Bookworm is Really powerful!

[Duskviper]

So after playing so many heroes with so many different powers, I decided to play a character with Bookworm. For any that doesn't know what Bookworm does let me break it down. Bookworm allows the character to first able to read any book, paper, magazine, that is done on paper and understand it totally. They also can read 2 pages per second (30 pages per 15 seconds) and retain that knowledge for 24 hours perfectly. Lastly they can follow any instructions in a book almost flawlessly (98%), and do the work at half the time of anyone else. If you sit back and think of all the How-To books, university books (teaches you whatever you are learning in class), Translation books (translates one language to another), etc... the list goes on and on. That character so long as they have the right books with them, can in around 2.5 mins (300 pages) do all what the books teach at a 98% proficiency. That is truly amazing! Just take a few minutes to actually look up anything on the net, and there is a How-to book on it. Mechanics, Electronics, Surgery, Plumbling, Cutting hair... the list goes on for ever. All you would need was a Dimensional Bag so you could hold them all. Also remember that you can find anything on the net that is written, print the page and then follow it, just the same. 24 hours. IF you forget that is ok.... read the book(s) again, and you are right back at it.

[slade the sniper]

That is a great power. Perfect for a Wizard type character. The only issue is trying to know what skills you need beforehand. Without a dimensional bookshelf, the power of the power (hahaha) drops a bit.

-STS

[Duskviper]

That is a great power. Perfect for a Wizard type character. The only issue is trying to know what skills you need beforehand. Without a dimensional bookshelf, the power of the power (hahaha) drops a bit.

-STS

Get Dimensional Pocket. Can carry A lot of books just on you
Actually!!! Take Heightened Sense of Recall for photographic memory, and just start reading and adding skills.

[Stone Gargoyle]

It's a wonderful power which is not taken often enough. It really fits with a game that is designed to solve problems rather than be a slugfest.

[Curbludgeon]

While Bookworm and Heightened Sense of Recall together would allow any instructions read in the last three months to be performed perfectly, there are a couple of other abilities that might synergize with them. Multi-Tasking allows simultaneous reading and writing (or if one reads Bookworm as already allowing that then reading/writing and something else simultaneously, such as teaching or being in a gunfight) while Speed Tasking halves an action's speed when a skill is involved. The skills Writing (preferably taken twice) and Research would seem to cover that. While the Psychic Sensitive power Total Recall is a less effective version of Heightened Sense of Recall, any of the powers Mimic Skill(Sensitive/Super), Steal Skill(Super), and Bleed Skill(Mind Bleeder) would allow a character to write about a skill they temporarily know.

Does Bookworm's ability to speed-write in the margins of texts extend to blank books, or books about other subjects? If not I suppose it would be easy enough to get specially printed books with only a few words per page, so a character writing about a psychically borrowed skill whom intends to later reread their own writing has plenty of space in which to do so, but I'd just as soon have such a character use notebooks.

Provided an exactingly arranged reading desk, a character with the Writing and Research skills, one of the above three skill-related psychic powers, and the four above minor superpowers could simultaneously write down everything they temporarily know about a skill at 14400 pages an hour while reading about something else at the same speed. While the requirement that everything be on paper is a bit of a hurdle, spending a month creating a library is entirely possible. Even more fun, a character with Bookworm and Grant Power could be the world's greatest educator. There's no way it wouldn't speed up the teaching of Secondary skills as seen in the RUE Rogue Scholar, if encountered in a megaversal game.

I'm poking around now for the lowest power way to get the psychic/super combo working for a character. An Experiment 77-88 entry and page 226 91-95 entry can both get the basic idea running, as well as a couple of PU2 Immortals, and I suspect some AU species. Suggestions are welcome, both on this and for a low-effort way to ensure a student has Total Recall