Well, you would be the one writing your own combat scene. I would introduce enough enemies for each player to have the opportunity to write a battle scene between their character and one or more opponents, kind of similar to how normal RPs work. The focus is still primarily narrative, the dice rolls just give a general idea of how well the characters perform.
The problem isn't really the dice roll itself. I have played D&D quite a few times, so I know how it goes. Sometimes the luck of the dice gods is with you, and sometimes, they just throw up two big middle fingers. The issue in my mind is that this is a single dice roll governing an entire future series of actions. You only get one roll, one singular point of success or failure. And once you have it, you can't adapt to or overcome it, because you don't get any other rolls to follow up with. It's a predetermined result.
To me, this seems like the sort of situation where it would better benefit from being either one or the other, full narrative or full dice. A single dice roll governing an entire narrative isn't much of a narrative at all. There isn't really a narrative tit for tat, where both sides can try to outsmart the other, because no matter what, the result is determined. Highs may be higher, sure, but lows are even lower. I'm pretty big on character agency, and this has very little. Even with normal D&D, I'm not a huge fan of ICly having every possible reason to succeed and just... not, but with that, at least you have the opportunity to roll more dice on later turns to try and recover or alter a failed plan. Not so here.
Of course, all that said, I really am tempted to give this a try, but you can see my misgivings. A big thing for me in an RP is character agency, that my success and failure rests on my own skills and tactics winning the day. This system doesn't allow for that outside pure luck. But all told, I do actually still want to give it a whirl. At the least, I think I'm interested enough to try this system out. I don't think I'll like it, but I'd be glad to be wrong.
I will admit to being interested in the premise, but the one thing that is kinda stopping me from leaping on this is the system. If I understand this right, a single dice roll determines your performance for an entire combat scene in every aspect? If that's the case, I really can't jive with that. It's too much of a gamble, and to me, it wouldn't feel like I have a lot of agency in my character's future. It means every combat essentially has a preset result, rather than ups and downs.
Saving this here in case it could be useful later.
"Sometimes, I'm certain I was born in the wrong era. Whatever this is... finally corrected that oversight."
Name: Jennifer Buckley
Age: 24 years old
Country on Earth: Texas, United States of America
Appearance: Height - 5' 9"; Weight - 125 lbs; an athletic young woman sporting a body refined by martial training. She's somewhat on the less curvaceous side, as most "fat" has been exchanged for muscle, but good genes and the advent of an Adventurer's peculiar body mean she is still clearly feminine, more-so than she once was even. The only thing "marring" her appearance is the crystal imbedded in the back of her left hand.
Personality: Strong-willed and fairly straight-forward, Jennifer is a woman on a mission, taking life by the reins and bending it to her will. While on average a fairly agreeable person, she has a stubborn and prideful streak, even to her own detriment, willing to stand by what she believes in not just because she might believe it's right but also simply to spite those that oppose her. There are also certain injustices that have the potential to ignite her normally contrite temper into a cold, furious storm, and she can be seen as utterly ruthless towards those that commit them, even to the point of depersoning them in her mind. On the whole, she can be defined as "chaotic good", trying to do the right thing according to her own convictions and her standards of what qualifies as overall good, but when necessary, she's more than willing to get her hands dirty to see her ideals through. Towards her allies and those she considers to be "under her aegis", she is encouraging and protective, even charismatic, especially in matters of self-betterment of the martial variety. She can be something of a "gym bro" and has no problem leading by example. She fights boldly from the front and lives life in the moment, relishing in the feeling of battle and being a hero. Jennifer became immediately attached to her new life in a fantasy world, and her desire to return to her old one is completely nonexistent, having decided to dedicate her future to this world instead.
Brief Backstory: Daughter of an average pair of city-folk, Jennifer was a creative and energetic child from a young age, always eager to feed her vivid imagination through art and fictional mediums, like video games. But as she grew older, the world started to grow duller, and she became increasingly disillusioned with life and thoughts of the mundane future. She thought more than once that she wished she had been born in another era or world, rather than this dull existence as another face in the crowd. She had no desire to be another cog in society, but realism and practicality crushed her down. So, she lived on and fed her escapist fantasies with dedication to martial arts and video games. Her motivation to go anywhere in life was staggered by the lack of options she liked, until one day when she was caught up in a bog-standard convenience store robbery... she felt compelled to act. Unable to stomach the idea of not taking the chance to throw off the yoke of bystander syndrome, she engaged the thieves, wrested away one of their guns and gunned them down in defense of the other people. For her trouble, she received fatal gun wounds in return. Her adrenaline carried her to victory, but she had long since bled out before an ambulance arrived.
Adventurer Class: Paladin
Starting Common Gear: Plate armor that is strategically lighter in some places to allow for greater flexibility. One-handed longsword. Heater shield. Backpack. Water skin. Rations. Bedroll. Mess kit (bowl that doubles as a cooking pot and container for eating utensils and a lid that doubles as a plate or frying pan. Utility knife (for skinning food, cutting ropes and such). Tinderbox (contains materials for firestarting). Medical kit (contains bandages, splits, thread and needles).
Special item: TBD (maybe a magical sword that's not awakened yet?)
Notable skills or abilities:
Adventurer: Jennifer's martial prowess has translated to her new adventurer body very well, making her stronger, faster, tougher and more coordinated across the board. Even though she'd never handled medieval weaponry before this life, her intuition with them is far from unnoticeable -helped along by knowledge attained from online studies of medieval fighting, allowing her to instinctively wield her sword and shield and move in armor like she's already gone through a hardcore boot camp, with her proficiency beyond that continuing to improve at a remarkable pace.
First Aid: She's pretty decent at mundane medical treatment as long as it doesn't require knowledge of how to makes salves or antidotes. She can wrap wounds, sew stitches, make splints, set bones, fix dislocations, perform chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth, and so on.
Cooking: She can cook pretty okay, well enough to feel her way around cooking raw prey safely.
Oath of the Paladin: Unlike some divine casters like Clerics, Jennifer's holy magic does not come from faith in any god but rather her own raw conviction and faith in herself and her ideals. She is empowered by her beliefs and dedication to seeing her vision through. She perceives her magic as a "Light" that embodies the unvarnished concept of good, and when she is fighting for justice and against the evil and unholy, that Light swells to self-reinforce her convictions and empower her to see them to fruition.
Spells:
Holy Senses: Focusing her senses, she can detect the location and nature of unholy entities in her near vicinity, particularly demons, undead and eldritch beings, along with areas and persons corrupted by evil magics. Conversely, this also makes consecrated areas and righteous entities stand out to her senses, revealing divine beings and those that use their powers, like Clerics. It's possible for the wary to defend against this magic preemptively, of course, but that will only get harder the more proficient Jennifer grows.
Healing Hands: With physical contact with a single target, draws from her pool of Light to soothe over wounds or purge a single poison or disease. At the moment, she doesn't have a lot to spare, having enough in the tank per day to cure up to two afflictions in total or cure enough physical wounds to bring a single person from the brink of death to full health. Lesser expenditures of this Light can mend broken bones and regenerate lost flesh (though not lost limbs/appendages), typically leaving no scars.
Holy Smite: Flooding her body or something she is holding with holy energy, she can execute an enhanced blow that is enough to cleave mundane steel in twain normally (with a sword or the like). When used against evil targets, this effect becomes more pronounced, and against the likes of the blatantly unholy, like undead, demonic, fiendish and eldritch entities, it experiences its greatest effect. Jennifer can instinctively sense when the Light flares on contact against a favored target and so can summarily identify the nature of one such being, even if it is magically disguised otherwise.
Stabilize: On physical contact, allows her to mystically stabilize a dying person. Even if they are suffering from grievous, lethal wounds, as long as those wounds aren't immediately fatal, against all odds, they will not die. Though, they will be locked into a healing coma until they recieve treatment from some additional source for the wounds merely held in stasis. Conversely, further injuries taken will immediately dispel the healing coma and potentially finish the subject off, depending, of course, on the total accumulation of wounds and whether or not they can be reached for some other form of treatment before succumbing.
Still waffling on the FC, but these are some of the forerunners.
Since I see D&D is apparently a heavy influence for this setting, I took a lot of inspiration from the 5e Paladin.
"Sometimes, I'm certain I was born in the wrong era. Whatever this is... finally corrected that oversight."
Name: Jennifer Buckley
Age: 24 years old
Country on Earth: Texas, United States of America
Appearance: Height - 5' 9"; Weight - 125 lbs; an athletic young woman sporting a body refined by martial training. She's somewhat on the less curvaceous side, as most "fat" has been exchanged for muscle, but good genes and the advent of an Adventurer's peculiar body mean she is still clearly feminine, more-so than she once was even. The only thing "marring" her appearance is the crystal imbedded in the back of her left hand.
Personality: Strong-willed and fairly straight-forward, Jennifer is a woman on a mission, taking life by the reins and bending it to her will. While on average a fairly agreeable person, she has a stubborn and prideful streak, even to her own detriment, willing to stand by what she believes in not just because she might believe it's right but also simply to spite those that oppose her. There are also certain injustices that have the potential to ignite her normally contrite temper into a cold, furious storm, and she can be seen as utterly ruthless towards those that commit them, even to the point of depersoning them in her mind. On the whole, she can be defined as "chaotic good", trying to do the right thing according to her own convictions and her standards of what qualifies as overall good, but when necessary, she's more than willing to get her hands dirty to see her ideals through. Towards her allies and those she considers to be "under her aegis", she is encouraging and protective, even charismatic, especially in matters of self-betterment of the martial variety. She can be something of a "gym bro" and has no problem leading by example. She fights boldly from the front and lives life in the moment, relishing in the feeling of battle and being a hero. Jennifer became immediately attached to her new life in a fantasy world, and her desire to return to her old one is completely nonexistent, having decided to dedicate her future to this world instead.
Brief Backstory: Daughter of an average pair of city-folk, Jennifer was a creative and energetic child from a young age, always eager to feed her vivid imagination through art and fictional mediums, like video games. But as she grew older, the world started to grow duller, and she became increasingly disillusioned with life and thoughts of the mundane future. She thought more than once that she wished she had been born in another era or world, rather than this dull existence as another face in the crowd. She had no desire to be another cog in society, but realism and practicality crushed her down. So, she lived on and fed her escapist fantasies with dedication to martial arts and video games. Her motivation to go anywhere in life was staggered by the lack of options she liked, until one day when she was caught up in a bog-standard convenience store robbery... she felt compelled to act. Unable to stomach the idea of not taking the chance to throw off the yoke of bystander syndrome, she engaged the thieves, wrested away one of their guns and gunned them down in defense of the other people. For her trouble, she received fatal gun wounds in return. Her adrenaline carried her to victory, but she had long since bled out before an ambulance arrived.
Adventurer Class: Paladin
Starting Common Gear: Plate armor that is strategically lighter in some places to allow for greater flexibility. One-handed longsword. Heater shield. Backpack. Water skin. Rations. Bedroll. Mess kit (bowl that doubles as a cooking pot and container for eating utensils and a lid that doubles as a plate or frying pan. Utility knife (for skinning food, cutting ropes and such). Tinderbox (contains materials for firestarting). Medical kit (contains bandages, splits, thread and needles).
Special item: TBD (maybe a magical sword that's not awakened yet?)
Notable skills or abilities:
Adventurer: Jennifer's martial prowess has translated to her new adventurer body very well, making her stronger, faster, tougher and more coordinated across the board. Even though she'd never handled medieval weaponry before this life, her intuition with them is far from unnoticeable -helped along by knowledge attained from online studies of medieval fighting, allowing her to instinctively wield her sword and shield and move in armor like she's already gone through a hardcore boot camp, with her proficiency beyond that continuing to improve at a remarkable pace.
First Aid: She's pretty decent at mundane medical treatment as long as it doesn't require knowledge of how to makes salves or antidotes. She can wrap wounds, sew stitches, make splints, set bones, fix dislocations, perform chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth, and so on.
Cooking: She can cook pretty okay, well enough to feel her way around cooking raw prey safely.
Oath of the Paladin: Unlike some divine casters like Clerics, Jennifer's holy magic does not come from faith in any god but rather her own raw conviction and faith in herself and her ideals. She is empowered by her beliefs and dedication to seeing her vision through. She perceives her magic as a "Light" that embodies the unvarnished concept of good, and when she is fighting for justice and against the evil and unholy, that Light swells to self-reinforce her convictions and empower her to see them to fruition.
Spells:
Holy Senses: Focusing her senses, she can detect the location and nature of unholy entities in her near vicinity, particularly demons, undead and eldritch beings, along with areas and persons corrupted by evil magics. Conversely, this also makes consecrated areas and righteous entities stand out to her senses, revealing divine beings and those that use their powers, like Clerics. It's possible for the wary to defend against this magic preemptively, of course, but that will only get harder the more proficient Jennifer grows.
Healing Hands: With physical contact with a single target, draws from her pool of Light to soothe over wounds or purge a single poison or disease. At the moment, she doesn't have a lot to spare, having enough in the tank per day to cure up to two afflictions in total or cure enough physical wounds to bring a single person from the brink of death to full health. Lesser expenditures of this Light can mend broken bones and regenerate lost flesh (though not lost limbs/appendages), typically leaving no scars.
Holy Smite: Flooding her body or something she is holding with holy energy, she can execute an enhanced blow that is enough to cleave mundane steel in twain normally (with a sword or the like). When used against evil targets, this effect becomes more pronounced, and against the likes of the blatantly unholy, like undead, demonic, fiendish and eldritch entities, it experiences its greatest effect. Jennifer can instinctively sense when the Light flares on contact against a favored target and so can summarily identify the nature of one such being, even if it is magically disguised otherwise.
Stabilize: On physical contact, allows her to mystically stabilize a dying person. Even if they are suffering from grievous, lethal wounds, as long as those wounds aren't immediately fatal, against all odds, they will not die. Though, they will be locked into a healing coma until they recieve treatment from some additional source for the wounds merely held in stasis. Conversely, further injuries taken will immediately dispel the healing coma and potentially finish the subject off, depending, of course, on the total accumulation of wounds and whether or not they can be reached for some other form of treatment before succumbing.
Still waffling on the FC, but these are some of the forerunners.
I like the first two the most for the coloration and the actually mostly practical(?) armor. Of those two, I think number 2 calls to me the most. Number 3 presents a very... interesting vibe that I didn't originally set out for. Not sure if it's really what I want for this RP, so I might save it for a different one.
Heya! Just wanted to drop a bit of interest here! I've had a craving to play a paladin-type character in a fantasy setting, and this RP seems like it could provide.
I actually have a character idea that definitely hits the "godlike hero" characteristics this RP caters to. I never got to use her, since the RP died before the IC ever happened, but lemme just dig up the original sheet... I think I could totally alter this where necessary to line up with this setting instead.
Name: Jen Shiragami
Titles: Overclock, Fastest Woman Alive, Bane of the Heaven Seeker, The Deathlight, Vanquisher of the Unspoken, The Hero Who Never Was
Age: 21 physically... and a fair bit older mentally if one considers her living extended periods with an accelerated mind.
World: Earth Q is an Earth variant world once reduced to a post-apocalyptic wasteland by decades-long war with a Wuxia-style Invader, were it not for Jen's final heroic act during her ascension restoring it to a golden age of relative peace. Magic and supernatural abilities are a fairly new phenomenon on this world, barely 30 years old, and are thus poorly understood and with shaky foundations for training.
Race: A black-souled/Perceiver human(?), Jen developed from her youth a natural and intuitive connection to the forces of Speed. By all accounts she is otherwise a bog-standard human woman of Japanese descent... at least on the surface.
Form: Jen appears as a young human woman of what could be described as be Japanese heritage. As a result of her ascension, this appearance is more a thin veneer than anything. Having been forced to cast aside her mortal form in truth, the illusion falters when she uses her powers to any real degree, revealing a semi-ethereal blue humanoid being that appears to be more a living, moving galaxy than anything else.
Legend: Jen's world was woefully unprepared for an invader with the bullshit of a Wuxia protagonist behind them. A war of decimation with the goal of godhood was waged against her world, and Jen from the age of 11 found herself participating. The war went on for a full decade from her joining, and Jen's power over Speed was cultivated and mastered in that time, her personally confronting the Invader many a time and often being the only thing between her world and annihilation. She in many ways became the face of the resistance, and her very presence tended to at least guarantee that the enemy could not win outright.
Widely hailed as humanity's savior, she was a one-woman army, known to slay and save thousands in the blink of an eye, entire armies liberated or laid to waste at her leisure. Rumor said that should one have a way by which she may hear them and so much as call her name, she could cross the ocean to aid the besieged before the words ceased to flow. Her final battle with the Invader would see her finally initiating a last desperate stage of her personal cultivation, resulting in her victory, along with her ascension and removal from the entirety of her world's memory and history.
Will: Jen dedicated herself to heroism and war from a young age. Time and again she has fought for the sole purpose of saving lives and opposing an unparalleled tyrant of a madman. Despite having finally defeated said tyrant once and for all, she cannot lay such instincts completely to rest. That said, facing a new world with new people and evils, Jen can only feel a looming sense of... exhaustion. Having sacrificed everything for her world and spent half her life at war, Jen now desires to try living for herself for a change, to seek personal peace instead of peace for the sake of others. To that end, she intends to explore the new limits of her existence/body and shatter them all over again, to cast down any threat to her peace, and to finally have what she always reserved for others... hopefully without compromising her moral compass... much. It's time for the selfless hero to be a bit selfish for once.
Mastery: Jen has long cultivated a natural intuition for manipulating the primal forces of Speed, to a degree that steps even into the realm of space-time. Her mastery has seen her surpass even the speed of light and the flow of time itself, and her ascension has seen the obtainment of near-immortality through the stark transformation of her body to one more akin to an elemental of Speed than anything else. Broadly speaking, if one can so much as conceptualize a usage of speed, it's fair to assume she can make it happen -or figure it out if not; she is basically a living embodiment of Speed. However, her mastery is very much White Arts focused. Red Arts are comparatively unexplored territory for her.
Ascent: When faced with the genocidal ascension to godhood of the Invader that had long terrorized her world, Jen was forced to finally attempt time travel. In order to prevent a worldwide paradox and ensure success, she exploited her time-space manipulation through her mastery of Speed to sacrifice her own past/history. As a result, her body began to unravel from the self-contained paradox, and she was forced to craft a new shell of a body from the fundament of Speed around her while she reversed time.
In short, she successfully reversed time by more than a decade and assassinated the Invader in the moment they entered her world. However, her not yet completely stable form interacted with the forces laid bare by the Invader's dimensional technique, causing Jen to lose her grip on her world's timeline. Fumbling to stabilize her form, she began to Ascend, as she managed to work a solution together using her accelerated reaction time. Her form solidified, and a force like a sun being birthed within her propelled her uncontrollably forth into the next adventure.
During the Wuxia Invader's ascension ritual, a genocidal sacrifice was initiated, wiping out a large portion of the planet's population and ensuring the Invader's ultimate victory. Instead of allowing such an atrocity to pass, Jen was forced to use time travel. She was wary of causing a paradox, but it was the only thing she had left, and she had a theory about how she could make it work.
Speed of light remains constant irrespective of the observer. It is observed that as the speed of an object increases, time slows down. At the speed of light, time stops. And on further increment of speed greater than light, time reverses. Thus, to travel back in time we have to move faster than Light. And Jen's personal step: sacrifice her own timeline to ensure that her appearance in the past would not cause a paradox.
She didn't just erase the battle, the defeat. She reversed time all the way back to the exact moment the Wuxia Invader had arrived in her world years ago. As she did so, the disappearance of her very past caused her body to begin to come apart at the seams. In order to retain cohesion, she infused herself with the very concept of speed that flowed more freely around her now than ever before, crafting a new body from the fundament of the universe, a part of her mortality inextricably cast away to achieve a stable existence outside her own timeline.
She found the moment of the Invader's entry and attacked him with every bit of her fully cultivated power against his less experienced past self, a merciless barrage of high-speed vibrating attacks that reduced him forever to mere atoms. However, the Invader had still been resolving the effects of his dimensional technique when she struck. The combination of such a technique imploding and Jen's own state of still-resolving ascension and weakened grasp on her world's timeline caused her to be nicked by the collapsing technique and thrust from her world entirely, as her ascension solidified and completed in truth.
Arriving in a place unknown, she found that her very being had been fundamentally changed by the experience. In order to maintain her existence, she had not merely joined herself to the concept of Speed. No, for to join herself with her own universe's rules of reality would have resulted in her unraveling the moment she left. Instead, she had managed to transform herself into a sort of moving "universe of Speed" in the shape of a human. Her very being was a self-sustaining battery of an existence that molded and adapted itself to instead be fueled merely by Jen's own belief and perception of Speed.
Ephemera: The Speed Nexus: A self-sustaining existence within Jen's body of her own semi-unintentional creation. More accurately, her body is the nexus itself, a relatively tiny but growing and hyper-compressed "Universe of Speed" that acts as a protective shell/shield for her memories and soul to guard against the paradox that destroyed her original body. Through this and her own perception of her power, her body has become essentially a walking physical expression of the fundamental force of Speed. This body is a magical nuclear power plant, constantly utilizing the forces of its own existence to generate and store further power, which is partially put towards generation, escalating the speed at which it generates more ad infinitum.
This body doesn't possess an organic growth cycle and as a result is no longer is capable of aging. Nor does it require food, drink or air. However, the body is barely any more durable than a standard human's. This will likely change in time, as it grows in power and "density".
Loyal Fol-... Frien-... Honestly, it's a cult: As a result of erasing her own history/past, very few from her home-world recall her existence, and she has been relegated more to myth than anything. That said, she is not the only being that can step beyond the reach of time, and several that remember cultivate her (presently false) image as a Goddess and search for ways to contact her or bring her home.
Hi, I'm very interested in this & working on a character (assuming it's still open!) - I just have a questions character creation wise.
For the grades you mention points, and say about starting with an average of enough to have D in each but that this can be adjusted as we like. For adjustment, is it a case of having to reduce one to increase another? (Say I reduce endurance to E and increase honkai to C) or is at adjust as you'd like within reason?
Happy to have you! I'll give that CS a look when I have some time.
It's about as you surmise (and as the other players have helpfully explained). You get enough points to start at D, and you can adjust them as you like within certain guidelines, which are outlined in the grades section. Maximum of C (before Stigmata/SWARA alterations), only one as low as F, as IC-ly, there as a minimum standard of competence expected across the board for field work.
I've never actually played this game, but I keep looking at your interest check. I'm thinking of putting together a psychic character. Although I am a little confused about the mechanics. If I play a psychic type character, would my attacks scale with my Intellect, or would it still be Power? And you mentioned psychic abilities being "useless" against Honkai. Does this only refer to my special psychic abilities, or would I also be unable to use my element effectively against Honkai?
In order:
Yes, psychic "power" is based on Intellect instead.
Yes, psychic abilities are historically useless on most Honkai creatures, with a few rare exceptions. Their "mindlessness" generally nullifies mental attacks and manipulation that don't originate from Honkai (and thus have an existing "in"), and only the likes of Herrschers that are built off a human template/host, have potential vulnerability. And after the sacrifice of Elysia in the First Era, precognition stopped working very well additionally, sometimes becoming entirely defunct, as she ruined the once predetermined flow of "fate". To clarify, in short, psychics are more "anti-human" than anti-Honkai when it comes to their innate abilities.
Your element, generally speaking, however, should be considered separate from your psychic abilities. Your element comes from your Artificial Stigmata, so it doesn't suffer the usual troubles against Honkai. It's Honkai-based, and it will work on them just fine. So, no worries about your element suffering against Honkai.
Einherjar 906
TheWendil
Noctis
Danyel
Reisling
Guardian Angel Haruki
Izurich
4wheathRmany
