Grrl Power #1184 – Little hairy dress
I wish I had a cleaning cantrip. There’s a lot of decent options when it comes to cantrips, but in everyday real life? A little bacon spatter on the stove top? Cleaning cantrip. Inside of the microwave after heating up a bowl of something a little spattery? Cleaning cantrip. The spot behind your monitor getting dusty? Cat hair all over your shirt? Need to squeak one more wear out of your favorite bra? You know it, cleaning cantrip.
Okay, yes. Guidance (+1D4 to ability checks), Control Flames, Gust, Mage Hand, Mending, Prestidigitation, Thaumaturgy, and Vicious Mockery would also be useful, (the last one only if it worked when posting snarky comments online), but Clean really beats them all for everyday use. Yeah, I know Clean isn’t a D&D 5e Cantrip, at least it’s not on the official list because there’s virtually no combat use for it. I don’t even know if that’s true. An adventuring team a dozen strong all with Clean could definitely piss off a Neo-Otyug. Still, you got to figure there’s a ton of cantrips that didn’t make the Tome of Arcana cut, like, Tune Instrument, Timer with Audible Alarm, Fit – to make clothes that are like half a size too big or just a little tight under the armpits fit better, Make Wobbly Chair or Table not Wobble, stuff like that. Man, that last on would be nice. It really bothers me when a table in a restaurant is tumping back and forth like you’re trying to play Labyrinth with your appetizers.
The July vote incentive is finally up! There was a disagreement about digitigrade and plantigrade leg configurations. What better way to resolve it than a race?
And in the Patreon variant, what better way to resolve it than a nude race? You know, to eliminate uh… wind drag I guess?
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Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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Okay, so–Parfait was summoned in mid-air, wearing nothing but bubbles. She lands square on her backside, laying flat. She is then shown standing, but is now covered on both sides with glitterhoney. This means she has to have rolled in it, at least one full revolution, before getting up.
You will never convince me that this was not done with flirtatious intent.
She was summoned from her bath, that’s why her left arm was positioned like that (as though it was resting on the side) and holding a loafer brush in her right
A lot of the ‘glittery’ is the soap bubbles, and a lot of people roll over onto their front to help getting up (roll onto front, move to all fours, move one leg forward, straighten the torso so it’s vertical, etc.) rather than sit up and awkwardly move the legs until they are under you enough to stand up (specially if there is nothing handy to help pull you up)
It’s entirely possible, after all, that she can’t do a sit up without her feet anchored, on account of being top heavy for reasons… While she’s doubtless flexible enough to make her way to vertical in several ways from lying on her back, rolling over before standing up would be the easiest.
I can’t really see her doing a kip up to get to her feet. Though I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing it.
Hm… It’s odd, though. I’d expect rolling over on all fours, sure, not staying flat while face down and then rising.
To the point about bubbles vs. honey, I’m more ambivalent than my first take–looking closer, they are bubble-like, but the coloring went from whitish in the prior strip to yellow-gold in the second. So maybe I just got confused by the lighting.
That’s the fun thing about rolling over. Even if you do intend to get up immediately, there is still that moment where you are flat on the ground. (If you start to push up with your free arm before you are fully flat you just push yourself on your back again)
Thanks to my spinal injury, getting up or down from the floor isn’t an easy task, I have to transition from all 4’s, to a hip, and then my side. to get up I have to do the reverse. Falling down is bad, if I go face first, I’m not getting up without help. Yes, yes, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”
I actually can get up, but it’s very painful and can take a while to shift around without tweaking something painfully. The curve of my spine is THAT bad. I haven’t slept on my belly in nearly 40 years.
Considering she can literally float I think it’s less likely that she can’t do a sit/kip up and more that the summons was by default… the sexy.
Did they really ‘cut’ spells from the new spell book, simply because they weren’t flashy combat spells? o_O
I mean, in practical terms, the prestigitation cantrip is what you’ll need for most day to day use case, unless you need to clean a castle and even then, its a cantrip, just use it more than once.
Your hair is not ‘chocolate blonde’, if you don’t like the term ‘dirty blonde’ (because reasons), then go with ‘honey blonde’
It is tricky to assume hair colours from graphic novels and anime (inspired) in particular.
Blue and purple are often used instead of black (because you cannot shade black to suggest hair strands and it ends up being a imposing blob on top of the character’s head).
Red is usually more fire engine red than reality allows and blonde tends to get shaded more lightly than the textual description. Because brunette colours tend to not show up well in graphics colouring either (they are dark brown with light brown highligths which is not a whole lo of natural contrast).
That said, if Sydney says she is chocolate blonde, it means she probably is seeing it that way (because she does not like her natural shade and thinks it is muddy) not because it necessarily is actually a chocolate blonde colour (as that is about as dark blond can get before getting into brunette hair territory.
This is by no means an advise to Dave as it would be very labour intensive to actually draw, but Sydney I would strongly recommend growing out her hair a little past shoulder length, then get a light bleaching on the underlayers (to give a nice dynamic feel to her hair as it moves and the lighter strands peek through), combined with perhaps a quarter length Ombre colouring. The exact colour to use depends very much on the actual colour of her hair of course (for the mid blond she is drawn with it would be a darker brown or reddish hue, but for the chocolate blonde she claims to be a honey yellow would probably work better. Copper would be great but that works only with some brown hair colours and may not for Sydney).
Of course this is a high maintenance hairstyle, with necessitates a monthly trip to the salon to keep everything in balance, and I cannot see her sit still for a couple of hours just to get the different colourations in her hair. Not to mention that this actually requires some carefull styling each morning (and she will probably drive herself crazy – crazier – with the hair brushing her face and shoulders ;).
Her current style of a combination of page with extra long bangs and widows peak, is iconic and does not look too bad, but it is not really helping her facial structure either.
Yeah, this comment wasn’t directed at DaveB, this was directed at Sydney and what she is calling her hair colour, not telling her she should change it (don’t see what the problem is, other than calling it ‘chocolate blonde’ :P )
Wait. If she got frosted in honey, doesn’t that mean that summoning with the usual material coats the summonee in blood? o_O
Depends on the summoning ritual, I think, sometimes they are being summoned directly from the blood (like in Diablo 4), but I think normally a being like Parfait can float over the messy circle. She was just so surprised she fell on her ass.
If Sydney had made the circle large enough, it would not be a problem.
I suppose a platform over the summoning circle wouldn’t interfere with it.
There was the blood portal thing that Sciona used. You could view that as summoning oneself to a location. Of course, since Sciona is a blood mage it isn’t surprising that everyone ended up covered in blood.
They all ended up covered in blood, because the first one through went *ker-splat*!
I love the fact that the majority of the comments are about what spells are available in D&D and how Prestidigitation applies.
Turns out Sydney’s theory about making the transit more luxurious (two pages ago) was proven true by Parfait’s comment in panel 2 here.
Ned(not enough data)
Sydney’s “exceptional” summoning methods make apparently for better transit, but it doesn’t have to be the price of the materials(which is what her theory stated).
Other options are the drawing quality of the sigils, the summoners’ lack of understanding, the use of external mana(chiquer tend to get summoned will probably more often get summoned with external mana due to power requirements), lack of light in the summoning room, the smell of the summoning materials(she didn’t expect gold),
For wobbly chairs/tables, it depends why they wobble – if it’s a perfectly level floor and unequal legs, then all you can do is wedge something under a leg, but if the legs are all the same length and the floor is uneven, then you can fix the wobble just by rotating the furniture by less than a quarter turn (unless there are discontinuities – a floor with sharp-edged potholes might make things harder).
Paper napkins do the trick in either case.
With the wrong mindset of what is unclean, a cleaning spell could be very dangerous. See Apocalypse: Generic System.
As shown by dioxygen-difluoride.
The semiconductor industry uses it for cleaning.
The semiconductor industry is kind of desperate.
The rest of the world avoids it like the plague.
Noone is using FOOF for anything, especially not anything which needs to be done in temperatures higher than 173 K (−100 °C). You have that mixed with ClF3 aka Chlorine trifluoride – THAT one is used for cleaning semiconductors. Note that it was rejected as a rocket propellant for being too dangerous.
… PS: I wouldn’t recommend mixing FOOF with ClF3, but it’s probably safer than mixing either with water.
Looks like mixing FOOF with CIF3 really is safer than mixing either with water. At least in a limited temperature range according to the paper “The Chemical Properties of Dioxygen Difluoride” from 1962:
“A rapid addition of chlorine to dioxygen difluoride cooled to about 140°K. caused a violent explosion.
However, when small portions of Cl₂ were added slowly to 0₂F₂ cooled to 130°K, a violet intermediate product
did form, together with ClF₃. […] The product is solid at 195°K. and in the absence of impurities, excepting ClF₃, was kept at this temperature for more than a year without noticeable decomposition.”
There’s a nice blog post about this paper in the “Things I Won’t Work With” blog.
I wonder if Monoxy-dihydroxide is on that last too ;)
(you know that chemical that causes most deaths annually ;))
Yes, it also oxidizes silica.
I don’t think monoxy-dihydroxide (better known as dihydrogen monoxide) is the one that oxidises silica.
I believe Er’ was asking if it was on the list of things that are not-to-be-mixed with CIF3.
“Note that it was rejected as a rocket propellant for being too dangerous.”
Not only that, it was also rejected as a weapon for being too dangerous – by the Nazis, no less.
When I wish for a ‘cleaning’ spell, I always dream of something that dissolves whatever I’m eliminating into ‘fuel’ for whatever makes spells go. I tend to think of it in terms of magicalories, because I see magic as manipulation of the counter-nexus representing your position on the axis of the 4th, 5th, and 6th dimensions, and conservation of energy and all that. It also tickles me to death to think of walking down the street ‘eating’ all the weeds and trash and other roadside detritus and then expending the energy gained from doing so to create a road surface that’s even and uniform, but with a pattern in the rocks that will drive you insane with the understanding of the 6th dimension if you stare at it for any period of time.
So, if you had a machine for that, would it be a Steam R’lyeher? A shub-Niveller?
Would the road be called a Miskatarmac, or the curb a Nyarlanestep?
could someone like Parfait be turned into a Klein~bottle blonde?
Prestidigitation is one of my favorite spells. Mostly for the cleaning component of it. My Pathfinder/Ponyfinder group worked out how to make a magical laundromat using a bunch of cantrip and first levels spell but the GM wouldn’t let us, lol.
When I was running a Pathfinder game I also dropped a Scroll of Soapstorm into the loot during an adventure. Let me see if I still have it:
Soap Storm School conjuration (creation) [cold]; Level bloodrager 3, druid 3, magus 3, shaman 3, sorcerer/wizard 3, witch 3; Elemental School water 3
CASTING
Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V, S, M/DF (soap and water)
EFFECT
Range long (400 ft. + 40 ft./level)
Area cylinder (40-ft. radius, 20 ft. high)
Duration 1 round/level
Saving Throw none; Spell Resistance no
DESCRIPTION
Driving soapy water blocks all sight (even darkvision) within it and causes the ground in the area to be soapy. A creature can walk within or through the area of soap at half normal speed with a DC 10 Acrobatics check. Failure means it can’t move in that round, while failure by 5 or more means it falls (see the Acrobatics skill for details).
The soap extinguishes torches and small fires and cleans ordinary dirt, grime, grease, etc. It also removes the Grease Spell from any affected items, objects, squares, people, etc.
Greater Soap Storm School evocation [cold]; Level bloodrager 4, druid 4, magus 4, shaman 4, sorcerer/wizard 4, witch 4; Elemental School water 4
CASTING
Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V, S, M/DF (soap and water)
EFFECT
Range long (400 ft. + 40 ft./level)
Area cylinder (20-ft. radius, 40 ft. high)
Duration 1 round/level (D)
Saving Throw none; Spell Resistance yes
DESCRIPTION
Great magical soap bars pound down upon casting this spell, dealing 3d4 points of bludgeoning damage and 2d4 points of acid (lye soap) damage to every creature in the area. This damage only occurs once, when the spell is cast. For the remaining duration of the spell, heavy soap bubbles and lemony water rains down in the area. Creatures inside this area take a -4 penalty on Perception skill checks and the entire area is treated as difficult terrain. At the end of the duration, the soap and water disappear, leaving no after-effects (other than the damage dealt) and having liberally cleaned and scoured everything in the area. Removes the Grease spell as Soap Storm and leaves everything sparkling clean and lemon fresh.
This had better be ritual castable.
No, that’s just how magic is in 3.x and Pathfinder. These are actually weaker versions of other spells I modified because my spells added a cleaning element. And the Greater version swaps in acid for cold which is much less often resistible so it is doing d4s instead of d6s.
I mean, blood pretty much ranges from sticky to crusty after a pretty short, though honey is likely to stay sticky longer. All assuming the blood is kept fresh by eldritch circumstances.
“Thothogoth” is officially the bestest surname(?) ever.
… It’s the name of her master, Dabbles’ ‘demonfriend-with-benefits’, aka Big Tom (fairly sure that’s his name… )
Thoth of the Goths
Prestidigitation is a cleaning spell. you can also use it up to three times with one cast. so you. the microwave and the counter top.
No, the three effects limit isn’t about what you can do with a single cast, it’s about how many of the persistent, continuous effects you can have going simultaneously. The clean effect is instantaneous, not persistent, and as such you can clean as many things as you feel like, but each thing takes one cast of the spell.
In Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody anime, they show him constructing spells from other spells like a dev doing copy/paste coding, so if they had gotten a 2nd season, it was in the realm of possibility that he might have been able to make a bathhouse spell or shower room spell, since he was able to do a wash and dry spell.
In the manga he made a cleaning spell from it then had to figure out a drying spell as it left the target soaked.
By dnd standards, prestidigitation is the ultimate non adventuring spell and a must for any sane adventuring person.
Cleaning items. Flavoring bland food. Lighting fires, cigars, or putting out candles at the end of the night. Harmless sensory could be anything from a choir to announce your arrival, to perfuming the air, to making someone uncontrollably itchy on one spot they can’t reach.
And thats the NON COMBAT USES.
Prestidigitation doesn’t have combat uses outside of weird situational overlap, like whether something is clean having an impact on the outcome of a fight, it *can* happen, but it’s not likely to come up very often.
Also, I’d argue that making someone itch doesn’t count as harmless.
Presto is an extremely useful spell, but I’d say it’s a stretch to say there’s combat uses, even if you light a fire to create an environmental hazard in battle, I’d argue that isn’t a combat use of presto so much as a combat use of a campfire, how it got lit doesn’t really matter.
Any thing can have a combat use if you think evil enough (including… feathers!) ;)
And because D&D is first and foremost a compbat system, they rolled all of that into a single spell and called it ‘good enough’
(after all D&D started as a less expensive version of wargaming with a distinct Tolkien-fantasy twist, and the early dungeonmasters saw it as their duty to try to kill off the party. Without cheating of course. Roleplaying was not something the original developers really had much use for, that came later as simple one evening dungeon crawls became multi-year campaigns with heroes (or not so) /living/ in the game setting and there being people outside the denizens of whatever lair or dungeon they were visiting that evening. It is no surprise that from that roots the game system did not develop a robust (or much of any, really) foundation for gamifying social interactions and that the spell list is almost exclusively about ever more impressive ways to F*** S*** Up. For those who get the last quote ;) )
Prestidigitation would allow you to have a conversation with Foul Ol’ Ron, without needing an extra place at the table for his Smell.
Knowledge is Power. Power is another name for Magick. Ergo, Magick in this life is typically experienced as technology or as applied knowledge such as techniques.
A known technique for cleaning is to apply steam. Boiling water in a microwave, for example, makes cleaning the microwave easier. Sand blasting is another technique for removing things from surfaces. Buying the necessary equipment to avoid work is the “magic” of tech.
As with Magick, proper technique is the difference between a spell that does what you want and the same spell doing something you don’t want. Also, as with Magick, knowledge requires both the labor of learning and the wisdom to know how to apply it. So what is easier, studying cleaning techniques online in order to reduce your labor or just putting in the elbow grease to get the job done? There actually is no right answer except for an individual’s willingness to work in whatever manner is best for that individual.
My purpose here was to provide an alternate point of view. I hope I succeeded.
& DaveB? The magic of your story is first rate.
there is a good set of men and women who would be willing to give her a tongue bath
I ended up giving many of my spell castes various levels of a dirt repel spell just to handwave away concerns like dusty roads, dirt from explosions, blood splatter, etc…
But even so a nice warm bath after an adventure still feels good.
Dusty Rhodes, what a legend :)
Syd, you’ve just summoned a honey-dipped succubus, who specifically asked your help getting clean.
It’s time and past to offer your personal help. Sending her to a shower stall all alone would just be rude.
And think how yummy she’d taste…..
Quick sidenote that Prestidigitation specifically *is* the cleaning cantrip. Often overlooked, but one of it’s uses is
> You instantaneously clean or soil an object no larger than 1 cubic foot.
so far there has never been a DM that disallowed casting it multiple times to clean up yourself bit by bit, it just takes a minute or two.
Presdigitation is 5e’s “Clean” cantrip. You even listed it =)
Is Club Untz Untz scenario in the near future?
What happens when all the succubi Halo’s met meet up?
Can Sydney survive the ugly duckling syndrome?
Or the magic makeover the girls will put her through?
Will Sydney learn cantrips as a backup to her orbs?
Probably thoughts of Arc-Magica, “Cantrips ? Useful. Not Dangerous, not really. Safe for novice mages at least.”
After they find Sydney teaching Advanced combat tactics, how to use cantrips to more than just annoy your enemies.
If anyone can make utility magic Dangerous it’s Sydney. Well, also most gamers.
Now imagine the specialized cantrips all her Succubi friends could teach her.
Now imagine how Sydney could repurpose those. Especially if she’s a huge mana battery and conduit.
Sydney “okay so you combined ‘goose/tickle’ and ‘hiccup” into minor orgasm? Could you pair that with helping hands? And up the mana used? Maybe a minor grease lube cantrip and buzz alarm. Then you’d have either a real good time or be able to make any spell chanter have a real hard time (she winks at pun) finishing a major spell. Oh, let me tell you about to change giant magic hands into Uncle Stickies probing …are you girls really blushing?”
Magic, even cantrips, in Sydney’s hands might not be a good idea, but her having a backup toolset? Def important.
Did you know- Prestidigitation is the best Cantrip in D&D, because it actually *is* a cleaning cantrip? It’s also a dirtying cantrip, a light-your-pipe cantrip, a cool-a-mug-of-ale cantrip, a stir-your-coffee without holding the coffee or the spoon cantrip, a small lamp cantrip, a illusionary flower/something else the size of your hand, the best coin-trick anyone has EVER seen, and a small jolt of static shock?
New theory about the final orb.
What if it’s not working because it requires the extra step of pouring mana into it.
Additional, what if why Maxima said way back was foreshadowing, the brig letting out prisoners, but is actually a summoning orb, scans sigils or individuals and can be used to then summon them on command
What a neat trick! If I could turn my hair into clothes, getting dressed in the mornings would be so much easier and quicker.
The proper name of the only “cleaning cantrip” what i heard of is “Prestidigitation”, but sadly it has a very limited area of effect… Only 1 cubic foot. But that’s just one of the numerous possible effects, as you can warm up or cool down things whit it (like a blanket or your food), light a small flame, make a small sensory effect (a weak wind or some nice smell), or even create a small non-magical item for a few second – nothing bit, but useful, if you suddenly need a pen or a screwdriver (as a cantrip, it’s easy to create a new one, if the item is needed for a longer period).
I’d rather have the mending cantrip to be honest. Cleaning supplies are relatively cheap but fixing or replacing things can be expensive as hell. Favorite clothes/shoes? Just like new. Flat tire? Not anymore! Somebody keyed your car? No they didn’t. Dropped your phone? Like it never happened. Leaky pipe/sprinkler? Poof, fixed. Baseball/brick through your window? Get all the pieces together and it’s gone like a pleasant dream in the morning.
I just finished reading both of the Tamer Enhancer PDFs.
I am in a state of great anticipation for the next volume!
This winter, you must maintain your stylish sense. So I recommend that you wear this Back to the Future Marty McFly Vest Red. Because it makes you gorgeous and protects you from the cold. It also maintains your fashion intact and makes you more trendy.
You need to keep your sense of style during stories. Therefore, I advise you to put on this Back to the Future Marty McFly Vest Red. because it improves your beauty and keeps you warm. Additionally, it keeps your sense of style intact and elevates your style.
Can’t tell whether to be annoyed that this spam made it through, or amused that they fell prey to the system’s double post snare.
Please, “chocolate blonde” isn’t a real hair colour…
And white chocolate is not real chocolate.
Hey, the characters (cast) at the top just showed Max looking deathly-shocked (white eyes with no pupil etc..). What strip was that from in the archives? Anyone know? linked here: http://micro.org/maxshock.png
Wow, that was harder to find than I expected. It’s on page 176.
OMG YOU ARE A NINJA! Thanks!
Wait ! Didn’t Parfait just give her entire and real name to an known occulist ?
Oooh, good catch. She is new to this!
Bayonetta, you mystery…