Indulgence
Version 1.0 “Clarity”
By Savestate
You have 1 Cobalt and 5 Silver.
You Are:
The powers in this section represent unbounded developmental potential, exponential or hyper-exponential growth, expressed through their own particular lens. If you are uncertain as to what a description implies, default to higher-end interpretations.
Options here cost 1 Cobalt and 1 Silver.
=Beloved=
You have the unconditional, all-transcending love of a concept.
Not some specific embodiment or expression of this concept, but the concept itself, as written into the bones of the multiverse. There is nothing it would not do for you, but a great cosmic bureaucracy restricts what it can do for you. You may receive one Greater Boon and three Lesser Boons from your admirer, and nothing more- not without attaining such absurd power these Boons are as insignificant trinkets. You need not call upon all your Boons immediately, and indeed may benefit from preserving a few against future need.
A Boon can be used to obtain any benefit that lies within its power; as such, the examples presented below are far from all-encompassing. Boons may provide novel forms of supernatural power- a summoned Ally might take the form of a brilliant archmage- which may be transmissible.
Ally
Allies provided by your Boons will be eternally loyal, with a thorough comprehension of your self; they will walk the perfect middle ground between blind obedience and unreliability. So long as you live, no death or maiming will adhere to these allies for long.
Lesser Boon:
● Generate an ally approximately 200 times as powerful as you currently are, with limited developmental potential.
● Generate an ally as powerful as you, who will grow more powerful at a 1:1 ratio with your own progression.
Greater Boon:
● Generate an ally more than a million times as powerful as you currently are, with near-zero developmental potential.
● Generate an ally as powerful as you, who will grow more powerful with the square of your own progression.
Power
Lesser Boon:
● Amplify all basic parameters and future increases to said parameters by a factor of 20.
● Accelerate all future development by a factor of 5.
● Assume new powers whose sum total does not surpass your existing powerset.
● Amplify an existing power and future increases to said power by a factor of 50.
Greater Boon:
● Unlock a new ability with developmental potential on par with another You Are option, but significantly inferior progression.
● Develop a new, universally-applicable method of progression, well-suited for clever exploitation and explosive growth.
Comfort
Lesser Boon:
● Acquire a measure of plot armor.
● Tweak all of reality out to the limits of your perception in a largely ‘cosmetic’ sense, akin to porn physics.
● Create a private realm well-suited to provide both great luxury and opportunities for safe development.
Greater Boon:
● Generate a new infinite multiverse, rooted entirely in the single concept that so admires you, under your absolute control but regarded as Unreal by those forces that defend the cosmos itself.
Immortality
Your admirer interprets the Boons you request in the manner that best serves your interest.
Unless you do something absurdly stupid, you won’t reach an inescapable end.
Lesser Boon:
● Guarantee lossless reincarnation to cosmically distant realms upon death or worse-than-death.
● Become that which springs to life full-formed wherever its name is spoken above a whisper.
Greater Boon:
● Acquire absolute immunity to all harm.
● Become fated to never encounter that which would see you harmed.
=The Inheritor=
You inherit the absurd creative power of some far-distant fallen smith. With a few minutes’ work, you can Record upon the substrate of your power a perfect schematic for any ‘created thing’ you have the opportunity to observe. In a similar timeframe, you can create a new schematic to fulfill a specific function, plagiarizing from your recorded schematics to create as optimal a design as is theoretically possible. If you have only recorded aircraft so far, a car you design might run off a jet engine, but it will be the best possible jet engine powered car.
Given two hours of work, you can Refine a single schematic. This increases its derived performance in a specific area by a dramatic margin- doubling the speed of a computer, or doubling the durability of a truck. You cannot use this to directly decrease cost, complexity, energy or fuel usage, or so on; neither can you directly increase the sources of performance, i.e. boosting the tensile strength of a phone rather than its overall hardiness.
In a similar timeframe, you can Reinvent a single schematic. This alters the basic rules of its function by several degrees. Taking a sailboat, you might change it from a device that allows safe travel over water into a device that allows safe travel through the void of space, still driven by wind and sail.
Your research and development efforts see hourly results equivalent to a full year’s productivity. This takes into account, and compounds, all available resources. Two hours with an investment of fifty dollars and a buddy joining in for half an hour partway through sees results comparable to a project with a budget of $400k and 13,000 man-hours of development time. Such development efforts will never produce the effects of your Refinement or Reinvention, but can and do yield the fruits of actual scientific progress.
Your personal capabilities, including basic attributes, knowledge, skill, and more esoteric forms of ability, will always be minimally sufficient to eventually recreate any schematic from your records. This cannot prevent your death, but can and will preserve a portion of your faculties against even the most thorough forms of annihilation. Basic tools are obsoleted by this factor of your power: you need no fire to refine ore, nor hammer and anvil to shape it, nor wrench and pliers to assemble it. However you may come to obtain them, raw materials are no less necessary than for any other creator. Stripped of body and mind and soul, cast into a true void, you might persist in some sense, but be imprisoned nonetheless.
It is within the abilities of others to use, study, replicate, and even modify your creations, including those that function by blatant nonsense. Preventing such subversion is not difficult- a relatively minor effort of Refinement could blackbox your work effectively against the scientific efforts of whole planetary civilizations- but crucially, it is not automatic. Neither does your work inherently function in realms with strange or lacking physical laws, no matter how loosely it is rooted in any one realm’s laws. Guaranteeing reliable function even in a place of raw chaos is, again, a relatively minor effort of Reinvention, but not automatic.
=A Wound=
The aftershock of a might cosmic weapon has left a wound upon reality shaped exactly like you. It sits above thought and perception, the player behind the character, the actor behind the role, truer to yourself than any part of you trapped inside reality could ever afford to be. Your wound-aspect cannot be destroyed or diminished, for what weapon could make a wound less severe? Neither can it be remedied or healed away, as this is merely destruction with extra steps.
Initially, you have exactly one Thread. In 24 hours, it produces one point of Action Potential, equivalent to 20 minutes of conceptual ‘activity’, and it can store a maximum of 10 points of AP. As time passes, the wound-aspect of your self steadily and continuously expands. Each objective day, you develop one additional Thread, and your individual Threads increase in productivity and relative storage capacity as their numbers rise. You may accelerate this natural progression without limit by absorbing any phenomena that ‘deteriorate reality’ in some sense. Your wound-aspect provides an innate faculty for such absorption; if you managed to make contact with its event horizon, you could eat a black hole.
AP may be directly spent to fuel a kind of impossible haste, super-speed. Any amount of AP may be spent over any timeframe for proportionate results: 20 seconds spent over 1 second for a 21x multiplier, 1 minute over 10 minutes for a 1.1x boost, 20 minutes over half a second for a brief 2401x surge. Few of the natural consequences of extreme speed apply to your haste; it manifests most similarly to time dilation, and the fuzzy edges of the effect actively mediate interactions in countless ways for your convenience. As but one of these conveniences: metabolic byproducts within your body are actively regenerated into useful compounds, mitigating the expected increase in nutritional requirements from experiencing more time in a given day. Generally, expect no hidden dangers and few exploitable side-effects. An attack you make while accelerated is no more or less potent; an attack upon you while accelerated finds its impact diffused over time, but not outright reduced.
You may additionally spend AP to execute actions instantly, bypass restrictions on action, and empower actions. Executing an action instantly by spending AP sees results equivalent to spending the corresponding amount of time on it. The amount of AP required to bypass a given restriction may be derived from the amount of time required to work around it. Ignoring an hour-long cooldown would take 3 AP, while stabbing an opponent in melee from half a mile away would cost fractional AP, rounded up to the minimum increment of one. Where simply working around a restriction is impossible, the cost of bypassing it is instead a multiplier to effective AP cost. Spend twice as much AP to include another person in your instant three-hour training session, or five times as much to include the starfighter you pilot in your instant journey, etc.
Empowering actions with AP increases their effectiveness linearly with regards to AP spent over baseline cost. That is to say, investing 40 minutes worth of AP into empowering a minor spell you could cast once per minute indefinitely would be expected to amplify its results by a factor of 40. Actions with any degree of empowerment acquire a degree of conceptual ‘effectiveness’, the difference between natural healing and regeneration.
Your Wound-aspect persists past even the most thorough annihilation of your lesser self, but is at least theoretically reliant upon your capacity for action. Theoretically. By spending ten times the normal AP cost, you may take an action as if it were a preexisting contingency- made in advance by some prior iteration of yourself, held suspended since. If you are cursed to always fail, you might continue to act at full effectiveness by deciding all your actions are preparations made by your prior, uncursed self. Death of body might be recovered from by deciding you did some healing ‘in advance’. This is not, in any real sense, a retroactive effect.
=The Progenitor=
Your ‘bloodline’ is linked, through you and through an infinitesimal crack in the walls of reality, to a better realm. Each day, three droplets of dark quintessence leak inside, and become available for your use. You may imbibe this quintessence to acquire supernatural abilities and to augment those same abilities. Any ability acquired in this manner is shared amongst every member of your bloodline at full strength, undiminished should it be spread out amongst even uncountably infinite numbers of bearers.
Any creature born from or sired by a member of your bloodline becomes part of it, bound by blood. You may freely banish these bloodbound from your line, stripping from them all of its power. This may be performed automatically, and even in response to complex conditions, such as the decision to betray your goals.
You, personally, may induct any willing creature into your bloodline at no cost. This, again, may function automatically, and in complex ways: you might visit a galaxy populated by quintillions of people and immediately induct all among them who are righteous and noble. These oathbound may not then be banished from your line by any means; they will retain its power forever.
The powers obtained from quintessence may alter and improve the bearer, enhance the manner in which they act upon the world, bestow specific abilities, and generate undirected phenomena of grand scale. These categories might be usefully named Attribute, Ability, Panoply, and Domain. Using a particular category to acquire a particular advantage is more a matter of efficiency than necessity. Ten droplets invested in Attribute affords physical might twice that of a realistic peak human. Ninety invested into Ability might unlock some minor magic system, such as a kind of potion making. Sixteen in Panoply could grant the power to throw fireballs comparable to modern grenades; the same into Domain could allow full-scale hurricanes to be called down upon one’s location.
Used crudely, the power of the Progenitor offers a quadratic progression curve. Clever synergies between powers, especially the purchase of unrealized potential in addition to immediate strength, may yield something approaching exponential. Fully harnessing your bloodline, there are multiple potential routes to hyper-exponential growth of personal power.
As long as your bloodline exists, you have an easy route back into reality. At any time, you may choose to incarnate yourself within any member of your bloodline. They awaken to the fact that they were you all along, that any semblance of independence was merely a lie put up by the world. You are restored to the peak of your power, and regain the full and unblemished truth of your identity. Technically speaking, there is no strict limit to the number of incarnations that may exist simultaneously.
=The Nexus=
You are the core of a unique form of magic. This magic system is tautologically capable of generating any effect that has been generated with this magic system. This includes effects generated by indirect, incomplete, or grossly inefficient means.
The substance of your magic, its basic building block and fuel, is abstract potentials. Any thing containing some non-zero quantity of your magic’s potentials serves as an avenue for the passive, free harvest of more potentials. (This harvest does not actually deplete whatever you gather potentials from, only incidentally interfering with precognitive effects.) Rates of collection scale directly with the amount of potentials contained within the thing, allowing for exponential growth up to the limits of its magic capacity. Potentials are generally a fungible resource, but do vary in kind- energy potentials, power potentials, etc. The kinds of potentials harvested from any given thing relate to the kinds of ‘expenditure’ it could enact; basic energy potentials are thus the most common by far.
Your magic responds eagerly to your will and desires with all of its ability. (The idea it could ever be used against you is laughably absurd.) Raw potentials can naturally spend themselves to fuel compatible processes; this is an extremely effective method of expanding the magic system’s functionality. Lending a bit of energy to a gust of wind could grant aerokinesis suitable for generating flesh-stripping wind blades within minutes of acquiring Nexus. Even something as grandiose as the charms of a Solar Exalted may become replicable, if only you can convince said Solar to draw upon your essence potentials.
Your magic improves, permanently and globally, as it is used and produced. When it is harnessed to generate an effect, it becomes more efficient at producing said effect. Anything saturated with potentials becomes a better storage medium. This is in most cases not a matter of specific objects- any person full of potentials increases the capacity of all persons, and as such for any other kind of thing. The growth itself is an unbounded linear increase in output per unit of input, and can be accelerated without limit. A civilization of ten billion mages improves your magic at least a thousand times as rapidly as one of ten million.
Where your magic can replicate the behaviour of a thing with only the potentials produced by said thing- i.e., duplicating the explosive properties of gunpowder with only the magic naturally produced by that gunpowder- it can subsume those behaviours. The subsumed behaviours are no longer natural functions of the contaminated object. They are then magical effects, under your control no less absolutely than any of your magic’s other behaviours. You might tell gunpowder not to explode, or with more thorough subsumption, tell it not to exist. Someday, you might end universes as easily as one would terminate a program.
The method by which Nexus would grant you immortality should be obvious.
=Ascendant=
A time traveler, however limited, can be described as one step beyond someone who merely experiences time. You are at least two full steps beyond that.
Your most basic abilities are the power to reset and rewind. When you first acquire the power of the Ascendant, the status of reality is recorded. At will, you may revert the multiverse, and every point along all its timelines, to this recorded state. Your ability to rewind is similarly straightforward and supremely effective. There is no limit to the amount of times you can reset or rewind, no price to be paid, no external threat that can escape the effect.
Ascendant, your consciousness exists partially outside of time. No effect can prevent you from taking purely mental action, and you may change your perceived timerate at will. Neither resetting nor rewinding breaks your continuity of consciousness, and your mind and memories do not decay. Even if you rewind reality to a point where you do not exist, your self will endure undiminished in the outside. Most kinds of psychological assault are ineffective against a mind like yours.
Time is no longer the primary constraint on your growth and progression. With the power to save and load, you may undergo arbitrarily great degrees of development in arbitrarily tiny amounts of realtime. Almost anything you could properly conceptualize may be recorded and reinstantiated, even across resets. Both saving and loading incur a price. ‘Timelessness’ is generated as you reset and rewind, in proportion to the magnitude of temporal variance lost to your power. The amount of Timelessness required to save or load a thing scales directly with its significance. Saves are permanent, but resetting or rewinding away something you have loaded does refund its price.
=The Player=
You gain the benefits of a modified Gamer system. Killing any creature grants you xp in accordance with its power. Gathering sufficient xp- ten times as much for each subsequent level- allows you to level up, awarding you one stat point, one skill point, and a compounding fivefold multiplier to the effectiveness of those points. Stats and skills augmented with points see a number of benefits. Beyond the obvious additive enhancement, they receive an increasing degree of supernatural effectiveness and convenience as well as boosted growth rates and developmental potential. There are no strictly defined areas you can or cannot invest stat or skill points; a stat point could be added to Strength as easily as Body or Arms, but broader subjects see their benefits outright lessened in addition to being spread thin. Skill points, in particular, can provide significant amounts of knowledge outright, or unlock abilities no amount of training should be able to provide. One skill point, used well, could grant you access to an entire magic system- or create one from whole cloth.
The system integrates and refines all lesser abilities. Your physique is translated into a number of level-boosted stats, your competencies into level-boosted skills, any training you undergo into ‘free’ stat and skill points. Various reserves of energy, mana and stamina and yet stranger, are distilled into a single pool of universally applicable Energy. Even the mundane medical benefits of bandages or caffeine are converted into direct healing or temporary stat boosts. This never diminishes what is converted, and will usually improve it by a significant margin. At level five, piloting a small mechsuit capable of lifting one ton, you could lift hundreds.
You are the Player, at least as much as you are the character. Whatever happens to your character(s), this game cannot really harm you save for in a limited emotional sense. Accessing the character panel, you may swap between, create, and delete your characters at will; your character(s) need not make any motions nor utter any command phrases for you to access your various menus. Though the multitasking required is not trivial, you can even control multiple characters at once if necessary. New characters are designed with a number of build points limited per-character, to establish backstory, appearance, and initial abilities, and are inserted into the world upon creation. ‘You Are’ and ‘You Have’ powers are part of you, the Player, rather than part of your characters.
You have access to an endless list of quests and achievements. These are constantly created in response to your current circumstances and dismissed as they become invalid. In addition to bonus xp and system-created loot, these can provide player-level benefits: extra stat, skill, or build points for all your characters, soulbound treasures, potentially even rare upgrades to the system itself. The difficulty of questing scales only imperfectly with your own level of ability. A week of the worst, most inefficient questing would see you earn at least six stat points, and it can only get faster and easier from there.
=Beastly=
You become something that logically extends from lichhood. Your body is converted into an immaculate phylactery. With a simple crafting action, you may convert the remains of almost any once-animate thing- corpse, broken robot, disenchanted intelligent sword, crashed starship, etc.- into a new phylactery, anchor and defensive shell and projector alike for your mind and spirit. So long as even one of your phylacteries remains intact, you are immune against assault upon any aspect of yourself less shallow and inessential than physical form. Every second, a pulse thrums out through all your phylacteries, restoring every one from even the most thorough annihilation.
Your phylacteries act as a source of ‘shadowflesh’, the quantity and nature of which is determined by the materials used in the specific phylactery’s construction. Shadowflesh naturally exists as formless darkness, but can take shape at your command, instantly assuming the substance and structure of anything its nature encompasses. A phylactery made from the corpse of an ordinary human soldier could produce a good kilogram of shadowflesh per second, which could shape itself into immaculate copies of the same soldier and their kit, or specific pieces of their equipment, or a skinless humanoid ghoul, etc.
When shaping your shadowflesh, you are not limited to wholesale copies of the original subject. Emaciated corpse becomes phylactery generates shadowflesh that most naturally takes the form of frail, emaciated limbs, but your freedom to arrange these constituent materials is only limited by your own mental faculties. Layering bone atop bone for a larger, denser, sturdier frame is trivial, combining multiple strains of shadowflesh into hybrid forms is simple, using flesh derived from obsolete warmachines to create bleeding-edge technological marvels is well within your reach. Brains and similar formed from shadowflesh may be used to seamlessly expand your own memory, mental speed, and multitasking ability without discomfort or constraint.
Shadowflesh is an extension of your body, under your complete control regardless of distance or seperation. It is only ‘false’ in that it is and remains component to your body, and in that it retains the power to gradually revert to unshaped shadow. Actually destroying shaped shadowflesh is fairly difficult. Once it has shape, shadowflesh requires no less fuel or sustenance than the structure it imitates. Shadowflesh’s capacity to revert to unshaped substance and assume new shape largely mitigates this problem. Depleted blood can reform into fresh and hearty ichor, discharged batteries into fully-charged cells. Unless throwing away mass for ammo or wasting energy profligately, neither fresh shadowflesh nor normal sustenance will be required.
With experience, more can be integrated into a phylactery than the physical. Mind, if its container remains somewhat intact. Spirit, if it has yet to fully depart. All these inclusions character the phylactery’s output, and may be expressed through it. Recreate the flesh of a defeated mage, and graft it into your forms to empower them with wizardry. In time, some semblance of even wholly external abilities may be preserved into your newest strains of shadowflesh.
You Have:
The benefits in this section represent tools. Not actual physical implements, but all the same: solutions aimed at specific problems.
Options here cost 1 Silver.
Wealth
When you desire a specific good, you may manifest a golden weight on a nearby unoccupied surface. This weight’s weight, in pounds, is equal to the cost, in inflation-adjusted 1999 british pounds, of having the desired good be purchased and delivered to your current location. If the weight is successfully lifted at least three feet above its original location, the desired good appears on a nearby unoccupied surface and the weight vanishes. If the weight is at any point not held stably, it immediately vanishes. The weight does not function in environments without a consistent gravity or pseudogravity of at least 0.9 g.
Understanding
Upon perceiving any manner of signal, you immediately receive knowledge of both its meaning and the intentions behin it. Not only will you know if you are being lied to, you will know if you are being manipulated by someone speaking only the truth, and to what ends. This does not require clear perception of the signal (you may use this ability to read even if you are mostly blind), and nor does it require a mind capable of processing the signal. The knowledge this ability provides will never cause you harm, even if it really should. At will, you may attach this ability to any signal you produce, allowing it to be understood in the same way by others.
Change
With a touch, you may cause a willing or helpless target to be encased within a large spherical shell. The shell is several thousand times as durable as its occupant, but if it is broken, the target is released unchanged as if no time had passed. Otherwise, the shell opens on its own after five days, the occupant altered in accordance with their wishes. This can produce almost arbitrary cosmetic and sexual changes, but only limited ‘practical’ benefits. Any bodily injury or affliction can be restored perfectly, including aging, genetic flaws, and stat loss; outright augmentation is incapable of anything beyond the equivalent of one year’s diligent physical conditioning.
Pockets
You have an inventory to which you may send any object in your grasp (or from which you may recall stored objects) with a simple mental command. Your inventory has no maximum capacity, being unbound by space, and objects held within do not experience time. Conscious beings may resist being sent to your inventory without trouble, but otherwise you may store away anything you could lift. You will never have trouble sorting through your inventory, either keeping track of the contents or locating specific items. With a minor spiritual effort, you may grant any container a sub-inventory, capable of storing a quantity of stuff proportionate to its abstract ‘usefulness as a container’.
You Can:
Complications here grant 1 Cobalt.
Travel
You discover, activate, and take command of an ancient device of unknowable origin. This device allows for safe, stealthy, and extremely far-reaching multiversal travel; it can take you from one wholly independent infinite multiverse to another, and conceal your intrusion from even the local omnipotents. Locating a specific reality is beyond it, as is making more than a handful of multiversal transitions per day.
Now active, the device is obviously flawed- either incomplete or severely damaged. Its engine contains something utterly inimical to reality, to existence; you are safe from it, but the world is not. After three cumulative years in the same cluster of worlds, the local multiverse will begin to collapse away into nothing. The first sign of collapse is the loss of growth, as populations can no longer expand, at best holding steady. Unless you leave, other concepts follow.
The machine can be repaired and/or completed, given work by someone with the right set of abilities. If you lack those abilities, and cannot find anyone else to do the job, the device will point you to suitable artifacts in any world you visit. All of its parameters may be improved; in time, its destructive influence may be contained completely.
Fight
Over time, new rooms will appear randomly in the doorways of any world you have visited. This is rare on an individual basis, but common on the whole, occuring an average of once per five years for each doorway. These additions represent more doorways, and so the total number of rooms rises exponentially without limit. New rooms are patterned off of their neighbours- an extra set of cubicles in an office building, another kitchen on the other side of your house, etc. Beyond the imperfection and gradual mutation inherent to this mindless iterative copying, every new chamber will be slightly more dangerous than its surroundings.
These rooms exist outside of normal space, each slightly ‘deeper’ than its predecessor. They branch off outwards, but never loop back on themselves, and can be cast adrift by ruining the doorways that keep them anchored. Blessedly, the deeper you move into this nullspace, the more difficult it becomes for anything like a person to be created. Even at the most shallow layer, the potential millions of direct copies of humans generated each day will utterly lack consciousness.
Generated rooms contain objects patterned off the contents of their neighbours. Thus, they can be looted. In the most mundane sense, how much could you get from selling off the contents of a spontaneously-generated second kitchen? As rooms increase in danger, there is a roughly proportionate increase in ‘potency’. The mindless copying that forms them cannot create clever traps or advanced technologies, so instead you see hazards empowered supernaturally. And an imperfect replica of a hazard may well be not only safe but useful.
Share
Seven imperfect clones of yourself appear. They possess all your memories as of their creation, but are distorted in personality. Together, they represent you at your cruelest, your kindest, your most lustful, your most gluttonous, your laziest, your proudest, and your most paranoid. Crucially, they are no more cruel, or kind, or so on than you yourself may sometimes, however briefly, become. However, they can never escape or diminish their particular ‘mood’.
Each clone has power equivalent to one third your own, growing and diminishing as you do. This is not to say they have your abilities at one third intensity. Each clone has its own distinct powerset, largely unrelated to yours, and it would take at least three working together to match you. You have no special control over your clones, but they have no special drive to hurt you. They may be killed, permanently, at least as easily as you yourself could be.
Incidentally, you may lend out portions of your power to others, diminishing yourself by equal margin. Energy, stats, abilities, etc., in whole or in infinitesimal fractions. What has been lent cannot be kept against your will, and any growth made by what you lend away is no less yours. ‘You Have’ powers are not diminished by lending; you could share Change with everyone.
Grow
You are isekaied to a xianxia world on the brink of catastrophe. A demonic cultivator has risen to the peak of power, such that no being remains in this world that could ever defeat them. They are in the process of consuming the world itself to break through to the next stage. Already, one of the elements has been subsumed: all the metal in the world is but an extension of this monster. Unless you interfere, in fifteen years time all remaining life will dissolve into silver centipedes. Ten years after that, they would break free into the wider multiverse, arriving first at your own world of origin.
This particular xianxia world is typically vast but very much finite. It is made up of dozens of layers stacked vertically, each wealthier than the last. With a habitable zone in each layer some ten thousand miles across, even the relatively primitive local civilization represents hundreds of billions of people. There are societies vast enough to get lost in, there are entire armies of mighty cultivators that you might recruit to your cause.
The cultivation system of this world is rooted in force of personality, in charisma and willpower. A cultivators basic parameters converge towards one megastat, strength and speed and intelligence and more multiplied together. A similar process magnifies upon skill as it is cultivated into dao. Your enemy- and they very much are your enemy, however you might feel about it- has refined themselves down to two aspects and one dao. They are APOCALYPSE SUN // SILVER CITY // LORD CENTIPEDES. The dao they wield is third-order, equivalent in breadth and conceptual potency to one of the five elements, and they possess raw power sufficient to liquefy mountains or crack continental plates.
Scree
As someone who knows little about cultivation, what exactly are dao’s/aspects, and how quickly can I expect them to grow stronger?
Also, is there more than 1 multiverse?
admin
Aspects are characteristics like Strength or Intelligence, but overwhelmingly broader. Dao are effectively skill/knowledge; the LORD CENTIPEDES dao is applicable for most purposes.
Nested infinities. Traveling to realms that arguably don’t exist. It’s crazy.
Sam
Is it possible to create multiple different bloodlines? Also could you talk about the possible synergies between all the abilities?
My choices would be, The Progenitor, The Nexus, The Ascendant, and The Player, with Understanding, and Travel, Share and Grow.
I would first concentrate on somehow giving myself multitasking/parallel processing and hivemind/shared consciousness mental abilities, and sending a character out into the xianxia world to find some awful people to take my bloodline and immediately become my incarnations, and develop a decent foothold in that universe so after a year or two when my Travel device that definitely isn’t a TARDIS has to leave, I can both leave and stay behind to continue working in that universe. My “Original” body plus my seven imperfect clones would form the Travel council and go from multiverse to multiverse spreading hivemind/shared consciousness incarnations and characters of myself while having some versions of us stay in the ship and work on researching, fixing and upgrading it, as well as doing other research experiments and training whose results I can share across all my selves. While my incarnations and characters are exploring and working in the various multiverses they will set up cults that worship “Me” as a god, I’ll have to come up with some godly themed character/persona for it, and use The Progenitor to give worshipers “Divine Blood”. Since I can’t strip the power from The Progenitor bloodline if I personally give them the bloodline, then my bloodline will not give any power or improved potential, instead only giving the ability to be able connected to “Me” and my powers. I’m hoping with a synergy of Share and The Nexus, since it obeys my will and The Player, forming a system type management, I can automatically and manually increase/decrease/disconnect/reconnect the carriers of my bloodline with my various powers and abilities, so I can’t give them anything they can use against me, manage which and how much power they get from me, and be able to immediately take it away, as well as automatically taking them over as an incarnation if I deem it necessary. If with a synergy of Share, The Progenitor, The Nexus and The Player I could get rid of the drawback of being unable to strip the bloodline power from people as well as make multiple bloodlines, then I could use the quintessence to make different cool bloodlines/classes I could grant to people, and have my own personal bloodline have all of the benefits. If I can’t strip given bloodlines and make different bloodlines then I would just ignore the quintessence, and hopefully with The Nexus and The Player I could fake it, so I could essentially automatically give people different access levels to different abilities to replicate different bloodlines/classes.
I would also try to find a way to kind of replicate and expand the Pockets power and make a special reality outside of all realities connected to/formed in me as a kind of soul space or dream space or something, hopefully with a synergy to be protected and sustained by the powers of The Ascendant. It would essentially function as a combined inventory and soul based/dream based version of the internet. Anyone who has my bloodline can say or think a prayer to me to access a (invisible to everyone else) gamer type window they can use as a computer tablet (hands free mental manipulation capable) with an internet browser they can use to browse information, upload information, and surf various soul websites I put on there, as well as use various apps I make, buy inventory space they can store items in, trade with each other and me as well as use video/voice calls and text chats. They could also fall asleep on command to enter the soul realm in their dreams, Matrix style, and I would have whole various simulated realities built there where they can buy property and do all the cool stuff you could do in a virtual internet Matrix/ready player one/sword art online style reality. My various incarnations and characters would, wherever they travel in their local multiverses, scan, organize and upload all information they come across (like the local internet (including wikipedia, netflix, youtube, spotify and such), local libraries, and things like mind reading skilled/knowledgeable people) to the soul space where I and the system could then assess and archive it and then selectively make public by adding to various apps/websites or just put up for sale in the soul network as direct to brain skill/knowledge downloads, “ebooks”, VOD or online/virtual courses. I would also make and sell items obviously to add to the soul space market place as well as have a soul currency and of course take a tax on all trades. Hopefully I could also construct a kind of “Heaven” or afterlife in the soul space as well, so anyone who dies and is part of my bloodline can automatically be saved into the soul space, and then optionally downloaded into a new body they can buy off of me or someone else in the marketplace. Or their old body if they can get someone to find it and put it back together. Or just chill in the soul space for eternity if they want to or just optionally go to sleep for eternity. What evs.
Hopefully the benefits of carrying my bloodline will encourage everyone in every multiverse to voluntarily join my soul network by saying a prayer to me, which would then automatically induct them into my bloodline, connecting them also to The Nexus which would help expand the capabilities of The Nexus, with it all automatically managed by The Player’s systems. If people act up in my network they will get warnings, get their powers banned, be usage restricted, perma banned or outright taken over as my incarnation depending on how badly they act online. (I won’t tell anyone about the incarnation bit of course.)
If the powers don’t really synergize then my plans are screwed lol.
Yawehg
Hey SaveState!
Indulgence 0.3 was one of my favorites of all time, so I’m really excited for this. Overall, I like this version, but it seems different enough that it’s almost another CYOA entirely. Some of the choices here seem simultaneously more limited and more difficult to understand.
Inheritor in particular seems to have been shifted to a more expressly engineering flavor? Previously it was a total creative force, you could be inspired/enlightened to create great works of art or philosophy as easily as inventions and scientific advancements. Reading this, you could maybe create a painting, but not necessarily a dance, or lockpicking technique. A lot hinges on the phrase “created thing”
Also, does the new power help give you the skill to actually make the things you design?
“Your personal capabilities, including basic attributes, knowledge, skill, and more esoteric forms of ability, will always be minimally sufficient to eventually recreate any schematic from your records”
This sentence is a bit confusing because it seems like it should relate to how you build creations, but grammatically it’s only about remaking the schematic itself.
Wealth is also a bit confusing to me. Is it just trying to say that it’ll cost however much something would have cost in 1999, adjusted for inflation? What if I’m trying to buy something that didn’t exist in 1999, but costs £50,000 now? Does the weight equal to amount of 1999 pounds that would be equivalent to 50k today (32,322lbs)?
What if a commodity priced at £50,000 today only cost £20,000 in 1999, will the weight weigh 20k or 32k? It’s a difficult-to-interpret passage and the complexity didn’t add to the experience for me.
One thing I do appreciate is how the ‘You Can’ choices are now more consistently detrimental, which I understand as a re-balancing choice. Previously they acted more like power-ups with a dangerous but manageable downside.
Thanks as always for making these!
admin
I think ‘creating a design’ can imply ‘creating the thing described in the design’.
Current prices, translated values.
Something costs 10,000 alien coins. The power finds alien coins have about 1/10th the value of 1999 British Pounds. The weight weighs 1,000 pounds.
Alistar
Q1: Is the device for ‘Travel’ small enough to fit into ‘Pockets’ to stop the collapse?
Q2: Is it possible to acclimate enough quintessence to teleport to the higher realm of the crack of ‘Progenitor’ and then connect with the ‘Nexus’ magic energy to gain the higher realm’s potential?
admin
Problem is that “Conscious beings may resist being sent to your inventory without trouble“.
Yes, but you’d have trouble bringing that potential back with you.
Ali
Q1: Can I use quintessence to teleport to the higher realm of ‘Progenitor’ and harvest its potential with ‘Nexus’?
admin
Not a higher realm, but a better one. Outside. You can gather and wield great power there, but bringing it back into the world would prove challenging.
Wissende
What exactly are each of the choices for bloodline? I can guess what Attribute means but ability, panoply, and domain seem to overlap to some extent
admin
“The powers obtained from quintessence may alter and improve the bearer, enhance the manner in which they act upon the world, bestow specific abilities, and generate undirected phenomena of grand scale. These categories might be usefully named Attribute, Ability, Panoply, and Domain.”
Attribute – Alter and improve the bearer.
Ability -Enhance the manner in which they act upon the world.
Panoply – Bestow specific abilities.
Domain – Generate undirected phenomena of great scale.
Relinquish
Loved your CYOAS. I have several questions mostly related to Beloved.
Can you customize your ally? Can your ally be a manifestation of the concept? What are the chances of betrayal, mind control, cheating etc?
Can the new ability unlocked, equivalent to You Are, with significantly less progression, be boosted with Lesser boons of Power? How many would you need to apply to match the progression of another You Are ability?
Can Plot Armor protect me from imprisonment, fates worse than death?
Can Cosmetic Sense be used to see everything as a sort of 3d anime world, with some minor and harmless quirks such as basic anime tropes, like drops of sweat when nervous, music playing in the background only you can hear when you want to, etc
Is the lossless reincarnation on a fate worse than death activated by the concept, or you consciously? If you get trapped in an eternal simulation that is outside of time, can you escape that?
In regards to Player
Can you use skill points to improve other powers?
Does it synergize with Wound? Can you use AP for say, immediately acquire an achievement “write a book” by simply immediately writing one by expending AP?
On the topic of Wound
Can you immediately, upon arriving at a new world, expend AP to learn the most common language of your region, despite having never heard it? Can you use AP to acquire skills you are aware exist, but have never personally encountered?
Excellent stuff, my picks are those 3 powers plus change, pockets, travel and fight, though my choices may change depending on some of the answers to my questions.
admin
Beloved:
Yes, yes, zero.
Yes. 3.
Yes.
Yes.
Either. It works out in the most beneficial way.
Player:
Yes.
Yes. Yes.
Wound:
Yes. Yes.
Modicum
Q1: Does [You Are: Ascendant] still function as intended if you were to travel to a wholly independent multiverse?
Q2: Can you utilize [You Are: A Wound] to consume whatever is “inimical to reality” for the [You Can: Travel] option? If so, would it be possible to project how far your Wound would expand by consuming it and would the consequences of the inimical thing cease to be?
Q3: Could you hypothetically use a ludicrous (Unimaginable) amount of AP to Save and Load while [You Are: Ascendant]? Assuming you could spend AP to commit a “preexisting contingency” where you go back, reset, generate timelessness and so on to save your currently expanded wound and then load it in an earlier place in recorded time?
Sorry if question 3 is unclear (This is more than 3 questions now that I step back). I’m unsure on how to word it. Really cool CYOA, I’m pretty new to the whole thing but this the first one I’ve seen from here and it’s probably my favourite so far.
admin
A1: Yes.
A2: Yes. A minimum increase of 120,000 threads per day. This renders the travel device nonfunctional.
A3: Yes.
Gdjitxdjl
what qualifies as a “created thing” for Inheritor? Such as a normal person, a Tyranid Bio-Organism, a system of government, a magic system, a cultivation technique, a philosophy.
Also, would one of the powers from Elemental Typo be a Lesser or Greater Boon?
admin
A thing, created with understanding and intent. Any of your examples might qualify.
Depends on how powerful you are when you spend the boon.
Gdjitxdjl
I see… I wasn’t expecting for a normal human to count since while there may be intent there usually isn’t actual understanding involved. Therefore would you be able to use Refinement on your own body to enhance it?
For the Greater Boon of Power what exactly would a ‘new, universally-applicable method of progression’ look like? Best I can think of is something similar to say the Gamer System.
Oh, and is it possible to adjust the minor details of the You Are options? I enjoy Beastly but find the aesthetics to be rather unappealing and potentially tedious. What I was thinking was that you convert the item into phylactery that it becomes a jewel with a crystalline structure of varying size? It’d other remain the same abilities being a source of shadow flesh except for the potentially altered size and you know being a jewel. I don’t mind spending a Beloved boon if needed to make this possible.
admin
A normal human would count if they were made with intent and understanding. Qualification comes from the process of creation, not the nature of the created thing.
You could gain Grandeur at the start of any conflict, which you could spend to upgrade yourself. A given conflict gives you enough Grandeur to, were you starting from zero, have decent odds of winning.
If you spend all four boons, you can get a power on the same level as any of the You Are options. This trick can get you edited copies of the default powers. Probably unnecessary in this case, though. Phylacteries can by default take on forms with less than 1% of the mass of their constituent materials.
Gdjitxdjl
Overall, I’d say Inheritor just become much stronger in my eyes then even on its own. This both neatly resolves the issue of early threats as you’d be able to Refine your own body to survive them. And, it grants a relatively easy ability to use most power systems from other settings provided you can get access to at least a single ‘spell’. No doubt reaching the apex of cultivation in Grow would be easily achievable since you can take even a basic cultivation technique and then Refine / Reinvent till it becomes absurd. By the way are there Stages past Stage 12 in the cultivation system? I could maybe seen refining yourself down to just a single Aspect and Dao or even just the Dao itself.
I see, I see. Still have a bit of trouble wrapping my head around Beloved with how open it is but that does help my understanding of it. Just need to figure out which Concept that I want the love of…
That’s good to hear, I’ll admit. Being able to change the phylactery in such a way opens up a lot more options . Also, its just more aesthetically appealing too. Deific power is fantastic however you need to look good while using it you know?
One last question! Well, two actually. Supposing you have Coronal Mass Injection from Elemental Typo then how do you imagine it’d interact with Beastly? The second is if I take Coronal Mass Injection as Greater Boon then would I be able to alter / enhance it be equal to the other You Are options? It’d have inferior progression of course.
admin
From Elemental Typo… your starting phylactery would be able to produce trillions of tons of star-blood each day, to be used as you see fit.
Of course!
Aeon
Wow great to see a new version of this CYOA.
Beloved, lesser boon, power, increase all future development by a factor of 5, seems really broken.
Does that mean I get 5 stat points and 5 skill points with every level up of Player? Or does exp gain get multiplied by 5?
With Wound do I develop 5 threads every objective day?
By my understanding that seems to be the case.
OP as hell, I love it.
admin
It would increase exp gain and thread development rate.
LordElsquare
Hey, I have a couple of questions, if it’s not a bother:
-Nexus: So ‘Raw Potentials’ (which presumably implies non-raw potentials can exist… cooked potentials?) can be expended to enhance something compatible; speed potential is expended to make something faster. Simple. But once the magic system can do millions of different things, does it matter what Potential is being used? Could I use a Speed Potential to turn a rabbit into a soul (that’s one of the things the magic system can do. It’s been used to do a LOT of stuff by this point…), and is there any benefit to using a different flavour of potential to enact that change?
– Can the magic system generate potentials for the other ‘You Are’ powers? If you fully subsume them, what would that actually do?
-Player. How does making more characters interact with Beastly? Beastly trivialises multitasking limits, so you could have however many characters – but presumably, all your characters can make phylacteries? Are they shared, or a separate network of phylacteries to each character?
-If you make a new body from shadowstuff (via one of your characters), can that then be a new character? Or is it technically part of the body of the character who made it?
-Beastly. “In time, some semblance of even wholly external abilities may be preserved into your newest strains of shadowflesh.” I may be being dense, but I’m having trouble figuring out what kind of thing this is refering to. Could you give three examples of things that would qualify?
-Shadowflesh needs sustenance (just like normal flesh). You can revert it back to shadow and reform it to ‘refresh’ it – but what if you don’t? If I make a standard human body out of shadowflesh, and have them go eat burgers, are those burgers being converted to shadowflesh as they digest, etc? If so, could the body eventually bulk up enough to split into two? Or into a pile of burgers, assuming they’ve picked up a ‘burger aspect’ to their shadowflesh?
Thanks for the answers, and this update to an already great CYOA!
admin
-It becomes much less important over time, as you develop methods of exchanging one sort of potential to another, but using the ‘wrong’ sort of potential just doesn’t work.
-Phylacteries are shared across characters. Bodies made from shadowflesh can be component to any or none of your characters, in accordance with your wishes.
-Someone prays to a god, and receives miracles. They do this all the time. None of the power is intrinsic to them- literally, all they do is ask for help. You kill them, and make shadowflesh priests. The god doesn’t help them. Your shadowflesh priests can manifest minor miracles anyway.
-Shadowflesh can make more shadowflesh, given sustenance.
Gdjitxdjl
Actually for Beloved would the Concept of Cultivation be valid? Ah, I mean the Xianxia version. If so then that cod be rather amusing with the Grow option.
admin
Valid.
Gdjitxdjl
Are we able to ignore the resource requirements of Inheritor through the ability of Wound to “bypass restrictions on action”?
Also, for Ascendant are we able to use Load multiple times on the same Save? For example if I Save a pizza then can I Load it three times to give me three pizzas? Or would I need to have three separate Saves which I would then have to load individually?
admin
Yeah.
Yeah.
Symph
If something saturated in your potentials is considered part of your magic, could you remake that thing with new potentials? Like if you have a quartz rock and its at capacity, you subsume it and change the “spell” that is the quartz crystal to include sun potentials. Could this or another process be used to upgrade somethings mana capacity or maybe the level or type of potential?
admin
Subsumption makes transmutation easier. Transmutation can alter/improve capacity, productivity, and nature.
LordElsquare
With Ascendant, we can Rewind back past our Reset point, right?
If so, what stops you from Rewinding to the start of the universe, Reseting and repeating to generate arbitrarily large amounts of Timelessness right at the start?
admin
The fact that this process doesn’t generate any extra Timelessness. Rewinding past all that ’empty’ time provides neither Timelessness nor better opportunities for farming it.
chrisianak
1. With regard to ASCENDANT rewinding past our reset point, If we have can FIGHT, would we be:
a-in the cultivation world
b-our original world
c-either as we want (perhaps with PLAYER or can TRAVEL)
2. Am I correct in assuming that rewinding and resetting also rewind/reset the progress we make in our other powers unless we save and load?
3. Is the gain/power of timelessness essentially exponential like nexus in the sense of linear output per linear input:
a. A relatively linear gain of “Timelessness Potential” vs subjective time, such as x*”Timelessness” per subjective year lived. Based on your description above I assume that inaction or pushing time off the rails would act as a multiplier. (x0 for just rewinding and fast forwarding again, +y*x for acting diametrically different,etc.)
b. A relatively linear value of “Timelessness Potential” vs how powerful you are for saving/loading. Such as x*”Timelessness” for y days of growth in powers.
4. For Nexus, could we do fairly conceptual stuff like:
a)Invest power/energy into a candle to boost light *gain light casting*
b)Cast light to create a shadow *Gain ability to cast a shadow*
c)Invest energy potential into a shadow (shape contains information/ is energy)
d)Sweep a powerful light and/or shadow infused with potential across the moon and since the beam/shadow can move faster than light. *Gain FTL*
e)Now spread potential from star to star through FTL shadow-beams.
Anyway, thank you. I love this CYOA, a real brain stimulator.
For now my build is:
You are Ascendant, the Player, the Nexus, (the Inheritor or a wound)
You have Wealth
You can Travel, Fight, and Grow
admin
1. Your original world, though you could use your Save/Load ability to transport yourself over.
2. Yes.
3. It gets exponential if you try. Divergence and subjective years increase together and compound on each other. Growth in your own power just makes causing divergence easier.
4. Essentially, yes.
Quest
These CYOAs are great, but I do have a couple of questions.
Q1 The Nexus describes how there are many types of Potentials but only lists energy and power could you explain what those Potentials even mean/provide examples of others, and could you provide examples of what energy can/can’t do?
Q2 Wound mentions how it can grant “conceptual ‘effectiveness’” to its empowered actions. what does this mean? Would a DnD firebolt empowered with a 200 times multiplier (that is the multiplier of 1 AP put in a DnD cantrip right?) become a fireball instead of just dealing 200 times base damage?
Q3 If you spent an AP from Wound on empowering a Nexus spell, thus elevating it’s “conceptual ‘effectiveness’”, would you then be able to repeat that elevated spell without spending an AP
Thanks for answering the questions here.
admin
Energy is literally potential energy. It can be used to do work.
Power is energy over time. It produces energy, and can create permanent self-powered phenomena.
Many forms of supernatural ability will boil down to Energy or Power- along with Mass, these make up the overwhelming majority of what you’ll use and produce.
As stated in the text, “the difference between natural healing and regeneration“. This effect is seperate from the empowerment. Your firebolt deals 200 times base damage, and can burn some things that should be immune (or otherwise defy normal limits).
Yes.
Quest
Thanks for answering my questions but a wild thought just came to me what would happen if you spent AP in order to Empower The Inheritor’s ability to record/create a schematic what would the multiplier/conceptual elevation do?
admin
Hmm. The ability on its own is already perfect. Not much? You might get a more ‘idealized’ version of a thing you record, or produce a schematic that is, while not any different in actuality, easier to construct into a real thing.
Gdjitxdjl
So for Cultivation how important are the Aspect & Dao in defining yourself and your capabilities? What does having an Aspect of SILVER CITY actually mean in a practical sense? Also, the same goes for what does having a Dao of LORD CENTIPEDES mean?
(Have you considered expanding on the Cultivation system as another You Are option? It’s honestly pretty neat. )
admin
The enemy has subordinated their Luck, Wisdom, Life, Integrity, and Perception beneath the new attribute of Silver City. These subordinated attributes continue to function only as expressions of Silver City. Beyond some massive amplification- they are hundreds of times as lucky and perceptive, trillions of times as resistant to spiritual assault- this means all ‘circumstantial’ benefits/penalties derive from Silver City alone. Cursed with deadly misfortune? Doesn’t matter, the Silver City’s Luck is not derived from their Luck. They’ve reordered half of themselves into a structure that reinforces the Silver City at the cost of its subordinate attributes, a literal city where their spiritual power is at its zenith.
The Dao of LORD CENTIPEDES allows its wielder to take any action within its domain at full effectiveness, as if every drop of knowledge and skill invested into the Dao was whatever best supported the action. They need a new spell to counter an opponent, and they draw up something as refined and practiced as if they had spent the last thousand years on nothing else. This particular Dao is as conceptually broad as ‘metal’ or ‘life’.
Gdjitxdjl
And APOCALPSE SUN? Since you’ve explained those two that just leaves the last remaining. Honestly, it does sound the most interesting too.
Actually… Could we steal his Aspect? Maybe not like literally steal it from him but copy it instead (and then do it better).
Also, I’ve noticed that all of these are limited to just two words. Is that intentional or are the Aspects/Dao’s out there made up of like three words or just one word?
admin
Simply the counterpart to Silver City. Apocalypse Sun subsumes Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Charisma. The creation of this attribute in particular involved the destruction of Willpower. It’s not that they have a Willpower of 0, but rather that they have no Willpower score at all. This half of their self forms a mobile body, which they use where more direct intervention is required.
Entirely possible.
Just happenstance.
Gdjitxdjl
I see… So is LORD CENTIPEDES trying to merge his two Aspects into just one then? And, if so what would it become? I’d assume he’d want to maintain a mobile body for direct intervention at least.
admin
Right now, they are attempting to convert the world they inhabit (and all its peoples) into a great world-body. Eventually, yes, they would construct a final attribute and subordinate all else beneath it.
Gdjitxdjl
Supposing I have both Beloved and Nexus would I theoretically be able to give the magic system of Nexus a corporeal form? Also, probably allow her to influence those who use the magic system. She’d essentially be a ‘living magic system’ then, I guess?
admin
Yeah.
Scree
What counts as “things that deteriorate reality”? Also, I’m probably being dumb but how does Nexus grant you immortality?
admin
The event horizon of a black hole. A false vacuum collapse. ‘Glitches’ in the workings of the world. Abominations that never existed, trying to impose their twisted false history upon the world. Spells that rip apart spacetime to shred physically invulnerable opponents. Etc.
Add to the set of effects Nexus can generate the set of effects necessary to run your own existence. Tell Nexus to run your own existence, if it would for some reason fail to maintain itself. As long as sufficient energy is available to Nexus, your existence will be perpetuated by it.
Gdjitxdjl
Some feedback on a few of the various options:
->Beloved: This one is the most freeform of the options available which is both a strength and a weakness. Honestly, I’d suggest jotting down a few examples to aid in directing the player’s decisions.
->Progenitor: The restriction on being unable to banish individuals you have inducted into your bloodline seems rather arbitrary?
->Fight: I think you went too far in the other direction for this one. While that version was under our complete control this one is entirely uncontrolled. Instead, perhaps a middle point might be better? Where ‘dungeons’ are periodically formed that spontaneously fit into a world. But, you can also create dungeons of your own.
Gdjitxdjl
Inheritor
->It says that my capabilities will always be at least “minimally sufficient” to create a schematic which is fine. I still need the materials after all. As an example how would this apply to Ninjutsu from Naruto? It requires no physical component yet it does need chakra. Would I therefore be able to use the technique at will or would I have to in some way acquire chakra first in order to use it?
Gamer
->Are skills and abilities character-locked? For example if I have a character that I use a skill point to unlock pyromancy for then is it restricted to that specific character alone or can my other characters also acces it now too? If so can this be circumvented by Nexus or Inheritor?
->As a system upgrade would it be possible to ‘read’ the backstories of others? Also, to gain the ability to ‘edit’ them causing retroactive changes. For example it might be used to retroactively swap the gender of a character.
->As a system upgrade would it be possible to gain access to an ‘Item Shop’? I’m unsure but it’d likely entail converting XP into either currency to buy it with or into the item directly. Also, what about ‘Relationship Points’ and such as seen in Visual Novels as a system upgrade?
->Is it possible to acquire soulbound pets, familiars, companions, and so on? What is the limit on what can be gained?
->What happens if one of my characters is slain? Are they gone for good or am I able to simply bring them back? Or, would the latter require a system upgrade to bring them back? Basically, is ‘perma-death’ a thing for characters.
->If I have Ascendant and rewind time back to a point before I existed would I still be able to create characters?
Nexus
->How are potentials harvested? I mean is it done essentially automatically so you don’t have to worry about it or is it some physical act which needs to be done.
Fight
->Am I able to use Beloved to acquire control over this? Also, if possible would I be able to make further modifications to make it more useful? It doesn’t need to be all at once. What I essentially want is an ‘infinite dungeon’ along with the ability to make ‘instanced dungeons’ which might have specific themes or otherwise be under my control. The scope and scale of these would expand over time as my own abilities do as would my influence over the ‘infinite dungeon’. For example I could use the ‘infinite dungeon’ to connect two doors together allowing for transport between them. Or, I might have an ‘instanced dungeon’ which seamlessly fits into a world or merely have it be an isolated section of the ‘infinite dungeon’. Oh, I guess that dungeon cores or similar would be a thing…
Share
->How does Share work in relation to sharing the Gamer System? Well, assuming I want to share the whole thing with one or more individuals but at like 5% power. In this case would the individual themselves become the ‘character’? Also, would this allow me to create other ‘Players’? Of course without the ability to create additional characters they’d be rendered unable to influence the world should their original character die.
admin
Inheritor
You would still need chakra to execute ninjutsu, but would have some minimal ability to produce chakra from your mind and body.
Player
The skill itself is character-specific, but what the skill provides can usually be taught.
Yes. Yes.
Easier to develop something like that as a skill, but possible. Somewhat possible.
Yes.
By default, they are no harder or easier to resurrect than they would be without Player. Resurrection magic is an available skill, and respawning is a valid system upgrade.
Haha yes.
Nexus
Completely automatically.
Fight
With a Greater Boon, yes. This would allow you to develop it further over time as an ability.
Share
When someone acquires the power of Player, they become a Player, and their self becomes merely one character.
AnAnon
1) Does the multiversal collapse from Travel interfere with Ascendant or Beloved?
2) Would Beloved’s boons still work in other multiverses (since Travel sort of implies the concepts of a given multiverse are discrete from others, given how they can be damaged independently)?
3) If you spend a boon from Beloved and feel like you wasted it, rewinding with Ascendant past the spending would ‘refund’ it and leave you able to try spending it on something else, correct?
4) Can Ascendant save ‘unspent boons’?
admin
1) Not with Ascendant. Most Beloved boons can bypass it.
2) Yep.
3) Yep.
4) Yes, but the reason you can’t get more boons is legal, not practical. You risk angering the cosmic authorities if you try for more.
Gdjitxdjl
Inheritor
->RE: Chakra – I see! It’s not too limiting at least however since while I can’t reduce the requirements of it I can at least likely devise a method to increase the quantity and quality of chakra I produce as a separate schematic. This would also likely be able to expanded to other ‘power sources’ too. Well, I mean it could be bypassed entirely with Wound or Gamer but with just Inheritor it needs a bit more of a workaround. I think. I might just be able to Refine my chakra network itself or create an artificial chakra network which I would then Refine instead.
->Suppose I wanted to make a multi-kilometer spaceship. Naturally, this would take a very long time if I were to do it entirely by myself. Would I be able to delegate it to others to increase the speed at which it gets done? Or, I suppose I could automate the process by making make one or more devices to help me finish it faster. I guess after a certain point it wouldn’t matter either as you’d be able to Refine your body itself to the point where it wouldn’t be an issue.
Gamer
->Do I only gain xp from creatures that I kill directly myself? Or, am I able to gain xp indirectly as well such as by leading an army in combat? If not then I suppose this could be a potential system upgrade since it does seem to make sense.
Fight
RE: Greater Boon – Then I could spend three Lesser Boons on Power to allow it match the other You Have options in terms of progression? Which… Hmm, it might be better to swap out one for an Ally. Most likely some sapient manifestation of the power itself or similar to provide either synergistic abilities which could be acquired or to provide additional assistance with the power itself.
Share
RE: Player – Interesting! I presumably have the ability to limit their capabilities by not sharing everything? Such as by not sharing the ability to create additional characters or say only one additional character. Or having a level cap? Which… Honestly, still provides a lot less control than I’d like though I could probably make something work via an Ally or Lesser Boon of Power. Either way it could be a potentially great way to outsource level grinding to others such as by having a ‘decay mechanic’ where after each year I retake a single level from everyone. I’m assuming that I can be selective in what I retake at least and maybe set conditional modifiers.
admin
Inheritor
Delegating your crafts is not made more difficult by Inheritor. If your assistants know what to do, they can perform all the construction work for you.
Gamer
Only from that which you kill yourself. More indirect sources of xp are valid system upgrades.
Fight
Yes.
Share
Naturally. Sharing in ways that introduce arbitrary limitations is simple. As an example: you could lend away some completely normal physical strength, and restrict it to only function for non-violent purposes.
Taking levels 1:1 isn’t possible, but you can drain xp, any stat or skill points they earn, etc. This is selective and intelligent enough to appear to look like taking away levels directly.
Silor
Is it possible to Nexus the Scale from Wealth? Or the Travel Device?
admin
Yes, and yes.
Scree
Who/what are the cosmic authorities, and what happens if you/your multiverse is seen as Unreal by them?
admin
The being that grants your Boons is one of their order’s lessers.
The defenders of the cosmos do not regard it as part of their domain, and do not uphold their laws within its bounds, and are quick to act against anything that moves across the border.
Anything ontologically dependent on an Unreal realm is also held as Unreal, and subject to all that which keeps the third era of the multiverse from descending into the fourth, predicted final. You are personally protected from this, capable of subverting it to a degree, but someone who trained in your realm is liable to find that knowledge and skill reduced to fading dreams upon their return. Someone empowered within it is liable to lose all that strength upon their return. Someone who lived, and learned, and grew into a better person, is liable to be erased upon their return. Unless they are powerful enough to fight back.
Storage is safe. You can generate ideal training environments and resources for your own development. Maybe more than that, if you’re clever.
Gdjitxdjl
Inheritor
->We’d retain Inheritor even when transferring our consciousness from weak, mortal flesh to the sublime strength of the machine? And, I assume that that any clones or otherwise copies of ourself would not retain Inheritor? If so could this be worked around by creating a hivemind?
Gamer
->We’re not limited in the types of character we can create except for background points? So I could become a living virus, a spaceship, a Tyranid Hivefleet, a Zerg Overmind, and so on?
admin
Yes. Yes.
Gdjitxdjl
Ah, an interesting idea occurred to me: How does awareness work in relation to Wound & Gamer when the lesser self they use to interact with the world is destroyed?
Wound
->It’d be the wound-aspect, I think? It’d be outside reality looking in.
Gamer
->Of the two I think that Gamer could be more interesting? It seems like a suitable system upgrade to shift from first-person to third-person and then to disconnect the ‘camera entirely’ to free roam. Also, to be able to retain awareness of places we’ve previously been though it’d require multitasking. Sorta like having multiple screen monitors each of which shows something different.
admin
Reduced to your wound-aspect, you exist on the border of reality. You make decisions without thought, observe without perception- or at least without those forms of thought and perception that can occur within reality. You are like an actor waiting for your next role.
As the Player, you retain more humanlike consciousness when your avatar is killed. You don’t initially have any ability to observe the world from this state, but the System provides.
Gdjitxdjl
I’m having a bit of a hard time wrapping my head around how this works. So is it like a net positive or a net negative? And, we can ‘take on our next role’ (i.e. bring ourselves back to life) even with just Wound alone?
admin
Definitely positive. It preserves you.
From the document, “By spending ten times the normal AP cost, you may take an action as if it were a preexisting contingency- made in advance by some prior iteration of yourself, held suspended since. … Death of body might be recovered from by deciding you did some healing ‘in advance’.” Wound alone is entirely capable of self-resurrection.
chrisianak
On Nexus, could we set limits on what its users could do? I.e. set limits on power per skill for others so an average mage doesn’t go from DnD fireball to throwing around nuke-levels a few years after people start using your nexus-magic. Wouldn’t want every spellcaster to turn into nigh-omnipotents.
How do we get our first bit of potential? It shows that you can get more by investing potential in things, but what about the first bit?
On Ascendant and Grow, this would allow us to go back to the start and try again if the enemy breaks free right?
admin
Yes. You can easily establish complex rulesets.
Your own energies/resources count as potentials.
Yes.
Silor
For Inheritor is it possible use the time warping productivity enhancing function to build or teach stuff? Like being part of a construction team building a skyscaper in 5 hours or teaching a full curriculum of college level chemistry to a bunch of students in a day?
admin
Of course.
Silor
Hey Savestate just wanted to say thanks for always being willing to give WOGs out here 😀 and that it also means that you keep being out there being cool B). Also new question :p can this function also be used to cram in more relaxing 😉 activities? Though my opinion of relaxing activites tend to be binge watching fun anime together :v.
admin
?
You can have an off topic area, if you find that useful.
Silor
Can you use the AP from Wound to generate more Quintessence for Progenitor? Like using up 1 day’s worth of AP?
admin
Yes.
Magic Outlaw
How do the Aspects and Dao from the Grow option interact with Player? I’m assuming that your stats will start to merge into your desired Aspect and a similar effect will happen to your skills merging into a Dao?
I also saw in an earlier answer that Lord Centipede has two aspects and the second one was made my sacrificing his willpower, is that a consequence of having two Aspects, something unique to his situation, or something else. If it is a consequence of having multiple Aspects can any You Are powers get around it, if so how? Can you have multiple Daos?
admin
Player systemizes your stats and skills already. You would see the effects of this cultivation in a systemized fashion. Skills are collected into groups as you develop Dao. Stats are arranged into hierarchical structures that allow them to massively compound upon each other. It would appear to you more like reorganization alongside large bonuses.
Willpower was sacrificed so that the stats ‘under’ Willpower- Intelligence, Wits, Perception- could be given over to other stats. Imagine you had three machines, and you disassembled one to add its parts to the others. Aspects are just collections of stats multiplying each other, and if you have fewer aspects with more stats in each, you are exponentially more powerful. This is a fairly standard method of progression at that stage of their cultivation system, but t is entirely possible- indeed, superior if you can manage it- to proceed without sacrificing stats along the way. Player can accomplish this trivially, by sacrificing Willpower and then spending a stat point on Willpower to get it back.
You can have as many Daos as you want. Larger Daos are better in almost every way.
Gdjitxdjl
Question #1: How difficult is it for Wound / Inheritor to acquire multiple bodies? For Gamer at least it’d be utterly trivial with only the multitasking being the issue.
Question #2: How difficult would it be to change an already established Dao and Aspect? Naturally, I’d assume that Wound would let me bypass any restriction.
Question #3: Does the degree of conceptual ‘effectiveness’ for Wound scale with the amount of AP invested into an action? If I spend 72 AP each day then I could empower all the actions I take by a minor degree? The just keep adding +72 AP to further increase their effectiveness?
Feedback: I’ll admit that Wealth is really hard to fit into a thematic build in a lot cases. Have you considered adjusted it to be more ‘metaphorical’ / ‘metaphysical’? As in an actual golden weight is not literally summoned instead it assesses your strength and if you’re able to lift it then the desired object appears and if not then nothing happens.
admin
Wound would struggle to achieve a ‘true’ multiform effect, but could easily produce the semblance of multiple bodies at the cost of spending about ten times as much AP for anything done by a non-primary body. Inheritor could figure out something basic within 72 hours.
Without out-of-context powers, changing an aspect costs two stages of cultivation. Not in the sense that you lose cultivation, in the sense that you need to cultivate two stages higher. (LORD CENTIPEDES is stage 13.) Without out-of-context powers, a Dao cannot be changed except by expanding its domain.
No. 72 AP each day gets you that effect applied to everything, and that’s about the limit.
You can refluff it if you’d like. I prefer it as-is. The Haves are meant to be tools.
Gdjitxdjl
Question #4
Would it be possible to use Greater Boon / Lesser Boons from Beloved to permanently slay / imprison / diminish / enslave the clones from Share? If so then how many Boons would it take to achieve this effect?
Question #5
If you have an Ally from Beloved are they also factored into clones’ total power?
admin
Yes. One Lesser Boon could handle three of them.
No.
Gdjitxdjl
Progenitor is weird. It’s like this strange midpoint between Gamer and Nexus? It’s got the easy, self-directed growth of Gamer in quintessence while also have the mass propagation aspect of Nexus in the form a bloodline and the oathbound. I’m not sure how I feel about it though… It just seems somewhat lacking in comparison to those two? Just the impression that I get.
Silor
With the Progenitor you can take over more than 1 body at the same time right? Does that mean it comes with multitasking too? Or is your consciousness split among them?
admin
By default, your incarnations aren’t united. When they manifest, they are completely and entirely you, of course, and they continue to be ‘you’. But the personality of one of your incarnations may diverge from the others, some of them can know information others lack, etc. It’s not really dangerous, but it is something of a constraint until you find a solution.
Silor
Is it possible to automatically Incarnate into one of the Oathbounds with the same function that checks your criteria for swearing in/casting off a person for your Bloodline i.e. if the function that automatically kicks out born members of a Bloodline if they betray can also be used to subsume the Oathbounds when they betray you?
admin
You can incarnate automatically, but don’t start with any ability to detect betrayal from the Oathbound.
Gdjitxdjl
Besides Beloved how do the other options* fare in either taking control of or mitigating Fight? It’s a neat drawback but also far more disruptive than the others.
*Specifically, I’d say Inheritor, Wound, Gamer, and Nexus as they seem like the one with the most promise.
admin
Preventing Fight from causing problems is as easy as monitoring all doorways and disrupting them should they manifest a new room. Useful control is not much farther off from that point.
Inheritor, Progenitor, Nexus, and Beast easily scale up exponentially to handle such a massive task.
Player and Wound can manage this, but will struggle if they can’t find enough resources.
Ascendant needs absurd amounts of subjective-effort or some secondary power to cultivate.
Gdjitxdjl
Question #1 {Beloved – Wound}: What if via Beloved we brought our wound-aspect directly into reality? I dunno. I got this idea of a dragon that’s actually a living wound in reality.
Question #2 {Beloved – Gamer}: Would you rate the power to just edit backgrounds similar to Gamer as a Lesser Boon? But, it’d be expanded to cover more than that, like being able to edit other individuals or societies and so on. Oh, and it’d have the ability to create additional bodies.
Question #3 {Beloved}: An idle question but do you have any ideas for a Greater Boon power involving dragons? They’re pretty neat after all.
admin
What if you brought part of a balloon’s surface into its interior? You’ve left behind a hole. Another wound, identical in shape, on that border. Meanwhile, the wound brought into reality, the passage-between-reality-and-not brought into reality, is free to run around. Shaped like a person, but capable of consigning stuff to the Not.
If limited enough, yes. The more capable you already are when using a Boon to empower yourself, the more power you can get out of it.
Something elemental, maybe? You pick an element. In all systems of power (magic, tech, psionics, whatever) it expands upon what you can do, guaranteeing some ability to create, destroy, manipulate, and be empowered by it. By absorbing manifestations of your element, or passively feeding upon its presence, you can recursively strengthen any abilities derived from it. It gets very broad as you grow. Maybe you chose Elemental Fire- with mundane technology and your element, you could create something on par with Star Trek, including replicators and transporters based on converting substance to fire and back again. With your permission, others can lean on your element to obtain some fraction of these benefits for themselves.
Gdjitxdjl
Huh, that sounds…really cool! A few more questions:
->What happens when something gets consigned to the Not?
->Are your familiar with Nobilis & Glitch? If so what would you rate being similar to an Excrucian as?
That’s an interesting power, I think. I’ll admit its a lot more creative than what I was thinking as well. Which would, essentially, be that you turn into a ‘Dragon God’ which isn’t very original.
Another concept that I enjoy is being a living portal to say a hell dimension or similar which is also part of yourself and under your control? While not infinite in size to start with the place does grow in power as you do. And, you can do all sorts of fun stuff like create monsters and so on.
admin
If it isn’t capable of both sustaining its own existence like an independent universe and traveling to places to which it has no shared ontology, it’s flat-out doomed.
Familiar only vaguely, by reputation. I understand there to be tiers of mundane/supernatural/miraculous power. Your strongest initial abilities (aside from Ascendant’s all-trumping reset, which is not relevant here) are in the form of Boons, which probably compare to individual miraculous effects. With a very large amount of progression, you can come to produce Boon (thus, miracle) level effects by your own strength. So, I think a Greater Boon might be able to grant you Excrucian-alike potential.
Gdjitxdjl
Would this be viable? I sorta got carried away but it was a fun concept to mull over. It’s loosely based off of your Unbeing from Chain of Isekai with some inspiration from Glitch/Nobilis. Yes, it’s powerful but it’s also building off of Wound as a foundation along with still having resource requirements so not as bad as it could be. Still very versatile especially as it progresses.
Greater Boon of Power
You are a wound upon reality that exists above and beyond rather inside the confines of actuality. This is your wound-aspect. It cannot be destroyed or diminished, for what weapon could make a wound less severe? Neither can it be remedied or healed away, as this is merely destruction with extra steps. Instead you have been alloyed with the substrate of existence itself to allow you to exist inside reality. Or, rather to be more precise a sliver of your wound-aspect can be cast into reality in the form of a wound-shard. It should be noted there is technically no limit to the number of wound-shards that can be cast into reality. But, the process itself does require both time and effort which serve as an effective limit.
In any case a wound-shard is typically perceived as a hole in reality shaped like a person though in truth a wound-shard has no definite form. It’d merely be a matter of practice in order to reshape yourself into myriad shapes. While functionally immune to damage in actuality it does weaken a wound-shard’s grip upon reality which could potentially result in them being cast back out of reality. Of course given your nature only the most cataclysmic of mundane weapons could pose a threat though this resistance does not extend to that which touches upon the higher principles of existence such as many forms of magic. These are however merely the passive aspects of your existence for through your existence you are able to manifest the qualities of *Not* and *Is*.
First, there is the *Not* of which you are capable of consigning things to. This starts with merely the physical but with experience this can expanded to the metaphysical and conceptual. Consign a person’s flesh to the Not, pluck the disloyalty from a person’s mind, erase a fire’s heat while leaving the rest intact, unmake a society’s concept of morality, and so on. All these things consigned to your wound-aspect. Then, there is the *Is* which allows for you to take which you consigned to the Not and use it to create. As your wound-aspect can not be diminished you retain what was used. Clad your wound-aspect in flesh, embed disloyalty into an enemy, return a society’s morality but with key aspects still missing. With experience you can easily create monsters loyal to yourself or stitch together a false history by weaving together what you’ve unmade. Perhaps your greatest feat would be to alloy another with the Not in an inversion of what was done to yourself. They would be similar to a wound-shard in nature, though loyal and bound to yourself yet inferior in power, and if ousted from reality they would be joined with your wound-aspect. A kind of immortality as you need only cast them back into reality though you could just as easily modify them.
All this is reliant on Depth. This is a resource you naturally generate over time with both its capacity and generation being exponential as it compounds on itself. It can either be invested temporarily or permanently into *Not* and *Is*. Examples of temporary use: Instilling a temporary amount of Depth into an army of monsters which once it runs out will cause them to be unmade. Or, use *Not* to unmake a person’s arm and once Depth runs out it gets returned. A permanent investment of Depth would lead to permanent results and would interfere with attempts to undo it. Use a permanent investment of Depth to unmake a person’s sight permanently. Invest Depth into yourself or another to act as ablative armor against that which would harm you. Stuff like that.
admin
Viable.
Gdjitxdjl
Honestly, if I were to refine the previous concept down further and get rid of the dross:
→You are a wound in reality made manifest having been alloyed with the substrate of existence. This enables you to generate Depth over time which functions as the fulcrum by which you leverage your influence over reality. While this resource is technically not expended upon use in practical terms it is as detailed further below.
→You exist above and behind reality in the form of the wound-aspect which is unable to be destroyed nor diminished. But, to actually be able to act inside of reality then a ‘vessel’ must be forged which is then embedded into reality. There are essentially two aspects of this process. First, Depth must be invested to form the structure itself. The amount invested not only typically determines the vessel’s potential ‘power capacity’ and ‘power generation’ but also the quality of the vessel itself which in turn determines its physical capabilities. With minimal investment a vessel might be no greater than an average human. Second, additional Depth can be invested to ‘fill’ the vessel allowing for use of more exotic applications. In this case however, Depth used in such a way is then ‘expended’ by being returned to the central pool in the wound-aspect. Technically, there is no limit to the number of vessels that can be created if one has sufficient Depth and time. You don’t even have to make use of the vessel yourself as you could create subordinate entities which are still inextricably entwined to yourself.
→While referred to as a ‘vessel’ for simplicity in actuality they are still formless wounds in reality. This makes it rather easy for a vessel’s form to be adjusted into myriad shapes given enough experience. It also makes them rather difficult to harm by mundane means though that which touches upon the metaphysical and conceptual have no such issue. If ‘destroyed’ then a vessel is simply cast back out of reality where the Depth invested into their creation is simply regained.
→Here are some active applications of Depth:
->Consign a thing to the Not whether it be physical, metaphysical, or conceptual. The amount of Depth needed scales with the difficulty of what you’re attempting.
->Invest Depth to fabricate a false history for yourself by leveraging your own formless nature. The more intricate and expansive then the more Depth is required. In this way potentially entire factions and worlds could be made in such a way. Or, it could be used to supplant or alter the history of other entities. Revise history so that a male had actually always been female or adjust a society so that nudity is the norm.
->Invest Depth to empower another with your own fundamental nature. Functionally, this can be done on either a permanent or temporary basis. If permanent then in essence they could be considered another of your vessels with their power depending on the amount of resources allocated to them.
– – –
→Typically, I feel that reality will go the ‘path of least resistance’ when it comes to the false histories you’ve fabricated. In effect this means that after a certain point you can retake the Depth invested and it’ll still remain with the original history having been overwritten. The time required for this of course varies based on the depth and breadth of revision involved. Of course you don’t have to allow this to happen if you’d rather it didn’t for whatever reason.
→You don’t actually have to micromanage everything if you’d rather not to as your wound-aspect is easily capable of covering that aspect. It exists above and beyond those parts of itself which are contained in reality after all.
→Yes, if you permanently invest Depth into an individual this does technically render them immortal. If slain then they’d be dragged back to your wound-aspect after which you’d simply need to craft them another vessel.
→Technically, it’d be entirely possible to craft entities originating from youself. Simply craft a vessel and then construct a false history to give it a life of its own. It’d be inextricably bound to yourself of course. It be… Hmm, well, I guess somewhat similar to a Daemon from Warhammer? In this case you’d be the Warp itself.
I think I’m pretty much finished with Beloved. Just need finish figuring out what the realm and companion will be. Also, I guess what the last Lesser Boon should be used on. If I take another Ally then the clones from share will no longer be a threat but there are other options…
Gdjitxdjl
If I were to refine the previous concept down further to improve upon it:
Synopsis: You are a formless wound in reality made manifest. Yet, what is a wound if not a gate? On one side exists all that *Is* while on the other is everything *Not*. It is this dichotomy that functions as the fulcrum by which you leverage your influence over each.
Resource: Honestly, I’m thinking that a resource automatically generated over time is most suitable in this case? Given the general thematics it might be termed ‘Depth’ for with each passing day the wound deepens or perhaps ‘Ichor’ for within the wound itself reality bleeds. In keeping with the “neither destroyed nor diminished” this means that resources are not actually expended upon usage. Instead, I imagine it’s more a matter of investing them into an action for either the short term or the long term. To further expand on the concept allocation of resources would be another important element with there being a ‘central pool’ in the wound-aspect which would then need to be divided up among various ‘wound-shards’ (i.e. lesser selves) found inside reality. Of course to even have a wound-shard you’d need to invest resources into creating it in the first place.
Usage: I’ll sketch out a few ideas below of what I had in mind for this Greater Boon {Power}. Oh, and I freely admit that Gamer was a big inspiration even if I instead built off a lot of the aesthetics of Wound instead. In any case:
● The Creation of Wound-Shards -> Functionally, this isn’t too dissimilar to how Player provides build points to create new characters except in this case it’d be reliant on investing Depth. It might be easier to conceptualize it as the creation of a ‘vessel’ instead? Lots of potential customization along with there technically being no limit on the number you can create except for the amount of resource you can invest into them. We’ll assume that an average human is the baseline with the further you stray from it the more expensive it becomes.
● Fabrication of False Histories -> Yes, it functions similar to Player’s ability to establish a backstory for their characters. In this case it’s done by leveraging the formless nature of the wound. Of course the more expansive and intricate the changes then the more Depth is required to be invested into it. Unlike with Player however this fabrication can also be extended to supplant or alter the history of other entities.
● Formation of Entities -> Technically, I think this could be considered an offshoot of the previous two? It’s essentially your ‘monster creation’ where instead of investing yourself into it instead you give it a life and history of its own. Of course it is inextricably bound to you and there’s no issue in simply reclaiming the resources allocated to it. It be… Hmm, well, I guess somewhat similar to a Daemon from Warhammer? In this case you’d be the Warp itself.
● Empowering Others -> Allow others to make use of your abilities by investing them with varying degrees of Depth. Or, make it more permanent by assimilating them into yourself entirely. To borrow the previous analogy then in this case they’d be a Daemon Prince then.
● Consigning things to the *Not* -> This is the ability to unmake a thing by casting it into the *Not*. Typically, it only requires a brief investment of Depth to achieve the desired result after which the Depth can be reclaimed. For example if you unmake an individual’s love for animals then they might eventually be able to learn to love them again. But, if you unmake their capacity to love animals then it becomes far more difficult without outside interference. In any case it is easier to unmake the physical than the metaphysical which in turn is easier than the conceptual.
And, probably more! This is what came to mind offhand though. Sorta amusing that if anything it seems more centered around creating rather than destroying. A few idle notes that I couldn’t fit in above.
→Typically, I feel that reality will go the ‘path of least resistance’ when it comes to your ‘false creations’? It pretty much means that if you allow it to happen then they’ll start to become ‘real’ rather than being sustained entirely by your own power. While this does mean you can retake the Depth invested it also means you’re giving up a varying degree of control depending on how far you let it go. I’d pretty much envisioned it as a trade-off at least. Either way the time required for this to begin occurring is reliant on the depth and breadth of the false creation itself.
→You don’t actually have to micromanage everything if you’d rather not to as your wound-aspect is easily capable of managing everything. It exists above and beyond those parts of itself which are contained in reality after all. Oh, this does mean that you don’t have the multitasking issue that Player has either.
Gdjitxdjl
Nexus
N1: How fast is the propagation rate of Nexus?
N2: Also, how difficult is it for another to remove from an area?
N3: If an individual who has been saturated in our magic dies wouldn’t it be an easy thing to simply return them to life? Similar to restarting a program in a sense with only a varying expenditure of potentials being needed.
N4: Our influence over Nexus extends to all of it regardless of distance or dimension?
N5: How feasible is it for us to either have triggers which cause certain reactions from the magic system (i.e. if its being purged from an area then it should retaliate} or to grant the magic system itself sapience?
Beloved
B1: Assuming that we build off on existing You Are options would we be given more leeway in crafting a new power with either the Lesser Boon or Greater Boon?
B2: Can we use a Lesser Boon to broaden a power acquired by the Greater Boon? Specifically, this would not increase the progression rate but instead provide additional versatility.
B3: For the private realm obtained via Lesser Boon {Comfort} would be able to expand it’s size over time? Does it adjust itself to remain relevant even as we grow in power? Lastly, can we decide where to place it such as having it being located in the wound-aspect from Wound?
B4: To how great a degree can a Lesser Boon {Ally or Power} be used to modify a You Are option?
admin
N1: Potentials can double in less than four hours, scaling with your magic’s improvement. Passive spread starts out around 10 MPH in atmosphere.
N2: As difficult as destroying everything that contains your potentials.
N3: Yes.
N4: Yes.
N5: Very easy. You can unlock a method for turning 20 Watts of power into a brain’s worth of cognition in your first few minutes.
B1: Not more leeway exactly, but you could definitely create something that builds atop the existing power like a foundation. Say, generate a new power that scales with something your You Are abilities give you absurd amounts of.
B2: No. Greater Boon powers come with potentially unbounded versatility already.
B3: Yes. Sure, you could do that.
B4: Difficult to answer.
dex10awesome
Really good to see a text version of your CYOAs. It’s so much easier to make builds with and theorize with. I love how your CYOAs look, but it’s really more convenient to craft ideas and stories with the actual text, which is why I often transcribe it. Thank you for posting this.
Gdjitxdjl
Further clarification on how these two are different from one another? There seems to be significant overlap between the two. Sorry, I know you’d mentioned one potential was to acquire Glory while in combat which could then be used to buy permanent upgrades.
Greater Boon of Power
● Unlock a new ability with developmental potential on par with another You Are option, but significantly inferior progression.
● Develop a new, universally-applicable method of progression, well-suited for clever exploitation and explosive growth.
—
What would you rate a Solar/Infernal/Abyssal Exalted at for Greater Boon {Power}? Or, a Primordial/Yozi?
—
What if the private realm was taken as a Greater Boon {Comfort}?
—
Thoughts on the below? (It’s not mine but I found it to be quite neat. I’d probably adjust the aesthetics though.)
Shimmer of Possibility – That phantasmal light of infinite color, which is potential itself bestowed unto flesh.
Become the unique and irrevocable bearer of the Aurora Halo, refracted expression of limitless forms which span the continuums of abstract, spiritual, ethereal and material. Even a beginner’s fumbling could manifest a handful of Chroma enhancements granting temporary augmentations on the level of “invulnerability to a specific element,” while the delicate interplays evoked by a master can make of the wielder a god-chimera bestriding infinite realms.
The Aurora Halo represents mastery over form in all its expressions. All types, parameters, and principles of form fall within its purview; in theory virtually any effect imaginable can be achieved by its mastery, so long as it is manifest through the lens of self-transformation. From the shape of one’s mortal vessel to the superstructure of one’s oversoul, all can be altered as easily as shifting pictures on a carousel.
Beginner: Attune one’s physical corpus to various elements, thereby becoming immune to harm from them. Increase or decrease one’s height or muscle mass, though with obvious cosmetic imperfections. Emit blinding light from one’s soul which repels and terrifies lesser hostile spirits. Grow and coordinate fully functional additional limbs. Overlay a template of wholeness upon one’s body, attaining slow but total regeneration.
Adept: Attune to the fundamental nature of mass-energy, selectively phasing through all forms of physical interdiction or harm. Assume arbitrary biological templates within 100x mass-volume of one’s original form. Emit memetic pheromones capable of dominating all physically instantiated minds regardless of substrate. Grow and coordinate fully functional additional brains and sleeve them, with near-arbitrary variations on personality, talent, physical capabilities, appearance. Overlay a template of perfection upon a facet of one’s mental, physical or spiritual forms, becoming infallible within relevant fields given the bounds of conventional metaphysics.
Master: Assume arbitrary forms of any type; embody all concepts and none, as well as the duality between them. Assume a template of perfection atop the entire continuum of one’s forms, becoming infallible and unassailable within conventional metaphysics. Remove the limits of one’s growth in any field. Assume paradoxical, fanciful, or impossible forms. Besiege the Realm of Forms by encompassing all that it is not, breaking into achievements beyond conceptual definition. Manifest any Halo advancement or combination thereof, at will.
randomlurker44
This is from Rihaku’s CYOA, yes?
Gdjitxdjl
Yup, that’d be right. The Christmas one to specific.
admin
The progression Boon allows you to increase what you already have. It can grant you absurd, physically impossible levels of strength, but not turn strength into telekinesis. It also allows for much much faster growth if the circumstances line up properly.
Assuming you start out like an player right out of chargen, these are within bounds.
Simultaneously a logic-bendingly wonderful paradise and the optimum environment for safe progression.
You could get something about as broad, but much slower to develop, offering exponential growth at best.
Gdjitxdjl
Ah, that makes it much easier to understand. Conflict, Worship, Fame, Lineage, and so on seem like good potential methods of acquiring progression.
Seems inferior to Gamer, honestly. On the other hand being an entity similar to a Primordial / Devil-Tiger does seem like an interesting thematic lynchpin as trying to figure out something that cohesively meshes with Gamer is surprisingly difficult you know?
Gdjitxdjl
How does Beloved’s Greater Boon {Power} compare in terms of progression rate to Grow’s cultivation system? Inferior, superior, about the same?
admin
Generally superior. Cultivation can maybe outpace it briefly when lots of cultivation resources are available.
Gdjitxdjl
Wound, Inheritor, Nexus, Player, Beloved
Beloved [???]
→Greater Boon {Power}
Synopsis: Functionally, you become an entity similar in nature to a Primordial / Devil-Tiger from Exalted. Which… Hmm, I’d say involves embodying a ‘Mythos’ that is rooted in a ‘Central Concept’? As you grow in power not only would it be a trivial to change your own nature to better match your mythos but you’d also be able split off portions of your own soul to form mythos-related subordinate entities whom are inextricably bound to yourself for they are expressions of your mythos. Shed mortality (humanity?) to become a pantheon and civilization unto yourself. Progression would mostly reliant upon obtaining the worship of others though simply allowing for time to pass would also see a gradual accumulation of power if at a far inferior rate.
(I’d like to retain a way to consign things to the Not by being a wound in reality though. It’s just really, really neat.)
(I’m going to be a dragon! Specifically, I’d take reference from Orasmus & Ebon Dragon from Exalted though I’d be more of a western dragon in design. Well, typically. My form would be very much mutable. I just favor dragons is all.)
→Lesser Boon {Power}
I’d use it it to amplify the aforementioned Greater Boon {Power} along with increaseing its rate of progression. While still inferior to the other You Are options in the latter aspect this at least somewhat evens the gap. Also, I enjoy the idea that if I share the aforementioned Greater Boon {Power} that I’d still be the best at it no matter what.
→Lesser Boon {Ally}
Honestly, I’m having a bit of trouble devising a suitable Ally for myself. At the moment I’ve mostly narrowed it down to two main concepts. First, it’d be to have the magic system from Nexus itself become a living entity. Or, I do like the concept of a ‘living city’ based off of Malfeas from Exalted though it could be branched out into a more broad ‘genius loci’ entity. I suppose there’s nothing stopping me from merging the latter with the living magic system concept though. Either way both would be able to take on corporeal form and would be inextricably linked to me in some fashion.
→Lesser Boon {Private Realm}
To borrow from one of the previously mentioned ideas: I do enjoy the concept of a ‘living city’ of vast, labyrinthine size composed of black stone where space folds in upon itself. At the very center of this city would be a palace-temple for myself to reside in. The myriad inhabitants of this place (along with the city itself) would not only worship me but also have an advantageous technological base along with sorcerous traditions for me to assimilate and replace with my own system of magic. There’d need to be some kind of perpetual external threat along with phenomena that deteriorate reality which I could routinely cull as well. Ideally, this would also be a way to obtain more of the previously mentioned resources such as new schematics and worshipers. If I wanted it’d work quite well as the core realm of a multidimensional empire.
RE: Player
I’d probably adjust it so that the explicit game elements occur in the background? Honestly, they don’t really match up with what I’m going for in terms of aesthetics.
Gdjitxdjl
Ah, almost done. Just a few questions pertaining to multi-option interactions:
Q1. Is Beloved’s [Lesser Boon {New Power}] able to undergo further progression / enhancement via investment from Player or Inheritor?
Q2. If I have Beloved’s Greater Boon {Power} then do all of Player’s characters have automatic shared access to it? Also, are they all able to upgrade it resulting in the shared cumulative growth of the power? If so what would you rate the exponential growth of the power as being roughly on par?
Q3. Would all of Player’s characters automatically be subsumed by Nexus’ magic system upon creation? Therefore any ability they unlock via the system also be shared with Nexus? Also, would anything made by Player’s background mechanic also be automatically subsumed?
Q4. For Player do I need to actually cause true death or would merely killing them suffice? Therefore would it be able to ‘farm’ entities for XP such as simultaneously killing them and not via Wound? Or, simply bringing them back to life afterwards and then doing it again.
Q5. Am I able to “cannibalize” Player’s characters by making them kill one another as a way to gain XP? How easy is it to automate a character’s actions to varying degrees so that direct attention isn’t needed? Optionally, could this be a potential system upgrade?
Q6. Wound is able to easily acquire information that it shouldn’t be able to via spending AP? Become fluent in a dead language that has no living speakers, learn a hidden trade despite having no one willing to teach you, obtain knowledge of an individual’s most hidden secrets that they’ve shared with no one, and so on. Can this then be used to obtain entirely new schematics for Inheritor?
Q7. A few questions in regards as to how a single Lesser Boon might interact with the clones from Share:
->Would I be able to degrade their abilities so that it’d require all seven of them working together to equal me with one Lesser Boon?
->Typically, I think one Lesser Boon is equivalent to Three Clones? If I take them as an Ally then how much flexibility do I have in adjusting them? Could I say merge them? Or, further adjust their personalities and nature?
->What using a Lesser Boon or Greater Boon to cannibalize them?
->If I spend two Lesser Boons on acquiring the clones then can I get the last clone for free? Essentially, I’d get all seven of them.
admin
1: Inheritor can augment it fairly directly. Player can develop Stats and Skills to amplify it or to use it more effectively.
2: Like other greater powers, all of your selves may draw upon it and further its progression. Stats and Skills remain character-specific; they boost what a specific character can achieve with it.
3: Effectively, yes. Yes. Possible, but not guaranteed.
4: All you need to do is kill. Yes.
5: Yes. As easy as automating your own mental functions. Botting is a valid system upgrade.
6: Yes. Yes.
7a: One Lesser Boon might remove 3/7 of their collective power, reducing individual clones from 1/3 of your own potency to 4/21. It would thus take six of them to overpower you.
7b: You would need them to be willing or helpless, first. Otherwise, the Ally effect just goes into neutralizing them. Being no more powerful than the Ally you could have otherwise produced, you would have near-total control over what they become.
7c: You wouldn’t get usefully greater benefit than from empowering yourself with a Boon directly.
7d: Yeah.
Gdjitxdjl
Questions on an Abyssal Exaltation as a Greater Boon {Power}.
A1. As you’d mentioned previously we’d start out as a new Exalted right out of character generation. Would we be limited to Essence 10 or could we reach even further heights? As we grow in power would we be able to negate or at least diminish the negative aspects of the Exaltation?
A2. Also, your thoughts on an Exaltation in comparison to that of Cultivation?
A3. {Gamer} Would it be possible to have an Exaltation be a ‘template’ that could be applied or removed from a character at will? Would Essence be distilled into Energy?
admin
Unbounded developmental potential.
Cultivation offers more raw power. Exaltation is much better at producing conceptual effects.
Possible. Yes.
Gdjitxdjl
Cultivation + Exaltation seems to be a winning combination then as you’d get both raw power and conceptual effects. Exaltation would probably help in the progression of Cultivation? And, it’d probably further improve things if your Dao lined up with your Exaltation as well.
Gdjitxdjl
You Are: Beloved, Inheritor, Wound, Nexus, Player
You Have: Nothing
You Can: Travel, Fight, Share, Grow
->Greater Boon {Power} – A (modified) Solar Exaltation. Also, the inherited memories of an incarnation of myself who reached the utmost heights of glory in the Primordial War and in the First Age that followed. (Optionally, I guess it could be swapped for an Abyssal Exaltation.)
->Lesser Boon {Ally} – A Lunar Exalted? Or, I like the idea of my shadow being shorn free to be given a life of its own. It’d be similar to a Lunar Exalted along with the Ebon Dragon in terms of capabilities.
->Lesser Boon {Ally} – A Sidereal Exalted? Eh, not sure it fits what I’ve got going on.
->Lesser Boon {Private Realm} – Yes, it’d be a living city that builds upon itself to reach ever further heights of glory. Only this time it’d have Dragonblooded inhabitants who worship me. The threat? Eh, probably something similar to the Wyld which constantly throws stuff at us which range from mere Mortals to Raksha to Ishvara to outright Primordials and more. Not all of it is hostile though at least.
Silor
When you remove someone who was born into your bloodline can they never again join it? Cause imagine for a second that you don’t want a baby to be born with incredible power but when they later prove themselves as adults it would be kind off a bummer if they could never join again.
admin
They could be readded, with the same caveats as anyone else added from outside the bloodline.
Anonymous
1 Is Inheritor able to Record the machine from Travel?
2 How do the 5x general growth or 50x specific power boosts work?
2.1 Like in terms of Wound does 5x only apply to AP and Thread production?
2.2 Does 50x apply to all numerical parts of a power? So for Wound it would become 50 starting Threads, 50 AP per Thread^2 every 24 hours, 1000 minutes per AP, (500 x Thread)^2 AP storage, 50x Threads per day per absorbed phenomena, and 50x AP effectivity?
2.3 How about for Inheritor or Player, what would the 5x or 50x boosts look like?
3 What’s the Greater Boon version of the 5x or 50x boosts?
4 How would the numeric growth boosts stack? Like say for example I take two 50x boosts and apply both to Wound, or a 50x boost and its Greater variant and apply both to Wound?
5 Would I get bigger boosts than 5x or 50x if I picked ‘Growth’ for Beloved?
6 Would I eventually be able able to stop, mitigate, or at least control Fight without spending Boons to specifically do so?
7 What does objective day mean? Like what happens if I go to a xianxiaverse where the passage of time between higher and lower realms are different?
admin
1. Yes.
2. The 5x effect improves progression-related efforts as if you spent five times as long on them. The 50x effect increases sum potency by a factor of fifty, and increases any growth it undergoes to match.
2.1. In terms of Wound, it improves thread production and the benefits of time spent harvesting deterioration. AP become more effective for training.
2.2. No. This might be 10x starting threads, 5x AP effectiveness, and any new threads you gain are multiplied by 10x.
2.3. 5x looks like bonus xp and bonus quintessence. 50x looks like increased stat or power effectiveness.
3. 25,000x growth acceleration, or 250,000x power. A bit of a waste of a Greater Boon.
4. They multiply.
5. Sure.
6. Yeah.
7. It means you can’t spend AP to generate more threads. Other forms of cheese are permitted.
E
Sorry about the doublepost btw, i thought this comment got eaten considering it didn’t show up after the page reloaded
admin
Comments must be manually approved unless the sender already has at least one approved comment. You wouldn’t know, but this site gets some spambots.
E
this has been bugging me, how come the Greater boosts only do 25,000x/250,000x? I initially thought they would be able to do an x^2 boost considering the x^2 growth Ally
admin
That’s another way to upscale from Lesser to Greater, sure.
E
does this work for both 5x growth and 50x power or only 50x power?
admin
Sure.
Gdjitxdjl
A few more questions in relation to Exalted {Assuming I’m Beloved by Exaltation}:
1. {Beloved} What would be the viability of empowering others into Dragonblooded as a Lesser Boon {Power}?
2. {Beloved} The feasibility of an entity able to corrupt, empower, and mimic the abilities of others through the lense of its nature as a Lesser Boon {Ally}? It’d be loosely based off the Ebon Dragon and an Abyssal Exaltation. For example it could invert a Solar Exaltation into an Abyssal Exaltation and so on.
3. {Wound+Ascendant} Would the conjunction of these two allow for an easy multiform (multiple bodies) access?
4. {Understanding} So could I communicate with the concept from Beloved with this ability?
admin
1. You’d need to be at least as powerful as a starting Dragonblooded to get that, and the empowerment would start out faster/easier/more potent the stronger you were when you bought it.
2. Valid.
3. Using Ascendant to make extra bodies? Workable.
4. You could communicate with your concept without Understanding. Cosmic gods can make themselves understood. It’s intervention that is limited, what they are allowed to talk to you about.
Gdjitxdjl
1. Not really too much an issue given the exponential growth of the You Are options. Would it be possible to explicitly make it a technique or ritual? This would be to allow Inheritor to more easily work with it.
Honestly, I find it more interesting to limit myself to three or four You Are options at most given how powerful they are. I suppose that Cultivation could be considered an additional “free” option as well? Not as powerful given the lowered exponential growth but still quite interesting. The idea of mutilating your soul for power is a pretty nifty as well.
Wound
->It’s probably my favorite option, I think. There’s just something about it that very much appeals to me? It’s an entirely selfish power with limited means of raising others up however.
->The super-speed is probably the least interesting aspect of it given the other abilities. You could cut it out entirely and I wouldn’t even really care or notice too much. Why spend AP on going super fast when I can just spend AP to have a thing done instantly instead?
admin
Yes.
E
1 how much AP would it cost to create, using Inheritor’s schematic, the machine from Travel instantly and ex nihilo?
2 can I choose what the 50x Boon applies to? Like instead of 5x AP effectiveness and 10x Threads, I just make it 50x Threads
2.1 can I even actually boost Threads by 50x? Cause 50x AP effectiveness and 50x Threads are vastly different, one is effectively just 50x AP while the other would be 2,500x AP because of Thread^2 AP generation
3 does the 50x multiplier grow bigger if I don’t take it right away, like does it become bigger the more powerful I am/get?
3.1 if the above is true would it also work the same for Ally and let me maybe eventually get an Ally that would have (2^x) of my own or maybe higher growth?
4 by how much does picking ‘Growth’ for Beloved increase the 50x Boon, does it become at least 100x or higher?
5 would Wound synergize with Player and modify the system to have an idle aspect? like Player would be able to automatically spend AP for me on things
5.1 with said idle aspect for Player + Wound, would I then be able to automate creation and absorption of phenomena to automatically increase Threads per day?
6 what’s LORD CENTIPEDES’ level/exp reward in terms of Player?
7 could diplomacy be used on LORD CENTIPEDES or is it not worth it?
8 if I had a plate of metal, would Inheritor be able to Record it? this basically being a workaround to the can’t directly increase tensile strength of object’s material rule by just having the material itself as a schematic to Refine
8.1 does this work for all materials/resources, like would Inheritor just be able to directly Record a material/resource to then be able to also directly Refine or Reinvent?
9 what’s the easiest way to increase Threads per day, like what phenomena would only increase Threads per day by one when absorbed?
admin
1. No comment.
2. Yes.
2.1. Yes.
3. It is a multiplier to your power as of the point you take it.
4. Less than that.
5. Valid.
5.1. Yes.
6. No comment.
7. Possible. They won’t accept ceasing to progress.
8. Yes.
8.1. Yes.
9. Depends on what powers you have.