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Trails of Tera Steel (Kiseki-inspired Pokemon Academy Quest)

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[X] Dreepy
[X] Fond Farewell
-[X] Will the Childhood Best Friend Win?
-[X] Family means no one gets left behind
 
justinkal said:
Will there ever be situations where multiple stats are rolled and the degree of success depends on how many pass?

Like in the above example, passing either one gets them to fess up a bit, but passing both gets them to fess up in full.
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Yes, in the provided scenario if you pass both you'll be able to respond in such that contradicts them and forces them to respond negatively.
 
nothingtoseehere said:
Investing in training/academics does have future dividends, but with Mariana's motivation from Gramps and our family it makes sense she'd prioritise getting out there to help. and building warm memories of Home to keep us going at the Academy. We also have a (slight) chance to pick up a second pokemon from our home, which will be valuable for both emotional and battling reasons when we get to the Academy, with more limited options for finding more team members.

A 10% boost to KNOW for 3 turns isn't that useful - assuming we did 1 study action a turn in those turns and that the Academy gives better stat gains than at home (say 500 XP per action, 1000 with our boost) we'd still only get 300 extra XP for studying now vs later, and give up several unique opportunities to do so.
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Also on this topic: I'm more concerned with the base KNOW boost than the 10% rider, since 400 KNOW XP gets us 40% of the way to our next stat up by itself.

Now, learning this is a d100 game makes me less concerned with minmaxing stats since each level is fundamentally only a 1% change to our success odds, but we have very important, plot-vital abilities gated behind getting our KNOW to a respectable adult level, so I think the catching up is very important, and I'm personally gonna be voting for at least one KNOW boost every single time we pick actions until at least we hit KNOW 8 and run out of our double progression bonus.
 
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[X] Dreepy
[X] Bonds and Binding
-[X] Family means no one gets left behind
-[X] I'm not Book Smart, I'm Poke Smart
 
So.....if Dreepy uses Quick Attack while holding that fancy knife in its mouth, to stab an opponent at high speed, does that count as using the move Steel Wing? Or maybe Iron Head?
 
Wow. Machop, Zubat and a pseudo-Legend. Never seen a more one sided matchup in my life.

Zubat. Obviously.

(But seriously, poor Machop. Zubat has some support, but Machop has nothing.)

ArvisPresley said:
Tamara teases him for it because she has a crush on him, and you almost feel sorry for him. He prolly did it to try and impress her. It's all really cute.
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Just give it four games and they might even kiss.

ArvisPresley said:
hate

bile fills your throat hateful curses words and mockeries spill over all the little hates in your life drowning you you hate your mother you your father you hate your sister you hate the old man you hate that little petulant brat you hate those paldeans you hate your relatives you hate your people you hate pokemon you hate those mightyena teeth gnashing snarling howling hunting in the day in the sun who tore and bit and killed you who was innocent you hate yourself you hate you hate yourself you hate your face you hate you're too red you hate your body too tall too ugly too boyish you hate your skin you scratch you scratch until it bleeds and your nails are nubs and your fingers bloodied you hate your throat writhing little under your skin you will scratch scratch scratch kill kill kill until you feel no more other than

cold
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...Oh. Well that's fun. No bad signs here. No sirree. This is a happy and fun Pokémon game plot. Like you find in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon.

ArvisPresley said:
"Up for storytime, kid?" Not much of a choice, really. "It was right after the war. My division was coming back from Unova. The memories of that Shadow Lugia fresh in our minds."
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Damn. I guess Leo messed up.

Also some equivalent of Cipher existed/exists. So that's... bad. Standing in for the Cult?

ArvisPresley said:
He straightens up from his ever constant slouch and looks you dead in the eyes. "A Legendary."
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My eye twitches once more as I see the one thing in any Pokémon fic guaranteed to irrationally anger me.

I'm not sure if any actual Pokémon media ever drops the 'Pokémon' from 'Legendary Pokémon'. Because Legendary is an adjective. And I don't think anyone whose name isn't Ash Ketchum ever deals with them so frequently that making the term more convenient becomes necessary. And the kind of people that do deal with the idea of them regularly would probably be more reverent about them anyway.

Like, nobody who talks about historical figures calls them 'Historicals'. Nobody refers to characters from Mythology as 'Mythicals' or 'Mythologicals'.

It just irritates me on a deep level when I see this bit of player terminology leak into the setting itself. Similar problem with 'Starter' instead of First Pokémon, though that's less annoying.

Alright. Rant over and I promise not to bring it up again as long as I'm here.

[X] Zubat

Gotta cheer on the underdog.
 
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LunaticPanda said:
(But seriously, poor Machop. Zubat has some support, but Machop has nothing.)
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If Dreepy wasn't there I'd be backing Machop to the hilt let me tell you, I'd love to have the physically strongest pokemon in Paldea at our side, especially with the Prowess boost it'd give us. I'd love to spar with our starter.

But you know, Dreepy.
 
[X] Dreepy
[X] Fond Farewell
-[X] Will the Childhood Best Friend Win?
-[X] Family means no one gets left behind
 
[X] Dreepy
[X] Bonds and Binding
-[X] Family means no one gets left behind
-[X] I'm not Book Smart, I'm Poke Smart


This seems like a very promising quest.
 
I wonder how training moves is going to work here? Is it 1 AP = 1 point towards mastery of the specific move or is it a dice roll to pass dc to get the mastery point?
 
[X] Dreepy

[x] Bonds and Binding
-[x] Family means no one gets left behind
-[x] I'm not Book Smart, I'm Poke Smart

Though, the comment earlier about naming the Dreepy Roland... It's a good name even if Work Life Balance doesn't win.
 
I would guess (without evidence) the "normal" student at the Academy without a exceptional background or backer is 8/8/8/8 stats and taking student loans to pay for it. As the protagonist who can use the Mcguffin, we will of course be in a special class of exceptional students who don't stick to that rule, but that is my guess.
 
[X] Dreepy

I think Dreepy will be good for us, his boisterous personality will do wonders dragging us out of our shell. An apologetic girl with an outgoing pet is a classic too. Also, I think that taming Dreepy's dragon-fuelled ego will be a nice character development moment for us. I think that Zubat is probably a fun choice too, but having our starter match our personality feels kinda boring to me.
 
If anyone was curious, without any static stat-ups or bonuses, in order to use the Plot Book, we will need to earn 12400 KNOW XP - or effectively 11050, since our first 1350 KNOW XP will be doubled by our background.
 
nothingtoseehere said:
I would guess (without evidence) the "normal" student at the Academy without a exceptional background or backer is 8/8/8/8 stats and taking student loans to pay for it. As the protagonist who can use the Mcguffin, we will of course be in a special class of exceptional students who don't stick to that rule, but that is my guess.
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Well, for the Kiseki side, the "academy inside an empire" has the special class make everyone have an exceptional background. Although some are secret backgrounds that aren't revealed until later.

The closest to having a normal background over there is, funnily enough, being native to an independent highlands area that's contested territory between that empire and the neighboring rival republic. I guess for the second round of characters you could add in "was acquainted with and admired the protagonist group of a previous story arc, but otherwise was perfectly normal".
 
Nerdorama said:
If anyone was curious, without any static stat-ups or bonuses, in order to use the Plot Book, we will need to earn 12400 KNOW XP - or effectively 11050, since our first 1350 KNOW XP will be doubled by our background.
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We're not in any rush to do so though. We also need a 6th-badge level Dark/Psychic pokemon - which is 43000 PKMN XP on a pokemon we don't even have yet. The KNOW requirement isn't a bottleneck and we shouldn't overfocus KNOW over other things because of the book. Gramps isn't expecting us to rush out there in 6 months, he's expecting us to take up the torch eventually, when we graduate.
 
nothingtoseehere said:
We're not in any rush to do so though. We also need a 6th-badge level Dark/Psychic pokemon - which is 43000 PKMN XP on a pokemon we don't even have yet. The KNOW requirement isn't a bottleneck and we shouldn't overfocus KNOW over other things because of the book. Gramps isn't expecting us to rush out there in 6 months, he's expecting us to take up the torch eventually, when we graduate.
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If this doesn't become an emergency situation way sooner than that, I'll be extremely surprised.

But yes, we're also going to have to catch and train an applicable Pokémon, which might or might not be a bigger bottleneck (since I'm assuming we can catch Pokémon at higher than minimum level, which is probably why there's also a move mastery requirement - gotta make sure we've trained it some ourselves.)

EDIT:

Tamara: Your younger sister. Playful. Loves teasing people she like. Likes Timothee.

Timothee: Your adoptive brother. Family died in a Mightyena raid. Certified Brat. But he's your brat
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Also just noticed that this inevitable Trails plot point came up and is being tanked by our sister. Thanks for taking one for the team, Tamara.
 
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