Riku of Many Paths
Modal spells have always priced their flexibility in the counting: pick one mode, or pay more to pick several, and the card scales its output to your investment. This design turns that arithmetic into a trigger. The reward is not the modal spell's chosen modes but a second, parallel menu whose size equals how many modes you already selected, so a spell that let you choose three effects now hands you three more picks off an entirely different list. The more a modal spell splinters its own text into separate modes, the wider this fans out, and the three payoffs (impulsive card advantage off the exile clause, a growing trampling body, a stream of flying tokens) hit the aggression and card-flow axes without ever touching mana acceleration. It rewards a deck built to maximize mode-selection rather than mode-power, a subtler build constraint than most payoffs impose: escalate and entwine spells, charm-style choose-two effects, anything that lets you fan the counter wide rather than deep. As a 3/3 it is a fragile body that would rather grow itself than block, and the counter mode is the only line that touches its own survival. The character has appeared before as a copy-focused commander in the same colors; this incarnation trades imitation for a native modal-payoff identity, a cleaner mechanical hook that ties the whole card to a single, underexplored corner of spell design.
