"Yes, when a power says it replaces another power it means it counts as it for the purposes of prerequisites."

Oh good. Feather deliberates for a bit on the sex powers she has to choose one from. Laugh Together sounds like it's maybe for more anxious people? But some of her partners might be anxious? 

In the end she decides to take it over Here For a Good Time. (The other option, Two Become One and Bop It, sounds like a great way to become over-fixated on having sex. Not that she judges people for doing that! But she has a Mission.)

The next batch of sex powers is a little more worrying.

The Princess And The Dragon. She appreciates the good intentions, but she's a druid. (Also, have you heard the good news about dragons becoming human-shaped?) She'd rather not cause any... unnatural happenings... in the course of loving someone of another species.

GGG, Before Your Eyes, Reaching Out. Bleh, sex mind control.

Opening Up. What??? Also, no way. She will find a true love (probably) and she will want to do nice things for them and help them become who they want to be and she will not make it so nothing they do can have real consequences.

Fated Lovers, Fated Friends. She will - definitely have a true love eventually? And keep meeting people who'd be good friends? This sounds like a good thing except that it also sounds like endless matchmaking. What if she doesn't want to meet any prospective true loves for the next year. What if she's tired of meeting people who are wonderful and attractive and interested in her and also she is busy fighting a dire weed infestation.

"Squirrel? Can Fated Lovers and Friends be - turned off for a while, or dialed down or something? I don't want it to feel - pushy." It sounds a bit silly but it's a power meant for her to be happy, so she's allowed to be silly if she wants to.

"Fated Lovers already turns itself off if you're satisfied with your current partners and Fated Friends tends to be subtle. I could still make versions of them that are more controllable though."

That might work, but Feather doesn't want to make herself - feel temporarily satisfied with her current lack of a romantic partner - to avoid meeting her future soulmate for the first time in a situation where that's deeply inappropriate or distracting or something. 

"Please make the more controllable versions."

"Alright how about like this?"

Name: Fated Lovers - Cost: 3 ☐

You will meet someone who will go on to become your true love at a time that works for you. If you enter a specific universe with a specific target in mind, you'll meet that person under favourable circumstances, and if it doesn't work out with them, this power will keep introducing you to new possibilities until you find someone who's right for you. If you're the sort of person who can have multiple true loves, you'll keep meeting new ones when the time is right for you until you have enough.

Name: Fated Friends - Cost: 4 ☐

Wherever you go, if you're looking to invite more people into your life, you will be steered into meeting people you'd do well to befriend. It's up to you to recognize and appreciate them.

"Thank you! That seems much better."

She's actually out of points! There were so many bad powers earlier that she half-expected to reach the end with lots of points left over. Well, she has some low-priority picks she can discard.

Sorry About That, Excuse Me, Tragic Backstory. These two are so bad!! She already commented on them earlier but it's really - impressive, how Nature accommodates many different sorts of minds including some that want this and helps them come together into a greater whole.

Sense of Style, Bonus Style Points. Not at all attractive, even ignoring the usual issues of mind-control and so on. Twist the very fate of the universe so that people - who are sexually attracted to her despite being a different species - will spontaneously change species! And 'get their hands on' stuff they can't afford! This is beyond 'that would be wrong' and well into 'that would be silly'.

Like a Mirror. Vaguely interesting, but she's not planning to visit other worlds.

Self-Reflection. Ditto, except -

"Squirrel? Is Self-Reflection only about people from other worlds, like the Mirror power, or does it mean there could be - other mes on Golarion? I'm not sure I want it even then, but it's a - weird idea that I'd like to hear more about."

"Sometimes there's more than one of the same person on the same world but it's a lot less common."

"What does it... mean? Just that there's someone who is extremely similar to me, like a twin separately at birth? Or is it somehow more than that?"

"Two people being the same isn't very much like being twins. Sometimes different versions of the same person are very different on the outside like how you're the same person whether you're shaped like you are now and when you're shaped like an owl. Sometimes the different versions of a person all grow towards thinking the same way and believing the same kinds of things but other times it means people start out that way and then grow in different directions. There's always a point in your life where you match to some point in the other you's life."

"That's less similar than being twins. At some point in our lives, not necessarily at the same time, we were extremely similar? I guess it would be interesting to meet someone who is or was very like me, but it doesn't feel at all - important." She won't be spending points on that.

Chaser Six When. Feather can maybe imagine herself one day learning to be a group consciousness, but getting it via a power sounds like it would be very confusing. She might have taken it out of sheer curiosity, to play with it a little and see what it was like, but for a high cost - no.

Severance. Wait, that's not about 'other hers', it's about identities in general. She could - uh - gravely and deliberately abandon her life, everything she's ever done, everyone she knows, and become untraceable?

That's probably good for people who have someone really terrible in their life that they want to escape. Feather definitely doesn't want to ever give up on her life.

Popular. Famous. More horrible powers for making 'fans' (not even friends) and giving strangers unrequited crushes.

Undiplomatic Immunity. Lawful is a fine alignment! Feather doesn't want to be the mortal enemy of all the Lawful people in the world! It would be horribly evil for even a Chaotic person to have such a power!

Friends in Low/High Places. Something about powerful and weak people? People with many versus few circles? Anyway, it's about everything being 'natural and intuitive' instead of being learned or requiring Wisdom, so no.

Friends in Strange Places. Reaching out to isolated communities is very important to being a druid! But, again, she doesn't want it to be intuitive, which is a word that means the opposite of understanding something.

And finally, Vending Machine.

She can... create any person???!!! Including (multiple?) (clones??) of ones who already exist? And anyone she can imagine? And then they can have existed all along???

This is so far beyond not making any sense that it wraps around into making its own weird sort of sense. To wit: someone with this power, and no other, can trivially take over the world and rewrite it in their image.

('I create my imagined god-of-doing-what-I-want, who makes me an arch-cleric! And a million arch-druids, whose fondest dream is to obey me! Who are also ancient dragons! And a race of superpredators specialized in those pesky enemies of mine, because believe me I can imagine some much scarier things than elder dragons! And that's just in the first hour!')

So... why doesn't she want to take this again? Creating new people is morally fraught, and going outside long-tested traditions (laying eggs, awakening animals, with strict guidelines for both cases) is extremely dangerous, and so one shouldn't do that. But normally one doesn't have an opportunity to do that. The temptation beckons, because - she can just... choose to create a person who'd be OK with it and whose existence would be an uncomplicated good, by both their values?

She suspects she is really going to regret asking this, but: "Squirrel? How does Vending Machine work? I can't actually... know, or invent, everything about a person, or anywhere near that really. Realistically speaking, I would only have some general idea. Who would actually - be created?"

"The Spirit can see a lot of worlds. I don't think it's actually an infinite number but it's a big enough number that it would be hard to talk about. So, if you want a specific kind of person the Spirit can find a person who already exists and matches what you want and use them as the template for creating a new person, maybe with some small changes around the edges."

"Right, but if I don't actually know most of the details - I don't think I can consciously know most of the details, not even about myself  - how does the Spirit choose?"

"It chooses based on your preferences and also what shape of person fits in with the narrative that is the story of your life."

"I'm not sure what that means, but does it mean I can't really choose or - predict it?"

"I'm not sure what you mean by really choose. The power will only make the people you choose to make and the people the power makes are based on your choices the power is working based on what you want it isn't trying to turn your choices against you or anything.

"As for whether you can predict the outcome of the power, it depends on how much detail you mean. If you don't specify whether the person you're creating likes a particular food you might not be able to predict that detail. The power makes people and people are complicated so I expect you would be able to predict the people the power creates about as well as people you meet that you have similar amounts of information about, probably a little better since the power works in part on your preferences."

"I suppose there's no other way it could work. I can't know everything about a person - even a real one, never mind someone I just made up - so the power has to make some choices. And making arbitrary people is - morally very complex so I shouldn't do it." 

The Big Oak of her imagination points out that the problem isn't making people who are - bad in some way, or suffering - there are no absolute guarantees against that with children either. The problem is being responsible for anything that goes wrong. If you do everything you can to raise your children right, and they turn out to be shitty adults after all, you can at least part ways. If you create shitty adult people ex nihilo, what then? The lack of strong tradition matters. Do not experiment with morally complex activities.

"I think," she concludes, "there's no ethical way for me to use this to create new people. But I could duplicate existing people - who agree to it - because the power doesn't need to choose anything about them, and it can be their responsibility." She could even duplicate herself, although she still doesn't particularly want to. "Could you make - a version of the power that can only duplicate real, existing people, that I've met, and only when there's no doubt which person I mean? Having a power that can do - tempting but unethical stuff - is a burden and I don't want that aspect of it."

"I can do that."

A new flower appears in front of her.

Name: Duplicator - Cost: 8 ☐

You can create identical copies of people you've met, including yourself, with all their memories.

"Nice, thank you!" She can still misuse it horribly but - she can also misuse the power of 'killing people by hitting them on the head'. Feather thinks she can use this new power responsibly.

Aaaaand that's finally it. Except that she doesn't have enough points, so she should probably look over the point-granting leaves before discarding some of her previous picks.

...most of them really are curses, whether straightforward ones like Plain Jane or weirder ones like Great Responsibility and Helpline, which gives you the knowledge and attention span of a god but uses it only to make you miserable. Others literally make your life a tragedy - the kind told to an audience - and Feather doesn't like tragedies even as a stories all that much.

Ignoring all those, and the horrible mind-control ones, and the ones where she'd gain points at other people's expense... And the ones with prerequisites she didn't pick... And the ones that belong to some incomprehensible genre that's not even a tragedy... There are a few drawbacks she could live with:

Style of Sisyphus. Not too terrible? But also, not worth it to get a permanent debuff to gain just one point.

Selective Memory. That might be worth it for some passive protection powers! The real downside is that she'd have to go over all her picks again.

The Veil. ...no, it would be far too confusing to live that way. Also, some of her powers need deliberate activation, there won't be any point in having The Duplicator if she takes The Veil to offset its price.

They'll Know. She'd actually pay for that if it were a power! She doesn't want to - become something that other people fundamentally cannot comprehend or anticipate, like some Wisdom-eating aberration! She didn't realize it was even an option!!

"Squirrel? I am upset about the fact that my powers would apparently, by default, discourage people from realizing that I have them. That is not something one should do except to enemies." Understanding other people is a good! Feather doesn't want to prevent others from understanding her, let alone from - modeling the world correctly because of it! "If I had enough points and never even looked at these 'drawbacks' I could have ended up like that unexpectedly, and I think I would be justifiably very angry about it."

Giving someone a 'power' like that without their knowledge is, in fact, pretty much enemy action. She'd be angrier if the powers on offer hadn't made it clear that the selection was not in any way optimized for Feather or anyone remotely like her; it makes it possible that this was an honest mistake, but having unexpected broad side effects is the kind of mistake she really really doesn't want.

"Is there anything else like - that, that I should know about these powers? Anything else they do, or that having any of these powers at all does, that's not stated explicitly? I don't want any powers if they might come with side effects I don't even know about."

"The veil that discourages people from noticing your powers is part of how your powers protect you from any obvious downsides they might have. Since people being upset about you having strange and incredible abilities is one kind of downside. I understand you being upset though. I will say that I always encourage people to look at the leaf powers even if they're under budget because things that are downsides for one person might be a positive change for another kind of person. Also even without they'll know you can specifically tell people about your powers and then the veil will stop trying to hide those powers from those specific people."

"I did not at all expect that would happen! I think I need a very complete explanation of what's going to happen that's not part of any specific power. And any part of a power I picked that I may not have noticed. And then maybe I'll ask you to turn some of those things off."

"The most important thing to remember is that these powers will be yours so they'll only try to protect you from things that you would see or experience as a downside. I also don't know all your thinking about the powers you've taken so I can't tell you what you haven't thought of. If people knowing about your powers wouldn't be a downside then They'll Know won't have much effect it'll just mean some of your powers are showier."