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Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)

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The problem I'm seeing is that Meizhen and Sun aren't static. Even if we do somehow become strong enough after breakthrough to stand up against the monster trio as they are NOW. Well... they've been in Green for a couple months more than us, and they're constantly growing stronger too. They're not static in strength.

By the time we're strong enough to match up against current Bai Meizhen and Sun Liling, Sun and Bai are still gonna be stronger than us. It's supposed to take us a couple of years or lot of luck/moon assistance to actually be completely at their level.
 
Heh, Green 2 vs Green 1 is a better setup than the current Green 1 vs late Yellow.

Besides, i believe it's well known that 1vs1 is a particular weakness of Ling Qi's build, more so if the fight starts a melee range as in traditional tournaments.
Elders must know that she's multiples times more effective in group fights (grp vs grp, 1 vs grp, grp vs 1), and her other speciality...

I think a lot of disciples nightmares start with:
"There are no Bindings I can not escape. There are no Traps i can not evade. There are no Doors i can not open. I am coming for you. Pleasant dreams..."

Adhoc vote count started by Ayashi on Dec 22, 2017 at 10:15 AM, finished with 747 posts and 102 votes.
  • [X] Plan Emerald Sea with Gan
    - [X] Use From Inventory: 3RSS, 1YSS, Highsun Pill, Skyblood Pill
    - [X] Buy and Use: Channel Cleansing Pill (2), Heavy Rains Pill (10), Clear Wind Pill (2), White Hart Elixir (6), Bright Sky Pill (2), Soaring Spirits Pill (6), Vigorous Sapling Pill (2), second wood pill (6), Bear Marrow Elixir (4), Bear's Heartsblood Elixir (10), Steady Growth Pill (8), Sturdy Oak Pill (18)
    - [X] Restock Restoratives: 1 Wellspring Pill (3)
    - [X] Total Spending: 13 (stones) + 76 (medicines) + 3 (restorative) = 92 RSS
    - [X] Overflow : Physical
    - [X] Grinning Moon Blessing : AE
    - [X] Hire a tutor
    -- [X] Stamina / TRF
    -- [X] Archery / FSA
    --[X] Train at the vent with Su Ling
    ---[X] Heart Meridian
    ---[X] Work on formations with Li Suyin, working on a project with your friend will be fun
    --- [X] Give the pen (from Renshu's base) to Suyin if we haven't already
    --[X] Explore and Train with Golden Fields
    ---[X] FZ
    --[X] Train with Meizhen
    ---[X] Spine Meridian
    - [X] Take a job
    -- [X] Appease the Forest
    --[X] Cai Renxiang is going to help you get your mothers legal troubles worked out, and give you a crash course on basic law to boot.
    ---[X] During the breaks in tutoring, mention to Cai you've been looking for "the fourth" Argent Art, which you suspect is Heavens/Earth.
    - [X] Gan Guangli is planning retaliation against Liling's raiders, you've been invited to participate.
    - [X] You need escape contingencies. Start working on that.
    ... and 7 more.
    [X] Plan Emerald Sea
    - [X] Use From Inventory: 3RSS, 1YSS, Highsun Pill, Skyblood Pill
    - [X] Buy and Use: Channel Cleansing Pill (2), Heavy Rains Pill (10), Clear Wind Pill (2), White Hart Elixir (6), Bright Sky Pill (2), Soaring Spirits Pill (6), Vigorous Sapling Pill (2), second wood pill (6), Bear Marrow Elixir (4), Bear's Heartsblood Elixir (10), Steady Growth Pill (8), Sturdy Oak Pill (18)
    - [X] Restock Restoratives: 1 Wellspring Pill (3)
    - [X] Total Spending: 13 (stones) + 76 (medicines) + 3 (restorative) = 92 RSS
    - [X] Overflow : Physical
    - [X] Grinning Moon Blessing : AE
    - [X] Hire a tutor
    -- [X] Stamina / TRF
    -- [X] Archery / FSA
    --[X] Train at the vent with Su Ling
    ---[X] Heart Meridian
    ---[X] Work on formations with Li Suyin, working on a project with your friend will be fun
    --- [X] Give the pen (from Renshu's base) to Suyin if we haven't already
    --[X] Explore and Train with Golden Fields
    ---[X] FZ
    --[X] Train with Meizhen
    ---[X] Spine Meridian
    - [X] Take a job
    -- [X] Appease the Forest
    --[X] Cai Renxiang is going to help you get your mothers legal troubles worked out, and give you a crash course on basic law to boot.
    - [X] The Ma sisters are pleasant enough to be around. Why don't you invite Su Ling to join you in sparring with them, she needs to get out more.
    -- [X] Assuming Meizhen agrees, share Growing Cavern with the Ma sisters
    - [X] You need escape contingencies. Start working on that.
    ... and 6 more.
    [X] Girl's night out with Lan Lan
    [X] Plan Dragons, not Wolves
    -[X] Use From Inventory: 3RSS, 1YSS, Highsun Pill
    -[X] Buy and Use: Channel Cleansing Pill (2), Heavy Rains Pill (10), Clear Wind Pill (2), White Hart Elixir (6), Bright Sky Pill (2), Soaring Spirits Pill (6), Vigorous Sapling Pill (2), second wood pill (6), Bear Marrow Elixir (4), Bear's Heartsblood Elixir (10), Steady Growth Pill (8), Sturdy Oak Pill (18)
    -[X] Total Spending: 13 (stones) + 76 (medicines) = 89 RSS
    -[X] Grinning Moon bonus -> FZ
    -[X]Overflow : Physical
    -[X] Research Dragons, and how one might be appeased
    -[X] Train at the vent with Su Ling
    --[X]Heart Meridian
    --[X] (Minor) Work on formations with Li Suyin, working on a project with your friend will be fun
    --[X] (Minor) The Ma sisters are pleasant enough to be around. Why don't you invite Su Ling to join you in sparring with them, she needs to get out more.
    -[X] Train with Meizhen
    --[X] Spine Meridian
    -[X] Explore and Train with Golden Fields
    --[X] Arm Meridian
    ---[X] Note: open this Meridian after the other two
    -[X] Hire a tutor (gives -1 minor, +1 major)
    --[X] Archery / Falling Star Art
    --[X] Stamina / Thousand Ring Fortress
    -[X] (Minor) You need escape contingencies. Start working on that.
    -[X] (Minor) Cai Renxiang is going to help you get your mothers legal troubles worked out, and give you a crash course on basic law to boot.
    ---[X] During the breaks in tutoring, mention to Cai you've been looking for "the fourth" Argent Art, which you suspect is Heavens/Earth.
    [X] Plan Emerald Sea with Lan Lan
    - [X] Use From Inventory: 3RSS, 1YSS, Highsun Pill, Skyblood Pill
    - [X] Buy and Use: Channel Cleansing Pill (2), Heavy Rains Pill (10), Clear Wind Pill (2), White Hart Elixir (6), Bright Sky Pill (2), Soaring Spirits Pill (6), Vigorous Sapling Pill (2), second wood pill (6), Bear Marrow Elixir (4), Bear's Heartsblood Elixir (10), Steady Growth Pill (8), Sturdy Oak Pill (18)
    - [X] Restock Restoratives: 1 Wellspring Pill (3)
    - [X] Total Spending: 13 (stones) + 76 (medicines) + 3 (restorative) = 92 RSS
    - [X] Overflow : Physical
    - [X] Grinning Moon Blessing : AE
    - [X] Hire a tutor
    -- [X] Stamina / TRF
    -- [X] Archery / FSA
    --[X] Train at the vent with Su Ling
    ---[X] Heart Meridian
    ---[X] Work on formations with Li Suyin, working on a project with your friend will be fun
    --- [X] Give the pen (from Renshu's base) to Suyin if we haven't already
    --[X] Explore and Train with Golden Fields
    ---[X] FZ
    --[X] Train with Meizhen
    ---[X] Spine Meridian
    - [X] Take a job
    -- [X] Appease the Forest
    --[X] Cai Renxiang is going to help you get your mothers legal troubles worked out, and give you a crash course on basic law to boot.
    --[X] You never did get to go out have a night on the proverbial town with Xiulan, see if she's still up for that
    - [X] You need escape contingencies. Start working on that.
    [X] Plan Emerald Sea with Lan Lan
    - [X] Use From Inventory: 3RSS, 1YSS, Highsun Pill, Skyblood Pill
    - [X] Buy and Use: Channel Cleansing Pill (2), Heavy Rains Pill (10), Clear Wind Pill (2), White Hart Elixir (6), Bright Sky Pill (2), Soaring Spirits Pill (6), Vigorous Sapling Pill (2), second wood pill (6), Bear Marrow Elixir (4), Bear's Heartsblood Elixir (10), Steady Growth Pill (8), Sturdy Oak Pill (18)
    - [X] Restock Restoratives: 1 Wellspring Pill (3)
    - [X] Total Spending: 13 (stones) + 76 (medicines) + 3 (restorative) = 92 RSS
    - [X] Overflow : Physical
    - [X] Grinning Moon Blessing : AE
    - [X] Hire a tutor
    -- [X] Stamina / TRF
    -- [X] Archery / FSA
    --[X] Train at the vent with Su Ling
    ---[X] Heart Meridian
    ---[X] Work on formations with Li Suyin, working on a project with your friend will be fun
    --- [X] Give the pen (from Renshu's base) to Suyin if we haven't already
    --[X] Explore and Train with Golden Fields
    ---[X] FZ
    --[X] Train with Meizhen
    ---[X] Spine Meridian
    - [X] Take a job
    -- [X] Appease the Forest
    --[X] Cai Renxiang is going to help you get your mothers legal troubles worked out, and give you a crash course on basic law to boot.
    --[X] You never did get to go out have a night on the proverbial town with Xiulan, see if she's still up for that
    - [X] You need escape contingencies. Start working on that.
    [X] Plan Emerald Sea
    - [X] Use From Inventory: 3RSS, 1YSS, Highsun Pill, Skyblood Pill
    - [X] Buy and Use: Channel Cleansing Pill (2), Heavy Rains Pill (10), Clear Wind Pill (2), White Hart Elixir (6), Bright Sky Pill (2), Soaring Spirits Pill (6), Vigorous Sapling Pill (2), second wood pill (6), Bear Marrow Elixir (4), Bear's Heartsblood Elixir (10), Steady Growth Pill (8), Sturdy Oak Pill (18)
    - [X] Restock Restoratives: 1 Wellspring Pill (3)
    - [X] Total Spending: 13 (stones) + 76 (medicines) + 3 (restorative) = 92 RSS
    - [X] Overflow : Physical
    - [X] Grinning Moon Blessing : AE
    - [X] Hire a tutor
    -- [X] Stamina / TRF
    -- [X] Archery / FSA
    --[X] Train at the vent with Su Ling
    ---[X] Heart Meridian
    ---[X] Work on formations with Li Suyin, working on a project with your friend will be fun
    --- [X] Give the pen (from Renshu's base) to Suyin if we haven't already
    --[X] Explore and Train with Golden Fields
    ---[X] FZ
    --[X] Train with Meizhen
    ---[X] Spine Meridian
    - [X] Take a job
    -- [X] Appease the Forest
    --[X] Cai Renxiang is going to help you get your mothers legal troubles worked out, and give you a crash course on basic law to boot.
    - [X] The Ma sisters are pleasant enough to be around. Why don't you invite Su Ling to join you in sparring with them, she needs to get out more.
    -- [X] Assuming Meizhen agrees, share Growing Cavern with the Ma sisters
    - [X] You need escape contingencies. Start working on that.
    - [X] Use From Inventory: 3RSS, 1YSS, Highsun Pill, Skyblood Pill
    - [X] Buy and Use: Channel Cleansing Pill (2), Heavy Rains Pill (10), Clear Wind Pill (2), White Hart Elixir (6), Bright Sky Pill (2), Soaring Spirits Pill (6), Vigorous Sapling Pill (2), second wood pill (6), Bear Marrow Elixir (4), Bear's Heartsblood Elixir (10), Steady Growth Pill (8), Sturdy Oak Pill (18)
    - [X] Restock Restoratives: 1 Wellspring Pill (3)
    - [X] Total Spending: 13 (stones) + 76 (medicines) + 3 (restorative) = 92 RSS
    - [X] Overflow : Physical
    - [X] Grinning Moon Blessing : AE
    - [X] Hire a tutor
    -- [X] Stamina / TRF
    -- [X] Archery / FSA
    --[X] Train at the vent with Su Ling
    ---[X] Heart Meridian
    ---[X] Work on formations with Li Suyin, working on a project with your friend will be fun
    --- [X] Give the pen (from Renshu's base) to Suyin if we haven't already
    --[X] Explore and Train with Golden Fields
    ---[X] FZ
    --[X] Train with Meizhen
    ---[X] Spine Meridian
    - [X] Take a job
    -- [X] Appease the Forest
    --[X] Cai Renxiang is going to help you get your mothers legal troubles worked out, and give you a crash course on basic law to boot.
    ---[X] During the breaks in tutoring, mention to Cai you've been looking for "the fourth" Argent Art, which you suspect is Heavens/Earth.
    - [X] Gan Guangli is planning retaliation against Liling's raiders, you've been invited to participate.
    - [X] You need escape contingencies. Start working on that.
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On Abyssal Exhalation, I'm of the personal opinion that as we improve our mastery over it we'd have different Dwellers From Below available than just worms if its summoning focused, or the mist becomes that much nastier.

Also its use of Power, based on @yrsillar mentioning of Flying Swords, there are certain 'weapon' skills that are very valuable at higher levels which you can't really USE at all at Red. Power, as the spiritual attack stat, is likely one of these skills, because well...we're doing a spiritual debuff build overall.

Would we have the luxury of ignoring the spiritual debuff offense mode entirely?
So training Power is short term suboptimal, but even at the mid term at Green I can already see quite a few of our arts picking up Power options if we want to expand our debuff role. Of course its weak. Lower level cultivators can't slam people with their soul at all.
 
Codex said:
The problem I'm seeing is that Meizhen and Sun aren't static. Even if we do somehow become strong enough after breakthrough to stand up against the monster trio as they are NOW. Well... they've been in Green for a couple months more than us, and they're constantly growing stronger too. They're not static in strength.

By the time we're strong enough to match up against current Bai Meizhen and Sun Liling, Sun and Bai are still gonna be stronger than us. It's supposed to take us a couple of years or lot of luck/moon assistance to actually be completely at their level.
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I'd say their biggest advantage are their spirit beasts. Zhengui is very unlikely to get to Green before the tournament, I think, and even if he does he'd still have much, much less time to learn to express his abilities than their own spirit beasts.

Monster themselves, though, we could thereotically close a large part of the gap. Taking Meizhen as an example, she got to late yellow week 5, we got there week 24. She had mastered 4 arts to the limit of her cultivation and 4 others to a limited degree week 15, we should have, if we are lucky, mastered 5 arts to the limit of our cultivation week 35 and 4 others to a limited degree. She broke through to green week 19, and if we are lucky we should break through week 37. That's roughly 18 weeks behind her in pure cultivation at first, and now we are catching up both in numbers of arts at equivalent level but also cultivation to week 37 (maybe even better, as we'll have 6 arts mastered to the limit of our cultivation when breaking through).

While Meizhen herself has the same access we do to superior sites (Black Pool, hopefully Mystic Vale), the other monsters should not, and CRX lags a bit behind Sun Liling, cultivation wise. If we play things right, I think we should be able to get, by the tournament, at the equivalent of Sun Liling week 45 or so.

So... she would still be significantly stronger than us, but considering how cultivation take longer and longer, there are hopes that she would not have arts to Foundation Green, but rather just have more arts to Appraisal than us.

Obviously, all of this depends on how good our breakthrough is, how long it takes to get to appraisal (and if it takes too long, it might not be worth it), and so on.
 
Okay. Now that we have talked a lot about generalist vs specialist. Do you happen to have actual wog, better than the one we already got IC with archer sempai, that say that generalist isn't inferior?

Because otherwise, the whole debate is meaningless.
 
PrimalShadow said:
Yes. We just have to make all of our spiritual debuffs music based so we can boost that instead.
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And improving Ling Qi's ability to whack people with the force of her soul doesn't strike you as a natural outgrowth of that? Music and Expression are methods for using Ling Qi's soul to whack people already, but I wouldn't be surprised if some higher arts or higher realms gave the ability to use multiple masteries.

Though, that's speculative and an entirely mechanical guess. So even I don't give it that much weight...it's just what I expect.

And Power has not been and will probably not be the first mastery Ling Qi needs to train from scratch. Resilience may be defensive but it required an Art to even allow its training. Even if it is short-term optimal to ignore Power, from a narrative view, Zeqing describes stuff like 'meter' and 'beat' as 'crutches' even though, to us mortals, the organisation of sounds through time is music. There's something more fundamental for higher-realm music, like Ling Qi's small bits of music-sense this week. If flying swords are training wheels then what's the kiddy stuff like 'actually playing an instrument like a pleb with no access to the real universe'? That sounds like Ling Qi'll need something like Power.

And maybe Expression is enough for accessing that fundamental music...but we don't know for sure either way.
 
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tricholysis said:
And Power has not been and will probably not be the first mastery Ling Qi needs to train from scratch.
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The problem is not in needing to train Power from scratch. That is a bother, sure, but in the grand scheme of things one more Mastery to train isn't the biggest deal.

The problem is that the things that if we want to boost AE, we have to invest in spiritual attack, rather then the much-more-build-fitting music. We already see the antisynergy even with our single music art: physical melee attacks via FVM don't benefit from spiritual boosts. And it will get FAR worse as we go. What happens if we get a music art that boosts our defenses? What about a utility art, like, say, summoning? (It should be noted here that despite being a summoning art among other things, the summoning component of AE does not benefit from spiritual attack.) None of that would work with Spiritual attack boosts, but it WOULD work with boost to music.


Now, if you don't want to go Bard!Qi, then I can understand it - but if we are going for a music build, we shouldn't be going for AE.
 
Uhh, I am pretty sure that the music attack is melee spiritual, I am pretty sure that yrsillar mentioned it roughly around when Ling got that ability.
 
Ayashi said:
Elders must know that she's multiples times more effective in group fights (grp vs grp, 1 vs grp, grp vs 1), and her oth
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Yes, but I doubt they care enough to change the format for the sake a commoner.

"You're not spec'ed for the contest? Too bad- you had the entire year to learn the format of the tournament. Better luck next year."

Which is why, again, I think we need to find a way to boost single target debuffs.
 
PrimalShadow said:
Nope. It is melee physical. We have WoG on the subject. That is why we can use it with the AS counterattack, which requires physical melee.
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Found the quote you were talking about:

PrimalShadow said:
@yrsillar - is playing Music a Physical Melee Attack, a Spiritual Melee Attack, or something else?
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yrsillar said:
Physical melee
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Though the fact that shouting 'listen to my song' and hitting the opponent with the manifestation of your soul is a physical attack is kinda weird to me.
 
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SITB said:
Found the quote you were talking about:





Though the fact that shouting 'listen to my song' and hitting the opponent with the manifestation of your soul is a physical attack is kinda weird to me.
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It's generated by our soul, but it hits someone physically. If they can block or dodge it like a regular melee attack then it's physical. And that's how it works. It's a concussive blast generated by our soul.
 
Codex said:
It's generated by our soul, but it hits someone physically. If they can block or dodge it like a regular melee attack then it's physical. And that's how it works. It's a concussive blast generated by our soul.
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The music attack specifically doesn't care about any other external obstacles and directly hits the opponent soul, it's not a sonic blast or whatever.

I mean, Xiulan throws physical fire at people, does that count as physical attack? FVM directly attacks the opponent mind and rolls spiritual dice, yet a technique that is a direct growth from that art is physical?

I genuinely don't understand why.
 
SITB said:
Though the fact that shouting 'listen to my song' and hitting the opponent with the manifestation of your soul is a physical attack is kinda weird to me.
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I thought it was weird as well. However, upon further consideration, I can kinda see why it works.

Remember that the Music upgrade to FVM didn't come directly from FVM; it came from our insights in the snowstorm-survival-trial thing that Lady Zeqing arranged for us. So really, I'd say that FVM direct-attack capability comes from the meridian we got before it was converted to Music - that is, Thunder. Which is why it makes sense to be physical; it is a sonic attack.

SITB said:
I mean, Xiulan throws physical fire at people, does that count as physical attack?
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Yes, it does, according to @yrsillar. Apparently attacks are classed by whether they inflict physical or spiritual damage, and fire is physical damage. If Xiulan hit someone with a metaphorical fire which caused agony and burnt Qi without dealing direct injury, then that would be a Spiritual Attack.
 
SITB said:
The music attack specifically doesn't care about any other external obstacles and directly hits the opponent soul, it's not a sonic blast or whatever.

I mean, Xiulan throws physical fire at people, does that count as physical attack? FVM directly attacks the opponent mind and rolls spiritual dice, yet a technique that is a direct growth from that art is physical?

I genuinely don't understand why.
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I'll let Yrs speak for me:
yrsillar said:
Kind of strange that a silk dress would provide armor at all :p

to be less pithy. Essentially the formations that create 'armor' as a mechanical effect defend against all forms of physical trauma. So like Xiulan's fireblasts are physical attacks, so are Cai's lazors. Elegy is a spiritual attack, Meizhen's aura is a spiritual attack, and so are Su Ling's illusions, though they have a physical component in the fire half of things.
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The whole "soul attack" angle is purely musical. Our music has the ability to affect people using sound protection and even deaf people, and that's because we play music directly to them. But when we're releasing sound blasts, the blasts are a form of physical trauma and are basically the same as Xiulan's fire and Cai's lazers, both of which are also spiritually generated.
 
Klaus said:
It doesn't use anything to land its attacks. None of its techniques require landing an attack to work.
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AtW requires one to win a clash. You can use something like archery on this clash, making it more likely you'll succeed if it's a skill you're good at.

Encircling Winds can be used with a projectile attack to include the caster in the bonuses. Again, having this projectile attack actually be good is obviously a boon.
 
veekie said:
On Abyssal Exhalation, I'm of the personal opinion that as we improve our mastery over it we'd have different Dwellers From Below available than just worms if its summoning focused, or the mist becomes that much nastier.

Also its use of Power, based on @yrsillar mentioning of Flying Swords, there are certain 'weapon' skills that are very valuable at higher levels which you can't really USE at all at Red. Power, as the spiritual attack stat, is likely one of these skills, because well...we're doing a spiritual debuff build overall.

Would we have the luxury of ignoring the spiritual debuff offense mode entirely?
So training Power is short term suboptimal, but even at the mid term at Green I can already see quite a few of our arts picking up Power options if we want to expand our debuff role. Of course its weak. Lower level cultivators can't slam people with their soul at all.
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PrimalShadow said:
Yes. We just have to make all of our spiritual debuffs music based so we can boost that instead.
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Actually, Power is basically the skill that most everyone who use spiritual use to generate their attacks. There is nothing 'special' about it, even in red.

However, I have been thinking for a while that Skills/Masteries and maybe even attributes should have a bigger impact on arts. I pitched to @yrsillar a while ago that he probably should give heavy penalties, and hopefully bottlenecks, to learning arts you don't have the necessary skills at high enough level.

Following this, I could totally see some dispel musical art in green having significant penality to learn if we don't have Power 5+/Expression5+, and that art to us Manipulation + Power + Expression, rather than just Manipulation + Expression. Or, I guess, Power+Expression if there is a worry of 'hybrid' arts having too many dice by being able to stack multiple skills... but I believe that skills ought to be made more powerful, so I don't think that's bad. The issue would be that there would then have to be ways to upgrade weapon specific Arts so that they would also use multiple masteries later on, but that shouldn't be too hard.

It fits well with the idea that red/yellow is the babies stage of cultivation, and that later on you need better and better foundation to even learn anything.
 
Black Noise said:
Something to consider, archery is likely to be inherently weaker than melee at close/mid-close range for a similar investment, or else why would anyone bother with melee at all.

A dedicated archer like that tutor can still be useful at those ranges, but they won't match a peer with a melee spec build there, and even staying effective requires style adjustments and cost at least the defensive value of a long range.

The relevance to us is that close/mid music + archery is likely weaker at short-mid range than music + melee, with the tradeoff cost of not having offensive mid-long range options other than stealth (us) or gap-closing with high defense (Meizhen, Liling).
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From a game balance perspective, this is not true. Someone who wants to use swords will need one art to let them be good at sword-ing and another art to let them attack at range. The archer needs an art to be good at archery in general and then another art to make short range archery competitive with sword + sword art. The archer gets a little bonus efficiency because they can stack everything into their archery skill and their investments into the bow, but it's not a massive savings (and you can buy swords that make you better at fireball).

IMO it's evened out by archery not benefiting from melee buffs even when in melee range. Since Ling Qi doesn't have amazing melee buffs, it's quite likely that (bow + FSA + close range archery art) is going to be better than (flute + AC + flute combat art).
 
jacobk said:
From a game balance perspective, this is not true. Someone who wants to use swords will need one art to let them be good at sword-ing and another art to let them attack at range. The archer needs an art to be good at archery in general and then another art to make short range archery competitive with sword + sword art. The archer gets a little bonus efficiency because they can stack everything into their archery skill and their investments into the bow, but it's not a massive savings (and you can buy swords that make you better at fireball).
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That's... wrong?

First of all you're assuming a melee spec will want a ranged attack, which isn't obvious (e.g Meizhen), and is clearly viable and scales with melee if desired (Liling) instead of some fireball-enhancing sword.

Less range-inclined melee builds either have dedicated anti-ranged capability (think personal defensive FZ), or trust their defense and gap-close enough to just not care about not having a ranged option.

Other than that, archery has the following advantages over melee:
- Not open to counters and other zero-range effects
- no need to close to zero range to deal damage (useful for keep-away kiting and for multiple opponents)
- can actually deal damage over at significant distance (multiple move-turns)

From a game-balance perspective, the above advantages must come at notable disadvantages compared to melee.

Here are some options of what they might look like:
  • melee arts inherently come with a defensive/support component at no loss of power (might be the case: all melee arts we have or know of, including ASA and Ice Wraith, indicate this is the case. Not even mentioning the bullshit that is Meizhen's Mantle or Liling's Armor)
  • melee techs are significantly cheaper (not true given FSA costs)
  • melee techs are significantly stronger (higher +dmg, more attacks for flurries, better dice, on-hit effects etc. Probably false or the gap isn't huge if true)
  • melee range allows for stronger CC effects (taunt, lockdown, intercept... seems mostly true, but requires a specific art focus; ranged has analogous options like trick arrows)
  • only melee arts can have counters (false if TR from AS works with bow, which is likely)

To me It seems obvious that a similar-investment archery style, no matter how* you try to make it suitable for close-range would lose in some capacity to a dedicated melee spec.

* there obviously exist exceptions in a Xianxia world with arts that are basically "a sword art that uses a bow instead" or "an archery art for the melee spearthrower", we're not talking about those here.

Edit: clarity
 
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Black Noise said:
That's... wrong?
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No, it's right.

First of all you're assuming a melee spec will want a ranged attack, which isn't obvious (e.g Meizhen), and is clearly viable and scales with melee if desired (Liling) instead of some fireball-enhancing sword.

Less range-inclined melee builds either have dedicated anti-ranged capability (think personal defensive FZ), or trust their defense and gap-close enough to just not care about not having a ranged option.

Other than that, archery has the following advantages over melee:
- Not open to counters and other zero-range effects
- no need to close to zero range to deal damage (useful for keep-away kiting and for multiple opponents)
- can actually deal damage over at significant distance (multiple move-turns)

From a game-balance perspective, the above advantages must come at notable disadvantages compared to melee.
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All three of those advantages are the same advantage: the archer can attack from range. In order for an attack at range to be viable at all the archer needs to have picked up a ranged archery art. If a guy with a sword wants to attack from range, he can pick up a ranged attack art (i.e. Ji Rong's hadoken). He then enjoys all three of the advantages you describe. If the short ranged archery art is equal to the sword art and the long ranged archery art is equal to the long range art, both the archer and the sword + hadoken (or whatever) guy will be on a level playing field.

The balance isn't "archery vs. sword." It's "short range tech + long range tech vs. short range tech + long range tech."

In reality the arts will not be identical but as long as they're roughly equivalent there's no game balance issues. If the sword guy wants to pass up on the fireball and double down on sword arts, then he will be better in melee than the archer. This won't be because archery is inherently weaker on an art for art basis, but because he's more focused on melee. He will then suffer from the disadvantage of not being able to attack at range, but again it isn't a game balance issue: it's a choice made in his build.

Archery that is done without a short range enabling archery art should indeed be weaker in close range than a melee art. But an archer picking up a single tech that allows him to fight at parity with a single tech sword fighter is no more OP than a sword fighter with a single long range tech that hits as hard as a single tech archer.

It's probably easier to stack multiple melee arts than it is to stack multiple short range archery arts, but as I said I think that is balanced by the fact that the archer is single-weapon dependent.
 
Black Noise said:
From a game-balance perspective, the above advantages must come at notable disadvantages compared to melee
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Well, in reality the key disadvantages were accuracy and damage were they not? If it is hard to hit a moving target, and arrows don't do enough damage to reliably drop someone before they can reach you, then melee is viable against ranged.

I would argue, for instance, that it should actually be really hard to hit a moving cultivator at range. Heck, if you think about it long range archery should basically be restricted to sniping stationary targets, because if they're moving you're more likely to run out of qi than drop them.
 
Erebeal said:
I would argue, for instance, that it should actually be really hard to hit a moving cultivator at range. Heck, if you think about it long range archery should basically be restricted to sniping stationary targets, because if they're moving you're more likely to run out of qi than drop them.
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That's where the long-range archery arts com into play. Unlike with a normal arrow or a mid-range art, they make the arrow speed so fast that the arget is essentially stationary, or they allow you to shoot homing arrows. So the qi is never wasted on shots that miss without a clash or because of a heavily penalized clash.
The limitation you are looking for would be that, as Ling Qi was taught, they require long-range perception arts to perceive and lock onto the target, which would probably have extra qi cost.

I also think that as the level increases, the qi cost must go seriously up. You cannot really justify a light-speed arrow shot from some kilometers away to do the same damage for the same qi that a sword strike at close quarters.
 
This is Xianxia, I think which weapon you use matters less and less as you climb higher up the ladder. And there are probably sword arts that let you slice something kilometers away.
 
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