[LP CYOA] 傳

Baltika9, I'd rather know what's going on before we jump into the Huashan summit.

As for Guo Fu, I'm pretty sure he'll be in the future tournaments. It's quite possible he'll win the ones while we're gone. Actually, Murong Yandi might be there also. Even Yifang with her Qingcheng stab technique (at rank 8) could be some decent competition for us. We haven't run out of good competition yet, Baltika9.

Also, I'm pretty sure there is always a prize for the winner of the Young Tigers tournament, and I reckon tradition dictates it be a technique. Treave, can you confirm this?

 

You also have to consider that we will be putting all of our shit, new and old, out there in a tournament, so the orthodoxes will be ready for us just like we'll be ready for them. It is a double-edged sword.

Besides, Yunzi's invitation and the Turfag take priority.

 

Qinqqong upgrade allows us to escape graps from opponen such Guardian of metal, Zhang JJue and Guo Fu type opponents who have plenty of qi reserves themself and can match or even exceed our physical abilities. Furthermore higher skill level allow us to learn more powerful qinqqong techniques in future.

 

If we're going to focus on silk as Jing's main skill for some reason I still can't fucking understand then I don't think it's silly to try to strive for a way to make silk without needing constant access to money and the Wudu Cult.

I created my package and no one replied to it, but I thought things over and have come up with another one based on five essentials:

It boosts Jing's unarmed skill and combat stats straight into the master tier, along with giving him a terrifying neigong that can be replenished or added to rather swiftly. In addition he has a decent sword technique primed and ready to be immediately upgraded if we come across a sword technique in the course of wandering aimlessly around China. All of this is achieved in a year and ten months.

I would like to train for longer, but I want to see what you guys would like to do instead of labelling out my specific things that are more likely to attract objections. If you want to train silk? Sure, toss that in. Prefer a claws upgrade? Why not, go ahead!

It's an orthodox tournament run by assholes and the last time Jing was only invited to fit some sort of scheme to put down Zhang Jue. The tournament boosted Jing's skills while he was a weaker pugilist; if you think we'll get another skill up from another go around when fighting the Guardian of Metal gave us nothing, well, I don't know what to say.

 

The higher the skill's level, the harder it is to raise it and find upgrades for it.

 

I wanted to vote for the qinggong upgrade if we were able to secure enough time to train (13 agility are possible here, Jing would be a monster as 11 is master level) but really, opponents are probably not going to want to be holding onto Jing for long if he has very noticeable qi vampirism.

 

Oh, I completely agree, but it doesn't seem like it would present to us an overwhelming offensive advantage like say, unarmed mastery paired with excellent unarmed techniques like wuying leipo kick and shouwang claws and qi-draining would. We have AGI 8, and the neigong boost will up it to 10. I think that's more than enough to get us fighting on par with the best of the best, speed-wise.

 

I'd rather a +1 int upgrade than a +1 qinggong upgrade. The only reason I'd go for qinggong upgrade is if we went for lightning bruiser Jing:

25 (neigong), 27 (qinggong), 28 (+1 str), 33 (+1 agi)
Also you get 22 (reikan), but that's beside the point.
23 months

That would let us blast in with 11 str and 13 agi. Enough to terrify the fuck out of people.

+1 Int is very appealing to me because it helps with damn near everything. It helps us learn skills. It helps us learn and create our own techniques. Treave already confirmed that for a wandering martial artist, high int is extremely useful. It helps us with politics. It helps us with memorization skills (like we could have used at Luoying Manor's lecture or Yang Xue's cave). It would also help us decipher the Jueshi Wugong Sword Song.

 

Tournament could be nice way to see how Zhang Jue untested techniques would work, but I don't think that anyone wants to test those while there is wild Yunzi on loose

 

Neigong would boost it up to 11 if we're also using the Mad Wolf step unupgraded. 10 isn't master level, but 11 is, so your point still stands.

 

Actually, no. 8 is Master level, 10 is the peak of human performance. Anything higher is super-human.

 

That's for skills, not stats, they're different scales. Treave said that the qinggong upgrade back at the Wudu Cult would boost Jing's speed up to around the level that the masters played at, and that would've taken Jing up to 11 agility.

 

Actually, 9 is the peak of human performance: "Rank 9 - You are a master among masters, taking the skill to the limits of human potential."

When you reach 10: "Rank 10 - You have elevated your mastery of this skill into the realms of the divine. Even the gods would be jealous of your prowess."

Anything breaking 10 ranks is some terrifying unearthly stuff.

 

Both are great, but due to time constraints, you can probably only pick one. Between the two of them, that's half our training period right there. Best to pick one and build something around that. Considering the nature of our qi, that was probably the better bet.

Well, considering that we'll be in the orthodox world's crosshairs when we get out into the world again, we'll have no shortage of enemies who want to test our skills. We can increase our Unarmed taking them on, though of course that will be a whole lot more dangerous. Not that a little danger ever bothered us, of course. Zhang's training is really the best and surest bet we have to get it, but then there's always trade-offs to costs to consider.

Kipeci does raise a good point that if we want to maximize our qi leeching skill, improving our Unarmed skill is a great means to make it really effective. But then again, even without Mastery, we can really surprise a better, hardier fighter than us by sapping his energy.

Ah, but with strong neigong and qi leeching, their strength becomes their weakness. Guo Fu might be stronger and hardier, but the more he grapples with us, the more we drain his qi.

IIRC, 10 is superhuman:

 

Just going to repeat this in case it was missed with the new page, skills aren't stats and those scales work differently. For skills 10 is superhuman, but when we had the chance to upgrade qinggong at the Wudu Cult (which would have brought Jing to 11 Agility) treave said that that was the speed that would allow him to properly compete with masters, if only in that area of speed.

That is so, but being able to pin experts and drain their qi still sounds to me like a better position than relying on draining qi for when Jing is pinned. Being at an early master level in unarmed combat before Jing is even twenty is just too tempting for me to pass up.

 

We could even show up just to watch the competition and learn their tricks by observation. If we get +1 int, at 7 per and 8 int, this would be very doable. Even 7 per and 7 int can manage it. Also, there is a lot of stuff that can be done at the competition aside from competing. Competing does however promise to be rewarding. We can also just use the same tricks we used to win the last tournament for a victory that doesn't reveal our new abilities.

 

I agree.

Unarmed +1 would make us beast on attacking side, but our Qinqqong would stay in measly 4 lvl. Well I suppose that we can raise it by battling enemies.

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Well the downside is that while they are grappling us, they can hit us more easily. Even with all those endurance boost we get, we still get broken bones when fighting against those kinds of opponents.

Hmm perhaps I should start tweaking my package.

 

As for Kipeci's package, the one that I already voted for is similar but swap Minamoto kenjutsu for generic sword upgrade (we're getting a +1 Swords either way so might as well go for the RARE technique) and END+1 for STR+1 for reasons already mentioned (gives us ability to withstand the damage the neigong will do to our bodies, which is THE trump card that we have, plus we keep on taking beatings anyway). Reposting:

It's similar to Esquilax's Zhang Jue Jr. package, just a tad more well-rounded at the expense of being slightly longer.

I feel like if we use our swords out in the wild, it'll probably be easier to increase to 7, especially now that we have that song to boost our sword-learning efficiency, compared to unarmed since its next step is Mastery level.

 

I am not going to go to some Little League tournament that we already won two and a half years ago by the time we're finished training on Maniac Island when Rob Halford is out there waiting to teach us glorious Fire Cult martial arts techniques. We won, it's over. We beat the competition already, there is nothing more to prove. What would those kids have to offer us? I mean, it just seems kinda pathetic, going in there, trying to recapture distant past glories like Al Bundy bragging about how he scored four touchdowns in one game:



Facing competition that we beat two and a half years ago is not going to teach us anything new or give us new insights into martial arts. To make an analogy here, it's like saying that if a professional basketball player goes and plays in a high school basketball game, his skills will improve. But in reality, that pro is so much better than the high school kids that they won't even challenge him enough to the point where he can test himself and learn new skills.

 

I'm fine with the sword upgrade swap, but I've got to put my foot down on replacing strength with endurance. We already have a rather hefty endurance boost from the qi itself, not to mention the ability to leech the stuff even if we've blown it out, so that's a pretty solid defense against that problem already established. We do need that +1 strength to put Jing on the master level, which is necessary because I'm tired of reading about how Jing launched his most devastating attacks against those guys and they do superficial damage at best because he can't put enough strength in them.

Actually, I think you could just glue the endurance bonus into my package and, along with the swap out of sword stuff, that'd make the process only take two years and four months, still leaving eight months for adventure. I'd be fine with an endurance buff, but Jing needs to work his strength up to proper master level.

 

No, I don't buy it. If we're staying here for two years and adventuring for one year, then we absolutely must train up our actual combat skills and create a well-rounded build, instead of our potential to learn skills. If you want to win the Huashan Summit by analysis, then we ought to have at least one and a half years of dedicated study of them and their techniques. Also, 8 INT and 7 PER is a pretty shitty build for that.

 

So here's the 3 year Huehueshan Summit package I can think of. I believe it has the best chance of winning:

13 (+1 swords)
14 (+1 unarmed)
20 (+1 swords, sword tech)
25 (Neigong training)
26 (Neigong leeching)
27 (Qinggong training)
28 (Strength training)
33 (Agility training)

36 months. 8 unarmed. 7 swords. 11 str. 13 agi. And more neigong leeching for endurance.

This one I could see crushing at Huashan.

 

We'll already be hitting with 10 STR with our neigong activated though, which is like already godlike. We don't need to worry about strength, we just need to worry about Jing's body being tough enough with its base END to keep on using that neigong. Hence base END upgrade over base STR upgrade.

 

I agree Kipeci, I'd rather have strength than endurance. I think it's better to maximize our (heh) strengths than try to compensate for our weaknesses, especially when a strength boost increases both our max unarmed and max sword while an endurance boost does nothing in that regard because the demon essence already has our max neigong at 15. That said, I think we are unfortunately outnumbered.

 

Absinthe, we are probably going for two years training, so the package won't fit.