The Lighthouses and the Pit (Fantasy Mage Quest)

@occipitallobe is there a particular reason Fleshcrafters don't Pit Dive beyond poor personal capability? It seems like healing ability would be very useful, and even combat ability could be supplemented to a degree with trained animals.

Granted, a driving passion where you have no greed for yourself makes it kind of OoC in most cases, but is there another practical reason?
 
Last edited:
[] Untouched by Desire, Detached From Greed
Struggling between this and Bladebound, but someone's actually arguing for it so I'll give it a vote pending further arguments. :p

Ninja vote change!
[X] Not Owned By Avarice, Not Fool Enough to Disdain Wealth
 
Last edited:
@occipitallobe is there a particular reason Fleshcrafters don't Pit Dive beyond poor personal capability? It seems like healing ability would be very useful, and even combat ability could be supplemented to a degree with trained animals.
Super high compassion and super low greed means it'd be somewhat unlikely for a Fleshcrafter to put themselves and their healing ability at risk pit diving compared to being where people in need can reach them.
 
Also playing a character that is focused primarily on helping others and who has powers that only allow us to strengthen others kind of decreases our agency since we depend on others to actually do anything.
 
@occipitallobe is there a particular reason Fleshcrafters don't Pit Dive beyond poor personal capability? It seems like healing ability would be very useful, and even combat ability could be supplemented to a degree with trained animals.

Granted, a driving passion where you have no greed for yourself makes it kind of OoC in most cases, but is there another practical reason?
Also, they don't have much reason to risk themselves so greatly when they have a massive ability to do other things. It's like.. uh.. Like the General entering melee! Sure he can, it's just not the best idea when he can be leading the army.
Also playing a character that is focused primarily on helping others and who has powers that only allow us to strengthen others kind of decreases our agency since we depend on others to actually do anything.
I don't really see that as a negative, TBH, the point about agency.
 
Last edited:
The issue is that if we just become a healer who stays in cities healing or deaging people we might be doing something could but actually changing anything significant will extremely difficult and it will get dull a lot quicker.
 
Re: Agency

Our character has perfectly fine agency. If you speak in respect to our OOC ability to influence things - You may have noticed that @occipitallobe has been quietly cutting down our agency the previous votes to define our character. From 6 lighthouses to 4, then 3, then 2, and now 1. More Agency, is, in fact, not always a good thing, as having less would allow the story to progress faster as opposed to filing out the tiny bits. Lesser is, in quite some cases, better.
The issue is that if we just become a healer who stays in cities healing or deaging people we might be doing something could but actually changing anything significant will extremely difficult and it will get dull a lot quicker.
I trust the QM to skip over those bits, 'You spend 5 years doing X', as opposed to the plan votings that was done over the last quest.
 
[X] Not Owned By Avarice, Not Fool Enough to Disdain Wealth

The ability to act and travel and do, not just being servant to others or ourselves.
 
@occipitallobe is there a particular reason Fleshcrafters don't Pit Dive beyond poor personal capability? It seems like healing ability would be very useful, and even combat ability could be supplemented to a degree with trained animals.

Granted, a driving passion where you have no greed for yourself makes it kind of OoC in most cases, but is there another practical reason?

The Pit is very dangerous, and a lost fight you can't escape from tends to be death for everyone. Roughly speaking, the more people who descend into the Pit, the greater the risk, reasonably linearly. Two very powerful mages will generally do better than a hundred novices, who in turn would do better than the entire mundane armies of the Three Cities combined. A retinue of fleshcrafted troops is great in the field, but almost a liability in the Pit.
 
The issue is that if we just become a healer who stays in cities healing or deaging people we might be doing something could but actually changing anything significant will extremely difficult and it will get dull a lot quicker.
While I'm not voting for the fleshcrafter, this is a spurious argument. The Fleshcrafter has as much depth of play as anyone else, they're just not the type you look for if you want to play dungeon crawling fools.

Each type of mage has a certain category of adventures associated with it, and the fleshcrafter is well suited to both Trader and Town Lord modes of play.
 
How many character has SV played that has a Healing ability? Or even specialized in support capabilities? Compared to all the other characters who have pure raw power behind them?

I really do want to see us play the healer; I mean, one can see the value they have simply by noting their rarity. Few people are inclined to the path of the Fleshcrafter, because few people are of that personality. We could.. be one of those treasured few. I suppose it would be natural thay powers = personality would force that. Few people have the lack of greed needed to be a Fleshcrafter, since this is a dark, despairing world of shadows.

I mean I'm not opposed to Pit-Diving, but I really do want to see us play the Fleshcrafter.
 
In any case, another argument.

Our character's personality (Hopeful, Compassionate) already lean to becoming a healer, and the third emotional trait, Stubborn, isn't opposed to it, either. In contrast, the same personality set just doesn't support being a Blademaster, with Compassionate not something you look for in a warrior, Hopeful neutral and Stubborn being okayish. Then for our actions - For a Blademaster, Hopeful and Compassionate would quite easily lead us to risks that Stubborn enforces, with potentially fatal results. The Healer, in contrast, would find the same risks suicidal and not take them at all.

As for agency.. the character for maximum player agency would be a blank, emotionless person with maximal power. On the other hand, someone with limitations, lines they won't cross and suboptimal things they must do - Is that not a more interesting person? In fact, it may well be telling that the options with greater sheer ability are the ones that come with constraints, in the form of extreme greed or selflessness.
 
[X] Untouched by Desire, Detached From Greed
In any case, another argument.

Our character's personality (Hopeful, Compassionate) already lean to becoming a healer, and the third emotional trait, Stubborn, isn't opposed to it, either. In contrast, the same personality set just doesn't support being a Blademaster, with Compassionate not something you look for in a warrior, Hopeful neutral and Stubborn being okayish. Then for our actions - For a Blademaster, Hopeful and Compassionate would quite easily lead us to risks that Stubborn enforces, with potentially fatal results. The Healer, in contrast, would find the same risks suicidal and not take them at all.

As for agency.. the character for maximum player agency would be a blank, emotionless person with maximal power. On the other hand, someone with limitations, lines they won't cross and suboptimal things they must do - Is that not a more interesting person? In fact, it may well be telling that the options with greater sheer ability are the ones that come with constraints, in the form of extreme greed or selflessness.
Hey, you're already mostly winning. The longer you continue to argue, the more you do nothing but increase your chance of sticking your foot in your mouth and driving people away from the vote you want.
 
In any case, another argument.

Our character's personality (Hopeful, Compassionate) already lean to becoming a healer, and the third emotional trait, Stubborn, isn't opposed to it, either. In contrast, the same personality set just doesn't support being a Blademaster, with Compassionate not something you look for in a warrior, Hopeful neutral and Stubborn being okayish. Then for our actions - For a Blademaster, Hopeful and Compassionate would quite easily lead us to risks that Stubborn enforces, with potentially fatal results. The Healer, in contrast, would find the same risks suicidal and not take them at all.

As for agency.. the character for maximum player agency would be a blank, emotionless person with maximal power. On the other hand, someone with limitations, lines they won't cross and suboptimal things they must do - Is that not a more interesting person? In fact, it may well be telling that the options with greater sheer ability are the ones that come with constraints, in the form of extreme greed or selflessness.

Someone hasn't watched very much shonen anime, I see.

Kenshin Himura is an excellent example of a compassionate, hopeful, stubborn swordsman. The argument that our current emotional setup doesn't work for a swordsman-type is silly. People enter the Pit for all sorts of reasons- having the gumption and optimism to seek something that could change the world for the better is as valid as any other motivation.
 
Last edited:
It's worth noting that if other sorts of healers are as rare as fleshcrafters, then becoming a fleshcrafter now and advancing as a spellthief later would probably make us tremendously powerful.
 
[X] Not Owned By Avarice, Not Fool Enough to Disdain Wealth

I wouldn't mind healer either, since we could probably still do things like pit diving if we (SV) really wanted to. After all, I could see a compassionate healer looking at a group of pit divers (or whatever other dangerous thing) and saying to themselves: "These poor people are going to get themselves killed if I don't help them."
 
Back
Top