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Grrl Power - Dabbler’s Science Corner #4
🕑 Added 2024-10-07 10:00:10 +0000 UTCThank you for the support! You guys are awesome
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.
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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.
Comments
eddi_TBH
Lapha is a special case.
Scott Brown
Not 'game breaking' so much as 'You found a DM willing to let you PLAY that?!?!'...Chaotic Neutral Kender Wildmage ;) If you're not familiar with them, Kender came from the Dragonlance worlds...variant of Gnomes, but utterly fearless, and literally no sense of property...They would 'steal' things because they were interesting, and didn't occur to them that anyone would *mind*. Most Kender were unable to do magic (ok, all but mine), and were exceptional thieves...mine still had the upbringing, just not the skill at it ;) Wild Mages rolled a die any time they cast a spell that varied by level (Like Fireball doing 3d6+1d6 per level would make you roll), and the level you cast the spell would vary up or down, depending...or you might get a Wild Surge, which was pretty much like triggering a Wand of Wonder...but with more extreme results ;) There is also a 1st level Wild Mage spell that let you cast ANY spell you knew...and caused a Wild Surge. Most saved this for dire emergencies...Having no fear, mine cast it pretty much daily ;)
Eric Loken
It needs to be well regulated to keep those problems in check. Just as with democracy and government, there has to be checks and balances. The idea that regulations are bad appeals only to the foolish or the unscrupulous; such as the board of Boeing that think QA is a waste of money, or that idiot that got himself and four others killed in the Titan due to his own hubris, greed, and stupidity.
Mathew Aaberg
Can't remember who said it but basically. "Capitalism like democracy is deeply flawed to the point where the flaws are obvious to all bar the wilfully ignorant. It's just the least worst thing we have found to work." I am paraphrasing slightly but still.
Eric Loken
"If you can't tell, I might be a bit of a cynic and pessimist when it comes to totally unregulated capitalism." That just means you have a reasonably functional brain. It's also not cynicism or pessimism when you have been shown to be essentially correct on many occasions (true, your example was a little extreme - although still not necessarily wrong - but it was for illustrative purposes).
Todd Ellner
Jerry Clower had that Southern storyteller's gift.
Todd Ellner
They's a problem adding people to that there list. Sometimes you add Jerry Brazwell to it. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xDJQD4BWa_M
Erin Palette
The chibi arms ending in stumps with one finger poking out is freaking me right TF out.
Jon Gibson
The good news there is that you can get the spell greater magic weapon to give you the flat bonus, and then your amulet can have something like brilliant energy and impact (gives you a size increase to damage dice) There's a few other things you can do to stack extra size increases as well, but they're rather feat intensive. Also, just noticed the power attack. when you flurry, your BAB becomes equal to your level, so at level 10 your flurry gives you -3 to hit for +6 to damage when you use it with power attack. *this assumes you're a regular monk rather than unchained monk.
Dave Barrack
It's been about 30 years since I cracked open a Champions book, so I might have the details wrong. I assume this was version 1 of the rules as well. Basically there was a way to move "endurance" to an external source, like a power cell for Iron Man or something. It made it so you got like 10 points of endurance for each point you put into it, but the drawback is that the power source was obvious and could be taken. But you could reduce the amount of points you got by making the power source not-obvious, and I think you could make it so it couldn't be taken (?), then you got 5 points instead of 10. But it was enough of a savings that I could make a 250 point character for 200 points, then I used the other 50 points to make my proto-Maxima character have different bodies, like how Bruce Banner/Hulk works, only each body looked the same, and each one had a different "all-in" stat. So one was super strong, one was super fast, one had an energy beam, one had a ton of armor. Proto-Max could only do one at a time and couldn't do like a half strength, half armor form, but the idea for Maxima was born.
Aaron Mauthe
Imagine the sensory lag of a kick to the groin. You see it coming, you know it’s happened, you know what’s coming, but there’s nothing you can do to stop the pain from arriving, even if it feels like you could
Aaron Mauthe
List is list
Dave Barrack
Hmm, Herolab doesn't account for Brilliant Energy taking up "slots" or whatever on the amulet. I'll have to look into that.
Marc Vun Kannon
Yay! For the return of the list.
Damian
A lot of people forget that mantis shrimp, while they do see distinct colors, basically only see those distinct colors. Like, they don't have the processing for blending any of them, so their eyes just target the ones that stand out the most in water. So if we saw like them we'd probably only really add in some vision in the UV ranges. Though that would be cool.
JasonAW3
Even more interesting when Syd starts adding to the List, using alien common...
JasonAW3
Greeeaaat... Now Sydney has the alien sister she never wanted, but probably needed... Also, as much as I hate to admit it, the artificial sentience that she mixed with for a while, will not only give Syd a better understanding of aliens and criminals, but will likely help make her ADHD brain a bit more coherent... Of course, obviously, for the alien, the exact opposite is also true... Of course, her ADHD may be so strong, that poor alien crook may be doomed to be... Alien Sydney!!!
Anton Schleef
It doesn't taste like soap to me, but it does tend to be rather overpowering if it isn't used very lightly. That doesn't mean I'm partial to it at all, though. As for completely changing the flavor profile of a dish? Yes and no. If there's enough to just overpower everything else, then obviously, but I can notice things on very, very small ratios so most of the time I can still tell what the dish would taste like without it.
Anton Schleef
The List is The List, it isn't holder specific. This could get rather....interesting, later.
Richard Riley
Your Power Attack probably is up to -5/+10...
Justaguy
My reflexes were slowed by 300% due to a car accident BEFORE I reached almost 50. My reflexes ARE similar to a spotty zoom call.
Jon Gibson
(I forget if you're 1e or 2e, assuming 1e). Okay so the only things you've really got wrong there for Frey is that you're using strong jaw on an unarmed strike. You'd want to use lead blades instead since unarmed strikes count as manufactured weapons. Other than that, the damage is increasing properly. 2 size increases doubles your damage dice. Also, amulet of mighty fists caps out at a +5 bonus usually, and brilliant energy takes up 4, so your amulet should only be giving you a flat +1 bonus to hit and damage. Also, there's a monk archetype called scaled fist. It changes all your wisdom based stuff to charisma based. There's rules for retraining you can use if you want to in universe it, and/or your dm doesn't just let you make the change.
Enigma42
Do you also have the thing where if they leave it out of a dish it is completely different?
Raymond Dannelly
Munch, the TerrorMaw Lvl 16 WarGolem Barbarian/sorcerer/dragon disciple with adamantine greataxe, belt of giant strength, haste, enlarge Person, Lead Blades (bard spell? Act as if weapon is 1 size category higher), rage, Power Attack... +32/+32/+27/+22 3d8+26+(1d6acid). Crit on 19-20 for x3 damage. I think, has been a while since actually played. Oh, movement 45, x5 running (normal being 30, x4), wings, regeneration (1hp/round) AC 33, BlindSense to 60ft, resist acid 10, 15% chance to ignore critical hits, and 1/day breath weapon 30' cone 6d6 acid damage. Perception +24 Sence Motive -3 Can hit a big heavily armored foe, deal major damage, tank attacks, and heal himself with a few minutes rest. Several medium foes, swarms, no problem. Phased or ghost enemies are annoying, but usually have the same troubles hitting him. You're unlikely to out run him, fly away, or successfully hide. But, if you have ANY points in Bluff..... "RAWR!!! I destroy you!" "Wait, no you fool, not me! We're on the same side! The bad guys are over there!" "Really? Oh, wow, sorry! That keeps happening!"
Magraal
Jabber looks surprisingly good here (better than Lapha I mean). Anyone else now kinda want a 'budget' vote incentive?
Torabi
Sydney and Lapha really are going to be a joyous pair to watch, aren't they?
Person
Yay! I missed The List. Pray tell, what is this Champions exploit you speak of (and from which edition of the rules)?
Todd Ellner
Dave, you think pathetically small. Duodecachromat like a Mantis Shrimp
Michael Obert
That didn't sparkle with her, did it? (Sorry, every time I see the world List capitalized I think of South Park 😆)
Evil Midnight Lurker
Cilantro tastes a tiny bit like soap to me, but not in a bad way? It's hard to explain.
3of4
List Privileges for Lapha, concerning
Christophe GABEL
Can we add people to « the List » ?
