The Untitled RP

[The Aspiring Archivist any pronouns]

Just now, Szeth_Pancakes said:

“…What just happened,” Allera said. The events of the last minute or so had gone completely over their head.

Variance remained motionless on the ground.

[Szeth Pancakes he/they]

16 minutes ago, The Aspiring Archivist said:

Variance remained motionless on the ground.

“No.” It was happening again. “Nononono…” Think, Allera. Do something! They patted their pockets for the Perception stones, but realized they’d left them behind in the ship.

[The Aspiring Archivist any pronouns]

Just now, Szeth_Pancakes said:

“No.” It was happening again. “Nononono…” Think, Allera. Do something! They patted their pockets for the Perception stones, but realized they’d left them behind in the ship.

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Hell be fine after a while... but they don't need to know that 

His form continued to deteriorate until he vanished, leaving nothing but a pool of blood on the ground.

[Szeth Pancakes he/they]

41 minutes ago, The Aspiring Archivist said:

His form continued to deteriorate until he vanished, leaving nothing but a pool of blood on the ground.

Allera let out an involuntary screech.

[The Aspiring Archivist any pronouns]

2 minutes ago, Szeth_Pancakes said:

Allera let out an involuntary screech.

The room filled with a light static sound, similar to what Ayia and Allera had heard upon their first encounter with Variance.

[Channelknight Fadran]

7 hours ago, Aeoliae said:

Spoiler

 

[No. I can garuntee you that Leo will leave once he is done with strohger (so after everything gets fixed) since he is a stellarknight. Stellarknights are expected to lead, and so Leo can't really stay. He is just here to fulfill a favor, and then leave. As for Ayia. He is far more likely to attack strohger than literally anyone else. But even then, even if he was attacked by Beorin or Ayia he would avoid killing. he isn't like strohger in that regard. Why is he here? Because it makes sense, and Leo will leave after. I additionally wanted to experiment with proto-hedra and proto-winter, since Tempest is super well developed becuase of strogher.

I would like to reiterate that, while Strohger is an annoying person, he does have some power that gives him a bit of reason to be like that. Stellarknight Leo, is a completely different person. Leo hates Strohger. Strohger knows this, but still calls him a friend, out of mockery (and since it is such a strohger thing to do). How will Leo get back? Hedra. Why didn't he use it to get in already? The stellarknight triangle, once of the points within is respect, which is similar to a skybreaker in terms of how it plays out. Also, strohger gets a little carried away, and nearly every time he gets into an arguement he doesn't want to lose so he refers to violence. Thats part of why he is very similar to moash in a sense.

Now, I do have some problems with Ayia. I dislike how open ended and overpowered her powers are. Now, don't get me wrong, but not having caps on powers is a very big no no. We end up with people like gandalf, where we don't know whether to expect him to be able to blow up everything in one tap or whether he will abduct a horse. But we just can't say he follows a limit to his powers without knowing that limit first. Ayia is the same. It seems like, because no one knows what Ayia can do, she can do anything. Now, I am certain that is not the case, but it certainly seems like that. Additionally, while everyone else has defined their powers when asked, Ayia has not (and I have asked), which makes it seem like you are using that to give her an unfair edge in battle. I have a bunch of examples that can help explain this:

Example 1: Ayia fights Strohger for the first time. 

This was in a ship, and Ayia summoned a metal baton at some point. I assume this is the semi realm. It should be noted that Ayia could've used her insane speed or reaction time to defeat him.

Example 2: Ayia and strohger fight for 1 minute, Ayia contradicts physics.

Strike 2 is basically strohger flings a knife at her, and she dodges it. Without breathing, since strohger is taking her air. Now, this should basically be impossible. Even with hightened reaction speeds, you still need to breathe, especially when doing something physically dificult, like dodging a knife. Try rolling and holding your own breath outside sometime, I garuntee you will not be able to do it.

Example 3: Ayia and Strohger fight (the latest one).

Now this is where I draw the line. I was willing to be able to allow examples 1 and 2, but this.. is something else.

The greatest problem is the very start. You are saying Ayia can hear them breathing, and is listening to them often. She can feel tempest move. (and it was moving real fast) Before it hits her. She can feel when air is moving. So slight problem there. Aiya can't tell if air is moving unaturally or naturally, since air is always moving. Especially on a spaceship, where ventilation and weird stuff does that all the time. Air is not perfectly still all the time. Secondly, Ayia knows that strohger had prepared windblades before hand. This is basically a variation of "seeing the posts" as the character. Big no. She cannot tel which air is sharp, which air he afected, which he did not. Since its the same air, and air is xonstantly moving S H O U L D she be able to detect everytime air moves. And then Ayi does a nervous system impairment and a headlock in 1.3 seconds. Don't you think that's over the top? Besides, if she had punched him at that speed, he would've gone flying by the time she did here spine shennanagins. Like, a blow at that speed is irrationally fast, and strohger is gonna be knocked back very far. Then, after a bit of arguing that Aiya is godly enough to dodge a knife that ignores spacetime, she gets hit by the perception knife.

So in other words, its just too much. Either Ayia is significantly stronger overthe course of 45-90 minuted or someone forgot her limits.

So I would like a detailed description of her power, its limits, and what it does. An entire description, including all the special moves she used earlier. After all, everyone else did supply you with a detailed description of their power, so its time you do the same as well.

And Aiya is by far the most powerful character on the thread. Just because she has to use her brain (which has not been the case so far) does not mean she is not extremely overpowered and doesn't needs to be stopped (or capped). Like without planning or making traps etc Ayia is already the most powerful of all of them.

Years upon years of combat practice will never get you a 0.3s reaction time or the ability to dodge a knife that avoids distance. Just FYI.

Am I bringing in more powerful characters to purposely challenge Ayia? No. But are they more powerful? Yes. And why? Because they don't fight and have knowledge. So there you go. But to me, it seems like you are exploiting the fact that we know nothing about Ayia's powers to make her unbounded and more powerful than she is supposed to be. (and I did read the aiya content, and she was way way weaker then).]

EDIT: this sounds very passive aggresive, but I am just super mad at how, for 50+ Pages, I come up with an amazing move or cool application of tempest for strohger and it gets unfairly shut down after Ayia shuts it down with some power we've never seen. The entire thing is basically a rant, but man it is exactly how I feel.

EDIT 2: if you do respond make sure to have the in depth description of what she can and can't do. That's basically all.

 

 

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Right-o. I put your thing in a spoiler because it's long. Also I promise I'll response but I'm eating lunch rn so I'm just putting this here so you know I'm getting around to it.

But basically: Ayia is from a completely different type of story that does not mesh well with yours.

1 hour ago, The Aspiring Archivist said:

His form continued to deteriorate until he vanished, leaving nothing but a pool of blood on the ground.

1 hour ago, Szeth_Pancakes said:

Allera let out an involuntary screech.

"Al..." Ayia jogged over, kneeling down beside the pool of blood. "Okay, um... he did this before, right?"

[Szeth Pancakes he/they]

29 minutes ago, Channelknight Fadran said:

"Al..." Ayia jogged over, kneeling down beside the pool of blood. "Okay, um... he did this before, right?"

Allera nodded.

[Channelknight Fadran]

"The... the knife is over there. Maybe we could reverse its effect?"

[Szeth Pancakes he/they]

Allera didn’t understand, but ran over and grabbed the knife anyway.

[The Aspiring Archivist any pronouns]

2 minutes ago, Szeth_Pancakes said:

Allera didn’t understand, but ran over and grabbed the knife anyway.

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That will still make them lose senses, but with enough effort they can hold it. Might catch them off guard the first time, though.

 

[Aeoryi she/her]

36 minutes ago, Channelknight Fadran said:

"The... the knife is over there. Maybe we could reverse its effect?"

"Shim? Can you help? You know a lot about variance."

@Nameless*

[The Aspiring Archivist any pronouns]

4 minutes ago, Aeoliae said:

"Shim? Can you help? You know a lot about variance."

@Nameless*

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Not really anything Ayia or Allera don't know.

As soon as they grabbed the knife, Allera lost all perception. They quickly came to, on the floor and hurting from the fall, the dagger having fallen out of their hand.

@Szeth_Pancakes

[NameIess]

19 minutes ago, Aeoliae said:

"Shim? Can you help? You know a lot about variance."

@Nameless*

“He’ll be fine. You don’t live for millions of years if you’re this easy to kill.”

[Channelknight Fadran]

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imma do my reply thing now so I stop procrastinating

Spoiler

SIR* AOELIAE

First of all: I apologize for all my "Ayia would win in a fight" things because they're kinda petty and rude, and also the sort of thing she wouldn't go around saying anyway. It's just... lame. That was a lame thing to do.

anyway

Ayia's powers are too open-ended: Correct, but they're very incredibly limited. The Alchemy stuff that she uses can't affect reality on the fly by any meaningful stretch. It takes hours upon days upon weeks to complete the equations for most remotely useful magical objects, so the only ones she ever really uses are those staff thingies and her Line. Also while the end results may seem to bend the laws of physics, they always need to be tied to a plethora of other objects and constants in order to maintain the status quo of Reality. It's like using a lever to lift a heavy object: all the laws of physics are being upheld, but more work is being done.

Also I haven't figured out how it works yet! Which sounds bad, because it is. I've spent hours trying to devise a working semi-mathematical system that could effectively derive any potential magic item, but to no avail because I'm not a mathematician. So far all I know is that the end result has to be balanced physically - kind of like solving for x in a massive equation by moving terms around and whatnot. Basically it's all stemmed from my fascination with the strange symmetries and patterns in math.

But I don't think that's what you mean. Instead you're referring to Ayia's seemingly inhuman strength, speed, and agility. Which brings us to the next point...

Ayia's strength is not based in reality. That is an accurate assessment, because all my stories are far more heavily inspired by various   a n i m e s   than most traditional fantasy. I've never particularly enjoyed all those videos about how "sword fights in this movie are unrealistic" because they take all the fun out of an epic action sequence to say "in reality sword fights take approximately two seconds and look about as stupid as two kids fighting over the last otterpop." Fantasy is meant to be epic and fictional, which is why I've always preferred fantasy stories that lean into that over reality.

The closest parallel I can draw between Ayia and an anime I like is with Demon Slayer (even though the show is kinda overrated); both she and the characters in le anime are technically devoid of any superpower or life energy or ki or whatever, but can still move at superhuman speeds and whack things with superhuman strength because   t r a i n i n g. This whole debacle began in Dragon Ball when Goku continuously beat the schnozz out of villains with insanely cracked powers, simply by spending years on end building his strength and endurance: it's an ideal that Training beats Talent.

So no, Ayia's strength is not realistic. She comes from a story where mortals channel the power of gods to tear holes in reality, because Epic Power Scaling in fantasy is metal as hell. Put simply, the limits to someone's physical abilities in the narrative from which she originates is way higher than they are here in the real world. The extent of her skill is in years of dedicated training to enhance every aspect of her body, because she needs to kill gods and demons without supernatural powers, because the idea that the most powerful beings in existence can be defeated by a girl with a vendetta is just the kind I really want to write.

Ayia vs Strohger on the spaceship: She did not ever intend to strike back against Strohger. Her conditions had been for him to leave a mark on her - that's all.

The air thing: Again - weird anime bs. In this case it's my favorite type of Paragon-1 semi-power, which is the ability to effectively and efficiently control one's own energy. For the characters in the Iconar Collective this will effectively turn around into wizard stuff and whatnot, but for Ayia it just means that she can survive for several minutes without any oxygen on her energy stores alone - it'll be really uncomfortable, and it isn't like she could fight you underwater for an extended period of time, but if someone were to cut off her breathing completely then she'd still have enough time to close the gap and beat the crap out of them before she passes out.

This isn't realistic by any traditional stretch, in the sense that it wouldn't work in the real world. It works in a fantasy sense because it's like "person has energy stored up / person can survive off of aforementioned energy"

Ayia's Attack: Once again, completely unbounded by any precept of reality. It isn't like she's seeing all the air moving, but rather that she can decipher what's happening around her based on how the atmosphere shifts locally. The vast majority of the time of attack was in closing the distance, as she was dodging in an arc to get behind him rather than just slamming right into him or anything - her momentum was going in a completely different direction than her punch, but decisive physical control meant she could cancel her own movement on a dime and completely change which direction she moved.

This, in anime, is known as the *Teleports Behind You* trope: someone moves at superhuman speed to get behind someone, but there's always a slowframe as they reappear because cancelling their momentum and changing their motion always takes at least a little time. Insert the obligatory "He's fast," the protagonists' eyes moving at a sluggish pace to look at the assailant, and then snap right back into the full-speed action for whatever attack was going on.

So yeah. 1.3 seconds for a spine punch and headlock is not realistic, but frankly I don't care. Ayia was never intended to be constrained by that sort of thing, because I love writing completely over-the-top action sequences that pit gods against feats of superhuman strength and endurance. She was never suppose to be "balanced," because she's a

Paragon Character. That is to say, a character that represents an idea or a theme more than basic character arc tropes. You find these a lot in Superhero fiction because the likes of Superman, Spiderman, Captain America, etc. are supposed to be philosophical ideals more than realistic characters. Now I could go on a whole rant about the issues of modern superhero implementations are completely bogus and clearly misunderstand the characters on a fundamental level, but that would take too long to write and too long to read. 

To be clear, the Shard RP subforum is objectively the worst place to have a paragon character in the first place. Sanderson exclusively uses dynamic characters over paragons - which is cool and all, but is a result of the fact that modern stories need to be "realistic" and whatnot. Again, I could go on a rant about the modern scape of acceptable storywriting and character analysis, spending hours explaining how static characters are good actually and Evil Superman is a dumb idea - but, again, that would take too long.

The crux of what I'm trying to say is that my overpowered characters are almost always built around a narrative paragon that their character development ultimately reflects. For Ayia it's "enough preparation can defeat any foe," which - in addition to tying in with my Beorin worldbuilding - means that she's always constantly training herself to face tougher foes, and by now she's taken down such unfathomably powerful beings that the likes of wizards are of little threat to her. Certainly, those epic battles weren't just [God shows up] [Ayia eventually murders him] but rather [God shows up] [Ayia spends a year preparing a bajillion contingency plans] [Ayia eventually murders him].

Also, I didn't drop Ayia into the RP to immediately conquer the entire storyline with her incredible skill and prowess. It was never my intention to simply write her showing off the entire time. I look forward to idle character interaction more than battle sequences (mostly because they're easier to write, honestly), and would much prefer to RP Ayia just hanging out with the crew than decking Strohger in the schnozz. I get that you spent a lot of time on your magic system (and believe me - I can tell), but it clearly comes from a completely different method of storytelling than Ayia's. They don't mix in the same sense that you couldn't put Batman in a fight against Super Saiyan Goku because those two stories follow completely different narrative dynamics and having Batman get kamehameha'd out of existence within ten seconds doesn't prove anything.

So, sorry that it just doesn't work. But I don't want to change Ayia's character to accommodate, and I don't intend to.

 

 

[Szeth Pancakes he/they]

38 minutes ago, The Aspiring Archivist said:

As soon as they grabbed the knife, Allera lost all perception. They quickly came to, on the floor and hurting from the fall, the dagger having fallen out of their hand.

@Szeth_Pancakes

Gales!

Allera attempted to scramble to their feet, but fell flat on their face.

[The Aspiring Archivist any pronouns]

3 minutes ago, Szeth_Pancakes said:

Gales!

Allera attempted to scramble to their feet, but fell flat on their face.

The strange, staticky noise continued.

[Channelknight Fadran]

Ayia sat down beside the puddle of blood.

"Sorry, Vari," she said. "You weren't supposed to get wrapped up in that."

[The Aspiring Archivist any pronouns]

4 minutes ago, Channelknight Fadran said:

Ayia sat down beside the puddle of blood.

"Sorry, Vari," she said. "You weren't supposed to get wrapped up in that."

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He definitely knew that he probably would, though, since he mentioned that Variance might give Stronger trouble.

There was no response.

[Aeoryi she/her]

1 hour ago, Channelknight Fadran said:

 

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... so basically we have Kokichi (reckoners rpg version) 2.0 here:

Spoiler

Basically Kokichi was supposed to be this minor epic with some mild cartoon powers and PTSD (which props to the winter system, was really well made). Then, by the time we did the reboot, Kokichi could basically defeat almost anyone instantly because *technically* in anime that was a definite thing that happened.

And so Kokichi was basically the most powerful epic of all time, having anime main character invincibility, super strength, illusions, the ability to run through walls, and the memes all in one super discrete power. This power was:

Anime aura: Within 50m radius of Kokichi things basically act like an anime.

I bring this up only because this was basically the thing that brought down the reckoners RPG.

Cause from what I can tell it is:

A. Ayia doesn't have defined power yet (I suspected this). This is fine. Not everything has to be developed fully.

B. Ayia has the equivalent of Anime powers in a world where no one has anime powers. That's the big problem there.

C. It doesn't really work that well but you just don't want to change it; which is fine. Just keep it more down to earth. Please. No one wins all the time. Even in anime. so I don't want to see any of this 'the battle was over on the first move' posts. For reasons already specified. I hate the "Ayia would never do that" excuse, and it's one of my most hated excuses of all time. It just is too soft.

...

Anyways.

 

1 hour ago, Nameless* said:

“He’ll be fine. You don’t live for millions of years if you’re this easy to kill.”

"Can you necro him or something?"

[NameIess]

1 minute ago, Aeoliae said:

"Can you necro him or something?"

".....No."

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Wait we weren't supposed to give our characters anime powers?

 

[Aeoryi she/her]

Just now, Nameless* said:

".....No."

 

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Ideally no, since they tend to be very op no matter what you do they can get unleashed fairly quickly 

"Can you even do anything to help?"

[NameIess]

Just now, Aeoliae said:

"Can you even do anything to help?"

A small circle of light appeared on Strohger's chest. "I have explained my capabilities and limitations to you. Tell me, why would you expect me to be able to help?"

[Aeoryi she/her]

3 minutes ago, Nameless* said:

A small circle of light appeared on Strohger's chest. "I have explained my capabilities and limitations to you. Tell me, why would you expect me to be able to help?"

"You said you were one of the greatest necros of all time. So aren't necros able to heal people? Would that work?"

[Channelknight Fadran]

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I’m not changing anything, and I’m tired of arguing about it.

 

[Aeoryi she/her]

Just now, Channelknight Fadran said:

 

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I dunno I'm just tired of the anime archetype ruining everything I write so I can argue all I need to. But I expect more grounded behavior in the future.