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Does Luna land gracefully? Or in Sumeryu's arms? Or both? Or neither?

Got it.

And so we 'survived' the first day at the academy. Which was rather frantic and full of at least two major fights that had some meaningful impact on the future events.

What's the plan - play it through day by day with the same level of intensity, or do periods of downtime (e.g. week-long) between more on-screen/adventury bits?

Well, on this, I must say my first intent was the first alternative (when I had no experience playing in PbP). Now I'm finding that would be a bit unfeasible, and that I should make a more focused game on the adventures, try for a better, pace, etc.

I think it's best to intermix on-screen and off-screen pacing. That way we get meaningful social interactions and adventure, and also get a chance for meaningful long-term projects and change.

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Speaking of change, I think Lín Jìng's Knowledge: Secrets isn't really working out in actual play. It's sort of there, but doesn't contribute meaningfully to the interactions or plot or anything. What do you say about dropping it and replacing it with something else? (Rikishi built as an ally/minion/something might be suitable in light of how the first day turned out, and that would be a way to ditch the awkwardness around the spell maintenance. Though I haven't really looked into the details, just had this idea and wanted to check with you whether it's even worth considering.)

Yeah, I was thinking of something like that, in fact. Could you share what you had in mind?
Good point, a permanent spell of such relevancy should better be turned into an ability.

By the way, everyone: you all get 2 Experience Point.

How this works: you can buy or raise an ability by paying in XP the value of it.

*Knowledge skill costs only half.

XP rate in average is 1 per adventure, but for longer ones, or at the end of storylines, more can be given.

I'm envisioning the New Rikishi to be something like this (a Companion 1 must have a total of Abilities and Weaknesses sum adding up to at most 1):

New Rikishi:

Beautiful 5
Charismatic 1

Clumsy 1
Coward 1
Lecherous 2
Love Magnet 1
Nosebleeder 1
Weak 1

I'm not sure what his ability build is like, so I'm leaving some leeway. I'm not sure what other traits he had in your vision and whether there is enough leeway.

What about overcoming Weaknesses - can XP be used for that, and if yes, at what pricing?

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I'm thinking between the following ideas for spending XP:
- Getting the first level of Vigorous, because she spent a lot of END throughout the adventure;
- Getting the first level of Invisibility, because she maintained it as a spell for most of the adventure;
- Overcoming Shyness (depending on pricing and whether it's even allowed).

Of course there's no way to do all three for the 2 XP, but depending on what are the options for the third, I may need to think about the choice.

Your envisioning of Rikishi is just fine, though I'd advocate for him to have Lecherous 3!

As for buying-off weaknesses. You could, though it would be a very boring move, in my opinion. Remember you can also overcome Weaknesses and even receive abilities. You could instead make Ling Jing actively engage in activities that would trigger her shyness, and then roll against it. After considerable victories against it, she could overcome it progressively.

Of course, if you don't want to engage in that, you can still buy it off with XP.

Sure, if he has level 3 that is cool too. Again, I don't know how many now spare points he needs anyway for his power and other Abilities.

Regarding Shyness, if you are fine with her *constantly* trying to resist it, cool. Some GMs prefer that if a PC constantly tries to resist a flaw, the flaw is bought off ASAP. So what is the difficulty to resist it? Because so far I rolled and interpreted my rolls (vaguely) without waiting for your response, so might as well ask the proper difficulty now.

Also it would still be good to know the costs of buying off flaws with XP.

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I also just got another idea for what to spend XP on, and would need to choose whether to take it instead of something if you think it's an acceptable idea. Remember how Lín Jìng cast a few buffs before one of the combats? Well, I'm thinking of buying a Transformation based on some of the spells chosen then:

Transformation 1: Demonic Awakening (total 2 points gained when transformed)
+2 Telekinesis
+2 Teleport
+2 Iron-Willed
-2 Arrogant
-2 Rude

Lín Jìng learned how to quickly (and temporarily) uncork all the youki flows ALL OF THEM, which boosts her key innate powers. Unfortunately, power is intoxicating, and she tends to act full of it after transforming. (This does not cancel her being uncomfortable around strangers, but sure does change how she manifests her discomfort.)

Could I hold onto my experience points for now?

Yes, for sure! That's the only way to raise a +3 and so on.

Then it's time to horde exp until I need it but end up never actually using it :D

Ended up spending the 2 XP on Vigorous 1 and Transformation (Demonic Awakening) 1, writing up a bunch of transformation-specific variants of TK attacks. Hopefully everything is correct with that - if not, please point me in the right direction. And swapped out Knowledge 2 (Secrets, half price) for Companion 1.

Still unclear on Shyness interactions: (a) how should it be resisted dice-wise (last couple of times I rolled, the difficulty was never clarified) and (b) what are the pricing schemes for buying off Flaws anyway (this is for the future).

For buying off flaws, the price would be the same as buying abilities, but in inverse order, I. e. a -3 flaw would cost 3 points, -2 costs 2 and minus 1 costs 1.

As for the shyness question. I'll try to be keen and say the difficulty beforehand, but in an ordinary interaction (I. e. not singing at a stage with thousands of people watching) we could go with DN 4. Remember that with the -1 shy, she'd roll only a single die. With this, you'd probably need to spend some Endurance for extra die, which would signify her going through extra effort for that.

Uh, I thought Iron-Willed would be helpful and added it to such resistance rolls before. Was I wrong to do so?

Well, one could make an argument that shyness wound impart some iron-will rolls, but I wouldn't say Iron Will could modify all shyness rolls, as that would trivialize it with such a strong Iron Will. It wouldn't make sense for a character to be shy at all with such a strong Willpower in that sense.

So I'd say that, in any action that is actively embarrassing and that any person would need to roll to try, shyness would be accounted as a penalty, but in a situation where only a shy person would have a chance to fail, I don't think you should add this same person's Iron Will to that roll.

Otherwise, you could only disregard her shyness and take it off her. As far as I can see, she can only either: a) have a strong iron will, but one that doesn't help her with being shy, or b) it does mitigate her natural shyness, in which case, she isn't shy at all.

Ah, fair enough. I think I may have picked the idea that in this system Will would help from someone else's roll. Thanks for the clarification, will go with an 'abilityless' rolls onwards.