Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)

[Thor's Twin]

While formations have their uses puppets overall are ill suited to a support build because they don't receive all the bonuses from the arts.

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I'm confused, what do you mean when you say that "[puppets] are ill-suited to a support build because they don't receive all the bonuses from the arts?"

I mean, the puppets that are being talked about are independent enough to receive the buffs from all of our support arts. They register as their own identity on the turn order and can do their own thing, so they get the full benefit of our support arts.

So, I'm not sure where you got the idea that puppets are not supported by support arts.

 

[AbeoLogos]

Of course. However with a total of 0 actions taken to get to that level that is pretty good. It's amazing! What if we spent some time working on them to reduce costs and lengthen their operational span. Man what an idea.

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We actually did do that. Made them more expensive, iirc.

You're not listening. Practically everyone has been saying scouts=good. The scouts are not the problem. The problem is the Horror depends on mass deployment of the scouts, which doesn't serve a practical purpose for us.

 

[archangis]

Alternatively instead of using immoral methods for making puppets practical over time we can simply make use of the large pool of cultivators available to the heir of a duchy, and/or simple chance to build up a unit of cultivators who will forge a legend. Admittedly it is something that require patience, and a willingness to build up a reputation that attracts talent.

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If we are using human sacrifices, high level curses are probably a much better use of the humans than feeding them to scouts.

The curse, not finished and AOE was already in and by itself an impressive combat debuff. Using something similar on a barbarian army/invasion would be more of a game changer than anything a green level cultivator could do.

 

[TehChron]

Guardians are pretty great as well

That whole "passive defense of a location" surely counts towards, you know

Passives

 

[Neshuakadal]

You're not listening. Practically everyone has been saying scouts=good. The scouts are not the problem. The problem is the Horror depends on mass deployment of the scouts, which doesn't serve a practical purpose for us.

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And yet I also feel that you are not listening. Funny.

The question is, are the scouts good enough? If they are not then we should spend time improving them. If they are then frankly we will never use them. The horror becomes better as the cost of scouts goes down. You just said we need a massive amount of scouts for the horror. If we reduce the cost of the scouts then we reduce the cost of the horror by X where X is the number of scouts used.

The horror serves a purpose of remote strikes agaist targets that we can not easily reach. Getting 21 mouse sized things to an area is way easier then getting a single human even if that humans is stealth based. The reason? Because the scouts level off of our stealth so as we get stealthier so do they. They have a small sized which massively increases their stealth roles.

 

[Erebeal]

Anyway, on a different subject...

First some small corrections:

On the offensive side, we've maxed out Fleeting Zephyr and Falling Stars Art, and we're at the Fourth Flow of Argent Current and the Third Rumble of Argent Storm.

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Honestly, those arts are all kind of irrelevant to our offense these days. Our offense is spiritual music - FVM and FSS. Even if we got a better bow, and upgraded FSA, we'd still be looking at a ~9 dice deficit due to our spirit bonuses and flying sword. And AC and AS just really don't add much value to our offense at all. We don't need "music arts that work with our basic attacks" because we have HC to attack with. Also, PLR, not PLM, AE is getting to 4, and FSS is at 2.

Anyway, the point that we're going to be replacing a lot of our art suite soon is an important one. There are additions I'd like - more stealth, more music, maybe another dance art. We'll need to replace bits of our support suite (FZ, AC), and that should be relatively easy. We'll need to replace AM - that will probably be harder. I suspect that we'll end up covering its hole in our build with two arts - a dedicated area spiritual defense art (we want this to fill out our support suite and stop our minions from being wrecked by things like us anyway), and a more normal perception-y perception art.

We'll want to look at how we fill out our support suite. TRF continues to be great (though it too will be replaced next year). Argent Pulse (which we'll likely get), sounds fairly defensive focused as well? We kind of want to cover physical and spiritual defense, spiritual and physical offense, and movement and stealth (particularly useful for us given our focus).... This is a lot. Kinda tempted to limit the offense here. We might even want to not bother with physical/melee attack buffs and instead just use our debuffs to support those things in fights. Spiritual buff on the other hand is good since it helps us land our debuffs to start with. A music-based spiritual buff art might work particularly well there.

Edit:
On a fun note, here's a chart of our cultivation growth:

Witness our rise to greatness!

 

[Neshuakadal]

Anyway, on a different subject...

First some small corrections:

Honestly, those arts are all kind of irrelevant to our offense these days. Our offense is spiritual music - FVM and FSS. Even if we got a better bow, and upgraded FSA, we'd still be looking at a ~9 dice deficit due to our spirit bonuses and flying sword. And AC and AS just really don't add much value to our offense at all. We don't need "music arts that work with our basic attacks" because we have HC to attack with. Also, PLR, not PLM, AE is getting to 4, and FSS is at 2.

Anyway, the point that we're going to be replacing a lot of our art suite soon is an important one. There are additions I'd like - more stealth, more music, maybe another dance art. We'll need to replace bits of our support suite (FZ, AC), and that should be relatively easy. We'll need to replace AM - that will probably be harder. I suspect that we'll end up covering its hole in our build with two arts - a dedicated area spiritual defense art (we want this to fill out our support suite and stop our minions from being wrecked by things like us anyway), and a more normal perception-y perception art.

We'll want to look at how we fill out our support suite. TRF continues to be great (though it too will be replaced next year). Argent Pulse (which we'll likely get), sounds fairly defensive focused as well? We kind of want to cover physical and spiritual defense, spiritual and physical offense, and movement and stealth (particularly useful for us given our focus).... This is a lot. Kinda tempted to limit the offense here. We might even want to not bother with physical/melee attack buffs and instead just use our debuffs to support those things in fights. Spiritual buff on the other hand is good since it helps us land our debuffs to start with. A music-based spiritual buff art might work particularly well there.

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You are going to a really hard fight if this is the direction you want to go. I don't think most people want to drop TRF or AM. I certainly don't.

 

[Erebeal]

You are going to a really hard fight if this is the direction you want to go. I don't think most people want to drop TRF or AM. I certainly don't.

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It's not about dropping them. They're going to be mastered, and we can't count on getting direct upgrades. Like, hell, TRF+ would be great! Not sure we can actually get it though. AM? Maybe, given we're at the Sect, but it's a bad idea. AM is a really great art. It is also a godawful fit for our build that causes us a lot of trouble. It is also a dead art since we can't teach it to anyone once we leave the sect, and won't be able to develop it any further. Getting perception arts that we can actually integrate into our style, and teach to our family etc. is something we have to do at some point.

Actually, there's another note there: it's kind of tempting to grab a bunch of low level arts here while we're at the Sect so we can teach people and our family things. Our low-level art library, once you remove the argent arts, is really very limited - and has huge holes like a complete lack of perception arts. I would actually be tempted to try to find a perception art that starts at low levels and continues up and learn that, just because that would have a lot of long term value for us.

 

[DeAnno]

Anyway, the point that we're going to be replacing a lot of our art suite soon is an important one. There are additions I'd like - more stealth, more music, maybe another dance art. We'll need to replace bits of our support suite (FZ, AC), and that should be relatively easy. We'll need to replace AM - that will probably be harder. I suspect that we'll end up covering its hole in our build with two arts - a dedicated area spiritual defense art (we want this to fill out our support suite and stop our minions from being wrecked by things like us anyway), and a more normal perception-y perception art.

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As much as I'm lukewarm on the Argents in general, I think AM is fairly efficient at what it does for us, even if it does it in kind of a so-so underpowered way for a while. As you say, we would likely need to replace one art with two, so I would put this at the bottom of my priority list for general shuffling.

I think I said this before somewhere, but it bears repeating. My list of Art wants next year pretty much goes:

0) Before we consider any active arts, I think we should definitely be improving our base cultivation and cultivation art with extreme prejudice to start next year. This isn't just because we've been waiting on it, but because we have a pretty effective, if ramshackle, Art suite RIGHT NOW and rather than patch holes with lower level Arts, I'd rather ride this until the wheels come off a bit more and get better Arts at higher CL when they do.

I'm thinking an action each on Physical/Spiritual (with those combo pills to save money), and whatever linear combination of Argent Genesis and EPC makes sense to do. IMO we should earmark 3/5 of our actions to this purpose at every turn at least until CL 8 on both sides, maybe CL 9.

1) A Domain Weapon Art, something defensive in nature to protect our glass cannon Domain weapon with, or something to stealth it, or generally make it less of a giant target. This replaces the functionality of nothing, and we still open meridians easily, so I would make this my first priority. This is a new Art I wouldnt mind getting and training immediately.

2) A dedicated stealth art. SCS serves some of this purpose right now, and is still a ways from completion, but stealth is a major focus and could use more investment. Another possible new Art I wouldn't mind training.

3) A dedicated summoning art. This is a step behind the first two, because AE is already a sort of "good enough" summoning art. A summoning art would have to fit us very well, and have versatile out of combat uses too for me to be lured by it while AE still has room to improve.

I don't think anything else would be very tempting over Arts we already have and improving our base Cultivation until CL9 or so, honestly. We have a good build right now, we need to powerlevel instead of messing around with what isn't broken to eke out a few more percents of effectiveness.

 

[AbeoLogos]

TRF is a really high quality Art that we'll have a tough time finding a replacement for next year. I doubt it's possible, or at least not competitive with other options of how to spend our time and resources. AM is a lot easier to replace, especially with the suggested 2 art approach.

And yet I also feel that you are not listening. Funny.

The question is, are the scouts good enough? If they are not then we should spend time improving them. If they are then frankly we will never use them. The horror becomes better as the cost of scouts goes down. You just said we need a massive amount of scouts for the horror. If we reduce the cost of the scouts then we reduce the cost of the horror by X where X is the number of scouts used.

The horror serves a purpose of remote strikes agaist targets that we can not easily reach. Getting 21 mouse sized things to an area is way easier then getting a single human even if that humans is stealth based. The reason? Because the scouts level off of our stealth so as we get stealthier so do they. They have a small sized which massively increases their stealth roles.

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Even if the cost goes down, it doesn't change that the Horror is bad at leveraging its inherent advantage due to the fact that our need for scouts is less than what is required for peak Horror strength. The Horror transforms already present assets into a comparatively sturdy combatant, which is good and efficient and impressive. My objection is that the presence of those assets shouldn't be the case for us. The Shaman's scouts were independently capable of combat and his plan had no consideration to sustainability in the first place. Our scouts aren't built for combat, so there's no reason to have dozens flitting about. We don't want to make them for combat because red-level combatants aren't that useful and it would make them more expensive. The Horror is neat, but it's designed for a use-case that doesn't fit our needs very well.

It's also not any better at hunting down shamans than we are. Ling Qi is faster, stealthier, and fits through smaller places than any Scout or Horror she has or will be able to make. She's cool like that. Speaking of shamans, if they're using wide-scale Arts in battle, then they're probably Green combatants. I'm skeptical of the reliability of a Horror in taking them out. Yes even an improved one. We fundamentally can't expect constructs to become continually cheaper, more powerful, and equivalent to higher cultivation. It's not how anything in the setting works.

 

[Neshuakadal]

It's not about dropping them. They're going to be mastered, and we can't count on getting direct upgrades. Like, hell, TRF+ would be great! Not sure we can actually get it though. AM? Maybe, given we're at the Sect, but it's a bad idea. AM is a really great art. It is also a godawful fit for our build that causes us a lot of trouble. It is also a dead art since we can't teach it to anyone once we leave the sect, and won't be able to develop it any further. Getting perception arts that we can actually integrate into our style, and teach to our family etc. is something we have to do at some point.

Actually, there's another note there: it's kind of tempting to grab a bunch of low level arts here while we're at the Sect so we can teach people and our family things. Our low-level art library, once you remove the argent arts, is really very limited - and has huge holes like a complete lack of perception arts. I would actually be tempted to try to find a perception art that starts at low levels and continues up and learn that, just because that would have a lot of long term value for us.

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Then you really needed to be clearer because the wording you used implied getting rid of TRF with all the other of your undesirable arts. While I agree with most of the arts I have no idea what you mean when AM is godawful for our build. Are you talking about the elemental alignment? Because to me that is not that big of a deal. Sure we won't get cost reductions for those arts but we rarely use those arts anyway. I really like the flavor of AM and the surety of thought that so helped us through out the outer sect

I would be much more interested in getting a darkness based perception art to work alongside AM. An art that passively gives us perception dice and where it can steal the perception dice from enemies near us. It would help a lot with sneaking around and combined with FVM and PLR it would make a really nice bar setter. Just like with Meizhen where you need to have X resolve dice to face her people would need X perception dice to fight us. Other wise they would just wander around FVM until we mercy kill them. or let them go... I guess...

 

[archangis]

It's also not any better at hunting down shamans than we are. Ling Qi is faster, stealthier, and fits through small places than any Scout or Horror she has or will be able to make. She's cool like that. Speaking of shamans, if they're using wide-scale Arts in battle, then they're probably Green combatants. I'm skeptical of the reliability of a Horror in taking them out. Yes even an improved one. We fundamentally can't expect constructs to become continually cheaper, more powerful, and equivalent to higher cultivation. It's not how anything in the setting works.

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Of course they are better than us for a man hunt. More eyes are always better after all.

 

[AbeoLogos]

Of course they are better than us for a man hunt. More eyes are always better after all.

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Bigger eyes are always better. Our constructs don't even have eyes! Ling Qi is infinitely more anime than they are.

 

[Neshuakadal]

TRF is a really high quality Art that we'll have a tough time finding a replacement for next year. I doubt it's possible, or at least not competitive with other options of how to spend our time and resources. AM is a lot easier to replace, especially with the suggested 2 art approach.


Even if the cost goes down, it doesn't change that the Horror is bad at leveraging its inherent advantage due to the fact that our need for scouts is less than what is required for peak Horror strength. The Horror transforms already present assets into a comparatively sturdy combatant, which is good and efficient and impressive. My objection is that the presence of those assets shouldn't be the case for us. The Shaman's scouts were independently capable of combat and his plan had no consideration to sustainability in the first place. Our scouts aren't built for combat, so there's no reason to have dozens flitting about. We don't want to make them for combat because red-level combatants aren't that useful and it would make them more expensive. The Horror is neat, but it's designed for a use-case that doesn't fit our needs very well.

It's also not any better at hunting down shamans than we are. Ling Qi is faster, stealthier, and fits through smaller places than any Scout or Horror she has or will be able to make. She's cool like that. Speaking of shamans, if they're using wide-scale Arts in battle, then they're probably Green combatants. I'm skeptical of the reliability of a Horror in taking them out. Yes even an improved one. We fundamentally can't expect constructs to become continually cheaper, more powerful, and equivalent to higher cultivation. It's not how anything in the setting works.

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I see your case against the horror and there are merits to that case. However you have also been arguing against improving the scouts. What is your argument against the scouts?

As for getting to places that are hard for us to reach like cloud shamans here is my reasoning for using the horror. Cloud shamans do not travel with the army. We do't know how far away the shamans are from the army. If we are already engaged with the army then we can't really disengage to hunt down that shaman because that would allow the army to spill through into the much less defended country side. However should our scouts find the shaman they can then converge and build a horror that can at least force the shaman to deal with it. This would severely hamper the army that was relaying on the shaman. Even if the shaman can both support the army and deal with the horror the shaman has just wasted qi he wouldn't not have otherwise. This gives us the advantage in the long fight which we wanted anyway.

 

[Yun]

I'm confused, what do you mean when you say that "[puppets] are ill-suited to a support build because they don't receive all the bonuses from the arts?"

I mean, the puppets that are being talked about are independent enough to receive the buffs from all of our support arts. They register as their own identity on the turn order and can do their own thing, so they get the full benefit of our support arts.

So, I'm not sure where you got the idea that puppets are not supported by support arts.

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Fair enough it appears my memory failed me on that point.

If we are using human sacrifices, high level curses are probably a much better use of the humans than feeding them to scouts.

The curse, not finished and AOE was already in and by itself an impressive combat debuff. Using something similar on a barbarian army/invasion would be more of a game changer than anything a green level cultivator could do.

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I don't care the amount of power it offers I'll never vote for anything involving direct human sacrifice for power. Furthermore I imagine a large issue with curses of that potency is having the skill to focus all that power onto the correct target not the actual acquisition of power. The shaman bypassed this issue by not caring about collateral damage whereas Ling Qi does care.

 

[Thor's Twin]

So, continuing on this happy train, here are my thoughts on what we need to do next year in terms of art preparation.

I would disagree with moving forward with Spiritual and physical cultivation as rapidly as possible. While we should do it, I believe putting it on the back burner is probably better than moving full steam ahead on it. And there are a couple of reasons why.

1. Base cultivation really drives itself with the use of drugs and the Dark Pool.
2. We have a ramshackle build of things we stole, were gifted, randomly earned, or desperately bought.

First off, elemental alignment. We have some crazy elemental alignment going on here, that makes it exceedingly difficult to do any type of item scheme. We have all of the Imperial 8, most of the Traditional 5 (just missing metal TRF!), and then Darkness and music to go along with all of that. We are a kaleidoscope of colors to anyone who sees us and checks our elemental alignment.

I don't particularly like it, but it also means cutting arts that I like out of the picture. The easiest art to cut, in my opinion, is Argent Storm. After that, it gets a bit harder with AC. Then we get to the tricky ones like FSA and AE, and then the really devastating one in AM. We could go further and cut TRF and eliminate wood, or PLR and eliminate Moon, but I really don't want to do that.

What this means is that our elemental alignment will be more focused on Dark, Wind, Water, Wood, Moon (and music). I mean, now I have to go through my justification on cutting AE, FSA, and AM

AE first. As much as I love this art, it doesn't pull the weight that I want it to pull. I wished that the third technique was more focused on the minions rather than another AoE. An AoE that received immediate competition from FSS, and art that has a higher count of dice than AE. Ultimately, it serves a useful function for the tournament and may require multiple arts to fully replace (a perception art, qi draining art, spiritual defense art, armor degradation art, and summoning art) but with as much competition as it is receiving from FSS, it probably won't be pulling it's weight and should be cut after the tournament for a more dedicated summoning art, at the very least.

FSA next. I love FSA, I really do. We have had extremely fun times with it, and it has pulled a substantial amount of weight in critical fights. However, as our proficiency with music is growing, and our arsenal of music is increasing, the value of FSA and bows, in general, is decreasing. We have more tools to do what FSA did and find it hard to rationalize and find time in a fight to stop our powerful music to pick up a bow and shoot. Furthermore, we have reached the end of it, and it would require finding its successor to improve upon. That being said, we should look into an art that is a simple "nuke" art for the purposes of rapidly destroying terrain in front of us. It was incredibly useful in escaping Yan Renshu's lair the first time, and having that type of firepower to blast through something in dire need is something to be appreciated.

AM is last, but certainly not the least. AM is a fundamental art in our build and a cornerstone of our perception and spiritual defense. It has proven extremely valuable for its perception-based abilities as well as the ability to emotionally stabilize oneself and see what is really going on. That being said... we have reached the end of the road for AM. There is no further way to improve upon it other than going down the Argent Path. Which means... eventually, we will need to find another art that serves those functions. An Early Green art just can't compete when we are dealing with 4th or 5th level greens. I love AM, and it will be difficult to find replacement arts, and it probably is on the lowest rung of our replacement scheme simply because of how fundamental it currently is to our spiritual defense and perception.

So, what arts should we focus on next? Well, here is a list of what I would like to have.

1. A Proper Summon Art (something dealing with treants would be cool)
2. A dedicated Stealth Art (SCS is great, but let's really crank up that stealth shall we?)
3. More diversified music arts (FVM and FSS strike an interesting chord in the listener, but perhaps expanding to more cheery toons will do Ling Qi good)
4. Face changing art (our subterfuge skill needs improving, surely there is an art that can change a person's face or a target's perception of the face? With Cai's mission being of the ... delicate sort, being as unrecognizable as possible will have it's merits)
5. More spiritual defense (~ Don't cry for me Argent Mirror! ~)
6. More Perception ( ~ Don't cry for me Argent Mirror! ~)

And yes... the pun was intentional.

 

[Erebeal]

I would disagree with moving forward with Spiritual and physical cultivation as rapidly as possible. While we should do it, I believe putting it on the back burner is probably better than moving full steam ahead on it. And there are a couple of reasons why.

1. Base cultivation really drives itself with the use of drugs and the Dark Pool.
2. We have a ramshackle build of things we stole, were gifted, randomly earned, or desperately bought.

First off, elemental alignment. We have some crazy elemental alignment going on here, that makes it exceedingly difficult to do any type of item scheme. We have all of the Imperial 8, most of the Traditional 5 (just missing metal TRF!), and then Darkness and music to go along with all of that. We are a kaleidoscope of colors to anyone who sees us and checks our elemental alignment.

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A really important thing here I'd say is the need to do research. What do we need to do green well? Do we need to make sure we have a strong foundation at certain points? Do we need to make sure our build is coherent? When do we need to fill up our domain slots?

All those things are really important to know. I think the first thing we do next year is go and research that. Getting EPC up, and hitting Appraisal ASAP is reasonable, but past that we really need to know these things.

 

[Neshuakadal]

So, continuing on this happy train, here are my thoughts on what we need to do next year in terms of art preparation.

I would disagree with moving forward with Spiritual and physical cultivation as rapidly as possible. While we should do it, I believe putting it on the back burner is probably better than moving full steam ahead on it. And there are a couple of reasons why.

1. Base cultivation really drives itself with the use of drugs and the Dark Pool.
2. We have a ramshackle build of things we stole, were gifted, randomly earned, or desperately bought.

First off, elemental alignment. We have some crazy elemental alignment going on here, that makes it exceedingly difficult to do any type of item scheme. We have all of the Imperial 8, most of the Traditional 5 (just missing metal TRF!), and then Darkness and music to go along with all of that. We are a kaleidoscope of colors to anyone who sees us and checks our elemental alignment.

I don't particularly like it, but it also means cutting arts that I like out of the picture. The easiest art to cut, in my opinion, is Argent Storm. After that, it gets a bit harder with AC. Then we get to the tricky ones like FSA and AE, and then the really devastating one in AM. We could go further and cut TRF and eliminate wood, or PLR and eliminate Moon, but I really don't want to do that.

What this means is that our elemental alignment will be more focused on Dark, Wind, Water, Wood, Moon (and music). I mean, now I have to go through my justification on cutting AE, FSA, and AM

AE first. As much as I love this art, it doesn't pull the weight that I want it to pull. I wished that the third technique was more focused on the minions rather than another AoE. An AoE that received immediate competition from FSS, and art that has a higher count of dice than AE. Ultimately, it serves a useful function for the tournament and may require multiple arts to fully replace (a perception art, qi draining art, spiritual defense art, armor degradation art, and summoning art) but with as much competition as it is receiving from FSS, it probably won't be pulling it's weight and should be cut after the tournament for a more dedicated summoning art, at the very least.

FSA next. I love FSA, I really do. We have had extremely fun times with it, and it has pulled a substantial amount of weight in critical fights. However, as our proficiency with music is growing, and our arsenal of music is increasing, the value of FSA and bows, in general, is decreasing. We have more tools to do what FSA did and find it hard to rationalize and find time in a fight to stop our powerful music to pick up a bow and shoot. Furthermore, we have reached the end of it, and it would require finding its successor to improve upon. That being said, we should look into an art that is a simple "nuke" art for the purposes of rapidly destroying terrain in front of us. It was incredibly useful in escaping Yan Renshu's lair the first time, and having that type of firepower to blast through something in dire need is something to be appreciated.

AM is last, but certainly not the least. AM is a fundamental art in our build and a cornerstone of our perception and spiritual defense. It has proven extremely valuable for its perception-based abilities as well as the ability to emotionally stabilize oneself and see what is really going on. That being said... we have reached the end of the road for AM. There is no further way to improve upon it other than going down the Argent Path. Which means... eventually, we will need to find another art that serves those functions. An Early Green art just can't compete when we are dealing with 4th or 5th level greens. I love AM, and it will be difficult to find replacement arts, and it probably is on the lowest rung of our replacement scheme simply because of how fundamental it currently is to our spiritual defense and perception.

So, what arts should we focus on next? Well, here is a list of what I would like to have.

1. A Proper Summon Art (something dealing with treants would be cool)
2. A dedicated Stealth Art (SCS is great, but let's really crank up that stealth shall we?)
3. More diversified music arts (FVM and FSS strike an interesting chord in the listener, but perhaps expanding to more cheery toons will do Ling Qi good)
4. Face changing art (our subterfuge skill needs improving, surely there is an art that can change a person's face or a target's perception of the face? With Cai's mission being of the ... delicate sort, being as unrecognizable as possible will have it's merits)
5. More spiritual defense (~ Don't cry for me Argent Mirror! ~)
6. More Perception ( ~ Don't cry for me Argent Mirror! ~)

And yes... the pun was intentional.

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I would also like to add in the belief that getting the sort of bar setting that Meizhen has would be phenomenal. Instead of resolve we use perception. Maybe our stealth art can increase the DC of stealth checks or more likely given the new system coming narratively make it harder to find us would be amazing. A shadow in the mist and music.

 

[AbeoLogos]

I see your case against the horror and there are merits to that case. However you have also been arguing against improving the scouts. What is your argument against the scouts?

As for getting to places that are hard for us to reach like cloud shamans here is my reasoning for using the horror. Cloud shamans do not travel with the army. We do't know how far away the shamans are from the army. If we are already engaged with the army then we can't really disengage to hunt down that shaman because that would allow the army to spill through into the much less defended country side. However should our scouts find the shaman they can then converge and build a horror that can at least force the shaman to deal with it. This would severely hamper the army that was relaying on the shaman. Even if the shaman can both support the army and deal with the horror the shaman has just wasted qi he wouldn't not have otherwise. This gives us the advantage in the long fight which we wanted anyway.

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I've never argued against improving the scouts. I reject making them combat-capable. Further increased memory/range, selective recording (not just last X time), greater intelligence/flexibility, a self-destruct, or a stasis/energy-saving mode so thy don't burn out after 2 weeks would all be sensible improvements.

 

[archangis]

Furthermore I imagine a large issue with curses of that potency is having the skill to focus all that power onto the correct target not the actual acquisition of power. The shaman bypassed this issue by not caring about collateral damage whereas Ling Qi does care.

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So long we do it far from anyone or anything of importance, the collateral damage is completely meaningless.

Think of it as a magical nuke. Ghere are plenty of way to use it without hurting the empire.

I don't care the amount of power it offers I'll never vote for anything involving direct human sacrifice for power.

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The stones are mined in mines with slaves that work to their death.

We are already using something worse than human sacrifice every time we take a spirit stone that we didn't mine ourselves.

Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest) - Original - Fantasy | Page 887

Here is the side story about the spirit mines.

 

[Raising Kittens]

We don't need "music arts that work with our basic attacks" because we have HC to attack with.

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That wasn't what I was saying.

FVM allows us to use music to make melee attacks even while we're playing, and those melee attacks can be used in conjunction with 'appropriate arts':

Instruments wielded by the user may be used to make sound based melee attacks at up to ten meters range. These attacks may be used in conjunction with appropriate arts without interrupting the melody. DV equals manipulation or expression, whichever is higher.

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It would be useful to get an art that works in conjunction with this, as it means we could be playing and do melee attacks simultaneously.

While Frozen Soul Serenade does provide two cold damage to 'music attacks', an Art that can be used alongside that aspect of FVM would be an excellent replacement for our melee Arts, and hopefully provide increases to our physical defenses.

And, yes, I do believe we should keep a ranged art or two, but no more than that, and preferably one that meshes with our alignments, however those shake out - a Dakrness/Wind/Yang archery Art seems most appropriate, but I don't think we'll be so lucky as to find one.

This is because we may manage to have music playing without our intervention, meaning we can keep FVM going and play close-in fire support. Hopefully.

Anyway, bed.

 

[PrimalShadow]

Ling Qi is anti army, sure, but we still need to buff our mist-ambush capacity. As it stands, we're actually quite promising for an assasination based build, compunctions against it aside. We sneak into an enemy camp, engage with the strongest cultivator there from ambush, and our aggressive aura keeps all of the chaff and backup away(or just keeps us hidden from them, or perhaps it stops the commander we're assassinating from seeing anyone and delivering buffs) once it inevitably goes loud. I'm still a little disappointed that we've never gotten a chance to show off that 'stealth, arrow, stealth, arrow, repeat' pattern, though hopefully we'll have a chance in the tournament.

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I feel like Ling Qi wouldn't be able to pull off an assassination like that.

We might be able to sneak into an enemy camp and engage their commander, but we have no good way to actually take them down at that point unless we have a significant power advantage. An assassin needs to deal burst damage that penetrates defenses and takes down the target quickly, whereas Ling Qi is built for endurance battles.

 

[AbeoLogos]

We do have decent ambush dice, and Hoarfrost Caress is good at piercing defences between the AP and semi perfect damage, but the echo effect is more dps than burst, it's true. Ling Qi's better at ambushing whole groups, sowing confusion and hurt, and then escaping than she is at decisively taking down commanders.

 

[PrimalShadow]

As we will have to kill people to protect our fief, I believe want not waste not apply. Why let perfectly viable power source be destroyed without any benefit for us when we can use them ?

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That is going to have the Empire come down on us.

I suspect that we'll end up covering its hole in our build with two arts - a dedicated area spiritual defense art (we want this to fill out our support suite and stop our minions from being wrecked by things like us anyway), and a more normal perception-y perception art.

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...you know, we don't need an area-boost art for literally everything. We can already boost our allies' health and armor; is it really necessary to ALSO be able to boost their Spiritual Defense?

It's not about dropping them. They're going to be mastered, and we can't count on getting direct upgrades. Like, hell, TRF+ would be great! Not sure we can actually get it though.

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We don't really need a TRF+, though. TRF goes all the way to Appraisal, and it already covers our bases in terms of Defense. It is true that at some point we are going to have grown to the point where it is insufficient, but that is a long way in the future.

Actually, there's another note there: it's kind of tempting to grab a bunch of low level arts here while we're at the Sect so we can teach people and our family things.

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The sect forbids this as far as I am aware. No re-teaching their Arts outside the Sect.

 

[Erebeal]

The sect forbids this as far as I am aware. No re-teaching their Arts outside the Sect.

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That's the Argent Arts I thought. Not the generic arts. There's nothing special about ZB.