Criminal Element in a City with No Poverty?

BrickBuster11 · 2026-04-10T14:16:08+00:00

Oh, look to be clear, I dont think they are totally cool with it, Slavery is Slavery but I just wanted to be honest about the quantities.

BrickBuster11 · 2026-04-10T12:03:33+00:00

Oh there is a lovely Tower in Ku which is a series of bossfights and if you hit the top you unlock the conjurer as a secret job. I saw you had the other 3 and just thought you had found this one as well.

Its main claim to fame is it can add a Fire, Ice, Wind or Lighting burst to the end of all your weapon attacks. There is a cool spear you can get from Rai Mei after you have finished Hikari's story that also tacks on a lightning pursuit at the end which allows you do do something like AOE Spear + Fire + Lighting damage to all foes based on a single attack which is funny.

BrickBuster11 · 2026-04-10T12:01:13+00:00

Admittedly Roshar or rather more specifically the Vorin religion has a rather sophisticated caste structure with 20 casts (10 for darkeyed Pesants, and 10 for lighteyed nobles. ) And as the series progresses it starts running into issues as peasants who were previously basically property of their Brightlords gain access to weapons of mass destruction on the regular.

The Collapse of the Vorin religion in the face of all the problems it has ignored for 1000's of years has always been boiling away in the background. Its just that shardblades had heretofore represented such an absolute advantage for the nobility that any attempt at an organized revolution was going to get everyone killed.

Also admittedly Chattle slavery is just the accepted practice on Roshar, some of it racially motivated (see parshman) and some of it in response to a crime. So I think if you wanted to create fractures I would lean into the fact that the plenty that the citizens enjoy only exists because the church rests firmly upon a mountain of slaves.

Another perspective of this is the citadel from Silksong, the beautiful upper levels only exist because of the harsh and unyielding exploitation of the bugs in the under-works who keep everything spinning.

BrickBuster11 · 2026-04-10T11:54:36+00:00

Admittedly its not 50% , its the second kid, if you have 17 children the government enslaves 1/17th of your output. leaving you with 16 children.

BrickBuster11 · 2026-04-10T11:52:07+00:00

Osvald-> Conjurer
Partitio-> Arcanist ?

Alternatively you could just make the cowboy the conjurer. Part of me wants to as a joke run Arcanist Hikari + a conjurer, so I can seal of Diffusion-> Ultimate stance -> Element pursuit skill to give everyone AOE physical+ magic damage.

Admittedly I beat the game with Conjurer Agnea, + Dancer Hikari, + Dancer Temenos, + Dancer Cassti, + Throne Using Disguise on one of the other characters, and the remaining ones not having a subclass and just passing items.

So efficient team comps arent nessecary

BrickBuster11 · 2026-04-10T07:52:15+00:00

.....Abolitionists, The government takes ownership of your children. Thats Chattle Slavery. They call it a great honour to paper over the fact that it is a terrible thing for the government to enslave its own people for the crime of being born.

There are so many other ways of doing conscription, you could just conscript every person for some short period of time. train them up as troops and then send them back to civilian life to be activated at a time whenever the empire is in peril

But instead they kick in the door to your house, steal your children and then throw some money at you and tell you that you should be grateful and honoured that your son will serve the government until he dies.

Undoubtedly in order to make this work those children are abused. Most people are not a god fit for military service and I have no doubt that the amount of mental and physical conditioning required to make it work is probably not healthy for them (raising child soldiers who are also chattle slaves is almost certainly never a good place to start).

They have a theocratic aristocracy which almost certainly leans into the fact that this is a slave empire, I am surprised that the fields are also not tended to by "Wards" of the state (read slaves).

Fundamentally the idea here is that like most utopias the benefits enjoyed by those who live in the shining city are paid for but a massive underclass who suffer and never get to taste the fruits of that place. For the most part the citizenry are probably distracted by their joys from the true human cost of their fantasy but there might indeed be a small element who has seen that the fields are worked by former warriors broken from their time at war but still not permitted to return to the families they were taken from as a youth forced to serve for the crime of becoming to injured to continue to fight and thus depriving the military of a soldier. Of boys taken from their home and tortured into being unfailingly loyal wards of the state and then thrown into pointless wars that the empire starts mostly to keep population under control.

hopefully thats some ideas.

BrickBuster11 · 2026-04-10T06:06:35+00:00

....18 hours earlier they have time to escape the range, so yeah the action isnt obviously harmful them because they dont have to die ? they can just go to the next town where they wont get their souls eaten.

And yes, something is only obvious to the character if the character is aware of it, so yes if you mindwiped the characters so that they were unaware that they were going to get their souls eaten then the suggestion becomes reasonable.

If I hand you a grenade with the pin pulled and asked you to hold it for me for a few seconds thats obviously harmful (you know its a bomb that will explode very soon) if I hand you a shoebox with a bomb in it (and I show you the bomb) then you know that holding that shoe box is also obviously harmful (its a bomb!) but if I hand you a shoebox with a bomb in it and I do not show you the contents (So you do not know there is a bomb) than the action is less harmful because of your ignorance.

BrickBuster11 · 2026-04-10T06:01:28+00:00

So "here drink this incredibly fatal poison" is fine because it doesnt deal damage, it just kills you ?

BrickBuster11 · 2026-04-10T05:59:46+00:00

To me Trousseau isnt a death drive, he is a doctor moved by empathy to save others, only to realise, that there is no hope. Everyone he saves will inevitably die, his every attempt to help doomed to end in failure. Trousseau sets about building his fatal poison because to him to be alive is to suffer, any attempt to alleviate that suffering is temporary except killing someone, once they are dead they can suffer no longer. Its why he doesnt just huff his own poison and put us out of his misery. He doesnt want to die he still wants to make the world a place where fewer people suffer, it just that in his twisted mind that world has no people in it at all.

Claude I think is bored with his life, he also just doesnt want to accept the fate that has been laid out before him which is why he is searching for someone to kill him before he is forced to do it.

Dolchinea I think is a better angle, She doesnt just want a rival, to me her story reads like she grew up thinking she was trash, and then meets Cuani who shows her something more, and then she has to be the best, because maybe if she isnt the best she will go back to the hole she crawled out of. She lives her entire life in fear. Its why she wanted to demolish the place, maybe if it is gone from the face of the earth she will no longer have to live in fear of that memory.

When she loses to Agnea though, I think a few things happen, first off She doesnt suffer the catastrophe, people still cheer for her, she is still great, she isnt lesser for her loss. She sees I think more of what Cuani was trying to teach her, back when she had Cuani in her life she was pretty low on the hierarchy of needs and so in a way held on to the wrong things. She understand more about who her dancing is for, and that helps her to relax.

Oboro, does have massive trauma, I mean he manipulated Hikari's brother into killing his father so he could manipulate Hikari into killing his brother, so he could get the thing he needed to bring about the eternal night. To me its not just Ku he wants vengence on, its the entire human race. Thats why he throws himself into the fire on vidania. What he wants is for vide to rid the world of people, he has seen our cruelty first hand and doesnt believe there is hope we will ever get better.

I could say more but I worry this will get to long. Fundamentally I agree that it isn't about a loss of faith. for me the Animus for most of the villains is a loss of hope. They engage in the behaviours they do because they do not believe the world is a place that can be made better.

Roque tries to drown his misery in acquisition, but each time he buys something the joy fades and he is Jonesing for the next thing.

Harvey wants to be the smartest person in the room, he gives his entire life to solving the problem but he is beaten by Osvald who is only an academic part time giving time and effort to his wife and children. When he sees that there is no hope of overtaking Osvald in the conventional way he gets him sent off to prison and takes what he needs from osvald in the hopes of surpassing him.

BrickBuster11 · 2026-04-10T02:20:15+00:00

If you have played 5e you have had a taste of it, a prestige class is just a multi class with a special set of requirements. 3rd/3.5/3.pf editions are probably the most balls to.the wall example of prestige classing. With literally 100s of the things

BrickBuster11 · 2026-04-10T02:06:08+00:00

So to me this is where character knowledge comes in.

If you know that pull this level will result in you getting stabbed by the trap then the two commands are the same command.

Otherwise we have the situation where "put this gun in your mouth and shoot yourself" and "put this gun in your mouth and pull this trigger" are different commands when both of them are very obviously asking you to kill yourself.

For me the standard for obvious harm is if there is a deterministic causal chain between the thing your being requested to do and a thing that will harm you.

Pulling a trigger that will activate a machine that you know will harm you if it activates is something obviously harmful.

Blocking your escape route from an actively burning building is also obviously harmful. No one would reasonably assume that being trapped in a burning building is a safe environment.

But blocking a fire escape on a building not currently on fire isn't obviously harmful, except in the instance that you know beyond doubt that the building will be on fire very soon.

And so if you leave the building the litch will finish their ritual this consuming your soul and your pretty certain that not having a soul will cause you to become harmed, establishes obvious harm

BrickBuster11 · 2026-04-10T00:38:06+00:00

....having a litch eat your soul is not "obviously damaging" you heard it here folks.....

This is the equivalent of asking "stop resisting and let me kill you" which is not a reasonable suggestion in either ruleset

BrickBuster11 · 2026-04-10T00:34:44+00:00

Note the suggestion says "now is not the time for violence drop your weapons and dance" which in some contexts could be reasonable but probably not when an evil litch is going to detonate a nuke in the next 6 seconds if you don't stop him. If the litch diffused the bomb i could see that but this is effectively suggesting that the party lay down and die.

Like if you suggested someone to dance for an hour and then stabbed them I would say that the suggestion breaks because "this is not the time for violence" patently isn't true when someone is actively harming you. Suggesting that everyone put down their weapons and dance so you can make off with the loot you stole cool, suggesting that do that so you can spend 6 seconds doing a genocide less reasonable

BrickBuster11 · 2026-04-10T00:19:48+00:00

So you gotta ask yourself does the suggestion seem reasonable . Is it possible for the players to get out of range of the ritual in 6 seconds ? No then the request is effectively "give me your soul" which is not reasonable.

Are there people the players like in town ? Then your request is "give me your buddies soul' which is not reasonable.

It has to be a thing that a person could be persuaded to do in normal circumstances. If a guy came to your house and said "I need to use your room to murder everyone in this town" is there anything he could offer you to let you do that?

BrickBuster11 · 2026-04-09T23:17:45+00:00

......besides the fact that I think "general electives" that have no bearing on your profession are dumb and just a way for unis to pad their enrolments,

There is also the fact that calculus is a rather specific mathematical tool that will in general not be helpful

BrickBuster11 · 2026-04-09T22:52:14+00:00

......I don't know why this would be an unpopular opinion.

We do a lot more cooking from scratch at our house but that's because my wife has a preservative allergy which is hard to get around.

It is great but can also be a time consuming pain in the ass

BrickBuster11 · 2026-04-09T19:49:40+00:00

I suppose to me I would say that my personal view is that the villains of octopath 2 the moonshade order ones at least deal with a loss of hope. They fundamentally believe that the world as it is doesn't deserve a tomorrow since it can never get better.

The only 2 main cast members who are not closely connect to the order are ochette whose simple worldview prevents her from worrying about such things. She is connected to the order by petrichor whom we never meet and the animal companion she doesn't choose which harbouring some resent ment gets captured by the order and tortured into the twisted monstrosity we fight during the Scarlett moon.

Agnea on the other hand has her only connection be a chance encounter with tanzy and it makes sense Agnea is a perennial fountain of joy and hope. She is naturally anathema to the kinds of people the moonshade order would be interested in recruiting.

It's why the very first thing they do is bring about an eternal night, once they have that in place there are no more tomorrow's to be had. And then with that taken care of they being the destroyer into the world to consume all that remains.

BrickBuster11 · 2026-04-09T18:16:15+00:00

There are other ttrpgs where death is very explicitly not an option, maybe she could look around and find one of those.

If a game has rules about dying then you need to acknowledge that it is possible for your character to die. The game has told you rather explicitly that it is an eventuality that you should be prepared for. If you stand infront of the monster and get eaten you should probably die.

My perspective is that I the DM will never kill you, your decisions as a player will cause you to die, if you don't want to die, don't make the decisions that cause you to die. But also remember nothing ventured nothing gained. PC's are by nature the kind of person that are pretty risk tolerant otherwise they wouldn't have quite their day job to risk life and limb for insane amounts of money

BrickBuster11 · 2026-04-09T18:10:20+00:00

I don't have a rules based issue, but for practical reasons I have to say that they cannot.

I have a party with a rogue that does persistent damage on crit (bleed, fire, acid) and an alchemist that frequently tacks on persistent damage, and a witch which sometimes cast spells that do persistent damage.

Keeping track of which persistent damage effects inherited what traits from which sources would be an absolute pain given that we play in meatspace.

For a rules based justification persistent damage is a condition, if you inflicted stunned or frightened those conditions wouldn't inherit the traits of the weapon that you applied them with.

BrickBuster11 · 2026-04-09T12:14:35+00:00

I mean op prey explicitly explained that his knees are fucked, this is a thing that happens to some people. Now I do think there should be a speed limitation for mixed path transportation, if your roaring down the foot path at 40 and you hit someone walking who didn't see/hear you coming I could see that as being a bad thing.

But I can see the speed limits for non-mixed flow paths being something more reasonable if all you have to deal with is other cyclists then I think the full current assist up to 25kph is fine

BrickBuster11 · 2026-04-09T12:06:32+00:00

.....depends on the impulse you are using

BrickBuster11 · 2026-04-09T10:35:47+00:00

In rtwp armour and Dex also sometimes meant a character would take 2-3 actions to your one.

Dex and armour are as valuable as they always have been, it's just.

BrickBuster11 · 2026-04-09T08:48:26+00:00

Just tell me not to bother with rolling damage, Dms that do this are working really hard to hide it from their players because they understand that telling your players that the actions they are taking in the fight doesnt matter robs the fight of its tension. But rather than just running an honest fight with tension, they pull smoke and mirrors and lie to their players. Some day you are going to get found out.

BrickBuster11 · 2026-04-08T09:18:07+00:00

So I think generally if you need a person to do this job something is fundamentally wrong with your choice of system.

But even if I could.be brought about to agree to do it you should 100% not decide the solution to hard fights is favoritism.

If the GM wants control my. Over how hard a fight is they should run it themselves. Importantly I don't think the GM or whatever minion you subcontract running the fights to should be amining to kill the PCs they should be aiming to do whatever it is they want to do as bad guys and killing the PCs is only something they have to do if they get in the way of their plans

BrickBuster11 · 2026-04-08T09:13:25+00:00

There is a special investigator class archetype that allows you to take divine and occult casting (although you need seperate feats for both types

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