Myxie Tryxle

One thing I suggested in the post that seems to have disappeared is that challenges, depending on the tribe, wouldn't necessarily have to be gladiatorial combat. For example, if the tribe were based on Vipers, their challenges might not be obvious at all, instead involving very Machiavellian cloak and dagger types of scheming that culminate in one or the other being assassinated. In the case of wolves, personal combat prowess may take a back seat to leadership ability. Their challenge could involve the nunh and the challenger each choosing a pack of four hunters, and whoever brings down the biggest, fastest, or most dangerous prey wins. Maybe they die taking on a behemoth to prove their worth. Maybe they lose their position because they just couldn't inspire the teamwork necessary to coordinate their hunters. Depends on how much you demand lore adherence though. Given how lackluster and non-comprehensive the lore about Seekers is, I'd have no issue with someone improvising a little. In my mind just looking at the tribe in the questline is kinda like picking one town, city, or village out of the entire Earth and saying 'all humans are like this.'

While I'm playing a Keeper and not a Seeker, I have encouraged extensive discussion on these topics, particularly when the game was re-releasing and lots of folks were trying to figure these questions out. Links to previous discussions on the subjects: Breeding Behaviors I had one about Sun Seekers and their nunh challenges but I either can't find it or it was deleted for being too speculative. Suggesting that the 96% of Seeker tribes we don't see might behave differently from the 4% we do see rubbed some folks the wrong way in a strict-adherence-to-lore sense. That said, given that we only really get lore about one Seeker tribe, I say you're free to expand in whatever direction makes good sense and encourages good roleplay. Given that humanity spawned tribes as different as the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Vikings, Aztecs, Incas, Japanese, Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, republics, empires, kingdoms, democracies, etc. I find it impossible to think that every Seeker tribe has the same customs and cultures as the one we see in game. Similar maybe, but there's plenty of room for improvisation, especially when each tribe reveres a different totem animal (Edit: They may also revere different members of the Twelve, leading to different cultural values). Given that you're playing wolf tribe, you could draw from documentaries on wolves, with their pack structure and only the alpha male and female allowed to breed. That would of course lead to a small, tight knit tribe, or perhaps a network of packs and more nunhs than your average Seeker tribe, making it easier for tias to become nunhs. From previous discussions, I feel the best way to get a handle on how the tribe structure would work is to watch documentaries on animal species with harem structures. If you look at lions (in particular as they are cats), gorillas, and elephant seals, the dominant males tend to breed only when females come to them and present receptivity. Between protecting their claim, patrolling their territory, finding food, and sleeping, they don't have an abundance of free time for chasing tail, nor any need to do so. It's a foregone conclusion that it will happen when the female is receptive. The notion of a nunh as a run-around playboy chasing tail to me is completely false, the knee-jerk reaction of how a human would behave given sudden supposed sexual liberty, not how a member of a species with the Miqo'te's biological heritage would view it. The nunh's got way too much at stake not to be diligently guarding his claim. To me at least, the idea of an adventuring nunh makes no sense at all. If he's away from the tribe, someone else is going to take advantage of that situation to usurp his position, either covertly or directly. (Of course if you're going with the pack structure I suggested, if the nunh could convince a small pack to all take up adventuring, that's one possibility. He maintains his position and authority by leading his pack on adventures.) That said, if you want to play Seekers that deviate significantly from the cultural norm of their own tribe, do it! Should lead to some interesting conflict, and conflict is the heart of a good story. Just flesh out how your characters are different from the cultural norm of thier tribe and why, and try to find RPers who understand the conflict from a Miqo'te perspective rather than a human one.

If you're looking for stuff that's going to make you hundreds of thousands in a single craft while leveling up, yeah, that doesn't exist. There are, however, lots of items that will make you decent chunks of change that add up quickly. To give you an idea of the economics/numbers I'm referring to, here's how I did it. There are some items with a very nice profit margin if you can HQ them. In my case it would cost me about 2-4k to craft the item, and it would sell for 15-20k if you HQed it. I picked roughly 8 of these items and always had 2-4 of each up at any time. It would usually take a day or two for most of them to sell out, but I was dilligent in maintaining my stocks, and occasionally had to drive out competition by dropping the profit margin significantly. These were items that could be HQed by someone with decent skill at the level they were current for. It probably helped that I leveled all my skills together rather than going for one at a time, so my gear was always up to par, and I could buy raw materials to turn into HQ intermediates rather than paying premium prices for stuff like HQ boar leather, HQ horn glue, etc. Just using that strategy I pulled in an easy million gil per week even while leveling. It takes market savvy and a little bit of research as well as patience, but it does work. Not gonna say exactly which items they were, as I've suggested this method to guildmates in more detail so they can use it (I'm running a crafting guild, after all), but they're fairly easy to figure out if you spend some time on the markets. I looked a month or two ago at those items, which I haven't been doing recently due to being able to HQ 2 and 3 star stuffs now, and they still existed and still looked just as profitable as when I did them. TL;DR Yes, you can easily pull in a million gil per week while leveling if you're patient and diligent.

The main caution I'd have about kitting your crafting classes (any or all of them) is one of learning. The manner in which crafting evolves as you gain new powers (class and cross-class) is something you won't necessarily learn by turning in someone else's kits or using someone else's macros. That said, crafting can be rather daunting at first without a little power-leveling. It's been the main focus of my character since her inception, and I just last night finally worked up the nerve to start the grind from 3 to 4 stars. Turns out it isn't nearly as difficult or costly as I expected it would be. That's been my experience with every step of crafting in this game though. Once I take that first step and discover it's not nearly as hard as I was expecting, I'm off to the races. On a side note, it's entirely possible to make money... a lot of money... while also leveling crafting. By the time I got all 8 classes to 50, I had made millions of gil, all while still having gathering classes in the 25-30 range and buying a lot of my materials. The opportunity is there if you're willing to put the time into it.

One system I found very useful for confronting these sorts of conflicts is Dogs in the Vineyard. In that system, you can make balanced characters with very different capabilities. All the attributes a character has must be very descriptive and have a unique flavor. For example, let's consider the barmaid and warrior mentioned earlier. When it comes to combat, the barmaid may have the trait "Been in a few bar brawls 2d6." The warrior could have the trait "Battle-hardened 2d10." If they came to blows in the bar, the barmaid may be able to hold her own. If the barmaid additionally had a relationship of "Ferdy's Bar 1d10," her knowledge of the location and some assistance from one of the regulars would give her a fighting chance. If instead they met in a dark alley, on a battlefield, or somewhere else, the warrior's superior combat experience, plus his "Family Sword 2d6" would likely see him prevail. To give you an idea what an entire character looks like, here's Myxie's character sheet: Throw Myxie into such a combat against a warrior, and her only useful traits would likely be magically talented and arcanist's arm, unless some aspect of the scene allowed her to devise a clever trap or mechanism to make use of the environment for "Clever Improvisation." Her "Well Read" and "Craftsmanship" traits would likely never help her in a combat situation, but could be quite useful in a social conflict or knowledge based skill challenge. In addition, there are four different severities of conflict, and each one makes use of different base stats, so if your character isn't winning the shouting match, you can raise the stakes to fisticuffs. If brawling still isn't doing it, you can draw your sword. The fallout system takes into account how dangerously you engaged in the conflict, and you may suffer more severe injury the more you escalate the situation in an effort to win the conflict. It covers everything from courtly rumors and gossip to shaking down a merchant to barroom brawls to deadly battlefield combat. If there's a conflict with stakes involved you can roll the dice and up the ante. The primary problem of this system is it requires some third party arbitration, otherwise you may end up with arguments about whether or not a trait or relationship applies to a given situation. It also takes a little practice to get used to how the system flows, but it's totally worth it. This system's focus on conflict resolution is quite revolutionary in the RPG field, and it's possible to make balanced characters who can still have substantially different capabilities based on the nature of the conflict in question. Even if you don't care to use the system, I suggest checking it out and possibly incorporating some of the elements into your own system.

It's been quite a while since I updated this thread, despite having completed my list months ago. Whether or not it's useful to anyone now that there are several websites where you can just do a gear search, I have no idea. I figured since I made the list I may as well post the full list, in case someone does find it useful. Enjoy, and good luck with your tradeskills

Orson Scott Card covers this notion of cliches rather extensively in his books on writing. In his description, cliches are essentially like putting your writing on cruise control. Whatever you're doing in the story, most beginning writers will run with the first thing that comes to mind, which almost by definition will be the cliche, the easiest or most common possibility. What he suggests is recognizing that your first instinct is likely the cliche and considering it for a moment. If it's too easy, try to come up with another answer or add an interesting twist to the cliche that's less common. Cliches aren't necessarily bad, they just need a little work to be interesting. And if you can't come up with a more interesting yet still believable solution, it's not a bad thing to go with the cliche once in a while. The cliche is a cliche because it makes the most sense. I also feel like it's inevitable based on the experience level of the writer or RPer in question. It takes a while to mature from the notion of "how awesome is my character" to "how interesting is my character?" Making interesting characters is always awesome, since interesting characters must overcome conflict. Making awesome characters is very rarely interesting, because awesome characters bypass conflict.

As far as thieves' guilds being in the game, my understanding of the three city-states is thus: Limsa is full of ex-pirates with a leader who is bribing them to walk the straight and narrow. There's a one-time opportunity for amnesty if you choose to become an upstanding citizen. Starting a thieves' guild means throwing that back in the Admiral's face, and you know she's going to answer that challenge. Ul'dah already has an organized criminal element, the Syndicate. As far as thieves being heroes, there's plenty of opportunity here for the Robin Hood type of character, unlike in the other two city-states. The problem is the Syndicate would probably not support such a group, seeing them as competition, and I see no reason for the Flames to support them either, because how is a thieves' guild any better than the corporate thieves they're already dealing with (not to mention less legitimate)? Gridania? No clue as it's my least favorite of the three city-states, but you've already got the Wood Wailers and the Godsbows, and I doubt either group would welcome a thieves' guild in Gridania. And finally, who cares what they name the classes? A black mage can just as easily be called a wizard or sorcerer. A white mage could be a priest. A summoner could be a witch. A bard could be a hunter or ranger. You're free to improvise with the trappings of the game whatever you please as far as your character's RP goes, so long as it isn't so fantastically unbelievable that no one takes you seriously. I see no reason a rogue can't be a thief.

I know what you mean. I cringe a little when I get a notification that it's back, and I wrote the darn thing. Predatory feline because they're obviously modeled after cats (and to an extent wolves I suppose), and felines (and wolves) are predatory. I doubt we'll ever get the lore behind the natural history of the different species, or that it would be satisfactorily scientific if we did. As for flavor text from NPCs, I don't generally take it for lore unless it's an NPC actively storytelling about world history. The whole super senses debate in the early pages showed the writers' penchant for poetic license. For all we know, Titan's opinion of all non-kobolds could be as accurate as asking a FOX News Show Host about Obama. Completely unbiased and fact-based. *cough* Pretty sure at this point this thread will only be resplitting the same hairs it's done a few times over. For those discovering it for the first time, my advice would be to use whatever you find interesting and ignore it if it has no value for you. Gonna try to avoid posting here anymore unless something truly novel appears.

Pretty sure this is the problem you have with my argument. I mentioned it before in the thread, but I'll say it explicitly: I don't believe Miqo'te are humans. I don't think they should be human, and I don't want them to be human, because there's already humans in the setting, so more humans aren't needed. To me this bias is like looking in a field and seeing a horse and a cow. Both are roughly the same size and shape with four legs, hooves on their feet, consume and digest grass, have short to medium length fur coats, and a variety of other traits that make them outwardly appear very similar. However, it's obvious that a cow is not a horse. Both are valuable farm animals, and much of their value is drawn from the ways in which they are different, rather than the ways in which they are the same. My goal in this thread was to offer insight into ways in which Miqo'te are different from humans, because I don't think you can take a predatory feline species and evolve it into a sentient form and get the same result as you would taking a vegetarian/omnivorous primate species and evolving it to sentience. The notion that despite their obvious biological differences that Miqo'te would somehow develop the same moral and ethical ideals as humans seems exceptionally unlikely to me. It's an underlying desire or bias for familiarity on the part of the player (and in my opinion a mistake made by the SE FFXIV writers). Even within the human species, different tribal and civilized cultures can have wildly varying cultural norms, even within the same culture as it evolves over time, which is why I didn't want to get into them in the first place. I am happy though that other people wished to discuss it, despite my personal lack of interest in cultural topics, because I think it's the logical progression of the argument. Now if you instead mean that I'm not offering the respect due a sentient species by comparing them to animals, that's just a point on which we're going to have to disagree. I have no problem comparing humans to our primate ancestors and cousins, so I have no problem comparing Miqo'te to their feline ancestors and cousins. By certain measures of success (biomass or number of individuals for example), humans are insignificant compared to insects. "Not human" in my mind does not equate to "less than human," even when considering plant or animal species. Again, my goal was to offer a foundation of biology about Miqo'te upon which the other players could build thoughtful, thought-provoking, interesting, infuriating, heart-wrenching stories. I think a Miqo'te species that is 'not human' adds interesting possibilities for roleplaying while also making good sense biologically.

Kinda surprised to see this thread resurrected again. I cringe every time it happens, because I'm worried what sort of new or re-justifications will be necessary for it, but I'm glad to see some good discussion being spurred again. I really could have used this sort of input a few months ago from someone whose credentials exceed my own. I will admit that at points I felt I was compromising my scientific viewpoint for the sake of politeness. For example, my original stance was that there would be absolutely, 100% no chance at all of cross-breeding between the five species producing live birth offspring. But as Xenedra pointed out, the scientifically unmeticulous writers at SE decided it would be cool to have an occasional half-breed in their world, so I had to roll with the punches. Also, a lot of people got upset at the suggestion that they couldn't have their Miqo'te fall for a Hyur or an Elezen in their RP. It was never my intent to force a certain type of RP with this thread, so I backed off on that particular point. I agree 100% here, and I know the physiological differences to which you're referring. I was just trying to keep anatomical terms out of the thread, as anti-ERP protests were already a danger, and even scientific discussion of certain features raises some peoples' hackles. This was ultimately the conclusion I came to when I finished with this discussion. Try as I might, I can't fix the scientific inconsistencies with the game's lore. By and large, the information I provided helped a lot of folks flesh out the background for their characters. Since that was my goal, I considered it a successful venture. Thank you for your input as well. I really appreciate it. Chances are we see very close to the same on the science, as nothing you said I found to be contradictory.

Kinda late getting into this, and didn't read the whole thread, but statistically, it's not surprising. Before the game went live, there were polls on this forum and others about what sort of character people planned to play. Every one of those polls put Miqo'te at the top with 30-35% of votes, regardless of gameplay goals. People roleplay Miqo'te because, in general, people like them. Personally, I was shuffling between male Midlander, female Miqo'te, and female Roegadyn when the game relaunched. I stuck with the Miqo'te because she was more fun. Others tell me she's rather unique, too, though I could easily list a handful of pop culture characters in reference to her presentation.

I agree with what Macey said. You have to let people know your character is still involved with the scene. Every once in a while do something like 'Myxie listens intently to the conversation but refrains from speaking.' Otherwise it can be hard to tell if your character is in the scene, or if you're distracted by the television, taking the dog out, or otherwise disengaged. You may get some helpful information from the Wikipedia page on body language. As far as depth of description showing that you're a better roleplayer, I agree to a point, and I think that point differs for different players. As an example: 1) Myxie glanced over her shoulder as she crashed through the underbrush of the Shroud, looking for any sign of her pursuer. She tripped over a fallen branch, crying out in pain as she landed on her wrist with a sharp, cracking sound. 2) Myxie's feet pounded the sodden ground as a light mist dissipated from the Twelveswood around her, a product of the early morning shower. A dappling of sunlight through the foliage mixed with the cryptic coloration of her coerlskin jacket to grant her a distinct advantage in terms of camouflage, but the clamour of her reckless retreat left no doubt as to the direction in which she fled..... [continued through three to five emotes of flowery text to reach the same conclusion of a broken arm]. There's been threads on this forum and others about which is the 'better,' 'more experienced,' 'elitist,' etc. way to roleplay. Either is fine, so long as it enhances the roleplaying experience for all involved.

I think part of the reason you don't see a lot of the dark types of characters is that it's difficult to play them well. A lot of villainous characters in popular media are over the top caricatures for the heroes to overcome. We can tell right away that they've been thrown into the story so the heroes have someone to fight against, and we don't learn much more than that about the bad guys. Take Supernatural, for example. We learn tons about the different good guys, their histories and relationships. Crowley's been a major antagonist for several seasons now, but all we know about him is that he's a demon and does demonic things because he's a demon. Surely there's more to Crowley than just plotting and scheming, but revealing his history would make him easier to relate with and less villainous. It takes a fair amount of maturity, experience, and roleplaying confidence to create a three-dimensional bad guy and play it as a PC (not just an occasional NPC for a storyline). I started roleplaying when I was fifteen, and I'd say I didn't really pull off my first memorable evil player character (one with depth and characterization) until I was almost thirty. The bar for playing a fantastic, realistic bad guy is much higher than the bar for playing a similarly interesting good guy. At the very least people are going to scrutinize your roleplay more critically if you're playing an antagonistic character. Though anti-heroes are even tougher. Still don't think I've ever pulled off an anti-hero. Maybe I'll try that for my upcoming Dresden Files game.

Another way you could consider this is instead of 'seeing' auras she could 'feel' them in a tactile sense. For example, if she were talking to a single person alone in a room, their aura might feel like a small draft in the room or a hand held fan blowing onto her skin. If that person starts channeling magic, it could escalate to the intensity of a room fan washing over her. Surround her by enough people or enough aether flow, and it would be impossible to distinguish one flow from another as they all buffeted her skin. This would also allow her to use her more tactile sensitive body parts, namely the hands and face, to explore the aether flows around her.