Oh definitely. We do it while truly unarmed and being grappled by our husband, I suspect (he bear hugs us from behind and restrains us completely). And warn everyone in advance, of course. Now, as the second time and us ready for it with a place to store it, I think it'll probably be fine...but better safe than sorry.
We can probably dump out all Orthsirr as well so we can't try any tricks and have a combat pool of nothing.

Still don't want to do it, though.
 
We can probably dump out all Orthsirr as well so we can't try any tricks and have a combat pool of nothing.

Still don't want to do it, though.

We have to do it some time. We need to know more about how it works.

This will require a Composure check to not instantly fall asleep, by the way.

That's fair. Should help with the berserker rage issue either way. We can try a few times until we stay awake long enough to do it.
 
Also, might want to make some chains that can hold Angry Halla at least for a few minutes until she chills out.

Like, I don't think it's Nid if you just made some really good chains and put them on as part of training, it's the Thrall Shackles that are Inherently Nid, right?
 
Also, might want to make some chains that can hold Angry Halla at least for a few minutes until she chills out.

Probably ask Sten for that, honestly. He can do it free of charge in terms of actions, after all (like, he can whip some temporary ones up in a couple of minutes, it sounds like).

Like, I don't think it's Nid if you just made some really good chains and put them on as part of training, it's the Thrall Shackles that are Inherently Nid, right?

Yeah, this seems valid. And the thrall-shackles are also magical and strip power...which is probably the nid thing in many ways, along with the symbolism. We can't have that during magical experimentation and so we definitely won't.
 
Note: Frenzy doesn't make you angry, it just supercharges your animal instincts and sends your threat identification into overdrive.

This is correct.

Ah, is it kind of like the Odr thing in that the first time is the worst? Because you're going from 0 to BATTLE REFLEX MODE and there's just no way to acclimate?
 
By the way, are we able to make Mire Ward have friendly fire? Like, not slow down Abjorn. What's the range, anyway?
 
By the way, are we able to make Mire Ward have friendly fire? Like, not slow down Abjorn. What's the range, anyway?

Probably would need greater proficiency to pull that off. Probably on the level of Perfect.

I imagine Perfect level Mire Ward would effectively be togglable with enough speed and efficiency that its disadvantages pretty much don't exist, is that about right @Imperial Fister?

Honestly, that feels like Standstill in a nutshell. Awkward and conditional--right up until you get Master+ level where it suddenly becomes stupid
 
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Note: Frenzy doesn't make you angry, it just supercharges your animal instincts and sends your threat identification into overdrive.
Hmm.

I wonder if this is a side-effect of the Enemy. If some of my earlier postulation about the Norse being a tool of the Enemy, then perhaps everything around us really is a threat. Or maybe it's because odr is Enemy-juice - the Enemy views everything around it as a threat, and putting that into our brain causes that paranoia to infect us.
 
That sounds about right, yeah.

Yeah, Perfect level Hugareida Tricks strike me as being game changers, even the relatively simple ones. Nice to get confirmation though that Mire Ward gets stupid at its absolute peak. We'd probably need whatever the Goes Fast version is though to truly emulate Babylon, where it's not just "You slow down" but "I Speed up too."

And at that point you're daisy-chaining two separate Hugareida that technically don't play nice together but you ground both of your core Tricks to Perfected so you just don't care anymore. And at that point there's a lot of other things you could have done with your time that you just didn't.

Hmm.

I wonder if this is a side-effect of the Enemy. If some of my earlier postulation about the Norse being a tool of the Enemy, then perhaps everything around us really is a threat. Or maybe it's because odr is Enemy-juice - the Enemy views everything around it as a threat, and putting that into our brain causes that paranoia to infect us.


I don't think that's the Enemy talking, I think it's just straight up "Sufficiently advanced intellect and instincts are indistinguishable from insanity." It's just that Norse Culture is so combat oriented right now that everyone's default assumption is "Have a plan to kill everyone you meet."

But also, this is a super dangerous setting anyway, so...
 
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Yeah, Perfect level Hugareida Tricks strike me as being game changers, even the relatively simple ones. Nice to get confirmation though that Mire Ward gets stupid at its absolute peak. We'd probably need whatever the Goes Fast version is though to truly emulate Babylon, where it's not just "You slow down" but "I Speed up too."
Might also be able to cheat with an Earth hugareida that moves what we're standing on, too.
 
When talking about Perfected Tricks it's always worth bearing in mind we can get those about twice as easily as other people...as long as they're Fire based. Like, it's pretty likely we'll get at least EWC and Kindle Spinner to Perfected by around the age of 23 even if we only invest 1d into each every round (and likely Firebomb Strike pretty soon thereafter). Quicker if we focus, but focusing on those would cause us to lose out on other opportunities.

At that point we might want to go hard on getting Halting Vortex Perfected as well and have an attack/defense/mobility suite that we can use for free (we're basically a starfighter at that point with constant jet-powered flight, a force field, and various explosive attacks). We might also want to aim for Mastering Power Chop at some point, since that becomes free at that point (making Perfecting it unnecessary), and rounds off that combo pretty well with a non-fire free trick attack.

I suspect that may be all the Perfected or pseudo-Perfected stuff outside of Fire we can readily afford for a good long while, but it's probably doable and seems like a solid combo all things considered.
 
We might also want to aim for Mastering Power Chop at some point, since that becomes free at that point (making Perfecting it unnecessary), and rounds off that combo pretty well with a non-fire free trick attack.
Mastering Power Chop, picking up extra damage off of shapeshift, and stacking some frenzy is the kind of thing that can really make your "single-die no orthstirr" attacks go brrr. Think about what it's going to look like for the guy who has to defend against 30 or so of those.
 
Mastering Power Chop, picking up extra damage off of shapeshift, and stacking some frenzy is the kind of thing that can really make your "single-die no orthstirr" attacks go brrr. Think about what it's going to look like for the guy who has to defend against 30 or so of those.

We probably still use Hone for the extra die and damage...but at 1 Orthstirr a pop that's still eminently affordable. 30 of those at 2d6+4 for 4 damage a piece will utterly wreck almost anyone unless they have a trick to end the round before they all happen or both good armor and a lot of dice invested in defense.
 
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We probably still use Hone for the extra die and damage...but at 1 Orthstirr a pop that's still eminently affordable. 30 of those at 2d6+4 for 4 damage a piece will utterly wreck almost anyone unless they have a trick to end the round before they all happen or both good armor and a lot of dice invested in defense.
Having a free or incredibly cheap perfect defense might also do the trick... and by the time we get there, that'll be a real possibility for our peer opponents. Sidestep only costs 1 at mastery. Still, it's a brutal attack pattern with relatively few valid responses.
 
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Having a free or incredibly cheap perfect defense might also do the trick... and by the time we get there, that'll be a real possibility for our peer opponents. Sidestep only costs 1 at mastery.

Sidestep also loses them the initiative so we just get to attack again without them ever getting a chance. Given our new Rune on our main weapon, it's probably even worse than that and we might get to attack them twice in the time it takes to Sidestep once.

But cheap or free perfects without that down side are definitely another way to survive, yeah. Of course, once we know about those, we can probably work around them. By the time we have that we also almost certainly have free 3d6+3 Firebomb Strikes, and while those do less damage (unless we've eaten a berry), they're pretty terrifying and counter a lot of perfects by virtue of being AoE.

We'd honestly probably alternate between the two the first round (after which we'd go with whichever caused them more trouble), which would be real ugly for the people we fight given we get two attacks to their one, so even their ability to defend against one of the two isn't getting them ahead.
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Hmmm. Looking that over, maybe we should replace a couple of actions in this turn with Firebomb Strikes (since we're using a berry anyway)...they'd have better dice and cost less for the same damage...I'm gonna leave the high die 'smack them out of the air' stuff as Power Chops in case they do have some fire resistance (which seems plausible given they were sent for us, and is why I'm not replacing all the Power Chops), but I'll replace the 1d attacks. That ought to be a good balance and the die difference matters more there...

Looking back on the plan, it maybe should've involved some Firebomb Strikes from the beginning, but I'm still not used to them only being 2 Orthstirr and the berry wasn't in the first version (and without the berry the Honed Power Chops + Lightning do more damage).
 
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Hmmm. Looking that over, maybe we should replace a couple of actions in this turn with Firebomb Strikes (since we're using a berry anyway)...they'd have better dice and cost less for the same damage...I'm gonna leave the high die 'smack them out of the air' stuff as Power Chops in case they do have some fire resistance (which seems plausible given they were sent for us, and is why I'm not replacing all the Power Chops), but I'll replace the 1d attacks. That ought to be a good balance and the die difference matters more there...
There's also the possibility that these guys are resistant to fire Hugareida.

The enemy doesn't play fair after all.
 
There's also the possibility that these guys are resistant to fire Hugareida.

The enemy doesn't play fair after all.

Yep. That's why the four big attacks are all still not using Fire stuff. I think it's worth the gamble on the smaller ones, though, given it's better dice, more Orthstirr efficient, and does the same damage with fewer defenses applying and maybe even hitting multiple targets.

Actually, hmmm... @Imperial Fister can we do a conditional die assignment in a plan like this, like, make those last 6 attacks Honed Power Chops if they seem resistant to the Kindle Spinner and Firebomb Strikes otherwise? I'll switch to that if we can.

Logically, it seems like we could, but logistically it might wind up making combat plans unwieldy and overly fiddly.
 
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