Scene 1 - And the gunslingers followed...

I'm splitting the letter in two posts, to keep things more synchronised with what's happening outside the cellar...

There will be one more post i.e. there are four pages of the letter - splitting things up to let things happen outside the cellar in parallel with what's happening here.

I'll also post a summary of the main messages of the letter once I've posted the second half, to hopefully reduce confusion and ambiguity - there aren't really meant to be any puzzles or riddles you need to 'solve' in here so I want most things to be fairly clear.

All of you please roll for initiative i.e. make a WIS test with advantage. I'm giving you advantage for this test because you were waiting and ready for this beast to burst out of the cellar and because, you know, it's got a bloody great big trap clamped to its leg which is gonna slow down even this beast a bit...

In the future, I could make those rolls for you to speed things up a bit? Seems like a rule adjustment that might be worth making given the generally slow speed of PbP? I have only very limited experience of PbP combat, so am very interested to hear from you what you think would work well.

@microtheMacroBear You might like to use the "keep the lower dice" syntax for your rolls with advantage - this is fine, of course, just that you might find it helps keep things clearer.

If you roll e.g. 4d6l3, you'll have the highest of the four d6s crossed out as you keep the lowest three dice (l3). 4d6l2 would cross out the two higher dice crossed out, and so on.

In this case you'd roll 2d20l1 to keep the lower of your two dice.

@microtheMacroBear Re: the ongoing fire damage - I was thinking about this. Before the monkey enters the fray, it will take the 3 ongoing damage your rolled previously. When the monkey has its turn, I'll ask you to roll another Ud4 - whatever you roll it takes as damage, if the die is downgraded/depleted (i.e. if you roll 1 or 2) then that's the last turn it takes fire damage. If you roll 3 or 4 then the following turn I'll ask you again to roll the Ud4.

A rule change going forward - reading the rules again, I think your initiative roll against the monkey would RAW be influenced by the difference between your threat level and that of the monkey. It has threat 5, you have threat 1, so I think ideally the rolls would have been with advantage, but with +4 to each of the d20 (the difference between your threat level and the monkey's thread level.

I'll play it like that going forward, but I won't make the change for the current roll

I'll move the action forward tomorrow by rolling initiative for @DragonDweller62.

Having said that, Mattie, Henry, Oscar can all describe their actions now already – you all go before the Bad Monkey, we know that already. Mattie and Henry get two actions, Oscar three (as he rolled a critical success on his WIS test).

I'll roll now for your hosts (I'll bundle them all together in one roll). EDIT with that roll, they will also go with you, before Bad Monkey.

To remind you of the scene - Bad Monkey is pulling itself out of the cellar door. This opens onto a set of concrete steps that lead up about six feet to the dirt ground. The side of the house Bad Monkey is coming out of is about 8 yards long - the house is a rectangle, the other side is maybe 15 yards in length. There is a window looking out onto the steps from the house.

On the same side of the house as the cellar door is the barn (where Henry opened the package) and the bath-house. Both are about 20 yards from the house.

The terrain between these buildings and the house is mostly dirt and stone. There are also two almost ornamental-looking immense saguaro cacti within this space, about 10 metres from the house.

And with your post, @microtheMacroBear, I realise I should have let you know your range to Bad Monkey in my previous post: you are NEARBY i.e. you are standing far enough away from it that you would have to run up to it on your turn to touch it/engage in melee.

AND that because of that trap, you are rolling with advantage.

AND a reminder that because its thread level is 5 and yours is 1 your tests (here your DEX test) are rolled +4 (your threat level i.e. 1 subtracted from its threat level to give 4).

And you hit it anyway!

I'll check now the details of your attack (this is the first The Black Tower Hack combat I've ever run...) and be back to you about that soon. I'll edit this post to add any confirmation/changes to how you've done things.

Wanted to get this post out there in case anyone else is about to post themselves so they know range, advantage, and the +4 to the test thing.

Appreciate your (plural) patience with my still very much learning this game and PbP GMing in general

So to run through what happened in your turn, @microtheMacroBear.

You have three actions (because you got a critical success on your initiative roll). You used them like this:

1. tell Bertie to protect Mattie/the package (as she has the package)
2. you moved one range further away from Bad Monkey - you were NEARBY, after this you are now FAR AWAY - in this case, you moved from about 5 yards away from it to something like 15/20 yards
3. you fired your gun at it

Because you have advantage over the monkey you could have rolled (2d20l1)+4 (the +4 from the different in your thread levels. But you got a success anyway without advantage as you rolled a 5.

You could have looked at your result from this roll, and if you'd failed the test but not by so much, you could have rolled your ammo die and SUBTRACTED that number from your roll (I think it's a typo/mistake in the rules to say you add it to the attack roll - although I've pinged the author to check). But you didn't need to do that.

Then to calculate damage, you rolled your damage die for ranged combat (1d6) and now decided to use your ammo die (currently a d6, adding its result to the damage).

You rolled a 1 on the ammo die, and because it's a Usage Die, that means you downgrade it now to a d4.

RAW it could be that you can also roll the damage and ammo dice with advantage - I find that ambiguous from the rules - but I'll rule now that it's only advantage on the initial attribute (here DEX) check.

You do total 7 damage to Bad Monkey. Solid!