Commentary
And we're back! Thank you for your patience and support. I did not have a very bad time after my second vaccination shot, and I think that's in part to being able to take it easy.
Making comics might not be super strenuous compared to professional lumberjacking (the metric by which all stress must be measured), but I might have felt worse had I not been allowed to spend the day in a state of chill cloth, so thank you.
- First use of a secret identity form
There are two types of Game Masters.
Okay, there are probably more, but that seemed the thing to type. I've heard it advised that GM's help new players with their characters to the point of doing all the heavy lifting, though I can understand a GM not doing that for more experienced players (or if they all have the same amount of experience).
That said, look at Elliot. Look at that naïve newbie-scrub. Throw him a bone, The Will of Magic Itself!
The Perfect Example
And here's one reason we spent so many pages on the Cheerleadra spell: It's the perfect example of pretty much every consequence of what's going on.
This includes complicated rewordings of spells, having to do things manually that used to be automatic, short term feeling of being nerfed with potential for greater rewards in future if you know what you're doing, etc.
And yes, we'll get to the shrinking, and why The Emissary wasn't thrown off by that being a thing the same way he was with points.
Charm
Charm might have seemed natural for the Cheerleadra spell to have because of the cheerleader angle, but it's worth noting that the Cheerleadra name was chosen by others for Elliot, and that the spell wasn't supposed to have anything to do with the leading of cheers.
Granted, I think I myself forgot that when I first decided Charm was a thing, but by the time when it was in the comic itself, I had decided on its connection to the secret identity forms.
No Points?!
When you think about it, what even are points? They usually represent things, and are not tangible things themselves.
A team's score in baseball represents how many times their batters have made it around the bases.
The strength score of your RPG character represents how strong they are.
The numeric score given to a video game on a scale of one to ten represents absolute nonsense.
And Elliot's Cheerleadra points represent aspects of a build for Cheerleadra, how the magic for the spell has been distributed, and what Elliot can handle. They do not literally exist, but much like it's easier to make a character for a tabletop RPG with a character sheet, it's easier for Elliot to figure out what he's doing by imagining points.
Actually... Do character sheets make tabletop RPGs easier? They really just weigh you down with a bunch of limitations, don't they?
Might be better just to say your character's name and how cool they are. Then they're ready for anything.
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