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Alchemical Solutions [Worm/Exalted] Thread 6: Fatal Fires Flagrantly Fry Frantic Friends, Family

Klaus said:
Not publishing the flash-forward would probably be the best solution in the future, as that would deal with most of the issues regarding players feeling trapped. This could all have been written as a single giant update after all, without need for scene breaks/votes. This vote and the last one where the vote is basically a coin-flip (or die roll) are kind of frustrating if the choices are mechanically different, rather than just flavor/attitude. Perhaps simply not giving a voting option on every post, and publishing the updates as Part 1 and Part 2, with the vote only at the end of Part 2?
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By that logic, the posters would be even more pissed off and feeling even more helpless and changed and complaining about "unskippable cutscenes."
 
Zechstein said:
Yes, even if it would mean letting everyone on your list die, I still say we are better off in the long run. Over-reliance on parahumans is a weakness that has brought about the sorry state of earth bet and will only make things worse. In the end, parahumans provide a unique service that can't be reproduced. They really don't help, they are just crutches that are specifically designed so that humanity will forget how to walk. They are not a salvation, they are poison.

Alchemicals on the other hand are different. While they represent a significant investment, they can be reproduced and are build by the people, for the people. In the end none of them is irreplaceble in the way Dragon or Panacea is.
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Point of Order: Alchemicals are built by the people in a general manner of speaking, but in a more detailed sense they are built and maintained by people with extremely high levels of Lore, Craft and Craft (Magitech), among other abilities. Very few, if any, people fulfilling those criteria currently exist on Earth-Bet. The before mentioned construction and maintenance of Alchemicals requires facilities and materials that don't exist in Earth-Bet, period. The resources needed to acquire the necessary materials, even in Autochthonia, are ruinously immense.
 
Heh, if this is Dragon's warning, then perhaps what we're choosing here is who's in danger: the people, the capes, or ourself.

Alternatively, maybe we're choosing whoever Dragon noticed the risk to first, or whoever Dragon chose to prioritise.
 
Brief clarification before I fall back asleep:

This vote is more of an "Attitude" vote than anything, indicating what Enduring Order Administrator views as the "most efficient" path when Dragon announces the final turn of this Arc. Remember: I am still reading all the discussion and have a history of keeping in mind what people would like Taylor to do, so there is more creative control going on here than is immediately obvious.

It's an experiment, as usual. I try things; sometimes they even work.
 
Zechstein said:
Yes, I know. I just don't really see how that is relevant to my point. I don't say that earth bet could produce Alchemicals to replace parahumans. I say they swould be better off whithout parahumans, because parahumans impede human growth by partially removing the drive for innovation and progress.
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On the whole, I disagree with you. Human drive is not simply to build stuff, but also understand how it works. Parahumans merely use science we don't yet comprehend, but when given enough time we will.
"Why should we fund research on XY? Tinkers can already build that stuff, who cares that nobody understands how it works."
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When there is an everpresent risk of those tinkers dying or being killed, researching what they do to figure out how to do it without them will still happen.
"Oh, I would have gone into medical research and developed the cure for cancer, but Panacea healed my mother with a touch so it doesn't seem so urgent anymore."
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Panacea is only one woman, she can't be everywhere at once. Also, considering the fact that one of the only people she gave a damn about, after burning herself out these last few years being a healbot, is ash she is in no real state to heal anyone. Hence medical research will still continue.
"Why should we build an army when a few capes can kill them all?"
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Many capes lack brute ratings, and those with Brute ratings often don't have exceptionally high ratings. High caliber kinetic projectiles or explosives have a good chance of killing them just fine. Armies still have their place.
 
Zechstein said:
Yes, I know. I just don't really see how that is relevant to my point. I don't say that earth bet could produce Alchemicals to replace parahumans. I say they swould be better off whithout parahumans, because parahumans impede human growth by partially removing the drive for innovation and progress.

"Why should we fund research on XY? Tinkers can already build that stuff, who cares that nobody understands how it works."

"Oh, I would have gone into medical research and developed the cure for cancer, but Panacea healed my mother with a touch so it doesn't seem so urgent anymore."

"Why should we build an army when a few capes can kill them all?"

Every time you use a parahuman power to solve a problem, you cheapen the effort and sacrifice of all the people who worked on it before, it reduces humanity to the recipients of handouts from the chosen of a pair of space slugs. If we can't solve our problems for ourselves, it would be better to just die instead of being reduced to that.
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That's really not how it works. Parahumans are all that's holding human civilization together despite S Class threats like the Enderbringers. They don't decide "we could try to cure cancer but Panacea can already do it, so why bother", the economy is in an incredible recession, infrastructure is falling apart and everything has to be decentralized. They don't have the resources to research XY because they are busy building and manning giant walls to keep people like Nilbog from killing everyone.
 
Whether you like the Capes or not, almost EVERY SINGLE intimacy we have is with a cape. We need people who are close to us and will follow our lead without succumbing to blind hero worship as prospective exaltation candidates. More importantly, we need people who have a drive to reach their fullest potential and to change the world around them for the better, and those are traits that are easiest to find in the Cape community rather than looking through the vast crowd of normals.

While I'm not saying that wouldn't be doable, it WOULD be wasting a lot of time and be horribly inefficient. Especially when we already know several Capes who would make very good candidates for each Caste with a little social-fu and would take drastically less time then starting over from scratch. Grom has said that this is act is the harshest it's going to get until the end game, but that doesn't mean we have time to waste when it would be better spent elsewhere.
 
Jinnt said:
If we don't pick people we can probably write off BB entirely
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Why? How many people do you think choosing the People will save that it makes such a big difference on causalities. The only people that's likely to save are people that aren't in the Enderbringer shelters, where close enough to the fight to be hit and far enough away or lucky enough to not be dead yet. I'd say there aren't more than amybe a few hundred to thousand people top that this would save, far too little to have an influence on the city itself.
 
....guys
the option here determines our ATTITUDE in the next update. We are literally a good hard sneeze away from being incapacitated, our armor is shot and we are flat out of Motes. Do you really think that there is anything that we personally can do that would save the city at this point? Whatever is about to happen next we're likely going to have to let somebody else take control of the situation while we pitch in where we can with what little we have left. Remember that however bad things get Grom is not setting this up for us to fail spectacularly just so he can bathe in our tears to restore his infernal powers, so just sit back, relax, pick your preferred attitude for the next bit and let Grom work his (possibly fell) magic.
 
with our high clarity Taylor would most likely go with that reasoning or decide to save herself in an attempt to save what's left of Autochthon's plan. While WE have Word of God that it's not FUBAR'd, Taylor doesn't.
 
uju32 said:
Dude.
In an emergency situation, there's a reason why efforts prioritize saving first responders and medical personnel.
Because they are force multipliers.

Taylor cannot save people on her own, or even at all; she has broken ribs, and possibly a snapped femur, her power suit is out of power, and she cannot heal.
Other capes, though, are in significantly better condition.
Get Strider medical attention, and he'll be able to teleport lots of people out of danger.
Vista will be able to move masses of people fast.
And so on.

And this will not be the last Endbringer fight; you blow your seedcorn now, and the next become exponentially harder.
We already lost Penitent, and possibly Othala, two irreplaceable healers, whose deaths will mean the deaths of lots of others.
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EXACTLY THIS. Taylor is practically dead on her feet, there is no way she'd be able to save enough civilians from whatever Dragon is about to warn us about to matter. She'd have a greater impact by saving a handful of capes, who in turn can save others.
 
[X]Save the Capes
Save the skilled, and then let the skilled save everyone else.
That's why the healers are so important.

Capes seem more important in the long run.
 
landcollector said:
Hypothetical situation: seeing as how we're nearly on death's door, say we want to get four additional General Charms slots, and fill them with 3 instances of Strain-Resistant Chassis Modification and Essence Shield Projector for enhanced future survivability:
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As a general rule of thumb - don't buy Ox Body. Just...don't. There are much better things that you can buy with that XP to boost survivability. Like...dodge charms. The general warning against Ox Body is even more important for Alchemicals because of the opportunity/costs associated with charm slots and the drain on personal essence pools.

Even if we got more Stamina charms - which we shouldn't, because once we have access to the Vats it means we can install Dodge charms - there are much more useful charms that we should get instead. For instance, Pain Suppression Nodes and its submodule Emergency Damage Compensators - this allows us to ignore up to -2 wound penalties, and turns that penalty into a bonus for all non-reflexive physical actions and Virtue rolls.

Subcutaneous/Exoskeletal Armor Plating would also be more valuable than getting more health levels because who needs more Health Levels when you're not taking damage?

But screw that. We should get dodge charms if we want to enhance our survivability.

You are giving out terrible advice. Stop it.
 
FunkyEntropy said:
As a general rule of thumb - don't buy Ox Body. Just...don't. There are much better things that you can buy with that XP to boost survivability. Like...dodge charms. The general warning against Ox Body is even more important for Alchemicals because of the opportunity/costs associated with charm slots and the drain on personal essence pools.

Even if we got more Stamina charms - which we shouldn't, because once we have access to the Vats it means we can install Dodge charms - there are much more useful charms that we should get instead. For instance, Pain Suppression Nodes and its submodule Emergency Damage Compensators - this allows us to ignore up to -2 wound penalties, and turns that penalty into a bonus for all non-reflexive physical actions and Virtue rolls.

Subcutaneous/Exoskeletal Armor Plating would also be more valuable than getting more health levels because who needs more Health Levels when you're not taking damage?

But screw that. We should get dodge charms if we want to enhance our survivability.

You are giving out terrible advice. Stop it.
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Apparently the words "hypothetical situation" didn't cross your awareness before you decided to chastise me. Ease off Funky, I KNOW there are better options.
 
Zechstein said:
And no parahuman shard could ever hurt an entity, they were specifically crippled to ensure that.
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Flechette could one-shot an entity, and Eidolon is pretty dangerous for one, too.

Do you remember the end of worm? Because it sure as hell weren't normal humans that saved the day.
 
landcollector said:
Apparently the words "hypothetical situation" didn't cross your awareness before you decided to chastise me. Ease off Funky, I KNOW there are better options.
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Then give your hypothetical using charm selections that aren't horribly sub par or state that the charms selected aren't actually something you'd actually recommend we get.

IIR, your Exalted 2nd Ed core book is still in the mail, yes? It was entirely reasonable for me to take what you have written, see it getting applied to our current situation where we're sitting at one HL remaining, and to then assume that you're making the classic newbie error of going, "I want some more survivability => Ox Body."
ticktrick said:
Parry charms actually, they cost the same to get and can block for others at need. Though the requirements are the same entry charm so...
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We're an Archery/Firearms build. That means Dodge, not Parry, is the way to go since you can't use ranged weapons to consistently defend yourself.
 
FunkyEntropy said:
Then give your hypothetical using charm selections that aren't horribly sub par or state that the charms selected aren't actually something you'd actually recommend we get.

IIR, your Exalted 2nd Ed core book is still in the mail, yes? It was entirely reasonable for me to take what you have written, see it getting applied to our current situation where we're sitting at one HL remaining, and to then assume that you're making the classic newbie error of going, "I want some more survivability => Ox Body."



We're an Archery/Firearms build. That means Dodge, not Parry, is the way to go since you can't use ranged weapons to consistently defend yourself.
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I have the Alchemicals book (The Core book hasn't even shipped from Amazon yet). Searching through ~60 pages for the optimal charm modules, when the sections related to dodging are not well labeled, is a little time consuming. I hope that you understand that.
 
Zechstein said:
Flechette could hurt an entity if she could hit one. She has got an entity grade weapon but not an entity grade aiming system. And about Eidolon: He might have been marginaly dangerous, but Scion killed him with four words, so yeah.

And about the end of Worm, you will remember that parahumans couldn't really hurt him, either. They drove him to suicide instead, which is a very human way of dealing with problems. That they used powers to pull that of is nearly meaningless.
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Their powers helped them stay alive and organized long enough to find his weakness. Without Doormaker, for example, they would have been screwed. I don't remember it too well, but I think Thinker also helped find his weak-spot.
 
landcollector said:
I have the Alchemicals book (The Core book hasn't even shipped from Amazon yet). Searching through ~60 pages for the optimal charm modules, when the sections related to dodging are not well labeled, is a little time consuming. I hope that you understand that.
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Like I said, I saw you making the CLASSIC NEWBIE ERROR of going for the Ox Body analog. It is my duty, as someone at least halfway knowledgeable about Exalted, to correct this particular error when it pops up as it can and does get characters killed.
 
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