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A Simple Transaction I

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Inheritor: Librarian, in addition to offering a substantial bounty of Intelligence, a stat Rihaku has held up as highly important for many years now, lets us develop a wide array of potent abilities suited to counter flaws we identify in our opponents. Against Vanreir we saw he had a weakness in his spirit, but we had no means to target it; that will continue to be the case if we double down on our strategy of focusing on the Fell-Handed Stroke, but something like that 'soul-flaying spike of ill-reason' would likely have worked against it. The tactical flexibility offered by this is exactly what we need to conquer the Temple and survive the Apocryphal Curse.
Rihaku said:
The magus tsked and made a curt gesture, disappearing from sight.

"Teleportation," Gisena said quietly. "It's short range, he's still around here."
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Rihaku said:
The mage gestured again with his free hand and an array of runes appeared beneath them, subjecting Hunger to terrible crushing force.
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Rihaku said:
Impatiently the mage leapt back and intoned a single word, a soul-flaying spike of ill-reason that drove Hunger to his knees and which Gisena was forced to aggressively counter. The world seemed to blur, bursting rotten at the seams, his mind filled with static and clawing pain, black blood leaking from ears and ruptured eye.
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Rihaku said:
Inheritor: Librarian -> Instant mid-level mage utility, +50% Intelligence
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Note we will also get 1 other stat that hasn't been revealed.

Further, we can interrogate him for information and avoid nasty surprises like the Vanreir fight, as well as perhaps finding out just how viable it will be to claim the Tortured Ring. Maybe there is even a hidden bounty to claim in the Ritual Grounds? With his soul trapped within us, he has some incentive to cooperate lest we find or exercise means to make him miserable.
Rihaku said:
Librarian is pretty sick, plus he's probably the most knowledgeable of the souls you could get. Think of the quasi-free info!
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HoratioVonBecker said:
Point! What if we all consolidated on Inheritor, and then had a subvote for which one we wanted to manifest first? I'm fairly sure we can get upgrades to it later.

I mean, we're in a setting where that's objectively a reasonable midterm goal for us.
Also, Mental Contamination doesn't seem objectively unhealthy - more like "I've got a new telepathic roommate and they sometimes share memories". Or Servant Dreams from the Fate series. The reason I'm leery of it because the Forebear and the Librarian are colossal jerks, and would thus make terrible headmates.
Vanreir, on the other hand, is both Not A Jerk, and someone very much like Hunger. He's also used to having a headmate, and it's a friendship Tyrant is deeply unlikely to destroy.
He's someone who could be a friend, and I want Hunger to have more friends, you know?
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Rihaku said:
A quiet like iron smog settling in the lungs. Even the detritus of the Inners is oppressive.

He shook his head, blinking away his father's resentments. The contamination was worsening.
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I don't know, the example we have of mental contamination doesn't seem like that at all. It definitely seems like their thoughts become blurred; it's called contamination after all. I don't think we'll exactly get a cool voice in our head from this.
 
BrainInAJar said:
I don't know, the example we have of mental contamination doesn't seem like that at all. It definitely seems like their thoughts become blurred; it's called contamination after all. I don't think we'll exactly get a cool voice in our head from this.
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That was after he'd had the contamination for a long time, and that was a direct and willing joining of souls rather then one soul imprisoning another. It's a very different dynamic, and we have all the power in our situation. We won't have it anywhere near that bad right away or possibly ever. And if after seeing it for the first time we suspect it could get that bad, we are Progression, we can just scale up and get something to fix the problem.
 
Current vote count?

I have noticed the (completely understandable) tendency for voters to emphasize the negative components of a choice, but I don't think this focus is a good idea strategically or rationally speaking. While fine in a normal situation, right now your resources are constrained enough that you must think about trade-offs with objective clarity.

Always choosing 'the option whose downsides you can most tolerate' is simply not coherent enough to be a winning strategy given the difficult scenario you guys decided to undertake. The true 'downside' of a weaker option that lacks downsides is simply a higher chance of dying.

If you guys want to get through the Temple without burning even more massive amounts of Arete and taking on massive amounts of risk, a synergistic or at least strategically coherent build is an absolute must. Having a perfectly functional liver is not an absolute must. Dodging a penalty to future Charisma and Wisdom gains is not an absolute must. Not dealing with a possibly annoying soul dude is not an absolute must, etc. Options which offer more relevant power at the cost of downsides that do not reduce relevant power are a great boon for you right now because of your strategic situation.

Also, it's just not healthy to focus so much on the downsides of your choices when there are a lots of cool upsides. Stranglethorn and Uttermost both have interesting character considerations that are often ignored in favor of focusing on negativity. It's almost always the case, at least when looking at Advancements, that the downsides of an option are far more tolerable than your worst fears imagine, especially in light of the advantages gained.

The +Rank option, for example, doesn't have any baked-in downsides, but it may be that the next option which most synergizes with +Rank will, and you don't know what its downsides may be. If you take it now and fail to take that strategically important option later, the Temple may simply eat you. The same can be said for a Sword build or a Mage build. That a pick costs some amount of options and Arete, which may be identical to a different pick, does not mean the two choices have an equal impact on your build.

While you've earned some breathing room by winning this risky fight, it would be unfortunate to squander it by failing to capitalize.

HoratioVonBecker said:
Not all the time? But insofar as the relationship needs to be both not-one-sided and able to survive more than the tiniest of disagreements, very much yes.
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Consider the limits of the Doom's actual purview!

HoratioVonBecker said:
Do they have different votes for the fourth option, or what?
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It seems that many Inheritor voters only want it for Librarian or Unerring and would have a non-Inheritor option as their second choice.

formalAI said:
As cool as the Librarian powers are, his personality is trash and I absolutely do not want mental contamination from him. I could deal with not being able to mitigate Tyrant, but losing Form of Rage, 30% of our Protection and Charisma and having a penalty to ever acquire more of those or Wisdom and Luck... That hurt quite a bit. Having Vanreir in our head is the most acceptable drawback of those on offer for me.
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Losing Form of Rage is the worst of those drawbacks, but since you guys never liked relying on Form of Rage, it can somewhat simplify your risk calculus in the future!
 
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BrainInAJar said:
I don't know, the example we have of mental contamination doesn't seem like that at all. It definitely seems like their thoughts become blurred; it's called contamination after all. I don't think we'll exactly get a cool voice in our head from this.
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Although it was not my impression at all initially, we explicitly do get a voice in our head:
Rihaku said:
You fundamentally misapprehend the nature of the option. You can directly convey the thoughts of the real him, who is still around, to his sister by acting as a go-between. Again, Vanreir is still there. His soul is still present, though as Hunger's prisoner. Certainly it is preferable to being dead.
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You know, via the Ring, and enough time and effort, we can probably construct a new functional body for anyone we so imprison, and if we can figure out a way to keep a copy of their power anyway...
 
@Rihaku How "permanent" is the liver damage? Is it "merely" on-par with our current losses of an eye/arm/lung, and thus recoverable with appropriate options, or is it more like sacrificing an eye to Rune King and thus irrecoverable barring much greater advancements?
 
[X] The Ring of Power - Inheritor
-[X] The Librarian
[X] Fierce Quickening
[X] True Maiming

Changing yet again.
 
Rihaku said:
I have noticed the (completely understandable) tendency for voters to emphasize the negative components of a choice, but I don't think this focus is a good idea strategically or rationally speaking.
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Rihaku said:
voters
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Rihaku said:
Stranglethorn does give a considerable amount of immediate power (lots of +Str and +Con), but so far you've mostly been relying your AGI to carry fights in the Temple... even massive STR and CON wouldn't have helped too much against this foe, for example. In certain matchups you would be nerfing yourself if you take it now. So it's not without risk.
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Rihaku said:
Just remember, combat is not determined by the number of +Stats you have, but also by how they are distributed. There are many situations where Agi is more important than STR or CON, or even more important than STR and CON. Before rushing into Stranglethorn, make sure you want to lean into the concept of a character who is slow but powerful, with all the advantages and downsides that entails.
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*angry stranglethorn noises*

They are a monument to your sins, Rihaku! Your devil's advocacy has come home to roost.
 
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Adhoc vote count started by runeblue360 on Jun 18, 2020 at 2:59 PM, finished with 523 posts and 57 votes.
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So, why should you, dear poster, consider embracing R A N K and voting for Kinslayer?
  • An utterly absurd amount of pure value. 0.7 Rank is more than we've earned so far put together, and even then each point of Rank is vastly more valuable than the previous one
  • As we've discussed prior, Rank is almost entirely omniapplicable, being useful in virtually every situation and having next to no weak points. Where something like mass stats has very limited utility when trying to find stuff, Rank can be utilized in pretty much every situation; from tracking to fighting to social. Indeed, in this very update we've seen Hunger use Pressure to both weaken Vanreir and then lure him into overextending. Let Vanreir be a cautionary tale; for all his ability to Cut Through he was incapable of giving his sister what she deserved. If he only had more Rank for social..
  • Speaking of utility, our Bloodcasting works by utilizing our Rank through Ring of Blood and, thus, it's potency is directly related to our Rank. Getting Kinslayer will make our blood abilities better across the board - including healing, buffing us and allies, debuffing enemies, bloodsight, healing Verse better etc.
  • Gisena gang, where you at? Not only that Kinslayer allows you to blood-buff Gisena more, stacking with our previous 2 Arete Gisena stat purchase, but more Rank is also the key for unlocking her next Grace. In addition, Gisena's own ability to suppress enemy's Rank has obvious synergy with more Rank on our part!
  • While Kinslayer's own value is hard to overstate, what truly makes it an winner is it's upgrade path. With just two Arete we can get War(which apparently gets dropped by every enemy we meet..) and then Prominence for 7AP more. Together with this and FOR, this would allow us to fight at ludicrous Rank 6
  • Did you even thought how good Once and Future would be? Because this is baby version of it. No perfect scaling and 0.3 Rank less(we get All Stats+ tho), but you still get 0.7 Rank for general purposes and 1.7 for fighting. That's completely fucking nuts
  • Of course, War/Prominence line builds directly Ruling Ring. Value of this should be self-evident
  • On the other hand, if we so desire we could just get Dominion and spend our Arete elsewhere. We don't need to rush Ring if we don't find it efficient right now, as we can upgrade into it at our leisure
  • Theoretically, with enough Rank, we could style on Ber by murdering him with a glance, provided that difference in Rank is enough. Let's not give that asshole honor of combat scene..
Great value, amazing future prospects, applicable in every situations. Surely, you may ask, there must be some sort of downside? Surely there are scenarios where R A N K can't be used effectively? Enemies that directly counter our Rank in some way?

A salient point, dear poster, but you've forgot one thing:
*Sleeping at least 9 hours a day yields the following benefits: You become only stronger, wiser, and more glorious with age, never becoming infirm, as if the travails of aging themselves have an inverse effect on you. You gain a substantial bonus to physical attributes and a minor bonus to mental attributes for the day. You are immune to hostile effects that would tire or exhaust you or induce artificial sleep.
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R A N K train has no brakes!
 
Uttermost's downsides are harsh, but all of the Defining Advancements we've seen so far come with trade-offs. Suppose that's the reason for the name, taking them is supposed to shape our build! But increasing the value of all Rank-ups is something that I don't think has been touched on; note that it doesn't say future Rank increases like Inheritor. We started at 3.5 and have scrounged up an additional 0.8, bringing us up to 4.3.

Unless I miss my mark, Uttermost grants us another 0.24, roughly a third of what Kinslayer would give! And that's in addition to the ++Int/Str/Con/Agi and a frankly stunning +7 Willpower, which has pleasant character implications. We throw around the term godstat like it's late with the rent, applying it to Accursed Favor, Rank... and intellect. This doubles the int bonus we got from Thick as Thieves; with Ruling Ring we'd be up to +6!

[X] Lingering Exhaustion
[X] Forebear's Blade - Uttermost (4 picks)

Also, we get to see Cut Through's blurb. Index has been updated, as always ping me if you think something's missing.
 
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Rihaku said:
[ ] Feat: Kinslayer - A true opponent's worth. Set Rank to 5. (4 picks)
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To get an idea how powerful this is, we can model Rank with the Elo rating system used in chess and other games. We're told that in the middle Ranks, having a 1 Rank advantage means a 90% winrate. Chess has draws so we'll use expected scores instead - actually somewhat appropriate as they can model devastating complications. You have a .9 expected score at about +365 rating difference. Accordingly, this option which gives .7 Rank would correspond roughly to +365*.7=+255 rating difference, which gives an expected score of .81. So against opponents for whom our Rank is a primary factor, this is a bit more than half as strong as gaining a full point of Rank and should lead to ~80% chance of victory against opponents who were previously at 50% chance of victory.
For risk tolerance we have been actually selecting, it would be more like going from 95% chance of victory to 99.5% chance of victory (+475 -> +730)

Absent a similar analysis for other ways of becoming stronger this is not directly relevant to our decisions, but it should at least give us a better understanding of what the option itself will do.


Orm Embar said:
But increasing the value of all Rank-ups is something that I don't think has been touched on; note that it doesn't say future Rank increases.
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I thought when this came up with Stranglethorn initially that Rihaku said it only applies to future ones?
 
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Projectile said:
*angry stranglethorn noises*

They are a monument to your sins, Rihaku! Your devil's advocacy has come home to roost.
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See:

Options which offer more relevant power at the cost of downsides that do not reduce relevant power are a great boon for you right now because of your strategic situation.
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There are situations where AGI is your only or primary relevant power; being really strong and tough wouldn't achieve much against the Magus whereas being able to speedblitz him would help immensely. Losing AGI actually is really bad for a warrior build and those statements remain correct. However, you do now have a lot of AGI and WITS so you can 'afford' to lose some. That does not mean that Stranglethorn ranks among the better options for immediate power in your present situation, especially since you don't have something like Dreadnought's Bearing + Iron Curtain that would allow you to more effectively leverage massive CON. But it's okay, and you can certainly shift your build priorities to make it great down the line. That may require taking things such as Dreadnought's Bearing with Rune King, however.
 
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Rihaku brings up salient points regarding planning and trade-offs. So, let's talk about that for a bit.

Inheritor: Librarian fundamentally is about getting us new tools to use. Hunger himself has noted that his current powerset is very linear. We picked up some utility via Chief Dominion, which gets us healing, buffs, and debuffs. However, most of our build is still fairly straightforward combat abilities. What happens if we run into a situation where straightforward combat power isn't a good tool for the job, or can do the job but not as well as something less constrained?

Inheritor: Unerring, Uttermost, Stranglethorn, and Kinslayer are all really strong, but they also all fundamentally do not introduce new capabilities, just reinforce existing ones. We are lacking in utility powers and versatility at the moments, and all of the above choose not to solve this issue, instead doubling down on what we already have. Now, specialization is often more powerful then generalization, but specialists also have areas they cannot operate in. Our only reliable support in this Temple is Gisena, who is herself a specialist and does not fulfill any roles outside of her niche.

The fact of the matter is, we need to get increased versatility sooner or later. And out of all the options we've seen so far to increase versatility, most of them have a high Arete cost (Ring stuff, Azure Moon/Philospher's Wreath, ect) or take time to truly pay off, costing immediate power (most magic systems).

We have an opportunity here to vastly expand our versatility, without a cost to immediate power or spending a ton of Arete. Inheritor: Librarian gets us a high amount of immediate power (competitive with the best options in that regard) and also solves our versatility problem.

If we don't get Librarian now... When, exactly, are we planning to increase the variety of actions we can take? In the future? Every option we've seen so far for expanding our capabilities has come with a lack of immediate power, or a high Arete cost, or both. We have an opportunity here which does not come around often, and we might not get one like it again while we are in the Temple of the False Moon.

We get opportunities to increase our combat abilities every single vote. How often do we get the chance to vastly expand the kind of actions we can take, while also not neglecting our immediate power?

So, to those of you who oppose Librarian - I offer you a challenge. What are you planning to do to increase our versatility, and what will you do if we encounter a situation where attacking with sword is a less viable or not viable option?
 
I'm a big fan of immediate physical power/parameters -- despite the fact that everyone we've faced has been a soul evocation user (and thus been unable to use Rank offensively, and with a penalty defensively), it doesn't seem to have been as important as our actual physical stats. Moreover, since it doesn't seem like folks are willing to pick Vanreir:

[X] Lingering Exhaustion
[X] Forebear's Blade - Uttermost (4 picks)
 
George said:
Although it was not my impression at all initially, we explicitly do get a voice in our head:
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That distinguishes it from the mental contamination of the Forebear's mental contamination, but also pretty much confirms @DarkSideBard's interpretation of any interaction with Erii, which I do agree feels skeevy. Doesn't really feel like there's much winning in that particular avenue. I think focusing on the mechanical aspects and the interactions between Hunger & Vanrier are likely a better direction to go in, those would likely be fairly appealing to a lot of people.


Rihaku said:
I have noticed the (completely understandable) tendency for voters to emphasize the negative components of a choice, but I don't think this focus is a good idea strategically or rationally speaking. While fine in a normal situation, right now your resources are constrained enough that you must think about trade-offs with objective clarity.

Always choosing 'the option whose downsides you can most tolerate' is simply not coherent enough to be a winning strategy given the difficult scenario you guys decided to undertake. The true 'downside' of a weaker option that lacks downsides is simply a higher chance of dying.
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Your quest participants are many things, but rational is not commonly among them. Many of us vote for or against things because they like or dislike the narrative thematics of those options as a significant or dominating priority.

In that vein,"what's most tolerable" is synonymous with "what will keep them interested in continuing to participate in the quest". Certain people will find certain directions a story or quest may take to be intolerable to their continued involvement with; that doesn't necessarily make those options bad or wrong, and those who enjoy them may continue to do so, but it does mean that those individuals found those options intolerable.

If you guys want to get through the Temple without burning even more massive amounts of Arete and taking on massive amounts of risk, a synergistic or at least strategically coherent build is an absolute must. Having a perfectly functional liver is not an absolute must. Dodging a penalty to future Charisma and Wisdom gains is not an absolute must. Not dealing with a possibly annoying soul dude is not an absolute must, etc. Options which offer more relevant power at the cost of downsides that do not reduce relevant power are a great boon for you right now because of your strategic situation.

[...]

Also, it's just not healthy to focus so much on the downsides of your choices when there are a lots of cool upsides. [...] It's almost always the case, at least when looking at Advancements, that the downsides of an option are far more tolerable than your worst fears imagine, especially in light of the advantages gained.
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This is somewhat missing the point of those individuals' concerns for opposing given options, because all those things are an absolute must; they are simply an absolute must in relation to what I mentioned above; what aesthetics and thematics are important to a given participant. It really comes down to subjective taste, and what you, or another participant ,might call an advantageous or narratively enticing quality another participant might call anathematic to their enjoyment. That can't be argued objectively because individual preference is not grounded in logic


I don't personally find any of these given options intolerable, though I find some to be more enjoyable than others. Just felt I had to make the above statement, because "Reject pathos/preference, Embrace logos/optimization" does kind of suck to hear.
 
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Byzantine said:
It does not buff or heal us. It makes it easier for us to buff or heal ourselves, and requires immense effort to debuff our enemies.
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Which is why we don't lose any combat power when we get Exhausted, right?
runeblue360 said:
@Wolfy, I don't think you've actually voted for Kinslayer yet.
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Quite so.

[X] Feat: Kinslayer
[X] True Maiming

Don't be Vanreir, who failed to Cut Through. Embrace R A N K so you always have a way to Rank Through!
 
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