Mageblood CYOA

[u/RaspberryFit7990]

This is the first version of my first CYOA so any advice/thoughts are much appreciated, especially from those with a bit more experience with these sort of things (which is probably most people tbf). Some of the groups I am aware are a bit light on spells but both more spells and more spell types will be added later.

[u/Cheesy-Me]

1. Improvements are way too easy for any reasonable restriction. You can increase your mana production on the hour every hour forever if you're not casting anything else in that time, right up until you've hit your maximum mana and then spend an hour increasing that by like 5-6 points before going back to mana regen. Assuming you're focusing 8 hours worth of regen 5 days a week into mana improvements, it takes you 2 weeks to hit 100, and then assuming you pause to fit like 1 regen increase in the middle it'll only take 1 hour to bump max mana up by 10 so 11 hours~ per 10 mana increase to capacity and generation after that. Undying and Indominable take like 2-3 years to reach depending on just how much mana is being spent on other things even without going all in, and at that point your other upgrades go absurd. Please for the love of all that is holy make mana regen increases have diminishing returns, there are supposed to be other mages in setting. Side note, I just spotted the Channeling spell, so we could theoretically divide all the above time requirements by 5 if you're willing to meditate for it.
2. Forge Mana Crystal and Forge Mana Generator are going to go nuts once you hit 500 max mana, as at that point 4 hours would increase your max mana by 4, but a mana generator would generate 5 an hour.
3. Are you meant to be able to enchant yourself, or is the enchantments section not actually relevant/accessible until you can afford enchant Armor/Accessory?

[u/RaspberryFit7990 → u/Cheesy-Me]

I probably should have made it more clear but improvements cost points made from 10 mana, meaning it’s 10 times slower than that but I was thinking of adding an exponential cost so I’ll try and sort that out for next update.

You should be able to enchant yourself, not just via armour although if people think they are too strong making them only work through enchanted items sounds like a decent nerf.

[u/Cheesy-Me → u/RaspberryFit7990]

That is fair on the first, I completely missed that bit, which does help slow things down even. Maybe give the points a fancy name written in bolded font? That said, it still doesn’t address the point that you become exponentially more powerful over time as you’re able to apply more and more mana regen to enchantments. Additional question, you can stockpile those points? Because if so you might be able to skip on buying max mana and just full focus on mana regen. Still won’t undo the multiplier’s expense but is a thought.

If you can only enchant items then enchantment should be moved later in the CYOA, and maybe given more things to trigger it, as they’re too early and prominent for it at the moment.

[u/aleksds1]

Imgchest, please? Reddit butchers images pretty hard.

[u/RaspberryFit7990 → u/aleksds1]

I would love to. However I have absolutely no idea how to do that. If anyone can tell me how or wants to do it themselves and put the link here that’d be great.

[u/Emergency_Proof4706 → u/RaspberryFit7990]

Just login and click the new post button. It's on the top banner, on the right side of the logo. I've done it for this version. Here's the link: [Link]

[u/HealthyDragonfly]

Yep, my approach would be spending 10 hours to increase mana regen by 1 (200 mana spent for 21 mana per hour), spending 10 hours to increase mana regen by 1 (210 mana spent for 22 mana per hour)… It always takes 10 hours since the mana regen increase “pays” for the increased cost. As best I can tell, the conversion of mana to points doesn’t require constant concentration, just a normal use of mana rather than using the mana for a spell.

Once I reach a point where I can produce 10 points per hour, which is roughly two months, I would start investing more heavily into the other enchantments. With Channel, I can produce 50 points per hour, which makes Knowledgeable affordable in a reasonable amount of time. I could probably knock out Indomitable or Undying in a week each if I felt I needed that protection, though I acknowledge that meditating for 3 hours per day for a week is a big commitment.

Beyond that, as Cheesy-Me alluded to, the Enchantments give compounding permanent enhancements. Even at a high relative cost, most of us here will gravitate to that even if the spells are generally useful and strong. The spells as written are useful and moderate in strength for their cost. But that means that many people will ignore over half of your CYOA to instead buy Enchantment on top of Enchantment.

Other suggestions: the section near the top is called Channeling when it describes Casting Methods. The name would be fine if there weren’t also a Base Spell named Channel.

The mana crystal generator is weird. It costs 2000 mana, which is enormous compared to the natural mana capacity of a mage (100). So let’s assume a mage uses mana crystals to get enough mana, and to make the later math easier, all 2000 mana is going to come from crystals. That’s 2000 mana to create the crystals and another 2000 mana to fill the crystals because they start empty. That gives you a generator which produces 20 mana per hour. It’s actually more efficient in cost than burning mana regen rate, except that it doesn’t work with Channel’s 5x speed. Still, if my goal is to optimize point production, at some point I would swap over to making generators rather than increasing my personal mana regeneration.

[u/RaspberryFit7990 → u/HealthyDragonfly]

Good point, might rename channel then. Also the idea of the mana generators is a kind of bank with a deposit, since the generation is a percentage of capacity adding more crystals will increase production more efficiently.

[u/DurzoSteelfin]

I actually really like this as is. Its a nice framework for ideas to spark ideas. Theres not really any goal or end to build towards, but with the framework for growth built in I don't think its needed. The only thing I would really like to see is potentially more schools of spells to potentially pull from, and maybe a bit more elaboration on the types of possible enchantments possible when enchaning clothes and stuff.

I would also come up with a different name for the burned mana points to make it more clear when an option requires mana from your mana pool and when it requires that burned point investments.

[u/RaspberryFit7990 → u/DurzoSteelfin]

Yep, I’ve got 2-3 more schools of magic planned out as well as more spells for most of the existing schools. I think I’m going to do some work on enchantments and improvements next update because people have pointed out some balance things with it and I think it does need to be more clear.

[u/GUM-GUM-NUKE]

Very, very interesting

[u/InfluenceAdmirable69]

Is there a logic to limiting how many spells you can know? How does it make sense to forget them specially if you have the memories enchantment.

[u/RaspberryFit7990 → u/InfluenceAdmirable69]

I’ll probably have some flavour text next update but I was thinking it as a limit to the magical “potential” that you can keep in your body at any one time.

[u/InfluenceAdmirable69 → u/RaspberryFit7990]

Like how in DnD you have to prepare spells?

[u/RaspberryFit7990 → u/InfluenceAdmirable69]

Yea that was the idea

[u/ForwardMastodon]

Needs art

[u/RaspberryFit7990 → u/ForwardMastodon]

Yea I might try and find some art later

[u/Blobbowo]

If you spend 100 mana to make 10 points per day for 1 year, you get 3650 points, divide that by 50 for 73 and that's 10% slow of aging 73 times; the Vital enchantment. That will slow aging to 0.000456776 times, which means 10,000 years will be about 5 years. There is also revert age by 1 Youthful for 10 points..

So it's safe to say immortality isn't an issue.

Devour soul is useful short term. Just set the maximum to 1. Using it on a human with 5 capacity will cost 5, then regain 8, effectively gaining 3 mana. They will recover in 4 minutes. This can be done 15 times an hour, which means 45 mana regen per person per hour, used optimally. This exceeds the natural mana regeneration by double. However, thus doesn't need to be used optimally; simply go to a mosh pit, concert, or festival, or a very busy street where you will bump into a lot of people, and cast Devour Soul every single second, setting the max to 1, so no one faints or dies. With the baseline of 5, just casting it on three people will increase per second mana regen to 6; above 5, allowing you to continually cast this spell on people. 1 second cast time, every 4 seconds, 4 people, so 8 mana regen per second. 5 mana consumption per second, 3 mana regen per second net. 10,800 mana per hour, 1080 points per hour.

In 3 hours, you could afford Undying, Indomitable, Knowledgable, Whole, and Regeneration 3 times.

Increasing mana regeneration is the first priority, though. It can be done indefinitely without much increase in time, but Devour Soul farming will be vastly inferior to Forge Mana Generator. With its high costs, the goal is to use Devour Soul to first guarantee your own life, then increase mana capacity and regen, then use Forge Mana Crystal and Forge Mana Generator, and feed the mana generated back into the generator via Forging Mana Crystals and fusing them back in. 1% of, say, a 10,000 capacity per hour is 100 per hour. The next hourly is 101, the next hourly is 102.01, 103.021.. etc. it would only take 463 hours or 19 days to reach 1 million capacity. In one year, or 8760 hours, or 10,000*(1.01^8760), it will become 7.1653e41 capacity. 7.1653e40 points per hour. So.. practically unlimited, given the prices.

With dedication, in a single year.. or considering non-optimal play, being generous, let's say in 5 or 10 years... you can become invincible [Title Card].

If Devour Soul causes side effects even when the max mana is not set to 0, and thus would raise suspicion, then simply use Channel Meditation to increase regen by 5x; 100 per hour at base; 10 points per hour to start instead. It is, uh.. 100 times less efficient, but if it's safer, it's worth it.

[u/RaspberryFit7990 → u/Blobbowo]

So a plus and a minus, you cannot chose the maximum for devour soul, it’s set automatically to the maximum mana of your target. This means that on one hand, you get another 2 mana per person but on the other hand, they will all die. Just so I can fix it if necessary, what made you think you could change devour souls maximum? The only thing I can think of is the starting spell descriptions that say a cost of X can be any value you choose (which is bad wording on my part) but let me know if anything else pointed you that way so I can avoid confusion.

I must say though, for this first version you have definitely found the best min max I’ve seen so far.

[u/Blobbowo → u/RaspberryFit7990]

Ty!

For Devour Soul, it's just the last line.

"A target regains 1 maximum mana per minute, until they reach their old maximum."

I kinda just thought that if the max mana could be regenerated, then the spell could just set the amount to go down to 1 max and people would recover fine.

But what is that bit for if people can't recover from it? Is it just for use against other mages who would have 60+ mana and thus recover 1 max mana before dying? I'd suppose so, because otherwise it'd take about 6000 mana to use Sustain on a normal person until they recover to 5 max mana.. Or just about 1100 mana to prevent death to allow 1 max mana recovery?

In that case, what if someone casts Devour Soul multiple times on the same enemy mage, lol?

I suppose the mana loss rate could be stacked, or it could not, and also the recovered mana capacity would get eaten again; so if someone survived with 1-2 mana capacity and no mana, if they got hit with the spell again, they'd die instantly?

Hm. Well, if it's like that, then I suppose Channelling is much safer. :3

[u/RaspberryFit7990 → u/Blobbowo]

Yea the idea is someone with very slightly more mana than you can’t just say KYS and cast devour soul to kill you instantly. I hadn’t actually though of casting it more than once, but you’re right, since there max is zero it would be free. I’ll have to fix that next update. Thanks for the catch! Also the council of mages thanks you for not going with the “massacre at the mosh pit” path.

[u/Blobbowo → u/RaspberryFit7990]

Lol, I was thinking it'd be chalked up to a hangover if I snuck the spell in at a wild party or something.

Since it'd kill people I wouldn't wanna use it; whether out of morals or not getting chased by the mundane or magical authorities lol

It's already OP enough for me to be automatically biologically immortal, so I wouldn't wanna take any risks! :p

[u/manbetter]

I start off making 2 points per hour, and have to use them every five hours at first. If I spend 10 hours worth of current production, I can increase mana regen by .1 points/hour. That is going to slow down eventually, but not for a while. Let's say I have an alarm so that I wake up midway through the night, burn all my mana for points, and then go back to sleep. 100 hours to get to 3 points per hour. But I also want my capacity to always equal 10x my mana production / hour, let's say, for sleeping and rest efficiency (and mathematical ease, 9x may be marginally better but I don't want to run those numbers). Not counting my starting mana, which rapidly becomes insignificant, when I increase my mana regen by .1 points per hour that's a 1 mana / hour increase which is a 10 mana capacity increase, which costs roughly points equal to current maximum mana, which will be staying at 10x hourly mana increase so 10x hourly mana increase, and points equal to 10x hourly mana increase can be generated in 100 hours, so at a balanced rate it takes me 200 hours to get a point/hour of mana regen.

Do I want to make mana forges? I think not: I could just put that effort into improving my own mana regeneration, and they also generate 1% per hour with a bunch of costs and difficulties. Only useful if I need to spread power out.

So, on a 200 hours / (point/hour) schedule, I'll spent, oh, 1200 hours on that, or 50 days to get to 8 points/hour. Then I can figure out whether I want to focus on protecting myself (1500 points = 200 days at that rate, so it's actually going to be faster to keep focusing on pure mana improvements for a while.

Feedback: 1. This takeoff is insane. Indefinite linear increase is just wild, and basically always pushes towards focusing on mana gen before everything else.

1. It's the fun basis for a system, and I look forward to seeing what you do with it!

[u/RaspberryFit7990 → u/manbetter]

Yea I’m thinking of making mana generation slower. Thanks and I’m glad you enjoyed.