I could probably make a suggestion about this, but I honestly do not have a good enough idea on what people would like to see, nor on how I would fully implement such a thing. Just rough ideas and the reasons why I would like to see them. Maybe other people have better ideas or can refine on my random uncollected thoughts.

TO PREFACE THIS, THESE ARE NOT MEANT AS A BE ALL-END ALL SOLUTION, BUT AS ALTERNATIVES TO ENHANCE ROLEPLAY AND NOT DICTATE IT.


Alright, with that out of the way, I would like for us to have an entirely new Skill-Tree with different altogether new points to invest in. Something for those that know, akin to SL1 yet a little more in depth.

the tree would have different archetype skills in them, some of which are directly opposed to another, others would simply be stuff like Strength or Dexterity checks, where you can press a boutton next to it and it would roll on screen for everyone 
Roll (Might) 1d20 + X (X being your investment)

These things could be used in everyday roleplay, and would better represent your character and how you have build them over Gentlemans agreement. Reason why not "Just roll a d20 fivehead" is that I hate rolling a d20 to decide on IC situations. Its just a coinflip, it has nothing to do with your characters and what they are supposedly excel at..For Example:

Peter is 14 years old level one Soldier and wears a heavy selfmade armor, with christmas light ornaments and serval bells! He has no idea what he is doing but he sneaks up on Laura!
Rolls a 8! Laura rolled an 6 for perception! Peter succeeds!
Himothy is a Legendary level 120 Assassin, wearing a cloak of concealment, boots of silent steps and casts an illusional veil upon himself to further blend in! He sneaks up on Laura too for some raisin.
Rolls a 2! Laura instantly notices that pleb of an assassin! Assassin? More like fat nerd!

Exaggerated, but it should get my point across. Rolling non-weighted dice in certain situations make just no sense what-so-ever. It breaks immersion to me, because it makes ne sense for a master of something to have the exact same chance at something as a completely untrained person. It would be nice to be able to build a set of Skills, that are on a sheet in game and everyone is referring to, and able to access from the game.



Thats just the roleplay aspect of it however, I would personally go a step further beyond that and tying back to SL1, which I personally think was one of the coolest things about it.

Having Skills like Sneaking or Perception that directly go against each other would be cool, to have more ways of interacting with the world. Let me just randomly throw some examples into this so you see what I mean. I probably work on a d100 system, as most in SL2 does. can be translated to a d20 system easy enough.

Stealth:
Stealth is everything from hiding yourself or items or generally trying to do something someone else is not supposed to notice.

base chance versus perception: 50% +5% per level in Stealth
Other Modification: -25%(+weight of armor) for Heavy armor, -15% during the day, +15% during the night +10% if umbral race, +25%(-weight of armor), +Concealment rank, Guile bonus? (all just example but I like it when things like race, your traits, talents and build matter for these things)

Grants active out of Combat Skill: Hide Presence: You player icon turns into a Generic black shadowy figure, for all people that did not succeed a Perception check against them. People hiding their presence can not be examined or their profile looked at (or get a generic profile with no flavour text).
Its enough for one person of a Party to perceive you, for everyone in that party to see you! Its enough for one member of your party to be perceived for the whole party to be visible!
If you start a PVP battle while hiding your presence, against someone unaware off you get the Option to "Assassinate!" which starts the battle giving you a back attack round. 
PvE mobs also take longer to aggro against you, while you hide your presence.


Perception:
Perception is your abillity to perceive things or generally notice things in your surroundings and general awareness of things that might be hidden to others.

Base Chance versus Stealth: 50%+5 per level in Perception
Other Modification: Traits such as Keen eyes, Scout talent, (day and night time are already covered in Stealth aswell as armors),Skill bonus?
Grants Passive Skill: Abillity to roll against people trying to hide their presence via Stealth, every person rolls once against a person. Only one person in a party much succeed the check for the rest to also perceive the hiding person.

Grants Active out of combat Skill: Scavenging/Hunting. While in the wilds you can searach for materials or something to hunt. it costs physical stamina but you can find things based on your Perception, maybe even tie it to a minigame like the archery minigame for hunting? Its mostly for fun and to have more ways to gain certain Materials.
One thing I dislike about current SL2, is the scarcity of certain very important crafting items. Gunpower is one of the main offenders, being used in Alchemy and for bombs, and bombs specifically being extremly useful for high level content for dodgies. But I rarely use them, because I rather save them for actually dangerous situations.

Eiter a new archetype skill or part of perception: Investigation: This skill alows you to use Detective mode! PvP Battle Symbols leave scars behind only visible to you, clicking the scar allows you to determine who participated in a fight and if successful, see footprints of the people that you can follow! You roll against the peoples Stealth and can only follow the footsteps of those you succeeded the roll against. (Could also have like an arrow pointing in the general direction of a person.) The time you can see the scars and footprint depends on your invastigation skill.


outside of that we could have general adventuerer Skills. Swimming, diving, climbing, acrobatics, performance or what have you. certain races could get advantage on there, like thenos for water related skill checks, herons for musical, shaitans for strength, etc.
These would be used to traverse difficult terrain in dungeons, giving more depth to them, reach areas that are otherwise hidden, exmaple: Dive in a specific pond, reach some underwater cave? Performance would basically allow you to play songs that you want, or learn new ones, certain songs could be used for World Puzzles, etc.

Just things that could enhance the exploring bit. Have your character able to reach certain spots that others might not, have failed skill checks damage you or cost mental or physical stamina, etc. things to just have more interactions with the world.

I'd probably seperate the things between core stats, that are difned by your actual build stats and then proficency in certain tasks you are good at, and have maybe some stats give boons to the Adventerer skills, roughly like that with not specifically thought out skills and just quickly thrown together for visualization.

Evasion could be something like general roleplay purpose die roll, but in the world it could be whats rolled when you step in a trap, or have a "Quick-time" event sort of dodge, like falling rockslide. Like I said, just random ideas thrown in, but I always thought that our traps in the game are kinda a joke.

There could be rare, random event nodes in dungeons, that open a Adventure style narrative and present you with options on what you could attempt to do, and be rewarded/Punished if you succeed, with a difficulty shown while showing your party members and how good they are at something..Somethings would only need one party members, others might effect everyone. 

Alot of random thoughts thrown in, but I wonder what other people here think of the game possibly having such things. obviously with a little more thought put into it and progressively added to the game.

P.S. I cleary had too much time today.

Applicable BYOND Key - Grorg
Character Name - Nyx Stavros
Request Type - Character Appearance / Height.
Request Details -  I wish to create an Apertaurus with a slightly greater minotaur-like appearance
Specific Request - As above, I'd like to make an Apertaurus that stands at nearly eight feet tall (Probably 7' 10" or so), with bovine ears. The differences from any other apertaurus would end there.
Roleplay & Lore supporting your request - Apertaurus are very similar in many ways to minotaurs. While I definitely don't think an Apertaurus should be able to have a fully bovine head, I feel that seeing one with cow-like ears wouldn't seem out-of-place.

EDIT: As of 9:38 PM EST on 7/25/24, I've spoken with the GM, Salsa, regarding the bovine ears. I've been told they are allowed, meaning this application is mostly just for the increased height.

Just in-case it helps make my specific request clearer, this is the image I had prepared for my profile. (Drawn by myself, not that it matters)

New skill - Certain Defeat

Becomes available when within 1 tile of a defeated player

3m - 1 range

Finish them off! The target player can no longer be revived by any means for the rest of the fight.


Revives in team battles make for extremely lengthy fights and give a large advantage to any side that has a revive like last chance, especially aoe ones. This would help to alleviate this disparity in a way that makes sense. It would also reduce the amount of random revives from diehard in overly long battles. Often when there's a lot of players in a fight that are spread apart, people spend a lot of time going around the map re-killing people... It's fun to get another shot at fighting when you're down, but this kinda makes no sense, why can't we ensure that someone isn't getting back up? In spars shouldn't they be counted as "out"? And in serious battles, couldn't they be literally KO or dead?

Genuinely. I hate this. Every field I go by either has a unique diverse array of plants that people are planting because they want a ton of crops.

Or it's just friggin watermelons.

Because you can cut 1 watermelon into 4 slices. Which sell for the same price as the 1 watermelon. (1 watermelon sells for 1 murai. 4 slices sell for 4 murai).

Can we either have Watermelon slices be knocked down to 1 murai per, or some other way to deal with the Watermelon in the room.

The statuses provided by Bear's Might / Fox's Cunning / Hare's Agility do not follow the informational text on their ability. It's stated that if you are not in a stance, the level of the buff decreases by 5 at round start whenever you are not in the stance.

On testing with Prinny, I got different combinations of all three to max level, and even just one to level 30 and swapped to a different stance. Upon round start, there was never an instance where the level of the buff decreased by 5.

Applicable BYOND Key - TheFrogZone (Slot 1)

Character Name - Rana (Mechanically)

Request Type - Ability / Roleplay Request; Unstable Chimera Mutation(s) (and arguably, Illness)

Request Details - I am requesting for Rana, the chimera whose purpose was to be a translator / interpreter of the unknown, to wield unstable chimeric evolution as a result of an incident that had occurred a LONG time ago within their backstory.  When this may have occurred is to be left vague for the sake of convenience (or in other words: whenever the RP demands it), but the result is a chimera with the ability to learn at insane speeds, at the cost of their physical form reacting to conflict MUCH more than a typical chimera would (and to the point where it brings them immense pain).


Specific Request -

I have listed my requests in order of how complicated I feel they may be!  Here goes...

1. Unstable (Starbeing?) Mutation - As a result of a certain incident (which is to be described via draft in a later section), Rana wields an astonishly high ability to learn and *adapt* to environments.  Although one may expect this from a chimera, Rana is able to do this via sight (or perhaps the focus in the air) alone, with the main drawback being that her body has to *reject* and *dispose* of contents within her that could get in the way (which typically results in her spitting out and vomitting blood / mud / ooze should she ever be put in a rather precarious situation).  This ability helps her learn, read through texts, and absorb knowledge at exceptionally high speeds, but it leaves her with the predicament of struggling to fight for very long, lest her unstable mutation begins to act up again.  Another way one could describe this is a temporary mutation for the sake of safety, or perhaps the contents she absorbed from the aforementioned incident not being fully compatible with Rana's body, hence the struggle.  I am fully willing to talk this one out, as this is VERY easily the request that could actively go AGAINST what makes a chimera a chimera.  I would appreciate the help here given how much I DO want to make it work!

2. Spatial Communication / "Demon Translation" - Rana's primary purpose (once again mentioned via backstory) is to be a translator / interpretor of ancient texts and spatial language.  Whether this extends to the Starbeings is entirely dependent on how closely related spatials actually are to them (which I assume they may not actually be, but I would still likely have her attempt to learn how to communicate with them regardless, for the sake of her 'mission').  This one's 100% tied to her purpose and why I'm roleplaying her the way I do (and why she actually struggles with speaking common, if she ever manages), and could be a fun way to flavor having spatial mercenaries (or even for the sake of events where a translator / interpreter for the alien may be needed)

Reason why you are making this request (if applicable) - Backstory / Thematic reasons;  I wished to make a character that is as 'alien' as they could possibly be, even for a chimera.  Of course, I wanted to keep their basic idea 'bound to earth' still via their backstory leading up to WHY they appear and act the way they do.  Alongside that, them being a potentially OLD chimera could also help add to her distrust toward people, given how the general view of homunculi (and chimera) could've been very different to her.

With all of that said, I know there are different ways to approach an idea like this, but I did want to have an extra layer of mystery sprinkled on top, and I figured one of the more mysterious topics on the island as is would be the deep wastes!


Roleplay & Lore supporting your request -

Rana is a chimera of unknown age whose sole purpose was to be a translator of ancient texts and interpreter of spatial 'language'.  Rana's creator was fixated with the idea of communicating and learning from those that come from the stars above, and would even go as far as to imbue Rana with matter belonging to creatures that have shown ample signs of metamorphosis, all in hopes of recreating that very same power that Starbeings were said to have.  Although attempts at imbuing Rana with spatial matter did not seem to work all that well, at least not initially.

Rana and her creator camped fairly close to the deep wastes all in hopes of acquiring *anything* that could help them learn more, and through a miraculous chain of events, would end up discovering what her creator assumed were remains of a starbeing.

Rana's creator was, without a doubt, ecstatic about the discovery, and was quick to have Rana analyze and study it.  Despite her nature and purpose as a chimera, however...

For whatever reason, she did not wish to get close to it.  She knew something was off.  But if the one she trusted said it was okay, then...

The two continued to poke and prod at the presumably dead starbeing, with Rana becoming more and more antsy by the day.  One could chalk it up to being instinct picked up from the beings she had absorbed, but this was never a problem until now.  Could it have been the *spatial* matter finally coming to play..?

Suddenly, their camp would begin getting assaulted by vanguards, despite how hidden their camp was.  The two (three?) tried to fend off against said vanguards, but were unsuccessful.  Rana was left with a difficult decision: to fight what she knew was a pointless fight, to run, or...

To consume and adapt.

As soon as she took one bite out of the fallen starbeing, she knew right away that it had never truly perished.  But the process of absorption had already begun.  A process that was normally painful to her, but nowhere near the level of agony and incomprehensible horror she felt at that very moment.

...

When she woke up, all she could recall was her original purpose.  She knew that time had passed, however.
It was up to her to take in as much knowledge as possible.

Just like she did back then.

First and foremost? 
She knows that she needed to relearn about her own body and why she feels the pain she does now.

---

Thanks for reading!  I'd be 100% down to discuss anything pertaining to this in DMs or here!  

I am sad! Vorpal Fangs have been reduced to a joke! They used to be one of my favorite dagger sets!

Dev, Unnerf those poor little suckers! They did nothing wrong! They are PvE exclusive!

UL% chance to BASE on a 5% is only 1%! 2% I guess with Two. but come on its just 7%, it ONLY works against PvE with monsters sub-level 70max and they have nothing else really going for them over any other weapon that happens to have vorpal.

Make it a flat +chance % again... And if you really want us to eat good allow us in PvE to trigger it against monster Level 70+, but then only as protection ignoring damage, so we can actually hurt those 80%DR guys (If we can crit)


JUSTICE FOR VORPAL FANGS! It really doesn't need to be acid claws levels of bad! (okay its still better, but come on!)

Now that blow kiss was nerfed, can it maybe be based on which ever is higher for its infliction Level? So either Scaled Will or Scaled Guile.

I think it would make sense for guile  (Knowing how to use your assets purposefully to your advantage) to work as well.

This would give guile characters a possible life line at times. Also goes really well with whips.

When I look back at the wake of these stories we call roleplay, I think of the people left behind. I think about the characters and their dreams and hopes, that intertwined with my own. Though we like to think them as little puppets, little people tossed into the world, they are more like strokes, an intent thrown on a canvas like oil paint. A bit of yellow there, a bit of green here. Or perhaps you feel more like purple, this time, letting your paintbrush run rampant on the page. And in the midst of this, you take a step back and look at the road travelled. Look at all the paint you let drip on the floor, and it's enough to fill the room. The canvas remains mostly untouched; there's a few little streaks on there, or perhaps a small version of what you had in mind. Or maybe you managed to land it all and create a coherent work of art. Others come in, adding the details to the piece, one by one filling it with color and life, making that abstract shape into a masterpiece. Or perhaps you throw the canvas away and start over again. Again, and again, trudging through the knee-deep ocean of spilled paint to grab more supplies, get together another color on another morning.

I think back about the friends I've left behind. The barely-known faces beyond the screen that were in the end nothing more than a passing acquaintance. After the curtain is drawn, and the show is over, there is nothing left there. We've all shown up to the play, and after the play, we all go home. There's nobody left on the stage, no reason to linger. Everyone has gone on to greener pastures, briefly remembering the days where there was life up there. For all the great times, laughter, and even shared hardships and joys, this sea is just too vast. For all the times our ships crossed paths, we're still just sailors, and at the end of the day we have to return to port. But well, I guess I could say the same about many others that I've shaken hands with. In the end there is always something that must connect us. Proximity being one, but perhaps not the most important, increasingly so.

I think back about the stories untold. In truth, the hopes were more painful than the pain. Remembering the little dudes we force to move with magic, I always think about what could have been just as much as what was. Just imagine how amazing things could have been if the right ingredients were present, at the right time. If things went a little differently and went on just a little longer... We fail, and we learn, and we do better next time... How many times do we have to learn before things get good? Ah, well, maybe I've reached that point, but it's at the cost of my vigor.

I miss them, honestly. The land never recovered after the great schism. The old was left in the dust, and to this day remains abandoned. I had a good thing going at the end there too... I really do miss them. Years of writing drilled a piece of myself into these little pawns, and leaving them behind is a cost I haven't yet fully paid.

Looking ahead, I see a cloud of mist where I once saw endless doors in a cacophony of incomprehensible possibility. More uncertain than ever. My life outside is one I can't complain about, yet there is something missing. And more and more I understand my place in all of this, and what the future holds. I can already see my grip had weakened, despite having more strength than before. It's slipping, yet never fully out of my grasp.

And when you step back and look at the art you left behind, what is there? So many stories, and interconnecting paths. So many forgettable moments that are forever lost like piss in the rain. So many plans and hopes that never were, leaving naught but a dull pang somewhere below the 3rd left rib. Yes, I ended up growing accustomed to it, accepting this fate. That's the nature of art as a whole, isn't it? Even more so for something so fleeting. But I guess that's life, too. Friends left behind, paths crossing and fading into the horizon. Stories untold, and hopes crushed by the wheel. Yet at the heart of it lies that gem of truth, the glistening, unpolished diamond of roleplay. Those moments that got you smiling at a computer screen, or got you moving those fingers at supersonic speeds. You can even play all of them like a cool montage in your head if you try hard enough, but I can't guarantee you'll be able to also play linkin park over it.

I guess in the end we're left with things that any human is left with. Memories, regrets, broken dreams, and those left behind. I miss those characters, I do. I miss what they meant to me, and what I shared with others. I miss you guys too, even in this very moment. I'm always missing people because of this goddamn evade meta. Each moment I wish I knew you better and managed to get just a bit closer. Maybe then it would be properly sad when we part ways.

From one roleplayer to another, I hope you find what you seek. From dust, to dust.