KaHavaVe🔌🐰

Yakone's families talent for bloodbending can be interpreted one of two ways (technically a third which makes more sense but it goes against a databook claim which I never like but a lot of people cling to databooks like a holy bible even when they're clearly wrong so I'll ignore it). Option one, they just have a genetic thing going on with them that lets them get away with bullshit. In this case, while powerful water benders, they more or less top out at master tier. Pakku level waterbenders who have a good trick that lets them get away with bullshit, but not truly generational powerhouses. Option two, they are just a family of generational powerhouses.

Under option 1, Katara handily beats their ass. Bloodbending can be broken with superior power, Katara is stronger. She wins 1v3.

Under option 2, Katara beats their ass with difficulty because her feats are typically higher than theirs. She wins 1v1. The reason she can't do daytime bloodbending is because she thinks its icky and has literally never done practiced it, but if she was put in a situation where she had to bloodbend herself to break it she could manage it.

That's fact. Either they have a trick which Katara can break, or they're powerful and Katara is just stronger.

You can absolutely do other animals and they have some advantages and disadvantages, but I think that Ravens are the best choice overall.

Domesticated animals - Dogs/cats, etc. Much lower lifespan than ravens and unless you turn them feral and just sort of hope that the bloodline continues (which you will be sabotaging with your lifespan theft) you'll have to take care of generations upon generations of short lived pets that you'll have to bury regularly.

Short lived wild animals - You could do this with ravens too, just set them wild once you're bonded to a couple families, but they lose the utility of familiars and are less stable. That being said, Ravens remain the ideal short lived choice for wild animals. I would also assume that there are benefits to keeping them nearby or keeping numbers low; otherwise your best choice would be to cast a very wide net and just bond to as many as possible until it would take an extinction level event to drop them.

Long lived wild animals - Crocodiles, aligators, elephants, etc. Main problem here is the vulnerability, since most animals that survive long periods in the wild tend to have lower rates of reproduction. Ravens can produce eggs very often in reasonable numbers provided food is sufficient.

Balance ideas if you're into that

Bonding requires individual connections; you may not have to become best friends with what you're bonding too, but you need to do something to each one.

Here's an excellent example because it shows how silly it is. In the Warhammer Fantasy novel Kinslayer, Felix Jaeger is stated to parry a lightning bolt while fighting a Dragon Ogre. Now, a normal person would assume that this is artistic license or that the lightning from a Dragon Ogre is not a 1:1 with real lightning.

A power scaler, however, would see that line and determine that Felix Jaeger's combat reaction speed is lightning level. And from that you can scale him to teen Kakashi (its not 100% clear when he cut the lightning, but its implied to be during the third Shinobi war so teen), so you can scale Felix Jaeger to be roughly elite Jonin.

Magh, God of the Crucible, Patron of Mercenaries

Magh is a transactional God, very harsh but fair and trustworthy in his dealings. He is one of the most active gods, venerated though not necessarily worshiped across the world. All cities and most settlements bear a shrine to him, and in that shrine one may speak with with an Angel of Magh in exchange for a minor blood sacrifice.

An Angel of Magh will offer two options; either a group of mercenaries in exchange for tribute or participation in the Crucible. Those who join the Crucible are whisked away to Maghs world where they await until a group of one thousand volunteers are collected. Once joined, they are subject to brutal training. There is no quitting. There is no washing out. Only the slow, gradual death of nine hundred over the course of their training.

Each death is a sacrifice to Magh, the soul of the prospect burned up. Seven tenths of the power goes to Magh, while the remaining three tenths is distributed amongst the survivors. Over the course of the training the intensity increases, to ensure a constant death rate; to facilitate this, food and water is provided in relation to how much of the training was completed; one who does not exercise may survive for a time, but they will quickly die of thirst.

Once there are only a hundred survivors, the deaths stop and they are put to an examination. Physical, mental, and tactical. The bottom ninety are conscripted into Maghs Hessians, his mercenary troops, for ninety nine years of service. The top ten, meanwhile, are given the choice to join as a volunteer with appropriate compensation or return to the world, empowered by the deaths of their fellows and wielding arms and armor forged by Maghs war smiths.

All graduates of the Crucible (whether former Hessians or those who refused the opportunity) remain connected to Magh, and if they die they are given the chance to enter into Magh's service for ninety nine years to avoid death. If they refuse, they enter the afterlife as normal.

The announcer ("the lord marshall") was absolutely into it. 100% the dude does ren fair stuff in his free time; he looked like he was having the time of life.

Dudes page is just a pile of loli porn.

Character creation; honestly a bit basic. Genuinely too basic to warrant sliders. It has the shell of a decent (not great but decent) character creator but too many options were pulled.

Gameplay; The overall gameplay is a pretty standard over the shoulder action oriented TPS. Nothing special but functional. It is pretty handholdy; you can't disable snap to aiming or the ability to press E to automatically shoot at explosives if enemies are near them. The latter is something you can just not do, but an option to turn off snap to aiming would have been nice; its not horrible, you do already have to be pretty close, but it does lower the skill floor while also punishing players who aim at the head and then ADS since like all aim assist it goes to the torso. This may be attached to the difficulty setting, I only tried it on the normal difficulty. It also feels like it wants to be a cover shooter but doesn't include a cover option. The takedown option is on a timer which I'm not 100% a fan of but it was clearly to solve the problem of takedown focused melee being weirdly efficient. I don't care for the animations being so long but that's a constant problem and hardly restricted to SR.

Tutorial mission; Not bad. Humor falls flat, its pretty generic, but the tutorial teaches you the things you need to know to play the game. The AI includes some automatic pathing to get them in the right spot at the right time and if you don't interrupt them they'll just run past you which is probably the funniest thing about it. The overall... not quality but lets say production varies through the mission; you have some spots with full, dedicated animations and others where it just plays voice lines while everyone idle poses and there's one scene where things move around a lot but your character stays rigid as a statue despite being in a turret in an out of control APC. It feels more like a mod or a fan project where you can clearly see the areas the creator cared about and which ones they decided "Eh, good enough". Even a low budget professional game should be more consistent than this.