Where is everyone going?

Alright so there are a few obvious leads for you now and the group is large enough that you can split up to cover more ground. Also some members might be better suited for some leads than others. I would like each of you to make a reply here so I know how many threads to open up and who is going to be in them.

Here are the possible threads and the times they will happen (it is possible to be in more than one if the timing doesn't overlap):

1a) Go to the Hanamizuki Temple and try to make a deal with the priests (sometime tomorrow)
1b) Break into the Hanamizuki Temple and try to steal some peach wood (probably tonight)

2) take a trip down the mountain in search of the abandoned peach farm, hoping there is a tree or two left (all day tomorrow)

3) Astrally project back to the park to see if there are any signs left to be found (tonight, pretty much now)

4) Go to the university to track down and speak with the professor of occult studies (tomorrow at 3)

5) other (feel free to suggest any other things you may want to try instead if you have some useful ideas)

Sam is going to go to the university tomorrow at 3

Chougou will meet Sam at the University at 3 in his van.

Im not a b/e guy, yet. But if anyone else was interested in breaking in to steal a branch from the temple, i would be interrested, albiet reuctantly atm.
Otherwise im looking for the farm tomorrow, meetup outside the noodle shop?

Satou knows Ichiro Doumeki, a professor at MIS (the Mingmei Institute of Sorcery) who counsels him on a private matter.
 
If you're thinking of a way to write him in, he could be there when the party arrives.
He is a decent B&E guy too.

winkingchef wrote:Satou knows Ichiro Doumeki, a professor at MIS (the Mingmei Institute of Sorcery) who counsels him on a private matter.
 
If you're thinking of a way to write him in, he could be there when the party arrives.
He is a decent B&E guy too.

Oh, don't worry. I know how to introduce you. I'll talk to you about it privately when the time comes.

I prefer 1a. I'm sure there's gonna be some branches that fell off recently, and seeing as my character comes from a monastery, he's not going to be ok with breaking into and burgling one.

Alright so far I have

Going to the university
Sam & chougou

Visiting the temple
Torpor and Sun

That leaves wujen and kingfisher left to be accounted for. Presumably they are going to do a quick flyby of the park tonight and we can do that in their existing thread. what are they doing tomorrow?

My temple visit would be the night break in and steal a branch,
Not chat up the priests . Leaving me open to go to the farm all day tomorrow which I'm doing either way.
So
1b (not alone)
2 (no matter what)

If both the talking to the people in the monastery and visiting the farm are possible, Sun does both.

Alright, sun already said he would be against a break in and I haven't seen anyone else leaping at the idea of breaking in, so we will say Torpor gives up on that since he wouldn't do it alone.

As for visiting the farm, due to the distance and trouble of getting there it is basically an all day thing. You could go visit the farm and then try the temple the following day (or vice versa) if you want. The people visiting the university have time to go visit the temple if they want though.

Okay, so we have:

Going to the university (and possibly surveillance for the jiangshi?)
Sam & chougou

Visiting the farm (by train?)
Torpor and Sun

Wujen and kingfisher can hop on one of those two splits when they decide where they are going.

Sorry, I've been hanging back on the astral stuff till Kingfisher finishes up with the water spirit, one way or the other. Don't make me summon the thing to get it's full report or the illusion it will be playing with will have Kingfisher's features...

My intention is to leave from the report at the river to checkout what can be checked out of the crime scene in astral space. I don't expect to find much, but it does not hurt to look. I assume it's still an active scene and not all cleaned up by now, or there is no real point in going there.

In the morning I intend to head to the abandoned peach orchard, train/walking if necessary though I'd much rather find a ride. Call me paranoid but it seems like just maybe the area is largely abandoned for a reason.

On a not unrelated note... If I use Levitate on someone/something, and then have an Air Spirit use it's movement power on it, does that work? It should result in not terrible air speeds.

WuJen wrote:Sorry, I've been hanging back on the astral stuff till Kingfisher finishes up with the water spirit, one way or the other.  Don't make me summon the thing to get it's full report or the illusion it will be playing with will have Kingfisher's features...

My intention is to leave from the report at the river to checkout what can be checked out of the crime scene in astral space.  I don't expect to find much, but it does not hurt to look.  I assume it's still an active scene and not all cleaned up by now, or there is no real point in going there.

In the morning I intend to head to the abandoned peach orchard, train/walking if necessary though I'd much rather find a ride.  Call me paranoid but it seems like just maybe the area is largely abandoned for a reason.

On a not unrelated note...  If I use Levitate on someone/something, and then have an Air Spirit use it's movement power on it, does that work?  It should result in not terrible air speeds.

I assume you two will eventually scan the area, so I am going to handle that on the split that you two are already in once the spirit is dealt with one way or another.

Hop into the train thread once I am done writing the intro for it (currently working on, should be posted shortly). I don't expect you guys to get into any trouble in the other thread, so you can post in both.

As for levitation plus movement, it does work, though you would need to sustain levitate on each person going for it to be useful, including little dragon. Doable, but might wear you down a little. Though a force 6 levitation spell isn't all THAT slow. You go at 6 meters per combat turn. That is average walking speed (agility x 2), which is faster than you would go if you were slogging through the forest on the ground. But yeah, combining them makes you go super fast.

They slowed down levitate in 5th? Sad Panda. It used to go Magic x Hits, which I had assumed would be subject to limits but otherwise untouched.

How does Movement in 5th work? I used to just multiply the movement rate by the magic of the creature. In 4th a couple of good rolls could net you an air speed approaching that of a sports car.

As to sustaining it on everyone... It's problematic, but doable. Conceivably I could summon a Spirit of Man to cast it a couple of times, and I think they can get Movement too, though the terrain it's useful in is kinda sketchy to me. They more or less replaced Hearth spirits, but 4th-5th has their own thing going on. They don't get flight as a skill, so I'd assume land, or maybe land/water since that's where people can go. Equally conceivably I could use it on something we were all in, like a raft or light car. Weight becomes an issue, but levitate gets almost 500 lbs per hit in 4th.

Regardless, if it becomes needed to GTFO Little Dragon can go astral and keep up with ease.

Movement works anywhere if used on the spirit itself. If the spirit uses the power on anyone else, it works in whatever terrain they control. They get to multiply or divide a target's movement rate by up to their magic rating (which is usually force). I don't think a check is made, they just do it unless they are trying to use the power on a vehicle, where they need to make a check. So if you are flying, a spirit of air is probably what you would need, unless you are flying low enough to go through trees, at which point a spirit of nature might work as well.

Levitate's force dictates the speed at force meters per combat turn. When casting you need a hit for every 200 kg you are lifting unless the target is trying to resist it, which they can do with strength+body.

amusingly, just getting a spirit to use movement on me would be effective...

My agility is 5, so movement is 10. With a force 6 spirit using movement I can walk around at 60, which is small motorcycle speeds.

Well, the terrain slows you down to half your speed on foot, so you would be going roughly the same speed, but in other circumstances, yes, walking is faster than flying.

Whut Aye Need is a good Power focus so I can sling a force 10 levitate without killing myself.

Unfortunately I will never be able to afford one, as they are incredibly, stupidly overpriced in every edition of the game....and then you spend Karma to use them.

Which leaves me looking for an enemy mage that has one. Only problem there is of course the enemy mage has it....

Interesting enough, what makes the drain physical instead of stun isn't the force, it's the number of hits you make, so technically you could cast the spell at force 12 and as long as you make less than your magic rating in hits, the drain would only be stun. It would still be 10 stun drain which is gonna most certainly kick your ass, but it wouldn't be physical.

If you really want to pop up the power of a spell and can't afford a power focus, a spellcasting focus is a cheap enough alternative (though it wouldn't affect levitate's speed, just how much you can lift with it). If drain is your concern, a power focus actually doesn't help with drain, just with the casting itself. You can initiate and learn centering to get extra drain dice, then you can also get a centering focus to increase those drain dice further.

Can you not assign dice from the spellcasting pool to help with drain anymore?

Also, before I get started on the train thing, give me a short run down on what I'll need to be rolling to summon spirits, because I'm gonna want at least one Spirit of Man and maybe a couple of Elementals for this, and hopefully sleep off some drain on the train.

>How long do they last? Used to be next sunrise/sunset.
>Summoning is Log+Summoning?
>Drain is ?+Summoning?
>I can have how many summoned at once? Just one without binding or some amount based on CHA?

WuJen wrote:Can you not assign dice from the spellcasting pool to help with drain anymore?

Nope. That's not a thing anymore.

WuJen wrote:>How long do they last? Used to be next sunrise/sunset.

If you summon, it's sunrise/sunset. After you have summoned a spirit, you can bind them (which takes force hours and costs force x 25 reagents) to keep them around as long as you like.

WuJen wrote:>Summoning is Log+Summoning?

Summoning + Magic [force]. You can use reagents to increase the limit though.

WuJen wrote:>Drain is ?+Summoning?

Based on your tradition, though usually willpower and some other mental stat. For hermetics it is logic+willpower. Shinto use charisma+willpower.

WuJen wrote:>I can have how many summoned at once? Just one without binding or some amount based on CHA?

One at a time, a fact that I forgot when Kingfisher was summoning spirits, but will have to remember. You can bind a number of spirits equal to your CHA though.

Which limit would I use for summoning.  Both Mental and Astral are 7 already, which is higher than I ever expect to roll on 12 dice and apparently already putting me at the potential for physical drain.

Also, can I spend edge to help with that glitched drain?  If so I will use the point from Little Dragon, unless I'm gonna have time to sleep it off.

The force of the spirit is the limit. The shorthand for a particular limit is putting it between square brackets []. So Summoning + Magic [force] means you roll summoning + magic, and the total is limited by the force of the spirit.

The amount of drain you suffer is dependent on how many hits the spirit makes in resisting the summoning. 2 times the total number of hits (not net). As for the drain being physical or not, summoning is decided by the force, while spellcasting is determined by the hits. It's weird that it is different, but it is.

As for spending edge, you can. It just turns the glitch into a normal roll though, preventing the effects of the glitch. It doesn't let you reroll as that would require a second point of edge, and only 1 point of edge can be spent on any particular roll