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Exclusion (PMMM AU / MTG)

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mythfan12 said:
I like the idea of us being able to boost our allies enough so deaths aren't as much of an issue.
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Note that we have powerful buffs that don't require an oath of fealty and likely scale better with both mana and large organizations:
Alivaril said:
...Enhance the power and defenses of yourself and your allies by an equal amount, regardless of how strong they were prior to the buff...
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The oath is probably much more difficult to practice, seeing as we'll get fewer chances to practice it and it's a more complex spell. It likely doesn't have any provision for "putting more power into it", as it's already powered by something other than our mana; this is nice if you're trying to conserve, but it also means we can't use more power if we have it. And we're green, our entire thing is getting more mana.

If we want a horde of minions, we're better off booming using Convoke or Hallow and dumping the mana into more broadly-applicable buffs and other assistance. Going with the oath will make it much harder for us to offer things like healing and regeneration to our allies for example, because it doesn't contribute to our economy.

[1] Convoke
[3] Soulstone
[2] Hallowed Haven
[4] Summer Raiment
[5] Knight's Oath
 
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[3] Convoke
[1] Soulstone
[2] Hallowed Haven
[5] Summer Raiment
[4] Knight's Oath

The greatest early-game benefit of Knight's Oath is knowing who's betrayed us the moment they do, and the greatest early-game benefit of Soulstone is that it looks like a soul gem (though voluntarily splintering our soul gem and distributing it might have confusing and troubling implications for MGs in the know). We might be able to resurrect someone from the Soulstone eventually, but that's pure speculation. Otherwise, Hallowed Haven is better for its guaranteed safety, while Convoke and to a lesser extent Summer Raiment are better for their ability to scale.

EDIT: With the info on the post after this, and after some more thinking, Soulstone seems worth it just to take a load off the PC's shoulders.
 
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Vebyast said:
Note that we have powerful buffs that don't require an oath of fealty and scale better with both mana and large organizations:
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Ah, bugger, edited. The Blessing version you currently know is strictly temporary (duration of tens of minutes instead of permanent until broken)


When picking, be aware that everything is going to have a pretty significant impact on your general strategy for approaching the world. As examples (and these are not all-inclusive, just that: examples)...

Convoke A, lets you bring Constructs into combat without needing to risk your pets, and B, provides significant amounts of extra mana from tapped organisms beyond what they'd normally donate to the land they live on.
Soulstone will help with the PC's (Yes, she'll be named immediately after the appearance vote is done—her family is fond of appearance-based names) inevitable fear of friends going into combat without having her on hand for a ghost-res.
Hallowed Haven will simultaneously provide you with something everyone will want, will give you extra protections around the homes of yourself and your allies, and would give you extra sources of mana production at the same time, especially once you get the hang of Harvesting nearby lands instead of just the one you're on.
Summer Raiment will make it much harder for people to follow the conventional wisdom of shooting the support first.
Knight's Oath would turn the rocket-tag nature of Witch battles into something closer to... well, bullet tag. Still pretty bad, but not instantly fatal after certain mistakes.
 
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I love Soulstone, but I have to admit it probably isn't the best. Raiment helps a lot with early game (and doesn't give up scaling), which is our weakest point, but just doesn't interest me much. Knight's Oath and Soulstone are good for forming our own Faction, though I have a strong preference for Soulstone, as it can both stop tragedy and let MGs escape grief. Convoke is strong both for ramp and major projects, though I find it bland myself.

All that said, I think Hallowed Haven is probably the best. It feeds our Mana production and we can sell it like Azalea in Revision.

[3] Convoke
[2] Soulstone
[1] Hallowed Haven
[4] Summer Raiment
[5] Knight's Oath

However, I'd be surprised if we couldn't learn the other ones eventually. It certainly won't happen quickly, but remember the others are eventually accessible. I'm not sure how fast we'll ramp, but by the time we're strong enough to really be setting up our own faction, we probably won't be too far from another thing on that level.
 
[4] Convoke
[2] Soulstone
[3] Hallowed Haven
[] Summer Raiment
[1] Knight's Oath

I wasn't too into Soulstone, but with the clarification that our character is going to be horribly scared of friends dying I'll bump it up to 3. Raiment and Oath both sound more fun for the power boost to ourselves and our inner circle, respectively. Plus either a cool outfit or some fun ceremony.
 
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[3] Convoke
[2] Soulstone
[1] Hallowed Haven
[4] Summer Raiment
[5] Knight's Oath
 
Vebyast said:
Hallowed Haven and Convoke are both bullshit and clearly top the list.

Convoke is particularly bullshit: plants and animals can be tapped and that mana fed straight back into Rapid and Titanic growth to make more plants and animals that we can tap. This is the kind of combo where our economy develops not just rapidly but explosively. Even better, Convoke is tactically powerful, especially when we're inside our territory.

This is balanced against Hallowed Haven and its universal appeal. We would make a killing just giving this away to anyone that wants us to cast it and holy shit would people want us to cast it. Military facilities, banks, hospitals, rich people, luxury apartment towers, government facilities, the queue would be literally endless and every single bit of it would feed us more and more power, which we could plow straight back into more Havens.
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Extrapolating from the fact that the main character isn't sticking around with her family to help with mana generation, I don't think Convoke will allow for a huge economy spiral; chances are, energy is lost in the conversion process. Convoke shouldn't allow you to, say, draw energy from a plant, feed it back into supporting it's growth, and end up with more natural energy than you started with. It's a summoning power first, minor economy buff second.

Hallowed Haven, though? Holy shit, is it overpowered. Assuming the ritual doesn't cost dozens of motes, it should pay for itself in fairly short order. If you're after mana generation, I highly recommend grabbing it.

[2] Convoke
[5] Soulstone
[1] Hallowed Haven
[4] Summer Raiment
[3] Knight's Oath
 
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[4] Convoke
[3] Soulstone
[1] Hallowed Haven
[5] Summer Raiment
[2] Knight's Oath

Hallowed Haven is protection and mana generation all in one. It also makes us friends easily, and gives us an excuse to go to people's homes and interact with them, getting to know them better. Perfect for someone aiming to form their own faction.
 
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Alivaril said:
Convoke A, lets you bring Constructs into combat without needing to risk your pets
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...Oh, I didn't notice that we don't already have a spell for creating constructs.

How strong are the constructs compared to the originals?

Sapient_Ham said:
Extrapolating from the fact that the main character isn't sticking around with her family to help with mana generation, I don't think Convoke will allow for a huge economy spiral; chances are, a lot of energy is lost the conversion process. Convoke shouldn't allow you to, say, draw energy from a plant, feed it back into supporting it's growth, and end up with more natural energy than you started with. It's a summoning power first, minor economy buff second.
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The cycle probably doesn't happen on the scale of a day, but note that our timeline for Improving the Central Park is on the order of weeks, and our goal is to increase its total mana generation by about 50%; presumably this corresponds to an increase of 50% in the amount of living stuff in Central Park. That means that at least some of our growth-encouragement magic, likely Rapid Growth judged by its current skill level, is powerfully net-positive.
Sapient_Ham said:
Assuming the ritual doesn't cost dozens of motes
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We're able to cast it out of our current production, I think.
 
[3] Convoke
[2] Soulstone
[1] Hallowed Haven
[4] Summer Raiment
[5] Knight's Oath

@Alivaril Just to be sure How does Hallowed Haven interact with witches? They're unnatural enough that I want to make sure that they're affected, and we don't suddenly find ourselves up against a witch, unable to hit back.

Other than that, Knight's Oath seems more useful it the mid to late stages: not helpful now. Summer Raiment is overall Meh. Convoke seems more helpful to go solo, which we really can't strategically. Soulstone is just as good at making allies, but does less to help the mana production.
Adhoc vote count started by saganatsu on Mar 9, 2019 at 12:40 PM
This vote count is in an error state, please contact support
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Adhoc vote count started by saganatsu on Mar 9, 2019 at 12:41 PM
This vote count is in an error state, please contact support
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[1] Convoke
[5] Soulstone
[2] Hallowed Haven
[4] Summer Raiment
[3] Knight's Oath
 
Powerofmind said:
@Alivaril How much agency do soulstone ghosts get?
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You don't think they'll have a conventional tether and they're entirely free-willed.


Vebyast said:
...Oh, I didn't notice that we don't already have a spell for creating constructs.

How strong are the constructs compared to the originals?
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Three of a given animal will yield one construct of equal strength; the more mana the animals could offer (the stronger they were), the stronger the construct. EDIT: This scaling seems to be a bit weird once you start combining larger amounts of mana, though; combining the mana from all your current pets produces a pack of four wolves, which you don't know how to explain.


saganatsu said:
@Alivaril Just to be sure How does Hallowed Haven interact with witches? They're unnatural enough that I want to make sure that they're affected, and we don't suddenly find ourselves up against a witch, unable to hit back.
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You're mortally certain it would still affect them, and indeed, might not let them in at all. It might only delay a Witch determined to break the shields of a Hallowed Haven and let violence leak in, but since that's a pretty niche scenario (Witches are supposed to rarely leave their own Labyrinth-esque Barriers), you probably just have to worry about the weaker Familiars, which the Haven would keep out just fine.

EDIT: I forgot to add Dearly Departed (AKA ghostmaking) to the last story post. That's been fixed.
 
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saganatsu said:
Convoke seems more helpful to go solo, which we really can't strategically
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Hm? Convoke actually seems like the most powerful strategic ability to me.

Hallowed Haven scales absurdly well, especially if we can cast it for magical girls, but it has a nearly-fixed rate of return on investment. You spend N motes to create a Haven, that Haven starts generating M < N motes/day, after N/M days you have enough mana to cast another Haven. The rate at which we can expand fixed by N/M, that ratio of its cost to its income. And I do not expect that ratio to improve as we gain proficiency with it; first, it's being drawn from another living being, and second, the MC herself believes that improvements will be in the direction of improving its protections rather than improving its economy.

I expect that we could guarantee that nearly every casting of HH we make goes onto a magical girl and so would produce at least 1 mote, and it currently costs little enough that we can do it out of personal production which isn't much, so the doubling period for HH is probably around four or six days. That's spectacular, but Convoke can do better.

Convoke scales with our access to plants, animals, and allies. If the entire city of New York woke up tomorrow and decided to give us all their power, Spirit Bomb style, we could immediately drop a Rapid Growth covering, say, the entire NE US. Or Naturalize a small country's military, if we used it for power rather than eco.
Powerofmind said:
Yeeeep definitely want me some free-acting spirit friends.
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I, uh. People don't end up in the soul-stone until they die, and the description of the soul-stone says that ghosts are massively weaker than their original incarnations and might take a century to recover their full strength. We could certainly speed that up, but I suspect that the effort we'd have put into the buffs would have had better results if applied to buffing the same people before they died.
 
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Could I get some explanation for why people are voting for Knight's Oath at all? We won't be able to use it until much later in the game because it's going to take a hell of a long time to convince people to swear a literal magical oath of fealty to us. We won't be able to use it at all on mundanes at strategic scales because that's a fantastic way to catch heat from the government and random people across the planet who disapprove of our literal cult; it has the worst optics of any option currently available to us. It provides no eco bonus. It doesn't work on animals or plants, which means we're splitting our effort between buffing humans and buffing animals, and remember: Never half-ass two things, always whole-ass one thing. Or we decide to focus on humans only and lose access to animals as combatants, which is kind of terrible idea for Green. To top it off I doubt we can even cast it on ourselves, so even if we can buff our allies up to fight witches, we'll still be the squishy healer in the back that literally everything targets first.
 
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[1] Hallowed Haven
[2] Convoke
[3] Knight's Oath
[4] Soul Stone
[5] Summer Rainment
I like the play style that Hallowed Haven represents, and many of them would stack awesomely with each other.
I think that the value of Summer's rainment (providing us with protection from witches that mitigates it) is mostly taken by the fact that we can generate White defensive stuff.
The first two are obvious mana economy boosters, and I kind of feel like we need that in order to scale properly, but if I'm going to vote for any of the others, then I'm all for general buffs for everyone (everything or survivability) over something that feels mostly covered (due to force fields and regen).
I'm voting for Knight's Oath because all magical girl already are willing to trade there lives for power in a contract with an alien. Were a nice girl, and there are no consequences to breaking it.
 
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Vebyast said:
Could I get some explanation for why people are voting for Knight's Oath at all? We won't be able to use it until much later in the game because it's going to take a hell of a long time to convince people to swear a literal magical oath of fealty to us. We won't be able to use it at all on mundanes at strategic scales because that's a fantastic way to catch heat from the government and random people across the planet who disapprove of our literal cult; it has the worst optics of any option currently available to us. It provides no eco bonus. It doesn't work on animals or plants, which means we're splitting our effort between buffing humans and buffing animals, and remember: Never half-ass two things, always whole-ass one thing. Or we decide to focus on humans only and lose access to animals as combatants, which is kind of terrible idea for Green. To top it off I doubt we can even cast it on ourselves, so even if we can buff our allies up to fight witches, we'll still be the squishy healer in the back that literally everything targets first.
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I like it.

Also were green white, were starting a cult anyway.
 
[1] Convoke
[5] Soulstone
[4] Hallowed Haven
[3] Summer Raiment
[2] Knight's Oath
 
[1] Hallowed Haven
[2] Convoke
[3] Soul Stone
[4] Summer Raiment
[5] Knight's Oath

Hallowed Haven is great, because it's a mana generation ability that people will want around, instead of one which they'll find inconvenient like growing plants everywhere. And boy, does it scale well; in cities people live densely-packed lives, so while at first we'll want to target magical girl living spaces for the mana boost, eventually we could cover entire apartment complexes and turn them into mana batteries pumping out twenty or thirty mana per building based on the mundane population alone. Even now this can be done piece by piece since two castings near each other will merge. This being my first choice rests on the assumption that the quest will take place over a scale of time generally measured in weeks, months, or years rather than days; if we don't have the time needed to ramp up with repeated castings and raising our skill to cover greater areas per cast, we won't be able to exploit this properly.

Convoke gives us all the benefit of using our minions as disposable combatants without actually treating our minions as disposable combatants. As a buff specialist there's a lot to be said for that. It also gives non-magicals who buy into what we're doing an ability to effectively contribute to our overall combat ability so they can feel like they're helping, which is likely to matter somewhat at some point.

Soul Stone is a great backup if everything goes horribly wrong. Unfortunately it doesn't help us make things go right in the first place, so while it's a fantastic safety net I'd rather have something that helps us in optimistic scenarios.

If we're planning on using Hallowed Haven extensively, then Summer Raiment starts looking really good, because its effectiveness is based on the mana generation nearby. However, since we only get one spell we can't achieve this combo and it's just as protective spell without the terrifying synergy of ramping into near-invincibility as we shape the entire city around us into becoming our mana battery, and we already have protective spells. Still, there's a lot to be said for dying very hard and we can always hang out in/near Central Park.

Knight's Oath is nice but nothing game-changing. I'd be happy to learn it but not enough to give up any of the previous options.
 
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