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 Andre Delambre. (I'd leave Andre 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.
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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 atPatreon. Also she has an incident with lotion," and there's a bonus comic page as well.
Double res versionwill be posted over atPatreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like