I don't see why we couldn't do this, unless the ability was specifically designed to do batch work.
Magical Girl Escalation Taylor (Worm/Nanoha)
- Thread starter Silently Watches
- Start date
Silently Watches
Professional Stalker
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- Right behind you
Beyond cartridges, no, you cannot store mana for spell-casting. Could a Gadgeteer automate the process? Maybe, but 1) they would need to be cross-trained with the Knight, 2) they would have to progress a ways down the energy skill branch, and the more advanced they were the better you could convince me to allow it, and 3) it would not be an efficient process because it starts running up against game balance issues.
You can cast with cartridges instead of your own mana, yes.
Normally, you three would be right. However, charging cartridges at the end of the day means making a batch with whatever mana you have left, which is going to vary based on what you did that day. Figuring out that percentage starts getting into "more trouble than it's worth" territory, and I'm trying to avoid doing hefty math because I don't have the time to assign values to everything and crunch the numbers.
So, here's my plan at the moment. Once you can make cartridges, you will be able to do so at either or both time slots per week, where one slot nets you two days worth of cartridges and both slots earn five days worth. This will be IN ADDITION to the normal activities, and you can specify which activity you want to do it with. That will let you get your cartridges without losing out on plot. It further puts the onus on you to determine how risky a situation is. The higher the likelihood of combat, the less you want to risk making cartridges and whittling away your mana.
If someone has an alternative that is easy to implement but doesn't take away ALL the consequences of a bad decision, I'm all ears.
I consider that fair- stockpiling "reserve" mana during downtimes for use during "Oh Shit" arcs/events.
Hoyden
Hugbot v0.28
- Location
- UK
I'm guessing you are planning to roll a dice to see if that was a charging day or not.
You could keep it a write-in option that is in addition to everything else, format something like this maybe.
[ ] Charge Cartridges.
-[ ] One day.
-[ ] Every other day.
-[ ] Every day (Risky Action)
Maybe not those exact options, but something similar that doesn't specify which day is used charging.
Firedon
Lazy Sleepy Cat
- Location
- Germany
We'd determine whether we charge during an action.
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@Silently Watches in the most recent chapter it sounds like Lung got within 16 feet of Captain. Did Danny get much better at suppressing his ability, did some weird interaction with the Butcher's power prevent him from taking control, or is something else going on?
Always Late
Lacking in coffee, sleep, and brains
- Location
- Ohio
There is something else going on: Not being Khepri.
Silently Watches
Professional Stalker
- Location
- Right behind you
As Always Late pointed out, Danny isn't Khepri. He can push people to focus on the same goals, but he doesn't take control, and his powers aren't always predictable when you start throwing in people whose goals are opposed to his own. In this case, when Lung/Butchers arrived, the goal they went to was "stop the fighting". If the Protectorate is crushed, the fight stops, wouldn't you say? After that, Lung took off, and again the fighting stopped.
Is this me justifying something in hindsight? Absolutely. I tend to take the position that if I can explain an in-story event with the rules already in play, I don't need to rewrite the scene in question even though that wasn't the thought I had in mind when I first wrote it. If I can't, I do need to rewrite it whether I want to or not.
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Ah, technically correct. The best kind of correct, eh?
Can you go into detail about how this works? From what you said it seems like a sneaky or fast villain could get Danny's buffs and use them against him. Is that something we need to be worried about?
Silently Watches
Professional Stalker
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- Right behind you
I can't go into detail because it is very situation-dependent. That Danny's powers have that kind of backdoor was intentional, but it was something I left open for myself as a "just in case" measure.
AAR: Escapades
Silently Watches
Professional Stalker
- Location
- Right behind you
After-Action Report for Arc 5: Escapades
Taking the Field
Taking the Field
- You chose to join the fight with Samantha at your side while the Privateers stayed home to heal. It was a split vote initially whether Danny would come or not, but eventually you decided to bring him along.
- If you had sent Danny to the fight without you going yourself, you wouldn't have known about Butcher XV and the attack on headquarters until after the fight was over. There would have been a survival roll (see below) with that situation, too; if Samantha went with him, he would have gotten a bonus, but she would have had a survival roll of her own. It was entirely possible that somebody, maybe even Alexandria, would have called you up to meet in person so she could give you some tragic news.
- You passed this chase up in part 1, and as a result, they reached the small town of Durham and dug themselves in. You went after them in part 2, choosing to trap most of the villains in a dimensional barrier so you wouldn't have to worry about hostages or mooks and blow them away with Solar Wrath. You also voted to go lethal, because only in Nanoha can you fling around beams of nuclear fire without concerns that you'll hurt anyone. For the villains you were after, that worked out just fine, but you had no idea that somebody was going to Trigger and run off into the sunset with Cricket and said mooks while Victor sacrificed himself to save them.
- It was the Recursion Field more than anything that caused a problem. You took the vast majority of your capes with you. If you had fought the Empire in the real world, you would have gotten all of them, but it also promised collateral damage since their attacks and your attack together would have ended up killing dozens of people, not to mention all the radiation from Solar Wrath being set to lethal.
- Cailleach would have gotten some actually screen time if you had split up, but since you didn't, you don't get any clues about whether or not she is, as some of you suspect, your school friend Kayleigh. Too bad.
- Oh, and just so you know? Kaiser was screened by Spectrometer, the same cape who verified your immunity to the Scream, and got a "red" rating on his chances of being Mastered.
- If you had Ragnarök, you could have asked for and maybe even received permission to burn Durham to the ground even without a dimensional barrier. The fallout (heh!) from that decision would have been spectacular.
- You chose to go after Purity's group yourself. When given the choice to go after Purity, Crusader, or Night and Fog, you picked Purity and decided to start off with diplomacy, a course you continued when you convinced Purity to give the Protectorate another chance. She and Crusader are now headed down south to become long-term probationary Protectorate heroes (unless Crusader screws himself over). Fog and Night's fates are still being decided, but even Purity knows that things are unlikely to end in their favor.
- Had you chosen not to help Purity, either by letting her go or choosing to fight her, she would have grabbed Aster and fled, and then both of them would have been killed by an overzealous Laserdream. The same would have happened had you not participated in this quest at all.
- I'm very glad you chose not to go after the civilians, by the way. That was the absolute fastest way to get Purity to try to kill you. Aster was in one of those cars. Theo, on the other hand, wasn't. Kayden didn't want to leave Theo behind, but she had to pick her battles, and between her daughter and her stepson? Wasn't that hard of a decision on who to save.
- In regards to the best way to help Purity out, I thought about faking her and Aster's deaths by shooting behind them with Solar Wrath so the other heroes gave up looking for her, with the ultimate goal being to scan her and give her a Device so she could leave her old cape identity behind and start over without all its baggage. The plan @KhazintheDark came up with, though? Beautiful, even if he initially forgot that Purity could simply order her allies to stand down and stop the fight that way. I honestly like it a lot more than my original one. It only had one problem with how it turned out, which is…
- Remember way back, I think in late Arc 1, how I said that I had some people picked out who were guaranteed to have Linker Cores but I wouldn't tell you who they were until you scanned them or the information became irrelevant? And also that I had figured out who this quest's Fate was going to be? Yeah, Purity had a Linker Core, and she would have been happy to give up her powers for a Device if it provided a fresh start as a heroine and you gave her a way to get herself and Aster out of Brockton Bay. That was the real prize you could have won had you completed Light in the Darkness back in Arc 2, just so you know. The reason I'm revealing it now is that she no longer has any impetus to give up the powers she's familiar with just so she can rebrand herself. She's getting recognized as a hero, Aster is forever out of Kaiser's hands, and Kayden Russel has a new start awaiting her in New Orleans. Life is finally looking up.
- What else? Oh! Since we're probably never going to get that far along in the story, Aster's life will now be much improved compared to canon. She gets to grow up with the knowledge that her mom's a hero, lots of friends in the Protectorate and Wards since she'll know them for as long as she can remember, a clean bill of health and knowledge that she isn't a Ziz-bomb thanks to all the psychological evaluations and counseling she'll receive, and she actually makes it to her third birthday without somebody shooting her in the head.
- You sent Samantha to help with the ABB/Teeth/Fallen fight both times, but because you were not there to lend your aid (or, OOC, give any battle plans), things didn't turn out so well, which is why…
- #PossessedRageDragon #NewButcher
- Lung was weakened by Samantha's Shredding Claw, but remember that his power ramps up with anticipation of fighting, number of people watching him, and most importantly, the threat that his opponents pose. Normally the stronger he gets, the less threat his opponent poses, and so he reaches a plateau for how much he can become. By lowering his damage resistance, though, Samantha insured that the threat of the fight never diminished, so his growth never slowed down. When he went into hiding, he could focus on that threat in anticipation for the fight coming the next day, which meant the charge he built up over spending the whole night anticipating the fight awaiting him was greater than it would have been normally and he could grow faster and larger than he normally would have that second day. Add in the "help" Samantha gave him with another round of Shredding Claw? It shouldn't be a surprise that he became strong enough to overcome even the Butcher's toughness.
- Okay, to be fair. Had you not sent Samantha there, Lung still would have become Butcher XV, but he would have been weaker than he was. That increased strength was why there was a bonus to the "Event" roll.
- The only way to completely prevent him from becoming Butcher was to take part in part 1, at which time you could have figured out the secret of Flare spells and used that to drive him back the next day. Maybe. On the other hand, if you wanted to die in this arc, this was the path you should have chosen.
- You passed up taking part in the chase after the independent villains. The pursuing heroes managed to get most of the civilians into custody, but the Undersiders and Parian got away. Uber was killed in part 2. Not anybody's fault; suicide-by-cape. He didn't take Leet's death during the Simurgh's attack well.
- Had you gone this route, you could have chatted a little with Vista and seen how she's been doing since the Cadejo fight. She refused to stay back while an attack was going on in her hometown, and since the Youth Guard cleared the Philadelphia Protectorate of any negligence on their part related to the incident with Cadejo, the PRT eventually cowed to her demands.
- Could you have stopped them entirely? Like with Lung, maybe. There was a cape the Thinkers didn't know about, and her powers make things extremely difficult for anyone chasing the Undersiders. *hint, hint* And no, she doesn't have the same power set she did in canon. Different environment, different trigger, different powers.
- This was the boring option, and it would have netted you nothing in part 1. The benefit to doing it yourself in part 2 is that you would have had the choice to save Danny had you been there yourself, or if Samantha was there, it would have netted a bonus to their survival rolls. You wound up not needing it, which is a good thing, but it could have been an issue.
- I like to keep things simple, so the survival rolls had a maximum of three rounds. It happened because you did not take choose to take part in the ABB or Security events on the second day and you used Recursion Field, so you had no way of knowing about the attack on headquarters. I also would have rolled if you could hear about Lung becoming the Butcher and chose to ignore it anyway.
- "Event" was Lung's attack on headquarters. Since Samantha was there for part 1 of the ABB quest, he got a 10-point bonus. Plus bonus, roll was 51.
- "Response" was Samantha's roll to get to the base of operations and teleport Danny out without either of them being seriously injured. If you sent Samantha to Security on day 2, you would have received a 15-point bonus. Roll was 56, so the two of them got out with only minor injuries on Samantha's end. Too bad for the Thinkers who had been flirting with Danny, though, unless he likes his women extra-crispy.
- Had you failed the Response roll, you would have had two "Aftermath" rolls, which were Samantha and Danny's chances of surviving Lung's attack with major injuries. The difficulty check here would have been half Lung's attack (in this case, 26), as I don't want to kill the people Taylor's close to. If there was one pass and one fail, I probably would have killed Samantha and let Danny live rather than the opposite. Yes, you've spent more time with Samantha, but as a Guardian Beast, she is replaceable. Danny, despite Perfect Storm's opinions to the contrary, is not.
- Your Linker Core reached its full, upgraded size, and that gave you the opportunity to cross-train in one of the other three templates. You picked Extinction Knight, and I truly do thank everyone who crawled out of the woodwork to vote. It's nice to know that there are more than fourteen or fifteen people participating in this quest.
- A max of two spells could be learned in this arc, one for each part you took part in. You chose Ragnarök and Flare Blade. We're soon to have a recurrent Dresden problem, aren't we?
- While you were gone, some interesting stuff happened back home that you missed out on. Nothing direct combat, but stuff nonetheless.
- Because Perfect Storm finally recovered some of its early memories, you found out its real name. And since your Linker Core reached its full upgraded size, you can now create twin familiars without any penalty on your rate of learning and training spells. Twins have to be created at the same time, though, and so you can't do that so long as Samantha is still alive and uplifted.
@Silently Watches , since we got Extinction Knight as secondary, does that give any boost for Barrier Jacket damage blocking?
Always Late
Lacking in coffee, sleep, and brains
- Location
- Ohio
... did Theo have a thing for Cricket or something?
Hey, my plan never said anything about taking most of the heroes into the barrier, I just said who'd be drug in when it first went up. They invited themselves rather than wait for Taylor to cast. Don't pin that on me.
No shit.
Considering you've said Ragnarök will kill us without buying some conditions we don't even know about yet, forgive me if I'm skeptical.
First Grue, and now Purity. Man, you keep handing us Capes to join the Privateers and become mages, and we keep inadvertently preventing that.
... Laserdream? You sure you're not talking about Glory Girl here? Laserdream's in college studying art, so the plausibility of her out-blasting Purity aside, where do you pull that characterization?
Eh. We can always recruit her later.
... FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-
-UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK! He can do that?
I kinda guessed you had that planned as a 'requires player interference to avert' event.
Secret of Flare Spells?
And his shard is finally rid of him.
Fucking Aisha.Could you have stopped them entirely? Like with Lung, maybe. There was a cape the Thinkers didn't know about, and her powers make things extremely difficult for anyone chasing the Undersiders. *hint, hint* And no, she doesn't have the same power set she did in canon. Different environment, different trigger, different powers.
I'd wait and see if those extra people keep participating or if they just go back go lurking before calling it 'participation'.
We're SB/SV, what other option was there?
Whelp. At least Noelle didn't make her move.
*cracks knuckles, neck*
BRING IT NOELLE! COME ON! LET'S FUCKING GO!
...I see. Good job Alt!Laserdream, how does it feel to have accidentally killed an infant?
Damn it. That was a large screw-up that continues to haunt us in missed opportunities.
RIP Uber.
Why does the use of "interesting" set me on edge?
- Location
- Belfast
Heh... Dresden problems?
"No officer, that building was definitely on fire before I got here... Honest!".
On a more serious note though, we're going to be a terrifying combatant once we reach towards the top of our skill trees. We might even reach the other end of Dresden responses, you know the whole 'genocided an entire species cause they severely hurt people he cared about'...
"No officer, that building was definitely on fire before I got here... Honest!"
.On a more serious note though, we're going to be a terrifying combatant once we reach towards the top of our skill trees. We might even reach the other end of Dresden responses, you know the whole 'genocided an entire species cause they severely hurt people he cared about'...
You're a little mistaken. Leet was the one whose shard wanted him to die.
Silently Watches
Professional Stalker
- Location
- Right behind you
You'll just have wait and see, won't you?
Yep, it's getting very frustrating.
The how is a shot in the back. The why is that art major aside, she has the same black and white views on morality the rest of New Wave suffers from. We only see her I think once in canon, during the Leviathan fight, so she's very much a blank slate for me to work with.
Ayup.
My player base is incredibly paranoid about everything.
Skilled QMs feed off their players' tears! I'm justified! *is wearing tinfoil hat*My player base is incredibly paranoid about everything.
Always Late
Lacking in coffee, sleep, and brains
- Location
- Ohio
*facepalm* Goddamn it Theo.
We see her picking Skitter over Armsmaster to take into fighting Leviathan then saving Taylor from drowning. Considering the shit Taylor did by that point, along with the grudge Amy and Vicky had, that Crystal picked her without a second though is character evidence enough. Plus, it's a bit of a stretch to portray the Pelhams as Dallon clones.
- Location
- In the depts of despair.
Does the upgraded linker core allows for a longer time when communicating with the TSAB?
- Location
- Ural, Russia, Earth
Vista alive and kicking!
Kicking, because she's a little too disarmed for punching...
Hmmm...
We have flame mana conversion affinity, so we can do our spells with "just a little fire" or "all of the fire and radiation".
Can we use it to convert Lung's flame into mana?
All could be explained with Ziz.
Silently Watches
Professional Stalker
- Location
- Right behind you
We see her choosing to carry Skitter into the fight over taking Armsmaster to the medics. She says during that discussion that she should be the one going into the fight because her lasers are stronger than her mother's. That's not character evidence of anything other than that she'll work with villains during an Endbringer fight just like every other hero does and that she doesn't like playing taxi.
Nor is it a stretch to believe that the two branches of a family who work on the same team share similar views on heroes and villains. I'd honestly be more surprised if they didn't.
