OverlordOutpost

Woops.

One thing to consider Certain metals may get in the way of aether flowing correctly for spell usage. Yes; Paladins are in full plate mail, and yes they can cast healing spells. Incredibly weak, underpowered healing spells. We can make an assumption that, just like how some gemstones help with magic casting, certainly other materials can also aid or hinder it. Magic casters who rely on a connection to their aether, or the elements, may have that connection weakened if they wear certain metallic armors. Inversely, some materials, such as certain types of imbued cloth, may strengthen this connection. Garlean has some armor wearing mages, but those mages tend to be weak or entirely reliant on magitech for spell-casting rather than any natural propensity. It's also worth noting that some of the more magitek-inspired items, such as the Ironworks equipment, or the High Allagan Armors, have far more metal in them. Perhaps because they've found metals that don't hinder that connection in low quantities, or the Ironworks items use some magitek technology to keep that connection going. --- Basically, this may be an issue of dense metals interfering with spell casting like a signal-jammer to a radio. As we progress in the story and Eorzea becomes more skilled with magitek and rare metals, we may see more metallic, armor-like mage outfits. Of course, I expect such things will still be rare. --- Worth noting, alloyed gildings are used in-game and in-lore to damped the effects of elemental magic. You can see this in the Gilded Magitek Armor and in Summoner lore.

A villain needs to be understandable, but not necessarily relatable. There are very few villains that bask only in the fact that "Yes, I'm evil! Evil is what I do!" And it's generally just a mask. Villain characters need to believe that they are right in what they do, or at least that it's then only correct way to go about their goal. If your villain is simply a black cloak figure in the back of the tavern who kidnaps women and makes them sex you... well, you're certainly evil, but you're not quite a villain. Mad possibly, or criminally insane. Unfortunately at the end of the day, criminally insane or mad villains are not that interesting. They're one dimensional tropes that don't have any redeemable value. There's no moral questioning, no thoughts on how they work or function, they just do because do. There's very little there to play off of outside of "behead it and call it a day." Even villains that are traditionally insane, Kefka and Joker which are constantly brought up here, have reasoning behind their actions. Joker wants to break Batman. Kefka wants to attain godhood because he learnt the only true good in the world is nihilistic (and it's a damn good way to get revenge). Reversed morality is another good, understandable, goal for a Villain that isn't relatable. Jack the Ripper's motivations could have been surmised by his victims and a very extreme sense of morality when it comes to sex. See also Jason Vorhees and his Mother; it certainly becomes a bit of a tropish/parody, but laziness/sexual promiscuity and the negligence that came from it plays deep into both characters. Ultimately, playing a villain, you should at least try to leave a trail or some hints on your true reasonings. Give a purpose for the heroes to debate and theorize over, craft them a story. As a villain, it isn't about you. It's about everyone who is going to stop you or is afflicted by you. As a villain, you are essentially a DM for a free-form RP event. If your own personal OOC reasons are greedy (I want to powertrip/I want ERP/I want to make players suffer/They're playing wrong and should pay), then the villain isn't your character. It's you, the player. If your character is nothing short then a one-dimensional insane criminal, then you're just an exceptionally powerful kobold that needs to be put down for XP and loot. Don't be that.

Being a roleplayer doesn't excuse us from being humans. Being aware of your flaws and trying to avoid them hurting others is far more mature then denying they exist to begin with.

For the Zeta thing, I honestly don't get it. To me, that's a lot of time that I could've spent anywhere else doing things that I found more fun, instead of grinding for a thing that offers a ephemeral fleeting advantage. And it's okay I don't get it. Why? Because my idea of fun is opening up a spread sheet, detailing out the schedules of 15 different trains, and moving coal from a mine to a power plant in some Sim game. I'm okay with the fact that some people find things I won't find fun, and even bragworthy. Because they're gonna brag about the hours they threw into a far more shinier weapon, just like I'd love to brag about how mathematically efficient my train routing system is and how my signals work, and just how absolutely amazing and cost effective the SH "125" Diesel Engine is in terms of sheer horse-power is. And to them, I'll be someone who puts way to much work into a fake train game. Ultimately, in both cases, it's pretty shitty if I brag specifically to bring someone else down, you Floss "47" using peasants. -- In terms of knowing your job in the game, know your damned job. You're not disappointing yourself; you're wasting the time of three other people that are relying on you not making Eos tank (somehow) in a level 50 dungeon.

It doesn't, but it does explain why it's usually complaining upwards, and not downwards.

That's not what he said. He didn't say anything about two high-powered characters in a fight. He said he's never seen a high-powered character's player shaming a low-powered character's player for being low-power. But he has seen, and I agree with him, the prevalent attitude that seems to be "you're bad if you play high-powered characters, because low-powered characters are the bee's knees." I was replying snark to what I perceived as snark, but I'll give what I believe is the reason. A badly played high-power character will reduce other people not at their level into nothing more than props or background scenary. A badly played low-power character generally won't.

You haven't seen two high powers getting into a screaming match about why one guy's shield piercing magic drill can't piercing the other guy's heavens shield. "My drill will pierce the heavens!" "Nuh uh, my heavens are powered by antispirals." "Your antispirals can't stand up to my spirals!" "Well, I have a special spiral dampening field!"

I've always been one that played on the idea that all PCs should be relatively low power. It's something that's stemmed from my pen and paper days where we weren't roving bands of bad-asses fighting mobs of enemies, but low class adventurers going toe to toe with orcs and goblins, and where a trained wizard was a massive threat. Thusly I've never played very powerful characters, or even characters there were exceptionally versatile unless I was playing a villain. They've always tended to be either on the weaker civilian end; or very highly specialized individuals. Their weaknesses came not through personality, but simply through their specializations natural weaknesses. Personal was developed separately with respect to why they chose to do what they do. In FF14 in particular, my character Katiti serves mainly the role of Tataru does in the story. A helper, an assistant, a manager, with very weak combat skills. If she was to ever focus she'd be at most 15-25 level-wise if you're using that to gauge character power. This has opened her up a lot more readily to social and event-based RP, but any form of adventuring or combat RP and she's immediately outclassed by nearly everyone without question. Rather than being a bit miffed at being locked out of a lot of RP because of this, or 'leveling up' to shoe-horn her in, I've worked it into her personality. It gives her a bit of a inferiority complex and need to be important that manifests as overcompensation. --- In terms of powerful characters and their flaws, I'm against the personality-as-a-flaw and the Superman type of flaw for balancing. Personality flaws tend to be rather samey at time (even alluded to in earlier posts) and they're flaws that don't really show up in situations where the character is powerful unless purposefully scripted in. These are things like Batman having no sense of humor or real social skills with his co-workers, it's a nice quirk, but it's not a balancing flaw. Superman flaws tend to be very specific flaws that either come in play very rarely, or require some sort of knowledge base to be able to play off of. Superman's' kryptonite flaw is useless as a balancing flaw because, again, it needs to be specifically scripted in and requires characters have massive luck stumbling on it or tons of knowledge based on it. A good balancing flaw would be something like an incredible hulk type of powerhouse running out of steam very quickly, one-and-done super types, glass-cannoning, or an obvious opening that needs to be protected. Flaws that a powerful character needs to be aware of and work around in a fair number of their battles. Think characters like Zantana, who had very obvious method to stop her magic, or even real-life Jackie Chan- amazing fight with a literal weak-point on his head that could end him. These flaws are also great because they allow other characters to participate in protecting your weakness. If D'Urist has almost unparalleled short range attacks, he shouldn't be able to use his sword to deflect off or redirect arrows/magic spells. He should be weak to them, and needs help from Urist Uriurist to keep up a powerful magic shield on him. Of course Urist Uriurist has very low physical capabilities so D'Urist needs to use his combat skills to keep him covered. This kind of back-and-forth is what people feel overpowered characters tend to miss or lack, and this back-and-forth can result in some of the best shared RP ever.

I do this all the time. I try to get all my SCH dots up while in Cleric Stance (along with Shadow Flare), and I immediately reapply dots if I burn a bunch of damage-boosting cooldowns like BFB. As for fairy healing in Cleric Stance, I... don't know? I've never actually compared it. I... guess it would make sense? I need to find out now, since I've been relying mostly on my fairy to do some spot healing while I get my dots up. Just because I didn't see this answered yet. Spells cast snapshot your modified statistics. So casting a DoT in Cleric Stance then swapping out won't lower your damage, and casting a Regen out of Cleric Stance and swapping in won't lower your heal. Conversely, casting a DoT out of Cleric Stance and swapping in will not increase its damage, and casting a Regen in Cleric Stance and swapping out will give you a very pitiable heal. For the Fairy. The Fairy works off your non-modified statistics. So casting the fairy in or out of Cleric Stance, and using Embrace in or out of Cleric Stance will not matter. Theoretically, this also means that if you summon a Fairy while you were Virus'd in PvP, the fairy would still heal the same.

I'd imagine; given the implied size of the world, versus the actual in-game view of it and the lore... the world -is- dangerous. Definitely. And there's a fair amount of death before people's time. But traveling is honestly not all that bad. The roads are generally kept relatively safe, there's body-guards, ferries, chocoboing services, and caravans for traveling. On top of that, most of the most dangerous areas and dungeons are, size-corrected, relatively distant from places people live. It's dangerous, but nowhere near as dangerous as the layout of the game and constant influx of "My god! DANGER!" is occuring. In fact, if you attribute for size and traveling, the sheer amount of events happening in the game occur over a period of a year or so.

Although Square, with the whole 'No classes meant solely for support' idea has made Conjurers and White Mages (technically) lethal to the point where one could play them as essentially 'White Magic Thaumaturges' While you can, gameplay wise, shove rocks into people's faces for a fun bit of reverse-healing their faces off ... none of the Conjurers in the game or in lore tend towards that personality or attitude. The only close to qualifing is Edda, who was insane and using corrupted white mage as necromancy to heal/revive the long dead.

I've held onto this type of idea since Guild Wars 1. Characters can certainly learn how to use a weapon, but mastering a weapon involves signing up with a mentor or trainer (hence the in-game classes). A class won't define the character, but some classes do attract certain personality types more than others. Finding an incredibly happy go lucky thaumatage pacifist won't be a common occurrence; neither will finding a embittered hate-filled white mage who reverse-heals. Which is not to say it can't happen, just it isn't common. So when I make a character, I consider what skills the would have learnt casually or on their own; followed by what class (if any) would their personality have led them to specialize in. In some cases, a character might've chosen a class they didn't fit into well, and that struggle could become a part of them. It's also important to remember that mastering a skill/class takes -time- and that needs to be considered in your character's backstory/age. As for Jobs, that's a whole different can of worms, since mentioned before; some jobs simply aren't very usable like Scholar or Summoner. Most cases I tend to stick to the class and not the job.

This logic is wrong. You're using non-universe, OOC information to determine in-universe IC information. The company's past games and trends, which are incredibly varied and not just your A/B answers, are not relevant to the in-universe fashion or acceptability of outfits. Neither is the use of festival gear; wearing a Freddy Kruger outfit is acceptable in Halloween, does that mean it's acceptable all the time? To determine what's acceptable in-universe, ICly, one needs to look at the actual game and the NPCs in it. What are the NPCs in your area wearing? That's what's considered normal or acceptable. Can you go a little above or below that without batting an eye? Yes. Can you walk around in undies with a giant bobbling slime hat while doing business in the Quicksand and expect to be taken seriously? No.

My life has always oddly followed my character. On Guild Wars 2, I played a researching Asura. Before long I wound up in a graduate program and doing research. In FF14, I play a character that works as a teacher.. and lo' and behold. I'm now that too. There's also definitely times where my characters emotional state will bleed over, or I'll nab myself using some of their mannerism directly after playing them.

I didn't read Sounsyy's post before I wrote this; but it explains a lot and invalidates the post. My worry in that regard then, is just how much knowledge do we know about Ampador that if she was asked as a character she'd honestly be able to answer?

Some spells that were casted between Conjurer and White Mage, there are huge gaps of spells that conjurers cannot use because it leads to white magic. Honestly White Mage is indeed forbidden but despite that it is hero's plot OOCly for WHM chain quest, it is considerably implied that -one- can be a white mage in due time through future possibility. So I am not sure how much Square Enix will forbid anyone from becoming WHM. (Considering the fact that there are no roleplaying servers, and Balmung/Gilgamesh are literally the unofficial RP servers.) If we talk about character background story, then we can also look at Paladins, Warriors, and Monks. Paladins can be free paladins to go out on an adventurer, but as Sultansworn paladins, they are limited by their duties in the city to protect Sultana, but there are still people who argue that people who play Sultansworns are rewriting history and lore backgrounds. By how much? Barely. But if the character background supports it and it doesn't impact a lot to the lore to destroy Eorzea, I don't think it should look down upon >_< Actually, mentioned before; just -being- a White Mage impacts the lore of Eorzea since you're now a powerful and pivotal player and it meshes you in the times directly between the reign of the elementals and the padjals. You'd become incredibly important and pivotal simply because of what you are. Is this pivotal play between the WHM of the past and the WHM of today and the interactions resulting as such an important and main focus of your character? If it isn't, it should be since you'd be outed immediately upon casting. If you can't use the WHM aspect or remember it ever, then it doesn't exist as a background. These ifs... buts.. and questions are a lot stronger than a Sultansworn's "Why aren't you in the throne room 24/7" argument. They directly effect the history and future of Eorzea. --- Now don't misconstrue me, you can be a WHM with some proper finagling. You can be in stasis in Ampador with some proper finagling as well. But being both at once is what switches this to a far grander story. Hence why the absolute best approach I think, is to simplify and pick one. White Mage, or Ampadorian.

There's always an issue with a character background story when it involves either rewriting history, or paragraphs of explanation just to seem remotely possible. When you hit that point where you're questioning your own characters validity and needing to ask publicly what to do/fix it you need to ask yourself. "Is this needed, and does it matter?" Does having this large and elaborate story affect or add to your character in any noticeable way? Is it necessary to have this or else the character personality or concept just cannot work? Is there not a simpler way to achieve that same goal? If you answered "No" to any of those questions, and you're still questioning your character's validity; then it may be time to drop and rewrite it, keeping it simple. -- Yours is particularly troubling because it relies on a lot of unexplained or vague aspects coupled with amnesia. Meaning your character will either be forever locked in an amnesiac state (making your background worthless) or runs the risk of having Square Enix contradict and annihilate your entire background in a single patch note. I'd honestly rewrite it to be more generic and vague, or drop the concept of being a White Mage at all. A amnesiac conjurer found in the Shroud not only fits directly into lore without any additional work; it also keeps a lot more avenues open for progress that don't carry the caveat of being obsoleted instantly or questioned constantly.

The FF14 engine just doesn't play well with SweetFX. You may need to either use an older version, remove any overlay programs you have running (including steam), or just have a different brand of card. Getting SweetFX to run on FF14 is a huge hassle.