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Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)

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Actually, @yrsillar: a question about how Domain development is supposed to work.

Right now we have 5 slots, soon to be 7. We'll probably have 9 somewhere in Foundation. Are we supposed to fill all those slots with different arts? Or is it supposed to work more like we set up a base with say ~3/4 different arts and then start building on their insights and upgrading them. Maybe by doing things like slotting conceptually related arts over top e.g. maybe we slot IMH and Harmony over TRF in order to further develop that insight or something?

Are you looking at expanding on domain stuff more soon? Or do we not really have to worry about slotting too low level arts? We should be mastering FVM/FSS next turn, probably SCS and maybe CDE after that... to say nothing of the questions around new arts.
 
yrsillar said:
Imperturbable Manor's Hearth
It has long been tradition for certain households in the Emerald Seas to keep shrines to the moon of mothers near the hearth of their households. This art seeks to replicate the Great Spirits protection, warding off malignant influences upon the users spirit, just as the sacred hearth protects the well kept home.

Potency: Green 1
Potency Growth: Green 2(3), Green 3(5)
Max Level: 5
Needed Meridians: Heartx1, Spinex1(1), Spine(3), Heart(4), Spine(5)
Keywords: Composure, Fire, Hearth, Moon, Resilience, Resolve, Wood, Yang
Experience: 100, 150, 250, 350, 500

Passive
+10 to Spiritual Armor
+5 to Spiritual Avoid
+5 to Spiritual Armor of allies in Close range

Cold Evening's Comfort: D
Duration: Long
The user fills their meridians with vitality and warmth, bolstering their spirit against intrusion. Enhances spiritual armor for the user and all allies at Close range.

Malignance Cleansing Hearth: C
Burning their qi in a bright display, the user bolsters both spiritual avoid and armor. In addition, using this technique activates a dispel clash against the lowest ranked debuff affected the user or allies in close range with a significant bonus
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Imperturbable Manor's Hearth
-Elements: Fire, Moon, Wood
-Meridians: Heart primary, Spine secondary
-Keywords: Composure, Hearth, Resilience, Resolve, Yang

The keywords and elements says it all. This is Zhengui The Art!
Fire's purification with Wood's Vitality, its the hearth fire which sustains life. It strengthens yourself with Spine so you can strengthen others with Heart.
It also covers all three Defense skills, Composure for Social, Resilience for Physical and Resolve for Mental.

-Combat utility: Spiritual Defense, Debuff Counter

This is basically the art we'd use to counter...ourselves. Its really nasty against debuff builds and spiritual attack builds. Great sideboard.

-Playstyle utility: Nothing significant yet

Coincidentally the Passive also makes it easier for our other friends to withstand Meizhen's presence.

-Domain slot message: "Come on in, the fire is warm","Home is where you are safe", "The Moon Protects"

Its about being safe and warm in the home from the terrors of the night, though from the range of the Art its meant to protect the HOME, not a large territory.
It'd give us the warmth, comfort and life of a home to our Domain.

Well, I'm personally sold the moment I set my eyes on it!
It is what Ling Qi wants in a home after all.
Safety.
 
Erebeal said:
Actually, @yrsillar: a question about how Domain development is supposed to work.

Right now we have 5 slots, soon to be 7. We'll probably have 9 somewhere in Foundation. Are we supposed to fill all those slots with different arts? Or is it supposed to work more like we set up a base with say ~3/4 different arts and then start building on their insights and upgrading them. Maybe by doing things like slotting conceptually related arts over top e.g. maybe we slot IMH and Harmony over TRF in order to further develop that insight or something?

Are you looking at expanding on domain stuff more soon? Or do we not really have to worry about slotting too low level arts? We should be mastering FVM/FSS next turn, probably SCS and maybe CDE after that... to say nothing of the questions around new arts.
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We know a couple of tidbits which should remain true for Green at least:
-There are advanced insights. We don't know how to get there, but they don't sound like they cost more slots.
-Art power level don't matter for domain slots, its more of the core message being integrated.
-We're building an internal cosmology over the course of Green based on the names on the levels of Green, it'd probably be composited from the parts.
 
I kinda want to go ENM, MNO, and DLS.

Should handle our stealth and defensive needs, I think?

Also, never really cared for AFL, but I know a lot of people adore it because "whimsy". Suppose we'll see how things go, there are a lot of arts to choose from now.
 
So, some thoughts on the new arts.

Mysterious Night's Obscurities
This looks like a cool art that will assist in dispel resist and stealth, both things that we could improve upon. Specifically, it provides stealth for an area that we haven't really explored yet, the spiritual senses. With SCS our capabilities to avoid the physical senses are phenomenal, but adding this will assist us in avoiding stuff like qi sensing and the more esoteric means of detection. Not sure how any domain insight we could gain from this will interact with the AM insight we have, but given that we aren't lying to ourselves, merely hiding and obscuring ourselves from others, it should play nicely.

Imperturbable Manor's Hearth
A nice wood, fire, moon art that deals with protection of the self and allies from spiritual harm. A very nice theme to go with the home domain we are still exploring and building, but I don't find it particularly exciting. It increases spiritual armor and spiritual avoid and does a debuff dispel, and does this for all of our allies, but we have Sixiang for debuff dispells and Zhengui, so I'm not entirely sure how valuable the dispel aspect is for us. Other than that it is a nice simple art that gets bonuses from our spirits, EPC, and our sites. Overall, pretty nice, but not really exciting for me.

Evanescent Anthem of the Nights Parade
A summon art! That summons horrors which can take a hit for us/buff our music or impart a debuff. These things are a bit... longer lasting than what their stats imply given that the first tech summons two of the creatures and the second summon can split into two. The automatic debuff from the second creature is nice, but it is unlikely to land more of the debuff since it is only in yellow. Despite its drawbacks, this art oozes flavor. A gathering of spirits that wish to celebrate or wage war depending on the circumstances and their fickle nature. The Fear keyword is well deserved here as this art really delves deep into primordial nightmares that exist in the night. Creatures that fall just outside the scope of understanding that wage war seemingly at random. Unfortunately, we don't really intend to create fear, it's more of a side effect of our style. And while the art is flavorful, I just don't think that it is the summon art that we want.

Storm Enduring Seedling
This looks like a fine art, and I feel that it is slightly poetic of Ling Qi's beginnings. Struggling to survive in the face of adversity, both the sapling and Ling Qi have survived and thrived in the environment until one day both were a force to be reckoned with. However, poetic symbolism of Ling Qi's journey does not mean that it really fits Ling Qi all that well. As mentioned before, SES has very strong ties with TRF and TRF is an art that Ling Qi has complicated feelings about. While I could go on and on and have a raging debate about the validity of this art and how to fit it into our style, Ling Qi doesn't like the immobile message that TRF and SES seem to play with. And quite frankly, I would rather follow Ling Qi's character hints than try and warp it at the moment. We are at the point where we can choose to be a bit choosy and picky regarding our arts. We have the Cai arts coming up in a couple of months, and the next few months will be packed... so I guess wait and see is my approach to this art.

Darting Labyrinth Shadow
I really like this art. It has potent spiritual defense techs which synergize with SCS's lessons of not being bound by a physical form. Combining this art and SCS makes me think that we can just disperse our body and reform it somewhere else. I mean... SCS will already allow us to do that with it's capstone technique, but this art may allow us deeper insight into the skills needed to do it cheaper, quicker, and surer. Also, it's from the grinning moon, and I like the thematics. However... it doesn't have the moon tag line which may just be a mistake, but if not is a bit of a bummer. All in all, a solid spiritual defense art.

My two favorites from these are DLS and MNO, with a close third being the IMH (only for the themes though...). Getting these two would require 4 spine meridians initially, and by unequipping AM and AS we would seem to have 4 spine meridians open.
 
Asael said:
Also, never really cared for AFL, but I know a lot of people adore it because "whimsy".
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Whimsy's a part of it, but there's also it capitalizing on a niche talent of ours (flight), being confirmed as more powerful than its level due to requiring flight (which means it's all but custom-tailored for us), and being relatively cheap to get even though we don't have strong modifiers for it.

It doesn't blow other arts out of the water or anything, but I think it's got enough going for it mechanically to be worth picking up and I do, admittedly, like the thematics of it too.
 
Inferno Vulpix said:
Whimsy's a part of it, but there's also it capitalizing on a niche talent of ours (flight), being confirmed as more powerful than its level due to requiring flight (which means it's all but custom-tailored for us), and being relatively cheap to get even though we don't have strong modifiers for it.

It doesn't blow other arts out of the water or anything, but I think it's got enough going for it mechanically to be worth picking up and I do, admittedly, like the thematics of it too.
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The thing is? probably shouldn't assume there aren't third realm counters to flight.

We live in a region at near perpetual war with flying nomads.

And frankly, all of this was gone over to death when AFL was introduced. It's really not that great.
 
For now I want HotDW, MNO, IMH. (Perception, stealth, resist, spiritual defense) Also master Cde.
Imo for summons we should look for something with more dps.
 
I would also bring up though the fact that right now our "support" arts are TRF, FZ, and (weakly) AC.

We're going to be dropping FZ and AC soon, which will leave us with only TRF.

Our only support arts in our current options are Harmony and IMH. I kinda feel like slotting TRF/HDW/IMH + our baseline would actually be a great domain combo there that would particular focus on the social support elements for those who want to focus on that.

Add PLR later on perhaps and you have a nice musical party.
 
Erebeal said:
I would also bring up though the fact that right now our "support" arts are TRF, FZ, and (weakly) AC.

We're going to be dropping FZ and AC soon, which will leave us with only TRF.

Our only support arts in our current options are Harmony and IMH. I kinda feel like slotting TRF/HDW/IMH + our baseline would actually be a great domain combo there that would particular focus on the social support elements for those who want to focus on that.

Add PLR later on perhaps and you have a nice musical party.
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Hrm, a plan of 4ap EPC, 4 Spirit and 3-4 Phys(depending of what it would take to get phys 2), plus 4ap of any combo of PLR/IMH/HDW leaving 4 for jobs/duties? I can work out a plan for that!
 
So before I start really digging my teeth into these arts what spiritual cultivation are we at? The character sheet states we are at early green (8) and early bronze (7) Is this a simple update error or is there something bigger that I am missing?
 
tryrar said:
Hrm, a plan of 4ap EPC, 4 Spirit and 3-4 Phys(depending of what it would take to get phys 2), plus 4ap of any combo of PLR/IMH/HDW leaving 4 for jobs/duties? I can work out a plan for that!
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4 physical cultivation actions and 9 arts actions to get appraisal bronze with 97~ percent certainty, not including overflow (if it still exists).
 
On the subject of how super awesome MNO is, people haven't really talked about its other tech: Shadowed, Secret and Safe.

This tech has *all* the synergy. Apart from being the only long Resist buff, it also penalises perception against us. The synergy with FVM and PLR is obvious: increased effectiveness of their perception filters, and would also further assist us in actually using the stealth environments they create if we ever want to use stealth in combat.

This is pretty damn awesome.

Combined with False Truths being a fantastic way to counter attempts to shut down our fields, and you have an art that is pretty much ideal for reinforcing FVM and PLR.
 
So right now a couple of thoughts
1.) Frozen Soul Serenade looks to be becoming a problem child pretty soon because of it's fourth song Echoes of Absolute Winter I have quoted and bolded the problem below.

A technique used in tandem with Aria of Springs End, if activated at the same time, the Aria carries an echo of true winter, stilling the very air around the singer with its freezing chill. Attacks targeting the user, or which have an area of effect overlapping with Aria's have their penetration reduced by one rank as the cold devours the energy of the technique or attack. Similarly, Cold or Dark techniques used by the singer against those in range of Aria have their Hit or Penetration enhanced by one rank, as chosen by the user. In addition, Fire, Light, and similar arts are reduced in effectiveness within range, regardless of source.
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For that reason I am leery of picking up Imperturbable Manor's Hearth since it is a fire art. Though in truth we may have to resolve never to use Echoes of Absolute Winter around our liege if at all possible. The huge problem that echoes is showing us is that it wants us to go more cold and dark arts to increase that combo while it tries to hamstring Cai. Not a great combo. We may want to pick up Imperturbable Manor's Hearth just to help us move away from this and be more supportive of the arts we know we will be around a lot. Something to talk about and discuss in the future though.

2.) Darting Labyrinth Shadow and Thousand Rings Fortress work so well together I am near speechless. Thousand Rings Fortress at the last ring grants a K.O. shield and Darting Labyrinth Shadow's 1st rank mitigates damage "significantly." These two working together would make us almost impossible to burst down like Ji Rong tried to do. The overkill amount would need to be extreme and if we feel in danger of a rush down we just pop Thousand rings Unbreaking to buy us even more time. These two working together will buy us a great deal of time which is exactly what we need for our build.

3.)There is some very nice leveling going on with the arts. From what I can tell all of our primary arts end at green or bronze 2. Almost all of these arts end at green 3. This is great as it will allows us to continue to expand our domain while getting into green 3. It works out very nicely which I think is intended.

4.) Both Darting Labyrinth Shadow and Mysterious Night's Obscurity penalizes any non-physical means of sensing us. While the wording is a little different in each of the arts they seem to serve the same purpose. I am a huge supporter of building up part of our strategy with a "this tall to fight" like Meizhen has done. So I would really like to get these to combo off of FVM's mist of the vale which also harms perception when trying to advance towards us. This seems to fit very nicely with that and allows us to be build towards being nearly untouchable to those that haven't specked enough points into perception.

5.) Harmony of the Dancing Wind and Imperturbable Manor's Hearth would make trickery at any social event doomed from the start. Both buff spiritual armor of our allies and spiritual attacks are likely the very first thing to be thrown about at a party about to turn sour.

6.)Storm Enduring Seedling seems great for a wood build that is lacking in spiritual armor. That is not us though a lot of the arts that look really attractive also have spiritual armor attached to them. I just think that there are better choices right now. It looks to do what it wants to do really well but we have a lot of arts who secondary aspects happen to do that job. I just don't think we need it.

7.)Evanescent Anthem of the Nights Parade seems to work better the more musicians playing with the owner. If Ma Jun ever gets into the inner sect, there is no way in hell she is getting in next year, we might start a band and this becomes super potent. Honestly it's an art I would like to get for a musician clan. I started to be super hyped for this but the more I read this less appealing it is to me. We need to summon the spirits and then the spirits need to survive. They also just don't seem to do much. The pipers boost our music and can take a hit for us but they don't really accelerate our game plan or slow the enemy down. The drummers decrease the enemies avoid and hit chance but we are a rolling ball of death. Hitting the enemy has never been a problem for us. As for decreasing the enemy hit chance the enemy has to see us first to hit us. The more I think about it the more I feel like there are better arts here and the opportunity cost may be just too high. I would love to work on this art later if we get a whole cadre of musicians with us so that the piper boost a ton of arts right off the bat but for now I would be content to let this one sit.

8.) In conclusion Darting Labyrinth Shadow and Mysterious Night's Obscurity look to be the best picks right now for me. They fill a key weakness of our build (dispels before Travelers end is up) and aid in our stealth game by being proactive and limiting the ability to sense us. This will help in a lot of the missions we will want to take which will give us more exp. They also seem to combo well with other arts we already possess (FVM and TRF) and allow us to play that attrition game we so want to play.
 
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SITB said:
You lose the spiritual cultivation rolls that way though, and 2 floating actions.

Like, why bother? The disciple pill is useful to push Ling Qi over the edge, not for action efficiency.
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It's useful for both, and with music + phys pill, we get 0.5AP of spiritual per AP of music and 0.25 of Phys per AP, so a music art effectively gives 0.75AP of base in addition to cultivating itself. It's just better to increase art cultivation to the max next turn even when it comes to base cultivation.
 
Arkeus said:
It's useful for both, and with music + phys pill, we get 0.5AP of spiritual per AP of music and 0.25 of Phys per AP, so a music art effectively gives 0.75AP of base in addition to cultivating itself. It's just better to increase art cultivation to the max next turn even when it comes to base cultivation.
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Instead of the music pill what about the stellar body pill? Could we do even more art actions since so many of our arts are yin? It doesn't add any more dice to the music arts but if we don't need those 80 dice to get our music to the next level could be able to sneak in another art Ap instead of a physical ap and really just hammer those arts?
 
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