"Okay, so you're a pretty solid backup plan. Keen. I am prepared to accept phenomenal power in order to draw out and bring to justice a murderous face-disliker."

"Awesome. Okay, that's six points--it's inconvenient how there are so few complications that give odd numbers of points, you're going to either have to go one over and waste one or go one under, with your twenty-three points for the Kryptonite."

"That is a weird problem but I can't imagine what system produced the point values in the first place so I can't guess why it exists. Remind me what else was in the list before I got distracted by whether I had a surreptitious enemy?"

"Boosted senses--tend to be overwhelming but there are magical technologies to compensate--dampened senses, and the two can't be taken on a single sense to cancel out--are the other two I already mentioned, plus there's one that addicts you to some substance or stimulus, plus one that makes you require some substance or stimulus, plus one that cuts you off from some form of ranked magic, plus one that makes mundane animals hate you, plus one that makes you vulnerable to something in a different way from kryptonite, it just physically harms you and there's three things to choose from, iron, water, and fire...should I continue or should we discuss those first."

"Does any of the ranked magic suck?"

"...There isn't any that can't be used in non-sucky ways, but there are ones that require more dedication and creativity to use in non-sucky ways. Curses has two really excellent uses and is otherwise approximately garbage. Consortation is good for getting people out of Hell, but some of the summoned demons are less interested in positive-sum resettlement and more interested in causing mischief, which can be a pain to deal with if you aren't specialized for handling that. Familiarity is useful but relies on being willing to make a commitment to another sentient being without, actually, meeting them beforehand. Necromancy is basically fine but some people feel gross about how it tends to involve working with corpses, and also there are some particularly obnoxious people who use it who have given it a bad rap."

"If I got a familiar wizard-style could I then double-duty them? So as to meet them beforehand?"

"Ah--no, I don't think so. Summoning a witch familiar isn't a matter of binding a pre-existing animal; the being who becomes the familiar is, before that, a formless but benevolent spirit with about the intelligence of a plant. You might be able to double up from the other direction, though, I don't know."

"...huh. What's so great about witch familiars? I've thought about getting a wizard one but I wouldn't be devastated if I couldn't."

"It gets smarter as your familiarity ranks up, and once you bind it, it starts out as smart as a trained dog, and is loyal to you and so can perform a number of tasks, including assisting with magic. As your rank increases, so do the benefits; at rank one, you lose all intolerances to animal materials, at rank two, you can talk to animals insofar as their intelligence allows, at rank three, you gain magical traits related to the animal whose form your familiar has assumed--water breathing, from a literal perspective, or enhanced intelligence, for a raven, for example. At rank four you can turn into that animal and your familiar, who by this point will have achieved complete sentience, becomes able to turn into a human. Rank five has some odd mortality-related benefits--you gain an additional 'life' when you save a cat's life, starting with and capping at nine, and you can use them to save an animal or a child instead of on yourself."

"...what an odd grab bag. I don't think I want a familiar this week but I don't really want to cut it off forever, might be cool one day. What are the good bits of curses?"

"It's a very odd grab bag and understanding it has not been my priority yet. One of the good bits of curses is the curse of immortality, rank five--anyone it's cast on can't die; it doesn't make their wounds heal any more and it doesn't stop aging, but it keeps them alive--obviously originally designed to be used maliciously, and can easily be used that way, but it can also be used non-maliciously, say to stabilize someone who's been badly hurt, or to prevent someone from dying who's likely to become badly hurt--agelessness is common enough among witches that the doesn't-stop-aging part isn't as bad as it might be. The other good part is spellbind, which lets you store other magical effects and then set them off like a curse."

"I have the diadem for anyone who is trying to be dead around me, is there, like, mana efficiency to be had for the curses or something?"

"No, the advantage is that you can curse someone with immortality and then they can go off and not be within your Lifeweaving range while trying to be dead."

"...don't foresee a ton of use cases, honestly. Let's axe Curses. What's necromancy good for, I don't have a special prejudice against the concept but I don't know what I'd do with a skeleton army."

"It's also good for interacting with ghosts! Whiiiich you seem to have fewer of. Hm. Without ghosts necromancy gets a lot less useful, honestly."

"So let's skip that too, hopefully the locals such as my maybe-doppelganger can cover any necessary ghosting in this universe-neighborhood. The senses thing seems neat? It doesn't sound like it'd be hard to compensate for with wizardry either, if I don't like the local stuff, but how good is the local stuff?"

"Hearing is the best one for the state of the art, they have alchemical earplugs that seal out loud noises while still letting you hear finer details from farther away. Sight is next-best, with glasses and contact lenses that filter out the worst stuff, but the earplugs are easier to ignore. There are potions you can take to deal with heightened smell or taste, but nothing where you can just acquire an object and have done with it. There are also fabrics specially woven for sensory shock touch, and alchemical balms."

"Hm. I might go with the sight one - I think I'd get weirdly paranoid about being able to hear a caterpillar walk across a leaf or whatever - maybe shortsighted of me, I won't always have just popped out of a deathtrap where most objects that made sounds in the walls wanted to eat me, but still. If I can see something I can look at it and determine what it is."

"You can take up to three, if you want to."

"Is it worth a ton of points?"

"Two per. It's legit if you want to stick with just sight, but I thought you should know."

"Two per's not that good but maybe I'll get real close to the thirty and thirty and pick it up. How cute can I get with the addiction and the requirement? Can I require cosmic background radiation? Can I be addicted to vitamin C?"

"You can't be addicted to anything socially perceived as healthy. You can require cosmic background radiation but you might, actually, be in a bit of a pickle in some pocket dimensions, those don't generally have any reason to include that."

"Oh, good point, how inconvenient of them. I assume it can't be anything I actually do need already, correct me if I'm wrong. Ambient dust?"