(12-01-2014, 08:23 AM)Warren Castille Wrote:Ooh!Â(12-01-2014, 04:41 AM)Natalie Mcbeef Wrote: Yeah every bit of FFXIV lore says that dragoons are super good at killing dragons. When they jump they are basically anti-dragon guided missiles. Even their armor and weapon is covered in ailerons to help them zero in on a target.
The heavensward trailer in particular indicates that there are a lot of dragoons, and they are the sharpest spear in Ishgard's arsenal against the dravanian threat.
Now, I would agree that playing a master dragoon, able to do all those things, could get a little hairy for some RPers. However complaining about your average dragoon being able to jump dozens of meters in the air is silly. You might as well complain about thaumaterges making fire from their hands, or conjurers healing wounds.
It's a fantasy game. Some adventurers can take hits from a primal, others can punch through steel, or summon ice and lightning. In comparison, being able to jump really high and land accurately on a target seems pretty pedestrian.
One has to ask whether the title makes the dragonslayer. You only becomes a "dragoon" by killing a dragon. The means of how you manage that aren't dictated by the lore, we just tend to see them wielding spears.
The only "issue" I've got with people roleplaying dragoons is how long jump would take to resolve. There's no propulsion beyond your feet, so if you are leaping fifty feet into the air, it does seem a bit ridiculous that several seconds would have to pass by before someone could resolve the action, not to mention that it becomes tantamount to guided flight if you're able to maneuver and strike a moving, smaller target. Leaping headlong onto a dragon's shoulder and skewering it, a la Cid in Advent Children? That's right on target (hee). But having a hypothetical dragoon leap dozens of feet into the sky and landing several seconds later onto a lalafell rogue who is aware of the attack pushes realms of believability.
Plus you then fall into the issue of "well why don't they just jump all the time and become invincible?" issue, because I've never seen anyone who RPs with combat abilities RP cooldowns.
Of course, I'm weighing worst-case scenarios here. I've never run into issues with anyone using a lance. I know Lancers/Dragoons jumping is an FF trope and all, but it still just seems wrong to me for folks to be able to just casually spring from the ground to rooftop heights as a free move action equivalent. Why would anyone ever walk anywhere again?
One of my 2,837,183,163,891,361,731 characters is a dragoon in training -- so I had to really sit and work out how the jumping aspect of his combat was going to work out.Â
At first there was the actual training, where I had to bullshit stuff about using aether to augment the legs, push off, blah blah -- but that stuff is easily explained in a world where aether can be a convenient go to answer. HOWEVER -- having him actually LEARN to do it was a fun thing to play off, because he was terrible at first. His first attempts at jumping were so bad, he just hopped and fell flat on his face. He'd endure horrible leg day pains following each session -- the process was just overall exhausting.
Eventually he learned to take off into a jump -- but good lord did his aim need work. His first few jumps involved him haplessly launching himself into trees, off of seaside cliffs and into second story inn windows (he did confirm that the baker was cheating on his wife...). It was a very slow process, but now he's learned to do about two controlled jumps in a row. After that, it takes him a bit of time to recover and gather the strength to do more. Even so, he prefers to use the technique against aerial targets because jumping toward something on the ground has never worked out for him. He's just not skilled enough.Â
I dunno, I enjoy playing off that 'learning from scratch' thing -- and in cases where I play a character possessing the skill, I either find a way to limit his use of it to a sphere within reason, or provide it with enough openings/weaknesses/complications to disallow it from becoming something super duper powerful that can beat everything/one/babbu/dargon.
...that being said, I haven't seen MUCH complaining about dragoons on the whole in RP. In PvE there's the whole bad dragoon/dead dragoon thing, I guess...but the only gripes I've seen about PC ones have been very much isolated.
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