I can't in good conscience vote for this plan while these two bullets are still in it. This is treason.
You're aware that the next big bonus is going to come at Earthshaping 50, right? As far as we can tell Earthshaping 40 is just a slightly more effective version of Earthshaping 30.
Well it wouldn't be a very good deterrent if we actually wanted to do it. Nonetheless, we probably don't want to do a contract of any kind, we want to impress on the others how serious this is to Ami.
You want us to say that to Kei?
Can someone remind me if training SC is more FOOM-efficient than raising CR here?
There are things we don't want to do that aren't treason. I don't see the need to list those suggestions as we aren't actually crafting a contract at this point.
It's the next step of @Paperclipped's "No-Buri" plan (the exact plan doesn't matter since they are all interchangable before the detours), so I'm pretty sure it's the fastest next step.
I believe wording in [] Don't Enter the Diva Path addresses that. @Shrooms, do you feel like the treason is the point of why those ideas are valuable or would you be ok with adding that "only mention if not treason" modifier?
I did "Sanity check with, and bring Akane and Noburi", does that work?
First jump was from lvl 10 to 30. Next would probably be the same 20 lvl gap. Mind you, I do think there are very real and tangible benefits to raising ES even if it doesn't hit lvl 50. For one, there are still many who are in denial or willing to dismiss our claims of the GS. The more accurate are models are, the less room they have to wiggle with and will thus take us more seriously. Even Orochimaru will have to stop dismissing this.
Adding on to that. There are maybe five people (Ami, Mari, Tenten, Naruto, Kagome, Hazō?, Noburi?) in the world that would be willing to lie and manipulate Orochimaru to his face in order to temporarily divert him away from Kei. Mari is one of Kei's most dedicated (and strongest!) protectors.
First of all, our model is about to get substantially better because we are about to lose our sixteen point penalty for our two severe consequences. That's going to let us go from 46 to 62, which is more than enough to make a substantial upgrade on our model. In comparison, we only get an additional four points from going from Earthshaping 30 to Earthshaping 34.
The best argument against this is that Mari's actions are only known to a very select few (and will stay that way since both the SC mechanics and the Asuma/Orochimaru divide are under heavy OPSEC). This wouldn't be a very effective deterant if no one knows about it.
May I ask if there's a concrete reason that you decided to go for a compromise solution? At first glance it feels like a middle ground fallacy/bias, but I assume that there's more to it.
Can you extrapolate what you mean by this? The XP cost for this upgrade is much lower than 591.
Ah.
I think your second point is more convincing actually! Although I suppose it's not yet clear whether the degree of retribution from Ami is or isn't proportional to the degree of harm someone exposes Kei to. Either way though, Ami "destroying" Mari for this makes associating at all with Kei look like a net negative in case you run afoul of Ami and so punishing "good but not perfect" harshly (even if proportionally) leads to people avoiding Kei interactions out of caution which seems... bad.
+1 to this! Hazou has been extremely deferential to Cannai in all their interactions so far (enough that Cannai is usually telling Hazou to chill out about it) so it doesn't seem like Hazou would do this. That said, Hazou not noticing at all that it's treason until Mari reminds him, even without the "better to ask forgiveness than permission" bit, still results in the same outcome/resolution right?
A slightly better model won't convince him of anything. He won't even see it. If you really want to convince him, have Asuma assure him it's been verified by Enma. Or better yet, have one of the Conclave clans send an ambassador to Snake so that Manda can be in the loop and tell Orochimaru.
