"All rounder sword fighter. Has a lot of medium ranged threat but excels at nothing. Can quickly adapt with its large array of follows and counters."
This is without contest the vanilla balanced sword character. Even if its stats leans more toward mobility and flexibility, it is not as frail as a specialist. The Ballpen can quickly repeat high damage attacks and adapts its pace with the opponent. However it needs some anticipation to properly follow the combos, and may miss opportunities. Back-Heavy can punish standby, and the last thrust of Side-Side-Side helps positioning for a next attack. Many of its single attacks and incomplete combos can be spammed to quickly wear down the opponent, or punish recoveries without putting itself in danger ; for example Neutral, Up-Back, Side-Neutral-Neutral-Neutral.
Quirks
☼ Very balanced sword fighter
☼ Alternates between frontal and backward attacks
☼ Fast and wide swings
☼ Can hit with the handle to stun at short range
Strengths
☼ Good offense output
☼ Easy to handle
☼ Easy to hit and combo
☼ Pursuit and counter
☼ Good coverage
Weaknesses
☼ Reduced array of support attacks, especially stun
☼ Its combo breaker are short ranged : Down-Down-Down, Neutral-Down
☼ Mediocre passive defense, especially guard
► Gets average with the Red stance with +2 strength, +1 weight and life
☼ Low to no control
☼ Has a tendency to dive, which can be punished
The bluepen is more often used and being the main character, but the blackpen was intended to be the most balanced in terms of fighting abilities, so the base stance takes black, and blue is the first stance. The death animation sound uses a heavy walking stick dropped on the ground recorded with an old microphone, originally for another FlameofChange game called On se tape (avec) des barres. The slash sounds were tricky to make, because it must sound like flesh cuts without metal tint. Later versions used layered duct tape sounds to get closer, but still not completely of FlameofChange taste. The older stats were
Strength 2 ☼☼
Agility 3 ☼☼☼
Speed 2 ☼☼
Weight 1 ☼
Stamina 1 ☼
Life 0
Cut 4 ☼☼☼☼
Pierce 3 ☼☼☼
Blunt 2 ☼☼
Reach 2 ☼☼
Difficulty 1 ☼
☼ It was intended to be the light sword fighter, in contrast of heavier ones like Scissors
☼ Held in the other side, using the cap as a blade end, it made a kind of axe
► While this idea could make the weapon much more diverse, it is a bit awkward out of context to hold a sword by its blade
► That is why it is kept for the fountain pen
☼ This is in practice the first item which FlameofChange played around in first grade, when the school gave hist first supplies
☼ The different colors inspired FlameofChange in the super-sentai / knight order vibe of the item, making them main characters
► Creating combination of pen caps accentuated the phenomenon, making halberds or even double side polearms
☼ Bic Crystal was also considered and handled by FlameofChange during his school life, but has multiple drawbacks
► The cap has a triangular shape and is shorter, making the sword handle less comfortable
► The cap also has a tendency to go off
► It has a better fluff as a long axe, spear or halberd
► A bit more fragile than Raynolds
☼ The large supply of this item, even with different colors, can easily fix losses
☼ The icon shows a white cap, which is an oversight
☼ The round handle makes it a bit harder to hit with the right edge, but since it's a unidirectional sword it only bothers the direction of the finger guard
☼ Blackpen is known to be very intelligent in the lore, but intelligence doesn't have gameplay impact so it is not reflected in the stats. If it was the case, it would be in the top 3 intelligence
