Doppelganger soul discussion.

Hello Folks~

As some of you may know Soul-powers have always been an issue through the history of RPS. While Soulpowers do bring a new element to the game, they put a threat another, Milletian's immortality.

The new skill, Bushin (Doppelganger), "allows you to gather monster souls and turn them into clones to attack your enemies."
Currently, soul powers are only allowed by a power request with many boundaries.

I want to know how do you all feel about this. Similar to the Shamala issue, we want your opinion on how the skill should work. Please post below any suggestions.

To make sure, I re-read the old Soul Powers and what the deal was about them, so I don't embarrass myself posting wrong things I don't see where "Doppelganger" would violate something in regards to the retired Soul Powers since it is not targeting a player's soul.

This is an attack skill. Apparently it can only be used when you have a target and each clone only hits only once. Even if you can use this skill without a target and have your clones idle around for a limited amount of time until you attack something and they follow suit, it still does not do anything to the SOUL of someone else.
Even the method to gather the "charges" required for the skill to use does not relate remotely to the Soul of a Milletian. The description says you collect Souls from monsters. Well "Soul" is very vague a description, and would put up the discussion if animals have souls. It might well be an error in translation and they mean something like life essence. In RP terms perhaps Erg or whatnot. Again, nothing that targets the Soul of a Milletian specifically.

I think it has to be tested if you gain a "charge" if you defeat someone in a duel. If yes, then I would simply alter the ways the charge is obtained on an RP level by saying; "the remnants of the energy the body was still filled when the soul departed back to the Soulstream is used to power this charge." This pretty much would be compliant with how the power works on everything else. You siphon the remaining ambient energy of the dead vessel.
I don't see a reason why the defense/protection penetration would automatically mean something like "hey dude, I hit your soul!" I can think of a multitude of ways how to penetrate Prot/Def with an RP power, which has nothing to do with targeting the life force / soul / whatever at all.

If you ask how the skill's representation should be handled... well... just like any other power ever that splits you up in multiple copies. It only has something to do with you, your physical apparition, less your soul itself. And usually, all those clones are just clones, and will pop into nothingness, leaving you as the original in place. You just learn magically how to split parts of yourself to attack from various angles for a single strike. Big deal.

Tl;dr
Doppelganger does not even target the soul, and it states you can only charge it up with monster "souls" (life force) -> no conflicts with removed Soul Powers.
Representation does not necessarily have to do something with your OWN soul -> no conflicts with removed Soul powers.

It could also be considered "moving too fast to defend against," thus making Milletians even more badass than they all ready are.

To clarify; It's considered a soul power because "This skill allows you to gather monster souls and turn them into clones to attack your enemies. If you have high Stamina, you can use it to inflict more damage on your enemy by making your dopplegangers more active. You must gather monster souls each time you use this skill." (gathered off of wiki. I'm sure it says something to that effect in game as well.)

So it does target the soul of a 'monster.' Which is then used as power by the Milletian.



Personally, I think this should be a 'upon request' type of power. However, if it's used normally, I don't think a milltian's soul should be destroyed by it. I'm not sure how to explain it so I'll put it in to an example.

Frank and Ted are fighting. Frank is a milletian with this power, and Ted is an erinn-born(humanoid or fomor, doesn't matter.)
Frank uses it on Ted, when Ted is weak and about to die. Ted dies permanently. (He is a mortal, he would have died with a sword anyway.)

Frank then starts fighting Sam. Sam is a milletian.
Frank tries to use it on Sam, and Sam dies. His soul is taken, but not gone permanently. When it's used in the next doppelganger attack, it's released and the player suffers the 3 day rebirth penalty like normal.


Does that make any sense? I can try to explain further in pm if anyone is confused.

Doppleganger doesn't work like shadow spirit, and it's target must survive all attacks if the target is to be "used" to power the next skill use.

I have also determined that Doppleganger may likely be less powerful than Final Hit.

I understand your example Aura, but my suggestion would make this scenario unnecessary because it does not affect the soul at all. This does not come down to the issue with the shelved Soul Powers. This is a matter of adapting the Doppelganger Power, so let me try to address the flaws in viewing the Doppelganger power in RP, because I don't want to start quote wars with your blocks and my blocks from the above posting Because I actually pretty much addressed everything before.

I don't see why there should be a problem in adapting Doppelganger simply to; "it does not grab SOULS, it grabs the lingering life force of a freshly killed body passing away". By doing so, you remove any and all possible conflicts with soul powers. And contrary to Shadow Spirit (as Kenelm already pointed out) you do not need to activate Doppelganger to gain charges. You get them by game mechanic means through regular killing, regardless of how you do that.
If this is by the book, then there you can start to make deviations with cosmetic power requests. "I don't get my charges from killing things, I get my clones from meditating / its just a burst of my energy reserve / I am multidimensional / this is a magic skill and they are tangible mirages which last for one hit." You name it.

Both words, "Monsters" and "Soul", are ridiculously vague in this context. Yes you can get a charge via PvP, but if we go with my adaptation from above it becomes just "energy harvesting".
Next thing is, you release these charges as a one-time MELEE attack. It's nature might be somewhat magic or whatever, but the impact is very much physical. Similar to Final Hit. You magically vroomzoom around but you still hit physically. So the activation of the power ITSELF does not target the SOUL or the energy. It is just another damage skill. So it is actually not the power itself that might need tweaking but the acquisition method. But I already mentioned this, what am I typing here.

From a Lore point of view, you learn this in Cor. Do you really think these tribesman think it is a good idea to piss off Irinid any further by developing a technique that gathers Souls, ripping them out of the natural flow? If you go strictly by the wording (which is a bad idea in this case) you would have to come up with a lore-specific reason how and why animals have souls in the first place.

Tl;dr:

1. Change wording to: Does not gather Souls but absorbs lingering energy ( Erg? ) from the thing you just killed. -> No conflict with Soul Powers anymore.
   
2. Using the power itself does not target any soul, it is just another special attack. If you kill something with Doppelganger, refer to #1
   
3. Representation and energy acquisition may be varied with cosmetic power requests.

Really, why making things overly complicated when there is such a simple fix to this?

Doppelganger does not even target the soul, and it states you can only charge it up with monster "souls" (life force) -> no conflicts with removed Soul Powers.
Representation does not necessarily have to do something with your OWN soul -> no conflicts with removed Soul powers.

Khun, your firstpost does not provide a suggestion, you are simply stating 'this is how it is' based on how you think the world 'soul' is being mentioned. I am sorry for not stating it, but I thought it was quite obvious that the reason I brought this up is not because of the defense/protection penetration, but for the fact it gathers souls.

And yes, you are right. It's very vague. That is why we are having this discussion. The initial purpose of this was to find what people think should be done.

Khunvyel wrote:
I don't see why there should be a problem in adapting Doppelganger simply to; "it does not grab SOULS, it grabs the lingering life force of a freshly killed body passing away". By doing so, you remove any and all possible conflicts with soul powers. And contrary to Shadow Spirit (as Kenelm already pointed out) you do not need to activate Doppelganger to gain charges. You get them by game mechanic means through regular killing, regardless of how you do that.

The bolded part is a suggestion and it's a very good one that will be taken under consideration. Yes, you stated this before, but not as a suggestion. Remember, we are all pitching in and taking people's ideas. Mabinogi doesn't always give us all the information we need or gives us content that will affect our RP world.

That being said: The duel-test wouldn't work. Lullaby does not affect Players in duels, nor can you absorb the shadow of a fallen player. The mechanics are simply not meant for it.

From a Lore point of view, you learn this in Cor. Do you really think these tribesman think it is a good idea to piss off Irinid any further by developing a technique that gathers Souls, ripping them out of the natural flow? If you go strictly by the wording (which is a bad idea in this case) you would have to come up with a lore-specific reason how and why animals have souls in the first place.

"Do you know that the spirits of all life forms are connected by a flow that is governed by Irinid? Once you study this flow, you may be able to control it and create wondrous things. - Kousai" (From the briefing of the quest)

Now, that is a very vague quote as well, but it does seem to point more to souls. Again, please stop saying things like you know them. You've stated before, it's a vague topic. But suggestions, or/and reasoning behind them.

Secondly: I will state again: The part in question is not the attack itself, the part in question is that it takes in monster's soul.

Suggestions so far:
The skill only absorbs erg(Khun)
The skill uses the soul, but after the soul is released (Aura)
The skill is just moving quickly. (Kenelm)



@Kenelm: As for your suggestion, does that mean we ignore the collecting part? And just turn it into 'adrenaline build up'?


TL'RD:
-Post suggestion, but don't claim it's the only/best way.
-The part in question is the absorption part.

I would like to take Ken's idea here and mess with it.

In the past, we have had Demi or sometimes even FH be just adreneline build-up/rushes. (People have used that as Demi reasoning, yes)

So Doppleganger could definately be the same. You gain your adreneline by killing monsters, then unleash it in a flurry of quick movements, one that makes the opponent see multiple of you. At high speeds, this is possible due to the speed leaving an image of you to other people (Like in Dragon Ball Z and stuff). It also makes sense to use it suddenly and randomly, from OOCly having the skill saved up already. That IS something we have to keep in mind, you can hold it indefinitely (unless you CC/Logout).

Now with holding it until whenever, that seems rather...broken from an IC point if we look at Aura's idea. They can hold the soul basically forever, since Maint and logging out is an OOC thing generally speaking.

So I personally like the idea of having it not relate to erg or souls whatsoever, and having it be more linked to just an adrenline speed rush. However, I will say Khun's idea of the erg is also easy to run, but that'd be...odd to make work. Stealing leftover erg, but I suppose it could happen.

Blinked a few times and thought of somethings( Edit: And seeing things Glacia said, apparently).

As for Ken's suggestion: Wouldn't the concept be slightly abuseable? If you are moving fast enough to elude the eye, you can pretty much instantly kill whoever you are attacking. And why do the other clones stay still?

Khun's: If you kill a target, they would have no erg(hence why they are dead), you can say that your finishing blow drains the rest, but Erg doesn't store that way, as in life drain, if you steal erg you heal. This would also imply that you can use the skill at the cost of HP.

Aura's: I like this one the most so far, but what if someone decides to 'hold' the soul? It is true that your counter resets when you log out/CC, so should we have it go away after a while? Will it increase the time someone has to stay dead(As a milletian).

As unrealistically as it seems that someone would never use that skill ever again IC, I can see where that could be abuseable xD!

I'd suggest a time-out thing for that, ic. If they don't use it within the time that it would take for a milletian to respawn(3 days- or maybe less, I'm just going with 3 days as an example. Maybe 1 day?) then the character's soul will just go back to the soul stream to start the countdown to return to RP, like normal.

So, it would basically add 1 more day for a person to return to RP, at the minimum.

Would there be a chance for the collecting of another players soul to fail, or is it automatic if you have the doppelganger skill and murder the player?

Soifa wrote:Would there be a chance for the collecting of another players soul to fail, or is it automatic if you have the doppelganger skill and murder the player?

If the person is dead/dying, then there should be no reason it couldn't work. For an erinn-born, it's no different than stabbing someone with a sword. The only penalty my way would be offering is an extra day to respawn.

I guess as a fail-safe, it could be discussed/up to the player? Like most soul powers(pre-dice rolling), it was usually up to the player to decide if it worked on their own character or not. Same thing could apply here, but really only for a milletian character.

I acknowledge the reality of my idea obviously doesn't agree with how the developer chose to represent the skill being used. Additionally, my intent was to explain the core mechanics ignoring the prerequisite kill count needed to prime the skill since the priming lasts an entire character session or until execution.

I was thinking it would simply not affect the souls of Milletians­. I mean, monsters' and Erinn-born's souls are more attached to their bodies and would stay there for a little while after death, thus making them easily collectable with this skill. After all, their souls are the ones that end up staying on Erinn and turning to ghosts.

A Milletian's soul on the other hand is too volatile to be grabbed. Once the body dies, the soul immediately flies to the Soul Stream, making it impossible to get ahold of.

Mithos wrote:I was thinking it would simply not affect the souls of Milletians­. I mean, monsters' and Erinn-born's souls are more attached to their bodies and would stay there for a little while after death, thus making them easily collectable with this skill. After all, their souls are the ones that end up staying on Erinn and turning to ghosts.

A Milletian's soul on the other hand is too volatile to be grabbed. Once the body dies, the soul immediately flies to the Soul Stream, making it impossible to get ahold of.

This is a great point. +1

Okay, I get it. I just have to write telegram style without giving a reason why until asked further
Because what Mithos said effectively boils down to what I said above. Just don't let them target Souls where it gets problematic, problem solved.

Khunvyel wrote:Okay, I get it. I just have to write telegram style without giving a reason why until asked further
Because what Mithos said effectively boils down to what I said above. Just don't let them target Souls where it gets problematic, problem solved.

Well... No.

Mithos suggested that it wouldn't work on Milletians, and gave the reason why.
You stated that it shouldn't stay on souls and claimed the skill had nothing to do with the soul in the first place.

Difference: Mithos gave a very good suggestion(My favorite so far), and he explained the reason without saying everyone else is wrong.

You, as I stated before, claimed that your way was obvious not giving room for any other suggestions. That is not really productive.
And in your method, you stated that it doesn't take the soul, it takes Erg, which would not give you energy, it would give you life. Meaning the skill would be fueled of the person's life.

See the difference?

As to Mithos: That is a very good idea, I am sad I didn't think of it XD

Actually, I like Mithos' idea except for one thing. Some people play their milletians as not returning to the soul stream right away. Process of dying/right when they are dead. It makes things more dramatic when there's a body there, and you know how much rps loves drama. What about in those situations where the soul hasn't gone? I mean, this sort of forces them to return to soul stream right away doesn't it?

Auramune wrote:
Actually, I like Mithos' idea except for one thing. Some people play their milletians as not returning to the soul stream right away. Process of dying/right when they are dead. It makes things more dramatic when there's a body there, and you know how much rps loves drama. What about in those situations where the soul hasn't gone? I mean, this sort of forces them to return to soul stream right away doesn't it?

I think Mithos' suggestion was just that the soul of a Milletian is too...different from other souls and it cannot be collected. It can stay there for the drama, but it cannot be collected.

At least, that is how I read it.

Until nexon uses this on a milletian in a g mission and then we have to re-consider everything!


If that's what he meant, then that's fine to me xD.

I was actually saying that the soul itself returned to the Soul Stream right away. You know, get in line to respawn?

The body can stay there for as long as the three days respawn time period for all I care.

I don't get how the soul staying there adds to the drama, as it can't do anything at all by itself. It can't see, hear, communicate... or, well, anything. xD; It's not like everyone and their mothers can see/communicate/play around with souls.

I don't think a milletian body would stay if the soul wasn't, idk. Otherwise, the streets would be littered with more bodies/or needed to be buried and burned. The soul of a milletian doesn't just poof out of the body, the entire thing goes up to the soul stream when a milletian goes.

I've personally always thought of a Milletian's body as an shell that quickly decays when empty.

"Fresh out of the Soul Stream? We've got just what you need! This brand new, custom-made body! See you next week!"

It's not like a Milletian's body is the same as an Erinn-Born's. Everything about them is sturdier and more durable. They're killing machines made for war. I can't imagine them being killed during a war and instantly going out in sparkles. There should be bodies, but they also should be available for respawn as soon as possible. Lingering down on Erinn isn't the most efficient use of their time.

On another note... In times of peace, I don't believe there are that many Milletians who lose their lives. There wouldn't be an exaggerated amount of bodies piling up outside of Dunbarton

But again, that's just my vision of it. xD;

Well technically the Milletian isn't dead until the soul leaves, so the player wouldn't be able to take it since the milletian isn't dead yet? So all that drama and stuff....the player is still alive.

Otherwise, the concept of Milletian souls and bodies was that we are given a normal body, and the soul is what adds all the unique racial features to it. So someone with a bat soul would have a normal body, then the bat soul takes affect and gives the body the bat features.

But that's off topic. Back on topic, Mithos' idea is the best I've seen so far. IF you kill a Tuathan/Erinn-born, there is no excuse why you can't take that soul. However, it's safe to keep in mind that a soul is a soul for the mortals, having the human soul will be no different than having the soul of a fox ('Having' being defined as collected for doppleganger). In the end, the Milletian or whoever uses the 'souls' to make the clones which attack.

My apologies for being too short and too vague in my last posting. What I was meaning was that Mithos suggestion looked like it was as easy and simple as mine. But I keep it short;

Mithos saying it just does not target the souls of Milletians sounded good until the question about how and where and why the soul would not be targeted in the first place arrived. It might still be a bit fishy that Milletian souls are too different to harvest, but at least it also gets the job done (and is hopefully going to cause interesting ingame discussions )
My suggestion was simply based on changing the wording in the desription. It does not target the soul but the remaining ambient energy of the body.
I have brought multiple reasons for why it would work, and I can get even more detailed, and bring even synonymous situations based on real world facts (brain activity after death, body functions still working, etc.) which support this suggestion, and even bring metaphysical reasons which are lore-compatible (Erg was just one bit beginning).

And no to those who thought and said that I phrase things like I "know" them or like I am saying that they are the best thing. Cut that out. It was asked to give thoughts and suggestions, so I did. I don't say my suggestion is the best, because it is just a cheap shortcut, but it certainly is the most uncomplicated since it removes the issue that was brought up; Soul powers.
One of the problems with Mabi Lore is that it only gets here translated from Korea, so errors are bound to happen. The other being that it is riddled with inconsistencies. So we have to make the best out of it.