Jumpchain CYOA Thread #880: Patron Saint of Budget Destruction Edition

I find that it's easier to actually care about Jumpchain, because your choices will carry on to the next story. If you are horribly traumatized in one CYOA, it will carry over rather than fading into nothing as you close whatever page you were doing it on and moving on to create a new character in the next CYOA. While there are some differences between Jumpchain and CYOA that are cultural and rule based, that's the most major difference in the experience.

I've been out of thread for a bit, any updates on the Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura jump?

Well, I found it holds my attention a lot more. Purely due to the sheer number of jumps to choose from/get through.

As you move through the jumps it's good to get the feel of character progression, which you don't really get in a regular CYOA, since they're almost always standalone.

This thread tends to shout down a lot of broken stuff. Last time I looked a CYOAG serously there was a popular one a lot of people were posting builds for and they were all pretty similar because there was one power that let you acquire the abilities of others once you'd killed them, and compared to that the other options had no growth, and because it was its own thing, nobody really had any motivation to balance it.
Whereas each jump (theoretically) should have an internal balance, and at the very least a vague balance with other jumps (mostly in that powers which would invalidate/trivialise the rest of the chain should be kept post-spark).

It includes an absolute ton of my favourite settings, even some really obscure ones, and because I know the lore for them, it's easier to connect how my Jumper would experience them rather than doing, say, the Space Opera CYOA which great as it is, has little lore.

So I guess it boils down to "/cyoag/ is more about the build, and /jc/ is more about what you _do_ with each build".

I don't really remember...

Oh, wow. Someone was actually looking forward to that? Well, okay then. I'll give you a brief overview of my progress.

+ The Universal Law of Magick and Steamworks is finally written to a point where I don't want to hit it with rocks. After a lot of deliberation back and forth on my part, I gave a blanket exception to Out of Jump Powers. It just saves me from having to answer questions on it forever and it makes things a lot easier on the Jumper.
+ Backgrounds are cemented, but not fully written. There's a separate route for Drop-Ins, while everyone else gets to pick a Race and Background for free. Backgrounds are done and come with a variety of positives and negatives. They also determine your Discounts and Penalty. (Penalty being a Skill or Ability that costs 50% more to take.)
+ I've started working on the Spell Colleges, but it's slow going. I've got to adapt a lot to make it useful, while still sticking to the source material.
+ All Abilities and Skills are going to follow a 200, 400, 600 point tiered buying system. Buying the 600 CP tier automatically gives you the lower two. I have /not/ gotten all of them written out by any means.
+ Both Drawbacks and Items have very little, if anything, finished yet.

I'll admit, I hit a bit of a brick wall. It was a lot larger job that I initially planned on, but I got ambitious. Right now I'm taking a bit of a break from it to finish up the Zootopia Jump, then I'll be back on it. Promise.

Flamio my good hotman.

And the same to the guy working on WoD Mages. I spaced throwing that out while I was at work.

Since they just released a new game. What would the thoughts on an Orcs Must Die! Jump?

Semi-related question: in the Arcanum videogame, how the hell do you go from the first town to the second one? I ran for what seems like hours and I'm no closer to anything. Is there a way around that? It made me drop the game even though I loved the writing and story elements.

Out of curiosity, what is the best data storage medium in the chain in terms of data to weight ratio? So far the best I've found is The Mega USB in Youtube for a Yottabyte of data stored in something that weighs about 12 grams.

Pic related

Did you forget to use the World Map button to travel? Because it sounds like you did.

I did the same thing more than once.

Take your time, I look forward to seeing your magnum opus come to fruition.

The negative size file from SCP kinda makes that question irrelevant.

Uh, the holographic computer from Tenchi Muyo, because it weighs nothing?

I asked this last thread, but for Dragonlance, how do we handled scenarios that involve the War of the Lance if we stopped the Cataclysm?

Thank you. I'll try that next time. Hope you can use it to go to unvisited places tho.

That's not actually a computer, it's basically a keyboard/monitor.

If you put a data storage device of some sort into scp 914 there is a chance to get out a data storage device with unlimited storage.

In Worm do Doormaker portals stay open of their own volition or is your shard unconsciously expanding energy to keep them open?

Pic related.

Seriously though, I have no idea. If you want my two cents, I'd say those scenarios would be locked off if you stopped the Cataclysm. Then again, you could always just say that the Cataclysm happened anyways, just differently. Of course, I'm not the Jump Maker, so take my opinion for what it's worth.

Going by canon, they take energy to keep open. Not very much energy, though, unless you're making literally thousands of them at once like Taylor did you're not going to burn out anytime soon. Also, your shard isn't packed up in travel mode, unlike Doormaker's, so it can refuel itself properly and is therefore even less likely to run out.

I think they all vanish when he burns out so the latter. Post jump you don't have a shard though. It may be they become tied to you in a way, so you might get tired keeping tons of them open.

Short Answer: Unless a particular event is declared as inevitable by your scenario then it’s not inevitable. Which is to say that if you ducked the Cataclysm, see below, but your scenario doesn’t require the Cataclysm then you’re good. Just assume the cities mentioned rose to some comparable level of prominence for whatever reason.

Long Answer: Regardless of what you did in Ansalon, the main continent of Krynn, you may not have stopped the Cataclysm. The Dragonlance series focuses damn near completely on the continent of Ansalon. The other continent on Krynn, Taladas, gets next to no mention or support. It’s neat and interesting, but it just doesn’t get love. With that in mind, and with the caveat that I’m not dictating to you what happened on your jump, consider this:

There is information in the Taladas lore that the Cataclysm was partially the fault of events happening on Taladas. Yes, all the main DL stuff says Kingpriest Kinpriest Kingpriest. But Taladas, which is on the same planet and is under the same metaphysic, was involved in some serious fuckery at the time too. Its kinda vague and LotR’ish: dark wizard, armies of light, etc, etc. Whatever it was, I’ve found a few throw away lines here and there that seem to hint that the gods of Krynn, which have different names on the continent of Taladas, sent all those meteors because of Taladas and Krynn.

Anyway, make of that what you will. The short answer is my ruling, as such, the long answer is just to chew on.

Pretty much. I imagine you could deliberately fail by actively screwing with things (e.g. exploding the Inn when everyone's in the common room, or Soth's parents before he is born) but otherwise the rails are there (in the case of Our Hero, until the first miracle of the Age of Despair).

Jumpers! What are the best ways to increase my intelligence? What about wisdom?

Ring of Increase Intellect from D&D
Ring of Increase Wisdom from D&D

Is there a way to reverse engineer something purely magical if, post spark, I, say, visit a particularly interesting fanfic universe (I'm reading some HP Fanfiction, and there's something in it that, well, its really interesting).

Its not technomancy, per say, but its being treated something similiar to it. The story, if anyone is interested, is called Not Normal by Radaslab, and no, the author is not going to update it anytime soon (been three/four years since he updated, so, that ship has sailed, sadly...)

I think Rick and Morty has the most powerful intelligence boosting perk in the chain, but personally I just take every single one I come across.
As for wisdom, take one of the really old backgrounds, like the ones from Smite, Darksiders, or Lord of Light.

Would I have to continue wearing them to retain their benefits? Also, how much of a boost is it?

Neverwinter Nights has Perks for that. So does FR. Demon's Souls has an alright one for intelligence. Hellsing has a neat low-level one, though its effects are nonsensical if you take its writing at face-value. DC has the Mortal line, and Marvel can get really silly if you go for the Reed Richards build (Brains+Brains+Brains+... until your budget is out), the Genius capstone from Teen Titans is kinda vague but it's a swell start, pretty much all Peak Human perks should boost your mind a lot, though if you don't consider them to stack together in order to make you Peaker Human then they lose all worth almost instantly.

Dark Wisdom from Overlord lets you recreate any spell you see with a bit of research, and also recreate spells from other magic systems.

Mainly I was thinking of Scales in Balance and 11th: Our Hero.

I guess it can be argued that the gods would leave because of my defiance for stopping it as well, and Taksis would try to come back anyway, but she'd need to find some other way when Istar was never sunk.

The second one is a bit iffier, since it definitely has the gods coming back and all that. I'm worried how me being around would effect that. Though isn't the dwarf in the party actually Reorx? If he ever learns who I am I imagine it'd be quite the funny reaction since gods do not take to admonishment well.

Top 1% of your species, so if you dump all your points into becoming something like an Elder Brain you'd probably be pretty damn smart.

Depends on the ring, some are +1, some are +5 I think is the max
Only works while wearing them.

>It seems to me that it is impossible to fail 11th: Our Hero or Black Roses Never Wither from Dragon Lance without dying. Is that true? It seems like they are both just situations that you are forced into and have to survive.

More or less. Those two modules toss you into a story, or provide you with a prompt, and challenge you to survive. The idea is to give you a DL-style adventure that you have to adventure. You have to go out and deal with what’s going on in the world instead of doing your own thing.

>(Though that could still be quite challenging for an early chain jumper, seeing as they are a war and death knight respectively).
That was what I was going for with the difficulty levels in the modules. I assume that the Low level ones are survivable for an early jumper. They’re a challenge, yes, but it’s about giving something to play with on Krynn. The Medium jumps represent things that the average MC-hero has had to deal with. The difference between the jumper and the MCs being that the jumper doesn’t have plot armor. So the younger jumper will need a good build and a bit of luck to survive, whereas the mid and older jumpers can use their in jump stuff and out of jump skills and perks to help them through. The High level stuff was representative of things done by the handful of big archetype characters that shaped DL’s mythology and requires a good amount of out of jump power to survive.

Oh wait nevermind I misread and thought you were talking about the perks

Angel of Logic from Gunnerkrigg Court should help.

* and Brain Booster from EVO: Search for Eden.

There are perks all over for both, but Fight Harder AND Smarter from Green Lantern TAS will let you get smarter by getting stronger.

Combine it with Softcap from Elona, and there isn't a finite limit for your strength anymore, meaning you could be become the smartest person in the universe if you just put the time in.

Get GAINZ, get BRAINZ.

Are there official stats for an Elder Brain? Cause I can't find any and I don't have much knowledge of d&d

Are Kender really the favored of Paladine?

Doesn't Softcap work for intelligence as well, since it's an improbable stat?

>Elder Brain

Here you go
lomion.de/cmm/eldebrai.php

I think Crimson Saint from Maoyuu does something like that.

Eh, I dunno.
Elonanon said it works for anything that'd be improvable in the game, so… yeah?

But you can just work your ass off in the gym and get smarter for free, or you could hit the books and stay a pencilneck, user.

The choice is yours.

Another thing, what does an intelligence of 20 actually mean? Like, just how smart is that?

According to awakenvideo.org/pdf/DnD 3.5e and you are welcome/DnD DM 3.5e Essentials---Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master 3.5 Essentials/books/Campaign Settings, Etc/Forgotten Realms/Forgotten Realms - Underdark.pdf
28 INT and 25 WIS

no idea what that means though

18 is the absolute human maximum.
14 Strength is body-builder tier

Yeah, you can always count on capriciousness from D&D gods if it suits plot. As for why? They could have come to some sort of cold war’ish détente where they backed off to let mortals run things for a bit. Sure, the Cataclysm was stopped by someone suggests that it was empowering the mortals that cause this problem so now, blah blah blah. Something like that is plausible. Then you can do the dragon bit the way it was played in the books. Takhisis and the evil dragons steal the good dragon eggs and make the good dragons swear to leave Anasalon for the Dragon Isles.

Those are just suggestions, but hopefully those help.

>spoiler
No, he isn’t. Though his bro-score is high enough that his place in the afterlife is right next to Reorx. He hands out, whittles and drinks.

Yes and no. Sometime during the Age of Mortals the Kender do get a kind of buff and some racial abilities from Paladine. Tasselhoff, the Kender that’s most involved with the main plots of the two big trilogies, always buddies up to Paladines avatar, and Paladines avatar is always cool to him. So there are hints of something along those lines in the narrative. However, it’s more a game mechanic than anything else. I didn’t include it because it’s way at the end of the world canon, it’s a blurb in the Age of Mortals supplement, and for balance I’d have to change a bunch of other stuff that happen with the Kender. I just went with the classic Kender that are seen throughout the vast majority of the DL canon.

Twice as smart as an average human.

That depends completely on the edition.

This user might be right and it depends on the edition.
But 20 in a Stat is and always has been significantly more than just "twice as smart" or "twice as strong".

10 is average and 20 is super genius legendary arch-mage might ascend to godhood or rule the planet tier wizard. So yeah, definitely more than double.

In 3x a normal human can roll 18 to start, and every four levels you can increase one ability score so you can go considerably higher than that.

I'm looking at the Unlimited Colors scenario in the new Kamen Rider jump and it locks your non-Kamen Rider perks and items. My question is this: can I use my Kamen Rider Black RX Bio-Rider and Robo-Rider forms alongside the new Drivers, or would I have to swap between Kamen Rider forms if I want to actually use my old stuff?

Yes you can. 18-20 is still supposed to be the best of the best. It's just that not all geniuses are equal.

You think PCs are normal humans?
10 is Normal Human. Any higher is exceptional.

>user plugs his 1YB drive into the computer, ready to conquer the world.
>Filesystem not recognised. Format as FAT32 (Y/N)?
>crying ensues

Yeah, people forget when they start whining that PCs are 'special snowflakes', that the point is for your character to already be a burgeoning legendary figure at level 1. You're already better than the common man.

Fair points.

Sorry if this is a dick question to ask, but is there a point to going Warrior or Rogue if I actually want to fight and adventure myself instead of diplomancing/warring (as in, being a leader and having others fight for me) my way to success?

The data crystal chips in Halo can store smart A.Is like Cortana.

if memory serves warriors are an NPC class and less powerful than fighters, rogues sneak and backstab, but are less combat capable than assassins. So no

It's a jump, not the system. You don't have to assume fighters suck.

Dragonlance is based on, but is not under the literal rules of, 3.X D&D. All of the characters are useful in the novels, not just Raistlin and Goldmoon.

Fair enough, but unless I start making shit up, going caster still seems miles better in terms of getting shit done myself and being self-sufficient than going martial. Then there's the big fighty Capstone for Warrior being partly-suicidal in how it works.

Well, the jump is doing a bad job of making it seem like that's the case.

Assuming 3.5 edition, standard adult human NPC ability scores range from 3 to 18 based on a 3d6 roll (if you're not using the roll system), so the odds of a person getting an 18 is 1 in 216. An older human can get +2 int, so a 20 is possible, but...

tl,dr; an Int 20 would in theory mean that if you and 215 other people were plucked at random from Earth, you'd be ~99.9% guaranteed to be the smartest person in the room.

Omnitool has pretty good storage. Idk how much, but considering they can do shit like hack anything in realtime, and bunch other stuff.

Lantern Power Rings are like massive computers in a tiny ring form. They have an AI that basically tells you anything and everything you want to know. Sure there's some things that the ring can't answer but that rarely comes up. I'm sure if you command it, then it could download massive amount of data.

For an early/initial direct boost to base you can go symbiote as a Grey Matter Transfer and get their reward:

>Gray-Matter Transfer - Your Host gets their mental faculties back, if they didn't have them already, and yours are increased up to what they could be as a Symbiote, without the benefit of Berzerker OS, unless you bought it. You both keep any abilities you bought or learned throughout the time you were here, and your Host gains any skills you know how to use that could be taught and/or learned; they've rubbed off on your Host since you shared a brain for a long, long time already.

Which buffs you up to the intelligence level of a quantum bio-AI, with absurd processing if you took Berserker OS.

>if you're not using
>should be if you're using

I know a lot of jumpers have a love/hate relationship with Japan, so tell me, who here has ever conquered/destroyed the U.S and how many times have you done it?

Not that user, but amongst other things? Since a Page of Void knows things through building an identity out of them, abilities that are dependant on or extensions of one's identity would probably undergo.../interesting/ changes.

For one thing, you'd simply have A LOT more fuel to power Soulfire with. Never mind what the ramifications of partly altering its' fuel source would be. Especially if said fuel source includes an opponent's machines, homeland, ideals and possibly the opponent itself.

For another, if one had the ability known as You Do Not Exist from Gunnerkrigg Court one could vastly increase the breadth of how extreme one could change form by identifying more exotic forms as part and parcel of their identity.

There's also the issue that one would likely have great influence through comprehension-assimilation over entities that do not, strictly speaking, exist properly. This doesn't sound great on paper but then you'd be surprised at how many people fall prey to Fingerkings or Hivers or Goetic demons every day.

If one had a style of alchemy that produced resources from nothing, like Minecraft's Equivalent Exchange, a style of magic that gives form to what has been analysed, such as Type-Moon's Projection or the relevant HSDW equivalent it might be possible to synthesise materials unimaginable in normal circumstances.

Being trapped in an identity-sublimating effect such as Instrumentality or the Infinite Tsukuyomi would be much less hazerdous, as through identifying with the effect one can understand and reject it.

As sympathic magic is partly based on the abstract relationship between people and their things, identifying in abstract with /everything/ would grant a LOT of metaphysical leverage to doing basically anything with it. Most likely more in the way of defence. It would be quite difficult to make a voodoo doll out of someone who is, in some way, an abstract extension of the world you live in.

Different user here, but getting those ludicrous kinds of buffs instantly, I'd be worried about any connection with who I was before being completely overwhelmed.

I dunno, look at Legend. Taking down giant monsters with just your sword and skill sounds pretty amazing.

>Sorry if this is a dick question to ask, but
Question’s a question, don’t sweat asking me something if it’s about one of my jumps.

>is there a point to going Warrior or Rogue if I actually want to fight and adventure myself instead of diplomancing/warring (as in, being a leader and having others fight for me) my way to success?
Having said that, I’m not sure what kind of answer you’re looking for to this question. I guess there’s as much a point in doing that as anything?

I made the jump to represent the setting, and when I’ve included crunch because I’ve done so because I know some people really want that. So, by crunch, fighters in 3E+ are on balance worse off than casters. There’s a little more balance in that respect in 2E, but that’s neither here nor there. Having said all that, though, I don’t see jumpchain as a tabletop game. So there’s no reason that you can’t adventure as a fighter if that’s what you want. My goal was to provide you with a set of options wherein you can figure out what your time on Krynn would look like.

If you’re talking straight power game, though? An inexperienced fighter will take down an inexperienced caster, and an experienced caster will take down an experienced martial. That’s a generality, but it’s fairly representative of what’s what. I consider the jump balanced, because you can flesh out builds for the various trees. I consider it representative of the setting because it allows you to do what characters do in the setting.

What would you like to see that you aren’t seeing or is there something you’d like me address that I haven’t here?

The US isn't terribly special.

Neither is Japan by default, when it's not being a nexus of supernatural activity. Which happens a lot more often than the US, oddly enough.

We probably have, but it's not terribly interesting to write memoirs about.

We mean technically we effectively took over the US in Metal Wolf Chaos but that was only beacuse Richard was so busy being crazy he signed all the forms and handed over all the codes that let us actually run the country, so yeah. Actually, that's a great metaphor for our approach to conquering America-there's all this crazy robot dickwaving going on outside, and meanwhile we're just doing our thing in the Oval Office slowly accreting power from behind the scenes, while other people get on with the grandstanding.

Not destroyed, but... um... define "conquered".

Forcefully took control.

> Japan

Love the wacky weirdness, dislike the bullshit interpretation of the Bushido code. Especially the fascist part.

> Destroying/Conquering a nation of country outright.

Learn to manipulate the economy and political system. Far easier, fewer fingerprints, less deathtoll/suffer, more options.

Only time I needed to take off the gloves was in Symbiote, because crazy fucking conspiracies literally want to destroy earth and fuck off to space.. Even then I just killed all the one who would escape custody and framed the others.

That’s how I approach it. I’d add on the additional rider that just because X can’t take down Y doesn’t mean that X is useless or X sucks. The right tool for the right job and all that.

I try to go more for narrative than for crunch, yes.

Yeah, there are some pretty great examples of knights bringing down things that are much bigger than them. Doesn’t always end well, but when you’re stabbing giant gods it rarely does. Legend is base off of those guys.

Caster is better solo, but with caveats. It takes longer for a caster to be able to solo. An martial can solo fairly early on, a caster soloing early in his or her career will likely not have a career. With one or two exceptions, it’s assumed that reaching the pinnacle of power for a caster takes a lifetime. Reaching the martial equivalent is much faster.

If the jump fails at showing how everything shines, that’s on me. That I suppose is part of the problem with trying to juggle something that has a lot of gaming material, spanning multiple editions, and runs of novels. Like said, I know some people /need/ crunch and others want as little of that as possible. All in all, I try to keep things as close to the canon and material as possible. I don’t want to OC the setting. So part of that means that I have to assume some of the baggage of the setting, which includes some of the weird bits about how classes balance against one another. Or, as is this case we’re discussing, potentially don’t balance against one another.

>That’s how I approach it. I’d add on the additional rider that just because X can’t take down Y doesn’t mean that X is useless or X sucks. The right tool for the right job and all that.
The above should not have been pointed at

You did a good job merging material and mechanics, but sometimes people need things spelled out for them.

In large, wooden blocks occasionally.

PCs. Are. Not. Standard. Humans.
10 is the Standard Human.

>I made the jump to represent the setting, and when I’ve included crunch I’ve done so because I know some people really want that.
Fix't.

I can't write in fucking Veeky Forums boxes to save my life.

That roll is for PC attribute levels.

Well, I usually just introduce post-scarcity technologies to the world at large; how governments react to that is on them. Worlds with a nation recognisable as what I'd consider "The U.S." are generally worlds where it responds sensibly.

But I guess it does depend on whether taking non-lethal steps to relieve certain officials of their station (so that the country can choose a new one) counts as forcefully taking control of the country.

Okay, I've tried writing this big thing explaining my thought process, and it all ends up being rambling nonsense so I'm just gonna spout my opinion without explaining why I hold it.

In their current state, there is literally no reason for me to ever acknowledge the Warrior or Rogue origins exist let alone take them, as the Arcane and Divine origins benefit the Jumper's nature as a self-sufficient world hopper much more. This is even before you account for the fact that one of the Warrior Capstones is partly self-defeating, and the incredible direct effects the Divine and Arcane Capstones have.

>I made the jump to...
I can accept that.

>If you’re talking...
That's also a good point, but the fact that you allow the Jumper to simply get power instantly instead of working for it undermines the entire idea for me.

Dude, 10 is the _average_ for the standard human. It's what the DM uses when they can't be arsed to roll for every single damn NPC the PCs meet on the street. Did somebody touch your dice or something?

What kind of shitty GM rolls for the NPCs? Rolls for PCs are acceptable for a touch of randomness, though there are other systems in place.

A Good GM decides what they want the NPC to be like, and builds the stat-block around that. Which is more work than rolling some fucking dice for it.

Not in 3.5 it isn't.
>Determine each score by rolling four six-sided dice, ignoring the lowest die roll, and totalling the other three.

3d6 is for ordinary NPCs, 4d6 then drop the lowest is for ordinary PCs.

I think you just need to accept that you personally prefer arcane perks this time, and that not all perks are going to suit you always, and that you have inherent bias against martials in DnD settings.