What voice/tense should the story be in?

  • Second person present

    Votes: 4 22.2%
  • Second person past

    Votes: 1 5.6%
  • Third person past

    Votes: 13 72.2%

  • Total voters
    18
  • Poll closed .
Theres a difference between a small mistake that we fix quickly and a mistake which we perpetuate and refuse to correct. If they see this as a mistake or we start to hinder our team rather with our fumbling, then we look far worse than trying something new. Realizing it needs more testing/practice and then reverting back to the tried and true. Keep in mind we havent even tried to fight normall using our levin technique yet.

We've been contributing pretty strongly to the entire engagement so far, where we distracted a ghost barbarian in such a way as to let Ming Xue get a hit in, kiting around another one meaning it wasn't actually contributing to the fight while chasing us, and then finally got a pretty bit hit in on another barbarian while their was a opening. Saying all we've been 'fumbling around' and this was all down to luck rather then Hua Yin consciously performing all this when we have confirmation from his inner though process it wasn't is a pretty huge overstatement considering all that.

Like look I get it some of the ways that Warumono used to explain our bad rolls involved being unused to using our movements in a fight, but if we had these same rolls but without the Path on, at best we would have done anything but tie down a single Ghost Barbarian for a few turns that our allies could have more easily dispatched, and at worst taken more injuries and not gotten that attack in because the one we were originally dealing with didn't start with a wound penalty and we had no way to give it the distracted malus.

The truth of the matter is that against foes with these sorts of die pools, 7 dodge die and a whopping 9 attack die, we're going to fail die rolls and making us less able to contribute to the fight both narratively as well as throwing mechanical advantages away isn't going to make that less likely because we can literally see how the die rolls work, it'll just mean when we inevitably fail our next dodge or attack roll Warumono will just make it be because Hua Yin isn't good enough at fighting which is actively less impressive then just having to adjust to a technique which Hua Yin has already started too, especially when the people we're being directly measured against actually ARE extremely good at fighting.
 
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We've been contributing pretty strongly to the entire engagement so far, where we distracted a ghost barbarian in such a way as to let Ming Xue get a hit in, kiting around another one meaning it wasn't actually contributing to the fight while chasing us, and then finally got a pretty bit hit in on another barbarian while they were distracted. Saying all we've been 'fumbling around' and this was all down to luck rather then Hua Yin consciously performing all this when we have confirmation from his inner though process it wasn't is a pretty huge overstatement considering all that.

Like look I get it some of the ways that Warumono used to explain our bad rolls involved being unused to using our movements in a fight, but Levin Path isn't actually given a malus to our attack rolls or dodge rolls here, just our damage ones, and the one hit we got in was a fairly good one dmagae wise regardless that was only possible narratively because we had it on.

If we had these same rolls but without the Path on, at best we would have done anything but tie down a single Ghost Barbarian for a few turns that our allies could have more easily dispatched, and at worst taken more injuries and not gotten that attack in because the one we were originally dealing with didn't start with a wound penalty and we had no way to give it the distracted malus.

The truth of the matter that against foes with these sorts of die pools we're going to fail die rolls and making us less able to contribute to the fight both narratively as well as throwing mechanical advantages isn't going to make that less likely because we can literally see how the die rolls work, it'll just mean when we inevitably fail our next dodge or attack roll Warumono will just make it be because Hua Yin isn't good enough at fighting to which is actively less impressive then just having to adjust to a technique which Hua Yin has already started too.

I think you are wrong, taking down our single opponent then helping others would have been more useful and helpful. Regardless it seems like distraction is firmly in the lead and hey, maybe we'll actually figure out how to use the earth defying path effectively in combat if we keep going.

[X] Continue being a distraction, but use the levin step more aggressively.
 
I think you are wrong, taking down our single opponent then helping others would have been more useful and helpful. Regardless it seems like distraction is firmly in the lead and hey, maybe we'll actually figure out how to use the earth defying path effectively in combat if we keep going.

[X] Continue being a distraction, but use the levin step more aggressively.

Why do you think we would have been able to take down our opponent by now? The Ghost Barbarian's all seem to have same die pool aside from any specific maluses they take from injuries or situations. If we had the same die rolls but against that one guy at the start, he would have potentially been able to hit us harder on Round 4 due to not having the -1 injury malus on his attack roll since keep in mind we hadn't be able to inflict any hits till then, and we likely wouldn't have landed a hit on our last round due to the ghost not having a -3 injury penalty on top of -2 distracted penalty to it's dodge since we only managed that with a single success.

I guess if you mean if we had been using the Qi part of Levin Step, but we've been consciously pacing our Qi use because we know this isn't necessarily the only wave of combatants we have to deal with, and even if we did do that it would have been a bigger impact to our exchanges with path on too due to how we made the majority of our dodge rolls.
 
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Why do you think we would have been able to take down our opponent by now? The Ghost Barbarian's all seem to have same die pool aside from any specific maluses they take from injuries or situations. If we had the same die rolls but against that one guy at the start, he would have potentially been able to hit us harder on Round 4 due to not having the -1 injury malus on his attack roll since keep in mind we hadn't be able to inflict any hits till then, and we likely wouldn't have landed a hit on our last round due to the ghost not having a -3 injury penalty on top of -2 distracted penalty to it's dodge since we only managed that with a single success.

I guess if you mean if we had been using the Qi part of Levin Step, but we've been consciously pacing our Qi use because we know this isn't necessarily the only wave of combatants we have to deal with, and even if we did do that it would have been a bigger impact to our exchanges with path on too due to how we made the majority of our dodge rolls.
i'm saying that it would have been better to not use path and just gone ham on levin step for a few rounds until we beat our opponent and could help others.
 
i'm saying that it would have been better to not use path and just gone ham on levin step for a few rounds until we beat our opponent and could help others.

Sure but going ham on Levin Step would have made us better regardless of what we did, because we made most of our dodge rolls. I guess it comes down to whether taking out a single fighter out of ten is better then then typing up multiple foes, including one guy whose spent most of the fight doing nothing but chasing us so is currently almost as much of a nonfactor as if they were out, and contributing to a big hit on one guy with Ming Xue's meteor hammer due to our distraction while making another big hit on the third barbarian. Considering how even small woundpenalties seem to make a big difference on our chances due to the current size of die pools i'd say it was probably better to spread those around but I can see disagreeing.

That being said Levin Step only does 1 physical damage and 1 stun damage every successful dodge which our separate tracks, while their's only been five rounds. Considering even Hua Yin has a Physical Health and Stun Health of 18 and 22 respectively, I'm not sure that would have actually been enough to get us a takedown or even do much damage given it's unlikely even by round 5 we would have given him a big enough injury penalty considering we'd need for our bad roll on turn 5 to hit within this timeframe especially since using it three times in a row starts giving us maluses to activate it against the same guy.
 
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Actually looking at the rules, because injuries are tracked on different damage tracks separately:

- Injury maluses: Every 6 damage in a damage track is a -1 malus to all actions for the combat.

and because Levin Step splits up it's 2 damage between the physical and stun tracks, it's actually not as great at the first stage then I thought. Which isn't to say that it can't make the difference in long lasting fights via attrition, but it would take one more round then we've even had in this combat while going first to inflict a single -1 malus while burning through more QI then Path itself takes to last for a hour in a combat where our rolls have been so bad we needed a -5 dodge penalty to inflict a single hit with one success on one of these guys. That's assuming that we don't whiff a round via the maluses from using it three times in succession against the same person or have to take more rounds due to taking breaks on using it every two.

Not to say it isn't good, but it's good in the sense that it can mean the difference between going down or being the one barely standing over the body of a relatively peer opponent after a long drawn out fight, not in the sense that it would let us style on and quickly end a fight against opponents that are as close to us in skill as the barbarians.

Edit: Actually looking at it, the barbarians just straight up have 7 dodge die and 9 attack die with a whopping base damage of 7. We we're probably better off not trying to take on any of these guys one on one.
 
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Edit: Actually looking at it, the barbarians just straight up have 7 dodge die and 9 attack die with a whopping base damage of 7. We we're probably better off not trying to take on any of these guys one on one.

EDP is halving our damage and giving us -2 to Attack rolls. Let's not fall into sunk cost and compound our mistake.

[X] Fight.
 
EDP is halving our damage and giving us -2 to Attack rolls. Let's not fall into sunk cost and compound our mistake.

[X] Fight.

Our damage is so low that this generally only means losing out on a handful of points anyway, and we've routinely been able to pick out engagements where our malus is either functinally negated due to our opponent having a injury malus of atleast minus 2 with much more in other circumstances. We've also caused what seem to be much stronger disciples to get hits in due to either narratively or mechanically if their own fights are being tracked.

-2 attack dice is definitely worth being able to routinely pick out opponents with worse maluses on their dodge die.

Edit: Trading a few attack die and damage points in a solo fight against a arguably superior opponent for maluses on attack die as high as 3 and dodge die that have gone as high as 5 in fights where we can expect immediate support from our allies is just good math.
 
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Sucks that we flubbed the persuasion roll. I was so sure we'd make it.

[X] Continue being a distraction.

Seems to be working so far.
 
EDP is halving our damage and giving us -2 to Attack rolls. Let's not fall into sunk cost and compound our mistake.

[X] Fight.
Sunk cost nothing. We're doing what we set out to do. Use EDP's enhanced agility to move about the battle and act as a distraction and support. And we've been rather successful at that, certainly more successful and done more to help the overall fight then if we had simply tried to fight straight up

[X] Continue being a distraction.
 
Ultimately this is being watched, standing and fighting and actually defeating an enemy seems like it gives a better showing than hurtling around. What's the plan if we keep doing it? Keep it going for the entire exam? There are 10 enemies and 10 disciples, I would like us to take down 1.
 
Our showing is probably already at above average if only by the virtue that we didn't freeze and we actually engaged the enemy, and didn't horribly fail.
 
If you think this exam is being judged on is how many individual ghosts we personally take down by ourselves, then we probably edged ourselves out of the top 16 this early on that front somewhere between character creation and not taking every single fight training we could every time we could.

The exam that's being judged is a battle, not a duel. From the lore drops military engagements often involve similar loads of mortals and similar roles that existed irl in times of similar mundane tools. Skirmishers were a big apart of those and the troops that fit those roles weren't often reknowned for their kill counts either, but that doesn't mean that militaries didn't realize how crucial a role they had in fighting. The BrokenTree sect has had a great deal involvement in conventional military engagements and war was the big thing the elders were worried about when we first entered it. I somehow doubt that dudes who have likely more experience fighting in them then any non cultivator due to lifespan alone with who knows how long a institutional knowledge to call upon have failed to pick up on the usefulness of having a mobile combatant around to harry enemies around the battlefield when their at their weakest, draw them away from engagements in pointless chases, draw their attention away from heavier hitters, ect.
 
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