Time of the Gods: Into the Amber Age
- Thread starter Powerofmind
- Start date
- Original
Eh, we don't know what the Moon Affinity actually gives and every option grants at least a Major Legend roll.
I want both - this is a unique opportunity for something outside normal gains. Traits and Attributes are all 'normal' gains.
Simply moving the Moon Sphere may increase the odds of Avatar and Shrine on the Fearbuy table; it likely increases the odds of AA - Moon; it might even add Minor Spirit of Strength.
The only ways I can see Moonbeam coming up again are as a Shrine Extension, at some point when we have a bunch of silver and a silver worker, or if we find another Moon Sphere. Which is not impossible... just another crit-chain away! And another few tiers of Influence, to be capable of getting to the thing... and the reward is probably somewhat smaller, because we'll have already done the action in question.
I do want to try for a high-astrology turn in the near future, whether or not Moonbeam wins.
- Location
- Hell
Even this early, theme seems Night, Ocean, Siren.
@veekie ! You forgot to add []At night to calm waters!
@Powerofmind The Shore vote seems to imply that after we absorb its magic we still have the silver to use as we want. Is this true?
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
All other options from the Moonbeam option grant you a comical number of Silver units (roughly 6 pounds to the unit, about the size of a silver bar, which translates to around 66 units of silver) to trade, perform rituals with, or craft with (if you pick up soft metalwork).
Pandemonious Ivy
Panties, Revolution. Big Drawers. Parachute.
Can we search the ruins for more copper?
Abby Normal
High Clerk of the Ymaryn
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Wait, guys, remember, the system changed, we have a trait limit now, and we're already at 3 out of 4 trait cap--4 out of 4 if we take either of the traits now, and/or get a trait via fear buy this turn. The shrine boost will get us to 3, boosting...actually wait...
@Powerofmind you were talking about maybe changing around the attributes, and thats relevant right now. What will shrine boost now? It used to boost trait limit, ambrosia limit, income (both fear and faith), # of shrine improvements, and...i think one other thing? Are you changing any of htose? and if we take the shrine boost, will it affect our income for *this* turn? And what is the income equation now/how much will going from shrine 1 to 2 do? i cant remember if that post with equations was the definite one yet or not? Also, if we're trait locked, then do fear buys only target attributes and skills? or can it automatically make us lose less-used traits and replace them?
[X] Accumulating Shrine discount +5, Major Legend roll
Because this gets us 2 attribute levels right now, we are almost trait capped, we need more ambrosia limit, we need more income so we can afford to be slightly less destructive to make our income last longer, and because shrine improvements are awesome. (I may change depending on PoM's answers to those questions)
Edit: Also, apparently the other best option (display forever) loses us out on a ridiculous amount of silver to work with and trade and whatnot (66 units! even Harzivan didn't have 66 units of things i dont think...and if he did, it was after he hit like 13 fear and 60+ traits and other ridiculous things we can't do anymore
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[X] Have it forever ornament your shoal! (Gaerig permanently gains Moonbeam while she controls the Teeth of the Sea Holy Place; Moonbeam grants a Minor Legend roll whenever rolling a Major Astrology success or better.), disallows decomposing the Sphere for silver units, Major Legend roll
This will score us the Moon Affinity just by rolling Astrology, and one of the things as a Fear spirit is having a constant supply of Legend without actually destroying your own pop base.
Fuck yes.
This will score us the Moon Affinity just by rolling Astrology, and one of the things as a Fear spirit is having a constant supply of Legend without actually destroying your own pop base.
Fuck yes.
- Location
- US
[X] Have it forever ornament your shoal!
for long term benefits
for long term benefits
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
Yes, though the amount you will get will tend to be somewhat meager.
Shrine will still provide trait limit, income, defense bonus, and maximum shrine level (has effects not yet unlocked to you that are relevant to Shrine extensions). It will no longer provide ambrosia limit, or increase the number of Shrine extensions you can gain. Additionally, all penalty and growth cap components will be removed from attributes (excepting Avatar sustenance cost increases), now that they are unnecessary to cockblock geometric bullshit. Any purchases will take effect immediately, before any new rolls are applied. The new equations are not yet being pushed in until after your next income phase (it's unfair to change the income rules in the middle of a turn vote). If you're trait locked, and do not despise, accidentally or purposefully, one of your existing traits, you will encounter the Yahweh lite's penalty mechanic for being Yahweh lite if you roll a new trait.
I'm tempted by the part about it being an "inherent" upgrade, in the sense that it doesn't take up slots of any sorts.
Moon Affinity would take up a slot, and I'm not sure what it would even give us in the short term (Affinities are tricky that way).
Spirit of Strength would get us to 3 Avatar (nice) but it would also take up a slot and the only benefit is getting +2 Melee, which I think is rather useless. After all, the skill will still be locked (thank you, fishing), and even if it wasn't, a 2 in Melee isn't going to do squat against an actual combat-focused enemy.
+5 points towards Avatar is interesting, but as a Fear spirit, I feel like the 2 points of overflow after buying Avatar 3 won't give us much of anything. It is mainly an extra Avatar rank, which is nice but mediocre.
+5 points towards Shrine is really interesting, since it double-upgrades our Shrine to 3. However, Shrine is decidedly not a short-term thing; we don't care about the Ambrosia cap, we haven't hit the soft Trait cap, and the bonus to income is negligible. If shrine improvements are a thing we get one of those; I suppose that is nice.
Ironically, the Bask option (which I dismissed at first glance) is actually surprising valuable. It is worth noting that our Fear buy requires Vehemence to function, which means having high Vehemence means we are more likely to get a high value trait (like T2 trickery or T2 Sea). It also means we have lots of Fear income that doesn't decrade which we can presumably use to be awesome if a conflict arises.
@Powerofmind - Judging from your latest post, I take it you didn't like my suggestions on the subject?
[X] Have it forever ornament your shoal! (Gaerig permanently gains Moonbeam while she controls the Teeth of the Sea Holy Place; Moonbeam grants a Minor Legend roll whenever rolling a Major Astrology success or better.), disallows decomposing the Sphere for silver units, Major Legend roll
Alright I thought about thinks for a while and this is the option I like the most.
I don't think we're going to stop doing Astrology for a long time and the constant Legend gain is going to be useful there
Alright I thought about thinks for a while and this is the option I like the most.
I don't think we're going to stop doing Astrology for a long time and the constant Legend gain is going to be useful there
Abby Normal
High Clerk of the Ymaryn
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Hey, @Pandemonious Ivy @Fumbles @Killer_Whale @nixter @PrimalShadow @Quest @Raising Kittens And others (don't remember the limit on this)
We get punished if we hit trait cap (currently at 3/4) and roll another trait, so we can't just sit at cap and wait to fear buy shrine without getting rid of things, and if we get shrine now we boost our income this turn. Plus, 66 units of awesome material to boost our shrine more, do rituals, and trade.
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
Which suggestions? I don't recall yours specifically, but the changes I've explained are basically to ensure that each attribute is a competitive purchase and has roughly equal value to the rest. Each trait gives you roughly 3 positive effects (Avatar still has a flat sustenance penalty because it's insanely effective and makes you way more capable overall).@Powerofmind - Judging from your latest post, I take it you didn't like my suggestions on the subject?
chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
[X] Have it forever ornament your shoal!
Why are people saying that we don't know what our theme is? We're fickle, literally do different things just because they're not what we did last time unless they are, screw around with people while blessing them, get people killed because they misjudged us...
We're the Ocean, we mess around with Stars, and we mess around with people Whimsically. Anything else is just a mask we're putting on for giggles, and also because it's maybe shiny. Like, are we really going to change those bits much, compared to anything else we could change?
Why are people saying that we don't know what our theme is? We're fickle, literally do different things just because they're not what we did last time unless they are, screw around with people while blessing them, get people killed because they misjudged us...
We're the Ocean, we mess around with Stars, and we mess around with people Whimsically. Anything else is just a mask we're putting on for giggles, and also because it's maybe shiny. Like, are we really going to change those bits much, compared to anything else we could change?
[] Accumulating Avatar discount +5, Major Legend roll
[] Accumulating Shrine discount +5, Major Legend roll
Okay, these two are the short term benefits. Basically speed up progress of these attributes, but at the same time it's relatively easy to increase them over time simply by being over the Avatar cap/having a bling shrine.
Arguably, having a sphere of silver in your holy place is itself a pretty bling shrine and will lead to increasing Shrine rating as people look at our mad shiny.
[] Minor Spirit of Strength (+2 melee, 3 accumulating discount to Avatar), Major Legend roll
This buys an out-theme trait, granting us a skill we can't use(being at the skill cap), and future access to Virility...if you know, we had a dick.
Good if you intend to go focus heavily on monster making, not so much otherwise.
[] Astral Affinity - Moon, Major Legend roll
Grab the Moon affinity we've been eyeing from early on. This is the moderate term thing, since entering a whole new Affinity is pretty potent for giving us options, but simply displaying the Moon Sphere and performing Astrology is likely to increase the trait appearing on the rolls.
[] Have it forever ornament your shoal! (Gaerig permanently gains Moonbeam while she controls the Teeth of the Sea Holy Place; Moonbeam grants a Minor Legend roll whenever rolling a Major Astrology success or better.), disallows decomposing the Sphere for silver units, Major Legend roll
Permanent upgrade granting us a renewable source of Legend to an action we are likely to take every turn when the budget allows anyway(I seriously don't see a reason NOT to do astrology at least once per turn unless we've dug outselves into DE exhaustion again, it's that powerful).
Remember Legend sources come from:
-Novel actions, we get one basic roll every time we try out a new trait. Not repeatable
-Acts of significant terror. This hurts our Population modifier for DE long term, so not exactly repeatable.
-Clashes with another spirit like Saiga. Repeatable, but inherently risky.
Meanwhile, we spend Legend at a rate of between 1-5 points every turn, scaling proportionately to how much Legend we actually HAVE.
As such, having a source of Legend not dependent upon either taking personal risks, or destroying our economy base is valuable as hell.
[] Bask in the Glory! (Gain very significant Vehemence boost this turn, Major III Legend roll)
Shortest term boost, gives us a shitton of Legend and DE to destroy some shit next turn. Given that there's nobody we want to go to the knife on yet...probably not.
[] Accumulating Shrine discount +5, Major Legend roll
Okay, these two are the short term benefits. Basically speed up progress of these attributes, but at the same time it's relatively easy to increase them over time simply by being over the Avatar cap/having a bling shrine.
Arguably, having a sphere of silver in your holy place is itself a pretty bling shrine and will lead to increasing Shrine rating as people look at our mad shiny.
[] Minor Spirit of Strength (+2 melee, 3 accumulating discount to Avatar), Major Legend roll
This buys an out-theme trait, granting us a skill we can't use(being at the skill cap), and future access to Virility...if you know, we had a dick.
Good if you intend to go focus heavily on monster making, not so much otherwise.
[] Astral Affinity - Moon, Major Legend roll
Grab the Moon affinity we've been eyeing from early on. This is the moderate term thing, since entering a whole new Affinity is pretty potent for giving us options, but simply displaying the Moon Sphere and performing Astrology is likely to increase the trait appearing on the rolls.
[] Have it forever ornament your shoal! (Gaerig permanently gains Moonbeam while she controls the Teeth of the Sea Holy Place; Moonbeam grants a Minor Legend roll whenever rolling a Major Astrology success or better.), disallows decomposing the Sphere for silver units, Major Legend roll
Permanent upgrade granting us a renewable source of Legend to an action we are likely to take every turn when the budget allows anyway(I seriously don't see a reason NOT to do astrology at least once per turn unless we've dug outselves into DE exhaustion again, it's that powerful).
Remember Legend sources come from:
-Novel actions, we get one basic roll every time we try out a new trait. Not repeatable
-Acts of significant terror. This hurts our Population modifier for DE long term, so not exactly repeatable.
-Clashes with another spirit like Saiga. Repeatable, but inherently risky.
Meanwhile, we spend Legend at a rate of between 1-5 points every turn, scaling proportionately to how much Legend we actually HAVE.
As such, having a source of Legend not dependent upon either taking personal risks, or destroying our economy base is valuable as hell.
[] Bask in the Glory! (Gain very significant Vehemence boost this turn, Major III Legend roll)
Shortest term boost, gives us a shitton of Legend and DE to destroy some shit next turn. Given that there's nobody we want to go to the knife on yet...probably not.
If we had someone with metalworking, or could consistently do rituals, or had someone to trade with (will probably happen soon) I would agree with you.
As it is... we have none of those. I'm aware of the Trait Cap, aware of what it'll cost to increase our Shrine Value, and aware of how to avoid accidentally denying a trait.
I would point out that even the increase to Avatar and 2 Melee(locked)...Saiga would still near effortlessly spank us if we lose the social rolls, even in our shrine itself.
If you want to promote Spirit of Strength it'd be more along the lines of shifting to a warrior-spirit/mother of monsters to go a-viking.
What's the particular penalty anyway?
I was under the impression it was a penalty to rolls to gain more traits, or that the trait we would have gained, simply is not.
Or maybe knocking off one of the traits we aren't using, which would be actually pretty challenging to do at this stage since we have so few of them
Noting that Shrine 2 is fairly reachable, if we Demand that our followers start to decorate it. It's also been on the roll table for a while now.
No Craft skill. Heck, metalworking isn't even unlocked. No Innovation.
Certainly no ability to build anything as potent as the Moon Sphere for a long time(this thing would be impressive to build even for Harzivan until the very end when Treebaby gave us enough gold growing from trees to make an equivalent Sun Sphere).
It's big, it's attuned to the Moon(so crafting it certainly involved Astrology/Mysticism upgrades at least)
So that would just turn an extremely high value artifact into scrap for trade goods. Without any Trade skill or people to trade with.
I think a decent analogy is converting the statue of liberty into scrap copper.
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[X] Have it forever ornament your shoal!
Abby Normal
High Clerk of the Ymaryn
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I don't want to craft with it, i want to do rituals with it eventually, and have our people use it to improve our shrines--if i remember right, @Powerofmind said that we can do that sort of thing to boost our shrines, instead of crafting things with it directly
FML. It looks like my post was eaten by the internets (currently on a bus and therefore experiencing internets prone to eating things). This is going to be a pain - it was a long post.
Alright. What I had was threefold. First, I responded to what you said about needing to have keep progress at a "moderate" level (as opposed to the WoW-esk scheme). My counterpoint is that whenever you introduce a rule, it should be significant enough for people to care about and make gameplay decisions based off of. If it isn't, the rule is just extra bookkeeping.
In the current income equation, 1 extra point of Shrine gives us an extra 0.4DE per point of Vehemence. Assuming 1 VE on average per turn, it would take 25 Years for for a single level of Shrine to pay for 10DE, which is about as much as we get from an Omake or Two. It just doesn't feel significant. To mitiage this, one of my suggestions was to double the role of Faith/Fear and to get rid of Shrine in the equation. Then, the calc becomes
4*[(5 + Faith)*3 + Pop]/10 for Faith spirits doing Faith income, and
V*4*[(5 + Fear)*2 + Pop]/10 for Fear spirits doing Fear income. It changes the balance of things slightly, but not in any major way, and it makes the rules for the impact of both Shrine and Fear/Faith on income more meaningful - by eliminating the former entirely (so it is no longer a thing to worry about in the first place) and by doubling the latter (so the effect size at least starts approaching significance).
My second point was in response to your suggestions to move over stuff from Shrine to Faith. I felt that was a bad idea; as is, without a meaningful income component (note: even before the adjustments above, I don't consider the shrine contribution to income meaningful), Shrine is actually reasonably balanced; nerfing it would make it weaker than the other traits. I'd rather have it keep its responsibilities. Plus, thematically, the things you had reassigned to Fear/Faith just felt like thematically Shrine things; in terms of narrative, it seems strange to hacve them switched to be under Fear/Faith.
My final point, and this is BY FAR the most important one, was a suggestion for how I thought Faith/Fear could be treated to make it meaningful. Namely, tie it to our legend. In particular:
- When we gain Legend, make it Faith/Fear roll instead of an Awe roll. As is, Awe is already super-important as a social-combat roll; it doesn't need to be responsible for Legend gain as well. And thematically, this makes perfect sense - it is the depth of feeling that our people have for us that determine how much our epic actions are remembered and thought about.
- Mechanically, I see this as rolling Fear or Faith/2 for Fearsome actions, and Faith or Fear/2 for "Faith-some" actions. This also lets you distinguish Fear and Faith spirits more by classifying legendary acts as Fear allighed or Faith alligned (and thereby making some epic things more useful for Faith spirits and others more useful for Fear spirits).
- Spirits with Awesome&Fearsome or whatever that thing is called would roll Fear + Faith/2 or Faith + Fear/2 as appropriate.
- Alternatively, you can make it Faith or Fear for the roll, or the larger plus half the smaller for A&E spirits. Or something. That is if you don't want to characterize epic things by alignment.
- The current thing about inspirations being misattributed because of low legend becomes about inspirations being misattributed because of low Faith/Fear.
- When we destroy a shrine, how much we gain from it is a Faith/Fear roll. There is already precedent for this from AN's quest when the spirit-kill roll on avatar-kill from Harzivan's Hunter trait was based off of Faith & Fear.
@Powerofmind
Question:
-Is the Trait limit : Shrine formula/ratio known or intentionally obfuscated?
-Should the current Trait and Skill cap be made explicit on the OP?
We could. If we had Mysticism+Craft/Art unlocked yes. Which takes 3 skills(Omen Reading, Art and Mysticism), and thus, 3 more Avatar to reach it.
It's also fairly unlikely to be nearly as potent as the artifact of a civilization and god at least one tier above us on everything. For shrine upgrade materials, I would point out to the copper scrap lying around, if we were to retrieve that(I would suggest demanding a leather sack from the mortals first though, it's not that heavy, but we won't carry many chunks with just our hands), which should be usable for shrine upgrades or at least ornaments.
Question:
-Is the Trait limit : Shrine formula/ratio known or intentionally obfuscated?
-Should the current Trait and Skill cap be made explicit on the OP?
We could. If we had Mysticism+Craft/Art unlocked yes. Which takes 3 skills(Omen Reading, Art and Mysticism), and thus, 3 more Avatar to reach it.
It's also fairly unlikely to be nearly as potent as the artifact of a civilization and god at least one tier above us on everything. For shrine upgrade materials, I would point out to the copper scrap lying around, if we were to retrieve that(I would suggest demanding a leather sack from the mortals first though, it's not that heavy, but we won't carry many chunks with just our hands), which should be usable for shrine upgrades or at least ornaments.
I think I feel in agreement with this part at least. Awe is powerful enough without being godskill for every successful spirit(since low Awe means you're going to be behind on your XP equivalent and the gap will only widen until the Awe 10 + Triple Arete is natural optimal)
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Pandemonious Ivy
Panties, Revolution. Big Drawers. Parachute.
Next plan, include a Demand for mortals to create the best bag/sack for our glorious personage, then use that turn to finally use our Inspire Blessings.
FML. It looks like my post was eaten by the internets (currently on a bus and therefore experiencing internets prone to eating things). This is going to be a pain - it was a long post.
Alright. What I had was threefold. First, I responded to what you said about needing to have keep progress at a "moderate" level (as opposed to the WoW-esk scheme). My counterpoint is that whenever you introduce a rule, it should be significant enough for people to care about and make gameplay decisions based off of. If it isn't, the rule is just extra bookkeeping.
In the current income equation, 1 extra point of Shrine gives us an extra 0.4DE per point of Vehemence. Assuming 1 VE on average per turn, it would take 25 Years for for a single level of Shrine to pay for 10DE, which is about as much as we get from an Omake or Two. It just doesn't feel significant. To mitiage this, one of my suggestions was to double the role of Faith/Fear and to get rid of Shrine in the equation. Then, the calc becomes
4*[(5 + Faith)*3 + Pop]/10 for Faith spirits doing Faith income, and
V*4*[(5 + Fear)*2 + Pop]/10 for Fear spirits doing Fear income. It changes the balance of things slightly, but not in any major way, and it makes the rules for the impact of both Shrine and Fear/Faith on income more meaningful - by eliminating the former entirely (so it is no longer a thing to worry about in the first place) and by doubling the latter (so the effect size at least starts approaching significance).
My second point was in response to your suggestions to move over stuff from Shrine to Faith. I felt that was a bad idea; as is, without a meaningful income component (note: even before the adjustments above, I don't consider the shrine contribution to income meaningful), Shrine is actually reasonably balanced; nerfing it would make it weaker than the other traits. I'd rather have it keep its responsibilities. Plus, thematically, the things you had reassigned to Fear/Faith just felt like thematically Shrine things; in terms of narrative, it seems strange to hacve them switched to be under Fear/Faith.
My final point, and this is BY FAR the most important one, was a suggestion for how I thought Faith/Fear could be treated to make it meaningful. Namely, tie it to our legend. In particular:
- When we gain Legend, make it Faith/Fear roll instead of an Awe roll. As is, Awe is already super-important as a social-combat roll; it doesn't need to be responsible for Legend gain as well. And thematically, this makes perfect sense - it is the depth of feeling that our people have for us that determine how much our epic actions are remembered and thought about.
- Mechanically, I see this as rolling Fear or Faith/2 for Fearsome actions, and Faith or Fear/2 for "Faith-some" actions. This also lets you distinguish Fear and Faith spirits more by classifying legendary acts as Fear allighed or Faith alligned (and thereby making some epic things more useful for Faith spirits and others more useful for Fear spirits).
- Spirits with Awesome&Fearsome or whatever that thing is called would roll Fear + Faith/2 or Faith + Fear/2 as appropriate.
- Alternatively, you can make it Faith or Fear for the roll, or the larger plus half the smaller for A&E spirits. Or something. That is if you don't want to characterize epic things by alignment.
- The current thing about inspirations being misattributed because of low legend becomes about inspirations being misattributed because of low Faith/Fear.
- When we destroy a shrine, how much we gain from it is a Faith/Fear roll. There is already precedent for this from AN's quest when the spirit-kill roll on avatar-kill from Harzivan's Hunter trait was based off of Faith & Fear.