The Norns Spin Your Fate

[Shai-Hulud]

You wake up one morning, walk out sleepily into the kitchen to put on some coffee, and there they are: the Norns.

They’ve been weaving the story of your life, and it turns out they’ve hit a snag.

They just got to the part where you get a clean bill of health and a hundred year lifespan, fully fit and vital up until the very end. But beyond that, they’re unsure which of four paths your life shoud take, each of which grants you a special power:

• Kyrptonian Eyes: You get all the vision powers of Pre-Crisis Superman, including telescopic vision, microscopic vision, x-ray vision, heat vision and—yes, we’re going there—super-hypnosis. Your eyes are also invulnerable, and you can’t be hurt by your own heat vision.
  
  
• Zeus’ Thunderbolts: You can control the weather at the level of Zeus, king of the gods, and are immune to weather effects like cold and lightning. You can also shapechange. Of course you can toss bolts-from-the-blue! Vaporize anyone you like.
  
  
• Wisdom of Odin: You have the All-Father’s special understanding of the universe, including knowledge of higher planes and the true nature of men’s souls. If you become a judge or diplomat, you excel, and you can see through lies and deception.
  
  
• Mage’s Magnificent Mansion: You can cast the spell at will, 30th level of ability, 3.5e, with no duration limit. If you recast the spell, the door to the Mansion moves, but the inside is still the same with all your stuff there. You can also cast all zero-level Wizard spells at will, 3.5e.

If you explain to the Norns that you want none of these abilities, that they should leave you an ordinary person, they show you that fifth path, heading off into horror, pain and tragedy.

So how should they spin you?

[The Chou Lives]

Zeus. Feeling petty and wanna zap people.

[Shai-Hulud]

Zeus. Feeling petty and wanna zap people.

And after you're through annihilating your enemies, you could refreeze the North Pole, save the world. Don't know about you, but I'm tired of all these heat waves. It's simply so difficult to look sharp when you're sweating like a pig....

[The Chou Lives]

Yeah I would use my weather powers to try to regulate the world, and shape shift into men (not animals.) to have way with puny human women.

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

Cover yourselves in knives with DnD magic.

You'll look pretty sharp then.

[The Chou Lives]

Cover yourselves in knives with DnD magic.

You'll look pretty sharp then.

.....


: Zeus Bolt to face.:

[T51R]

Let's see if their loom goes up to 12,000rpm first.

[Blackid]

Gimme the Wisdom.... love to help people and get wealthy beyond my wildest dreams at that.

[Basara]

Control weather and shape shift? Holy crap, that's a lot of power!

There are so many ways I can use shape shift, both to make money and do whatever the hell I want.

Yeah, I'm going with Zeus' Thunderbolts.

[Photon Torme]

I'll take the Zeus package. Shapeshifting would be insanely fun and protecting the world from Catastrophic weather would be fullfilling.

[Sol_M]

Came across this and had some fun thinking about the potential here.

You wake up one morning, walk out sleepily into the kitchen to put on some coffee, and there they are: the Norns.

They’ve been weaving the story of your life, and it turns out they’ve hit a snag.

They just got to the part where you get a clean bill of health and a hundred year lifespan, fully fit and vital up until the very end. But beyond that, they’re unsure which of four paths your life shoud take, each of which grants you a special power:

At this point, I politely tell them that they have be confused with someone else (probably someone that doesn't exist, because I can't think of any hundred year olds with perfect health).

Analyzing the abilities themselves though:

• Kyrptonian Eyes: You get all the vision powers of Pre-Crisis Superman, including telescopic vision, microscopic vision, x-ray vision, heat vision and—yes, we’re going there—super-hypnosis. Your eyes are also invulnerable, and you can’t be hurt by your own heat vision.

Probably most useful for day to day life is super hypnosis.

It's also the most easily abused one, so yeah. Assuming you have no scruples, you should be good to go as far as becoming the next god in this world.

The rest of them are pretty useless unless you have some very advanced knowledge of many scientific fields. If you do, I suppose you could become a godlike surgeon, able to precisely perform surgeries with super xray microscopic heat vision. Or perhaps a nanomechanic? An astronomer?

Either way, 20/20 vision throughout your life is not too bad either.

Upsides:

- Physically quite powerful. Nothing too ridiculous though, especially considering the weak defences
- Easy to get away with anything, take over the world, become wealthy, etc.
- Can really save lives/help people immensely if one chooses to practice the appropriate disciplines.

Downsides:

- Does require you to disregard scruples, at least to some extent, to get any mileage out of the most powerful ability.
- Vulnerable to anything that affects non-optical parts of the body.

Pretty mild downsides, all things considered.

Rating: 4/5 stars

• Zeus’ Thunderbolts: You can control the weather at the level of Zeus, king of the gods, and are immune to weather effects like cold and lightning. You can also shapechange. Of course you can toss bolts-from-the-blue! Vaporize anyone you like.

Or single handedly solve the world's energy crisis, which is probably much more important. Slightly less urgently, but more trivially, you can also solve climate crises.

Or wipe out humanity, whatever. Not much use being a god if your followers are dead though.

I like how it's called Zeus Thunderbolts, but you also get his shapechanging for some reason.

Again, shapeshifting is pretty abusable (less so than super hypnosis, which is mostly automatically considered abuse if you use it) so you can get away with anything.

Zeus level shapechanging is especially egregious since it let's you turn into animals and trees and get their abilities as well. You can fly or swim anywhere you want, have vastly enhanced senses, etc. Also, Zeus shapechanging works on others as well, so there's that.

You could go one step further in playing god and slowly turn human kind into something else, making them physically and mentally superior over time. If you wanted to go down that route, anyway.

Upsides:

- Physically very powerful, more than any of the others here.
- Can be set for life without resorting to overtly evil activities or working too hard.
- Can travel more freely anywhere than anything else here.
- Zeus level shapechanging utterly breaks puny stuff like aging/disease, which I'm pretty sure isn't intentional, but still including it because it means everything else now has a vulnerability downside while this doesn't.

Downsides:

Eh...nothing really. The best I can think of are:

- Somewhat abusable.
- Poor understanding of how weather works result in accidentally wiping out a lot of people.

Rating: 5/5 stars

• Wisdom of Odin: You have the All-Father’s special understanding of the universe, including knowledge of higher planes and the true nature of men’s souls. If you become a judge or diplomat, you excel, and you can see through lies and deception.

Some of this is far too vague to actually mean anything.

What if this knowledge entails that there are no higher planes and souls don't exist? On paper this could be good, but without any knowledge of how things actually work in this universe, this just isn't all that useful.

Being able to see through lies and deception is pretty good, but it's only useful for specific occupations. Certainly, it seems more way more useful than the other stuff.

Is it going to be more useful than super hypnosis, or shapeshifting and functionally unlimited energy reserves? Probably not, unless it leads to some knowledge that lets the person become immortal/transcend to a higher plane of existence, which...isn't suggested by anything.

If this was less vague about exactly what you could learn and accomplish, it would have a higher rating, but as it stands...

Rating: 2/5 stars

• Mage’s Magnificent Mansion: You can cast the spell at will, 30th level of ability, 3.5e, with no duration limit. If you recast the spell, the door to the Mansion moves, but the inside is still the same with all your stuff there. You can also cast all zero-level Wizard spells at will, 3.5e.

Plus side:

- A mini personal realm is always good, especially with the cost of housing these days.
- A lot of people just want a pocket dimension like space.
- Servants keep the place managed, saving time on chores.

Downside:
- A There might not be a duration limit, but unless the food reserves are still limited as far as I can tell. Once you run out of food, you need to get more. Servants can't help with this.
- It doesn't come with all the benefits of a modern home and the servants don't do work you can monetize, so you still need funds to live comfortably.
- It's not really all that flexible as far as pocket dimensions go. You can change the layout once, and that's about it. Can't affect the laws of the realm, etc.

I think the best way to make money off it is to just rent it out. Couple of things to keep in mind however:
- Take payments in cash, obviously, since putting this place down on paper is going to be a problem.
- Since there's only one entrance, security is an issue. You should only rent out to people you trust and design the layout in a way that ensures unhindered access for you in all situations as well as ensuring ways of evicting tenants that you want to get rid of.

This is a clear downgrade compared to the first 2 options where you can get extremely wealthy or outright play a god very easily, but if you really want a free place to live/really want a pocket dimension, this is your best bet. As such, the rating is more in the purely objective usefulness sense. It could be a bit higher if one has personal preference for this sort of ability.

Rating: 2/5 stars

If you explain to the Norns that you want none of these abilities, that they should leave you an ordinary person, they show you that fifth path, heading off into horror, pain and tragedy.

So...like everyone else's life?

So how should they spin you?

Like a top!

[Shai-Hulud]

Also, Zeus shapechanging works on others as well, so there's that.

- Zeus level shapechanging utterly breaks puny stuff like aging/disease, which I'm pretty sure isn't intentional, but still including it because it means everything else now has a vulnerability downside while this doesn't.

You don't get the ability to transfigure others, just yourself.

You don't have to worry about disease, period, the Norns have set you up with 100 years of health.

They've also stated that you die when you reach one hundred. So you can do the Zeus stuff like become a bull or ball of light, but this doesn't reset your DNA clock ... which you don't really have to worry about anyway for the duration.

[Shai-Hulud]

- A There might not be a duration limit, but unless the food reserves are still limited as far as I can tell. Once you run out of food, you need to get more. Servants can't help with this.
- It doesn't come with all the benefits of a modern home and the servants don't do work you can monetize, so you still need funds to live comfortably.

The Norns read your mind, laugh, and tell you that no, you won't run out of food.

The place is furnished and contains sufficient foodstuffs to serve a nine-course banquet to a dozen people per caster level.

The Norns clarify that the food production is extended along with the duration: you get a banquet amount of food each day. At 30th level, (12)(30) = 360. So, each day a nine-course banquet sufficient for 360 people.

I suppose if you wanted to make a living, you could open up a restaurant and ferry food out of the Mansion. Your overhead would be pretty low.

They also tell you that as part of the ability to reconfigure the Mansion, you can create electrical outlets that work. If the Mansion can create food, light and servants, it can power your computer, flatscreen and dvd player.

Sorry none of that was clear. I didn't want to clog up the OP with all sorts of legal minutiae. Mea culpa, I guess.

[Sol_M]

You don't get the ability to transfigure others, just yourself.

You don't have to worry about disease, period, the Norns have set you up with 100 years of health.

They've also stated that you die when you reach one hundred. So you can do the Zeus stuff like become a bull or ball of light, but this doesn't reset your DNA clock ... which you don't really have to worry about anyway for the duration.

A ball of light can't die though, no matter how "old" it is. :P

I suppose you magically explode and vanish when your time's up, but that's literally some external factor outside this specific ability that brings about your demise, rather than the ability itself being flawed.

Transforming others is a pretty minor thing anyway, considering the legal issues.

Sadly, this is where logic tends to fall apart unless we assume that being in perfect health till 100 means that you're also immune to diseases somehow. And accidents. And general wear and tear. Otherwise, you can't really live to a 100 in perfect health.

Hmm, I guess the 5 rating stands, since it needs a specific "At 100, you die no matter what." clause independent of the ability in order to not do what it would otherwise do.

The Norns read your mind, laugh, and tell you that no, you won't run out of food.



The Norns clarify that the food production is extended along with the duration: you get a banquet amount of food each day. At 30th level, (12)(30) = 360. So, each day a nine-course banquet sufficient for 360 people.

I suppose if you wanted to make a living, you could open up a restaurant and ferry food out of the Mansion. Your overhead would be pretty low.

They also tell you that as part of the ability to reconfigure the Mansion, you can create electrical outlets that work. If the Mansion can create food, light and servants, it can power your computer, flatscreen and dvd player.

Sorry none of that was clear. I didn't want to clog up the OP with all sorts of legal minutiae. Mea culpa, I guess.

Ah. that makes much more sense.

So in that case, yes, you're pretty set without any real effort on your part. It's still kinda inferior to the first two by a large margin, but in some ways it's also better.

And you could still make more money off it if you really wanted.

So I'd say that would bump the rating up a notch, up to 3.

[Dalak]

The Norns read your mind, laugh, and tell you that no, you won't run out of food.



The Norns clarify that the food production is extended along with the duration: you get a banquet amount of food each day. At 30th level, (12)(30) = 360. So, each day a nine-course banquet sufficient for 360 people.

I suppose if you wanted to make a living, you could open up a restaurant and ferry food out of the Mansion. Your overhead would be pretty low.

They also tell you that as part of the ability to reconfigure the Mansion, you can create electrical outlets that work. If the Mansion can create food, light and servants, it can power your computer, flatscreen and dvd player.

Sorry none of that was clear. I didn't want to clog up the OP with all sorts of legal minutiae. Mea culpa, I guess.

Ah. that makes much more sense.

So in that case, yes, you're pretty set without any real effort on your part. It's still kinda inferior to the first two by a large margin, but in some ways it's also better.

And you could still make more money off it if you really wanted.

So I'd say that would bump the rating up a notch, up to 3.

If the plugs provide enough electricity you can wire it up to the grid and sell that too.