Shattered Kingdoms

This popped into my mind the other day when I was contemplating on the most prominent figures in the life of my character. It'd seem logical to me that when one has spent several IC years around the same person and has the habit of grouping up with them, that their combat abilities would become more harmonious around each other.

I'm suggesting a skill that tracks down the time you've spent around a character and that allows you to pick a single person to form a power combo with. This could be a fortitude/reflex/willpower boost, an increased chance to land extra attacks or the ability to dodge/shield block more often. Since I am imagining a span of several IC decades for one to be eligible for such a skill, the requirement for this would be to be playing active, long-lived PCs.

At the moment, despite the intelligence and wisdom ticks people have little motivation to play characters for a long amount of time. Especially the melee ones have no real advantage. Perhaps this would be a worthwhile 'reimbursement'.

Hrm...I hope there wouldn't have to be a choice between this and the cohort thing.

Inzaarid would have an insane 'power combo' if some other character was the same age.

:^(

I both like and dislike this idea.

I like that it gives people more incentive to play characters for long, I dislike that it makes people grow attached to one other character. It will form elitist groups.

'Excuse me are you free now?'
'No. I'm with X'.

Share the fun, don't just stick to 1 other pc

I think this idea needs a lot of refining. I like the concept, but it would lead to a lot more people creating together or feeling like they have to create with someone else. I also think Erevan makes a good point. It would become a burden for the sake of mechanics.

It sounds good, but it would be more beneficial to characters that natrually libe longer.

Unless the rate of "attachment" was staggered based on a percentage of total age, not just a standard across-the-board amount.

Cohort and this are full of fail.

Incentive comes in the form of the mentor system and extra stat points that you can get through that. Longer lived characters are more likely to have ridiculous stats.

Motivation being something derived purely from their usefulness in PK? Honestly, I always figured people played old characters because they were sentimentally attached to them, and that they still had something to accomplish in the SKs world. I do not particularly like the idea of playing as a 60 year old, nor do I particularly desire to be surrounded by a council of 60 year old characters trying to twink out their power combos or what have you. As it so happens I'm surrounded by a number of moldy oldy characters, some of them exceeding a hundred years (elves), and they all tend to do fine for themselves.

It makes logical sense to me that mages benefit far more from aging than warriors. You always imagine the wrinkly old uber wizard, not so much the wrinkly old uber swordsman (depending on your media...) for logical reasons. Being an old warrior and watching your strength fade is just a part of that.

It would be nice however, if they (non-mages) did get -some- benefit outside of the mentor system. But I would not like to make it rely on other, equally old characters. An extra spec, some other class specific time-locked skill we make up, etc., I think would be awesome. But I don't mean to change the subject...

When it comes to old warriors I've always thought it would be cool if they could have a bonus
or something to reflex or dodging. Something along the lines of...

After countless years of training and battles the seasoned warrior has learned to
effectively avoid his enemies using the least amount of energy.

Sort of like the old dojo masters in movies.... just my two cents.