- Location
- Laniakea
Let me preface this by saying, I applaud all the time and effort it must've taken to compile this whole log. 👍
That said, I feel like I need to point out that the obstacles we've encountered until now (and in turn, all the actions and rolls we needed to get past them) are not going to be reflective of those in the future. In fact, I know that if I was the QM, I'd definitely be going out of my way to make the obstacles different, precisely to keep things interesting so we wouldn't be able to just repeat a successful plan from before, as that would be boring.
Not to mention, our capacity to use Write-Ins and Stunts also allows us to change to an extent which stat combo we use to tackle a particular problem.
The default approach to closing the rift back during the Saaya episode may have been Stamina + Occult + Illusion - but if the proposed voteplan to try and directly close the rift had actually won instead of the one to just fight the demons, it would have used Charisma + Integrity + Empathy instead. Because it was stunted back then to take an approach using those stats, in order to maximize the dice pool (and was confirmed it would have used those stats if it won).
In theory (and I stress "theory"), if one were to assume that we players were both innovative enough and had enough leeway from the QM that our write-ins or stunts could potentially allow any stat combo to be used when attempting things, our "best buy" would always be to buy another dot in our highest-ranked stat in one of the 3 stat categories (Attribute, Ability or Skill), choosing whichever of the 3 category top-rankers are the cheapest to buy another dot in.
As this is what would be needed to increase our theoretical "absolute maximum best-case" dice pool.
Right now, our best stats are Charisma for Attributes, tied Integrity and Presence for Abilities and Telekinesis for Psionic Skills. So the absolute best stat combination we could ever use would be Charisma + Integrity or Presence + TK, giving us 9 dice. There's no way to get more than this, without pumping up either Charisma, Integrity, Presence or Telekinesis. So one of those 4 would be our "best buy" and the cheapest would be Integrity or Presence, since the training time is only 2 weeks vs 3 weeks for TK and 4 months for Charisma (disregarding that "2 weeks" for Integrity will stretch longer in practice due to limited daily training hours).
Of course, it is highly unlikely we'd be able to somehow stunt every action ever to use the highest stats in each category (though the odds can be increased if we make sure our highest stat for a category is something versatile, that can be used for many situations, like Illusion) and was not the rationale behind why we chose to level Integrity.
We just need Integrity, because it turns out simply using Psionics and SOS stat boosts (and now Overgrowth) can cause damage to the mind/soul even without external forces trying to mind crush Amu and the former sees frequent usage, thereby making Integrity too crucial not to beef up.
So far, it's the only identifiable exception of its kind confirmed to be that heavily used.
The only other stat I think -might- be anywhere near as crucial may be Dreamwalking. From what these recent chapters indicate, without ranks in Dreamwalking, traversing through cognitive areas (at least ones like this filled with fog) will quickly incapacitate people. Depending on how much of the quest takes place in "Dreamlands" and whether adjacent dimensions like Road of Stars/Sea of Souls and Makai/wherever demons come from and the Wyld from Exalted are treated similarly to Dreamlands, we might need those Dreamwalking levels just to walk around places without collapsing. Ontop of that, we basically got given confirmation that any mind healing that would require regrowing cognitive matter (and/or "soul surgery") will require Dreamwalking, as Illusion cannot make the stuff by itself.
Of course, that's still a big "might" contingent on how often we come across those places or need to perform soul surgery.
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