No evil frog… this time.
Plane landed so no GM post until later. Emi, go ahead and cast the fuchsia, I’ll post the Naja avatar later then begin act III when I can do so without neglecting house guests who just traveled 8000 miles.
Nobody successfully rolled a 10+ to notice XIII’s tattoo at the beginning of the game.
@Randy, sorry I botted you there. I figured with two players already hitting the assassin droids we could just bring that leg of the battle to a quick end.
For the upcoming battle, I added a map.
___________ . . . . . . . . . . . . . ______________
Causeway \______________/ Sandy Beach
. . . . . . . . . . .U . . . U . . . U. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Randy could position himself on the causeway for stronger earth magic. There’s also a sandy beach and three cannons (the U’s), though your characters can’t see them yet.
For now, I assume you are all near XIII, the only NPC who hasn’t fled or died.
It does occur to me that Randy should sense what is happening off-camera, although not because of his magic.
Posted.
Also worth mentioning…
You will need ranged attacks for the first leg of the battle. Difficulty to hit is based on distance, but so is the creature’s damage!
Cannons are d20 for Badia due to her Hunter day-job; d12 for Randy & Emi. However, the Causeway and Sandy Beach each add power to their respective magic elements.
AND HAPPY 4TH!
(If you celebrate it… a lot of people in my other games are from countries other than the U.S.)
Updated Waterfront spoiler to note PC positions.
Unless you specify otherwise, it’s
• Randy on Causeway
• Badia on Center Cannon
• Emi on Sandy Beach
@Stalwart, was just at the bookstore and saw the Jim Butcher book you mentioned. Now I’m curious…!
Let's see:
Titan... check.
Massively destructive energy beam... check.
Assaulting a city from the water... check.
Desperate group of heroes completely outclassed... check.
One-shot use item that might be the key to defeating it... check.
Ha… I see!
More posts to come. But got in-laws to entertain.
the key to defeating it...
…is exactly what you all did in the first round: find weaknesses you can exploit! I’ll add damage, a hindering effect or both, depending on what you come up with! (Well… if the dice don’t screw you with a miss.)
@Emi, please specify a target for the scorpion tail to strike. If someone shatters the dome, for example, you can pick a lobe/hemisphere! If you roll high enough, the tail can shatter the weakened dome AND inject poison.
@Randy, you may have guessed an up-trust to the underbelly won’t work again. It’s meant to be more psychological than anything else. Randy probably COULD penetrate a copper hull with a stone lance, but the brain just cut you off from that particular attack.
@Badia, but there’s nothing psychological about the cannons. They’re gone! Badia has to go back to kicking butt the old-fashioned way.
Eh, just saw this after I posted.
Should I edit my post?
No!
That post is awesome! My above was an example, but what you did was better… I even came up with a defensive for her—which only prevents you from repeating the same idea twice. If she’s making an attack impossible, you did good!
The Mother Brain sends her thoughts to all of you: Blah, blah, blah… I’m invincible!
Q. What video game brain claimed to be invincible?
@Badia, for a time I had forgotten about Super Mario Legolas. I read your post and I remember again!
We all tried to block that out of our memories... XD
Ha-ha… I never watched the Hobbit. I watched LotR, extended and all, but my wife’s not into that stuff. I was just happy she sat through eight seasons of Game of Thrones.
Naja has been absorbing damage. She won’t die when her ♥️s run out. She just loses her sand form and can’t soften the blow for you anymore.
Current HP:
• Badia: ♥️♥️♥️
• Emi: ♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️
• Randy: ♥️♥️♥️♥️(♥️♥️) <= loses two if hit this round.
• Naja: ♥️♥️♥️(♥️♥️) <= loses two if Randy is hit this round.
For the next round, I wrote exactly what Badia loses and what Naja absorbs. Emi and/or Randy might lose 2-3 ♥️ it hit, but none of you should get KO’d this round with all the lucky d12 rolls you’ve had.
Technically, Badia, you still get to roll a d20 to fight your way out of the dream. Up to you though. I don’t see the brain surviving this round.
Okay. Made a roll in case it matters.
Wow…! Got to learn a lot about Emi from that scene!
Okay. Made a roll in case it matters.
I’ll give Randy a chance to act, but your 15 is Bad Roll Insurance.
I prefer to avoid botting, but given the pace we’ve kept up since last Friday, I think I should commit to resolving the round by about 24 hours after the last player post.
I already felt like Randy really got to shine last round, using earth magic to get past BAMB’s attempt to shield a wound. Combined with Badia’s high roll, Emi’s hit is just enough to finish the job, so let’s make it official then. Big bad’s dead; nothing left to kill!
I hope you enjoyed the cheap thrill ride that was this game! Feel free to stick around to give your PC some closure, but I hope none of your heroes leave without saying goodbye.
Oh, bummer! Well, hope you’re safe anyway.
@Emi, PM sent.
I’ll write a wrap-up post tomorrow, in the interest of ending rather than awkwardly petering out. Feel free to add a bit more to the scene as you see fit today.
In the meantime, I thought you might get a kick out of the only written source material for this: a six-sentence prompt (nine, counting the title) that I threw together a day or two before recruitment.
Beginning - three factions are sent on the annual monster hunt.
Middle - the chimera isn’t that bad a guy. Will our huntresses talk to him or kill him anyway?
End - the knights are actually evil robots trying to overtake the kingdom. Choose your method of defending the innocent!—or will you protect the king, though he’s kind of a jerk?
XIII with a tattoo of the tech wizard’s logo was for Bella, so I didn’t do much to develop the tie-in between him, Mother Brain, and the death of Bella’s parents. You all failed to stop the assassination and he lost the coin toss. (Whether your fails were odd or even determined the target.) Since Bella wasn’t playing, him dying made things much easier! And the third act had no ♥️-bonus for saving lives anyway. The hope was that you’d all kick ass so bystanders wouldn’t die. Basically, you guys had unbelievable timing with good and bad rolls.
The plan for damage was ♥️ to ♥️♥️ in Act I, ♥️ to ♥️♥️♥️ in Act II, and ♥️♥️ to ♥️♥️♥️♥️ in Act III. The brain’s damage was to be anywhere in that range, but I gambled you would win at the highest difficulty level, which was ♥️♥️♥️♥️ damage and you could only shave off 1/16 of its health bar if your narrative did not convince me you’d find its weakness. I calculated you could barely win a slugfest, but odds were not that good. If you figured out what to do (and all three of you did—and Emi even said it!), I thought the brain might land a knock-out.
I got one of you down to ♥️ in each act, but dropped no one. You guys defied the odds with some of those unfavorable d12 rolls! I’m happy with that result!
I’ll tell you now, I pulled punches exactly once. When Randy threw his item off the cliff, I thought it might be funny if Randy the Savage (whose name I almost changed) would try to out-Randy Randy. His axe was just granted power to strike one target for ♥️♥️♥️, then explode (as Monster Hunter Tri’s switch-axe does), striking all for ♥️♥️♥️ damage… or he could throw it in a way that was easy to dodge, losing the item hit or miss.
The unused portion of the Fuchsia scroll was your TPK Insurance. I’m glad you ended up winning without it.
Oh heck… post is written. Why wait? Ending it now!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Thanks for running!
Not-quite Badia, not-quite Emi & Naja, and in a not-vermilion qipao is an ass-kicking vixen.
All by the same artist: “Vandrell.”