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Shards of a Broken Sun [Megaten/Shugo Chara/Exalted]

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Quine said:
Mechanically, I don't think we can get partial levels, or at least, a half-trained level won't boost our rolls. But training can be suspended, and narratively, we don't just suddenly go from "learned nothing" to "learned everything" at the instant training finishes. Narratively, we'd have already learned plenty by the end of day 1. I think it makes sense that we'd get the narrative benefits we're looking for even if we suspend after a day.

As for whether half-trained Teleportation 1 or Clairvoyance 1 would allow minor uses of those skills... I'm curious too!
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One day isn't really enough, especially for the first attempt at 'training'. But the idea makes sense in general, and I'll be tracking partial dots anyway to keep track of how far said training has gotten. That being said, I'm not going to roll partial dice. For any situation in which dice get rolled, 99% complete training will do as much good as 0%. This is mostly for my own sanity.
PistachioCookies said:
If it is, is it possible to get half a level in Teleportation to pull things from our pockets without needing our hands or half a level in Clairvoyance just to see behind doors/walls?
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Yes, though it should be noted, Amu is capable of those things right now—with 0 dots in clairvoyance or teleportation, those feats still have a dice pool of [Perception + Integrity - 1], which... okay, Amu isn't amazingly perceptive, but 3 dice gives a decent chance of success. It's just, teleportation—or clairvoyance, often—isn't something you want to risk a botch on.

Having 0.5 dots in it doesn't change that equation significantly. You'd still need to complete the first dot to do anything I'd describe as 'useful', outside of special circumstances.
PistachioCookies said:
@Baughn - Would Amu actually be able to get more training time from school hours if she hit Lore 2 and presumably stuffed the curriculum into her head?
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Quine said:
It's not a matter of how much training time she can get. It's a matter of what the consequences are. She can stop paying attention with or without Lore 2, but she can go a lot further without academic consequences (or the resulting social consequences) with Lore 2. I don't want our parents (or Ami) getting disappointed in us for coming back with a bunch of failed assignments.
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Quine has it right. Amu would come off as weird if she gets perfect grades without seemingly studying at all-

<Saaya> This is a difference in degree, not in kind.
 
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Voting semi-closed
  • Voting
    • Adhoc vote count started by Baughn on Dec 11, 2023 at 12:06 PM, finished with 120 posts and 14 votes.
    [focus] [training]
    • 13
      [X][Focus] Ami
      [X][Focus] Kana
      [X][Focus] Utau
      [X][Focus] Lulu
      [X][Focus] Nagihiko
      [X][Focus] JPs
      [X][Focus] Tsukasa
      [X][Focus] Kukai
    • 4
      [X] [Training] Dreamwalking 2
      -[X] It'd be nice to hang out with Ami more. See if you can keep Ami company during her own dreamwalking trips.
      [X] [Training] Illusion 2
      -[X] Try to keep up minor illusions while you're doing other things. Wear an illusionary scarf or hat or something around the house, or stick an illusionary ball in your bag when you go out and see how long you can keep it up.
      [X] [Training] Plan: Do As Ami Does
      -[X] Dreamwalking 2 - Ami needs some love and attention after the incident. Not from the counselor. Spend some bonding time with her leading up to bedtime every evening and maybe you'll also be able to figure out how her lucid dreaming powers work at the same time, and you can try and replicate it while you go to sleep every night too. Maybe Kana will also be able to provide some tips, given she seems to have some way to influence Yui's dreams whenever they get bad.
      -[X] Illusion 2 - Ami pulled something out of dreams for your birthday, perhaps you can do the same and give her a reciprocal present on her next birthday. Also, all your school stuff got crushed along with your desk by the rift, so you now need new stationery. Fortunately, Miki allows you to pull functioning pens, pencils and other writing implements out of thin air. Make some before going to school every day and then see how long you can keep them working throughout school once separated from Miki. Though, you'd best hurry up and buy an actual set too, just in case they don't last too long.
      -[X] Precognition 2 - Your capacity for schoolwork is less than 100% given everything that happened. This is not a problem for Ami, as Miki exists to help her cheat. Conversely, this means Miki is not available to help YOU cheat, but fortunately you have another solution. Much like Tsukasa and that not-so-quack fortune teller from TV, you believe you may also have some ability to see the future thanks to Dia, if nothing else. While at school, attempt to use Precognition to shore up your flailing academic grades by predicting the questions and answers to everything the teachers ask everybody, whether in-person or on the quizzes. While outside school, conjure a deck of Miki-sized playing cards for her and try to guess what she draws next whenever she randomly shuffles the deck.
      -[X] Integrity 3 - It might be possible to speed up Saaya's recovery if you knew more about how she was afflicted. You can think of 2 experiences you have personally suffered that might come close - either the strain that comes from borrowing someone else's Chara, or the hollowness you feel from keeping Ran and Su out for too long. Miki and Ami always enjoy having Ran and Su out and about and you're fairly sure Utau wouldn't mind too much if you borrowed Eru for a little bit either - as much as you can manage each day, anyway. Angel's Cradle might help Ami not have nightmares about demons, if nothing else.
      [X] [Training] Plan Learn Early to get Ahead
      -[X] Lore 2 With all the things that happened lately, you surely fell behind at school, and you have a feeling that more things might happen in the future. So getting ahead in learning will surely make it easy to keep your grades up and perhaps understand what everyone older then you at times is talking about.
      -[X] Integrity 3 - It might be possible to speed up Saaya's recovery if you knew more about how she was afflicted. You can think of 2 experiences you have personally suffered that might come close - either the strain that comes from borrowing someone else's Chara, or the hollowness you feel from keeping Ran and Su out for too long. Miki and Ami always enjoy having Ran and Su out and about and you're fairly sure Utau wouldn't mind too much if you borrowed Eru for a little bit either - as much as you can manage each day, anyway. Angel's Cradle might help Ami not have nightmares about demons, if nothing else.
      -[X] Illusion 2 - Through the day when reasonably possible you could try and maintain some kind of illusion, be it illusions to amuse your little sister with, or trying to hide a chara change with Eru, or even just some idle accessory you can put on yourself. Surely if you try such things enough you'll be able to figure out how to make illusions better then before.
      [X] [Training] Plan: Do As Ami Does
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    The result of the focus vote is fairly obvious, and I'm calling it closed.

    As to the training vote, here's an extra 24h.
     
  • Voting
    • Baughn said:
    One day isn't really enough, especially for the first attempt at 'training'. But the idea makes sense in general, and I'll be tracking partial dots anyway to keep track of how far said training has gotten. That being said, I'm not going to roll partial dice. For any situation in which dice get rolled, 99% complete training will do as much good as 0%. This is mostly for my own sanity.
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    Okay, so more than one day, but we could finish the rest of the school year's worth of material in less time than it'd take to finish Lore 2.

    Baughn said:
    Yes, though it should be noted, Amu is capable of those things right now—with 0 dots in clairvoyance or teleportation, those feats still have a dice pool of [Perception + Integrity - 1], which... okay, Amu isn't amazingly perceptive, but 3 dice gives a decent chance of success. It's just, teleportation—or clairvoyance, often—isn't something you want to risk a botch on.

    Having 0.5 dots in it doesn't change that equation significantly. You'd still need to complete the first dot to do anything I'd describe as 'useful', outside of special circumstances.
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    Huh. That's Integrity? More reason to train Integrity, then.
     
    Baughn said:
    Quine has it right. Amu would come off as weird if she gets perfect grades without seemingly studying at all-

    <Saaya> This is a difference in degree, not in kind.
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    ....So what you mean is, we're risking Amu getting accused of mundane cheating if we tried to use Precognition to compensate academically.

    I don't believe Lore 2 is worthwhile, but if we can buy just half a level for 1 XP it might be OK. Would still be useless for practical purposes, but the important thing is that it would let us still train Dreamwalking at the same time for the night hours while retaining 2 XP to instant boost during the arc.

    Otherwise we can't train anything else except for Lore, Illusion and Integrity without having too little XP to use for instant boosts.
     
    PistachioCookies said:
    ....So what you mean is, we're risking Amu getting accused of mundane cheating if we tried to use Precognition to compensate academically.
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    It certainly would be much easier to prove you aren't cheating if you genuinely know the material. Precog is fiddly, failure-prone, and doesn't apply at all in many cases.
    Quine said:
    Huh. That's Integrity? More reason to train Integrity, then.
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    It would be in this case.
    Quine said:
    Okay, so more than one day, but we could finish the rest of the school year's worth of material in less time than it'd take to finish Lore 2.
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    Lore 2 corresponds roughly to every college education, so yes.
     
    I don't mind if some one made a plan for half training it, we could always fill it in later if we decided it would be useful then. And I do prefer the story where Amu learnt her school work for the year in a surprisingly quick time, certainly would be an interesting revelation.


    Also 'every' college education is already a pretty high level of knowledge.
     
    [X] [Training] Plan Learn Early to get Ahead.

    Okay, I like the idea of Dreamwalking, but Lore 2 is amazing and it sounds like something you want to unlock as early as possible. It's kind of a shame that there isn't a plan that includes both of those things.

    Edited: Speaking of the usefulness of Lore 2, if Amu had a medical college level understanding of biology, she could very well be able to cure Saya on her own.
     
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    As things stand, here's the training I'm interested in, and why:
    • At least half a dot of Lore 2, to make sure other training during school time is an academic non-issue.
    • Dreamwalking 2. This lets us get some training benefit out of sleep time, and is potentially useful later on in a number of ways, such as if complications arise with Ami or Yui. Also, the narrative of training this involves Ami hangout time, which I'm happy with.
    • Illusion 2. So versatile.
    • Integrity 3. Boosts our mental resilience, which we're going to need, and it goes into useful dice rolls.
    I'm neutral on precog - I'm not going to vote against a plan for taking it, but I don't like how heavy use of precog affects a story.
     
    Eternal_0bserver said:
    Edited: Speaking of the usefulness of Lore 2, if Amu had a medical college level understanding of biology, she could very well be able to cure Saya on her own.
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    To clarify that statement a bit: Lore is defined as specifically academic knowledge. It would include some knowledge of biology, such as how the Krebs cycle works, but all the practical aspects -- how to surgically remove a tumor, et cetera -- is in Medicine. Lore is pretty much limited to work you can do on a keyboard.

    That doesn't make it much less useful, but means you often would need other people to handle the hands-on work.
     
    Baughn said:
    To clarify that statement a bit: Lore is defined as specifically academic knowledge. It would include some knowledge of biology, such as how the Krebs cycle works, but all the practical aspects -- how to surgically remove a tumor, et cetera -- is in Medicine. Lore is pretty much limited to work you can do on a keyboard.

    That doesn't make it much less useful, but means you often would need other people to handle the hands-on work.
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    So basically it's something like the theoretical knowledge on the matters? As in you know the idealized diagrams and so for it, but have no experience in how it works out in the real world. You know there are lungs and tissues surrounding it, but don't have the experience of what it means or what to do if those are breached.


    Still even theoretical knowledge in some cases might be something you could leverage at least a little bit towards some cases of biokinesis healing. At the least because you'd have more of an idea what each of the things are and so. Hmmmm.
     
    This story is going to involve precognition as soon as Nicaea comes online anyway. The way I see it, us having our own brand of it is just evening out the playing field.

    But OK, this is my best attempt to overlap Illusion, Integrity, Dreamwalking and half a level of Lore:

    [X] [Training] Plan: Cram Like Kairi
    -[X] Dreamwalking 2 (1 XP) - Ami needs some love and attention after the incident. Not from the counselor. Spend some bonding time with her leading up to bedtime every evening and maybe you'll also be able to figure out how her lucid dreaming powers work at the same time, and you can try and replicate it while you go to sleep every night too. Maybe Kana will also be able to provide some tips, given she seems to have some way to influence Yui's dreams whenever they get bad.
    -[X] Illusion 2 (1 XP) - Ami pulled something out of dreams for your birthday, perhaps you can do the same and give her a reciprocal present on her next birthday. Also, all your school stuff got crushed along with your desk by the rift, so you now need new stationery. Fortunately, Miki allows you to pull functioning pens, pencils and other writing implements out of thin air. Make some before going to school every day and then see how long you can keep them working throughout school once separated from Miki. Though, you'd best hurry up and buy an actual set too, just in case they don't last too long.
    -[X] Lore 1.5 (1 XP) - You're going in to a new school having missed half a month of lessons. This is not a problem for Ami, as Miki exists to help her cheat. You're going to need to make up for time the old-fashioned way. You have no idea what the curriculum of the new school is like compared to Seiyo, or what point they are currently at - but you have a foolproof solution to this that would make your old friend Kairi Sanjou proud. You simply need to read ahead on the entire year! ...And maybe the one after too, just in case they're ahead of Seiyo. In addition to meticulous note-taking with your conjured stationery, you grab every copy of every textbook for school you can think of and any copies of their past exams you can find and also conjure mini-copies of them for Miki, so that she can also help quiz you on stuff whenever she's around. And possibly even while you're dreaming too.
    -[X] Integrity 3 (4 XP) - It might be possible to speed up Saaya's recovery if you knew more about how she was afflicted. You can think of 2 experiences you have personally suffered that might come close - either the strain that comes from borrowing someone else's Chara, or the hollowness you feel from keeping Ran and Su out for too long. Miki and Ami always enjoy having Ran and Su out and about and you're fairly sure Utau wouldn't mind too much if you borrowed Eru for a little bit either - as much as you can manage each day, anyway. Angel's Cradle might help Ami not have nightmares about demons, if nothing else. Meanwhile, Ran and Su can also join Miki to help you cram with mini-textbook copies of their own.
     
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    Baughn said:
    To clarify that statement a bit: Lore is defined as specifically academic knowledge. It would include some knowledge of biology, such as how the Krebs cycle works, but all the practical aspects -- how to surgically remove a tumor, et cetera -- is in Medicine. Lore is pretty much limited to work you can do on a keyboard.

    That doesn't make it much less useful, but means you often would need other people to handle the hands-on work.
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    I mean, the academic knowledge of medical college students includes things like detailed step-by-step instructions for emergency care for most common injuries and illnesses. It must be more difficult in the absence of practical experience, but having this knowledge is still much better than not. Besides, Biokinesis seems to cheat through a lot of problems.
     
    Eternal_0bserver said:
    I mean, the academic knowledge of medical college students includes things like detailed step-by-step instructions for emergency care for most common injuries and illnesses. It must be more difficult in the absence of practical experience, but having this knowledge is still much better than not. Besides, Biokinesis seems to cheat through a lot of problems.
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    Those would definitely fall under 'Medicine' as well. In general, if some aspect of knowledge could be under either Lore or alternately <something else>, it's under <something else>...

    But while Lore won't tell you how to suture a wound, it does include the theoretical knowledge you'd need to recreate that guide. And you're right, biokinesis helps a great deal. "X + Medicine + Biokinesis" can indeed sometimes be replaced with "X + Lore + Biokinesis"...

    Not for first-aid, though.
    PistachioCookies said:
    ....You mean every college education except Law (Bureaucracy), Politics (Bureaucracy), any foreign language (Linguistics), Medicine, Religion (Occult) and Performing Arts. And possibly anything to do with Forensics (Investigation) too.
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    Right. The academic side.

    It's still staggeringly broad, but it doesn't obsolete all the other abilities.
     
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    Well @PistachioCookies plan does nearly everything mine did and has dream walking as well. And it does try to get things to work together more for some overlap. Guess we'll see if the illusionary stationary remain permanent or not, though I guess it would create some motivation to get better at the illusion thing.

    [X] [Training] Plan: Cram Like Kairi
     
    [X] [Training] Plan: Cram Like Kairi.

    Seems like a good enough compromise. Still hoping we get Lore 2 next time because even if somewhat limited, it's still pretty cool. Plus, the seemingly usually unflappable Amu worrying about her grades at her new school to the point that she accidentally memorizes each college's syllabus is absolute comedy gold.

    <Amu> I realized that you were right. I really relied too much on my natural abilities and did not pay enough attention to my studies. So now I intend to try my best!
    <Saaya> Why does that sound like a threat?!
     
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    Baughn said:
    To clarify that statement a bit: Lore is defined as specifically academic knowledge. It would include some knowledge of biology, such as how the Krebs cycle works, but all the practical aspects -- how to surgically remove a tumor, et cetera -- is in Medicine. Lore is pretty much limited to work you can do on a keyboard.
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    We might still be able to apply it to medical stunts anyway, though. Even if we take a penalty for needing to work things out from first principles, there's probably some breakpoint where it's better than trying to use Medicine 0. An equal level of Medicine would still work much better, of course.

    Eternal_0bserver said:
    [X] [Training] Plan: Cram Like Kair.
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    You've got a period instead of an "i" on "Kairi".
     
    Anything we have even a single level in is better than Medicine 0, we don't just get no dice for it, we get slapped with a penalty using it too.

    My guess is that what we can mainly replace using Lore rather than Medicine is replicating drugs. That would require chemical engineering knowledge which could also fall under Craft or Medicine, but since the actual engineering of it gets done using Biokinesis, I guess it might be enough to just know the chemistry. You wouldn't need to work out what the medical effects would be using your own knowledge either, if you got told on the packet what it was supposed to be for.
     
    [X] [Training] Plan: Cram Like Kairi

    Lore 2 would be nice, but Lore 1.5 works for now.

    That being said, though, if we want Lore in part to help with using biokinesis for healing, why not train Medicine? It'd give us actual experience with this specific field. I suppose I might be missing something about our XP budget, and I'm on mobile so writing up a plan myself would be a pain, but I'd say we should probably get at least one Medicine dot after the next arc, if we can. (Actually, would half-training it at least remove the unskilled penalty?)
     
    PistachioCookies said:
    Anything we have even a single level in is better than Medicine 0, we don't just get no dice for it, we get slapped with a penalty using it too.
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    We're likely to take a penalty for trying to use Lore on a Medicine action, too, or it might raise the difficulty. (I'm talking about actions like, say, trying to use Lore to figure out how to treat Saaya from first principles, where Medicine is far more immediately useful.)

    PistachioCookies said:
    My guess is that what we can mainly replace using Lore rather than Medicine is replicating drugs. That would require chemical engineering knowledge which could also fall under Craft or Medicine, but since the actual engineering of it gets done using Biokinesis, I guess it might be enough to just know the chemistry. You wouldn't need to work out what the medical effects would be using your own knowledge either, if you got told on the packet what it was supposed to be for.
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    I don't think Amu can directly perceive the chemistry, even with biokinesis, so knowing the chemical structure of a drug might not be enough to synthesize it.

    Yu Narukaze said:
    [X] [Training] Plan: Cram Like Kairi

    Lore 2 would be nice, but Lore 1.5 works for now.

    That being said, though, if we want Lore in part to help with using biokinesis for healing, why not train Medicine? It'd give us actual experience with this specific field. I suppose I might be missing something about our XP budget, and I'm on mobile so writing up a plan myself would be a pain, but I'd say we should probably get at least one Medicine dot after the next arc, if we can. (Actually, would half-training it at least remove the unskilled penalty?)
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    The first dot in a new ability takes 3 times as much training time as the second. Medicine 1 would take 6 times as much training as Lore 1.5. It's hard to justify the training time for that.
     
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    Quine said:
    The first dot in a new ability takes 3 times as much training time as the second. Medicine 1 would take 6 times as much training as Lore 1.5. It's hard to justify the training time for that.
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    Ah, I see. It would be good to get eventually anyway (healers are invaluable), but we should probably wait until we can find a tutor for it. I think most medical professionals should qualify as tutors, since 2 dots is the standard for trained professionals (per 3E), but we'd still need to find one who had the time to help us out.

    ... Which also means we should try and do that before shit really hits the fan, because once it does, medics will be swamped with work. So it should probably be a priority post-Arc 2.
     
    PistachioCookies said:
    In addition to meticulous note-taking with your conjured stationery, you grab every copy of every textbook for school you can think of and any copies of their past exams you can find and also conjure mini-copies of them for Miki, so that she can also help quiz you on stuff whenever she's around.
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    Are the copies supposed to be conjured after Amu memorizes the contents cover to cover, or are you hoping Amu can make a copy of a textbook without doing that?


    Thinking about it, this plan is going to result in a pretty frazzled Amu - it's a heavy training load, and training Integrity 3 this way is a significant stress. Considering the strain this puts on Amu, and considering Amu just got out of the hospital for mental overstrain, I don't know if Utau will actually let us borrow Eru, or if Eru herself will cooperate.

    Considering how much time we're voting to spend with Ami, and Ami's "Motivation: Doing everything that Amu does", I think Ami will likely end up mimicking at least part of what we're doing. This could lead to results like Ami pumping up the intensity on her own coursework - I can see her having Lore 1 in a month or two, or sooner if she decides to really push it.
     
    Quine said:
    I don't think Amu can directly perceive the chemistry, even with biokinesis, so knowing the chemical structure of a drug might not be enough to synthesize it.
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    Biokinesis is the... abstracted interface, might be the simplest way to put it. Doing chemistry that way would require somewhere around Biokinesis 5. ... but that's because it's pushing the definition of "biokinesis". That being said, none of Amu's talents lend themselves to that direction.
    Quine said:
    Considering how much time we're voting to spend with Ami, and Ami's "Motivation: Doing everything that Amu does", I think Ami will likely end up mimicking at least part of what we're doing. This could lead to results like Ami pumping up the intensity on her own coursework - I can see her having Lore 1 in a month or two, or sooner if she decides to really push it.
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    I know! It'll be interesting!
     
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