Remove ads

Time of the Gods: Into the Amber Age

Reader mode
veekie said:
-Monster component - Ask the Monstermancers. I'm not one of them, but there's a LOT of them.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Probably not speaking for everyone here, but my main goal with Humanity would be not to turn beast more human, but the other way around. If we can slap some gills on our worshippers, we can found a new village beneath our waters, which would be very hard to find, let alone attack, by our enemies. It would also open up a lot of tactical options for raiding other settlements with mortal aid.

For monster themselves, a shapeless mess of teeth and tentacles that sometimes comes to the surface to sate it's vile urges would do fine for a Fear Spirit. No human parts needed except as food.
 
Azel said:
Probably not speaking for everyone here, but my main goal with Humanity would be not to turn beast more human, but the other way around. If we can slap some gills on our worshippers, we can found a new village beneath our waters, which would be very hard to find, let alone attack, by our enemies. It would also open up a lot of tactical options for raiding other settlements with mortal aid.

For monster themselves, a shapeless mess of teeth and tentacles that sometimes comes to the surface to sate it's vile urges would do fine for a Fear Spirit. No human parts needed except as food.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I don't think that would need an aspect as the base animal would already be human? Aspects grant attributes not the base animal.
 
Sivantic said:
I don't think that would need an aspect as the base animal would already be human? Aspects grant attributes not the base animal.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
From what I gathered we would need Humanity to understand enough about them for making improvements on the design without going through a lengthy crossbreeding process.
And Local God rank to truly warp the line between beast and man.
 
Last edited:
mc2rpg said:
Well we did just find some new people that aren't affiliated with ours, and this shrine issue will probably be resolved in the not to distant future....
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think we could deal with that.

Once we have them in our target range(which would require increased Influence since they aren't targetable yet), we'd do a warmup with a bunch of Roils, which rotates Waves into the buy list.

Then Woosh.
Azel said:
Probably not speaking for everyone here, but my main goal with Humanity would be not to turn beast more human, but the other way around. If we can slap some gills on our worshippers, we can found a new village beneath our waters, which would be very hard to find, let alone attack, by our enemies. It would also open up a lot of tactical options for raiding other settlements with mortal aid.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
We can do that already. Once we have an Avatar again. Just need to give one human two Water affinities and they can breath water.
Azel said:
For monster themselves, a shapeless mess of teeth and tentacles that sometimes comes to the surface to sate it's vile urges would do fine for a Fear Spirit. No human parts needed except as food.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
There's more subtle monster options, but mostly we need to get to Chimera for the REALLY fun stuff.
 
Captain Spatula said:
Man that's a horrible idea. Grass is weak to ice.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
But strong against water... Actually, that still makes it a bad idea.
mc2rpg said:
So... how long are we planning to actually keep burning a slot with Aspect of humanity then? Are we going to try to beeline to use the innovation for an art and then despise it, or will it be sitting around for turns as a cushion, possibly getting more tiers and becoming even more of a sunk cost?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
As one of the Monstermancers, allow me to explain why Humanity is actually a good Monster Trait:
  1. Innovation is a great skill. Take, for example, our Mischievous Octopus. Innovation is fundamentally the Skill of development, so if we want it to come up with imaginative uses of ink, we'll need that one. It isn't quite tool-use as it doesn't have Crafting, but it helps if they come upon lost items in the depths.
  2. Leadership is a great skill. It's what differentiates soloers from pack hunters. Again, using our Octopus as an example, Leadership would allow them to gang up and make ever more elaborate pranks. Leadership and Innovation are actually a really good combination, as it allows the monsters to pool their brains when coming up with solutions.
  3. It allows our monsters to be more humanlike mentally. It won't grant them sapience at any currently reachable level, but if we want something like giant lamprey mounts for our people, having more intelligence is an inherent bonus. Especially when at higher levels it grants Trade, meaning that you can actually make a deal with them.
  4. It allows our monsters to be more humanlike physically. Some of the monstermancers want to create mermaids* and the like, and that takes humanity. It also takes Chimera and IIRC a shapeshifting trait.
*Monstrous mermaids will likely eat humans. That's a plus in my book.
 
Azel said:
From what I gathered we would need Humanity to understand enough about them for making improvements on the design.
And Local God rank to truly warp the line between beast and man.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Nope! Animal aspects are simply added to benefit. No worry about negative mutations. Otherwise gotting water affinity would be a death sentence, but there our daughter goes
 
I would prefer despising Humanity. I think it makes much more thematic sense, and while I have no particular feelings regarding monsters, Chimera condensing Aspects only has value if we...get a bunch of Aspects. Which I don't want to do. As for Waves, I would like to keep it given that we're a water spirit.

This whole business feels like a thematic dilution, rejiggering us to go to Harzivan-land. Which has been done. I wouldn't mind so much if we accidentally despised Waves, because the dice fall where they may and I enjoy that part of the quest.
 
Guess I misunderstood something then. I thought we would need Humanity to slap anything on them as opposed to slowly breeding a trait into the population.
Our daughter was rather expensive and waiting 15 years for every new generation is far too slow for large scale augmentation.
 
With that said I'd actually prefer less hooman monsters. I am very much in favor of the whalectopus.
 
Melum said:
This whole business feels like a thematic dilution, rejiggering us to go to Harzivan-land. Which has been done. I wouldn't mind so much if we accidentally despised Waves, because the dice fall where they may and I enjoy that part of the quest.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I would greatly prefer to stick to the ocean theme and just add appropriate animal aspects. Not a big fan of adding Raven for example.

Harzi did indeed have a absurd bunch of aspects, but most of them where just kind of there and never did much. I would rather take a page out of Apitulkus book and remake man in our warped image.
That's something that his kids tried to some degree, but Harzivan himself never had the attention span to do something like this.
 
Personally, I like keeping the humanity, because I think including human elements makes monsters more monstrous, not less. Perhaps it's because they embody of the evil's that humanity is capable of, or maybe it is because they mock all of our frailties, but I think that monsters with human elements, can be some of the most horrific of all.

And if you disagree, clearly you haven't seen any images from the Kingdom Death: Monster line:


THANK YOU, THAT IS ENOUGH HANDS, MISTER NIGHTMARE RAM, SIR!

NOOO, I ALREADY HAVE ENOUGH HANDS!

BABY, WHY! (jk, that thing is full grown. The mouth hands are human sized.)
 
Last edited:
Melum said:
I would prefer despising Humanity. I think it makes much more thematic sense, and while I have no particular feelings regarding monsters, Chimera condensing Aspects only has value if we...get a bunch of Aspects. Which I don't want to do. As for Waves, I would like to keep it given that we're a water spirit.

This whole business feels like a thematic dilution, rejiggering us to go to Harzivan-land. Which has been done. I wouldn't mind so much if we accidentally despised Waves, because the dice fall where they may and I enjoy that part of the quest.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The specific reason to despise waves is BECAUSE we're a water spirit. It's trivial to reacquire when we need big wave-cannons to destroy a given coastal area.

Right now it's mostly just in the way since it makes all the other elemental traits cost more, we have no targets within our influence and our local population needs weaker water attacks since at present we have enough firepower to outright destroy the village with Waves.

By contrast, Human Aspect, being an Aspect, is half the prereq for Chimera, which is the actual cure to trait bloat woes by giving us a way to vent it.
 
So, anybody wants to make a plan with Despise Hunanity? I would, but being on the phone and at work makes it a bit hard, so it will take a few hours. It just feels so damned approptiate to lose Humanity when we lose our most human part (the avatar).

Edit: Also don't let mechanical arguments dictate everything.
 
Last edited:
If aspect of humanity was called anything else, but had the same mechanical benefits, I wouldn't be interested in it outside of monster breeding. At this point in the game, we don't have enough skill slots to make leadership, innovation, nor trade a permanent part of our build.

That said, since it is called aspect of humanity, I do want to keep it or even make the traitline inherent. I imagine that it allows Gaerig to better understand her worshipers (and human aspected spirits) better, to know what makes them praise her, what makes them fear her, and how they can best be misled/beguiled/tricked.
 
not caught up yet but PoM never said that we were the evil force the crone foresaw there is a possibility of another spirit/old god/ higher tier deity showing up eventually
 
[X] Plan Towards getting a body again

I like veekie's planning, and because I want to see if we can add hands and faces where they don't belong...
 
Darkcrest said:
not caught up yet but PoM never said that we were the evil force the crone foresaw there is a possibility of another spirit/old god/ higher tier deity showing up eventually
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
After we recover our Avatar, maybe we can convince the voter base to Scour the Future for exactly that event? Wouldn't hurt our long term planning, at any rate...
 
[X] Plan Towards getting a body again

To all the debate going I have one thing to say to you ladies and gentlemen: Meh.
 
Edkose said:
We should probably read the past as well. See what we can figure out about the Crone.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
True, but I still want to specifically call out her prophecy, if only in private. If we look and find nothing, that means one of three things: A) We flubbed the roll that bad, B) We are the threat she foresaw (and therefore she'll be actively targeting us), or C) She made the whole thing up, as an elaborate scam to take control.

OR, She isn't bluffing, and we should start planning around that, at least in the long term.
 
veekie said:
The specific reason to despise waves is BECAUSE we're a water spirit. It's trivial to reacquire when we need big wave-cannons to destroy a given coastal area.

Right now it's mostly just in the way since it makes all the other elemental traits cost more, we have no targets within our influence and our local population needs weaker water attacks since at present we have enough firepower to outright destroy the village with Waves.

By contrast, Human Aspect, being an Aspect, is half the prereq for Chimera, which is the actual cure to trait bloat woes by giving us a way to vent it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I understand the argument from a mechanistic perspective. I just find it unappealing on a narrative level.

To be productive, I would like a trade/explore focus. I would find trade far more palatable than leadership/innovation, providing a mechanism for learning skills that didn't require innovation. It's something we could do either with Saiga, or something he could start doing again while we watch over our home island. I also think aspect of whale and octopus would let us unlock some craft skills, and still heavily maintain our themes.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top