Well that happened. I would say something on the slacking issue, but I figure Aranfan has been fighting that fight a lot longer than I have, and thus should have the honor of...
Actually, no wait, Deathbybunnies is going on about the "infallible mathematics of 1+3" again, so maybe I do have something to say.
@Deathbybunnies, we have hit a totally different paradigm here. Your plan, barely feasible though it originally was, is now completely thrown out of the park. Why? Read the update: your parents are pissed that you dropped in grades.
Do you really think that you can ever get away with doing the same thing again?
This is what I was talking about earlier when I mentioned the apparent game/story split in our approaches to the quest.
In your game-driven philosophy, (or at least that's how it looks to me) it's mathematically a good plan to slack as much as possible, and only bother with grades to raise them when we fall. The yo-yo-ing back and forth between "optimal state" and "slightly less than optimal but still easily recoverable state" seems ideal, right? Especially if we get extra actions out of it, right? And if this were
just a numbers-based RPG, I might agree with you.
But this is a story just as much as it is a game, and you're also dealing with characters and
unintended consequences... one of which we've just run into: our grades influence our relationships with our parents. Yep, apparently parents care about their kids' grades in school... who knew?
We fell in grades, and our parents are pissed. But we were lucky... we're young, more important things are happening, and we had (incorrect) in story reasons for doing so. Thus, we got the "you didn't know better, here is the reason why" speech. The downside? Now we do know better. That excuse is gone.
So yeah, even if we do raise our grade, slacking now carries other penalties. I mean, our parents just laid down the law... we get good grades
or else. From now on, even if we do raise our grades back up, losing grades again is basically saying that we don't care what our parents said, we do it our way. Which in turn, I'm pretty sure, will lower our relationships with them. And assuming that we have to spend time (and actions) with someone to raise the relationship...
Well, to put it mathematically for you, you're now betting on a paradigm of 2+2 to maintain our station vs 1+5 (three to raise grades, one to repair relations with dad, and one to repair relations with mom) to maintain. So in other words you'd need to get lucky three years in a row, as the rolls get progressively harder each year to reflect more advanced classes, to break even. And considering that mathematic proof is the final say... welcome to Team Never Slack, friend.
((Though before I go any further, I just want to say that the above was mostly tongue-in-cheek sarcasm over the arguments we've had over this before. I'm sorry if it came across as serious or mean-spirited; I truly mean no offense to Deathbybunnies. That being said, I stand by my reasoning.))
Also, is it me or are there two of the following in the choices in the break seal conspiracy section:
