Ch.10
I went back to the room with the Hearthflame and looked into how expensive my plans were going to be, as well as how many Records I was making off of those three rooms.
I’d made enough to raise one Stat point by one point. Int immediately went up to 16. That was 4 more Skill points, after all! A point went into Appraise, Bluff, Weaponsmithing, and Heal. I wanted to have more social skills, as I’d be raising my Charisma after raising my Intelligence and being able to talk people into doing what I wanted them to was usually easier AND nicer for everyone involved.
And no, having a high charisma and good rolls for social skills isn’t the same as mind control! People have been convincing other people to do what they want them to and changing people’s minds for as long as humans have been able to speak to each other! All being good at social skills does is make you REALLY good at doing that!
Don’t get me wrong, being able to super kung fu the crap out of someone who deserved it was absolutely AMAZING! It was just better if I had more than a single answer to problems and my conscience will be a lot happier if I try to talk people into doing the right thing before using the super kung fu...
After all, like the old adage says, ‘When all you have is a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail.’
I also had enough Records to purchase a single Feat, so I took Great Throw.
Great Throw was an amazing Feat for me, as it let me do my unarmed damage to an enemy when I made a successful Trip attack. That’s right, another way to take advantage of Flowing Water Master!
It meant that now, the first time an opponent up to one size category larger than me attacked me in melee combat, I’d get a free trip attack on them. A success now did my full unarmed damage of 1d6+9+1d6+5... then, since they were prone and next to me, I’d get to use Vicious Stomp!
Even better, the free trip AND the unarmed damage from it weren’t considered attacks of opportunity! Unfortunately, it also meant that I couldn’t Cleaving Finish off of the damage from Great Throw but come on – never complain about Free Damage to your enemies!
I got a message that made me less than happy after purchasing Great Throw, however.
Update: From now on, Dreamers will now be limited to purchasing 2 stat points and 1 Talent per Primary character level, and 1 Feat and Mastery per day. Bonuses from Training and leveling are unaffected.
That sucked, but it wasn’t really surprising. The number of Feats and Masteries I had bought already were a bit absurd. This would slow my progress down a bit. To be fair, though, at this point I’d already reached a point where I needed more levels and a higher Attack Bonus before I could really move onto the next set of Feats and Masteries I was really gung-ho about.
It does feel amusing to me that it felt like I was the reason behind it – did I just get everyone nerfed? I probably just won’t tell anyone about that little detail... The idea of that felt kind of absurd, really and I comforted myself by telling myself that other people had probably been doing the same thing...
3rd level would give me access to a bunch of Feats and Masteries, though, since I gained my Qi Pool at that point, which was the prerequisite for a ton of Qi Feats I was absolutely drooling over. Not only were they awesome, but many of them scaled up in power as I leveled, which made them even better as far as I was concerned. 4th and 5th level gave me access to some nice stuff – specifically the Jiang-Shi Fist Masteries at 5th, but 6th level was when things really would get crazy again!
The only real reason I could think of was that whoever authorized the change probably thought it would get a lot of people to get back to leveling up. Having to wait days and weeks to get everything you wanted might sound easy, but I bet a lot of people just didn’t have what it takes not to grab the obvious, quick power of leveling up as quickly as they could.
It would be difficult for me, too, but unless something changed, it only made sense.
Meanwhile, the people who took it slow would be MUCH stronger at higher levels! If I managed to get everything I wanted, I should be able to beat someone a few levels higher than me who’d rushed forward through the levels. Of course, once they reached whatever max level was, they could then start buying stuff, but they’d be paying a bunch more Records for the same thing!
In the end, buying Feats and Masteries at lower levels meant getting stronger faster. A little math proved it, easily.
The Game wasn’t like online video games. You still gained experience in the tabletop version of The Game for defeating lower-level opponents, unlike most video games where you didn’t; you just needed a lot more exp to do anything, so it usually wasn’t worth it to do so. How useful was 135 exp per goblin for killing a small tribe of low-level goblins when you needed 180,000 exp for your next level, after all?
Especially when the goblins didn’t magically respawn for you! Even if they did, it was still a lot of time and effort for very little reward.
High level enemies were MUCH rarer than low level ones, and harder to find, too. Low level ones, on the other hand, were everywhere! Higher level characters would be severely gimping themselves by rushing to high levels without milking the lower levels for all that they could!
At least, that was my conclusion for now. Even if I was wrong, I’d still be a lot stronger for my level at all points, meaning that I’d have a safer leveling experience by building up my power NOW instead of later.
I went back to grinding the two spider rooms and the room of Skraven. I started changing up my tactics a bit, trying out my Broken Chains’ Iron Palm stance instead of Elemental Embrace. The difference, as far as effectiveness was concerned, was simply the loss of the bonus lightning damage from Djinni Style. It was a significant difference, of course, but I was still able to kill the spiders pretty easily, in one or occasionally two hits for the smaller spiders, and in two or three for the larger one.
What I really needed was a sparring partner and a martial arts instructor who was further down this path than I was. I felt like I was heading in the right direction, of course, but it's hard to know for sure without some kind of proof of concept... and I had no way to get that, at least for now.
Still, getting more combos and just going with bigger numbers being better seemed like the best way to stay safe until I found someone who I could ask about all of this stuff!
I started feeling really tired after just a few minutes, and before I knew it, I was nodding off while sitting in front of the Hearthflame.
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The next couple of weeks were fairly calm on Earth, with me falling back into a rather normal routine of working, playing with Banner, hanging out with Chris, and taking the time for a much more serious focus on my training at the dojo. It had been years since I had been this serious about training with Sensei Kai.
Since I’d graduated college, I’d attended classes at the dojo three or four times a week and been slowly learning what I needed to in order to try for my Fourth Dan black belt, but my dedication hadn’t been anywhere near what it was like when I was in high school.
Suddenly that fire was back in my belly. I was getting up early to go jogging for the first time in years. I was attending every class I could at NW Kajukenbo. Kajukenbo was my PASSION once again!
I felt great every day, and then I went to bed and woke back up as a Dreamer again... and every time I did, I was shocked at how much what was happening in the Dream was influencing me in the real world.
I’d been grinding out Feats, mostly ones that helped my skills, since I was out of Combat Feats that I thought would be of any significant use to me... at least ones I could buy at 2nd level. These Feats I was grinding out now would give me another +10 to skill rolls once I hit level 10th level and gave +5 to them now!
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
It took me buying multiple Feats to raise the bonus to each skill that high, but I felt it was worthwhile doing so.
Some of my Combat Art Counter maneuvers worked off of my Skill rolls versus enemy combat rolls, so gaining a +10 to Perception and Spellcraft, for instance, would give me +10 to rolls on powerful defensive abilities that could save my life... I’d be a fool NOT to take them when I could buy those Feats on the cheap!
There were also Skill Feats like Persuasive – it gave +2 to Intimidate and Diplomacy, +4 at 10th, AND they made them into Class skills... which neither one was for my classes. Prodigy gave +2 to each and every craft, perform, and profession skill, then +4 at 10th.
Alertness was for Perception and Sense Motive, Self-Sufficient for Heal and Survival, and Stealthy worked on Stealth and Escape Artist! I bought them all.
There were also Skill Focus Feats that could be bought for each and every skill and gave a +3 now and then a +6 to each skill when I reached 10th level. I bought it for every single skill I had – well, that’s not exactly true, I only bought it for Lore (Martial) because I only needed to raise the one skill and my Scholar Talent took care of the rest of them, also, I bought the Talent, Craftsman, which does the exact same thing for Craft skills as Scholar does for Lores... so I also only bought Skill focus for Alchemy.
20 Feats, all told, for Skills! Including 2 for a skill I didn’t even HAVE yet, Diplomacy! I also bought Defensive Throw and Big Game Hunter.
Big Game Hunter was pretty simple – it made me better at fighting things Large size or bigger, granting me a +1 to hit and +2 to damage against them. The rematch between me and the half-ogre ghast/werewolf was going to go VERY differently, when I got around to it!
Defensive Throw added to the silliness I already had with all the stuff having to do with using trip attacks. Once a round, as a Free Action, I could designate a single opponent as my target. And the first attack that target made that missed each round let me make a trip attack as an attack of opportunity against them!
That’s right, now I could get two free trip attacks a round, with all the craziness that came out of that completely intact! Both of them would trigger Great Throw and Vicious Stomp, too, of course!
I had also started in on my Stat Masteries, of which I could only buy the first level, which gave me a +1 to all stat checks or rolls using those stats – another +1 to every Skill check, basically.
As you might imagine, my skill checks were now starting to get pretty absurd.
Anyway, it had taken me twenty-two days of buying Feats to get through all of the Feats I wanted.
Each day I had ventured deeper and deeper into the Skraven’s area. I had even died once when I’d gotten too cocky and been ambushed by a high-level Death Skitterer Assassin.
Lots of Sneak Attack dice, a backstab surprise attack, and a strong poison hurt and weakened me too much to do anything but die when a small horde of Skraven piled onto me seconds after the Assassin’s stealthy attack. It was also before I’d gotten my Stealth and Perception skill bonuses up to where they are now – once I hit 3rd level, he and I were going to have another discussion... I didn’t think it would go the same as the last one had with me having another +6 to both those skills!
I had managed to sneak back and recover my lost records. I’d been a lot more careful from that point on.
I had also found out that even if you recover them, you still lose twenty-five percent of them...
To be honest, I wasn’t all that mad at the time, but now I have enough Records stored up to level at least to 4th, maybe to 5th, even! If I die again, the amount lost will be days of work!
Plus, dying sucks. Dying by being stabbed and bitten to death, with poison coursing through your veins is not something I really wanted to experience again!
Believe me, when it's happening to you, the thought that you’re going to revive isn’t much of a comfort!
I was finally DONE with all of that, though! I had all the Feats I wanted and had saved up more than enough Records to level to 3rd as a Monk and a Disciple, now, and I totally was going to do so.
From Monk, +1 Attack Bonus, +1 Will Save, +10’ Fast Movement – raising my base move to 50’, now. I gained a Qi Pool equal to ½ my Monk level plus my Wisdom modifier, or seven Qi. My unarmed strikes now counted as magic damage, which meant that I could now bypass the Damage Resistance of a lot of monsters that would otherwise been able to ignore five to fifteen points of my damage per hit; DR/magic is generally between five and fifteen points, you see.
As a swift action, I could now spend one point of Qi to make an extra attack with Flurry at my highest attack bonus. I got eight more Skill points, and I got a Feat for reaching 3rd level... and that was it for Monk this level.
As I took the level, I could feel a rush of energy from within. It was so like and yet so different from Pneuma. My new Qi flowed and grew through my body even as it healed and strengthened everything it touched. For now, the two, Qi and Pneuma, were separate forces, each in their own containers... but I knew it would only be a matter of time until they came together!
Disciple of Pneuma gave me +1 to Fortitude and Reflex saves and a second elemental attunement for which I chose Earth.
It gave me the Feat, Greater Unarmed Strike for free, which made me do damage as if I were a Monk 4 levels higher than I currently am, raising its 1d6 base to 1d8 base!
Earth attunement let me change my Elemental Embrace from Air to Earth instead, naturally, which gave me DR 2/-, increase my CMD versus grapples, trips, and bull rushes, and made my attacks do damage as if they were one size category larger, taking it to a 2d6. Yes, Earth attunement’s DR added to what I already had, and increased with my level!
I also got three more maneuvers and gained access to 2nd level Combat Art maneuvers! I took a new Fist of the Four Elements move, Energy Spark.
Energy Spark(Boost) – 2nd. Expend this boost to fire a ray of elemental energy at any target in range. Make a ranged touch attack, success means do 3d6. Spend 2 Pneuma to fire a second ray at same or different target.
For my second move, I took a Counter from Fo4E – Arcane Shield.
Arcane Shield(Counter) - 2nd. Works versus melee or ranged attacks, including touch attacks. Make a Spellcraft check versus your opponent’s attack roll as the DC. If you succeed, block the attack. This is a force effect, and will stop incorporeal attacks. Can be enhanced by spending 1 Pneuma, which adds a +2 shield bonus to your AC until the start of your next turn.
For my last new maneuver, I went to Broken Chain. Since I could, I traded in Brawler’s Attitude and Eldritch Shield for Bronze Knuckle and Counter Step and took Leg Sweeping Hilt as my other new maneuver.
Bronze Knuckle(Boost) - 2nd. Until the start of next turn, deal +2d6 damage and ignore all DR.
Counter Step(Counter) - 2nd. Make an opposed Acrobatics roll against your opponent’s attack roll. If you succeed, the attack misses and you make an immediate 5’ step to a location that is not being threatened by the opponent. Does not provoke attacks of opportunity.
Leg Sweeping Hilt(Attack) – 2nd. Make a trip attack, at +2 competence bonus. If successful, make an immediate attack at maximum attack bonus.
Also, I could now start with three maneuvers in my hand, chosen when combat began... and have up to six maneuvers. Boosts, Counters, and Attacks in my hand that were added randomly to my hand once per round.
I could also create something called a Glyph now. I could only use Glyphs of the elements I was attuned to, so for now that meant Air, Earth, and Metal, with my Earth attunement also giving me access to Metal.
Using a Glyph expended a move action, and I had to spend a Pneuma point. The glyph affected myself and up to my Initiation modifier, which was Wisdom for Disciples in number of allies, and lasted for 1 + Initiation Modifier rounds.
Air - +10’ to all types of movement, and can make one turn during a charge of 90 degrees or less.
Earth – gain a bonus to CMD equal to Initiation mod.
Metal – gain +¼ Disciple level DR/-, minimum +1.
So, my Glyphs could affect up to five people and lasted six rounds, or thirty-six seconds. As I leveled up and unlocked more and more Elemental Attunements, I’d get more Glyphs, and each of the Glyphs would gain more and more abilities!
My skill points raised my main skills. There's no way I could raise them all, but Scholar and Craftsman were going to let me save a metric ton of skill points from those skills... and they were skills I really felt I needed. Or, at the very least, really wanted!
I also took Diplomacy. I’d bought the Feats to go with it, so I didn’t want to wait around on that any more. Hopefully, if I ran into mob mooks on Earth again, it would let me talk them out of trying to shoot me!
I got three new Lores, The Planes, Engineering, and History, as well as three new Crafts, Leatherworking, Tattooing, and Jewelcrafting.
I had plans for all my Crafting skills, and I was getting close to being able to do something with them. With a +15 to all of them, I could take 10 and hit a DC 25 – more than enough to make Mastercrafted weapons and armor!
That was important, of course, because in order to enchant something, to make it magical, it HAD to be Mastercrafted... and Disciple of Pneuma eventually let me make magic items with Pneuma!
For my Feat, I took Discipline Focus (Broken Chains). It let me do +2 damage with any of the Broken Chains style weapons, which of course included unarmed strikes. It also added +2 DCs to any saves versus my Broken Chains maneuvers, and... it let me do my full unarmed damage while using Shield Gauntlets!
I also paid for Discipline Focus (Fist of the 4 Elements), which did the exact same thing, but for Fo4E weapon groups, which naturally also includes unarmed combat!
So, my attacks should now be 1d8+13+1d6+5, with a crit range of 19-20/x2 on the first attack of each round, with the +13 damage dropping to only +10 after that first attack due to Dragon Style. If I swapped to Earth Element and Broken Chain Stance, it bumped the damage to 3d6+13, with the same crit range, and my AC dropped by 2 but I gained 2 more DR/-, giving me 6. A Metal Glyph upped it to DR 7/-!
Now I just needed some armor, though I’d likely have to make do with an enchanted item that cast Mage Armor since neither of my classes could wear armor, the Mage Armor spell was one of a few ways around that, though, since it was technically a magical construct that imitated armor.
Also, I now have a crap ton of Qi Feats to buy. Once I get them taken care of, though, I am totally gonna tear that Skraven village apart!
The other day, when I died, I had found out that there were actual crafting stations in the Skraven village! They were really shitty ones, but there was a smithy and an alchemist’s station, a tannery, a leatherworker’s shop, and so on.
If I could get access to them, I’d be able to start actually using all of the crafting skills I’d been buying!
I’m probably going to be stuck using the crappy stuff I’m sure I’ll find there to make better stuff, until I can get to the point where I can make decent enough Crafting gear to actually start making what I want! Potions. Oh, lordy lord did I want potions! Also, better, and by that, I mean enchanted, weapons and armor!
Hell, at this point I’d just take ANY gear beyond this crappy starter gear! I was 3rd level and still wearing Ratty Trousers, damnit!
I wanted all the GOOD stuff! Boots of Striding, Girdles of Giant Strength, Rings of Elemental Power, Cloaks of Invisibility, Bracers and Robes that raised my defenses... I wanted it all! Fighting in a set of damned Ratty Trousers was getting old!
Dammit, you can’t really be OP until you have OP gear, too!
I went out to kill more spiders and ratty boys.
Gotta grind them eeps, boi!