Killer B Syndrome

[Toroi21]

Poetic Tendency

Who cares what others say? You've got rhymes for days! For real, it's something bout rhyming yo! Without it it's harder to focus on the flow, of battle, like a simple metered pattern helps you focus fo' sho!

Effect: This character must rhyme every spoken sentence. Slant rhymes are acceptable, if they make sense. If they do not, this character will add 10 to their speed percentile with each offense. The user must speak at least 20 words every 100 written words, and this count is kept between posts. The user may choose to use an "AB-AB" rhyme scheme or an "AA-BB" rhyme scheme, where the words that rhyme are represented by the letters "A" or "B," and are located at the end of each spoken sentence.

SP: +1 SP

Edited March 10, 2020 by Toroi21

[almondsAndRain]

As written, this is a positive skill.  The higher your Speed, the lower your Speed Percentile, so this effectively increases your Speed the longer you do not rhyme.

 

Also, even if this increased your Speed Percentile, the exact effects vary wildly in strength from one extreme to another. For instance, if a character with this had 500 Speed, they would have a Speed Percentile of 167. Increasing that by 10 effectively decreases their Speed to 468, which is only a -32 penalty. If a character with this instead had 2,000 Speed, their Percentile would be 48, and raising that would effectively give them a Speed of 1,654. So this penalty is very ignorable at low levels punishing at high levels.

 

You can also avoid this by... just not speaking often or at all. So if you were to go forward with it, you should require the user to speak every few hundred written words, like is done with Compulsive Catchphrase or Tic.

 

That said, if you have a rhyming or rapping character in-mind, I think you should just request permission for your Compulsive Catchphrase to be based off of rhymes instead of a specific set of words. It was done once with haikus, so I don't suspect it would be an issue.
 

EDIT: Holy mother of fuck, that picture was huge. Reuploaded it to Imgur to fix that.

 

Edited November 10, 2019 by almondsAndRain

[Toroi21]

 Changed the wording so that it INCREASED speed percentile rather than decreases. That was a miswording, thanks for pointing that out. 

 

• For it to be so punishing: that was the point lol. It's not that hard to rhyme, so if you pick this up and don't manage to rhyme your character's words toward higher levels ... that's sort of disappointing. The whole point of this is so that you can get a feel for your character at earlier levels, whereas later on it becomes second-nature. Same principal with compulsive catchphrase/tic. 
• My plan was for this to be used along with Compulsive Catchphrase ( "Yo" ) to create, as you said, a rapping/rhyming sort of character just like Killer Bee in the near future. As someone who loves to create music, this has been sort of pulling on my heartstrings for the past couple of days. So for it to be a special form of compulsive catchphrase means less SP, which is something else in the game i sort of want. 

As for the abuse of "not speaking" or speaking very little at all, I added a clause that forces the character to speak to their heart's desire every 100 words. That makes it fairer, I think!

Edited November 9, 2019 by Toroi21

[almondsAndRain]

Alright, let's try this wording, to bring this skill more in-line with the other Compulsive skills: 

 

Killer Bee Syndrome

Effect: For every 20 spoken words or every 600 written words, whichever comes first, at least two of the words the user speaks must rhyme.
This count is kept between posts. 
Each time the user fails to meet this requirement, their Speed Percentile is increased by 10 for the rest of the day in-character or at least two days in real life, whichever is longer. 
Description: wordsAndWords.
Cost: +1.

 

The reasonings and thoughts I have on what I've written above are organized here, by color I've made the text:

• Red: You have a character with both Compulsions- you know how restrictive having to force actions and or dialogue into a post can be, and making someone speak a rhyme once every 100 written words is too much. Rhyming is easier and less restrictive than having to say the same phrase repeatedly, so the spoken and written word requirements still have to be lower than Catchphrase's, though, so good call there.
  Also, "at least two of the words the user speaks must rhyme" is... kind of a bad way of getting the effect, I'm not happy with the idea, but hopefully you or someone else can help. I'm not entirely sure how to make it better without forcing the user to stick to some kind of rhyming scheme. Because it's not hard to make two words rhyme, I do it accidentally all the time.
• Green: I am still not a fan of this effect. My concern was not that it was too punishing, it was that it disproportionately harmed a character with a high Speed focus while having less of an effect on slower characters. This incentives slower characters to take this skill, because if they accidentally forget to rhyme they lose less than a fast character. 
  Assuming a stat total of 12,500 with a Speed of 2,000 and Percentile of 48, the first penalty effectively decreases her Speed to 1,654, or a reduction of 346. But it doesn't actually decrease her stat, so effects determined by it (1.5x total stat bonus, maximum stat bonus from equipment, abilities that use Speed in some way like Chidori) are not affected. By contrast, if the user instead has Catchphrase and missed their phrase, their non-tank stats decrease by 5%. Assuming a high tank stat total of 4,000, the user's non-tanks would total 8,500. A 5% reduction would deduct 425 stats, before accounting for the effect on the stats' 1.5x bonus and the user's equipment bonus. And yes, the penalty is less focused than the Speed penalty, but it's also easier to work around than all of your stats taking a hit.
  Also, from a purely fluff-perspective, Killer Bee was fast. Disincentivizing a fast character from taking a skill inspired by him is weird.
• Blue: The punishment and the requirement are both weaker than the other Compulsions. I don't believe this is a +2 skill.

All that said, I'm not a fan of another "say this or be punished" hindering skill being made. I'm not going to refuse to review it because of that, but I'm definitely not app'ing it unless a higher ranking staff member is cool with two Hinderings with concepts and effects so similar existing.

Edited November 10, 2019 by almondsAndRain

[Toroi21]

notes:

*Made the skill more restrictive. Gave it parameters for the user to rhyme with. These are actual rhyme schemes, though basic, I feel like it is something that everyone can accomplish if they put their mind to it. 

*changed the value of SP from +2 to +1. 

*For the fluff. I guess youre right when it comes to killer bee being the most ironic choice to when it comes to how the skill affects the taker, but Killer Bee syndrome just sounds cool. Maybe I could get different names when different staff pops through.

Edited November 10, 2019 by Toroi21

[Toroi21]

name change, and bump

[almondsAndRain]

As I said via PM, I'm moving a lot of customs to dead if their creators are inactive. My opinion on this one is that is requires way too many words to be spoken per 100. Look at the other two we have, Compulsive Catchphrase and Compulsive Tic, as a comparison for what may be more appropriate. If you want to work on this in the future, feel free to contact me and I'll move it back.