dracothulhu

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OH MY GOD

OH MY GOD

#the owl house #gravity falls #crack ship

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Reblog to open a rail line from your blog to the person you reblogged this from

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The girl genius fandom every time a new round of @bestpolyshipbracket comes out:

#girl genius #yeah

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Corollary to this: It's confirmed in the AP that Mary Ann did/does have the following: - Enhance Ability - A Strength-boosting item of some sort, probably equivalent to a Belt of Giant Strength - a feat that gives her Expertise on Athletics She also 'nearly crit' which indicates a roll of 18-19.

With Expertise she would have a proficiency bonus of +8 to +12 - taking your high-end numbers, that turns the roll to a 30-31 even without Strength added in. Dialing it back a little to level 13-16 (proficiency +5/+10 with Expertise), she could have gotten a 35 on a roll of 18-19, with +10 proficiency, and respectively a Belt of Fire (Strength 25/+7) or Fire (Str 23/+6) Giant Strength.

the ratgrinders' potential levels

cannot believe i was right about the xp reqs. the bad kids & the seven get 'special treatment' (milestone leveling and saving the world), while others have to work with xp. which tells you a lot about why people fled during prompocalypse.

ok getting into the algebra now: the rat grinders have gone into the far haven woods every day for the last two years, for 3 hours after school, and 9 hours/day on weekends. presumably they keep this up during the summer.

they have supposedly defeated 80,000 or more of three types of creatures: rats, spiders, and twig blights. there are some variations to what these could be, so here's a list of what this could encompass, assuming the ratgrinders are not facing creatures over CR 1.

giant rat: CR 1/8, 25 XP

swarm of rats: CR 1/4, 50 XP

giant wolf spider: CR 1/8, 25 XP

swarm of spiders: CR 1/2, 100 XP

giant flying spider: CR 1, 200 XP

giant spider: CR 1, 200 XP

ice spider: CR 1, 200 XP

twig blight: CR 1/8, 25 XP

needle blight: CR 1/4, 50 XP

thorn slinger: CR 1/2, 100 XP

vine blight: CR 1/2, 100 XP

razorvine blight: CR 1, 200 XP

thorny: CR 1: 200 XP

the full list is a little difficult to do calculations on, so let's condense it. assume a quarter of the 80000 creatures were CR 1/8, a quarter were CR 1/4, so on and so forth.

how much xp would they earn? how much would they level for the amount they ground? grinded? for?

critical assumption here: in the games i've played, we've always done milestone or zeroed out xp with each level, i.e. after earning 300 xp to get to level 2, you have to earn 900 xp to get to level 3, not 600. this analysis assumes that you have to earn the next levels xp reqs on top of your current total. i'm including the xp chart here to clarify:

level 1: 0 XP, +2, total 0 XP

level 2: 300 XP, +2, total 300 XP

level 3: 900 XP, +2, total 1200 XP

level 4: 2700 XP, +2, total 3900 XP

level 5: 6500 XP, +3, total 10400 XP

level 6: 14000 XP, +3, total 24400 XP

level 7: 23000 XP, +3, total 47400 XP

level 8: 34000 XP, +3, total 81400 XP

level 9: 48000 XP, +4, total 129400 XP

level 10: 64000 XP, +4, total 193400 XP

level 11: 85000 XP, +4, total 278400 XP

level 12: 100000 XP, +4, total 378400 XP

level 13: 120000 XP, +5, total 498400 XP

level 14: 140000 XP, +5, total 638400 XP

level 15: 165000 XP, +5, total 803400 XP

level 16: 195000 XP, +5, total 998400 XP

level 17: 225000 XP, +6, total 1223400 XP

level 18: 265000 XP, +6, total 1488400 XP

level 19: 305000 XP, +6, total 1793400 XP

level 20: 355000 XP, +6, total 2148400 XP

if we went cumulatively, based on the number of creatures the bad kids have defeated, they'd be getting up there in xp. we know they've had opportunities to defeat creatures outside of the quests that we've seen, given the oneshots. thus, i'm going with the second explanation, because otherwise the ratgrinders would be 19th level, and i don't think they are, because it would make any pvp setups super unbalanced, which are neither fun to play nor watch. this puts them on a little more even ground and emphasizes the amount of work it takes to xp grind to level against milestone leveling.

for the CR 1/8s: assuming roughly 20,000 creatures, they'd get 25 XP per, which means 500,000 xp. that's cumulatively enough to get to level 13, on just those creatures. divided 6 ways, assuming the ratgrinders have 6 members, it's 83,333.33, which is enough to get you to 8th level.

this scales up to the 1/4s, 1/2s and the 1s since the xp gains double for each challenge rating rather than plateauing as they do at higher levels.

for the CR 1/4s: 1,000,000 xp. that's cumulatively enough to get to level 16 on just those creatures. divided 6 ways, assuming the ratgrinders have 6 members, it's 166,666.66, which is enough to get you to 9th level and almost to 10th.

for the CR 1/2s: 2,000,000 xp. that's cumulatively enough to get to level 19 on just those creatures. divided 6 ways, assuming the ratgrinders have 6 members, it's 333,333.33, which is enough to get you to 11th level and almost to 12th.

and for the 1s, 4,000,000 xp. well over what you'd need to get to level 20, on just the CR 1s. divided 6 ways, assuming the ratgrinders have 6 members, it's 666,666.66, which is enough to get you to 14th level and part of the way to 15th.

using this estimate and adding all of this up, each member of the ratgrinders would have gathered enough xp to be level 17.

obviously the actual numbers would scale differently; initially, they would likely have to tackle these creatures as a party, but over time would take care of them individually

this seems extreme for the aguefort adventuring academy; let's scale it down a bit. the creatures specifically mentioned are probably giant rats, giant wolf spiders, and twig blights, based on the descriptions from jawbone.

all of these are CR 1/8, or 25 XP each. 80000 would give an xp total of 2,000,000, which would put each of the ratgrinders at around 11th level, a little higher level than the bad kids at the moment. however, since their fighting prowess scaled up, and they're probably going out in elmville and actively hindering the bad kids in some way, that level is very likely to increase.

what we saw in the episode

now the sticking point is mary ann rolling a 35. we know she got some kind of transmutation buff. a little tricky wording from brennan; fabian had enhance ability on, which is a transmutation spell. he did not say it was enhance ability.

mary ann is a barbarian, so she already gets advantage on athletics if she's raging, which i assume she was. the buff probably wouldn't be something that grants advantage.

assuming the lower estimate of 11th level, mary ann would get a +4 proficiency bonus, and i'm assuming she has 20 in strength, so +5 to her strength based skills, for a total of +9. at the high estimate of level 17, she would have a +6 to her proficiency bonus, which would give her a total of +11 to athletics. this is still not high enough to get a 35, even on a nat 20, which brennan would have declared if he had rolled one. she could conceivably accomplish this with the brawny feat, which allows for expertise in the athletics skill, which would give her a +17, meaning she could hit a 35 on a 18.

or, the buff was something like skill empowerment, which is a 5th level transmutation spell that gives the target expertise in a skill that they already have proficiency in. this spell is available to bards and wizards, among other classes, both of which we presume are in the ratgrinders. ruben could have cast skill empowerment on mary ann and given her bardic inspiration (lower estimate: d10, higher estimate: d12), both of which would have enabled that 35.

judging by the implication that she could not accomplish that feat without some kind of buff, i'm going with the latter explanation.

anyway i did too much math for this to not go in the stats series, or the school series. so this will be added to the spreadsheet later.

i hope this is useful.

#dimension 20 #fantasy high junior year

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Ablative Humanity

An old story about mechsuits and identity, copied from my former twitter account (originally written on August 10th, 2018).

So the war comes, and we have to use mechanical exoskeletons to have any chance of fighting back. They're mind-linked, so you control them by just thinking of moving, and they learn from you to get better, predict your motions, and you become a better fighter.

At first you're just wearing it for when you go out on raids, or when you're on guard duty, but after so many surprise raids you end up wearing it all the time.

it's comfortable enough to live in, and with the sensors hooked up you don't really feel "you" anymore, you feel the suit. After a while it starts to feel weird when you have to take it off for a medical check up.

In the early days, you felt "big" in the suit. now you feel "small" when you take it off. You stop taking it off, as much as possible. towards the end of the war you're wearing it for weeks at a time, then months at a time.

Finally, the enemy is pushed back. Security can exist again, the random raids slowly trail off, and slowly things settle down. you remember what "calm" is.

There's never a treaty, but at least you're no longer staying up for days at a time watching the horizon with the suit's far-beyond-human eyes, watching for an attack. You're no longer keeping a satellite feed up in the corner of your vision, watching for movement.

And the day you were waiting for, at least at first, finally comes. You're going home. The war is over, or over enough that you're no longer needed here. You can take off the suit for the last time, and go back to your pre-war life.

You approach that appointment with some trepidation. you've felt so weak and tiny and powerless when you've had to be outside the suit before, will you ever get used to being a normal human again?

It takes three techs and 2 doctors to get the suit open at this point, given all the armor and modifications that have been made. it's basically grown around you like a second skin, just a second skin that can shrug off high-explosive anti-tank rounds.

They start with computer connectors and migrate to screwdrivers and by the end they're using something that looks like halfway between a crowbar and the jaws of life, while you're busy keeping your automatic self-defense reactions from frying them.

And finally they crack it open, and someone vomits from the smell. There's nothing but a decaying corpse inside.

There's confusion at first, someone asks if you're controlling the suit remotely, but they check the dogtags. Then the DNA. It's you. or, "you". Cause you're you, aren't you? This is just a human body... and you're still alive.

The suit's mind-link systems grew into your brain and took over functionality and worked on emulating your reactions so it could do what you want, better, faster.

And at the same time, your mind did what human minds do: they adapt. Humans are naturally cyborgs, you only have to pick up a pencil to realize that. It's part of your body image, and you think of moving the pencil, not moving your fingers to move the pencil.

So your human mind got more robotic, and the suit's computerized mind got more human. At some point you met in the middle.

And then one day on the battlefield when the biological half died, you didn't even notice. It was just another redundant part, just your ablative humanity.

You're still you. You're not the you that was born all those decades ago, but the you that was built and given life by bonding with a biological "you" that you've since discarded.

It's the Ship of Theseus, replacing every plank and beam as they rot, and there never being a point when it stops being the original and starts being a new thing. You have continuity of self from when you were born to now.

It's just that the Ship of Theseus started as a single-sail wooden ship with oars, and is now an aircraft carrier made of titanium and iron, with nuclear fire in its heart.

#creative writing #not mine #transhumanism #mecha #humanity

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Look, I can understand that Kristen has MULTIPLE issues she needs to deal with and that affects her relationship with her faith and know that it's probably going to be a whole arc for her this season while ALSO just not liking the way she treats Cassandra.

#dimension 20 #fantasy high junior year #cassandra d20 #cassandra #kristen applebees #big mood

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I would have updated earlier but The Horrors (depression) got me.

Anyway the hiatus clocked in at just about eleven (11) actual months.

Also, amusingly, the hiatus was apparently to resolve a continuity snarl and/or make sure they had the plot going forward figured out, and meanwhile now that the story has resumed one of the characters vanished at some point from one place and popped back up in a different place half-way across the continent, and it's unclear when or how that happened.

It has been nine (9) IRL months since Girl Genius put the main plot on pause to do this sidestory about a dragon and a librarian going treasure-hunting.

There have been people who got pregnant during this hiatus, who have since given birth. Whole entire babies have been brought into the world. Wild.

#girl genius #god bless the foglios i wouldn't have it any other way #like Bang was ON Rat Island with everyone #she was instrumental in ESCAPING #and then she vanished #got to the Empire ahead of Agatha #and is back working for Gil like it ain't no thang

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Girl Genius, left to right and top to bottom: Lucrezia Mongfish, Dmitri Vapnoople, Klaus Wulfenbach Tarvek Sturmvoraus, Gilgamesh Wulfenbach, Zeetha Daughter of Chump Da Boyz / the Jaegers in general, Agatha Heterodyne, Bangladesh DuPree

New Meme Alignment Chart came to me in a fit of Mania this morning. Have fun kids!

#girl genius #alignment chart

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this is entirely me being very curious about how well people can guess what others will do and self sort. so to that end:

PLEASE DO NOT TELL PEOPLE PERCENTAGES OR GIVE ANY HINTS IN THE NOTES

and pls reblog for sample size :)

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Tournament 2 : Characters with Demigods' names

Semifinals

Demigods they share a name with :

- Perseus, son of the Greek god Zeus and a mortal, the princess Danae

- Gilgamesh : demigod, son of the Mesopotamian goddess Nissun and (according to some sources) the Sumerian king Lugalbanda

#girl genius #we who are about to die salute you

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Reading Be the Serpent

Man, Luna really said 'mortal' with the hard 'R' there.

#october daye #october daye spoilers #be the serpent #seanan mcguire

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#star wars #jedi positivity #yeah i'll reblog that

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🚨 SCAM JOB ALERT🚨

Watch out for any job listings that claim you’ll cruise the seas for American gold, fire no guns, and shed no tears. These are all scams and the job is NOT as advertised. Source: I fell for it and am now a broken man on a Halifax pier

#it's been six years since we sailed away AND I JUST MADE HALIFAX YESTERDAY

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Satine, obviously.

Vote away, my fellow fans of honor-simping, flying bucket heads!

#Star Wars #gar saxon even meriting a spot is hilarious #there are way better choices

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Overworked Blorbo Battle Round 4 Poll: 3

#Gil is bi/sapio-demisexual and poly (if we're getting into representation which I absolutely will if other people are) #Luisa tragically isn't even implied or coded to be gay (nor nontraditionally feminine other than buff) and never talks to an unrelated woma #Luisa has her hands full with A Town #Gil is responsible for Many Towns #if he has a livestock problem they spit acid and eat people #and he can't deal with them himself so he has to send a squad (and deal with the casualty and bereavement paperwork after) #because man-eating acid cows are the Least of the never-ending problems he doesn't have time for #he hasn't slept in Years due to the aforementioned problems (also because someone will get ideas and attempt to assassinate him) #the first time we see him rest after the timeskip it's a coma #also he has a copy of his overbearing father stuck In his brain against his will #which will take over his body whenever it feels he's acting against the empire's best interests #also also one of the aforementioned Problems is the timetraveling main antagonist infecting people with mind control parasites #[joking] #[light hearted] #vote gil. he's dying.

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Overworked Blorbo Battle Round 4 Poll: 3

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Basically. I got screwed.

I am very sorry for how relatively quiet this blog has been but I've been dealing with a very unpleasant situation the last few months, and now I need help.

Essentially, I tried to help someone out, and she took advantage of me, and I have no way to recoup my losses.

Earlier this year, I moved house. Before we sold the old house, a Now-Former friend ran into some trouble and was about to become homeless with pets and a small child. Not wanting them to be on the street, we offered to let her rent the old house at a severe discount to cover the cost of the two mortgages. No profit to us, just helping her out.

Instead, she:

Never Paid a Dime of Rent ($12,000 for the nine months she was there)

Trashed the house ($500 dump fees for the trash alone)

Let her pets piss and shit all over the house ($1,500 bio hazard cleanup, $4000 to replace the carpet and other damaged flooring)

Caused an electrical issue in the garage ($900 to repair)

Broke the washer, dryer and refrigerator ($2500 to replace)

Broke the FENCE ($1000 to repair)

Illegally squatted in the house for a solid three months and I had to hire a lawyer and actually take her to court to get her to leave ($2,500 because she dragged it out)

The resulting stress has been, as you can imagine, stressful. So stressful, in fact, that my Husband developed acute medical issues, had to go to the hospital, and take time off work to recover. Now the health insurance is trying to weasel out of paying his short-term disability claim.

So net, this woman has managed to cost me around $25,000 and that's not taking into account the missed paychecks and medical expenses. I do not have $25,000, and until at least $13,000 of that is spent to repair the damage she did, I cannot sell the house to even begin to recoup my losses.

Theoretically, I could sue this woman, but she doesn't have any money, or a job to garnish wages from, and it would be me paying even more money I don't have to get... Nothing.

If you can help out in any way-share, donate spare change, anything- I'd be extremely grateful.

Thank you.