Pretender (Worm/Dominions 4)
- Thread starter TotalAbsolutism
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TotalAbsolutism
That One Guy
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- New Zealand
Now that I'm awake!
In theory (your mileage may vary) everything in Worm is meant to be operating via real physics, just with high-level understanding and manipulation. Magic doesn't care. This causes some interesting interactions.
Dinah's predictions will basically reflect the world as it would be if Taylor only had the basic Brute-ishness she's picked up from her transformations. Yes, this does mean that Pretender more or less breaks Thinkers on a long-scale just by existing. Short-scale almost all of them will still work fine; but as soon as their prediction comes into contact with her or someone she's interacted with it'll deviate from reality.
Poor Coil.
... it is, however, a lot more of a 'revenge' tactic.
Kurgi, incidentally, is probably the most impressive due to their ability to cast Master Enslave when they show up and just mindfuck everyone fighting them into submission.
Fun fact; Ethereal units have no inherent bonus to attack other ethereal units. Most creatures that are innately ethereal also have magic weapons. Scion's golden light attack is called 'stilling'; it basically negates wavelengths along its path. This can do a lot of bullshit. Magic, however, is even more bullshit because it flat out does not operate on the normal rules of physics.
In theory (your mileage may vary) everything in Worm is meant to be operating via real physics, just with high-level understanding and manipulation. Magic doesn't care. This causes some interesting interactions.
In theory, yes. In practice, pretty slow.
Those spells will never find anything, ever.
Yes and no. Thinker powers and Taylor have an interesting interaction based on the simple fact that their powers cannot parse her powers. Someone like Contessa can work around it by creating a model of what she understands to check herself against. Other people will have more trouble.
Dinah's predictions will basically reflect the world as it would be if Taylor only had the basic Brute-ishness she's picked up from her transformations. Yes, this does mean that Pretender more or less breaks Thinkers on a long-scale just by existing. Short-scale almost all of them will still work fine; but as soon as their prediction comes into contact with her or someone she's interacted with it'll deviate from reality.
Poor Coil.
I'd choose to say that the Doom Horrors are more powerful than they seem but limited by needing to shove themselves into our reality. The main benefit is this; Horror Marks light up your soul, and draw Horrors right to you. There's a non-zero chance that they may migrate directly to his main body. If that's the case than hilarity may ensue. In addition, if he was Horror Marked enough there'd be a constant stream of them coming after him forever.
... it is, however, a lot more of a 'revenge' tactic.
Kurgi, incidentally, is probably the most impressive due to their ability to cast Master Enslave when they show up and just mindfuck everyone fighting them into submission.
Coil has no Dominion. Only Pretender Gods have Dominion.
TotalAbsolutism
That One Guy
- Location
- New Zealand
Do you mean that they would not be limited by needing to shove themselves into the local reality if attacking Scion's main body? Does that mean that horrors will also be far more powerful if attracted to the world where this story takes place?
Well, while you eventually get a constant stream of horrors, the rate is rather slow even for severe horror marks. Unless it is a very high level mark you are less likely than not to attract an attack in any single month.
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TotalAbsolutism
That One Guy
- Location
- New Zealand
They still would be, I suspect, but you could argue that without magic around to resist them they'd have more luck warping the local laws of reality to match their own.
They do have the magic power trait though (which makes them more powerful when the magic scale is high and less powerful when you have a drain scale) and you did mention that this world has Drain 3.
TotalAbsolutism
That One Guy
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- New Zealand
True, true. I'd forgotten about that. Either way, their capabilities in lore don't quite match up to their abilities in reality.
Happerry
Bat out of Hell
- Location
- Kanto
Shouldn't it also see her items too? I mean, even if it can't parse triggerable magic effects, 'she has a flaming sword even if I can't figure out how the hell the sword works' seems totally take into accountable.
Someone has never seen a Horror Conga Line in action. Once you hit a certain point the attacks never ever stop, given that most Horrors can mark anything they attack so with each attack you end up getting more and more Marks stacked on the poor sucker. I mean, sure, an individual Horror or even an individual Doom Horror isn't going to do much to Scion, but they'll never ever stop coming...
TotalAbsolutism
That One Guy
- Location
- New Zealand
Well... yes and no. Once an item has been observed in affect then Thinkers can try and account for it. But before then their Shard will be attempting to derive its affect from what it is. This works for all other things, even Tinkertech, because they do understand the underlying principles.
Even someone like Tattletale would have that issue. See someone with an unactivated Fire Brand and her power would feed her, "It... is a sword." Once it would lit up she'd be suddenly be in, "Oh wow that thing shouldn't be doign that what the fuck."
So yeah. Once they see her do something and the effects of it then they can start to build a working model. Thinker Shards will adapt to her over time; if they couldn't do that then they'd be pretty well useless. But any time her solution relies on an unseen spell or item they'll be at a loss.
- Location
- Can't read map
Lore wise, with horrors coming from game Earthdawn and whole world being -3 drain on magic scales....
Horrors would be weak as there is no/low/barely any magical energy to sustain them at max level. Magic goes and falls from zero to its max, at near max level of magic field, horrors can freely and do massively invade into our world and mindrape everything. Even in dominions it is said in horror's description of them appearing in highly magical lands or if sent by evil mages. Found some old list of events... 2 magic and 1 chaos in province for chance of horror to appear? Reviving pretender from death for second time? Finding "proper" locations?
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edit: side note
Earthdawn is fantasy setting in ancient past
Shadowrun is same world (Earth), but modern age and cyberpunk, at year 2012 magic comes back. In several centuries horrors will invade
And there is new rpg Equinoq that is far future. Spaceships, horrors (licence problems, so renamed as demons), Earth shattered into pieces is asteroid beltit seems
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Not all foundable places are:
ancient temple, mage tower that provides recruits, alchemist guild, kelp fortress, etc, etc
There are also places like ancient forest, volcano, geyser, oais, big graveyard, kelp forest and so on (of course, first few locations are too far away from Taylor to be of use). Long term (months/years old?) standing portals into parallel Earths might crystallise astral pearls nearby?
But then this begs a question... how do those gems exist in first place then? Where they come from? Are there are no places where you can reasonably expect few gems at end of every month like special place at nearby river/sea and so on?
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Did you mean the lore in their descriptions or some other lore? They seem to at least match the lore in their descriptions fairly well. For example, The Eater of Gods can reliably defeat the vast majority of pretender gods and Kurgi would certainly be difficult to deal with for many kingdoms (damage reversal 7 and 404 hp alone can be very hard to deal with and then there is also astral 10 etc.).
I have certainly seen very high leveled horror marks, but the turns of Dominions are one month each, so you will still on average get quite a bit of time between each attack.
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TotalAbsolutism
That One Guy
- Location
- New Zealand
Oh, that's right. The reason the Doom Horrors would have a fighting chance is their damage reversal. MR check or the attacker takes all damage instead of the defender.
Given you can theoretically get multiple attacks stacking together into a single battle you could argue that a constant stream would better represent that. While writing this I have to do some things to step away from game mechanics because they're mechanics that exist simply because it's a game.
For various reasons, none of those would have any gems.
There are, but the spells searching for magic sites wouldn't locate them here.
@TotalAbsolutism
I am no expert on Dominions but from the comments of yourself and others the powerset is quite limited by Taylor's lack of followers and the world's lack of magic.
Most Worm fics cover the span a period of days/weeks to several months.
How is Taylor going to do just about anything in the time available with the circumstances you have laid out?
I mean, you are clearly focusing on the item crafting but have it crippled by a lack of resorces and build time.
There seems to be many potential optoptions but no time for them to be taken.
I am no expert on Dominions but from the comments of yourself and others the powerset is quite limited by Taylor's lack of followers and the world's lack of magic.
Most Worm fics cover the span a period of days/weeks to several months.
How is Taylor going to do just about anything in the time available with the circumstances you have laid out?
I mean, you are clearly focusing on the item crafting but have it crippled by a lack of resorces and build time.
There seems to be many potential optoptions but no time for them to be taken.
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TotalAbsolutism
That One Guy
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- New Zealand
She probably isn't going to do much in a few days/weeks. Even months, perhaps.
Much like my other work, Dwarf of Bronze, I'll be making liberal use of time skips between each 'plot arc'; although probably not ones as long as the one from canon Worm. Once things are established there's not much need for me to show every individual little bit of crafting and researching.
That's true, it could end very badly for him if Scion decides to immediately go for his more powerful attacks.
I don't think that is actually the case. While you can get multiple horrors attacking you at the same time, that appears to be one event rather than multiple stacking ones. Some kinds of horrors often attack in groups, but I have never seen different kinds of horrors attack together or multiple simultaneous attacks from the most powerful horrors.
Edit: I decided to test it by getting a commander in one of my games an extreme level of horror mark (among other things hundreds of Horror Mark spells) and the multiple attacker events even seems to have disappeared after the horror mark got serious enough, so perhaps those events were replaced by attacks of more powerful horrors.
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I hope this goes somewhere and doesn't die like so many non-SI fics.
With Taylor no longer being the queen administrator, can Scion still be defeated @TotalAbsolutism ?
With Taylor no longer being the queen administrator, can Scion still be defeated @TotalAbsolutism ?
TotalAbsolutism
That One Guy
- Location
- New Zealand
Yes. If nothing else, you can arrange for MAD with Horror Marks. There are other ways, though. Some she isn't willing to use but others may work just as well.
Thing is, based on how I'm running this, she can organise Capes just as well without taking direct control of them if they just accept her authority. So if nothing else she could manage the final fight safely from a distance... as long as people play along.
I see. A lot of Worm fiction immediately try to go with blatant Scion killers, which makes the fics pure wank since they tend to die before reaching the part with Scion. It's a tricky balance to have someone capable of killing Scion who also won't just wipe the floor with the entire global cape community.
TotalAbsolutism
That One Guy
- Location
- New Zealand
Most of her anti-Scion, or Endbringer, options are either uncertain to work or gated behind a lot of research. She has no intention to work towards some of the stuff likely to work on the former but not the latter because it's either horrible, way too lethal for her tastes, or both. Until she finds out Scion is a threat, which will be a long time off, she has no need for it.
Taylor's main goal at the moment is Brockton Bay. She wants to make it better. But she also has this nagging feeling that it's her duty to kind of fix... well, everything. So her intended scale will gradually increase.
TotalAbsolutism
That One Guy
- Location
- New Zealand
Gladly. First, there's this bit of info by @Gelly³ which is pretty accurate about the stuff she's done so far as well as how magic operates within the context of the crossover. Now for my explanation.
A Pretender God is what happens when the Pantokrator, Overgod of the unnamed world of Dominions 4, goes poof. All these would-be divinities he was suppressing come out of the woodwork, grab a nearby nation and get to fighting. This is generally really, really bad for the world. An entirely logical and consistent serious of events that I do not intend to explain any time soon has caused Taylor to effectively become one of these.
She can now percieve magic gems forming around her; basically the essence of reality crystalising into a form she can gather and use to infuse items with power or cast various magical rituals. In addition, her Shard has also been hijacked by the Nascent Divinity she now holds in order to process the vast amount of information it contains and is constantly feeding her in terms of reasonably detailed extrasensory information about her surroundings.
In theory, by vanquishing all other Pretender Gods vying for the world she ought to be able to spread the worship of her freely across the globe and thus ascend to ultimate godhood. However, in practice, when this happens in the game it's at the end of a large and bloody war. When the enemy gods, the only thing uniting their massive nations, disappear there's no resistance for your ever expanding armies of mortal warriors and mythical creatures as they march out and forcibly unite the world under you.
Taylor, you may have noticed, is lacking in a few things. A capital city, a fortress, an army of loyal followers, a priesthood, a variety of mages to recruit to her cause, a medieval society just waiting for a bit of order and discipline and more besides. So she's going to have to work her way up to the whole 'ruling the world' thing.
- Location
- Malaysia
These magic gems worry me as a story mechanic. I am unsure how you can balance their frequency and occurrence. Right now you have her as a single person going around a moderately sized city and gathering enough for say an item a month. Once she expands her movement and gathering options, delegation, etc I would expect that to multiply exponentially.
If you say the current crop is from long buildup but the generation rate is very low, this is already somewhat counteracted by her seeing one form in front of her, and there doesn't seem to be anything stopping her from taking road trips to other fresh locales to pick low hanging fruit. You'd have to limit the generation to some sort of proximity effect, and then the gems become a function of her divinity instead of a function of how the world works.
If you say the current crop is from long buildup but the generation rate is very low, this is already somewhat counteracted by her seeing one form in front of her, and there doesn't seem to be anything stopping her from taking road trips to other fresh locales to pick low hanging fruit. You'd have to limit the generation to some sort of proximity effect, and then the gems become a function of her divinity instead of a function of how the world works.
TotalAbsolutism
That One Guy
- Location
- New Zealand
In the end, I'm writing it as a story. When the story would be made more interesting by her having a surplus she'll have a surplus. Likewise, if lacking makes things more interesting to read then she'll be lacking. Perhaps if this was a Quest I'd be rolling dice for it all and have the players prioritise whether they wanted to gather or research or make items or what have you but, ultimately, any 'balance' will be entirely up to my whim. Anything else would just end up frustrating me.
The 'long buildup' isn't actually all that long, to be fair; given these gems literally didn't exist within the Wormverse over, oh, three to four months ago.
- Location
- the netherlands
Why does she not move to africa or something? Warlord turf.