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Tacit Ronin: The Power of Three

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BungieONI said:
BungieONI's Tsutsuji Shrike
Tsutsuji Shrike
Class: Mk II
Motivation: To Impale and Bite!
Starting Stats (12/15)
HtH 4
STR 4
TOU 2
RAN 0
AGI 2
DEX 0

Archetype: A vicious psycho gymnast.
Preferred Defense Action: Block
Primary Weapon/Method of Attack: Her entire body is covered in slashing blades, spikes and rotating auger mouths.
Secondary Weapons: Bladed fists and feet.
General Aesthetics: Lithe, with abnormally long limbs and a shiny chrome body covered in spikes over muscular artificial flesh.

Stat Priorities: HtH and Str are the two primaries, with Agility being the next, followed by Tou. Dex and Ran are ignored because she's all about getting up in your face and stabbing you to death.

Gear Breakdown:

Tsutsuji Shrike is a brawling creation of the Raubtier Program meant to make use of the regenerative and Ongoing healing functions of that program as well as the potential Adrenal Response enhancement modes which may be developed for it. Her primary mode of attack and interaction with her enemies is her Toothed Frame which is a Specialized Frame whose external surface is covered in spikes, sharp edges and rotating blades and augers. Its specifically based off the Teeth Without Number Charm from @Revlid's Metagaos charm set (thanks for making that charm set by the way) adapted for the limited flexibility of our technology, its not like we can just sprout mouths on our Jaegers like a Shoggoth right now or any time in the foreseeable future.

This structure is meant to give her a fighting style where she is striking Jaegers and Kaiju with the full weight and length of her limbs and body, so Slams and punches and kicks Edged and Impact damage. Which are always useful damage types. Furthermore its supposed to let her tear up creatures that get into grapples with her and damage them from maintaining the grapple with her, and it is meant to act as a way to damage the limbs of creatures who strike her when she uses the Block Reaction. A thorns damage effect where she's covered in Bad Touch vibes.

The Shrike Coating and Mirage Cloak are a significant upgrade for her and would allow her to stand against Cat IIIs and IVs plausibly as well with confidence. Further enhancements could be things which enhance the AP qualities of the Toothed Frame and the Demolition Toxin, which is a coating that when applied to Kaiju Flesh explodes after a delay. An adaptation of the Contact Poison idea we have recently encountered made to work with explosive pastes and fluids.

Equipping her with gear like Phenom would also be prudent, though she isn't actually meant to grapple even if she'd be awesome at it. She's meant to stab things to death repeatedly.

Gear Priorities
Critical: The Toothed Frame (need development). Completion of the Raubtier Program and the Adrenal Response enhancements (need development). Shrike Coating and Mirage Cloak(Available).
High: Demolition Toxin (need development).
Medium: Better hands and stabbing feet (need development), things that get around her low Dex for sensors so she isn't blind (need development).
Low: A plasma weapon located in the mouth weapon so she can spit plasma(need development, or a minor rework of the Plasmacaster we already have).

-Basically the joke with her is that she ends up looking and fighting like the Shrike from Hyperion Cantos.
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Let's see... from the top...

What does "tsutsuji" even mean? The Japanese (I'm assuming) seems fairly gratuitous to me...

That Motivation seems rather worrisome. I'd appreciate something with fewer cannibalism implications. Maybe "Rip and tear, until it is done" would work better?

It's obviously gonna be a melee monster, if a somewhat fragile one, going by the stats.

The Archetype kind of concerns me a bit, but that's mostly in combination with the Motivation.

Its stat priorities make sense for a melee build, but the complete lack of ranged abilities is a bit of a glaring weakness, I'm sure you'll agree.

Building it as a Raubtier seems like it'll have both benefits and drawbacks. I'm not sure if Raubtiers will actually be compatible with "frames" as we have them right now, so it'd be likely to have actual mouths (with which it would actually eat its enemies) instead; we'd need to both research dental configurations for optimal combat and actually figure out how to give it mouths. On the other hand, regen and adrenal shenanigans.

Its equipment setup seems like it'll do more damage the longer it's in contact with its target. If it's got blades or mouths or whatever everywhere it'll almost certainly have some sort of passive grapple damage... Fortunately, it won't need any work if we decide to retool it into a grapple design.

The Shrike + Mirage Cloak setup, as previously stated, seems like it'll be fun to play with, and I'm glad to see others experimenting with it.

The Demolition Toxin, from what I can tell, is some sort of remotely-activated explosive gel, right? Seems like it could be nasty, especially if it detonates subdermally. Not sure if a remote trigger (likely requiring a specific action to set off) or a timed fuse (started on submersion in Kaiju Blue) would be better, though...

Grapple claws in the initial writeup means that literally no work would be needed to adapt this design into a grappler, should we go that route. Of course, if the claws turn out good enough in comparison to all the grindy, stabby bits we'd probably default to them instead, which I'm sure is not your intention.

The most likely workaround for the low Dex would be a partner to make Sensors checks for her; giving her equipment to help compensate would run into the issue of taking up space that could instead be used on more effective blender impressions.

Plasma breath seems like it's just for the cool factor, and your writeup seems to acknowledge that by making it a Low priority.

To summarize: It seems like it'll be powerful in its preferred range, but it has a few issues that I feel hold it back from its full potential.
 
Sir Plusse said:
Let's see... from the top...

What does "tsutsuji" even mean? The Japanese (I'm assuming) seems fairly gratuitous to me...

That Motivation seems rather worrisome. I'd appreciate something with fewer cannibalism implications. Maybe "Rip and tear, until it is done" would work better?

It's obviously gonna be a melee monster, if a somewhat fragile one, going by the stats.

The Archetype kind of concerns me a bit, but that's mostly in combination with the Motivation.

Its stat priorities make sense for a melee build, but the complete lack of ranged abilities is a bit of a glaring weakness, I'm sure you'll agree.

Building it as a Raubtier seems like it'll have both benefits and drawbacks. I'm not sure if Raubtiers will actually be compatible with "frames" as we have them right now, so it'd be likely to have actual mouths (with which it would actually eat its enemies) instead; we'd need to both research dental configurations for optimal combat and actually figure out how to give it mouths. On the other hand, regen and adrenal shenanigans.

Its equipment setup seems like it'll do more damage the longer it's in contact with its target. If it's got blades or mouths or whatever everywhere it'll almost certainly have some sort of passive grapple damage... Fortunately, it won't need any work if we decide to retool it into a grapple design.

The Shrike + Mirage Cloak setup, as previously stated, seems like it'll be fun to play with, and I'm glad to see others experimenting with it.

The Demolition Toxin, from what I can tell, is some sort of remotely-activated explosive gel, right? Seems like it could be nasty, especially if it detonates subdermally. Not sure if a remote trigger (likely requiring a specific action to set off) or a timed fuse (started on submersion in Kaiju Blue) would be better, though...

Grapple claws in the initial writeup means that literally no work would be needed to adapt this design into a grappler, should we go that route. Of course, if the claws turn out good enough in comparison to all the grindy, stabby bits we'd probably default to them instead, which I'm sure is not your intention.

The most likely workaround for the low Dex would be a partner to make Sensors checks for her; giving her equipment to help compensate would run into the issue of taking up space that could instead be used on more effective blender impressions.

Plasma breath seems like it's just for the cool factor, and your writeup seems to acknowledge that by making it a Low priority.

To summarize: It seems like it'll be powerful in its preferred range, but it has a few issues that I feel hold it back from its full potential.
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Tsutsuji is Japanese for Rhododendron/Azalea. There's also a pun in there because the Kanji for Rhododendron have a synonym that means "to walk forward and back > hesitant".

The Motivation and Archetype/Aesthetic are basically like that because of the Exalted things I'm pulling from. (Metagaos is not a nice eldritch god thing, even though he is my favorite out of his relatives) And Doom is great but I'm not keen in using it because of the meme weight of that motivation, and it's kinda wordy. I was thinking of using the title of the Sabaton song Resist And Bite. I'll actually go back and edit that in.

The ranged stuff is a glaring weakness yeah, which is why I had that last line about equipping her like Phenom which would mean having the arm and leg Muscular strands or Raub equivalents and his Barrier, which works well with her being Block primary. I'm hoping that for Raubtier's what can happen is that their "Frame" is the combination of their mostly metal skeletons which we grow flesh and muscle onto, and its armor. Since the Toothed Frame is basically an extension from her skeleton in some manner.

She's basically supposed to have a Bad Touch aura that makes her main form of defense, Blocking, another means of attack against melee combatants and to do more damage if she gets grappled so long as they touch her. And she sort of throws away defensive augments, mods and equipment beyond the Barrier in order to be more of a combat wombat in melee and blender through things faster than they can kill her because they kill themselves on her spiky form.

The things that mess her up would be heavily armored melee combatants and characters with point blank ranged options and explosives. Bakelite alternatives as well would be ruinous if her Barrier is down or they are deployed in melee. E: Come to think of it Bakelite effects applied in melee against Tacit would also be ruinous to Tacit since he needs those stats to stab things with.

I was conceiving of Demolition Toxin as a basically injected toxin meant to work on a time delay without input from her.

And yeah you're right the easiest work around for her low Dex would be one of the variety of high Dex Jaeger designs we have in the works, since we do always prepare and field teams of Jaegers if we can.
 
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Fyrstorm said:
Now, sorry, but can I get more of a consensus on what we want for the Revolver perk stuff? The second part, at least, since the multiattack bit's been cleared up.
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Hitting weakpoints better seems like the best option, going by the general thread and my own gut feeling. Let's go with that.
 
BungieONI said:
LostDevilJho had stuff for the other threads which is in the info post below the OP of the thread but I'm not sure if he's caught up to here.
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I am absolutely not. I think I managed to clear the first thread? but I haven't updated the story only in a while since it's time consuming and I have other priorities most of the time.
 
Sir Plusse said:
Building it as a Raubtier seems like it'll have both benefits and drawbacks. I'm not sure if Raubtiers will actually be compatible with "frames" as we have them right now, so it'd be likely to have actual mouths (with which it would actually eat its enemies) instead; we'd need to both research dental configurations for optimal combat and actually figure out how to give it mouths. On the other hand, regen and adrenal shenanigans.
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Our current Raub tech actually specifically avoids giving them an actual mouth to eat with. Of course, we always could give this one mouths, it seems like it would fit, but the general pattern for any Raubs we make is gonna be more along the lines of an LCL bath.
 
LostDeviljho said:
Our current Raub tech actually specifically avoids giving them an actual mouth to eat with. Of course, we always could give this one mouths, it seems like it would fit, but the general pattern for any Raubs we make is gonna be more along the lines of an LCL bath.
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I know, which is why my wording was "give it mouths" rather than "give it multiple mouths."
 
One last thing on the perks. Which is more acceptable; that activating the perk has a chance to fail (that is, it involves a roll), or that activating the perk requires time (albeit only about a round)?
 
Fyrstorm said:
One last thing on the perks. Which is more acceptable; that activating the perk has a chance to fail (that is, it involves a roll), or that activating the perk requires time (albeit only about a round)?
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I feel both are about equal in how much they impact our question of "How much do we want to use this, if it costs X?", but it feels like the Roll option would possibly lead to a more powerful perk.

Which is just dice god bias I'm pretty sure. On the other hand if we have those charging Guillotines on Shogun, having a perk that we can pop guaranteed while its charging is pretty powerful.

I think I like the "Takes boot up time" option for that reason.
 
Fyrstorm said:
One last thing on the perks. Which is more acceptable; that activating the perk has a chance to fail (that is, it involves a roll), or that activating the perk requires time (albeit only about a round)?
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Personally, I think I would prefer consistency here, if perhaps only to not make turns go any slower due to more rolls, but I don't actually have a strong feeling on this so I'll leave it to whatever the general thread consensus is.
 
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BungieONI said:
I feel both are about equal in how much they impact our question of "How much do we want to use this, if it costs X?", but it feels like the Roll option would possibly lead to a more powerful perk.

Which is just dice god bias I'm pretty sure. On the other hand if we have those charging Guillotines on Shogun, having a perk that we can pop guaranteed while its charging is pretty powerful.

I think I like the "Takes boot up time" option for that reason.
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I agree, I think the time one is better, since that way we know it will work, rather than have to hope it will work
 
BungieONI said:
I feel both are about equal in how much they impact our question of "How much do we want to use this, if it costs X?", but it feels like the Roll option would possibly lead to a more powerful perk.

Which is just dice god bias I'm pretty sure. On the other hand if we have those charging Guillotines on Shogun, having a perk that we can pop guaranteed while its charging is pretty powerful.

I think I like the "Takes boot up time" option for that reason.
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Fair enough, let's go with the "guaranteed, but prep time" version then.
 
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Week 50: Downtime, Part 2
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    • (Week 50: Downtime, Part 2)

    [x] Plan Wrapping Up the Turn v 1.0
    -[x] Last Normal Action in Neo Seattle: Equip Jagdhund with a replacement IE-10 in the same spot as the old one.
    -[x] Jaeger Creation:
    --[x] Rechristen Elysium Praetor as "Revolver Shogun"
    --[x] New Color Scheme: Main color: Purple. Secondary: Gold.
    --[x] Pilots: Salla Hemming (Left, Disciplined/Patient) & Theodore "Theo" Browning (Right, Experienced/Observant)
    --[x] Motivation: To Shoot Down the Sun.
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    The last thing on Neo-Seattle's list is pulling another piece of equipment out of storage-- in this case, their spare IE-10-- and using it to replace the missing one on Jagdhund's shoulder. With this, the jaeger's arsenal is fully restored.

    IE-10 Electromagnetic Projector equipped to Left Shoulder!

    Meanwhile, Everett's holding a straight-up ceremony for their new arrival. The old grey and red paint is scrubbed clean, leaving the jaeger's armour bared to the sun, before a new coat of royal purple is applied, accented by crisp golden linework and stripes. In some areas, the scheme is reversed, with larger areas of gold around the sternum and upper arms, the purple adding detail to the gleaming plates. As the new rangers of the machine start it up for the first time, the announcement is made;

    No longer is this the Blue Star's Elysium Praetor. Now, the Mark II is the Northwestern Protectorate's Revolver Shogun.

    Elysium Praetor now renamed Revolver Shogun!
    Revolver Shogun now has pilots!
    New Perks added!

    I'll probably draw up a new picture for Shogun, but in the meantime we'll just use Elysium's pic.
    Also, here's your new perks for Revolver (in addition to Gyro-Stabilizers):
    - Mark For Death (Salla)    : As a Standard Action, Revolver Shogun may Mark a single target of its choice within 30 units, analysing its defenses for key weaknesses to exploit. This Mark lasts until it is consumed, or until combat ends, whichever is sooner. When Revolver Shogun attacks a target that has been Marked For Death, it may choose to consume the Mark, treating the AV of all the target's armour as halved, before applying Resilience, until the end of its turn. Other combatants cannot benefit from consuming this Mark, a Marked target cannot be Marked For Death again until the existing Mark is consumed, and Revolver Shogun may only have a single target Marked For Death at any one time.
    - All-Out Assault (Theodore): As a Long Action, Revolver Shogun may make an attack with up to all of its Ranged Weapons against a single target within range. Revolver Shogun may decide to fire less than the maximum number of weapons it has available, but must fire at least two separate weapons systems to make an All-Out Assault. Each attack made during an All-Out Assault suffers a non-cumulative -1 penalty, and counts as an individual attack for the purpose of the target's Reactions or relevant defenses. After making an All-Out Assault, Revolver Shogun suffers a -1 penalty to any and all Reactions until the start of its next turn.

    Hopefully these perks work out, and don't have any horrible flaws in them-- besides perhaps being a bit on the wordy side, or some odd language choices. I can always modify them later, in any case.

    Kaiju will be coming shortly, I just have a few things to finish up on them first.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Fyrstorm said:
    Meanwhile, Everett's holding a straight-up ceremony for their new arrival. The old grey and red paint is scrubbed clean, leaving the jaeger's armour bared to the sun, before a new coat of royal purple is applied, accented by crisp golden linework and stripes. In some areas, the scheme is reversed, with larger areas of gold around the sternum and upper arms, the purple adding detail to the gleaming plates. As the new rangers of the machine start it up for the first time, the announcement is made;

    No longer is this the Blue Star's Elysium Praetor. Now, the Mark II is the Northwestern Protectorate's Revolver Shogun.
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    Yay!

    Fyrstorm said:
    - Mark For Death (Salla): As a Standard Action, Revolver Shogun may Mark a single target of its choice within 30 units, analysing its defenses for key weaknesses to exploit. This Mark lasts until it is consumed, or until combat ends, whichever is sooner. When Revolver Shogun attacks a target that has been Marked For Death, it may choose to consume the Mark, treating the AV of all the target's armour as halved, before applying Resilience, until the end of its turn. Other combatants cannot benefit from consuming this Mark, a Marked target cannot be Marked For Death again until the existing Mark is consumed, and Revolver Shogun may only have a single target Marked For Death at any one time.
    - All-Out Assault (Theodore): As a Long Action, Revolver Shogun may make an attack with up to all of its Ranged Weapons against a single target within range. Revolver Shogun may decide to fire less than the maximum number of weapons it has available, but must fire at least two separate weapons systems to make an All-Out Assault. Each attack made during an All-Out Assault suffers a non-cumulative -1 penalty, and counts as an individual attack for the purpose of the target's Reactions or relevant defenses. After making an All-Out Assault, Revolver Shogun suffers a -1 penalty to any and all Reactions until the start of its next turn.
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    Good lord, those have some really good synergy. To clarify a Long Action is where we sacrifice both our Move and Standard and convert them into a Long Action right, and the point of the perk is to have Revolver brace where its standing and Engage the Dakka right?

    That's what it seems like from context, but its been a long time since we've seen a Long Action.
     
    Fyrstorm said:
    Each attack made during an All-Out Assault suffers a non-cumulative -1 penalty
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    Oof. That's... Actually a pretty strong incentive to not use it, if I'm remembering past experiences with cumulative penalties right.

    Edit: wait that says non-cumulative. NVM that's really good.
     
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    LostDeviljho said:
    Oof. That's... Actually a pretty strong incentive to not use it, if I'm remembering past experiences with cumulative penalties right.
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    It's non-cumulative so the attacks all only suffer -1 penalty. So like 1d10-1, 2d10-1 etc I think. And it applies a cumulative penalty on our enemies reactions.

    E: This is some hilariously good stuff, thanks Fyr.
     
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    BungieONI said:
    Good lord, those have some really good synergy. To clarify a Long Action is where we sacrifice both our Move and Standard and convert them into a Long Action right, and the point of the perk is to have Revolver brace where its standing and Engage the Dakka right?

    That's what it seems like from context, but its been a long time since we've seen a Long Action.
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    Yep, it costs both your Move and Standard Actions to use a Long Action.

    LostDeviljho said:
    Edit: wait that says non-cumulative. NVM that's really good.
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    BungieONI said:
    It's non-cumulative so the attacks all only suffer -1 penalty. So like 1d10-1, 2d10-1 etc I think. And it applies a cumulative penalty on our enemies reactions.
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    Basically.
     
    Fyrstorm said:
    Yep, it costs both your Move and Standard Actions to use a Long Action.



    Basically.
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    The way its structured also encourages us to use our most powerful weapons last in the order of firing which is very fun if we have Mark for Death going and are using the SRSE-1 Kinetic Guillotine as the Barrier Can Opener first.
     
    Honestly, I'm a little worried that those perks might be TOO good. Like, Mark for Death halves a target's defenses against RS's attacks for one turn, while All-Out Assault makes an arbitrary number of attacks (from a Jaeger, with the appropriate levels of power and the ability to crit) on whatever unlucky sap we choose.

    In other words, I think those combine into something that could easily lead to one-turn-kills on damn near anything. This means that, if they live up to my worries, Fyr will have to either throw disproportionately-strong kaiju at us or nerf RS.
     
    Sir Plusse said:
    Honestly, I'm a little worried that those perks might be TOO good. Like, Mark for Death halves a target's defenses against RS's attacks for one turn, while All-Out Assault makes an arbitrary number of attacks (from a Jaeger, with the appropriate levels of power and the ability to crit) on whatever unlucky sap we choose.

    In other words, I think those combine into something that could easily lead to one-turn-kills on damn near anything. This means that, if they live up to my worries, Fyr will have to either throw disproportionately-strong kaiju at us or nerf RS.
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    It did occur to me that that might happen yeah. Its specifically the sequential penalties levied against the Reactions of our opponents because of the way All Out Attack is structured as a line of separate attacks, but I definitely want to give these a good and proper test run against a Cat IV so we have use cases to go off of.

    E: And I don't want to get too deep in the weeds about getting concerned about it because it is Lost's baby and its been long in coming.
     
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    BungieONI said:
    It did occur to me that that might happen yeah. Its specifically the sequential penalties levied against the Reactions of our opponents because of the way All Out Attack is structured as a line of separate attacks, but I definitely want to give these a good and proper test run against a Cat IV so we have use cases to go off of.
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    Think maybe running a simulated battle against one of our previous enemies would work well enough to test that? I can't think of any names offhand, but I expect RS vs. Blade-class would be good enough for our purposes.
     
    Sir Plusse said:
    Think maybe running a simulated battle against one of our previous enemies would work well enough to test that? I can't think of any names offhand, but I expect RS vs. Blade-class would be good enough for our purposes.
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    I can do that, although it wont be done for a few hours. I'll do it versus Viceroy, as the most recent cat 4 that is fairly normal
     
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