Knights vs Dragons

[Thinslayer]

@Lumiere Magic was off the table, initially. I guess I kind of changed my mind part way through. If you want, I'll let you tweak your character. I really like her as-is, though. There are only so many hours in a day, and those who spend them learning magic are not spending them honing their martial skills. Your character brings dueling skills that sword mages just can't compete with.

[unicorgi]

ok this is my last dumb question
can my character be partly dragon?

[Thinslayer]

@unicorgi
No. This is a story about humans. The nearest equivalent to dragon-people are kobolds, who live in Riftgard with the dwarves, but we're not playing any monsters until we reach their respective domains.

[unicorgi]

:( durn it my character had a whole revenge thingy with the dragon oh well :P

[Rhiven Knight]

You could always play a character with issues with dragons that makes themselves and their skills in the image of a dragon with the intent of becoming like them to gain strength like theirs? That would allow you both a thematic image as a 'Dragon' Knight, and also allow you to play in the rp as a human?

[unicorgi]

Full Name
the viscountess Ysabelle Runeglass
Reference Image

All Points Bulletin:
Birthdate: 8/6/3130
hair color: blonde
eye color: blue
skin color: fair
species: human
Possessions: sword, pouch of runestones, enchanted shield (has a sort of pocket attached to it that is bigger on the inside where she keeps her stuff(shield, armor, enchanted map,
Relationships: her father is the duke.
Skills & Abilities: a great fighter who has been training her whole life, is amazing at anything to do with parkour (this world examples would be gymnastics, Equestrian vaulting, track, and hurdles, trapeze, etc you get the idea), horse riding, and knows some spells and some rune magic, hunting; scavenging; gathering, scouting, cooking, other wilderness survival, and knows many languages.
Blurb: wanted to become a knight to help people, her father finally let her try out some of the training and she turned out ot be very skilled at it.

[Thinslayer]

@Lumiere@Vega7@Darkwatck01@Celsius@Rhiven Knight@Pie Flavor@unicorgi
I think I got so carried away trying to make everyone's characters awesome that I forgot about the needs of the story, and more importantly, made Lumiere (rightly) feel cheated and left behind. You all are important to me; I want you guys to be proud of the characters you've created and to have fun with them. So we gotta fix this, and I'll need your help to do it. I have a few proposals that I'd like your input on.

• We leave everything as-is and acknowledge the power differential between Aarkanhan Elzbrn and the other knights, and allow the character a greater story role to compensate. I have mixed feelings about this proposal. I'd like all the characters to be balanced between each other, since they all need to contribute equally to the party, and who's to say they won't turn on each other someday?
• We raise Aarkanhan's magic-power level to everyone else's, and we can let Lumiere decide on the details. The upside is, it efficiently balances the character. The downsides are, it gives Lumiere extra work to do, and it doesn't address the risk that all of us together may be a bit too powerful for the story.
• We drop everyone else's power level to match Aarkanhan's, going back to the core fantasy that this RP establishes. This is the second most work-intensive (and potentially demoralizing) option. Facing down a world-ending power with only your wits and a sword is what this story is all about, and I feel it would be better-served with characters at a more human power level. Lumiere's character won't be so different from everyone else's anymore, but we'll have to undergo extensive character sheet nerfs and reworks to do it.
• Everyone has two versions of their character: the entry-level version they start out with, and the high-level version they upgrade to. Lumiere's character is the entry-level version, and everyone else's is the high-level version. In other words, y'all aren't done yet with your character sheets. This is the most work-intensive option, but less demoralizing than the previous option. I recommend this one.

Your thoughts, everyone?

[unicorgi]

i just realized
the little tag on your posts in this thread
say you are op
lol

[Rhiven Knight]

I am happy submitting a new character at a matching tier, allowing her to tune up slightly while we tune down or rewrite to a lower tier, or really explicitely whatever.

I wouldnt feel demoralized reworking the character, to find a comfortable tier. I also wouldnt object to most of the options, I think the last option is definately the hardest, since we already envisioned these characters as a starting point, rather than an ending point, so if you opted for the last option I would probably ask for the chance to just create a new character that has room to grow more naturally.

So If we are keeping characters a tune up for her or a tune down for everyone is perfectly acceptable, but it should be pretty explicitly clear what power tier you are aiming at.

I am also fine with resets to zero, and creating characters at 'peak' human level that can grow as they are exposed to these heroic and legendary challenges.

In any case I think the core is finding the power tier that feels right to you, then expanding on options that work at that power tier, to allow us room to create unique characters that can grow and develop into something befitting dragon slayers.

Sorry if some of those thoughts are jumbled.

[Thinslayer]

@unicorgi
Original Poster, but OverPowered works too. xD

[Rhiven Knight]

To expand and clarify on the idea of defined power tiers, and how you might turn that into a way to express uniqueness.

I Could think of Knights as ranked individuals, with each rank they earn granting them the privilege of having the spell coders generate and send them custom skill crystals that can be equipped to their gear. Meanwhile magismiths or engineers as we progress could provide gear with equipable slots, and you could control our relative power tier by controlling how many equippable slots we had, and approving our skill requests.

[unicorgi]

my character only has small magical abilities

[Rhiven Knight]

@unicorgi it isnt necessarily a slight at you, but that could mean anything and I feel like the flux of this conversation is that without being identical these characters should be as close to equivalent as their disperate skills allow, and still grant us as players unique flavor options.

[unicorgi]

ok

[Celsius]

Personally I don't mind toning down my CS. I started out being underpowered too anyway, so I will just revert to that ^^;

OR

I can make my character younger, and while she still have powerful mana, her ability is not fully developed, and she will have trouble controlling her power etc, and get her to improve over time.

OR

I keep the character the way it is, but make her inexperience a rather major issue and potential character development point.

PS.
I made my characters 25 years old because average human life span is 120 years (my rudimentary calculations put her to the equivalent of 16-17 years old teenagers of our world) because my intent is for her to be a naive teenager in her rebellious phase. How do the people of this RP age and mature anyway? Should I reduce her age after all?

[Lumiere]

I'm perfectly fine with picking up a magic item or two. Otherwise, its really not a big deal. I wasn't implying that I'd have made a mage if I thought it was an option, I kinda like what I have going.
I'll just have Aark be the martial swordsman of the group. I mean, they already have the best armor of the group and can probably bench-press half of the party. :P

Theres a lot of room for expression left by their otherwise mundane methods.

[Rhiven Knight]

it sounds like as a group we are pretty much willing to adjust to what the dms call is. Looks like a good sign to me. Let us know how you want to handle it ThinSlayer.

Edit: I have been up all night and most of yesterday, I am probably going to lay down at in ten minutes, unless I have a sheet project to finish for here.

Edit 2: Off to sleep will review anything that comes up after sleeping.

[Thinslayer]

If it helps, here's the upgrade scheme I have planned out.

Firstly, the dragon is way OP. Even at our current, unmodified power levels, we can't take him on. The dragons were created to fight off whole armies of demigods, and as such can only be slain with godlike power. So we don't need to worry about how strong we are at first, because nobody is strong enough. We'll acquire that strength through certain items, and we'll need all of them to even have a chance against the dragon. These items are scattered throughout the continent, giving us the impetus we need to explore the world of Aion.

I haven't decided on all the dragonslayer equipment yet, but there are a few that our characters would probably know about through myths and legends.

• Dawnblade: A mythical longsword whose edge is infinitely thin, unbreakable, and cuts through every substance in the world like butter. The blade shimmers with a golden hue that makes it impossible to miss. According to its User Manual, the weapon assigns ownership to the first person who grabs the hilt, and shuts down anyone else who tries to take it. Its last owner was its creator, and only its creator can reset ownership.
• Duskblade: The sister weapon to the Dawnblade, likewise unbreakable. This longsword inflicts un-healable wounds, and any living thing cut by its blade is cursed to die. Its combat properties are otherwise equivalent to any other high-quality sword. Since the weapon possesses no unique visual features, it has been lost to time.
• Aegis: A large, unbreakable shield that reflects anything that strikes it. There is a trigger on the handlegrip that activates a spherical protection field in a 1-meter radius (though doing so negates the shield's reflective power).
• Titan: A necklace with an ancient medallion that, when grabbed, materializes a suit of powered armor over the wearer from head to toe. The armor vastly enhances the wearer's strength, speed, and dexterity to near godlike levels, and possesses a mysterious protective field able to stop nearly anything this world can throw at it. The ancients considered this their weakest armor.
• Luna: A silver bow that fires magical light-arrows. The arrows are not affected by wind or gravity, and thus fly straight and true. Up to three may be fired at once. Each arrow possesses enough piercing power to rip through multiple armored targets.
• Magic Gauntlets: A pair of gauntlets that tap into the user's bloodstream, allowing even non-mages to cast magic. They can draw from ambient mana in much the same way people naturally do, which allows the user tremendous freedom to cast whatever spells they want at minimal cost to themselves.

[unicorgi]

ooh i like those gauntlets

[Thinslayer]

Full Name
the duchess Ysabelle Runeglass

Reference Image

All Points Bulletin:
Birthdate: 8/6/3130
hair color: blonde
eye color: blue
skin color: fair
species: human
Possessions: sword, pouch of runestones, enchanted shield (has a sort of pocket attached to it that is bigger on the inside where she keeps her stuff (shield, armor, enchanted map))
Relationships: her father is the duke.
Skills & Abilities: a great fighter who has been training her whole life, is amazing at anything to do with parkour (this world examples would be gymnastics, Equestrian vaulting, track, and hurdles, trapeze, etc you get the idea), horse riding, and knows some spells and some rune magic, hunting; scavenging; gathering, scouting, cooking, other wilderness survival, and knows many languages.
Blurb: she is out for revenge. the dragons killed her mother when she was only 6 years old, right in front of her during a family camping trip she was hiding behind a rock as her mother told her to. she has wanted revenge ever since and has been very serious about her training, although all that couldn't stop her from having her funny and kind personality.

@unicorgi

Not too fond of the revenge plot. Most people become knights either to help people in need or to achieve glory and recognition, not because of some tragic backstory or anything. If you're really keen on writing her a revenge story, I suggest making the whole character revolve around it. Her funny and kind personality will take a back seat when vengeance is driving, which would give her good room for development.