Tally incoming:
Adhoc vote count started by Conjured Blade on May 30, 2020 at 10:47 PM, finished with 99 posts and 23 votes.
 
@Rihaku, I realized I'm not totally clear on how Rains functions.

Is it there's the active 1/Month effect to transfer someone else's wounds, and then a passive reverse wound penalty effect that's always active? Or is the reverse effect only for the ally wounds we transfer? Also does Reverse mean it turns a -16% penalty into a -0 or a +16%?
 
There is a new Thing I Do Not Like: oodles of hunt based options after Huntress' Moon won the vote. Hunger upgrades are convenient, but not to the point that we get an applicable healing ability, and Apocryphal is even more inconvenient.

We have options. We can go charging off hunting in this direction, or we can stalk our foe in that direction! Or not. Takes no credibility to start a fight if the schmuck does it himself.

Feels kinda like we handed the Affliction a keyword, it handed it off to the Curse, and now it's being spammed at us. Ah, paranoia. There are procs under every rock.
 
@Rihaku, I realized I'm not totally clear on how Rains functions.

Is it there's the active 1/Month effect to transfer someone else's wounds, and then a passive reverse wound penalty effect that's always active? Or is the reverse effect only for the ally wounds we transfer? Also does Reverse mean it turns a -16% penalty into a -0 or a +16%?

The reverse effect is for all wounds not caused by your own hand. Basically you don't get the bonus for healing someone that you yourself hurt. Wounds inflicted on yourself by others and on your allies by others absorbed into you are both reversed.

-16% becomes +16%, yes. It's really quite an impressive survival effect!
 
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Shirou Emiya. Protagonist of Fate Stay Night. Has a massive case of survivor's guilt fueling his desire to ideally save everyone, that causes him to have little to no regard for his own existence. His utter absence of regard for himself makes him godlike at Archery though.
... Well, I am fairly sure that such a syndrome is highly unlikely to say the least. That's like.. a writing and characterization thing. Not a powerset thing.
 
Guys, keep in mind that if Ber is some sort of Isekai Gamer type protagonist, he'll have a couple things going for him.

1. Very steep growth curve
2. Ability to punch way above his weight-class by exploiting hidden mechanics and weaknesses.

We're not able to contest his ability to exploit weaknesses, because we don't know anything about him or the general setting. That means we really need to focus on being strong enough to overpower him when he inevitably comes back to beat us.

Preferably, we'd be able to kill him, so as to remove any possibility of him pulling another, better informed salty runback.

Immediate risks may be great, but we've also go to consider that we stand a serious risk of being farmed for EXP in the near-distant future if we don't scale up hard enough.


EDIT: By the way, this is an argument for Age and Treachery
 
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Hm... if you guys can manage to avoid taking any Arete spending options this time, and get Coldly Calculating, you'd basically have enough Arete for a 7 cost! That would potentially be even more power than a full short-term build here, especially if you get something synergistic with it.

For example, Echo of the Forbear + Echo of the Forebear -> A Thousand Cuts. Maximize raw speed and strength, and then gain a ranged finishing move that cuts spirit as well as flesh and septuples speed and strength!

Recuperate + Age and Treachery into a good 7-cost would also be a potent combination for the medium to long term. You got into this situation chasing Rank upgrades, why not follow through and get all the Rank you can!
 
Guys, keep in mind that if Ber is some sort of Isekai Gamer type protagonist, he'll have a couple things going for him.

1. Very steep growth curve
2. Ability to punch way above his weight-class by exploiting hidden mechanics and weaknesses.

We're not able to contest his ability to exploit weaknesses, because we don't know anything about him or the general setting. That means we really need to focus on being strong enough to overpower him when he inevitably comes back to beat us.

Preferably, we'd be able to kill him, so as to remove any possibility of him pulling another, better informed salty runback.

Immediate risks may be great, but we've also go to consider that we stand a serious risk of being farmed for EXP in the near-distant future if we don't scale up hard enough.


EDIT: By the way, this is an argument for Coldly Calculating
If the concern is being outscaled, would not the proper response be to kill them before they start scaling?
 
Incidentally, you guys do realize that Ring of Blood can heal Letrizia, since Recuperate removes Exhausted? It won't be immediate like What Rains, so it may cost an action later, but it can heal her. Reading Hunt for Healing again, it just seems especially dumb because it does not note that it removes Exhausted. Meanwhile, Press the Attack drops to Tired. There's no real reason to pick Ring of Blood and then go on to Hunt for Healing while Exhausted and still wounded, since Hunt for Healing makes no mention of resting.
 
Upon reflection, now that I understand how the wound penalty inversion of What Rains works, I think that it's incredibly well-suited to resolving our more immediate problems. But it still makes me wary.

Stealing damage and damage leading to power does stem the compounding effect of constant battle and let us protect our allies, but it doesn't resolve the actual central issue that we'd still be injured. It actually bends our play style towards the mode of being injured all the time, and I think that it might actually play into the Apocryphal Curse. If it only takes a bit of bad luck for us to be finished off while gaming unresolved injury for power, then simply amping up encounter rate will make death more likely. I think pursuing genuine healing in something like Ring of Blood is safer long-term against Apocryphal procs, even if the buffer it provides is less effective than What Rain's enhancement at getting us over the hump vs. individual high-grade encounters.

Obviously it would be optimal to just take both, but we can't right now. Though What Rains would have really good synergy with Pitiless Maw from the long-term stuff, if it could get saved. Like a circular endurance effect where we take devastating blows and immediately deal them back to recover the damage, or take an ally's wound and use it for a decisive blow.
 
If the concern is being outscaled, would not the proper response be to kill them before they start scaling?

Yeah 100%, except Rihaku's gone out of his way to tell us we'd be hard-pressed to kill this guy even if we were at our best, and we're very far from that at the moment.

I just don't think it's feasible to finish this guy off right at the moment.

Besides, it's been made clear that if we do focus on scaling, we do have a very solid chance of leaving him in the dust
 
Hm... if you guys can manage to avoid taking any Arete spending options this time, and get Coldly Calculating, you'd basically have enough Arete for a 7 cost! That would potentially be even more power than a full short-term build here, especially if you get something synergistic with it.

For example, Echo of the Forbear + Echo of the Forebear -> A Thousand Cuts. Maximize raw speed and strength, and then gain a ranged finishing move that cuts spirit as well as flesh and septuples speed and strength!

Recuperate + Age and Treachery into a good 7-cost would also be a potent combination for the medium to long term. You got into this situation chasing Rank upgrades, why not follow through and get all the Rank you can!
We don't have any 7 costs available right now though I thought?

Incidentally, you guys do realize that Ring of Blood can heal Letrizia, since Recuperate removes Exhausted? It won't be immediate like What Rains, so it may cost an action later, but it can heal her. Reading Hunt for Healing again, it just seems especially dumb because it does not note that it removes Exhausted. Meanwhile, Press the Attack drops to Tired. There's no real reason to pick Ring of Blood and then go on to Hunt for Healing while Exhausted and still wounded, since Hunt for Healing makes no mention of resting.
The difference is that Hunt for Healing leaves her without burn scars
 
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[X] Hunt for Healing
[X] Evening Sky - Amaranth Star
[X] Hunger - Scent of Prey
[X] Fury - +1 pick above


Sad that I lost an vote. Anyway, quite cool fight scene, even if our party's current health is quite worrying. And we live in interesting times, wouldn't surprise me if we faced quite a few more encounters.

Anyway, Lettrizia is hurt, let's heal her. Kinda worried about Verschlengorge too, the mech seems to be in quite a bad state.
 
[X] Recuperate - Rest for now until the Exhausted and Tired conditions clear, then continue onwards without diverging from the plan. It's likely you'll outscale this particular enemy without any special actions. Don't get distracted and focus on your own Progression.
[X] Feat - Age and Treachery. Gain +.25 Rank. [2 picks]
[X] Feat - Age and Treachery. Gain +.25 Rank. [2 picks]
[X] Coldly Calculating - +.75 Arete
Power levelling all the way baby. If at our current level and while exhausted we were strong enough to drive off Ber after killing his party than adding another 1.25 rank means that short of him pulling some Zang Kong nonsense i'm pretty confident we can kill him later whenever he turns up.

You misread Coldly Calculating, it gives Arete not Rank
 
While Hunt for Healing may potentially leave her without scars if we find the right kind of healing in the right amount of time, it is far from guaranteed that Hunt will heal her better than relying on Ring of Blood, or even heal her at all. What are the chances that we kind find someone who killing would give us better options for healing others than the Ring of Blood, who we can kill in our current state?
 
While Hunt for Healing may potentially leave her without scars if we find the right kind of healing in the right amount of time, it is far from guaranteed that Hunt will heal her better than relying on Ring of Blood, or even heal her at all. What are the chances that we kind find someone who killing would give us better options for healing others than the Ring of Blood, who we can kill in our current state?

If you have Scent of Prey, it's not that unlikely! But Scent of Prey does spend two picks on something with no direct combat application... going full stats with Exhaustion Mitigation (Amaranth + Echo x2) would give you a much wider range of enemies to kill! That's ++Might, +++++Agility! so agile much wow!
 
If you have Scent of Prey, it's not that unlikely! But Scent of Prey does spend two picks on something with no direct combat application... going full stats with Exhaustion Mitigation (Amaranth + Echo x2) would give you a much wider range of enemies to kill! That's ++Might, +++++Agility! so agile much wow!
Huh. Either enemies that could provide healing better than Ring Of Blood to someone in our condition, with our Accretion themes are far more common than I would expect, or Scent of Prey is truly just that good, to sniff out the one in a thousand foe that can provide exactly what we need. Of course, I suppose knowing where to find such a for and surviving the journey to find it are two very different things, in our current condition.
 
You're in pretty bad shape, but you're certainly still stronger than the vast majority of wild beasts! Especially if you pick up some exhaustion mitigation or just enough raw stats to compensate for your injuries.
 
How broad is Scent of Prey's 'Target', anyways?

Could you use it to find a location, for example; could you get an accurate location of "A legal shop in this city that has the best price for travelling supplies"? What about more esoteric stuff like 'hunting' "The moment in this conversation where an interjection would break the tension best"?
 
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