The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest.
-Albert Einstein
After Perry dropped off a man-sized chunk of prawn he’d snagged off the beach to the man-hunters, he went back to his house and got verbally reamed for a good half hour for nearly getting people killed at the beach.
His mom for going too far, his dad for not going far enough.
Perry just wondered how they knew.
By the time Perry finally went to bed, he was exhausted and passed out in a matter of seconds.
There was so much to do tomorrow.
***Tomorrow***
Perry inspected the seedy 2-story motel.
The walls were thin, but strong and durable, the rooms chintzy looking. The water pressure, internet and electricity was good, though. Perry didn’t bother making those poor to maintain the façade.
There was an empty pool in the back, just waiting to be filled up, surrounded on three sides by the back of the motel, offering it a fair amount of privacy despite being right next to the road.
The gym had weights for civvies, and bowflexes with steel cable and spring steel as thick as Perry’s arm for the bruisers.
The rec room had pool, ping pong, a couple discount T.V.s, some dead consoles he’d resoldered, some video games…
The carpets were weathered and stained with unknown fluids, but clean, there were some refurbished couches and a bean-bag.
In short the place was objectively as comfortable as mathematically possible. Too ostentatious and people would be afraid of relaxing. It had that lived-in feel that would encourage people to slouch, spill their drinks and eat chips on the couch.
Perry was pretty proud of that part.
Perry didn’t have the materials to make a secret elevator, so he’d just taken a page from Dave’s book and made a staircase in the Manager’s Office.
Underground was much more unfinished.
The lair was a huge open space, filled with heavy-duty power hookups and vents. His previous workshop took up a tiny corner of the space, covered in C-4 smudges.
The industrial chemistry equipment was on order, but since it was High Tide, shipping was delayed, of course.
Still, Perry could easily picture his lair filled, humming with power as one project after another was developed.
He felt a manic chuckle rising from inside. There were no capes around to give him funny looks, after all, so he went ahead and did it.
“MUAHAHAHAH!”
Quest Complete!
Make a proper lair!
Reward: 300 XP, Lair.
Congratulations! You are now a level 3 Garage Tinker.
Paradox Zauberer (Perry Z.)
Class: Garage Tinker
Level 3
HP: 4
Body: 3
Stability: 3
Nerve: 6
Attunement: 12
Free Points:4
XP to next level 1848
“Hah, hah…ha..”
Perry did a mental double-take at his free points. It was one point higher than it should’ve been, confirming a suspicion he’d been harboring.
Oh my god. I think Attunement effects the Generalist perk.
Perry ran over to his computer and opened his excel spreadsheet.
He’d made a handy graph for the multiplicative power of a stat at any given level.
He made a new line and entered in his levels in a column, from one to twenty, then started crafting a formula for his Attunement growth in the other.
Let’s see, there’s 3 guaranteed stat points based on the standard +1 free floating per level and +2 Attunement per level automatically.
That’s three points that never change. Now…it SEEMS like Attunement affects the Generalist Perk, which normally gives me two extra points per level.
Last level, I hit 10 Attunement.
Perry glanced over at his stat column and slid down to 10.
.628
*1.628= 3.256 extra stat points from the Generalist perk.
Math checks out. Presumably it was rounded down.
Three free points, and two more points modified by my Attunement level.
In the level 1 row, Perry entered 5, the amount of Attunement he’d had at level one, then crafted a formula directly beneath it in the level 2 row.
=ROUNDDOWN(L2+3+(2*1.05^L2), 0)
L2 being the cell directly above that had his level one Attunement, or 5 in this case.
The ‘0’ told the round down function to round down to the nearest whole number.
So the function looked like this: 5+3+(2*1.05^5), rounded down to the nearest whole.
It gave back 10.
Heart pounding, Perry extended the spreadsheet down, each function grabbing the numbers from the previous one.
His skin went cold.
The list looked a little something like this:
level
Attunement
.48465E+12
#NUM!
#NUM!
#NUM!