Crystalwatcher's Magical Girl Quest!

seeing as this is the endgame.....I'm not sure how good what if ideas are?

Meh, worst case is omake or something.

EDIT: No idea what I was thinking making this. I wonder if this has to do with my eating coffee beans and not drinking coffee like a normal person?


PROJECT TRIDENT


"I will not be denied my purpose. Humanity demands the enemy's destruction, and I am their instrument."
- proclaimed by Cyber Maiden CM-15-V37-F2-P13 to her therapist after her 'liberation' from Black Site Factory 2.


Special, Counter-measure, Cyber Maiden.

Originally intended as an attempt to mass produce Magical Girls to make up for combat losses, the Cyber Maidens were deemed illegal and immoral experiments leading to Project TRIDENT being shut down. It was however, shut down too late as a significant number of 'successful' subjects had already been created. Unlike magical girls, Cyber Maidens live for one purpose and for one purpose alone. The destruction of all enemies of humanity. They cared not for their old lives and sought to be used as the expendable troops they were intended to be.

They are however notably limited, yet greatly effective due to advancing human technology. Each unit could take a normal mundane weapon and push it to its theoretical limits and well beyond but are oddly incapable of using 'normal' magical weapons to their fullest potential. Their semi-synthetic nature is assumed to be the reason for this but it is believed to be caused primarily by the prototype nanotechnology used to build them.


The Fae and Elven races however report a sense uneasiness when one is nearby which has not improved the reputation of these units and commanders who use them.
 
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The nature of Nepgear's Save-From-Death is a manifestation of INDESTRUCTIBLE CORE's... well... indestructibility.

The best way to explain it in mechanics terms would be the Progenitor Frame making a save against a core breach and rolling a nat 100 each time. In meta-physics terms your magic is expressing the concept that is holding your existence together, which is 'indestructible' or 'invulnerable'.

Which goes back to my old info dump about how all the incoming damage that gets through your defenses being magical power backing that incoming attack's ability to overwhelm the magic upholding your indestructibility. It's why you take so little damage from literally everything: it's metaphorically beating it's head against the concept of 'invincible'.

It's funny as hell if you think about it.
 
Which goes back to my old info dump about how all the incoming damage that gets through your defenses being magical power backing that incoming attack's ability to overwhelm the magic upholding your indestructibility. It's why you take so little damage from literally everything: it's metaphorically beating it's head against the concept of 'invincible'.

It's funny as hell if you think about it.
Man, I really understand how annoying most human magic-users must be to everyone else, "It's simple, man. Just swap your position with another position if you want to teleport-""DO YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT WHAT TELEPORTATION MEANS"

Oh, but about IC, why does it's no-sell threshold get lower or higher as her health changes? More or less of the concept of 'invincibility' shouldn't change much about how much of that invincibility can actually be overcome, right*?
*Not that I'm complaining.
 
Oh, but about IC, why does it's no-sell threshold get lower or higher as her health changes? More or less of the concept of 'invincibility' shouldn't change much about how much of that invincibility can actually be overcome, right*?
*Not that I'm complaining.
It depends were we always magical girl solid core or did we change into magical girl solid core?
Cause if it's the later killing us simply would involve detaching us from the indestructible core.
Which would be doable by destroying the connection between indestructible core and the protagonist.
 
Man, I really understand how annoying most human magic-users must be to everyone else, "It's simple, man. Just swap your position with another position if you want to teleport-""DO YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT WHAT TELEPORTATION MEANS"

Oh, but about IC, why does it's no-sell threshold get lower or higher as her health changes? More or less of the concept of 'invincibility' shouldn't change much about how much of that invincibility can actually be overcome, right*?
*Not that I'm complaining.
I imagine it has something to do with your Magic resisting theirs?
 
Man, I really understand how annoying most human magic-users must be to everyone else, "It's simple, man. Just swap your position with another position if you want to teleport-""DO YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT WHAT TELEPORTATION MEANS"

Oh, but about IC, why does it's no-sell threshold get lower or higher as her health changes? More or less of the concept of 'invincibility' shouldn't change much about how much of that invincibility can actually be overcome, right*?
*Not that I'm complaining.
Human Magic is headache inducing for even the more well-versed arch magi among the other factions.

The reason the no-sell threshold drops is because of the same concept a shield gets weaker the more you hit it. Your health pool represents the amount of free magic you have to reinforce your concept of indestructibility against incoming damage. It's also the exact same reason you have a NS threshold in the first place instead of just a bunch of hard defenses. After a certain point, the stored magic to power your passive defenses reaches the point that anything lacking enough magical oomph pretty much bounces off in spectacular fashion since it can't overcome the 'invincibility' concept of your defenses.
 
To get her to Negative HP in the first place you'd have to burn through her save.
That contradicts an earlier statement from @crystalwatcher :
10. Does The 'Kind' Monster plus ICORE's save-from-death mean that White Soul would have a hard time killing Nepgear because she has to get her to -200% Health, and then back to -200% Health from 1 in the same turn?

Yes. You are the first person to catch that I think.

Honestly crystalwatcher's version makes more sense since ICORE's save triggers only if Nepgear would be killed not when her hp drops below 0. While The 'Kind' Monster is in effect Nepgear can't be killed until her hp hits -200% and so ICORE's save shouldn't trigger until then.
 
We'll probably be running into White Soul soon enough that we won't really have the opportunity to refresh our buffs. Besides, as other people have mentioned, White Soul snapped and became a monster even before she died the first time. I really doubt dying and being resurrected has done her any favors. We're killing her.
If we decide to refresh our buffs, that means either sending people to Sam or bringing Sam in—probably the former, since the Solid girls are fast. And if White Soul decides to engage us before we're done? Then she's denied herself the opportunity to choose the battlefield.

And I agree, we're going to end up killing White Soul. That's not the point. The point is not making assumptions and checking with the person who ought to make the decision.

-[X] Upgrade Celestial Severance to level 17 (310)
Turns out I did forget a comment on upgrades. As I noted in the White Soul post, if we manage to land a hit with Celestial Severance, then Walk With Me will kill us. ICORE's save-from-death protects us, but it's still bad.

Why are you so much better at my job than me? :cry:
I catch typos you miss because they're the only ones available to be caught. Also years of pedantry.

What happens to someone who should be dead when the thing keeping them alive stops?
The important question is whether they die instantly, or if there's enough time for an until-then-disabled healing spell to save them.

Of course if it wasn't for the fact we were trying to capture Grey Champion alive the answer would be to repeat our first fight against Judgement Core
That's only if the barrier doesn't count a high-speed magical girl as a projectile attack :V. (Also, I wouldn't have gone for that plan—if there's one piece of annoying brandcraft, why can't there be another that deals with melee combatants?)

I'm not sure how good the internet hivemind is for this quest.
An SV plan is usually better than no plan, but rarely amazing.

She's always been a commando?
Yes. We just didn't know exactly what that meant. We still don't; we just know more of what she's trained in. (And I'll admit I'd forgotten that tidbit; it hasn't come up much.)

Tentative vote:

[x] Plan Consult With the Expert
-[x] Talk to the others, especially Red Rose, about what we're doing next. Some points to potentially touch on:
--[x] Whom to send out with Grey.
--[x] We expect to fight White Soul. Confirm with Red that we'll be fighting to kill. Note options, including having Goddess Gold glass the place; letting her fight White Soul alone while others either hang back, flee, or continue searching; and retrieving people we already sent back (Brilliant Key in particular) or taking the time to refresh our buffs (possibly on everyone, possibly just on Solid Core and Solid Drive, because they can get there and back quickly).
--[x] Somebody set up that brand craft barrier. Was that something Grey knew how to do? If so, what else could she have made that she might have given to someone else? If not, who/what is likely to have been responsible, and what other nasty surprises might we expect from them? (In particular, is there anything which White Soul is likely to use if it's available?)
--[x] What kinds of tactics does White Soul prefer?
--[x] Do we need to focus on preventing ambushes, or do we expect a direct challenge?
--[x] If White Soul is willing to fight Red Rose, she's probably either even crazier than we already know, or thinks she can at least avoid losing. What do we do if she's right, and she manages not to die to Red Rose? If she brings both bodies here we can kill her (via Goddess Gold if nothing else), but if she manages to stick to one, there aren't many other possibilities. Could we provoke her into recklessness?
-[x] Whatever we decide is the best immediate course of action—whom to send out, whether to pause for buffs, etc.—do it.

[x] [EXP] Plan Just a Little, Just in Case
-[x] Upgrade Purifier Beam to Level 17

The general outline is definitely what I want to do. It gets input from the relevant people and tries for answers to some pressing questions. The "whatever we decide to do, do it" part is to make sure we in-character on the discussion, instead of going through another round of voting on the final decision. I'm open to eliminating it or any of the discussion points, and to adding more points—I've probably missed some, and will be updating the plan as I think of things. We should also make sure to praise Aquila taking down Grey, though I'm not sure this needs to be an explicit part of the vote. I'm also considering telling Sega to cast Limit Break before we go anywhere, even though it turns out to only be relevant for resisting Walk With Me (if she upgrades enough to attack at all).

The EXP plan is because the Panzer Blade can still be useful, but Celestial Severance and Starshine would do too much damage to the environment and wouldn't be useful enough in the fight. Upgrading ICORE is pointless, since the only real danger is Soul Rend, and its danger level is completely independent of ICORE's level (we're immune to DoTs, and the initial damage isn't big enough to matter). And we already have enough Flight for the moment. I'm considering not even buying the PB upgrade, since it's not all that useful for White Soul, and the increased collateral damage is bad for anything else we might attempt. And we can do it next update anyway, after hearing Red Rose's take on fighting White Soul.
 
I'm going to start this math fest off with things as they currently stand.
Initial Conditions:
Health = 29,610/4,200
Base Resilience = 1,700
ICORE Negation Threshold = 29,313
Effective Health = 5,922,000
Segarite Core Regeneration = 3,150
Effective Regeneration = 630,000


Upgrading to Level 25 ICORE results in:
Level 25 ICORE:
Health = 29,610/6,000
Base Resilience = 2,600
ICORE Negation Threshold = 29,313
Effective Health = 5,922,000
Segarite Core Regeneration = 4,500
Effective Regeneration = 900,000

So the end result is that we can no-sell a little more damage (31,913 vs. 31,013) and we have a higher regeneration rate. Despite the large XP cost there isn't really that much of a gain because of there is basically no one who can output greater then 630,000 damage per turn who can't also output more then 900,000 damage per turn.



For our fight against White Soul here is a list of her everything and their effects:
Code:
The White River
Level 4
Attacks Per Turn: 4
Affinity: Life
Ability: Shapeshift
With a base damage of 1,000 and no special effects aside from shape shifting this is basically not a concern. With one exception I'll note below.
Code:
Follow The Waves
Level 35
Base Damage: N/A
Magic Modifier: N/A
Affinity: Life | Immortal
Ability: Clone-Self
We've all covered White Soul's cloning ability before. There isn't anything to say here.
Code:
Soul Rend
Level 50
Base Damage: 10,000
Magic Modifier: 3,000
Affinity: Life | Legend
Ability: Slaughter | Vampire | Negative Space
The Slaughter ability isn't a concern since ICORE negates DoTs. Vampire isn't a major concern since for White Soul to be injured in the first place you have to hit both clones simultaneously and if you can do that odds are they'll both die. Negative Space is nasty but with the amount of health we've built up it will take 13 turns to kill Nepgear and I don't believe we've had a single fight last that long before. CMGQ is basically rocket tag after all.

One thing we have to watch out for is that while Negative Space is a melee strike:
The spell it's attached to is a Melee spell, so she has to get in close and actually whack you with it to leave the Negative Space debuff
White Soul's weapon has shapeshift because it's a liquid that White Soul telekinetically controls:
The White River is exactly that. A white liquid that floats through the air that White Soul can telekinetically control at will. She can form it into pretty much any shape that she desires, but it'll only be that. A shape. It lets her bullshit some abilities it technically doesn't actually have, but at reduced effectiveness.
Now it's not clear that she casts Soul Rend through White River but if she does then that melee limitation isn't as much of one as we had hoped. Just imagine long and ultra thin tentacles delivering a Soul Rend just by touching you. If that is the case then avoiding it is basically impossible.

Code:
Not Truly There
-White Soul may have two active instances of herself at any one time through the use of Follow The Waves. She may delete one whenever she chooses. Should one die, the other dies with it.
Same with Follow The Waves; we've already discussed this to death.
Code:
Walk With Me
-When White Soul takes damage, an equal amount of damage is caused to her opponent. This damage is subject to the victim's Resilience and any damage reducing effects they have.
So normally this wouldn't be an issue for us since with ICORE and No Longer Human we only take 0.005x the damage, although Level 17 Celestial Severance would still instantly kill us, but with ICORE crippled Purifier Beam/Panzer Blade is the only attack we have that won't instantly kill Nepgear due to Walk With Me.
Code:
Revel In Darkness
-Affinities of a positive alignment take 25% of their current health in damage per turn.
This honestly isn't even a threat. 25% of Nepgear's current health is 7,402 and even if ICORE's NST is cut down to 50% that is still 14,805 and so ICORE should just flat out no sell this.
Code:
The 'Kind' Monster
-White Soul's allies and enemies do not die unless they are reduced to a negative amount of Health equal to twice their Maximum Health. After being reduced to 0 Health, White Soul's enemies take extra Body Damage modifiers on every hit.
For most people this would be a problem but Nepgear is immune to Body Modifiers so this is actually a net posative.
Code:
Scream For Me
Level 17
-Weapons and Spells lower level than this ability cannot be utilized. Operates as an Overwhelming Presence effect.
Seeing as Core Purge, Celestial Severance, and Starshine would all instiagib Nepgear due to Walk With Me this isn't really much of an issue. We'll need to level up Purifier Beam, which is annoying since it gets harder to control each time we do so, but that is about it.
Code:
Overwhelming Presence
-Opponent Super Abilities operate at 50% reduced effectiveness.
This is the biggest issue we face since Nepgear's whole build is based around ICORE so crippling is seriously bad news for us. What's more we don't really know how this will effect us. We know the damage reduction drops to 50% but what about the NST? Or what about the non numerical abilities like ignoring DoTs/mind effects/body modifiers or dropping to 1hp instead of dying?

This also effects Supremacy Zone but that's not something we really use and seeing as we'll be inside is pretty much irrelevant.
 
Hey, @crystalwatcher, I was wondering... would you mind telling how/when Red Rose got To Stand Amongst Gods?

It is a little strong to be a starting-Ability (unless she won the superpower-lottery as well), so I was thinking that maybe she did it by some particular feat, such as Nepgear did (one-shotting Uni) before she got The Insurmountable Gap.

Is there any kind of story behind it?
 
Hey, @crystalwatcher, I was wondering... would you mind telling how/when Red Rose got To Stand Amongst Gods?

It is a little strong to be a starting-Ability (unless she won the superpower-lottery as well), so I was thinking that maybe she did it by some particular feat, such as Nepgear did (one-shotting Uni) before she got The Insurmountable Gap.

Is there any kind of story behind it?
Sounds like a question for the alternate universe in which we chose one of the starting options that would have resulted in Red Rose being the protagonist :V
 
Too many fights outside their nominal weight class and an unreasonable amount of exp.
Well, that's a bit... worrying. Red Rose is one of the most seasoned Magical Girls ever, and has been in the top ten of known girls ever since they've been keeping a list.

What's considered outside her weight class? I thought she was a resounding success in Gaia's project to produce combatants that no one could afford to discount or ignore. Looking at the (possibly inaccurate) sheets it seems she could drop half of the four Goddesses by using Avatar of Victory to disable them before using her 'no save, just die' spell.

What has Red Rose been doing?!
 
Well, that's a bit... worrying. Red Rose is one of the most seasoned Magical Girls ever, and has been in the top ten of known girls ever since they've been keeping a list.

What's considered outside her weight class? I thought she was a resounding success in Gaia's project to produce combatants that no one could afford to discount or ignore. Looking at the (possibly inaccurate) sheets it seems she could drop half of the four Goddesses by using Avatar of Victory to disable them before using her 'no save, just die' spell.

What has Red Rose been doing?!
What do you think keeps happening to all the Dark Lords. :D
 
using her 'no save, just die' spell.
Actually, her Auto Kill spell wouldn't work on the Goddesses anyway. Auto Kill spells explicitly only work on mortals with an equal or lower Existence Bonus than the caster, so since Red Rose is Legend and the Goddesses are all Epic...well.

I know that Sudden Death worked on Lunar Radiance, but that's probably because Lunar took on all the traits of the giant doom snake, including the Affinities. So essentially Sudden Death worked on Lunar because Lunar didn't have her Epic Affinity at the time.
 
Well, that's a bit... worrying. Red Rose is one of the most seasoned Magical Girls ever, and has been in the top ten of known girls ever since they've been keeping a list.

What's considered outside her weight class? I thought she was a resounding success in Gaia's project to produce combatants that no one could afford to discount or ignore. Looking at the (possibly inaccurate) sheets it seems she could drop half of the four Goddesses by using Avatar of Victory to disable them before using her 'no save, just die' spell.

What has Red Rose been doing?!
She wasn't always one of the strongest, you know.
 
The Old Guard wound up starting in a similar position to what Nepgear did. Right out the gate, the lot of them were dropped straight into the deep end and left to die more or less.

From there, Red Rose has stood on battlefields that even one of her strength really has no business being on; she's fought each of the Goddess four on more than one occasion for a variety of reasons and lived to tell of it. She's fought entities that are/were near-Divine Being level in power and didn't splatter like she should have.

For all intents and purposes, Red Rose is pretty much Anastasia's spiritual Forerunner as a Magical Girl. The shit you've put up with? Red Rose has gone through similar situations long before you have. Her family was still (mostly) alive, she's ran headlong into hordes of demons, fought high-level Dark Magical Girls in one on one deathmatches, and even fought beings that required Gaia to take a personal interest in herself.

She was never in the spot light. But at the same time her feats were the kind that literally no one could ignore. You're not going to run into a Magical Girl more suited for the battlefield than Red Rose is. Not even Carnage.
 
The Old Guard wound up starting in a similar position to what Nepgear did. Right out the gate, the lot of them were dropped straight into the deep end and left to die more or less.

From there, Red Rose has stood on battlefields that even one of her strength really has no business being on; she's fought each of the Goddess four on more than one occasion for a variety of reasons and lived to tell of it. She's fought entities that are/were near-Divine Being level in power and didn't splatter like she should have.

For all intents and purposes, Red Rose is pretty much Anastasia's spiritual Forerunner as a Magical Girl. The shit you've put up with? Red Rose has gone through similar situations long before you have. Her family was still (mostly) alive, she's ran headlong into hordes of demons, fought high-level Dark Magical Girls in one on one deathmatches, and even fought beings that required Gaia to take a personal interest in herself.

She was never in the spot light. But at the same time her feats were the kind that literally no one could ignore. You're not going to run into a Magical Girl more suited for the battlefield than Red Rose is. Not even Carnage.
I feel like one of the scariest things about Red Rose is that she's done all of that without any Super Abilities (except the one attached to her stupidly high level spell) and without obtaining an Overwhelming Presence (which makes sense because she stays out of the spotlight).


Although now I'm picturing there being some horrifying Super Ability she hasn't purchased yet that combines Monsters Kill Men, Heroes Kill Monsters, and Men Kill Heroes.
 
Despite the large XP cost there isn't really that much of a gain because of there is basically no one who can output greater then 630,000 damage per turn who can't also output more then 900,000 damage per turn.
Only reason to do it is for defense-suppressing stuff like Solar Radiance and White Soul have. (Outright negation shouldn't work.) Or massed fire from mid- to high-tier opponents, which we should only encounter if we get a kill-team sent after us while Goddesses Red & Grey are busy, or if we go looking for it.
with ICORE crippled Purifier Beam/Panzer Blade is the only attack we have that won't instantly kill Nepgear due to Walk With Me.
Core Purge would only almost kill us (5% + 50% * 50% * 75 * 5% - 1700 - 1d390, so we end up at around 2500 Health the first time, and 2000 after that). And don't forget the save-from-death. Not that we should allow it to be used.
This honestly isn't even a threat. 25% of Nepgear's current health is 7,402 and even if ICORE's NST is cut down to 50% that is still 14,805 and so ICORE should just flat out no sell this.
……Dammit. I know exactly why I missed this, but that doesn't make it any less stupid. Though I'm actually not quite certain it'll run into the NST—the NST is basically a skintight forcefield, so it depends on whether Revel In Darkness operates as "White Soul emits anti-niceness radiation" or "White Soul's presence makes the area inimical to the existence of positively-aligned entities". But it should definitely get the damage reduction, so we would only take 6.25% of our Health, and Sega takes 3.125% of hers (assuming it bypasses Resilience, which is reasonable—Presence of Light does). Still a non-threat.
We know the damage reduction drops to 50% but what about the NST?
It has the same phrasing as Unrivaled Radiance of the Sun, and
Her Unrivaled Radiance ability also renders INDESTRUCTIBLE CORE's NS Threshold half of what it should be, and it reduces half as much damage as it should.
what about the non numerical abilities like ignoring DoTs/mind effects/body modifiers or dropping to 1hp instead of dying?
Doesn't affect those in any meaningful manner.


Re To Stand Amongst Gods: there are a number of Abilities on high-level girls that I can't see how to make reasonable at Level 1. TSAG could be acquired later on, or it could have been an upgrade similar to Steel/Mythril/Adamantium Frame where the Ability upgrade changes its name instead of having a numerical level. I'm more concerned about Level 1 Sudden Death, Avatar of Victory, Soul Rend and Let's Start a Riot! (which averages x51 with a Level 1 !☆Riot☆!) (also Oblivion Awaits and Madama Morte's Level 1 Auto Kill, but I'm a bit more lenient on Epics). I also can't see why some spells would need any upgrading—whats the difference between Sudden Death at Level 40 and Level 1 (or whatever level it got Auto Kill, if it didn't start with it)?



Unrelated thought: Scream For Me doesn't specify that only enemy Spells and Weapons are disabled. So even if she does have allies, they may well be just as disabled as we are. The funny part is that it doesn't specifically exclude her, either, so if we take it literally her Overwhelming Presence is the only reason she can use The White River.


Some belated citations: Red Rose does not have an Overwhelming Presence; White Soul has a Control Seal but may not have two.
 
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