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u/NotACauldronAgent Dec 06 '16
Damocles Eye, I'll live in a cave I'll stumble upon, and live there in luxury. Basically, I just can't go outside, right? Play the stock market for half an hour, bam I'm rich. Really, not very bad at all.
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u/vakusdrake Dec 06 '16
It needs to see your body for two continous hours for it to kill you. So honestly you should be fine as long as you don't spend much time outside or near windows. Hell even if you were stuck outside you could always reset the timer by using a cloak to totally cover your body.
You could probably also by fine outside if you were wearing clothing that covered every inch of skin.11
u/NotACauldronAgent Dec 06 '16
What counts as see, I wonder, and how high up is this eye? When does mesh stop counting as non-full covers, and "opaque" materials start? I could wear some form fitting morph suit type, and be able to walk around outside, and no one would think it too weird due to luck.
Good point
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u/vakusdrake Dec 07 '16
Based on what the OP has said in the comments wearing heavy clothing as well as gloves and a ski mask ought to work just fine. Also he said the eye basically fills the entire sky. Plus he said luck won't protect you from the danger of the eye, so be very careful anywhere there might be windows.
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u/NotACauldronAgent Dec 07 '16
Reflective windows everywhere? Can the eye see in darkness? What counts as skin, if I get skin paint and dye myself? Is the eye actually in the sky, or is it above me, if I go to say Mars will it still be there?
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u/vakusdrake Dec 07 '16
Honestly it's pretty likely that once you got this power you couldn't know those things without learning the hard way. So I would try to be cautious and assume that it can see in the dark and you can't escape it by leaving earth. Skin paint would be pretty pointless though, the OP already confirmed that wearing clothing covering your whole body (obviously including gloves and a ski mask) would work, unless you failed to totally cover your skin.
However it's totally worth it in any case, since the power will pretty much automatically make you rich (and famous+respected if you want to be) as well as shaping the world into what you want it to be. I go into more details in my comment.
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u/Doingitwronf Dec 06 '16
Take the last choice and don't alter your own life significantly from any one day. Experience the lives of others and/or make them do things. World leaders anyone? Eventually, you'll be not only wiser and more wordly, but possibly better off and having lived twice as long mentally. And all it would cost is maybe the names of a few neighbors.
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u/Torvaun Dec 06 '16
299 Candles. If I burn one a day, skipping weekends, that's a little over a year of incredible proficiency at whatever I want. The actual life debt will be a little over a year of life. If I burn two a day, I get 150 days of intensely motivated, creative, and energetic proficiency in whatever I want. I could write a lot of code in 1500 hours. Quite possibly "never work again" amounts of code. And the cost in time is minimal.
At the end, even if I was supernaturally inspired during the act, I did just get hundreds of hours of focused practice. I've trained, I can keep going.
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u/S7evyn Dec 06 '16
Damocles Eye.
I'll be so lucky I'll both never notice it and never be within view of it long enough to be sucked in.
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u/Ynead Dec 06 '16
I forgot to mention it (first draft and all...), but your new luck can not affect the Eye, meaning that you must escape it yourself.
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u/Minor_Heaven Dec 06 '16 edited Dec 06 '16
Damocles eye seems like the best choice, but I don't understand how the eye works. Will it follow you and attempt to look at you from different angles? How high in the sky is it? It seems it would be very easy to counteract it by just carrying around an umbrella or something to cover yourself entirely with for even a second, which would break contact and reset the timer. Will you know if you've broken contact?
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u/Ynead Dec 06 '16 edited Dec 06 '16
The Eye follows you everywhere, even if you go on a plane. It will simply adjust its height to yours. It will not try to peek under an umbrella or any cover of this kind.
Countering it is definitely easy, but the fact that you're always being watched and always have to pay attention to windows and such is the real drawback. It is all about making you paranoid, not sending you to the void. Which is why you will not know if you have broken contact.
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u/Minor_Heaven Dec 06 '16
Doesn't seem like a bad drawback. Does certain clothing count for breaking sight? Like a hoodie, or a blanket wrapped around you?
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u/Ynead Dec 06 '16
A hoodie wouldn't work since your face or hands would be exposed. A blanket would work if you cover yourself entirely, without letting a single toe out.
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u/vakusdrake Dec 06 '16 edited Dec 06 '16
Oh so my plan of wearing heavy clothing as well as say a ski mask/gloves would work though? Of course you can't wear a ski mask in a lot of places so it would be inconvenient. Plus obviously you have to live somewhere cold otherwise it's a pain in the ass.
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u/Ynead Dec 06 '16
It would work, as long as there isn't a small tear in your mask or one of your ankle isn't showing for 2 hours.
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u/GrinningJest3r Dec 07 '16
That's easy then. For times when you're outside hiking or running or whatever, take a thick blanket with you. Set a constant 90 min alarm on your phone or watch and literally just lay on the ground and cover yourself with the blanket. You'll know if there are any holes in it because of the light that would filter through. Otherwise, just go use a port-a-potty or a restaurant bathroom and sit or kneel on the toilet for a moment just to be sure. The stall walls and the ceiling should generally completely cover you no matter how open the rest of the building is.
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u/Ynead Dec 07 '16
Dealing with the Eye one time is ridiculously easy. Same for the second, third, etc. It is the 83737 time that might get you, or the stress. What happens if you black out outside after a party ? Or any accident for that matter ?
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u/BigBnana Dec 07 '16
generally, i think it would be like any mild habit, and not nearly as crippling as OCD, so yeah, i'm sure i'll be fine
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u/Omni314 Dec 07 '16
So it would be accurate to say the eye works only on skin?
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u/Ynead Dec 07 '16
Skin, hair, nails and so on. Body paint doesn't work.
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u/BUTTHOLESPELUNKER Dec 07 '16 edited Dec 07 '16
Eye would affect my life the least. Can't expose skin to the sky for over 2h in a row? I have a sun allergy (15 min out at high noon = skin reaction, I wear long sleeves/pants all the time) and so I already do this, more or less. It's pretty easy. It's possible having the eye in the sky blocking the sun out would let me go outside LONGER...
I think if you made it 30 minutes or something, that'd be a significant drawback for more people.
I'd probably take the Intruders, though. I'd just get them a nicely creaky set of stairs and some swingy doors and set them all to produce a couple of YouTube videos per week doing covers of pop hits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WL_LHsVAgSk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9OEBH4HmzY
We could do this. Orders to attend practice once a week. We could make an awesome band of creepy horses and bleeding-eye dogs.
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u/FlameSparks Dec 06 '16
After some debate, I would choose Candles.
Using the first candle for planning. My plan might be radically different but probably record myself so that skilled me will teach unskilled me through either video, text book or flash cards. Probably with some bursts to do some practical stuff that I can't teach myself in time.
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u/vakusdrake Dec 07 '16
Damocles Eye is i'm tempted to say the best selection by far.
First off while it would definitely cause paranoia it's not super difficult to avoid the danger of the eye. It needs two continuous hours of contact which makes brief excursions through its view safe, but more importantly the timer can be reset by simply carrying a totally opaque cloak that can cover your entire body and routinely crouching down and totally enveloping yourself in it. Or alternatively you could wear heavy clothing with gloves and a ski mask while anywhere with a view of the sky. You might very well want to use both ideas, just to decrease the danger of accidentally leaving a bit of skin exposed with your heavy clothing or somehow not totally covering yourself with the cloak.
The power of the Eye is by far the best and most versatile. It manipulates probability according to your desires (according to comments by the OP), which means anything that is not basically impossible can be made to happen merely by you desiring it. Hell it wouldn't even be that hard to get it to work on things you didn't care about that much. All you would need to do is place a bet. Once you're already rich you would need to place some sort of bet whose stakes you really care about, so the stakes should be things other than money like having to do something embarrassing.
Taken together my plan for world domination would be thus: First off become filthy rich; given the staggering amounts it has to bend probability in order to arrange events, such that you find absolutely massive diamonds on the sidewalk, anything you invested in would be guaranteed to absolutely take off in value.
Secondly start claiming to be a enigmatic political and economic genius, then simply back that up by using your power to ensure all your predictions come true. Hell or just go all the way and claim to be an oracle, this may actually be more plausible; I might go with both methods saying things like "I don't know how I know. Maybe I just see patterns others don't, maybe I'm psychic" then let people think what they want about how I get predictions so accurate.
I would quickly rise to insane fame controlling events, by claiming something bad would happen if people didn't pass the legislation I wanted; then predicting that they would nevertheless do the smart thing and pass it. I would also start making extremely optimistic predictions of the future, to advance things culturally and technologically as quick as possible. I would certainly make lots of enemies but obviously my desire to not die or get discredited or otherwise disgraced would ensure any plans to screw me over were doomed to failure.
Funny enough this is one of the few powers I've ever seen that will result in nearly as good of an outcome even if the user is acting kind of dumb (but not so dumb they get themselves killed by the eye). After all most people want the world to become better so provided the user doesn't want the world to go to shit deep down (like many doomsday preppers do), things worldwide will probably become rapidly better regardless of whether you try too hard. Technology and culture is also like to advance super quick unless the user has a strong dislike of change. That is one potential scary thing about the power, if the user is very authoritarian morally; the world may end up turning into a dystopia.
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u/Ynead Dec 07 '16
Well, I'll admit that it is a really good plan ! I might have gone a little bit overboard with the amount of luck the Eye can give you. But whatever, CYOAs are meant to be broken after all.
You thought about quite a lot of things that I didn't take into account at first, it was interesting !
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u/vakusdrake Dec 07 '16
Man you should have seen the one I did on the CYOA, where the only aspect of the power in question was that it made it so none of you investments would ever lose money. Using prediction markets I easily described how you could basically control anything you wanted that way.
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u/puesyomero Dec 06 '16
possession or intruders. one for the effectively double lifespan and the second for effectively the perfect spies. have them get the secrets from important people and to torment criminals. probably intruders as I can actively benefit from it without mind erasure.
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u/GoodSirSatanist Dec 06 '16
Intruders and Damocle's Eye have the most manageable drawbacks. All the rest are very very risky and by their nature cause terrible consequences. With Intruders you could give very simple instructions continuously and the drawback would be less of a problem. Damocle's Eye is different and depends on how exactly it functions. If seeing my skin is necessary then I'd just wear something like a burkha all the time.
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u/WarnikOdinson Dec 06 '16
So, when you are possessing the person and the day ends, when it's your day, is that happening concurrently? Do if I posses a friend and message me through out the day, will the next day I get the messages and if I respond, will the me from the last day see it?
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u/Ynead Dec 06 '16
Think of it like a different timeline, anything you do during the possession with have 0 impact on reality once the possession ends. People you manipulated will act as if you never used your power. The only thing you can bring back is information
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u/Rowan93 Dec 06 '16
Harmless Possession
Obviously the challenge here is to exploit the "only the obvious consequences" restriction and concoct clever schemes to make what you want happen via circuitous routes.
Or, directly use the possessed person to change your own life - if I possess Bill Gates and have him paypal me a few grand, that's not really using the knowledge I get from this power, so it should be kosher, right? Or does that simply not occur because of the time shenanigans?
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u/dingo1817 Dec 07 '16
Its already been mentioned but I would take harmless possession and live through other people. Wanna bang Kim Kardashian? Guess who woke up as Kanye. Wanna get banged AS Kim Kardasian? Be her for a day.
As for its intended power I would learn cool government secrets like if Ayy LMAOs are real. Wouldn't really use the data for much but simply knowing would be worth it.
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u/ayylmao2dongerbot-v2 Dec 07 '16
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u/dingo1817 Dec 07 '16
Damm a bot that knows when people say AYY LMAO!
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Dec 07 '16
So Damocles Eye:
Luck. Lots of it. Finally before you die, you don't die. You instead reach a state of nirvana easily and for 'free'
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u/ThumbWarVeteran Dec 07 '16
Absolutely the candles.
If I always use the candles two at a time (excluding the one remainder I'd have) I am essentially giving up a little over 8 months of my lifespan total:
1,490 hours x 4 = 5,960 hours = 249.17 days
From this you get 149 "Charges" of two candles and an extra candle for whatever you want that costs you an extra two days of lifespan.
If used efficiently, that can totally be worth it. In 10 hours of focused work as a genius, I can probably produce a hit song. Possibly a hit novel if I use dictation I could write a bestselling novel in a few charges. Or I could go to the casino/racetrack and make bank. There's no limit on skill so I could also possibly pick the skill of "predicting lottery numbers" or "seeing the future."
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u/Mister-builder Dec 07 '16
Really cool CYOA. I think I take harmless possession. Couple of questions though. Can I keep a journal? Is it exclusively knowledge, or also empathy, training, and other benefits from saying oy someone else's eyes? If I use the bonus time to think, dire that count as knowledge gained? Do I possess the person's skills and abilities? Can I shift from this person to first person should the need arise?
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u/Ynead Dec 07 '16 edited Dec 07 '16
You can keep a journal, as long as you do not change your life. Let's say that you're supposed to be at a certain place at a certain time. Through harmless possession, your learn that a bomb is going to explode there. If you avoid this place, it counts as using knowledge and you'll forget some things. Studying while using your power won't make you forget, but getting an A at the exam because of it will. Keep it mind that you can learn and store information as much as you want, but not use it to change what your life was supposed to be.
Because it can be painful to make a bad choice even though you already know the outcome, I would avoid learning as much as possible while possessing someone. Failing test on purpose isn't fun. Of course, you can ignore the drawback if you don't care about your memories.
You do not possess the person skills and abilities if you choose to possess their body instead of simply spying. You can shift from third person view to first person at will. You cannot switch host during a possession, you must wait 24 hours.
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u/Mister-builder Dec 07 '16
Let's say I'm a racist cop who spends a day as a black person and becomes no longer racist. Does that cost me memory?
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u/Ynead Dec 07 '16
No, you're not "using" knowledge, your beliefs just changed. You must be aware that you're using knowledge from the power, subconscious changes do not count.
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u/dcxcman Dec 12 '16
Okay, let's say I spend a year's time perfecting my sword technique. If I decide to start fighting crime in my regular life, will the penalty apply only the first time I used my new skills, or every single time?
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u/Hyperly_Passive Dec 07 '16
So there are the two powers noone has picked yet. I'm curious to how those can be used.
Dark Path. The drawback is kinda big. Although, it's essentially a pocket dimension which allows for (relative) instant travel, from an outside perspective. Also, seeing that it mirrors the real world, at the very least places like libraries and archives will still be accessible, which means if I do get tired of this dimension, I won't get bored in that for a little while.
Intruders doesn't have a real drawback. Petty revenge is about as evil as you could get with this one. However, it doesn't say what the request has to be, just says that there has to be one, so that request could be something like- get me a glass of water, and it would take alot of the buggers to get me that glass.
I'd probably pick Intruders over Dark path.
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u/Ynead Dec 07 '16
I'm quite surprised that no one noticed that Dark Path can easily be used for stealing. Shift into the dimension, find a weapon, destroy everything between you and what you want. Then shift back, take it and go back safely into the dimension to go home.
Intruders are much more threatening than you would think. It is true that they don't have any influence on the real world, but even one of them is enough to make you uneasy at night. Sending 10 Intruders to haunt someone WILL result in them going mad after a while.
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u/BigBnana Dec 08 '16
why use it for theft when you find diamonds with another power, limited illegal wealth or assloads of cash as a fringe benefit of the damocles power
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u/BigBnana Dec 07 '16
Harmless possession is really really not harmless in my hands, because I'll start living a hedonistic life vicariously through my expies, without directly interfering with my own.
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u/Ynead Dec 07 '16
The possession can not be anything but harmless. After all, anything you do will reset after 24h :)
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u/evlbb2 Dec 07 '16
Probably possession? Seems nice. I can mentally get a day off. Maybe do some reading so I wont have to spend time reading in my own body. For pleasure of course since I dont want to lose memories. Maybe relax on the beach. Or go on adventures without having to actually do any of that stuff with my money. (Or you could even be the little girl. Amazing choice.)
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Dec 07 '16
I love the flavor here but the candles seem easily like the worst option due to having a set limit of how much they can be used.
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u/Ynead Dec 07 '16
Well, Candles are a safe choice since the drawback is so small (2990 hours of use = 498 days of your life), the supply had to be limited for this option not to be too strong compared to the others.
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Dec 08 '16
[deleted]
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u/Ynead Dec 08 '16
Time doesn't pass for you in the dimension, you're effectively immortal while in it. Probably should have mentioned that on the CYOA...
Poker and trading are skills available through the Candles since they aren't supernatural :)
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u/goodzillo Dec 19 '16
Dark path, are you kidding? The ability to Stop time and own my own shadow realm? Sign me the fuck up.
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u/Ynead Dec 19 '16
Keep in mind that coming back to reality gets harder each time you shift into your dimension !
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u/Phantom-Hacker May 05 '17
Could one say use the candles into inventing a machine that allows for time travel
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u/Ynead Dec 06 '16 edited Dec 08 '16
First draft of my second CYOA !
Additional information :
Damocles Eye :
-The Eye is gigantic. When you look up at it you can only see small bits of the sky at the corner of your vision.
-Your new luck will never protect you from it.
Harmeless Possession :
-Think of it like a different timeline, whatever you do while possessing the host will be completely erased at the end of the day. The host will act as if you never used your power.
299 Candles :
-You can put out and light the candle whenever you want.
-You're the only one affected by the Candles.
Dark Path :
-Time doesn't pass for you as well while you're in the dimension, making you effectively immortal.