Wise Old Mentor CYOA draft

# Mentor CYOA

# **Wise Old Mentor MYC**

# ***v0.5***

Congratulations\! You would make a good mentor. Oh, you were expecting to be an isekai protagonist? No, no, there are millions of those, really, we don't need any more. But you\! The Cosmic Mentor has determined that you are someone willing to take a back seat, teach someone to use their power, and get started on the road to greatness. Or at least willing to become that kind of someone. And that's a lot rarer\! So you have been selected to receive many gifts of Cosmic Mentorhood, and then sent out into a world to demonstrate the Power of Mentorship and get your student \- or students\! \- on the path to glory, victory, and a lastingly-intact world.

## **Setting Power & Type**

What type of world are you looking to appear in? Low fantasy where magic of any kind is rare? High-powered science fiction where your technology is indistinguishable from magic? Superheroes? Cyberpunk? Steampunk? Modern hidden-magic masquerade? Choose the broad strokes, and we'll work out the details, though you can make some suggestions. Pick one power level, all the genres that apply (at least one), and any number of modifiers.

### **Setting Genre**

What types of power source and sources of story tropes are available here? Primarily aesthetic but a few options will require certain genres to work. Select at least one.

#### **Fantasy**

Magic exists, it’s known, and there is a teachable skill for using it, that is largely the same across practitioners. In a low-power setting the ability is rare and a chosen student will likely be unusual in being able to use it at all. In a higher-power setting the talent is more common but your students will be exceptional in their potential or their specialties.

#### **Science Fiction**

Nothing exists in contradiction to nature, but that doesn't mean its capabilities are limited to what is obviously possible within the laws of physics as we know them. This type of setting has technology with capabilities significantly beyond the modern day, and some of it violates the laws we believe are universal, like FTL travel. Just how impossible the results are depends on the power level.

#### **Martial Arts**

Perfect the body, perfect the mind, perfect the soul. Mastering martial arts and training yourself extensively doesn't just make you deadly unarmed, it makes you capable of blocking swords without a scratch, catching arrows, and dodging bullets. In higher-power settings, you can throw fireballs or teleport through sheer force of will and expert control of your soul.

#### **Superheroes**

Many people, by birth or strange accident, have idiosyncratic supernatural powers, though there may be a unifying principle that claims to explain the whole system like the 'X-gene'. Some people get useless powers; some can break the world. Costumed crime-fighting and pseudonymous theme crime aren't required, but they'll fit more smoothly into this type of setting than anything else.

##### Combinations

A setting which is both fantasy and science fiction either has both coexisting (e.g. Shadowrun or Mass Effect) or has magic which follows unusually scientific rules and can be investigated rigorously and used to create reliable technology that can be mass-produced (e.g. the Cosmere or Mass Effect). Martial arts and fantasy produce coexistence (e.g. Shadowrun again) or a xianxia cultivation setting with formations and rituals; martial arts and science fiction likely produce a world where biotechnology and martial arts overlap (maybe Warhammer Space Marines?).

Superhero worlds either coexist with other power sources, or introduce more variance in specialties, personal aptitudes, and circumstances of acquiring power. Either way they increase the likelihood of the cops and robbers game and pseudonyms in costumes.  Harry Potter, where everyone can cast the same spells with the right training is one thing; the Scholomance, where everyone has an affinity that makes particular spells or tools easier and cheaper, is a good example of a fantasy-superhero setting combined in this way. Science fiction-superhero fusion would look something like Worm's Tinkers, who each have a specialty and have great difficulty inventing anything outside it.

### **Power Level**

Is it over nine thousand, or merely a couple hundred? All levels will have power available beyond the ken of mortal man (at least if he's native to Earth and not very imaginative) but the strongest hero or villain in the world could range from Batman to Legolas, to Lofwyr, to Dr. Manhattan. Choose your playing field, and hope that it's even.

#### **Low Power**

This world is relatively tame; some people may not even believe supernatural capabilities exist or know technology has advanced. Great warriors are Aragorn or Luke Skywalker; great mages are Glinda the Good Witch or John Constantine; great geniuses are Sherlock Holmes or Doc Brown. Things beyond normal mortal capabilities happen, but not often, and only by exceptional people.

Conan the Barbarian, The Hobbit, the original Star Wars trilogy, the Arkham Asylum Batman games, and the World of Darkness (excluding Mage) are examples of low-power settings.

#### **Moderate Power**

No one's going to deny that the supernatural exists, unless it's all technology and it *doesn't*. Moderately advanced powers and capabilities are well-known and widely distributed; the most powerful people can do things far beyond an ordinary human. Great warriors are Drizzt Do'urden or Captain America; great mages are Harry Dresden or Maleficent; great geniuses are Iron Man or Grand Admiral Thrawn. The baseline state of reality has started to look significantly different from a mundane world, even far from anyone exceptional.

Harry Potter, most of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Shadowrun, Warren Ellis's Planetary, and Mistborn are examples of moderate-power settings.

#### **High Power**

World-shattering power is yours for the taking, which would be great if it wasn't available for all your enemies as well. The power available to ordinary people is enough to thoroughly destabilize anything like a mundane world. At its tamest, this is a magitech second industrial revolution or high cyberpunk everyone-chromed eudysutopia, and it goes up from there. Great warriors are the Flash or Kid Buu; great mages are Dr. Strange or Nynaeve al'Meara; great geniuses are Emperor Leto II or the TITANs. Galaxies may hang in the balance if anything escalates.

The Forgotten Realms, Lovecraft's Mythos, Exalted, the Wheel of Time, and The Authority are examples of high-power settings.

#### **Cosmic Power**

*Mentor: \+4?*
	*Student: \+4?*

Cosmic Horror, except theoretically with less horror. Rules have been thrown out the window. Great warriors can cut through time and parry age; great mages can alter reality; great geniuses can invent impossibilities that make themselves certainties. Anyone truly powerful needs to augment their minds just to stay sane while comprehending the scope of the possibilities arrayed for and against them. Note: This option has the highest rate of complaints among those who choose it. Apparently we still aren't warning you hard enough about this being inherently a little 'cosmic horror' even if you didn't pick horror. If you pick both we make no warranties whatsoever and you will probably regret it.

Examples of cosmic-power settings generally live in whatever part of the setting the gods live in, whether that's Warhammer's Realm of Chaos or the Zones of Thought's Transcend. 'Here be dragons' doesn't really begin to cut it.

### **Modifiers**

Miscellaneous changes that can be stapled onto any combination of genres and levels of power

#### **By Your Wits**

Mentor: \-2?
	Student: \-2?
	*Incompatible with Disabled, Nine Steps*

Most fights with a Great Enemy, like you're preparing your student for, are contests of battle, but this one's more subtle. Whether it's a matter of heists or mystery investigations, ? or ?, you're much more rarely going to be throwing strength against strength; it's figuring out where to exert your strength, or even against who, that's the really difficult part. You still won't be able to help directly, and that will end up broader than usual, but you're more likely to be able to help if an actual stand-up fight breaks out.

#### **Children's Card Game**

*Mentor: \-1?*
	*Student: \-1?*

The contests you are preparing your students for are confrontations, but not ordinary battle. They're something... weirder. It will resemble one of your existing hobbies, as much as feasible, and considering that 'half-assed parody of Magic: the Gathering' is not only feasible but the canonical example of this perk, just about anything you're looking for probably will be. Really the only critical restriction is that you don't take any other options that conflict with your desired field of pseudo-combat, because that *could* block it.
Oh, and yes, the stakes will still be lethal. Not necessarily always, but against the Great Enemy, yes. 'Shadow Realm', pff.

#### **Masquerade**

*Mentor: \+2?*
	*Student: \+2?*

Superficially, to a poorly-informed resident of the world, it appears normal and mundane. Possibly a modern setting, possibly medieval, classical Rome, even earlier, or anything in between. Very few people, comparatively, are in on the secret; it might be only the rare people born with talent, or the ruling class preserving a 'divine' mandate, or secret agencies silencing anyone who wants to break it open.
*If you have High Power, or Medium Power with multiple genres, the 'mundane' world has a low-power version of at least one type. Cosmic Power or High multi-power bumps that up a notch. This can be true for weaker-powered settings but you don't receive bonus points for choosing it.*

#### **Primitive Screwheads**

*Mentor: \+3?*
	*Student: \+3?*
	*Incompatible with Science Fiction or Cosmic Power*

Yeah, there's supernatural power around, but by god you're gonna need it. Everything else sucks; you're in the deep medieval, if not the iron age, and not a particularly rosy interpretation of it, either. There is no technology much more advanced than the plow, gunpowder and steam power are far beyond your capacity to create even with a couple centuries and genius invention, and you'll need magic or superpowers for an acceptable standard of living.

#### **Horror**

*Mentor: \+4?*
	*Student: \+4?*

Magic, advanced tech, or anything else isn't all it's cracked up to be. Oh, you can still use it, and it's useful and powerful, but the consequences can be dire. Letting demons leak into reality, driving you mad, waking dead gods who understand little about humans and care less, weakening the fabric of reality, or a litany of other horrors. Goes well with Masquerade because, really, would *you* want to let people know that was possible? Good news, this either horrifies the Great Enemy as well or places an inherent limiter on them if they're themselves one of the horrors; you almost always don't need to worry about them escalating to world-horrifying stakes just because they're losing.

#### **Sexy**

	*No points*

Either the rules of the world are distinctly slanted toward porn logic or the nature of magic or power uses sexual and romantic connections, or just the culture in which you find yourself is unusually sexually permissive and open relative to ours. Maybe more than one. If your students are old enough when you meet them, it may be socially permissible for your teacher-student relationship to include a romantic relationship as well. Guaranteed not to squick or creep you out with its details. No rewards granted here; if you want it, it's its own reward.

##

## **Reasons You Can't Help**

Now, don't worry, you'll get some magic or power of your own. But it won't go well, probably, if you try to solve the world's problems yourself. You're a mentor, not a protagonist. Your chosen one will fight the Great Enemy, not you.

But why? What happened, to make you unavailable for direct hands-on problem-solving like your students?
Select at least two, and as many as you want.

### **Old**

*Student: \+4*

You're old, and you feel every month of it. You may have been a hero when you were younger, or not, but wear and tear, the slow reflexes and memory of age, and weakening of limbs and body, have made you much less capable than you were.

You're not going to live all that much longer, either, though you might see your student through their quest if you're lucky.

### **Wounded**

*Mentor: \+4*
*Student: \+4*

You took an arrow to the knee and never recovered, or probably something more serious if your setting has healing magic. In any case, it can't be fixed, not without more power than you or anyone on your side ever had. Your student may surpass you and change that, but at that point you'd still be a supporting character.

This is whatever kind of injury would most interfere with combat in your world. Usually physical, but if you're spellcasters your soul will be burnt or if you use ki your channels will be ruined. It doesn't stop you from fighting entirely, but it makes your endurance tiny, your control shaky, and/or your exertions dangerous to your future health.

### **Badly Wounded**

*Mentor: \+4*
*Student: \+4*
*Required: Wounded*

You know what I said about it not stopping you from fighting entirely? Scratch that. You can just about manage to demonstrate your old second-best fighting techniques without collapsing for the rest of the day.
That said, those techniques were pretty impressive and you will be able to show the new generation what's possible. If the great enemy doesn't hunt you down first to keep you from doing it.
*Free: Breadth of Experience*

### **Disabled**

*Mentor: \+8*

You were never a hero. You didn't get injured, you were born this way, and no power you've ever heard of can fix it for you. You were never trained to be a hero because you couldn't do it, even if you had destiny behind you. Crippled legs, blind eyes, a shattered soul \- whatever it is, you will never put into practice any knowledge you learn.

But you did learn\! You are a gentleman (or lady) and a scholar, and know far more about theory, lore, and pedagogy than anyone who learned mostly from the school of hard knocks.
*Free: Scholarship*

### **Dying**

*Mentor: \+6*
*Student: \+6*

Forget dying of old age, you're not even going to make it to Act 3\. Incurable illness, slow poison, fading of the soul from being too far from the light of creation: any way you choose, you will absolutely not get to see the end of your student's story. This might have weakened you, but you're not getting worse, and won't until just before your death. You have time to complete their initial training in safety, but after that it could hit you at any time.

On the bright side, you've known this is coming for a while, and you have prepared resources you can leave them with that allows them to keep learning from your wisdom after your passing. Maybe even pass along a little of your power as a secret technique they can master after you're done with it, or secret lore you were bound to take to the grave.
*Free: Legacy*

### **Uncle Ben**

*Mentor: \+8*
*Student: \+8*
*Required: Dying*

Complete their training in safety? That's a laugh. No, your death will be sudden, unpredicted, and very, very soon. You can identify your student, instill values that will ensure they will make you as proud as they are possibly able, point them in the right direction... But not much more than that. If we wrote the novel, you wouldn't be dead on page one, but you wouldn't make it to page fifty, and it might be page ten.

You didn't see this coming, but by luck and circumstances, a few pieces of knowledge will make it through. More importantly, no matter how short your time was together, the values you taught them will be unshakable. Your chosen hero student will never fall, never waver. They may not have your skill or your power, but they will have your heart, and any time they disappoint your memory it will be because their skills failed them, not because they didn't try their best.
*Free: Great Responsibility*

### **Stronghold**

*Student: \+8*

Whether it's a castle, a school, or a holy site, you have a place of power which must be defended at all costs, and you can't do that and also go questing. If you stay home and nothing happens to remove your power or increase the great enemy's, it will never fall. But they're watching, and it wouldn't take all that long for them to plan a successful attack if they knew you weren't holding it.
While you're there, though, you have a nearly-perfectly-safe place to train students, whether your destined chosen hero or any others
*Free: Training Site*

### **Bound**

*Mentor: \+6*
*Student: \+6*
*Required: Stronghold*

You can't leave home at all, or if you do you'd be so powerless as to be completely useless. Until the great enemy is defeated, you must stay and defend it, for your own sake as well as the sake of the stronghold you are bound to. Afterward, when the world is safe, you might be able to leave it behind, if you're lucky.

On the plus side, you're never going to miss anything going wrong in your stronghold, ever, as long as you're there. The best anyone could do is create bigger problems simultaneously so you might be distracted and not follow up on the lesser problems until it was too late.
*Free: Awareness*

### **Escalation**

*Mentor: \+8 points*

You could help at any time. Walk up to the enemy's walls, throw off your cloak, and challenge him to a duel. You might even win. You know this. But you also know you wouldn't like the consequences. See, whether it's ancient law, a magical geas, or just a matter of the arcane physics of whatever power you hold, if you get to let loose, so do they. Either they unlock power long limited from them, or they cast Summon Bigger Fish and now the great enemy has been replaced by the greatest enemy, who your student won't be much help with even if they're reaching the end of their journey. Do not open the can of whoop-ass, lest a can be opened also upon you.

For demonstration purposes, though, watch out; you can show the kids how it's done in as much detail as needed, as often as needed, as long as it's useful for that purpose and doesn't risk breaking the relative truce.
*Free: Power*

### **Nine Steps**

*Mentor: \+4*
*Student: \+4*

You can unleash all your old power any time you want. Once. Twice, even. But if you do it nine times, you're dead, instantly. If not worse; certainly you won't get an afterlife if you try it, and a celestial prison for eternity isn't out of the question. If neither of those makes sense in your destination world, think up something else equivalent. You're risking something worse than death \- but you can risk it, if it's worth it to you.
Two strikes back to back at full power still counts as two, but you know exactly where your count stands and you know where the line is that risks reducing it.

You have the capacity to help your student at full power at a critical juncture, a handful of times. And you won't fail when you do, if you planned it well enough. Make it count.
*Free: Strategy*

### **Politics**

*Student: \+6*

Diplomats talk about winning the war and then winning the peace. You don't have the luxury of doing things in that order; your homeland has some extremely unpleasant political factions, or at least some extremely-stubbornly misguided ones, and if they're allowed to take power your student's quest will have to abort, losing all its support or being betrayed to the great enemy, in addition to whatever their other goals are, none of which you'll like. You are an experienced elder statesperson and can manage it to keep the nasties out of power, but it takes up a lot of time you'd rather be using to train your students, and precludes traveling on a quest yourself.

But it's not all bad; your experience doing this makes you very good at navigating any lesser political struggle, and you'll be able to train your students to pick up similar skills, particularly leveraging their status as a chosen hero into support from others.
*Free: Political Strategist*

### **Nemesis**

*Mentor: \+6*

Your student has a great destiny ahead of them and will be capable of shaking the foundations of the world, defeating the great enemy and rebuilding what they've ruined, but you can't help them on their way. You're too busy with your own great enemy. This might be the same enemy as theirs, or an older generation, or some kind of cosmic force beyond your student's comprehension, but the result is the same: you're fighting a constant battle to maintain the stalemate with your nemesis. If you turn your attention to your student's great enemy for long enough to help, or at a predictably critical moment, your nemesis will get the upper hand and the world won't be saved after all.

While this is continuous, it's not literally constant; you always have to be ready for another round at short notice, but most days you can live your life, and you've long since learned to handle the stress smoothly. Very little else can faze you in comparison, and jumping from fighting for your life to peacefully living it, and back, only stresses you at all if it endangers others.
*Free: PTSDone*

##

## **Student Perks**

What have you done and been, that lets you pass on greater readiness to your students?

### **Legacy**

R*equired: ?*
*Forbidden: ?*
*Student: \-?*

You haven't left your eggs in one basket. Even if you and everyone else who taught your students are killed by the Great Enemy, they won't be left without guidance. Holocrons, memory jades, encrypted manuals; whatever form they take, many of your lessons will survive you, and your student will be able to learn from you at a distance even before that time.

#### **Beyond the Grave**

*Required: ?*
*Forbidden: ?*
*Student: \-?*

Some powers can have only one wielder, and some secrets must be taken to the grave. You have planned around this. Strike you down, and your *student* will become more powerful, receiving what you could not give them while alive. You may have a few other contingencies, too.
(Making them more powerful than the Great Enemy can possibly imagine not guaranteed.)

### **Great Responsibility**

R*equired: ?*
*Forbidden: ?*
*Student: \-4?*

The moral education you impart to your students is unshakable. They may not master all your techniques, but they will master your code of honor and morality. They will understand what you would do, and \*why\* you would do it. You can be absolutely certain that they will never misuse your practical lessons or disgrace your reputation, but always make you proud.

#### **Moral Frontiers**

*Required: ?*
*Forbidden: ?*
*Student: \-4?*

If your student runs into circumstances beyond anything you ever encountered, they will be no more conflicted than you would have been, and whatever their choice, their reasoning will be something you would approve of. They will be able to make snap judgments as if they had hours to reflect.

### **Training Site**

R*equired: ?*
*Forbidden: ?*
*Student: \-?*

You have secured, discovered, or built a site where training is easy and safe, at least compared to doing it elsewhere. It doesn't do much for you: you're powerful enough to have gained all the lessons it assists in teaching. But it's fantastic for bringing students up to their potential without the usual dangers.

#### **Hidden City**

*Required: ?*
*Forbidden: ?*
*Mentor: \-4?*
*Student: \-4?*

Not only is it safe, it is inaccessible. The Great Enemy will not be able to find you there, not without fighting you to death or exhaustion first, and any lesser enemies, if they can even attempt it, will have great difficulty. You couldn't store the whole world the Enemy threatens behind your walls, but you can store everyone your students care deeply about who isn't strong enough to join them on their way.

### **Company of Heroes**

R*equired: ?*
*Forbidden: ?*
*Student: \-?*

Many mentors have a single prized student they send out to accomplish what they could not. You are not one. You have several. You can find potential and train it with much greater range than most teachers, even ones as skilled as you, or perhaps you've been maintaining a long-term program of tracking or influencing people to pick potential heroes with the right talents and attitude, In any case, you can send your hero out in a group, even before they find allies, and with people they've known for a long time and trust.

#### **Try, Try Again**

*Required: Disabled, Bound, Escalation, Nine Steps, or Nemesis*
*Forbidden: Dying*
*Mentor: \-2?*
*Student: \-4?*

This isn't the first time you've chosen a hero and sent them out to fight the Great Enemy. And unless they succeed, it won't be the last either. You play the long game, and play it well; even as you send out one hero, you're starting the training of another. But this isn't all good; it means your enemy is resilient enough that this was necessary, and a solid but unexceptional victory for your student won't be permanent and will still require a new hero be trained to fight them again in the future.

### **Inherent Potential**

R*equired: ?*
*Forbidden: ?*
*Student: \-?*

Whether through long decades of planning, secret rituals to unlock power, or extremely good intuition for capable candidates, all your students will have significantly higher natural potential. To reach it, you'll have to train them and they'll have to work hard, and it won't be easy, but the limits are high, and they'll surpass just about everyone, you in your prime included.

#### **Smooth Path**

*Required: ?*
*Forbidden: ?*
*Student: \-?*

In most cases, the amount of training and practice required to get twice as good is more than twice as long as it took to get halfway; your students break this, by particularly good selection or preparation. If normally each step took a little longer than the last, quadratically \-- six months from zero to one, twelve months from one to two, eighteen from two to three \-- it will drop down to linear; if it's normally exponential \-- six months from zero to one, twelve from one to two, two years from two to three and four years from there to four \-- then it will be quadratic.

### **Faster Teaching**

*Required: ?*
*Forbidden: ?*
*Student: \-?*

You're extremely good at teaching, and can convey complicated concepts in half the usual time, or even faster for simple concepts. You can break everything down to its essentials, convey them intuitively, and make them stick quickly enough to keep building on them with further lessons. Whatever you need to teach will happen faster, though this doesn't ultimately let you convey more skills than you could have done otherwise.

#### **Cram Session**

*Required: ?*
*Forbidden: ?*
*Student: \-?*

If you need to teach something crucial very quickly, you can do it in a tenth the time by exhausting yourself to do it. It will take you a long time to recover, ten times as long as you spent teaching the crash course at least, and your student won't retain it as well or as long as if you'd done it the hard slow way, but if a major confrontation or crisis needs it, you can get it done and deal with the fallout later.

### **Analysis**

*test*

The one tool your student can never be deprived of is their mind, and you can teach them to make use of it quickly, incisively, and strategically. They can plan a campaign, analyze the structure of a building, give flawless odds on casualties and outcome of a clash of infantry, and decipher the secrets of ancient ruins and artifacts. This won't help them execute their plans, but they'll be excellent plans, without fail. They'll also gain insight into enemy skills and spells, perhaps learning from them.

#### **Physical Numbers**

*Banned: \<Force, Evasion, Leadership upgrades\>*

If you master analysis to the point of evaluating the arcs of projectiles and the timing of blades, you can control all the random elements of your own actions and guarantee you are never surprised by anything in a contest except that which you and your opponents cannot perceive. You know the basics of this skill, and your student has mastered it, making them extremely dangerous. But that which your opponent isn't expecting, you cannot predict by analysis; loose-cannon subordinates of the Enemy are this student's bane.

### **Force**

*test*

Many skills are useful in the conflicts your student will face, but direct force is one they are sure to see great use of. How to wield all your power in a refined point; how to overwhelm defenses rather than subvert them; how to go strength and strength and win. These are the lessons of force. There are few problems which cannot be solved by a powerful hero applying direct force to them; the problem is that reliance on it can blind you to alternate solutions with fewer side effects.

#### **Not Using Enough of It**

*Banned: \<Analysis, Evasion, Leadership upgrades\>*

On the other hand, you could simply use more force to solve those side effects. Your student is strong, and you've learned a lot in your time; perhaps the solution is to give them the training to win in one blow, or destroy the ruins their first blow created with a second. They'll be incredibly effective if they can get the Great Enemy cornered, but the Enemy will see that coming, and may be tricksy enough to prevent it.

### **Subtlety**

*test*

Your student is a trickster by nature, though it took training to get them there. They're a master of bluffs and thefts, disguises and deception, dirty tricks and sneak attacks. They could teach back-alley enforcers and thieves's guild godfathers both a thing or two. And they know one of the most important lessons of ambiguous confrontations: if there's going to be a fight, shoot first.

#### **Without Fighting**

*Banned: \<Analysis, Force, Leadership upgrades\>*

Sun Tzu said that the supreme art of war was to defeat the enemy without fighting, and you have trained your student into a master of it. Against such a powerful opponent, it would be foolish to confront them unless absolutely necessary, and to your student, it's never necessary. Tactically they dodge; in battle they maneuver; on campaign they bypass. Even the Great Enemy can be evaded, if they're not careful, though the source of their power may be well-defended too.

### **Leadership**

*test*

The most important skill of all is the one you cannot practice: leading others. Morale keeps a party of adventurers together just like it holds together a phalanx or a rifleman's square. And good leaders, who project confidence without bravado or arrogance, secure that morale. They also attract good people to their side and distinguish the talented from the arrogant, and as they succeed, they attract more.

#### **Legion of Heroes**

*Banned: \<Analysis, Force, Subtlety upgrades\>*

With this lesson, you have imparted the art of mentorship itself to your student. They find good allies where others see worthless vagabonds, untrustworthy scoundrels, or decadent nobles, and they both charm them into their retinue and train them to bring out their potential. They have backup, in all circumstances, and an incredibly diverse array of talents to bring to any challenge. More than can be mastered in one lifetime, but they have many more than that to bring to bear.

## **Mentor Perks**

What can you do yourself? Or, at least, what *could* you do yourself, if it wasn't for the restrictions and infirmities that bind you?

### **Scholarship**

*Required: ?*
*Forbidden: ?*
*Mentor: \-?*

You have boundless knowledge. You don't just know spells or techniques; you understand how they work in great detail. You don't just create useful devices, but have a deep understanding of the science underlying them. There are many fields you are not an expert in, but you can become one as quickly as anyone else can acquire a practical working knowledge of it.

#### **Innovator**

*Required: ?*
*Forbidden: ?*
*Mentor: \-?*

Past mastery is creation. If something is achievable with the techniques you understand, you can determine how. It may require more power than you or your student have, or more control, or rare resources, but you can invent it. And you won't make any journeyman's mistakes while creating it, either; anything you do wrong will be something a master might miss.

### **Awareness**

*Required: ?*
*Forbidden: ?*
*Mentor: \-?*

In places and spheres you have spent large portions of your life and rigged with the products of your work, you have near-perfect awareness. If something goes wrong, you will know about it in as much detail as if you had been wounded yourself. It takes many years to establish this, and if you don't spend at least a tenth of your time in a place you have set up for your familiarity and awareness, it will soon decay, but you know how to do this for more than one place.

#### **Benefactor**

*Required: ?*
*Forbidden: ?*
*Mentor: \-?*

You can arrange this kind of awareness not just for places but for people, arranging for your students, subordinates, or allies to give you warnings as surely as for your chosen headquarters. It may be significantly more difficult to travel to their aid in a timely fashion, but you won't miss it. You must see the people protected this way at least yearly, or at least send intermediaries from the group from you to them and back multiple times a year.

### **Power**

*Forbidden: Disabled*
*Required: ?*
*Mentor: \-?*

In your heyday, you were extremely powerful. As strong as your greatest chosen student at their full potential. At least in the narrow areas of your expertise; you probably didn't have as good a teacher. For one reason or another, you can't go out and use it directly against the Great Enemy, but you're still unusually powerful, and at least for training purposes you can show the full potential of everything you teach. And if you can ever maneuver the Enemy to face you and your student together... watch out\!

#### **Overwhelming**

*Required: Bound, Escalation, Nine Steps, or Nemesis*
*Forbidden: ?*
*Mentor: \-?*

You were more powerful than your student, once. The cost to unleashing that power against the Great Enemy would be high, or the setup extremely difficult, but if nothing else (like injuries) gets in the way, you could beat them without your student's help. Not easily, but you could. Their success may just be forcing the Enemy to face you.

### **Strategy**

*Required: ?*
*Forbidden: ?*
*Mentor: \-?*

You are excellent at laying plots and planning wars. You may not be a master of tactics to win battles, but you are excellent at choosing which battles you ought to fight and arranging to fight those, and not the others. You can maneuver enemies into fighting on unfavorable ground, at inopportune times, and with inadequate preparation. If you have the opportunity, at least.

#### **Professional**

*Required: ?*
	*Forbidden: ?*
	*Mentor: \-?*

As the saying goes, when others talk strategy, you talk logistics. But also management of other varieties; you have mastered the most powerful spell in the universe, which is 'delegation'. Your people are well-chosen and you are aware of their shortcomings and can plan around them. Your goods and forces will arrive when they are needed as long as it's physically plausible even if other people call it impossible. Napoleon would respect you as a peer.

### **Political Strategist**

*Required: ?*
*Forbidden: ?*
*Mentor: \-?*

Through long experience, you are skilled at politics, both at the individual level and maneuvering factions. It takes a great deal of skill to manipulate your enemies, and a great deal more to manipulate your friends... or at least allies. This helps less on those who are hostile to you on important fronts (say a rival country who is more concerned with when your country invaded them last generation than with the Great Enemy) and a lot less on those who are actually hostile to your central goals and lack common ground, but it's not useless, especially in determining whether that common ground exists.

#### **Diplomacy**

*Required: ?*
*Forbidden: ?*
*Mentor: \-?*

When you kill an enemy, you shift the balance of forces by one. When you turn one to your side, by two. You have mastered this important but delicate art. You can't create alliance where there's no common ground, but you can create rapport if there isn't anything existential on the line, and you can get outsize results from doing important favors for them. You're also good at determining what things are much more important to them than you. You're not going to talk down the Great Enemy but you might peel off some of its significant servants or vassals.

### **Healer**

*Required: ?*
*Forbidden: ?*
*Mentor: \-4?*
*Student: \-2?*

Everything that can be fixed with your magic or skills, you know well and can put into practice readily. You have all the necessary tools and know how to construct new ones if they are damaged, and both field medicine and long-term recovery are within your capabilities.

#### **No Dominion**

*Required: ?*
*Forbidden: ?*
*Mentor: \-?*

Even death can succumb to your efforts of healing. If you're at low power this may require you get to them fast and consume expensive materials, and/or have a long recovery time before they're fighting-fit, but you can do it, especially for those you pay close attention to and can equip in advance. At higher powers or with magic that is particularly cooperative to healing, remove all those restrictions or even call back people centuries dead.

### **PTSDone**

*Required: ?*
*Forbidden: ?*
*Mentor: \-?*

You don't get PTSD or any other trauma response. Anxiety attacks, avoidance, panic \-- none, you're good, no matter the stress. (And yes, this is retroactive. Though many general ills will be mostly fixed anyway while you get reincarnated.) You're still appropriately scared and strained in the moment, but it doesn't impair you as much as it normally would, and you recover very quickly and without lasting strain. Interrupt an assassination during dinner, clean up the mess, and sit right back down to eat like nothing happened.

#### **Field Therapist**

*Required: ?*
*Forbidden: ?*
*Mentor: \-?*

You're very good at helping others with the same problems. Sometimes very quickly, especially if you're there for what caused them and helping in the immediate aftermath. If you jump right to the date you were eating dinner with as soon as the fight's done, they'll be completely fine in ten minutes, and probably more resilient against anything similar that happens in the future to boot. Further from the trauma will be harder, but you're still a preposterously effective therapist, and let's be real any of these adventures will make your students need one at least a little.

### **Breadth of Experience**

*Required: ?*
*Forbidden: ?*
*Mentor: \-?*

You have an astonishingly broad set of practical techniques you know well enough to demonstrate, teach, or use under fire. It's not that everyone else is a narrow specialist, but if it's within your capabilities, there's very little you won't know well enough to at least demonstrate all of the basics and a few of the more powerful techniques. It helps less than you'd think with creating new things or understanding the theory, but it's very hard to throw something at you that you can't come up with a reasonable counter to, as long as it exists.

#### **Recognition**

*Required: ?*
*Forbidden: ?*
*Mentor: \-?*

You're fantastically good at recognizing other people's techniques as well. You're likely to be able to tell where someone learned to cast fireball, just from seeing it done once, and identifying disguised people by their techniques is always an option, and with preparation an easy one. This also helps substantially in training as you can identify the ways a technique or spell is being used improperly.

### **Fine Control**

*Required: ?*
*Forbidden: ?*
*Mentor: \-?*

Your control of your powers and techniques is extremely precise and efficient. You may not have enormous raw power, but you waste no energy or motion, and what power you do have is used with near-perfect targeting. As a warrior, you may hit less hard but almost never miss; as a mage, you may not be capable of the greatest workings but are very difficult to hedge out with protective magic or to counterspell.

#### **Craftsman**

*Required: Scholarship or Breadth of Experience*
*Forbidden: ?*
*Mentor: \-?*

Mastery of fine control and sufficient theoretical or practical knowledge makes you extremely good at creating tools and artifacts that encapsulate your capabilities (or perhaps those of people allied with you and assisting) into forms that allow others to use them. Magic items or ritual blessings that let the user cast your spells on demand, software suites or hardware modules that let others use your technological skills, etc.

### **Trickster**

*Required: ?*
*Forbidden: ?*
*Mentor: \-?*

Whether it's deceiving your enemies to trick them into engaging on poor terms, or tricking your allies to learn lessons or take actions they don't like but need to do, you're very good at playing Spider Anansi or Bre'er Rabbit, maneuvering people to do what you want in the guise of something else entirely. You are a master of lying and getting away with it, and incidentally also a very good storyteller.

#### **Thousand Faces**

*Required: ?*
*Forbidden: ?*
*Mentor: \-?*

You're not just good at lies and stories, but also at changing your appearance, voice, and mannerisms to appear to be someone you're not, even specific people. Whether that means you're giving people lessons anonymously or impersonating your enemies to deceive them into inconveniencing your other enemies, you're very good at it.