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Shards of a Broken Sun [Megaten/Shugo Chara/Exalted]

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Quickshot0 said:
I guess it would be a longer term project to complete then, though perhaps one could find some time for it here and there?
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From what I've gathered, the main Skills/Abilities of interest on the table right now are Illusion, Integrity and Dreamwalking.

The way I see it, we have 2 ways we can approach this:

One, the slow and steady route, where we set up a few skills to be trained simultaneously and take advantage of this school-less week and training-overlap stunts to try and get a bulk discount on the whole thing. Borrow Eru from Utau and walk around school for as long as Amu can stand having her loaded in her head, to get maximum overlap on Integrity training with Illusion and maybe Precog/Mental Range using some variant of the stunt I proposed. And Dreamwalking at night.

Dreamwalking and Integrity should have 100% overlap, though they won't finish levelling until long after Illusion due how little time they are limited to each day (maybe 30 minutes if at that?). Still, we're starting early and there's no sign daily training time will ever get better for them.

Two, bullrush. We dump 1 XP into Illusion to grab it ASAP and then save 8 XP and try to immediately SOS boost Integrity in the next opportunity we get in the following arc. I'd say we could also do a version where we SOS boost Dreamwalking and try to slow-train Integrity while we do Illusion, but SOS Dreamwalking requires specific circumstances that may or may not be available (but not impossible if that one Scavenger with the sleep issues is involved, or if Ami gets into trouble with her Dreamwalking).
Nero200 said:
It's Ami. Her ability focus is Dreamwalking and obscene levels of UMI.
I'm reasonably sure it was mind control.
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I am too, but let's be reasonable - Ami is not going to randomly do to her sister what she did to those demons. Not unless Amu shows up wearing the illusion of a Strix and probably not even then, since as soon as she reach out to mind crush, she will realize said mind belongs to Amu.
Meanwhile - and I acknowledge this may be overexposure to Persona 5 Royal at work - but I am somewhat concerned about who exactly this counselor is and what he's been doing with her.

The one in Royal was very dodgy, to put it mildly.
Nero200 said:
Amu calling / sending a text would cover that.
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These guys are paranoid as hell, they would assume her phone was compromised. I get the impression nothing bar face-to-face personal contact - or rather, full mental strip-search - would assuage them of their fears.
 
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Quickshot0 said:
I think their concern is more that Kana might go off and attack JP to 'save' Amu, or some other scheme like that.
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That's part of it, but I'm also worried because Kana is the friend who gets into the most direct danger. The last contact we had with the Scavengers implied that something big and likely dangerous was about to happen, and now Kana isn't answering calls, even after the time frame we were told to stay away.

Things could be okay, but there's too much of a risk that something went seriously wrong. They might need rescue, or medical aid. If it turns out they need something, then whatever they need is the most likely to be time-sensitive, out of all of our options.

PistachioCookies said:
These guys are paranoid as hell, they would assume her phone was compromised. I get the impression nothing bar face-to-face personal contact - or rather, full mental strip-search - would assuage them of their fears.
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Heck, I'm worried our phone might be compromised. JP's had plenty of time to bug the thing. They might even have the access to just monitor our calls through the cell network, without directly tampering with our device. Or IMSI catchers, though those would only work while one is in the vicinity of our device.
 
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PistachioCookies said:
Still, we're starting early and there's no sign daily training time will ever get better for them.
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....OK, I do say this, but there is a stunt I can think of that -may- possibly improve the training time just a little bit. It would overlap with Integrity training too.

@Baughn - How much more training time in Dreamwalking could Amu eke out in a day if she borrowed Pepe from Yaya and tried to use her Baby specialization to force herself to sleep and dream?
 
PistachioCookies said:
@Baughn - How much more training time in Dreamwalking could Amu eke out in a day if she borrowed Pepe from Yaya and tried to use her Baby specialization to force herself to sleep and dream?
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o_O

Checks notes.

...Pepe no longer exists, so this isn't an option. If it had been... it's embarrassingly likely that she'd have gotten a great night's sleep, but completely forgotten about what she was meant to be doing.
 
PistachioCookies said:
And if we borrowed Eru and tried to replicate Angel's Cradle on ourselves (or get Utau to use it on us) to do the same thing?
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You'd end up asleep, and potentially dreamwalking.

You'd also be trading daylight for dreamwalking at perhaps a 10:1 rate, and worrying your parents in the process. I'd suggest there are better ways to do this.
 
I've got this silly mental image where we push really, really hard on training, and Ami walks in on us balancing upside down on our head while juggling illusionary baseballs with our mind, while we attempt to clairvoyantly read a book that's sitting behind us.

Ami: Uh, sis... what are you doing?
Amu: Training!
Ami: ...why?
Amu: I need to improve my skills, to be ready for demon attacks and other crises!
Ami: ...I want to train too!

And then mom walks in half an hour later, and Ami is on her head too and we're juggling the baseballs together.

Baughn said:
You'd end up asleep, and potentially dreamwalking.

You'd also be trading daylight for dreamwalking at perhaps a 10:1 rate, and worrying your parents in the process. I'd suggest there are better ways to do this.
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How about trying to link into Ami's dreams while she's taking a nap, without going to sleep ourselves?
 
Quine said:
How about trying to link into Ami's dreams while she's taking a nap, without going to sleep ourselves?
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Ami is happy to let you try that.

... Actually, Ami is ecstatic to get even a little bit of attention. She's been getting better lately, but Amu in canon treated Ami mostly as a distraction.
 
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Baughn said:
Well, for one thing the week is already partially over. But for another, "8 hours per day" is basically a full-time job. Leaving aside what that sort of stress might do to her, Amu's parents would definitely notice.
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I'm confused as to what we're actually voting for, with training. Is this the stuff we work on this week? For the next month? Something else?
 
Skelm said:
I'm confused as to what we're actually voting for, with training. Is this the stuff we work on this week? For the next month? Something else?
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Things you will work on until completed or changed. I'll keep track of accumulated training, so you can switch to something else later, if you feel like it.
 
Adhoc vote count started by Baughn on Dec 9, 2023 at 11:23 PM, finished with 56 posts and 12 votes.
[focus] [training]
  • 12
    [X][Focus] Ami
    [X][Focus] Kana
    [X][Focus] Utau
    [X][Focus] Lulu
    [X][Focus] Nagihiko
    [X][Focus] JPs
    [X][Focus] Tsukasa
    [X][Focus] Kukai
  • 2
    [X][Training] Illusion 2 (1 XP, 1 week)
    [X] [Training] Dreamwalking 2
    -[X] It'd be nice to hang out with Ami more. See if you can keep Ami company during her own dreamwalking trips.
    [X] [Training] Illusion 2
    -[X] Try to keep up minor illusions while you're doing other things. Wear an illusionary scarf or hat or something around the house, or stick an illusionary ball in your bag when you go out and see how long you can keep it up.
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There's no rush on deciding what training time you might want, in any case. I'll close the vote on that task after next update, assuming there's no obvious majority prior to that.

…so. Ami and Kana, is it? If you do decide to go for dreamwalking, that would slot in nicely.

Downtime is something that happens to other people.
 
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Baughn said:
…so. Ami and Kana, is it? If you do decide to go for dreamwalking, that would slot in nicely.
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I'm going to guess that the Scavenger with the sleep issues might have 3 dots in Dreamwalking and be a viable teacher for Amu. I'm also going to guess that having a teacher for a 1 XP training action still won't make the training free. Does it make it free?

If we did vote on trying to train Dreamwalking and Illusion at the same time and persuaded Ami to try helping us train at night instead of the during the day, would we get full overlap with the training time on Illusion? And would we get the level in Illusion first since we're spending more daily hours on it, or would it again be a batch job and only get the level in Illusion when we have also finished levelling Dreamwalking?

Finally - if we were training Dreamwalking, didn't complete the level before the events of the next arc hit and then chose to emergency SOS boost Dreamwalking during the arc, what happens? Do we get refunded the XP we tried to spend? Do the previously accumulated training hours start counting towards the next level in it? Or do we just lose the XP and time we spent?
 
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Baughn said:
Downtime is something that happens to other people.
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Great for XP, at least! Just gotta figure out how to spend the stuff. It'll feel really silly if we end up pumping WP just because we're bottlenecked on training time.


PistachioCookies said:
I'm going to guess that the Scavenger with the sleep issues might have 3 dots in Dreamwalking and be a viable teacher for Amu. I'm also going to guess that having a teacher for a 1 XP training action still won't make the training free. Does it make it free?
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Unfortunately, the XP discount is only valid for abilities, not psi skills:
Baughn said:
All psionics are treated as always having a teacher. However, if they actually have a teacher—defined as someone who can spend a minimum of 2 hours per 8 spent practicing, and also has at least 2 dots beyond the student's [rating]—then the cost of training an ability is reduced by 1 XP.
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PistachioCookies said:
If we did vote on trying to train Dreamwalking and Illusion at the same time and persuaded Ami to try helping us train at night instead of the during the day, would we get full overlap with the training time on Illusion? And would we get the level in Illusion first since we're spending more daily hours on it, or would it again be a batch job and only get the level in Illusion when we have also finished levelling Dreamwalking?
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With what's been said about dreamwalking, if we're both asleep, I'm worried we won't even be able to find each other at our current skill levels. I definitely want to try to find each other, though. (If we're not both asleep and we're trying to train dreamwalking at night, at least one of us is going to be losing sleep time.)
 
Quine said:
With what's been said about dreamwalking, if we're both asleep, I'm worried we won't even be able to find each other at our current skill levels. I definitely want to try to find each other, though. (If we're not both asleep and we're trying to train dreamwalking at night, at least one of us is going to be losing sleep time.)
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The problem with training Dreamwalking using the day hours is that it will lengthen the training time for anything else we want to do train at the same time. Even if we can successfully piggyback off Ami dreaming, I'm going to guess that doing it in waking time with her instead of asleep with Eru would make the efficiency maybe 1:4 at best instead of 1:10 (going by the birthday present, Ami had to try hard to make herself do it during daylight hours too).

That means we're getting only 30 minutes of training for every 2 hours we spend on it - and that's 2 hours we aren't spend on training Illusion at the same time. If we tried to train 2 skills at once, I imagine it would be something like spending 1 hour on Dreamwalking, 1 hour on Illusion a day. That would make it take 2 months before we get Illusion and since we'd only be getting effectively 15 minutes of training a day on Dreamwalking, an unreasonable 224 whole days to fully level it.

The only way I see the efficiency of it improving is if we have a better teacher than Ami who can help us do it at a better ratio than 1:4, probably the Scavenger girl, Yui, who we haven't confirmed Dreamwalks yet (or Kana herself maybe, if she Dreamwalks to help Yui).

Otherwise, with the amount of time it would take, I honestly believe enough story arcs would go by that one of them is likely to give us an opportunity to immediately SOS level it - and that this would come by before we actually finished slow-training it.
 
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PistachioCookies said:
The problem with training Dreamwalking using the day hours is that it will lengthen the training time for anything else we want to do train at the same time. Even if we can successfully piggyback off Ami dreaming, I'm going to guess that doing it in waking time with her instead of asleep with Eru would make the efficiency maybe 1:4 at best instead of 1:10 (going by the birthday present, Ami had to try hard to make herself do it during daylight hours too).
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Are you expecting that kind of efficiency because Ami would only spend a limited amount of sleep time dreaming? We can do other stuff while we wait for her to dream. (And, of course, we'd still try to train dreamwalking during our own sleep time too, and try to meet up with Ami in our dreams. I'm not voting against that.)

PistachioCookies said:
Finally - if we were training Dreamwalking, didn't complete the level before the events of the next arc hit and then chose to emergency SOS boost Dreamwalking during the arc, what happens? Do we get refunded the XP we tried to spend? Do the previously accumulated training hours start counting towards the next level in it? Or do we just lose the XP and time we spent?
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Personally, I'd hope the XP cost for the boost gets prorated for how much training time we're skipping. So, for example, if we've spent 1 XP and half the training time for a skill, I'd hope the boost cost would be 0.5 XP instead of 1 XP or even 2. We'll see what Baughn says, though.
 
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Quine said:
Are you expecting that kind of efficiency because Ami would only spend a limited amount of sleep time dreaming? We can do other stuff while we wait for her to dream. (And, of course, we'd still try to train dreamwalking during our own sleep time too, and try to meet up with Ami in our dreams. I'm not voting against that.)
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I'm expecting that kind of efficiency, because from according to this little tidbit:
Baughn said:
Dreamwalking doesn't have to be done while you're unconscious, and arguably shouldn't be, but considering that's how Ami does it... yeah. The fact of the matter is you're unconscious, so it's not as though she'd be fully effective.
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The "right" way to do Dreamwalking is apparently when awake and Ami herself isn't doing it the right way. So Ami's own efficiency at it is already bad - Amu's is just worse since she doesn't even have 2 dots in it. So if we piggyback off Ami, at best we get her level of efficiency which is seemingly sub-standard.

I suspect that Kana does it the "correct" way when she's helping Yui, so if there's anybody who can help to train Amu at a better rate it might be her. Of course, that still means doing it in daylight hours and if we need Kana, we can't get any discount by practising during class either. So no matter what, it would cut into the spare time that would be spent on anything else being trained at once.

Right now, I'm leaning towards the idea of immediately starting slow-training for Illusion, Precognition* and Integrity so we don't waste this week and then waiting for the next chapter to see if it's feasible for Kana to help teach Dreamwalking - since I expect at this point the vote for Ami and Kana is going to win and I'm anticipating that Ami is going to be present during that scene, leading to an automatic discussion on Dreamwalking abilities by Ami and Kana.

Adding Dreamwalking after that would spend 7 points on slow-training, leaving 2 XP for an SOS boost on any other rank 2 or lower Psionic skill during the arc.

I want to wait for Baughn's reply first though - this method works out best if it turns out we get a refund or discount on SOS boosting an ability we were already training normally, as then if we needed to instant boost Integrity, for example, we might be able to do that if it drops the cost to 6 XP and the 4 XP we already spent also counts towards it.

* I'm interested in Precognition for 2 reasons, besides the obvious use of knowing when threats are incoming.

First, because given the mention of this by the QM:
Baughn said:
But a lot of what Amu gets up to in canon, or has happen around her, feels like fate magic. You're not wrong about that.
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It makes me suspect Devil Survivor 2's Fate System is in effect. It's an analogue to Persona Social Links, except you actually need to rank up people's Fate rankings for them to survive to the end of the game. So Precognition might actually be able to tell us who has death flags attached, even before the Nicaea website gets set up and starts showing everyone death clips.

Second, because it would enable some bullshit stunts in conjunction with our once-a-month Dia to pull information from the future and allow Amu to know things she would otherwise have no way of knowing in advance, thereby enabling her to take actions she otherwise wouldn't even know was possible (i.e. like the fact the Dragon Stream exists and how to tap into it).
 
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PistachioCookies said:
The "right" way to do Dreamwalking is apparently when awake and Ami herself isn't doing it the right way. So Ami's own efficiency at it is already bad - Amu's is just worse since she doesn't even have 2 dots in it. So if we piggyback off Ami, at best we get her level of efficiency which is seemingly sub-standard.
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Oh, that's what you're worried about? I don't think we'd lose efficiency just because Ami is asleep, if we're not. (@Baughn, assuming we successfully linked into Ami's dream while we were awake, would we be able to train at full efficiency while linked?)

I mostly want to try this to see what happens, and to spend some more time with Ami. Whether I'd want to try it again would depend on how the first try goes.

PistachioCookies said:
Right now, I'm leaning towards the idea of immediately starting slow-training for Illusion, Precognition and Integrity so we don't waste this week and then waiting for the next chapter to see if it's feasible for Kana to help teach Dreamwalking - since I expect at this point the vote for Ami and Kana is going to win and I'm anticipating that Ami is going to be present during that scene, leading to an automatic discussion on Dreamwalking abilities by Ami and Kana.
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What's your idea for Illusion/Precog/Integrity? And why not get started on Dreamwalking now?
 
Quine said:
What's your idea for Illusion/Precog/Integrity? And why not get started on Dreamwalking now?
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Borrowing Eru and having her loaded in Amu's mind for as long as she can handle each day while conjuring Illusion playing cards for Miki (or maybe Zener cards, like they use Toaru/Raildex's Esper training regime, though that might train Clairvoyance instead) and trying to play precognition poker constantly, in addition to trying during classtime to predict what questions and which student a teacher is going to pick when quizzing people and what the responses will be.

I expect she'll probably have to drop Eru after 30 minutes or something, but that should still give her maximum overlap with everything else.

Dreamwalking during the night is fine, but trying in the day would would cut into the time for training the other skills - and it can't be done in class since the only way we know how to try right now needs sleeping or Ami or both.

I'm fine with training Dreamwalking in the day if we get good efficiency on it, just hesitant if it sets us back too far on the level in Illusion. I can't think of any stunt that gives us any overlap between the other stuff and Dreamwalking with the methods we know of right now.
 
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PistachioCookies said:
I'm going to guess that the Scavenger with the sleep issues might have 3 dots in Dreamwalking and be a viable teacher for Amu. I'm also going to guess that having a teacher for a 1 XP training action still won't make the training free. Does it make it free?
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PistachioCookies said:
If we did vote on trying to train Dreamwalking and Illusion at the same time and persuaded Ami to try helping us train at night instead of the during the day, would we get full overlap with the training time on Illusion? And would we get the level in Illusion first since we're spending more daily hours on it, or would it again be a batch job and only get the level in Illusion when we have also finished levelling Dreamwalking?
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To clarify, attempting to train dreamwalking only while asleep? In that case you'd get full overlap, yes. Effectively you're just doing two different things at two different times... they'll complete independently.

PistachioCookies said:
Finally - if we were training Dreamwalking, didn't complete the level before the events of the next arc hit and then chose to emergency SOS boost Dreamwalking during the arc, what happens? Do we get refunded the XP we tried to spend? Do the previously accumulated training hours start counting towards the next level in it? Or do we just lose the XP and time we spent?
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If it would cost 2 XP to train the normal way, and you've invested 1 XP by the time you hit the SOS button, then only the remainder (1 XP) gets doubled—so you'd pay 3 total, instead of 4. The non-XP impact would also be reduced... probably. Depends on what exactly you're calling on.

PistachioCookies said:
The "right" way to do Dreamwalking is apparently when awake and Ami herself isn't doing it the right way. So Ami's own efficiency at it is already bad - Amu's is just worse since she doesn't even have 2 dots in it. So if we piggyback off Ami, at best we get her level of efficiency which is seemingly sub-standard.
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Persona would be a very different game if you could run the dungeons in your sleep.

Quine said:
Oh, that's what you're worried about? I don't think we'd lose efficiency just because Ami is asleep, if we're not. (@Baughn, assuming we successfully linked into Ami's dream while we were awake, would we be able to train at full efficiency while linked?)
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Yes.

PistachioCookies said:
Borrowing Eru and having her loaded in Amu's mind for as long as she can handle each day while conjuring Illusion playing cards for Miki (or maybe Zener cards, like they use Toaru/Raildex's Esper training regime, though that might train Clairvoyance instead) and trying to play precognition poker constantly, in addition to trying during classtime to predict what questions and which student a teacher is going to pick when quizzing people and what the responses will be.
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Frazzled Amu, this is your time to shine!

 
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Baughn said:
Frazzled Amu, this is your time to shine!
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If we borrowed Eru, I think there's a chance Amu would look quite angelic externally regardless of her mental state. I assume this would not carry over to her image of herself during Dreamwalking.

So, this is my best attempt at a stunt to maximize the overlap coverage while slow-training Illusion, Precognition, Integrity and Dreamwalking:

[] [Training]
- [] Integrity 3 - Borrow somebody else's Chara and synchronize daily with them for as long as possible every day, preferably Eru since you have Chara-changed with her before and know it will work.
- [] Dreamwalking 2 - Use your telepathic connection to Ami to try and learn from her ability to Dreamwalk while she's doing it, ideally while borrowing Eru and singing your best cover rendition of Utau's Angel's Cradle in order to put Ami to sleep so she can start dreaming faster.
- [] Illusion 2 - While Dreamwalking, see whether you can pull out dream material the way Ami does. Outside dreams (or also inside, if Miki joins Amu during them) conjure a deck of Miki-sized playing cards that defy physics to float wherever Miki wants them to float for her to play with while...
- [] Precognition 2 - ...Trying to predict what cards Miki draws when randomly shuffling the deck. At school, try to predict what teachers and classmates will do before they do it, including what questions get asked and what responses will be and questions that might be put on exams or homework assignments and the answers for them.

.....I'd suggest trying to use Illusion to cover up how frazzled Amu might be looking, but as this could be construed as a form of vanity I'm going to hold off on actually putting that in.

How much sleep does Amu actually need to stay healthy and would it cut into her time for other activities if she went to bed 2 hours early with Ami in the evening, so she could link up with her while Ami actually slept and did her Dreamwalking?

EDIT: Do we also get full overlap on the Integrity training if we do it this way? I assumed we did since Integrity isn't a Psionic Skill and doesn't exactly require splitting attention unlike with Illusion and Precognition, but if it doesn't overlap using this stunt, it would be a big bottleneck over the other skills and I'd be inclined to just section off an explicit segment of time during school for Amu to do it instead of mixing it in with Dreamwalking, etc.
 
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@PistachioCookies You could probably improve the integrity matter by referencing things related to it, like...

Integrity 3 - You saw Saaya's mind starting to fall apart, how it fell apart in to different parts, and how it was pulled back together... also you saw the kinds of damage it sustained. You studied the threads the Humpty Lock use to hold it together now, the magic in the room helping to keep her together as well... And you experienced how it was to pull pieces of Saaya's mind out of your own and back in to hers with out harming their integrity. If you could just figure all these parts out more you could perhaps help Saaya even more... or at least prevent the same happening to yourself and others. While thinking of this an idea came to you, that there was some similarities between these problems and when you merge with a chara that isn't from you. In such a case there is some mixing between parts of yourself and that of others, you could observe how you influence each other and how to reduce this effect, to not harm each others integrity so everyone can remain themselves, to see in merging and unmerging how to better maintain each others structure and stay whole. Maybe Utau would let you try such a thing with Eru, you don't think she'd really mind as you've done it quite a bit already. Also... maybe you'd figure out how to talk with Utau from further away with this, that would be nice as well.


It's probably not the best wording possible, but hopefully it gets the intent across. Which is to basically try to use existing motives and already gained insights to try and reduce the difficulty of what is being attempted to be learned, which is to maintain the integrity of the souls. And perhaps see Utau a few more times.
 
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PistachioCookies said:
Do we also get full overlap on the Integrity training if we do it this way? I assumed we did since Integrity isn't a Psionic Skill and doesn't exactly require splitting attention unlike with Illusion and Precognition, but if it doesn't overlap using this stunt, it would be a big bottleneck over the other skills and I'd be inclined to just section off an explicit segment of time during school for Amu to do it instead of mixing it in with Dreamwalking, etc.
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The maximum possible overlap is 50%, but that's for—let's say—practicing fine-control telekinesis by lifting barbells at the same time you're training strength, and assume the presence of a gym that doesn't mind the presence of a preteen lifting hundreds of kilos.

The way Amu would train integrity does in fact need a lot of attention.

Normally you should be expecting around 25%.
 
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