Reincarnator

Alert

Type

Power of Rebirth

Gains New Power on Loss

Setup: Manifest a random power. That power becomes your main power, and this power becomes your sub-power.

As an actor, after suffering casualties, use this power to manifest random alien powers equal to the dominion you need to win the match. Look at each power, one at a time, and choose to either vaporize it or transform your power into it. After choosing your power, vaporize the rest. You may not vaporize the last power manifested.

Legacy: When a leader suffers casualties, their power is scrambled.

Many aliens are incapable of processing the difference between right and wrong. Reincarnator is an alien that can tangibly experience that difference. When their physical bodies give way, the cosmic forces weigh their soul to determine what form they should take next. It would seem that a lust for conquest makes a soul rather heavy.

Actor: Encounter

Mandatory

Wild Flare

After another alien loses an encounter, you may discharge this flare to scramble that alien’s power. Then gift this pod to that alien.

Any: Encounter

Super Flare

When using your power, you may discharge this flare to keep your existing sub-power.

Actor: Encounter

Modifications

Changed Reincarnator’s power name from power of “reincarnation” to power of “rebirth” to avoid redundancy. The power of rebirth is used by the later-released Reborn, but I plan to fix the issues I have with that alien’s theming later.
Modified Reincarnator’s power to be a little less random. The original power assigns a random power when losing an encounter. Mine gives Reincarnator a choice in the matter, with the choice getting reduced the closer Reincarnator gets to victory. I set it up with the queue system to prevent Reincarnator from always taking the optimal choice. Once it turns a power down, it can’t take a new one, so it has to be satisfied with what it takes. Used dominion as an abstraction of “karma”, as it makes sense that Reincarnator could be considered more evil/selfish/unrighteous the closer it gets to victory. Didn’t want to overcomplicate things by adding “karma” tokens when Reincarnator does certain actions, but it’s another possibility.
Added the “Setup” clause to let Reincarnator start with a power, as the original requires a loss to get its first power. Mechanically this power works fine. Added because it doesn’t make sense to me that Reincarnator starts every match in its default form. One would think it would carry over from previous matches.
Set Reincarnator’s main power to be seen as whatever its starting base power is, to make it more of a surprise after it loses ships for the first time. This decision in contrast to base Reincarnator gives it an interesting passive benefit at the beginning instead of a boring passive weakness.
Original Reincarnator reincarnates after losing an encounter, including peaceful losses or encounters that rescue their ships. I modified it so Reincarnator only loses the power when losing the ships as casualties, to prevent Reincarnator’s power from being reset by a simple Plague artifact or Assassin’s power.
Reincarnator’s legacy causes every alien to scramble their power upon taking casualties, allowing aliens to trade a few ships to get a new power if they don’t like the one they have. Aliens that love their power will need to pull off a win streak to protect it. Original Cosmic has no legacies.

Tips

Zapping Reincarnator will allow it to keep its current sub-power. Useful by opponents to force it to keep a bad one or by allies to help it keep a good one.
Reincarnator’s sub-power is mostly random, but it has more options the earlier it loses its power. After getting a good power, Reincarnator will want to avoid losing encounters for as long as possible.
Reincarnator has its own tier list when it comes to choosing sub-powers, separate from the situation of the match or personal opinion of the user. Many loss-based powers like Ethic and Vacuum are mostly worthless to Reincarnator, as unless it has a zap handy the sub-power will either only get one use or go away before getting much of any use. On the flip side, powers like Anti-Matter and Gambler, which can be deleterious to have long-term, can work great in the hands of Reincarnator, who can use the powers for all they are worth and then dump them for something else.
If Reincarnator has a bad sub-power, consider letting them win or accepting their deals to prevent them from getting a stronger one.

Development Notes

Like Warpish, Reincarnator is another alien that makes me wonder what “death” means in the context of Cosmic Encounter. Of course, Reincarnator could technically be changing form without dying. Perhaps the alien commander always pilots the flagship
The key aspect I wanted to add to my Reincarnator theme that does not exist in the original is the notion of “karma,” where the user’s actions have an effect on the potency of their transformations. The power level of different powers in Cosmic is both subjective and situational, so there is no realistic way to set Reincarnator to get a “better” power with good karma and a “worse” power with bad karma. Instead, it would need to be decided on a case-by-case basis. The two best ideas I came up with involving this were to let Reincarnator choose a power, with the number of choices being determined by karma; or to let the other aliens vote which of two powers Reincarnator should take. The latter seems a bit too abusable, as even if Reincarnator is entirely selfless the entire game, other players could still decide to give them Masochist in a game with Healer instead of Remora. The choice aspect is the least thematic aspect of the power, so it needs to be abstracted.
One of the main questions to ask regarding this power is whether Reincarnator should start with a power already. Realistically, Reincarnator wouldn’t be starting every match at the first cycle of its rebirth, so it makes sense for it to already have one. It also helps if Reincarnator’s power is copied by another alien, as the power they would receive would be the power of Rebirth, along with the sub-power if related assets are copied as well.
I had the fun idea for Reincarnator’s visible power to be the sub-power. Realistically, if Reincarnator is coming back as one of the other aliens, the other alien is what others would see. It does make one wonder why Reincarnator has a design at all, but that be interpreted as what Reincarnator’s “soul” looks like, in the same vein as the other aliens. That’s what people see when Reincarnator is using its “real” power.
I set it up so that Reincarnator’s main power becomes its sub-power during setup. Its base power will be the one everyone sees. This has a side effect of creating a power dynamic with Plant and other power stealing aspects. If Reincarnator’s power is stolen and that alien loses, that alien’s original power will be replaced, permanently replacing their original power with whatever they turn into. Stolen powers usually get undone during upkeep, so the reincarnation power itself will be erased, preventing the alien from reincarnating again.
Since my Cosmic provides wins to aliens rather than players, an alien like Reincarnator makes me consider how such a thing should be tallied. If Reincarnator wins, does it count as a win for both Reincarnator and its current main power? What if Reincarnator had one main power for the entire match and then changed right before winning? What about an alien like Chrysalis that is designed to change into one alien and keep it for the rest of the match? It seems to make the most sense to me that an alien’s power at the start of the match determines the alien that gets credit for winning, but what if an alien loses their original power outright, such as Chrysalis transforming into Reincarnator and then replacing its main power with Trader? I think such a circumstance would still result in a Chrysalis victory, since it was ultimately a Chrysalis that transformed into that new creature. The one exception I think I would make to this rule is Cult, as any alien that becomes Cult also counts as a win for Cult. I think the rule should be that a winning alien’s original power gets credit for the win, unless otherwise specified as part of an alien’s bio.