to go.
Looks alright otherwise, but Quality Over Quantity is way too powerful of a skill to be having at this stage - you would essentially gain the ability of a promoted character every time you found yourself outnumbered in the immediate area. It's situational, but extremely powerful for those situations. Either tone it down to boosting just one stat, or give it a different effect, like boosting the rate or Critical Hits or something.
...Oops. That's what I get for not reading the whole thread.
@Eisenhorn Everything looks to be in order, but keep in mind that since our initial group will be mostly run by the players, you may be asked to alter your history if want to be in the initial group - otherwise, you could always retain your separate history and simply choose to join the players later, under some circumstances. We'll figure it out once we get the OOC started proper.
@AquaAzura You wouldn't need to change anything fundamental about your biography, but it should be explained why such a high-status character like her would bother with a simple lowly mercenary group. Is she just using them as an escort, or does she see something in this group that made her want to join? But yes, she would otherwise be ready to go.
@Crimson Raven An interesting pair; reminds me of Dante and Vergil from Devil May Cry, if their roles were reversed. You left out their class features, however, and 'Uses Dark Magic' is a repetitive feature when he is already listed to use dark tomes. They may be default classes, so to speak, but they should still have unique class features (as explained in Character Creation). I can't stop stop you if you want to go without, but you'll be putting yourself at a slight disadvantage for it.
Another detail to note is your weapons- firstly, your greatsword image doesn't link properly (even though I managed to find the image you meant to link to). You might also want to list the base material of your weapons (bronze, iron, steel, etc) so that we can get a general idea of the weapon's quality, even if their make might suggest otherwise. And is that greatsword mysterious just by nature, or does it have some yet-to-be-revealed ability? If it's the latter, tell me about it; you can use PMs if you'd like to keep it secret. And in the meanwhile, I might also like to know where he got his hands on a Nosferatu tome, but if you can justify that I won't ask you to remove it.
You guys are really hammering it out so far. Let us wait for a few more people to join (or Corporal Lance to return, whichever comes first) and we can get to work on the OOC for you all. Thank you for being patient.
@Penultimate_Pi Alright, I can really just add on a bit where the mercenaries he's running with get wiped out by the vastly larger military they parked themselves in front of, and that would free him up to be with the main group, just like that.
@Eisenhorn Like I said, whatever works. You can choose to bring him in initially or slightly after that, just tell me which. Hell, you could almost even kick off the plot for the players to make them realize they're about to be attacked by the encroaching army.
@Crimson Raven Lemme clarify one thing about Terror... "Units hit take more damage from this unit and do less damage to it," means that when you hit units, you 'frighten' them to produce the following effect, right? I want to make sure I'm understanding this correctly.
A forged Killing Edge is passable, but combined with Indomitable Spirit, that's going to spit out a lot of Critical Hits. Just be aware that a Killing Edge and similar blades tend to be more fragile that most swords, and a forged weapon does only a little to mitigate that.
@Penultimate_Pi Hmm, that bit about warning the other players could actually work better than I had planned for Shaeld initially. That sounds like a good idea, Shaeld was sent to warn the nearest grouping of people, the players in this case, before or even during the last clash between the mercenaries and encroaching army.
@Crimson Raven Lemme clarify one thing about Terror... "Units hit take more damage from this unit and do less damage to it," means that when you hit units, you 'frighten' them to produce the following effect, right? I want to make sure I'm understanding this correctly.
A forged Killing Edge is passable, but combined with Indomitable Spirit, that's going to spit out a lot of Critical Hits. Just be aware that a Killing Edge and similar blades tend to be more fragile that most swords, and a forged weapon does only a little to mitigate that.
Essentially, yes. It doesn't have to be a very big change, I'll leave the actual amount to you.
So he simply would have to take good care of it right?
Added Branded under Races, adjusted the wording of skill rank cost that @Eklispe pointed out was confusing.
@Crimson Raven Link on the Greatsword is still broken for me, just in case you made an attempt at a fix. "Terror" is a pretty powerful skill, so expect modest bonuses instead of game-changing ones. The opposite of Pi, I'm completely fine with Nosferatu as it's decently common in Awakening but am totally against giving any starting character something like a Killing Edge, especially a specially crafted one. In this game we're using overall craftsmanship of a weapon to determine its value, and Killing Edges are already well-forged weapons. You can keep Folly, I'll let that go, if you agree to it being forged down. As in it was broken at some point and is now weaker as a result and on par with other starting weapons. I'm also pretty okay with a Greatsword that has latent power but is essentially just a hunk of iron at the beginning, as other players will be acquiring awesome gear as they progress you'll just "unlock" your weapon's latent potential. Backstory on the Raith brothers is good, I like Marcone's personality, points are good.
@Eklispe I like your character, and if you wanted to have "Quality over Quantity" give another point in another skill I'd let you. This is because players can already have one flat point in a skill as their Class Feature if they choose to do so, so I wouldn't want you to get screwed over for having a neat feature.
As a general notice to all, keep in mind to have your characters' starting weapons fairly simple. You'll get the cool stuff later on as you play, and if you start with a mysterious axe forged from the souls of tigers and drinks blood to gain strength you don't really have anywhere to go but down, do you? Stats and cool features don't mean much anyway, they're just a way to gauge character ability against each other, what everyone is good at and known for and what they should probably be doing on the battlefield.
I get on my flight at 1245 tomorrow, so after I get off tonight I probably won't be on until Sunday sometime.
@Crimson Raven Link on the Greatsword is still broken for me, just in case you made an attempt at a fix. "Terror" is a pretty powerful skill, so expect modest bonuses instead of game-changing ones. The opposite of Pi, I'm completely fine with Nosferatu as it's decently common in Awakening but am totally against giving any starting character something like a Killing Edge, especially a specially crafted one. In this game we're using overall craftsmanship of a weapon to determine its value, and Killing Edges are already well-forged weapons. You can keep Folly, I'll let that go, if you agree to it being forged down. As in it was broken at some point and is now weaker as a result and on par with other starting weapons. I'm also pretty okay with a Greatsword that has latent power but is essentially just a hunk of iron at the beginning, as other players will be acquiring awesome gear as they progress you'll just "unlock" your weapon's latent potential. Backstory on the Raith brothers is good, I like Marcone's personality, points are good.
Okay I had an idea consenting Folly. Right now it is broken and he needs a sufficiently skillful smith to repair it, trouble is, the metal is hard to work with so he can't just repair it at the local smithery. He will fight with an iron sword for now. I did use a different link to the greatsword, still broken? It works fine for me.