Alchemical Solutions [Worm/Exalted] Thread 18: Ravaging Rapscallions Rapidly Regret Regular Rampages

[Ridtom]

Death of the Author, yo. If Gromweld wants to go with Word of Wildbow, great, but Wildbow's word is not inherently correct just because he's the author. If it's in the text, it's canon, otherwise it's an interpretation, and even authors are known to make dumbass interpretations of their work.

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That refers to the interpretation of the work as a message, not disregarding new material that he hands out as we ask him for it.

Wildbow saying that Worm symbolizes British Imperalism would be worth Death of the Author.

Him answering a fans question on how he'd have Contessa beat Crawler is less so, because nothing in text contradicts it.

Gromweld is still free to choose, since AU are based on things not ocurring in canon, but he appears to be doing an admirable job of keeping to canon and new material that Wildbow provides when asked.

 

[Katsuragi]

Typically, I treat WoG as the highest degree of secondary canon, that is, it's canon unless it contradicts something in the source material.

Then again, my background for these things is primarily vs. battles.

As far as this particular instance goes, I'm fairly sure it would take something along the lines of PtV to turn Crawler into an armored ball of useless. Like, the odds of doing it by chance of near non-existent, and the odds of intentionally doing it without some sort of higher level guidance are only slightly better. PtV could do it, because it basically work on "Are the odds of this happening >0%? Then here's how." I don't see armored ball o' Crawler being remotely feesable without involving some form of thinker power to guide the actions precisely.

 

[Imrix]

NOPE. Sadly enough, even in-text Wildbow can be wrong. See Taylor's birthday. When she's talking to her father (after S9, I believe?) on the 19th, he says that her birthday was a week ago, on the 12th. Later, she gives her birthday as the 19th. Now, maybe Taylor is just that forgetful, but I doubt it.

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Yeah... Plotholes are an odd space about canonicity.

That refers to the interpretation of the work as a message, not disregarding new material that he hands out as we ask him for it.

Wildbow saying that Worm symbolizes British Imperalism would be worth Death of the Author.

Him answering a fans question on how he'd have Contessa beat Crawler is less so, because nothing in text contradicts it.

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Ehhh, I disagree, but to be fair I couldn't justify it off the top of my head. But to me, if it's not in the text, it ain't ironclad.

 

[Scify]

This has been your obligatory "Death of the Author" disagreement. We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread.

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If you had to choose one of Travellers to Exalt into an Alchemical, who would it be and which caste?

 

[FunkyEntropy]

@uju32 - I think you need to reread what I said. Whether Marrow's shard counts as armor or natural soak has no bearing on how much damage poison will do to her because SOAK has no bearing on how much damage poison does. The distinction only matters in that it determines whether an attack with a poisoned weapon (that can be applied via contact) needs to HIT her or if the attack needs to CAUSE at least one HL of damage.

(Although this does remind me that I need to go back and edit that post because I was wrong about how poison resistance rolls work (you have to do it every interval, and reducing the type of damage only applies to that particular interval), but that doesn't have any bearing on the issue of poison and soak)

 

[Katsuragi]

Hm. I don't think any of them have quite the right drive for it.

That said, probably Mars As she's the most conducive to the team getting along.

In an ideal world, pre insane Noelle could easily have been first of the chosen me thinks.

 

[veekie]

Typically, I treat WoG as the highest degree of secondary canon, that is, it's canon unless it contradicts something in the source material.

Then again, my background for these things is primarily vs. battles.

As far as this particular instance goes, I'm fairly sure it would take something along the lines of PtV to turn Crawler into an armored ball of useless. Like, the odds of doing it by chance of near non-existent, and the odds of intentionally doing it without some sort of higher level guidance are only slightly better. PtV could do it, because it basically work on "Are the odds of this happening >0%? Then here's how." I don't see armored ball o' Crawler being remotely feesable without involving some form of thinker power to guide the actions precisely.

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Lore 5 with parahuman specialty to figure it out. War 5 to implement

 

[Katsuragi]

Right. Possible, but I'd still call it heroically difficult. Taylor's knowledge and plan through glorious exalted bullshit marrow could probably pull it off, though.

Thinking of synergies, Flechette would be good for the crew. Taylor's bullshit generaling channeled through her perfect precision and Sting would be terrifying even before incorporating glorious exalted bullshit.

Shame we didn't meet and develop a connection with her.

 

[FunkyEntropy]

Right. Possible, but I'd still call it heroically difficult. Taylor's knowledge and plan through glorious exalted bullshit marrow could probably pull it off, though.

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Well yeah. Legendary Difficulty (Diff 5) for sure. But totally feasible with Taylor's dice pools (she beats that on average dice) but we'd probably be spending WP/using a Conviction channel to boost the odds in our favor.

 

[landcollector]

Well yeah. Legendary Difficulty (Diff 5) for sure. But totally feasible with Taylor's dice pools (she beats that on average dice) but we'd probably be spending WP/using a Conviction channel to boost the odds in our favor.

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Yep, we'd be averaging 6 successes on each of the Lore and War rolls, and that's without stunt dice. A Conviction channel would add 4 dice to a particular roll, averaging 2 extra successes.

 

[kenhikaru]

Shame we didn't meet and develop a connection with her.

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Not necessarily necessary. If we talk to Dragon/Marrow about potentials/adjust our parameters to include capes who can/might be able to harm Endbringers, her name should come up. And that's something we could do IC after the S9, call it preparation for the next EB attack.

 

[uju32]

@uju32 - I think you need to reread what I said. Whether Marrow's shard counts as armor or natural soak has no bearing on how much damage poison will do to her because SOAK has no bearing on how much damage poison does. The distinction only matters in that it determines whether an attack with a poisoned weapon (that can be applied via contact) needs to HIT her or if the attack needs to CAUSE at least one HL of damage.

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And I think you're missing MY point.
The calculation I made referred to Marrow in full armor dealing with a Yozi venom analogue as a contact poison or an environmental hazard.
I was saying that the poison would not make it through the armor to reach her skin; that's where the soak assertions came in.

Rolling against poison that made it into your system is a very different calculation.

If you had to choose one of Travellers to Exalt into an Alchemical, who would it be and which caste?

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Genesis, because it allows us to deploy her projection like a Stand.
Caste? Probably Moonsilver, because said Stand can be reconfigured as an infiltrator.
That said, I don't think any of them has the will for it besides maybe Noelle, who would have rocked a badass Unity of the Closed Fist ability.

Now question: what totemic anima would be appropriate for Moonsilver!Aisha?

 

[Imrix]

And I think you're missing MY point.
The calculation I made referred to Marrow in full armor dealing with a Yozi venom analogue as a contact poison or an environmental hazard.
I was saying that the poison would not make it through the armor to reach her skin; that's where the soak assertions came in.

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You're assuming Soak helps with that. Depending on the mechanics, it might not; it might just be a Trauma roll.

 

[uju32]

You're assuming Soak helps with that. Depending on the mechanics, it might not; it might just be a Trauma roll.

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Why wouldn't it?
Said poison NEEDs to get into the person's system somehow when they're wearing artifact armor.
I compare it to something like a Solar in artifact armor strolling through a Fire-aspected Dragonblood's totemic anima without harm.

 

[Imrix]

Why wouldn't it?
Said poison NEEDs to get into the person's system somehow when they're wearing artifact armor.

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Because of how the mechanics work. Generally speaking, the environmental poisons I've seen don't deal damage for Soak to interact with; you make your Trauma roll, and if you fail you suffer a dose of the poison. You want to argue whether that's dumb, fine, but thats how I've seen it work.

I compare it to something like a Solar in artifact armor strolling through a Fire-aspected Dragonblood's totemic anima without harm.

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Yeah, that's dumb as hell. The elemental fury of the Dragonblooded being either hyper-lethal or trivially stonewalled based on whether you're wearing so much as an Artifact 1 piece of magic armour is stupid.

 

[Stormseed]

NOPE. Sadly enough, even in-text Wildbow can be wrong. See Taylor's birthday. When she's talking to her father (after S9, I believe?) on the 19th, he says that her birthday was a week ago, on the 12th. Later, she gives her birthday as the 19th. Now, maybe Taylor is just that forgetful, but I doubt it.

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I've become increasingly convinced that WB has difficulty operating a calendar.

 

[uju32]

I've become increasingly convinced that WB has difficulty operating a calendar.

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He was writing a serial without proof-reading; of course there are continuity errors.
The wonder is that there are so few.

Because of how the mechanics work. Generally speaking, the environmental poisons I've seen don't deal damage for Soak to interact with; you make your Trauma roll, and if you fail you suffer a dose of the poison. You want to argue whether that's dumb, fine, but thats how I've seen it work.

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Yeah, I'm gonna go with dumb as hell.
Especially in light of the example below.

Yeah, that's dumb as hell. The elemental fury of the Dragonblooded being either hyper-lethal or trivially stonewalled based on whether you're wearing so much as an Artifact 1 piece of magic armour is stupid.

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This OTOH makes sense to me.
You would expect that someone building magic armor would take into consideration just this sorta thing; DBs are the commonest Exalts after all.
And note that it doesn't happen for just every bit of artifact armor; it happens for artifact armor with Hardness, which generally requires at least Artifact 2(I think).

 

[Imrix]

You would expect that someone building magic armor would take into consideration just this sorta thing; DBs are the commonest Exalts after all.
And note that it doesn't happen for just every bit of artifact armor; it happens for artifact armor with Hardness, which generally requires at least Artifact 2(I think).

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Nope. Artifact Breastplate, 1-dot armour, Hardness 2L/2B. That's kind of the problem; one of the signature abilities of the Dragonblooded, the elemental fury of the mighty Champions of the Elements... Can be completely ignored with so much as an artifact breastplate. Of course if you don't have it, it's one die of unsoakable damage per tick, in a game where an action is usually five ticks and people tend to have about 7 HP. So, Anima Flux is either totally useless, or "you're dead in less than thirty seconds." Hyper-lethal or trivially ignored is not good design.

 

[uju32]

Nope. Artifact Breastplate, 1-dot armour, Hardness 2L/2B. That's kind of the problem; one of the signature abilities of the Dragonblooded, the elemental fury of the mighty Champions of the Elements... Can be completely ignored with so much as an artifact breastplate. Of course if you don't have it, it's one die of unsoakable damage per tick, in a game where an action is usually five ticks and people tend to have about 7 HP. So, Anima Flux is either totally useless, or "you're dead in less than thirty seconds." Hyper-lethal or trivially ignored is not good design.

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Superheavy plate used to be Artifact 5, so rebalancing may well have caused some issues.
Still, as I understand it, DB anima is supposed to be a mook killer, not something to gank Essence users, so that may well be by design.

Need to go back to rework a version 2 of Starmetal!Dinah; something came to mind.

 

[noliar]

And of course artifact armours with hardness include orichalcum chain mails which are made of holes and not water tight. Not to mention that armours without helmets are mechanically the same as those with but by definition are not full coverage.

It is almost as if a set of rpg rules are insufficient to describe a working world.

Coming back to Crawler, he has many more eyes, legs and tentacles than he started with. That says to me that his adaptation acts to preserve (and improve) not merely his survival but his ability to function, including his mobility.


Still, even if we allow that Contessa could do it, it does not follow that it can be reproduced by any amount successes in warfare to make a plan of attack. Contessa's power does not work like that. It doesn't deduce the right thing to do by a careful assessment of capabilities and likely responses, it uses literal precognition to go straight to the desired outcome, picking moves not by skill but because it already knows they will have worked. Getting perfectly lucky at every single moment is fundamentally different from competence.

At some point, Crawler did not have acid spit or tentacles, nor do they seem like purely defensive adaptations. The people fighting him at those times could not have predicted those changes based on previous performance. No doubt they got a nasty, even fatal, surprise. Which is to say, give the bastard as little chance to mutate as possible and don't stick your arm in the adapting abomination if you can avoid it and if you must, don't do it twice.

 

[veekie]

Word of Wildbow, every adaptation is just that, a tradeoff in function. Crawler's adaptations still need to be biologically/mechanically viable, which means for instance, armoring joints would reduce mobility, unless alternate locomotion is added or redundancy is used. It protects against given typea of harm by evolving a countermeasure, but physical limitations aren't transcended by his ability.

The shard attempts to get the best of both worlds, but it favors protection and redundancy over other stuff, and will sacrifice other capabilities for defense.

 

[Imrix]

Superheavy plate used to be Artifact 5, so rebalancing may well have caused some issues.

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The rebalancing is besides the point. The situation is the same before and after 2.5; any artifact armour, down to a mere breastplate, renders anima flux a non-issue.

Still, as I understand it, DB anima is supposed to be a mook killer, not something to gank Essence users, so that may well be by design.

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Maybe, except I've never seen any statements of the sort, and anima flux is still hyper-lethal for essence users unless they've got some form of Hardness, which many don't, because Hardness tends to come either deep in a soak tree or from artifact armour, and it's a niche effect anyway, because Anima Flux aside it isn't very useful.

And of course artifact armours with hardness include orichalcum chain mails which are made of holes and not water tight. Not to mention that armours without helmets are mechanically the same as those with but by definition are not full coverage.

It is almost as if a set of rpg rules are insufficient to describe a working world.

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... And? What's your point? I'm talking game balance and system design here, not setting physics. My point is that one of the signature powers of the Dragonblooded is badly designed, because it is either hyper-lethal or trivially ignored, depending on whether the victim has what is otherwise a niche and not-very-useful effect.

 

[Odysseus2099]

... And? What's your point? I'm talking game balance and system design here, not setting physics. My point is that one of the signature powers of the Dragonblooded is badly designed, because it is either hyper-lethal or trivially ignored, depending on whether the victim has what is otherwise a niche and not-very-useful effect.

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Like shaping? Exalted is filled with effects like that.

 

[FunkyEntropy]

And I think you're missing MY point.
The calculation I made referred to Marrow in full armor dealing with a Yozi venom analogue as a contact poison or an environmental hazard.
I was saying that the poison would not make it through the armor to reach her skin; that's where the soak assertions came in.

Rolling against poison that made it into your system is a very different calculation.

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Sometimes what you said and what you meant are like two ships passing in the night. They know the other is there, but will never meet baring strange coincidences of fate. Very sad, in a romantic sort of way

Because let's go back to what you said:

Trap the inserted arm and digest it with yozi venom class secretions.

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I would suggest you look at Marrow's armor stats.
Marrow is packing Condensed Armor x7, with an armor rating of +28B/21L and +14 Hardness.
Yozi venom?Is 10L IIRC.

Not working that way even if ISF didn't no-sell it.
His poison is only a danger as a component of an attack, not passive exposure.

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It's reasonable to conclude that, given how you're talking about soak and poison, you might have been talking about soak and poison. This is why, if you meant to talk about it as an Environmental Hazard, it might be useful to use the right words to talk about the thing you want to talk about.

But now I know that you're talking about Crawler's acid (and it's very important to be as precise as possible by calling it what it actually is so we can avoid people mistaking it for a poison effect) as a potential environmental hazard. So...progress!

Nope. Artifact Breastplate, 1-dot armour, Hardness 2L/2B. That's kind of the problem; one of the signature abilities of the Dragonblooded, the elemental fury of the mighty Champions of the Elements... Can be completely ignored with so much as an artifact breastplate. Of course if you don't have it, it's one die of unsoakable damage per tick, in a game where an action is usually five ticks and people tend to have about 7 HP. So, Anima Flux is either totally useless, or "you're dead in less than thirty seconds." Hyper-lethal or trivially ignored is not good design.

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I, personally, don't have a problem with it. Yes, a lowly orichalcum breastplate no-sells the damage component of a Terrestrial Exalted's. Too bad, so sad. It's still absolute murder against anyone that doesn't have a Hardness rating, such as Solars that don't have any Resistance charms but practice a Martial Art style that forbids the use of armor. You take that same "useless" Anima Flux and pit it against a horde of Raksha, Blood Apes, or mortals and you'll get a very different result. This is fine because Terrestrial's weren't designed to go after hard targets like Mardukth, the Mountain and the Beast Upon It. They're Soldiers, not God Kings.

 

[uju32]

Anyway, in an effort to improve the (little) girls at an affordable cost, I went digging into the Charms, and found something of use.

Manifold Transhuman Implants:
Stamina 2, Essence 2
1 mote installation cost
Stackable
8 mutation points per installation.
Exemplar 1 per installation ONLY IF the mutations break from the human template(two arms, two legs, one head).

COMBAT 1
Many Hands: Prehensile Hair: 2 points
1 point per extra appendage, adds (Points/2) to Rate of natural attacks, max 5.
Extended Reach: 2 points
Adds 1 yard of reach per point.
Apply to prehensile hair.
Ambidextrous: 1 point
Eliminates off-hand penalties
Blade-Proof: 1 point
Parry lethal attacks without a stunt.
Hyper-Awareness: 2 points
Always considered wary for surprise attacks; add 1 die to Wits+Awareness roll against surprise/ambush.

SENSORY 1
Acute Sense: 6 points
Keen(Sense)Technique analogue, all senses.
Night Vision: 2 points

SENSORY 2
Spirit Sense: 5 points
Detect immaterial beings with all senses.
Chakra Sense: 5 points
Detect spells, wards, charms et cetera with all senses.
*
Two point discount for taking both at the same level.
6 points is the max.

SENSORY 3
Heat Vision: 4 points
Supplements normal vision.
Night Vision: 2 points
Sonar: 2 points

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Mutations list used is from TWA Redux.

NOTES
This was originally designed for Dinah, to expand her sensory reach within the limits of her limited slots(14-16 available), without infringing on Taylor's themes.
Start with Sensory 1, and then add Sensory 2 at Essence 4, when neutral or hostile Essence users might be a thing and the social Alchemical needs to perceive them.
Combat 1 just being a throw-in. Senses not as good as Taylor's, but close.

But the sensory packages would also be appropriate for Aisha, especially Sensory 1 because of the boost to sight without a Perception Aug prereq.
Sensory 2 would only come into play once hostile Essence users became a thing; no point having your infiltrator run face first into a ward of some sort.

Missy would probably come with a Perception Aug, though, or an analogue of it, so she might pick up Optical Enhancement anyway.
Thoughts, anyone?