Any room for Knee-Groin-Trick?
We could use a kill or two with that.
NorseQuest (A Norse Xianxia)
- Thread starter I.F. Ister
- Start date
- Original Fantasy Action
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- 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
We could use a kill or two with that.
- Location
- Bretonnia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Could we at least tell the rest of the guys with us that they should be wary of the gatehouse? I wouldn't want him to get the drop on us - even if Halla will probably be fine, the same can't be said for the others.
And is having their morale break really the best idea? We're supposed to serve as a distraction after all, so the longer they're focused on us the better. Although it's honestly not that big of a problem, since the only thing they'd do if their morale broke was regroup and reform their ranks, before trying to take us on again. Except for if they realise the mayor's house is under attack, and split up their forces.
[X] Plan Cut Off The Head
And is having their morale break really the best idea? We're supposed to serve as a distraction after all, so the longer they're focused on us the better. Although it's honestly not that big of a problem, since the only thing they'd do if their morale broke was regroup and reform their ranks, before trying to take us on again. Except for if they realise the mayor's house is under attack, and split up their forces.
[X] Plan Cut Off The Head
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Sirrocco
Pedantic
We'll save that for the guy upstairs. It just isn't the same on packed mooks wielding spears in formation.
Once their morale breaks, the next thing you have happen is a bunch of vikings loudly looting, having busted in the front gates, which is distracting in its own way. Also, mook-tier spearmen with broken morale aren't generally going to be all that great at reforming into a coherent threat again.
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- Location
- Bretonnia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Eh, it's not so much that I expect the to be a threat. It's just that I think it'd be waaaay too easy if we kill one guy and win the raid. Especially since Folkmarr seemed pretty sure of there being a good for glory during this raid. Beating a buncha mortals that can barely hurt us doesn't seem very glorious.
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I honestly forgot. Changing it now after so many votes seems inappropriate...but saving that for whoever is lying in wait also seems reasonable.
As other note there's the guy upstairs and whatever he's planning, and the suspicion that he's a cultivator, so there's that.
But also, near as I can tell, mortals in numbers are actually pretty dangerous if they focus and coordinate just due to how the system works. We don't actually know the rules for mortals in detail, but we know that they theoretically max out at the equivalent of Hamr 2...if their combat skills are similar, well, bear in mind that weapons provide dice. If it's as simple as 'max stats and skills at 2, no tricks' for mortal stats then each spearman likely has something around 6-7 dice total including their equipment (and better equipped and trained mortals may have as many as 10-14 in theory, again, including equipment). Way less than Halla, sure, and with no tricks, but if you get attacked by 10 of them with 4-5 dice each that's 40-50 attacks and actually a serious threat to many cultivators (us included), as the cultivator dies a death of 1000 cuts. Even if they only get one die plus weapon dice, that's likely 3 dice each and 30 attacks for ten spearmen if they go full offense.
Now, the plan here involves not getting attacked by a full 10 spearman by ourself (they only outnumber us 3 to 1, so avoiding that is quite doable, I think)...we can handle something like 20 attacks pretty readily with the plan I posted. 30 with difficulty. But more than that? Starts being an issue. And due to our cheap Reinforce Shield (and that just being a great trick vs. mooks) we're actually quite durable to swarms of basic attacks compared to many Norsemen...less so than those with Shapeshifting (who can become basically immune if they have the -1 damage thing), but tougher than most, meaning that surviving even 20 attacks basically unscathed is a glory-worthy feat since it's unusual and impressive. To say nothing of leaping over their lines blazing with power and chopping their leader in half.
Basically, we're gonna win this fight, but if they coordinated perfectly and picked their targets, I actually think they could inflict casualties on us with a little luck. 30-40 attacks at each of our two or three weakest members and I think we'd very plausibly lose some people. Avoiding that is worthwhile and impressive and worthy of at least a bit of orthstirr in its own right.
I'm actually slightly regretting not putting more orthstirr into Reinforce Shield as insurance against this sort of thing this turn the more I think about it, and will likely throw in more next turn if there are still significant mooks about.
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Seems unnecessary at the moment. We're hoping to get out of this with minimal orthstirr expenditure and without starting any fires yet (remember folks, pillage then burn, doing those in the right order is important). If killing their leader winds up being insufficient to disperse them, Kindle Spinner may come out to play for this purpose, but we're trying the other way first.
- Location
- Bretonnia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Sure, but that doesn't include the fact that the cultivator can probably kill them in only a few hits on account of their low ass Hamr. Assuming they max out at 2, our Power Chop would one shot them. Especially if they used all their dice to attack and ignored defense. A 3Fold Honed attack would let someone kill 3 mortals at once, and then they could use it again to kill another 3 more, etc.
Combat doesn't let someone use up all their attack dice at once, and the cultivator would definitely kill them before their defenses broke if they managed their dice correctly.
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Weird ooc lone here
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Armor is also a thing. I imagine they do have 1-2 health, but that's 3-4 with even a crappy gambeson...5-6 if that gambeson is decent (to say nothing of if they have better armor than that). Once it starts being two or three attacks to kill one foe, and they're all attacking you simultaneously, well, things get dicey. Heck, even at one kill per attack, for one Norseman vs. 10 mortals that's 10 attacks, then 9 attacks, then 8, then 7 if they're all making 4 each. That's 34 attacks...sure killing people at one attack per reduces their numbers, but not enough to be perfectly safe by any means if that's all you're doing.
Now, in reality, we've got enough Vikings attacking that we're likely killing more than that per wave, but even at us killing 5 of them per 'wave' (a high-end estimate, I think, based on us all using high damage attacks and them only having the crappiest possible armor), that could easily make for 50 attacks total before they all went down (20+15+10+5). If those were focused properly? Still bad news and one or two casualties.
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- Location
- Bretonnia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Assuming they have 6 hp, a single honed 3Fold Attack could kill them. I'll then assume that a mortal could get off one attack in the span of a cultivator's two (3Fold Attack counts as one). I'll also assume that the cultivator wouldn't let themselves be completely surrounded by mortals, but is taking on 3/2 at once, out of a 20 person regiment. That's like, what, 2/3 attacks per turn?
Like, people aren't robots. We wouldn't stand there and let 20 people surround us so they could attack us all at once
I mean, sure, but that's assuming every soldier was in reach of Halla, was targeting Halla, and also completely forgot about the rest of the angry vikings charging them.
Like, if we were taking all these guys solo, them yeah it'd be very glorious, but we're not. We're a bunch of cultivators taking on a bunch of mortals who are terrified.
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Asva likes another man too.
- Location
- Bretonnia
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- He/Him
I realise that my post makes it sound like I think a cultivator around our level could take on 20 men easily. Yeah, uh... no, I do think that 20 mortals is actually quite impressive for one cultivator. I didn't even mean to start arguing about this - sorry if I come off as aggressive - because my main point was that killing these mortals in this situations wouldnt yield much glory.
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We were warned that 2Fold and 3Fold attacks tend to leave you without defenses which seems like a bad gamble here...I also believe we haven't ever actually been informed on how to make those, which is a bit of an issue.
The only single attack we have that deals 6 damage is Honed Leaping Cleave, everything else would take at least two attacks (which is what Honed Power Chop would take, for the record).
Why would you assume we get more than one attack per one of theirs? We never have before, even when fighting non-cultivators (the Nisse was a non-cultivator, remember). Nobody else has either.
True, hence statements like 'if they're coordinating'. I don't actually think anything close to 20 attacks is gonna wind up going at any one of our merry band...but it's not impossible, and should be kept in mind if facing more organized units, and particularly those with ranged attacks.
I was more thinking of 4-5 of them going to town on Halla for multiple attacks while she killed their leader, not 20 of them each making one attack.
They're not a non-threat, is what I'm getting at here. Sure, we're likely gonna win...stacking the odds so we likely win is a large part of the point of raiding, but we're not fighting people who have no chance to harm us. We're fighting people who could do serious damage under the right circumstances but making sure the circumstances are, in fact, not right for that to happen.
I feel like this is wrong because of how Norsemen view glory. Like, yes fighting against desperate odds is the sort of thing to gain orthstirr, but so is coming up with a clever plan that results in an easy win against an otherwise dangerous foe.
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- Location
- Bretonnia
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- He/Him
I wouldn't put the nisse - the supernatural creature that also had xianxia rabies - that Halla explicitly noted to be fast (fast for a cultivator, not a mortal) in the same bracket as mortal humans. I was just going off the basis that a cultivator with decent Hamr should be way faster than a mortal human, and thus would be able to get off more attacks than they could.
They have the potential to do damage, sure. But the actual chance of that happening isn't high at all - I highly doubt that they'd even be able to kill one of us, let alone take on seven of us. They're more likely to run or give up than they are to actually fight. And even if they did fight, I still believe that the seven of us could take them on. Yeah, a few of us might get hurt, but I doubt that any of us would actually die.
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Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
From what I've, read, it's actually surprisingly tough to get more than six people attacking one person at a time, assuming those six people have an open space to surround that one person from all directions, and have also trained well enough together to not get in each other's way. More than that and you're likely to hamper each other.
Untrained people would do even worse, doubly so against a cultivator, because on top of morale problems and the fact that the singular dude/gal is faster, stronger, more skilled and better equipped by a large margin, letting them fight mobs piecemeal simply because they can't actually pin them down due to them being able to (easily) break out in any direction. On top of being terrified.
Now if they had ranged weapons and like the equation would change somewhat, but not that much IMO.
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I feel like that description was because the Nisse had around Hamr 10 and just to make it clear the calibre of foe we were facing, and that cultivator speed is taken into account by them having more dice by a lot and being able to use Tricks. But we'll see, all this is somewhat speculative given we've never actually fought mortals before. I prefer to go with the pessimistic assumptions to avoid unpleasant surprises, though.
Sure, and my point is that, by Norse logic, having put enemies in a position where that's true is, in fact, glorious. Or perhaps more accurately, clever and worthy of orthstirr.
Six people attacking one is still an issue, honestly. For a lot of cultivators, anyway (that's 18 attacks before you finish them all off even if you're killing one per round of attacks, 22 if it takes you two attacks to finish them...Halla can handle that, but I'm not sure every cultivator can do so as readily). And I think the cap of 6 assumes weapons other than ranks of spears...being able to stab over your allies from behind them really expands how well you can focus fire.
And yeah, I mentioned ranged attacks specifically for a reason, as they lack this issue.
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- Location
- Bretonnia
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- He/Him
I'd be very surprised. In this case, we see them as nothing more than weak Christians. I don't think our defeat is even being considered, especially since Halla is looking down on them even more after seeing a man die from something she'd easily dodge. I don't see what's so glorious about killing weak people. Like, even if they're not actually weak - and that's being generous - the Norse view them as weak, so I don't see why they'd consider such a victory to be glory.
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My entire point is that, while they may be weak individually, as an armed unit that outnumbers us and could in theory kill some Norsemen they are, in a vacuum, dangerous. And that the Norse are fine with many tactics that reduce how dangerous a group of people are, and do not consider that to be dishonorable or reducing the credit for defeating them.
Like, if this were instead a group of two or three cultivators on par with the average 16-20 year old Norseman, that's probably equivalent on the 'danger' scale...and yet if we attacked a group like that while we had them outnumbered and caught by surprise like this, the Norse attitude is that it's their fault for not being better prepared and we still get full credit for taking out those two or three cultivators. Similarly, we get credit for taking out this group of guards even once we've stacked the deck.
Is that as much credit as if we were fighting larger number of more powerful people? Of course not, but the circumstantial stuff doesn't vastly reduce the credit we get for this. Like, orthstirr is, to some degree, just bragging rights and 'we took out a squad of twenty guards!' is similarly good bragging rights regardless of how much we stacked the deck as long as our tactics aren't actually dishonorable.
So I'm not saying this is the most glorious thing ever, I'm saying it's equally glorious to fighting these people when they were prepared and precisely coordinated (or pretty close anyway). Which is where my analysis about this number of mortals being dangerous if prepared and properly coordinated comes in, since they mean that this unit would be a meaningful threat under those circumstances, which means defeating them comes with the credit for defeating a meaningful threat.
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- Location
- Bretonnia
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- He/Him
Yes, and I acknowledged that they could be dangerous. But that doesn't change the fact that even before the surprise attack, we were still considering them 'weak'. We didn't go into this with the expectation that we were going to have a somewhat-challenging-but-manageable fight or anything of the sort. The expectation is that they're going to win, because they're weak. Of course, this doesn't apply to everyone - I imagine the seven of us fighting a single Knight would reward orthstirr - but these are just some random chumps; the very guys they consider weak. Folkmarr did mention the chance of there being stronger fighters, but these guys clearly are not their strong fighters. The way I understand it, they wouldn't brag about defeating these twenty men, to begin with, since they see them as weak - regardless of whether it sounds impressive or not.
Like, I just don't agree with this. Halla doesn't even see them as guards-
-and that's on top of the assumption that these guys are weak. They haven't made any incredible showing or anything of the sort, so Halla and the rest of them have no reason to consider them strong in the first place. As far as Halla and the felag is concerned, this is their full potential, so they wouldn't see it as defeating twenty organised and trained men. They just see it as killing weak Christians.
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You're assuming Halla's standards are reasonable or normal for even Norsemen, which is, I think, rather badly incorrect. Halla is used to a higher class of opponent, and has higher standards herself...but Halla is exceptional even by Norse standards. The fact that she is dismissive of these people does not mean that other people would be, or even necessarily that she should be (if she encountered them when they were prepared, they might well make a better showing). It means she's sheltered in a weird way, and not used to the norms that the rest of the world uses.
Basically, I think you're taking Halla's unreasonably high standards and unfamiliarity with anyone but elite warriors as the norm when they're really not. Orthstirr is not only awarded for things that meet Halla's personal standards of impressiveness. Many things she finds unimpressive would likely grant some orthstirr if witnessed by others.
Basically, I think you're taking Halla's unreasonably high standards and unfamiliarity with anyone but elite warriors as the norm when they're really not. Orthstirr is not only awarded for things that meet Halla's personal standards of impressiveness. Many things she finds unimpressive would likely grant some orthstirr if witnessed by others.
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- Location
- Bretonnia
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- He/Him
Except, even Folkmarr considered them weak? Like, granted, both of them are strong. And I wouldn't call the rest of the felag much weaker, if they're anything like Audrikr. It was a spar, sure, and it was fluff for our training, but he was still keeping up with Halla perfectly fine. I don't see why the rest of the felag would consider them 'trained and deadly fighters that just happened to be taken by surprise' and not 'weak men', either. I never said that we'd receive no orthstirr, but that it doesn't seem very glorious, so we wouldn't receive much orthstirr at all.
Not to mention that by that logic, should Halla defeat anyone that is considered 'strong' - regardless of whether they're actually strong or a challenge, she'd receive orthstirr for doing so. We could just go around beating people that other people considered strong, even if they were helpless in the face of us, to farm orthstirr.
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Note that Audrikr is the one going with Folkmarr on the only two man crew. I suspect that indicates he's probably the most badass member of the felag, us and Folkmarr aside. Certainly top tier comparatively.
And, I mean, orthstirr is literally 'fame' or 'renown' in most ways, which is also the meaning of the word 'glory'...if we gain orthstirr, it was glorious. Kinda definitionally. Even if it's not a huge amount (and no, I'm not expecting a huge amount for these guys...the guy up top may be more impressive), that's still 'glorious' in that it gains us glory.
Maybe we're just having a difference in definitions of what 'glorious' means?
I'm pretty sure that would work if you could do it, yes. Now, given that they'd need to be considered strong in communities of Norsemen (since that's whose opinion orthstirr is based on), they inevitably have high Orthstirr themselves and are highly unlikely to actually be weak in any way, but it would work in theory if you could find such a weak person widely believed to be strong.
- Location
- Bretonnia
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- He/Him
Not necessarily, she could just go and fight someone the Norse consider 'strong' from another culture that didn't have a fame-based cultivation system. Granted, they probably would still be strong (but what may be strong for the general populace, Halla may consider weak - like you said), but what I'm trying to say is that even when we're leagues above a person, Halla would still be able to receive a decent amount of orthstirr for fighting someone believed to be strong.
Nah, I'm pretty sure we're talking about the same thing. It's just that I don't see these guys being considered very glorious, period. I believe a group of the average twenty-year-old - the age one typically becomes a raider - could still take on these guys with relative ease.
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