Lalliman

Boss Battle: Diabolus

There's guides on arena fighting to be found somewhere, like the T1, but i can't really find them at the moment. At its core it goes like this:
- Player 1 declares an attack by describing what he does and how he does it, but leaves it open whether or not the attack succeeds.
Example: Bob tries to punch Steve in the jaw with a right hook.
- Player 2 reacts to the attack. It's up to him to decide whether or not his character can (partially) avoid it or gets hit. If he gets hit, he also states the damage. Within the same post, player 2 can then make his attack, in the same way that player 1 did.
Example: Steve sees the punch coming so he steps to the left, avoiding it, and lashes out with his right foot to leg sweep Bob.
- These steps are repeated until one of the players is defeated.

There's a little more to it than that, but that's the basics. Because the defender decides whether an attack against them succeeds, a certain amount of trust is needed between participants in order to play fair. You can't control or assume someone else's actions, but you can make if-statements to react to things your opponent might do.
Example: Bob feigns doing a right hook. If Steve tries to block the punch, Bob makes use of the distraction by leg sweeping him.

Oh, and a charge is basically when you spend one or multiple turns not attacking in order to make a future attack more powerful. Sometimes charging keeps you from doing anything or sometimes you can still move and fight within certain restraints, it depends on the character.

Boss Fight: The Game

I'm not the one authorized to judge this, but to me it looks good apart from a few things:
- His healing ability should be a serious energy drain. Healing abilities are heavily restricted in the arena because they're counter-productive to the nature of it. If you could just heal all your wounds, there'd be no consequences to your actions.
- A general indication of how hot and how cold his combustion/freezing ability can get would be good.
Some examples for frame of reference, in case you're not so familiar, -270 C/-460 F is absolute zero, 0 C/32 F is where water freezes, 800-1000 C/1500-1800 F is the heat of common fire, 1540 C/ 2800 F is where iron liquifies.
- "speeds untraceable by the human eye" is an inaccurate estimate, as the ability of the eyes to trace something depends on the distance from the object. Either way, it's probably unreasonably high, well into the hundreds of miles per hour, probably quadruple digits. Unlike in anime, objects in real life don't simply become invisible when they go fast enough, not unless going insanely high that is.
- A more minor problem: diamond isn't all that strong. It's a common misconception. Diamond is the hardest material on earth, but the hardness makes it brittle. If you were to hit a diamond with a hammer, it would splinter into a hundred pieces. Materials like steel have a good mix of both hardness and flexibility, which is what allows them to be so strong.

Boss Battle: Diabolus

Since you're so new, we should probably ask: do you know how the combat works around here?

Edit: I'm afraid i won't be posting till tomorrow. I hope Schradinger can wait for that. If he's impatient i don't mind last-minute changing the posting order to prevent that bit of delay.

Boss Battle: Diabolus

Count me in.

Boss Fight: The Game

A fourth person will surely come in handy once the power levels start rising.

Boss Fight: The Game

Hmm... I'll stick to Shen for now.
Laios has been strangely quiet...

Boss Fight: The Game

If we're switching characters anyways, i could swap out Shen for a tankier character to complete the standard trio of character classes. Would you guys prefer that? I don't mind either way.

Boss Fight: The Game

Alright, that adds some variety, i approve. Well, except for one thing, the precision beams. Unless they move slower than the speed of light, which you've given me no reason to believe they do, they're completely undodgable. No attack at any reasonable power level should move at the speed of light. Not one that takes only two turns of charging, that is.

Btw, i updated Shen with some numbers.

Boss Fight: The Game

True. I tend to prefer not having too many numbers and just hope that my opponent will trust me, but if you guys like i can elaborate.

And the power increase is a long-term effect that shouldn't come into play here.

Boss Fight: The Game

Here's my character. I'm very bad with power levels, so i don't really know if he's underpowered compared to you guyses characters.

Shen

Name: Shen (last name unknown)
Race: Demonkin (formerly human)
Gender: Male
Age: 26
Height: 6’6
Weight: 350 lbs

Appearance: http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2010/354/8/c/orc_blade_master_by_heewonlee-d35b1xt.jpg
(minus the huge beads)

Personality: Shen is a man with a torn personality. While he’s originally a well-intentioned person with a strong sense of honor and justice, the Usurper has corrupted his mind with violent tendencies and a thirst for power and blood. For now, he’s managed to convince himself that he does what he does for the good of mankind, but deep down even he must wonder how long this will last before it all goes amiss…

Abilities and powers

Physical enhancements – Shen’s mutated body brings with it a variety of advantages. He can deadlift 2200 lbs and sprint at 80 mph. Despite his size and weight, he can jump superhumanly long distances, do a wide variety of acrobatics and is overall extremely agile. His bones are reinforced, requiring three times as much force to break as before, and his wounds heal at 5 times human rate. His sight and hearing are both roughly twice as powerful as a normal human’s. He also has advanced low-light vision, allowing him to see in near-full darkness. As a downside, very bright lights or sudden flashes can blind him more easily.

Demonic blood – Shen’s corrupted body grants him a passive resistance to fire. Flames and other heat-based attacks are generally shrugged off, but due to his human side, the resistance is not perfect. He can still suffer scorching wounds and internal damage if exposed to common fire for a long time or when hit by exceptionally powerful flames (3500+ °F). On the flip side, divine magic deals increased damage to him and healing spells that draw from a divine source are ineffective. Holy water and certain other divine items will hurt him on touch, as if he was an actual demon.

Iron will – Shen was born with an exceptional mental fortitude, which was further enhanced by his mental training as a monk. All but the most powerful of mind-altering effects will be shrugged off or at least partially resisted, such as the mind-controlling effect of the Usurper.

Martial arts – Shen is trained extensively in a mixture of elite fighting techniques, focusing on unarmed combat. These techniques focus on dealing fast and precise strikes with hands and feet, as well as preventing damage to oneself by dodging or countering.

Swordsmanship – While sword fighting wasn’t part of his training as a monk, his skills with a sword developed at a supernaturally fast pace from the moment he began using the Usurper, as if he absorbed the knowledge and muscle-memory of the sword’s previous owners through use. He’s not the greatest swordsman in the world, but he’s close, capable of slashing and parrying at near-superhuman speed.

Pyromancy – Shen can generate and control fire to a certain extent. It can only be generated in direct contact with his skin before being able to control it further away from him. Any part of his skin will do, but the hands are easiest. Fire that stays within three feet of him remains under his control and doesn’t go out by itself as long as he’s actively maintaining it. Once the fire leaves that radius, it will continue moving in the direction it was already going and will naturally snuff out after a few seconds unless it hits something flammable. For the purpose of pyromancy, Usurper is considered a part of Shen’s body as long as he’s holding it. His pyromancy based attacks include, but are not limited to:
- Firing a cone of flame from his hand, similar to a flamethrower, about 40’ long and 20’ wide at the end. The fire is 2500 °F at the center and gradually drops down to 1500 °F near the edges. This requires no charge but is fairly energy draining. When used at full power, it drains about 1% of his total stamina every second.
- Creating a fireball in his hand and throwing it. When done without charge, it’s simply a basketball-sized sphere of flame that scorches things on contact. When charged, the fire becomes compressed and will explode on impact. With a 5 second charge, it has an explosion radius of 20’ and enough force to send humans flying for several yards. The fire is 2500 °F at the center and 1500 °F near the edges. On max charge, 10 seconds, the radius, force and temperature have all doubled. A half-charged fireball costs 5% of his total stamina, a full-charged one costs 15%.
- Channeling the heat of the flames into Usurper’s blade, gradually heating the metal to 2500 °F within about 10 seconds, at which point it will glow bright orange. If the ability is no longer sustained, the sword loses its heat over the course of one minute. The energy cost for this is ignorable.

Equipment

Usurper – The source of most of Shen’s powers. A large 5’ long katana of unknown origin, made of a non-reflective dark grey metal that is indestructible by conventional means. It’s surprisingly heavy for such a slender weapon, only able to be wielded efficiently by someone with superhuman strength, and has a razor-sharp edge that never dulls.

Usurper (and in extension Shen) draws power from the departing souls of its victims, slowly growing a little bit more powerful with each kill. The legends say that Usurper’s wielder once defeated entire armies of the greatest warriors, but the sword has lost the majority of its power due to centuries of disuse.

As long as its current owner is alive, his and Usurper’s souls are inseparably entwined and Usurper will not grant its power to anyone else. The sword has shown to have a mysterious way of returning to its owner when separated for too long. When the current owner is killed, Usurper will once again attempt to bind itself to the next suitable creature that touches it.

History

Shen was orphaned shortly after his birth due to an unknown cause. With no one left to take care of the young child, he was taken in by the monks of an isolated monastery to be raised as one of them. There he was trained from a very young age in the ways of the warrior monks, which includes extensive physical and spiritual training in order to achieve enlightenment. Shen showed great affinity for these teachings and over the course of many years he developed into a full-fledged monk. While his ability to follow orders was imperfect, he more than made up for it with his willingness to learn and his great mental fortitude.

It was only when he completed his training at the age of 24 that he found out about the monastery’s real purpose. Stored in a vault deep below the monastery was an ancient weapon, a demonic sword that the sensei called Usurper, after the way it used to hijack the souls of men to pursue its own dark purpose. When any attempt to destroy the weapon resulted in failure, it was stored far away from the prying eyes of the civilized world, to be guarded by the warrior monks until the end of days.

Yet despite all his training, Shen was an ambitious man. He claimed that the monks couldn’t remain idle while the outside world was being torn apart by wars, demons and more. He insisted that they held a power too great to ignore and urged his masters to tame this weapon and utilize it for the greater good, but the sensei were adamant in their denial. Shen had little choice but to accept this, yet over the following weeks he found himself plagued by nightmares of standing powerless as an evil being slaughtered his fellow monks. It was always the same dream and the same creature, and the sight wouldn’t leave his mind even during the day.

One night, he couldn’t handle it anymore. He had to acquire the one thing that could keep his brothers safe, even if he was told not to. Shen snuck down into the vault to inspect the Usurper, only to be stopped by a senior monk. On an unfamiliar violent impulse, he charged the older man and managed to overpower him just long enough to make a run for the sword. The moment his fingers touched the hilt, the weapon was reawakened and its soul reached out and forcibly fused with his. The massive injection of power took its toll on Shen’s body and rapidly transformed him into a demonic being, hulking and green-skinned. Although the sword never spoke, its intentions were clear as day. Usurper urged him to give in to its bloodlust and raze the monastery with everyone inside. It was only through Shen’s miraculous strength of will that he could resist slaughtering his former brothers and flee into the mountains instead.

From there on, it didn’t take long for Shen to realize he’d made a huge mistake. While he retained his own will over that of the sword, the bloodlust that came with its possession was almost uncontrollable. For several days, he evaded capture while attempting to tame Usurper’s soul, but he could gain no further control over the weapon and with every passing day, the urge to kill became stronger. Eventually, admitting defeat, he returned to the monastery and surrendered himself to be punished for his crimes. As there was no known way to separate Usurper’s soul from its wielder’s, Shen was sentenced to death so that the sword can once again be imprisoned.

Shen had every intention to pay for his sin and didn’t resist as his former brothers chained him and placed his head upon the chopping block. As the executioner’s sword came down to behead him, Usurper’s ethereal voice screamed inside his head, louder than ever, dazing him. When the daze faded, blood was streaming down his arm, as his hand had moved up, tearing free of the iron chains, to stop the blade. With no control over his own body, Shen watched himself rise to his feet and tear the executioner’s throat out with his claws. And it didn’t stop there. He gave in to his bloodlust as he reached for the Usurper and began cutting down everyone within his reach. Each and every monk was a powerful warrior, but the Usurper had turned Shen more powerful than all of them combined.

Shen didn’t regain control over himself until it was too late and he found himself covered in blood and ash. Upon the taste of blood, Usurper’s power over him had receded, but there was no doubt it would return. He knew there was no way back now. He had tasted the power and satisfaction of killing, even if the ones he killed were his former allies. There was no going back to his peaceful life as a monk, but he could still repent by using his power for the greater good, if only he could strengthen his grasp. If the Usurper wants blood, that’s exactly what it’s going to get…