CRYSTALGATE'S PROFILE

If I were s streamer, I could not guarantee that I wont swear. Even if I signed a contract that required me to not swear, I may accidentally slip up and do so anyway. However, I can guarantee that I won't use certain swear words. Swear words which I find distasteful and don't use habitually, I won't use by accident. The brain works that way. What you're used to do and don't associate with "danger" or "problem" you do without thinking, while what you're not used to do or is conditioned to think of as dangerous or problematic, requires thinking. It's a survival trait we have. This also means that if I do slip up and use a certain swear word, then it's a swear word I don't find distasteful and use habitually.

author=NeverSilent
Apparently, another perk of being a world-ending Revenant is the freedom of being a sassy smarty-pants at any given time. After all, who's going to stop him? Good old Aeyr.

I feel really dumb now. I mistook the statues for guards and the "terrible situations" text made me think Aeyr was a captive (even though he doesn't seem restrained), but it's just referring to Aeyr being a revenant.

To clarify my earlier comment, if the emperor had Aeyr captive, he is in the presence of people who are dangerous to leave alive, yet they have boatloads of juicy information and just getting rid of them may bite him later on. As such, if the emperor is a rational man, he will realize that he is in a tricky situation, but if he's not, then he may think that just getting rid of them will solve his problems.

That said, even though Aeyr is just barging in, the emperor's reaction is still going to be interesting. I can think of several things the emperor can say to improve his standing with Aeyr, provided he hasn't burned that bridge by earlier actions already. I can also think of several things he absolutely should not say.

My favorite is FF V. That game was the most fun to me and that's ultimately what counts.

This game has the right amount of customization for me. There are both enough choices and limitations. Some FF games don't give you much to customize at all or they give you too limited choices. For example, FF III lets you pick a class for every character and that's it. Others don't have a proper limitation. For example, FF VIII has a lot of customization via the junktion system, but there's no reason not to make everyone great at everything. This meant all party members became fighter/black mage/white mage master of all, no weaknesses whatsoever, characters.

I also think FF V hit the right spot of difficulty.

That's not much really, but then, I've never been a huge fan of FF games. I don't hate them, but FF is just one series among other for me. This makes the downsides of FF V matter less in comparison. For example, FF V has a rather bland story and bland characters, but there are no FF game where I really loved either the characters or the story anyway.

Has the player been given a good reason to want to find out more about the characters in question? Has that "very limited development" been, while limited, interesting or hinting towards something interesting? I sure know that I won't bother with reading flavor text unless I think that will pay off and I don't think I'm the only one with that attitude. Basically, if the player is already somewhat mentally invested in the character, then fine, give the player a chance do some voluntary digging. However, I think it's a bad idea to ask of the player to dig for something to get mentally invested into in the first place. In that case, I think it's better to just show the player whatever is needed and maybe a carefully chosen selection of the flavory stuff.

It's pretty close to a hit points system where the characters get weaker the lower their hitpoints are compared to their maximum hitpoints. There are differences of course, but I don't know what exactly this system is supposed to accomplish. I don't think it's realistic either.

The hitpoints system is there to make a character able to survive hits with certainty, but still go down eventually. Let's say a (superhuman) person is so tough that in order to reliable kill it with one spear stab, you need to generate twice the kinetic energy you are capable of generating. With only half the kinetic energy needed, you will not be able to kill him with two stabs. Unless you hit the exact same spot twice, with two stabs you get two stabs where neither kills him. Eventually, he will bleed out over multiple wounds, but it can take a lot of time and way more than two stabs. With a hitpoints system, you would kill him with just two stabs doing half the required damage.

Typically, hitpoints are replaced with a wound system in pen and paper games when a gritty realism, where a person can easily go down in one hit, is desired. You can do that with hitpoints as well, but then you get into situation like "the sword stopped just one centimeter from your heart, you survive, but if a child kicks you on your knee, you're going down".

You want to make battles realistic, but not too lethal. This is almost a contradiction. Realistic means getting a sword rammed into your body can easily take you down without any further injury needed.

One option is making it more difficult to hit in the first place and making the consequences of being hit more important.

If you go that route, I suggest setting the game so so that the player can vastly improve the chances trough good tactics. If we assume that the heroes are more skilled than mook enemies and have say 60% chance to hit vs their 30%, then she/he could maybe manipulate the odds to be 90% vs 10%, but only trough good planing and execution.

Anyway, as for the hearts system, it seems to me that it would make more sense if tougher creatures got a lower wound category rather than surviving more wounds of the same category. A punch that causes a serious, but not life threatening wound, to a five years old child would be unlikely to cause a serious wound to an well trained adult, rather, it would cause what you call a light or medium wound. Heck, try the same punch on an elephant and I doubt anyone would say the elephant got wounded.