Belgrave Royal Military Academy

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I would not include myself in that "everyone". Lotte has low overall damage output for her ability to soak up spells and remove mages from a fight. She's a natural magic tank. Her physical durability is low, but she doesn't want to fight Knights head-on, if at all. Her intention is to disrupt mages.

A physical tank wouldn't be particularly difficult to create, either. I'll make a third character if I have to for that. It wouldn't be the first time. I'll help someone else make a kit for the job if they want to play it instead.

Most of the Knights are definitely damage-focused, and that's an issue, but another problem is that most of the Mages are supports, meaning they can neither deal nor take enough damage to be a threat. They're completely reliant on the Knights pulling aggro and using sustain spells on them, while the Knights have to manage to keep pulling aggro so the focus doesn't shift to the support. The support might have damaging spells, but that's not the focus of their kit and therefore inherently weaker than that of a dedicated DPS mage. While seemingly complementary, there's only negative synergy (anergy?) between those two archetypes, because they're both still squishy and both completely screwed if:

1. the support Mage can't heal fast enough often enough, or
2. the damage Knight can't pull attention away from the support.

A tank+DPS pair will completely destroy them, because the tank can ignore the damage Knight and output more relative damage than the support; and the DPS can burst down the damage Knight before the latter can make contact, if not set up for even more burst while the DK is trying to peel off the tank. I can use player characters as examples if anyone would like.

Squads should be able to rectify this, but that won't happen if the Knights are the only damage, and the Mages are their only source of sustain. A single tank could ruin that strategy with wide area crowd control.

At best, it's a parasitic relationship where both parties are parasites.
 
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I find it unrealistic to assume that the characters aren't going to grow, learn new spells or techniques, and become what the game, and their squad, demands of them.

Let's use my character, Chelsea, as an example. She has 1 defensive spell, 1 offensive spell, 1 buff, and 1 CC. I would hardly call that a "kit", and it's hardly more than a highlight of what I intend for her to do. She's a "Wind mage", and capable of doing everything we all associate with that element. Shindo has already said that Lightning is a derivative of Wind. I never intended for the few spells I listed to do anything more than give her a bit of flavor. Further, the characters are supposed to be students - if this was an MMO it'd be the equivalent of having a level 10 character - enough abilities/spells to get a feel for a character, but nowhere close to their full potential and still missing key pieces that make them powerful at level 60.

People are looking at these characters from a min/max viewpoint. They're making assumptions about things, and then they're making OP characters or characters that simply don't fit the setting.

I have to say, I'm not a fan of how things are being handled and organized.
 
*Suspends meta and tosses people IC*
 
Kuroka definitely isn't a support mage, she's a DPS :D With her ability, she'd be hard to use as support anyway other than teleportation skills.
 
I have to say, I'm not a fan of how things are being handled and organized.

I think it's important to note that this last armour discussion was Deathwatch101, Karakui and me being huge nerds. Not an official statement on how things are being handled.

Besides, I don't think anyone here is so dumb they would create a ultimate version character for an RP that makes all of them students thrown into an academy which job it is to teach them to improve and grow. That'd be silly. I think that's kind of an unjust assumption to make. Just because people design their characters with a certain role/specialisation in mind and give them a toolkit beneficial to that, doesn't mean they already excel at it. It just means they have a direction they want to grow in. I mean we can question balance all day long, but I don't think anyone intends to be OP from the get-go.

You already know my stance on things like character relations, as we discussed by PM, but I'm going to reiterate I said in a post as well; if anyone wants to focus on character relations more than whatever is covered at that moment; take initiative! I've even given people options how-to. Look, it's right here.

I don't want to talk in problems, I want to talk in solutions. I've put up an IC-post that's pretty much an open invitation to interaction, goddammit. I've proposed a pre-RP relation with Chelsea for my secondary character. I plan on doing more of these things with other players in the near future. I may be loud and yes I do like arguing about things like armour and team composition, but whatever the case; I. get. shit. going. I'ma say this again, just so it's really really clear; I provide solutions to things you complain about. And I'm not even a GM. I'm a regular old player, just like everyone else.

Searching for teams doesn't work when you say, "Hey, my character isn't on a team yet, anyone wants to be on a team?" I mean everybody's going to say that and when nobody makes an actual concrete proposal, what factors are there for anyone to decide by? On the other hand, what does work is, "Hey you, I want to be on your team and I think that'd be really cool for these reasons!" Said reasons can be because their abilities work well together, like I did, but it doesn't have to. It could be because you can link backstories or personalities, etcetera. Don't know enough about a character by reading their CS? Shoot the player a PM asking specific questions you want to know the answers to. Hell. You don't even have to initiate squad creation, there's two up there you can apply your character to as well. The important thing is to approach people. Lay out concrete options, ask concrete questions. The only other player I've seen actively trying to do this is @Sakuyahime, but there's nothing stopping anyone from trying the same.

Now I'm not saying that if you prefer to hold back a little more you're automatically a bad player, I'd even argue a little balance between active and passive in a group is good. I am saying however, is that if you want solutions to your problems, someone needs to initiate those solutions. I see a lot of complaints, but very few accompanying solutions and... Well, you can understand that starts being a little frustrating. I mean come on. I don't think I really taught anyone anything new here. You're all smart enough people. I'm not better than you. I just take initiative.

So please, do something. Post in the IC. Propose character relations. Do something positive I haven't even thought of yet! Just, come on. Even if you find it hard to come up with solutions yourself, you could always initiate positive change by asking others to help brainstorm. There's all kinds of options to make this better. Use them. Please.
 
My post is half done. The rest will be done after work. If no one has responded to your post yet I will.
 
Ill wait for a couple of posts before mine see how people are doing the setting.
 
I have now posted in the IC and proposed character relations in one go. :D
 
I have now posted in the IC and proposed character relations in one go. :D
Hah, he's a bit of a go-getter isn't he? ;p Wonder what else will be catching his eye- I mean, heat vision, later in the RP.
 
@Shindo if we have new combat techniques we are working on should we mail them to you for approval ?
 
@Shindo if we have new combat techniques we are working on should we mail them to you for approval ?
I'd prefer that, although keep in mind they'll be earned slowly, probably once every few missions.
 
I'd prefer that, although keep in mind they'll be earned slowly, probably once every few missions.
Yea i was looking at other peoples applications it felt a bit bare with mine only having one wrote up.
 
It doesn't have to mean Marvus is only able to do that one thing. The characters' listed spells are more like ones that are notable or used frequently enough in their repertoire to be listed. It's to be expected that everyone would have some degree of proficiency over basic applications within their element.
 
ahh ok that works better thanks for the clarification sakuyahime.
 
I posted something! I hope you don't mind if I barged in on your character Esper ^_^;
 
I posted something! I hope you don't mind if I barged in on your character Esper ^_^;
Not at all. Replied by the way. Not two minutes in and her armored foot is in her mouth.
 
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