Well we did pretty good I suppose, is there going to be a countdown before votes close?
ARCANA (40K Perpetual Quest)
- Thread starter The Bird
- Start date
- Mature Sci-Fi Fantasy
The Bird
tEM IS GUD...RITER!
- Location
- In that den of villains and scum, OKLAHOMA
Yeah probably gonna be a few days, turns out that some stuff came up IRL.
The Bird
tEM IS GUD...RITER!
- Location
- In that den of villains and scum, OKLAHOMA
Yeah that's not happening. Like, even ignoring that they're extinct, Pacts DO have restrictions and resource costs, and trying to make a pact with an old one would be roughly as difficult as making a pact with, say, a daemon primarch in terms of cost.
The Bird
tEM IS GUD...RITER!
- Location
- In that den of villains and scum, OKLAHOMA
Like, to expand a bit because looking back I might have given a rather askew view of how powerful they are, with Pacts, you have about four major limitations.
The first is that you actually have to offer something in your Pact to the other party. You can't, say, trade something worthless to someone in order to trick them into signing away their soul, so to speak. This can be something as basic as "I don't kill you now" or as big as "I'll give you immortality". And if you wind up breaking a Pact or nullifying it, the other party gets to keep whatever you gave them in perpetuity, meaning that in the case of the immortality example, if you broke that Pact, the other party gets to keep their immortality, while whatever you got from them is lost unless you make another Pact (this works both ways, I'll note: if they break the Pact, you get to keep whatever they bargained up while they lose whatever you traded to them).
Second is that unless you cancel a Pact, you have to abide by its terms: you can arbitrate to some degree but you can't disobey the Pact. For example, if you made a Pact with a Daemon that said you had to sacrifice someone to it in exchange for the Daemons power, you don't get to weasel out of the deal: you either kill someone or the Pact is forfeit. EDIT: Also to be clear, making a pact to immediately break it DOES have backlash.
Third is that you can only have so many Pacts at once: the stronger the entity you make a pact with, the higher the maintenance, basically, which'll be modeled by you having a limited amount of slots for a Pact, with higher impact pacts costing more slots. For instance, any Pact with a daemon is going to be extremely high maintenance, coming in (at minimum) four slots or so. Meaning that if you want more Pacts, you'll have to annul some.
Fourth is that there is, in fact, limits on what you can demand and offer in a Pact: these limits can be raised as you progress, but you don't get to start out with the ability to, say, con someone out of 90% of their lifespan or offer someone infinite knowledge. The exact rules on what you'll be able to do at start will be explained after chargen (assuming Devil wins), that said.
There are some other restrictions and rules, but basically if you're picking Pacts because you think its busted you're severely mistaken: they're powerful, sure, but all the options are powerful (Magician, as said, gives you the ability to reach Primarch level skill at character generation even before you unlock additional esoterics, while Moon lets you basically generate quests as needed to say nothing of being able to preview the consequences of your decisions ahead of time).
The first is that you actually have to offer something in your Pact to the other party. You can't, say, trade something worthless to someone in order to trick them into signing away their soul, so to speak. This can be something as basic as "I don't kill you now" or as big as "I'll give you immortality". And if you wind up breaking a Pact or nullifying it, the other party gets to keep whatever you gave them in perpetuity, meaning that in the case of the immortality example, if you broke that Pact, the other party gets to keep their immortality, while whatever you got from them is lost unless you make another Pact (this works both ways, I'll note: if they break the Pact, you get to keep whatever they bargained up while they lose whatever you traded to them).
Second is that unless you cancel a Pact, you have to abide by its terms: you can arbitrate to some degree but you can't disobey the Pact. For example, if you made a Pact with a Daemon that said you had to sacrifice someone to it in exchange for the Daemons power, you don't get to weasel out of the deal: you either kill someone or the Pact is forfeit. EDIT: Also to be clear, making a pact to immediately break it DOES have backlash.
Third is that you can only have so many Pacts at once: the stronger the entity you make a pact with, the higher the maintenance, basically, which'll be modeled by you having a limited amount of slots for a Pact, with higher impact pacts costing more slots. For instance, any Pact with a daemon is going to be extremely high maintenance, coming in (at minimum) four slots or so. Meaning that if you want more Pacts, you'll have to annul some.
Fourth is that there is, in fact, limits on what you can demand and offer in a Pact: these limits can be raised as you progress, but you don't get to start out with the ability to, say, con someone out of 90% of their lifespan or offer someone infinite knowledge. The exact rules on what you'll be able to do at start will be explained after chargen (assuming Devil wins), that said.
There are some other restrictions and rules, but basically if you're picking Pacts because you think its busted you're severely mistaken: they're powerful, sure, but all the options are powerful (Magician, as said, gives you the ability to reach Primarch level skill at character generation even before you unlock additional esoterics, while Moon lets you basically generate quests as needed to say nothing of being able to preview the consequences of your decisions ahead of time).
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Can't really speak for others—and it does seem there are a few who are expecting certain options to be innately more powerful—but personally I'm just fond of the flavor of the option.
Magician seems like the Primarch route, Moon seems like the Eldar route, but Devil seems unique and a little cryptic. Has my vote by virtue of seeming the most interesting, and being a path towards withstanding the horrors of the galaxy that isn't just trying something someone else did but harder.
- Pronouns
- Human
[X] Magician, Arcana of Talent
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
Does this include one-and-done trades, and not just ongoing deals? Like, if we traded some rare artefact for someone's unusually excellent sense of smell, would that require ongoing maintenance?
[X] Magician, Arcana of Talent
Besides enjoying numbers going up, this also seems like the most reliable option, meaning the ones with the least prerequisite requirements for any approach to work/with the most options for goals to be achieved despite outside influence, for example if we forsee a system will be attacked with the the moon, but there are not enough forces around that could intervene.
Besides enjoying numbers going up, this also seems like the most reliable option, meaning the ones with the least prerequisite requirements for any approach to work/with the most options for goals to be achieved despite outside influence, for example if we forsee a system will be attacked with the the moon, but there are not enough forces around that could intervene.
Sir LagsAlot
Yandere Dice Magnet
- Location
- In the fridge
Can you clarify something for me real quick, please? Namely, how many pact slots do we have in total at the start? Ten? Twenty? A hundred?
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The Bird
tEM IS GUD...RITER!
- Location
- In that den of villains and scum, OKLAHOMA
Sir LagsAlot
Yandere Dice Magnet
- Location
- In the fridge
Thanks. And when you say a daemon takes up four do you mean a normal daemon or a greater daemon? If you mean the latter what variety of greater? Honoured? Exalted? One of the other types?
The Bird
tEM IS GUD...RITER!
- Location
- In that den of villains and scum, OKLAHOMA
Four is the minimum and only for the weakest of daemons.
- Location
- The Netherlands
ganna be honest, it feels like Magician is just way stronger than the other starts.
like don't get me wrong Moon and devil are good and i like devil more but it just feels like they are way worse by comparrisson.
like getting primarch lvl skill at char gen is insane and that both being 2 steps below their eventual cap and being able to raise anything to that is just nuts. and that is just what it can do without esotheric BS.
pacts meanwhile can steal some traits using deals. but you can only have 5 pacts and anything as strong as a minor demon costs 4 slots. like those are not equal in power in any way shape or form.
like the powerscale seems like it is heavely favouring magician by a very wide margin for a significant length of time
The Bird
tEM IS GUD...RITER!
- Location
- In that den of villains and scum, OKLAHOMA
Okay so I double checked and I made a mistake on the FP, but to make something clear, you don't start at Primarch level skill, you just start with your caps such that you can reach that point. The highest skill you start with is Heroic, which is still theoretically within the bounds of human ability: Primarch level is Mythical onward. You'll still need to put in a lot of work to reach that point.
At start: obviously you'll get more Pact slots as time goes on. Also, keep in mind that theres no such thing as a "weak" daemon: even the least daemon can potentially overpower a space marine and has access to extremely potent esoteric abilities and knowledge. Devil is by no means weak: you just have to pick and choose where you want to make trades and what deals you value more than others.
And that's just Devil: Moon can literally use their divination spheres to, for instance, consistently make the most optimal decisions when conducting a war by divining the consequences of their strategic and tactical decisions, use minor divination freely to gather information and, as mentioned prior, do stuff like divine the location of artifacts like an STC machine, of which owning even one would severely alter the balance of power in the galaxy.
Anyways small update: the thing that came up didn't pan out so the vote close is gonna happen in a few hours.
- Location
- The Netherlands
... yeah a single nurgling can totally kill a spacemarine sure.
Xantalos
Turtle-Speed Writing
Nurglings don't really count as individuals per se; think Plaguebearers.
The Bird
tEM IS GUD...RITER!
- Location
- In that den of villains and scum, OKLAHOMA
I mean, yes, in certain circumstances, though it isn't likely admittedly. That said, stuff like Nurglings aren't really what I meant by minor daemons (mostly because they're in practice mostly extensions of their originator): if you made a deal with Nurglings, it'd almost certainly be less with any individual one and more a grouping of them.
- Location
- The Netherlands
doesn't change the fact that a nurgling is still a single deamon. yes a plaguebearer can kill a space marine but the quote even the most least deamon would include the nergling.
it mostly just feels like these starting options are very imballanced when compared to each other.
Magician starts at th human limit at something, can train to primarch, decreases the limit of skills and trains faster.
moon can foresee the future and use ti to cheat everything or get whatever they want by seeing the concequences beforehand.
Devil can make metaphysical deals to gain thing. except they can only make 5, except stronger people take more slots and even a plaguebearer takes up 4.
like moon and magician might be comparable now it is no longer stated as "Start at primarch skill" but pacts just seems to have way, way, way less to work with. like with the cap, different price ratings and actually needing to get people to make the deals it is just so much harder to make it work than the others.
- Location
- Goose Land
You did see the WoG about how more Slots are gained over time/development, right?
Each of the three options have their own Progressions involved for becoming better effective actors in the world. It's really just a question of play style and themes.