DerpRavener

I used to play a Dawn of War 2 gamemode where three players each controlled a single hero unit, and had to survive against increasingly dangerous waves of enemies. I kitted out my hero to summon a single Ravener unit, and then buff the heck out of it. Only problem was that you couldn't directly control summons in this mode. The end result was that the Ravener was the most dangerous member of the team, except that he sometimes liked to just stare at rocks while the rest of us were getting mauled.

Apologies in advance if this was all rhetorical, and people weren't supposed to respond to it. I think there's no shame in sticking with FFA. There's a lot there that can't be done elsewhere, and it's no less valid a part of the site than any other. After reading through this though, I am wondering: is there no way you could adapt any of the characters you're invested in, to fit with CC or WoE? I get the idea of not wanting you use characters you aren't attached to, it's why I basically only used one character for a while, so with that in mind is it possible to make alternate versions of some of the characters, which preserve the really important bits? This might be a bad example, as I don't want to make you change anything you don't want to change, but why is Avery an alicorn? How does he use that, and what about his character requires that to function? Him being Celestia's offspring would probably be hard to manage, but if the goal is to have a connection to nobility and having him go missing, that could probably be accomplished by having him as a long lost son of a noble family.

I think this approach has a lot of positive points. Knowing the subject matter as described is a great way to get the most out of a character in combat. The one thing I don't like about it, is that is has the potential to be kind of limiting. Take me for example: I've never even been in a fist fight, and my only interaction with a gun is firing rifles at a range a few times (probably at fairly pitiful ranges too). The closest I've gotten to something like combat is I've tried boffer fighting with friends. So if I'm using my own experience, I'm basically limited to non-combatants. Now, I could expand my proposed knowledge base with games I've played and movies I've watched, but if the goal is a more realistic approach to combat that presents its own problems. My approach instead tends to focus on two questions: 'does this character's action make sense in context?' and 'how is my character affecting other players?'. For the first question, I find that if you keep things vague, and then take into account things like traits of the other characters, So using sample character you came up with: if our sniper is just shooting a training dummy, even from a long way away, I don't think a lot of people will demand to know what the windspeed was or how she accounted for bullet drop. However, if you sniper is shooting at another character, this character might be very agile, and so either more time (posts) are needed to line up a shot or shots will miss. Alternately, maybe it was previously established in the thread that the area everyone was in was covered in heavy fog. Then, either from having a general idea of what fog is and/or seeing how other characters are reacting to it, we conclude that visibility is reduced, and our sniper has a harder time finding or aiming at targets accordingly. The second question comes down to this: in roleplaying, but especially forum RP, it's about telling a story. Even if two characters are fighting each other, their respective players are still working together to make the story happen. They aren't competing, or at least not the way the characters are. The goal is for everyone to have fun, and part of that is making and running characters that don't hamstring each other. This is where the god-modding issue comes in: if you make your character too capable, (either on their character sheet or through their actions in a thread) you're not giving anyone the chance to play it out. If our sniper ends up in a thread where a team of REA is trying to take down a rogue mage, and the moment the mage is seen she immediately shoots him and ends the fight, I don't think a lot of participants will leave that thread satisfied. It's fine if she tries, but there has to be something to prevent her from landing a lethal shot (it could be she aimed too quickly and missed, it could be that she suddenly saw another threat, it could be that she fired but the mage had shielded himself). I'm writing this quickly, so my specific example here might be a bit off, but the point is: when making a combat character, it's good to think about how they compare to others in combat situations, and to ask oneself whether the character will be fun for others or annoying. And in many ways I think that's more important than accuracy. It also hits me that a lot of things I've written here could be addressed in other parts of the guide, so some of this might be covered elsewhere. Largely I'm writing it to provide another option, particularly if people want to try out a character outside their general knowledge or for dealing with characters who don't really have a real world analogue (i.e. combat mages).

Welcome back.