I'm struggling immensely with the conclusion and where to place a certain big reveal/twist. I've got like about 90% of it done I'm just struggling with the last really important 10% and constantly rewriting and reordering things. I am trying to finish but I'm also struggling with it (not that I'm helped by other stuff IRL making it harder to write).
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In many countries, math professors are outright expected to also play musical instruments. "Math vs Music" isn't the dichotomy you think it is.
Or we could harness that power much more easily by acquiring a series of magic-wielding subordinates... just as we have done and are continuing to do. Having Lex himself specifically know magic doesn't significantly increase our ability to do things in the world.
It kinda does because not only does it allow Lex to defend himself even against Superman without a suit but it also allows us to apply Lex's significant intelligence to an entirely new field
I can't really agree with that, it might unlock more magic based options when we spend points but Lex is first and foremost a technological genius and I find it very unlikely that he'd suddenly put aside decades of relying on the scientific method in order to create something dependent on magic that isn't replicable unless it was literally the only way to do it
Which isn't any more than a lot of other actions, literally the only reason it failed the first time is because of a really crappy roll
Please do not double post, it is against forum rules. If nobody has posted since your last post you can edit it with whatever you want to add to it.
Lex never goes into battle himself anyway, and with our strategy, if he's in a direct fight with Superman, we're doing it wrong. We're fully capable of arranging megastacks to do magical things as it is (and thus apply Lex's significant intelligence to those fields). All we have to do is assign one or more existing magic heroes to the job alongside Lex, and we're starting to get a decent number of those to work with. Indeed, we've doe it before.
If affects outcomes. It affects where result points are spent, and that's not something we have direct control over. Magic heroes, when they create things, are more likely to get "this is awesome, but you can't really replicate it." That's a thing that magic heroes do, sometimes even when they don't mean to. I don't want that for Lex.
It isn't more than a lot of other "reshape the world in your own image" megastack rolls. Those things aren't cheap, and when we do roll them out, they can do awesome things. The fact that we can do it does not make the price trivial.
I bring them up because they are true. I also bring them up because I don't like the idea... and you dismiss them because you do like the idea, and you want it anyway, not because my arguments are actually flawed.
Yes ideally he'll never be in a fight but we can't guarantee that every time and magic would be a good way to keep him safe
Yes but Lex learning magic would allow us to do magic actions with less of a mega collaboration which would mean more hero units to be assigned elsewhere
Yes that works but Lex knowing magic allows us to cut out the middle man with no real downsides
Firstly we do have direct control over where points are spent
Except learning magic doesn't need a huge collaboration, literally just Lex, Rebecca and Pamela were enough last time even without a double down, the only reason we failed is because we got spectacularly unlucky with the rolls
Again you not liking the idea is perfectly fair but your two main arguments against it are that Lex would allow magic to effect everything he does afterwards, which just isn't true, and that we can theoretically do all the same things with a large enough team, which is true but the argument "We can still do it just with more difficulty and having to spend more resources" isn't particularly convincing IMO
No there isn't one that absolutely requires Lex to know magic but nobody ever claimed that there was, just that Lex knowing magic makes building a team to accomplish whatever we want easier, it cuts out the middle man and there not being any real reason not to
He is almost never in a fight, and there are lots and lots of better ways to keep him safe in a fight, many of which we are already using... and that's even leaving aside the Major Character Protection, which is in full force for him. So... "Lex needs magic to protect himself" is an inefficient solution to an edge-case scenario that already has solid-gold plot protection. It's not a thing.
When are we ever going to want to assign Lex solo to anything? His whole schtick is that he's awesome at doing things with subordinates.
I've talked about the downsides. You have to teach him magic, which is an achievable but still exorbitantly high DC. Also, the aforementioned bit about how his payoffs start to be magic-themed, which, for the things we want Lex to do, is often not ideal.
For certain kinds of actions - the grab-bags? Yes. For many of them, though, no. We throw in the heroes, a result is generated, and then we find out what we got for it - heavily biased by the specific heroes involved. As those heroes change, their result pools change. It's been that way the entire quest. Even for the grab-bags, it biases what is available to be bought.
That's not how it works, though. Becoming magic-capable fundamentally requires bending your brain and internalizing illogical things. That's why he finds it so hard. It's not like all of the other fields. It's far more personal, and requires significant mindset shifts in ways that nothing else would for him.
It's a DC of over 200. That's not trivial however you slice it. Yes, if we stack Pamela and Lex and also another strong hero on it, we can start to hit those numbers, but that doesn't make it cheap.
...and here you go again. You go straight from "We can afford the cost with notable hero investment" and "it won't cripple him" to "not being any real reason not to." That's a heck of a leap. And the real gain is... we can assign Lex as our hero to magic actions without other magic heroes. That's basically it. For anything other than a megacollab, it's not really better than having another decent magical hero or two (something that would take similar or lower levels of investment and also be more useful elsewhere). For megacollabs, sticking a magic-user into the pile just isn't that hard. Additional convenience? Sure - but situational, not all that significant, and manageable in other ways. If that's your main argument for, you're really not bringing much to the "pro" side of the argument.
We cannot rely entirely on the idea that Lex will never be caught by surprise or have his security overwhelmed due to plot armour because even if he isn't at risk of dying he could be kidnapped or injured in a way that takes him out of commission for a few turns or brainwashed
You're twisting my words, I never said solo actions I said it would allow us to put less people on the action and get the same or similar results, letting the spared hero be used elsewhere
Again Rebecca is our only real magic hero for anything Learning related and while I also want other ones it's been pretty solidly established that capable, trustworthy magicians are few and far between
Not really, again a team of him, Pamela and Rebecca would have easily accomplished it if it weren't for really shit rolls
Only if we buy into the idea that Lex will suddenly abandon all of his scientific knowledge and the fundamental core of who he is, which is a possibility you made up
Again you are entirely basing this off of the idea that Lex will fundamentally change who he is as a result of learning magic which just isn't true
Yes it may allow us to spend points on some magic options but it's extremely unlikely that those will be in place of better scientific ones
You have to keep in mind that magic works how the user thinks it works so if Lex learns magic he would be operating off of the belief that it works along the lines of rigid, self created laws because that is who Lex is
Okay let's just simplify this
It's not trivial no but it's not really a risk either and potentially opens a lot of useful doors
Okay I apologise for exaggerating what you said but I still disagree that it's true
And the increased ability to defend himself, potentially new research unlocked as a result of Lex's unique form of magic, the possibility of getting along better with other magic users, the personal benefits of him knowing magic himself rather than being dependent on other people for it and the fact that it's possible that Lex's more scientific approach to magic would allow for more advanced study of magical objects or anomalies
Putting together a megacollab isn't as simple as you're making it out to be, not only does it take away several hero units from actions they would arguably be better spent on but we also have to carefully chose specific hero units and keep their co-op scores in mind, plan around the existence of the megacollab for that turn, the crit rolls for them are strictly limited and the actions that need them often end up getting delayed because we don't want to put that many people on one action
Putting aside your questioning the legitimacy of what's on the pro side, which I do disagree with, the con side consists almost entirely of your belief that Lex would allow knowing magic to corrupt his other projects which we have no prof of or anything to suggest it's true
Lex learning magic is not a get out of jail free card and would not be nessarily let you protect yourself with no cost.
I mean the answer is both yes and no. Lex learning magic would be a very significant change to his character but that's neither good nor bad just different (for comparison adopting a child is also a big character shift that is neither good nor bad but different).
Oh absolutely, I never expected it to be an "I win" button or anything but it's better than being defenceless when we're caught unawares
That's basically exactly what I was expecting, on actions that are already magic related or course he's going to use magic and a couple of options in a point spend being magic based make sense
Depends on the roll. If you roll low, magic finding it's way into the project to make it harder to replicate sounds like something I would do, but if the roll is high enough I'd probably give you a choice between a non-magic replicable option and a magic option that has some other advantage but keeps the difficulty in replication.
So basically a bare failure or success might end up giving us something that works but aren't replicable and on normal successes and higher we'd be given an option between a superior magic version that can't be replicated and a somewhat inferior, in comparison, purely technological one that can be replicated
Huh, that's new information I didn't know, thanks for sharing it.
If it was exactly what you were expecting...
then it wasn't exactly what you were saying.
Who's defenseless? Lex has *never* been defenseless. He's a moderately capable combatant himself, he has a bodyguard with him everywhere he goes, and he wears low-profile armor basically at all times. Then, too, it would be dependent on what kind of magic he gets. If Lex's magic is the kind that requires three hours, a lodge, and the right kind of weed to get going, then it's not going to do him a lot of good if a firefight breaks out.
It doesn't though. "Simplifies hero assignment a little" isn't at all the same thing as "opens a lot of doors"... unless you're referring to some other benefit that I'm not aware of.
So let's look at this.
For the record, @King crimson's response on this has basically been "probably not much, but a bit." So, down towards the low end of what I'd been looking at, which I'm glad of, but still not zero.
We have magical artifacts. They sit in desk drawers for years on end and we never actually use them. Admittedly, we're now at a point where we're fielding superheroes, so if we were crafting some in-house it might make sense to outfit them... but even there I'd rather have it be someone other than Lex doing it. It's not like we're short on things we want Lex to do.
Firstly that's why I said that it was basically exactly what I was thinking
Once again just because Lex has always had security so far doesn't mean that will always be the case and just about anyone with a gun is a threat to his life
Yes if it's a type of magic that requires those very specific things it won't be useful to defend himself but there's also the dozens of other types of magic it could be where it would be useful
Just because we don't want to be in a situation where we'd need it for that doesn't mean we should dismiss it as a potential benefit, by that same logic we should never give Lex armour or a weapon because ideally he'll never need them
I would argue that there are several characters that would respect Lex more if he had an at least decent understanding of magic in his repertoire, for example Tala, Zatanna and Circe
I feel like this is debatable because the structure of Lex's magic is decided by his mindset so rather than obeying esoteric rules h has to change to understand it's far more likely to have strict laws that a scientific mind can easily understand
Not necessarily, at the very least having his own magic would ease some of Lex's fears of Rebecca, it would allow him to understand Jinx better and get over his slight annoyance at Sam
Realistically we can't really argue this point until we know what form Lex's magic would actually take so let's just agree to disagree on this one for now
Usually I get that but in this case we don't really need a big group for this, though admittedly we would need a small one of important hero units
And that's completely fine, I disagree with you and personally believe it just makes sense for Lex to want to know magic because he couldn't stand not knowing something that major and being reliant on other for it but I completely understand just not liking the idea
This isn't true, though, in a few different ways. First, we have a hero unit who's officially assigned as his bodyguard. So... he pretty much always *will* have security. In general, he'll have more than that, but at bare minimum, he'll have Lady Vic. In general, though, he pretty much only ever goes to places that are LexCorp property and places that are under the control of nominal friendlies. Almost invariably, if a firefight breaks out, he's going to have at least some of the bystanders be on his side.
Oh, I think it's fine that he wants it. That makes perfect sense. I just think that he's a better character if he doesn't have it. I mean, this is Lex Luthor. Having relatively petty reasons to feel envious and aggrieved is perfectly in character.
I do also want to do this yes
I feel like there's one major aspect that you're forgetting, how strong the attacker is
That's completely fair, I also don't really want Lex to be some master archmage but I personally feel like the benefits of him getting some personal grasp on magic outweighs the potential negatives
