A Simple Transaction I
- Thread starter Rihaku
- Start date
- Original
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
personally if I were worried that bringing up something in a quest thread was rude, I'd dm the QM with a brief description of the post and ask permission
- Location
- Pindorama
Maybe Fell-Handed Strike would qualify as a perk in the old system? I dunno.
Y'know, if things go badly at the city or in general really, that +Stealth would be mighty useful! Martial challenges are not the only ones we will encounter, especially if Armaments continue to be more powerful than us for the foreseeable future. More avenues of problem solving means more chances for our intelligence to carry the day!
Y'know, if things go badly at the city or in general really, that +Stealth would be mighty useful! Martial challenges are not the only ones we will encounter, especially if Armaments continue to be more powerful than us for the foreseeable future. More avenues of problem solving means more chances for our intelligence to carry the day!
Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
I feel it's a consequence of us selecting Nightmare Praetor (along with the emotional compromise and from selecting Vengeance). Ruthlessness means no mercy. Before that, the Hero was stated as making sure to offer surrender to the Tyrant's soldier's where practicable. Combined with our No Quarter vote, that means surrender was never on the table.
(Plus, like, we'd miss out on all that mitigation.)
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Rihaku
The Internet
There is one crucial difference between Hunger and Nameless that I'd like to elucidate - while Nameless' Thrice-Great progression was exceptional due to its inherent synergies, he only had Beyond Points to serve as further stimulus. Hunger has Experience and Arete, and even if he never spends his Arete in an efficient manner, if it lets him survive so that he continues to gain Experience, he can scale up without limit. It's not just about getting the best bang for your buck with your Arete, but rather how Arete expenditures affect your journey as a whole. If they help you survive a perilous time, that can be much more valuable than some incremental efficiency here or there, because no matter what you do with Arete you'll still be a Progression-type Cursebearer on top of that.
Undying Echo itself may be boring, but it may also be the prerequisite to more interesting things... And while it's mechanically basic, it opens up a lot of options in play. Being significantly more resilient means you can take on greater risks and also benefit from symmetrical debuffs like poison clouds or explosions. Something Gisena might find quite useful!
Slumber of Aeons would raise your gains from sleep (if you slept a lot) to a mechanically relevant level quite quickly, within the order of a month or two.
Verschlengorge's affinity for you can only be a good thing! For you.
I wouldn't ignore Arete expenditures entirely this vote. You guys already took a greedy build last vote, and Hunger has to get through dozens or hundreds of encounters before this escort mission's over. Most of them won't be as hard as this one, but some may be harder.
Efficiency in isolation is not necessarily efficiency in combination! There are certainly effects which in synergy are worth more than the sum of their Arete cost.
Sevenfold striking speed and power can be an excellent high-risk XP farming tool or general I Win card, yeah. If you're attacked by someone who's three times stronger, faster, and tougher than you, usually you'd be out of luck, but not with A Thousand Cuts!
You wouldn't need an ability such as this to become greater than that! If you survive, and grow strong.
Maybe, depending on the exact mechanics of the Voyaging Realm. But it would take a really long time.
Good thing you guys voted to speak to her twice! Though as you've noted, there's nothing truly stopping you from dissolving your compact with her once she's reached her destination.
You don't think she's keeping anything major and immediately relevant from you, no. But she has her secrets!
Undying Echo itself may be boring, but it may also be the prerequisite to more interesting things... And while it's mechanically basic, it opens up a lot of options in play. Being significantly more resilient means you can take on greater risks and also benefit from symmetrical debuffs like poison clouds or explosions. Something Gisena might find quite useful!
Slumber of Aeons would raise your gains from sleep (if you slept a lot) to a mechanically relevant level quite quickly, within the order of a month or two.
Verschlengorge's affinity for you can only be a good thing! For you.
I wouldn't ignore Arete expenditures entirely this vote. You guys already took a greedy build last vote, and Hunger has to get through dozens or hundreds of encounters before this escort mission's over. Most of them won't be as hard as this one, but some may be harder.
Efficiency in isolation is not necessarily efficiency in combination! There are certainly effects which in synergy are worth more than the sum of their Arete cost.
Sevenfold striking speed and power can be an excellent high-risk XP farming tool or general I Win card, yeah. If you're attacked by someone who's three times stronger, faster, and tougher than you, usually you'd be out of luck, but not with A Thousand Cuts!
You wouldn't need an ability such as this to become greater than that! If you survive, and grow strong.
Maybe, depending on the exact mechanics of the Voyaging Realm. But it would take a really long time.
Good thing you guys voted to speak to her twice! Though as you've noted, there's nothing truly stopping you from dissolving your compact with her once she's reached her destination.
You don't think she's keeping anything major and immediately relevant from you, no. But she has her secrets!
- Location
- USA
[X] Forebear's Blade - Echo of the Forebear
-[X] 2 Arete: Undying Echo
[X] Forebear's Blade - Fell-Handed Stroke
Felt the Echo was the right choice upon reading the update but let greed get to me. Get our combat stats up, increase survivability, and let us use the Stroke more.
If we get to 7 I would consider Thousand Cuts too, it should let us kill and advance more.
-[X] 2 Arete: Undying Echo
[X] Forebear's Blade - Fell-Handed Stroke
Felt the Echo was the right choice upon reading the update but let greed get to me. Get our combat stats up, increase survivability, and let us use the Stroke more.
If we get to 7 I would consider Thousand Cuts too, it should let us kill and advance more.
Lealope
Not yet invincible
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Okay, maybe just a teeny, tiny, itsy, bitsy bit more greed.
[X] Forebear's Blade - Fell-Handed Stroke
[X] Hunger - Sleep of the Just
-[X] 2 Arete: Slumber of Aeons
24 hour sleep cycle, you awake you a fake.
I know, I know, spending discipline, efficiency, immediate survival. I get it. But if the upgrade to Repose makes it go from waiting years to matter to tangible, mechanically relevant results in a month, I'll be just a bit more greedy. That it ameliorates the greatest weakness of the Repose is yet another benefit. The Fell-Handed Stroke should give us enough power to survive another month. Besides, if we do want to get Dead But Dreaming, this is a necessary component anyway.
EDIT: Necessary to be viable, I should clear up.
[X] Forebear's Blade - Fell-Handed Stroke
[X] Hunger - Sleep of the Just
-[X] 2 Arete: Slumber of Aeons
24 hour sleep cycle, you awake you a fake.
I know, I know, spending discipline, efficiency, immediate survival. I get it. But if the upgrade to Repose makes it go from waiting years to matter to tangible, mechanically relevant results in a month, I'll be just a bit more greedy. That it ameliorates the greatest weakness of the Repose is yet another benefit. The Fell-Handed Stroke should give us enough power to survive another month. Besides, if we do want to get Dead But Dreaming, this is a necessary component anyway.
EDIT: Necessary to be viable, I should clear up.
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Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
Well..
In the previous AST some of the more powerful build vote options involved spending exp on skills (which we could improve naturally). An EFB perspective suggests that we should optimize power/stage - But an AST perspective suggests we should just optimize power, and accelerate that exponential curve by constantly jumping ahead.
[X] Forebear's Blade - Echo of the Forebear
-[X] 2 Arete: Undying Echo
[X] Forebear's Blade - Fell-Handed Stroke
In the previous AST some of the more powerful build vote options involved spending exp on skills (which we could improve naturally). An EFB perspective suggests that we should optimize power/stage - But an AST perspective suggests we should just optimize power, and accelerate that exponential curve by constantly jumping ahead.
[X] Forebear's Blade - Echo of the Forebear
-[X] 2 Arete: Undying Echo
[X] Forebear's Blade - Fell-Handed Stroke
Rihaku
The Internet
He could just have been lying!
You could do that with Progression alone! Right now you need the power to survive!
It's not complicated, just the desire for more people to see something that you've created.
Undying is technically part of Accretion bullshit!
- Location
- Canada
I mean, obviously? The Accursed said that Seram may, in time, approach his own power and the Accursed is certainly far beyond the likes of Azathoth. I meant in the sense of the entirety of the Lovecraft verse being but a product of Azathoth dreams.
OctarineShrike
Avatar of Mandos
Sorcerously Advanced, work on it apparently started Jan 2018, I started chiming in around 2nd Alpha June 2018. Currently in Beta 3. I actually lifted some of the stuff I was mulling related to that setting as inspiration for the "The Leviathan has Come" omake.
400 years ago, the ability to do magic in this fantasy setting, once the reserve of specific bloodlines and with metaphysical costs to learn, became available to everyone at no cost due to an act of the setting's Deity. This plunged the world into war and upheaval. Some were able to find ways to run and hide, but others fought. The present day of the setting focuses on a region where some of the more powerful civilization have broken out of the fighting. The world is also a plate 10 light-seconds in diameter held by the 24 armed divine titan that gave everybody magic, so there was a truly ludicrous amount of war going on at some points. The setting is multiversal, different universes have their own divine titan holding up the world in the shape of the dominant species if they aren't entirely empty. Some examples include Manta Rays, Octopi, and Giant Crows, and they all have magic too. Some of the other civilizations are also known multiversally, like the Geometer's Guild, that attracts people seeking to learn their magic from other universes within the setting's let's just say multiversal cluster.
Life is really weird now, for some examples, immortality is easily acquired that's strong enough that unless somebody exploits your specific immortality flaw, you kill yourself, or give up after being trapped in some kind of unfathomably horrific hostile environment like the inside of a Volcano, you can recover even from total bodily annihilation given sufficient time. Becoming magic makes the body sufficiently a plaything of the mind that even if you get stuck in a volcano, if you hold out long enough with the right mindset, you can eventually turn into a lava swimming creature and adapt. You don't want to give up though. Afterlife selection is essentially random, there are multiple heavens and multiple hells, and Resurrection of the Dead is extremely skill and resource intensive(Communion 5 which is the maximum, possibly self 5 to work 24 hours without sleep, and a tremendous amount of benevolent mana.). You might reincarnate out of hell eventually if you're lucky.
Contiguous National borders are a thing of the past due to the existence of the Travel Grid enabling people to get a 10 mile path from any of overwhelmingly pervasive access points in the world to any access point in the world, leading to giant alliances of city-states instead of nations with borders.
There's inexplicable ancient magical projects floating around like a magitek version of the internet if the internet was github meets the library, the previously mentioned travel grid which is multiversal in scope, and orbital artillery systems.
Conjuration magic, disconnection from Industry, and the benefits of having a high self magic rating means nobody sufficiently skilled at magic ever has to worry about starving to death.
The most common legal model is restitution focused, bears an uncanny resemblance to Saga Period Icelandic law IMO, and has Judicial Dueling as a thing.
Anime hair colors are canon, and one person given sufficient training and augmentation can have firepower rivaling a natural disaster.
If you're willing to forfeit your ability to do violence you can acquire an absolute immunity to it with magic, the disconnection techniques provide potent esoteric defenses in spite of their sizable costs.
The Default Player character group is the Archive, an international adventure archeology organization meets the Wikimedia foundation, though as far as I'm concerned, there's enough unpleasant stuff in the setting for the Soulpact(an organization of Kung Fu Necromancers trying to save people from fates worse than death/find a solution to the fact that hells exist) to be a viable player character organization too. For example, finding a way to do something about the existence of hells may be possible because they are manifestations of divine self-loathing in a pantheistic cosmology. Heavens, hells, and certain other dimensions are literal manifestations of God's thoughts, so if they can figure out a way to get God therapy, hell is a solved problem.
400 years ago, the ability to do magic in this fantasy setting, once the reserve of specific bloodlines and with metaphysical costs to learn, became available to everyone at no cost due to an act of the setting's Deity. This plunged the world into war and upheaval. Some were able to find ways to run and hide, but others fought. The present day of the setting focuses on a region where some of the more powerful civilization have broken out of the fighting. The world is also a plate 10 light-seconds in diameter held by the 24 armed divine titan that gave everybody magic, so there was a truly ludicrous amount of war going on at some points. The setting is multiversal, different universes have their own divine titan holding up the world in the shape of the dominant species if they aren't entirely empty. Some examples include Manta Rays, Octopi, and Giant Crows, and they all have magic too. Some of the other civilizations are also known multiversally, like the Geometer's Guild, that attracts people seeking to learn their magic from other universes within the setting's let's just say multiversal cluster.
Life is really weird now, for some examples, immortality is easily acquired that's strong enough that unless somebody exploits your specific immortality flaw, you kill yourself, or give up after being trapped in some kind of unfathomably horrific hostile environment like the inside of a Volcano, you can recover even from total bodily annihilation given sufficient time. Becoming magic makes the body sufficiently a plaything of the mind that even if you get stuck in a volcano, if you hold out long enough with the right mindset, you can eventually turn into a lava swimming creature and adapt. You don't want to give up though. Afterlife selection is essentially random, there are multiple heavens and multiple hells, and Resurrection of the Dead is extremely skill and resource intensive(Communion 5 which is the maximum, possibly self 5 to work 24 hours without sleep, and a tremendous amount of benevolent mana.). You might reincarnate out of hell eventually if you're lucky.
Contiguous National borders are a thing of the past due to the existence of the Travel Grid enabling people to get a 10 mile path from any of overwhelmingly pervasive access points in the world to any access point in the world, leading to giant alliances of city-states instead of nations with borders.
There's inexplicable ancient magical projects floating around like a magitek version of the internet if the internet was github meets the library, the previously mentioned travel grid which is multiversal in scope, and orbital artillery systems.
Conjuration magic, disconnection from Industry, and the benefits of having a high self magic rating means nobody sufficiently skilled at magic ever has to worry about starving to death.
The most common legal model is restitution focused, bears an uncanny resemblance to Saga Period Icelandic law IMO, and has Judicial Dueling as a thing.
Anime hair colors are canon, and one person given sufficient training and augmentation can have firepower rivaling a natural disaster.
If you're willing to forfeit your ability to do violence you can acquire an absolute immunity to it with magic, the disconnection techniques provide potent esoteric defenses in spite of their sizable costs.
The Default Player character group is the Archive, an international adventure archeology organization meets the Wikimedia foundation, though as far as I'm concerned, there's enough unpleasant stuff in the setting for the Soulpact(an organization of Kung Fu Necromancers trying to save people from fates worse than death/find a solution to the fact that hells exist) to be a viable player character organization too. For example, finding a way to do something about the existence of hells may be possible because they are manifestations of divine self-loathing in a pantheistic cosmology. Heavens, hells, and certain other dimensions are literal manifestations of God's thoughts, so if they can figure out a way to get God therapy, hell is a solved problem.
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- Location
- USA
They are separate sub-options, Dead doesn't look like it requires Slumber. It's possibly one might preclude the other, though if they don't and dead-sleep counts as normal sleep that would be some insane synergy.
Gimme that Accretion signature bonus. I'll go for the .1, I'm pretty active and post in enough threads I think.
[X] Forebear's Blade - Echo of the Forebear
-[X] 2 Arete: Undying Echo
[X] Forebear's Blade - Fell-Handed Stroke
I changed my mind, I still like the versatility that comes with banking hours a lot, but baseline improvement seems more suitable for the time and place.
-[X] 2 Arete: Undying Echo
[X] Forebear's Blade - Fell-Handed Stroke
I changed my mind, I still like the versatility that comes with banking hours a lot, but baseline improvement seems more suitable for the time and place.
Yeah, on reading the name I wondered if these 'Echo' skills aren't leading up to us getting the option for a Forebear simulacrum in our head or something. You said it doesn't give memories 'to an appreciable extent', but that it's possible at all's interesting! If the sword's something like a phylactery, does that make him a lich? What an absurd advantage, with this voterbase.
Lealope
Not yet invincible
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Sorry, I miscommunicated. What I meant was "a necessary component to be viable". Being immune to death is great and all and so is dream magic but I don't think it'll help us survive when we fail the Apocryphal's tests and/or the Geas due to falling behind on our growth.
Maragas
Nothing to see here.
- Location
- Tree House
It's not greedy if it works. It makes our previous choice of Repose so much better and the earliest we take the more benefits we will get from it.
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ImperatorV
The Laughing One
- Location
- The Voyaging Realm
[X] Forebear's Blade - Echo of the Forebear
-[X] 2 Arete: Undying Echo
[X] Forebear's Blade - Fell-Handed Stroke
I like the arguments for Undying. For a progression-type cursebearer, survival is the most critical thing. As long as you survive you keep scaling up, and there's not really anything that can outscale a Progression-type. Essentially, high-risk high-reward plays are less good because we always have high rewards anyway, the proportion of gains relative to risk is not great.
-[X] 2 Arete: Undying Echo
[X] Forebear's Blade - Fell-Handed Stroke
I like the arguments for Undying. For a progression-type cursebearer, survival is the most critical thing. As long as you survive you keep scaling up, and there's not really anything that can outscale a Progression-type. Essentially, high-risk high-reward plays are less good because we always have high rewards anyway, the proportion of gains relative to risk is not great.
OctarineShrike
Avatar of Mandos
Tally incoming. May need a bit to consolidate plans properly due to formatting differences.
- Location
- USA
While it's true taking it earlier squeezes more juice from it, we absolutely know without a doubt that we are going to be fighting right now. We are already fighting at less than 100%.
Is taking a choice that lessens our time awake and doesn't help us survive right now really the best choice? Once we are in civilization and leading such that fighting might not be on the table sleeping is pure benefit, now? We can fight and advance faster with Hunger than the benefits of pure stats we would get from sleeping.
Maragas
Nothing to see here.
- Location
- Tree House
I do agree with this but taking either of the combat boosters already helps with this a bit.
Not to mention every one of the hours we sleep increases everything about us, wisdom, charisma, strength, endurance etc you name it. It will make our sleep so much more efficient in power gain as we already need to sleep 9 hours for optimal fighting condition.
Combine everything I say we will be fine.
And who knows, I am feeling the Sleep perks will unlock rejuvenation sleep too. Something that grants huge regen bonus while sleeping rather than Deads resurrection.
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- Location
- Poland
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Forebear's Blade - Fell-Handed Stroke
[X] Hunger - Sleep of the Just
-[X] 2 Arete: Slumber of Aeons
Slumber of Aeons is the only thing I care for.
Sleep is good. I miss sleep. This is still a rational and tactically viable vote and not a cry of a sleepless night.
[X] Hunger - Sleep of the Just
-[X] 2 Arete: Slumber of Aeons
Slumber of Aeons is the only thing I care for.
Sleep is good. I miss sleep. This is still a rational and tactically viable vote and not a cry of a sleepless night.
OctarineShrike
Avatar of Mandos
Going off raw option popularity for the sake of comparison looks like this. (Edit: Votes weren't initially consolidated but are now.)
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Rihaku
The Internet
Fell-Handed Stroke is interesting. It's an option whose value increases geometrically the better your physical stats are, but if you're up against an enemy you can't land it on, it's kind of useless. Taking alongside King of Thieves would be decent synergy, since you get ++Agility and +Stealth to strike from ambush.