Ch.5
I became aware again as I woke up next to the Hearthflame.
I’m... alive? HAHA! I LIVE! I took a few seconds to pat myself down, making sure that everything was properly attached where it was supposed to be!
Then I glanced down quickly and was relieved to see that my legs actually WERE once again attached to my torso! I was also happy to see that I was still clothed.
I was pretty surprised when I just blew off the psychological side of dying so easily. I halfway expected to be curled up in a fetal position, sucking my thumb, totally mentally scarred... but none of that manifested itself. Is this because of having such a high Wisdom? I mean, a 20 in a Stat is bordering on beyond human, after all.
Don’t get me wrong, I was pissed, but even though I had just died, I wasn’t feeling how I expected. I had been afraid that there might be some crippling fear of dying again, somehow forcing me into inaction.
Thinking about it, it was kind of funny, being afraid of being afraid.
Instead, I was just mad about it! Really, REALLY mad about it!
Holy shit! Did that thing really 100 to 0 me with just ONE hit once it transformed? That damned half-ogre is TOTAL bullshit!
Technically, at least, I guess the answer was no. I had already taken eighteen unhealed points of damage from its previous hit, plus six more from the crossbow bolt before that. That meant I still had twenty-two hit points at that point, plus you can go negative your Con in hp before dying, so that one hit landed for at least forty points of damage!
Let’s see. 2d6 for the Large-sized battle axe, probably a 22 to a 26 Strength, so let’s figure it’s a 22. Two handing it meant a 1.5x multiplier on the Strength modifier, and it probably had at least a +4 Attack Bonus, so it can use the second tier of Power Attack. A 22 Str gives +6 damage, increased to +9 for wielding the axe 2-handed, +6 more for the second tier of two-handed Power Attack, and I’m pretty sure that was a magic axe, so +1 more, probably?
A battle axe crits for x3 damage, so 2d6+16 becomes 6d6+48... yup, a critical hit from him can EASILY make for a one-hit KO on me, Hell, minimum damage was almost a one-hit kill! Even at full health, I’m well within range of a one-hit kill!
Holy crap! Note to self, get a LOT stronger before I consider going back to try to fight that guy again!
That had definitely sucked. I wonder how close to Black Spirits this place is? I killed seven ghouls before I died, plus three more spiders. I should have earned at least a couple thousand Records, but if this place is like the world of Black Spirits...
When I touched the Hearthflame, I was unsurprised to find that I had no Records available at all.
Annoyed as Hell, but not surprised.
Welp, that’s just how the cookie crumbles, I guess. There’s no way that I’m gonna go back and try to get them right now! Time to farm me some spiders.
I proceeded to do exactly that. The spiders very rarely even had a chance to hit me, what with me usually going first and one-shotting them. To be honest, their damage was low enough that my Innate Armor usually kept their bites from doing any damage to me, and thus from poisoning me, even when one of them did manage to hit me.
Breaking out of their webs was almost a joke, too – I'd just had bad luck the first time. None of them survived more than two hits – I just hit too damned hard now.
It took me less than five minutes to kill the spiders, spend the Records, and be ready to do it again.
I considered feeling bad about that for a moment, then remembered getting two-shot by the half-ogre and that feeling evaporated. There was just no way I wasn’t going to take advantage of this for everything I could!
Combat Reflexes was the first new Feat I took. Instead of one attack of opportunity per round – the default – I gained (1 + Dexterity modifier) number of attacks of opportunity per round... so four, for now.
The Vicious Stomp Feat was next. If an enemy falls prone in a hex you threaten, basically, one you can reach with an unarmed melee attack, it provokes an attack of opportunity, an unarmed one. A stomp, obviously.
Then I purchased the Redirection Alternate Path from the Flowing Water Monk. It let me, once per round, attempt to trip or reposition an enemy that I threatened, that also tried to attack me. It went off before my opponent’s attack, too, and if it succeeded, they were sickened, basically they took a –2 to pretty much every kind of roll they could make for one round.
Gave me a +2 to the trip or reposition roll, too!
Yup, once per round, I could essentially get a free trip attack against anyone attacking me in melee... which makes them fall prone.
Next to me.
That’s right, this is why I took Vicious Stomp. This is what’s called a combo, boys and girls, and combos are what combat in The Game are all about! The more combos you create between Feats and Class abilities, the more synergistic they ALL become with each other. After a certain point, things can get more than a little silly!
Next up, I bought the Four Wind’s Fist Alternate Path from the Monk class. It gave me an Improved version of the Elemental Fist Feat; the normal version just did +1d6 damage in the element, but this improved version did more damage as I leveled up. Djinni Style gave me a second use immediately, because Elemental Fist was normally a big part of how the style was used.
Next was Improved Trip, a +4 bonus both for and against being tripped and you no longer provoke attacks of opportunity when you attempt a trip maneuver.
Versatile Unarmed Strike let me do slashing or piercing damage instead of crushing damage with my unarmed strike.
Improved Initiative gave a +4 to my roll to go first in combat, added to my Dex mod.
Finally, Weapon Focus (Unarmed Combat). It gave +1 to hit when fighting unarmed, and Dodge, that gave +1 Dodge Bonus to AC.
I also grabbed Crane Style, Outslug Style, and Jabbing Style; they were all pretty niche for me right now, but they were the last three Styles I wanted to eventually fuse, so I might as well get them when they were the cheapest they would ever be!
Crane Style was a defensive style that reduced the penalty to hit from fighting defensively from –4 to –2 and increased the Dodge bonus from +2 to +3. The penalties continued to reduce and the bonuses continued to increased as I advanced through the Feat tree.
Yes, Crane Style is kind of strong for a melee focused combatant...
Outslug Style let me make a 5’ step any time I landed an unarmed strike, but doing so gave up my 5’ step in the next round of combat. It also gave me a +1 Dodge bonus to AC and +1 damage until the start of my next turn.
Jabbing Style was amazing. Every time you hit the same opponent with an unarmed strike in the same round, after the first hit, you did +1d6 damage to them.
All of the Style Feats got stronger as you advanced, too, not just Crane Style.
Eventually Crane Style would just me block one melee attack per round that would otherwise hit me; completely negating it and giving me an attack of opportunity when I did so! It was a free action, too, it didn’t even take my Counter action!
Outslug Style increased its bonuses, got rid of the penalties of another Feat called Lunge which I was totally going to take when I qualified for it and eventually let me take a 10’ adjustment every time I landed an unarmed strike!
Jabbing Style let me dance around opponents in between attacks, plus doing a lot more damage. When I could use both Outslug and Jabbing Style at the same time, eventually, the mobility that I got would be just silly...
There’s no way I’d be able to afford all of the Feats I’d need to take advantage of it all normally in The Game, but now, it was just a matter of working hard enough.
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Happy with that, I raised my Dex again, getting it to 18, and went to begin raising my Intelligence, Charisma, and Luck, and found something new out. I could only add two points to stats, per level, and only until they reached an 18.
That changes my initial plan, dammit. I was going to raise everything to 18 at first level, then buy the Talents for all of them, too! I guess I’m stuck with just buying the ones already at 18.
I started to do that and got another bit of bad news, I could only purchase one Talent per level, too!
Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution are all at or above 18, and I can’t raise any of them directly – at least for now. I guess that the one I buy now doesn’t really make a difference until it hits 20, at level 5, and I’ll have all three of them raised to that point by then... so Strength now? Start at the top and work my way down, I guess?
I bought the Strength Advanced Talent, then I was ready to level up Monk and Disciple of Pneuma... which of course gave me a whole slew of other stuff to deal with.
Yup, it makes sense. I wanna see what the difference is between 1st and 2nd level, anyway!
I took my 2nd level as a Monk, first.
It made my Attack Bonus and therefore my Combat Maneuver Bonus and Defense all go up, of course. My to hit bonus, including everything, was now +8 when I was fighting unarmed, and my CMB was the same, unless I wanted to trip something, when it was +14. That was simply absurd at 2nd level. My CMD was now 27, 31 vs. Trips.
My AC was now 22, 24 if I fought defensively! 25 if I swapped to Crane Style! That was with zero gear! I couldn’t wait to start actually getting equipment.
2nd level Monk also gave me Evasion. Remember when I told you that a Reflex save was dodging out of the way of fireballs and the like? Evasion made you better at that. Most AoE spells, like fireball, allowed for a Reflex save to take half damage... Evasion reduced that to zero instead of just half!
That’s right! Someone tosses a Fireball at you, and if you have Evasion and make your save, your ninja flip out of the way and take ZERO damage! Screw you ya dumb Wizard, Fireball does NOT solve everything!
My 2nd level from Disciple of Pneuma gave me an ability called Pneumatic Defense, which gave +1 to AC and saves versus spells, psionics, and spell/psionic-like abilities. Considering how nasty that kind of thing was, I’d take every advantage I could put my hands on against them.
It granted Aura of Defense, too. Aura of Defense granted a Disciple of Pneuma their ‘Initiation Modifier’, in my case, Wisdom, as an Initiation modifier to their defense. Since the wording specifically says that this is a separate type of defensive bonus from the Monk AC Bonus it stacks! It even also counts both when flat-footed and versus touch attacks!
That vaults my AC to 27 all the time, 29 when fighting defensively, and 30 if using Cr! 31 if it was against a spell or spell-like ability!
Yeah, it's ridiculous. This is why people don’t get to have 2 Classes at the same time like this in The Game, normally! It really lets you make some broken shit. No 2nd level character should be able to have a walking around 27 AC!
That said, a Fighter/4 half-ogre werewolf ghast as an opponent for 1st level characters is ALSO some serious bullshit! Boss mob or not, that’s not cool!
Part of the reason that all makes me so annoyed is that I knew, deep down, that I should have gotten out of there way sooner than that. Everything about that place screamed trap, and I fell for it...
I also got 2 more Combat Art maneuvers and another Stance, though I could only use 1 Stance at a time. I also qualified to gain access to a new Combat Art, so I took the Broken Chains Combat Art.
Broken Chains was essentially Super Karate, and I thought that was pretty damned awesome! Years of studying Karate in the real world might make me a bit biased, though.
For my new maneuvers, I took Brawler’s Attitude and Pommel Smash, and for my new Stance I took Pugilist’s Stance.
Brawler’s Attitude was a Boost, my first one, and gave a +4 to most combat maneuver checks, including trip.
Pommel Smash was an attack, a fake out move, really, letting you get in an attack while your opponent was flat-footed. That means they were denied their Dex and Dodge bonuses to AC! It also did +1d6 damage added to your base damage.
Pugilist’s Stance let me do +1d6 physical damage and gave me a +2 shield bonus to AC, both of which scale up in level. It wasn’t nearly as good as Elemental Embrace, but some opponents were immune or at least resistant to elemental damage. This gave me a good second option when those kinds of enemies showed up – heck, even a 1st level spell, Resist Elements, would let a magic user ignore most of my elemental damage for a while.
No thanks!
Both of my levels gave me 20 more hit points, 14 from monk including my Constitution bonus, and 6, that’s half of maximum for Disciple of Pneuma.
I had two more Feats coming from my level. I took Cleaving Finish and Roll With it.
Cleaving Finish let you make a free attack when you reduced an opponent to 0 health or below, once per round.
Yes, if I used Cleave, killed that opponent, I could then get both my Cleave attack AND a Cleaving Finish!
As long as there were enough targets nearby, of course.
Roll with It raised my DR by 2/-. Like Innate Armor, it stacked with everything. DR 4/- doesn’t sound like much, but I was just getting started with my DR stacking! For right now, it was just another tool to survive a little bit longer... but I was also getting into the range of it being a pretty big deal. Even now, a person with a normal 10 or 11 Strength couldn’t even hurt me with a knife or a lot of smaller weapons!
You could buy Roll with It more than once, too! It could be purchased once at 1st level, then at 3rd and every 3 levels afterwards. In The Game, it usually wasn’t worth the enormous number of Feats you needed to invest... but if I could just earn more Records to buy more Feats?
Well, if it was just a matter of getting more Records, you’d honestly be a fool NOT to take it!
Of course, a crit from that damned half-ogre would still probably one-shot me! To be fair, it was unlikely I’d ever reach a point where I could ignore a single, massive hit for 50+ points of damage – but most things couldn’t DO 50+ points of damage with a single hit... not even on a crit.
At least not at 1st or 2nd level.
Still, at level 3, it would be DR 6/-. At level 6 it would be 8, 9 with Innate Armor’s upgrade at 4th level and 10 at 8th level! Better yet, armor and natural armor, with armor being something like a suit of mail or a breastplate, and natural armor being things like a scaly hide, also gave DR. Better yet, they ALSO stacked with all other kinds of DR!
By the time I was 7th or 8th level and had geared up a bit, I fully expected to have 20 points of DR. Maybe more? That WAS a big deal!
I bought two more Feats. Fleet raises your movement by 5’ and can be purchased twice. +10’ movement speed, get!
A normal person’s move speed was 30’. Adding ten feet to that made it 40’, and then every three Monk levels increased it by ten more feet. Normally, running was a x4 multiplier, but the Run Feat made it a x5 multiplier... and let you keep your Dex and Dodge bonuses to AC when you did it whereas running without the Feat removed those bonuses!
By the time I hit 10th level or so, I’d be able to run thirty or forty mph pretty easily, maybe faster!
It would depend on what kind of other Feats were available.
Lastly, I used my skill points. Fourteen of them still. One point went into all the old skills I already had except my Lore skills, where I put a point into Lore (Martial) and let raising that skill take care of the rest via my Scholar Talent.
I then added two more Lores – Dungeoneering and Nature, and then for my last skill I took Craft, Cooking.
Because if I’m stuck in this Hell hole, I might as well eat good! Between Survival, Alchemy, and Cooking, I should be able to figure something out, right?
Come on, let me have this one!
I yawned out of nowhere, suddenly feeling really tired for the first time since I’d woken up here. Some quick math in my head told me I’d killed those three spiders nearly a dozen times since I respawned, so it was no surprise that I was so tired!
It feels like I’ve been going for well over a day, now. A nap won’t hurt, then maybe I’ll look into figuring out a way to cook some spider legs? Crab claws are delicious, after all! Why can’t giant spider legs be yummy, too?
I curled up near the fire and used my arm as a pillow, drifting off to sleep in seconds.
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The observer, still gazing down on the brilliant blue-green marble from the void, was fairly happy with how things were proceeding. The combination of ideas borrowed from its brethren and the native sapient species innate traits had turned out to be quite successful, thus far.
The more the Dreamers struggled, the more they improved! Those who struggled harder, improved more AND faster.
It felt the fact that it had been forced to tweak the Dreamer’s societal conditioning pertaining to violence, hesitation to use violence, and regret for using said violence was inconsequential.
He’d inserted a very clear set of pre-programmed limits as to when the tweaks would kick in – only if the Dreamer was in significant personal danger, or if a member of its Pack was seriously threatened would the changes affect them!
So, what if it had added a minor imperative towards learning and training. The new Dreamer’s species was naturally inquisitive, anyway!
Besides, it was for their own good, right? Relative morality was pushed fairly far down its list of priorities when a species’ existence was at stake.
It cared first and foremost about the species’ survival. Anything else was ranked far lower in its priority queue.
It already had several methods to hurry things along, but for now, the observer was more than satisfied with the progress it was seeing, both from the natives turned Dreamers and from The Grand Method itself.
Once a Dreamer’s improvement hit a certain threshold, they were returned to their small blue-green gem none the wiser, and the next sapient was given their chance.
Each new Astral link forged between those Realms forced the rift between the different points in space-time a miniscule amount wider, made it a little bit sturdier, and after a certain number of links were established and sufficiently developed, it was wide enough to allow more individuals to venture into the various faux-Realms simultaneously.
Just like it had planned, the entire thing was already a self-perpetuating process, accelerating faster and faster with every planetary rotation that passed. The new Energies linking their True selves to their Dream selves were beginning to propagate through their Realm, and, as they were true pandimensional Energy types, they had already begun propagating forwards and backwards through the 4th dimension, as well.
The number of Dreamers was barely over a thousand, now, but only a few dozen planetary rotations ago, there were only a handful.
Focusing on the sapients who fulfilled the criteria of self-identifying as long time ‘nerds’ and ‘hard core gamers’ had worked out quite nicely in its opinion, and his few experiments with individuals unfamiliar with the material it was pulling the various Creation Systems from had gone extremely poorly.
The observer had gotten as close as it could possibly get to enjoying something when it retroactively re-wrote the laws of reality of this Realm to more precisely match how the roleplaying games it was imitating for the Dreamers operated.
It had borrowed heavily from the laws of other universes that closely resembled those games. Adding in some common features from online multiplayer games had been oddly titillating for it, as well.
Making certain that its changes to the core code of a world or star system echoed forwards and backwards in time, like a pebble thrown into a still pond. Making those changes in such a way that the now of a world didn’t have any significant changes, at least as far as the majority of the native species were concerned, was highly challenging, even for IT!
Getting it correct had forced it to dedicate a slim majority of its resources to the task for a significant fraction of an entire second, after all!
Because of observed data, it had determined that until The Grand Method had progressed further, attempting to use anything other than the demographic referred locally to as hard core gamer nerds as Dreamers was sub-optimal. In fact, the data the observer had gathered suggested that it was a complete waste of resources.
It even had many ideas for how it would handle bringing in new Dreamers, now. It would simply offer the more experienced Dreamers the chance to do it themselves, eventually! A few rewards, what would be for it a miniscule expenditure of its nigh-infinite resources, and many of the native sapients would be fighting over the chance to help new Dreamers!
It had been a bit disturbed when it noticed more energy spillage from the Dreamer’s alter egos when they were back in the waking world than it had expected. Thankfully, even at the current rate of spillage, the supernatural energies escaping from the Dreamers was far too minor to cause anything but the most minor of effects before the observer was ready to progress to the next step in The Plan.
Projections showed that both the spillage and the ripples of its own actions were well within the tolerance limits that it had set, and that a small amount of leakage of Qi, magical, and psionic energies would likely even make the next stage of the Plan proceed more smoothly!
Certainly, The Grand Method would have some negative societal and even physical repercussions on some individuals – and that was unfortunate – but the entire species was at risk! Only The Grand Method had any chance of allowing not only the native sapient species to survive, but it was the only thing that had a chance of allowing ANY of the native species to survive.
It was even more encouraged when its calculations informed it that because of how well things had gone, the success rate for saving the local species had increased by over 66%, to almost a full 10% chance of success!
The observer considered the loss of a small, or even a significant percentage of the members of a species was less than nothing in the face of the survival of the species as a whole!