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A Simple Transaction I

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The only reason I think Eclipse could compete with Pillars is that the Voyaging Realm and the Human sphere both contain things badder than the Temple. If I were to still think that Hunger and company are vulnerable after the temple, I might prefer Eclipse for the mixed option.

Given sufficient time to apply it, Pillars becomes the obvious choice. If we're ditching the Voyaging Realm, and not walking into an Armament-powered civil war, then I'm pretty positive I want Pillars.

Ultimately I'm one of the easiest voters to sway, though, so who knows!
 
SpectatingRaven said:
Rihaku, can we develop Gardener's Hallow with the Crimson Flare? This seems like something it can do and something we can offer the Inner Circle civilization is to also replace some of their magical infrastructure with one that give super resources.
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Gardener's Hallow + Crimson Flare would be cool but why do it here rather than benefit some other population that hasn't burned stars from the sky, leeched off a Ring for millennia and repeatedly had their agents try to kill us? One that might actually be grateful rather than resenting us for stopping the shit they were doing.

When we say a social victory we're talking encounter by encounter getting closer to our goal without having to kill everyone and run the mortal risks in so doing. It doesn't mean getting everyone to accept us freeing their communal slave in exchange for some buffs. Having buffs to sell shows the authorities something they might want from us that they can't take off our corpse so we get our foot in the door and it lets us bribe individuals. Social victories are how we win individual battles in an intrigue campaign that's still fundamentally hostile, a diplomatic campaign ending in agreement is not on the cards.
 
Orm Embar said:
Been a while since the Hero-Defeating Stance's description was actually posted, so I went back to reread it and was surprised to find that it discounts Once and Future by one Arete. A neat feature, if we're pivoting back toward that after the planned Evening Sky EFB. What are people leaning toward there, anyway? Pillars is unlocked but Total Eclipse's slightly discounted, and Silver of Evening could come back for a rematch.
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I'm still thinking that there will be a new, surprise 25 Aerete Evening Sky advancement that will be revealed as soon the thread's total Aerete gets close to being able to actually afford things, and that it will end up being more popular than all the ones we currently know about.
 
noliar said:
When we say a social victory we're talking encounter by encounter getting closer to our goal without having to kill everyone and run the mortal risks in so doing. It doesn't mean getting everyone to accept us freeing their communal slave in exchange for some buffs. Having buffs to sell shows the authorities something they might want from us that they can't take off our corpse so we get our foot in the door and it lets us bribe individuals. Social victories are how we win individual battles in an intrigue campaign that's still fundamentally hostile, a diplomatic campaign ending in agreement is not on the cards.
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Indeed, gunship diplomacy is a lot more useful when one has the actual ships to display! That said, it's not impossible to find those who would like to overthrow the existing power structure. The number of available opportunities can rise dramatically if you have buffs in store for defectors, and a narrative of justice or freedom! As for why even the powerful might be amenable to such plans - if their alloted span nears its end, people will do desperate things for more!
 
Rihaku said:
Indeed, gunship diplomacy is a lot more useful when one has the actual ships to display! That said, it's not impossible to find those who would like to overthrow the existing power structure. The number of available opportunities can rise dramatically if you have buffs in store for defectors, and a narrative of justice or freedom! As for why even the powerful might be amenable to such plans - if their alloted span nears its end, people will do desperate things for more!
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"Pst gramps, want some lifespan"
 
Rihaku said:
Indeed, gunship diplomacy is a lot more useful when one has the actual ships to display! That said, it's not impossible to find those who would like to overthrow the existing power structure. The number of available opportunities can rise dramatically if you have buffs in store for defectors, and a narrative of justice or freedom! As for why even the powerful might be amenable to such plans - if their alloted span nears its end, people will do desperate things for more!
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Oh yes. A councillor in their late 900s who doubts their promotion prospects could open all sorts of doors.
 
Stealth is actually making a great turnaround!

How many of you really want to turn that shy little angel into an assassin? Let her be our secret undercover ninja and get into shenanigans with the team! Let her cloak hunger if someone needs their brains blasted!

A vote for stealth is a vote for our girls health!
 
Hirorubie said:
Stealth is actually making a great turnaround!

how many of you really want to turn that shy little angel into an assassin? let her be our secret undercover ninja and get into shenanigans with the team! let her cloak hunger if someone needs their brains blasted!

A vote for stealth is a vote for our girls health!
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Angel... of death you mean!
 
But yeah, you know what you need for buffs? That's right, Arete! If we manage to roll well on social and get bunch of picks, we might pick Exalted Spirit and Ennoblement and maybe another similar Crimson Flare effect, perhaps even something that costs 7AP.

So, as always, HODL. Don't spend Arete!
 
Orm Embar said:
If there's an Immortal Deployment Act, sounds like calling on them could be costly in terms of star-stuff? Would be a reason beyond laziness that they don't periodically curbstomp the current crop of adventurers.
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I mean, do you really need to mobilize entire army to deal with a couple of troublemakers, when your High Marshals can already fight on level of super secret combat suits..

Just let Outriders deal with chaff and enjoy your piece of paradise. That worked fine for thousands of years.
 
I just feel that Aeria as an added combat asset to our party is bound to become a powerhouse just from the crapton of buffs we will be sending her way, and a stealthy attacker to complete our Mage/Warrior/Thief paradigm with Hunger and Gisena makes for a very balanced team against most kind of opponents. Maybe I'm thinking too much like an rpg/strategy game...

Plus, it's not like she'll lose her present stealthiness (she'll even get better at it considering the ++Agi) so we'll still be able to make use of her that way, with the combat specialty working as added survivability if she ever gets caught and needs to escape.
 
Wolfy said:
But yeah, you know what you need for buffs? That's right, Arete! If we manage to roll well on social and get bunch of picks, we might pick Exalted Spirit and Ennoblement and maybe another similar Crimson Flare effect, perhaps even something that costs 7AP.

So, as always, HODL. Don't spend Arete!
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With our current blood Rank we can demonstrate some damn good buffs even without those - certainly enough to keep us going until we can buy them.
 
noliar said:
With our current blood Rank we can demonstrate some damn good buffs even without those - certainly enough to keep us going until we can buy them.
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Value of our buffs is relative - more we can offer vs what they have, the more support we can get, to say nothing of actually buffing people that join us to greater combat relevancy!
 
ScalesLikeCinder said:
I just feel that Aeria as an added combat asset to our party is bound to become a powerhouse just from the crapton of buffs we will be sending her way, and a stealthy attacker to complete our Mage/Warrior/Thief paradigm with Hunger and Gisena makes for a very balanced team against most kind of opponents. Maybe I'm thinking too much like an rpg/strategy game...

Plus, it's not like she'll lose her present stealthiness (she'll even get better at it considering the ++Agi) so we'll still be able to make use of her that way, with the combat specialty working as added survivability if she ever gets caught and needs to escape.
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From my understanding, the +++element magnitude allows her the ability to cloak the rest of our team much more successfully. Super helpful for our backline, and in certain scenarios it should be enough to sneak hunger through as well!

Assassin would make her personally better, but considering we don't even know if she is staying I'd rather invest in her utility, something that scales with our main team.
 
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Wolfy said:
I mean, do you really need to mobilize entire army to deal with a couple of troublemakers, when your High Marshals can already fight on level of super secret combat suits..

Just let Outriders deal with chaff and enjoy your piece of paradise. That worked fine for thousands of years.
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I mean, maybe the Immortals get their fair share of combat from sparring, but in their shoes I'd want to occasionally stretch my legs and take out the trash! Half the fun of power's in wielding it. Plus, it proves their value as the Temple's trump cards to all the youngsters who don't remember their promotion. The likes of Nameless wouldn't care to exert themselves, but Selune was already bored with her life.
 
Wolfy said:
I mean, do you really need to mobilize entire army to deal with a couple of troublemakers, when your High Marshals can already fight on level of super secret combat suits..

Just let Outriders deal with chaff and enjoy your piece of paradise. That worked fine for thousands of years.
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Yeah, it doesn't really seem like any of the Moonbrain's in the encampment our on Hunger's level, and when coming across someone like him who they couldn't predict, they started throwing their big guns at him.


ScalesLikeCinder said:
I just feel that Aeria as an added combat asset to our party is bound to become a powerhouse just from the crapton of buffs we will be sending her way, and a stealthy attacker to complete our Mage/Warrior/Thief paradigm with Hunger and Gisena makes for a very balanced team against most kind of opponents. Maybe I'm thinking too much like an rpg/strategy game...

Plus, it's not like she'll lose her present stealthiness (she'll even get better at it considering the ++Agi) so we'll still be able to make use of her that way, with the combat specialty working as added survivability if she ever gets caught and needs to escape.
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Yeah. Aside from having more combat relavant people being good for not dying, the combat progression may actually leave her better at Stealth in the long run. Plus, this prepares her in case she ever does need or want to fight someone later in life, a fact that might become relevant given her home is currently losing a war of attrition against the rot beast and she wants to contribute to her home not being ripped apart by monsters.


Unelemental said:
For some reason I think that to let her get better at stealth, you need to pick the Stealth option that chooses to improve her Stealth magic.
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I don't know, the combat option still apparently provides training in infiltration and ambushing which require stealth. Plus literally every stealth option we've ever been offered seems to grants and benefits from increased agility. The stealth option is certainly better for stealth in the short run, but it seems counter-intuitive to me that agility mechanics wise and infilitration+ambush training fluff wise would have literally zero impact.
 
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Unelemental said:
For some reason I think that to let her get better at stealth, you need to pick the Stealth option that chooses to improve her Stealth magic.
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For some reason I think that while we're choosing the specialty she focuses on, it wouldn't make much sense for her to become an assassin and still keep her stealth at newbie levels for the rest of her life.

The first option makes her particularly better at stealth because that would be what she focuses on, and would allow extra things like a better cloaking of Vers, but that doesn't mean she'll start parading around in heavy armor if we make any other choice. Her main fighting style kinda focuses on stalking, ambushing and generally attacking from the shadows, after all.
 
Sorry, but kind of got annoyed at all the implied 'she might even better at stealth than Stealth' stuff. If you want to focus on Stealth, pick Stealth. If you want her to be a (stealthy) combatant, pick Combat. It's that simple.
 
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