#untyped fixed damage

[basilhomebrews]

Can you guess what game I've been playing a lot of? That's right:

Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless

On an unrelated note, I've been chipping away at converting the "important" items from Monster Hunter for use in Fabula Ultima. Pic related, it's basically one of the ways I'm choosing to emulate ammo from MonHun into FabUlt. This is maybe the biggest homebrew project I've undertaken? Like, I'm writing up several methods of simulating MonHun items for FabUlt in varying degrees of complexity, so people can pick and choose how crunchy they wanna get.

All from me for now, real life has been kicking my ass recently. Stay frosty, o' ye internet stranger.

[miracul0us-multishipper]

Welcome to the back (Part 10)

First Chapter Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Warning: I am trying not to romanticize Akumatization. Felix’s motives may be noble, but he’s still an akuma and not going easy on anybody. So don’t get your hopes up he might be a chivalrous bad boy who only punishes the evil guys.

- - -

Chat Noir had his baton at hand, camera opened and zooming in on what was happening. He didn’t want his Lady to get hurt, of course. Just to wait long enough that she truly appreciated his arrival.

“That was quick.”, Sentiquill said with raised eyebrows. “How did you...” His eyes widened. “Of course. Marinette still had her phone, right?”

He sighed and raised his quill as Ladybug swung into the room, planting herself between him and the students.

“You have bigger worries now, Sentiquill.”, the spotted heroine declared, then turned towards his terrified classmates. “You guys! Everybody out of here, and take Alya and Madame Bustier with you!”

The class hurried to comply, and Chat Noir purred with adoration. She was always concerned for others, looking out for everybody. It was so cute! Though he didn’t get why she hadn’t tried to lure Sentiquill outside. The classroom wasn’t ideal for a fight, space was limited and furniture created unnecessary hindrances. What was she thinking?

Sentiquill seemed confused as well, suspiciously taking a step back. Ladybug was known for her impossible traps and plans, it was only natural he’d be on edge.

“Felix”, Ladybug called him surprisingly gentle. Caring even. “Give me the quill. We can end this without a fight.”

Chat scowled. No fighting? Then how was he supposed to impress her? And why was she so sympathetic towards Felix of all people? She’d never talked to Chat like that! So... sweetly. It made his nose wrinkle in jealousy.

“Trying to reason with an Akuma, Ladybug? Unusual approach.”, Sentiquill commented, adopting a fighting stance. “What’s the reason for your sudden change of attitude? Gone pacifist overnight?”

“I know you can’t want this.”, his Lady continued unwavering. Did she know Felix personally? Did she visit him after patrol, now that she had forbidden Chat from accompanying her? His claws dug into the ground and bared his fangs when she continued.

“You’re a thinker.” The admiration in her voice made him sick. “You enjoy outsmarting people, you don’t like resorting to violence. Let me help you, please!”

His breathing hitched. Why was she- Why would- Didn’t she think of him at all?! She couldn’t just go around saying stuff like that! It was far too... intimate!

Sentiquill didn’t seem to share Chat’s opinion, instead of flustered, he looked furious.

“Help me?!”

In the blink of an eye he was moving, slashing his sword and shooting ink at Ladybug. She blocked it with her yo-yo, but the force of the attack hurled her through the window into the yard, where the rest of the class ran into hiding. She landed on her feet, sliding over the ground.

“You didn’t care to help Marinette either!”, Sentiquill roared. “All it would have taken was a single word of you and nobody would have listened to Lila ever again!”

“I know, and I regret this, but-“

“Then show it!”

Sentiquill followed her, attacked with his blade from every angle. Ladybug could barely keep up with blocking his slashes with the string of her yo-yo.

“Come on, tell them the truth!”, Sentiquill snarled and gave her a shove that sent her against a wall. “Tell them who Lila really is!”

The students leaned out of their hideouts, curious for what was going on despite the danger. Chat stiffened. Surely she wouldn’t... Ladybug knew how important it was to leave Lila in peace, didn’t she? She wouldn’t say anything rash now, would she?

Ladybug got up again, a fearsome scowl on her face.

“You think Marinette cares about that now? She wants her friend back!”

A bitter laugh got over her lips, so untypical for her Chat leaned back a little.

“But fine! I couldn’t like Lila less! She’s a dirty liar, we’re not best friends and I would be more than glad if she left Paris again. Happy now?”

The yard was dead silent. If Lila was still hiding somewhere, Chat couldn’t see her. He was flabbergasted. Had Ladybug just... Was she insane?! Oh fuck, he should have joined the fight when it hadn’t been too late yet. Now his carefully protected, unproblematic school life would be completely out of control!

Sentiquill laughed in disbelief.

“Why, thank you, Ladybug! I didn’t expect you to actually do that for me.”

He smiled, genuinely. If Chat hadn’t still been so rattled, he would have hissed in disgust.

“I appreciate the effort. Alas...”

His face darkened.

“Too little, too late. The damage is done, and I’ll set things right again.”

He raised his sword.

“Let’s see which dark secrets hide behind that little mask of yours.”

He pounced again, ink swirling through the air. Ladybug held her own skillfully, dodging his slices at her sides, dancing around the ink torrents he sent her way and blocking the thrusts of his blade. Before he realized it, Sentiquill was dangerously low on ink. Hectically he looked around for a potential victim and made a run for Rose, who had leaned out of the girl’s bathroom a little too far. Before he could reach her, Ladybug’s yo-yo wrapped around his foot and kept him in place. That’s when she spotted him on the roof.

“Chat Noir!”, she shouted without sparing Chat a second glance, eyes fixed on her opponent. “Finally!”

Not the greeting he had hoped for. Ugh! This whole day was a disaster, nothing went as planned! Couldn’t life go his way just this once?!

“His quill’s ink comes from negativity others carry!”, Ladybug informed him of what he already knew. “You need to get the civilians out of the way!”

That’s all she wanted of him? Not to fight by her side, to protect her from Felix, but to play savior for classmates he already protected from their own carelessness as Adrien? Who would doubtlessly create nothing but chaos now that Lila was exposed? No, he didn’t think so!

Angry, Chat stood on the roof and watched Ladybug. She really was getting arrogant these days, yelling at him to leave her alone and then expecting him to follow her every command. A decision formed in his mind and he crossed his arms. It wouldn’t do any real harm if he left her to deal with this alone, would it? Miraculous Ladybug always cured everyone anyway. So why not teach her a lesson?

“Wonderful morning to you as well, My Lady!”, he hissed sarcastically. “I thought we shouldn’t work together until absolutely necessary?”

Her face fell. She was still fighting to keep Sentiquill in place, who was hacking at her weapon with his quill. Revenge truly is sweet.

“Chat, this is not the time to-“

“Exactly!”, he interrupted her smugly. “Now is not the time it’s necessary.”

With a satisfied grin he dropped on his butt, watching cross legged as her grip on Sentiquill loosened and he ripped himself free.

Rose had started to run, abandoning her hideout to escape to Juleka. The taller girl was hiding behind the stairs and hectically waved her girlfriend closer.

But Rose had no chance to outrun an Akuma.

When Sentiquill stabbed the hilt of his quill into her back, her scream was drowned out by Juleka’s.

Chat flinched, but forced himself to stay put. He had to do this, Ladybug forced him to. If she didn’t learn to respect him more now, she’d only harm their teamwork and therefore endangered Paris in the long run.

Yes, Chat Noir was in the right. She’d understand that, eventually.

This occupied with his own righteousness, he didn’t notice his ring beginning to pulse in a green glow, reacting towards its wielder’s deeds. Fused with his chosen, a Kwami could not consciously act on their own. But every one of them could feel if their power was abused, it changed their aura in the fabric of reality itself. The change might not be noticeable to humans, but fellow Kwamis would feel it instantly, just like they had felt it with the very first akuma.

Four thousand meters away, a little green creature snapped out of his slumber and flew to his master, warning him of the danger it sensed. The guardian’s eyes closed in resignation as he stood up, ready to do what was necessary.

They had lost Nooroo.

They could not afford to lose Plagg.

-

Ladybug in the meantime was despairing. Juleka had jumped out of hiding to help her girlfriend, who was forced to whimper about being a burden to everyone as Sentiquill dragged her innermost fears to light. If Ladybug tried to save Rose, she’d make herself vulnerable for an attack and Sentiquill had the chance to go after Juleka instead. So she had to make the unfair, horrible choice and intercepted Juleka, stopping her before she could get too close.

“Stay hidden!”, she tried to calm her, “I’ll take care of everything!”

“Rose! ROSE!”, Juleka yelled, not listening. With a groan Ladybug lifted the struggling girl up and ran towards the next classroom in which she found Nathaniel and Mylène, standing protectively over Alya’s and Bustier’s unconscious bodies.

“Take care of her!”, she ordered as she pushed Juleka inside. “Don’t let her out and stay hidden! Do you understand?”

“Yes, Ma’am!”, Nathaniel hurried to assure her. According to his intimidated face, she was sounding harsher than expected. She nodded and closed the door again, turning back to the yard. There was no time to think of a plan, however, because Sentiquill’s ink was already all around her before she could fully face him. At the very last moment she managed to jump up the wall and somersault into safety, milliseconds before the black torrents crashed down on the place she had been a moment ago. She had no time to get to her bearings, Sentiquill’s blade coming at her from left and right.

“Chat!”, she screamed for her partner, desperately trying to avoid getting hit. Rose was laying on the ground a few meters away, drained and crying. How could Chat Noir abandon her like this?! “Stop this nonsense and help me!”

The other hero only crossed his arms and pouted.

“I’m not sure if you really mean that. What’s the magic word?”

She was on the brink of tears when Sentiquill started to laugh at her.

“Looks like Marinette isn’t the only one with friends who won’t stand up for her.”, he said almost pitifully as he brought his blade down on her. “You truly have a prick of a partner, Ladybug. My sincere condolences.”

She ducked to escape the blow, only to be kicked in the chest when she came up again. The impact sent her crashing into a wall again, and she had to cough a few times before being able to breathe again. If it hadn’t been for her magically strengthened suit, she would’ve had a few broken ribs.

To her surprise, Sentiquill allowed her a few seconds of calm to turn towards her par- Chat Noir. In a single, fluid motion he thrusted the Quill in his direction, creating a blizzard of ink headed straight for the treacherous cat. He barely had the time to take out one of his batons, which was promptly knocked out of his hand. The metallic clang told Ladybug it landed somewhere on the upper walkway, out of her sight. Chat Noir screamed when the ink hit him and knocked him straight into the nearest chimney. Cursing, he got up and searched for cover as Sentiquill’s attention shifted back to Ladybug.

“See this as my thanks for exposing Lila earlier.”, he stated matter-of-fact and pointed his sword at her. “Now give me your Miraculous!”

Ladybug inhaled and stood up straight.

This was going to be a long day.

-

Sentiquill was vicious. She was still shaken from being thrown into a wall - again! - and without Chat at her side she was quickly loosing ground. Her supposed partner had started to watch from the sidelines again, continuing to ask- no, demand that she apologized and begged for his help. As if she was some kind of stubborn, disobedient pet.

She was all but sobbing in frustration when Sentiquill cornered her at a wall, with no chance of cover.

“Come on, My Lady!”, Chat patronized her like a parent would a toddler. “You’ll only end up hurt if you keep this up. Just say it already!”

She’d never regarded Chat Noir as anything other than a friend. Nothing more, nothing less. Right now, however, the feeling that burnt in her lungs was dangerously close to hate.

“Please!”, she swallowed down her pride and fought back tears. “I’m sorry for rejecting you! Please help me!”

Sentiquill towered over her, his gleaming blade at her throat. He could hear their conversation, but he couldn’t see from which direction Chat Noir could attack without taking his eyes off of Ladybug - who would use every chance to escape. Behind him on the roof, Chat Noir got up and stretched.

“As you wish, My Lady!”, he beamed smugly and raised his hand. “Cataclysm!”

Sentiquill smiled, just when Chat jumped down on them. Only now she realized he hadn’t been looking at her. The Akuma had watched Chat’s reflection in his blade.

It was too late to warn him. Chat - rash as always - was already descending, his sparking claws aimed at their opponents back. In the last second, Sentiquill moved aside, just when the cataclysmic hand came down on them, not able to stop or avert its course - which now aimed for Ladybug on the floor. He was going to hit her.

She was going to be cataclysmed.

She was going to die, at Chat Noir’s hands.

She didn’t, of course. But it was close. Chat Noir, eyes wide with terror, had pulled his hand aside just when Ladybug had flinched in fear, missing her head by a hairs breadth. Instead, he touched the ground beneath them.

Ladybug recovered first from the shock, rolling aside and throwing her yo-yo around a chimney to pull her to safety. Chat Noir wasn’t as quick. He was still frozen in place when the ground and part of the wall behind them began to crumble, before breaking through completely. He screamed when he fell into the cellar, and then again when he was hit by debris.

“My jaw!”, she heard out of the newly created hole. Carefully, she inched her way foreword. The ground seemed stable enough now - Chat less so. He was back down on the bottom of the whole, trapped by the bricks and concrete debris that covered him. One piece had hit him right into the face, effectively breaking his jaw.

He was yelling and wailing, unable to move beneath all this debris. If it hadn’t been for his suit, he would be dead now, no doubt about it. His ring gave a weak blink and made peeping sounds. Time was running out!

“Take his Miraculous!”, she could hear Hawkmoth’s voice and turned around to see Sentiquill standing over the hole as well, a violet butterfly outline in front of his face. He shrugged.

“That one’s out of commission, he’s not going anywhere. Let him suffer a bit.”

His blood red eyes fixated her.

“For now, I’ll take care of the bug first.”

She had no chance. He was faster than her, and her yo-yo was a limited defense against a sword. Without any hope of back up she was as good as defeated. Still. When he finally hit her with his nib, she was surprised anyway - for a second, at least. Then, her mind and body went numb.

”Gotcha!”, Sentiquill mocked her with her own catchphrase. “Now, show us how perfect Paris’ hero truly is!”

The sensation was... terrifying. Control of her body was stolen from her as his power rummaged through her mind, finding all her dark, hidden places and tearing them out of her.

“I... I am scared... that I’m alone.”, she pressed out between clenched teeth, trying to fight his spell.

In vain.

“That I have to carry all this responsibility alone a-and mess up. I’ll disappoint everyone.”

She closed her eyes as darkness rose around her, feeding into Sentiquill’s weapon. He scoffed, before giving her a malicious smirk.

“Oh, but you already have.”, his painfully familiar voice dictated. The words seeped into her mind, trying to take root. She couldn’t let that happen, she knew it was a trick. The people he drained sank into a despair of his making, it was just Hawkmoth’s magic!

“You currently are, and you won’t stop being a single great disappointment.”, he finished, breaking through her mental defenses. She flinched, realizing he was right. She... had lost. She had been abandoned by her partner, her best friend was fighting her and she was... too weak to save him. Useless.

”You had your fun, Sentiquill.”, Hawkmoth’s voice commented. “Now take her miraculous.”

His champion nodded, but didn’t seem as if he had quite enough yet.

”Anything else you want to fail at?”, he asked her gleefully. “Keeping your identity secret, for example?” He laughed when she lowered her head.

“Come on, tell us who you really are, beneath all that false glamor!”

“I’m...”, her voice began, part of her still trying to resist. “I-I am... Ma-“

A loud clang startled her and Sentiquill’s sword was knocked out of his hand by a flash of silver. He jumped back in surprise and looked at the object that had hit him: a silver staff, clearly belonging to a certain Cat. But Chat was buried beneath tons of debris! Who had...?

She looked around and her eyes, blurry with unshed tears, focused on a splotch of yellow on the metal walkway. Was that... Chloé?

“Hey, Leanne!”, the reckless girl yelled and flung her hair over her shoulder. “Stop being such an obnoxious bastard and get away from the Lady!”

She grinned, propping her chin up on one hand and giving him her most judgmental glare.

“You’re acting utterly ridiculous.”

An angry snarl came from Sentiquill as he picked up his sword and jumped up to the walkway, cornering her. Chloé didn’t even look at him, instead leaned over the handrail to wave at her in excitement.

“Hey, Ladybug”, she greeted without a care in the world. “It’s me, Chloé! Did you see that throw?! Just miraculous, wasn’t it?”

Sentiquill towered behind her like an angry bull, but she only spared him an annoyed glance.

“Oh shoo, get away from me with that ugly hat! Who designed your outfit?! It looks like a toddler made it!”

The violet outline returned to his face.

“Stab her, now!”, Hawkmoth shrieked, having temporarily forgotten about Ladybug. Not that it was of much use to her. She was beaten and on the ground. There was no way she’d get up now. She was a failure, a lost cause.

And so she could only watch as Sentiquill raised his sword and hit Chloé with the nib of the hilt.

“If that isn’t a whole lot of dark thoughts you have. Care to share them, Bourgeois?”

Chloé contorted her face in pain, but didn’t flinch when the inky swirls rose around her.

“I don’t know how to act around the others, after all that I’ve done.”, she admitted openly, with no sign of being forced to. “I don’t want to disappoint Ladybug, and I certainly don’t want to become like my mom. But i can’t apologize either, I don’t know how. And I hate feeling vulnerable like that; to be at the mercy of other’s judgement.”

Sentiquill scoffed, ready to fill her with his poisonous words as he had with Ladybug.

“It’s in vain, Chloé, and you know it. You already are just as horrible and worthless as your mother, and Ladybug is fully aware of that. That’s why she took away your Miraculous for good.”

Ladybug knows what came next; she was experiencing it herself, after all. The doubt, the pain, the horrible knowledge to be useless.

But Chloé surprised her. Instead of crumbling under his scorching glare, she looked him straight in the eye, chin up and back straightened.

“I don’t believe you.”, she declared confidently. “I know my worth. You’ve all already seen me at my worst, and I’ve dealt with Hawkmoth and Mayura at the same day. Your ridiculous power doesn’t impress me, Felix.”

Sentiquill let go of her, visibly taken aback. It took him a moment before he could collect himself.

“Pah.”, he played her resistance off. “Your confidence is admirable, for someone this...”

He trailed off. His gaze had wandered behind Chloé and downwards, where Marinette’s earlier ink prison stood. Ladybug gulped. Now that he was on the walkway, in an elevated position, he could look right inside the cylindrical cell.

“Empty...”, he whispered, his hands clenching to fists. Then he pounced, landing right on the walls to check every angle. “Empty! Where is she? Where is Marinette?!”

He looked around, eyes rabid with fury, searching for the rest of the class.

“Who of you took her?! TELL ME!”

Ladybug flinched as she watched him slice the prison into shards of dried ink, his angry roar echoing off the walls of the yard.

“Don’t get distracted!”, Hawkmoth tried to command. “Give me Ladybug’s Miraculous, now!”

“Shut up! Where is Marinette?!”, Sentiquill yelled back, his sword hacking at bare stones now. He caught sight of Nino, hidden beneath the stairs, who was filming everything with his phone. He growled and stomped towards him, but before he could even take two steps, a flash of purple covered his hand and he screamed in pain. What had happened? Was Hawkmoth punishing him?

She didn’t have time to ponder. In the meantime, Chloé had managed to run down the stairs and shout orders at the rest of the class, before dashing over to Ladybug. The fallen heroine groaned in pain when she was picked up and pulled to the side of the yard.

“Come on, Ladybug!”, Chloé muttered, panting under the weight of her idol. “You gotta kick his ass! Get up already!”

Ladybug closed her eyes, resigned.

“I can’t.”, she whispered. “I’m sorry! I’ve disappointed you. I... can’t.”

Chloé pouted, hands on her hips.

“Don’t be ridiculous! Of course you can!”

She shook her head. Useless, worthless, abandoned.

“Okay, I’ll definitely feel bad about this later.”, Chloé sighed. Then she slapped her - hard!

“Ow!”, she yelled and sat up straight. “What the-“

”Stop the nonsense right there, Ladybug! Look at me, I’m still on my feet as well. If I can fight him, you can do it too!”

”But...”, she protested, still halfway under the spell. “I failed! I’m alone and... I failed.”

Exasperated, Chloé rolled her eyes.

“You haven’t failed yet, and you’re not alone. Look!”

She gestured at the yard, where her classmates had come out of hiding. Some were armed with brooms or mops, Markov flew around clutching a wrench twice his size while Max was carrying an unconscious Rose to safety. Kim had Alix on his shoulders, who held a spray can in each hand and looked ready to bite her way through to Sentiquill. Next to them was Nino, rotating his headphones like a lasso - or like her yo-yo! And was that a knife in Sabrina’s hand?! Where had that come from?!

Chloé flipped back her ponytail, obviously proud.

“We’re all with you. Now get up or my knees will get dusty.”

Ladybug smiled as the last bit of darkness faded from her. It felt like breathing after being underwater for too long.

“We can’t have that, now, can we?”, she chuckled and stood up. “Thanks, Chloé. You did great!”

The blonde blushed and swatted her hand through the air.

“A-alright, alright, I know I’m awesome. Do your thing!”

She didn’t have to ask twice. Now that she was free of Sentiquill’s influence, he would get his ass handed to him on a silver platter!

“Lucky Charm!”, Ladybug yelled and threw her yo-yo, only to catch a long, rectangular box.

“Aluminum foil?”, she wondered when she opened it. How would that help her?

She looked around. Her eyes fell on Ivan and Kim, on Alix’ skaters, then on a table next to the hole Chat Noirs cataclysm had caused. It was missing two legs thanks to the crumbled wall, but maybe...? She looked to the other side, then to Chloé in front of her.

Handrail. Nino’s phone case. Sunlight. Sabrina on the walkway. Quill. Chloé’s sunglasses. Aluminum foil!

“Yes!”, she cheered, then pulled Chloé closer. “I need your help! And your sunglasses!”

The blonde all but sparked with excitement.

“Aye, Aye, Ladybug!”

-

“Sentiquill!”, Ladybug called her opponent, who had only recently recovered from Hawkmoth’s punishment. Since then, he’d been busy defending himself from all kinds of objects that were hurled at him from a safe distance. Whenever he tried to attack one of the students, the others would step in with even more things to throw. They were no match for his sword, of course - it simply sliced through the stones and metals with ease - but it had slowed him down, irritated him. Now however, her preparations were complete. It was time to bring Sentiquill down and get her Felix back!

“Time to end this!”

“Finally something we can agree on!”, he snapped back, quill at the ready. She smiled grimly and put on the sunglasses, then went in for the attack. She was lighter on her feet, this time, her steps elevated by the knowledge her friends had her back. She dove underneath the first blow and jabbed at his face, but he dodged and jumped back a little. They danced around each other in a dangerous game of a fight, a competition to see who would show weakness first. He didn’t notice she was maneuvering him closer and closer to the stairway.

“Now!”, she gave the signal when she had him where she wanted. Sabrina nodded and raised her hand, Nino’s phone case in her hand. It was wrapped in Aluminum foil and reflected the sun like a mirror, blinding the fighters below. Well, one of them, at least. Chloé’s sunglasses allowed Ladybug to get the upper hand and she dealt a rapid series of blows and kicks to his torso. Enraged, Sentiquill blindly slashed in the direction of Sabrina, shooting ink at her. A grave mistake! Chloé pulled her friend out of the way in time, and now Sentiquill had left his sword hand wide open. With all her weight Ladybug threw herself against him and hurled him forwards, until his sword slipped between two bars of the stair’s handrail.

“What the-“, Sentiquill begun but never finished. He had caught sight of his impeding doom in form of three students and a table with roller blades.

“Here I come!”, Alix announced from on top of the table, which had its two remaining front legs tugged in her skates. Behind her, Ivan and Kim high-fived before giving the improvised battering ram a strong shove. It scooted down the stairs towards the exposed broadside of the Akuma’s quill.

“Razzle Dazzle!”, Alix cheered when the table crashed into the metal, shattering it in two.

Sentiquill sank to the ground as his power was drained from him and the corrupted butterfly broke free of his quill’s shards. Triumphant, Ladybug opened her yo-yo.

“Enough evil doing for you today, little Akuma. Time to de-evilize!”

She spun around herself to gather momentum, then threw her yo-yo and let it snap shut around the troublesome akuma.

“Gotcha! Bye bye little butterfly.”

Relieved, she released the purified butterfly into the sky, then she held her hand out towards Nino. Sabrina had returned his phone to him, and now he happily removed the Aluminum wrap from its case.

“That was a close one, dudette!”

She sighed and weighed the balled foil in her hand.

“It really was. Miraculous Ladybug!”

Pink and red lights flashed over the sky, then swirled around the school. Broken doors and windows repaired themselves, ink stains vanished from the walls. The hole in the ground was closed by the Cure as well, just like the adjacent wall. The door towards the other classroom opened and Nathaniel and Mylène came out, followed by a cured Alya and their teacher. Juleka flung her arms around Rose’s neck, who nearly cried into her black shirt. Everyone was unharmed again. Well... almost everyone.

Ladybug stepped next to Sentiquill the moment the purple smoke around him faded, turning him back into Felix.

“What... What happened?”, he asked confused, holding his head. His eyes widened and he jumped to his feet. “Where’s Marinette?!”

“Don’t worry.”, she calmed him, hiding her euphoria at having him back behind a soothing smile. “She’s alright. How are you feeling?”

He blinked, looking at the repaired pen in his hand.

“I’m... fine, I think. Why does Sabrina have a knife?”

Ladybug’s smile turned forced.

“I‘m afraid to ask, if I’m being honest.”

-

A floor further down, Adrien beat the dust out of his clothes and rubbed his freshly healed jaw. Miraculous Ladybug had closed the gaping hole above his head only seconds before his transformation ran out, keeping his identity a secret once again. That aside, this akuma attack had been a single disaster.

“I can’t believe it”, he muttered. “She just left me lying down here! I was hurt and bleeding, and Ladybug doesn’t even come to look after me.”

He groaned.

“This day is a catastrophe! I almost had her admitting she needs me, and then everything went south! That stunt with my Cataclysm? Lord, that was so embarrassing! A rookie mistake; I was looking like an idiot. Do you think she’s still mad at me, Plagg?”

Only silence answered him and he turned to search for his Kwami.

“Plagg?”

The tiny creature floated motionless in front of him, eyes hard as granit and his face absolutely expressionless. Adrien shrank under his burning gaze.

“Look, I know I should have intervened earlier.”, he tried to appease him. Plagg’s expression was creeping him out. “But I already got my punishment, didn’t I? Ladybug exposed Lila, and now school is going to be so much drama. Lesson learned.”

His Kwami was still silent. Slowly Adrien started to get nervous. Sweat was forming on his forehead and he was going for a shifting of blame before he fully realized it.

“It’s not like it was all my fault, you know?”, he desperately tried to fill the quietness. “If Ladybug hadn’t slapped me the last time, we wouldn’t have gotten into this mess!”

His words sounded eerily close to what he’d said about Marinette earlier, he noticed.

“I just wanted her to learn how to treat her partner better! I’ll be nicer next time.”

“There won’t be a next time.”, a commanding voice behind him declared. “And you are in no position to teach Ladybug a single thing.”

Adrien whirled around, raising his hand.

“Claws out!”, he yelled before remembering Plagg hadn’t eaten yet. There would be no transformation any time soon. Realizing his defenselessness, he swallowed and looked at the figure that had ambushed him. As if on cue, it stepped out of the shadows, revealing...

“Master Fu?”

Adrien almost fainted in relieve.

“Oh god, you gave me the scare of my life! What’s the matter? Any new potions to deliver?”

The guardian didn’t blink. Instead he raised his hand, expectantly.

“You have forsaken your partner. You have willfully sacrificed a civilian in order to punish Ladybug. You have abused your powers by choosing inaction for the sake of revenge.”

Adrien gulped when Fu came closer.

“I cannot risk Ladybugs safety anymore. Give me your Miraculous, boy.”

“What?!”, he spluttered, covering the ring with his other hand. “No! You don’t even know the whole story, it was nothing like that!”

Fu’s eyes narrowed.

“I won’t ask again.”

“But I am Chat Noir! Ladybug and I are meant to be together- to be a team! You can’t take that from us!”

He searched for his Kwami, desperate.

“Tell him, Plagg! I was just helping Ladybug grow to be the bigger person! It’s not like there’s any permanent damage anyway.”

The cat Kwami closed his eyes and breathed out. When he opened them again, there was no compassion in them.

“I’m sorry, Kiddo.”

Adrien had no time to react. Fu’s cane had jabbed at him out of nothing, swatting his hand into the air. His ring slipped of his finger and was caught on the wooden staff, just when Plagg began to blur and merge with it again.

Adrien stumbled back in shock, before fury took control of him. How dare he?!

“No!”

With a battle cry he went after Fu, fists clenched and ready to get his ring back by any means necessary.

He was taller than Fu, younger and quicker. The senile guardian wouldn’t stand a chance against him.

“Shelter!”, a voice to his right exclaimed and a green, solid barrier slammed into his side. Adrien yelped when he was thrown against a pipe and fell to the ground, breath knocked out of his lungs. He panted for air and looked up.

A tiny green creature floated next to Fu, hands raised to summon what he knew as Carapace’s superpower. Wayzz, the turtle Kwami, Plagg had mentioned once.

Adrien’s eyes widened. He might’ve had a chance to win against Fu, but a Kwami was another topic. Without his Miraculous, he stood no chance.

“Please!”, he resorted to begging, tears welling up in his eyes. “I need it! There’s nothing I can do as Adrien, I’ll be trapped at home forever! What will Ladybug be without me?”

Fu turned his back on him without hesitation, walking towards the stairs.

“Better off, I hope.”, he retorted coldly. “I regret your situation, but I can’t afford to waste Plagg’s powers on someone out of pity.”

He stopped.

“Adrien Agreste, you were granted the Miraculous of Destruction, a great honor. But you abused this privilege for selfish gains and tormented the one you were meant to protect. You will never again be worthy of its powers.”

He sighed when Adrien let out a helpless sob.

“I hope you can grow beyond what you are now, I really do. But until then... Farewell.”

With that, he disappeared into the shadows of the cellar, leaving Adrien behind.

[endon-project]

Chapter 1: Preview

An object in the sky

It was late. Almost midnight in fact, but yet, on this cold February evening in a house close to the edge of the forest a man was still up and sitting behind his computer. Oskar von Könitz was not done working for today. He had his laptop set down on the dining table and was still finishing up some tasks. Nobody in their right mind would’ve still be doing work on a Friday evening! But Oskar was determined to get these last few tasks done so he could enjoy the weekend fully. Nobody was waiting for him to come join them in bed anyway. The house was empty. Except for him and his loyal, older Labrador dog, which he had named Isabell. She was lying on the floor next to him with her eyes closed and dozing off.

Earlier that day Oskar had returned from work at his usual time. The commute always took about an hour; if he was lucky and there were no traffic jams. If the rush hour traffic was particularly bad, it took him almost two hours to get from the big city to the small town he lived in. But he wouldn’t want to move to the big city anyway and he didn’t mind the drive all that much. Besides, trying to find a new home was always such a hassle. He had grown up in this area and it was the perfect place for his dog, too. That didn’t mean moving to the big city hadn’t tempted him before.

After getting home he took a moment to relax from the long drive, before making some dinner and giving his dog her dinner as well. Once finished, he had cleaned the kitchen and dishes, as he usually did, and went for a walk with his dog. Since she was already older, their evening walks started to get shorter and shorter. Almost as soon as they were home again, Oskar started up his laptop and got back to work.

Oskar liked to work in silence and thus the room was quiet, except for the sound of his fingers moving over the keyboard. He hadn’t even bothered to put on some extra lamps. The only light came from a lamp right above the table he was sitting at. He knew sitting in a dark room with just one light on strained his eyes too much, but frankly, he also didn’t care at this moment. He was almost finished anyway. When he had started working earlier that evening, he had no idea it was going to take so long. But after running into a few problems, he realized he wasn’t going to be done within the hour. Going to bed wasn’t an option either, because that meant he had to finish it tomorrow morning! No, he’d just finish it tonight and get that off his chest.

Being so caught up in his workflow, Oskar didn’t even notice Isabell getting up and walking towards the nearest window; her nails making that distinct sound of a dog walking over floorboards. She looked outside through the window and suddenly started barking. At first it was only one bark, then she looked at her owner. When he didn’t react, she barked again. When the man still didn’t react, she continued barking at the window.

Now that got Oskar’s attention, since she never barked repeatedly – certainly not at this hour! He looked up and saw his dog standing right in front of the window, her gaze fixed on whatever was outside. Maybe she saw something in the front yard, a small animal or something of the sort. Oskar shook his head, told her to stop and looked at his screen again. Isabell listened to her owner for about half a minute before she started barking again, now even jumping up against the window to signal that something was wrong.

Oskar sighed annoyed. “What is it?” He grumbled, because she was acting so untypical. The dog would not stop barking. “Stop it!” He commanded. Isabell stopped for a second but then started again. It dawned on Oskar that she maybe wanted to show him something? Maybe there was a suspicious person walking on the street; maybe an intruder? Who knew? So with another heavy sigh Oskar got up from his chair and walked over to her to look out the window.

He looked down his driveway that led to the street about twenty meters away. He had parked his car in the garage when he came home, so the driveway was empty. The streetlights were still on, but he couldn’t see anything or anyone walking on the sidewalk. There were also no cars, which was normal, since this town was very small and especially this neighbourhood was very quiet – even more so in the middle of the night. After he didn’t notice anything on the ground, he looked up at the sky. It was very clear with just a few clouds and the moon was shining bright to provide more illumination. But yet… he still didn’t know what his dog was so upset about.

“What are you barking at?” He said to his dog and looked at her, but she refused to look up. Her view was fixed on something outside. Then her head moved slightly up and now she was looking at the sky. “Silly dog.” Oskar mumbled. “What are-“ Then he also looked up at the sky and he couldn’t believe his eyes! He had to blink a few times and even then he didn’t think what he saw was real.

Something was falling from the sky in a rapid speed. A dark object engulfed in fire! It didn’t really look like a plane, but certainly some sort of object that was supposed to be able to fly. It wasn’t round but had a distinct shape, something like wings were attached to it. It was also about the same size as a commercial jet. Oskar observed the object closely and felt his heart beat rise a bit. It seemed to be out of control and damaged. As it came closer and closer it almost looked liked it was going to crash into his house! Just as Oskar wanted to grab his dog and run outside, it changed course towards the forest. Thus he kept standing in front of the window and watched how the object came crashing down. He saw the trees shaking and breaking, he even heard the cracking noises, which were then followed by a loud thud – but no explosion.

Oskar stared at the treeline. What did he just witness? Was he dreaming? Was this real? Maybe he was just overly tired. But no… he clearly saw that thing! And Isabell saw it too! And he even heard the impact of the crash so it couldn’t be too far away! For another few seconds he was frozen and didn’t know what to do. He assessed the situation again and still wasn’t sure if he had actually just seen that. But after a minute or two he decided to go out and check if somebody needed help. For all he knew, it could’ve been a plane with people in it and his sleep-deprived mind just gave it a different shape.

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[arjuna-vallabha]

GOVINDA DEV - the king of Vrindavan.

   In the year 1514 , a Bengali brahmin was walking alone , leaving behind everything that he had in search of spirituality . He was the Dabir-i-khas or chief secretary to the Sultan of Bengal , Allauddin Hussien Shah . But due to his free mixing with the muslims , he was ostracized from his own caste and society , as was common in those times . Some days earlier , Shri Krishna Chaitanya had paid a visit to the village of Ramkeli , situated just outside the capital of Bengal at the city of Gauda . Thousands of people had gathered to catch his glimpse and pay their respects . Out of the thousands , the chief secretary to Sultan was also there . We do not know what transpired between them , but what we know is that the dabir-i-khas of the Sultan had such a deep change of heart that the entire meaning of life changed forever . Secretly he left home in search of the higher cause ! Dabir-i-khas became Shri Roop Goswami . His destination – the holy town of Mathura . Mahaprabhu through his spiritual insight undertood a forested wilderness near Mathura to be the lost pilgrimage of Vrindavana ! Back in those times , the fabled Vrindavana of the puranas was just a name . Nobody knew where the place was . Mahaprabhu had instructed Shri Roop – “ Go to Vrindavan and stay there . Ask Sanatan ( Roop's elder brother and the chief treasurer to sultan of Bengal , who would also become a renunciate monk later in life ) to vist me . In vraj write the scriptures that would expound the philosophy of divine love and rediscover and establish the lost places of pilgrimages . Spread the name of Krishna and the message of Bhakti . I shall visit once to see your work . “ So Roop set off with the intention to rediscover the lost site . But after reaching the forested wilderness of Vrindavan he was in a lurch ! How to search for something without any clues ? He got himself a manuscript of ‘Mathura mahatyam’ and started investigating . Alongside he led a life of exemplary renunciation and prayed to the divine to show him a way . Shastras describe the glories of Govinda as the supreme lord of Vrindavan . Agamas , nigamas and puranas sing in unison the glories of this form of lord . Varaha purana says – “One who sees the Govinda of Vrindavan does not need to go to the abode of Yama and attains punya . In Mathura Khanda of Skanda Purana , Narada says – ‘ Vrindavan is the abode of Govinda who is always served by his servitors . The king of Vrindavan resides with his beloved within the eight petalled lotus . ‘ SammohanaTantra says – ‘ I bow to Shri Radha along with Govinda of yogpeeth in center of Vrindavan . In Vrindavan Mahatmya , Mahadev answers Devi’s questions – “The groves of Vrindavan are dense with manju trees and numerous branches and creepers . This is the abode of sweet rasa and fragranced by aroma of pravala and other flowers .Within such a beautiful abode is the hallowed siddha peetha – the place of Govinda ! At the center of this yoga peetha stands a golden building . At its center is a bejeweled eight cornered golden throne on which blooms the transcendental eight petalled lotus . Govinda , the king of Vrindavan and his beloved ladies of vraj resides in the center in his beautiful vigraha form . . Roop was determined to locate that yoga peeth where Govinda resides eternally and shastras always glorify ! Even before him , Advaita Acharya , the most intimate associate of Chaitanya had come to Vrindavan and located the deity of MadanGopal atop the dwadashaditya teela hillock . Still earlier , the Guru of Advaita Acharya , Shripad Madhavendra Puri had discovered the deity of Shrinath Gopal ( now called Shrinath Ji ) near Govardhan mount . But the lord of Vrindavan , Govinda is yet to be located . It is said that after the demise of Shri Krishna , His great grandson had installed quite a few deities in vraj area . But in due course of time , all the sites had fallen into disuse and were forgotten . Roop Goswami started his penance in attempt to discover the lost sites . Finally he got the divine intervention that he was seeking . A local villager informed him that on the top of Gomaa teela hillock he sees a cow shower milk everyday on a fixed spot . Overjoyed at hearing this . Roop Goswami set off immediately with some other villagers and started digging at the aforementioned spot . Soon , Govinda manifested himself under the dirt ! The whole of Vraj was immersed in great joy and the deity was re installed in a simple hut on the Shukla Panchami tithi of Maagha month in the year 1536 . This news reached Mahaprabhu at Puri and he was overwhelmed with bhava hearing this miraculous manifestation . He immediately sent his associate , Kashishwar Pandit to take charge of the seva of Govinda . But Kashishwar was reluctant to leave the blissfull company of Mahaprabhu . Realising his pain of separation , Mahaprabhu gave him a metal deity of two armed Krishna as an extension of his own self . Kashishwar named the deity Gour Govinda and arrived at Vrindavan to help others in seva of Govinda . During those times , some other associates of Mahaprabhu were also residing in Vrindavan . Amongst the six main Goswamis was Raghunath Bhatta Goswami . His disciple built the first temple to Govinda . But presumably that temple was damaged pretty soon . At this point , Maharajah Maan Singh , the general to Mughal emperor Akbar , offered to build a new temple for Govinda . The funds for contructing this temple came from the Mughal imperial treasury ! And Akbar is said to have allowed the use of red sandstone , which was otherwise reserved for royal use . Red sandstone is the same variety that’s used to build the Red fort at Delhi , Agra fort and parts of Taj Mahal . The chief architect who designed the city of Delhi , Govinda Das , was appointed as the brain behind this project . A whooping 13 lakh rupees was spent in those days just as labour charges ! And finally after much waiting , the temple was consecrated through a lavish ceremony in the year 1590 . No temple of this size and opulence had been constructed in entire northern india , since the coming of islam till the end of british days !! Not atleast to my knowledge . Hindus of northern India back in those times had to regularly deal with external agressions and attacks on their religious places and hence had totally given up their traditional practice to erect big temples to gods . This history can easily be noticed in the art of the Govinda temple . Though the temple is huge and opulently carved , the eaternal walls are completely devoid of any representations of gods/humans or animals ! Which is very untypical of a hindu temple ! Whatever little human figures are to be found , are mainly concentrated around the main entrance door to garbhagriha , and they are not of particularly high craftsmanship . It is understandable that the artists working under Islamic regimes , being used to the Islamic tenant of not depicting human figures , had forgotten their skills in depicting anthropomorphic forms ! But that part apart , the rest of the temple is a glorious testimony to artistic excellence . Someone who has visited the earstwhile capital of akbar at Fatehpur Sikri would instantly understand the striking similarities between the two places . Krishnadas Kaviraj Goswami , a eyewitness to the opulence and poularity of the temple in its haydays leaves behind a graphic description of the same – “ Situated in the center of Vrindavan Stands a golden palace . Inside that maha yoga peeth is a bejwelled throne , over which grows an eight petalled lotus . Inside the lotus eternally resides Govinda Dev - the dispeller of lust ! He is served like a king with different items of luxury . Jewels , valuable cloth abound ! Thousands of servitors do run errands daily around the temple The richness of seva cannot be described by a thousand mouths ! “ In British era the collector of Mathura district , F.S. Growse wrote in his records – “The temple of Govinda Deva , is not only the finest of this particular series , but is the most impressive religious edifice – that hindu art , has ever produced , at least in upper India . “ It is said that emperor Akbar himself had once come to meet the goswamis of Vrindavan , which is perhaps not an exaggeration , when you think of his inclusive religious nature and also the fact that he went out of way to fund this luxurious hindu temple using mughal funds . It is probable that he was impressed with the renunciation and eruditeness of the Goswamis . It is also quite possible that he was curious to see the man who gave up his position of chief secretary and is now living under a tree out of love for god ! Maharajah Man Singh donated huge tracts of land and other riches for the maintainence of the temple . Sehnai and other instruments used to sound daily from the Naubat-khana in the temple premises . By that time , Vrindavan had become a small human settlement from forested wilderness . But sadly the will of god would have it otherwise . Govinda Dev could not stay in his new temple for long . In 1669 , the great grandson of Akbar , Badshah Aurangazeb would order a demolition of all the temples of Mathura and Vrindavan . Perhaps the growing emergence of Vrindavan as a new site for idol worshipping hindus alarmed the rigid Islamic mind set of the king . Armies marched to Mathura and destroyed the temple of Keshava deva at the site of Krishna’s Birth , replacing the site with a Shahi Idgah ( mosque ) which still stands today . But Hindus were used to such events by now . News of impending attack reached the Goswamis of Govinda temple and they secretively escorted the deities out of Vrindavan and hid them in Radhakunda , some 20 kilometers from Vrindavan . Other principle deities of Vrindavan , Shri Nath Ji , MadanGopal , Gopinath were all moved out of the area . Only Radharaman , the tiny self manifested deity , was hid inside an alcove in the inner wall of a well where he remained for many years until the fear of Mughals subsided . Banke Bihari , another important deity also did not move out of vrindavan , because back then he was enshrined in a simple hut inside nidhivan without much fanfare . So his presence was unknown to outsiders and he would not have attracted the wrath of the marauders . The gigantic temple of Govinda was desecrated and its spire broken down completely and a small idgah made hastily on the top of the roof . That structure remained into recent times untill Growse had it removed as a part of archeological restoration project and thereby restored the temple to its original identity . Today the temple is maintained by the archeological survey of India . After staying for 2 years at Radha Kunda , Govinda was brought to Kamyavan . This way , Govinda Dev continued to shift between places for the next few decades . Initially the servitor Goswamis tried their best to protect the deity from iconoclasts and as well as try keep him within the borders of 'vraj mandal' ( the expanse of territory where child krishna lived and sported his leelas ) But inspite of their efforts , the political situation continued to worsen and finally they felt compelled to shift Govinda Dev out of the vraj mandal into the safety of Rajputana . Maharajah Sawai Jai Singh , a descendant of Man singh , came to rescue and brought Govinda to his own palace and built a temple to him within his palace compounds to ensure safety . He then dedicated the entire estate as the property of Govinda and himself as a mere servitor . His seal was etched with the words – “ Shri Govindacharan – Sawai Jaisingh Sharan” Even today , Govinda dev is being worshipped royally as the presiding deity of the town of Jaipur . And even today , the descendants of Bengali Goswamis serve them . Now let us come to the topic of this painting . I have tried to depict the temple of Govinda as it would have originally stood at its prime days . A natural question that may arise is - on what proof did I base my artistic reconstructions ? Is it merely an imagination or is there any solid evidence behind it ? Only the walls of the temple stands today at Vrindavan . The top is completely demolished . But there is a line drawing preserved in Jaipur city palace which has sketches of the temples of Vrindavan as well some of the important religious sites of northern india . This was painted when the temple still stood and provides the much needed clues as to how the original structure might have looked. But I shall post a detailed post on my artistic reconstruction later in this page . Hence im restricting my words for now on this topic . On the right hand side of Govinda Dev stands Shri Roop Goswami . On the left is Kashishwar pandit with the deity that Mahaprabhu gave him personally – Gour Govinda . Gour Govinda is still worshipped in the temple at Jaipur . Right beneath him stands Maharajah Man Singh in white clothes . Opposite Man singh in blue suit is Maharajah Sawai Jai Singh who helped the cause in times of distress . These two characters are thereby immortalized in the leela of Govinda . Today , a new Govinda temple erected in late 18th century stands next to the original temple in Vrindavan . And more recently , a new set of Gour Nitai vigrahas have been installed in the original garbha griha of the desecrated temple . The mind of a bhakta feels saddened to see the empty temple today . But I want to put forward a question to all readers at this juncture . Is divine manifestation only to be found in a deity and nowhere else ?! Can the eternal yoga peetha ever be detached from the eternal presence of the lord ?! Can we not say that Govinda is as much present in Jaipur as he is in Vrindavan yogpeeth ?! Wherever Krishna resides , that verily is the vrindavan . So when Govinda moved to Jaipur , the city became the new vrindavan ! And Govinda through his continuing presence in Vrindavan changed the place into a flourishing tirtha that it is today ! The dream of Mahaprabhu was fulfilled at last ! That is precisely why , one of the greatest gaudiya mystics of 20th century , Ramdas Babaji Maharaj never went to Jaipur to see Govinda . To him , Govinda eternally resides in the yogpeeth . Krishna promises to the gopis – “Vrindaavanam parityajya paadamekam na gacchaami” – I shall not leave ever from the land of Vrindavan . The divine leela of Govinda are eternal . And that all auspicious leela has created a thread of bond that runs from Bengal in the east to Rajasthan in the west with Vraj bhumi at its heart ! Jai Govinda !

Painting and text by Halley Goswami, more at https://www.facebook.com/Halleysart

[vewordoc]

General dnd 5e character builder

#GENERAL DND 5E CHARACTER BUILDER GENERATOR#

#GENERAL DND 5E CHARACTER BUILDER FREE#

You can google either one of their names and pathfinder sheet and you can find downloads to it. I would recommend their sheets a lot less bugs then mine but auto calculates stuff less then mine. That is the only part of their original sheet left it mine it. and setup I can't even tell in their coding, where the data is coming from and when I contact them about it they could not even remember how they did it either. Some times you may want to tweak a background for some of its features then it is better fits your campaign or character setting. So read the below steps to know more about the 5e backstory generator.

#GENERAL DND 5E CHARACTER BUILDER GENERATOR#

I was try to make an adjustment to that to replicate a fake increase such a teifling Fiendish Sorcery ability. With the d&d 5e background generator we can create our own 5e background and customize it as like as we want. I know one of them I can't remember which one, auto calculates bonus spell from high ability scores. If you don't want my strange little bugs in the sheet, I would check out their sheets. Both are based off of Nercos and Abellius sheets with some teaks that allow for changing which bonus go were, like lunar oracle replacing dex for reflex saves and dex. dispite the coding for that section being the exact same as the other sheet, but this one does not have any issues with the hit and power attack. I got unchained one also that uses both consolidated skills and background skills for my home game, but for some reason on that the max dex will freak out on it. I often have to untype and retype a number to get it to fix it self. When trying to meet a specific word count in writing a personal biography, Derek sometimes adds Oscar Wilde quotes, like, “Be yourself everyone else is already taken.I am working on one my self but it is not ready for a public release still has a lot of bugs when calculating to hit when I try to add it power attack it freaks out. A fan of classics as well as the latest and greatest, Derek balances sampling the newest entertainment media with revisiting the well of a (thankfully) never-ending backlog. After being immersed in nerd culture for many years, Derek is now happy to write about the media he enjoys instead of just ranting to his friends. He is a fan of science fiction and fantasy, video game and tabletop RPGs, classic Hong Kong action movies, and graphic novels. This creator only determines the basic aspects of your character, enough so that Ana can figure out the statistics that go along with the options youve picked and can make a completed. Derek majored in journalism and worked for a print newspaper before discovering the internet. Welcome to Anas homemade character creator for the ART DnD group This will be the character that you play as during our adventures in DnD. When he is not writing, playing video games, watching movies or television, or reading novels or comic books, he occasionally takes some time to sleep. He lives with his wife, three dogs, and a likely excessive number of video game consoles. With the right items, and a well-planned character build, an Artificer can excel in and out of combat, functioning as a Dungeons & Dragonstrap expert, versatile spell caster, and ranged or melee damage dealer.ĭerek Garcia is a Game Feature Writer for ScreenRant. A Ring of Spell Storing is another solid choice, though this cannot be replicated through infusions. All of these are items that could be created as Artificer Infusions if they cannot be found or purchased. Other helpful options include a Brooch of Shielding for resistance to Force Damage and immunity to Magic Missile, and Cloaks and Rings of Protection for bonuses to Armor Class and Saving Throws.

#GENERAL DND 5E CHARACTER BUILDER FREE#

An Amulet of Health is a worthwhile attunement, and other universally helpful attuned items include Boots of Flying for Concentration-free flight, and a Ring of Free Action to avoid many mobility-related spells and effects. The selection of D&D magic items is key to helping an Artificer excel in battle. A ranged D&D Battle Smith should instead start with Crossbow Expert, and after maximizing their Intelligence they can add feats like Sharpshooter, Toughness, and Lucky. This can be of help in games where the party lacks a dedicated melee specialist but the player wants more flexibility than classes like Barbarian afford outside of battle. A Variant Human melee-focused Battle Smith can start with Polearm Master, then pick up Great Weapon Master, Mobile, and Sentinel at higher levels, after using their levels 4 and 8 choices to increase Intelligence to the natural maximum of 20.

[overfedvenison]

The context of Gen 1 was that it seemed specifically single player focused, but communal. That is, early Pokemon tended to be weaker than later ones, the idea of HMs seems to be more like Metroid Power-Ups that let you explore a world more, and there wasn’t really a focus on competitive balance as later generations would have. It is an open-world RPG you play together with friends and can assist one another in. With that in mind, it seems like Dragon was built up to be a kind of “Late Game Typeless Element;” weak to nothing, but itself rare and incredibly strong. This is like how in other RPGs, you eventually unlock untyped spells and the like. But it never really achieved that, because the only Dragon-type move is Dragon Rage, which is a fixed 40 damage move. That is conceptually the kind of Typeless Damage Move you would normally get early-mid game in an RPG, but it means it doesn’t benefit from a dragon type using it at all. So like, why is there not even one really cool Dragon move for your endgame Dragons?

Question about Pokemon Types

Actually, question coming off of my last post: What changes would you, person reading this, make to Pokemon and their Types if the only context was Gen 1 and the 15 types and 151 Pokemon therein?

[newstfionline]

Meet the tutors of the ultra-rich

David Batty, The Guardian, 13 Mar 2018

Early one summer morning some years ago, Nathaniel Hannan was confronted by one of his students brandishing an antique Colt six-shooter. The private tutor had been hired by the young boy’s super-wealthy New York parents to ensure that his academic performance befitted the family’s elite social circle. Fortunately the tutor, who had been preparing a Latin lesson at one of the family’s homes, owned a revolver similar to the one now pointed at him and noticed that it was not fully cocked, meaning the gun could not be fired immediately.

“He seemed to be under the delusion that he was a gang member taking revenge upon me for a drug deal gone bad,” Hannan says of the boy, who he says had mental health problems. “I managed to handle the situation with a minimum of physical violence. I grabbed the barrel towards the ceiling and disarmed him.”

The tutor recognised the weapon, famously used by the US cavalry in the old west, as part of a collection on display in the family home. When Hannan explained what had happened to the boy’s father, the man “sort of shrugged and asked if I wanted combat pay”. “There were no penalties to the son,” Hannan recalls. “The father did, however, stop keeping the gun on display and I took the bullets out and kept them.” Some weeks later, Hannan had to disarm the boy again after he held a knife to the tutor’s throat. But the tutor stresses that this was the only one of his five long-term posts with super-rich families over the past 10 years where he had to deal with such extreme behaviour.

His experience is untypical for the British tuition industry which, according to the Tutors’ Association, is worth around £2bn a year. The majority of families who hire tutors in Britain are middle-class parents, with students often receiving additional lessons in the evening or at the weekend to help with schoolwork or grammar school entrance exams. But a handful of firms in London and the home counties also provide tutors for the super-rich, who account for about 10-25% of their clients and can pay between £50,000 and £70,000, or more, a year. One, Tutors International, says almost all its clients are high or ultra-high net-worth families.

Hannan, who works for the Oxford-based company, may have encountered only one gun-toting pupil, but the Tutors International founder Adam Caller says his staff have had to deal with incidents of self-harm, child abandonment and threats of violence. He once arranged to surreptitiously remove another tutor from her placement in the western US after a boy pulled a knife on her. “The father didn’t think it was a problem but she was scared for her life. We had to sneak her out of the house when the father was at the bakery, which he went to every morning. The police waited at the entrance to the property and escorted her to a plane.”

Caller believes that such incidents reflect the increasingly complex and exhausting demands tutors face while living with uber-wealthy families. In the past four months, these pressures have pushed the company’s top salaries to about $250,000 (£180,000) a year. “By far the greatest rise in the highly paid jobs is coming from Asia,” he says. “We’ll be earning more than $1m in revenue from four tutors in Hong Kong this year.”

In the past, the toughest roles might involve tutoring a child in up to 15 GCSEs, but now tutors are routinely required to be fluent and teach in two or three languages, from French to Russian and Mandarin Chinese, and to create a lesson programme suited to school curriculums in different countries. Some of the best-paid roles also involve addressing learning difficulties, mental health problems and other special needs: Hannan once worked with a young heir who had suffered a brain injury in a motorcycle accident. Others require additional work: the company has a job advertised in Florida, where the tutor will need to act as a personal assistant and project manager for the family, overseeing the rebuilding of their main residence, which was badly damaged by Hurricane Irma.

However, the mere fact that the family has such wealth and privilege can be the root of their children’s problems, says Caller. Some of these families “don’t work very well because they’re so rich”, he explains. For example, they never have to be on time for a flight, because they own a private jet. “The children grow up without any consequences for their lack of responsibility,” he says. Some of them also feel that “if they put effort into something, they won’t do any better than if they didn’t. They’ve got nothing to work for.”

One role currently advertised involves working with a 12-year-old Japanese boy, whose relationship with his parents is described as “toxic”. The advert states: “He frequently ferments [sic] trouble between himself and his schools. His access to the family wealth has led to his ability effectively to ‘buy’ friends, and … it is unclear whether he has any real friends at all. Over the years, the student has come to rely on his father’s money to solve all sorts of problems.”

The job, which has a minimum salary of $225,000 (£162,000), or $300,000 (£216,000) for a couple, may require moving with the boy to the US and being on call at all times: “The successful candidate will have to work as a tutor, mentor, guide and friend, and in some ways a surrogate parent.”

Another of Hannan’s former clients, who does not want to be named, says that she and her financier husband hired a tutor to mentor their son, who has Tourette’s syndrome. “The only thing he found that calmed it down was marijuana,” she says, “so he probably started smoking a bit too much. He was feeling very down, so it was a struggle to get him up in the morning and get him to class. That was when we realised we needed to intervene.” Their first step was to send the teenager to a therapeutic wilderness camp, which tackles addiction, mental health and behavioural issues in a calming natural environment. “It took him away from other kids who had high anxiety and other issues. When he finished, he was ready to re-enter normal life but not be in the same environment with the same friends.”

The role required not just working with the boy, but also assisting his parents. The job description stated that the tutor should “help them to enforce their boundaries and [limit] the controlling behaviours of their son. He has come to learn that if he makes enough of a fuss he can get what he wants from his parents and while they do not want this to continue they need support to develop strategies to be able maintain their authority when under pressure from their son.”

Hannan, who studied at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana and Oxford University, not only helped the boy with university applications and preparation for admission tests but also bonded with him through their mutual love of mechanics, often helping the teenager fix his car. “I used the rapport to help him understand what his parents meant when they said or did things,” he says. “The upshot was that he was more likely to respond in a way that didn’t lead to shouting matches.”

The professionalism required in a private tutoring arrangement is very different to that required in a classroom, says Hannan, who previously taught in a private school in Washington DC. “For all kinds of child protection reasons, being a school teacher requires a certain emotional distance. In a family environment that changes; it’s important to be able to develop a sincere rapport with these folks.” His former student’s mother says that Hannan became a friend to her son, who is now at university. “My son appreciated [that there was] somebody to help guide him, moving forward,” she adds. “To have someone by his side, holding his hand, was a really positive thing for him.”

Other tutors say rifts in families often arise due to the high-flying and transient nature of the parents’ jobs or lifestyles. Mark Maclaine, who co-founded the agency Tutorfair in 2012 after more than a decade of tutoring, says tutors can also find themselves acting as an intermediary between highly demanding parents and their offspring. “If you’ve got a parent who is very successful in their career, they have been used to getting results by pushing their staff,” he says. “But kids don’t work the same way. The parents realise that the life skills that helped them become incredibly successful don’t apply to their child who is struggling. A lot of the families turn round to me and say: ‘I think I’m making it worse.’ If your dad is the king or your mum is the head of a huge corporation, that’s going to be dialled up to 11.”

However, Dirk Flower, a Harley Street psychologist who works with super-rich families and several tutoring agencies, says tutors can also find themselves in families whose value systems undermine their efforts. The standard gripe is that parents expect the tutor to achieve top grades even if the pupil’s schooling is disrupted by frequent holidays, he says. But the clash of values can be more extreme. “You do get a criminal family where the 13-year-old is walking around with a Kalashnikov because their father wants them to take over the empire.”

Cleo Masliah, a tutor who works with another agency, Simply Learning, says a significant aspect of her work with both children and their parents is helping them to operate in western society. Masliah, who studied art history at the Courtauld Institute in London and interior design at La Cambre in Belgium, has worked with ultra high net worth families in Dubai, Moscow, Switzerland and the Caribbean. When she tutored a young Russian girl who wanted to get into a leading British boarding school, she had to advise the mother on how to present herself. “In Russia, if you’re visiting a school and you want to show the principal that you’re serious, you take out all your diamonds and your Birkin bag and your Chanel suits and you wear some nice stilettos,” she says. “That’s frowned upon by an academic school in Britain. So part of the job is to say, ‘You know what? It would be a good idea for you to wear flats and keep the jewellery to a minimum. And you know what? You’re a smart, high-profile lawyer; let’s make sure they know that.’ And the girl got in.”

Masliah says the grey area of switching between being an authority figure and acting like an older sister to being a friend and adviser to a parent is what makes the job “fantastic”. However, she warns that tutors must remember the power their clients wield. “They are extremely wealthy, and your relationship with them is going to be what they decide it’s going to be. If you have an issue with a normal middle-class family, the worst that is going to happen is that you never speak to each other again. This is different; these are often people in a lot of power. And you’re often not in your home country--you’re in their country, where they are very important. I do a background check on my clients before I work with them. There’s a level of shady that I am not working with, because I’m putting myself in danger,” she says.

Emma Swanson, the founder of the UK-based international company Tutoring Futures, says home tutoring has become much more popular than boarding school for the super-rich because it is more convenient and allows the parents to spend more time with the children. “The father who needs to travel a lot now takes his children with him,” she says. “But, obviously, the ultra-high-net-worth do live a very transient lifestyle and they have homes around the world and yachts they want to spend their time on.”

In late 2016, James Clement, a former high-school teacher who works independently as a tutor in Washington DC, did a tutoring job with a family who took their children out of school for a term to travel round the world. For 12 weeks, they sailed around Indonesia on a 75-metre superyacht. He and another tutor taught the girls between 8am and 1pm on the observation deck, which was converted into a schoolroom, taking short breaks to play board games. Two or three days a week, the tutors would be invited to go jet- or water-skiing with the girls. On other days, they might go snorkelling or scuba diving on a coral reef, which would be used to teach their students about marine biology, or visit villages, volcanoes and islands relevant to their history and geography lessons.

While both tutors ate most of their meals with the 20 crew, on occasions they would be invited to join the family for dinner. But these were not simply social invitations, with the tutors sometimes asked at a day’s notice to give PowerPoint presentations on a wall-height projector screen in the yacht’s salon. “Once they asked if we would give a 30-45 minute presentation on the history of Indonesia,” says Clements. Other topics included the country’s political climate and scientific facts related to the places they visited.

Such tasks reflect how tutors tread a fine line between being friends of the family and mere employees. Nathaniel McCullagh, managing director of Simply Learning, says tutors enjoy an elevated status compared with other staff due to their academic credentials and close relationship with the children. But this can risk alienating the household’s “loyal retainers”--the personal assistant, the nanny, the butler--whom the tutors need on their side because they know the family’s foibles and secrets. “They’ll be the ones to say, ‘This is a good time to talk to the parents’, [or] ‘Whatever you do, don’t go into that room.’”

Although tutors sometimes receive privileges, including expensive gifts such as Rolex watches, use of private jets and family holiday homes, McCullagh stresses that they must be “unimpressed by their surroundings”. “We really can’t put anyone in with chips on their shoulder or any kind of overwhelming adoration for the family or the money or the lifestyle,” he says. “You’re in this world of massive wealth and, for a limited period, you’re part of it. The next day, the family is going home in a limo and you’re back on a train home. You start thinking, ‘Why am I on easyJet when they’re taking their own jet?’ You’ve got to understand that the parents are your boss, but in many cases they don’t want anything to do with you. They are abdicating their responsibility not because they’re bad people but because they have chosen a professional to do the work. If you’re the sort of person who needs constant affirmation from a parent, you could have problems.”

Caller says tutors are sometimes asked by parents to help a child appreciate their privileges, such as getting the student to make bread for the family for a month, or cooking a meal from scratch, including making their own pasta. Other projects can be more elaborate. For example, one family helped build a library for a school in a disadvantaged area of southern India, and tasked their two children--under the supervision of two tutors--with liaising with contractors, the headmaster and interior designers, as well as organising the fundraising and buying books.

Tutor Melissa Harvey says both sets of parents she worked with saw her comparatively humble background as a positive influence on their children. The modern languages graduate, who previously worked at the Swans international primary school in Marbella in Spain, says the two families “were curious that I went to a comprehensive. I worked in four jobs to get through university and I think they saw those things as a positive influence for their children.” One of her jobs, arranged by Tutors International, involved a private cruise through the Amazon jungle where she says her two students were shown how local people lived. “It was wonderful to be able to show these girls, who come from a very privileged background, other children who don’t. We showed them how they made their clothes or their food, using all the resources around them. Some of the children didn’t have shoes. We gave them some coloured paper and you would have thought we had given them a pot of gold. For the girls, that was a real eye-opener.”

Ultra high net worth families worldwide are predicted to pass down more than $16tn to future generations over the next three decades, according to the analysts Wealth-X. Hannan believes his work has social value. “In some of these students there is absolutely the feeling of ‘Why am I bothering to try? Daddy’s money is always going to be there to take care of me.’ But others think, ‘I’m going to distance myself from that money, from my parents. I want to think of myself as myself.’ The crux of the issue is helping them find out that their lives can have profound meaning separate from this great blessing of family wealth.”

[cyberkevvideo]

Throne of Night - New Special Material: Gunzarak (True Mithral)

In Book 2, the (unfortunately) last published book for Throne of Night, we were introduced to the concept of “true mithral”, also known as gunzarak. It was a special processing of mithral that allowed you it to mimic some of the properties of adamantine. We even got a really interesting weapon in the form of an axe. We were also given a minimal amount of lore that this style of processing was a closely guarded secret to a specific clan of dwarves, and that its secret had long been lost over time.

Sadly, that’s all we got. It can be assumed that in Book 3, where we see the party finally find the lost dwarven city, that we would get either a sidebar or even an appendix that explained what true mithral was, and its pricing for armor and weapons. Sadly, this would not be the case. At least as of today’s entry.

Today, I’m going to give you my rundown on how I would have released it. I would like to say that I did not come about these numbers willy-nilly. I contacted some friends and acquaintances from the table top industry, who far more adept and knowledgeable at this kind of thing than I (not to mention decade long veterans) , and had them give me their opinions, then I went marketed it to more than a half-dozen players to get their take on it.

As always, for space reasons, I’ll be cropping the encounter build.

All images shared here were done by the forever fantastic and amazingly talented Michael D. Clarke, aka SpiralMagus

I do not have a Patreon or a Kickstarter, but I do have a Ko-Fi  page (linked) for those who are looking to support me monetarily. There is no pressure  or obligation to do so.

Finally, before I get to it, I hope everyone’s  staying safe right now.

Deep within the Zaraketh Mine, after solving a dwarven puzzle, what appears to be a mithral greataxe can be found by the party. To their astonishment, it’s actually an axe made of a new special material, gunzarak.

The provided lore says: But for all the dark elves’ skill in working this strange metal, it was in the forges of Dammerhall that the dwarves learned the secret of elevating mithral to its full potential. They could create an alloy that was lighter than aluminum, stronger than adamantine, as perfect a metal as this world has ever known. This was gunzarak (in dwarvish lit. the true gift of the earth) or “true mithral”. Even the drow had never seen its equal and it was Dammerhall’s gift to the world. Even today, centuries after the last sword of true mithral was forged, many a dynasty counts among its greatest heirlooms these dwarven blades and armors.The secret of making ‘true mithral’ was lost with the fall of Dammerhall. The dwarves too jealously guarded their secret and when calamity fell, the secret was lost. Perhaps there will never again come forth a smith capable of making gunzarak. Perhaps this jewel of dwarven lore is forever beyond the kin of mortals.

As written, the magic axe reads as thus:

The Axe of Horath Rocknose Aura moderate conjuration and transmutation; CL 10th Slot --; Price 27,320 gp; Weight 6 lbs. DESCRIPTION This is a +1 keen dragon-bane greataxe made of gunzarak (true mithral). It counts as both being made of adamantine while possessing the weight reduction of mithral. For the purpose of damage reduction it is considered as both an adamantine, silver and magic weapon. CONSTRUCTION Requirements Craft Arms and Armor, creator must know the secret of working true mithral, keen edge summon monster I; Cost 13,660 gp

Given its stats, it’s obvious that this was to be a major boon in Book 3. It can also be assumed that if the axe is shown to the stone golem blocking the secret passageway to Dammerhall, that’s part of the key needed for bypassing the guardian.

From a designer stance, this item has a few issues in the math and wording, but that’s okay. What’s important is that you can still discern its capabilities and what the author was trying to convey when he made it.

With what’s provided, and a little reverse engineering, we are able to deduce that, theoretically, gunzarak is worth 775 gp/lb. This is a little more than 1.5x what mithral costs (500 gp/lb.). That sounds reasonable enough.

Over the past month, I’ve had multiple discussions with some fellow game designers, as well as a bunch of players that I know. The reason being is designing special materials is a balancing act that many aren’t very good at. The conversations went from “treat this like a magic item and make the lowest cost be 1.5x the price and add the highest base, or at least add an additional percentage to the total price” to “adamantine in Pathfinder 1e and 3.5 was overpriced, so unless that gets fixed, you won’t get a proper price for this material.” What was also mentioned was that it was nice that this replicated both mithral and adamantine as a whole, like a magic item, what was special about it? What made it its own material that people would covet? Sure it was both mithral and adamantine, but you could find magic items that would made things better and cheaper, or even psionic powers or spells that could do it better, for cheaper, and not have any sort of weaknesses short of being dispelable. “True silver”, another special material (from Paizo), is processed to the point it was immune to rusting effects, so why wouldn’t true mithral have something similar, if not exactly the same? Again, all valid arguments.

In the end, after all the conversations had completed, this ended up being the final numbers and abilities. As such, I’d recommend the additional property be added to the axe in Book 2.

Gunzarak (True Mithral) Mithral that's been masterfully refined and processed, making it lighter than aluminum and stronger than adamantine. Armor: Heavy and medium armor are treated as one category lighter. ACP is reduced by 3 (to a minimum of 0), Dex bonus is increased by 2, and ASF is reduced by 10%. Grants untyped damage reduction 1/— (light), 2/— (medium), 3/— (heavy) Weapons: Ignore hardness of less than 20. Considered adamantine and silver with regards to bypassing DR. Special: Always considered masterwork. Immune to rusting effects. Hardness 20; Hit Points 30 per inch Armor Costs: Light (+6,000 gp), Medium (+15,000 gp), Heavy (+22,000 gp) Weapons and other items: 775 gp/lb.

It shouldn’t need explanation, but just in case, “rusting effects” include that of rusting monsters and the rusting grasp spell. Also, true mithral isn’t adamantine, even if it counts as such, so it won’t have the same ‘hit points per inch’.

I know that some people are going to argue that it’s way too cheap, but it’s honestly not. Adamantine is way too overpriced, and you fail a single save against a rusting effect and that PC is out their armor. Not to mention, given any other price point, you’re better off taking mithral armor and wearing a belt of Con for the additional hit points or something that can regenerate your heal in some way. Anything else would just be considered a waste of money. I know, the players I talked to schooled me pretty hard in that regard, and broke down the math. Not to mention, if you allow 3PP products in home games, a psychic warrior with the biofeedback power has DR 2/— for 1 minute/level, and can augment that to make it even higher. If you can turn that same power into a permanent magic item, it costs 8,000 gp to buy, but only 4,000 gp to make. It’s about being practical with your money at higher level, and crafting items takes a long time when it’s in the high, high thousands.

That said, if you feel it should be significantly higher, like say: Light armor +6,500; Medium +16,000; and Heavy +28,500 gp, which were the original prices I was suggested to go with, then so be it, but don’t be surprised if the party tries to sell the items for something cheaper and more practical, and bank the rest of the gold. Even more so if they’re playing with the kind of GM who is very strict about the wealth table, and being even 1 gold piece over it means you’re “broken” and no longer allowed an allowance until such time that you become high enough level to earn gold again. And, yes, those GMs absolutely exist, and players take that into consideration when it comes to their purchases. I will mention that my original prices were actually lower (14k and 20k for medium and heavy), but I was quickly talked out of it.

Again, this is what the decision came to be after multiple conversations with fellow TTRPG game designers (most having previously worked for Paizo) and players who’ve all played in very confining and restricted wealth games. In the end, we were all able to walk away happy. I have absolutely no idea how much Gary originally intended this material to cost, and I’m more than curious, but he had connections with Paizo as well (namely the director and lead designer, Jason Bulmahn), so it’s possible that our numbers aren’t all that different.

Segway: For anyone curious what a more practical cost for adamantine would be, Purple Duck Games published it as 750 gp for light weapons, 1500 gp for one-handed, and 3000 gp for two-handed. Armor was 4000, 8000, and 12000, respectfully. When it came to gunzarak, it was quoted as likely being 6000, 12000, and 18000 for the different armors. Weapons would probably start at 800 gp, to make it more of a round number, and different from adamantine. Mithral was also dropped to 350 gp for light weapons, 700 for one-handed, and 1400 for two-handed. Armor was 1000, 2000, and 3000. It sounds cheap, but the new Pathfinder 1.5 system they developed removed arcane spell failure.

Getting back to the original subject though, in Book 3, the party was supposed to discover the art of how to process the mithral, and I would bet that like in Book 2, the axe the PCs find is a key to a safe or another puzzle, that has that exact formula for how they’d do it. As to what that process is, I’ll leave it up to the GM. Their game, their rules. They would know best how it should be done in their own home games in their own home world.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

With that, the “Throne of Night” AP is complete. At least for now. All the known monsters have been identified and given stats (or linked to stats), the gunzarak is fleshed out a little more, an alternate race (that we should have seen in Book 3) was provided, a couple of extra monsters were added for additional encounters, more items were designed or showcased, and Mike’s fantastic art was shown off. Not to mention an entire AD&D adventure converted to Pathfinder 1e to help anyone finish their game without having to rely on books that don’t exist, and still give the AP some sense of finality. If there’s any more than that, I’ll do them as they come by may. At the very least, there’s more than enough to do your own game and give it a respectful ending.

If anything more if required, I made a resource page and posted a link on the Paizo forum for everyone to access. It has all of the relevant posts, additional adventures that could be used, suggestions and ideas from other GMs who homebrewed the rest of their own game, etc. A treasure trove of information for anyone needing it.

I thank everyone for coming with me on this journey.

[birdfriender]

What's so bad about D&D 3.5?

I’ve had this ask sitting in my inbox for ages bc I want to give a proper answer and that might take a little while. 

Fucken long post under the cut

So the first an most obvious criticism is the balance issue, a lot of words have been said by a lot of people on this but basically there are some classes that are so weak as to be useless unless carefully optimized by someone who knows what they are doing (eg monk) and other classes that are so overpowered as to trivially break the game unless carefully reigned in by someone who knows what they are doing (eg druid). 

To expand on both those points: monk has a core issue with the design of the class, firstly it is strongly dependent on multiple different attributes. The monk cant wear armour. this is theoretically offset by them adding their wisdom bonus to AC however in order to keep up with other melee combatants this means the monk needs to have high stats in both dex and wis. Additionally, the monk needs strength in order to deal damage as their unarmed attack bonuses do not scale well enough to make up for their lack of magic weapons. Additionally, as a melee combatant with d8 hit dice the monk really cant afford to dump constitution or risk being extremely vulnerable to a couple of lucky attacks. Finally the monk has the second lowest skill points per level of any class, meaning that in order to have any out of combat utility they need to have a little bit of int. This leaves only charisma as a viable dump stat (this is the dump stat for almost every class in the game by the way, another flaw of D&D). As if all this wasn’t enough, the monk doesn’t even have full BAB scaling for gd knows what reason? Additionally the monk has several abilities that benefit them for moving or encourage them to move around, suggesting that the monk should be a fast and mobile fighter, however their key damage dealing ability, flurry of blows, requires a full action and therefore cant be used in the same turn as movement. Flurry of blows ALSO imposes an attack penalty which couples with the monks low BAB means the monk struggles to ever hit enemies, let alone deal meaningful damage.

On the other end of the spectrum, the druid only really ever needs Wisdom. Freeing them up to put their second highest stat in constitution or intelligence for general utility. The druid gets an animal companion which being entirely honestly is usually a more useful combat unit than a monk, and takes its own entire turn every combat in addition the druids fairly powerful array of spells. At level 6 though the druid gets the option to take the Natural Spell feat which, taken on its own with no optimization or further thought put into it, completely breaks the game, letting the druid shapeshift into animals with extremely strong physical stat lines while keeping the druids mental stats AND spellcasting. A casual player with no effort and without meaning to can pick this feat because it sounds cool and suddenly have a character that is basically as powerful as the rest of the party combined.

These sorts of issues pervade all of D&D 3.5 and all its sourcebooks. These examples are just from the core rules but it gets honestly worse the more content you add. Balance isn’t the only issue though, there is a general lack of cohesion with the design across different sourcebooks and different designers. There are often multiple different implementations of the same concept or idea but done in subtly different ways. For instance the alternate class feature system is used very inconsistently and infrequently. There are many sourcebooks that implement “new” classes that could very obviously just have been sets of alternate class features for existing classes, I have a bad memory for the specifics of these but classes such as the Ninja and Swashbuckler jump to mind. Another example of this issue is in bonus typing. There is supposedly a system in 3.5 where every bonus has a type such as enhancement and that multiple bonuses of the same type dont stack, however this is once again applied inconsistently and there are many places in sourcebooks with “untyped” bonuses where neither the designer nor editor cared to correctly implement the rules. These may have eventually been fixed in errata but as far as I know they were not.

 Related to the issue of incoherent design vision there are frequently mechanics or ideas where there is no indication as to how the designer intended these things to be used. The most obvious example of this is Beholder Mage which is a prestige class that is clearly ludicrously overpowered as it was supposedly designed for DMs to use for enemies, however nowhere does anything indicate that this is the intention. On its own this may not seem like a huge issue but when there are lots of these cases scattered across different books and articles it adds a huge overhead on the GM to make sure everything is being used as intended (i.e. that they dont let players play Beholder Mage even when nothing mechanically prevents them from doing so).

One thing that is more of a personal gripe is the issue of “simulationist” games in general. D&D aims to simulate a world by tying everything down with mechanics. Every NPC is built on the same stats and skill system as the player characters when there is absolutely no need for this to be the case. The effect of this is that the DM has to put in a lot of work maintaining the simulation; generating entire stat blocks for every monster and NPC, maintaining all their status effects and spells/day etc. and while many people would argue that DMs dont have to do this and can just handwave it all, that is not what the rulebook tells you to do! When you spend money on the rulebook for a roleplaying game you are placing your faith in the designers of that game to have made a good game with a coherent ruleset that is fun to play, as soon as you start ignoring chunks of the rules to make the game fun or playable THEN THATS A BAD GAME! If the solution to having fun with a game is to just handwave and ignore the actual rules then those are bad rules! its a bad game!

Finally the reason I hate D&D so much and why i cant just ignore it and let people have their “fun” (i remain unconvinced) is the way the design attitudes and sensibilities behind D&D dragged down roleplaying games for so long. I dont think it’s unfair to call D&D the World of Warcraft of tabletop games. For decades, every new RPG copied the fundamental ideas behind D&D, that enemies and players all work on the same system, that the GM should just be expected to do all the work and spend all the hours sorting everything out and that the GM should be the ultimate arbitrator of everything and therefore responsible for everything. Even games that I think are broadly pretty good still suffer from this core conceit, Savage Worlds, Dark Heresy, World of Darkness, etc all would likely be better if they hadn’t approached their design from a D&D dominated perspective.

Honestly I probably forgot some stuff? But thats in broad terms why I think D&D and especially 3.5 are so bad. 

[mattgambler]

My mixed feelings on Pathway

After playing the game for 4 hours I got bored and stopped playing. I talk about what I liked about the game and what I consider it’s biggest problems.

Pathway is beautiful, and if I were to make games myself I would want them to look like this. Pixelart is not for everybody and doesnt fit every game equally well, but personally I am happy that games with this kind of aesthetic are still being made and they usually get me at least curious instantly. You control a diverse cast of adventurers in a setting that perhaps isn’t new, but which still feels refreshing as it isnt nearly as oversaturated as your everyday Fantasy / Sci-Fi / Postapocalyptic / WW2 scenario. But Matt, technically speaking this is World War 2 as well, arent you fighting nazis? And zombies arent exactly the most original opponents either... True perhaps, but it still feels more like an Indiana Jones setting than anything else and I can appreciate that as an attempt to do something different. With that being said, it is not the setting or the graphics that quickly had me lose interest, but rather a couple of specific design decisions. 1) Roguelite Progression? I love good roguelites and I can sink weeks into them once they have me hooked, dying my way from unlock to unlock while I develop my skills until Im finally ready to face the final boss for the first time, every run feeling different because of different characters, different upgrades, etc.  Replayability and difficulty are king here and when I looked at all the playable characters that I could unlock I got excited and was reminded of what it felt like when I played Dungeon of the Endless for the first time. Pathway, however, chooses a somewhat untypical format for it’s actual missions (or adventures, as they are called). Each one of them has a wincondition that seems easily achieveable, and unlocks a completely different mission once it is done, which is only connected to the one before via story and nothing else. You can switch characters inbetween, you cannot build up a reserve of ammo or fuel, and if you fail adventure 3, you simply retry that one instead of the earlier ones. On top of that characters gain experience and become stronger, but after they die progress is not lost, similar to leveling up gods in Thea - The Awakening. Characters are different from each other, but also rather restricted in what they can and cannot do, with most characters only being able to wield one type of weapon and having perks that for the most part are only relevant in specific textbased events. For example you may find a sick camel and if you have a character with medical skills you can choose to try and heal it. Otherwise, keep moving, nothing to do here. 2) Interesting choices? Levelups are similarly uninspired. Yes, your heroes have a skilltree, but almost all of the possible choices are bland stat increases, so you may have the choice between slightly more movement, slightly more accuracy or a slightly higher critchance. Endurance is the worst example of this, as it only increases the time that a character can survive unconscious after they have been downed. That, combined with a levelcap of 5 per character and the fact that your heroes remain leveled up for all future runs as well, turns character progression into something that is not only rather boring, but also eventually completely removed from your games altogether. Personally I fail to see the appeal of this method and I would have probably enjoyed the game just as much (if not more) if levelups were completely absent from the game. The few skills that are not stat increases are usually unlocking a different weapon or armor type, so your character might be able to now wear light OR medium armor instead of only light armor. Usable abilities do not exist apart from that, they are exclusively tied to what weapons and armor you have equipped and there is one ability per weapon. A shotgun can fire at all enemies in a cone, a sniper rifle allows a person to go into coneshaped overwatch. Light armor lets you sprint, medium armor allows you to duck so you are harder to hit and heavy armor allows you to hunker down so you take only 50% of the damage you otherwise would have taken. It is all very basic and for people that have played the XCOM games, Battlebrothers, or really any game with a skilltree, there isn’t much to see here. What makes this even worse is that you can find weapons, but often you can’t use them eitherway because the vast majority of characters are shackled to only their one preferred weapon and armor type so they will always have the same weapons, therefore weaponbound abilities and because of the levelup system even stats. All of this denies meaningful choice (apart from what team of characters to send in together) and shackles replayability completely needlessly. 3)Enemy variety and combat The first adventure features nazi dogs, nazi troopers and nazi shocktroopers. I believe the final fight of the map has a first medic. Troopers and shocktroopers use rifles, the dog bites, the medic can heal and uses a pistol. Enemy numbers vary between 3 and 5 in all fights. On its own that doesnt sound so bad yet, and later adventures introduce new enemies, most notably zombies but also nazi snipers, officers, medics, I stopped playing there but there’s probably more later, right? So what am I complaining about? This is a rough guess, but I would say in order to beat the first adventure you have to go through about 7-10 battles. Each one of them uses the same three enemies. Some might not have shocktroopers, some might not have dogs, but it will always be 3-5 enemies either in a procedurally generated ruin, or a procedurally generated desert base, or maybe a desert bunker if or desert oasis. Hell, even writing this is boring. The biggest culprit here is probably not even enemy variety, but the fixed numbers. Battles happen quite regularly and they all feel pretty much the same. Sometimes it’s an ambush and you have to deploy your heroes in the center of the map, other times its not and you deploy on one side, but at the end of the day these fights all feel the same and I found myself hoping everytime I would move my people that I would find nothing again, instead of another fight. This, combined with all the other things I mentioned before basically results in a gameplay experience that is always the same. Your characters are the same (but hey, at least there are many different ones to choose from, I count that as a big Plus), your enemies are the same, the maps are the same and the abilities your characters as well as the enemies can use are always the same. A shame really. The Saving Grace However I want to note that it is not all bad. While combat itself gets repetitive rather quickly, the overworldmap and resource management in general are pretty great. One run you might run out of ammo very quickly, on another you might trigger a trap or 2 early and struggle with healing supplies and in the next you wont have enough jeep fuel. (Im kidding you never have enough jeep fuel) This, together with the fact that characters do not only use up bullets as a ressource, but also do not heal inbetween fights, gives the game a sense of lasting attrition that you need to fight against, which felt a lot deeper and had me more engaged than for example running out of fuel in FTL in comparison. One of the things that I was worried about most in combat was not the battle itself, but how I could get by without using too many bullets. How many enemies could I shank or knock out instead? At the end of the day there wasnt enough to keep me busy however. Games like The Binding of Isaac or Enter the Gungeon have me excited about what weapon I will unlock next or how different the next run will play out. What bosses will I have to fight this run? If Pathway has bosses, then I stopped playing before encountering teh first one, I was deep into adventure 2, on its 3rd map to be specific. The game seemingly doesnt want you to have too many options, doesnt give you a sufficient amount of skills to choose or other choices to make and basically falls flat when it comes to replayability. A shame, because music and graphics are beautiful and the overworld map hints at what potential there was. If I ever run into Pathway 2 I will try it, but in the first 5 minutes of the game I will look at the skilltrees and keep an eye out for abilities like “allows character to use shotguns” and hope that I dont find anything.

[pawlikautomotive]

2009 Jaguar XF; Thermostat Replacement

Bernie Pawlik, Pawlik Automotive Vancouver, BC http://pawlikautomotive.com  (604) 327-7112

Mark: Hi it’s Mark from Top Local Lead Generation, we’re here with Bernie Pawlik, Pawlik Automotive in Vancouver, 17 time winners of Best Auto Repair in Vancouver as voted by their customers. How’re you doing Bernie?

Bernie: I’m doing very well this morning.

Mark: So we’re going to talk about a classic, some people would say, another classic Jaguar XF from 2009, it had a thermostat problem, what was going on with this fine English sedan?

Bernie: Well our client came to us with a complaint of a coolant warning light on the dash, basically it was an overheating warning light. We’d actually had the car here a few months ago with a similar issue and it turned out the coolant overflow bottle which has a sensor in it, a level sensor was malfunctioning, so we replaced the bottle. Solved the issue and for a couple months it was working fine and then the same light came on. Although the conditions were different this time. It was only on after driving for about half an hour driving down the highway that the issue occurred.

Mark: So how did you go about diagnosing the problem?

Bernie: Well the first step with any coolant diagnosis is to make sure there’s coolant in the vehicle, so I verified that in fact the coolant level was full, it hadn’t lost any coolant, there were no leaks present anywhere. So the issue was either something internal in the engine was causing it likely run too hot or maybe that overflow bottle had a malfunction. Again so the first step basically hook up a scan tool which is something we can do on this vehicle, and access the data on the vehicle and see what the actual coolant temperature is. Drove the vehicle and it was pretty apparent, I didn’t have to drive a half an hour on the highway, it was pretty apparent just driving in the city, the temperature  was creeping up pretty high. It’s normally, like the normal temperature on this vehicle should be under a hundred degrees Celsius. It was you know pretty quickly running up to a hundred, a hundred and two, a hundred and three slowly creeping up to a hundred and ten and you can hear the radiator fan running full blast the whole time. So that’s again, an indicator of a problem. So we brought it back to the shop and continued the diagnosis and I’ll share a couple of, well actually no, we’ll talk a little more then I’ll share some photos.

Mark: So what did you find that was wrong with the vehicle?

Bernie: Well after testing and looking at a few things further determined that the thermostat was the cause of the problem. The thermostat is supposed to open at a specified temperature, usually it’s around 95 degrees Celsius. It can be up or down five degrees above or below that number but that’s usually the right amount of time and as the temperature just kept creeping up, I figured it was either, the coolant’s full, it’s flowing, it’s mostly likely a defective thermostat and that was a place to start. When we took it apart we found the thermostat housing which is made of plastic, was broken apart which is not an untypical issue to find on these cars and that along with the bad thermostat was the cause of the problem. So at this point I’ll share a few photos. So here’s our fine 2009 Jaguar XF, very nice stylish looking four door sedan and this is a screen capture of our scan tool. It’s an Autologic scan tool, excellent for imported vehicles and there’s a number of items that we look at this. On this particular car it lists the temperatures that are running in the engine. So you can see fuel rail temperature, engine oil temperature, intake air, ambient air which is the outside temperature and this is the engine coolant temperature. Now I did this screen capture after we repaired it and everything was working properly and you can see it says 96 Celsius. This is pretty much where it sat the whole time when we did a long road test once the engine was warmed up but previous to doing this, as I said this number was creeping up to a  hundred, a hundred and three, a hundred and five, a hundred and ten, so it kept going up. So this was a place where we get data an good data and information to look at. Back to a couple of the photos, here’s the thermostat housing, now initially you can, for this particular engine, it’s a V8 non-super charge, you can actually buy the thermostat separately but it was pretty apparent once we took it apart that the housing was damaged. Here’s a closer view of the inside of the housing. You can see this is a, this is supposed to be a nice round cylinder and you can see these rough edges, this is bits of plastic that have basically broken off and disintegrated and the the thermostat fits into this area. So it really affects the flow of the coolant through the thermostat. So the whole housing needed to be replaced. Not an untypical repair for these vehicles and Land Rovers use a similar engine as well and they do have problems also.

Mark: Alright, so this is a pretty, upper, special, fancy car is there any particular unique feature about this car that we should look at?

Bernie: It’s funny that you mention that because yeah there’s a couple of unique features about this car. I love the interior of the vehicle, when you get in there’s a push button start like a lot of newer vehicles have but is has a knob instead of a gearshift lever for the transmission, it actually has a knob that comes up, it’s a rotary knob and it actually lifts up out of the dash but the other really neat feature and I’ll just share a video here, so if you watch these dash vents as the engine’s starting, for some reason there’s no sound here, but when you shut the engine off which I did then these vents close. So that’s my kind of unique feature of this car. I think that’s pretty nifty, there’s four of them and they all pop open but strangely whenever I’ve worked on these cars, I go that’ll be interesting when something goes wrong with them and sure enough one of the vents which is not in that view, actually doesn’t close properly, it eventually closes, but it’s slow. So you know there’s with all that beauty and neat engineering, there’s extra stuff to go wrong but it’s a pretty cool feeling when you get the car and you push the button and all these things kind of pop up and move into position.

Mark: You’re showing your age Bernie, it’s like you talking about a 69 Corvette.

Bernie: Yeah I know, yeah exactly we talked about pop up stuff like hide away headlights awhile ago and now pop up dash vents.

Mark: So in the past, English vehicles had let’s say a, well terrible reputation for reliability, how is this age of Jaguar?

Bernie: These are good and yeah, you’re right, I mean older English cars are the kind of thing where you’d be having it in to the mechanic shop every week doing some tinkering or fixing it and these vehicles are really reliable. I mean, as I say, the thermostat problem is not uncommon and there’s a, it’s probably the worst thing about these cars is there’s a lot of plastic on them which just happens on a lot of European cars, not so much on Japanese, but a lot of European cars, there’s plastic in the cooling system so they seem to use a lot of it and it breaks. So that’s sort of one of the things that affects the reliability, but overall they are actually pretty good, I mean you can usually get in these cars and you can drive without much problem. So the engines are pretty good. They used to be problematic in the past, I mean as much as I often have had not great things to say about Ford’s ever since Ford took over Jaguar and Land Rover, it’s made them a lot better vehicles. So yes Ford’s aren’t that bad after all.

Mark: So there you go, if you have a Jaguar in Vancouver and you need some service, the guys to see are Pawlik Automotive. You can reach them at 604-327-7112 to book your appointment, you have to book ahead, they’re busy or check out the website pawlikautomotive.com or our YouTube channel Pawlik Automotive, you just have to search for it, you’ll find it, hundreds of videos on there over the last few years. Thanks Bernie.

Bernie: Thanks Mark

https://www.youtube.com/user/pawlikautorepair https://plus.google.com/u/0/104437348234668995906/about

2009 Jaguar XF; Thermostat Replacement 2009 Jaguar XF; Thermostat Replacement