Grrl Power #946 – Passive enthusiast
I see some of you guessed, if not this exact thing, then at least what the general function of the encapsulated nodes off of each orb might be. As for what each specific power might be…
As the stinger suggests, I like passives. Well, it depends on the game, but I tend to like them when they’re not lame like “1% Better Chance to Block.” There are a few different kinds of Passives, and the ones that extend existing abilities aren’t really what I think of when I think of Passives. You know, stuff like “10% of damage inflicted is Vampiric,” or “Do 50% extra Damage to enemies below 25% health.”
The stuff I like are passives that grant new abilities, but without any of the management overhead. They’re quality of life improvements. “5 meter automatic loot radius,” or “Reflect an attack that would have killed you – 5 minute cooldown.”
Then there are the ones that “proc” (an acronym for a Programmed Random OCcurrence – I didn’t know that until just as I was writing this and looked it up). Basically you get an unreliable power. “20% chance to dodge incoming ranged attacks,” et cetera. I’m less excited about those. It honestly depends of the proc rate. See my previous rant about lame upgrades.
Some Passives functionally take the place of attribute points. If you think about it, “Strength” in a game doesn’t do anything by itself. Strength is what’s used to calculate Carrying Capacity or Melee Damage or Jump Height or whatever. But if you could buy “Increased Carrying Capacity” or “Improved Melee Damage – Level 3” or “Hardiness – 1 Extra Health Pip,” you’re effectively acquiring the end result of buying attribute points. It could be suggested that it’s designed to be a more engaging manner of character advancement than just dropping a point into an attribute.
A lot of games RPGs have Too Many Powers in my opinion, and you only have so many hotkeys, so cynical game design analysis aside, I tend to gravitate toward passives. Give me a big hit for bosses, an AOE for swarms of things, a fun traversal ability, maybe some stealth/backstab options, and a lot of quality of life passives, and I’m happy.
The new vote incentive is up! Some of you got sort of invested in Lapha and Garamm, so her she is testing out her new duds. I don’t know if or when they’ll show up in the comic again, (probably more a question of ‘when’) but we’ll have to see if she got any other options besides the tail. Personally I’d go for retractable, venomous fangs, but presumably if you get those, you also have to get a special upgraded pancreas or liver or something, in case you accidentally bite the inside of your own cheek with your fang.
As usual, there are a few variants over at Patreon, and as is becoming more common, a little follow-on comic.
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.
I like the idea that the orbs are, collectively, an egg.
There’s an Nth that wants there to be another Nth but is aware that granting someone godlike powers all at once gives them a gross case of god complex and/or headsplosion.
Enter the orbs, which are designed to slowly ease the recipient into godlike power as they continue using them.
From a biological standpoint this is kind of like parasitic reproduction, but it’s not as bad as that sounds because it really is taking things at the recipient’s speed. The Nth has no limit to its time scale so releasing one god-egg that will just kind of hang out until it finds a suitable host (even if thousands of near-suitable hosts don the mantle and then don’t quite hack it) is, across infinite time, functionally identical to laying millions of eggs and hoping one makes it.
I dunno. Changing the way Sydney interacts with gravity seems really significant to me – like a step away from humanity as significant as when Max got pointed ears and gold skin.
And once the final pip is filled in, Halo will be inexorably drawn to a monolith in Jovian orbit and sucked into the aetherium causeway.
OMG someone watched 2001 A Space Oddessy????
Total classic! The sequel was good, but not AS good.
Read the books first; 2001 was actually the very first movie I ever saw on DVD. Which at the time was being marketed as this amazing hi-def format that instantly made movies more exciting… yet I confess I actually fell asleep during the stargate sequence, only in part due to travel-weariness.
The original novel, was Childhood’s End, by Arthur C. Clarke!
In my headcanon … Childhood’s End’s penultimate scene, in which all Earth’s Children wander in a daze thoroughly absorbed into some massive interactive uber-consciousness, is only a little beyond today’s smartphone powered web absorption.
Clarke erred only in not anticipating cat videos.
As a side note: In all the catastrophe scenarios published before Covid 19, no one has foreseen the toilet paper hoarders.
One of several (of his own) from which parts were incorporated. The initial discovery on the Moon started out in The Sentinel, for instance.
That would also help explain why they aren’t super user friendly. Letting the “host” find each function through experiment would help slow down the progress. Also makes me wonder if the “skill tree” is only that because Sydney is familiar with it. If someone else had it then maybe the development function would appear differently.
that is similar to the theory Sydney is a baby Nth level being, going through reincarnations or an avatar-larval phase; and the orbs are like training wheels to come into their powers slowly and externally from the fragile human form; and when all is ready they will fuse into one being and ascend.
We don’t actually know yet how many that would take, because there are a few arcs out of the diagram that run off into the unseen aether.
But my own wild-ass thought about it would be, when this entire set of stuff gets filled in, all those arcs trailing off into unseen aether light up, showing an extended chart with spaces for seven more orbs. This would be incredibly frustrating if Syd can’t find any of the second set of orbs, or can’t activate any of the second set until she has them all.
It makes sense that when Sydney finally beats the Orbs Game, she has to purchase Orbs 2.0 which features an improved game mechanic and a more difficult initial quest.
The idea that Arianna can explain with the honest “I work with a bunch of superheroes and one of them startled me by flying past my fourth-story window” truth amuses me.
“Hang on, let me pull the shades and we can continue.”
Soooooo… what happens when she Caps Out on points to be able to spend?
>:-)
talking about those games where *and they don’t always warn you*, that by the time you max level (or due to some other factors like relationship gauges* you can’t actually earn enough skill points to finish out the skill tree?
I will be honest, this is a punk move that just irritates people who are completionists, especially if said skill tree forced you spend points on useless junk to access the better skills.
often there are ways to address such unfortunate oversights. most of them do not involve bodily harm to the overworked programmers.
*most* of them….
so who would with the feather fall introduce it to the rest of the team by pretending to walk down the building?
(I wonder if feather fall shares so if anvil jumped off the roof with her they would both float down)
“Is it shared” is definitely a good next question, especially because it’s something she doesn’t want to learn in the field.
Yes. It has to be tested as a parachute with non-flyers and also while using 2 orbs
but *NOT* the Flight Orb.
Maxima’s right there.
She should grab Sydney and deactivate her own antigravity.
Are they both FeatherFalling?
FastFeatherFalling?
NewtonFalling?
I mentioned this before, but thinking about this more I really hope Sydney can use her next upgrade on the passive for the still unkown orb. At least then there is a chance of something out of the ordinary helping to figure out what that orb might be.
Unless DaveB is going to give a passive for something so we cant figure out what is happening….
*WHEW* I was a little worried that the special pips might be a “deactivate this orb, permanently” option (analogous to parental controls or car window locks) .. but not that worried, because I knew the author prefers to confer diversity and power, and avoid tragedy and sadness.
Your featherfall just put that poor little rock out of it’s cushy back-poking job.
don’t know if anyone else has noticed this (and I don’t have time to read all the comments nowadays) but this upgrade is the first one that does not require her to touch one of the orbs.
To be fair, my first early RPG games were ALL ABOUT THE LOOT HAMSTER LIFESTYLE, so maxing strength and then putting points into mule-pack traits may seem like I’m just roleplaying as an overglorified merchant’s donkey…buuuut.
It’s what brings you joy, that enriches life. No matter how dorky.