Dervish said
Couple things with that last post, Volt. The first is the shield, I am not a fan of people adding things to their inventory without GM say so. I'd prefer that you waited until Soul or I describe loot and inventory in an area before making changes to your equipment. The reason being is simple, it's a slippery slope where it sets a precedent where people start feeling that they can do the same. We were already linent with the swords in Chorrol, and we established thay dwemer stuff is high-tier equipment, so randomly deciding you want new stuff, especially of that caliber and just justifying it in a time skip isn't cool. I don't want this to turn into 'And Blade killed a guy in power armour and took it for himself' or whatever.
Gotcha. I didn't think you would mind the shield since, outside of being a targe, it has no special properties. It's just a shield with spikes on it. Ill redact that if you like though.
Your character is already strong, which brings me to point two.We get that Blade is tough, but in just about every encounter he's basically unstoppable, takes no injuries, and makes everyone he fights look like a bunch of weak, half-wit Redshirts.
I think that's a little unfair, well, the no injuries part anyway. Yeah I do have him go on sprees but I try to balance it out with injuries.
He got busted up by those trolls when I first started. He was near death after Chorral. He got cut up during the boarding of the Dominion ship (admittedly less so that time.) And I was gonna have him get carved up in the fight with Krieger's minions too but then the site blew up and I have no context as to what they were actually capable of, and NoSoul's characters seemed healthy enough so I went along with that.
Maybe I don't explain it well while I'm writing, but due to the chaotic nature of a pitched battle, not all of the people he kills are necessarily killed 'fairly' per se. Many of them just get blindsided and it's over, so I don't go into detail about exactly what happened to them. But when it's a fair, face to face fight, I write it as more of a duel, like the time he faced off against the dwemer he took the greatsword from for example.
But I get your point and will try to balance it more.
He's not going to step into a tournament with a bunch of Alik'r warriors and other veteran fighters who have fought the dwemer more than he has and come out on top and have them just get walked all over.
I realize I didn't go into much detail with the fights (I was too tired at the time) but I did mention that he was having a hard time with the more skilled warriors, and I also assumed that there would be plenty of less skilled ones, which he could steam roll.
Remember in the OOC where I wrote that the goal was believable characters with lots of development and not unstoppable badasses? Blade hasn't changed, at all, since the game started and he can pretty much be defined by 'apathic badass who is unphased by everything who is emotionally static and is only driven by fighting. ' I get he's a gladiator and that's the only life he knows, but he's still a person.
I actually agree with you on that point, his development is going very slowly. But I do have something in mind. It actually started with your mention of how the people of Chorral looked to him as a hero after the battle and he started getting recognition for helping a cause instead of just fighting for himself. It's happening slowly, but it's happening.
Final point, the Hammerfell equipment is necessary for the Helgathe arc because it's the dwemer capital in the province and as such is the most secure. The guards aren't going to let strangely clothed, heavily armed and armoured people walk the streets unchallenged, especially since they know about the Heroes of Tamriel after Chorrol and there's uprisings in other cities. Even if that were socially acceptable, the dwemer are not going to see him with dwemer gear and think, 'he has good taste!' They're going to think, rightfully, he killed somebody for it.
Ah. I was not aware we were going on a stealth mission. Will fix.