[OOC] Death & Taxes

Yeah no probs, I’ve noted it down but I’ll hold off doing anything with it until you’ve had chance to weigh in on it. I agree it’s pretty strong but it is a T4 talent so I think at that level they’re all pretty beefy.

If there's a lot of spell casters Counterspell seems good for use if with Surpreme Inspiring Rhetoric. That said scathing Tirade I think now is looking good. But still saving for first T5 talent.

is the talent tome gone? :o

depends on if someone paid their storage sub on dropbox I guess...

The guy updates it when new books come out, so I think the previous link was outdated. Try here.

mcneils5: I reread Teleportation, and I think it should be OK. It's very powerful, but also very, very dangerous, especially if Hildar wants to bring friends along. I think I'll ask you to assume a Story Point upgrade anytime it's used.

How convinient! Has Nekurr's name all over it... but I'm not sure if there are many devices in this setting :)

Otherwise, I'll boost the talents I usually forget about to get T3: Natural (vigilance/charm) and T4:Can’t we talk about this for 15+20XP right?

Did we get anything for December?

did we get a new Heroic points by the way?

Thx bud. That should put us at 155 so yes, I'm Frequency also since I had one saved before as well.

Did he close the door? I guess I'm not entirely getting what happened :(

It looks to me like he ran and dropped a snake outside, to Nekurr you just go out, expose himself to an attack and cast a spell. If the door is closed, then it's probably wiser to re-group, kill the scarecrows and release bruv, and then run after him. We have the witch and the boat man who can explain what is going on

Yeah, sorry if it's not clear what's happened. Over his past two turns, he ran outside the house, closed the door, cast a conjure spell to summon a monster, and then ran as far as he could north of the house. His goal is obviously to get away from you and to slow down pursuit, as even with the scarecrows around, he's a sitting duck in a straight-up fight with you.

Again, you can get a shot off at him, but you'll need to get outside to do so, and that requires dealing with the monster he dropped there, which is guarding the door.

In a previous turn, it looks like CESN tried to move through the door after the mayor, but he didn't have enough maneuvers to do so. I let him get his shot off anyway, as the mayor was just on the other side of the door, so narratively I said the door was still swinging shut. (This was when the overhang fell on him.)

So, by this point, the door is closed, and the mayor has moved halfway to long range (still technically medium range, but now through a closed door and with a monster summoned just behind the door). So for Nekurr or anyone to get another shot at him, they have to engage the door (maneuver), open the door (maneuver), and fire. But now there's a monster in the way. That fact should affect the roll in some way to my mind.

That said, I'm not trying to cheat or to be frustrating here. My goal is to give you a thrilling encounter, and just wailing on the mayor seemed like it might be boring. So what if we let Nekurr get his spell off, but it's automatically upgraded?

Yeah, so GM fail. Again, I didn't anticipate you going aggro on him in the house, so when this turned to combat, he was really not going to be much of a threat. My goal was simply to get the combat to a more interesting area. But now he's down!

I have wayland cast ensnaring spell and 2 moves one turn with a strain burn I guess, another cast and a move or double move after Nekurr's attack which did something to him. So if he closed a door (was never stated him doing just it's closed or it's cover if the attack succeeded though it it's not really an issue I figure to get through now) that'd be an action in there as well and he's two to three moves away from Nekurr which get to I figure since he magicked through doorway or a closer door already.

Field Commander maneuver to get through door and then move and attack or move twice to be close enough to see if he had any gum in his pocket then spend an action to lick his face or something more dangerous.

If we have a new house rule now a spell summon can lead block out of turn that's ok but that's also something we can do from now one I figure if they block line of sight mind you I can get that but that's for a stationary target casting and not moving before casting no?

A thrilling encounter is good and desirable, but OOC and IC we have no idea what he's doing or where he's going.

If I was him, I know I would go for help. That's what I/Bruv assumed he's doing. If he was just moving the fight to a different "arena", maybe with more cultists or something, where this could be concluded with more challenge but without changing the "color" of "the victory"? I'm fine with that sort of thing, and I think there's tools to do that and make it clear that's the intent of his flight (explicit expositive narrative and Story Points). "The Mayor is running away from town into the fields and swamp. Like the prey he's become, he's heading for his last hope and final stand. Yada yada..." In which case I wouldn't necessarily be so dead set on stopping his immediate escape immediately.

But entangling more, and potentially more innocent, people in this does not equate to thrilling for me. That starts getting painful.

We started by talking. He made a power-play out of it to take control of the situation, we made a power-play back. He didn't like it (granted within the bounds of law), and he chose to engage us in combat. Between everything that we've learned and the fact that the Mayor knew what's going on here and resisted our power-play, I/Bruv would rather do GOOD here (so much as we've been able to discern it) than follow the law, and I/Bruv have no troubles seeing that turn off events as he's clearly the bad guy now, and responsible for his own death and those of the Cultists.

If he was innocent he could have easily been more accommodating to our attempt to attain an understanding.

Getting more townsfolk and the guard involved, who may not actually know or be responsible for what's going on here? I/Bruv do not want at any cost. Because then we have to start killing innocents, and that's not fun or thrilling for me.

That's all highly meta obviously, and is a level of discussion that wasn't going on (probably because that level of discussion can dampen the thrill too) and so in retrospect may have little value, but where we end up at without that is where we are: we still just want control of the situation like we tried to get in the first place by talking.

For the record, I have found it all very thrilling anyway. When a pbp game gets your blood pumping irl, you know it's a good game, IMO. And that's what this story has done, even without being pushed to our very limits with combat.

Think of it this way: You open a door, and there's someone standing right behind it, blocking the way. It's essentially a second door for purposes of movement and line of sight. I think adding a couple of setbacks might be another way of handling it (shooting a ranged attack through the person blocking the doorway). The "Penalties when Casting Spells" table suggests that an upgrade is in keeping with the rules for this sort of thing, too, so I think we can leave it at that.

And incidentally, yeah, if y'all are ever in a situation where you want to block someone from entering or exiting through a door, Conjure is a good way to do that. In fact, plain Conjure could theoretically summon an actual wall! In this case, Divine doesn't allow summoning, but the mayor had a special ability that let him summon scarecrow monsters.

Sorry, didn’t notice the door :(

Yeah, that was the intent. I thought I telegraphed as much when he said something along the lines that "the ritual" would be completed this evening with or without the weaver. But I could have had him reiterate that through dialogue as he fled.
Yeah, I totally understand that and didn't mean to imply any of that was wrong.
Thanks for letting me know it's been thrilling! That's a relief. Again, I didn't mean to shame you all for killing him. I merely wanted to give you a satisfying showdown. And even with the mayor down, it's not over yet!

No worries! it's very easy to miss things in PbP :D I'k ok with attacking the mosnter behind the door.

So, Nekurr runs to the door, carefully opens it and then cires like "a little girl" (casting) when he sees the scarecrow, and then turns into an bad big tiger man :D

Oof, I definitely missed that. I've had a lot of home-owner drama tho ever since Xmas (broken pipe, water in the basement, asbestos discovered! 😩) and so probably haven't been reading every post as diligently as I might otherwise. Sorry!