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A Simple Transaction I

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Byzantine said:
It let's companions progress at up to triple their regular rate, and pushes us to limits of what our skills should allow us to accomplish, if I'm reading it correctly. It's broken powerful, especially given the Limit is Praxis. But then again 7 Arete picks seems to be broken but have a condition that partially cripples them. Maw is crippled by needing to be melee. This is crippled by only getting one pick.
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Rihaku said:
You may use that system to the limits of your Intelligence or applicable Attributes, developing any appropriate qualities within reason, but this may no more than double your overall advancement.
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I'm not clear on the exact meaning of this line. It's hard to tell if it's implying we'll be granted skill in it up to our attribute cap or if we'll be granted the potential to use it up to our attribute cap. I'm also not sure what it means by doubling our overall advancement? The magic power it gives can't be more than twice as powerful as we already are? Or we can't advance more than twice as fast in it than we already do?
 
Byzantine said:
It probably unlocks abilities and talents we cannot currently use.
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Well a Zweihander is a huge sword used in both hands, so common thought would probably be it unlocks the ability to use both hands to do more powerful strikes.

I actually think if you put together all the clues it hints towards something else, however. Seeing as it's base ability let's us use barehanded strikes with the Blade's power, and the ability it unlocks is Martial Stances, I think it most likely allows us to fight without the Blade at a reasonable level.

I'm guessing we'll be then able to take more stuff to either let someone else use the blade, absorb it to empower us, or something cool.
 
Byzantine said:
It let's companions progress at up to triple their regular rate, and pushes us to limits of what our skills should allow us to accomplish, if I'm reading it correctly. It's broken powerful, especially given the Limit is Praxis. But then again 7 Arete picks seems to be broken but have a condition that partially cripples them. Maw is crippled by needing to be melee. This is crippled by only getting one pick.
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I wouldn't call that crippled, just not applicable to every situation or otherwise limited. 7 Arete sounds a bit cheap for strong superpowers that are useful for every occasion.
 
Sickul said:
I actually think if you put together all the clues it hints towards something else, however. Seeing as it's base ability let's us use barehanded strikes with the Blade's power, and the ability it unlocks is Martial Stances, I think it most likely allows us to fight without the Blade at a reasonable level.
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The name Martial Stances:Forebear's blade made me think it would be some swordmanship special moves but I guess it could be a barehanded combat style based off the blades moves.
 
Unelemental said:
I wouldn't call that crippled, just not applicable to every situation or otherwise limited. 7 Arete sounds a bit cheap for strong superpowers that are useful for every occasion.
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Perhaps I should have said "condition". The idea is that 25's are just ridiculously OP with no restrictions. 7's are OP but have a condition that makes them situational, or at least creates situations where they do not work. 2's are bread & butter, as it were.
 
Getting even a couple of low/mid tier graces would be excellent in a way that compounds our power in a non-linear way, let alone getting high-tier graces.
 
Defining advancements are interesting. Looks like we can specialist our build toward three areas like we could take three accretion artifacts. Stranglethorn seems like it's going for tanky raw stats build which seems pretty synergistic with what we've gone for so far.
 
There are quite a few types of magic systems that would have synergy with what we have atm.
One would naturally be the Graces, because it might help Gisena advance (and thus deal with our Curses) and because it sounds like something that has some underlying principles in common with Accretion.
Another would be something that concentrates on enhancing our physical stats, preferably something that is hard to dispel. Like it or not, a great deal of our combat effectiveness involves hitting things with our sword as fast and hard as we can.
I'd say something with general utility is another hole in our build, but Hunger makes training too inefficient to bother with.
Maybe there's even an explicit anti-curses magic system, but I wouldn't get my hopes up.
 
Does the Accursed use the Imperial Praxis? Or is there an even higher form for his personal use/high cursebearers? The Exalted Praxis?
 
Sorcery would be a system you could pick, though you would not be a Sorcerer Eternal and would only have one Grace to start. Still, it would be a top-tier Grace, and the stats are always nice.
 
Also, the Zweihander option probably expends a great deal of its potential simply on healing our arm, so I don't know how valuable those Martial Stances would be.

Sickul said:
Does the Accursed use the Imperial Praxis? Or is there an even higher form for his personal use/high cursebearers? The Exalted Praxis?
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Rihaku said:
Access the Praxis, the Accursed's personal casting style.
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I'd say we get what he uses.
 
We might not ever achieve a Defining Advancement at all. Grand power like that is the domain of the sort of person Hunger was before: one who risks all with but a thin shield of faith for protection and overcomes what should rightly kill them. Our play-style mostly bends into calculated risk/reward, which is to say that we make choices like an actual person would, not in the slipshod, all-in way a hero establishes their legend. After all, aren't all heroes we see simply the survivors of a gauntlet of deeds which take in a thousand, ten thousand times their equals in number?

We would never choose a fight which might grant a 4 choices worth of experience. The only way it'll happen is if Apocryphal Curse nails Hunger with a challenge that should absolutely kill him and he survives anyways.

Anyways, the best sort of magic system we could unlock is one that acts as a tactical utility increase, rather than a force multiplier. Feeding Hunger more opportunities to make use of his Treachery would make him much more effective over a wider range of circumstances, and we seem to have most straightforward options besides outright battlefield bombardment covered, though we could do that too if we figure out how to jump high enough.
 
Rihaku said:
Sorcery would be a system you could pick, though you would not be a Sorcerer Eternal and would only have one Grace to start. Still, it would be a top-tier Grace, and the stats are always nice.
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3rd Coalescence would make us into Sorcerer Eternal, wouldn't it?

Instantly becoming Twice-Great.. crazy.
 
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Shard said:
3rd Coalescence would make us into Sorcerer Eternal, wouldn't it?
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Eternal is more of a qualitative change, methinks. It's about findross generation ability rather than specific number of Graces. Normal Sorceresses have to switch Graces if they want to use them and can't keep them up forever.

Edit: Though if we get a Grace that helps with findross generation, we might effectively become Eternal.
Edit2: Or if Accretion helps us with it.
 
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That being said, I would still much rather get something like Valor and s a v e for those juicy 25 options. Use our xp to shore up short term with high pick options such as Rain and Valor and we should have Once and Future or some other 25 option by the end of week.

Granted, that would be much easier if we went to Civ and used our money/charisma to generate additional power instead of doing Moon.
 
Wolfy said:
That being said, I would still much rather get something like Valor and s a v e for those juicy 25 options. Use our xp to shore up short term with high pick options such as Rain and Valor and we should have Once and Future or some other 25 option by the end of week.

Granted, that would be much easier if we went to Civ and used our money/charisma to generate additional power instead of doing Moon.
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Moon grants 2 arete and presumably there'll be things to kill thus netting XP picks. I would think Civ would be more likely to contain high arete options.
 
Alright, lets shill for Civ a bit:
  • You guys know who the Astral Lord is? Well, I don't either, because we spent last week wanking off in the middle of nowhere instead of talking to people. Civ allows us to get all the spiciest rumors and other relevant information without having to run into them face first
  • Some would say that there is value in being a virgin on your wedding night, but I would rather not get fucked by Tyrant's Curse without having some experience first. With Civ we can get some real world experience of what works and what in regards with Tyrant, which will be awesome boon once we end up having to interact with Letrizia's civilization
  • Fixing up our boy Verse. Also having Gisena add some rocket launchers which, funny that, would do nothing to us thanks to Evening
  • We have this "build" thing that makes us good at certain stuff, that stuff being social. Let's unzip our Charisma++++ and start slapping people around together with Gisena. Do a thing we are good at doing
  • Some would say that money is power. That is only correct if you are not in the middle of nowhere - with Civ, we can translate our pearl and other loot into money, which can then be translated into power by buying artifacts/mercs or paying people to give us monsters to farm
  • Finally, s a v i n g. With this, we can utilize the greatest power man has ever known, that of financial responsibility, to win our way through this quest. Utilize money to gain short term power and experience to gain powerful mid term upgrades and, thus, save our Arete for those shinny 25 Arete upgrades
 
Wolfy said:
With Civ we can get some real world experience of what works and what in regards with Tyrant, which will be awesome boon once we end up having to interact with Letrizia's civilization
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Or we can take them over and have an excuse for not obeying foreign laws. The more I hear and think about Civilization, the more I like the idea. But muh Temple of Elemental Evil the False Moon!..
 
Wolfy said:
  • Finally, s a v i n g. With this, we can utilize the greatest power man has ever known, that of financial responsibility, to win our way through this quest. Utilize money to gain short term power and experience to gain powerful mid term upgrades and, thus, save our Arete for those shinny 25 Arete upgrades
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Observe as we pick a 7 Arete option in the very next post. It is unavoidable, whether we are going to Civ, Hunting, or the Moon Temple.
 
Alright, shilling part 2 of 3 - lets talk about making money. As mentioned earlier, money is power in very literal sense; we can pay people to do stuff instead of us. Things we can look for, in no particular order, are:
  • Information - of notable monsters we could hunt, notable polities and entities we might encounter, about Astral Lord, magic systems, treasures, ruins and so on
  • Gear - better weapon for Gisena, general gear and potions/scrolls for our party, fixes and upgrades to Verde etc. If Gisena can strip curses off gear without damaging them in process we might get some good shit for cheap
  • Grind - being able to kill stuff for xp procs
  • Mercs/Companions - easy short term power
  • Access to magic systems
There are some additional things we can acquire, but this are the main ones. In particular, we can look forward to gaining increased short term power via Mercs/Gear and mid term power via xp into high choice picks such as Valor, allowing us to save Arete. That being said, one lone Pearl might not be enough, so we want more money. There are two ways to go about this - directly acquiring value and offering services. Direct acquisition would be:
  • Looting morally acceptable targets such as bandits and other criminal elements
  • Looting dungeons/monster dens
  • Finding Treasures
On the other hand, offering services would see us trading away our skills and power for value. Examples being:
  • Having Letrizia/Gisena come up with inventions
  • Having Gisena clear negative magic conditions from people/items
  • Working as a mercenary
  • Offering healing, provided there is no easy access to healing
  • Hunting down dangerous monsters(being paid for your Hunger procs? Yes please!)
  • Using our Rank to move people around
With all of this, we must remember that both Gisena and Hunger have very high if not outright superhuman social, which would help us to translate actions into value into power.
Shard said:
Observe as we pick a 7 Arete option in the very next post. It is unavoidable, whether we are going to Civ, Hunting, or the Moon Temple.
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I don't think so. I feel that it will be easy to convince thread to save once we are not in immediate danger, and once you hit 12-14 Arete people will get super hyped and saving will become default.
 
Hopefully there's going to be something we can pick that increases our Arete gain in some way, saving for 25 seems close to impossible as is.

I guess the counter argument is that we could take it at every thread selection and every available choice. But the thread amount isn't ever even a full point, and the choices that give Arete are either too dangerous or too sensible! We walk the line in between that!
 
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