BFldyq said:
Okay, I keep on meaning to ask these, but I keep on forgetting to:
1) Same as in the PM, with regards to the "Dita/Dominic Bastard Backup Plan", and more specifically, the reputation destruction/decrease(respectively), does that take into account Dita being known as a Priestess of Inovia or "known" as mistress of Dominic(true or falsely)? If not, how would those pieces of information affect opinion on the ploy?
The Church of Inovia does not have a good rep in Borjeria, and if the fact that Dita is a priestess gets out that will both hurt her reputation and make the fallout from any other scandal worse.
A baron's daughter is far too high-status to be the mistress of anyone but the King, or maybe a really powerful duke. If she became publicly known as your mistress the fallout for her would be just as bad as if she had your kid, although at least becoming pregnant afterwards wouldn't make things any worse.
BFldyq said:
2) Relatedly, Arkeus suggested the above plot might trigger a war. How likely would that be the case?
Depends on the personality of Dita's next of kin on her mother's side, which you don't know. But you'd guess the risk is low - if they were prone to that kind of reaction they'd be more involved with Dita's situation already.
BFldyq said:
3) What would it take for Inovian worship to be viewed as "acceptable", and relatedly, what would it take to discredit, or at least significantly diminish, Khersis's standing in Borjeria?
Unless the players come up with a truly brilliant plan you aren't going to be changing Borjeria's culture anytime soon.
BFldyq said:
4) Are the specialties of sorcery and wizardry different, or can you a wizardry specialty through the study of sorcery, whether your own or others?
There's no master list of specialties. A wizard can specialize in any area he can acquire sufficient arcane knowledge about. Having sorcery would function as a source of knowledge, but the wizard would still have to train to develop a mathematical and theoretical understanding of the field to go along with the instinctive affinity of a sorcerer. You're not sure how much benefit there would be in such a synergy, although Katiana is planning to find out over the next few years.
Thomasfoolery said:
Also the whole point of promoting the people is so we don't have to micromanage them in the order lists.
Correct. There's no need to give Bialis or Dragos orders unless you want to take them away from their main job for some special assignment. Othrwise just approve or reject their requests, and decide when you want to authorize major projects. They'll take care of the details.
BFldyq said:
I suggest we just start with animal pregnancies, actually. Larger sample base, and after we've analysed the pregnancies of various different animals, then move onto humans.
Dominic agrees. Pregnancy seems like a delicate process you could easily mess up by accident, and he doesn't want to use his own kids as experimental subjects.
Arkeus said:
1°)We are soon coming into winter. Having decent Fire sorcery by winter means that where every other lords are cut off from their troops and everything in their castle, Dominic can say fuck that and do what he wants.
Realistically this is only going to apply to small groups, like an adventuring party. Allowing military units to operate in winter would require much fancier spells (mass warmth?), which would take a lot of effort to reach (probably Fire Sorcery 3 and several research projects).
Arkeus said:
3°) Fire sorcery has stupid synergy with either Force and Flesh sorceries. You can make flesh that's highly resistant to fire with it, or you can make some kind of fire-creatures, or even dragons-sort by melding force into it. As for force/Fire, you get access to stuff like concussion blast of fire, fire swords, etc etc.
Fire and force have great synergy. Fire and flesh not so much - using fire sorcery on someone else without burning them would be really tricky, and making magical fire creatures would be really high-end (i.e. 4 or 5 in both types of sorcery, plus a lot of research).
Arkeus said:
5°) Fire elementals. Need i say more?
Using sorcery to summon and command elementals is probably level 3-4 magic, depending on circumstances and the strength of the elemental.
Arkeus said:
EDIT: I am likewise hesitating to switch a Fire Training action of Dominic to a Force Sorcery: movement buff spell (think: force jump).
That sounds like an easy effect to research, but you'd need to raise your Force Sorcery level first - right now you can't lift anywhere near your own weight.
Arkeus said:
[X]:Train Diplomacy with Dita. If that doesn't fly, Woodscraft.
Dita would like to know what you plan on having her do where diplomacy would be useful.
Arkeus said:
Dita:
[X]: Train Light Sorcery. If she believes it would also attract demons and is too reluctant to even try it, then train Light spells: stealth applications. Lowering the ambient light levels sounds like a feasible first-step on the path to stealth spells. Other classic methods include 'bend light around me', 'blur/haze effect to reduce noticeability', 'make a blinding effect to stop people from seeing anything'. Given that Dominic can use Fire sorcery to reduce fire to nothing, it seems very feasible for Dita to be able to use light sorcery to eliminate light. Hell, even 'glowing dark' could work in some cases.
Dita likes this idea. She's pretty sure it's only Holy Sorcery that makes her a demon beacon, and sealth would be useful.
Arkeus said:
[X]Try to use Flesh magic to keep the beastmen corpses, or what's left of them, to rot completely.
Too late. They've long since rotted away and been disposed of.
Arkeus said:
@ShaperV: we are waiting for an answer from our Parents and Aunt about Zarana, correct?
Likewise, adventure leads from Gavrilla should be coming soonish?
As for Dita, she only is reluctant to increse her Holy sorcery? Light is fair game when it comes to being seen by demons?
Correct on all counts. You expect to hear back from your family in another week or two.
Ghost said:
There seems to be 3 major types of actions characters can do; training, adventuring, and infrastructure. Seeing as how we are on a time crunch I don't think training is our best option, for necessary things like new sorcery research it's necessary, but adventures give a greater amount of experience and have an effect on our situation.
There's actually a bit of a conflict here between gaining personal power and playing feudal lord. If you focus on the former you want to do lots of adventures, but for the latter you actually want to let time pass so your improvements can get built and slow-moving political plotlines can develop. Adventure updates tend to take almost as much effort to write as turn updates, but they only advance your character and not your fief.
I'm fine with running either approach, but if you want to do a lot of feudal politics and warfare you might want to ease off on the adventures and let more time pass.
Ghost said:
1) [X] Research: Fleshcrafting Sorcery technique (Charm boost, similar to Body application)
Dominic doesn't think this will work (see below)
Walkir said:
@ShapoerV: Can we f0ld several construction actions that add up to one month or less under one action?
Yes. I'm actually tracking everything in terms of nominal SP cost, and both Kat's time and normal labor tax months have a conversion to that. Alternatively, you could just give Kat a list of approved construction projects and tell her to get them all done as efficiently as possible. She seems perfectly capable of scheduling her own time.
Walkir said:
We have more labor tax than we know what to do with currently, anyway.
Yes. Dragos will point out that lords frequently use the labor tax to have peasants farm extra land directly for them. Unless you're planning a lot of big construction projects you may want to look into that option for next year.
Arkeus said:
I may be completely off about it, but Charm boosts from flesh seems to be, in my mind, either a pheromone or a shapeshifting thing. We have no clue how to do the former so far, and while shapeshifting (and later permanent body change) are great ideas that we WILL want to learn, just saying 'give charm boost' seems unlikely to work. It seems much more likely that it will come from a chain of studies about learning to shapeshift our body and learning what makes one more attractive.
Correct. You'd need Flesh Sorcery 3 for permanent changes, and then a few actions figuring out how to do different kinds of cosmetic changes. You suspect that low Charm scores will be easier to raise than high ones, and for Dominic doing women will be easier than men (because he has a better idea of what to do to make a woman beautiful). Plus you'd be buffing appearance only, while Charm also includes charisma and other intangibles.
Arkeus said:
All in all it seems, to me more likely that if we want a scene-long easy to learn charm boost fire could actually work quite a bit easier (Think impassioned speech/etc, instead of looks).
That would actually be even harder. Invoking metaphorical fire instead of the physical kind is probably level 4, although if you ever get to that level it would be a plausible way to buff actual charisma rather than appearance.
Ghost said:
Or we could go with empathy, there are several different ways to do it so I'll ask ShaperV if it would be valid when he comes back on.
Working out improved versions of your body sense ability would be good for a bonus to Diplomacy or Seduction. The main weakness is that it's a physical ability rather than a mental one, so while it works great for detecting hunger or lust it tends to miss more cerebral responses.
fitzgerald said:
On Elementals, summoning them via sorcery usually requires brokering a deal of some sort yes?
No, that's how wizards do it. A really powerful sorcerer can just call them up and command them (your sorcery level is effectively a Charm buff vs. elementals of the correct type). But the summoning part of that is probably level 3, and you probably want better fire resistance before you try ordering fire elementals around.
