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NorseQuest (A Norse Xianxia)

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Fuck your shields, cousin! :p

[X] Plan You Can't Use Shields Without Wrists
 
So, our eyes keep being described as like Steel. And not like Forged-Iron, as the RL version of it is known here. This makes me think our family line has a connection to it, going back to Odin. But Odin, famously, sacrificed one of his eyes. Perhaps the Enemy (or someone else) was able to exploit that sacrifice in the creation of Steel? That might be optimistic of me, though, as that's the least dangerous-to-us connection I can think of.
 
DeadmanwalkingXI said:
I don't see that as a reason to not break his other wrist...it is still an attack and does damage, not huge damage, but still.
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Oh, wait, does Shatter-Wrist work through weapons, not just shields? For some reason I was thinking of it as a specifically anti-shield thing.

To be clear, I was not saying at any point that we should not have two Shatter-Wrists in the plan, seems silly not to. It's that I struggle to imagine this fight ending with him having two broken wrists.

DeadmanwalkingXI said:
So, this isn't actually true. He rolled around a 42 on the dice on his first Contested Movement roll. So he added some dice there...that's the average on 14d6, exactly as much as we get from our base pool and 2 Basic Attacks. Plus, if he has Stoker State he can add those dice...that may even be what he did on that one. He's done basic attacks since then, too, so he could've built it back up. I'm not comfortable doing it with less than 9 bonus dice, and even then it's dicey. I don't think it's probably worth moving those attacks earlier in the turn order for something as risky as this.
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I think that Contested Movement is the only thing we've seen that he can't use some bullshit to stop, and that's significant. He has more Orthstirr than we do, so hoping to just batter down his defences with Shatter-Wrist and then high-dice trick attacks is... maybe viable if Shatter-Wrist surprises him enough, but I my strong gut feeling is that might pull something which allows him to mitigate this. If that happens, and he starts throwing his own powerful attacks back, then IDK how we win.

A Contested Movement with a strong attack (and I trust you to decide what that would be) feels like it could end this fight decisively if we soften him up with Shatter-Wrist beforehand. If we need at least +9d6 to make it work, then I think we should try and make sure we throw three Basic Attacks at him so we can do that. That's my hot take, anyway.
 
Skippy said:
Oh, wait, does Shatter-Wrist work through weapons, not just shields? For some reason I was thinking of it as a specifically anti-shield thing.

To be clear, I was not saying at any point that we should not have two Shatter-Wrists in the plan, seems silly not to. It's that I struggle to imagine this fight ending with him having two broken wrists.
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It aims at the wrist, it works on any arm we aim it at, in theory anyway, it's just that shields don't help. And it may not work but seems worth trying.

Skippy said:
I think that Contested Movement is the only thing we've seen that he can't use some bullshit to stop, and that's significant. He has more Orthstirr than we do, so hoping to just batter down his defences with Shatter-Wrist and then high-dice trick attacks is... maybe viable if Shatter-Wrist surprises him enough, but I my strong gut feeling is that might pull something which allows him to mitigate this. If that happens, and he starts throwing his own powerful attacks back, then IDK how we win.
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I'll note that our attacks are a lot more efficient than his defenses, so his better Orthstirr doesn't go as far as it might. It still goes a ways, but not as far as one might expect. And he can't pull the same trick nearly as well offensively because his swords will, in fact, break if he starts doing Sharpen too much. This is especially true if we can force him to burn Aspects on having functional limbs.

Skippy said:
A Contested Movement with a strong attack (and I trust you to decide what that would be) feels like it could end this fight decisively if we soften him up with Shatter-Wrist beforehand. If we need at least +9d6 to make it work, then I think we should try and make sure we throw three Basic Attacks at him so we can do that. That's my hot take, anyway.
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I don't see good evidence he can't oppose that, is the thing. Even at +9d if he's been using Stoker State on all his basic attacks and uses the dice there, I think the Contested Movement goes in his favor more often than not. And while Contested Movement can be good for us, it also opens up a fairly significant hole in our defenses.

Also, during the three attacks we're making to set up the Contested Movement I suspect he'll have already hit us with any big attacks he may be planning. Even if we do them right after the Shatter-Wrists in order to get three of them used, we'll have been attacked by him 3 or 4 times...I'd be very surprised if his big attacks aren't in the first three or four attacks he makes unless we can get him on his back foot, in which case I don't think contested Movement is the best play.

Imperial Fister said:
This is so tragic, lmao
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I am now concerned. I think? Or he's just using Fasts with his absurd number of shapeshifting slots or something.

wrecksalot said:
Can't we just do this with Armory Pockets?
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Only at huge expense. Conservatively, he's used at least 6 or so. That many Armory Pockets would be, well, they'd cost 120 Permanent Orthstirr and thus 4 Odr per turn. Fasts are more viable, but having that many would be 2 Shapeshifting Slots, which is a large investment.
 
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DeadmanwalkingXI said:
I'll note that our attacks are a lot more efficient than his defenses, so his better Orthstirr doesn't go as far as it might. It still goes a ways, but not as far as one might expect. And he can't pull the same trick nearly as well offensively because his swords will, in fact, break if he starts doing Sharpen too much. This is especially true if we can force him to burn Aspects on having functional limbs.
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If it becomes a pure battle of attrition then the Sharpen advantage might be decisive, although I think we've spent two much Orthstirr here?

And yes, if we can break both of his wrists, then I think we've essentially won the fight - I'm just not certain about our ability to pull that off.

DeadmanwalkingXI said:
I don't see good evidence he can't oppose that, is the thing. Even at +9d if he's been using Stoker State on all his basic attacks and uses the dice there, I think the Contested Movement goes in his favor more often than not. And while Contested Movement can be good for us, it also opens up a fairly significant hole in our defenses.

Also, during the three attacks we're making to set up the Contested Movement I suspect he'll have already hit us with any big attacks he may be planning. Even if we do them right after the Shatter-Wrists in order to get three of them used, we'll have been attacked by him 3 or 4 times...I'd be very surprised if his big attacks aren't in the first three or four attacks he makes unless we can get him on his back foot, in which case I don't think contested Movement is the best play.
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...It may well be true that by using Contested Movement twice already, we've put ourselves in a bit of a corner in terms of being able to effectively employ it this time.

Honestly it would be great if we could cheaply throw a bunch of dice on our Basic Attacks like Steinarr does, so they don't feel like such a waste versus a Trick attack. Then again "just be Steinarr" feels like it would solve a lot of issues we have in fights. 😅
 
Skippy said:
If it becomes a pure battle of attrition then the Sharpen advantage might be decisive, although I think we've spent two much Orthstirr here?
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Depends on context, really. If he uses all his Aspects for Orthstirr, yeah, the orthficiency advantage won't be sufficient...if he has to spend them healing, it might be.

Skippy said:
And yes, if we can break both of his wrists, then I think we've essentially won the fight - I'm just not certain about our ability to pull that off.
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I think we probably can, my concern is Aspect Healing, which can force us to do it again. Hence all the attacks focused on it.

Skippy said:
...It may well be true that by using Contested Movement twice already, we've put ourselves in a bit of a corner in terms of being able to effectively employ it this time.

Honestly it would be great if we could cheaply throw a bunch of dice on our Basic Attacks like Steinarr does, so they don't feel like such a waste versus a Trick attack. Then again "just be Steinarr" feels like it would solve a lot of issues we have in fights. 😅
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Versus a lot of opponents, what we can do probably is sufficient...I'm not convinced Hal is one of those people at this stage of things. It likely would've worked on Round 1 if we'd done it then, and maybe we should've, but we were still worried about grapples at that stage of things and it would have been a potentialy fatal mistake if he were a Glima specialist.
 
Skippy said:
Oh, wait, does Shatter-Wrist work through weapons, not just shields? For some reason I was thinking of it as a specifically anti-shield thing.
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Well, it sort of does in the sense that if you hit the weapon close enough to the wrist for the orthstirr drill to reach, you probably don't need to break the wrist in order to disable the hand
 
OneArmedYeti said:
Confirmed, terrible trauma will give our kids badass Muna.
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So far all the really monster cultivators we have seen have had a traumatic background. Of the ones we have seen anyway.

Logi: Drysalt killed everything probably including his dad
Hallr: Dad died while a child
Steinarr: Dad died while a child, also Horra
Horra: Dad died while a child
Sten: Foster-dad died, village killed by monsters
 
Shard said:
So far all the really monster cultivators we have seen have had a traumatic background. Of the ones we have seen anyway.

Logi: Drysalt killed everything probably including his dad
Hallr: Dad died while a child
Steinarr: Dad died while a child, also Horra
Horra: Dad died while a child
Sten: Foster-dad died, village killed by monsters
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Obviously the move is to change our plan away from a minimum risk Disclosure and towards getting us and Abjorn killed to make Sigudr Batman.
 
Shard said:
So far all the really monster cultivators we have seen have had a traumatic background. Of the ones we have seen anyway.

Logi: Drysalt killed everything probably including his dad
Hallr: Dad died while a child
Steinarr: Dad died while a child, also Horra
Horra: Dad died while a child
Sten: Foster-dad died, village killed by monsters
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Halla herself contradicts this inasmuch as she counts, at least so far. Honestly, I think it's less 'powerful Cultivators have traumatic backgrounds' and more 'most Norsemen have traumatic backgrounds'...because the world and society they live in are fairly brutal.
 
Imperial Fister said:
I would like to note that Halla is very resilient to trauma as a result of her having Bloodlust. Essentially, it'll take deep psychological bullshit to really leave a mark—something like a betrayal or other non-physical trauma
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Fair. Her parents were also not abusive and didn't die when she was a child, though, so that's a leg up on a lot of the other examples shown just in terms of her circumstances.
 
Nobody wins misery comparisons, but she did feel like she'd never get any respect if she didn't fucking ice the first guy that gave her a valid excuse.
 
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