Damn. Remind me never to write a post after just waking up ever again in my life... I mean... just damn...

Breaking Reality:
The use of Break Points is fairly straight forward. You spend a point, shit happens. However, there are certain restrictions. Namely, reality can only be influenced based on either your strength of spirit or your foci. Linda isn't strong enough to force the existence of a waterfall, and said waterfall has nothing to do with the bullet.

There are certain things Linda will always be able to perform, although for now they are limited to only two things. As she gains more Spirit, the things she'll be able to do will increase. They are as follows:
-Avoiding Death: Anytime you would normally be killed(like getting shot in the head) will be negated as Reality warps to defend you. This only activates if you have the point to spend, however, so don't go getting yourself killed on a regular basis.

-Manifesting: This manifests in a different way for each foci one can obtain. For Linda, this translates into a weapon as yet unknown.

Random Information: Form Hated 2012/08/25(Sat)17:52 No. 59245 ID: a407a5
File 134594234660.jpg - (31.48KB , 500x334 , woflie1.jpg )

Another Character Breakdown, and an Introduction to the second Manifestation type.

Name: Trevor Ferguson
Stats: Strength-4, Finesse-1,Will-2
Spirit: 2
Break Points: 11
Focus: Pet Wolf
Manifestations: Form Type
1-Giant Wolf
2-Werewolf

Trevor's manifestation type, unlike Linda's, is centered around changing his own body into the weapon. Form types can generally manifest more quickly then the other two varieties, but are also easier to take down unless they are more skilled at breaking reality than their opponent. They are the second most common, following weapon types.

Experience Points Linda McCallahan 2012/08/25(Sat)23:25 No. 59273 ID: a407a5
File 134596231106.jpg - (12.97KB , 425x313 , life-experience-points.jpg )

Because how else would you improve yourself?

There are numerous ways to gain the precious points of growth, but there are two major ones. The first is laying claim to foci. Killing the wielder is optional, since as long as he doesn't have the foci, he can't do anything to you. The second is the completion of major goals, such as surviving your first fight, performing some major task given to you by someone else. Both methods will award only a single point each, but they are the most reliable of all the methods.

Spending points is a little more complicated. Depending on the category it's spent in, the rules change a little.

Stats: Strength, Finess or Will increase by one for each experience point spent.
Spirit: One pays the CURRENT spirit in experience points to increase it by one. Therefore, 1 to 2 in costs 1, 2 to 3 costs 2, and so on. This also increases the total Break Points by 3.
Break Points: Paying an experience point specifically in this field increases the total by 3.

Manifestations: A single experience point used on manifestation can do a number of things. They are as follows:

Released Manifestation: A point spent on an existing manifestation allows you to modify the weapon being used. For example, Linda's rifle could be modified by changing the bullet type(from normal to explosive, or armor piercing, or incendiary or whatever else), or you could increase the magazine size(yes, that matters). You could also add various reality warping funtions to the weapon as you see fit, such as the ability to fire "Healing Bullets" as was suggested by Magus.

NOTE: Each modification to an existing weapon will increase the cost to manifest it by one.

Non-Released Manifestation: When you find a foci, or rather, when you loot a foci, you don't just get to start using whatever weapon or ability is attached to it however you like. You have to tune it first. Spend a point of experience, and whatever weapon rests within a foci is yours to do with as you choose.

Any questions should be posted here, and similarly, any debates or ideas about how experience should be used is done here.

We thank you kindly,

SHARE AND ENJOY!

Part of me wants to put a point in will, just so we don't continue to be unable to talk people into doing things.

A bigger part of me wants to unlock our stolen focus though. It looked to be some kind of a handgun, which with our finesse gives us non-lethal options when we want them. It's tough to make trick shooting matter when you're using anti tank artillery.

In the future, I think we want to disable and loot target' foci so they don't matter and can be let go. If they actually need putting down though, well, that's what the tank gun is for.

Whoops, forgot this bit...

As Spirit increases, so does one's ability to warp to your desires. Every time Spirit is increased, you "learn" a little more about the fabric that is reality, and about how to tell it to go cry in a corner somewhere. For reference, the next ability gained would be either:

Normality- By expending a Break Point, the world around you is convinced of normalcy. People wil forget the massive gun duel that just took place above their heads, the random people who died will be erased from existence itself. Everything will be made... normal.

Warped Minds- "Normal" people will generally notice if you toting around a massive gun. With this, they'll just ignore you. After all, if it isn't normal, obviously it's not real, right?

Break Sight- One will be able to "see" other peoples remaining Break Points, although this doesn't tell you the max number they can have, or how they can use it.

Couple of options;
A. Unlock handgun (1),
a. let it shoot healing bullets (1).
B. Point of Spirit (1)
b. Next point of Spirit (2)
C. Point of [Stat] (1)
D. Moar BP (1)

I vote B, save xp for b.
Or, since it's more likely to get a consensus, A+a.

Hey, so we can disable weapon type breakers by looting their foci if we disable them. That's easy- we just have to grab the bullet or whatever.

But what about form type breaker? I don't see how you could just lay claim to a wolf.

>>59279
Dumb question, but do we get to chose, or is that rolled for?

Guys, I just had the best idea for a specialty bullet to be made later. Foci Seekers.

>>59281
It's a choice. For now at least. Higher levels there won't be a choice, you'll get what I give you.

How exactly do you "recharge" break points? Is it like a day by day system, gotta level up, or killing people?

>>59290
Break Points will slowly return over time, generally at the rate of one per hour. For Linda, this translates to about 8 hours till she's ready to go again after using up all her Break Points. Right now, she's down by 3 points, so she'll be completely ready again in 3 hours.

Random Information: Avatar Linda McCallahan 2012/08/26(Sun)12:56 No. 59307 ID: a407a5
File 134601098297.jpg - (89.69KB , 650x520 , magus-killer-650x520.jpg )

And now, for the last Manifestation type, the Avatars, as well as a character breakdown to help explain.

Marc “The Boss” Conner
Stats: Strength-1, Finesse-2, Will-8
Spirit: 7
Normalcy
Active Break
Warped Minds
Break Sight
Beloved
Fear Itself
Death Avoidance
Manifest
Break Points: 54
Manifestations:
“Amelia” Kill Doll- Cost 10
Stats: Strength-5, Finesse-3
Speech(1)
Self-Repair(3)
Break Channel(2)
Sudden Appearance(2)

The last and least common of the three manifestation types are the Avatars. In this case, the Focus is the manifestation, instead of becoming something else, it "wakes up" and begins to act as though it were living. Generally looking like humanoids of some kind, they take various forms, but all, once manifested, can act independently of their master. This makes it very difficult to kill them, as generally they are made of materials that are difficult to damage or destroy, and even more so, an Avatar will have its own set of stats, as well as having a much higher ability to adapt, as they can gain abilities that both weapon and form types can't.

So a breaker starts out either with a weapon, form, or avatar foci (assuming there's not some even rarer as of yet unknown types).

Are they bound to this? Ie, can they only use foci of their type? Actually, are form or avatar foci transferable at all? They seem more integrated with the user than a simple bullet.

Thinking long term build here, I think we're going to need a minimum of two guns.

Our main gun we upgrade and make better, and more expensive to manifest, once we start getting a big enough BP pool to merit that. Then we have a cheap fallback for when we want to conserve energy, or not turn things/people into smoking scorched ruins with bloody smears on the walls.

Potential Rifle Upgrade Ideas:
Recoilless- This should be self explanatory.

Multi-Function Scope- Magnification, night vision, thermal vision, x-ray vision, etc.

Bullet Types- High explosive, Incendiary, Foci Seekers, and for when something just absolutely has to die, Mini-Nukes.

>>59310
Each type can only use their type. Linda can't use Form or Avatar types at all, BUT, she could gain allies and followers that can. That'll be explained when you start getting allies you'll actually have any influence over, but for now, we'll just worry about yourself.

Regarding the Form and Avatar Foci. Not all Form type foci are living creatures. Technically the wolf that follows Trevor isn't a alive at all, just faking it really well. As long as one "claims" the foci, then one gains possession of it. This requires a successful use of Will multiple times, so generally most prefer to just kill a person and simply pick the damn thing up, or force the other person to hand their foci over willingly.

This is another reason Avatar foci are considered very precious, because they can defend themselves from being "claimed".

>>59312
Recoilless and scope seem the logical first choices.

That said, I don't think we can afford to up our gun to cost 2 or 3 points to summon yet, our BP pool is too low, especially if we need to spend BP to reload.

I think on our next level up we need to attune our second focus so we have a backup and don't end up like Marc. The other points we should probably use on our base stats- spirit seems the best immediate pay off: more reality warping, more BP, and a new ability.

Ooooh, so that's when warped mind gets useful. When our main gun costs 23 BP to manifest, we just stop de-summoning it and use warped mind to make no-one care that we're saving our reality warping power.

New Character Linda McCallahan 2012/08/26(Sun)17:28 No. 59327 ID: a407a5
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Sooo... for those of you who pay attention to this, a new character seems to be coming up. Because because they are new to the world, and because I love seeing what you guys come up with, and because I'll end up using them all anyway...

PLEASE FILL IN THE FOLLOWING:

Name:
Age:
Gender:
Accident/Incident that Caused Injury, Mental or Physical:

Jack Kadel
18
m
Inexplicably violently attacked by the otherwise loving family dog when he was a young child. He was forced to kill it.

Name: Mathew Kemmett
Age: 29
Gender: Male
Injury: Was a substitute teacher subbing for a teacher with maternity leave at a high school until a fellow teacher started claiming that everyone was a psychic and/or the puppets of said psychic and started to set people aflame with a homemade flamethrower. His pants caught on fire when flaming student ran up to him and grab him. Able to move fine but has scars over his legs and has a extreme fear of schools since the incident.

(Just threw one together sorry)

Allies and Followers Linda McCallahan 2012/08/26(Sun)19:53 No. 59337 ID: a407a5
File 134603598290.jpg - (18.85KB , 300x300 , allies-shoulder-to-shoulder.jpg )

Allies and Followers are the two types of people who will generally be working with you. While most things are similar between the two(they'll fight alongside you and generally won't be the ones trying to kill you), there are some major differences.

Allies are people who are aiding you because someone else wants them to, or because it's simply the best course of action. They will generally act on their own in a fight, and will keep foci and equipment they find for themselves. Usually they'll be with you only as long as it's convenient for them, or until the person they follow tells them otherwise.

Followers are those that consider you there leader. They will be much more open to following your advice and commands, and will also let you decide what happens with any foci and equipment they loot. Similarly, you'll also have some say in how they spend any experience they gain, although it will be treated more as a strong suggestion then an absolute.

Both allies and followers can become one or the other. If you interact with an ally, and gain their trust and/or friendship, they will change from allies into followers. Conversely, if you mistreat followers, or perform actions they don't agree with, they'll likely change into allies(if they were originally following under someone else's orders) or simply leave outright. Extreme cases could have a follower or ally turn on you completely, and start actively fighting you.

Fleshing out Linda Linda McCallahan 2012/08/27(Mon)17:33 No. 59378 ID: a407a5
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It occurs to me that Linda doesn't actually have much of a history, at least not that's well know, as we seem to have pieced some things together(she doesn't smoke, for one)... so hey, let's think some shit up. I'll give a basic outline of some stuff I find useful, then I'll leave it to you lot to figure it all out.

Job: What does she do normally?
Clothing Preferences
Family: Any living relatives?
Habits she might have

That's just to get you started. I want to see what you all come up with. Feel free to debate it as much as you like. The stuff above is just for me to utilize in the random day to day of Linda's life. Skip too much work, after all, and you'll start getting calls from this at some awkward moments.

Clothing Preferences: As far as pants go it has to be jeans due to the fact it matches well with everything and it's hard to go wrong with them whether you are shopping or hanging out with friends. As far as shirts are concern white or other bright colors and if it has to be a dark color it has to be black. I guess she likes to "play it safe" as far as clothes go.

(Add details as needed this is kinda bare bones)

Was work ever going to be a problem? I wasn't even sure if it was gonna be safe to go out alone in the normal world now that we've been sucked into the situation we're in. Knowing there are super powered crazies who would gladly kill you for your power makes me think we'd be better off sleeping back at base rather than alone at home. And regularly showing up at one building and staying there for hours among civilians is also a risk. Home life and work seem a.... liability. We put ourselves and others at risk.

I would think if works' a problem, there's got to be a way we can arrange alternative monies (...without bank robbing), or just cheat at doing our job with a small investment of BP.

Anyways... background suggestions.

>clothing style
Semi-professional, medium length skirts, blouses, maybe a jacket. No unnecessary jewelry. No heels. No fixed color pallet.

>Family
Let's say yes, but not local. She's an only child, but moved away from home. Would take a short plane ride or inconveniently long road trip to get back to her parents.

No love interest at the moment.

>Job
Okay, we want something that reflects her skill set. She's good at finesse, but not so good at people. Ideally something that doesn't mess with our new lifestyle would be nice too (retroactive back-stories have advantages!)

How about some kind of consultant? She works mostly from home, finessing numbers and contracts for clients. We could have a primary employer, but actually showing up to work is only an occasional thing (...which means that calling out we did will be a bigger deal than if it were an everyday job. But not having to work 9-5 is worth a one time awkwardness, I think). I'm thinking business transactions kind of financial things though, not laywer stuff.

>Habits
Eh, I got no ideas for quirks right now (I may revise this). They're still fun when we introduce them spontaneously, anyways (coffee cake anyone?).

Comments? Revisions? Counter proposals?

>>59386
None at all I guess I could just make a none major habit if we need a habit

Habits: When she is waiting for something she has to tap whether it be fingers, her feet, or whatever is on hand. Just a small nervous tick when waiting on something major and she just gotta do that tapping business to make her feel like she is doing something

Clothing style: Semi-professional when working, casual\comfortable clothing when not working.

Family: only child, parents live out of town.

Sexual Preference: Bisexual

Job: Work at home business consultant(as described above.

Habits\Quirks: Facepalms when annoyed by other people being stupid. Adores steak. Has a surprisingly high alcohol tolerance(shenanigans of epic proportions happen when she gets absolutely hammered). Unconsciously rubs her scar sometimes. Has an irrational fear of spiders(First response is to kill them via overkill). Likes the smell of gun powder. Her guilty pleasure is mecha anime. Has an unconscious distrust of dogs.

>compulsive tapping, has to be doing something
Ooh! I like that, a lot. If fits- she's used to putting her hands to work, tapping away on a keyboard, or (now) manning a gun. Her high finesse seeks an outlet when she doesn't have something constructive for it to do.

>bisexual
...already putting the moves on Cass, are we? Well, I've go no objection to keeping out options open, makes things more interesting.

>gun powder, mecha anime
I'm cool with this so long as it doesn't translate into any useful or applicable modern military or firearms knowledge. I like the idea of her coming into this gun summon thing blind, but still kicking ass at it.

>>59395
Sounds good so do we need to add anything else?

Btw I want this Clothing style: Semi-professional when working, casual\comfortable clothing when not working.

The gun powder thing is something that she should realize over time. And when has mecha anime ever been realistic?

>>59400
I'm thinking she likes to imagine herself as Yoko from Gurren Lagann. She manifested her Anti-Tank Rifle because subconsciously she wanted to be an action girl. Not to the point she starts writing self-insert fanfictions, just casual 'I wanna be the Guy'.

>>59399
I can live with the style being flexible. She shouldn't have to dress the same way all the time anyways.

>>59400
No, it isn't realistic. But sometimes that's the kind of interest that can lead one to looking at the real thing. It's... an adjacent or accessible interest, I guess I'm trying to say. I think it's more interesting if she doesn't discover that till after being broken.

Don't worry, you can all keep going. But I'm just doing this to help finalize some things at least.

Job: She works mostly as an accounting consultant, dealing heavily with other people's money. However, most of her work is done at home, leaving her with very little interaction with other people. This also translates to some very odd working hours, and she rarely, maybe twice a month, goes into her actual office, usually when she's required to attend some meeting or other.

Clothing: She prefers to keep it casual, jeans are the norm for pants, and shirts vary from t-shirts to button ups. When she is required to be professional, she has a semi-casual suit/skirt combo she tends to wear, although this almost never leaves her closet unless attending a meeting or getting it cleaned.

Family: She moved away from her family almost as soon as she could, spending her college years(assuming she went to college) and most of the rest of her adult life as far away as possible. While she calls semi-regularly, actual visits are few and far between. She's also an only child.

Habits/Quirks/Random Info: She tends to always be doing something with her hands or fingers, a habit picked up from almost constantly working at a computer for her job. This mostly shows up when she's waiting on someone or something. When she's nervous, scared or otherwise uncertain about something, her hands almost always gravitate to the scar on her stomach, although she actively tries to prevent herself from doing so when she notices. Facepalms when annoyed by other people being stupid. Adores steak. Has a surprisingly high alcohol tolerance(shenanigans of epic proportions happen when she gets absolutely hammered). Has an irrational fear of spiders(First response is to kill them via overkill). Her guilty pleasure is mecha anime. Has an unconscious distrust of dogs. While she currently doesn't have a significant other, she is clearly bisexual, and can appreciate both genders equally.

That seems to be what I'm getting so far. Objections and/or modification?

I approve.

I'm all for this

She's 23? That makes timing for college tight if she's already got an established career. She either started early, didn't take a 4 year program, or is self made.

I think I'd lean towards one of the latter two, rather than her being some kind of wonderkund.

>Objections and/or modification
I'd bump the semi-casual up a notch from "never leaves the closet unless it has to". Sometimes she wants to feel professional. Fits with her work ethic. It's just not all the time or always convenient.

Other than that sounds good.

>Predictions
We're totally going to get in some trouble for missing the work meeting though (...I expect our Will will help with pushing around the normals though). And we're totally going to pull a gun and blow a spider away at a poorly timed moment, aren't we.

Of course we are but that part of the fun

The spider in question will probably be some poor fucker's foci.

>>59410
...calling it. Mathew's going to be a form type breaker, and be a giant spider-person when we open the door. Instant diplomacy check fail when we tank gun blast the guy we're supposed to be helping.

I'll leave it to you lot to decide if she actually has a higher education or not, as well as any other details you'd like to flesh out. For now though...

I set up a wiki! YAY! It's pretty bland right now though, just a brief and fairly crappy overview and the some basic info and stats for Linda and Cass. I'll be using the wiki page now to save any stat information for characters you encounter that actually mean anything... so... Yeah.

Here's the link, in case anyone needs it...
http://tgchan.org/wiki/Breaking_Reality

Fun for Everyone! Linda McCallahan 2012/08/27(Mon)21:53 No. 59415 ID: a407a5
File 134612962753.jpg - (10.68KB , 290x267 , Thank-you.jpg )

>>59412
Oh damn... I didn't think of that...

THANK YOU!

Anonymous 2012/08/27(Mon)21:59 No. 59416 ID: f6cff9
File 134612997781.gif - (1.20MB , 250x167 , 2qlsxnb.gif )

>>59412
You bastard but I just gotta know why did you do it? Why?

>education
Eh, I'll say mostly self taught, with maybe a year or two at college so she gets to have enjoyed the social aspects. I mean, she deserves to have had some fun with the high booze tolerance and bisexuality at some point, right?

>>59416

Well, so long as Mathew hasn't burnt off all his break points faffing around already, it won't be permanently fatal. Hopefully the shock of not dying followed by Linda's frenzied apologies and panic will diffuse the situation instead of descending into an outright fight to the death.

Cass will definitely rib us about being crazy after all though.

>>59415
...the danger of giving voice to your crazy ideas where the DM can hear them. XD

Unfortunately, I can't use the spider idea right now. Mathew already has his focus set up, and I don't really feel like changing it for something like this. I will keep that in mind though...

That's fine. It's not like I actually wanted that to happen. Crazy predictions are slightly different than suggestions. But feel free to use our own ideas against us, it's your right, and our own fault.

Thank you kind sir for sparing him but I do have a question. Do you want us to make more characters or is that on hold for now?

I won't object if you give me your ideas. I can even supply you with some names I need the normal amount of information for. Namely Rodriguez or Daniels, as they're both members of your little gang, although if you have your own ideas I won't object. After all, I need reoccurring characters and villain. Other than Trevor, since he's planned to be Cass' main archenemy/foil for the fixer side.

But just as a reminder. For any characters you make, I need the following.

Name:
Age:
Gender:
Accident/Incident that Caused Injury, Physical or Mental:

Of course, that's not to say you can't give me more than that. If you put more thought into the character, give them a bit more personality then "They have some trauma" and thereby give me more to work with, I'm more likely to give them Plot Armor. Just saying.

Name: Rodriguez Hernandez
Age:35

Gender:Male

Former Occupation: Priest

Accident/Incident that Caused Injury: Crucifixion performed by some crazy cultists.

Personality: Laid-back, Kind, Charismatic. Fiercely Protective of Friends and Newbies.

Foci: Sliver Crucifix

Name: Bob Smith
Age: 25
Gender: male
Accident: they have some trauma

...Really?

>Werewolf going to be a recurring villain
I am so tempted to tune his brother's gun to us and waste points to modify the thing to shoot silver bullets. Just for spite.

(Despite that we could easily just blow him away with the tank gun, and we want the pistol for a cheap un-upgraded spare or fallback anyways).

The what-if part of my mind keeps running through battle scenario for what would have happened if we sided against Cass. She had the biggest BP pool of anyone in the room, and was destroying Trevor (who basically just threw himself into her blade over and over). And the brother was done to 1BP already, I think. If we ran with the brother there's a good chance she would have killed Trev while he held her off. If we stuck around and the two of us laid down suppressive fire, I could see us driving her off, but not successfully killing her without a lucky break.

The way she was questioning our decision makes me wonder if you expected us to chose the other way.

Oh, and after seeing Cass' stats in the wiki, we should add Lightened to our wishlist of eventual gun improvements. Make the giant thing impossibly easy to carry and swing around. ...obviously after Recoilless, unless we want to blast it out of our own hands.

Name: Logan Dunham
Age: 26
Gender: Male
Occupation: Fixer Hit Squad(Newbie)
Former Occupation: Soldier
Weapon:Mini-Gun
Accident/Incident that Caused Injury, Physical or Mental: Physical and Mental Torture (Terrorists)
Notes- Extremely Scarred, Bald, and very not right in the head.

Anybody else want to expand on Rodriguez? Its 2:10AM over here and I can't think of a good way to expand his history.

>>59429
Some questions first like did he have any friends in the priesthood?

At what age did he wanted to become a priest?

Where did the cultist crucify him? A good spot might be in the church he work at. They could also have desecrate it so they could do a ritual within the church itself.

Did he have a lost of faith after the incident?

Just throwing questions around

Hell the guy leading the cult could have been a fellow priest/deacon that he trusted which cause the cult leader to betray that trust for the ritual. Those crazy cultists and the need to kill/hurt others in rituals.

It could end up with the cult being caught by the police but the priest/cult leader getting away and probably doing the same shit he did before with a new cult. Rodriguez can forgive a lot of horrible things people do but not this guy. He just can't forgive this motherfucker and he has to go down.

Now we have a subplot for Rodriguez in the future.

Fix this as needed. I know it ain't perfect due to the fact I wrote this at 6 am but it's a good start I think.

>>59438
If we're going to have a priest around, the most interesting things to consider is how he views this reality breaking thing, theologically.

Are we blessed? Possessed? The work of God, or his creation falling apart? Is this the apocalypse? Are the breakers the chosen of god, innocent victims, or do we need to be saved? There are a lot of ways one could take this.

Of course, if we're going to have a discussion with him in the future, we might have to pin down Linda's belief system. Personally, I'd prefer her to be pretty secular. Heck, maybe an outright (philosophical) humanist- fits with her rejecting the absolute moral code of the fixers and siding with the pragmatists.

>Recoil
We obviously need to do something about this. We could tune the gun to have less, but I'm leery of upping the manifestation cost until our BP pool grows a little bigger. Maybe we could accomplish the same thing by putting a point in STR?

Although the easiest solution is to tune the pistol to us. We get a low recoil weapon we can quickly maneuver and fire rapidly at close range. The tank gun is devastating powerful, but unwieldy and slightly inconvenient at close range.

...part of me wants to actually get a legal concealed carry permit for the pistol, just for cheek. Make it actually useable in public, and so we can show off at the firing range. Of course, it's not practical to have any of our weapons on public record, the idea just amuses me.

>>59449
Isn't him being a priest a former occupation as in he isn't a priest right now based on what Magus wrote? I don't know what could be his current one though and I don't know why he stop being a priest.

His current occupation is basically being in our group. He got kicked out of the church because of the reality breaking. He still carries himself like priest except he more lax about killing dangerous individuals.

New Character Idea

Name: Denny Foeman

Affiliation: Part of Breaker group that is friendly with Linda's.

Age:22

Gender:Male

Accident/Incident that Caused Injury, Physical or Mental: An extreme case of abuse as a child. Has either schizophrenia or dissociative identity disorder(not sure which would be more accurate)

Personality: Shy, Fearful, Nervous, Submissive(low will)

Foci- Ventriloquist Dummy with hidden weapons (Avatar Type)

Foci Name: Woodsy Foeman

Foci Personality: Rude, Sarcastic, Kinda Mean, Dominate(high will that really only applies to Denny)

Note- When the dummy isn't active Woodsy is in Denny's head. In other words, two people in one body. This results in Denny and Woodsy sometimes exchanging control of Denny's body. This usually only happens when Denny is feeling stressed and just can't handle it.

Denny should have Warped Minds as an Ability because he carries the dummy everywhere.

More Notes on Rodriguez's personality: He views our group as his new flock, regardless of any religious differences. He sees it as his God given mission to protect and comfort the group. He is willing to Kill and Die for the group, although he prefers to settle matters diplomatically if at all possible. But God help you if you hurt any that he see under his protection(the group, newbies, and to a lesser extent mundanes.

As for his view on Reality Breaking in general, He sees it as neither good nor evil. God works in mysterious ways after all.

Just in case my unnecessarily long posts haven't made it clear, I'd just like to say I'm loving this quest, and having a great time building characters from the ground up the way we are.

Anyways, idea: after the texting limitations it occurs me to if we're going to be running coordinated military ops like this often, we might be well served to invest in a proper low profile comm system. We don't even need to waste points on something like that- we can just buy the hardware. Assuming of course that it isn't trivial for rival breakers to generate enough EM to render the equipment useless (although, if we've got our opponents wasting BP to negate mundane equipment, that still sort of works out as a plus for us).

I'm glad to hear people like it. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I even got myself and actual writer name and everything, just to celebrate!

And since we're all up for pointing out things, I'd like to point out that I'm working on the next post, and it is... well, I'm going for as bloody as I possibly can, because I'm trying to get a point across. Tell me after you read it how I did.

Linda got hit didn't she.

>>59603
Well, it's kind of inevitable. We're pinned down, fighting at least two assailants, and we don't know where either of them are, or where exactly our allies are. We have to lose our first life eventually.

Hopefully we're ahead though, with the picking away we're done at sword guy, and with Cass coming to back us up.

>get a point across
It's not necessarily Linda who's going to get hit though. Sword guy could meet a gruesome death (the point being we don't get to avoid killing people gruesomely). We could witness Cass in full on berserker mode (making the point that our ally is crazy and violent and we've been trying to ignore or justify it). Or Matt could get it (this is what happens when you don't protect your escort mission npc!).

If it is Linda though, the point's probably "this is what happens when you fuck up" (although I'm not sure what we really fucked up, aside from sending the ranged unit in on point and the melee unit as a spotter. But Cass sucks at diplomacy, so we didn't have much choice. And we did a pretty good job of getting Matt to at least passively side with us, considering the narrow time constraints).

Whatever, enough second guessing. I'll give you your analysis after the update goes up, DOT.

Although I don't plan on being that descriptive of anything like that for a long while. I'm not one for writing death scenes, particularly one's meant to be gory. I prefer light hearted to dark and gruesome, at least when I write.

You did a great job as far as making Cass looking like the craziest breaker in ANY group cause Jesus if Mathew wasn't freaking out before he is probably pissing his pants in fear.

Seriously though her "problem" doesn't even begin to describe her but there is one thing we can take to heart and that is she is our group's little monster at least so far.

One thing I have to say though and officially Cass is THE craziest breaker around and we made the right choice joining her if only because we didn't have to die the same way that guy just did. That was pretty gruesome way to bite the dust but congratulations because my number one fear is getting stab to death over and over again.

Good Job highlighting her insanity. I still like her. Plus, I highly doubt she is the craziest breaker out there. I mean you got Breakers that go out of their way to kill, rape, and steal from people. Cass just loses self-control in battle.

Okay fine I take it back but she is the craziest one we saw so far for sure although that poor schmuck never did get a chance to show off how crazy he was and he never will. Farewell poor gunner if only you never came here and saw Cass then you could have been killing other people elsewhere and fucking up other people houses.

Hah. One of my string of possible guesses as to the point you would make was right.

But yes, you did a good job of portraying Cass as completely a batshit crazy, sadistic, bloodthirsty lunatic.

That said, on some level I'm not that shocked. Spawn / kill camping is the most effective way to deal with enemy breakers. Which is why I've been clamoring to attune our pistol or fix the tank guns recoil- so we could do the same thing. Except with less pleasure, and stopping once they hit empty. We're going to be professional, practical and merciful (when possible) about it.

(Tank gun! Walk up. Draw pistol. Spawn camp chain execution: Headshot, Headshot, Heashot! Your foci or your life now, please).

The question I'm interested in now is whether her mindset is just normal crazy, or a side effect of her abilities she can't control, and perhaps regrets. I'm wondering if a longer term goal couldn't be to help her in some way. Teach her self control, or master to master her "issue". Or at the very least, earn enough personal loyalty that we can bring her to heel.

Yeah... if your purpose was to make her irredeemable in our minds, you failed. I'm already making justifications and planning rehabilitation or control.

An Update for the list of Spirit Powers you can gain, if you take the third point in it(eventually).


Normality- By expending a Break Point, the world around you is convinced of normalcy. People wil forget the massive gun duel that just took place above their heads, the random people who died will be erased from existence itself. Everything will be made... normal.

Warped Minds- "Normal" people will generally notice if you toting around a massive gun. With this, they'll just ignore you. After all, if it isn't normal, obviously it's not real, right?

Active Break- Normally, breaking reality during say, combat, is relatively more difficult to do than if you have the time to concentrate on things. With Active Break, you don't suffer the normal penalties to ripping reality apart with you will while in combat or other stressful situations.

Spirit Sight(req. Break Sight)- You can now spot the Spirit of a target as well as the Break Points, allowing you a better estimate of your opponents abilities.

Normality Cloak(req. Normalcy)- You passively cloak yourself from the Sights of others, letting you appear as normal to even other Reality Breakers. They still have a chance to see you based on their Spirit vs Yours.

A quick question, Mr. Magus Black.

How is this meant to be said?

>"Didn't think you did. Hell, that shit makes my inability to have kids seem like a walk in the park."

Jokingly? Seriously? Some other way I didn't catch? Just thought I'd ask, since it might change the way she reacts if I do end up using it.

And because of the somewhat conflicting approaches.... is there a reasonable consensus as to how far you want to go in this sitting? Some seem to want to rush into it, others are more the slow bond types. I just want a general idea...

Now that I put it that way.... How would Linda do this normally, so I don't always have to ask for clarification. Is she the joking type? The serious type? Is she blunt about thins, or is she more passive?

>>59658
If I had to guess, I'd say the intent there is to get her to open up by opening up ourselves.

Might be moving a little fast, but hard to say.

>How would Linda do this normally?
I'd sat mostly serious with a sense of humor. She's been very rational a lot of the time (asking for a clear explanation of sides from her home invaders, the way she talked to Cass after the first murder, the interactions with Marc, the way she handled Matt). But we have seen some humor (with Mike, and a little in the diner explanation to Cass).

So she'll crack a joke, just not all the time. And trying to make light of something stressful or hard to talk about is doable.

I don't think she's quite passive, she's certainly been interrogative enough. She has been passive in the sense she's wiling to defer to those around her, but a lot of that is the situation, and trying to figure out how to work with these people. That's kind of developing.

The degree of bluntness I would think varies on the situation. Finesse is her thing after all, but we've seen her be blunt as the situation called for it.

>Consensus
Actually, I have to say this quest seems kind of unusual in how much consensus we have achieved. It's been downright amicable, with rational discussion and very little disagreement.

I can't tell you exactly how to resolve things when we give you conflicting suggestions though. (We try to resolve them by talking each other into things, sometimes). Go with majority, or the case best argued, or that best fits the established character, or some kind of amalgamation (where you find the character among the competing uses). We'll roll with it.

I noticed the weird amount of consensus, hell we have had outright cooperation. It is a nice change of pace.

>Active Break
This is for "free form" breaking, right? Things besides manifesting weapons, refilling ammo, respawing, activating spirit abilities with BP costs?

This might be more useful if we had some idea what we can do besides our core abilities. All we've managed to do so far was destroy a book, and make the damage we did to arm arm permanent. Our meager BP pool and slow regeneration hasn't made experimentation a good idea.

Would putting any points into strength help with the recoil of our gun or are we just assuming it does when it really doesn't?

>>59743
So, to explain how I do this a little better. All those number translate into dice. I roll a number of dice equal to the number and then compare the number that succeed(5's n 6's) to whatever the target number is. The reason you guys haven't been able to break anything is because A) When you tried all that other stuff you had one die to work with and failed every time, and B) When you tried to heal that guys arm, you were doing so under stress, which auto-failed cause you only had one die. Penalty took it into the negative.

To answer the thing about not knowing what you can do, you can ATTEMPT anything, it's just going to get penalized depending on the situation and what your trying to do, and you still have to meet the target number. As stated, Linda is going to be better when it comes to things dealing with guns and the like than most other things.

>>59763
Strength would aid in recoil, although it would not eliminate it completely. No matter how strong you are, there is always going to be some kick.

Well, we'll have to see how big a difference the str makes then. At least the gun will be easier to lug around, if nothing else that aids ease and speed of movement. (If we can compensate and realign faster than targeted breakers can get back on their feet after we peg them, that's all we need).

Long term stat growth, obviously we keep upping spirit, fin is our core stat, str gets capped as soon as it's good enough, wil as a secondary so we can talk people into things (we want to be in a position of influence on the team, and as a group we like to talk, anyways).

>breaking
Still be nice to have a sense of scale, or a rough idea. Like, someone at 1 spirit might be able to make a pen levitate, but someone with 10 could mind-throw a car a block.

>More questions
Is it possible to have more than one manifestation active at a time? Obviously we can't dual wield anything with the tank gun, but I can imagine situations where suddenly pulling the pistol could be useful, and it'd be nice to not have to swap the tank gun in and out.

>>59785
I'm guessing at 10 you could probably do a lot more then mind throw a car considering how much exp you have to waste (45 exp all together if you start from spirit: 1 to get to spirit: 10). You have to consider Marc also just being at spirit 7 and he is the boss but this is all assumptions.

Another we have to consider is later down the road it might be better just to put exp points into the Break Points field directly because the spirit cost will get prohibitively costly as far as break points are concerned.

>Another we have to consider is later down the road it might be better just to put exp points into the Break Points field directly because the spirit cost will get prohibitively costly as far as break points are concerned.

Yeah. Spirit is only a cheap and cost effective use of points in the short term. Cass already made that tradeoff- she's only got one more spirit but more than twice the BP. And Marc's way past it.

>Sense of scale
I can do that. Maybe... a rough scale, cause we're working with a relatively abstract concept, and trying to apply a number to it.

1-Minor Changes to Reality(Hey look! My shirt is PINK!)
5-Major Changes to Reality(Look at the pretty pupp- OH MY GOD IT'S EATING MY ARM!)
10- Deny Reality(Gravity? What Gravity?)

>more than one manifestation
Of course! Why wouldn't you be able to? There's no need to sustain them once you've got them out. But they aren't weightless, so you could have both the rifle and pistol out, and still have to deal with the weight of the rifle your lugging around.

Thanks, I've got a ballpark to work with now.

Okay, so low levels of spirit aren't useful in tactical situations. But I can think of strategic applications. After all, how far a stretch is it from changing the color of a shirt to... ink on a page? It's just a matter of control. Or finesse. There's gotta be a way someone with a financial or business background could abuse altered documents- especially if you stack it with something like normalcy, so no one notices. Or when our spirit gets high enough, and the reality the documents represent change to match our edits.

Boom. Money not a problem- and we never had to rob a single bank, or even hurt anyone. Wouldn't be surprised if the hotel was funded by something like this, actually.

>why wouldn't you be able to?
Arbitrary in game physics? Although I suppose the whole point here is to make physics shit down and shut up...

So, some questions about Weapon Manifestations:
- Reloading an upgraded ammo-using weapon still only costs one point, right?
- With relatively inconspicuous weapons like pistols, is it possible to keep them summoned indefinitely if you have somewhere to store them?
- About how much can we break from realistic in a low-cost weapon? (For example, could we mod a gun to become an ice ray or something?)
- (Is Daniels's healing cross already an example of a non-physically-based Weapon Manifestation?)
- Since using a scope generally involves having time to prepare, would it be plausible to save some points by carrying around a real scope and attaching it to our summoned gun when we want to snipe?

>>/quest/450269

Yes, magic senses and equipment would make our lives easier.

However, you're really reaching with the things you want to try.

In order to get equipment or enhancements, we either need to spent XP on upgrades, or trade in foci. Both of which are rare commodities- we have to work for them.

I mean, come on, we had to trade in a magic gun to get comms. We're not summoning a helmet for free in a game system that follows those rules.

You're also really overestimating what we can do for free form reality breaking. We aren't Chee. We aren't Liz. We're a girl with the power to do guns and gun related things well, and almost nothing else, yet.

The thing is its our third fight, we're allowed to make mistakes, we're allowed to experiment. I sincerely doubt we'll be killed off this early unless the Op is a complete hardass. And its not like BP doesn't regenerate fairly quickly If we do get overwhelmed we have superhuman finesse and strength to run... but we need to see where we are going for that too. Unless you WANT to try generating a flashlight while running for your life after the first gets smashed in the fight.

I'm pretty sure creating objects, especially fully functioning mechanical ones, is outside of what we can do.

Pulling shit out of thin air is what the foci do, and if we could do it without them, we wouldn't need them.

Look, I have nothing against experimentation. So long as we can come up with something that's (a) worth trying, and (b) seems like it might be plausibly successful. I don't believe what you've advocated so far meets either criteria.

Then lets go back to enhancing our senses itself. Or do you not agree with me its a bad thing to be deaf and blind against an unknown enemy in unfamiliar territory?

And besides it wouldn't be creating the damn helmet, it'd be pulling it from an army depot or military surplus store and putting it beside us.

We're taking a stationary gunning position as the enemy comes to us. In a noise amplifying tunnel. We'll hear the fight, and we'll have a flashlight in position. Hardy deaf and blind.

If we're desperate for light? We could probably conjure a floaty mage-light thing. A simple trick of the light is probably within our current power.

Enhancing our own senses is risky because we're breaking ourselves, and we have no idea of the chance of success. We've seen two examples of failed breaking done directly on people permanent damaging them- Mike got trapped in snakeform, and we made the arm loss permanent. Logically, we could expect messing with our eyes and ears to make us blind or deaf if it fails. Or to make our head explode. That's not something we want to experiment with until we know more.

Teleporting an object might be possible. But something we've never seen, an arbitrary distance away, at an unknown location? I'm sorry, I don't see how that has any chance of success at our current power level. That's not a test, that's throwing away points.

(Besides, if we could do that, there's nothing stopping us from tele-fragging bullets into anyone we want dead from anywhere).

There's a difference between being allowed to make mistakes, and making them for no purpose.

There is no reason we CAN'T telefrag. Sounds like a good gun mod in fact. Probably need special clairvoyance optics on the gun to be really useful though.

However right now we don't know the effectiveness of a 2 spirit Reality Break... and we'll never know unless we TRY. Its only 1 BP... jeesh. Enhanced Senses, teleporting a combat helmet, both sound reasonable to me as baby's first steps.

>>60140
I just gonna give my two cents.
I can never agree to something that could make us blind/deaf forever(Enhance senses). Honestly the teleporting helmet to us is a way more reasonable thing to do if our only other option is "Enhance senses". We could try the mage-light thing as a different option.

Did you look at the scale were were provided?
>>59811

No, we don't know exactly what our limits are. But I don't understand why you think acquirement and massive self buffs are the logical step up from color manipulation.

Basically, you're suggesting things that are really powerful. Whatever we are, we aren't that, yet. We should be thinking up clever ways to use limited power (for instance- color manipulation by itself could be used to forge or alter any document we ever wanted), not ways to use overwhelming power we lack.

Yes I looked at that... at I don't see why a 2 RB wouldn't be able to enhance senses. Or convince reality that something is actually in one place instead of another. Its not a giant change to reality. We're merely changing the location of an item... something that happens every second of the day.

>>60143
You not making it move. You are making it disappear and reappear somewhere else. Does Linda even know where to get one and where it is? Why would she? I mean she is an accounting consultant so how would she know where to get one exactly. How are you gonna teleport something if you don't know the precise location? Why would Cass(Her Spirit is 3) even trade in the foci for radios if she could "teleport" radios whenever she wanted? That just seems like a waste to me.

...if teleportation was cheap and easy, you wouldn't have meaner breaker gangs storming banks either, like Marc mentioned. They'd just remotely empty the vault.

Breaking ourself is a bad idea, period.

Experimenting with breaking in the middle of combat is also a bad idea, because we have a severe lack of points to Break with, relative to our enemies.

We can experiment outside of combat, easy. That is when it would be a reasonable thing to do. At least, until we've done a little bit of preliminary experimentation so that we have a rough estimation of what we're capable of. Then we could make calculated risks based on actual data, instead of random, baseless speculation.

We aren't IN combat yet... and won't be for however long it takes the guy to drag this mysterious enemy to us... or ambush us.

Look at:
>>59292

It takes us about an hour to get a BP back.

For the purposes of BP use we are in combat because we can expect to be fighting in less than an hour. We need to have all the BP we can when the fighting starts. It just doesn't refill fast enough to let us experiment right now.

The only reason we exited our first encounter with as much BP as we started with was because we spent xp to increase it. We used three, and we gained three from leveling our Spirit.

Combat is where your shooting at an enemy while he shoots or stabs back. Its pressed for time, you literally have nano-seconds to preform a useful Break, it makes sense to have that penalized... we have several minutes at the very least. Thats not combat. This is where you prepare, make sure your weapons are in working order and psych yourself out. We HAVE that time to mentally prep ourselves to Break reality. I doubt we`ll have a combat penalty in this situation.

As for seeing what happens when you modify yourself... actually no we haven`t ever encountered it. We`ve seen what happens when an enemy does it, in battle with those penalties. Probably two strikes to them since I bet Reality Breakers have an in-built resistence.

>Combat is where your shooting at an enemy while he shoots or stabs back
I think that's a too narrow interpretation of the concentration penalty. After all, no one was shooting at us when we messed up the arm. We were alone in a room with a dying person.

Rather, it sounds more like anytime we aren't calm, collected, and free to take the time we need, our breaking suffers. It's not purely a combat penalty, it's for high tension. And I'd say things qualify as tense, right now. We're underground, teamed up with someone we don't know if we can trust, worried about Mike, while waiting for a monster to attack. I could see that stress having a negative impact on concentration.

- Reloading an upgraded ammo-using weapon still only costs one point, right?
This is correct.

- With relatively inconspicuous weapons like pistols, is it possible to keep them summoned indefinitely if you have somewhere to store them?
This is also correct. The only reason carrying around a tank gun is difficult is because it's a tank gun. Once manifested, reality "thinks", in a way, that you have it. There's no need to continue spending BP to convince it more.

- About how much can we break from realistic in a low-cost weapon? (For example, could we mod a gun to become an ice ray or something?)
Yes, but there are certain requirements involved, which will be discovered later. For now, stick with the semi-realistic.

- (Is Daniels's healing cross already an example of a non-physically-based Weapon Manifestation?)
Define "non-physically-based".

- Since using a scope generally involves having time to prepare, would it be plausible to save some points by carrying around a real scope and attaching it to our summoned gun when we want to snipe?
Yes. Technically, all your doing with the scope when you use it as an upgrade is convincing reality the scope was always on the gun.

>Define "non-physically-based".
What I meant by that was whether it counts as a weapon manifestation that has its core function be supernatural, as opposed to being a summoned version of a normal weapon with supernatural modifications.

You could put it that way, yes. Rodriguez's manifestation would be considered "supernatural". The issue with calling it that, though, is that by definition the moment it comes into being, reality says it's natural, so it's no longer supernatural.

The encounter with Aria raised the question of how much we actually trust our current allies. So here's my take so far:

>Cass
Despite being the omnicidal short fused unstoppable merciless killer, Cass is probably the most dependable and trustworthy of the bunch. She's straightforward, and seems to put stock in personal loyalty. If we continue to build up trust with her, we'll be able to count on her, probably even if a break were to occur with the rest of the faction.

>Mike
Snakebro's a cool dude, but we don't really know him very well enough yet. He could be hiding something, but I'd like to give him the benefit or the doubt.

>Mathew
This guy is either going to stay a pathetic wet blanket, or is going to turn mean. Just you watch.

>Daniels
I don't trust him at all. He's been cold with us (the one or two times we talked at all), and he murdered sword guy when he could have easily disarmed him of foci instead. Yes, Cass did the same thing, but he did it in cold blood not in an insane berserker rage. He's choosing to kill when he doesn't have to.

>Rodriguez
Philosophical healer? Always good to have, and seems trustworty. Still, he's higher up in the organization chart, so if there is something shady going on, he may well be in on it.

>Da Boss
If he was honest, his goals are almost completely in line with the kind of place we'd set up in this kind of setting. Pragmatic survival, protecting the newbies and non-coms, trying to diplomatically persuade people to work with you, etc. But for all we know he's playing us. And he does have a killdoll that goes on a warpath when he gets annoyed.

So... trust pending. Waiting to see if evil boss or good boss.

Also, I'm not sure how to read all the one-on-one debriefs. It either shows he doesn't trust us, or he really likes to lay on the personal touch.

>Aria
Actually seems easier to trust than Marc, since she wants so little from us. Still, we know almost nothing about her, and potentially betraying our own faction is not to be taken lightly.

I've been thinking about our plans for growth... and I think except for occasionally increasing our finesse we should dump most of our point gains into spirit. That is where all the power is.

High Finesse and Reality Break... Linda is the One.

And with power being tied to how many Focii you can grab.... There can only be One!

Highlander + The Matrix!

Later on we gotta drop some exp directly to the Break Points field so we have the break points to match. It would be kinda sad to be at spirit 10 and have people at spirit 5 and 6 with more BP then us...

Possible Gun Upgrades

For the Rifle (no more then 5-6 points max until we get up there with BP):

Collapsable: Right now we are still worried about how noticable our main weapon is, as well as conserving BP so the ability to make it smaller and less recognizable as a gun would be a good thing.

X-Ray Scope: Might take several points, but the ability to target longer ranges as well as look through walls, and clothes (for focii you perverts) would be invaluable.

Delayed explosive rounds: For staggering deaths

For the pistol (2, so we have a fall back weapon): Sticky bomb rounds. Hit someone and incase whatever it hit in your generic sticky gel. For capture and frisk targets for focii.

That would be hard to pull off with just BPs gain from spirit level up(Each one cost more than the last in exp). Even if it's just one or two experiences points into BP field per spirit level up will go a FAR WAY. Getting to spirit 10(44 MORE exp to get to spirit 10 ugh...) WITHOUT putting any exp into Break Point Field would just leave us with 32 BP(Kinda sad isn't it).

Nice ideas for when we get the BP though.

>>60198
I'm sorry that I keep stressing this point. I'm just kinda nervous when people are gonna want to do something cool with our weapons and we don't have the BP to make that feasible it will be a horrible day for us all.

The higher you get in spirit the more you can do with each point. A low spirit \ high BP is obviously limited to manifestation, simple changes and not dying. While at spirit 7 say with no additional BP buying you can change reality in ways that others will not be able to counter 23 times. Imagine changing the floor to lava or acid. No way to save themselves from being immolated \ melted again and again till they die permanently. Another problem with high BP is the regen rate. If you drain yourself completely it can take days to get back to full.

As for the weapon upgrades I suggested we wouldn't want to do them all at once. For example the rifle wouldn't be complete till spirit 5 anyway and by then we'd have enough BP to summon it 3x over.

>>60201
You will run into trouble if you fight someone with the same spirit level but more BP. Just saying

I'm not saying we shouldn't be putting points directly into BP but putting them into spirit should have priority.

>>60205
Of course that's no problem at all. I just want to put 1 exp(3 BP) or 2 exp(6 BP) in the Break Point Field every once in a while to have less problems in the future.

Heres a thought for the next point applications. Again long term.

1 - 2) Spirit 3, Active Break, useful since we're going spirit heavy, 11 BP total
3) 1 into Collapsable for our rifle
4 - 5) 2 into finesse, 5 Finesse, total I imagine is going full Matrix on them, not quite Neo yet, but wall running, huge jumps, shooting things by sight several miles away
6) 1 into BP (14 BP total)
7-9) Spirit 4, Spirit Sight, to better choose our battles (17 BP total)

At what spirit level do we not have a choice for spirit abilities? I'm kinda worried about that or is it a mystery?

Thats a big reason why I picked Active Break first... don't want to lose the chance to get rid of that penalty.

I'm all for that because I want it as well. It's useful when we want to use reality breaks in fights/tense situations.

Considering that our free form breaking is kinda crappy right now, I wouldn't prioritize Active Break yet. Who cares if we're able to turn lamps into potted plants in combat next level? Doesn't help us much. Mind moving things might, but only if we're dump enough to get separated from our weapons.

Personally, I'd think Normalcy or Spirit Sight would be more immediately useful. SS because it gives a much more accurate assessment of threats, or normalcy because it can be used to "correct" reality to match our updates. Faked documents wouldn't be fake anymore- they'd be authentic.

Next level up, I'd like to up either spirit or the BP pool directly (depending on available XP). Also dump a point into wil- we need to suck less at that considering how much negotiation we end up doing. Level after that we go back to fin, get our first gun upgrade, and more BP, points allowing.

And as for our scope, we want to pile as much as the system will allow us to into it.

>Multi-Function Scope- Magnification, night vision, thermal vision, x-ray vision, etc.

The reason we picked it first is because its been stated as we go up in spirit we'll be cut off from being able to choose the ability. So its best to get the most useful ones first.

While it IS probably safe to choose Spirit Sight for Spirit 3, I'd rather not risk it.

As for the scope... those all might cost one exp pt for each feature... but we can try for all at once.

>Want to get the good skills before getting choice locked.
I suppose that's good logic. Although I had assumed there would just be certain levels were we would be forced to take certain key skills on, not that choices would disappear entirely.

If we have to build a multi-modal scope up in stages, x-ray vision is probably the one to start with. We can shoot through walls with relative ease- let's exploit that. Probably could be used as crude night vision too. (Although, can we get the cartoon style "wall goes transparent" x-ray vision, or just the more realistic "oh look, blurry skeletons over there")?

Right. Officially announcing I'm done emotionally hounding Linda for not trying to avoid murder for the night. Piled on enough guilt, what she should work on now is coming to terms with it, and reaching a new, workable pragmatic philosophy on all this.

Hopefully there's a positive outcome from the hostage rescue, so she'll be able to tell herself it was worth it.

When this battle is over? We need to talk to Cass. She's the only one here we can really talk to yet, and who will understand. We killed today, and didn't like it. And we had a choice in the matter, goddamnit.

(Should be less of a guilt fest next time. Death is gonna keep happening, but so long as it's to people we can justify as deserving it, and the circumstances aren't unreasonable, Linda should grow to accept it. As Re points out, she was pretty quick to accept her teammates' kills, after all).

Great news! I finished making Linda's opposite! Whoo! You won't meet him for awhile though, which is kinda a shame, but... eh, life goes.

>certain levels were we would be forced to take certain key skills
This is the more accurate interpretation. I was going to let you choose up to a certain level, but the skill progression was to hard to figure out. It was easier to select certain Spirit levels where you'd get assigned a skill, instead of have it be up to a certain point. For now, those levels are 4,5,8, and 10. All other levels you'll get to select what power you want. Certain powers will disappear at later levels though.

A quick note. Spirit Sight doesn't work exactly like Break Sight. You have to focus on a person to "see" their Spirit level, and it'll be an abstract representation, instead of a definite number.

Regarding the scope. The x-ray vision can function however you like it to, although what your suggesting would technically make it see through EVERYTHING, as you didn't specify materials it can't see though, and so on. Also, every addition to the scope IS going to raise the cost of summoning. It'll be a slow process making it fully functional.

Instead of making everything completely see-through could the xray make them mostly transparent? The closer it is the more transparent it gets. So you can tell what your looking through as well as distance. With the exception of focii. Those should always be completely solid.

If 4 and 5 are restricted I am definately going to support Active Break for 3 then.

>>60284
Yeah, I support that logic. By spirit 4 or 5 we'll probably be able to do tactically useful breaks (best we could do now is apportation, or physic paper shenanigans).

Toggleable x-ray scope seems practical for our first upgrade (ie- normal scope, but you can turn on the x-ray sight, functions as redaeth describes).

Could break sight harder to use if the enemy was far away/hard to see? You know by not seeing the numbers, the numbers being blurry, and etc.

>>60318
Well, we were too far away to make out Mike's number in the sewer, so yes. Range is a factor.

Okay, we've done a lot of fighting, and already looted 2 foci. By the time this is done, I figure we'll have at least 3 XP to spend, prolly more. In case I'm not around to vote on distribution, here's what I recommend, in order of decreasing importance:

2- level up spirit to 3, get active break
1- upgrade tank gun, get x-ray scope
1- get wil to 3
1- increase BP pool
1- increase fin to 4.

I actually think a more useful upgrade to the rifle would be to make it silent, than to get it the scope. We're using bullshit reality-breaking physics here, so it should actually become very near to silent. This would make urban ops far easier to carry out because we wouldn't always be fighting against the clock trying to get our stuff done before the police show up.

Okay, now we're gonna have 4 looted foci for four xp, plus whatever we get from all the combat. At least 5 XP total, I think.

I'd like to append my earlier recommendation- before we allocate any , me should have Marc evaluate the loot (what do the needle or stone do? Are they weapon type, or form?) and see what we can get through trading (either with Mac's shop, or swapping loot with Cass) before we apply any points. We might find something we want to spend a point on to use as our cached holdout.

>>60335
Eh, I still think being able to shoot through walls would be better. Would certainly help us avoid nearly getting killed in melee like what happened today.

Yeah, he's right. Ignore the main post. I forgot about the one you looted off that other guy...

Yeah, there's five XP gained this "mission"

Looking over that mission, we didn't do too bad, morally. We killed two guys (the second of which we had no choice in), but we spared two others (the guy with the rock, and the normal), saved the hostages, and even got Cass to be merciful!

On the whole, that's pretty good, considering the position we've been put in. Aside from the somewhat inevitable guilt of having become a killer, Linda shouldn't be feeling too shabby, I think.

It has occured to me that I never described Cass at all(nor have I really described any of my characters, but I'm pretty bad at remembering to do that) so I think I'll be going back one by one and actually describing how they look physically, as well as putting up an appropriate picture if I find one on the inter-web somewhere.

So, to start my new goal off: Cassandra Geld. Because why the fuck not.

Cassandra Geld. 21. She's actually a fairly tall person, measuring in at roughly 6'3'', but while she's taller than the average, she tends to avoid making a scene, or really getting noticed at meetings at all, unless of course something drives her into berserk killer mode. Regardless, in order to cover up her height as best she can, she tends to wear baggy clothing, like loose fitting jeans and oversized hoodies. When on her own, however, her clothing becomes much more appropriate to her build, as although she doesn't like to draw attention, she does prefer comfort when she can. The only times she's usually alone, however, are in her room, and as such she has only a few pairs of jeans, a few t-shirts and some sleeping clothes(a pair of sweat pants and a white t-shirt) that fit her well. Her black hair comes down to just about her shoulders, although most of the time this is covered up by whatever jacket or hoodie she's is wearing at the time, and while she wouldn't exactly be referred to as... busty... she does have a bit of curve to her form, although again, this is hidden from casual observation by her preference of baggy clothing.

>>60400
Well, pretty much what I expected. Except for the her being a giant bit! I was assuming Linda was taller. Readjusting mental image...

Looking at the wiki, I have to say we look kind of behind the power curve when it comes to BP. I'm thinking next level up, we want to dump a point or two of XP into increasing our BP pool, just so we have a comfortable margin.

There's more to weapon use than stats, right? Linda seems to have a supernatural affinity for guns, despite no training, or practice. Despite Cass currently having the same finesse, I don't see her pulling off the same shots if we passed her a gun. What I'm wondering if this trait is character based (Linda's a gunner girl, Cass is hack and slash, etc) or if it's done by attuning foci (you automatically become good at things you tune to you).

You are correct. There is a certain amount of supernatural affinity someone gains upon becoming a breaker. While Linda can't compare to a highly trained professional sniper in the military, she's competent enough to get the bullet where it needs to go. Her skill at doing so increases as her finesse does, but her actual knowledge regarding the weapon won't. In essense, she has enough knowledge to operate a gun, but she can't disassemble one, nor could she put it back together again. Similarly, she has no idea what most terms for a gun are, such as the bolt, the difference between a round and a cartridge, so on so forth. All those terms are meaningless.

You don't, however, gain similar affinity for stolen foci. Your first foci is what determines your weapon "type", anything else you have to pick up the hard way. Cass can use most weapons she comes across, but that's only because her method of fighting is "bash it till it dies, rinse, repeat". There is no calculated strategy in the way she uses her weapons. Her first weapon, for example, wasn't actually her chainsaw(although that has become the symbol for her). Her first is the machete she used in her murder-happy moment back when you picked up Mathew. Her affinity for knives would let her use it far more skillfully, as well as any other knife she picked up, if she actually gave a damn about skill and didn't always just go in for the kill.

You know what? This whole Extended Cooperative Character Creation (ECCC for short) has to be one of the best ideas on tgchan.

Name: Elizabeth Baker
Age: 17 (orphan)
Affiliation: possible recruit
Foci: Glass Eyeball (Oracle-Type foci?)
Gender: Female
Accident/Incident that Caused Injury, Mental or Physical: Bullet right though the left eyeball out the back of the head. Should have killed her but she some how made an almost complete recovery besides her eye being completely destroyed and an pronounced effect on her on her behavior.
Personality: Extremely Spacey/Complete Cuckoolander. Low-attention span Friendly/Loyal. If she ever becomes serious and focused you should probably listen.

For the Laughs Linda McCallahan 2012/09/06(Thu)21:32 No. 60458 ID: a407a5
File 134699237265.jpg - (90.22KB , 450x338 , 857194-bigthumbnail.jpg )

And because why the hell not, and because you all seem to love imagining all sorts of crazy shit...

LINDA'S DRUNK ADVENTURES!!!

The rules are simple. Come up with the craziest scenario you can possibly think up that Linda will have done(drunk, obviously) and I'll eventually get around to coming up with a reward for it. Maybe. No, I will. Maybe I'll get a friend I know to draw it. Eh, I'll do something to rewards whoever wins. It might take awhile though.

Anyway, you can submit as many entries as you like. Who wins is based purely on my own amusement. How else would I decide the winner?

>>60420
Hmm. That means picking up an emergency melee focus might not work so well.

>>60458
Seriously going to be hard to top literally crashing a wedding to sleep with groom and ending up with the bride.

You know the drunken shenanigans Linda gets up to might actually go a long way to explaining why she is so unfazed the whole reality breaking situation. She already had experience with the bizarre and seemingly insane.

1: Went to an Applebees, got to the drunk level shortly before closing time, ended up refusing to leave. The police got called, and she ended up taking one of the waiters hostage. Three hours later, the cops bust in and find them both naked in a broom closet.
2: In a Chucky-Cheeses, she managed to make 300 tickets off of the skee-ball, spent the tickets on Nerf guns and just ran around the park for two hours shooting children and hiding in the ball pit.
3: Broke into a school and scribbling sarcastic remarks/grading all the papers in the classroom she remembers as being her old english class. Ends up stealing her permanent record and setting the school on fire.
4: Draws a brilliant mural out of chalk on a building next to her work. An art show nearby takes an interest in the new graffiti artist and makes an effort at finding her to offer her a place in the gallery for her work. Unfortunately, Linda never makes the connection between her drunken escapades and the critically acclaimed mural of the universe expressed through spirals.

Drunken Shenanigans:

-Skydiving nude. Results in hypothermia. Totally worth it.

-Picking a fight with a Gang. Somehow win. Have no memory of why you are so sore the next day or why you have a collection of human teeth.

-Help a random couple with their relationship problems in an intense 3 hour consulting session while completely hammered. Couple gets married a week later. Indecently, the Wedding Crasher incident happens a week later.

-Wake up with 23 cats, 15 dogs, 39 parrots, 12 goldfish, and 1 spider in your bedroom.

Weirdest thing is that Linda has never gone to jail for any of her Drunken shenanigans. If anybody wants to expand on these shenanigans go right ahead.

-Coaxed a cow onto the third floor of an elevatorless office-building [They don't go down stairs very well :3c]
-Apparently discovered the recipe for 'the perffect[sic] raspberry muffins'...and wrote it all over the walls in magic marker.
-Beach volley ball during a hurricane
-Accidentally kidnapped a much younger cousin--broke into a zoo to feed the giraffes

These are fantastic.

I'm impressed by the number of creative responses that didn't just default to just slutting it up. Crazy unpredictable dunk so much more interesting than simply an easy drunk.

But I really like the dichotomy we build up- mostly-rational work ethic finesse girl has a zany side.

>>60466
-2: Shortly after fighting the entire gang, ends up drunk-walking though a completely different shootout those guys are having with the cops, just because she recognized one of them and wanted to punch him in the face. They surrendered after they recognized her.

-4: After waking up, she set the entire place on fire. Screw collateral damage/innocent casualties, there's a spider in my bedroom. Not even the fish survived the blaze.

New Character time

Name: Kevin Lowrance
Foci: Knuckle Dusters (Weapon-type foci)
Affiliation: Enemy breaker
Age: 20
Gender: Male
Accident/Incident that Caused Injury, Mental or Physical: Serious PTSD
Note: Former Member of gang that Linda beat up.

Hmm. Could we do without the pyromania, actually? The sarcastically graded papers go over funnier if they survive to actually be handed back to students, and if there's no explanation for how it happened or other evidence of a break-in. And why light the room on fire to get rid of a spider when you have 23 cats to throw at it? (If it's a irrational fear, she's going to react with what's at hand).

I agree, no pyromania. Plus chucking cats at a spider is pretty damn funny.

>>60492
Lets move the fire to its own incident. Something like
-Went to the ice hotel in Quebec one year. Managed to set the oversized igloo on fire.

>>60492
Updating!

3: Broke into a school and scribbling sarcastic remarks/grading all the papers in the classroom she remembers as being her old english class. Ends up stealing her permanent record. As it turned out, the average grade for the class was a solid D-. The sole A of the class was a dissertation on the similarities and tropes inherent in Fighting Robot anime which was clearly cribbed from TV Tropes.

-4: After waking up, she threw 6 puppies, 12 kittens, and 4 goldfish at the spider before one of the many parrots ate the spider. It took her a full week to find a shelter that would take all of the parrots and goldfish. The 'shelter' was actually a carnival booth that had run out of prizes.

(Sorry, I just liked the idea of a fire killing the fish)

>>60482

Oh god, I can just see Linda going "YOOOOOOU!" and charging across a parking lot to punch him in the face while drunk, dodging bullets.
I hope he becomes a recurring character in all of our drunk stories.

>>60495
Now that's a funny use of fire I can approve of.

>>60496
Okay, dumping the pets in a carnival booth has me giggling.

>>60497
Wait. Does that mean Linda was the cause of his PTSD?

YES!

Mwahahaha! Linda McCallahan 2012/09/07(Fri)20:03 No. 60500 ID: a407a5
File 134707340985.jpg - (34.22KB , 300x300 , Who_the_hell_do_you_think_I_am_by_k.jpg )

Many a gangsters has fallen before and fallen for the legendary DRUNKEN MASTER of the streets. As mysterious as she is beautiful and deadly, none no her true identity. The only thing anyone is truly aware of is her signature catch phrase...

WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK I AM!?

>>60500
.... I approve.

Brilliant. And this is why our HQ will be safe when ever we all get drunk. Enemy breaker shows up and then gets trashed by Linda.

Drunk Linda Stats

Strength-5
Finesse-0.5
Will- UNKNOWN
Spirit- "WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK I AM!"
BP- UNKNOWN

Foci- Alcohol

Note- RUN! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, RUN!

Oh yeah, and Raphael has been added to the wiki-page.

>>60505
Huh. Str/Wil build. I guessed right!

Good thing we jumped the guy we got the rock focus from. Not sure how effective bullets would have been against a stone golem. (Obviously, forms and avatars are what we're going to need fancy ammo to deal with, someday). Now that it's on our side though, that means we've got a second tank to fight next to Cass.

Dude, we have an ANTI-TANK RIFLE. A stone golem would just be a huge fucking target for Linda.

Depends on what kind of stone, how much of it there is, and whether or not golem-form feels pain or has any kind of vital organs.

Easiest fight- the stone is just armor and we could have just punched through to the squishy person underneath.

Worst fight- giant dense man of stone with no vitals, and no pain. We'd have to spend a bunch of shots disabling it- blind it, shoot out the joints, etc, while not allowing it to close with us. More than once, if and when death avoidance kicks in.

...and the hostages would have been executed while we were doing this, of course.

I've been examining things in my head, and as a result, I'm making a small change to the x-ray scope you've been given. Namely, no, foci won't be completely solid and slightly glowing.

What made everyone assume(including me at the time) that an x-ray type thing would be able to detect a foci? What makes a foci a foci is it's inherent "unrealism", it's affect on reality if you will. You'd need something that could specifically detect the "off" feeling that foci radiate. Which brings me to the x-ray's actual capabilities.

The thing will allow you to see through walls and people as you described to me, but foci will be treated like everything else, just another object to look through. The reason I'm placing that restriction is simple. After having thought about it awhile, an x-ray, regardless of how you measure it, provides information through materials, not reality. Foci are blurs and holes in reality. To the x-ray, the physical representation is still something to look through. Everything else is fine, though, and will be left alone. People will be see through but still identifiable as people, walls and other such things will be ignored and the distance affects how transparent something is.

I figured I'd get that out there before we end up relying on the thing so much.

Ah! And before I forget, Break Sight(and it's derivative, Spirit Sight) has an effective range of normal vision. Namely, if you could normally make out a number or letter at that range, then the number will appear. Scopes and such won't factor into that range. That way everyone(including me) has a definite distance to work with.

>What made everyone assume that an x-ray type thing would be able to detect a foci?
No assumption. We explicitly designed it to work that way on purpose for an advantage, not because it had any mechanical logic behind it. I mean, we're using modified Superman style cartoony x-ray vision, not a detector for actual x-rays.

(Well, rather, we tried to design it that way. Didn't fly. :p)

>Scopes and such won't factor into that range.
...so while we could use the scope to read actual words and numbers outside our normal line of sight, that doesn't apply to break sight? Dang. We can still see the numbers via x-ray through walls if we get close enough, right?

Ya we're a calling it an x-ray scope since thats the best way to describe it, but in reality (heh) its superman vision. Good analogy by the way. It's basically magic so as far as seeing focii as solid I figured since you said 'Make up your own rules concerning the capabilities.' I'd give Linda a bit of an edge for finding the Breakers and their focii amidst all the normal clutter. But your running the show, if its too much for a newbie to be able to do we'll throw that into one of her next upgrades.

It's not so much difficult to handle as something I imagine as not being simulated easily. With the creation of Rodriguez's power(healing) it seems more practical, or maybe more likely, that people with manifestations specifically made to hunt foci were to start popping up. Besides that, once your spirit gets high enough, "feeling" changes in reality becomes possible. In a way, I'm trying to make it so that one person can't do literally anything and everything. Otherwise we'd get into situations like redaeth described, and the Spirit 7's and above just start making the floor acid or lava or something.

Don't worry too much. Magus gave me a very good way to get you lot an effective scouter, so you can focus your own experience elsewhere.

Okay, so then one potential upgrade for the scope in the future is reality-sight. It makes abnormalities in reality stand out (outlines them in red, or something). This includes breakers, foci, avatars, sufficiently broken reality (like Aria's sewer-room). Ideally, we should be able to combine scope modes (so more than one can be on at once). Obviously, sufficiently high spirit Normality Cloak users would probably still be able to avoid detection (pricks).

Although, for our next level up, I'm thinking what we want to do is dump a point or two in BP (we've got half the pool of our peers, with barely any room to experiment with breaking), and tune something new.

>>60538
Oh, the oracle eye is gonna show up? Useful, but to some extent we're going to want our own senses if we want to continue trying to be merciful where we can.

>>60540
Two points into BP. At least.

>>60541
Yeah, assuming we get 3 or more XP, I want 2 in BP, 1 to tune.

Actually, if eyeball girl is gonna be divinations and foci hunting focused, I'm really hoping she comes with the ability to ID manifestations on untuned foci. That would be hella useful.

You guys gotta remember we are new at this... REALLY new. Cass has gotten at least 17 exp and Raphael has gotten 26 exp compared to our 9. The only reason why we've been doing so well is because of our effective as fuck weapon. We don't NEED to up its damage or effectiveness to take on much stronger breakers. BP will come in time. I say its more worth it to concentrate on spirit 4 and upgrading our finesse now that we have supernatural everything. Its time to specialize.

Lest we count our chickens before they hatch, let's talk mid-term upgrades instead of short-term for a bit.

I don't think we need any more scopes or similar add-ons for our anti-tank gun--it'd just be an extra BP cost every time we summon it for not a lot of extra functionality. However, there is one tweak I think would be worth the cost: Silencer. That'd bring it up to three BP per summon, and I wouldn't want to raise it beyond that for a good while for a few reasons.
1) Need a larger BP pool before we pull out expensive guns left and right
2) I can think of improvements that seem cool, like explosive rounds, but may quickly become obsolete/inferior/redundant if we get guns better suited for specific tasks--like a bazooka or a sniper rifle etc.
3) The other thing I can think to improve would be recoil, which is probably just as easily fixed by upping our strength

>>60544
I agree with this logic, further gun improvements aren't cost-effective or necessary in the sort term. Won't stop me from brainstorming for longterm, though.

>Why BP?
Just manifesting our main gun twice burns through over a 3rd of our points. More BP gives us the flexibility to pull and dismiss guns without worry, to handle longer fights where we actually have to reload, and to use active breaks when we get opportunities (after all, what's the point of spirit if we can't afford to do any breaks?). I mean, costs are tight enough now we were all noticeably perturbed when Linda dismissed unordered. I'd like to get up into the teens so we have a comfortable margin to work with.

>More crazy possible longterm upgrades.
-explosive rounds
-delayed explosive rounds. Timed for respawn, two kills with one shot (may not be worth it depending on how the respwans work- ie, if the bullet ceases to exist, it can't explode).
-Depleted uranium rounds. Or frigging neutronium, if we can get it. Basically, as much much stopping power as we can put in a bullet. For when we inevitably have to fight something horribly nasty, like the Boss' kill doll.
-supernatural silencer sounds reasonable.

>Reality-Sight
No. At least, not until you've gained Spirit Sight, which at this point won't happen till you reach Spirit 6.

>Delayed Explosive Rounds
I'll save you the trouble and say no, this won't work. 1) Death avoidance would get rid of the bullet, as if it lodged itself inside someone they obviously took damage from it and died. It can't still be there if they never got hit. 2)Your rifle's shots go straight through targets. It will never lodge itself inside someone unless it manages to somehow severely reduce the amount of force its carrying.

Everything else I've seen so far looks alright to use, unless I accidentally missed something.

Would a sticky bomb sort of deal work for our pistol? Or should we save that sorta thing for when we get a gernade launcher.

>>60547
Fair enough. I didn't expect delayed explosions to work, and spirit sight as a prerequisite for the other makes sense.

>sticky bomb
Ooh! Nonlethal disable, and bypasses death avoidance. Me like.

Not sure we should put it on the pistol though. I like keeping that for our cheap as dirt execution and close range weapon.

>>60549
Squirt gun!

With sticky bomb tweaking

Because I'm not handing over a potentially priceless recruit without a fight. And there will be no deus ex machina's this time. So there.

But yes, the sticky bomb/spray thingy would work. Woman everywhere will fear you, but it would work.

Do focii carry over enhancements when being attuned to a different person?

37BP Boss fight is going to be... problematic, to say the least. We need to burn 4 rifle clips or 3 handgun just to take that many shots, ignoring misses and dodges. Although presumably Raph will do some damage too, and she'll burn points doing something (...not that that's a good thing).

The quickest way to end this might be to blow off her arms and break them, if we get the chance. Might be hard to do though- presumably she's got high finesses, so anything other than torso shots may fail dodge checks.

Golem pinning her so we can chain execute might work, but I can't help but think she'd be able to break a way out of that (unless she doesn't have active break. But I'm kind of thinking, what high level breaker doesn't?).

We have flashbangs, right?

Yup. Although we have no eye protection, and no comm on Raph to warn him. It's a possible play to buy us a shot at the bitch off guard, but with her reaction time it might just give her a few free shots at our allies.

Looks like we weren't ready at all. Maybe if the scope had an adjustable zoom, or the other breakers had been any help. Probably didn't help that we delegated rescue to our meatshield isntead helping in the battle.

She was the worst matchup right now for solo play. A close \ midrange fighter while we're strictly long range right now. And we started fighting right in her ballpark.

>what stat allows you to power through fatal damage and keep moving so you don't drop dead where the enemy can camp you

That's her Spirit 4 ability. As long as she makes at least one success on a finesse roll to dodge, the dodge turns itself into a roll into cover while she still takes the hit. She doesn't have active break, by the way. Otherwise that flashbang would have done absolutely nothing.

Oooh, that looks interesting. Spirit and Finesse seem like the best choice for spending XP on now, since we don't have any stats at 1, and we already have a kickass weapon that can shoot through walls from a huge distance.

New drunk story:
On labor day weekend, she accidentlied a Yoko costume and made third runner-up in her category at the cosplay contest at Kumoricon.

Oh, it's unusual enough to be from an ability, not stat endurance (I was guessing it might be from high str or wil). Kudos for me on noticing it, then.

>>60607
I hope to frig the scope is adjustable, and Linda just didn't notice in the panic of battle. It's gonna suck to have to blow XP and increase BP costs over something that basic.

And yeah, with no active break, and hopefully no other guns, the I think we could have won that is if golem-Raph pinned her instead of going for the girl. But she'd probably have dodged.

>Spirit and Finesse seem like the best choice for spending XP on now
It costs 3 XP to get another point of spirit now. Everything else costs 1. We're also almost of BP in our first fight where the enemy actually fought back. We don't even have a sufficient safety margin to reload or use active break.

If we get 3XP, I say we spend it:
1- finesse to 5
2- BP to 17

Now we know what the Spirit 4 ability is I'm going to say we concentrate on it. Being able to dodge during death is something we NEED. We probably wouldn't have died twice in a row if we had that. If we get 3 XP from this fiasco that would be perfect.

>>60613
You're assuming we'd get the same ability as our opposite. She's clearly a close combat specialist- our original weapon implies we're meant to function at range. I think it's more likely we'd get something for that.

I really think we need more BP though. We're making a classic mistake here- we're piling on the core stats and abilities while leaving our HP/MP crippled because it's less interesting. We need points to function!

>Spirit 4 Ability
Just because HER Spirit 4 ability is what it is, doesn't mean YOUR Spirit 4 ability will be the same. There are a number of things which influence which ability you get. Until you actually get Spirit 4, you won't know what you have.

>Scope
The scope is adjustable, but it doesn't adjust down to normal vision. At that close distance, no matter what magnification you're using, it still going to be very focused, making it very difficult to fire at anything resembling accuracy, especially given the speed at which everyone was moving. The scope can't be used to just conveniently change what your normal vision sees, it'll magnify no matter what.

Worst case? Our spirit 4 ability isn't passive, it's active- some new BP expense we can't afford to make good use of.

>>60615
Well, what's the minimum useful range on the scope then? If we want to plug people through walls, how far away do we have to be?

Spirit DOES increase BP as well you know. I still think its worth it to get it over getting 6 points instead of 3.

In between 4 and 5 we can increase our BP to the 20s. But right now I think Spirit 4 is needed more.

I think we need the fin and reserves to function more than we need a hypothetical new ability we may not be able to afford to use. We just botched another shot, and a dodge check too, against the goddamn scrubs guarding the door.

It's a moot point, anyways. We're not getting 3XP since we failed to take out the two at the door. Between the violence and the rescue, I'm guessing we'll get 1 or 2. Which means our choices will be tuning, fin, or BP. And we need fin and BP more than we need another weapon right now.

Answer Linda McCallahan 2012/09/09(Sun)10:26 No. 60621 ID: a407a5
File 134721159974.jpg - (84.07KB , 640x480 , rifle-scope-sight-crosshair.jpg )

>Minimum effective range
I'll start by putting it another way. The maximum effective range on this thing is supposed to be somewhere along the lines of 2000 yards(20 football fields). The minimum range(thanks to the scope you put on it not being standard and because I don't like being a dick) is set at 800 yards(or 8 football fields). That is, of course, if you want a reasonable field of vision with the thing.

Something like resembling the sight through the picture, although the magnification is wrong and the distance is very wrong. But that's what you'd reasonably see.

Alright I think we need some xray glasses for close up work hah.

>8 football fields
...so completely useless if we're in the same building as the person we want to shoot (unless they're holding still). And there's not going to be overlap with break sight. Damn it.

Scope is then only good for long distance murdering (which kind of goes against our philosophy in many circumstances, and makes looting foci inconvenient at best), or spying through close walls before combat starts. Maybe getting the opening shot off.

So much for taking full advantage of wall shooting. Oh well. Still more useful than a conventional scope- just less so than we expected.

(Maybe Linda knew this intrinsically? Her unordered dismissal of the gun makes more sense in that context).

You know something has been bugging me. Why do groups like Linda's allow themselves to be associated with the more violent groups? As far as I can see there are 3 distinct overall groups of reality breakers. The Breakers who are just violent maniacs. The Fixers who are just violent hypocrites. And then Groups like Linda's who kinda just want to be left alone without hurting anybody. I mean its not that big of a deal, but it seems like the reasonable groups would want to start referring to themselves as something else, like Free Spirits or some thing like that.

>>60626
Well, to be fair, we DO look like violent maniacs from time to time [esp. Cass]. Since we solve our problems with weapons and violence, like every other gang, Breaker or Fixer.

We could probably help our image more, going forward, if we went to disable and disarm opponents without permakilling.

Damn people. Just... damn. You filled up that first thread quick. I mean... shit... over 600 posts in, what, two weeks? A little over that? I seriously didn't expect that to happen.

Which is good though, because I think it's time to move it into another chapter. And a new thread. But another chapter to go with the new thread. Yeah. And I will say that I was trying to see how powerful I should make the bosses. That was a little more overpowered than I anticipated... oh well. It turned out alright in the end, and it gave me something to work off of for the next one.

Also, since I like criticism(YAY!) what do you all think so far? Any comments, concerns, changes, likes, dislikes, insanities, depravities, or otherwise related things to say?

I've been thinking on how to deal with high finesse opponants.

1) Homing bullets. They move, the bullet adjusts.
2) Remember that flame thrower? You can't dodge a huge plume of flame. All you can do is get under cover.
2a) A flame thrower is basically a giant squirt gun. Replace the fuel with sitcky gel and tada non-lethal weapon. Lets ask Cass if she knows what happened to it. Toggle between flame and gel of course.


Not directly related but might be neat. A mental connection to our rifle. The scope could act like a third eye so we don't have to look through the thing as well as shooting it without touching the trigger. Plus having the gun as an extension of ourself will give us all sorts of little bonuses..

>>60630
Or we could just keep on building up our own finesse, since that's our aiming stat.

Since we got 2, I think what seems reasonable is 1 point Finesse, 1 point for 3 BP

>>60628
I'm really enjoying the character building and background stuff over here in the discussion thread.
Also, a link to this thing in the new OP would be nice, maybe a recap of our stats.

>>60632
We were aiming right at her... she was literally dodging bullets.

...threads, fill up? (Honestly, I have no idea how that works). Part of that was probably due to fact we weren't just suggesting things- we were actually going back and forth, discussing options, and reaching consensus (mostly). Burt a lot of posts that way, I suppose.

>Overpowered Boss
Well, in a workable way, though. She was a specialist- pistol only, walk into the middle of battle, dodge and shoot everything, use BP defensively but not offensively. She ran into problems when she couldn't bring that to bear. If we were facing anyone of a comparable power level to hers with more flexibility or options (alternate guns, active breaks, active spirit abilities) I think we'd be dead (barring deus ex machina, of course).

>Criticism
-We're always gonna ask about BP from break sight when we run into someone new. Might as well give it to us. :p
-Next time we can an upgrade, can we discuss what exactly it entails here before we commit points? I'm not sure we would have chosen differently (scope is still useful, especially since it can see through cover), but I think we would have reacted differently in that fight if we knew the actual limitations of our scope.

>>60630
>Ideas

Homing bullets, if possible, make me a little leery. At least, if they bypass finesse checks, that could pose a serious problem for us, long term. I'd kind of rather they didn't exist. If they are possible though, they're probably something we should get someday.

A flamethrower / stick bomb gun sounds pretty fantastic if we can get it.

>I'm really enjoying the character building and background stuff over here in the discussion thread.
Yeah, this is hella fun. Only thing that miffs me is it sorta gives us an OOC edge when we run into characters we've helped create. Haven't been quite sure how to handle that.

>>60635
I think I have an idea on the character creation. Break it up into two parts.

Part one, NORMAL stuff. Name, age, gender. Bam.

Part two, ABnormal stuff. Possible foci, battle preferences, morality---mostly personality stuff.

Part three, UNKNOWABLE stuff. Supernatural accidents, hidden powers, backstory and/or plainclothes occupations for characters. Over here, completely separate.

Now, all three parts are to be considered completely separate from each other--to be mixed and matched into new characters by the author, so we can't really metagame it

How's that sound?

>>60639
whoops three parts not two

>link, stats
Both can be found here http://tgchan.org/wiki/Breaking_Reality, which will have a link to it in the next thread.

>BP
I try to remember to put this up every time an enemy comes along, but I usually find myself caring more about the post than the numbers. Or maybe somewhere in my head I just assume you're all mind readers. Either way, I'll try to be better about this, but if I don't feel free to threaten me with pitchforks and steak. I love steak.

>Upgrades
Sure, I don't mind going over specifics. The last thing was a bit of a failure on my part mostly, but it would be a far better idea to go over details than leave things open to misinterpretation.

>>60641
http://tgchan.org/wiki/Breaking_Reality

Links and punctuation don't play well together

>>60641
Thanks. They're both fairly minor quibbles. Overall this is going great.

>>60643
I've been thinking we need to add our inventory (untuned foci, useful items and possessions, fluff possessions), and maybe what other people's stats we know (the boss, Trevor, and what incomplete information we have on other breakers who've survived encounters with us).

>>60644
I'll see about getting on that. It might take me awhile though, at least for the information bit. The inventory I should be able to do tonight...

Oh yeah, and new chapter-

AWAY!

Actually, I was kind of thinking making a list of incomplete but known info about other breakers should be the kind of things readers should do. ...if we weren't too lazy to update the wiki ourselves.

>moar wiki infos
Ah, Elizabeth is a weapon type? I was half expecting the eye to be an avatar.

>Trap type focus
Okay, the needle sounds more tempting than ever. We tune this to Linda next level, right? I'm half tempted to give it to Liz since she's our support unit (and traps are for support!), but I'm afraid she'd never use it.

Obviously we run everything through Elizabeth from now on (does Cass still have any spare foci, I wonder? Still curious as to what the ipod does...).

We're going to have to be in charge of our own intra-party foci swapping, since we don't have access to Mac anymore.

It's not that surprising giving that there was no humanoid independent creature/puppet. It's hard for a eye to be independent but it's not like we knew what her focus was at the time. (f6cff9 over here just using a different computer)

Are other breakers aware of stats or is just a game mechanic. cause if they are we should get Cass to put some points into Will. It might help with the berserker thing.

Other breakers are not aware of stats. Technically, Linda isn't aware of stats either. That's why I just refer to BP that she sees as "numbers". That's all they are to her, is the number of times one can break reality. It's a person's number. Spirit sight won't even give you a number, just a vague optical illusion that shows a persons power level. What they're actually at will have to be guessed at.

Cass, for example, will never gain Will, at least not until you deal with her mental trauma. Because in case you hadn't noticed, everyone has either a physical or mental trauma. Most of them have mental ones.

...as if it weren't obvious that Cass' trauma is mental. (Raphael's too. Why else would his default powerset be based on nightmares?).

Confirmation that we can help with her issues is encouraging, though.

Huh. Did resolving Linda's issues trigger anything, I wonder? Sterility got trumped by adoption pretty quickly there.

>>60657
Who knows? Maybe she already dealt with the mental issues awhile back and all there is left now is the damage done to her body.

But now I'm wondering because at the rate Linda is going, she is gonna become the Team Mom. Solving team issues and what not.

>>60657
I don't know if she's even thought of the adoption in the context of "this is the closest you will get to having children," though? It was more of a practical decision to get paperwork in normal land for keeping her in our group anyway. And the fact that Elizabeth's 17, even if she acts like a child, might not have had Linda making that sort of mental connection to her trauma...yet, if at all.

We know stats 3 and over are considered superhuman, but by how much? I'd love to get a sense of scale. When is Linda going to start dodging bullets. How strong is Raphael \ Cass. What can the Boss convince people to do.

>>60660
It's been a month. Even if it was done on a technicality, the thought would have at least occurred to her.

>Team Mom
I was idly wondering if that was how her injury was manifesting itself earlier (I mean, guns from guns is kind of obvious, but nearly everyone else got something downright symbolic in their response to being broken). I was kind of surprised when the literal adopting cropped up.

>>60680
If dodge and aim checks are based purely off fin, I'd think Linda might already be able to dodge bullets. At least ones coming from scrubs and normals at decent range (we already snatched a throwing knife out of the air. That's pretty damn fast and handy!).

As for str, I've kind of been assuming Cass can knock through any door short of an airlock or blast door at this point.

These are for Raphael, Elizabeth Baker and Marc Conner.

SHARE AND ENJOY

Raphael. Age 27. Due to his rather unique condition, Raphael has always had difficultly dealing with others. Being an albino from birth, Raphael has almost stark white hair and bright red eyes, although his condition has only slightly lightened his skin tone beyond normal. Raphael is otherwise physically fine. He stands at just around the same height as Cass, perhaps an inch taller. Unfortunately, he has has a rather slim build, making him unsuitable for close combat in his normal form, although with the introduction of a new form to his repertoire, he seems to be gaining weight and muscle in equal measure. His normal choice of clothing always contains a pair of sunglasses, which rarely leave his face, but the rest of his clothing his generally very fluid, changing to suit his environment or needs.

Elizabeth. Age 17. She is somewhat detached from the world, mainly staring off into space and generally not displaying a lot of emotion except under extreme circumstances. This might be because she got shot in the face as a child. Who knows? Either way, she tends to stare blankly at everything. Her hair is a normal brown, as is her natural right eye. Oddly enough, her left glass eye has an iris painted green, and this eye glows slightly when its power is in use, trailing the green light behind her movements. She's shorter than Linda, coming in at around 5'5'', and looks unusually frail compared to people around her. Most of her clothing was chosen by Linda, which means button-up shirt/t-shirts allied with a pair of jeans and some comfortable sneakers, but somehow dresses seem to sneak their way in here and there.

Marc Conner. Age 36. While an older man, he's turned out to be one of those men who's charm grows with age, instead of dwindling. He's seen mostly in business suits, as he spends most of his time on his work, both breaker and normal, and can almost inevitably be found smoking as well. His hair is kept is kept clean and well trimmed, and his taste in clothing is expensive yet not overbearing. He stands tallest out of the current cast, at 6'6'', but seems genuinely helpful and friendly. Except for the creepy doll that always seems to be in his presence. That's just creepy.

Congratulations on making the guy we just met obnoxious enough that when the Butler refereed to him as the master, my brain refused to acknowledge he was the master that the butler was talking about. I guess I was hoping it was someone else.

We've been doing pretty well since we hit sun city, huh? We're already up one foci, beat up a gang and intimidated them away, we're currently kicking ass in a water gun contest, and if the negotiations go well tonight, we'll have secured new allies and/or minions, expanding our influence in this area and completing the mission. Gotta be worth several XP, at least. So once again, the perennial discussion on how to spend it!

>Next XP allocation.

First thing I think we want to do is get our spirit to 4. More BP, better breaking, and we get our first unique spirit ability. Hopefully it's something good.

Next up, I think we want to tune something. The trap-needle seems more interesting than the colt. It's possible we might want the ring though once Elizabeth tells us what it does (I'm guessing it's some kind of defensive or buffing item?).

If we have any points left after that, our last priority should be to pump fin and BP. Probably keep doing that for a while longer too before we go for spirit 5, or consider upping wil again.

>Long term objectives, planning
(because I'm bored).
- Fix Cass.
- Get Maria's gun. Bitch.
- 12.7x99mm Neutronium rounds. (To kill modern tanks with, and fighting high end, otherwise hard to damage avatars and forms).

>>60727
I also reread the section a few times, to make sure this was actually the guy!

Oh hey, while I'm on it, how does the cost structure for upgraded ammo work? Adding a new kind of ammo ups the manifestation cost by 1, and you have to pay BP once it's out to swap ammo types? Seems like we might be paying twice.

>>60727
Yeah, going from flirty girl, to fatty obnoxious moneybags was a bit of a disappointment. Also the fact that these guys seemed fairly dismissive of their normal employees. These may not end up being people we want to be allied with. We'll have to see.

>>60729
At least you didn't write we should wait for the "Master" and then delete your post. If the guy being obnoxious was what he was aiming for(and it was) then he got it.

By the way I'm not saying it's a bad thing. It's suppose to be a character we don't like.

...I'm actually wondering if it might be a test? Normality Cloak isn't exactly the most common ability, and flirty dancer seemed a social type, an illusion or deception ability could fit her power-set.

>>60734
One, I hope not because I'm awful at tests like that. Two, I think that's hoping for too much. Three, We would have an awful time seeing though that with our skill set.

Ammo will not up the cost of the weapon as long as the ammo type chosen is something "realistic". Instead, every time you manifest the weapon, you will have to specify which kind of round you want to have loaded into the clip(type of round being Incendiary, AP, Sniper, Sabot, etc.). At the moment, you're are using a standard Ball round, mainly intended for use against personnel. Anytime after the first manifestation, if you want to load a different type of round, you spend 1 BP to reload, and just specify you're changing the round type.

Now then, let's assume you want something "unrealitstic", like your Neutronium rounds. THAT will cost you more. Your convincing reality they exist, and that you have them. If you choose to use those rounds as your manifesting the weapon, it costs an extra 1BP, and if you choose to reload into them, it costs two the first time you switch to them. My suggestion, if you do end up using Neutronium rounds, is to make it worth your while and assign another ability to them, like exploding or something. Neutronium, after all, is what they are made of, and while strong on it's own, I'm willing to give you a little leeway.

>>60764
Alright, that's a reasonable price structure. We can get alternate ammo without making the gun too expensive to summon. Although, honestly, I'm not enough of a gun nut to know what the hell the difference is between the mundane rounds (AP, Sniper, Sabot vs ball), or what we'd want them for.

The whole idea behind neutronium would be upping stopping power / kinetic energy in order to punch through things made of exotic materials, or to at least send them flying (or to punch through a whole bunch of walls like they weren't even there). Because we're going to fight a nearly indestructible avatar eventually. Assuming we can magically maintain the same muzzle velocity, we'd be getting orders of magnitude more kinetic energy out.

I'd have to do the math, but I'm pretty sure trading mass for a hollow filled with pretty much any conventional explosives in the head would actually output less energy on the target. ...and the whole reason my head went to super-dense ammo in the first was to avoid the complications of using higher energy explosives (like the mini-nukes suggested a while back). Although, the ammo might explode on impact at those energy levels anyways.

Then there's the problem of weight. Have to check that a clip of 10 masses out to something that can actually be carried (even by a superhuman).

(Yeah, don't worry about any of this for now. I'm off to go be a physics nerd and see if I can get any reasonable numbers out of any of this. And this is long range theoretical planning, I'm not gonna be suggesting we add this at level up anytime soon).

I don't see that we need to make a deal with this guy EVER.

I would prefer we shoot him in the face right here rather than try and work within a system to maybe make him nicer over time.

The reason boss sent us here was to deal with the local people and get them on our side/establish a base--not to let ourselves get pushed around and do the dirty work for some local bully with delusions of grandeur.

Thing is, he's already the local bully who runs this town (or at least a chunk of it). Right now, he's willing to give us the room to set up under his watch. The alternative is to set up competing with him.

It's a lot easier to take the breathing room and steal as much as we can from his organization (win over as many people as possible) and eventually hold a coup rather than compete directly.

Then there's Daniels to consider. Dude will cause us hella problems if we break from plans and try to compete with this jerk. The betrayal plan? He'll probably be more than glad to help us kill him.

Also, we'd have to shoot him in the face 18 times. Our clip isn't even that large, he's already proved to be very fast, and possibly has an avatar backing him up, so he outnumbers us (assuming the ping pong ball isn't a weapon form). Plus he has more backup then we do right now. Tactical analysis says we aren't killing him in his office, I'm afraid. Not right now, at least.

>>60775
That doesn't mean we need to accept his horrible, horrible deals. We just extricate ourselves from this position and plan how to deal with him on our own terms--NOT rolling over and accepting his.

>>60776
Well, if you don't like his terms, what's your counter offer?

We need connections, intel and a temporary safe base of operations. He offers that. He needs muscle. What else do we have to offer? I don't see another deal.

>>60777
But he doesn't WANT to negotiate with us, so we will get nowhere, or even wind up starting a fight with him by trying to counter offer.

The better option is a tactical retreat. WITHDRAW, don't ACCEPT.

>>60778
...I'm sorry. Could you please explain what you want to negotiate for? What you think a better option is? What arrangement you would like to have?

I don't care if he's willing to accept it, or if negotiations won't work, please just explain to me what deal you think we should be getting.

Because it seems to me that tolerating an outside military force on your turf in exchange for basically mercenary work is a pretty standard agreement. I'm not sure what you're hoping for. No strings attached free room and board?

Withdrawing is the same as refusal. It nets us nothing, insults him, and makes us an enemy. We don't get to leave on neutral terms, and there isn't going to be a better option if we come back later. It's choosing to go to war.

What do /you/ want? Because if you don't go for at the very least right of refusal you are, as he put it himself, getting screwed over.

We have the power to take him on, we are being downright GENEROUS if we agree to let him have an observer on us like he wants--we don't need to do his dirty work for him, and should not agree to that.

It's not so much what I want, so much as what we DON'T want. And we don't have to accept the first proposal he makes.

>we don't have to accept the first proposal he makes
We do if we literally don't have another proposal. :p

Seriously, we already have the right of refusal. It's called, if her gives us a job we don't like? We don't do it. Or we subvert it- pretend or appear to do it, but secretly do something that goes against his interests.

Arguing for the right or discretion to refuse missions up front just tips our hand unnecessarily- shows we're bucking his power.

>>60781
Our other proposal is "Try again" :B

But as I said I'm really sick of debating this with you, I'd rather debate with the quest characters. -_-

*laughs*. Sorry, I'm not trying to be a prick. I was honestly trying to either persuade you, or get you to say something that would make your position make sense to me.

I don't know why, but this quest really seems to draw out the impulse to try and debate towards consensus, instead of just throwing out suggestions and leaving them.

>>60784
Haha, no worries, I know the feeling. Maybe it's investment in the story--we'd like to all be on the same page. And it is good to have some debate--I think we're just spinning our wheels at this point, though xD

Linda McCallahan, irresistible sex symbol to chainsaw wielding maniacs, albinos, snakes, weak ass tubs of lard, brides, and musically inclined lesbians.

Honestly, we're getting to the point where it would be easier to track the people who haven't shown some kind of interest. XD

Hey I got to thinking that Jake is setting us up for a fall. For example what if a bunch of people coming the east from a rival gang and started killing people in your town, what would you do? I'm afraid he just gonna use us and let us just take the fall. This works especially here because killing ain't the norm nor is violent actions based on what happened on the beach. I know he was planning on using us to begin with but setting us up could be part of his plans and then he could just play dumb while saying he had no part in it. His endgame plan could be letting us die while taking out some of his enemies while he is in the clear.

Something to think about I guess although we are not planning to kill people to begin with. We could use this line of reasoning to convince Daniels to listen to what we are saying though.

>>60805
I'm mean it's pretty obvious that what he planning on doing anyways. I guess it's a good thing we aren't going to do exactly what he says.

Of course I'm working under the assumption he wants us to kill people to begin with. For all I know he could just want us as muscle to keep others from his territory or other tasks like that.

>>60807
It really was VERY obvious. I wonder if that's a result of his foci, someone else's meddling, or, unlikely, something WE did, like make a will save.

>>60808
If it's the result of his foci that would be great. If that was true I bet he thinks he is a master manipulator even though all of his true intentions come out. Odds are it's someone who would benefit from him getting taken out in a gruesome fashion. If Linda herself did that then it's all kinds of awesome.

I'm assuming his injury is psychological in nature. He's got his Id or something as an avatar. (Actually, if you think about, almost all avatar users are gonna have psychological injuries. Form and weapon could more easily go either way). Probably why he uses a front- he can't hide his contempt or motives from people, he's forced to play with his cards face up (well, he can hide it when he's pretending to be the butler, at least).

...which makes me wonder what kind of trauma translates into bubbly vivacious music powers.

>>60810
Could be ICE powers of some sort, and she just does music as a non-breaker hobby.

>>60810
Could be that as well although I'm wondering where his avatar is at though. I mean once manifested it can act independently from it's master. It's kinda the whole gimmick of avatars besides being powerful.

I mean just because something is weird, strong, or unusual doesn't make it an avatar.

>>60811
Music has to be central to her personality or powerset though, or else Elizabeth wouldn't have named her that.

I'm also wondering, in retrospect, if the irrational hatred for, and desire to hurt Carson wasn't coming from Jake. Trying to see how easily we could be controlled.

>>60813
I thought the whole second self mind-whispering to us screamed avatar. I kind of wish we had had Raphael in the room through for a second opinion.

>>60816
I think it would have to have the ability to act on it's own. Besides I thought his rubber ball was his weapon so wouldn't that make him a weapon type unless the ball was talking and can move by itself which makes it all sorts weird.

I mean I could be completely be off base here. I'm not gonna say that I know what's going on at all.

Anyone can use any focus type however you have to learn to use the ones that are different then your initial focus. For your first focus you have an affinity for that type.

>>60821
Wait are you saying? Are you saying a weapon type can get a form type or a avatar type can use a weapon type if they tried? I'm just confused is all so can you clarify?

>Each type can only use their type. Linda can't use Form or Avatar types at all, BUT, she could gain allies and followers that can. That'll be explained when you start getting allies you'll actually have any influence over, but for now, we'll just worry about yourself.

Or I could have given you the question and the answer post instead of green texting it like an idiot.

Here is the question
>>59310
And the answer
>>59313

Unless that's not what you're talking about at all if so I'm sorry and would still like that clarification if I'm wrong.

>>60420
I was thinking about this actually. So anyone can pick up a weapon type focus and learn to use it. But it'd be like learning to use it normally which depending on the weapon can take years.

I mean, if a weapon foci was MANIFESTED I guess another person could use it, but I'm still under the impression that people can't manifest foci other than their one type; weapon, form, or avatar.

>>60827
That's what I assumed as well. That's why avatar types are kinda unlucky because how rare avatar foci are. I mean why reference that in the quest if they could use other types to begin with.

>>60826
That was more for weapon users only type of deal. Like if I started out with an axe then I would be really good with all axes but I would need to train to use a sword.

If I started out with a form type I COULDN'T use any weapon foci to begin with AT ALL.

>Each type can only use their type
That implies only weapon types users can use weapon type foci.
Form type users can only use form type foci.
Avatar users can only use avatar type foci.

I was assuming his doppelganger was his avatar, and the ball he slammed into the guys face was just a normal ball, not a weapon form.

With sufficient finesse and str, we can kill with ordinary objects. There's no rule that says breakers need to use manifestations to kill.

It could go the other way (ie, ball was the weapon form, doppelganger a unique spirit ability). But then he's got a very mundane weapon form, and a pretty unique ability. Avatar just seemed more likely to me.

>>60833
He has a doppelganger? Damn I must suck at reading. Anyways we don't know enough yet. All we do know is he kinda of a dick to everyone based on what we saw.

>>60833
Where did it say he has a doppelganger? Now I'm just kinda lost here and I would like a map so I can go home.

>>60837
The picture implied it and the echo text made us speculate that way but there's no real textual evidence yet that it is a doppelganger. But it might be.

>>60838
Oh that just thought that was meant to represent him as a person and the echo coming from him. You know how he really is in the inside. Outside all polite with smiles but inside a complete douche bag.

>doppelganger?
>no real textual evidence
Ahem.

>And like there's... someone else with him... behind him.

Maybe it was just an ethereal or mental effect, but the second self wasn't just a nasty echo. Linda saw something. I'm assuming it's a avatar, but really, it doesn't have to be. Really wish we had brought Raphael into the room, freaky perceptual and mental shit is probably right up ghosthorse alley on dreamwalk boulevard.

>>60841
Ah I didn't catch that part. Thanks for pointing that out. If it's a avatar then that small ball could have been something regular which spells bad news for us if he can do that for anything. I can't believe I'm hoping a small ball isn't normal instead of it just being some toy.

It occurs to me that if we're successful in meeting up with this doctor dude, we're going to have an opportunity to mod foci.

The important question is, what do we want to mod, and how? We aren't sure yet exactly how his changes differ from the upgrades we're used to (I'm assuming his changes are cosmetic? Or they change what things do, replacing instead of adding so as not to increase BP cost), but maybe we should brainstorm some ideas.

We have our rifle, and pistol, which are fine as is, and we probably don't want to alter. We've got the colt, which we haven't tuned. Frankly, it seems inferior to me to our existing handgun. Yes, a magnum hits harder, but that doesn't matter much and you can't chain kill with it as easily. Maybe we could make it a different kind of gun? We've got the needle, which acts as a trap (somehow), which sounds hella useful, but we can't really guess how it might need alteration until after we tune it. Then there's the ring, which we have no data on.

We've also got other people's to work with, two, I suppose. Dunno what would be useful to change with the chainsaw, knife, eye, horse or golem though.

Sorry if this has already been answered, but are manifestation type foci weapons only or are there also equipment types? I'm only asking because it might be pretty useful to have body armor or a getaway car stored in Linda's pockets.

As far as I can figure, the types split up like this:

The defining feature of avatars is that they're autonomous. They can act independently of the breaker, and the foci / manifestation are the same object.

Forms always have a separate foci. If it altars the user, it's a form.

Weapons so far are the broadest group. The defining characteristic seems to be anything that can be used as a tool. Whether or not there's a separate manifestation from the foci can vary. On the one end, there's the obvious weapons, like our guns, the chainsaw, etc. you call from foci. There are also the less than obvious weapons/tools, things that do things but don't necessarily manifest anything. For example, Elizabeth's eye, and (I suspect) the crucifix and ring.

Theoretically, something that manifested a non-weapon or tool might be possible and count as a weapon type. We haven't seen any examples yet though.

The fact that this scientist has robotic minions is very notable. It means that (unless he is super-skilled at non-magical science or the bots are constantly dependent on a normal manifestation), we have evidence of someone creating what are essentially self-contained 'magic items'.
When casters run on a finite pool of energy/time, being able to stockpile magical effects into items is a game-changer.

>>60966
Also, all the weapon types we have seen so far have been hand-held or otherwise carried, though a magic car would be pretty great.

>>60970
That or he just used break points to make them. When you can turn puppies into beings of hate at spirit 5 you can do a lot of crazy stuff at later levels.

>>60971
Even if he does, Zig is right. It's a game changer. He can spend BP in advance to power himself up. He can accumulate more BP in useable minions / magic items than he would normally have at his disposal in a day. It's a means to circumvent your own power limits- save up past the cap.

I'm still stumped on what mod to ask for when we get to this guy. I get the impression he'll be annoyed if we break in to talk to him and we don't even have anything for him to do. But I can't really think of any cosmetic changes we'd need or want for our gear. (...an custom engraving on one of our guns? I could see maybe putting an Angel on the handgun grip. Hardly necessary though).

>>60972
We don't need to have anything to do now, specifically--just that Boss wanted us to find this guy. He's a former acquaintance of our group, so if he left on bad terms we might have to do some persuading and/or find out the story behind that. Otherwise, breaking in to say "hello we're in town, how are you :D" sounds legit to me.

Maybe given two focii he can merge them. Gun + trap needle = Trap Gun (?), Needle + Ring = Explosive Clone. Ring + Gun = Two Colts? Double bullet?

>>60974
Combinations sound very interesting. Especially the trap-gun! Although I would be reluctant to "use up" the ring or needle until we know first hand what they do. It's possible they're already awesome (for instance, why permanently make one gun a twin manifestation, if it happens that the ring power is to dual summon whatever we want?).

>>60973
Yeah, I suppose we go with just talking to him then. It is the mission. Maybe when he actually explains his abilities to us we'll be able to think of an appropriate use for them.

>>60976
I'd much rather see what the ring does on its own, first.

It might already double a weapon of our choice--or it might double the weapon user--it's an already modified foci, after all.

List of experiments to try with Lindouble later after we tune the twin-ring: (most of this could be done at the hotel, but we'll need a place where we can test shooting).

-can she talk?
-how much a lower intellect are we talking here? Does she have the same personality?
-can she manifest, or is she limited to what we have out at the time?
-can she reload?
-does she have BP?
-is her skill as good as Linda's?
-can we talk to her via the duplicated comm?
-can she break?
-...does she respawn (not sure if we want to actually murder ourself to test that).
-how long does she persist? Is there a time limit, or can she be maintained indefinitely?
-do her memories persist after dismal, and re-manifestation? Or is it a clean slate each time? (Being unsure of this is one reason to hesitate at test-killing her).

Since we went and killed it, can I request a spoiler on what the needle would have done? Unless foci repeat, or there are similar trap types out there, we missed our opportunity to figure it out in game.

It essentially placed needle over and area, triggered by a wire and would launch out and inject a mild sedative into target, slowing reaction time. Both the type of poison used and a the trap-trigger could be changed through level modification, such as changing the poison to something deadly or the trap-trigger to sensors. It was meant as something to use to cover your own ass a little if you decided to go the long-range sniper support role, although you seem to be leaning more towards a more all-ranges gunner instead.

>>61092
Keeping an eye out for more snipe weapons, though. ;D

Can we have a reminder of what we can get when we boost our spirit, too?

In this case, a rather simple choice.

Offensive, Defensive, or Support?

>>61096
My first instinct is offence. Its what Linda is good at. And specialization is generally a good idea when working with a team. Unfortunately we seem to be going solo distressingly often. The mech, spear guy, etc.

So I vote defensive.

>you seem to be leaning more towards a more all-ranges gunner over a long-range sniper support role
Huh! Actually, it had kind of been my feeling the plot had been pushing us that way. There have been very few combat situations where we've had the opportunity to work at long range, or fight in a support role (we supported Cass, what, once?). And the break sight mechanics / range limitations made playing sniper a lot more morally dicey. Not to mention the loot/xp system disincentives killing at range.

>needle
Alright, that doesn't sound like such a bad loss. Getting enough types of triggers or toxins for it to be versatile would have been a real xp sink.

>Offensive, Defensive, or Support?
...we get a choice?

If the choice is that vague, I want a passive defense skill. We're almost never actually fighting with anyone to support, and the last thing we need is another offensive option to spend points on. We already have active break and soon to be 4 weapons for that.

>>61098
Passive defensive preferred, yes

Your new Spirit 4 ability. It passively makes all evasive actions better, reducing the number of successful dice needed to dodge. If an attack lands anyway, another roll is made to see if the attack is reduced in severity, from death to critical damage, critical damage to moderate damage, and so on. The reduction in severity doesn't work for all weapons, such your rifle, as it doesn't matter where the weapon hits for it to cause fatal damage.

>>61120
That sounds perfect. We'll still have to worry about area of effect attacks but for most breakers that we've seen thats not an issue.

Even more superhuman evasion? Definitely useful- we've failed a lot of dodge checks. Really helps at this point in the game too- it makes us dodgier before we've actually got a chance to stack finesse, and it's more useful than Maria's endurance in death skill at a low BP count (and more versatile overall, I'd say).

Also extends the usefulness of our twin, after we tune the ring. Assuming she doesn't get her own BP pool and respawns, making her dodgier increases her survivability and usefulness.

I wonder if the damage mitigation factor might backfire at some point though? As we've seen, there are definitely instances where you're better off dead and respawning then left alive and injured- it actually disables you longer. Although with more outright dodges and otherwise disabling injuries mitigated, I suppose it works out to a net gain.

>Future XP priorities
-tune twin-ring / cold magnum (whichever one we don't tune now).
-stack some finesse and BP (at least 7-8 fin, 20+ BP).
-weapon customization and improvement, such as:
(ammo choices not ranked by priority)
--alternate ammo choices. Say, tranqs for the pistol, explosives or armor piercing or something for the the tank gun (the anti-personal rounds were limited in how bad they could hurt the mech- it would be nice to hit the next one harder).
--improve time on the freeze ray (10s is kind of a long for a combat situation)
--improve twin (depending on results of experimentation)
-Spirit 5
-don't tune anything else for a while unless it's *fantastic*.