Ch.2
Choose a starting Disciple of Pneuma Combat Arts.
This was where it would start to get awesome. The Disciple class was from a third party book called Paths of Battle. It looked to close the overwhelming power gap that has always been present between the combat-oriented martial classes and the spell casting classes at higher levels.
It did a really good job of it, essentially by giving combat classes nine levels of combat abilities that corresponded to the spell casting classes’ nine levels of spells, divided into ‘Styles’ called Combat Arts. The Disciple was, essentially, the hybrid magic and melee class. The Disciple of Pneuma, a Disciple variant, leaned towards Qi instead. Pneuma was the Greek word for breath, and essentially meant the same thing as Qi does; at least roughly.
I chose the Combat Art I needed at 1st level to step onto the path of major league awesomeness! It was called Fist of the Four Elements, and just like how it sounded, it let me use Fire, Air, Water, and Earth-based attacks and defenses. It even had options for pure Force attacks and defenses! I only got one element at level one, and for that I chose Air, because Air-aligned attacks do Lightning damage, and Lightning is FREAKING awesome!
It was also what I considered the best option at 1st level.
As I made those choices, I could feel power bloom then expand within my body and soul! I knew it was tiny compared to what it would be in a few levels, but for someone who’d never felt anything like it before, it was a heady feeling!
Not only could I sense the air around me now, but I could even control it, at least a little. Just enough to make a gentle breeze, and that was about all, at least for now.
Not only that, but I could also sense the bioelectricity in my own body, now, and did the ever feel weird.
Even a taste of being able to control electricity was a damned big head rush, though!
‘This is gotta be what it’s like to be a superhero! Hah! A demigod, even!’
At 1st level, Classes that gave you a Combat Art let you take four ‘maneuvers’ - basically three of its techniques, plus I could choose one ‘Stance’. From Fist of the 4 Elements, I took Spark Strike. Unlike what it sounded like, this was a burst of pure elemental force, an actual combination of all four Elements and it could be enhanced with Pneuma, the Disciple of Pneuma’s special resource.
For my second maneuver, I took Eyes of the Efreet, a passive ability. It gave me infrared vision and gave a bonus to perception rolls! The third ability I took was called Eldritch Shield, a ‘Counter’ that let me negate ten points of either fire, lightning, cold, or acid damage as a ‘Counter’ action.
In The Game, using a Counter could be done at any time, once per round, twice a round at 11th level. It was always defensive in nature, though it could have many secondary effects which included everything from allowing the person using the counter to move outside of their turn, something that was normally impossible, to knocking an attacker back, to letting you simply block or negate an attack, plus many more options.
Which brings us to talk about how combat rounds are broken up in The Game.
A combat round is considered to be six seconds long.
The basic number of actions a character could take were divided into a move action; which was normally used to move your base movement value (usually 30’ for a human).
There was also the standard action; which could be used as a move action but was also what was needed to cast a spell or make an attack.
Lastly, there was a swift action, an action which took a very brief period of time, like drawing a weapon or activating a power that merely took a thought and a brief moment of concentration.
Generally, you can only do each of them once per round. There were technically also free actions, which were considered to take no combat time and thus you could do as many of them as you wanted, though sometimes a GM would limit how many of them you could do at once. Soliloquy, that is, speaking out loud, was an example of a free action, though there were many more.
Soliloquy was made a free action mostly so that heroes and villains could banter at each other without affecting combat. It added to the fun, so why wouldn’t you do it that way?
Another kind of action was an immediate action, which generally requires you to reserve part of your turn for it.
Preparing to stab the first thing that comes around a corner uses an immediate action, taking the place of a standard action held in reserve to do that specific thing since stabbing something is an attack – a standard action.
Think of it like setting a character on Overwatch in a turn-based strategy game, but you can set an action to do pretty much anything, not just attack. This is the most common way that wizards, for example, dispel enemy magic spells and powers.
The difference is important because readying an action, which was basically giving up another kind of action to set a scenario like stabbing the first person to come around a corner, was the only way to act when it was not your turn... aside from using a counter, or getting something called an attack of opportunity.
A counter was its own, separate thing, but similar to an immediate action. However, even though you could only use the Counter action once per round, you could save your swift action and use it as an immediate action to counter a second time during a round, but only if you had two Counter abilities! That was usually going to cost you some offence, though, which was fine, at least in the game.
Trading some offense for more defense was perfectly acceptable in a game from a balance standpoint.
Not sure how the heck it’ll work in whatever the heck I’ve fallen into here, though!
For my Combat Art’s Stance, I took Elemental Embrace. The Air version let me do bonus electrical damage with each attack and gave me a small Dodge bonus to my AC, making it even harder to get hit.
Once I was done with choosing those abilities, I got another prompt.
Choose 4 Feats: One base, plus one as a human, plus one as a 1st level Monk, plus one as a 1st level Disciple of Pneuma.
That was expected, and I was pretty excited. I went all in on damage, because my AC was already going to be pretty silly.
“I think I’ll swap Flurry of Blows for Style Master Alternate Path.” I said with a grin, writing the change down on my notebook character sheet.
Doing this wasn’t a Feat – it was choosing a specialization for my Monk Class, but it was important, because I wanted to take a pair of Style Feats, and that only worked if I had Style Master.
Because Style Master gave me the ability Fuse Style – martial arts Styles were a big part of a Monk’s power, imitating the abilities of powerful beasts and supernatural creatures in much the same way that ancient martial arts tried to do – things like Tiger Style and Monkey Style kung fu were real things after all, and The Game’s Style Feats were aimed at doing the same thing, more or less.
Styles were chains of Feats. There were three Feats per each Style where each new Feat in the chain added to the benefits you got when you activated the Style.
They were also a separate, though similar, thing to a Combat Art’s Stances, and you could normally have only one Stance and one Style active simultaneously. Fuse Style let me have two Styles active simultaneously, and eventually would let me have up to five Styles active at the same time at higher levels instead of just one!
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It was incredibly powerful and allowed for some amazing synergies.
Then I took Power Attack, a feat that lets me sacrifice attack bonus for more damage. Basically, it traded accuracy for more damage.
My AB (Attack Bonus) would go down by one, but I would do two additional points of damage. At 4th level, and every four Character levels past that, I could sacrifice one more point of AB to get another plus two damage.
You could also simply choose not to use it if you ran into an opponent you were having a hard time hitting, so it was essentially an ability you could simply toggle off and on.
I then took the first levels of Dragon Style and Djinni Style. Normally, you need a Feat called Elemental Fist to take Djinni Style but having the Fist of the 4 Elements Combat Art is specifically mentioned as counting in place of it for the purpose of purchasing other Feats.
Dragon Style gives a +2 bonus to resist mind-affecting abilities, like fear, sleep, and paralysis as well as against being stunned, and gives me more bonuses to parkour-style movement, as well as lets me add on and a half times my Strength bonus to the damage of my first unarmed attack in a round, basically the same bonus a character would get for swinging a weapon with two hands instead of just one.
This multiplier also increases the damage of Power Attack, taking it from plus two to plus three points of damage per minus one to hit! Again, this is the same bonus gained when using a melee weapon two handed.
As a 1st level Monk, my unarmed attacks do 1d6 damage base instead of the 1d3 a character would normally do when fighting unarmed. 1d6 is about equal to what being hit by a baseball bat does! With Dragon Style and Power Attack’s bonuses figured in, I can hit for 1d6+9 damage with my first strike each round – that’s without using Spark Strike, which adds +2d4 more damage!
Djinni Style lets me add my Wisdom bonus to any electrical damage I do, and Elemental Embrace in Air Attunement makes it so that each attack does electrical damage! That’s another 1d6+4 damage right there!
Of course, it all stacks, too! The combination of Dragon Style and Djinni Style was common enough that the combo even had a name – Lightning Dragon Style!
Dragon Style combined with Efreeti Style was Inferno Dragon, plus Marid Style was Blizzard Dragon, and plus Shaitan Style was Mountain Dragon Style! Djinni, Efreeti, Marid, and Shaitan were the elemental djinn royalty, one for each of the elements; Djinni for Air, Efreeti for Fire, Marid for Water, and Shaitan for Earth.
For my last Feat, I took Cleave. If there’s another enemy adjacent to an enemy you successfully strike, make a free attack against that enemy as well!
With that done, Character Creation was nearly done. Normally, I’d still have to get my skills, pick equipment, write a short back story, and decide on a personality for the character. I was pretty sure this Character Creation would end the moment I was done with picking my skills, though.
I got four skill points from each class, plus one for being human and two more for my 15 Intelligence, for a total of seven, times two for my two Primary classes, for a total of fourteen. A point went into Acrobatics, Climb, Escape Artist, Perception, Sense Motive, Spellcraft, Stealth, and Swim. As I wrote each of them in my notebook, my head blossomed with information about each subject! Not only how to do each of them, but also what to do in order to train to get better at each of them!
I placed a point into Lore (Martial), which I needed for my Combat Arts, and Lore (Religion) because it was useful to both classes – and it also gave info about the undead!
I also took Lore (Arcana) and Lore (Local) because they seemed like the most useful out of the skills left. Arcana was knowledge of magical subjects, and Local was knowledge of things in the area – local laws, hot night clubs, where to go to pawn stolen goods, the names of important local figures. Heck, it even extended to local legends!
With my Scholar Talent, I would eventually put one point in all of the Lore skills, because that was the whole point of the Scholar Talent! Taking the Lore skills felt a lot weirder than the previous skills – dozens of books worth of information suddenly filling my mind is a sensation that’s difficult to properly relay.
It wasn’t exactly uncomfortable, but I didn’t care for how it felt at all.
There was this sense of touching on something much larger than I was. It was different than whatever happened when the entity touched me when I was gaining my Combat Art, as this thing was profoundly inhuman. Not actively aggressive or anything, but just so different, so very alien, I guess? Yes, so alien that it made me shy away from it instinctively.
I thought long and hard about the last two points, and went with Craft (Alchemy) and Survival, making it into a Class skill with my Trait, Footsteps of the North, which also gave me the language of the Northmen. For some reason, that defaulted to modern German. I also had English as my native language plus it gave me ‘Common’, and I also got two others. With no real idea what else to choose, so I took Dwarven and Draconic.
That done, I waited for what was next. I didn’t have to wait long.
Character Creation complete.
You have been granted basic starting equipment.
You have gained a Ratty Trousers.
You have gained a Holey T-Shirt.
You have gained a Pair of Socks.
You have gained a pair of Worn Work Boots.
You have gained a Rusty Cestus.
Venture forth, Dreamer! Opportunity beckons!
The moment I got that message the familiar table and chair, the ring of light around it, and my Crown Royal dice bag, all of them simply disappeared, like the whole thing had been a soap bubble that just popped.
As I stood there, I felt myself Change. Some small changes had begun as I had made each decision along the way, but now the processes begun by those choices all rushed towards completion!
I could feel myself grow and change. I knew I had gained a bunch of muscle that just hadn’t been there before. An 18 Strength and Constitution means that I should be on par with the very best of the best of elite, professional athletes! A 16 Dexterity also put me solidly in that same category, but the feelings evoked by that were very different; it was more a feeling of balance and incredible control over my body!
My 15 Intelligence and 20 Wisdom were more difficult to pin down. I could feel my mind alter, change, and expand. I could feel myself thinking and making connections more quickly, I could not only recall memories more completely, but more quickly as well. The difference was every bit as startling as the physical changes, if I’m being perfectly honest.
I’m pretty sure that only my newly improved mental faculties were keeping me from being overwhelmed by all the changes.
Then the more metaphysical changes began to happen. The power I’d felt bloom within me before began to grow and expand even further within my body and spirit.
For now, I only had a tiny amount of Qi. I would need to reach 3rd level as a Monk before I had an actual Qi Pool, but I had Pneuma now. Pneuma’s basic function was to be expended to enhance Combat Arts and it could be used to boost or improve them in a few ways.
Magic spell, Combat Arts, and even some skills and Feats could be resisted, the roll made to do so in The Game was referred to as a Saving Throw, or more simply, a Save.
Pneuma could be expended when using a Combat Art to make it more difficult to make the Save against it, to basically overwhelm an opponent’s defenses by supercharging your attack. Pneuma could also be expended to help with landing a blow, essentially a matter of empowering an attack, once again, to bypass defenses or move faster so it couldn’t be defended against. Eventually it would be able to do much more than that, but that was all I could do with Pneuma for now.
Or at least that’s how it worked in The Game; but everything so far had matched The Game really closely, so I was just going to keep assuming that’s how things work until I find out differently.
I didn’t think it was possible to describe how those changes felt to someone who hasn’t experienced something similar, but I’ll try.
I felt like I had metallic fire and liquid lightning caged inside my body and soul. I knew that it just being there was making me stronger, tougher, and faster; I couldn’t imagine what it would be like when there was more of it! It was painful pleasure and ecstatic pain at the same time. I both couldn’t get enough of it and was mentally begging for it to stop!
I felt what I knew were the two basic Chakra points in my hands and then, a moment later, the two on my feet begin to open as well. I could see and feel the skin bubble up from inside like a boil suppurating and popping in fast-forward, and then pure Pneuma and Qi boiled out of them! A few moments later, the basic Meridians (the pipelines in a mortal body for supernatural energy) leading from my Center (the place where all my Energy existed inside of me) to those Chakra points now having been established, some kind of a balance – an equilibrium – was reached, and I felt these new parts of my body and soul reach some weird, metaphysical homeostasis.
My Lore (Martial) skill informed me of all of this rather clinically, the information appearing in my mind as if they were interesting bits of trivia as I contorted between orgasmic pleasure and the worst pain I’d ever felt simultaneously!
I couldn’t begin to guess how long it had taken for the changes to finish themselves, but eventually, it did came to an end.
It was an incredibly weird sensation. I was so much MORE than I had been when I first became conscious in this odd place.
I was stronger and tougher, as well as smarter and more perceptive, sure, but that barely began touching on the differences. Supernatural power now thrummed through my body and my soul! Lightning was mine to command – at least a little bit!
And this was just the beginning!
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When I became aware of my surroundings again a little while later, I could see that in place of the table and ring of light, there was a small campfire with a sword driven into a stone at the center of it. It was maybe five feet away from me.
A sword in a stone, huh? Reference to Arthurian legends, get!
I was seated on the floor of what appeared to be a natural cave, maybe twelve or thirteen feet high at its highest point and roughly 25’ or 30’ wide and long. There were two visible exits, and the sound of rushing water was coming from one of those other caves.
The floor was relatively smooth, but it looked like it had been done by natural action rather than something that had been done by hand.
There were a few bioluminescent mushrooms and a bit of moss, as well. It was quite cool and humid in the room, to the point that I was glad for the small fire in front of me.
I was just starting to relax after examining my surroundings – what I had felt was a pretty careful examination of them, too – when out of the darkness stepped a tall, blond, blindfolded, female figure clad all in sky blue and white.
I won’t lie to you; I was so surprised that I nearly pissed my new Ratty Trousers!
“Welcome, Dreamer.” a soft, melodious feminine voice said. My surprise had obviously amused her. “Like all thy kind, thou must be confused about thy new situation. I am Melnaria, the Bride of Virtue. The Great One hath bid me greet thee and offer thee an introduction to thine new, odd... situation.” As she spoke, she stepped further into the light.
She was tall, elegant, and stunningly beautiful. Long, curly blond hair, almost golden in the firelight. Her dress looked medieval, but was obviously well made, out of silk or maybe satin; I'm a guy, I’ll admit I couldn’t tell what material it was by dim firelight, at a glance, from 15 feet away.
She wore a good bit of silver jewelry with what looked like sapphires, as well, and her eyes were covered with a simple white blindfold, though she seemed to have no trouble with telling exactly where I was.
Once I’d recovered from my near heart attack, I did what was probably not the smartest thing in the world, in retrospect.
At the time, I couldn’t help myself; she had startled me; I was really annoyed with her and this whole situation! “Well, Melnaria, the Bride of Virtue,” I made finger-quotes in mid-air, “could you please tell me where the hell I am, and why the hell I feel like I’m stuck in a damned mishmash of half the role-playing games I know of! Also, what the hell’s going on with my memory!?”
Even as I did it, I knew I was being a dick, but I’d been on the edge of freaking out since I’d woken up, and the fact that something was keeping me from going over that edge just meant that I was even MORE stressed out, not less!
Melnaria, the Bride of Virtue looked at me, obviously nonplussed for a moment, then she started tittering, which turned into a melodious giggle, which turned into actual laughter that went on for more than a little while.
It felt like it was an odd reaction to me lashing out at her.
After a few seconds, I came to the realization that I had just been kind of a dick to a woman who’d just told me that she was sent here to help me; I couldn’t help but blush in embarrassment. “That was very rude, Melnaria, I’m... I’m sorry. This, well, whatever's happening here, it's exciting but it's also VERY confusing and more than a little scary. I feel as if I’m having some of my lifelong dreams fulfilled, but in the worst way possible.”
The Bride nodded, her laughter finally dying out. “Indeed. There are many things I canst tell thee, but unfortunately there are also many things I canst not, for now. First, know this is all real at the same time as it is... different from the Reality that thou hast dealt with before now. You are a Dreamer, and while the place we stand now is not truly a Dream, we are still within THY Dream. Or at least, tis one of them. I am not permitted to tell thee much about what is going on beyond a few very basic things. For now, at least.”
I asked the obvious question. “What can you tell me, then?”