It took me another week to get the whole 'dying' thing down. The death process was no longer jarring and I could choose where I came back with some limitations. I could now pick a person or a general 'place' to resurrect near (like in a chair, even if it moved) at but I had to be next to them when I made that decision. If those options didn't work for some reason than it would default me back to the original option of 'where I last slept'. Also I learned that if I slept in a chair and the chair was put away I would fall to the ground when I came back and it would hurt.
Right now I had another important question running through my head. "Dad? Why can't I walk without falling down? I feel like a little baby."
"Because you are one?" He answered.
"I don't want to be one anymore. If I'm not one anymore will I be able to stand and move normally?"
"Yes." he answered, then shattered my hopes by continuing, "because one of the milestones to turn two is being able to walk."
"But I know how to walk, or at least I used to. Why do I need to learn how to do it again?" I was complaining for no reason, it wasn't like he could make the problem go away, but at least it made me feel less like a car accident victim who was having relearn basic skills.
"I would assume it is the same reason you had to learn to talk. Something about Paradise itself or else something about your new body? It is a difficult thing to investigate as there is no way to create a control group."
"Is there anyone who doesn't have to deal with relearning all this stuff?"
He nodded, making a thoughtful face. "There was one kid I heard of who came from a world where whenever someone died the others would use a firebird feather on them so they wouldn't be 'downed' anymore. She figured out the death thing in a few hours. Also most kids who had been speedsters in their past life pick this stuff up in no time, so it seems that a lot of it is acclimating to your mobility attribute. But why do you have to do that? Shouldn’t it be natural, just like breathing?"
I tried again to stand without holding on to the chair next to me. It was difficult not just because my balance and body sense was off but also because I barely had the strength to hold my body when I pushed. Back when I had been walking with my father, hand in hand, it was obvious that he had been basically carrying me. Only now did I realize how little I had been doing on my own. Instead I tried to distract myself from the difficulty by talking. "We have different bodies here now, though. Shouldn't that answer the question and prove the milestone is about getting used to the mobility attribute?"
He smiled, eyes lighting up. "You might think, but the exact opposite is true! If it was all about getting used to your attribute than a kid with fifteen or even twenty, as opposed to your one, would take much longer to be fully acclimated! It appears the milestone may be nothing more than hitting a flat level of ability regardless of your innate talents! But that doesn't answer why! Why do the first six milestones, after the developmental ones, all have to do with the basic Attributes?! Why not focus more on psychological aspects like many of the later milestones! And why in that order! Marvelous questions, and I haven’t got a clue!"
I thought about rolling my eyes as he went on his spiel but I didn't want to fall over. My balance was shot so I ended up having to correct for every little movement I made. Moving out away from things was easy, an object in motion stays in motion after all, but trying to stand still was much harder. "Why is this so hard??? Walking is hard but standing still is even harder!" I complained. I was feeling worn out and hungry, things I hadn't felt since I got here.
"Oh that? It is because you don't have much Volatility so the 'feeling' of balance isn't really getting through to you. That is your next milestone to turn three, by the way. Why people would think that 'wisdom' equated with the 'terrible twos' I may never know." He was, once again, complaining about the 'unscientific' way that people referred to the attributes but I had gotten used to it by now.
The one thing I absolutely wasn't going to do was point out how the reality of children getting better at sensing the world around them might lead kids to becoming defiant against how the world worked. I'd tried pointing out things like that before and didn't feel like having another hour long discussion right now. Maybe later.
I stumbled around a bit more, giving truth to the term 'toddler', when suddenly I nearly fell over in surprise. Everything about moving got easier. My limbs reacted faster and more like how I wanted so that I stood more easily despite my bad sense of balance. This was amazing! I tried to jump and landed on my butt, but I still succeeded at the upward part of it!
My father, the big meanie, was letting out a belly laugh at my antics. "Just wait till you get a good long rest. Your mobility will double again and everything else will triple!"
So wait, I currently had one point in everything but mobility so tripling everything except mobility, and doubling that, meant I would be getting two points in everything when I went from one 'year' to two. Did it double or go up by a factor of the age? And what about before 'happy birthday'? Did I have zero in everything or was it like half a point or something?
More importantly, "Dad, why am I hungry? I thought this was like a video game where you never had to eat unless you wanted some buffs."
He was still laughing but it was winding down. "What did you expect? You did a lot of work so of course it would take a lot out of you. Just rest a while and you will recover.
"But I don't want to recover. I can finally move and I wanted to grind my Dex."
"Mobility," he corrected, then continued. "Do you want to talk about your 'build' then?" Finally! He was willing to talk about things that might include actual numbers and ratios that would let me properly min-max the system.
I pulled myself over to a cushion on the floor, getting onto chairs was still beyond me and my current height, but hopefully I would be growing soon. The main room was sparsely apportioned, with a number of chairs and couches and a few tables but no shelves or knick-knacks or even pictures on the walls. The bedrooms were a little beter, with a bed and room for a couple extra pairs of clothes but no closets. And that was the whole house, so far as I had seen; one main room that took up something like 90% of the floor space and a few bedrooms. “Sure, but wouldn’t it be best to raise all my abilities to be super strong without any weaknesses?”
He hummed at me. “No, when you focus on one area you spend time that you could be focusing on other areas. Also there are increases to your stats that you have to choose for one or the other, and spreading yourself too thin means that you won’t stand out in any area.”
I nodded. “So comparative advantage and switching costs, applied to ability growth rather than economics? Get good or get owned?”
“Comparative advantage? Switching costs? Your old world was weird. Why put so much focus on naming those things when you could just say that it is better to focus your time and talents than to have no true strengths?” He asked, rubbing his chin. “It just seems like common sense to me.”
“Common sense is neither common, nor makes sense to a lot of people.” I replied with an eye roll, “Or in simple terms, people are dumb.”
He tilted his head. “That is a fair assessment.” He then visibly changed to his ‘scientist mode’ before continuing. “But no, it isn’t just about time and effort constraints. Each of the abilities has an advantage in combat, dependent on how much higher they are than the average, so most people focus on either two or three. Part of it is that no one ability can adequately cover both offense and defense, not effectively at least, and lacking either makes you either an easy target or cripplingly team dependent. The other part is that the more directions you split your effort the weaker your focuses becomes, which is why a three way split is the usual limit.”
I nodded. “And being team dependent is a bad thing? Why would that be crippling?”
“Everyone relies on others, to some degree, but needing a specialized defender or attacker in your group in order for your skills to be useful is what happens when you don’t cover both aspects.”
I nodded in understanding. It was good to talk about this but I wondered if I would be able to make an informed decision about stats without knowing more about abilities. My parents had been very clear that they weren’t going to talk about that aspect of things, even if they hadn’t given any reason why. Even many of the things that they were willing to talk about were put off ‘until they become important’.
He continued. “The defensive stats are Stability, Mobility, and Volatility,” I mentally translated to Con, Dex, and Wisdom, “while the offense stats are Flow, Viscosity, and Depth.” So Strength, Charisma, and Intelligence. “Your stats determine your basic fighting style while your abilities, once you get them, refine that style and give you tricks to work with it. Tools can then be used to modify things even further.”
“So fighting style, like with magic?” I asked before he could go on.
He nodded.
“But what if I want to fight at long range but I don’t get a laser like that one guy from back at the park but get that shorter ranged beam thing that the other one was using? Won’t that mess up how everything is supposed to work?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Not really. In the absolute worst case that be you might want a tool to modify your abilities, but your overall approach to the battle is still based on your combined stat focus rather than your abilities.”
I gave him a confused look and he continued. “Let me give you an example. Focusing on Volatility and Flow is a common enough combination.” I mentally corrected to Wisdom and Strength. “Defensively this combination tries to hide from any enemies or catch others unaware while offensively they burst down their enemy either at long range or by hitting them up close when they are weak. When things go right their enemy never has a chance to respond, but when things go bad they have enough teeth to force their enemy into approaching with sufficient caution to let them fade away.”
I immediately saw a problem. “That sort of Wisdom based strategy seems to depend a lot on stealth and hitting enemies in a way where they can’t hit back. If either of those fail you would be in trouble.”
He nodded. “HA! Very true! You have it exactly right! But not everyone wants to be a combat specialist and Volatility (Wisdom) has many non-combat applications while still being a good defensive option.” He straightened up a bit, “in fact that is what I use! I pair it up with Viscosity (Charisma) for a bit of extreme non-combat utility! That doesn’t mean that I’m a slouch when fighting happens, in fact I’m one of the most dangerous people on my team! The longer I remain behind my allies the worse the enemy fares and trying to focus on me does little good with my position and vanishing act!” I wasn’t so sure of that whole ‘most dangerous person’ thing. He didn’t exactly strike me as a scrappy guy.
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Instead I focused on the topic at hand and made a face. “I don’t want to be hiding all the time. That sounds like a pain.”
My father laughed. “Then don’t focus on Volatility (Wisdom)! I’m sure you can figure out the basic effects of each of the stats, so let’s hear them.”
“So on the defensive side if Wisdom lets you hide and pop out unexpectedly, Constitution lets you shrug off the hits and Dexterity lets you avoid or run away from it?”
“That’s right! And offensively?”
“Strength lets you hit harder, Charisma lets you stun lock or otherwise debilitate them, and Intelligence lets you use your abilities more often or in unusual ways?”
“Absolutely! The thing you have to remember, though, is that it is the combination that determines how everything works as a whole. Like my example of Volatility/Flow from before!”
“Dad, can you just use the normal names for things. I know they aren’t ‘scientific’ but people will look at me weird if I get into the habit of talking like that.” I wasn’t sure, I hadn’t actually talked to anyone since my birthday other than my parents, but I guessed it was true from some of the comments from my mother.
He rolled his eyes and mumbled something under his breath. Thankfully, though, he did seem to accept my argument. Having to switch over what he was saying to normal speech was getting annoying. “Fine!!” he replied, as though it physically pained him. “The ‘Wisdom’/’Strength’ combination is commonly referred to as an Alpha-Striker. Hit an unaware enemy hard enough and you have basically already won. Wisdom/Intelligence is known as the Guerilla build. Enough small and unceasing strikes from unknown directions will wear down enemies psychologically long before you could take them out physically. Wisdom/Charisma, like I have, is known as the Rogue build. I already mentioned how much of a menace it can be.”
“I still don’t want to spend all my time sneaking around.” I said, likely crushing my father’s hopes that I would follow in his footsteps.
“To each their own.” He acknowledged. “Most Wisdom specialists want to avoid combat rather than excelling at it.”
He continued. “The most common choice people make is to build off of Constitution, as it is always helpful and requires only minimal skill to use effectively. Constitution/Strength is the most common combination and is widely referred to as the Fighter build. Heavy hits and solidly dependable defense make a combination with few surprises but proven worth. Conversely Constitution/Intelligence, known as the Pugilist, outlasts the opponent with tricks pulled from multiple sources. Finally Constitution/Charisma is known as the Obstructionist. It is common enough among people with a certain set of abilities and is a real pain to fight against. It isn’t like you can’t win, it just takes forever and you come out almost worse than your opponent.”
“There seems to be a pattern with the Charisma combinations. Do they all leave your opponent bad off even if the other person wins?” I asked.
“Very smart for noticing it! That they do, though certain abilities make it worse than others!” He gave me a smile. “The tradeoff is that it is hard for them to actually finish the fight.”
I nodded in acknowledgement. The whole ‘massive debilitation’ thing sounded interesting, but had some serious flaws. It was probably not as bad as failing to have a focus for both offense and defense, at least from how my father had made it out to be, but it was not what I was personally looking for.
“Finally you have the Dexterity combinations that all focus on speed. They have an easier time avoiding hits that would flatten someone focused on Defense but if they fail to dodge they can be beat by someone with significantly less power. Dexterity/Strength is referred to as Lancers, and are the second most common combination. Hit hard, hit fast, and get away before the enemy can retaliate; It works, although it is more work than just shrugging off the hit. Dexterity/Intelligence are Skirmishers and are the second most frustrating to fight if they are any good. You can’t pin them down and they can go on forever, just hope you can get in enough lucky hits before they whittle you down. And finally Dexterity/Charisma are called Scoundrels and have a bad reputation since a lot of outlaws focus in that sort of direction. They are known for their fast getaways and attacks that disable rather than kill.”
I thought through each of the options he had brought up and turned to lay down on the carpet. “That… is a lot to remember.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll be going over it a lot before you’ll be ready to go. It is something that will be important to keep in mind for the rest of your very long life because it lets you know what people can do and what you need to do in response.”
Hmmm. It seemed like a lot of exposition, but then if this were a story than the readers could just pop back to chapter 3 to get a refresher whenever they wanted. Or wait, would my life before this count? Would that make this chapter 4 or would that be more of a chapter 0 type of situation? I am convinced the furniture fiasco doesn’t count, if only because I hope my humiliation from the event will remain hidden. If there is some sort of writing god out there, please hear my prayers! Thank you? Amen? Comment and give a 5 star rating? I’m not really sure what would be appropriate in this instance.
My father, lacking insight to my inner monologue, simply continued. “Combining those builds by adding a third focus mostly just gives the advantages of both, just to a smaller degree. Alternately some people add in a third stat at a lower level in order to get some of the secondary benefits. Dexterity may primarily make you faster, but a little extra stamina can be a big help when you really need it. Constitution may make you more resistant to damage, but being able to take a little bit more can often be the difference between victory and defeat. This is one place where you often see Charisma used, specifically for its ability to increase the area of attacks.”
I could see the usefulness of that. “So giant ‘pew-pew’ lasers that can hit multiple people?”
He nodded cheerily. “Imagine that on an Alpha-Striker!” He shook his head. “I’ve seen entire teams decimated by that trick. Thankfully they were opposing groups and thankfully, if you are on the receiving end, it requires the same tried and true counters as for any other Alpha-Striker, but it is still something to keep in mind.”
“So why not just focus on four things, for those who are already focused on three? It shouldn’t make that much of a difference to split your stats to 4 out of 6 ways rather than 3 out of 6.”
He gave me another smile. “You might think, but the strength of the advantages you get is based on how far from your average the particular stats are. The size of the effects on an individual are a nonlinear function of their deviation from that average that follows an exponential trend. Does that make any sense to you?”
I nodded to him, thinking about it. So basically if you had one stat that you put everything into then, while everything else would be mediocre but not bad, your one good stat would be far more than twice as good as if you had two ‘good’ stats. This would make it a great idea to put absolutely everything in one place, if not for the crippling overspecialization problem, except that crippling overspecialization was apparently very much a thing. I would like to see the results of some empiric testing, but for now I would just take my Father’s word for it.
Or, to say it in more general terms, what it really meant was that the numbers were screwey and whoever did the math for this ‘game’ was a bit weird in the head. The system didn’t work well if you were too overly specialized or not specialized enough.
He continued, speaking in his ‘researcher’ mode. “Having three focuses is hard enough to manage, especially since your strengths and maluses even out at that point. Trying to add a fourth means that you no longer have strengths that stand out, you have weaknesses that drag you down. Granted, there are a few who try it, hoping that their ‘generally generalist’ build will either hide or invalidate their weaknesses, but it rarely works out. The math on that approach just doesn’t fit their expectations.”
This was all good and interesting but it did beg the question to me. “So… you’ve been pretty closed off about a lot of this stuff, telling me I’ll learn it later when it becomes important. Why are you suddenly telling me all this now?”
He rubbed his chin in a mockery deep thought. “It just seemed like a good idea to let you know that it was important to choose what to focus on and what not to just try to get better at everything without a thought of the long-term effects.” He gave me a knowingly smug look. “Otherwise, the moment I took my eyes off you, I suspect you would try doing push-ups or sit-ups or some such thing.”
Of course I wouldn’t do that, pushups had nothing to do with the ‘Strength’ stat, it was an imperfect split between Constitution and Dexterity and would be an inefficient way to train either or even both for that matter. Instead I would have tried stabbing myself to train my Constitution. Don’t give me a weird look, stab wounds hurt a lot less here than in the ‘real world’, and thanks to my Mother’s training I have gotten used to it. Not like I was going to tell him that. My only response was to try to not look guilty.
“Your mother and I caught you trying to climb around your room when you should have been sleeping.” His smile only got larger at the look on my face. Drat, I thought I had been so stealthy about it. Then again, they had literal superpowers that made their senses better, so maybe I was overly optimistic.
“So what’s next?” I asked, in a blatantly subtle attempt to change the subject.
“First you will need to get some sleep,” he said as I rolled my eyes, “and then you can get started on some of the stuff for your next milestone.”
“Wisdom, right?” I asked, “but what about going out and fighting monsters and learning magic and all the other stuff you are supposed to do in a fantasy world?”
“No hunting till you can keep your clothes on, your mother was very clear about that, but I can start teaching you about some basic Essence skills.” Magic! He was going to teach me magic!
“So how does it work? Do you first reach out with your senses and feel the magic around you till you develop a ‘sense mana’ skill, then learn to manipulate the flow of mana within yourself and bring it outside yourself, before finally learning to shape and use the mana for specific tasks?” If reading Isekai has taught me anything about magic, it is that magic is a must.
He gave me a weird look. “Yeeessss….” There was silence for a moment as he examined me. “I thought you said you came from a non-magical world?”
“I did,” I replied, this time I took on the bearing of a researcher! Take that Dad! “In my world there were a lot of fanfictions and amateur stories about stuff that didn’t exist and eventually some things got reduced to common tropes and codifications. For ‘magic’ eventually people figured that it would be hard to affect things without feedback, so mana sense usually always came first! From there it would be hard to move something without having some sort of connection to it, so that was next! Some stories required people to take in the magic from outside and others needed you to just find the magic within yourself, but all of them eventually got to the point of manipulating the magic inside as one major step!”
My father had this weird look on his face as he mumbled to himself. He seemed to be going over definitions, for some reason? It was odd. “Fanfiction? Derivative works set within another author’s personal world where the writer seeks to pay homage to, explore new possibilities within, and/or fix the mistakes of the original author’s work? The ‘One True Paring’ must date and be cute? Slash is love? Crack is life? Mary-Sue is evil?” He looked more perturbed as he went on, but kept his words to a mumble and was nodding along as I spoke. “What kind of crazy world was that???”
I, of course, continued. “Once you can pull out the mana and hold onto it, then the next step is actually shaping it into things. This usually involves either runes, arrays, or just sufficiently formalizing the mana’s shape to allow for faster and more streamlined casting! Often words or hand gestures were included either as a sort of mnemonic device or to refer back to previous patterns that the world’s ‘magic’ had learned to follow over countless generations! Sometimes the patterns were so strong that people could skip right to this step, assuming they had the right qualifications to use magic at all.”
“Right… And you are absolutely certain that your old world didn’t have any magic or anything else supernatural in it?” He kept giving me that skeptical look, like he thought I was trying to hide something. Jokes on him, though! I don’t know enough to know what would be hide-worthy even if I wanted to be sneaky!
I did give it a moment’s thought. “Not so far as I know. There was this one guy who offered a million dollars to anyone who could show him something supernatural, and I’m pretty sure nobody won it, but other people just said that his standards for ‘reasonable doubt’ were unreasonable. I wish it were true, since it would have been nice to be able to fly on broomsticks or something…”
My father appeared to have a mild case of cognitive whiplash as he tried to catch up. “What? Broomsticks? Wouldn’t that be incredibly uncomfortable, especially for a male?”
I shrugged. “Probably, but it is still more iconic than shoes with tiny wings on them or a carpet. Unfortunately hover-belts and jet-packs were a different genre. You take what you can get, or not get as the case may be.”
There were a few seconds of silence. “Son, how do you manage to get so wildly off topic?”
I shrugged again. “It’s probably a result of a child’s mind, adult ADD, and how I’m now living in a world that conforms to so many fantasy tropes.”
He made some faces again and looked like he really wanted to speak up when I mentioned ADD, but shut his mouth instead and let me finish. “Regardless, I am the parent and it is my job to keep you on focus. That means getting you to bed as soon as possible.”
Ugh, bed. That boring ‘lay there till you wake up’ thing that I kept having to do because my parents thought it was ‘healthy’. All nighters are my friend, even without caffeine. I made an unhappy face.
“You do want to learn magic, right?”
“Yes!”
“Tomorrow you learn magic.”
FINALLY! Tomorrow I learn magic! I should go to bed as quickly as possible!!!
… wait…