On the Tawkin/Homunculus changes

[Air 649]

yo it's your local alchemist player cephalonair, here is my twitter post screeching about the new changes.

 

first i shall list the benefits/cons to playing a homunculus and what narrative flexibility they now possess alongside their strengths:

-weak to/affected by aurum.

-takes double the damage to voidal magic, can't be near things actively producing voidal gunk (obelisks, stalkers, enchants, etc).

-new enforced eye color strips them of aesthetic customization, makes them far easier to discern from regular people. i understand wanting them to be more eerie and easier to identify but the new eyes make it a dead giveaway and harms rp potential.

-3 mutations that give them the option to stand out and be slightly better than regular descendants with some drawbacks that can admittedly be more pronounced.

-essentially immortal and can rejuvenate limbs and etc given ample time, but have a 1 week death respawn timer (can also be PKed via juliet potion).

-cannot pick up any magic.

-they can be affected by holy magics.

-lack of a soul and mana.

-same durability/base strength as a regular descendant.

 

while i did not list every ability a homunculus has listed in its lore, i plucked out the differences that make them stand out from regular descendants.  prior to the changes this list wasn't that different, yet now they are much weaker combatively (regardless of the additional mutation) and will likely suffer from being perceived as darkspawn thanks to their newfound weakness to aurum (which also makes zero sense due to their lacking of a soul, as per the lore: "-Aurum is an effective weakness against any creature which has had it's soul altered in some manner. Undead, spectrals, and soul-bound constructs, would all be affected by Aurum equally.") and beady black eyes that are unchangeable.

 

in truth i don't really think another weakness hurts if it makes sense in lore (i also don't think that holy magics should affect them lorewise but that's a different argument entirely), my gripe lies solely in how easy it is to discern them from a regular descendant now on top of the many weaknesses they have. all it takes is for one guy at the gate to a city to yell "darkspawn at the gate" or something along those lines for the homunculus, despite what their original intent may have been, to be overwhelmed and chased away/attacked by guardsmen.

 

the change to homunculi seemed to mostly strip them of their versatility and guide them down a more combat oriented route rather than pursue other more interesting types of rp. which will lead to people only using the CA for its strength in crp and nothing more.

 

next, the kloning and mutation change.

 

i don't see why a tawkinist should only be restricted to creating klones for themselves/only being able to mutate homunculi or klone vessels. the former i can see being able to be kept track of a lot easier with the new limit on klones alongside keeping track of said klones via their klone app as vigilantly as the tawkinist themself will have to now. i also believe that mutations should be kept track of via a FA as opposed to removing them from the general populace entirely, it should be relatively simple for regular people without klones to have an FA detailing which mutations they've been given even if it is decided that mundane bodies can only handle one greater mutation at a time and should contact ST whenever they get it removed or changed. mutations themselves do have the ability to promote interesting rp depending on the person roleplaying them, such as embracing it as a part of their character. displaying its downsides and introducing something  unique to set their character aside from others rather than just being a combative advantage. i myself toyed with this idea long before actually being given the tawkins FA and i'm sure others have too.

 

anyways, that was my rant, lemme hear other peoples opinions on the subject. (i am not sorry for not formatting this) ((also give me rep))

[creamynoteblock 2426]

i like the changes because im tired of everyone and their mom having orc strength

[Ewdrawings 455]

Most changes I'm fine with; I would like to see an edit of the PK clause though.

[Air 649]

1 minute ago, creamynoteblock said:

i like the changes because im tired of everyone and their mom having orc strength

cant say i've run into that in my own experience but that is understandable

 

Just now, Ewdrawings said:

Most changes I'm fine with; I would like to see a revisal of the PK clause though.

what do you mean by this

[Hearth 873]

Didnt read, upvoted.

[Werew0lf 12023]

hey man! nice post!

 

It’s not being changed! 
 

maybe if u write a second post, they will change it! 
 

hahahah! XD

[rdowdy 236]

I like the Tawkin changes with the exception of Homunculi being weak to aurum. That feels a bit much.

 

There's zero reason most people need a Klone and it is at best used to help shunt someone else's PK clause for an actual RP reason. At worst it's just so you can have a bunch of backups and only one person has the PK Clause.

 

I also think that mutations *should* be written to be mildly improved since the new limitations, but I'm just happy to see there's actual accountability with it and it's ya know actually kind of relevant to Tawkin rather than just being used to supplement Min-Maxers.

[Unwillingly 11176]

37 minutes ago, Air said:

mutations themselves do have the ability to promote interesting rp depending on the person roleplaying them, such as embracing it as a part of their character. displaying its downsides and introducing something  unique to set their character aside from others rather than just being a combative advantage.

I'm not that versed with tawkins mutations or w/e but I think the issue most people have is that no matter how much people wanna tout about "personal character growth" or "part of my character identity," these are purely self-serving RP components and the average if not only experience people have from an outside perspective is during CRP, in which they get totally annihilated by some guy with like iron fists and orc strength or whatever it is. it should be able to promote interesting RP for others as much as it does for themselves

[salamanderfantasy 677]

hello it's your local homunculus child replying to their deadbeat tawkinist dad. Also, hi everyone who's been guessing what Hael is for nearly half a year now -- she's a funky homunc!

i second almost all of this, minus the kloning as I've yet to have any practical experience with that

As anyone who's seen me complain for like 2 hours will know: I don't like the eye change. A big chunk of this is me-specific (i play a homunc with a LOT of eye-based character development) (i think jet black demon eyes are overdone), but also because it now means there is no possible route to plausibly deny being a non-descendant without going off the rails.

 

Glasses/goggles can be removed, and gate guards will probably ask us to before we enter cities. (This is while standing on aurum floor plates which now hurt us) (thanks st). We can't change the eyes in any way, they were changed to be Harder To Disguise, but now they're almost impossible, and you just have to get lucky that nobody asks eye cover to be removed. Or gouge out your eyes repeatedly as the regrow.

best outcome = no entering city
likely outcome = guard panics, ur dead, wait one week to rp

 

So what's your choice here? No rp in a lot of cities, considered darkspawn-esque, more risk of being attacked = being kinda encouraged to load up on mutations and become a CRP goon. Slides right into the spooky combat creature niche. Not inherently bad, but not what i signed up for

 

Applying it to all existing homuncs sort of sucks too. I very carefully picked features of my homunc for a cumulative effect -- noticing weird body traits one after another until the observer realises a normal descendant couldn't be this strange. But now, all they have to do is look at the eyes. There's nobody on the server with completely black eyes that isn't up to SOME kinda dark shenanigans.  So now: much easier to spot. And even weaker than before.

I also don't entirely see WHY homunculi needed an immediate, barely hidable tell that they're Creatures. It can't be for combat -- anyone who has aurum weapons, enchants, holy or void magic fighting is going to be Already Using Those in most combat anyway. And there are already ways of figuring out a homunc Is A Homunc in other roleplay, they just require a small amount of effort. Is it the effort that's the problem?

I could honestly just shrug my shoulders at all other changes, but with those on TOP of the silly black eyes, Well I Am Going To Complain About It

 

I can't speak on the anthroparion players and how they feel about becoming homunculi, but it sucks that they need to become what's a kinda worse version of homuncs now.

And i'm gonna finish here. gotta keep on homuncing out of spite, so that's see how that goes! i have an old homunculus eye in a jar for Reasons though, HAH

[DrakeHaze. 2483]

Can you spot the homunculus?

[Air 649]

6 minutes ago, Unwillingly said:

'm not that versed with tawkins mutations or w/e but I think the issue most people have is that no matter how much people wanna tout about "personal character growth" or "part of my character identity," these are purely self-serving and the average if not only experience people have from an outside perspective is during CRP, in which they get totally annihilated by some guy with like iron fists and orc strength or whatever it is

 

yea this is a completely fair take on it, given that I don't regularly encounter tawkin mutated characters in crp I can't really comment against that. it just upsets me that min-maxed combat oriented characters ruin the narrative opportunity for less combat focused characters.

 

10 minutes ago, rdowdy said:

There's zero reason most people need a Klone and it is at best used to help shunt someone else's PK clause for an actual RP reason. At worst it's just so you can have a bunch of backups and only one person has the PK Clause.

 

my thing is, it kinda forces the player to spread the FA which i don't inherently mind but i liked the idea of making deals irp for stuff or having someone be dependant on x person if they do want to not die. kinda like having a thrall without the whole enthrallment part. havent gotten to do anything like it before because i dont consistently rp anymore but it seemed like a fun idea.

[Pancho 2527]

Air posting? Shit just got serious

[wowj 2825]

Homunculi are walking corpses and it already says they are weak to Holy magics, being weak to aurum isnt that far of a stretch

[Amuletic 561]

I've come out of hiding in the French countryside to comment on this post with one statement.

 

57 minutes ago, salamanderfantasy said:

As anyone who's seen me complain for like 2 hours will know: I don't like the eye change.

 

From an artistic standpoint- W take. Black edgy demon eyes are overdone, cringey, and generally boring. Giving Homunculi a "tell" could have been done more creatively, allowing for more connectivity within the lore itself. I'm not on the ST's "idea" team, but being the product of a string of cadavers certainly could've warranted a more unique tell than "beady eyes".

 

Being in the game since 2016 has given me an unadulterated hatred of black demon eyes and I will continue to express this opinion until I die. If black demon eyes have 100 haters, I'm one of them. If black demon eyes have 10 haters, I'm one of them. If black demon eyes have 1 hater, that's me. If black demon eyes have 0 haters, I'm dead.

[rdowdy 236]

1 hour ago, Air said:

my thing is, it kinda forces the player to spread the FA which i don't inherently mind but i liked the idea of making deals irp for stuff or having someone be dependant on x person if they do want to not die. kinda like having a thrall without the whole enthrallment part. havent gotten to do anything like it before because i dont consistently rp anymore but it seemed like a fun idea.

 

The FA is already rapidly spreading as a part of alchemy. This just hopefully means more people pick up the PK clause instead of just... not learning Kloning tbh.