An Outing

[Albert]

Ah, I never saw the "slip the masters Mark" ability.

 

Anyway, part of the fun with the game is the ability to do the crazy stuff That's all, I'm not sugesting all of it is the best or smartest thing to do.

Also, it would be a different World if everyone operated that way.

[Metis]

Fair enough, especially since as is you can't actually get it ingame. DLC 17 might change that, though.

 

True, but if there's practically no point it's not crazy awesome so much as just crazy. Rest assured, though, I've got crazy awesome planned for the An Outing... adventure line. If, that is, it'll ever exist.

[Schwarzbart]

Metis because you never published your mod that increased the Synchronicity SS max no one saw the level 11 skills except of you ^^

[Metis]

True, but it's come up a few times before, so I...kinda assume people know.

[Albert]

True, but it's come up a few times before, so I...kinda assume people know.

I only remember hearing it was removable, the temporary slip sounds even more interesting.

 

I prefer it if my character is able to do anything, including lobotomising him/herself

It's the choices that creates the excitement.

 

Now all I need is psychopatic indifference, as a skill to combine Sync and Mastery Rise of the new puppetmaster! I'm sure one of my characters would make a delightful psychopath as it grows up.

Then the victims would just cry out of joy as they are gettign vivisected for Entertainment, because they know they are entertaiing the master... Monster beyond Dragon kind... Perhaps master a few dragons for some fun and toys aswell

Hybris at it's best!

Setup some Dragon pitfights with betting, the house Always wins btw.

[Metis]

Try to recall, someone sorely lacking Empathy cannot use Sync. Yes, Empathy does not necessarily equate sympathy, but when using Sync it kinda...well, has to. Complications may arise otherwise.

[Dreamweaver]

Try to recall, someone sorely lacking Empathy cannot use Sync. Yes, Empathy does not necessarily equate sympathy, but when using Sync it kinda...well, has to. Complications may arise otherwise.

But we can learn Sync against our will from randomness and besides I don't agree that someone who can empathize with people can't choose to ignore that part of themselves. Empathy just means you have an innate understanding of other people, not that you have to like them or be nice to them. I can empathize with, and understand bullies, doesn't mean I don't hate and despise them.

 

Someone less moral than me might understand people quite well, yet choose to be selfish, or suppress their empathy "for the greater good" as part of some ideological scheme like I'm sure Communists, Nazis and other fanatics have done in the real world. After all, the vast majority of people are capable of a fair bit of empathy and yet a sizable part of the population are jerks.

 

I don't really like when possessing a skill in the game makes assumptions on my characters personality, like when you've learned "ethics" (which I'd say is knowledge) you sometimes behave more ethically correct. Otherwise reaching a certain level of Sync should trigger an event where you can clarify your personality and get a skill malus if it's appropriate.

 

At any rate I've avoided the adventure as I resent being controlled and spied on, especially as I tend to unlock Sync randomly anyways.

 

Lore-wise surely only empathy would be a problem at all, the other 3 sub-skills are either instinct or knowledge. As for empathy, it only signifies instinctual understanding and only forms an advisory part of your conscience which is really quite optional to act upon. Just like having deep knowledge of ethics and law doesn't mean you have to act in accordance with it.

 

Anyway is it confirmed by the devs what the exact lore and limits are on the subject? As I understand it you suggested the skill, but they might have used it as inspiration for their own take on it.

[Metis]

But we can learn Sync against our will from randomness and besides I don't agree that someone who can empathize with people can't choose to ignore that part of themselves. Empathy just means you have an innate understanding of other people, not that you have to like them or be nice to them. I can empathize with, and understand bullies, doesn't mean I don't hate and despise them.

 

Someone less moral than me might understand people quite well, yet choose to be selfish, or suppress their empathy "for the greater good" as part of some ideological scheme like I'm sure Communists, Nazis and other fanatics have done in the real world. After all, the vast majority of people are capable of a fair bit of empathy and yet a sizable part of the population are jerks.

 

I don't really like when possessing a skill in the game makes assumptions on my characters personality, like when you've learned "ethics" (which I'd say is knowledge) you sometimes behave more ethically correct. Otherwise reaching a certain level of Sync should trigger an event where you can clarify your personality and get a skill malus if it's appropriate.

 

At any rate I've avoided the adventure as I resent being controlled and spied on, especially as I tend to unlock Sync randomly anyways.

 

Lore-wise surely only empathy would be a problem at all, the other 3 sub-skills are either instinct or knowledge. As for empathy, it only signifies instinctual understanding and only forms an advisory part of your conscience which is really quite optional to act upon. Just like having deep knowledge of ethics and law doesn't mean you have to act in accordance with it.

 

Anyway is it confirmed by the devs what the exact lore and limits are on the subject? As I understand it you suggested the skill, but they might have used it as inspiration for their own take on it.

 

The random learning of skills is...really more of a gameplay thing, not a lore thing I think. Otherwise I'd certainly like an explanation about how, theoretically, stuff like Office Hours could teach stuff like Total Control if you rolled the right skill at the right time. And when I said "Yes, Empathy does not necessarily equate sympathy, but when using Sync it kinda...well, has to" I meant while actively using Sync. Like, while casting a spell, let's say, that requires you to roll Empathy for it to work you can't exactly ignore (or supposedly not really have) your empathy without the spell plain not working. Beyond that you certainly have at least some measure of control about when and where to apply it. Or not apply it.

 

I did indeed suggest it (the idea, at least), but as far as I recall the Legate never publicly mentioned anything about how exactly Sync works, and I also don't remember him ever correcting me when I said something on the subject. The current canon status of pretty much everything not ingame is "neither confirmed or denied" as far as I know.

[isadorbg]

But we can learn Sync against our will from randomness and besides I don't agree that someone who can empathize with people can't choose to ignore that part of themselves. Empathy just means you have an innate understanding of other people, not that you have to like them or be nice to them. I can empathize with, and understand bullies, doesn't mean I don't hate and despise them.

 

Someone less moral than me might understand people quite well, yet choose to be selfish, or suppress their empathy "for the greater good" as part of some ideological scheme like I'm sure Communists, Nazis and other fanatics have done in the real world. After all, the vast majority of people are capable of a fair bit of empathy and yet a sizable part of the population are jerks.

 

I mostly agree with you but I think that what Metis meant was that when using Sync the bond between the user and the patient is so fusional and intense that the Empathy between the two is multiplied tenfold or something... .

 

I guess that using Sync already requires a natural and big amount of Empathy and Sensitiveness given how you basically open your mind and feeling to the other maybe not everything but a lot and not in words and gestures like normally but instinctively like if you shared the same body and the same mind.

So a cold or selfish person might find it harder to bond with Sync given how himself might not want to share his inner self and his character does not help the patient to open himself either.

 

For exemple if you use Sync while torturing someone (or using it to torture) you'll probably feel the other sadness, pain, anger etc. having images of his family, friends as he think about them, feel his plea for mercy all of this far louder than shouts and cries ever will be.

 

So I guess a huge amount of willpower and unsensitiveness is required to stomach such uses of Sync which kinda goes on the opposite of what is required for the intended uses of this particular magic.

 

I don't think it's impossible tough just that you have to be a heartless (and powerfull) mothaf****.

 

Hope that helped you Metis. :D

[Dreamweaver]

I guess what I mostly had in mind was a bad person using it to spy on someone and get "a read" on him, not actively torturing him meanwhile!

 

So sure I've no doubt sharing the feelings of someone you are hurting is going to be most unpleasant and something only a hardened, deranged fanatic could reliably do; I mainly took issue with the notion that having learned the skillset inherent to Sync you'd automatically be disinclined to abuse it or subvert restrictions on Mastery.

Especially as the adventure basically means you are forced to comply, which doesn't say much about your true motivations. Heck, you might study Sync obsessively in some vain hope to get better at regular Mastery, or better at hiding what you do. I guess it would provide an excellent excuse for having Mastery residual energy on your person, making it more necessary to actually get caught red-handed.

 

As for random skill gains some of the particular moments don't really make sense but I don't see any lore reason why you couldn't learn Synchronicity on your own when you can learn other banned magic, I'm sure a book makes mention of it somewhere. By the way is Instinct supposed to be a supernatural ability or something you could learn by yourself?

 

I noticed that you can max Sync without learning Empathy at all. My character just learns Instinct because it's powerful, but as for the others only Serenity has some use and the others don't offer much (unless you want the spells at least). Which means learning to be an accomplished Sync user is probably of debatable usefulness if you don't want to use it for mental healing or some such, but many elements of the skill can be quite useful for an aspiring wizard of questionable morals.

[isadorbg]

Well I agree that spying or "reading" a person using Sync is probably not that difficult afterall getting/wanting to know someone (and more importantly what s/he "knows" ) is also a part of what empathy entails.

 

And I don't think it needs Mastery only perhaps a ill-intended person might need some form of "dispassion" ( ) to hide his malevolance to his target. Sharing his feeling might make even a good liar too obvious.

 

As for the Mastery-Sync mix. Metis used to say that this can be a recipe for disaster and I can see that it can be in some cases as Sync requires an amount of personal involvement that Mastery as far as I know doesn't at all.

 

And I certainly have a lot more ideas on how this could go further wrong altough I did disagree that it would always be a failure. Funnily I remember having this discussion about Empathy with Metis but I don't remember where.

[Metis]

I guess what I mostly had in mind was a bad person using it to spy on someone and get "a read" on him, not actively torturing him meanwhile!

 

So sure I've no doubt sharing the feelings of someone you are hurting is going to be most unpleasant and something only a hardened, deranged fanatic could reliably do; I mainly took issue with the notion that having learned the skillset inherent to Sync you'd automatically be disinclined to abuse it or subvert restrictions on Mastery.

Especially as the adventure basically means you are forced to comply, which doesn't say much about your true motivations. Heck, you might study Sync obsessively in some vain hope to get better at regular Mastery, or better at hiding what you do. I guess it would provide an excellent excuse for having Mastery residual energy on your person, making it more necessary to actually get caught red-handed.

 

As for random skill gains some of the particular moments don't really make sense but I don't see any lore reason why you couldn't learn Synchronicity on your own when you can learn other banned magic, I'm sure a book makes mention of it somewhere. By the way is Instinct supposed to be a supernatural ability or something you could learn by yourself?

 

I noticed that you can max Sync without learning Empathy at all. My character just learns Instinct because it's powerful, but as for the others only Serenity has some use and the others don't offer much (unless you want the spells at least). Which means learning to be an accomplished Sync user is probably of debatable usefulness if you don't want to use it for mental healing or some such, but many elements of the skill can be quite useful for an aspiring wizard of questionable morals.

Just spying is theoretically possible, but probably impractical to the point of uselessness. Especially because doing so without the other person knowing would be...hard.

 

The thing with you learning the skills and it making assumptions of your PC's personality is that in using Sync you will unavoidably learn how people feel and think differently than you do. That's kinda the entire idea - stepping past the barrier between two minds and making them work as one. And once you have that knowledge you cannot use stuff like Mastery without knowing and remembering, on some level, exactly what you're doing to them even when you're not actively using Sync and what you're making someone go through. Parts of that are actually part of An Outing... too, IIRC, though I can't get you an exact quote at this very moment since my cheaty test character has Mastery ranks and part of the information is in the "has not touched Mastery" branch.

Speaking of that adventure, BTW, the reason it assumes that your character only studied Mastery out of curiosity and not because s/he is any measure of evil is because that's the only possible characterization the PC can have without logically suffering a game over in that instance. Leene won't throw an ignorant PC to the guards if she believes that the PC isn't a lost cause, but if the PC really is evil she would have brought him/her before the Captain and that would have been a game over. Yes, Leene is fresh from an Embrace so that would be like tossing her son/daughter to the wolves as the adventure notes, but she's been trained to handle her emotions if necessary. If it came to it she'd live, and she knows that she would, so she would do what she'd believe necessary.

 

Sync is rare, possibly rarer than Gates or Mastery, but it certainly exists. It's more location and person/book teaching than anything. The Sphinx randomly teaching the PC Subtle Calm? Perfectly reasonable. Watch a Conley Trial from the Observation Gallery teaching Blood Tarantula? Less so. And Instinct isn't supernatural by itself, it's just a mundane skill just as much as weaving is, but training it very high can make it look like a superpower relative to people who don't have it trained. Think how fast a race car driver can slam the break after seeing he needs to compared to someone who drives as much as an average person does. It's not a superpower, but it's the difference a trained Instinct skill makes.

 

Yeah, the "3 skills needed to raise parent skill" is more game mechanics than how it should actually work. Like you logically shouldn't be able to do (as) much with, say, Glamour when you don't study Glamour Methods at all you likewise shouldn't be as proficient with Sync when you don't pick up Empathy. Of course if you don't want Sync you can certainly learn just Instinct and not have any problems. There's a reason why Empathy and Instinct isn't called Sync Methods and Sync Phemes or some such - they're their own skills with their own uses even separate from Sync.

 

Well I agree that spying or "reading" a person using Sync is probably not that difficult afterall getting/wanting to know someone (and more importantly what s/he "knows" ) is also a part of what empathy entails.

 

And I don't think it needs Mastery only perhaps a ill-intended person might need some form of "dispassion" ( ) to hide his malevolance to his target. Sharing his feeling might make even a good liar too obvious.

 

As for the Mastery-Sync mix. Metis used to say that this can be a recipe for disaster and I can see that it can be in some cases as Sync requires an amount of personal involvement that Mastery as far as I know doesn't at all.

 

And I certainly have a lot more ideas on how this could go further wrong altough I did disagree that it would always be a failure. Funnily I remember having this discussion about Empathy with Metis but I don't remember where.

That's true, and actually Mental Bridging teaches an ability literally called Judge Character. I was thinking through Embraces specifically, that would be a bit of a different story.

 

There's a reason Composure gives at least one boost to Lie.

 

Yup. Sync and Mastery, under very specific circumstances, can be mixed without losing empathy...but the results might be...bad.

 

It can also succeed, but one shouldn't expect it to and when results require a trip through a mental minefield it is best to stay patient and just let sleeping dogs lie. That topic, BTW, I'm pretty sure was Playing with/ Thoughts on the Game in General.

[Dreamweaver]

Right, at any rate you are quite unlikely to get past 2-3 in any skill from randomness alone, but any random skill I gain that doesn't fit the situation I just pretend the Sphinx told me instead (usually she did).

 

Anyway despite "knowing exactly what you are doing to them" some people just aren't going to care much, many of the most heinous real world crimes are committed by people who experienced the exact same thing in their own childhood. You are right though, that a person like that probably would experience great difficulty with the Empathy skill at least. Ideally an event should fire when you get the skill then depending on your picks you might get maximum Empathy skill reduced to 5 or something. On the other hand it's not like I choose to learn it anyhow, so I guess barring that it can just be left to roleplaying.

 

About Synchronicity, while I'm sure the official users wouldn't want to teach it to you I'd be very surprised indeed if it wasn't possible, either through correct application of Sync itself (mixed with high lying/dispassion) or through mixing it with proper Mastery, to "close" parts of your mind to scrutiny to show a fake facade and perhaps to limit the impressions you get in return as well. Naturally not against another more skilled Sync user, but if you were going to use it on a more conventional target.

 

Maybe it would also be possible to do a stealth semi one-way bond to avoid notice (at least from an untrained person). Probably strictly forbidden, but then so is the rest of Mastery.

 

My character despite being an aspiring villain/anti-hero would not constitute "evil" if she undertook An Outing. She does mostly learn Mastery out of curiosity or perhaps more accurately to be "more powerful", without any specific goal in mind more than "just because". I guess an accurate reading would reveal her to be arrogant, selfish, prideful and vain with a sprinkle of envy and hatred. It would have to be a pretty loose definition of evil for that to qualify, however, and it's not like she's beyond redemption, she's just a kid. She'll probably turn out to be more anti-hero than villain I'm sure...

 

Still, I avoid the adventure as I prefer the scenario of my character going unnoticed through year 1.

 

Oh and as for instinct somehow with the bonuses involved I can't help feeling it's a tad supernatural just not specifically from a spell, just more in a similar way to how Pure Luck works by semi-unconsciously altering reality a bit.

[Albert]

Dangersense in it's description and implementation commes a cross as fairly supernatural aswell. It's almost like Spideysense from "spiderman", or Jedi precognition allowing them to deflect or Dodge blaster bolts.

[Metis]

Yeah. Tell that to the Sphinx and Gates magic. And Mastery, as well. I don't think I've ever had a character that, if I didn't manipulate the random skill gains, would be at or below "casual contact" levels.

 

Perhaps, honestly. Thing is that the Empathy problem is something a Sync-learning PC doesn't really run into until they're at higher levels of Sync skill ranks (like, beyond Y2 level high), and the An Outing... adventure line plain assumes that it never comes up. Yes, that assumes something from your character's, well, character, but to do otherwise would be very handily shooting both itself and the PC in the foot a year or three too late.

 

The problem with self-teaching is simply that you're going to run into a mountain of thing you don't understand and pretty much have to figure out through trial and error, and trying to fill the gaps with Mastery is just adding even more non-existent fuel to the already fume-powered fire. Sync, at least on some level, is done on instinct. It's not just "wave wand like this and expect a result between this and this", particularly higher skill levels I imagine it's feeling things through and knowing - not "thinking", "knowing" - how to direct your emotions and (through that) the emotions of others. You can't effectively learn that yourself through trial and error, and how do you propose that a book even attempts to explain that in a way that a student will be able to replicate it from reading that alone?

 

As for the "semi-one way bond", lying and closing your mind from someone else when using Sync kinda doesn't work and goes against the entire idea of it. "Synchronicity, in this circumstance, refers to the magical skill and practice of aligning one's mind with another's - usually to shield against pain or to offer guidance against deeply held fears.", as the in-game description of Sync says. Lying doesn't work when words are skipped entirely in favor or transmitting thoughts and feelings directly, and if you attempt to close your mind than, well...yeah. Not to say that you couldn't, say, hide information you don't want others to know, but that can't be done through lying. You'd need different skills to do that on an instinctual level. Also not saying that a semi-one way bond absolutely can't work in any way, shape or form, but you'd again need different skills than Sync to do it (or different skills in addition to Sync, I'm not sure).

 

Yeah, during An Outing... Leene has you under full Embrace so whatever motivations, history or whatever your character has, she can and will find out if she discovers that you've studied Mastery. That's not to say she'll understand everything without the PC being in a good enough state of mind to provide context (Gates magic to name one example), but she can get a good read off of the PC and his/her motivation. And I'm not sure if she'd consider someone who studies Mastery for the promise of power to be save-able. That's kinda the exact opposite of Serenity, and you being theoretically able to learn Sync instead of Mastery might be her cut-off point for "should I not throw this kid to the guards as I legally should?".

 

Definitely possible. And I do still intend for there to be the option of convincing the Sphinx to teach you Sync in Y2 and beyond if you learned it without going through An Outing... in Y1, it's just that typing around Y2 mechanics is frustrating and the Sphinx wouldn't be an option for people who want to learn Sync and Mastery at the same time anyway. The Sphinx knows what comes of combining Sync and Mastery even more so than House Kazus itself, so that option is more to avoid being put on government records (for one reason or another).

 

Instinct isn't supernatural by nature, I think, it just seems that way when you look at someone who's trained it and compare to someone who didn't train it. Danger Sense...I'm less sure about, and seeing as how the question does involve students of a magic school it really could be either.

[Dreamweaver]

Well surely desiring to be more powerful by any means necessary is softened somewhat by the desire to use the power for the "good of mankind" and such?

 

I said the Lie skill because of the dishonesty involved, basically you avoid thinking certain things and present half-truths and ambiguous answers to remain technically honest while actually misleading without saying something that's false. Also good liars can often convince themselves they are speaking truth of sorts.

 

Also isn't Serenity the ability to enter "a state of mind" as per meditation, as opposed to a personality trait (not desiring power)?

 

Beyond that it's possible to use Mastery on yourself, then you can segment your mind to trick a casual examination. Is Mastery able to provide thought-reading? If it is then I guess there's no point learning proper Sync for selfish reasons, but if not then I don't see why you shouldn't combine Sync and Mastery.

 

Surely someone doing an embrace doesn't experience the subject's entire life in seconds, they may have access to examine and understand all sorts of things about the person but there are limits to how fast a human mind can process that information and I don't accept that it's always a flawless process. It must be possible to miss things, especially if the subject knows how it works. Maybe a Y1 student wouldn't be capable of tricking Leene but it must be possible for someone more experienced, at least to the point where all she can determine is that something is off about the subject, not details.

 

As for instinct it'd be difficult for a mundane person to learn to be prepared to react swiftly to "anything", usually you gain that ability by training against specific scenarios. So by that logic I'd be more comfortable thinking of high level Instinct as leaning on magic like Pure Luck or Danger Sense.

[Metis]

Nope, at least not as far as Serenity is concerned : "The skill underlying Serenity is all about understanding and embracing all the possibilities of the moment you're in - and not wanting more. With serenity, you can set aside pain, you can focus your thoughts, you can control what you can control and you can forget about the rest. It's a skill most never learn."

 

Yeah, on an instinctual level lying doesn't work like that. Instinctually (which is apparently not a word though I could swear that it is) you know what is true and what is not, and while you might be able to pick and choose what to say and believe you'll always know what is actually true. Good liars I think can mess with their own heads to block out that information temporarily, but messing with yourself on that level is...not conductive to pretty much anything Sync attempts to accomplish.

 

I suppose so, but personally I follow the idea that a character is at least partially defined by their stats. "It's just intellectual knowledge" I can understand in cases like Ethics and Law, but Serenity actually isn't one of them (none of Sync's subskills are, actually). Of course that can be just a personal thing.

 

Telepathy at least is part of proper Mastery, you can see that during The Keystone IIRC, and I imagine mind reading is likewise part of it. And Sync really doesn't invite selfish people to study it by nature. The reason to learn Sync over Mastery is really more of a question of preferred methods and personal morality. The results have considerable overlap. As for not combining them, well, the two tend to be opposed to each other simply by nature of how they work. Attempting to combine them tends to...not have favorable results.

 

It's certainly not that fast or a perfect process no matter what, but missing something would require a botched roll on the part of the person doing the Embracing...or a successful contested roll on the part of the person being Embraced at less than even odds when all other things are equal. Thing is, that contested roll isn't a matter of lying, it's a matter of being better trained at Sync than the person performing the Embrace. No amount of plain old willpower or wishful thinking is going to stop someone who doesn't completely botch their empathy roll from noticing you're knowingly trying to hide information.

 

Could very well be, honestly, we won't know for sure until we see what the 40-50 ranks of Instinct unlock...and that'll be a while.

[Dreamweaver]

Oh sure but there is a difference between noticing that you are "hiding things" and noticing that you are hiding being a Mastery user. She has no real authority to mess with anyone's mind against their will without a good reason anyhow.

 

I'm sure you can dodge a thorough read without actual Sync skills if you don't mind being obvious about it, stuff like stubbornly thinking about certain subjects and avoiding others. Like you said Sync requires empathy but avoiding someone trying to empathize with you shouldn't require any empathy. The better you are at resisting being empathized with the higher roll would be required for it, so essentially it would be some kind of contested roll. They might just get the reading that you seem to be a cold and unpleasant person, but that isn't illegal.

 

There is an event where someone uses Mastery on you to get information and you can dodge it by stubbornly thinking about other things.

 

You've managed to convince me a Mastery user has no real use for Sync though, as he can accomplish everything Sync can do more easily with regular Mastery (as long as he don't care about the well-being of the subject at least). Aside from Instinct that is, which is universally useful.

 

Your quote on Serenity doesn't state you must be serene at all times, just that you are capable of being serene. "With serenity, you can set aside pain, you can focus your thoughts, you can control what you can control and you can forget about the rest." as a skill it's something you can choose to utilize or not, it may have a degree of effect on your personality but it can't be defining because then it's not a skill.

 

Also already at 10 Instinct you get +3% chance to succeed at anything you attempt to do. That's not something a regular person could achieve. So already at Y1 I think it feels like a supernatural ability.

[Metis]

I think that detecting a Mastery user is actually easier than detecting plain old secrets, since Mastery leaves a distinct residue that can be detected without having to know exactly what it did. Maybe. Although it's true that Leene doesn't sift through the head of everyone she meets "just in case" or something, it just so happens that the PC in An Outing... got really poor (or good, depending on who you ask) luck.

 

During an Embrace it's absolutely required that neither party resists any attempts of the other to receive and be allowed to send data. If either does the Embrace simply doesn't work, and resisting it knowingly is kinda highly suspicious if you're suspected of practising Mastery. Not to say that you can't anyway, but during situations where you really don't want people to know resisting the old fashioned way will quickly make the point of resisting moot.

 

True, but that's proper Mastery. Embraces work differently, even though the spell is itself a Mastery spell technically.

 

Yes and no. There's some things Mastery can do that Sync can't, even ignoring the whole "control others" aspect, but likewise there's things that Sync can do which Mastery can't. Nominally you can learn either and do pretty much everything either way, but the methods and results won't be exactly the same. Especially for the patient/people you Master.

 

True, but I personally define character partially on skills. Especially skills that are less learned knowledge and more instinctual (like the Sync skills) I presume have at least some effect. I certainly don't expect someone who trained Instinct to have the ability to just "turn off" that stuff when they feel like it. In fact, mechanically you can't undo the permanent abilities that, say, Instinct gives you at high levels short of...I don't even know what, so I presume that it's a mark of permanent change/growth of the PC's character.

 

EDIT: Incidentally, this is like the fourth discussion on Sync I've been a part of that the Legate hasn't commented on at all. So the canon status of pretty much everything not stated in the adventure is (yet again) nebulous at best.

[Dreamweaver]

Well resisting the Embrace entirely would be ideal, that way she has no way of knowing for sure why you resisted, maybe a mundane secret you had was just that important to you. It would have to be a pretty damning reason to make them assume you must be a Mastery user just because you refuse to cooperate. For all they know you just loathe and detest something even remotely tied to Mastery and won't submit for that reason.

 

Acting really suspiciously also isn't illegal, though the scrutiny would probably force you to lay low or move elsewhere.

 

Detecting the residue from Mastery isn't Synchronicity it belongs to other Pillars and it doesn't detect knowledge it detects recent spell use. If you were suspected of using Mastery and refuse to get your head examined then they'd have to get a wizard to check for residue if none is found then you must be declared innocent.

 

Edit: I guess we could ask for a comment from the Legate in the question thread.

[Metis]

There's more than one reasonable reason to resist an Embrace even when there aren't any secrets involved, but when you were brought in on suspicion of some crime or another I'm pretty sure the guards wouldn't practice Innocent Until Proven Guilty as much as we're used to. The Captain especially.

 

Using Sync and then refusing the Mark is in the same boat, actually. There's reasons that are entirely reasonable why you'd refuse, but tradition holds that you're either with them or against them and you're going to be judged as such whether it's fair or not.

 

Not detecting it in the same way that Negation could, but noticing directly that some aspect of your mind has been tampered with through Mastery. Something has to change in order for Mastery to make a change, and I imagine that Sync could detect that during an Embrace. Actually, I know it can. Leene can do exactly that during An Outing..., so I have to assume it's possible. And I'm pretty sure that when you're suspected of Mastery the guards wouldn't let you go so easily. I imagine they'd at least question you on why you refused an examination, although plain lying will get you out of that one (heck, plain Persuasion could get you out of that if you know what an Embrace is like).

[Dreamweaver]

You are right that the whole innocent until proven guilty probably isn't adhered to all that strictly but Synchronicity isn't a public and respected field of study and their authority is limited. As far as I know no one in power actually practice Synchronicity themselves.

If there is reason for suspicion then surely checking for residue would be sufficient, if they demand an embrace then it's hardly much different from regular Mastery anyhow and I think the local populace is too fearful of abuse by zealous wizards to allow that.

 

Once an actual embrace is underway I've no doubt they could detect the Mastery more easily than most other things, but not if they resist as like you said an embrace would then fail. If you stubbornly refuse and then get cleared in a test for residue they couldn't do more then and there but it would be very foolish to continue Mastery studies as you'd probably be watched closely.

[Metis]

That is most likely true, but those that practice Sync tend to be under the thumb of people who do have power in some way, shape or form, and if someone in power says it works...and yes, Negation-based residue tests I assume are the standard method of determining guilt in that fashion, simply because it's a more practical method. Sync is more of an opportunity for defence, like if a suspect says "I didn't cast any Mastery spells at all, the Mastery residue on me is from that other spellcaster who tried to Master me!" the guards could call for Sync to determine if it's the truth. Of course Negation could do the same, compelling truth and all, but it's an option. In legal practice I suspect that Sync is mostly used to get information from suspected victims of Mastery, see if people's memories were tampered with and so on. Memory manipulation through Mastery is as effective as it is crude, relatively, and Sync can detect such things (and possibly restore the damage done...to an extent).

 

From a legal standpoint you would indeed be cleared, but I'm pretty sure that people will remember you refused the Embrace and you will indeed be judged as such.

[Albert]

Given what an "embrace" is, it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of people would refuse to get their whole being laid bare for a mastery type mage... nm potential accidents and sideeffects.

 

Also, it isn't a very equal society, social status will likely effect investigations, especialy if the evidence is sketchy and the whole situation bizzare.

 

If they made a move on Catherine Chard there would likely be some serious political blow back, somewhere it was stated that the Captain is the only one standing between the chards and their total dominance and Control of the city.

I'm sure there are other influential people and families out there, but they probably got them in their pocket one way or Another. Alliances, debts, marriage etz.

[Metis]

Yeah. Suffice to say that it's a last resort option regardless of social standing. And the Captain standing between the Chards and total domination of Mineta? Where's that referenced?