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I would be totally for Plan Neptune if it would add a draught of wakefulness as a "we're trading the go shopping action now for another action down the road"
No. We came into this wealth via robbing someone who themselves was incredibly wealthy, it's effectively a one off injection. We have zero income ourselves so we shouldn't waste it on things that aren't effective for a first year student.
 
[X] Plan Crafts & Tutoring
-[X] Buy Full Camping Gear
-[X] Buy Superior Writing Equipment
-[X] Buy Quality Geometric Tools
-[X] Buy Tutoring, Skill: Five Families Etiquette
-[X] Buy Tutoring, Skill: Haggling
-[X] Buy Tutoring, Skill: Combat - Retreat
-[X] Buy Tutoring, Skill: Artifact Use & Identification
-[X] Buy Tutoring, Skill: Basic Alchemy x2
-[X] Buy Draught of Wakefulness x2
-[X] Buy Potion of Speed
-[X] Buy Itching Powder



Limit 238. 90 + (5 x 4 =) 20 + (3 x 20 =) 60 + (22 x 2 =) 44 + 18 + 9 = 236. 238 - 236 = 2 coins remaining.

Selling the knife and the measures are idiotic: we'll need to get them later and alchemy is quite useful. We're not high enough w/ runic for there to be a point buying the circle. Buying water scrolls doesn't seem to have a point. Plus, when it comes to items like these, I'd rather we wait and save up $ so that we can buy the minor arcana of protection, they are far, far, far, far....far more useful. We should also figure out what the hell this bone wand is for before we sell it.

So basically I want us to buy a bunch of tutoring skills.

The first three, Etiquette Etiquette and Haggling are diplo-based skills that will help us make friends.

Combat: Retreat is obviously useful for escaping. Traps & Tripwires is intended to help us defend our room agains Thomas.

Artifact Use & Identification is to let us identify future artifacts and use them.

Basic Alchemy is to let us figure out what the mushrooms we found are and make the droughts (like the drought of wakefulness) that y'all want to buy.

Runic Theory is so that eventually, in the far future, we can make our own Minor Arcana of Protection.
 
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No. We came into this wealth via robbing someone who themselves was incredibly wealthy, it's effectively a one off injection. We have zero income ourselves so we shouldn't waste it on things that aren't effective for a first year student.
All I'm saying is grab the draught as a single "steal a march in a time of crisis" tool.
 
No. We came into this wealth via robbing someone who themselves was incredibly wealthy, it's effectively a one off injection. We have zero income ourselves so we shouldn't waste it on things that aren't effective for a first year student.
We can gain income as we gain skills that let us produce things - i.e. if we take alchemy or Runic Theory we can make the draughts that everyone wants to buy & identify what the mushrooms are.
 
No. We came into this wealth via robbing someone who themselves was incredibly wealthy, it's effectively a one off injection. We have zero income ourselves so we shouldn't waste it on things that aren't effective for a first year student.

Yeah, this is essentially your 'wow, you antagonized someone with way more power and money than you, here's the corresponding boost to make your situation survivable'. You're unlikely to come into this much money until later, and one of the big problems every mage has is that if you want to make money, you need to sacrifice skill progression. If you go make a few hundred Draughts of Wakefulness, you'll learn nothing, but you'll spend a long time doing so. You'll end up cashed-up, but that's time your opponents can use to level Skills, learn Spells, and invent new Recipes. Money has an opportunity cost - in this case the opportunity cost is having a powerful person hate you.

I'd like to note that the chain of events went something like this: Willpower burnt on Laila roll, allowing a +10 versus the next Thomas Action. Ulos then rolled 23 vs Thomas's 26. If the thread hadn't opted for the Laila reroll, Ulos's test would be so much ink and his ability to get extra tutoring would have never occurred. Having a powerful rival has the ability to fuck you out of things at pivotal moments (especially if they know when those pivotal moments are, like tests and so on).

Alchemical items are really valuable, though. The average Alchemist graduates from Draughts of Wakefulness pretty quick and goes on to more powerful personal buffing - your average Alchemist doesn't sell potions the same way a Runesmith might sell runes. A Runesmith might try and forge a powerful Artifact, fail, and end up with something that's still saleable due to it merely failing in one aspect or another.

The Minor Arcana of Protection is one such item. Protecting against one attack only is very low-tier for an Artifact, but someone had the bright notion to tie five of these rings together and call it a fully-fledged Artifact. People might buy it because it offers attacks against most major vectors but doesn't cost a lot of power - meaning you can absorb one surprise attack and set up your own defenses.



Talking about the various plans so far:

Plan Neptune - Sell the Alchemy stuff, which may have repercussions next term (if we take Alchemy), with the understanding that power now is better than power in ten weeks. Getting items that boost skill rolls means that long-term progression gets a boost, and training the 'run away' skill is always good for a weak mage. In terms of portable power for confrontations, though, it offers very little. Essentially gambling that we can do ok in the short-term and win by just getting better and better in the long-term.

Plan Think of the Future - Similar. Trains Mind Magic, which is probably your strongest offensive option in the short term against weak mages and normals. Otherwise, gets the Skill boosts and a few Draughts for emergencies. This is more powerful than it might seem - it's not unreasonable to be put in a bad situation (especially if you start locking more Actions to get superior progression) where you just need an extra Action to prevent a crisis.

Plan Zaratustra - Given our direction, the Skill items certainly look highly cost-effective. Much like Neptune, takes the Runic Binding Circle for maximum Skill boosts. Takes a minor offensive option with itching powder, though, which may be useful. Almost the same as Neptune, swapping out much of the Tutoring for options that offer immediate power. This is not a bad choice either - given you almost lost a permanent powerful Training Action (and possible ally) due to Thomas's interference, having counters and offensive options on hands could be crucial in saving your bacon.

Plan Crafts & Tutoring - Uses a lot of Actions in the future to get a bunch of low-level Skills. Nonmagical skills are generally less useful than magical ones in the long run (excepting diplomatic ones, for the simple reason that they can give you influence over mages). Takes eight Actions to complete, which is over a week's worth of Actions. This is not as short-term as it might seen - a Skill with only 3 points in it (the average result of most of these Training Rolls from zero) can be applied to any Action to which it is applicable. This is a reasonably cheap way to power up - five Skills with five points cost one-third as much as one Skill with twenty-five points in it. If you're in a situation that can apply all those Skills, you've got a very cheap power-up indeed. Of course, the big advantage of training a few specific Skills is that you can choose situations and Spells that suit them, which isn't really the case for a mishmash of lots of skills.
 
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[X] Accept the Tutoring Offer

I like the idea of skill training, but I think we should focus a bit. Alchemy we have resources for and the potions seems very useful.

Great quest by the way occipitallobe, very fun to read.
 
[X] Plan Better Living Through Alchemy
-[X] Sell Masterwork Cutting Knife
-[X] Sell Masterwork Bone Wand
-[X] Buy Full Camping Gear
-[X] Buy Superior Writing Equipment
-[X] Buy Quality Geometric Tools
-[X] Buy Potion of Speed
-[X] Buy Potion of Strength
-[X] Buy 3 Draught of Wakefulness
-[X] Buy tutoring skill: Basic Alchemy
-[X] Buy tutoring skill: Five Families Etiquette
-[X] Buy tutoring Skill: Haggling
-[X] Buy spell training: Magical Disruption


This plan sort of suggests we bone up on Alchemy, which was a favorite in character creation because it's explicitly useful even for those with low magic. Note that we also have a chit for an extra book and could check out a book to learn via self-study. Thus, it keeps the alchemy tools, which are fairly average and nondescript. This is a time investment to take further, but probably a worthwhile one.

It also buys some potions for 'just-in-case', speed and strength can always be useful in a real emergency- as an example, we could have downed the speed potion to reach Madavian in time guaranteed. Buying a spell also seems like a smart choice, since we'll mostly use magic to counter other people's attacks or pranks going for countermagic seems wise. Strength potion+countermagic+grapple isn't such a bad strategy in a pinch.

Note, this does leave us with 100 coins to find lodging for Abraham later on.
 
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[X] Accept the Tutoring Offer

I like the idea of skill training, but I think we should focus a bit. Alchemy we have resources for and the potions seems very useful.

Great quest by the way occipitallobe, very fun to read.
Potions are an entirely separate style of magic that doesn't synergize with anything else we do.
 
Potions are an entirely separate style of magic that doesn't synergize with anything else we do.
It doesn't synergize with the other fields of magic, but it does synergize with the other things we do by providing complementary actions. E.g., even if we just learn how to make a Draught of Wakefulness over the long term we'll be gaining actions through irregularly using the draughts we create.
 
Potions are an entirely separate style of magic that doesn't synergize with anything else we do.
Except they clearly do? Draught of Wakefulness is pretty obviously useful to everyone. Alchemy in general is useful for everyone with the brains to learn it.

'What we do' at this point isn't much of anything magic-wise other than make a blinding flash of light and we have yet to get very far in spirit binding. It's specifically more useful to high-magic people who can summon powerful spirits, which we aren't, so while it could be useful depending on it for combat effectiveness seems very chancy- weak spirits may be weak. History certainly isn't going to help us defend ourselves much.
 
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Plan Crafts & Tutoring - Uses a lot of Actions in the future to get a bunch of low-level Skills. Nonmagical skills are generally less useful than magical ones in the long run (excepting diplomatic ones, for the simple reason that they can give you influence over mages). Takes eight Actions to complete, which is over a week's worth of Actions. This is not as short-term as it might seen - a Skill with only 3 points in it (the average result of most of these Training Rolls from zero) can be applied to any Action to which it is applicable. This is a reasonably cheap way to power up - five Skills with five points cost one-third as much as one Skill with twenty-five points in it. If you're in a situation that can apply all those Skills, you've got a very cheap power-up indeed. Of course, the big advantage of training a few specific Skills is that you can choose situations and Spells that suit them, which isn't really the case for a mishmash of lots of skills.
Honestly, my goal with all of these skills is to be well-rounded and semi-independent.

I'd be fine w/ trimming down if people could make up their minds to choose between runes or alchemy.
 
Also, I thought I'd talk up the Artifacts as no-one has chosen them yet (and the bells). Some things don't offer direct roll boosts, but rather have powerful in-story effects. The very first thing I would say is this. Between Abraham and Madavian you have a Magic Pool of 320 lying around. Abraham might work harder and use his up to train, but Madavian? He's spent most of his time here chatting to people, watching the occasional cool magical duel, and hanging with his buddies. None of his magical Skills are very good, to say the least. You can probably prompt him to charge a relatively cheap item up each week (he gets 120 a day), no issue.

The Magically Linked Bells are the magical version of quantum entangled, well, bells. Being able to communicate over long distances in code is really powerful, and they have no distance limitation. Learn Morse Code (or the equivalent) and you can run a magical telegraph! Admittedly, it's a little weak right now, but if you wanted Abraham to move out? Well, being able to communicate with him instantaneously would be very, very useful.

The Chimes of Cessation are ridiculously powerful, especially for someone with your hilariously tiny magic pool. Charging it to 200 points is enough to completely exhaust someone with a Channeling 4 Magic Pool, which means you can fire off a spell, ring the chimes, and then run away after they cast all their spells. You can even wait for them to exhaust their Magic Pool and save yours until after the Chimes are exhausted, winning the duel by default. Of course, they're very, very situational, but they can nullify most close-range magic encounters.

The Eye of Farsight allows you to spy on a ten-by-ten metre area for ten minutes for 100 Magic Points. It's not exactly weak to be able to spy on your opponent's room, especially if you can convince your friends to charge it daily. It offers unparalleled intel against Thomas, as well as useful spying against anyone who doesn't have a decent anti-scrying setup. It would also allow you to inspect locked rooms for useful knowledge or items. Knowing what's happening at any given time is really powerful - it doesn't improve your rolls so much as it generally gives you access to better Actions that do more stuff in a given situation.

The Minor Arcana of Protection are really very good. 100 Magic Points per week to defend against a single attack from each sort of source, for the most part. Being able to defend against heat/cold, kinetic force, airborne poisons and acids, liquid poisons and acids and mental magic is ridiculous. You'll also notice when the charge goes (having been Awakened this week), so you'll have an early warning against any sort of attack - enough time to muster a defence and either retaliate and run away. The only reason they're so cheap is because they're essentially failed versions of true Arcana of Protection, the sort rich combat mages use.

Lastly, the The Training Cube allows you to grind Spellweaving and train Spells more effectively. It doubles our Spellweaving Training Rolls (from a multiplier of one to a multiplier of two) outside the classroom, and allows us to effectively train spells. If we want to get good at spellcasting, having something like this is tremendously useful.
 
How fast does magic in one's pool replenish? I don't think we actually covered that? I mean, is it a percentage, a flat rate, and is that per hour or per day or...? That, combined with the fact that we don't actually have any real magic in our pool has us completely discounting artifacts.
 
How fast does magic in one's pool replenish? I don't think we actually covered that? I mean, is it a percentage, a flat rate, and is that per hour or per day or...? That, combined with the fact that we don't actually have any real magic in our pool has us completely discounting artifacts.

Your Magic Pool is replenished each day, though the replenishment itself happens at a steady rate. So you have a Magic Pool of 20, and recover roughly 1 point per hour. The version of you without the Curse has a Magic Pool of 420, and recovers roughly 20 points per hour.
 
@occipitallobe Yeah but they're expensive.

@drake_azathoth Why are you selling the mastercraft knife, which is useful in alchemy? If you can find a way not to (i.e. by dropping the writing tools and etc. which seem more useful for Rune Theory, and maybe the Potion of Strength, too) and add in an Artifact Use & Identification tutoring session I'll switch to your plan.
 
Potions are an entirely separate style of magic that doesn't synergize with anything else we do.

Alchemy can be synergistic in the sense a potion making you stronger, or more dextrous, or calmer can have a great impact on how you manage to perform.

The real lack of synergy is more like...

Well, if you decided not to train Lore: Runes ever, you could still use Lore: Magical Theory in a pinch when it came to figuring out what Runes did. Likewise, if you wanted to figure out what a spell did but had no Magical Theory, Lore: Runes could be subbed in at half-strength to help out. Most of the other branches of magic have enough similarity that learning the theoretical side of one will often help out with the theoretical side of another, so even if you take one term of runes and decide not to do it any more, it'll still help out. If you get a massive score in Craft: Rune that same steady-handedness will help you out with Spellweaving (assuming you're, say, trying to scribe a spell onto paper).

Alchemy, on the other hand, is weird and unlike all other magic, so that doesn't happen. Learning the theoretical part of Alchemy will teach you about Alchemy. Learning to be patient and good at timing, measuring and cutting won't help you scribe sigils at all. If you take a term of Alchemy and decide it's useless, the learned Skills will be very weak, and making the low-level Recipes will be pointless compared to, say, your third-and-fourth year spells (you could more reasonably scribe spells, sell them, and buy potions using your comparative advantage in this hypothetical case, and use less Actions for a better set of Alchemical potions and philters). Recipes can't be made on the fly unlike Spells, so having a Recipe rarely increases your situational versatility, whereas knowing a weak version of a Spell might still sometimes come in handy.

Also, Alchemy doesn't offer the same identification powers other skills do. Even if you don't even summon a Spirit, having Lore: Souls and Spirits can definitely help you screw with a Spirit someone else has summoned. Looking a potion tells you nothing, and they're impossible to reverse-engineer. So while weak skills in other schools offer you limited counters to those schools, Alchemy doesn't.

If you do focus on Alchemy though, it's absolutely worthwhile. It's just that it doesn't offer much unless focused.
 
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What I meant was that alchemy takes time and money and effort away from our other skills. I've been advocating for buying potions. Well...time to throw together my own plan. If @occipitallobe could offer similar analysis to the other plans, that would be appreciated.

There is no plan here. Move along.
-[] Sell Masterwork Cutting Knife
-[] Sell Average Measures and Weights
-[] Buy Full Camping Gear
-[] Buy Superior Writing Equipment
-[] Buy Itching Powder
-[] Buy Draught of Wakefulness x2
-[] Buy Potion of Speed
-[] Buy Quality Geometric Tools
-[] Buy Tutoring Skill: Combat-Retreat
-[] Buy Tutoring, Skill: Traps & Tripwires
-[] Buy Tutoring, Skill: Artifact Use & Identification
-[] Buy Tutoring, Skill: Five Families Etiquette
-[] Buy Tutoring, Skill: Haggling
-[] Buy Spell Training: Mind Magic


Leaves us with 58 coins, gets us some mind magic (and might I recommend the excellently written Mother of Learning for a story about how a low-magic-pool character skilled in mind magic can make a go of it), gives us a bit of an "in case of emergency, unstopper glass" reserve, helps with long-term stuff, helps with short-term needs (find Laila, give her a tiny supply of the itching powder and ask her if she wants to see the rich jackass squirm because we both dislike Thomas? Okay, okay, I'm fishing for ways to get Laila in our group if just so I have an excuse to link Clapton when she does something cool)
 
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....??? I'd think that such things would not only help with scribing sigils but would also help with, say, spellweaving and even combat, when it comes to timing.

Think of timing slightly differently. It's not so much reaction speed as it is being good at measuring time. At seventeen seconds, throw this in. Wait sixty-two seconds, stir for eight seconds. Do this for three hours and four minutes, but no more than three hours and six. Combat is more about having a sense of when a thing is going to hit, or a spell is going to activate. You're less concerned about seemingly arbitrary measurement precision and more about, well timing something to get through their defenses. Your native sense of time is fine for this, but it works horrendously for Alchemy.

Likewise, being really good at cutting and measuring quantities might offer some tiny boost to scribing hypothetically, but Craft: Runes and Spellweaving are essentially doing the same thing - scribing a two-dimensional symbol of some sort into a material. Spellweaving cares about what order you scribe the various lines of the symbol (and which direction you scribe them in), Runes do not, but the virtues of precise symbol-engraving into some sort of material remain very closely related.
 
Think of timing slightly differently. It's not so much reaction speed as it is being good at measuring time. At seventeen seconds, throw this in. Wait sixty-two seconds, stir for eight seconds. Do this for three hours and four minutes, but no more than three hours and six. Combat is more about having a sense of when a thing is going to hit, or a spell is going to activate. You're less concerned about seemingly arbitrary measurement precision and more about, well timing something to get through their defenses. Your native sense of time is fine for this, but it works horrendously for Alchemy.

Likewise, being really good at cutting and measuring quantities might offer some tiny boost to scribing hypothetically, but Craft: Runes and Spellweaving are essentially doing the same thing - scribing a two-dimensional symbol of some sort into a material. Spellweaving cares about what order you scribe the various lines of the symbol (and which direction you scribe them in), Runes do not, but the virtues of precise symbol-engraving into some sort of material remain very closely related.
For rote alchemy, yes, a strictly by-the-numbers type of timing is sufficient. But for higher level alchemy, no, it shouldn't be. In such a case it would be more like something where you're basing things off of your knowledge of the ingredients, intuition, and the sight of the brew. Combat is a matter of having a sense of when a thing is going to hit or how long it will take to activate; just like alchemy is a matter of having a sense of how close to the next step a potion is, how much time you have to grind herbs (if you haven't already), and etc. The main/only difference is that in combat your opponent is less predictable (unless you've done your research). Both, however, have some aspect of time management, a judgment of your own capabilities, and a keen eye. The refinement required to perform alchemy would enhance the "native" timing required in combat. In my opinion, at least.

Spellweaving and Runes are similar in that they both require precision in terms of making lines correctly. They are different in that one of them is drawing in air and the other is cutting against possibly variable resistance, usually with tools that aren't your fingers or a wand.

But it's your quest. I just find it weird that such a heterogenous skill would be considered to be so detached.

@drake_azathoth Yo are you going to not sell the knife or...?
 
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People do know that for Tutoring we also need to spend a action, right? We don't just magically get those rolls by spending money.
 
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