Grrl Power – Dabbler’s Science Corner #4
I personally wouldn’t deal with any company that offered a la carte insurance on my body. If the core function of their business isn’t “we keep your body completely safe and healthy while you enjoy our rental bio-surrogates” then you may as well just stick your head under one of those crushing machines that did in the original Terminator and also André Delambre. (I’d leave André as an obscure reference, but it would take you 2 seconds on google to discover that’s the name of the scientist from the 1958 The Fly movie.) I mean, a company that dicks you around on insurance like that and your body dies while a copy of your mind is occupying one of their rental bodies, you KNOW they’ve got some rider in page 87 of their T&C that says they can keep charging you the rental rates for the rest of your life, while the death of your body will be attributed to “unforeseen acts of God” and no legal action can be brought against the company and the CEO probably is allowed to fuck your technical widow against her objections because you also signed up for Disney+ when you rented the body.
If you can’t tell, I might be a bit of a cynic and pessimist when it comes to totally unregulated capitalism.
But speaking of renting alien bodies, I think that’s something I could be talked into just to eat alien cuisine that’s either wildly toxic to humans or it all just tastes like cilantro – and that assumes you have the gene that makes cilantro taste like soap. I mean, it doesn’t taste like soap to me, it tastes like parsley. Like bitter grass. It’s weird, I think olives are disgusting, but I love capers, and my wife is the opposite. They seem like they’re not too far unrelated, but I’ll load up piccata or anything with greek dressing on it with capers, and the smell of olives makes me gag. It’d be awesome to live in a world where we could take a pill and flip certain genes on and off so we could make all the food taste good. And also cure Alzheimer’s and whatever. But mostly the food. Oh, and also the ability to synthesize Vitamin C since we used to be able to do that back when we were still more monkey adjacent. And while we’re at it, why not all the other vitamins we can’t synthesize? And make us all tetrachromats and while we’re at it I could use a prehensile tail when I’m carrying groceries…
Or we could invent Avatar technology and live in semi-disposable bespoke bodies.
*********************
Oh, right, I was going to tell you about Fray, and how I might have broken something. So, let me start off by saying that some of this wouldn’t be possible if the GM I’m playing with wasn’t real generous with the loot. We have access to most everything in the books, assuming we can afford it, but some of the dudes we fight have incredible equipment, so we sell it off and buy up what we need. Fray is an Ifrit monk – Ifrits actually don’t make great monks because they get +2 Dex and Cha, and –2 Wisdom. The Dex is nice of course, but the Cha doesn’t do much for monks except in a few cases, and the -2 to Wis is pretty bad. But I didn’t care. I thought she’d look cool with dark skin and glowing orange hair. Ifrit get 5 points of energy immunity against fire, which I didn’t know when I picked her race, but that makes sense. I also didn’t know they get an Ifrit racial ability with a few options, I think the default is that they can actually heal up to 5 points of health from fire in a round. There’s another option that gives them bonuses to fire type magic spells, which didn’t matter for my monk, but weirdly, there’s also an option for them to cast Enlarge Person on themselves once a day. That sounded cool to me, so I went with that. Inspired by the kind of broken Tavern Brawler monk from Baldur’s Gate 3, I went with a strength build, even though I knew the TB feat doesn’t exist in Pathfinder. She started off with 18 Str, and every 4 levels you get a point to spend on attributes, so currently she’s running with 20 Str. On top of that, she has (and remember about the loot generous DM) a Belt of Physical Perfection, which gives her +6 to Str, Dex and Con. She also has an Amulet of Mighty Fists, which gives her a +5 to hit and damage. It has an effect on it called Brilliant Energy which basically allows weapons to pass through and ignore armor. So Fray has to roll against enemies’ Touch AC, not their Armored AC. But wait, it gets worse. There’s a Feat called Power Attack which gives, at her current level a -2 to hit, but a +4 to damage, AND here’s the kicker. There’s a spell that can enchanted into an item called “Strong Jaw” which allows natural weapons to hit as if they were two size categories larger. It’s really designed so that some Druid’s owl or fox familiar can actually dish out some reasonable damage in a fight, but a Monks bare fists are indeed natural weapons.
To cut to the chase, a monk at her level can use Flurry of Blows to hit up to 4 times a round. If you spend a Ki point, you can add an additional Blow, and if the Monk or their party is under a haste effect, like from Blessing of Fervor (and we have a cleric who always casts it at the start of combat) then she can get a 6th attack roll in. Also we have a Bard that sings their Inspire Courage song, which gives +3 to hit and damage.
So, with all that, she does 20 points of damage per strike from bonus damage alone. If she activates Strong Jaw and Enlarge Person, she’s attacking as if she were 3 size categories larger, (Gargantuan) and if she lands all six attacks, (remember she’s targeting Touch AC, and is coming in with +22/+22/+22/+22/+17/+17 bonus to hit) she does 120 damage PLUS 6D6 per strike, or 36D6. In other words, she’d average about 240 points of damage a round. At level 10.
While I am an egregious min/maxer, this would clearly make the game less fun for the other players, some of whom do have pretty impressive builds and all of whom have top-tier gear, but the GM would have to throw a few enemies per encounter at us with like 500 hit points, or wrap everyone in triple stone-skin spells, or make their Touch AC 35 or something.
The reason I think something is broken in Herolab (which calculates all this stuff for you, as Pathfinder is a little more crunchy than D&D) is that at normal size, I should be doing 2D6 per hit. And if you told me to adjust the damage for going up a size category, I would assume that the progression from 2D6 would be 2D8 for Large, then 3D6 for Huge, and 3D8 for Gargantuan. But according to Herolab, when I add just the adjustment for Enlarge Person, the damage goes to 3D6, and if I add just the adjustment for Strong Jaw, the damage goes to 4D6, and if I add both, it jumps not to 5D6, but to 6D6 for some reason.
So, anyway, I thought I’d share that with you guys as I found it very amusing. I basically managed to replicate the damage output of a BG3 Tavern Brawler in Pathfinder 1st edition. Obviously I’d talk with the GM about those numbers and probably wind up rolling 3D8 since I don’t want to make the game a drag for all the other players. But the +20 to Damage from strength, Bard Song, Power Attack and my Amulet is staying!
Oh! And I found the perfect Deity for Fray. Kurgess, the god of Strength. Apparently worshiping him involves lifting weights and gives some bonus to encumbrance or lifting capacity if you “meditate” while doing squats with an anchor over your head. In my mind all sermons in Kurgess’s church (i.e., muscle beach) start off with “Well let me tell you something, brother! The only thing you can rely on in this world is the strength of your own arms…” all done in Macho Man’s voice, while the pastor enacts various bodybuilding poses.
Feel free to share your sick, game breaking builds. FYI, Maxima basically exists because I figured out a honey of a ‘sploit in the Champions tabletop game.
The new vote incentive is up!
Dabbler went somewhere tropical, in a very small bikini. As you might guess, it doesn’t stay on for long, which of course, you can see over at Patreon. Also she has an incident with “lotion,” and there’s a bonus comic page as well.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
An addition to the List has been called, nobody can go against the List.
Not even the List, if it makes it to the list.
List lore is being revealed. Lapha knows secrets about The List.
The size increase damage stuff that Herolab is doing for you is correct, there’s a FAQ about it – https://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1fm#v5748eaic9t3f
There’s an interesting ‘exploit’ with this and the Shikigami Style line of feats and a couple other things where you can use a sledgehammer (which starts at 2d6) and go all the way up to *each* of your attacks doing 32d6
Wait, you got +6 belt, +9 amulet of mighty fists (+5, and Brilliant energy is +4), and power attack only gives -2 to hit and +4 damage? You are level 8-11? That is insane loot. But yeah, welcome to Pathfinder martials. You do one thing (dealing damage), but you do it REALLY well. Look into the Dragon Style feat to push that strength bonus you got a little further (instead of +Str you get +1.5 * Str to damage), and later Dragon Ferocity feat.
Yeah, there’s being generous with loot, and then there’s giving items 7 levels too early. These items are endgame-level stuff, not level 10.
A level 10 Monk is good, and especially with Enlarge buffs, but you shouldn’t be able to outdamage a 9th-level spell like Meteor Swarm, especially not this consistently.
Back when I was a teenager, I’d pull that sort of thing in computer RPGs. I’d emulate an absurdly generous DM by creating a new character, immediately saving, then making my character beyond broken with a save editor:
– I’d set every attribute and skill to the absolute max allowed, to the point that in some games it would break getting extra points because of overflow or caps;
– I’d grant myself every relevant feat for my chosen build, even those I wouldn’t be able to get without modding because they’re for other classes or even other party members or enemies;
– I’d give myself the absolute best gear in the game, even those that are mutually exclusive quest rewards or NPC-only equipment;
– I’d configure my friendships and reputations with everyone in the game to be the absolute best, even with characters that are bitter rivals or mutually exclusive.
The result was that in some games, I was so damn broken that I was oneshotting bosses and unable to lose battles that I was supposed to lose. I’ve had multiple games where I had to reload a save, then exit, open the save editor again, tone it down from “slapping around gods with my pinky” to “supernaturally gifted” and then load back into the game.
Through the years, I’ve learned from experience that progression plateaus are not fun. These days, if I want to make a game easier, I don’t give myself all the goodies from the start. I generally do 2 things that allow me to start strong and end overpowered. The first thing I do is edit my starting attributes to the default maximum the game would allow, as in the superhuman level. So that would be, for example, 18 in all attributes in a D&D or Pathfinder game, as well as giving myself some free non-combat feats and spells, like the ones that allow communication with animals or corpses. Then the second thing I’d do is use a mod or trainer that speeds up progression, either by increasing the amount of EXP that I get or by allowing each levelup to be more potent. For example: in BG3 I used a game mod that gave me a free feat every time I leveled up, as well as gave double combat resources compared to normal, like sorcery points, Ki points, spell slots, …
I found that by raising the starting progression curve and then supercharging it, I would actually enjoy the game more. I would still have the experience of an absolutely broken character, but I would also still be able to work towards that goal over the span of the game by getting the rewards I wanted and the skills I need, instead of starting as a trust fund kid with a golden spoon in my mouth…
Did similar with Forgotten Realms games (this was back using the big floppies), would save the game on one side, turn the floppy over, load a character, take all the powerful gear and items and trade it to another character, repeat until all characters had end level gear and full stacks of ammo (like… 256 of the +5 arrows or whatever the big ammo was) and then start at level 1 :P
1) Pathfinder’s Power Attack automatically scales, whether you like it or not. At level 10 the penalty should be -4 and the damage bonus should be +8. Four extra damage per hit is pretty solid, even when your static modifier is +20 already after all the other buffs.
2) Yeah that’s insanely generous loot from the GM. Maxed-out enhancement bonus to to-hit and damage AND a belt of physical perfection +6? That’s endgame stuff :p
3) Upgrading damage dice through size increases generally works out to +50% “base” damage per size increase. That’s why 2d6 increases to 3d6 – it’s half-again as much. 1d8 upgrades to 2d6 because 8 (the max of 1d8) times half-again is 12 (the max of 2d6) and so on and so forth. That can kinda break down once you get to silly amounts of size increases, like 3+, but at the very least Medium → Large works that way (and honestly, 2 to 3 to 4 to 6 *is* about 50% more each time, if you round down. Can’t exactly do 4.5d6, Pathfinder isn’t HERO System~)
4) Back to the comic, Sydney “giving in” and adding Jabberwocky to her shit list is unfair, if on brand :)
While you’re right that power attack scales automatically, it scales off of a character’s Base Attack Bonus rather than their level. Even then a character with full BAB progression won’t be seeing a -4/+8 power attack bonus until level 12, since Power attack only increases when the BAB is a multiple of 4.
Monks have 3/4 bab progression, meaning at level 10 Fray’s bab is +7 so Dave is right that her power attack bonus is at a -2/+4. Next level though it should increase to -3/+6.
The Brilliant Energy doesn’t add bonuses to hit or damage. It’s just an effect. But you’re right, at level 10, you usually don’t walk into a fight rocking +11 to damage from items. It’s still fun though!
I’m just going to put this out there: Brilliant Energy only ignores Armor, NOT natural armor, and your attacks will do no damage whatsoever against undead and constructs, and you can’t sunder stuff, right? So monsters are perfectly safe against you, it’s the armor-wearing types who have problems.
And yeah, a belt of physical perfection is 100k all by itself. Normally you’d need to be 18+ to afford something like that.
Monk Unarmed progression is not the same as size progression. Basically, size progression damage doubles with every two size categories. So, 2d6, 3d6, 4d6, 6d6, 8d6 IS the correct progression.
Afraid I have to disappoint you DaveB.
Unarmed Attacks are treated as Manufactured Weapons thanks to the monks’ Improved Unarmed Strike, NOT Natural Weapons, UNLESS you have a custom feat or custom magic item that allows that to happen.
Because of this, none of the things that affect Natural Weapons will work on unarmed damage, and vice versa.
Now, if your character used a natural weapon to fight, you could use Feral Combat Training to make it count as unarmed for the purposes of things like Flurry of Blows and Improved Unarmed Strike, or other feats or attacks that required an unarmed strike, but that’s about it.
The only way to make your fists count as a natural weapon would, again, be a custom magic item or custom feat, and even then, it would still need Feral Combat Training to benefit from your monk stuff since those specifically mention a using an “Unarmed Strike” or Monk Weapon, and Natural Weapons are neither by base.
In Pathfinder 1e, monks treat their unarmed strikes as natural and manufactured weapons for spells and effects that enhance or improve either.
I was hoping someone posted this answer before I did.
Unarmed strikes don’t count as natural weapons, per the unarmed strike weapon description on page 149 of the core book. That’s why the amulet of mighty fists buffs both unarmed strikes and natural weapons.
I’m a few days late, but both page 58 (of that same book) and
https://www.aonprd.com/ClassDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Monk
say “A monk’s unarmed strike is treated as both a manufactured weapon and a natural weapon for the purpose of spells and effects that enhance or improve either manufactured weapons or natural weapons.”
This is presumably to let monks get the benefits from such things without any extra baggage from the natural weapon rules, while denying such benefits to people who aren’t trained in punching.
Let’s see…Pathfinder 1E huh…? Well. Kineticist. My character, Xanos, was a small homebrewed race called Drakyn, which are like more human looking Dragonborn, and he was at first a Cryokineticist(Or a Kineticist that specialized in Cold damage) but when I got Expanded Elements I took a look around and I saw a lil something called Spheres of Power. It had in it the ‘element’ Light, which could combine with my current Cryo build. Cool so far. Well, if the stars aligned, at level 9, I could do a total of 146 damage in a single burst with the kinetic blademaster gauntlet allowing me to use it to strike twice with the kinetic blade. Granted there’s the caveat of all that Burn being applied. and, I think all things considered, you really don’t want to deal 45(at level 9)points of incurable nonlethal damage to yourself too often. This is disregarding the versatility of having the ability to heal people in a pinch being of the “Water” element giving me access to that capability. I do miss Xanos, but I understand why I can’t play him at too many tables. >.>
I’d love to see some vote incentive art of Fray. Love the name, too – very fitting.
God of weightlifting = YMCA with its Muscular Christianity
You also get the Jesus of strength in the official video to Feuerschwanz – Berzerkermode.
God of weightlifting = Norse god Magni, Thor’s son and literally god of strength, so preacher should sound like Jesse Ventura.
We already did, she’s the dark-skinned Maxi
The ‘rent a body’ system probably really helps with galactic diplomacy as lets be honest…
We fall into three issues. Difference, risk, values.
1) Hard to tell anyone that the giant bug creature (scariest combination of bugs you can think of into one bug) is a totally friendly creature,
but due to circumstances they better deserve the new planet over you because they have a better time adjusting to the extra two degree differences in the planet’s surface temperature.
2) risk… Lets be honest… A lot of us might be more willing to trust the unknown alien species if we could walk up and speak freely to them knowing the body we are operating is essentially a puppet with no risk to out own lives.
3) Values… Got an alien body, can talk to them without risk of life. Now you can maybe get an idea for their perspective or have some fun as it turns out that arsenic isn’t an attempt to openly murder you and claim it was an accident, but their own equivalent of salt as everything tastes great with it.
((They are smol. Science fiction story where one of the alien species that was essential a giant snake person who finds humanity adorable was struggling to look through her list in trying to make a drink that wasn’t deathly toxic to humans from her list of drink mixture ingredients. Essentially a story where a lot of mistakes were made and first contact with humanity ended poorly and the aliens start by trying to make humanity less paranoid about the galaxy)
4) Gutter brain… Because lets be honest… Someone would try and while it may or may not make the next morning more awkward it might give less of an incentive to openly murder the other species.
The Omnitrix original purpose was making inter-species communication easier.
Meh. Monk’s are weak.
I’d go with a Tibbit Soulthief, Life leech, Sadist, Vitalist. It’s reasonably strong overall, but without much effort. Remember “Stop hitting yourself”. All the damage you do to me you do to yourself, which I then heal on myself further damaging you bypassing all your resistances. Gear I’ll take wisdom boosters.
It will wreck any martial build, that Monk is particularly weak to it.
A teleportation specialist wizard does quite nicely at high levels with a rod of greater metamagic quicken, various feats to boost summons, summoning celestial tyrannosaurs and adding various buffs on them (haste, mass eagle’s spendour, mass bull’s strength etc)
I remember this Sci-Fi B-Movie from about 20-30 years ago that had the premise of the protagonist uses bodyswap tech to go on holiday (as a chimp I think), but the company misplaces his real body (due to a kid on a school excursion swapping his tag).
His mind kept going into this VR world based on Casablanca where most of the film happens.
Moral of the story, don’t trust corporations and that corporations should be afraid of the little guy they’ve insensed.
It’s called “Overdrawn at the Memory Bank” and it stars Raul Julia, and MST3K did an amazing riff of it.
I still reference the “could have been worse, you could have been an anteater” from that movie, and no one ever gets the reference.
Wait it has Raul Julia? I love that guy, he can make abad movies fun! Its now on my watch list.
That is probably the best MST3K of the Mike era. Definitely watch that version (not the non-MST3K one).
That “avataring” raises a lot of questions:
What gets done to the avatar after copying memories back to your original body? It seems horrible to kill a copy of yourself but I imagine it’d be mentioned here if every time someone got an avatar they now had a new copy of themselves running around.
Also, why not keep the original body awake during this avataring instead of in a coma? Is the transfer of memories later made more difficult if the original goes on living, and forming new memories, at the same time as their copy?
It’s not like keeping you in a coma magically makes your copy any more you (I’m not denying or affirming that the copy is you, only denying that how awake you are in your original body magically affects how much a copy of you is also you).
My guess would be to avoid confusion with dual sets of sensory inputs on the conscious mind. Also, if both are conscious, dual sets of active motor control systems. Trying to see through 2 sets of eyes, you go to move the avatar’s left hand, and yours moves as well, etc.
Yeah, just ask the Daphne’s how that works :)
There wouldn’t be dual sets of inputs or outputs if you make a copy of yourself and both are awake. Your original self and your copy would have completely separate experiences with no idea what the other is feeling since they’re as separate from each other as any two people are. There hasn’t been any indication here that recopying your whole brain into another body magically creates a new Daphne/Harem.
If the Avatar is driven by a copy of you, and your two selfs make vastly different experiences in the same timeframe, the two selves might develope different personalities that could complicate the later merging.
I would also suggest to remove the memory of being a clone alltogether to prevent damage to the selfimage which in turn could lead to the wish of exterminating all other copies to become the new original.
There’s no merging involved here though, just an uploading of memories at the end before waking up the original. That’s what raised my first question: Does the copy just leave afterward and live an independent life or does the copy just get killed? Neither sounds particularly palatable.
“Or we could invent Avatar technology and live in semi-disposable bespoke bodies.” The 2009 movie Surrogates goes with this premise, with basically everyone staying in the safety of their own home and remotely controlling the titular surrogates (bioroids akin to the Avatars, but all-human rather than human-alien hybrids, and without a need for a genetic link IIRC) to live their lives. The main character winds up needing to leave the house and do his investigations in his own body and spends most of the film terrified about this (as he hasn’t actually left the house in decades). IIRC, the movie was pretty good. Altered Carbon (which I’ll note I’ve only seen the first season of, so I can’t comment on the second one) is somewhat-similar in effect (people not being terribly-attached to their “temporary” bodies), but it accomplishes this by having every person implanted with an alien-tech disc in their spine; pull out the disk, the body goes dormant, and for any dormant body you slot the disc in the original owner of the disc now pilots that body (basically, the disc is the person). The discs are decently resilient (and don’t degrade outside of a body – IIRC the main character is in storage for over a century when he gets released at the start of the show), but far from indestructible – energy weapon hits to the head will fry the disc, and there’s even a case where a guy smashes a woman’s disc with his bare hands while pumped full of a rage-inducing stimulant. Artificial bodies are also available, and extremely useful (many have limited shapeshifting abilities, and at least the one that one of the characters opts for appears to have superhuman strength), but their use is stigmatized. Most people also seem to develop issues if they switch bodies too many times; the ultra-wealthy avoid these by having clone bodies on standby (there’s no issue if it’s basically your own body), while the main character is the last member of a sect that used extensive mental exercises to be able to handle any body just as easily as their own.
Gen:LOCK series has a couple of (not) fun twist on this:
1. spend too much time in your mech avatar body, and your digital mind has diverges too far from the ‘wetware’ neurons and CAN’T be restored to the meatsack.
2. degraded-quality mind copies for profit
second season wasn’t a patch on the first, alas.
Surrogates was based on a graphic novel of the same name that was… not quite as well-thought-out as you describe the movie. It had one too many times where the author decided that all humans had to react in a particular way to a new technology.
For instance, as noted, just about everyone has a “Surrey” (I think one of the text bits said something like 90% of citizens have on). But almost no one is shown having multiple Surreys (the chief exception being folks who rent an opposite-sex Surrey for a thrill ride; this, by the way, is treated as extreme deviancy by our protagonist). But in the real world, if everyone has one of something, many people will have two or three, and these others will be used for recreation. So the city should be teeming with punk rock Surreys, Thin Man Surreys, catgirl Surreys, punk rock Thin Catgirl Surreys, and so on. But no, just normal people.
Furthermore, there’s a bit of a class divide, but it’s not what you’d think. Instead, most people just have a Surrey that looks like a younger, fitter version of themselves, but the elite (corporate and political) are almost always White Male Surreys, no matter who is driving them. I found this bit interesting, but it’s again painted as an absolute negative by the PoV character, despite the fact that this implies that Surreys have enabled actual women and people of color to get into positions of power by exploiting the system.
The author does have some good things to say (via metaphor) about online anonymity giving reign to people’s darker sides, but he felt the need to exaggerate every bad thing because Technology Bad. It felt like reading the Caveman Science Fiction comics from the author of Dresden Codak: https://dresdencodak.com/2009/09/22/caveman-science-fiction/
Okay your comment is the closest to something I just thought of.
One of the business gripes going around is no one wants to work. Trick to the argument is that is rainbow paint. There are all kinds of issues under that heading. Not going to get into it right now.
But my point is I am older and have a heart condition. I can only do light work now. But the company has a generic ‘worker’ body for you to remote operate. You get someone that might not mind doing work but cannot physically do it. Plus side on the worker side. Your body is laying down for those hours. You don’t walk out with all the aches and pains accumulated from the work.
The company does not need to hire based on physical ability or set the shop floor for differently abled people. They just need someone smart enough to grasp the work itself.
On the next Dabbler’s Science Corner, Dabbler attempts to recreate an ancient Gaulish potion that gives a person superhuman strength…!
For that occasion, Dabbler dresses in the robes of a Gaulish druid.
no no no, Dabbler must end up looking like a female version of either Obelix or Asterix :)
Halo should be the one cosplaying Asterix and Anvil should cosplay Obelix.
PF 1e build – had a midget gnome sorcerer (dual-bloodline archetype fey/undead) / oracle that was spec’d to mind-magic and illusions. The midget part was reached by adding the young template. Oracle curse was deafness. Now deafness does have some real drawbacks, but there was this little line in the curse description “You cast all of your spells as if they were modified by the Silent Spell feat. This does not increase their level or casting time.” …. funny thing about that wording is that it doesn’t differentiate between sorcerer and oracle spells. Combine this with Still Spell and Eschew materials, all he had to do to cast a spell was look at you for ANY of his spells unless it requires an expensive component. Oh, and the undead bloodline? That allowed him to use mind effecting spells on corporeal undead, so I could and did PK vampires and liches…
Also, with reduce person it took the character from tiny to diminutive, meaning that unless you had a building that was sealed against even mice, he could find a way into any building, and he had a mean-streak a mile wide. Look up “Delectable Flesh” as a spell (obtained thru a page of spell knowledge), then imagine what would happen if an unseen tiny ass caster cast that in a crowded room.
I play the Champions game every Friday! My character is her team’s brawler, with a 50 strength and mad damage resistance due to her elasticity powers. Her signature move is ‘The Flyswatter’, where she stretches her arm out, expands her hand to twelve feet wide, and then slams it down onto groups of baddies.
Overpowered builds you say? Well, let me share a concept I came up with for 3.5 ages back. I’ve never gotten to play them, but it was fun theory crafting the character and build.
Firian Cross is a Human Swashbuckler/Monk/Battle Dancer/Shadow Dancer/Duelist (yeah, very munchkin for the classes and Prestige classes).
3 lvls of Swashbuckler gives Weapon Finesse, and Insightful Strike to add INT as damage
4 lvls of Monk gives WIS to AC, unarmed attacks, Flurry, Stunning Fist, Evasion, and bonus move speed
1 lvl of Battle Dancer (Kind of an obscure class from Dragon Compendium) gives CHA to AC
2 lvls of Shadow Dancer gives Hide in Plain Sight, Darkvision and Uncanny Dodge
10 lvls of Duelist gives INT to AC, Precise Strike for extra damage, and can add Duelist lvl to AC when fighting defensively.
While his damage output isn’t amazing, it’s still a decent effort with the “Versatile Unarmed Strike” and “Deadly Defense” feats, but the main focus is on being practically unhittable with bonus AC for all three mental stats and magic items to boost ability scores through the roof, comfortably sitting around 50 AC, and able to reach up to 70 when fighting defensively, depending on how much Attack you sacrifice. From there, he’s also a bit of a skill monkey with a huge INT bonus, and his high mobility to dance around the battlefield, using the Bluff skill to taunt and draw attention to himself, along with stuns and trips to just be an annoying menace on the battlefield. High saves from all the multiclassing also keep him relatively safe and a Ring of Freedom prevents them from being captured or stopped from moving.
The build always felt like the type of “overpowered” that wouldn’t be so bad, because they don’t really do that much on their own. He’s a showboat and arrogant, but has the skills to back up his attitude, and while his talent is in drawing attention to himself, it’s primarily so the rest of the party would be free to fight without being too harassed by the enemy.
So, as someone familiar with the joys and complications of VR setups: The human brain *cannot* handle input lag well. *Especially* if it effects the total sensory feed. It’s one thing to deal with moving a mouse causes movement on a screen a quarter of a second later, but when it’s your hand? Your eyes? Not being in control is a *very* quick way of discovering your nausea reflex. That’s why VR setups have to be driven at 90 FPS or higher: You *feel* the minute, split-second time difference between your head moving and your visual field updating.
it’s the same with first person view (FPV) race drones. Newbies often get vertigo and most people fly sitting down or leaning against something. Lag is the enemy of speed and most people will sacrifice resolution for frame rate. At race speeds you only have to drop a frame or two to put you into the side of a gate.
When you mentioned “Let me tell you something brother”, was imagining Hogan, not Savage :P
Coulda been worse (or betterer), it coulda been The Warrior :) but then half the congregation wouldn’t understand what he was saying :P
At one point I was running a D&D character who has enough strength that we added “open walls” to the character stats (alongside “open doors”).
Weekend up semi-resetting him by having him discover that in addition to his other stats he had psionic abilities, specifically body weaponry — but he only develops that if he relies upon it, which means accepting leather or lighter armor and relying on bare-hand attacks. He also discovered energy redirection abilities, which gives him resistance to spells and fire.
When last seen, he was working on developing these to the point where he could take on a small family of red dragons to avenge a friend they had smoked.
The identity/paranoia protection of the first option is only one way.
Real-me goes to sleep and wakes up with new memories that are effectively mine, but CLONE-me gets the pleasure knowing she’s going to die in a day/week/month and have her memories uploaded to somebody else.
Swapping to a different design of body would be tricky. Your brain is wired four limbs and no tail. Add a tail or extra arms and it would take a learning curve to work them. And getting used to not catching things with your extra arms again.
Even with the same number of limbs, your balance is going to be off and, if you had wings, you’d have to learn to fly from scratch.
And any delay with remote control will land you on your face unless the body has the basics of balance programmed in for autopilot.
For avataring (we can verb all the nouns, and noun all the verbs…) to be fun enough that people would do it semi-casually, there would have to be some sort of medulla/cerebellum native to the avatar, so that reflexes would take care of it.
Medulla would be obligatory, otherwise e.g. some avatar with two hearts just wouldn’t work.
Cerebellum would likely work as long as you don’t think about doing something. So walking with four legs means you don’t fall over.
Just finished a novel set in a world with magic, where one character did a *really good* disguise spell that not only gave him the appearance, voice and smell of the target, but also his mental habits. He used it to do things like open a door with a keypad. Since the character was trying to get into the target’s workplace and the target had to key it multiple times per day, it was now “muscle memory” so he could open it as long as he didn’t think about it.
I think this is likely a skill you can practice, like learning *not* to think of a pink rhinoceros when told not to.
Hans & Franz, evangelists of Kurgess:
“We’re here to pump” *clap* “YOU up!”
Sydney has done the remote body before.
Ask her.
Playing a very high level 5e D&D wizard, we completed a campaign and got to ask a god for a boon. I asked for an amulet I could attune to that let me restore one spell slot per day, of my choice. The DM understood this would basically be a way to have 2 lvl 9 spell slots per day, but decided that was fine given the power level of the campaign, so long as I didn’t use the restored spell slot for the Wish spell.
I paid some folks to duplicate the item, but the DM ruled I couldn’t attune to multiple copies of the same item. So each day I used Simulacrum three times (2 with 7th lvl slot, 1 with 8th), and each simulacrum used their 7th and 8th lvl slots to create more simulacrums, ending with 6 total simulacrums. I used my first 9th lvl slot on Wish to supply the materials for the next day’s spellcasting and extra materials for emergency caches. My second 9th lvl slot used True Polymorph to permanently make one simulacrum into a dragon or other powerful being I could use in my organization.
I then attuned to a different copy of the amulet, restored a 9th lvl slot, and used True Polymorph again. The concentration is an hour, and it takes an hour to attune to an item, so I just did other things for an hour and then repeated until each simulacrum was a dragon or something. 5~ish hours later, I had 6 dragon-level protectors or infiltrators (with full spell slots 1-6 and a single 9th lvl slot each), and a little more wealth in whatever form I wanted in addition to the resources to repeat the process the next day.
Combined with a few Clone bodies stashed away in my personal demiplane, in a bank vault over there, in a hidden crypt there, etc (many of them protected by simulacrums), and with a stockpile of magic items that let my growing army talk to each other and me, I was immortal and unstoppable. Making judicious use of the Smithing proficiency and the Fabricate spell, I was able to buy up materials, turn them into things, sell them, and use the profit to buy into more things. Dragons made recovering lost artifacts easy, and many ruins were explored by my simulacrums. Before long I had a powerful mercantile empire.
We all had a good laugh, and the DM decided the existing powers wouldn’t sit still for this. But by the time they came for me, I had six months to build up protectors and a lot of bribe money. It worked out to be 500~ish CR 20 polymorphed protectors, as there were a few days I needed extra spell slots for Clone or things besides Simulacrum and I did take some losses. Nobody that came for me could handle that much firepower.
My DM realized he’d made an oops. Gods came for me, but by then I had ~700 simulacrums with 1 Wish each, able to undo anything a god did. After a holy war that cost me ~500 dragons and decimated three nations and the clergy of a few gods (with one god dying outright as a rival took advantage of his weakened state), a treaty was signed.
Max the Wizard is still out there to this day, with an infinite army of completely-loyal servants, each capable of fighting an adult dragon and winning. He runs the economies of multiple worlds, his loyal servants guarantees that his employees don’t steal from The Max Company and protecting its assets from any violation. Expeditions into the Elemental Planes supply additional resources, while miners are well paid and protected from any crypt or hidden horror they accidental dig into. As part of the Eternal Max Treaty, each good-aligned and some neutral deities are supplied with diamonds for resurrection spells and are able to call upon a truly massive army to defend themselves in the right circumstances (usually when an evil-aligned deity goes after them, but also for world-ending threats such as extraplanar invasions or certain types of natural disasters).
Every century, Max the Eternal accepts petitions and tackles one charity request. He picked the first to show his customers what he’s capable of, and for his exhibition he picked the entire annihilation of every lich on every world Max operates on. The second was removing from every memory and written record the idea of Hawaiian pizza, forever ending that debate; sorry everyone, it got more votes than ending world hunger, universal health potions, or deleting mosquitos. Though that last one was submitted late in the voting process and will probably win next century.
You can only have one Simulacrum at a time. DM dropped the ball.
If anyone gets the right to add people to the List, it’s the lady who has all of Sydney’s memories and actually KNOWS the List.
That moment when you realize Deus Superion is probably an AI or soular. That would explain the X scar.
“We should probably do that before we fill up on chili.”
Wisdom for the ages.
Dave, I recommend Pathbuilder. It does the same stuff as HeroLab, but better, and for free. No ads either (I don’t know what arcane magic keeps their server costs afloat, but it’s probably donations, since it’s such a good product). I’ve also never ran into a bug using it, and the interface looks/feels better, to me personally. Cheers! https://pathbuilder2e.com
If he’s using HeroLab “Classic”, then it’s a cost he’s already paid (no subscriptions on that). And that’s mostly just fine with PF1e rules.
on the Avatars, something I’ve been playing with for various tech levels. Your first example feels like a bio-android version of Ghost in the Shell but with more risk of identity issues (it is tricky to completly remove all traces of memory from one brain to another, possible risk of doubles *a common sci-fi trope* or damaging the memories, or even a chimera mind where the rent-a-body has had so many people that enough memory fragments have been embedded that it becomes its own free living person.
the Ghost in the Shell approach though is the body has no real brain in there, you physically move your actual brain (or a computer or such that your brain is encoded onto) into the prosthetic bodies. So not too different from Laphta there, just as some like USB drive, insertion rod, brain case at the largest, that is physically removed from one body and inserted into the other body.
I had a while ago come up with some variations of these , that feels inbetween your two versions.
https://www.deviantart.com/rhuen1/art/The-Rat-Avatar-Hypothetical-893105154
the basic rundown *which is such a short thought experiment I probably could have just copy and pasted it rather than a link, but I digress, the short of it is,
place the subject in stasis, their mind via a VR dream based system either remote controls an drone body, in the linked scenario its a way for scientists to explore life with animals (or aliens with humans). Going up the complexities until a quantum entanglement system that allows the controlled bio android *or even grown naturally* body to be linked to the person in stasis, the life of the drone is like a dream but is pre-set to load into long term memory automatically. Allowing the person to live as that subject until that subject dies.
(now what isn’t written there is yeah, if the stasis is disturbed or something goes wrong we could see an existentialism event as the worst case scenario if there is no kill switch in place). Although as a quantum link a disturbance could more likely end up like your Daphne/Harem character and cause some headache issues as they perceive two bodies at once till their main body goes back into stasis or they can induce sleep in the other to retrieve it.
What’s not in the link is I do have a version for ascended level beings and above, but its basically cheating as there is no “soul” in the body, its their own projected essence, so a double can’t really happen, because even if there is backwash of memory and power it would still come across as “I am a human being that is an avatar of a higher cosmic power” and “Oh crap I’m a bio-frame that gained independence and have the memories of a real person walking around”
the differences tech level makes on a scenario’s possible outcomes.
Robert Sheckley’s Mindswap is based on bodyswap deals going wrong.
Wow, you made the Incredible Hulk
Surely you mean Red She-Hulk.
PF 1e. Don’t remember exact details, but I decided to see how early I could do in the generic level 14 arc villain. Chose a custom Kobold rogue. By level 3, she had enough stealth bonuses to practically waltz into his evil lair and harass him until he surrendered to the “divine spirit”. The DM decided to become inspired and make the next arc villain a level 3 half-fey dragon with a similar build philosophy. We didn’t win that one until we reached level 16. Yeah…
So, in this situation, lag can *literally* kill.
Cool.
::evil grin::
The cure for silliness like that is an old-school fire-shield (cold). The current 5E one is heavily nerfed but will at least exact a price. No idea what Pathfinder has done with the spell. :)
It wasn’t exactly game-breaking, but I made a dhampir (half-vampire) antipaladin, which is inherently a little broken. Dhampir are healed by negative energy/death magic despite being alive, and antipaladins get death magic attacks, including an aura that harms everything around and can optionally also effect the user. It’s been a while, but IIRC, my character was dealing 1d8 passively to anything in melee range while also healing 1d8 every round for free at level 2 or 3. The damage AND range of the aura increase as the character levels up, and with the other death attacks to heal and with plate armor and using the Rubber Body spell, she was so tanky that against even swarms of weaker enemies, she could basically just stand there and heal herself until everything succumbed to her aura. Then the evil cleric in her party could raise the bodies as zombies and skeletons, which were also healed by her aura. Sadly, that game didn’t last long because of schedule conflicts.
Wait, don’t PF 1e Monks do 1d10 at level 10 (it’s not 2d6 until level 12)? Which at Gargantuan would be (checks PFSRD) 4d8 (I think?)
Anyway, I don’t think I’ve really managed any truly absurd munchkinry so far, though I am brainstorming an Arcanist-Arcane Trickster (Arcanist Trickster?) to use the Dimensional Slide Exploit to deliver Sneak Attack Spells Anime-Flash-Step style
Pathfinder 1e, especially if you pile on the mountainous pile of stuff in the splats, is unbalanced from top to bottom.
There are far more obnoxious things than your monk, like summon builds. Summoner builds of any kind (druid, wizard, sorcerer, etc…) are bad enough, making everyone else sit on their hands while you run a squad/platoon of critters, but Paizo said to themselves: “Hey, there’s this character archetype that makes life hell for GMs and other players, lets double down and make it worse.”
So they created the summoner. Then you don’t even need a pile of overpowered gear to be crazy with it.
Is it just me, or is the first “remote body” model just the teleporter problem but they always kill the duplicate after its job is done? If you wake up the original body early there are two of you. And… the duplicate MUST know they will cease to be after it’s all over, right? I don’t think they’ve confirmed the afterlife at least?
I don’t think its officially canon, but there was a novel I think of Star Trek where someone did go to the afterlife and saw a hundred or more doubles of himself, that every time they were transported it was in fact killing the person/that copy and creating a clone, that the teleporter is really a replicator given the *exact moment* data of the person being taken apart, or disassembling them and send via a beam particles that would be reassembled, like beaming down was less a clone than beaming to the ship, it was weird, but the point was each copy got their own soul.
it kind of reminded me of the appliances are alive story prompt, (I had a weird creative writing teacher in college), the premise was each time an electrical signal went to an appliance or something was turned on, it counted as “alive” and got a soul, only to die each time the power was out, so a robot or clone with all the hardware and software turned on could think it was the same entity, but the soul from before the previous power down had gone on to the other side or to be reincarnated elsewhere etc..
That’s pretty much how there ended up being two Riker’s: they didn’t clear the buffer (ie delete the original) and then when that transporter was checked they found him still in there and rematerialized him not realising what had happened
Remember the early days, when this strip had action and actual superhero confluct in it? Yeah… I miss that.
Sorry Dave… Couldn’t resist. I truly do really love your strip (wouldn’t have been reading it since the very start if I didn’t) …but seriously dude, as a genuine request from a genuine fan, can we please have just a bit more action against actual bad guys, and not just stuff that isn’t internal downtime killing, like the battle with Math?
I mean seriously — thirteen years in, and we still don’t know what the final orb does, or what half the options on that skills tree does? Your writing is at its strongest when we’re dealing with central / cannonical stuff. I love reading your strip, and of course it’s all you call, but please consider the possibility of just a bit more action, and a bit less exposition?
Just aline man’s opinion, feel free to ignore it. I get that not everyone will agree, and that’s cool too.
Well we’re literally reading two pages a week not an issue a month like a normal comic.
If you really are a long time reader as you claim, then you would know this was never about the action but the ‘boring shit’ in between
The webic may be thirteen years old, but the story has progressed no more than four months (give or take a few months)
If you read the About page linked in the header of the comic, it specifically says that while there will inevitably be some fighting, it’s not really the focus. The parking lot brawl was a significant aberration. It’s superhero slice of life.
You may have missed the memo on the previous page that DaveB is currently dealing with some significant real life issues, and while it has been over a year since the raid on the Ascenders, and maybe the comic is due for some more serious action, that’s probably not something he has time to draw at the moment. Thus, the simplified art on this and the previous page. Unfortunate timing, but some things in life don’t wait for when it’s convenient.
The List knows all your sins. Fear it, run from it, The List will come for us all in the end. Even Santa defers to The List.
So Lapha’s race are punsters by nature. I like her better already.
I like the chibi style. Please do more of that if it’s faster.
Yeah, Chibi-Laph is cute, specially panel three :)
She needs to smile more, genuinely smile