Would Melchior Make a Cool Party Member in a Chrono Trigger fan game?

[Mr Bekkler]

Maybe he looks better when holding a bottle of alcohol.

Doesn't anyone? Haha.

Got 666 EXP.
Got Beer Goggles

[FaustWolf]

What? Playable Toma...?

>.>
<.<

No playable Toma from a future Compendium project. Nope, nope, nope. Never gonna happen.

>.>
<.<

Anyway, with respect to Melchior, after seeing him in Crimson Echoes and Prophet's Guile, I view him as a possible former military man. He's kind of like Yoda. A sage who advises the party, but he can pull out a serious can of whoopass in a cool fight scene. Not to mention he can hold his liquor.

[Dark Serge]

Maybe he looks better when holding a bottle of alcohol.

Doesn't anyone? Haha.

Got 666 EXP.
Got Beer Goggles

Wow, I just noticed he has a striking resemblance to King Kai.

Aside that, no, I don't think he'd make for a cool party member. He hates fighting and violence, and I never understood why he became a blacksmith with those kind of feelings. It's like a videogame producer that hates people who play videogames.

[ONSLAUGHT]

Maybe that's where his fighting comes into play. He wasn't always an old man y'know sonny?

EH in my day you young whippersnappers I remember Melchior runnin' round! Swingin' his sword and blowing up all kindsa stuff!
Real fun!
MELCHIOR TRIGGER, varmins!

[V_Translanka]

Well, Melchior isn't entirely against violence...He sees the possibility in the weapons for both good & evil.

But I also thought alt art Magus colors (aka Gold Pants, Red Cape, etc Magus) and maybe Living Statue Magus (Magus made to look like his statue come to life) would be cool...

Magus with the red cape is easy (see attached).  Gold pants are a lot tougher--the highlight colour on his pants is used in his hair an awful lot, so staying within the colour constraints is proving more difficult.  If people are genuinely interested, I can keep working on it, though.

The red cape in that doesn't seem like the red of his red cape in the art (though I guess your example was made by simply replacing one color or w/e and wasn't meant to be finished even just the cape), but still kind of neat...oh, and I think the other part of the alt would be making his hair purple...But yeah, gold seems like the hardest part...I think to do it properly you'd have to use different colors than his sprites allow...

[alfadorredux]

The red cape in that doesn't seem like the red of his red cape in the art (though I guess your example was made by simply replacing one color or w/e and wasn't meant to be finished even just the cape), but still kind of neat...oh, and I think the other part of the alt would be making his hair purple...But yeah, gold seems like the hardest part...I think to do it properly you'd have to use different colors than his sprites allow...

It was a little more than a straight colour swap...but not much more, I admit.

Part of the problem is that I didn't edit the cape shadow, I think--it's used extensively for shadowing in other parts of the sprite, so converting it will involve a lot of tedious pixel editing (the black from the shadow underneath the sprite is probably a reasonable substitution in those cases, it's just that the original artists didn't always use it).  Nor did I sample the colours from the relevant official art, which I probably should have done.  I'll start a thread over in Kajar Labs for a more serious crack at this, I think, so as not to clutter up this one with stuff that doesn't really belong.

[Mr Bekkler]

I like the SuperMagus sig. 

This seems more like a PM...
                         ~V_Translanka


Edit: It really should be but the colorized Magus was the center of conversation so I thought I'd slip that in. Sorry! Won't happen again.

[Chrono'99]

Just to get the thread back on topic, what do you guys think Melchior's Element would be?

Note that in Prophet's Guile he actually had one, if you paid close attention to his "battle" moves...

[FaustWolf]

Element in terms of Chrono Trigger? I'd guess...wind/light? Based on that swirly thingy he shot at Magus at one point in Prophet's Guile.

[V_Translanka]

I thought pretty much every Zealian would be Shadow...He'd have access to all of them...

[Mr Bekkler]

I could really see him as fire, though. If you think, three gurus, three magic types. Belthasar could be water, and Gaspar could be Sky or Light or whatever you'd like to call it.

Reasoning:

Melchior gets trapped in ice on Mt. Woe, which may mean he's not able to defend himself against it as well. Also, he forges weapons, and you need a lot of heat to do that, but I saw no anvil or hammer or anything to indicate he could make a weapon without magic.

Belthasar just seems so knowledgable about the icy Death Peak.

Gaspar lives on a platform that floats to nowhere from nowhere in the middle of the air at the end of time. With a light. It's a shaky connection at best.

Edit: Also, I'll point out Belthasar's writing "All life begins and ends with Nu" and the fact that the localized names are those of the three kings of the nativity story. In most religions, all life begins and ends with water. Another shaky Belthasar to water connection.

[Chrono'99]

Lol, I guess he could really be anything. I made him Sky/Green in PG based on Mune's "I wanna be the wind" quote, Masa&Mune's wind-based attacks, and his creation of a Seed of Life. It's all just interpretation though. The developers probably didn't have an official Element for him (let alone a Dragonian color).

[alfadorredux]

I always thought Melchior might be Water--it would make sense for the Guru of "Life" to have healing powers.

[V_Translanka]

Crono has the Life spell though...Shadow still makes the most sense to me. All of these allusions still hold true even with Shadow. Wasn't that what the Zealian was talking about when referring to Crono & Co.'s Magic being archaic (I forget the actual wording)...? Since Magus isn't in your party at that time you don't have an innate Shadow in your party...

[Zephira]

Young Woman: Your powers differ from ours... In you I sense a strange aura of... kindness.
Retranslation: Young Woman: Hm? Your power would seem to have a slightly different feel to it than that of we People of the Light. What could it be......? I sense a mysterious kindness.

different Young Woman: My, you've got an unusual aura! So, you must possess the skill, too! It must be very primitive compared to ours! You poor things!
Retranslation: Oh my, you have a peculiar “spirit”. I suppose you can use the arts as well? But they would seem to be quite primitive arts compared to ours. Ho, ho.

I always thought the 'different feel' meant the powers Spekkio gave Crono Crew was different from what native Zealians posessed. The woman refers to the Enlighted Ones as "People of the Light", that could mean that most Zealians are light/sky innates.

There's another woman who says "the Prophet's aura is full of hatred and sorrow", I think that's the defining point for Shadow innates. With all things considered, I think that Melchior would be a Light innate.