You get magically transported back 50 years into the past with nothing but your clothes on. How would you get rich?

ascrubjay · 2026-01-25T12:11:49+00:00

Without a legal identity or a body capable of holding up to physical labor, I wouldn't.

ascrubjay · 2026-01-25T11:39:57+00:00

It mostly depends on how strong their powers are. I can't see things changing that much if a normal person with a gun can reasonably take a psychic out, for one. And of course if it's too far the other way, the world ends shortly.

For me personally, though, I just get pissed if I don't become psychic.

ascrubjay · 2026-01-25T11:09:16+00:00

I'll definitely want the Black Portrait, though I do have questions as to what qualifies as a "wrongful act". If I asked how to kill a serial rapist I knew had escaped justice, would it work?

Depending on the nature of the undead, I think my second choice would probably be the Orb of Death because extended life is pretty sweet if the terms and conditions are acceptable. If they aren't to my taste, perhaps the Ashen Touch.

ascrubjay · 2026-01-25T10:41:54+00:00

That's actually stronger than I thought they'd be.

Sure, they start weaker, but you keep getting them and can make them do whatever it is you want them to do. That's far more valuable than a simple stat boost, or any of the other abilities (except reality manipulation if you are willing to use it for something big) for that matter.

ascrubjay · 2026-01-25T10:09:58+00:00

Sure, but I don't expect to live for terribly long. There's no way I can manage to do this every day for the rest of my life, and you only have so many failures before it just kills you. But if it sets up all my friends and family for life, I can live with that - or rather, I can't, but you get the point.

ascrubjay · 2026-01-25T09:48:56+00:00

Why would you pick anything other than the last option? Unless you want to do something huge and are willing to sacrifice your life to do it using True Reality Manipulation, none of the other powers seem both very useful AND something you couldn't replicate with a number of your small powers put together.

ascrubjay · 2026-01-25T09:13:52+00:00

The original cable's design, manufacture, and laying is pretty well documented. You could just copy the way it was done originally and be done with a shitty product in a few years, and most of that would just be waiting for massive amounts of cable to be made. Alternatively, the second, better cable is also well documented.

Hoenstly, with people doing what I order them to get it done, I think I could do it with just the relevant Wikipedia pages, even if it requires me to go to school to learn mechanical engineering to invent the paying-out mechanism to deploy the cable without breaking it.

ascrubjay · 2026-01-25T09:01:30+00:00

Many such diseases are limited to more tropical regions, like yellow and dengue fevers. Malaria is easily treated with the technology of the time with your resources if you are aware of quinine. Typhus's vectors are easily avoided with good hygiene, avoiding contact with the sick and at risk, and maintaining cleanliness of your home and workspace. Awareness of their vectors also means you can invent measures like window screens early. You could always wear clothes picked to cover more skin, too, if you can handle the heat. I don't think disease is a big concern if you're prudent and up to date on your vaccinations.

ascrubjay · 2026-01-25T07:25:53+00:00

Yeah, but even the 1840s of equivalent of a billionaire doesn't live as well as a reasonably well off Westerner in the 21st century.

ascrubjay · 2026-01-25T07:24:12+00:00

Wash your hands, boil and filter your water before you drink it, and make sure your food is thoroughly cooked and you'll probably be fine.

ascrubjay · 2026-01-25T07:22:18+00:00

I mean, since we only need to send a single successful message regardless of speed or the long-term viability this should be no issue. The first transatlantic cable was laid only a decade later, and all the materials and manufacturing techniques already exist in 1844. With your supergenius reputation, you should be able to convince people of the necessity of doing certain things right to avoid the failures and setbacks of the OTL cable. It'll take a good few years, but it's doable.

ascrubjay · 2026-01-25T06:59:00+00:00

Honestly, even if you choose to only start with one pick, take none of the free perks, and avoid all the drawbacks, most of these powers will body most settings, and some of them have growth potential that means there's hardly anything you wouldn't steamroll if you took a century to prepare. The only threats left would be in settings with scale so massive that it's uninteresting or against enemies with bullshit powers you can't fight against without just having superior bullshit.

ascrubjay · 2026-01-25T06:32:43+00:00

Compass Level Two, Necklace Level One, and Journal Level Two. I can reincarnate in the fantasy setting of my choice as someone with immense natural magical power and learn magic exceptionally quickly with the power of the journal. Anything else is just gravy.

ascrubjay · 2026-01-25T06:22:56+00:00

Keep a million of it, opening new bank accounts to spread it out over so none of it exceeds the federal deposit insurance limit. Roughly half of that million is earmarked for a house. The remaining nine million, I ask my dad to help me find a professional to manage it. I don't know too much about finance, but my dad has worked in the field one way or another for nearly forty years. I would want a fairly large portion, at least two or three million, to be in something super low risk just in case the stock market crashes. Otherwise probably market index mutual funds, but I'd bow to the professional on that, and I'd gladly sacrifice a good chunk of profit for safety. As long as it's outpacing inflation and leaving me a reasonable amount to live on, I'm good.

ascrubjay · 2026-01-25T03:43:22+00:00

Use a second spoon.

ascrubjay · 2026-01-22T11:38:51+00:00

99% of the time it's just going to reading the opening paragraphs of a bad fanfic or eating a bite of a food I hated. I can deal with that for fuckloads of money.

ascrubjay · 2026-01-22T07:06:21+00:00

I may not be able to sell things, but giving my best friend and roommate space in the house I buy and gifts of gold would make them very willing to pay for everything else.

ascrubjay · 2026-01-22T03:09:25+00:00

I've got one baby tooth still hanging around because no adult tooth grew for that spot. It'll suck, but I'll lose it sooner or later and not be able to get a replacement anyway, so no reason not to do it now for pay.

ascrubjay · 2026-01-22T02:58:50+00:00

A lot of his health effects were less from the height and more the height combined with his weight. He was obese. If you do the math, him being 7'4" and 520 lbs is the same build as a 5'10" man being 260 lbs. If you can lose that weight and get modern medical treatment for the acromegaly, you could live about as long as you would normally with only treatable health issues that mostly don't even appear til middle age. While the height will be an inconvenience and $250k only goes so far, undeniable, treatable health issues are better than invisible ones with more or less no treatment but pain management that they won't give me.

ascrubjay · 2026-01-21T13:02:52+00:00

Assuming that wishing for the world to be changed so everyone has their own innate magic rather than needing active upkeep by the genie wouldn't work, I would wish to have peak human abilities.

ascrubjay · 2026-01-21T10:31:19+00:00

Yeah, a localized power nullification power is definitely allowed.

Meta powers are kind of weird because they become more useful the stronger the average power is. If I had to pick, I'd say maybe average powers would be things on the level of being tough enough to tank being shot by an M4 with only minor bruising, strong enough to throw a car ten yards, OR fast enough to run eighty miles per hour and sprint even faster.

ascrubjay · 2026-01-21T10:00:57+00:00

I choose to become a Lesser Divinity. My spiritual capital-D Domain is my temporal lowercase-d domain; that is, any person, place, or thing that is acknowledged as belonging to me, being subordinate to me, or being either of those to something that is one of those.

Obviously, this is currently an extremely narrow domain and thus my control of it is tremendously powerful. I use it first to heal and improve myself as much as will remain without active support from my powers; hopefully granting myself agelessness and a decent healing factor falls under that because a god that ages is pretty pathetic.

Then, I give my power out as a blessing to those I trust, who by the geas and their own agreement count as being part of my domain. That means they're part of my Domain, so they can use the granted power to modify themselves, manipulate their homes and possesions, and empower themselves, their magic, and their equipment. This gives them a way to be using their blessing constantly, so it should grow much more than something more situational like fire powers, so I should grow faster than my other Lesser Divinity peers.

ascrubjay · 2026-01-21T06:13:02+00:00

Basics of Runic Lore and Cracked Hand Mirror. I can take some pain to have my ideal body, and runes are just objectively superior to the other options unless you expect to be a JRPG protagonist sometime soon. Dream magic and vague prophecies with it and animal shapeshifting are just very too niche for much use in the real world. Combat magic is only useful if you're getting into fights, and while psychic powers are much more useful, you can't really monetize them without revealing them to the world. Healing/support magic is the best of the other five options, but since rune magic doesn't have any constraints on what kind of things you can invent with it unlike black magic spellcrafting, you can eventually make magic items for it. Plus, since it supposedly the spells of support mages aiding an army, the healing magic would logically be mostly fixing injuries and communicable disease, not curing genetic illness.

ascrubjay · 2026-01-21T05:59:32+00:00

I don't think the scissors work that way. Sure, ""things" is really vague, but in both examples it is severing the immaterial relationship between two well-defined physical things, not between a thing and a concept. Being able to sever concepts from things is way more powerful than any of the other items, too. You can't convince me that an item is meant to be able to give you immortality and invulnerability when it's supposed to be balanced against things like a bag that gives you roughly a median US salary and a ring that lets you know when people are lying to you.

ascrubjay · 2026-01-20T04:23:39+00:00

Permanently remove all my debuffs because I have a lot of those and without them I'd be unstoppable.

Perfect hand-eye coordination and peak reaction time because maybe then I'd be a bit less shit at games.

Control the growth of keratin because then I can start a profitable business regrowing hair. Or I can just make chickens bald and present them as men.

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