"I think I will stop there, then, and go for 'long term power cap'. I'm not sure what I want to make my requirement yet; can I think about that while I distribute my points? It might help if you had some examples of popular choices. That is, if enough people have taken the trait for there to be popular choices."

"Oh, sure they do, people get clever all kinds of ways requiring for themselves things they expect to have always or need anyway. Their wedding ring like air, whatever they do for mana like food, sunshine like water."

"Oooh, sunshine is good, I like that. I'm assuming I could define it such that it's the light of any star, not just this Earth's Sun? Still means I'd die if imprisoned, but I'm not sure that's a negative. Wait, actually—"

Alyssa blushes, grits her teeth, and continues.

"—just to get a full sense of my options, would 'masturbation' be an available choice? I know I already picked 'porn' for an addiction, and they tend to go together, but—they don't always. For me."

"Yes, if you want to be enjoying three squares a day of it forever."

"Ah, fair enough. I hear 'like water' and just think about how often I'd need water to not die, not how often I need it to not be miserable. I'll go with 'sunshine', then, unless I think of something better before I finish picking my other options."

"Sunshine and starshine like water? All right. - does limit your gallivanting in pocket dimensions a bit, eff why eye."

"Before today I wasn't even expecting to get to go to other planets! I think it's a fair price for maxxing my long-term power."

"Well, the nice schools are not in sunshiney places. Circle back to it if they sound of great appeal, perhaps."

"Fair enough. Do you have a standard recommendation for whether people invest in ranks or miscellanous little magics first? If not, I think I'd like to start with ranks."

"Either way superfine! I have already assumed you want the free points of the academic things. Things in species affinity for you are Divination and Alchemy again because both species have Life, Hexes whichever species you go with by different routes, and if you go mimi-first, Familiarity and Metamorphosis. Going daeva-first has no rank magic advantage but might be handy for perk thingies."

"I'll stick with daeva, and I think I wanna start with ranks. What are the ranks like for alchemy?"

"Usually take about an hour to make, vary how much of that time is prep and how much simmering and how much stirring new stuff in. Then they sit on your shelf forever till you want them, if you go tomb-raiding the potions are all safe to drink like honey if they ever were safe to begin with. Condense them into pills, soak them into bandages, reduce them down to single drops to carry in a hollow tooth, as you like. Potions vary like cooking, but more! No two perfectly alike, very customizable within broad power bands. You will need ingredients ranging from grocery store to grand quests for unique swag depending on ranks, or to substitute extra mana. Broad categories are medicine ones, buff ones, and silly ones - like magical no-annoying-side-effects paracetamol, caffeine, and hair dye, as a for example. Also possible to do poisons and debuffs. Ranking up lets everything be harder better faster stronger. Well, not faster, already pretty fast at rank one. Medicine ones go from 'reliably best case mundane medicine' to 'definitely obvious magic' at rank three. That's also when you can do grenades! Usually not worth the ingredients unless you are very good at throwing and do not have straight combat magic, though. Rank four is when you can bring the dead back, but only if they are not too long dead. Rank 5 is when you can go around solving aging for people who have this problem! And do scary things, love potions and amnesia potions and shapeshifty potions and all that intense stuff."

"How many points do I have after taking my various disadvantages, and how many would it cost to take all five ranks in alchemy?"

"If you are spending to cap on long term potential, with your complications, you can spend thirty-one more today."

"And what's the situation on how many points each rank costs?"

"Only seven! You cannot do this with all the things you like, though, you want a sort of a stack, for every five a four and for every four a three or a couple and for every three a two and so on."

"Yeah, I figured, I thought I would at least see about Alchemy though because I'm doubly advantaged at it and it seems like one of the coolest magics. Do the affinities from my species and method of growth continue to make it easier to rank up in an area of magic once I've left here, or do they only apply to point costs right now?"

"Applies forever so long as your affinities stay as they are."

"I think I'd provisionally like to take all five in alchemy. What are the ranks like for Divination?"

"Divination has a zeroth rank! It is the chat app in your head. Text voice video, block people if you want, very handy. Costs nothing. Old-school witches sometimes still put it through a magic mirror or crystal ball but these days everyone has always wanted a phone in the brain. Once you buy ranks - never forget people's names at a party again, point and say 'identify' and know who they are and some public fact to go with. So-and-so captain of rugby team, such-and-such queen of location, etcetera. Also good for field guiding plants and things, indispensable if you go mushrooming. At rank two also starts telling you magical facts. Essential if you go mushrooming in the Feywilds. Status spell keeps you updated if your friend is hurt or your toast is burning. Augury gives you a good or bad or meh feeling about something you might do in half an hour or less than that.

"Rank three, convenience bonuses for identifying, like everybody has a nametag for you all the time without you needing chanting. Status more specific also. Map app in the brain, like a video game keeps the map of wherever you go, place markers in your map. Archive is witch for photo app in your head, also manages inventory if you have extradimensional space. Augury goes up to twelve hours. Foresight is half a second precog, mostly useful for fights. Rank four, identify can doxx people! Status gains a Clippy telling you how to fix it if you can, if your toast or your person is burning. Map more convenient and backgroundy, works on places you went before you got this magic, automatically identifies all the things on the map. Spell to hit things you aim at like a homing pigeon, Archive starts working without needing your eyes on the thing you want photo'd, Augury two days long, Foresight does one and a half seconds or a simulation that doesn't know anything you don't for an hour. Rank five doxxes True Names and weaknesses, traces magic effects to casters, checks if people like you or not. Status gets spookier, less about 'is burning' and more 'having affair with the postman' or something. Maps update live like you had the Google truck there taking pictures all the time, unless masked; masking also becomes a thing you do at this rank. Archive works through maps, locking on to targets works through maps. Augury all week long, and longer if the thing is very bad. Three second foresight or 24 hours of simulation, and it glitches informatively if you will be surprised."

"Oooh, Augury sounds great! How much would it be to bump it up to rank two? What about rank three?"

"Two is two, three is four!"

"I'll take rank two. What about Psionics?"

"One is one, two is three, three is six, etcetera, no affinity there. Buffers you against trauma, spooky shit, telekinetic things thrown at your head, and psychic constructs, more at all ranks. Rank one, you can make a little fist size thing or smaller invisible - to one set of eyes or ears or one other sense, not a crowd, not cameras - or like a different thing the same size. Give people headaches, just because you said so or because they must put a quarter in the swear jar or something; these can get worse with every rank. Rank two, fist size goes up to big pumpkin size, two senses two people; this keeps going up each rank. Make psychic doodads - letter opener, chair, have seen this done with a handkerchief and that was mightily odd to look at - which are real to you, sit-on-able to you, but nobody else, they just feel tingly, numb. Psychic chair would go through the floor if you weren't holding them up with your brain. Rank three! Better range of constructs, thirty meters instead of five, that keeps going up, throw ninja stars that don't exist at people to make their arm fall asleep. Swap places with anywhere empty, ker-pop! Sixty feet but handy if you are not doing lots of portals and flying magics. Rank four, the ninja star that does not exist action-movie-unconscious-es people if you get them in the head! Mile of teleportation! Go bother people in their mindscape, mess with memories, adding subtracting remixing. Rank five, the headaches are bad enough you physically explode their skulls. Very gruesome, one hears. Scarier mindscape botheration. Go see psychic echoes in the ethereal realm of thought, make a thing antimemetic if you wreck it from there. Though many witches are warded, this and other hasslements will not work on savvy ones."

"Awww dang, the really cool mind powers are all the way at rank four and sound more geared towards strictly adversarial purposes than I was hoping for. Figured it was worth checking for low-hanging fruit, and any amount of psychic power would rule; I'll take one rank.

And then I wanna hear about Runes next...is what I'd like to say if something weren't bugging me, which is—so since I heard that immortality is on the table I've been going for—disadvantages I'm sure I could stand forever, long-term power over short, nothing to get me dragged into conflict. But it's starting to really sink in that being a witch sounds probably more dangerous than being an American rich kid even if I'm the type to focus on my studies, do nice uncontroversial charitable projects, and not seek out beef with anybody, and if I'm not willing to put more effort into survival now, I might not have forever. Which you might've been trying to hint at more gently and I was being too dense—and starry-eyed about the cool stuff—to get it, so sorry.

So, I guess I'm wondering which areas of magic are best for, like, defense? For shrugging off a wide range of potential attacks? And also noting that I will wanna revisit the disadvantages with additional questions to see if I can squeeze out a few more points."