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Knight of Wessex (A Written World Quest)

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[X] Plan THE FINAL COUNTDOWN
-[X] Stance: Prayer for Perseverance (5/turn), Vanguards Prayer (6/turn), Litany of Resolve, Clever Deflection, Slip Free, Darting Strike, Black Scratch, Faulty Ground
-[X] Expenditures: 3 Zeal on Black Scratch, 34 Fervour, 2 Zeal for an emergency Armor Restore if needed
-[X] Tactics: Close in with Margh with Hardfall Stance and force him to expend all his focus on Audrey. It's clear that he's got talent in close combat in spades, thus focusing on tarpitting by expending Black Scratches to force his attention and Faulty Ground to hold him in place whenever possible, to keep him from being able to extend his focus towards Mildred, who's revealed herself to be capable of extreme damage in situations where she isn't overwhelmed in close quarters. Let her have as many openings as necessary to expend her gem related insight as often as possible, even if it means taking damage that otherwise might not be necessary.

Alright, so pretty straightforward here: it's obvious that the GLORIOUS INCANDESCENCE is some kind of sun-derived mental effect. Which means it's not going to be the only one of its kind, up to and including a Solar Flare style effect. Typically this could be dealt with by strandsense, but the anti tactics passive kinda puts paid to it being that straightforward

The point here, therefore, is for Audrey to tarpit and tank Margh. Not finish the fight herself. That means Giant Killing Blow - while useful and dramatic - aren't actually ideal here. Audrey already had her cinematic moment with it in her last bout with a proper 1v1 duel. Here it's a matter of tactics and cooperation against a superior foe.

Black Scratch for Scratch Damage. Zeal boosted Faulty Footing for Scratch Damage inflicting snares. Resolve, Deflection, Rebuke, Hordebreaker, and Slip Free for Defense. Darting Strike for Initiative.

And the low key counter: Crowleys abilities as a Greater Stormcrow to hopefully dim his light enough that Mildred won't be blinded by him at range so she can get her own setups cooked off. Fog banks won't matter for Audrey since she'll be infighting the bastard, but stormclouds fundamentally block out the Sun.

It won't amount to much I think, but here it may just be enough to tip the scales over in Mildreds favor

Edit: Since Rebuke was auto refreshed anyway, I'm applying 1 Zeal to boost Black Scratch so that we have a reserve of 2 Zeal in order to pop an emergency Armor Repair in case that proves necessary to avoid getting run down before Mildred can finish the fight

Edit2: At Co-GM clarification removed the Crowley bit

Edit3: Had Zeal boost mechanics clarified, removed the ones applied to the Faulty Ground and applied them to Black Scratch instead
 
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TehChron said:
3 Zeal on Rebuke
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Alectai said:
Your Rebuke carries over from the last fight, just don't expect it to help here.
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The rebuke carries on from our last fight, so we don't need to pay for it again.

TehChron said:
The point here, therefore, is for Audrey to tarpit and tank Margh. Not finish the fight herself. That means Giant Killing Blow - while useful and dramatic - aren't actually ideal here. Audrey already had her cinematic moment with it in her last bout with a proper 1v1 duel. Here it's a matter of tactics and cooperation against a superior foe.
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But powerful and dramatic is what we want if we're going to try and keep his attention on Audrey, a single GKB dos more damage than his armor score and is a threat he must respect its an attack which forces him to take Audrey seriously and to expand his treasures/tricks for negating such powerful attacks.

Like he quite possibly can just tank 1-2 black scratches on his armor and that's not good if we want to try and force him to remain focused on Audrey.

Honestly, just switch prayer for preservation for GKB and add a note to hit him with one if he tries to disengage or go for Midred. This fight isn't getting past the third round -one way or the other- so we can just tank the fatigue with our stamina.
 
TehChron said:
[] Plan THE FINAL COUNTDOWN
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I like this plan a lot! I agree with your logic in that Giant Killing Blow is not a good fit for this encounter and I especially liked your idea of using Crowley to dim the light of the sun, very clever. Even if Crowley couldn't summon fog, just blocking the sun with his body might help. I would of liked to see Stunning Blow in there somewhere but I don't know the system well enough to know if there is anything worth swapping out for it. Do you think it would be worth editing the tactics a bit so we use darting strike to better bodyblock for Mildred?
 
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uri said:
But powerful and dramatic is what we want if we're going to try and keep his attention on Audrey, a single GKB dos more damage than his armor score and is a threat he must respect its an attack which forces him to take Audrey seriously and to expand his treasures/tricks for negating such powerful attacks.

Like he quite possibly can just tank 1-2 black scratches on his armor and that's not good if we want to try and force him to remain focused on Audrey.
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You're thinking of burst damage, but Marghs not an idiot. The Eotenslagas GKB is pretty infamous and associated with their bloodline. Merely by engaging Audrey in combat, he's going to be wary of eating that attack. Most importantly, since he's not an idiot, he'll keep his defensive measures in reserve in order to defend against said GKB at all times...simply because he has no way of knowing when it will otherwise pop out.

So by focusing on a grind with Black Scratch - which uses the same principles with less expenditure - then he's going to be reminded of the GKB, and thus maintain his defenses at all times.

Which is fine, because that means that Mildred will have her own openings, and each time she burns a gem on hitting him he'll have to choose between countering Mildred or holding out a reserve for the inevitable (but not really) GKB coming out to hit him in the opening.

Openings that'll constantly come up from Uneven Footing being juiced and forcing him to respect it.

Now that being said, if we have Zeal to spare naturally it'll go into Black Scratch instead to force him to respect it. What we want him to be unable to do is dodge.
 
TehChron said:
ou're thinking of burst damage, but Marghs not an idiot. The Eotenslagas GKB is pretty infamous and associated with their bloodline. Merely by engaging Audrey in combat, he's going to be wary of eating that attack. Most importantly, since he's not an idiot, he'll keep his defensive measures in reserve in order to defend against said GKB at all times...simply because he has no way of knowing when it will otherwise pop out.
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And it would be better if we actually throw out a GKB or have it slotted in so that he doesn't call our bluff, we have the fervor for it and as this is the last battle we don't need to save it for later.
 
DDDDogCat2001 said:
Might want to replace Prayer of Perseverance with Perfect Footing then to ensure that he can't just blow Audrey over with an attack and attack Mildred while she's getting back up.
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I'm not swapping out Perseverance when the dude clearly has mental effects in his kit

Like, it's right there, in front of our eyes, clearly on the table.

I'm confused why there are people just dismissing the possibility of there being more sensory warping mental effects in play.
 
Alectai said:
Prayer For Perseverance (5 Fervour per turn): This nearly ubiquitous Meditation among Knights allows for them to fight for hours without rest. On a mechanical level, any turn this is used does not count towards Stamina for purposes of fatigue penalties. At Rough, when you stop using this Meditation the accumulated fatigue hits you all at once, while at Mastered the cost is reduced substantially. (0/27 Mastered)
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Uh, the anti mental effects is Litany of Resolve.
 
TehChron said:
My confusion is even worse now. Clashing is an utterly intense stamina drain? Like, it's much more exhausting than a short sprint. There's absolutely no reason to assume we're going to end this fight quickly against a fellow gorilla like Margh
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Alectai said:
Stamina: The number of turns you can take before starting to suffer fatigue penalties.
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The way stamina works is by round not attack. So we would have 3 rounds before eating fatigue.
I deem it unlikely that Audrey will be able to last 3 rounds against Margh.
 
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TehChron said:
My confusion is even worse now. Clashing is an utterly intense stamina drain? Like, it's much more exhausting than a short sprint. There's absolutely no reason to assume we're going to end this fight quickly against a fellow gorilla like Margh
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We can go stamina rounds without penalties; our stamina is 3. That means 12 combat actions before we get penalties, this fight will be done one way or the other before we reach round 4.

The big strength of the preservation tech is that if we didn't had it we'll be facing penalties from all the fights till this point but as the last fight we don't need to save stamina for the next encounter so we can drop that tech and spend the capacity on something more useful.
 
DDDDogCat2001 said:
So you are willing to bet that Margh would throw up an anti stamina debuff when every Squire has in basic training an infinite stamina prayer?
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Because if he does and we don't have a defense against it, we don't have any other means of mitigating it and thus will eat a guaranteed loss.

Perfect Footing is supplemental to other existing measures, but Fortitude is something we don't have a replacement for other than accepting a time limit...Which if you stop and think about it, is the entire premise of Marghs fighting style as an adherence of Gawain.

He's not just about spamming attacks when his strength waxes, but circumventing the issues of his strength when jt wanes as well
 
TehChron said:
2 Zeal to Faulty Ground,
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So, for clarity, I don't think this does what you want it to do. It's just +10 damage for each Zeal (as opposed to +20 on most attacks). It does ignore armour and Hama Field, but your plan acts like it keeps people imprisoned better or increases the odds of the Feat working or something. It does not. Just the (pretty low) damage bump.

Honestly, using Zeal for damage when not slotting in Giant-Killing Blow is weird and inefficient and I'm not sure why you'd do it at all. Not slotting GKB? Potentially valid in some fights. Spending Zeal on damage thereafter though, especially on Black Scratch, just makes a vastly less efficient and effective duplicate of GKB.

TehChron said:
And the low key counter: Crowleys abilities as a Greater Stormcrow to hopefully dim his light enough that Mildred won't be blinded by him at range so she can get her own setups cooked off. Fog banks won't matter for Audrey since she'll be infighting the bastard, but stormclouds fundamentally block out the Sun.
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Crowley is very much not gonna interfere in this. Birds aren't supposed to do that for this kind of competition...if they were allowed to do that people would target them and they would die. Also, as far as Audrey knows, he's powered more by time of day than weather conditions and she's already immune to being blinded. So while this would be a reasonable idea in a 'Why not?' way in a real life or death fight, it's probably of minimal help and not happening here.

Guest99 said:
We have that danger sense that scales against stronger opponents, right? What's that doing for us at the moment?
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As strong as it's ever gone off barring real life and death stuff and sparring with full Knights. That said, that's mostly a split second thing and can vary between specific attacks, so it's pretty imprecise for what you're trying to ask here.
 
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Alectai said:
Assuming the enemy does not use a shield and Rebuke doesn't stop the blow, then at that point the blow must contend with the Hama Field (if the opponent has one) and then Armour (if they have that), in that order, but both work the same way: They reduce the damage by their rating and then, if they took damage at all, lose 10 points from that rating (or their entire remaining amount if that is less than 10). This applies to the two separately, so someone with 40 Hama Field and 100 Armour who is hit with an attack for 50 Damage loses 10 of each (down to 30 Hama Field and 90 Armour) since both were hit. A 20 Damage attack would have only affected the Hama Field since it did not even get to the armour. Some Rotes, Feats, and other special attacks specifically do more damage to armour, reducing it by more than the default 10. Generally these are specific to damaging Hama Fields or Mundane Armour. Some attacks also ignore armour entirely, including a few that ignore both Hama Field and Armour, though they tend to be relatively low damage.
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Basically the reason why Zeal boosting damage of low damage attacks will almost never matter is that the damage must exceed the armor and Hama Field equivalent in value to deal damage to their Fortitude, if it doesn't then all it does is scratch the Hama Field and/or Armor for by default 10 damage like normal.
 
DeadmanwalkingXI said:
So, for clarity, I don't think this does what you want it to do. It's just +10 damage for each Zeal (as opposed to +20 on most attacks). It does ignore armour and Hama Field, but your plan acts like it keeps people imprisoned better or increases the odds of the Feat working or something. It does not. Just the (pretty low) damage bump.
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Nah, the Zeal is for it to enable it to hopefully do meaningful amounts of damage, since the idea here is to chip away at Marghs hp pool consistently while Mildred sets up the bigger DPS bursts

So snares that are cheap to spam and do +40 damage ignoring defenses is the kind of thing you have to consistently respect in a slugging match where you're at a numbers disadvantage.


DeadmanwalkingXI said:
Crowley is very much not gonna interfere in this. Birds aren't supposed to do that for this kind of competition...if they were allowed to do that people would target them and they would die. Also, as far as Audrey knows, he's powered more by time of day than weather conditions and she's already immune to being blinded. So while this would be a reasonable idea in a 'Why not?' way in a real life or death fight, it's probably of minimal help and not happening here.
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Alright then. I'll edit that out
 
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TehChron said:
Nah, the Zeal is for it to enable it to hopefully do meaningful amounts of damage, since the idea here is to chip away at Marghs hp pool consistently while Mildred sets up the bigger DPS bursts



Alright then. I'll edit that out
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The Zeal is for only one attack though, so it will only do that damage once.

Alectai said:
Zeal can be spent for direct bonuses in combat, granting +20 Damage to a single attack per point spent (halved under the same circumstances as other damage) up to a maximum Zeal expenditure equal to the Combat Skill, or +1 to all rolls for a turn for 3 Zeal, up to a maximum bonus equal to your Combat Skill (so you can spend either 15 Zeal for a +5 for a turn or 5 Zeal for +100 Damage at Combat Skill 5, or both of course). This is usually a last resort, but it is possible.
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TehChron said:
...

Not ideal, but a single instance of 40 damage that ignores defenses in this kind of fight isn't bad if there isn't any fight clinching supermoves on the board

That being said, it'd be more efficient to redistribute that into Blac Scratch and an Armor save instead, so I'll make that edit as well
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When do you want the Zeal boosted Black Scratch to hit?

The way Armor mitigates damage is that any attack that doesn't exceed its value will just do scratch damage to the armor, normally its just -10 but Black Scratch does -30.
Brythonic Cultivators also seem to have their own defensive field equivalent called Phantom Armor which absorbed the whole 50 damage of a Black Scratch when fighting Jory which prevented any damage to his armor while getting restored by Jory at the end of his turn. It was overcome by a 130 damage GKB at the end but I imagine that Margh's version would be even tougher and/or have bonus effects.
 
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