Special Ability Poll

We've got a lot of great ideas for Iris' abilities, but sadly, only 3 can move on to the final poll and only 1 will make it into the game... So here are your top 3 picks for the 15th Man's abilities:

• Aether (Click to View)

  Ability Name: Aether
  
  I think she should use the "Tools" mechanic. In that, you get items (however many) and those will serve as her "abilities" HOWEVER, these are not tools in and of themselves, but rather the manifestation of mana and spirit that grants her access to hitherto unknown power.
  
  I would say that you would receive these Mana Orbs (or whatever) from certain enemies, a few littered in storyline bosses, other powers (and probably her more significant of them) could be from optional bosses.
  
  Now for what will make her abilities different from Edgar's Tools.
  
  All her abilities are random, split among three different possibilities. Imagine for a moment a sort of combination of Edgar's Tools, and Mog's Dances. You stay in complete control of her, use whatever ability you want, but what happens is completely up in the air.
  
  For example:
  

  15man is in battle, you go to her ability selection window, let's call it Aether (why? Because aether is the manifestation of both life energy and spiritual energy, in a sense for this game, magic and spirit).
  You choose 'Wyrm Mana'.
  
  now there are three abilities that can happen with Wyrm Mana:
  
  1. Dragon Breath: 15man summons the ferocious fire of a great dragon to decimate her foe. Powerful (fire) or (non-elemental) damage to a single enemy.
  
  2. Dragon Skin: 15man releases her chaotic energy to give her party Shell and Protect, but at the cost of burdening them with the weight of her spirit. (Casts Protect, Shell, and Slow on party)
  
  3. Entrap: 15man's energies have run out of her control, paralyzing a random person with her ill intent.

  
  With this example, I show that 15man can easily be a powerful ally, but at the same time she could hurt you as well. This would show how her very nature is twisted up, warping her powers and possibly harming the very people she is trying to help and protect. In this way, even in battle it can show just how desperate she is to get out of her troubled situation.
  
  Plus I think with that kind ability she could add a whole new level of tactics to battling, since you never know if she is going to do something helpful or harmful. And I just love gamble type characters in my battle party.
  
  
• Malady (Click to View)

  Malady
  
  It's a multi-skill ability that has no menu. The way it works is when you select Malady in battle it will automatically choose a skill based on her current status ailments. So if she's poisoned, she uses a certain ability, if she's blinded, another, near fatal? yet another. I think 6-8 abilities is a good working number and also works with the status effects in place.
  
  Dark
  Poison
  Imp
  Near Fatal
  Mute
  Slow
  Berserk - optional
  Muddle - optional
  
  I try to stick with abilities that don't cause loss of control of the character, but maybe we can make exceptions for berserk and muddle if we are smart about how we build the ability mechanics, i dunno. There would have to be a hierarchy to determine which spell gets used if 2 or more of these are in place, or maybe it randomly chooses between any current afflictions.
  
  My reasoning for this mechanic is that it capitalizes on the 15th's man afflicted side. It encourages the player to use her in a way that's different from the other characters they play with. By allowing or placing status ailments on the 15th Man, we are accepting these afflictions in exchange for power, and the balancing game will make single-ailment curing items useful for setting up the 15th man with the best mix of risk vs. reward for the situation, making it a good strategic ability as well. The only potential downside to this is that some afflictions and abilities will need to be set up in-battle, costing turns to set up. We can counteract this with the quality of the abilities obtained from each ailment.
  
  
• Fuse (Click to View)

  She would "Fuse" with an esper. I guess it could be with the equipped one, or within a list of 6-8. The esper could appear behind her, like with sketch. Thereafter, a second battle menu appear, like with "control", and she use ability related to the esper, not necessarily the spells she gives. Like Gau, she would gain status ailment and elemental resistances of the esper. Part of her pallette could change depending on the esper with a custom status ailment.
  With this, you have great versality and you will be able to discover new things with each esper.
  Also, another possiblity is, we could make the ability a lot stronger, but make it that a magicite is required to use the ability
  
  Also, are we discussing about a relic that change the ability? Like fakemustache?
  If so, i suggest that the relic change "Fuse" for "Wild Magic", which cast a random magic black magic, but alot stronger than the normal version. It could also rarely cast esper attack.

Here's what we have for the 15th Man so far:

Name: Iris Havengard

Concept (Click to View)

Code:

The Implacable Experiment

This character is an individual who has had close contact with the Empire after being used for human (or esper) experimentation in the Magitek Facility and has taken on a grotesque appearance. This character is aware of their disturbing appearance and their primary drive is to seek vengeance against those who have wronged him/her and to see that they are brought to justice.

This character would work well in FF6 as they would serve to show the more cruel and inhumane side of the Gestahlian Empire, especially when you consider how much Terra's past is lacking in filling in the darker parts of the Empire's history. This character would also ideally have a somewhat strange fighting style which would vary from the other characters, they also by merit of being a Magitek experiment could have a natural magic learning list.

Background (Click to View)

Code:

The Betrayed Young Citizen
Gender: Female.

Back history: This daughter of a South Figaro sailor was raised by a lonely old woman from Vector after the boat transporting her and her father sunk near the Southern Continent. She was then taken prisoner by the Empire in her teenage years after the old woman died an that Emperor Gestahl adopted a secret law to capture homeless [and unwanted] citizens for Magitek experimentations. During her captivity, she developed her hate towards the Empire that she was considering once her second home.

Possible encounters: She might have been in contact with Cid and/or Kefka and/or Celes during her captivity. She might also have been in contact with some Espers and talked with them. This all depends on how we want to develop her back story and the game events.


Pros:
- Rich backstory and relations with the actual characters of the game if we want any.
- Explain well why the character feels doubly betrayed by the Empire and explain her hatred.

Cons:
- Might require a lot of event creation, but isn't this the goal of this hack? ;)

Theme Music

My vote goes to Malady. The ability is the most "creative" of them all. I really like Aether too but Malady seems more orginal than the other two.
I really don't want to influence anyone who originally wanted to vote for Aether but after he/she saw my post, she goes with Malady...

I don't understand what you are trying to say here. Are you saying that you don't want to "influence" anyone, but anyone in their right mind after reading what you have just said would pick "Malady" and would not pick "Aether". Is that what you are saying?

Influencing other's decisions is my favorite part of the ancient voting process. =)

I went with Fuse because I think it would be the most fun to use and practical ability, especially for that point in the game. And the ability name sounds the coolest out of the three imo.

I'm not sure what Malady means, but it kinda sounds/looks like "Milady" to me a bit. Honestly, while the skill is indeed very creative and great on paper, I'm not very fond of having to be under a status ailment in order to use a skill. The 'a' being italic. If it was a skillset with 3 or 4 unique spells for each ailment, then I might be tempted to choose this more. As it is I could see it becoming tedious.

Aether is cool, but I won't be voting for it since I have a skill in my hack called Aether and the idea is similar to this one mentioned here, except that it's still too much like Tools and does not branch... Besides that though, at that point in the game she might have to come with 3 or 4 Aether skills to make her useful, and that might take the fun out of finding them - this isn't a big issue, I'm sure there's creative ways around this.

I really do feel that Fuse would make the most sense for Iris, from having direct contact and experiments with Espers. She has a horn on the side of her head after all, so it's kinda fitting to have the skill lol. I can also envision a nice event there in the Magitek Lab (or wherever her major joining event takes place) where she fuses with an Esper and kicks some ass.

I think Malady is possibly the most creative on this list, but I just don't see it being balance-able. I'm okay with being under status effects to use the skills; we'd have to be very careful to strike a fine line between "not worth setting up for in random encounters" and "the boss fights become about setting Iris up and steamrolling the enemy". It would be tricky, but with so many minds at the task, I'd guess that particular issue could be overcome. My problem is this:

The ability cannot upgrade over the course of the game. All negative statuses are usable reasonably early on, which means the same moveset has to deal with endgame and earlygame battles. If you want an example of why this won't work, just look at Slots. Many people say Slots are a lame ability (barring manipulation), although if you look closely, when you get Setzer, 7-Flush and Chocobop (the two attacks you can always get) actually deal decent damage. As the game goes on though, these abilities quickly fall by the wayside, and most people don't use Setzer even as early as the WoR, unless they've raided Kefka's Tower for the Fixed Dice (using the Moogle Charm). I've heard people blame the luck-reliance, but to some extent I feel that is only covering up the real issue.

I see a very similar fate for Malady, as the attacks will either practically 2 hit KO earlygame bosses and deal competent damage in the WoR, or deal nice damage to WoB bosses but be entirely worthless past the Floating Continent. It would have been hard enough to balance, but this just compounds the difficulty.

With that in mind, I have to vote for Fuse. It is a creative idea, would work well with the game mechanics and fits the character well, so in my book it hits all the points. I also like that it would add a new thrill to getting new Espers, which is something I never quite cared about as much as the game intended (maybe because I usually do challenges where they're pretty much useless).

Aether is a neat ability, and probably easier to implement, but I just feel it isn't quite as "out of the box." For somebody creating a hack involving several new abilities being made, it would work wonderfully, but I feel with this we should go as crazy as possible.

Sorry if I sound like I'm being negative or anything with this post; I tend to explain negative sentiments more thoroughly because I feel the need to justify them as real problems and not just apathy or something.

my vote would have to go to fuse

Your points have a lot of merit Lockirby! If theres anyone that understands game-balancing, its you.

A few potential solutions for what you mentioned, though:

• We haven't yet decided when we will get Iris, so scaling may be less of a factor
  
• My original idea for the ability (which i never posted, which is my fault) involved having to learn the abilities by being afflicted by them over time, granting that natural progression you talk about.
  
• Make utility-based abilities for curing/buffing party members or even debuffing enemies (perhaps through protection)
  
• Add an additional damage multiplier based on any number of incremental criteria that can happen with/without the player having to be involved such as level, game progression, key items, or even GP.
  
• Use percentage-based damage/healing
  
• Make the ability an overcompensation for the affliction, essentially making it a best-option for her at the very least. Such as a never-miss attack for blindness, or a draining attack for poison, a double strike or even quick-granting ability for slow. Or a magic attack that self-cures Mute.
  
• Upgrade the abilities over the course of the game (which in my mind is essentially a more deliberate and flashy version of adding an additional damage multiplier)
  

I don't tend to subscribe to the idea that any mechanic is simply broken and won't work, it's just a matter of figuring out how to make it fit what you need. Luckily, we have some really good ASM coders helping us with the project.

I really like the discussion guys, keep it up! I will seriously be happy with any of these abilities winning.

Ah, good ideas. I figured that the ability was somewhat set in stone in terms of following the description at this point, so that's why I didn't try thinking of a way around the problem. Then again, it's not like anything you said went against the description, just added to it. I would have mentioned some of my issues earlier (like I did for other abilities), but it took me until yesterday to actually put my finger on what was bothering me. Some of those solutions would reassure me plenty (I probably like the damage multiplier/attack upgrade ideas the best0:-)).

Please make sure you are logged into your username before you vote.

@Edrin: Maybe they wanted to vote and didn't want to make an account here. You can accept or deny their votes, choice is yours(no back-seat moding)