Modern Magic Quest

So, mind magic it is. But what are you starting with?

( ) Precognition, short range temporal shenanigans.

• When this is active, information about what will happen to you (and only you, or at least a very nearsighted and partially deaf version of you) is received by your brain slightly less than half a second before it actually occurs. Burns through fuel quickly. Rapid continuous changes can be disorienting.

( ) Truth reading, analysis based.

• The parts of your brain that deal with understanding body language, tone, and analyzing statements are greatly enhanced. While it's difficult to absolutely qualify a nebulous concept like 'truth', your ability to identify deceptive behavior puts modern polygraphers to shame. Low cost, can be kept active all day. Might need a few minutes of conversation to really be usable against some targets. Bullshit magic stuff might throw this off.

( ) Empathy, sympathetic reactions.

• Gives a decent idea of the mental state of people near you by causing you to feel an echo of what they're experiencing. When a part of their brain is active, that part of your brain is stimulated as well, if to a much lesser degree. Chemical conditions and imbalances are also shared. Medium cost. Can be overwhelming as well as worthless in crowds. Less effective the further a target brain is from working like a human one.

( ) Clairvoyance, lying about echolocation.

• Yup, you've definitely got a vision power that lets you see all around you, and aren't using a hearing enhancement combined with a weird mental assessment effect at all. Range is the room you're in, or around five thousand meters cubed outdoors, which would be a thirteen meter radius on a flat field. Costly, best used sparingly, in single pulses.

( ) Write in, something else.

• No, you can't have jedi mind tricks as a starting power, but that's only because I'd have to nerf it to the point you'd have trouble telling if it actually worked or not. Really, anything is fine as long as it fits the theme of messing with your own brain, I might have to adjust how effective it is though.

And you're attending school, for now. We'll see how long that lasts. Oh, have you had your growth spurt yet?

( ) Nope, still a midget.

( ) Yep, all awkward and gangly now.

( ) That was a while ago.

 

(X) Empathy, sympathetic reactions.
(X) Nope, still a midget.

Has no chance in hell of winning, but I'll try it anyway.

Ok, so I was wrong... Color me shocked.

 

(X) Clairvoyance, lying about echolocation.
(X) That was a while ago.

 

(X) Truth reading, analysis based.

(X) That was a while ago.

 

(X) Empathy, sympathetic reactions.
(X) Nope, still a midget.

Voodoo? Seriously? We have the option of starting on the voodoo path? Is this a joke? That's BROKEN!!! Starting as young as we can though would mean we have even more time to work up to that kind of brokenness I would expect from Voodoo!

 

(X) Empathy, sympathetic reactions.
(X) Nope, still a midget.

 

(X) Empathy, sympathetic reactions.
(X) Nope, still a midget.

 

Those options all sound pretty horrible, to be honest. I guess I'll go with:

(X) Empathy, sympathetic reactions.
(X) Nope, still a midget.

 

(X) Empathy, sympathetic reactions.
(X) Nope, still a midget.

 

(X) Precognition, short range temporal shenanigans.

(X) Nope, still a midget.

 

[X] Bullet time- You're able to increase your brain's processing speed to the point where it feels like the world has become slow and grey around you. Unfortunately, this doesn't actually let your body move any faster- But it helps with reading assignments and homework, so it's not all bad.

Is this acceptable?

[X] Nope, still a midget

 

Sure, s'fine. Gonna burn through your reserves about as fast as the precog stuff though.

I probably should have mentioned that this is supposed to be basically a 0th level spell. It's less important what it does, than what path you want to take to advance. The closer something is to the starting spell, the easier it will be to learn.

 

[X] Bullet time- You're able to increase your brain's processing speed to the point where it feels like the world has become slow and grey around you. Unfortunately, this doesn't actually let your body move any faster- But it helps with reading assignments and homework, so it's not all bad.
(X) Nope, still a midget.

 

(X) Precognition, short range temporal shenanigans.
(X) Nope, still a midget.

Just looked over the Superpower Wiki, and I decided on "temporal shenanigans" because the highest level might land us godhood. Like so. So, yeah. I'm going with this.

Honestly, Precognition seems to have WAAAAY more potential than Bullet Time. With Precognition, we're seeing the future, and then changing it. With Bullet Time, we're just making our brain work faster.

 

(X) Precognition, short range temporal shenanigans.
(X) That was a while ago.

 

(X) Precognition, short range temporal shenanigans.
(X) Nope, still a midget.

 

(X) Precognition, short range temporal shenanigans.
(X) Nope, still a midget.

Temporal Shenanigans are the best kind of Shenanigans.

 

Precog isn't too bad, but I prefer general mental buffs if only because they improve our learning speed which we can use to learn to use them better for learning to learn what we learn when we're learning.

And that's just good science.

Oh, also, bullet time kung fu.

 

I'll agree that Bullet Time is probably better, in the short term, but Precognition seems better in the long run. Plus, our magic is mental, not physical, so our "bullet time kung fu" probably wouldn't be great. If we had gone with "Power flows through the body," on the other hand...

 

(X) Empathy, sympathetic reactions.
(X) Nope, still a midget.

 

(X) Empathy, sympathetic reactions.
(X) Nope, still a midget.

 

(X) Empathy, sympathetic reactions.
(X) Nope, still a midget.

 

Don't see much use in Empathy.
From the description it sounds like we feel what they feel, not the other way around.
Might be good for determining if they're hiding how they really feel or something.

 

Well yes, but they're all rather useless at the base level, we are just in school and all that. But it mentions matching chemicals in the brain, and that's just a few steps shy of body jacking. Much less the other fun stuff you can pull with mind magic beyond the obvious mind reading.

 

Empathy's not very useful in a fight, though, and we want to be able to survive long enough to get more powerful. Well, actually, I guess it might be able to be used to detect where and when an attack is coming from, but precog can do that, too.

 

I'm hoping along the upgrade path for Precog... we get Path to Victory. Although this might be kind of boring.

Or even better, we send mental attacks through time, allowing us to attack someone with an infinite amount of us attacking them.

 

[X] Bullet time- You're able to increase your brain's processing speed to the point where it feels like the world has become slow and grey around you. Unfortunately, this doesn't actually let your body move any faster- But it helps with reading assignments and homework, so it's not all bad.
[X] Nope, still a midget.

 

(X) Truth reading, analysis based.
(X) That was a while ago.

A very nice power that can be leveraged without much work.

 

We are voting for the youngest option available to us when we vote for empathy you know. Meaning we will have time before we get into fights. :

 

(X) Clairvoyance, lying about echolocation.
(X) Nope, still a midget.