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NorseQuest (A Norse Xianxia)

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I agree, the trick is lining things up for maximum impact. But yeah, we shouldn't hold back the slightest scrap of anything for this. If we spend all of our Odr and walk away with nobody dead? We still won, the Muna and the Orthstirr from such a battle will easily make good our losses in the long run. And there's no way a fight like this isn't going to be Muna worthy for a fightmonkey like Halla is.
 
Alectai said:
I agree, the trick is lining things up for maximum impact. But yeah, we shouldn't hold back the slightest scrap of anything for this. If we spend all of our Odr and walk away with nobody dead? We still won, the Muna and the Orthstirr from such a battle will easily make good our losses in the long run. And there's no way a fight like this isn't going to be Muna worthy for a fightmonkey like Halla is.
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This is definitely the kind of fight where burning odr on damage is potentially worth it, yeah.
 
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Good news is? Chances are pretty good given the hype that he'll trigger our Punching Up Twist. Of course, that still puts us on a timer for this fight, but such is life in the Norse Zone.

EDIT: You know, a question comes to mind. What happens if we Odr Boost a non-damaging Trick like IAT @Imperial Fister ? Does it just make it harder to break out of or is it mostly wasted?
 
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Alectai said:
Good news is? Chances are pretty good given the hype that he'll trigger our Punching Up Twist. Of course, that still puts us on a timer for this fight, but such is life in the Norse Zone.
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I'll reiterate something here: Punching Up has specific use cases and it's not 'every round we fight someone we can use it on'. Right now it grants 22d6 for 35 Orthstirr...we can get 35d6 for 35 Orthstirr just by burning it on the Tricks themselves, and there's not a cap on doing that.

The ability to treat everything as a Trick and thus assign dice to bunches of different things can absolutely make it worth it in some situations, but it's not actually gonna be worth it every round.
 
DeadmanwalkingXI said:
I'll reiterate something here: Punching Up has specific use cases and it's not 'every round we fight someone we can use it on'. Right now it grants 22d6 for 35 Orthstirr...we can get 35d6 for 35 Orthstirr just by burning it on the Tricks themselves, and there's not a cap on doing that.

The ability to treat everything as a Trick and thus assign dice to bunches of different things can absolutely make it worth it in some situations, but it's not actually gonna be worth it every round.
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It's pretty great for binary 'Pass/fail' stuff like with IAT though, which I don't think we can boost with more Orthstirr?
 
Alectai said:
It's pretty great for binary 'Pass/fail' stuff like with IAT though, which I don't think we can boost with more Orthstirr?
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No, we can. Per what Imperial Fister said we can boost any Trick just by investing more Orthstirr into it. We can burn, like 41 Orthstirr on IAT and roll with 80d6 as our only action if we want to.

What Punching Up is great for is if we want to do things that aren't codified tricks but we still want to put a bunch of dice into, like when we tricked the Troll without any active Social Tricks, or in theory it would enable the Owl Boulder Drop plan even though we lack defensive Tricks with the Owl and any Throwing Tricks because it would just allow us to assign 67d6 freely to the owl doing stuff in any amounts we wanted. We're inside so that doesn't work here, but it's an example.
 
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DeadmanwalkingXI said:
No, we can. Per what Imperial Fister said we can boost any Trick just by investing more Orthstirr.
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...

That feels like we're missing something then. Because it'd be weird for a Muna to give us a Twist that's actually less effective than our normal options.

There's got to be a limit to how many extra Orthstirr we can spend for more dice in light of that, probably the same as Odr Boosting I would bet. You can stack up to your Skill/Rank in a given Trick's field for extra dice and no more.
 
Punching Up lasts the entire fight. If I previously said that it doesn't, then past-me was wrong.

More dice is more good.
 
And there we have it, voting is now done.
Scheduled vote count started by Imperial Fister on Apr 26, 2023 at 4:32 PM, finished with 45 posts and 4 votes.
  • [X] Plan: Reclaim the Initiative
    -[X] 40d6 Attack
    -[X] 5d6 Defense
    -[X] 0d6 Intercept
    -[X] Use Ember Wing Cloak (12 Orthstirr) to close back into close quarters, and damage race his arse, a mix between 2 Honed Power Chops (6d6 + 1d6 Hone) (4 Orthstirr), 2 Kindle-Spinners (3d6 + 2d6 Ignition + 2d6 Extra Orthstirr) (8 Orthstirr) , and 2 Firebomb-Strikes (5d6 + 2d6 Ignition) (8 Orthstirr). Kindle-Spinners are prioritized if he tries to open the range again after we close in to keep him busy, but keep them under our hat unless we need a ranged option. Maintain a Contingency Honed Leaping Cleave (12d6 + 1d6 Hone) (4 Orthstirr) to close the distance if he uses some kind of Trick to create a gap again (Like a repeat of that powerful wind-ball) or goes for one of his Saxes to punish. Be willing to use EWC along with the Leaping Cleave if it's required to help it land home. (16 Orthstirr if required)
    -[X] Maintain 5 Reinforced Honed Defenses (1d6 + 1d6 Hone + 3d6 Reinforce) (20 Orthstirr). Use Halting Vortex (4 Orthstirr) on any powerful Tricks, but be willing to Sidestep (2 Orthstirr) if he tries to repeat something like that wind orb, do not give him an opening to safely go for one of his weapons without having a punish on hand.
    -[X] Overall Tactics: Regain the initiative using Ember Winged Cloak to close back into close quarters distance--this should make it easier to prevent him from using his Hugareida on you and he's not going to be able to wrestle well with two broken wrists. Maintain a solid defense against his counterattacks, but the priority is dropping him quickly to back up the rest of our elites against the Captain. Create a 16 layer Reinforce-Shield between defeating the Brute and engaging the Captain, unless the situation looks desperate enough that we need to join in now
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I also note... if he's surrounded by a bunch of us, and we have an attack that can punch through his free defenses that only costs dice, then just pouring "Standard attack spam" at him starts having value. We're going to be dogpiling the guy. outspamming him should be possible.
 
Sirrocco said:
I also note... if he's surrounded by a bunch of us, and we have an attack that can punch through his free defenses that only costs dice, then just pouring "Standard attack spam" at him starts having value. We're going to be dogpiling the guy. outspamming him should be possible.
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Eh. Honed Power Chops are only 2 orthstirr each and do 3 damage to a standard attack's 1...I suspect that's always gonna be worth it on every single attack especially since odds are this guy has Shapeshifting to reduce all damage by 1 (or even 2) anyway, which would make unenhanced attacks meaningless.

But spamming 1d6 (2d6 with Honed) Power Chops may very well be worth it under the right circumstances, yes.
 
Sirrocco said:
I also note... if he's surrounded by a bunch of us, and we have an attack that can punch through his free defenses that only costs dice, then just pouring "Standard attack spam" at him starts having value. We're going to be dogpiling the guy. outspamming him should be possible.
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Mail actually complicates that a lot, since it's +2d6 on defense to every incoming attack he receives, and that's at a baseline--gear and quality modifiers likely get higher. It's not the same level of "You must be this tall to matter" that Knightly Armor allows for, but it does mean there's not much point in attack-spam because he's able to trivially outcompete you on defense.
 
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Alectai said:
Mail actually complicates that a lot, since it's +2d6 on defense to every incoming attack he receives, and that's at a baseline.
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Mail actually adds a flat number, and only to defenses that have at least 1d6 already, I believe. Attack spam probably works okay-ish (he'll be succeeding any that he puts dice towards due to the mail, but he does need to put dice into it)...the issue is his likely damage reduction.
 
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DeadmanwalkingXI said:
It actually adds a flat number, and only to defenses that have at least 1d6 already. Attack spam probably works...the issue is his likely damage reduction.
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True, we already saw how much of a pain in the ass Damage Reduction shapeshifts can be. I'd still say he's probably not higher than Hamr 8 though, we've seen no indications of him having Giant's Blood and 128 Training Successes is already a Big Ask. 256 is just stupid, especially since he's not going to be pouring his training into Hamr alone.
 
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Alectai said:
True, we already saw how much of a pain in the ass Damage Reduction shapeshifts can be. I'd still say he's probably not higher than Hamr 8 though, we've seen no indications of him having Giant's Blood and 128 Training Successes is already a Big Ask. 256 is just stupid, especially since he's not solely going to be pouring his training into Hamr alone.
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True. My personal suspicion is that if he actually had -2 damage shapeshifting he wouldn't bother with the mail, but -1 is possible and we should plan around it.
 
DeadmanwalkingXI said:
True. My personal suspicion is that if he actually had -2 damage shapeshifting he wouldn't bother with the mail, but -1 is possible.
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Yeah, 1 DR and +1 Damage seem like the current Norse Meta. DR to make you immune to ordinary attacks from anyone who doesn't at least have Hone or some other way of increasing their damage output (Which immediately takes the majority of casual foes off the table as relevant threats because Hone is relatively uncommon outside of professional vikingr), and the other to let you shred people without spending much Orthstirr since it means you're hitting for Trick levels of damage for 1 single Hone die. Notably, these two perks also cancel each other out when you're facing your peers, which puts you on even footing and letting your skills have it out. While anyone who doesn't take those as their first shapeshifts is at a disadvantage against their peers, since you're either giving up resistance to being attackspammed or removing attackspam as a viable option on your part.

And we know at this point that the Norse Meta is apparently about lots of regular attacks mixed up with powerful Tricks. Meaning the successful fighters are the ones who maximize the benefits of going into that. Explains why Hone and Reinforce are a big dividing line between Farmers who fight and people who are actual Warriors--those two Tricks are hard to learn from first principles, but are hands down the most efficient and powerful options in the current meta.
 
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Alectai said:
Yeah, 1 DR and +1 Damage seem like the current Norse Meta. DR to make you immune to ordinary attacks from anyone who doesn't at least have Hone or some other way of increasing their damage output (Which immediately takes the majority of casual foes off the table as relevant threats because Hone is relatively uncommon outside of professional vikingr), and the other to let you shred people without spending much Orthstirr since it means you're hitting for Trick levels of damage for 1 single Hone die. Notably, these two perks also cancel each other out when you're facing your peers, which puts you on even footing and letting your skills have it out. While anyone who doesn't take those as their first shapeshifts is at a disadvantage against their peers.
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Generally agreed, though I will note a couple of caveats:

#1: Using the 'bonus to all defensive dice' plus mail is an acceptable replacement for damage reduction...maybe even a superior one for duels against equals. Just avoiding damage is better than reducing it by 1, after all, and that combo lets them avoid almost all mundane attacks for 1d6 per attack. Their disadvantage is against large numbers of mortals (where they will run out of dice) rather than their peers (where their bonuses on high die defenses make them very tough targets for big tricks). This is a specific alternate build that I suspect is less common, but by no means rare.
#2: Other Norsemen are always a potential threat due to Tricks. -1 to damage you take may let you waltz through non-cultivators, but the Norse's cultivation (pseudo-cultivation?) does mean that even those who haven't picked up Hone probably have some trick that ups damage and can hurt you.

Alectai said:
And we know at this point that the Norse Meta is apparently about lots of regular attacks mixed up with powerful Tricks. Meaning the successful fighters are the ones who maximize the benefits of going into that. Explains why Hone and Reinforce are a big dividing line between Farmers who fight and people who are actual Warriors--those two Tricks are hard to learn from first principles, but are hands down the most efficient and powerful options in the current meta.
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Yep. This is definitely correct...Halla tends to burn a lot harder than this, which can cause some problems, but has also definitely allowed us to fight well above our weight class more than once.
 
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So yeah, I'm thinking Halla definitely wants to go with the damage-adder and one of the Reflex Shapeshifts rather than the Damage Reduction, simply because she has good options for getting high quality Mail, which is a fairly solid substitute for the DR. Especially since we're liable to have Forgefire sooner or later which lets us do high level Crafting--not something most people have reliable access to. Which one comes first is somewhat up in the air, but that seems a pretty solid line to aim for.

Huh, I wonder what kind of Muna will be on the table when we're done here? Maybe a Wind Hugareida from the Brute? Or maybe something else depending on how the main fight goes? Wind + Ignition can probably make some very juicy Alloys down the line.
 
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Alectai said:
So yeah, I'm thinking Halla definitely wants to go with the damage-adder and one of the Reflex Shapeshifts rather than the Damage Reduction, simply because she has good options for getting high quality Mail, which is a fairly solid substitute for the DR. Especially since we're liable to have Forgefire sooner or later which lets us do high level Crafting--not something most people have reliable access to. Which one comes first is somewhat up in the air, but that seems a pretty solid line to aim for.
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Actually, I disagree with the second part of that (I agree a damage adder is first). Reflex Adders only substitute for Damage Reduction as long as you have dice, and Mail alone is enough for that to be honest (good Forged Iron Mail was mentioned at, like, the +10 to +14 level in terms of static bonus). The big bonus of a defensive reflex adder is when you use a lot of dice on a defense (well, and to reduce the dice you need to use on such defenses)...something we do very rarely as we can usually instead just use Halting Vortex. Meanwhile, Halla's current big weakness actually is the 'horde of mooks' that Damage Reduction solves. An offensive reflex adder is a little more tempting, but not needed, I don't think.

Alectai said:
Huh, I wonder what kind of Muna will be on the table when we're done here? Maybe a Wind Hugareida from the Brute? Or maybe something else depending on how the main fight goes? Wind + Ignition can probably make some very juicy Alloys down the line.
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I think Wind is unlikely as he hasn't used it much. I also suspect the Captain is gonna be a much tougher battle and thus a much bigger contributor to what we get.
 
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