Panty is an optimizer - here's why (also Gunner Gloom build)
Chapter 1: steal her strats
Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt is a show which makes me feel like I'm watching something I'm not supposed to despite being an adult with a job and an apartment. There must be an intersection between the parts of my brain which is stupid enough to not have thrown away 5e months ago and that understands and enjoys the themes of sexual liberty and feminism, I guess. I am ripping FoD off (as per usual).
#1: Panty buys magic items
As it turns out, Ranger becomes a top 3 class when you can get an Ascending (or at least Awakened) Dragon's Wrath antimatter rifle, a weapon better than the entire Barb, Fighter, and Rogue classes. Panty presumably has one, given her gun can blow stuff up in a way a modern firearm couldn't, the damage being necrotic is close enough to being radiant like in the show, and she sometimes makes spread shots which look like the spread option of Dragon's Wrath.
She purchases clearly magical items (mostly weapons) from Heaven and Gunsmith Bitch. Buying magic items is extremely broken and should be done as much as your DM allows, so Panty is based for understanding this underrated XGtE feature.
#2: She focus-fires
Don't mind the watermark.
Panty knows the basic optimization principle that her 8d6+3d6 damage should be going towards the BBEG of the week rather than his goons, as shown here her nuking Tortlebelt rather than his children. She's sometimes careful with the Dragon's Wrath blast and sometimes just blasts it to get the encounter over with, which is understandable since her encounter days are a cringe-worthy 1-2 encounter long.
#3: She surprises
From the same episode as #2, Panty makes an attack before any of the thousands of Tortlebelt. This surely means she has PWT active for her and her velociraptors she reflavors as Stocking.
#4: She uses lycanthropy
Another fairly basic but important optimization strategy is getting your ass bitten by a lycantrophe, which Panty reflavors into a transformer. Clearly, the reason she was kicked out of heaven is because the became Evil to not have the DM take control of her. Another L for the DM for not letting her ignore lycantrophy's alingment stuff.
#5: She kites
From one of the few spood S2 episodes, we can see her and her velociraptors (which she was maintaining Concentration on from her earlier fight with the demon sisters) run away from the melee BBEG. No reason to have some velociraptors die when you have a Phantom Steed reflavored as a minecart.
Chapter 2: steal her build
This will be a quick build, because Haen already did a lot of the talking and picking out the spell list is his own Shadow Sniper Gloom build. Therefore, we're just gonna be snapping here. Have this build open in another tab since I'll be referring to it a lot. The differences between this and that build stem from adapting it to be an antimatter rifle Gunner build instead of a CBE build, and me using a feat and spell background since a DM which allows antimatter rifles is more likely to allow all bg's (Me. I'm that DM).
Tech used: Consult my tech glossary on the following:
- Investigator/Inheritor tech
- Oversized weapons
- Lifeberries
Character Creation
Race: Custom Lineage (Gunner). Half-feat and lets us ignore having to manually reload every 2 shots.
Background: Investigator for the pearl necklace, but we use TCE's optional rule for swapping bg features to replace Official Inquiry with Quandrix Student's Quandrix Initiate (Druidcraft, Guidance, Wizard: Shield), which gets us the bracketed spells and later Vortex Warp and Aura of Vitality. We're mostly here for Shield, though.
Stats: 8 Str/15+2+1 Dex (remember Gunner)/14 Con/8 Int/13 Wis (Heightening this only really matters for Entangle and Fear, which we compensate for by solving with damage)/13 Cha. Bump Wis if you won't get to DSS (or don't care for it).
Lv 1-6: Fighter 1/Gloom 5
This is entirely identical to Shadow Sniper, with the exception that you take Superior Technique (Precision Attack) instead of Defense, taking Archery at Ranger 2 instead. This makes you levels 1 and 2 a lot worse with later-game trade-off in being able to turn a miss into a likely or guaranteed hit (assuming you use it wisely), which becomes ever more influential compared to Defense's +1 AC since you just do so much damage on a hit. Also take Longstrider instead of Entangle.
Lv 7-8: Rune Knight 3/Gloom 5
I will commit the sin of delaying Conjure Stocking so that we can get our magical girl transformation. Cloud Rune and Fire Rune are taken, but we're pretty much just using the former for redirecting a deadly attack. We're mainly here for Giant's Might, which is a great increase in power when you consider that we don't BA attack and that we deal an extra 6d8 on a hit (and once per turn a free but dinky 1d6).
Lv 9-12: Rune Knight 3/Gloom 9
Take Vortex Warp instead of Locate Object and Aura of Vitality instead of Fear (your save DC is way too low). We dip for Lifeberry and then Favored by the Gods for a better defensive portfolio.
Lv 13-20: Rune Knight 3/Gloom 13/Life Cleric 1/DSS 1/Wildfire 2
W take more Gloom levels exactly as Shadow Sniper specifies. I then just want more spell slots for our best spells and so take Wildfire 2 to get Find Familiar and Wildfire Spirit.
Note: I didn't do any calcs for this shitpost build, so Idk if this is the day where Ass 3 truly is a good way to cap the build off (taking it instead of either instead of any of Gloom, Wildfire, or DSS).
Going Dao 2 for SR Lifeberries and 6 more dpr may also be worthwhile over Wildfire. It's T4, 5e is defunct at this level anyway so why care?
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