Book 2 – Text Updates 052

[multilis]

You missed the point. And i noticed that you left out Zeku's first example of the people who were in the "Holy Land" when the hebrews arrived. As described in the Old Testament, God keeps saying "Kill them all!" Then a few chapters later, God throws a fit because "Hey, i have looked into your cities and i see some of peoples X, Y, and Z, which i told you to kill, Now go finish the job!"

This was associated with religious pluralism, that is the toleration of people worshiping someone other than Yahweh.

I suppose you could interpret it that way, which is "Group A almost, but not quite, exterminates group B, then Group A decides this was a problem and repeats the job".

The justification given is that they were not allowed to go in and wipe out the Canaanites till the Canaanites had become so evil that it was required, expressions along lines of "not because you were good but because they became so evil", and not allowed "till the error of the canaanites came to completion". (other religions/cultures were not seen as evil as Canaanites, there was some admonition to be good to foreign residents as the jews were also once foreigners in strange land)

It was felt that bad behavior would infect the people, eg claim is even wise Solomon started to sacrifice/burn his kids because of contamination from foreign wives, and another kings evil wife Jezebel's corruption/murder such as killing someone to have his garden)

The "evil" claimed included a) murder/violence of many sorts with biggest focus of own children as sacrifices "passing though fire" (parents placing their first born child on idol of god with outstretched hands over a burning fire while priest class played loud music so screams of baby not heard), and all forms of "unnatural" sex including incest, bestiality and same sex.

Modern standards are different, eg polygamy is considered wrong today, where back then it at times was a requirement... if your brother died (such as was common in wars), then you were required to take his wife as your own so she and her kids would be looked after. A person back then who heard how we ban being hit with a stick as punishment for wrong, but lock in jail for many years with open jokes about bubba in the shower probably would find that barbaric to the extreme... (hit with a stick and his life is normal in a week, but jail costs him years of best life in fear of rape the whole time).

Much of our culture is also a matter of conditioning... eg 70 years ago "social darwinism"/eugenics was very popular and deemed at times "needed" in most western societies especially among the "liberal" intellectual elite. (was seen as logical part of science, many governments even in north america forcibly sterilized mentally handicapped adults). As result of Nazi's promotion and usage of it, is seen more negatively now.

Similar with sex, there are many different forms of "unnatural" that show up in nature at times... I have seen cows and geese very annoyingly try to breed humans. We would still consider it sick if some farmer had sex with his horny cow. But 30 years from now they may be genetically engineering apes to be better "consenting" sex slaves of humans, arguing that this is improvement over prostitutes and those that disagree with bestiality are barbaric or phobic. (Hitchhikers guild to galaxy has intelligent/sentient "animals" wanting to be killed/murdered as food in a restaurant)
...

Much of the focus of such rules in ancient cultures was about success of community as a whole, strong focus on people getting married, having kids and looking after their kids (so kids don't steal to survive). Today a very large cost of economy goes to providing welfare and policing to children of single parent families (tend to have higher crime rates). Overpopulation is now a problem so birth rates are not as important.

In erfworld game terms if it cost 10% of production if a culture did something sexually different similar to Parson not making his rounds in city, there may be "moral" rules as result.

[Oberon]

Tremennis phtagn!

Nyarlathotep, is that you?

[dwn3]

With those extra few minutes of siege not pounding the tower, the king has a few options, 1 take the jetpack and croak Ossomer and an archon or two and quickly name Tramenis heir before giving him the jetpack or otherwise getting him and the casters out of the city. If that proves too risky, his other option is to get everyone out of the city he can with Tramenis, sit at the top of the tower and do what Parson did back in the first book, drop the tower, the dungeon, the atrium, the walls, after of course firing off every city defense available still on the archons for the bounty. (He should do this all in addition to the jetpack heroics he's contemplating too) and after dropping everything to level one and getting all retreat-able units out of the city,

Slatley can't do that. Hamster could only do it because he had Sizemore, a dirtmancer, to bring down the city on the enemy. If you could bring down your city over the enemy so easily, every damn side would be doing so and nobody would ever capture a city over lv1.

Not necessarily true, a lot of sides may leave their cities intact for the future chance of reclaiming them, remember in the text update how Transylvito and that other kingdom had been trading that one city back and forth forever? (Ditto with Pantstown and it was stuck at level one for all of the little history we have of it.)

disband everything else to avoid them being turned. If he had an especially close view of combat or was clever enough he could tell all units to fight until 1hp or close to death and then disband themselves to avoid leaving a body to uncroak.

Also can't do that. Queen Bea had to order her troops to get out of the city and then kill herself to disband them, which means she couldn't just mass-disband them inside the city. Let alone when fighting the enemy.

Ah but I'm sure there hare other ways around it than manual banning, Stanley has mentioned before that disobeying an order should leave someone disbanded, like how he was always surprised when Parson accidentally ignored orders back in some of the updates. All Slately would have to do is say anyone dropping below x hits is disobeying this direct order.

[fjolnir]

TV was ransoming that city back to carpool every few turns, until carpool sent their shockamancer to stop it from happening.

[dwn3]

Okay, I have to point a few things out.

1st, I think the reason you have a prejudice against Artemis having any kind of importance, and that you are writing her off, is because she was introduced through a Text Update.

I may have been misunderstood here. I love Artemis as a character, and I'm not writing her off, I'm wishing her off. I just feel as though her stand here, despite not killing Sylvia, still accomplished something. She bought those precious seconds for the tower to stand, she, and her knights, killed those stacks of dragons which can never be used again. I didn't mean to say what she did meant nothing or was inconsequential because it was a text update, I simply meant to say I wish her the best with the Titans because I want her tragically beautiful death to have meant something instead of coming back to work for the people she bought time against a turn prior.

The likelihood that Artemis will be playing a role in the future is very high because of the pre-planning and follow through that Rob has done for this combat event, going all the way back to saying "The archers positioned on the outter walls" may have even been in preparation for this stuff.

I'm sure it may have been planned as well, and I would probably enjoy any screen time she got in the future, but I just think that sometimes a character can be better when they don't have to be brought into the story as another player, sometimes the side players can stay on the side and disappear after an episode and be done, but not forgotten.

I believe the reason you would not support her return as a Decrypted would be because you view her as a character that serves only to have a cool fight with Sylvia Lazarus. I think it is Rob's decision as to if she should be Decrypted, and she may in fact have needed to be Decrypted, for the sake of the story. If it works for the story and makes it more interesting, then it should be done.

I actually didn't even really think of her just being around for the one fight, to me, and I don't even particularly like Sylvia.

2nd, KC was actually mentioned in the drawn comic pages, when Parson was thinking about who to make the new Chief Warlord as one of the choices. The Text characters are not automagically never mentioned again. And like I said before, the more GK Warlords that we actually know the names and faces of, the better for when we have the military combat maneuvers down the line. Would we have been as mindful of the Fighting Retreat in book one if we had not met the Archduke and Ensign Toast? Or the Dwagon Charge on the Siege and the annihilation at the hands of Jillian and Ansom? Familiarity makes us invested in events, and how invested were we when all we had was names and faces to put towards walking corpses? Right now, we have Ossomer, Sylvia, Antium, and the annoying guy Antium enjoyed killing (too bad it didn't stick, huh, buddy?). That is four Warlords. The council table that Ansom had in book 1 had 5 Warlords to help track troop movements and opposing ideas about tactics. Is it really so bad to get differing personalities working on the same side? If it makes the comic more interesting, then it's something that you'll enjoy, right?

I really didn't mean to say the text updates didn't mean anything, or that someone introduced in a text update would stay there. I meant more to say that it was some horrible luck for Artemis to have to go against a relatively important onscreen character while currently existing only in the text updates. My current view is that Sylvia is riding that plot armor way too hard and is going to be in for an abrupt lesson in pain so that when Parson arrives he'll actually need to start doing tactical and strategic planning.

I actually agree with a lot of your views, I'm just tired of deaths not sticking in pretty much any genre of story you can imagine. Deaths are that much more significant and that much more symbolic when they both stand for something and stick.

[The.Healing.Mage]

Before this last text update, Lady Lazarus was probably my favorite character who isn't Jack or Parson. Captains Archer and Ford ranked up there, but Lady Lazarus had a lot of spunk, and frankly, she's pretty booping badass. She told Ansom what's up, yet she was devastated when he died. She was totally, on-the-point-of-insane bold, and she was a welcome foil to the Decrypted Ansom's woe-is-me-I'm-no-longer-the-smartest-guy routine and Wanda's general failure (despite a game breaker).

But whether you read this as bad rolls or bad luck or fate or the Titans intervening or what have you, in this update she kinda came off as... distant and arrogant. She didn't leap to command against a danger, she toyed with it like it wasn't a problem, facing an enemy warlord of higher level than she, she nonchallantly stayed with the siege instead of delegating that to Archer and leading the stack against Artemis. It's heavily implied that without the first strikes against the dwagons, all of Artemis's knights would have been done for, and Sylvia's bonus would have definitely tipped the scales.

Frankly, Captain Archer (who is a pretty professional badass) and Captain Ford (RIP), who calmly looked at his two stacks and said something to the effect of "We're booped in the boop, but let's go down swinging" have my respect way more than Sylvia's "bwahaha luckamancy". Even Artemis had an air of professionalism and purpose. The fact that she missed several tough shots doesn't even count against her that much. She isn't winning simply by being there, she's working hard an making a valid attempt, and sometimes that even works.

Anyway, that's my peevedness in the wee hours before the next installment.

[Ytaker]

Hah, I missed this-

Random debris represents an unlucky critical failure. Blocking with her sword is a defending action that may have some bonus to defence.

You shouldn't think about it in terms of the physics of the matter. If Sylvia's bonus is less than Artemis' then there's nothing she can do to stop the arrow. The debris simply represented a critical failure on the shot. In actuality what happened was something like this.

{snip. Lots of detail, imo completely unsupported by canon}

I'll take your numbers and systems for the characters' stats to be an illustration of a point, rather than a model of how Erfworld actually worked in that occasion.

Everything that can be based on canon is.

http://www.erfworld.com/book-1-archive/?px=%2F040a.jpg

You get a full chief leader bonus for all units on your side.

http://www.erfworld.com/wiki/index.php/ ... mission_33

All units on the same side as Wanda get a 1+ bonus.

The notion that defending with your sword gives you a defensive bonus isn't anywhere in canon, so we have no particular reason to assume it's anything but a visual flare.

We know that levelling increases your stats. I assumed the increase was linear, but regardless, artemis is going to have better stats than Sylvia.

http://www.erfworld.com/page/27/

"Her body had massive bruising and tearing, but she was not incapacitated." We know she's heavily damaged.

As such, it's clear that Artemis is going to do a lot of damage with a hit, and that her attack is going to be greater

With that understanding, I'm still puzzled. Obviously Artemis can still miss, and whether you call that a bad roll or whatever, the possibility exists. You also admit that Sylvia's defensive actions are, system-wise, another roll which in effect reduces the other, the attack roll. I'd not use such specific language, but just say that Sylvia can nudge the chances of Artemis' attacks, through her defensive actions.

With the chief warlord bonus for Artemis, which is huge, I have doubts that she could do much to nudge it. I don't know if defending does anything to your stats. It may. But being close range may do something too.

Lots (all?) gaming systems work like that. So why is it unbelievable that Sylvia could have knocked one of Artemis' arrows out of the sky with a parry?

Because Artemis' bonuses are huge compared to hers. 2 extra levels, and a chief warlord bonus. I don't know how the stats work for attack and defence. It's possible she might have increased her blocking chance some tiny percentage. She was in a fatalistic mood though, trusting in fate to kill her or save her. The huge gap meant she could do little.

[korbenm]

http://www.erfworld.com/wiki/index.php/ ... mission_33

All units on the same side as Wanda get a 1+ bonus.

Wanda also adds +4 to all Decrypted in her hex.

[oslecamo2_temp]

Because Artemis' bonuses are huge compared to hers. 2 extra levels, and a chief warlord bonus. I don't know how the stats work for attack and defence. It's possible she might have increased her blocking chance some tiny percentage. She was in a fatalistic mood though, trusting in fate to kill her or save her. The huge gap meant she could do little.

Who says Artemis is geting chief warlord bonus? Trems is incapacitated.

And we know that an incapacitated chief warlord cannot provide his big bonus anymore since when Ansom got incapacitated by Jillian's mount, Sizemore automatically lost his Chief Warlord bonus as Janis pointed out.

Meanwhile Sylvia may be two levels lower, but benefits from two other powerful bonus. She's decrypted so Wanda greatly boosts her combat stats as she's a master croakmancer, and the pliers grant yet another stackable artifact bonus (pointed out during the first dwagon massacre on Ansom's side and later at Stanley's breaktrough and also in the summer text updates in their first counter attack).

[BLANDCorporatio]

Ytaker, all this talks of mechanics (if this is what you're after, as opposed to story significance) from you forgets that Artemis can miss, which is a coy way of saying not all shots are equal, and some are worse than others. Whatever the mechanic looks like, there's some kind of possibly random function, which gives a number, which needs to be higher than some threshold for the hit to connect.

Artemis' hit function may have a spectacular possible range of 1 to 10000000000, but the output value (which can be ANYTHING in that range) still must be greater than x. What's x? Why is it so hard to believe that Sylvia could have taken a defensive action to raise that x? After all, she could have protected herself better, as Artemis thought. And we have in comic evidence that parries work to knock out arrows from the sky. You dismissing this as mere visual flare is a bit disingenuous. We don't know any better than the apparent, which is that swords work for Ranged Defense too.

Also, if I may get nitpicky, where'd you get "3Hits" left from that quote about Sylvia's status? It could be 1H left, or 4, or 5 ... who knows?

There's also the bonus questions, as in who's getting what.

At the end of the day, and this is the last I care about the mechanic discussion (see below), what could have happened (DIDN'T, but might have) may have been like this. Artemis has, with bonuses, a huge attack skill and damage scores, but for whatever reason, or no reason, since it's random, her attack roll is below average. Meanwhile, Sylvia tries to parry the attack, and either has a good roll herself or whatever, but the end result is that Artemis' roll is now too low to connect. Because the threshold for a successful hit was raised above Artemis' unlucky roll. If you want an actual comparison with an existent computer game, try Diablo 2, where even a maxed out fighter can still miss the lowliest of creatures, because attack chance is maxed at 95%, for one, and also any shred of defense skill/armor etc can reduce it slightly.

But, as I mentioned, the mechanic discussion misses the point. The way things happened caused a certain reaction in us. Disbelief. Amazement. Cries of GM Favours and speculations on Titanic involvement. Three shots missing their mark because of flying obstacles is so bluntly improbable that you'd have to be very incurious not to wonder what's up. Therefore, we suspect that this reaction was as intended, and that Rob is planning some surprise for us.

OTOH, had Sylvia managed to parry 3 arrows with her name on them, most of the reactions would have been "wow what a badass", with the possible exception of Oberon chiming in to ask "what the hell, three parries are terribly unlikely". And another exception would have been joosy, whose reaction would have been "hasa diga eebowai".

[kouhoutek]

She didn't leap to command against a danger, she toyed with it like it wasn't a problem, facing an enemy warlord of higher level than she, she nonchallantly stayed with the siege instead of delegating that to Archer and leading the stack against Artemis.

It's not her turn, so she has no move. Her only option is to hangout and wait for Artemis to come to her.

And since archery occurs apart from combat, Archer was the *only* effective unit in her stack while Atermis was out of the hex. Having him lead the siege would have been pointless.

[oslecamo2_temp]

And we have in comic evidence that parries work to knock out arrows from the sky. You dismissing this as mere visual flare is a bit disingenuous. We don't know any better than the apparent, which is that swords work for Ranged Defense too.

Because we have several other instances of characters being unable to parry arrows.

If a lv6 warlord can so easily block ranged attacks from a lv9, why were they all so scared of Jetstone focusing their archers while they were airborne? Ossomer and all the other warlords would by all means be virtually untouchable by mass parrying the puny arrows from basic infantry!

And how comes duke atrium gets shot down by a single puny arrow when Sylvia easily "parries" a headshot from an elite unit?

And how comes captain archer can just go in a perfect killing spree on the atrium when at least some of his targets should be able to parry?

Heck, expand that to the whole atrium. Arrows falling everywhere, and not a single unit shown parrying them.

And finally how comes Artemis, the master archer herself, never mentions anything about taking any defensive action against captain archer besides "shoot them down before they shoot me"?

So yes, we're entitled our cries of "damn lucky b****" when suddenly Sylvia evades three arrows aimed straight at her in a row, specially when the same archer hits every other target she aims for.

At this point I'm expecting Sylvia to be revealed to have some special "arrow invulnerability" bonus she gained from leveling up but other units can't see it. Hamster will probably point it out next time they meet because he'll be able to see it with the glasses.

[BLANDCorporatio]

If a lv6 warlord can so easily block ranged attacks from a lv9

Who actually is a lvl8, but nevermind, who gave you the idea that it was easy? Did I claim it was easy? Where? All I claimed was that it is possible. Just as possible as it is for a randomly flying helmet to deflect an arrow.

God, why is this so hard to get?

The rest of your post is based on the assumption that parrying arrows is easy/likely. It's not what I'm claiming so I see no reason to engage with it.

[oslecamo2_temp]

If a lv6 warlord can so easily block ranged attacks from a lv9

Who actually is a lvl8, but nevermind, who gave you the idea that it was easy? Did I claim it was easy? Where? All I claimed was that it is possible. Just as possible as it is for a randomly flying helmet to deflect an arrow.

God, why is this so hard to get?

Because she stoped 3 of them in a row, when nobody else managed to parry a single one so far. So either it was just a visual trick, or GK's winning this battle pretty much on the back of lots of dumb luck.

The rest of your post is based on the assumption that parrying arrows is easy/likely. It's not what I'm claiming so I see no reason to engage with it.

Show me one other instance of characters stoping arrows. Because I find it highly unlikely a mechanic that's suposed to be general for everybody only applies to a single character all this time.

Another one, Caesar assaulting a city and taking multiple arrow hits under heavy enemy fire. Not a single arrow was parried. We get hundreds of shots and Caesar carefully descrbing his battle experience but he never mentions catching arrows in mid-air or anything like that. So tell me, what kind of chances of parring an arrow are those that it doesn't trigger for an elite warlord with hundreds if not thousands of oportunities for it?

[BLANDCorporatio]

Because she stoped 3 of them in a row, when nobody else managed to parry a single one so far. So either it was just a visual trick, or GK's winning this battle pretty much on the back of lots of dumb luck.

First off, what are we arguing about? Sylvia didn't parry arrows now (she did so at the bridge battle). I'm claiming she might as well have parried those shot by Artemis, if random debris can get in the way.

Then let's see. Caesar must parry arrows with his rugged good looks, I suppose, because he's not carrying a sword, and Antium was poorly placed, with his back turned on the archers and the focus on what he thought was Wanda.

Meanwhile, we saw one attempted arrow parry (well, several arrows at said bridge battle), and at the same time, success (on all of them). Make of that what you will.

Be it "special ability" or "dumb luck" or absolutely whatever, the fact is that parrying arrows is possible.

And it also is the case that, however lucky an action needs to be to succeed, the fact that a character takes it or not is what is relevant to the perception of the solution. Simply put, yeah, Sylvia would have needed to be very lucky to parry those arrows, but if she tried, and succeeded, then her luck would have been at least in part her making. It wasn't, and that's the relevant point of the update, probably.

[oslecamo2_temp]

Then let's see. Caesar must parry arrows with his rugged good looks, I suppose, because he's not carrying a sword, and Antium was poorly placed, with his back turned on the archers and the focus on what he thought was Wanda.

Caesar parries swords with his bare hands, not his rugged looks, as described on that text update. And Sylvia was focused on taking down the tower so she's just as vunerable as Antium was. He actualy knew arrows were falling, Sylvia didn't know Artemis was gona shoot.

Meanwhile, we saw one attempted arrow parry, and at the same time, success. Make of that what you will.

No, we saw a visual effect like debris falling from the sky. It would be completely off-style of the comic for a key character to be saved by a mechanic pulled from her ass that was never used before and so far hasn't been used again.

[BLANDCorporatio]

And Sylvia was focused on taking down the tower so she's just as vunerable as Antium was.

First shot, ok. Second and third she knew of Artemis.

No, we saw a visual effect like debris falling from the sky. It would be completely off-style of the comic for a key character to be saved from a mechanic pulled from her ass that was never used before and so far hasn't been used again.

No seriously.



Kingworld.



Ok, enough. Unlike the above counter-example to your statement, we would have had a precedent for said ability (foreshadowing!) and its subsequent application.

But you (and others) seem dead-set that parrying couldn't have worked. Why? Is it because you saw Rob saying something on IRC, as Ytaker PMed me to say? What did Rob write there?

[drachefly]

She didn't leap to command against a danger, she toyed with it like it wasn't a problem, facing an enemy warlord of higher level than she, she nonchallantly stayed with the siege instead of delegating that to Archer and leading the stack against Artemis.

It's not her turn, so she has no move. Her only option is to hangout and wait for Artemis to come to her.

What. She can't go and root her out of a city region, but Artemis was in the Garrison - a portion of the Atrium zone. Second, even if it's so, she can definitely assume a formation that is less susceptible to sniping.



And osle, I encourage you to slow down because you're severely misreading bland.

[BLANDCorporatio]

And osle, I encourage you to slow down because you're severely misreading bland.

Thanks drachefly, sometimes I get carried away myself.

To summarize,

What happened: Artemis, a level 8 Warlord, fires 3 arrows towards Sylvia, a level 6. All arrows are deflected by other projectiles in mid-air.

This causes us to wonder what exactly is going on, and whether those misses have a hidden purpose. Just like a coin could come out heads in 100 consecutive tosses, but by then you'd suspect it's not a fair coin.

What could have happened: (actually, whether this was a possibility or not is the bone of contention) Sylvia somehow parries Artemis' arrows, or at least two of them.

Now back when I first proposed that, I did it, probably, because imo that would have seemed a more satisfying resolution. Yes, ok, said parries would have needed to be very lucky, but at least the luck would have been Sylvia's making, in part at least. If she was the one doing the parrying, then the implication would be that, if she hadn't, she'd be toast.

The story of the update did not hinge on Sylvia displaying some skill mixed with luck however, which would have produced a different reaction from us than the flying debris did. Indeed, it appears there's some force looking out for GK units, whether they defend themselves or not.

However, the discussion is getting bogged down on technicalities of whether parrying is possible or not, and not what purpose this would have served (or not) for the story.

[kouhoutek]

Be it "special ability" or "dumb luck" or absolutely whatever, the fact is that parrying arrows is possible.

This much is obvious and indisputable. The real question is, is there a parry arrow mechanic?

Let's say Artemis shoots at Sylvia, and Sylvia deflects with her sword. What happened under the covers?

A) no mechanic

Artemis targets Sylvia, rolls her d20 and gets a 11...near miss. Since it was a near miss, the DM conveys this by making it a parry in flavor text. If she rolled a 2, the DM would have said it missed by 10'.

B) mechanic

Artemis targets Sylvia, rolls a 16, potential hit. Sylvia, aware of the attack, attempts to parry, and rolls a 19...parry! The arrow is safely deflected.