Remove ads

The College of Jewels (Magical Academy Quest)

Reader mode
[X] A glimpse of truth- gain the trait Witness to Genius: You gain access to all dimensional science spells you know of with a rank less than or equal to the rank of your highest ranked dimensional science spell, and treat them as though they were that rank for all purposes except casting speed. Costs for non dimensional science magic are doubled.
[X] Banish the Pact from this plane of existence. It will return, but while it is gone, the City Council's control over the hearts and minds of Diadem will be dangerously weakened.
 
No7sHere said:
The problem with the second option (the trait) is that it really cripples us in the other disciples, so its important to know how much of all the other disciplines we need to know ti graduate. If it's expected to focus heavily into one area then, the trait makes sense because it will allow us to pick up dimensional science spells incredebly fast, especially since the cost of advancements seems to grow exponentially rather than linearly.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Malaquez said:
@Wander can you confirm please? Because I want the trait, but the cost doubling for other trees...
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
If you got good enough in dimensional science, the Archmage would (begrudgingly) let you graduate even if you were deficient in other areas. He would still think Saphira was a scrub though.
 
[x] A flash of brilliance- gain +100 points in dimensional science

We need enchanting to pass the coursework, we want countermagic as part of our freindship thing, we want elementalism for survivalism sake, we need general magic points for speed/reaction casting, we haven't even seen what a proper spiritualist can do, never mind what gets taught in later years.
The trait will almost certainly be a negitive in the short term, and we need short term power to avoid being killed. The biggest positive to getting the trait would be saving up a bunch of points and then bulk spending when neccessary, but that's far too dangerous right now since not learning anything new for a while might actually lose us our scholarship.

[X] Kill Morgan Blackreach.
This is the one that actually affects us in any real sense via Henry. AFAIKR he is next in line but he might have more brothers? either way this is going to effect him, and thus us, drastically.
 
[X] A flash of brilliance- gain +100 points in dimensional science
This is both better in the short-term and the long-term - the trait is only better in the medium-term, when we have the points to buy a big DS spell but not enough to start branching out into other disciplines.
[X] Kill Morgan Blackreach.
 
[X] A flash of brilliance- gain +100 points in dimensional science
[X] Kill Morgan Blackreach.
 
[X] A flash of brilliance- gain +100 points in dimensional science
[X] Banish the Pact from this plane of existence. It will return, but while it is gone, the City Council's control over the hearts and minds of Diadem will be dangerously weakened.
 
Hm. Basically all the Counsil members or even associates, excluding the Archmage and... Diana? Was it something we did that allowed her to protect herself?

The assumption that killing any Counsil member is 'safe' just because we don't know what exact function they serve is... curious. Why would The Word Anew even have them on a target list if removing them didn't plunge everything into chaos? And why are we even making the choice with these considerations in mind? Wouldn't the enemy strive to maximize their impact?

I think that whatever we choose would decide the vector of the first strike. Damn, Diana would be such a great target... with no money the city simply grinds to a halt. But I suppose giving Wrath a bit of a leeway by lifting the restrictions on thoughtcrime could be entertaining as well...

I have less of an opinion when it comes to Dimensional Science. The opinion of the Archmage is probably the last thing to consider, but the versatility is something that I'd miss. Still, I'd like to have some uniqueness to our build.

[X] A glimpse of truth- gain the trait Witness to Genius: You gain access to all dimensional science spells you know of with a rank less than or equal to the rank of your highest ranked dimensional science spell, and treat them as though they were that rank for all purposes except casting speed. Costs for non dimensional science magic are doubled.
[X] Banish the Pact from this plane of existence. It will return, but while it is gone, the City Council's control over the hearts and minds of Diadem will be dangerously weakened.
 
Last edited:
Nevill said:
Why would The Word Anew even have them on a target list if removing them didn't plunge everything into chaos? And why are we even making the choice with these considerations in mind? Wouldn't the enemy strive to maximize their impact?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The trouble with decisions made by committee is that everyone thinks that their idea is best. I will say that the logic for the first list of potential targets is (broadly) 'most important figures with no chance of evading or defeating The World Anew.' Draw whatever conclusions from that that you like.
 
[X] A flash of brilliance- gain +100 points in dimensional science
[X] Banish the Pact from this plane of existence. It will return, but while it is gone, the City Council's control over the hearts and minds of Diadem will be dangerously weakened.
 
Holy. Shit.

[X] A glimpse of truth- gain the trait Witness to Genius: You gain access to all dimensional science spells you know of with a rank less than or equal to the rank of your highest ranked dimensional science spell, and treat them as though they were that rank for all purposes except casting speed. Costs for non dimensional science magic are doubled.
[X] Banish the Pact from this plane of existence. It will return, but while it is gone, the City Council's control over the hearts and minds of Diadem will be dangerously weakened.
 
[X] A flash of brilliance- gain +100 points in dimensional science
[X] Kill Morgan Blackreach.
 
[X] A flash of brilliance- gain +100 points in dimensional science
[X] Banish the Pact from this plane of existence. It will return, but while it is gone, the City Council's control over the hearts and minds of Diadem will be dangerously weakened.
 
[X] A flash of brilliance- gain +100 points in dimensional science
[X] Banish the Pact from this plane of existence. It will return, but while it is gone, the City Council's control over the hearts and minds of Diadem will be dangerously weakened.

Let's start a riot, a riot, let's start a riot!
 
I just recalled a tibit that @Wander has mentioned previously:
Wander said:
The Truth that lies Between (N/A) You may invest points directly in Dimensional Science rather than buying spells. You may cast all Dimensional Science spells with a rating less than your total investment in Dimensional Science, and treat their rating as your Dimensional Science rating.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
So, this is what the TA has - and it it looks like our "glimpse" of truth is touching on the same thing that the TA has figured out already.


The Glimpse is interesting. I like it's compounding nature, and a really like the way it incentives us to go out and learn more types of DS spells (assuming the exist) - since with the trait, we only need to drill into the DS tree for depth whereas breadth will be provided to us in totality for free.

As far as breadth goes, right now, we can make portals to Somewhere, and can buy upgrades to:
  1. The size of the portal
  2. The range of places we can create as the "other side" of portals
  3. The control we can exert on the "other side" after we create them (NOTE: purchase of Planar Control 2 not currently available, though it probably exists judging by Planar Control 1)
We can also buy the ability to teleport stuff to our Somewheres directly without a portal.
And we can buy the ability to make portals to Elemental Planes instead of Somewheres.

So in total, we've got 5 branches so far. This means that our investments in DS will make our investments right now scale faster by a faster of five, though it might go higher if we pick up branches, or might go lower as branches close or go in directions that we think are less valuable than the written cost. Anyway, if we stick with the 5x number getting +25 points in DS would effectively net us +125 points in DS, so that is roughly the break-even point at which this matches the immediate bonus of 100 points we would get with the other vote option. We currently have 8 points in DS right now, is it would take another 17 - and I think we gain about 2-3 points per day, so that means it'll take about a week.

But what about the elephant in the room - the doubled difficulty for everything else? Well, that one is tricky, but we can at least approximate the impact somewhat. So far, we've invested 25 points into DS, and a combined 24 points in everything else. If we want to keep that 1-1 balance, then to effectively get another 50 points in DS and 50 in everything else, we would need to invest 10 into DS (since we get a roughly 5x multiplier) and 100 in everything else. That's not really an improvement - we went from spending 100 points total to spending 110. However, we don't actually need to stick to the exact same distribution, here. If we continue spending points at the same rate as we did before (rather than buying the same quantity of results), then spending 50 in DS and 50 in everything else would give us an effective 250 in DS and 25 in general, which means that we get close-to-triple what we got previously, in terms of effectiveness.

So... I think this can definitely be worth it. Possibly. @Wander - a question. I imagine that IC, there exist DS spells that we've read about but which we aren't sufficiently familiar with to actually learn. Could you mention what some of those might be? Other than just making our portals better as covered by our current available upgrades, what can DS do for us?
 
The math has convinced me.

[X] A glimpse of truth- gain the trait Witness to Genius: You gain access to all dimensional science spells you know of with a rank less than or equal to the rank of your highest ranked dimensional science spell, and treat them as though they were that rank for all purposes except casting speed. Costs for non dimensional science magic are doubled.
[X] Banish the Pact from this plane of existence. It will return, but while it is gone, the City Council's control over the hearts and minds of Diadem will be dangerously weakened.
 
Last edited:
[X] A glimpse of truth- gain the trait Witness to Genius: You gain access to all dimensional science spells you know of with a rank less than or equal to the rank of your highest ranked dimensional science spell, and treat them as though they were that rank for all purposes except casting speed. Costs for non dimensional science magic are doubled.
[X] Banish the Pact from this plane of existence. It will return, but while it is gone, the City Council's control over the hearts and minds of Diadem will be dangerously weakened.
 
Wander said:
Well, he wouldn't necessarily. I mean, he could if he looked at Saphira and squinted a bit, but I'm just commenting on what his general opinion would be of it.

The archmage is a real build elitist.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
So it's an actual magical effect? I thought it was just Saphira suddenly understanding it better or something.
 
PrimalShadow said:
I just recalled a tibit that @Wander has mentioned previously:

So, this is what the TA has - and it it looks like our "glimpse" of truth is touching on the same thing that the TA has figured out already.


The Glimpse is interesting. I like it's compounding nature, and a really like the way it incentives us to go out and learn more types of DS spells (assuming the exist) - since with the trait, we only need to drill into the DS tree for depth whereas breadth will be provided to us in totality for free.

As far as breadth goes, right now, we can make portals to Somewhere, and can buy upgrades to:
  1. The size of the portal
  2. The range of places we can create as the "other side" of portals
  3. The control we can exert on the "other side" after we create them (NOTE: purchase of Planar Control 2 not currently available, though it probably exists judging by Planar Control 1)
We can also buy the ability to teleport stuff to our Somewheres directly without a portal.
And we can buy the ability to make portals to Elemental Planes instead of Somewheres.

So in total, we've got 5 branches so far. This means that our investments in DS will make our investments right now scale faster by a faster of five, though it might go higher if we pick up branches, or might go lower as branches close or go in directions that we think are less valuable than the written cost. Anyway, if we stick with the 5x number getting +25 points in DS would effectively net us +125 points in DS, so that is roughly the break-even point at which this matches the immediate bonus of 100 points we would get with the other vote option. We currently have 8 points in DS right now, is it would take another 17 - and I think we gain about 2-3 points per day, so that means it'll take about a week.

But what about the elephant in the room - the doubled difficulty for everything else? Well, that one is tricky, but we can at least approximate the impact somewhat. So far, we've invested 25 points into DS, and a combined 24 points in everything else. If we want to keep that 1-1 balance, then to effectively get another 50 points in DS and 50 in everything else, we would need to invest 10 into DS (since we get a roughly 5x multiplier) and 100 in everything else. That's not really an improvement - we went from spending 100 points total to spending 110. However, we don't actually need to stick to the exact same distribution, here. If we continue spending points at the same rate as we did before (rather than buying the same quantity of results), then spending 50 in DS and 50 in everything else would give us an effective 250 in DS and 25 in general, which means that we get close-to-triple what we got previously, in terms of effectiveness.

So... I think this can definitely be worth it. Possibly. @Wander - a question. I imagine that IC, there exist DS spells that we've read about but which we aren't sufficiently familiar with to actually learn. Could you mention what some of those might be? Other than just making our portals better as covered by our current available upgrades, what can DS do for us?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Thank you for this in-depth analysis. Also I just realized that DS can be used to achieve the same effects as both elementalism and spirits. We just have to make shaped stable elemental protals and protals to the spirit realms.

Other possible effects might be being able to make time clones or summon yourself from other realities.
 
Last edited:
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top