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Fire Emblem: Last of the Manakete

What would readers prefer?

  • Pure narrative quest: no dice will be used, the author will have free reign to decide what happens.

    Votes: 25 59.5%

  • New dice system: the author will design a new, better dice system to add some randomness and risk.

    Votes: 17 40.5%
  • Total voters
    42
  • Poll closed .
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Yeah, they captured the Whitewings that should be here resting. It's a rescue mission too!

[X] Go, wake the Whitewings, and get ready for a fight. You don't know how many bandits there are, but you probably can't fight them all by yourself. Together, though, especially if you can lure them somewhere where they can ride their pegasi, things'll go better.
 
[X] Strike now. The bandits aren't all in yet, if you hit now, you might be able to drive them off before they can bring their greater numbers to bear.
-[X] You can see them, and they can't see you, you are also an accredited Mage who can fly even if you're not bringing your Dragon-Self into the equation, and presumably, they're not going to fight to the death if they don't have to. So you probably don't have to kill every last one of them before they'll break and run. You sincerely doubt they're going to charge into a chokepoint when there's a Mage who can cast Arcthunder blasting them from the shadows.
--[X] So the answer's simple, before they know you're here, take the one who can see out first, hit him with everything you've got! Take him out of the fight before he can guide his allies forward.
---[X] Between the flashes of thunder and your wings, and their lack of night vision for the most part, you should be able to relocate between every attack, keep your distance, make use of the terrain to keep them back--the noise of your blasting should wake your escort, and you can trust them to have their act together. But the most important thing is to keep them on edge, to abuse your ability to see while they're floundering in the shadows, and hopefully they'll break and run before you have to step things up a notch.

If a battle involving lightning magic starts, I suspect the others will wake up pretty quickly.
 
[X] Strike now. The bandits aren't all in yet, if you hit now, you might be able to drive them off before they can bring their greater numbers to bear.
-[X] You can see them, and they can't see you, you are also an accredited Mage who can fly even if you're not bringing your Dragon-Self into the equation, and presumably, they're not going to fight to the death if they don't have to. So you probably don't have to kill every last one of them before they'll break and run. You sincerely doubt they're going to charge into a chokepoint when there's a Mage who can cast Arcthunder blasting them from the shadows.
--[X] So the answer's simple, before they know you're here, take the one who can see out first, hit him with everything you've got! Take him out of the fight before he can guide his allies forward.
---[X] Between the flashes of thunder and your wings, and their lack of night vision for the most part, you should be able to relocate between every attack, keep your distance, make use of the terrain to keep them back--the noise of your blasting should wake your escort, and you can trust them to have their act together. But the most important thing is to keep them on edge, to abuse your ability to see while they're floundering in the shadows, and hopefully they'll break and run before you have to step things up a notch.
 
Hestia&theCourt said:
[] Go, wake the Whitewings, and leave. You don't know how many bandits there are, but you do know there are only four of you, so if it comes to a fight you can't guarantee you'll win it. However, it will take the bandits time to get organized, so that should be enough time to simply leave.
This definitely isn't going to win, but I honestly don't see the point in picking a fight here.
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I'd considered leaving given we don't level up with XP but if the bandits are being paid to kidnap and kill people it's probably by the same overall bad guy that is controlling everything from the shadows so stopping them rather then avoiding them so that they can kill more travelers is probably important and with Draconic Weapons a Suprise attack from someone ready for them is likely to be really effective.

Draconic Weapons
-Fear: Terror All Around: Your strikes act as Brave weapons. More likely to retreat from a battle if possible.
 
More importantly, they're prepped for attacking flyers, chances are good they have archers lying in wait outside.
Archers are the fucking kryptonite of flying units, which is all of us. Even the beefiest flyers have to be scared of a generic archer.
 
[X] Strike now. The bandits aren't all in yet, if you hit now, you might be able to drive them off before they can bring their greater numbers to bear.
-[X] You can see them, and they can't see you, you are also an accredited Mage who can fly even if you're not bringing your Dragon-Self into the equation, and presumably, they're not going to fight to the death if they don't have to. So you probably don't have to kill every last one of them before they'll break and run. You sincerely doubt they're going to charge into a chokepoint when there's a Mage who can cast Arcthunder blasting them from the shadows.
--[X] So the answer's simple, before they know you're here, take the one who can see out first, hit him with everything you've got! Take him out of the fight before he can guide his allies forward.
---[X] Between the flashes of thunder and your wings, and their lack of night vision for the most part, you should be able to relocate between every attack, keep your distance, make use of the terrain to keep them back--the noise of your blasting should wake your escort, and you can trust them to have their act together. But the most important thing is to keep them on edge, to abuse your ability to see while they're floundering in the shadows, and hopefully they'll break and run before you have to step things up a notch.
 
Alectai said:
Ummm.

We can't expect the Dragon to follow our instructions. We can put an emotional context in place, but we absolutely can't expect it to not lash out at the invaders.

More importantly, it'd be really damn hard to hide, and raise aggro a lot.

We have not done the Awakening Ritual yet, when we Dragon Shift, the Dragon has the reins and will Act To Remove The Danger. A plan to go Dragon is a plan to "Delete everything that remotely resembles a threat.".

And we don't have time to Half-Shift even if that would be a good idea.
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I agree, but I would suggest that protective anger-shifting might be a good idea if something goes wrong and any bandits get into melee range, or Ryza gets injured. Ryza in heart form is a glass cannon. Depending on how things go, she might need to become a tank.

Would you be willing to add something to that effect to your plan?
 
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GreatWyrmGold said:
I like Alectai's plan, but it feels uncharacteristically pragmatic for Ryza. I feel like she'd try to scare off the bandits before murdering them. So...
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GreatWyrmGold said:
And you're definitely underestimating how bloodthirsty "hit him with everything you've got!" sounds.
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Eh, it's not that different from our very early combat plans back when Ryza just woke up. I remember us setting up a pretty similar killbox with Artemis, relying on lightning to fuck with vision. And the bit where we'd used the sound of lightning to kite bandits through Ryza's home, killing them a few at a time.

Edit: I do have some concerns about rate of fire vs rate of kills, though. Arcthunder is strong and will certainly mulch any bandit it hits, but Ryza has to build that whole feedback loop each shot, and thus give the Bandits both time to react, and time to close distance and start attacking in melee after the first dies. It might be worth making Elthunder the default as it only takes one loop, and swap to Thunder if any bandits close to melee range.
 
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The only one that really needs an alpha strike is the Thief, since they're the biggest danger here. But I'll edit for clarity.
 
Random Sanity said:
Anything that gets THAT close is getting a dragon to the face. You do NOT try to use spells from within chopping distance no matter what system you're using.
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We've had to do it before, iirc. It's really a lot easier when you can just toss electricity at your opponent with no wind-up, gestures, incantations, or fancy tomes. Ryza can fire off Thunders as quickly as she can build up the energy to do so, which... It's hard to tell, but seems to be around as fast as someone can swing a weapon anyways. Just means she's gotta dodge since she can't block, and is a bit more likely to land lethal damage.
 
Realistically, with Ryza having night vision and ruining theirs, combined with the complex terrain, if the Thief goes down in our alpha strike, the rest will struggle badly to recover, since the only warning they'd have is right before Ryza attacks, which is probably too late, especially since few of these guys will have Strong Dice, meaning that Ryza gets two autos onto them. The Thief in particular is going to have a very bad day.
 
Ryumancer said:
We've had to do it before, iirc. It's really a lot easier when you can just toss electricity at your opponent with no wind-up, gestures, incantations, or fancy tomes. Ryza can fire off Thunders as quickly as she can build up the energy to do so, which... It's hard to tell, but seems to be around as fast as someone can swing a weapon anyways. Just means she's gotta dodge since she can't block, and is a bit more likely to land lethal damage.
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So what I'm hearing is that Ryza is weighed down too much by high-tier spells and we need to buy a speedwing or body ring.
 
So I've been reading over all your thoughts, and as always I love the discussion. There are a few minor things that I just want to make sure you have fair knowledge of.

Ryumancer said:
Edit: I do have some concerns about rate of fire vs rate of kills, though. Arcthunder is strong and will certainly mulch any bandit it hits, but Ryza has to build that whole feedback loop each shot, and thus give the Bandits both time to react, and time to close distance and start attacking in melee after the first dies. It might be worth making Elthunder the default as it only takes one loop, and swap to Thunder if any bandits close to melee range.
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I don't actually have a speed mechanic implemented, so using Thunder rather than Arc or Elthunder is not mechanically different. The only reason you all might need to downgrade a spell is if, for some reason, you were deprived of your tablets, or if some story reason came up (training exercise, not wanting to hurt someone too badly, or something like that).

For example, had Ryza failed the roll to think to grab Thunder's Cry, she'd be stuck with Elthunder unless she wanted to give up the initiative to go and grab it.


TaliesinSkye said:
I agree, but I would suggest that protective anger-shifting might be a good idea if something goes wrong and any bandits get into melee range, or Ryza gets injured. Ryza in heart form is a glass cannon. Depending on how things go, she might need to become a tank.

Would you be willing to add something to that effect to your plan?
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Dragon-form is always lurking in the background, and short of some sort of instant-death attack or ambush (which I've certainly not created here, if I ever do at all,) or fighting without her dragonstone (which she will never willingly do), Ryza will always have that split-second of knowing she's about to die, her dragon reacting, and transforming.

Mechanically, if a roll goes really bad, I've had a result that's something along the lines of "Ryza is badly wounded and instinctively transforms." Should she then lose that combat, there'd be a chance she'd die, but that's never happened yet.

There would be consequences that would come afterwards, but I don't want a single bad set of rolls to kill off Ryza.

EDIT:

Alectai said:
especially since few of these guys will have Strong Dice, meaning that Ryza gets two autos onto them. The Thief in particular is going to have a very bad day.
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Actually, none of them have strong dice. The bandit leader's not a character, just a slightly-above-average mook. If he did have strong dice, though, Ryza would only get 1 auto success in heart form.
 
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Yeah, but none of them do.

Which means she's rolling with 2 successes to begin with and her dice matter more by a lot (I think Characters have all their dice as Strong Dice?). It's why it's so important to open up with Arcthunder, since I'm pretty sure that's going to delete the Thief barring some truly awful rolls (And even with them, he's not going to be in good shape), and without the Thief, the rest of them are getting fucked by Fog of War, which also means that Archers even if they come in right now, are not going to be able to target Ryza.

And if the speed of her attacks doesn't really matter, she can probably shred these dudes as fast as they come in by throwing Arcthunders at them from a distance and then scooting away before they can follow, doubly so if we make full use of the terrain and our night vision superiority to avoid retaliation.

If they have any sense of self-preservation, they'll fuck off when they see there's a very fast Mage casting Level 3 Attack Magic from the shadows.

Actually, come to think of it @SoaringHawk218

What kind of bonus happens when you have Magical Supremacy and the winning caster is rocking Level 3 Magic? Or does the Magical Supremacy bonus only increase if you have strategic scale magic like Bolting or other meme tier spells on hand?
 
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Alectai said:
What kind of bonus happens when you have Magical Supremacy and the winning caster is rocking Level 3 Magic? Or does the Magical Supremacy bonus only increase if you have strategic scale magic like Bolting or other meme tier spells on hand?
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The various Supremacy circumstance bonuses are just my way of giving a mechanical connection to the story. In the case of Magical Supremacy, if one side either is the only side using magic, or at least the other side is really bad at using magic, the side with stronger magic gets an extra dice for Magical Supremacy.

For example, if you were to get into a magical fight with Apollo, he's good enough with magic that you wouldn't get Supremacy. However, if you got into that same fight with Siri, you would, since she's far less adept with magic.

In this battle, you're looking at getting Magical Supremacy (since the enemy has no mages currently in the fight) and Ranged Superiority (since the enemy has no ranged combatants currently in the fight).

Emanyzal said:
My point is it means Ryza is more likely to retreat.
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This is correct: when transformed in fear, Ryza is more likely to run away, but when she is fighting her wild, flailing style gives there the effect of Brave weapons to attack multiple times.

As @Alectai says, other emotions will give other effects, and I can't see you all choosing to transform in fear for this battle if you do at all.

If, however, Ryza transforms automatically, it has a very good chance of showing up.

Alectai said:
Shadow Elixir, that's for the entire Combat Event, right?
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It is, but in this case Ryza did not think to grab it. You could go back and get it, but that'd give the bandits more time to organize.
It's totally not because I forgot about it...
 
SoaringHawk218 said:
It is, but in this case Ryza did not think to grab it. You could go back and get it, but that'd give the bandits more time to organize.
It's totally not because I forgot about it...
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Damn, well, taking the initiative here before they can get their shit together is still more important. Still, it'll come in handy if they refuse to withdraw and we have to run a breakthrough. Dragon Form is a last resort when things are this much in flux.

So, Magical Supremacy, Ranged Superiority, I imagine that we'll start with Advantage due to having the Drop on them, and once the Thief's gone, we'll have a further advantage by way of "We're the only one who can see shit" here, huh?

Are we going to be rolling vs the entire enemy group? Or do we at least get our first move against just the one guy before they know they're in a fight?
 
Alectai said:
Are we going to be rolling vs the entire enemy group? Or do we at least get our first move against just the one guy before they know they're in a fight?
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Rolling against the group. They're all there, and while they're not expecting a fight right now they are still on-edge enough that you can't completely isolate one member. However, you would only have to win by a little to take the Thief out of the fight, since they're the primary target.
 
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