Ch.4
Yeah, so I totally did that. It was a complete no-brainer, all things considered. My excitement over my victory had quickly been quashed in the face of the sickly purplish-yellow color that my right arm and shoulder were rapidly turning.
I walked up to the Hearthflame, and with no clue what else to try, touched the hilt of the Blade in the Flame. Sure enough, a menu popped up for me and I could feel a sensation I could only describe as the world pausing as it came up!
Welcome to the Realm Guardian System, Dreamer.
You have 1200 Records available.
Please choose one of the following options.
1.) Level Advancement
2.) Advance a Statistic
3.) Purchase a new Feat
4.) Purchase a new Talent
5.) Purchase a Mastery
6.) Exit
400 Records each for three 3rd level giant spiders! Nice! 1200 total! It was almost enough for a level, but I wasn’t ready to do that just yet.
Everything was so danged expensive, though! It was all based off of the price of my level ups, basically a flat percentage of whatever that amount was. And multiple purchases in the same field made each new purchase twenty percent more expensive, just like Melnaria had said.
I need to be careful, those costs could get out of hand really quickly.
I couldn’t advance my stats that were 18 or higher, either. It just wasn’t an option, though, after I raised my Dex by a point, I was glad to see that each stat was consider separate for the price increase.
I am totally going to raise all my stats to 18 before I become level 2!
That seemed pretty damned absurd, to be honest, but if killing those three spiders kept on netting me 1200 Records, and I could just walk up to the Hearthflame and reset them. Since that’s how it would work in Black Spirits, it could only be the work of a couple hours, with a little luck!
You know, provided I didn’t get webbed and poisoned to death repeatedly!
Ok, this is pretty cheap, for now. Cheap as in inexpensive AND cheap as in this is seriously some power gamer wet dream stuff! That said, escalating costs is gonna make this become a real pain. But damn, this opens up some real opportunities... for grotesque abuses of the system, of course! The only part that sucks is that I’m totally going to be stuck at 1st level for a while... because why in the world would I raise myself to 2nd level and pay 2nd level prices for stuff I can get for half of that! Assuming that experience levels remain consistent with how they work in The Game, of course.
Being able to buy Class Features, optional Features, and Alternate Path Features as Masteries was pretty silly, too.
Essentially, Class Features were the things that defined what a Class was and did. A Monk, at level 1, got a Bonus Feat, their AC Bonus, Flurry, Stunning Fist, and Unarmed Strike as Class Features. Alternate Paths changed a Class by swapping some of those Features for other ones. I had taken an Alternate Path for both of my Classes, essentially.
With Monk, I had given up Flurry for the Alternate Path Feature, Style Master. Its Fuse Style Ability is what let me use two Style Feats at once. Normally you can only use 1 Style Feat at a time. Giving up Flurry was a very big deal, but Fuse Style was even bigger, in my mind; at higher levels, it would let me fuse as many as five Style Feat chains together, using all of them at ONCE!
Style Master even let me take ‘floating’ or ‘Wildcard’ Style Feat slots using my Monk Bonus Feats at level 6 and every four levels afterwards, so I didn’t have to buy every single Style Feat that I wanted to be able to use! I just had to qualify to be able to purchase the Feat in order to be able to use the Wildcard slot on it.
It just gave me a lot more options, which was always nice.
The level of absurdity there was simply too good to pass up, especially now that I knew I’d be able to just buy more Feats! To be honest, I was kind of scared about just how silly the stuff I was going to fight was gonna be if everything could take advantage of all of this!
Wait... I’m a character from The Game, in the Black Spirits video game world. Is the reason I’m able to go so hog wild because not everyone made their character using the rules from The Game?! If people can make their characters from OTHER game systems, or even video game systems, then this makes a LOT more sense! A level 20 character in The Game is pretty powerful, but a level 150 character from Black Spirits would completely OWN them! Are Dreamers making Realm of Battlecraft characters? Characters from Diabolic 2 and 3? Phantasial Finale 7, Remake?
Maybe... but maybe not? There were a lot of character Classes converted to The Game from other video games in The Player’s Handbook... uggh! This is all so annoying! I want details, dammit!
Honestly, if that was true, I’d have to min/max like a champ to even be on par with those kinds of characters! On the other hand, if everyone DID have access to all the same stuff, then that meant it was a race to see who could Munchkin the hardest!
Challenge Accepted! Even if it's NOT true, not making myself as powerful as I can is just silly, right? Until I’m proven wrong, I’m going to assume that this is all REAL! I sort of hope it isn’t, that this is all some crazy, fantastic lucid dream, but ASSUMING that it is would be idiotic!
Disciple of Pneuma was an Alternate Path (or A.P.) from the Disciple Class, and all it really did at 1st level was change the special resource the Class gained from something called Animus to Pneuma and add more of an unarmed martial artist theme to the class.
I sighed at the thought of all the grinding I was going to have to do in the near future to get all of the cool stuff that I wanted. There were three Monk A.P.s that I really liked, and I was absolutely going to try to get them all. The first was Style Master, but I had that one already.
The next was the Flowing Water Monk. It was all about Bruce Lee’s concept of ‘Be water, my friend’. It would basically let me punish anything that had the gall to attack me, letting me use throws, takedowns, and trips on them for free... but there was another Feat, called Vicious Stomp, that would let me turn those throws into free attacks of opportunity. To put that in other words, it was free damage! The A.P. (that’s Alternate Path) basically turned you into an aikido or judo master, which is pretty awesome if you ask me.
An attack of opportunity can be described as when someone leaves themselves so wide open during a fight that you get a free chance to hit them. A combatant ignoring another fighter as they try to run past you is the basic attack of opportunity that everyone gets for free in The Game. If they move out of a square that you threaten, basically that you can attack into, you get a free attack on them as they leave the area.
Normally, you only get one attack of opportunity per combat round, which is six seconds in The Game. There were ways to get many more than that, though... and of course I was going to take them.
ALL of them, if I could!
The third was called Jiang-Shi Fist. It was wildly OP, but its abilities wouldn’t kick in until I reached Monk/5. Jiang-Shi Fist basically lets you use what would in a video game would be called Life and Mana Leech, except you would be Leeching hit points and Qi in this case. Unfortunately, it only worked if you landed a critical hit or when you killed a foe. The only other limit was that you could only use one of them, Life or Qi Leech, at a time.
I bought my Dex to 17 and bought back Flurry, which took most of the Records from the first set of spiders. Both were absolute no-brainers to take as far as I was concerned.
I also checked my current character sheet. There weren’t any real surprises.
Name: Dreamer 707
Alignment: Neutral Good
Race: Human (Blood of the Great Beasts)
Primary Class: 1st lvl. Monk (Style Master)/1st lvl. Disciple (Disciple of Pneuma)
Hit Points: 40/40 (recover 5/hour)
Qi Pool: 0/0 (recover 5/hour)
Pneuma Pool: 6/6+ (recover 10/minute + Special)
Hero Points: 2
Strength: 18
Dexterity: 17
Constitution: 18
Intelligence: 15
Wisdom: 20
Charisma: 11
Luck: 12
Saving Throws: (+2 to any save vs. Supernatural)
Fortitude: 2+4+2 = +8
Reflex: 2+3 = +5
Will: 2+5 = +7
Monk Features:
Fuse Style, AC Bonus, Unarmed Combat, Stunning Fist, Flurry
Disciple Features:
Pneuma, Pneumatic Meditation, Elemental Attunement (Air), Combat Arts
Combat Arts:
Fist of the 4 Elements:
Spark Strike(active) - A blow of pure Elemental Force. Does +2d4 Force damage, can be boosted to +3d4 by spending a point of Pneuma as a Free Action.
Elemental Embrace (Stance) - provides several bonuses, varying by elemental attunement. Air grants +1d6 electrical damage to all attacks and a +2 bonus to hit metallic objects or enemies wearing metal armor, a +2 dodge bonus to AC, and the benefits of the Deflect Arrow Feat. At 10th level, the hit bonus increases to +4, the damage to +3d6. The dodge bonus increases by +1/6 levels.
Eyes of the Efreet(passive) - grants IR vision, roll twice on Perception rolls taking the highest, and gives +2 to all Perception rolls.
Eldritch Shield(counter) - gain energy resistance/10 versus one element you can attune yourself to for one attack. Spend 1 point of Pneuma to raise the energy resistance to 20.
Feats:
Power Strike, Cleave, Dragon Style, Djinni Style
Skills:
Acrobatics (1+3+3 = 7) Climb (1+3+4 = 8)
Craft, Alchemy (1+3+2 = 6) Escape Artist (1+3+3 = 7)
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Knowledge, Martial (1+3+2+2 = 8) Knowledge, Religion (1+3+2+2 + 8)
Perception (1+3+5+4 = 13) Sense Motive (1+3+5+2 = 11)
Stealth (1+3+3 = 7) Swim (1+3+4 = 8)
Survival (1+3+5 = 9)
Talents & Flaws:
Magical Blockage (-2), Shamanism (-2), Heroic Flaw: Trouble Magnet (-1)
Blood of the Great Beasts – allows character to develop traits inherited from the bloodlines of a Divine or Demonic Beast.
Innate Armor – grants DR 2/-, +1 per 4 levels.
Regeneration(basic) - improves regeneration 2 steps on the time chart, from Con bonus per day to Con bonus per hour. +1 Fort save & h.p.’s healed per hour. Those increase by +1 per 5 levels.
Martial Mastery (Brawler) - grants +1 to hit, damage, and to any grappling rolls or opposed combat rolls while fighting unarmed or grappling. Grants an additional +1 per 6 levels.
Advanced Wisdom - +1 Wisdom, +1 per 5 levels.
Scholar – grants +2 to all Knowledge skill rolls. Use the same modifier to roll all Knowledge skills as whatever the roll is for your highest Knowledge skill. +1 to Knowledge skills per 5 levels.
Qi Recovery(basic) - improves Qi recovery 2 steps on the time chart, from Wis bonus per day to Wis bonus per hour. +1 Fort save & Qi recovered per hour. Those increase by +1 per 5 levels.
Acute Senses - +2 to all perception rolls, +1 per 5 levels. Gets to roll to sense things that would normally not get a roll for.
Sense Supernatural – can sense supernatural energy and beings. Supernatural camouflage and reality shifting are useless as long as a being is even partially in the same realm as the character. +1 to saves versus any supernatural effect, +1 per 5 levels.
It was a lot of info. Like a massive amount of a lot. I was surprised when I looked at the stats it displayed to me, my hit points specifically. The only way I had that many at 1st level was if yet another House Rule was being used. The Game must have been adding my Constitution Stat to my hit points, PLUS I got max hp plus my Con bonus for one of my Classes and half that for my second!
I basically had 25 or so more hit points than I was expecting to have... no complaints, here!
That was a lot to take in, but other than some different implications; mostly me getting nearly ALL the stuff from both classes and it seeming like every optional rule I’d ever heard of was being used, I'd expected most of it.
Even better, I was at maximum hit points and my arm and shoulder were back to their normal color again! That was an absolutely amazing discovery, even though it had its drawbacks, too. I’d have to be careful not to miss any Hearthflames as I adventured, or I might end up really regretting it!
Having to fight my way past a tough fight more than once because I’d missed a Hearthflame sounded like something I wanted to avoid at all costs!
Now to see if my other guess was right.
I stepped back into the room where I’d fought the 3 giant spiders, and, sure enough, there were three more giant spiders!
The fight went a lot more easily the second time around, with me knowing what I was facing from the start. Any hesitation or surprise that had been present the first time around was gone, as I knew that I was a match for them barring one of them getting lucky with their webs.
Confidence and foreknowledge made a huge difference!
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Can’t get too cocky, either, though. Not sure I want to know what giant spider poison feels like again! Whether I can die or not, whether this is a Dream or not, that doesn’t sound like a good way to die...
I congratulated myself for quoting one of the classics of sci-fi, then considered using the Records I’d gained to advance again. I was feeling pretty good about myself, so I decided to look into the other room, first.
Yeah, yeah, I know it wasn’t super smart, but I actually went in there with the intention of being pretty cautious. What I wasn’t ready for was the fortified wall with the entrance to a small redoubt with crossbowmen who’d begun shooting at me less than 2 seconds after I poked my head through the door!
My Elemental Embrace was in Air attunement, of course, granting me the ability to deflect 1 arrow per round, which let me deflect the first crossbow bolt sent my way, and the other two just plain missed.
Then I was charging the wall!
It was a snap judgment that I made without really thinking about it, almost an instinct from years of gaming! The only thing going through my mind was, ‘Always take out the healers and ranged attackers first!’
Reloading a crossbow isn’t a fast process after all and if I wanted to not get shot, I needed to be punching this jerk, ASAP!
And not getting shot with a crossbow bolt sounded like a VERY smart idea!
These guys were really good at reloading, though. They definitely had the Quick Draw Feat, or something similar, allowing them to fire a crossbow bolt every round in game terms. Six seconds to cock, load, and fire a heavy crossbow was damned impressive.
Unfortunately, it had left me stuck in a conundrum, and I didn’t appreciate that too very much! As I got closer to the wall, I’d be an easier and easier target, BUT if I didn’t close the distance, I couldn’t do a thing to them!
One of the drawbacks of being a melee combatant, I guess? Crap!
Unfortunately, that first bolt had made my gamer mode kick in and instinctively insist that I, ‘Kill the archers ASAP!’ I had started running like a madman at people with crossbows before I really even thought about it too much!
Normally, it would be the smart decision. Letting a ranged attacker plink away at you while you were busy doing something else was following your enemy’s script for the fight, never a good idea!
I’m pretty sure, in hindsight, that running away would have been a better choice here... but it was too late for that!
The only good part was that the walls were only about 15’ tall, so with the bonus I got to jumping, I was confident I could clear it.
As I was running towards them, my Acute Senses Talent let me see, even from over 100’ away, that the crossbowmen weren’t human.
At least not anymore. They were some kind of undead. When I got inside of sixty feet from them, I was shown what kind of undead they were. They had a little icon floating over their heads.
Ghoulish Crossbowman, lvl.3
What the heck is with the lowest level thing I run into being level three!? I mean, I’m partly thankful, these guys give way more Records, but Hell!
They were dressed in obviously worn military uniforms, full of tears and holes. Their faces were horrific parodies of a human’s, with a mouth and teeth more like a shark’s than a person’s!
Their skin was moist looking, almost greasy, and a disturbing purplish-grey. Their fingers were tipped with sharp claws in place of their fingernails, and they had long, almost leechlike tongues hanging out of their mouths, plus they were completely hairless. Their bulging eyes glowed with a dim, red inner light. The chain mail armor I could see beneath the tunics was all damaged, badly rusted, and ramshackle; I doubted it would be worth much as far as defense was concerned.
Their crossbows were in good condition, though, unfortunately.
Essentially, they were ambulatory nightmare fuel!
My luck against the three crossbow users held out until I was almost to the walls, when I got hit by a crossbow bolt for the first time. Several others would have hit but had gotten deflected thanks to Elemental Embrace in Air mode letting me deflect them using my ability to control the wind. Unfortunately, that ability only lets me deflect an arrow once per six seconds... and this was the second arrow in that time frame.
Basically, two of them got lucky at the same time. Law of large numbers and all that, I guess.
It was eight points of damage, minus the two for my Innate Armor, still meant I was down six hit points! Let me tell you, just because it hit me in the shoulder, far away from anything super important, doesn’t mean it didn’t damned well HURT!
Fortunately, an 18 Con and a +8 Fortitude save meant I could handle the pain just fine – if anything, it sent a jolt of adrenaline right through me!
A moment later I was on top of the wall. Elemental Embrace’s arrow deflection saved my life, again, I’m pretty sure. At least it prevented an almost certain critical hit! The Ghoulish Crossbowman that was nearest to where I leapt upwards to scale the wall had me lined up for a perfect headshot if Deflect Arrow hadn’t let me knock it away from my noggin’!
Holy shit, that was TOO CLOSE!
I immediately attacked, punching the ghoulish, undead THING in the face! Even without using a Combat Art, I could hit these things hard enough to get an easy one hit kill. Unfortunately, none of the other ghouls were close enough to try to Cleave off of.
Meanwhile both of the other ghoulish crossbowmen missed me with their shots. I crossed the distance between me and the other two on the wall a moment later, but whiffed, missing the ghoul by a mile, when I dodged an arrow that I saw hurtling towards me from down in the courtyard on the far side of the wall, which was unfortunately filled with another half a dozen or so ghouls.
The two ghoulish crossbowmen dropped their ranged weapons and pulled rusty short swords and swung them at me while flailing at me with their claws and trying to bite me at the same time.
They were standing right next to each other, though.
That was a big mistake.
Spark Strike plus Cleave meant that if I hit the first one, I was going to at least have a chance to hit both of them!
Boom! Boom!
My roundhouse kick smashed into the ghoul on the right, and a simultaneous discharge of both electricity and the pure elemental force of Spark Strike let my leg go completely THROUGH its torso at waist height and smashed into the second ghoul, though with somewhat less spectacular results, since Spark Strike only counted for the first hit.
The second ghoul still died.
I didn’t have time to celebrate, though. Lucky for me, there was only one more ghoul with a crossbow, and my Air affinity with Elemental Embrace would let me deflect the bolts from his crossbow for as long as I needed it to, letting me eliminate the crossbow ghoul when I decided I wanted to.
I leapt down next to two of the ghouls below me. My first attack connected, so I was able to Cleave again, and both ghouls went down as easily as the ones on the wall had.
Then the others were coming for me. I grinned and waited.
I probably shouldn’t be having so much fun here. There almost HAS to be a boss around... SHIT!
I just jinxed myself, didn’t I?
Sure enough, an enormous, two-handed axe connected with my ribs at that precise moment, the blow strong enough to send me flying.
The... thing wielding the huge axe was almost eight feet tall and had to weigh in at around 600 or 700 pounds!
It basically looked like one of the old school gigantic pro wrestlers, but with the hideous facial features of a freaking ghoul! It was wearing clothes that were in somewhat decent condition, at least compared to the other ghouls, and its axe’s blade was obviously well maintained; that or it was magical.
Never mind. That axe was DEFINITELY magical!
All of the ghouls had shown a higher level of self-awareness than I’d expected from them, which is possible for a ghoul – my Lore (Religion) skill was telling me that they probably have human level intelligence. Most of the time, though, a ghoul’s intelligence was overridden by animalistic instincts.
This big boy, though, came across as downright clever. I won’t lie, the big guy genuinely scared the shit outta me.
I’ll take a dumb opponent over a smart one any day!
The axe’s hit was a twenty-point non-critical hit, eighteen after my Innate Armor Talent, and sent me flying into and past the ghouls I’d been preparing to fight.
The big bastard was chuckling at me as I was still in mid-air, secure in its superiority!
Oh, fuck you VERY much! It is SO on!
An almost reflexively graceful Acrobatics roll let me stand up without provoking any attacks of opportunity or using my Move action, and I immediately attacked one of the nearby, lesser ghouls. My Cleave attempt actually missed when the second ghoul managed to dodge!
It was only the second time I’d missed in this fight, so it was hard to complain, but this was VERY poor timing for that, all things considered! I really needed to take these things out ASAP; there were just too danged many of them to be fighting while I was trying to deal with their Boss!
But now, I was surrounded by two ghouls, had a third sniping ineffectively at me with its crossbow, and I was engaged with what looked like a goddamned half-ogre ghoul, for fuck’s sake!
Then the big one started to transform before my eyes!
My Lore (Religion) skill, which is the one that pertains to the undead, was very suddenly screaming at me that what I was seeing was an incredibly dangerous and rare combination!
An undead lycanthrope. This freaking thing was a half-ogre ghoul WEREWOLF! Of course, me figuring out what it was made its little floating nametag appear over its head.
4th lvl. Ghastly Werewolf Half-Ogre Fighter
Now, a ghoul can’t become afflicted by lycanthropy and thus become a werewolf, but very rarely, a werewolf CAN become a ghoul! Lycanthropy and ghoul fever, the magical disease that causes someone to become a ghoul, are both magically Cursed diseases. Usually, they don’t get along!
But the abomination created when they do is horrifying.
Oh, look, lucky me! Day one in a new world, and I get to fight not only a half-ogre, not just a half-ogre werewolf, but a goddamned half-ogre werewolf that’s been turned into a freaking GHOUL?!
Then my brain dredged up even MORE bad news via my Lore (Religion) skill, prompted by the half-ogre’s nameplate.
Wait, no, NOT a ghoul, it's a freaking GHAST! A damned Super Ghoul! I call BULLSHIT! This is wildly unfair!
A ghast was, essentially, just a higher-level version of a ghoul. They were noticeably larger, and had a few more special abilities, but they were physically superior to ghouls across the board, too.
Great! Just what I needed. Why didn’t I run away when I had the chance? Oh, wait, right. Gamer brain got my dumb ass into this.
Of course, it was hard to spend too much time worrying about all of that what with all of the desperate fighting for my life I was doing right now!
I started Fighting Defensively. It’s an option that anyone could take in The Game, giving me a –4 penalty to hit in exchange for a +2 dodge bonus to AC.
An important note about most types of bonuses in The Game, they just don’t stack. Dodge bonuses are an exception to this. They stack infinitely. It was important because Elemental Embrace’s Air attunement bonus to my AC is also a Dodge bonus. This raised my AC to a 22.
Ghouls normally have a +3 to hit, but I was pretty sure these ghouls had a level in Fighter, too, so they probably had a +4 to hit, meaning they’d need to roll an 18 or higher to hit me – it meant they had about a fifteen percent chance to hit each time they swung as opposed to a twenty-five percent chance if I didn’t fight defensively.
Taking the –4 to hit wasn’t great, but honestly, I was just hoping to get the heck out of here now. The half-ogre Boss was still transforming, and I needed to get out of here before it finished!
The two ghouls saw that, and immediately tried to grab me! That wasn’t a great decision on their part, honestly. Attempting to grapple without training from a Class or a Feat provokes an attack of opportunity. A critical hit meant that the hammerfist I threw at the top of the first ghoul’s head went clean through it!
Unfortunately, I don’t yet have the Feat that lets me take more than one attack of opportunity in a round – I also really need the Cleaving Finish Feat! Having either of those things would have allowed me another attack from killing this thing.
Luckily, Monks are pretty good at grappling. By that, I mean that unless you’re a pro wrestler you probably shouldn’t bother to even try.
Grappling, along with tripping, disarming, and heck, pretty much anything that isn’t just hitting an opponent or casting a spell are called Combat Maneuvers. Your bonus to hit with a Combat Maneuver is your Attack Bonus + Str mod + miscellaneous bonuses from size, Feats, and so on.
Yeah, bigger creatures are better at this kind of thing naturally. Every Size Category you are larger than an opponent, you get a cumulative +4 to Combat Maneuvers and Defense against them. So, two sizes larger is +8, three is +12, and so on.
The opposite is also true. If you’re Medium size and trying to Trip a Large opponent, you’re at a -4 to do so.
Your Combat Maneuver Defense is your Attack Bonus + Str mod + Dex mod + most defensive modifiers not including worn Armor + miscellaneous bonuses from size, Feats, and so on.
My Combat Maneuver Bonus was the same as my Attack Bonus, a +6.
My Combat Maneuver Defense, though, was the same as my AC, since all my AC counted towards it, PLUS MY STRENGTH MOD, another +4 for an 18 Strength... leaving me with a 26 Combat Maneuver Defense right now.
Yeah, I’d need to roll a Natural 20 to grapple myself, and a Nat 20 is ALWAYS a success... with a few exceptions. Nothing that will be remotely pertinent until I’m at least 11th or 12th level, though.
Anyway, the ghoul’s grapple attempts went terribly for them, to say the least, with all of them failing horribly. I turned and sprinted towards the wall, staying well out of what I thought the half-ogre's reach would be, even though I was fairly sure it was too busy transforming to notice me.
It proved me wrong with a swipe from its oversized axe.
I felt a huge amount of pain, then realized I’d fallen and couldn’t get up...
Then I saw my legs lying on the ground a few feet away... severed from the rest of my body!
Then the pain REALLY hit, through the massive shock to my system.
I died, raging at myself for being a moron for underestimating the half-ogre's reach, even as consciousness fled and its axe descended towards my head.