Jumpchain CYOA Thread #1890 Waiting For The End Edition

That's the thing to read from it, yes.

> I don't suppose he had any good mead recipes?
Nah. Not much of a cook, Loki.
He did, however, know some great places to get drunk! It'd been awhile since he and Thor had went carousing, but still, the places he pointed me towards did brighten up the rest of the pilgrimage quite a bit.

You ever drink mead from a real live Olde Norse Dwarf? It's pretty great.

Yes and no.

Like, if you just give into it and devour every fucking thing, eventually the hunger becomes so consuming that it's almost impossible to keep up with it, and it'll tear you apart from the inside. In the game, since there's a finite amount of things to kill/devour, this is really bad news. It's entirely possible to eat yourself into a no-win situation. In "real life", if you had the power, you'd probably end up devouring huge swathes of wildlife and towns and shit, constantly trying to sate your hunger.
On the other hand, tempering the hunger through... like... god it's been so long, I'm gonna say meditation? I think that's what was used? Anyway, tempering it and being the good guy makes it a lot easier! But at that point, at least as far as Jumper goes, it's kinda like... why even have it, y'know? If you're never going to use it?
It's really a "Blessed With Suck" situation.

Except, if you go full murderhobo and manage to survive? There's a path where you can actually devour the dead god Myrkul, who is a total dick (and the one who made the curse! So, extra points for irony!), and eventually become so powerful that, in the ending, the Gods of Faerun declare you a menace to reality and set out to destroy you.
What happens to your character is left ambiguous, but it is heavily implied that not all of them came back alive.

So, if you ever wanted the power to punch the FR Gods to death with your fucking teeth and bring vengeance for The Wall with just a single, in-universe perk, there's your golden egg.

Because they also cover non-casting skills and abilities common to those sorts of classes, Casting having been determined to be the most valuable thing available to them.

But you yourself have stated that we need to take another perk from a different origin to get any of the skills and knowledge normally possessed by them.

I don't think anyone will ever stop giving you shit for this, players get to choose any class they want for free but in jump Arcane and Divine Classes have to pay capstone prices just to get their starting abilities.

Needed something small for Drop-in and that was the best fit, If you have one of the actual backgrounds with memories you have the general knowledge expected of someone of your profession.

The 'Skilled Individual' perk more is for having skills/knowledge you don't really have any reason for having either because of dropping in or simply it being outside your usual purview.

But that isn't what you said last time, also you even have written into the jump that you need Skilled Individual along with both the caster capstones to eventually become a Mystic Thurge, someone with fairly advanced casting would definitely already have that knowledge.

So what you are saying is that the capstones are completely worthless since they give us a negligible head start on casting we already know enough to immediately jump into.

So they are omnipotent, is what you're saying.

The origins are Arcane or Divine not wizard or cleric.

Dude, I don't remember shit from when I was making the Jump. It was over two years ago and I have edited it once since then. As far as I remember Mystic theurge is like that because it's generally the most powerful option apart from maybe the ability that comes with an automatic drawback.

No, they're not. They're not really the DM, they're just powerful beings that exist to facilitate the story. Far beyond the player characters, but they're not meant to be the top dog of the entire D&D cosmology for arbitrary reasons, just be insurmountable actors for the purposes of keeping your Ravenloft campaign in line. Moreover, you're not jumping into the game, you're jumping into the setting itself, the world of fluff. They are actually limited characters, albeit potentially powerful to an arbitrary degree. Vecna did escape them, after all. If you can body Ao/other such characters on that scale, the Dark Powers probably aren't a threat to you unless you wank them quite hard.

>Vecna

Wasn't it Soth?

No, Soth was released. Vecna escaped in a way that fucked up the entire FR campaign setting in the process.

Hey Val, I heard that Demonbane is always treated as being aligned with good. Is this true for the scenario Demonbane, or is that one evil?

At best, it's good taken to insane and deadly extremes. Much more likely is that it's either insane or evil.

Oh, I only remembered Vecna for doing...something to the Lady of Pain that I've been told you shouldn't be able to do to the Lady of Pain.

I would probably say that, except that terminology really triggers some people, and then they start arguing about semantics and the definition of what words mean, and then I realize that I don't actually care, like... at all.

So instead I'll say "They have complete control over Ravenloft, they're effectively the Capital G God of the Demiplane of Dread, but they're not omniprescient and it's possible to fool them or just fly under their radar (which has happened canonically), and after that it's kindof just whatever you feel like fanwanking I guess."
They're a plot device meant to do whatever the DM wants them to do, and to maintain story consistency, which is "Ravenloft sucks and everything is shit forever".
They're as powerful as a plot device that gives the DM carte blanche to do whatever they want to do. That's about as well as I can describe it.

>The origins are Arcane or Divine not wizard or cleric.
The only thing a wizard needs to be a wizard is knowledge of the arcane. The only thing a cleric needs is the favor of their god. The freebies of these origins are sufficient to prove that they have enough of those things to become full casters of their relevant type pretty much immediately into the jump.

The reason you gave for not doing the obvious thing and just learning the magic in jump was that you wouldn't get fiat backing, right before you admitted that the freebies are indeed enough for that. There is just no reason to take those capstones unless you want to pay 600/300 CP to skip the easiest part of a caster's growth.

The only thing this inane ruling does is leave the casters without real capstones.

Are there any perks that let you function normally while experiencing great anger, despair, or other negative emotions?

So if they wanted to, they could trap Jump-Chan or The Presence there and there's nothing either one of them could do about it.

>the most powerful option
Nope, it is inferior to a pure wizard or pure cleric by a large margin.

>If you can hijack the story from the DM and punch them in the face

Both of them are very, very capable of that so no.

If you take Arcane and don't buy any actual magical abilities then evidently your background would be that of a new student who barely knows anything and your background memories would reflect as such. Much the same is also true for Divine.

All well.

Not, they're not. No being is actually capable of "hijacking the story from the DM" unless the DM allows it.

Whenever people complain about casters in NWN it always seems odd, the entire jump is like that. There are two actual perks in the jump, Montage and Eater of Spirits. The rest of them are all just things middling adventurer of the appropriate origin would be able to do.

Taking all the Martial perks just makes you decent but not particularly high level Fighter, other than montage the Drop-In perks just make you a decent but again not particularly great Rouge or Bard, the caster perks are as pointed out again and again the same way. It is all just a minor head start on the abilities you are supposed to start with at level one.

Which is why The Presence became a bloated corpse and Jump-Chan got pinked by some Necron, amirite.

Does anyone else use old enemy drawbacks to continuosly torture Orikan forever?

Well, Medaka Box has a power for that. Anima has a god with that blessing. Katanagatari has literally perfect skill at one weapon, which you could translate to other exploits via other perks like Dies Irae's "You Can't Iai Strike With a Gulliotine".

Something that I don't get about Lovecraft is how human the eldritch abominations are. Like they get presented as basically all powerful entities above human comprehension and yet they have cults involving large amounts of fucking and dedicated to their worship. For some jumpers that is a Tuesday. I mean literally knocking up alien species, making half human (or whatever the fuck the jumper is) hybrids is literally going to be a goal of a number of jumpers.

Nyarly is a sadistic, malevolent and evil despite supposedly being a highly impersonal force. Motives incomprehensible to human comprehension is a weak explanation that wrecks suspension of disbelief. Why? because it makes no sense is never a good explanation.

Saga of Soul has a character similar to Nyarly but also has a good explanation for its that evokes plenty of cosmic horror on its own.

JAGS Wonderland also does eldritch better. The Wonderlanders are mad with an alien sense of logic directed by metaphor and literary tropes.

If you can obtain a familiar then you could learn a few cantrips easily and a few first level spells with not too much more effort.

Enough favor with you god to actually have them send you minor visions means you are way better off then most clerics and will be a really good one without much time.

"The DM" isn't something that exists in-character unless you take that perk that specifically makes it so. Also, blatantly false considering the current state of the Presence.

>because it makes no sense

Sums up Lovecraft, pretty much. There's a big difference between trying to write about impersonal, alien cosmic entities and being any good at it. To be fair, Lovecraft sometimes hits gold like with the Dagon worshipping things, the Color Out Of Space and the Elder Things. As usual, it's at the higher end of the powerlevels where everything starts to get shitty.

I have no idea what you guys are talking about. Lucifer didn't have a sequel.

Exactly, the jump is a great opportunity to just ignore perks and acquire waifus and cool stuff.

I know you're just being silly, but that's actually a pretty neat thought experiment, so I hope you won't mind if I ramble on about it and navel gaze for a bit!
Full disclosure: when I was starting out writing, I cracked open more thesauruses than dictionaries, and dove pretty heavily into symbolism and metaphors. I'm think at this point I would've made a half-decent writer for a PS1 era trash jRPG or anime, but if you're looking for VS Battles min/maxing I'm probably just going to make you mad.

Anyway, I think it really depends on your personal benefactor, how you define your chain, and how you feel about terms like "relative omnipotence". I'm pretty sure just typing those words gave a couple anons aneurysms just now.

But like, how do you think Jump-chan is sending you along on your chain? Is she omnipotent? Is she, like... really, REALLY capital O Omnipotent, in the strictest user's definition? Or is she just really powerful and can move between all the dimensions?
And that goes for the Dark Powers. Like, are they Capital O and can bridge across the multiverse, or just in control of their own plane? I think it'd be the latter, but since they can apparently pluck people out of various other D&D settings they have to have SOME influence in those realms.
I have to wonder what their relative power levels are to each other. Maybe if you get sucked into your own Dark Realm, the Benefactor CAN'T actually save you...?

Right now, Heavens is doing a really interesting chain where his "Jump-chan" is actually a machine in his warehouse that's busted and not working properly. Would the Dark Powers, even if they're weaker than normal, be able to interfere with that? That's a really interesting thought.
Honestly, I've always thought "What happens when these two forces come into contact?" to be really interesting, not out of a desire to know who would win, but just, like, wondering how they would interact with each other.

I'm really tired.

Nothing in Familiar say's you summoned it, if you have no other skills someone probably did it for you or it showed up on it's own.

A god liking you enough to occasionally respond to your pleas for guidance does not equate to the training to actually channel divine magic. You'll have an easier time of it than the average neophyte but you'll still be putting in a significant amount of hard work.

user I......

I think the problem is that /jc/ is full of the kind of people who want clear, definitive rules on questions like "who would win in a fight?" or "what stat is DA BESS for being DA STRONKEST?".

And a lot of TRPGs/comics/Jumpchan don't like to give vague and definitive answers to those questions, because the point of a lot of those stories is that the answer is pretty vague. Hell, there's a lot of powers in the chain that work like that too.

So yeah, from where I'm standing it's the internet conversation equivalent of flooding a mentos factory with pepsi.

IT DIDN'T HAVE A SEQUEL. IT DIDN'T HAPPEN. WOULDN'T IT HAVE BEEN A SHAM IF SOMEONE HAD OVERIDDEN THE PERFECT ENDING TO A SERIES WITH SOME CONTRIVED, POINTLESS BULLSHIT HAHA.

What are some decent metamorphosis perks that explicitly work on anyone?

It's time wake up user lest you delude yourself to the point you believe your own lies, like I did after negating the existence of the Tsukuhime anime

Your origin provides the skills.

Look, it was scary for its time and place. Like, you can complain about how bad it was handled, but Lovecraft was more or less the second guy to ever write cosmic horror. The first was Lord Dunsany, who interestingly enough was also cited as a major influence on Exalted of all things by the original dev team. Dunsany was prolific and wrote a lot of genres. I'm getting off topic. Point is, at the time it was something new and weird and disturbing, these stories about the incomprehensible that refused to explain themselves to you and that rationality could not justify or explain. Lovecraft had an audience that hadn't been exposed to those ideas before, and so he didn't need to hit the ball out of the park to impress them. We jaded anons of the 21st century are all too familiar with ideas of cosmic nihilism in our fiction, of course we're going to need something a bit more refined to get the same response.

Hey Val, is DYN Freaks or Saint Seiya more dangerous?

Why do we even need other jumpmakers if we have Val?

Saint Seiya. DYN Freaks is higher power, but you're less likely to get involved with the high-power stuff.

>less likely

Doesn't it end on Literally Vortex Demonbane taking a look at the universe and trying to bodyslam it, shortly after Azathoth-chan rewrites all of reality?

Pretty much what user says here With Saint Seiya, you're extremely likely to be drawn into the story (Which focuses on people with equal or far stronger power levels to you) unless you go drop in and make efforts to stay far out of everyone's way. DYN Freaks, barring drawbacks, isn't too hard to stay out of the way of danger and so long as you stay away from plot, you are unlikely to meet things you can't handle unless you choose to not get anything that boosts your power or versatility in the jump.

Yeah but it ends before you have to fight him unless you take the scenario.

Yes, but the jump ends literally the moment it shows up.

Why are all the perks in NWN all class abilities anyway? Montage and Eater of Spirits look like the only actual perks, the rest are just things we would expect to be part of our initial class choice only with slightly more experience. The Items are a bit better but drop-in gets utterly shafted with even it's 400CP item just being a minor magic item that jumpers have minimal use for thanks to the warehouse.

So could Berserker from F/SN get past Protection of the Gods? Or Sojourou since he's enhanced by Medea (who was a demigod)? Would something like Abnormal Growths (boosted) be able to patch that hole?

Don't we start with a fully filled spell book we can use to learn magic without any further resources?

Yo Val if you copy something "absolute" with Migeika, does that mean you have to be infinitely powerful to get rid of the strain, or just on a level comparable to the power's intended user? Or somewhere in between?

Just buy a companion who can teach you your chosen magic field?

Yeah, but it's not fiat-backed, so if you learn it without backing the basic ability it'll leave you post-jump. At least, I'm pretty sure that's his justification behind that.

> because the point of a lot of those stories is that the answer is pretty vague
Yeah, I noticed that, too. And that's what makes talking about these stories so difficult in the context of Jumpchain.

Because, like, I've been around long enough to recognize that when someone is asking, "So how powerful are these guys?", what they're REALLY asking is, "So how can I beat these guys in a fight?"
And the answer to that is there is no answer to that. There's no way TO answer that and be 100% correct, because the Dark Powers were designed not to have an answer to that. It's all up to the DM, and the DM tells the story.

In Jumpchain, you are not the DM, but you also kindof are?
Like, you're writing your own story. It is technically correct to say that whatever you say is correct, is correct.
Technically, if the DM wanted, they could create an epic tale of an adventuring party who challenge the Dark Powers of Ravenloft in an effort to bring true light to the world, and discover that they are nothing but a bunch of squirrels hiding under a robe with a flashlight. And that would make a really... interesting story!
But that's probably not the answer anyone who asks the question is looking for, and most of the thread would think that was pretty dumb.

So the question is asking for particulars, like definitive rules, objective facts in that case, and really the only real definitive response in that case is... exactly what I said the first time, which is, "They're a plot device, and they're used in this manner, and everything past that is kindof just fanwank."
And that's kindof really unsatisfying for someone looking for a definitive answer! But it's the only one to be had. And after that, whichever user in question just kindof has to content themselves with making a story that they don't think is completely stupid... or that satisfies their paranoia over an imaginary writefagging game.

I guess there's really no DA BESS answer for it.

That was his initial statement on the matter, which makes no sense since things are supposed to keep working post jump regardless, but that was made irreverent when someone brought up that having a divine link such as the Divine Freebie or an example of Arcane magic such as the Arcane freebie should be enough to make sure your arcane and divine magic keeps working.

How durable is Vortex Blaster is? Could hundreds of Giga Dragon Slave + infinity be enough?

He could. Souichiro also could. Eh....not in this case. It's not really a power so much as a perk based on what you'd have from the influence of another being.

Mmmmrrr, probably more the latter I guess, being comparable to the user.

Why is the Rogue/Bard/Other Designated Practical Skills Class origin Drop-In? Do jumpers with an interest in those things not get to have an appropriate origin?

I honestly can't think of any emotion control powers, but sufficient willpower perks should do the trick.

The Vortex Blaster is stronger than Elder God Demonbane, who defeated an arbitrary number of beings either comparable to or on par with the Lord of Nightmares. I forgot how literally the "anime Azathoth" meme goes but I'm pretty sure the multiverse she creates isn't infinite, and besides EGD was armed with the Shining Trapezehedron which conceptually imprisoned Azathoth's court as well as Azathoth himself. I'm not even sure if the LoN is up to scratch with Azathoth, when the plot of Demonbane amounts to Nyarlathotep creating and manipulating all of existence for a trillion years-long gambit.

In short, I don't think so because all that really amounts to is throwing the Lord of Nightmares at other Lords of Nightmares.

I can't remember if they're "function normally", "act rationally", or "not be clouded in judgement by your emotions"; but if I recall correctly, there should be at least one in Noblesse, Kakagurui, and Aldnoah Zero. There are also a few limited to specific emotions in Inside Out. I also wouldn't be surprised if Sekai Oni had something, considering it's all about emotions, but I'm not too sure if there actually was anything for that and don't have the doc on hand.

Whenever people talk about how Rey is a mary sue (instead of just badly written), I always think of Souichiro. This guy comes out of nowhere, and all he needs to kill King Arthur with his bare hands is a status buff from a caster. In a game that keeps going on about how the virgin Caster can't keep up with the Chad Knight Class without like 2 home turf advantages and the element of surprise.

There's a perk in Akame ga Kill for that, though it's meant for fighting, there isn't any reason it has to be used for fighting.
>Bury Them, 200cp, Discount Hunter
>Your emotions I mean, like flipping a switch in your head you can shut them out so that you could fight even former comrades without hesitation. You may still morn people you kill, but they won't be able to use your emotions against you. While you won't stop being ruthless due to the emotions that should be welling up, you might find yourself repeating something to strengthen the effect. Note this effect does not weaken or stop the emotions, it just lets you ignore them.

Would Golden Dagger be able to slice Vortex Blaster?

All this Neverwinter Nights stuff can be solved so easily by just not taking it as your first D&D jump, go to one where you get a class for free or just one that doesn't do it's origins tied to a class so that you have the abilities and pick up the cool toys that go well with your existing D&D abilities like Amulet of the Gods Favoured or Arcane Stave.

To be fair, the reason he did so well was not just the status buff from a pretty great caster that was hopped up on an awesome amount of energy but also that his fighting style is amazing at first encounter fights and much less good in stuff after that. When the series had already established since Tsukihime that you can literally just train to supernatural levels with martial arts, I think Kuzuki is fairly justified in what he does.

I mean, EMIYA stomps him pretty quick the moment Caster stops buffing him, even though they haven't fought yet.

It'd be able to cut it.

Would cutting it do anything to the eldritch giant robot?

Mmm, probably not. Not without adding that effect to something more impressive.

>It can harm those who exist in a purely spiritual form and even deal genuine damage to the projections or avatars of greater beings that transfers back to the original being, though only in part. Still, slaying the avatar of a God will severely harm that God at least.
I mean, not that user, but it also has an effect to allow you to minorly harm it.

What happens if you hit it with Black Barrel?

Is Preying on Prey stealing power (i.e. were my does resurrected would they be severely weakened)?

>I forgot how literally the "anime Azathoth" meme goes but I'm pretty sure the multiverse she creates isn't infinite,
It gets implied to be with some things and author comments, however that author is noted to never take those sorts of questions seriously and jokes a lot. So LoN could be the creator of an infinite multiverse, or there could be an infinite multiverse each with their own LoN, or there could be a limited multiverse with a single LoN being its creator, or a limited multiverse with a LoN in each. These things are roughly equal possibilities, and so it would really be up to the individual for how they want to interpret it.

If you can actually manage to hit it, it'd hurt it a bunch.

No, just copying it. I really need to fix that to be clearer.

>you can literally just train to supernatural levels with martial arts

See, this just makes me wish Nasu would explore Tohsakas' path to the root via kung fu.

These kind of questions interest me too when I feel like wildly speculating.

Benefactor/jump fiat is just something that was made because no universal answer could be reached for "how does this work when...?" except to reply "It just does!" and by defining it so, we made Jumpchan more powerful than anything else. For some of us this is acceptable, but for any story that features the Jump-chan as a character rather than a plot device, its' not very satisfactory.

But what would someone's chain look like if your Jump-chan had only the "bare minimum" power to support whatever purchases you made in your chain, and not a bit more? Some kind of trickster demi-god who gets by on scraps of whatever power is out there, who themselves have to bargain for higher abilities from the local gods? Negotiating with Shenron in DBZ to give their Jumper some Saiyan powers for some drawbacks, or where they really are cut off from the Jumper in LOT.

That might still mean they're godlike, sure, but when you're traveling the multiverse you end up in settings with hierarchies of deities.
Could that mean that a Jumper might encounter a situation where their Jump-chan is eaten by some greater god? What happens then? Do they lose everything, or get traded over to the greater god, who assume control of the Jumper's chain? Could a Jumper pledge themselves to a different Benefactor and abandon their previous Jump-chan?

Hmmm... I take it importing Black Barrel as your Ahnenerbe wouldn't be a particularly good idea, would it?

It could still be useful to attack beings like Scion, Mercurius or the Choushin that usually are only present through avatars. Do we have any other perks or items that would stack well with that dagger to kill someone through their avatars?

Why not?

Ah, so around Gohan Blaco's level.

I mean...you're not gonna be hurt by it at least.

Silver Key (DYN), Cheat Weapon (KonaSuba). And plenty of other item imports. Something like that perk in Chrono Trigger to let you damage things as though you were on the same scale as them.

>Gohan Blanco's level
>Not Gohan Blanco (Completado)'s level
Is she that weak?

Dungeons & Dragons folder in the series section of the drive when?

>Silver Key (DYN), Cheat Weapon (KonaSuba)
None of those have that power reflected in their descriptions. So, unless I'm missing something from the canon material, I don't know how would they interact with avatar's user.

Cheat Weapon scales with you.

>Order of the Stick
>Dragonlance
>Neverwinter Nights
>Forgotten Realms
>Ravenloft
What else?

Stuff would stack with item imports to increase damage would naturally increase damage sent through the avatar.

Adventure Zone when it comes out, looking forward to that one. I want muh magic umbrella.

>and by defining it so, we made Jumpchan more powerful than anything else.
I mean, it helps that she can travel to other IPs unlike so many other beings that would be supposedly "above" her, and also that drawbacks can basically do whatever the author wants, up to and including mind-raping or otherwise affecting seemingly omnipotent deities. Crawling with Love, for example, among others. You also need to explain why all these other beings allegedly on her level haven't traveled/conquered other settings when for a significant portion of them, it'd be fairly out of character for them not to. Like the Dark Powers themselves, or the Chick Tracts God. Are there coalitions of Supreme Beings that protect worlds like slice-of-life form further influence? But then if they did, then why are settings like 40k a thing? I mean, it's not impossible, but there are some actual valid reasons why the Benefactor is perceived that way.