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A Simple Transaction I

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Rihaku said:
Mm, there are ways to upgrade stats with conceptual power. And stuff like +Int, +Luck etc are relevant even without it.
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Fair enough. Willpower might actually be quite important in the long-term, especially since praxis is based around sacrifice, and its likely that the sword praxis to some degree follows the same logic. Going full potential would be something like +100% int, will, luck, wis and char, pluging the hole that uttermost left. Considering how rare they seem to be, probably worthwhile if we don't need the immediate power when we take it.
 
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Enohthree said:
On the flipside however, rerolling in the midst of combat isn't the best use of it. Rerolling the encounter when we pick an option, especially considering we generally only pick one major fight a day, would be wonderful though. Not having to fight an overwhelmingly powerful opponent when we're hoping for that's truly powerful or even just an uneventful fight that still nets us 3+ picks would be wonderful.
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I was taking that into account, I don't think it'll be enough in the inner layer. As I expect their response system to be highly tuned and responsive enough that there's not going to be a huge range of possible encounters we get.
 
[X] Fierce Quickening
It's ahead, so I'm voting for it.

People, Slice Fate is of limited help in the Temple; especially compared to an EFB; we don't need the equivalent of ++All Stats, we need a gamechanger, and Cut Through is that. Overwhelming power and conceptual supremacy are much more useful.
Maragas said:
It's not Praxis though. I want Praxis, not Not!Praxis.
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A distinction without a difference. If not now, when?
 
Figure one more should be enough for this experiment. I'm trying the concept of an Arete Bounty. If Investigate the Schools wins, next update I will put out a minimum of 10,000 words of Omake Power but the actual result will be higher, with the Arete gain that entails.
 
[X] Hot Springs And Go
[X] Evening Sky - Opalescence


BrainInAJar said:
Can this stop now? It's the Sword Praxis. It has all the benefits of the Sword Praxis. It is not mysteriously worse and a trap option. This is the real thing. It's happening.
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I have no idea why you're being so suddenly confrontational for no apparent reason. Please cease.

The part you just quoted of me speaking? Rihaku's statements say nothing to disprove. It's true, the Infinite Singularity Husk has no evidence stating the Praxis is integral to it.


I'm actually quite thrilled to find out that Cut Through is parallel construction and essentially is an off-brand manifestation of the Praxis. That's much superior to what I had been under the impression of, given the text. I already clarified that I was not trying to talk down Cut Through, simply be sure of what it offers. Quite a bit, looks like
 
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[X] Hot Springs And Go
We keep not voting for condition healing options. We keep accumulating conditions. This is not a good combination.

[] Lift the Siege
BUUUT I could be persuaded to vote for this under the right conditions.

As for the picks, "Slice Fate" and "Fierce Quickening" both look pretty awesome. "Ring of Power- Dominion- War" might be a good choice too if we fight the Rotbeast, because the Rotbeast may not have blood but we will definitely be at war with it.
 
So Stranglethorn doubles our Strength. Zweihander makes our power of ruin scale with our Strength. And then Cut Through means that the power of ruin goes from Pressure-based conceptual power to axiomatic power or some equivalent. Even discarding the potential to develop Sword Praxis abilities, that's genuinely just absurd.

Seriously, what the fuck Forebear? Who made you? What's even your deal? Why are you like this? No wonder he managed to ascend to the Hidden Ones from mortality, I'm convinced he was his world's closest equivalent to Odyssial.

[X] Fierce Quickening
[X] Hot Springs And Go

Fighting the Rotbeast right now is a terrible idea. We're still suffering from the combat penalties of True Maiming, Verschlengorge is only at Rank 4.5 and we've got two other negative Conditions lowering our performance. Just do this and we can review afterwards.

Also, this helps us S A V E.
 
Oh, to clarify, the other options do still yield the healing % effect of the Hot Springs, just not the Arete bounty. And they spend wordcount on other stuff like the magic system or Rotbeast fight.
 
[X] Augment Dominion: Blood
[X] Investigate the Schools

Not spending arete this vote, so that simplifies things. I think the .25 rank boost is better than vigor, Fierce Quickening, or the others, but I don't have any strong opinions here. Just so long as we don't spend Arete.

The rotbeast is worth three picks, which gives us a rough idea how deadly it is. That's the same as the magus. Recall that our build was perfect against the magus, and we had help, and we still had a 20% chance of death. We have allies for this fight as well, and it's possible that since we're stronger we can go into three pick battles with less risk, but at the same time we've got a 4x weakness to rot AND can't afford to fight all out or we damage ourselves more. So unless I'm misunderstanding things I'd say fighting the rotbeast is a bad idea.

With rotbeast out, that leaves schools or hotsprings. The schools blurb is longer, it has a plot hook ("There had to be a reason Verschlengorge brought them here") AND it gives magic, so I'm picking that.
 
Orm Embar said:
Yeah, no way are we burning through our reserves on Slice Fate.
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I think that you are genuinely underestimating the value of a single reroll, here.

It turns a 10% risk into a 1% risk. It turns a 25% risk into a 6% risk. It turns a 50% risk into a 25% risk. It doesn't save us from overwhelming risks (>90%), though one of those would kill us anyways. But it makes marginal risks extremely marginal, which massively improves our ability to take more productive options without worrying. It massively multiplies our effectiveness, and it gets better the longer we have it, because it returns more value the more of anything we do.

In this world, the biggest threat is not lacking power, because unless we are constantly taking insane risks the Apocryphal Curse will scale to our power. The biggest threat is an endless procession of very dangerous rolls that we are forced into, and while each individual option that grants power will be subsumed by risk from the Curse, the free reroll scales with whatever situation we're in because of how the reroll mechanic works. And it's applicable to anything. Combat? Check. Diplomacy/Tyrant procs? Check. Logistical decisions? Check. Cooking tasty food? Check. Loot rolls? Check. Anything.

Hell, if we had a thread participation reroll bonus, it would turn a 50% chance of death into a 13% chance. That's crazy!

This option is worth it alone for 7 Arete, even completely forgetting the other stuff it's packaged with.

Edit: Rihaku just laugh reacted my post about being curious about the Wandering Magus's EFB. Damnit.
 
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runeblue360 said:
So Stranglethorn doubles our Strength. Zweihander makes our power of ruin scale with our Strength. And then Cut Through means that the power of ruin goes from Pressure-based conceptual power to axiomatic power or some equivalent. Even discarding the potential to develop Sword Praxis abilities, that's genuinely just absurd.

Seriously, what the fuck Forebear? Who made you? What's even your deal? Why are you like this? No wonder he managed to ascend to the Hidden Ones from mortality, I'm convinced he was his world's closest equivalent to Odyssial.

[X] Fierce Quickening
[X] Hot Springs And Go

Fighting the Rotbeast right now is a terrible idea. We're still suffering from the combat penalties of True Maiming, Verschlengorge is only at Rank 4.5 and we've got two other negative Conditions lowering our performance. Just do this and we can review afterwards.

Also, this helps us S A V E.
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Since you're in civilization, there's an argument to be made for Vigor Itself instead... get that Charisma back to what it was!
 
Meh, it's a magic system that uses sword. Who cares if it's the real Praxis or not? Even if it's not real Praxis it's still a great compromise option. And finding an EFB that a majority of the thread can actually agree on is notable enough.
 
runeblue360 said:
So Stranglethorn doubles our Strength. Zweihander makes our power of ruin scale with our Strength. And then Cut Through means that the power of ruin goes from Pressure-based conceptual power to axiomatic power or some equivalent. Even discarding the potential to develop Sword Praxis abilities, that's genuinely just absurd.
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It's almost like...it's an synergetic build. Who the hell would do something like that?
 
Rihaku said:
Since you're in civilization, there's an argument to be made for Vigor Itself instead... get that Charisma back to what it was!
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There are only two kinds of stats;
stats that let us kill things in the temple
stats that don't

I never cared much for charisma in the first place and I still don't now. Why would we waste our time offseting a trivial loss in a stat that isn't significant when we could be improving our survival chances?

Rihaku said:
He closed his eyes. "I was going to surprise you, but I ordered some specialty meats from a group of merchants I met in the Outer Temple. When we return, we'll pick them up."
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Rihaku hard at work earning that deconstruction tag.

But I am glad to see Hunger didn't murder/mug those merchants after all.
 
BrainInAJar said:
A distinction without a difference. If not now, when
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A huge difference, I and a few other people want Praxis for the lore and the connection to the Accursed. I personally don't care about the power aspects, I care about it being the personal magic style of the Accursed.

I don't reallly care about Cut Through Not!Praxis beyond the fact that it's a good power option compared to the Ring potential.
 
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[X] Lift the Siege
[X] Fierce Quickening

Forgot to vote. I think we should seriously consider fighting the Rotbeast. While it has an advantage over us due to our True Maiming weakness, we should still be able to fight effectively enough with the use of ranged blade-winds and Thousand Cuts spam given that Uttermost allows use to exploit that advantage of the Blade for very little cost.

When we beat it, we get 3 picks which we can leverage to get Ruinous Valor - Zweihander and regrow Hunger's arm like some people have been wanting as well as enhance the overall efficacy of our swordsmanship, probably supporting our use of the Sword Praxis later on. Seems like a good way to focus our build and prepare for Cut Through.
 
Rihaku said:
Btw guys, Slice Fate is ultra-rare, so if you don't pick it up now you may not get the chance. Saving's important with how close you are to an EFB-equivalent, but re-roll effects are incredibly valuable for a reason. It's pretty much equivalent to ++All Stats.
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The ultra-rarity is... a good point.

I don't intend to post any definitive statements about the quest in the Discord, it will mostly be for hanging out between questers themselves.
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It's still going to be actively bad for the quest environment because of how it enables the formation of cliques. Plus, you may do something by accident some day; most people do.

vali said:
The rotbeast is worth three picks, which gives us a rough idea how deadly it is. That's the same as the magus. Recall that our build was perfect against the magus, and we had help, and we still had a 20% chance of death. We have allies for this fight as well, and it's possible that since we're stronger we can go into three pick battles with less risk, but at the same time we've got a 4x weakness to rot AND can't afford to fight all out or we damage ourselves more. So unless I'm misunderstanding things I'd say fighting the rotbeast is a bad idea.
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Good point. No fighting the rotbeast. Especially with that liver damage being a factor.

Still sticking to

[X] Hot Springs And Go

Not making any firm decisions on the pick vote.
 
Maragas said:
A huge difference, I and a few other people want Praxis for the lore and the connection to the Accursed. I personally don't care about the power aspects, I care about it being the personal magic style of the Accursed.
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Honestly exploring the same concepts he did without him handholding us there sounds like one of the better chances to earn some Accursed Favor we've come across.
 
Rihaku said:
Oh, to clarify, the other options do still yield the healing % effect of the Hot Springs, just not the Arete bounty. And they spend wordcount on other stuff like the magic system or Rotbeast fight.
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That's a pretty important clarification. I'd never have assumed that the other options heal if you hadn't said it.

I'd appreciate it if you added that clarification to the vote.
 
Rihaku said:
Yup! Getting to avoid %overwhelming / %death checks on encounter rolls is very helpful. Doesn't save you from the Apocryphal Curse, though.

However, you are somewhat ahead of the Apocryphal curve already...
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Just realized that +++++++Willpower should be protective against "Gasp, Tyrant parallel!" What a relief, that was mean and obnoxious of the curse.
 
Unelemental said:
Yeah, the Foremost sure knew how to design their weapons. When you create an intelligent one, you make sure it actually enjoys its purpose and doesn't rebel against being used as a tool of war. Though this does give me pause, as Letrizia mentioned the Elder Implements were much more than weapons way back when she explained them to us. Maybe they specialized in certain fields of endeavor and Verschlengorge is an example of an Armament that is heavily focused on fighting?
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Hey, wading into chaos is not always about battle! Sometimes you just gotta bring about order by devouring the primeval chaos!

Unelemental said:
What an exquisite security mechanism. Even if their programming failed and the Armaments decided that they knew better than all those stupid pilots, they can't properly function without one. Hmm, now I'm thinking whether there's an Armament somewhere out there that rebelled against its Foremost-created purpose and decided to strike out on its own.
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Why would they? That would be compromising its core purpose in favor of its peripheral values! The Armaments have an objective and they stick to it!

Unelemental said:
Heh, I can just imagine Letrizia with her nose in the air dispensing her knowledge while subconsciously shouting 'Praise me more!'
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That's what headpats are for!

vali said:
I never cared much for charisma in the first place and I still don't now. Why would we waste our time offseting a trivial loss in a stat that isn't significant when we could be improving our survival chances?
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It also gives ++Might! Quite relevant in battle, though slightly less so than AGI for you.
 
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