Welcome to Gaia! ::

Aaaaand open!

First on the docket: Rules and Stats!

Added Combat Info: Weapon Types and Status Changes!

PLEASE NOTE: While these have been worked on for some time, this is still not the final draft! Some alterations may still occur.

Added Magic Guidelines: Spell Levels and Costs, Magic Guidelines: Elements, and some Miscellaneous questions and answers regarding them!

Reminder to please be sure to read each new addition and absorb the available information.


EDIT: Edited the Spell Levels and Cost portion to include more detailed examples and explanations!

And now introducing: Form Shifts, including Form Points, Drive Forms, and D-Links.

More to come on that front in the future!

Also updated the Misc post with additional information, including this important tidbit:



Reminder to please be sure to read each new addition and absorb the available information.

Slight update regarding Form Shifts, specifically Form Points: the default starting FP has been reduced from 5 to 3.

Reasoning: One of the longest battles to date, Phase One against the Dark Abomination in the Louis Arc, was 5 rounds long. Few others have been that long, if close, so we have reduced to default time in order to incentivize saving your FP for critical moments, rather than just starting a Drive/Trance and maintaining it the entire battle.

Oookay, I've been meaning to start this, I might as well do it tonight.

ABOUT TRAINING!

The Time Question: From breakfast to dinner on days 8, 9, and 10, we will be entering a magitechnically created dimensional pocket space (known as the Mirage Arena, hereafter Arena) in which time is compressed by magnitudes such that it loses meaning, and space becomes effectively infinite.

For instance, Day 8 (last day in HA V1), we've entered around 8-9 am, and will exit approximately 8-9pm. Reality experiences roughly 12 hours. We will experience roughly four months.

Days 9 and 10 will start sooner and end sooner, to give us more free time during the festival to relax.


How Much Training?!: We will not be spending every existing moment in the Arena training. We will learn for some hours, train for some hours, relax for some hours, and sleep for some hours in day-like cycles. Day and night do not exist, but our bodies still effectively function on the concept of limited energy and required regular maintenance.


What Kind of Training?: Every feasible kind you can imagine!

• Day 8 will cover General Training and Mastery. In 'compressed time', the first month will basically be boot camp, the second will be a bit more complex, and so on into Day 9, and then Day 10.
  
  When I say 'boot camp', I don't mean crazy Navy SEAL type training, but I do mean militia-like practices. Running, lifting, sparring--every manner of physical exercise you can imagine. So, yes, feel free to consider your body in a more idealized fashion after this point rather than sticking to 'how lanky was I on Earth' and such. After the first few weeks/first month, the physical regimen requirements will be reduced from 'training' to 'maintaining' (except for those focusing on physical skills, of course).
  
  During that first half, there will be very little direct training in magical application. There will be discussions of magical theory to help everyone grasp how magic works (*cough* this is how you'll basically learn the magical systems), but there will be no dedicated, required classes (self-practice is always up to you). The reasons being simple and obvious: you're going through very intense physical training. Requiring intense magical training immediately is unwise.
  
  However, once the physical regimens switch from 'training' to 'maintaining' (about two weeks in), genuine magical lessons will begin. These will be fairly general, and mostly just on the use of magic as a whole.
  
  Things will get a little bit more specialized after that, and so on, and so on. Month 2 might begin the more personalized sessions and whatnot. By the end of Day 8, you should have developed and mastered the extents of your personal class and summon abilities. That also means that any class, weapon, or summon shifts should occur during this time period.
  
  
  
• With that said, then, Day 9 will be devoted almost entirely to Synthesizing New Talents and Teamwork. While AP will have been covered and taught at some point in the later months of Day 8, Day 9 will encompass the potential of AP to grant you new powers and the capacity for said powers to work well not only with your own unique talents, but with those around you. Yes, everyone could learn White Magic, but doing so would be a massive waste of potential, and so on. It's about learning your strengths, weaknesses, and passions and combining them with everyone else's.
  
  And as mentioned, a heavy part of this day's training will be focused on teamwork. On picking squad leaders, if they're necessary; on obeying orders and proper ways to negotiate with leaders in the case of a unanimous disagreement; and so on. Here, everyone will begin working under canons, but as progress continues, Earthlings with more obvious leadership potential will be picked, groomed, and heavily tested for the likely-inevitable case of a canon-less mission.
  
  Also part of this teamwork training is the oft-spoken of Drive Trials. Though not mandatory by any means, it will be suggested that Earthlings seek to harmonize with each other well enough that, in case of emergency, any one individual can drive with another.
  
  Another aspect of Day 9 that you probably don't know: Chocobo Training! Everyone knows that we've all gotten our own Chocobos, but they've been more fluff companions than anything significant. But these birds are capable of so much more. In fact, they're capable of something extraordinary: ability channeling. While riding a Chocobo, certain basic abilities of yours can be channeled through the Chocobo's own powers into something worthy of mounted combat. This is not a direct upgrade to your abilities, but something that fits within the concept of rapidly-moving fights and travel.
  
  By the end of Day 9, everyone--everyone--will not simply be teamwork capable, but teamwork optimized. You will know each other as well as you can for the purposes of combat and skill. You will know your teammates weaknesses as well as their strengths. You will know who you get along with, who you don't get along with, and more importantly, you will know that that doesn't matter: in a life or death situation, your personal preferences are last on the priority list, and your team's survival is first. Whether that solves out-of-combat bickering is entirely up to you.
  
  
  
• Finally, Day 10. Ah, Day 10. In these months, you will be run through training exercises, fabricated missions, virtual combat--the whole gamut, over and over, in countless, countless different ways and scenarios. These are the war games. These are the days when you're memory-warped into thinking a situation is real, and only after it's over does your memory return to realize it was all training. Is that psychologically healthy? No, not particularly. But it's the closest possible thing to actual, genuine experience you can possibly receive, and when you leave this arena there will be no safe guards, no back-up protection protocols.

That's a lot to process. But there it is. Moving on--


Who Will Be Training Us?: Think of a canon at our disposal. They're probably there! Yen Sid and the Wise Ones, for sure. Every canon who is considered at least close to an expert at their skills (Zell and Tifa for hand-to-hand, the various sword-users for bladed combat and possibly others, et cetera et cetera). Heck, even some of us: Zeiq's character is well-versed in fencing and sword-art, Noelle spent years not just practicing martial arts but teaching it, and so on.

And yes, before you ask, there will absolutely be one-on-one sessions of training if your character requests it!


What About Downtime???: When we're not training our asses off, we've gotta be chilling somewhere, right?

Our resting ground will, effectively, be like a combination dormitory-mansion. A large building with two-three floors, two separate wings for living quarters, and a large central area. On the first floor will be a large living area, including a dining room and kitchen. The second floor will house a seemingly endless library, filled with every volume at the kingdom's disposal, and a gym-like training room filled with any and all manner of necessary equipment.

And yes, basically every room is larger on the inside.


What Character Developments Should We Plan For?: The primary non-combat developments that should be considered are two-fold.

First, out of character, we've all known each other for years. Well, now we're going to be together in close proximity for basically a year! Now our characters can stop acting like strangers we've only known for a few days and start acting like, well, us.

Second, well... our characters have been through a lot. A lot. And it's only going to get worse. Because of that, there will be regular, mandatory counseling sessions for our characters, not just to deal with the grief of loss, but also to deal with the traumas of near-death, combat, and, well, existential shattering. They can't feasibly cover every subject of our Earth lives, so don't try to treat it like every Earth issue gets solved and we're happy-go-perfect. Still, talking is therapeutic for a reason; we'll work through our frustrations, we'll learn to accept certain things and stand against certain other things. There's no simple 'trauma cure-all', but at the very least the Wise Ones aim to give us a stronger foundation than we've had the past week. And that's something to consider.

Out of character, this is a possible excuse for you to speed along or alter your character's identity path to better suit where you are now than where you were, oh, years and years ago when you first started. If you so choose, anyway.



That's basically everything I can think of right now, though if there are more questions, feel free to ask and I'll update as necessary.

HOOOOOOOOOOOkaaaaaaaaaaaaaay, so because of my own hole-poking and Chika's prodding, we've gone ahead and tried to more concretely define combat and stats, which in the process has tweaked the reasons behind other things, etc.

So, going in:



The following are quotes of the new changes made to each respective aspect. First up, how stat modifiers are determined at all.



Second, what that means for Actions per Round (hint, it doesn't change your actions, it just means there's a step between stats and actions now).



Third, how combat mechanics can now function if you want to use them.




And fourth, though I'm not gonna quote the small change, your Summon Points will use the same formula as your ApR.

Once again, as always, you don't need to memorize, it's numbers, etc etc. In fact, once again, you don't even need to use this at all if you don't want to. If you're unsure whether something should work or not and you don't want to get nitty-gritty, ask a mod! We're the GMs of this whole thing, so our primary roles are to be arbitrators.

Rule change regarding Standard and Custom Hexes.

First, a note: Due to the debilitating nature of Silence (no magic/MP usage whatsoever) and Pain (no melee/standard physical attacks whatsoever), their difficulties have been shifted to (-3).

Please be aware that balance changes are inevitable, especially given (as has been brought up) that statuses in the games were so easy to get because they were also so easy to get rid of via items (which we lack, for the most part).

Rather than trivialize statuses to the point of insignificance by increasing the variety and allowance of items, we will almost always opt to increase their impact--which will likely mean greater difficulties when an imbalance is discovered.

Moving on, the second bit:

Custom statuses are always encouraged. Innovative ways to work around a target's immunity are efforts worth rewarding, not punished. That said, should a custom status be almost perfectly equivalent such that it's fairly clear that it's a work-around status rather than something unique, its difficulty will be based on the original status. At minimum, it will take the original status' difficulty, increase it by -1, and require one additional successful roll.

Example:

• Slow reduces Speed by 50%, and has a difficulty of (-0).
  
• Frost does the same thing, but does so using ice magic through the idea of chilling the body into slowness. It will have a minimum difficulty of (-1, x2)

The minimum increased difficulty is the price one pays for invalidating a character's innate, reserved power to resist such a hex.

As usual, if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Also, probably starting in the next week, so... >o>