Style of the Gods: A Xianxia Style's Celestial Bureaucrat
- Thread starter Evenstar
- Start date
- Original Fantasy
- Location
- Brazil
[X] Plan Grey Rat Swarms the World.
-[X][Asuka] Try to correct the Atma imbalance that's making you constantly hungry. Atma check at DC50, success removes the Voracious trait.
-[X][Style] Grey Rat Scavenges To Live
-[X][Personal] Use your influence over Grey Rat style to encourage its discovery by a larger group of practitioners.
With the constant remaiders we have no domain it is somewhat past time we spread our style to more than a single practioner.
-[X][Asuka] Try to correct the Atma imbalance that's making you constantly hungry. Atma check at DC50, success removes the Voracious trait.
-[X][Style] Grey Rat Scavenges To Live
-[X][Personal] Use your influence over Grey Rat style to encourage its discovery by a larger group of practitioners.
With the constant remaiders we have no domain it is somewhat past time we spread our style to more than a single practioner.
Quick review of what's changed, mechanically, new stuff in green:
We're currently very much headed towards a "separated from civilization" build, at this point.
... for those who want to renegotiate with Death, our current bargain: "So long as practitioners of Grey Rat Style emulate the manner of the carrion rat and exalt the power of King Death over all the celestial bureaucracy, they shall be entitled to an Atma dividend of an additional 35 druchi continuously."
Between Hunter, Artisan, and Survival 3 Asuka's probably quite capable of living in the wilds if she gets kicked out - so long as she's not injured at the time.
We're currently very much headed towards a "separated from civilization" build, at this point.
... for those who want to renegotiate with Death, our current bargain: "So long as practitioners of Grey Rat Style emulate the manner of the carrion rat and exalt the power of King Death over all the celestial bureaucracy, they shall be entitled to an Atma dividend of an additional 35 druchi continuously."
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- Location
- Singapore
[X] Plan Healthy Mind
-[X] [Asuka] Try to correct the Atma imbalance that's making you constantly hungry. Atma check at DC50, success removes the Voracious trait.
-[X] [Style] Grey Rat Is Kin To Thousands
-[X][Personal] Continue cultivating and attempt to form a Core. Cultivation DC40.
-[X] [Asuka] Try to correct the Atma imbalance that's making you constantly hungry. Atma check at DC50, success removes the Voracious trait.
-[X] [Style] Grey Rat Is Kin To Thousands
-[X][Personal] Continue cultivating and attempt to form a Core. Cultivation DC40.
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[X] Plan Grey Rat Makes Talismans
I don't think trying to renegotiate with Death is a good idea at the moment.
Having included Grey Rat Eats Behemoths' Corpses in our style, "emulate the manner of the carrion rat" is pretty much a given - we're not going to stop doing that at this point.
Which means the bit we'd like King Death to ease up on is "exalt the power of King Death over all the celestial bureaucracy."
How well do we think he's going to take that, hmm? I want something we can give in return when we do that, because I don't see a way to do it without offering insult.
One last thing. @Negation, if you don't want to vote for Plan Healthy Mind, you need to make your own plan, not just sub out one of the sections.
I don't think trying to renegotiate with Death is a good idea at the moment.
Having included Grey Rat Eats Behemoths' Corpses in our style, "emulate the manner of the carrion rat" is pretty much a given - we're not going to stop doing that at this point.
Which means the bit we'd like King Death to ease up on is "exalt the power of King Death over all the celestial bureaucracy."
How well do we think he's going to take that, hmm? I want something we can give in return when we do that, because I don't see a way to do it without offering insult.
One last thing. @Negation, if you don't want to vote for Plan Healthy Mind, you need to make your own plan, not just sub out one of the sections.
- Location
- Pindorama
Also, wow, Asuka has been training this Style in secret for 4 years at this point; hopefully we can do something interesting with it soon!
[X] Plan Grey Rat Makes Talismans
-[X][Asuka] Try to focus on making less complex Charms. Atma check at DC30.
-[X][Style] Grey Rat Is Kin To Thousands
-[X][Personal] Use your wealth and fame to acquire a minor Treasure for Asuka to use.
Approval voting my own plan for reasons below.
[X] Plan Grey Rat Makes Talismans And Goes Fasting
-[X][Asuka] Try to focus on making less complex Charms. Atma check at DC30.
-[X][Style] Grey Rat Is Kin To Thousands
-[X][Personal] Train to remove one of your personality faults and thereby improve the style you're responsible for. (Gluttonous)
The plan is simple; we improve Asuka's Atma rolls and keep working on Gluttonous ourselves so that it hopefully stays at one; then Asuka rolls against Voraciousness herself next turn and we pick another Style path; giving us the benefit of 2 turns focusing on Beast-Killing without any Drawbacks.
I will also approval vote my original plan in case people don't mind Gluttonous 2; people really seem keen on not having any flaws however, so I think my second plan is more appealing for many. We will see though!
[X] Plan Grey Rat Makes Talismans
-[X][Asuka] Try to focus on making less complex Charms. Atma check at DC30.
-[X][Style] Grey Rat Is Kin To Thousands
-[X][Personal] Use your wealth and fame to acquire a minor Treasure for Asuka to use.
Approval voting my own plan for reasons below.
I don't know if Domain actually refer to the number of practitioners, since if so we should have had some Domain actions that affect only Asuka already.
Hmm, considering the pattern so far it seems that Style focuses give us 2 positive traits and a negative one; last time, focusing on Fundamentals made us more Prepared and Worldly, but also more Cowardly, while this vote gave us Hunting and Artisan while making us more Gluttonous. It seems this definitely discourages you from focusing on one single path without focusing down it's drawbacks through actions. So picking the Beast-Killing path while voting to solve our Voraciousness seems anti-synergistic. Maybe we can focus on that next turn with both our Asuka and Personal Actions? Hmm, this may be an opportunity; alright, new plan.
[X] Plan Grey Rat Makes Talismans And Goes Fasting
-[X][Asuka] Try to focus on making less complex Charms. Atma check at DC30.
-[X][Style] Grey Rat Is Kin To Thousands
-[X][Personal] Train to remove one of your personality faults and thereby improve the style you're responsible for. (Gluttonous)
The plan is simple; we improve Asuka's Atma rolls and keep working on Gluttonous ourselves so that it hopefully stays at one; then Asuka rolls against Voraciousness herself next turn and we pick another Style path; giving us the benefit of 2 turns focusing on Beast-Killing without any Drawbacks.
I will also approval vote my original plan in case people don't mind Gluttonous 2; people really seem keen on not having any flaws however, so I think my second plan is more appealing for many. We will see though!
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DevilsAdvocate
Always follow the golden rule.
[X] Plan Grey Rat Swarms the World.
-[X][Asuka] Try to correct the Atma imbalance that's making you constantly hungry. Atma check at DC50, success removes the Voracious trait.
-[X][Style] Grey Rat Scavenges To Live
-[X][Personal] Use your influence over Grey Rat style to encourage its discovery by a larger group of practitioners.
-[X][Asuka] Try to correct the Atma imbalance that's making you constantly hungry. Atma check at DC50, success removes the Voracious trait.
-[X][Style] Grey Rat Scavenges To Live
-[X][Personal] Use your influence over Grey Rat style to encourage its discovery by a larger group of practitioners.
- Location
- Brazil
Consider the chargen vote :
Clearly our domain refers to those that practice our style, the problem is that isntead of chosing a group we chose a individual, so instead of managing a domain we are managing a hero unit, so logicaly to unlock the domain action we need to expand the number of practioners.
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[X] Plan Grey Rat Makes Talismans And Goes Fasting
[X] Plan Healthy Mind
We could totally go for some kind of Ethereal Deathly Lunar Wyld Hunt thing. You know I really really like the idea of an Ethereal Deathly Lunar Wyld Hunt thing. Earn our fame and respect(and fear of course) by way of hunting ludicrously dangerous Demon Beasts(and people, if given the right incentives of course) and either selling or using the parts. We might even get Nomadic to if we get kicked out the sect, roam around the world/empire picking up loose cultivators.
[X] Plan Healthy Mind
We could totally go for some kind of Ethereal Deathly Lunar Wyld Hunt thing. You know I really really like the idea of an Ethereal Deathly Lunar Wyld Hunt thing. Earn our fame and respect(and fear of course) by way of hunting ludicrously dangerous Demon Beasts(and people, if given the right incentives of course) and either selling or using the parts. We might even get Nomadic to if we get kicked out the sect, roam around the world/empire picking up loose cultivators.
Hrm.
I'm unsure how "positive" and "negative" traits are being defined; "cowardly" gives the Style the trait "evasive," which doesn't sound like a negative effect, and "vicious" gives the style "dangerous," which seems to me to be a double-edged blade; without any further definition, it could be both "dangerous to the user" and "dangerous to fight against."
Lazy and inefficient is a pair I'm certainly happier without, granted.
The 1400 vote got Kaname a point of Legendary, two points Disreputable, a point of Ghoulish, a point of Gluttonous, and got rid of a point of Lazy; that looks like 2 positive for 4 negative, but maybe Legendary is just especially valuable. I think the two sets are (Legendary, Disreputable x2) and (-Lazy, Gluttonous, Ghoulish), but it could be (Legendary, Disreputable, Gluttonous) and (-Lazy, Disreputable, Ghoulish) instead.
The 1401 vote got Kaname a point of Lunar, a point of Alert, a point of Cowardly, and removed a point each from Disreputable, Vicious, and Gluttonous. That's six points of shift, again - but three of them came in the form of reductions, rather than the previous turn's one. Possibly some traits are directly opposed?
Given that Gluttonous is explicitly called out as a Yang imbalance, I suspect the Yin specialist path is the bit that removed the point of Gluttonous. It's almost certainly also the source of Lunar. We specifically voted to reduce Disreputable, so that reduction should be in the other set. So: (Lunar, [anti-gluttony], Cowardly) and (-Disreputable, -Vicious/+[anti-vicious], +Alert), but that doesn't look right? Hrm.
1402 vote: Kaname gains 1 point Cultivator, Worldly, Prepared, Cowardly. Loses Impolite. Hmm. That's five, not six. On the other hand, this is also the first turn in which Asuka failed her roll; we might be looking at (3, 2, 1) instead of (3, 3) and missed the (1) this turn? [Fundamentals] is probably (Worldly, Prepared, Cowardly).
1403 vote: Kaname gets another point in Cultivator, and also Wyld, Hunter, Artisan, and Gluttonous. That's five, again, and Asuka didn't fail this time, so it looks like it's the difference between cultivating and removing faults that does it. Sets should be (Cultivator, Wyld) and (Hunter, Artisan, Gluttonous), if Wyld's association with Chi-use says anything.
We've gotten Gluttonous twice now, both on turns when Asuka focused on raising her Cultivation. That might be a coincidence, but let's keep an eye on it.
More Yin, probably.
Yang Specialist was "Grey Rat Devours the Sun," which probably would have increased Gluttonous.
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- Location
- Pindorama
The reason I just compared the two last votes is because those were the turns we didn't focus on Personal flaws, so I wanted to isolate the effects of just the Style choices specifically. Of course, our personal actions also give us stats which confuses things.
But in terms of fluff, it seemed that we got Gluttonous when we made our deal with King Death, which doesn't seem linked to Asuka's Cultivation. It's also possible Asuka developing that new Technique is what gave us Alert, since she can also affect our Traits.
The Style increases are also likely fluff dependent as well. I don't think this next Beast-killer focus will give us Artisan for example, though I could be wrong.
Regardless, I think the 2-for-1 trade feels pretty intuitive for me with regards to "normal" Style developments. If we get a turn where we choose to focus on the world by giving her a Treasure or making new adepts of the Style we can confirm this.
We lost it completely when made our deal with the Moon, so we should be able to lose it again.
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Looking at things more carefully, we got Gluttonous on turns where we picked "Grey Rat Persists on Corruption" and "Grey Rat Eats Behemoth's Corpses."
I'm gonna go with, "if we don't want gluttonous, stop taking Style choices that reference eating things."
As a side-note, I don't think each Build Path always gives us the same three; we've seen Style of Legend twice, but there's no way "Corrupt Grey Rat's Plague Fist" gives the same trait set as "Grey Rat Persists on Corruption." Not when it would practically have to give us a rank of Vicious.
Assuming acquiring a Treasure or whatever doesn't have an effect on our stats, anyways. But if it costs us a point of Rich or something, it should probably be easier to isolate.
- Location
- Pindorama
I see you missed my edits; no worries, it happens to me all the time as well.
Of all the Styles on offer I do think the Survival one is the one most likely to give Gluttonous, but I do still think it's possible with the Beast-killing path, even if I consider something like (Alert, Hunter, Cowardly) pretty possible as well. I'd like to hedge my bets here, and so I'd prefer to remove Gluttonous now. If we don't get another point next turn we can just have Asuka do something else; arguably that's a better use of her time then using her to fix our own flaws.
I agree, yes. Though if spreading our Style to more people really unlocks Domain, it might not give stat changes? That's a bit of a long shot I admit, but we want to find a away to unlock Domain anyway, so.
"Grey Rat Devours the Flesh," Warlord. Maybe Survival has it too, I don't see any reason that couldn't happen, but I don't think there's any way the Warlord one doesn't.
Our bargain with King Death and the emulation of carrion rats probably means we're likely to see a lot of style options give gluttonous; come to think of it, that might be reason enough to want to renegotiate.
Hmm. Asuka's recent thoughts on Atma seem relevant.
I'd like to try to recruit additional students on the same turn as we have Asuka fight a duel. Gives an obvious narrative reason for what's going on, though probably one that'll really tick off the Master of the Green Dragon Sect.
- Location
- Pindorama
Both Scavenging and Devouring are hunger-related terms; but only the Survival fluff references literally devouring Life Atma, so it's a stronger chance to me than the one who references our feral nature only. But this is basically pedantry at this point, frankly.
I agree there's likely a synergistic effect there, but pushing through the Duel seems pretty hard. The most fitting time would be now as the capstone of 5 years of training, but next turn might give a similar effect if it's done at "start" of the turn. I do think Asuka needs to strike on her own someday though.
... Huh. Thinking about this for a minute ...
Grey Rat Cheats the Heavens has an issue with Life Chi. Seriously so. Given Asuka's hunger currently can't be handled with Yin this time, it might not be a Yang imbalance, even though Yang is associated with hunger. It might be a Death imbalance, which Life Atma would be needed to correct.
... I don't think I'm going to make any claims as to what's going on here, but once I've chewed it over some more I might just be changing my vote.
- Location
- Pindorama
That's actually a good catch. Even if it's not specifically a Life Atma unbalance the element is still pretty Yang-Aspected so it could work. Given our hunger returned when we were finished with the hunt however, I still think Gluttonous was caused by our Style focus. Would the ability to eat Life Atma make us less Gluttonous then following this logic? It seems against theme to me, but I also see how it could work, so I dunno.
This chain of events is actually pretty weird, which I suppose is fitting for a Nobilis-like. We didn't have Gluttonous the previous turn, so our Style couldn't cause those urges even if we taught it to new people, but now that we have the Trait again it's suddenly an issue, and having her train the Style to fix that would actually remove it from our own Traits. Is it because she's our only practitioner and therefore what Traits she doesn't have the Style has a whole wouldn't have either? If more people trained our Style it would be weird and totally unbalanced if we get modified every time they bring the Style in a new direction, but Asuka can indeed change the Style as a whole so I so think it works like I theorized.
If we successfully train Gluttonous out, would she find a solution without an action on her part? The Moon turn result says yes. The next question: Would the Survival focus actually increase or decrease Gluttonous? Both could be in theme, but I lean more strongly for it actually increasing the Attribute. So I don't think the Survival path is a solution, even though I agree it's possibly so.
Even if it did reduce gluttonous, thematically it'd do so by making her resemble (or be?) souldraining undead, so I'm not fond of that path even if I think it might work in the immediate sense.
Mostly I'm reconsidering my initial judgement of the "renegotiate" vote, though I'm still concerned what the costs of that might be.
Certainly we know Asuka's currently getting a surplus of Death Atma from Kaname's bargain; I wonder what she might think is going on if she notices?
- Location
- Pindorama
Renegotiate the deal so it gives less power, that'd certainly be something alright. If you think there's too much Death Atma in her system I'd prefer to develop something that channels such Atma more productively instead of renegotiating the deal. This could be either through a Style development or through Charms or even a Treasure. If we have too much power it just means we aren't putting it to use, or doing so incorrectly; I'd certainly prefer seeking other alternatives first.
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