Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)
- Thread starter yrsillar
- Start date
- Original Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
[X] Li Suyin: The proper paperwork is done. You can do the expedition any time. Who knows what you might find, deep below the earth.
We promised in story, whereas Xuan Shi hasn't asked yet. Plus getting any Suyin action through is always a massive slog so I'll take anything I can.
We desperately need more social actions though.
We promised in story, whereas Xuan Shi hasn't asked yet. Plus getting any Suyin action through is always a massive slog so I'll take anything I can.
We desperately need more social actions though.
We don't really.
The problem is building up too many obligations or narratively required things.
In this case, we've got Suyin already set up back in Month 1. We've got the stuff with our Mother set up back then as well. We also have instructions to be getting closer to Xuan Shi, and don't see him normally, so while we can put him off somewhat I wouldn't want to delay that past Month 5 at the latest. Last month meant that Sixiang really had to be done now, because it would make no narrative sense to delay, so yrsillar is just making that happen this month anyway.
Then we'll have Zeqing later which is *kinda* our fault for doing all our music now and making her the most logical option.
If we just, say, had a choice of "random Xiulan adventure", "random Suyin adventure", "random Meizhen fun" then it wouldn't really matter which one we picked, and we wouldn't have any obligations or pressure. Go and have us promise to do one of them already, or set them up, or set one of them on fire and then suddenly the choice calculus changes. Set all of them up in advance and then keep adding more options and you can end up with a situation where we've got three options all of which have been set up by the story to be done *now* - and that gets problematic.
Basically, to avoid this kind of build up these kinds of things need to be managed carefully. This isn't to say that us failing to meet obligations as well as we might want to is always bad - look at our decision to run away from dealing with awkward mom and servant stuff and focus on our friends, which is a perfectly reasonable character decision - but those kinds of choices should be set up deliberately I feel.
Afterall, the problem here isn't really so much that Ling Qi doesn't have time to meet all her obligations. Heck, if we feel sufficient social options are time-sensitive we're happy to sacrifice a bit of cultivation time. It's really more about managing yrsillar's load and the narrative pacing. In that sense, avoiding a build up of obligations and events is important.
Ideally I would actually suggest that most of the time we'd have no more than one social action in a month and no pressure to spend more. Also ideally we'd do stuff with multiple people. That recent intel meeting tea with Xiulan and Suyin was great there.
Xicree
Murder.Malice.Might
No it isn't. If you didn't want all the choices it wouldn't be that much of a choice!
I kinda wish that Yrsillar did ranking votes for social actions, not what we have now. So I could vote [1] Li Suyin, [2] Xuan Shi, [3] Zhiqing, [4] Ling Qinggee. Then everyone's rankings are averaged and the top three are done in that order. Or something similar.It would stifle the paranoia of "if we don't vote for it now it will never be voted on".
I kinda wish that Yrsillar did ranking votes for social actions, not what we have now. So I could vote [1] Li Suyin, [2] Xuan Shi, [3] Zhiqing, [4] Ling Qinggee. Then everyone's rankings are averaged and the top three are done in that order. Or something similar.It would stifle the paranoia of "if we don't vote for it now it will never be voted on".
- Location
- scrabbling
[X] Xuan Shi: For once, the odd boy has called in your offered favor. He wishes for your aid in penetrating the interior of an odd little temple full of traps and puzzles.
As close to one on one as possible
As close to one on one as possible
- Location
- UK
[X] Li Suyin: The proper paperwork is done. You can do the expedition any time. Who knows what you might find, deep below the earth.
- Location
- The Core
[X] Li Suyin: The proper paperwork is done. You can do the expedition any time. Who knows what you might find, deep below the earth.
This seems to be the most pressing, given narrative context, and something we should be able to do quite well at our current power level. Easily the optimal choice here.
This seems to be the most pressing, given narrative context, and something we should be able to do quite well at our current power level. Easily the optimal choice here.
- Location
- United States
I was originally thinking of voting for the Qingge option, but the arguments for Li Suyin have won me over. Lets do some spelunking.
[X] Li Suyin: The proper paperwork is done. You can do the expedition any time. Who knows what you might find, deep below the earth.
[X] Li Suyin: The proper paperwork is done. You can do the expedition any time. Who knows what you might find, deep below the earth.
So, for an interesting look at things, I present PassiveScore! A comparison of the strength of the passives of our different arts by weighting them according to their (approximate) value. General rule of thumb is that your basic + speed, + offense, + defense bonuses are x1. Conditionals like "low-light" or "vs. poison" are x0.5. Auras are x2. +Stat/skill is x0.1.
Soooooo.... yeah. Certainly Arts shouldn't be equal in passives... but SCS is perhaps a bit too overwhelming here, especially given it also has amazing techs and both passives and techs are jumping massively next level as well. FVM and PLR are just incredibly bad given they're high quality green arts with multiple levels that are somehow weaker than literally everything else - including CDE (despite it wasting two of its passives on +skill bonuses).
Just spitballing things as illustration, FVM with passives more in line with its level might be something like:
Or PLR:
Soooooo.... yeah. Certainly Arts shouldn't be equal in passives... but SCS is perhaps a bit too overwhelming here, especially given it also has amazing techs and both passives and techs are jumping massively next level as well. FVM and PLR are just incredibly bad given they're high quality green arts with multiple levels that are somehow weaker than literally everything else - including CDE (despite it wasting two of its passives on +skill bonuses).
Just spitballing things as illustration, FVM with passives more in line with its level might be something like:
+15 bonus Resist on water and darkness techniques
+10 bonus Spiritual Armor
+10 Combat Perception in low light/darkness
Debuffs on user are reduced in effectiveness
[permanent] E rank Qi expenditure may prevent interruption of any melody
[permanent] Darkvision
+10 bonus Spiritual Armor
+10 Combat Perception in low light/darkness
Debuffs on user are reduced in effectiveness
[permanent] E rank Qi expenditure may prevent interruption of any melody
[permanent] Darkvision
Or PLR:
+ 5 to Speed
+ 10 to Physical Avoid
+ 5 to Spiritual Avoid
+ 5 to Hit of Dance Arts
- Escaping grapples or confinement is easier
- You are more graceful and cool and people are like "wow you're so graceful" (cosmetic)
+ 10 to Physical Avoid
+ 5 to Spiritual Avoid
+ 5 to Hit of Dance Arts
- Escaping grapples or confinement is easier
- You are more graceful and cool and people are like "wow you're so graceful" (cosmetic)
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Black Noise
Curious
- Location
- About 1AU from Sol
Score multiplier for conditionals should scale with how likely they are to apply, both in general and to us specifically (general to determine the "cost", us to determine how good of a deal we're getting).
As for SCS's 'first strike' specifically, it applies once per scene, only if initiative is won and for a single attack that has to be the opening move. It can matter a lot but it needs to be built around. To get it's multiplier I'd ask what value of +hit or +pen one would call a "fair trade" if the new bonus is under some a multiple-use condition like low-light or vs.unaware.
Also worth noting that some of the passives we etched onto the Art as a result of experience that didn't come from attaining a new level; Heizui subjugation gave us +Resist on FVM and TRF end-of-tournament insight gave us non-tech (limited) semiperfect qi block.
Mmm, yeah, that's fair. First strike should arguably be weighted low.
There are other things that get a bit awkward too. AC, for example, appears to be fairly decent overall for a late yellow art - but this is because it's full of "good" auras. The actual numbers on those individual auras though are pretty bad. +2 hit doesn't really add anything. Outside of the + multiattacker bonus, AC's passives are really only useful if you stack them in a squad, so that everyone has, say, +10 hit, +10 damage, +10-40 hit/pen (multi-attacker). If it's just us providing support, however, the auras are pretty meh.
- Location
- Earth
[X] Li Suyin: The proper paperwork is done. You can do the expedition any time. Who knows what you might find, deep below the earth.
- Location
- Computer Desk
[X] Li Suyin: The proper paperwork is done. You can do the expedition any time. Who knows what you might find, deep below the earth.
Arkeus
Crazy cat guy
- Location
- France
So, for an interesting look at things, I present PassiveScore! A comparison of the strength of the passives of our different arts by weighting them according to their (approximate) value. General rule of thumb is that your basic + speed, + offense, + defense bonuses are x1. Conditionals like "low-light" or "vs. poison" are x0.5. Auras are x2. +Stat/skill is x0.1.
Soooooo.... yeah. Certainly Arts shouldn't be equal in passives... but SCS is perhaps a bit too overwhelming here, especially given it also has amazing techs and both passives and techs are jumping massively next level as well. FVM and PLR are just incredibly bad given they're high quality green arts with multiple levels that are somehow weaker than literally everything else - including CDE (despite it wasting two of its passives on +skill bonuses).
Just spitballing things as illustration, FVM with passives more in line with its level might be something like:
+15 bonus Resist on water and darkness techniques
+10 bonus Spiritual Armor
+10 Combat Perception in low light/darkness
Debuffs on user are reduced in effectiveness
[permanent] E rank Qi expenditure may prevent interruption of any melody
[permanent] Darkvision
Or PLR:
+ 5 to Speed
+ 10 to Physical Avoid
+ 5 to Spiritual Avoid
+ 5 to Hit of Dance Arts
- Escaping grapples or confinement is easier
- You are more graceful and cool and people are like "wow you're so graceful" (cosmetic)
This is an interesting talk because we all have significant differences in opinion on what that 'fair trade' would be. A detail though is that Heizui Subjugation gave us +Resist on MotV, not FVM- we got that one when resist was created.
Anyway, let's see SCS for a bit:
Mechanically, those are:SCS7 said:
- +10 to spiritual hit, +10 to physical hit, +10 to spiritual pen, +10 to physical pen on conditional of "act first in a fight, for that action only".
- +10 spiritual hit, +10 physical hit against targets with one rank perception below our stealth (when we have done stealth)
- +5 to spiritual avoid, +5 to physical avoid in 'stealth environment'.
I don't think I would give it a 0.5 weighting, because a +10 P.hit/ +10 S.hit would be slightly better than it, but I consider it stronger than, say, a +15 P.Hit.
The Bonus to hit against unaware targets is very likely to happen, but needs actual set up. As such, a 0.5 multiplier is fine... and so it means it is as strong as a +5 p.hit/+5 s.hit (counts as 10).
The Avoid though is interesting, because while it may need set up, it doesn't always do so, and it is a fairly easy set up to boot. Given it gives +5 p.avoid/+5s.avoid, I would count it as 7.5.
So basically what I am saying is that @Erebeal is undervaluing how ridiculously powerful SCS passives are lol.
Mmm, the whole weighting thing can get pretty complicated, yeah. There's a large difference between defense and offense for instance. Broad defensive bonuses are great and always wanted, while restricted ones (e.g. + against an element) are pretty bad because they're so limited. In contrast, focused offensive bonuses are fine because you'll typically be building into a specific offensive style and focusing your power there. Broad offensive bonuses are more useful for auras so that they'll apply to as many allies as possible.
- Location
- Earth
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