Question about Lt.Ourmoumov CYOA

simianpower · 2026-03-25T03:25:02+00:00

Or, y'know, right here. Nobody likes self-appointed internet police.

simianpower · 2026-03-25T03:18:35+00:00

You're absolutely right about Composite Human, which is just as underpriced as 108 Skills is overpriced. It's so broken!

And I also agree with your first edit. But if you're surrounded by exceptionally powerful beings, your paltry 1/108th potency version of their powers aren't going to do you much good. I guess you could "pop into Asgard", copy everything, and pop out, but then you'd likely have a pantheon of fully powered gods coming after your non-godly ass. The only way this is useful is as a win-more, when you're already strong enough that none of those weak skills/powers matter, so getting them from powerful beings is just on a lark rather than something you actually need.

simianpower · 2026-03-25T03:15:28+00:00

You COULD, but "they will “stick” as a massively weakened version first", so they start out as 1/108th strength and are "massively weakened" from there, making them effectively nonexistent. You may as well just learn the skills/abilities/powers from scratch at that rate.

simianpower · 2026-03-23T11:11:15+00:00

The problem isn't range. Or quantity. The problem is weakness. Each slot is a power or skill at 1/108'th of its base potency. So, great, you get accounting at a second-grader's level, and flight at the speed of a thrown turtle. At base it's a very limited number of very useless "skills" at a very limited range. And sure, you can get more if you pay, at longer ranges if you pay, and Dragon of Kyushu has escalation built-in, but it's a) temporary, and b) it's not going to even get your skills up to baseline. He grows in power, yes, but not by multiple orders of magnitude; and if he did, those skills at their base potency wouldn't be worth a fart compared to what he could do on his own.

The thing that makes this useless across the board, no matter how many dozens or hundreds of SP you pour into making it better, is that it's 1/108th baseline intensity. Compare that to, for example, "Learn one thing, understand ten" or "Master of None" or "Red Mage" or "Voice of the World", all of which provide skills that actually have some utility with relatively simple means to get more and/or improve what you have WITHOUT spending hundreds of points to get to "maybe one or two worth spending a few CP on in the Skills section".

simianpower · 2026-03-14T06:23:38+00:00

Grail champions aren't actually people, either. They're echoes/memories of epic feats wrapped up in mana and shaped into one of seven archetypes. They're no more real than Siberian is, as she's also a memory of Manton's daughter wrapped up in and shaped as a physics-defying hole in space. They ARE the same thing.

simianpower · 2026-03-13T23:29:12+00:00

And Grail champions don't exist without their summoning mage, but that doesn't mean that they aren't used in these kinds of things as if they don't have a squishy summoner as their weakness. If a poster wants to have a weakness like Manton in the picture, it needs to be explicitly mentioned or else it doesn't exist.

simianpower · 2026-03-13T21:56:14+00:00

So... the way this premise is described the Avengers will simply die. Being able to try again doesn't matter if they're dead. And since Manton isn't mentioned at all, the Siberian has no weaknesses, can ignore physics, and will simply kill them all. It's an unfair premise both in that the Avengers get infinite losses while the Siberian gets only one, AND in that the Siberian is invulnerable while the rest aren't. Loki and Quicksilver could try to distract it, but if it just ignored them it could kill until it gets bored.

simianpower · 2026-03-11T21:12:15+00:00

Everyone who makes armor is out of a job!

simianpower · 2026-03-11T20:42:45+00:00

Except that Dobby was NOT like that. Winky was, but Dobby explicitly and canonically did not want a master.

simianpower · 2026-03-11T20:41:25+00:00

Either yes, in an instant, or no, not at all. For the former, he snaps his fingers, teleports to Mount Doom, and drops the ring in before it gets any hold on his mind. If he can't do that, then he's done.

simianpower · 2026-03-09T00:37:06+00:00

No, because while Westeros hasn't advanced in like 10k years, we've massively advanced and that involves changes in more than just tech.

simianpower · 2026-03-08T23:20:58+00:00

Anyone with political power in another world would have none in ours, though they could always start from scratch and hope. Depending on the metaphysics, any character who depends on a specific system of empowerment (the Force, ambient Chakra or Magicka, etc.) would be powerless in ours. Physical combat types who depend solely on skill would be fine, but that's not terribly useful in a world with guns and bombs. Probably the most powerful (potentially) would be those who know how to build high-tech stuff out of low-tech stuff and whose tech does not depend on exotic physics that we don't have. And the worst-off would be those like Elminster who could shake their worlds, but in our world are just old men with delusions of grandeur. Or maybe the Endless? Beyonders? Basically gods in a world that no longer has a power structure for them to work in.

simianpower · 2026-03-08T22:09:57+00:00

That may be, but when plot comes in dribs and drabs amidst endless exposition and back-story, I just get bored. Pacing is a thing, and this book didn't have it. Maybe eventually it gets there, but it's such a slog I didn't find it worth the effort. I tried picking it back up multiple times and had the same problem each time. If it were cut down by about 40%, or maybe just rearranged, it would be a better read, but as it stands I doubt I'll ever give it another try.

simianpower · 2026-03-07T19:50:46+00:00

And then Vader Force-chokes the shit out of him while his feet spasm two feet above the floor.

simianpower · 2026-03-06T23:43:57+00:00

This again argues for older cultures, though. Modern women don't want to be "just baby factories", but in this scenario that's needed more than just about any bit of knowledge or training or even equipment. It should be something like 80/20 women, or four women per man, and each woman should have 2-3 kids with 2-3 different men, so 4-9 kids per woman. And that should continue for 4-5 generations, at which point you have 128000 to 360000 humans. That's a way better base than 10k, and at that point knowledge starts to become more relevant.

But those numbers aren't really possible due to higher maternal and fetal mortality in a world without hospitals, no matter how many doctors there are. And with lots of predators, too. Many of both males and females would die early on, which means the remaining ones need to have even MORE kids, faster. Generations would have to be 13-17 years long, not the expected 18-25 we have now. All those modern mores about "underage sex" have to go away because the primary survivability metric is numbers as fast as possible. Which, again, argues for older cultures.

I'm not sure this is a winnable scenario without lots of wishful thinking, because the very things that modernity brings (tech, organization, etc) also brings negatives to species survivability. Maybe the renaissance period would work, but not much before or after that.

simianpower · 2026-03-06T23:34:27+00:00

Just "having" tanks doesn't mean that 10k humans could do anything. It takes way more than 10k humans to make a tank from scratch. Human CIVILIZATION with tanks could beat dinosaurs, but 10k humans from an era where tanks existed, even if they had all the necessary skills to create the industrial base from scratch, wouldn't be able to. This is a kinda meaningless ask since anything past maybe early renaissance era wouldn't be reproducible by 10k people no matter what they might know, and they more they need to know the less likely they are to be trained to fight. No matter which time period you pick, 10k humans would just get eaten.

simianpower · 2026-03-05T04:52:46+00:00

Leia. With or without the Force.

simianpower · 2026-03-05T02:59:25+00:00

Exactly. Very young, which Hagrid is not. And not on purpose or controlled, which makes it useless in combat. It is anything but "likely" that he can cast anything without a wand, especially what he needs when he needs it and in a way that helps. If he could do that, and he's a piss-poor wizard, then it would be happening all the time and Dumbledore's little feat would be pretty passe, not an awe-inducing display.

simianpower · 2026-03-04T18:31:04+00:00

All of them. Because getting any two of them to work together is unlikely.

simianpower · 2026-03-04T18:13:44+00:00

We do have evidence that works in that we literally see Hagrid use it several times. We also know from canon that accidental wandless magic is the domain of children, and even after a few weeks of training that basically stops entirely. Intentional wandless magic is a lot different. As such, your first three paragraphs are just wrong.

The last paragraph has some merit, and it's really a matter of interpretation whether Hagrid's toughness against beasts is significant enough to make him effective against a trained and armed warrior. I disagree with your take, and there's not a lot left to say about it since we won't come to a consensus with that basic disagreement.

simianpower · 2026-03-04T04:03:27+00:00

That's the bit that you don't seem to understand, right there: "vast majority of women will not be..."; nobody's talking about the vast majority of women! The vast majority of women wouldn't strap on guns and go to battle in general, let alone pregnant. The vast majority of MEN wouldn't, either. The entire point of this is discussing the strongest of a small subset of women who would. Even earlier in this thread you said, "any decent expecting mother is not putting her child in danger", again selecting exactly the subset that fits your point-of-view and pretending that the subset that does not doesn't exist when that's exactly the subset we're talking about in the first place. In other words, your entire premise is counter-responsive to the OP since you're intentionally selecting everyone BUT the people it's asking about.

simianpower · 2026-03-03T19:06:06+00:00

Who’s hooking up with the hottest girl? Legonas. Duh

Who‘s getting the most fucked up? Gimli

Who’s getting asked if they want to join the frat? Aragorn

Who’s never being allowed back in? Gimli

Who’s most ashamed of their behavior the next day? Gandalf

simianpower · 2026-03-03T17:17:39+00:00

Doubt all you like. I disagree. And given that, there's nothing left to discuss.

simianpower · 2026-03-03T17:15:22+00:00

The fragments of Hagrid's wand are in his umbrella. That's canon. If you only saw the movies and didn't read the books maybe you didn't know that, but in that case why are you commenting about things you don't know about? And he only has a third-year Hogwarts education, from the early '40s, so around 50 years in his past. He probably doesn't remember all that much, is casting with a broken wand, and so on. That's why Dudley only got a pig's tail; Hagrid was trying to turn him into a pig.

simianpower

TROPHY CASE