ALTERED REALITY - Character Discussion

[PureQuestion]

There is no maximum points. The points you spend impact your leveling rate. You are allowed to have 9 in every stat. it will simply take you an eternity to level up.

[ZarroTsu]

- Ammount of skills / spells per character?

Any, really. Physical skills are learned relative to how skillful you are with a weapon, while magical spells, I dunno yet. You might get skill points every level to spend on specific weapon states, or the same states for magic spells. So a base structure for what spells your character would learn is probably a good idea. Sort of a growth tree idea. Could be that you have 'ice' and 'thunder' spells - if you spend skill points on your ice spells to increase its accuracy/crit, then higher spells would be easier to cast.

I probably might change/do it so "AGL" corresponds to crit rate, and "SKL" to the actual skills you can use. Evasion isn't really weapon specific, but more 'total weight' specific.

I dunno, should DEX correspond with evasion rather than with speed? It wouldn't be too troubling to just have the player party go all at once, then the enemy party all at once, repeat. (Unless it's a boss or an ambush, where it would be the opposite)

- Should the characters be given a 'role' in their profile?

I suppose? It's generally a good idea to place some form of actual backstory behind the character. And as before, some sort of indicator of how pleased/frightened you yourself would be having found yourself in that body in a do-anything-barring-monsters world.

- In case of buffs / debuffs, is there a limit on the ammount a player can give / receive / be affected at once? I assume this will be balanced later, but I'm more concerned about engine limits.

Fairly sure it's "as many as you can make/stack." Of course each powerup/down is a specific status effect, so you can't really stack two of the same one.

- No Burn / Freeze / Sleep / Curse / Doom status?

Burn (and Bleed) would fall under debilitation, freeze and sleep under paralysis, curse would probably fall under debilitation too, and doom doesn't really exist unless you need it to; it would probably categorize under 'death' though.

[AlexMdle]

Character Name: "Caleb"
Gender: Presumably male
Row: Front

Character Stats: HP: 55
MP: 43
STR: 99
CON: 37
DEX: 99
INT: 32
WIS: 30

Element Efficiency: STRONG: None
WEAK: Ice

Status Efficiency: STRONG: Death
WEAK: Confusion

Signature Weapon: "Quazeltoth" (Short sword)
Weapon Stats:
STR: 9
CON: 4
DEX: 9
INT: 3
WIS: 2

"Increases chance to score a critical hit."

Passive: Blind Rage
Confusion also applies "Berserk" to Caleb, increasing his damage output. While confused/berserk, Caleb cannot use skills and chooses attack targets at random.

Skill 1 [Rend]: Inflicts medium damage to a single enemy, reduces enemy armor.

Skill 2 [Fan of knives]: Administers a flurry of daggers to a single enemy, possibly causing short Silence or Paralysis.

Skill 3 [Burning Scorn]: An attack that increases in power the lower Caleb's HP gets. If Caleb's HP is under 10%, deals additional FIRE damage.

Skill 4 [Carnage]: Attempts to deal high physical damage up to 3 times, striking a random enemy with each strike. (May hit the same enemy more than once)

Skill 5 [Terminus Est]: Skill deals massive damage to all enemies, with a decent chance to miss. Small chance to insantly kill any affected enemy. (Except bosses)

Ultimate [GENOCIDE]: A more powerful version of Carnage, that strikes up to 5 times. Leaves Caleb confused after use.

[AlexMdle]

Hard to find a place where to start. I hate the entire world with seething, burning hatred, or at least I think so. I don't think I ever had any real problems in my life. Sure, I was poor, subject to russian bulliyng (Which is like bullying on steroids) and then constantly subjected to daily drama at home, where I mostly played a passive observer between mom/sis' fights. But back then I was stupid, er, stupider, my morale worked solely in black/white and idealism and escapism RULED my imagination.

That is before the world ruined it all. I can pinpoint the moment where my fantasy started to die to the lesson where I learned how energy works. Suddenly there was a grim realisation that there is nothing special in the world. No magic, no supernatural or etc, just a long wait, nothing at all in the end. Hated to live forever, hated to die, the world has pretty much screwed me over. Locked me in a very limited (though also very intricate) body, woven my mind to be set with goals I cannot accomplish and worst of all, it gave me the ability to comprehend this. My life is thus a paradox, I want to escape all responsibilities, abandon the society as far as I can and try to eke out a substandard living in solitude. Never got to die young sadly always wanted to.


So. Now I am suddenly Caleb. And I am proven wrong. There IS magic and supernatural in the world. My shoulder hurts and I know why and I already feel horrible memories fade and I also know why. I do not care for all the losses. For all I care the old world might have disappeared. Sounds cruel, but I am a cruel person now. Who is to place any restraints on me? Life has kicked me in the nads my entire life, now it's payback time. I will have no care, no superior, I will answer to none, be second to NO ONE.

But why does it feel so hard. I cannot bring myself to be evil, whatever sort of behaviour that implies. I am not bloodthirsty, I do not like hurting people because it also hurts myself. Maybe those are all the traits I have since forgotten and I certainly hope so. Those traits belonged to Alex. And I am not Alex anymore. I am Caleb, ain't I?

That's right. I am. I know I once had a name. I have forgotten it along with the name I once was given. I may not enjoy death, but I do enjoy freedom, I can learn to tolerate constant pain, I do not need much and yet can have anything. The world is mine for grasp, all it's fine pleasures.
I have never called any place home. And even here no ground binds me. Freeedom, I can remember how I love that word. What it stands for.

But what is at the end. In the end, all food is stale, all fight is boring, but I forget. I need not worry if I forget. And in time, I will forget that I forget. Maybe in time I will forget that it all makes no sense, eternity holds no reward for me, I know I have hated it as much as end. It is a constant fact, it is always there. Haunting me, filling me with worry.

Even this freedom is of no worth anymore. I have tasted it until the taste would not go. I should have known, but the craving made me forget as i forgot everything. I do not know Alex. But who is Caleb? Why. Everything. Why. What for? I just want to know the reason. Why does it never open itself up. This world. I hate it. I hate it as much as I hated the world prior. It gave me no answers. It locked me in a better body, but no body would ever suffice. The goals have become much more distant and I now know that they are impossible to reach.

It is the nature of man, to walk forward blind.

I hate it.
I hate everything.
I hate.
Hate.
Hate.
Hate
hate
hate
hate
hate
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ehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehate
hatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehateha
tehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehate
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hatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehate hate

WHY WONT IT EVER STOP!?

*Looks over*

Wow, Ive let myself go...

[ZarroTsu]

Something that needs to be discussed and/or looked into is the prospect of character skills, and how exactly they would be acquired.

Thus far, I've decided upon one thing for sure, that being that known skills will be able to 'level up' over time. However, this is majorly prospect to specific weapon skill or similar being higher, rather than the skill itself actually being leveled somehow, as that itself seems rather overzealous an idea. There's already a fuckton of levels to keep track of as-is (28 different level counts to keep track of PER CHARACTER), so adding more just for skills is more of a hassle to the player. Although if a majority of people WANT actual exp meters to each skill, then I can look at adding it; but I don't feel it's a requirement until then.

The reason I feel I'd like skills to level is that eventually they become obsolete to the player's equipment, and possibly to other skills (and other characters). While I could simply do like many other rpgs and give you a new version of the skill to fuck around with while retaining the old, this feels especially pointless when it just leaves the old skill cluttering up the skill list, totally unused. I can say without asking that nobody here used the fire spell in any final fantasy game after Firaga became available to them. And it's not like I intend the 'old' skill to be suddenly weak because it doesn't take the player's magic ability into account; it's more along the lines that eventually you'd have 9999MP, and a fire spell that only costs 6 mana to use. You basically have infinite use of that spell at that point if it were to stay just as innovative a spell from the beginning to the end of the game! Rather silly.

Another thing to question is how exactly characters would attain the skills, which is something that should be heavily considered. There is a limit of 999 skills (and items, and weapons, and armors. It's a stupid limit.) possible to the game. While I can probably add a suffix to an existing skill via code so that "Fire alpha" and "Fire omega" both use only one skill slot; the problem doesn't come in skill uniqueness, it comes in character uniqueness.

Unlike last time, I want to assure that every character is both unique, and at the same time not totally fucking useless. This is a hard statement that struck the other day when I was messing around with old fights and the new skill levels: There will come a time when the character could be rendered useless for one function alone. However, if the character serves as ONLY this one function (whitemage, fighter, blackmage), and they are rendered entirely powerless for even a single battle... It presents them as awfully worthless. For all the good they could be against random encounters; if they can't lay a finger on a boss, then what good are they really?

An example of this occurred during the fight with that old 'dissantra' boss (who basically mimiced Zalbak from Lufia 3). She would cast mirror on herself and on players, reflecting spells left and right, as well as a nasty down-to-1HP attack she always used on the same target as a mirror that round (she could attack three times a turn, and always went first!). While this could be remedied in advance by casting a heal spell the start of the same turn this occured... the problem is that mirror would reflect the heal spell back at the caster, meaning the mirrored individual could not be healed unless by an item. So fine, I can't really use a healer too often, so I checked her skills and she could indeed hit the boss with a defense-pierce attack. A different character, however, was more of an offense-hinderer... and every single skill of his was reflected by the enemy's mirror. Every one. Totally useless for the final boss = totally useless THE ENTIRE GAME.

But the problem wasn't his character or build, it was his skillset, which were from a generic pool I set up for that old shitty version of this project. Just so happens he got a bum wrap because of the mirror spell, and having no physical offense skills.

So really, the only way to go is to give all the characters their own unique skills, to try to avoid a move pool. This is unfortunately more difficult than you might think, as I'm not entirely sure how skills should be learned, and exactly how diverse the individuality should be.

The question stands as to how the characters should learn their skills. Should it be by leveling up in ye old generic way? Should they be purchased by teachers or magic shops? Should they be dependent entirely on which weapon is being used?

The best idea I have is the last one, which is what makes the 999 limit a problem. Assuming we have 16 characters in the end, times the 9 skills each, this quickly eats up 144 skill slots assuming every one is unique. And that's still just one skill per weapon per person. Which is a rather silly prospect, since unless you specialize in every weapon (which would be time consuming as fuck), you're really only getting 3 of those skills. Adding more eventually adds up. I mean, in the end, how many skills are REQUIRED to present good variety in a character build?

However, if it is only built around a single weapon type and the magic skill, it presents the opposite problem: false freedom of play. Presently, the system is built in such a way that you can give any character any weapon and train them with it however you like, to improve their accuracy and evasion while wielding it. HOWEVER, if they only learned skills from using one specific weapon type, what would be the point of raising the other weapon levels? What would the point be of even presenting the option?

One of the solutions to these problems that comes to mind, while still a little pathetic, is a generic move pool to each weapon skill, to be accessed unless you're using the signature weapon types to that character. This is all well and good until the player notices duplication between multiple characters, and quickly dismisses it as obvious repetition, and my own personal laziness to the build, which could have easily been avoided. This does, however, serve as a means of assuring any character can have a use, even if they pick a radically different weapon skill to train than they should have. But even if it rids the looming space limit of 999 skills by creating a few generic pools to prevent a massive flood, it's still just a means to making characters LESS individual than they should be.

So really, I'm in a tight spot at the moment in my deciding. Should there be generic move pools to fill the void presented by unnatural weapon skill routes? Should I risk the limitations and make every single skill option unique and original?

Thinking about it while writing the above, a new thought occurs: Should each character only have a set number of weapon options to train and deviate with? It would certainly prevent an overburdened number of skills required to be made, while still presenting flexible paths to raise the character with...

[PureQuestion]

I would highly recommend limiting which weapons characters can use in a non excessive way. You mentioned the weapons being linked to the 3 rows. Perhaps that would be a good way to go about it?

Naturally, it could also be done on a character by character basis.

[ZarroTsu]

You mentioned the weapons being linked to the 3 rows.

Eh, I was pulling that out my ass as a theoretical weapon limitation prior to my starting work on the weapon levels. With weapon levels, I don't really care.

And yes, I would say the best idea would be character-specific proficiencies for certain weapons.

[ZarroTsu]

In any case, I'd like if everyone with a posted character would go ahead and add which weapons they'd be proficient with from the list;

Code: Select all

Axes (incl. Scythes)
Swords
Polearms (incl. Spears)
Daggers
Shields 
Blunt (incl. staffs and unarmed)
Guns
Bows
Magic **

And you can go ahead and say you'd be proficient with everything if you really want, although it's not really suggested as it's what I'm trying to AVOID. Regardless, please specify one weapon that you consider the primary proficiency (Zarro's being swords for example).

Something else to include is a short bracket of what kinds of skills you'd learn while using the weapon proficiency. In fact, if you want to spoiler it you can make a large list of every skill name and effect that comes to mind if you like; but try to limit it to only 8 per weapon.

** Magic is something difficult for me to determine. I'm not saying you can't learn specific spells from using weapons, but the fact stands that the magic proficiency will still determine accuracy from those spells, unless they're healing spells, or physical attacks. It additionally is used to raise/determine magic evasion as you get hit by more magic spells. If you do not want your character to use magic AT ALL (and it's a valid option), then I may as well remove the counter(s) entirely, magic evasion included. However, seeing as this may result to be a bad idea, I would suggest that everyone tries to come up with at least one magic-relative spell to their character.

[AlexMdle]

Caleb

Primary proficiency: Swords

Secondary proficiency: Daggers

Tertiary proficiency: Axes, Guns


Sword skills: Caleb's main source of damaging skills.

1 - Physical attack with an increased critical ratio.

2 - Physical attack that ignores X% of enemy defense.

3 - Physical attack that increases in power the lower Caleb's HP is. Under 20% HP - deals additional fire damage.

4 - Physical attack that has a chance to instantly kill a non-boss enemy.

5 - Physical attack that strikes up to 5 times, random targets. (May strike same target more than once)

6 - Powerful physical attack that causes bleeding.

7 - A mass variant of skill 4.

8 - GENOCIDE. Improved skill 5, deals more damage, strikes more times, leaves Caleb confused after use.



Daggers: Caleb's source of debiliating skills.

1 - Minor physical damage. Reduces enemy defense.

2 - Minor physical damage. Extra damage to enemies with reduced defense.

3 - Adequate physical damage. Target non-boss is silenced for one turn.

4 - Mass minor physical damage. Chance to paralyze each target hit.

5 - MERCY. Backstabs a paralyzed or stunned enemy for instant critical hit with a chance of instant kill.



Axes: Caleb only masters 3 skils with Axes. Used when he needs to be more defensive.

1 - Creates a shield of X damage around himself or an ally. Counter-strikes an enemy who breaks the shield.

2 - Powerful physical attack that reduces the amount of healing the afflicted enemy receives.

3 - NOSFERATU. Powerful physical attack. Caleb drains 50% of damage dealt as HP and may steal positive buffs placed on the enemy.



Guns: Caleb only masters 2 gun skills. Exploits enemy weaknesses.

1 - Caleb deals physical damage to the target. If the target is weak to an element, the attack takes on that element.

2 - Caleb deals physical damage to the target. Chance to apply every negative buff the enemy is weak to.

[Spriterkid]

Mika holds proficiency of 3 different types: Swords, Guns and Magic.
Swords as a primary, Guns as a secondary, and Magic as a terciary.

Swords:All about passives, status effects and reducing enemy stats.
Can imbue her sword in elements, making her attacks from that element.
Can thrust her sword into the ground, damaging all enemies by 50%, of the element Thunder. (DQ8 reference)
Can passively counter enemy's normal attacks if she dodges. WORKS ON BOSSES.
Can make her attack diminish an enemy's damage output.
Can passively deal 50% of her damage in 2 enemies next to the attacked enemy.
Can passsively reduce the enemy defence of those she hits. DOES NOT WORK ON BOSSES.
Can passively steal Mana from those she hits. WORKS ON BOSSES. (Learnt from the moment she joined.)
Can passively blind enemies with her attacks, having a 5% chance of doing so. WORKS ON BOSSES. (Learnt much later)
As her strongest skill, she damages an enemy 6 times, each time utilizing an element. Both the enemy and her are then stunned. (Hex Slash)

Guns:All about lots of attacks.
Can shoot twice, thrice, 4 times, and even 5 times in succession. (All of these are different skills)
Can shoot a burst shot that deals less damage but damages all enemies.
Can imbue her shots in elements.
Passively has a 30% chance to deal 150% damage to an enemy next to the enemy she attacked.
As her strongest gun skill, she shoots all enemies 7 times. All of these shots can critical hit, but deal 14% damage. (Timed Bullets)

Magic:All about status effects.
Can cast minor Thunder and Darkness skills.
Can imbue her weapons in said elements ONLY.
As her strongest magic skill, she casts a Darkness Bolt, which can both blind and paralyze and deals the damage of both elements.

She will need a lot of mana for her sword skills, so the mana-stealing passive is essential later on.