A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
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- a song of ice and fire a sword without a hilt d&d 3.5 dungeons & dragons 100% high octane dragon fuel ave corvidae battle action dragon diplomacy best sister bureaucromancy delicious soul-stuff dragon dreams come true dragon ta'veren greatest uncle hubris is a coward's word in defiance of gods and men mammon's folly mutually assured mage's disjunction qm murderhobo top tier coatl
- Location
- Germany
It gets worse. Look at the other ability of those Norns.
Let's say that the leader of the court could throw a Soul Trap at Viserys with a DC high enough that he has only a 50% chance to make the save. The leader has a coven of 3 Norns with him, who all use that ability.
The chance to make that 50% save four times in a row is 6.25%.
We can't fight that.
egoo
Totally Not Creating Problems Where None Existed
- Location
- Russia
@Azel, I'll be frank with the PoV I see this from.
We never had any sort of plan for the Slavers' Bey, not once.
But the thread generally agrees in actively hating losing to Devils.
Because of that, people are assigned in-bulk in hopes of "well, maybe they'll just handle it, right? ...Right?"
And that didn't work.
It could work now, under the new system of reports and people-acting-without-players-direct-input, but you, and a lot of other people are burnt out on getting no results and seeing contradictory storytelling, world-building and mechanical power-levels.
Same with the few latest months of CoS.
We have had the general "Shit Shit Shit!"-mindset but no idea what to do to stop shit from happening.
And I was the man behind it all, throwing these actions out, assigning people, and pushing through the turnvotes.
Only, like, apparently no one thought that maybe these sounded dubious whenever I wrote "counter devils." as literally all the description the actions had.
Most of us here arent really the "long-term planning"-peopple, yes. Keeping track of stuff is easy, voting is easy, strategizing isnt.
At this point, we either ret-con, or just give up on the world-building making any form of sense and end this thing.
I can't really see us pulling oursleves out of the put we made.
DP included.
...But mostly me and bandwagons I caused every turnvote.
We never had any sort of plan for the Slavers' Bey, not once.
But the thread generally agrees in actively hating losing to Devils.
Because of that, people are assigned in-bulk in hopes of "well, maybe they'll just handle it, right? ...Right?"
And that didn't work.
It could work now, under the new system of reports and people-acting-without-players-direct-input, but you, and a lot of other people are burnt out on getting no results and seeing contradictory storytelling, world-building and mechanical power-levels.
Same with the few latest months of CoS.
We have had the general "Shit Shit Shit!"-mindset but no idea what to do to stop shit from happening.
And I was the man behind it all, throwing these actions out, assigning people, and pushing through the turnvotes.
Only, like, apparently no one thought that maybe these sounded dubious whenever I wrote "counter devils." as literally all the description the actions had.
Most of us here arent really the "long-term planning"-peopple, yes. Keeping track of stuff is easy, voting is easy, strategizing isnt.
At this point, we either ret-con, or just give up on the world-building making any form of sense and end this thing.
I can't really see us pulling oursleves out of the put we made.
DP included.
...But mostly me and bandwagons I caused every turnvote.
Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
Spell Bane four or so "trap the soul" type effects.
Though really, your point is well made. If you can swap out one spell with another SoD, there's plenty that can fuck over most things if it lands beyond repair.
- Location
- United States
Yeah, I was glancing through the abilities of the more powerful fey and I saw that. I really, really don't like how strong these things are, and I'm just stuck trying to think of why we haven't been wiped off the map yet.
We could always try the "drown them in numbers" gambit. We can forge groups of minions that are strong enough they need to be dealt with by someone with some heft, then release them all over the place. They can pick between attacking us or defending one of several key targets. We wait for them to commit, then tar pit them in low grade trash and send the companions in to go for kill shots.
It could just be that they're well aware of how fucked everything is right now. They might be able to take us, but if we go down we could kill a lot of their valuable people with winter right around the corner.
There's also the possibility that losing the two most active kings of the court has forced them into a passive role. This might be as aggressive as they can be within the confines of the court's broader story without their full leadership or some sort of exceptional circumstance.
- Location
- Germany
The problem is that we can't attack them at all without Companion grade leaders and / or divine support. They can just abuse the Feywild to disappear arbitrary numbers of lesser assets, unless we invest in some fashion to prevent that. The Feywild is ludicrously hard for us to attack, but in reverse, it's extremely easy for them to send forces against us.
In a drawn out fight, we loose utterly. The Reach would turn into our Vietnam and we are already the weaker party in this battle.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
I think we need to approach the Reach situation from a different angle, y'all.
We've got that Mythic Rock Troll dude working on some anti-Court of Stars warding scheme, the details of which escape me at the moment, but which is supposed to prevent further storybookification of the Reach. That is one thing to keep in mind.
We might not need to come at the CoS from a war footing like so many of our other enemies. The Fey want to stay in the Reach for some reason rather than the Feywild, despite being arguably more powerful there due to the nature of that Plane. They even made the dangerous journey back to the Material Plane when magic returned.
Why don't we double down on not only preventing the stroybookification, but try to get to the true root of why they are so interested in the Reach and what might be done to change their priorities?
We've got that Mythic Rock Troll dude working on some anti-Court of Stars warding scheme, the details of which escape me at the moment, but which is supposed to prevent further storybookification of the Reach. That is one thing to keep in mind.
We might not need to come at the CoS from a war footing like so many of our other enemies. The Fey want to stay in the Reach for some reason rather than the Feywild, despite being arguably more powerful there due to the nature of that Plane. They even made the dangerous journey back to the Material Plane when magic returned.
Why don't we double down on not only preventing the stroybookification, but try to get to the true root of why they are so interested in the Reach and what might be done to change their priorities?
- Location
- United States
None of us want this war, we were forced into it because:
1) Apparently the Fairy Queen will refuse any requests to abandon her scheme, and lo and behold the entire Kingdom of the Reach is lost to the Feywild with its inhabitants forever stuck in a never ending feudalism play
2) None of the subcourts of the Court of Stars will even entertain the notion of defecting
And now we find out we don't have a chance in hell even in open war.
So where does that leave us?
- Location
- Germany
I see no reason why they would idly sit by while we try to install these wards and their motives for wanting the Reach are ultimately incidental to our situation.
They want the Reach.
They have the power to take the Reach.
We do not have the power to stop them from taking the Reach.
Why would they even come to the negotiation table when they can just have what they want?
- Location
- florida
Can you link me to these?
Not that I would talk to us if I was her. We're holding her husbands brain hostage.
The plan is annoying certainly, but its not actually going to cause everyone to explode and die. I think the real issue there is the power block they make. We could, and have shaped culture rather handily.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
Snip Thread is a Death Effect, which is not hard to no-sell. Everyone's Soulfire brackets negates it entirely.
That's a pretty dangerous ability, but the range is fairly limited. If we had to work around it, we could manage. Long-range spell effects are well beyond its reach, though we would have to be very careful.
egoo
Totally Not Creating Problems Where None Existed
- Location
- Russia
Is "sacrifice a massive pile of stuff and the Fey crown to get OGs to help us out directly" and "throw every Companion and most of our strategic assets at it" a good enough start for an attack, still?
Hell, how about having all of our Gods that can chime in on this, maybe?
Yss, R'hlor, OGs, all seem powerful enough to make a difference there, and we can go out of our way to gather a 30-40k HD sacrifice of Daemons in a month's time to split three ways between them.
...yea, I still have little idea beyond "throw people and resources at it, and hope it solves itself".
That's just me planing anything in a nutshell
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
I don't know yet.
That's why I think we should consider refocusing our efforts back to R&D in relation to the CoS rather than preparing a military campaign against them in their seat of power.
The ongoing effort to prevent storybookification were more of a bandaid on the situation. I would instead prefer to figure out why the Fey want the Reach so badly, then do something to make it unattractive or downright inimical to them.
- Location
- Germany
The problem is that we can't just concede the Reach to the Fey without risking the whole Imperium to blow apart. The whole shebang hangs together thanks to propaganda and the nimbus of Viserys invulnerability. The moment people like Zherys or Phassen smell blood in the water, they will turn on us and look for the best deal they can get while we are going down. And if not them, then their own subordinates. Or some other group like Abbaddon or Baator uses the opening to cause unrest.
I'm simply at a loss here.
I'm simply at a loss here.
- Location
- Germany
And when do you propose to do so? We have two months. And all we figured out over the last 6+ months of anti-CoS operations is that they won't accept any deals that are blow the crown and the Reach, that all sub-courts are fully loyal and that they are too powerful to fight.
It's not as if we hadn't tried to learn about them and their motivations. We just found fuck-all despite all the time and people invested into the matter.
The only two things I can think of right now is to firebomb the Reach until it's a wasteland or to bumrush Anti-Fey bioweapon research and to try and cause an extinction event.
These are, for those not picking up the tone my description is trying to evoke, bad ideas.
- Location
- florida
Found it. Is this what people are referring to?
Getting the attention of the far fae would be bad yes.
Shes apparently about as strong as an outright God. So yeah. Makes sense force of arms wouldn't phase her.
Any chance the lord wouldnt be on board with her plan to get the whole of the reach to worship her?
- Location
- United States
Yeah, that's the one.
And the thing is she has no real reason to even entertain the notion of surrendering her scheme at our behest. She has the firepower to casually demolish us in open war.
So I'm with @Azel here, I have no idea how on earth we're supposed to handle this.
- Location
- Germany
You've seen what the crown does. The moment the lord wakes up, he will have full control over the Reach. He could make the Mander run backwards with a thought or raise a few mountains to keep out our armies.
For all intents and purposes, he would be a god and the Reach his divine realm.
egoo
Totally Not Creating Problems Where None Existed
- Location
- Russia
And probably expand the crown's... Reach... even further once the tale gets going, yeah.
It's a no-go, clearly enough.
I do wonder if "bumrushing bioweapons", in the sense of using that one sympathetic ritual we know (the one that killed Andals, you know the one..?), the crown, and a few tens of thousands of sacrifices to power it, we cant even out the fight s little.
Just, you know,
*is really reaching now*
Okay, so what about our divine resources? The OG used to be fey, and they can do a lot if given the blood to power it. If we can mwith their ability to cross over somehow, or find a way to protect ourselves against feywild shit through them, then we're closer to managing this.
@DragonParadox would the OG be capable of something like a roided out version of Planar Bubble tuned to protecting units in the feywild? Alternatively, could they make it harder to cross in areas they have influence over, or perhaps screw with the exit location of anyone crossing to the material plane?
If not that, perhaps some weapons blessed with a fey version of the Demon sorrow curved blade tuned to fey wild shifts? Forcing them to stay somewhere we've drawn them out to would be valuable.
I'm not quite ready to declare this impossible to beat. DP might have given the CoS the good steroids, but we still have some tricks to work with. I'm going to start digging into weird plants, obscure curses, and anti-fey nonsense to see if I can find any leads.
@DragonParadox would the OG be capable of something like a roided out version of Planar Bubble tuned to protecting units in the feywild? Alternatively, could they make it harder to cross in areas they have influence over, or perhaps screw with the exit location of anyone crossing to the material plane?
If not that, perhaps some weapons blessed with a fey version of the Demon sorrow curved blade tuned to fey wild shifts? Forcing them to stay somewhere we've drawn them out to would be valuable.
I'm not quite ready to declare this impossible to beat. DP might have given the CoS the good steroids, but we still have some tricks to work with. I'm going to start digging into weird plants, obscure curses, and anti-fey nonsense to see if I can find any leads.
- Location
- florida
O.k. Why haven't they already and why didn't they in the past?
They got weaker (and isnt that some shit), and are worried about the long night?