I will become God-Harem King of the World! [Highschool DxD/Exalted] (CLOSED)

[Silversun17]

As far as I recall it only heals normally and magic generally doesn't do shit to heal it, which is pretty bad since Aggravated damage is otherwise just like lethal damage, which means you get to go through all the shit a normal human in the real world goes through when being stabbed or something.

Also, what the fuck?!
We used holy attacks against her?
We are a Compassion 5 character and Aggravated Damage is cruel as fuck.
More to the point, Agravated damage is a horrible idea if you're intending to incapacitate someone.
I guess with stats as low as we have, Soak might have made it necessary, but seriously Aggravated Damage.
I'm surprised that didn't require a comapssion roll.

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Issei doesn't know what he's doing yet.

 

[Pipeman]

If we're going for getting the summoning thing, why not have us reach into our pockets for a phone, pull that out instead and decide to give it a go anyway? After all at worst you only lose a few seconds and considering all the weird shit that's just happened it's not like this thing actually summoning help would be all that ridiculous right?

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It's honestly not that unlikely to try the summoning.
I mean, we just learned supernatural stuff is actually real, so testing other supernatural stuff is not actually that far out there.

Did we take any dots in Occult?
If we did (or we still have the option to) that could actually easily justify the attempt, since we are sponaneously gaining the knowledge through magic in this case.

Edit:

Issei doesn't know what he's doing yet.

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Fair enough.
At least he only used it once.

 

[Malcolmo]

I know, I was just trying to make the write in feel a bit more natural, since Issei would have likely forgotten about that paper by now.

 

[Pipeman]

I know, I was just trying to make the write in feel a bit more natural, since Issei would have likely forgotten about that paper by now.

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True enough.
If you have the option to just stunt yourself into accidentally finding the summoning thing, there is no reason to have to squeeze in unrealistically remembering it.

 

[Smuthunter]

So if I change the write-in so Issei finds the summoning contract while looking for his cellphone, how many votes would it get?

 

[Pipeman]

Well, mine for one.
Also, this okay?

[X] As you search through your pockets for your phone to call help, you stumble on the scrap of paper that strange girl gave you. Supposedly it is used for a summoning. Well, since the supernatural is appreantly real and you don't have many options, it should be worth at least a try. Not like it's going to take you very long.

That aside, I'm kind of curious how our development from here on will go.
I mean, it's not going to be that easy to figure out that our primary talent isn't straight up fighting, so there might be some misspending of experience and training in the beginning, but since we're still going to be very good at fighting that's not really a bad thing and once we do figure out our talents, we get to take a look a an entirely different side of the Occult Club. The Actually Occult And Not Shounen side!

 

[Silversun17]

[X] As you search through your pockets for your phone to call help, you stumble on the scrap of paper that strange girl gave you. Supposedly it is used for a summoning. Well, since the supernatural is apparently real and you don't have many options, it should be worth at least a try. Not like it's going to take you very long.

 

[Bloodshifter]

Guys we DO have Char Gen Points to Spend that could have saved us back in the Social Combat against Raynare...

 

[John At Dawn]

[X] As you search through your pockets for your phone to call help, you stumble on the scrap of paper that strange girl gave you. Supposedly it is used for a summoning. Well, since the supernatural is apparently real and you don't have many options, it should be worth at least a try. Not like it's going to take you very long.

 

[Silversun17]

Guys we DO have Char Gen Points to Spend that could have saved us back in the Social Combat against Raynare...

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then can someone who's better at exalted then me make a list of what to spend those points on?

 

[Malcolmo]

[X] As you search through your pockets for your phone to call help, you stumble on the scrap of paper that strange girl gave you. Supposedly it is used for a summoning. Well, since the supernatural is appreantly real and you don't have many options, it should be worth at least a try. Not like it's going to take you very long.

 

[Pipeman]

Guys we DO have Char Gen Points to Spend that could have saved us back in the Social Combat against Raynare...

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Do we?
I'm not sure if the stat sheet is up to date, but if it is 3 dots in Occult and Medicine should be rather useful and are dirt cheap.
Otherwise, filling up Presence, Lore and/or Dodging seems like a not outright horrible idea.
Now I'm debating on whether to reserve 8 BP for boosting Appearance to 4 dots (Appearance is rather good for social combat of any kind) or going for mental attributes.
Not really sure though.

We'd be very light on the physical side of things, but we are playing at a low difficulty, have Ddraig to pick up the slack, will have a team as well and are a Twilight, so we can probably get by.

 

[Smuthunter]

It's probably a better idea to top off Presence and our other skills rather than investing in new ones. If we're using the training times system, going from 3 dots to 4 dots or 5 dots is going to take months of training while going from 0 dots to 1 dot only takes a few days or so. That BP will be better spent on more expensive stuff. Of course if OP isn't using normal training times then yeah, just go ahead and spread them around.

 

[Pipeman]

It's probably a better idea to top off Presence and our other skills rather than investing in new ones. If we're using the training times system, going from 3 dots to 4 dots or 5 dots is going to take months of training while going from 0 dots to 1 dot only takes a few days or so. That BP will be better spent on more expensive stuff. Of course if OP isn't using normal training times then yeah, just go ahead and spread them around.

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Normally true, but

Abilities cannot be raised with this method beyond 3

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We kind of have to spread those BP out, unless we go for pure Attributes, which is doable and even somewhat economical, but leaves us with signficantly fewer immediate payoffs.
Honestly, Issei is built so weirdly, I'm not quite sure how to salvage him.

Edit:
Also, all the ones I'm proposing are favored/caste which means they have only XP costs and no training time.
Still not that economically XP wise (if Alex isn't houseruling this) but at least we wouldn't take months to get anything done.

 

[Smuthunter]

Actually I just noticed we don't have any dots in combat abilities. Makes sense for Issei but if we're getting skills by magic why don't we sink a few points into MA so we have some basic human competence?

Normally true, but
We kind of have to spread those BP out, unless we go for pure Attributes, which is doable and even somewhat economical, but leaves us with signficantly fewer immediate payoffs.

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I'm pretty sure that got errata'ed out; Solar are supposed to be awesome by virtue of their awesome skills, so they can have up to 5 dots at chargen. Either that or someone made a mistake coding Anathema.

 

[Pipeman]

Actually I just noticed we don't have any dots in combat abilities. Makes sense for Issei but if we're getting skills by magic why don't we sink a few points into MA so we have some basic human competence?

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Because we don't have anything combat related favoured (excedt for Dodging which I am proposing to get as many dots as we're allowed right now) and our combat stats aren't really that impressive either.
Odds are we are better off going for Occult and spamming spells like crazy and using Ddraig to tide us over whenever we are forced into actual combat.

Non favoured abilities are outrageously BP expensive in comparison to favoured ones and since we can't go over 3 anyways, using BP to buy them isn't that much better than XP either.

 

[kinglugia]

[X] Pipeman's stunt.

 

[Pipeman]

Okay, I've been going through our optoins and I think we are best served with:

3 dots of Appearance (12 BP)
1 dot of Medicine (1 BP)
3 dots of Occult (3 BP)
2 dots of Presence (2 BP)

Reasoning is the following:

It is true that minmaxing at Character creation is largely preferable, but Issei's buils is all kinds of fucked up and the 3 dot limitation in Abilities doesn't help.
Given that we have all our Attributes at most at 2 or 3, we can only really max one while leaving enough BP to get desperately needed Abilities for more dice.

Combat Abilities are more or less out since we have no favoured (except dodge) and even with the 3 dot limitation buying favoured abilties with BP has a much larger advantage over buying non-favoured abilties with BP than buying favoured abilties with XP has over buying non-favoured abilties with XP.

This means buying Combat attributes is not really sensible, which leads me to conclude that getting Appearance up to 5 is the by far preferable option to maxing other Attributes.
To those who don't know this, Appearance is more or less the most important of Social Attributes, since it effectively adds your score as successes to both your defenses and attacks in socail combat while anything else just adds their score as dice to attacks and only to defenses if you're using your mental parry (which we won't).
I say effectively, because the issue is somewhat more complicated, but that is what it generally comes down to.

This would leave us with 6 more BP to spend on Favoured/Caste Abilities.
As far as I see it viable candidates were Presence, Lore, Medicine, Occult and Dodge.

Lore is all around rather useful, but honestly not quite necessary for us, so that's out.

Medicine is useful because we have someone dying here, but a single dot is enough to automatically ensure she stabilizes since she's a supernatural creature, which means I won't spend more on it.

Dodge would be useful since it is what we'll rely on, whenever we get into combat, but due to the way our defense is calculated we only get something out of it if we take two dots, which means it's suboptimal to take in a situation we need to be frugal in.

This leaves us with 5 BP left which is just enough to fill up Occult and Presence.

Occult is important for two reasons.
Firstly, it ensures we will actually be able to use the summoning thing instead of accidentally burning it by infusing something made by a creature of darkness with Glorious Solar Essence.
To be honest, this can likely easily be avoided with a stunt or not having horrible luck, but it's still somewhat noteworthy.
Secondly Occult is needed to be a competent caster, which we kind of need to be.
After all our only combat related favoured abilty is Dodge which means we might be able to avoid getting hit but will have significant difficulties hitting back, so we have to find alternative ways to be useful in combat and with us being a Twilight and all, that seems like the most sensible approach.

As for Presence, assuming we raise it and get to apply our specialty we would be able to throw 7 dice plus a stunt and up to 4 dice through the Presence Excellency which together with the high Appearance and our MDV of 6 constitutes a decent enough dicepool for some basic social combat.
It's far from perfect, but considering that we're going to be negotiating with the Occult Club pretty soon we kind of need to have something to get by and it's something we can build on.

 

[Happerry]

Not arguing about any of the other stuff while I'm half asleep, but depending on sorcery to make you useful in combat isn't the best of choices.. unless you mean for us to load down on enchantments before the battle.

Or summoning minions before the battle.

Do to how sorcery works, the area where it hits its only stride for 'in combat casting' are actual large unit battles..

But it is a master at the prep before and after battles.

 

[Robotninja]

Right. As our motive is to become a harem king, we want social charms. Husband Seducing Demon dance is a nice eventual goal, even though performance is not favored.
No, it is not mindrape. That is more Golden Years Tarnished Black, or perhaps Threefold Binding of the Heart.

 

[Bloodshifter]

Okay, I've been going through our optoins and I think we are best served with:

3 dots of Appearance (12 BP)
1 dot of Medicine (1 BP)
3 dots of Occult (3 BP)
2 dots of Presence (2 BP)

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We can't get more then 3 dots in any ability. Unless Alex rules differently.

Also no dots in socialize? Or MA? Both aren't Favored... Or we can pick up a Speciality in Appearance...

 

[Smuthunter]

Not arguing about any of the other stuff while I'm half asleep, but depending on sorcery to make you useful in combat isn't the best of choices.. unless you mean for us to load down on enchantments before the battle.

Or summoning minions before the battle.

Do to how sorcery works, the area where it hits its only stride for 'in combat casting' are actual large unit battles..

But it is a master at the prep before and after battles.

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Maybe Sorcery as seen in Creation, but magic is also a thing in DxD and it doesn't have the same mechanical limitations -- you can do blasto-magic and fireballs and such quite trivially without needing a huge setup time and a big neon "please don't hit me while I'm completely defenseless" sign over your head. The only trick is that Issei doesn't have any natural talent for magic that isn't perverted in nature -- which probably isn't true anymore if he's a Twilight.

 

[Pipeman]

Oh, I know that sorcery isn't going to make us directly useful in combat.
As far as I see it, that ship kind of sailed when we became a Twilight with a really weird spread of Attributes, no dots in Martial Abilities and no Martial Abilties favoured either.
That said, Sorcery would at least make us useful outside of Social Combat and Crafting.
Effecting Combat indirectly isn't too bad either.
And, if we're lucky, we may actually use the native magic system to become useful in combat, which would be a nice bonus.

That said, I'm half asleep myself and my Exalted knowledge is anything but top notch, so there is a good chance I've made my share of mistakes.

 

[Larekko12]

[X]Plan Pipeman

 

[Smuthunter]

[X]Plan Pipeman

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*Sulks in a corner*

But yeah, go magic, go hard, go fast. We're not limited to ritual spells with long charge-up times unless our exaltation locks us out of the native magic system for some reason. Remember, Issei invented the Dress Break just by imagining making a girl's clothes explode really hard and then dumping magical power into that idea. Same with Bilingual and same (I think) with summoning Chichigami-sama. Sorcery is our ticket to the big leagues; social-fu is all well and good, but it's probably not going to help when guys like Vali and Cao-Cao start showing up.

 

[Pipeman]

We can't get more then 3 dots in any ability. Unless Alex rules differently.

Also no dots in socialize? Or MA? Both aren't Favored... Or we can pick up a Speciality in Appearance...

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Appearance is an Attribute.
There is neither a cap on Attributes nor can you get Specialties for them.

As for Socialize and MA, as you said they aren't favoured, which means using BP to buy them is rather expensive.
Additionally, thanks to the 3 dot limit we wouldn't even get far enough for it to be worth it anyways.
We can get more or less that far with the equivalent amount of XP, so buying those first dots now is kind of a waste.
We'll get by with Presence for social combat and apparently will simply have to settle for not being any/very good in a proper fight.

 

[John At Dawn]

Right. As our motive is to become a harem king, we want social charms. Husband Seducing Demon dance is a nice eventual goal, even though performance is not favored.
No, it is not mindrape.

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I respectfully disagree. And our motivation also says that we want to become worthy of girls' affection. Using a charm to get them to love us defeats that point.

 

[Smuthunter]

I respectfully disagree. And our motivation also says that we want to become worthy of girls' affection. Using a charm to get them to love us defeats that point.

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I would say it's too easy, yeah. HSDD is an "I win" button for any possible romantic conflict, so let's avoid it simply on that basis and complete ignore the question of whether social-fu is mind control or evil or whatever it is that sticks in our collective craws.

 

[Carrnage]

The only Social-Fu that is Mind control is UMI, some social charms have it some don't, If a charm doesn't have UMI it basically makes Issei really good at being persuasive for it's duration.

 

[Pipeman]

Not to mention that it would require us to buy 5 dots in an unfavoured abilty and then three unfavoured Charms on top of that.
I mean using your Glorious Solar Mindrape to get around all those bothersome parts of a relationship is one thing, but going at it inefficiently?!
Do we look like we're made out of XP?
Just craft yourself some mindrape jewelry and be done with it.

Edit:

The only Social-Fu that is Mind control is UMI, some social charms have it some don't, If a charm doesn't have UMI it basically makes Issei really good at being persuasive for it's duration.

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HSDD is UMI though.
Not to mention that it's a really inefficient way to build yourself a harem.
Its main use is turning a large group of people you stand far above already trivially into extra fanatical followers.