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Well, as I promised, I am going to allow the participants still in the tournament to show their characters progressing by allowing them to LEVEL UP! That means you get a +3 to all your stats, a few additional increases to your HP and MP, and you may learn a new ability if you're the right level. How awesome is that?!

Actually, it doesn't work quite like that. What happens here is that each person is allowed to add one of the following to their character: a new item, a new ability, enhancing a present item, enhancing a present ability, or enhancing some physical aspect of the character.

A New Item - Your character can bring in another piece of equipment for their character. Be it a new sword, rubber gloves for fighting those electrical characters, or anything else that your character will like to bring into these later rounds. However, new items usually are not POWERFUL in magic if you give it a magical enhancement, which is the downside of bringing in new items instead of using current items. However, the upside is that you can add more versatility or specialization to your character's arsenal. Realize that this new item must also keep to the rules of the tournament, meaning no guns, explosives, etc. In addition, if you want to bring in a piece of armor for your character, make sure it covers only one major part of the body (torso, legs, arms, or head or a variant of this), and that your character does not already have two pieces of armor on their body already. You can still add armor regardless, just know that your character can only walk into a fight with up to two pieces of armor.

A New Ability - This option allows your character to learn a new ability, such as a mage finally learning how to cast Blizzard after reaching a certain level. However, unlike in an rpg where the mage is instantly a master with it, having a new ability means that the character isn't "a master" of it, and will mainly mean they'll be using it on its most basic level. Or, it's powerful, but it's very very hard to control, which can backfire on the character themselves. For example, if that mage learned the Blizzard spell here, they can use it as an ice spell, but they won't be able to use it in more creative, freeforming ways such as allowing it to create a star-shape out of ice (unless that's its basic description already). The rule of thumb here is: the new ability adds to the character's arsenal of skills.

However, do not take this as having a new ability that is simply a new use of an already pre-existing power. For example, if you are a psychic user who finds a new way to use their psychic power to do something different, it'll be best if you use the "Enhance Current Ability" option instead.

Enhancing Current Item - This is for those who want to take a present item of theirs, such as a sword or anything else, and give it an enhancement. This could be from making it magical, to giving it a new ability, or a variant of this. Making it physically stronger, giving it a shape change, it's your choice. Now, when it comes to "allowing a sword to spawn fire along its blade," this isn't an excuse to use fire as your main weapon. It allows you to put a burning edge on your slashes, but it doesn't mean you can now throw fireballs. In addition, this power up usually isn't directly manipulative, such as a fire user using that fire as a source. Though that is applicable, he shouldn't be pooling fire from the sword infinitely nor at a fast rate.

In summary, if you're going to make your weapon magical, know that it isn't the same as giving a "new ability."

Enhancing Current Ability - This option will allow a character to take one ability that their character possesses, and give it some upgrade, be it power upgrade, speed upgrade, a new special effect, whatever you wish to do. This doesn't mean that your fireball can now become a "SUPER KAMEHAMEHA FIREBALL", but you can make it close to that. However, remember that with upgrades like this, it usually comes with an increase in cost if it does scale up in power. As long as the upgrade is "reasonable," it will be accepted.

Direct Character Upgrade - This is an option that will be better for those people with no powers. Mainly, it allows a person to add either a physical or mental increase to their character, such as an increase in muscle, increase in leg speed, increase in reflexes, or whatever you believe will help show the character's enhancement. Even an "overall" body increase performance can work, though the benefits will be distributed across the body. However, know that if you're trying to add a magical or technological enhancement, such as a new robotic eye, this goes under the "New Item" option instead.

Additional Details

If you give your character an upgrade, make sure you supply a brief explanation to "why" the character is getting this upgrade, either intentional or if it was developed throughout their experience in the tournament thus far. This will add to the story part of both your character and this tournament instead of giving the impression that your character was just magically given this new feature.

Your upgrade will be proposed in this thread. If there's something that won't be liked about it, you will be informed of what you need to change in order to make it a reasonable upgrade for balance reasons.

Anyone who wants this upgrade has until Sunday, August 23, 11:59 PM Central to get their proposals in this thread. If you miss this deadline, you will not be able to upgrade your character until after the next round, assuming you make it past the next round. For everyone else, this is your only upgrade period for the time being, and there won't be another one until probably the Semi Finals or Finals period.

Enhancing Current Ability -

Metabreath feature: Animation

Using The metabreath feature of animation, the dragon's breath weapon can then be manipulated after release to move in a different direction. Say someone whips around the breath weapon to the right, the dragon's left, the animation feature could then be locked in and send the breath weapon whipping to the right.

However, it only gets one initial direction change, and it taxes the breath weapon usage time even more. Adds four turns to breath weapon usage timer.

Why this upgrade?

Metabreath features are something that a dragon works on; tying magical abilities in with the magical properties of their natural breath weapons. Vince had learned of this as a young wyrmling, and had studied it ever since he was only 200 years old. He now wishes to put it to the test, having honed it for years.

A New Ability- Merge

By combining the energies of multiple weapons, Jurie can Forge two weapons into a new, stronger weapon. This new weapon will take all of the offense and defense points added from her mastery ability and add them together to create the new total. The rules of mastery still apply and six is still the cap for the combined weapons.

However, this skill has a 50% chance to simply "glue" the weapons together rather than creating a new one. While the attribute change still applies, the creation could quite possibly become.... unwieldy.

Why acquire this upgrade?

Jurie, by trade, is a blacksmith ((albeit a rather odd one)) and is constantly developing new techniques to create items and weapons. However creating these items during battle can be a taxing process if done repeatedly, a partial reason why she restricts herself on creations during battle. So with a bit of innovation and creative thinking our young heroine decided to do a bit of testing to further conserve her power during battle.

Countless hours were wasted away within the confines of the smithy, her new nirvana away from the busy streets and bustling society she is so unaccustomed to. And with a bit of communing with the workers inside they were able to come up with theories and ideas which spawned the creation you see before you now.

Though a few rather.... "hapless" creations have been spurred from the moments, about half the time a progress result was actually made through all this testing. Sadly round four was right around the corner and the blacksmith simply didn't have time to perfect her art just yet.

Needless to say... a bit of fine tuning was still needed... But the time for that would just have to wait. As she approached the new arena Jurie could only cross her fingers and hope for the best, as this new technique could either make or break her new approach in strategy.

Enhancing Current Ability-
Musical Enhancement- Charge

Saphen will be granted one charge that can not be replenished for the entire match. The bard preps before battle by infusing his body with a dormant energy that remains inside of him until activated.

Once activated the bard will instantly switch battle modes with out the requirement of charging. This means that the post the bard uses this ability he may use abilities from that mode. An example of this would be switching to mage mode and defending himself with a small earth wall.

Why this upgrade?

The core feature of being a bard is buffing and is what sets him apart from most combatants. After vigorous training the musician has managed to slightly increase his ability to do so by making an 'on the fly' power boost. While this will be reserved for either dire situations or a clever way to increase his offensive abilities, it will only increase his ability to come up with plans to defeat his opponent.

@Swagga Hopper: What does this incense do?

@Striker Nightmare: Approved.

@Tenkai Matsumoto: Approved.

@Linik: Approved.

@Link: Approved.

@Saphen: Approved.

@Damon: Sharpness can only get so "sharp". It is because of the lack of weight that usually acts as a counter balance to weapons being sharp: for example, a katana may be sharp, but it doesn't have the sharpness to hack through metal like a claymore can (since it has weight behind its blows). Therefore, you have three attributes to consider, especially since this is a psychic weapon: weight (of the body), sharpness, and fragility. Normally, fragility doesn't apply to metaphysical abilities, but realize that Damon is "concentrating" just to keep psychic energy in place. And so the lower the fragility, the easier it is for his weapon to be canceled after taking a body blow or hitting something hard itself. For that, he'll need to chose two attributes to focus on, making the third weak, distribute evenly throughout all three, or specialize in one to dwindle down the other two.

Enhancing Current Item


What?

Ben's buckler. A button has been added to the top of his shield's single handle and a circular device liken to that of those on his gauntlets has been placed on a section of the rim on the buckler's back that would normally sit near his elbow when the buckler was held parallel with his arm. The spike on its front as also been removed.

The button when pressed ejects a hidden section of metal from within the buckler which rapidly expands to an outer ring, which effectively doubles the area of protection by bringing the defense's diameter to a total of 2ft from its previous length of 1ft 2in. This also activates the raised ring of the inside of rim, which creates a magnetic field to hold the bulkier shield to Ben's gauntlet for the extra stability needed to wield the bigger shield properly. The removal of the recently added spike was simply in interests of weight since it was never used anyway.

The downside of this upgrade being an addition of more weight, as even with the work done to hollow out some of the interior of the shield the extra plates still made the overall weight rise. Not to the point that he would be encumbered by carrying the defense but rather it will be harder to swing this bad boy around on its handle as he tends to do from time to time. Horizontal to vertical transfers are gonna take more time and concentration than ever before.

Why?

It is no secret that Ben lacks the ability to do well in ranged affairs, relying mostly on his buckler to ward attacks while he tries to move in close. But with its small size, eventually something was going to get through or he was going to get worn out by the effort of swing it from side to side. Now with the option of forgoing ease of mobility for a bigger badder shield, he can more effectively make the approach to close without fear of being battered back or worn out before he can do damage in his comfort zone. An ability that would have aided him greatly against Omi, as even if he was wearing his buckler that day the snakes would have been too large to effectively block.

Direct Character Upgrade

Payoff

A phenomenal increase in muscle mass (strength) and reflexes, at the cost of dexterity.

Reason

Esouna trains. Sometimes it's a lot, sometimes not too much, but whatever the case, it's done to better herself. Before the tournament, Esouna was unable to speak English, therefore without a job and on a starvation diet. Still, she tried to improve her body, but failed. Finally, with enough nourishment, everything caught up with her--reflexes are lightning-fast now, and newly-augmented muscles are like hydraulic pistons. The latter lowers her agility with the extra mass, however.