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

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Quine said:
in that example, after we finish Dreamwalking 2, the 0.5 hours a day of sleep time go fully toward training Integrity 3, instead of cutting off.
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This assumes that Dreamwalking would actually finish independently of Integrity.

I got the impression that if we were training multiple skills, barring "full overlap" (that is, only leveling Dreamwalking at night) - which is apparently exceptional circumstances since it isn't "normally" possible to get more than 50% overlap - none of the skills will finish at different times. They will all finish at the same time, or none at all.

Having some periods without overlap might lower the overall overlap percentage on the package, I guess. But QM said to expect 20-25%, so that's the number I'm using when estimating since I assume that whatever non-overlap lowers the overall percentage like being unable to use the night hours for anything else, it will get made for in things that would have greater overlap, like trying to precog exam answers while scribbling them down using a conjured pen.
 
PistachioCookies said:
This assumes that Dreamwalking would actually finish independently of Integrity.
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Baughn said it would:
Baughn said:
With a total cost of 48 hours for leveling up Dreamwalking, that makes it 31 days before she's done. At that point the 'research income' reverts to being 2.5 hours per day, all of which is assigned to Integrity.
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In the example, Dreamwalking finishes first, in 31 days, and Integrity training continues on, fully occupying both the 2 waking hours and the 0.5 sleep-training hours.

PistachioCookies said:
That might lower the overall overlap percentage on the package, I guess. But QM said to expect 20-25%, so that's the number I'm using when estimating since I assume that whatever non-overlap lowers the overall percentage like being unable to use the night hours for anything else, it will get made for in things that would have greater overlap, like trying to precog exam answers while scribbling them down using a conjured pen.
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...wait, an illusionary pen would probably have illusionary ink. Do we really want to fill out an exam sheet with illusionary ink?
 
Quine said:
...wait, an illusionary pen would probably have illusionary ink. Do we really want to fill out an exam sheet with illusionary ink?
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If the cookies she makes using Su can last, she can probably make the ink last when conjuring the pen.... or just use real ink, with the illusory pen. If she had any refills at home, they'd have survived the demise of her schoolbag.
Quine said:
In the example, Dreamwalking finishes first, in 31 days, and Integrity training continues on, fully occupying both the 2 waking hours and the 0.5 sleep-training hours.
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Easiest way to clarify whether extra hours disappears when ordinarily inapplicable to a skill would be to ask I guess.

@Baughn - Do the 0.5 sleep-training hours also disappear along with the multiplier if we finish Dreamwalking and can't train Integrity while asleep?

Either way, it probably wouldn't matter too much under the stunt I proposed, since Illusion + Precog would mostly be trained during school time, Dreamwalking (with some Illusion) would be trained in the evening/night and while I didn't have a particular time in mind for Integrity training (as I am not sure whether it is possible to do it while at school), I imagine it would occupy the "club time" after school, but before evening (i.e. the baseline 2 hrs).

Overlap-wise, it's meant to target Illusion + Precog and Dreamwalking + Illusion and Integrity + Dreamwalking (since whatever stuff with borrowing Eru or externalizing Ran/Su would be done while spending time with Ami).

If we squeezed 6 hours out of that stunt, it should be pretty evenly allocated between skills, assuming it is individually allocated and not pooled.
 
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Here's where I'm currently at with training Illusion, Integrity and Dreamwalking:
  • Integrity is capped at 2 hours a day (at most, might be less) for spoiler reasons. Not possible to do more, no matter whether we have a stunt that has her trying at school or masochistically keeping Ran/Su out at night to try and train it then.
  • Dreamwalking cannot reasonably be done at school without causing problems. Whatever extra hours can be scrounged for it can only come from outside school, when she can either sleep without people getting worried or gets access to someone else Dreamwalking to telepathically link to.
  • Illusion can be done at any time, but cannot be trained at night unless Amu can do it while sleep-Dreamwalking like Ami.
  • Sleep-Dreamwalking efficiency is 1:10 for Amu. If she sleeps for 8 hours a night, she will scrounge maybe 40 minutes of training time assuming she successfully does Dreamwalk in the night.
The training plan stunt I had attempts to do the following:
  • Add hours from school to train Illusion and Precognition.
  • Add hours from evening/night to train Dreamwalking and Illusion
  • Use baseline hours to train Integrity.
  • Overlap training on Illusion and Precognition
  • Overlap training on Illusion and Dreamwalking
  • Overlap training on Dreamwalking and Integrity.
Since Illusion, Precognition and Dreamwalking all take the same time, I assume they will all complete at the same time, even though Illusion is being trained in 2 different actual time slots (in school and after). After that, Integrity will lose any overlap multiplier and even though school hours are now free, falls back to being trained at just 2 hours at day.

Are any of these assumptions incorrect?
 
Quine said:
Either way, she's left wondering what her limits really are, when she puts her mind to something. I think I like having her wondering this. On the other hand, taking Lore 2 like this shines a big spotlight on just how utterly absurd these training rates are. This is far, far beyond Amu's canon academic performance. Any psion we control can boost Lore at the same rate, too, as long as they have the XP for it.
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You know, this idea sounds pretty good and she'd have a motivation to want to study to catch up as well. If one only paid attention to half the classes one would gain a lot of extra hours in a day, and one wouldn't have to burn down a school to do it. Even better you'd actually now not be behind in learning at all. And think of how much it could help her cool and spicy image, properly keeping up with school and thus being 'cool', while at the same time not paying as much attention, thus being spicy.

Also it does kind of make one wonder what XP is... though considering the parts of Saaya she was picking out of her mind, perhaps part of the answer could at times be more disturbing then one thinks. Reusing for instance bits of demon mind certainly would give one a new canvas to write information on with out impacting yourself. Though perhaps it also has something to do with that quick learn experience, one could narratively argue that this training scheme only showed up after that and that in a sense we never fully left that behind. As in, in the back of our mind there might now be a weak connection to others/something that lets one more quickly absorb information. Or I guess it could have something to do with psychic powers or the Humpty Lock... or you know, maybe a bit of all of the things.


I should think of a stunt using this I guess... something like

- Lore 2 ; More general knowledge will help her in various ways as well.
- Illusion 2 ; to fill some of the time you've now freed up
- Integrity 3 ; Via Eru among other things, it would also combine with Illusion considering the chara change options here


Not as sure about Dreamwalking in this case, as it might not overlap so well with school time... I guess it's something you could do though. Also not sure how much XP would still be remaining at this point.
 
Not too big a fan on taking Lore myself.

Making Amu a known academic super-genius would probably accelerate the Forced Publicity bane (not that Rank 2 would qualify her as a genius per se, just an honors' student rather than so-so). I'm also personally dubious as to how many important dice-reliant actions would ever rely on Lore as a contributing ability.

It also costs 2 XP. That's just to hit level 2 and all that would likely do is make her a honors student, not a master engineer. The next level would then take 4.

Considering we get Level 3 Psionic Skills for 1 XP, just seems kind of pricey.
 
Lore describes more or less all of academia and desk work. Everything from designing aircraft carriers to programming computers. Which is, yes, very broad; but in context it makes sense that it would be (effectively) easier to learn than almost anything else.

You asked how useful it could possibly be…

Well, that's a good question really.
 
PistachioCookies said:
Making Amu a known academic super-genius would probably accelerate the Forced Publicity bane (not that Rank 2 would qualify her as a genius per se, just an honors' student rather than so-so). I'm also personally dubious as to how many important dice-reliant actions would ever rely on Lore as a contributing ability.
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Lore has its uses if one tried to leverage it, like it expands the things one can imagine and thus implement in illusions. Also it would help communicate more complicated ideas to others, etc. It's a lot of small things in various places. Basically Amu becomes a bit smarter/wiser from this, which has its own value in and of itself.

But that isn't really why I was thinking of taking it, the main reason was more that you could recover more hours from school from it, thus effectively increasing your training time every day. So even when taking it first it would probably be net neutral training time, as you recover it in school time you can now use in illusion. But once you complete it... you'd presumably be permanently ahead.


Though @Baughn there this isn't a psychic thing, it would take a bit longer to train then a psychic skill I think? Or cost a bit more? I don't quite recall that part anymore.
 
Quickshot0 said:
But that isn't really why I was thinking of taking it, the main reason was more that you could recover more hours from school from it, thus effectively increasing your training time every day. So even when taking it first it would probably be net neutral training time, as you recover it in school time you can now use in illusion. But once you complete it... you'd presumably be permanently ahead.
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Here's the thing, though - Amu has to go to school whether or not she knows all the material for the exams or not. All it would do for school, practically-speaking, is keep her grades afloat when she fails to concentrate on lessons during class time because she's preoccupied with training something else.

Is Amu failing her exams really going to be that a big concern? Something - mainly all the demons and impending apocalypse - makes me doubt the answer is going to be yes, either for Amu herself or the people around her.

I also got the impression that communication with other people falls more under Linguistics and Socialization than Lore. Speaking of which...
Baughn said:
Lore describes more or less all of academia and desk work. Everything from designing aircraft carriers to programming computers.
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Correct me if this is wrong, but I assume she would need at least Rank 3 in Lore before she is actually able to start designing aircraft carriers or write a program that does more than print "Hello World"?
 
PistachioCookies said:
Here's the thing, though - Amu has to go to school whether or not she knows all the material for the exams or not. All it would do for school, practically-speaking, is keep her grades afloat when she fails to concentrate on lessons during class time because she's preoccupied with training something else.

Is Amu failing her exams really going to be that a big concern? Something - mainly all the demons and impending apocalypse - makes me doubt the answer is going to be yes, either for Amu herself or the people around her.

I also got the impression that communication with other people falls more under Linguistics and Socialization than Lore. Speaking of which...
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I don't understand your argument, as it is your already trying to eke what time you can in school and elsewhere. Getting Lore 2 would only make that easier as she no longer has to worry as much about the teachers, parents or friends being worried about her falling behind. Because now she is ahead of coursework. This would help her have less stress, have a more normal life and gain all that training time for the rest of the year.

As for communication, it doesn't make you better in general obviously, yeah. But there are certainly a fair few technically minded people around, like at JP, and being able to talk in more complicated concepts with them would help. In general you'd be treated better for showing a certain level of competence and understanding as well.


Also sounds like Lore 2 is perhaps more advanced then thought with Baughn latest reply. Guess Lore 2 would make you some what computer able.
 
Quickshot0 said:
I don't understand your argument, as it is your already trying to eke what time you can in school and elsewhere.
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My argument is that whatever time Amu is eking out of school, I don't see it being any different with or without extra levels in Lore.

Not having studied may mean she's a little more stressed about trying to keep up Illusions in the middle of her exams - but time-wise, she should get the same amount of training in compared to her not being stressed about her exams. The only thing that would change is the score on her test paper, not the training time.
Quickshot0 said:
Also sounds like Lore 2 is perhaps more advanced then thought with Baughn latest reply. Guess Lore 2 would make you some what computer able.
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The biggest use of computer skills that I can see would be to try and disassemble Nicaea when it comes online and that would likely require Occult in addition to Lore 3 at minimum. I don't think Lore 2 is enough to make Amu proficient at software reverse engineering, much less reverse engineering the bullshit that is Nicaea.

@Baughn - Would Lore 2 make Amu a hacker capable of cracking into mundane non-Nicaea corporate servers or just savvy enough to jailbreak an iPhone, if iPhones existed in the quest?
 
PistachioCookies said:
Would Lore 2 make Amu a hacker capable of cracking into mundane non-Nicaea corporate servers or just savvy enough to jailbreak an iPhone, if iPhones existed in the quest?
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It would allow her to try, though she'd probably fail. For the iPhone case, it would allow her to reliably follow instructions to do that. If you're thinking Nicaea, that's the realm of Lore 5.

Fumi is sitting at Lore 4 / Occult 4 with some specialties, for point of comparison. An experienced, professional programmer might have Lore 3 with one or two specialties. A college graduate would typically have Lore 2.

(Though for people who are not Amu it will tend to actually be "2 dots plus specialties", because real world training times are ten to a hundred times what she's getting away with. Fumi is not normal.)
 
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Trying to train too many things at the same time strikes me as a mistake. There are a great many things it would be useful to have, but trying to reach for them all at the same time will just split our focus too much to get any of them in a useful time-frame.

Amu's greatest strength is her psionic abilities and training them is strongly favored mechanically, so we should focus there. Integrity is probably the strongest case for an exception because it should help deal with the costs of psionic (over)use. Trying to also grab Lore, or any of her other mundane abilities, strikes me as splitting too far. We can consider it once we've completed the several months of training entailed by the existing proposals.

PistachioCookies said:
The biggest use of computer skills that I can see would be to try and disassemble Nicaea when it comes online and that would likely require Occult in addition to Lore 3 at minimum. I don't think Lore 2 is enough to make Amu proficient at software reverse engineering, much less reverse engineering the bullshit that is Nicaea.
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In the previous iteration of this quest we got, or at least planned to get before it died, significant usage out of Lore to stabilize the Dragon Seal and uphold the basic integrity of reality. But that's post-exaltation, and exalts get to raise 10 different Abilities without training time.

Which is another reason not to spend a lot of time raising Abilities right now.
 
PistachioCookies said:
My argument is that whatever time Amu is eking out of school, I don't see it being any different with or without extra levels in Lore.

Not having studied may mean she's a little more stressed about trying to keep up Illusions in the middle of her exams - but time-wise, she should get the same amount of training in compared to her not being stressed about her exams. The only thing that would change is the score on her test paper, not the training time.
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My argument was that she could greatly increase the amount of time she could eke out at school by learning Lore 2. You could get away with paying less attention in classes and thus use far more class time as training time. Instead of 2 hours at school, maybe you could get 4, Baughn mentioned as well that you could train more at school, but at the drawback of her not paying nearly as much attention. Lore 2 would presumably help to greatly offset such a matter and thus allow one to far more quickly train up skills, with out nearly as much worries of needing to balance time out further.


It depends a bit on how one thinks the year will go of course, but at least in Devil Survivor 2 school kept running till the start of the actual troubles. So unless she starts trying to skip out entirely and try to escape the truancy officials etc... or just accepts nose diving her academics, there is but so much time of the day she can use then... unless she can make more of the school time freely available to use to her.

Of course if she doesn't get nearly as much XP any more, this would matter a great deal less, as you wouldn't feel as time pressured. But even then it isn't like Lore 2 gets one nothing, it as I noted does allow one to imagine far more things and so boost illusion, interact with computers, talk with the technical people and learn more from such talks. These many small things still have I think a significant overall impact story wise. A more learned Amu making more learned choices.
 
I'll try to make a Lore 2 vote branch then

[X] [Training] Plan Learn Early to get Ahead
-[X] Lore 2 With all the things that happened lately, you surely fell behind at school, and you have a feeling that more things might happen in the future. So getting ahead in learning will surely make it easy to keep your grades up and perhaps understand what everyone older then you at times is talking about.
-[X] Integrity 3 - It might be possible to speed up Saaya's recovery if you knew more about how she was afflicted. You can think of 2 experiences you have personally suffered that might come close - either the strain that comes from borrowing someone else's Chara, or the hollowness you feel from keeping Ran and Su out for too long. Miki and Ami always enjoy having Ran and Su out and about and you're fairly sure Utau wouldn't mind too much if you borrowed Eru for a little bit either - as much as you can manage each day, anyway. Angel's Cradle might help Ami not have nightmares about demons, if nothing else.
-[X] Illusion 2 - Through the day when reasonably possible you could try and maintain some kind of illusion, be it illusions to amuse your little sister with, or trying to hide a chara change with Eru, or even just some idle accessory you can put on yourself. Surely if you try such things enough you'll be able to figure out how to make illusions better then before.
 
Seems like it's basically Lore 3+ or bust if you're trying to get practical use out of the ability (was pretty sure hacking Nicaea would need Lore 4+ to work). That's 144 hours of training time and 6 XP. I only see benefit coming from Lore 2 if it really does let you get more training time from school hours.

@Baughn - Would Amu actually be able to get more training time from school hours if she hit Lore 2 and presumably stuffed the curriculum into her head?

It looks like the training vote is probably going to stretch to next update, but I'll probably be sticking with mine. Between training Precognition to try and keep up versus cramming Lore to do the same thing, both XP- and utility-wise Precog 2 seems the more worthwhile option over Lore 2.

I'm more ambivalent over Dreamwalking, but it also only costs 1 XP and potentially opens up 30-40 minutes of night hours for training during sleep too (even at the poor efficiency of 1:10).
 
PistachioCookies said:
My argument is that whatever time Amu is eking out of school, I don't see it being any different with or without extra levels in Lore.

Not having studied may mean she's a little more stressed about trying to keep up Illusions in the middle of her exams - but time-wise, she should get the same amount of training in compared to her not being stressed about her exams. The only thing that would change is the score on her test paper, not the training time.
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I like the story of "Amu tries to get ahead of her classes, and succeeds so hard she has to realize something is up" a lot more than I like "Amu tries to cheat on her classwork with precog to make up for deficiencies in actually learning the material". (Besides, there's a lot of classwork she can't effectively cheat on with precog.)

PistachioCookies said:
@Baughn - Would Amu actually be able to get more training time from school hours if she hit Lore 2 and presumably stuffed the curriculum into her head?
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It's not a matter of how much training time she can get. It's a matter of what the consequences are. She can stop paying attention with or without Lore 2, but she can go a lot further without academic consequences (or the resulting social consequences) with Lore 2. I don't want our parents (or Ami) getting disappointed in us for coming back with a bunch of failed assignments.

Skelm said:
Trying to train too many things at the same time strikes me as a mistake. There are a great many things it would be useful to have, but trying to reach for them all at the same time will just split our focus too much to get any of them in a useful time-frame.

Amu's greatest strength is her psionic abilities and training them is strongly favored mechanically, so we should focus there. Integrity is probably the strongest case for an exception because it should help deal with the costs of psionic (over)use. Trying to also grab Lore, or any of her other mundane abilities, strikes me as splitting too far. We can consider it once we've completed the several months of training entailed by the existing proposals.


In the previous iteration of this quest we got, or at least planned to get before it died, significant usage out of Lore to stabilize the Dragon Seal and uphold the basic integrity of reality. But that's post-exaltation, and exalts get to raise 10 different Abilities without training time.

Which is another reason not to spend a lot of time raising Abilities right now.
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The immediate use of Lore 2 would be to let us train other traits harder during class time with less consequences. I don't think we need to fully train Lore 2 to get that benefit - just one day would probably be enough to cover the entire rest of the school year. We could probably suspend training after that. (@Baughn?)
 
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Quine said:
I don't think we need to fully train Lore 2 to get that benefit - just one day would probably be enough to cover the entire rest of the school year. We could probably suspend training after that.
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Hoy, partial levels can actually be a thing?

If it is, is it possible to get half a level in Teleportation to pull things from our pockets without needing our hands or half a level in Clairvoyance just to see behind doors/walls?
 
PistachioCookies said:
Hoy, partial levels can actually be a thing?

If it is, is it possible to get half a level in Teleportation to pull things from our pockets without needing our hands or half a level in Clairvoyance just to see behind doors/walls?
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Mechanically, I don't think we can get partial levels, or at least, a half-trained level won't boost our rolls. But training can be suspended, and narratively, we don't just suddenly go from "learned nothing" to "learned everything" at the instant training finishes. Narratively, we'd have already learned plenty by the end of day 1. I think it makes sense that we'd get the narrative benefits we're looking for even if we suspend after a day.

As for whether half-trained Teleportation 1 or Clairvoyance 1 would allow minor uses of those skills... I'm curious too!
 
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