Exclusion (PMMM AU / MTG)

[Aerrow Shadow]

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

 

[Vebyast]

Also were green white, were starting a cult anyway.

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We need to build a polity, and there are a lot of ways to do that other than starting a cult. Same way that not all governments are totalitarian dictatorships. For example, see my earlier proposal where we establish ourselves as a tactical magical specialist for the NYPD, rapidly accumulate influence as people call for protection that isn't unstable teenage girls that half the time are the problems themselves, and integrate ourselves into the upper levels of government where we can start really booming.

Now that I think about it, Convoke would suit this strategy particularly well. It doesn't have the mind-affecting components of HH or KO ("what if she decides to suppress something other than violence?") that'd make a mundane government official hesitate to sign off, and we'll be able to demonstrate effects that make it very much in the mundane government's best interests to provide us with large reserves of manpower that we can Convoke from. Honestly, the combination of Convoke and Rapid Growth is a total game-changer for a national defense policymaker; they get a strategic asset that not only comes with a built-in positive feedback loop but a built-in feedback loop that grows faster the more people they assign to us, and we're at peace, so they have literally millions of people in the armed forces that can be mobilized for things like this on an hour's notice. Fill a stadium, have half of them Convoke (so the other half can get them home), and we suddenly have tens of thousands of motes to work with. Looking at our current expectations, several motes a day of Rapid Growth for 30 days allowing us to add 2 motes to Central Park, we get about 1 mote/day per 50 motes invested, so 10k motes would yield a forest worth 200 motes/day. And you bet your ass the City of New York or the US Army could make that happen if it wanted to.

 

[Kai Merah]

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

I really like the optics and growth potential of hallowed haven, and Vebyast has convinced me Convoke is very worthwhile too. I'm putting Summer Raiment as third because it's clear we're much squishier than magical girls, even with ethereal equipment, and I'd like to fix that, and I put knight's oath before Soulstone because the idea is to prevent death in the first place rather than making death less bad. Hate to say it, but if someone dies, they're effectively out of the Walpurgisnacht/KG fight, ghost or not.

 

[zxzx24]

We need to build a polity, and there are a lot of ways to do that other than starting a cult. Same way that not all governments are totalitarian dictatorships. For example, see my earlier proposal where we establish ourselves as a tactical magical specialist for the NYPD, rapidly accumulate influence as people call for protection that isn't unstable teenage girls that half the time are the problems themselves, and integrate ourselves into the upper levels of government where we can start really booming.

Now that I think about it, Convoke would suit this strategy particularly well. It doesn't have the mind-affecting components of HH or KO ("what if she decides to suppress something other than violence?") that'd make a mundane government official hesitate to sign off, and we'll be able to demonstrate effects that make it very much in the mundane government's best interests to provide us with large reserves of manpower that we can Convoke from. Honestly, the combination of Convoke and Rapid Growth is a total game-changer for a national defense policymaker; they get a strategic asset that not only comes with a built-in positive feedback loop but a built-in feedback loop that grows faster the more people they assign to us, and we're at peace, so they have literally millions of people in the armed forces that can be mobilized for things like this on an hour's notice. Fill a stadium, have half of them Convoke (so the other half can get them home), and we suddenly have tens of thousands of motes to work with. Looking at our current expectations, several motes a day of Rapid Growth for 30 days allowing us to add 2 motes to Central Park, we get about 1 mote/day per 50 motes invested, so 10k motes would yield a forest worth 200 motes/day. And you bet your ass the City of New York or the US Army could make that happen if it wanted to.

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Whats your plan for breaking into the government? Especially since were a known magic user. Which means they would have to worry about things like say... mind control? Super weapons?

Us slaughtering all of those people for fuel?

So like. Bam. Sell me on the whole... uh. the government isnt going to tell us to "fuck off" at best thing.

 

[BloodsCrescendo]

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

 

[Alivaril]

So like. Bam. Sell me on the whole... uh. the government isnt going to tell us to "fuck off" at best thing.

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The government is probably only going to try to oppose you if you do something especially (and unusually, given how many other things they'll have to occupy their attention) threatening, like, say, making a magical cult on that could easily imitate the shenanigans of That One Religion without them noticing.

 

[Alanek]

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


Imagine how much people would pay us to Haven, say, an airport.

Screw military bases. Do you know how many people are in the security lines at la Guardia airport at any time?

Or the hospitals, too.

 

[zxzx24]

The government is probably only going to try to oppose you if you do something especially (and unusually, given how many other things they'll have to occupy their attention) threatening, like, say, making a magical cult on that could easily imitate the shenanigans of That One Religion without them noticing.

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Coo.

I still like knights oath though.

 

[Vebyast]

Whats your plan for breaking into the government?

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Exactly what I described. Start by offering to buff the NYPD SWAT teams. If we take Convoke instead of HH or KO we won't have anything mind-affecting. I expect that people will rapidly figure out how PMMM gucas work and conclude that such abilities are hard to gain except via Wish magic, so the thing that looks like our special Wish magic (Convoke) would exclude the possibility that we have mind-affecting powers as well. That'll get us a foot in the door. Then we just... do stuff and talk about our powers, being careful to emphasize that we don't feel like we have much of an upper limit, and show off the way we gain strength from growing greenery on the side. At that point it's less a question of how we "break into" government and more a question of how long it takes them to realize the potential and try to get us on their side. I don't expect Convoke to be a common effect at all; it may even be unique. Convoke and Rapid Growth together make us likely the single person on the planet with the highest probable upper limit and the single person on the planet who can reach geopolitical power levels in anything like a reasonable amount of time, see my back-of-the-envelope earlier on Rapid Growth probably building 1 mote/day of forest per 50 motes we invest in it. In other words, we're Superman or Doctor Manhattan, and we'd be volunteering to defend the nation from evil. We won't be going to them. They will be coming to us.

 

[Sapient_Ham]

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.

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If Convoke exhausts animals, what do you think happens to plants? At a guess, they either wilt slightly, or grow slower. Essentially, Convoke saps vitality, but not to a degree that causes lasting damage. My point was that using Convoke to power Rapid/Titanic Growth should lower net vitality if the mana donator and recipient are the same organism, because otherwise this trick could be used to generate infinite growth/mana. No way Alivaril would allow something like that.

While Convoke can be used to boost Green economy, I'm betting it mostly works by tapping 'external' sources that normally wouldn't contribute much to a land's Green mote production—people and animals. However, this still exhausts them, and the resulting growth needs quite a bit of space, so it doesn't scale the way HH does.

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.

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Exactly what I'm thinking. Hallowed Haven is something people may very well pay us to set up, whereas normal Green mana production involves turning an area into an overgrown jungle that may or may not include literal man-eating flora. The city of New York may, uh, object to such a renovation of public property.

 

[Deathbybunnies]

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

 

[Dauan Tienar]

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

 

[Nixeu]

For the purposes of this spell, plants are always counted as "willing." You used to think your pets hated having Convoke used on them, but ever since you started offering treats, they've started to fight over the right to be tapped first.

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...Whelp, that definitely clinched it for me. I might crazy, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't in the preview of this I got. Convoke OP, pls never nerf. Seriously, we can funnel that mana into enhancing the plants of the area, resulting in permanent mana generation.

[] Hallowed Haven
(Hallowed Haven)
With a large amount of mana and about an hour to work with, you can (near-)permanently ban physical violence within an area, preventing anyone from following through on any violent thoughts or impulses while they're within its boundaries. This effect targets the concept of violent action itself, preventing living organisms from attempting such; food can still be chopped and open-heart surgery could still be performed, but furniture cannot be broken and foes cannot be stabbed. The casting cost of Hallowed Haven scales with the size of the targeted area; right now, you could barely cover your two-bedroom apartment in one go.

The version you currently know does not prevent threats from being issued, cruel and damaging words from being uttered, magical emotional manipulation from occurring, etc., although you think you'll eventually be able to manage all of those things. You don't know if the negative emotional influence from Grief will be included under the list of banned magical emotional manipulation; Hallowed Haven doesn't police thoughts, and since Grief is contained entirely inside their souls, HH might consider that to be an innate part of them.

Humans sleeping or spending most of their time within a Hallowed Haven will passively generate Green/White mana, adding it to the standard mana generation for whichever land the Hallowed Haven is on. Each living Magical Girl or colored mage sleeping within a HH generates W/G while ordinary humans only produce a small fraction of that amount (less than 5%). Other animals don't seem to produce anything extra at all.

Hallowed Haven can be temporarily or permanently suppressed with sufficient physical force directed at its boundaries, although it should still provide early warning. Barrier strength (and spell cost) scales with the coverage of each Haven. Two touching havens will link to form a single one, enhancing barrier strength.

Unless you resort to force, you cannot dismantle Hallowed Haven once it has been cast; you receive no special treatment when it comes to undoing the effect.

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...Crap, I forgot how this ramps and acts as a defense. It might still be worse than Convoke, though. Convoke has a lot more versatility.

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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Agreed. They're both pretty damn far ahead of the competition IMO. Being able to efffectively ensure the safety of our allies and produce power is pretty tempting, but Convoke has it beat in terms of giving us raw power to work with on demand.

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.

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The thing is, you can still feed mana from animals and allies into enhancing the land, and also use the power from, for example, a lot of grass to greatly enhance the growth of a tree, or stuff like that. The sheer versatility is pretty damn useful. It's also useful in combat, and keeps us from needing to use our animals friends and risk their lives.

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 was going to make a joke involving half-stallions and whole-horses, but then I thought about it for a second, and decided that would just be confusing. Regardless, this is a pretty good summation of my feelings on the topic.

I like it.

Also were green white, were starting a cult anyway.

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"White-Green" and "cult" aren't synonyms.

Imagine how much people would pay us to Haven, say, an airport.

Screw military bases. Do you know how many people are in the security lines at la Guardia airport at any time?

Or the hospitals, too.

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Sadly, people could still be smuggling things other than weapons, so the TSA will still be needed. Also, we can't put a Haven on a plane, as far as I know, so they may still have to worry about hijackings.

If Convoke exhausts animals, what do you think happens to plants? At a guess, they either wilt slightly, or grow slower. Essentially, Convoke saps vitality, but not to a degree that causes lasting damage. My point was that using Convoke to power Rapid/Titanic Growth should lower net vitality if the mana donator and recipient are the same organism, because otherwise this trick could be used to generate infinite growth/mana. No way Alivaril would allow something like that.

While Convoke can be used to boost Green economy, I'm betting it mostly works by tapping 'external' sources that normally wouldn't contribute much to a land's Green mote production—people and animals. However, this still exhausts them, and the resulting growth needs quite a bit of space, so it doesn't scale the way HH does.

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See, the thing is, you can use the power from one plant to buff another. We could fuel the growth of the forests by using the power from poison ivy or other vines that tend to strangle trees, or invasive species like kudzu or dandelions to grow less harmful types of plants, or use the power from a mature tree to grow a younger one. Convoke is chock full of possibilities and options, and I love it for that.

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

Convoke is just too versatile for me not to want it. Power on demand, to use as we please, and it increases in power as we gain allies, or become well known enough for people around a fight to be willing to give us some power to work with. Hallowed Haven for the ramping and defense. It's definitely very powerful and scales quite nicely, but Convoke gives us more options in combat, as well as giving us more power to use on enhancing the Park. It's the difference between a jack-of-all-trades and a specialist, in my eyes. The rest are just kinda meh, IMO. Soulstone is rather impressive, SR is nice enough, but not super impressive, and Knight's Oath is way too specialized and niche for my tastes. I want a super-spell that's going to help us from the starting line, and be one we use often. Hence why I like Convoke.

 

[kitsune9]

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

I don't mind Convoke but I have no real desire to work with the government at such a scale. Working as a contractor I could do but joining them entirely I'm not interested.

The reason Hallowed Haven is second is because it works against us as well and doesn't work against witches.

 

[Nixeu]

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

I don't mind Convoke but I have no real desire to work with the government at such a scale. Working as a contractor I could do but joining them entirely I'm not interested.

The reason Hallowed Haven is second is because it works against us as well and doesn't work against witches.

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...It does, though? Not in that it makes them tame or whatever, but it does keep them out. Not that Witches are likely to be trying to get into a Haven on a regular basis, given that they stick to being inside their barriers a lot. Familiars are honestly probably more important to keep out.

I have a question for you all: which of these abilities do you guys actually think has the ability to make us strong enough to take on Kriemhild Gretchen? Or really matter against her? Because I'm not really seeing Knight's Oath ever becoming strong enough to really impact that fight significantly, the Raiment might keep us alive, but we're a support, and thus need allies to work well, and the Soulstone doesn't do much beyond let people survive in some form if we're not around. Hell, even the Haven might not be able to become strong enough to really impact that battle, aside from the ramping effect it has.

Convoke, though, lets us pull a DBZ and Spirit Bomb her, or summon a Wyrm, or whatever. Just something to consider.

 

[Vebyast]

I don't mind Convoke but I have no real desire to work with the government at such a scale. Working as a contractor I could do but joining them entirely I'm not interested.

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There are other options; that was just one route to power. It's been noted that we can Convoke from forests as well. How hard do you think it'd be to hire someone to fly us around repeatedly Convoking from some dense forest? Or we could just go public with our power and let people volunteer.

Or, even better, check this out:

You know how to use White to cure minor diseases, mitigate chronic illnesses, and heal small cuts...

(Ability Known: Heal [Rank 4])​

...Rapidly regenerate torn flesh and bone as long as there's still life left in your patient...

(Ability Known: Regenerate [Rank 5])​

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You know how people go on walks for the cure and participate in/donate to charity marathons and so on and so forth? Well, imagine that, except instead of sparking a bit of money donated to research, we walk down the street alternating between Convoking from volunteers and growing back peoples' missing arms and legs and eyes, curing sick children, and making sure the entire assembly goes home minus a bit of arthritis and back pain. On live TV.

This bit here:

You basically need to conquer the city. Oh, your family called it "allying as many Magical Girls as possible," but you've heard too many stories of MGs to actually buy that. You're sure some of them are fine and everything, but the others might as well be mafia members. Grief Seed tithes for living in their territory, "protection money" if they know you're rich enough, torturing or running off girls who don't comply, crushing any fermenting rebellions as ruthlessly as possible... really, it seems as though being a powerful MG and being a good person are mutually exclusive. You've resigned yourself to the fact that you'll probably need to align yourself with a local faction and pay their fees until you're stronger, more skilled, and have some friends willing to help you make your own faction.

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Convoke's biggest win is that it lets us skip that whole "align with a local faction" thing right from the start, because it means we can scale off of mundanes. And we have the best magic to demonstrate and are not horrifically traumatized and perpetually having a bad day like normal magical girls. There are tens or hundreds of thousands of mundanes for every magical girl and the Convoke+Healing combo is purpose-built for getting them all behind us.



Edit:

For the purposes of this spell, plants are always counted as "willing." You used to think your pets hated having Convoke used on them, but ever since you started offering treats, they've started to fight over the right to be tapped first.

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@Alivaril We're a Green mage with a mission to grow strong, healthy forests and a bunch of pets and plants, so we presumably we're pretty good at purely-mundane forestry and animal husbandry. We also presumably convoke from our pets and houseplants on a regular basis. Have we observed any long-term negative effects from Convoke? If so, how much mana does it cost to offset those effects using something like Rapid Growth, as a fraction of the mana we get from Convoking? How much mana does Convoking generate compared to the kind of simple existence that lets us draw mana from a forest?

edit edit: Right now, the MC estimates that it'd take her about a month to increase the production of Central Park; presumably that's using a decent chunk of her mana every day on Rapid Growth scaled to the entire park. If we took Convoke and put in roughly the same effort but taking advantage of our ability to Convoke, how much would it shave off our estimate of the time necessary to sufficiently encourage Central Park?

 

[Shard]

I had gotten the impression than Knight's Oath and Summer Raiment (the stuff from Black nearly winning) would be bonus stuff in addition to our White/Green combos.

 

[Alivaril]

@Alivaril We're a Green mage with a mission to grow strong, healthy forests and a bunch of pets and plants that we presumably convoke from on a regular basis. Have we observed any negative effects from Convoke being used regularly on an individual? If so, how much mana does it cost to use Rapid Growth to offset those effects, as a fraction of the mana we get from Convoking? How much mana does Convoking generate compared to the kind of simple existence that lets us draw mana from a forest?

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Using Convoke for Titanic Growth (considering renaming that since even I'm getting confused already) will always be a net loss. Using it for Rapid growth will slowly yield a net gain (temporary bonus vs. permanent one), but since Convoke effectively siphons off the mana reserves plants would reserve for lean periods, they have the potential to suffer more from droughts, loss of nutrients, injuries, and disease. In other words, once you pick up a Convoke project, don't stop monitoring it until a week or two after you've stopped using Convoke on it.

EDIT: Ah, I remember! Plan A was to call Titanic Growth "Growth Surge" before I forgot.

I had gotten the impression than Knight's Oath and Summer Raiment (the stuff from Black nearly winning) would be bonus stuff in addition to our White/Green combos.

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Yeah, I've been thinking about it and was about to post an announcement (you ninja, you). Specifically, I'm removing Summer Raiment as an option and am just going to give you a weakened Summer Raiment as a bonus spell. I don't like how all the others would have a significant impact on approaches while Summer Raiment just lets you keep doing what you'd keep doing anyway.

 

[zeromass]

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

 

[Vebyast]

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

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I see that you've put Convoke and Hallowed Haven at positions 4 and 5. Could I ask why, and what argument I might be able to make to change your minds about those?

 

[Mellithae]

Yeah, I've been thinking about it and was about to post an announcement (you ninja, you). Specifically, I'm removing Summer Raiment as an option and am just going to give you a weakened Summer Raiment as a bonus spell. I don't like how all the others would have a significant impact on approaches while Summer Raiment just lets you keep doing what you'd keep doing anyway.

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In light of this, minimally revised vote.

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

 

[Aetharian]

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

I like the idea of Hallowee Haven, is being able to have a place where we're just Safe no if's ands or buts about it, (Well, unless they use LOTS of physical force to break it) and it would be a great thing for our allies too, a place where they can just relax without having to worry about getting hurt? A place where they can't be hurt? It just seems nice to me.

 

[Past Dreams]

[1] Convoke
[2] Hallowed Haven
[3] Soul stone
[4] Knight's Oath

 

[Nixeu]

When the construct is dismissed (a process which takes about twenty seconds), any unused mana will return to those you pulled it from, decreasing their recovery time. Ruined constructs will not have any mana to yield and damaged (including ones which you summoned a while ago) constructs will yield a portion comparable to how much they've lost.

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Wait, hold the phone. Is this basically saying we can keep the Constructs around long enough that our allies would be recovered enough for another Convoke? Just how long can the Constructs last?

Here's another fun area where Convoke could really help out: post-battle healing. It probably wouldn't be hard to find volunteers to provide us with power to help us patch up wounded allies, or wounded civilians. Hell, we could probably draw power from the less wounded to heal the critically wounded, if need be. Or from a potted plant, or a service dog, or whatever.

Using Convoke for Titanic Growth (considering renaming that since even I'm getting confused already) will always be a net loss. Using it for Rapid growth will slowly yield a net gain (temporary bonus vs. permanent one), but since Convoke effectively siphons off the mana reserves plants would reserve for lean periods, they have the potential to suffer more from droughts, loss of nutrients, injuries, and disease. In other words, once you pick up a Convoke project, don't stop monitoring it until a week or two after you've stopped using Convoke on it.

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So, it could help in killing off invasive species, then. Excellent. Let the dandelion and kudzu genocide begin.

Yeah, I've been thinking about it and was about to post an announcement (you ninja, you). Specifically, I'm removing Summer Raiment as an option and am just going to give you a weakened Summer Raiment as a bonus spell. I don't like how all the others would have a significant impact on approaches while Summer Raiment just lets you keep doing what you'd keep doing anyway.

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Oh. Cool beans.

I like the idea of Hallowee Haven, is being able to have a place where we're just Safe no if's ands or buts about it, (Well, unless they use LOTS of physical force to break it) and it would be a great thing for our allies too, a place where they can just relax without having to worry about getting hurt? A place where they can't be hurt? It just seems nice to me.

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It's nice, but less useful for reaching our final goal of beating the apocalypse. Unless we Hallow all of NYC, I don't see us making something able to delay our intended foe for long. I would consider it lasting 30 seconds impressive, against Gretchen. Still not enough, though.

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

 

[Terence]

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