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Dragon Ball: After the End

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ilbgar123 said:
How is magic not the best of the three powers again? You can boost it with Qi, so it steals most of the advantages of Qi, and it lets you spam conceptual effects. Most of the problems it has are also faced by the other two.
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Good question. There may be more information on the topic to which you aren't privy.

Or I left the obvious balance problem in and went, "Eh, fuck it. It'll hold."
 
[X] Take the vision (No check; next update contains a vision interlude before moving on with the day).

Because I'd like to avoid missing half of Bassoon's Update On Galactic News.

Pittauro said:
wait, can we overcharge our sight with Ki? could we do it by gathering some ki with the genkidama?
@PoptartProdigy

Even if we don't do it now it's something to consider for the future. A vision powered by a spirit saiyan with the strenght of multiple super saiyans might be enough to have a vision about the enemy maybe.
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This assumes that the issue with seeing the face of The Enemy is only an issue of raw power.

ilbgar123 said:
How is magic not the best of the three powers again? You can boost it with Qi, so it steals most of the advantages of Qi, and it lets you spam conceptual effects. Most of the problems it has are also faced by the other two.
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Presumably you can't make it do the same things that you can do with Ki. And while it's easy to write "spam conceptual effects", we don't have proof that doing so is more effective than a single larger, more complicated spell.

Plus, we've seen repeatedly that raw Ki can overpower Magic.
 
[X] Time to stress-test your new sight abilities: see how many visions in a row you can handle, and how long do you need before you can have more, starting with the one regarding Guru
 
[X] Take the vision (No check; next update contains a vision interlude before moving on with the day).

ilbgar123 said:
How is magic not the best of the three powers again? You can boost it with Qi, so it steals most of the advantages of Qi, and it lets you spam conceptual effects. Most of the problems it has are also faced by the other two.
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Magic takes time to, y'know, learn. Time spent learning magic is time spent not increasing or maintaining your Ki. Further, sufficient Ki can just flat out shatter magic.

Or, to word it differently: overall, Magic probably is the more potent option. It's just that Ki says "fuck that and fuck you", screams for an arc, and then breaks it.
 
[X] Time to stress-test your new sight abilities: see how many visions in a row you can handle, and how long do you need before you can have more, starting with the one regarding Guru
 
[x] Time to stress-test your new sight abilities: see how many visions in a row you can handle, and how long do you need before you can have more, starting with the one regarding Guru

ilbgar123 said:
How is magic not the best of the three powers again? You can boost it with Qi, so it steals most of the advantages of Qi, and it lets you spam conceptual effects. Most of the problems it has are also faced by the other two.
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Sight, used competently, gives you nigh-unlimited long range planning ability. Ki, used competently, gives you blur-fast reactions. Dandeer was only able to use magic to negate the advantages of ki because she had massive prep time and literally no one seriously suspected the full scope of what she had done, including us-the-players. By contrast, we could have trivialized all her preparations just by piling on more ki using a form we already had access to. We might well have been able to speed-blitz her as a ruthless character. Using the Sight personally might well have warned us about her magic and given us options to neutralize it, too.

Dandeer's big advantage was prep time and freedom from being interrupted by US making serious use of our 'top tier' abilities, the things that make us "not just the average [super]-saiyan warrior."
 
[X] Take the vision (No check; next update contains a vision interlude before moving on with the day).

We can test our abilities another day, I really don't want to miss the meeting. Additionally, we don't even know how long this vision will last, so trying to have another afterwards might not even be possible without missing the meeting.
 
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[X] Take the vision (No check; next update contains a vision interlude before moving on with the day).

Stress-testing our Sight is a good idea... but we currently have a meeting coming up that we want to pay attention for. Even if we don't actually miss the debriefing, who knows what kind of mental state we'll be in after visionquesting all morning? I'd prefer to wait until Bassoon is asleep again and we have nothing better to do.
 
[X] Time to stress-test your new sight abilities: see how many visions in a row you can handle, and how long do you need before you can have more, starting with the one regarding Guru
-[X] Take a break when it's time for the debriefing.
 
[X] Time to stress-test your new sight abilities: see how many visions in a row you can handle, and how long do you need before you can have more, starting with the one regarding Guru
-[X] Take a break when it's time for the debriefing.
 
[X] Time to stress-test your new sight abilities: see how many visions in a row you can handle, and how long do you need before you can have more, starting with the one regarding Guru
-[X] Take a break when it's time for the debriefing.

taking a break to listen makes sense. As long as we resume after that.

We REALLY need to know what our actual limits are.
 
[X] Take the vision (No check; next update contains a vision interlude before moving on with the day).
[X] Time to stress-test your new sight abilities: see how many visions in a row you can handle, and how long do you need before you can have more, starting with the one regarding Guru
-[X] Take a break when it's time for the debriefing.
 
ilbgar123 said:
How is magic not the best of the three powers again? You can boost it with Qi, so it steals most of the advantages of Qi, and it lets you spam conceptual effects. Most of the problems it has are also faced by the other two.
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Given that you're talking about Magic being boosted by Ki, you're not really saying "Magic > Ki or Sight", you're saying "Magic+Ki > Ki or Sight (or Ki + Sight)". Given that our Sight has been crippled for almost as long as we've had it and the obvious counterexample is Dandeer, an accredited genius in her discipline, it's not really a fair comparison. It might be better to look at Jaffur as our example of Magic + Ki - his magic wasn't crippled, but it was greatly lacking in tutelage. The only impressive thing we've really seen from Jaffur that wasn't countering Dandeer's magic was his bonus to Team Fighting between the two of us. A +50 to Team Fighting is pretty damn strong, but I don't think t outweighs the information-gathering aspects of the sight.

And of course, the fact that the Sight is the rarest doesn't necessarily make it the strongest. It's probably the hardest/least likely to be planned against, which is a definite advantage, but there's no rule that says it has to be straight-up stronger too.
 
Deathbybunnies said:
Given that you're talking about Magic being boosted by Ki, you're not really saying "Magic > Ki or Sight", you're saying "Magic+Ki > Ki or Sight (or Ki + Sight)". Given that our Sight has been crippled for almost as long as we've had it and the obvious counterexample is Dandeer, an accredited genius in her discipline, it's not really a fair comparison. It might be better to look at Jaffur as our example of Magic + Ki - his magic wasn't crippled, but it was greatly lacking in tutelage. The only impressive thing we've really seen from Jaffur that wasn't countering Dandeer's magic was his bonus to Team Fighting between the two of us. A +50 to Team Fighting is pretty damn strong, but I don't think t outweighs the information-gathering aspects of the sight.

And of course, the fact that the Sight is the rarest doesn't necessarily make it the strongest. It's probably the hardest/least likely to be planned against, which is a definite advantage, but there's no rule that says it has to be straight-up stronger too.
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The rarity is also, it should be noted, particular to Garenhuld Saiyans.

Not that I have specific reason to believe it's more common elsewhere, but my point is eg Namekians apparently have Magic pretty often and not Sight to all appearances. The specific one in twenty for magic and one in 100 for Sight is specific to the Exiles, not a universal, all species rate. It's entirely possible there's a species out there with 100% chance for sight and no magic ever.
 
[X] Take the vision (No check; next update contains a vision interlude before moving on with the day).

I rather not risk missing half of Bassoon's news report and tuning in just for the weather.
 
ilbgar123 said:
How is magic not the best of the three powers again? You can boost it with Qi, so it steals most of the advantages of Qi, and it lets you spam conceptual effects. Most of the problems it has are also faced by the other two.
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Click to shrink...
Honestly, this argument has been bugging me for a bit now.

It's a dishonest framing. As Deathbybunnies noted, you're calling magic being boostable by Ki an advantage of magic, and not one of Ki.

Like. Sorta by definition if you're going to say 'magic is the best, because I'm gonna assume the mage is an equally competent Ki fighter to the Ki fighter', you've made magic the best. But that is solely because you are treating it as free.

We know Dandeer had sub cap power levels. Not just at all, but significantly sub cap. Apparently, that's normal for Sorcerers, and in fact they tend to have sub-million power levels. They can do impressive things with prep time, but Ye 15m Power Level Generic Saiyan moves and thinks fifteen or more times faster than Ye Sub Million Mage, and is always at full readiness unless injured or sick.

The mage is prep time dependent.

Hell, look at the one prep time dependent ki move we have. Spirit Bomb. Also known as 'fuck that problem completely'. Dandeer with multiple Super Saiyans on her side would probably have been totally crushed had we done Spirit Saiyan, magic or no.

In fact, Dandeer with the backing of every mage on the planet would still probably have been completely crushed.

Ki gives a bunch of passive advantages that are Big Deals, including some that hard counter magic. Like, note that a big part of how Dandeer won was by first evening up the High End Ki User Count. Indeed, she grabbed the overall better half of the fighters.

That's not magic being bullshit. That's plain old Winning The Ki game.

The fact that magic let her leverage the win in ways a ki user couldn't doesn't mean she's better than a ki user. All evidence we have is that, in a white room death match, Dandeer, mightiest mage of Garenhuld, would lose against any of the Super Saiyans, or even, in all likelihood, the top normal Saiyan warriors, unless she specifically had basically arbitrary prep time in the scenario.

Ki is the straight combat power. Bassoon has already indicated that mages in the wider galaxy don't go toe-to-toe with Ki Fighters. Sight can't make up for a large enough power level differential except by like ambush to all appearances.

Sight is the information gathering power. You get to literally see the future, see through illusions and cloaking, see the past, see across the galaxy, see into the afterlife... Hell, lemme point out that we probably could have kicked Dandeer's ass off the Spirit Bomb again, only further point out that we knew the Spirit Bomb... by being a Seer. Mage!Kakara would not have been able to learn the Spirit Bomb from Gohan, so far as we know. Certainly, we'd have had other advantages, but not likely anything to directly replace knowing the Spirit Bomb.

Magic is a broad utility power, but very clearly falls flat compared to Sight and Ki in their realms of specialty. The very way it's based around concepts also makes it fundamentally less straightforward- it's hardly surprising that Mages trend so low on Ki when you look at how much work seems to go into figuring out how to be able to Do A Thing. Magic can't just go I Cast Fist in the way Ki can, and the Sight seems to be literally inherently intuitive where to a large degree you go 'I want' and the Sight responds by doing it for you.

In general, I think people are missing how little we know of Magic's difficulties and the Sight's abilities, given we never really studied magic and so only see some end products and we just learned our Sight was crippled.

Think about it. We're years Dandeer's junior, we had crippled Sight, and yet our Sight+Ki could have probably stomped her Magic+Ki via the Spirit Bomb.

And we saw some major hints of major flaws with Magic with the arc end. 'But you didn't ask!', sure she has mind control but even with literal mind control attached people can still fuck her over if she makes wording mistakes. You can't counter a Kamehameha by noticing the other guy didn't say it just so.

Ki gets to overpower magic, the Sight gets to learn all kinds of bullshit, and so on. The fact that we 'lost' to Magic doesn't mean it's the best. It just means there are ways for it to win and conditions for it to win in. Some of the time. You know, when we aren't going Spirit Saiyan to the face.
 
[X] Take the vision (No check; next update contains a vision interlude before moving on with the day).
 
Even if we don't miss the debriefing... we would be specifically testing what could possibly go wrong. Maybe we'll pass out. Maybe we won't be able to stop until we do pass out. Maybe every sentence in the debriefing will throw more visions at us. Maybe we'll just be tired and not paying as much attention as we should. Maybe we'll re-anchor ourselves in some random place and be too tired to get back to Bassoon, leaving Dazarel alone in his head. Maybe we'll attract the attention of whatever mysterious old man pulled us away from our Enemy vision and get stuck in a social boss battle.

I don't want to see what ODing on visions does right now. We just got something back on our Schedule!
 
[X] Time to stress-test your new sight abilities: see how many visions in a row you can handle, and how long do you need before you can have more, starting with the one regarding Guru
-[X] Take a break when it's time for the debriefing.
 
[X] Take the vision (No check; next update contains a vision interlude before moving on with the day).

[X] Time to stress-test your new sight abilities: see how many visions in a row you can handle, and how long do you need before you can have more, starting with the one regarding Guru
-[X] Take a break when it's time for the debriefing.

I know, I'm essentially non-voting (since I voted for both frontrunners) but honestly? Both of these get me what I want (the vision that is pending) and both of them explicitly have a 'pay fucking attention to the meeting' out that means we shouldn't miss anything important. I assume Kakara, with her (in)famous scheduling skills, will be able to recognize when the meeting time is.
 
[X] Take the vision (No check; next update contains a vision interlude before moving on with the day).

[X] See if you can't poke it towards another vision (Moderate-high-difficulty sight check to switch; next update contains the result before moving on with the day).
-[X] Toru

[X] See if you can't poke it towards another vision (Moderate-high-difficulty sight check to switch; next update contains the result before moving on with the day).
-[X] 17 and 18
 
Terrabrand said:
Honestly, this argument has been bugging me for a bit now.

It's a dishonest framing. As Deathbybunnies noted, you're calling magic being boostable by Ki an advantage of magic, and not one of Ki.

Like. Sorta by definition if you're going to say 'magic is the best, because I'm gonna assume the mage is an equally competent Ki fighter to the Ki fighter', you've made magic the best. But that is solely because you are treating it as free.

We know Dandeer had sub cap power levels. Not just at all, but significantly sub cap. Apparently, that's normal for Sorcerers, and in fact they tend to have sub-million power levels. They can do impressive things with prep time, but Ye 15m Power Level Generic Saiyan moves and thinks fifteen or more times faster than Ye Sub Million Mage, and is always at full readiness unless injured or sick.

The mage is prep time dependent.

Hell, look at the one prep time dependent ki move we have. Spirit Bomb. Also known as 'fuck that problem completely'. Dandeer with multiple Super Saiyans on her side would probably have been totally crushed had we done Spirit Saiyan, magic or no.

In fact, Dandeer with the backing of every mage on the planet would still probably have been completely crushed.

Ki gives a bunch of passive advantages that are Big Deals, including some that hard counter magic. Like, note that a big part of how Dandeer won was by first evening up the High End Ki User Count. Indeed, she grabbed the overall better half of the fighters.

That's not magic being bullshit. That's plain old Winning The Ki game.

The fact that magic let her leverage the win in ways a ki user couldn't doesn't mean she's better than a ki user. All evidence we have is that, in a white room death match, Dandeer, mightiest mage of Garenhuld, would lose against any of the Super Saiyans, or even, in all likelihood, the top normal Saiyan warriors, unless she specifically had basically arbitrary prep time in the scenario.

Ki is the straight combat power. Bassoon has already indicated that mages in the wider galaxy don't go toe-to-toe with Ki Fighters. Sight can't make up for a large enough power level differential except by like ambush to all appearances.

Sight is the information gathering power. You get to literally see the future, see through illusions and cloaking, see the past, see across the galaxy, see into the afterlife... Hell, lemme point out that we probably could have kicked Dandeer's ass off the Spirit Bomb again, only further point out that we knew the Spirit Bomb... by being a Seer. Mage!Kakara would not have been able to learn the Spirit Bomb from Gohan, so far as we know. Certainly, we'd have had other advantages, but not likely anything to directly replace knowing the Spirit Bomb.

Magic is a broad utility power, but very clearly falls flat compared to Sight and Ki in their realms of specialty. The very way it's based around concepts also makes it fundamentally less straightforward- it's hardly surprising that Mages trend so low on Ki when you look at how much work seems to go into figuring out how to be able to Do A Thing. Magic can't just go I Cast Fist in the way Ki can, and the Sight seems to be literally inherently intuitive where to a large degree you go 'I want' and the Sight responds by doing it for you.

In general, I think people are missing how little we know of Magic's difficulties and the Sight's abilities, given we never really studied magic and so only see some end products and we just learned our Sight was crippled.

Think about it. We're years Dandeer's junior, we had crippled Sight, and yet our Sight+Ki could have probably stomped her Magic+Ki via the Spirit Bomb.

And we saw some major hints of major flaws with Magic with the arc end. 'But you didn't ask!', sure she has mind control but even with literal mind control attached people can still fuck her over if she makes wording mistakes. You can't counter a Kamehameha by noticing the other guy didn't say it just so.

Ki gets to overpower magic, the Sight gets to learn all kinds of bullshit, and so on. The fact that we 'lost' to Magic doesn't mean it's the best. It just means there are ways for it to win and conditions for it to win in. Some of the time. You know, when we aren't going Spirit Saiyan to the face.
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I guess that makes sense. Still, it seems like an argument from a fanfic I read. Qi isn't the strongest, just the simplest. That is, even a complete idiot can use Qi effectively, and being/fighting smarter than your opponent isn't always going to help you if they're getting a +100 to their combat rolls. The main disadvantage it has it that it doesn't do any one thing very well, it's just okay at everything, which means you have to train like hell if you want to do something you haven't already got the basics down for, and you don't always have the time for that. Magic and Sight have weaknesses of their own, sure, mostly in the form of how much longer doing anything impressive takes with them, but it's hard to see how they aren't better when the first lets you mind control people if they let their guard down for a split second even if they have a 10 million PL advantage on you, and the second let's you see the future, as in, that's the most common ability for people with Sight, at least among Garenhulder Seers.

I mean, how much time did Dandeer actually need for her 'literally everyone is my slave now' ritual? Sure, it was (supposedly, we really only have Dandelor's word on that) a decade in the making, but she wasn't exactly without duties, and the Spirit Bomb is the closest equivalent Qi users have to that sort of thing so I'd take our estimate of the difficulty of magic rituals and ratchet them down a notch. As in, prepping something with your powers ahead of time. Even Sight isn't really something you can just store away like magic can. There's no indication Dandeer was at all weakened by the whole 'holding an almost complete ritual of planetary scale in reserve' so the main reason we weren't totally screwed is that she didn't devote her time to rituals specifically to mind control all the nobles, instead of half of them.

When we get back, we should break Dandeer's hands and then let them heal wrong. If she can't do hand gestures, her magic is crippled. That way, we can avoid anyone trying to kill her since her magic is already badly weakened, and have her magical expertise on demand. So long as we make it abundantly clear this is the only way she doesn't wind up dead, since she basically launched a coup on the rightful rulers and enslaved her entire race, she's unlikely to cause trouble. Magic? Just addressed that. Political maneuvering? No one's ever going to fully trust her with a butter knife again, never mind political power or their loyalty. Might cause some issues with the sorcerers though, since it probably looks like a toothless lion to them.
 
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