Deed Negated ?

[Jojeke]

Does this reduce only the odds of casting a spell (the calendar activity) or would it also affect casting challenges when doing random events or adventures ?

[Legate of Mineta]

Jojeke;

 

Usually, this kind of thing only affects the Calendar activities. Sometimes it can affect the Stories, but it depends on the Effect.

[Schwarzbart]

Jojeke but be carfull this can change in the next years at Academagia and then you char still have to live with his backgrounds.

[Svinik]

I'd suggest that the extra back ground point from negated isn't worth it given the value of spells. If you are looking to min-max I'd look at:

 

Astrology: The Comet. Omen: Shattered Mirrors; Family: Sports; History: Artisans of Skill; Deed: Lonely Sentinel; Prodigy: Centre of Attention; Prodigy: Spiritual; Apprenticeship: spy; History: Descended from Heroes.

 

Those all give +1 to a stat (with a fair spread) and various skills (the knowledge of the skill being almost as good as the 1 or 2 levels in it in my view). So for 9 points you get +1 Charm, +1 Fitness, +2 Finesse, +1 Glory, +1 Insight, +1 Intelligence, +2 Luck, +1 Strength, +2% chance of success on all actions, 18 skill-ups, and informed of all spy skills, albeit at a cost of -2 stress.

 

Blacksheep is good (the loss of money is somewhat irrelevant), although you can't "fix it with your parents" - rumour has it that something terrible will happen to your character over the Y1-Y2 holidays

 

Friendships: Bitter Hatred Actually (unless you get Joanna) is fine: 5 actions will fix it later unless you get Joanna though random gains may avoid much of that cost.

 

That would leave you with 3 cc points to spend - I'd recommend at least 1 on insight as otherwise getting access to the libraries early on will take ages though in the long term insight is easy to get. Personally I then take strength as its hard to get from adventures but for a min-maxer it would be a waste.

 

If you want to romp through gates then Family: Secret Heritage is the way to go.

 

Familiars are expected to be buffed in Yr 2 so if setting up for Yr 2 I'd suggest a familiar. There aren't many familiar adventures on the wiki so please think about adding one if you pick a familiar.

 

Do remember though, that for 6-7 actions most adventures will give you an ability point, and for 10 actions the same is true of research - in practice unless you are going for "the ultimate" the starting choice is really only important for "who do I want my guy/gal to be".

[hdghg]

Largely agree, but a few other points:

 

- While attributes can be got from adventures, this typically isn't true early in the game and that might inhibit your skill improvement if you're looking to max skills early on. That's particularly an issue if you have an attribute at 1. So, starting attributes are still important even though the difference will become irrelevant by the end of the year for a hardcore adventurer.

- Gates does not seem too useful in Y1. I still took the secret heritage for me evil/gates character, but that's an RP choice, not a powegaming one.

- History: Descended From Traitors is an alternative to blacksheep if you don't want to risk ongoing effects. The penalty is significant but can be overcome. Note also that parental approval could potentially lead to a *lot* of pims over the full 5 years once the series is complete. If we're only taking year 1 into account though, then black-sheep is very clearly the powergamer's choice.

- Glory is not as significant as other attributes so be cautious about that -2 stress. I'd only recommend it if you're going 3+fitness. Otherwise I think you'd end up with a stress max of something pathetic like 2 which could be hit by a single bad event.

- Familiar attributes are extremely difficult to increase. There are some traits that give your familiar 2 attribute points. A hardcore powergaming Y1 character would probably largely ignore their familiar, but personally I like to do their adventures. If that's the case then consider one or more of those backgrounds. In particular, it's not very realistic to max bond if the familiar has a 1 in an attribute that governs a bond subskill (fitness, luck, intelligence I think). I always take the exotic familiar though so it's guesswork for me.

- Insight 2 is not that big a problem. You can get an extra point from war 2. War subskills can be unlocked by the mercenary house which is unlocked by vilocian. You can get that by training elumian 1 step I think and then studying with professor sido. There's another point available from planning as well and it often increases with adventures.

- As Svink says, strength is by far the hardest attribute to raise. It's also probably the least useful, but still worth considering a bit extra at character generation. It's not unusual for an endgame character to end up with insight etc at 20+ but strength hovering around the 6 mark.

[Schwarzbart]

I personal still have all attribute at 2 at game start as this turned out a good value for me.

This is usualy enough till I have raised my core attributes trough study 10 or got Cleanse and Remake.

 

Blacksheep and Negated are both to expensive in the long run to be worth the 1 point you get from them in my opinion.

While Descended From Traitors and Friendships: Bitter Hatred are easy to overcome in year 1.

But if you getting Philippe or Joana in the negative you best reroll as the problem they can give you at the start are to much.

Vettor in oposit is a nice rival his action is anoying because it need you to adjust your training plan but thats it.

[Svinik]

I agree that you want at least "2" in everything to avoid needing too many skill steps in any skills, but more than 4 at the outset would seem excessive exzcept in strength (purely because its hard to raise otherwise).

 

I'm undecided on the sheep, it depends I think on whether it drags on too much into Yr 2 - I'd have preferred it to be -50 parental approval or some such - hard to overcome but not impossible.

 

Some students don't actually do anything to you if they hate you - but I agree entirely with Schwarzbart on Joana and Philippe - although I suspect that getting someone like Rui would also be unfortunate.

 

Ability gains from adventures - Oan's is fairly easy, and the Dance of Fools is a gift, but in the very early game I'd aim for one of the cheap skill boosts (planning 3: Learn from mistakes; danger sense 4: goose bumps, War 2 Understand Strategy; or Acrobatics 3) and get a point or 2 from Zoe'ing my way to study 10 as Schwarzbart says.

 

I quite like descended from heroes, the glory's fairly minor, but you also get a point of luck, and getting a point of fitness to cancel out the stress penalty isn't too hard - particularly if you got running as your sports background skill and can do a pair of crippling runs on the day you need to rest - a few of those and you should get the fitness bump that you need.

 

Familiar's - I've not done much with them, there's always been so much for my student to do themselves that familiars seemed excessive. I've tried a cat on this run through and had to give up on the adventure - poor kitty just wasn't close to hsving what it took due to her feeder's failure to train her properly

[Schwarzbart]

Svinik you know that there is a ability at zoology 11 to change your familiar with a random exotic one?

Thats why I personal usualy don't consider the point in familiar wort it unless I want a specific one.

[hdghg]

Getting zoology to 11 is not trivial though - it's a parent skill so that means you need 3 subskills at 11. Unless I've missed something that's 30 actions in researching (ouch!) or 30 relationship points plus probably a fair bit of reloading to increase skill caps from favours. If you have your heart set on a non-Pamela familiar then that's a pretty steep price to avoid spending a chargen point.

 

Of course, if skill caps are increasing in Y2 and getting zoology 11 becomes straightforward then that'd have an impact on the value of buying a familiar.

 

Also, I just noticed how I am totally derailing this thread from its original question onto a discussion of chargen choices. Of course I decided to post my derailing post anyway...

[Legate of Mineta]

hdghg;

 

As you will see, while the Skill cap does increase in Y2, it is not necessarily straightforward to get to 11...

[Schwarzbart]

Uhh what?

I'm curious how difficult it get in year 2 to get a non class skill to the new max and if class skills are still self runner that end at the max if you have a bit look at your attributes.

[Legate of Mineta]

Schwarzbart;

 

If you want to reach the new maximum you'll have to work for it, as you'll see. It's definitely possible, but you'll want to be strategic. More than that...I should not say.

[Svinik]

I'd heard of the zoology 11 ability, but as I haven't taken the class and only get to L5-6 through randoms & adventures it seemed a tad out of reach - plus I've been trying to fill out adventures on the wiki so didn't have time for sphinx-spamming (my hubris in thinking I could clear the non-familiar/college ones was clear, my spreadsheet listing the adventures shows masses outstanding, sigh, I just could get all the friendships up).

 

To be honest I think the real message in creation should be "don't sweat it" - over the game I tend to pick up 70 plus ability points and hundreds of skill points - the character creation ones are great for story, but I wouldn't say that there's a "wrong choice" unless you are going for the "perfect" game. Part of me says forget the grown-up "how to win" thinking and just pretend you really are that 13-year old kid, enjoy exploring and figuring life out as you go, your destiny lies before you but will be what you make it, so enjoy the ride, and don't sweat the destination until you're older.

[Schwarzbart]

I personal even prefer to have Zoology not as class skill when I go for the Exchange Familiar because I would loose ~1/2 a year of class training there.

The problem is that you start at 0 with the new familiar and to manage a good enough training of your familiar to get trough its adventure you need a vew months with improved familiar handling.

(The training requirement was for me a reason why I complained against the to high difficultys of many familiar adventures as they haved a difficulty as if the player would do it him self and not the familiar)

[freespace2dotcom]

I suspect greatly that raising the skill cap will be similar to how you do it in Y1. Just on a greater scale due to having a lot more options as it is now the focus of training. There will likely be new sub skills to accommodate this.