yoshua171

The Prophecy

I'on is so done with Morgan's shit right now xD

Huh...well that was an interesting thing to do. Although it really shows me both I'on's magical skill, his focus, and how much he relies on magic. Actually no wait. I guess this just shows me that he relies on magic when he's pushed too much both in battle and out.

Interesting. Hopefully this has more effect than his "Calm," spell did back at the gates. It should...considering there are considerably more arcane words in it, thus increasing the power of the spells.

As a note, the projectile spell will last as long as the AoE spell is in effect, which is part of why I'on is as tired as he is. He dedicated more magical energy to the AoE spell both so it'd effect an area and so it'd continue to effect that area for longer.

It should also be noted that those spells both had more words than I included in their "thought chants". I just thought I'd write enough for the gist of the spells to be understood, but I couldn't be bothered to write "seal, restrain" or any number of synonyms for "calm" several more times haha.

Jack, Shienvien, if the speed of these spells presents an issue, please tell me, but I always intended for I'on to be a very skilled magus.

The Prophecy

I'onriyi Stonehand

---

Having been nearer the masked sister than the blue one, the penin mage had no way of stopping the violent event from occurring. However, having been between the masked sister and Morgan, he had plenty of agency in dealing with the man he not yet knew was a vampire. If he had known he would have kept a closer eye on the man, or outright revealed him to the city guard as a dangerous element. The man's unfortunate timing and aggressive actions, accented by his incredible stupidity--at least from the penin's standpoint--were making him believe that he ought to have let the city guard take him in anyways.

Such was his certainty that something terrible was going to happen the moment that Morgan shoved the blue sister, that he began muttering and moving his fingers each in different patterns at his side.

He did not pull his staff from his back, but his gauntlets began to glow. Each of them emanated a light bluish hue as his energies channeled through them. He was weaving runes in the air at his sides with both hands. Each finger wrote a rune, but he mirrored the same runes on each hand so that he was writing them twice to increase his chances for success.

The incantation went thusly, its words barely whispered, "Seal its form. Bring calm and diffuse stress. Create aversion to aggression/violence. Expand outwards like air, with speed of lightning. Permeate and remain."

This was a spell that he had developed in his free time several years back after he had encountered situations in which he had to reduce aggression levels for a variety of reasons. It also made fighting hordes of enemies easier as the spell briefly put them at ease to such a degree that it made the group passive as he cut them down or entrapped them in a second spell. With his fingers and lips both working to complete the spell, he managed to cast it as the pillar struck the roof and began to expand into a wall.

The spell, which he had aptly named Ego Subduction, spread out as a nigh undetectable wave of energy, which upon contact with anyone within the inn or several feet around it, would curb aggression, bring serenity and calm the nerves. It brought forth an aversion to violence or the cause of further distress in any within the area, and made chaos a concept which one wished to avoid. While the effect would not violate the mind, it would infuse impressions into it on a baser level.

While it was surely possible to detect the spell's creation, once it was used, the presence of the spell vanished almost entirely leaving it difficult to detect at best. He had yet to encounter individuals who could detect the spell, or the point where its effects ceased. However, it was surely possible that some could.

As the spell was cast, I'on felt the energy he had devoted to it leave him and was forced to lean on the wall near him for a moment as he recovered. At his best the spell would not have staggered him as it was, but he was not at his best. His day having been long he was more physically tired than he was magically, and so the effects had hit him harder than they ought to have done. Nonetheless, he managed to recover enough to add verbally to the situation. "And I'm sure as all the hells that you should shut yer damn mouth!" he said, a form of distinct annoyance in his tone. Nonetheless, the Finest was taking off the edge to the situation for I'on. He'd have been angry enough to knock Morgan out and restrain him, then haul him off to the authorities had he not downed several gulps a few moments before.

Instead, he was annoyed and suspicious. He had still made the conclusion that Morgan was dangerous. In fact, he considered the man's inability to truly read situations properly more dangerous even than the masked sister who had nearly killed the man just now.

NoW: GreivousKhan vs. Yoshua171 Rnd: 2

While I greatly appreciate the praise/feedback, and I don't intend to leave the arena at large, I would just like to say this.

The fact that Raelis managed to even hold up against Khazna who was superior in the following manners...

Speed.
Perceptual acuity.
Magical nullification.
Attack range and breadth.

...is testament not to Khazna being balanced in a mid-tier tournament, but to my own ability to turn a shitty situation into something barely manageable.

I wish MelonHead luck in defeating a character that takes away most of his abilities and is also physically/perceptually superior to him in every way, but should he lose it would summarily prove my point that Khazna is FAR from mid-tier, even without his top speed.

To Greivous. I enjoyed our fight in the sense that it was a challenge to counter a character in a place which weakened mine (both in terms of movement and in terms of sapping his energy) and versing a character that matched him in perceptual speed, but removed most of his magical might and was capable of countering him even in base physical combat based on Khazna's speed and ability to cut through essentially anything with his blades.

It was challenging and it helped me learn some things about Raelis' peak abilities.

However, did I find it fun to fight a character that is clearly of higher tier than Raelis. Not really...honestly. It was infuriating multiple times. Perhaps in the future you should reconsider Khazna's tier. Just saying.

I know I need to rewrite some of Raelis' CS to be more clear about his abilities so yeah.

Oh yeah, I have a single question for you @GreivousKhan; If you had replied to my latest post, did Khazna have a way out of that maneuver?

Nexus of Worlds- Darkness Rising- A Guild Tournament

@MelonHead good luck.

Arena Chat Thread

See I had no real way of knowing that. As I said, my presence in the arena has been spotty till recently.

Insofar as I can see, the problem is everyone talks about change, expresses their opinions, argues, and then no one actually tries any of it out. This is not to say that changes have never been made and it is not to say that experimentation hasn't happened. It is to say that it hasn't been done enough or people wouldn't complain so often. I'm also not saying "decide on an imaginary perfect system," I'm saying "try some of the suggestions or compile the good aspects of various ideas into a single system and test that out." That's what I did for the last few RPs I've run and now I have a successful RP built on the systems I developed over time.

Even more so, the first in those chain of three RPs (the third being the successful one) was _literally_ an interest check, which asked people "what is your ideal "X type," of RP." I got a whole community of people who wanted to participate in the creation of the ideal X RP. It ended up failing, but then I knew what had gone wrong and I knew what people wanted.

The second RP I altered things to compensate for the mistakes and flaws of the last iteration. It almost worked, but just fell short.

I tried again and edited things to compensate for my mistakes once more. I invited as many people as I could think of who might be interested and BAM that iteration still lives and is quite healthy. I've improved it during its running once more.

There are about as many people in the arena (maybe a bit more) as there were in the first iteration of that RP. The arena however, won't die from experimentation. It will die from stagnation and continued arguments and inability to attempt new ideas because less and less people will want to join the community because they'll test it out, have a negative experience or four, and then leave with only bad things to say to those they know who might want to participate.

I know more than one person who, just based on things they've seen lately, have come to the very conclusion that it's not worth joining. That's not a great sign.

I know other people who have left because of the lack of problems being fixed.

I would call them opinions except, the amount of people who have these opinions and the fact that these people think very differently from one another tells me that it goes across the board and isn't an isolated issue.

---

I apologize for the edged nature of my last response by the way. I tend not to enjoy being irrational or poking at people in that manner, but sometimes, like any human, I get irritated and it gets past my filter. From here on out I will stick to rationale and if that doesn't work or make anyone rethink their stand point, then I will withdraw my hand in this discussion as it will mean that I am wasting everyone's time and energy, especially my own and thus am not wanted.

Arena Chat Thread

Also, I do love it when I mention the tiers being broken, vague, and unreliable at best and no one takes that point in stride. I also quite enjoy the fact that instead of offering better solutions, all my ideas and points have been met with resistance.

Arena Chat Thread

Link? Also, I merely thought it could be a helpful starting point for conversation, not a be all, end all.

Arena Chat Thread

A friend of mine got this up on the forum so I thought I'd share it here due to relevance.

T1

Anime & Manga Recommendations

<Snipped quote by yoshua171>


You don't really need to launch a colorful mecha into space and make them fly around in a dizzying whirl of colors to be awesome. 'Nuff said.

@tsukune

Favorite Fight: Girge's last fight.

Arena Chat Thread

Kind of interesting how both of you have had trouble with it, and I never once have. I've GMed plenty of successful RPs, and been in plenty as well, many of which did have a combat focus that required one to keep a tight reign on abilities.

While what is OP is somewhat subjective (depending on the tier and the context), there are certain things that are objectively pretty unreasonable or nigh impossible to counter. Perhaps the problem is that the tiers are so loosely defined that it's very difficult to ordain where one stops and the next begins, making it difficult to create even match-ups.

Since at the moment what I am noticing is an isolated set of individuals having similar issues happen continually over a period of time; Perhaps, since I've seen the same system work and I know others who have as well, it is not the system of grading, but instead the difficulty of there being no really set/strict system.

I know you don't like strict Tiers, Skallagrim, and I know we had the system before which had numbered tiers which were "more specific," but really that was fairly lacking as well. My reasoning for it being lacking is based on the fact that various characters from other verses were used as parallels, but they were poor parallels either because their powers were loosely defined or because their powers were far more grand and vast if you looked them up. Meaning that the tiers more or less lost their meaning altogether and instead ended up just as vague as the current system, though that may have been the intention to begin with.

Unless of course you're talking about these GMs ALSO having to make decisions regarding the fairness of a given match. That is not what I'm talking about. However, since we DO have a match grading system in place, which does use numbers, you could honestly have all three GMs grade it and then average the grades out to get the final one. You'd end up with less biased grading to boot. Nonetheless, I am just one voice in a sea of voices and I have virtually no real social pull in the arena because my presence here has been somewhat spotty over the years I've been participating. While I am changing that currently, it won't likely matter for a good while.

So yeah, while my opinions and ideas MIGHT gain traction if other more socially respected individuals come along, I doubt anything I say is truly going to make waves. That just seems to be how things work around here.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not questioning anyone's character despite whatever impressions anyone may think I am attempting to give off, just stating how things appear to work from someone on the outside coming in. I'm sure many, if not most of you, are very reasonable and pleasant people. Aside from a few fairly isolated incidents that has more or less been my experience.