Weapon guidelines

Many, many kinds of weapons are permitted in this RP, though there are some restrictions on their availability and use, plus some kinds of weapons that are disallowed completely. Read on to learn more.

Guns

Guns are allowed, but not always the best fit for a Sonic RP such as this one. While we downplay their effectiveness somewhat, they are still deadly weapons, and so they tend to change the landscape of combat in the story immensely. Basically, what would otherwise be a story about a bunch of high-flying superpowered characters duking it out with their unique abilities becomes a (sometimes excessively) realistic gunbattle. And while certain original characters do work better in more realistic situations, and realistic situations themselves are sometimes a fresh change, we must remain firmly grounded in the understanding that this is an RP about Sonic the Hedgehog. Go ahead, click the link — look at the guy. He's a grinning blue hedgehog who runs at the speed of sound! While the series has its dark and edgy moments, even officially, it's otherwise pretty bright and fun, and that's an attitude we want to maintain at least half the time. Get the idea?

So, that said, here are some things you should do.

• Make sure a gun is a good fit for your character. Firearm usage should fit thematically into the character's role and styling, and not be an afterthought.
• Consider alternatives. Energy weapons are allowed, and their somewhat more forgiving and vague effects often make them more welcome and less reviled by your fellow players who want a less "guns-and-blood-and-guts-and-gore" Sonic RP experience.
• Don't expect realistic lethality. Our characters generally aren't bulletproof here, but we do use "gamey" logic for character injury. See the injury article for more information.
• Don't try for realistic lethality. Not without a good reason. It's generally frowned upon to go around trying to kill player characters willy-nilly without a really good reason.
• Don't expect to be reliably accurate. This is a Sonic RP, so even characters who aren't implicitly speed-oriented are often still very fast, small targets. Even the best shooters would have a hard time reacting and drawing a bead on targets moving so quickly in what are often ridiculously chaotic, over-the-top circumstances. And if your character goes guns-akimbo, expect this to apply even more.
• Understand that guns are very rare in our story, rarer even than in the games. As of Chapter 4, a successful world takeover by Dr. Eggman resulted in the seizure and destruction of virtually all firearms.
• Don't use a "sniper rifle" without a good thematic reason and a lot of discretion in how you intend to use it. Really, this applies to any high-power rifle, but video-gaming culture has romanticized the so-called sniper rifle and made it a relatively popular choice for fancharacters across all kinds of fandoms. Owing to the fact that most people do not want to see the hard work they put into designing and developing their characters destroyed in an instant by some random guy with a big gun half a mile away, plot shields will probably prevent you from ever successfully using such a weapon against anything but NPCs.

As far as the comments on usage against other characters go, they really mostly apply to player characters. NPCs by their very nature are usually quite disposable, much like extras in a war movie or random baddies in a video game. If your character is the type who wouldn't go around killing people, but has plenty of reasons to try to fill robots with holes, a gun might be a reasonably appropriate choice that won't raise the dander of your fellow RPers.

Swords

Just don't.

Really.

... If you really must, though, be aware that this is one of the most stereotypical and overused things you can slap onto a Sonic fancharacter, and that your character will come under far more scrutiny in the review process simply because of it. You'd best have a very good, very compelling reason to equip a "serious" character (that is, not a gag character) with a sword.

Suffice to say that if your character is an average-looking guy in a T-shirt and jeans with a katana strapped across his back, you're on the wrong path. The same applies if it looks like a Naruto character or a Final Fantasy character in Sonic form.

Unique weapons from other series

Under no circumstance should you equip your character with a weapon that is exclusive to another video game, movie, TV series, or anything of the sort. This means...

No...

• Lightsabers
• Vibro-blades
• Keyblades
• "Buster swords" or "masamune" (ala Final Fantasy)
• Anything else immediately and obviously exclusively identifiable with another property!

Magical, enchanted, or cursed weapons

No.

Sci-fi energy weapons

Definitely allowed and heavily-employed, given that this is a Sonic RP. Be mindful in how you depict and use them, though.

First off, let's make this clear: Everyone has a different idea of how energy weapons should behave. Some people think every brightly-colored beam is instant death for his or her character (or others' characters), while some others think "laser" is another word for "Expensive Nerf Gun." So, here are some rules:

• Make your character's energy weapon have a reasonably logical power source and be reasonably sized.
• Use moderation. If it's an instant-kill weapon, we probably won't allow it.
• Don't mix up the different kinds of energy weapons. "Laser" is not universal.

Here's some basic information on a few types of energy weapons you can expect to encounter or potentially use:

Name	"Shot" Appearance	Effects	Strengths	Weaknesses	Other Details
Chaos Blast	Varies in shape and color, usually slower moving	Impact and repulsion; may have some explosive power	Technology easy to miniaturize; some individuals don't need a weapon to fire chaos blasts; incapacitating, but typically non-lethal	More lethal to robots than living things; reliable power sources like Chaos Drives may be hard to come by; rings may deplete too quickly	100% fictional “energy blast” in its most generic and inoffensive form.
Laser	Straight line-like ray, instantly appearing from weapon to target at the speed of light	Extreme burning power; may “cut” in sustained fire	Perfectly accurate; cannot be dodged if the user's aim is true because of the speed of light; extreme range in outer space	Needs powerful (and thus usually sizable) capacitors; needs good cooling system; requires charge-up time before firing (for RP fairness); does not work well in rain, fog, smoke, or any other low-visibility conditions; “blooms” and loses effectiveness at range; fragile components	Lasers are basically dangerously intense beams of light.
Particle Beam	Typical “energy beam” in outer space; erratic bolt in-atmosphere	Kinetic energy transfer so rapid and immense that the target superheats and explodes	Utterly destructive; powerful electromagnetic fields can do great damage to electronics even with a near miss	Cannot be effectively miniaturized; large-scale weapon requiring immense power source	Though the Eclipse Cannon is often referred to as a laser, it may more accurately be an example of a particle beam cannon.
Plasma Bolt	Streaking, energized ball, blob, or toroid	Mechanical and thermal shock (“boom”); electrocution; burns; disruption/destruction of electronics	Useful for disabling both living and mechanical/electronic targets; some plasma weapons have slight homing abilities	Needs powerful (and thus usually sizable) capacitors; needs good cooling system for rapid fire; effective range somewhat limited	Think of the weapon on Tails' and Eggman's vehicles in Sonic Adventure 2, or Gamma's gun in Sonic Adventure.