[LP CYOA] 傳

[treave]

treave Have we as of now at any point gotten some extra benefit for the levels in Scholarly Knowledge that we took?

You could say that your Scholarly Knowledge helped you conceive the idea for the Emperor's disappearance, but otherwise, no.

But then bear in mind that its been barely three months since you got that upgrade.

And we're still in the first part of the LP, which is taking a lot longer than I envisioned.

And it's already the Lunar New Year.

Apparently this time we're welcoming the Year of the... Horse.

 

[Kipeci]

So, you're saying that if we hadn't taken the option to get just smart enough to come up with a spectacularly stupid plan then the opportunity to make use of our superior poetic skill wouldn't have turned up at all? I guess I should turn down the a bit.

Not really. This is also the first time in a long time our Herbalism skill has actually done anything. And if we had taken Cao'er along, which appears to have been the superior option, then it would've nothing, most likely.

While I'm not going to lie and say that it'd have been better to bring Cao'er along (I wish I hadn't stayed neutral on that, maybe another dissenting voice and vote would have helped out...) I think our Herbalism skill has come into use rather often. It's kind of off-screen a lot of the time, but that appears to be how we get the overwhelming majority of our spending cash to secure places to stay, food, and presumably any clothes or whatever that we need. Which brings me to thinking, treave what sort of outfit does Jing wear? It's not too clear aside from that we have an eye patch, I just realized that I pretty much only ever envision Jing from the neck up except for when he's been stripped to show off his ridiculous scars. Anyway, off that tangent, without our herbalism skill we couldn't have memorized and replicated the condom recipe to get the massive amounts of cash that allowed us to pay off Yu's debts and probably give us a pretty penny for years to come. We basically get whatever we need in straight cash from our herbalism skill.

While you're reading this, treave, how skilled would you say that Jing is as a healer? Obviously he's pretty inexperienced, but you said earlier that even prestigious imperial doctors (or perhaps especially them) are basically quacks that don't know what they're doing if only in comparison to Yao, so does a little time having learned medicine 'the right way' make him disproportionately good at healing compared to even more experienced healers?

 

[Baltika9]

Anyway, off that tangent, without our herbalism skill we couldn't have memorized and replicated the condom recipe to get the massive amounts of cash that allowed us to pay off Yu's debts and probably give us a pretty penny for years to come.

Until it gets burned down like Luoying Manor, you mean.

 

[Kipeci]

That's what the 'probably' is for. The powers that be seem to be pretty pro-prostitution here, though, so I don't think it's too likely.

 

[treave]

treave what sort of outfit does Jing wear?

Hm, the standard clothing of the era. Long sleeved tunic and trousers with two, three layers depending on the weather. You can probably find some examples by googling wuxia outfit.

While you're reading this, treave, how skilled would you say that Jing is as a healer?

He's well studied enough to be a reliable healer. Not superb, but better than average.

 

[Grimgravy]

Ok...looking back at the choices Im going to flop. I dont care if it is about spears, but 1B sounds the most badass. Since this phone cant edit, I'll flop my original post later.

BA

 

[Tribute]

He could always boost his healing skills by spending more quality time with Cao'er. Might help shift the Abandonment Meter down a few notches.

 

[Nevill]

Speaking of which, Cao'er promised us to try some new things... why didn't she?

“Yeah,” you say. “I’m going to need to rest here for a while.” Cao’er’s face brightens up, happy that you’ll be staying. “…good… I have new things to try…” Something about that worries you a little, especially since Qilin is grinning widely like she knows what is going to happen.

We must rectify that.

 

[Baltika9]

He could always boost his healing skills by spending more quality time with Cao'er. Might help shift the Abandonment Meter down a few notches.

We ought to be making ourselves a better fighter to complete Zhang Jue's challenge first, no amount of medical skills will save us should we fail.

 

[Nevill]

The current tally:

Spoiler

Kipeci AA
asxetos AB
Smashing Axe CA
XenomorphII AA
Anabanana CA
Zero Credibility CA
Nevill CA
Baltika9 AA
Elfberserker AB
SirArvedeth CA
Lambchop19 AA
Kashmir Slippers AA
Jester AB
TOME CA
Azira CB
The Brazilian Slaughter AB
ERYFKRAD AB
Esquilax CB
Rex Feral CB
ScubaV AA
Fangshi CA
m4davis AB
Tigranes CB
RealDDc AB
profreshinal AB
Grimgravy BA
Absinthe CA

1.
A - 14
B - 1
C - 12

2.
A - 15
B - 12

 

[Esquilax]

Yeah, I was not a fan of lawnmower legs either, and this seems to be going that way. Best thing we ever did with that technique is that we lost it instead of something else. 1C could be some kind of upgrade for our claws, which I kind of like as I prefer to specialize a bit. It certainly sounds like the most interesting choice to me - Bat Man Tiger Pig.

Well, perhaps we aren't giving the Duncao Legs technique enough credit - we barely even developed it before we lost it. I voted for the Healing Finger technique because it was a short-term risk for long-term gain, but I wasn't upset that the kicking technique won out. We had no other skills at the time.

As for 1C I think it's a bit more complicated than a boost to our Shouwang Claws:

C. The segment that begins: “In my dotage the dark took me; the swooping claws of the bats in their hunt leave their mark both on me and my foes.”

The line here, to me, implies that this technique is a sort of a savage technique that hurts both the person doing the technique and the one on the receiving end. This might actually be a pretty good if we're in a dangerous situation or we're forced to punch above our weight and fight someone significantly stronger than us; sure, we might get badly hurt, but we'll be alive and they won't. I could be completely wrong in my interpretation of course.

 

[Absinthe]

While I'm not going to lie and say that it'd have been better to bring Cao'er along (I wish I hadn't stayed neutral on that, maybe another dissenting voice and vote would have helped out...)

Yeah, I didn't vote on that either. But it seems Jing made it by avoiding possible rocks, and with Cao'er's ridiculous perception, she would've succeeded at that too. The only part that remains is the fall, but she seems to have learned a decent qinggong and Jing might have been able to help with that. Between cao'er amazing memorization skill for the wall, her healing skill for Qilin, and her throwing skill, it seems she would've helped with damn near everything. Well, that's hindsight for you.

I think our Herbalism skill has come into use rather often. It's kind of off-screen a lot of the time, but that appears to be how we get the overwhelming majority of our spending cash to secure places to stay, food, and presumably any clothes or whatever that we need.

I don't think Herbalism has done that since the tournament arc. After the tournament arc, our spending money came from our winnings. After Yuhua Hall, our spending money came from what little money Xiahou Yu managed to scrounge together with the assistance of the women there. After the Hundred Man Battle, I believe we gained some spending money from the reward for our assistance. In the route where Jing got needled and lost his belongings, he was completely broke at Youxia City, suggesting that Jing didn't earn any money but was instead living off the land to cover his basic needs. Yuhua Hall appears to be the last time Jing's Herbalism skill did anything. (Sure, there was treating the wounded eye, but the eye didn't recover.) I can understand Scholarly Knowledge not being of much use. It's not something that's readily applicable to the situations that we tend to enter, and the only other use of it would be for treave to insert more flavor text and background info, which is a lot of work for updates. Herbalism, on the other hand, seems like it had more opportunities to be useful, but the way Jing's Herbalism skill has seen use, you'd think it was considerably lower than his unarmed skill. Eh, I guess I'm just venting my disappointment that we didn't really get to see physician Jing despite his considerable skill. Then again I didn't vote for entering the army camp either.

 

[Baltika9]

I'm pretty bummed that we won't be learning YX's spear skills this time around, if the dude is this powerful after all he's been through, I can only imagine him in his prime. Hopefully the caves won't collapse and we'll get to return here and study more.
treave, had we continued with the Chief's assassination, would we have been 'disappeared' in these caves with Yang Xue?

 

[Kipeci]

Spear techniques are nice, but we've kinda run into a problem there in that the skill is capped by perception.

Though I'm a bit surprised that Jing never had any skill with it, the spear was mentioned as being a very important sort of thing for both bodyguard types and Imperial Court people. Instead of that or the also generally used by guards saber sort of weapon he was just a little practiced with swordery, making him the best possible skill and potential of the starting character for learning sword stuff... which we immediately abandoned in favor of Zhang Jue martial arts, oh well. At least we know what end is supposed to go into other people.

 

[Esquilax]

Yeah, I didn't vote on that either. But it seems Jing made it by avoiding possible rocks, and with Cao'er's ridiculous perception, she would've succeeded at that too. The only part that remains is the fall, but she seems to have learned a decent qinggong and Jing might have been able to help with that.

I think that this is a case of the grass being greener on the other side. Jing's Reikan requires a concentrated mental state, and if he's worrying about Cao'er and trying to make sure she doesn't hurt herself in the fall, then that means he's not focusing on his own descent. I still think that we would have gotten hurt if we went down here with Cao'er. To be honest, I'd rather not know what would have happened - that gnawing sense of regret is part of the fun.

I don't think Herbalism has done that since the tournament arc. After the tournament arc, our spending money came from our winnings. After Yuhua Hall, our spending money came from what little money Xiahou Yu managed to scrounge together with the assistance of the women there. After the Hundred Man Battle, I believe we gained some spending money from the reward for our assistance. In the route where Jing got needled and lost his belongings, he was completely broke at Youxia City, suggesting that Jing didn't earn any money but was instead living off the land to cover his basic needs. Yuhua Hall appears to be the last time Jing's Herbalism skill did anything. (Sure, there was treating the wounded eye, but the eye didn't recover.) I can understand Scholarly Knowledge not being of much use. It's not something that's readily applicable to the situations that we tend to enter, and the only other use of it would be for treave to insert more flavor text and background info, which is a lot of work for updates. Herbalism, on the other hand, seems like it had more opportunities to be useful. But the way Jing's Herbalism skill has seen use, you'd think it was considerably lower than his unarmed skill. Eh, I guess I'm just venting my disappointment that we didn't really get to see physician Jing despite his considerable skill. Then again I didn't vote for entering the army camp either.

Well, we probably don't see Jing's herbalism skill in action because it's not quite as exciting as kung-fu asskicking, and he only got the technique boost up to 6 quite recently. treave mentioned this before, but a lot of the use our character has for herbalism has been done off-screen; it's actually how Jing managed to eke out a living while being broke and constantly on the move.

 

[Anabanana]

To be honest, I'd rather not know what would have happened - that gnawing sense of regret is part of the fun.

treave

treave what have you done

you've turned Esquilax us all into masochists

 

[Baltika9]

Spear techniques are nice, but we've kinda run into a problem there in that the skill is capped by perception.

Which is not really a problem since skill caps are breakable (for example, our Pressure Point skill is past the cap right now) and we have Reikan, all we have to do is make it usable in combat. I dunno, learning the spear techniques of the baddest motherfucker of the war (even Wang and Fhangzhang had to fake his death, they couldn't take the dude down) seems like a great opportunity. Seeing the old Frathouse going into cardiac arrest when they see us using it would just be icing on the cake. Sadly, it has no chance in hell of winning the current vote, so I'll just stick to 1A and focus on improving our unarmed skills with a kicking technique.

 

[Tribute]

I think the logic is mostly that we've already invested in both Unarmed and Sword, and picking up Spear skill now is spreading ourselves thin?

Of course if that's not how skill increases work then there's not much reason not to take the spear tech, but treave has mentioned figuring out a proper build, which implies we can't just go with "grab everything".

 

[Baltika9]

And that's definitely true: if you focus on learning everything without a strong base, then you will spread your skills too thin and become a jack of all trades and master of none. And maybe focusing on our unarmed skills right now is the right answer at this moment. Unless the tunnels collapse or some asshole destroys the couplets on the walls, I see no reason why we won't be able to come back here later and study more. We do have the Fire Cult's challenge to worry about now, after all, and BJ.

 

[Kipeci]

Most likely the madman will do something horrible that rips us up somewhere (probably in the dick) resulting in a spray of blood that dries over the writing.

 

[Grimgravy]

You guys seems to have missed something. The techniques are in POETRY. Metaphors abound!

B. The segment that begins: “In my prime I became the unsurpassed Conqueror’s Spear; with spear in hand I pierced the heavens and split the mountains.”

Everyone who wants Jing to get more "action" should vote 1B. Spear is clearly a penis reference. Heavens and mountains must be colorful references to certain anatomical regions.

 

[Baltika9]

That settles that, Yang Xue is Rance. His hyperweapon pierced the Heavens.

 

[Smashing Axe]

Oh god, if this is a penis technique...

 

[Absinthe]

I think the logic is mostly that we've already invested in both Unarmed and Sword, and picking up Spear skill now is spreading ourselves thin?

Of course if that's not how skill increases work then there's not much reason not to take the spear tech, but treave has mentioned figuring out a proper build, which implies we can't just go with "grab everything".

Treave also mentioned that with our stats we could learn almost any technique except for the low int ones.

Eh, flipping to 1B>C 2A. I second Baltika9 on this (dude, make a ranked preference vote), and I'd like to see Jing branch out a bit. The spear technique sounds like this monster's most powerful technique, so I don't think this is one of those cases where branching out is weak.

 

[Esquilax]

See treave, this is what happens when updates take too long! Codex gets silly ideas in its head!

... We'd probably still do dumb shit anyways.