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View Full Version : Complex Ability Query



Grandjester
08-22-11, 04:16 AM
I'm not sure if this is the right subforum, but it looks like it, so I'll go ahead and post this here.

My character, Jean, is ported from my previous PbP board that focused on a Magic: The Gathering inspired setting. His custom magic allowed him to basically think up a character and summon it at will, and it functioned as another of my characters and counted as an individual, living person, though it was tied to Jean's will. The series of characters he created were collectively called the Casualty Puppets. I was wondering if such an ability could feature in this setting's incarnation of Jean, because it's quite above the norm for most characters to be able to do.

I'll list some specifics to give you an idea of the limits and how it works. Much like with his mantras, Jean has to speak the name of the puppet before he can summon them, and had to give full concentration while doing so, but the amount of time it took to summon each puppet was taken up only by the time it took to say their name, making the summoning process almost instant. The puppet would appear in the area around Jean close by, in a manner of his choosing, and would then act as a seperate character with it's own personality and free will. Jean had the ability to take control of these puppets through his mental link to them when he wanted them to do something specific, because they didn't always want to do what he asked of them, but doing so took a lot of concentration and controlling more than one puppet this way weakened himself and the puppets he controlled, since he had to split his attention up between them and himself.

Each puppet had one unique ability tied to it, for example one of the puppets had an ability that sucked in any magic and obliterated it, but had a cooldown between each use and therefore made the puppet a walking counterspell of sorts. Another puppet had a much less specific ability that allowed it to absorb kinetic energy from blows and such, and metabolize it into enhanced physical abilities like growing super huge and strong. The puppets could take damage and die just like anyone else, but after Jean got a decent sleep, his thoughts would regenerate and he could resummon them again. He could also unsummon the puppets at will and put them on a much shorter cooldown that only lasted a few posts before he could summon it again, but it would be in the same condition that it was in before he unsummoned it. The delay between issuing an unsummon and the puppet receiving the order and being unsummoned depended on how far away Jean and his puppet were. If the puppet was in the same room as him it was practically instant, but if the puppet was on a different side of the world it could take days, even weeks.

Other than that, the puppets were essentially seperate characters with their own profiles, personalities and character development. I was thinking that I could spend one ability slot to get one puppet with it's own ability, and if I required them to have more abilities I'd have to spend more ability points to get them like with Jean, so the strength would be divided up between Jean and his puppets, and make him more of a group strength rather than an individually strong combatant. Thoughts?

EDIT: Oh, and the puppets were collectively a hivemind with Jean as the hivequeen, sort of. Meaning Jean could sense what the puppets could sense, and visa versa.

EDIT 2: I'm fine with this ability being too strong/overly complicated also, I can have plenty of fun just with Jean since he's interesting enough. I'd just like to know if I can use this concept because I had a lot of fun with it on the other forum.

Visla Eraclaire
08-22-11, 06:10 AM
Summoned minions are fine, conceptually, but the biggest thing that's going to limit you is that at low level, it's going to be hard to have interesting "puppets" as well as personal abilities. You seem to already realize that you're going to be approved based on your combined power of you and the puppets.

It's hard enough to figure out what's considered "too strong" for a given level, but when you split it between two entities it's even harder. You're going to have to have slightly less power than a single character with all your main and puppet abilities combined would have to offset the utility of having two or more people able to act.

You'll also probably be forced to limit yourself to a certain number of active summons at a time (1 at first level probably). It's a fine concept though, you'll just have to build it slowly like everything else here.

Honestly, one of the best things you can do if you just want to have an interesting character that you enjoy is limit certain abilities in battles. That's the whole point of "balancing" characters based on their level, so you tend to get away with much more if you say that your abilities have some drawback in character-vs-character battle.

Grandjester
08-22-11, 07:56 AM
That reminds me of another limit I had on the other forum, which was the limited summons you mentioned. It was something like puppet limit = W/2, where W was a stat called willpower, but I think a different formula would be better. Something cumulative like each puppet summoned beyond the first requires a higher level gap each time. As for combat puppets, the aforementioned counterspelling puppet was pretty much just that, a counterspell. It had no fighting skills aside from that and was actually just a weak teenage girl. The puppets had weak points like that. They'd certainly start out flawed with only one ability, but if I could upgrade them with more abilities to cover their weaknesses as I level, I think it'd be balanced.

SandStorm
08-22-11, 04:57 PM
In reality, you could use this set-up. Visla's right on how you would have to limit it during your first few levels though.

I would allow you to have one (weak ability) of your own, the summon (limited to one summon at a time), and I could let you get away with giving the summon an ability (a weak ability). So say you wanted to be able to throw out fireballs and have a summon who throws out ice balls.

Fireballs (1 ability)
Summon (1 ability)
Summon's Iceballs (1 ability)

Three abilities, approved.

It really depends on how strong or weak you make the summon and the two other abilities.

Go ahead and submit a profile and I'll help you work through it, because this is a cool concept.

Max Dirks
08-22-11, 06:13 PM
Sandstorm is right. Those abilities would be considered sequential, because you would summon the puppet and then have the puppet use a spell. It would be perfectly reasonable for your character to be a spitting image of your D&D character at higher levels.

SirArtemis
08-22-11, 08:38 PM
Shows how much Dirks read. D&D =/= Magic: The Gathering.

Anyways, it sounds like a cool idea nonetheless! It reminds me of Pain from Naruto.

Max Dirks
08-22-11, 08:40 PM
It's all the same to me.

SirArtemis
08-22-11, 08:59 PM
I'm just teasing you Dirks. You got your point across either way =p

Grandjester
08-23-11, 03:52 AM
I don't think I'll bring the puppets into play straight away, Jean develops them himself as he develops. He gets inspired by things in life and then makes puppets based around those concepts. He's like an author inside a story who comes up with characters for the setting he exists in. So I'll offer a draft profile when I'm ready to make the first puppet.