Black Zenith [Adventure RPG / Chapter Four: Fires of Heaven]

"I didn't exactly design my weapons with birds in mind, although I suppose just watching should suffice. My name is Selphy by the way. (If you forget what one of these weapons does, you can find this information in Selphy's inventory on the first page of this thread.)"

Airship Weapons

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Heavy Rifle: A complicated weapon which fires a tungsten bullet at an extremely high velocity. This weapon pierces armor and deals immense damage to a single target... and probably whatever is in front of and behind the target. This weapon is especially effective against large monsters.
Does 2x damage, ignoring damage reduction.

Gatling Gun: A large multi-barrelled gun mounted on the front of the airship. Deals damage to enemies in a cylindrical area in front of the airship and hits many times. This weapon is effective against other aircraft.
Hits three times per attack for ½Power each per attack. Deals double damage against vehicles and smaller flyers.

Artillery Cannon: A cannon designed to launch explosive shells. Deals damage to targets within a spherical blast radius at a targetted location, and is particularly effective against structures.
Deals area damage to all targets in an area, with a 3x area damage multiplier. Does double damage to structures.

Once Selphy finishes instructing Myra on how to use the Airship Weapons, Myra will thank her, and read more of the Book of Warding on a left-alone area of the ship's floor so she doesn't have to levitate the book and risk her headache getting worse.

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Shooting through the air beneath a black sun, the airship makes good progress, driven by a wind called by the druid. As time passes, the passengers of the ship finally have a moment of peace to themselves, and Myra in particular uses the time to read ancient theories on the principles of magical shielding - a dull, but informative study. The rest, however, seem content to merely rest.

It is not long before the first streak of darkness flashes by, hurtling from the sky like some meteorite made from the shadows themselves, soon striking the land below and leaving behind only a smoldering crater where there before was farmland. Within moments, dark things are crawling up from the impact point, scattering across the landscape, desecrating the very ground as they pass. More dark meteorites follow, like black bolts from the sky, leaving trails of shadow in their wake as they rain on the defenseless land below.

And as the city comes into view, something massive parts the clouds above, bellowing its hatred with a roar that echoes across the land. A great serpent of unparalled size stretches from the skies as it dives on the city, a great mass of black fury and ungodly strength poised to annihilate the entire city below with a single sweep.

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Cursing, Razan lets his staff clatter to the ground. "Find Ziras, and get him out of there!"

A sword of blazing light appears in Razan's hands as he takes a running start, leaping straight off the airship, leaving only his staff behind. A moment later, he appears again on wings of light, heading for Nirthrid and the monstrosity lurking in the clouds above it. Though fast by its own standards, the airship cannot keep pace with Razan, and he quickly outdistances the ship.

Meanwhile, the city seems to be faring badly, even without the titanic serpent above, staring with its eyes of malevolence from above. Meteorites fall on the city, and dark things run through its streets, surrounding pockets of defenders and barricaded houses.

Raising a hand as he falls into a dive, Razan blasts the massive serpent with a beam of magical power, but it barely reacts, instead descending on the town to brutally sweep one of its massive claws through a third of the towns' structures, turning them to rubble and sending debris flying in a shower of splintered wood and bricks.

Then, Razan draws back his arm, hurling his blade at the creature's back. It seems ridiculous, such a tiny pinprick thrown at a veritable sea of roiling darkness. And as the blade strikes, it is deflected, puffing away to nothingness. But the serpent roars in anger, sweeping its tail through the town as it turns to regard Razan, stopping only for a moment before abruptly tearing after him, its eyes aflame with hatred.

Razan, meanwhile, turns to flee, leading the dark serpent across the sky in a chase, as the black sun shines its twisted light from above and rains death.

THE END OF CHAPTER THREE

~

also, this is when you get a level up. i have some things to say about that tomorrow, though, so dont start posting your new stuff quite yet.

Could you remind us about/explain how this level up will work?

Normally leveling up would give you two traits, a special ability, and 3 combat stat points & of a social stat point.

Since there are still a number of chapters left, i thought bringing up alternative ways of handling character progression would be a good idea. Nobody wants to end up having 15 specials and just rotating between them (thats not a thing that would actually happen). So i wanted to hear if anyone had ideas. Upgrading a special instead of getting a new one might be one way to handle something like that. Or perhaps combining two specials into a more powerful one. Just ideas; i know some people have already predefined what they want. Not gonna mess with that.

So for example, I could get more than 2 traits at the expense of a special or something?

that wouldnt exactly solve the problem as an overabundance of traits are also a problem but yes something in that category

Upgrading traits maybe? I know having 10% off damage would appeal to Watson

I'm all for the trait upgrading idea, although its way more boring than getting a new trait. Perhaps if upgraded traits didn't necessarily just double the effect of the old trait?

yes, i considered that aswell. Upgrading something to make it twice as powerful is *BORING*. Adding something new and fancy is much more interesting. (though that kind of thing tends to give me headaches when writing updates. But thats for me to worry about.)

Maybe it would help if you gave some guidelines for how to format our traits to make them less of a headache? I know it was really hard for you to keep track of certain traits and abilities because of how they tied in with the calculations, so maybe if you gave us some pointers in that respect, it would help us think of traits and abilities that could be incorporated more smoothly with the update calculation process.

I don't know how much this would help, but eh. ._.

How about a few suggestions on how to determine what we should raise for a level up. Is a trait as valuable as a special? And how do plain old stat points measure up to things?

Dont worry too much about the traits getting out of hand. I got that handled. Though if you want something that gives you like five different effects youre probably better off putting it in a special... Anyway, if a particular trait is troublesome i'll tell you. Usually they're not though.

At the moment the system works something like this:

Stats: raw power and numbers. The essential but unexciting stuff.

Traits: Specialized perks that make you stand out from the rest by making you particular awesome in certain situations - or just all around effectiveness, if thats your preference. But basically they are what give character definition. Thunderpaws traits in particular are extra interesting because he took them based on things that happened to him.

Specials: Powerful tools you can use when the situation needs it and lets you have a small moment where you get to be awesome (hence why i worry that having a ton of specials would be boring)



Odds are that for this level up, it'll proceed like normal. Just want to voice a couple of ideas at the moment in preparation for the next level up. Unless you all disagree with me and think having excessive amouns of traits/specials is awesome, in which case that will be a thing.

So what did you want to say about level ups today? Also, do we pm the level up thing to you or post it here?

Can we have the option of upgrading traits available to us? Also, having one huge special instead of 2 traits and one normal special? Or... 1 colossally powerful trait instead of 2 traits and a special.

So what did you want to say about level ups today? Also, do we pm the level up thing to you or post it here?

the stuff i said just now. im just asking if anyone has any ideas in particular.

and post it here, please.

Here's hoping I am doing this right.

+2 Precision
+1 Constitution
+1 Intimidate

Divinity 2: An upgrade to divinity which further increases the traits effects. In addition to this, if Selphy's target is in melee range her strength also contributes to the effects of healing and holy damage effects. Selphy does not benefit from the strength bonus when she is the target of her own spells.

Pilot 2: An upgrade to the pilot trait, further increasing its effects. Using vehicle controls and weapons now requires less concentration from this character, allowing it to be used alongside magic or other actions which require thought. However, the magic action would be subject to a large precision penalty.

Special attack- Hallow Indignation: A gigantic golden halo appears above Selphy and is flung towards an enemy. This attack deals both holy and melee damage, and has a high chance to cause dismemberment which may or may not result in instant death depending on where it hits. Instead of a regular cooldown this attack needs to be charged, the overflow from any healing that would bring Selphy's health above 100% will be contributed to Hallow Indignation's recharge. Holy damage that Selphy receives, including self inflicted damage will also contribute to its charging. This special attack will slowly lose its charge while out of combat and cannot be charged further until Selphy re-enters combat. Although this power is much harder to use than normal special attacks, it also is appropriately more powerful.

I'm all for upgrading traits because I don't really have any ideas for things at the moment. I had a good idea for something to strengthen Echo's theme and go with her Slow Time but it would work better as a time mage and she's not really one.


And she's not exactly in the same case as the party and is still kind of in limbo. Plus she'll get nerved so...

My concern is that levels happen... pretty much once a year. And to go an entire year with the same dull moves would be even worse than having 20 of them. I have highly coveted these level-ups as a way to spice up what has become the norm of combat with something else, making the game as new again.

Granted, if progress was faster than it was, I would think upgrading would be a whole lot better than gaining 20 moves in a week. But what you choose tends to be what you're stuck with for a long time. A VERY long time! And with how long battles tend to drag out, saying "I hit the enemy" 20 times over fails in comparasin to pulling something out of your character's bag of tricks!

Assuming one isn't like Echo and is able to pop every single special in one round of combat, having an echo-like list of nonstandard attacks would be pretty cool in my opinion. A living record of what your character has learned that sets him or her apart from the normal fighters in the land. What makes them truly heroes.

I know that opinion doesn't do much for cutting down the imminent dictionary of skills that would follow, but hey. Any good tabletop game, if drawn out enough, leaves the players with a scroll of a character sheet. I think it is the nature of defining a person in numbers; people learn a LOT as they go along.

@SN yes thats certainly one way to handle it. The Special is especially nice. I was thinking for a long while that having some kind of resource to manage other than just health and cooldowns might be nice. On the other hand, that doesnt necessarily translate well to the entire text thing.

And i agree with MasterBlade. Absolutely no sense in cutting back on character progression. Which is why im asking for ideas now, to see if anybody has a solution. I definitely havnt been able to think of one that would be all around satisfactory.



Something that *would* help would be having more cooldowns like hellbent and winds of fate. Things that are really powerful, but are used very rarely to great effect. Ofcourse that would just create the new problem of suddenly whenever somebody is in mortal danger five people blow their big abilities and thats just kind of overkill and probably takes away from the DRAMA.

Forcing something like that would also be really bad for the character freedom inherent in the system.

I don't really understand what Masterblade is trying to say about Echo, but I will admit I'm kind of going through an identity crisis with what I want Echo to be, though that's part of her being an enemy and me just needing as much power as I feel I can get my hands on. You all could't see her most recent set but it's much more focused on supporting then it was.

I think he meant your specials rather than your traits. Between slow time, banish and your summoning book, you could potentially use five specials in one turn, since all of those dont take a turn and you could then also use an additional two specials, from slow time.

oh well the banish and the book are items but yeah I guess

I'm open to suggestion concerning possible traits for Watson.