Once more into the Fray (Patreon)

I've started playing some Pathfinder 1e on the occasional Saturday. It does eat into my drawing time, but I kind of don't leave the house anymore unless it's for a walk or short errand, so my wife was like "Hey, let's go to a place and do a thing." Plus playing D&D/Pathfinder (lets not pretend that Pathfinder isn't just D&D) has given me an excuse to expand my dice collection again. Honestly I wish we were playing the latest version of Pathfinder, because 1st Edition is... I guess the kids would call it crunchy? Characters have an Armor Class, natch. Okay, they need a "Touch AC" for spells like shocking grasp where the armor isn't a factor in defense. Sure, that's fine. Flat Footed? Okay. That's Armor Class without Dex bonuses. (I think.) Makes sense. But do I need Fortitude, Reflex and Will saves? Isn't that just Con, Dex and Wis? And CMB and CMD? I still can't remember what they stand for, and it's stuff like if I'm trying to trip or grapple someone maybe? It seems needlessly complex.

But still, I'm having fun, even though I have terrible dice karma. I don't believe in luck or karma or anything like that. It's all anthropomorphization of causal events and confirmation bias. But that said... I roll so badly that the DM started giving me pity rerolls towards the end of one game because I hadn't rolled a double digit "to hit" die in like 9 attacks. To see if it really was some kind of weird deviation, I wrote down all my dice rolls for the last game. I'll break them up for non-combat and combat rolls. This is just the D20's. My other die rolls like damage seem... better distributed.

Non-Combat Rolls (Init, Saves, Skill Checks, etc.): 8 17 2 9 13 20 18 20 17 (Average of 13.777 )
Combat (to hit) Rolls: 6 15 11 8 3 3 10 20 5 9 2 12 7 16 1 10 18 9 14 6 5 9 12 16 2 18 11 1 4 3 1 4 20 13 3 ( Average 0f 8.777 )

If you add all of those up, the average shifts to 9.577, which for a single game session isn't exactly bending the law of averages. What makes the attack rolls hurt more is that the non-combat rolls usually have lower targets. Perception checks against DC15 or whatever, or it's an initiative roll which doesn't really matter all that much, but the to-hit rolls are almost always against AC's in the 19-24 range. Everyone always goes into combat with a bunch of bonuses to hit, but usually I still need to roll double digits on the D20 to actually hit anything.

So, I swapped characters early on in the campaign from a Ranger to a monk, because 1) Monks are rad, and 2) I figured if I can get 4 attacks a round with flurry of blows, I might actually hit once per combat turn. So that's who's in the vote incentive, my Ifrit monk, Fray. Ifrits don't really make great monks in Pathfinder, as player characters they get a +2 to Dex and Cha, but -2 to Wis. For monks, Dex is good, Cha is largely irrelevant, but Wis is important as it can add to your AC and also has something to do with Ki points I think. But I didn't care. I wanted a character with dark blue/gray skin and glowing orange hair, so that's what I picked. (I don't think Ifrit even really have dark skin, so maybe she's 1/4 Drow? Don't care. I think she looks cool.) Will she show up in the comic? I mean... maybe? Probably in a Dabbler flashback, but who knows?

By the way, saying "Once more, into the Fray" to her is only acceptable after her partner has already had sex with her at least once. Otherwise it wouldn't make any sense.