Star Wars Roleplay: Chaos

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How do you develop your character's abilities?

In canon terms, a Sith will take years to develop and hone lightsaber forms and Force abilities.

Of course, over here in a forum we condense that into a much smaller timeframe.

I was wondering, how do you personally create that sense of your character developing skills and Force powers without it seeming too fast or indeed too slow?

I mean, do you just hit up a few training threads and you feel like you've done enough, maybe in groups, master-apprentice, maybe just solo threads?

Or just general RPing, and as your Sith rises through the ranks, the increase in power is just assumed, so that dedicated training threads in later stages are not required that much?
 

Elensa Jari

Guest
[member="Wolf"] Because I get involved in a lot of threads, I start each with a particular sense of what I've learned: if I pick up a new ability in another thread, that can only be used in threads that start after that point. Anything I'm in prior to that stays essentially static, so I'm stuck with the abilities I had at the start of that RP.

I'd also not assume that a rise in rank means more power - ultimately, the difference between an Acolyte in their last days of training and a Knight new to their title is...the name. The power they develop and the skills they gain should (but often aren't!) RPed out completely - there's often that sense of "I'm a Knight, therefore I'm more powerful than Acolytes/Padawans/Rookies etc", which isn't entirely accurate. To me, if you don't RP it, and don't receive training or do IC research/study, you haven't got it, and shouldn't use it.

Then again, my Sith Lord has been a character I've used for over 10 years now, so I've had plenty of time to write hundreds of threads to develop the character, both in personality, skills, abilities, allegiances and practices. That requires a lot of time and patience, and some people are just in too much of a rush :p I, however, will always maintain this to be the greatest pleasure of RP: growing with your character, and watching them become something more than you started out with. Takes a long time to do right, but it's very much worth the hassle :)
 
I always just had his abilities increase when he rose through the basic ranks, and when I hit Master in late 2013 his abilities kinda just plateaued for awhile.

But with each battle his skills and experiences have increased.
 
As I've stated previously, I don't like the sudden jump that people typically do with their characters directly after a promotion... this is probably because all the force character's I've had up until Zambrano, were fairly static.

I started out this board with a Dark Jedi Padawan named Jhar'Vokh who was horrendously overpowered for his rank because I hadn't quite figured out the force yet (who technically did get promoted but it was a pretty awful character progression), and then my second was Darth Voracitos, a badass Force Masta with a penchant for ignoring his obesity and diabetes and eating three turkey's at once anyway (OP 5realz), the rest of my force characters were flat, stale, and just bleg.

Then comes Zambrano... and he has actually progressed.

That's never happened before.

And since I'm used to stagnation and the character base is solid at minimal force usage (since I don't want it to be overshadowing my gore :p), I don't see any reason why his power base had to increase just because I'm recognized as a Knight on the OOC level.

So with all that in mind, upon immediate promotion... I don't do anything with my characters. It just means that they are ready to reach out a little more into the reserve of the force, and expand upon what they've already learned. And likely, when he goes Master, he'll have already learned his favorite techniques, and becoming a Master will him just becoming a specialist with those specific skills, narrowing down rather than expanding.

Becoming a Knight, I hope to learn a lot more than I did as an Acolyte, because as an Acolyte, I was merely getting a hang of things. As a Knight, I have a certain hold of things now, and it's time to take those first pivotal steps to find out as much as I can... then once I have... I'll start narrowing down and that's when I become truly a Master.

It's okay to learn as a Master, but I don't feel like it should be your focus to learn. Learning is for Acolytes and Knights, Master is for Mastering.

Though I suppose that's a different topic :p
 
[member="Elensa Jari"]
[member="Zambrano the Hutt"]
Do either of you keep tabs on your abilities?

For example do you try to rank them, like "Telekinesis (weak)" or "Djem so (master)" or do you keep it all in your head and just build on previous threads?
 
As you go through threads and use the force ull start to decide what will be more scaled in terms of abilities. For example I use Force Rage often by the time I got to High knight i considered it mastered. Its all up to you really. [member="Wolf"]
 
[member="Wolf"] Pretty much what Kez said. There is a certain goal in mind when I have these characters, and I don't often distract myself with other abilities.

However, if the ability in the moment seems to make sense for what my character will be delving into, I will very much use it. I don't like lists that much :p
 
[member="Wolf"]

I personally developed through use. Pretty much everyone above explained it pretty good.

Though, you're technically required to have a list of your characters abilities listed on your character sheet .p. [member="Zambrano the Hutt"]
 
I write my character as if it were the protagonist or antagonist of my story, they are doomed to failure at various points where the odds are stacked in her favor, while evenly matched or situations where she is clearly not superior she will tend to excel much more.

It oddly evens out, I think, and I always force a weakness or issue on myself in order to make things a bit more realistic.

As far as time progression, when I started writing Silara she was 20, but at various important events I increased it until now, where she sits at 37. So realistically she has spent years learning and so on.
 

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