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| Crest Ability System | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: January 11, 2015, 3:31 pm (1,105 Views) | |
| Arcvalons | January 11, 2015, 3:31 pm Post #1 |
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Lord of the Octoroks, all hail!
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This is an ability system I was wondering about. Basically, roleplayers would be able to create "crest abilities" by combining a number of "crests" that could be obtained by defeating enemies and the like. To better understand this, picture "crest abilities" as spells with "crests" as the individual properties of said spell. 1. Material Crest or Spiritual Crest The first type of crest needed to build a crest ability. In other, this'd be the crest that decides if the crest ability is either "Physical" or "Special" , it's the differnece between a flaming fist or a lightining-charged blade, and a fireball or lightning shot through the fingers. 2. Element Crest This is the second type of crest required to build a crest ability. It's the crest that determines the elemental affinity of the crest ability, and there are six basic elemental affinity crests: Fire, Water, Wind, Earth, Light, and Shadow. Additionally, you can use two of these at the same time to create composite affinities (g.e. Water + Wind = Frost), though you can't combine two opposite element affinities (Incompatible: Fire & Water, Earth & Wind, Light & Shadow). The elemental affinities of Light and Shadow are a bit different from the other ones, in that while they can be used by themselves, they are usually used together with the other four; malice, destruction, or change are represented by Shadow elemental affinity (g.e. Shadow + Earth = Necromancy), while Light elemental affinity instead embodies benevolence, creation, and preservation (g.e. Light + Fire = Holy White Fire That Purifies Evil). 3. Form Crest This is the third type of crest required to build a crest ability. It's the crest that determines the shape of the crest ability (g.e. Material Crest + Fire Element Crest + Sword Form Crest = Flaming Sword, while if you replace the Material Crest with a Spiritual Crest you'd instead materialize an Ethereal Sword of Fire). There is anything from Sword Form Crest, to Breath Form Crest or Dome Form Crest, or to be more precise, you can turn nearly any physical object into a Form Crest with a special item you get near the start 4. Type Crest This is the fourth type of crest required to build a crest ability. It's the crest that determines the behavior of the crest ability. There are three kinds of Type Crest:
5. Power Crest This is the fifth and last type of crest required to build a crest ability. It's the crest that determines the power level of the crest ability. There are five ranks, and the higher the rank, the most powerful the ability, which in turn means its effects are stronger:
By choosing all five crests (or six, since you can choose two element crests), you've created a crest ability. In the RP, you'd start with one crest ability, and throught the RP you'd get more crests to combine into new crest abilities - existing ones could be dissassembled at will. Example of a Crest Ability: x) Dance of the Dragons (Spiritual Crest, Element Crest Fire, Form Crest Sword, Type Crest Reactive, Power Crest III Master) Materializes a set of three ethereal swords of fire around the user's body, the swords will rise into the air and quickly circle the battlefield. When a foe approaches the user at melee range, a sword will descend upon this enemy like a spear and impale him/set him on fire (at the same time!). What do you think? |
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| Onime No Ryu | January 11, 2015, 3:46 pm Post #2 |
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I'll be your Undertaker this evening
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It reminds me a bit of my Aces ability system, but the problem I ran into there was that people just couldn't get the hang of it due to its complexity. After reading this system and comparing the two, I've realized that what my Ace system boiled down to was just a superpower/special ability system that could be made stronger by setting limits and conditions. If I had explained it from that perspective, and just scrapped all the elemental/inheritance stuff, since it was ultimately only a way for in-universe governments to categorize things, people probably would have been more accepting. In the same vein, let me see if I can offer any suggestions for simplifying things. First you've got the Base Crest: Material or Ethereal. Material is a physical object, solid and tangible. Ethereal is made of energy or a projection of some kind. What is the difference between these? Is its affect more aesthetic--floaty magical glowy swords as opposed to a regular steel one, yet both are treated as solid and can cut equally well--or is there some kind of advantage/disadvantage to having one or the other? The Element Crest determines what Pokemon type it is, sure that works. A list of elements and how they interact would be useful there. I personally like elemental combination myself, but I ran into a lot of problems associated with it in Aces. Form Crest determines what actual form it takes--a sword, a gauntlet, armor, etc. Maybe this could be combined with the Base Crest? Type Crest determines whether it's a command, passive, or counter ability. Personally I think the Type should just be used to refer to the finished Crest overall, rather than be a crest of its own. For example, if two people use the same crest, they might manifest and use it in different ways just because of their different personalities or preferences for fighting. Thus, the crest would change type between them. It's more of a category thing, something a government official or a shopkeeper would put down as an observation when sorting Crest Users into categories or whatever. As a gameplay mechanic it just sort of seems to take up space. Power Crest...Hmmm...On one hand, being able to upgrade over time is a good incentive for characters to keep playing. I personally really like Monster Hunter style things like that. On the other hand, unless there are some real limits associated with it (Level I can only be used three times a day, Level II can only be used five times a day, etc) it seems, like the Type Crest and the Base Crest, to be more of an in-universe/aesthetic requirement rather than a gameplay one, because an individual's creativity seems like it would determine their power a lot more with these kinds of abilities. As a last question, can Crests be made from monster materials or other such things? Killing and looting things is pretty cool as long as it doesn't get too grindy. |
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| Arcvalons | January 11, 2015, 4:28 pm Post #3 |
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Lord of the Octoroks, all hail!
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1) About the Base Crest and the Form Crest, let me explain better. -A Material Crest is for using existing physical objects and incorporating them into the Crest Ability, so when combined with a Element Crest Fire and a Form Crest Sword, it's actually enchanting and infusing your existing sword with the element of fire. -A Spiritual Crest is for using Crest Abilities without incorporating any physical object, so when combined with an Element Crest Fire and a Form Crest Sword, it's summoning an ethereal sword literally made of fire. I get what you mean though, it could probably be removed completely, and it's function could be taken over enterily by the Form Crest. Then the Form Crest could have fundamental properties, after all, I'm having difficult understanding what the difference between a physical breath and a material breath would be. 2) About the Type Crest and, to greater extent, the Power Crest, it imposes a limit on player abilities. Without them I'd probably have people complaining because "he never said that ability could be used in that particular manner", or something like "that ability was never that strong". And anyway, if people just made an ability and stated it's a command ability, functionally is the same as having the Type Crest Active within the Crest Ability. It's just that this manner it's a little more controlled. It could be removed, but I feel it would also lose a strategic layer. For the Power Crest, it provided a means of scaling. Say at the beginning the characters only have Basic and Advanced Crest Abilities, and the bad guys have up to Master Crest Abilities - characters get stronger as they get Master Crest Abilities, and enemies start to use Hero Crest Abilities. And so on. So the bad guys would feel stronger as the RP progresses. |
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| Onime No Ryu | January 11, 2015, 4:44 pm Post #4 |
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I'll be your Undertaker this evening
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Okay, now that you have pointed out the difference, I can see some advantages and disadvantages to Material and Ethereal. Fusing the Base and Form Crests still sounds like a good idea to me, but here's what I thought of as far as those advantages went: Material Crest infuses a weapon with a power. +Requires Less material to create +Drains less power to use since it has a "body" of sorts. -Is usually somewhat weaker -Can be disarmed Ethereal Crests create objects to project powers. +Is usually stronger +Cannot be taken from the user, and multiples could be used rapidly -Takes more material to create -Takes a higher toll on the user's mana/energy/etc pool
While I see your point, I've come to realize that most people can actually be trusted to stay within limits, as long as the Admin and other players take an active role in monitoring each other. In VoC people have been quick to call each other out, though not in an argumentive manner, and Sin's very involved whenever anyone has questions. So for the most part, while we do have stats and limits on the number of spells we can have, we don't actually have a lot of limitations. Maybe the strategic layer would be more obvious, and justify the Crest a little more, if there was a system of interaction between them? Active beats Passive, Passive beats Reactive, Reactive beats Passive. Maybe you could merge the Type with the Element Crest as well, and layer the strategy again with a Water>Fire>etc system. I would also suggest having a "Wind powers up Fire" type of cycle in addition to the usual "Water beats Fire" cycle.
So the Crests themselves are found as individual items, but they're not made from materials? I kind of thought you had to like, put a sharp claw/fang and a stick and some other shit into a pot or whatever to craft, say, a Sword or Spear Crest. Doing it with materials allows the characters to gather small materials over a steady period of time as they go--During phase one of the story, they kill some monsters and get fangs, during the next phase, they negotiate with angry villagers and get some magic beans or something. At each stage they get something a little better, and they say "I wonder what comes next?" Doing it as a reward that's only given at the end of the quest makes players rush to try and get to the end of said quest, which impacts their understanding of the narrative, and if a quest drags on too long they'll start getting frustrated cause they're not getting anything for their time. Do you see what I mean? |
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| Knight of Tigers | January 11, 2015, 4:50 pm Post #5 |
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Cat-Eared Complex Blitzkreig from the South
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I agree that the Form and Material/Spiritual Crests could easily be collapsed into one. From what you've said, Material Crests are basically just imbuing pre-existing objects with the Crest's power; could that be turned into an Aura or Infusion Form Crest? Other than that, it looks really interesting! I'm eager to see where it goes. |
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| Sin | January 11, 2015, 6:28 pm Post #6 |
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Slow and steady...
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This honestly reminds me of the magic system in the "Two Worlds" series of games. You build your spells out of a slew of different modifiers much like you've described. You take a fire spell for example and combine it with a bolt modifier to make a fire ball. From there you can increase the number of fire balls thrown, whether or not they seek out targets, what they do when they hit a target and all of that business. If that's the case, then yes. I agree with Onime; do something with this immediately!
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| Arcvalons | January 11, 2015, 6:34 pm Post #7 |
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Lord of the Octoroks, all hail!
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Yeah. If they are merged, I'd just make one of the available Form Crests a "Form Crest: Infusion". I was also thinking about avoiding using the classical elements for the Element Crests, instead using something different, like absorbing the souls of monsters and turning them into crests, then the characters would be able to use that monsters abilities by equiping said crests. These would replace Element Crests, and give A LOT of flexibility and customization options (from Slime abilities, to Dragon abilities, and everything in-between) but I'm not sure. The problem with getting Crests from monsters, or anything like Monster Hunter, it's that I'm not sure the characters would spend a substantial amount of time fighting monsters, rather than other characters and NPCs (as it tends to be the case in my previous RPs.) I mean there'd be a considerable monster fighting, but still... Another alternative I thought of was making them Class Crests, so there'd be a Class Crest: Knight or a Class Crest: Necromancer, which abilities that revolve around the class description (e.g. Knight crest abilities would revolve around using weapons to protect others). That's more NTNP's thing though, it'd probably be too complex for me to try. |
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| Onime No Ryu | January 11, 2015, 6:43 pm Post #8 |
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I'll be your Undertaker this evening
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Absorbing Souls, Energy/EXP Orbs, etc from Monsters as done in the Demon/Dark Souls games, God of War, and others would also be kind of neat as a mechanic, especially if it's acknowledged in the RP as "whoa what the fuck are these fairy lights gettin' all up in my grill." Maybe the Orbs/Spirits/Souls you get aren't all the same, though. Remember the Golden Sun games? In those, everything in the world is composed of different combinations of the four basic elements--basically, rather than Protons, Electrons, and Neutrons, their atoms were formed of Fire, Water, Earth, and Wind, and they had lots of little particle effects throughout the games to represent that. Instead of getting "Dragon Souls" from a dragon, what if you got a ratio of Fire Souls for its breath, Wind Souls for its wings, and Earth/Metal Souls for its scales? The souls would be used as a mix of currency and materials, to allow you to craft/combine/etc other types of Crests. If you're concerned about fighting monsters as opposed to other players/NPCs, just have them all share those Spirits/Souls, like all beings in the Demons/Dark Souls games. The more "souls" a thing collects, the more powerful they become. Maybe call them something besides souls, though, to avoid the questionable nature that Dark Souls created. It was never really clear, to me anyway, just wtf souls were in that game. Were they individual spirits, with personalities and memories? Were they just the concentrated energy, the power, of whatever you took it from? What role did humanity play? That kind of shit. I'm personally against Class Crests. I like freeform class structure better, where your weapons/equipment determine your fighting style and your stats have an effect on them, rather than your stats/class determining what you can/can't use. |
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| Arcvalons | January 11, 2015, 7:24 pm Post #9 |
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Lord of the Octoroks, all hail!
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@Sin: Something like that is the idea. To customize all the properties of a spell. @Onime: Now that you mention Golden Sun, there's also Djinns. That was an interesting concept, maybe rather than souls of monsters making crests, there could be monsters that ARE crests. |
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| Onime No Ryu | January 11, 2015, 7:40 pm Post #10 |
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I'll be your Undertaker this evening
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For individualized/very special/rare crests, yeah that might be a thing, Living Crests. But I would think something like that would be along the lines of Excalibur, you know? Not something the average character would just stumble upon at the start. So, to summarize: Crests are created by combining a Base Form--it can be Infused into an object, or projected as an Ethereal form--with an Elemental Type that can be a single element, or a combination of two other elements, used in an Active, Passive, or Reactive manner. The Power of the Crest is determined by a third material, which I guess acts like fuel for the fire, so to speak? By upgrading, switching, and recombining these materials, characters create new spells/weapons/abilities. If Crests can be disassembled, removed, reassembled, equipped, and so on at will, is there a limit as to how many Crests could be Infused into one weapon? |
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| Kazemitsu | January 13, 2015, 5:42 pm Post #11 |
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Assassin
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So to make it understandable to my poor game riddled brain. These are basically ability gems you plug into something, or yourself, to get what you want? |
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| Sin | January 13, 2015, 6:30 pm Post #12 |
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Slow and steady...
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Two Worlds magic system. That's pretty much what it is. |
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| Kazemitsu | January 13, 2015, 6:58 pm Post #13 |
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Assassin
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Dats where I got the ability gem idea from x.x |
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| Arcvalons | January 13, 2015, 8:21 pm Post #14 |
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Lord of the Octoroks, all hail!
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OK, so I read a bit about the Two Worlds magic, and that's right. Element Crests would be equivalent to Effect Cards, with Form Crests being Carrier Cards. Type Crests and Power Crests have similarities with Modifier Cards. In fact, I am now debating if I should add a Modifier Crest and/or replace Power Crests with it. A strategic choice could involve trading damage potential with area of effect. Additionally, thought of two new Element Crests: Body, and Mind. The first strenghtens physical properties of the user, the second refines their mental abilities. Those would be for more "martial artist" movesets. Edited by Arcvalons, January 13, 2015, 8:25 pm.
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| Onime No Ryu | January 13, 2015, 8:33 pm Post #15 |
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I'll be your Undertaker this evening
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I don't really think Body and Mind are necessary. They could just be applications of already existing elements--use Earth to strengthen the muscles or make the skin hard for defense, for example, and use Wind to speed yourself up or let you jump super far. Merging Power and Type Crests into Modifier crests could work. But remember this formula, KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid. Where I failed with Aces was making everything too complicated. Boil it down to the most basic aspects, and then see if you can't boil it down further. What's really necessary to understand the powers? What's really needed to make them work? Stick with that and leave the rest. Could we get some more info about the setting? |
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| Arcvalons | January 13, 2015, 8:56 pm Post #16 |
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Lord of the Octoroks, all hail!
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Of course! I hadn't thought about that, Element Crests can have secondary properties. Earth is not just throwing rocks, it also represents Strength. Water is easily Knowledge, and so on. How do you imagine summons could work? Maybe with a Triple Element Crest combination... I'll make a thread with the story, map, and character sheet sometime this week hopefully. On the surface there is essentally what you'd expect of me though, there's an empire searching for ancient relics, they have generals with mastery of the elements (here specialists with crest abilities of that element), and there's heroes both opposing them and supporting them - of course I'll have plenty of twists and turns that will challenge expectations, and a very good idea of how the plot would progress even beyond the initial chapters I outlined above. For example, about half the map is obscured at the beginning. |
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| Onime No Ryu | January 13, 2015, 9:13 pm Post #17 |
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I'll be your Undertaker this evening
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For secondary properties, why not just borrow Codex Alera's system or modify it? Here's a break down: Spoiler: click to toggle For Summons, remember those creature crests and the Djinni you talked about before? What if Living Crests were very rare, but rather than granting the power of an element or a weapon, they were like a summoning card type of thing? I would vote against obscuring the map, but if you wanted to reveal new locations and whatnot that would be fine--just leave them off the initial draft of the map, and be like "Oh a big tower thing has appeared on the horizon!" or whatever when you need them. After all, no one can know every location if there's no such thing as GPS. Because you've said you have limited time to post sometimes, maybe adding some open world elements wouldn't hurt. I'd recommend talking to Sin and NTNP about that if you'd like advice, as both of them have done well with the world building aspects of their RPs, especially NTNP's Calatia's Throne in regards to open-worldness. |
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| Kazemitsu | January 13, 2015, 9:18 pm Post #18 |
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Assassin
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I want a crest that makes Kaze exist. Gimme that and I shall be happy. |
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| Onime No Ryu | January 13, 2015, 10:11 pm Post #19 |
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I'll be your Undertaker this evening
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yiff in hell |
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| Kazemitsu | January 14, 2015, 5:47 am Post #20 |
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Assassin
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Only furry hipsters use the term yiff and other terms like it. But seriously, bugger off before I decide to get nasty, you've behaved admirably. Don't throw it away. |
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| Onime No Ryu | January 14, 2015, 6:36 am Post #21 |
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I'll be your Undertaker this evening
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Alright, alright, I wasn't being serious. Whether I think your dragon man is silly or not I don't really care if you use him in RPs. whenever i type liek this or maybe in a way that you think burnt would i'm usually not being serious |
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| Arcvalons | January 14, 2015, 5:02 pm Post #22 |
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Lord of the Octoroks, all hail!
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Kaze means Wind, so you could say there's a Kaze crest already! |
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| Kazemitsu | January 14, 2015, 5:24 pm Post #23 |
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Assassin
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Kaze is a giant draconic being =_= |
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| Onime No Ryu | January 14, 2015, 7:49 pm Post #24 |
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I'll be your Undertaker this evening
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BO I have an idea of what kind of stuff I want that character I came up with to do in this RP and I wanted to know if it was possible/what kind of crests would make it possible. For the character himself, backstory wise: Do Mercenary, Adventurer, or any kind of Guilds exist in this setting? How do they function, what rules to they follow, how do they interact with the world and the governments, how do people feel about them, yadda yadda general info. Would a katana be terribly out of place in your setting? If it's not, does it need to come from a Japan-ish equivalent, or what? For the character's weapon: I wanna basically have his sword drink the blood of his enemies and store it in the hilt, then use it for "fuel" for a few different effects. I can PM you with more details if you need them, but what kind of Crest would he infuse his sword with to make this possible? Just water? A mix of Fire and Earth for Metal, to represent the iron in the blood, and then Water? A Nature/Life/Healing element? |
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| Arcvalons | January 18, 2015, 6:00 pm Post #25 |
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Lord of the Octoroks, all hail!
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My main inspiration for this fantasy setting is Zelda, and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (both of them). In the latter there are groups called "Clans", which are essentially adventurers that band together to earn glory and loot by doing quests for the people of the realm, and I actually planed to have something very similar to that. A katana would be fine, since the setting isn't necessarily Western. For the ability that you mentioned, in the original version of the Crest Ability system from the OP, it would be something like (Material Crest [to "enchant" the sword with the ability]+ Dark Element Crest [drinking blood sounds evil]+ Absorb Form Crest [for the vampiric effect]+ Passive Type Crest [since the effect would be in the crest all the time]. As you can see, that seems incomplete. I propose you guys tell me what you'd want an ability to do, so I can come with a more flexible system before this starts. I actually haven't done much progress, though maybe I can pop something this coming week. |
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5:53 PM Jul 10