kenod

Aylitha blinked. "Found you..." She whispered, and started smiling. The bugs she had left with Mac started vibrating their wings. "Found him," they said. "They're at some abandoned factory. Lots of monsters around the place, though most are pretty stupid. They're planning to wait until the storm hits the Vortex. As for their location..." She paused, trying to remember where he was, then told Mac the location. "Tell me if you need anything else," she said. "I'll tell you if I find anything, but I need a nap. Controlling this many bugs is difficult when I can't use my main intellect." She scooted over to the nearest wall, and sat down against it. Moss started growing under her body, creating a cushion, and tentacles wrapped around her body, serving as both a cocoon and a blanket. @MacThorstenson

We could use the side-universe threads for this, to some extent. Most of them are a lot less strict in balancing and still seem to work (though most have become inactive). And it is true that creating a system that doesn't require the restrictions of the points-system would work too (the Reckoners RP is a great example). I think it's mostly that the culture/mindset of this rp isn't (or wasn't) really fit for it though.

Suddenly, the bug stopped moving, and it seemed as if some form of focus came over it. Unconsciously, Aylitha smiled, focusing on the bug, and taking direct control. Focusing, she tracked the path the bug had taken, trying to determine it's position, and vectored more bugs over to the general area. Meanwhile, the bug itself sat down on the ceiling, and a small patch of black moss spread from its legs. Lifting up again, it flew closer to the man. The wings changed, becoming more sensitive to vibrations, and Aylitha started listening in on the conversation. Meanwhile, an eye opened on the black patch, looking into the room. Outside the building hundreds of bugs flew or crawled towards it, entering and exploring the building, each of them directly controlled by Aylitha. The remaining bugs slowly started moving in the same direction as well.

Aylitha walked out of the alley, looking at the empty city. It seemed like this area had already been evacuated, judging by the lack of corpses. Pity, she thought. A few corpses would have been useful as raw material. Looking around she spotted a larger butchery shop, and walked in. Thin tentacles lashed out from her body, stabbing into the nearest pieces of meat, and slowly the meat turned black, before dissolving into a black goop that got absorbed by the tentacles. More of them lashed out, spreading further and further through the store, absorbing every piece of meat they could find. At the same time a thin layer of black moss started growing around her feet, spreading out onto the street, as well as the floor of the store. After a few minutes, the smell of burned and decaying wood started to spread, together with the smell of acid. A counter collapsed, as did a table. Outside, a few of the bird-headed monsters walked towards the shop. As soon as they stepped on the moss tentacles lashed out though, spearing through them. Aylitha looked up, walking towards them, and even more tentacles erupted from the moss, cocooning them, leaving only their heads free. Curious Aylitha examined them, ignoring their screams. "Do you have a name?" She asked. Hearing just screeching and screaming she shrugged. "Guess not," she muttered. "Still, a species needs a name, you know." She tapped her chin thinking, until she suddenly looked up, smiling. "Homo Aves," She said, nodding to herself. That name seemed to suit them, even if it wasn't that original. She looked around. It seemed the screams worked well, drawing more of the creatures towards her. She smiled, happy about having more raw material to work with. Ten minutes later, Aylitha looked around at the area around her. A thick black moss was covering the ground and the buildings near her. Some of the buildings had collapsed, all organic material in them consumed, while tall black growths surrounded her. Further out were the creatures that hadn't yet been converted, still screaming as their skin and organs dissolved and mutated. Some of the closer ones fell silent as their longs got too damaged to work. She snapped her fingers, getting annoyed by the sound, and the tentacles covered the heads of the remaining creatures, and the area fell silent. Thirty seconds passed, then a minute. Aylitha sat down on the ground, and closed her eyes. At that moment, the pillars suddenly burst open, millions of bugs flying out of them, while the moss further away from her started moving, turning into swarms of bugs as well. Quickly the bugs spread out, flying away, swarming across the region. Aylitha's eyes opened, unfocused. "Fly my pretties, fly," she muttered, sounding as if she was dreaming.

I agree that the points system is rather limiting, but the issue is that it's currently the only way we've found to actually deal with power creep. The problem with creating guidelines is that (based on what I've seen in era 1 & 2) they'll become progressively less enforced as the era goes on, which can quickly spiral out of control, with one or two OP characters being enough to kick-start it. So while I dislike parts of the points system, I dislike what happened before we had them even more. The issue is that I don't really have any solution for this though. Loosening the limits would simply make everyone design their characters around the new limits instead, while also (as Mac said) requiring a rewrite of parts of the Index. I think guidelines, if clear enough, might work, but it would require everyone in the RP to collectively make sure they're kept, not just relying on the mods to do so. If people think we'd be capable of that, then we could try it, but I think that otherwise we should stick to the point system. If we do try it, we should make sure the guidelines are as clear as possible though, and that everybody understands them, as well as the fact that if we don't manage to keep power-creep in check we'll go back to the point system.

For me, the idea behind raising the points limit isn't to create a real change. It's more to allow different characters and create more variety. At the moment it's often difficult to create characters that fit with a certain idea or concept because you don't have enough points, or at least that's how I find it. Raising the limit, especially for skills, allows for more variety in skill allocation, as well as having additional points for buying fluff skills, like being a great cook or speaking a lot of languages. Also, there's the fact that a lot of us will probably be carrying over our Era 3 characters to Era 4. This means that it would probably be nice to have room for additional character development, to reflect things that happened in the current Era. This means characters might lose weaknesses, or have learned new skills. Something like that isn't really possible if we keep the current point limits, as a lot of characters were developed to use as many points as they could, meaning a single new skill or removal of a weakness would make the character OP, requiring them to be retired.

More skill points (and possibly Investure points as well) could be fun. Currently balancing skills is difficult, and its hard to create a character with skills fitting them (example, almost no GB characters have the assassination skill). It would also allow for better character development if we're keeping characters from the current era. As for the skills section being incomplete, I think that's mostly because creating a listing for every possibly skill would be way too much text and scores, so it's easier to just have the mods use their own judgement for that, same as how we score Epic powers and Smedry Talents.

Aylitha nodded to Mac. "Thanks," she whispered. "Open up a path for me, please." A few beetles crawled out of her hand. "Take these with you," she said. "Keep one, give the rest to other important personnel. I can use them to keep in contact." Standing up, she walked to the door. "I'll call when I find something," she said to the people in the room. Outside, she walked into the nearest alley. *** KanMien saw Voidus motion at Lita, Laurelai and them, and slightly tilted their head, wondering what was going on. Putting down their teacup they walked towards him and the other heads, stopping in front of them.

Aylitha nodded. "Sure," she said. She turned to Mac. "Can you bring me there?" She asked. "I can work better close to the location. Also, if possible, drop me off close to a slaughterhouse or butcher. I need raw materials for this." While she was talking the bugs crawled and flew back to her, crawling back into her body as they got reabsorbed. @MacThorstenson

Aylitha heard them talk about the bunker, and looked at Mac. "We should be able to find him," she said. "Getting underground shouldn't be an issue with spatial manipulation, as long as we have a rough area to aim for." She smiled. "And I," she said, "should be able to take care of the searching." She lifted her hand, and slowly touched the table with her index finger, and a small wave of black bugs spread out from it. The backs of some of them opened up, revealing eyes.

That one is great.

I personally don't have any issues with it going either way, as long as we're not doing time-skips larger than 1-2 years. I think it depends on how the current plot ends though, and what we're planning for the next Era.

Shade watched Erlin walk out of the door and looked at the empty office, feeling nervous. Waiting for him she started wondering what kind of things he wanted to ask her about. He would probably want to know who she was, she thought, and he'd also want to know why she had come here. She felt herself looking towards the window, wanting to jump out and run away. She shook her head, taking a deep breath, trying to calm herself. @Blessing of Potency

KanMien looked at Mac and Lusk. "We'll also need to set up secure communication channels between our guilds," they said. "Currently if we need to talk to each other we need to seek each other out in person, which is time consuming and not reliable."

Aylitha looked at Eiran, confused. "KanMien?" She asked. Looking at the woman Eiran looked at her face lit up as she understood what was happening. "Ah, I didn't mean her, I meant Sudiov." Her voice grew irritated. "You know, that ... Thing you TUBA people have got in your basement?" A small chuckle came out of Aylitha's mouth. It had been a long time since anything had last managed to confuse her, she felt glad Mac had invited her along. *** KanMien look at the girl, feeling confused. They tried to figure out why they had to be locked away, but couldn't find anything. Besides, that girl was clearly a DA member, with the way she looked. When she explained the misunderstanding they sighed, feeling relieved. They looked at the girl again, curious about her. It seemed as if she ranked quite highly in the DA, given that she entered together with Mac, Voidus and the Stranger, but they had never seen her before. It was also obvious she wasn't human, with her skin and eyes, but they wondered to which extent she wasn't human. They found themselves wondering about eating her, curious about what they might discover. They quickly shook their head. It wasn't smart to think those kind of thoughts about someone who was likely a superior.