That hasn't been mentioned in a while. Its favored and only the 2nd dot, so Baughn said it should only take like half-an-hour to train. And honestly we need all those quick slot for all the Archery Charms we need to grab to make this work.
Shards of a Broken Sun [Deprecated; see link in final post for remake]
- Thread starter Baughn
- Start date
- Crossover Sci-Fi
ω₁
The Long Count
There Is No Wind (Archery 4) extends the Solar's attack range to her maximum visibility range. (It costs 5m per shot, though.) Accuracy Without Distance (Archery 5) makes it a perfect attack, guaranteed to hit anything within range; I think that's what you were thinking of.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure we can actually see far enough, or with sufficient detail, to hit the angels from where we are without Keen Sight Technique (Awareness 3); fortunately Ran already gives us a +1 Awareness bonus, but that's still another charm we'd have to buy.
I don't think we can act as an anti-army archer without purchasing five charms: an Archery Excellency, There Is No Wind, Trance of Unhesitating Speed (prereq for AST), Arrow Storm Technique (shoot a lot of targets at once), and Keen Sight Technique.
And would you look at that, we have six quick learning slots.
Can't believe we have to use one on an Awareness dot though, ugh.
ω₁
The Long Count
Yeah, I... am not convinced that I'm up for spending all our quick-learn slots on this plan. Not at the expense of not getting HAM+LSC.And would you look at that, we have six quick learning slots.
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
Yeah, I'd rather burn the quick learning on stuff to help us survive Hell Week, then spend XP to buy charms that aren't important to immediate survival once it's over and we can actually use things like HAM/TWTM.
But we don't necessarily need archery to get through hell week in the first place. Assuming it's still on that is, Merek just up and left after all. I'm pretty sure that's not part of Hell week, when the Sepentrion engages the Angels and then leaves.
Frankly does Hell week even still make sense at this point, isn't the one responsible kicked from his throne right now? Kagutsuchi is running the main show now, no?
Aside of that, if we only try playing the most safe ever, we won't get to the better outcomes. We had to gamble a bit previously as well. Should we really be sacrificing our growth potential for so long, for something we might not even need to win?
Sure we'd lose more people and hero units assuming it's hell week after all. But we'd be gaining in alternate units instead. And there Amu is a much more capable general then Hotsuin, it's likely losses would be far more limited anyway. Especially if we analyze the Harmonizer as soon as possible.
We can train the archery thing afterwards if need be. Humanity in the short term should have enough weapons and things stored away to hold the line reasonably well still.
---
Still, that's my take on things.
Besides, if we go all in on Archery, can we still do anything for places like Korea? They should have lots of Hero units there as well. Keeping the place alive longer, as well as organized, would be another way to blunt future attacks.
We have a lot of resources lying around, if we can but organize and utilize them. These would long term probably get us much more then immediate combat ability as well.
Frankly does Hell week even still make sense at this point, isn't the one responsible kicked from his throne right now? Kagutsuchi is running the main show now, no?
Aside of that, if we only try playing the most safe ever, we won't get to the better outcomes. We had to gamble a bit previously as well. Should we really be sacrificing our growth potential for so long, for something we might not even need to win?
Sure we'd lose more people and hero units assuming it's hell week after all. But we'd be gaining in alternate units instead. And there Amu is a much more capable general then Hotsuin, it's likely losses would be far more limited anyway. Especially if we analyze the Harmonizer as soon as possible.
We can train the archery thing afterwards if need be. Humanity in the short term should have enough weapons and things stored away to hold the line reasonably well still.
---
Still, that's my take on things.
Besides, if we go all in on Archery, can we still do anything for places like Korea? They should have lots of Hero units there as well. Keeping the place alive longer, as well as organized, would be another way to blunt future attacks.
We have a lot of resources lying around, if we can but organize and utilize them. These would long term probably get us much more then immediate combat ability as well.
ω₁
The Long Count
Okay, on rereading I think we can probably dump AST, and therefore ToUS, and might not have much use for a sniper build at all. I've been operating under the mistaken assumption that we have to worry about many more angels than we actually have to; between nukes and the Septentriones' assistance (seriously, what's up with that?), I suspect JPs should be able to mop up the rest with only a bit of Exalted leadership and occult know-how. At most, we would need to shoot down one or two stragglers, and I suspect we can get away without that.
The Septentriones themselves, of course, are another matter.
The Septentriones themselves, of course, are another matter.
Do we roll Wits or Intelligence with War?
And it sounds like we have a fairly solid training regime lined up. Get the last dot in Lore on our way back while Ran's getting her 2nd dot in Archery and starts on the third. We can probably quick learn the Awareness dot and Charm on the way back. Get Amu's 2nd dot in Archery, fuse with Ran and quick learn the Archery Charms.
After that we can check up on the situation, by this point someone probably knows about the Harmonizer and should have brought it to Fumi/Miki's attention. We have no idea how long this is going to take though, so...
Anyway if shit's going down we can start to bombard whatever's doing it if not we can take the time to wrap up the War dots we need to be that much more frighteningly effective when we start going Dawn/God-General all over our forces. Either way we should grab the Archery Charms because we either have shit going down or we can act as O-tillery for our forces at the drop of a hat if they need it.
We could switch out Amu's 2nd dot of Archery to get a fourth dot of War, but frankly I think we need the skill in Archery to make sure we come close to hitting them at least.
As for moving resources around, we have no dots in Bureaucracy, so the only thing we'll be moving is Military units and those are included in the current plan.
And I'm getting a little frustrated because I know I've said this before, but I'll put it a different way: There is no Long-Term. And we can't afford to assume there will be a long-term without our intervention because we still have shit coming at our faces at mach 5, even if the surprise of us being here and keeping so much of the world intact is causing changes and making them hesitate some, we just can't afford to assume we'll have time.
And it sounds like we have a fairly solid training regime lined up. Get the last dot in Lore on our way back while Ran's getting her 2nd dot in Archery and starts on the third. We can probably quick learn the Awareness dot and Charm on the way back. Get Amu's 2nd dot in Archery, fuse with Ran and quick learn the Archery Charms.
After that we can check up on the situation, by this point someone probably knows about the Harmonizer and should have brought it to Fumi/Miki's attention. We have no idea how long this is going to take though, so...
Anyway if shit's going down we can start to bombard whatever's doing it if not we can take the time to wrap up the War dots we need to be that much more frighteningly effective when we start going Dawn/God-General all over our forces. Either way we should grab the Archery Charms because we either have shit going down or we can act as O-tillery for our forces at the drop of a hat if they need it.
We could switch out Amu's 2nd dot of Archery to get a fourth dot of War, but frankly I think we need the skill in Archery to make sure we come close to hitting them at least.
I'm going to say it, yet again, we have Miki, Fumi, and Su/Utau already working on the Dragon Seal issue. And we're going to grab a Lore dot on the way back likely, there's nothing else we can do.
As for moving resources around, we have no dots in Bureaucracy, so the only thing we'll be moving is Military units and those are included in the current plan.
And I'm getting a little frustrated because I know I've said this before, but I'll put it a different way: There is no Long-Term. And we can't afford to assume there will be a long-term without our intervention because we still have shit coming at our faces at mach 5, even if the surprise of us being here and keeping so much of the world intact is causing changes and making them hesitate some, we just can't afford to assume we'll have time.
If we can get the Harmonizer out we probably could, I assume by the time we have the training finished we could drop by to ask how long they think it might take to actually finish and distribute it, so we'll have to see then I think.
Last edited:
So, just to be clear, the current plan is: have Amu buy one dot each of archery and lore on the way back, while Ran buys two dots of archery, bringing her Dex+Archery dice pool and Miki's Int+Lore dice pool to 10. When we get back, we have Amu and Ran learn 5-6 archery charms and possibly train Keen Sight Technique with Su if needed.
Can we merge with multiple Chara properly? Does this let us learn the charms to make our shots high damage enough to harm anything important?
After this, when the opportunity presents itself, we get the last two dots of war, which brings our Int+War pool to 9, or 10 when merged with Dia or Miki. This also let's us get up to 5 auto-successes from the second war excellency (this rounds up right?).
Sometime after hell week is over, we buy the various training charms, based on whatever seems most important at the time.
How much XP is all this going to take?
Can we merge with multiple Chara properly? Does this let us learn the charms to make our shots high damage enough to harm anything important?
After this, when the opportunity presents itself, we get the last two dots of war, which brings our Int+War pool to 9, or 10 when merged with Dia or Miki. This also let's us get up to 5 auto-successes from the second war excellency (this rounds up right?).
Sometime after hell week is over, we buy the various training charms, based on whatever seems most important at the time.
How much XP is all this going to take?
A lot, but we're only 24 hours into Hell Week, we'll have a lot of XP by the time we're done I wager.
And no, we won't being using Su likely unless we can somehow use her to cut down on the training time of Awareness in order to treat it like a Favored ability for Amu.
We had... issues when we tried merging with both Ran and Miki when the world was collapsing, so... no probably not.
We'll probably need to spend a quick slot on the awareness dot. And we apparently need only 3 or 4 Archery Charms ideally... yeah I know, don't laugh.
ω₁
The Long Count
That's a total waste of a quick-learn dot; once we fuse with Ran we would have access to enough Awareness to pick up the Charm.
Okay, one or both of us has missed something. If we were to get those Archery Charms, what would you expect us to do with them? The angel army isn't a pressing problem anymore. They're basically gone. It cost a lot, thanks to our absence—the Dragon Seal is badly damaged, and there's nuclear fallout to deal with—but unless there's another army of roughly the same size out there, my understanding is that they're no longer a significant threat.
I disagree with your threat assessment. I don't think you need Amu to handle the combat herself in this case. There's enough time to better employ already existing combat units and perhaps start training some up more quickly.
And that's assuming hell week is still a thing, which I've questioned several times now. Merek just up and left after all, this is not some trivial detail, the second test just 'left'.
I'm not entirely sure what to make of that, but I'm thinking plans have changed. And destroying the seal doesn't seem to be Polaris first priority any more.
Between these two it actually rather seems to me like we have a little time. And thus I'd rather use quick learn to get things that will get us more long term. We could learn archery right after getting accelerated learning if need be for instance. Assuming we really need that, and couldn't instead just get more, more powerful heroes running around instead.
Buying both training charms would take 8 days without quick learning, and the upgrades another 10. That is hardly crippling our long term growth, especially since hell week is definitely still on. Merak attacked the angel army because Polaris and Law have very different ideas about what the new world should look like, but he's still going to send the rest of the Serpentions after us.
I'm more worried about having enough XP to afford 6 charms, which is 56-58 points depending on if we buy KST and the skill dots right now, since we're not using flat pricing.
Which archery charms are you thinking of exactly?
See above. We still have the rest of the Serpeniones to deal with and anyone else who attacks for the same reason we had a demon army show up from Law.
I missed that Ran had an Awareness dot, my bad.
There's probably going to be another army coming. And I don't mind dropping squad-killer for just sniping, but we really need something.
And what is left, our army is going to have issues denting until they get Harmonizers, which again we have no idea how long that's going to take. Its just easier to get ready to take care of ourselves in case it really is needed.
Charms take days to learn, and near a week for unfavored Charms. I doubt we'll have that much time. We're in SMT, where the best ending in the games involved keeping the status quo because everything else was worse, I can't afford to assume we'll have that time.
As it is, we might be able to squeeze in a training charm if I have the number of Archery Charms we would need to grab right. And that's kind of iffy at the moment as well.
And I'm not saying Amu always needs to handle the combat personally, but we really need the Harmonizer for our forces to get anywhere against what enemies we do have. Without that Amu is the only one who can effectively fight these things, especially without damaging the Seal.
Most of the Charms would be favored because we're a Dawn, so closer to fifty than sixty. Other than that the Awareness Charm Keen Eyes, the only non-favored we'd be grabbing with Ran giving us effectively 3 dots so we don't have to buy that at least, and the Archery Charm that lets us shoot whatever/wherever we can see are definite. The one that makes our arrows hit like an RPG is also likely, other than that though its a bit up in the air as to what we'll need/want since we might not actually need the "one arrow strikes multiple targets" one, but there are also other useful ones we might need/want. Or maybe even something else altogether.
Last edited:
Improving our skills toward seal improvement would allow one to use much heavier weaponry with out damaging it though. And we could probably similarly accelerate a harmonizer roll out, possibly tuned to work best with the seal at that.
And even with out a Harmonizer there are some humans who already are capable of hurting angels and demons as well. Amu is far from unique in this. Collecting them would allow one to get a more substantial combat unit as well.
As such I don't think Amu is the only possible answer to this, she's simply 'a' answer. The conservative answer. The answer with the least risk, but also less reward.
So in the end I guess it's perhaps a disagreement over the correct level of risk to try for. Balancing possible extra losses earlier out for possible gains later on.
---
To me it just feels better to increase humanities combat potential I suppose, rather then putting everything on a single vulnerable person. Who for all we know might not be present again at a critical moment, and then what?
And when we get down to it, humanity wasn't doing 'that' badly against the first army at that. Lets not sell everyone else's abilities to short. Just boosting them up a bit would already make a major difference, or using the seal to debuff an enemy army instead could similarly do it.
Still as I said before, I guess we look at the factors differently, I can't claim I'm sure my idea is better, it's just my best guess at the matter. Am I really over selling everyone else's abilities? Is our meta knowledge on the harmonizer that unreliable?
ω₁
The Long Count
Then our first priority, exceeding all others, should be to get our hands on a copy of the Harmonizer (or some other method for making our existing forces effective), and get it distributed as widely as possible. Spending irreplaceable resources on suddenly becoming the second coming of Simo Häyhä isn't going to help nearly as much as just doing that; and until we do that, our existing War dots are very nearly useless.
Amu cannot handle everything that needs to be done on her own, not even with four Charas. We need to power up everyone, not just her.
If we meet those other people, I will be one of the first to shove as much as I think is safe at them. The problem is how would we even find them currently.
And you're right, I am taking the safe option. Because if we fail that gamble, everyone pays. Probably very close to literally everyone at that.
... Read below.
Its called delegating. And sorry if I''m rude but I am sick of people skipping stuff when we're having an important discussion and I am getting very tired. Both of it happening and just in general, its late where I am.
Last edited:
ω₁
The Long Count
As a specific rebuttal to this: anyone else who wants to invade is probably going to have seen how the angels just got shot in the face. Unless they have very good intelligence, it probably looked to anyone watching as though we (or Kagutsuchi?) and the Septentriones called a truce to take the angels out.
Nobody else is going to attack until we and the Septentriones finish duking it out, because that way they only have to deal with the winner, instead of a team-up of some stupidly powerful demons and a disturbing fraction of the full force of Kagutsuchi dumped into a Megidolaon attack.
EDIT: There are other interpretations, but I think they still all involve anyone else invading taking a look at the situation and thinking "Okay, we were not expecting this."
Last edited:
Eh, it's late and I'm not going to be able to put together any kind of coherent arguments, but I'm going to have to go with those saying that dumping most of the quick slots into Archery charms isn't the right move here.
Might help if other suggestions on how to blow the slots beyond picking up the training techniques were made, though I can't personally come up with anything specific due to lack of familiarity with the material.
If you want to do the General thing, maybe grab something to boost persuasiveness? Having a way to reduce friction against less orthodox strategies might come in handy. That Integrity charm someone mentioned a ways back that dramatically reduces the cost to no-sell a social attack might come in handy as well.
As for Thrown... actually I can't really make any comments here because I don't know what it's charm list looks like. I will say to not look down on strong single target damage; after all, that's what Jungo does, and he Jungos things. I'm not saying Amu's going to be able to Jungo things herself, as she's not Jungo, but it's not a bad goal to shoot for, no matter how impossible it may be.
Might help if other suggestions on how to blow the slots beyond picking up the training techniques were made, though I can't personally come up with anything specific due to lack of familiarity with the material.
If you want to do the General thing, maybe grab something to boost persuasiveness? Having a way to reduce friction against less orthodox strategies might come in handy. That Integrity charm someone mentioned a ways back that dramatically reduces the cost to no-sell a social attack might come in handy as well.
As for Thrown... actually I can't really make any comments here because I don't know what it's charm list looks like. I will say to not look down on strong single target damage; after all, that's what Jungo does, and he Jungos things. I'm not saying Amu's going to be able to Jungo things herself, as she's not Jungo, but it's not a bad goal to shoot for, no matter how impossible it may be.
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
My favorite thing about Thrown is probably Joint-Wounding Attack, because you can use it with all the combat abilities and it's an awesome charm - and it's Thrown 1. Scene-long penalties for 2m/shot? That you can escalate with a better hit? Hell yeah.
I think aiming for the Harmonizers to improve the forces we're working with, rather than trying to shoulder everything, is probably a better use of our charms. Admittedly, this is going by the analysis of others who actually know the setting we're in, because I have no idea what any of these things are beyond what's been mentioned in this thread since I started reading this quest.
I think aiming for the Harmonizers to improve the forces we're working with, rather than trying to shoulder everything, is probably a better use of our charms. Admittedly, this is going by the analysis of others who actually know the setting we're in, because I have no idea what any of these things are beyond what's been mentioned in this thread since I started reading this quest.
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
Sounds like Lore+Occult work to figure out how they work and how to replicate them. Maybe a little Craft?
(What even is a Harmonizer, I'm so confused. Google-fu, don't fail me now!)
EDIT: After thorough and in-depth research, which was definitely not less than 5 minutes of Google and SMT-wiki reading*, I have concluded that Lore+Occult with a possible dash of Craft is, indeed, what we need for Harmonizers.
* This parenthetical contains 100% truthiness.
Last edited:
Charms, not abilities, since some people are suggesting we spread Harmonizers instead of getting archery charms.
Everyone is already listening to us, it isn't urgent enough to need a quick learn point.
Amu probably can match Jungo, whoever that is, if she put enough investment into it. Solars are about being the best at whatever they focused on.
More generally, quick learn points should only be used for things that would be needed right now, if they are actually needed. I see a lot of people suggesting things that are mostly useful after the end of this week, like training charms, and trying to argue that archery probably won't be needed, but that leaves us with a huge problem if they're wrong, where as if we get archery then we're covered if we need it and can spend the time to get the other charms normally without loosing much. Remember that we got these points to give us a chance to survive the week, we should use them to garuntee that.
Last edited: