OOC (HitH)

Noellins, you can have Tovrunn's horse, I thought that was implied but I'll say it clearly here 😁

The way I read it, it looked like you were taking my horse for some suicide mission and keeping your your horse for a hasty escape... Misunderstanding on my part.

She was, but then Lan pulled her on to his. It's musical horse-chairs!

Confusing! I think I got it now!

Actually Ira was the escape plan, I have no intention of losing my horse 😁

Right, so before I write a post on this let me just clarify - what was the spell and what's the intended outcome?

The spell is Flaming Sphere, cast in the field and used to just burn whatever it touches, kept up for the full length of time allowed. The use is to ride East-Southeast (pretty sure there is a fence running that direction but I'm not 100% on that), perpendicular to the wind, cast the spell between us and the baddies, ride Northwest pulling the spell along for half it's duration, then turn Southwest and pull it the remaining distance. The intention is to draw our chasers towards us, box them in using the fire and force them to backtrack as the wind pushes the fire southwest.

I also planned on letting Corson's horse drag a burning blanket in that same Southwest direction to force the enemies to either try to outrun the animal, cut East and run into the fire, or retreat south to regroup. We'll see if we need that though.

Bonus action to move the sphere, Action to dodge for the duration of this gambit, if it's necessary. The goal is to keep concentration up and force their hand.

I have a good feeling about this plan, especially how we'll be arrested as soon as we reach the Free City of Endier.

That's only a problem for people who can't shapeshift

It wasn't me! It was the one-armed squirrel!

None of these uses of fire as an escape mechanism have ever cause raging infernos or actually killed anyone (well, maybe at the inn?). It's winter and the crops are either young or the fields are fallow. You won't create an impenetrable box or flame that will rosat your foes alive. But horses don't like fire, so the best case scenario is that this slows pursuit quite considerably as they have to back up and go around the flames or wait for them to die back. That's precious minutes to lengthen your lead, which is not nothing.

The downside is that a big sphere of flame in the middle of some fields will be seen from a long way off, so the riders you successfully evaded at the tradehouse will now be able to meet up with this group.

This'll make your situation better by creating a good lead, giving you tolerance for more failures, but there will still be some rolls coming.

Can I make an argument for this being an auto-success for our getaway attempt? I'm not sure what our metrics are as far as the successes before failures we need to escape, but this is a lot of resources I'm dropping on this (I'm handicapping myself for any fight we have tonight and for days after this just on this one move), and I'd like that to make a bit bigger of a difference.

What is with this dice roller? 😕

It's certainly been quite bipolar (or bimodal, I guess?) lately.

I hear you, and I was open to that, but reading the text of the spell compared to something like Wall of Fire and picturing what you're working with I can't imagine a scenario where a skilled rider forcing an animal through it or backing up and going around isn't the likely outcome, which costs them time bust wouldn't cause them to stop.

Starting a fire is a good distraction, a great way to sow chaos, and particularly good against mounted people so it's an asset in this scenario, but it's only going to be the 'end the encounter' button in the right situation. But given the cost you were willing to put up I eschewed any roll for you to keep ogre under control or for the pursuers to notice what was happening from a good way out and change direction.

So after consideration I went with no rolls for the plan to go as intended because that felt like an appropriate response to how much you wanted it, but also a delay rather than closure because that felt appropriate to the scenario in my head and the consistency of spell effectiveness.

If it weren't at the tail end of chapter and the result of a number of factors you've already rolled for I might just wave it, and I'm always willing to hear counters, but if I gave you a scene where you saw someone you were following starting a fire five minutes ahead of you you'd probably veer right or left and try to flank them. And if I had a goblin shaman cast Firebolt into the woods I wouldn't feel fair saying three rounds later you couldn't escape unless he'd explicitly set up some kind of accelerant beforehand.

Am I being unfair?

Honestly? Yes, I think that you are being a bit unfair. And I think that unfairness started at Halfday.

Look, I get what you're going for. Overwhelming force, backs against the wall, time to get some thrilling heroics on and watch the characters get through a nail-biting sequence by the skin of their teeth. And I'm here for that, normally. But there's two things that turn this from nail-biting sequence to a frustrating inevitable failure, at least for me.

First is that we just got through with a nail-biting sequence where we escaped by the skin of our teeth, and that was the Spiderfell and a fuck-off huge spider named Shivhi The reason we went there in the first place, why we chose to go through that encounter then with goblins, was to avoid a similar but more complicated one at the border and actually get ahead of our hunters for once. Except now it didn't matter that we went through that and got to our stated destination, exhausted but alive, because an overwhelming force already beat us here now and we're off riding hard again right when a long rest and a chance to actually breathe and think and plan is in our grasp. That's not a tense nail-biting sequence, that's a bait and switch.

Second reason is because of the specifics of the groups involved in this chase. I know you said that this is the less intimidating of the two parties, but twenty CR 1/4 enemies will trounce even fully rested level three characters every single time just due to the action economy and how many times they get to attack. We're running on fumes and rolling at Disadvantage, with a little under half of our party not having proficiency with Athletics. Worse, we got no chance to try to mitigate that first level of Exhaustion, no Constitution Saving Throw, no letting the short rest reset us enough to avoid it, nothing. Even if we had gone through the border we would still be on Exhaustion 1 the way this played out. Mathematically we are set up to fail, and bumping up our attempts from two turns to three doesn't change that.

Unless I'm horribly misreading the earlier posts in Halfday, there was no way to know that the kitchen boy was a paid off informer, stop said kitchen boy from lighting his signal, or catching the spy as he fled, or done anything else to keep us off of the path we're on. I know you've got a plan for this game and I'm all the way here for that, but in full context this chase encounter feels really railroad-y to me in a way that the rest of the game just hasn't before, and my attempt to shake things up and provide a plausible way out via said thrilling heroics also feels a little unwelcome. It's also kinda crazy that the consequences of a lesser failure is a mathematically unwinnable fight with a series of rolls at Disadvantage preceding it, but that's a separate conversation I think.

I could probably say more, but I don't think that it would come across in a way I'd be okay with presenting myself, and it's pretty late where I am, so I think I'll go to bed instead.

Okay, I hear you. I think periodically having to lower the DM's screen is something I'd rather not to at all, but doing so occasionally is a compromise I'm okay with. So what I will say is that I had planned for you to summon the spy using the kitchen boy's lantern, ambush him and get some story info I wanted you to go to the next bit with. Running again was a contingency, but I did try to softly dissuade it cos I was concerned it felt a bit repetitive. So to that end, no, I'm not holding you to a plan. You departed from plan A a while ago.

My next best approach was to have you capture some of these chasers when you meet your other new PC. But I've always rewritten based on your actions, the scene is always highly mutable.