Hey everyone. Making some new sprites of Leraku.
The old 'Genesis' styled ones with the white hair/three fingered hands have been scrapped. If i ever feel like it i'll make decent Genesis ones if needed.
Anyway, seeing as his old look was dark blue/green, and his new colors are vastly different, i came up with a good backstory to explain his change.
Some of this might appear in roleplay, in fact.
His old form was extremely high-powerful and had a lot of story flaws/overpowered/was a mary sue. That version of him was designed at a time when my roleplay experience was very... undereducated.
I decided to balance him out.
His backstory now goes into these settings...
He had shamed his people, the Hydralonians, by becoming a stereotype. An overpowered jerk who was overconfident, above himself and "High-and-mighty", felt superior and didn't treat people well.
The result was he was stripped of his rank, power, and most of his equipment. He only has limited powers that he learned on his own, his sword, the Tamashii, and his satchel bag.
This means no more copying moves, insane power, or strange, flawed backstory.
I'm thinking about him becoming an 'alchemist', or a technomage. Able to summon machinery/technology to aid them, say an arm cannon or whatever it may be.
Aside from that, he's gotten a complete look change, as though he's still a ring tailed lemur, is now green with white stripes, and turqoise pupils. No special forms either now. Reference pic: here.
I also made some new sprites as well.
Criticism anyone?
Well, I wont pretend to know what his backstory was before, but the change seems... I don't know, a tad predictable. Not that that's a real problem, though. As for the new appearance, I approve.
Backstory was supposedly from a race of time-traveling dimension guardians... extremely high power...
Lots of overpowered unbalanced stuff.
I wanted to balance him out and not have the whole 'instant-win u suk lolololz' stuff.
Thanks for the criticism though, muchos gracias.
So he was stripped for becoming a "stereotype", I'm not really clear on your lore but this does seem like a step up from the general stuff I read about him prior. The move emulation and the whole "time cop" niche seemed cliche and expected from my experience. I think really foundating and understanding his new backstory and personality could give me more of a foundation to critique the character. ALTHOUGH, it does seem adding technomage attributes would throw his balance right off the scale when the scale seemed on the right track before you commented on such.
Just my thoughts.
It wouldn't be anything drastic, like HUGE OMEGA LIGHTNING STORM OF OMGWTFBBQ or anything, just some simple knowledge and research. Mostly by 'technomage' it's that he uses some of what he builds instead of raw power.
That's all.
Thanks for the criticism though, i completely understand.
But at least it's a start, i've got to begin from somewhere.
But as said, basic stuff... summoning like a pistol or a sword or something... that kind of thing.
I had to make several balance adjustments to Tergonaut over the years. One of the things I had to do was separate myself from the character and give him his own identity, separate from mine; once that was established, it was a lot easier to nip and tuck at him until I had something more than just a super-suit-wearing me. Character refinement is a process, though, and while some certain steps can be taken, some changes are simply done over time as you grow and learn more of the intricacies of fiction.
I think you've taken the character in a good direction: a formerly prominent member of their race who was giving the whole race a bad name by his actions, stripped of his authority and thrown out of their society. While it's good to cut back on his powers, and to focus on his powers as one aspect of character development, another needs to be the character's personality, quirks and motivations. How does he feel about the way he's been treated by his own people? Does he recognize that he did something wrong, or does he curse them under his breath for not seeing his greatness and following his example? Is it one of his goals to try to get back into his race's society, or is he more interested in making himself a free agent in the rest of the universe?
One thing I had to do with Tergonaut was to remove the omni-suit from the character equation and work on the character himself, tinker with his quirks, strengths and weaknesses. You may have to remove all of Leraku's powers and pretend that he is, essentially, a regular person for a while in terms of working out what he's like. It's a suggestion, of course. You could use Leraku as a character in practice RPs to develop him further.
I can't seem to get my mindset around 'normality'... i just had to stick in SOMETHING. being normal and having to study to understand the Technomage proffession... well that's not easy. He's still a basic, all i've got down for im is an arm cannon...
Other than that, he understands he did wrong and is kinda 'angsty' about his 'failure' in a roleplay i did with some of my friends... But yeah, instead of having huge OMGWTFBBQ powers he just has tech finesse and some... VERY basic elemental knowledge. He can barely generate enough flame to start a campfire... much less do serious damage.
As said, to make up for his lacking in many areas, i'd think he decides to study old runes, learn about tech/mana infusions, etc.
Thanks for all the help all of you.
