Grrl Power #597 – High Int., let’s say average Wis.
The first half of this page is channeling that crime procedural show “Numbers” where, if you haven’t seen it, the FBI guy has his math savant brother use all kinds of crazy math to solve crimes, like applying fluid dynamics to traffic patterns to plot get away driver escape routes and the like. My biggest complaint with that show was they only did a surface level explanation of the math. I really wanted them to spend a good 15 minutes really getting into the math, like an episode of Numberphile. (Similarly, my complaint with The Imitation Game was they barely explained anything about the Enigma machine itself, unlike this Numberphile episode. (And this one talking about how they cracked it.))
The second half of the page is anything involving the sad trombone noise.
To be fair to Dabbler, I didn’t think of that solution until I sat down to write this page. I think if I had played any tabletop RPG’s in the last few years, my brain might have been better geared to outsmart the GM. That’s where the stupidly obvious refrigerator logic solution occurs to you while you’re playing and not 2 nights later, and the GM goes “uh… yeah, I guess you could do that.” and you wind up skipping half the adventure. The evil wizard builds a tower full of traps and monsters, each level more dastardly than the last, and Lina Inverse uses a flight spell to fly up to the top floor on the outside of the tower and chuck a fireball in the window.
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Seriously, where’s the geek fun that? Also, John von Neuman could have done that in his head.
Alfred E Neuman wouldn’t have worried about it.
With that level of Dabbler embarrassment, I think Sydney just earned herself a tardy excuse.
Sydney just invented the self-hoisting petard for Dabbler….
Dabbler just got ‘Jean-Luc’ed.
Panel 5 looks like a full-out processor meltdown. Real paradigm-altering calculations on the nature of reality.
I love the look on your face, Dabbler!
Which one? :D
The one on the front of her head.
She has duplicates of other things. Have we had a peek through her hair yet?
Meant in which panel in particular as there are several great one’s (fortunately no Great One’s) on this page :D
Panel 5.
That scenario with the tower full of deathtraps actually played out exactly like that for a group I was running — except they managed to bring the entire thing crashing down on top of all the demons inhabiting the place (by sheer happenstance, no less).
They did that in One Punch Man as well.
Fate/Zero too.
Albeit that was engineered on purpose
Looking back, it’s kind of hilarious. Kayneth was so certain that his “fortress” was impenetrable and was bragging about all the horrible crap Kiritsugu would have to get through to get to him and then Kiritsugu just blows up the building.
To be fair even Saitama thought Genos was being mean when he did that XD……….Annnnnd the Villain in question was smart enough to keep himself and the important gear underground.
Evil Overlord List
#12 One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.
It’s better to go for any Average Joe… 5 yr olds are easily distracted, likely to just goof off and emotionally immature.
Reference to the Evil Overlords list. One of the good ones, besides, the kid doesn’t have to sit at your feet all day listening to boring adults make conspire to do evil things, and run the country competently. He’s just there to vet the totally obvious mistakes that often plague would be evil overlords. Kind of like putting a big red button for the self destruct in their lair/base/spacestation. There’s a lot of talk about that particular issue. :D
True, but my point on 5 yr olds still stands. Just because they don’t always have to be around, doesn’t mean they’ll step up to the task when they do.
An Average Joe on the other hand, will
the reason for a 5-year-old is that their thought patterns aren’t fixed. they can think of outside-the-box solutions easier than people who are older and think in more of a straight line. the average Joe WON’T think of going up the outside of the tower.
And even more importantly the average Joe will see an evil overlord in front of them and be too afraid to speak their mind honestly. That part of the brain does not exist in a five year old.
I always thought it was that if even a 5-year old child can see the flaws in the plan, it’s not a good idea to follow it- not that the 5-year old would be the only one you consulted.
Like the big red button labeled “self-Destruct” active a dozen machine gun turrets aimed at the button, and the actual self destruct button being a like a light switch behind the mirror in the Overlord’s bathroom.
I prefer having a clearly labeled Self Destruct button, without safeguards. It works as a suicide switch.
If you want to kill yourself, have at it, hoss, but don’t say the button’s mislabeled.
Mmm, I can see a flaw in the plan. If your enemy is too weak to defeat you, but is quite happy to die, if they can take you with them!
Ah – he did not say that the button would destruct the base. Just the “Self” – so, in this case, the person pressing it.
A similar option would be a big green button to start the Doomsday Device marked “You Win”, and a big red one that immolates the user marked “You Lose”. Let the hero witness you pressing the first button, then clumsily attempt to ineptly distract him from the console as you make your escape!
Ahh, so in a fantasy setting it might be an elf destruct button. Gotcha.
That’s a good plan. The problem with geniuses is that they tend to overthink problems, leading them to come up with complicated solutions or declare that no solution is possible. In an episode of “Bones”, people wanted to pick out a Secret Santa and they were coming up with all sorts of weirdly convoluted ideas for choosing names. Agent Booth simply wrote everybody’s names on a sheet of paper, tore off the names, crumpled them and then placed them into a hat. Another time, they were trying to catch the face of someone leaving a room. They had the back of his head on the camera but no frame showed his features. While they were trying to come up with some solution involving camera angles, Agent Booth said they could catch the reflection of his face on the glass door as he was leaving. Even the geniuses were impressed.
SNERK!
Dara Ó Briain: School of Hard Sums
Some nice pics of Dabbler today.
Do iPhones still have that “Find iPhone” app?
That might have worked also, but who would throw their iPhone like a grenade
with no reasonable expectation of getting it back?
+1
Even without that all their chokers, and Halo’s pip-boy, can be tracked by Archon HQ.
>who would throw their iPhone like a grenade?
Samsung users.
Then that wasn’t an iphone, now was it?
((really sick of the ‘Samsungs explode’ joke… it was bad lithium batteries. same thing happened with a lot of other consumer electronics… they just didn’t get caught on film, melting through a fast food table. ))
Well, samsung explodes joke was accidental. It was more about samsung users treating their phones like phones, rather than sacred objects of worship. On of course they’d throw a spare iphone into a hole if they happen to have iphone and samsung on hands.
Then, why not a nokia?
You know, the proven bullet-ressistent phone? The one that easiely survives several months covered in snow and still works?
Haven’t seen any Nokia *smart*phones on the shelves. If they even exist.
Pretty sure they exist, but do they exist outside in the US?
Which is too bad. I’d certainly have considered purchasing a smartphone that I knew was damn near bulletproof.
Nokia does have a smartphone.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/10/06/can-a-phone-stop-a-bullet-nokia-reportedly-saves-mans-life/
Pretty sure they only have stupid phones now. That’s not the same thing as a dumb phone. A dumb phone is actually nice to have as it easily survives two weeks on a recharge. No Atupid phone is one the rund Windows… I have one so I can tell you it’s a stupid choice.
The stupid isn’t even in the OS, it’s that almost every time you see an interesting app you find out it’s available for all platforms, IOS and Android. Windows? What’s dat?
Propitiatory systems do tend not to withstand the test of time. Microsoft have not learnt from the mistakes of history.
That’s because, in their search for the ultimate monopoly, they tend to not cater to other platforms.
Considering that Archon probably has a small rack of them set aside for Maxima due to strength related breakage, Max could have tossed hers through. It would have been a minor twitch in the ‘replace the Colonel’s phone again’ routine, in that this time they check its GPS and activate any needed data purge system before loading the next phone in the sequence.
considering the criteria listed for the portal’s other end, what are the odds of it having cell service??
There is nothing to loose. The bad guys know that the good guys were coming, so having something thrown through the portal does not do anything beyond confirm that. If there is a signal, fine, they have the location. If there isn’t then they switch to the rock plan.
Personal belongings carried on target’s person is generally considered second best magic focus after target’s body fragments like hair, nails or blood. I for once would not give a crazed vampire artificer something that could let her put a curse on me.
Extremely good point. Hopefully Dabbler would raise that before putting the suggestion into practice. With an off-the-shelf phone, rather than lobbing a personal phone.
Not that I was envisaging anyone wanting to be separated from their own phones, other than in an emergency. But your point elevates it from a privacy risk to a life-or-death issue. So putting a call in to Harem to pop down with a disposable phone would be a good idea.
If they can get a signal to her from here, that is, to show her where to teleport. Normally I would have suggested using the magical internet, if there are no cell towers down the side of the continental shelf. But I gather there is a problem with that.
So their delay may extend to getting up to the surface or whatever depth their satellite phones/ pip boys / chokers can actually get back in touch with HQ. Then wave to the spy satellite, so that Harem can see them.
Well, if they had not already gone past that stage, of course.
Pretty sure the same thing might apply for a grenade. Might even be a little surprise present for the deathtrap on the other side.
Because there could be orphanage and bunny rehab “Sacraps of Hope” rather than deathtrap on the other side of the portal. If you don’t know what you’re gonna hit, assume the worst.
+10
If in doubt, assume that if you hit an unknown target, it’ll either backlash your hit back at you, or it’ll hit something that’ll backlash on your reputation.
you can get a Satellite enabled phone with GPS nowadays, a few people who hunt recreational in Texas use them, and more got them after Ike and Harvey because Satelites dont have Towers that can go down(also usable almost every place on the planet)
Sidney and Maxima are in no position to blame Dabbler for forgetting that. They were both there and also didn’t think of it.
On the other hand they didn’t just boast with their superior intelligence.
Maybe. But neither Sydney or Maxima know what Dabbler’s magic is capable of. Dabbles was just so focused on her intricate and brilliant plan that she missed the obvious. Maxima trusted she knew what she was doing. And she did. She just made more complicated than it needed to be.
Dabbler merely forgot to notice the trees while admiring the forest…
More accurately, she and Sydney just demonstrated the difference between Intelligence and Wisdom.
Fair. On the other hand, Dabs could just reply: “For the same reason that you didn’t send your Lightbee through to scout the location out.” which would get Sydney scurrying off to class.
The last time Sydney used the lightbee to scout a location, she died (or, if not, would have suffered worse, at Sciona’s hands). Choosing not to repeat that is a sign of wisdom not forgetfulness!
OK now that she knows about the teleport function she could avoid using that. However the capabilities of the orb have not been tested, and Sydney has shown that even in life-or-death circumstances she can fumble when using the orbs (namely dropping the flyball, in midair)!
On top of which Sciona is now aware of Sydney’s capability, and is a powerful and adaptive mage. Just as the portal was likely to be rigged with deathtraps, Sciona may have set up something to counter the lightbee. Even if all it does is destroy that, it could be a permanent loss, if the lightbee is an irreplaceable object, rather than just a projection.
But, given that Sciona has teleportation magic, the worst case scenario is forcing the lightbee to teleport Sydney. Either to her or into the death trap.
In order: I’m thinking more along the lines of using the lightbee to scout the position and then, if need be, bring it back to her position so she doesn’t teleport through. (Shouldn’t she be training on this sort of thing? I know “rule of Sydney” but still….)
Is Sciona aware? That would seem to be a vague point given the issues involving the previous time warp.
If we go along the notion that Sciona is capable of that sort of thinking and abilities, then we must also presume that Sciona is also capable of countering the pebble trick as well. You could just as easily say “Well, Sciona might have rigged a Redeemer (Unreal Tournament weapon if you don’t know) to fire a 2-megaton warhead through the portal if anything inorganic breaches it.” to counter the pebble argument. As was said in a previous strip, it’s possible to overthink what your enemy’s counter-strategies could be.
As for the last paragraph do note that Sydney had discounted the whole possibility due to the risks of tampering with a death-trap laden portal. Whereas Dabbler has the technical expertise to know whether a tracking spell on a pebble is a low or a high risk. And, from her expression, concluded that it was not high.
Whereas Halo does not even know her own orbs properly, so the risks are already disproportionately higher than with Dabbler – using a spell she has likely practiced for more than a century. Sydney should indeed be testing out her powers. But is undergoing basic training, so her time has to be spread out amongst the different tasks that entails.
Amongst other things I imagine Maxima wants to instill a basic level of discipline, before risking the more dangerous testing. Harem has a mechanism to ensure she can avoid arriving from a teleport in the same spot as someone or something else. Does Halo?
Clearly she inadvertently triggered her teleport the last time. So that is easy to do. Making sure she has safeguards to avoid that, in a potentially deadly situation, must take higher priority than attempting a shortcut in locating a (likely abandoned) staging point.
Possibly not. But even when she had no clue that there was an Archon team on her doorstep she managed to capture an invisible superhero with the stealth of a jaguar! And Sydney, the instant she teleported in. Who was monologuing to herself in the process.
So I think it safer to assume ‘probably’, when it is our protagonist’s life on the line.
Does Dabbles know Sydney can use the Lightbee like that?
Sydney did mention that she could see and hear through the lightbee. But you are right that we saw Halo considering the merits of concealing critical information, to counter the possibility that she may, one, day have to engage a rogue teammate. So if Krona’s transcript does not give away the extent of the scouting ability it is indeed possible that Dabbler may not know.
That’s the Curse of Smart. As intelligence goes up, so does the propensity for overthinking things and completely overlooking the simple solutions, thus making it more complicated than necessary.
It’s like Thor said to Carter: “The Asgard would never invent a weapon that propels small weights of iron and carbon alloys by igniting a powder of potassium nitrate, charcoal and sulfur.”
Ouch ouch ouch.
My lungs hurt. Laughing painful.
Good job.
well lead and copper compounds propelled by detonating nitrated carbon compounds. but maybe he was talking about it before 1880.
Ahh Stargate Thor, speaking to Samantha Carter. I was having difficulty placing it, as the Marvel universe was the one that sprang to mind initially.
Yes, he was talking about the initial development of firearms. Unless you have the initial concept, and successful implementation of that, you will not get subsequent refinements. Whilst a more advanced society would have a wider range of materials to choose from,* Asgard did not do that. So it would have been pointless referring to a development that never occurred.
So the logical way of phrasing it would be to describe the one that did occur, on Earth.
* In fact, should such an advanced race decide to mimic our inventions, I seriously doubt they would use something as limited as nitrated carbon compounds. They will have far better ones to choose from, off the shelf, and would likely be able to produce custom ones optimised to produce the maximum lethality within the limitations (such as the carrying capacity) of the people they intended to use it.
Outsmarting the GM is the best part of any RPG. Current campaign: had to assault a town’s improvised defenses, made of wood. Determined that Ray of Frost can freeze fuel-oil. Our two capable casters created a frozen boulder of fuel-oil, lit it, and rolled it at the defenses. They did not survive.
That’s why they should have rolled it before lighting it :P
One of my DMs had the bright idea of slowing us down with reversing gravity bashing us up & down 30 feet each time down a corridor. But I had a Monk who took no damage from falls under 50 feet and just ran right through.
And then there was the case of a published module (‘Tomb of Horrors’ ?) in which the dungeon’s outer doors were made of Mithril or Adamantite or some such material… and at least one party, I think at a major convention, realised that simply removing the doors from their hinges and taking those slabs of metal back to the big city would yield them a truly massive value in loot without the need to face any of the traps and horrors further in…
^_^
_^_
That was a GenCon going quite a few years back – at my judge table a few weeks before the convention we did what all good [ie long lived] adventurers do. Take anything that was not nailed down, then take out the claw hammers, pull the nails, then take everything else including the nails. HQ was always too busy to listen to the feedback from judges tables because we always broke things but then again they always were.
Our ref got annoyed after we flooded the market be recovering all the old bronze hinges, torch holders, etc…
My favorite was giving the players a low-challenge dungeon that contained very little coin but a lot of valuable-yet-hard-to-transport stuff — 40′ x 40′ tapestries (from the dining hall) that weighed hundreds of pounds, 6′ x 50′ mirrors (from the fencing salle) that were likewise super heavy and fragile but far better quality than anyone else in the area could produce and therefore much more valuable, and so on. The players were too low-level to have portable holes / bags of holding, etc. The adventure wasn’t about killing things, it was about economics, goods transport, politics, etc.
this is like seeing 4 grandchildren who all have doctorates of some kind trying and work out why the TV won’t turn on now that they’ve connected the new Fancy-As-Fuck-Gedget’o’tron 5000 and having grandma, who didn’t finish high school and was a stay at home mom, say “Is it plugged in?”
Someone get the Shame Bell!
I think we have all had moments like that, being on one side or another. Like when my husband wanted to scan something to his laptop, but the printer seemed to be taking forever until I asked him if his laptop was turned on [it wasn’t].
This actually happened at my university when I was studying to become an engineer in electricity.
One of our teacher couldn’t get the projector to work and ended up calling two of his collegues to help him.
They passed a good quarter of hour on it.
Then, after ten-twenty minutes, as they had concluded that it was broken, one of them asked us if we had any ideas on why it didn’t work.
As a joke, I asked if they had checked if it was plugged in.
That was the day I made three engineers feel stupid.
I used to do tech support for a kids computer game company. I would get calls for folks with PHD’s all the time, number one issue was a dirty disk number two issue they were stuck and couldn’t figure out how to get further into the game because the kid was stuck as well. Doing software testing was another one of those job where you get to make someone way smarter then you feel like an idiot. Comes down to being things that folks takes as common sense aren’t common sense. Like using rock to mud to destroy the village of monsters when they built it on a cliff side.
I remember playing a Sherlock Holmes text game. It was quite fun exploring the starting room. But took an interminable time to get Holmes to go downstairs into the street. After spending another eternity typing things like “walk down street”, “hail cab”, “walk”, “call taxi”, “N”, “S”, “E”, “W” and so on, I eventually concluded “F*ck this stupid game” and never played that or any other game like it again!
I dislike any game that has one specific solution to any given problem. And if it is so uninituitve and inflexible that you have to call tech support or look up a cheat or walkthrough to continue, I have zero interest in playing it.
A friend of mine had a very similar experience playing one of the old text adventures… somehow he got into a situation where one has to move a bear away from a spot to progress. He says he tried everything he could think of before he decided to express his contempt for the puzzle in typing.
The text parser, in order to save storage space for verbs, didn’t actually hold the full word, instead using the first two letters of the verb, thinking that would probably be enough to prevent ambiguity.
The expected command was probably supposed to be ‘scream at bear’. Instead, my friend typed in ‘screw bear’, and was amazed when the game allowed him to advance, due to the bear being startled.
Based on “scream” / “screw”, I’m guessing that the game’s dictionary maxed-out at 4 letters per word…?
The original “Adventure”-game used a “5-letters/word”-limit, so that “Northwest” was read as “North”, which meant that you had to use “NW”, instead.
That’s exactly what got me into programming. Adventure, it was called. I wanted to make it unpredictable. After 20 years, I was writing AI to analyse simulation data and generate behavior rules to validate that the simulation acted according to predicted behavior. Still haven’t finished the Adventure rewrite, but when I do, it’ll be fricken awesome.
Sounds like the kind of game I want to play. Not just as in ‘your idea sounds good’, it is akin to one that I have been pitching to any games designer I chat with. Just in the hope that someone will get around to making it. Because it is the kind of game I would like to play, but have too many other priorities in my life to learn such a complex job and do it myself.#
Clearly you must have a great mind!
*wags tail companionably*
Take a space travelling game as an example. Each sector the program would just track the overall demographics. The proportion of planets which are settled. What percentages of each race can be found there. Likewise for significant cultural factions (such as a trading empire or outposts of a galactic civilisation).
A high proportion of death cultists or pirates can make for a dangerous place. Whilst a prevailing peaceful cult may make for a boringly quiet sector.
Plus all the usual bits and bobs, like birth rates. As modified by racial or social factors, of course.
Only if a player either travels through it, goes to one or more of the planets, or acquires charts or other information about the region, need the details be populated. As a player can only interact with so many things, this does not mean detailing the entire galaxy. Just the bits of it that they player becomes aware of.
If they see a ship, the game can work out its allegiance, and the demographic makeup of everyone on board (with such clumping as may be appropriate – such as the possibility that they are all pirates).
And if they leave a sector, then only the major events, like wars, plagues and super novae, need be tracked. Along with their impact on the demographics, like refugees fleeing, invaders settling or the mortality rate for any of them.
Should the player return, and decide to look up an old acquaintance, first the game needs to check if their number came up on the mortality list. Likewise whether they might simply have died of old age or accident. Then it can do things like check if they are still in the same job.
If they are, then it should be easy to track them down, if the player knew they were a miner on a particular world, for example. Maybe not so easy for an asteroid miner, independent trader or mercenary.
That way even getting back in touch with a useful contact would be a matter of hitting social media, galactic email, or whatnot. Rather than going to the middle of the park, outside the town hall, and expecting to find them standing there. The same as they were years ago!
Without having sneaked off to even go pee!!
The fun bit being that if players like the look of a particular character, they can choose to abandon their current game and switch to playing that character. Whilst their old character’s behaviour then gets run by an AI (to discourage abuse by players switching to play major characters, who could bankroll them, or otherwise provide favours that the game normally would not, then swapping back to their original character).
Aaaah, exact word syndrome. The bane of the genre! It’s gotten better these days, though.
Also, wow, you sound demanding with your games. How does that work for you?
Well mostly I just play what is available. But when talking about what I would like made, I can be a lot more specific. Garbler’s sounded like it covered the key bits though. Using AI to determine the precise interactions based upon ‘simulation data’ is not dissimilar to mine of ‘demographics’.
His just being the way you would generate said demographics, in a dynamic environment.
I was just fleshing that out for the kind of play you might expect in an example environment. The same mechanics could work in any era or setting. Provided you use data/models that are appropriate, of course. It does, of course, also assume that the AIs have realistic behaviour for their role.
Where it may fall short, pre-programmed behaviours can help to fill the gap. The crew of trading ships will seek to take goods from where they are cheap to where they are expensive. Pirates will seek to attack vessels in areas where there is no police or military presence, in preference. Miners will travel to mineral rich planets, etc.
Likewise social allegiances can affect these typical behaviours. Cautious traders will tend to stick to safer systems and familiar social groups (e.g. trading with others of their own race). Whilst more adventurous ones will dare the more dangerous systems, IF there is a suitable extra profit margin. Likewise they will be more inclined to interact with aliens.
Meanwhile they will be more likely to trade with an allied trading group than a rival one. Likewise an AI who has strong faith would prefer to trade with those sharing the same faith, all other things being equal. Whilst will have an aversion to dealing with those of a rival faith. Whilst one with only token faith, or who is secular, will be less bothered about these issues.
All of which would provide a realistic backdrop, which would create a believable network of alliances and rivalries, for any scenario to draw upon dynamically. A leader within religion A wishes to have a rival within religion B discredited by having a ‘fake’ artefact taken by force and sent for independent analysis.
A military leader within race C wants to discourage race D from conducting mining operations in the sector, so is hiring discreet mercenaries to harass their operations. Whilst avoiding provoking an outright war. If the player gets it wrong, he will find that his friends and any other civilian operations he may have in the area (such as mines of his own) may well suffer directly or indirectly from the war.
Rather than ‘demanding’ I hope that part or all of it might be ‘inspiring’. Although Garbler seems to be thinking along similar lines, for some core aspects. Obviously as he is developing something he will not want to reveal to many details, in an open environment.
Whereas I am quite happy for him, or others, to use these ideas as they may see fit. I would be very happy if a game similar to this were to be developed. Or even if it were just aspects. Like finding a MMOLG where the NPC contacts actually go home at night, go to work during office hours, and if you need to find them at the weekend, you better find out what their favourite sport or pastime is!
The approach I’m taking is actuwlly not inventive in its broadest strokes: everything has an objective reality, and rules for individual and swarm behavior. the map is a cellular automation, and NPCs and the main objects are alife, up to & including reproduction. Yes, castles can reproduce.
The hard part is that everything I just mentioned has to have mathematically integrated behavior, like a balanced ecological system.
Try to design a system that acts like a real world balanced ecology, and you’ll soon discover that there is not and never has been such a thing as a “balanced” ecology.
One of the more interesting games to follow through the mainstream news outlets is Eve online. Because it has an economy and social dynamics that can reflect real world dynamics. Making the shifting alliances, betrayals, economic fluctuations and the like an interesting meta game, over and above the programmed game dynamics.
Provided those swarm behaviours, and the like, have a fair approximation to how things work outside of the virtual environment then you can have an immersive game world that can keep players absorbed in perpetuity. They can experiment with things that they would never dare to in real life. But the consequences should be realistic.
Except, of course, if a character has to spend 30 years behind bars, and does not find a way to escape, the player can opt to switch to a different character. Perhaps trying for a career less likely to end up being strung up by the tallest solar panel arm, until dead.
ummm..what i meant by “objective reality” is in-game objectivity, ie, it continues to exist and behave even when no human players are in view of it. Example: kick a ground sloth into a sinkhole, go back to town, go adventuring in the mountains, come back around to the sinkhole. Maybe the ground sloth is still stuck in there; maybe she found a way out and sneaking up behind you to get revenge; maybe she followed your trail back to town and is currently terrorizing the townsfolk. objects don’t reset. destroyed pieces of things, ashes of burned things, etc go away; but unbroken/unkilled things are persistent.
Ahh, quite a lot more resources required for that then, if you are having to keep track of every element in the game. Even with cunning shortcuts. So not as much on the same wavelength as I thought. But still a good game emulating life. Just in a smaller area. Which is not a bad thing, at all, if that is an interesting one.
To the contrary I know that having limitless space to explore can both be daunting and make it more challenging to vary the content in a meaningful way, to stop it all becoming homogeneous.
I’ve seen similar things, if not quite as bad as your example. I’ve worked in IP tech for a while. I managed the NOC at a Ma and Pa ISP, where our office space was in the same large room as the cold room all the equipment was in, separated only by glass walls and a glass door.
Multiple times I saw smart techs work for long periods of time on a layer three or four approach, when the issue was far simpler. The time the web server was acting all wonky, for example. It was after hours and several of us were at a party being hosted by another colleague. The manager of the web team called to notify us of the issue. Then called a half hour later to say that he couldn’t find the problem. Then again another half hour later to say that there was no change. I said to the room ” is a smart guy, both with the web software and the OS. I have complete confidence that he would have found the problem with the web server if it was there.” Another half hour later, no change. The office was fairly close by so I rolled by, walked into the server room, re-seated the octopus’ nightmare of cables connecting the web server to the disk array, and the problem went away. really was a smart guy with both the web server software and the OS, far smarter than me on the specifics. But that’s where he had put all of his energies investigating. The issue was much simpler, and not one you could ever solve at layer three or four.
Apparently when you put “web server guy” between greater than and lesser than signs it is interpreted as a hypertext tag and the contents and symbols are removed from view…
It is probably just a routine designed to prevent people implying that folks are prostitutes. ;-)
Back in college it was a running theory that learning advanced physics killed basic math skills. It’s the same factor as in any of these situations; you’re so focused on all the high-minded stuff and keeping track of it that the obvious things to check roll right under your nose. None of us ever got the wrong answer because of the complex stuff, it would be because we had 1+1=11 in there.
And that’s why tech support starts every problem with “is it plugged in, is it turned on.” It’s simple and obvious and nobody would call in without checking that which is exactly why they do and it saves a WHOLE lot of time to get that out of the way.
I don’t think I have ever loved Sidney as much as I do on this day.
Or that I have laughed this hard at Grrlpower as I did today. :D XD
Sydney is a walking Occam’s razor. Plus she has her super ADHD powers. Dabbler never had a chance…
Dabbler forgot rule no1 of true intelligence-Youre never as smart as you think you are.
Good thing we have a Brady Haran fan in you
“Most optimal”? Really? In other words, “most best”? Because “optimal” means precisely “best”.
I could expect such phrase from Sydney, but not from Dabbler, who is educated enough to know better.
Yeah, but English is not Dabbler’s native language. Depending on how she learned it she may have picked up some technically incorrect colloquialisms without realising it
Dabbler is not a native English speaker. And seems to have some gaps in her self-determined intelligence level.
And even native English-speakers (or Muricanese) can get things wrong
Butt, in this case, ‘most best’ is acceptable, because you can have the best, and the more than the best
I prefer “bestest in the whole wide world” myself
Abreastes of the bestest of the breastesses.
optimal & best are both singular AND plural. Most optimal is singular. (in other words, a group of things can be optimal, with one being the most optimal)
Yups, isn’t the English language such fun :D
“Most optimal” is equivalent to “best of the best”. It’s totally cromulent.
Like ‘most excellent’.
just making sure to avoid localized optimums.
And avoid local opossums. They may be endangered, and you should not interfere with wild animals, in any event.
Damn straight they’re endangered, if I’m around. I keep a live trap on the patio, and bait with veggies as occasion arises. free the cats that inevitably get caught (repeatedly, one of them), and give any captured pouch rats a new home on the bayou about 4 miles away.
It’s been scientifically proven that people who think they’re intelligent are often lacking in brains & vice-versa
Apparently they also have a tendency to go for the complicated solution instead of the “quick ‘n’ easy” way Maybe they should heed the advice of Scrooge McDuck: “Work Smarter, Not Harder!“
Dabbler is working smarter. She just not working wiser.
The set known as Quick and Easy has a massive overlap with the set known as Dumb.
There is also a significant overlap with the set known as lucky – this is where dumb luck comes into play.
Most quick and easy solutions are all levels of Red Green creativity but without the flash of genius or any sense of self preservation.
If the women don’t find you handsome, they should at least find you handy.
Nothin shouts “poor workmanship” louder than wrinkly duct tape.
Especially for a fix where you would expect welding instead.
Thus, one of my favorite quotes:
“That’s far too simple and straightforward a solution for a complicated fellow like myself.”
Eh people who proudly declare that theyre smart are usually far dumber than the people intelligent enough to keep their smarts a secret.
A fool is content in his ignorance and says he has learned enough, but the wise man understands how much he does not know and realizes always want to learn more.
oops, realizes he always wants to learn more.
The Dunning-Kreuger effect, best paraphrased as ‘if you are very stupid, you actually lack the critical judgement necessary to know how stupid you are. To know how stupid you are, you have to actually be a little bit smart’.
Yea, I’ve done that. It was with a published module too. A maze (open to the sky) at the end of which was the objective tower, with the final fight at the top.
To give them credit they set the level of the module such that the mages should not have fly. But the alter self spell does allow limited flight with wings. And I was able to cast it enough to bypass all the other encounters (with invisibility to avoid archers), sneak a peek at the final boss unseen and figure out an easy way to wipe him out. Solo (despite the module being for 4-6 characters of my level).
What version were you playing? Because in 5e Alter self does not allow flight, for that reason.
Also how did you go invisible with alter self? They are both concentration spells, so you shouldn’t have been able to do both at the same time…
I dunno, maybe it was an earlier edition, maybe other reasons… but it sounds like the reason you bypassed the module was because your GM didn’t know the rules, and let you do things you shouldn’t have been able to do.
Would be interested if you found a way to let it happen RAW, love those loophole things.
Probably 2e or 3e/3.5e — Invisibility & Alter Self simply had durations in those editions, no concentration needed.
Definitely 3.5 era adventure. 5ehas its points but there are major issues with it as well.
Anyways, our tower did not have windows and there was flying nastiness that would cause problems if you went above the tree tops. The foundation was unnatural so druids couldn’t do their thing. HQ thought they had everything covered.
At the time blade barrier’s plane could be any orientation and could intersect any object and damage was determined by caster level – poor tower – lots of math involved. [Nobody wanted an enhanced Disjunction cast] Then the Druid piped up they could have turned the walls to dust – much pelting with popcorn followed. HQ instituted a level cap as a response.
Played this after 3rd came out, but it was an older module, so both alter self and invisibility were spells that the module designers should have taken into account.
Not that it matters. I had fun, even if the adventure was a lot shorter than expected. So, to make sure we did not waste the day, I then worked my way through the maze in reverse order, looting everything on the way.
It turns out that approaching ambush points from behind makes those a lot easier to handle, even when significantly outnumbered. Especially when you have all the loot from the boss’s lair! :-D
I confess one time as a DM when I was in a bad mood I designed a scenario like this as scmuckbait and had the top of the tower 1: Not be where the target was and 2: Be designed as a collossal trap designed to take out any smart arses who thought they could pull a dungeon bypass.The looks on the players faces was hilarious and I had to remind them that Id repeatedly stated that the villain in question was known as being extremely paranoid and intelligent.
That’s like my first D&D session. Matt, our DM, gave my perpetually drunken dragonborn half-elf sorceror a fancy item called ‘tankard of endless drink’ that would endlessly replicate any liquid put into it, and could switch between liquids, so my character could stay drunk. Literally the first thing I asked when I read the description was “can I put a health potion in it?”
I have never heard such a gentle man curse like that in all my years. Yes, I could. With limits during encounters, but none outside of them. So after every battle, I healed the party.
Surely it would require a periodic willpower roll though, to avoid replacing it with alcohol? Especially if coming across a particularly good vintage or rare blend. And at a significant penalty when the regular booze has run out!
no problem… have a vial of healing potion and a bottle of whiskey. pour the healing potion in, pour it right back into the vial, us the healing potion. pour the whiskey in, pour it back, get drunk.
There is a flaw in that, butt too tired to coherently word it :(
You should have asked about flammable liquids too – https://goblinscomic.com/comic/03242010
I’d say to thet that it does not replicate magic, so it can produce healing potion that have no healing properties – just looks smells and tastes like one. Still could be used to scam people, though.
Depends on the magic system used – in 3.5 a magical potion requires a spell being cast during its production so no but an alchemical mixture is just a precisely cooked up mixture of extraordinary ingredients then yes but most of those have limits built in.
The usual exclusions for items like that is ‘no magical liquids’ and ‘only liquids that people actually drink’, which puts an end to such problems. Otherwise the players prep for combat with multiple resistance and buff potions, in addition to healing afterward.
But you can do some interesting things even with normal liquids. A friend of mine’s gaming group had to clean out a vampire nest which was in a mountain. The vampires got tricky and carved small channels that their mist and small animal forms could go through and kept ambushing the players. The players got tired of it and spent a few days outside the dungeon stockpiling as much of the local equivalent of Everclear as they could find barrels for. Then one morning they went back, poured the whole lot into the dungeon from outside, waited a few hours for the fumes to circulate, then stood way back and lobbed a fireball. The whole complex basically blew up. They lost a lot of treasure but it turned out they weren’t supposed to beat the dungeon – it was a ‘loss and retraining’ arc, and they had taken out an end boss early.
Acid for door locks, avoid any nastiness like poison needle traps because your rouge can’t pick her way out of the bathroom.
I was always a fan of adamantine daggers as a universal key. Carving the lock out of the door frame works pretty good.
Or simply going through the wall and avoiding the traps that await just behind the door :P
Of course, a smart opponent will trap the walls, too. For example in Skin Game (15th book of the Dresden Files), protagonist wizard Harry Dresden has to break into the vault of a bank that belongs to a mob boss who is very much aware of the supernatural. In addition to wards and security measures that will go off if magic is used nearby (as human wizards disrupt electronics when they use magic), there are frigging Claymores embedded into the walls and ceiling, just waiting for a smart guy to try to blast a shortcut.
I have a friend who did that on a military training exercise. The enemy had fortified a building, and it was anticipated that up to thirty casualties could be lost in taking it. So he took his squad around to a spot they could approach unobserved and blew a hole in the wall, with explosives!
He got a lot of flack for damaging the training facility. But presumably took precautions to ensure that there was nobody at risk from the explosion. And did manage to take out the entire position without a single loss!
I’d think taking live explosives on a training exercise would be a very serious charge.
They were legitimately available. He was not a member of a regular unit.
In fairness, Marcone lifted that trick from Lara Raith.
The best (and most realistic) part of this is that she mentioned this without looking up from her tablet. Quick and easy solutions, though not always workable, often seem to come from a partly distracted mind.
In Sydney’s defense, she was not aware of Dabbler’s tracking spell until just now. If she had been aware of it or the possibility of it prior to this she might have suggested the same thing while in the cavern. My question would be why Sciona left the portal open when she left afterwards anyways. sure it’s possible to kill anyone that comes back through it, but even if her enemies are half as smart as she is they would be too smart to do that. In that case leaving it open is a liability.
For Sydney from now on she’s just treat everything like a D&D encounter and assume that her Mage isn’t smart enough to think of the right spell.
It’s possible that Sci-fright couldn’t close it once opened
And was just about to comment on how Sydney wasn’t even paying attention when she made that comment :D
Dabbler = High Intelligence, Low Wisdom
Sydney = Low to Medium Intelligence, High Wisdom
They balance each other out! Maybe they should just let Sydney in on some of their plans for now on. XD
I think sydney is quite intelligent but has an attention span of about 5 seconds.
Yep, She’s very intelligent, but with “Look! Shiny!” level of concentration….
At the time the distractions were I’m covered in blood because I found the portal the easy way followed by cold cold cold cold cold cold.
Followed by warm warm warm … girl parts are activating …
I suspect Sidney is quite intelligent in human terms. Not a super genius but much smarter than the average bear. If I recall the range is probably in the 120 to 130 IQ range. On the other hand she’s got the attention span of a squirrel on caffeine and that makes things difficult. Trust me I know.
I would agree with the others here that Sydney is quite intelligent, and has very little issue with learning and retain information that interests her if/when she is interested enough to focus. One doesn’t sit down to science podcasts about DNA because they like the sound of someones voice.
Yeah her stumbling block is both her hyperactivity and ADD. She might be smart enough to be a scientist but she would get so bored with the tedious paperwork and minute testing she would most likely walk away from it all.
I wasn’t calling her stupid. I know she is probably very smart, but she is no scientist and I assume she does not know everything. She can retain information but there is a reason she isn’t in Harvard right now.
Also, IQ tests are terrible at judging ones knowledge. I am just unsure what to rate Sydney’s intelligence. I consider her somewhere around medium because she is still learning the ropes of Archon, Military-esc tactics, and Superhero 101 classes. In a few years (Sydney’s time), we can assume she will be one of the smartest people, with the tutoring help of the team members.
Relax, I don’t think anyone here thought you were calling Sydney stupid, I certainly wasn’t. Just that the evidence points her to being fairly bright. Maybe not genius and to be honest I bet she would have a hard time even taking the IQ test unless it was framed as a contest to see where she placed against fictional comic book counter parts.With her wandering mind and short attention span.
As for Knowledge, it could be argued that Sydney’s insights of comics as they relate to powers is actually helping the rest fill in obvious intel gaps. They may very well be learning from her as much as she is learning from them.
Id say that evidence points to her being completely average on the intelligence front and shes just benefiting from being a comic nerd and an avid gamer,Though that said average doesnt mean stupid =).If she was really super smart would she really be the co owner of a failing comic shop for example?I recall her cunning plan to drum up business before becoming a celebrity was to scream like a psycho at random passers by.
I dunno about that. I think ‘fairly bright’ is fairer than ‘average’. She has been able to intuit For-Whom-the-Periwinkle-Butt-Sniffer-Toll’s power, organise a way of testing the theory and likewise of overcoming it. Similarly with Vehemence.
Yes she is drawing upon gamer experience to do so. But I think it would take a smart one to do so correctly, under battlefield conditions. I recon your average armchair gamer would be pretty satisfied to come to the second session, paused half way through the battle, having figured out the answer. Whereas Sydney had to do that in real time.
The initial marketing scheme was simply her expressing frustration and angst. I don’t think it stands up to critical scrutiny as her seriously attempting that as a marketing ploy.
Whereas when she did do that, it was by spotting an opportunity, seizing it with a spur of the moment idea. Getting her website address up in front of the assembled world’s press, before even the official Archon website had been announced, has turned their store in to a thriving success!
Importantly an average person might have the idea, but lack the dynamism to attempt to put it into practice. Whilst others might have the latter, but may only get the inspiration at the water-cooler, after the event.
Finally others may have had both, but lacked the mental agility to pull it off successfully. Commanding the tentacle to form the website address, and doing so with enough clarity to keep it readable, is proof of an agile and focused mind (when she can overcome her ADHD to do that of course).
Plus she shows lightning-fast tactical thinking, in critical circumstances. Note her successful feint and sucker orb punch against Math, as one example. Plus her heartbeat’s time to respond to a glimpse of Shadow Boxer behind her.
An average person would likely have hesitated, be that in panic or to formulate a response. It normally takes weeks of basic training to drill in useful combat responses to a hint of a threat. Sydney had neither that nor any significant prior experience, such as growing up in a dangerous area.
Yet Halo made the right call. And, again, under circumstances where a wrong one would result in death. Beginner’s luck could be used as an excuse for some of the cases, but that becomes less viable each additional incident she handles well.
Whereas her poor decisions are usually when she is bored, distracted or otherwise unconcerned about behaving in a socially normal way.
In all honesty anything involving her orbs I wont put down to anything involving Halos mental agility since if they were any more user friendly theyd go out and fight crime while she slept at Archon.
Also remember her lighting quick tactical thinking where she died?Or maybe when she thought it tactically apt to not use her level up grid mid battle even though it made her powerless and blinded/nearly killed another teammate.Most of Halos smart moments come from when shes hiding behind her unbreakable shield.Almost anyone can armchair general which is essentially her superpower shen shes got her shields up,Also the main reason Halo was the first to come up with a decent strategy against deathtoll and Vehemance is cause everyone else was busy fighting and being drunk on an aggro aura while she literally stood there and woolgathered a plan cause nothing on the battlefield could do anything to her.
She did react just as fast and made a good judgement. Halo broke the bones in Sciona’s arm, which should have freed her. She was not to know that Sciona was so powerful that would not phase her.
Being outclassed by a stronger opponent does not reflect badly on someone’s intelligence. Not when they do the best that they are able to, in the circumstances.
Sydney lacks the combat experience to immediately recover from such a psychologically devastating setback. Whereas Sciona is a seasoned fighter, and retaliated instantly, so Sydney got no second chance. Frankly she had guts, as a rookie, to even initially attack an arch-villain who is strong enough to fight the assembled Twilight Council.
You are omitting the context that she was exhausted before she even had to fly for about four or five hours (as the pilot) including through urban areas, and settling down frequently. With her meds being ineffective enough at that point, combined with her exhaustion, to the extent that she did not feel hallucinating a Muppet Maxima to be unusual.
Then had massive culture shock through being introduced to the assembled supernatural races. Fainting twice in the process. Then had to sit through long meetings. Then fight a battle. Then go on a patrol. Then fight another battle.
Yea, that really shows she is stupid. Not. Any rookie might have frozen up at that point. She was many hours beyond being just exhausted. Then, on top of that, she had the skill tree pop up, which played against her ADHD, in such a mentally weakened state.
I do not consider the medical condition that I have, which interferes with my ability to recall names, to make me less intelligent. Nor do I believe Sydney to be less intelligent, due to freezing, when factoring in all the factors above.
As for the shield protecting her, she did not have that when Shadow Boxer tried to backstab her. Nor when Sciona had her in her grasp. And she chose to sacrifice its protection, in order to shield her colleagues from Vehemence’s aggro aura. Using her judgement that she had built up enough rapport with him that she hoped he would not kill her.
That was yet another life-or-death decision that she made, and one which wholly relied on her ability to judge the character of someone she had only just met. This is not something that a merely average person would contemplate, let alone make the right call on.
As for the other situations where she was shielded, yes that is an advantage. But Sydney made good use of those advantages. Taking the time to spot the two individuals behaving anomalously, on the battlefield, and focus on them (not an easy task for her with all the distractions) allowed her to sus out their capabilities, in the end.
Average people may have been distracted by the flashier showier fights going on, and thereby fail to spot the main players. I stand by my assessment that Sydney is better than average intellect.
And I think Dabbler does too.
Must not re-read page again. Pain too great! N OOOoooooO!
face facts, you’ve already read it at least 4 times.
Ok, well into “no shit, Sherlock” territory here..
Except I do not recall, in all of the hundreds of comments posted on every comic page featuring the portals or since, anybody making the suggestion that Sydney just casually mentioned. We seem to be a community of Watsons.
Some things are obvious in hindsight. But would need to be suggested at the time, to be useful.
Given Sciona’s proffered approach to the tactics, as observed by the warehouse and the other ops locations, the portal location is likely going to be mammary trapped but more than likely divorced from any grander plans. The factory where she was actually working for example was ultimately a separated and disposable burn site from the rest of the plan even while she was working there. In all likelihood, when they get to the site they’ll encounter a bunch of traps and then find a bunch of dummy portals to other sites while none of them are really important beyond that particular phase of the plan.
At least they will know to toss in a few tracker-rocks :D
Also, you don’t have a portal directly into an open area in your lair. You either have it lead into a man-trap that has to be opened by the security guard on duty, or have it lead to somewhere a couple blocks away.
I see Dabbler is wearing similar but not identical clothing in Panel 1 and her thumbnail (one of them anyway).
I’d like to think the decorative gold embroidery is alien iconography which is a legal disclaimer succubii must display. “May cause injury or death but worth it”
The other top is black and more of a full corset, butt the glyphs actually move, like one of those ticker-tape machines or those scrolling banner-things
So Dabbler has that memetic white/gold x blue/black dress and is spontaneously changes colors between them?
Nah, the tops are completely different, the only thing they have in common is the scrolling banner-work
Sydney: “I know this may finish me as an acting recruit, but …”
Dabbler: “Shut up,
WesleySydney!”Poor Dabbler.
That is the BEST beat panel.
(Bah, can’t edit comments.)
Also, Dabbler’s expressive ears are great.
I’m old and my eyes are starting to go, so for a second there one of the equations behind Dabbler in panel five looked like 0+0 = BOOBS. Then again, it is Dabbler.
Well, 80085 is supposed to look like BOOOBS, just like the ‘0+8:::D’ is supposed to look like a dick and balls (not sure what the ‘0’ is supposed to mean though)
0 0
they’re more boobs. like (.) (.)
0+8:::::::::D is:
The alien: 8:::::::::D
Heading into the spaceship: {()}
Stolen shamelessly from one of those “Funniest texts” sites, where the story went that the mom wrote an innocent text to her daughter and ended it with “the alien.” The daughter texted back asking what was the mom thinking, sending her that? The mom texts back that she saw her son send it to his girlfriend and asked about it, and he said that it was an alien. The daughter says “That’s not an alien!” Then the mom writes back, clearing finally figuring things out, and says “… I see. And {()} isn’t a spaceship either, is it?”
Except, for that to be correct, the dick is entering balls first…
Rule 34.
You do know where the balls are typically found don’t you? And that most balls and dicks are attached to something (unless you are thinking of a realistic dildo)
Hey, rules are rules!
Love it! I can just hear the record scratch on Dabbler’s train of thoughts. XD
Also, yay Slayers reference! :D
Lol with panel 5 writings :) totally inline with dabbler’s brain freeze :p
A plan might be fool-proof, but you can never make them idiot-proof. Idiocy has no limits.
I learned that as “you can make anything foolproof, but not damned foolproof”. Points at Washington DC…
Einstein’s dictum: everything should be made as simple as possible – but no simpler.
It is the mark of truly advanced technology. An utterly simple interface that actually does what you want it to.
See a problem, point your magic wand at it, and the problem is solved.
If you make something idiot proof, the universe will make a better idiot.
“No Such Thing As Fool-Proof…
…Because Fools Are Too Ingenious”
About that whole ‘fridge logic’ thing, if that was in reference to that scene in the last Indy movie, he wasn’t using the fridge to protect himself from the radiation, butt to survive the literal shock wave, just like how in the first Predator movie, Arnie wasn’t trying to outrun a thermonuclear explosion, simply trying to get far enough away before it goes off to find a hole to hide in to avoid the blast
Nah, Fridge Logic is older than that. Hitchcock coined the term, apparently. Something about the parts of a movie that when you get home and start rummaging through the fridge, you think… huh… why not just do this.
Oh, okay, that kinda makes sense, usually have those moments just before falling asleep :(
see also: fridge horror
Oh, like that scene in “Tropic Thunder” when that guy is holding the head of the producer (or cameraman) and initially thought it was a prop
The French have l’esprit de l’escalier – literally, the spirit of the staircase. The perfect response you think of much too late, like while climbing the stairs to your own home after the party.
Sid doesn’t think outside the box. She has no idea the box exists. If she heard about the box, she’d probably decorate it and use it for magic castle play time.
She’d put a cat in it to see what happens….
A sleeping cat, usually, unless the box is a big refrigerator box also containing three little boys, in which case the result is a terrified feline desperately trying to get out. At least, that’s how it works in my experience :P
Fridge logic thought experiments?
*cries*
Someone needs to introduce Dabbler to Murphy’s laws of combat.
If its stupid, but it works, it isn’t stupid.
Maxim 43. If it’s stupid and it works, it’s still stupid and you’re lucky
In stories it means they are wearing plot armor and the writer/director is an idiot or Lucas without a leash.
With the corollary that the grunts will need to be retrained if they see a Maxim 43.
Annnnnd add one more in the ‘antic that secretly amuses Maxima’ file for Sydney.
For this very reason it might be why others are allowing Sydney to tag along on some of these meetings. She might be as difficult to keep on target herself, and say more then a few screwy things but the occasional random thought makes them all stop. pause and keep them all grounded and on target themselves.
+1
Sydney might be a pain in the arse a lot,* but that is worth putting up for to gain critical tactical insight.
* Or gazaporvum, as the case may be.
An unreliable anecdote about Henry Ford – he hired a business expert to look over his company and recommend ways to save money. The expert came back later and said that he’d found an employee that was just sitting with his feet proped up staring into space. The expert checked several times and the guy hadn’t moved. The expert suggested getting rid of the goldbricker. Ford said “Last year he had an idea that saved the company several million dollars. I think he was sitting exactly the same way. We’ll keep him.”
Lol.
Eh in real life Sydney would do a lot more harm than good-in fact in comics shes not been far offve this either to be honest.
Sydney just put Dabbler in a spot didn’t she?
Now off to class for you Miss Scoville!!!
Ironically the very same one that Dabbler once banished Harem to.
Saw it in computer tech help days. The smartest colleagues were baffled by problems and sought overly complicated solutions when it ended up as being simple. Sometimes one can be too much of an expert where all the options, most of which are only useful in rare situations, can overwhelm you.
Part of the problem with that (having done that professionally) is that, especially if you’re working with onsite tech support, is that you presume that other people are smart enough and technical enough to check if the device is plugged in. As such, you tend to breeze right past the “Is it plugged in” stage.
There’s a reason they always ask “did you turn it off and back on again?”
The smartest people tend to forget that.
Probably the most quintessentially Sydney moment EVer. Well done.
It was at that moment, Dabbler knew she Messed up
“I’ve made a huge mistake.”
As a GM myself, I usually try to make sure that dastardly wizards have alarm spells and whatnot to alert them to incoming good guys. That way when Lina flys up to the window, she gets a nice surprise that most don’t expect when fighting a mage. Like a heavy ballista that will kill the mage and any birds that happen to be behind it, with a dour but very intelligent golem named Nick Cage at the trigger.
You should really watch the Slayers, it’s worth it.
And don’t forget to dodge!
In other words two things Lina Inverse has already dealt with.
Lina Inverse once to get past the anti-magic defenses of a giant ancient Elven weapon *designed to fight demon-gods* hence her most powerful spell which used demon-god magic was useless against; devised a plan to have her…assistant as it were…construct a giant golem…after the golem fell in love with the giant ancient elven weapon…Lina used a powerful levitation spell, coupled with an explosive spell to throw the golem at the ancient weapon to destroy it. *anti-magic weapons are often relatively weak against mundane attacks*.
and her world does have cannon balls, robots, golems, guns, and explosives. Just areas heavy in magic normally don’t bother as the people are so powerful that their spells put most of those to shame.
I’ve never had a comic make me laugh out loud, or at the very least, smile, more than yours does. You are a brilliant writer. Thanks. :)