- Location
- Laniakea
Yes.
If she can make copies without fully knowing everything in it, all good. If she can't and her Charas end up with botched copies - more incentive for her to improve Lore and Illusion.
Shards of a Broken Sun [Megaten/Shugo Chara/Exalted]
- Thread starter Baughn
- Start date
- Crossover
If she can make copies without fully knowing everything in it, all good. If she can't and her Charas end up with botched copies - more incentive for her to improve Lore and Illusion.
One thing to point out, Lore was the cornerstone upon which the entire world and everyone in it hinged on last quest.
Lore stronk.
We were also a really bad Solar last time since we thought we'd be fighting in Conception so we went Dawn and only used War out of the entire set. And only once I think.
We were the most Twilight Dawn to ever Twilight and it was hilarious.
... Come to think of it, I wonder where the rest of the old crowd is. Alectai is still around at least I know...
Anyway, old man tangent aside, you're all monsters. Integrity training.
The ability used to stop reality from squishing you.
Amu's gonna be more than just frazzled from trying to train that. Good ideas on how to train it though.
One thing to keep in mind is we have on giant advantage playing right now: We know Amu is going to exalt as a Solar. God-Kings/Queens and Leaders. It doesn't necessarily make sense IC, but we can prepare in a lot of ways still. Don't dismiss getting base abilities because they are more expensive, remember that they're also prereqs for Charms.
And the more Ability dots we get now, the less we spend with Exaltation points to get then for whatever we need in the moment.
Maybe don't plan out the Charms we'll get, we don't know who will be around or what resources we'll have once Conception hits, but we can plan some things. Like we'll probably want something out of the fighty club and war. Twilight's everything. Yes, including Bureaucracy, we had a dire need for that last time, never laugh at the paper pusher Exalt. The Dragon ones can literally drown you in it if you do.
*Shrug*
Psionics is going to be fun and very useful and very encouraged, don't forget about the basics though.
I know at least one reason everything is Solar priced for Amu, but another guess I have: The world is coming apart at the seems, and Amu lives on and probably is one of those seems.
There's consequences for every action, those consequences can be happening to us from other's actions too. Its not a one-way road.
Lore stronk.
We were also a really bad Solar last time since we thought we'd be fighting in Conception so we went Dawn and only used War out of the entire set. And only once I think.
We were the most Twilight Dawn to ever Twilight and it was hilarious.
... Come to think of it, I wonder where the rest of the old crowd is. Alectai is still around at least I know...
Anyway, old man tangent aside, you're all monsters. Integrity training.
The ability used to stop reality from squishing you.
Amu's gonna be more than just frazzled from trying to train that. Good ideas on how to train it though.
One thing to keep in mind is we have on giant advantage playing right now: We know Amu is going to exalt as a Solar. God-Kings/Queens and Leaders. It doesn't necessarily make sense IC, but we can prepare in a lot of ways still. Don't dismiss getting base abilities because they are more expensive, remember that they're also prereqs for Charms.
And the more Ability dots we get now, the less we spend with Exaltation points to get then for whatever we need in the moment.
Maybe don't plan out the Charms we'll get, we don't know who will be around or what resources we'll have once Conception hits, but we can plan some things. Like we'll probably want something out of the fighty club and war. Twilight's everything. Yes, including Bureaucracy, we had a dire need for that last time, never laugh at the paper pusher Exalt. The Dragon ones can literally drown you in it if you do.
*Shrug*
Psionics is going to be fun and very useful and very encouraged, don't forget about the basics though.
I know at least one reason everything is Solar priced for Amu, but another guess I have: The world is coming apart at the seems, and Amu lives on and probably is one of those seems.
There's consequences for every action, those consequences can be happening to us from other's actions too. Its not a one-way road.
We, uh... actually don't. It's very likely! But the exaltation could still go to someone else.
That said, we'll probably want to prepare for exaltation at some point.
- Location
- Laniakea
Hey.
How about ideally, we don't let Conception hit and don't need to pull an Arisato and use our own soul as a metaphysical door-stopper against Kagutsuchi?
Hikawa's cult is still in the feeding-demons stage right now, so unlike the first Shards I assume we have an opportunity to stop them from triggering the apocalypse given it is many months early.
Finding out enough about their activities to stop them is probably going to be the main issue (given that JP's seem ready to bring down the hammer where necessary)- and I imagine some extra Precognition would really be of help in that regard.
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
True. I forget, how much Lore does Chaos-Repelling Pattern require again?
3... but it also needs Essence 3, and the standard rules for converting a mortal PC to an exalt don't let you take Essence 3 at that time. If we're following those rules, we won't be able to pick up Chaos-Repelling Pattern as a starter charm. We'll need at least 3 days at 8 hours a day to research it, and that's if Lore is a favored/caste ability.
- Location
- Laniakea
Lore 3.
As I mentioned before, as far as I can tell, it really needs to be at level 3 before it's especially useful for anything good.
(In fact the only Lore Charm that takes less than 3 is Essence-Lending Method and, uh, can anybody else we know even make use of Essence?)
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Vote closed
Looking at the story implications of this training vote some more...
When I proposed Lore 2, I had a much lower-key narrative in mind for the training. Amu would be starting with a very low target, maybe just trying to get a month ahead. She'd push on, mildly disturbed by her progress, when she realized how quickly she's progressing. I was also imagining Lore 2 as a much lower target overall, and imagining a less dramatically intense study effort.
Quickshot's Lore vote was close to what I had in mind. Pistachio's vote, though? Pistachio's vote puts forth a very different story. Here, the narrative has Amu starting with a total overkill academic goal, although still not as high as Lore 1.5. She's trying to study all the way to next year's material, in preparation for classes resuming, which is in a week or less. The narrative of this Lore vote is Amu taking on an utterly unreasonable level of academic burden, before she learns she's miraculously up to the task.
Combined with the Integrity vote, which is basically Amu hurting herself to try to help Saaya, the story of this training vote is the story of an Amu coping very poorly with the rift incident. She's got the stress of killing demons, guilt over the people she couldn't save, and guilt over Saaya, still in the hospital despite her best efforts. Maybe also a bit of "holy shit, I could have died out there". I think in character, beneath the surface justification, the crazy hyperstudying is an attempt to distract herself from her feelings.
Fortunately for Amu's mental health, she has people who love her, and we've voted to interact with a bunch of them. Ami, Utau, Miki, Ran, Su, and Kana (who we picked as a focus vote). All of them can read Amu's emotions, too. Hopefully some of them can help break Amu out of her funk.
I can't see that Integrity vote going as planned. Utau might let us borrow Eru maybe once, max, before she realizes what's up. Eru is going to stop cooperating too. I'm less confident about how Ran and Su will react - with their closer tie to Amu's mental state, they might be feeling a lot of what Amu is feeling.
Amu's parents are going to be so concerned. She was supposed to be resting! If they see her studying like this, the stress of Integrity 3 is going to look like it's coming from Lore 1.5.
I don't know if we can actually finish Integrity 3 like this without Amu having a total breakdown, and/or her friends and family staging an intervention.
That said, Amu's training rates are even more absurd than her goals. She is in fact quite capable of accomplishing the academic goal the vote has her set for herself - even heavily distracted, she should be able to reach next year's material before classes resume. (Unless an interrupt stops her.)
I'm not sure how much effective training time per day we're getting. Maybe 4 to 6 hours? Maybe more before school resumes, or maybe less, if the focus votes take a lot of time.
5 hours split 4 ways between 4 traits, with a 25% overlap boost, would be about an hour and a half per day of effective Lore training time. Maybe about 2 or 3 weeks to finish Lore 1.5? It sounds like Lore 1.5 is past the end of middle school, I'm guessing around end of high school, which is just nuts to reach in 2 or 3 weeks while heavily distracted. Depending on exactly how much time is left before classes resume, Amu could be working on or already done with next year's material by the time classes restart.
By that point, she should have either realized on her own how hard she overshot, or another character (like Ami or Miki) should have pointed it out. If she somehow hasn't realized yet, she should realize it when she sees the actual class material. That doesn't mean she stops, though.
When I proposed Lore 2, I had a much lower-key narrative in mind for the training. Amu would be starting with a very low target, maybe just trying to get a month ahead. She'd push on, mildly disturbed by her progress, when she realized how quickly she's progressing. I was also imagining Lore 2 as a much lower target overall, and imagining a less dramatically intense study effort.
Quickshot's Lore vote was close to what I had in mind. Pistachio's vote, though? Pistachio's vote puts forth a very different story. Here, the narrative has Amu starting with a total overkill academic goal, although still not as high as Lore 1.5. She's trying to study all the way to next year's material, in preparation for classes resuming, which is in a week or less. The narrative of this Lore vote is Amu taking on an utterly unreasonable level of academic burden, before she learns she's miraculously up to the task.
Combined with the Integrity vote, which is basically Amu hurting herself to try to help Saaya, the story of this training vote is the story of an Amu coping very poorly with the rift incident. She's got the stress of killing demons, guilt over the people she couldn't save, and guilt over Saaya, still in the hospital despite her best efforts. Maybe also a bit of "holy shit, I could have died out there". I think in character, beneath the surface justification, the crazy hyperstudying is an attempt to distract herself from her feelings.
Fortunately for Amu's mental health, she has people who love her, and we've voted to interact with a bunch of them. Ami, Utau, Miki, Ran, Su, and Kana (who we picked as a focus vote). All of them can read Amu's emotions, too. Hopefully some of them can help break Amu out of her funk.
I can't see that Integrity vote going as planned. Utau might let us borrow Eru maybe once, max, before she realizes what's up. Eru is going to stop cooperating too. I'm less confident about how Ran and Su will react - with their closer tie to Amu's mental state, they might be feeling a lot of what Amu is feeling.
Amu's parents are going to be so concerned. She was supposed to be resting! If they see her studying like this, the stress of Integrity 3 is going to look like it's coming from Lore 1.5.
I don't know if we can actually finish Integrity 3 like this without Amu having a total breakdown, and/or her friends and family staging an intervention.
That said, Amu's training rates are even more absurd than her goals. She is in fact quite capable of accomplishing the academic goal the vote has her set for herself - even heavily distracted, she should be able to reach next year's material before classes resume. (Unless an interrupt stops her.)
I'm not sure how much effective training time per day we're getting. Maybe 4 to 6 hours? Maybe more before school resumes, or maybe less, if the focus votes take a lot of time.
5 hours split 4 ways between 4 traits, with a 25% overlap boost, would be about an hour and a half per day of effective Lore training time. Maybe about 2 or 3 weeks to finish Lore 1.5? It sounds like Lore 1.5 is past the end of middle school, I'm guessing around end of high school, which is just nuts to reach in 2 or 3 weeks while heavily distracted. Depending on exactly how much time is left before classes resume, Amu could be working on or already done with next year's material by the time classes restart.
By that point, she should have either realized on her own how hard she overshot, or another character (like Ami or Miki) should have pointed it out. If she somehow hasn't realized yet, she should realize it when she sees the actual class material. That doesn't mean she stops, though.
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Well excellent points on the narrative side of things @Quine, I guess one could also wonder if ability scores have direct impact on how various things go in daily life. Like for instance her Social 0 might explain how any potentially hard social interaction doesn't go to well.
But yeah, I guess if she starts getting frazzled that people will get worried over the impact the event had on her. And to be fair, this particular training regime was also chosen because it was thought to be a some what effective answer to various issues and concerns around her. So it's kind of true then that she is pushing herself to try and fix everything around her and get things under control. Admittedly this might be taking on far more responsibility then she should and she should rely on others more as well if possible. Which could thus in the meta thus be a good tip for ourselves as well...
Though on the other hand... if she keeps getting in to trouble Illusion 2 and Integrity 3 seem like good starting points in reducing willpower usage, and improving mental toughness... So one can also view it as that instead of wallowing to much in despair on what happened she at least tries to work on it a some what productively and effective way. And that might also come out in discussions with others then, which might convince them to give her at least some space to get a bit better, or even to train together with her a bit if they're worrying about such things as well. Which they may well be doing.
As for the studying, I guess after a week of very easy progress she might have just decided this entire school work thing is pretty easy and that where others find textbooks dense reading material, it's kind of become light reading material to her? So she just keeps reading further to see what other new things they might talk about.
At least I could see that as a potential rationalization for continuing to Lore 1.5, if she visits Utau now and then, she could borrow her high school books for that as well, which would make sense in story.
Certainly would be something if she comes by to play with Eru, Iru and Utau, and reads some 'books' along the way for fun.
But yeah, I guess if she starts getting frazzled that people will get worried over the impact the event had on her. And to be fair, this particular training regime was also chosen because it was thought to be a some what effective answer to various issues and concerns around her. So it's kind of true then that she is pushing herself to try and fix everything around her and get things under control. Admittedly this might be taking on far more responsibility then she should and she should rely on others more as well if possible. Which could thus in the meta thus be a good tip for ourselves as well...
Though on the other hand... if she keeps getting in to trouble Illusion 2 and Integrity 3 seem like good starting points in reducing willpower usage, and improving mental toughness... So one can also view it as that instead of wallowing to much in despair on what happened she at least tries to work on it a some what productively and effective way. And that might also come out in discussions with others then, which might convince them to give her at least some space to get a bit better, or even to train together with her a bit if they're worrying about such things as well. Which they may well be doing.
As for the studying, I guess after a week of very easy progress she might have just decided this entire school work thing is pretty easy and that where others find textbooks dense reading material, it's kind of become light reading material to her? So she just keeps reading further to see what other new things they might talk about.
At least I could see that as a potential rationalization for continuing to Lore 1.5, if she visits Utau now and then, she could borrow her high school books for that as well, which would make sense in story.
Certainly would be something if she comes by to play with Eru, Iru and Utau, and reads some 'books' along the way for fun.
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Huh. Those are some weird rolls. One trait vs. another? It's not "one die per trait, higher roll wins" - that wouldn't make sense for the 3-die rolls. Somehow we're rolling Integrity vs. itself, too.
Sounds like these are just regular dice pools. I'm not sure what they actually mean, but at least we didn't botch any. "Confirming: Overgrowth vs. Int" even sounds like we're confirming a crit somehow, so rolling 3 successes on that sounds pretty good.
On the other hand, the fact that we need dice rolls in the first place sounds like we're pushing way too hard, dangerously hard. Training should normally be an automatic success. We probably need to think about dialing it back.
(At least, I sure hope training is normally an automatic success. If it turns out that whatever Amu is doing to grow so fast is inherently unreliable even at lower intensities, that's going to suck.)
Sounds like these are just regular dice pools. I'm not sure what they actually mean, but at least we didn't botch any. "Confirming: Overgrowth vs. Int" even sounds like we're confirming a crit somehow, so rolling 3 successes on that sounds pretty good.
On the other hand, the fact that we need dice rolls in the first place sounds like we're pushing way too hard, dangerously hard. Training should normally be an automatic success. We probably need to think about dialing it back.
(At least, I sure hope training is normally an automatic success. If it turns out that whatever Amu is doing to grow so fast is inherently unreliable even at lower intensities, that's going to suck.)
There are definitely healthier ways to narratively flavor the training. Further story events, and differently worded training votes, should hopefully change the narrative flavor.
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Considering Int came up in those rolls, it's possible Int has some influence on how well trying certain things go as well. Which narratively could make sense as well...
I think that's just Integrity again - the "reason" field for throwing dice has a character limit, and "integrity" wouldn't have fit that time.
- Location
- Laniakea
There's a reason I wrote that Integrity stunt with the wording: "as much as you can manage each day". It's not actually meant to assume very much.
The only thing we know is that Amu cannot handle more than 2 hours Integrity training per day, we don't know how much she actually can. Could be 10 minutes, if at that. There's no real way to find out without trying, but it also wouldn't be very effective training if she wasn't pushing her limits.
....I'd also like to point out that nobody else apart from me came out with any suggestions on how to train Integrity. And I can tell you, every other method I can think of for training it is worse and less low-key than asking to borrow someone's Chara or seeing how long she can keep Ran and Su out.
The least problematic of the alternatives I can think of is trying to keep her Charas loaded/herself Chara-transformed as long as she can, which requires absorbing Miki for extended periods of time. The other methods involve asking either trying to nudge Dia awake, getting other people to try and force their mind onto hers (most likely morally-grey people from JP's or the Scavengers, as her friends would almost certainly refuse) or attempting to replicate the possessive demon/persona summoning that she did when healing Saaya and purposely losing herself in the Sea of Souls/Road of Stars.
It's not just "one trait". The first 3 rolls all involved Integrity.
My guess is, that single stat is the sole reason we need dice rolls at all (taking into account QM's mention of Amu needing to pay special attention to training Integrity) and those rolls were for the overlap stunts involving Integrity to see whether Amu's attempt to train it at the same time as Dreamwalking (using Eru at the same time as linking with Ami), Lore (studying while Ran and Su are externalized) and double up on itself (borrowing Eru while Ran and Su are outside) succeed or ends up with her too exhausted to actually pull it off.
We got successes on all 3, but we don't know how many we actually need to "fully" succeed. We got 2 on the Lore roll, probably means it fully works and she studies just fine with Ran and Su. We got 1 on Dreamwalking + Integrity, that probably means we got some overlap with Dreamwalking and it goes mostly fine, no guarantees on the quality of her actual sleep. The Integrity + Integrity one only got 1 success for 3 dice. If it needed 2 to fully succeed, my guess is that's it's either going to leave her exhausted but not enough to completely crater the training attempt, just not enough to get the full 2 hours for it. Maybe an hour or half an hour. In the worse case, that roll might have been for how much of a penalty to apply to Amu and she avoided getting carted her to hospital, but lost a few hours on training time due to people noticing her nearly fainting from the attempt.
But as you said though, "Overgrowth" sounds like a bonus rather than a penalty, so likely we only need 1 success to pass all 3 and then got a chance at extra because of it. And then got a critical success on it, meaning either more overlap percentage than normal, or she comes out of the attempt having "opened up" more hours in a day to do it (i.e. than if her friends/family got worried about her and tried to force her to stop).
That was my first guess and that 2 of those dice came from having 2 levels of Int.
My second guess was, the mention of Intelligence might indicate how this gets implemented from a narrative perspective - either whether people notice that her cramming and newfound knowledge (possibly including her sudden prowess at Dreamwalking and Illusion) is unnatural, or just get convinced that Amu is simply naturally that smart and talented (2 dots in Int is not really dumb and, given the right circumstances, could probably get mistaken for 3 dots in Int or higher).
.....This list of people might actually include Amu herself.
Oh come on guys, I came up with like 3 drafts of this stunt and I don't remember anybody (apart from maybe the QM making some shifty comments) seriously bringing up healthiness as an issue when I mentioned how masochistic the idea of training Integrity was. I thought everyone was fine with it.
If you guys can think of a better method that both grabs as much extra hours in day as possible for training 4 different stats at once - including Integrity, of all things - while overlapping them in a way that keeps Amu fit and healthy mentally and physically, please do.
'Cause that was the healthiest way I could come up with.
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Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
At least it's less torturous than my idea for training Integrity: getting into a million stupid internet arguments.
You see, despite the name, the Integrity skill's most common use-case is ignoring what anyone else has to say.
You see, despite the name, the Integrity skill's most common use-case is ignoring what anyone else has to say.
- Location
- Laniakea
By the way, speaking of that, there's another reason (apart from being able to involve the Charas and overlap Illusion/Integrity) that my Lore stunt involved textbooks instead of trying to digitally download a wiki's worth of data into her brain.
I considered the idea of Amu simply getting lost in the internet and inadvertantly learning more from Japanese wiki sites than she meant to, which might have been healthier than trying to cram textbooks - but then I realized.
I don't think Amu actually has a computer at home or can effectively surf the web on her 2009 flip phone. It would have limited her study hours to either library time at school or time at a non-school library, which would eat into her post-school baseline hours, as opposed to being doable at all hours of the day.
If this is true, I have a sinking feeling that any attempt to train Integrity at all is going to need dice rolls - even for something as mild as exposing herself to brainwashing videos or chatting with zealots on the internet - and that it's tied up with the spoiler reason that caps Amu's training time.
Best guess, not only is Amu's Integrity already under constant strain, Dia's solution to keeping Amu intact involves "freezing" her soul or sense of self such that it's both resistant to external influence, but also to internal growth.
Meaning every attempt to train it will trigger a contesting throw by Dia that we need to beat, for it to work.
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Hmm... maybe if Amu can find or invent actual mental defense techniques, she might be able to practice those, even without actually being under mental attack. Maybe Lulu or JP's would have relevant info?
I was okay with accepting the psionic health risks of Integrity training. It just took me a while to think through the conventional mental health implications of the vote's narrative. ("Active" quest participation is exhausting, and I've got other things to do.)
Now that we're rolling dice for training, the risk analysis has shifted. Depending on how the next update turns out, I'm likely to vote to cut back on training.
The Japanese release of the first iPhone was in 2008. Amu might have one of those. If not, it's a Japanese 2009 phone. Japan was way ahead of the rest of the world in cell phone technology before modern smartphones took off. There's a pretty good chance Amu can browse the web on whatever phone she has.
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Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
A lot of very interesting speculation! And I have to admit, I was ad-hoccing the rolls a bit.
It's got nothing to do with the training intensity. Which isn't honestly that high, except from the perspective of Amu's free time. Nor is it caused by training multiple things at once. You'll find out in the next update.
It's got nothing to do with the training intensity. Which isn't honestly that high, except from the perspective of Amu's free time. Nor is it caused by training multiple things at once. You'll find out in the next update.
Huh. If the training intensity isn't actually that high, I guess that probably means the super-straining Integrity training attempts just give out early instead of driving Amu to exhaustion. I remember you saying that manifesting Ran or Su is supposed to be one of the most straining things Amu can do, and I think using someone else's chara is up there too.
I guess I'll wait for the next update to find out what those rolls were about.
- Location
- Laniakea
If it really is the case that Integrity alone is solely responsible for all these dice rolls, which is what I'm taking away (given it's not the intensity or the overlap), then the best way to get to Level 4/5 (if we plan on trying to get Integrity to that) really COULD just be to hoard XP and look for an opportunity to SOS buy it during an emergency in a future arc.
This probably isn't as reliant on circumstance as it should be.
Because given that Amu is apparently capable of actually pulling off Psionic feats using skills she doesn't have any ranks in by using Integrity to roll for it (and that categories like Biokinesis are just "interfaces" or "filters" for psychic powers as a whole), I believe it could probably be justifiable from virtually any situation where she has to push herself to make some psychic miracle occur, under the pretext that she's using "raw psychic ability" to do it and straining her Integrity to brute-force the attempt, rather than refining any of the "skill" filters that would be necessary.
That would still require 2 arcs' worth of XP (12 XP for L4), assuming we don't get more than 6-9 XP per arc, but......
This probably isn't as reliant on circumstance as it should be.
Because given that Amu is apparently capable of actually pulling off Psionic feats using skills she doesn't have any ranks in by using Integrity to roll for it (and that categories like Biokinesis are just "interfaces" or "filters" for psychic powers as a whole), I believe it could probably be justifiable from virtually any situation where she has to push herself to make some psychic miracle occur, under the pretext that she's using "raw psychic ability" to do it and straining her Integrity to brute-force the attempt, rather than refining any of the "skill" filters that would be necessary.
That would still require 2 arcs' worth of XP (12 XP for L4), assuming we don't get more than 6-9 XP per arc, but......
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