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[zomara0292]

Then you habe my guaranteed support on the next research action.

[RAM]

I kind of dislike the ape idea. Quadrupeds seem better equipped to be aware of what is above them, good for something that can fly. There are plenty of rodents that are quite articulate with their forward feet, I see no reason that traditional dragons can't use tools. they might have a little difficulty looking at what they are working on, but then again, rodents don't have that much of a problem and we could give dragons more neck flexibility than that if we wanted to. Meanwhile, the big issues of dragons are the innate magic as opposed to active magic. Which we have a head-start with the fire affinity and just need to branch out into magically toughened scales and magical flight-assistance. Even a rather puny dragon would be well worth it if they are tough and fast enough for scouting and can breath fire onto supplies and flammable terrain...

Action:
Research Dragons (2): Failbird105, RAM
Research Etching Darkness crystal ():
Research Mistress of the Unending Darkness (1): Frostgiant
Design Body of Flame ():
Design Blackscales (2): Crazyabe, Zomara0292

[Doomblade187]

We have a tie! You guys should break it.

[Taricus]

Action:
Research Dragons (2): Failbird105, RAM
Research Etching Darkness crystal ():
Research Mistress of the Unending Darkness (2): Frostgiant, Taricus
Design Body of Flame ():
Design Blackscales (2): Crazyabe, Zomara0292

[RAM]

Action:
Research Dragons (1): Failbird105
Research Etching Darkness crystal ():
Research Mistress of the Unending Darkness (3): Frostgiant, Taricus, RAM
Design Body of Flame ():
Design Blackscales (2): Crazyabe, Zomara0292

Meh, fine...

[Taricus]

Action:
Research Dragons (2): Failbird105, Taricus
Research Etching Darkness crystal ():
Research Mistress of the Unending Darkness (2): Frostgiant, RAM
Design Body of Flame ():
Design Blackscales (2): Crazyabe, Zomara0292

[Failbird105]

Alright so, here's my input on the two three current leading choices.

Design Blackscales - While I do like what these guys are going for, I feel like it will definitely wind up having flaws added onto it, all of the aspects are relatively mundane so I can't see them being too hard, but certainly not easy, possibly not normal either. These touch on no field of knowledge we have thus far, which means while we will get a bunch of new knowledge from them, they will also be made more difficult by such. I'd recommend adding a flaw or two to the design at least since that would logically make them less difficult, and probably adding a definition to "tall" because as is we don't know if that's supposed to mean human sized(our current guys are short after all), tall for humans, or taller than a human can possibly be. While this means that better rolls can give us greater results, it also likely makes the roll harder.

Research Dragons - The biggest drawback to this is it doesn't give us a design, merely a bonus to designing something related to dragons. However from this we can go off into designing something like lizardmen soldiers, but why hold back when we could just as easily go for dragon men soldiers that have fire affinity and fire breath, maybe even wings. From this we can also go off into straight up fucking dragons, as elites, champions, or just straight up our main soldiers if we feel like it, a line of large fire-breathing beast flying at you is more than likely a terrifying sight after all. From dragons we can potentially even make fire breath a staple of our forces, and likely spread flight around to give us.

Research MotUD - This shares the drawback from dragons of not giving us a design as it is a research action, however it also has the problem of not providing us any sort of bonus to making an effective front-line fighter, which we currently lack. It does set us up for further work in use of and protection from etching darkness however. The main problem is that I don't see the actual design working out, even with the research, it leaves a good bit of room for obvious weaknesses to be added which should make it a bit easier, but it also tries to do a LOT much of which would lead to it very easily not being worth two actions and however many points if cut out, all that on top of being a CHAMPION, which means that as far as I'm aware we get only one of them and they are likely to be quite a bit harder to design.

[RAM]

Action:
Research Dragons (3): Failbird105, Taricus, RAM
Research Etching Darkness crystal ():
Research Mistress of the Unending Darkness (1): Frostgiant
Design Body of Flame ():
Design Blackscales (2): Crazyabe, Zomara0292

Call me Ishmael

[piratejoe]

Action:
Research Dragons (3): Failbird105, Taricus, RAM
Research Etching Darkness crystal ():
Research Mistress of the Unending Darkness (2): Frostgiant, Piratejoe
Design Body of Flame ():
Design Blackscales (2): Crazyabe, Zomara0292

[Taricus]

Alright, As I've expressed on the discord I find none of the options palatable to actually pick (Hence my enforcement of the 3-way draw).

Research: Biology: By studying the intricate components to living, organic mortal life would undoubtedly make us more skilled at improving and developing all the organs necessary to the performance of biological creatures.

Revision: Forgebound: Increasing the natural capacities of the imps, we could have a particularly skilled labourers that are magically talented and heat resistant. While losing the wings, and exchanging the claws for humanoid hands, the bodies of the forgebound are broadened and laden in muscle and some fat with extra fire/heat resistance built in them.

Most interestingly is the mental changes to the forgebound; more industrious, diligent & sociable than their imp forebears, the forgebound are able to work and fight alongside one another easily and without complaint.

Research: Vampirism: Vampires have been creatures associated with darkness from the moment they have been in the mortal consciousness. The midnight aristocracy would make for an excellent addition to the armies of darkness, providing us with peerless elites and formidable officers. But the weaknesses typically associated with them need to first be sorted out and eliminated.

Design: One Handed Blunt Weapons. Warhammers, Maces & Clubs. Designed to break bones and inflict blunt trauma onto flesh. While not terribly effective against soft targets and requiring some measure of strength behind a blow to be effective, the ability to ignore 'hard' armour and break stiffer & more brittle materials isn't something to bwe underestimated.

Action:
Research Dragons (2): Failbird105, RAM
Research Etching Darkness crystal (0):
Research Mistress of the Unending Darkness (2): Frostgiant, Piratejoe
Research Biology (0):
Research Vampirism (0):
Design Body of Flame (0):
Design Blackscales (2): Crazyabe, Zomara0292
Design One Handed Blunt Weapons (0):
Revision Forgebound (1): Taricus

[Failbird105]

Action:
Research Dragons (1): RAM
Research Etching Darkness crystal (0):
Research Mistress of the Unending Darkness (2): Frostgiant, Piratejoe
Research Biology (0):
Research Vampirism (0):
Design Body of Flame (0):
Design Blackscales (3): Crazyabe, Zomara0292, Failbird105
Design One Handed Blunt Weapons (0):
Revision Forgebound (1): Taricus

sigh fine. I'd rather take making a capable infantry unit that is under explained and trying to do like three new things at once with no research than any of the other options currently available, and I doubt anyone else is willing to change to dragon research at this point, so I guess dragons just won't be coming.

As for your ideas Taricus, I'm going to go over the problems with them one by one.
Blunt Weapon Design - Why would we make melee weapons when we don't even have a capable front line soldier to wield them yet?
Vampirism Research - We don't have basic front line infantry why would we be making or even researching elite units?
Forgebound - I already went into my tirade about how I absolutely refuse to just make bigger better imps until we have a solid army that isn't reliant on imps and other demonic beings. Also while the general knowledge doesn't say that imps don't have wings or that they do have hands, I feel like that's the more logical assumption to make and that the opposite is what would be mentioned if it were true, and otherwise this just makes them a little tougher, even less burnable, and more cooperative.
Biology research - I... I can't find any real logical problems with this option really, or at least not with my head as fogged up as it is from frustration and tiredness, it just feels kinda dirty to get a bonus to literally every living creature when the lowest bonus we can logically get from a successful research is +1 which is actually pretty big on a d6.

[Taricus]

It's less of a +1 on a D6 and more a (Possibly small) reduction of difficulty for any biological thing we make. Which is more or less any living troops we can make.

As for the forgebound, they aren't meant to be better at magic, just better at being... well, a good, stable base for infantry and/or labour. They'll definitely do alright as a front-line in a pinch, just consider forgebound effectively the same as slightly demonic dwarves or the like.

[Failbird105]

Alright, I'm awake and coherent now.

It's less of a +1 on a D6 and more a (Possibly small) reduction of difficulty for any biological thing we make. Which is more or less any living troops we can make.

As for the forgebound, they aren't meant to be better at magic, just better at being... well, a good, stable base for infantry and/or labour. They'll definitely do alright as a front-line in a pinch, just consider forgebound effectively the same as slightly demonic dwarves or the like.

Hmm, yeah I can see that for the biology research, but in that case I don't quite see it being large enough to spend an action on. If it's a noteworthy reduction then maybe, but it also leaves us with virtually no direction to go in terms of "front-line soldier" other than biological, which is quite the broad category, so I still feel we should at least get ourselves a good frontliner first, the Blackscales at least give us a good set up for capable infantry and a good few alternative options outside of what we started with, I can see a design or revision to make a variation that sacrifices stealth for being big, tough, and fire-resistant.

With the forgebound, it's not the magic that was the point, it's that they're an action spent just improving our imps, they don't really provide us anything in terms of new knowledge, just an improvement on the old. It falls into the same boat as a lot of other ideas that are in the votebox, I can see them being useful, and would consider voting for them, but not this turn.

Also, you might want to specify what materials the blunt weapons should be made of.

[Taricus]

Metal mostly, the gems aren't particularly suitable as blunt weapons due to being brittle.

[RAM]

If you have an option, isn't biology kind of a terrible choice for your brutes? Golems don't have that annoying "bleed to death from a slash across the arm" thing, and some interpretations don't even have a thinking centre to aim for. I mean, sure, you can go for the joints, but that applies to anything. Fundamentally, anything with a metabolism will be vulnerable to grapeshot/scattershot unless its armoured to the nines. Granted, biologicals are typically portrayed as faster than other physicals, but only marginally, while things made out of shadow or air can zip around like nobody's business. If we want a dangerous front-line rather than an implacable one, we would be better off with something like a Wraith or spectre from Dungeons and Dragons which pretty much embody the concept of "total party kill".

So you have, like, your muscle-bound gymnast-of-terror which looks like a mouth with four limbs and a tail sticking out of it and swings a mace around with enough force to shatter boulders. Or you have a bog-standard metal golem. Let's say it is made of bronze, stands 3 metres tall, and looks and moves like the Tin-man from The Wizard of Oz. Now, it seems to me that the former is more ambitious and more effective as a fighter, but worse at protecting the back lines. And if we wanted cavalry to assault flanks then we should look for something faster, or teleportation spells to flank with the slow golems. Or we should just give up on ranks and makesure that our ranged-attackers can protect themselves while the close-combat units run wild...