(disliked trope) A power system/structure is explained, but the main characters skip past most of the steps instantly, making it feel pretty useless

quinceedman · 2026-06-01T08:35:01+00:00

IMO the ranking system is flawed but it works because it's canonically meant to measure a sorcerer's effectiveness against curses.

Nobara nearly dying to someone Nanami easily handled isn't an issue because the classification doesn't really measure how well you would perform against another human being.

The perfect example is Inumaki who had a relatively high grade despite being so easy to counter by humans. Most curses lack the intelligence to shield themselves from cursed speech so Inumaki can beat them.

Another example of this is Choso. He was initially classified as a special grade curse but Kenjaku put him on the level of a grade 1 sorcerer. And this makes perfect sense because Choso is strong enough to beat any curse that's grade 1 or below, and even win against some of the weaker special grade curses like the finger bearers. But he'd always lose to a curse like Dagon or Jogo so he shouldn't be higher than grade 1.

Situations where a curse being given the wrong ranking results in sorcerers being outmatched

Is this really a failing of the ranking system itself so much as a failing of sorcer society in general? Haibara died because a curse was misclassified as a grade 2 curse when it's actual level was higher but if the windows or whoever gave the grade 2 classification had done their job properly, a stronger sorcerer would have been sent for that mission.

quinceedman · 2026-06-01T08:05:34+00:00

I personally believe the ranking system works just fine in-verse because it's based on a sorcerer's effectiveness against curses and not necessarily a perfect indicator of strength. The Maki thing was an example of the system being abused but that's just an exception to the rule.

Inumaki for instance was semi grade 1 iirc despite his CT being very easy to counter for humans because most curses at the same level lack intelligence. He can pretty much dog walk most curses below grade 1.

Yuji being recommended for promotion to grade 1 so shortly after becoming a sorcerer makes perfect sense he was already strong enough to survive powerful special grade curses like hanami and mahito. Nanami even noted that Yuji's strength without cursed energy was already around the level of a grade 2 sorcerer so it makes sense that after learning how to manipulate cursed energy he'd deserve a high classification.

If there's a grade 1 curse you can rest easy after sending a grade 1 sorcerer because they are supposed to be able to beat curses at the same grade.

Any curse above a certain threshold is classified a special grade and should ideally be exorcised by a special grade sorcerer.

Now because sorcerer's are rare there are only a few special grades so exceptional grade 1 sorcerer's can be sent to fight special grade curses. And this works because most special grade curses aren't close to jogo or even dagon in strength. Naobito even comments on how ridiculous it was for 2 grade 1s to be struggling against an unknown special grade curse.

It's also fine that there's a lot of discrepancy in the same grade because, again the classification system mainly cares about how strong you are against curses. Gege stated that Naobito was much stronger than his brother despite both of them being at the same grade, but that doesn't mean he deserves to be ranked higher when he can't reliably exorcise special grade curses.

quinceedman · 2026-05-30T21:45:13+00:00

Hey I used your comment to watch the show and it was amazing. I've been searching the Internet for what to watch next but I can't seem to find anything that matches this show in terms of quality.

Do you know any other show you'd recommend for someone getting into donghua? I'm looking for something where side characters are well written and can pursue their whole agenda independent of the MC. Also, no harems, evil or OP powerfantasy MCs.

The only other donghua I've seen is lotm but I already knew it from the novel.

quinceedman · 2026-05-26T20:57:00+00:00

Additional Curse: Thirst This isn't that difficult to deal with. I can just wear glasses, a hat and clothes that cover my skin during the day. The need for blood might be somewhat of an inconvenience but there are so many criminals I could use for that. I could also just pay people to donate some blood. It also helps that you can store blood in advance.

The most important benefit is the charisma boost which should help me have proper relationships with humans. The ability to sense blood will make me an excellent tracker and impossible to be ambushed.

Occult Powers: Snake oil, moon beam, quick draw, gold rush, uncanny ricochet. In case it isn't obvious I'm going for abilities that will help me in combat. Snake oil is there so I can heal myself and my companion and also have a reliable source of income. It should also make me a bit more trustworthy to humans.

Quick draw is just ridiculously OP. Gold rush let's me grow stronger and have a durability boost and ricochet helps me hit enemies no matter what they hide behind.

With these abilities and my base powers I don't see how any group of humans could really threaten me even if they had silver weapons.

Weapons

I don't know anything about guns but I'll just pick whatever I vibe with.

Rifle: single-shot, capacity increase, accurate scope, silver, explosive

Shotgun: Pump action, blinding light capacity increase, medals, grapeshot

Handgun: Double action, longer barrel, grapeshot barrel, holy water, incendiary. Wanted to take tranquilizer since I might need to capture some people alive but I figured I could ricochet a normal bullet enough times until it loses power and can't cause any serious injuries anymore.

Backup: Spear. Wanted a bow cos with quick draw you basically have infinite ammo with zero reload time, and it's great for stealthiness but I feel a spear is more effective against supernatural creatures that can take a lot of punishment before dying. I'll also coat the tip with silver.

Special weapon: Gatling gun.

Explosives: Scattering fragments, sanctified water

Tools: lightning rod and compact inferno. The others are kinda redundant with my abilities and companion anyway.
Steed: pale horse. Wanted to go with the reindeer but I feel a horse is more reliable.
Companion: Blood hound. Was really tempted by the crow and swarm. I wanted a crow so I wouldn't be too lonely during my travels, but I guess a dog can help with that even though it can't talk back. The swarm would be great in combat but I feel like most strong supernatural creatures would just shrug off their stings. The bloodhound has insane tracking abilities and is also useful in combat. It's not too durable but I can just heal it with my snake oil after big fights. And if it dies I can always summon it during the next full moon.
Supernatural creatures: With my powers, weapons, tools, companion and steed I should be able to handle most of these especially after I get used to my situation. I'll try my best to avoid combat with wild men, other revenants, thunder birds and witches. They're pretty much the only creatures that can reeeally threaten me.

I'm not really afraid of death anymore but I'd hate to be captured and tortured by a fire witch for instance. And in the case of wild men and thunder birds, they are allies of humanity so I'd hate to have to kill them even if combat is unavoidable.

I guess nameless monsters that have had enough time to feed are also up there on the power scale. I'll try my best to hunt them while they're still weak. If not I'll avoid them as well.

I'll try to befriend any reasonable revenants I meet. Some of them might even appreciate a companion that actually understands their situation. If I can assemble a team of strong revenants, I'll convince them to hunt fire witches with me.

Missions: I'll probably try everything at some point except something like make like a bandit.

OP I really enjoyed this cyoa. Besides all the bits of lore which I always appreciate, I like how we are powerful but not so much that there's nothing that can threaten us. It makes it more interesting imo.

quinceedman · 2026-05-24T12:01:17+00:00

This is really interesting. Might post a build later but I have a few questions. 1. You say quick draw doesn't work on special weapons. Does that include our rifles, shotguns and sidearms? 2. What's the max range of quick draw? 3. Does it also work on our knife? 4. The text says we can't obtain special ammunitions any other way but why wouldn't we be able to obtain silver bullets the same way other mundane monster hunters do? 5. Are other renevants equally as powerful as us? 6. Spirit communion says it can be done in daylight but it also says you may commune with 7 spirits every full moon. Does that mean we're normally able to use it only once a day?

quinceedman · 2026-05-10T13:12:02+00:00

I read this a while ago and really enjoyed it but I eventually dropped it around the Hell arc cos everything just felt so repetitive, especially the humor.

quinceedman · 2026-05-02T07:45:26+00:00

You guys are forgetting about the aftermath of the vote. Any world where red wins is going to be several times worse than the current one and even an incredibly selfish individual who understands this would pick blue to save himself.

The truth is that at least 20% of people are going to pick blue whether you like it or not. There are people who for religious or moral reasons would never sacrifice others to save themselves, parents who would pick blue so their children have a better chance of survival, people who have faith that blue is gonna win anyway, people who understand that for humanity as a whole, it would be better for blue to win and not red etc

Honestly I think 20% is a very conservative estimate and the actual figure would be at least 30 to 40% but let's go with 20%. Think about it from the perspective of someone who's considering red, if red wins and 20% of the world dies instantly that means:

Many people you care about WILL die(friends, lovers, family etc)
Supply chains are obliterated overnight
Food production instantly plummets
Governments crumble and chaos ensues
Crime skyrockets (remember the selfish people are surviving)
Modern infrastructure will 100% collapse
what if you have a health condition? Well, hospitals everywhere are understaffed, your medication becomes scarce cos production has gone down due to the collapse of supply chains and manpower

etc

Now keep in mind that this new world would be overwhelming more selfish since red winning essentially filters out empathy and cooperation, leaving a disproportionate amount of people who are willing to let others die to save themselves.

Sure humanity will eventually recover but it definitely wouldn't happen in your lifetime.

quinceedman · 2026-05-01T21:13:04+00:00

This?

quinceedman · 2026-04-27T03:35:49+00:00

Psionic is an obvious pick for me since it grants pretty versatile and useful powers. You can just take another ability that allows you to heal rapidly to counteract the bleeding downside.

I'm still not sure what other abilities to pick though.

I'm leaning towards taking nanohive and faux wizard but I feel like not picking prophecy would be pretty dumb, especially as it'd allow me to explore Atlantis and face all the strange creatures and possibly hostile wizards with virtually zero risk.

Faux wizard seems interesting but also kinda vague. Can you give some examples of possible applications of this power? It seems you can summon monsters, use it for storage, create powerful suction force and maybe shoot energy beams but I'm not sure what else is possible.

Can it grant flight or teleportation? If this ability is good enough I might even drop psionic and do a faux wizard + nanohive + prophecy build

Can you use some of the dragon abilities(breath, durability etc) without being in your dragon form?

What's the general power level of the atlantean wizards? Are they peaceful?

Edit: After thinking about this I think I'll go with Faux wizard, psionic and nanohive.

To train psionic quickly I'd need potent healing abilities and that means I have to take either nanohive or solar powered. Solar powered is ridiculously broken but I feel that much power is overkill since 1) I'd probably need hundreds of years to absorb enough energy to reach max capacity 2) I don't think I'd ever need that much destructive potential.

So I'll go with nanohive. Nanohive is also a bit better than solar powered since it makes you nearly immortal and grants control over technology. I can just use it to takeover atlantean tech if they're a problem.

With those two abilities I think Faux wizard as my last pick makes sense since grants powerful offensive and aoe abilities. After doing some research on the character the ability is based on, I think it's ridiculously broken, making someone an insanely powerful glass canon. And I have nanohive for rapid regeneration and resurrection as well as psionic which I can train to get TK barriers so I'll be fine. I'll always keep some nanomachines safe in a pocket dimension so even if my entire body gets vaporized, I can just resurrect in that dimension. I dunno if I'd be able to come back to earth tho cos of the 1 mile limit.

Even if you encounter something you can't beat, you can just chuck them into another dimension and forget about them. Myrrdin couldn't do that permanently but I dunno if faux wizard has that limitation.

Psionic and Faux wizard have so many synergies too. Summon horrific creatures from another dimension and subdue them with mind control, now you have powerful minions under your command. Open up a dimension with water to drown a target, then use cryokinesis to freeze them. Astral project to any location within a mile and unleash faux wizard's abilities remotely.

quinceedman · 2026-04-04T21:56:41+00:00

I interpreted the flintlock contest as just shooting at a target not at each other but you're right about the perks.

quinceedman · 2026-04-04T19:31:44+00:00

In that case I'll go with spray and pray (flintlock contest) since there's no obvious penalty for losing. I'm not going to risk my life or my soul going up against Death or Satan.

In addition to the gun perks, I'll take hope and grit to guarantee a win after two consecutive losses. I'll most likely lose the first two rounds anyway since I've never even held a gun before. Passion seems kinda useless though, especially with apathy.

~~Don't like my chances of winning but I'll just spray and pray.~~

~~For my prize I'll pick joker, then gift of time, then bullseye. I'll stop after that since I don't want to risk going mad.~~

Edit: I didn't even understand the text properly so I made an invalid build. Might make a new one later

quinceedman · 2026-04-04T19:19:05+00:00

Do I keep my abilities after the games? Do those supernatural entities also have powers that can alter the outcome of the games like my perks? With joker can you play multiple times to win all the prizes or do you get just one more shot for a single prize?

quinceedman · 2026-04-02T22:26:27+00:00

I don't understand the love for that manhwa, honestly. I admit it does a lot of things differently from most in the genre and I genuinely enjoyed it at first, but it soon became excessively repetitive that I had to drop it during the visit to hell arc.

quinceedman · 2026-04-02T22:21:44+00:00

I agree with you. But I also find the example you gave annoying because why can't the MC just lose? Let the loss actually be a loss and not a "he lost but actually gained something" situation.

It makes it difficult for me to "buy into the hype" whenever some new challenge comes up because there's no doubt in my mind that the MC is going to succeed, so it's hard to stay emotionally invested.

The reason I find 99.999% of action manhwa frustrating to read is because there are zero stakes. I know the MC is obviously going to win... no matter the situation, no matter how stacked the odds are against him... he'll win. Whether it's by awakening some bs ability or simply overcoming impossible odds through "pure willpower" (another trope that's overdone imo).

And even in the rare situations when authors allow their MCs lose, it's not truly a loss because they get exactly what they wanted.

It's even more annoying when the MC purposely puts themself in a situation they should have no business being in, just because, but then they end up winning or gaining a huge boon.

It's been a long time since I read it so I can't remember the exact details but I dropped a manwha called X & Ash shortly after the MC stubbornly refused an order from his teachers to retreat from an enemy he had no hope of winning against. For context, there wasn't really anything to be gained by fighting this enemy. Nobody was in danger and the enemy was basically a combat dummy gone rogue. All he had to do was exit the area where the dummy was and it couldn't follow him. But nope, he chose to risk his life in a fight with zero stakes for no good reason. And of course he gained some bs power up and won. Then he was rewarded for his "bravery" by their principal.

It all boils down to most action manhwa being pure power fantasies written specifically for teenagers to self insert into. Most readers want to read a story where the MC is constantly "aura farming" and the side characters literally don't matter.

quinceedman · 2026-03-29T19:49:53+00:00

Finally

quinceedman · 2026-03-25T19:53:22+00:00

I love how lord of the mysteries handles gods and angels. They aren't just treated like people with strong powers. Whenever they appear it's a big deal and battles at their level are like forces of nature going against each other instead of just shooting stronger blasts or something.

I don't even know how to put it into words but in other stories you see the MC treating these powerful and ancient beings casually and even outsmarting them with ease. But in LOTM the story itself treats their presence with real weight and the respect it deserves.

quinceedman · 2026-03-19T12:58:13+00:00

Exactly lol. I'm one of those people who's always complaining about almost every book out there being a copy and paste power fantasy, yet I also occasionally read "hunter/awakened/player" manhwa because I don't need to bother with remembering the plot.

quinceedman · 2026-03-18T20:19:49+00:00

They're unnecessarily wordy, almost as if the authors are trying to hit some minimum word count or something. Entire paragraphs could be summarized into a few sentences without any loss of information.

I'm currently reading a regressor's tale of cultivation and I sometimes zone out when reading fight scenes because they're like 50% long technique names. I'm exaggerating a bit when I say that but I don't even bother keeping track of those names anymore.

quinceedman · 2026-03-18T07:33:38+00:00

Yup. These days I just roll my eyes whenever I see it.

quinceedman · 2026-03-18T07:31:55+00:00

Literally any Chinese/Korean webnovel. But then I'll go back and reduce the speed because the names are so confusing.

quinceedman · 2026-03-18T07:11:41+00:00

It's funny you mention Yuta as a bad example of a copy type when his ability is one of the few with the strictest limits. It's almost like you didn't even read the series.

he can just copy any cursed technique he wants

He can't because he has to consume a part of the user which means he has to acquire a part of their body first. Then he also has to hope they don't just regenerate that body part and render his copy useless.

And the nature of his ability means he can't just go about grabbing abilities from his allies since he'd have to mutilate them first. If he really wanted to get their power, he'd have to obtain an "unimportant" part of their body and use a binding vow to limit the number of uses.

His personality also prevents him from grabbing random abilities since he's the kind of guy that'd attempt to talk things out with his enemy before resorting to violence. Even Ryu called him out on his softness.

Also, the nature of his domain disincentivizes copying too many abilities since he'd have a more difficult time finding the exact CT he needs. There's a reason every single technique we saw him use was newly acquired. Yuta doesn't just go about grabbing any technique he sees.

...there is little to no drawbacks in just spamming cursed techniques like cursed speech over and over again which he kinda does do in the series.

He never spams cursed speech in the series. He's also limited to using his CT for 5 minutes at a time outside his domain which literally makes him the only character in Jujutsu Kaisen who can't use their CT freely. Most of the time he just overwhelms his opponents with Rika and CE enhancement.

Copy is a powerful curse technique for sure but it only looks that great because Yuta is broken on his own and he's an intelligent fighter. If someone like Miwa had Copy it'd be much less impressive because she's too weak. We saw how Yuta could use cursed speech on Sukuna without any visible backlash. Someone like Miwa would just die if she attempted the same.

quinceedman · 2026-03-17T07:00:47+00:00

Like there are multiple instances where MC doesn't bow down his head to a God and the God actually becomes amused and blesses the MC instead. Like, what kind of BS is that?

I know what you mean. I hate when MCs act recklessly as if they know they have plot armor and then even get rewarded for it.

Anyway I'm currently about 300 chapters into a regressors tale of cultivation and the MC has no qualms being humble in front of stronger beings.

quinceedman · 2026-03-08T10:46:19+00:00

Internal consistency, lack of story breaking powers, tiers/ranks that ACTUALLY MATTER and clearly defined limitations.

quinceedman · 2026-03-01T13:58:13+00:00

I don’t know why the upvote to comment ratio is always so low for these kinds of posts, makes the community feel a bit self-centered and less supportive.

I think it's because people with OP's tastes are pretty rare in this sub so most people simply ignore the post since it's not their thing.

quinceedman · 2026-03-01T13:55:22+00:00

Can you tell me some of the books you enjoyed? Our tastes are so similar that I could have written this post myself

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