BV’s Upcoming Overhaul

[Vio]

Hey, everybody!

So, in lieu of some recent discussions we’ve had regarding some of our site’s current systems, the staff body has decided that maybe we’re in a bit of a hole. As much as we’ve tried, reconditioning Bon Voyage’s current systems has been both a huge undertaking and a difficult thing for us to keep on top of, though I feel we’ve generally done a good job where we can.

Now, however, we’re looking at it all with a fresh mindset. Bon Voyage is struggling in a way that most probably can’t see, and it’s not just due to the fact that we haven’t advertised as much recently. The site’s old and, really, so are its core systems. With every improvement we’ve made, we’ve unintentionally complicated things for ourselves, and then we’ve tried to simplify those changes to optimise the site. All in all, it’s time the site got its largest overhaul; a complete systematic rebuild from the ground up, doing away with the points of contention that have been making things increasingly difficult for us.

I know a lot of you are probably used to the site’s current ways and, even after the overhaul, we fully intend to keep the storytelling aspect on the fore. Bon Voyage has always been about storytelling, character development and having fun; we’ve always shunned combat systems and hard statistics and we don’t intend to change that. What we do aim to do is make character progression more flexible, while still maintaining that sense of achievement and reaching new heights that the current Class & Experience system has enforced.

So, enough of my ramblings; here’s the gist of what’s most likely going to be happening:

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Say Goodbye to Experience, Beri & Poinz!
The core issue we’ve stumbled upon is that the site has too many currencies; a total of three where only one would really suffice. Because of current systems, a strange divide exists between characters of different walks, and that’s forced us to implement additional limitations on certain items which makes them seem far less accessible than we’d really like them to be. It makes it far too easy for a jack-of-all-trades character to exist and gain a massive advantage (through the use of multiple currencies) over characters of a primarily skill-based or technology-based archetype.

Our proposed solution is the eradication of Beri and Poinz, essentially merging everything into Experience (which we’ve been calling X-Poinz or XPz.). This puts all characters, no matter the walk, on an equal footing. A character can be diverse as you’d like, but no longer can they one-to-one a character of a more focused style and still have benefits that put them above and beyond what should be considered normal for their level.

The idea is that these new X-Poinz will serve as a blanket term for a character’s experience, honed skill and proficiency in various facets. More on what this means below:

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X-Poinz, The New System
The general new concept is that, rather than earning a set amount of Experience and then gaining things freely based on what you’ve accrued, characters instead earn and then spend what they’ve earned on new things, upgrading old things and the like. Essentially, view it as a point buy system; garner enough points and dedicate them to something new!

X-Poinz can be spent on equipment, techniques and more. To this end, it could represent hours of training poured into developing a new attack, research and experimentation into crafting a new weapon, or perhaps simply looking into purchasing something special from a merchant. It covers all bases and equalises everything; while a technology-orientated character spends hours cooped up, creating new devices, a skilled swordsman might spend those hours instead on honing their existing strength and technique.

Exact numbers have yet to be ironed out, but we’re basically looking at classing everything within a bracket (or Rank) from 1 to 10, which reflects the amount of effort, luck and such needed to learn, construct or find things. We’re looking (at the moment) at the cost of something being equal to its Rank multiplied by 50.

There’s more to this!

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Class System No More?
With the creation of the X-Poinz system, one of the cores (and another slight problem child) of Bon Voyage also gets some heavy adjustments. Characters themselves will no longer be measured by their Class and accumulated Experience, but rather by their natural progression via the XPz system. The rumoured “E-Class Hell” will straight up be no more, but the option of starting as a weak, normal human (or whatever you are) remains to those who wish to adopt it.

Instead of Class, all characters will begin with 300 X-Poinz to spend on starting equipment and techniques. For those of you more familiar with the system, you might realise that that’s well into D Class by our current standards. Well, it is and it isn’t (as explained a bit further down). Bare in mind you aren’t forced to spend it on creation and you won’t lose it for not doing so.

The general idea behind this system change is that, if you really want to have a character who starts strong, you can. However, you’re also paying something of a price by burning all of your starter funds on a small handful of things. It should also be noted that Rank 0 items and such exist; a simple sword isn’t worth burning this on when it’s readily available to the masses. The rarer and more advanced the equipment, the more it’ll set you back; the same applies to techniques.

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Devil Fruits, Extraordinary Fighting Styles & Overdrives
Here’s a big feature of the new system. All of the above (and some other things) are going to be scrapped and reiterated via a new, all-encompassing Fighting Style system. Fighting Styles will now actually matter a lot more and, rather than the character, it’ll be the Fighting Style that has a Class. A character’s Fighting Style offers them a unique flavour and, in many cases throughout canon, characters have developed special skills from what they already know. The prime examples are the Monster Trio of the Strawhat Pirates!

Luffy
The future Pirate King’s own Fighting Style encompasses creativity, unarmed combat and (most importantly) the Gomu Gomu no Mi. It’s through his rubbery body that he’s able to do so much, from stretching strikes to elasticated blows and everything imaginable that sits between the extremes! For so long we’ve classed Luffy’s Gears (Second, Third and Fourth) as Overdrives - additional Advanced Abilities - but the reality of it as that we might’ve been working too hard to classify such things. What do all of Luffy’s Gears rely upon? His Devil Fruit! For Luffy, his Gears are extensions and upgrades to his Fighting Style where his normal capabilities just don’t cut it. When he needs that added speed, power and durability, he pushes himself to extremes to do so. His Fighting Style never changes, but it does adapt!

Zoro
Practitioner of the Three Sword Style, Zoro’s Fighting Style is already quite extraordinary in its own right, and further development of it proved that even the simplest of styles can become downright bizarre after training! Zoro’s most unusual, supernatural techniques are all a part of his swordsmanship, so why didn’t we classify that as an XFS? Well, now we won’t have to. Just like Luffy, Zoro’s techniques are advancements of his personal style; even Asura - Nine Sword Style - can be seen as an otherworldly advancement of his abilities.

Sanji
Sanji’s Black Leg Style is the most simplistic of the lot, but even then his abilities are ridiculous. He was able to break through Blueno’s Tekkai with one of his attacks and has further demonstrated some unusual techniques, but one of the most iconic things he’s done was amplify the power of his Black Leg Style by applying some heat! Diable Jambe can easily be considered an advancement of his standard style, as with Luffy and Zoro, for when he needs it most!

To this end, each character should have a Fighting Style of their own, and it is via that that they’ll be able to achieve greater heights. It could be a style orientated around raw skill and strength, or maybe it’s more about technology and smarts? That’s up to you, so long as it’s not insanely diverse!

Fighting Styles will be eligible for upgrades as you accumulate more X-Poinz; you’ll be able to spend some of what you’ve earned (in total) on enhancements to your existing style, to push it up through the ranks and gain access to more things. While heavily in development, my general idea is that you’d be able to unlock a couple of extra things with every upgrade and thus develop techniques and such based on those new attributes. For example, Zoro might’ve upgraded his Fighting Style at some point during the Alabasta Arc, unlocking the ability to cut steel. Later, during Skypiea, he did the same again and unlocked his ability to unleash Flying Slash attacks! This is the kind of flexible progression we’re looking at.

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Grading Overhaul
Outside of our various currencies, Grading is actually part of the problem in its own unique, weird way. Despite having a good rubric, two Graders can offer drastically different opinions and give differing results for the same thread. Whether they intend it or not, there’s two camps - scrutiny and leniency - and try as they might they’re still only human. It’s hard to achieve such a balance.

So, will we do away with Grading? No. It’s something the site actually needs, oddly enough, and some people benefit from it more than others. However, Grading’s also a tough job to take on (I know I’ve done it a few times myself). The concept is a simplified ideal; characters earn X-Poinz per post, based on their location. As it stands, we’re looking at 10/Post in the Blue Seas, 15/Post in the Grand Line and 20/Post in the New World. This is to help make progression seem more tantalising without actually punishing people - don’t overshoot just because the reward seems greater, either!

Quality bonuses/penalties will still exist, but they’ll be less massive. Right now, they can contribute to a difference of over 25% between two individuals through a single thread, so we want to diminish that somewhat to help people keep up without letting others shoot far ahead. It’s been suggested so far that a range of about 30% (-15% to +15%) of a thread’s total XPz score be applied for violations of rules and high quality storytelling. It’s not a drastic amount early on and can balance out later.

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Crew Funds
With the removal of the Beri system, one hurdle we ran into was crews. Normally, if a crew wanted a ship, they’d share the cost between themselves. Without a hard monetary system, that’s very difficult, and nobody would be particularly fond of giving up their own character’s chances at progression for the sake of their crew, even if they’re a noble sort. We came up with a compromise, and that’s the idea that a crew, division or whatever you want to call it can earn X-Poinz separately.

As members of a particular crew partake in adventures, a portion of what they earn is copied over to their respective crew’s personal funds. With those funds, the crew can then purchase new things (vessels, upgrades to their ships, high-tier NPCs and such) to boost their crew’s capabilities. This also allows for crew members to split up and still earn for their crew; though it should probably be obvious that the crew sticking together might earn more than each member going it alone!

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So, that’s all I have to say right now. There’s no fixed date on when any of this will be implemented, and it’s definitely unlikely to come about before this year’s out, given how much needs to be ironed out. If anyone has any questions, suggestions and the like, now and here is the time to shout it out! The more feedback we get on this, the more likely it is to come about sooner and be better suited to you (the players) whom this will affect!

[Vio]

I’m back again! After having answered some queries in the CBox, I thought I’d go ahead and elaborate on a few other bits and pieces that will most likely be coming along with the overhaul. Here’s one such outstanding detail I didn’t mention previously:

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New-N-Tasty, Grading Rubric!
For a long time, scores awarded via Grading have been impacted almost solely by writing quality, which has left some members barely keeping up with others. It’s like a rich/poor divide, where one’s ability to write exceptional literary pieces vastly dwarfs the common writing practices that far more casual writers employ. To that end, the current Grading rubric that we call upon is going to be thrown aside and replaced with a fresh one focused more on what really counts - telling a story and having fun!

As previously mentioned, there will be a range of about 15% above and below the base amount of XPz a character earns from a thread. This gives us a range of about 7 grades, split into intervals of 5% to help keep things as clean as possible. Negative modifiers will only be applied for violations of the rules and generally poor RP behaviour; spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and the like will have far less of an influence.

Exact positive modifiers have yet to be ironed out in any meaningful way, but there’s three core aspects I would (personally) like to use for this: Social, Proactive, Development. Social involves taking the time and melding your writing to help other members of the thread feel more involved, letting them (either via in-character moments or acts of narrative) take a turn in the limelight. This isn’t just your story, it’s one big one! All the world’s a stage; and all the men and women merely players! Proactive rewards those who work to progress the plot - every contribution to the continuation of the story counts! Reactionary posts are fine, but what’s a good story if only one person’s ever telling it? Development is, of course, referencing character development! Giving the readers insight into your character, putting them through their paces and so on are all core elements of a good story. Sure, we all want a powerful force, to be the best, but One Piece has always been about the struggle to overcome those odds!

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Feel free to ask any questions here, guys!

[Vio]

Wow, I just won’t shut up, will I? This is big news! Also, I’m dropping by again to elaborate on some of the ideas surrounding the Fighting Style system and how it’ll pan out (again, tentative):

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Fighting Style Progression
As discussed earlier, Fighting Styles are going to be the sole benefactors of the Class System (or some iteration of it), separating Class directly from a character’s measure of strength and skill and instead focusing it into what matters. All Fighting Styles begin at E Class, though his no longer means what it used to mean. Whereas before E Class represented an average, everyday human (or whatever race you chose), it will now represent a Fighting Style that has yet to be honed to superhuman extremes. It’s more comparable to what the first five members of the Straw Hat Crew were capable of when we first met them during the East Blue Saga.

In order to develop new techniques and special abilities, you’ll need to dedicate a portion of your character’s accumulated X-Poinz to honing their Fighting Style (which I’ll now refer to as FiSt to make it easier for me to type out). A FiSt scales from E to S, just as the current Class System does, but the currently proposed limitation is that you may only spend up to one third of your total accrued Xpz on enhancing that FiSt Rank. Here’s a quick table full of what might seem ridiculous numbers, but really aren’t in comparison:

Class	D	C	B	A	S
XPz/Class:	200	350	500	650	800
XPz to Reach:	200	550	1,050	1,700	2,500
Total Accrued:	600	1,650	3,150	5,100	7,500

The first row is simply the Class of the FiSt. The second row is how much XPz you’d need to spend to upgrade to that Class from where you currently are. The third row is how much XPz (in total) would need to be spent on that FiSt to reach that Class. And the fourth row is the total amount of XPz you’d first need to acquire to be permitted that FiSt Class! Yes, I know, the numbers look massive, but they’re actually quite balanced? Especially as, on the Grand Line and in the New World, you’re gaining XPz at an accelerated rate for sailing in tougher waters.

With each Class Up you achieve, you can incorporate additional aspects to your FiSt, such as (in the case of swordsmen) the ability to cut steel, or (in the case of marksmen) the ability to curve your projectiles through unusual trajectories. While we’ll probably chalk up some good standards, much of this is free-form for you to build, tailoring your FiSt to suit the character! Of course, don’t go too broad. A character can legitimately have more than one FiSt if they so desire it, but remember that you should still save XPz for actual Techniques, Equipment and the like!

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I’ll be posting more on Techniques & Equipment soon!

[Vio]

Hey! Guess who? As promised, I’ll be elaborating some more. This time, here’s a rough build of what might become the new system for how Techniques, Equipment and similar such things work:

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Techniques, Weapons & Items
As previously mentioned somewhere in the above mess of highly probable possibilities, Techniques and Equipment will be assigned an X-Poinz cost based on what we’re currently referring to as a Rank. Ranks are going to range from (what we’ve agreed just recently) 1 to 5, denoting various facets of the associated thing.

When you first unlock a technique or buy a weapon or item, it starts off at Rank 1 (R1). From this point onward (with some exceptions), you can further choose to upgrade said technique or piece of equipment to ranks above, for an appropriate cost. Of course, we’re not about to let just anybody have access to the best gadgets on the market or have mastery of the most intricate and secretive techniques. To this end, the maximum Rank that can be attained by a character equates to the Class of their associated Fighting Style. Technically, a Rank 0 also exists, but this is for the absolute basics of the basics, such as standard methods of attack (that anyone is capable of) or equipment that is extremely easy to get a hold of. This will be free of charge.

Here’s a table of XPz costs for Techniques and Equipment, showing assumed prices and the various Ranks. It also mentions the minimum Class requirement in a FiSt needed to attain skills of such a level:

Rank	Purchase Cost	Total Cost	Min. Class
R:0	Free	Free	E
R:1	50	50	E
R:2	75	125	E
R:3	100	225	D/C
R:4	125	350	B/A
R:5	150	500	S

You’ll probably notice that there’s no examples of what’s what on that table, but that’s because we’ve not really had time to iron things out yet. Everything’s still just a theory (a game theory)! Of course, you can safely assume that rarer and more powerful tools might only be available to those with the proficiency to construct them or learn to wield them, but it’s best to remember that only a scant few (and extremely powerful) things will be entirely inaccessible until set Classes have been achieved. We’re trying to broaden the spectrum, not tighten the belt!

Techniques are generally a lot easier to figure out, luckily enough, as your limits are self-imposed ones. As previously mentioned, when you upgrade to the next Class of your FiSt, you gain access to an additional aspect to apply to techniques you upgrade or purchase from then on; you could have a Class D FiSt that grants you access to a Flying Slash ability, then upgrade it to Class C and attain the power to cut steel. Lo and behold, you now have the potential to make a technique that does both! Mix and match, be creative with your Fighting Styles!

Though an exact rate has yet to be narrowed out among staff, what has been decided is that when you Class Up a FiSt, you’ll be able to spend a portion of the XPz you used on free techniques, equipment and upgrades suitable for it. Personally, I’m looking at a rate of 100 per increase (so you’ll be able to spend a total of 1,000), though again, we’re not decided! These things represent the practice and honing of your Fighting Style and your exploits in reaching that next level, plus it seemed awfully punishing to make somebody spend 2,500 X-Poinz on merely being able to access new things!

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Any questions? As before, ask them here (or in CBox), and I’ll try to answer them if able. I’m looking towards such things as Ships, NPCs and Haki for the next focal points of this big overhaul. Stay tuned!

[Vio]

^{Shut up, Vio!}

^No!

^{I’m not crazy…}

In all honesty, I might be, but that’s besides the point! Once again, some random discussion has heralded some fruits of our labour for you guys to take a gander at and consider in preparation for the overhaul. This time, I’m keeping it brief and less elaborate as the past few additions to this news thread, so here’s a selection of things to look at (with far fewer numbers than before):

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Haki, The Fighting Style
Here’s one I was asked about, but I can safely say that there’s still not a lot ironed out in regards to this mysterious force. Here’s a few (mostly) definitive facts for Haki and the new X-Poinz system, however.

In order for a character to obtain Raw Haki in the current system, they need to earn 1,000 Experience, which is a steep margin that can be tackled quite quickly if you put the time and effort into it. Of course, Haki was almost entirely unheard of prior to the Summit War Saga and the prelude to the time skip, but afterwards it became a staple of the New World. To try and stick to our guns, we’re setting Haki’s absolute minimum requirement to roughly equal out with what it is now.

A character needs 2,500 XPz in order to obtain Raw Haki! It should be noted that this is not spent on obtaining the power, but rather is a minimum total of accrued (not spent) X-Poinz. In other words; Raw Haki is still free to obtain once you hit the necessary benchmark for it!

As for training and progression? Well, we’re looking at having Haki count as a Fighting Style in accordance with the majority of other things, though that’s about all we’re actively ironed out. To be honest, changes to Haki will probably be minimal at best compared to its currently unique systems.

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New Templates!
Not so much a mechanical change, but a beneficial one all the same; we’re completely reconsidering the current designs for both our Character Profile and Devil Fruit templates! Simply put, both are quite intensive on members and while veterans may have no trouble, fresh faces often find themselves struggling to fill in the prerequisites of our (admittedly) convoluted sheets. Tolstoy once said: “There is no greatness where there is no simplicity.” That’s our philosophy now, too!

The Character Profile template is going to see some sections removed and reorganised where able, such as the unusual (and mostly unnecessary) Physical & Mental Tendencies section. While useful for gauging your character’s strengths and weaknesses in the realms of body and mind, it sometimes gives the illusion of statistics, which we’d like to tune out as much as possible to realise Bon Voyage’s original ideal. Personality is most likely going to have a lot of fat trimmed too, with it being decided that it’s better to build personality through active role play than through solitude alone. We don’t become personalities on our own, so why should our characters? It’s been considered that cutting this section down to just a few general personality traits might be the better option, focusing the bulk of character creation elsewhere.

Devil Fruits are also going to have a chunk or two taken out of their written requirements, with the main operation being the complete removal of their Ability Potential segments. While useful, sometimes it can be a bit of a shambles as well; it’s easier for us to gauge a Devil Fruit’s powers based on its core abilities as you pay (via XPz) to unlock new parts of its power! Appearance requirements are also going to become a bit more lax, given how easy it is to summarise some of the canonical ones, and Example Techniques is most likely going to be transplanted with Starter Techniques in lieu with the newer systems. All in all, there’s more room to breathe when creating one of the series’ perennial pieces!

…I’ll stop now.

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Ships! How Do They Fare?
With the introduction of the Crew Funds system, one of the core elements of what makes a crew a crew came to my mind sooner than anticipated. This is probably the most incomplete idea in this batch! Either way, my focus is to make it so that the system for ships stays mostly the same whilst also taking a load off of the members who build it. Crew Funds takes care of the latter, but what of the former?

Ships are going to be given a sort of Class system of their own as well, much like Fighting Styles, and it is via that system that you’ll be able to purchase, upgrade and even replace you crew’s or organisation’s vessels. Be warned, while smaller and simpler vessels are readily accessible for fledgling groups, larger and more intricate craft will be appropriately more difficult to get a hold of! I know this is going to hurt some people’s plans, but fancy ships are certainly expensive and require a lot of research to construct!

Exact values are undetermined, but the base costs of each vessel Class will grow from shallow increments up to far steeper and appropriately massive leaps. People who’ve barely made it anywhere with heavily armed galleons at their disposal seems awfully disproportionate compared to veteran groups with simplistic vessels, no? The quick table below shows a ship’s Class (tentative term) and what it equates to in terms of ship scale:

Class	Scale
E : Tiny	Free of Charge. Simple rowboats, 2/3-person sailboats, basic rafts and other mundane, cheap and readily available craft. Unsuitable for traversing harsher waters.
D : Small	Cheap but cheerful. Smaller ships, comparable to the Going Merry, capable of sailing long distances and in harsh seas, but not necessarily diverse. These will be cheap enough that small, fresh off their first thread crews can obtain these readily.
C : Medium	Costly in comparison, but still quite cheap in the grand scheme of things. Fresh crews will have a hard time getting one of these until they’ve cashed in a handful of threads; probably enough to clear their personal Blues Saga. These can be larger, but still aren’t galleons.
B : Large	Now we’re looking at some serious cost. The Thousand Sunny probably slips into this category; quite chunky a vessel with a lot of development room. These tend to be the next step for crews that have covered a stretch of Paradise.
A : Grand	Big, powerful and most definitely costly. You’d certainly have to spend a long time in the Blues to net yourselves even a basic one of these, but that’s the whole point. Ships of this size and calibre are earned by those who’ve cleared the early Grand Line and have garnered enough in numbers and knowledge and skill to create one of these bad boys! For an example, I’d personally steer towards Orlumbus’ Yonta Maria.
S : Supreme	Who needs an island domain when your ship is your island? That’s right, these are the biggest and most expensive of all craft, comparable to Thriller Bark. A solo character would find this impossible to net, but a larger crew or even a whole organisation? Well, it looks like those dreams of a Mother Base might be more realistic once you scale into the New World!

Yeah! Yeah! Like I said, there’s tonnes more to do with just Ships alone before we’re even close to finishing!

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Rokushiki, The Six Styles
This is an oddball, to be honest, but one with a viable workaround that we haven’t properly placed as of yet. For starters, being a bit less restrictive upon this might be more beneficial, though we’re probably going to tack it up as a Fighting Style. Having seen honed special forms of Rokushiki such as Jabra’s Tekkai Kenpo, Lucci’s combination of Soru and Geppou and even the most recent reveal of Stussy’s Flying Shigan, it looks like the scale of the Six Styles has a lot more to it!

As for being more relaxed? Well, many a Devil Fruit can likely give access to Rokushiki clones, and I’d rather not punish your ability to learn a solely body dependent ability because you were creative with a superpower somewhere else! Luffy’s elasticity can let him mimic Soru and Geppou, but he’s certainly not going to turn that into some form of Rankyaku or Shigan any time soon (as far as we know)!

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As always, ask questions! There’s always more to do!

[Vio]

Vio’s back with some more detail on what’s coming! The nature of the Crew Funds system (see above) means that there’s a lot more in regards to what crews should be able to get and when that we ever considered beforehand, with Ships being one of those big issues. Of course, there’s far more to an organisation that just the vessels they sail, such as minions and other allies, special equipment and more! Here’s some speculation, plus a few numbers, on a few of these:

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Non-Player Characters
Crews are rarely made up of entirely player characters, with NPC allies helping to fill crucial roles or even just bulking up a force to make it seem more reasonable. Most ships and even fleets aren’t designed solely for the best of the best; large Marine Warships (as an example) need a skeleton crew of several dozen able-bodied seamen just to function, and that’s not counting weapons and such!

On the other side of the coin, our current NPC rules are extremely lax; perhaps too much so given that we don’t run them through an approval process of any major degree. For one, it’d be too time consuming for us to have to assess and approve entire NPC profiles on top of everything else the site has to offer, so we’re going to keep it minimalist in staff involvement wherever possible. The character’s personality, appearance and backstory is typically up to flavour for these guys anyway, so the only thing we’re going to be looking at is their combat abilities.

Consider an NPC a piece of equipment for a crew!

There’s going to be six Classes of NPC, ranging from the lowliest to the most elite, and each will set you back some of your crew’s X-Poinz supply. Fortunately, we’re not making it mirror the costs of player characters, as that would be ridiculous. In actuality, an NPC will be quite cheap and cheerful, though certain additions beyond what we’d consider a norm will also have to be factored in separately (such as giving one a Devil Fruit). Here’s one of them pretty tables I love so much:

Allied Non-Player Characters

Class	Cost (Total)	Cost (Per)	Required
E Grunt Rank 0	Free	Free	0
D Rank 1	100	100	600
C Rank 2	275	175	1,650
B Rank 3	525	250	3,150
A Rank 4	850	325	5,100
S Rank 5	1,250	400	7,500

An NPC’s Class/Rank (undecided which we’ll use) is roughly comparable to a player character’s own Fighting Style Class, effectively representing how capable they are. Obviously, those with exceptional styles (B+) are the most expensive as they are also the most capable. An NPC will have to have their own personal Fighting Style and an assortment of Techniques and Equipment related to it, though in most cases these come as a part of the package at no extra charge! They still have to abide by roughly the same rules as player characters in regards to these, however!

The table’s second column (Total) shows the amount of XPz that an NPC of that Class/Rank would cost, which is equal to what an equivalent Fighting Style would cost, halved. The third column along (Per) shows how much it would cost to upgrade an NPC to the next Class/Rank, to show that they too can progress as the crew does! In turn, they get bonuses just like an evolving player character would. The final column (Required) represents how many X-Poinz the Captain (or equivalent leader) of that crew would need to accrue (not spend) before they’re eligible to have an NPC of that level.

Simply put, there’s almost no way an extremely capable warrior/seafarer/etc. is going to listen to somebody who’s not at least on their level in some respect, though that doesn’t necessarily mean they’d have to be of equal fighting ability. A resourceful, clever and charismatic leader could still have the power to recruit somebody far superior to them in terms of combat ability! Respect!

Obviously, the most basic E Class/Rank 0 NPC counts as little more than your average grunt. While you can still give them an identity and backstory if you really wish to, all they are in the scheme of things is a lackey of some regard. This represents basic troops, staff, fresh from boot camp Marines and more!

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Vessel Enhancements
What’s a good ship without upgrades to make it better? Well, this is extremely vague at best, but we’ll have to have a crack at rebuilding this system in its entirety! While base ship costs are one matter, upgrades to them is another! Special weapons, supplementary craft and other augmentations will all be factored in and given their own costs! More on this at some point in the future!

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Questions, people! Give us more!

[EJ]

I have a question regarding allied NPCs.

Do you think it'd be feasible to have a group of "clone" chars classified as one unit? What I mean, for example, is a task force full of "uniform" NPCs that can be upgraded all at once? Like CHIMERA's goons that wear the same suits and masks, for instance.

[viruswithshoes]

The clone question also makes me wonder if we could make Germa 66 clones purchasable to pirates or Pacifista's to marines.

[Vio]

^{To be honest, I’m not sure that’s even a necessity, EJ. The “Grunt” rank NPC fulfils all the duties of standard troops, regardless of location. Sure, by the time your crew reaches the Grand Line and later the New World, even your average troops will have greater combat skill, but they’re still just basic troops in the grand scheme of things. As for viruswithshoes’ question regarding Germa 66 Clones and Pacifista, that’s currently a no. It might become an option in future, but it heavily depends on a variety of factors that we simply haven’t touched upon as of yet.}