Boosted Animals & Reconfigured Equipment: Feb '23 Update!

[Jade]

<sup>Hey there, Bon Voyage! It’s been a little bit since the last one of these updates, but we’ve been working on a few new system additions and patches behind the scenes for a little while now. There isn’t much to say that won’t be better done by just getting into what’s being rolled out, so let’s get right into it!

Inherent Qualities: Boosted Animals!
Previously, it has been an understood part of Bon Voyage that Zoan-class Devil Fruits grant their users some generalized boosts to their physical capabilities - but really only Ancient Zoan have been given anything to showcase and codify this within the system, with their old Ancient Power feature granting them an analogue to Legendary Strength while in their Zoan-given forms. But even that was always a little clunky. After all, why would every ancient beast grant overwhelming strength?

So, in order to address this, we’ve introduced a new feature to the Zoan classification of Devil Fruits on site: Inherent Qualities! All users of regular and Ancient Zoan will be granted an Inherent Quality meant to represent one particular physical capability of their beast side, roughly equivalent to a Trait or a Passive Quality Advancement for FiSts. Regular Zoan will now receive a physical boost roughly equivalent to a standard Static Trait or Passive Quality I FiSt Advancement while in their Zoan-given forms, which is a brand-new feature being granted to them!

This change notably impacts Ancient Zoan, who are losing their previous Ancient Power feature - however, this grants them newfound flexibility, as their Inherent Quality can be used to replicate the benefit of a standard Legendary Trait or Passive Quality II Advancement! No longer will speedy critters be forced to pick up an ill-fitting strength effect, and those tough-as-nails dinos will be able to tank hits with the best of them!

Mythical Zoan, however, have been passed over from receiving the benefits of this update, as it was deemed that their Mythical Abilities, which grant them powers more befitting the Paramecia- or Logia-classes of Devil Fruits, are a more than fair trade. On the other hand, though, SMILEs will be granted an Inherent Quality, just as regular Zoan do - however, their Inherent Quality only ever is in effect for the manifested portions of their animal, rather than their users’ full bodies.

Awakening & Inherent Qualities: Even Further Boosted Animals?!
That’s right, we aren’t done with the system changes that come with the addition of Inherent Qualities just yet! Whenever a regular Zoan attains their Tier I Awakening, their Inherent Quality is boosted to its Legendary Trait- or Passive Quality II-equivalent while within this Awakened Form. This is in addition to the other benefits of Awakening offered to Zoan users!

SMILEs are also receiving a new Advancement, called Chimeric Ascension, made available once they’ve upgraded their SMILE FiSt to at least B Class! This Advancement allows them to boost their Inherent Quality to its Legendary Trait- or Passive Quality II-equivalent as a permanent, passive benefit - although, as before, it only affects the animal portions of their body!

Zoan Form Quality Tweaks & Changes!
For a while now, there’s been an odd restriction when creating Zoan Forms, based on how we presented them - Zoan Form Qualities have been utilizing the “Trait-like” and “Aspect-like” language that Equipment use for a while, and the “Aspect-like” Qualities were restricted such that only Mythical Zoan could make use of them. But no more!

The old “Trait-like” and “Aspect-like” language has been dropped now, leaving Zoan users with the option to add +1 Qualities and +2 Qualities to their Forms instead! These revised Quality options still function in much the same way, just with new-and-improved language. However, as part of this change and opening up the +2 Qualities to all Zoan, there now exists a new limitation - any given Zoan Form can only have one +2 Quality. Drawbacks, which drop a Zoan Form’s Rank down by -1, still remain!

But we’re not done with the changes to Zoan Form Qualities just yet! There has been a long-standing question on Bon Voyage in regards to what happens to Zoan users who possess particular powerful racial Traits as part of their physiology when they assume a Zoan Form that lacks those portions of their physiology - for example, what happens when a Giant enters a form that isn’t colossal? The brand-new +0 Quality option is here to codify this exact thing! By taking this Quality option, characters who possess a racial Static Trait are able to add their racial Static Trait and its corresponding Negative Trait to a Zoan Form, or remove both the racial Static Trait and replace it with a weaker version while also removing their Negative Trait in the process!

Equipment Sets!
Have you ever wanted to play that swordsman character who carries around a gym bag full of swords, or maybe a spearman who has a couple of seastone-tipped spears, but found the idea of financing so many copies of higher-Rank Equipment daunting? Well, good news: Equipment Sets are here! Long-time members may remember our old rules for “Cloned Equipment” - this new system functions as something of a spiritual successor, granting characters who wish to maintain small personal armories of identical Equipment the chance to do so without breaking the bank!

The only restriction here is that every single piece of Equipment within a Set will be functionally identical, bearing the exact same Qualities as every other piece. However, handling Equipment in this way means you won’t need to pay any extra X-Poinz for the Set! An actual number on the individual pieces within an Equipment Set will need to be set, and will be judged on how reasonable it might be for a character to physically own and utilize based on staff discretion.

Additional Configurations & Switch Qualities: A System for More Flexible Equipment!
Characters using transforming Equipment has, by and large, been handled by Wapometal in our systems… But, upon review, the staff have come to an agreement that this system is rather clunky, and doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what configuration-swapping Equipment could truly become in our systems. That’s where Additional Configuration and Switch Qualities come in!

The brand-new set Quality Additional Configuration replaces Wapometal, serving to represent any mechanism for Equipment that changes from one configuration to another, and raises the Rank of Equipment by +1. Notably, unlike other Qualities, Additional Configuration can be added multiple times to a single piece of Equipment - allowing one to create Equipment that can take on many different forms!

And, featuring Additional Configuration as a prerequisite, we’re also introducing Switch Qualities! These represent specific Qualities Equipment might have that change between configurations - so, for example, a sword might be Extraordinarily Sharp, but when converted into its gun configuration, it swaps that Quality out to become an Automatic weapon! Switch Qualities come in both “Trait-like” +1 and “Aspect-like” +2 Quality variants. Additionally, for each time Additional Configuration has been taken on a piece of Equipment, that Equipment’s Switch Qualities will gain an additional slot to hold a Quality, representing how that Equipment has even more alternative configurations!

Seastone Quality Split: Seastone Coating and Full Seastone
While we traditionally prefer to keep our system updates in the realm of granting new options to the community, or offering what some might calls “buffs” in these system patches to borrow some more video game-like terminology, the staff have come to the conclusion that one Quality we have long offered Equipment was quite overloaded in terms of benefit versus cost compared to every other: The fabled mineral that carries the same wavelength as the sea and boasts a durability far surpassing nearly everything else seen in canon, Kairōseki - or Seastone, if you prefer.

Where before we offered Seastone as a set +2 Quality that would represent any Equipment featuring the material in its construction, we have now split it into two separate set Qualities. First up is Seastone Coating, which remains on offer, still as a +2 Quality, representing Equipment that has received a minimal coating of the material along the most important parts of the Equipment. While this set Quality does not offer the sheer ridiculous durability Seastone is typically famed for, this still allows for the creation of Equipment that can harness its incredible power against Devil Fruit users, serving as something of a universal counter against Ability Users.

Second, we now offer Full Seastone as a set Quality with a value of +4. Equipment with this Quality still maintain their status as a universal answer to Ability Users, but now also boast the seemingly unbreakable nature of Seastone as well. Whether or not the Equipment is actually made entirely of Seastone is up to you, of course, but this Quality allows for the creation of Equipment that at least features enough of the substance to be granted this benefit.

If you have a character with seastone Equipment, you may need to update their affected Equipment in the Fighting Styles, Weapons, Etc. board.

Multi-Fighting Style Techniques and Aspects
An infrequently-remembered portion of how we handle Techniques that draw from multiple Fighting Styles is that the Technique had to draw primarily from one Fighting Style, and then the “secondary” Fighting Styles could only contribute a single Aspect to the Technique. Upon review, the staff have determined that this is an arbitrary restriction - Techniques drawing from multiple Fighting Styles can now potentially access every Fighting Style’s suite of Aspects, with the only restriction being the character’s ability to pay the resulting X-Poinz cost!

Whew, that ended up being quite a bit more than I’d expected, actually… And we still have more in store! That’s right, we’ve got a few other projects in the works that we can’t wait to share with you all coming in the hopefully near future. Stay tuned!</sup>