Dragon Elements
Jun 7, 2014 17:04:32 GMT -6
Post by Nayru Al-Saiduq on Jun 7, 2014 17:04:32 GMT -6
While there is nothing inherently wrong with WotW's current system for dragon elements, it does leave out several that were featured prominently or to at least some degree in the games, and I feel like it restricts player options a bit since there are quite a number of dragon elements common throughout fantasy or in character concepts not offered here. I respect that part of that is because certain of those types (especially earth, magic and divine) dragons were significantly stronger than other dragon types in one FE setting or another, but some of them weren't, and it's not like WotW doesn't play loose with what little dragon lore there is (hello, Divine Dragons, and Lightning dragons don't even exist in FE canon at all in the first place) anyways. Wouldn't be the end of the world if we offered a little more versatility in dragon elements, under the explicit understanding that they are all equivalent to each other - I would see the new elements as equal but different types, rather than 'limited' super elements or anything of the sort.
There are a number of elements that could be used; I'll mention them and briefly go over how they could work here. I'll also be general about possible gem upgrades, since the only real consistency with the current ones is 'amps up power of breath a lot' and otherwise seems to be more or less up to the player so long as it follows the general theme of the element, aka fire dragons don't get to 'upgrade' to freezing breath. So I'll try to keep that idea going here with just some vague general ideas, since it seems like the gem upgrades are mostly there as examples of what is permissible.
Mage dragons were either one name for Demon/War dragons (Elibe) or a generic Dragon tribe (Akeneia). Rather than using an element per se, they attacked with magic directly, and their attacks actually did Magic rather than Strength based damage in the Akeneia series, and were resisted by Resistance. While we don't need to reflect that here mechanically or anything, the idea of a dragon that attacks with silvery-blue trails of essence or elementally unaspected magic sounds pretty cool, and technically a version of them already exist in FE6/7 canon anyways. Thematically I could see them revolving more around 'raw' and generally non-elemental magic; more themes of blue/ghostly or rainbow colors than yellow (lightning) or red (fire), attacks being stuff more like rainbow lasers (HELLO MASTER SPARK), entwined torrents of silvery essence, etc. 250 post gem upgrades could be stuff like dampening or detonating magic with their attacks, in keeping with their strong attunement to magic.
Air (or Wind) dragons are hinted at in some supports as a dragon tribe that fell entirely to madness and eventually became wyverns, I believe, but never seen in game. Regardless of that, the general concept of a wind dragon isn't exactly unheard of, and it doesn't take a whole ton of imagination to envision a wind dragon in a setting that has plenty of wind magic - breath attacks could be anything from cutting scythes of wind to more tornado-ish, I mean come on dragon BREATH attacks lend themselves pretty well to wind stuff anyways. Much like how FE makes a distinction between thunder and wind magic, I think it'd be interesting if there was a similar distinction in dragons. 250 post gem upgrade could be something along the lines of either utility (less damage but more movement impeding than other elements) or boosting the direct power of the attack; air blades now cutting through armor and other impediments, tornado breath uprooting stuff it couldn't before, etc.
Water (sea) dragons have only ever appeared as an unused class in Mystery of the Emblem, and may or may not be appropriate here due to possible overlap with Ice dragons, but can carve out a niche of their own pretty easily in terms of attacks - anything from a flooding torrent of water to sweep foes away or high-pressure cutting jets of water, a la water lasers, which are on a side note equally awesome and terrifying. Gem abilities could be along the lines of straight upgrading volume output or the intensity thereof, water lasers slicing through armored opponents like paper or a veritable tidal wave of water to drown foes.
Earth dragons are in sort of a weird limbo in canon in that the games only ever really shows one of them and mentions one other, both of which are already crazy and have become Dark dragons. SO THERE'S NOT A LOT OF INFO ON THEIR ABILITIES AND STUFF. Earth dragons in general do pop up a surprising amount in fantasy though, and much like Air/Wind dragons it's not super difficult to envision them - earth/stone looking exteriors, tendency to breathe a hail of stone shards or petrifying breath, that kinda thing. Gem upgrades could be stuff that amplifies (or enables) the petrification effect, as well as options like the generic idea of making the stone shards pierce more or cover a larger area, or weakening enemy attacks. You COULD work in bog/swamp-style poison stuff here as well, either as a possible base ability or a gem upgrade, but that would probably be overloading the concept.
Dark dragons may or may not be something you guys want to play with at all, especially with how little actual info there is about them in the games (apparently a side-evo for Earth dragons), but it's not like dragons with shadow breath or equivalent are exactly unheard of in fantasy, and it's a cool aesthetic that might warrant some love since humans have Dark magic anyways and dark isn't an -inherently- evil element/type. The aesthetics side of things is pretty much self-explanatory so I won't really bother with that, breath attacks of dark magic also pretty self-explanatory, real question would be with effects; could do stuff like corruption (physical or magical), petrification (if earth dragons don't get it), maybe curses (presumably limited, maybe related to what Dark magic can do after the recent buffs).
Divine Dragons are already taken care of and plot-specific stuff like War, Demon, (maybe) Dark, Dracozombie, etc. dragons don't really sync that well with a major player dragon class on account of being either unique or very specifically plot related, plot that either doesn't exist on Elibe or isn't the focus here.
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There are a few questions worth addressing pre-emptively; perhaps the greatest is how the different elements play into each other. FE has always been big on triangles, both for magic and weapons, but has consistently avoided them completely with dragons - while certain dragon types had special abilities (Mage dragons were immune to magic in one game and had high resistance by dragon standards in another, Dracozombies often have a defense-ignoring effect on their breath attack, Earth dragons halved foe's attack power in the one game they appeared in), Fire and Ice dragons didn't interact with each other like Fire and Wind element magic do in Awakening. There are a few types that can play into the Pokemon side of things (Fire>Ice, Water>Fire, Lightning>Water, Earth>Lightning?, Water>Earth, Earth>Fire) and a few that kinda sorta fit into FE types (Wind>Fire) but there isn't really a consistent set of values, and most of the Pokemon ones are stupid anyways, ESPECIALLY when you try to apply them to magic - Earthquake doesn't work against a Flying type, but Earth dragons breathing stone spikes has no reason to be disadvantaged; Ground is immune to Electric in Pokemon but when a Lightning dragon breathes magic death lightning at an Earth dragon there's no reason they should be immune.
There also isn't a consistent and complete network of weaknesses - you'd have to come up with arbitrary weaknesses/strengths for Dark and Magic especially, and most of the ones that exist in Pokemon make minimal or literally no sense whatsoever in this setting. Plus Fire would just be screwed on account of being weak to Wind and Earth and Water, and no one wants to play the redheaded stepchild element. Overall I'd say that there shouldn't be an explicit strengths-and-weaknesses system, especially since a lot of them just come down to the dragon's power level here; water vs fire, water can put out fire, fire can evaporate water, which of them 'wins' just depends on which can put out more magic.
Another good question would be what any of this means for existing player dragons (just to use an arbitrary example, Nax was a Magic dragon on Nocturne but changed to Fire here, I think since Magic type wasn't available here - if she wanted to change 'back' could she? Not saying that she would, just the first example that came to mind), and would this be a new development in-setting or just LOL BTW THEY'VE ALWAYS BEEN THERE? Given how fractured the Manakete knowledge base is in-setting and OOC player wise as well, I think that it would be perfectly fair to just say that these elements always existed in-setting, maybe they were less common than fire/lightning/ice but even that probably isn't necessary simply because there have been so few dragons active in Elibe that who the hell KNOWS what is "common" outside of Arcadia?
There are a number of elements that could be used; I'll mention them and briefly go over how they could work here. I'll also be general about possible gem upgrades, since the only real consistency with the current ones is 'amps up power of breath a lot' and otherwise seems to be more or less up to the player so long as it follows the general theme of the element, aka fire dragons don't get to 'upgrade' to freezing breath. So I'll try to keep that idea going here with just some vague general ideas, since it seems like the gem upgrades are mostly there as examples of what is permissible.
Mage dragons were either one name for Demon/War dragons (Elibe) or a generic Dragon tribe (Akeneia). Rather than using an element per se, they attacked with magic directly, and their attacks actually did Magic rather than Strength based damage in the Akeneia series, and were resisted by Resistance. While we don't need to reflect that here mechanically or anything, the idea of a dragon that attacks with silvery-blue trails of essence or elementally unaspected magic sounds pretty cool, and technically a version of them already exist in FE6/7 canon anyways. Thematically I could see them revolving more around 'raw' and generally non-elemental magic; more themes of blue/ghostly or rainbow colors than yellow (lightning) or red (fire), attacks being stuff more like rainbow lasers (HELLO MASTER SPARK), entwined torrents of silvery essence, etc. 250 post gem upgrades could be stuff like dampening or detonating magic with their attacks, in keeping with their strong attunement to magic.
Air (or Wind) dragons are hinted at in some supports as a dragon tribe that fell entirely to madness and eventually became wyverns, I believe, but never seen in game. Regardless of that, the general concept of a wind dragon isn't exactly unheard of, and it doesn't take a whole ton of imagination to envision a wind dragon in a setting that has plenty of wind magic - breath attacks could be anything from cutting scythes of wind to more tornado-ish, I mean come on dragon BREATH attacks lend themselves pretty well to wind stuff anyways. Much like how FE makes a distinction between thunder and wind magic, I think it'd be interesting if there was a similar distinction in dragons. 250 post gem upgrade could be something along the lines of either utility (less damage but more movement impeding than other elements) or boosting the direct power of the attack; air blades now cutting through armor and other impediments, tornado breath uprooting stuff it couldn't before, etc.
Water (sea) dragons have only ever appeared as an unused class in Mystery of the Emblem, and may or may not be appropriate here due to possible overlap with Ice dragons, but can carve out a niche of their own pretty easily in terms of attacks - anything from a flooding torrent of water to sweep foes away or high-pressure cutting jets of water, a la water lasers, which are on a side note equally awesome and terrifying. Gem abilities could be along the lines of straight upgrading volume output or the intensity thereof, water lasers slicing through armored opponents like paper or a veritable tidal wave of water to drown foes.
Earth dragons are in sort of a weird limbo in canon in that the games only ever really shows one of them and mentions one other, both of which are already crazy and have become Dark dragons. SO THERE'S NOT A LOT OF INFO ON THEIR ABILITIES AND STUFF. Earth dragons in general do pop up a surprising amount in fantasy though, and much like Air/Wind dragons it's not super difficult to envision them - earth/stone looking exteriors, tendency to breathe a hail of stone shards or petrifying breath, that kinda thing. Gem upgrades could be stuff that amplifies (or enables) the petrification effect, as well as options like the generic idea of making the stone shards pierce more or cover a larger area, or weakening enemy attacks. You COULD work in bog/swamp-style poison stuff here as well, either as a possible base ability or a gem upgrade, but that would probably be overloading the concept.
Dark dragons may or may not be something you guys want to play with at all, especially with how little actual info there is about them in the games (apparently a side-evo for Earth dragons), but it's not like dragons with shadow breath or equivalent are exactly unheard of in fantasy, and it's a cool aesthetic that might warrant some love since humans have Dark magic anyways and dark isn't an -inherently- evil element/type. The aesthetics side of things is pretty much self-explanatory so I won't really bother with that, breath attacks of dark magic also pretty self-explanatory, real question would be with effects; could do stuff like corruption (physical or magical), petrification (if earth dragons don't get it), maybe curses (presumably limited, maybe related to what Dark magic can do after the recent buffs).
Divine Dragons are already taken care of and plot-specific stuff like War, Demon, (maybe) Dark, Dracozombie, etc. dragons don't really sync that well with a major player dragon class on account of being either unique or very specifically plot related, plot that either doesn't exist on Elibe or isn't the focus here.
------------------
There are a few questions worth addressing pre-emptively; perhaps the greatest is how the different elements play into each other. FE has always been big on triangles, both for magic and weapons, but has consistently avoided them completely with dragons - while certain dragon types had special abilities (Mage dragons were immune to magic in one game and had high resistance by dragon standards in another, Dracozombies often have a defense-ignoring effect on their breath attack, Earth dragons halved foe's attack power in the one game they appeared in), Fire and Ice dragons didn't interact with each other like Fire and Wind element magic do in Awakening. There are a few types that can play into the Pokemon side of things (Fire>Ice, Water>Fire, Lightning>Water, Earth>Lightning?, Water>Earth, Earth>Fire) and a few that kinda sorta fit into FE types (Wind>Fire) but there isn't really a consistent set of values, and most of the Pokemon ones are stupid anyways, ESPECIALLY when you try to apply them to magic - Earthquake doesn't work against a Flying type, but Earth dragons breathing stone spikes has no reason to be disadvantaged; Ground is immune to Electric in Pokemon but when a Lightning dragon breathes magic death lightning at an Earth dragon there's no reason they should be immune.
There also isn't a consistent and complete network of weaknesses - you'd have to come up with arbitrary weaknesses/strengths for Dark and Magic especially, and most of the ones that exist in Pokemon make minimal or literally no sense whatsoever in this setting. Plus Fire would just be screwed on account of being weak to Wind and Earth and Water, and no one wants to play the redheaded stepchild element. Overall I'd say that there shouldn't be an explicit strengths-and-weaknesses system, especially since a lot of them just come down to the dragon's power level here; water vs fire, water can put out fire, fire can evaporate water, which of them 'wins' just depends on which can put out more magic.
Another good question would be what any of this means for existing player dragons (just to use an arbitrary example, Nax was a Magic dragon on Nocturne but changed to Fire here, I think since Magic type wasn't available here - if she wanted to change 'back' could she? Not saying that she would, just the first example that came to mind), and would this be a new development in-setting or just LOL BTW THEY'VE ALWAYS BEEN THERE? Given how fractured the Manakete knowledge base is in-setting and OOC player wise as well, I think that it would be perfectly fair to just say that these elements always existed in-setting, maybe they were less common than fire/lightning/ice but even that probably isn't necessary simply because there have been so few dragons active in Elibe that who the hell KNOWS what is "common" outside of Arcadia?
