Welcome to The Proving Grounds - better known as The Arena. This space is dedicated to testing out new powers, new character, new builds, and new concepts to see how well they work in actual combat scenarios. Here, players can "try before they buy", to to speak, testing the limits of their potential characters before finalizing them by putting them in a real game environment. Not only that, but new players can get a feel for the rules by exploring the more intricate elements of the NPG battle system. NPG Academy teaches new players to walk. The Arena teaches them to run...and swing a sword while doing so.

Each thread in this sub-forum is dedicated to a very specific combat scenario (given in the first post of each thread). Players will be told what kind of characters they can make, what the objective of the thread is, and just how powerful their characters are permitted to be. The following post will be a short list of character profiles. No frills such as bio and backstory are required here (the Arena doesn't really care where you're from or how your daddy died saving you from bandits). All we need are stats and abilities. PM your characters to Mercurius (or whoever's in charge of a particular thread) and they'll be posted.

Participation here is much appreciated as it gives us valuable data regarding how strong characters can become and lets us know which abilities may be overpowered or unfair. We'll even be doing some quick beta testing of new games (at least the character design portions) here. This is the only time I'll ever say this: power gamers are WELCOME here. Please, power game the hell out of this space. We want to know what powers and character builds may need a bit of tweaking...so your desire to make unbeatable, god-like characters will help us very much in this respect.

Those of you who's primary goal on this site is role-playing will probably not have a very good time here. Though we do ask for a degree of literacy even here, storytelling isn't the Arena's primary concern. You'll have more fun (and you're more needed) in the actual gaming threads. Those of you who's primary goal in the games is to see some action...welcome home.