12 KiB
[MK] The Two Year Emperor, ch72 - Not Story: FAQ
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Author: u/eaglejarl *
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URL: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9669819/72/The-Two-Year-Emperor
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Score: 11
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Created: 2014-11-20T20:38:42
Post:
Comments:
u/eaglejarl [+3] (31 minutes later)
UPDATE:
It's irked me for a long time that I put the rules notes in Chapter 10 instead of in a separate document but I can't do anything about it now without renumbering all the chapters, which would mean updating all my source HTML to match. Immediately after posting this here I found myself thinking:
"Hey, maybe I should avoid making the same mistake twice."
So, now the contents of this chapter have been moved to a separate document. Chapter 72 will be replaced when I post on Saturday.
u/None [+2] (2 hours later)
Upvoting for visibility. Or something.
u/eaglejarl [+3] (35 seconds later)
This is just Q&A of things that I've been asked a fair bit, no story. Much of it has already been discussed on here.
u/MoralRelativity [+3] (an hour later)
20 days?!? TWENTY DAYS?!? That's a shit-load of stuff to happen in 20 days. Wow.
u/eaglejarl [+3] (an hour later)
Yeah, I know. Still, I've got the timeline written out. I tracked all the events based on day and hour and it really does work.
Put it down to "the D&D rules are ridonkulously abusable." If the gods hadn't been stepping on Jake's toes basically constantly he would have ruined the world a lot faster.
u/JanusTheDoorman [+1] (an hour later)
Why didn't Neklos' portfolio sense alert him to the fact that the dozen souls he had under his personal control at that moment were about to die? The heroes took precautions to avoid the intent to kill Neklos to avoid tipping him off, but Suze deliberately aims to kill everyone else.
u/alexanderwales [+2] Time flies like an arrow (2 hours later)
You know, I was thinking that it had something to do with the wording of the spell (Trap the Soul) in that it wouldn't technically qualify as death, but looking at it that doesn't seem right unless death is defined as the separation of the soul from the body and Trap the Soul already separates the soul causing them not to die but merely be released to the afterlife without dying.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (3 hours later)
Ding!
Death in D&D is actually defined as: "[t]he character’s hit points are reduced to -10, his Constitution drops to 0, or he is killed outright by a spell or effect.
The character’s soul leaves his body.[EDIT: removed this sentence because it was confusing and not part of the point I was making]"Trap the Soul pulls the soul and the life force out of the body; I'm considering that to be death. Neklos didn't get any warning because he'd already killed them; when the soul gems shattered their material bodies would have reformed but been instantly vaporized. I'm considering this as "they were dead-but-in-the-gems, then they were dead-but-not-in-the-gems" with no actual intervening time that would allow Neklos's portfolio sense to alert him.
u/JanusTheDoorman [+1] (5 hours later)
That definition seems to say that death is one possible thing that triggers a soul leaving a body, not that the soul leaving the body is itself a sufficient condition for death. It reads like the first sentence are the things which trigger death, and then death triggers the soul departure as a separate event. Soul separation triggering death is getting the causality backwards.
u/eaglejarl [+3] (5 hours later)
Didn't say it was.
I am considering having your life force sucked out of your body by Trap the Soul to fall under the "killed outright by a spell" clause.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (an hour later)
Take a guess -- I'm curious if I left enough information that people can figure it out. If not, maybe I'll need to go back and re-work.
u/JanusTheDoorman [+1] (2 hours later)
Since you seem to be pretty diligent about sticking to the source material I expect I'd be best served by researching how the portfolio sense from the rulebooks, but I think it's more interesting to try and discern how things work based on what's been presented in the story so far.
The portfolio sense described in most detail so far is Herrun's, particularly in reference to how she becomes aware of any plot against her whether it's public or private knowledge since those are explicitly part of her domain. She's also shown or at least heavily implied to be aware of Suze's secret desires when Suze is immediately thinking of them.
I think's it's realistic to generalize to portfolio sense therefore being sensitive to matters that relate directly to the god in question, or to those who they're paying attention to at the moment. I think my original confustion stemmed from the assumption that gods are pretty much totally aware of anything related to their domains at all times, but given that Herrun was defeated, however, she either isn't consciously aware of literally all knowledge at all times, or the plot was so sophisticated and capable that she was defeated even seeing it coming.
The latter seems less likely, especially since the "not pseudo-omniscient" hypothesis is supported by Arros leaving behind a shard to attend to Jake's questions, suggesting that gods consciousnesses aren't as unlimited as they would have to be to deal with that level of awareness.
It could be argued that since Neklos wasn't paying attention to Suze and she wasn't attempting to kill him his sense wasn't triggered, but that's a very conveniently shaped loophole, and I expect that's not your actual, implied answer. Maybe I'll hunt back through the text to find something I'm missing, but that feels like cheating.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (3 hours later)
You're mostly on track. I laid it out in a comment above.
While I was writing all this up, I realized that there are also a few other reasons.
u/MoralRelativity [+1] (2 hours later)
I assume Suze's surprise round trumped this.
u/rtkwe [+2] (6 hours later)
No the surprise round wouldn't help, portfolio sense extends into the future. Quoth http://www.d20srd.org/srd/divine/divineRanksAndPowers.htm which /u/eaglejarl says is the canonical source.
Greater deities automatically sense any event that involves their portfolios, regardless of the number of people involved. In addition, their senses extend one week into the past and one week into the future for every divine rank they have. When a deity senses an event, it merely knows that the event is occurring and where it is. The deity receives no sensory information about the event. Once a deity notices an event, it can use its remote sensing power to perceive the event.
Death has more than 1 million worshipers so he has at least a week into the future of portfolio sense.
u/MoralRelativity [+1] (7 hours later)
Yes, thanks for that. I was wrong. /u/eaglejarl has provided a clear explanation above.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (3 days later)
One week per rank, actually. So, 20 weeks.
u/MoralRelativity [+1] (2 hours later)
Is it a problem for Afi that he's lost most (almost all?) of his ice assassin copies? Is he still going to be able to command the remaining ice assassins?
u/eaglejarl [+2] (3 hours later)
He lost all the ones that were in his extradimensional throne room area. He still had quite a few out and about doing missions elsewhere. And yes, he can still command all of them -- he used a Programmed Amnesia to ensure that.
u/JosephLeee [+1] (10 hours later)
So Afi's going to wander around the world, make a new base somewhere, and spend the rest of the story breaking the world using the rules he Mindscraped from Jake?
Or will he make another apprentice in Part 2?
u/eaglejarl [+1] (10 hours later)
u/MadScientist14159 [+1] WIP: Sodium Hypochlorite (Rational Bleach) Eventually. Maybe. (a day later)
It would be interesting to see Afi going full science-munchkin.
u/Empiricist_or_not [+1] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (a day later)
Question is, considering Afi has the knowledge and the capability, does he want Suzi's domain of death?
Just curious if I missed something, but is contingency, not a core spell, or not one you are using?
u/eaglejarl [+1] (a day later)
Yep, it's a core spell and I'm using it. I just haven't had cause to show it onscreen yet. Why?
u/Empiricist_or_not [+1] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (a day later)
I was just surprised it hadn't come up, then I re-read it and saw you could only have one instance at a time. I wonder if Suzi could pass the spellcraft check to write a version that isn't limited to one instance, or if the god of magic is munchkin friendly, or foolish enough enough to allow it to be written.
u/eaglejarl [+1] (a day later)
The trick would be if you could have a contingency that was an IF/THEN -- two slots, two conditions. Even if you were only allowed one contingency, you could stack others into the two slots -- they aren't in effect until their condition triggers. It would take some pretty carefully constructed conditions though.
u/Empiricist_or_not [+1] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (a day later)
From D20 srd: Contingency
The conditions needed to bring the spell into effect must be clear, although they can be general. In all cases, the contingency immediately brings into effect the companion spell, the latter being “cast” instantaneously when the prescribed circumstances occur. If complicated or convoluted conditions are prescribed, the whole spell combination (contingency and the companion magic) may fail when called on. The companion spell occurs based solely on the stated conditions, regardless of whether you want it to.
My emphasis added. I was excited for this, ate a chocolate for the good idea by posting, then went and looked at the RAW and decided it might be less useful than I though, but It'll be interesting to see if it shows up. After all, I don't think an if then else decision tree is complicated, but does the god of magic think it is convoluted, and if so can you use plane shift cast using the cleric level as an escape hatch?
u/eaglejarl [+1] (a day later)
Yeah, I was familiar with the "complicated" restriction. Still, you could probably make it work with something like
" SLOT ONE: If I am ever attacked, cast Time Stop. SLOT TWO: I have a bunch of nested contingencies in this slot; if the conditions that would cause one of them to be activated are ever met, activate the Contingency in this slot. "
That Contingency then has something like:
" SLOT ONE: If I am ever reduced to -9 hit points or below, cast Delay Death. SLOT TWO: I have a bunch of nested contingencies in this slot; if the conditions that would cause one of them to be activated are ever met, activate the Contingency in this slot. "
And so on.