Summon Heartless

[roy]

Reward Type: New Ability
Cost 150 Munny
Reward:

Summon Heartless - Roy is an upper-level Heartless, able to command his brethren merely because they acknowledge his superiority in form. It was inevitable that he would learn to call them to his aid, for whatever reason. As opposed to a normal summon ability, this is the power to bring Heartless to his location until they are killed or drawn off by some other force. They will, of course, follow his orders and even defend him as necessary. There are, of course, limits to how many can be called dependent on his power and their type.
[Horde of Shadows (20) - One post Cooldown]
[Medium Heartless (10) - Three post Cooldown]
[Darkside - Five post Cooldown]


[i][b][color=silver]Summon Heartless[/color][/b][/i] - Roy is an upper-level Heartless, able to command his brethren merely because they acknowledge his superiority in form.  It was inevitable that he would learn to call them to his aid, for whatever reason.  As opposed to a normal summon ability, this is the power to bring Heartless to his location until they are killed or drawn off by some other force.  They will, of course, follow his orders and even defend him as necessary.  There are, of course, limits to how many can be called dependent on his power and their [i]type[/i].
[Horde of Shadows (20) - One post Cooldown]
[Medium Heartless (10) - Three post Cooldown]
[Darkside - Five post Cooldown]


[Vincent Valentine]

Before I can approve this, please define what Heartless you mean in Horde of Shadows (Shadow Heartless, I presume), and medium Heartless (Neoshadows, Large Bodies? etc). Also, I think the amount summoned in ratio with the cooldown is a bit tad overbalanced... and you haven't restricted yourself with summoning one type of Heartless, either, so potentially you could loophole and summon them all at once. Say Sora went up against Roy and Roy summons 20 Shadows at once... Sora has a turn and maybe has two action that wipe out say, I dunno, 2-3 Heartless per action making 4-6 for that turn. Then Roy's cooldown is finished the next turn since a turn has passed... he can summon another 20 Shadows... or since if we approved this as-is, no restrictions holding you back from also summoning 10 Medium Heartless and a Darkside... you get the picture. It might be easier for larger groups, but Roy could still replenish the Heartless faster than his opponent can destroy them and still quickly overwhelm them.

So in summary, I think the cooldown if any on lesser Heartless should be equal to or slightly less than the number of Heartless a group of one to three people can take out (the number of your opponents on average, as you may have encountered thus far). I believe twenty isleaning towards too much for Shadow Heartless as Sora rarely faces those kinds of numbers in the game unless he's in a Colosseum or in an end-game area, but if you really want to go beyond the game and summon twenty at a time we can fine-tune it. So what I recommend for a balanced ratio and a compromise is:

Horde of Shadows (10) - Two post cooldown. Duration: Five posts.
Medium Heartless (5) - Three turn cooldown. Duration: Four posts.
Darkside (1) - Once per thread. Duration: Three posts.

For bosses like Darkside, I think having to fight one and Roy should be enough for any one group in a thread.

Also, like FF summons, you might want to put a duration on how long these Heartless will stay around before they slink back into the shadows so there's no argument if you're being fair or not, how many are being destroyed or are evading damage. Another loophole you could take advantage of, despite cooldowns to summon more, is keep evading damage with them when they're only meant to serve as a distraction/annoyance to keep people from getting to Roy. We want to avoid this. So I think a duration is fair, but if you don't like that/doesn't make sense Heartless would just disappear, you could add a note saying they must continuously take damage throughout their whole duration and can't avoid/evade damage unless it's with a ability not on cooldown (like a Shadow's sinking into the floor), and then give them a certain number of Hit Points or HP (like they'll take X number of hits before going down). If you don't like that either, then if you evade damage with your Heartless it's just going to have to be marked against you in the raid reviews and such, unfortunately. That's the two solutions I can provide to help you avoid that, though.

I think that's everything I can think of. I have to make sure your ability does what it says it does since we've had disagreements recently of members doing otherwise, and this avoids conflict and being put off from wanting to roleplay overall on the site. We make things fair, so people don't have to worry and can have fun. Feel free to comment, Roy, Larxene and Terra. Hope we can reach an agreement.

[roy]

First...yes. Shadows means the little guys, Medium means Heartless who are many of your 'Bamf out of nowhere opponents', and of course Darkside means Darkside. You got that right. Now then...

I will admit, the ratio by which I had determined amounts was based on my belief that guys like Sora could actually own these amounts rather quickly. When playing, I've crushed alot of Heartless. And people who fight in these games can be pretty tough cookies. (I mean, come on. Sora VS A THOUSAND HEARTLESS AT ONCE, and he hands them their butts on a platter.) But if that's different here, I may have to adjust the amounts and we can discuss that.

Now, I don't know what the heck we could even say to justify Heartless suddenly running off besides plot reasons. Like...say Roy's up to no good and somebody else with potential darkness lures them away, or some sever light scares them off. But for it to happen regularly? Dunno. Heartless are, of course, the scourge of the worlds. They're here to invade. I can easily go woth them not being dodgey for ya, but I think they have to die to be gotten rid of. This especially applies to Darkside, as I'm sure they are there specifically to sunder worlds.

So, lemme adjust the ratio and you tell me if this is better.

Summon Heartless - Roy is an upper-level Heartless, able to command his brethren merely because they acknowledge his superiority in form. It was inevitable that he would learn to call them to his aid, for whatever reason. As opposed to a normal summon ability, this is the power to bring Heartless to his location until they are killed or drawn off by some other force. Heartless summoned by him are like infantry and continuously take damage instead of dodging. They will, of course, follow his orders and even defend him as necessary. There are limits to how many can be called dependent on his power and their type, though.
[Horde of Shadows (10) - Two post Cooldown]
[Medium Heartless (5) - Four post Cooldown]
[Darkside - Once per thread]

I understand that this is all about fairness VS what makes sense in terms of Heartless. Let us continue to work this out, as I'm sure we can come to an agreement.

[Vincent Valentine]

Alright, that's true, but in the Battle of a Thousand Heartless wasn't summoned up by just any one villain, just accumulated over time, and in the game you're fighting them for like fifteen to twenty minutes tops depending on your skill and what Reaction commands you can get off. On this site, Sora's only got one reaction-command and it's been finely tuned so it's not a one-button win but fair on both sides. At the same time, I said that Sora takes out maybe 2-3 Shadow Heartless per action because while they are the basic form of Heartless to defeat when not sunk into the ground, I don't want it to seem like your Heartless are just pushovers Sora can mow over in seconds to get to Roy, y'know? He does have some power, but effort has to go in there too.

Okay, to your revised edit. That's a bit better, but you left out a few things I mentioned in the last post. First of all, like you explained to me, you should briefly note what Heartless can be summoned per rank. Secondly since you don't like a post duration, each rank needs a number of hit points or HP until they are defeated. Lastly, a note that Roy can't summon more than one rank of Heartless at a time. So:

Summon Heartless - Roy is an upper-level Heartless, able to command his brethren merely because they acknowledge his superiority in form. It was inevitable that he would learn to call them to his aid, for whatever reason. As opposed to a normal summon ability, this is the power to bring Heartless to his location until they are killed or drawn off by some other force. Heartless summoned by him are like infantry and continuously take damage instead of dodging. They will, of course, follow his orders and even defend him as necessary. There are limits to how many can be called dependent on his power and their type, though. (Only one rank can be called at any given time.)
[Horde of Shadows (10) - Two post Cooldown] Shadow Heartless. 1 HP (hits) to defeat.
[Medium Heartless (5) - Four post Cooldown] Any higher rank of Heartless such as Neoshadows, Darkballs, Invincibles etc (any considered of boss difficulty cannot be summoned). 2 HP (hits) to defeat.
[Darkside - Once per thread] Darkside Heartless (Boss). 10 HP (hits) to defeat.

Hope that's a fair enough hit point system... I was in a thread with Sora, Yuna, Goofy and Jecht, and going on for four to six founds of fighting Dark Followers seemed like enough without it getting too repetitive/boring of fighting the same Heartless that has only three abilities. Say for example if Roy fought Sephiroth and summoned any of his ranks of Heartless, it would still take Sephiroth five rounds (two of his actions each round) before he could defeat them them all, and that's not if he's directly attacking Roy.

I agree with you, let's continue to work on this together to come to an understanding, but I hope you like this arrangement.

[roy]

You make a highly-valid point. Certainly, Shadow hordes and Heartless groups are not really hopeless minions. They're legitimate tactics with a certain use of their own. It makes sense to balance it, of course. Because of the nature of things, what is mine AND what is a Keyblader's must work in a particular fashion.

Apologies for forgetting stuff. I was sort of thinking at about one step at a time. Filling in the words for clarification is important, but I wanted to work on the formula first, as it was the trickiest one to mess with. That said, yours is pretty good. The HP setup makes me think of Gamma World, if you've ever played it. Your setup is just fine, as is. As usual, you have some fine suggestions and I'm just gonna go with it.

Maybe in the future, an upgrade can allow the creation of an additional rank after cooldown. But for now, this is just fine, because I needed to make Heartless appear for my plan in luring our Terra. (See the whole Xehanort business for more details.)

[Vincent Valentine]

-nods- Agreed, then we have an accord. I haven't played Gamma World, nor do I know what you mean by a future upgrade of a additional rank after cooldown, but in the future it's probably best to do all edits than one at a time like a character application. Since it's going into yours anyway, and it saves both you and I time we could be doing roleplaying or other things.

Here is the current draft for the sake of the staff to copy + paste later on once it's approved, or to summarize if anything needs to be altered:

[i][b][color=silver]Summon Heartless[/color][/b][/i] - Roy is an upper-level Heartless, able to command his brethren merely because they acknowledge his superiority in form. It was inevitable that he would learn to call them to his aid, for whatever reason. As opposed to a normal summon ability, this is the power to bring Heartless to his location until they are killed or drawn off by some other force. Heartless summoned by him are like infantry and continuously take damage instead of dodging. They will, of course, follow his orders and even defend him as necessary. There are limits to how many can be called dependent on his power and their [i]type[/i], though. (Only one rank can be called at any given time.)
[Horde of Shadows (10) - Two post Cooldown] Shadow Heartless. 1 HP (hits) to defeat.
[Medium Heartless (5) - Four post Cooldown] Any higher rank of Heartless such as Neoshadows, Darkballs, Invincibles etc (any considered of boss difficulty cannot be summoned). 2 HP (hits) to defeat.
[Darkside - Once per thread] Darkside Heartless (Boss). 10 HP (hits) to defeat.

1/3 Approved. You'll have to be patient and wait for both Terra and Larxene to go over this and approve it before you can sic' Heartless on the former. Good luck.

[Terra]

Terra Approved 2/3

[Larxene]

3/3 Approved

Your new ability has been added to your profile and 150 munny has been removed from your account as payment.

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