DM Nagging: It's pretty much my job

[Anastasia]

Maybe a unique one, but you're full up on those.

This is more meant to be something nice for the fightery types. If a particular mage type wants to spend the unique SDA on it then so be it, but I don't want it to be a generic option.

[Anastasia]

<Ebiris> Reincarnated in another world as a deity but my powers are the wrong end of the magnet and my aunt is a gold-digging faker.

Posting this here to be preserved.

Edit.

[Anastasia]

This was a short week so short feedback.

Alicia

I really enjoyed your experimentation with the sphere. It's been a ton of fun to DM and watch you work around the problem. You've mostly made intelligent plays with it so far, so I hope you can seal the deal on it next week. Otherwise, we saw a little more work on the Queen and the Guardian, both of which should come into sharper play this coming week. I like how Alicia tends to approach these problems, she feels both methodical and reasonable about them.

Moore

Sanzha chat was a fun little adventure. She's rather different than the rest of your node, something that showed abundantly well. She's also more than willing to make comments other people in your node won't. Beyond that, another trip towards Sylvie was solid with progression there into your door. I don't want to tip my hand much, but with how you've focused on them for lore, a library felt like a natural fit.

Alyssa

This is a hard week to comment on, as it was mostly upkeep, side stuff and milling time until Moore's freed up. That being said, I did enjoy it for what it was, and that retraining was long since due. I did still enjoy it, it's merely not a notable week since you were between major story arcs, and that's okay.

Seira

The chat with Syala and Antenora was okay. It was one of those chats that needed to happen but didn't add a ton beyond a smidge of character work. That aside see Moore's commentary for your combined antics. Good solid progress towards next week and towards the end of that long story arc at last. I feel like you're grasping things at a good clip here (accuracy aside of course since DM spoilers) and putting some pieces together. Your IRC scene was a nice continuation of that.

Overall

All of you did great last week. 10/10, do approve, hope it continues.

[Iron Dragoon]

Alyssa

This is a hard week to comment on, as it was mostly upkeep, side stuff and milling time until Moore's freed up. That being said, I did enjoy it for what it was, and that retraining was long since due. I did still enjoy it, it's merely not a notable week since you were between major story arcs, and that's okay.

*thumbs up*

[Anastasia]

That's one way to put it.

[Anastasia]

Also speaking of text markup, if Alyssa manages to become One or get a divine seed, what color would she use for her divine text?

[Iron Dragoon]

Shit, I dunno. We talked about this, IIRC. I think we said something like a purple/grey?

[Anastasia]

That sounds right. Just avoid straight purple. This is Shar's color.

[Ebiris]

Yeah I hope I don't have to spend all this week on the sphere too, it's the sort of thing where I want to just make a stat check the longer it goes on.

[Anastasia]

Yeah I hope I don't have to spend all this week on the sphere too, it's the sort of thing where I want to just make a stat check the longer it goes on.

I don't think you'll spend all week on it, let's put it that way.

[Anastasia]

A new monster is up in C&M. It's one I've meant to finish awhile. While not the most complex one, it provides a higher level, non epic aquatic encounter. A skirmisher in particular, a ranged warrior who has abilities that punish those who try and get close anyway.

[Anastasia]

Weekly Feedback, part 1.

Alicia

There's a lot to comment on your side, so I'll try not to write reams.

First of all, I thought the last leg of the divine seed quest went well. Back in prep, I had designed those challenges to have various answers and ways to overcome them. The Guardian wasn't ever numerically overwhelming - though it has great latitude to adjust its powers so it's competitive with whatever seeks the seed, by the will of the Incarnation of Balance - but instead a small puzzle with each form. Whomever came on this seed would need to be able to handle these puzzle or otherwise assemble teams that could.

As a side note before I get into that, it should be no surprise at this point that a being such as a Guardian was not using the Weave. This makes sense for a bunch of reasons and is one of the reasons why I included a being such as the Guardian of 21 in B3. This happened to personally hose Alicia a little bit here, though it was worth acknowledging that yes, at this point this is obviously a being able to enact magic (or the Enaction of Will as it is called) without the Weave. Moore's managed to create a few things without the Weave as well with his work into the various applications of the Words of Creation.

Form 1:  Temporal Manipulation. The fundamental gimmick was a foe who had self rejuvenating armor to soak a lot of damage each round. He had a few other tricks, some of which that weren't seen due to no non DvR creatures there and some due to Alicia guessing the trick first try, but that was his main gimmick. This one could be beaten without overcoming the trick with enough offense, though sidestepping it is far easier.

Form 2: Space Manipulation + Protection from Ranged Attacks + Oblivion. The trick was to be able to deal with the oblivion and the space manipulation. The latter was a hard block and would've taken either a ton of movement (a full move by an epic level monk might do for example) or space manipulation to counter it. As for the oblivion, destroying it would take either an artifact or a deity's unarmed/natural attacks. Anything else would've been instantly destroyed. Goldenfire would've also worked. The rest Alicia was able to deal with and finish off.

Form 3: Raw Distance. This one was set up to crush foes through attrition as few could close that distance fast. You either needed a group with enough speed and tricks to make the assault bearable for long enough to get there, or more likely, vast speed. At this point attrition was a factor, as after two battles that may well not be quick, it's assumed that some resources are going to be used up. Alicia cleared the first two fights quickly, which helped her here, but she was well suited to this challenge regardless. Obviously, good reflex saves and evasion/improved evasion are super useful here as well. Alicia's strategy of countering would've worked with a fair few things, though silver fire was the fit I had in mind here.

Form 4: Prismatic Sphere + Counterspells. Pretty much a resource check at this point. Most nodes could deal with this fresh no problem, the question is if they could this far into it. It's worth noting at this point that Alicia generally had the right tools and made the right choices so far, so things had been going about as smoothly as possible. I could see any node getting stuck on one for a bit and bleeding resources, so that this one's harder. But Alicia had the right resources in the right places and at the right times to sort it out.

Form 5: Army. Yeah, Alicia stone cold counters this one. So does Seira. Moore's node could do okay with it thanks to Xandra if she uses the right spells, as could the other two nodes. This is mostly a panic moment and another resource drain.

Form 6: Speech. The Guardian had a lot of nasty attacks, things to hurt any node. But that's not truly important - the important part is his gimmick. The only way to affect him at all is to...shut him up. It's very much a quiet build up from start to end. The Guardian was never meant to come off as favorable, and he slowly stepped this up in the trials. The right to exist, indeed. It's meant to show that him commenting as each attack fails to be natural trash talking. A distraction that worked well, as Alicia herself grew annoyed at it IC. Of course, it wasn't just an annoyance, but the actual puzzle. This one relied on that along with the knowledge that a servant of an Incarnation such as this was likely invincible to anything you could do. Would a tired, drained party figure it out or succumb?

Anyway, Alicia eventually stumbled on it and as she said IC, she overthought it. A silence spell would've worked, as would simply putting a hand over his mouth or literally muzzling him. All you had to do is shut him up and provide either about 500 damage to him or put him in a situation that's enough to keep a relatively normal creature helpless. However you did it, that was the final puzzle and likely the hardest. Less because of the raw difficulty, but because I felt it was disguised and a different kind of lateral thinking compared to the other puzzles, which were more direct in a mechanical sense.

More after this, but this analysis ran long enough to be another post. A lot of work went into this puzzle of a boss fight, so you get a lot of words back on it.

[Ebiris]

Yeah all the forms were pretty straightforward and we had accessible counters to all of them but the last. I actually went back after I figured it out just to compare his words spoken with attacks negated since that might've made for a more obvious clue in retrospect but they didn't line up. Once it was obvious he was immune to direct damage I was thinking of grappling which yeah would've won by covering his mouth, but the full entombing in solid rock process was chosen for thoroughness.

As said in chat, when in doubt drown.

[Anastasia]

Weekly Feedback, part 2.

Alicia

Boss fights aside, I thought everything with Queen was strong. She was never meant to be an ally. I knew it's possible PCs being PCs, but the sacrifice to do it as well as the unlikelyhood of a chance being found made it a longshot. Nonetheless here we are. That'll be a fun story bit in the future, but for now it's on the back burner. It is nice to see someone get a happy ending, moreso someone who never deserved a bad end.

The choices on how to use the divine seed made sense to me. There were a fair few reasonable choices here, though Alicia's worry about word of the divine seed being spread was fair. For what it's worth, Jessica's first impulse was to use it on herself, but as she thought about it, giving her part of it to Marie or Latha made more sense. Either was perfectly justifiable, it's merely a personal choice rather than something with a right or a wrong answer. Unless you do something really silly or dumb with it, anyway.

Otherwise, Alicia's trip into the filter went fine. It was probably the shortest but as Sylvie said, her node is in a position to need the least time here.

Moore

The main takeaway I have for you is that you're doing an excellent job of learning here. There's a lot of moving parts but you're doing what you can with what you have, better than a lot would. You've handled your battles here well as well, no team fails to benefit from Moore being around due to his support build. At the same time you're almost on pause and await the climax of this arc, which is the big climax of a major story point for Moore so far. This week should be something.

More later, ran out of time so have part two this evening, once eyes can sorta see the screen again.

[Ebiris]

Yeah, I mean helping out Queen is just a nice thing to do, but I've got high hopes for her ending up as a really strong ally in the future so it'll pay off too.

Funny how just being polite to the sad and crazy boss monster paid off so well.