Grrl Power #559 – The guardian needed an upgrade anyway
Arc-SWAT was invited to the vault partially because The Council is allies with them even if they’re a little stand offish with them on occasion, but also because obviously they’re handy as bodyguards. Doesn’t mean they can’t be scared by their bodyguards. I think being scary is kind of a fundamental requisite for bodyguards. I wonder how often people get scared of their own bodyguards? Firing a bodyguard has to create some tense moments, but I assume the best way to do that is hire the new guy first, and if something goes down it’s like part of the extended interview.
The original script for this page had Ingsol ask in the last panel “And you did that at (X) percent of your strength?” but putting a number on it felt weird, because that guardian was designed to beat up interloping vampires, werewolves, golems, what have you, and they’re mostly all stronger than humans anyway, so unless the weakness aura was enough to make them weaker than a human, they’d still be able to, I don’t know, throw dynamite at it or fire crossbows and what have you. (It was made a long time before there were anti-tank weapons and grenade launchers were invented. Probably time for an update anyway.) So a 75% debuff doesn’t sound like it’d be enough to seriously hamper most supernatural creatures, but a 95% debuff to strength would make what Max just did seem really absurd. She’s incredibly strong but not like, kick Mt. Everest in to the sun strong. So yeah, best not to give it an exact number.
Of course, it’s probably not a straight percent debuff, most game systems have saving throws, or level comparisons, like you have a 50% chance to hit an enemy who is the same level as you, but only a 42% vs one that’s a level higher than you, and a 36% if they’re two levels above you, etc. Or 95% is the limit to any applicable effect, so anything that goes over 95% just serves to eat up levels of resistance, so an Act boss that had a 150% debuff, it would still only affect you to the tune of 95%, but your girdle of strength would have to give you at least a 56% buff before it started counteracting the debuff.
Dabbler’s ear clasp is a Legendary, BTW.
I was hoping to have the vote incentive updated with this post, buuuuut, my parents live in Houston and their house got about a foot of water last week, so me and the wife went down and helped them pull drywall and insulation and move surviving furniture to a place they’re going to lease while everything gets fixed up. Considering they’re among something like 30,000 other people dealing with that, it may be a few months before things get back to normal. Before I went down I tried to buy one of those industrial air movers, but Lowes and Home Depot in Dallas were already cleaned out of anything to do with water mitigation. I’m sure all the drywall in the state is on its way to Houston by now. It’s a good time to be a contractor in Texas I guess.
Anyway, they’re fine and insured and everything will work out, but it took up most of the weekend.
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I was more of the opinion that it simply did not affect non-magical beings, or probably has a reduced effect on them.
According to the councils explanations when Sydney 1st got introduced to them, most of the council does not consider themselves to be “magical” creatures, instead they are literally a different species or race. The weakness aura should work on anyone flat out because its a magic spell (unless someone has a protection in place like a Force Bubble Orb, or a enchanted earring for example)
I think based on Max saying “It Did.” and her not effected by it would have to do with her military training. one of the biggest things they teach is “if you fear it than make it fear you. after that it wont matter anymore.”
But how would the aura be able to mimic Max?
Or it did affect her. but it’s only designed to affect to a certain level.
Maybe wekness aura reduces 95% strength but its maximun reduction is limited to a huge amount of power that would be reasonably hard to exceed even for an elder vampire wizard. Shiny girls that hit at sound speed is unreasonably powerful even for this top spell effect.
An even bigger maximun reduction would be resource draining for the council and too hard to create, after all creating a spell 10 times more powerful than their top wizard might be too difficult or impossible. And they are never going to need so much reduction, are they? If an outer god comes knocking at your door… even 95% reduction will not be enough.
No. That sounds like the Marines more than any other branch, but not the military in general. Max’s “resistance” has nothing even remotely to do with any kind of military training. It more has to do with her being a super with super strength to begin with, and a pool of points that she can dump into whatever she decides sound good for the situation. (IE: You just knocked half my strength off, so ima dump my pool into crushing your arm now.) As far as I can tell Max’s balance is decided more or less instantly. Max was not unaffected by the weakness aura. She ate it, adjusted, then crushed hopes and dreams. I will grant that there is likely some intimidation ploy in the way she phrased things… purely because Max, not the military, but Maxima, has displayed that tendency previously.(Though to be fair the military is good at doing intimidation ploys of their own.)
I think it is more to do with willpower. yes the “make it fear you” is more marines, but standard basic training forces you to face fear in life threatening situations. that is for all military US or otherwise, as their job is to shoot at things and get shot at. it forces you to develop your own will power on top of courage and intent. I personally believe she was affected but becouse of her training she simply pushed it aside using her own willpower and knowledge of her abilities. then she handled business.
Short and effective that fight was. :)
That’s the way to do it, get it done with before they get time to figure you out or what’s actually going on…
Smug/confident Sidney is awesome Sidney.
I REALLY hope it doesn’t turn out the orbs are battery-powered, and sydney just doesn’t know that she shoukd recharge them somehow. That would be an unwanted surprise in the middle of a battle.
Or maybe, Sydney is so weak that the weakness aura couldn’t maker her any weaker.
If she is lucky it could be like old-school video games where you subtracted more items than you had and since there was no check for negative the counter rolls over to max values.
aaaw poor construct, it’s heartbroken, in fact it’s completely shattered! You could almost say it lost it’s head, really I mean look at the poor treatment it gave them and it was just trying to say hello.
They didn’t even think about his feelings. Why, he’s even gone all to pieces over it.
I know, right? They just send it over the edge at the end & didn’t even care…
Which is sad, considering how completely he fell for them.
It’s a broken golem now
By the way, our girl had best remember that “nothing” means “durn little”, not “nothing”. Otherwise she could not see out of Mr. Bubble since no light would be coming in. We may meet an unfriendly exception in the future, but there are lots of other ideas demanding attention.
Lasers, for example? I doubt the forcefield would be able to discern between coherent and scattered light. At least, it could use a polarisation filter, blocking the lasers half of the time.
But again, this is a comic with magic beings and supers, so nothing has to make strict sense
It’s already been shown to be able to filter out HARMFUL levels of light. For instance, Hex’s beams, and the flashbangs they used against Death Toll, at the steakhouse fight.
It was also shown that Sydney herself is confused by how it does it. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1630
WHAT!? That’s HORSESHIT! That totally would go through that.
Remember: Mr Bubbles is different to that forcefield
I don’t think Mr Bubbles isn’t proof to anything a normal person isn’t proof to, unless greasepaint and big shoes offer added protection.
Mr Bubble on the other hand is Halo’s forcefield and seems to be proof against almost everything.
Which is different to the transparent forcefield used in the opening pages
If we are going with the spaceship analogy that was used before in the comic, it could be that the shield is not actually transparant but projects real time images on both sides of the shield, because you know…windows are a structural weakness and you really do not want those on a spaceship (and we already saw the shield is actually airtight).
If so… the shield might easily be able to just turn into a one way mirror or even a stealth bubble.
Given that there are a couple entirely unused upgrade paths on the skilltree for the shield… one might well be for something like that.
And seeing that there are direct linking nodes between the different orbs… well those could be combination abilities and combining sight and shield might be exactly that.
Like in Aldnoah.Zero? Their force fields are near impenetrable, except for 1 point for an antenna to airborn cameras.
Then again, if Sydney’s is magic, and powers its own camera function, then maybe she is truly impenetrable.
Invisibility probably doesn’t have a “camera function”. It’s probably more like this:
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/349/6254/1310
I never thought two words could be so funny.
Such short and common ones, too.
Okay, I freely admit I probably just forgot something, but why does Dabbler have Caucasian flesh toned legs while she has her normal teal and purple arms and head?
It’s actually her outfit, which has peach colored legs down to the knees. We never got a close up look at it, but go back a few pages and you can see (https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2600 and /2602). The color’s just not quite as ‘peach’ on this page.
Here’s a good look at that almost-non-outfit.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/621
Wait just a damn minute.
Mr. Bubble doesn’t allow air to pass through, nor impacts, but the vibrations of sound are getting through? Is one of the pre-purchased upgrades sound transparency?
it probably does to sound the same it does to light.
This. Probably a selective filter that stops anything bad past a certain threshold (like when she just stood there in the wake of those flashbangs).
Or maybe it just stops EVERYTHING and then has (the equiv of) a camera on the outside repeat what is deemed “safe”, maybe even at a sensory level. If it’s a spaceship then it should be able to filter out direct sunlight-in-space which melts eyes if seen directly.
That’s what I’ve been guessing, glad I’m not alone.
As long as the vibrational mode can pass through — which is to say, that as the air on the outside pulses against the field, it transfers the pulse to the air on the inside — sound can be transmitted. Straight physics.
That said, a shock wave, being just a very high-amplitude acoustic wave, would be trouble. And it’s already been demonstrated that that does NOT get transmitted. So I suspect either we’re talking strictly comic book physics here, or the orb in question — since it’s in contact with Sydney’s hand while in use — picks up on what to let in, and what not to let in, within certain limits.
Oooo, that’s possibly the best explanation ever: because Mr Bubble is in Sydney’s sweaty palm, he knows what would be harmful and not to let it through, also explains how the bubble in the opening pages worked differently
135% resistance to debuff? Wait does that mean she gets buffed by debuffs or is she simply more resirant/immun.
+135% compaired to what?
I am so confused by that statment.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2621/comment-page-2#comment-566570 Okay that comment was supposed to be a reply to yours but due to some user error it ended up individual. But that’s my explanation to maybe help understand.
I bet this version of getting punched in the face like a boss where, you know, you are actually punched in the face but get the same reaction is much more satisfying to Maxima. Though I suspect that the reality this time is still much less impressive than just taking the punch from vehemence, even factoring in that he still broke her nose.
Hope panel 9 goes into the rotation of protraits for Max at the top of the page. It’s a good one, even if it’s a bit oddly-shaped for that purpose.
Yet another thing I need to update. :P
I agree though, it’s a pretty good pic of her.
is it just me or is Dabbler’s leg human in the first scene she is in? Otherwise awesome page again. only wish this updated faster lol
It’s peach leggings, it was mentioned during the trip through the spike-tunnel
thanks, I didn’t think DaveB would make a mistake like that but everyone has an off day lol
So, an elder vampire hitting enough of a debuff to bring him to his knees….
The average person can carry 46 pounds, and weighs ~130lbs (meaning a 160lb maximum), meaning a normal person could be debuffed only 25% on strength and be rendered heavily encumbered. So we can use roughly 50 pounds/25% is a standard human debuff measurement equivilent.
Further, 4Gs (meaning four times their weight) is enough to bring an average person to near immobile (as is evidenced by the gravitron carnival ride, against the rules, I rotated on one of these once, and you can be on your hands and knees, but its very difficult). This is the level to which Ingsol was reduced. For a normal human to reach that point (assuming I qualify as normal in this regard), at the time I was ~120 pounds, meaning adding 360 pounds, making a debuff to “hands and knees” a common human would be roughly 7 times that. So to “floor” a typical human would take a 175% debuff. That means dabblers 135% should actually be completely overpowered by whatever would floor an elder vampire.
Now, that’s assuming the percentage is based off of “what a person can carry”.
The problem here is, “X%” is only a moderately useful measurement when you don’t know what it’s “X% -of-“. It’s kind of like the DBZ power level problem. “Sure, great, your power level rose by 20… 20 what? Is it a linear scale, a logrithmic one, are we talking units of energy like calories, or are we talking final result strength, like deadlift pounds?”
Similarly, are we talking debuff percentages in regards to what a typical human can handle, in regards to what dabbler can handle, in regards to what an elder vampire can handle, or are we talking each person a percentage of their maximum so it’s variable based on the individual? (Because added weight reducing Maxima to 50% would crush most anybody into paste, but if its scaled for each person, that seems oddly variable for a single drain source.)
So many questions, not enough answers!
I don’t think the vampires were UNABLE to stand – more likely, the weakness surprised them just as if you suddenly put big weights on them. They would be able to stand but not quickly.
Also, Maxima with her ability to change how strong she is is more used to changing strength and therefore can adapt faster.
You may have a point. That said, Ingsol did have time to comment on the veakness aura. So obviously it’s strong enough for him to not just pop right back up after realizing it. So I’d assume at the most gentle end of the spectrum, it’s at least enough to make an elder vampire stumble along at a slow shuffle.
Compared to the strength of the debuff. The easiest example I can think of is Darkest Dungeon. In that, you can increase the odds of your Debuff’s working Above 100%, and resistances can be above 100% for some enemies. Basically the game randomizes a number between 1 and your Debuff’s max chance, and if it exceeds the enemies resistance, then the debuff succeeds. So you’d need a 136% chance to have a shot at debuffing Dab’s, but a 200%~ chance to have something in the realm of the reasonable. OR it could also be a situation like a Debuff can only have 100%, BUT effects can Lower the targets resistance, so you’d have to lower her’s by an additional 35%. I hope that explains it.
I might not be an expert on DD, but that doesn’t really makes much sense. If both values are compared against eachother, then there is not much point in calling it a percent chance.
Usually, as far as i know, it hapens in either of 2 ways.
1 – two seperate checks
The caster has A chance to cast a spell, and if successfull, THEN the target makes an apropriate Save.
Dice rolls between 1 and 20, if you are playing DnD, or 1 and 100, if using percentages.
If the dice is above your required value, you fail. if its equal to or below, you succed.
2 – Effect reduction
Instead of making an “all or nothing roll”, you simply use your “resistance” to Reduce the SEVERITY of the efect. IT still goes throguh, just not as powerfull as it would be otherwise. no actual rolls are made here.
In both cases, they are both EFFECTIVELY caped as a 100% percent, since its pretty much pointless to have more “CHANCE”, than “guaranteed”.
However, “effective” value, is not the same as “Base” value.
There are often abilities, that reduce the Targets ability to resist such spells, or succede in casting them.
Those abilities, affect the BASE value, but not the cap.
So lets say, someone aplpies “50% resistance reduction”
if we go by flat value, for anyone else that would be a massive hit, virtualy rendering defenceless against curses. but for dabbler here, she would still have 85% resistance, and so she would be merely “inconvenienced”.
Grll power does not operates on game logic, but magic still has a lot of rule lawyering.
I’m currently re-reading Patricia Wrede’s 13th Child series. I love her character, Miss Ochiba. “That’s one way to look at it. There are others.”
100% resistant to debuffs means debuffs don’t. Debuff, that is. So 135% resistant means not only do the debuffs not debuff you, they enhance your buffs by 35%.
That’s how I look at it.
You’d have to ask DaveB of course, but the way I took it was that the extra resistance is an offset against penalties.
For example, Dabbler has 135% to resist debuffs. Now, obviously, you can’t fail your save if you’re making your saving throw on percentile dice and have more than 100% resistance. But what if the debuff itself has a -60% penalty to the saving throw? Now your 135% chance to save is reduced to 75%.
In any gaming sense, or tabletop style game, more then 100% resistance to debuffs should mean a bonus of some kind instead. The extra (35% in this case) would become a bonus to healing or magic or buff a stat instead.
An ability to reduce resistance could occur, but the gaming terminology of a saving throw wouldn’t apply, instead it would be reducing the effects on the person. (weakness aura works all the time for example,dabbler got a stat boost for a bit, making her stronger, while Maxima worked with reduced stats, just not completely reduced like the vampire & bug were)
Or, the above 100% is to offset any penalties you’d take to the score. Rolemaster and palladium works like that. Rolemaster also allows for better levels of success if you beat 100% on something. I’ve never seen a table top game where having an over percentage nets you any gains when hit by what you’re resisting as just a casual part of the resistance. When it does (like if you not only resist fire, but absorb it for healing), it’s a really specific and highly themed ability.
This is slightly off topic, but it appears other web writers are confused with using percentages as well. PC World wrote an article recently about how bloatware can slow down net access on a PC.
“the Superfish software on a laptop slowed Internet speeds by as much as 125 percent”.
Now THAT’S slow. I think you would actually have to reverse time to achieve that effect.
Erm… but why is Syd piping up here?
Magitech forcefield or not, she didn’t do much here, did she? Or am I missing something?
she saved decollete from being crushed by a pile of shattered giant bones on the previous page
also, if maxima, for some reason, was not there to intercept the attack, the fist probably would have bounced harmlessly off the lighthook
The question was asked of the whole team, not just Maxi
Nothing except certain kinds of light, Sydney… Certain kinds of light.
And sound. Nothing except anything that is deemed completely safe.
we’re gonna need five plates at the crow buffet, please
Why?
Wait, that actually doesn’t make sense. Sure, a boss might have a stronger debuff aura, or whatever, but at 100% resistance, no matter how strong, that should make you immune. Anything above that would turn the debuff into a buff, wouldn’t it?
So she’s got so much resistance it makes her stronger. Would be a funnier way to explain why she didn’t get weaker in the weakness aura. To me at least.
Depends on how the resistance and debuff stack.
It could be indirect resistance (“I have a 100% chance to resist your debuff”) but other effects may decrease your resistance (e.g. “decrease debuff resistance by 75%” would result in a mere 94.5% chance to resist debuffs!)
It could be direct addition (“I have 135% debuff resist, you have a 150% snark debuff aura, my snark is decreased by 15%”)
It could be something even more esoteric, since maths can be fun with percentages like that: A 50% debuff and a 50% buff done as linear addition from base value will cancel out (“X + 0.5X – 0.5X = X”) but as multiplication will not (“50% * 150% = 75%”)
It gets very funny when you start using percentages as additions. Multiplicative stacking works pretty well as long as you don’t go into negative numbers or above 100%.
E.g.: I have 135% debuff resistance, so when you debuff me I reduce the effect by 135% so you actually buffed me for 35% of the effect you would’ve caused me with 0% resistance. At that point the word resistance is probably not correct however (as most people assume resistance to be passive, not to generate things, which is also the problem with having negative resistance). Which could’ve been the case with Dabbler considering that she decapitated that golem in one hit (the golem couldn’t defend but still it meant that Dabbler was able to take it out in one direct hit).
That’s why units are important.
Is the debuff “Your strength is reduced by 75%” or is it “You effectively way 75% more?” or is it “You feel like 75% infected with some illness?”
Wouldn’t it mean you just operate at 25 % of your normal strength?
Even operating just as low as 50% of your normal strength would floor people and send some people into cardiac arrest. Many people’s lifting strength (in addition to the normal everyday holding up of theri bodies) is less than their full weight, meaning a 50% reduction would be cutting into the “I can stand up” strength. So is that 25% of your lifting strength, 25% of your overall strength, 25% of your heart’s cardiac strength, or what? The first is you have to drop your backpack and armored jacket, the second is you’re flattened on the floor, and the third is you’re dead.
Hey Dave,
If you really need some water mitigation stuff and don’t plan on hiring anyone, check out http://www.jondon.com. I work for them and we just opened up a second location in Texas to help get the stuff the professionals need down there. There is a location (normal location) in Dallas and a secondary, temporary location in Houston. The second location is pick-up only, no store shopping though. However, you can shop the website, call ahead and lock something down. Our sales reps are really super helpful, I listen to them all day as I work. They always try and make sure they do the most possible that they can for our customers. Hope that helps you!
‘It did’
That is probably my favorite line from her so far.
Also, terrifying. :D
Which is why Ingie has that thought bubble in the last panel :D
Mr. Bubble! XD I wonder if that name will stick, or if she’ll change it to something else later? :)
Will you be helping your parents reinsulate/sheetrock? It’s fairly easy to do, just annoying to finish/sand. I do hope the studs weren’t damaged badly; I guess let them dry out and check for rot (i.e., poke with a sharp metal stick and hope for resistance)?
I am not really happy with Max’s suddenly softer face in recent comics, but this is a really good scene for her anyway.
Yeah, this is close to her normal look, little soft but not as bad as it had gotten
What about “at just a fraction of your strength”?
Also very interesting to notice that the orbs are definitely of magic nature. We had already a suggestion but the in-built magic defense means probably that the creator was familiar with the techniques and energies used by Earth’s mages.
It could also completely deny AoE effects but that still means that the bubble either acts as a barrier that takes into account everything or it does something strange like removing the bubble from reality altogether and then relying photons between the two planes of reality.
As a side note that would mean that Halo is not immune to sight-based attacks (e.g.: hypnosis, possibly flash bangs. Why did Maxima not try flash bangs yet? It seems such an interesting option. Okay, could’ve happened between pages of course). Which of course raises the question… Would this work?
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/48
And there are excellent ways of blocking all attacks that are not subtle however. Including light-based ones. Block everything that would cause the bubble to become a dangerous environment (I said excellent, not simple) and you will find yourself coding also a protection for high energy photons. I guess that could be counterproductive in cases where you want something dangerous to enter the bubble however. But I can’t imagine such a scenario. Maybe if by error you trapped an enemy inside with you and couldn’t release the orb. Like in the case the orb was glued to your hand. Damn. That could be Halo’s doom. Superglue on the shield orb and she could starve XD
Actually, holding the orb allows her to use it but it doesn’t auto-activate it.
From Krona detecting something from the orbs (and I assumed that her abilities are magic-based because the framing for her code is similar to the one used for the “magic emails” so it suggests that the nature of the two things is similar in nature and it would’ve made no sense for the author to suggest that visually if it was otherwise, it could be but still Krona is in an organization that deals in magic protecting the identity of magic users through the use of magic. There are aliens too, but they seem to be in the back row. Also maybe Dabbler is an alien too as suggested by the comic it was taken from. And she uses magic as well as technology) and from the fact that the owner probably was aware of the existence of magic as the bubble stopped a magical debuff.
So maybe saying that they are entirely magical in nature is too much. We can say for sure that they can manipulate/stop magic in some cases. It could be a coincidence caused by how the weakness aura worked but the most simple explanation would be that the orbs are able to manipulate magic and so are (at least in part) of magical nature.
Where do you get the idea that the orbs are magic? The most powerful magic users can’t even detect anything from them
As for that page you linked: different type of force field, that’s why Omnigal was able to rules lawyer his defeat
I love throwing in the omnigal reference to Sydney and her shields, that said, a common headcanon floating around apparently (myself included) is that Sydney’s shield is actually completely opaque and immpenetrable, but it senses and projects two way, meaning Sydney will only ever get things within safe parameters.
Where do you get the idea that the orbs aren’t magic? It’s not like they have any apparent power source, show any signs of being constructed, or operate like or respond in any way like any known technological item, after all.
I’m not saying that they are magic, or are technology. I’d just say the jury is not only just out on the matter, but that the pool of potential jurors hasn’t even been created yet.
The forcefield orb does seem to be able to stop beam weapons and coherent light, though. That was mentioned in strip #294.
Seeing how magic scans did nothing but Krona was able to see more I think the orbs are in the same nature as her powers, reality warper or something like that.
Or possibly shielded from scans until you open them to meddle with their “coding”.
Sorry about your parent’s house. Quite a mess we have down there. I used to live in clear lake. Now I’m in Bryan/College Station, but I still know a lot of people down there.
So far as I’m concerned, the Forb is now officially called “Mr. Bubble.”
Lots to like on this page, but imma shoutout to Dabbler playing hackey sack with the golem’s head.
The shield orb is the shield orb. Only the shield it creates is Mr. Bubble.
Not to be confused with Mister Bublé. :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Bubl%C3%A9
…Those last 5 panels make an excellent set of badass boasts. Especially Maxima’s.
If she has 135 % resistance to debuffs, does that mean she actually got boosted 35% by the weakness aura?
In any gaming sense, or tabletop style game, more then 100% resistance to debuffs should mean a bonus of some kind instead. The extra (35% in this case) would become a bonus to healing or magic or buff a stat instead.
The example is weakness aura works all the time its “on” in the area. Halo blocked it entirely, Dabbler got a stat boost making her stronger, while Maxima worked with reduced stats just not completely reduced (or hers were so damn high to begin with it doesn’t matter) and lastly the vampire & bug being people the aura was made for had no resistances and got the full effect on them.
It’s a 135% addition to whatever Dabbler’s normal debuff resistance is. If her normal debuff resistance is x, then the clasp adds an additional 135% of x to her resistance.
Why would a real-life debuff work on percentages anyway? All other real-life debuffs, like throwing a net, covering someone in tar or glue, and things like that work on an absolute level.
It’s rated with X amount of durability which is sufficient to hold any creature that can’t just break through it. Or it gums up a person’s limbs and makes them Y amount harder to move, which is insignificant for anything that can move with y*20 amount of force.
Unless they live in some kind of simulated reality (IC in addition to OOC, a comic book is a simulated reality after all), you’d expect something like a weakness aura to either add some kind of bonds/webbing to people that only interact with them precisely where they are attached and are otherwise invisible and ethereal.
The closest thing to a percentage-based weakness aura that I can imagine might simply increase the effect that gravity has on them/the effect of gravity in an area with an exclusion field around itself, causing a 70kg vampire to weigh (for example) 700kg, a 500kg power armored soldier to weight 5000kg, and a 70kg superheroine to still just weigh 700kg, regardless of how much more non-weight-related power you put into her.
Spells most likely don’t function based on percentages. Dave’s decision to make the exact values of several spells nebulous supports this conclusion.
However, in science you need quantifiable terms in order to derive a meaningful result. 100% resistance is probably like saying 1 kilogram is always equal to a constant atomic value: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/07/150715-kilogram-avogadro-chemistry-science-history-metric-units-mole-atom-mass/
In other words, it’s a system of measurement. And since she’ll mostly be comparing debuffs and buffs, rather than explicitly measuring them, using a percentage by default makes sense.
And I wouldn’t be suprised if Dabbler has dabbled in RPGs, and my headcannon is she’s an avid gamer. (Heck, she probably makes rounds of local gaming groups. Easy access to non-depleted tantric energy, while getting to brainstorm her next adventures simultaneously. Probably comes up with a number of her ideas that way; although I suspect her goto character is a Tiefling Artificer with high Charisma) So, she may be just have her own rough scale in her head, and it sounds better to attach numbers to it.
Except they don’t. You can set a trap to drop a net on someone, but it might not fall on the victim squarely every time. Or they might be carrying an umbrella they can use to keep the net from wrapping around them just like it keeps the rain off of their head. How much tar or glue did your tar or glue jet manage to land on the victim? Did it hit them in the chest and do almost nothing to them, or did it gum up their legs and cause them to run at half speed? Or did it gum up their legs and cause them to run at 1/4 speed?
The issue with your description is that it is results based instead of actions based. When you say “covering someone in tar or glue” instead of “trying to cover someone in tar or glue” you are assuming that your action had the effect you wanted all along. Things don’t work like that.
Fair enough, the primary point was that if a net or tar does work, it doesn’t make you 40% weaker, regardless of whether you’re a toddler, a human, a bear, a car or a tank, it just gives you 20kg more weight to move around, which is going to be impossible for the toddler, a lot for a human, small for a bear and a car or tank would only notice if it blocks their vision.
There is, of course, the possibility that the quoted 135% is knowingly inaccurate, and is just used for effect. It needn’t even be a deliberate misdirection; it’s a lot easier to say ‘135% debuff resistance’ than it is to say ‘complete aura protection, with excess capability in case someone’s packing an anti-protection aura’.
Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if spell resistance didn’t work *at all* like the percentage model; but Dabbler plays a bunch of video games, and decided to use a description that was intentionally imprecise as to what she’s really capable of, while communicating that it’s damned impressive.
Also, while I realize it comes with the whole tinkerer/inventor package, Xuriel *really* needs to keep a lid on her cool equipment. Here, pointing out her fantastically-powerful arcane artifact; and in the fight with Kevin, bragging about where the components of her sword came from in the presence of people (unexpectedly) capable of putting two and two together (“No no … she’s from Jersey!” “Oh, is *that* where they keep the Ætheon Thrones?”). I think there’s a real chance she’s going to give away information that she *really* shouldn’t give away.
Perhaps the debuff was a flat debuff (theoretically with a certainn floor) such as “minus 20 to strength, minimum strength of 4” or something like that. That way it would reduce everyone by a huge amount, reducing brute and supernaturally strong alike to a managable level, but would still allow for the truly SUPER strong to overcome that restriction.
Personal security isnt usually scary; and firing one, tends to be a blunt and straight forward no frills “we dont need your services anymore”.
usually after we get scary. i did a couple stints at the job; biggest problem is watching some idiot with a bit of cash destroy themselves and others. remaining silent is the hard part. but the pays good till your morals cant take it anymore. i liked the kids they where no trouble the teens on the other hand are by and large spoiled little punks. as a side note: you get in trouble when you let non lethal threats pop the punks in the mouth..
It’s probably easiest to just assume Dabbler is making a joke about her protective talisman ear loop working like it is from some RPG. Remember she is very secretive regarding her equipment.
Dabbles isn’t secretive about her equipment, she’s just not letting anyone have it and retro-engineer it and learn her secrets
“cough” ingsol i think the word your looking for is, owned
I like how Ingsol is reacting here…If he were alive, he’d be visibly sweating the realization that Archon has the Council outmatched, even in sheer power. That thought baloon, if it were words instead of being a graphic, would probably read, “We’d best stay on their gut side.”
That last row there….I think is just about perfect to describe them. Invincible shield, little bit of a munchkin, and just absurdly strong.
“……………………oh.” *must not show fear must not show fear…*
Why are dabbler’s legs a different color from her face?
Because she’s not wearing her pants on her head.
sigh…Dave’s gonna have to have a good panel of Dabbler so people stop asking that.
In response to Maxima:
“Ooh MYYYY!”
Shut up, Sulu! :-P