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Alchemical Solutions [Worm/Exalted] Thread 9: Icon’s Idiosyncrasies Incite Irritating Inquisition

[X] Essence Reservoir-to-Heart: Provide counsel for a member of your caravan, getting to know them better as a mortal as well as evaluating them for Alchemical potential.
- [X] Stunt: Talk to Dennis, find out how he's doing, and what he thinks of things so far. Get his support in covering up for any Clarity induced social mistakes, and see about enlisting his assistance in keeping Aisha sufficiently motivated and amused, especially after their mutual Glenn sessions. The last personal conversation you've had with him involved a prank involving being surrounded by a swarm of bugs, after all, things could stand to be on a more positive note.

[X] 4 XP - Craft ●●●●○
[X] 4 XP - Bureaucracy ●●○○○
 
Switching vote choice to:
[] Essence Reservoir-to-Heart: Provide counsel for a member of your caravan, getting to know them better as a mortal as well as evaluating them for Alchemical potential.
- [] Stunt: Talk to Dennis, find out how he's doing, and what he thinks of things so far. Get his support in covering up for any Clarity induced social mistakes, and see about enlisting his assistance in keeping Aisha sufficiently motivated and amused, especially after their mutual Glenn sessions. The last personal conversation you've had with him involved a prank involving being surrounded by a swarm of bugs, after all, things could stand to be on a more positive note.
 
As for Clarity hijinks, I propose that the first things we do when we arrive is:
1) Get mandatory therapy sessions
2) Meditate the shit out of our abilities AND mental state.


No multitasking, no reading stuff while we meditate. Total focus on the one goal of knowing how the hell we work. Don't even set up our workshop until we're done with the meditation.
mastigos2 said:
Maybe from UMI?
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Legend can shoot beams of cheer up I think. Might be him?
 
spudman said:
I was under the impression that it was because all the stunts worded SOPA being turned off (as in, switching it off) for those occurrences Grom went with the interpretation it was turned back on in the interim so that it could be switched off for each stunt. So it's a problem that doesn't have to be repeated if we're careful.

Couldn't we just word a stunt to keep SOPA off all day (or rather, for as long as it takes) once turned off?

That is, once we have the WP to do so again...ugh.
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Nope. Only the legend stunt said turn off, all the others said keep off, to me the assumption was pretty clear that Taylor should not have been turning it back on.
 
veekie said:
As for Clarity hijinks, I propose that the first things we do when we arrive is:
1) Get mandatory therapy sessions
2) Meditate the shit out of our abilities AND mental state.


No multitasking, no reading stuff while we meditate. Total focus on the one goal of knowing how the hell we work. Don't even set up our workshop until we're done with the meditation.
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I agree fully with this, though SoPA will most likely be subtly swaying us to have IEU active.
 
Edited my earlier post, speculation that Legend might have tried to use one of his lasers to improve Taylor's mood with UMI.
landcollector said:
I agree fully with this, though SoPA will most likely be subtly swaying us to have IEU active.
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IEU might be part of the problem. Note that only one mental thread considered turning off SoPA, with the other threads objecting. That likely means additional mental threads amplify SoPA's effects on us.
 
[X] Essence Reservoir-to-Heart: Provide counsel for a member of your caravan, getting to know them better as a mortal as well as evaluating them for Alchemical potential.
- [X] Stunt: Talk to Dennis, find out how he's doing, and what he thinks of things so far. Get his support in covering up for any Clarity induced social mistakes, and see about enlisting his assistance in keeping Aisha sufficiently motivated and amused, especially after their mutual Glenn sessions. The last personal conversation you've had with him involved a prank involving being surrounded by a swarm of bugs, after all, things could stand to be on a more positive note.

[x] Free Action: get over our PTSD. (Wits/Willpower + Integrity, Conviction channel)
- [x] Yeah, Behemoth was scary. Yeah, people died, including our friends. But cowering in fear, having panic attacks? That's letting them win. That's letting our friends down. We can't let that happen, can't let them win. We are better than this. We are Exalted. We are a divine instrument of the Great Maker Autochthon. We stand tall, where others would falter, against the darkness and the forces that seek the destruction of humanity.

[X] 4 XP - Craft ●●●●○
[X] 4 XP - Bureaucracy ●●○○○

[note: if it seems like I'm treating PTSD like a joke, that's because it is. For one of the Exalted, at least. We can totally do a bullshit shonen protagonist self-peptalk to get us out of our funk.]
 
FunkyEntropy said:
[x] Free Action: get over our PTSD. (Wits/Willpower + Integrity, Conviction channel)
- [x] Yeah, Behemoth was scary. Yeah, people died, including our friends. But cowering in fear, having panic attacks? That's letting them win. That's letting our friends down. We can't let that happen, can't let them win. We are better than this. We are Exalted. We are a divine instrument of the Great Make Autochthon. We stand tall, where others would falter, against the darkness and the forces that seek the destruction of humanity.
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Minor nitpick: You left the "r" off of Maker.
 
Adding Funky's free action, and I don't have the words to convey how strongly I agree with Veekie. As soon as we get to Philly we need to spend at least a day spamming meditation.

[X] Essence Reservoir-to-Heart: Provide counsel for a member of your caravan, getting to know them better as a mortal as well as evaluating them for Alchemical potential.
- [X] Stunt: Talk to Dennis, find out how he's doing, and what he thinks of things so far. Get his support in covering up for any Clarity induced social mistakes, and see about enlisting his assistance in keeping Aisha sufficiently motivated and amused, especially after their mutual Glenn sessions. The last personal conversation you've had with him involved a prank involving being surrounded by a swarm of bugs, after all, things could stand to be on a more positive note.

[x] Free Action: get over our PTSD. (Wits + Integrity, Conviction channel)
- [x] Yeah, Behemoth was scary. Yeah, people died, including our friends. But cowering in fear, having panic attacks? That's letting them win. That's letting our friends down. We can't let that happen, can't let them win. We are better than this. We are Exalted. We are a divine instrument of the Great Make Autochthon. We stand tall, where others would falter, against the darkness and the forces that seek the destruction of humanity.

[X] 4 XP - Craft ●●●●○
[X] 4 XP - Bureaucracy ●●○○○
 
spudman said:
If Taylor is turning it back on regardless of content of stunts then what can we do?



Would the therapy sessions Veekie suggested even help Taylor when she's in Clarity-mode?

Right now we know social interactions reduce Clarity, but one thing SOPA is doing is shooting those social interactions dead and keeping them from doing that.

If we have SOPA off to prevent that...Taylor turns it back on and drains her WP, thus unable to turn it off again right now.

We could try turning off IEU as well next chance we get.


*sigh* I KNOW it doesn't help to complain. It's better to spend that energy trying to find a solution. But dammit, this is really frustrating.
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Noting that therapy sessions do more than try to reduce clarity. It treats one of the root causes(the PTSD) AND it means that someone else can study Taylor in sufficient detail to work out that something is wrong with her beyond simply acting robotic. And being aware of the problem is the first step to getting help.
 
Esbilon said:
We do after stunting our action, assuming it qualifies as a 2 die one.

Also, can we raise our virtues, in particular Compassion? That should help with Clarity, both by having access to more Channels and making it easier to lose Clarity from interacting with ordinary people.
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For God's sake...NO.
 
Can't raise Compassion until Clarity goes down to 2 or less. It would help with future Clarity however(along with all the other bundles of joy discussed to death)
 
spudman said:
Yelling/harsh language rarely helps.


Hmm....back to IEU. Can we work turning THAT off right now into any of the proposed stunts? Do you think that would require WP? If we can manage it now (or ASAP), it'll probably make it easier to turn off SOPA and keep it off once we have the WP.
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We could just not turn it back on next time we wake up? IIRC we turn it off to sleep.
 
Aranfan said:
We could just not turn it back on next time we wake up? IIRC we turn it off to sleep.
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spudman said:
That would require wording it into a stunt that mentions not turning it on as we wake up (and keeping it off for the day).

I guess I'd be willing to edit something like that into some of the leading options...which ones are those, again? Anyone?
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It should be fairly obvious that the players wanted SoPA off for the entire length of the update, so it feels like the GM is actively trying to exploit the smallest ambiguities in formulation of the vote to punish the players. In a normal playing seesion, the player would correct the GM immediately, but the quest format makes it a lot more problematic.
 
FirstAndForsaken said:
So, Taylor's aware IC that SOPA is bad for her social fu, and she's aware IC that it might have deleterious long-term effects. Nevertheless, she keeps switching it back on. While it's possible that Grom just likes handing us the idiot ball, I fear that the problem may be more insidious: we're sufficiently dependent on SOPA that we can't just turn it off and keep it off. For whatever reason (addiction, hardwiring, etc.) we're stuck with "on" as the default state to which SOPA reverts when we're not concentrating. This is supported by the fact that, in the latest update, SOPA reactivations occurred off-screen, without any conscious decision by Taylor.
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This wasn't a problem before the Behemoth attack though.
 
Addressing a few points because my body thinks that it only needs 3 hours of sleep? Sure thing, body - I just love sleep-deprived hallucinations.


- Invasive spacemonsterhax are Invasive: Autochthon succeeded in making the Shard better everything it did. Whoops. This is something that can be addressed through 'Meditation On Charms' actions/write-ins.

- The Mental Trauma and abnormal Clarity losses/gains are major signs for why Alchemicals were typically created with souls that had multiple lifetimes of heroism to their credit. Whoops. This is something that can be addressed through 'Meditation On Exaltation' actions/write-ins.

- New York has the highest population of parahumans in the world, with over 700 known supervillains. Taylor noted crimes constantly within her 900-foot radius of awareness, even if most were petty/civilian crimes. It is logical to desire/require tactical awareness at all times within a foreign city, but that's multiplied several times over for New York.

- For clarification, the current system (which is subject to change after Meditation) for Mental Trauma Triggers: Roll [Temp Willpower + Clarity Mental Mods + SoPA Bonus]. The number of successes indicates how well you ignore/don't notice the trigger (which has happened several times by now). If you fail the first roll, [Wits + Integrity] to reduce the duration/severity of the attack. What we saw here was 'Failure' on the first roll and 'Low Successes' on the second. Therapy can help identify and treat this.

- I'm changing the newly-available Integrity Specialty from "PTSD" to "Mental Trauma" to bring it in line with other Specialties.

- We have zero willpower as of the ending of 5.5, but we accumulate Willpower exceedingly quickly when not spending it and thus should be back up to reasonable levels fairly quickly.

- You are right to feel frustrated by the final scenes; Taylor still has a large host of issues plaguing her at the moment, but rising stronger from the struggle requires focused effort and attention. However, the net sum of accomplishments in the update was a plus, not a minus, so don't feel too bad.
 
See, I figured Grom wasn't just screwing with us. The clarification and meditation suggestions are a big help.
 
.IronSun. said:
See, I figured Grom wasn't just screwing with us. The clarification and meditation suggestions are a big help.
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Definitely something to focus entirely on, at first anyway, once we get to Philly. We can't evaluate and Exalt someone in the required timeframe if we're constantly at risk of having a freakout.
 
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