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Cast-Offs of Divinity - A Merchants of Divinity Quest

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Training minions only makes sense when we find that we have some regular AP expense that a Minion should be able to handle if trained up. For example if we could train a clone to handle our medical practice making it pure passive income that would be something worth doing, or maybe make a crafting minion who can make the things we blueprint.

Or there is a specific job that we are making a custom minion to handle, but in that case there should not be much training.
 
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Hey Jay is intelligence a viable target for infinitum's contract? If so would it only apply to the T5 version? Also are psionics off the table at really high levels of biology?

Oh oh oh! Another question, do we know what specialty would be required to analyse void crystals?

Sirrocco said:
Now, I personally would love to have Leviathan go full transhuman and cram her body full of low-profile bio-augs, because I love that stuff. but I suppose it doesn't need to be particularly combat-focused when she does... as long as we don't go outside the walls until we have some solution planned for "What do you do if your fellow researchers try to gank you at the end of an expedition, and for whatever reason your minions are not available?"
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Ideally once we get combat minions that will be like asking what if your fellow researchers try to gank you and your hands aren't available? If you've been separated from your minions something has already gone horribly wrong. We'd have to see how doable it'd be, but maybe we could make some sort of wearable amorphous combat minion.

I vaguely remember capital M Monsters giving random body parts when killed in the original quest, so if a similar thing happens with some of them here then having minions do the killing may actually be a boon.

Oh also I'm also down for transhuman stuff, but personally I prefer high-profile modifications.

fictionfan said:
Training minions only makes sense when we find that we have some regular AP expense that a Minion should be able to handle if trained up. For example if we could train a clone to handle our medical practice making it pure passive income that would be something worth doing, or maybe make a crafting minion who can make the things we blueprint.

Or there is a specific job that we are making a custom minion to handle, but in that case there should not be much training.
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We can also hire teachers for at least some of our minions, so teaching them ourselves is pretty unnecessary in most situations.
 
Just added the Intelligence rules to the tutorials post.

Dreaming Circuit said:
Hey Jay is intelligence a viable target for infinitum's contract? If so would it only apply to the T5 version? Also are psionics off the table at really high levels of biology?
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It would only affect a single variant. The "intelligence" effect is actuality a bunch of effects.
As for psionics... Well not as far as Leviathan knows currently.

Dreaming Circuit said:
Oh oh oh! Another question, do we know what specialty would be required to analyse void crystals?
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Materials science. Not even that high level to understand the basics, though higher levels might reveal more advanced applications. They have been pretty well studied.
 
OH RIGHT before I forget again, we could have our minions take contracts once they get smart enough. If they had their own weight that would be very convenient, at the very least. As a bonus minions defaulting on a contract can't (directly) kill us.
 
JayTar said:
Materials science. Not even that high level to understand the basics, though higher levels might reveal more advanced applications. They have been pretty well studied.
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probably something we'll want to get a specialization on at some point then.

Actually what are our plans for university courses? After Biology are we going for a standard science course (up to 5)? Do we want a second specialty instead? We can go from 0 to 3 in basically one turn, and then up to 5 in the rest of them.


[X] Plan: Bones' Weighty AP
 
So, looks like no preparation for the expedition. (Except what we may do in the 5? AP we have after this, i.e. less than 1 turn with no ability to react)
 
Toboe said:
So, looks like no preparation for the expedition. (Except what we may do in the 5? AP we have after this, i.e. less than 1 turn with no ability to react)
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let's talk about this a bit.

what kind of preparations could we make that would be a better investment than 22 APs for...

  1. 4 weight, and what that unlocks (listed below)
  2. supernaturally increased emotional resilience
  3. an offer for the second MD contract
  4. 4 HP
  5. 1 AP
We can get more money by working, but there's nothing in particular we currently want to buy, except maybe the 5 high dots lab, which we won't be able to afford in just 2 or 3 turns without some kind of special loan.

we could build up to... nearly 4 new implants for the same APs, which means +6 to various rolls. We need to know the effects for that, but we could get some good tier 2 ones from the university papers I imagine. With the AP cost for finding those though let's say we could maybe get 3 tier 2 implants.

We could explore and social in hope of getting preparations. Probably not worth it right now.


Am I forgetting anything else?


All in all I think there's a potentially good argument in favor of "get a few +6 implants", but I'd still lean towards getting the contract instead. And if we're lucky maybe we'll get the other 3 weight points during the expedition...
 
Pittauro said:
let's talk about this a bit.

what kind of preparations could we make that would be a better investment than 22 APs for...

  1. 4 weight, and what that unlocks (listed below)
  2. supernaturally increased emotional resilience
  3. an offer for the second MD contract
  4. 4 HP
  5. 1 AP
We can get more money by working, but there's nothing in particular we currently want to buy, except maybe the 5 high dots lab, which we won't be able to afford in just 2 or 3 turns without some kind of special loan.

we could build up to... nearly 4 new implants for the same APs, which means +6 to various rolls. We need to know the effects for that, but we could get some good tier 2 ones from the university papers I imagine. With the AP cost for finding those though let's say we could maybe get 3 tier 2 implants.

We could explore and social in hope of getting preparations. Probably not worth it right now.


Am I forgetting anything else?


All in all I think there's a potentially good argument in favor of "get a few +6 implants", but I'd still lean towards getting the contract instead. And if we're lucky maybe we'll get the other 3 weight points during the expedition...
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"Nothing we want to buy"
Strong disagree.
JayTar said:
[] Protective equipment. If you are going to be heading into the wastelands you will need at least something basic. Find a shop. (1 AP)
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"we could build up to... nearly 4 new implants for the same APs, which means +6 to various rolls."
Or we could consider what challenges we might face and invent stuff to help with that, needn't be implants.

Actually doing the characters whole stick.
 
good point on the protective equipment, but we can do that in the last 5 APs of preparation.

and about implants vs normal equipment... fair. I wasn't really distinguishing between the two in my mind, it was mostly meant as "inventions/gadgets" that give us better rolls.
 
Pittauro said:
good point on the protective equipment, but we can do that in the last 5 APs of preparation.

and about implants vs normal equipment... fair. I wasn't really distinguishing between the two in my mind, it was mostly meant as "inventions/gadgets" that give us better rolls.
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Yeah, we can visit the store in the 5 remaining AP.
But we can't really react to what we see.
Like making our own biotech version of effects we realize would be nice to have.
 
fictionfan said:
It's a good plan. I just find it at little odd since our character doesn't know about weight so I wonder how they justify it in character.
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It's sort of known IC that people who take a lot of contracts seem to get better even at things unrelated to the contract, and that it might be connected to the number of stars the contracts give.

There might even be some theories about how "people who accomplish much/get famous" are also just better than normal at things they shouldn't be, stuff like a famous scientist being somehow better at unrelated stuff even while not training them.

There's just no definitive proof about it.
 
Dreaming Circuit said:
It occurs to me that if we look into studies of contracts the city full of contract taking mad scientists has probably actually discovered weight.
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it's already been stated that "people with many contracts get better at everything" is something that's, if not common knowledge, at least suspected by most.

The fact you can gain weight OUTSIDE of from contracts (and what "weight" is) is not, though there's probably suspicions by some people there too.

The problem is that it's a complex field to study. Still, if someone could, it would be amd scientist with high rep and ways to make it worth it for other people to join the studies.

The easiest test I can think of is to take lots of people, have them tested on something random that none of them have ever practiced, and then try to see if there's a correlation between "contract stars declared" and "level of performance".

The problem is getting most people to admit how many stars they got. And of course the weight gotten OUTSIDE of contracts will influence the results, though there should still be a very obvious trend.
 
Dreaming Circuit said:
It occurs to me that if we look into studies of contracts the city full of contract taking mad scientists has probably actually discovered weight.
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Train Academics (Gods) if you want to know more in character!

Speaking generally though Weight is scientifically kinda like Dark Matter and Dark energy. They can notice its effects when looking at the big picture, but nobody has demonstrated a way to observe it directly yet. So it's less accurate to say they have "discovered" weight, and more "Through broad analysis of statistics and several interesting case studies theorize the existence of a force similar to weight. It's exact properties, function and creation however are hotly debated with multiple conflicting hypotheses."

The effect of weight at the low levels is very subtle, and the high levels are practically 100% outliers. So proving causation is really hard.
 
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Pittauro said:
it's already been stated that "people with many contracts get better at everything" is something that's, if not common knowledge, at least suspected by most.

The fact you can gain weight OUTSIDE of from contracts (and what "weight" is) is not, though there's probably suspicions by some people there too.

The problem is that it's a complex field to study. Still, if someone could, it would be amd scientist with high rep and ways to make it worth it for other people to join the studies.

The easiest test I can think of is to take lots of people, have them tested on something random that none of them have ever practiced, and then try to see if there's a correlation between "contract stars declared" and "level of performance".

The problem is getting most people to admit how many stars they got. And of course the weight gotten OUTSIDE of contracts will influence the results, though there should still be a very obvious trend.
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Any such study would be confused by the selection bias in that Gods are generally more inclined to offer contracts to exceptional people. There is a chicken egg problem along with correlation and causation.
 
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fictionfan said:
Any such study would be confused by the selection bias in that Gods are generally more inclined to offer contracts to exceptional people. There is a chicken egg problem along with correlation and causation.
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For a more direct study you could look for a pool of people who are capable and willing to take a new contract, and if you can find those you have them all perform a number of tests to get a baseline. Then you select a number of them randomly to take a new contract. After that you make them perform tests AGAIN and see if the people with new contracts see more improvement than those without. A study like this might even help discover that weight has breakpoints.
 
fictionfan said:
Any such study would be confused by the selection bias in that Gods are generally more inclined to offer contracts to exceptional people. There is a chicken egg problem along with correlation and causation.
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true, but there should still be statistical trends visible when you have people tested on things they're explicitly untrained in.

Like, random example, measure how long it takes them to try and learn how to play guitar, or how to sing.

It won't be a perfect trend due to, as you said, the problems with correlation and causation, but as Jaytar said it's enough to deduce the existence of such a factor, and probably connect it to the number of stars on contracts. Possibly also to tie it to the level of fame or famous feats someone achieved, but that makes it even harder.

Dreaming Circuit said:
For a more direct study you could look for a pool of people who are capable and willing to take a new contract, and if you can find those you have them all perform a number of tests to get a baseline. Then you select a number of them randomly to take a new contract. After that you make them perform tests AGAIN and see if the people with new contracts see more improvement than those without. A study like this might even help discover that weight has breakpoints.
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if the first contract has 4 stars, there's a SIGNIFICANT improvement to be seen there...
 
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