Oh cool! Birdsie made a new CYOA-
*Sees the Writer's Quill.*
Oh, so that's how it is, is it? Well then I'll make my own CYOA, with comfiness, and hope, and much further on the Lite side of the Lovecraft Lite scale. In fact-
You were just playing a video game when it happened. It would be wrong to say you woke up to The Matrix. After all, when there was no higher layer to reality within this multiverse, was the simulation really a simulation? By the same token, one born in the simulation could be said to be part of that simulation. So, your newfound ability to view your Status Screen was best described as the result of an epiphany.
This was not to say there was no truth to the metaphor. Rather, you existed on the higher level of reality in your multiverse. Each video game was it's own distinct universe, in many cases with video games of their own that served as branching universes, which would in turn have branches. This could get especially complicated in post-apocalyptic settings where the video game existed in the past and was destroyed when society collapsed, like Fallout. These universes generally still existed, but were more difficult to access.
The point was, certain privileges came about from understanding the underpinnings of the system, such as being a Player Character instead of an NPC. This, in turn, provides a number of benefits. While there were looming threats in a number of universes, such as Final Fantasy's Void serving as both the origin of all of it's universes and the thing casting all the Shadows the characters were fighting, the heroes can usually be counted on to win on their own, if not without casualties. You are free to do as you wish. Help, forge a dominion of your own, or simply pilfer advanced technologies and magics for your personal benefit. Maybe all of the above.
It should be noted that, in time, most of the items that aren't Core Features can be acquired at a later date.
4 Bits, accrued from the minor abilities a character or archetype in the games that interested you.
[ ] Elemental Immunity - 1 Bit.
Choose one of the following Elements: Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, Ice, Electricity, Sound, Poison, Illusion, Light, Darkness, Null, Space, Time.
You are now immune to that Element. Fire immunizes you to extremes of heat as well as flames, while Ice does the same for cold and ice. More esoteric elements like Illusion has a limited ability to nullify other elements. Artificial blindness that falls under an unnatural pall of darkness could be ignored by Illusion or Darkness, for example. Space prevents hostile teleportation, including telefragging, while Time prevents artificial aging or being frozen in time. Many of the most powerful spells are considered Null for Elemental purposes. The Ruin and Flare series, for example, are usually non-elemental, or Null. If it weren't for the fact that most enemies beyond the mook tier aren't limited to one Element, particularly by mid-game areas in a given game world, this would be a much more expensive purchase. A second purchase can change immunity into absorption, or simply add a second Element. This purchase can be done as many times as you possess the currency for. A total of 28 to achieve absorption of all of these effects. If, for whatever reason, you desire to do so, you can increase your absorption rate of a given Element linearly with each purchase as high as you have the purchasing ability for.
[ ] Job Magic - 1 Bit.
In many games, a character will have a specific profession with special abilities connected to it. A Cook or Chemist who can provide a bonus to the use of healing items, for example. Sometimes they'll even gain a secondary form of EXP to mark their progress on this front. Job Levels are unlocked by this, as is the ability to switch between professions with essentially the press of a button.
Some jobs, such as the aforementioned Cook and Chemist, will grow more swiftly through focused study, while others will see the best results from steady combat, such as Knight or Blue Mage. Regardless, if you accommodate the swifter method, you will find that you achieve Adept status within a month, and conventional mastery within 6. It should be noted that this is skill rather than power. A Red Mage who can flawlessly judge when to use their limited pool of magic and weaker spell list and when to cast fist, and when discretion is the better part of valor, as opposed to upgrading to a Red Wizard. Similarly, a Cook who can make the best use of even awful ingredients like chopped liver, stale graham crackers, and old mustard, as opposed to one who can make a godly dish that can elevate an idiot to the realms of genius, or an incompetent ruler into a wizard of administration, or cure cancer with fine wine. Job Levels versus conventional Levels.
[ ] Skill Points - 1 Bit.
Upon leveling up, gain a point or points to spend on upgrading a skill. Wouldn't it be great if it were that easy?
Upon a minor accomplishment, you are rewarded with Skill Points, which allow for improvement of just about any Skill you'd care to name, though the bias towards combat and martial or magical feats nudges the spending towards Skills relevant to these fields. Major accomplishments offer more. Thus, both conventional training and grinding your way through enemies can serve to train skills, though the latter is more likely to allow you to train unrelated skills.
[ ] Seeds of Excellence - 1 Bit.
Sometimes, grinding is just too much of a slog. At that point, your options are to buy superior equipment, or use items that directly improve your Stats. Generally, access to the former is limited, and if the latter exists, it's in limited numbers. Luckily for you, you made a habit of maximizing your chances for them in your games.
Spend a Bit, and receive a small tasty nut or fruit of some kind that provides a + in an Attribute of your choice. This has an upper limit of 10 +s to an individual Attribute.
[ ] Mystic Energy - 1 Bit.
Choose an MP equivalent from a videogame. You now have access to it, even if you normally wouldn't qualify or local metaphysics ought to not support it. This can be purchased for every distinct type you can think of, though not for every distinct system if they use the same kind of energy. The Final Fantasy games all use Magic and generally have MP bars, counting as the same type of energy under most circumstances. Limit/Trance states from FF7 and FF9 technically qualify, on the other hand.
2 Bytes, obtained from your favorite gimmicks.
[ ] Three Bars - 1 Byte.
It's such a basic assumption most don't question it. You get an HP Bar, and an MP Bar. Why only one of each though? Game balance, of course. Would anyone follow that in real life if they didn't have to though?
Gain a total of three 'MP Bars' which confers numerous benefits. First, the obvious tripling of your maximum pool therein, and second, a tripling of your regeneration of whatever magic type you have chosen or obtained. If one or two bars are full, they will automatically overflow into the remaining bar or bars. Additionally, these bars can be treated as a second HP Bar at 33% efficiency.
The most important ability, however, is a tripling of long-term or one-use spells and abilities. For example, the ordinarily lethal use of the Eight Gates in Naruto can be used twice without risk, though the third will cripple and/or kill you. This assumes, of course, that you've trained to the point you can use the Seventh Gate as a more conventional Super Mode. This also applies to abilities with less dangerous consequences for use. An ability that will cause a character to vanish after use, a ghost passing on after using Possession to save the Party Member, content in having saved someone, with the caveat that this normally only applies to oneself. Multiple purchases add more bars and uses in twos per purchase.
[ ] Three Actions - 1 Byte.
Much the same argument as the previous, but when some Bosses can act multiple times per Turn, it's especially egregious.
Gain 2 additional actions in a given timeframe. In an Idle game, this is akin to having three accounts able to share resources. In an RPG world, this is rendered as three actions per Turn. In the overworld it would allow you to essentially have a pair of shadow clones, though this is closer to existing in three places at once than the Narutoverse Shadow Clone and will disable the trio of actions in the battle dimension unless you pop one of the copies to restore it. On the one hand, they will not pop on a single hit, but they share HP and MP. This can be beneficial, safe instances healing at an inn or using healing items or artifacts in your position of relative safety. Status effects do not hit every body at once if the second mode is in use, but a Boss who constantly reapplies a specific effect risks other instances being affected if the body being targeted is already suffering the effect. Can be purchased multiple times for strictly linear improvements. Twice for six actions per Turn, 6 instances of a hivemind of yourself wandering about, or anything in between.
[ ] Commander Bonuses - 1 Byte.
The Leaders of a Faction, or the Faction in general, can provide bonuses, and in many RTSes, they do.
Gain special abilities, which will grow in power as you do, increasing both in potency and number. This is generally a boost to followers of some stripe. A Knight would boost the swordfighting of soldiers under their command or allied to them, for example. Normally these are passive effects, but in some circumstances it can be a Super Mode of some sort. A highly developed version can turn a mediocre fighting force into something workable, and a great one into a wave of death.
[ ] Advice Fairy - 1 Byte.
A staple of the genre, popularized by Link's companion Navi. Hopefully you won't find this one as annoying.
A combination of journal, exposition fairy, monster encyclopedia, glossary, and companion. Unless heavily invested into, they will not directly contribute to a fight beyond providing advice, unless you count autocasting Scan/Libra/the local equivalent. Information beyond the specifics of a defeated Monster's weaknesses and Item Drops will be relatively generalized, collected from a 'Word On The Street' level general scan of the locale and any local Internet equivalent. Essentially, she's a a sapient, mobile Alexa/Google/daily planner. Multiple purchases linearly improve her information-gathering. A second purchase gathers information locals wouldn't share with a stranger and pierces weak protections on enemies when gathering data mid-combat. A third gathers minor secrets and can provide minor combat assistance. Low-level spells, generally speaking, and removing of status ailment. She adds 'healbot' to her functions, essentially. Unless one of the higher tiers has been purchased, plot hints will be vague, and even on the third, it's up to you to actually accomplish their advice.
[ ] Contractual Boss Immunity - 1 Byte.
It's certainly annoying when the Boss is immune to the status ailment even the common Monsters in their Dungeons are affected by just fine. Be a shame if someone stole their schtick...
Become immune to most status ailments and instant death effects. If, for whatever reason, you become undead, Revive will still kill you, as it technically isn't an instant death effect. Otherwise, even ones that ostensibly work will find themselves failing more often than they should by any logical standard. This also makes it relatively easy to summon spammable minions as fodder. Or improves the ability if you come into one naturally, usually in number rather than increased quality.
1 Core Feature, related to what caused the epiphany. One might call it enlightenment manifested.
[ ] Prestige- 1 Core Feature. Can be purchased multiple times for a linear improvement. Say a Prestige for 100% completion is done with two purchases of Prestige, you would gain 200 Diamonds instead of 100, tripling the cap and learning rate of the system instead of doubling it. A third purchase would have 300 Diamonds as the reward, etc. The rewards are multiplied for each stage.
A common feature of Clicker Games, reset your progress in order to gain a bonus to it. Much like Clickers, there are tiers to it. The basic Prestige reverses your progress in a singular magic system, providing Prestigious Diamonds linked to it that improve the Progression speed and cap of the system. At baseline, doing this to a maxed out system doubles both, so it takes just as much time and effort to achieve the new cap, but only half as long to achieve your old peak. Of course, if a system takes decades or centuries to advance to it's peak, or slows over time, both of which are common, it can be more efficient to trigger the Prestige earlier. Do remember that only the selected system loses progress. If, for example, one were to Prestige their skills in Final Fantasy Magic, this would not affect their abilities in Fallout Skills. Similarly, a Prestige in Final Fantasy 12 levels will not affect Pokemon Mystery Dungeon levels, despite both using levels.
The Reset undoes all Prestiges and burns the Prestigious Diamonds for Base Particles, which improve the potency of a Prestige. As a baseline, each 100% charge Prestige provides enough Particles for a 1% boost to the power of Prestiges, with Prestiges adding up. So, a system with a low cap and speedy Progression can be repeatedly burned to quickly boost Prestiges for slower systems with higher peaks.
The Ascension consumes all Resets in favor of Ascendant Halos, which bolster Resets. As a rule, each 10% bonus conferred to Prestige is transformed into a 1% bonus to Resets.
Transcending is fueled with all prior Ascensions, and provides Transcendent Spirits(these are technically the prior instance of your soul, so this moniker is rather literal) in exchange for automatically initiating all prior tiers for all systems, effectively reducing the user to zero beyond equipment and any special abilities purchased here. Like it's predecessors, a 10% bonus conferred to Resets is usually translated to a 1% bonus applied to Ascensions, and ontological coherence in the wider omniverse, and reality as a whole, is improved commensurately, 1% and 0.1%. This roughly translates to a +0.01 ISH for all systems which can be applied no matter how high your finite ISH is. Further tiers are needed for transfinite ISH. This continues to indefinite heights, but you should understand the gist.
This can be considered a crude recreation of the Lathe of Heaven. Similar omniapplicability and upper potential, at the cost of being enormously slower. That is to say, given infinite, transfinite time, both would achieve infinite, transfinite power, but the latter would do so first by a
long shot. Orders of magnitude more quickly. Still, getting even a ripoff version of Progression without Curses isn't half-bad.
[ ] World Overlay - 1 Core Feature.
Beyond the mere at-will traversal of worlds you possess as a result of bumbling your way into enlightenment, travel this multiverse more-or-less as you wish.
Ordinarily, your travel method comes with the caveats that the world in question must be a video game or a world that exists in the world you inhabit, or be a valid world to have reached the world you are inhabiting in the first place. Undertale can reached from the Hub World, but a Mew Mew Kissy Cutie game would need to be jumped to from Undertale, for example, and one would need to jump back to the Hub if they wanted to jump to Underfell without using local means of jumping worldlines, timelines, universes, etc. which, while not uncommon across the multiverse, are not so common that one should expect it to be trivial.
This power allows you to immediately jump to essentially any point in your multiverse you wish. With some effort, you can even make semi or fully permanent pathways. Ever wanted the characters of two Final Fantasy games to meet? Well you can! This also makes getting to settings like extremely derivative versions of a videogame possible. Swapfell or further permutations still of Undertale, for example. Not to mention various specific timelines and FUN values of a 'verse.
The following are all advanced applications that will take significant time and practice to enable.
Permanent paths may be created, be they a portal network or literal bridges. They cannot be expanded without you, though they can be maintained. This is no personal expenditure beyond initial construction.
You may 'carry' advantageous physics and metaphysics with you. The indestructible blocks of Pong can grant you the same blessing(though this will not perfectly defend against ISH 3+ effects as it is technically physics), or your entire locality that ability. Fall damage does not exist in Kingdom Hearts, and can be made to not exist around you as well. In time, you can even make it permanent!
Similarly, this can be made to apply to areas normally of total ontological incompatibility. Beings who normally couldn't exist in each other's worlds could with your help. Perhaps even use any special abilities they might possess.
[ ] A Simple Transaction - 1 Core Feature.
Your enlightenment dramatically pushed up your Cursebearer compatibility, to 1 Curse for Combat-type, and 3 for Progression, Apocryphal required.
In this case, you had a more conventional enlightenment, and your knowledge of the meta-contextual hyper-reality in turn recontextualized your home multiverse and it's underlying mechanics. It should be noted that Prestige and the Lathe of Heaven are different enough to synergize, if you're interested. The Accursed already got it, but still. Do keep in mind that Final Fantasy represents combatants more than capable of shattering worlds, not to mention ISH 3+ effects present in, say, Fate Grand Order or Umineko, so you may well need the power.
The transaction can be deferred, this merely guarantees that it's an option. Perhaps a trump card.
[ ] A Complicated Transaction - 1 Core Feature. Can be taken multiple times.
Choose a CYOA from elsewhere in the thread(not a Cursebearer one, obviously) and take the basic options from it. Multiple purchases allow you to select multiple CYOAs, or linearly increase your funds for the specific CYOA. The Silververse CYOAs will require you to be ejected from them 5 minutes before your purchases, unless you wish to be Splintered from existence(the Dark Ones aren't making
that mistake again) and the Demon of Dreams CYOA is outright off-limits as the local Top Gods will strip you of these powers before laughing as they chuck you into their world should you attempt that one.
Drawbacks: Take as many as you like. Just be sure you can handle it.
Elemental Weakness - +1 Bit.
An inversion of Elemental Immunity. Much like it's counterpart, can be taken as many times as you wish. Though, 1100% vulnerability to Fire would make even the slightest fluctuation of temperature above your preferred level unbearable, for example. Still, if you were to raise you Con by 10 via Seeds of Excellence that would raise that threshold quite a bit, so it's not a
complete wash of a build choice.
Contractual Boss Stupidity - +1 Byte. Can only be taken once.
Your attacks must always be possible for whatever opposition you're facing to avoid. You cannot completely render yourself invulnerable, even if the method to make you vulnerable might be a specific move or item the enemy may not have gotten, but must have had the opportunity to get. In essence, defeat for you and victory for your enemies must always be a possibility.
No Backwards Compatibility - +1 Core Feature. Can only be taken once.
Your enlightenment allows you to maintain the ontological coherence of any powers or artifacts from this multiverse within it. Sacrifice that, should you choose this, and effectively truncate your ontological stability. Be very sure before picking this.
Normally, as an enlightened denizen of this universe's bedrock, you possess the ability to safely use any abilities that come into your possession anywhere within it. NBC negates this, forcing you to work off the rules a normal traveler would where the use of any powers are concerned. This is considered an ISH 3.9999999 effect, so it can be negated by Ninefold's Willpower effect.
Special Offer:
For 500 words of build discussion and/or relevant Omake, add an additional Bit. For 1000, add a Byte and 2 Bits, and for 2.5K add a Core Feature, 2 Bytes, and 4 Bits. For the second tier and onward, 2 Bits can be converted into a Byte and vice versa, and the same for a Byte and a Core Feature. Additional 2.5K chunks can increase this linearly, with no upper limit. So yes, someone could write 10k words, convert all the bonuses into Core Features, and go ham on CYOAs.
AN: Figured we didn't have any CYOAs quite this... video game-like. If I can't join 'em, then I'll make my own! In all seriousness, I see no reason why I shouldn't make one of my own after the last few. It's not like we couldn't use the Arete.
3590 words above this line.
