Inner Peace (Through Superior Firepower) – Episode 008

[balder]

New One is up.

[Sixty]

Well THAT'S interesting. Luckamancy hurting your own side at times? Makes sense in a way. If Predicamancy and Mathamancy say Side A will lose half their troops in a given fight Luckamancy will help you make certain units there more likely to live while making the rest more likely to fall into that half that croaks.

[Ptharien's Flame]

This also helps explain why Wanda is such a jack of all trades (and, funnily enough, Jack isn't).

[joosy]

So there is some balance issues to be considered within Luckamancy. Use it too much and it could have negative effects elsewhere. Kind of like CoinSpinner from the Book of Swords series. I wonder if you could use Luckamancy to lower someone's chances thus boosting someone else's (hopefully someone from your side). I am going to be spending a lot of time this night thinking about practical applications of Luckamancy.

[atalex]

Interesting. So am I to understand that Luckamancy cannot be used to jinx an opposing force but only to boost one's own side? And even that only by "stealing" one of your own side's good rolls and exchanging it with whatever you were supposed to roll at the time? I kind of like that mechanic. Hmm.

[BiSp2001]

So he is helping his important units to survive at the cost of lower units.
Hm no difference to a body screen as normal units stacks with a warlord and screen him for attacks.

[Brainwright]

As with most things clever, Luckamancy doesn't create anything new. It just rearranges the already available resources.

Wanda has a nibble of the truth, but can she really take it? Yes, the Luckamancy might be as much a bane as a boon, but every action has a cost.

That's the way it is with life in general, isn't it? The world is in motion, and there isn't really anything you can do to change it. However, we all know the world is grinding to a halt.

So where did the impetus come from in the first place? The Creator? Or a choice?

[Glome]

Interesting. So am I to understand that Luckamancy cannot be used to jinx an opposing force but only to boost one's own side? And even that only by "stealing" one of your own side's good rolls and exchanging it with whatever you were supposed to roll at the time? I kind of like that mechanic. Hmm.

Actually Clay does state he can jinx an opposing force. In that case, I assume you would be stealing bad rolls from other enemies who would then be more likely to roll high.

[Sir_Dr_D]

This update provides a deep revelation on some key aspects of the plot.

If you put the following together
1) In order for one person to benefit from luckamancy, other people need to receive bad luck .
2) We know that there is at least two characters that are destinied by fate. Parson and Wanda.
3) Fate seems to protect people by using Luckmancy.

You realize that suffering is going to always surround these two. No wonder Wanda's sides always fell. No wonder she said she had to suffer so much to get her arkentool. No wonder she said Parson is giong to face so much hardships in his life. This is an actual Erfwold mechanic, and not just Wanda's personal beliefs. Erfworld suddenly seems much more cruel. Parson has a huge fight ahead of him.

Good update Robb. I would say the last two updates have been the most important ones yet.

[Thomar]

WOAHWOAHWOAH! Hold on a minute here...

So if using Luckamancy on battles or individuals tends to make things go worse for that side overall, that means that anywhere we've seen bad luck it could indicate luckamancy to the side's benefit elsewhere...

If this is true, it could provide a perfect explanation for why no gobwins have popped for Gobwin Knob, and why the battle at the tower went so strangely (a chunk of rock preventing a warlord from being shot.) If an unknown side (probably Charlie, who is playing both sides) was using luckamancy to make Gobwin Knob win many of its important engagements, it would screw up the side's odds all over the place (like the spawn rates of things like gobwins in their capital.) However, it probably wouldn't affect the spawning of monsters in hexes outside the city (which is why Stanley's dwagon taming has kept working.)

It would make perfect sense for Charley to calculate the odds, weight the dice with luckamancy, and then use turnamancy (and get paid to do it!) in the current battle so that both sides are left crippled. Putting Wanda in a vulnerable position (in the capital's airspace on the enemy's turn) would be a very high priority to achieve those objectives, because if she survives any engagement she gets to decrypt all of the casualties. And when both sides are weakened, Charlie can have some archons swoop in and grab the Arkenpliers.

[blaklaw]

Ah I see, so luckamancy seems to be similar to the distribution of troops. Except instead of physical units, you move around numbers.

Predictamancers predict the major tide turning battles.
Mathamancers figure out the odds of winning the tide turning battle.
Luckamancers steal the 'numbers', or 'luck', of their other, less important battles.

Then they win important stuff, yay.

They lose the less important stuff, meh~

They don't have a Mathamancer though. The Luckamancer won't be sure how much luck is enough to boost a victory because they don't know how tilted the odds are. Thus the less important stuff impacts them more than it should.

Epic side combo:
Thinkamancer + Mathamancer + Predictamancer tri-caster link
Then a master class Luckamancer to top it off.
Muhahahahaaaa!
Wonder how much rands it would take to buy those casters...

[vintermann]

I really like the luckamancy mechanic. It could be implemented in a game quite elegantly: Just roll twice on the jinxed attempt, and keep the high result (or the low, if that's what you aimed for). Next time you roll the result you choose at ANY roll, you substitute the result you didn't use from the jinxed roll.

It could be abused nicely, by arranging to make rolls that don't matter. Send your lowest level pikemen into pointless fights, they're going to lose anyway but hopefully they absorb the luckamancy backlash in the fight.

But in Erfworld, it's not clear it only applies to rolls of the same type, so it could well be that e.g. a powerful luckamancy spell applied to Wanda's popping (anyone care to bet that happened?) will have bad repercussions for the side for a long time, if not for the entire world.

If the die rolls are predetermined and they follow a certain distribution, they're really not so much like die rolls as card draws. And you know that if you got all your good cards in one hand, your next hand will be bad.

[blaklaw]

Oh yeah, nice callback to the popping of Wanda.

Spoiler: show

"For when the price was paid, it was Erfworld which processed the transaction. The world would produce the unit that was called for...more or less. There was the matter of the Fate Axis as well, and this unit was turning out to be very special. This unit would be worth far more than the buyer had paid for.

That was no violation of Numbers, though. It simply meant that this unit carried a balance due. And though it was an astronomically high figure, someone would pay.

Zero always called, and someone would have to pay."

How many sides have been paying Wanda's debt, I wonder, cause it certainly seems like Gobwin Knob was still paying it. Losing all other cities, heavily outnumbered, losing a major choke point battle to marbits who luckily found a very valuable gem. Heck, they still seem to be paying it. Gobwin knob with no gobwins, this little battle scenario at Jetstone's capital, Great Mind Thinkamancers doing the opposite of helpful...

Hell, did protecting Sylvia actually aid Ossomer in turning back to Jetstone? Did the Pop a Cap spell become epicly more effective with the tower bonus + Wanda-Parson numbers debt?

Ouch, headache...

And yet... so exhilarating... Go Erfworld!

[Saladman]

Well... huh. I guess luckamancers need some kind of balancing factor to keep them from being the god-kings of Erfworld, but that's a harsh one. I'd like to think Dice is right and they pretty much have to come out ahead on balance just on principle, but that's the gamer in me talking, and Erfworld isn't just a game.

Ah I see, so luckamancy seems to be similar to the distribution of troops. Except instead of physical units, you move around numbers.

Predictamancers predict the major tide turning battles.
Mathamancers figure out the odds of winning the tide turning battle.
Luckamancers steal the 'numbers', or 'luck', of their other, less important battles.

Then they win important stuff, yay.

They lose the less important stuff, meh~

They don't have a Mathamancer though. The Luckamancer won't be sure how much luck is enough to boost a victory because they don't know how tilted the odds are. Thus the less important stuff impacts them more than it should.

Epic side combo:
Thinkamancer + Mathamancer + Predictamancer tri-caster link
Then a master class Luckamancer to top it off.
Muhahahahaaaa!
Wonder how much rands it would take to buy those casters...

I agree especially about the mathamancer. It gives some more weight to Sizemore telling Parson about math-/luck- dependent sides in book one. Even if the general world doesn't know the full story, they'll see those sides do better overall and attribute it to the surface explanation Sizemore gave.

For the ideal caster force, I think you could replace a predictomancer on the side with a lookamancer. No need to prophecy the critical battles if you can just far-see enemy forces. And right now the specialty whose worth to a side I'm questioning even more than luckamancers are predictomancers.

I wonder if there's any way at all to direct that numbers vampirism. Like, with a mathamancer to tell him how much he could get away with, could a luckamancer actually depress his own side's rolls in safe battles to kind of run up some credit beforehand.

Or! Carnymancy is "the magic of rigging the game". So you put your hypothetical carnymancer, luckamancer and thinkamancer in a three caster link and have them shift the low rolls to the enemy after all, perhaps by simultaneously boosting your guys and jinxing the enemy in the same battle. Then you still need a mathamancer and a lookamancer or predictomancer on the outside briefing them, which is okay in its own right, but five very specific casters is a lot to ask in Erfworld.

[blaklaw]

Yeah, the predictamancer and lookamancer is interchangeable based on who is in charge. If you have a good ruler/commander you can use the information gained to figure out what parts of a conflict are more important. Though if you aren't good with information that's given to you, then you would need a predictamancer instead to actually tell you what's good distribution and spell use. The former requires competent leaders, the latter requires trust and faith in a single unit's prediction. Basically the same as the predictamancer of Wanda's current side... Too trusted. Relied on.

[Incomptinence]

Yowtch what a drawback. Probably good on warlords and other priority targets though, focus your efforts and you eat luck!

I wonder if it becomes easier to control some of this toxic bad luck output with increasing proficiency. Maybe some of the bad luck shifts onto allies? Could explain the disposition of their "allies" toward Goodminton.

An important component of using a luckomancer would be diplomacy I guess. Boost a decisive battle and hope the bad luck fells something more expendable in the lull. Give an enemy bad luck and another enemy gets good luck against them?

[BLANDCorporatio]

Hmm. I'm getting a distinct feeling that Clay doesn't actually know what he's talking about.

Which is a nice touch. Magic- it works, but no practicioner actually understands how, or at least, no one has a very good picture. Very stupidworld-like, too.

It also means nothing with regard to my pet theory on how to interpret Luckamancy action. If I assume Clay doesn't know enough to provide a coherent model, what do I have to go on?

But I can put my tinfoil hat firmly on and say that there are a few Magicks in Erfworld that may be less than what they appear: what if Luckamancy, Mathamancy and Predictamancy were mostly bunk?

Well... huh. I guess luckamancers need some kind of balancing factor to keep them from being the god-kings of Erfworld, but that's a harsh one. I'd like to think Dice is right and they pretty much have to come out ahead on balance just on principle, but that's the gamer in me talking, and Erfworld isn't just a game.

You don't need to be too harsh on balancing a unit's ability to influence rolls. Imagine if say a spell were added to DnD that can add a tiny number to a roll/load the dice a little (or maybe it already is, my knowledge of that is very limited, but loading physical dice for the purpose of just one roll will be a tad inconvenient). Not really any more overpowered than any other spell really.

I really like the luckamancy mechanic. It could be implemented in a game quite elegantly: Just roll twice on the jinxed attempt, and keep the high result (or the low, if that's what you aimed for). Next time you roll the result you choose at ANY roll, you substitute the result you didn't use from the jinxed roll.

I'm not sure that this is what Clay means (again, I suspect he don't know much, actually), but it is REALLY, REALLY cool.

[Whispri]

So it's not just the Wicked Witch of Goodminton in decay, but Clay as well? Hmm...

I don't like that she has plans for Wanda.

[Raza]

I guess Clay isn't high enough level to have this fully figured out. Where rolls come from when you boost a side, how to estimate and influence where they get stolen.

Predictamancy may not be as utterly useless as it appears, it's just a mindfuck thing. It seems to give you the outcome of events, after all modifiers have been applied... so while your side may well benefit from having a predictamancer tell them things, this benefit or its absence will already be included in the prediction, and the predictamancer's decision to share or withhold information will be whatever the prediction needed it to be to come true. Every prophecy is a self-fulfilling one. That'd mean a helpful and honest predictamancer would still be a greater boon to their side... but from the predictamancer's perspective, it all turns even weirder: they're either able to predict their own actions and unable to deviate from that, or they're able to predict the outcomes of their actions and aware that whatever they choose to do inbetween will just be filling in the blanks. This may explain their weird psychologies, and why they have so much leeway about duty demanding honesty. Duty would compel them to stick to a principle of transparency in hope of being the best possibly influence before predictions get made, but it makes a known exception for hopelessness, which predictamancers think/know it is before they ever get to make such a decision.

In fact, the 'not if it is hopeless' clause may exempt predictamancers from duty altogether. Huh.

[vintermann]

I wonder if there's any way at all to direct that numbers vampirism. Like, with a mathamancer to tell him how much he could get away with, could a luckamancer actually depress his own side's rolls in safe battles to kind of run up some credit beforehand.

Remember, Clay's words were

"I don't think it goes very far to steal good outcomes when I boost one of our warlords, you know?"

. So this isn't widely known. Some experienced luckamancers probably suspect it, and mathamancers who work with luckamancers probably notice something is up as well. But they can't know for sure. And it's by no means sure the outcomes are always stolen from your own side - it just feels that way to Clay, who may well be a pessimistic type.