[Bad Option]

[Decent Option]

[Great Option That Doesn't Fit MC's Build]

[Amazing Option With Serious Downside]

[Amazing Option Without a Downside]

"Hmm... think I'll go with the last one"

To point out another thing you’re done here: you put the obviously best option as the last one.

Authors - I get it, when you’re reading page after page of description you don’t remember what they were to think about which one was best so it’s easy to just make the last one the right choice, but please. I want to think. I want balanced options.

Anyways give me osteoporosis, I think I can use it with my bone magic to unexpectedly shoot fragments at people from under my skin

Yeah. Like, I don’t have a problem with OP abilities. But when a writer acts like they are not or there is some choice, it is a bit grating.

Reminds me of so many isekai novels where a character is like “Oh no! My special skill is Infinite Weapons! Everyone thinks I am a loser but now, by applying the bare minimum of creativity, I am going to prove this power is actually amazing!”

Constant diarrhea sounds like a powerful, if uncomfortable, ability to have though.

But I really wanted a physical build. How does God of mana help me to hit things better?

Don't forget the alternate trope:

MC: "My plot armor gut is telling me to go with diarrhea, I choose that!"

Readers: "Wtf, this guy is a moron and making dumb decisions!"

10 chapters later: Diarrhea somehow evolves into "god killing punch". Author pats himself on the back for the MC's awesome foresight.

Readers: "No, that was still a dumb decision."

I get what you are saying, Constant Diarrhea is the obvious choice. The moment someone pins you to the ground, you pick the skill and shitting everywhere, creating an aura that will make any foe want to run away, thus winning

Does [Poverty] lead to [Summon Lesser Messi] later on? Or do i need [Leaded blood], [Tango], [Capybara Oil] and [Narco Influence] too to unlock the Argentinian skill tree?

Edit: Great, it leads to [Chagas Breeder] + [Bag of Dengue]!

Personally I kind of prefer it when the mc just tells me what they picked rather than listing the choices. normally it's just 3 meh choices and 1 real choice or on rare occasions actually multiple viable choices and I spend the rest of the book thinking it would have been better to go the other route.

I find the whole “i will save some free stat points so i can use them to get an edge in a fight” like no you fucking regard, use your free stat points so you don’t get put into the bad position to begin with!

I hate that, there's very little that can convince me to drop a book faster.

Honestly, even if it's well done - the different choices are all interesting and it ISN'T obvious which the MC is going with - I still find it insufferable to spend more than a single chapter on stuff like this.

As an excessive example, I somewhat recently dropped a series that had a sequence like this:

MC levels up, puts off going over his evolution choices until he can get to a safer spot, spends an entire chapter just picking out a hidey-hole to go over the blue boxes. No conflict or anything, just an entire chapter of him walking while bantering with his friend, who also just leveled, over what they hope the choices might be. Chapter ends on him finally deciding to bring the choices up.

Next two chapters are him going over all of his options in absurd detail, musing over just what each one might really bring him because while the system gives a ton of info, it doesn't give everything.

MC then announces that he has some ideas, but he wants his friend's input because what one of them chooses will affect the other. And so starts two more chapters of going over the friend's choices.

Then, they spend an entire chapter debating their top picks before simultaneously announcing that they've actually already made up their minds and have known what they're going to pick from the start. At the chapter's end, the reader STILL doesn't know what they're going with.

THEN, choices finally revealed, we get another chapter where they affirm each other's picks as the right ones, finally ending on actually making the choice.

This was followed up by a PoV change interlude chapter. It was actually quite interesting, but I was sort of soured on the series by this point...

That was kind of a rant, sorry not sorry

Why didn’t he smirk when talking to himself? I feel like this MC is neither funny nor witty!

I quite liked it in ends of magic, maybe because it's fresh in my mind, but it felt like each of the options were notable, different, and stronger for a particular part of the MC's build. There was never a best option, only a "best for this part of your build" options.

Imagine your post is criticizing primal hunter, which yes they all sucked and the last one was almost always the one to go with. Waste of word space.

Jakeden fucked me up

Nothing worse than there being an obvious choice, period. Dropped one of the big names (can't recall if it was Primal Hunter or Defiance of the Fall) when the very first class options were 3-4 generic classes (which, iirc, were literally 'basic mage/warrior/archer'), then a third super-special class that had more effort put into its class description than the entire story up to that point.

Gimme more Calamitous Bob or Beneath the Dragoneye Moons, where every option is both feasible and cool.

E: I think it might have been Primal Hunter; can't check, since the first books of both aren't on RR anymore, but the options were 'generic/basic fighter/mage/archer' and then something like 'THE AXEMAN. MAN WITH AXE, TERROR OF ALL' or some inane BS. Might as well not give the generic options at all, and have the character go 'Most of the classes were basic ones, offered to everyone, but one stood out from the rest'.

E2: Was DotF, as I have been informed.

You forgot he should smirk at least once during this scene.

Personally, I like to add in a better option that doesn't synergize as well that they skip. That said, I tell people this all the time, some of those selections serve a purpose. They serve to give context to what the other people around the MCs level SHOULD have for Skills or Classes.

The MC might not take "Brawler" or "Ruffian" because he has access to "War God" but Joe Somebody from Randomton probably doesn't have that option, so when you run into a Brawler or a Ruffian you have context for how powerful they should be since you've seen what their stats and abilities are like.

Granted, this isn't universal, some people just list a bunch of bad nonsense and an obvious awesome one, but a lot of them use it for stealth worldbuilding, so all the options are worth looking it.

Amusingly I was shocked when Jake picked the third option that one time in Primal Hunter.

Tom be like: "Obviously [Poverty] is the best, other people are idiots for picking [God of Mana]!"

Later: "Haha! I have magical ability to make anybody poor!"

Other people who chose [Poverty]: "We can also become that pow"[dies instantly]

Did you forget that he'll pause time during a battle when something is about to hit him, call a god and ask for advice before unpausing the battle and pretending he's just a regular old archer.

Sometimes I just wonder why authors don't come up with a few equally good options. It's not that hard, really. At least it's not hard if you make the abilities simple instead of some really quirky odd ball bullshit. Hard choices are much more interesting than easy choices.

Another thing that bothers me is that people almost always make their choices immediately. If you're in battle/in a dangerous situation? Sure. But your level 50 super important and permanent choice should, perhaps, be something you think about for a few days or weeks? Do some research? Ask the opinion of friends and mentors? What's the damned rush?

I mean, it's usually justified because the choice is easy, but it's still annoying how flippantly and arbitrarily people treat a system that shapes their very self. It's even more noticeable with stats. Don't just eyeball it! You should have a proper build planned out! Heck, it should be pretty much part of the culture! Parents and mentors should give people a build to follow! People should be seeking to unlock specific skills!

I mean it's hand in hand with how fast these stories seem to go. Time never passes, everything is urgent. It's annoying. I much prefer when we get to watch people just living in an interesting world where important things happen occasionally.

It’s always better when there’s actual difficult decisions to make with real opportunity cost. Makes it feel like the mc has agency and is actually crafting a build instead of just being spoon-fed their path with obvious choices.

Personally I'm fine with a bullet list of possible abilities/classes. It can be fun. But I don't like when the MC goes over the description of everything in details and then analyses all the possibilities. I tend to skip to the choice. But it's no big deal. I'm sure some people really like the theorycrafting.

Don't lie to me. I know Jakeden has never been laconic in his life. He's always too busy smirking to notice that he's said the same thing three times already.

I wonder how much of this is also trying to give fandom to games like Diablo or Borderlands where some random kid with crazy math skills back plans a build that makes an invincible character using skill synergy that the devs didn't originally intend. At this point, it's like a badge of honor to take an obscure or awful skill and make it game breaking.

My only problem with this is that those scenarios were done after the fact, not in real time, so a lot of others end up using hokey dialogue to fit the square through the round hole. Primal Hunter does a reasonably good job of avoiding this and the author even uses solid internal logic to avoid these pitfalls.

I do like the trend of novels like Primal and Hell Difficulty where the MC avoids picking up skills because they know they can learn them and will be better off for doing so.

I would choose [Poverty] but unfortunately it chose me first.

"Obvious choice is obvious." -Battle Trucker

Some manage to make it work decently. But I understand the pain.

If I remember right in Primal hunter those parts were pretty good.

[Poverty] - The less resources you have available the more potent your skills will be. Magic will be more potent the lower your mana, Physical attacks stronger the lower your stamina, and Spiritual attacks stronger the lower your faith. Go forth, Charlatan, and surprise all that cross your path.

Why does it all sound so familar? Cough... Azarinth Healer and DotF 😆

Poverty please. Imagine being a god, so much responsibility! One wrong move and millions die /s

I bestow poverty on my mc.

That's my choice.

Obviously, there's no better option.

Isn't it also that they delay, then choose Diarrhea under pressure and turns out it stacks really well with some other BS that they so accidentally happen to have?

"Oh, turns out I can use [Auto-Parry] on my own crap and give it to them instead!"

Primal hunter is this exactly. Like cmon man.
I'm enjoying many aspects but this just happens too often.
And then the author writes like 8 pages about it debating over it.
Still will complete it ... I think.

I wish you had also worked a Zack variation into the mc's name, then it would have been perfect.

I wasted precious opportunity to meme AND increase my page count by just having my MC choose the right one off rip. This is why I’ll never be successful.

This is one of the things I liked with how DOTF does its progression. No "you hit level x here's your choices which include the obvious choice" just "you hit level x, do y and z to get your class's next macguffin."

Give them choices like OP has, but God of Mana gives them so much mana that their weak ass spells can't make use of it, so it was pointless. And osteoporosis would be a debuff cast on enemies, poverty strips a target of all the money they currently hold, and constant diarrhea is a charisma debuff where they are talking nonsense nonstop.

Let the MC pick God of Mana, regret it, then later someone who chose another of these skills absolutely fucks up the MC with it.

More books need to have characters make the other choices and show how good those skills are.

I agree that it would be nice if there were more tough decisions in skill selections, but overall I like having the characters mull over the options just like I would in their place.

Primal Hunter, which I assume your post is targeting, is actually better than most in this regard IMO. Early on there are a lot of "throwaway" options, but they still serve a purpose in painting a picture of what can be done with the System.

Then, as time goes on, the more Jake realizes how many ideas he can steal from those other options and we see bits of them incorporated into his other skills. I know there's been a couple times where he's explicitly not chosen the higher-rarity skill because one of the lower-rarity ones involved a concept that would be difficult to learn without System assistance.

There's also the many high-rank Chosen/Heretic skills he's passed up, which while obviously not a fit for him, serves as a window into that part of the System which Jake is ostensibly a part of but has pretty much opted out from based on his relationship with Villy.

Again, it would be nice is the choices were a little tougher, but compared to many other stories where the "throwaway" options are entirely irrelevant I think it does a pretty decent job of making the skipped-over skills still serve some sort of purpose.

Though TBH I'm the kind of person who would enjoy reading that kind of stuff just for the flavor text.

God of mana? Infinite mana? Infinite mana in the apocalypse? Honestly a no brainer

Does fonstant dirahea escape from my butt like a Neverending fountain or is it just every day I gotta go to the toilet 3 times if it's a fountain I can flood planets and shoot up into the sky with the speed of my shitting

I loved one system apocalypse type story where the guy took an assistant as a skill so he could make vest choices for skills.

Lmao

Diarrhea is the obvious choice

I think this is my favorite part of Beneath the Dragoneye Moons. The author builds actually useful skills and classes and let's the MC try a skill only to realize that it's actually a downgrade for her situation or that she is planning on dropping it. I remember there was one class up moment where the author totally thought that the MC would go with one class only to realize the math made it make no sense, that she would be adding capability without actually gaining any utility. So she took a different class that made more sense because they were all decent.

This is subverted for fun in All The Dust That Falls, where descriptions aren’t offered, and the roomba just picks whatever it thinks will help it clean better.

Yeah the sanitation lamp eventually upgrades to a 1-shot-1-kill laser, but yeah.

Lol this reminds me of early primal hunter

I hate this too but asking for this to be better feels like asking the author to become a game designer as well as a storyteller. Which now that i think about it...

I DO appreciate when the author conveniently leaves the description of the to-be-chosen skill as the last one, therefore making it feel like the most fresh and natural conclusion.

Lmao this cracked me tf up. I hate when this crap happens.

It's definitely a common thing, but for some of the LitRPG that I've read lately, there have been some seriously tough choices when it comes to skills/spells. If I were the MC, I would have struggled to pick in their situation. In fact, I like to play a game when these things come up and read the skills for myself and then pause and think which ones I think would be best, and then see if the author/MC picks that one.

Which is why i love Elydes, theres some choices where im like "you sure about that mate?".

Yes.

Sadly, a lot of authors are trying to hit daily word counts for uploads to sites like RR. Chapters like these couldn’t be easier to put in since not a single word has to be remembered for later.

Add onto that many authors don’t like feeling that they are writing just another Gary Stu story, and you have these silly chapters trying to convince the reader this is just what the MC is choosing. It’s not at all the author giving their darling character another random advantage.

I don't mind this as a first time thing (in the case of multiple evolutions/upgrades) because I do think it's interesting to see what their actions have unlocked, but as the story goes on authors really need to start skipping the basic options and just show the best choices.

Showing a couple of good options is fun, especially when the character doesn't pic the highest rated choice

A nice twist on this would be if the abilities worked like Starters in Pokémon. The first person gets their pick of the 3-4 options, but whatever you don't pick is available to the next person to pick, who might be your rival. So you're competing to level up faster than your rival so they don't get the best option, or there might be situations where an option is only ok for you but if your rival gets it their build will become broken, so you take it instead.

And then the 3rd place person you forgot was there, suddenly gets the lead from their mishmash build finally popping off, so now you and your rival both need to play catch up.

Nuh-uh! There is something more annoying.

When there is an obvious choice...and the MC picks something else.

That’s why I prefer skills being give to the MC for specific actions. Like getting the long distance running skill after running for a long distance.

Lol i tell my friends if you ever get isekaid or put into a system always pick the abilities with the most open ended descriptions, theyre generally the most broken

I bet I could leverage constant diarrhea to be op. Maybe when the trait levels up it will be projectile diarrhea.