Grrl Power #1345 – Hack or slash
I mean really, why not an axe and a sword? It’s not like Maxima really has an encumbrance limit. The real limit is just how much stuff she can situate on her back before it gets in the way of doing her normal field work. A bag of holding would solve that issue as well, but the dungeon is a long way from being able to produce dimensional alchemical supplies. You need the stomach of a JumpJerk at a minimum. They’re like goblins that can do short teleports and they like stabbing people in the butt, but they’re about a 3.5 on the 9 point monster scale. You know, like “Lower Lower Class” all the way up to “Upper Upper Class.” Except most worlds with magic don’t label stuff like that. They’ll use Iron through Platinum, or sometimes they stick with metal until the top rank then switch to Diamond for some reason. Or they’ll do F through S Ranks. That’s still only 7 ranks though. But “Mundane” is an unranked rank, and jumping into the Divine arena is a whole other rank, or really a whole other scale you have to start climbing all over again, but F-S plus Mundane and Divine makes for 9.
The point is, if Dabbler hands Maxima a 7′ horse killer Berserk sword, she’ll have to actually carry it around with her, and that’s going to be really awkward. Also for some reason in our modern age, a cop, excuse me, gendarme with a gun is perfectly okay. But law enforcement walking around with a vicious melee weapon, that’s a harder sell. Especially the first time Maxima bisects some super powered bank robber. That’s going to be a rough week for the P.R. team.
Oh! I know. Give Max one of those swords that also turns into a bladed whip, Ivy style. Only instead of sword segments, use double headed battle-axe blades. Yup. I see no possible drawback to that.
System Delenda Est 3 is out. I recommended SDE 1 a little bit back when the Audiobook came out. SDE2 audiobook is out as well, so you can grab that if you like. If you don’t recall from my first recommendation, I fucking love the premise of this series. Instead of yet another System Apocalypse story, i.e., the system comes to Earth and civilization implodes and billions die, but hey, the main character gets to level up and be awesome, this story takes place after all that happened and Earth actually fought The System off of Earth, and the main character is looking to make sure it can never come back and destroy civilization all over again. This entails taking down The System in its entirety across all of known space. That seems like an incredibly daunting task, especially since high level System users can outright ignore nearly all physics, and the MC can’t level up within The System without it learning all of his tricks. And speaking of tricks, when I said Earth fought off The System, I mean an Earth of some indeterminate future where shit has gotten advanced. And when I say advanced, I mean like Enceladus, Jupiter’s moon Enceladus is, in it’s entirety, an unshackled AI of incomprehensible capability. The MC starts the adventure as a five ton Kaiju, and eventually winds up in orbit where he deploys exponential manufacturing capabilities and starts taking on high level System users with orbital mass driver strikes, and it is fucking fantastic.
The author, Inadvisably Compelled, has another good series, “Paranoid Mage” which has the MC discover the supernatural world around him, or rather, the supernatural world discovers him and the fact that he’s an unawakened/untrained mage (I don’t recall the exact details as it’s been a while since I read it). Anyway, they attempt to tell the MC how things are going to be, and the MC nopes right on out of there. And when they come after him, he winds up having to kill like half of the council of supernatural butt-asses before everyone is like, “Naw it’s cool. Do your own thing, bra.” It’s obvious to me the author has issues with authority, and that’s something I identify with.
I’m going to try something with this new vote incentive.
This month, I’m closing on a new house, selling my Mom’s house, finishing packing Mom’s house, moving city to city to the new house, forwarding mail, canceling utilities, all that. And after that’s done, I get to start the process of selling my old house, which needs a little work before it can realistically go on the market.
SO. I’m going to try and do this vote incentive in stages. Currently it’s just pencils. The TopWebcomics one will update with colors and detail until we get to the no clothes versions, then that will continue over at Patreon. Also there will be a comic or two in between each version to fill out the story.
I know it’s hard to tell from just the pencils, but this is Heatwave and Jiggawatt. The comics will explain why they’re doing what they’re doing. Although I feel like even saying that much makes it easy to guess, but hopefully the journey will still amuse.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Maxima has enough speed to comfortably catch bullets, so finding gaps in armour is very feasible. The only reason she would have to limit herself to a melee weapon is if her other attacks would cause too much collatoral. And by the time she needs to repeatedly strike with something tougher than her hands, they should have enough materials for Dabbler to create some sort of transforming weapon.
Max doesn’t have much ability to create area denial beyond melting the entire area around her, so something with reach she can swing around her head would be ideal. Even without a head deployed, staves are very versatile, surprisingly dagerous even in normal human hands, and a decent ferrule can turn it into a spear if needed. And if it can collapse to be the same length as her femur, then strapping it to her thigh makes for very easy transport.
But I’d vote a short hafted halberd for it’s utility if a transforming weapon is too fragile.
One of my RPG characters kind of has the opposite problem… hitting someone with a weapon is the *gentle* option, because at least a baseball bat will break if she hits someone hard enough with it. Her fists won’t.
Against Vehemence it was showed, that while she has incredible power to show off in various apartments, she require to redistribute her energy among them. She cannot put up a near impenetrable shield and wield the power of giants the same time… Not counting speed and/or flight.
Love Love LOVE the Weird Al reference in the interstitial comment. Keep up the AMAZING work. Thank you.
Every once in a while a new page gets posted and it feels like I accidentally skipped a page. But then I press the back button and, nope, this is how it was written. This kinda feels like that. Like there is a page missing.
I’m with Dabbler on the spear point. Well, the other points as well, but I don’t think Max would go for them.
I’m pretty sure that for pure efficient killing potential, the spear is the best weapon. It can poke things before they can hit you, it’s less resource intensive than an axe or sword, and you can swing it to get a sharp bit of metal going at speeds much faster than any sword or axe. It’s issue is that if your opponent gets past your spear tip, you are in a bit of trouble, but in this case they would be in close range to Max, which isn’t a spot you want to be.
Note, I am thinking of a spear like the ones from that First Berserker game, and I think some people would call them glaives, as they have quite a bit of spear tip, to the point where they are basically a short sword on a stick.
I am also thinking in the case of Max going dungeon delving, as having something that you can use to deal with adds without having them spill their insides on you is something I would want. Anything too tough to hurt with the spear Max probably can just blast with her gold beams (or whatever her energy blasts are called), similar to how she blew Vehimence’s arm off.
A spear is a pointed or double-edged blade on a stick, made for thrusting and maybe slicing open the wound as it goes in.
A glaive is a single-edged blade on a stick, like a scimitar, with naginatas being among the most famous. It’s a hacking weapon on a stick with some pointed utility.
A halberd is an axe on an extended stick, often with a spike and either a curving hook or a hammer backing it for more utility, considered one of the finest and most versatile polearms to ever exist.
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Max doesn’t need reach in normal circumstances with her speed. If she does, she can grab a convenient tree.
She needs something that can punch in through a really thick lot of armor and meat to get to critical stuff.
So, she needs a heavy axe or sword, at least six feet long, that could peel open Godzilla’s hide if she can ram it in, or a 20-30′ long kraken-skewering pike that might be long enough to punch through and find a heart.
If she needs crowd clearing, just order her a wrecking ball with a chain however long she wants, and get her to spinning it. She’ll clear a crowd of normals REALLY fast with that, and something monstrous taking a few tons at Mach 1 on the chin will feel it, too.
I think a halberd would be suitable for Maxima, very versatile as a weapon, and not quite as bulky as a straight battleaxe. Plus the main reason I can think of for her to use a melee weapon would be for a semi-ranged attack that doesn’t exploded, so the reach would be handy. Dabbler could probably even make it extensible and would enjoy making a one length fits all dildo joke.
?! A halberd is basically a large battle-axe on a stick! It’s much more bulky than a battle axe!
Did you mean a two-handed double-bitted greataxe, by any chance? That’s still less bulky than a halberd on a 7-8+ foot shaft!