Hey guys, bit of an update as hopefully Nàr is close to actually being in a playable state. She is a bit more serious than Ludovic whose slot she will be taking up; but since there isn't many actions that would need a retcon or anything like that I don't see any problems so far.

Obviously, Nàr wouldn't have been standing around doing nothing this whole time, the discussions back at base would have been an opportunity for her to inquire about potential other champions everyone else knows and share those that she might think of, since it seems like we shared some of this information but not as much as we could have.

The encounter with Torag's representative would have had her in favor of joining the assault, she has respect for his ability to plan battles specifically and sees value in taking the fight to the heinous before they can lay out even more complicated schemes. Nonetheless with the discord and lack of support in the party for this path, she would agree with the messengers assessment that cooperation on the battlefield isn't wise at this time.

As an archer and an elf, she would have absolutely loved to put that drow in her place. C'est la vie. From the numbers though, Halasik is a better archer though, so I didn't get a chance to get embarrassed. Good job getting it done!

GGs for everyone for winning every competition so far as well, if I'm reading correctly. Tutorial town ain't got nothing on us!

*adds to Diata's friend list immediately*

@GM: Glad I could pull off a surprise. I want it on record that I didn't plan to have that ability, you gave us the skill unlocks. :P

In reply to Diata Yuari (msg # 914):

I'm perfectly aware; you're the one who remembered to use them, though. Not everybody does.

Also, Nar, as far as the game's narrative is concerned, your character was going through the town taking part in random competitions while the others were busy with their own; we'll go over the details of that in PM, but I just wanted to make it clear how the "team meeting back up" would work.

Interesting, I missed the skill unlock bit (which is amusing, because I have the same house rule in one of my own games)! Nice job Diata.


The solution might be for the judge to take all of the written down questions and choose one at random face down to hand to all of the contestants, so that the judge doesn't know which question was chosen and thus can't be thinking of the solution. However, saying that would imply that everyone is cheating, which might not be a great idea.

Skill unlocks?

Also, welcome Nàr! I had the pleasure of clicking on your intro link in the hot minute the GM realized it wasn't in its own private group and i liked what i saw, so i'm looking forward to seeing what you can do in the RP :)

In reply to Iona de Orasaigh (msg # 917):

Skill Unlocks let you use skills you have ranks in to greater effect. The House Rules thread mentions that I'm allowing them, in the post about skills.

Basically, all of us have Signature Skill for all skills.



Oh, please do imply and reveal that if you have a good way to prove it. The advantage of doing it Diata's way is that she isn't breaking any rules, she's just a skilled observer.

Problem is, to make that suggestion you'll need evidence that Zakhar's team is cheating, and at that point it's not needed.

It's pretty obvious the Asmodeans are on a team, right?  They even have their own glowing forehead symbol.

So realistically, it's Diata vs their entire team.  Make two of them Aid Another the third-- you answer their question, they answer yours.
Given how common telepathy is for outsiders, it seems reasonable to say they speak with each other mentally, even if you can't prove they're reading the judge's mind.

Alternatively, if there were some way to get the judge to think the WRONG answer to a question was correct, and they all three give that wrong answer, that'd make it pretty obvious what happened.

Oresha has a round green mark on her forehead, but that's just her own thing; Zakhar and Argos don't have anything like that (although Argos has glowing red eyes). That said, they did show up together and made a name for themselves by winning a multitude of knowledge and quiz-based competitions in the day they've spent in town, so confirming they're a team wouldn't be hard.
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:37, Fri 19 Aug 2022.

Oh dear, a team you say? In an individual competition?

Tsk, tsk.

Forgive my shaky grasp of the current situation; do we currently have eyes on all members of the opposing teams? If not, what skill would be the fastest way of tracking them down/finding them? Diata seems to have her trio well-handled, but I'm worried about letting any of these devilish types work unobserved.

Aside from Feather tokens, are there any tokens Nár should be trying to find do you guys think?

Mmm...  I don't think we're watching the other team that closely.  The problem is that, with the scale of the competition, we can't afford to take ourselves out of action in order to take
the Asmodeans out of action.

Also, welcome to the main thread!

Also also, we actually have a feather-- missing Beehive and Cup, I believe, though I bet the Beehive token is locked behind the "animal contests" pattern.  Unless there's a hair-styling contest somewhere you can do?


Also also also, In reply to Supervisor of reality (msg # 912):
Pretty much.  So it's a roll of the dice either way unless you know a lot about the person.  Pretty true to life, I suppose.  At least September will know in advance if he's about to seriously offend someone.
This message was last edited by the player at 07:13, Mon 22 Aug 2022.

Been an active weekend. Will try to get it in tomorrow.

I notice that the Asmodeans are getting really close to breaking the rule about secrecy...  might be able to manipulate them to actually doing that...
This message was last edited by the player at 03:55, Tue 23 Aug 2022.

I wish you joy and success, but don't get anywhere near that line yourself, no matter how tempting the opportunity-- they're the rules lawyers from hell, literally.

Oh I'm not planning to, don't worry. But we've got some clever talkers around.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the player at 15:25, Tue 23 Aug 2022.

The one way I could see to do that would be...as said.

Question: We rested for 8 hours, right? Not all of us are Sustenanced? That would mean I'd have had time to employ preparation.

I'm a little confused by the status of Diata's contest.  Why does it not matter whether or not the Asmodeans answer correctly right now?  If Diata and the Asmodeans both fail this round of questions, doesn't that make it a tie, rather than her loss?

Yes, it does. But the Asmodeans have resources that they could expend to win, but won't if Diata can answer everything correctly - if she does, they'll judge that she could keep going, and their resources are limited, so they'd not try to pitch their cheating against her skill. If, on the other hand, she fails, then they only need to spend those resource once to win, so Zhakar would insist they do so to prove himself superior to Diata. Thus, I need Diata's results first, before I can decide what the Asmodeans will do.

Does that makes sense?

And Diata, you can indeed assume that you're rested and at full power.
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:02, Tue 23 Aug 2022.

Ahhh, I see.  Yes, that makes sense.

I assume this has to yield to my Academy Uniform's Skill Mastery?
This message was last edited by the player at 17:36, Wed 24 Aug 2022.

In reply to Diata Yuari (msg # 933):

You realize that it's an item that lets you access any class feature in the game, right? I wrote it that way specifically because I want it to be a risk/reward mechanic, so you can't use Skill Mastery to ignore that aspect of it, you'll need to roll no matter what.

Fair enough.

Remember, if message 1001 gets posted, the thread is no longer searchable, which would be terribly inconvenient!  Everyone please stop posting by 990.

In reply to September (msg # 936):

Actually, I think we can close this thread already - it's not like we're in the middle of any discussion that'd be interrupted by it.

So, yeah - thread closed. I'll open the new one briefly.