Our half dot of Lore training should finish in a little while, no? I think it was only a week or two, right? I guess in theory that could open up a time slot to put Socialize in? And with Lore done, Amu would have a lot more time in class to Socialize with others there. And I believe we actually have an open standing vote to learn more about her classmates still. It just hasn't had time to activate much yet. So that is a potential synergy?
Shards of a Broken Sun [Megaten/Shugo Chara/Exalted]
- Thread starter Baughn
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Baughn
Healing-type writer
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- Dublin
It's something you can train while socializing with your classmates, yes, at least to a degree. And Midori is eager to help.
- Location
- Laniakea
The problem is this:
If we actually use Midori as a teacher, the rules mandate she supervises for 2 out of every 8 hours that Amu trains the skill.
In theory, Amu could spend the whole 6 hours at school casually Socializing just by ignoring the teacher and texting friends on her phone or passing notes or something. But to take advantage of Midori's teacher bonus, you would need to set aside 2 more hours outside of it to spend with Midori.
Obviously, we are not going to be able to train with Midori while at school. Even if we tried to text her, she'd probably be at work and promptly teach Amu that texting people in the middle of school or work is not good social etiquette.
That means we would have to sacrifice at least 2 hours of our after school time (or whatever proportion needed to match however long we spent training it separately from her in the day) which does cut into other stuff we train.
I see, so you're saying we can only gain 75% parallel training out of this rather then 100%. At least if we go for the Midori bonus.
I didn't actually say that, but frankly... yes. Lore is book smarts, which is incredibly useful, but Socialize is also extremely useful.
I mean, I don't know if Amu is gonna become a demon-summoner after the Conception hits, but if she does, I'm pretty sure we could use Socialize for negotiations. Just as one useful example.
Though frankly I still say getting the Medicine ability would be super useful... alas, there's a lot to train, and not a huge amount of time to do it. We'll have to choose carefully.
I did say "minimal impact" rather than "no impact". But Amu likes her mom. She would want to spend time with her mom anyway. Socialize tutoring isn't just spending time she wouldn't have spent with her mom otherwise; it's also paying more attention in the time she already spends with her mom, and adjusting the conversation topics a little.
I think that one ends up being more Presence, but good Socialize is unlikely to hurt.
One thing that's important to understand about the Storyteller system: Abilities are deliberately vague. Often a single action can be handled using different Abilities, and which one is used depends on how you fluff the action.
For example, using Socialize to negotiate with a demon would consist of trying to understand the demon and persuading it to follow you using that understanding, rather than using raw force of personality to persuade them as you would when using Presence.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
It's definitely spending extra time. But it's also the sort of thing that, years later, she'll be really happy she did—even w/o the training being useful.
- Location
- Laniakea
....Hey, I just had an idea.
If we do go down the route of taking up Midori's training offer, I wanna chuck Ami and Miki into the training program too.
Ami, because her interlude makes me suspect there is something rancid about the social dynamic going on in her classroom, which could get exposed during these training sessions when Ami is told what kind of behavior non-psychics expect and then slips up about what they usually do in class.
Miki, because she's got 3 dots in Integrity and can be used as an Integrity teacher for Ami and having her during the sessions allows those two to overlap Integrity training at the same time.... by getting Ami to learn how to block out mental effects such as Empathy and especially the kind of "mind writing" they usually use as telepathy, allowing her to more easily practice behaving as a non-psychic.
If we do go down the route of taking up Midori's training offer, I wanna chuck Ami and Miki into the training program too.
Ami, because her interlude makes me suspect there is something rancid about the social dynamic going on in her classroom, which could get exposed during these training sessions when Ami is told what kind of behavior non-psychics expect and then slips up about what they usually do in class.
Miki, because she's got 3 dots in Integrity and can be used as an Integrity teacher for Ami and having her during the sessions allows those two to overlap Integrity training at the same time.... by getting Ami to learn how to block out mental effects such as Empathy and especially the kind of "mind writing" they usually use as telepathy, allowing her to more easily practice behaving as a non-psychic.
I was thinking of this earlier QM quote:
We could use a Socialize-heavier approach, but we probably wouldn't.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
There absolutely are demons that would respond to Socialize. Many fairies, most gods and goddesses under the right circumstances... one of Naoto's best friends is a goddess, after all.
Just don't try it on an Oni. The more common abilities for handling demons nonlethally are Presence, Occult, or martial skills.
Just don't try it on an Oni. The more common abilities for handling demons nonlethally are Presence, Occult, or martial skills.
Yeah, not training this when you are young is a really bad idea, especially for some of us who start with negative Social dots by the standards of common society :/
The impression that I'm getting is that it's not critical to have (now), but most people who care for her would be very happy for her to get this 1 dot of Socialise huh
Was thinking further, do we actually need to cut Lore? Because Lore + Integrity + Socialise can trivially be done during what would otherwise be Amu's studying/homework time by Amu deciding to work faster, and then using the remaining time to browse the internet and to discuss the worldviews online with her mom or something.
~44 weeks left => ~55 weeks if we double up every trained skill for 25% overlap and assume we can train 8 hours a day 6 days a week, discounting story-related training progress buffs as those are impossbile to predict ahead of time.
We have ~2.5 weeks => ~3 weeks left before Hikawa does his thing.
Practically, I think 4-5 hours is the limit after Stunting - that means 22/27 "weeks" total, and ~1.5 "weeks" before the next major story arc.
Narratively Lore/Illusion/Integrity appear to have been Stunted together with a thread of Illusion running throughout the day, so Illusion is barely going to make it in time as-is; and to fit Socialise in too we'd need to make a Stunt of Amu treating Illusion as the equivalent of a fidget spinner?
For Nocturne/DeSu2 veterans, what does this mean in practice OOC?
I don't know much about DeSu2 (I need to go back and actually finish it), so I'm not sure I can really distinguish the two... but I know a decent amount about Nocturne, so I'll try to work with that.
In Nocturne, the apocalypse is followed by the Conception, which is where the human survivors of the former compete for the chance to influence the new world that will be made afterward. The Conception is essentially a process of refreshing the system, more similar in nature to the Yuga cycle in Hinduism than a "normal" apocalypse. The world ends, but a new world will be made afterward, and whoever reaches Kagutsuchi in the end will have their Reason influence the new world.
As for Reasons... the only one I vaguely remember off the type of my head is Hikawa's, which boils down to "a world of silence". I know you can end up just remaking the world exactly as it was, or completely break out of the cycle and destroy the world permanently by killing Kagutsuchi... but I actually don't remember the other characters' Reasons.
- Location
- Laniakea
I suspect Amu actually did in this quest, owing to the... "non-standard" nature of her mind. Since personas without the capital "p" are apparently meant to be a natural development formed via human interaction (along with small-letter shadows), her somehow having her persona getting torn apart exposing her Shadow implies that she got stunted somewhere along the line, until she "regained" her persona (or 3) through her Charas.
After all, Shadow Selves are meant to be incapable of lying and not intended to be exposed to other people - so if Amu's main self was a shadow, she wasn't playing with a full deck hence her needing to have "learned to do things shadows simply aren't meant to do".
I suspect that Ami, Micchan and everybody else with the yellow eyes in her year is also in the same boat - it's just that since there are no social expectations for them at that age, they currently perfectly fall in line with what typical 7 year olds are meant to have for Socialize skills, which is no dots.
Their exposed Shadow Selves I speculate got caused by that questionable classroom social dynamic of discouraging each other from keeping secrets, leading to either them having torn apart their own personas or simply never ended up developing one in the first place. Ami's midly-sinister suggestion on dealing with the reporters might have been part of a Shadow Self's naturally aggressive instinct to lash out (which is the sort of behavior that does automatically makes you enemies everywhere you walk).
Nothing actionable, I'm afraid (though bear in mind, I'm not sure I'd call myself a veteran).
JP's doesn't even exist in Nocturne, the whole organization only appeared in DeSu 2.
Best guess, it means Polaris doesn't exist and JP's had no warnings about any Septentriones and Hotsuin has never met Alcor.
Or it could just mean he hasn't met Alcor, but Alcor and Polaris nonetheless exist though they will only become relevant if Hikawa is stopped from executing Conception, being the QM's "backup plan" on how to end the world if we stop the first attempt.
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Doing the calculations on training time really makes the importance of Stunts to increase available free time clear though, it's not just a few percentage points of difference, but 100s of percentage points of difference as compared to not writing anything - we could probably get to 2 dots in all Psionic Skills (for Lock usage) and then specialise as appropriate by the end if we can sustainably get 4 hours a day of training.
(Yes, we could just decide to train anyway, but that is not sustainable or mentally healthy in the slightest before the dots actually get connected in-universe)
This means that having more people around (with Psionics?) to specialise in Attributes or Psionics is also far, far more important given the enhanced nature of specialised Psionic Skills - as we have seen in this Chapter teamwork makes the dream work (lol at doing this without Utau, or without Ami).
Furthermore, I really can't justify buying any new Abilities other than Socialise - the 1 dot penalty of Medicine can just be replaced with more Biokinesis, the Investigation penalty can be either obviated by asking her parents/Utau, or by Clarivoyance to a limited extent.
@Baughn I wonder if Precog + Lore can be used to somewhat sidestep not having Attribute dots at penalty in the sense of "I Precog how using Lore in this manner works or doesn't work, in which case I need to try something else"?
Also, is my suspicion that Biokinesis is hilariously lethal at touch-range, while lethal Thermokinesis at range is not covered within the usual array of Magic/Mental Blocker defense correct (if traumatising for Amu unless used with very good reason, and perhaps even then)?
(Yes, we could just decide to train anyway, but that is not sustainable or mentally healthy in the slightest before the dots actually get connected in-universe)
This means that having more people around (with Psionics?) to specialise in Attributes or Psionics is also far, far more important given the enhanced nature of specialised Psionic Skills - as we have seen in this Chapter teamwork makes the dream work (lol at doing this without Utau, or without Ami).
Furthermore, I really can't justify buying any new Abilities other than Socialise - the 1 dot penalty of Medicine can just be replaced with more Biokinesis, the Investigation penalty can be either obviated by asking her parents/Utau, or by Clarivoyance to a limited extent.
@Baughn I wonder if Precog + Lore can be used to somewhat sidestep not having Attribute dots at penalty in the sense of "I Precog how using Lore in this manner works or doesn't work, in which case I need to try something else"?
Also, is my suspicion that Biokinesis is hilariously lethal at touch-range, while lethal Thermokinesis at range is not covered within the usual array of Magic/Mental Blocker defense correct (if traumatising for Amu unless used with very good reason, and perhaps even then)?
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- Location
- Laniakea
Well, you know my opinions on Socialize by now. Even if we do end up trying to train it, I personally wouldn't bother with more than a single dot.
Occult on the other hand.....
Agreed - 18yo level of competence is more than good enough, we do not need to beat adults at their own game here.
I would say Occult doesn't come up very often based on my reference list (we are already working on Integrity), but Lore has come up literally never before and yet we are still training it, and as far as I can tell the more finesse based Psionic options all key off Occult so...
Getting Occult to 3 dots would normally take 6 XP and 5 full-time weeks, but I wonder if we can get access to Fumi as time goes on to shave 2XP off? (She has Lore/Occult 4 according to the QM somehow, although by the same token getting her to train us would be difficult)
(So far Integrity + Occult is basically the entirety of Skills that has been used so far, individual cases aside; Awareness could probably be substituted by clear-vision Clairvoyance trivially)
I would say Occult doesn't come up very often based on my reference list (we are already working on Integrity), but Lore has come up literally never before and yet we are still training it, and as far as I can tell the more finesse based Psionic options all key off Occult so...
Getting Occult to 3 dots would normally take 6 XP and 5 full-time weeks, but I wonder if we can get access to Fumi as time goes on to shave 2XP off? (She has Lore/Occult 4 according to the QM somehow, although by the same token getting her to train us would be difficult)
(So far Integrity + Occult is basically the entirety of Skills that has been used so far, individual cases aside; Awareness could probably be substituted by clear-vision Clairvoyance trivially)
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Not Baughn, but the recent power-scaling post notes that the ability to precog things is affected by probability and impact. So as one example, basically every precog can tell that the world is gonna end soon. But minor things like what you're describing can require five dots to see.
To quote the power-scaling post:
So Biokinesis really can't substitute for Medicine if you plan to use it on other people. ... Also, Amu getting her family to let her spend 2 hours a day helping at the hospital so she can learn how to heal people (and so what happened with Saaya is less likely to happen again) doesn't seem implausible, which means it wouldn't necessarily cut into our other training time.
Actually, given the earlier Psionics PR discussion and the mention of how Amu might become a spokesperson on Psionics in this generation, I wonder if we can make this kind of good-PR stuff public?
(Though if we use Biokinesis in public that does raise other kinds of second order effects Amu should probably be coached on before we actually do that)
I don't think Biokinesis is actually limited to touch range.
Unfortunately, we very well might need to do exactly that. I'd like to be able to rely on Midori for that kind of thing, but as Amu becomes a bigger player in her own right, she's going to become less able to use Midori as a proxy.
Medicine gives us more dice per unit of training time than Biokinesis at this point, plus the knowledge it represents is very important for using Biokinesis right.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
That's correct. There's probably only one person who could use it to replace skill, and even he isn't able to do so right now.
It isn't. Though accuracy decreases with range, and if you want to use it offensively against most relevant targets you'd have to pass a contested roll. In Persona terms, most (non-elemental) psionic effects are typed as Dark/Curse; this includes the 'Heart beam'.
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- Location
- Laniakea
Amu becoming some shadow director of JP's or usurping Hotsuin or starting her own psionic Black Knights is exactly the sort of thing I don't want to see her using Socialize for.
No Amu Lamperouge please.
Have a strong hunch that Tsukasa has a similar number of dots in Occult.
As a professional teacher, it probably wouldn't be hard to persuade him to actually do his job, the only issue might be his personal availability and schedule.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
I decided to write a python script to do it, and then didn't write it yet because it won't matter until you're out of this event. I'll get around to it in the next two or three chapters, at this rate.
