Grrl Power V: Probably Not an Octopus

[Radar]

Ah, the Grease spell. So underappreciated.

Really? I always considered it as one of "must have" spells in D&D 3.5 - it forces both a saving throw in order not to fall and a balance check to move out of the area.

At any rate, the old saying proves true again: plan is the first casualty of battle.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Most people don't appreciate the comedy elements of the game (Gust of Wind being a fart joke, etc). Also, Grease keeps you from getting close enough to the enemy to hit them with the shiny metal sticks until they stop moving, and some players find that annoying for some reason.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Most people don't appreciate the comedy elements of the game (Gust of Wind being a fart joke, etc). Also, Grease keeps you from getting close enough to the enemy to hit them with the shiny metal sticks until they stop moving, and some players find that annoying for some reason.

It's great for the sneak attackers, though, since just about zero monsters have ranks in the Balance skill... and thus are vulnerable to being sneak attacked for as long as they're in the grease zone, no save allowed.

[Rogar Demonblud]

At last Dabbler says something I can agree with. Find a safe vantage point and enjoy the show as Maxima goes to work.

[Traab]

Yeah that final merc is basically stuck there unable to do anything and is on a ticking timer to when her stasis ray runs out of juice or she gets overwhelmed by everyone else anyways. No need to get involved in that when taking care of the prisoners and policing the scene for alien tech is a better idea.

[Keltest]

I'll admit, "Deploy Operation Sportsbra" had me laughing probably a lot more than it should have.

[Radar]

New page up.

Spoiler

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I have to admit that was quite a sucker punch. He should be polite though and say "It hurts me more than it hurts you". Because it will - very much so.

It seems that there are more mercenary groups trying to get in on the kidnapping and those might be more competent as they did not rush blindly into a fight.

[Traab]

This is going to get messy. Seems we have a free for all getting started as maxima is the newest hot commodity in the galaxy. On the plus side, by the time its over there will be a significant reduction in the total number of mercs in the galaxy. And earth will have all sorts of new tech and toys to play with from the captured aliens. Lets just hope nobody goes the orbital bombardment route to force a surrender.

[InvisibleBison]

This is going to get messy. Seems we have a free for all getting started as maxima is the newest hot commodity in the galaxy. On the plus side, by the time its over there will be a significant reduction in the total number of mercs in the galaxy. And earth will have all sorts of new tech and toys to play with from the captured aliens. Lets just hope nobody goes the orbital bombardment route to force a surrender.

I'm pretty sure Mr. Big here is human. He is making a reference, albeit a fairly dated one, to American pop culture, after all.

[Traab]

I'm pretty sure Mr. Big here is human. He is making a reference, albeit a fairly dated one, to American pop culture, after all.

Maybe, but also recall that earth has had some serious alien tourism long before now. And plenty of earthlings have been taken along on space trips as well according to cora. Its entirely possible you are right, but its not the only possibility.

[Max_Killjoy]

I think these new guys are going to be local superchumpsvillains, not more aliens.

[lord_khaine]

Yeah this is a human. Else he would not be using the Alf reference.
Question is why the heck they are trying for Max now of all time.
Though he should have a fairly well sized team if he want this to work.

[InvisibleBison]

Question is why the heck they are trying for Max now of all time.

I would guess it's because he doesn't have all the information that the readers have. He sees a bunch of aliens show up and use some sort of device that weakened Maxima, and he thinks this is his chance to defeat her (or whatever it is he wants to do). He doesn't know that the device is about to run out of power, or that she'll be back to full strength as soon as it does.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Dun DUN DUUNNNN!

Where's Glyphstone with that popcorn cart?

[AvatarVecna]

It's always interesting seeing what the method-of-the-week is for keeping Maxima out of the fight so that other characters get to participate.

[Dragonus45]

It's always interesting seeing what the method-of-the-week is for keeping Maxima out of the fight so that other characters get to participate.

I can't tell if you are being sarcastic or not, but I unironically agree. How you manage your "Totally Not Superman" character in a series like this is important and doing it properly means a lot. I'm convinced it will be less relevant as time moves on and Sydney becomes more independent and involved in things where Max just isn't nearby.

[Traab]

I can't tell if you are being sarcastic or not, but I unironically agree. How you manage your "Totally Not Superman" character in a series like this is important and doing it properly means a lot. I'm convinced it will be less relevant as time moves on and Sydney becomes more independent and involved in things where Max just isn't nearby.

Im honestly wondering how often that will be. Maybe if after this whole flashback thing (THAT WE ARE STILL IN!!!!) ends, we will get the original scene of her showing up for work then time skip forward to where arcswat has multiple teams of varying levels and maxima is basically the nuclear option who commands from the base and only takes the field when people like vehemence show up or global invasions happen. I mean, as of now we have a fairly standard main cast of sydney, max, dabbler, and then random others who show up from time to time to remind us they still exist. And really, unless super incidents scale WAY up in number, there is no reason for maxima to NOT go out there. Ive heard it described in comic books when people complain about how superheroes ignore the far more common thefts rapes and murders in favor of dealing with supervillains as "If wonder woman is busy dealing with purse snatchers, who is stopping Circe from turning all men on earth into badgers?" But that doesnt apply here because there isnt enough of a rogues gallery for there to be a need for maxima to hang back and not engage just in case they need her elsewhere.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Thanks to the time skip we're past the start of the comic. If it's still there, I haven't looked in a couple years because the art style hurts.

And it's not much of an improvement to sideline one Supes expy just to bring in another.

[Traab]

Thanks to the time skip we're past the start of the comic. If it's still there, I haven't looked in a couple years because the art style hurts.

And it's not much of an improvement to sideline one Supes expy just to bring in another.

We arent past the flashback part because she was a corporal before we had it. Sydney hasnt even graduated yet, or been field promoted or whatever. We covered a significant length of time due to sydney and her time travel shenanigans, but thats very little comfort considering it took 9 freaking years to cover the first month or so of the three month flashback. Also, I really dont have a problem with the old artwork outside of anvil who looks utterly ludicrous.

[Max_Killjoy]

We arent past the flashback part because she was a corporal before we had it. Sydney hasnt even graduated yet, or been field promoted or whatever. We covered a significant length of time due to sydney and her time travel shenanigans, but thats very little comfort considering it took 9 freaking years to cover the first month or so of the three month flashback. Also, I really dont have a problem with the old artwork outside of anvil who looks utterly ludicrous.

The flashback was 3 months, I think that's stated somewhere.

The time-skip for Sidney was... about 1 month?

So we're what, in total, almost 2 months through the 3?

[InvisibleBison]

The flashback was 3 months, I think that's stated somewhere.

The flashback was described as "a few months", which is fairly ambiguous. Unless there's another, more precise, description I think there's room for the timeline to work out however the author wants it to.

[Rogar Demonblud]

The time skip was two months. Pre time skip was three weeks. Post time skip, depending on which comment you read, is anywhere from three to five weeks. At minimum we're three and a half months into the flashback.

[AvatarVecna]

I can't tell if you are being sarcastic or not, but I unironically agree. How you manage your "Totally Not Superman" character in a series like this is important and doing it properly means a lot. I'm convinced it will be less relevant as time moves on and Sydney becomes more independent and involved in things where Max just isn't nearby.

It's the problem when one character is explicitly so far ahead of the people they're obstensibly teammates with. I'm glad that Dave is at least aware of the narrative problem of having a tactically-knowledgeable Superwoman on the team, but it also takes some of the surprise out of the story. The villain of the in-universe week can't be powerful enough to give Maxima trouble or the rest of the team is almost completely irrelevant (Vehemence got around this by having a fairly unique powerset that required upkeep to stay at Maxima's level - he had weaknesses that could be exploited even if the others couldn't normally affect him in a fight). And if the villain isn't someone capable of taking on Max, she needs to not take part in the fight for some reason. The parking lot brawl did this well - the media is present, and Archon wants to show off all their capabilities rather than just the Goddess Of Ash.

This is also a good one - it's a kidnapping plot focused on her specifically, so of course they bring along something that can temporarily take her out of the fight...and because she was probably full-speed at that moment, it's fine that this one guy managed to punch her out - she's not in full strength/toughness right now. But now that she's out of stasis, realistically the fight should probably be over fairly quickly, but it still feels like too early in the fight for it to get wrapped up just yet. Maybe the fight just ends sooner than I was originally expecting, or maybe they pull out another trick to shut Maxima down. The former wouldn't be great, but I'm wary about the latter - it speaks to a lack of in-universe planning on the part of these intergalactic bounty hunters, and a lack of out-of-universe planning from Dave on keeping Max out of the fight without "Max gets shut down by A, then B, then C, then D, then etc".

It's good that Maxima's presence isn't just shutting down on-screen conflicts, but I wish the reason was more frequently that she was dealing with big issues elsewhere, because the alternative is stuff that could seriously affect her that just doesn't get used on the rest of the cast for some reason, or pulling out a series of temporary measures to keep her subdued that realistically they probably should've all used at once to ensure she was out of the fight for good (which leads to the same thing). I guess it just comes back to "anything that should take Maxima out of the fight, could've also been used to take most everyone else out of the fight, so why didn't they bring 2". And so far it's had good explanations but I'm always nervous that this time it won't, and it'd be so much easier to handle if we didn't have to worry about Superwoman solving everything in the scene because she wasn't present (or didn't exist in the first place).

[Traab]

Yeah the super brawl was perfect having her as over watch and backup in case of emergency, and I liked the black council thing where she evacced an exploding golem and had to dig through the rubble to make it back to the fight. Those felt organic and reasonable, not contrived. I do agree in hindsight the bounty hunters did this really stupid. Yes maxima is clearly the alpha prize here, but all of them were recorded feeding those fel beings their feet and making them swallow. So why were they ignored until they started punching the bounty hunters in the face? They were clearly threats.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Target fixation, likely aided by all those dancing currency signs filling their field of vision.

Look, greed makes people dumb. All people, not just humans.

[lord_khaine]

This is also a good one - it's a kidnapping plot focused on her specifically, so of course they bring along something that can temporarily take her out of the fight...and because she was probably full-speed at that moment, it's fine that this one guy managed to punch her out - she's not in full strength/toughness right now. But now that she's out of stasis, realistically the fight should probably be over fairly quickly, but it still feels like too early in the fight for it to get wrapped up just yet. Maybe the fight just ends sooner than I was originally expecting, or maybe they pull out another trick to shut Maxima down. The former wouldn't be great, but I'm wary about the latter - it speaks to a lack of in-universe planning on the part of these intergalactic bounty hunters, and a lack of out-of-universe planning from Dave on keeping Max out of the fight without "Max gets shut down by A, then B, then C, then D, then etc".

The only think that would have pleased me more with the current situation were if Max had not been able to overcome the stasis beam on her own, and so actually been in need of being saved by her team.
That would kinda validate their existance a bit more. Even if it is of course Sydney we have to thank for the stasis pod vanishing mysteriously.

Still. Actually long term out-of-universe planning would have been to give Max more exploitable weaknesses.
Or a power level that was only 1 rank above everyone else in magniture as opposed to two.

[Traab]

The only think that would have pleased me more with the current situation were if Max had not been able to overcome the stasis beam on her own, and so actually been in need of being saved by her team.
That would kinda validate their existance a bit more. Even if it is of course Sydney we have to thank for the stasis pod vanishing mysteriously.

Still. Actually long term out-of-universe planning would have been to give Max more exploitable weaknesses.
Or a power level that was only 1 rank above everyone else in magniture as opposed to two.

Too be fair, she WAS being saved by sydney and crew. The stasis ray gun froze her solid for a significant time frame leaving her helpless. Had they not run interference she would be in an even more powerful stasis chamber and being evacuated. MAYBE in time maxima would have drained that as well, but it would still have been a problem. Also, vehemence required lateral thinking because he was able to get stronger than maxima and overpower her. So she isnt unbeatable, even on earth. And there is also that one mystery bad guy that fought her to a near draw back in her military days.

[Ibrinar]

Almost all other supers without super speed should be easy to kidnap like this, wonder how and if they will deal with it. I guess they could screen visitors if they can limit entry somehow.

[Radar]

Almost all other supers without super speed should be easy to kidnap like this, wonder how and if they will deal with it. I guess they could screen visitors if they can limit entry somehow.

Or it would be enough to gain a solid reputation (3:05 for the impatient), so everyone would think twice before doing anything funny. The problem is, it will take time and there is always someone stupid enough to try anyway.

[Traab]

So this new guy seems to have some sort of vibration based punching power that lets him shatter shields. An interesting twist on just being yet another brick type.