Brief intro to explain some stuff and give a disclaimer.

Aiming for a low-fantasy Monster Hunter Calico/Palamute + Hunter kind of thing, sort of grimbright or nobledark in tone, "the world sucks but we're going to make it better/worse together" sort of. Emphasis on codependency. Your monster synergizes with your human and vice versa. There's supposed to be emphasis on clever use of powers or combinations as opposed to leaning into one archetype or another, and I'm trying to avoid cookie-cutter elemental powerups or pure super senses/strengths to that end. Also because your human isn't supposed to be anything like a superhero, just more like a very skilled craftsman or knight with some magical flair. If there's anything like supe stuff in here, it's probably like D-tier at best. Enough to strike fear into the hearts of the average civilian but not enough to be revered as a God if you get what I meant. Anyways, eat your heart out. There's shitloads of stuff in here.

Open with the nation you want to be in, then the type of monster you want to specialize in fighting?

Sliding scale of reliance. Either the human can be slightly more powerful than the monster or the human can play support to the monster while being able to kind of hold his own.

inspiration from Pacific Rim, Monster Hunter, Dragonriders of Pern, etc.

• Pacific Rim inspiration is more obvious with indeterminate time period. Make this more obvious in the description, with guilds being run by nations and the best mercenaries getting state funding.

wellness of your monster influences you. Literally intertwined, after all. Lifespan is also the same.

GENERAL LORE STUFF:

Atlantis and Mu have become visible to a chosen few across the planet. Giant, nightmarish monsters are leaking out of them, drawing their power from the dreams of the people on either coast (Mu from the Pacific, Atlantis from the Atlantic) and attacking the rest of the world.
With every new nightmarish monster, a new, mostly random person is given a counterpart "soulmate" that is made of the person's personal ambitions/dreams. Generally benevolent, but will put their loyalty to their human first and foremost.
This soulmate is seen in a dream a day before the chosen one wakes up to see it,
Due to the monsters deriving life and power from extremely strong sentiment, it is very rare for unambitious people to be granted soulmates. Therefore, the "chosen few" are among the most ambitious on the planet. Those with grand aspirations or extremely strong motivations are prime candidates. [EDIT: PEOPLE ARE CHOSEN AT RANDOM, BUT THOSE WITH GRAND ASPIRATIONS ARE MORE LIKELY TO BE CHOSEN. FIX PHRASING LATER LOL]
Despite my phrasing, they're more like one-time manifestations of emotion. Dreams and ambitions are less of a life support for them and more of a gestation period. They still live without them; they’re still flesh and bones. I haven't figured out whether they need to eat/sleep/etc. yet given that they're still "dream" creatures, but I might have them do it anyways as a point of relatability. Really trying to go for "man's best friend" vibes so it's hard to keep that up when your partner conveniently has to spend 6-8 hours either away from you doing its own thing or watching you sleep.
Monster's levels of power are somewhat influenced by ambition and dreams. They grow stronger when you're in sync with them or your dreams, they grow weaker when you're actively going against your dreams or super demoralized. Achievement makes them stronger, which is a big reason why they’re very eager to fight Nightmares (easy source of victories).
Note that this is POWER LEVEL, not health. At absolute worst the dreams will basically be as dangerous as a rottweiler, but very demotivated and disaffected.
Normal humans can’t harm nightmares. They’re completely immune to normal weapons unless they’re used by a "dreambearer" (name is VERY subject to change). Nobody knows how or why, and it’s freaking everyone right out. The real reason why they can’t be hit? Balancing.
”Power of friendship” is a genuine thing? Synchronizing well with your monster at certain times gives you a boost. I don’t know how I’ll add this to lore and it’s bordering on too shounen. Idk, consider mentioning it.

Time periods have various exact settings. Throwing ideas at the wall:

Exploration Abounds (1493)

• Really fucking hard mode. On top of a serious lack of technology, people still hate each other enough to find the nightmares less of a problem than the French. Protag will almost certainly be hunted by the superstitious, likely blamed for any damage fights cause, and quite probably thrown on a ship to be made someone else's problem. Guilds aren't funded by the state, and are relatively small.

  Pilgrimage (1693)

• Hard mode, especially in America. Anti-magic fervor is at an all-time high. People are somewhat rational enough to drop the witch hunting if there's a giant monster threatening their village, but they still won't look on the protag kindly. Guilds are small.

  Age of Empire (1893, maybe earlier)

• A good balance. Tech is relatively advanced. Armies will still have little to no chance against the creatures, but the protag won't be discriminated against much and there will be a concerted effort to fight nightmares on the part of various empires (probably still not working together, but actively attempting to push things back). Introduction of state funding to guilds.

  peak Prohibition (1923)

• Tanks are a thing, so armies have a sliver of a chance. Everyone is riding high off of the end of WW1 but still experienced enough to fight a new threat without huge issue. Protag will likely be actively enabled.

  B-Movie Hero (1953)

• Two world wars are over with and a select few countries have nukes. The main issue here is that everyone is just tired of fighting, but they will fight regardless. Countries are very likely to cooperate and put all of their effort into destroying the creatures, though how good a job they'll do of it is still up in the air.

  New Millennium (2000)

• The easiest choice. Nukes are somewhat prolific, countries have had decades of cooperation between each other to leverage against the creatures, tolerance is at an all-time high. Protag is probably celebrated as a hero right out of the gate and actively funded by the state. Crazy prepper types have already been stocking up for Y2K, so there's also less casualties. Also huge amounts of communication, so coordination is easier than ever.

  "Indeterminate" section that basically just takes time out of the equation. Choose a year, go wild. This is sort of a catch-all to encourage MPs to experiment and encourage general replayability. Gives a baseline amount of points and leaves it at that. (This option will also be copy-pasted into the location section when I make it, probably? idk, i'm still thinking it might dilute the CYOA, but then again this time period setting already kind of does too...)

  [editing this from the rentry here: I should probably consider overhauling these descriptions. I'm not confident I want all the guilds to be state-funded at all, it makes little sense for what's essentially a band of mercenaries. I might just consolidate the state funding into various "government" options at the end instead.]

MONSTER Physicality:
(This first chunk is free unless otherwise stated.)

Mammalian: your creature resembles some kind of mammal. This includes humans, but those won't grant your creature human-like intelligence.
Reptilian: your creature resembles some kind of reptile. This includes birds, but your creature can't fly by default.
Insectlike: your creature resembles some kind of insect, bug, worm, or other creepy-crawly.
Aquatic: your creature resembles something from the sea. Or the ocean. Or the rivers, the lakes, the ponds. As long as it mostly lives in the water, your creature can look like it with this option. Conveniently, yours does not need to remain submerged to live.
Plantlike: your creature resembles some kind of flora given life. It is immediately distinguishable from its nonsentient counterparts, but remains able to photosynthesize.
Chimeric (COSTS POINTS): your creature can't decide what it is. Pick two different animals. Your creature is now a combination of them.
??? (COSTS POINTS): your creature doesn't resemble anything from reality. Its biology is a mystery, but definitely some kind of organic. It remains no taller than ten feet, and still needs to feed on something to live. What that may be is up to you.

Sponge: your creature can absorb liquids in an amount up to twice its body weight. While stored by the creature, these liquids can be concentrated into more powerful versions of themselves: pressurized/carbonated? water, less stiff lava, or more potent potions for instance. UPGRADE?: Your creature is a self-contained chem lab. It can convert any liquid substance into any other liquid substance, with the sole exception of liquid mercury, within the span of ten minutes.
Spin Me Round: your creature can turn all of its heads over 180 degrees. Really cheap option that's partly here for funnies. I just think it's neat. Can alternatively be applied to the eyes for Epic Chameleon LARPing.
Hydra: your creature has another head! Can be purchased multiple times.
Spines: your creature is covered in sharp spines. These spines help increase its physical defense.
Impressive Horns/Claws: your creature's horns/claws are above-par! They help physical attacks do a little more damage. (Optional upgrade:) They're also retractable. (Claws only upgrade:) instead of having claws, your creature literally has built-in blades for arms.
Betentacled: your creature has plenty of tentacles to mess around with. (Optional upgrade:) They're also retractable.
Flighty: your creature has wings and can fly about as high as your average bird.
Swimmer: your creature your creature can dive to the bottom of the epipelagic zone of the ocean without losing breath. CANNOT breathe underwater
Superior Sniffing: your creature has an incredibly powerful nose. It can be trained to accurately identify the scent of any given item or person. It isn't infallible, and you still have to manually train it to do much more than recognize the scent.
Eagle-eyed: your creature can see things clearly almost thrice as far as you can. If you have poor eyesight, this option will assume 20/20 vision.
Creepy-crawlie: your creature can walk up walls and on roofs. CANNOT be taken if you purchase Mount or Cannonball.
Siren: your creature can sing very beautifully. This singing doesn't have any effect on others, it just sounds nice. Makes your monster's sounds very pleasant to the ears.
Prehensile Limb: your creature has an extra limb, on top of its existing ones, and it's prehensile. This can be a tail, a trunk, or anything you desire. Can be purchased multiple times. You can still have this upgrade without buying it if you choose monkeys, elephants, dragons, anything that's got a prehensile limb by default.
Mortar: your creature has some kind of limb that equates to a mortar. This limb replaces one of its existing limbs. It can fire whatever you put inside of it like a projectile, living beings included, and is large enough to contain modern shells. Can be an arm, a tail, a leg: anything. Upgrade lets you grow a unique limb for mortar purposes only.
Webbing: your creature has webbing somewhere on its body. This typically comes in the form of webbed paws or claws to allow for better swimming, but you could also stretch this webbing from arm to leg to allow for very short-term gliding.
Opposable Thumbs: your creature thinks it's a man! Well, not really, but now it's got the thumbs to prove it. Your creature has opposable thumbs.
Infinidigits: Two fingers? Ten fingers? What's the difference? Your creature can go beyond the limits of nature and has six or more digits on any given paw, hand, claw, foot, or other limb-ending thing.
Glowie: your creature is has bioluminescent patterning, like a squid or an octopus. The light emitted by these patterns is very soft, and can be any color.
Tiny Tank: your creature's got a very sturdy shell of some sorts. This can be as big as a turtle's (and will always be as tough as one's), enveloping its entire torso, or more like a piece of armor that only covers, say, a skull or the end of a tail. Can be purchased multiple times; each purchase will only account for one area of a limb. (eg one elbow, one femur, one foot, etc.)

Ideas for COLLECTIVE options:

option for another monster at the cost of splitting power between the three of you (-2 human modifier, -1 modifier for each monster?)
some way to convert one currency to another, if only to cure my autism
option for the monster to be stored somehow. Maybe several options for this one? Stored in a trinket, stored in your soul, something like that. By default, it wouldn't be stored.

• some options:
• personal trinket (medium cost)
• some kind of prominent marking on you (second-highest cost. The biggest drawback would be putting a giant fucking target on your back.)
• your soul; essentially vanishing into thin air, sometimes able to speak through you (highest cost)

  Specialist: your human/monster (there's a version of this in either tree) is better at fighting one specific type of monster at the cost of all others. 1.5x against one type of monster, 0.5x against the rest
  Humble: you're one of the unlucky few who managed to find themselves a monster without much ambition to speak of. Both you and your monster's strengths have had their power halved. (big point booster)
  Conflicted Relationship: your monster doesn't have the inherent protective instinct that most do. It is reckless, disobedient, and in need of serious discipline lest it kill you both. (big point booster)
  Dependency: can be applied to either the human or the creature. You have a crippling dependency on some kind of food or substance. Without a steady, above-average influx of it, your powers will not work. (small point booster because the dependency is questionably negative and can be literally anything. You could have a dependency on fucking water and it would count)
  Mental Firewall: not a negative modifier. Expensive. Prevents any intrusions into the mind: monsters that would read your thoughts or deal psychic damage now cannot do that to you.
  Shared Pain: you can actively determine how pain is split between you and your creature. This can mean transferring all the pain to you, all the pain to your creature, or splitting it between the two of you in various different ways. This can very easily kill you if you don't manage it properly. (EXPENSIVE.)
  Language: your monster can actually speak to you with words. Telepathic, but can work on other people. By default, the monsters are more like dogs in that they have body language, you can definitely understand them, but your communication is going to be limited to nonverbal guesses. Cheap option, but still costs money because I think it'd be neat for this to be optional.
  Haemophilia: either you or your monster need extra care to stop any sort of bleeding, and you bleed more easily. The speed of bleeding can somewhat be mitigated by regeneration, but the fragility cannot. (medium-to-high point gain)
  Illusionary: Your human/monster can appear to create slightly washed-out copies of itself. These copies vanish when something touches them. By default, you can create up to four clones of yourself at once. (Repeatable purchase, but EXPENSIVE. Unlikely anyone would be able to afford more copies unless they dumped all their stats into this.)
  Shadowmancy: Your human/monster can blend into the shadows for up to half an hour at a time. This is essentially just another form of camouflage: it won't disguise any of your other senses (eg you can still be smelled), but it will disguise you from being seen. You also can't change your appearance beyond just being a silhouette: you retain the same outline and shape as you did prior to blending in. More expensive than camouflage because this would probably be pretty OP at night. Probably like a middle-ground between camouflage and half-hour invisibility.
  Detachable limbs: incompatible with regeneration. You can detach anything but your head at will and it'll float up to twenty feet away from you. This does not include spines/claws/etc. unless you buy Urchin or Skewer. (UPGRADE FOR HUMANS ONLY:) You can use this power on other people. Instead of their limbs floating, however, their limbs will just fall off.
  Razor Winds: You can manipulate air into blades as sharp as fiberglass. Its range extends as far as you can see, and the size of the blades scales with your focus on performing the power. Their average size is about as long as a broadsword.
  Unstable Union: Your consciousness is randomly swapped with your monster from time to time. There are no patterns to this, and it never ends. Even while you sleep, you will jump from your brain to your monster's, and your monster's to yours, and vice versa over and over again. It can happen twice in two seconds or once a year, but it will never become consistent enough to be predictable. Synchronization will become nearly impossible. (HUGE point earner because this completely ruins your lives lmao. Genuinely such a bad drawback that I'm not sure I should include it; seems more like fodder for misery porn than an interesting character trait to have)]
  Peak Synchronization: while in perfect sync with your monster, you can make use of one of its existing powers. If you achieve this peak synchronization 50 times in a month, and manage to sustain every single instance for over 10 minutes, you will acquire this power for yourself permanently. You can purchase this power up to three times, but every single purchase will stack. If you take this three times, you will need to achieve 150 synchronizations in the span of 3 months, each one for at least 10 minutes at a time, to acquire all of your purchased powers.
  Half-hour Invisibility: Exactly what it says on the tin. You can go completely invisible for up to half an hour at a time. You won't be able to be smelled, heard, or seen with this. You can still be touched? (not sure about this since I think that shadow power I brought up lets you not be touched, so in comparison this would be a weird nerf for something this expensive...) However long you spend invisible, you need to spend twice as long not being invisible before you can turn invisible again. (eg if you go invisible for 1 minute, you gotta wait 2 before going invisible again).
  Limited Regeneration: Through sheer willpower, you can regenerate parts of yourself. However, if you lose your head, heart, or human/partner you will die regardless of willpower. Your power also scales: shallow cuts can be healed near-instantly, but limbs will take weeks to regenerate. Hydras will die if they lose all of their heads instead of just one.

  ^all three of the above are some of (if not outright) the most expensive options in the CYOA, on-par with Effortless Retention.

  Weather-Resistant Vision: your eyesight isn't impeded by mist, fog, sandstorms, heavy rain, heavy snow, smoke, or smog. You'll see in those circumstances as you would normally. You still won't be able to see in especially dark or bright places; this doesn't give you any form of nightvision or resistance to blinding. Just lets you see through nature's particle effects.

HUMAN modifiers:
(mostly inherent skills)

Likeability: people are at worst indifferent to you upon first impression, and persuading people into things is much easier
Professional chef (two types; power), brewmaster/sous supreme. Former is better with enchanting potion effects that can hit a wider area but won't be as strong, latter is good with specific dishes that give better bonuses for longer. For reference of effect: potion would hit a mile-wide radius and cause small, shallow cuts to be healed up. Food dish would be fed to one or two people and heal large, deep gashes.
Conduit: You can conduct electricity. You cannot summon electricity in and of itself, but if you build up enough static electricity you can retain it and achieve the same effect. (high power cost) Can be upgraded to allow you to redirect lightning strikes towards yourself (and become immune to electricity), which is only slightly cheaper because the base power is so expensive. It is still expensive. This power and its upgrade alone should take up like 1/3 of your total points without drawbacks.
Inventor: You can invent a certain type of gadget that can assist you with one task. Can be expensively upgraded into a sort of mech-builder who gives up the gadgets to build a mechanized suit. Can also be upgraded to allow you to make multiple gadgets, but these additional gadgets will take more time to build than your "specialty" gadget (the base trait's original gadget).
Weaponmaster: proficiency in a certain type of weapon. Pretty self-explanatory. Can only be taken twice.
Smithy: more universal version of the inventor. Self-explanatory, can choose between smithing weapons or armor.

• Can be purchased twice to be proficient in both.
• Can alternatively upgrade your proficiency into a "signature" weapon/armor of your own design that either doubles your efficiency against your chosen Specialty or halves damage from a specific archetype,
• or choose another upgrade to give you and your monster a custom set of armor/weapon (no modifier, just works as normal, so it's cheaper than the signature thing).
• Ultimate version lets you make armor out of the monster parts in the physicality section, with two parts being guaranteed free but each additional part costing you as much as it would to purchase the part itself. You get all the effects that the parts would normally impart onto monsters.
• All versions come with a one-time free purchase of either a weapon, shield, or set of armor.

  Doctor: Fire Emblem style. Some kind of combat/nurse archetype that's much better with quick, on-the-go healing vs. proper doctor that's much better with after-battle long-term stuff. The latter can be upgraded to make replacement organs?
  Sixth Sense: expensive. Gives you a literal sixth sense that lets you anticipate enemy moves exactly one minute before they happen. Reflex-based, not vision-based, so it won't interrupt what you're already doing to show you a glimpse of the future or something.
  Rock Climber: you are able to physically climb enemy monsters if they're larger than you, Shadow of the Colossus style. Does not guarantee safety, but does prevent exhaustion from the activity. Greatly increases your chances of staying on the monster instead of immediately getting thrown off.
  Undercover: you're rather good at disguises and slipping into crowds. Any false identity that you take on will be believed with little pushback. Can be upgraded to make your face completely unmemorable at will, or take on the guise of someone that shares your gender and age bracket (10 years in either direction).
  Survivalist: you will intuitively know how to scavenge for (very basic) food and shelter no matter where you are. You could be in the middle of the ocean and magically learn how to fish, or on a long journey and intuitively understand how to set up a viable camp.
  Nightmares: every time a new Nightmare comes into being, you have a nightmare involving it in your sleep. The most this will reveal about said nightmare is its appearance. (given that nightmares are coming into being pretty frequently in any setting, this should be a big point gain)
  Skydiver: Your damage depends on altitude. The longer you dive on the way to your target, the harder you'll hit. If you miss, you might want to kiss your bones goodbye. Diving while riding atop the back of a creature still counts as diving.
  (Al)chemist: you can brew a type of nonlethal, invisible gas that only you can see. This gas is flammable enough to be lit up by a single match. (expensive?)
  Internal Compass: you have a perfect map of where you are at all times in your head. This map has a compass that points to Mu, Atlantis, and your base of operations + hometown. If you think of wanting to go to one of those places, you will immediately know which direction to start going in.
  Balloon Frame Brain: you can build simple structures very quickly, in the heat of battle, with whatever materials you have at hand. Walls, platforms, tiny huts or shacks: if a prehistoric civilization could build it, you can too-- in a hundredth of the time, no less. Unfortunately, unlike those prehistoric civilizations, your stuff probably won't last. It is inherently less sturdy due to its quick construction, and will fall apart within a month if it isn't actively destroyed first.
  Indiscriminate Telepathy: instead of just communicating with your creature telepathically, you can now choose up to three people at a time to talk to through thoughts alone. Upgrades allow you to apply this to animals and other peoples' monsters (but not nightmares). Branches into smaller attacks:

• Psychic Goading: you can psychically taunt a specific person or nightmare. This taunt doesn't have any inherent meaning; it just goads the target into acting more recklessly. Will make them use much more force against you.
• Phobia Flash: you can target a specific person with their worst fear and convince them that it's real so long as you keep focusing on them. The more focus you put on this attack, the more convincing the illusion. Splitting your attention will cause occasional visual glitches at the absolute minimum.
• Nervous Breakdown: (when you make contact with someone?,) you can temporarily scramble peoples' senses and nerves to make them literally taste dirt when their skin touches the ground or feel pain in their fingers when you attack their knee. [FIGURE OUT HOW TO BALANCE THIS BECAUSE IT WILL BE VERY OP VERY QUICKLY IF I DON'T.]

  Burning Hands: exactly what it sounds like. You can quadruple the temperature of your hands or feet to the point that you can feasibly use your own fists as a forging iron. This comes with the bonus of your hands and feet resisting burning temperatures, but ONLY your hands and feet. You could use this power to walk barefoot on desert sand, for example, but would still sweat from the sun and burn your knees if you tripped. Then again, this also means that if someone tried to flamethrower your hands you could just stop the fire by raising your palms.
  Omnilingual: you can learn new languages in a snap, and understand most in vague terms even without study. The latter is prone to miscommunication, but the former means you should be able to learn any given language within the span of a month to make sure that's not much of a problem.
  Effortless Retention: any effort you put into improving yourself will remain forever. Your skills won't fade, you won't lose muscle if you stop exercising. You could theoretically train yourself to the absolute upper limit of human achievement and then pig out on nothing but chips for a decade while remaining ripped. The only way you can lose something is through physically aging and becoming weaker from that, but even then you'll remain at the same "level" as you were before. It'll just adjust to a new age bracket. (if you end up as a bodybuilder, you'll still be the equivalent of a bodybuilder in your 60s but will obviously not be as good as a bodybuilder in his 20s.) MOST EXPENSIVE UPGRADE FOR HUMANS.
  Amnesiac: Something went wrong when your creature manifested, and you've lost almost all of your memory. You remember how to walk, talk, write (both in your native tongue), sleep, shit in a pot and eat... but that's about it. Your existing skills are that of a second-grader's and will take a lot of time to build up again. Good luck learning how to do everything else while your hometown is being ravaged by nightmares. (medium point earner? given that you can learn all your skills eventually, it's a drawback that can be overcome instead of a permanent deficit like most of the high earners. Also, if I give too many points for this, everyone and their mother is going to end up being an amnesiac like how everyone and their mother is turning out to be dotty in harry potter.)

MONSTER modifiers:
(mostly powers)

Fireworks: monster can create small explosions like a firecracker. Branches into being able to make a whip-like chain out of them, rudimentary bombs, or blowing itself up (with a drawback). This power can also be used in tandem with others to create small explosions of certain substances (eg glue, spines, nectar, etc). Maybe another upgrade that lets you delay and compress the explosion, essentially making it into a fancy bomb?
Ghost in the Wire: able to possess electricity. Can zip between telephone poles, underground circuits, etc. Very expensive due to the speed of travel and difficulty of harm. Probably up there with the regeneration and the invisibility cloak. An upgrade, only available if you have Sponge, allows your monster to store electricity within itself and essentially teleport through lightning arches into any viable conduit. Also expensive.
Cannonball: monster is very heavy and round. Able to act as a cannonball, bowling ball, basically a sentient boulder.
Mount: your creature is big enough to be mounted. It can be anywhere from the size of a Great Dane to about as large as a Shire horse. (medium cost; I want to make sure that it's not a standard, but also somewhat easily accessible)
Fantastically Flighty: (requires Flighty) your creature can fly up into the stratosphere, and has the power to keep you breathing all the way there.
Superpowered Swimmer: (requires Swimmer) your creature can has gills and the ability to dive below the epiepelagic zone. It can do this with you in tow, allowing you to breathe on the way there.
Flashbang: your creature can create a large burst of light that temporarily blinds anyone looking at it. An upgrade allows for the light's brightness and duration to be controlled, and another allows you to change the color of the light. This includes an option for UV light. Another upgrade allows you to steal light from nearby sources instead, essentially "snuffing it out," and if your creature has Sponge then they can store this light for an even bigger flashbang later.
Confusing Serenade: your creature can sing a song to make your enemies forget what they were doing for five minutes. This song can also be altered to cause literal earbleeding, amnesia, or an extreme drowsiness effect that makes keeping your eyes open a challenge.
Urchin: can only be taken if your creature has a "spines" upgrade (name TBD). Creature can shoot the spikes out all around it. Different upgrades can allow the creature to direct the spines towards a specific target, contain a weak (able to be intensified) poison, or carry a numbing agent. Can be combined with a signature weapon/armor to give the signature weapon/armor all the upgrades of your creature's spines, so long as the design involves those spines.
Mirror: can reflect any manmade mundane projectile back at whatever threw it at the creature. This includes cannonballs, bullets, boomerangs, throwing axes. Does not include anything that breaks upon contact with something else (potions, frangible ammo). An upgrade allows the creature to redirect the projectile someplace else at a 90-degree angle, as if the mirror was angled.
Prehensile antennae: basically makes antennae into weapons/limbs. More like tails on a head than actual antennae. Can specifically be specced to be like maces or boxing gloves. Allows you to make the antennae as long as you want, which means you could have antennae as long as a fucking python if you wanted and have that entire length be covered in spikes.
Surfer: two options. Can walk on water (incompatible with super swimmer) or swim through sand/earth. Can be combined with mount to have the creature be used as a surfboard for the human.
Seasonal: a weird one. Can spend points to become more effective in up to 2 seasons or day/night, gain points to become less effective during them. Can be purchased up to four times (for day/night) or eight times to make the monster hibernate/operate at peak efficiency during certain times.
Skewer: can only be taken with claws, horns, spines, or tentacles. Creature can induce rapid growth into the keratin and up to triple the length of its whatevers. After the claw/horn/spine exceeds 2.5x its normal length, it will be shed and the thing will take a few hours to regrow. If combined with regeneration, they'll only take a few minutes to regrow. If taken with tentacles, this will instead inject keratin into the tips, rapidly sharpening them to be like rapier blades, and convert the tip of any tentacle this is applied to into a kind of bone skewer. This will take days to wear off, hours if regeneration is taken, and makes traversal with that tentacle impossible during the healing period.
Sticky Bomb: monster can spit up globs of sticky material that acts like glue. It doesn't really bind to dirt or grass, and completely dissolves in water. Upgrades include being able to make the glue work equally across all terrain and last longer, removing its ability to stick to living beings but allowing it to enhance manmade objects with better durability, or being able to excrete it (and giving it the durability of concrete/stone?) as a defensive tactic.
Camouflage: your monster can change its skin color to blend into its environment. Won't protect it from being sniffed out or detected by other means.
Bedazzling: your creature looks REALLY good. When you send it out for battle, it'll momentarily stun anyone who sees it for a few seconds. This only works once per battle, but it completely immobilizes them. You and your allies are exempt from this upgrade's power. Note: your creature does not actually have to look good to use this power. It can be staggeringly ugly, or completely mediocre, and achieve a similar effect. It's more to do with presence than with actual looks. (medium cost?)
Instant Lava: your creature can convert water into lava, then expel it anywhere it wishes. It can also control how fast this lava cools; theoretically, you could have it cool within a few minutes and have usable obsidian on your hands, or you could leave it burning and molten for up to thrice its usual lifespan.
Pocket Sand: your creature can convert any dirt beneath its feet into sand, which it can then command to attack anything it wishes. This conversion takes place in a circle around the monster, about a foot below it, and leaves a crater when it's performed. The sand cannot be turned back into dirt, but if it's exposed to a high enough temperature it can be converted into glass. The control works somewhat like Indiscriminate Telepathy; just think of each batch of sand as another "person."
Overemotional: strong emotions will interfere with any form of camouflage and override your monster's natural palette with neon-bright colors related to the monster's emotional state. This color-changing is uncontrollable and activates whenever your monster feels strongly about something, good or bad. (medium point gain?)
Bubbles: your monster can create durable bubbles around whatever it wishes. These bubbles will float around for up to an hour before popping, and they're about as strong as elastic.
Mundane: your monster cannot use any magic. (high point earner, probably good for physical builds. might be too good?)
Kleptomania: your monster has an inherent hoarding compulsion. At minimum, it will want at least one trinket from every single battle you partake in. If it doesn't indulge in this hoarding compulsion, its powers will stop working. (medium point earner)
Sanguinophile: your monster cannot live without human blood. It must feed on 1-3 adult men worth of blood, depending on its size, at least once a week to prevent withering away. If it goes without blood for a full month, it will die. (HIGH point earner. This is obviously a very fucking bad idea, emphasize how bad it is in the description.)
Very Special: your monster is especially stupid. Its intelligence is comparable to a medically retarded child and will never improve. It needs extensive training to understand the most basic of commands and won't listen to you without them. The most complex sentence it might be able to form is probably "Need go sleep." (medium-high point earner)
Stonewalled: your monster is secretive to a fault. Its body language is hard to read and its communications are short and brief. That isn't to say it's dumb: it still understands you and clearly listens, but it doesn't say much and seems offended by the prospect. (low point earner)
It's A Jungle Out Here (name change probably pending): your monster can make its breath extremely humid. Sighing onto another person will be enough to get them to start sweating, and heaving breaths will make metal start rusting. Two upgrades: one will allow breaths as small as sighing to clam people up enough that they can't hold objects (their hands are too slippery), another will intensify the rust power to the point that 5 minutes of exposure can rust an entire suit. Mutually exclusive.
Loch Walk: your creature can excrete mist out of its pores (at will) that will only spread to a 3-foot area around it, but can grow as tall as twice the monster's height. Upgrades allow intensifying the mist to the point that opponents can only see silhouettes or reversing the height/width ratio (letting it spread in an area up to twice its width but only up to 3 feet high).

MONSTER archetypes:
(not entirely sure what these are yet, but I'm thinking optional modifiers to a creature's entire powerset. Just an easier way to slot them into traditional classes, I guess. Only one per build, and they cost points.)

Brute Strength: self-explanatory. Creature is a physical powerhouse. Magic is 75% as effective while physical modifiers are 125% as effective. Includes an all-around boost to the senses.
Sturdy Fortress: Tank. Both magical and physical attacks are 75% as effective, but defense is 125% for both. Magic itself is not hampered: only purely offensive applications of it (eg Fireworks). Generally slow and rather bulky.
Arcane Cannon: Brute Strength but with all magic instead of physical attacks. To balance the fact that it is quite possibly objectively better in most respects, it also includes an 85% hit to physical defense.
Speedster: exactly what it sounds like. 125% to speed and general dexterity, but 75% on both defenses.
Underdog: +1 (or 2? or however many seems reasonable with point scaling) point from every drawback you take. All stats at 90%/everything you do is weaker than it would be. This option is the cheapest archetype by a country mile.

GEAR:

Personal trinket: something mundane that holds great value to you. A prime candidate for storing your monster if you chose "creature storage" (or whatever I'm going to call it). Cheap and repeatable.
Hobby kit: catch-all for some kind of hobby you want to bring with you. Sculptor's tools, a palette and easel, your model army. Do mind that you only get one of whatever you bring, unless you buy this multiple times, so you might want to make sure that it's replaceable or repairable if it breaks. Cheap and repeatable.
Musical instrument: a good way of making money (through busking), keeping up morale, and having fun. Cheap and repeatable.
Bubble blower: a giant bubble blower. Its appearance is up to you, but it blows bubbles. These bubbles will match the look of your monster's (but not the function), if it's got the Bubbles power, but it's otherwise a bit useless. Extremely cheap.
Your choice of weapon: catch-all for whatever weapon you want to use. Try to keep it period-accurate, because your weapon does not come with an infinite supply of ammo. Cheap and repeatable.
Your choice of shield: can be anything from a lightweight tiny one to a giant riot shield.
Your choice of armor: one-time purchase. As long as it is a type of clothing meant for combat, it counts as armor. Can be made out of the monster parts in the physicality section if you want to be cool, but each part will cost you as much as it would to purchase the part itself. On the plus side, you get any neat effects it might have. Cannot be applied to your creature (you'd need Smithy to do this).
Tracker kit: a set of tools meant to make tracking monsters significantly easier. If your time period is in the future, it instead comes with 25 "tracking gizmos" that attach to a creature and broadcast its location to a personal device of your choice. One-time purchase unless it's the gizmos, in which case it's repeatable.
Communication kit: a quick method of communication. If you're in a time before the telegram, it'll come with a magical quill and paper set that lets you send teleporting letters to allies. If you're in a more modern setting, it'll be some kind of instant communication device (radio, walkie-talkie, phone, etc.) appropriate to the period that will magically never fail, and will come with up to five copies of this device. Medium cost?
Giant box of scrap: essential for inventors. An initial cache of scrap mechanisms meant to get your noggin joggin'. The scrap in here always ends up being whatever you need most for the situation; its inventory shifts with your requirements. The box's inventory caps at 10k pieces of scrap. Also comes with a way to hold that scrap, which is how this keeps being beneficial after that scrap runs out. Both the box and the scraps are especially good at conducting electricity. Somewhat cheap due to its very niche usage.
Trap kit: a variety of traps meant for catching wild animals. If you put your mind to it, you can repurpose these to use as weapons or against people. If you don't, these will be useful for catching food on adventures.
A Little Richer: a hefty sum of money to keep you comfortable in civilized society. Equivalent to $1m American Dollars in 2025, but will change equivalence to the native currency of your chosen location and time period.
Big briefcase: something to store all your stuff on the go. Can be made into a backpack instead of a briefcase in post-1893 settings. Medium cost.
Saddle: can be for a horse if your creature isn't mountable. A saddle that you will never fall off of. Even if you're flying upside-down in the sky, you'll stay put unless you will yourself to fall off. You'll still need to train your mount to get used to it, but that shouldn't be too big an issue. Medium cost.
Fancy Megaphone: this handy device allows you to mimic any voice you've heard, so long as it's human and you speak into it. It also works as a regular megaphone, so you can just use it to amplify your own voice if you'd like it to instead. Pre-1893, this is completely analog and looks more like a weird bugle made out of wood. You may get questions about it from time to time. If it somehow gets burnt or destroyed, it will show up by your side after you wake up the morning after its destruction.
Medical kit: a compact first-aid kit with essential supplies. It'll replenish its stock every week. Contains everything you would find at your local healer's; whether that's a medieval doctor's strongest soldiers or a modern hospital's actual first-aid kit depends on the setting. Medium cost.
Portable tent: more like a teepee hut than a tent. Not modern at all in look, but modern in function: you can fold it into a compact disc to store it (look up what those fabric discs/frisbees? they used to use in gym class were. it's like those), then put it on the ground and pull on its top to expand it. Durable. Medium-to-high cost.
Royal garb: possibly invaluable in earlier time periods. Clothing that looks identical to that worn by the most elite of society in any given time period. It's far more comfortable to wear, but your average person of the time wouldn't be able to tell the difference. In later time periods, this is probably something more like an extremely expensive suit. Medium-high cost.
Period-accurate map: shows the state of the world in your time period. Has accurate political borders, local and translated names of settlements, and basic information on local customs at its disposal. Updates in real time. High cost, but probably worth it.
Nightvision: expensive. A pair of glasses that help you see more clearly at night. If you're in a more modern setting, these can just be standard nightvision goggles... but they still cost a pretty penny.

(consolidate all the kits into a subsection at some point maybe, it'll be less of a headache)

LOYALTIES:
(Only one guild. Not sure about restricting the other loyalties?)

"The Guild:" name TBD. The original monster-hunting guild, founded shortly before whichever time period you're in (within weeks of the dreamers' discovery). Located in the Swiss Alps with outposts in every major European coastal city (or just France pre-1893), it's easily the most well-known guild in Europe. Its reputation is a little questionable, currently being tarnished by a bad batch of recruits, but it does its best to maintain high standards of service and genuinely wants the best for its continent. Focuses on the Atlantic and Mediterranean (though the latter is obviously much less of a troublemaker).
"Old Glory Guild:" (1693 AND LATER) name also TBD. Set up shop around Newcomb, New York, on the Hudson River. Much newer monster-hunting guild, less than a year before you came around. Extremely ambitious and seeking to become the greatest guild in America, it's aiming to destroy the nightmarish menace at all costs. Main hub for American mercenaries looking to be legit about their business. Focuses entirely on the Atlantic.
[insert very chinese name here]: not gonna bother adding the disclaimer anymore, none of these names are final. Located in Guangzhou, this guild is larger than the rest combined but significantly less organized. It's easily the most extreme, with ongoing controversy surrounding ridiculous death counts at the hands of its mercenaries causing a lot of internal friction, but it'll take literally anyone with a monster. Its headquarters keep moving due to monster attacks often being nearby enough to cause collateral damage. Focuses exclusively on the Pacific.
"Golden Frontier Guild:" (1850 AND LATER) really just in it for the money. Fortuitously headed by benevolent actors at the moment, but its mercenaries really live up to the name and will typically gravitate towards whichever client pays the handsomest fee when doing work. Focuses exclusively on the Pacific. Owned by the State from 1941 onwards.
[something native?? idk]: (1693 AND LATER) Greenlandish guild, stationed in Nuuk. Mostly keeps to themselves, but gets the job done. Its placement directly upon the sea isn't an issue compared to the Chinese guild because not even the nightmares care about Greenland. Very very small and often cold. Straightforward, benevolent, and pays well. Focuses on the Atlantic and Arctic Ocean, though the latter rarely brings trouble.
"Defense Down Under:" (1850 AND LATER) Australian, established in Mildura upon the Murray River. Like the Golden Frontier in that it prioritizes money. Probably the most sea-bound guild of them all, with a huge emphasis on defending Oceania (since China's too petty to do it) leading them to sail around Micronesia and New Zealand plenty. Mostly focused on the Pacific, but sometimes handles the Indian and Southern Oceans as well.

-
(more personal loyalties. Maybe you can choose one of these alongside a guild, but you'll prioritize these when trouble comes around?)

Yourself: self-explanatory. You're a mercenary who don't need no fancy guild. You work for whoever will have you, or whenever you feel like it.
Your place of residence: you've taken up the defense of your hometown. This can be for benevolent love of the place, or some kind of crackpot scheme to take control through extortion and threats. Regardless, you've sworn yourself to keeping your town safe.
Your crew: there's a certain group of people you already swore your exclusive loyalty to long ago. Some kind of gang, corporation, or secret order: whichever type of crew this is, it's yours. You're going to use your power to defend them above all else. (MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE WITH ANY GUILD mostly due to redundancy)
Your country: you love your State above all else. You don't really care for other countries, just your own, but will lay down your life to protect whatever part of it is in danger.
Other: your loyalties are complicated and not very easy to label. Catch-all for whatever isn't listed here since this is mostly just character-building fluff and not an actual point sink.

(if I'm really set on adding an indeterminate location option, maybe add a few generic guilds in a separate category for indeterminate? Still really not sure about that)

QUESTS:

option for a "one true enemy," where you basically build the main rival monster you'll be facing from the same parts as your companion but like thrice the point amount (think of that one kaiju CYOA) and don't fight anything unrelated to that enemy

• maybe also add a multiplayer option to make this another character in an MP, and build off of that?