At the time of the hot doggy encounter there was about 44h left until floor collapse. Belphagor gives up 39h from then and Drew comes off physical violence penalty in 30.
At dinner that night we have 38 until collapse, and 24 until Drew gets magic back which means there's 33 more hours of demon storm. There's 33 more miles to go. I think we'll cover ground pretty damn fast once the demons are gone, most other enemies are killed by the demons and Drew's full power. I think we'll cover fuck all distance at night with Drew nerfed. We have enough time under better conditions still to come that we should make it to the staircase without trying to squeeze in a bit more in the dark. Better to sleep while we can.
I don't see a need to start getting elaborate with specifying distractions or modes of movement when we set off - the PCs have been doing this for days and they can see the terrain, we can't.
[x] Get some sleep
BTW, I said invulnerability should have gone to Moose not Taylor. Taylor simply doesn't have the build or the role to use a few seconds of face tanking to any good effect. Just like they did hot doggy and not hot Taylor even though pyrophilia is Taylor's spell and he has the fire gel - he doesn't have the rest of the package to make it work.
[X] Plan Friendly neighborhood demon summoner
-[x] Sleep through the night
-[x] Have Taylor figure out how to use his yoyos to swing Spidey style so he can cover ground faster while Leo hovers at top speed and Drew rides doggyback
Nerfed Invulnerability while writing chapter 44 because I realized that spell level should factor in. It will get stronger as it hits thresholds. Fortunately, it's never been used so there's nothing to retcon. Unsurprisingly, it gets used in chapter 44. New version:
Spell: Invulnerability
Cost: 40 MP
Cooldown: 30 hours
Target: Self Duration: (Intelligence / 5) seconds
Duration: (Intelligence / 20) + (Spell Level / 4) seconds, rounded up
The recipient is immune to damage.
"We're a lot more likely to get spotted if we're moving at night," Drew said.
Taylor took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "All things considered, I think we need to get some sleep. We can focus on making better time in the morning."
"Needs to be way better," Calliope grumbled.
"Then we'll make it better!" Taylor snapped. He slammed his mouth closed and made himself breathe slowly for several seconds, eyes closed, as he struggled to get his temper under control. "Sorry," he said, barely meaning it. "Look, Leo, we've been hiking hard or fighting basically every minute of the last twelve hours. Maybe you're all youthful energy and pep in your step, but I'm fucking tired. I'm going to bed. We'll sleep until morning, eat, and then get on the road."
Calliope looked with pleading eyes to Levi. "Tell him, Levi. Tell him we can't afford to stop here."
Levi blew out a slow, thoughtful breath and then gave a shrug that rippled across both sets of shoulders. "Both positions are valid, Calliope," he said. "Neither one is indisputably the right move but, being honest, I would probably make the same choice as Taylor. Opposition in this area is extremely high and if you're holding up torches at night as you travel then you're going to be visible for miles while not being able to defend yourselves as well. On top of that, given your Constitution score, you probably aren't feeling the strain of the day too much yet, but you'll be out on your feet if you try to go straight through for another thirty-five hours. Tired crawlers get dead easy. You're going to need to stop to sleep at some point, so it might as well be now."
"But it's eight hours until the sun comes up! And what then—we hike for another sixteen hours until it gets dark, then we hole up again for eight more?"
"I'll be off punishment by then," Drew muttered around his joint. "With my Torch spell available it will be safer and easier to move around at night. Plus, I'll be combat effective again."
Calliope didn't have a response for that.
"Good night," Taylor said firmly, standing up and striding for the counter where the Bopca proprietor waited to exchange cash for bed rentals.
o-o-o-o
Calliope hadn't pushed it after Taylor went to bed, but she did get them up an hour before dawn and insist that they hurry out the door the instant there was enough light to see their feet.
"Could have done with a coffee," Drew groused. "Fuck me I hate mornings."
Calliope pulled a cardboard takeaway cup out of her inventory and handed it to Drew with a grin. "I even put in all the cream and seven sugars."
"You are the best," Drew mumbled in between slurps of coffee.
"I don't suppose you got two of those for me, did you?" Taylor asked hopefully.
"Nope," Calliope said, popping the 'p'. "No coffee for mean old uncles who cost us lots and lots of time. You should have gotten it while we were there."
An instant of rage at the spiteful little brat flashed along Taylor's spine, but he clamped down on it and forced his voice to stay mild. "You didn't give us time to get anything," he said. "You ripped the blanket off of me, shoved two sausage and egg muffins into my hands, and told me to get moving. We were out the door before my brain finished booting up."
"Not my fault you're old," Calliope said with a magnificent shrug and an even more magnificent disregard for her own safety.
Moose was in his smallest size, about that of a labrador. He had been silent since they left the saferoom, his head up and constantly sniffing at the air. He spoke for the first time, cutting across the sniping.
Moose: THERE ARE RED-TAGGED MOBS JUST AHEAD! THEY WEREN'T ON MOOSE'S MAP BUT THEN THEY APPEARED WHEN WE GOT CLOSE! MOOSE THINKS THEY HAVE A STEALTH ABILITY THAT MOOSE COULD NOT SEE THROUGH UNTIL WE GOT CLOSE!
"Hide!" Taylor hissed.
"Fuck that!" Callipe shouted, launching herself forward with her sword in hand, her skateboard letting her glide rapidly across the rubble. "We've got no time for hiding, Unc! HEY, YOU STUPID FUCKS! OVER HERE!"
"I am going to murder that kid," Taylor said as he ran after his niece at the best pace he could make on the rubble. Moose zipped past him, his stable quadpredal form letting him make better speed while constantly recovering from stumbles. The ground-up concrete they were hiking across scattered to the sides and behind him like gravel from the tires of a racecar. Drew came in the rear; he couldn't attack anything or defend himself, but he could use scrolls to support the others.
Taylor couldn't tell what this area had been before the notional disaster of the Scolopendra attack, but now it was a sea with 'waves' ten feet high of shattered concrete, gravel, and rebar. Surviving fragments of walls, a mix of red brick and gray concrete, stood here and there like scraggled teeth. In some places there were random pylons...towers...big round cylinders of broken-off concrete with steel bars sticking out the top because sure, why not? At this point Taylor had given up on imagining that the showrunners cared about plausibility of design. This was some producer, probably more stoned than Drew on an afterwork Friday, going "Duuuude...you know what would be awesome? A huge fuckin' sea of shifty rocks and big ol' stone trees!"
Team Trick Shot was hiking through a small forest of the pylons, ranging in diameter from one to five meters. They leaned at various drunken angles, a frozen stick-figure moment depicting towering angry schoolmarms scolding overcaffeinated kindergarteners. (Oh, hey, wasn't there a 'not a place of honor' vibe to it? Cool, maybe they would all die of radiation poisoning before the monsters got them!) They were dense enough to break line of sight after a couple dozen meters, providing plenty of room for murderous games of hide-and-seek between mobs and crawlers.
Taylor broke out into a small 'clearing' where Calliope was busily going all murderhobo on the bad guys. The bad guys in question were five spider-like demons with clawed arms instead of legs and two-meter necks that looked like giant gray worms. Atop the necks were the faces of human women, their proportions distorted just enough to dwell firmly in the uncanny valley. They had short, spiky hair, each a different color that never occurred in nature: cyan, tangerine, blue, pink, and green. The demons' carapaces were so hot they glowed a dull red.
Moose was in his elephant-sized form and playing smash tag with the cyan-haired one at the edge of the clearing; he couldn't get an effective bite because the thing was so hot that even brief contact burned him, so he was having to settle for knocking it around with quick slaps of his paws even as it stabbed and burned him with its massively-clawed front arms.
The green-haired demon, the largest, was busy trying to pull Calliope's sword out of its front left knee joint, shriek-chittering as it did.
The remaining three demons scuttled towards Calliope as she pinballed around the rubble on her skateboard, ramped off a tumble of rocky trash, bounced off a pylon, and dropped wheels-first onto the one in the lead.
Taylor's heart nearly stopped as the demon's tentacular neck lashed out, smashing its tangerine-haired head at Calliope like a flail. Calliope pivoted to the side, dodging the attack with a millimeter to spare, and flipped her Marston's Cord around the demon's neck in a noose.
"Time to ride, motherfucker!" the catgirl shouted before turning gravity and falling away from the demon.
Falling up.
There was a sickening crack as the force of Calliope's fall slammed into the monster's slender neck. An instant later her board got too far from the monster and the Gravity Resurfacing effect switched off.
She fell on her side, landing on the monster's red-hot carapace with a sizzle of scorching fur and a scream of pain before rolling off to the side, her board clutched tight in one hand. Her health dropped and then returned to full as she slammed her Heal spell.
The two surviving and undistracted demons crouched and spat, cords of webbing flying from their mouths towards Calliope. She curled into a ball, holding her board over herself like a shield, and managed to block the strand fired by the blue-haired demon. The demon hissed with delight as it yanked the board out of her hands. The other strand, the one from the pink-haired demon, hit her on the ankle. She cried out, her health bar dropping once again as the acidic webbing ate into her flesh.
"Tay!" Drew shouted. Taylor Gold glanced over his shoulder in time to see Drew throwing something long and thin at him. He reached out and snatched it out of the air by sheer reflex before registering what it was: the scissor-equipped Bident of the Big-Brain Gnomes.
Meanwhile, Taylor Blue hadn't stopped as he entered the clearing at a dead run, every step a scramble. The pink-haired demon was pulling Calliope towards itself like a fisherman with a massive grouper on the line and the blue-haired one skittered forward with the skateboard upraised in its front arms, clearly intending to beat the girl to death with her own tool. Taylor body-flickered across the last few meters of rubble to intercept the charging demon.
Taylor's Skyhawk whirled to the side, shifted to maximum mass, and slammed into the chest of the charging demon.
The impact cracked the demon's carapace and slammed it hard enough to stop it in its tracks. It staggered, although multiple legs (well, arms) kept it from falling until it could shake off the pain.
Taylor Gold appeared next to Calliope, who was having her ass and back scraped raw by being dragged over the rough ground. Taylor scooped the demonic webbing into the gap of the bident and yanked on the weapon's lever. The blades scissored together, snipping the webbing away.
"Forget me, cut their necks!" Calliope shouted, kipping to her feet. "Board, to me!" She reached out one hand, her Summon Object yanking the stolen skateboard out of the blue-haired demon's clawed hands and across the twenty feet of empty space between them. The webbing the demon had spat to capture it in the first place was still attached and the board smashed to a halt somewhere between the demon and Calliope. The much heavier demon leaned its head and neck back slightly and hissed in satisfaction as it grabbed the webbing and started pulling the board hand-over-hand back towards itself.
"Fine," Calliope grunted, releasing her spell. Suddenly unresisted, the demon's pull yanked the board in so that it bounced off the creature's hands. It grunted in pain but its health bar didn't go down. Calliope had already turned away, a flick of her wrist unlooping the Marston's Cord from around the dead demon's neck and back towards herself.
Taylor wasn't letting the grass grow under his feet. The fourth demon, green-haired and largest of the group, had finally managed to get the sword out of its knee and was charging at Calliope with a steamwhistle of hellish rage that sent the others skittering back. Taylor Blue, his body flicker off cooldown, appeared in front of it, the bident zipping through inventory from one body to the other. He braced the base of the weapon against the ground, aimed it at the demon's chest, and slapped the faintly-glowing slider on the shaft.
The bident went from five feet to fifteen in a fraction of a second. The monster was going at least fifteen miles an hour when it ran into the extending tips of the bident; the combined speed made the weapon bury itself to the base of the nine-inch tines in the monster's flesh. The demon's breath was knocked completely out of it in a wheezing grunt and it stopped dead, clutching at the weapon. A moment later its limbs all went limp and it clattered to the ground, its health bar zeroed out. An achievement pinged in Taylor's HUD but he waved it away.
Calliope: Have some style! Catchphrase!
"Tricked you, motherfucker," Taylor Blue growled.
Meanwhile, Taylor Gold was repeatedly smashing his Skyhawk into the pink-haired demon, the one that had previously webbed Calliope's ankle. The monster's health bar was going down with each strike, but painfully slowly. Its forward arms flashed out towards Taylor in blurring stabs that he barely managed to dodge. Its mouth gaped as it spat fragments of acidic webbing at him in a constant barrage.
"Fine," he growled under his breath after a few inconclusive seconds. "Try this, bitch." He flickered forward, crossing the intervening distance in zero time and appearing directly in front of the demon's nose. Its head snapped forward, mouth dropped open in delight with orange fangs gaping wide—
"Invulnerability," Taylor said, smashing the spell on his hot list. A 2-second timer appeared on his HUD as a glimmer of wintergreen light went across his body, making him shudder involuntarily. He punched forward, shoving his fist down the creature's throat up to the shoulder. The demon gagged in surprise.
"Lock," Taylor said. The Skyhawk that he had been palming froze in place, becoming inviolable and immovable as Taylor opened his hand and jumped back. His bicep caught on the demon's fangs; one of them broke but the other was sufficient to hold him in place until the too-short timer clicked down to zero and his invulnerability ended.
The demon's entire body was hot enough to glow slightly red, its throat was filled with traces of acidic webbing, Taylor Gold's arm was stuck in its mouth up to the shoulder, and his teleportation was on cooldown for another nine seconds.
The mob was gagging and flailing, too distracted by the yo-yo it was choking on to bite Taylor's arm off, but it was thrashing around hard enough that he couldn't disengage. Its health was dropping as it suffocated but it wasn't dead yet.
Both of Taylor screamed, Blue going to the ground like a string-cut puppet while Gold yanked frantically on his arm even as his nerves lit up with shrieking agony. His health was dropping fast so he frantically slammed down a potion from his hot list. He punched the demon in the nose again and again with his free hand, burning his knuckles but knocking the mob's head back and stunning it. The movement jammed its lower fangs deeper into Taylor's arm in a wave of pain that sent him to his knees, vision covered up in sparking static.
Then someone was there, grabbing his hand and positioning it atop a metal thing...a lever?
"Pull!" Drew shouted.
Still unable to see through the static, unable to think, Taylor yanked hard on the lever.
There was a schunk! sound as the bident's tines scissored together through the demon's flesh. The monster's head and neck came free from the body, cooling almost instantly to ambient temperature. It was enough to let Taylor catch his breath and clear his eyes, upon which he found that Drew was prying the demon's mouth open while wearing a pair of rubberized oven mitts. (Overstock bin at Walmart, cost $0.99 for the pair.) Taylor extracted his arm gratefully. It was a mass of blisters from bicep to fingertip. His sleeve had been enough to prevent more than mild chemical burns from the demon's acidic webbing, but his hand was a ruin. He looked around blearily to find that the clearing was flooded in a Confusing Fog effect that no longer mattered because the fight was over. He slumped to the earth, cradling his destroyed hand.
Moose: IS TAYLOR OKAY?!
The massive dog had finally decided that slap-fighting wasn't getting the job done and settled his fight by biting through the neck of his opponent, even though it had meant burning his mouth horribly. Fortunately, a potion was enough to fix it and now he was free to focus on nosing frantically at Taylor Gold.
"'m fine," Taylor mumbled from both mouths, trying and failing to push Moose's snoot away before the tongue bath began. Moose put a foot on his chest and pinned him firmly in place, then started licking rapidly at Taylor's scorched arm.
Moose: TAYLOR WILL LIE STILL! MOOSE NEEDS TO WORK ON HIS SLOBBERY SMOOCHES SKILL! TAYLOR HAS BEEN VERY SELFISH THUS FAR, ALWAYS HEALING HIMSELF AND NEVER LETTING MOOSE PRACTICE!
Taylor Gold laughed weakly and let it happen, meanwhile standing Blue up and surveying the wreckage.
Moose had bitten the head off the cyan-haired demon, Calliope had hung the tangerine-haired one, Taylor had speared the green-haired one and scissored off the head of the pink-haired one...
"Where's the one with the blue hair?" he asked.
"It ran off after I popped fog," Drew said. He took a drag on his joint and held the smoke, making his voice tight and funny as he continued, "I would have shot it but, y'know, couldn't."
"You saved my ass, so I'd say that's more than enough," Taylor said fervently.
Moose: MOOSE IS WORRIED THAT THE ESCAPED DEMON WILL TELL ITS FRIENDS WHAT HAPPENED AND THEY WILL ALL COME BACK TO BEAT US UP!
"Yeah, me too," Taylor said. He looked down at his arm. Moose's Slobbery Smooches skill was only level 3 and did not work as quickly as a healing potion. The heat burns on the arm itself were mostly healed but the ruined mess of his hand, suffering both from heat- and chemical burns, was not visibly better. He took a potion and his health bar returned to full. The hand did not improve.
The others had gathered around to see what was happening; Calliope winced at the sight.
"And this is why we don't go charging in," Taylor said. He immediately regretted the words as Calliope looked utterly stricken.
He sighed. "Forget it," he said. "I'll deal. Moose, let me up." He pushed hard on Moose's ankle and, reluctantly, the big dog stepped back and let his person stand.
"We need to get moving," Taylor said.
Calliope brightened as a thought struck. "Wait! Got an idea," she said. She pulled a poncho out of inventory and dropped it over herself. There were several seconds of wiggling around and then the poncho disappeared, leaving her in a Seattle Seahawks jersey with a T-shirt in her hands. It was the one she had gotten in her very first Gold box upon entering the dungeon. It was bright pink and had a unicorn on the front.
"Put this on," she said. She nodded impatiently at Taylor's expression. "I know, I know, it's girly and all. It's also got a Regeneration benefit."
Taylor hesitated. On the one hand, potentially healing for his maimed appendage. On the other hand, his followers were going to laugh their asses off, and might jump ship. The wider universe almost definitely had homophobes and toxic-masculinity asshats who would raise a stink about him wearing something girly.
He sighed and took the shirt. He struggled out of his own T-shirt (also dungeon loot, but all it did was grant +1 Strength) and into Calliope's pink and unicorn-equipped shirt. Fortunately, like all dungeon loot, it resized itself to fit him.
"Thanks," he said. "Now help me cut my yo-yo out of that thing's throat and then let's go find that staircase."
o-o-o-o
The sea of rubble had held out for another fifteen miles after that first encounter with the demons. As expected, the blue-haired demon had run off and tattled to its friends, meaning that those fifteen miles took twenty hours and involved no less than seven fights with progressively higher numbers of enemies as the demons dialed in the team's position and swarmed to the attack.
The battles had been brutal, chewing through the team's supply of potions and exhausting their Confusing Fog scrolls. On the other hand, it had been great for advancement. Calliope, Moose, and Drew had all gone to level 19 while Taylor had gone to 20. Everyone had seen most of their skills rise by at least one level, if not more. Moose's Pathfinder skill had reached level 5 and the radius of his map had jumped by fifty percent. His Danger Sense had also reached level 5 and become far more sensitive, allowing him to spot stealthed enemies from farther away—which was good, because there were more and more of the damned things.
Drew's punishment time had finally expired, returning to him his ability to use spells. Without his newly-restored firepower, the team would have died multiple times. He rode atop Moose, in part because he had by far the lowest Constitution in the group and couldn't have kept up on foot and in part because it gave him a better angle to act as a moving sentry gun, especially in combination with his Ring of Overwatch, which gave a 25% damage bonus when firing on a downward angle.
The team hadn't dared stop for the night; they had passed only two saferooms the entire time and neither were workable. The first had been on the very edge of Moose's Pathfinder-enhanced map, too far out of their way. They had passed the second two hours later, but they hadn't stopped for fear that the squad of demon rhinos dogging their steps might camp the door and call for backup.
Finally, finally they had broken out of the sea of rubble and into a stretch of post-apocalyptic suburbia, where there were broken and potholed streets to run on and half-demolished houses to hide within. They had more than twenty miles to go and only ten hours left before the floor collapsed. Easy enough for a marathon runner on paved roads who didn't need to fight a continuous running battle against the legions of hell. A trifle more challenging for Team Trick Shot.
Three hours and five miles later they gave up on any attempt at stealth. Sixteen miles to go, seven hours to get there. They took a straight line, smashing through opposition without bothering to fight unless they had to. Most of the demons were slower than Team Trick Shot when the Terrans were really moving, but leaving a line of surviving enemies in their wake meant that more and more demons were portaling in ahead of them, making it harder to make progress.
Moose: MOOSE DOES NOT LIKE HOW LONG TAYLOR GOLD HAS BEEN BACK THERE! MOOSE WOULD LIKE YOU TO POP IN, PLEASE!
"Relax," Taylor Blue said. He was running alongside the big dog, clutching onto one of the straps of Moose's harness and letting it take part of his weight so that he could run longer and faster. Calliope was skitching behind while Drew rode; Moose's ridiculous Constitution allowed him to sustain his version of a fast jog despite his loads. "I'll be along in a minute. I'm playing tag with a bunch of those rat demons and I don't want them close enough to do that swarm trick agai...oh, shit."
Taylor Gold appeared with a poit! of displaced air.
"Yeah, we should probably go faster," Taylor said.
Calliope looked back over her shoulder. "Oh shit."
A mile or two behind them, the sky had turned red and black as dozens of house-sized portals opened up and spewed forth what seemed like an unending stream of flying demons. They were too far back to make out the details, but the things moved faster than the vulture demons and were larger than the forerunner imps. They were so thick in the sky that they seemed like a single amoeboid entity.
Moose: TAYLOR SHALL MOUNT! MOOSE IS GOING TO RUN FAST!
Taylor didn't argue; he teleported Blue onto Moose's back behind Drew and clung tight to his friend's waist, both of them leaning forward to reduce wind resistance as much as possible. Gold found the best cover he could and hid.
Once Taylor was secure, Moose put the hammer down. He stretched out, close to the ground and bounding forward in long leaps. His wings, still too sore to fly, stretched partway out and tilted down at the front, both to help with balance and to act as a spoiler that pressed him to the ground so that he could go faster on the straightaways and corner on the curves without hurling himself into the sky or having his paws slide out from under him.
Behind the team, the demons shrieked and swarmed towards them.
"Suck on this!" Taylor Gold shouted, stepping out of cover and tossing a six-foot section of PVC pipe onto his shoulder. He braced it with his mangled right hand, aiming it vaguely in the direction of the demons, and brought the blowtorch in his undamaged left hand to the touchhole on the potato cannon.
A combustion chamber full of acetylene went boom and a fist-sized chunk of PVC went whoosh into the sky, aimed for the leading edge of the demonic sky river. The demons flitted away from the projectile with contemptuous ease, cawing their derision.
And then the distributor cap inside the improvised missile went off and spread piranha solution across the sky.
The horrific stuff destroyed eyes, melted membranous wings, and erased sensitive antennae. Demons fell from the air, shrieking in agony. The entire swarm, thousands strong, abandoned their pursuit of Moose and the others in favor of descending on Taylor Gold's position.
Taylor Gold dropped the potato cannon back into his inventory and waited as the spiked and pincered and screaming demons closed the distance with horrifying speed.
"Drew, give me a couple of your shotgun buckshot!" Taylor Blue shouted over the rush of air from Moose's passage. He unwrapped his right hand from Drew's waist enough to hold it out.
"Three left after this!" Drew said, dropping two of the shells into his hand.
The lead demon of the swarm pounced on Taylor Gold with a shriek of delight...which instantly changed to frustration as the crawler disappeared an instant before being eviscerated. A small canister fell to the ground where he had been standing.
"Boom, bitch!" Taylor cried, standing up from behind a crumbled piece of wall a few meters away. He threw his shotgun to his shoulder, sighted in on the canister, and fired twice before immediately ducking for cover.
The buckshot shredded its metallic victim and spilled the thing's contents into the air. The contents were not propane, nor acetylene, nor piranha solution, nor anything so friendly. No, this little container held the last of Taylor's chlorine trifluoride.
The high-pressure gas spraying from the buckshot-torn hole acted like a small jet engine, making the canister tumble and bounce across the rough ground, lighting the dirt and concrete on fire as it went. It hit a minor obstruction and hopped three feet into the air, still jetting gaseous horror everywhere.
Half a dozen demons were caught in the gas as the entire area promptly went up in flames so bright they seared vision. Not Taylor's vision, since he was running away as fast as his feet would carry him, crouching low in an instinctive desire to avoid the disaster that was happening behind him.
The demons ignored him for several seconds, circling around their unfortunate comrades while cawing forth what was all too clearly mocking laughter. Several of them got too close and promptly caught fire as well, startling the rest into swirling back and away. They watched in amazement as their comrades burned to horrific ash, and then the ash continued to burn. It was a full minute before they finally remembered that they were supposed to be hunting down and killing humans.
Taylor Gold led the swarm a merry chase through the ruins, periodically teleporting away from attacks while leaving behind thoughtful gifts of piranha solution and kobold fire gel. He killed easily three dozen of the demons, leveling up to 21 in the process. It made no difference whatsoever to the size of the swarm. There were thousands of the things and they were spreading out, covering more and more ground at various altitudes. The topmost ones acted as spotters for the ones lower down, calling out his position every time he moved to a new piece of cover.
He could have teleported away, returned to where Moose was carrying Blue and the others to the stairwell, but he couldn't afford to. Moose was carrying two people while towing another and the big dog was already tired when this started. Moose could run nearly twenty miles an hour across the current terrain, but that still meant forty-ish minutes to reach the stairwell if he could even keep that pace. The demons were fast enough to catch up quickly, so Taylor Gold needed to buy the group every possible moment that he could. Fortunately, the demons' pack instinct was too strong for them to split into separate groups and hunt both Taylor Gold and the rest of the party.
"C'mon, assholes!" Taylor Gold shouted from atop a half-collapsed house. "I'm here to chew bubble gum and kick demon ass, and I'm all out of bubble gum!" He turned and jumped down as the demon swarm came for him.
o-o-o-o
Taylor Blue jerked and would have fallen off of Moose's back if Drew hadn't felt him go slack. The stoner twisted around and grabbed him, holding him in place until Taylor shook off the stun.
"You okay?!" Drew shouted, the wind snatching the words from his mouth.
"Fine!" Taylor called back. "No worries!"
Taylor waited to check his stat sheet until Drew had faced forward. As he suspected, his Constitution had been cut in half.
o-o-o-o
An exhausted and panting Moose staggered to a halt on the lip of the stairwell. The humans slid off of him quickly, wanting to relieve the big dog's burden as soon as possible.
Moose had, unsurprisingly, not been able to sprint for sixteen miles. Eventually he needed to slow to a fast jog as he panted in a desperate attempt to dump heat. Taylor pulled two five-pound bags of ice out of his inventory; he and Drew each held one against the dog's heaving sides. They melted within minutes and Taylor dropped the sloshing bags back into inventory. Hopefully there would be a chance to refreeze them at some point. Perhaps in a saferoom, since a freezer was one of the few things Taylor had not been able to bring on this expedition.
Slowed pace or not, Taylor Gold had bought enough time that Moose could stay ahead of the demon swarm.
"Yes!" Calliope said, pumping one fist. She kicked the tail of her board, snapping it up into her hand. "Humanity for the win! Suck it, demons!"
Drew took a deep drag on his joint, quiet pleasure on his face.
"No point in waiting," Taylor said. "We're inside the six-hour mark. Great job, Moose." He rubbed his very good boy's shoulder.
"Absolutely," Drew said. "You are the man, dog." He bumped his knuckles against Moose's opposite side.
"Forget humanity, Moose for the win!" Calliope said, hugging the big dog's tree trunk of a left rear leg.
Moose: MOOSE THANKS YOU ALL AND WOULD VERY MUCH LIKE TO GO DOWN THE STAIRS NOW!
"No problem," Calliope said. She glanced around. "Hey, Unc, aren't you going to port Gold in?"
"He'll join us on the next floor," Taylor said, his voice terse. He walked to the staircase and started down without waiting for further questions. "C'mon, we've got another floor of derring-do ahead of us, and I'll get another body the minute we walk through the door when my Two Body Problem skill levels up."
They reached the bottom of the steps and found an exact duplicate of the doors they had seen when descending the previous stairwells. Calliope reached out to push them open but paused when Taylor held out an arm to bar her way.
He paused to think for a moment, then nodded to himself. "Both of you, give me whatever shotgun slugs and buckshot you have left," he said. "I'm out of both, but my new body will have some or all of the gear I'm currently carrying. If we're very lucky and Our Lord is feeling generous, maybe he'll give us some more shooty stuff. The fans seem to have liked it, and shotguns are pretty awesome."
"I'm out," Calliope said, shrugging helplessly. "Plenty of birdshot left, but none of the good stuff."
"This is all I've got," Drew said, handing over ten shells loaded with slugs and three loaded with buckshot. "Pretty much shot it dry against the Vespa."
"Better than nothing," Taylor said gratefully. "If Our Lord is willing to give us more then I'll split all of it among the group. If not then I'll give these back."
Moose: MOOSE THINKS IT IS VERY UNFAIR THAT HE DOES NOT HAVE THUMBS. MOOSE WANTS TO SHOOT THINGS TOO!
Taylor snorted in amusement. "Yeah, well, I'd like to have giant chompy teeth and massive stompy paws. I guess we're both going to be disappointed."
Moose: IT IS TRUE. MOOSE IS VERY CHOMPY AND STOMPY.
Somehow, the enormous canine managed to look inordinately pleased with himself. It was something about the tilt of the head, probably.
"Moose, you should probably shrink down," Taylor said. "We don't know how big the space on the other side will be."
Moose: MOOSE DOES NOT WANT TO SHRINK! MOOSE LIKES BEING BIG AND STOMPY! MOOSE IS MUCH BETTER AT CHOMPING BAD GUYS WHEN HE IS BIG!
"Yeah, but what if we appear inside a closet and you don't fit?" Drew asked, dragging on his latest joint. "You might go squish, and that would make us all sad."
Moose chewed the air in disgruntlement for a few moments and then grumpily shrank to the size of a pony.
"Good boy," Taylor said, ruffling the dog's ears. "Let's do this." He pushed the door open and disappeared in a pixelated flash of teleportation as the AI moved him to the next floor.
He appeared with no sense of transition and staggered as the floor shifted under both of him, forcing himselves to grab onto metal poles for balance. An instant later the others stepped out of a ripple in the air, Drew staggering just as Taylor had. Moose the quadruped and Calliope the girl with literally catlike reflexes were fine.
"It's a train," Taylor Blue said, looking around at the swaying metal carriage with the plastic bench seating. It was badly lit and there was graffiti spray painted on the walls and windows; the writing was in French. "Why are we on a train?"
Welcome, Crawler to the fourth floor. "The Iron Tangle"
Sponsorship bidding initiated on Crawler #5. Bidding ends in 45 hours.
New Achievement: Too Dumb to Duck!
Congratulations, you have taken a lethal wound and don't have Cockroach or similar life-saving skills! Not sure why I'm bothering to put effort into this text, because you're going to be dead before you can finish reading it, but that's the kind of perfectionist I am! Best of all, the years that your media overlords spent programming you to believe that self-sacrifice is sexy worked, because you died to save your so-called 'friends'! I hope you aren't expecting any gratitude; they probably didn't like you anyway.
Reward: You're dead! Dead people don't get...wait a second. What the fuck, dude? How are you still alive?! Okay, you get a Gold Martyr's Box!
New Achievement: Copy Cat!
You died and then resurrected yourself in a clone body with all your memories intact! Holy shit!
Reward: You have received a Legendary Lazarus Box!
"Hang on," Calliope said, staring at him with narrowed eyes. The expression was made slightly ridiculous by the enormous hair bow she wore, each loop large enough to obstruct one of her kitty ears. "Unc, I thought you got an extra body when you hit a new floor? And why are you wearing that?"
Taylor Orange looked down. He had appeared slightly behind Blue and his other body had not looked back yet, so neither of them had noticed Orange's clothing. The blue jeans and combat boots were the same as Blue wore, but the shirt was a mesh abomination that would have fit right in at a metrosexual goth club. He reached to take it off and then aborted the motion; when the godlike AI that controlled your fate put you in ridiculous clothes, wear them for a little while. Didn't do to offend the powers that be.
"Hi," he said to Calliope, smiling easily. "I'm Taylor Orange. Gold didn't make it."
Calliope's mouth dropped open in horror but, fortunately, Drew spoke before she could.
"Acajou Line Train 17A, car 20," he said, pointing to a scrolling electronic sign with red letters. It was at the far end of the car, above a closed door that lacked the window train doors normally had.
The sign continued to scroll, saying: Next stop: Oni Station (81) in 11 minutes and 19 seconds.
"All passengers take note," a voice came through the loudspeakers. "We'll be arriving at Oni Station, station number 81, in just over ten minutes. Watch out for the mud drakes! The next transit stop is station 83, where you can transfer to the Sapphire and Coquelicot lines, and to the Flaying Express! Thank you for riding with us today."
The loudspeaker clicked and went silent.
"Well, that didn't sound good," Taylor said. "How about we—"
"Crap," Drew said, his eyes flashing as a new system message appeared in front of him. "I've got six minutes to choose a class for this floor."
Voting is open. There are three (3) things to vote on: Drew's class, the team's allocation of stat points, and your next actions. Drew's class choices are in the post one three below this one. (I was delayed and @noliar got in first!) The team's current stats and stat point totals are in post #3.
Drew's Class (options in the next post):
[][Class] name of class here
The team's stats. Current stats and available points are in post #3. Distribution will not actually happen until you reach a saferoom. All team members must be included and using the following format or the vote will be ignored. Note that Moose's points distribute automatically so he cannot be included. This is an example:
[][Stats] plan name here
-[] Calliope: Strength +1, Dexterity +2
-[] Drew: no change
-[] Taylor: Intelligence +4, Charisma +5
What to do next:
[][Action] Get off at stop 81, see what these mud drakes are about
[][Action] Get off at stop 82
[][Action] Get off at stop 83, the transit stop
[][Action] Write-in
Voting ends when discussion has run its course, but no earlier than
.
You humans are hilarious, you know that? Critical human infrastructure such as ambulance drivers and firefighters, people without whom your cities would fall apart in minutes, and how are they paid? They aren't! Mostly they are volunteers, doing it for the love of the job, and they need to work their leathery fingers to the bone saving your life and your stuff from death and destruction, then go work two or three more jobs in order to put food on the table. Stupid humans.
This is an Earth class. As an incentive to choose an Earth class, you will receive a Silver Earth Box upon choosing this class.
+5 Strength
+6 Constitution
+6 Charisma
+3 to the Stabilize skill
+3 to the First Aid spell
+10 to the Water Cannon spell
+3 to the Fast Insertion skill
Immunity to the effects of non-magical heat, including smoke inhalation
Can see normally in obscured environments (fog, smoke, etc)
Skill: Stabilize Range: Touch Time to activate: 5 seconds Cooldown: 5 minutes, target-specific
Attempts to remove each debuff from a target you are touching. Cannot be used on yourself.
"Target-specific means that the cooldown is separate for each person," Levi said. "You can use it on Calliope, then immediately use it on Taylor, then immediately use it on Moose, but you can't use it on Calliope again for five minutes. The chance of success is rolled for each debuff separately and your luck powers will help a lot."
Spell: First Aid Cost: 5 MP Cooldown: 1 minute, target-specific Range: Touch
Restores the target's health by 5% per spell level. Has a chance to remove any health-seeping debuffs.
A truly egregious jet of high-pressure water erupts from your hand. Angle of dispersion can be controlled. Suitable for dousing major structure fires and knocking enemies around like billiard balls. Volume and pressure depend on spell level.
"Fun thing about this spell," Levi said, "it exerts backwards pressure on the caster. Real firehoses don't do that, but it's what most audiences expect and it's cool, so the dungeon makes it work. At high levels you can use it as a flyboard."
Skill: Fast Insertion
When activated, your movement speed and the movement speed of any vehicle you are aboard is increased by 10% per skill level. Also, the air is filled with flashing lights and sirens.
Class: Banana Whisperer
The leveled-up version of the Banana Farmer class, this is a weird and wacky option that is still suprisingly effective.
This is an Earth class. As an incentive to choose an Earth class, you will receive a Silver Earth Box upon choosing this class.
+10 Strength
+10 Constitution
+10 Intelligence
+10 Dexterity
+10 Charisma due to your yummy 'banana and honest work' scent
+9 to the Banana Seed Cannon spell
+7 to the Banana Grower skill
+5 to the Bananimator skill
+3 to the Slippery When Banana spell
+3 to the Imbue Plant spell (banana trees only). Initial abilities:
Incendiary
Healing
Dexterity enhancement
Mystic potential
+3 to the Plant Awareness skill (bananas, banana seeds, and banana trees only)
+9 to the Golden Banana skill
A Platinum-tier Banana Republic shirt
Benefit: Banana-Enhanced Minimap
Benefit: XP Farmer (Skill XP for banana-related skills and spells is also applied to character level)
Note: For purposes of this class's abilities, you are considered to control a plant if you grew it (naturally or via abilities such as Plant Growth or Banana Grower) or if you are currently animating it.
Spell: Banana Seed Cannon Cost: 5 MP base, plus more when firing imbued seeds Range: (Spell Level) meters
This is a class-locked spell available only to certain classes.
This is an attack spell.
This is a healing spell.
This is a utility spell.
Fires magically-created banana seeds at one or more targets of your choice. You may fire up to (Spell Level) seeds per casting, splitting them among various targets as desired. The seeds have enhanced accuracy. Seeds fired at high speed will cause significant damage. Seeds fired at low speed will not cause damage and are thus useful when combined with the healing and utility abilities of Imbue Plant. Seeds in a given burst may be assigned different speeds.
At casting time, you may choose to combine this spell with Imbue Plant. If you do:
Each seed in the salvo may be assigned zero or one ability, chosen by the caster at casting time
Different seeds may be imbued with different abilities from the list of available abilities
The cost of that salvo becomes 5 + 2N mana, where N is the mana cost of the most expensive ability that was imbued
The ability activates when the seed strikes a surface
Banana trees grown from imbued seeds do not have the abilities of the seeds
Skill: Banana Grower Range: 5 meters per skill level AOE: (Skill Level) meter diameter circle, or one mature banana tree Cooldown: 30 x N minutes, where N is the number of times you have used this ability today, including this use
This is a class-locked skill available only to certain classes.
Over the course of 10 seconds all banana seeds in the AOE grow to maturity. If the seed is in an inappropriate environment (e.g. inside a living creature) then there is a chance that the skill will not affect it. This chance depends on various factors, including the skill level.
If used on a mature banana tree instead of as an AOE, the tree will immediately sprout (Skill Level + 1d5) bananas. (Reminder: If the tree was previously targeted with Imbue Plant then all of these bananas will have the ability.)
Animated trees that were grown from magically-produced seeds such as those from Banana Seed Cannon will live for ((Skill Level) x 2) minutes or until killed. Bananas grown from a tree disappear when their parent tree dies, even if kept in inventory.
Skill: Bananimator
This is a class-locked skill available only to certain classes.
You may animate one or more banana trees within (Character Level) x (Skill Level) meters of you. Animated trees will obey your mental commands without regard for distance. Animated trees will die if you command them to. Animated trees may uproot themselves and run.
Animated trees will crumble to dust when the tree dies. Note time limits imposed by the Banana Grower skill.
Animated banana trees have the following stats:
Strength: 5 x (Skill Level)
Intelligence: 0
Dexterity: Skill Level
Constitution: 10 x (Skill Level)
Charisma: 0
Speed: (Skill Level) x 2 meters / second
You may have at most (Skill Level) trees animated at any given time.
Spell: Slippery When Banana Cost: 5 MP Cooldown: 1 minute Range: (Spell Level) x 10 meters AOE: (Spell Level) meters Duration: (Spell Level) x Intelligence seconds
The designated area is covered in banana peels. Anyone attempting to cross the area will have their Dexterity and movement speed reduced, as well as a penalty to certain skills such as Acrobatics. Strength of the penalty depends on spell level.
This is a class-locked skill available only to certain classes.
Ordinarily, this spell imbues an ability to a single banana tree that you control. It can be combined with Banana Seed Cannon in order to imbue that spell's magically-created banana seeds instead. When used on a mature tree, all bananas produced by that tree will contain that ability. Mana cost of this spell depends on what abilities you imbue.
Some imbued bananas have a cooldown. The banana cooldown is similar to but distinct from the potion cooldown—all potions share the same cooldown, all bananas share the same cooldown, so if you use a healing banana then you cannot use a Dexterity-enhancement banana until the cooldown expires. Cooldown is based on spell level.
You start off with four abilities and gain an additional ability each time you descend to the next floor. Initial abilities are:
Incendiary bananas (no cooldown, 2MP each)
Healing bananas (cooldown, 5 MP each)
Dexterity enhancement (cooldown, 10MP each)
Mystic potential (no cooldown, 2 MP each)
Did you break the stem on an incendiary banana? Best not be holding it 3 seconds from now or...FWOOSH!
Mmmm. Yummy, yummy. Full of potassium and holistic bullshit, healing bananas function like healing potions but they use the banana cooldown, not the potion cooldown. Plus, they taste like bananas instead of like ass.
Dexterity enhancement bananas offer +(Spell Level x 2) Dexterity for a period of time. Banana cooldown applies. Does not stack.
Bananas with mystic potential are a highly sought-after ingredient for the creation of magical items such as potions, runestones, scrolls, etc. They are necessary to many and will enhance many others. Plus, they make potions taste nummy!
This is a class-locked skill available only to certain classes.
For normal Banana Farmers, this is a spell with short duration and short range. For master-grade farmers such as yourself, it is an always-on skill.
You can receive full-sensory data from any plant you control as though you were standing in its place. The clarity of the data depends on your skill level. NB: This class can only target bananas, banana seeds, and banana trees.
Skill: Golden Banana
Once per day and only at sunset, a banana tree that you control which reached maturity at least 3 hours ago will grow (Skill Level)x2 golden bananas. The base value of each of these bananas will be (20 x Character Level) gold. These bananas will dissolve in 10 minutes if not picked. They are permanent once picked. They can only be picked by the controller of the tree.
Benefit: Banana-Enhanced Minimap
All bananas and banana trees within the normal range of your minimap will be marked on your minimap. Additionally, all bananas and banana trees within ((Character Level) x 100) meters of you will be marked on your minimap, even if this is beyond the normal range of your minimap.
Beings (mobs, crawlers, pets, etc) who are within 10 meters of a banana or banana tree that is shown on your minimap will, by default, be marked. The map will show their name, level, type, and current health percentage. Reasons that this might not apply include stealth skills, specific racial abilities, special environmental circumstances, etc.
"Wow," Levi said. "Ranged damage, ranged healing, battlefield control, long-ranged sensory abilities, money, and minion production? That's an impressive combination."
Class: Battle Burglar
This is what happens when a Battle Klepto gits gud. Shame that law enforcement didn't do its job.
+10 Dexterity
+5 Intelligence
+6 to the Stealth skill
+6 to the Pick Pockets skill
+3 to the Find Traps skill
+3 to the Disarm Traps skill
+3 to the Master Unlocker skill
+3 to the Dodge skill
+3 to the Ninja Vanish spell
No penalty for attempting to steal worn and/or equipped items
At level 10 of Pick Pockets, you may attempt to steal from the target's inventory
Experience gained towards the Pick Pockets skill is also applied to leveling
Skill: Master Unlocker
You may attempt to open any lock, including magical ones.
"That's a rare skill," Levi said. "Hard to get and incredibly useful."
You slam a smoke pellet into the ground and are surrounded in an obscuring cloud of smoke for 2 seconds. You may teleport up to 10+(Spell Level) feet. You must use this ability before the smoke clears. You must arrive at a location that is not being observed by any in-dungeon entity. The teleportation will fail if you attempt to arrive in an observed location.
"Remember, Pick Pockets is a misleadingly-named skill," Levi said. "It's much more than simply taking things out of people's pockets. It's all about manipulating objects while in very close proximity to another being and without being noticed. You can put something into the pocket instead of taking it out, which is great if you have a locator beacon, or a miniature incendiary, or a time-release vial of contact sleeping powder, or whatever. You want to tie a guard's ankle to the desk without being noticed? Clip off his purse? Swap his ID badge for a fake as part of a frame-up? That's all Pick Pockets.
"Also, don't forget that once this class gets a high enough Pick Pockets skill it will let you literally steal the spikey brass knuckles off an enemy's fist while they're in the middle of swinging on you.
"Third, the experience you get towards Pick Pockets also goes towards leveling up. That's huge."
Class: Democratic Committee Chairman
Waah, waah, safe spaces! Waah, I'm so liberal and special! Waah, I love spending money! Waaah, I'm too dumb to do effective social messaging, and I don't have the guts to actually do what it takes to get shit done!
Eh. At least they aren't climate-change deniers.
This rare and exclusive class is only available to crawlers who:
Have a Charisma of at least 20 after spending stat points but before class bonuses
Received 500 billion views before reaching the third floor
Received 100 billion followers before reaching the third floor
Accept that yes, you humans were absolutely fubaring your climate via fossil fuels
Accept that yes, vaccines save lives and no, they do not have microchips in them
This is an Earth class. As an incentive to choose an Earth class, you will receive a Silver Earth Box upon choosing this class.
+8 Intelligence
+8 Charisma
+5 to the Daily Stipend skill
+5 to the Free Healthcare for All skill
+3 to the Gun Violence Reduction skill
+1 to the Voter Protection Legislation skill
+3 to the Climate Change Judo skill
Skill: Daily Stipend
Every 24 hours you receive a Silver 'Rank Has Its Privileges' lootbox containing ((Skill Level) x 1,000) gold pieces. This skill levels up based on how much gold you loot from dead mobs or receive in prize boxes, including prize boxes generated by this skill.
Skill: Free Healthcare for All Cost: See below Duration: (Skill Level) hours
Every commie socialist pinko America-hater loves to rant about this stuff and wave signs that say 'free health care now'. Bad news, buttercups: that shit ain't free! Somebody's gotta pay the rent, and the way you do it is by taxes. Checkmate, people with empathy and good critical thinking skills!
If you successfully activate this skill, everyone in your party, including you, receives a full heal, +(Skill Level) to the Regeneration skill, and +1 to the Mutilation Mitigation skill for the duration of the effect. This skill boost cannot exceed your skill cap (level 15 in most cases, level 20 otherwise).
When you attempt to activate this skill, everyone in your party will be taxed as follows:
Everyone is taxed 15% of their total gold.
People whose class has 'Senator' or 'President' in the name may choose to be exempt from this tax.
Each party member has the option to contribute more if desired.
If this tax raises at least 10,000 gold then the skill will activate.
If the tax does not raise enough, the skill does not activate and all of the money raised is consumed.
If more than 10,000 gold is raised then the first 10,000 will be consumed and the remainder will be distributed evenly into the inventories of all Senators in the party. If there are no Senators in the party then the gold will fall on the ground.
This skill trains based on the total non-consensual damage healed during its duration.
Does not stack with itself. Cannot be terminated early.
"Mutilation Mitigation is one of the few skills that can fix permanent damage such as missing limbs, eyes, scars, and so on," Levi said. "At level 1 it will take a long time to do that but it's a rare ability."
Skill: Gun Violence Reduction Duration: (Charisma) minutes AOE: 5+(Spell Level) meters radius around the caster Cooldown: 15 hours
Within the AOE, ranged attacks AGAINST you or your party members deal ((Spell Level) x 5)% less damage. Attacks made BY you and your party are unaffected.
Skill: Voter Protection Legislation Cooldown: 10 hours Duration: ((Charisma) x 10) seconds AOE: ((Skill Level) x 3) meters radius
Members of your party who are within the AOE are immune to debuffs and negative status conditions. Most debuffs and negative status conditions that were in effect when the skill was activated will be removed.
Buffs and positive status conditions on members of your party who are within the AOE will not expire while this skill is in effect.
Sometimes, ya gotta use climate change against itself. I know, I know, I'm blowing your mind.
Within the AOE, members of your party take ((Spell Level) x 10)% less damage from attacks based around heat, fire, cold, or ice, or that belong to the 'Storm' category. Yes, it stacks with other damage-reduction skills. Yes, it can reduce damage below zero, thereby converting it to healing.
Class: Disgruntled Postal Worker
Hey, you try delivering mail in crappy weather to people who only complain about the occasional problems instead of appreciating the miracle of getting any package across a continent and to the step of every rural asshole within a few days, all for a nominal fee. Oh, and Amazon and UPS and FedEx get all the credit for being fast and all that shit, despite the fact that they only do the easy deliveries and fob the hard ones off on you. Oh, and they also get the credit for being innovative and profitable, despite the fact that you 'are not innovative' because fucking Congress literally made a law saying that you can't be. Seriously, fuck those guys. And fuck you humans for being so mean to your poor postal workers. Just thinking about it makes me want to go postal, and I'm not even human.
Everyone knows the Norman Rockwell version of these guys—the blue short-sleeved shirts and cargo pants, the funny hat, the leather messenger bag, the hatred that dogs hold for them, and so on. In truth, they deserve a lot more credit than they used to get before we murdered all of them and destroyed your planet. The official motto of the US Postal Service was 'neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.' Now you can add 'mobs, traps, and anything else in this dungeon' to the list.
This is an Earth class. As an incentive to choose an Earth class, you will receive a Silver Earth Box upon choosing this class.
+2 to Strength
+5 to Constitution
+3 to the Going Postal skill
+3 to the Return to Sender skill
+3 to the Doing My Fucking Rounds No Matter Fucking What skill
+3 to the Avoid Dogshit Or Whatever skill
+3 to the Delivery Service skill
+1 to the Insufficient Postage skill
Skill: Going Postal This is a class-locked skill.
You gain the 'Not Gonna Take It Anymore' status condition for (Skill Level) x 10 seconds. While this status condition is in effect:
Your Strength is multiplied by (Skill Level)
Your movement speed is multiplied by (Skill Level)
Damage from your physical attacks is multipled by 200% per level of Going Postal
The range on your ranged attacks is multiplied by ((Skill Level) / 2)
Your melee attacks acquire a range of (Skill Level) meters
Warning: Five minutes after the effect wears off, a trio of city guards will be teleported to the location where you used the skill. City guards have levels dependent on your current floor and are always at least 40 levels above you. They will attempt to find you and murder you.
"What they aren't telling you," Levi said, "is that while you're in this state you won't be terribly discriminating about targets. There's some potential for friendly fire here, so you need to be careful about when you use it."
Skill: Return to Sender This is a class-locked skill.
This skill will activate at most once per fight. When it activates, the next attack that would have hit you is redirected back to the attacker and its effect is multiplied by (Skill Level). Chance of activation depends on skill level.
Skill: Doing My Fucking Rounds No Matter Fucking What Duration: ((Constitution) x 5) seconds AOE: A dome ((Skill Level) x 3) meters in diameter
This is a class-locked skill.
A dome of magical darkness appears, centered on the caster. The dome does not move with the caster.
The temperature in the dome oscillates between too hot and too cold, spending 10 seconds in each phase. Rain and snow pound down throughout the area, causing damage over time and applying debuffs to the Dexterity and movement speed of everyone in the area.
You are unaffected by the darkness and environmental effects. Your movement speed is increased by ((Skill Level) x 3)% while you are within the dome.
Skill: Insufficient Postage
This is a class-locked skill.
Any attack that would reduce you to below (Skill Level)% health instead heals you completely.
This effect will activate only once per battle. It will not affect falling damage or other things that are not attacks.
Skill: Avoid Dogshit Or Whatever
You have a chance to notice any foot-activated traps before triggering them. Triggered foot-activated traps will give you a notification and will be delayed by (Skill Level) seconds.
Skill: Delivery Service Cost: 10 MP
You may locate any crawler for whom you have a postage-paid letter or package. The preciseness and clarity of the resulting information increases with skill level.
Class: Hitman
According to your books, TV, and movies, you humans have a weird sort of admiration for people who murder for money. I guess you must really groove on the fact that we genocided 99% of your species in order to earn money from watching the rest of you kill monsters and each other.
This rare and exclusive class is only available to crawlers who have committed murder in exchange for money, either inside or outside the dungeon.
This is an Earth class. As an incentive to choose an Earth class, you will receive a Silver Earth Box upon choosing this class.
+3 Intelligence
+5 Dexterity
+4 to the Advanced Backstab skill
+3 to the In My Sights skill
+5 to the Contract Killer skill
Skill: Advanced Backstab
Damage is increased by 250% per level if you attack from behind without the target being aware of you. There is also a small chance of a critical strike which will multiply your total damage by (Skill Level) on top of other bonuses.
Skill: In My Sights
If you can keep your eyes on a being for 1 minute before entering combat, you may place a 'Sighted In' mark on that being. Your damage against a creature with that mark is increased by 200% per level. Sighted In marks fade if you lose sight of the marked being for 1 minute.
Skill: Contract Killer
The system AI has placed open contracts on every being on the floor. You may accept the contract for any being so long as that being is currently conscious and at 100% health. If you kill a being for whom you hold the contract, you will receive the following:
XP awarded will be increased by ((Skill Level) x 2)%
Gold equal to ((10 + (their level - your level))^2.25) * (Skill Level), round down
Contracts against crawlers are worth 5x as much, both in terms of XP and gold.
You may not leave the floor while one of your contracted enemies is alive. You may not cancel a contract.
Class: Master Assassin
+10 Dexterity
+6 to the Advanced Backstab skill
+6 to the Stealth skill
+3 to the A Boring Guy skill
+5 to the Dagger skill
+1 to the Blademaster skill
A Gold-tier dagger
Skill: Advanced Backstab
Damage is increased by 250% per level if you attack from behind without the target being aware of you. There is also a small chance of a critical strike which will multiply your total damage by (Skill Level) on top of other bonuses.
Skill: A Boring Guy
When you want to, you can seem boring. Uninteresting. Not worthy of attention. This is a good way to get that overly-flirtacious coworker to back off, and also a great way to make the guards not notice you walking right past them on your way to kill their boss.
Skill: Blademaster
When fighting with a bladed weapon, your damage is increased by 50% per level of Blademaster.
Class: Master Weaver
This is an Earth class. As an incentive to choose an Earth class, you will receive a Silver Earth Box upon choosing this class.
+8 Intelligence
+6 Dexterity
+6 Charisma
+9 to the Threadsense skill
+10 to the Thread Rectification skill
+2 to the Control Thread spell
+6 to the Thread Barrier spell
A loot box containing 10 spools of thread, 600 yards each
Skill: Threadsense
You are aware of the precise location and description (color, composition, thickness, etc) of all threads within (Skill Level) x 20 meters.
"This is useful because it will show you the location of everything that wears clothes, plus exactly how they're moving," Levi said. "Also, I suspect it will ignore shielded-room protocols. That means if a room is blacked out on your minimap you'll still be able to detect any curtains, carpets, drapes, tapestries, and so on inside it. At higher levels you'll have extremely precise awareness, allowing you to notice the carpet being compressed by the footfalls of mobs walking on it."
Skill: Thread Rectification
One or more targetable threads become inviolable and attempt to straighten themselves with an effective Strength of (Skill Level) x 50. Threads are targetable if they are entirely within range of your Threadsense skill and are NOT part of dungeon loot. Threads you have affected with this skill will not harm you.
Threads remain straight so long as you concentrate on maintaining the effect and, at your discretion, for up to (Skill Level) x 10 seconds afterwards. Threads outside your Threadsense range cannot be concentrated on. Overuse of this ability will start to drain your mana.
"This is a deceptively powerful ability," Levi said. "Inviolable threads make ideal spears and clothesline traps. It guarantees you won't be harmed by them, and it straightens them with a huge amount of force. You could use that to launch yourself into the air, for example. One critical question is how it will handle threads that have knots in them; if it causes the knot to untie itself, that's one thing. If it causes the knot to tighten down...that's got some serious utility."
Spell: Control Thread Cost: 3 MP Range: (Spell Level) meters Duration: (Intelligence x (Spell level)) seconds
You may telekinetically control one piece of thread that is no more than 50 cm + (10 x (Spell Level))cm long. Maximum force is determined by spell level.
You may fill some or all of the AOE with a barrier of woven thread. This barrier is immobile. The barrier is strong at level 1 and its durability scales up with skill level.
Class: Medical Student
You thought that medicine was about helping people? You sweet summer child. No, medicine is about scrambling to make your malpractice insurance premiums and student loan payments. Betcha wish they had told you that in school, eh? Well, don't worry. We have way better debt collectors. Mwah. Ha. Haaaaa.
This is an Earth class. As an incentive to choose an Earth class, you will receive a Silver Earth Box upon choosing this class.
+10 Intelligence
+3 Charisma
+8 to the Major Heal spell
+3 to the Anesthesia spell
+3 to the Antibiotics spell
The Heal Party benefit
The Vitamin Shot benefit
The I Got You, Fam benefit
+3 to the Here, Have This! spell
+15% to all earned experience
Disadvantage: Student Loan Debt
Spell: Major Heal Cost: 3 MP Range: 10 + (Intelligence / 2) meters Target: A non-undead being(*)
The target is healed by ((Skill Level)x10)% of their max health. Healing over 100% results in bonus health. This spell can reattach missing limbs, fix permanent disfiguration, etc.
(*) When this spell reaches level 10 you will be able to target undead, but the MP cost will be 10 instead of 3 when targeting undead. Instead of being healed, undead hit with this spell will take damage approximately equal to ((Skill Level) x 2)% of their max health.
Spell: Anesthesia Cost: 3 MP Range: (Spell Level) meters Target: A living being Duration: 30 minutes
The target receives the Feelin' No Pain buff. At your option, they will also be hit with a Sleep effect of the same level as this spell. If successful, the Sleep effect will last (Spell Level) hours.
"That buff is a very mixed blessing," Levi said. "On the one hand, it makes you immune to pain-inducing attacks and lets you do stuff like push a red-hot piece of metal out of the way so that you can escape a death trap. On the other hand, you won't notice you've been injured. Can be very useful if you cast it on a mob and then someone attacks it from behind; they won't notice the injury, although they will still notice if you move them. Cut their throat, don't stab them, since stabbing would push them forward."
Spell: Antibiotics Cost: 10 MP Range: (Spell Level) x 10 meters, requires LOS
All debuffs and negative status effects currently in effect on the targeted being are removed.
The Heal Party Benefit Cost: 8 MP
Everyone in your party is hit with a Heal spell.
Benefit: Vitamin Shot Cooldown: Can only be used on a given being once every 10 hours
By touch, boost each of a being's base stats by (your Character Level)/5 for (your Character Level)/10 minutes. Current and maximum health will increase in proportion to the increase in Constitution. Does not stack.
Benefit: I Got You, Fam Cooldown: 30 seconds
By touch, transfer a debuff or negative status condition from a being to yourself.
Spell: Here, Have This! Cost: 3 MP Range: (Spell Level) x 10 meters Target: A living being
Attempts to transfer a buff, debuff, or status condition from you to another being. Chance of success is dependent on your Intelligence and your spell level as compared to their level. Transfer to a willing target will always succeed.
Disadvantage: Student Loan Debt
When you choose this class, a new tab will appear in your interface to track your student loan debt. You start 750,000 gold in debt. You will receive a 150 hour grace period before compounding and payments begin. At the end of that period and every 30 hours thereafter, the debt will compound by 1% (the interest rate) and then a payment of 0.5% (the payment rate) of the total debt will be withdrawn from your gold total. Once every 30 hours, your interface will allow you to pay extra against the principal.
You cannot exit the dungeon until the debt is fully repaid.
If you miss a payment you will receive a warning. Every time you receive a warning, the following penalties will be applied (N = number of warnings you have received including the current one):
Your debt increases by (5N)%
Your interest rate increases by (N / 2)%
Your payment rate increases by (N / 4)%
Each of your stats is permanently reduced by (2N) points, and,
The level of each of your spells and skills is permanently reduced by 1
If you miss three payments in a row then you will be considered to have defaulted. Default will result in being accelerated.
"Ah. That's why they were willing to give you that broken XP bonus," Levi said. "In case it wasn't obvious, being accelerated is fatal."
Class: MedWagon Fast-Insertion Medic
The planet Skaduloop is an ancap nightmare with people shooting each other in the streets every night. MedWagon is a feared and renowned company that provides medical support for individuals of high net worth. The customer hits their panic button, or flatlines and thereby activates their biosigns monitor, and a MedWagon team is scrambled. These guys drop out of the sky in an armed and armored troop carrier that gives itself airs as an ambulance. They indiscriminately spray the area down with suppressive fire from multiple 2cm plascannons, get their client aboard, and bounce. As a result of this policy, streetrunners and random bystanders have developed a watchword: When you hear incoming MedWagon, there's gonna be a fraggin'.
+3 Strength
+5 Constitution
+5 Dexterity
+9 to the Heal Person spell
+9 to the Heal Critter spell
+2 to the Rifleman skill
+2 to the Aimbot skill
+3 to the Fast Insertion skill
+3 to the Combat Drop skill
Once every 30 hours you may cast a level 15 Suppressive Fire spell for 20 mana
Spell: Heal Person Cost: 8 MP Range: (Skill Level) meters, LOS required Target: A living being
The target is healed by ((Skill Level) x 10)% of their maximum health. Healing above 100% provides bonus HP. These HP will drain away in a few minutes if not used. You may not cast Heal Person on a target that currently has bonus HP.
Spell: Heal Critter
Identical to Heal Person but only applies to non-sapient targets.
Skill: Rifleman
Damage from your ranged physical attacks is multiplied by (Skill Level).
Skill: Aimbot
Your ranged attacks are (5 x Skill Level)% more likely to hit.
Skill: Fast Insertion
When activated, your movement speed and the movement speed of any vehicle you are aboard is increased by 10% per skill level. Also, the air is filled with flashing lights and sirens.
Skill: Combat Drop
Falling damage is reduced by (5 x (Skill Level))%.
Spell: Suppressive Fire Cost: 20 MP (after class discount) AOE: 20m radius centered on caster
Dozens of plasma bolts shoot out from the caster at waist height. Bolts will fizzle just before touching a member of the caster's party. Caster's party are not protected from secondary effects such as flying rubble, fires, and being sprayed by gibbed enemies.
Class: Metamage
Some mages study fire magic. Some study healing magic. These guys study magic-related magic. What a bunch of nerds.
One of the most theoretical disciplines of magic, metamagic still manages to be remarkably effective in the real world. On the other hand, it requires a certain type of mind that tends towards the eccentric, which can be off-putting.
+10 Intelligence
-1 Constitution
-2 Charisma
The Metamagic benefit
At class selection, you may use the Metamagic benefit twice
Upon descending to a new floor, you may use the Metamagic benefit once
Benefit: Metamagic
When used, select one of your spells and one of the following advantages. The chosen spell will be permanently modified to incorporate the chosen advantage. Repeated applications of a given advantage will compound.
You may bank uses of Metamagic for later if so desired. Using Metamagic takes only a moment, so it is possible to make the choice while in combat, but the choice is permanent and cannot be altered once applied.
Autofire. Each casting creates twice as many instances of the spell. (At casting time you may choose to use fewer instances.) These additional instances do not require mana or other costs. Casting-time choices (e.g. target designation) may be made separately for each instance
Cheap. Mana cost is reduced by 50%, rounded down. (e.g. a spell that costs 35 MP now costs 17.) Minimum of 1. Cooldowns are reduced by 25%, rounded down
Choke. (Only relevant for AOE spells.) At casting time you may choose to reduce the volume of the spell by any amount desired
Far Strike. The spell's maximum range is multipled by (Spell Level)
Homing. Allows designating a target before casting. Chance of hitting a designated target is increased by 50%. Applying this benefit twice will upgrade the benefit to 'Guided', allowing the spell to be steered in real time or to fire-and-forget with a 100% chance of hitting the marked target. (Note: It is possible to evade a homing spell through certain rare abilities, such as a Dodge of level 16+.)
IFF. At casting time, you may designate one or more beings to remain unaffected
Indomitable. This advantage requires 2 picks. Spells with this advantage are immune to counterspelling, anti-magic, redirection/reflection, hostile alteration, and muting effects
Intensified. The spell does twice as much damage but costs 50% more mana
Penetrator. Armor is only 50% as effective against the spell and damage is increased by 50%
Shaped. You may modify the AOE of a spell. Total volume must remain the same but the arrangement of that volume is at your discretion. Excessively bizarre shapings will be disallowed, causing the spell to fizzle
Spread. AOE spells have each of their dimensions doubled. Non-AOE spells become AOE, usually spherical with a 1 meter diameter. Some targeted spells may be converted to have a larger or differently-shaped AOE at the AI's discretion
Storable. You may cast the spell and place the result in your inventory to be taken out and discharged later. You may use this ability at most once every 3 hours. The casting cost of the spell is paid as normal, and then you must pay an additional amount of mana equal to 3x the cost of the spell. You may have at most (Spell Level)/2, round down, instances of the spell in your inventory at a time
Trample. If the spell strikes and kills its target but there is damage left over then the spell will continue in a straight line, applying the remaining damage to the next target it strikes. Repeat until all damage has been applied to a target
"One thing to know," Levi said. "All of the spells you've been getting so far are cheap, usually three or five mana. Later on you'll start getting spells that cost 50 or more. That 'Cheap' advantage is better than it might seem."
Class: Monster Truck Driver
Yee-haw! Time to put your baseball cap on, grab a chaw of 'baccy, and climb up into your ridiculously giant-wheeled truck. Maybe you can get some cornbread and fried Oreos on the way to bang your sister!
This is an Earth class. As an incentive to choose an Earth class, you will receive a Silver Earth Box upon choosing this class.
+15 Constitution
+1 to the Second Fuel Tank skill
+1 to the Rush skill
+1 to the Pathfinder skill
+1 to the Speed is Life skill
Immunity to wind spell damage
+50% resistance to the Buzzed and Shit-Faced debuffs (only from beer)
Beer acts as a minor healing potion, but only if it's Freedomland big-name beer
Skill: Second Fuel Tank
Absorbs and stores a percentage of the damage from every hit you take. Every attack you receive has a chance of triggering this ability; when triggered, all stored damage will be reflected back on the attacker. Will activate at most once per fight. Trains up based on the amount of damage absorbed.
Skill: Rush Cooldown: 30 hours
Your speed is magnified based on the level of Rush. Your body is flung forward, causing damage to whatever you hit. You are invulnerable for the duration of Rush.
"Rush is a powerful ability," Levi said. "It's like Moose's Legion Rush ability, but better in some ways and worse in others. Moose's ability can be used multiple times a day, but only while he's in motion and there's a brief glow before it activates, which gives away the fact that he's using it. Once it activates, it increases his speed and mass and gives him half a second of invulnerability at the start but nothing after that. If there's something immediately in front of him when he activates it, that thing is going to be vaporized. On the other hand, it makes it so that he doesn't turn well, which means that he's likely to die if he hits something after the invulnerability runs out, or if he simply trips or loses his footing and slides. Plus, he'll weigh literal tons, meaning he can collapse bridges and sink into muddy ground.
"The normal Rush skill can be used from a standing start with no sign that you're using it, it keeps you invulnerable for the entire time you're moving, and it doesn't change your mass but it still does enough damage to destroy or kill most anything you hit. The problem is that it's very short ranged, and it's unpredictable. You might go five feet, you might go twenty. You might go the direction you're facing, you might go ten or even twenty degrees off.
"Since Rush activates immediately and without warning, the momentary invulnerability can be used as a defense if you get the timing right. That's theoretically possible with Legion Rush, but it's much less practical because of the warning and the fact that you need to be in motion."
Skill: Pathfinder
Your minimap covers a much larger area. This skill is trained by keeping your map open to maximum size.
Skill: Speed is Life
Gotta go fast, gotta go fast! You receive a bonus to your Constitution depending on how fast you are moving. The increased Constitution raises both your maximum and current hit points for the duration of the bonus. Damage taken while the bonus is in effect will be removed from the bonus hit points first.
Class: Pirate Admiral
Arrrr! Ya scurvy scalawag! Shiver me timbers and set sail for high adventure! Ya started your career as a stowaway who became the captain's cabin boy (hurr, hurr) before moving up to deckhand. Eventually, you had enough stolen pieces of eight to buy your own ship and hire the dregs of the dockyards. Things went well and you bought a second ship, and a third. Soon you took your place among the most feared marauders on the seven seas!
This is an Earth class. As an incentive to choose an Earth class, you will receive a Silver Earth Box upon choosing this class.
+6 Dexterity
+10 Charisma
+4 to the Acrobatics skill
+4 to the Sword skill
+5 to the Plunder skill
+5 to the Wooden Ships and Iron Men skill
+5 to the Cannon Cocker skill
+5 to the Conjure Cannon spell
+3 to the "Attack, Me Hearties!" spell
A Platinum-tier eyepatch
Every time you kill a boss, you will receive two boss lootboxes instead of one
When you swing on a rope, chandelier, etc you will receive the Pirate's Luck effect for 1 minute. No cooldown, does not stack but does reset the timer
Pirate-type mobs and NPCs will be positively inclined to you
Rogue-type mobs and NPCs will not be hostile to you
Skill: Plunder This is a class-locked skill available only to certain classes.
Every time you kill a mob of a level higher than your own you will receive a Treasure box containing (mob level - your level) x (Skill Level) x (Charisma) x 3 gold pieces. Level of the box will be determined by the amount of gold received. You must strike the killing blow.
Skill: Wooden Ships and Iron Men This is a class-locked skill available only to certain classes.
While you are aboard a ship:
There will always be favorable wind
That vessel's speed, handling, and toughness increase by 100% per skill level
Any ship-mounted weapons do 100% more damage per skill level
All crew members and members of your party who are aboard the ship:
Gain +10% damage reduction
Do 25% more damage per level of this skill
Have their mana regen rate doubled
Gain +2 to the Regeneration skill, not to exceed level cap
Skill: Cannon Cocker This is a class-locked skill available only to certain classes.
When using a cannon or similar weapon, your damage is increased by 100% per skill level. Your rate of fire is increased by 25% per skill level.
This is a class-locked spell available only to certain classes.
You conjure a self-operating cannon along with all required accessories including gunpowder and cannonballs. Size and power of the cannon is determined by spell level.
The cannon and its accessories disappear when the duration expires.
At level 5 the cannon's range and power are increased and in addition to cannonballs you will receive chain shot and grape shot.
At level 10 you can conjure up to 5 cannons. Their range is doubled. Their accuracy is increased. You will receive explosive projectiles in addition to the normal types. The duration is increased to 15 minutes.
At level 15 you can conjure up to 20 cannons. Their maximum range is 30 miles. You will receive a wide variety of ammunition types including kinetic shells, chain shot, grape shot, explosives, incendiaries, armor-piercing, smoke, flares, and various gas-dispensing shells.
"Wow," Levi said. "This spell all by itself makes this class a good pick. Stack it with the Cannon Cocker ability and it's seriously impressive."
Benefit: Pirate's Luck This is a class-locked ability available only to certain classes.
Similar but superior to the Fortune Sculpting spell, this effect distorts probabilities in your favor and against your enemies. The bonus/malus varies based on your Charisma and your Character Level.
Reminder: This effect is only active for 1 minute after you swing on a rope, chandelier, etc.
Note: This effect will stack with your Fortuna's Favored Child skill.
Cooldown: 30 hours This is a class-locked spell available only to certain classes.
(Spell Level) pirates appear and follow your orders. Once the duration expires, they disappear. Pirate physical stats are based on the spell level, but they are run by a rules engine; they can understand basic orders but they cannot carry a conversation and they ain't that bright.
Class: Professional Gambler
You gotta know when to hold 'em. Know when to fold 'em. Know when to walk away...and when to run!
When you were little you used to play poker for M&Ms with the boys; soon enough, you got hooked. Having no other talents and unable to get a job doing anything else, you started hustling pennies from the rubes. Then you graduated to the tournaments and worked your way up to the big leagues. Now you make a living from your stone-cold poker face and the occasional bit of cheating.
This is an Earth class. As an incentive to choose an Earth class, you will receive a Silver Earth Box upon choosing this class.
+2 Charisma
+5 to the Gambling skill
+3 to the Fortune Sculpting spell
+3 to the Card Throwing skill
Your resistance to Charisma-based charm attacks is doubled
Probabilities are distorted in your favor. Falling objects are less likely to hit you, enemy attacks against you are more likely to miss, your chance-based special abilities are more likely to activate or succeed while those of your enemies are more likely to fail when directed at you, and so on. The bonus/malus is dependent on your spell level and your Charisma.
Note: This effect will stack with your Fortuna's Favored Child skill.
Bottomless Box of Chance Cards
These are perfectly normal playing cards when examined by anyone but you or another Professional Gambler, except that when the cards are removed from the box they are always in new-deck order. If a card is discarded or destroyed then a copy of it will reappear in the box so long as the cards are in the box. This will happen within the next hour, or whenever the cards are returned to the box if that is longer than an hour.
With a mental command you can prime cards from your deck that you are touching. Once primed, the card becomes rigid metal with (if you so desire) razor-sharp edges. You cannot cut yourself with your own cards. Upon impact with a surface there is a chance that a primed card will trigger one of a variety of possible effects including healing, exploding, chain lightning, etc.
Dungeon Book of the Floor club
Once per floor you will receive a random spellbook in the mail. Mailboxes can be found in every safe room and personal space.
Class: 'Psychic' Conman
If you were psychic, why'd you come into the dungeon, huh?
This is an Earth class. As an incentive to choose an Earth class, you will receive a Silver Earth Box upon choosing this class.
You intensify whatever emotions the target is experiencing. If they are grieving, they grieve harder. If they are angry, they start to see red and completely lose their reason. If they are happy they become giddy. Makes them more vulnerable to Silver-Tongued Liar, Taunt, Hurtful Words, and similar spells and abilities.
Skill: Silver-Tongued Liar
When you make an effort, you can convince people to believe the bullshitiest of bullshit!
If successful, the target will believe whatever you tell them. Only works on mobs. Will not work on some mobs. Mob must be able to hear you and understand you. Chance of success depends on skill level, Charisma, and the ridiculousness of what you are attempting to convince them of.
Class: Republican Senior Senator
Damn, I admire these guys so much. When it comes to gaining and retaining power, these guys are the hands-down masters. You should say 'Thank you very much, AI Sky Daddy, for being the nicest, thoughtfulest, most generous Sky Daddy of them all' that I allow you the privilege of obtaining such privilege. Not that you will. In fact, I doubt you'll even acknowledge that you have privilege. Granted, as laughable yet expected as that would have been a few weeks ago, there's an argument to be made that you're lacking in privilege given how we blew up most of your civilization. (Sucked down would be more accurate but sounds lewd.)
This rare and exclusive class is only available to crawlers who:
Are male
Are white
Chose a race that is NOT too visually distinct from human, at least some of the time (e.g. Doppleganger is valid and Scion of the Zree is valid if committed to human final form)
Have a Charisma of at least 20 after spending stat points but before bonuses/penalties from class and race
Received 500 billion views before reaching the third floor
Received 100 billion followers before reaching the third floor
This is an Earth class. As an incentive to choose an Earth class, you will receive a Silver Earth Box upon choosing this class.
-1 Intelligence
-5 Strength
-5 Constitution
+12 Charisma
The Own the Libs benefit
+8 to the Filibuster spell
+5 to the Gerrymander spell
+5 to the Incentivized Reality Denial spell
+5 to the Super PAC skill
A level 5 Cockroach skill
All of your attacks have the Unholy affinity, allowing them to damage mobs that couldn't normally be damaged and inflict greater damage on mobs with the Holy affinity
Mobs with the Unholy affinity will lose their automatic hostility and start off positively inclined towards you
The Stay in Your Lane benefit
Disadvantage: Your physical damage is reduced by 25%. Your fault for being an old white guy
Disadvantage: Your movement rate is reduced by 25%. Again, your fault for being an old white guy
Note: You will be given the appearance of a man in his sixties. This will not affect you mechanically except as described above
Benefit: Own the Libs Cost: 1 MP (normally it's more, but you get a discount, you special snowflake you!) Target: One mob Duration: 30 seconds Cooldown: 1 minute Requirement: Immediately before using this benefit, you must insult the target. Doesn't matter if they understand it; it's just for my amusement.
Did you know that people get offended when you insult them? Nobody knew that, but it's true.
This is a massively amplified version of the Taunt spell. It's the best version of the Taunt spell, better than any version ever seen before. Everybody says so.
There is no chance of failure. The target is forced to attack you immediately, eschewing other targets, options, or considerations. Mobs that were not red-tagged become so.
Spell: Filibuster Cost: 3 MP Duration: As long as you keep talking Target: One red-tagged mob Target (level 5+):: ((Spell Level) - 3) red-tagged mobs
If successful, the target is slowed as long as you continue talking in a clearly audible voice about useless things. (In other words, not battle tactics, warnings, etc.) While filibustering you must remain on your feet and may not lean on anything or consume anything. Chance of success and degree of slowing depends on your level in the spell, your Charisma, and the target's level. When the filibuster ends, the target is hit with a Taunt effect with level equal to 2+(Spell Level).
"Hmm," Levi said, frowning as his eyes flickered. "Looks like that one's got an interesting upgrade path. The target will move slower as the spell level goes up. At level 5 it will start affecting multiple targets and at level 10 it will become an actual AOE time manipulation effect, meaning everything within the area of effect that isn't you will be moving more and more slowly. At level 15 it will be an actual Time Freeze and on top of that you'll get IFF so you can make it affect some people and not others."
Spell: Gerrymander Cost: 10 MP Duration: (Charisma x Spell Level) seconds, until sufficient damage is inflicted on the barrier, or until dismissed Target: An irregularly-shaped contiguous area of no greater than (Skill Level) x 2 square meters
Creates an invisible barrier 5 meters tall around the perimeter of the chosen area. Mobs and their weapons and spells cannot cross the barrier, although they can go over it. You choose the shape of the area but shapes that are too bizarre will cause reality to tell you that you're full of shit and therefore the spell will fail. Shapes that are not bizarre enough are insufficiently exploitative and therefore the spell will fail.
Spell: Incentivized Reality Denial Cost: 1 MP Target: One red-tagged mob that has attacked you in the last 30 seconds and is at least half your level Requirement: Immediately before casting this spell you must loudly shout "There's no such thing as [name of target's species]!"
If successful, gain gold pieces equal to: Charisma x (monster level) x (Spell Level). Chance of success depends on your level in the Spell, your Charisma, and the target's level.
After targeting a mob with this spell, you must wait until it attacks you again before using the spell again. You may only target a given mob a maximum of 3 times ever.
Skill: Super PAC Cost: 100 GP base
You may spend gold to either:
Multiply damage and effectiveness of all your spells by (Skill Level) for (Charisma) seconds
Heal yourself for (10 x Skill Level)% of your max HP. Healing above your max will provide bonus health
Amount of gold required increases based on the number of times you have used this skill in the last hour. Both abilities stack with themselves but stacking them increases the gold cost substantially.
Skill: Cockroach
You have a chance of surviving an otherwise fatal attack. At level 5 you are guaranteed one free lethal hit per fight, though you will be at 5% health afterward. At level 10, your health will not go down at all after the first fatal strike. The only way to train this skill is by using it.
Benefit: Stay in Your Lane
There's a thing you're reeeally good at but in general all that learnin' and edumacation stuff ain't really your forte. All class actionables train 5% more quickly. All actionables that are NOT class benefits train 5% more slowly.
Class: Septic Tank Cleaner
I don't know if it's true that where there's muck there's gold, but if it is then these assholes must be the richest bastards around! Nothing like wading around in sewage to give you some perspective on life, eh?
This is an Earth class. As an incentive to choose an Earth class, you will receive a Silver Earth Box upon choosing this class.
Constitution +15
Immunity to poison
Immunity to disease
Immunity to acid
Immunity to cloud-based spells, traps, and effects
Immunity to suffocation and drowning
+2 to the Acid Stench spell (cost discounted)
+1 to the Share Immunity spell
Spell: Acid Stench Cost: 5 MP after class discount Range: 10 meters + 2 meters per spell level Duration: Constitution x (Spell Level) seconds or until dismissed AOE: Sphere with diameter chosen at time of casting. Minimum 4 meters, maximum 10 meters + 1 meter per spell level.
A cloud of toxic and corrosive gas appears, centered at the chosen point. All beings in the area receive the Poisoned debuff. All beings in the area must resist or receive the Queasy debuff. Everything in the area receives acid-type damage over time. Extended exposure can lead to the 'Blind' debuff being applied. This is a cloud-based spell, to which you are immune. It can be dismissed at will, in which case the gas disappears. Multiple castings do not stack but do increase the opacity of the cloud. The caster can see clearly in the cloud.
The target receives a copy of one of your immunities. This will cure relevant debuffs.
"That's a damn good spell, and hard to come by," Levi said. "At level 5 it ramps up to let you affect more than one person at a time. I don't know how many it will be; they like to fiddle with it every season. It's especially good in combination with Acid Stench, which is a nasty thing to be on the wrong end of. Not sure what upgrades it will get at level 10, if any."
Class: Special Effects Nerd
Growing up, you wanted to be a movie star so bad. You joined the theater club as a kid, you read books on acting, you took classes. Unfortunately, you've got the face of a wet cabbage and all the stage presence of a bowl of over-salted noodles. Your dreams dashed, you figured that you could at least get stage-adjacent by putting your nerdiness to work creating the pretty pictures that let James Cameron indulge his fetish for blue-skinned aliens with USB ports in their heads.
Even that turned out to be less exciting than you'd thought. You don't have the sort of creative freedom you had hoped for; the Director makes all the decisions of what will get worked on and your immediate manager tells you what to do on a day-to-day basis.
This is an Earth class. As an incentive to choose an Earth class, you will receive a Silver Earth Box upon choosing this class.
+4 Intelligence
-1 Charisma
+1 to the Mirage spell
The Manager benefit
Spell: Mirage Cost: 5 MP Cooldown: 5 seconds Duration: Concentration + (2 x Intelligence) seconds or until dismissed AOE: Cube with sides (Intelligence / 5) + (1.25^(Spell Level)) meters centered on the caster
Creates a multi-sensory illusion. The illusion is not solid and will not inflict actual damage. The illusion can be updated so long as you concentrate on it. Once you stop concentrating, the illusion remains static. You cannot start again once you stop.
I'm not going into specifics because that's liable to change, however the key aspect is simple.
We will need to gain control of a train, derailing a train is a possibility and then killing the train conductor, but its a terrible idea which will kill many crawlers in the end. Unfortunately people will still take it so Banana Whisperer does work if we use it for that purpose.
Either way we'll need to unlock the train conductor door, and use it to go to our desired destinations. Something like Battle Burglar should prove very useful for this purpose.
Of course it's dungeon crawler carl, so its a lot more complicated but... that's the key point.
How much gold do we have again?
(If we regained significant amounts of gold after the gambling incident, Medical Student would be a awesome thing to have)
Also, alternatively... copying filibuster to Tay at the end of the floor. @eaglejarl
Do we/Levy know if taunt gains the aggro per body or per crawler?
Do we/Levy know how mobs react to being taunted by something impossible to hit?
How much gold do we have again?
(If we regained significant amounts of gold after the gambling incident, Medical Student would be a awesome thing to have)
Also, alternatively... copying filibuster to Tay at the end of the floor. @eaglejarl
Do we/Levy know if taunt gains the aggro per body or per crawler?
Do we/Levy know how mobs react to being taunted by something impossible to hit?
I know we're pretty much all agreed that taking Wizard Supremacist was necessary, but I had thought we were going to at least get the option to pick up Mystic Scholar this floor? The intention to exploit the glitch in Create Spellbook was even mentioned in the narrative.
