Why are you special?

When I can move again, it’s daytime. I’m laying down on something soft. I can hear a breeze whispering, and some birds singing in the background. I can’t identify them… I’ll eventually cheese in full ranks in Knowledge(Nature), but don’t have it yet. I open my eyes, and look around.

OK, yes, this is the edge of a forest, definitely. There’s some grassy plains over there to the um… I should have taken some ranks in Survival, I guess… and some trees behind me. They’re tall… green… have needles rather than leaves… and for the life of me I can’t name them. That’d be Knowledge(Nature), wouldn’t it? Right. No ranks in that. I’ll eventually be able to work around that kind of thing, but not yet. At least it’s a nice sunny day? Of course, that means anyone can see me easily. And apparently, “zero” for my starting wealth also means “no clothes.” Great. Well… there weren’t any reflective surfaces in Death’s office. I never did get a good look at myself. Can I hear anything…

I start by ‘taking ten’ as I don’t have any current distractions… the breeze on my bare bottom doesn’t count… ah, I can hear a brook nearby… in the forest. Hmm. Death mentioned there would be a town about a day’s walk along the road… and with this build, I don’t need to eat or sleep, so there’s not exactly any rush. A brief stop to check my reflection should be OK.

I walk towards the sound of the water, and after a few minutes… yes, a brook is babbling through the forest. I just need a spot where the water is relatively calm… following the water a short ways, I do find a bend that has a calm section of the water, but as I check my reflection…

OUCH. I’m pricked in the legs four times in rapid succession… I glance down… great… four insect-like things with eight legs, pincers, and a tail with a nasty-looking barb on it. A scorpion of some kind, obviously, although I don’t know specifically what. Small, at least the poison shouldn’t bother me. I didn’t see them, so I guess they got a surprise round? My turn now… hopefully I don’t run out of spells… Charm Person and Color Spray won’t help with vermin like this, so… Snowball. And they’re very small, which is probably why they entered my space to attack… so I start by stepping away from them. Just a five-foot step, I don’t want to provoke with movement… I also don’t want to provoke when I cast…

I concentrate - I have an ‘out’ on the spell components in Telepathic Caster, so I don’t need to wave my hands or shout like a crazy person to cast a spell… I just pull up the energies and let loose. The tactic lets me get my Snowball spell off safely… but the spell goes wide.

The four little prickly beasts chase after me … but this time I know they’re there, so I take a swing with my fist at one as they enter… but I can’t land the blow. Not that it matters much - I don’t have a meaningful strength score - yet; I plan to fix that at level two by cheating outrageously - so I’d only hit them for a single point of damage if the blow landed. But the Attack of Opportunity is free, so there wasn’t a reason not to try.

All four of the little buggers sting me AGAIN. Ouch! … but I’m not getting any damage notices, and my legs seem OK… oh, I get it. These things are TINY. Their damage dice is low, and they probably have a low enough strength score that they’re consistently dealing little enough damage that it falls into the ‘one point of nonlethal’ category when they strike, and I’m immune to nonlethal damage… and most vermin are mindless…

I stop casting spells and just lay in with my fist. The ‘Light Body Technique’ campaign variant from my DM’s house rules gives me Improved Unarmed Strike for free, so I can deal lethal damage. My strength score of seven means I’m rolling 1d3-2 at this level, which means I’m dealing one point of real damage every three hits (and one point of nonlethal on the other two). The same strength score means I’m only hitting these buggers once every twenty tries… but they’re mindlessly attacking a meal that they can’t actually harm. It HURTS, but I’m fine. And I get a ‘free’ attack every time they follow me into my square. So I keep up the five-foot step and attack, getting two attacks in every six seconds as they sting my legs over and over and over again (I have an Armor Class [AC] of just eight, due to no gear, no buffs for my AC, and dumping Dexterity as I plan to fix that by cheating outrageously next level, just like I plan with my Strength - the same way, even).

It takes an embarrassingly long time to kill the creatures, though. It’s a full twenty minutes before the last one finally stops moving, and I can proceed to Coup de Grace them all (which, for these, boils down to stomping on their heads and letting gravity do the work)... and even that takes a few tries to get a sufficiently satisfying ‘crack’ letting me know they’re good and dead.

Still, four hundred experience, and all it cost me was one of my four spontaneous spell slots for the day… and I still have the two prepared ones. But oh that hurt.

I should probably go over the aspects of my build that let me win that one, why it took so long, and the house rules for the same, huh?

OK, so… I cheat. And by that I mean I’m within the rules I’m allowed, but I’m bending them out of all recognition of their intent. I have all sources available, and a free archetype to boot. My class? Freelancer, from Final Fantasy d20. It’s a build-your-own style of class, it lets me select class features from other classes, provided they’re available at my level or lower, according to some scoring rules. My free archetype? Monsterkin. As a ‘normal’ archetype, it lets me pick abilities from monsters instead of from classes. As a ‘free’ archetype, I get to pick and choose from either on how I spend my points. Of immediate concern is that Monsterkin lets me spend thirty points (of sixty by default, but I burned three feats from various sources to have ninety to spend at first level - there’s a lot I want to squeeze in, and the house rules for my build help) to gain the traits and features of one of a few types. The type I used? Undead. So I have all the undead immunities (there’s a lot of them, including poison and nonlethal damage). These creatures, like many Tiny creatures, have a very small damage die, and very little strength to go with it. There’s a clause in Pathfinder’s combat rules that allows them to still do at least one point of damage on a hit… but it’s nonlethal, and I’m immune to that. With the free Improved Unarmed Strike from Light Body Technique, I can deal lethal damage with my fists… if I hit hard enough. However, I tanked my physical stats entirely. My Dexterity and Strength are at seven (I plan to fix those next level), so they could hit my very easily, and I could only hit them when I got really lucky… which of course, happens repeatedly if you try enough times. So I couldn’t do much damage… but mostly nonlethal and occasionally lethal is enough when the other person literally can’t hurt me.

That said, my Intelligence and Charisma scores are sitting pretty at twenty-three each, and my Wisdom at sixteen. A base eighteen in each of Intelligence and Charisma on the point buy (paid for by dumping my physical scores as much as I could), with the remaining points tossed into getting a Wisdom score of thirteen - again, base. Then the house rules let me trade out the normal racial modifiers for a plus two to two abilities, and a minus two to one, all three of my choosing. Another ability form Monsterkin (Ageless, from the Sublime template, applied to a Common Bat so it’s less than CR one and I can take it) lets me set my starting age to “Venerable” to get another three point boost to all mental statistics without costing anything to my physical stats. Also prevents me from being magically aged, and prevents me from dying of old age.

So I have thirty four years of life experience, a body that’s aged a thousand years - but looks in the prime of life - and was born earlier today thanks to divine shenanigans. I’m going to call myself thirty four. It seems the most sensible of the three numbers to me.

I wash the bug juice on my legs and feet off in the stream, and then try to get a look at myself in the calm water….