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BTDEM, book 13 notes, and 'Numbers go up' (Patreon)

Published:
2024-04-10 13:26:31
Imported:
2026-06

Content

Hey all!

Bit of an announcement/information post.

Two parts to this. The first is a note on book 13, the second is a note on numbers and Elaine’s stats.

THERE ARE ARGUABLY SPOILERS HERE AND SOME VAGUE DISCUSSIONS ABOUT THE REST OF BTDEM. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK. I’m not trying to spoil anything, but there are minor ones you might dislike.

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First! Book 13 is plotted to be short and sweet. From a web serial perspective you won’t notice too much of a difference, just that we’ve got a slice of life vibe for a bit. Then we’re moving to high octane, and critically, I think we’re staying there for most of the rest of the series.

Wait. The rest of the series?

Yes! I’ve had the overarching plot for BTDEM written down for quite some time, and we’re getting through it at a decent pace. One day we’re going to hit the big The End. We’ve got two more ‘mega arcs’ between here and the end, along with a final book. I’m not going to say how many books that is - but the first seven books was three mega arcs. 

Book 13 is also a shift in approach. I’ve been bad about not letting Elaine sit and breathe for a few years here and there. I should’ve had more long breaks at various spots. Maybe eight years between being a Sentinel and the Formorian attack. More time out beyond the wall. Etc. Book 13 is going to cover a number of years, shifting mentality to ‘oh this is a long time’, as well as being a bit of a breather.

I think I’ve foreshadowed what happens next well enough.

I’m toying with the idea of the last book occurring at a slower pace, so I can MAKE SURE it’s all done to the highest quality. We’re at least a year and a half away from the start of the last book, probably two, so it’s nothing you need to think about now. At the same time, I’ve been doing BTDEM in a ‘three-five per week’ cycle for so long - why change a winning formula?

That’s it on the future stuff.

Stat stuff here

I’ve had a lot of people ask or complain about Elaine’s stats. ‘They’re too big’ ‘My eyes glaze over’ ‘they don’t make sense’.

Which is fair. The numbers have gotten far larger than I expected when I first sat down to write BTDEM. However, I promise you - all the numbers DO mean something, and they all feed into a variety of calculations that drive the plot and the story. 

I’ve been keeping most of these calculations under wraps. For the most part, a combination of ‘A magician never reveals their secrets’ and the ability to fudge things juuuust a hair if needed. But they’re still there and working.For example, when Katarina asked Elaine during the Han Civil War arc if she could double-space her troops, I went straight to my calculations. I worked out how wide a Legion was when deployed, I worked out Elaine’s radius, and from there I was able to give an answer. 

Let’s have a stat sheet for comparison.

(Note - I don’t THINK there are any spoilers in here for current patrons, but I could be wrong.)

[Name: Elaine]

[Race: Chimera (Elvenoid)]

[Age: 38]

[Mana: 6,911,270/6,911,270]

[Mana Regeneration: 13,695,885 +(41,548,244)]

Stats

    [Free Stats: 0]

    [Strength: 40,823 (Effectively: 326,584)]

    [Dexterity: 65,269 (Effectively: 694,984)]

    [Vitality: 203,035 (Effectively: 3,172,422)]

    [Speed: 190,267 (Effectively: 3,745,025)]

    [Mana: 691,127]

    [Mana Regeneration: 1,555,022 (+ 4,154,824)]

    [Magic Power: 904,127 (+ 39,600,763)]

    [Magic Control: 903,335 (+ 39,566,073)]

[Class 1: [The Arbiter of Life and Death - Celestial: Lv 876]]

    [Celestial Mastery: 876]

    [Aurora Curialis: 771]

    [The Stars Never Fade: 55]

    [Luminary Mind: 602]

    [Universal Cure: 876]

    [Etheric Aegis: 222]

    [Event Horizon: 650]

    [Zenith Everlasting: 609]

[Class 2: [Seraph of the Dawn - Radiance: Lv 855]]

    [Radiance Mastery: 855]

    [A Light Shining in the Darkness: 23]

    [The Rays of the First Dawn: 855]

    [Radiant Angel's Spear of Obliteration: 38]

    [Celestial Dew: 855]

    [Sunrise Halo: 855]

    [Seraph's Wings: 855]

    [Six Wings, Six Million Feathers: 855]

[Class 3: [Erudite Archmage - Spatial: Lv 712]]

    [Spatial Authority: 488]

    [Cozy Reading: 712]

    [Teleportation: 195]

    [Repository of the Magus: 557]

    [Tower of Knowledge: 92]

    [Reality, Writ As You Will: 530]

    [Astral Archives: 326]

    [Endless Pursuit of Knowledge: 644]

General Skills

    [Long-Range Identify: 532]

    [Handy: 1]

    [Companion Bond between Elaine and Auri: 876]

    [The World Around Me: 216]

    [Oath of Elaine to Lyra: 876]

    [Sentinel's Superiority: 876]

    [Persistent Casting: 650]

    [Tender Gardening: 108]

A lot of big numbers! Now, let’s reveal a little behind the curtain. First, her physical stats:

System Improvement

Biomancy Improvement

Total

17.2

2

34.43

20.1

2.2

44.29

29.4

2.5

73.47

28.8

2.7

77.65

Taking Strength, for example - Elaine is made 17.2x as strong as her baseline because of the System and her 40.8k strength stat. She’s twice as strong as her ‘human’ baseline, making her 34.43x as strong as a human woman with her general fitness. Wow! The same applies to her Speed, and we get the following chart in my notes:

Elaine Mass Kg (For str calcs)

45.0

Elaine Mass Kg (Current)

80.0

Jogging Baseline

5.5

Jogging Modified

427.1

Sprinting Baseline m/s

7.5

Sprinting Speed Modified

582.3

Speed of Sound

343.0

Mach Speed

1.7

Deadlife Baseline (kgs)

67.5

Deadlift Modified

2324.2

Squat Baseline

58.5

Squat Modified

2014.3

Bench Press Basline

40.5

Bench Press Modified

1394.5

When I need Elaine to do something - lift weights, run fast, etc. - I reference this chart, and it tells me what happens. From there, I’m able to say stuff like “Elaine runs this fast” “A light jog overtakes most people” “needs the anti-friction runes for max speed”, etc.

Which brings me to the magic stats! They also have a chart, and a great big set of calculations. 

Skill Calc Chart

 

Oath Multiplier

            43.8

Celestial Affinity Tree Bonus

              4.8

Sentinel's Superiority Bonus

            1.25

Aurora Curialis Range

      10,436.7

Universal Cure Range

        1,317.9

Universal Cure Efficiency Bonus

27%

Healing Costs:

5.6%

Shield Range

            48.9

Radiance Affinity Tree Bonus

4.8

Rays of the First Dawn

          238.4

Six Wings Acceleration

            33.4

Six Wings Time

              13

Reasonable Distance

        1,490.2

Max Distance

        2,980.4

Blink Range

            10.7

Shield Range

            48.9

Parallel Though Processes

              12

Long Range Identify

        1,064.0

Nectar Bonus

              2.7

Spatial Affinity Tree Bonus

              2.8

Vault of Ages Room Size

2.5x8 (Cylinder)

Number of Tower Levels

            14.0

Persistent Casting number

10

Blink Cost

  114,271.36

Sorry - Patreon is kinda throwing numbers all over the place a bit. Six Wings has a star on it on my notes - the formulas currently need reworking. (I had an initial assumption that Elaine could continuously accelerate the feathers when they were out, but that violates my distance principle, so that’s all gotta be recalculated.)Now, there’s the fundamentals that come into play. 1 mana is good for about 1 gram of conjured matter at a baseline. It’s a little more complex than that, but we’ll start with it for now. Elaine’s skills means for healing, it goes about 20x as far. As the numbers go up, it gives me a ‘scale of devastation’ that Elaine can handle and shrug off - or if it exceeds that, explain how many people survive and why. 

Wizardry, on the other hand, eats a hefty penalty.

All this to say - I understand if your eyes are glazing over on the big numbers. They DO matter though, and they do impact the story and how I tell it, and what’s possible for our little mango fiend to accomplish.

Cheers! I hope the peek behind the curtain doesn’t ruin anything.

Comments

Specter

Scrolled all the way down to say thank you for discussing things like this with us but personally I'll be skipping lol have a great day!

Gamingninja

Love this peek behind the curtains as you call it, im a sucker for the system behind the system!

Lijwent

Well, can't say I understood all of it but it's certainly an interesting insight into how you mix stats with story

Darth

This is really interesting to see mathed out! Thank you very much!

PrometheusDarkflame

Thanks for the clarification (and the info). What I’m personally curious about is to see a comparably levelled immortal healer (maybe an elf?) that doesn’t have Elaine’s insane accomplishments for comparison. Even if we don’t get shown the stats directly it’d be nice to see Elaine interact with an elf or lich or some such that’s at the same level and more or less the same functional age (accounting for the maturity disparity) and see just how different their power is. Or put another way to see how much ahead of the curve Elaine is due to what she’s achieved and the life she’s led.

Hodge Wasson

Thanks for the peak behind the curtain!

Cormac

The numbers, Mason! What do they mean? I enjoy having the numbers in the story. It lends a bit of credibility to all these fantastical magical feats. Like, without a hard and fast base, how can we say if Elaine's evolution is really progressing?

Jams

I've always been glad that your numbers mean something and you're able to reference what is possible with x stats. I sometimes get annoyed at perceived inconsistency in other stories regarding a MC's stats and abilities. I've never had to worry about that here!

AgeOldCure

I am very impressed. I had never thought about how important these numbers could be,and how easy they could make some things.

Nait02

I was already impressed with the Excel Stat sheet but this is even cooler. That said I get the complaints about the numbers being too big. They are simply not on a scale that humans are very well equipped to handle. A somewhat different complaint I personally have, is that Elaines capped skills in her 2nd class have mostly overtaken the skills in her 1st class. In her 1st class she has 2 capped skills and 6 that have differing levels based on how much she does with them and when she got them. In her 2nd class she has 6 capped skills (and 2 new ones). She capped most of her skills in that class very early on and they have stayed capped since. I very much get that from a writing standpoint, it would be more effort than it is worth to keep track of how capped her capped skills are and it wouldn't contribute much to the story. It just feels a bit wrong that most of the skills in the 2nd class are higher level than the ones in her 1st class. (It males sense for some eg Stars never fade, but others it feels like should be higher at this point especially when compared to her 2nd class... (her anti pain skill and ranged healing come to mind) Edit: Her ranged skill fused, so scratch that... and most other skills have explanations (the pick me up being low danger most of the time, her barrier being new, her aura being slow to level for various reasons)... but it also feels like some of these reasons could apply to the 2nd class as well + she didn't use them all that much outside of the Han recently. Most of her class XP coming from Auri rather than her own actions too...

Jason Hardman

When numbers scale up large I mostly start to focus on the orders of magnitude they fit into and whatever the first few digits are, rather than read every individual number. A simple, 43M is fine for a sense of scale to me, rather than all 8 digits. That being said, I don't mind stories where they choose to refactor or rescale the numbers when they get large. The usual is changing the timeframe that mana regen is represented over, e.g. mana per hour, becomes mana per minute, or mana per second. etc... I'm often most interested in knowing how long it would take a character to go from zero to full. I do like that such effort is put into ensuring the story remains consistent with the numbers. It's not something I've ever tried to analyse from story to story, but I do wonder how many authors I read are pulling numbers out of thin air without a real sense of system being applied.

Cormac

Imagine tiny little Elaine showing up on Earth and casually bench pressing a Golf.

Specter

@selkie do the spoilers extend beyond B13? Wondering when I should plan to return to this post

Nyotree

I love the fact that you calculate everything and have a reference sheet that makes me feel so complete… I really hate it where the numbers just seem arbitrary and don’t change the story.

Anonymous

So a comparably leveled healer with green classes would be somewhere around 10-20% as efficient as Elaine based off of stats and not accounting skill quality?

Ronny Cook

One thing I've been wondering for a while and don't recall seeing explained... what is the difference between the two different Mana and Mana Regeneration stats? I assume for the latter it's time scale (regeneration per how long?) but I can't see how that works for baseline mana.

fox5s

Oh, I appreciate that you are keeping her stats and what they convert into on hand so that you can keep track of Elaine's actual capabilities. When I said that they were incomprehensibly large before it was because we don't readily have the benefit of handy conversions that tell us what they actually mean. So it just feels like incomprehensibly big number got an incomprehensibly bit bigger. This chapter helps some by letting us know that they are doing things and you do know what she's able to do at any given time. I don't want you to feel like the time is wasted because it does add to the story. An example from another story. In "Have Spacesuit, Will Travel" by Robert A. Heinlein, the MC ends up in a spaceship that was constantly accelerating at 1g. He did the actual math on how long it would take to arrive at Mars, Luna, and Pluto. Answer, a LOT less time than you would intuitively think. This allowed the characters to guess at where they were going and dictated a few other constraints and overall added to the story. But did he display his whole equation in the book? Not really. It would have detracted from the story too much. It took the author and his wife a whole weekend to work out the calculations that the characters needed to know in about an hour or so. All this to say, I appreciate that you are keeping track of the numbers as it keeps your story grounded in its own modified reality. But the numbers themself, ehhh... They are still incomprehensibly big at the moment. I do not unfortunately have a solution to propose for that.

Cirvante

Interesting. I've always wondered how much the stats multiply her numbers from baseline, even though I was aware of the whole 8x stats = 2x effect formula. Thanks for clearing that up. So a human with 80 Strength would be about 2x baseline. Then at 640 Strength they are 4x baseline, at 5,120 they reach 8x and at 40,960 they get to 16x? This explains why Julia used to nag Elaine to get her Vitality and speed to at least 80. It also means that the average frontline soldier in Remus was at 6-8x baseline strength and speed, which means they were basically blurs to the un-enhanced eye. The formorians were literally racing into a blender. My question would be, how does lifespan get calculated? Elaine mentioned having her lifespan increased by about 4-5x at 15k Vitality, so it must be a separate formula. Also, does Magic Power scale similar to Strength? Otherwise mages would punch up even harder than they already do, firing hypersonic rocks at relatively low levels. Could you give us the formula for how much Vitality increases hostile spell cost? Basically, if Dark magic can destroy matter at a cost of 1 mana per 1 gram, then how much does 5,120 Vitality increase that cost, 8x? Also, what was the efficiency penalty for [Imbue] like? It seemed really overpowered for Dark mages with a long-range element. Finally, I feel like including the effective multipliers behind the numbers would be far more useful in the future. 45k Strength means relatively little to the readers, as do the increased numbers from her biomancy, but 34x baseline strength gives us at least some idea of what she can do.

ProSailor22

Could you possibly do a stat side by side of Elaine and Iona?

laundmo

I would really like some of those "what elaine can actually do" stats along the normal ones. like max ground speed for the speed stat, time to refill from zero for mana regen stat, amount of severed hands regrowable (too gruesome? too gruesome.) without regen for the mana pool etc. to give a sense of scale. i mean, i know the text of the story also does that, but mass healing events showcasing what she could do aren't always available when stats change

Daddy_Moonlit

We thank you and appreciate all the hard work you do to make this a great story.