Alphonso, I sent you a private message about your last post
Response sent
Fine with waiting
Quick story time! (related to axel's post in the current beastman combat)
When a group of mine was playtesting D&D 5E, I was acting as the GM and one of our players had made a character by the name of Ulfgar. Said character died, and the player brought in a new, identical character named Wulfgar.
Later on, the party ran into a room with a massive pile of kolbolds that were obviously working themselves up into a 'kill the humies' sort of frenzy. One of the players asked what would happen if they went to try Diplomacy with the kolbolds and I responded "I dunno. What is your name with a 'W' in front of it?"
Going ashore right now is kind of similar...
Hey I am moving right now and very sorry to be slow on posting, bot me if necessary
No problem. Thanks for letting us know.
Alphonso: You were hit in the arm and the chain shirt doesn't cover there, but your Leather Jack does. Shields don't provide any armor bonus unless you use them to oppose an incoming attack. You could have done that, but there's a bunch of details about using shields to talk about (see below). If you don't use the shield to oppose the incoming attack, I'm seeing one point of armor on your arm locations, so 10 damage - 3 Toughness Bonus - 1 Armor Point = 7 Wounds taken. I'll allow you to use the shield to oppose the attack, but read the article below before you do: it's not clearly better until you are very good with a shield.
If Alphonso doesn't show up, my 'bot' choice for him is to not use the shield to Oppose. I don't to take a big risk on his behalf and/or end up needing to use Fortune.
Axel: I think you may have taken off one Wound too many. Axel's Toughness Bonus is 4 if I'm reading your character sheet right. So you'd take 4 Wounds and have 15 remaining.
I'm not seeing any kind of 'aim carefully' action for spells like there is for ranged weapons. It's always possible to use Insight to try to gain an Advantage, which would kind of be the same thing. The magic rules don't have a clear interaction between Channel and Petty Magic at all. I'm tempted to think it should, but let's not innovate on the magic system too much until we get used to it. Note that I did say that taking cover for a round consumed your action earlier though. So you could do some method of preparing, just cast this turn or take cover.
I am not very experienced with magic use myself. I think my recommendation would be that when you cast, you save your Fortune pool to try to offset/change any Miscasts. If you simply fail, just let it go. Probably...again I don't have good experience with actually using magic.
Hans: the people to wake up are still below deck and your charge is above deck. So I'm interpreting this as Hans going onto deck and yelling at people rather than spending an action to wake them up. You aren't saying that you are taking cover: the big things I can think of for Hans to do this turn after that are to oppose incoming attacks with his shield (see below) or shoot his bow.
Edit: oops - I think your shield rating is 1, which doesn't allow you to oppose ranged attacks. If so, nevermind about all of that stuff.
Zarine: you took cover, so everything is easy.
Shield Use: is complicated. It's probably best if I just point toward an article that Cubicle 7 put up that dealt with the topic. See here. But the gist that I'm trying to get to is that if you choose to Oppose an attack, you could turn a missed attack into a hit or even increase the amount of damage you take by getting a deeply negative SL. The way lack of Ambidexterity works with shields makes that kind of scary unless you are quite good with them. Less so if you are willing to spend Fortune on it.
Alphonso, I sent you a new private message to look at when you are available again. It's a bit long and isn't time critical, so you can deal with it after you move if that helps.
Ok thanks for the info on stuff makes sense.
Should'nt have mentioned Sigmar, that old magic hating hypocrite bastard... lol
Note to self, spend more XP on casting...
I just made a big post in Gameplay about the current combat, detailing things that happened. Let's have another one to briefly talk about things that didn't happen but could have, or to explain a few other items.
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First, why I'm posting all of the enemy defenses in spoilers: this is solely to hurry things up a bunch. If I didn't do that the posting order for a single attack would look like:
Me: who do you attack?
Player: I attack this guy. (rolls attack)
Me: here is their defense roll (rolls defense)
Player: decides whether to apply Fortune or not, or even Resilience (possible reroll)
Me: ok, here is the final result.
At a table, that ordering happens pretty quickly and is preferable because I wouldn't be taking the risk of revealing all the enemy defense SL to the players and giving them an opportunity (even unintentional) to cheat and just attack the guy that rolled worst.
In pbp that ordering is sooooo unbearably slow. So the solution my prior GM came up with was to roll all enemy defenses after they take their turn and spoiler them. This heavily depends on the players deciding what their action is before they look (honor system yadda yadda) but makes the game playable.
When the ungors start attacking, their attack rolls will be up before player defense rolls. Because players won't have a choice but to respond to them, those won't need to be spoiled. So that's the full version of my response to Axel's question.
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Thing #2 that didn't happen: Zarine didn't go after a gor. Unlike the ungors, the gors are wearing light armor (they'll have an AP of 1). Monsters typically have just a global armor rating, and so that armor is the same on all locations.
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Thing #3 that didn't happen: Zarine didn't roll doubles. If she had and the attack was successful, that would have been a critical hit. But her attack wasn't successful (despite the fact that she won the opposed test and dealt damage to her opponent). So if her roll had been one higher (88) she still would have hit the target, but we'd also need a roll on the Oops! table on page 160 where bad things would have happened.
Supplement: the impale property on her weapon made me briefly wonder if a 0 on the units die (80) would also cause an Oops!, but it doesn't. Impale only triggers on successful attacks (criticals), it doens't Oops!
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Thing #4 that didn't happen: Axel imploding the universe. For fun, let's go through a theoretical casting mishap. He rolls doubles and doesn't succeed on the test (88) so we roll on the minor mishap table (page 234).
- Witchlight: he glows for 1d10 rounds. Lucky! There are much worse minor mishaps. But for a witch trying to hide what they are this remains very bad.
Supplement: this would happen even if his test was successful and doubles (33) except that he also has the Instinctive Diction talent, which prevents mishaps on a critical roll for Language (Magick).
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For the counter attack that I'm sure will come Hans' way:
"Defensive is nice and straight forward: when you are wielding the weapon, you gain +1 SL to the Melee Test when defending. This even works if you are defending with a weapon in your other hand as you manoeuvre your shield into the path of any incoming weapons! When combined with the fact you’re likely to have a relatively high Melee (Basic) Skill, you should have a good chance of entirely parrying many incoming attacks (or at least reducing the difference in the SL). The Defensive Quality also allows shields to be used with Melee (Parry), which forgoes the –20 penalty you’d receive for using Melee (Basic) in an off-hand (if you don’t have Ambidextrous)."
So what makes the most sense would be for Hans to defend with his sword, and not his buckler. This foregoes the 1 point of armor from the buckler, but it gives him +1 SL when defending.
Hans rolls a 20, and he has WS35 with 5 skill points in basic, for 40 total. So that is SL2. As he has a buckler in his other hand, it becomes SL3.
This would be SL-2, but because of the buckler, it becomes SL-1. Useful, as the Ungor would get a bonus for ganging up on him.
This is all correct?
Also, it might be useful to link this to the campaign header.
It's a really useful cheat sheet
Yes, that's probably the default best way to use a shield without supporting talents or a LOT of melee(basic). Kind of anemic when all that AP is closeby, but the -20 penalty is pretty brutal.
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Also, it might be useful to link this to the campaign header.
It's a really useful cheat sheet
Great sheet! Thanks.
Almost done moving thanks also I considered a spear to be a hand weapon for a knight lol. More and more I just should have spent the XP to the next promotion and gotten the equipment and trappings etc.
But I went for the RP.
Advancing to the next tier doesn't get you trappings (character creation is the exception). You need to acquire them in-game. The trappings are listed so you can know what you need to have for others to take you seriously as a member of your career.
I'm considering picking up a new book soon that focuses on warrior careers. I know it has some additional knight careers. If we get access, we can go over the options to see if a different kind of knight would suit Alphonso better. I think they are all for Imperial knightly orders rather than Brettonian ones, but it is worth a look. If anyone is interested the name of the book is Up in Arms.
I'll try to post tomorrow if our remaining players haven't acted for their turn by then.
It’s a great book. Only saw a few pages, but freelance is a wonderful career for adventurers.
Also the book let’s you have the possibility of everyone being part of a knightly order but with different careers. So cool :)
The #1 thing that got my attention was alternate rules for advantage. It's a subsystem that definitely needs some work but it is so integrated into talents & monster abilities that I'm reluctant to start hammering around with it on my own.
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I purchased Up in Arms today. I've only scanned through it but here are some neat features.
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Lots of careers, most but not all of which are in the Warrior class. I'll denote their parent career:
Artillerist (Engineer)
Cartographer (Scholar)
Camp Follower (Pedlar)
Light Cavalryman (Cavalryman)
Freelance (Knight)
Knight of the Blazing Sun (Knight)
Knight of the White Wolf (Knight)
Knight Panther (Knight)
Archer (Soldier)
Halberdier (Soldier)
Handgunner (Soldier)
Greatsword (Soldier)
Pikeman (Soldier)
Siege Specialist (Soldier)
Warrior Priest of Myrmidia (Warrior Priest)
A lot of these new careers don't seem very different from their parent career, but that was only with a quick scan-over. Archer and Handgunner are much more different from Soldier than most any of the Knights are from Knight itself. Again, that was only with a glance-over. They are probably different in some meaningful sense.
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A layout of Imperial and at least some Myrmidian knightly orders. Nothing for Brettonia...I assume that would need to get its own book.
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Rules for being Tilean humans - also a whole bunch of Tilea flavor/history/ect. Same for Myrmidia and her followers.
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Alternate rules for death & injury - they looked very similar to me at a glance-over. The critical tables are probably different than our current ones.
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A bunch of new rules for weapons. I'm overall not a fan. Combat is difficult enough without more finnicky weapons. This does include somewhat modified rules for shields. I don't think it changes the Ambidexterity problem to oppose with a shield but it looks more lenient in handing out the shield APs.
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More mounted combat rules: again at a glance they didn't seem very different from the current mounted ruleset. I think there was more about what happens if the mount is targeted or the rider is dismounted.
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Group Advantage: this is a replacement for the core advantage rules. It looks like it does away with the problem of Advantage stacking and also provides more default uses for Advantage, similar to a number of monster abilities that consume Advantage for various effects (like dragon breath for instance). Advantage is gained largely like it is now but goes to the pool for your side of combat. It is spent when used from the group pool rather than just building up until it is taken away. A bunch of talent errata accompanies the system.
I like the look of it a lot but I'm unlikely to be able to get my head around the whole thing in time to use it for our current combat. Which is a shame, because I have a suspicion that this fight might have enough combatants to allow someone to really go crazy with Advantage.
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Out of all that I'm most likely to adopt the Careers as valid & Group Advantage. I suspect the shield rule modifications will be popular so I'll take another look at them.
Magda will avoid combat as much as she can, and try to heal the wounded sailors
A bit more detail for Alphonso's benefit since he's facing a potential gor crit. The first thing to do is to just roll your melee defense. The rules suggest that the gor would crit you anyway, but I don't like crits happening on misses or defensive crits.
If Alphonso is still taking a hit after the first roll, this is a classic time to spend a Fortune. First, make sure you can't win by just getting +1 more SL since a Fortune can add 1 SL to your test. If that isn't enough, this is a good time to try a reroll.
If you are still losing, you could consider a Dark Deal. That allows you to reroll the test again at the cost of 1 Corruption. Corruption is nasty and hard to get rid of, but this hasn't been a heavy Corruption campaign so far and it may be affordable.
If you do the Dark Deal (or not) and are still losing...things get harder. You can consider whether to spend a Resilience or Fate to avoid the blow. See Gameplay: the crit came out as a Ragged Wound to the body. Bleeding conditions are pretty bad.
The one complication amid all that is that if Alphonso goes down (negative Wounds but not zero) he'll take another critical hit. That one might be -20 reduced severity if the negative wounds are between -1 and -3.
Alphonso & Magda: I didn't have time to look it up earlier today, but the Bleeding Conditions that critical hit could cause are really bad. Normally if you go down you might take a critical hit but are relatively stable. Bleeding Conditions cost 1 Wound per Condition per turn if you ae above 0 Wounds. If you are at or below zero Wounds, Bleeding Conditions give a 10% chance of dying per turn each. So if Alphonso takes the crit, goes down & isn't healed that's 20% chance of dying every round until it gets fixed.
Resolve could remove the Bleeding Conditions at one point of Resolve each. Magda could also use Heal to remove Bleeding Conditions rather than trying to restore Wounds. She rolled well enough to take care of both Bleeding Conditions if it comes to that. So the situation doesn't look critically bad at the moment. That could change a bunch if Alphonso goes negative & takes another crit though.
Relevant things to look at:
* Bleeding Conditions (page 168)
* Bandages (page 309) - if folks want to retroactively buy these in Ubersreik I'll allow it this time
I forgot one important thing in this critical wound discussion. Since the blow struck an armored location, Alphonso could use the Critical Deflection rules to prevent the crit while still taking normal Wound damage. The armor itself would take damage but that is WAY better than bleeding conditions or spending Fate or Resilience.
Just spend a fate point and say no
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Very glad to have not wasted a fortune point. Thanks for looking out for me.
I've had a chance to read over the Group Advantage rules more. Here's roughly how it goes:
* no one has their own personal advantage and importantly no one can stack up huge combat bonuses to all checks & super hard to stop
* all advantage goes into the allied or adversary pools. friendly npcs contribute to the allied pool
Ways to gain advantage for your pool:
* attacking surprised enemies (+1)
* assess - this is like using Insight, Pray or other skills to gain advantage (+2 or +3 with a success of 6 SL or more)
* victory - defeating an important NPC (+1) or a party nemesis (+2)
* winning - win an Opposed Test you initiated (+1)
* outmanoeuvre - wound an opponent without an opposed test (+1)
Advantage doesn't do anything in the group pool if it just sits there. It needs to be spent. The rules say "You don't need to consult with anyone before spending advantage but courtesy is rarely a vice":
* Batter special action (1 advantage) - opposed Strength test to give enemy the Prone condition
* Trick special action (1 advantage) - opposed Agility test to give enemy Ablaze, Blinded or Entangled (it's assumed you need something to do it with, like lamp oil & a torch for Ablaze would work)
* Additional Effort (2+ advantage) - gain +10 on a single test, decided before you roll, for 2 advantage. For every 1 additional advantage spent, you get another +10
* Flee from Harm (2 advantage) - move out of Engaged without penalty
* Additional Action (4 advantage) - take another Action - you cannot gain Advantage for the pool with whatever you do with the action
* Creature Trait abilities (varies) - like the Hatred thing the Gor activated. Notably it covers a lot of extra attacks enemies can get like bite attacks & such.
End of Round Assessment: at the end of each round, the side with more combatants either gains +1 advantage or moves 1 advantage from the opposing side's pool to their own
The rules say the GM can optionally start one side or the other with advantage in their group pool for having tactical advantages at the beginning of combat. Things like outnumbering the enemy, holding important ground or having a dragon.
A bunch of talents are changed to go along with the changes. Largely they are much weaker than before but that's mostly because Core advantage was so strong: Beat Blade, Distract, Drilled, Gunner, Rapid Reload, Relentless, Reversal, Shieldsman. The standout notation to make here is that Rapid Reload & Gunner change the action of reloading a ranged weapon into an Assess action.
Charging now gives +10 bonus to the first melee test you initiate after completing your move instead of generating advantage.
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Shield Rules: the optional rule for shields is that you get the shield AP anytime you Oppose an attack.
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Obviously there are a bunch of details missing and I'm highly suspicious of a typo on the new Batter action. I'll refrain from commenting on what I think of the rules (more than I did above) for the moment. What do you guys think?
I like shields just working. They made the rules too complicated.
As for advantage, it seems like group adv makes record keeping much easier, especially in large combats. That’s a win in my book! I’d remove batter though, as it comes across OP
Seems more complicated to me, but if it is easier on the DM, then that's definitely a plus.
In Gameplay, Magda used a Fortune to push a Heal test from failure into success. This is technically something the game rules don't actually allow for and that has always bothered me. The relevant passage under spending Fortune is:
* add +1 SL to a Test after it is rolled
Modification of Success Levels doesn't strictly speak to whether a test was successful or a failure in the game's terminology. As the rules are written, I'd call the final result a failure with +1 SL, but since bandage use requires a success nothing happens.
What I'm considering is allowing the +1 SL mode of Fortune to alternatively add +10 to the skill a roll is being made against. If this second method is chosen, however, the roll only counts as a success. Any talents or other effects can't be used to push the SL higher and the SL would either be +0 or +1, however the math works.
Any thoughts?
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Zarine, your suggestion for how to get Axel out of his 'look I'm a witch' jam is better than the one I'd been thinking that he could use. It would be highly unusual for a wood elf to be bringing an apprentice wizard in for training--they usually arrive via care of the Cult of Sigmar. If the lie is believed, however, they'd probably need to consider you to be acting as a Witch Hunter.
The lie will be WAY easier to pull off if you prevent him from casting magic any more than he has where they can see it.
I have a few things in my favour... hopefully.
When I started, I looked like crap. Now? New clean clothes, boots, new staff, recently bathed etc. I could MAYBE be seen as a servant and be believed as such, just not in livery for... reasons?
Not every servant wears livery. It depends on their role. I think we'll be okay, but you know, if not, then we'll slaughter the people who try to murder you until they stop trying.
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Just a pity I didn't land a single hit...
I was sad too. Magic can be spectacular.
I think we'll try Group Advantage on our next combat. Personally, I think it looks a lot better and easier to track.
Things I like:
* not having to individually keep track of advantage loss and gain
* enemies can't steal away advantage you have acquired besides the weird end of round thing
* no one can escalate crazily out of control with advantage. It never quite went badly in our last combat, but if say one of the melee ungors escalated to +60 from advantage through a series of lucky rolls...it's awkward to deal with from there.
* assess action is both formalized (even if it isn't 100% clear which skills can do Assess) and more useful - I can image a Nun praying for advantage for instance and a witch hunter using that advantage on the same round.
* it's the only advantage fix I've seen that still meshes well with creature abilities that consume advantage
* the Flee from Harm action isn't really new, but in practice someone who really needed to run away from an enemy needed to somehow get advantage first or take big risks. Now someone else can gain the advantage for them.
Things I really don't like:
* the aforementioned end of round advantage-nicking by the most numerous side.
Things that could go sideways & need more watching:
* the more numerous side has benefits well above just the end of round advantage theft. Because opposed rolls can only generate advantage for the character that initiated the action, a more numerous party has more chances to gain advantage than a less numerous one.
* monster abilities are far easier to activate, at least in a group. Ungors don't normally have the Fury trait, but they can gain advantage for Gors to use to enter Hatred, for instance. Or skeletons could rack up the advantage needed for a zombie dragon to use its breath weapon.
* the book specifically says that pre-combat advantage seeding is an option, but I could see it being quite dangerous with monster abilities. I'll want to be careful if/when we give that a shot.
I'm kind of itching to get rid of the end of round numbers evaluation, but we should try the normal version before I start making modifications.
One change I'm going to make right now is that Leadership is able to Assess. I think the book authors missed it, but the function of Leadership that allows it to be used to move advantage to other characters doesn't do anything with Group Advantage. A Leadership Assess also makes sense, so I feel no hesitation in saying Leadership can Assess with this system. The mutated bestigor would've loved to have that in the last fight. He was mostly using Leadership to give his guys +10 to Psychology tests because they were running away from the blackpowder weapons...and it never worked. One of my GM spoilers had a:
because his archers could never recover from Broken.
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A note on the new Batter and Trick actions: the enemy can gain advantage if they win the opposed Strength/Agility test on these actions--unlike other Opposed tests--for some reason. The book phrasing is really weird, but it's clear that those ones can gain advantage for the defender.
That probably shouldn't change the evaluation of those actions overall, but you guys should know it before we start.
I've also looked over the injury & death rules in Up in Arms, and I'm still not impressed. They definitely made changes, and some of them really frighten me.
For instance, right now if someone goes below 0 wounds, they take a Critical Hit. The critical hit severity is lowered by 20 if they only went negative by less than their Toughness Bonus though. For instance, Rocco took a Critical Hit (Major Ear Wound) as he went down, then unfortunately took another Wound with the -20 modifier (Tis But a Scratch) because he took another Wound damage from his Oops! result. That's why he had the Bleeding Condition that could have killed him. If you take more Wound damage above your Toughness Bonus threshhold, the Critical Wound severity is just normal.
Anyway, the Up in Arms rules say that you take the amount of negative Wounds below zero, multiply that by ten and add that amount to Critical Severity. Which is scary lethal. Moreso because all of the guys on my side of the GM screen are ultimately expendable. If all of the players want to get their PCs killed we can do that, but I'm not so inclined.
One thing I didn't remember about death in WFRP is that a character dies at the end of the round if they:
* are Unconscious
* at 0 Wounds
* have more Critical Wounds than Toughness Bonus
The two source books have the same rule for that. They do allow for survival if a Critical Wound is removed during the round, but even with magic that's super implausible. Regeneration on a troll might be able to pull it off.
In light of that, I should be better about listing the number of Critical Wounds on each allied combatant.
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One change I'm more interested in is they seemed to realize the Bleeding Condition is too nasty and modified it.
Differences:
Normal rules: if you go to 0 Wounds while Bleeding, you immediately fall unconscious.
Up in Arms rules: if you go to 0 Wounds while Bleeding, you go unconscious if you fail a Challenging (+0) Endurance test or fall unconscious.
Note: both rules give the 10% chance of dying per Bleeding Condition only while unconscious, so that's the importance of the Unconscious condition here.
Normal rules: the test to remove Bleeding Conditions is unspecified, so Challenging (+0)
Up in Arms rules: the test to remove Bleeding Conditions is Average (+20)
I'm not thrilled that we could end up with the silliness of a character bleeding to death with say, 7 Bleeding Conditions but staying alive round after round because they keep making their Endurance tests and never go unconscious. But that sounds like something less likely to happen in practice than in theory.
Agreed. I'm not an expert in the game mastery of the system BUT am a fan of the system in general... and as it stands it's already lethal enough.
As above, I reviewed the critical hits the crew has taken. We have:
Alwin II: Jarred Arm
Rocco: Winded, Major Ear Wound, Tis But a Scratch
Per Hofbauer: Sliced Ear, Jarred Arm
I'm not 100% certain on the rules for when these criticals can be considered cleared for the purposes of not contributing to a too-many-crits death. The rules say that all conditions have to be cleared (Bleeding, Deafened, Stunned in our case - I haven't been rolling every round on these for the characters that went down) and all non-permanent negative modifiers need to be removed. That last bit is the squishy part. If we don't consider the extra Wounds caused by critical hits to be part of the 'negative modifiers' then the Jarred Arm crits would already be gone. If we do, then they would only need to recover some Wounds. Probably like 'have at least as many Wounds as those caused by the Critical Hit' is good enough for that. Alwin II got some Wounds back from Magda's efforts, so I think his is fully cleared no matter what reading I use. Added a strikethrough above.
Up in Arms has revised critical tables that I don't think we'll use. One thing I really like about them though is that each table has a few low results with a 'T' for number of extra Wounds lost, meaning the Critical Hit is trivial, doesn't cause extra Wounds and doesn't count toward death. Unfortunately I don't think the tables are usable without adopting more of the Up in Arms injury rules which I'm not excited about doing.
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I'll plan on moving the encounter forward tomorrow, so people can have time to respond.
As an example for the Gang Up discussion, let's create an example situation.
Hans and Alphonso are both fighting a Orc but for whatever reason the fight is going nowhere. Then Hans and Alphonso are both attacked by one goblin each. Are Hans & Alphonso ganged up on? Is the orc?
Does the answer change if Hans and Alphonso are both attacked by two goblins each? What if Hans is attacked by two goblins and Alphonso isn't attacked by any?
I know that the Mordheim computer game by Rogue Factor handled this by negating a character for purposes of their Gang Up-like effect if they were engaged by another enemy (ie. they were also being ganged up on). Or something like that...the game never explained what was going on exactly. That might be a clean solution. I'll try out that idea below, but I'm open to others.
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Situation A: Hans & Alphonso both are engaged with the single orc & one goblin. Result: Hans, Alphonso & the orc are all not counting toward gang up. No one is being ganged up on.
Situation B: Hans and Alphonso are engaged with the single orc & two goblins each. Result: Hans, Alphonso & the orc are all not counting toward gang up. Hans & Alphonso are ganged up on 2v1.
Situation C: Hans is engaged with the single orc & two goblins. Alphonso is engaged with the orc. Result: Hans & the orc don't count toward gang up. Hans is ganged up on 2v1.
WFRP is the best system I have seen for one on one combat. For multiple combatants? It is really messy. Because in these situations, it matters who attacked who each round. It gets even harder in PbP.
For ease of use, I'd just do this: "Swirling Combat."
When there are multiple people fighting each other, to determine gang up, add every enemy adjacent to the fighter and subtract every ally adjacent to the fighter. Whichever side has the higher number gets +1 SL, which increases to +2 SL if they outnumber the enemy 2v1 and +3 SL if they outnumber the enemy 3v1. Large combatants (trolls, minotaurs, ogres, etc) count as 2 when calculating this.
So in the above example, Hans and Alphonso are fighting an orc and a goblin. There are even numbers in that swirling melee, where there are multiple combatants who have choices on who to attack. As the numbers are even, neither side gets an advantage.
But if another goblin charges in, then the greenskins all get +1 SL regardless of who they attack, as both Hans and Alphonso are valid targets. If Hans and Alphonso can kill a greenskin, then it goes back to being an even fight.
This just seems *so much* simpler to me. It's one less thing to have to keep track of. Throw in group advantage, and suddenly party size fights will no longer be a headache.
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I have a medical emergency in the family so I'm gonna need a day or two.
No problem, Axel. Take care over there.
I will use fortune and I am back from my illness as I said but still recovering slowly
Zarine, one detail I want to check on out of character. When she says that she wants to get Axel trained, the normal human thing to do would be to take him to the Colleges of Magic in Altdorf. As much as we've been talking about witch-fires and such, that's what a lot of witch hunters would be doing with a witch that didn't resist anyway. So if that's what Zarine means by training, she'd be effectively acting as a witch hunter. Super unusual (because she's a elven noble) but not otherwise out of the ordinary.
If she intends something else or is being vague in character, that's different.
If it helps, I think Axel has been planning to get to the Colleges of Magic as well.
Yeah, that's what she intends. You said it would be unbelievable that she was a witch hunter, so I didn't claim to be that, but the goal is the same, and it was written into her background that some of her family have been witch hunters in the past because of their talent at seeing magical weaves.
Unrealistic to expect an elf to teach a human, so he needs to go to the human place, and she hopes to use her influence to get him trained, and then back out safely (not sure if there is an obligation there where he would have to serve them or whatever).
Sorry I've been quiet for a bit. The Thanksgiving weekend and other events that came up took up more bandwidth than I anticipated. That's mostly calmed down though. I don't think I'll be able to push today, but hopefully tomorrow.
Hope everyone is doing well and Alphonso is feeling better!
Replying here about Scarlet Empress for Zarine's question.
Scarlet Empress is a card game, probably equivalent to poker. I'm need to iron out the rules I want to use, but the broad outline will be a set of Opposed Gamble (or Intelligence if untrained) tests against all the players. Best SL wins, with tie breaks, ect. The rules in Rough Nights and Hard Days don't do what I want, so I'll be ignoring them.
Without saying whether we'll actually have cheating going on, I want to preserve that as a possibility and that's the part of the rules I'm still trying to nail down: how to allow you to make Opposed Tests while preserving that possibility.
The basic structure of the game will be six rounds of the game (represented by one Opposed Gamble test for each round). The buy-in is six silvers, so each hand will be worth one silver per person at the table. I'm planning on six players including NPCs, so winning just one hand out of the six would at least break you even, normally.
Lord Goldhaber is doing two buy-ins for the game to sweeten the pot, according to the tavern owner, so each hand will be worth slightly more than a buy-in this time.
Though I'm not fully decided on how to work the game to allow the possibility of cheating, the basic structure will be Perception vs Sleight of Hand. The tricky part is that I don't want to reward stuff like saying "I watch all the players every time!" Splitting your attention that much should come at some sort of penalty. Ideally, a player should be rewarded (get a bonus) if they are focused in on the person actually cheating. For the cheater side, I want the rules to lean toward making it utterly crazy to try and cheat on every hand--their luck won't hold out vs all those Perception tests and cheating strategically should be the way to go.
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Separately, does Zarine have enough money to buy into the game, get a room at the inn and pay for food?