Caves of Qud

Caves of Qud

WM Extended Mutations [Beta Edition]
♡ Lilith ♡ 31 Mar, 2023 @ 2:48pm
Psybrachiomancy Explained: Psi Charges, and Just How Many Arms Can I Get?
Short Version: Anyone can manifest 1 extra pair of arms with the power. Getting another pair requires a moderate investment in ego and a few character levels. Toughness helps a little too.
Getting your third pair requires a high level character with a huge investment in ego. Costs scale up heavily with each new pair.

Intro
I'm not the creator, just a fan of the mod. This little guide should help you build better characters with psybrachiomancy.
Here's my findings after looking through the code and doing some basic testing. Thanks to Winged Monotone for the great mod. Also thanks to them for giving some advice on my (now defunct) Scrapbot AB-I mod a few years ago. If they have any objections or corrections, I'd be happy to change what I've done here.


Math and Arms
Psybrachiomancy tests against your maximum psi charges to determine how many times you can manifest an additional pair of arms. In game testing got me these numbers.
Number of Extra Pairs:Max Psi Charges Required
1:0
2:6
3:24

Or, to translate that to a level 1 character (with 18 toughness),
Number of Extra Pairs:Ego Required
1: 0
2: 24
3: 56

I didn't test further, because getting the 56 ego for the third pair of arms is already well beyond what most players will achieve. The only character I would estimate to get 3 or more extra pairs of arms would be high level ego-centric characters.

Your max psi charges should equal
Ego modifier + (.5 * Toughness modifier) + (character level * ego bonus * .1)
Willpower affects psi recharge rate, but does not affect max psi charges. So it has no effect on psybrachiomancy. There's also a debuff if you try to manifest more arm pairs than your willpower modifier, but it is temporary and easily ignored. It likely only has an effect if you need to manifest an arm after losing it in combat.

One thing I can't easily test for is character levels and how they affect max psi charges gained. At a glance, it looks like you add your ego modifier to psi charges once every ten levels.
So an ego 30 (+7 modifier) esper, at level 20, would have a max psi of about 22. Sorry I can't be more precise. There's too many moving parts, considering toughness gain and other factors. Also it calculates per level, but I simplify to per 10 levels.


Build Advice
Esper: It could be a solid mutation if you want to be able to hold and wear more items.
Akimbo Gunslinger: The new arms DO grant missile weapon slots, so this is a strong contender to replace or supplement Many Arms or Chimera. Though it would require a big investment in ego and probably waiting a few levels for the second extra pair.
Melee Dual Wield: I don't see much synergy here, since your penetration stat would be strength for your default fleshy arms, but ego for your psychic arms. MAD (multiple attribute distribution) problems. Though I suppose anyone could benefit from a few extra slots.
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Winged_Monotone  [developer] 15 Nov, 2023 @ 9:28pm 
oh! I didn't even see this, so sorry x.x I don't know why but my notification system just completely overlooked this, thank you for looking into things and helping out all the players and for the compliments of course it means a lot. Maybe I can try to expound on some things and explore some of the mods build:

Originally posted by ♡ Lilith ♡:
Short Version: Anyone can manifest 1 extra pair of arms with the power. Getting another pair requires a moderate investment in ego and a few character levels. Toughness helps a little too.
Getting your third pair requires a high level character with a huge investment in ego. Costs scale up heavily with each new pair.

Mhmm, this is right! So the scaling for your starting Psi Charges is based off your Ego modifier but can also be affected by your characters Toughness as well, typically, a higher Ego and Toughness will grant you more Psi and though improving your Ego definitely helps its also a good idea to increase your toughness as it also acts as a mediator to the increase regarding charges vs your current ego.

Originally posted by ♡ Lilith ♡:
Math and Arms
Psybrachiomancy tests against your maximum psi charges to determine how many times you can manifest an additional pair of arms. In game testing got me these numbers.
Number of Extra Pairs:Max Psi Charges Required
1:0
2:6
3:24

Yep, so the "OG" Psybrachiomancy was kinda wild, you use to be able to get almost double the arms you can spawn now lol, so I decided to choose harder limits for the arms that are 'feasibly' reachable in game while letting players investing in the Ego-Meta and game to do some wild stuff if they want too.

Originally posted by ♡ Lilith ♡:
Your max psi charges should equal
Ego modifier + (.5 * Toughness modifier) + (character level * ego bonus * .1)
Willpower affects psi recharge rate, but does not affect max psi charges. So it has no effect on psybrachiomancy. There's also a debuff if you try to manifest more arm pairs than your willpower modifier, but it is temporary and easily ignored. It likely only has an effect if you need to manifest an arm after losing it in combat.

Yep, so Psi-exhaustion is if and when you summon a set of arms/use any psi heavy ability that uses psi equal to (I think) 80% of your current maximum Psi, the psi-burdened state which lowers your willpower was another little balance thing I threw in as the arms were strong in terms of combining with multi-attack and the fact they can wack early mobs pretty good. Thing is the affect is not supposed to be temporary I think I fixed that its supposed to remain so long as you are utilizing more than the 80% of your current Max Psi.

Originally posted by ♡ Lilith ♡:
One thing I can't easily test for is character levels and how they affect max psi charges gained. At a glance, it looks like you add your ego modifier to psi charges once every ten levels.
So an ego 30 (+7 modifier) esper, at level 20, would have a max psi of about 22. Sorry I can't be more precise. There's too many moving parts, considering toughness gain and other factors. Also it calculates per level, but I simplify to per 10 levels.

Easiest way to think of it is that whenever you level, your current maximum charges become:

(Current Ego Modifier + 1) + (Toughness Mod ÷ 2) + (One's Place of Level * Ego Modifier.)


I went with this to help scale down the growth of Psi vs the early versions. Before Willpower used to add to your current Psi as well but I felt the psi-growth was too fast so I relegated it to regen speed making it important for other abilities.

Hope this helped and thanks a lot again, really appreciate the deep dive!
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