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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.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Yes. By that measure we should never train any arts just keep looking in the library.
Black Noise
Curious
- Location
- About 1AU from Sol
Few things:
- You seem to have a misconception about how ENM works;
- The first tech (awareness state reset) is a purely Stealth vs Perception clash.
- The second tech is an instant defense debuff that applies automatically with no clash, it is analogous to an instant self buff and is similar in function to CDE's WMA
At no point is enemy sp.def contested. - In general the sentiment that a Green 3 start art costs less AP long-term is correct (by about 3 AP), but ENM has very hard to beat efficiency on multiple fonts that makes it ~AP cost neutral and very hard to beat for short-medium term gain:
- Uses arm meridians (which are effectively free) and legs (which are currently free and overall much more convenient than say Spine).
- Is a Wind art and as such can be buffed by Sixiang, which is a pretty big advantage for something so reliant on dominance like Stealth. Other half is Darkness which works nice with our domain weapon.
- Already covers the stealth and fade aspects we'd want in an art if we were gonna go archive diving, except that's not guaranteed to get us something this convenient or six-buffable.
As for the narrative advantages, it should be petty obvious but having an art themed for suppression of our spiritual and memory presence pairs exceptionally well with the physical shadow-form of SCS and our Vanishing skill both in combat and in more delicate infiltration scenarios.
In addition, the offensive bend and state-reset of ENM means we have the narrative excuse to just fade into stealth over and over between delivering devastating attacks from stealth, or just letting our death fields do their work. Functional stealth basically add to our versatility and enhances all aspects of our offensive and defensive combat strategy.
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Alright. The "efficiency" argument.
ENM is not inefficient to train.
ENM5 needs ~4AP to give us g3 potency and a mastered art.
A typical g2 art? Say from archive 2? ~3 AP to reach level 3 and g3 potency. Plus 1ap for archive. And I'd expect it to be weaker than ENM at that point. It would of course then have more levels to train and become stronger, but those will be expensive - our G2 bai arts are looking at 10+ ap to softcap for instance.
We could just go to archive 3 of course. Such an art would be expected to have 2 g3 levels taking ~2-3 ap. Plus 1 ap for archive and 1 ap for the sect points. It would save us from having to go looking for an upgrade sometime, but even with ENM that wouldn't be until the end of the year anyway, which is a long time away.
So yeah, there really isn't a meaningful efficiency loss from training ENM, and it continues to be mechanically perfect and beautiful.
I wouldn't object to going to the archives instead, but a) going to yrsillar "hey, can you give us an art that is mechanically identical to ENM but higher level" seems a bit tacky, and b) people are also wanting to go looking for social arts and I really don't want to be having to fight over stealth vs social like that.
ENM is not inefficient to train.
ENM5 needs ~4AP to give us g3 potency and a mastered art.
A typical g2 art? Say from archive 2? ~3 AP to reach level 3 and g3 potency. Plus 1ap for archive. And I'd expect it to be weaker than ENM at that point. It would of course then have more levels to train and become stronger, but those will be expensive - our G2 bai arts are looking at 10+ ap to softcap for instance.
We could just go to archive 3 of course. Such an art would be expected to have 2 g3 levels taking ~2-3 ap. Plus 1 ap for archive and 1 ap for the sect points. It would save us from having to go looking for an upgrade sometime, but even with ENM that wouldn't be until the end of the year anyway, which is a long time away.
So yeah, there really isn't a meaningful efficiency loss from training ENM, and it continues to be mechanically perfect and beautiful.
I wouldn't object to going to the archives instead, but a) going to yrsillar "hey, can you give us an art that is mechanically identical to ENM but higher level" seems a bit tacky, and b) people are also wanting to go looking for social arts and I really don't want to be having to fight over stealth vs social like that.
Glad to see you meet your own expectations.
Same question, then.
300 successes per AP? Wheres the math?
Not quite so.
Its not a strict debuff, but an opponent lacking a reason to buff their perception due to being unaware of Ling Qis presence is in itself an effective debuff by virtue of denying them the opportunity to have their maximum combat perception in play.
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The hilarious thing about ENM is that since Passing Phantom is so cheap, we can actually afford to use it multiple times per fight, and given Vanishing along with Sixiang boosts and Hanyi/Zhengui distractions thats something that has a high likelihood of going through.
Black Noise
Curious
- Location
- About 1AU from Sol
It's not an unreasonable concern, for effective combat stealth[1] we want to have at least a full rank of stealth against most opponents even with them pulling up their respective perception buffs. The reason me and others at the math cabal are confident we can mostly count on it is as follows:
- Dex is our highest attribute we'd want at least S in[2] and with SSC having the Stealth keyword we can easily level the skill. S baseline before passives is something we can easily count on, meanwhile far from everyone will be running S rank Wits and Perceptiveness.
- Our foundation art for stealth is LFWT which is pretty much god-tier at peer level. SCS alone gives a +10(20 in darkness) stealth passive, and the OWS tech is a persistent shadow-porting intangible wraith form.
On its own It's not enough to turn us into a stealth Monster but with the other factors in play we will have a very real claim on the title.
- Sixiang has a tech that enhances our stealth, and another tech to buff our own music and wind arts. LFWT qualifies, as would ENM. Plus in combat we can use JT to buff LFWT techs (since it's a Dance art among others).
This level of buff-stacking lets us scale our stealth much higher than the number of arts would imply, and contesting that with perception would be ridiculously hard.
- In most fights we'll be running one or more field effect, and currently both FVM and especially PLR come with highly potent perception debuffs to anyone not insulated from the effects. On top of that, techs like Elegy and the poison from HR inflict an all-stats debuff which includes perception. (note that all of those are buffable by JT and some may be further buffable by Six).
- And finally, in bigger fights we'll have Zhengui deployed, and if he doesn't fall behind us in cultivation he'll have his own perception-debuffing field effect and generally act like a great distraction you can't really ignore.
Basically our build already has all the right elements for extremely potent stealth, an art like ENM is less about starting to walk in that direction so much as finalizing that build aspect with enabler-elements like the awareness state reset and techs enhancing the benefits of already having a stealth advantage.
[1] Utility/infiltration stealth is both easier and harder; on one hand opponents won't have their full buffs in play, Six can focus on buffing our stealth, and we could use our 1/turn bonuses in a pinch. On the other hand, failure is much more costly (may be mitigated somewhat by ENM as it levels), and we don't benefit from the perception debuffs of our area field effects.
[2] Dex is an uncapped attribute for us and ideally we'd have SS rank by tournament, but that's likely too costly so at best we'll have it by the end of our sect time.
Or unless it is an are you want to keep regardless. So you really think we will want to unequip FVM or FSS even at Green 4-5? Seems like they would almost be worth keeping for the passives and domain-weapon boosts alone, even if we outgrow the techs.
So, I'm a newb from the first thread. A couple of questions, feel free to not answer. Anyways, is being Meizhen still suffering and has Ling Qi finally decided on her sexuality? Because I'm only at the party by the moon spirit and I'm just morbidly curious, has Ling Qi stopped being a wreck or nah?
Also Meizhen is ok.
Ling Qi is very clear about her sexuality, and was never confused at any point.
Meizhen is doing pretty well right now. She beat the heir of the clan her family has a blood feud against in front of a shit load of nobility causing said heir to lose their heir status, her Aunt whom she admires is gonna be the next clan heir, said Aunt arranged an alliance with her only other friend's mom allowing Meizhen to have a path to still hang out with CRX and Ling Qi. Meizhen's also met a maybe new friend! Life's coming up aces for our Best Snek.
- Location
- Third planet from the star named Sol
- Pronouns
- He/They
Her sexuality hasn't been much of problem for Ling Qi. For her the issue is being sexual/romantic as a living being. It comes up at several points later on, but remember in the fallout after the Lake? Ling Qi was wondering if Meizhen was friends with her just to 'use' Ling Qi, and even tried to see if she could see girls as attractive. For Ling Qi, amorous and sexual intimacy is tied up in a lot of baggage.
Sorry, I mean the whole sexual/romantic relationship thing. I should have worded the sentence better.
Yeah, I remember it getting touched upon in the first thread. Thanks for clarification though.
Jensaarai
Sing Victory Everlasting
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I don't feel comfortable with constantly going back to the GM and asking for better things than what he already gave us, over and over again.
That's when you start getting a GM who stops caring about the game, or just wants everyone dead.
So I don't know if this has been talked about yet but I think we need to make sure to do the Bia Xiao Fen tutoring when we can. I see 3 good reasons
- We promised Meizhen
- She is feeding Gan Guangli resources and I want to get him back in the story
- She will be part of Meizhens life for a long time so I want to have a good relationship
- Location
- United States of America
Have no fear! Our tutoring of Bai Xiao Fen is a locked action every month. We are doing it, and it seems, at least to me, to be very successful.
- Location
- The Star Kingdom of Manticore
Tutoring Bia Xiao is a locked action. That means we must do it each turn. There is no choice for us. It just hasn't happened this turn yet because of the big expedition we are on right now.
Thanks for letting me know. That's a relief to me one less thing to fight about :lol
- Location
- United States of America
Speaking of fun things we promised to do, we should talk to Bai Meizhen about SCS now that we have completed it. It's been a long time since we made the promise to share some pointers regarding SCS to Meizhen, but it should be an enlightening experience either way.
I'm... not sure how much Meizhen will benefit from SCS's lessons, given Meizhen's own methods of dodging, tanking, and countering but I'm sure that there are some lessons in it that could further refine Meizhen's understanding of darkness.
I'm... not sure how much Meizhen will benefit from SCS's lessons, given Meizhen's own methods of dodging, tanking, and countering but I'm sure that there are some lessons in it that could further refine Meizhen's understanding of darkness.
Meizhen would love to move like a horror movie monster
- Location
- North Carolina
Meizhen would love to move like a horror movie monster
Well, main issue with that is that SCS became a Dance art.
So...
Snake dancing?