Grrl Power #1235 – Battle of the attocentury!
In case you were wondering, one attocentury is 3.1556926 nanoseconds, according to google. I didn’t do the math this time so it’s probably accurate. Not that attocentury is a real term, though how crazy would it have been if it was exactly pi nanoseconds? It’s pretty close. Maybe there was a point where that was the case, like how the moon is very slowly de-orbiting the Earth so it’s orbital period is nanoscopically changing? Maybe before Theia came along and bonked the Earth and formed the moon, an attocentury was pi nanoseconds. You know what that would mean? Literally nothing! Numerology, man! It’s where the crazy people live!
The lesson Sydney should take from this page. Shield up Sydney = Pretty tough. Shield down Sydney = bitchslapped.
Not that Harem is a creampuff of a foe. Sure, she can’t throw a car at you, but she will always outnumber you, I mean unless you can also create duplicates. She isn’t exactly the best fighter on the team, but even so, no one but Math has beaten her during sparring. And that includes Maxima and Hiro and the like, as long as they’re training their fighting skill, and not just relying on the fact that Harem couldn’t hurt then if she came at them with aluminum baseball bats. Obviously if Maxima is using her full speed, she’s basically untouchable, but if she limits herself to human speed, Harem wins. If she goes double speed, Harem has a lot harder time but usually still wins. If Max goes 5x speed, the fact that there’s five Harems doesn’t make up the difference.
The new vote incentive is up! This is a bit of a weird one as it’s a character that hasn’t appeared in the comic.
I’ve started playing some Pathfinder 1e on the occasional Saturday. It does eat into my drawing time, but I kind of don’t leave the house anymore unless it’s for a walk or short errand, so my wife was like “Hey, let’s go to a place and do a thing.” Plus playing D&D/Pathfinder (lets not pretend that Pathfinder isn’t just D&D) has given me an excuse to expand my dice collection again. Honestly I wish we were playing the latest version of Pathfinder, because 1st Edition is… I guess the kids would call it crunchy? Characters have an Armor Class, natch. Okay, they need a “Touch AC” for spells like shocking grasp where the armor isn’t a factor in defense. Sure, that’s fine. Flat Footed? Okay. That’s Armor Class without Dex bonuses. (I think.) Makes sense. But do I need Fortitude, Reflex and Will saves? Isn’t that just Con, Dex and Wis? And CMB and CMD? I still can’t remember what they stand for, and it’s stuff like if I’m trying to trip or grapple someone maybe? It seems needlessly complex.
But still, I’m having fun, even though I have terrible dice karma. I don’t believe in luck or karma or anything like that. It’s all anthropomorphization of causal events and confirmation bias. But that said… I roll so badly that the DM started giving me pity rerolls towards the end of one game because I hadn’t rolled a double digit “to hit” die in like 9 attacks. To see if it really was some kind of weird deviation, I wrote down all my dice rolls for the last game. I’ll break them up for non-combat and combat rolls. This is just the D20’s. My other die rolls like damage seem… better distributed.
Non-Combat Rolls (Init, Saves, Skill Checks, etc.): 8 17 2 9 13 20 18 20 17 (Average of 13.777 )
Combat (to hit) Rolls: 6 15 11 8 3 3 10 20 5 9 2 12 7 16 1 10 18 9 14 6 5 9 12 16 2 18 11 1 4 3 1 4 20 13 3 ( Average 0f 8.777 )
If you add all of those up, the average shifts to 9.577, which for a single game session isn’t exactly bending the law of averages. What makes the attack rolls hurt more is that the non-combat rolls usually have lower targets. Perception checks against DC15 or whatever, or it’s an initiative roll which doesn’t really matter all that much, but the to-hit rolls are almost always against AC’s in the 19-24 range. Everyone always goes into combat with a bunch of bonuses to hit, but usually I still need to roll double digits on the D20 to actually hit anything.
So, I swapped characters early on in the campaign from a Ranger to a monk, because 1) Monks are rad, and 2) I figured if I can get 4 attacks a round with flurry of blows, I might actually hit once per combat turn. So that’s who’s in the vote incentive, my Ifrit monk, Fray. Ifrits don’t really make great monks in Pathfinder, as player characters they get a +2 to Dex and Cha, but -2 to Wis. For monks, Dex is good, Cha is largely irrelevant, but Wis is important as it can add to your AC and also has something to do with Ki points I think. But I didn’t care. I wanted a character with dark blue/gray skin and glowing orange hair, so that’s what I picked. (I don’t think Ifrit even really have dark skin, so maybe she’s 1/4 Drow? Don’t care. I think she looks cool.) Will she show up in the comic? I mean… maybe? Probably in a Dabbler flashback, but who knows?
As usual, Patreon has her in delicto flagrante.
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Why do I feel like mind-wipes are about to happen?
*winces*
Well, that’s a minimum of one person who’s going to be in a cell even more secure than Vehemence’s for life if there isn’t a zero-residue, irreversible memory redaction editing method available that works on their exotic neurology-
And a bunch of other people in similar risk if there isn’t a identical solution for theirs,
Because this is one of the secrets governments kill over that is actually understandable-
I suspect the UN/earth’s governments as a whole emphatically do -not- want to have every FTL civilisation in the galaxy rushing to invade to scavenge the ashes for Clarketech…
Not only are there probably Star Empires that would turn the Earth to dust to get Nth Tech,
there could also be Star Empires that would turn the Earth to dust to be sure that no one gets Nth Tech.
The smart thing to do would be to destroy the Orbs Of Power.
The Orbs cannot be destroyed, jayessell son of someone, by any craft that we here possess.
While the Fel are demonstrably unable to attack Earth with Maxima around (at least not without a fleet), I suspect the mystery machines that wiped out the Alari homeworld could be a pretty significant threat (one of their mecha-kaiju appeared to get dangerously close to penetrating Halo’s shield). And of course, for Nth tech, large fleets may indeed be launched, and while they’d undoubtedly lose a large number of ships, there’s no guarantee Archon will be able to prevent significant damage to Earth in the process. Then again, a situation like that may well result in Deus and Tom going to war against the would-be invaders (there’s no Earth to rule if a bunch of treasure hunting empires tear it apart), and it’s possible the influence of Dabbler and Parfait’s mother might result in the succubi siding with Earth. A war like that would probably result in significant destruction and upheavals all around.
Hopefully, they’ll be able to contain the leak.
I think you’re the only person I’ve ever heard say 2nd edition pathfinder was less complex than 1st.
Anyway, about the comic I believe Harem may need to detain a bunch of these people and make sure they keep their mouths shut.
It is less complex because it is. A lot of things in PF2 are simplified and streamlined from PF1. This is deliberately so.
For example, rolling crits. In PF2, to get a crit all you need to do is roll an attack that exceeds the target’s AC by 10 and that’s it, you critically succeed on the attack. You do not even need to roll a 20, you just check one number against another number, once.
In PF1, you need to roll on a 20 on the d20 and even if you do, you then roll again. Only if the second roll also meets the AC do you crit. You need to do two rolls and check the results twice.
I think people conflate “hard to learn” with “complex.”
And PF2 is much harder to learn for most of its incoming audience than PF1 was…because most of PF1’s audience was coming to it from 3.5 and therefore almost all of its complexity was tied up in systems they’d spent 4+ years learning already.
I admit I’m not that up on 2nd ed, I’ve been playing D&D versions, (BECMI, 1st & 2nd ed AD&D) since around 87, 3.x since 2002 (pre-ordered it but couldn’t find a game until then), 1st ed pathfinder since 2013 or 2014 (I got invited into a campaign that was using it)
With that familiarity I found 1st ed easier to get than 2nd ed pathfinder, but I’m pretty sure that if I was sat down cold and had to figure out the 2 games from scratch 2nd ed would be much clearer.
The problem isn’t complexity then but that the game is similar enough to conflate it with D&D but actually different enough that a lot of conflicting impulses and ideas come around.
Is it just me, or did Sydney sneak in a Dune 2000 reference?
This is the scene that came to mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZICpNF4li0
Haven’t played that game in almost two decades (got as far as the final battle against the Emperor, with all three Houses)
Wow, that tattoo sleve is just Ahegao face huh?
Huge PF1e fan. If you ever want to try out a ridiculous build for a 1-shot go for a Toxicant alchemist Vishkanya with a 1 level dip in gunslinger. You need to carry multiple double pistols like an old-timey pirate, but with the Poison Harvester and Vishkanya Sleep Venom feats you will be rolling in *relatively* high dc poisons that you can spam with pre-loaded pitted bullets.
Is anybody gonna untie Lulu?
I think Arc Dark is going to be supplying answers for quite a few questions very quickly.
Considering Harem is a double agent with Deuce… this bodes ill.
Deus already implied he knew the Orbs are Nth tech, when he was discussing the Superion field and the question got brought up who made it, when Sidney looked at her orbs Deus was like, “exactly”.
Ah right. I forgot.
This leads me to ask can harem teleport into the shield?
she couldn’t teleport out, but her unimind remained intact, she described as feeling very strange or something to that affect.
It’s been established not once, but twice, that Harem cannot teleport through the shield. Either direction.
No, no she can’t
I have to wonder if Daphne isn’t still nursing a grudge over (let’s count) a nuclear wedgie, punch to the face, knee smash, am I ringing any bells here? Otherwise she might have gone for the hypo spray used in the Vehemence minion roundup rather than going full Taser.
Maxima “I don’t but the innocent act there, why no spray?”
Daphne “But Max, Sydney has all those prescriptions in her system and one alien hitchhiker… How would I know if the spray would react badly? Or work at all?” Innocent eye roll.
Honestly, expecting Maxima to be jealous that Harem got to taze Syd first!
To point out, Sydney is in BIG trouble now, too. She has NOT been forthcoming about her orbs. If anything, she’s been omissive to a nearly NEFARIOUS amount.
The government can’t let someone wielding powers like that go free without full knowledge of EXACTLY what she’s capable of. And worse, they need to have ways to prevent her from deciding to use her powers for nefarious intent.
She’s going to be locked up for a LONG time. Probably subjected to a truth detecting super, so they can tell if she’s telling them the whole truth.
“You’re still hiding details, Miss Scoville. I suppose we’ll have to pick this up… IN 24 HOURS. The more you lie, the longer you stay here. Oh, and we’re not PARTICULARLY concerned with your health and well-being, so don’t expect any food or water. After the stunt and the s*** you pulled before, be grateful we’re even interested in hearing your explanation!”
(This would be a SECRET government facility, so they don’t HAVE to treat prisoners humanely.)
The author repeatedly established that this wasn’t that kind of comic over the first couple hundred pages. Page 146 made that particularly clear. Unless you think it’s all a big bait and switch, for both the characters and the audience, I think you’re just expressing your own anxieties.
To add a point beside what Torabi already made: it is very clear that this is not Sydney’s fault, at least not directly, and it is not HER that is spouting what is supposed to be government secrets. Archon KNOWS this, not just from Dabbler but from its own people. They are not punishing Sydney here, they are doing this to neutralize her hitchhiker’s ability to do any further damage.
As far as the government is concerned, Sydney is an obedient and useful servant that should be kept on the payroll. Even accounting for her shortcomings and little withholding. If they were as ruthless as you implied, they would have just quietly killed Sydney and had a more trusted agent pick up the orbs.
Sure, they have a cell like this for Sydney, but they probably have a cell like this prepared for each member of Archon, including Maxima. Hell, they probably have a cell prepared for every super they know of. They have to take care of people far more powerful or innately powered than her. Hell, they probably are able to construct cells like this, or setups, very rapidly because they never know when a new super comes out of the woodwork.