ASTA

For the Gods! [RECRUITING]

How did Krix intercept that many stones with the single chain while also simultaneously altering each stone's trajectory to such a heavy degree without the stones incurring a sever loss in velocity during the process? I could see him blocking the things, but flinging them back at a completely new target like that comes off as very strange.

Additionally, is there a maximum and/or minimum radius his stone-manipulating/stone sensory powers can function at, or is it unlimited?

For the Gods! [RECRUITING]

Grnmachine said
For all we know Mahz is trying his best to fix the site. Dont be such a pessimist :/

He isn't trying. Looking at the list of empty promises and undelivered updates over the past 10 months is dead-proof of this; if you were a long-standing member of RPG prior to its deactivation earlier this year, you would have been exposed to Mahz's older displays of shoddiness.

I'm not going to weigh down the thread with a discussion like this though. If you want to talk about this more, PM me. I'll have links and other citations waiting for you.

For the Gods! [RECRUITING]

I'm starting to question how long it's going to be before RPG's 22/7 downtime is going to cause me to permanently leave this joint.

Mahz admitting he gives 0 damns anymore would be an excellent first start.

For the Gods! [RECRUITING]

The first Shadow Hound vanished with an eerie howl and a plum of dark smoke when the rocky spikes made contact with it.

The second Shadow Hound, however, had taken a minute gander at the demise of his mate and the ensuing approach of the extensive series of chain links that aimed for his own ensnarement. He jinked to the side moments before the unforeseen strike made contact with his spectral form, violently pushing his body into his own leftmost direction with a powerful flex of the corresponding leg and arm. Although his trajectory had been abruptly altered of his own accord, the Shadow Hound's momentum still carried him handily, which caused the wolf to awkwardly stumble about during his attempt at a quick recovery, his body flailing widly in the sand and gravel. An opaque cloud of dust and sand was produced from the ordeal, which worked in tandem with the faint wind to hide the Shadow Hound from plaint sight.

And by this time, the third wolf—who had trailed behind the two others in their mutual advancement upon their shared prey—saw what events had unfolded and adjusted his attack pattern accordingly. Before coming within range of Krix's chain-wrapped hand, he halted and retreated away with due haste, moving about in irregular patterns made to distort and confuse anyone or anything that attempted to sight him for destruction.

Sovereign saw the second Shadow Hound use the boon provided by its own dust cloud to dart away from Krix's immediate effective range and take up position amongst a collection of trees, bushes and rocks that lay some four hundred feet away from the area where Sovereign and Krix resided. It's counterpart did the same.

Chains are dangerous, Sovereign thought to himself. And fast too, but they seem less geared towards inflicting direct damage to an opponent but may be designed more for catching and ensnaring him. But I wonder what manner of restrictions accompany the creature's capacity to bend the earth? Let us see.

As he navigated the varied terrain of the arena with an expeditious and chaotic degree of tempo, Sovereign gripped and broke free great clawfuls of loose, hardened stone from the surface directly below him. Always keeping Krix's body in his peripheral vision as he surged and zin-zagged onward, the lycanthrope unleashed his two bundles of projectiles one after another in lightning-like succession.

By their nature, the rocks were not aerodynamic in shape. They could be better likened to grape shot of exceptionally dismal quality, severely limiting their accuracy at longer ranges, but giving them improved hit probability against scattered targets or a single adversary moving in a sporadic or fixed fashion; dodging every single projectile was highly unlikely, but not outside the realm of possibility should the innate powers of a demigod be factored into the equation. The missiles accelerated down-range towards Sovereign's enemy with the speed of a round fired from an anti-material rifle of quality make and large caliber, the pebbles fanning out into a vaguely cone-like formation as they went.

The werewolf suspected that his enemy wouldn't be killed by such an underhanded attack, but the opportunity to further experience Krix's powers over the earth was too much for Sovereign to pass up.

For the Gods! [RECRUITING]

Schradinger said
Alright, I'll operate under the assumption that Krix can lift 10 tonnes.About the wolf summon, if it's not going to be a one-time strategic thing, I feel like there should be something more involved in their summoning than "They appear!", since that basically just means that your opponent ends up fighting four champions (even if three are less powerful) at a time instead of one, the weaker three of which can be instantly healed and return to battle after death every X amount of posts.To me, an attack that increases the number of opponents should be a one-time option whose use needs to be decided tactically, rather than spammed at every opportunity (because if you CAN do it every X posts, why wouldn't you?). An exception to this would obviously be a specialized summoner, who's weaker in personal power than their opponents but makes up for it by summoning creatures stronger than themselves. Summoning wolves, however, makes a lot of sense for your character so I would hate to see the ability removed altogether.

After having read the first few IC posts that have been submitted for this battle, I've already detected several glaring issues with them. For one, they're rather restricted in their special capabilities and seem to function as nothing more than a chaotic threesome of low-grade minions that are reliant on crude, unimaginative melee attacks to bring harm to their enemies; this isn't satisfactory given the wide range of special powers and items that your average, run-of-the-mill arena combatant has access to (as Krix has just demonstrated). Even Sovereign has a few tricks up his sleeve that can potentially alter the flow of an arena skirmish despite being a claw-to-fresh specialist.

Later versions of Sovereign's CS will feature a far more extensive description of the Shadow Hounds' individual physical characteristics, limitations and a number of distinct powers applied to each of them, which will reinforce my intentions of the 'Hounds being a powerful strategic asset rather than bog-standard mooks destined for the meat grinder. They'll function as a pack, with Sovereign at the head.

To counterattack this 'buff', I'll probably make the power one that requires a warm-up time before it can be used. But in truth, I'm hesitant to make it a charged attack, because charged attacks are difficult to pull off unless you work some seriously skillful IC work that ensures that the charged attack is guaranteed to fire off successfully without being interrupted.

Or I could just make it a one-battle use ability and leave it at that.

However, I'm not changing anything relating to the Shadow Hounds until this battle is concluded, but I am going to decree that Sovereign can only summon them once during this battle so that fair play can be maintained.

But now I need to figure out how to make as many of Sovereign's friends survive Krix's counterattack as feasibly possible.

For the Gods! [RECRUITING]

Schradinger said
Well, Krix can't lift two tons. He can lift a little over one ton. In all honesty, I'd rather amp the existing heroes to true demigod levels and say he can lift 10 tons (putting him back in play as a physical powerhouse but still weaker than N'athr and Sovereign) than nerf Sovereign and N'athr. Of course, the other original heroes would need to be amped as well, and Light might have something different to say if he ever comes back, but it would make the battles feel more like it's two demigods fighting.

Well, we can buff the characters for now I guess, but I think a tier system or something needs to be established as soon as possible.

Sovereign's sudden gain in weight and size is only a minor issue born from the inconsistent (and poorly-defined) power scaling of the roleplay. It'll only become worse as time goes on, sadly.

For the Gods! [RECRUITING]

Schradinger said
Two tons? And he's still fast enough to blur to a human eye? Even Skall's character, who's ten feet tall, strong enough to lift 100 tons, and durable enough to shrug off bullets, weighs a little over 1 ton. That's... A pretty huge detail to leave out, and I'm pretty sure it just made sovereign even more powerful than Skall's proposed character. He may not be as strong (which is debateable since it isnt specified and he can get stronger), but he can also summon three phantom wolves that are each more physically powerful than any single champion besides Skall's (and he hasn't even been approved), and he can re-summon them every three posts. Even just one of the phantom wolves would be a match for Herriman or Mifune or Krix. In short, he just became a lot more powerful than (we thought) he was when he got approved, and unless Krix gets a fairly significant boost to his own abilities, I'm not sure he can do anything beyond slow him down. I intended Krix to be a fighter that uses a combination of physical strength and powers, but the way things are going I might as well throw away his weapons and just amp his earth and fire manipulation. All Sovereign has to do to win is sit on him. F*cking escalation. >_<P.S. I'm not upset at you, Asta. It's just frustrating when you get into a fight and then find out OOC that you're in a completely different battle than you thought you were, and half the purpose of your character becomes instantly moot. *sigh* We need to figure out how to keep the original characters competitive if they're going to be facing two ton werewolves with hulk syndrome (and friends) and bulletproof giants that can bench a tank one-handed, because at this point, we're way beyond the original character's power level.

Well, I stated in the OOC (and in the bit of OOC at the bottom of my IC post) that a single Shadow Hound wasn't capable of adequately contending with a champion; Sovereign reinforces this statement by mentioning in the IC that he didn't exactly expect them to effortlessly down Krix let alone cause him sever harm (this, however, depends on how Krix's handler posts, but since you've been in the Arena section longer than I have been, this shouldn't be an especially daunting challenge for you---I think).

Skall's character possesses more utility abilities than Sovereign and probably rivals him in the sheer 'might' department. Sovereign's only real advantage against other champions is that he's a lightning bruiser that excels in all physical attributes and progressively grows more dangerous as battle damage is accumulated. He's also extremely durable; much of that durability is owed to his hide's unusual paranormal properties. That's about it. A watered-down, werewolf-version of the Juggernaut if anything.

As for his mass, I sort of expected every champion to be at least able to throw a car around without much effort. For that reason, the idea of Sovereign sitting on Krix to win the fight comes off as unexpected. And Krix has an impressive amount of equipment on him; I was worried that all of that gear would put Sovereign in a tough spot (and I still am, which is why he's using rocks and trees for cover as he closes in on Krix's immediate position).

I haven't really had a chance to see what they can do yet, but If the Shadow Hounds are that powerful, I can limit the amount of times Sovereign can summon them to once per battle and reduce his weight to a single ton if it's an issue.

Keep in mind though that this is my first Arena fight, so I'm still learning the ropes of this posting system and how Sovereign functions in an Arena battle. I'll get better eventually, so bear with me.

Skallagrim said
Again as I always preach. A defined tier limit and clearly defined min/max sets diffuse many of these issues. Simply saying "be fair" is not enough which is why settings without limits tend to not work.

Which is why I was trying to push for the implementation of the medium tier idea, but that kind of got ignored by almost everyone if I recall.

For the Gods! [RECRUITING]

Schradinger said
@Asta: you can probably go whichever way you choose with the phantom wolves, NPC or directly controlled, though I am wondering whether they're in the form of actual wolves or bipedal like Sovereign.

I'll control them directly then I guess, but if it gets too messy and confusing, I'll probably regulate them to NPC status for future battles.

Also, they're in the form of bipedal wolves like Sovereign, just smaller, and of course weaker in every aspect save for their ability to never actually 'stay' deceased during a battle; Sovereign can recall them back to the Arena if he wants to. As should be expected, the summoning power has a cool down period. I'm thinking three posts or so.

I also never truly defined Sovereign's dimensions. He's twice the height of a normal man, but is incredibly dense. He probably weighs more than a standard automobile, which is approximately two tons. This revision was made in response to Dag's description of him in the post for the battle's opening.

I'm not going to go back and edit in distinct actions for the Shadow Hounds however. I'll let your character perform his counter actions first to see what Sovereign's next moves are.

For the Gods! [RECRUITING]

Sovereign's only response to the man's snide remark was a rich, deep howl that cut through the rumpus of the ecstatic crowd. Instantaneously, three swirling portals each produced a trio of ghastly, canine-like creatures of sizable proportions and ferocity, their fiery hides and razor-sharp claws poised to absorb the blows of their victims and rend the hide of their prey with an animalistic zeal never before exhibited by any customary predator native to the simplistic world of the living. Termed 'Shadow Hounds' by Kri, Sovereign's allies took no time in assessing the current situation that they suddenly found themselves in; they immediately registered the smith that they gazed upon as their master's foe and consequently reacted in kind.

Fanning out to encircle him, their excited speed and agility would make covering the comparatively short distance placed between man and wolf a meager challenge. Sovereign's companions would be within striking distance of the smith in less than a fraction of a second, and would most likely assault the man with firey tooth and fang pinpointed at the ankles, kneecaps and shins of the smith.

Sovereign did not remain rooted to his starting point either. Being tiered far above his deceased comrades in the physical sense, the werewolf was already on the prowl long before the Shadow Hounds even stepped free of the mystical gateways that bridged their domain with that of the arena's. Sovereign's substantial shape was propelled by all four of his limbs with supernatural rapidity. He appeared as a faint, dark blur that dashed to and fro, his path of movement completely irregular—chaotic even to the untrained eye---but nonetheless calculated all the same. Rocks and the occasional tree acted as natural barriers and articles of concealment as he swiftly made his way towards his enemy.

Consciously, Sovereign knew that the Shadow Hounds would only be a distraction to the smith. They were fairly effective against weaker mortal and immortal beings of martial prowess, but demigods were a prey animal that they were ill-suited for handling. Though perhaps they would surprise him? Maybe united, they could cause harm to the man.

But even so, that was the point of course. After all, isn't distraction one of a hunter's greatest tools?

((I'm going with Schradinger's idea about the arena pit being a mix of trees, rocks, grass, and sandy spots, since apparently it was Light's intentions from the beginning; maybe we can go with notdeadyet's idea for the next fight, however.))

((Note on the Shadow Hounds: They're tough, but I don't really expect them to be effortlessly scoring hits on demigod-level champions. But I do consider them an appropriately-tiered attack for a being like Sovereign, which means that they can become exceedingly dangerous if left unchecked or handled the wrong way.))

((Also, let me know if I should control them directly or if they should be treated as low-tiered NPCs. I'm actually unsure on this. The GMs might want to give a verdict. I don't know.)))