Keyblades

[K]

Juuuuuust so that there is no discrepancy, on this site, keyblades are weapons that are enhanced with special magics that others can't cancel out, and these magics make them exceedingly bad in the ass. To wield a keyblade, one must have its keychain, then summon the respective keyblade into this dimension at the character's will. This makes keyblades very portable, as one can simply will the keyblade into leaving this dimension to be summoned again and, in just one thought for both of these, teleport the keychain into the character's inventory. If you were wondering, each keychain will, unless otherwise stated, only have one copy per universe. That means that no two characters can wield the same keyblade in the same universe. If Noah wields Rapture, Leilani can not. If Learpabru wields Intersection's Testament, Noah can't wield it. If Komo wields Realm's Will, Learpabru can't, and so on.

Outside of the Kingdom Hearts universes: There are no keyblade masters, there is no necessity of a strong heart, or anything else like that. They're just really good weapons with good knockback and flinch factors. Keychains can be earned (sometimes as mission/arena prizes), but they won't be especially common, because they are really good, strong weapons for magical and/or physical characters. Characters can't start with keyblades, but can know how to wield them beforehand. If you have some genuine reason for some sort of exception to be made for your character, ask it here or send a PM to me, and I'll see what can work. Exceptions don't have to be made; they can be if they are fair. Examples:

Person 1: I just want Oblivion! Just let me have Oblivion! Please, please, please! I don't even want any other keyblades; I just want to have Oblivion!

Me: Um, first, we like to have people wield somewhat more original keyblades, you know? As in, something that's not just a carbon copy of something from the games, see? Second, no. There's no reason why you should get to start with a keyblade, while others shouldn't. Keyblades are earned. Surely, you can find a keyblade that you'd like (Just search Google Images and/or DA.), you could send me a link to it, and, when you complete a mission or win in the arena, I may (if you have earned it, that is) give it to you, savvy?

Person 2: In my character's story, she is supposed to wield this one keyblade that was made just for her. (Insert link here.) I want her to have this keyblade as soon as possible, I would not like it to be taken by someone else, and I don't want to have this character exist only in a KH RP. Would it be possible that she could bear half the keychain, and could earn the other half as some manner of prize?

Me: I understand that. Certainly. In fact, once you make your character and she is approved, I'll make a mission for her. Fair enough?

Person 3: I earned this keyblade fair-and-square with this same character on a different site. (Insert link here.) May I have this as a starting keyblade? You'll see that I also earned other keyblades; may I have those?

Me: -checks it out- Okay, you did earn them fairly, so perhaps I could make another exception . . . Um, you'll have to make the following changes to abilities that are overpowered:
-lists some changes to be made for each-
If you fix those, yeah, you can have one, but no more. You can have those two that come as a set, if you want, but that's the limit; either pick one or the set of two that go as one, if you want one at all.

Persons 1, 2, and 3: Fair enough; thank you.

Me: Welcome.

Examples Fin.

Kingdom Hearts universes: Keyblades are the same way that they are in the games, with the necessity of a strong heart and everything. Each KH character can start with only the number of keychains that the RP master has designated, and dual-wielding requires an ability. If your signature keyblade comes in a set of two and must be dual-wielded, send us the picture, and we'll be sure that the pair will be one that you'll get during the storyline, if you ask nicely, and your starting keyblade can be replaced/added to. If you absolutely must have more than one keyblade from the beginning, for some reason, tell us what the reason is, and, if it makes sense and is fair, we'll see about making an exception. As far as earning new keychains, think of it like the games. You can get more as the storyline progresses. The RP master makes the storyline up, so that person(s) decide(s) when you get a new keyblade and such, which will be reasonable. There's pretty much no reason why someone should be able to acquire 50 keyblades in four posts.

[the General]

Well I don't like the idea of everyone having one. Which you did cover one. I don't know much or anything about kingdom hearts but I like the idea about the pure heart thing. Maybe that's how it should go on sein to make them really hard to get

[K]

Well, everyone can have at least one keyblade, just not from the start. There's nothing to stop anyone from earning one. Adding the necessity of a pure heart would do just that: People who make characters that aren't pure of heart would be disabled from obtaining some weapons that are exceedingly bad in the ass. Sure, that'd be their personal choice, but it'd just be an unnecessary limiter. I mean, look. Here's an example thought process:

I want to make a character whom is all about impurity/corruption/whatever.
However, I want that character to be able to earn and wield keyblades.
Since the rules don't allow that, I'm screwed. I can a) make my character and just never have it wield keyblades, or b) change my character's theme altogether to allow my character to have a pure heart. Geez, what a pain . . .

See, just an unnecessary limiter. Also, those who pay attention to the series know that a keyblade doesn't necessitate a pure heart, but a strong one. That puts other limiters on characters: People can't have characters who need to grow more strength of heart and expect to wield keyblades; they have to either immediately learn or start with strong hearts. Naw, that's messed. That's to say nothing of the fact that all characters would be subject to the admin/mod opinions of their strength/purity of hearts. We're not going to waste the time and effort to rank every char's heart (which would be especially unfair if we misevaluated things, which would be especially likely for characters for which we had not been reading through tons of posts) while each character has to wait around on us before they can go earn keyblades and all. That'd be messed.

Also, keyblades aren't going to be really hard to get. Don't get me wrong: Especially for the better keyblades, they will be far from easy, but it's not gonna' be like on Esc, where two R7s/Lv1s and an R4/Lv4 have to get together for a fairly long mission and beat an enemy that's way out of their leagues, coming damn close to the R4/Lv4 dying, but coming up with a badass combo to save that R4/Lv4 . . . just to get one keyblade each . . . I don't blame that admin for the prizes; I do appreciate them, truly. He was just keeping within the ways of the site. Well, this site isn't going to make keyblades so scarce. I don't want every char and its mother to be running around with an armory of keyblades just for giggles, but, if people earn keyblades, they earn them. It's like Levels: If you're a Lv3, you go into a Level Challenge, and you earn Lv5, there's no good reason for you to be held back to Lv4.

[Choh Lehko]

I should probably elaborate a bit on properties of keyblades, while I'm here.

• Keyblades all have a magical effect that allows them to act as edged weapons, whether they appear to be blunt or edged. This applies to the entire weapons. Because of this, they are mostly wielded as double-edged swords with sharp points, or sometimes in a more hammer-like fashion. With no exceptions yet known, keyblades are equally edged and powerful from all angles. The side with the tooth of the key is no stronger than the rest of the weapon, but many find that swinging with the tooth toward the target helps accuracy by granting more area of the weapon to hit with.
• Keyblades do not have set wielding methods, like in KH 385/2 Days. They can be wielded as freely as any double-edged swords, if not a bit moreso because they are considered to be edged from all directions. Some abilities, however, are specifically designed to give special properties to some attacks when performed by a keyblade (e.g. a variant of Vortex, which allows three spinning, dancing, horizontal slashes with slight, upward angles to block incoming attacks easily).
• Keyblade lengths are variable, but generally can be classified as “short,” “medium,” or “long,” and are never too far different from each other. One can view pictures and videos to see length differences and note that none of them are too dramatic.
• All keyblades have some manner of hit animation, such as stars, flowers, orbs, or whatever else flying out of wherever they strike. These will be detailed in their descriptions, and visual aids will be granted in some cases. Examples can be seen via Youtubing some KH vids. The manner in which these units fly out before immediately disappearing is akin to, but independent of, blood spill. They are magical animations that have no effect on anything but aesthetic value.
• Power factors vary from keyblade to keyblade. They will be measured numerically, where 3 = a nudge over that of the average sword of a Sein char, and a difference of 1 is a very slight boost or detriment from there. Therefore, the power rating of, say, Oblivion (6), makes that keyblade rather strong, but not severely overpowered. It's stronger than, but not actually double the strength of, a keyblade with a 3. Many of these power factors are close to each other.
• Similarly, keyblades add their own power factor to your magic, when equipped. A magic rating of 3 means that there is no change. A 2 makes your magic slightly weaker, while a 1 makes it moderately weaker. Higher numbers result in slight increases, just as with the physical power factors.
• Almost all keyblades have an ability. These abilities are generally weak, but usually of some small benefit. By and large, they are support abilities. Sometimes, a keyblade will have more than one ability, or it may have a negative ability to counteract its superior stats. Keyblade-granted abilities are almost entirely battle-oriented and rarely capable of any more than minor utility usage, though there are exceptions. An example of such an ability would be Defender: When the wielder is in critical health (<10% of MAXHE or critically wounded in tissue damage), increase the wielder's DEF and RES.
• All keyblades have an effect that makes attack combos to enemies stronger as they go on: In a combo, the second attack receives a laughable power boost, then the third gets a bit more, the fourth a bit more, and so on until the combo ends. The total difference is almost entirely negligible. For the most part, one won't see a real difference in a battle unless one relies almost entirely on wielding a keyblade and stringing combos together well throughout a battle. Fortunately, one can use magic to sustain a combo, and some abilities strengthen this addition (such as “Combo Boost,” granted by the Decisive Pumpkin keyblade, which only applies to the "finisher" attacks at the end of a combo in-game, but we don't have such classifications here, thus the whole "each successive hit" deal).
• All keyblades and keychains are totally indestructible. Knocking a keyblade out of a wielder's hand results in the keyblade shining away, turning back into just the keychain, then the keychain just lying there. To recover the keychain is to recover the keyblade. Someone else can only take the keychain from you if the keyblade is not present. If the keyblade is present, the keychain is irreversibly stuck to the bow (key handle) and can not be removed by any means. If the keyblade is given to or taken by another, it teleports back into your hand. The only way that a keyblade may be transferred is by transferal of the keychain when the keyblade is not in play.
• Keyblades can potentially block physical, metaphysical, and magical attacks. Only attacks that are explicitly unblockable can not be blocked by keyblades. Given their designs, this makes it apparent that they are quite capable when it comes to blocking, though not excessively so.

[Noah Ivaldi]

I keep forgetting to mention this: Keyblades can also be pointed at a lock and focused upon to generate a small orb of light that shoots forth like an arrow to unlock or lock things. Although this magical procedure can work on plenty of enchanted and normal locks, it is far from an omnipotent skeleton key feature, and, in fact, isn't even highly advanced. Basically, if you can't open it with a normal key or a somewhat magical one, a keyblade won't do much better.

[Dycedarg]

Skallagrim of Youtube made this video, so I was reminded of other properties that I should specify.


Because velocity is not a determinant of exerted force by Houcm physics (and likewise in many Other Universes) and most chars are exceedingly strong, weight isn't as crucial as it is in real life. I haven't explicitly decided whether we should establish a singular weight that all keyblades are assumed to have on Houcm or just leave it up to whatever people write for their designs, the latter of which is how we'd normally do things, but the problem is that most of us use others' designs, and others don't tend to say a word about weight, so it adds an extra step of us always having to remember to come up with our own decision for them. It's not a big deal in either case, so I'm just going to put that thought in your minds and let opinions trickle in.

The guard is the main issue. As for the fact that it throws the weapon off alignment, yeah. That's just inevitable for chars with traditional anatomies. Hey, wield a keyblade with two tentacles in place of your arm! Well, anyway, there isn't much of an explicit "fix" to this for chars with more common anatomies, but keyblades tend to have increased power factors (as compared to other good weaps) that compensate for the would-be reduced damage. The main problem with alignment is, as Skallagrim demonstrated, a deflection factor: The weapon is naturally inclined to deflect by simple measure of having force exerted on it in a direction that is adverse to its alignment when one end encounters resistance from the impact. Thankfully, this is solved with a property that I mentioned before . . . but, evidently, forgot to put here . . . >_>
Keyblades have an impact-phase property. That is, upon striking a target, they phase through the target to maintain momentum while also exerting the appropriate force of the initial hit. Simply put, they behave like most weapons in a majority of video games (including KH, so this really shouldn't be a foreign concept . . .): You see them hit, but they keep going as though they cut through air, not flesh, yet the opponent only gets a cut as though flesh resistance did apply to the weapon. Things seem to be normal, except that the weapon loses no force and can even go through multiple enemies with no waterfall damage, which really seems like you're getting force (and thus energy) "copied" for no cost, about as close to true creation as we'll ever come, but it's easier on the mind if you remember that Seinvocc has different physics and this is simply a dimensional property by which a singular force is existent in multiple locations. This is a property among plenty of weapons, and all keyblades have it.

The other guard-related issue is the possibility of an enemy taking advantage of the guard position and inflicting a strike that would cripple one's hand, as Skallagrim depicted. Just by nature of context, this is not a terrible flaw here because our increased strength gives us increased grip, reducing the amount of force that an enemy can put into this spin, and our increased defense makes an indirect and angled strike like that become rather insignificant. Yes, it's technically a viable attack method against keyblades, one that experienced or reasonably intelligent chars will figure out/remember and do well to implement, because it combines some wielding disruption with some damage. It's just not a particularly glaring flaw, as it would be to normal people. It's still a bit of a downside, but, then, there's no such thing as a perfect weapon, and keyblades do come with a rather impressive set of pros to balance out such a con, so they do end up being rather practical, in this setting.

Since we use fanmade keyblades, too, we're likely to find designs that actually employ single-sided guards, knuckle guards, like more real swords, or designs with illusory guards . . . or whatever else. Such keyblades would lack basically all of the flaws that make them impractical in comparison to real swords in real life. About all that's left is, of course, aerodynamics, but, then, that's an awfully nice trade-off for great physical and magical power, abilities, and whatnot.