Could we do the reverse's and make a regular blow seem like GKB? Or make BS look like it? (though I suppose that depending on how much it costs there is no reason at that point to actually thrown in a GKB).
Knight of Wessex (A Written World Quest)
- Thread starter Alectai
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- Original Fantasy Alt. History
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
You're beginning to get it, yes. It would cost something to turn on a Meditation that makes all of your attacks look either very scary or very mundane, but it would really put the information disparity in your favor, and bait out bad mistakes against someone who can't beat your Tactics rolls.
And most people can't beat your Tactics rolls. Which isn't the same as going "It can never happen", it's just that Audrey's Tactics game is broken.
- Location
- Space between realms
- Pronouns
- He
This is so big brained! @DangerKitty We bow before your wrinkled brow, Sage of the Myriad Dao!
DangerKitty
shoddy writter
- Location
- lala land
Starting to feel like audrey with all this praise. Ohohoho! XP
- Location
- England, unfortunately.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Fucking genius
You've earned it. That slots very nicely into our build. Very nicely indeed.
Edit: I suspect the answer to this is "no", and it's probably niche anyway, but just to get it off the table - could we amplify the presence of pain in an opponent? Not damage to be clear, but how much an injury inflicted on them would feel like?
Edit 2: or again, the opposite, making a crippling wound like a Limb breaking hold feel less severe to make an enemy overconfident?
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Another option might be dulling the pain of our own wounds, but I'm not sure this system has a "you're in intense pain, take a mechanical penalty" aspect that we could ignore using that.
On the other hand, that does seem to be part of how the Norse work so maybe it could be impactful.
- Location
- England, unfortunately.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Useful maybe, but we have so much defense that If we need something like that then we've already done something wrong. I'm more interested in finding ways to get our enemies to make mistakes we can capitalise on.
Hmmm. We can't create presences ex nihilo but,
Can we only raise and lower presence, or can we change them?
Because we might be able to make an enemy think one of their allies is someone else, say, us or someone on our side. Or alternatively, swap with an ally so the enemy's expecting the big GKB from one side, only to be blasted with it from what they thought was a lesser attack.
Might be a bit overcomplicated.
I think it should match up thematically with what Light is supposed to do though? I still don't fully get it tbh, it's starting to feel closer to Obfuscate or mental manipulation.
Edit: wait, no, I think I'm getting it. We can control what *other* people perceive within our niche. It's still perception focused, just backwards from what I was thinking. Maybe, probably.
Can we only raise and lower presence, or can we change them?
Because we might be able to make an enemy think one of their allies is someone else, say, us or someone on our side. Or alternatively, swap with an ally so the enemy's expecting the big GKB from one side, only to be blasted with it from what they thought was a lesser attack.
Might be a bit overcomplicated.
I think it should match up thematically with what Light is supposed to do though? I still don't fully get it tbh, it's starting to feel closer to Obfuscate or mental manipulation.
Edit: wait, no, I think I'm getting it. We can control what *other* people perceive within our niche. It's still perception focused, just backwards from what I was thinking. Maybe, probably.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
I think this has to be a Meditation. Combining Rotes is not really a thing in Carolingian Cultivation. For the record.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
To clarify on this, that's using two separate technniques, which carries the surcharge, but you can't just smash them together into one Rote, it doesn't work that way. Most Rotes also don't play nice together, because they're fully comprehensive parts of your internal cycle, and you can't really smash them together without breaking both down.
There are exceptions, but they're exceptions, not the rule.
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- Pronouns
- He
Is it because each Rote is its own Zeal construct, so the only way to combo 2 rotes together would be to construct the Rote in the first place to be able to be fed together?
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Rotes aren't Zeal, they're internal prayer cycles that you push Fervour into and they whirr and produce an effect.
Think of Rotes and Meditations and all that like prayer wheels, while Fervour is the thing that flows through them to make them spin. Capacity is how many directions you can subdivide your attention to maintain these without losing track of what's going on in the outside world.
Psyche's "Specialty", is being able to divide attention, just like Hugr is about thinking really hard and sharpening your senses. Psyche is about parallel processing. Each point of Psyche is effectively a another fully functional instance of yourself, which can be subdivided as any human can task manage--maybe a bit better.
Notably, this is also why you don't want Psyche to outpace your Soma by too much. Do it a little, and you'll be fine, it's not like you're putting your full Psyche to use 100% of the time and you can tolerate high performance when you need it--but it's like overclocking a computer--if you wind it up too far beyond what the case can handle, you risk Bad Things Happening.
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- Location
- England, unfortunately.
- Pronouns
- She/They
So can I please get a clear answer on this? I'm suspecting that again, the answer is either 'no' or 'it's expensive' or 'it's too niche to be useful most of the time', but I'd at least like to get some clarification.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Probably not, no, why would you want your enemy to not react to an injury you dealt them?
And amplifying the presence of "Pain" isn't really a good option, because that's stretching the definition to the breaking point.
- Location
- FL
the light revelation reads to me like being an actor on the stage you can shine the spotlight on yourself or you can stand in the shadows to show how much the audience should be paying attention to except the audience is everyone else so the spotlights on you while you lead the charge to rally your allies or its not on you so clearly that is not your big finisher move going online.
- Location
- England, unfortunately.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Yeah expected something like that. Good I can at least get it off my mind.
I was thinking something like trying to get an enemy overconfident and fight battles they couldn't win... but honestly yeah, no, that's the Norse, and that's meant to be a buff, not someone getting blendered and thinking they're invincible.
Glad I can stop thinking about this then. Alright, different options.
- Pronouns
- He
So Rotes are basically programs and Meditations background services, Capacity is how many can be loaded on the SSD at once to be used at will during the fight.
Fervour is the electricity coming in through the wire or stored in the battery consumed to run the programs and background services while Soma is the physical hardware of the system and Psyche is an OS upgrade that can outpace the hardware slightly but not beyond a certain point.
This fits best with my impression of what has been described, although I'd be interested in exploring the "moonlight is reflected sunlight" -> sun is shining even when not seen aspect. Something like ensuring that your deeds become known even if there are no witnesses? Not that that matters to a knight the way it does to a norseman.
- Location
- England, unfortunately.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Actually...
@Alectai Could we manipulate presence to make ourselves appear to be in better or worse shape than we actually are? Kind of like a glamour, where we reduce the presence/appearance of any injuries or flaws present in our armour whilst highlighting the parts that haven't been damaged, or vice versa?
Idea I'm going for here is basically bluffing enemies into thinking we're either more or less damaged than we actually are to trick them into trying to go for a battle plan that favours us.
@Alectai Could we manipulate presence to make ourselves appear to be in better or worse shape than we actually are? Kind of like a glamour, where we reduce the presence/appearance of any injuries or flaws present in our armour whilst highlighting the parts that haven't been damaged, or vice versa?
Idea I'm going for here is basically bluffing enemies into thinking we're either more or less damaged than we actually are to trick them into trying to go for a battle plan that favours us.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Yes, but it's very much an edge case kind of thing I don't imagine would be a good bet compared to some of your other options.
Capacity is still your main limitation here, and spending some on a really niche stunt is questionable when doesn't help you much.
Curious if this is something we can do eventually. Make an ally feel like us or something.
Am I even a little bit close with this, by the way?
- Location
- England, unfortunately.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Oh right.
I wonder if trying to do something like that with our Companions would...
...Nah, not worth it. It'd be cool to use the fact that companions are technically Audrey to use them as Beacons for stuff like giving them her Intimidating presence
But as is becoming apparent, there's a lot of stuff here that's neat as a thought experiment, but we either just don't need or covers stuff we already would have (or other options just do better).
I'd say "Just fight like a knight - outlast everyone and then punch down once they're exhausted", but with the mention of Norse at high levels becoming a DPS race, that's also not exactly an option. The real kicker is probably increasing the amount of chances we have to land hits - our ability to do so maximising that means we then get to land more GKB, BS, or stuff that has strong utility.
Invisible bird for scouting missions could be good.
What's a good horse equivalent...
Horse that blinds you when you look at it, I guess?
- Location
- FL
clearly we shall emulate Gandalf at helms deep with every battle.
- Location
- England, unfortunately.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Invisible Bird would be great, but that's already a case where we're out of combat, so Capacity doesn't matter nearly as much.
Capacity really is the big limiting factor. We're not a Psyche build, this stuff is useful, but mostly we want to be finding ways to use it so that we can Unga Harder. not using it itself to Unga. What we probably need to actually be doing is thinking of stuff for Hard Fall, or the other Martial Styles.