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Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)

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Erebeal said:
I don't know what you'd read this as if not a support art:
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I read it as Gan Guangli's armour special ability. We know Han Jian's armour has a different ability than ours, and the mention of Gan's armour makes me think it's its doing, rather than an art of GG. It would also mean that he actually used his armour's ability, rather than got taken out without using it.
 
yrsillar said:
A silent command sent the qi reserved in the worms surging, and they struck as one, a hissing carpet of writhing flesh… and Ji Rong missed a step, his bare foot sliding a few centimeters too far, right into the waiting grasp of one of the half dozen worms assaulting him. The hissing beast coiled around his leg in an instant, and for a single second, her opponent was held still. Grasping roots seized his other ankle.
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That is probably not the most dignified way to lose
 
wingstrike96 said:
That is probably not the most dignified way to lose
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I do like that losing to Ling Qi is very...equalizing. Like, for cultivators weaker than her, it's the sort of terror that a normal person would go through out in untamed woods. You're lost, powerless, your qi is drained away and you're left a normal human, to fall prey to the monsters lurking around you. It's an interesting facet of her build, and not one that seems to have been intentional.
 
adaer said:
I do like that losing to Ling Qi is very...equalizing. Like, for cultivators weaker than her, it's the sort of terror that a normal person would go through out in untamed woods. You're lost, powerless, your qi is drained away and you're left a normal human, to fall prey to the monsters lurking around you. It's an interesting facet of her build, and not one that seems to have been intentional.
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yeah, we rarely damage since we dont use archery anymore.

We just drain the qi and leave them for dead.


Kinda like the perfect recipie for that villain who will inevitably leave behind that one hero who survives through grit and hardheadedness and then comes back after a redemption arc to overpower the Evil Darkness Maiden living atop a Xuanwu's shell filled with burning forests.
 
So, the interesting part to me of this GG discussion is in what he does about it next year.

Actually, it doubles down on something that got mentioned before (by me, IIRC, possibly others). Getting kicked back down to the Outer Sect for a year may well have been *good* for GG. It means that he's not immediately adjacent to CRX, and therefore isn't holding himself back for her. It means that he has to stand as his own leader, and pick arts accordingly, rather than expecting to leech off of hers.

We can't really expect him to pull off "managing an Empire" as well as CRX did, or even as well as Sun Liling did, but he's likely to come out of this with both a significantly improved personal setup (acquiring and developing a spirit of his own, cultivating up a bit more, domain improvements. adding a good leader art or two) and with a fresh group of subordinate cultivators who are ready to get recruited in to the duchy in various appropriate places.

In particular, he's well-placed to pick up a lot of the kids of relatively wealthy commoners who were brought in under family funds. In general, they'll be local to the duchy, and they won't have what it takes to make it to the Inner Sect. They'll be looking for someone to help them figure out how to survive the sect itself, and for options about where they can go once their time in the inner sect is done. The newly motivated GG standing out there with a great big grin and an "I'm from the Cai, and I'm here to help" sign starts being pretty compelling... especially after they get horribly oppressed after First Thunderdome. After all, GG's budget from the Cai isn't going to be amazing, but it'll be enough to do things like pay for medical care for recently-beaten red cultivators so they don't lose a bunch of cultivation time... especially if we let him have the pill furnace for the year, in exchange for favors to be named later.

Admittedly, if we loan him the pill furnace on top of everything else, that's going to increase the pressure on him to excel... but I kind of think that GG is going to be the sort to thrive under pressure. He *wants* to have difficult things demanded of him. The trick for CRX in the future is going to be refusing to ask things of him that will break him, but the outer sect isn't going to be enough to do that.
 
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adaer said:
I do like that losing to Ling Qi is very...equalizing. Like, for cultivators weaker than her, it's the sort of terror that a normal person would go through out in untamed woods. You're lost, powerless, your qi is drained away and you're left a normal human, to fall prey to the monsters lurking around you. It's an interesting facet of her build, and not one that seems to have been intentional.
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I mean, just look at how all the normal outer sect students view her:
-Argent Peak Outer Disciples: oooo
-Fearful Respect
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To most of them, Ling Qi is not someone you want to have angry at you because as far as they're concerned there's no real way to stop her unless you're a Ducal Scion. Just look at what options are available:

- You can't swarm Ling Qi with a horde of lesser cultivators because a lot of her build is dedicated to those kind of anti-army battles. Send a group of Yellows after her and she'll just chew them up and steal all their qi.

- Buying expensive pay to win items doesn't seem to work either. Remember that one noble in the preliminary matches who paid through the nose for a talisman specifically to counter her? Even after overloading his talisman he didn't even manage to slow her down

- Turtle up in a safe location? This is the girl who snuck her way into Sun Liling's fortress - a fortress that had defenses specifically made to counter her sneakiness

- Go full facepuncher and try to blitz her out before she can set up her techniques? As Ji Rong just found out, she's significantly more tanky than you'd expect

Aside from that, her weird build makes it exceedingly frustrating to deal with because she can (among other things):

- fly away (this alone is pretty bullshit for a newbie Green cultivator)

- drop down a Death Zone of Doom that fucks over anyone without strong spiritual defenses (and bear in mind that hardly anyone has great spiritual defenses at the yellow/early green level)

- gobble up her opponent's qi to give herself ridiculous levels of sustain

- teleport through shadows

- summon cheap minions to fight by her side

- buff up said minions (or any other allies) significantly to the point that even mook worms can cause trouble for a Green fighter

- snipe people from afar with her bow (though she hardly ever uses it anymore)

- sing and dance people to death

- and has recently revealed the ability to make herself tough enough to facetank an alpha strike from a dedicated facepuncher

All in all, while she lacks the up front DPS of a cultivator using a more standard facepuncher build, Ling Qi's build gives her so many options that she's just a real pain in the ass to fight unless you've got a significant cultivation level advantage.

For most of the ordinary Outer Sect Disciples, trying to fight Ling Qi would be like trying to fight someone like Cai Renxiang or Sun Liling or Bai Meizhen - barring some truly exceptional circumstances, there's just no way for a standard Red or Yellow cultivator to win against someone like that.
 
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Arkeus said:
I was planning to make a PM to Yrs about it but then thought "what the hell am I doing I shouldn't be an asshole pushing my anxiety to micro manage him about it". But yeah, this is the fight I expected to use it, which is a pity.
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This, plus the other mentioned tactical missteps, is probably the narrative manifestation of Ling Qi's low War score.
 
So, post mortem of the fight. It seems extremely likely at this point that we have gone full narrative and the mechanics have all been thrown away.

Ji Rong seems to be a fighter that does very high damage flurries in his first few turns before the enemy has set up his defences, then switch to extreme damage single hit when the enemy has. He uses his domain weapon to make sure he can make the transition smoothly, and there seems to be a hint that he needs to set up his buff before the extreme damage single hints can be done, like us with Travellers End, if his tactic against both GG and us is any indication.

Ling Qi now seems to be in a position where she has mutually exclusive arts. Maybe I am misreading this, and it would be nice to have @yrsillar's confirmation, but it appears SCS and TRF are mutually exclusive, as are FZ and AC. The latter already had a weird moment when we Ambushed Ji Rong and we only used EW, but now we only used PC when the plan explicitely called for EW. The former seems to be because the fluff and defensive action choices seems to show SCS can't be used with TRF anymore.

Furthermore, after a few turns things seem to get more and more complicated with all the arts and tricks the hodgepodge that is Ling Qi has, and so we can assume half of our assumed tricks can't be used if they are for the end of the fight simply because it goes against narrative flow (Flower Pin, Rumbling Squall, Thunderous Retort, SEA, etc).

Here is the known action break down:
  1. Turn 1
    1. Ji Rong attack with flurry; TRD response. Hits us once, miss us once.
    2. FVM + Dissonance
    3. Zhengui: Ashfall, unknown what else
  2. Turn 2
    1. Ji Rong attacks us and Zhengui; DWV response, we take damage and Armour is mentioned to blunt some of it, possible debuff but no mention of Sixiang doing anything
    2. Zhengui attempts attack (what else?), Ji Rong dodges
    3. Worms + HRA
  3. Turn 3
    1. Ji Rong attacks, we get bruising; response unknown
    2. Gui Spearing roots + Worms attack (misses) (Ling Qi lower initiative than Zhengui/Worms so they don't benefit from PC???)
    3. More worms + PC
    4. Ji Rong response? Lightning nova (knock back, doesn't kill worms)
    5. Zhen Boiling Shot (lands)
  4. Turn 4?
    1. Ji Rong attacks us, solid hit; response unknown
    2. HC (+ presumably SEA), messes him up
    3. Ji Rong uses domain weapon to restore qi
    4. Worms and Zhengui do nothing
  5. Turn 5?
    1. Ji Rong hits again (broken bone); response unknown
    2. FVM refresh
    3. Worms are annoying Ji Rong
    4. Zhengui spectate
  6. Turn 6?
    1. Big worm attack, worm grabs, Gui lands woodland grasp
    2. IPF
    3. Ji Rong counter? kills worm
  7. Turn 7?
    1. Ji Rong ranged attack, failed perception test
    2. LW
As can be shown here, it's fairly clear it goes fully narrative early on (no responses after the first couple turns, multiple turns of Zhengui skipped, etc), which makes for a more interesting fight. Moreover, it probably completely discard the mechanics for the get go. In turn 2 we are taking damage, but it's mentioned our armour is somewhat effective, and we have DWV and TRD up. This means that if the mechanics existed Ji Rong's flurry would either be pure Perfect damage, or give +4 bonus perfect damage as a minimum. Likewise, Turn 3/4/5 Ji Rong does his extreme damage single hits on us, and actually goes through our defences. Even if we dismiss the dice, and we assume SCS cannot be used anymore with TRF, and we assume that his single hit has +2AP compared to his flurry (following FSA and FSS trends), Ji Rong would need a minimum of 6 perfect damage to ruffle Ling Qi's robe. If we actually can use SCS and AS with TRF, he might need up 8 perfect damage to do that. Likewise, even with only TRF we should have effective p.def of 51, and if we can use SCS/AS effective P.def of 62. Assuming we have never been healed by Zhengui, that is.

Given he actually hit us every single round, it seems much more plausible to assume that the narrative decided things got out of hand and Ling Qi should not, in fact, have higher dice than Ji Rong's attack from turn 3 on, and shouldn't need 8 bonus perfect damage to do anything to her.

As an aside, it seems like Ji Rong actually doesn't benefit from speccing in initiative. Or, rather, he benefits like everyone else, and not like someone who needs initiative, as his strategy isn't "I really need that one big hit early on or I lost" at all.
 
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I did roll things out, but when it came time to actually write the fight, I remixed and cut to make things actually flow well as a scene while maintaining the general outline of the outcomes. As I have said before, trying to write a scene that one for one includes every mechanical detail really just doesn;t work for me, it kills the flow of the scene and makes everything come across as clunky and stilted.
 
MobiusC said:
This, plus the other mentioned tactical missteps, is probably the narrative manifestation of Ling Qi's low War score.
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War is more about group combat. Personal combat is a different beast, or else her war score would constantly increase instead of only increasing while hanging around Han Jian. Personally, I think it's down to the fact that Ling Qi has never actually fought with the outlined strategy. Like, it's very much not in keeping with her usual M.O. which can best be described as 'dodge and play support until the opposition runs out of energy or dies from a thousand cuts.'

Perfection isn't something achieved in an afternoon. It takes a lot of hard work, and a lot of mistakes to get there. That SV can optimize her pill usage and training has some narrative excuse in that she's a street rat who is used to stretching her resources so as to maximize the value of what others would toss into the trash. That there's no waste can be reflected in her own background.

Combat-wise though... she's supposed to be an utter beginner and in many ways still is. Before coming to the sect, the most glorious feat of battle prowess she'd managed was pretty much hitting someone and then running away. And if you look at how she's fought, she is very used to doing the cultivator equivalent. She's run at least three opponents off cliffs (or into wells) has ambushed or struck first multiple times (thunder crow shaman, thunderdome redux, Ji Rong capture mission, probably a few I'm forgetting), and has fled battle without a moment's hesitation at least four times (after infiltrating yan Renshu's base, getting discovered at Sun Liling's fortress, from Sun Liling herself, and after Yan Renshu hit the self-destruct button - ok, that last one was just good sense). When she isn't doing those things she's playing FVM.

This... worm strategy is coming entirely out of left field for everyone and that includes Ling Qi. She's never used anything even close to it in live combat ever. That it went as well as it did is a testament to how effective it was.

Edit: Well, that will teach me to type type type while Yrs is around. :V
 
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yrsillar said:
I did roll things out, but when it came time to actually write the fight, I remixed and cut to make things actually flow well as a scene while maintaining the general outline of the outcomes. As I have said before, trying to write a scene that one for one includes every mechanical detail really just doesn;t work for me, it kills the flow of the scene and makes everything come across as clunky and stilted.
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Ah so we did sort of follow the plan and it wasn't because our war score screwed us.
Might I ask was the double worms effective? I'm not good at mechanics, so if the reason for that was obvious I apologize.
 
yrsillar said:
makes everything come across as clunky and stilted.
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That's why I keep having only vague time markers in my "...stealth?" series.

As long as it all ends up the same and is a good fight scene, I don't care much.

Also, am I right in saying that Ji Rong is a combo-focused boxing style fighter that never quite managed to land his full combos?
 
victor janus said:
Ah so we did sort of follow the plan and it wasn't because our war score screwed us.
Might I ask was the double worms effective? I'm not good at mechanics, so if the reason for that was obvious I apologize.
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Double worms meant double the multiattacker penalty, which was the only reason his defense got as low as it did.

Hangwind said:
That's why I keep having only vague time markers in my "...stealth?" series.

As long as it all ends up the same and is a good fight scene, I don't care much.

Also, am I right in saying that Ji Rong is a combo-focused boxing style fighter that never quite managed to land his full combos?
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Kind of? part of it was just fluff since obviously he has no reason to stop swinging once he's in your face, but his techs do have an element of giving fairly potent single turn debuffs to set up for the next strike.
 
yrsillar said:
Double worms meant double the multiattacker penalty, which was the only reason his defense got as low as it did.



Kind of? part of it was just fluff since obviously he has no reason to stop swinging once he's in your face, but his techs do have an element of giving fairly potent single turn debuffs to set up for the next strike.
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Oh I thought those didn't apply when fighting someone a color above you. Hmm that makes me a little more hopeful about the sun fight.
 
FixerUpper said:
Combat-wise though... she's supposed to be an utter beginner and in many ways still is. Before coming to the sect, the most glorious feat of battle prowess she'd managed was pretty much hitting someone and then running away. And if you look at how she's fought, she is very used to doing the cultivator equivalent. She's run at least three opponents off cliffs (or into wells) has ambushed or struck first multiple times (thunder crow shaman, thunderdome redux, Ji Rong capture mission, probably a few I'm forgetting), and has fled battle without a moment's hesitation at least four times (after infiltrating yan Renshu's base, getting discovered at Sun Liling's fortress, from Sun Liling herself, and after Yan Renshu hit the self-destruct button - ok, that last one was just good sense). When she isn't doing those things she's playing FVM.

This... worm strategy is coming entirely out of left field for everyone and that includes Ling Qi. She's never used anything even close to it in live combat ever. That it went as well as it did is a testament to how effective it was.
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In training she has used that tactic against Meizhen quite a lot, and in live combat she has used a similar tactic when ambushing Ji Rong.

When it comes to live combat with possibly deadly consequences, since coming to the sect, Ling Qi has:
  1. Fought in ambush in the fort in zhou's test
  2. Fought in ambush against well boy
  3. Pushed off a cliff a golem
  4. fought face to face with Huang Da
  5. Fought with Hong Lin while supporting Xiulan
  6. Fought with Meizhen against a group
  7. Fought against a worm head on
  8. Fought with Meizhen against a large group of bats
  9. Played Tag with Hanyi
  10. Escaped from wolves
  11. Fought in thunderdom redux against Liling and Kang Zihao and mooks
  12. Fought against spirits in investigation
  13. Fought against Shaman in investigation
  14. Fought against Chu Song's group
  15. Running battle against Renshu's group
  16. Fought against Hungry Giant with Xiulan
  17. Fought against team of 3 barbarians with Xiulan
  18. Fought against Yan Renshu's puppets after stealing his book while with Xiulan
  19. Fought against Liling
  20. Fought against plant monster with GF
  21. Fought against Ji Rong when ambushing him
  22. Fought against Yan Renshu when ambushing him
Now, maybe your argument is "the worms are totally different from those", but I would argue that teaming up against an enemy is what the majority of those fights were. The worms are, actually, the substitute that fit perfectly well in most of her other fights. It is not a "this fight was different than the other", but rather a "keep on ganging up on a superior opponent with numbers and support arts" that we did in the majority of those fights.

This is exactly the kind of fight Ling Qi has been doing all year round.
Hangwind said:
It's a couple of colors IIRC. Greens can be swarmed by Reds, but Cyans are going to laugh them off.
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Yellow can be swarmed by reds, green will laugh at them.
 
Arkeus said:
Basically, yes.

Gan Guangli seems to have a thing where he doesn't want to step on CRX' toes. Ling Qi noted on how he wasn't trying to break through until CRX herself had completely broken through, and I could see his refusal to get leadership arts or teach the people he trained how to work as a squad was because he felt that it was overstepping his duties toward CRX in the former and asking too much of his soldiers in the latter.

The problem with this is that, well, he put himself into the role as their leaders, and that's the role CRX sold him as to both her mother and the public, and that's the role other people in the years saw him as. He didn't see himself that way, but everyone else did, and what came out was that he was given a set up to make his public speciality shine, and failed.
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That...is both completely pants on head retarded and yet utterly fitting and logical from his PoV that it seems likely that you're right.

adaer said:
I do like that losing to Ling Qi is very...equalizing. Like, for cultivators weaker than her, it's the sort of terror that a normal person would go through out in untamed woods. You're lost, powerless, your qi is drained away and you're left a normal human, to fall prey to the monsters lurking around you. It's an interesting facet of her build, and not one that seems to have been intentional.
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Its an interesting juxtaposition with her Domain, since it focuses on how its all safe and warm and protected in her heart....and outside is utter hell.
PrimalShadow said:
How would more Qi have helped him? By the end of the fight he was debuffed, grappled, and swarmed with enemies, and it's not like that would have changed if he had more Qi.
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He had serious pacing issues judging by the tempo of the fight, and he was very clearly unable to spare the qi to clear away the mook obstacles after the initial facepunch failed, which led to him getting tarpitted when he could theoretically oneshot all the worms one at a time, but would have nothing left to win the fight with.
 
yrsillar said:
Double worms meant double the multiattacker penalty, which was the only reason his defense got as low as it did.
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Mmmh... Double worm means at most -4 for the last worm. Encircling Wind means +5 to everyone, including Ling Qi, and +5-8 bonus damage for Zhengui and the last couple worms.
 
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Arkeus said:
Yellow can be swarmed by reds, green will laugh at them.
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Do note however that Greens can be swarmed by Yellows and Cyans by Greens. A White, in theory, would go down to a coordinated strike by Prisms, which is pretty much the basis for the Imperial state not being dominated by powerful loners, since everyone wants their own minions to keep everyone else's minions off.
 
Arkeus said:
In training she has used that tactic against Meizhen quite a lot, and in live combat she has used a similar tactic when ambushing Ji Rong.

When it comes to live combat with possibly deadly consequences, since coming to the sect, Ling Qi has:
  1. Fought in ambush in the fort in zhou's test
  2. Fought in ambush against well boy
  3. Pushed off a cliff a golem
  4. fought face to face with Huang Da
  5. Fought with Hong Lin while supporting Xiulan
  6. Fought with Meizhen against a group
  7. Fought against a worm head on
  8. Fought with Meizhen against a large group of bats
  9. Played Tag with Hanyi
  10. Escaped from wolves
  11. Fought in thunderdom redux against Liling and Kang Zihao and mooks
  12. Fought against spirits in investigation
  13. Fought against Shaman in investigation
  14. Fought against Chu Song's group
  15. Running battle against Renshu's group
  16. Fought against Hungry Giant with Xiulan
  17. Fought against team of 3 barbarians with Xiulan
  18. Fought against Yan Renshu's puppets after stealing his book while with Xiulan
  19. Fought against Liling
  20. Fought against plant monster with GF
  21. Fought against Ji Rong when ambushing him
  22. Fought against Yan Renshu when ambushing him
Now, maybe your argument is "the worms are totally different from those", but I would argue that teaming up against an enemy is what the majority of those fights were. The worms are, actually, the substitute that fit perfectly well in most of her other fights. It is not a "this fight was different than the other", but rather a "keep on ganging up on a superior opponent with numbers and support arts" that we did in the majority of those fights.

This is exactly the kind of fight Ling Qi has been doing all year round.
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Yeeeeeah, I'm not getting into you on this particular topic. I just wanted to present an IC defense of Ling Qi's actions so that we don't get into another round of 'make yrsillar go back to editing what was in all honesty a really good fight,' and yrs already did that by revealing that he rolled things out and then rearranged them so that the fight could read better. Hence my edit which was a 'welp, this post was pretty useless'. :V
 
victor janus said:
Oh I thought those didn't apply when fighting someone a color above you. Hmm that makes me a little more hopeful about the sun fight.
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He's the same rank in Green as we are. And for the worms thing, the multi-attacker penalty is two realms.

E: at least it should be, its been a while since I had to think about that.
Adhoc vote count started by BungieONI on Aug 27, 2018 at 11:15 AM, finished with 373 posts and 127 votes.
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