Forte - Kedakai

Name: Kedakai Balor'ai
Race: Dark Elf

Appearance: At an unremarkable height of six feet and a single inch with a lithe but tightly muscled body, Kedakai Balor'ai is something of an unimpressive sight to those who do not recognize his ebony shoulder-length hair, blood-red eyes, and heirloom cloak about his shoulders that mark him as a member of the Dark Elven race. He carries two swords, the longer of the two which is his right-handed sword on his back and his left-handed blade sheathed to his right on his build. Typically Kedakai wears a cloth mask about his face and nose along with his raised hood, giving his geared appearance similar to that of the Shadow Warriors that hail from Ulthuan.

Background: Like all Druchii, Kedakai was born into a world of discipline and savagery though his childhood proceeded the resurgence of the Cults of Pleasure. Blessed of Khaine, Kedakai was abducted during one of the many Nights of Murder and brought to the Temple of Khaine where he was trained as an Assassin. Initially, Kedakai exhibited a great fervor for his god and for his people. While he was a devotee of Khaine, so too was he a follower of Malekith whole-heartedly. It was not until the rise of the formerly all-powerful Cults of Pleasure that Kedakai begun to become disenfranchised with his people. They began to lose the edge of discipline and hatred as that blade dulled on the excess and insurgency of what few, especially not Kedakai for he refused to buy into the Cults, knew as the worship of the Chaos God Slannesh.

It started as simply a secret frustration with his people that he could not quench but was finally vindicated when he received a dream of what he saw as a permission ticket from Khaine himself to remove himself from Dark Elf society to continue honing the strength of his swords and will. The message came in the form of an older and more powerful seeming version of himself standing against and conquering the Witch King Malekith himself; slaying the iron-fisted ruler for allowing the Cults of Pleasure to hold any influence at all in Naggaroth. He is hunted almost relentlessly by his peers, but he cares not for he considers his God with him and that is all he cares for, believing his people to have strayed too far from the path of murder to be concerned with them. Though he intends to return to Naggaroth one day and utterly destroy those individuals that have let his people and land fall so far, for the time being Kedakai Balor'ai is content with traveling abroad to test his skills against the most fearsome of opponents that fate can throw at his feet.

[Statistics]
Ws | 25
Bs | 10
S | 20
T | 15
Ag | 18
Wp | 10
W | 12

[Equipment]
Ritual Swords (Hand Weapon x2)
Throwing Knives (Light Throwing Weapon)
Bow (Bow)

[Skills]
Total Points Spent: 8

<Dark Elf Racial Traits>
Cultist of Pleasure [••]
Disciple of Khaine [••]

<Path of the Slayer>
Critical Strike [•••]
Dual Wield [•••]
Off-hand Specialization [••]
Flurry of Blows [•••]
Rend [••]
Hobble [••]
Against All Odds [•••]
Berserk Charge [••]
Warcry [••]
Vengeance Strike [••]

<Path of the Apothecary>
Antidote [•••]
Poison Resistance [••]
Deadly Poison [•••]
Slow Poison [•••]
Crippling Poison [•••]
Weakness Poison [•••]
Poison Specialist [••]
Oil [•••]
Boiling Tar [••]
Alchemist's Fire [••]
Strong Arm [•]
Unstable Concoction [•••]

<Path of Khaine>
Unarmored Fighter [•••]
Dance of Khaine [••]
Kiss of Khaine [•••]
Blood Frenzy [••]
Inspired Frenzy [••]
Khaine's Gaze [•••]
Eyes of Murder [••]

Delayed Approval - The fluff is good. 2 Things. The first is I posted a first build of the path of Khaine. Take a gander and see if you want to redistribute any of your skills. Second since you start with a free hand weapon you have an additional equipment point to spend. (Also might want to specify your Throwing Weapons as light or heavy, I'm assuming they are light but the fluff is completely up to the player. If you decide to alter your character or you don't want to spend your extra point and are satisfied with your skill choices lemme know and I'll give you the seal of approval.

A few more minor things is the poison path is the path of the apothecary not path of grace. Poison specialist requires a single rank in 3 poisons and deadly poison requires one other poison at max rank. Also i removed a lot of the medic style abilities from the apothecary path not that you were using any of them and added two abilities you probably won't be using.

P.S. Wow, Killing Malekith huh? Your character really has a death wish doesn't he?

Done and done.

And approved.

Guess I'll post this here.

After some deliberation, I'd like to swap my character around as follows (I figure it's probably alright since I haven't gone through any modded combat with him yet):

<Changes>
Draich Fullblade (Great Weapon) [2 points]
Shuriken (Light Throwing Weapons) [1 Point]

Path of the Slayer -> Path of the Juggernaut
Path of the Apothecary -> Path of the Defender

<Path of Khaine>
Unarmored Fighter [•••]
Dance of Khaine [••]
Kiss of Khaine [•••]
Blood Frenzy [••]
Inspired Frenzy [••]
Khaine's Gaze [•••]
Eyes of Murder [••]

<Path of the Juggarnaut>
Power Strike [•••]
Killing Blow [•••]
Whirling Slash [•••]
Ground and Pound [•]
Bull Rush [•••]
Veteran Warrior [•]
Armor Shredder [••]
Cleave [••]
Two-Handed Weapon Specialization [••]

<Path of the Defender>
Guard [•••]
Block [••]
Deflect [••]
Magic Guard [••]
Juggernaut [•••]
Iron Skin [••]
Tough as Nails [••]
Adrenaline Rush [••]
Titan Strike [•••]
Hunker Down [•••]
Focused Defense [••]
Taunt [•••]
Blinding Rage [•]

Looks alright. If you could tally up things and give me a little summary at the bottom that would be awesome of passives and such since you're starting to accumulate a lot of em.

I tallied a 6% dodge chance.

7% block against melee
5% block against ranged

and ignore the first 2 points of armor on every strike

I'm assuming same stats as before.

Sound right?

Also I did some math on the weapons and I concluded that armor piercing on the Grt Weapons was a bit overkill considering they already did double the damage of basic hand weapons. I nerfed back balanced two handers a touch to compensate (so grt wpns are still the highest damage dealers). The damage for great weapons is untouched. I hope this doesn't effect you too much but if this alters your choice lemme know. Otherwise I'll post it as is.

Not gonna mess with my stats and yeah, that tally sounds right. I'll make sure to note the tally during my combat posts.

Name: Lord Valmir "Shadowfang" Weissberg
Race: Vampire

Appearance
Weissberg stands a hair-bit taller then six feet tall and has an athletic build for a human. He is typically seen with his raven black hair tied back in a clean ponytail and a black-midnight blue colored eye-patch covering his left eye, his uncovered eye sporting a feral yellow color with bright red flecks here and there about the iris. He prefers light clothes in a black or a blue, is never seen wearing white, and favors a hood-less cloak that has layered pieces of fabric about the shoulders that look at first to be armor plating. Underneath the cloak, while out traveling, he wears a suit of pitch-black scale armor and carries a single cutlass on his right hip.

--

In his transformed state, Valmir's features contort to a much more feral appearance and he typically sheds his eye-patch for better visual abilities. At this stage, his mouth is filled with razor-sharp teeth and fangs and his hands are transformed into vicious talons. He also sports large but ultimately vestigial bat wings as they are not able to bear him aloft in the air.

Background:
A former Vampiric noble from an age that has long since passed into the mists of time, the "Lord" Drake Weissberg was once known as Lord Shadowfang-- a nomad from the once mighty kingdom of Strigoi that had existed in the Badlands before the invading Greenskins destroyed it and slayed their king Ushoran, Weissberg found life difficult in the world of darkness despite his powerful body and boastful necromantic magic. Eventually hunted down by the same Greenskins that had sacked his country, Lord Shadowfang was "destroyed" and many thought him dead. However, like many of the powerful vampires of his time, Weissberg was not as destroyed as originally thought though grievously wounded. He lay dormant in a sunlight-less cave for years, a time frame that he has yet to even decipher for he cares little. Awaking finally to the point where he has recovered, the former Shadowfang has lost much of his former glory. Finding himself bereft of his magic as a whole and at a fraction of his power, he set out into one of the various corners of the world to hide out from those that would destroy him-- most specifically the other Sylvanian Vampire Counts for having been a Strigoi noble. Hence he has come to these isles to serve as a hiding place whilst he slowly regains his powers and perhaps to amuse himself so that his years do not grow boring.

[Statistics]
Ws | 20
Bs | 10
S | 20
T | 15
Ag | 18
Wp | 10
W | 17

[Equipment]
Vampiric Resilience [Heavy Armor - 2 pts]
Vampiric Strength/Talons [Balanced Two-hand Weapon - 2 pts]
Cutlass [Free Starting]
Ancient Pistol [Loot]

[Bonus Tally]
2 Armor
2 DR
2 Armor Penetration
100% Poison Immunity

[Skills]
Total Points Spent: 10

<Vampire Racial Traits>
Blood Frenzy [•••]

<Undeath>
Curse of Undeath [••]
The Everliving [••]
Ravage the Living [••]
Infinite Hatred [•••]
Red Fury - 1 Ranks [•]
Supernatural Horror [••]
Supernatural Howl [••]
Cycle of Death [••]

<Path of the Juggernaut>
Power Strike [•••]
Killing Blow [•••]
Whirling Slash [•••]
Ground and Pound [•]
Bull Rush [•••]
Veteran Warrior [•]
Armor Shredder [••]
Cleave [••]
Two-Handed Weapon Specialization [••]

<Necromancy>
Summon Undead [•••]

Approved. I'll add to the character section. Start up a new training thread. I'll also give you an extra two training opportunities this week to catch up if you feel like writing.

Name: Maelkur Aelorothi
Race: Vampire [High Elf]

Appearance: Maelkur comes to a height of six and a half feet, something of a shorter elf having shrunk somewhat when he had been transformed by the blood kiss. While his actual appearance is that of a shriveled and hideous mockery of a High Elf, Maelkur uses a glamor about his person at almost all times to show off an outward appearance of what he once looked at before he was transformed into a vampire against his will. He is of a thin stereotypical elven frame which belies his skill with the blade.

Background: Once a mage of the Tower of Hoeth, Maelkur is the only living vampire to possess the knowledge enough to wield High Magic in any facility. It was his misfortune to become wrapped up in the plot of one of the vampires belonging to the line of W'soran whom believed that if he added the lore of the High Elves to his arsenal, his magical might would be uncontested. Maelkur never learned his kidnapper's name for the undead wizard never deigned to share it. Spirited away from his homeland one night thousands of years ago, Maelkur was forced into undead servitude by the W'soran vampire, though rather then kill Maelkur and raise him as a spirit or a similar undead; the Necrach elected to give him the blood kiss and transform him into a subserviant vampire. New to his form and with his ability to use magic stunted by powerful enchantments, Maelkur was compelled to teach his new master everything he knew about High Magic which, at the time, had been substantial. Both grew in power over time, for while the Necrach slowly learned the secrets of High Magic from Maelkur-- Maelkur was spent his unsupervised time stealing the secrets of Necromancy from his captor with the intent to use them against him someday. He could feel his aptitude for the lore of undeath from the moment he had awoken, some piece of him remained High Elf enough to still feel the winds of magic as he did when he had been alive.

Unfortunately for Maelkur, he would never be given the chance to face his former master in the vengeful battle that he wanted. In the hundreds of years he spent in the employ of the Necrach whom he knew only as master, Maelkur suffered greatly. He was beaten within an inch of his unlife, tortured with various spells and curses, but always forced to continue his tutoring of the Necrach for the compulsions on what still remained of his soul were too powerful for him to break. He had always planned that one day he would shatter the various enchantments on him and then break the Necrach with his own lore of magic in order to shame the monster in his defeat as well as destroy him. In this time, Maelkur learned of his capacity to hate and for malice as he fed and destroyed the lives of others if only to sustain his own to destroy his Necrach overlord. Ultimately the Necrach's downfall would be precipitated by a group of Sigmarite crusaders attempting to bring the power of light back to Sylvania. Though their crusade was doomed from the beginning for they could never hope to match power against the combined Vampire Courts, they succeeded at the very least in besting the Necrach and driving him back to his tower. In his desperation, the master released the enchantments on Maelkur's powers thinking that perhaps his "apprentice" might aid him in exchange for the releasing of the curses and compulsions. He was wrong. In the moment where the compulsions vanished, Maelkur lashed out and destroyed the Necrach's weakened body utterly with one of the few spells he could recall from his life as an elf. With his captor slain, the undead elf claimed a handful of his former master's collection of magical weapons and items and fled the tower to avoid the wrath of whatever had caused the fall of the Necrach.

Since then, Maelkur has travelled the world going from place to place simply learning. While he still is driven by the same desire he had in life, to learn and know, he pursues said knowledge now with a tenacity and disregard for life that he had not possessed before.

[Statistics]
Fast as he was in life, Maelkur is even faster now in death. Like all elves he has never been possessed of a powerful body but now cursed with an unlife as a vampire his strength grows every day and his magical powers are only enhanced by the stilled death that was forced upon him.
Ws | 20
Bs | 10
S | 15
T | 10
Ag | 20
Wp | 25
W | 10

[Equipment and Inventory]
Hand Weapon (free)
Large Hand-weapon (1 Point)
Heavy Armor (2 Points)
Shrunken Dragon Ogre Head [+5 to Casting Rolls]

[Skills and Abilities]
Still learning the power and lore of Necromancy from his former "master's" spellbooks and artifacts, Maelkur still has some of his skill with a blade and the power of High Magic that he'd learned from his studies in the High Tower.
•Vampire Racial Traits
•Path of Grace
•High Magic
•Path of Undeath

<Passives<> - 12 Points Total
Curse of Undeath (Rank 2) - Path of Undeath
<Cast in H.Armor> (Rank 1) - Path of Undeath
First Strike (Rank 3) - Path of Grace

<Spells>
Dispel Magic (Rank 3) - High Magic
Khaine's Fury (Rank 3) - High Magic

<Powerful Abilities>
None.

I can with-hold my spell skill points if you want me to wait until the High Magic revamp goes through-- I just figured that you have enough on your plate right now without having to bump it to the top of your list to allow me to make my character. >>

I would like to hold off a little on the skill points so I can redo High Magic a bit. More importantly however is that you only have 3 trees available and you are currently drawing from all 4. I will work on High Magic tomorrow at work so you can get started.

D'oh! I'll fix that. xD;

Updated.

Approved.

Ws | 30
Bs | 11
S | 20
T | 12
Ag | 20
Wp | 33
W | 20

Skills
Vampire
Armored Caster - 1 Point

Path of the Assassin
Crippling Poison (Rank 1)
Deadly Poison (Rank 2)
Poison Expert (Rank 1)

High Magic
Walk Between Worlds (Rank 1)
Fury of Khaine (Rank 3)

Path of the Berserker
Dual Wielding (Rank 2)
Overwhelming Assault (Rank 1)

Note: Am I allowed to trade out my Large One-Handed Weapon for a Balanced one? If yes, then I do that.

The only problem is to meet the prerequisites for skills you must have all the ranks in those skills.

So for example to unlock deadly poison you would need all 3 ranks in crippling poison.

All it says for the spells and poisons is that one other poison/spell is required, not that they have to be maximum rank. If we want all prerequisites to require the previous skill to be maximum rank, we should probably remove the portion in the rules where it covers specific requirements because they probably won't exist (such as requiring only 2 ranks in a certain skill).

For the record, I prefer specific rank requirements rather than enforcing maximum rank all the time as maximum rank leads to very linear progression in the paths and forces us to place points into skills that we are unlikely to use for various reasons (doesn't fit build, doesn't fit character, etc).

That being said, I'll go with the following then.

Vampire
Armored Caster - 1 Point

Path of the Assassin
Crippling Poison (Rank 3)
Deadly Poison (Rank 2)

High Magic
Walk Between Worlds (Rank 3)
Fury of Khaine (Rank 1)

Path of the Berserker
Dual Wielding (Rank 2)
Overwhelming Assault (Rank 1)

Approved and noted. As for the prerequisites we had a discussion about it in one of the many many revamping posts and we felt it was necessary to have some prerequisites for skills to make the trees feel a little more like trees. Since the overwhelming majority of skills that we had prerequisites for required all the ranks anyway for simplicity we chose this route.

The problems we saw with having little to no requirements are as follows.

A) It encourages trash spending for the sole purpose of moving to higher level spells/abilities that nobody will ever want to use or touch again.

B) Defeats the purpose of Epic and High Ranking abilities. These abilities are supposed to represent the upper crust of that focus. It was not my intent for someone to gain the best and most unique abilities of a tree without at a moderate investment of time and energy. I think that it ruins the feel of high level spells and abilities when you start the game off immediately with them.

C) It simply doesn't make much sense in many cases. A Tzeentch mage who barely knows how to cast Red and Blue fire should not be able to drop 2 points and suddenly pick up the Epic spell. The same applies for many

Your concerns for linearity are noted but with the exception of the epic ability they really don't feel very high. A 3 point investment in either WbW or SoS before getting Fury of Khaine for example is not unreasonable. The only abilities that really have much in the way of a prerequisite are the Epics and even those there is almost always a good deal of flexibility. Every other skill (veteran warrior excluded) is available to beginning players should they choose to invest in it. While there is a small amount of structure to the trees now they are still quite shallow. The only abilities with any real depth are the epics. While not all the epics have their requirements fleshed out take Juggernaut and Assassin as examples.


Juggernaut-
Requirements- Veteran Warrior (a 1 rank skill)

Veteran Warriors requirements are 3 powerful melee attacks from the juggernaut tree. Juggernaut at the moment has 6 powerful melee attacks to choose from
So while it is a 10 point investment it is not strictly linear.

Assassin - Requirements - 3 Poisons, Assassin's Mark - I am lowering this prerequisite down to 2 poisons but again there is a good deal of flexibility in your choices. Assassin's Mark is slightly linear but I feel it is incredibly appropriate for the ability.

If you have suggestions for better prerequisites for any of the trees feel free to suggest them in the Rules Discussion thread. Also you will have another option to revamp your character as we complete more of the trees so the current setup is temporary.

Your character is approved. I'll be posting the first City Raid post shortly.

Last note- I officially changed Deadly Poison and Crippling Poison to Dark Venom and Black Lotus. Also your Large HW has been switched out for a balanced one.

Hm, I'm sorry that I missed that discussion.

With the Magic Lores and the Epic Abilities, I agree that broad requirements with mastered abilities makes sense. For the Lores, there are a lot less abilities to choose from and they are generally linear as is to represent one's study and growth with magic. And Epic Abilities represent the culmination of everything that the character knows/has learned about that tree which is what leads up to them being able to execute such an attack.

You're probably right; it was just a concern that I had based on an unknown number of skill points. The acquisition of them requires missions to be done which can take a good amount of time to do and you don't get many of them at the end which leads to wanting every investment to count rather than feeling like you had to put points into something you'll never use. That being said, I just want to keep this in mind going forward was we review and create new trees.

Sounds good. If you have individual concerns with skills etc and requirements (Such as Man-Slayer w/13 pts of pre-reqs now down to 10. I'll admit 13 was pretty high.) let me know.