Magical Girl Escalation Taylor (Worm/Nanoha)

veekie · Aug 2, 2019

Reminder for the nth time that these are THREAT ratings, and thus engagement policy. Breaker is designated as such because the Breaker has modes which will have different powers, and thus the policy is to hit them when they aren't in Breaker form, or tailor attacks to the Breaker form's form specific weaknesses so they are forced to drop it.

Wyrd said:
That said, we have more power as a Mover than anybody else alive, unless Doormaker's shard has a new host with all of his power. Part of what merits the 10 is our Blaster rating, too, as we can not only hit as many cities as we want in a matter of minutes, we could do so much damage that, as you put it, the PRT's response would "well, we're boned". Once they find out about Ragnarok, the combination of our Mover and Blaster ratings could push both of them over 10, into a range where the justified response is, "pray she doesn't go crazy".

Our Trump rating will remain low even with our ability to give out Templates, provided they never learn what IAE can do when at full power. We have a Striker rating in the form of our scythe, which while revealed to the PRT, and is likely in our file, we don't know the final rating. I'd think 3~5, depending on how they rate the intensity and cutting power of the blade.

Our Brute rating went up when we got Knight Armor, but I think we haven't suffered a hit strong enough for them to revise the "concussion and broken ribs from an RPG" that is the most damage they've seen us take.

I think Crescendo might warrant an extra point in our Shaker rating, but we're already rated high enough there that more than one point isn't justified. I suspect adding Singularity to that wouldn't add another point, and will as a result get dumped into the existing rating.

MM seeing our upgrades to PS likely got us a Tinker rating if she reported it, but she doesn't know enough to make a good guess at our rating there, and she knows the Protectorate is already downplaying our abilities to scare people a little less.

We rate a Master classification thanks to Samantha, who, prior to the PRT Underdogs program was unknown as a subordinate creation, might now be listed in our file. Her sheer power would be worth a substantial rating here, a rating that would go even higher if it were known that we can maintain two GBs. We can't create a second one unless Sam dies, so I hope we never get that opportunity, but I think it would still be worth an extra point for sheer power.

Wide Area Search and PS's demonstrated processing capabilities warrant a Thinker rating, maybe a 3 or 4.

Our Barrier Jacket warrants a Changer rating in addition to its Brute rating, but only in the 1~3 range.

Nothing comes to mind for ways to warrant a Breaker or Stranger rating, but we don't need those to have achieved "put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye" as the official PRT response to us going crazy.

An utter mess there. Ratings don't stack like that. The PRT doesn't have aggregated threat scores because parahumans have one power.

As a Mover we have very high scores on Unstoppability, but low scores on tactical speed, with average scores on strategic speed. Keeping in mind Doormaker going all out can portal fast enough to dodge a beam weapon, and that Calamity Witch has a nice, but not very special flight speed. This means that Calamity Witch can generally pick the terms of engagement on a strategic level, and is unlikely to be possible to restrain via any means other than damage, but she's not doing the Mover 10+ gimmick of simultaneously hitting your front door and back door while also in a safe and untargetable location.
In terms of engagement strategy its not meaningfully different from Mover 5 at a tactical level, by blocking off direct flight avenues and attacking from multiple angles at once, she is unlikely to be able to disengage on the basis of speed alone.

Blaster wise we can qualify as a 12(11 if they know about the limits on cartridge use) on the strength of our broad array of options, of which Mistletein is probably a bigger deal than Ragnarok, because Blaster is all about the ability to take down an opponent, and a petrification method which works on Endbringers is up there, coupled to a variety of lesser blaster options which can be used point blank, on multiple opponents, on arbitrary numbers of numerous, durable opponents, and selectively friendly fire into an area.
In terms of engagement strategy, Taylor here is solidly in the "do not engage" scenario for a Blaster.

UberJJK · Aug 2, 2019

Wyrd said:
Breaker is changing into something else, not just a change of appearance; otherwise power armor that can be deployed onto somebody would grant them a breaker rating, instead of a changer rating.

See I would say that Vista's power armor would be classified as a Breaker power.

Compare and contrast the descriptions given in the PRT Quest doc:

Breaker
Has the ability to alter themselves to a different state in which they maintain different abilities. Appends other powers, but only in this state. Can also include general altered states.

Target the individual outside of any enhanced state where possible. All other effects depend on the sub-classification.

Changer
Can alter their form, appearance, and/or natural abilities through some manipulation of their bodies. Does not include new powers beyond natural weapons, armor, or durability.

Sustained focus fire is recommended. Low-ish priority, all numbers assumed to be equal.

Stranger
Powers predominantly lend themselves to infiltration. Ability in question might bypass defenses, mislead, or help to avoid notice.

Full 'eyes on' is SOP where possible. Other safeguards include indiscriminate fire and high priority targeting.

Of the three Breaker is the best bit here. Changer specifics natural weapons/armor/durability because the idea is the person is changing their body.

Martenzo · Aug 2, 2019

Honestly, the whole Changer-Breaker-Stranger quadrant of power ratings is an absolute mess of overlaps, which isn't helped by how sometimes the ratings are just one small part of a PRT "threat response" guideline, and other times the rating categories are treated as an actual framework of "themes" that the Shards themselves seem to adhere to. Despite Wildbow's insistence that the latter is just fanon, characters in-story frequently treat the threat rating categories as "parahuman archetypes" in casual conversation.

Full eyes on protocols and verbal passwords are put into effect

Is apparently SOP for Changer 5+ according to wiki.

Faraway-R · Aug 2, 2019

UberJJK said:
Mistilteinn currently has a range of 60ft but we can increase that by ranking it up:

Not that it matters since Behemoth's kill radius is 32ft although the recommended distance is 100ft to make sure he can't close range.

Didn't Ben also have a liquiefying wide-area sonic scream? It's another great incentive to NOT come closer... and would be IC for Endbringer to scream "in pain" from another M-spell.

UberJJK · Aug 2, 2019

veekie said:
As a Mover we have very high scores on Unstoppability, but low scores on tactical speed, with average scores on strategic speed.

Why exactly are you under the impression that Calamity Witch has low tactical speed? Calamity Witch is explicitly capable of supersonic speed:

Silently Watches said:
It is only now that you've dropped out of your maximum flight speed – and wince as the windows below you rattle with the aftereffects of your sonic boom – that you see what he meant, and in hindsight, it makes perfect sense.

and given that is from us flying in New York odds are good the PRT knows about it. We don't really have much to compare it with but Glory Girl is one of the few to get an explicit speed of less then 80mph and most other Movers we see aren't really that much faster. The only really fast flyers we know are Legend, who we simply have "continue accelerating past the speed of sound" and Alexandria who supposedly* made it from midway between US-Japan to Cape Verde in six minutes.

*Personally I suspect She, or rather Pretender since he was puppeting her at this point, flew out of sight of anyone before using Doormaker to portal close to Cape Verde before resuming flying.

It is also worth remembering that Calamity Witch isn't simply capable of flying supersonic. She is explcitly capable of dogfighting at full speed:

Silently Watches said:
Aerial Combat (6/6 Master) – Ability to fly. You are fully maneuverable in the air and can dogfight at full speed.

Faraway-R said:
Didn't Ben also have a liquiefying wide-area sonic scream? It's another great incentive to NOT come closer... and would be IC for Endbringer to scream "in pain" from another M-spell.

He does but it is a slow thing from the description we see in 24.3:

Worm: Crushed 24.3 said:
It was only two or three seconds later, as the second wave of spheres drifted to Behemoth and began to cut into his torso and groin area, that he responded. His 'mouth' opened, the craggy spikes of obsidian 'teeth' parting.

And he roared. A sound that was slow at first, growing steadily more powerful.

Sound was a bitch of a thing. It could be muffled, but blocking it entirely? We didn't have Grue.

I fled, cranking my antigrav to 'high' and risking unfolding my wings to use the propulsion systems as I made my way to for cover, putting as many buildings between Behemoth and I as I could.

My swarm responded to my call, assisting the capes who weren't fleeing fast enough. They rose as a singular mass, a wall of tens of thousands, and absorbed the worst of the scream. I wasn't sure it was enough. Even with some distance and a dozen buildings between Behemoth and I, I had no defenses as it reached a crescendo. My sense of balance went out the window, my very bones hurt.

Closer to Behemoth, capes were bleeding from their ears, vomiting, passing out. Organs and brains would be reduced to jelly as he continued. My bugs weren't doing much to muffle the noise or soften the damage, if they were helping at all.

It actually takes a far amount of time for him to stop roaring. So with our Barrier Jacket and flight getting out of the way shouldn't be too much of a concern. Plus Behemoth is explicitly called out as slow and not dodging attacks so keeping him under a nigh constant Temporal Sludge is probably something we'll probably be doing.

Wyrd · Aug 2, 2019

veekie said:
An utter mess there. Ratings don't stack like that. The PRT doesn't have aggregated threat scores because parahumans have one power.

Regardless of canon, the official ratings for CW explicitly stated in one of the interludes of this story that part of her rating was because of that combination. That's the only reason I count them as affecting each other's ratings. I concede that I may be misremembering that scene, but don't feel like hunting it down.

UberJJK said:
and given that is from us flying in New York odds are good the PRT knows about it. We don't really have much to compare it with but Glory Girl is one of the few to get an explicit speed of less then 80mph and most other Movers we see aren't really that much faster. The only really fast flyers we know are Legend, who we simply have "continue accelerating past the speed of sound" and Alexandria who supposedly* made it from midway between US-Japan to Cape Verde in six minutes.

Movers in Worm are ridiculously underpowered compared to practically any other comic world( with notable exceptions like Watchmen, wherein only one person is an actual superhuman being, capable of things not even the best of normal humans can hope to attempt).. Our reaction speed should definitely be considered when coming up with our mover rating, since as somebody else pointed out, these ratings are about the threat we pose. I do not recall any point in Worm when somebody explicitly broke the sound barrier without being in a vehicle; that doesn't mean it didn't happen, merely that that sonic boom was never mentioned.

Faraway-R · Aug 2, 2019

UberJJK said:
It actually takes a far amount of time for him to stop roaring. So with our Barrier Jacket and flight getting out of the way shouldn't be too much of a concern. Plus Behemoth is explicitly called out as slow and not dodging attacks so keeping him under a nigh constant Temporal Sludge is probably something we'll probably be doing.

Thank you for a concise answer. Point accepted.

Silently Watches · Aug 2, 2019

Wyrd said:
That said, we have more power as a Mover than anybody else alive, unless Doormaker's shard has a new host with all of his power. Part of what merits the 10 is our Blaster rating, too, as we can not only hit as many cities as we want in a matter of minutes, we could do so much damage that, as you put it, the PRT's response would "well, we're boned". Once they find out about Ragnarok, the combination of our Mover and Blaster ratings could push both of them over 10, into a range where the justified response is, "pray she doesn't go crazy".

veekie said:
An utter mess there. Ratings don't stack like that. The PRT doesn't have aggregated threat scores because parahumans have one power.

Wyrd said:
Regardless of canon, the official ratings for CW explicitly stated in one of the interludes of this story that part of her rating was because of that combination. That's the only reason I count them as affecting each other's ratings. I concede that I may be misremembering that scene, but don't feel like hunting it down.

You're both right and wrong. Yes, the PRT does do aggregated threat scores; they have to when people like grab-bags are a thing, not to mention Tinker subclasses (which in all honesty is what Taylor's ratings really are; she technically would be a Breaker/Tinker because she uses a piece of technology to assume an alternate form that gives her the majority of her powers). No, her threat status does not aggregate between ratings like that. It only applies when she has multiple abilities that all fall into the same category.

Her official rating file as of Arc 12 would read something like this:

Breaker/Tinker archetype, subratings as below:

Mover 10: supersonic flight (Aerial Combat), long-range/global teleportation (Spatial Translocation), personal dimension and capable of bringing others into said dimension (Recursion Field), short-range speed boost (Blitz Action)
Blaster 9: multiple self-directed fireballs (Flare Shooter + variants), high-yield beam-type attack (Solar Wrath), anti-armor projectiles (Rust Shooter + variants), petrifying projectiles capable of causing harm to Endbringer (Mistilteinn)
Shaker 6: defensive shield (Strong Shield), time-slowing field (Temporal Sludge), hard-light restraints (Ring Bind)
Brute 5: increased durability vs personal force field vulnerable to lethal munitions (Barrier Jacket)
Striker 3: hard-light blade (Flare Blade)
Thinker 3: small-range searching ability (Wide Area Search), unclear computing power, unclear hacking ability but has integrated into official com channels

The only Protectorate people who know about her interdimensional teleportation or telekinesis are Alexandria or Vista, both of whom have reasons for withholding the full truth. No one in the Protectorate has ever seen Petty Cure, Ragnarok, Frost Beam, or Divide Energy. The PRT doesn't want the Master nature to get out because of Operation Pentagram.

And I honestly don't know exactly how they rank Thinker abilities because the standard threat level responses don't work so well with this group.

Wyrd said:
Breaker is changing into something else, not just a change of appearance; otherwise power armor that can be deployed onto somebody would grant them a breaker rating, instead of a changer rating. Armor they have to put on manually would be rated only in the powers it provides. Since it appears on us, but does not change us, it's a Changer rating, as I read that, at least, regardless of the brute rating it provides. Tarbaby turns into animate tar, so he's a Breaker. Iceman from Marvel's X-men turns completely into ice, so a Breaker. Our Jacket doesn't prevent people from recognizing us, beyond the inherent disguise of a costume, so Stranger is pretty much out of the running.

Martenzo said:
Honestly, the whole Changer-Breaker-Stranger quadrant of power ratings is an absolute mess of overlaps, which isn't helped by how sometimes the ratings are just one small part of a PRT "threat response" guideline, and other times the rating categories are treated as an actual framework of "themes" that the Shards themselves seem to adhere to. Despite Wildbow's insistence that the latter is just fanon, characters in-story frequently treat the threat rating categories as "parahuman archetypes" in casual conversation.

The way I understand it, a Breaker has an unpowered form and a powered form that they switch between like your typical magical girl, a Changer is a shapeshifter, and a Stranger is either a spy or can deflect attention from themselves.

veekie said:
As a Mover we have very high scores on Unstoppability, but low scores on tactical speed, with average scores on strategic speed. Keeping in mind Doormaker going all out can portal fast enough to dodge a beam weapon, and that Calamity Witch has a nice, but not very special flight speed. This means that Calamity Witch can generally pick the terms of engagement on a strategic level, and is unlikely to be possible to restrain via any means other than damage, but she's not doing the Mover 10+ gimmick of simultaneously hitting your front door and back door while also in a safe and untargetable location.

Decent scores on tactical speed with Blitz Action, very high scores on strategic speed because Taylor can go supersonic, and very high score on unstoppability because of supersonic, teleportation, and Recursion Field combined giving her several "get me out of here" combos.

Wyrd · Aug 2, 2019

Silently Watches said:
Operation Pentagram.

I thought there was a name for the program. I just couldn't remember it.

The fun of thinking of the ratings isn't in what they know about, which is scary enough, but in what we're really capable of. Between how little they know about templates outside of the Blaster and Tinker versions and how many spells require better devices than Pentagram can currently produce, we have a rather large stash of abilities they haven't gotten a chance to see.

Martenzo · Aug 2, 2019

Silently Watches said:
And I honestly don't know exactly how they rank Thinker abilities because the standard threat level responses don't work so well with this group.

Not sure if this is just fanon, or actually something Alexandria narrates in canon, but I've seen her sum up three "tiers" of Thinkers in something I've read. Since most ratings in the wiki seem to follow 2+/5+/9+ thresholds, those might as well be the thresholds for these tiers as well: "Assume they can figure it out", "Assume they already know" and "Your assumptions are irrelevant", respectively.

UberJJK · Aug 2, 2019

Silently Watches said:
small-range searching ability (Wide Area Search)

Just wanted to point out Wide Area Search isn't exactly small-range. Assuming 1 block is 100m then an 8 block radius is an 800m radius for a total searched area of ~2 million square meters (2,010,619.3m^2). At 20 seconds total completion time that gives approximately a hundred thousand square meters per second (100,531.0m^2/s) or ~10 blocks per second.

For comparison Skitter's range topped out at 6.5 blocks in a high stress situation but averaged 3 blocks during her warlord days. Even assuming she know every detail within her range, which we are shown she doesn't multiple times, her ability to search is primarily limited by her move speed.

Running the numbers:

So determining how Skitter's area changes over time is kinda messy problem until you look at it correctly. If she runs far enough the shape traced out by her area of control becomes a rectable capped with semicircles, also known as an obround.

Lets say she runs for 10 radii that puts the rectacle at 10r by 2r for an area of 20r^2 and the two semicircles come together to form a circle with an area of pi x r^2. That gives a total area of (20+pi)r^2.

The next question is how fast can Taylor travel those 10 radii? Well google says the average woman working out managing to cover 4.6 miles at a speed of ~6mph. That converts to 2.7m/s over a distance of 7403m.

So now it is time to convert those radii into meters:
6.5 Block Radius:
So at Skitter's peak of 6.5 blocks her power covered a radius if 650m. That makes 10 radii 6,500m (within the distance she could reasonably cover) and an expected travel time of ~2407.4 seconds.

Meanwhile the area covered is (20+pi) x 650^2 which calculates out to 9,777,322.9m^2.

That gives a total searching rate of 4,061.4m^2/s.

3 Block Radius:
At Skitter's more normal range of 3 blocks her power covers a radius of 300m. That means 10 radii are 3,000m (again well within her expected endurance) and her travel time 1111.1 seconds.

Expanding out the area covered [300^2 x (20+pi)] gives a total area of 2,082,743.3m^2.

Put that all together and we get a searching rate of 1,874.5m^2/s.

At the low end of things Skitter is capable of covering just one block every ~5.3 seconds (1,874.5m^2/s) and even the high end estimates only bring that up to one every ~2.5 seconds (4,061.4m^2/s). Compared to that Calamity Witch is between 25 and 53 times faster at searching an area then Skitter.

To further emphasize things lets look at the area of Philadelphia. The city covers 369.59km^2 of land. That is about 370 million square meters. Wide Area Search for comparison covers about 2 million square meters in 20 seconds. So searching the entire city would take Calamity Witch 3,676.4 seconds or about 61 minutes.

Of course such a search would hardly be subtle and depending upon how Calamity Witch went about the search there are a variety of problems that would occur such as overlap and the concern of targets slipping around the search borders and into already searched spaces. Not to mention all the areas outside the city proper a target could lay low in. Still it does establish a pretty impressive rate of search capability.

Although now I find myself wondering if the PRT actually realize we can search this rapidly. They know we can search an area, IIRC we demostrated it during the MS-13 operation, but I don't know if we told them, or they had enough data, to realize just what sort of rate Taylor can chew through search space.

Wyrd · Aug 2, 2019

UberJJK said:
At the low end of things Skitter is capable of covering just one block every ~5.3 seconds (1,874.5m^2/s) and even the high end estimates only bring that up to one every ~2.5 seconds (4,061.4m^2/s). Compared to that Calamity Witch is between 25 and 53 times faster at searching an area then Skitter.

One big difference between the two characters' techniques is that Calamity Witch has to generate very visible orbs that then go out and scan everything. Skitter is aware of whatever any 'bug' in her range is aware of, the moment they come in range. Translating that information into something useful for Skitter took lots of practice, while PS handles that for us. Further, Skitter is not blocked by line of sight and barriers, so long as there are bugs in her reach, while WAS has to find a path to whatever it is trying to scan, which is what kept us from just running along the storm sewers and sending out pulses of WAS at regular intervals to find Typhon.

Edited some errors out.

Silently Watches · Aug 2, 2019

UberJJK said:
Just wanted to point out Wide Area Search isn't exactly small-range. Assuming 1 block is 100m then an 8 block radius is an 800m radius for a total searched area of ~2 million square meters (2,010,619.3m^2). At 20 seconds total completion time that gives approximately a hundred thousand square meters per second (100,531.0m^2/s) or ~10 blocks per second.

Small range as in she can't canvass the entire city at once.

veekie · Aug 2, 2019

Eyeballing, Wide Area Search should be in the Thinker 3 ballpark. The metrics I think you can gauge a Thinker on are:
-Utility of the information - Average. Unanalyzed raw visual data put through a multithreaded human-level pattern recognition.
-Ability to bypass information protection - Above average. The search orbs are small, flight capable drones, which can fit through places a rodent might, but cannot breach sealed or actively defended areas due to a lack of ability to apply force and visibility.

Its mainly useful as...a targeting augment for her Blaster rating.

Silently Watches said:
Mover 10: supersonic flight (Aerial Combat), long-range/global teleportation (Spatial Translocation), personal dimension and capable of bringing others into said dimension (Recursion Field), short-range speed boost (Blitz Action)

Blaster 9: multiple self-directed fireballs (Flare Shooter + variants), high-yield beam-type attack (Solar Wrath), anti-armor projectiles (Rust Shooter + variants), petrifying projectiles capable of causing harm to Endbringer (Mistilteinn)

Shaker 6: defensive shield (Strong Shield), time-slowing field (Temporal Sludge), hard-light restraints (Ring Bind)

Brute 5: increased durability vs personal force field vulnerable to lethal munitions (Barrier Jacket)

Striker 3: hard-light blade (Flare Blade)

Thinker 3: small-range searching ability (Wide Area Search), unclear computing power, unclear hacking ability but has integrated into official com channels

So turns out this matches. Thinker might go up to Thinker 5 if they realize just how strong the hacking is though.

Wyrd · Aug 3, 2019

We need a group of people to test the de-Zizzing treatments on. Brockton Bay was attacked by Ziz. The largest group of capes who evidently didn't even try to escape with the E88 and ABB are the druggies, the Merchants. What do you think their response would be to an offer of free drugs for the Merchants so long as they let us 'observe' them. Don't even tell them what we're trying to accomplish, and stick to the precogs who are good at catching her influence to see if their likelihood of carrying out Ziz induced actions decreases.

This idea came with a mental image of dropping off crates of LSD, peyote, etc., or just spraying LSD as an aerosol.

Wyrd · Aug 5, 2019

Next build is coming up in a couple of weeks. I'm thinking a plan of:

Create interdimensional Armory 3 slots
Upgrade push and pull pads to interdimensional 2 slots
Build cybernetic eye for Alexandria 1 slot

Thoughts?
The cybernetic eye can send its input telepathically since Alexandria has a linker core, even though only a c or d rank, and the events of this fight should bring her injury to mind.
I want the other items for when we go back to other worlds, so we have supplies that can be sent directly to us.
The armory would currently only send out Vista's armor, the liquid nitrogen sprayer, and the gravity projector, at least at present, but I've wanted this system for a while because it makes so many other builds viable. Once we can get things to the people who need them, immediately, utility items like the rust grenades could be*... but we're trying to get more characters in our team, and every new character is a new person to send stuff to, a reason to leave the stuff at Steve--err, Tim's place so whoever needs it can call it.

*...Sorry, my brain is not working well, can't think how best to word it.

Taijutsu · Aug 10, 2019

Three things.

First, the way to forcefully teleport the Endbringers--and other S class threats to an unihabited Earth--are Teleportaion Drones. Dragon and Shipwright can make multiple drones that surround the target and iniate interdimensional teleportation. VI controlled, mass produced drones would have easily deployed replacements in reserve and be able to cast the spell more quickly than a human mage.

Next Alexandria has a couple of magical options, even with a D rank core. One of the reasons mages use Devices is because of the complex spell equations, however with her perfect memory this would be less of an issue. She could become a competant D rank mage even withour a Device. Another option is a Guardian Beast, however it would need to be tough enought to be Alexandria's Guardian Beast--the obvious answer--a honey badger.

Finally, I don't like the idea of Vista not getting to be a Magical Girl and joining Taylor's team--so after my first idea proved impossible, I believe I have a solution. Cybernetic-Hybrid-Unison-Device-Vista, CHUDV. Yes, it sound crazy, but it could work. First, since Unison devices have Linker Cores, that means its possible to create Artificial Linker Cores. Most of a Unison Device is stored in a pocket dimension, with the "body" in the the world being a solid projection. A body doesn't need to be created--only an implant installed into Vista's brain linking to the unison device in the dimensional pocket. Vista gains a Linker Core and the processing power to use it. She could then get an Intelligent Device of her own--if she even needs it--since Unison Devices can have ItellIntelligent Devices.

UberJJK · Aug 10, 2019

Taijutsu said:
Finally, I don't like the idea of Vista not getting to be a Magical Girl and joining Taylor's team--so after my first idea proved impossible, I believe I have a solution. Cybernetic-Hybrid-Unison-Device-Vista, CHUDV.

You do know it has been confirmed, multiple times now, by Silently Watches that we can give Vista a Linker Core via Tim's new Mutation serums right?

No need to sacrifice her humanity when, at most, some minor physical modifications, that she'd likely want, will work just fine.

DestinyPlayer · Aug 10, 2019

UberJJK said:
You do know it has been confirmed, multiple times now, by Silently Watches that we can give Vista a Linker Core via Tim's new Mutation serums right?

No need to sacrifice her humanity when, at most, some minor physical modifications, that she'd likely want, will work just fine.

It depends mostly on whether she'd think that sacrificing her humanity would be the more fun option. Because, well, we decided that Vista is pretty transhumanist, regardless of what some detractors might think about it when it was literally for us to choose in its entirety, not anybody else.

Wyrd · Aug 10, 2019

I'm going to guess you got to this point without reading the forum posts, only the story, as your ideas have all been answered.
* Edit below

Taijutsu said:
First, the way to forcefully teleport the Endbringers--and other S class threats to an unihabited Earth--are Teleportaion Drones. Dragon and Shipwright can make multiple drones that surround the target and iniate interdimensional teleportation. VI controlled, mass produced drones would have easily deployed replacements in reserve and be able to cast the spell more quickly than a human mage.

Nope. Drones can't cast spells. Teleport creations have to be in contact with the thing to be teleported and move with it. With the issues of mass, and the need for contact, this might work with a bunch latching on to Leviathan, but Behemoth would just melt them.

Taijutsu said:
Next Alexandria has a couple of magical options, even with a D rank core. One of the reasons mages use Devices is because of the complex spell equations, however with her perfect memory this would be less of an issue. She could become a competant D rank mage even withour a Device. Another option is a Guardian Beast, however it would need to be tough enought to be Alexandria's Guardian Beast--the obvious answer--a honey badger.

A d rank core can only support a lesser Gear. It takes c and up to have any other variety of GB. Deviceless magic should be in her capabilities, but she doesn't seem interested in that.

Also, the base animal has no impact on the GBs toughness. The honeybadger's personality of IDGaF would be likely to push one to suicidal levels of brashness.

Taijutsu said:
Finally, I don't like the idea of Vista not getting to be a Magical Girl and joining Taylor's team--so after my first idea proved impossible, I believe I have a solution. Cybernetic-Hybrid-Unison-Device-Vista, CHUDV. Yes, it sound crazy, but it could work. First, since Unison devices have Linker Cores, that means its possible to create Artificial Linker Cores. Most of a Unison Device is stored in a pocket dimension, with the "body" in the the world being a solid projection. A body doesn't need to be created--only an implant installed into Vista's brain linking to the unison device in the dimensional pocket. Vista gains a Linker Core and the processing power to use it. She could then get an Intelligent Device of her own--if she even needs it--since Unison Devices can have ItellIntelligent Devices.

We can give Vista a core with the mutagens. We cannot, ever, create and install an artificial linker core without killing the person. Both of these statements were quite explicit and emphatic from SW. Further, SW has explicitly stated that s/he has already decided on exactly what strength core and what side effect mutations Vista would get should we give her the mutagen.

*Edit

UberJJK said:
You do know it has been confirmed, multiple times now, by Silently Watches that we can give Vista a Linker Core via Tim's new Mutation serums right?

No need to sacrifice her humanity when, at most, some minor physical modifications, that she'd likely want, will work just fine.

DestinyPlayer said:
It depends mostly on whether she'd think that sacrificing her humanity would be the more fun option. Because, well, we decided that Vista is pretty transhumanist, regardless of what some detractors might think about it when it was literally for us to choose in its entirety, not anybody else.

I think the point Uber was going for was that Vista can be every bit as strong, just different, without the complications that come from more comprehensive cybernetic augmentation. Being transhumanist doesn't mean she hates being human and wants to get rid of everything that connects her to the species, merely that she has doesn't mind losing some humanity to get what she wants. I think the real deciding factor would be that taking the mutagen would make her more like Samantha and Taylor, both of whom she respects and admires.

UberJJK · Aug 10, 2019

Wyrd said:
Deviceless magic should be in her capabilities, but she doesn't seem interested in that.

That would be because Taylor hasn't really explained, or thought about, what Alexandria could do deviceless. Since she only has a D-Rank Linker Core, and a Device would be a waste with her power, she only has half a spell slot. This means she can't use any major spells and any spell she does get would be half powered so Alexandria thinks it is worthless:

Silently Watches said:
It isn't that she can't do magic, it's that she can't do any useful (to her mind) magic. Major spells done Deviceless require more than the half-spell-slot she has available as a D-rank, and the only Guardian Beast she can sustain is a Gear.

However there are a fair number of spells that could be useful to her even at reduced power.

The only spells we know are ruled out are:

Breakers (IE: Ragnarok)
Busters (IE: Solar Wrath)
Wide Area Search (Even Alexandria need's a Device's processing power)
Flight
All Guardian Beasts except Gears

So that still leaves a fair range of possibilities.

A Gear GB could be useful for her in producing Magi-Tech for her except that the PRT is about to be overflowing in Gears so it is a really short term investment. About the only attractive thing here is that it gives her a companion that will live just as long as she will and that probably won't start mattering to her for decades.

Most of Taylor's spells aren't that useful to her since Alexandria is hardly lacking in direct damage abilities. Others like her Shaker spells (Recursion, Sludge, and Crescendo) aren't really useful for a melee fighter. However there are some that do provide some utility:

Restraint:
Alexandria currently doesn't really have a way to capture/restrain a target other then either beating them unconscious or wrapping them in steal beams. Frost Beam, Ring Bind, and Bind Mine all provide this capability. I'd probably say Bind Mine is the least useful of those three with Frost Beam also providing Alexandria a ranged attack while Ring Bind doesn't require the enemy falling into her trap.

Movement:
So Alexandria can already fly and is pretty damn fast. But we don't know how fast. If she can legit fly anywhere in the world in minutes then this doesn't matter. But if she did rely upon Doormaker for that like I personally suspect then we've got some possibilities here. Blitz Action for high speed tactical movement or Spatial Transportation for high speed strategic movement, possibly with friends depending upon how the spell is nerfed.

Buff Spells:
This requires bringing in Aeris to tutor Alexandria but there is some serious synergistic potential here. Strike Boost explicitly synergizes with parahuman strength and Cover would mean an invisible Alexandria which is scary as hell.

If we can convince the two of them Alexandria learning Macalibuin's Cape Boost could also be quite the worthwhile endvour. We'd probably want to see what a full powered Cape Boost did to Alexandria before having her learn it though just to be sure.

Questionably Learnable Spells:
So there are a number of spells we know of that seem more like innate abilities rather then proper spells people can learn. If they can be taught then Samantha's Shredding Claw for example could be very useful against Endbringers when combined with Alexandria's super strength and invulnerability.

Wyrd · Aug 10, 2019

UberJJK said:
Buff Spells:
This requires bringing in Aeris to tutor Alexandria but there is some serious synergistic potential here. Strike Boost explicitly synergizes with parahuman strength and Cover would mean an invisible Alexandria which is scary as hell.

The IE buff spells cannot be used on the person casting them.

UberJJK said:
If we can convince the two of them Alexandria learning Macalibuin's Cape Boost could also be quite the worthwhile endvour. We'd probably want to see what a full powered Cape Boost did to Alexandria before having her learn it though just to be sure.

Maclibuin's spell cannot be taught or added to a device. This is more a matter of keeping that spell unique to one character than a limitation built into the spell itself.

Both of those answers have been explicitly stated in the past, unless my memory is substantially less reliable than even my usual, crappy standards.

I agree that Alexandria could benefit from a number of spells, even at their reduced strength. I got the impression that SW meant her core to deliberately be so weak she wouldn't want to bother with learning a spell, even with her enhanced memory letting her hold a lot more data than an ordinary individual could ever claim. As such, the issue isn't convincing Alexandria that learning a spell would be helpful than convincing SW that taking the story in that direction would be adequately interesting.

Byzantine · Aug 10, 2019

Wyrd said:
I agree that Alexandria could benefit from a number of spells, even at their reduced strength. I got the impression that SW meant her core to deliberately be so weak she wouldn't want to bother with learning a spell, even with her enhanced memory letting her hold a lot more data than an ordinary individual could ever claim. As such, the issue isn't convincing Alexandria that learning a spell would be helpful than convincing SW that taking the story in that direction would be adequately interesting.

He actually did roll for her core strength, and it was bad, even with the bonuses. (We have bad luck rolling cores).

Silently Watches · Aug 10, 2019

Taijutsu said:
Finally, I don't like the idea of Vista not getting to be a Magical Girl and joining Taylor's team--so after my first idea proved impossible, I believe I have a solution. Cybernetic-Hybrid-Unison-Device-Vista, CHUDV. Yes, it sound crazy, but it could work. First, since Unison devices have Linker Cores, that means its possible to create Artificial Linker Cores. Most of a Unison Device is stored in a pocket dimension, with the "body" in the the world being a solid projection. A body doesn't need to be created--only an implant installed into Vista's brain linking to the unison device in the dimensional pocket. Vista gains a Linker Core and the processing power to use it. She could then get an Intelligent Device of her own--if she even needs it--since Unison Devices can have ItellIntelligent Devices.

That's… not how Unison Devices work in the slightest. They have a generator that is like a Linker Core, but it is not a Linker Core in fact. Humans can only interface with it when a Unison Device merges with their organic Linker Core, and it's more of an outward flowing of magical talent. It wouldn't be Vista casting spells, but the UD casting spells through her. And she can't do that without a Linker Core of her own, which you cannot surgically implant. You have to use a mutagen.

Wyrd said:
I think the point Uber was going for was that Vista can be every bit as strong, just different, without the complications that come from more comprehensive cybernetic augmentation. Being transhumanist doesn't mean she hates being human and wants to get rid of everything that connects her to the species, merely that she has doesn't mind losing some humanity to get what she wants.

This is 100% correct.

UberJJK said:
A Gear GB could be useful for her in producing Magi-Tech for her except that the PRT is about to be overflowing in Gears so it is a really short term investment. About the only attractive thing here is that it gives her a companion that will live just as long as she will and that probably won't start mattering to her for decades.

She could also theoretically create a Familiar rather than a Guardian Beast. It's pretty much the same ritual process. The difference is that with her having so little magic, her Familiar would be more like Uno (an administrative assistant figure) than any other character in canon.

UberJJK said:
Spatial Transportation

Spatial and dimensional teleportation, just like flight, require a B-rank LC at minimum.

UberJJK said:
This requires bringing in Aeris to tutor Alexandria but there is some serious synergistic potential here. Strike Boost explicitly synergizes with parahuman strength and Cover would mean an invisible Alexandria which is scary as hell.

Strike Boost, as a support spell, can only be cast on other people. There is a self-directed strength increase in the Extinction Knight template which she could theoretically learn at half-strength.

Wyrd said:
Maclibuin's spell cannot be taught or added to a device. This is more a matter of keeping that spell unique to one character than a limitation built into the spell itself.

Eh. The question that was actually asked, as best as I remember, was whether Maclibuin's spell could be added to a TEMPLATE. That answer is no. There is no logical reason why someone with a generic Boost Device couldn't learn it, however.

Wyrd said:
I agree that Alexandria could benefit from a number of spells, even at their reduced strength. I got the impression that SW meant her core to deliberately be so weak she wouldn't want to bother with learning a spell, even with her enhanced memory letting her hold a lot more data than an ordinary individual could ever claim. As such, the issue isn't convincing Alexandria that learning a spell would be helpful than convincing SW that taking the story in that direction would be adequately interesting.

Byzantine said:
He actually did roll for her core strength, and it was bad, even with the bonuses. (We have bad luck rolling cores).

Alexandria's LC roll in general was so low that to give her a LC at all, I had to really stretch the definition of a social event to include every interlude I had written from her perspective. Then the strength roll gave a 19

Byzantine · Aug 10, 2019

Silently Watches said:
Alexandria's LC roll in general was so low that to give her a LC at all, I had to really stretch the definition of a social event to include every interlude I had written from her perspective. Then the strength roll gave a 19

Hence us having bad luck rolling for cores/strength.

It does suck though, given Alexandria would be an incredible mage, due to her memory.

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