Ancient Tree Rules:
You start with 2 dice in every Action, and can buy Traits to get more.
You start with 3 Trait points. Every 25 full votes after achieving Ancient Tree grants +2 Trait points. (You remain "Ancient." If disambiguation is needed, start calling upgraded Trees "Ancient+1," "Ancient+2," and so on, at 50, 75, and so on total votes.)
If you desire Traits that are initially unavailable due to Requirements, feel free to bank the relevant Trait Points until you fully qualify.
Trait selection:
- The basics:
- Generalist: Grants +1 dice on any normal Action vote.
- Requires: For one rank, requires votes in at least 3 categories of actions, and at least 4 votes outside your most-frequent category. Per additional rank, requires at least one vote in +1 category of actions (max 7, counting write-in as a category) and at least +4 votes outside your most-frequent category.
- Split Focus: Grants +2 dice on any 2 categories of normal Action votes
- Requires: at least one vote in each category and at least 5 votes in the two categories combined, per rank taken.
- Category Expert: Grants +3 dice on any 1 category of normal Action votes
- Requires: at least 6 votes in the category, per rank taken.
- Narrow Focus: 4d to 1 tag (includes a to linked Write-Ins, equal to a half-rank in Innovator).
- A tag is something like "Bees" (or any other Creature type), "Void" (or any other Magic Element), or "Biology Research" (or another narrow focus within any single category).
- Note that "Magic Elements," "Magic Research," and "Esoteric Research" all grant a Write-In bonuses for setting up their respective advancement-projects.
- Requires: at least 7 votes with the tag, per rank taken.
- Hyperspecialist: Grants +5 dice on any 1 specific Action (e.g. "Store Resources for Future Need").
- Requires: at least 10 votes in the Action for the first rank taken, and 6 per subsequent rank taken.
- Specific note: Only Actions which will, exactly as they are, always be available, should be taken for this trait (e.g. "Grow the Forest" or "Store Resources for Future Need" - or, if you're slightly crazy, something like "Ice/Fire Negacion (Magic Research)").
- A bit more esoteric:
- Moving Tree: Aka "Ent." This trait makes you a level better at moving than the rest of the Forest. This will also grant +3 dice to anything with the (Movement) tag.
- Movement skill levels are: Stationary, Heliotropic (the Forest's original baseline), Very Slow Movement, Selective Fast Movement (Basic Movement), General Fast Movement (Intermediate Movement), Mobile Forest aka Huorns (Analyze Mundane Movement), Bipedal Movement aka Ents (Advanced Movement), slow Shapeshifting, fast Shapeshifting, then as many layers of ridiculous-speed and shapeshifting-skill as you want. Fast Shapeshifting +3 lets you outrun a Cheetah in bipedal form - though you'd be better off Shapeshifting into something with wheels anyway. Fast Shapeshifting +5 would let you duplicate most of Schlock's (Schlock Mercenary) shapeshifting stunts, except with full capacity to go rigid or gain a full normal solid form as desired.
- <Element> Specialization
- Pick an Element; some Magic that our Forest has some experience in. Any Action related to that Element gains +3 dice and +10% to all Successes in the entire Action (stacks additively with most other modifiers). Related Write-ins also gain bonuses (equal to a half-rank in Innovator).
- Requires: At least 5 actions related to said Element per rank.
- <Animal> Connection
- Pick an Animal; some Creature (or Monster, or narrow category of Mind) that our Forest has some experience in. Any Action related to that Animal gains +3 dice and +10% to all Successes in the entire Action (stacks additively with most other modifiers). Related Write-ins also gain bonuses (equal to a half-rank in Innovator).
- Also gain +2 dice on Consensus votes for your Animal type, if and when relevant.
- Requires: At least 5 actions related to said Animal per rank.
- Innovator: Grants +1 roll (I'll keep the best) and a bonus to the final result on any write-in.
- If you pick this more than once, the 2nd, 4th, etc. picks will grant you an additional basic roll on your write-in action - as if multiple Trees were trying the same write-in - and the 1st, 3rd, 5th, etc. picks will improve the results on whatever unimproved roll you have.
- So if you took this Trait 6 times, every write-in would result in 3x (roll twice; keep the best and apply a bonus) and 1x (roll once without modifiers).
- Requires at least 6 write-ins per rank taken.
- Obsessive
- This Tree obsesses on a single action, to the exclusion of all else.
- Grants +2 dice in an action for every 2^n consecutive prior times you've taken that action. Table of effects:
| Consecutive turns taking action | Bonus to action |
| 1 | +0 |
| 2 or 3 | +2 |
| 4 through 7 | +4 |
| 8 through 15 | +6 |
| 16 through 31 | +8 |
| … | … |
- Note that, if the action you wish to take is not available on a given turn (perhaps due to combat), you are allowed to take a normal action and pretend that turn did not exist for purposes of this rule. Again, if you do not vote at all in a given turn, that turn will be ignored for purposes of this rule.
- Also note that this must be applied to exactly one action. You could theoretically Research certain Magics (any single Negacion) indefinitely. You could theoretically Grow certain Special Trees - or, more reliably yet, the Forest itself - indefinitely. You can Store Resources or Raise the Shield, or keep the Lasers (or other attack) warmed up and ready to fire perpetually. But a lot of actions change, and even the always-available ones don't always make sense to use.
- You have to pick a single Action for this, while upgrading. You canpotentially change up your Traits slowly over time later, but with an initial penalty.
- You must spend 2 turns taking an action with no Obsessive bonus, in order to convert a single rank of Obsessive from one obsession to another. If you have multiple ranks and wish to convert them all, spend 2 turns with no bonus per rank. If you have multiple ranks and do not wish to convert them all, let me know and I will allow that, but unconverted ranks in Obsessive will have no effect until you convert them (or switch back).
- Requires: The same as one rank of Hyperspecialist.
- Seasonal Favorite
- Pick one season. Roll 4 extra dice on all actions during that season only.
- Deciduous
- +2 dice in everything in spring/summer/fall.
- -2 dice in everything in winter.
- Elder Roots
- This Tree was a unique Elder Tree, and keeps to those Roots.
- Base statline is set to equal the Tree's Elder Tree statline.
- System-altering:
- Reliable: All Action dice are converted to 0.5 auto-successes each. This DOES NOT COST a Trait-point, but changes your base dice from 2d to 1.5d.
- Determined: Gain 0.4 banked auto-successes per turn. On any turn, you can allocate any or all of those auto-successes as desired.
- Seer: The GM will grant you mysterious lines of information from time to time. These will vary from "actively confusing" to "Archnemesis' greatest weakness" depending on a random roll. Taking this Trait more than once will presumably increase the effects - but beware the many stories of mad seers, self-fulfilling prophecies, and so on…
- Special Tree: You also count as +1 Special Tree of a type of your choice. You do NOT contribute to the Forest's total Special-Tree count, but you DO contribute to specific Special Tree caps (e.g. "max Lens Tree per Magnitude of the Forest"). Taking this repeatedly can be used to upgrade your Special Tree effects to Elder or Ancient.
- Tall Tree: Grants +1% to all Successes throughout the Forest (stacks multiplicatively), plus your Tree is actually physically taller. Yggdrasil would be Tall Tree level ~32. Consider investing in Lightning defenses.
- Strategist: Grants +2 votes to any Consensus vote. The GM will try to send you a rough draft of the chapter before posting it, and if possible will coordinate so that you can very quickly post a reply with any interesting analyses, right where anyone can see it.
- No requirements, but I'll expect you to be paying attention to "optimal choices" and the like. GM may modify this trait - or delete it and issue a full refund - if it gets annoying to support.
- ???
Some specific examples:
Ancient Resource Storing Tree: Hyperspecialist (Store Resources) x3. Gets 17d at Store Resources; 2d at everything else.
Ancient Commander Tree: Elder Roots (Commander Tree), Moving Tree. Gets stat-line from Commander Tree, +1d to Survival, +3d to any Movement action; +1 rank of Movement Level.
Ancient Moving Tree: Moving Tree x3. Gets 11d to (Movement) actions; 2d to everything else; +3 categories of Movement Level compared to the rest of the Forest (you could literally pull off a Trojan Horse gambit on the fly, and are a few more Forest Research actions away from being able to pull a Transformers reference).
Ancient Growth Tree: Category Expert (Growth) x3. 11d to Growth; 2d to everything else.
Most Ancient Tree: Generalist x3. 5d to everything.
