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The Path Unending (A Cultivation Quest)

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Vesvius said:
Something about my words seems to strike home for Zhuan Kun. It is almost imperceptible, but out of the corner of my eye I can see his normally stiff spine straighten even further. His shoulder rolls back like a soldier preparing to be inspected on parade rest, and a smile even briefly threatens to break free on his face.
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❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤ love this. Im so happy

Vesvius said:
"Do you not know what a group of hummingbirds is called, Disciple Kong?" he asks. When I shake my head, something approaching a smile crosses his face.

"A group of hummingbirds is called a Charm, Disciple Kong."

…well. Yes, knowing that, the name does seem rather self-evident.

Technique Evolution performed! Hummingbird's Dance -> The Charm In Full Flight!
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This is also beautiful, you have a real talent for naming Ves. I didn't know a flock of hummingbirds was called a charm. How delightful!

Edit - I now caught up with the discord, good job @Cteatus too

Vesvius said:
Description: An advanced form of the Hummingbird's Dance built around quick, deceptive movements used to distract a foe and leave them open for single, overwhelming strikes.
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I love how much this fits Zhi as a character. Always surprising and unique, but hits hard.

[X] Yes, filtering a technique seems most wise. The loss in power will be negligible compared to the gain in efficiency. (A further subvote will be called should this option win)

It's best to get rid of the rain for chariot. As much as I love rain imagery, it just doesn't fit Zhi.
Edit - or maybe get rid if the fire and keep the rain? Idk
 
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[X] Yes, filtering a technique seems most wise. The loss in power will be negligible compared to the gain in efficiency. (A further subvote will be called should this option win)
 
Making rain more pure might be detrimental because it'd skew closer towards water and Zhi would have to consume more anam if he uses water techniques.
 
One thing that this chapter further cemented is that integrating techniques that contain our core aspects will be very useful. So we should do our best to find a few more time/smoke/steel techniques, even if this means not picking up weaker ones to prioritize the ones we do have.

At this point most of our techniques are combat focused, but a time investigation tool or something containing smoke/steel that could be useful for charmcrafting would be neat. As caretakers and a charmcrafter we are going to encounter situations were such tools could be better than just adding techniques that help in fights.
 
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Koguyra said:
Making rain more pure might be detrimental because it'd skew closer towards water and Zhi would have to consume more anam if he uses water techniques.
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We don't have a problem with water techniques in general. We very specifically only have problem with Mist and Lightning and Fate anam, because those are the opposites of our core aspects - Mist opposes Smoke, Lightning opposes Steel, Fate opposes Time.

Vesvius said:
Core of the Forge Eternal: Kong Zhi has taken the Soldier's Step by forging a core of Steel, Smoke, and primarily Time in the very heart of his spirit. He now generates his own unaspected anam at a rate of 2 points per day (Empathy(Primary Attribute)/3). Time Techniques are 30% less expensive to learn and use. Steel Techniques are 10% less expensive to learn and use. Smoke Techniques are 10% less expensive to learn and use. Mist Techniques are 10% more expensive to learn and use. Lightning Techniques are 10% more expensive to learn and use. Fate Techniques cost 50% more to learn and cause Kong Zhi mental stress if used. ??? Techniques cannot be learned at all.
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Vesvius said:
Upon a Throne of Smoke: Kong Zhi has integrated a technique of his master's choosing, the Elegant Plume. Such mastery causes unconscious benefits that Kong Zhi need not think about. During combat, whenever a Physical Stress Box is filled, so long as Kong Zhi has over half of his maximum anam remaining, any remaining damage is ignored as Kong Zhi's body becomes as smoke. This effect is negated should the attacker be over a Step higher than Kong Zhi or if the attack used is born of Mist Anam.
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That said, yes, removing the Rain from Searing Chariot would probably make it easier to evolve into a Fire/Smoke technique or something like that. That makes narrative sense, to me.
 
This all seems rather premature to me. None of this is an issue until late Teacher Step and by the time Zhi is into late Farmer, he'd be able to reaspect his techniques to match his core.
Zhi is still in the Soldier's Step, meaning that he has more than enough time to evolve these techniques to better fit his core.
There isn't much to gain from doing this right now.
 
Zhi has a better sixth sense than most people multiple tiers higher given the Stallion proved pivotal to the murder mystery which is a good way of being premature. Knowing things in advance would help for when we actually get to the stage where such is expected.
 
Koguyra said:
Zhi has a better sixth sense than most people multiple tiers higher given the Stallion proved pivotal to the murder mystery which is a good way of being premature. Knowing things in advance would help for when we actually get to the stage where such is expected.
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Zhi is learning this ability whether he uses it now or not. It explicitly says so.
 
HousePet said:
This all seems rather premature to me. None of this is an issue until late Teacher Step and by the time Zhi is into late Farmer, he'd be able to reaspect his techniques to match his core.
Zhi is still in the Soldier's Step, meaning that he has more than enough time to evolve these techniques to better fit his core.
There isn't much to gain from doing this right now.
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While you're right and Master Warrior explicitly said this is something that'll be more useful later on, you yourself argued earlier today that it may make integrating NAO easier if we removed the Wood from it:

HousePet said:
Removing Wood from NAO would be our best bet. Then NAO isn't in conflict with SotP for anam from the Twice Forged Thicket and is about 30% faster to integrate minimum (max 60%). And removes the issue of needing pills or running back and forward between two Wonders.
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And I think you were right. On top of those points, NAO is not only currently weaker than The Charm in Full Flight, but it might be weaker even when both are fully integrated. So, since both are Warrior techniques, I don't think it'd be all that bad to restrict NAO to being War-only and then hope that it'll evolve into War/Steel or maybe War/Time.

Failing that, removing the Rain from Searing Chariot isn't a bad idea either - we mostly want it because it's a WIT technique, and as an Archer tech second, but it being pure Fire isn't a terrible basis for it becoming better either.
 
If we do touch NAO, I'd rather get rid of War than Wood because then there'd be almost nothing left of the original technique.

That and War alone feels a lot less fun than Wood alone since it'd just be hitting things aggressively without any other effect which would make it even more redundant with Charm in Full Flight. Wood can also easily evolve to have Smoke as well given the obvious.

Wood also works more thematically given KZ's woodcrafting and being a thematic fuel source to craft things with so it feels a lot more in line with his character than pure War even if we can give it another element down the line.

Wood can be used to create things and War just destroys them if not paired with something else. We have good Wood insights thus far and War a lot less so it'd be a waste to give it up.

But honestly getting rid of Rain would be vastly preferable to any of the alternatives.
 
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Didn't we get a bunch of pills for almost all our techs?

Right now I'm not very interested in just eliminating an aspect from the two techs that are likely targets and the aspects aren't in direct opposition to our core. After learning a bit more and getting to the point we can adapt them I think I'd be more open to making changes. Either way the vote goes getting an idea of how it's done is useful though.

[X] No, I cannot afford to lessen my techniques now. This lesson will be strictly academic. (No technique will be filtered, but Kong Zhi will learn the theory behind how to perform such an act)
 
Parabola said:
While you're right and Master Warrior explicitly said this is something that'll be more useful later on, you yourself argued earlier today that it may make integrating NAO easier if we removed the Wood from it:
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I did not argue that we should do it.
I was only asked which technique could get the most reduction in integration effort. The answer is NAO, but there is no obvious benefit to getting NAO integrated quickly.
And in the case of NAO, it possibly doesn't save any actions if we were going to use the Blue Skies Card to get some strong War pills anyway. The change is 3 actions with added pills to 3 actions without pills.
We aren't obligated to integrate NAO.
 
[X] Yes, filtering a technique seems most wise. The loss in power will be negligible compared to the gain in efficiency. (A further subvote will be called should this option win)

When someone of Master Warrior's level tells you that you currently have a problem, and offers to help fix it, you say YES.
 
HousePet said:
I did not argue that we should do it.
I was only asked which technique could get the most reduction in integration effort. The answer is NAO, but there is no obvious benefit to getting NAO integrated quickly.
And in the case of NAO, it possibly doesn't save any actions if we were going to use the Blue Skies Card to get some strong War pills anyway. The change is 3 actions with added pills to 3 actions without pills.
We aren't obligated to integrate NAO.
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Oh, I see. Yeah, that's fair. Not that I think we'd necessarily have gone out of our way to request strong War pills, but sure.

..Although I will say, integrating NAO might give a +1 to Strength and that would factor into increasing Zhi's Spiritual Talent. This is assuming we get a similar integration bonus, of course, but I feel like it's quite possible. I don't think we'd get nothing out of integrating it.
 
Parabola said:
Oh, I see. Yeah, that's fair. Not that I think we'd necessarily have gone out of our way to request strong War pills, but sure.

..Although I will say, integrating NAO might give a +1 to Strength and that would factor into increasing Zhi's Spiritual Talent. This is assuming we get a similar integration bonus, of course, but I feel like it's quite possible. I don't think we'd get nothing out of integrating it.
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Why wouldn't we use our free pills card? That is what the Sen wanted to give Zhi.

We should get Spiritual Talent up with WC and StM, so NAO doesn't help much there.

There is potentially a talent from integration, as this would be the first technique that Zhi created and then evolved. But I'd imagine that gutting an aspect from it voids that possibility.
 
HousePet said:
Why wouldn't we use our free pills card? That is what the Sen wanted to give Zhi.
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I recall Cteatus saying that for rare aspects of Treasures or pills, we may need to actually may need to pay for some of them - he said something about that regarding Star pills or renting Star Treasures, back when we discovered Ma Rongjie's inheritance. It could be that War is counted as a rare-ish aspect - though probably not as rare as Star (we've found two War Wonders thus far, after all), asking for 'multiplier' pills or Grade 3 or 4 pills might end up costing a bit, even if it'd be worth it.

And yeah, if there was a time to use the card, it'd be for procuring the pills we need, but we don't even need to do that if we try to streamline the technique and take the loss of power in exchange for a purer concept.

HousePet said:
We should get Spiritual Talent up with WC and StM, so NAO doesn't help much there.

There is potentially a talent from integration, as this would be the first technique that Zhi created and then evolved. But I'd imagine that gutting an aspect from it voids that possibility.
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I'm not sure that's a voided possibility, but it's true that we wouldn't really know unless we actually do it.
 
[X] Yes, filtering a technique seems most wise. The loss in power will be negligible compared to the gain in efficiency. (A further subvote will be called should this option win)
 
[X] Yes, filtering a technique seems most wise. The loss in power will be negligible compared to the gain in efficiency. (A further subvote will be called should this option win)

While Xianxia memory magic would probably let learning the theory be just as good, a part of me is insisting that actually getting to practice the filtering process under Master Warrior's direct guidance is going to be more beneficial for when we actually need to do it.
 
[X] Yes, filtering a technique seems most wise. The loss in power will be negligible compared to the gain in efficiency. (A further subvote will be called should this option win)
 
[X] Yes, filtering a technique seems most wise. The loss in power will be negligible compared to the gain in efficiency. (A further subvote will be called should this option win)
 
I want to try it at least to see the use scenarios. That way we can judge how major the impact is and start to fine-tune our eclectic bunch of techniques into something more cohesive.
 
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  • Voting
    • This one seems pretty well decided. Closing the vote a little early so we can get a jump on the subvote.
    Scheduled vote count started by Vesvius on Jun 29, 2024 at 10:33 PM, finished with 115 posts and 69 votes.
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  • Voting
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    'To Filter' won the last vote handily, so let's get going on the specifics!

    With the aid of Master Warrior, Kong Zhi will be filtering an aspect out of one of his techniques. The aspect filtered from the technique will be removed from future cycling requirements, and the remaining aspect will grow in strength, but the resulting technique will be weaker than it's predecessor. What technique does Kong Zhi filter, and what aspect does he remove from it?
    [] (Select a technique from Kong Zhi's repertoire)
    -[] (Select an Aspect from the above technique to be filtered out)
     
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