If, for example, you can manipulate Astos while the fight is in progress rather than before it begins (say, you find a random crit, then manipulate it to get the same crit every turn), My question is, will this be treated as RNG manipulation% or could it be considered a new independent category?
My instinct is to say that it would be classified under the current RNG manipulation%. The reason being is if at any point you're manipulating the RNG of a combat encounter you're no longer in a category of no manipulation. That said, if there's something specifically unique about the manipulation it may need its own category however at the moment I would not expect that to happen.
I have already made a video that demonstrates how to manipulate Astos in an encounter without first manipulating the RNG beforehand. I can send that to you.
The example can be seen here
(1 The RNG is not set up before the Astos encounter (2 The manipulation of Astos is set up under the conditions that -A- Astos is silenced and -B- All 4 party members are alive and are not poisoned, paralyzed, silenced, darkened, stoned, slain or asleep. (If there are less than 3 party members, the manipulation will be more difficult as the game might reroll to select a valid target, which also affects RNG) (3 First, a random critical hit is needed. When that occurs, we perform a pattern so that the exact same outcome from the previous turn happens in the next turn, and future turns until Astos is terminated.
Although the next encounter could be predicted when Astos is terminated, it is not guaranteed, and we will not manipulate the encounter after that.
Once you start using B to back out of the menu so that you can move along the battle RNG to an expected state you've entered the realms of the Any% category. I personally would not allow this to be submitted to a category with no RNG manip. At the moment I don't feel that this would be worthy of a separate category but if you do please let me know what you feel the rules for that category would be. If you want to hit me up on discord that would allow me to respond faster.