- Pronouns
- He/Him
Definitely a factor, yeah.
We've been told every 3 Stoked Dice increases the area they hit meaningfully. I guess we could go with not using any, though...
NorseQuest (A Norse Xianxia)
- Thread starter I.F. Ister
- Start date
- Original Fantasy Action
-
- Tags
- norse mythology (mythology) original xianxia cultivation western cultivation ask sirihand did your mother tell you anything? discussion pleases yggdrasil farming gloating gets people killed granary management hubris is a coward's word you will die norsemen do not die when they are killed the qm has a bad memory the qm is bad at math viking courtroom drama (legal drama) vikings
Definitely a factor, yeah.
We've been told every 3 Stoked Dice increases the area they hit meaningfully. I guess we could go with not using any, though...
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That's in my plan...I'm assuming we have long enough for that or it'd be stated we don't.
So, in this vein, I think we should summon an extra Sword Guard. It's a capability he's seen before, and given 1 Sword Guard = 1 Spear Countered, there's a big value to redundancy. If it's quantised in lots of three dice, then three per Devouring Blaze sounds about right. Ideally we want to try and build up our Stoked Die over the fight, as we're likely to need it later, but I think we're doing a reasonable number of Ignition moves this turn, and next turn we could try a Stoking Engage.
I worry that this plan is overcautious and he may blitz us round one, but it is dramatically appropriate to drag out the fight and keep a technique secret in order to show off. Arguably Devouring Blaze is actually more important to keep secret, though. The ability to delete his Spear Hugareida is tactically pretty significant and we'll only be able to surprise him with it once, so it might be better to save for the turn we use Stoking Engage.
- Pronouns
- He/His/etc
In terms of dramatic appropriateness (and the gods f'ing love drama) we definitely want to build towards an eventual Flame-Tending Blade. No comment on the tactical utility of same.
I.F. Ister
Fortifying The Thread
- Pronouns
- He/They
It's been too hectic. Fortunately, however, he's also likely down an Aspect and has already taken some battle damage.
He's... He's got Standstill
For every 3 dice you put in, an extra person is affected
Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
How much more or less Standstill compared to us?
How much Hamr does he seem to have?
Can we Sundersight people to get a feel of their weaknesses?
- Pronouns
- He/His/etc
Did he get a Muna from his previous defeat?
- Pronouns
- He/Him
An extra Sword Guard is really expensive and pretty likely to get busted by his own Guard Break (which he almost certainly has)...overinvesting in Guards is risky.
I dunno if the potential surprise is worth it. Forcing him to just not use Guards because we'll break them seems pretty valid as an option here, and our attacks will basically be wasted against him as long as he has them up. I think waiting until he's got them up then breaking them is probably the most efficient option in terms of making him waste resources and not wasting them ourselves.
I think he's too canny to actually rely on Guards without a contingency, which makes using it as a surprise less useful.
Huh. More or less than we do?
Shard's questions on Hamr and Sundersight are also very relevant.
Okay, we don't need them for one person, then...
Last edited:
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Better question, by "Extra Person", in this case, does it include extra Constructs wiped by it?
Also, his Standstill shouldn't be better than ours, if it is, I'm going to call foul. Even equal should be a stretch, it's rank 6 with us and it hasn't been that long since we encountered him.
Also, his Standstill shouldn't be better than ours, if it is, I'm going to call foul. Even equal should be a stretch, it's rank 6 with us and it hasn't been that long since we encountered him.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Even the baseline version is an AoE that hits everything around a person, so if they're close to him it should hit all of them...the extra dice just expand the area. We might need 'two people' if the constructs are unusually far away, though...
- Location
- some computer lab
If we devouring blaze his guards, then threadcutter + sword strike should rapidly result in him running out of prepared defenses. I don't think we even got to see his DR in the previous fight, but threadcutter deals decent damage, and if we're worried about that following up with a folded sparkbomb should get through it.
This is proabably more of a next turn kinda thing though, since we seem to want to probe his defences this turn.
This is proabably more of a next turn kinda thing though, since we seem to want to probe his defences this turn.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It's not that hard to assign, like, 20 or more Basic Defenses. Doesn't make Threadcutter bad, but it's better if we use it to surprise him after using other tactics first getting him to assign fewer larger defenses.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
If we knew more about how it worked it might be fine. In the absence of that waiting for round 2 makes sense.
Fifty orthstirr is not that big of a deal given that fights tend to last three or at most four rounds. The risk of wasting resources certainly not fun, but a spear to the face is worse.
Based on rules of narrative, but also the fact that he's an experienced fighter who probably has multiple strategies and toolkits for fighting different kinds of opponents, once he knows we have a really effective way of clearing out his spear guard, he'll change up his defensive strategy. That means Devouring Blaze gives us one turn where we can potentially catch him with his trousers down - I think we should use that to get in close and launch attacks we're serious about, not probing attacks meant to test his abilities.
One option would be to go immediately on the offensive starting this round, but if we're going to test him out first, then I think it might be better to keep the distance a bit more. It's true that whilst he has his guards up, it's difficult to effectively attack him in melee without using Devouring Blaze, but if the objective of this turn is more about information-gathering then that's not necessarily a deal-breaker.
How come?
I think the logic is kinda questionable with Slowing Slog, but Sundersight straight-up just gives us more information. If we're spending the first turn starting slow and getting a feel for his new abilities, why wouldn't we want to use the ability which gives us more information?
Even if it means he can tell we're using it - which seems speculative at best - the mere fact that he knows we can gather information about his weaknesses does not really advantage him in any way?
- Pronouns
- He/Him
A spear to the face is something we have various other ways to avoid. But you may be right here, I'll think about it.
The issue is that the probing is useless and achieves nothing if the Spear Guards are up. All it tells us is that he has Spear Guards, which we already know.
Our ranged attacks will also be defended against with the Spear Guards is the thing...we just can't meaningfully probe his defenses at all with those up.
True. I'll see if I can maybe fit that in...
The logic for delaying Sundersight is that turning on Seersight is hard and we may not be able to keep it up very long. Whether that's true is another matter, but it's possible.
Last edited:
AeonIlluminate
The power of friendship and aggressive landscaping
- Pronouns
- They/Them
We haven't tested it's combat use yet, so we don't really know how it works, and also almost every time Solrun has used her Seer sight it has blinded her temporarily and ended the lessons for the day. Getting our most important sense fucked over in a fight is a very quick method to die, and this fight is probably one where whoever dies has it be their fated day.
Given it's an ability Halla has had for a while, this seems like something we should poke @Imperial Fister about until he answers.
- Location
- some computer lab
Wouldn't a single high dice attack break through all of them? it's a bit Orthstirr expensive, but with Sharpen we are more efficient, and we can power it with combat dice rather than pure Orthstirr.
It's risky if he has a non-standtill based Contest trigger, but that alone is useful information to know.