Im afraid that Im not following what your aiming for Saken, please explain :)

I have trouble with elves. :I I imagine them to be cold, distant creatures. It's difficult to bond with other characters because my character's personality.

Ummm, I was wondering myself, how you would go about making psychic characters fair when other characters aren't psychic... I'm afraid I have next to no experience with roleplay as of yet though :P

My biggest issue (and one I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned) is a magic-user. How does one go about making a magically powerful character, but not an overpowerful character? Magic in general is very tricky to deal with in and of itself, but having a character who uses magic is even more difficult.

Particularly when everyone in a group is a magic user. When people go about controlling different areas of magic (illusions, conjuration, necromancy, etc) it becomes even more difficult. After all, how can one tell if this illusionist's power is equal to that necromancer's power?

Tricky tricky.

Hmm, excellent point Billie, but I would say it depends on the use of the said illusionist. For example, I played one that was a mix between Illusionist and Creationist. Parts of her abilities actually became real enough to be perfectly believable. She would use this ability to actually make it seem as if whole armies were charging (this was designed for mass warfare) or make other people look like the enemy, so that they were literally killing eachother. Deception is a considerable power, but ONLY if it is applied as such. :) Thats just my thoughts. Think of relating the power on a mass scale. For example, said Necromancer might be able to only revive one skeleton, or perhaps they can raise a entire battlefield. Great way to compare chars is on the wide scale effects.

There is also the power source. For example, I play a character named "Ame" in a roleplay called "Blue Lips". Essentially, his power is based on the number of people he can inspire, the more intense feelings like anger and happiness grant him more power. Thus, it is limited to the vast power of feelings, as well as his charisma. In the begining, he has little power, causing the area around him to rain or slight breezes. However, as his power grows, he could eventually causes mass storms, or even fly. This can be a area to limit your ability, as well as providing a GREAT way to explain where your magic actually comes from.

As for the phychic, Derv, make them at a relative level of your allies. A good example is perhaps the Mass Effect series, which has a job purely dedicated to phychic ability called Adept. However, after using all your abilities (the game had cool down times) you were relatively helpless against the other weapons of heavier jobs (who may just gun you down ect). Essentially, always balance by making your abilities not entirely full proof. For example, you may be able to lift a truck with your mind, but you can't hold out very long before some drastic side effect on the battle.

Wrong place for this probally >,< sorry!

Anyway, my own list of sterotype Furry Chars

Warrior Furry: Very popular in both books and video games and probally the least poorly portrayed version, they are throughout history. Many gods in various religions have anthromorphic warriors, and many humans try to become "animals" such as the "Jaguar Warrior" of the Aztects. We also use animals as symbols in war, particularly in Europe, the lion or the boar.

Merchant Furry: Popular mostly in video games, most particularly noted in the "Secret of Mana" series, that features both a traveling sells cat and a traveling sells bunny. These are probally more connected to Japanese beliefs, where cats are "lucky", often relating to business in some ways (there are statues that raise their paws, meaning "Good Fortune"), and rabbits probally have some similar relation that I don't know :) lol.

Sexy Fur: Commonly in adult related stuff, most notably "Playboy" which uses a bunny as its symbol, as well as having "bunny girls". Anyway during the much of the early years of there was a big connection to anthromorphic images and sexuality. Bast, a goddess of women, is a cat-goddess.

Billie_blujean wrote:My biggest issue (and one I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned) is a magic-user. How does one go about making a magically powerful character, but not an overpowerful character? Magic in general is very tricky to deal with in and of itself, but having a character who uses magic is even more difficult.

The issue indeed tends to be the limit of the power level. It is the job of a GM to build the magic system, or his/her willingness to deal with the player's creative input, in which case the only thing the applicant really needs to do is to sound reasonable. What is reasonable is best judged by the context of the RP. Common perception is that the ability to destroy planets is godmoding, but if every character can destroy planets and survive in space, it no longer is. Hence there is no solid solve-it-all answer to this.

Particularly when everyone in a group is a magic user. When people go about controlling different areas of magic (illusions, conjuration, necromancy, etc) it becomes even more difficult. After all, how can one tell if this illusionist's power is equal to that necromancer's power?

Tricky tricky.

Exact equality actually isn't that much of a big deal here.

For example;

1.) The necromancer will have a different purpose than the illusionist. Add to that, both have weaknesses and strengths the other has not, which affects their match-ups. Even if the necromancer has a better damage output than the illusionist, and so kills more units faster, once he's up against a powerful practitioner of holy magic, all his minions will be exorcised/banished at the same if not a higher rate than he can summon them. The illusionist may be weaker in terms of actual damage output, but because the holy-magic-user also happens to be a little on the naive and superstitious side, illusions will trick and deceive his opponent, riding the illusionist to victory with relative ease.

2.) If they work together, does it really matter? The necromancer summons a mighty undead, say... A ghost-dragon of three stories high. Alone this is an incredible opponent, but if there appear to be twenty of them and one will causes that humongous damage, it will become a very dangerous guessing game for their foes.

3.) In the even they fight against each other, it simply requires the writers to do their job and accepting bad match-ups, should they occur. But even then it is winnable. You can imagine a necromancer will focus more on his own power to summon big bad mofos, than using his surroundings. To summon his biggest baddest summons, he will need a lot of space, which gives the illusionist the tools he needs to create most illusions and thereby minimising the chance of getting hit himself. Even should this go wrong, the illusionist may flee into a castle, creating illusions of walls and walkways where they are not. The big-bad summons cannot be brought inside, so the necromancer will be forced to bring his weaker ones if he wants to chase the illusionist, which instantly put the match in his disfavour.

There's no need to 100% balance power, as long as everybody simply plays fair. The creative writer can work around everything. It is not a technical issue, it is that of mentality. Rather than finding a way to balance character power, I say it is more useful to find a harmony for your players.

Yea, this isn't actually the place for this, but it's all right. I'm going to be going through this, making a list, an then writing up a guide (with the help of others at RPG) for playing the species of the character, with a few added thigns (like, for example, if the furry was a sexy one, it would act like this if this happened, or so on and so forth)! PM me if you'd like to write up a guide. =p I'm getting onto it soon.

That is a much better explanation Kestrel, thank you. I tend to look at the technical side and at least relate it to be similar, but either method gets the job done. In the end, it does come down to the roleplayers though, I have to agree on that.

As for your guide Saken, I think you should also have characters who fit the sterotype, but are, in the end, interesting characters. Offering examples of ways to make the character unique despite the strong sterotypes of that field would ultimately be the purpose of the guide. I have two "fur" chars I would submit to that :)

Ah right, sorry dude. No intention to steal your thunder here. Carry on.

No need to be sorry, I was just simply stating that it was not the right place to put it, silly. >=p

Where else would you put this. It seems as long as you are teaching something related to rp it can go here, why not? Anyway what I wanted to say is that the peramiters of a characters abilities should be outlined clearly by the gm. It is the gm's job to show what is or is not allowed in their role play and everyone in the rp should follow the same rules. For example if it is a rp with vampires the gm should specify what type and what abilities and such the vampires can have or can't have. That way anyone who plays in that rp knows what to do and how to do it.

Too many of the rp's I have seen have no details as to what to expect from that rp. They will simply have a race list, but what good is that if you don't know the details of the race the gm wants to portray. Saying elves people have many different views so the gm needs to say you can be a Wood elf for example. You live in forests and have a natural affinity for nature magic. You tend to have tanned skin and varied natural colors like brown, green, and blue for hair and eyes. Etc...This tells the people who want to play not only what abilities their character might have but also a little about what they might look like. Of course more details are good as long as you don't overload people with too many.

I think a good idea would be to have a thread talking about the different races and character types like somone mentioned so that if a gm needs more specific ideas they can read the forum and decide wich types they want to use. Or if a game is more open a person can use it to come up with ideas for a new race or use an idea they may not have seen before.

This was not actually meant to be the teaching thread, and was set up in a different forum, but was moved here. The thread was set up to gain the knowledge of what races people have troubles with seeing, or creating so that a guide could be made for this forum.

Also, just because you know the race does not mean you can construct it to the liking of other people, not to mention in a Role Play like the MultiVerse, it may be difficult to create a species.

Tæfarós wrote:Werecreatures! Definitely werecreatures. On the subject of Twilight and even True Blood, they've been tampered with; they're not weres--they're shapeshifters. So now what we have is common misconception of how to define their species. Werecreatures generally: (a) transform during the full moon; (b) endure a very painful form change (shifting bones and growing parts'll do that to you); (c) don't fucking keep their clothes on. Fabric should be lost or ripped to shreds! At least Sookie Stackhouse got it right.

And even if you weren't following the traditional roles, you'd still need to consider how to portray them properly. Do you condense the were aspect into something believable, or do you go all out for emphasis? They would also have this underlying primal instinct about them, given their nature.

Mmkay, I'll stop. Rant get.

What I find frustrating is the debate on what form they end up taking. It's either they-just-look-like-animal-x, or kind-of-half-breed-thing, or human-with-wicked-fangs/tail/wings/whathaveyou. The variety isn't my main problem (although I find that last one a tiny bit annoying). What frustrates me is that even though there's a clear divide, I have yet to meet a game master who defines the form ahead of time, which tends to lead to confusion and miscommunication when playing.