If I understand this correctly, I think I lose having a consumable list as the final output. But it got me on the right track I think. THANKYOU!

I’m working with this now, which seems to produce a functional consumable list derived from a slice of the original list.

thanks again, I hadn’t stumbled across the createPerchanceTree command in the tutorials.

OriginalList
  d
  c
  x
  y
  z

//calls consumableList here just to prevent duplication
a = \{  [OriginalList.consumableList.selectMany(2).joinItems("|")]  \}

output
  //converts the selectmany product to a consumableList
  [newList = createPerchanceTree("slicedList =" + a ).slicedList.consumableList] [newList] [newList]  

This worked for me. thank you so much

Look at an example on (https://perchance.org/t2i-framework-plugin-v2). when you review the code, look for the numImages variable under settings > userInputs this shows how you can prompt the user to select differing quantities of images

That works perfectly. Thanks so much for the explanation.