Magical Girl Escalation Taylor (Worm/Nanoha)
- Thread starter Silently Watches
- Start date
Silently Watches
Professional Stalker
- Location
- Right behind you
I don't know if this is bad phrasing on my part or a reaction I should have expected after giving you a look at the developer notes without any context (or both), so I'll just explain it from the top.
I am really, really bad at translating between stat numbers and narrative effects. It's a large part of the reason the mage portion of the quest is entirely skills-based. When I promised that I would give a randomly chosen GB a stat boost (which I told everyone upfront), I expected it to be easier to come up with a simple stat system for the GB. That was not the case. Converting this, too, to a pure skill setup is the obvious solution, but while that means I cannot honor the letter of my promise, I can still honor the spirit. In this case, the easiest compromise is exclusive skills.
The tank already had a damage-reducing skill; that got an exclusive upgrade to the invincibility I promised for Momberian. The infiltrator got a shiny new Trump ability. Both the ranged and DPS classes had an interesting but not exactly necessary ability that could easily be made exclusive. I had a terror of a time coming up with the scientist skills until today, so it was designed from the ground up to have two additional Tinker abilities to serve as its random boost.
What I expect is causing all the furor is the support class. To give you some behind-the-scenes background, support has always been excessively bloated. It started off with 18 skills. For comparison, the other GB classes had 4–5; Witch and Knight have 30 and 28, respectively. I cut the GB list to 12 and used the original list as the core for the human support class. Even then, 12 abilities compared to 4 or 5? I was essentially punishing you for choosing anything else. Paring it down further to a more modest 7 reduces that bias, especially since 2 of the Enchant abilities are upgrades to other skills.
In fact, here.
Recovery is very similar to Physical Heal, and Defense Gain is the next step up of Iron Hide. System Purge I'm honestly not sure if you'd ever use. Fortify Spirit is the canon spell Divide Energy plus a caffeine jolt, basically. The only spell that you'd truly be missing out on is Soul Wings.
This should, I hope, put your minds at ease that I'm not punishing you or torturing you or anything of the sort. It was a last minute change because the system I originally planned to use was becoming more trouble than it was worth.
But if you still feel that, had I known about this in the beginning and told you, you would have chosen differently? I am more than willing to repeat that vote and let you change your minds. I want this quest to one you want to play, not an exercise in frustration.[/color][/b][/color][/b]
I am really, really bad at translating between stat numbers and narrative effects. It's a large part of the reason the mage portion of the quest is entirely skills-based. When I promised that I would give a randomly chosen GB a stat boost (which I told everyone upfront), I expected it to be easier to come up with a simple stat system for the GB. That was not the case. Converting this, too, to a pure skill setup is the obvious solution, but while that means I cannot honor the letter of my promise, I can still honor the spirit. In this case, the easiest compromise is exclusive skills.
The tank already had a damage-reducing skill; that got an exclusive upgrade to the invincibility I promised for Momberian. The infiltrator got a shiny new Trump ability. Both the ranged and DPS classes had an interesting but not exactly necessary ability that could easily be made exclusive. I had a terror of a time coming up with the scientist skills until today, so it was designed from the ground up to have two additional Tinker abilities to serve as its random boost.
What I expect is causing all the furor is the support class. To give you some behind-the-scenes background, support has always been excessively bloated. It started off with 18 skills. For comparison, the other GB classes had 4–5; Witch and Knight have 30 and 28, respectively. I cut the GB list to 12 and used the original list as the core for the human support class. Even then, 12 abilities compared to 4 or 5? I was essentially punishing you for choosing anything else. Paring it down further to a more modest 7 reduces that bias, especially since 2 of the Enchant abilities are upgrades to other skills.
In fact, here.
Exclusive skills are bolded and blue.
- Boost Up
- Striker Power – Increase physical attack power.
- Barret Power – Increase energy attack power.
- Iron Hide – Increase damage resistance.
- Healing
- Physical Heal – Heal mild to moderate injuries.
- System Purge – Remove toxins, diseases, and debilitating parahuman-induced effects.
- Fortify Spirit – Transfer mana to restore magic levels and cure mental fatigue.
- Containment
- Ring Bind – Create rings of magic that wrap around target's limbs to lock them in place.
- Struggle Bind – Trap target in chains that also forcibly revert any magical transformations.
- Mighty Shell – Hemispheric shield over location.
- Enchant
- Soul Wings – Grant temporary flight.
- Recovery – Grant temporary regeneration.
- Defense Gain – Grant temporary invulnerability.
This should, I hope, put your minds at ease that I'm not punishing you or torturing you or anything of the sort. It was a last minute change because the system I originally planned to use was becoming more trouble than it was worth.
But if you still feel that, had I known about this in the beginning and told you, you would have chosen differently? I am more than willing to repeat that vote and let you change your minds. I want this quest to one you want to play, not an exercise in frustration.[/color][/b][/color][/b]
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Well, there were three main arguments for non-random:
-Power increase is 'minor' - Distinctly disproven right there. Non-random familiar is an enormous gap from the random
-Wrong class familiar screws us hard - I don't know about these guys since thats up to their judgment of whether getting a specific skillset is worth losing out on exclusive skills, though strategically every familiar class provides something big and the random exclusives gives us a full PC tier monster.
-I want <X> specific animal(nevermind the ones who think this adds to power and want some mutant crab) - Unchanged
-Power increase is 'minor' - Distinctly disproven right there. Non-random familiar is an enormous gap from the random
-Wrong class familiar screws us hard - I don't know about these guys since thats up to their judgment of whether getting a specific skillset is worth losing out on exclusive skills, though strategically every familiar class provides something big and the random exclusives gives us a full PC tier monster.
-I want <X> specific animal(nevermind the ones who think this adds to power and want some mutant crab) - Unchanged
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OverReactionGuy
Verified Sanity
-shrugs-
I chose random because it would have likely been a cat anyway.
I chose random because it would have likely been a cat anyway.
Archeo Lumiere
The Prince's Archivist
- Location
- Lumiose City, Kalos
- Pronouns
- He/Him/They/Them
I voted ran on the one in 192 chance of it being mine. Or is it 1 in 96 considering my character fits two niches?
- Location
- Pittsburgh PA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I kinda wanted the Momberian cat, no matter how unlikely it was. Awesome name for it by the way.
Set Up! 1.x
Silently Watches
Professional Stalker
- Location
- Right behind you
Set Up! 1.x
He was trapped.
The rocks hemmed him in. The dust choked him. His arm was pinned in place. The rubble shifted and threatened to collapse every time he moved. Even if he didn't move, the concrete groaned and closed in a little more. Only faint sounds drifted to him, and they were just more screams of pain.
Here, in the dark, he cried. He was going to die, killed by the goddamn gangs, and they wouldn't even realize it! What would happen to the dockworkers when he was gone? Who would find them jobs? Margaret and Kurt didn't have the contacts he did; would they be able to keep them afloat? Most of them didn't have the money to move to another city, and for the ones who had families, that was something else keeping them in place—
Oh God, Taylor. This was going to destroy her.
Hysterical laughter filled the cramped hollow. Would it?! Would it really?! He was already out of her life for the most part. What the fuck kind of father didn't know his daughter was being tormented in school until it put her in the hospital? What kind of father worried about the future of his subordinates before his own child's? Alan and Zoe were far better parents than he was; she'd probably flourish in their care where she had just withered in his own.
Son, boss, husband, father; it didn't matter what the role was. He was an unmitigated failure in all of them—!
He blinked blearily, picking his head up from the rock under it. Had he passed out? But that didn't make any sense. He was digging through the rubble, and he was watching the Merchants and Empire duke it out, and he was running to his truck to get the rifle he knew was still in there….
Something was very wrong about all this.
He shifted a large chunk of concrete out of the way to reveal a weedy, bespectacled man buried underneath. He stretched out his hand to himself, and he reached up to grab Alexander's hand.
"Boss," he said, "I think something weird's going on."
Danny threw off the covers and sat on the edge of his bed, his hands shaking. This was the second time in as many nights that he had dreamed about the attack on the office, and he doubted it was going to get better anytime soon. He would bear them, though; he was alive to have them, for one thing, and he had been given a second chance at being a father and fixing the city. If a few bad dreams was the price for that, it was one he would gladly pay.
Walking out of his bedroom, he swung by the kitchen and flipped on the coffee pot. He wasn't going back to sleep any time soon, and if he was going to be awake at three in the morning, he might as well be productive. But since it needed a few minutes to work….
He made his way up the stairs as stealthily as he could and gently pushed open the nearest door. Taylor, at least, was sound asleep, though she had kicked off her blankets in the process. All that covered her was a single sheet, and even that had been pushed down far enough to reveal more of his daughter than he had any desire to see.
How had he missed his gawky, awkward little girl blossoming into this beautiful young woman? She looked so much like Annette now that it physically hurt for him to look at her. She was growing up so fast.
And she knew it, too, if her flirting with Ralph was any indication. Her body language just oozed sensuality and devil-may-care attitude, neither of which was helped by her provocative choice of costume. She was her mother's child that way, too, he decided after thinking back to the outfits Annette had shown him from her time under Lustrum, and that was what worried him. The behavior he once appreciated in his twenty-seven-year-old girlfriend evoked entirely different feelings coming from his fifteen-year-old daughter.
But that was an issue for tomorrow. Creeping closer, he took the sheet and pulled it up over her shoulders, and then he rested his hand on her head. That explained a few things all on its own; her skin wasn't fever-hot, but it still felt like she had just come in from a long day of work under the summer sun. "Sweet dreams, kiddo," he murmured, and though he couldn't say with any certainty, he thought he saw her lips curl into the faintest smile.
Standing straight, he glanced over and picked up the deep blue jewel laying on her nightstand. "You're the reason she has these powers, aren't you?" he asked the necklace. "You protected her from Squealer?"
The jewel gave him a dim glow.
"Thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you." He replaced her necklace where it had been. "Just keep doing that. Keep our girl safe. Please."
The glow this time was brighter, more confident, and it was even accompanied by the whisper of a chime.
He closed the door behind him and went back down the stairs. A check on the still-brewing coffee, and then he pushed a flashing button on the answering machine. It was probably just a telemarketer, but maybe, just maybe….
"You have one new message. Playing message." A beep, and the electronic voice was replaced by a jovial man. "Danny-boy! It's been years since you called. I was convinced you had thrown away my number once Annette's little problem was cleared up. We have to get together some time. Maybe you and that little girl of yours can come down; I know some guys who would love to show a young lady around New York. They'd all behave like perfect gentlemen, I'd make sure of that.
"But you didn't call to chat! I don't know what you're planning on hunting up there, and I don't want to know. But if your little slice of Hell is about to lose some of its skinheads, I can talk to a few guys, see who's got some heavy lead for purchase. Might even be some of the rougher crowd who'd be willing to help out if it nets them a trophy or two, if you know what I mean. Just gotta know that the stuff you're talking about isn't cheap, and it's gonna be cash or nothing. I'll call in a few days if I find something."
"Message deleted. End of messages."
+1 training to Strong Shield (2/4 Adept).
He was trapped.
The rocks hemmed him in. The dust choked him. His arm was pinned in place. The rubble shifted and threatened to collapse every time he moved. Even if he didn't move, the concrete groaned and closed in a little more. Only faint sounds drifted to him, and they were just more screams of pain.
Here, in the dark, he cried. He was going to die, killed by the goddamn gangs, and they wouldn't even realize it! What would happen to the dockworkers when he was gone? Who would find them jobs? Margaret and Kurt didn't have the contacts he did; would they be able to keep them afloat? Most of them didn't have the money to move to another city, and for the ones who had families, that was something else keeping them in place—
Oh God, Taylor. This was going to destroy her.
Hysterical laughter filled the cramped hollow. Would it?! Would it really?! He was already out of her life for the most part. What the fuck kind of father didn't know his daughter was being tormented in school until it put her in the hospital? What kind of father worried about the future of his subordinates before his own child's? Alan and Zoe were far better parents than he was; she'd probably flourish in their care where she had just withered in his own.
Son, boss, husband, father; it didn't matter what the role was. He was an unmitigated failure in all of them—!
He blinked blearily, picking his head up from the rock under it. Had he passed out? But that didn't make any sense. He was digging through the rubble, and he was watching the Merchants and Empire duke it out, and he was running to his truck to get the rifle he knew was still in there….
Something was very wrong about all this.
He shifted a large chunk of concrete out of the way to reveal a weedy, bespectacled man buried underneath. He stretched out his hand to himself, and he reached up to grab Alexander's hand.
"Boss," he said, "I think something weird's going on."
Danny threw off the covers and sat on the edge of his bed, his hands shaking. This was the second time in as many nights that he had dreamed about the attack on the office, and he doubted it was going to get better anytime soon. He would bear them, though; he was alive to have them, for one thing, and he had been given a second chance at being a father and fixing the city. If a few bad dreams was the price for that, it was one he would gladly pay.
Walking out of his bedroom, he swung by the kitchen and flipped on the coffee pot. He wasn't going back to sleep any time soon, and if he was going to be awake at three in the morning, he might as well be productive. But since it needed a few minutes to work….
He made his way up the stairs as stealthily as he could and gently pushed open the nearest door. Taylor, at least, was sound asleep, though she had kicked off her blankets in the process. All that covered her was a single sheet, and even that had been pushed down far enough to reveal more of his daughter than he had any desire to see.
How had he missed his gawky, awkward little girl blossoming into this beautiful young woman? She looked so much like Annette now that it physically hurt for him to look at her. She was growing up so fast.
And she knew it, too, if her flirting with Ralph was any indication. Her body language just oozed sensuality and devil-may-care attitude, neither of which was helped by her provocative choice of costume. She was her mother's child that way, too, he decided after thinking back to the outfits Annette had shown him from her time under Lustrum, and that was what worried him. The behavior he once appreciated in his twenty-seven-year-old girlfriend evoked entirely different feelings coming from his fifteen-year-old daughter.
But that was an issue for tomorrow. Creeping closer, he took the sheet and pulled it up over her shoulders, and then he rested his hand on her head. That explained a few things all on its own; her skin wasn't fever-hot, but it still felt like she had just come in from a long day of work under the summer sun. "Sweet dreams, kiddo," he murmured, and though he couldn't say with any certainty, he thought he saw her lips curl into the faintest smile.
Standing straight, he glanced over and picked up the deep blue jewel laying on her nightstand. "You're the reason she has these powers, aren't you?" he asked the necklace. "You protected her from Squealer?"
The jewel gave him a dim glow.
"Thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you." He replaced her necklace where it had been. "Just keep doing that. Keep our girl safe. Please."
The glow this time was brighter, more confident, and it was even accompanied by the whisper of a chime.
He closed the door behind him and went back down the stairs. A check on the still-brewing coffee, and then he pushed a flashing button on the answering machine. It was probably just a telemarketer, but maybe, just maybe….
"You have one new message. Playing message." A beep, and the electronic voice was replaced by a jovial man. "Danny-boy! It's been years since you called. I was convinced you had thrown away my number once Annette's little problem was cleared up. We have to get together some time. Maybe you and that little girl of yours can come down; I know some guys who would love to show a young lady around New York. They'd all behave like perfect gentlemen, I'd make sure of that.
"But you didn't call to chat! I don't know what you're planning on hunting up there, and I don't want to know. But if your little slice of Hell is about to lose some of its skinheads, I can talk to a few guys, see who's got some heavy lead for purchase. Might even be some of the rougher crowd who'd be willing to help out if it nets them a trophy or two, if you know what I mean. Just gotta know that the stuff you're talking about isn't cheap, and it's gonna be cash or nothing. I'll call in a few days if I find something."
"Message deleted. End of messages."
+1 training to Strong Shield (2/4 Adept).
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- Location
- Mountains and rivers
Extraneous [/b] there.
Glad I checked my facts before posting. Just who is Danny's mysterious friend? I smell a plot hook.
The Stormbringer
Worm Fanfic & Crack Connoisseur
- Location
- Spaaaaace~!
Enchant and Boost Up look like they'd be best for us. Now to read the chapter...!
Manic Dogma
This, I can't deny.
- Location
- The far side of tired
- Pronouns
- Whatever
...was that a remnant of Lustrum's crew? It might just be all the references to Annette screwing with my brain, but I dunno.
Support familiar spells. We can't get em.
One reason I'm going to be pushing for Support + Technician.
The Stormbringer
Worm Fanfic & Crack Connoisseur
- Location
- Spaaaaace~!
Why can't we...? They'd be extremely useful.
Silently Watches
Professional Stalker
- Location
- Right behind you
If you cross-train as a support mage, I plan to give you the Boost Up spells. The Enchant spells I'm still considering.Why can't we...? They'd be extremely useful.
Hestia&theCourt
Turns out we're plural too.
- Location
- In transition
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Alternatively, our theme is having no theme. In which case, we could go for just about anything except for a cat or a parrot.
How about a pet tarantula then?
Hestia&theCourt
Turns out we're plural too.
- Location
- In transition
- Pronouns
- She/Her
If not, then it's time to start bugging(heh) Panacea!
Here goes the pet option problem again....
Taylor doesn't even like bugs initially when she got her canon powers....
Taylor doesn't even like bugs initially when she got her canon powers....
Depends on what we get from each cross training option
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The Stormbringer
Worm Fanfic & Crack Connoisseur
- Location
- Spaaaaace~!
I still say a big, flying turtle would work. We can call him Tank! 
Silently Watches
Professional Stalker
- Location
- Right behind you
FUCK no.
I'm not arachnophobic, but I despise spiders. Put a gun to my head, and maybe I'll reconsider it.
And this. This is another excellent reason.
Hestia&theCourt
Turns out we're plural too.
- Location
- In transition
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Hmm.
How about a ferret, then? Bonus points for being a callback to Nanoha!