Shattered Kingdoms

RP Portion, cool, but you can skip it

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The rain patters mercilessly against the tavern roof; wooden shingles, rigid and steadfast, work tirelessly at their thankless task of holding back the elements from entering the dilapidated establishment of moral decadence, they never complain. The torrent of water bears down heavily in the late hours, but no one inside notices, except for me, the torrential sound is drowned out by the cacophony of sounds, mirth fueled by liquid spirits. I sit amongst these creatures of the night, an old warrior, as gray and tattered and faded as my cloak that is now employed in keeping the cold from my aching bones that do their best to hold up this once feared mercenary of the battlefield. I order another ale.

The serving wench smiles at me, bless her, I have not yet lost the eye for the damsels, thank the damnable gods. Her eyes flirtatious enough to beckon a tip but reserved just as to not to entice an unwelcome advance from an old fart like me. Skills she has earned from working this place, no doubt, scars of another form, but I am not focused on that this night, my own scars ache to warn me to something else. I had been noticed.

The first one young one approached me, the most eager and reckless of the bunch, perhaps thinking the tired old warrior will come easy, he put his hand on my shoulder and uttered some comment I didn’t quite hear as my right fist connected with his face, my knuckles knew well from countless other brawls the feeling of crushing bone, the caving in of whatever alignment his face had before impact, the warm wet splatter of blood, it remembers every broken face.

He reels back to his friends, their bladed weapons drawing in dissonance and glinting in the low light of the tavern, people scatter. I watch them patiently, drawing out my unnamed longsword, I say nothing, I was never one for words. The young lads come at me, are they shouting out or are their mouths merely agape as they charge? I do not know, any sound fails to reach my ears, I merely focus. They are younger and stronger than I, but the countless battles have chiseled my senses and my sword arm reacts accordingly, their trusts pierce air, their cuts make the air hiss but my body is impervious to anything other than the blade of time.

They are dead now, more nameless faces forever etched upon the equally nameless sword. I pay for my drink and walk out of the tavern away from the lifeless corpses and stunned faces, suddenly aware again of my again aching bones and my eternal companion, age whittling away at my form, it will claim me one day, but not yet.

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Skill Idea - Seasoned

Age and the passing of time is a concept that has been with SK for as long as I can remember, our characters age tick, stats change and they eventually age die if we stick with them that long. Casters are in a position where they benefit from the age tick, their int goes past the maximum, as does their wisdom and charisma with the tradeoff for strength, dexterity and constitution lowering. While this arguably is not a huge drawback for their classes, melee classes (fighter and adventurer) however suffer the blow a lot more, it wasn’t until the inclusion of an extra specialize for an age ticked mercenary that they received a benefit from age ticking, which was awesome, but can we do a bit more? A young warrior should always hit harder and be stronger than the seasoned veteran, but where does all that experience go from a dude that has been fighting wars all his life? It would be cool that when a melee class age ticks this skill opens up, which would add slight (not too much) bonuses to their defensive (Eg. parry, dodge, shield block, etc) skills based on their wisdom score (Yeah, their wisdom score) on top of whatever checks go with the skills already, to make them fight on even ground with the whippersnappers. I don't think the answer should always be have more strength herbs or have more sorcerer friends for haste and hope for the best.

Idea for it is that you can’t see the skill when you are young, it suddenly shows up on your skill list when you age tick, but with your first age tick you can only level it up to say, good or very good, superb at the second age tick, and mastered when you are an old fart if you live that long.

I see it as something that would promote you keeping a character around for longer, especially a melee class, and actually paying attention to your stat gains through the mentoring system to perhaps invest slowly in wisdom, and it would also be something that sets PCs apart from NPC charmie NPCs. Thoughts?

When I started to read the beginning about what you were talking about, I was thinking exactly the same. That even though, their physical stats go down, their ability to dodge/parry/block would go slightly up to compensate. I like this idea.

Did anybody else read that in the Diablo guy's voice?


They're alllllways watching.


I think this is a fantastic idea.

I wholeheartedly approve of this idea. On a mechanics scale, it gives purpose to age ticked character. On an RP scale, it makes playing that grizzled veteran viable.

EDIT: I do have a slight disagreement though. The Seasoned skill should be trained up to a cap as you describe, then reach master at some point earlier than when you describe, then start diminishing again. In the end, no matter how much of a veteran a warrior is, they are not up to par with the younger blood regardless of how many "countless" fights they had. After a while, a man's mind and body betray him, making him both feeble and dim. That, in my opinion, should happen at the high end of someone's age e.g. 85+ on a human

Even Yoda had some trouble with the Chancellor as he got old.

I think this would be a great idea.

I really, really like this idea. Would give melee players a reason to keep a long lived character other than pure RP purposes and keep them viable.

This is seriously one of the best original ideas I've seen in a long time.

I loved the RP Portion so much!

I'm confused. How did he know that the young guy wasn't putting his hand on his shoulder and asking him for directions? Looks like he might have murdered those poor kids for no reason.