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NorseQuest (A Norse Xianxia)

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Alright, so, current plan, such as it is. I'm open to other ideas, but we need to counter his advantages here and this seems right.

[X] Plan Slow Down And Shut Up
-[X] Invest 3 Orthstirr into Tactics (-3 Orthstirr)
-[X] 47d6 Attack (39d6 tricks)
-[X] 35d6 Defense
-[X] 0d6 Intercept
-[X] Activate Mire Ward immediately (-12 Orthstirr)
-[X] Attack Sten immediately after the Mire Ward with up to two 15d6+2 Honed x3 Skewer-Flick attacks using Orthstirr for extra Lightning damage (-8 Orthstirr each) hoping to pierce his armor (preferably in a location he won't be expecting or care about, and making sure to toss him somewhere still in melee range), if his armor is pierced (and before the second Skewer-Flick if we pierce it on the first try), draw Ashen Kiss and attempt a 18d6+2 Honed x3 Power Chop attack (-4 Orthstirr) in the gap in the armor to shut him up and negate his magic, and then follow up with eight 4d6+2 Honed x3 attacks using Ashen Kiss if his armor is pierced but the first one doesn't work, or Sagaseeker otherwise (and switching to Sagaseeker once he is, in fact, silenced), and adding lightning damage in the latter case (-3 Orthstirr each with Ashen Kiss, -4 each with Sagaseeker).
-[X] If at any point he distances himself from us enough that we can't attack, drop Mire Ward, use EWC to reengage (-6 Orthstirr), and then try to get Mire Ward up again (-12 Orthstirr)
-[X] If attacked with any melee Trick Attack attempt to use Contested Movement (-3 Orthstirr), and if that doesn't work or he uses a ranged trick attack use up to two 12d6+6 Reinforced x2 Honed x3 defenses (-5 Orthstirr each). If we are attacked with a non-Trick attack use up to seven 6d6+6 Reinforcedx1 Honed x2 defenses (-4 Orthstirr each).
-[X] Tactics – Try and slow him down with Mire Ward, defend against his basic attacks, breach his armor with our heaviest attacks and then silence him with Ashen Kiss. Then just keep hitting him.

Basically, try and breach his armor, silence him, then hit him as much as we can. Dunno if that's gonna work, but it seems like the best plan we have right at the moment?

EDIT: Removed Power Chop from the eight 1d attacks so they don't count as Trick Attacks. Probably a trade worth making (they should still hit for 3 damage each with Ashen Kiss, or 4 damage with Sagaseeker) since he has to treat them like basic attacks. Also, added investing in Tactics to fix my error there.
 
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Well. I guess it makes sense he'd have counters to our favorite tricks since he's fought alongside us. Hopefully once we start learning seidr we can learn a way to deal with enemy spells affecting us.
 
DeadmanwalkingXI said:
preferably in a location he won't be expecting or care about, and making sure to toss him somewhere still in melee range
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No such thing.

But aim for his left hand.
DeadmanwalkingXI said:
If attacked with any melee Trick Attack attempt to use Contested Movement (-3 Orthstirr), and if that doesn't work or he uses a ranged trick attack use up to two 12d6+6 Reinforced x2 Honed x3 defenses (-6 Orthstirr each). If we are attacked with a non-Trick attack use up to seven 6d6+6 Reinforcedx1 Honed x2 defenses (-4 Orthstirr each).
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Can't we use Slice-Aside instead?
 
DeadmanwalkingXI said:
Halla has super-instincts, I think she can figure out what part of him is best to target.



Contested Movement is there because it doesn't cost dice (and the counterattack is automatic). Slice Aside costs dice.
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Contested Movement is Standstill though, so we would be reducing Mire Ward's effect.

e: Can we use Punching Upward's extra dice to buff our Tactics roll?
 
Shard said:
Contested Movement is Standstill though, so we would be reducing Mire Ward's effect.
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Not from what we've been told previously, no. Contested Movement still works when things like IAT are out without diminishing their effects...it's our only Standstill trick that does that, but it does. It also doesn't require a free hand...Contested Movement is weird.

Shard said:
e: Can we use Punching Upward's extra dice to buff our Tactics roll?
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This is a good question, though. If we can I'll reassign a handful of dice to that.
 
We should also put in us using EWC to break contact if we run out of defend dice or something.
 
Shard said:
We should also put in us using EWC to break contact if we run out of defend dice or something.
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Nah. Sten is arguably a ranged specialist, he's certainly a mixed melee/ranged guy...we can't actually get far enough away that he can't keep attacking. It's not worth it.

If this were a fight to the death, fleeing the battlefield entirely might be an emergency option, but why would we do that in a spar?
 
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Hey Blackhand, any idea why Eric doesn't seem to have Born in Fire or Fire Hugareida?
 
DeadmanwalkingXI said:
Actually, no. With one level of bonus damage we do 5 damage for 3 Orthstirr (1 Power Chop, 1 Hone, 1 Lightning)...additional Hone beyond the first does nothing to damage (we just needed the dice). 6-7 is, again, just Honed Skewer-Flick or Leaping Cleave with the Lightning added.

Basically, IMO, 1 Orthstirr for +1 damage is basically always worth it and we have three sources of that we can use.
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DeadmanwalkingXI said:
But let's say you're right and -2 damage becomes more common...at that point, unenhanced, Kindle Spinner is not viable (1 damage per hit is just...not good), and the above combo for 3 orthstirr is only barely so at 2 damage...so if we pick Kindle Spinner as our +2 and the guy has fire resistance, or we pick melee and he can avoid getting into melee with us, we're screwed unless we start spending Odr like water. If we've split our focus, the Kindle Spinners still do 2 damage after the damage reduction and the base melee attacks do 3, so we're at least somewhat viable either way
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I want to point out here that you're in dissonance with yourself. On the one side, you've pointed out that we can do 4 damage with 3 orthstirr, when chopping. On the other, you're saying "Well, if we put our focuses in kindle spinner and then they have enough fire resistance to ignore that, and they have a couple points of damage resistance, then we'll have to spend odr like water". No. You don't get to have both of those. That's the thing I've been saying - because if you're saying that the damage is such that adding one is basically meaningless, you don't get to also say that it's low enough that removing one is crippling. Heck - it sounds like the difference between all-in ranged and split evenly is just switching which one is 4 dice and which is 5.

Still, if you're so worried about the enemy having fire resistance...

@Imperial Fister - a question for Hallr: "You were known for using fire in combat. Given the bloodline, I'd assume our whole family was, and you said that we'd been fighting The Enemy for more time than I can imagine. How often did you have to deal with creatures of the enemy who were specifically resistant to fire?"
 
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Shard said:
Hey Blackhand, any idea why Eric doesn't seem to have Born in Fire or Fire Hugareida?
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'Are you sure he doesn't? Just because something is easier to gain does not mean that one will get it.'
Green Baron said:
"Hey Blackhnd, who exactly was sir Artorias? And did he have a specefic name or nickname that was well known?"
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'He broke my spine in four different places before throwing me off a sea-side cliff. I didn't have much time to process if he had any other names when I hit a rock on the way down and broke my back again.'
Sirrocco said:
@Imperial Fister - a question for Hallr: "You were known for using fire in combat. Given the bloodline, I'd assume our whole family was, and you said that we'd been fighting The Enemy for more time than I can imagine. How often did you have to deal with creatures of the enemy who were specifically resistant to fire?"
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'The fire thing is a relatively recent development. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that The Enemy hasn't bred enough Foemen with strong fire resistance yet. Unfortunately, though, Fire Giants are completely immune to fire in nearly all its forms. ...I have had to kill more than my fair share of Fire Giants.'
 
So Halla's descendents are probably gonna have to deal with more fire resistant enemies but we shouldn't expect the enemy fodder to resist fire. Fire giants are gonna be an issue though. The 'nearly' is interesting though. Wonder if the top tier fire hugareida can hurt them or if you need something specific like dragonfire or something.
 
Sirrocco said:
I want to point out here that you're violently whiplashing on assumptions in order to try to make your position look good. On the one side, you've poitned out that we can do 4 damage with 3 orthstirr, when chopping. On the other, you're saying "Well, if we put our focuses in kindle spinner and then they have enough fire resistance to ignore that, and they have a couple points of damage resistance, then we'll have to spend odr like water". No. You don't get to have both of those. That's the thing I've been saying - because if you're saying that the damage is such that adding one is basically meaningless, you don't get to also say that it's low enough that removing one is crippling. Heck - it sounds like the difference between all-in ranged and split evenly is just switching which one is 4 dice and which is 5.
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I'm not whiplashing at all because those statements don't contradict each other. The first is me stating that you're wrong that doing 5 damage is expensive, not anything about whether doing that much is sufficient. Totally different subject than the second one, which is talking about how much damage is needed. The two are basically on completely different subjects, with the first being intended almost solely as a clarification on how much things cost.

Basically, 4 is probably enough as a baseline (though 5 is better), especially if you can go higher with Tricks (and, indeed, we can do that in melee). 3 is not enough of a baseline. Which means we need at least one in Ranged to up Kindle Spinner's damage for it to be useful in serious fights without Odr expenditure. And damage beyond 5 is getting into the 'diminishing returns' area I was talking about elsewhere (which was mostly about why I thought putting two slots into melee damage was overkill a lot of the time, to be clear...I also admittedly wasn't thinking about -2 damage opponents as much as I probably should've been when I said that).

At that point (one choice into ranged damage) we're at 'just enough' in both categories and need to decide where to put the additional damage slot...and at that point I specifically note that putting the second into Ranged as well is arguably the best choice mathematically...except for the fact that fire resistance is a serious issue at that point, and likely to feature in our most dangerous fights where we need every advantage the most.

Another factor that's been brought up by the QM since that post is our basic attack spam and how good that can be...we don't have that for ranged (all our ranged stuff is Trick Attacks), and 3 damage attack spam (the best we can do without a damage boost from shapeshifting) is back down to 'not very viable' again, while 4 damage attack spam (which we can use if we put one shapeshifting slot into damage) is vastly better. This isn't something I was even thinking about previously, but it's a good reason to go with the mixed option even leaving fire resistance aside. I've made some arguments why we don't always want to use attack spam, but we do want to sometimes, and we don't want its damage to be so low as to be non-viable when it's the right strategy.

So, I guess, TLDR: I think hitting a minimum of 4 damage on any attack we actually want to use is really important (and that we want to have both basic attack spam and Kindle Spinners available for use), and that putting everything into Fire-based stuff is super risky, and splitting the damage bonuses does a better job of making everything hit that damage minimum and doesn't risk as much loss of capability vs. fire resistant stuff.

Sirrocco said:
Still, if you're so worried about the enemy having fire resistance...

@Imperial Fister - a question for Hallr: "You were known for using fire in combat. Given the bloodline, I'd assume our whole family was, and you said that we'd been fighting The Enemy for more time than I can imagine. How often did you have to deal with creatures of the enemy who were specifically resistant to fire?"
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I'm specifically worried about it with Horra and his people. A man who has gone so far as to specifically raise one of his sons with Water Hugareida in order to counter Steinarr seems very likely to have anti-fire countermeasures. How common fire resistance is in general is sort of irrelevant if one of the most likely people in the immediate vicinity to come after us, and one almost certainly supplying gear to almost all the rest, is really likely to have access to it.
 
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Hey, Deadman, I was wondering if you were gonna notice, but since it's looking like you might not I'll go ahead and point it out for you.

Unless I missed it/a discussion going over it, you haven't put any orthstirr into Tactics.
 
Imperial Fister said:
Hey, Deadman, I was wondering if you were gonna notice, but since it's looking like you might not I'll go ahead and point it out for you.

Unless I missed it/a discussion going over it, you haven't put any orthstirr into Tactics.
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Ah crap. I totally meant to. I was really distracted yesterday and that's the second relevant mistake I made then. Sorry folks. I'll add it to the current plan.

EDIT: And added to my combat plan template so I will never forget again.
 
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Wiggy said:
So Halla's descendents are probably gonna have to deal with more fire resistant enemies but we shouldn't expect the enemy fodder to resist fire. Fire giants are gonna be an issue though. The 'nearly' is interesting though. Wonder if the top tier fire hugareida can hurt them or if you need something specific like dragonfire or something.
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Ilmarinen's Fire will probably do it.
 
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