Wait, beast masters roar?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Ack, you're right... Tough does have the Tarzan yell, doesn't it? Now I remember why it bugged me. To be honest, what concerns me the most is the thick, yellow breath that the character lets out on summoning, um... The lions? Can those colours even be customized? Like, the animal fur colours? Or at least their breath, like the Dark colours of Necromancy can?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Isn't that kind of like throwing seeds as a means of controlling plants, though?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Yes, the breath-call/summoning animation is color customizable. You can minimize the colors to near-invisible or make it so bright no one can miss it.

The summoned pets are not color customizable. The wolves are always grey. The lionesses are always tan. And the Dire Wolf is always white.

The attack pets (bees, hawk, and raven swarm) are color customizable. So, for example, the bee swarm can be fushia, the hawk neon pink, and the ravens aqua blue.

well, themes are what you make of them really. the elk lady struck me as a shamen, so she would be communicating with the animals by calling on their spirits/ some old pact with their ancestors in their language. there would also be the tarzan yell for both wild men/women and for big game hunter "craven" types that learned their tricks. finally, for the science types types, you could put them in some sort of psi amplifying helmet where the roars are simply their words being translated into something the animals understand, mixed with some sort of dominant body posture marking that the caller is the boss. heck, the cloud could even be soem sort of pheremone dispersal from the helmet to convince them that the wearer is the dominant pack leader.

Fascinating :P

Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!

That's good to hear. Are the corresponding breath colours on the actual pets colour-customizable, too? Going back to Necromancy, if I swap my summons colours to a sickly toxic green like I did for Iprit, then not only do I summon my henchmen with effects of this colour, but they also shoot their own Dark Blasts in that same colour. Is that how it works for Beast Mastery?

It's a concept thing. I'm willing to stretch what's on the screen to great extents so long as I can still have some sort of claim over it. For instance, I can pretend something that looks like fire, spreads like fire and deals fire damage is nevertheless "a tangible energy of destruction" just because it mostly behaves like fire anyway. However, I can't take a character who's shooting bullets out of a rifle and claim he's actually an archer because there's simply no way I can spin this. It looks like a rifle, it sounds like a rifle, it shoots hitscan bullets. It's a rifle. Maybe it's an alien rifle, maybe it's a steampunk rifle, but it's still a rifle.

What I can and can't spin defines what characters I can and can't create. In the case of Beast Mastery, I find the feral beast master to be a very uninspiring concept just because essentially everyone has one. I don't have a problem with people using it, of course, but I want something that's different, and a scientist controlling animals ala Dr. Animo is at least slightly different. This, it turns out, is something I can't do because my scientist would have to growl, which in turn diminishes the arrogance and finesse inherent in making the character a scientist to begin with.

What I CAN do - and I'm lucky in this regard - is create a power-armour-wearing scientist who is also an animal, for whom it would be natural to growl, though perhaps not howl. The character in question, whose design I've not yet worked on, will be essentially a lion-head person, so that's one possible implementation. That, however, is practically the only one I can think of at the moment that is still in keeping with the way the set is presented, or at least with the way I've seen it when used.

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Tangentially, this is related to the problem with Demon Summoning and depicting the demons as clearly mystical, to be summoned via mystical rituals and mystical sigils. BABs explained this by insisting that regardless of what our characters' means of control over the demons might be, the demons are still magical in terms of their own origin. I can't quite explain why I have less of a problem with a scientist using magic sigils to summon demons, but I suppose it's easier to say said scientist learned the ritual as it is to say he learned to growl, just because magic is a form of knowledge where as growling is a type of skill.

That's a tad like saying a scientist learned martial arts and the art of guerilla warfare. Sure, it's not at all impossible, but it diminishes the concept of a scientist who's generally defined as being physically less capable, which he makes up for with science. And even then, Demons being so obviously mystical does get in the way of presenting them as robots or genetically-engineered monsters, thus getting in the way of said Demons Mastermind being anything other than of the Magic origin. Yes, I'm aware many people have just these concepts (which is why I quoted them) but we each have a different level of tolerance for disregarding things shown on the screen. I could never use Dark Armour for sand, for instance, but many have.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

if you command thugs do you think you tell them orders in their language?

Oh Stewardess, I speak Jive.

But I don't speak Chav!

Post of the Day!!

The Mercs audio is essentially "Sims speak." I know it actually has a meaning, like those police radio bits we get hear and there, but it's essentially impossible to tell what's being said. It is, in essence, a stand-in language which can stand in for whatever language you want it to stand in. It is, therefore, ambiguous what language I speak to the Mercenaries about.

You are also making a fairly large leap of logic that "controlling" animals requires speaking with them, especially for things like Dire Wolves which aren't real animals. It's about as unsafe an assertion as asserting that to control Robotics minions, I need to speak to them because they're voice-activated. Circus trainers and animal wranglers do a very good job of "controlling" animals through the use of whips, sticks and body language without needing to meow at the cats and and trumpet at the elephants.

I can see summoning demons through a ritual just because that's so deeply ingrained popular culture as the way demons come into our world. Is roaring at lions as deeply ingrained a means of communicating with animals? I don't remember Ma-Ti's power of heart requiring him to do any of this. He generally just spoke to his ring in fake-accent English and the animals understood. Aren't we missing the opportunity to finally make Heart a worthwhile power?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

But it is a language, and you speak it.

Not necessarily. My character's mouth doesn't move and it does not exhaust a foul, dense breath. This could simply be voice coming OUT of the radio.

I still don't see how that's relevant. Ninja Masterminds don't speak with their henchmen. Hell, almost nothing in the entire game uses voice at all.

*edit*
Furthermore, are we really equating speaking with animals to speaking with humans? Especially considering most of these animals communicate via scent and body language as much as they do by sound, if not more so?

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Yeah, you can cancel it by moving while you toggle it on, but it still animates every time you walk through a door I REALLY wish I could get rid of the animation. It's most unbecoming for a character as soft-spoken and gentlemanly as mine.

Hi Sam!

=D

Call Hawk's custom color option is broken and reverts the hawk model to solid black.

were you in Virtue help chat earlier today?

there was a series of Airplane quotes posted, and I posted "I speak jive"

I haven't personally unlocked Summon Dire Wolf or Tame Beasts yet, but I'll give you what info/images I can.


Here are links to screenshots (I used primary color G6 and secondary color N6 for you on these examples):

Call Swarm

Summon Wolves (pets have no inherent breath aura)

Call Hawk

Train Beasts

Call Ravens

Summon Lions (pets have no inherent breath aura)

Fortify Pack

Summon Dire Wolf

Tame Beasts

Summon Wolves w/ Train Beasts and Summon Lions w/ Train Beasts

Summon Wolves and Summon Lions w/ Fortify Pack


If you want more than that just PM me to arrange to meet in-game on Freedom and I'll play with whatever color/buff options you'd like to see/hear.

Well, I talk to my dogs.
Sometimes they talk back, but they never make any sense.