MelonHead

The World of War: Central Hub/Main Thread/Chen's Tavern

Liu listened, and drank, with a thoughtful expression on his furry face. He did not take Xiomara’s questions thoughtlessly, but gave them the consideration he believed they deserved, as was his way. However, his reverie was interrupted by the sudden arrival of a dark haired woman oozing with confidence, feigned or otherwise. She grabbed a bottle of spirit off the table and downed it in one, suffering for her display of strength all the same as the drink burned down her throat.

“Hold your breath in future, hmm.” The Pandaren advised with a smile, laughing as she dropped the drink and made some choice remarks. “That was Firedrake Whisky.” He told her, and then returned to concentrating on Xiomara’s philosophical musings. They were not exactly the questions he had asked himself, by any means, but Liu had considered questions like them before. What was his role in this new world, one born of violence and populated by the bloodthirsty and the maniacal, a place of war? He drank his ale and he let the wisdom bestowed upon him by others flow through his mind, carefully deciding what he would say and how to articulate himself. After a long pause, he placed his emptied tankard before him.

“Xiomara, you have forgotten that without places such as this” he waved his arms to mean the tavern, but in general he referred to peace and civilisation “there would be nothing to fight for. It is only when a man dreams of peace that he understands the necessity of war, like in all things this place knows balance. Ying and Yang, fire and water, when we are deprived of one the other loses sensation. Would you have all struggle become meaningless?” He posed the question to provoke Xiomara to consider things for himself, even as he refilled the tankard of ale from the keg.

“As for coin, do not trouble yourself, Xiomara. Though if you could bring me one of those large boar you once spoke of you can consider your debt paid to me.” Liu licked his lips (or proxy) as he thought of the succulent meat, and downed another pint of ale.

Terra Magica (Open/Accepting Players!)

Erik, for his part, drifted slowly towards one of the engineering contractors he recognised. The man was sat behind a table stacked high with admission forms and looked thoroughly put out with the task at hand, as a clamour of unskilled individuals mistakenly (or perhaps purposefully) tried to get hired as trained engineers. It was his job to sort the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, and with most of the genuinely skilled workers already being hired out by Company, there were more pretenders than not lining up to meet his appraisal.

The man's worn out face broke into a brief smile of ackowledgement when he spotted Erik lurking in the crowd. The two had worked together before and had a fairly easy friendship so Erik pushed to the front and few people were brave enough to stop him. Once he was within earshot he addressed his friend.

"It is good to see you, Andrew, so you were lumped with the desk work then?"

"Unfortunately." Andrew sighed as he looked up at his broad friend, before flicking through some papers in front of him. He stared at an odd note for a few moments, and then glanced back at his friend. "Looks like it's your lucky day, Erik."

"Hmm?"

"It says 'ere that you've been picked for some sort of expeditionary group, dunno why, good pay though."

"What?" Erik looked perturbed for a moment. "What does that mean?"

"I guess it means you'll be leading the charge, doing all the dangerous work for a bigger pay-out. Could be risky though, there's bound to be trouble with the Clanners."

"So... I'll be paid more to fight the Clan?" Erik looked at him thoughtfully, at odds with the hustle and bustle all around him as his brow furrowed. "Sounds good to me."

"Righty-oh." Andrew muttered a little awkwardly, he knew there was history between Erik and the Clan, so he didn't want to press it. "You 'ave to go outside, meet the rest of the group out by the Silos."

"I'll do that then."

Erik made his way to the large red structures just inside Ambrosia, he was actually fairly familiar with the food storage Silos, having been contracted to carry out some repair work on their exterior a year ago. It didn't take long for him to get there, but even so someone had beaten him to the punch so to speak. There were already a couple of armed and dangerous types waiting, a soldier in the defence force and a frontier type, perhaps one of those hunters. Erik strode over to them confidently, nodding to them but saving introductions as he assumed more were coming.

Daniel had to make his way through throngs of people, elbowing past people who clearly did not respect his badge. It didn't matter. He was more then a little peeved at the whole thing. Random orders were never good. As he stepped up to the group, his eyes widned at the site of Claudia Alrecht, who stood arms akimbo.

"Captain Alrecht. I did not expect to see you here." He said. Eyes glancing over the engineer at his side.Next to him stood a man with a large rifel. A hunter, he'd stake his pay on it. "What is the meaning of this little initiative."

Claudia smiled. It was a cold, dead excuse of a smile. "Is that any way to adress your superiors, Peace Officer Cheng." She turned to regard Erik. "Welcome Erik, I had a feeling you'd accept the commishion."She said the last bit with a wry grin on her lips. " The Silent man next to you is Joséf Bartosz. He is a hunter of some skill. We are still waiting for a few others to arrive. Any questions in the meanwhile?"

Erik nodded politely at the officer, though her smile unsettled him. "No questions, as such, I am sure you will tell us exactly what we are to do when the others arrive." He looked around for a moment. "Except, I would very much like to know why I was picked for this group, I am not a soldier or a hunter. Are engineers not going to be needed for the railway project?"

The redheaded soldier pondered this. You won't be needed for the actual railway until we actually have the lay of the land." She frowned. "We need to set up fortifications along the the way. Hard points. That's were you come in.

"I see. Well, I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth."

"Wise. Its more like a gift dinosaur in any case."

Cynric arrived at the signup desk just before the rush. He was surprised just how smooth things were going, his paperwork had been processed quickly and someone was already walking up to him.

"Hey. Sinner ack." Cynric put his hand up to stop him.

"It's Sin-err-ick."

The man coughed nervously. Cynric smiled. "Never seen someone with an eye-patch before? Look." He lifted the patch showing off his ruined eye. "I can't see jack through it and chicks dig scars. Apparently."

There was a pregnant pause from the man who whistled nervously and flipped through the papers he had. "Well. You've been assigned to the expeditionary group."

Cynric looked at the man confused. "The expeditionary group? Sounds exciting."

The man nodded handing him the papers he was carrying. "You're to head to the silos to meet up with the rest of the group from there you'll be told what you're doing."

Cynric returned the nod and took the papers from his hand. Turning on the spot he headed out towards the silos. He saw there were already several people milling about. "Howdy there folks. Names Cynric."

Erik turned towards the vaguely familiar voice behind him, surprised to see a face he recognised. Though it wasn't the sort one would forget, considering the man was wearing an eye-patch.

"We've met, remember?" Erik grinned at him, for they had indeed met in the past. The burly armourer had done some maintenence on Cynric's bike almost a year back, though they had only talked briefly. The apocalypse had a way of bringing people together, so it was really unsurprising that the two had met before. "It's Erik, if you had forgotten." He laughed, letting the man off easy if he was the sort to forget the names of those he met in passing.

Cynric looked at Erik slightly confused the cogs in his brain slowly processing his words. "My god Erik it's been a long time." He enveloped Erik in a bear hug slightly lifting him off the ground. "Last time I saw you you were working on that hunk of junk you called armour. Thanks for the tune up by the way!" He let Erik down and stepped back to give him some space.

Erik was taken aback by the sudden hug, but he just assumed Cynric was that type of person and shrugged, not bothered enough to let it get to him. If anything, he was glad there was at least one familiar face on the team. Eventually he was put down, though he'd barely left the ground to begin with. He patted the one-eyed swordsman on the shoulder.

"That armour will save lives one day, Cynric, we both know the real 'hunk of junk' is that bike of yours. I was happy to work with it, you don't have to thank me again, though given a few more days the thing would have probably killed you!" He laughed, and with that introduction out of the way Erik turned back to the red-haired captain, expecting more rag-tag individuals to arrive at any moment.

Featuring

Hellis, MelonHead and Nytefall

Terra Magica (Open/Accepting Players!)

We are being overrun by spambots it seems.

Also. I think the collab is done.

@Hellis

I noticed that myself, Mahz fix yo shit.

Want me to post it?

Divinity Vs Dazsos!

Yeah, Division is a pretty broken spell looking at it. The limitation that you can't interact with the outside world while it's active would be fine, if it also constantly drained energy keeping it up and prevented you preparing any other abilities. But that doesn't seem to be the case, so the only thing I could determine is that it should be able to be pierced by a spell of sufficient strength. I mean, you could say 'well I snuck this ability through so lol I win' but that would be really bad form. Because in its current format, it has no practical limitations what-so-ever and there's nothing in it that suggests you couldn't also prep new abilities while inside, so long as they don't interact with the outside world until you were ready. Even if it did render you completely cut off, considering its lack of cost it would still be wildly overpowered for it to literally stop everything.

Still, there's not much I can say, as Divinity did technically agree to fight the ability. I'd have asked for clarifications on its traits, so it couldn't be abused, but I have trust issues. *Shrug*

Anyway, I'm rambling far more than usual because it's 4 am and contrary to popular belief sleep is actually a necessity. Still, it was an interesting conversation, even if we just went full circle.

Divinity Vs Dazsos!

You're helping me out here more than you know. And I'm a vulgar masochist who thrives on forcing multiple people to side against me on a debate to truly weed out what's wrong in both sides.

So the barrier shouldn't just be blanked out by any prepped attack, because it's a high tier, high grade ability. It's a one-trick pony, but it's very effective, and it was accepted by my opponent before the match started. There's my vice grip, here's my calloused hand.

Psssst... hey, hey Melon... you're still using aspects of time in your explanations. Also, I'd give your crude humor a 6.8/10. If you used the word feces, or the rather elusive ejectamenta, you'd surely earn more points on my sphincter scale.

@Dazsos

Yes Dazsos, but as I've explained multiple times, your characters are the same tier now. Corban doesn't really have any detailed abilities, but we can presume that they're vaguely equal in scope to Myron's shield, so for all intents and purposes it's up in the air which would come out on top. Unless the shield is restricted in some fashion outside of T1 Eden, but was still accepted (Such as a cooldown on its use, or some other restriction) it has to follow the same rules, and therefore it can stand up to any unprepped attack (logic permitting) but a prepped attack should pierce it.

I'm not shaking that hand dammit, I'm not done pounding my point in.

I am indeed using aspects of time, but only as I explained as a limiting factor. You can choose to be limited by time or not (I quite often do) and you can use that as a justification of a prep, but regardless of how much time passes in a turn, you still only earn one prep. Because preps are a balancing feature outside of IC logic. There is nothing statistically sound about them, other than numerical superiority being paramount. But as they only apply in instances where it's a matter of what overpowers what, that's more than suitable.

I resent your score of my piss analogy, this is proof I need to declare you insane, 6.8? Bah!

For example, I have a character called Metz who can spell-cast for longer periods of time if he wishes, the effect of which is a larger magical circle. The damage of the circle doesn't change however, because I know that's not how preps work. So I can secure an advantage using time by increasing the range of my circle, but its damage potential doesn't change. Time then becomes a tactical advantage divorced from the purely function advantage of the prep system.

So, bringing this example into this case, your time warp spell gains you a tactical advantage, because you can logically cast more spells in a period of time than you usually could. It doesn't give you an overpowering advantage though, because that would be pretty OP, your character would jump up at least an extra tier level if he could suddenly put double the power into his spells after using an ability with no real cost. In fact, it's basically an auto-win, because you simply overpower an opponent using the balancing mechanic, which they can't really fight or argue with. (Save for interrupts, but at this level interrupting is -hard-)

Divinity Vs Dazsos!

The issue with your piss analogy, is that I'd only rate pissing a T1 ability, where-as your space shield is T7. A better analogy would be trying to piss one of those annoying shit-stains off the side of the toilet, say that shit had sat there 'prepping' for a turn or two, you might just need to hold in your piss until it gets to super-pressure levels in order to blast it away. Now that, is a shit analogy of the prep system.

Character tier levels are inherently linked to the prep system, because higher tier abilities inherently have a prep advantage over lower level characters in most settings. (This is an adjustable rule, but it tends to make sense, and explains why your piss analogy doesn't hold any weight. That piss attack has to face maybe seven passive preps to overcome that shield, which is never going to happen, so we never have to see a logical fallacy that wide. Not to mention, even if it did break through the shield it would do no damage, because logic does still apply when it comes to damage dealt :D)

The reason why preps can't be relative to time is because in 'game mechanic' terms it would be completely impossible to balance and would break logic hard. The prep system is a gaming mechanic, it is not rooted properly in what is wholly logical, it is simply a balancing mechanic that says 'well, we have two opposing magical forces here that are balanced due to the tier, we can't just let whoever has the fancier description win (nor would that be suitable here, as Corban's sheet doesn't even have any hard references) so what do we do? Well, we could flip a coin, or roll a dice? But that leaves it up to luck. Okay, then we'll make it so a person can pre-plan an attack, they can state the intention to launch an attack in a prior post, and then when it's launched we say 'well, he planned to do that', so it's only fair it overcomes someone acting completely on reflex because all things being equal, the thing with prior thought/energy invested in it should be stronger.

There aren't any absolutes of course, T1 has to be flexible to survive the countless contexts it can be used in. However, you can't lose sight of what it is, it's a system outside of the 'IC' so to speak, a way of gauging if something can overcome something else when those factors are almost entirely abstract. There's some things you just can't know, and the T1 prep system plays the part of a dice or coin flip but gives full agency to the players, rather than dumb luck.

How was my crude humour, by-the-by? Can't fault that shit-piss analogy surely? It made me laugh, which may be more of a testament to the fact that I should be sleeping at 3 am, not typing.

That's not to say you can't use time as the IC capacity by which your character 'preps' but that's a limiting factor you place on yourself, as regardless of what happens 'fluff' wise with your spell, it only gains one prep per turn as part of the balancing mechanic.

The thing that's difficult to articulate here is how you -have- to divorce the prep system from IC, and do whatever you have to in order to explain the effects of preps through IC action. You display your character carrying out an activity akin to preparing an action, or charging an ability, but out of character you've gained a counter basically, a counter you can exchange for a determined outcome against an opponent's own actions, but which you buy at the price of risking being bopped on the head while you're distracted, and usually alerting your enemy to the fact that you're up to something.

Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG (Closed)

I can see that being doable, though as I said, it's likely that Tearstone and Hero's PCs will intervene at some point during the ambush. I don't know if Lekh would keep the bubble of null (Yes, I nicknamed his power, lol) up or shrink it, mainly as he doesn't just null the heroes' ability but also his allies preventing them from completing their job to their full potential. In addition I don't know what range he will try to keep as too many malfunctions in one place is likely to get unwanted attention from Strike or other sources, which might be the IC reason he can't push his ability to cover too much range?

@Fallenreaper

He can direct it, to an extent. It only has a short range though, forty feet at most I believe. There are ways Lekh can be of use however, he is a master of disguise and his abilities are very subtle. It wouldn't be hard for him to put himself in range of the heroes or even take one out of the equation on his own, if that was required.

For example, he could easily screen for the villains if a fight broke out. Say the van stops at traffic lights (or an intersection or w/e you guys call it.) The villains could do something as simple as follow the van in a couple of cars, and when it's in a good position honk their horn a couple of times using a specific pattern. Lekh can hear it, disable the driver (and everyone else in the van) and open the door, bundling Racheli straight into the loving arms of the villains just outside, who will have picked a good spot to carry out this plan (AKA few witnesses.) The Heroes would only be aware something is wrong when the team leave the rear car and the ambulance doors open, at which point Racheli will be in their hands, and Lekh can pull some shenanigans to screen for the group.

Literally just depends on if you want the heroes or villains to win, but I thought of some ways Lekh can cause chaos if you want it to be less cut and dry who succeeds. For example, Racheli could escape from the villains later, but the heroes could fail to save her initially.

It would also be up to the heroes, they might have super observation or something and foil anything Lekh can do, it would depend how smart they are and if their players are interested in forming a rivalry with Lekh, as whoever he disables/delays would have the questionable pleasure of seeing his face, they might be the only person who could prevent him doing something even worse in the future. (As his picture doesn't really exist anywhere.)

Just spitballing, but I do have some cool ideas that could make this ambush less cut and dry, so to speak. Depends entirely on what you want though, I'm happy to play a smaller or larger role depending on what's required.

Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG (Closed)

Well, if Lekh can get inside the vehicle he could disable the drivers with his power, as they would only be ordinary humans. He could be inside the vehicle suppressing Racheli's ability to save herself, and at a pre-determined time unleash his power to disable the driver, perhaps at traffic lights? Then the ambush team can just pull up and take it over, without the risk of road block tactics or whatever method they were planning to use.

If Lekh is allowed to infiltrate the team in the back then he can definitely play a large part in any ambush. Not to mention his ability cuts out communication tech, preventing the people inside calling for backup. That may be the most important part he can play.

Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG (Closed)

<Snipped quote by MelonHead>

Likely, NN and me might be leading this but if you and the others have any ideas for how to do the ambush feel free to speak up and we can likely make it happen. We have a basic plan and it's flexible enough for other player's input to affect it or enhance it.

@Fallenreaper

Who's transporting Racheli again? If it's CDC security staff then it would be pretty easy for Lekh to infiltrate the team and cause the crash for the ambush. Hell, even if the vehicle is going to be on site for any length of time Lekh could just stick a tracker on it.

To be honest, the latter makes more sense. If Lekh was actually on board he could just incapacitate the guard and drive Racheli straight to where she needs to go. That would be far too effective :d

Terra Magica (Open/Accepting Players!)

If anyone was planning to post very soonish, they might want to either wait or join our collab, it'll probably be posted tomorrow and a lot of things in it won't make sense if someone had ran over and joined the group before we've posted it.