A Simple Transaction I

Cerillian · May 19, 2020

ReaderOfFate said:
Oh my god. While this is unlikely to be chosen since it doesn't have practical benefits in quest, out of quest this is the sort of thing that a Cursebearer would kill for. It gives a respite from an otherwise eternity living with your Curses, which is otherwise essentially an impossible dream, since complete Mitigation would only occur in scientific scales of time forward.

~~I'm personally going to vote for it as one of our Lesser Remittances specifically for that narrative reason.~~

EDIT: Nvm, going to choose Seals synergies instead.

I don't know, in some ways having a break like that could almost be worse than a Curse enceasing. With this, you could essentially be torturing yourself, knowing you could let things slide briefly, but instead have to maintain the willpower to not do so until the right moment.

Or just use it as fast as you accrue it, which isn't really a very good use of things.

That kind of pressure can drain a person, and reduce determination needed to accomplish other things.

Admittedly, that isn't really a concern until our hero has actually accrued his first vacation hours.

Dark Lord Bob said:
I'm quite reluctant to switch away from Praxis, but if I did then I'd switch to this.

It's kind of funny that we've got one option which gives us ultimate offence and defence (Imperial Praxis) and another that gives us slightly less ultimate but still awesome offence and defence (Grey Plate + Forebear's Sword).

True, if Praxis fails this vote, then yea, this does seem tempting. I'm not terribly fond of reading about training efforts, and Rihaku seems to enjoy keeping such on screen and not just summarising them in passing.

Although, I'm not sure the Seals vs Accretion vote matters much with Intensify, depending on what exactly the Scepter offers. If it is just a powerboost in that art, I'd still prefer Seals in that case.

Redshirt Army said:
Alright. If we're gonna do the edgelord thing, let's at least actually finally get the Praxis out of it, instead of just repeating this insanity the next time it gets offered in a Rihakuquest.

[X] Plan Vengeance Can Be Praxis
-[X] The Sword That Ends the World
-[X] Seven Seals
-[X] Gisena Allria, the Nullity Sorceress
-[X] Forebear's Blade
-[X] Retinue

You've laid out quite nearly the same arguments I was thinking.

Plus, it seems like Gisena is quite popular with other builds as well, so it seem like there is something resembling a consensus there. I do find it fun that additional elements of Seram's quest could return this way. Makes things almost like a continuation, in a way.

[X] Plan Vengeance Can Be Praxis
-[X] The Sword That Ends the World
-[X] Seven Seals
-[X] Gisena Allria, the Nullity Sorceress
-[X] Forebear's Blade
-[X] Retinue

OctarineShrike · May 19, 2020

What are people voting for Vengeance Can be Praxis hoping to achieve, given the legitimate possibility of Seals+Blade being useless for Curse mitigation? What is the drawing factor in its absence?

Lealope · May 19, 2020

KidFromPallet said:
Yes, and it's also been stated that the Lesser Remittances will only affect our survival chances by 1-3%.

You're misremembering, that was in reference to the choice of native magic we had without an immediate power option.

Rihaku said:
There's only a modest difference in survival value between the three arts, as the hero's present level in all of them is massively reduced from its apex.

BrainInAJar said:
Hey, you're the one saying we will die to a stiff breeze in the next world, I thought you'd support even a modest increase in survival! Though I will admit, by pure preference I'd choose the Nobilis Aspect power, so if that's the one that maximizes survival I'd gladly pick that instead.

Rihaku said:
By modest I mean it will not affect your survival chances by more than ~1-3%, because you'd suck at all of them without a power granting Remittance. The difference would be larger (in safety, utility, actual play experience etc) the more initial power you have.

[X] Orm Embar

As a sidenote, the Index is updated to the latest threadmark.

Orm Embar · May 19, 2020

Rihaku said:
Interesting. Is Accretion actually falling behind? I will say that sufficient quantities of Accretion can act as a natural check to the horribleness of the Apocryphal Curse. The curse is basically all the bad parts of being the Main Character with none of the good parts, whereas Accretion allows one to literally develop a Plot Armor.

Huh, that's an interaction I was low-key hoping for but it's nice to see it confirmed.

With Hunger pushing us to act and granting additional willpower, we can bull through with no need for any training arcs and the accompanying build votes. Accretion scales with one's deeds, so the sooner we start singlehandedly routing armies, the faster our mythos will crystallize. Do as Odyssial did during the Primordial War, and forge a legend of invincible destruction that will echo forever in the minds of our foes. People claim past quests lacked slice of life and downtime? Hah, they haven't seen anything yet! If we're going to embrace the edge, might as well make it the Infinity Edge.

Sickul · May 19, 2020

[X] King's Knights
-[X] The King's Scepter
-[X] Accretion
-[X] Gisena Allria, the Nullity Sorceress
-[X] Forebear's Blade
-[X] Retinue

My thinking is that Gisena is the best of the three, the other two are strong physical and mentally, but Gisena is the only one was a unique power that is probably rare and uniquely helpful.

Retinue to give her and others much better progression, and Blade with Accretion to give us a second way to progress without limit.

BrainInAJar · May 19, 2020

Aabcehmu said:
Personally, I was totally down for Praxis on a Combat-type, where it could serve as our key to unbounded (albeit, much slower) growth. But on a Progression type, it's too win-more and not enough catch-up.

KidFromPallet said:
Yes, and it's also been stated that the Lesser Remittances will only affect our survival chances by 1-3%. Eventually cutting our growth rate down to 23% isn't worth around +2% survival chance right now.

No, that was the starting magic. If the biggest difficulty of the Sword is surviving the Curses, obviously mitigation helps.

Conjured Blade said:
What are people voting for Vengeance Can be Praxis hoping to achieve, given the legitimate possibility of Seals+Blade being useless for Curse mitigation? What is the drawing factor in its absence?

It is the option that most improves our starting magic in the immediate term, therefore increasing the possibility of survival in the same interim.

Sickul · May 19, 2020

I am afraid of the side effects of Hunger with Doom of the Tyrant. I think our greed for the visceral pleasures of life could make us hated and people more likely to overthrow us.

It seems like something that would be ideal to combo with Slumber.

Aabcehmu · May 19, 2020

runeblue360 said:
[X] Orm Embar

As a sidenote, I've updated the Index to the latest threadmark.

BrainInAJar said:
No, that was the starting magic. If the biggest difficulty of the Sword is surviving the Curses, obviously mitigation helps.

Gisena can only be said to have the strongest effect on our early survivability if she is specifically tasked on mitigating the Apocryphal Curse, which A) means that we need to provide some impetus for her to help us basically nigh-constantly, and B) means that she is not doing anything else, including help mitigate our other Curses or help handle the concrete situation-on-the-ground, which, if we pick Praxis and don't pick something that adds additional combat abilities on top of it, could be bad enough to kill us both, even without Apocrypha.

Cerillian · May 19, 2020

Rihaku said:
You absolutely refuse to submit to, or even acknowledge the legitimacy of, any rule, custom, law or authority above your own

BrainInAJar said:
Transactional bargains are none of the above things, so I assume so. We won't find trades backed by law or custom valid, but this is neither.

Interesting thought, we would thus submit to our own rules and customs. Which, if our hero still has modern world sensibilities internalised, could mean that he largely refuses to haggle or bargain on prices, treating initial offers as the only possible sticker price. Absent sales and coupons, and not counting buying cars, real estate, or other such exceptions as make sense in his head and/or emotions.

Possibly with the occasional demand to see someone's manager, if service is not to his satisfaction.

Unelemental · May 19, 2020

[X] Transcendent Shonen Murderhobo

Perfectly capturing our questing essence in three simple words. Brings a tear to my eye. Though I suppose Talon+Champions Brand would have fit this title a bit better, it is not the powers that make the murderhobo, it's the attitude.

More concretely, I'm still for Scepter+Accretion for all the reasons mentioned previously. That Blade was something I was planning on involving anyway - too strong a link to the Hero's greatest hour, the act that made victory, bitter as it was, possible. It might also serve as a link to those hidden masters that we could use to track them. It reeks too much of outside involvement to be a coincidence.

Hunger is just an obvious pick. We're going to be knee-deep in conflict from the get-go and have Hunger as a Curse besides, so the themes fit. Aside from the obvious, I'm also curious what Accretion will do with it as we advance.

And Relinquishment is just... yeah. Put pressure on the Hero again and again, and he might surpass our expectations. But without a single iota of respite, he might just break. Also makes us less predictable.

Beach episodes here we come!

KidFromPallet · May 19, 2020

runeblue360 said:
You're misremembering, that was in reference to the choice of native magic we had without an immediate power option.

BrainInAJar said:
No, that was the starting magic. If the biggest difficulty of the Sword is surviving the Curses, obviously mitigation helps.

Alright, fair enough. I still maintain that the boost in early game survivability gained by having Gisena scale faster to deal with Curses is outweighed by the fact that we take 1/3 longer to actually get out of early game vulnerability, and the fact that she'll become increasingly unimportant as the game goes on.

Like, just think back to EFB. Would having someone with 25% of Nameless' growth rate and the ability to slightly mitigate Fate working against him mattered? At all? If Nameless only had 75% or less of his growth speed throughout the Quest, would he have been able to survive?

And the only case where Gisena doesn't become increasingly unimportant is because we've lowered our growth rate down to less than 25%. Just, think on that. Would a Progressive Cursebearer with less than 25% growth be able to handle every challenge promised by the Geas of Indenture and the Apocraphyal Curse?

No, Retinue utterly murders our late game for a little bit of extra survivability in the early to mid game. I just can't countenance voting for it. Heck, what do you think having a full Retinue will do to our concept of exploring the Praxis? Cutting our growth rate by that much is going to mean awful things for the possibility of getting Deepest Lore.

Rihaku · May 19, 2020

Shard said:
I wonder which version of EFB this guy is from. And from where. The height of the Age of Truth, escaping from reality long before any Dooms had time to take hold? After or in its Decline, leaving to escape them? Even the Age of Might? After, learning under Nameless and then leaving to journey beyond?

Well, we know it's not the latter, since he doesn't have universe-destroying physical stats and multi-stage boosted uber Blood diagrams...

BrainInAJar said:
Why even let us choose the Sword if it's so troublesome.

It's fine to take as any Combat-type! And Seram had the option, of course, because he didn't have to pick Geas.

Dark Lord Bob said:
One worry I have regarding Retinue is that it might still be short term.

Nah, it's great in the long term as long as you pick your companions correctly. You're basically getting the cross-system synergies of an Xth-Great, where X is the number of characters in your Retinue. Like, would it be worth losing 77% of Cultivation speed in order to get access to the Diagram and Artifice? And that's not taking into account character-specific multipliers like Intensify Praxis, Ordinal Purist, unique conditions, etc.

Aabcehmu said:
Gisena can only be said to have the strongest effect on our early survivability if she is specifically tasked on mitigating the Apocryphal Curse, which A) means that we need to provide some impetus for her to help us basically nigh-constantly, and B) means that she is not doing anything else, including help mitigate our other Curses or help handle the concrete situation-on-the-ground, which, if we pick Praxis and don't pick something that adds additional combat abilities on top of it, could be bad enough to kill us both, even without Apocrypha.

Gisena mitigates all your other Curses too, given some more time. She offers a reasonably fast First Stage Mitigation for every Curse on top of her winning personality!

That said, I do think people are sleeping on the other companions and not just a little bit. I will say this. Given the characteristics of the thread, you will probably regret not taking Ceathlynn when you had the chance. Though that would make for a better story... hm.

Koden · May 19, 2020

[X]Plan Maximum Curse Mitigation(Gisena Edition)
-[X]The King's Scepter
-[X]Seven Seals
-[X]Gisena Allria, the Nullity Sorceress
-[X]Forebear's Blade
-[X]Retinue

Edit, corrected spelling invote

BrainInAJar · May 19, 2020

KidFromPallet said:
No, Retinue utterly murders our late game for a little bit of extra survivability in the early to mid game. I just can't countenance voting for it. Heck, what do you think having a full Retinue will do to our concept of exploring the Praxis. Cutting our growth rate by that much is going to mean awful things for the possibility of getting Deepest Lore.

Rihaku said:
Nah, it's great in the long term as long as you pick your companions correctly. You're basically getting the cross-system synergies of an Xth-Great, where X is the number of characters in your Retinue. Like, would it be worth losing 77% of Cultivation speed in order to get access to the Diagram and Artifice? And that's not taking into account character-specific multipliers like Intensify Praxis, Ordinal Purist, unique conditions, etc.

Thanks for the statements, Rihaku.

Rihaku said:
It's fine to take as any Combat-type! And Seram had the option, of course, because he didn't have to pick Geas.

Just ignore me, I'm just grumpy and burned out by the vote. I'm happy Sword even got this far, really.

OctarineShrike · May 19, 2020

Given Rihaku's Remark and my own frustration with the Praxis plans I'm seeing I want to submit my own Praxis Plan for consideration.

[x]Plan Rise My Apprentice
-[x] The Sword That Ends the World
-[x] Seven Seals
-[x]Forbear's Blade
-[x]Talon
-[x]Ceathlynn "Catherine" of Amarlt

As has already been mentioned, the Sword gives us bonuses to the power of seals drawn with it, even though we're unlikely to return to our Archmage levels of power, our theory knowledge remains. We can entice Catherine who's socially suggestible into traveling with us via sealing training, and mooch off her until we reach enough Praxis development to start pulling more of our own weight. Talon can be exchanged between the two of us as needed, and gives us material for Seal Alchemy we can use for teaching her. We're also giving Catherine/moe captain America access to Feruchemy, letting her take her capabilities to superhuman levels. Talon also gives us a boost to intimidation that may be helpful given Doom of the Tyrant.

It also addresses the concerns people have with Retinue impacting our long term growth.

Rihaku · May 19, 2020

BrainInAJar said:
Thanks for the statements, Rihaku.

Well, you do have to pick your companions correctly... that can require patience or giving up on shiny treasures. Is that realistic?

Cerillian said:
Interesting thought, we would thus submit to our own rules and customs. Which, if our hero still has modern world sensibilities internalised, could mean that he largely refuses to haggle or bargain on prices, treating initial offers as the only possible sticker price. Absent sales and coupons, and not counting buying cars, real estate, or other such exceptions as make sense in his head and/or emotions.

Possibly with the occasional demand to see someone's manager, if service is not to his satisfaction.

Doom of the Karen

You will always receive substandard service. The person you speak to about it will always be the manager, and will always be unhelpful. Any attempts to escalate this will always end up with your roundly mocked and humiliated in a public arena. You feel compelled to escalate nonetheless, but will never successfully escalate beyond line management. Before employing other methods of conflict resolution, you always sincerely attempt complaining first, even in matters of violence, even if your interlocutors have been unresponsive before.

Aabcehmu · May 19, 2020

Conjured Blade said:
Given Rihaku's Remark and my own frustration with the Praxis plans I'm seeing I want to submit my own Praxis Plan for consideration.

[x]Plan Rise My Apprentice
-[x] The Sword That Ends the World
-[x] Seven Seals
-[x]Forbear's Blade
-[x]Talon
-[x]Ceathlynn "Catherine" of Amarlt

As has already been mentioned, the Sword gives us bonuses to the power of seals drawn with it, even though we're unlikely to return to our Archmage levels of power, our theory knowledge remains. We can entice Catherine who's socially suggestible into traveling with us via sealing training, and mooch off her until we reach enough Praxis development to start pulling more of our own weight. Talon can be exchanged between the two of us as needed, and gives us material for Seal Alchemy we can use for teaching her. We're also giving Catherine/moe captain America access to Feruchemy, letting her take her capabilities to superhuman levels. Talon also gives us a boost to intimidation that may be helpful given Doom of the Tyrant.

It also addresses the concerns people have with Retinue impacting our long term growth.

The problem is that without Retinue, then Catherine's loyalty, growth, and ability to follow us between Indentures all require in-the-field answers, which are non-trivial to produce.

notgreat · May 19, 2020

Y'know what?

[X] Plan Safety in Numbers
-[X] The Sword That Ends the World
-[X] Gisena Allria, the Nullity Sorceress
-[X] Ceathlynn "Catherine" of Amarlt
-[X] Retinue
[X] Accretion

Praxis is interesting. I didn't want to vote for Vengence but if we're doing this we might as well go all in. The two companions is a great way to maximize cross-system synergies, and their individual power should help us not die in our first couple fights before Sword's scaling kicks in.

Rihaku · May 19, 2020

Conjured Blade said:
As has already been mentioned, the Sword gives us bonuses to the power of seals drawn with it, even though we're unlikely to return to our Archmage levels of power, our theory knowledge remains.

You don't have theory knowledge either. Remember, your character doesn't even remember the Seals beyond the Fifth.

Conjured Blade said:
We can entice Catherine who's socially suggestible into traveling with us via sealing training, and mooch off her until we reach enough Praxis development to start pulling more of our own weight.

You probably can't be carried by Catherine, she's too weak without a force multiplier to make a large difference. When I say regret I mean like, emotionally, from a practical standpoint she's only about as good as Gisena overall, but their advantages are distributed quite differently.

OctarineShrike · May 19, 2020

In that case I'm going back to my original plan.

[x]Plan Maximum Curse Mitigation(Gisena Edition)
-[x]The King's Scepter
-[x]Seven Seals
-[x]Gisena Allria, the Nullity Sorceress
-[x]Forbear's Blade
-[x]Retinue

Rihaku · May 19, 2020

Conjured Blade said:
In that case I'm going back to my original plan.

Your new plan was good at what it aimed to do, but I think given your comments overall you'll be happier with your original plan.

notgreat said:
Y'know what?

[X] Plan Safety in Numbers
-[X] The Sword That Ends the World
-[X] Gisena Allria, the Nullity Sorceress
-[X] Ceathlynn "Catherine" of Amarlt
-[X] Retinue
[X] Accretion

Praxis is interesting. I didn't want to vote for Vengence but if we're doing this we might as well go all in. The two companions is a great way to maximize cross-system synergies, and their individual power should help us not die in our first couple fights before Sword's scaling kicks in.

Well, Catherine doesn't really offer any synergies to start, she's more of a late-game asset! But she's very good at that.

Shard · May 19, 2020

We're going to need another consolidation after this, aren't we?

KidFromPallet · May 19, 2020

Rihaku said:
Nah, it's great in the long term as long as you pick your companions correctly. You're basically getting the cross-system synergies of an Xth-Great, where X is the number of characters in your Retinue. Like, would it be worth losing 77% of Cultivation speed in order to get access to the Diagram and Artifice? And that's not taking into account character-specific multipliers like Intensify Praxis, Ordinal Purist, unique conditions, etc.

The problem is that it isn't just a 77% loss to our main empowerment speed, it's around a 76% loss to all our empowerment speeds. We'd have 23% ourselves, plus 25% for five other people. We'd be able to harness multiple disciplines, sure, but only the lowest levels of each discipline due to the growth cut.

Assuming each companion has one empowerment method they could safely share, including the Hero, we'd have six disciplines averaging a hair under 25% growth speed. Or two different Thrice-Greats at 24-25% growth speed, or effectively one Thrice great at 49.75% growth speed. It just doesn't seem worth it, especially when growth compounds unto itself to produce more multipliers. Sure, we'd have higher growth than this in the beginning of the Quest, but I still don't really think that it'd outpace a solid Seals + Forebearer's Sword build.

If you want to Devil's Advocate me and just directly say that the synergy granted by having six different people with effectively 25% of a Progressive Cursebearer's growth share empowerment options results in superior growth, then please do, I would very much like that clarification, but I currently don't think that's the case.

After all, I doubt that a 33% Cultivator focused Thrice Great + a 33% artificer focused Thrice Great + a 33% Diagram Mage focused Thrice Great would stack up to a 100% Nameless.

DkArthas · May 19, 2020

Shard said:
We're going to need another consolidation after this, aren't we?

Well, Rihaku might just go for the plan with highest votes.

Chronic · May 19, 2020

[X] Plan Vengeance Can Be Praxis

If we are to be an avenging murderhobo, we might as well be a suicidal avenging murderhobo. Go all the way, so to speak.

And if the quest goes down in flames due to our greed, at least it will be a pretty fireworks!

A Simple Transaction I

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