Optional Drawbacks

If you would like more company credits, You may voluntarily take on negative consequences to earn more. Note that you will still be expected to engage fully with the testing process no matter what challenges you take on.

+1 Going in Dry- you will have no access to bindings, including love confessions or experimental lesser binding such as “don’t split the party.” You will have no retinue beyond yourself. Your Tagalongs will by default still feel positively inclined towards you (if you summon them) but there will be nothing ensuring that they stay that way beyond your own ability to not alienate them. Lures and company assets which create permanent bonds (if you acquire any) will similarly have no assurances of their continued efficacy.

+1 Speedrun- you will be given a Diegetic time limit such as severely limited and irreplaceable resources, an incurably fatal curse, or constantly escalating attempts to kill you which scale to your power level. In addition, you will be given a difficult but possible mission which you must complete or die trying in order to gain credit for this test environment.

+1 Harder Daddy- Your life will be arbitrarily difficult. You might be a hated minority (such as a mutant in the Warhammer Fantasy setting), you may start out as a wanted criminal, you might be arbitrarily hated by some powerful organization, or you might be disabled. If you negate, escape, or sufficiently compensate for your handicap, a new handicap or trouble will manifest which will be scaled to your current power level, always something major enough or invasive enough to cause meaningful inconveniences at least once every 24 hours.

+1 Are We the Baddies? - You are. Based on recent testing, we are checking a new form of PVP. You will be obligated to serve as the antagonist to another beta tester and will be cast in a villainous role. Your mission objectives will tend to be needlessly cruel, overdramatic, or stereotypical (if you have missions). You will have diminished capacity in non-stereotypically evil forms of magic, and you will be punished for any attempt to engage with non-retinue members in a good faith mutually beneficial manner. In addition, retinue members will become more “villainous” as part of the process of capture, leading to them doing evil things and squabble with one another without careful oversight. Finally, your opponent (the “hero”) will gain various subtle advantages which individually could be mistaken for strokes of good luck or narrative convenience. Your primary objective for this test will be to model villainous behavior and provide an interesting obstacle, so immediately crushing the Hero will not be considered a satisfactory test even if you start with a massive upper hand.

+1 Job Insecurity- if you don’t WANT to be promoted or are feeling particularly cocky, you can of course trade in Job Security points for Expense Account credits at a 1:1 rate.