Being isekai’d had long since stopped coming as a surprise to Cassandra “Catastrophe” Claire. Her first time had been at the age of twenty two, freshly out of college and waking up from a graduation party into an impossibility. She’d been prepared for her second time, having predicted—after a few false starts—that it would come the day after her successful thesis defense, and she’d felt like it was old hat by the time she went for her third go-round after getting her PhD.

Still, this was by a large margin the most… derivative, and the System’s integration-and-character-creation phase wasn’t turning out to be her favorite.

SELECT ARCHETYPE: RESILIENCE / DESTRUCTION / UTILITY / CONTROL

ARCHETYPE SELECTED: DESTRUCTION

Her first fiancé had been a disaster, but at least she’d found that out the fun way when she’d ascended to Godhood through cultivating the Dao of The Dao—she’d taken them both back home, laughing with joy as her understanding of anthropology expanded to encompass the universe before burning it as fuel for her return to Earth. He’d graciously dumped her in horror and fury and shame, which had saved her the trouble.

SELECT CORE CONC—SELECTION MENU ABORTED.

TEMPLATES REJECTED. MANUAL SELECTION ENABLED.

The second one was a keeper. She’d been sure of that before their engagement; by the end of their two years of tracking down the Faerie Queen and then tricking her into accepting a rosé from the Midnight Vineyards instead of an extinct Midnight Rose, his cataclysmic incantations and her shield had become one machine of death and destruction.

BASE MENTAL ABILITY SCORES LOCKED. SCORES ARE AS FOLLOWS:

INTELLIGENCE: 14

WISDOM: 8

CHARISMA: 18

The wedding night had been, of course, sublime. Dawn had broken in a world of seven suns, each a burning nightmare eye whose horrors strode titanic across the shattered planet. With a blend of ancient technology and modern demonology, they’d torn one of the eyes asunder and threaded the needle of the singularity at the center of its iris to return home in time to catch their flight to Hawaii.

INTELLIGENCE:

Intelligence measures mental acuity, accuracy of recall, and the ability to reason. An Intelligence check comes into play when you need to draw on logic, education, memory, or deductive reasoning. The Arcana, History, Investigation, Nature, and Religion skills reflect aptitude in certain kinds of Intelligence checks. Wizards use Intelligence as their spellcasting ability, which helps determine the saving throw Difficulty Checks (hereafter DCs) of spells they cast.

WISDOM:

Wisdom reflects how attuned you are to the world around you and represents perceptiveness and intuition. A Wisdom check might reflect an effort to read body language, understand someone’s feelings, notice things about the environment, or care for an injured person. The Animal Handling, Insight, Medicine, Perception, and Survival skills reflect aptitude in certain kinds of Wisdom checks. Clerics, druids, and rangers use Wisdom as their spellcasting ability, which helps determine the saving throw DCs of spells they cast.

CHARISMA:

Charisma measures your ability to interact effectively with others. It includes such factors as confidence and eloquence, and it can represent a charming or commanding personality. A Charisma check might arise when you try to influence or entertain others, when you try to make an impression or tell a convincing lie, or when you are navigating a tricky social situation. The Deception, Intimidation, Performance, and Persuasion skills reflect aptitude in certain kinds of Charisma checks. Bards, paladins, sorcerers, and warlocks use Charisma as their spellcasting ability, which helps determine the saving throw DCs of spells they cast.

Major promotions and job changes had come with their own adventures in turn, each as much a joy as a tribulation. The jaunt after their return from the hospital with a three-day-old daughter had been tremendously unwelcome, but the ones at major milestones—walking, jumping with both feet off the ground, deliberately breaking something because she wanted attention, that sort of thing—at least meant coming back to Earth fully rested and having had some together time. That was very nice.

It was… less nice when little Harriet Joan started getting sent along with them, though at least the first few times had been far gentler adventures than the vicious bloodbaths and Heavens-striving, continent-shattering violence that they’d occasionally had to deal with.

RACES AVAILABLE: Dragonborn / Elf / Gnome / Halfling / Half-Elf / Half-Orc / Tiefling

RACES UNAVAILABLE: Dwarf / Human

RACE SELECTED: TIEFLING

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She’d long since recognized that every adventure she’d been sent on was to at least some degree reflective of, if not entirely based on, forms of media that she had access to back on Earth, even if she hadn’t been aware of all of them before encountering them first-hand. The first time she’d died had been to a blood-spitting Sect Elder whom she hadn’t rejected deftly enough; she’d come back the next time around and torn the cultivation out of his soul, leaving him a mortal with wealth far beyond his ability to safeguard. Justice, she’d decided, could handle being served by his peers—she and her husband had no interest in tarrying and forgetting what they needed to do in order to get a blue science factory set up, and the Heavenly Realms didn’t have video games.

CLASSES AVAILABLE: Barbarian / Bard / Fighter / Rogue / Sorcerer / Warlock / Wizard

UNAVAILABLE CLASSES: Cleric / Druid / Ranger / Monk / Paladin

CLASS SELECTED: SORCERER SORCERESS

But it wasn’t all bad. She’d had centuries upon centuries to spend with her favorite two people in the world, even if when they came back to Earth it all got mostly blurred. For the best, that—they’d all have gone mad from the trauma otherwise, along with becoming inhumanly jaded and isolated from everyone else on the planet.

Besides, Earth didn’t have magic.

Magic! There was nothing like magic to make a girl’s day. Forget diamonds, forget jewels, and forget even otoro nigiri with a well-paired bottle of sake and a massage afterwards—magic was where it was at, Cassandra had long since decided. Weapons and shields were for chumps, children, and himbos.

CLASS INFORMATION: SORCERESS

Hit Dice: 1d6 per sorcerer level

Armor Proficiencies: None

Weapons Proficiencies: Daggers, darts, slings, quarterstaffs, light crossbows

Tools: None

Saving Throws: Constitution, Charisma

Skills: Choose two from Arcana, Deception, Insight, Intimidation, Persuasion, and Religion

You start with the following equipment, in addition to the equipment granted by your background:

(a) a light crossbow and 20 bolts or (b) any simple weapon

(a) a component pouch or (b) an arcane focus

(a) a dungeoneer's pack or (b) an explorer's pack

Two daggers

An OTHERWORLDLY TRANSIT WITH KNOWLEDGE OF COUNTLESS SCHOOLS OF MAGICAL AND MYSTICAL POWER left an indelible mark on you, infusing you with arcane magic. This font of magic, whatever its origin, fuels your spells.

ORIGIN AUTOMAGICALLY SELECTED: UNSTABLE SORCERY.

Ability Gained: Instability Surge

Your sorcerous magic unleashes wild and unstable magics. Every time you cast a Sorceress spell of 1st level or higher, you have a 1% chance of an Unstable Sorcery Confluence, which always results in some manner of magical effect. Even if that effect appears to be a spell, it is not stable enough to be affected by Metamagic, and as you are not in control of it the spell lasts for full duration and never requires concentration. You may bend the path of Fate by rerolling Her die once for each level above 1st the spell possessed, but you must choose the new result.

Ability Gained: Load Fate’s Dice

Once per long rest, gain advantage on one attack roll, ability check, or saving throw. While this is on cooldown, trigger an Unstable Sorcery Confluence when you cast a Sorceress spell. You may reroll Fate’s die as per Instability Surge. On a result of a 01, 02, 99, or 100, you are refreshed as though having just had a long rest.

At 1st level, you know four cantrips of your choice from the sorcerer spell list. You learn additional sorcerer cantrips of your choice at higher levels.

SPELLS SELECTED: Mage Hand, Prestidigitation, Fire Bolt, Minor Illusion

You may cast two 1st level spells per day. You know two 1st-level spells of your choice from—

SPELLS SELECTED: Magic Missile, Detect Magic

CHARISMA is your spellcasting ability for your sorcerer spells, since the power of your magic relies on your ability to project your will into the world. You use your Charisma whenever a spell refers to your spellcasting ability. In addition, you use your Charisma modifier when setting the saving throw DC for a sorcerer spell you cast and when making an attack roll with one.

Spell save DC = 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Charisma modifier

Spell attack modifier = your proficiency bonus + your Charisma modifier

Jason, Claire’s husband, wasn’t the biggest fan of Vancian Magic systems, or even the more flexible variants thereof, given how they warped the whole structure of a game—or, well, an isekai adventure—into the Single Adventure Day and its attendant tricks. Everything became about maneuvering and positioning so that you could complete your goals in one strike, blowing all of your prepared resources for an overwhelming victory that completed your strategic goals with as few intermediate steps as possible, and without ever having another fight for which you couldn’t appropriately prepare.

He felt like it was cheating. She felt like if someone didn’t want to get styled on, they could absolutely feel free to get out of their way or surrender before the stampede of hundreds of ten-ton-and-up mammals arrived, but she always made sure to follow that up by telling Jason that she loved him very much and that she found him absolutely delightful.

Once Harriet started coming along, it turned out that Jason’s wholehearted warmth and tendency to throw himself fully into everything he did could, as per usual, eclipse her own efforts. A stampede of elephants was one thing—a nation risen to war behind their beloved icon was rather more effective.

They still used the stampede in the second phase of the operation. Jason, as she loved to say, was a sweetheart in so many ways.

PLEASE HOLD—SYSTEM PROCESSING—ESTIMATED TIME, NAN NAU