jennafans | "But I don't want to have Damaged anymore!" - a discussion on changing the worst powers of the Arcs (Reply)

extrapolations based on a brief conversation with Jenna Moran

One of the common questions I've seen is that of how to "remove" or "undo" an arc. Most of these questions are about the arcs with life-ruining negative effects - usually the Blasphemy of Wounded Angel, or Damaged from Accursed, but someone sufficiently determined may demand to be released from, say, Gatekeeper's Oblivious. Jenna Moran has not given official rules on how to "remove" or "undo" arcs, and I think that's for philosophical reasons. But I keep seeing people asking about this, so I'll address it.

To "remove" or "replace" an arc from your character sheet is a deeply metaphysically fraught prospect. An Arc is earned through your history, and as such, to remove an Arc is to cut out that part of your history. And to replace an arc is to reinterpret that entire part of your history. So there's good reasons why it's not allowed.

But you can change the shape of your scars. And that's what I'll talk about today.

General Cases

You can, and are expected to, use quest rewards that say to "adjust a miraculous power" towards modifying the miraculous powers you get off an Arc.

This is the reason why the Chuubo's character sheets given in GMD are complete restatements of the entire Miraculous Arc's powers in character-specific terms, complete with new names, rather than just fill-in-the-blank sheets referring to the canon Arcs. You are expected to use quest rewards to eventually change the effects of these powers, give them extra uses, or otherwise rewrite them, and that's why they are reproduced in full.

Now, the thing is, the core book stashes all the quest rewards behind a header saying "Miraculous Perks and Other Benefits". Some people seem to misinterpret this to mean that everything in that section must only work on your perk slots, and that your character sheets themselves are otherwise immutable. And this is mostly true - most of the suggested quest rewards do go in your Perk slots. But the thing is, if a Perk power or power-modification stays on your sheet long enough, and you use it often enough, I think it'll eventually "stick". It just wouldn't make sense for you to earn the power to manifest flowers, use it every day for a year, and yet have it in a constant state of metaphysical flux because your Perk slots might become too full to keep it!

In game mechanics, attach an anytime quest to using a power or power-up that you want to move out of your Perk slots, and then replace that quest's reward with making it permanent. How big is that anytime quest, you ask? Depends on how big the power/power-up is. If it rewrites an existing power slightly, 15 XP. If it's a huge, flashy, new Imperial Miracle, 45-60 XP. You're going to have to interpolate in the middle yourselves.

(Sometimes I find that I've slid into relying on a Perk-power without realizing, and I'm pretty sure you can't retroactively start a quest, so I'd discuss with the HG and then copy and paste it underneath the other relevant header on the document. Then again, I'm known for being extremely cavalier about these kinds of rules, so that probably shouldn't work in most games.)

You can stop using powers entirely and leave that part of your character sheet just dangling there, or seal them away behind strong Afflictions or Wishes.

If you absolutely, positively do not want the World-Breaker's Hand anymore, you cannot actually erase it from your sheet... but what you can do is earn a high-level Affliction that states that you will never use it anymore. Or get someone to pronounce a Wish that you cannot use the power anymore, and not take a Wound to stop it from taking effect. Now, many of these kinds of powers have inherent Auctoritas or Strike that would prevent them from being suppressed. Others might not say they actively prevent themselves from being suppressed, but it's possible that in your game, or in your metaphysics, they'll tend to work their way free anyway. Please use your judgement.

Specific Cases

The Blasphemy of Wounded Angel can be released and then sealed away.

Blasphemy already has a clause, right in the corebook, that once released, it could theoretically be suppressed with sufficient work. And in this case, I think "sufficient work" could be fulfilled by, while having your Blasphemy out, doing a Quest to explore and understand its structure. And then you could use the reward at the end of the Quest to implement a semipermanent way to keep it under control even as you start healing Divine Health Levels again.

Note that, if you fully seal the Blasphemy, I don't think you can take any new Empowered Wounds ever again. You can keep the ones you already have, or you can heal them, but without that threat looming over your shoulder, you probably wouldn't be able to drag that level of power out of your wounds again. You can still take the ordinary sort of Wounds, and those Wounds still have powers attached, but they're much smaller. This is roughly analogous to how Jenna's Accursed revision has clauses saying you lose access to most of the highest-level powers if you manage to suppress Damaged.

The Sanctuary/Damaged/Nourishment triangle from Accursed can be modified beyond recognition with sufficient work and quest rewards.

For example, the list of quest rewards for Otherworldly 4 quests includes a Power-Up perk "extend[ing] the flexibility of a miraculous ability". You could use this on Nourishment to have its MP-replenishing properties work outside your Sanctuary in, say, another place you've made yourself at home in. And if you keep doing this, eventually it'll matter less.

Caveats

Actually, "replacing" your arcs might be possible... sort of.

There are a few effects that do end up reinterpreting your history in a way profound enough to force your Arcs to change. The moment of an Excrucian breakthrough is one of the clearest ones. Being revealed to be a Mimic can do this too. And on exceptionally rare occasions, Illusion 5 may resolve with you realizing that you were meant to be using a different character sheet all along. (I have seen that last one exactly once.) However, this is rare and not really worth angling towards - because what results is usually worse for you.

It is metaphysically fraught to seal a core power of an arc you are actively pursuing.

Now, I can't claim to know how your character or your game works. But if you are (say) actively pursuing Accursed, it feels incorrect to continue to have your new and "fixed" identity even as your cracks widen. And I think that means that, if you pursue any further Arc levels in one of these Arcs that come with a fundamental cost, any previous attempts to seal your demons will be increasingly unreliable as you continue the arc. And any such sealing/modification will be completely reset and removed when your Arc Trait increases.

This could, of course, be used on purpose. If for some absurd reason you want that.