Remove ads

Taylor Hebert and Her Rather Sad Life [Worm/The Gamer/D&D3.5]

Reader mode
DragonParadox said:
Except if she goes into the Wards she is stuck with Pigot who has shown herself to be a bully on her first interaction for three years. I do not think she will ever have the opportunity to punch the good Director as catharsis. I can see a case for being more polite (though I do not agree with it) but not for entertaining the idea of accepting Pigot as her superior.

Incidentally one of the authority figgures that has already failed Taylor (albeit indirectly) is Pigot herself since she was ultimately responsible for SS's status as a probationary Ward who broke her probation with impunity.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I thought the vote made it clear Taylor has no intention of joining the Wards, it even mentions Piggots attitude as the factor that made up her mind.

TheEyes said:
Grammar/spelling corrections:

It's okay, though I don't like the open-ended nature of "Partial disclosure of your abilities". Maybe "Minimal disclosure of your abilities"?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Thanks, changing to "Minimal disclosure of your abilitiies" should be fine, the intention was for Taylor to give some information about her powers, plus a good reason for her conditions, just so Piggot doesn't dismiss her outright and polite discussion can resume(or start), it's intended to be a short description, preferably only mentioning powers she has already shown, nothing actually useful besides the selling point.

mrttao said:
This doesn't make any sense at all. If we are refusing to join the wards it is completely pointless to disclose our abilities
She didn't say "I am curious about your abilities" she said "why should I pay you more than I do anyone else", disclosing our abilities was in this context how we convince her to pay us more.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Sorry, the first line of the vote is what Taylor is thinking, not something she should say. Otherwise it would make the rest of the vote completely pointless, also, disclosing some of our abilities, noted as nothing we could consider important, plus something major that would justify Taylor's demands, is just so we can continue the discussion with Piggot, because I seriosly doubt she'll spare us a single minute if we don't do this, and that'll probably sour our relation with PRT, which is, if not bad, at least undesirable.
 
DragonParadox said:
Procedures could have been put in place to offer verification for more than that one PRT official of SS's behavior.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
How politician.
These are completely worthless platitudes that are entirely without substance. These exact phrase can be and have been used in many politician's speeches

The fact is that procedures were already in place.
There was an entire school worth of faculty and a PRT assigned handler.
The school (being a school) has multiple layers of procedure to ensure a lack of abuse on its own as is standard for schools.

The fact that every single member of the faculty along with the PRT handler along with every school employee along with many of the students all colluded in a grand conspiracy to hide what was going on... and even the victim herself was complicit in it by never reporting it to anyone! all of that together simply trumps any possible procedure you might have
 
Last edited:
mrttao said:
But why would we care to continue the discussion if

it just seems contradictory to me
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It's more to just finish it, because the other options are either just walking away or ignoring Piggot's "Sell me on you, Adrestria, or take you and your little bird the hell out of my office" which likely ends with Taylor being asked to leave, both are likely to screw her relationship with the PRT. That's why the the vote I'm proposing has Taylor continue the discussion, but with the intention of not joining, it's basically just posturing for the sake of maintaining the current neutral relationship with the PRT, because, even if we don't need them, burning bridges with them just feels wasteful.
 
sandmanwake said:
Wasn't some of that her own fault? Or was it just fanon that she removed Ward oversight from the Protectorate so that she'd look over them herself then failed to do it properly? I've got to admit that I've only skip read parts of canon Worm as I hear it's pretty dark and I'd rather not purposely depress myself. If it is as dark as some people say, it's pretty awesome that it can give rise to so many entertaining or even funny fanfiction stories.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I'd need to go hunt down the WoG, but I thought it was armsmaster's idea.

Ah, I had misread. It was the "oldest wards is the leader" that was atypical, and armsy's (or piggot's, it mentioned both of them) idea
 
Last edited:
sandmanwake said:
For those more familiar with DD magic, is it possible to craft something which would block master's effect and maybe Ziz's scream effect? That, as much as healing items would make her invaluable to the PRT. And maybe something which undo mental contamination. Or maybe I'm looking too far forward here. But it is a munchkin quest. Hmmm.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Ring of Mental Fortitude DMG2 p264 Requires: Forge Ring, Mind blank, CL15, 55,000 gp, 4,400 XP, 110 days. Market Price: 110,000 gp.

Cowl of Warding Magic of Faerun p156 Requires: Craft Wonderous Item, Freedom of Movement, Mind Blank, Spell Turning. Market Price: 200,800 gp.

Could make a command activated item with Mind Blank probably cheaper. Items with Protection from Good/Evil/Chaos/Order would probably provide some protection, though not nearly as complete as mind blank, but much, much cheaper and easier to make.

Cortical armor requires psionic creatures to forge and Third Eye, Conceal requires psionics so neither are likely possible.

Greater restoration (cleric only), heal (lvl 7 spell for druids ), limited wish (lvl 7 spell for wizards), miracle (cleric only), or wish (lvl 9 spell for wizards) could probably reverse Ziz's mental contamination. There may be other spells as well.
 
Are we having another fight about Piggot's complicitness in the bullying? Cause I'll tell you it doesn't exist on an institutional level. Piggot did her due dillegence. They investigated Sophia. They got character witnesses for Sophia that were compelling and well respected. Sophia did save Emma. Sophia is an athlete who put in the time on her team. She does have friends. They watched her for months, put her through therapy and monitored her private life. Sophia put in the hours and never behaved egregiously beyond the limits of what could be expected to be part of the recovery process an those got appropriate punishments. The bullying didn't get caught in the beginning because it was mean girl bullshit and Taylor wasn't raising any kind of stink any more and was just relieved that they backed off for months. Then Sophia's good behaviour got her of the defcon part of her probation. Possibly also this is when she volunteered for that Behemoth fight before the Simurgh one in Canberra. That's when the locker and the resurgence occurred. And again no one including Taylor talked about the trio. Considering the regular violence that occurs and was talked about if it did reach Piggots desk they probably asked Sophia to look into it.

She was in the clear all the up Taylor shooting herself in the foot by punching Emma. And what happened that is that everyone of the trio got suspended on hearsay, Sophia got punted off track, her act got over turned and Piggot was about to go Truffle hunting when the city went to shit and Sophia's wrong doings became immaterial in the face of Bakuda and then the E88, and Then Leviathan where she got her back broken and her id was lost, and where Armsmaster lost his marbles.
 
Larekko12 said:
Are we having another fight about Piggot's complicitness in the bullying? Cause I'll tell you it doesn't exist on an institutional level. Piggot did her due dillegence. They investigated Sophia. They got character witnesses for Sophia that were compelling and well respected. Sophia did save Emma. Sophia is an athlete who put in the time on her team. She does have friends. They watched her for months, put her through therapy and monitored her private life. Sophia put in the hours and never behaved egregiously beyond the limits of what could be expected to be part of the recovery process an those got appropriate punishments. The bullying didn't get caught in the beginning because it was mean girl bullshit and Taylor wasn't raising any kind of stink any more and was just relieved that they backed off for months. Then Sophia's good behaviour got her of the defcon part of her probation. Possibly also this is when she volunteered for that Behemoth fight before the Simurgh one in Canberra. That's when the locker and the resurgence occurred. And again no one including Taylor talked about the trio. Considering the regular violence that occurs and was talked about if it did reach Piggots desk they probably asked Sophia to look into it.

She was in the clear all the up Taylor shooting herself in the foot by punching Emma. And what happened that is that everyone of the trio got suspended on hearsay, Sophia got punted off track, her act got over turned and Piggot was about to go Truffle hunting when the city went to shit and Sophia's wrong doings became immaterial in the face of Bakuda and then the E88, and Then Leviathan where she got her back broken and her id was lost, and where Armsmaster lost his marbles.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

If all that's true, Piggot's incompetence is often way overblown in fanon and a lot of what happened to Taylor with respect to the trio could have probably been taken cared of much, much sooner if she was a bit smarter. Makes me wonder now how much Piggot's abrasiveness and bigotry is exaggerated from canon in all these stories.
 
mrttao said:
mind blank is a really high level spell, so it is better to just cast it on people instead of relying on a crafted item
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This is true - high level magical items take painfully long times to make - especially if your GM is stingy on downtime.

Of course, if you can get/make a dedicated wright(s), you can have them hammering away while you go do something else. That does require craft construct, which is generally not the best option for a feat. Nice option to consider though if feat retraining is allowed.
 
notanautomaton said:
If you cast it yourself it costs xp. If you summon a Djinn or something to cast it, or use a wand, or something, it doesn't. Probably.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Well you can't use a wand, but Planar Binding can summon an Efreet, which you can then force to grant you three wishes for no XP cost. There's other ways of doing this that are cheaper/easier/available sooner, but I can't remember them off the top of my head.
 
Dimensionist said:
Being relatively unfamiliar with D&D, what's so bad about casting Wish yourself?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
casting a wish consumes 5000XP (or a fuckton of diamonds if pathfinder)
however certain beings have wish as a spell like ability. Spell like abilities waive all the XP or money costs.

notanautomaton said:
If you summon a Djinn or something to cast it
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
TheEyes said:
Well you can't use a wand, but Planar Binding can summon an Efreet,
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Effreet are better than djinn because a regular djinn gets 1 wish a day and you need a lord for more wishes (which has too much HD to summon easily)
Effreet on the other hand has 3 wishes.
Moreover, you can mind control them to not twist your wish, and then use their wishes to summon more efreet

that is
Cast planar binding to bind an effreet
Cast dominate
Order the efreet to use its first wish to planar bind another effreet, its second wish to dominate that effreet, and its third wish to just do something for you.
Repeat until you have an arbitrary amount of wishes.


Of course the fact that the effreets can help each other and hunt you down, perhaps with local mercenaries bought with wishes (who use wishes against you) makes this a risky tactic
 
Last edited:
mrttao said:
casting a wish consumes 5000XP (or a fuckton of diamonds if pathfinder)
however certain beings have wish as a spell like ability. Spell like abilities waive all the XP or money costs.



Effreet are better than djinn because a regular djinn gets 1 wish a day and you need a lord for more wishes (which has too much HD to summon easily)
Effreet on the other hand has 3 wishes.
Moreover, you can mind control them to not twist your wish, and then use their wishes to summon more efreet

that is
Cast planar binding to bind an effreet
Cast dominate
Order the efreet to use its first wish to planar bind another effreet, its second wish to dominate that effreet, and its third wish to just do something for you.
Repeat until you have an arbitrary amount of wishes.


Of course the fact that the effreets can help each other and hunt you down, perhaps with local mercenaries bought with wishes (who use wishes against you) makes this a risky tactic
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
You could always let them go afterwards...? Say, "Hey, let's make a deal. I need some wishes, and then I'll let you go. Cool? Cool."

Maybe using them to make a number of magical items that have Wish or Resurrect would work?
 
mrttao said:
How politician.
These are completely worthless platitudes that are entirely without substance. These exact phrase can be and have been used in many politician's speeches

The fact is that procedures were already in place.
There was an entire school worth of faculty and a PRT assigned handler.
The school (being a school) has multiple layers of procedure to ensure a lack of abuse on its own as is standard for schools.

The fact that every single member of the faculty along with the PRT handler along with every school employee along with many of the students all colluded in a grand conspiracy to hide what was going on... and even the victim herself was complicit in it by never reporting it to anyone! all of that together simply trumps any possible procedure you might have
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Actually I can think of a simple solution: rotate personnel through the position of SS's handler. I sincerely doubt a second PRT agent would be willing to cover up the conspiracy when s/he could get an administrative pat on the head for uncovering it.
 
DragonParadox said:
Actually I can think of a simple solution: rotate personnel through the position of SS's handler. I sincerely doubt a second PRT agent would be willing to cover up the conspiracy when s/he could get an administrative pat on the head for uncovering it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Wasn't SS only on the Wards for a few months by the time canon started? Even if parole officers get regularly rotated, you really can't rotate them more often than every six months or so, and even that is so fast they might not be able to function at their job.
 
TheEyes said:
Wasn't SS only on the Wards for a few months by the time canon started? Even if parole officers get regularly rotated, you really can't rotate them more often than every six months or so, and even that is so fast they might not be able to function at their job.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It was almost a year not a few months. The bullying itself was going on for two/three years (date confusion in canon).
 
DragonParadox said:
It was almost a year not a few months. The bullying itself was going on for two/three years (date confusion in canon).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
My point is that even a rotating assignment usually only rotates once a year, so there wouldn't have been time to rotate in a second handler at the point canon happened. Even so, it is very unusual that the Winslow conspiracy managed to involve so many people: the handler, the principal, every teacher, without the stated or implied consent of the PRT.
 
TheEyes said:
My point is that even a rotating assignment usually only rotates once a year, so there wouldn't have been time to rotate in a second handler at the point canon happened. Even so, it is very unusual that the Winslow conspiracy managed to involve so many people: the handler, the principal, every teacher, without the stated or implied consent of the PRT.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Perhaps but its not like a situation like this would have been inconceivable. Unlike Joe the (maybe) former drug dealer, probationary Wards have a value to the PRT (the very institution her parole officer comes from) which means said parole officer will have a motive to cover for them.
 
DragonParadox said:
Actually I can think of a simple solution: rotate personnel through the position of SS's handler. I sincerely doubt a second PRT agent would be willing to cover up the conspiracy when s/he could get an administrative pat on the head for uncovering it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Rotate the handler like they do the general psych? A policy they've drawn flak for?
And beyond that. There was no covering. The Officer turned up. Everyone got suspended ( which wasn't enough for taylor but is the literal max they can do off her crappy evidence.) Sophia got kicked off the team and the inquisition was coming as soon as things calmed down. This is the entire reason Sophia was coming after Taylor on her brian hang out.
DragonParadox said:
Perhaps but its not like a situation like this would have been inconceivable. Unlike Joe the (maybe) former drug dealer, probationary Wards have a value to the PRT (the very institution her parole officer comes from) which means said parole officer will have a motive to cover for them.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Probie ward also get the benifit of a doubt when they do everything that is asked of them but be nice and Volunteer to fight and do search and rescue on the other side of a planet.

It's not like Sophia's Feint.
 
Larekko12 said:
Rotate the handler like they do the general psych? A policy they've drawn flak for?
And beyond that. There was no covering. The Officer turned up. Everyone got suspended ( which wasn't enough for taylor but is the literal max they can do off her crappy evidence.) Sophia got kicked off the team and the inquisition was coming as soon as things calmed down. This is the entire reason Sophia was coming after Taylor on her brian hang out.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The best they could do, really? There were no incriminating text messages/emails to seize and you think other kids would not have come forward if a full scale investigation had been launched after the locker and not maybe beginning over three months later?

I'm sorry but without complicity from Sopia's parole officer there is no way an investigation could have been delayed that long.

Larekko12 said:
Probie ward also get the benifit of a doubt when they do everything that is asked of them but be nice and Volunteer to fight and do search and rescue on the other side of a planet.

It's not like Sophia's Feint.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

That is the thing about parole, people on it shouldn't get the benefit of the doubt. It has already been established that they are guilty of something that should get them incarcerated. They are responsible for proving their good behavior constantly until the parole ends or they go to jail for the original deed.

Of course effectively press-ganging someone on parole is also an open invitation to conflicts of interest just like this.
 
Last edited:
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top