Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)

Alectai said:

I'm Not.

Because standing right in front of her and trying to damage race her is playing her game.

She doesn't have perfect knowledge of her surroundings at all time for heaven's sake. The whole point of my plan is to attempt to get distance so we can set up when we're not trying to damage race a cruise missile.

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It's playing both her and Ling Qi's game. We are good in a direct conflict like that. We are not in trying to run away while staying safe. We have no understanding on how good she is at perception, so gambling on something we are at mediocre at to be better than something we are good at is, imho, a bad idea. Especially when the endgame is still the same as you do engage her later.

I prefer thinking that Ling Qi's speciality is better than hers and pitting our strength against each others, rather than assuming our hobby is good enough to beat unknown defences and ability of hers, especially as doing so doesn't actually give us anything special.

PrimalShadow said:

I think the sticking point here is personal loyalty.

Yes, CRX could probably bank on her prestige to pick up some Cyan retainers, and then rely on their skills over ours; certainly we wouldn't be able to compare as far as raw capability goes given the cultivation gap. HOWEVER, said retainers wouldn't be directly loyal to CRX, and CRX's position in the relationship means it would would be tricky to build said loyalty. In contrast, she is in a position to make a direct and meaningful impact on our lives, and persevere against adversity together with us - both of which build loyalty.

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She's in a position to make a direct and meaningful impact on a bunch of Cyan or higher Cultivator's lives. Indeed, given how White Rooms are more valuable and higher tier spirit stones are more expensive, she has significantly more to other a Cyan or higher level Cultivator than she had to off a Green. This is true for multiple grades upwards, from what I can see.

Loyalty can be based on more than personal power. CRX also has immense social power and influence that she can deploy on her retainer's behalf, as well as the hope of future advancement. She's also almost certain to go through shared adversity of various different kinds with all te retainers she recruits. Her mother will ensure it.

There's no reason that, say, a Cyan (or higher) genius of the inner sect couldn't be converted by CRX's vision or charisma, or that she won't win over some officers in the Cai's armies tonher side while she's serving on the frontier. If she can't, then she's probably unfit to be the heir anyway. This is the kind of challenge that Shenhua seems very likely to give her, to force her to win the direct loyalty of those with greater personal power.

One year's acquaintance at the age of fourteen is not sufficient to permanently exclude all other retainers in future. Permanently locking in your companions for all of te next thousand years based on that is very implausible. Very few regular humans with life spans a tenth as long make their best/only friends and employees at age fourteen.

Alectai said:

Huh, I guess we've been playing a dream all this time then, that she was attacking us constantly and we never got a moment's rest.

Rather then what actually seems to have happened which is "Sun Liling knew roughly where we were thanks to her blood tracking, but she had to call Dhatri to smoke us out, and couldn't pinpoint our exact position once we broke contact after surviving the dance"

But according to you, that never actually happened, she was meleeing us constantly until we were pounded into submission because she was always right on top of us, and the efforts to gain stealth were futile.

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According to me, she lost track and found us again in the first couple turns, then attacked us, then lost track due to Fu Xiang buffing us, then we teleported away due to teleport from Fu Xiang, then she caught up just as we got to safety thanks to Zeqing.

She was constantly catching up to us and we could never distance her, and it was other people who provided the crucial help to make us safe.

[x] Set up and Stick in
-[x] The terrain is neutral, but you can mold it into your favor. While setting up the mists, avoid melee defensively as best you can. Once the mists stick, release Zhengui and together turn the area into a frozen ashy mire, while setting up defenses for the both of you. If Chu Song has a strong dispel, do like Heizui and use it to wear her down, but if she fails work towards Traveler's End. Do not get sucked into a flying sword or spirit beast duel, it's best to keep all three targets where they can be engaged together, as that is where Zhengui and your Singing Mist Blade both excel. Elegy can be used to isolate instead of distance. Fight around Zhengui so he can disrupt them, and if they take their attention off of you, slam an opponent hard. If Chu Song escapes or tries a skirmish strategy, don't waste energy chasing, but try to mislead her and get her stuck in again - unlike Shen Hu you have the advantage that she must engage you to win.

Alratan said:

She's in a position to make a direct and meaningful impact on a bunch of Cyan or higher Cultivator's lives. Indeed, given how White Rooms are more valuable and higher tier spirit stones are more expensive, she has significantly more to other a Cyan or higher level Cultivator than she had to off a Green. This is true for multiple grades upwards, from what I can see.

Loyalty can be based on more than personal power. CRX also has immense social power and influence that she can deploy on her retainer's behalf, as well as the hope of future advancement. She's also almost certain to go through shared adversity of various different kinds with all te retainers she recruits. Her mother will ensure it.

There's no reason that, say, a Cyan (or higher) genius of the inner sect couldn't be converted by CRX's vision or charisma, or that she won't win over some officers in the Cai's armies tonher side while she's serving on the frontier. If she can't, then she's probably unfit to be the heir anyway. This is the kind of challenge that Shenhua seems very likely to give her, to force her to win the direct loyalty of those with greater personal power.

One year's acquaintance at the age of fourteen is not sufficient to permanently exclude all other retainers in future. Permanently locking in your companions for all of te next thousand years based on that is very implausible. Very few regular humans with life spans a tenth as long Male their best/only friends and employees at age fourteen.

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You're basically assuming that Shenhua will just hand Renxiang the tools she needs to win everything forever, which flies in the face of all of her characterization so far--which is to say, "If you want something, you'd best earn it, because you're not getting a dime more from me than you've bought with your performance."

Shenhua doesn't want Renxiang to pay to win to solve her problems, she wants her to have the capacity to solve her problems before she gets the resources to make it trivial. It's for that reason that Renxiang isn't likely to just 'Discard us', because we are the assets she uses to solve the problems she gets.

She couldn't deploy the White Room proactively to buy people's support. She got it as a reward for making a Ducal Heiress who actually was doing Pay to Win to eat crow and publically submit, and she used that reward to secure the support of her allies, which encourages people to do this again.

And even then, she didn't get unlimited access, she got one of the temporary White Rooms for a few months, and no doubt it'll be gone later.

Alectai said:

So, we never actually escaped from Sun Liling on that mountain I guess?

Well, news to me.

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Lol. We didn't escape sun. Fu Xiang talisman saved our hide.

Alectai said:

'm Not.

Because standing right in front of her and trying to damage race her is playing her game.

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Good thing that isn't in anyone plan but yours then ? You are the only one arguing to close the distance with ows backstab.

Alectai said:

She doesn't have perfect knowledge of her surroundings at all time for heaven's sake. The whole point of my plan is to attempt to get distance so we can set up when we're not trying to damage race a cruise missile.

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Why. We start at one hundred meters. She will need two turn to cross that. We would already pretty far in fvm especially if we retreat giving us three turns.

Alectai said:

So, we never actually escaped from Sun Liling on that mountain I guess?

Well, news to me.

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And did we ever hit back or offensively buff or drop FVM again in that runaway?

That is the effect of ceding and spending actions on stealth. It delays real, winning offensive action in favor of a keep away loop.

However I do believe we will win the perception checks and am perfectly fine with a disengagement strategy. At least one that doesn't spend critical first turn actions doing nothing. KISS, drop a big FVM cloud and run away. IMO this would likey be just as successful in breaking engagement and actually does something useful too. Note that's how we broke SLL initially as well.

uiopion said:

And did we ever hit back or offensively buff or drop FVM again in that runaway?

That is the effect of ceding and spending actions on stealth. It delays real, winning offensive action in favor of a keep away loop.

I'm perfectly fine with a disengagement strategy that doesn't spend critical first turn actions doing nothing.

KISS, drop a big FVM cloud and run away. IMO this would likey be just as successful in breaking engagement and actually does something useful too. Note that's how we broke SLL initially as well.

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Except... Stealth isn't doing nothing.

It's disengaging and forcing her to spend her own actions tracking us down or cede the initative to us, which we can then flip to set up the full FVM suite unopposed if she decides to concede.

I just don't get why this is in doubt? Especially since we know the number one weakness of Music cultivators are when they're getting set up, which is exactly the period she can use to close with us. (I have little doubt a dedicated Wind/Thunder facepuncher can threaten a target around a hundred yards away, and she only needs to interrupt us on the second round where she actually definitely reaches us and we have to start the FVM cycle fresh, if she has some ability to stop us from playing for even a moment)

Yeah, if she can interrupt the stealth attempt, that doesn't work--but that's a problem no matter what, because FVM getting interupted is a hell of a lot worse than just not being able to teleport into a shadow and vanish, because it means we've wasted a turn doing set up that we need to start from scratch.

Alectai said:

Except... Stealth isn't doing nothing.

It's disengaging and forcing her to spend her own actions tracking us down or cede the initative to us, which we can then flip to set up the full FVM suite unopposed if she decides to concede.

I just don't get why this is in doubt? Especially since we know the number one weakness of Music cultivators are when they're getting set up, which is exactly the period she can use to close with us. (I have little doubt a dedicated Wind/Thunder facepuncher can threaten a target around a hundred yards away, and she only needs to interrupt us on the second round where she actually definitely reaches us and we have to start the FVM cycle fresh, if she has some ability to stop us from playing for even a moment)

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We fought lilling and meizhen solo without ever stopping our melody and yet chu is the one that would succeed to do so.

This is ridiculous fear mongering.

[X] Alectai

archangis said:

We fought lilling and meizhen solo without ever stopping our melody and yet chu is the one that would succeed to do so.

This is ridiculous fear mongering.

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Are you kidding? Liling wrecked our Melody, we didn't have time to play it after the first round because she was in our face until we ran away and broke contact.

Meizhen just dispels our melody directly because she's overpowered too, and that's how she responds to it.

It just occurred to me that part of the reason both CRX, and Jiao were frowning is that the flow of the conversation implies the Sect Head, Cai, and Bai have reached an arrangement of sorts. That is to say in the absence of increased* support from the Imperial Throne the sect head has decided to ditch the unofficial policy by the Sun of not allowing the Bai any inroads into places that'll allow them opportunities to gain influence, and as a direct result will receive increased funding from Bai scions being sent to the Argent Sect alongside everyone heavily invested in suppressing the Bai to do the same, which creates a sufficient demand for the "limited" number of slots for new outer sect students to justify a increase in the price of attendance.

This neatly explains why Shenhua allowed the brackets to be arranged in a manner that insured all of the Sun aligned students would make it into the inner sect where Sect rules forbids them from interfering with outer sect students, and the Han being set up for failure is a tiny bit a result of an unexpected outcome that made one of the Sun members fail, but mostly a consequence of generous trade deals made with the Han by the Cai/Bai insure Han Jian's support of GG alongside any new Bai in the outer sect. This support is crucial as the nobles houses from Golden Fields have been sending their promising scions to the Argent Sect for generations, and the Guo will almost certainly want in on this mutually beneficial relationship for the opportunities it'll permit them in acquiring the means to expedite the reclamation of their province.

For the record if my theory is even remotely correct CRX is currently screaming internally as her status as heir to the Cai is riding upon her ability to acquire enough influence in the Argent Sect to make this work while simultaneously obeying official sect rules, tip toeing around the cultural expectations of those who attend the sect, and actually making enough time to continue her personal cultivation.

*Kang being given a pass is in part an attempt to produce a good crop of Imperial Royal Guards through him, and further increase the amount of funding the Sect receives from the Imperial Throne. The reason the Sect Head is so desperate for resources/funding is that he needs them to reach white tier, and he appears to have been unable to acquire it through the traditional means available to a Great Sect to acquire them despite being an Imperial hero.

archangis said:

Lol. We didn't escape sun. Fu Xiang talisman saved our hide.

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Spoiled for size.

Three out of four our stealth beat Liling's perception with and without outside assistance. If it weren't for Fu Xiang Dhartri would have known where we went, but seeing as how at that point we had gotten to Snow Mom's we would have been safe. So it's safe to say our stealth is good I feel, even with Liling using her blood tracking arts. We can assume Chu Song doesn't have that level of tracking, because she didn't grow up in a hell jungle where keeping track of your prey was so important.

Alectai said:

It's disengaging and forcing her to spend her own actions tracking us down or cede the initative to us, which we can then flip to set up the full FVM suite unopposed if she decides to concede.

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And the equivalent keep away actions on our side are free I suppose? "Keep away loop"

Look, we win that battle in the end. But it is not free.

And again, turn 1 doing OWS is stupid. Spend the time doing something useful like dropping a 300m fog (100+200) that CS needs to break is far superior.

uiopion said:

And the equivalent keep away actions on our side are free I suppose? "Keep away loop"

Look, we win that battle in the end. But starting turn 1 doing OWS is stupid. Spend the time doing something useful like dropping a 300m fog (100+200) that CS needs to break is far superior.

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No, but every keep away action we succeed at, we get a little further, and once we get to the point where we can get set up without her punching us in the throat or otherwise stopping us from setting up to Traveller's End, we can actually get our territory together and come down on her like the wrath of god.

The whole point of my plan is to deny her the chance to get in our way, rather than assume that she doesn't as an axiom.

Alectai said:

Are you kidding? Liling wrecked our Melody, we didn't have time to play it after the first round because she was in our face until we ran away and broke contact.

Meizhen just dispels our melody directly because she's overpowered too, and that's how she responds to it.

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Did we stop playing with Sun in our face maybe ? And if your argument is that she has ultra powerfull dispell, then we have already lost anyway so it doesn't matter.

archangis said:

Did we stop playing with Sun in our face maybe ? And if your argument is that she has ultra powerfull dispell, then we have already lost anyway so it doesn't matter.

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...

what.

You pointed out "Ling Qi kept doing this even in the face of them' I pointed out "No, not really, in hindsight, it wasn't actually helping compared to other things she was doing." How did that wrap around into me assuming our current opponent can match that specific ability?

She doesn't even need to be able to dispel, she just needs to stop us from playing for a moment, and the build up is stopped.

archangis said:

Did we stop playing with Sun in our face maybe ? And if your argument is that she has ultra powerfull dispell, then we have already lost anyway so it doesn't matter.

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She doesn't need a dispell. All she needs is some ability that forces us to stop playing for one, single, turn. And since she's a face puncher who wouldn't want us to get our ball rolling, it's safer to assume she has one and act acordingly.

Alectai said:

Except... Stealth isn't doing nothing.

It's disengaging and forcing her to spend her own actions tracking us down or cede the initative to us, which we can then flip to set up the full FVM suite unopposed if she decides to concede.

I just don't get why this is in doubt? Especially since we know the number one weakness of Music cultivators are when they're getting set up, which is exactly the period she can use to close with us. (I have little doubt a dedicated Wind/Thunder facepuncher can threaten a target around a hundred yards away, and she only needs to interrupt us on the second round where she actually definitely reaches us and we have to start the FVM cycle fresh, if she has some ability to stop us from playing for even a moment)

Yeah, if she can interrupt the stealth attempt, that doesn't work--but that's a problem no matter what, because FVM getting interupted is a hell of a lot worse than just not being able to teleport into a shadow and vanish, because it means we've wasted a turn doing set up that we need to start from scratch.

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Stealth doesn't actually disengage as I pointed out repeatedly before.

Using Twilight Beauty drops a low light zone of 50 meter radius, since Chu Song isn't blind she will know where Ling Qi is. Even if Ling Qi runs away without using Twilight Beauty, using FVM drops a 40 meter radius fog in a bright sunny meadow which will let Chu Song know where Ling Qi is.

Ling Qi main attacks (FVM and FSS) are not stealth friendly, and the moment Ling Qi drops the fog Chu Song will simply move there and dispel/attack with buffs she casted while Ling Qi was busy running.

NotAlwaysFanfic said:

dice logs

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Sigh. You need to be looking at the base dice and not the outcomes. More or less 50/50 per check.

Rule question: Wasn't our flute capable of holding a music art for a turn without LQ currently playing? Would that help if she is forced to stop playing for a moment?

Alectai said:

You're basically assuming that Shenhua will just hand Renxiang the tools she needs to win everything forever, which flies in the face of all of her characterization so far--which is to say, "If you want something, you'd best earn it, because you're not getting a dime more from me than you've bought with your performance."

Shenhua doesn't want Renxiang to pay to win to solve her problems, she wants her to have the capacity to solve her problems before she gets the resources to make it trivial. It's for that reason that Renxiang isn't likely to just 'Discard us', because we are the assets she uses to solve the problems she gets.

She couldn't deploy the White Room proactively to buy people's support. She got it as a reward for making a Ducal Heiress who actually was doing Pay to Win to eat crow and publically submit, and she used that reward to secure the support of her allies, which encourages people to do this again.

And even then, she didn't get unlimited access, she got one of the temporary White Rooms for a few months, and no doubt it'll be gone later.

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No. I assume that when Shenhua has CRX play higher level games, she'll give CRX the basic resources required to compete, just as she did here, where she directly paid for Ling Qi's vassalhood with a flying gown, which is a Realm breaking advantage. Not enough to make it not challenging, but enough that she still gets to play the influence game. Otherwise she'd never learn how to properly deploy the assets available to a Ducal House. Even if she doesn't directly give resources for some reason, CRX can still trade on her name.

Effectively restricting someone that should live for a thousand years to only being able to recruit the people she happened to meet in the year she turned fourteen would be an absolutely crippling disadvantage as well, for the entirety of the rest of her life. Particularly as the other people in the outer sect wasn't something CRX could influence or control. In the artificial environment of the sect that made some form of sense as part of the constraints of the war game, but in the wider world CRX needs to be able to win the loyalty of a much wider range of people than the massive easy mode which was GG and Ling Qi.

The whole point is to get the distance so that when we go loud again, she can't reach us before we've amped up enough that FVM becomes self-sustaining. That's it.

I'm making a--fairly safe I think--assumption that she has an adequate response to our most iconic ability, which we've been told has the same weakness common to all Musical Arts in that if something can stop you from playing in the set up phase, that you have to start from scratch. She might have a response if we decide to stealth to gain distance on her. But if she doesn't have a response for FVM, then she doesn't deserve to even compete, let alone win.

And I don't like the idea of assuming a named character who's been foreshadowed, who could fight (If not beat) Meizhen with her murdersword six months ago, hasn't done her homework and can't do anything to stop us.

torac said:

Rule question: Wasn't our flute capable of holding a music art for a turn without LQ currently playing? Would that help if she is forced to stop playing for a moment?

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Explicitly not possible if we're stopped by enemy action.

Alratan said:

No. I assume that when Shenhua has CRX play higher level games, she'll give CRX the basic resources required to compete. Not enough to make it not challenging, but enough that she still gets to play the influence game. Otherwise she'd never learn how to properly deploy the assets available to a Ducal House. Even if she doesn't directly give resources for some reason, CRX can still trade on her name.

Restricting someone that should live for a thousand years to only being able to recruit the people she happened to meet in the year she turned fourteen would be an absolutely crippling disadvantage as well, for the entirety of the rest of her life. In the artificial environment of the sect that made some form of sense, but in the wider world CRX needs to be able to win the loyalty of a much wider range of people than the massive easy mode which was GG and Ling Qi.

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So what you're actually arguing then is that we won't be able to keep up in cultivation to be relevant as a retainer on this scale?

uiopion said:

Sigh. You need to be looking at the base dice and not the outcomes. More or less 50/50 per check.

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So someone who was above us, and thus could spec specifically for chase and pursuit without sacrificing damage, could only break even with us. Considering how we are much stronger now, and are facing a peer, I feel that just supports my argument.

Alectai said:

...

what.

You pointed out "Ling Qi kept doing this even in the face of them' I pointed out "No, not really, in hindsight, it wasn't actually helping compared to other things she was doing." How did that wrap around into me assuming our current opponent can match that specific ability?

She doesn't even need to be able to dispel, she just needs to stop us from playing for a moment, and the build up is stopped.

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NotAlwaysFanfic said:

She doesn't need a dispell. All she needs is some ability that forces us to stop playing for one, single, turn. And since she's a face puncher who wouldn't want us to get our ball rolling, it's safer to assume she has one and act acordingly.

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Ling Qi has Sixiang who ensure that taunt and other thing like that that would break our melody fail. Shen Hu is significantly better than Chu song and he didn't succeed at using some king of control ability.

It's pretty ridiculous to assume that she is better at spiritual than shen hu when she has never shown any kind of ability there.

NotAlwaysFanfic said:

Three out of four our stealth beat Liling's perception with and without outside assistance.

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Yes, we didn't escape sun as she was still rolling against us, forcing us to spend a massive amount of qi.

This si exactly what I was talking about. We are going to hemorage qi and actions and never ever hurt Chu, which will let us snatch defeat from the jaw of victory.