Howdy friends and fellow stoners!
Welcome back for issue 12 of Endstone. This issue promises to be full of excitement as our heroes make their last stand against the God at the Eternity Spire. So pull up a chair and enjoy the finale of Endstone.
Endstone
A Fantasy Webcomic, Sci-Fi, Post-Apocalyptic, Comic, Graphic Novel
Buy Endstone
Sounds like there’s a lot of somethings to be heard. I wonder which in particular she’s referring to…
Oh my god ! Kyri just turned into a Nosferatu vampire, the ears are proof ! 🙁
The ears do look a little odd at that…
Agreed. Totally wierd and oversized.
Maybe she got a “improove senses Stone” that was not mentioned before and has those side effects? Maybe she has a bat-stone and uses it only partially to get superhearing?
Maybe there is an slight mistake in the art?
Darth and Insectoid, I’d say she’s part deer and can rotate her ears forward.
What he said. Also woot, new chapter!
End of Line
It’s good to hear from you folks again. 🙂 As for Kyri’s ears, they are drawn large intentionally. She is a deer after all, and has the ability to rotate and expand her ears forward to pick up sound waves from predators. She also did this here in Issue 4: http://endstone.net/comic/4-02/ (but drawn slightly different).
Also, Kyri has an enhanced sense of smell, and I had a bit in this scene where she is picking up a scent but I cut it due to time constraints.
“I can’t Hide in Shadows with you lurking over my shoulder!”
At least some version of this is said by every thief, ranger, or monk to every fighter, paladin, and barbarian ever.
Absolutely. 🙂
In fact, all of the Endstone characters are based on standard RPG classes (I just wanted to put a new twist on things in this story).
Kyri is a Ranger/Monk.
Jon is a Magic User/Thief.
Cole is a Magic User.
Pablo is a Magic User.
Herrik the Snake is a Monk/Assassin/Thief
Vandric the Grim is a Figher.
Ben is a Paladin.
Gog is a Cleric and Bolo is a thief.
Nothing is new under the sun… or so I’m told. 😉
Rogue: “Ok, so Mage is going to delay until right after me, I’ll sneak attack the big guy, Mage’ll drop down a fireball and roast all the trash, and-”
Barbarian: “ZERGE!!!1”
Rogue: “OH GODDAMMIT NOT THIS AGAIN!”
Close enough? I have DM’d more than my fair share of games like this.
End of Line
Welcome Back Tony.
It’s good to be back. 🙂
Enhanced senses, we all know it. But here, i think the intent on the ears was more like guiding them to the noise like a radard antenna. But the movement translates badly.
As for the RPG classes, Ben is no paladin, he’s a knight. To be a paladin, he’d need to master light based magic, in other words a holy-related overstone. But as we know, he’s no stoner.
And since in this universe a stoner can change all his powers just by changing his stone collection, i don’t think the class system can apply at all. Give Kyri the Toadstone or the Firestone, will she still go into melee or will she start using ranged tactics ? 😉
That difference with the classic medieval fantastic theme is one of my interests in the Endstone mecanics. 🙂
Sorry the ears didn’t work for you, my friend. They make me chuckle so we’ll see them again. 😉
And good point about how changing stones changes the character class. As you would agree, the Endstone characters are loosely based on RPG classes. I just wanted to come up with a unique way to do magic and it sort of evolved from there. 🙂
Actually, ignore game balance for a minute and there’s no reason at all that “traditional” RPG mages can’t be more spontaneous. Just look at the D&D Wizard for instance: they can literally change their entire spell list on a daily basis. The only reason the fireball-dropping mage who hurls lightning everywhere doesn’t wade into melee with a +7 Greater Godbane Greatsword of Metagame Thinking is due to the d4 hit die and lack of combat prowess (again, game balance). Naturally, this makes the look on the players’ faces when they find out you’ve been running the game with the Unearthed Arcana Gestalt Class rules worked in this whole time priceless. Protip: Most players don’t read your carefully-prepared two-page introduction packet that you put hours into.
[For those who don’t know, said rules basically let you have two classes at once with drastically reduced game balance. And they thought that +5 free level adjustment was generous. Kehheheheh.]
End of Line
Exactly. 🙂 I’m an old-school D&D fan. I prefer sitting around a table interacting with people rather than playing on a console or computer. But that’s just me. 🙂
While i don’t see myself playing paper RPGs, nor figurine ones, i hope i’ll get one day the opportunity to do the real life ones (you dress up as your character and go on a journey the whole week end living up your character). In the meantime, it’s video games and imagination for me :p
And balance is everywhere, or there will be nothing left to talk about a whole universe. It’s just that balance can be achieve by a myriad of possibilities. Many games show laziness in their developement by re-using mecanicns from other games, even more true since few years ago for mmo-rpgs, with most of them keeping cloning WoW and adapting it to whatever theme they’re in.
While WoW as the original is a good game (despite the horrendous patches and extensions that keep coming and made me quit), the clones always feel like clones and suffer from a lack of originality because of it. Some of them, like SWTOR which i’m currently in, compensate by very good content, others are just plain bad (ever tried DragonBall Online ?).
And when they are not WoW clones, they often are clones of another game. Take DC Universe Online, for instance. Nothing else than a clone of Champions Online (minus the cell-shading graphics). Original ones are scarce, good original ones are even scarcer (of all i’ve tested, only City of Heroes stands out and his servers got close to compensate the losses from Aion…)
All of that to explain why you always see more or less the same mecanics in rpg : they keep copying each other. Tony did a great job finding a way to step back from those templates while not alienating himself completly from them, which has a very good result in my book. As for me, i dream of one day finding a way to take various mecanics that are not supposed to mix together, and mix them together. The manga Toaru Majutsu no Index did just that by mixing magic and science, and did it flawlessly. I’m sure it’s possible to go further and add, i don’t know, chakras, overstones, experiments and natural mutations ? Making it possible for each special ability to be obtained in a completly different manner depending on your power source. 🙂
For instance, put against one another an elemental bender like in Avatar and a naruto-style ninja, both using thunder. The bender has to be a firebender, using an advanced skill nearly uncontrollable to shoot thunder, while the ninja has a lightling element of its own he can control, generate, shape and use. Similar ability, completly diffrent way to achieving it. 🙂
I’m not familiar with Toaru Majutsu no index so I’ll have to check that out. And btw, I’m re-watching Avatar for the zillionth time just this week. I LOVE that show!!!!!!!
To sum up quickly the mecanics of Toaru Majutsu no Index, you have to types of supernatural powers : science (espers : extra-sensory perception. These power up their abilities psychically) and magic. eich have their own rules, and don’t mix well together (nearly all espers that have tried generating mana to cast spells have suffered serious internal injuries, often to the point of death). Each side has its world of followers, as well as its ow higher beings (going as far as the magical Angels and the scientific Artificial Angels) to go with them.
But there is a link between them despite that. First evidence comes from the fact that the first man to discover the science abilities was once the greatest archmage of his time. Second evidence is our main hero, with the automatic ability to nullify whatever supernatural phenomenon enters in contact with his left arm. The fact that both magic and esper abilities are affected the same way by his nullifying ability shows it’s powered up by whatever the missing link is.
As for the rules that separate science and magic : scientific espers can only have one ability of their own, though depending on the talent and training level of the esper it can manifest in myriad ways of power and power level. The main female esper heroine is a lightning master, and can use it to generate electric attacks of course, but also to magnetise object, form iron power sword that cut through anything, magnetically propel an object with a sudden burst of kinetic energy that a single penny will have the force of the canon of a tank. The main male esper hero, having the ability to control vectors at close range plus a brain capable of computing faster than computers, can virtually do anything, from controlling winds to reflecting bullets to nullifying incoming sounds, to reversing the flow of your blood, to manipulating bioelectricity in your body to brainwash you, etc… Of course there are the weaker ones, like one that has most likely a fire ability, but being very weak all she can do is keep things from cooling down. 2 others are teleporters, with one only being ablge to teleport herself and things she touches, while the other can teleport things at range but will have big trouble teleporting herself due to psychological trauma.
Magic on the other hand grants a wide variety of abilityes and technique to a single user. Howecer, each ability is very specific, both in effect and power, thus it’s hard to improvide new tactics with the same abilities. Also, magic abilities are all themes around religious lore (christian for the most part at first, i heard that in the manga they started using ancient egyptian lore too) so if you’re not well versed in a religion’s legends and digmas, you’ll have trouble understanding a magician from that religion. Mages have ways to understand unatural things espers don’t, since espers always look for the scientific explanation for everything (that’s why mages have always figured out right away how our main hero’s ability works, while espers never could)
I said i was explaining it QUICKLY… Oh well…. 😀
Sounds interesting. 🙂