Exalted

[marsh garden]

THAT'S VERY CUTE

[wise ocean]

that's very fun

[marsh garden]

big ups

[velvet raft]

Since our group is more familiar with the lore we cannot have that exact ooc revelation, but we decided to go with the same basic vibe

We're starting as mortals in a Wyld Hunt

[wise ocean]

I've thought more about where to go next with my characters and the more I consider it, the more I think the answer is just take one more ox-body on both. dots in relevant combat skills. charms that let you do otherwise cool things are a myth, being squishy is the run-ender

[velvet raft]

There's a regularly scheduled Hunt that happens around a tomb in the South, where every generation or so a strange anathema tries to break in, and we're part of the people being organized for it

[marsh garden]

so, just to be clear - these charms do not allow you to ignore disengage, right? because they're still amplifying your reflexive move

[tulip folio]

My sid tanking her dex was likely a terrible plan as it took multiple charms to overcome and she's still not exactly super mobile but going full Str/Stamina felt fitting for her.

[velvet raft]

I hear you

[marsh garden]

yeah no i know dex would just be better but

[velvet raft]

Going no dex just has a vibe

[marsh garden]

i want to be clumsy

when i'm being Not Clumsy, it's because i'm doing obvious magic to unfuck my natural ability to eat shit and fall on my face and ruin my nice outfit that my mom bought me

[bleak hazel]

in this case I have infinite XP being eaten by my snake/mantis/brawl trifecta and so I will probably have to relegate resistance to Ox-bodies only

which is awkward because that means I have no foo unfooable

I will have to just clash them all with Snake Style

[velvet raft]

Aren't there a couple of grapple charms in Resistance?

Assuming sids

[bleak hazel]

there are, but my grapple suite is Mantis + Speared Boar Struggle anyway

let me go see how deep loom shifting nudge is

[velvet raft]

Resistance has some rad stuff in general

Immunity to forced movement, grappling, feats of strength

[bleak hazel]

three, ouch

Sid Resistance is a great toolkit

[velvet raft]

running in a straight line

[bleak hazel]

it's just that negating uncountable requires two durability charms that aren't ox-bodies as prereqs and I'm already getting those from Brawl

so that's a 3 charm investment for tankiness I don't super need

[velvet raft]

Fair

[bleak hazel]

also I do want this guy to be slightly less combat focused than Four Seasons Rival

I need to fit in various gaslighting, gatekeeping and girlbossing techniques since I never get to play with Sid Manipulation and it's fun to do so

[wise ocean]

real

sidbuilding has so many charm tree taxes compared to solaroids, it's unfortunate you can't really go down a given tree

[bleak hazel]

I always feel way more taxed making solar-types because they're worse at dipping for one or two cool things per tree

but my Sid builds always have like fifty combat trees and that's where the expense is

[wise ocean]

It was harder for me to make Crystal than Graves or Torchlight, honestly

Crystal was like "okay, I need these four different merits, I need these rituals, I need necromancy, I need to dip into these four different charm trees, I need to take this from this division tree and this from that division tree, and if I want prophecy I should make sure I have a specialty..."

Graves was I KILL PEOPLE

Torchlight was just taking everything in social combat I wanted and tossing three charms of combat on at the end

[velvet raft]

Picking up stealth at all?

[bleak hazel]

Sids are always "so I combined 50 random techniques and now I can punch out God" but you need to know where all the tricks are

also getting sorc/necro on them is a pain due to prereqs

and maybe

I would like to teacup ninja but it might be difficult to squeeze in the charms

stealth + socialize might be a decent combo

fire off some social orbital lasers while hiding under the cutlery

[tulip folio]

Yeah, I went 'hmm...I could get more soak with sorcery' and then I went 'I need how many charms for sorcery?'

And in the end I only had 2 secrets charms. Spider Google and 'I can see spirits'

[bleak hazel]

spider google, spiritcam, shaping defence and either unweaving method or ascending destiny mien is my usual four

but that can be hard to fit

[tulip folio]

Yeah, when I also needed a chunk of battles charms for 'stat fixing' I couldn't afford it.

On the plus side: Nephrite does have a solution to people who are fast moving but have to be in melee at literally any point.

[buoyant summit]

You're making a Journeys right?

[tulip folio]

Speared Boar Struggle for 'HEY, GUESS WHO LANDED THE COMMAND GRAB'

[wise ocean]

surprisingly I don't have spider google on crystal, but I do have every other prophecy, spycam, or future-related thing on him anyway

[bleak hazel]

could be journeys, could be secrets, could be endings, I need to figure out what lines things up best

also yes he also has command grab

[wise ocean]

endings adds overwhelm which is nice for MMA

not getting a ton out of secrets signs

[tulip folio]

I linked ID a video of Heavenly Pot Buster when describing my combat plan for this sid.

[wise ocean]

journeys sign is always useful

[buoyant summit]

🦢I kiiiiinda wanna make a fully spider-themed Secrets with the Distaff and google spider for the game Misc is making this guy for that Rhi is running

[fierce star]

I'm fiddling with a secrets sid and pondering MAs for them that would fit thematically for the two sides of her coin, one side bieng 'professional rumormonger who loves to make people live in interesting times', and the other side being 'combat pragmatist raised by Fae Big Boss as part of a mercenary company in the hundred kingdoms' (has not been killed by the wyld hunt yet by virtue of being willing to fight anathema for pay)

[buoyant summit]

Oh that's incredible

Also

[marsh garden]

fae big boss...

[buoyant summit]

Nah it would be Fae Big Boss

The Boss served two states

[marsh garden]

?

i said big boss

i seem to be missing something

[fierce star]

I might want to wait for companion. On the other hand there is just... sidereal melee.

it's not big on 'the basics of cqb' but it's probably the most straightforwarrd option

[wise ocean]

just double-checked my prereqs and realized I did the exact same thing but unintentionally

well, replacing spider google for incite decorum because Necromancer

[buoyant summit]

Twas talking to myself, apologies

[bleak hazel]

If you want to flex on people I suggest Sid Melee with dual knives into CMOS or OSOI

clash clash clash clash

[marsh garden]

oh, i see

[velvet raft]

Spider Knife

Spider Knife

Does whatever a knife spider does

[wise ocean]

cmos is fine for Hit Penalty but I really don't think anybody can match to osoi for fuckiness

[bleak hazel]

CMOS is the most well rounded, OSOI has giga flurry

and the same hit penalties from the form

[fierce star]

Hmm. I was planning for her to eventually take QHOD (because of course the faeblooded has the meme virus), any word on if it'll be knife-compatible?

[bleak hazel]

Nope but if you went melee you just enlighten both

[fierce star]

iirc in ex2 you could use weapons from your dreams

[bleak hazel]

at which point they are forcibly made compatible with each other plus the entire melee tree

Also we don't even have the companion yet so steady on

[fierce star]

yeah that's legit

[bleak hazel]

QHOD is in an as yet unannounced book of unknown scope and timing

[fierce star]

this hcaracter is about uh

four? down the celestials-I-want-to-play lsit?

six if we're including solaroids

[marsh garden]

oh right, it would go in Gets with Rakan

[fierce star]

so chances are by the time I find a game for her at the veyr least companionw ill be out lol

[marsh garden]

forgot about that

[fierce star]

OTOH she is the sidereal I want to play the most, but I could easily swap in my journies airship fetishist

[wise ocean]

I don't really rate osoi form compared to cmos form, since either of those forms mean no paoc form or egoa form and at least cmos is more competitive against that

which is part of why I say cmos is the hit penalty sma, since your webs just Have That

[bleak hazel]

PAOC is an E5 silly capstone, I don't really compare that to other forms

Its subsidiary forms, perhaps

CMOS has the advantage of being cheap and cheerful and as such being "pop to gain a fuckton of init"

[wise ocean]

Yeah, I'm mostly thinking "do you really want osoi form over demesne and manse or soulfire"

[bleak hazel]

If you're on an unarmed build you can go extra wild and do web + WOE

[fierce star]

she'd just be sid melee into PAOC and me begging the GM to let me invent a charm that lets me use demense-and-manse form to power airships

she's from that lookshyan family that's dedicated to maintaining their air fleet and is really mad about how far they've fallen in the modern day. She knows she can't just like. help them from heaven, but if she makes powered flight easier in general, you know

[bleak hazel]

I think you really do, OSOI form reflexive clashes + penalty just brutalises people

[wise ocean]

Maybe I'm undervaluing clashes, yeah

[fierce star]

what was that crazy demense and manse combo that got you an extra 3 motes/turn every turn you were in the stance?

[velvet raft]

OSOI coming off of melee can also get some extra non-charm defense if it takes the charm that bases parry on perception

[bleak hazel]

Nope, nope, does not work

Bonk

OSOI extra dots only count for OSOI calcs, you can't just spawn +1 noncharm parry from them

[buoyant summit]

🦢Hmmmm

Secrets Caste Forgotten Blade build...

That uses Even Blade with Oracular Wisdom because surprise bitch Oracular Wisdom works with an attack charm now

[wise ocean]

hm. Looking at cmos form vs. osoi form again, I suppose reflexive clashing is definitely important, but I just can't see the draw in "1/r decisive clash" with that form entry condition (read as "take ebon shadow") vs. three initiative tracks, free initiative (w/enlightenment, otherwise smoothing out your mote economy) with incredibly easy entrance, or yet more mote econ plus damage bonus with an also very easy entrance

[buoyant summit]

It doesn't apply the mote discount but the other effects work

[bleak hazel]

Clashes are disgustingly efficient, since spending on clash + boosting attack roll means you don't have to spend on both an attack and a conventional defence

they also do extra damage and penalise the loser's defence, and if your opponent can clash you you have to be careful to never lowball an attack lest they go "hey free hit" and collect the win-clash bonus

since everyone's usually going all out on them, the attack penalties hurt a lot for your opponent

CMOS Form is still my personal favourite before PAOC Form because it's just so incredibly cheap, but OSOI is scary

[wise ocean]

📝

[bleak hazel]

CMOS also has a reflexive clash at E4 anyway so it's not like it's massively worse at that, it just can't spam them

Cannibalistic Heritage Technique hurts

[marsh garden]

yeah jesus christ

[marsh garden]

i hit you with 3x jb initiative

[bleak hazel]

"Join Battle, Join Battle, Join Battle"
"OK, take your swing, I'm holding two knives for +2 dice on clashes and you're at -3 to hit me"

[marsh garden]

what even survives that

[bleak hazel]

average resistance solar

[marsh garden]

bwuh

[bleak hazel]

hang on, maths

[marsh garden]

you have like 30 average decisive damage, how

[bleak hazel]

alchs can straight up health gate you

for one

[marsh garden]

what charm's that?

[bleak hazel]

OK, 45 init for 33 motes 1wp total (JB x 3, CMOS Form, Nest of Living Strands)
5m to clash, 6m to excellency the clash

Rolls an average of 18.88 levels of decisive damage if you win the clash

[wise ocean]

blows up your artifact clash
5m

whew

[marsh garden]

wait, don't you have pretty easy damage TN reduction?

or are those charms not versatile

[bleak hazel]

an E5 Solar with 5 ox bodies has 22 health levels, grows 9 more -0s with an E1 charm and tanks it while staying on his -1s

assuming he doesn't use Adamant Skin Technique and apply soak against it for stupid amounts of reduction

[marsh garden]

i thought it should be closer to ~31 levels of decisive

[bleak hazel]

oh if you're coming from melee you can get it up to 22.5 levels with Smiling at the Damned, yeah

[wise ocean]

it's functionally impossible to get that much without some truly ridiculous doomcombos like that gentle embrace thing against a battlegroup I came up with awhile ago

[bleak hazel]

but nobody has tons of damage TN reduction

SATD is not versatile so you have to Enlighten to use that

[wise ocean]

you'd need to be rolling either huge TN reduction or ~60 dice (!!) to hit 30 decisive levels

[bleak hazel]

nobody has that much TN reduction

it caps at TN4

[marsh garden]

ahhh, i was thinking of Sever the Thread

which also isn't versatile

[bleak hazel]

you can just about get there with greater sign of endings + smiling at the damned + that whole combo against a big ghost like a deathlord

at which point lmao

[marsh garden]

yeah i imagine the only reason any deathlords are still alive is because the sids didn't know about them

[wise ocean]

fafl probably just tanks it still tbh

[buoyant summit]

Damn the Distaff would have really cool sauce with CMOS

[bleak hazel]

you can Brawl enlighten with light weapons, that works fine, so you can combo that if you go that route

[buoyant summit]

If an ST let someone use the Distaff threads as their threads for CMOS

[wise ocean]

well, for certain definitions of "tank," but it doesn't one-shot FAFL

[bleak hazel]

oh yeah FAFL doesn't give a fuck

[marsh garden]

fafl's mentioned to play super tight with their motes unless they already know they're fucked, so

[bleak hazel]

for one he has 41 health levels, for two he has a health gate

so you do 5 damage, gratz

[wise ocean]

I think at the point they see GSOE they know to start spending their shit

[marsh garden]

don't supps have to be before the attacker spends shit?

or am i mixing up timing again

[wise ocean]

nope, attacker then defender

[marsh garden]

because of reflexive on offense vs. defense

ah

i thought they declared "at the same time"

[bleak hazel]

always attacker first

otherwise it breaks the bidding-game dynamic and leads to "lol lmao I declared 50 charms after you specced your defences, you die"

[marsh garden]

right

[bleak hazel]

this is also why reflexive clashes are mean because they are a defensive option

[marsh garden]

ahh

right

[bleak hazel]

so you can see their lowballed attack coming in and go "eat shit"

[marsh garden]

so you always know exactly how much you need to spend

to beat them

[wise ocean]

yep

[bleak hazel]

at which point they can declare stuff like clash buff charms and defences against incoming decisive because well, there's an incoming decisive

but you can't go back and redo your excellency or whatever

[marsh garden]

god, i know i had this down

and then i unlearned everything because reflexives don't work like that on defense...

[bleak hazel]

Cannibalistic Heritage is an extremely good charm but at E4 it's not out of line for solar grade bullshit

(Resistance solar is also just deranged and never dies ever until you mote tap him, restrain him and drag him down with weight of attacks)

[buoyant summit]

Oh wait

For this character idea I can just Melee into CMOS

hehehehehe

[wise ocean]

that +2 to clashes from having two weapons or a 2h weapon looks ever more attractive to me by the day, and yet if I take the extra weapon I no longer have a hand free to RCD while hitting people with sword VBOS. fucked up

[bleak hazel]

use legs

kicks are unarmed strikes

(unless you're wearing iron boots, anyway)

[wise ocean]

-whatever penalty to parry without ambidextrous, no? that's going to make rcd basically never worth it compared to just using vbos medium weapon

[bleak hazel]

technically this game has a -1 offhand penalty to rolls, there is no penalty to parry

[wise ocean]

... huh. wild

[bleak hazel]

also everyone forgets that penalty exists because it's dumb

and it says specifically "your off hand" which I would say means legs are fine

[marsh garden]

lmfao

that's such horseshit

but considering core

i'd believe you if you said it was intended

[buoyant summit]

🐰I forget it when Misc is doing Rival's insano 'I swap the shit in my hands five times a turn' crap

[wise ocean]

surely I will be allowed to 2h my by-rules 1h weapon to gain the clash bonus without having to take a random cheap mundane sword in my other hand which exists for no other reason than clash bonus

[buoyant summit]

But I think he specifically took ambi to cover his ass anyway

[marsh garden]

yeah, he did

[bleak hazel]

Rival has ambidextrous because i cannot be fucked to remember what weapon is in what hand when I'm doing that bullshit

[buoyant summit]

l m a o

Such is your punishment

(I like Rival's build but the sheer aura he farmed by two-shotting a raksha with a magicians trick made me hate him. As a friend.)

[wise ocean]

though considering the offhand is used for, uh, no purpose I can possibly think of but "having a clash bonus" I can probably just buy a sword which for all narrative purposes does not exist

and by "buy a sword" I mean "all I need is a mundane medium sword, I picked it up off of one of the guys I killed, done"

[buoyant summit]

Oh I just realized

[marsh garden]

my (very limited, as we've established) understanding of the intent here is to make Heavy weapons not like

utterly unusable in clashes

[buoyant summit]

With CMOS, do you need a hand free to grapple?

[marsh garden]

as opposed to being an upgrade in general that you can slap on mediums (which already have their defense bonus for no reason)

[wise ocean]

oh, of course, but it's mildly annoying to have to swap off to white reaper scythe whenever I want to clash a guy lol

[marsh garden]

oh, from a 1h spear?

[wise ocean]

not from a balance perspective, from a My Build Feel perspective, which is very selfish

from vbos medium sword

[marsh garden]

yeah fair

ah

[buoyant summit]

Oh ur talking about Graves rn

[wise ocean]

might as well, he's my combat gremlin

[buoyant summit]

🐴FIGHT MEEEEEEEE!!!!!

(I know that needs setup, dw)

[wise ocean]

pretty much all my combat thoughts get evaluated through him because he's actively in play and a Dusk Of All Time

[buoyant summit]

Also probably gonna beat the brakes off me but it'll be cool

[tulip folio]

Crimson Truth Revealed 
Cost: 5m; Mins: Perception 3, Essence 1(?)
Type: Reflexive
Keywords: Mute
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: None
Without structure, the game falls apart and a winner can't be declared. Drawing on the narrative convention within her soul, the Wanderer reveals a rule of the game.

The Wanderers doubles 9s on a Profile Character or Case Scene attempt. On a success, in addition to any other clues, the storyteller will reveal a Crimson Clue about an ongoing mystery or crime. This Crimson Clue is a certainty of the scenario, without need for supporting evidence and often a fact that could not have been discovered by mundane means. Crimson Clues are always valuable and directly related to the scenario. They may immediately rule out possibilities, though they will never immediately reveal the entire truth.

When the Wanderer speaks a Crimson Truth genuinely, her honesty is apparent to all who see her.

I'm pondering this as an Investigation charm. Where you get a Bonus Clue, with the small extra bonus that if you Tell People The Clue, they know you're being honest.

[bleak hazel]

technically mundane sword does not pair with beamklave but I can just make you a bigger than normal warscythe and stat it out as 2H staff

get necron with it

[bleak hazel]

you can probably stunt it with legs

failing that either drop one of your knives or just take a hand off your sword unless it's 2H tag

grappling with armed MAs sometimes gets a bit odd

[buoyant summit]

I'm asking because my terrible build idea

And you are going to sigh exasperatedly

Is Melee into MotSE

Plus Garda Talon Even Blade

Plus CMoS

[bleak hazel]

literally everything in there is gold and extremely XP-efficient except Even Blade

Even Blade is kind of a pointless addon in this case because it's just "what if awful compatibility problems"

[wise ocean]

but Sword... Flavor...

What I want keeps clashing with what's most effective and my charop side only gets stronger every day

[marsh garden]

lol

what i think is cool always has triumphed

[buoyant summit]

The EB is why I prefaced with terrible build idea lmao

[marsh garden]

it's why i always gravitate to one fucktillion strength characters

[bleak hazel]

just why, you already have sword martial art in Sid Melee

[wise ocean]

this is true, this is why I have 4 performance and only 2 and 1 or something in awareness and athletics

what do I use performance for? threats, mostly

[marsh garden]

based

ngl

[buoyant summit]

https://giphy.com/gifs/movie-megamind-migamind-hn8f7CsPoXlUlQoojt

[marsh garden]

after having seen Flying Guillotine Style

i've realized that something i've been trying to do with a personal artifact

would actually fit way better as a Field of Fell Dreams Style

and now i want to make that

[wise ocean]

cha5 perf4 is a surprisingly large dice pool for threatening people since it'll also always be stunt boosted

[buoyant summit]

God I cannot wait to fight Not!Darth Vader

[marsh garden]

lol

[buoyant summit]

Which is even fucking funnier because one of Fel's (my character for context, topple) main inspos

Is Anakin

[marsh garden]

but have you considered using App 8 perf 4 threaten pool

ah yes

sidakin and sid vader at the same time

or is this for your voygame characters

[buoyant summit]

Nah Ash's character is an Abyssal

Ye

Voygame

[wise ocean]

bone throne

[marsh garden]

bone throne :D

[buoyant summit]

Is Graves a necromancer?

🐮Speaking of Abyssal necromancers, my Moonshadow is the only one in my group, a Perfect Circle

That is not a necromancer

The Dusk is a necromancer

[fierce star]

being fair solaroids find it ridiculously easy to dip into necromancy/sorcery

occult 3 ess 1 no prereq charms

[buoyant summit]

I have 0 Occult dots

[fierce star]

pick up a couple utility spells and bing bang boom you're a gish now kid

[buoyant summit]

I put them into Lore instead

For legal code and Underworld cultural mores

And Force Lightning

Also fuck me we need to set up our pluralkit...

[marsh garden]

my dusk is also a necromancer lmao

[buoyant summit]

bruv

[marsh garden]

i desperately wish i could have gone daybreak

but alas

explode so hard you a demesne

it called to me

[buoyant summit]

lol wtf

[marsh garden]

it's one of like, a blistering three non-clone ath charms

maybe less than that

but it's peak

[buoyant summit]

Are you Apoc Athletics?

[marsh garden]

yeah

[buoyant summit]

Amazing

Ours is boring and is Apoc Melee

[fierce star]

I mean shit my azimuth is apocalyptic awareness

she can taste you from a mile away

[marsh garden]

i mean

infernal awareness is at least forty billion JB boosters

[wise ocean]

nope

[buoyant summit]

(yorny joke) ||mfw Infernals invented bluetooth sex toys||

[wise ocean]

infernal awareness is insane, I stole a charm from them as an evocation for good reason

[buoyant summit]

Thank the Lord

[fierce star]

her build only has like two of the JB boosters, it's mostly the sense extenders

[merry arch]

infernal awareness is goated

[fierce star]

she should be a lore primordial... whatver the !twilight is because she's a mind hand manipulation primary user, but her backstory fit azimuth too well

being blind and having no arms means you have to sacrifice some charms for functionality

[wise ocean]

while it would be appropriate to drown anyone in the skeleton legion before they actually fight him as a basic stat check before the other stat check of survive my king-killing blow, Purple Morality Agenda forbids this

[marsh garden]

yo mood, i also have no arms

well, that's what the artifact is for (for now)

(i plan to obliterate it later for maximum depression)

things hurt worst when you lose them twice, after all

[buoyant summit]

What's funny is Fel would be immune to exactly this trick

Command 4

Skip right to the bossfight, baby

[bleak hazel]

infernal join battle is so incredibly good that I wouldn't copy-paste more than the first charm to other splats, just because it's clearly one of their outsized strong points and Solars should probably not be allowed 25 average init on JB before Awakening Eye

double 7s JB w/ full solaroid dice cap

[wise ocean]

this is true, I was planning on other things for helm of the one eye later

mostly soak reducers, ambush reducers, those sorts of things

surprisingly hard to come up with vision-based evos that don't boost JB

[marsh garden]

yeah, you've got like, perception buffs, defense shredding, awareness powers, and i guess evil anime glare

unless you've got some Balor/Medusa tech going on

and you can infernal eye of stone a mf

[buoyant summit]

Isn't one of Graves' main inspo arts that guy with the freaky helmet from Made in Abyss?

[wise ocean]

it would be funny to have "gemstone eye: laser a bitch" as a capstone evo, this is true

[wise ocean]

Nah, Ryth IB2
All swords all the time

[buoyant summit]

(does not know what that is)

[wise ocean]

Bondrewd has a similar style of helmet but is much less sword

[buoyant summit]

Oh infinity blade

OH

[wise ocean]

yep

[buoyant summit]

Man

[wise ocean]

the Deathless Blademaster, the greatest swordsman you'll ever face is pretty much the start statement, though obviously modified for "this is an e2 character"

[marsh garden]

BONDREWD???

NAH

[buoyant summit]

Infinity Blade 😔

[marsh garden]

oh fuck

[wise ocean]

the first two were ported to PC!

[marsh garden]

raidrar hat inspo?

[wise ocean]

nah, ryth

[marsh garden]

ahh

[wise ocean]

but radriar for an infernal or solar would fuck

[marsh garden]

god i love the IB setting's armors

raidrar's drip is so good

i'm gonna give my dualcasting daybreak some IB-ass armor

[tulip folio]

...actually, that talk of JB boosters has me pondering how to get some of the flavour of Shaping Combat without actually being Fucking Shaping Combat.

Join Battle charm that gets stepped up a tier if you do it in a Wyld Area (Like a Bordermarch) as you go "HEY GUYS, TIME FOR SHIT TO GET WEIRD!" and everyone else goes ''Oh god, what the fuck is this, I need a moment to comprehend how the rules work now'. Sorta like how The Game Is Real doesn't actually impose game rules on players, just the characters.

You just Domain Expansion over the area and get the jump on other guys because you're the only one who knows how things work/real enemies will quickly adapt to it.

[buoyant summit]

@wise ocean Deeply Star Wars nerdy question

What form(s) would Graves use?

XD

[tulip folio]

What's Grave's deal again? 3am iki brain not sharp

[wise ocean]

Primary II, secondary V/Djem So and VII/Juyo

[bleak hazel]

I forget the name but whichever one Anakin had that was all about "bam you're dead" fits with his tendency to open fights with immediate megadecisive

[marsh garden]

god's most sword autist dusk apoc iirc

[buoyant summit]

That's V Djem So

[tulip folio]

If they're a sword autist(duelist) we're looking at Makashi

[buoyant summit]

Fel would be Fucking Annoying, i.e. Forms III and V Djem So

[bleak hazel]

Rival has Sid Melee, which is just Soresu, and Crane, which has a lot of leaping about and furious exchanges of rapid counters, so III and IV

[buoyant summit]

Since she's using Sid Melee and Radiant Breath, the two-handed Even Blade

[bleak hazel]

heavy emphasis on the latter

[tulip folio]

Ataru is just 'I get as much bonus base init as possible and never stop decisiving'

[buoyant summit]

Single-Point is I think good Ataru rep

Fight me

[tulip folio]

Juyo/Vaapad feels very Infernal Melee

[bleak hazel]

Single Point is the least mobile sword form in the game, the only schmovement it has is anime sword dash

[tulip folio]

'I am literally powered by my hate'

[buoyant summit]

Deep Wells Of Emotion type headass

[bleak hazel]

Ataru does not strike me as base init decisive spam

[buoyant summit]

fair

[bleak hazel]

that feels more V

[buoyant summit]

Yeah as a person whose whole gameplan is 'get the highest initiative possible and decisive the shit out of someone'

That's V

[tulip folio]

Shii-Cho is just Even Blade.

[buoyant summit]

How Fucking Very Dare You (you're not wrong)

I am just a Shii-Cho Hater, but you right

Also Devil-Prince is just 'what if Dun Moch included actual sword techniques'

[bleak hazel]

new sid of mine is not a sword enjoyer at all but I am wondering whether to give him a staff just for the optional +1 parry

[tulip folio]

Jar'Kai: "Oh no...I'm Steel Devil..."

[buoyant summit]

(wookieepedia insists Dun Moch is a sword style in its own right but... no it's not you have to sprinkle it in with an actual form)

[bleak hazel]

technically the optimal thing to do is to give him two seven-section-staffs to use when clashing but that looks dumb as hell

maybe I can stunt it as one walking stick that disconnects into a proper two-handed three-section-staff threaded together by pattern spider silk

[buoyant summit]

🐰I would allow this, with extra 'ST thinks this is cool' points if you plan on going into CMoS

Assuming this is who ur making for my game

[bleak hazel]

final composition would be 5 in Snake, Sid Brawl, Mantis Style into CMOS

with a very brief pit stop in PAOC to get Ways of Exaltation for anima disguise

[buoyant summit]

🐰YEEEEEEEEAAAAAHHHHHHH DO IIIIIIIIIIIIIT

[bleak hazel]

mostly an unarmed fighter but sometimes you need to whack a guy

and having a weapon means I can, if I really want, take Holistic Arsenal and Harmony of Blows to brutalize people with SSTH

[wise ocean]

in general the way Graves fights is "extremely precise singular blows, minimum-movement parries and dodges, evaluate the opponent's entire moveset before disassembling it as efficiently as possible" which does seem to map nicely onto a lot of the "I am mastering my emotions to create the One Perfect Blow" Sith

[buoyant summit]

Ash did you read Even Blade before making Graves

[bleak hazel]

going to be an interesting matchup with Rival, who has a whole spiel about how people misunderstand Maiden on the Shelf and you should in fact go wild and crazy with it

[buoyant summit]

Sorry, I am the chat's Even Blade shill, and 'evaluate the opponent's entire moveset' is literally the second charm

[bleak hazel]

his first fight involved him backflipping 20 feet in the air to hook a chandelier with his sword

[wise ocean]

I did not, because it was not out yet at that point!

[buoyant summit]

Oh, also

[wise ocean]

VBOS being all about death is inevitable and there is a single bright line leading from my sword to your, specifically, death is also Very Abyssal

[buoyant summit]

Whoever fights Graves first of the Sids, if they're a martial artist

Is gonna have a Qui-Gon vs Maul Round 1 moment of

'He is trained in the Jedi Arts'

With VBoS

[wise ocean]

indeed, Mask isn't a MAhead but they did get "this is weirdly familiar but Wrong" vibes off the Form

[bleak hazel]

I believe you're up first, Rival is not here to fight people just yet

[buoyant summit]

Fel is gonna have the perhaps inappropriate reaction to this

She is going to Be Tai-Lung

[bleak hazel]

oh yeah I should in fact bring Rival in to meet everyone

[buoyant summit]

https://giphy.com/gifs/finally-worthy-a-opponent-our-battle-will-be-legendary-yrLeAr9tZuTpJoSr3J

(Ignore that in her first two bouts she got the shit beaten out of her please)

[bleak hazel]

I do wonder what she thinks of Rival

[buoyant summit]

She...

[bleak hazel]

given he is the other Sidereal sword enjoyer in the squad

[buoyant summit]

She is jealous actually, probably!

[bleak hazel]

well, sword and every other weapon

[buoyant summit]

In a 'the grass is always greener' way

He seems generally carefree

Well, maybe not carefree but

[bleak hazel]

his response to "my martial art is a direct line to your death" is "well, as long as I'm not on that line I can do what I want, right?"

[buoyant summit]

Able to be less curmudgeonly and agitated

She is also, for entirely the wrong reasons

Jealous that Gleam is his previous incarnation

[bleak hazel]

Rival has a serious philosophical beef with the concept of "perfect form"

[buoyant summit]

Because she cannot comprehend how fucking weird and repressive having your entire lifepath and training laid out before you by your now dead dad/instructor is

[bleak hazel]

his name was Gleam, but yes

[buoyant summit]

Gleam

(Where the fuck did I get Dream from...)

[bleak hazel]

Gleam of [variable] Embers

[wise ocean]

waking dream is a fairly common turn of phrase

[bleak hazel]

Burning/Glowing/Vanished depending on when you ask him

[marsh garden]

probably mixing up the dream thing with Waking Smith

[buoyant summit]

Ahhhhhhh

Yes

[marsh garden]

triple blender

[buoyant summit]

But yeah Fel will be unpleasantly jealous that Gleam of Burning Embers is Rival's previous incarnation and thus he gets all the tasty martial arts and Doing The Job knowledge that Gleam is posthumously imparting

[bleak hazel]

If Rival hadn't exalted at 14, having barely had a father figure before, he might not have come to view Gleam's atemporal presence in his life as His Father

but he did start doing this basically the moment he could hold a daiklave

[buoyant summit]

She will try and hide it

It will be poorly hidden

[marsh garden]

"try" being the operative word, i assume

yeah lmao

[buoyant summit]

Guile 3

And only so high because she took the Secrets charm

Otherwise it would be Guile 1

Oh, she also thinks Rival is a better martial artist than her, which really chaps her ass cuz he's younger both in age and in time spent as a Sid

[wise ocean]

there's a surprising amount of that in Sid Crew there

aside from Delight who's just doing whatever despite being E3 Enlightenmented, Guolin and now Rival are flipping the table as it were

[buoyant summit]

By some (weird-ass people's) standards, Fel is middle-aged, and is getting upstaged by Barely Not A Teen

[bleak hazel]

I think he probably isn't, which is funny, because he doesn't even know every Crane charm at his level

[buoyant summit]

Isn't he like

[marsh garden]

lol

[buoyant summit]

two MAs plus Melee?

[buoyant summit]

REAL SHIT

[wise ocean]

incredible

[bleak hazel]

he might be a better fighter, but that's purely because his insane improvisational style doesn't really care for having particularly flawless technique

one MA plus melee

eventually two

but he has no SMAs yet

[buoyant summit]

That is ultimately what Fel means

[marsh garden]

me when i stare pathetically at you

[bleak hazel]

he is Melee + Crane, which he has made 90% compatible via a series of bullshit combos and tricks I invented

[buoyant summit]

He has concocted some insano bullshit and is incredibly effective

[wise ocean]

stares at you with my autistic eyes type of app 5

[buoyant summit]

Fel is restrained, in her mind

By how she was trained

Flawless technique, flawless footwork

[bleak hazel]

Rival might be a better fighter purely because he is way less concerned about whether he is the better fighter

[buoyant summit]

She still loses

[bleak hazel]

"come fight me about it" is his usual response to that question

[buoyant summit]

Because, ironically, despite her background in dance

[bleak hazel]

(Red-Handed Kijamano threw him off a waterfall when he got too cocky in training in that way)

[buoyant summit]

Her style has no room for improvisation

[merry arch]

delight will be gaining investment into svop once we get charms for it

[wise ocean]

https://tenor.com/view/danny-devito-danny-devito-this-fucking-this-fucking-rots-gif-5376903909901530178

I have to get her before then.

[buoyant summit]

Rival showing up, especially if Rival and Fel both participate in the same battle and Rival does better

May be Fel's impetus for Pulling a Sasuke

Not

A betrayal but like

You know

The going away part

On some 'I must get stronger' pack

[wise ocean]

right now I feel fairly confident in being able to beat Delight if she's solo but once she gets SVOP with it I'm fucked

[bleak hazel]

Guolin, if he weas fully developed in his styles, actually hard counters Rival

[merry arch]

based on my reading of it in 2e it seems like it would pair up very nicely with CL

[bleak hazel]

flexible weapon + great clash build + hit penalties

every other Sid here, eh, I'll take my chances

[buoyant summit]

If we eventually get to the point Fel can get MotSE, would the SMA she picks, if she picks for it to be compatible with her sword, then become compatible with EB?

Is that how MotSE works?

[bleak hazel]

no

Enlightenment charms only work for the SMA

[buoyant summit]

Why the fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck did I build her this waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

[bleak hazel]

this is why MA + Enlightenment charm + SMA builds are hard to do

[merry arch]

plus umbrella and ribbon is a fucking sauced combo to be stanced up with

[wise ocean]

https://i.redd.it/ou3yl44vzpmb1.jpg

how it feels to detect a SMA user

[bleak hazel]

Rival makes it work but I need a literal flashcard of what things I can and can't combo in either of my two forms to use his E3 build

[marsh garden]

ff14 lookin ass

[buoyant summit]

Question

For the Enlightnment charms

To purchase them multiple times do you need five more Charms

of that skill

[bleak hazel]

I have this insane three step stance shift thing he does to land big decisives with Deadly Starmetal Offensive and it basically amounts to "defend with sword so I can grow lightning claws with the offhand and gut someone"

[buoyant summit]

For each repurchase

[bleak hazel]

no

you need 4 charms as the prereq for MOTS Form, then five more charms as the prereq for Enlightenment, then you can buy it as many timeas you like

[buoyant summit]

Okay so I can salvage a high level build out of my first attept at a combatsid

Cool

[bleak hazel]

Even Blade specifically goes horrendously badly with SMA (along with Steel Devil, Single Point, sword-pick Thousand Blades and Flying Guillotine) because it has no native unarmed strikes and no SMAs use any of its weapons

so there's no way to establish compatibility without E5 PAOC

[buoyant summit]

Because swordsids should go full Melee

[bleak hazel]

Melee is really good

eventually Amethyst Edge will open all this up, I think

[buoyant summit]

Being the sword SMA, I assume

[bleak hazel]

yes, it's Sidereal Sword Law

[buoyant summit]

Okay

There are two media properties that use this terminology that I think we both know

Which are you referring to

Or is it

Some

Insano 'this martial art is commentary about the monopoly on violence a state must maintain'

[bleak hazel]

neither, I am quoting the dev description of the style from way back when on a since-lost forum

I am not sure what they were referencing

[buoyant summit]

Well, if it was way back when they are referencing neither

[wise ocean]

presumably it was before ksbd

if it was Long Ago

[buoyant summit]

Since the furthest back one of these properties go is 2013

KSBD

The other is Destiny, 2014

[wise ocean]

Sword Law didn't come up in KSBD until later, no?

I'd think Destiny Grimoire if anything

[buoyant summit]

This is also true!!!

[bleak hazel]

yeah never played Destiny of any kind

[marsh garden]

no that's Sword Logic

[bleak hazel]

my space ninja game was Warframe

[buoyant summit]

Sword Logic, Sword Law

[buoyant summit]

potato potato, imo

[bleak hazel]

honestly it probably has themes beyond "is swords"

but we don't know what they are yet

[merry arch]

sword logic creates a framework of laws in hive society

basically the same thing

[marsh garden]

yeah but it's still sword logic as [a philosophy]

as opposed to sword law as [a code]

[buoyant summit]

Sword Logic is a wonderful little chestnut that encapsulates how the monopoly on violence a state or power structure maintains strangles its lowers' self-actualization

Anyways

Exalted

[merry arch]

seems needlessly pedantic when we both know what rhi meant, but alright

[bleak hazel]

Dune of course has "attitude of the knife" which is at least conceptually similar

anyway, sword style delayed until gets

there are also rumous of Ruby Embrace of Phlogiston, which is Sidereal Gun Kata

[wise ocean]

way back when I wrote a wh40k lore post about how the primarchs embodied sword logic and the ones who rejected this to obtain power granted them by another permanently stunted themselves compared to unlocking their inner nature

[marsh garden]

oh huh, that's not one of the ones coming with sids 2?

[buoyant summit]

🦢Oh! I had a pithy turn of phrase I made up that fits into this convo while driving up to Seattle cuz I was bored

[bleak hazel]

Sids 2 has exactly one SMA in it

Sapphire Veil

[marsh garden]

oh right

[bleak hazel]

I have said this infinity times

[marsh garden]

i know, i apologize

[buoyant summit]

'Every silver lining is the edge of a knife; are you behind it or under it?'

[marsh garden]

my memory is genuinely just apocalyptically poor

it's something i'm kind of worried about but lmao

can't do anything about it right now

it didn't used to be!

but uh

it sure has degenerated rapidly and badly!

[wise ocean]

yeah get that checked out

[buoyant summit]

Is Amethyst Edge anywhere but in the 2e book? I remember Misc linking an old 2e SMA but idk what site it was

[wise ocean]

genuinely

[buoyant summit]

Also yeah topple

[marsh garden]

i would love to

unforchies, i live in america

[wise ocean]

especially if you have migraines etc that needs to be examined yesterday regardless of cost or inconvenience

[marsh garden]

nah, no migraines

[bleak hazel]

AEoS is new for 3e

was a 2e fan style way back when but I can't even find that

[marsh garden]

oh, was it mentioned but never statted in 2e?

[bleak hazel]

nope

[marsh garden]

or is it just something that the devs decided to canonize

neat

[bleak hazel]

it was not even mentioned, it was a fan style written by one Robert Vance before they became a dev

[marsh garden]

OH

[buoyant summit]

🦉God damn it I was hoping to homebrew it into 3e

[marsh garden]

i see, that's fun

[buoyant summit]

The name...

Makes me think it might serve as a conceptual extension to VBoS?

Violet, Amethyst

[bleak hazel]

the existing 2e styles we are still waiting on are BOKL, Sapphire Veil, Scarlet Patterned Battlefield and Quicksilver Hand of Dreams

[marsh garden]

huh

[wise ocean]

inasmuch as "SMA that builds on house style" has backing in Cerulean/Sapphire and maybe in Ivy/Emerald, who knows

[marsh garden]

scarlet-patterned battlefield is a tradition breaker

[marsh garden]

makes sense, they're also both sword styles

[wise ocean]

technically vbos is a sword and staff style, but man, I just can't see it with staff

[buoyant summit]

I could

[wise ocean]

white reaper staff makes sense, but vbos

[buoyant summit]

🐴Until Guolin shattered my fucking mandible, that is

[marsh garden]

well, white reaper is a scythe-and-staff-and-spear style, but

it's The Scythe Style

i wouldn't necessarily say that what all they're allowed to do is The Thing They Embody

[buoyant summit]

white reaper vbos combo

[marsh garden]

maybe that's just a categorization mind goblin, though

[bleak hazel]

SMAs that have [Maiden] vibes tend to have a suitably coloured gemstone in the name but it's not so much that they're a direct continuation

[buoyant summit]

wtf would Amethyst Edge even do...

[bleak hazel]

OSOI is basically Sid Melee 2 and that doesn't share a colour

[buoyant summit]

Did this guy write it out?

Or just come up with a cool name?

[marsh garden]

wait

[wise ocean]

all I can find is people speculating it's Maya KSBD

which isn't of much use

[marsh garden]

i know melee is a battles skill, but

are all the skills themselves directly associated with their House's color?

i thought it was more the sids and the styles than the full abilities

[buoyant summit]

Not... reeeeaaaalllyyyyyy?

[dense verge]

the one celestial type per player means i dont throw mori at graves

[buoyant summit]

That is the most obvious and unhelpful answer lmao

Like

No shit

[dense verge]

instead if my sid ever meets graves its going to be resident evil slapstick as ayesa tries to not get mr x'd

[buoyant summit]

But what does that mean

[wise ocean]

yeah, I'm trying to keep to sword/scythe for graves because that's the iconic division for him, but if I went stave like a proper charopper then I'd be able to combine vbos white reaper and albicant sepulcher into a single unified fighting style with no weapon swaps

which is
Mildly Terrifying

[buoyant summit]

turn your beamklave into a lightpike

beam weapons are all weapon types

(No I'm not just suggesting this because lightpikes are my favorite lightsaber type)

[wise ocean]

I don't think Graves recognizes that Ayesa is like
an entity with subjectivity

[marsh garden]

this might explain why

Minton, not Vance

and been renamed

since sapphire's taken now

[prisma sun]

ah damn it

[buoyant summit]

And people speculate it's Maya KSBD because lmao the pfp do be Aspected Chaos

[bleak hazel]

they steal the colours a lot - Sid Melee wraps your sword in crimson stardust and can do Red Flash, Sid Ride produces a trail of yellow stardust to your destination, Sid Bureaucracy throws a violet crystal at the ground to end a debate

[prisma sun]

i've plaguerized

[merry arch]

ayesa is extremely grace re9 coded when it comes to abyssals chasing her

[wise ocean]

ah, there it is!

http://exalted.xi.co.nz/wiki/Quendalon/IdeaPile

Pattern-Extracting Strike: Simple; target loses all stability and deliquesces into the stuff of the Wyld. You may store the target's Essence pattern in a sapphire, which may later be used to re-embody the target from Wyld-stuff using appropriate Charms.
holy shit

[dense verge]

I was thinking the same thing

[merry arch]

just OH GOD FUCK FUCK FUCK AHHHHHH

[marsh garden]

hmmm

[wise ocean]

who's leon

[marsh garden]

that one seems pretty strong

[wise ocean]

hm. actually rival might be leon

[merry arch]

extremely good question, that screams Rival to me with his fucking comically large bag of tricks

[coral wraith]

rival

[wise ocean]

they're even both blonde, how appropriate

[buoyant summit]

"RIVALLLL!"

[merry arch]

does rival constantly crack one-liners

[buoyant summit]

"RIVAAAAAAAAALLLL!!!!"

[wise ocean]

fel would be chris

complete with BSAA

[buoyant summit]

🐴I fucking hate you

LMAO

[wise ocean]

fel is doing chris re8 stuff on the regular

[marsh garden]

who's ethan

[dense verge]

eresh would be chris, she can punch a boulder

[bleak hazel]

if you want my idea of how Rival looks he looks like Mittermeyer but a bit more rough and with less coiffed hair

[buoyant summit]

🐴AM I????

[marsh garden]

scruffy mitter...

[wise ocean]

damn, though, this is true as well

[coral wraith]

do we have a wesker analogue

[dense verge]

graves?

[buoyant summit]

🦉Also, all this talk of the sword arts is making me want to make a sword SMA

[coral wraith]

graves.

[buoyant summit]

Graves is not Wesker

[coral wraith]

mmmm

[wise ocean]

going back to this because I think it's quite interesting, though: I think they share a lot of core philosophical points

gesturing at Graves speaking to Pyre, he's very much totally at peace and in union with the concept of death being an inevitable, immutable fixed point

[coral wraith]

not quippy enough

[merry arch]

I don't know that we have a Wesker or Ethan tbh

[prisma sun]

Zorin is Ethan

[buoyant summit]

Wesker is both too quippy and gives others too much consideration

As tools

[wise ocean]

oh my god

[coral wraith]

lmao

[wise ocean]

I mean. Technically correct

[dense verge]

Zorin is the new PC you have Ash, congrats

[merry arch]

we just need to moldify him and boom. ethan

[bleak hazel]

question: how fighty do you have to be for Graves to consider you an actually existing sapience

is it literally "block him once"

[wise ocean]

fuck

[dense verge]

you've been reverse party-goblin'd

[wise ocean]

block or dodge the full excellency vbos hit

[buoyant summit]

I did just kind of realize

Ash used Zorin describing his other character

Unintentionally

To aura farm

lmao

Amazing

[bleak hazel]

it's a good way to aura farm

we need to build heat for the villains

[wise ocean]

so either "have a perfect" or "don't get most of your guts ripped out by ~22 hit dice on a 15-20init decisive with vbos enhancement"

[buoyant summit]

🐴Also Ash, I am gonna need Fel being RE8 Chris explained to me

[wise ocean]

considering perfects are e2-3 and down the serious combat fucker tree that's a pretty simple gate for "is this person an entity I need to recognize as Existing"

[wise ocean]

Put-upon commander with a serious chip on their shoulder descending into an undead-infested area with their elite squad of handpicked troops

[bleak hazel]

If you roll 17.5d of decisive flat against Rival's health track you neatly fill every -0 on average, which is a very funny way to lead if you do manage to hit him

"eh"

[buoyant summit]

...

okay

Fair enough

[merry arch]

least she isn't screaming about bloodlines

[buoyant summit]

She fucking hates what parts of her family can remember her

[marsh garden]

damn, rival has three ox-bodies?

[bleak hazel]

3 ox-bodies stam 5, yeah

abs of steel

strength was not very important for his deal so I dumped it and bought it up to 3 later

[marsh garden]

i gotta find another game...

every time y'all talk about voyserver, it gets me more excited for blorbos

[wise ocean]

real

[marsh garden]

hoping the hearteater thing pans out, those horrid creatures are so fucking fun looking

[wise ocean]

does rival actually have a perfect yet or is it just Crane Counterattack so we hit each other simultaneously

[buoyant summit]

What concept other than just

Cutting physical space or time or w/e

Would a sword SMA fit nicely into...

My mind immediately goes to control

Sword as icon of rulership type ish

[bleak hazel]

he has Serenity In Blood, he can block unblockables

and put +1TN on them

[wise ocean]

ah, so just foo unfooable and reduce accuracy

[bleak hazel]

which is the Sid Melee pseudoperfect

that is the case for almost everyone other than Sid Brawl E4 and Solaroid Dodge E2

very few true "delete this attack" perfects in the game

[wise ocean]

reduce TN sucks because crane gets resting parry really high but 22 dice double 10s TN 8 still hits parry 10 on average
if barely

ideally I'd want double 9s too or some ncd but I don't think I have it

[bleak hazel]

honestly I'd rather this fight not be resolved in one swing anyway

[wise ocean]

oh, it's not going to anyway because you have three stam5 ox bodies, I'll be lucky to wound penalty you on decisive 1

[bleak hazel]

he has two ways of approaching decisives, there's either SIB hard parry check or Crane Form withering to reduce incoming, swordbreak filter to reduce the pain where necessary and take the rest on health levels

which one he uses is very contextual

you do not want to meat tank anything with poison, for instance

[wise ocean]

quick math says I literally can't one-shot rival, yeah
you're all set

[bleak hazel]

poison builds are mean and we haven't got one in that server yet

might be a fun Lunar

[buoyant summit]

scorpion lunar with that one daiklave that

becomes your arm

[dense verge]

eresh if i build her to be more active

toad style

[bleak hazel]

oh shit

[wise ocean]

if I was going to poison build it'd probably be infernal melee these days

[bleak hazel]

my new Siddie can use Toad, he's unarmed

I should check to see if it has juice here

two charm dip for poison fist not bad

[wise ocean]

hm, how else to apply poison except white veil, since white veil obviously isn't compatible with gsw...

There's got to be a useful way somewhere

[bleak hazel]

unfortunately solaroid melee trees are mostly what you see is what you get

if you want poison for one I suggest a corrupted green jade 'klave

there's one in Core that is amazingly not that Core(tm)

[coral wraith]

The thing with White Veil is that Birdsong Over Blades' Mastery effect is so fucking mean

[wise ocean]

yeah, I'm thinking stack poison onto infernal gsw and gg someone out with huge penalties

[bleak hazel]

don't need more evos for it, just use Howling Lotus Strike as 3m poison

[wise ocean]

so that means no MA

[coral wraith]

Heehoo -5 dice to your resistance roll

[buoyant summit]

That green jade daiklave is cool

[bleak hazel]

reasonable looking sword

[buoyant summit]

I have weird tism tho that means I would never put it on anything but a woodsid

Because My Character's Weapon's Material Must Match

[bleak hazel]

I have a thousand blades infernal that is building a wuxing panoply and as such I need highly particular vibes for my five spears

[marsh garden]

infernals can smear gross infernal goop on artifacts to corrupt them

so it always matches

it basically just means omnires + free evocations

[buoyant summit]

🐲Ohoho?

What tree?

[marsh garden]

i really hope the abyssal companion gives an equivalent lmao, since they're the only one without either free evos in craft

[buoyant summit]

Craft?

[marsh garden]

yeah

[bleak hazel]

So far I have refluffed Crook of Runel (White Jade, earth nurtures wood) and Burning Branch (Green Jade, wood fuels fire) and am still waiting on the other three

[wise ocean]

hm

infernal melee since gsw is actually early in the tree just to apply gsw, then white veil+centipede for actually hitting people?

[bleak hazel]

Earth nurtures wood. Wood fuels fire. Fire becomes smoke, diffusing into air. Air condenses, and rains down as water. Water enriches the earth, beginning the cycle anew.

eventually I will stick one evo on all five of my spears where they can combine and do a Five Spear Trigram

enemy stuck in many triangles of elemental pain

and because they're all verdigris corrupted because this is a craft/1kblades infernal they will be yozi-flavoured

Malfean fire, Metagaotian jungle, Adorjani wind, earth of Qaf, Kimberian acid water

[wise ocean]

melee 5 and then two (!) MAs at 5 is rough investment though, I wonder if you could fit anything else at all in that build

[bleak hazel]

don't bother with the MAs, just melee

melee + evos

[wise ocean]

probably resistance and awareness - oh?

[bleak hazel]

there's so much melee

[marsh garden]

infernals can also literally just

make 3-dot artifacts instantly

with no buildup

or point reqs

[wise ocean]

well, poison build, you're not using the melee for anything but applying gsw for the penalties and damage

[merry arch]

yeah i think it's not unreasonable to make an arti with poison evos to make this engine run and then u also get to have fun with infernal melee being a bastard

[marsh garden]

this shit is zonked

[merry arch]

infernal melee very fucking good

[bleak hazel]

you use Melee for Melee, it's an insane blender tree with a billion attacks

[marsh garden]

"hello yes my craft primo infernal can just spawn Heaven and Earth gauntlets 1+/story"

[bleak hazel]

every solaroid can summon a 3 dot from nowhere, the Infernal one is just in a better spot on the tree

[buoyant summit]

If you were to make a spider-themed Sidereal, would you make the distaff into a knife or the Core green jade daiklave into a knife

[bleak hazel]

the Solar one is after six charms of utter trash

[buoyant summit]

Both for use with CMoS

[marsh garden]

don't the other two need actual points?

[buoyant summit]

Or, would you be A Shit

And dual wield

[bleak hazel]

nope

[marsh garden]

oh huh

that's fucked

[bleak hazel]

honestly you don't need knives, if you're doing melee enlightenment into CMOS you can just use the Distaff

[marsh garden]

oh, infernals also get to reset it unlike the others

[bleak hazel]

like, as a sword

[marsh garden]

so theirs is strictly better

[bleak hazel]

oh yeah the infernal one is disgustingly spammable at that level of craft investment

[wise ocean]

infernal melee just being Good is what I'm battling against here, because realistically I should just go down there but also Poison Build, and being 90% Solaroid Melee with some poison enhancement MA 2-dot dips just feels like Solaroid Melee

[bleak hazel]

it's genuinely faster to spam 2 dots and summon 3 dots from nowhere than it is to make 3 dots

[marsh garden]

they also don't even need to make a three-dot artifact

yeah

they can literally just make one of the needles or some shit

and spam 3-dot daiklaves once a week

[bleak hazel]

infernal melee is the most unique melee tree

I suggest going heavy on that, skipping MA altogether and then going hard on poison evos on a 4-5 dot daiklave

[marsh garden]

infernal melee is like 90% GSNF juice

[buoyant summit]

Weird Q

[merry arch]

yea fwiw infernal melee is a very fun and different flavor than solars/abyssals

[buoyant summit]

Can live wire use knives or is it only whips?

[wise ocean]

actually, huh. That's a really interesting evocation idea

Daiklaive (rapier) (break it off inside your opponents like a broken hypodermic needle)

[marsh garden]

its form and some other charms only benefit whips

[buoyant summit]

Cuz Distaff whip with poison knife in the offhand has juice

Fuck

[marsh garden]

and it's only whip and unarmed

[bleak hazel]

I was actually trying to write an evo for Rival's swords that work that way because their gimmick is "break them in different ways for buffs"

and the damage one was going to be "when you decisive, pay 5m 1wp to break sword for [nebulous bonus here] as the enemy is left impaled by the whole blade"

wound penalty increase seems boring

[marsh garden]

you could make it like shadow-pinning strike

they're starmetal, right? you can say you're stabbing them in the timeline or some bullshit

and they're locked in place until they unfuck themselves

[bleak hazel]

where's that one

[buoyant summit]

I kinda wanna turn that rapier that one Fae from AotR has into an artifact

[buoyant summit]

Actually

To elide the choice paralysis I'm experiencing from thinking of how to make a CMoS character with distaff that's spider themed

How much Fae Juice do Sids have in their charms?

Like how Unweaving Method is molded from emulating the energy of the Wyld

[bleak hazel]

lots of similar antics, explicit wyld juice is limited to Unweaving Method

and a couple of fuck-with-faeries charms like Conning Chaos Technique

[buoyant summit]

Similar antics is fine enough I suppose

[wise ocean]

https://eldenring.fandom.com/wiki/Antspur_Rapier?file=ER_Icon_weapon_Antspur_Rapier.png

surprising nobody this is actually exceptionally sauceful infernal aesthetic

[bleak hazel]

that sets infinite fae on people

[buoyant summit]

That's amazing

Is that Larceny?

[bleak hazel]

leaving out several paragraphs of "how to break this" mechanics because it's long as fuck

[buoyant summit]

That's amazing

[bleak hazel]

Larceny also includes things like "stole your name, I get to use it now" and "stole your athletic prowess, -3 to all physical rolls and I get free excellencies"

[buoyant summit]

🦢Unrelated question, totally nothing to do with the fact Rhi is about to run a Skullstone game for us

[bleak hazel]

and "skyrim prison speedrun technique"

[buoyant summit]

Can you turn a Shadowland directly into a bordermarch?

[wise ocean]

no

[buoyant summit]

Because I have a fucking stupid idea

[bleak hazel]

basically no lore indicates anything about this but no listed effect can do it

explicitly, anyway

"what happens when various doom zones meet" is left to the ST

[buoyant summit]

🐰Maeve

Please don't

🦢Fiiiiiiiiiine

[wise ocean]

crazy how elden ring just gives you evocations for free

[bleak hazel]

this is cool but also relatively minor considering you just exploded half your artifact weapon to get here

good inspiration though, and very similar cost

[wise ocean]

decisive, leap from short to close, if you deal at least one level of damage apply Particularly Nasty Poison Effect

then "break weapon off for really nasty poison" is a supplementary on decisive...

[prisma sun]

Exalted also gives you evocations for free

tbf

[wise ocean]

nah, I mean inspiration-for but in a tongue in cheek way

[marsh garden]

yeah, i didn't necessarily mean clone it exactly, since this is only an e2 charm

[wise ocean]

I can probably just steal a couple white veil and centipede charms as evocations to finish out the tree

[marsh garden]

and you could make it a supplemental effect after one of your existing Explode Ya Swords charms instead of the end goal of a simple action

[bleak hazel]

this is a standalone E2 evo, so it's pretty close

[marsh garden]

or just like, an attack that does this after dealing enough damage

Crashing or dealing any decisive, maybe

[bleak hazel]

the other explode sword technique is "block [essence] levels of damage from a decisive" and then the three other evos are all stuff that happens wihle you're repairing the sword

[marsh garden]

with a damage amp because your swords are now shrapnel

[bleak hazel]

so the two break effects are your root charms of the tree

[wise ocean]

where is paralysis costed as a poison effect anyway

[marsh garden]

inside their butthole

ah ic, i thought more were going to be smash em

[bleak hazel]

it's only a 3 dot, I'm stopping at five or six evos

[wise ocean]

"if someone is crashed and you hit them with Poison Stab they get paralyzed, have to get out of crash and shake that off to start moving again" seems particularly nasty but, as mentioned, not sure where poison is costed elsewhere

[marsh garden]

reasonable, i'm staring at 9 for my 5-dot as just normal evocations and then another 5 personal

that are pure custom

and ohgod

i'm attempting to keep my scope smaller for other artifacts that i'm working on as practice, at least...

seven for 4-dots and five for 3-dots

[prisma sun]

I mean if you're crashed it's usually a prelude to death anyway

[wise ocean]

probably something like crippling penalty stacking elsewhere as well with Nerve Damage Poison

[bleak hazel]

E1: break sword defensively (autounlock)
E2: break sword offensively, while you're repairing sword gain training time benefits
E3: learn eclipse charms from people helping you repair sword/people you fought -> go into XP debt to instantly learn a single charm/eclipse charm midfight when your sword explodes - > capstone that makes broken swords count as light artifact weapons and does unspecified other thing

the artifact is a pair of swords so you get one use "free"

and then second one deprives you of your cool weapon

[marsh garden]

defensive break was a crippling injury replacement, yeah?

[prisma sun]

Can't you bypass all of this by just making your own artifact weapon out of (various charms)

[marsh garden]

i vaguely remember that from the early discussion

[bleak hazel]

paralysis poison would probably just be an init-damage poison with a hefty penalty

and yes, that's what the one evo I have actually written does

[marsh garden]

sorry, bypass all of what?

[bleak hazel]

priced more expensively than the existing one that lets you do it with resplendent destinies because it's an E1 evo

and the RD sacrifice is E3

although the fact they both negate (Essence) levels of damage means the evo version is worse anyway

[marsh garden]

wait, why is it worse?

won't it be just as good once you're e3

[wise ocean]

... huh, is Aim non-charm accuracy?

[marsh garden]

i believe aim is Accuracy, yeah

[buoyant summit]

yeah

[marsh garden]

not "dice to the attack roll"

which makes sense, since mortals can use it

[wise ocean]

oh, I should start dipping even blade for Graves if I don't intend to switch to Mechanically A Stave lmao

[prisma sun]

Do mortals technically not have a dicepool cap

[buoyant summit]

snrk

Even tho it's not an SMA would him learning it by fighting Fel repeatedly work?

[bleak hazel]

it's worse until you have the essence level that lets you qualify for the existing one, anyway

I'm still not sure how to price it, left it at 5m 1wp for the minute

[marsh garden]

i believe this is mentioned somewhere, they have an unstated dice cap natively that's...i want to say 2-3?

[bleak hazel]

Exigents gives them suggested caps but also explicitly states that if one single effect would put them over the suggested cap, go with what the effect says, since mortal caps are just intended to stop players stacking bullshit on them to get a 30 dice mortal or something

[marsh garden]

in case they get charm buffs from goobers with motes

[wise ocean]

hell, I'd just give it to him anyway since it's a regular MA and very close to what he already does, the problem is just that it requires dots and also charms, so I'm unlikely to ever pick it up

three ability dots and two charms is theoretically possible but quite an oof for some dice tricks

considering I plan to take an ox-body too, that's all my charms for the Story

[bleak hazel]

Aim is non-charm, which is why Inner Eye Strike goes hard for Sids

[wise ocean]

breath and essence control eats WP like a motherfucker but I probably only need to use that once

[wise ocean]

since the entire point is "I just want non-charm dice for the Decisive That Kills You"

[bleak hazel]

(as a melee charm that aim can only enhance melee attacks and Melee-versatile-compatible MAs, but that's all you care about)

[marsh garden]

3m for +3 non-charm dice is pretty damn good...

[wise ocean]

actually, hold on a tick

there's no way "Martial Arts 3" means any MA at 3, right? It's that MA?

[marsh garden]

yeah

[wise ocean]

3m 1WP, the WP is the gate there

[marsh garden]

[Martial Arts X] as a charm prereq is [This Martial Art X]

[marsh garden]

check the last sentence

[wise ocean]

... ah. Ah.

[marsh garden]

no wp at close

so it's 3m1i

for 3ncd

[bleak hazel]

yeah it's Sid Excellency 2

slash slash

[marsh garden]

which would be a very good rate even for a non-sid, and sids have the strongest math

[buoyant summit]

Oh I meant like, to make it the 'I fight my rival to make him stronger' trope

[wise ocean]

well, no WP if you're already going first, which - VBOS lol

[marsh garden]

so this being better math is exponential

[wise ocean]

this is true...

[buoyant summit]

Yeah VBoS EB is

Potent

[wise ocean]

Damn, I really should've looked into EB before finishing E5 Graves

ah well, that's a finished project

[bleak hazel]

Sid Melee is extremely good, as in "this would be Solar tier if it wasn't for all the other bullshit Solar trees have like infinity extra attacks, multiattacks with schmovement, way better psuedoperfects and long-duration onslaught negation"

you are allowed to iterate, I haven't done Sunderdome yet

although I now have 3 builds for it so I will do it on my next long train ride

which is probably on the 15th

[wise ocean]

indeed, I'm trying to determine what I can safely cut

probably toad

I can skip having to budget for albicant because that's irrelevant for sunderdome specifically, at least

... ah. hm.

After dealing damage with a decisive attack to a lower-Initiative enemy, the stylist makes a brutal follow-through cut. She increases her enemy’s wound penalty by one and then rolls (new wound penalty) dice of decisive damage, ignoring Hardness. The enemy suffers the −1 penalty for the rest of the scene or until he crashes the stylist.
looking very hard at vbos here really

grave cut radiant breath EB + blade vbos el mao

have you considered just Rolling 7-10 Extra Dice

[buoyant summit]

🐴FUCK THAT'S HOW I SHOULD'VE BUILT FEL

[velvet raft]

Radiant Breath is rad

[marsh garden]

i don't think i'm familiar with that one

[velvet raft]

It’s the Even Blade substyle

About big chops

My fave of the four styles

[marsh garden]

ah

[wise ocean]

muttering foul things to myself as I rebuild graves for the billionth time

[dense verge]

ok late reply but i think considering the threads of backstory that have been dangled i do think graves may also go wait. you look familiar. at exalted mori

[wise ocean]

🙂

this is true!

[bleak hazel]

Radiant Breath is also my favourite

what if you sworded harder

[wise ocean]

"I know you."
It is said with the certainty of a falling mountain, as he does in all things. The rasp rises, falls, and is silent. The bow strains one millimeter from touching the strings again.

"Is this it, then? Have you decided you wish to meet your end? I can give that to you. I can make it almost painless."

[dense verge]

No reply but the raising of fists.

ironically, despite graves considering mori as existing, graves would barely count as a person to mori, more in the category of very persistent hungry ghost

[buoyant summit]

killing intent and explosive ferocity are the sum total of swordplay; all else is pretension

[wise ocean]

Interesting, I assume that's how the Mori Philosophy interacts with Abyssals being a thing

I have also examined EB in the silence and realized that now I have to make the E5 build have two modes: Sword (EB+VBOS) and Staff/Read: Scythe (VBOS+WR+Albicant)

surely I can dump resistance for this and nothing will go wrong

[dense verge]

go back in the dirt

graves shows no indication of wanting anything other than suitable murder, so in the square hole he goes for mori's conceptualization of him

[wise ocean]

she doesn't understand the Purple Morality Agenda...

(he has made no point of explaining it to her)

[wise ocean]

hm

Ordering Question

Even Blade form says reflexively enter when landing a decisive attack, VBOS form says reflexively enter after increasing wound penalty with a decisive attack

Can I throw out a decisive that hits, reflexively enter RBEB form for the damage roll boosts, then deal damage, increasing my opponent's wound penalty, and reflexively enter VBOS form?

I'm trying to figure out how many bonuses on a single decisive I can game out of the system

[bleak hazel]

hang on let me bring up even blade

yes, I believe that works

[wise ocean]

The ideal ordering, I think, is

Secrets of Future Strife (VBOS)
Breath and Essence Control (EB)
Death Between Heartbeats (EB)
Blade of the Battle Maiden (VBOS)
Decisive Attack with Sudden Revelation (RBEB), boosted by Supreme Violence (RBEB)
Land attack, enter RBEB Form
Life-Severing Blow (VBOS)
Roll damage w/RBEB form boosts, doubling 9s and 10s because of Supreme Violence in form, enter VBOS form
Grave Cut (RBEB), double 10s, not 9s because in VBOS form now

it's not perfect, since LSB is before damage roll and thus before VBOS form you miss out on a damage die, and since Grave Cut is after dealing damage with the decisive you're out of RBEB form and thus don't double 9s on it

but I'm quite fond of this as Maximal Sword Expression

[bleak hazel]

what's the price tag on that one

[wise ocean]

off the top of my head, 3wp, chopping+aiming init costs (2?) and 40m, +10m because full excellency because of course

[marsh garden]

chopping's 2i on its own ain't it?

or is it 1i1d like piercing

[wise ocean]

¯_(ツ)_/¯

I'm going to look at the exact damage and accuracy code of the attack when I can sit down and pull my books up

[marsh garden]

I'm lying on my ass in bed, i can go do that lmao

okay yeah chopping's 1i, 1d

it's smashing that's 2i

(and 1d)

[wise ocean]

does prone subtract from defense?

[marsh garden]

yeah

[wise ocean]

how much, -2?

[marsh garden]

-1 parry -2 eva

so not raw def, sorry

[wise ocean]

neat, since mastery on the rbeb capstone lets you knock your target prone before the attack (and if you do get +1 reset init)