Bay 12 Games Forum

Was he on the same level of stupid as George W. Bush was?

Eh... not really? Different kind of terrible. Not so much "same level" as "different but equal level". Just curtailed by the smaller scale.

... yeah, couldn't have done that, m'self. Normally pretty pain resistant, but both sets have been days-straight sinus-headache levels of pain even with the opiates. I... probably would have killed myself, instead, because fuck that with a rusty nail studded cactus. Or at least tore out my eye, because it's been goddamn tempting enough as it is. Why the jaw is somehow connected to the eye socket in regards to nerve endings I don't even freaking know.

Helps that the stuff I got isn't actually fun. Somewhat relaxing, and obviously pain killing, but the physical side of it's pretty unpleasant. Kinda' feels like part of my insides are hollowed out or somethin' while they're seriously kicking in. Nasty shit. Effective, but recreational it is not.

Apparently corpses in provinces lets you animate humanoid manikins, which are better than the animal critter ones.

Hnn... not really. Humanoid manikins are like your third worst manikin, after harpies and plain... wolves, or something like that. Both of your best manikins (bear, elephant) are animals, as are... well, all of your better ones but maybe the minotaurs, if you assume the centaurs are naturally omitted. The order of quality goes something like harpy->wolf carrion beast->plain manikin (humanoid)->boar carrion beast->satyr manikin (humanoid)->horse carrion beast->mandragora (humanoid?)->minotaur manikin (humanoid?)->bear carrion beast-> elephant carrion beast. And of the upper ranks, the mandragoras in particular are quite rare. You can do a lot worse than an aspho chaff blob made mostly from the better carrion beasts. The humanoid ones do tend to have somewhat better attack/defense scores, but it's fairly marginal and the animal one's greater HP/protection tends to (readily, if you've got access to H4 via prophet or booster) make up any difference on that front.

As for the water bless, I generally... well, personally, I don't really see the point to taking a water bless if you're not going major. Defense isn't a particularly sexy, well, defense stat. If I were going for an expanding pretender, I'd probably nab the gorgon or great white bull -- s'like I said, regardless of anything else you want at least that minor earth bless. Any nation with as many sacred casters as aspho has wants that minor earth bless, heh. Still, if you were going with that dragon, with the intent to bless your black centaurs, you'd probably want to go ahead and get W6 and completely offset the berserk penalty, heh. Though... do remember, if you can nab up at least S1 indies, which isn't terribly unlikely, you can start putting out shrouds for your pans. Good stuff, that, if you've got N/e.

As for the extreme temperatures... well, there's something to be said for that. I'd still almost want to go for heat instead of cold, strictly to deny enemy undead that extra boost (and make using your own in conjunction with your unresistant chaff horde less painful), but particularly if you take the currently incessantly hammered upon minor earth bless, it wouldn't be that terrible for your more prolific battlecasters, as well. I guess it depends mostly on what other nations are in the game with you -- if you can handle going extreme either way, might as well pick the one that's going to cause the most annoyance for the most people.

Incidentally, your main battlefield casters are probably going to be living dryads (hag or otherwise) and panic apostles -- carrion lords and ladies are honestly too expensive to use en masse, so you'll be leaning on your recruitables for on-the-ground force projection. The carrion ladies are actually kinda' total junk (better two centaurs than one lady, >95% of the time) and I would probably never recommend summoning them, honestly, whereas the lords are SC-chassis and heavy battlecasters/mass manikin buffers -- specialists, instead of something you're going to have tons of. And your other casters are all recruit-anywhere, which means if you can mumble up the gold you can have an unholy bucketload of them, especially if you're not spending (much) money on supporting actual troops.

As for the F/E divergence, remember if you can get fire brands (which would be nice strictly to give you diversity, and make it so the enemy can't just casually slip on cold res and ignore your thugs) you can probably manage charcoal and gleaming gold shields as well, and both of those are somewhat deliciously brutal. It's nice to have the option, makes you somewhat harder to counter.

... also I'm totally kinda' rambly, so anyone with better ways of putting any of that are terribly welcome to join in. Ruddy painkillers.

I don't see how it's compatible with violent retaliation though.

Not so much compatible as potentially not incompatible. As the wiki page actually mentions, iirc, Streaker J doesn't say much on what to do in the case of reacting to life-threatening violence, only (in these cases) on how to react to being stolen from or maybe abused. You can take that to imply a wider degree of action, but given that the critter's apparently not terribly chuffed about war, or violent law enforcement (capital punishment, et al, seems to be alright by 'im -- or, at least, again, not directly spoken on terribly much), it'd probably be pretty easy to make a case the authors were, at least, uncommitted in regards to violent retaliation in the case of certain thresholds of violence.

All that said, Wink's interpretation makes for much more amusing headcanon, and I like it better, now. Christ, He Who Advocated Public Indecency to Shame Your Oppressors.

Streaker J is yesunim's street name now, by the way.

Not so much "weird" as "willing to ignore the words of Christ when it comes to self-defense".

You're in good company, really. Pretty much every Christian selectively chooses what and what not to actually follow.

You heretic

Wikipedia, maaan.

That wink fellow's interpretation is pretty interesting. Not so much non-resistence as Jesus advocating being a jackass in response to jackassery. Might be interesting to do some research and see how justified an interpretation it is...

I kinda' like the sense of escalation in the cloak bit. "Take my shirt, eh? Well, alright, time to flash a foo'. Cost of admission, one eyefull of my entire righteous splendor! It has more wrinkles than an elephant's arse, AND NOW I'M GOING TO SHARE!"

And now I can see a situation where "Naked Pelvic Thrusts For God" is actually a thing. I wonder how a mugger would actually react to that?

Please. Ebolabats are still an existent species. Any oppression to date has been solely incidental. We have not yet begun to oppress ebolabats. You will know when we start when they go extinct.

This is what I get for skimming.

There's a tiny part of me that always hopes to have an excuse to post that picture in relation to a discussion on religion.