- Location
- some computer lab
Punching up triggers on folks twice as strong as us, and multiplies our dice pool by 1.5x at the cost of some Orthstirr, it is literally incapable of making us stronger than any valid target
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
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I disagree with this because Punching Up doesn't actually close the gap. We are not actually more powerful than someone who started twice as powerful as us after activating Punching Up. It lets us do better in the fight than we would otherwise, but we have only ever won a solo fight using Punching Up vs. mindless opponents and I wouldn't be surprised if we never win such a one on one fight vs. opponents who can think and plan. It is helpful and lets us punch well above our weight class, but it's not actually enough to make up for the differences between us and the people we can use it on.
Strictly speaking, it clearly doesn't only count dice pools, since Sten had less than double our dice during our spar and still counted, so we could in fact wind up with more dice than someone theoretically. On the other hand that's clearly not the only measure of power...we used Punching Up in that instance and Sten still won that spar pretty readily.
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- Location
- Norway
"Twice as strong"? "Stronger"? what are these words referring to? what is being counted here? Do you mean literal physical strength, Twice as much Hamr maybe?
Halla can evidently win a fight where she activates "Punching Up" Twist, because she did. The fact of having won that fight is evidence that she was the "stronger" person in that fight and she was "punching down" by the colloquial meanings of those words.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It's clearly a combination of factors. As mentioned, we know Sten's stats when we used it against him and it was not double our Hamr. Nor did it need to be for him to beat us.
Strength is not the only determiner of who wins fights. The only one-on-one fights we've won with stronger opponents we used Punching Up on they were mindless and we outthought them. A person who wins a fight is in no way always stronger or 'punching down'...that's just not how that works, in either stories or in life.
Just because you manage to kill a bear with a knife does not mean you were stronger than the bear, y'know?
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So... Just a reminder.
IAT, while really handy, can be broken by leveraging yourself, not just overpowering it.
Iirc, it was after the Sten spar, but stoking an aspect would grant people the needed leverage to break free.... And most experienced warriors will know that of how to break out of binding tricks.....
"Hey Blackhand, how can you notice a twist or seisr being used? Odr we know has a visual effect, but the other two?"
IAT, while really handy, can be broken by leveraging yourself, not just overpowering it.
Iirc, it was after the Sten spar, but stoking an aspect would grant people the needed leverage to break free.... And most experienced warriors will know that of how to break out of binding tricks.....
"Hey Blackhand, how can you notice a twist or seisr being used? Odr we know has a visual effect, but the other two?"
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yeah, we're aware. The hope is that he tries to break free without doing that, or the Odr at least delays how long that takes for long enough for us to achieve something. It might not work, but we have no sure things at this point, we're sort of taking what we can get. It is done in response to him attacking us so it should stop at least that much.
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Historically, we've been told we can't do conditionals of this nature (ie: we do this Trick if X, but this other Trick if Y, using the same resources) as it would make plans have logistical issues. So...I'm pretty sure we can't do that. We could make them IATs, or we can have them be Sparkbombs, but no conditional usages like this since they're using the same limited resources (ie: the Muna-boosted Contested Movements).
Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
Incidentally:
A person with twice as much Hamr as Halla would wreck her so hard it wouldn't be funny, even doubling our dice wouldn't be enough to do anything more than make it not be an immediate execution, if even that.
- Location
- Burgundian Netherlands
I'm a bit puzzled as to the disappointment with this boss fight, too. Attempts to discredit the Punching Down Twist (whatever its concrete mechanic or 'real' name) seem to build on a very narrow interpretation of what can count as a narrative twist. "You thought you had a fair shot, but you don't, young padawan. My power is greater still than you expected." seems an appropriately dramatic (lower-case) narrative twist to constitute a (upper-case) Twist.
We are facing a very tough, very thematic, very cool enemy at an appropriate narrative moment, who has plenty reason to be here, strategically speaking. Yes, it's a trap of a sorts, but one that feels very fitting -- if Halla as a greenhorn decides to start meddling in Dwarven affairs on a 'case-by-case' (wink-wink) basis, it's more than reasonable she'll trip over a contingency by a rival power who has a very vested interest in making sure 'their' Dwarves win. That Rogaland sends the one guy who, either because of past experience fighting dwarves or an unrelated reason, happens to be very good at fighting individually inferior enemies who tend to form up into murderblobs (like dwarves!) seems such an obvious strategic choice that it doesn't really require another (IC or OOC) explanation?
Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
@DeadmanwalkingXI
Have you considered the 'Blackhand controls our body briefly to break the Frenzy Analysis' idea? What did you think about it?
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Mechanically speaking Punching Upward is a moderate amount of Orthsirr efficiency, it only pays out if you get more than 35d of combat dice over a fight.
Unless... can we put Punching Upward Combat Dice into Contested-Movement? Or even Tactics?
Have you considered the 'Blackhand controls our body briefly to break the Frenzy Analysis' idea? What did you think about it?
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Mechanically speaking Punching Upward is a moderate amount of Orthsirr efficiency, it only pays out if you get more than 35d of combat dice over a fight.
Unless... can we put Punching Upward Combat Dice into Contested-Movement? Or even Tactics?
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- Location
- Bretonnia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Unfortunately no, it only works on "Planned" moves.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Well, if nothing else, the Enemy probably doesn't have infinity leverage over an infinite supply of monsters like this guy. He's kind of weird; I doubt there are many quite like him.
We know the Enemy has limited agents and pays prices for reality alteration.
That said well, You Will Die tag. Going somewhere, meeting something we can't kill and dying is part of the game. It's a roguelites that has to be solved through multiple runs.
That said well, You Will Die tag. Going somewhere, meeting something we can't kill and dying is part of the game. It's a roguelites that has to be solved through multiple runs.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Yeah. A generic "do well against scrubs that get lucky" defense might be creatively misapplicable against someone like Halla in principle, if you're on a high enough level that Halla still looks like a scrub.
- Location
- Bretonnia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I don't think this guy is an agent of the Enemy? This feels more like the Enemy giving a helping hand to someone we were going to run into anyway, rather than an actual agent. While it probably cost it something to do that, I don't think it actually spent much at all, since he didn't actually send this guy from what I can tell.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
The issue is him being here, specifically, a relatively minor front in a greater war. Which is where the Enemy meddled. We would absolutely balk at participating in the Decisive Battle of the entire campaign.
You don't send your elite agents to sit tight and drink your beer at one relatively minor contested mine with less than a hundred individuals defending it (Against a horde-type faction like the Dwarves in NorseQuest anyway). You deploy them offensively to help clinch critical areas. This is like going into a side-quest dungeon and suddenly running into a lategame optional boss when everything else was more-or-less appropriate to what you eyeballed it.
Again, I'm not protesting the existence of a wake-up call boss though. The issue is that "You need to go on adventures to improve" combined with "But you have a nigh omniscient foe who can and will apply Murphy's Law freely."
You don't send your elite agents to sit tight and drink your beer at one relatively minor contested mine with less than a hundred individuals defending it (Against a horde-type faction like the Dwarves in NorseQuest anyway). You deploy them offensively to help clinch critical areas. This is like going into a side-quest dungeon and suddenly running into a lategame optional boss when everything else was more-or-less appropriate to what you eyeballed it.
Again, I'm not protesting the existence of a wake-up call boss though. The issue is that "You need to go on adventures to improve" combined with "But you have a nigh omniscient foe who can and will apply Murphy's Law freely."
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- Location
- Bretonnia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Uh, how? It is entirely reasonable for Geirmund to send this guy here even without our presence, as he has a vested interest in depriving Agder of its iron. Blackhand's sudden confusion definitely feels like it's from the Enemy, but Hooknails being here just feels like bad luck rather than an actual play from it. He's not after us specifically - he even offered to let us leave. He's here because he wants to kill the Ducklings.
Blackhand noticed the Enemy's presence, so it's fingers are in this situation, even if we don't know the details.
- Location
- Bretonnia
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- He/Him
I never said the Enemy wasn't involved. Just that this guy isn't an actual agent of the Enemy, and that I doubt the Enemy actually spent all that much to facilitate this. This feels more like the Foemen attack when it's taking advantage of an opportune moment to fuck us over, except in this case he didn't actually send Hooknails.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Again, you'd be right if this was the only contested mine and therefore it was critical to maintaining the iron shortage. It's not, it's a specific place being targetted because of personal animus from one group of the Ducklings. And it wasn't even a critical front or they'd have been able to wrangle up more fighters for it--this was effectively a surprise attack on a small mine, not literally breaking the iron shortage.
But as I edited in later. I'm not protesting the existence of the wake-up-call boss, especially since we had some pretty good ideas to apparently get backup. I was protesting the existence of some kind of "Punching Down" Twist because 'Strong people being strong and beating people who aren't as strong as they are isn't a Twist in the Narrative, it's just Reality Ensues".
I also wasn't saying he was an Agent of the Enemy, I was saying that he was nudged here by them.
Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
Geirmund almost assuredly has Seers to advise him, which is honestly pretty scary. Imagine an Aki that focused on their Seersight..
...Though Geirmund must be an Odr Cultivator, right? Isn't the Enemy effectively helping him out by messing us up? 🤔
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Honestly, the fact the dude is this stacked and apparently not even noticeably aged to the point where it was called out in his description.
Now, I know he's a giant Bloodborne Reference, and that's cool, I'm just being my usual grumbly self here.
- Location
- Bretonnia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I mean, Imperial explicitly said 'a third' of Agder's iron income. While it's not critical, that's still a pretty big play. Certainly enough to warrant sending one of his own hirdsmen to facilitate. It doesn't seem like a concentrated effort either - more like Geirmund had the opportunity, and thus took it. Especially with a Twist like Punching Down, Hooknails would be able to wreak havoc against these dwarves.