@Imperial Fister

I was going through the character sheet and rules and I have a minor character sheet comment and some combat related rules questions:

On the character sheet: I think our max combat dice pool is significantly lower than it should be. It should be 22d6 not counting equipment (21 Orthstirr to max), I think (5 from Hamr + 4 from Chop +4 from Defend +3 from Dodge +2 from Pierce +2 from Bash +2 from Glima).

For the questions:

1. Can we spend more than one Orthstirr per action on Hone, and if so what's the cap? Like, can we spend 4 orthstirr for +4 dice on a single attack?
2. So, tricks let us spend multiple dice on a single action, thus getting multi-die actions without necessarily using Hone. What's the cap on that? Like, can we spend 5 dice on every Power Chop we make if we so desire?
3. When using a Hugareida trick, that takes an appropriate action (ie: spending an attack die on attack trick, or whatever) but adds dice based on Hugareida level, is that right? Plus whatever other dice we invest since it's a Trick?
4. Contested Movement and Hefty-Halter-Chop-Trick seem very similar in terms of use case...what's the actual mechanical difference there? They do somewhat different stuff thematically, but with identical costs and similar use cases I'm curious about the specific rules differences.
5. Relatedly, can we in fact use Contested Movement with our atgeir? I presume we can use Halting Vortex with it since we specifically asked for something we could use with our new weapon, but confirmation would be nice there, too.
6. This is only tangentially related to combat, but is armor automatically assumed repaired between turns like shields and more generally how does armor repair work? I presume an Armorcraft roll to repair it within a specific turn, but that's just an assumption and I'm curious about the details.
 
On the character sheet: I think our max combat dice pool is significantly lower than it should be. It should be 22d6 not counting equipment (21 Orthstirr to max), I think (5 from Hamr + 4 from Chop +4 from Defend +3 from Dodge +2 from Pierce +2 from Bash +2 from Glima).
Ope, you're right. I knew there was something I forgot to update. Thanks!
1. Can we spend more than one Orthstirr per action on Hone, and if so what's the cap? Like, can we spend 4 orthstirr for +4 dice on a single attack?
You can, but it only works by wrap-around. If you dedicate 20 dice to various things, you're gonna need to put 40 orthstirr into Hone in order to get 2 extra dice on each action.
2. So, tricks let us spend multiple dice on a single action, thus getting multi-die actions without necessarily using Hone. What's the cap on that? Like, can we spend 5 dice on every Power Chop we make if we so desire?
Correct, though you can't dedicate multiple dice to a single basic action like attacking or defending or intercepting, each of those would just result in an extra attack/defensive measure/intercepting action. Think of your combat pool as how much 'effort' Halla has to use. She can put more 'effort' into any given thing, but that reduces what else she can do.
3. When using a Hugareida trick, that takes an appropriate action (ie: spending an attack die on attack trick, or whatever) but adds dice based on Hugareida level, is that right? Plus whatever other dice we invest since it's a Trick?
Tentative yes, but can you reword this?
4. Contested Movement and Hefty-Halter-Chop-Trick seem very similar in terms of use case...what's the actual mechanical difference there? They do somewhat different stuff thematically, but with identical costs and similar use cases I'm curious about the specific rules differences.
HHC attacks the enemy's weapon. CM attacks the enemy. A successful HHC either stops, disarms, or breaks the weapon. A successful CM interrupts the enemy, deals basic damage, and also gives you a follow-up opportunity. HHC requires a weapon in hand, CM doesn't.

They both have their uses.

You are going to encounter reskins of different moves over the course of this quest, as, thanks to non-standardization, things have different names depending on where you are and who you speak to.
5. Relatedly, can we in fact use Contested Movement with our atgeir? I presume we can use Halting Vortex with it since we specifically asked for something we could use with our new weapon, but confirmation would be nice there, too.
CM doesn't need a free hand. It's basically a general triggering of the benign field that constantly surrounds Halla.
6. This is only tangentially related to combat, but is armor automatically assumed repaired between turns like shields and more generally how does armor repair work? I presume an Armorcraft roll to repair it within a specific turn, but that's just an assumption and I'm curious about the details.
Armorcraft rank dictates how much HP is repaired by each turn. You can dedicate a personal action to repair to roll for it with each success equaling a repaired HP.
 
Ope, you're right. I knew there was something I forgot to update. Thanks!

No worries, happy to be of assistance.

You can, but it only works by wrap-around. If you dedicate 20 dice to various things, you're gonna need to put 40 orthstirr into Hone in order to get 2 extra dice on each action.

Ah! Okay, that makes a lot of sense and probably won't be happening any time soon, but good to know.

Correct, though you can't dedicate multiple dice to a single basic action like attacking or defending or intercepting, each of those would just result in an extra attack/defensive measure/intercepting action. Think of your combat pool as how much 'effort' Halla has to use. She can put more 'effort' into any given thing, but that reduces what else she can do.

Check. That makes sense.

Tentative yes, but can you reword this?

Sure. I think Hugareida tricks work like other tricks, but add the Hugareida dice as well (well, die at level 1). So if we used a hugareida defense with 2 dice from our pool and added Hone as well, it would have a total of 4 dice (2 Pool + 1 Hone +1 Hugareida). Is that correct?

If that isn't correct, then I'm confused about what the different dice for different levels of Hugareida actually mean.

HHC attacks the enemy's weapon. CM attacks the enemy. A successful HHC either stops, disarms, or breaks the weapon. A successful CM interrupts the enemy, deals basic damage, and also gives you a follow-up opportunity. HHC requires a weapon in hand, CM doesn't.

They both have their uses.

Ah! That is indeed a large and important difference that I was not clear on. Great information to have.

You are going to encounter reskins of different moves over the course of this quest, as, thanks to non-standardization, things have different names depending on where you are and who you speak to.

Yeah, I'm honestly not even trying to figure out other people's tricks as of yet, just our own. I would expect us to be able to spot full-on reskins as we get better, but it hasn't happened yet, so we should be fine.

CM doesn't need a free hand. It's basically a general triggering of the benign field that constantly surrounds Halla.

Wonderful. That makes perfect sense.

Armorcraft rank dictates how much HP is repaired by each turn. You can dedicate a personal action to repair to roll for it with each success equaling a repaired HP.

Sweet. That definitely works.
 
You are going to encounter reskins of different moves over the course of this quest, as, thanks to non-standardization, things have different names depending on where you are and who you speak to.
This, this offends me greatly.
We gotta become Great Teacher Halla in our old days!

On another note though....
Can we make good luck/protective talismans or something similar without knowing magical runes?
 
It is indeed correct
Can we make good luck/protective talismans or something similar without knowing magical runes?
If the spoken word has very literal power, then the written word will have even more.

In short, yes.

Technically, there's no such thing as magic runes because runes are an alphabet, not symbols or pictographs. By writing runes down at all, you're telling the world that such a thing is true.

This is going to be one of the hurdles to get around/over when trying to codify Norse cultivation. How do you write stuff down when every time you do it blows up?
 
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It is indeed correct

If the spoken word has very literal power, then the written word will have even more.

In short, yes.

Technically, there's no such thing as magic runes because runes are an alphabet, not symbols or pictographs. By writing runes down at all, you're telling the world that such a thing is true.

This is going to be one of the hurdles to get around/over when trying to codify Norse cultivation. How do you write stuff down when every time you do it blows up?
Do all written languages have the same issue?

This feels like something we should poke Jerasmus about at some point.
 
In short, yes.

Technically, there's no such thing as magic runes because runes are an alphabet, not symbols or pictographs. By writing runes down at all, you're telling the world that such a thing is true.

This is going to be one of the hurdles to get around/over when trying to codify Norse cultivation. How do you write stuff down when every time you do it blows up?
Gods, no wonder Halla knowing runes was so surprising to Steinar then.

...oh no, I can't stop imaging the possibilities.
 
I'm not sure I understand the rune issue. Is the problem that when you write out even a single letter, it explodes as something syntactically incoherent? Or is the problem just with writing down cultivation steps? If runes exist, it must be possible to do something with them... 🤔
 
I'd like to reiterate that skipping making money this turn is a deeply bad idea and potentially very risky. We can visit with Drifa, Asva, or both next turn or the turn after rather than this turn and it costs us nothing (and, indeed, I intend to put precisely that in whatever plan I do next turn), while the opportunity costs of not crafting to get the money together for good armor are potentially quite large.

Any plan that neglects our pressing need to get money together in order to purchase good armor is a bad plan and I urge people to reconsider. It's probably only one action needed, but it needs to be this turn if we want to actually get our shopping trip in this summer...which we really do in case we have another Visit we need to do this winter.
 
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I'm not sure I understand the rune issue. Is the problem that when you write out even a single letter, it explodes as something syntactically incoherent? Or is the problem just with writing down cultivation steps? If runes exist, it must be possible to do something with them... 🤔
It's probably that there isn't a system.
Write the word fire and there will be fire. Write down shatter and whatever it is written shatters, or a part of it will, if it's too large.
There is no difference between words written to preserve knowledge or thought and so called words of power.
Perhaps another language would get around that, making the runes into a language of power.
 
I think our owl just become more.... Us, somehow.
Perhaps sharper talons or razor feathers?
As for turning into a furry.... Fusion dance is a good idea, yeah. Perhaps we will be like an angel?
Gotta show it to both Jeraamus and Gabriel if it's angel like lol.

Or out owl just become bigger or something....
Perhaps that small venomous boss is an advanced fyjgla of someone?
 
Possible, though I think that more falls under high Hamr and shapeshifting? My personal bet would be more in terms of personality stuff, but I could be wrong.
In Norse myth, one of the means of shapeshifting was to put on a fursuit. :D This fursuit is also called a Hamr. (Or ham, hamn, hams, hame, depending on dialect and grammar.) In the Thrym Song, AKA Thor's Wedding Trip, it's mentioned that Freya has a spare bird-hamr (fursuit? feathersuit?) that she can lend to Loki when he's looking for Thor's hammer.

Weirdly, English Wikipedia insists on using Þrymskviða for the Thrym Song. Compare German Thrymskvida, Norwegian Trymskvadet, Swedish Trymskvädet. Literal language import in the title that most people won't be able to write, but then the same article's body dumbs down the bird-hamr to "feather cloak". Grumble. Feels like those should be the other way around, simplify the title for English orthography and put the technical notes in the article body.
 
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In Norse myth, one of the means of shapeshifting was to put on a fursuit. :D This fursuit is also called a Hamr. (Or ham, hamn, hams, hame, depending on dialect and grammar.) In the Thrym Song, AKA Thor's Wedding Trip, it's mentioned that Freya has a spare bird-hamr (fursuit? feathersuit?) that she can lend to Loki when he's looking for Thor's hammer.

Weirdly, English Wikipedia insists on using Þrymskviða for the Thrym Song. Compare German Thrymskvida, Norwegian Trymskvadet, Swedish Trymskvädet. Literal language import in the title that most people won't be able to write, but then the same article's body dumbs down the bird-hamr to "feather cloak". Grumble. Feels like those should be the other way around, simplify the title for English orthography and put the technical notes in the article body.

Indeed! I was actually aware of basically all of that except the terminology (which is interesting new information, I'm learning a lot of weird Old Norse terminology in this Quest). In mechanical terms we've also been explicitly told that shapeshifting is an option from Hamr 7+, which inclines me to suspect we don't get the same effect from Fylgja, but rather something else.

So shapeshifting is very possible, but likely a ways off for Halla. I wouldn't be surprised if Abjorn pulls it off significantly sooner, though.
 
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