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

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PistachioCookies said:
XP is not our bottleneck for training, it was always the training times.

3 whole weeks for Socialize 1 is already a sizeable investment, forget talking about taking longer. Compare that to new Psionic Skills only taking 2 weeks (reminder that weeks assume 8 hour days which Amu doesn't get, she gets maybe 2-4 hours typically depending on stunt, so in practice you'd be doubling or quadrupling the week count).

Personally, I am highly unconvinced that Socialize is worth training over the whole array of Psionic Skills or the defensive Abilities like Integrity and Resistance, or even Occult and Medicine. And especially since the QM is hinting that Midori's own Socialize rank is probably at least 3 or 4 (since it's "easily" higher than necessary to act as her teacher) meaning that if we ever needed it, we could probably throw her at the problem instead of Amu.
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Our bottleneck may be training times, but psi skills only barely have an advantage there. The second dot of an ability is only 1 week. With a tutor, it's exactly the same cost and time as the second dot of a psi skill. The first dot will take longer than the first dot of a psi skill, but I think it's worth it.

We can't rely on mom to have all our conversations for us. Most of our conversations happen without mom around. Plus, people who want to have a conversation with us will go to us, not mom, and we won't always have the luxury of fobbing them off on mom.

Social skills are extremely important, and everyone needs their own. I'd like ours to be competent.
 
Quine said:
We can't rely on mom to have all our conversations for us. Most of our conversations happen without mom around. Plus, people who want to have a conversation with us will go to us, not mom, and we won't always have the luxury of fobbing them off on mom.
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Amu is 13, she's not even legally allowed to open her own bank account without her mother's signature. There may be situations where Midori is not available to speak on her behalf, but for a lot of them, she arguably should be.

In practice, this obviously won't always be the case because Amu is getting into fights with demons and making friends with serial killers but these same extraordinary circumstances also make Socialize far less important than in real-world life. On account of needing to survive physical, magical and psychic attacks being the priority.

Can't negotiate with demons (or other people) if you're dead.
 
PistachioCookies said:
Amu is 13, she's not even legally allowed to open her own bank account without her mother's signature. There may be situations where Midori is not available to speak on her behalf, but for a lot of them, she arguably should be.

In practice, this obviously won't always be the case because Amu is getting into fights with demons and making friends with serial killers but these same extraordinary circumstances also make Socialize far less important than in real-world life. On account of needing to survive physical, magical and psychic attacks being the priority.

Can't negotiate with demons (or other people) if you're dead.
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We have very large dice pools for "throw shit at enemies" or "UMI them to stop". We have a 1-die base pool for "keep a secret". Adding 3 more dice to our social pools does a lot more for us than what we'd get out of the same time investment in fighty stats.

Our best way to come out ahead isn't to invest harder in fighty stats. It's to make sure we have allies, resources, and options. Social skills are important for that.
 
Quine said:
We have very large dice pools for "throw shit at enemies" or "UMI them to stop". We have a 1-die base pool for "keep a secret". Adding 3 more dice to our social pools does a lot more for us than what we'd get out of the same time investment in fighty stats.
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Firstly, if you're only defending during social combat, it's supposed to use "Resolve", which is meant to be Wits + Integrity.

The QM making our attempts to hide the truth "Socialize + Manipulate" by default was, I assume, because it involved Amu proactively trying to lie to make Midori happy instead of just keeping her mouth shut and letting Midori be upset. That was the only reason we had a 1 die pool.

If we stunted it, we could likely have used Integrity instead. People just went for the full disclosure because they didn't mind telling Midori and didn't want to drag out the scene and/or didn't want any sort of dice roll whatsoever. And if nobody wanted to roll dice, it wouldn't have mattered even if we had a larger pool for it. And in that particular instance, I don't even think Socialize 2 would have given us good odds, given Midori likely has 3 or 4 in Socialize for her own contesting roll and also likely would have tapped Willpower for it.

Secondly, you and I agree that allies are important if you want to come out ahead - and I prioritize keeping those allies alive first and foremost, over trying to keep them happy.

We can still work with an unhappy Midori. We can't work with a Midori who is dead because we failed our medical roll.
 
PistachioCookies said:
Firstly, if you're only defending during social combat, it's supposed to use "Resolve", which is meant to be Wits + Integrity.

The QM making our attempts to hide the truth "Socialize + Manipulate" by default was, I assume, because it involved Amu proactively trying to lie to make Midori happy instead of just keeping her mouth shut and letting Midori be upset. That was the only reason we had a 1 die pool.
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First, that's the wrong system. This quest is based on 2e, not 3e.

Second, the issue with our secret-keeping isn't resisting persuasion to blab. Our Dodge MDV is fine. The issue with our secret-keeping is presenting a facade that isn't totally transparent. We failed that so hard, Midori saw through it before either of us said a word about Kana.

PistachioCookies said:
If we stunted it, we could likely have used Integrity instead. People just went for the full disclosure because they didn't mind telling Midori and didn't want to drag out the scene and/or didn't want any sort of dice roll whatsoever. And if nobody wanted to roll dice, it wouldn't have mattered even if we had a larger pool for it. And in that particular instance, I don't even think Socialize 2 would have given us good odds, given Midori likely has 3 or 4 in Socialize for her own contesting roll and also likely would have tapped Willpower for it.
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Midori is an expert on both Socialize and Amu. Not everyone will be that good.

PistachioCookies said:
Secondly, you and I agree that allies are important if you want to come out ahead - and I prioritize keeping those allies alive first and foremost, over trying to keep them happy.

We can still work with an unhappy Midori. We can't work with a Midori who is dead because we failed our medical roll.
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I want Medicine too, but I think we can fit Socialize into the schedule as well.
 
Quine said:
First, that's the wrong system. This quest is based on 2e, not 3e.

Second, the issue with our secret-keeping isn't resisting persuasion to blab. Our Dodge MDV is fine. The issue with our secret-keeping is presenting a facade that isn't totally transparent. We failed that so hard, Midori saw through it before either of us said a word about Kana.
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Even going by 2e rules, it still uses Integrity (and Willpower and Essence that we don't currently have), again we only had 1 die because it defaulted to Socialize + Manipulate on a vote that nobody even realized would need a roll back during chapter 2.1.

If we'd gone with clamming up and not saying anything in 2.1, Midori would probably have probed and initiated social combat first. And then we'd have used our Dodge MDV and gotten far more than 1 die (though I think I recall QM mentioning we'd have run out of WP before Midori anyway).
lurker9875 said:
Makes sense, though I do wonder what Midori will think about us (effectively, if not literally true skill-wise) asking to learn how to lie from her right after this arc?
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....I take the opinion that if the reason why you want Amu to learn Socialize is so she can "competently" lie and compartmentalize secrets from everyone and act like a Lelouch or Light Yagami-style supernaturally-powered chessmaster manipulator..... that would be very out-of-character and un-Amu-like.

There are many words I would describe Light Yagami and Lelouch Lamperouge with, but none of them include anything similar to "likeable".

The best in-character use I can think of is recruiting demons, but again, that part usually comes after fighting them so guess what takes priority first.
 
lurker9875 said:
Makes sense, though I do wonder what Midori will think about us (effectively, if not literally true skill-wise) asking to learn how to lie from her right after this arc?
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Yeah, the whole Ability abstraction gets a little weird there. We wouldn't be asking how to lie better - we'd be asking her for help with understanding people. The effect on secret-keeping would probably manifest through a better awareness of her own social cues and the flow of conversation, so she can make a better effort to control those things. It'd only be one part of generally enhanced social competence.

PistachioCookies said:
....I take the opinion that if the reason why you want Amu to learn Socialize is so she can "competently" lie and compartmentalize secrets from everyone and act like a Lelouch or Light Yagami-style supernaturally-powered chessmaster manipulator.....
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You jump to so many conclusions.
 
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Quine said:
You jump to so many conclusions.
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Well that was your proposed use for it.
lurker9875 said:
Yeah, there are plenty of very good reasons we want to be able to keep a secret without noticeably deflecting or stonewalling
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Then lay them out.

There are 2 main reasons I can think of, personally.

One is to placate people and keep them happy by concealing or downplaying otherwise alarming news in the way of a used car salesman. In the "you should let me visit a house occupied by serial killers because they haven't been convicted yet and the only people they killed were evil" kind of way.

The other is to recruit demons.
 
There's another way called "not folding like a wet blanket to whichever media reporter than knows how to ask the right questions that Amu can't literally or metaphorically run away from"?

And also not tell Hidden Lore to untrustworthy people when we inevitably find some (that would lead them to questionable actions)?

Or perhaps we need to scout out groups without having our cover be immediately blown into smithereens, so that we can make better decisions afterwards?
 
Again, like I said, defending against social attacks is done with Integrity and Willpower (or Wits in 3e). Not Socialize.

If you are worried about that, you want to train Integrity or Willpower.
lurker9875 said:
Or perhaps we need to scout out groups without having our cover be immediately blown into smithereens, so that we can make better decisions afterwards?
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If you're talking about infiltrating groups of potentially hostile humans, I rather think the fact that Amu is 13 years old and short would give it away long before she opens her mouth.

And "tall for her age" still means a midget adult.
 
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lurker9875 said:
We may need to go on the offensive sometime to control PR spinning/PR damage which Socialise/Manipulation would also be useful for?
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This kind of scenario, along with legal troubles, is the kind of thing I suggest it is better to throw people with existing ranks in Socialize and Bureaucracy at, like Yukari Sanjou and Amu's mother, than try and have Amu learn the abilities from scratch to deal with herself.
lurker9875 said:
Illusion?
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Well gee, I wonder if that might have been one of the skills I was thinking would be worth putting in 2 weeks to train to rank 3, instead of spending 3 weeks to train Socialize to level 1.
 
PistachioCookies said:
Again, like I said, defending against social attacks is done with Integrity and Willpower (or Wits in 3e). Not Socialize.

If you are worried about that, you want to train Integrity or Willpower.
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A social defense is an attempt to resist persuasion. Social defenses aren't the issue. We can go through a social interaction without ever being persuaded and still fail every single actual objective.

If someone asks us a question, and we look down, and mutter "no comment" 3 seconds later, the answer will often be inferred as something negative.

If someone says "it's not like Kana's ever killed anyone, right?", and we start sweating and look away and let out an "uhh", that is a failure.

If we ask someone to do something, and they ask why, and we stonewall them, that greatly reduces the chances that they'll do it.


We need to be able to talk to people ourselves. Refusing social interaction and telling everyone to talk to our mom is not a good idea. We can avoid things like press conferences or interviews, and we can leave some things to Midori, but she is no substitute for Amu's own social skills.
 
lurker9875 said:
The recent chapters is a perfect example even, if our objective was to "get Midori's approval to go out w/o revealing the Scavenger's secrets" then we failed miserably lol
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Let me remind you that I made a voteplan targeted at achieving that joint objective, that was intended to not require a dice roll. And then another one that attempted to use Charisma + Presence as the rolling stats, when people complained about the risk of Saeki finding out anything about the Scavengers (despite the vote being written to not tell her anything about the Scavengers whatsoever).

Nobody voted for the latter and the former was outvoted.

Not my fault if certain people refused to believe that it was possible to both get Midori's approval AND maintain the secret. I stated quite clearly I believed both outcomes were achievable without needing any Socialize rolls.

And I still maintain that it would have been possible to achieve that outcome.
Quine said:
A social defense is an attempt to resist persuasion. Social defenses aren't the issue. We can go through a social interaction without ever being persuaded and still fail every single actual objective.
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Socialize is used for social attack - to persuade other people.

If your objective is to persuade someone that a lie is the truth, you're using it to lie.

If your objective is to persuade someone that the truth is the truth... I really don't think Amu would ever be going "no comment" or doing nothing but stammer when delivering a response in that case.

And I'll remind you - we can still fail a roll even with Socialize 1/2. That's not exactly a high stat. We can go higher if we augment using Psionics, but if we were using Psionics we arguably don't need to use Socialize. We'd just be overpowering them with Mind Control.

And if your objective is simply to persuade someone to do something, veracity of the information be damned..... you're essentially doing what Lelouch Lamperouge did with his Black Knights.
Quine said:
I want Medicine too, but I think we can fit Socialize into the schedule as well.
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Just what stats do you suggest that we train next exactly?
 
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PistachioCookies said:
Socialize is used for social attack - to persuade other people.
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Nope. Socialize cannot be used to make social attacks.

PistachioCookies said:
And I'll remind you - we can still fail a roll even with Socialize 1/2.
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Sure, but we won't be failing 60% of difficulty 1 checks. We'll have a good shot at those, and a reasonable chance of succeeding on difficulty 2.

PistachioCookies said:
Just what stats do you suggest that we train next exactly?
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...is that the issue? I've been thinking on the time scale of the entire rest of the year. I'm not saying Socialize needs to be top priority.

What I want to train next will depend on a bunch of factors, including what seems likely to be important in the medium term (nothing will finish in the short term) and what's most effective for squeezing out training time. Socialize will probably be an effective way to fill out training time - social interaction is easy to justify - but depending on how much training time per day we're already getting, that may not be important.

Other things I've been thinking of for the next training include Illusion 3, Telekinesis 4, Medicine 1+Biokinesis 3 (together), or Lore 2.
 
Quine said:
Nope. Socialize cannot be used to make social attacks.
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Dunno what you like to call the default voting options back in chapter 2.3 that would have used Socialize + Manipulate rolls (i.e. downplaying the death risk or convincing her to let you send Utau or Tadase instead) but that's what I'm referring to by "social attacks".

There was that long post by the QM about using Charisma and Manipulation in social attacks - and given that Manipulation was paired with Socialize back in those default votes, I refer to those kinds of actions as "social attacks". If you think the term means something more specific and that those options don't classify as such, you can swap the term out it in your head with something else.

But Socialize gets used for that kind of persuasive action and mincing terms doesn't change the point.
Quine said:
Other things I've been thinking of for the next training include Illusion 3, Telekinesis 4, Medicine 1+Biokinesis 3 (together), or Lore 2.
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That's the thing I'm talking about . Socialize isn't useless, but given we have so many other things that need training, I just don't see how to justify spending 3 weeks on the first level.

It would be a different story if Amu were a Wildcard, with Social Links. That would bump it up the priority list. But right now, so far as we know, she doesn't actually have Social Links.

There's a suspicion I have that Devil Survivor 2's Fate System may be in play, in which case that might also bump Socialize up the priority list, but again - no confirmation.
 
If I may make a suggestion:

Some of this discussion could be better grounded if you overanalyze chapter 2.5.
 
Baughn said:
If I may make a suggestion:

Some of this discussion could be better grounded if you overanalyze chapter 2.5.
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Yes, yes.

Ami and Amu are like Caroline and Justine, someone grabbed some Velvet Room attendants and washed their brains out, chopped their personality up into multiple Charas and stuck the rest into human skinsuits. Technically, they have Social Links, but only because they manage other people's. And like all good Velvet Room attendants, they can leverage them to summon demons too. Dia probably represents the biggest portion of Amu's power.
Baughn said:
The world glitched. She felt the sky shift above, the ground tremble underneath. Dia was-

Utau felt arms wrap around her.

A blazing white star hung in a midnight sky, a single point of light that denied the moon, illuminating every city on the planet- no, Utau wasn't-
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Which is what happens when someone borrowing a not-so-blue Key gazes upon the true form of One Who Rules Over Power.

Since the moon is identified with "destruction/death" in this quest and the Velvet Room attendant most associated with holding back the Fall is Elizabeth, I conclude that Amu is actually Elizabeth. Their Socializing competencies are identical.

Meanwhile, Ami is just Lavenza.

Utau is not Amu's girlfriend, she's her current Guest. Amu had a thing for Ikuto, because he looks like her old flame, Minato Arisato.
 
[X] Beeline for where you can feel Yui

I dunno about this overanalyzing stuff, but I don't wanna involve Lulu and JPs with this group unless they start to become, like, a threat to the public or something. Let's just explore this place without trying to get too clever.
 
[X] Utau reaches out through the key, now better prepared, and invites Ami and Hikaru to make a new friend.

Actually, I like the idea of 2 Rulers of Power going ham in their native environment.

Maybe 3 if it turns out that Hikaru is actually Theodore.
 
PistachioCookies said:
Ami and Amu are like Caroline and Justine, someone grabbed some Velvet Room attendants and washed their brains out, chopped their personality up into multiple Charas and stuck the rest into human skinsuits. Technically, they have Social Links, but only because they manage other people's. And like all good Velvet Room attendants, they can leverage them to summon demons too. Dia probably represents the biggest portion of Amu's power.
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PistachioCookies said:
Actually, I like the idea of 2 Rulers of Power going ham in their native environment.

Maybe 3 if it turns out that Hikaru is actually Theodore.
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You are very silly.
 
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