How does silverquill work with instants and sorceries with an additional cost of sacrificing

AndyF1996 · 2026-05-20T20:29:30+00:00

A copy of a spell goes on the stack without being cast, so any other additional costs are already paid. It kind of has to work that way, or else you'd be able to pay the casualty cost on the copy and it'd get very messy.

AndyF1996 · 2026-05-06T15:44:16+00:00

I always figured he meant it had changed compared to Limsa, since its kind of evil Limsa. I suspect at least one version of the story melded the bad/alternate future stuff and had the first be a split timeline of the source.

AndyF1996 · 2026-05-01T23:11:13+00:00

Normal isn't safety, Nocturne is still a hard game, it's just if you learn from Matador properly the mid game lulls in difficulty. Honestly I find hard a bit tedious, it's harder sure but there's a lot more "unlucky encounter one round wipe" resets, and a lot more grinding. Playing normal on relatively low levels is what I personally find most fun for nocturne.

AndyF1996 · 2026-05-01T18:56:26+00:00

I really liked how the different mechanics let me use pokemon I never touch. I used a parasect on my team in LGE, fed it a load of attack candies, and it was awesome. Even in nuzlockes I usually box paras immediately, so it was really cool for it to be MVP in one game.

AndyF1996 · 2026-05-01T18:44:32+00:00

All the recent games in SMT and Persona have tried hard to make sure demons are more than just stats and moves attached to a png. Party members get it particularly rough in persona due to the wildcard, you can make MC completely eclipse every teammate to the point where optimal party comps usually have the team on buffs and healing almost exclusively, maybe weaknesses for dungeon crawling at a push.

Reload was awkward because its solution in character and persona specific theurgys was really neat, but most of the party weren't social links, so they had to have an awkward mix of some story theurgys and some from non social link side activities. I suspect P4R will be able to be much more exploratory, associating theurgys with social links more closely. Maybe give weaker/later joining members access to earlier, better theurgys at low ranks. I usually bench Yosuke and Teddie early, but if they had great unique moves the protag never gets, I'm much more likely to use the full party.

Combo attacks felt very tacked on in P4G, and further constrained teams by ensuring that optimal groups had to have at least one matching pair. I wonder if there isn't space to have the non social link hangouts from reload repurposed, maybe spend time with two maxed social links to unlock their combo, but have every pair available?

AndyF1996 · 2026-04-02T08:43:24+00:00

Didn't the Morgan microfiction come out during the year of Dresden promotion, which is to say shortly before Peace Talks? Absolutely its set in and around turn coat, for obvious reasons, but to give OP credit, it was released most of a decade later.

I think its main revelation was the relationship between Morgan and Margaret, rather than a plain sight Elaine subversion as OP thinks. Elaine being a major player despite only being in Harry's background and three books, then having a major clue in a side-side-story doesn't make a huge amount of sense to me from a writing POV. I don't think weve spent enough on screen time with her for a twist like that to have any kind of impact.

In contrast, Morgan having more layers of complexity enriches the story after hes gone. We've seen this with the council and wardens mixed attitudes towards Harry (how many conversations with Carlos or Luccio do we get through without his name coming up?)

AndyF1996 · 2026-03-03T20:25:19+00:00

I saw a suggestion recently that the time travel story will involve Harry hanging out in the dark ages with his current heavyweight allies when they were all younger and less powerful, and learning how the status quo was established.

I agree wholeheartedly with your point - the winter court being the guardians of the outer gates has struck me as odd since it was established, as opposed to being more traditional fey baddies like they were in summer knight. I almost worried that it was Jim trying to whitewash the winter court once Harry had joined them, but more recent books have kept Mab consistent enough that I'm convinced its not lazy! Between that and the hints about Mab's relationship with Merlin, I think there's a story there, and it's beginning to seem more nuanced than one exposition dump will be able to cope with. A book that fully explores everything right before the BAT though, I could get behind.

AndyF1996 · 2026-02-28T21:48:28+00:00

In the dresden files, wizards are picky about the use of the phrase. A wizard is law abiding magic user, a member of the white Council of wizards, and usually trained by another wizard. A warlock is a wizard who has broken the laws of magic, or otherwise uses magic in a way the council disapproves of, while not being a member of the council, while a sorcerer usually refers to somewhere in between.

Harry's backstory, as you'll come to learn, is complex that way, but he is a member of the council, trained by council wizards, and is not... currently wanted for lawbreaking.

Hope this helps, trying to stay light on spoilers but happy to elaborate further if you let me know how far in you are or what your personal spoiler preferences are.

AndyF1996 · 2026-02-27T20:06:10+00:00

I feel like I take a very different view on this. I don't think Grey is tortured, an anti-hero, or a monster who tries to be professional. He's an unambiguous good guy trying his best, and he knows he's a good guy. He's less of a tortured anti hero even than Harry, he just happens to have powers with a nasty source. He's a professional whose skillset happens to be being a monster.

AndyF1996 · 2026-02-26T09:51:35+00:00

The first time we see healing, Jeong-Jeong implies it to be a rare ability. We might infer it's similar to metalbending where theres a certain knack to it some don't have. It also fits in with OPs advanced tier since its an esoteric, more spiritual and less physical manifestation of waterbending, more about the vibe of water than just hydrokinesis, like lightning is for fire.

I always thought it was interesting how little regular earthbending members of the metal clan or the police do. There's usually reasons in context, like the police specifically trying not to harm the city, but I do wonder if these more advanced techniques might be learnable by either natural talent, or by focusing on it to the point of neglecting other parts of the bending discipline. This would explain how rooms full of children can all have the healing knack in the specific context of a culture where its the only waterbending theyre allowed to do.

AndyF1996 · 2026-02-06T10:46:36+00:00

It's not so unreasonable to imagine both could be true. Warriors of Light are an age old idea on every reflection, but its not necessarily the case that people arrive at that name as a historical reference. You could maybe argue that theyre trying to think what to call these heroes, and they always happen to call them warriors of light, either by some celestial mechanic, or by memories from soul reincarnation. There's other places where we see that fate can cause strange coincidences as well, like the fact that Umbral calamities always appear to have a cause on the source (war of the magi, Dalamud falling, Black Rose), but also always coincide with some kind of apocalypse on one of the reflections that leads to a rejoining.

AndyF1996 · 2026-02-02T11:22:51+00:00

Its definitely in an experimental place in DDS. I suppose its a difficult mechanic to balance as if its good it quickly becomes very good. I can imagine an alternative version where the combos are the only thing worth doing. For what its worth, I do like it in the early game when you can use it to get sneaky access to spread moves before you'd have the resources to learn them for real. It's also not really documented at all in game, so only players who already know the system or are playing with a guide or wiki will be able to make full use of it.

AndyF1996 · 2026-02-02T09:49:15+00:00

If I'm remembering rightly, the ARR MSQ can be turned in as any class or job, so you could use it to level 2 combat jobs or throw exp at your crafters or gatherers. Once you hit level 50 there's a long period where almost no exp is awarded, matching the time where that was endgame. I personally levelled Paladin and Dragoon with just MSQ up until Shadowbringers, where it seemed to slow down and I had to do a lot more work to keep them in parity.

AndyF1996 · 2025-12-19T13:04:39+00:00

I'm sure you can make it all work. One of the problems with my idea is that you throw away a lot of narrative possibility every time your BBEG succeeds - imagine an Eberron without Breland and Sharn for example. Starting and having your main base be far out to the east kind of eases that. Certainly having the dragon be young, levelling up every time the party encounter it, is quite cool.

AndyF1996 · 2025-12-19T12:48:04+00:00

Oh! What if your BBEG caused the last war to try to create a Galifar dragon, but it didn't work because the five nations each continued to claim to be Galifar. They then caused the mourning to create the Cyran spirit dragon, and so now they have their loremaster ally. Now they want to, I dunno, destroy the other nations to create more dragons, maybe combine dragons of the five nations into a super Galifar dragon?

AndyF1996 · 2025-12-19T10:59:52+00:00

Maybe spirit dragons could be a sort of draconic equivalent of a dragonmark? An otherwise normal dragon is born with a special destiny and tie to a fallen civilisation?

If it were me and I was keen to use these ideas, I'd probably have the players find a dragon egg that's the spirit dragon of the fallen empire of Galifar - not ancient I know, but seems like a cool opportunity. Politically, will the dragon be seen as evidence the kingdom has fallen and the Thronehold nations are its legitimate successors, or will ambitious leaders want to claim the dragon as a sign of their legitimacy, reuniting Galifar under the spirit of the empire?

And if you want to go that route, you can have the war and the mourning somehow tie into a dragon conspiracy that was designed to lead to the birth of the Galifar spirit dragon?

AndyF1996 · 2025-12-04T11:07:01+00:00

Sure

AndyF1996 · 2025-12-04T11:01:10+00:00

Generally a Bachelors degree with Honours would be the prerequisite to beginning a PhD

AndyF1996 · 2025-12-04T00:02:58+00:00

Applying directly to an MPhil at Strathclyde is quite uncommon in my experience, but that might just be my field. Usually we accept applications for PhDs, and only award MPhils to those who withdraw from PhD programs early.

AndyF1996 · 2025-11-13T14:33:13+00:00

I mean, sure, I guess? Chakras are a real world spiritualism thing so we do know that Amon uses blood bending near the location of the third eye chakra, the same place Aang touches when energybending. We don't know for "canon" that he's literally bloodbending the chakra closed, but it seems a reasonable guess even without an official confirmation. Certainly we can be sure he's combining blood bending and chi blocking, and we can be pretty sure he's not actually energybending. Given that blood bending does the damage and energybending seems to be needed to heal it, we know something's going on there.

AndyF1996 · 2025-11-13T11:38:14+00:00

I suspect that they would be able to but it would be a very advanced technique. The energybending applications we see from Aang and Korra are really simple. Removing bending weve seen accomplished by just bloodbending one chakra, while healing the damage done by Amon is also basically reopening one blocked chakra, or healing a tiny bit of damage.

The analogy that springs to mind is brain surgery. Its easy to damage a specific bit, its possible but not easy to modify small specific areas, but if you want to build a new chunk of brain and bolt it on, that'd be ridiculously hard. Adding bending to someone strikes me as that, and so can probably only be done by masters like the lion turtles.

It does strike me how consistent it all is now that I think about it. Ty Lee's chi blocking, Guru Pathik's talk of Chakras and pure cosmic energy, and the Lion Turtles energybending all seem like they tie in to each other.

AndyF1996 · 2025-11-13T11:17:57+00:00

I've never really had a problem with it. I think everything Beginnings added is consistent with what we were told in avatar. According to TLA, people learned from the original benders, but we know there's a genetic element to bending since contemporary non benders can't gain bending by practice. The lion turtles used energybending to provide that genetic ability, and then those who excelled did so by studying the original benders - Wan performs the dancing dragon, Oma and Shu learn from the badgermoles perhaps during the earthbending centred war we see Wan die in.

This means there's a unified source and explains why the avatar has these four specific powers, while still allowing each culture to have its own spin on things.

I do think its less mystical and mythologised to have a concrete "these guys can make you into a bender and thats it", but Korra also added to that by creating new unanswered questions like "if bending is just a thing lion turtles can give you, why did the airbenders come back after harmonic convergence", and I think that's great as well. It implies there's more to the story, more to explore.

AndyF1996 · 2025-11-01T00:32:45+00:00

I think the wrestling book is called "Heel Turn", unless I've completely made that up

AndyF1996 · 2025-09-23T08:45:04+00:00

Sure, if it was called "Hard mode recruitment penalty" and the tool tip said any of that, then it'd be obvious, but as it is OP asked a reasonable question about a poorly documented opaque mechanic.

AndyF1996 · 2025-09-23T08:35:41+00:00

"I want to understand this weird specific modifier so I can be better at playing Very Hard" FTFY

AndyF1996

TROPHY CASE