[OOC] Dragonball: Final Hours

[Thess]

@BCTheEntity Alright, I approve the character.

[BCTheEntity]

@Thess Ossem. Uh, I don't know if I asked this already, but when are we planning on starting this up?

[Thess]

@BCTheEntity I plan on getting the opening post up tonight, started working on it already. If not tonight, then tomorrow.

[Halvtand]

3. I mean... when I say absurd, I mean really a whole hell of a lot of power is gained from Namekian fusion. Nail had a power level of 42000, and Piccolo presumably didn't have much more than that, if he wasn't in fact weaker; yet their fused state escalated Piccolo's power level to more than a million, most likely at least 1.2 million or so given the difference between how he does in his fights against Frieza's second and third forms. Even if we assume that Piccolo miraculously reached a PL of 58000 from his sub-Nappa strength prior to death whilst training with King Kai to round off the combined PL of him and Nail to 100000, that's still a twelve times multiplier on that amount of power, minimum, and it's far more likely that their combined PL was closer to 50000, requiring a multiplier of twenty four times to reach the 1.2 million minimum (lets assume the PL of fusing Namekians is added together prior to the multiplier itself), and probably twenty five times if we assume both the initial combined PL and the fusion multiplier are relatively round numbers. Piccolo's fusion with Kami was presumably a less dramatic boost than that, but given how much weaker Kami was than Piccolo at that stage, and the fact that Piccolo was already a fused being (suggesting reduced potential in future fusions), it'd still have been pretty impressive. Long story short, even the lowest possible combined PL between Harkon and Limic, 950, would likely have resulted in a PL of just under 24000, and the higher number of 1150 would have given even more than that, nearly 29000. In short, Harkon's far too weak for a fused Namekian.

@BCTheEntity

This is really interesting, and I think your calculations are logical. That big flaw here is that we don't know Piccolos power level pre-fusion. The latest number we have is around 3500 while fighting Nappa, which must have changed otherwise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsMSiVn6vpQ
In my search for a reasonable power level for Piccolo pre-fusion I found one thing that is slightly more reliable than the thoughts of mr random internet person who once saw an animu. A published RPG with the DBZ logo on it. Granted, this was before people cared much about the integrity of IPs, but at least it's something. link: http://dragonball.wikia.com/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Z:_The_Anime_Adventure_Game
This list states that Piccolo's power after training with King Kai is 800,000. Nail at 42,000. Post-fusion 1,200,000.
With these numbers as a base the power increase was less than 50%, which makes Harkon's and Limac's fusion much more reasonable.
This is of course with the assumption that the power increase is made with a set multiplier instead of with an accumulative scale.

Anyway. I don't think there will ever be a solid right answer to this. In the end the fusion is simply a plot device and the power level of Harkon is set pretty low because I don't want this character to be the big and powerful dude that he might be if all rules were followed to the letter. If it bothers you, we can write something about it in-game after he's had a big power surge, something about the corruption holding back his true power or something like that.

4. ...I mean, maybe? I'm just saying, one clean hit with even a single shuriken could probably take any human-sized target's head off, and it doesn't seem like it takes much time to create one. I'd have figured the actual difficulty in the technique isn't in the amount of ki you put in, but in the way it's spun to form a razor edge, presumably with most of the disc's ki focused at that edge, which is why they're always made to be so large in canon - you may as well make it as likely to hit as you can get, especially since the disc always seem to be going at a fair clip (not the Final Flash's "across the galaxy and blowing up a distant planet in a few seconds" fast, but not overly slow either), and since one can figure out ways of telekinetically manipulating any given disc.

@BCTheEntity

I agree with this whole quote, and when this character is facing Mooks or other unimportant NPC's this will be a pretty devastating technique. But the important thing is that mooks are mooks for a reason, they're pretty much just filler. When the real fighting begins (against other players or GM-controlled enemies) I expect everything to be dealt with in a more lore-friendly way. What's important is that the story we write is interesting and fun. I'm not after a "always kill"-attack, I just think the destructo-disc is cool as hell and wanted to make a character that has it as a theme.

5. Maybe Guru's powerup unlocked Dende's native potential for magic, and Healing just happened to be the field he was naturally skilled in. Maybe his potential unlocking ability had two different types, with the magic type only working on beings with the potential for magic, i.e. not most humans or Saiyans, and certainly not those with a generally martial inclination. Or it just changes what it does depending on what significant potential it senses within any given being. My point is, there's a few possible reasons why Dende suddenly acquired healing abilities, and since he didn't show any potential in ki usage either before then, I have trouble imagining that he had "special ki" which needed its potential unlocking when there's clearly a precedent for magical healing, both in-series and in this game.

@BCTheEntity

I see your point, the only thing I can correct here is that Dende did show that he could manipulate ki by flying. Other than that I have to agree, we have no idea how Guru's unlocking actually works, it could be any of these things or fifty others. I can't really argue here.
I think I'll leave this up to the GM. If necessary I will change the healing to a mystic art and write some shit about it.

[BCTheEntity]

@Halvtand
1. There's no way Piccolo got to 800000 from 3500 in less than two months, when Goku only increased from 8000 to 90000, with a zenkai boost and after training at one hundred times Earth's normal gravity practically non-stop for six days. That being said, yes, it's totally feasible that Limic's corruption might have affected the fusion in some way, though I feel like it might not need to be the case that Harkon doesn't then improve his power at all after fusing with him. That just seems incongruous to how DBZ itself works; even the weaker characters improve fairly consistently as long as they keep training to improve their power level, after all.
2. Well, of course. All I'm saying is that it's a pretty major thing to need to account for, if a character has a cuts-nearly-everything attack that they can basically spam freely.
3. Oh right, he could do that. Even so, I'd still go with the thing that has a precedent in canon over the thing that doesn't, as a general rule.

[Halvtand]

@Halvtand
1. There's no way Piccolo got to 800000 from 3500 in less than two months, when Goku only increased from 8000 to 90000, with a zenkai boost and after training at one hundred times Earth's normal gravity practically non-stop for six days. That being said, yes, it's totally feasible that Limic's corruption might have affected the fusion in some way, though I feel like it might not need to be the case that Harkon doesn't then improve his power at all after fusing with him. That just seems incongruous to how DBZ itself works; even the weaker characters improve fairly consistently as long as they keep training to improve their power level, after all.
2. Well, of course. All I'm saying is that it's a pretty major thing to need to account for, if a character has a cuts-nearly-everything attack that they can basically spam freely.
3. Oh right, he could do that. Even so, I'd still go with the thing that has a precedent in canon over the thing that doesn't, as a general rule.

@BCTheEntity

1. I agree, this leap in power is HUGE, even if we removed 10% of it and brought it back to 80,000 it's still way out of what we'd expect to see. I only brought it up because it came from the one source I could find that in any way could be considered somewhat legit. Personally I think we should see about the same power increase in Piccolo as we saw in Goku when he trained with King Kai, which in a few months should leave Piccolo at about 5000-6000 or so.
2. Yes, I understand your concern, it is something that we have to look out for, because unbalanced techniques like these can seriously wreck the game. I've played and GM'ed several fandom-rps myself, the danger is real. On top of that I've heard the "I won't abuse"-line about five million times, so yeah. The only thing that can help balance this is playing in the advanced area, because the requirements are so much higher here. You don't just run in and attack, you have to justify it first, role play the whole thing.
3. As a general rule, yes. I'll leave it to the GM to decide right now though.

Thanks for the great discussion. I'll try to give your characters a god read-through tonight and tomorrow. I already have one question, but want to read everything through properly before I make a fool of myself :)

[BCTheEntity]

@Halvtand
1. As I said, their combined power is likely not much more than 50000 if the combined value is multiplied by 25, so 6000-10000 is probably about accurate for Piccolo pre-fusion, to give the full range between 1.2 and 1.3 million.
2. I suppose so. I think part of my apprehension is how weak Harkon is otherwise - a PL of 2000 is not a lot relative to how the game's going so far, and he'd be soundly beaten in a fair fight with almost any other PC thus far shown, yet he's quite capable of slinging attacks able to soundly cut through foes with a PL more than ten times his own, if not even greater than that. However, since PC-on-PC combat nominally isn't allowed to end with death unless it's agreed upon, his moves end up being for the most part useless, since the blade attacks are always going to be dodged, and his other abilities don't work so well due to his reduced power level. Still, I assume he wouldn't be involved in the Galactic Tournament for various reasons, so that's something to consider.
3. ...alright. 's your call @Thess.
4. I'll be waiting for those questions with eagerness.

[Thess]

Alright, I just posted the first IC post. Like I said, I don't mind Harkon being boosted(the two PLs added together and let's say multiplied by fifteen), especially since it sounds like he will eventually be more a support character anyway. As for Dende's ability to heal, to me it seems more like a mystical ability as he does not seemed heavily taxed by it. He should have a lower amount of Ki and if he was using his own Ki, then it should exhaust him fairly quickly. Since the Mystical Arts, are not usually based on one's Ki but the natural forces of the Mortal Realm, it seems more fitting. I won't make you change it, since you have sort of blended the two together, but I would say that healing is generally a more mystical technique in the DBZ universe.

[Terminal]

Well, the nominal character I intended to act as an antagonist is literally the second weakest member of the cast and my second character cannot yet feature.

I have an idea for a post, but it's basically just going to be Charis going 'Gonna go train, brb.' Expect that up soon. Either until there's an actual party of nominal protagonists elsewhere or she actually reaches the same average plateau of power everyone else is standing on, that will likely be my only post in the IC for the foreseeable future.

[BCTheEntity]

@Terminal I mean, you could also just alter her power level to be higher from the get-go, to fit better with what everyone else has. I think Thess already confirmed that you're allowed to do that if you want.

[Thess]

@Terminal I did, I still wanted her a bit weaker than the rest, but I would like to see her in the tournament.

[BCTheEntity]

@Terminal @Uffizi @Bartok @Halvtand Not to sound pushy, but I think it might be an idea for everyone to start posting IC, since the game's actually started and all.

[Terminal]

Not a problem. I'll see about getting a post up today, although after some private discussion with @Thess I am still sticking with my aforementioned basic plan. I'll see if I can involve Charis at least partially in the Tournament preparations/training arc if possible, but expect her involvement to be minimal.

[Terminal]

Paging @Halvtand. After reading the description for your Android, I realize you probably had your own ideas for introducing them - but if you are currently lacking/would like to explore alternate avenues, I left an opening for their introduction in my post as one of the Androids tasked with exploring the Estate. Being a creation of the old Regime of the RR army, either Royal Robotics or the Royal Army might be using that particular task in order to evaluate how trustworthy/effective they are.

But if that's not what you had in mind, it's not problem. I can proceed regardless. I just thought I would make the offer so long as I was using androids at all in the first place.

[Halvtand]

Huh, I thought I wrote a reply here earlier today, must've forgot to push the button...

I'll get my first post up this weekend and do the changes to my character before that. In short I'll give him some mystic training and raise his power level up to about 15000. (combined PL (ca 1000) x 15).

[BCTheEntity]

We're still waiting on that post from you, @Halvtand. And updating of Harkon's PL and etcetera. I'm just Saiyan.

[Thess]

I will be posting my next IC post tomorrow. I know @Uffizi is still trying to finish up his sheet. @Halvtand I hope you have a chance to post here pretty quick.

[BCTheEntity]

@Thess What was that about "tomorrow"? It's been two days, and... it's not just you, but we gotta get more people posting IC in general. Where are all the people who signed up? @Halvtand in particular, but also @Terminal and @Uffizi to some extent, since one already made a post and the other is still constructing their character... I'm half-wondering why you haven't finished Shiver already, Uffizi, but whatever.

[Thess]

People do have lives outside of the internet, just saying. In particular, I had a procedure done yesterday and wound up too sedated to post. I know Uffizi in real life and he has been rather busy. If this game is not moving fast enough for you, I'm sorry, but obviously you are gonna need to slow your roll. I will try getting the post up tonight, but once again I have a life away from my computer and it seems most of the others do too.

[BCTheEntity]

@Thess I mean, yeah, I get that people have IRL lives, of course they do. I also do, for the record, since you're seeming to imply that I don't. I'm just saying, we haven't had a particularly fast post rate at all, let alone in IC, and I'm just concerned about the game dying. I'd rather that didn't happen, since it's a really great concept.