Character feedback time!
Name: Hans Koring Staffenberg
Race: Elf
Appearance: An average sized elf, Hans has a line of freckles across the bridge of his nose, straw-blonde neck length hair with a thin braid hanging over the right side and pale blue eyes.
Bio: Having recently immigrated from Low Gothia as a child, Hans and his family have always been treated as outsiders, mainly by those with an anti-Gothic bent. The increasing turmoil and tension in Europe due to the actions of Low Gothia, his homeland, haven't really improved his circumstances. In fact, Hans joined the Royal Commandos not only to prove his loyalty to his new country but to become a hero in hopes of changing how Gothic immigrants like himself are treated.
During his time in England, Hans have taken an interest in its mystical and esoteric legacy. From griffons and dragons to runes left behind by the druids of old, Hans have always believed that there was an even stranger world out there that is hidden from the mundane senses of people, existing beyond the laws of nature. He believed that this
Uber Realitat or "super reality" as he named it existed beyond the collective awareness of ordinary beings and that magic itself is just a tiny fragment of it that people know of. Of course he could be wrong but as his father always say: 'The world is still filled with mystery.'
Despite the fact that he was raised by honest people, Hans quickly find that persuading others to see his way of things turned out to be a valuable skill. Using the right choice of words and an understanding of the other person, Hans can either persuade them to back down, reconsider a previous decision, or even goad them into action.
Abilities/skills:
- Silver-tongued: Making use of the right things to say and a bit of wit, Hans can influence almost anyone, either allies or foes, into action. +2 Bonus to persuasion, insulting, and inspiration actions
- Magosensory Perception: A result of his Uber Realitat theory, Han's have taken classes that allows him to sense the presence and characteristics of spells and other magical events in a location, as well as their possible duration and effects. In combat, this will allow him to determine whether the enemy is being affected by some sort of buff that's not immediately apparent or if someone is somehow affecting the battlefield from afar. +1 bonus to magic detection actions.
- Tactician: Examining and exploiting battlefield conditions and opportunities, Hans can easily utilize any advantages he have to hit the enemy where it really hurts, either by doing it himself or advising his allies. +25% chance of success for flanking, ambushing, and feinting actions.
Yay! I was reallyreallyreally hoping for a nonsnooty elf PC! Prepared to get foiled like mad! Anyways the bio is cool, I like the 'Uber Realitat' bit cuz that kind of the red pill/down the rabbit hole stuff is definitely what the game is going to pace towards so I think your character will be quite a good fit for the story.
About your skills. Magosensory Perception checks out perfectly. The way it will work is that you submit an action asking to sense magic along with your other turn actions and I'll roll a 6 sided. The higher the more confident you are that their is magic or not.
Silver Tongue is checks out too but actions made using it will be contextualized meaning that rolling high won't always end with you getting exactly your way. Like don't expect to be able to insult the Low Gothic soldiers into running out of their positions with bayonets cuz you rolled an 8 when insulting them. If you want to narrow it down to a skill with more discrete, repeatable results you could change it to a skill that allows you to preform an 'inspiring action' that halves the enemies fire superiority value for a single turn in combat (I guess than it would be a combat skill, but IMO thats fine cuz Magosensory is kind of like a out of combat skill) or one that lets you preform intuition checks that give you clues as how to manipulate NPCs.
Tactician will basically work out as a +1 to purely contextual combat actions based around flanking, distracting or ambushing. Just like Silver Tongue it will have unclear contextual limits when used. If you want more repeatable, discrete skill you could consider one that lets you designate a target for flanking which increases the damage it receives double damage from short range attacks, one that affects the fire superiority values like an ambush skill that doubles your teams fire superiority value for a turn or a check that lets you discern what actions your enemy (or if they have hidden units) is likely to take next turn.
Name: Jim Harrington
Race: Human
Appearance: A tall, lean man. His brown hair is shoulder-length and almost always "up" in some way (usually a hastily-done ponytail). He keeps his beard and moustache short, . There's a faint scar under his left eye.
Bio: Jim was always interested in Euro-Roma history, specifically when Gothia is involved, to the point of learning Low Gothic (assuming there is a High/Low Gothic, not simply Gothic) during school.
Afterwards, he got a job at a repair shop. He was pleasantly surprised to find that this wasn't the horribly boring job he expected it to be. Pretty soon, he had his own "projects," or "piles of metal that used to resemble automobiles."
Fun fact: Jim has a niece living in High Gothia, only a few dozen miles from the border, that he totally didn't forget existed. But to be fair, he sometimes forgets he has family in London, and he lives there!
Skills:
-Speaks Low Gothic
-Mechanic - bonus (of some sort) repairing vehicles/identifying weak points (not necessarily in armor, but engines etc.) (I'm not sure how combat-y this is, but I'm fine with 2 non-combat skills if you are)
-Covered - Jim knows what part of things is best to cower behind to use to avoid enemy fire. (+25% cover hp)
Jim will make a good addition to the team as a mechanically interested character. I was hoping that there'd be some PC interest in vehicles cuz I kind of know too much about era vehicles. And he has a niece you say? Well! I can't imagine at all ever that anything could possibly happen that makes her plot relevant.
As for skills. SirElventides character will have the ability to speak Gothic in accordance with the context of his bio. I'm thinking I'll grant you another non combat skill if you so desire so that you don't have to spend a skill to have something that someone else on your team has without needing a skill.
Mechanic is a interesting skills and could take form in a number of ways: as a combat skill it could be used to grant your team a damage bonus (say like 2x) against one machine that you designate in combat, or enable you to roll to restore the health of your vehicles in combat (I guess I didn't announce this anywhere but vehicles will have a separate health bar from the shared one, when it runs out it forces the allied PCs/NPCs to bail). As an out of combat skill it could enable you to diagnose vehicle damage and repair it (given the parts are contextually available).
Covered checks out perfectly and will work by making cover block more shots. Cover doesn't have HP (I'm guessing that the mechanics description on it might have been misleading) rather it blocks a fixed number of hits every time you are attacked (it never can block the first one though) in it so your skill will make any cover you cover behind block 1.25 times the hits.
Name: Madeline Christie Atkinson
Race: Human
Appearance: A thin, medium-height woman with high cheekbones and an eternally frustrated look on her face. She has milk-chocolate hair with two braided locks of hair running down either side to her shoulders.
Bio: Maddie grew up working as an assistant for the famed archeologist Wallace von Weber, who took her along on various trips across all of Europa. While her mentor's work primarily concerned the ancient peoples of the world, Maddie found herself fascinated with the fantasical creatures and races she encountered.
Orcs, dragons, griffons, all of these though well-known among both scholars and commoners, both fascinated her and encouraged her to take up biology, using her mentor's trips as an excuse to gather samples and study the origin of the various species of the world.
Her fanciful mind did turn up one useful theory: that there were two branches of life: those made of ordinary flesh, and those descended from some kind of magical ancestor species which hybridized with various other animals to produce griffons and the dragons we know today. Though griffons are not commonly regarded as magical, she eventually made her own trip to Scotland in order to find out more about the once-proud species, now reduced to the level of horses.
There she sought out local knowledge, and came across a monastery whose tomes could be found in no library. The local monks, living in seclusion, advised her to make copies of the books, which were written in an ancient tongue, and allow them to be translated. She nodded and made a promise that she'd bring them home, to which she remained faithful... to an extent. The copies remained in her bookshelf for quite some time as she tried to decypher the language herself. She deduced that it was some sort of precursor to the Elvish language, which led her to seek out ancient magical tomes in an effort to learn several dead languages, languages which may have been offshoots of the father tongue she wished to read.
As a result, she picked up a good idea of how spells work. She'd never managed to actually perform magic, but the prospect of finding a mentor had grated on her mind long enough for her to quit her current job and hunt down a practitioner of magic. Her search turned up little in the way of results, as nobody wanted on someone with a broad, yet shallow range of expertise like hers. She fell into a short bout of depression as she exhausted her options, but eventually she cheered up and signed up for the Royal Commandos: her last chance to travel the continent.
Abilities/skills:
Forbidden Knowledge -- Can make guesses as to how one would cast a certain spell, what a person could do with magic, whether magic was being used, etc. Magical knowledge that's just short of actual magic.
Camouflague -- Based on her knowledge of a wide variety of predators and prey, she has an edge in hiding amongst natural objects and environments. (+1 to stealth outdoors)
Psychological Warfare -- During combat training she picked up on ways to make enemy soldiers fear for their lives, like a hunter to her prey (Doubled suppression with marksman weapons)
Great bio with clear character ambitions and plenty of plot-able stuff. Expect there to be lots of stufff to explore as far as the setting goes and maybe, who knows, Maddie might be the one to figure out these things about the creatures of Euro-Roma.
Ask for skills. Forbidden Knowledge checks out perfectly and does exactly what you wrote. I'll be feeding you magic context clues. But remember as it is written this skill doesn't detect magic in any definite way.
Camouflague will +1 to contextual combat actions that seek to have you not be shot at in combat while outdoors. Of course as with the other heavily contextual skills it will have contextualized effects that may not always be discernible to you. If you want to change it to something with more discrete, predictable results perhaps it could prevent you from being shot at until you shoot while outdoors, or force enemies shooting at you while your outside to roll a +3 check to see if they can find you to shoot at you.
Psychological Warfare checks out perfectly and as written the fire superiority contribution made by sniper weapons you use will be doubled.
NOTE: Once you're all satisfied with your characters I'll add your characters to the OP with rewritten skill texts. The purpose of rewriting them is just so I remember exactly how they work on my side.
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Topic: OPERATION MARKET STORM: TURN 7, Mission 1: Ich gebe auf! (6/5) (Read 17636 times)