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Magical Girl Escalation Taylor (Worm/Nanoha)

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@Silently Watches Is Yuuno's ability to turn into a ferret considered a rare skill, and is it one of the rare skills on your list that characters can roll?

It's not exactly important in the immediate sense. I know this. It's also been four days since anybody has posted anything.
 
Wyrd said:
@Silently Watches Is Yuuno's ability to turn into a ferret considered a rare skill, and is it one of the rare skills on your list that characters can roll?

It's not exactly important in the immediate sense. I know this. It's also been four days since anybody has posted anything.
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Transformation is a rollable Rare Skill, though it is not limited to a ferret. You would be able to pick the form for each individual who has it.

In fact, here's a question for errybody. I'm going to take away the mystery and reveal the 12 Rare Skills; in exchange, I'd like people to arrange them in a tier-type list of what sounds the most interesting and what doesn't. I'm sure this won't affect anything in the future at all. :whistle:
  1. fire Mana Conversion Affinity
  2. Regenerator; responds better to healing magic and has more effective healing spells
  3. support twin familiars
  4. shapeshifting (player chosen)
  5. Berserker; physical traits get stronger in response to pain
  6. divination "ritual" or spells (example, player chosen)
  7. ice Mana Conversion Affinity
  8. inflicted wounds do not respond to magical healing
  9. summoning (player chosen)
  10. time manipulation
  11. lightning Mana Conversion Affinity
  12. spectral projections (example, player chosen)
 
Silently Watches said:
*Snip*
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For what it's worth, top being most want to see and bottom being least, my rankings:
  • summoning (player chosen)
  • ice Mana Conversion Affinity
  • spectral projections (example, player chosen)
  • support twin familiars
  • time manipulation
  • Berserker; physical traits get stronger in response to pain
  • shapeshifting (player chosen)
  • divination "ritual" or spells (example, player chosen)
  • lightning Mana Conversion Affinity
  • Regenerator; responds better to healing magic and has more effective healing spells
  • fire Mana Conversion Affinity
  • inflicted wounds do not respond to magical healing
The bottom two are easy to justify - whilst unhealing wounds is a great long-term combat strategy, it's not good for seat-of-the-pants action, and the fire MCA is just a flare MCA with the teeth taken out. Regenerator, again, nice to see but not necessarily that fun in context. Anything above that, I can't find any objections to, and is just ranked based on what I feel would flow best with the story.
 
Here's my order of interest:
  1. spectral projections (example, player chosen)
  2. divination "ritual" or spells (example, player chosen)
  3. summoning (player chosen)
  4. support twin familiars
  5. shapeshifting (player chosen)
  6. time manipulation
  7. Berserker; physical traits get stronger in response to pain
  8. Regenerator; responds better to healing magic and has more effective healing spells
  9. inflicted wounds do not respond to magical healing
  10. ice Mana Conversion Affinity
  11. lightning Mana Conversion Affinity
  12. fire Mana Conversion Affinity
My reasoning is that the first 4 allow for greater awareness of the strategic and tactical pictures, summoning and projections are basically variations on a theme, both allow for tactical flexibility that can reshape a fight, shapeshifting is almost as effective on that front. Time manipulation is interesting but probably redundant due to Tim having time tech in his arsenal of tech. 7-9 are all healing/damage related, would synergize well if a character had any of them paired up :). The last 3 are just greater efficiencies with different elements, useful but not critical in the grand scheme of things.
 
Boring Tier:
  • fire Mana Conversion Affinity
  • lightning Mana Conversion Affinity
  • ice Mana Conversion Affinity
  • support twin familiars
MCAs don't really give the mage anything interesting. They are useful sure but from a story perspective it just gives them an [Element] theme. Making matters worse is that Calamity Witch has the Flare MCA (which seems to be Fire but better), anyone familiar with Nanoha has already seen Lightning MCA with Fate, and we've already got a couple ice themed capes in Philly IIRC.

Similarly supporting twin familiars is useful sure but every Template that waits long enough can already do that so it doesn't really add anything to the story. Yes it does make one character actually a package of three but in my opinion we're already having issues getting enough screen time for our cast list as is. Even more characters simply means adding more characters we never interact with.

Novelty Tier:
  • Regenerator; responds better to healing magic and has more effective healing spells
  • inflicted wounds do not respond to magical healing
  • shapeshifting (player chosen)
These are abilities that would be interesting to see in the short term but don't really provide anything to maintain that interest.

Regenerator, unless we're talking Combat Regenerator, makes for a good healbot (except we've already got that from Lacey) and a neat "How did he survive that!?" surprise but there isn't really much to do with this trait story wise.

Similarly wounds that don't heal could be devastating in lethal combat/warfare, make for a nasty surprise enemy (if we ever end up with mage enemies), or a shock "I accidentally killed/maimed someone" bit but once you know about it I'd say it actually restricts the character rather then provide interesting avenues since they are either evil "I happily murder and maim" or good "I can't fight without hurting people".

Shapeshifting, assuming it's mage -> preset form (Eg; Ferret), would be a nice and interesting trait if it weren't for the fact that every single Guardian Beast can transform. Thanks to the PRT Mage program there are now dozens of people capable of transforming into animals at a moment's notice wondering around Philly. That it is a mage rather then a GB only matters if you are in a setting that treats mages and GBs differently which we pretty clearly don't here.

Potentially Coll Tier:

  1. Berserker; physical traits get stronger in response to pain
  2. divination "ritual" or spells (example, player chosen)
  3. time manipulation
Each of these has some potentially interesting stories you can tell. But only potentially because it is quite easy to fall into boring familiar tracks.

Berserker would be interesting not for the getting stronger in response to pain aspect itself but for the mental effects of such an ability. Like that character from Game Theory/Power Games which struggled with the mental alterations (risk taking behavior and poor risk assessment) that came with the Berserker abilities.

Divination is basically the magical equvilant of Thinker powers and done right (Tattletale and Numberman) they can be very interesting. Done wrong and they can seriously damage a story (Dinah and Contessa).

Time manipulation can be fun, see all the Sci-Fi that uses it, but it can also be stupid and/or headache inducing, see all the Sci-Fi that use sit.


Interesting Tier:
  • summoning (player chosen)
  • spectral projections (example, player chosen)
Summoning has a lot of fun stuff that can be done with it. What makes it better is that even though we already have one (future) summoner (Lacey) it doesn't matter since most summoners seem to have a different array of minions they can call up.

Spectral Projections is just neat and not something you see used much.
 
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Tier 1: abilities that allow a character to act in a significantly different way from normal. Shapeshifting, spectral projections, summoning, divination.

Tier 2: abilities that offer a large situational advantage for uncommon situations. Inflicting wounds that can't be healed magically.

Tier B: improving abilities you already have access to. Elemental affinities, time magic, twin familiars.

Tier 2 is more interesting to see portrayed than tier B, but tier B is more useful than tier 2.
 
It really depends on the scope of some of these Rare Skills. Time Manipulation can mean anything from Epoch's ability to Elisandre's"Fuck you let's reset the whole fight thing".

Summoning, Berzerker, and divinination are definitely interesting in terms of story points for characters, as they bring different limitations and uses than "blow stuff up". The Elemental Conversion things are kind of meh, it's just different colored blasts of energy. The Healing/Anti-healing abilities are, baring Wolverine-levels of power, lacking in impact. It really depends on the context of how they show up.
 
serra2 said:
It really depends on the scope of some of these Rare Skills. Time Manipulation can mean anything from Epoch's ability to Elisandre's"Fuck you let's reset the whole fight thing".
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I was thinking more along the lines of Homura Akemi's time shenanigans, which include:
Duplicating items (Homura's arsenal of weapons)
Time stop / teleportation (able to move and 'drop' items while time is stopped up to 1 month subjectively)
Revert time (fixed 1 month interval)
​
Much like Divination on steroids it can mean sending messages back in time to alert the user, or do other shenanigans.
​
 
Valdimarian said:
I was thinking more along the lines of Homura Akemi's time shenanigans, which include:
Duplicating items (Homura's arsenal of weapons)
Time stop / teleportation (able to move and 'drop' items while time is stopped up to 1 month subjectively)
Revert time (fixed 1 month interval)
​
Much like Divination on steroids it can mean sending messages back in time to alert the user, or do other shenanigans.
​
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Isn't Homura's arsenal just Hammer Space and she raids a military depot at the start of each loop?
 
serra2 said:
It really depends on the scope of some of these Rare Skills. Time Manipulation can mean anything from Epoch's ability to Elisandre's"Fuck you let's reset the whole fight thing".
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It would probably be similar to Epoch since I don't know jack about WoW. Slowing and speeding up time, stopping time for a target (stopping time for everyone but yourself is really just a really strong speeding yourself up), a short jump backwards (a few minutes at most).
Valdimarian said:
Duplicating items (Homura's arsenal of weapons)
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I thought that was just she went to a national guard/JSDF armory and stole everything?
Valdimarian said:
Time stop / teleportation (able to move and 'drop' items while time is stopped up to 1 month subjectively)
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See above about stopping time/speeding yourself up. But yes, setting up traps in "no time at all" would potentially be possible.
 
Alayne said:
Isn't Homura's arsenal just Hammer Space and she raids a military depot at the start of each loop?
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That's... possible. It wasn't too clear if she raided the base each time or if she was able to retain the arsenal she'd raided in a previous timeline.

If she could keep items from timeline to timeline then that'd let her dupe items, which I suspect would be too OP, so you guys are probably right.
 
Interesting
12. spectral projections or 9 Summoning
Calling up specialized familiars for any given situation could be fun. It'd make an interesting skill. I think Lacy has a point in something like this already but we haven't seen it in story? I'd note that this could just be double dipping into Summoning. I'd need you to clarify the difference. I put summoning lower on the list just because it sounds more permanent. I'd honesty remove one from the list just because I don't like managing a horde of pets. Finding somebody that can summon all the Wasps and Bees just to have a through the looking glass moment would be fun.

10. Time Manipulation, as long as it stays small scale 1 minute - 1 hr. kinda Coil lite. Could be interesting, kinda already exists in what Mini-Ziz is doing. I'd honestly love it if Kayleigh or Laura got dragged back into things because they had an affinity for this and Cassiel ended up as their partner in crime. Trying to explain to you friends that hey, we accidentally Ko'd an end bringer.

6. Yearly divination in the example was a dumb plot add on, rather limited for this quest. However, giving the player an oracle to consult for a fortune once a month would be pretty interesting. Also a good way to set some of the tone, guide the plot. Good for plot holes and other dumb things.

Fun world building utility.

1, 7, 11 They're basic elemental affinities. If a character can make them shine, that's great. If you're just tacking them on as part of a progress tree I'd not really be interested. I'd rough out all the elements and kind pool it into this so you get a rock paper scissors balance going on. What's the basic trade offs and bonuses for each one. 10 would fall in here too.

4, depends on how actively it gets used. Shape shifting can be fun but over powered. Picking one form Harry Potter style is pretty boring though. Might be a fun ability for a Mask to use.

No so interesting,

9, Summoning, in this setting not so much. We already got permanent pets floating around. See above.

2, 5, These two fall into combat porn abilities. I'd roll the basic premise into an element and give it pros and cons. Earth for berserk, Air for healing something like that. Just helps to keep things organized.

3. Twinning a familiar isn't really that interesting unless there's some drama between the summoner and 2 familiars. It's basically dumping screen time into side characters.

8, like the lowest on the list honestly. Either magical healing is a thing or it isn't. You end up with a stupid layering effect of:
White Mage: I cast cure wounds!
Rogue: Haha, but they've fallen victim of my ultimate stabbing! Cure wounds doesn't count!
White Mage: Well HAHA, I just leveled up to CureRARARAga!
Its fun for table top games to give balance but pretty dull writing.
 
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Malcanthet said:
Can I suggest some simple elegant 'Raise Dead' type affinities ;;;P
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Necromancy is just a (creepy) application of golem creation, so no Rare Skill needed.
Amaretto said:
Calling up specialized familiars for any given situation could be fun. It'd make an interesting skill. I think Lacy has a point in something like this already but we haven't seen it in story? I'd note that this could just be double dipping into Summoning. I'd need you to clarify the difference. I put summoning lower on the list just because it sounds more permanent. I'd honesty remove one from the list just because I don't like managing a horde of pets. Finding somebody that can summon all the Wasps and Bees just to have a through the looking glass moment would be fun.
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The IE template has a summoning Rare Skill, but Lacey doesn't know any of the spells yet.

Difference between projections and summoning. Biggest thing would be that projections (mostly) aren't physical. They're kind of like Cadejo's dog form; they can do some stuff and slip through walls, but they can't be hurt. They also can't take a hit or do much reasoning. You'd be looking at a half-dozen or so projections at a time, and they don't change based on the situation.

Summoning in canon and in this quest has three "levels". First is a swarm of small critters that are mostly for recon. Second is a larger human-size summon that has independent thought and planning abilities. Last is an Endbringer-sized beastie that is basically for smashing everything in its path. Each of these summoning levels is its own spell, so you don't have to know the first two to use the last. I would, however, put rank thresholds on them like I do bombardment spells; i.e., the giants are limited to mages with AA or AAA rank cores unless a B or A ranker gives up a spell slot. (The second level is technically limited to B rank and over, but since you need a B rank LC to access a Rare Skill anyway...)

I use Lutecia's Rare Skill as the example because she shows all levels in the show. Obviously you are not limited to bugs, and I'm highly tempted to exclude her bugs and dragons from the otherwise near-infinite options because they're both canon.
 
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1-2. Summoning and Spectral projection are the most interesting, as canon Nanoha hadn't show much of them.
One day, I hope, Lacey will summon Giant Squirrel and make it box with Behemoth.

3. Time manipulation is always my favourite. Interesting that, as far as I remember, we didn't see any time manipulatiors in canon Nanoha, but in MGET Taylor has spells for slowing down/accelerate time even without this Rare Skill.

4. Divination would be interesting to see, but we already have Cassiel for it. Canon example is kinda reaaaally weak in comparison with capes abilities.

5. Berserker can be interesting if it's accompanied by risk-seeking behaviour and mental contamination, making such a companion difficult to manage.

6. Inflicted wounds do not respond to magical healing. Would be fun to watch, not so fun to use, unless it somehow works on Endbringers.

All other Rare Skills are not really interesting.
Additional flavour for your attack? We have plenty of it with Taylor already.
Twin GBs? It's like one GB, but there is two of them.
And so on, and so on.
 
Shaseyu said:
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I agree with this order. If we didn't have Cassiel, Divination would be higher; as a possible idea for social conflict, giving the PRT a Diviner might be an interesting direction.

For unhealable wounding - how would that interact with parahuman healing?
I could see it going three ways; firstly, there's magic left in the wound that prevents magic from affecting it ('dark magic' wounds you often see), which would not affect P-healing.
Second, the offensive magic could make it unhealable by affecting our inbuilt manton limit - if the target loses an arm to it, any attempts to give them a new arm (magic, parahuman or prosthetic) fail as their subconscious cannot perceive any new arm.
Third, the 'dark magic' lingers in the wound like an infection (which could maybe be excised?), hampering any attempts to heal it like scarring.
 
Shaseyu said:
3. Time manipulation is always my favourite. Interesting that, as far as I remember, we didn't see any time manipulatiors in canon Nanoha, but in MGET Taylor has spells for slowing down/accelerate time even without this Rare Skill.
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Time manipulation would be less limited than Taylor's time spells. Much less limited, and with longer duration than Epoch's ability.
Fireball900 said:
For unhealable wounding - how would that interact with parahuman healing?
I could see it going three ways; firstly, there's magic left in the wound that prevents magic from affecting it ('dark magic' wounds you often see), which would not affect P-healing.
Second, the offensive magic could make it unhealable by affecting our inbuilt manton limit - if the target loses an arm to it, any attempts to give them a new arm (magic, parahuman or prosthetic) fail as their subconscious cannot perceive any new arm.
Third, the 'dark magic' lingers in the wound like an infection (which could maybe be excised?), hampering any attempts to heal it like scarring.
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Parahuman healing would be nullified just like magical healing. Wounds from this style of attack would have to heal on their own, though prosthetics and surgery would still be available.
 
Silently Watches said:
Summoning in canon and in this quest has three "levels"
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It was a major plot point so it wouldn't be uninteresting. Its just more interesting in a visual format, busting out a fuck off monster. Creating a construct of magic to do your bidding really doesn't change much from a homing missile at that point. I poke the wiki deeper and it vomits up
It specializes in conjuring living beings ... or inorganic matters (e.g. metals) to the summoner's aid.
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Seems like spectral is pretty much the level 0 while summoning is just ranks up upon that. Not that rank 0 doesn't have it own benefits. Still, it could be good. I'd keep it in the top three.
 
Silently Watches said:
Time manipulation would be less limited than Taylor's time spells. Much less limited, and with longer duration than Epoch's ability.
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In that case, I think time manipulation is tier 1. The things SV can do with the ability to control time... Though it depends on the control. Like, could this time manipulation be used to speed up a part of human's body, but only part, creating a time disonence inside and causing eventually to explode in a bloody gore? ... What? Why are you looking at me like I'm crazy? It's just theoretical question!

Speaking of time manipulation - Grey Boy. There should be still a lot of his victims around the world, forever trapped in those time bubbles of his, suffering and going mad without a single break. If we don't have a spells that could at least kill those victims (because I don't think they can really be helped with how mad they must have gone by now), we should really try to get this skill.
 
Here's my thoughts order of interest

1. time manipulation
2. divination "ritual" or spells (example, player chosen)
3. summoning (player chosen)
4. shapeshifting (player chosen)
5. support twin familiars
6. Berserker; physical traits get stronger in response to pain
7. spectral projections (example, player chosen)
8. Regenerator; responds better to healing magic and has more effective healing spells
9. inflicted wounds do not respond to magical healing
10. ice Mana Conversion Affinity
11. lightning Mana Conversion Affinity
12. fire Mana Conversion Affinity

Not any particular reason for most of them. Just my interest and what I think my be fun to see/use.
 
Amaretto said:
Seems like spectral is pretty much the level 0 while summoning is just ranks up upon that. Not that rank 0 doesn't have it own benefits. Still, it could be good. I'd keep it in the top three.
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Eh, use wise its very similar to level 1.
Hejtan said:
Speaking of time manipulation - Grey Boy. There should be still a lot of his victims around the world, forever trapped in those time bubbles of his, suffering and going mad without a single break. If we don't have a spells that could at least kill those victims (because I don't think they can really be helped with how mad they must have gone by now), we should really try to get this skill.
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Tim has studied the Grey Boy bubbles and could already build something to try popping them. His concern is that he doesn't know just what would happen afterwards.
Hejtan said:
In that case, I think time manipulation is tier 1. The things SV can do with the ability to control time... Though it depends on the control. Like, could this time manipulation be used to speed up a part of human's body, but only part, creating a time disonence inside and causing eventually to explode in a bloody gore? ... What? Why are you looking at me like I'm crazy? It's just theoretical question!
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No manipulating only part of an object, animate or not.
 
1. Shapeshifting
2. Summoning
3. Spectral projections*
4. Time manipulation
5. Ice **
6. Berserker
7. Divination ***
8. twin familiars ****
9-12 Fire, Lightning, and Regenerator, I have no preference on these.

Explaining my choices:
1. Shapeshifting is one of my favorite powers in fantasy and superhero stories.

2. Summoning would be better if you were calling beings from other planes, but as I recall, you put it that you were creating temporary magical constructs that just happened to look like creatures. It's still a cool thing, but the summons don't get a chance to be characters of their own.

3. Spectral Projections. My thought on this was something like Susano'o from Naruto(Susanoo) or Amor from the X-men (Armor (comics) - Wikipedia).

4. Time manipulation. What can I say? Messing with time is fun!

5. Ice would be interesting on Laura or Kayleigh. I'm not sure what it would add to any new characters that we find and scan, but there's definite story potential for those two.

6. Berserk can be a good story telling tool, particularly if you include a loss of control that accompanies getting stronger, so that they're always fighting themselves to stay in control.

7. The thing with divinitation is that it is so easy to abuse, so hard to make interesting without giving away too much information. If this can only provide specific types of information or has something like a yes/no limit, it's less abusable, but can still be fun.

8. Twin familiars is really only useful to a non-template mage, though getting a template would destroy the rare skill anyway. Whether a character having this would push people toward keeping them as non-template leaves me a little leery of the whole mess.

As for the rest, I really don'
 
Fireball900 said:
I would think there are bubbles where Grey Boy 'missed, ' or used a bubble to stop attacks - basically, ones where there are no humans present. Would make perfect practice bubbles.
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And some where animals got caught. Those can be the second stage of experiment.

Actually, after Levi runs away? We gotta do this. Grey Boy is one of the most cruel capes in Worm, I would say more than Jack Slash, and if we can help his victims (even if only by granting them the final rest), we really should sacrifice some actions for it.
 
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