A Simple Suggestion

[prythian]

The ADMIN making a SUGGESTION?! GASP!

Well, here's my suggestion: Canon bundles.

Certain canons just... would not be found apart. So, why not count those characters as a single character? A great example would be Pain and Panic, or the Gullwings. Those types of characters.

Problems are that they'd have to have shared (or split) hp and such given that they count as a single character and other such related problems.

Thoughts, other Dream Sequence members and staff?

[mrcrazycakes]

I'd actually been meaning to put up something similar a while back, but it slipped my mind. I support it; those types of characters are practically jointed at the hip, so finding an excuse to split them from the group for every thread until they get the rest of the group can be inconvenient (Seifer is easy to excuse because of who he is; other characters, not so much).

I agree with it, basically. It simplifies things, and doesn't present the oddity of Lock suddenly deciding to go on an adventure without Shock and Barrel (Or some similar group).

[00Penguin]

I'd have to agree with that... It would make it easier to audition, if ya have the other's that complete or compete with their persona, then it builds and make the audition a lot better.

[Rocket!]

I see your suggestion, and raise a question:

1000 starting credits is fair for a single character, not so much for two or three. Abilities would need to be shared between the characters, whether or not the player chooses to use 'em as such.

HP, meanwhile, might be better suited to allotting--

Say you get Pain and Panic. You buy ten Weak Abilities, giving you 20 HP, and choose to give 12 HP to Pain (Who's used to pain by now), and 8 to Panic. Somewhere down the line, you buy a new ability-- you'd need to declare where the new HP goes.

I say this because, well, if the HP is shared between characters in a single HP bar, then you've essentially got two to three clones running around at any one time. Speaking from a battle-perspective, that's scary.

[NiNeLiVeS]

Hm, Rocket raises a good point. You can, however, mitigate against having the 'clonelike' by maxing out your number of actions at 4 regardless of however many characters you have.

Getting around the fact that you have three characters running about and possibly in different directions *would* be tricky unless in battle it was made clear that they actually *are* magically joined at the hip. Which is a little restrictive, in my mind (and actually kind of fatal. AOE would do 3x damage). However, without a shared HP bar how would death work? Would we assume that until the last character falls they've merely been knocked unconscious?

I'm more curious about the stats. Certain canons - like the gullwings - are pretty obviously not supposed to share the same statistic types (argue with me about the gullwings if you'd like - the argument is still valid). How would that work out?

[prythian]

This is why I put up the suggestion. XD

That's the problem; if they're each a separate character, it's difficult for them to be auditioned for because we have that 'too closely related' rule.

If they're one character, they're each going to be weaker than on average than is usual. Allotted HP would most likely be the way to go to recognize variations between the characters (Gullwings are a good example; Paine would take hits much better than Rikku, and thus have higher HP.).

Which would mean that death works like it would any other time; if a character dies, they die. (...That would be interesting, given one of a bundled canon being in the Underworld. I really do need to work on that unconscious mechanic though.)

As for the stats, well... like I said, characters would be weaker under this. I'd picture the Gullwings as having equal stats in each thing, and each using abilities based on their own particular thing.

(I never intended the abilities to be non-shared; it makes sense for them to be shared between characters and leave it up to the player whether or not one character uses an ability got specifically for another.)

That said, that raises a good question; how do buffs work on them? Do they work on a single one, or the whole group at once? If the answer is a single one, then they should each have their own actions. (This mitigates the lowered HP factor.) If they work on the whole group at once, the entire group should max at out 4 actions total.

Any difficulty in the group splitting apart, whether in battle or even to the point of going into separate threads for whatever reason, is entirely taken upon the heads of the player, though. We wouldn't restrict them to staying together.

[NiNeLiVeS]

Imma go for a COMPLETELY different direction and ask-

If canons can do this, why not OCs?

[Spring [Complex]]

NiNe raises an interesting point at OC's but before we get to that complicated story, I'd like to say I agree with Canon bundles. Gullwings, Aladdin especially (Just toss in Abu and Carpet geez, even Genie kinda needs to go into that bundle or at least be his summon kinda iffy if Genie gets added to that little mix but definitely Carpet and Abu. Who else benefits like that...The Queen of Hearts and her Card Soldiers lol, Chip N Dale, Jack Skellington and Zero, Mickey should get Pluto, hmm...there's quite a bit of the Disney Canons who benefit from this approach. The mechanics are still a bit iffy though heh. Curious about Beast then...do you get a free Lumiere, Cogsworth, Mrs. Potts, and the Wardrobe? Or is it that if you want Lumiere you get the rest of em? So long as we know all the bundles for each world we're good to identify how abilities/HP sharing should work (Ah forgot Peter/Tinkerbell).

[prythian]

(Genie, just due to how he works (not sure if he's been freed yet, for heaven's sakes) might be obtained through a quest as a special summon or something like that.)

There is one other issue with these bundles. Certain characters need certain abilities. As in, they absolutely cannot exist without them. Like the Gullwings' and Carpet's flying, or Zero's ghostiness/flight.

And we'd be bundling them after this suggestion is passed. (Not to mention the Queen of Hearts bundled with her Card Soldiers? Would result in VERY LITTLE HP for all of them. XD)

Pluto's also iffy on bundling, given that throughout most of the games he was traveling on his own. It's also difficult to bundle characters already taken; they didn't audition for said character.

As for the enchanted objects, they would more likely be their own characters, maybe with Mrs. Potts and Chip as a bundle.

HP allotting is the way to go, with abilities shared between characters and played by the owner's discretion. Shared Abilities would also have cooldowns apply to all the characters, admittedly. (You don't want to buy Jump Boost twice for a single character, basically, but a shared health bar prevents everyone in something from dying so long as one person runs away, and you can't defeat them one at a time; that's unfair in a sense. Allotted health bars allow for someone with more hp that defends the weaker ones, etc.)

As for NiNe's point, I am unsure. There are obviously distinct disadvantages to it, but I'm not sure why we WOULDN'T let OCs do it if they want to take on those disadvantages.

[NiNeLiVeS]

Building off of Pryth's idea: why not give each bundle bonus abilities?

So let's say you have Aladdin/Abu/Carpet. You could get Glide for Carpet and Aim for Abu or you could get Super Glide for Carpet or something along those lines. It's decided on beforehand, but it gives a little more incentive to audition for a bunch of really fragile characters.

[00Penguin]

But then wouldn't that mess with everything like the stat system and the 1000 shop credit needed if it's a character that doesn't have a character sheet yet?

[NiNeLiVeS]

Well, it'd be like an ability that you'd get from a rank. The character wouldn't -need- the stats (or spellbooks) for it, they'd just have it.

And yes, it'd also go over the credit system (you'd still start with 1000). Basically, the idea is that you don't have to pay for the privilege of playing weak characters, the munny you spent on your audition is already spent on pre-packaged bonus abilities.

[Spring [Complex]]

That seems very fair considering you PAY for auditions. So I think that keeps things in nice and neat. Hmm, which means I'll be looking out for Carpet and Abu in my audition for a certain street rat...or do I let Bilby play the Street Rat hmm... >]