Lex Sedet In Vertice: A Supervillain in the DCU CK2 quest

[PickleJar]

I'm not sure I understand this question.

I could hypothetically design a hero unit that works that way. That doesn't mean that there is or will be a hero unit that functions that way. On top of that "divination" is really, really broad. You seem to be describing some form of prescience or precognition (which is arguably a subset of divination).

Broadly speaking what you're describing seems to align with how Atrocitus uses his abilities (he sees a myriad of possible futures and then attempts to prune as many branching paths as possible to give the actual future he wants the best chance of occurring), but he's not really stewardship focused at all. Lilith Clay in the comics could occasionally do something along these lines but it wasn't clear and it definitely wasn't stewardship focused.

In general I'll say that if a hero has the ability to see "possible futures" it'll almost certainly not be focused to just interacting with a certain stat and instead be more general.

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I was more asking about a Stewardship-equivalent of Nightshades trait, the divination bit is mostly a guess as to how such a thing could work.

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I was talking more about something like trying to manipulate financial instruments (debt, currencies etc) via supernatural insight. Often this sort of damage can be massive and incredibly quick (a particularly brutal short squeeze can theoretically cause hundreds of billions of dollars/euros/whatever of debt that needs to be paid out of pocket pretty much within days or even hours.)

It can be as simple as getting an intuition that an earth-wrecking calamity is coming (Brainiac) and throwing money at real estate private equity firms.

Normally I'd say that financial crimes are probably too complex to be implemented, but you gave us Earl Dukeston so it got me thinking a bit.

 

[King crimson]

I was more asking about a Stewardship-equivalent of Nightshades trait, the divination bit is mostly a guess as to how such a thing could work.

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I mean there's nothing stopping such a trait from existing (beyond my imagination and willingness to include it), but I have not given any hero unit such a trait thus far.

I'm probably not going to give the trait (it's a really strong trait and in general most characters in a comic book universe don't have a focus that translates over to stewardship properly), but I theoretically could. That's part of why I don't get the question. If I wanted to put in the work and was willing to deal with the consequences of doing so, I could give any character any trait I wanted to.

I'll also preemptively say right now that suggesting to me that "x character deserves this trait" is just going to anger me. I didn't appreciate all of the commentary about Nightshade's stats and traits (I found it completely worthless and unproductive), so I'm uninterested in ever experiencing anything like that ever again. People can talk about traits, but the moment I even get an inkling that someone's trying to pressure me to alter or include a certain kind of trait, I'm going to be very unhappy.

I was talking more about something like trying to manipulate financial instruments (debt, currencies etc) via supernatural insight. Often this sort of damage can be massive and incredibly quick (a particularly brutal short squeeze can theoretically cause hundreds of billions of dollars/euros/whatever of debt that needs to be paid out of pocket pretty much within days or even hours.)

It can be as simple as getting an intuition that an earth-wrecking calamity is coming (Brainiac) and throwing money at real estate private equity firms.

Normally I'd say that financial crimes are probably too complex to be implemented, but you gave us Earl Dukeston so it got me thinking a bit.

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While there is room for some financial crime simulation, I don't do it to a massive degree. I'll also say that I don't think a short squeeze has ever come remotely close to bringing down a country's economy. It does damage and it hurts people (and is rightfully illegal) but it's entirely incongruous with "crashing the economy".

Magic can be used to commit certain kinds of financial crimes pretty easily (conjure gold and flood the market lowering the price of gold while earning a profit, then vanish the gold in order to raise the price right back up). They generally can't get anywhere near "crashing the economy" but a magic user could make a comfortable living committing various sorts of financial fraud to get by.

I'll also repeat my answer from earlier that most of the big scale stuff can/will be caught. Using magic to get the right information to only make correct bets to shape the market in specific ways looks like insider trading and will eventually get the US government to set a magic user on you to try and deal with you. Future sight is incredibly rare and anybody who has it to a degree that they could accurately predict things probably doesn't care all that much about the stock market.

To give an example of why future sight's actually incredibly difficult to use for making money, I'll use your Brainiac example. Say you only know that an earth-wrecking calamity is coming. If you don't know when it is coming then you might end up only seeing a profit after 50 years (by which point you've potentially lost money and died). If you don't know where it's targeting, Brainiac could simply kill you before you ever get to reap the rewards of your financial manipulation. If you only know that the earth-wrecking calamity is happening, then you don't know if the currency/appropriate government will even be around anymore and so it can all become worthless (if you solely make investments in Sweden and Brainiac blows up Sweden, you've got nothing). This is merely three basic ways that a simple scheme for monetary manipulation using future sight can be completely derailed by things you aren't aware of. Future sight is not the ideal magic for financial crimes.

Edit: If you're pretty obviously using magic to set up a short squeeze that cripples the nation you'll get caught. It's hard to do magic on a scale that would "crash the economy" because you have to have enough magical power to affect a massive amount of things and enough knowledge of the economy to make it screamingly obvious that you used magic in hindsight. It's not easy to do so. All of this is information I'm now reiterating.

 

[Randino Treviani]

Jade Crock: Jade is compatible with the serum and has no knowledge about it. Jade would quite happily agree to take the serum as she sees no real downsides to doing so.

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King crimson what is the DC on Jade taking the Serum?

[ ] Improve chemical production plants
DC 64 With your recent purchase of chemical plants from Stagg Enterprises, you've gained more than a few new capabilities. That being said you almost certainly can make said facilities better if you want to get even further ahead of your competition

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So, thinking of the Twins trait, we could improve Chemical Production Plants next turn. It feels like a safer bet. The action that earned them those points is directly related to this one, so it might be enough to get us what we are aiming for, and possibly let us t get even more out of the next time the D'Amaris twins push pharmaceuticals.

Thinking about bone serum, if we get what we really want it may be time to fold and just give the serum to Karl. The medical version still has numerous benefits to soldier and can probably be combined with things like Venom and Sharp for roughly the effect we want.

 

[King crimson]

Heads up people, the vote will be closing tomorrow. Just figured that everyone might like to know in advance.

King crimson what is the DC on Jade taking the Serum?

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The DC for Jade taking the human plant integration system is 26

 

[Gumiho]

Martial:
[X] Fortify locations in Alexandria with jewels
[X] Fortify LexCorp's non-Metropolis holdings
[X] Upgrade Alexandra's defenses
[X] Have someone train in your metahuman training room (Siobhan)

Diplomacy:
[X] Donate to Gotham University
[X] Recruit more occultists
[X] Meet with Amy Winston
[X] Meet with Count Vertigo
[X] Meet with Chloe Decker
[X] Meet with Senator Creed Philips
[X] Meet with Dinah Drake Lance in Star City
[X] Form a new superhero team under LexCorp's aegis
[X] Meet with the League of Shadows
[X] Advertise and promote the Wonderland Races
[X] Push for legislature designed to increase the maximum capacity to which you can donate to a politician
[X] Market your new line of Zoom Pets
[X] Give bonuses to employees

Stewardship:

[X] Create a specialized lab
[X] Continue to repair Metropolis
[X] Build a new LexCorp building (Rome)
[X] Continue creating Zeta Beam transmat stations
[X] Rebuild the resources lost in Brainiac's invasion
[X] Develop Bialya
[X] Donate to Bookworm
[X] Contribute more resources to the Wonderland races
[X] Renovate LexCorp Tower
[X] Donate to reconstruction efforts
[X] Expand Future Construction
[X] Build apartment complexes
[X] Build affordable housing
[X] Purchase even more stock in Keystone Motors

Intrigue:
[X] Interrogate Toby Merlino
[X] Locate Andre le Blanc

Learning:
[X] Reverse engineer Atlantean rifles
[X] Reverse engineer needle pistols
[X] Improve bone growth formula
[X] Improve learning program
[X] Attempt to reverse engineer the life model decoy drones
[X] Learn about the Gingo fruit
[X] Study psionic technology
[X] Learn about robotics

Misc:

[X] Double Down x3

[X] Assist Helena in getting revenge against Mandragora
-[X] Assist Helena by recruiting local aid
-[X] Assist Helena by drawing attention elsewhere
-[X] Assist Helena by helping her plan and execute a more discrete assassination attempt

[X] [Comp] Further analyze Gingo fruit
[X] [Comp] Analyze Dhawan's particle

 

[PickleJar]

While there is room for some financial crime simulation, I don't do it to a massive degree. I'll also say that I don't think a short squeeze has ever come remotely close to bringing down a country's economy. It does damage and it hurts people (and is rightfully illegal) but it's entirely incongruous with "crashing the economy".

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There have been instances of people shorting the currency of smaller countries (and bigger ones too sometimes, like with George Soros) though, so it is one example of how such a thing would theoretically be doable and incredibly quick and devastating - particularly since a short squeeze on that magnitude *is* possible (and I use that term loosely) and could cripple the entire financial system if leveraged properly. Theoretically, of course.

So, thinking of the Twins trait, we could improve Chemical Production Plants next turn. It feels like a safer bet. The action that earned them those points is directly related to this one, so it might be enough to get us what we are aiming for, and possibly let us t get even more out of the next time the D'Amaris twins push pharmaceuticals.

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I was thinking about expanding Ferris Aerospace if I'm honest. Makes building O.D.I.N easier among other things.

Thinking about bone serum, if we get what we really want it may be time to fold and just give the serum to Karl. The medical version still has numerous benefits to soldier and can probably be combined with things like Venom and Sharp for roughly the effect we want.

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It's too early to say one way or the other. We don't even know what degree of success to expect.

edit:

@King crimson Will we get the option to improve O.D.I.N's using our Supercomputer once we start building it as we did with some other Learning actions, or will it be exclusively limited to the O.D.I.N-based research action?

edit 2:

Also, will we be required to take separate actions to produce variants of the bone serum? For example, if we want to produce a weaker version of the bone serum and spread it around as a form of medical treatment (assuming we removed the bone monstrosity thing), would we need to take another action to do so or would it be folded under a "produce and sell bone growth serums" action of some kind?

 

[King crimson]

@King crimson Will we get the option to improve O.D.I.N's using our Supercomputer once we start building it as we did with some other Learning actions, or will it be exclusively limited to the O.D.I.N-based research action?

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If I were feeling snarky I would simply say yes and not actually give you any more information.

That being said I'll say right now that I currently have no intention of giving you a supercomputer based action to improve O.D.I.N.. I'd also like to point out that both learning about space and learning about computers, two actions that could result in O.D.I.N. improvements, both are also off of the list of available supercomputer special actions. This is intentional.

Also, will we be required to take separate actions to produce variants of the bone serum? For example, if we want to produce a weaker version of the bone serum and spread it around as a form of medical treatment (assuming we removed the bone monstrosity thing), would we need to take another action to do so or would it be folded under a "produce and sell bone growth serums" action of some kind?

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In order to make multiple versions of a thing, you generally need to take multiple actions (at least 1 for version A and another for version B). For the bone growth serum, I'm not folding a learning action for the creation of new variants under a stewardship action to sell an existing one.

That being said I'm almost certainly not going to split variants of the bone serum away from a single "improve" action. I think one single general option that covers all "improvements" that can then result in specificity in subvotes is generally better for keeping down clutter in this case.

 

[King crimson]

Hello everybody the vote is now closed. Expect the actual update to land sometime around the weekend if everything goes according to plan. Thank you for your patience.

 

[PickleJar]

In order to make multiple versions of a thing, you generally need to take multiple actions (at least 1 for version A and another for version B). For the bone growth serum, I'm not folding a learning action for the creation of new variants under a stewardship action to sell an existing one.

That being said I'm almost certainly not going to split variants of the bone serum away from a single "improve" action. I think one single general option that covers all "improvements" that can then result in specificity in subvotes is generally better for keeping down clutter in this case.

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Just to clarify and make sure that we are on the same page, what I meant is that if we have a bone serum with the effects of X Y and Z then we'd end up creating a bone serum with the effects of 0.1X, 0.1Y and 0.1Z. Enough to give massive medical benefits but not enough to create actual potent metahumans thus making it something we can offer civilians across the world, rather than adding an additional effect M to what the formula does.

Also, does the bone growth formula affect teeth? Teeth aren't bones but Doctor Death's teeth were affected by the formula as well, and "naturally regenerating teeth" could completely break the dental industry.


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Here are some additional thoughts I had

• Katherine desperately needs someone to team up with her. Her coops are borderline unworkable at the moment and don't let her play into her strengths as a military leader/trainer since the DC for those actions is too high for to tackle by herself. I don't see this changing this turn, unfortunately.
  
  
• Meena has no reliable, go-to team-ups. This could change with a good recruitment effort for occultists, particularly if we pick a science-leaning magic user
  
  
• Rebecca has no reliable Learning team-ups at the moment. Hopefully this will change this turn.
  
  
• Rose hopefully returns next turn. Stats will increase? Something to do with her brother/father? Hopefully, her coops with Talia, Eve, and Livewire will be good.
  
  
• Cold Engine completes this turn, so either Louise will demand to work on it or offer her resignation. We could use Helena's nemesis action to announce the Cold Engine and give her credit publicly this turn? Frankly, we should fire her.
  
  
• We will probably need 2 hero units to build another Lexcorp tower next turn given the rising DC. Nathan + Starfire (+42, -10 to DC) could be useful
  
  
• Nightshade needs: Training with powers, stealth training, and possibly a good weapon (enchanted magic pistols?) at the bare minimum to start showing us her true potential.
  
  
• Random idea: Have Fire and Ice fight crime in Canada. Canada has no major superhero presence and nothing is stopping them from becoming the biggest heroes there, solidifying Lexcorp's presence across all of North America
  
  
• Random idea: if robotic convergence increases Lex's and Marie's coop score to 2 then Marie's Diplomacy should only be increased up to 30. If we increase it to 31 then their Diplomacy team-up will be +97 and given the scale of successes that they will experience, Marie's diplomacy increasing is inevitable, even a +1 to Diplomacy will turn them into a +99 team and bar them for additional rerolls. At Diplomacy 30, +95 on a team-up will be slightly weaker but significantly more resistant to stat increases and thus more useable long-term
  
  
• Diplomacy (* post-transition Marie), Martial, and Intrigue all have decent coverage hero unit-wise. Additional recruitment efforts for Learning and Stewardship hero units should be made. Recruit scientists? Recruiting executives with Lex and Marie post-convergence could be viable as well.
  
  
• I think that recruiting Zatanna in our occultist recruitment action is probably not optimal if she is offered. She is too moral and it's unlikely that her Learning stat will be high, not to mention that she will come caveats like having to help her with her shows and stuff like that. I'd rather pull her over to us over time and take other occultists right now if offered to solve more immediate needs.

 

[King crimson]

Just to clarify and make sure that we are on the same page, what I meant is that if we have a bone serum with the effects of X Y and Z then we'd end up creating a bone serum with the effects of 0.1X, 0.1Y and 0.1Z. Enough to give massive medical benefits but not enough to create actual potent metahumans thus making it something we can offer civilians across the world, rather than adding an additional effect M to what the formula does.

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This feels completely different to what you were asking before to the point where I now am even more confused about the question. Like I'm now genuinely unsure if you're asking about the same thing. There's also not really a question here so is the question still "if we want to produce a weaker version of the bone serum and spread it around as a form of medical treatment (assuming we removed the bone monstrosity thing), would we need to take another action to do so or would it be folded under a "produce and sell bone growth serums" action of some kind?". Because what you're describing seems to be taking the action to make improve the bone serum and then getting a version of it applicable to medical processes. That's not at all related to a "produce and sell bone growth serums" at all and I will not give a stewardship action that lets you cover a learning action functionality.


I suppose I'll reiterate a few points and try to make it more clear. All actions to modify the bone growth serum will probably be under the "improve bone growth serum" action. I might change my mind on this later on but for now I see no reason to disaggregate the options. There is the option for unique variants and specific versions separate from the "main branch" of improvements. In the hypothetical scenario where you pick the options to get a "medical" variant of the serum, I'll make it distinct from a hypothetical "combat" equivalent. In the same way that I've handled exo-suits such that a lot of option cover them broadly but could also cover the Myrmidon variation, I'll be doing the same with bone growth serum variants. For now I see no reason to split the action as I feel like I can keep track of improvements to a "variant" pretty easily.

If it becomes confusing I may eventually split things off into different categories but it'll never be for a "produce and sell" action (which generally is a stewardship action). All bone serum improvements will be learning actions regardless of whether or not I choose to disaggregate things. My decision to disaggregate things will ultimately come down to what I think is practical.

As of right now, I don't think that splitting up variations of the bone formula based off of the type of improvement is practical, when I can let you work off the same "base" and then split things within subvotes once strains become sufficiently divergent.

TLDR: There will be one action for improving the bone growth formula to keep down clutter. For now at least, I'm content leaving it in subvotes whether the improvements to the formula aggregate or result in unique variants.

Also, does the bone growth formula affect teeth? Teeth aren't bones but Doctor Death's teeth were affected by the formula as well, and "naturally regenerating teeth" could completely break the dental industry.

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For the purposes of this quest, I'm not really distinguishing between "bones" and "teeth" for simplicities sake. The formula can hypothetically affect teeth.

 

[wabbitking]

Cold Engine completes this turn, so either Louise will demand to work on it or offer her resignation. We could use Helena's nemesis action to announce the Cold Engine and give her credit publicly this turn? Frankly, we should fire her.

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If we are puling off the Lexpo next turn I think she'll want to wait around till then. If only to get the most glory out of her work. If we do fire her we should ideally steer her towards the government. We don't really want something with as much potential as the cold engine getting into the wrong hands.

I think that recruiting Zatanna in our occultist recruitment action is probably not optimal if she is offered. She is too moral and it's unlikely that her Learning stat will be high, not to mention that she will come caveats like having to help her with her shows and stuff like that. I'd rather pull her over to us over time and take other occultists right now if offered to solve more immediate needs.

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Any reason why you don't think she has a high learning score? I'd assume a spellcaster of her caliber would have a decent one even if it's heavily magic focused. And yeah morals would be a problem but it depends on what we put her on. We're unlikely to be able to have her build a zombie army but stuff like anti-Trigon measures and the Metamorpho lore we got from the Stagg auction would be doable.

 

[PickleJar]

If we are puling off the Lexpo next turn I think she'll want to wait around till then. If only to get the most glory out of her work. If we do fire her we should ideally steer her towards the government. We don't really want something with as much potential as the cold engine getting into the wrong hands.

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If we do manage to do such an event successfully then it will make having a Lexpo a lower priority, so there's that to consider. It's too early to say anything though obviously.

Any reason why you don't think she has a high learning score? I'd assume a spellcaster of her caliber would have a decent one even if it's heavily magic focused. And yeah morals would be a problem but it depends on what we put her on. We're unlikely to be able to have her build a zombie army but stuff like anti-Trigon measures and the Metamorpho lore we got from the Stagg auction would be doable.

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tbh it's just that Zatanna's magic is related to her bloodline so I can't say that it, by itself, is good proof of Zatanna's Learning. I don't doubt that Zatanna has very good stats overall and some powerful traits and coop scores to go along with them (the one trait that we do know she has increases her Diplomacy, Stewardship and Intrigue by 10 (!!!) whenever she's performing, for a very loose definition of the words since it also works on speech checks) but I doubt that she's going to be a good specialized magic researcher of some kind and I can think of a few people I'd be interested in if they ever came up.

It's probably just me, but knowing that with some effort and time we will eventually get her regardless, I'd rather not spend our occultist recruitment slots on her and instead go for people we would otherwise have no way of reaching out to.

Assuming that her name ends up coming at all, of course.

 

[Randino Treviani]

Katherine desperately needs someone to team up with her. Her coops are borderline unworkable at the moment and don't let her play into her strengths as a military leader/trainer since the DC for those actions is too high for to tackle by herself. I don't see this changing this turn, unfortunately.

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I think the big problem is that Katherine just lacks the ability to compromise and and avoid needless confrontation. If we could Identify the right skill we could train Katherine in it with Pamela, and her coops would shoot up, not enough to be fantastic, but she'd be workable in more than a handful of situations. Hmm.

to separate something into parts and not allow those parts to mix together

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Compartmentalize might work. It would let her be more professional and ignore peoples negative attributes. Again, nothing revolutionary, but it would put her into workability.

Meena has no reliable, go-to team-ups. This could change with a good recruitment effort for occultists, particularly if we pick a science-leaning magic user

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Meena has a lot of decent coops, but conversely no overly strong ones. If she weren't usually the highest learning character in a team up that wouldn't be much of an issue, and conversely it can come in handy for leading people who otherwise don't get along.

It's been hinted at before that most magic is more about belief, and science is more about logic. This is why it's so hard to teach Lex Magic. It'd be pretty hard to find a science minded occultist with the kind of power or versatility we are aiming for.

What meena needs is tact. The ability to recognize when she has pushed to far and plan ahead to butter someone up to make them more willing to answer her questions and such.

Rose hopefully returns next turn. Stats will increase? Something to do with her brother/father? Hopefully, her coops with Talia, Eve, and Livewire will be good.

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Talia is likely, eve maybe, livewire is a coin flip to whether she gets on her nerves or not. I'm more interested in how she gets along with meld for intrigue team ups than the latter two, and whether any of her good coops have shifted. Also, whether her dad is looking into us now or not.

Cold Engine completes this turn, so either Louise will demand to work on it or offer her resignation. We could use Helena's nemesis action to announce the Cold Engine and give her credit publicly this turn? Frankly, we should fire her.

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I don't think so, and I think we are voting on the final sub action selection as part of the hero vote. If she is being weird next turn and still around, I say we fire her while doing that push for recognition action. Caitlin is loyal enough she won't care much about not getting acknowledged.

Alternatively, if we think it's worth the time, we could use pheromones to convince her to be paranoid about abduction over her knowledge and believe she needs to stay with Lexcorp for her own safety, but it's a waste in my opinion.

Last suggestion is to have Bee snap her up. She'll get some use out of her for a few years and then she'll go braindead, taking info on the Cold engine with her.

I feel like we need to have someone teach Leonard engineering so we can have him and Caitlin as our Cold engine team. That or finally use the language spell on someone so we can maybe get him to use it after he has seen the results.

We will probably need 2 hero units to build another Lexcorp tower next turn given the rising DC. Nathan + Starfire (+42, -10 to DC) could be useful

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Unless we are targeting somewhere difficult I feel like it's likely there is a DC within just Nathan's range.

Random idea: if robotic convergence increases Lex's and Marie's coop score to 2 then Marie's Diplomacy should only be increased up to 30. If we increase it to 31 then their Diplomacy team-up will be +97 and given the scale of successes that they will experience, Marie's diplomacy increasing is inevitable, even a +1 to Diplomacy will turn them into a +99 team and bar them for additional rerolls. At Diplomacy 30, +95 on a team-up will be slightly weaker but significantly more resistant to stat increases and thus more useable long-term

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Fine by me. I want her to get her intrigue over 20 anyways, though again, I am 100% not converting her until she has her trait. We know nothing about how a converted hero unit functions in terms of trait acquisition, and I'm not taking the risk. A turn or two of trying for a trait won't kill us, and we don't know that LMD reverse engineering has succeeded.

Diplomacy (* post-transition Marie), Martial, and Intrigue all have decent coverage hero unit-wise. Additional recruitment efforts for Learning and Stewardship hero units should be made. Recruit scientists? Recruiting executives with Lex and Marie post-convergence could be viable as well.

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Recruit competent assistants.

[ ] Recruit competent assistants
DC 35
Roll 67
Amazing Success

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Recruit Competent Assistants subvote
Please select up to two of the listed option. Keep in mind that I will not be revealing stats in advance for any of these characters.

[ ] [RCA] Felicity Smoak
This programmer has had a long history of getting involved in various smaller startup companies. While she hasn't had any major breakout hit her management and coding skills are excellent and make her a good asset.

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It's how we got Felicity.

[ ] Recruit competent assistants
DC 39 It's so hard to find good help. Mercy is a blessing in her competence but she cannot do everything. Finding someone to help fill in the gaps and take care of things you can't personally oversee would help everything run a lot smoother

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[ ] Recruit Managers and Executives
DC 127 Sometimes you need an individual to be able to manage things. While you've certainly got your own hands full, having someone who is skilled in the art of business could enable you to free up more of your time and focus your efforts elsewhere

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And the DC is much lower than managers and executives.

I think that recruiting Zatanna in our occultist recruitment action is probably not optimal if she is offered. She is too moral and it's unlikely that her Learning stat will be high, not to mention that she will come caveats like having to help her with her shows and stuff like that. I'd rather pull her over to us over time and take other occultists right now if offered to solve more immediate needs.

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Her learning stat being low might be offset by a trait relating to teaching or magic learning actions. Another thing to keep in mind is that occultists, like superheroes, prefer independence. It's difficult to get someone of quality who doesn't have enough familiarity with you to feel comfortable. It's not like we have grand evil magical ambitions. We want a heroes for teams to learn more about mostly safe kinds of magic and help our younger mages get a hold of their powers. Her likely high coop with jinx is good for that. We aren't planning to strike deals with demons or possess the daily profit here.

 

[Negation]

I think the big problem is that Katherine just lacks the ability to compromise and and avoid needless confrontation. If we could Identify the right skill we could train Katherine in it with Pamela, and her coops would shoot up, not enough to be fantastic, but she'd be workable in more than a handful of situations. Hmm.

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I'm thinking of having Katherine + Pamela + Mari do a Zambesi mission to find out what is going on in there.

It may not be the best mechanics wise but would fit better In-Quest to help build her up.

 

[Randino Treviani]

I'm thinking of having Katherine + Pamela + Mari do a Zambesi mission to find out what is going on in there.

It may not be the best mechanics wise but would fit better In-Quest to help build her up.

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Nah. That just increases her coops with one of those two while accomplishing the objective. If we want to get her to the point where she's not either solo or cooperating with one of a handful of heroes, we need to take the diplomacy action to teach her a skill that will let her work with people she doesn't like more easily.

 

[HavocOrder0999]

Just a thought for the next turn when Helena won't need to be on her revenge action, we could have Helena, Cassandra, and Katherine on two of the child actions:

[ ] [Cass] Teach Cassandra Leadership DC 10 (Cassandra Luthor must be assigned to this action for it to be taken) (Learning)
Helena (12) + Cassandra (31 * 1.6 = 50) + Katherine (7 * .6 = 5) = 67 before the roll

The goal is easily cleared and Helena and Katherine may get a small boost if the results are very good. Helena is good at working with children, and Katherine has military experience.


[ ] [Cass] Have Cassandra learn battle tactics and field command DC 36 (Cassandra must be assigned to this option for it to be taken) (Martial)
Katherine (20) + Cassandra (29 * .4 = 12) + Helena (15 * .6 = 9) = 41 + 10 (Katherine trait) = 51 before the roll (or 45 if Cassandra's bonus is cut in half due to having <1 coop with the leader on the action)

Katherine's military experience helps, her coop with Cassandra is what hurts the action, and Helena has experience from her assassination spree in Gotham. I'd prefer switching out Katherine if there is someone with a better coop score.

 

[Negation]

What turn was Rose supposed to return again? Also we really should have Nygma investigate William Walsh when we have free tasks.

 

[HavocOrder0999]

What turn was Rose supposed to return again?

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Rose's time off officially ends at the end of turn 32. Whether she'll actually be back by then is somewhat dependent on dice rolls.

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She's hopefully coming back in the events or interludes at the end of this turn. She had a 1.25 coop with Cassandra and 1 with Helena.

 

[Randino Treviani]

Just a thought for the next turn when Helena won't need to be on her revenge action, we could have Helena, Cassandra, and Katherine on two of the child actions:

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I'm pretty sure we planned to have a strong Helena lead team on teaching Raven Lexcorp propaganda so she sticks around after Trigon.

Edit: it's her last special action next turn, so the last chance to do it.

 

[PickleJar]

For the purposes of this quest, I'm not really distinguishing between "bones" and "teeth" for simplicities sake. The formula can hypothetically affect teeth.

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Could a production action make the bone serum cheaper and thus more ubiquitous?

I think the big problem is that Katherine just lacks the ability to compromise and and avoid needless confrontation. If we could Identify the right skill we could train Katherine in it with Pamela, and her coops would shoot up, not enough to be fantastic, but she'd be workable in more than a handful of situations. Hmm.

Compartmentalize might work. It would let her be more professional and ignore peoples negative attributes. Again, nothing revolutionary, but it would put her into workability.

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That's a good idea - she could benefit from this sort of training a lot.

Meena has a lot of decent coops, but conversely no overly strong ones. If she weren't usually the highest learning character in a team up that wouldn't be much of an issue, and conversely it can come in handy for leading people who otherwise don't get along.

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Meena has no "reliable" coops. Her only options are Frost and Felicity and if they are taking a Stewardship action then she's stuck. Carol is even more unlikely given how busy she tends to be.

What she needs is a good Learning unit that we are incentivized to stick with her whenever, like how Brown and Villain now function for Karl.

It's been hinted at before that most magic is more about belief, and science is more about logic. This is why it's so hard to teach Lex Magic. It'd be pretty hard to find a science minded occultist with the kind of power or versatility we are aiming for.

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Some people are very capable in both areas, and even some are trying to bridge between them (Elphius Levi, and Nathaniel Seine, who already was mentioned in this quest btw, come to mind among others). Meena is very likely to get along, or at least make the effort, with that type of person.

In general I think that these people should be a priority for us in our recruitment this turn.

Talia is likely, eve maybe, livewire is a coin flip to whether she gets on her nerves or not. I'm more interested in how she gets along with meld for intrigue team ups than the latter two, and whether any of her good coops have shifted. Also, whether her dad is looking into us now or not.

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Meld has enough good team-ups when it comes to Intrigue, and with Nygma leading her best one the match with Rose is poor. Assuming good coops (1<):

Talia + Vic + Rose could be a +70 Intrigue team for us.

Eve + Rose would be decent but not amazing.

Livewire + Rose + Lisa would be great for both Intrigue and Martial. Notably, they could be put on actions to use and improve both Rose and her trait, as well as give Livewire more understanding of different technologies and thus improve her for us long-term.

Unless we are targeting somewhere difficult I feel like it's likely there is a DC within just Nathan's range.

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Most of the big places are already outside his "range" and the DC will only go up next turn. London in particular.

Recruit competent assistants.

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While that's a possibility, recruiting assistants gives us a little bit of everything, and in those cases, I'd rather specialize and look for dedicated Learning/Stewardship units specifically.

Her learning stat being low might be offset by a trait relating to teaching or magic learning actions. Another thing to keep in mind is that occultists, like superheroes, prefer independence. It's difficult to get someone of quality who doesn't have enough familiarity with you to feel comfortable. It's not like we have grand evil magical ambitions. We want a heroes for teams to learn more about mostly safe kinds of magic and help our younger mages get a hold of their powers. Her likely high coop with jinx is good for that. We aren't planning to strike deals with demons or possess the daily profit here.

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Wasn't Zatanna specifically noted to not be a very good teacher in magic?

I'm far, far from being dismissive of Zatanna of course, but if we are given 3 choices (which seems highly likely) then I can think of other people who could potentially be more useful than her for us and for our needs, even if Zatanna is likely better than them by most objective metrics as a hero unit - assuming that she is even offered to us at all, of course.

Just a thought for the next turn when Helena won't need to be on her revenge action, we could have Helena, Cassandra, and Katherine on two of the child actions:

[ ] [Cass] Teach Cassandra Leadership DC 10 (Cassandra Luthor must be assigned to this action for it to be taken) (Learning)
Helena (12) + Cassandra (31 * 1.6 = 50) + Katherine (7 * .6 = 5) = 67 before the roll

The goal is easily cleared and Helena and Katherine may get a small boost if the results are very good. Helena is good at working with children, and Katherine has military experience.


[ ] [Cass] Have Cassandra learn battle tactics and field command DC 36 (Cassandra must be assigned to this option for it to be taken) (Martial)
Katherine (20) + Cassandra (29 * .4 = 12) + Helena (15 * .6 = 9) = 41 + 10 (Katherine trait) = 51 before the roll (or 45 if Cassandra's bonus is cut in half due to having <1 coop with the leader on the action)

Katherine's military experience helps, her coop with Cassandra is what hurts the action, and Helena has experience from her assassination spree in Gotham. I'd prefer switching out Katherine if there is someone with a better coop score.

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I'm not sure why Cassandra isn't leading all of the actions that you just mentioned given that in all of them she has the highest stats.

For this turn, I was hoping to have Starfire and Cassandra work together on the battle tactics and field command action (+83).

For the next turn... Well, it's a bit too early to talk about, but I have been eyeing the "Learn about Zoology and Ecology" action. If she takes it with Enoch Brown then his trait will activate and increase his Learning to 28 ( if the action involves animal biology then the boost is increased to +12) and together with Emily Rice it will look something like:

31 + 48 (28*1.7) + 17 = +96 (+25 at the end from Emily's and Cassandra's traits)

While that's probably not the best action to take, it will require a very small dedicated investment on our part (just Enoch) and I'd rather get 400+ on a not-ideal action VS get 80 on an ideal action.



edit: @Randino Treviani @King crimson I just realized that I accidentally tagged the wrong person when quoting, sorry about that!

 

[Randino Treviani]

Wasn't Zatanna specifically noted to not be a very good teacher in magic?

I'm far, far from being dismissive of Zatanna

In general I think that these people should be a priority for us in our recruitment this turn.

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of course, but if we are given 3 choices (which seems highly likely) then I can think of other people who could potentially be more useful than her for us and for our needs, even if Zatanna is likely better than them by most objective metrics as a hero unit - assuming that she is even offered to us at all, of course.

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I believe that was mostly Zatanna doubting herself on account of her family magic. Despite only half heartedly teaching jinx and not focusing only on magic, she managed to give Jinx enough of a foundation to win big and get relative control of her powers. She certainly isn't the best mage our there, but if we consider that it took the entire superhero point allocation to turn her into a full hero unit in spite of our long positive relationship greasing the wheels, well, imagine how much someone better with good stats would cost without that ground work?

In general I think that these people should be a priority for us in our recruitment this turn.

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Let's not get our expectations up too much or dismiss anyone out of hand going into this one. The amount of griping that took place about the hero vote options last turn was very off putting, and I'd like to avoid it this time. We are certainly getting occultists and whoever they turn out being is good enough for me.

Most of the big places are already outside his "range" and the DC will only go up next turn. London in particular.

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Well, if we are targetting big places then yeah, probably put a strong team.

While that's a possibility, recruiting assistants gives us a little bit of everything, and in those cases, I'd rather specialize and look for dedicated Learning/Stewardship units specifically.

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Yes, that is kind of the point. We have a decent amount of skilled and expert stewardship or learning individuals, but they don't always work well together. Let's be realistic, we don't need more ambitious and capable managers who don't necessarily get along with the competent workers who have been around longer than them and may come with expectations.

Competent assistants can serve the roll we need them to and is 88 DC points lower to succeed. We can tackle it with a good team, and we aren't screwed if it isn't a landslide like skilled doctors. If we can get Felicity and Carl with 67 against a 35 DC, imagine what's waiting at the higher successes. It's sufficiently better than managers and executives which we have to crit for any kind of success.

For the next turn... Well, it's a bit too early to talk about

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Definitely to early to talk about. We haven't examined her new ones just yet, which I'm interested in between the combination of last turns actions and us simultaneously recruiting a bunch of doctors.

 

[PickleJar]

I believe that was mostly Zatanna doubting herself on account of her family magic. Despite only half heartedly teaching jinx and not focusing only on magic, she managed to give Jinx enough of a foundation to win big and get relative control of her powers. She certainly isn't the best mage our there, but if we consider that it took the entire superhero point allocation to turn her into a full hero unit in spite of our long positive relationship greasing the wheels, well, imagine how much someone better with good stats would cost without that ground work?

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I'm pretty sure that that's because she can't teach the way that she was taught since her magic is blood magic i.e specific to her lineage, so she has a lesser "conventional" understanding of how it works. She outright stated that she has no interest in taking any more students after Jinx since she's not cut out to be a teacher.

At any rate, Zatanna is a top tier hero unit for sure, but she isn't necessarily the one most suitable for helping us with our goals at the moment *and* we have a way to get her eventually and over time, I'm not as inclined to jump at the opportunity and ignore other options just because Zatanna is "better" by most objective metrics - I'm far from dismissive of her however.

To use an example from the previous doctors subvote, Patricia Windsor has led multiple non-profits to massive successes and was able to lead many medical cooperation as well as get many donations to her cause from around the world, she is also one of the few doctors (along with Thomas Eliot, Arthur Villain, Guy Dax, Shiro Ito, and Achilles Milo) to be noted as particularly exceptional medical professionals. If I had to guess, she is likely to have high Stewardship and very high Diplomacy and Learning as well as some good coops, making her one of the best hero units offered with a strong possibility of being "the best" outright.

The downside is that to work on the bone serum, get along with Karl, and be willing to do certain unethical medical things, she is simply not a good match. The fact that she comes with an "obligation" that relates to doing charity work (just as Zatanna comes with one related to her shows btw) is another complication.

Also, keep in mind that recruiting Zatanna as a superhero is so difficult partially because she's not inerested in working under us or being a superhero full-time.

Yes, that is kind of the point. We have a decent amount of skilled and expert stewardship or learning individuals, but they don't always work well together. Let's be realistic, we don't need more ambitious and capable managers who don't necessarily get along with the competent workers who have been around longer than them and may come with expectations.

Competent assistants can serve the roll we need them to and is 88 DC points lower to succeed. We can tackle it with a good team, and we aren't screwed if it isn't a landslide like skilled doctors. If we can get Felicity and Carl with 67 against a 35 DC, imagine what's waiting at the higher successes. It's sufficiently better than managers and executives which we have to crit for any kind of success.

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If we're making the effort, I'd rather try and get people specialized for the task at hand over trying to grab a bunch of different people from different places. Also, recruiting scientists has an even lower DC than recruitting assitants so why not go for that if all else is equal?

At any rate, what action we will take will depend on who we can put on it when the time comes.

I will also say that that particular subvote led to some very good options for us given the roll for sure. We took a "recruit PR representative" that very same turn and rolled better on that action but were offered worse options overall - I view that particular result as a bit of an outlier tbh.

 

[Randino Treviani]

If we're making the effort, I'd rather try and get people specialized for the task at hand over trying to grab a bunch of different people from different places. Also, recruiting scientists has an even lower DC than recruitting assitants so why not go for that if all else is equal?

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Because scientists are less likely to have good management skills, which means another action with a big team, and can be over specialized and eccentric besides. Also, If you look at the ones we hired already, Pamela, Karl, Ivo, Louise, they all came with specialist projects they expected to work on. Even the D'amaris twins have their preference for Pharmaceuticals.

Recruit Competent Assistants subvote

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If you look at the option we are presented with as well as Felicity and Carl you'll realize competent assistants are actually quite specialized with exception for a Jack of all trades, but aren't one trick pony learning specialists like most of our scientists before we invested in them as we did Pamela.

I will also say that that particular subvote led to some very good options for us given the roll for sure. We took a "recruit PR representative" that very same turn and rolled better on that action but were offered worse options overall - I view that particular result as a bit of an outlier tbh.

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I think that's more that DCU has a larger populace of characters suited to be assistants (Henchmen) than Company PR Representatives, much like we get a lot of anger prone scientists with special projects and quality sneaks who are good recruits than we do sane pro corporate superheroes or occultists. It's a setting issue, but Competent Assistants is on of the ones it's in favor of in my opinion.

 

[PickleJar]

Because scientists are less likely to have good management skills, which means another action with a big team, and can be over specialized and eccentric besides. Also, If you look at the ones we hired already, Pamela, Karl, Ivo, Louise, they all came with specialist projects they expected to work on. Even the D'amaris twins have their preference for Pharmaceuticals.

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Scientists are also more likely to be good at science, which covers something that we do need - Learning. I also think that your breakdown is a bit too biased, for every scientist who wanted something from us we had a scientist who explicitly didn't unless we specifically chose to recruit them for their work. It's ultimately a matter of seeing who's available and choosing the ones we are most comfortable with.

We also need Stewardship, and recruiting assistants can theoretically accomplish both but not necessarily either very well. Carl doesn't have particularly high stats and he's mostly good at the one thing that he does (this is not to disregard him), and Felicity's stats were lower and she didn't have her computational comprehension trait either when we recruited her.

As I said, I'd rather try and specialize in recruitment efforts to cover a need compared to just taking a general recruitment action and seeing where it lands us.

Keep in mind that our recruitment attempts are limited to three people at a time at most from what we've seen so far, so if we try to get both Learning and Stewardship hero units with a single non-specialized action we will get fewer of each and they won't necessarily be as capable in a given stat - there's very much a give and take here.

I don't necessarily mind it and if we can't muster the resources for a dedicated managers and executives roll then I'd be all for it so it is an option, but if resources do allow us a bigger investment then I'd go for the other option.

I would prefer to just recruit scientists with a dedicated action though. The high end Learning units are very unlikely to turn up from the assistants roll and those are the people we should be gunning for.

This is all very theoretical of course and things can (and probably will) easily change by the time turn 33 or 34 roll around.

Edit: @King crimson How does Carl compare to (other) world-class security experts?

Also, who would you consider to be the best (by whatever definition you'd like to follow) lawyer in the setting? Icon? Someone else?

 

[Randino Treviani]

Keep in mind that our recruitment attempts are limited to three people at a time at most from what we've seen so far, so if we try to get both Learning and Stewardship hero units with a single non-specialized action we will get fewer of each and they won't necessarily be as capable in a given stat - there's very much a give and take here.

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Yes, and we are very much not trying to recruit to many heroes. Remember we have the soft cap, and we just got an unexpected sweep of learning heroes from skilled doctors, one of which is good for stewardship. Also stronger success tend to come with more options to choose from. We'd have fairly good odds of getting the stewardship heroes we need without needing to guarantee reroll, and decent odds of them also being good for learning.

Carl doesn't have particularly high stats and he's mostly good at the one thing that he does (this is not to disregard him), and Felicity's stats were lower and she didn't have her computational comprehension trait either when we recruited her.

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Yes, carl doesn't have especially amazing stats, but he has good ones in two catagories and makes up for them with particularly good traits and a lack of work he insists on doing semi-frequently. Same with Felicity.

Yes, the two heroes who didn't have a particularly great roll to split between them didn't come out the strongest. If we are planning to use them for learning, particularly strong learning teams, that will fix itself relatively quickly with a few learn about actions we want to take anyway.

Scientists are also more likely to be good at science, which covers something that we do need - Learning. I also think that your breakdown is a bit too biased, for every scientist who wanted something from us we had a scientist who explicitly didn't unless we specifically chose to recruit them for their work. It's ultimately a matter of seeing who's available and choosing the ones we are most comfortable with.

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Please name these scientists. Pamela had human plant serum and environmental preservation. Ivo had his amazo project. Karl is still working on bone serum over 20 turns later.

Meena has Dhawan Particle, but is the rare exception who is excited about all science and so isn't too particular about it, or may simply be easily sated because Dhawan Particle pops up unexpectedly in a lot of learning projects we undertake.

Louise and Caitlin were a package deal and Caitlin more like Louise's assistant than not and were exclusively good for cold engine and not much else before lucky breaks with it and heat chamber much improved Caitlin.

Enoch has achieved his big science project and wants legal help and vengeance instead. Catherine was snatched up early enough that she hadn't had a chance to find her focus yet, which is the whole reason we picked her.

Yes, there are characters who function like scientists for us at times but are distinctly not scientist. Felicity and frost are more engineers than scientists, even if Felicity has grown into the role. Raven is a magic user who will do a lot of research on our behalf but isn't a scientist.

I would prefer to just recruit scientists with a dedicated action though. The high end Learning units are very unlikely to turn up from the assistants roll and those are the people we should be gunning for.

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I really feel we need more stewardship than we need a batch of fresh quirky learning heroes. The main reason we don't have another 2 good learning heroes is there locked up handling stewardship, which isn't always a bad thing. Our flexible hero units tend to get more important things done than the ones who are just good for one thing, Ivo's trait making him the exception.

Depending on what happens this turn, an influx of competent assistants with stewardship to pair with heroes we already have and free up Felicity and Frost to team up with meena is probably a better approach than going strait for scientists. If we decide we need to follow up with a recruit scientists then we can do that.