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Punching through the Masquerade (Modern Magical Cultivation Quest)

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Right, I was hoping we'd get right into the fight, but I need to get to bed right now.

Broadly, the strategy I had in mind was "Empousa does their thing to contribute, we hit with our Earth Spell from a distance and limit our mobility to bait him in. When they try to close in to end the fight decisively with physical attacks, we respond with Arsonist's Escape to hopefully blind and stun it, get out of the splash zone, and then Blastburn him. We should have a major advantage between the Empousa playing Rogue and us hitting him with a hard hitting, high accuracy spell that should work on him. But I wouldn't want to risk a Blastburn unless we set things up that his defense is impaired, and that--I feel--needs the flashbang to work. We're only likely to get one good shot of that before he gets wary to it.

Don't know if the update'll drop after I turn in or not, but we've got decently smart people here. I'll trust y'all to keep things humming along while I'm in bed if it moves on by then.
 
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Alectai said:
Broadly, the strategy I had in mind was "Empousa does their thing to contribute, we hit with our Earth Spell from a distance and limit our mobility to bait him in. When they try to close in to end the fight decisively with physical attacks, we respond with Arsonist's Escape to hopefully blind and stun it, get out of the splash zone, and then Blastburn him. We should have a major advantage between the Empousa playing Rogue and us hitting him with a hard hitting, high accuracy spell that should work on him. But I wouldn't want to risk a Blastburn unless we set things up that his defense is impaired, and that--I feel--needs the flashbang to work. We're only likely to get one good shot of that before he gets wary to it.
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I mostly like the plan, but i am not sure i like the idea of letting it get close to us. With or without Arsonist Escape.

Our physical defenses are too low, i don't want to take the risk.
 
Mystic Pentagram said:
I mostly like the plan, but i am not sure i like the idea of letting it get close to us. With or without Arsonist Escape.

Our physical defenses are too low, i don't want to take the risk.
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It's a spirit, I'm pretty sure it is literally incapable of actually targeting our physical defenses...you need a mundane attack to do that. Anything magical hits our magical ones and everything it does is magical.

Our low physical defenses need addressing in case someone comes after us with a gun or a crowbar, but not for this.
 
DeadmanwalkingXI said:
It's a spirit, I'm pretty sure it is literally incapable of actually targeting our physical defenses...you need a mundane attack to do that. Anything magical hits our magical ones and everything it does is magical.

Our low physical defenses need addressing in case someone comes after us with a gun or a crowbar, but not for this.
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The post speaks of a "Manifested Spirit" so i trought it now had a physical body it could use to attack us, not just magical/spiritual attacks.

Also, yeah. We need physical defenses. The Order of the Silver Dusk totaly has some thugs on retinue ready to beat us up if supernatural attacks fail.
 
Mystic Pentagram said:
The post speaks of a "Manifested Spirit" so i trought it now had a physical body it could use to attack us, not just magical/spiritual attacks.
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I mean, it physically exists, but so do a lot of magical attacks...it's made of magic, I'm pretty sure our anti-magic defenses should work.

Mystic Pentagram said:
Also, yeah. We need physical defenses. The Order of the Silver Dusk totaly has some thugs on retinue ready to beat us up if supernatural attacks fail.
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100%. Being able to throw a physical punch would also be excellent. We need some self-defense classes.
 
DeadmanwalkingXI said:
We need to learn self defense.
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Do we want to learn something Modern and Practical, Ancient and Spiritual, or try to figure out something from first principles that takes full advantage of our Reforged status? We went from sub 1 BB to 3 real 5 effective, off of two things becoming Bronze, so assuming the same rate of growth continues and there's no Completion Bonus, we'll end up at 7 real 14 effective, which sounds....kind of insane?

Rolling an average of 49 on any BB using action feels very intense, for the scale we're working on.

We might want to see about picking up Tai Chi for its reputation for slow deliberate movement anyway, to preemptively work on our control...
 
Modern and Practical, the entire draw to Camilla's original character writeup was "Lost Magic applied through a modern lens." Not someone who impulsively goes "The Ancient Ways are inherently better." They had the disadvantage of being insanely easy, so people had no reason to optimize like they would have had to in a post-Masquerade setting.

Modern combatives are very fucking effective because they've had quite literally centuries to be optimized to a fine sheen. That + some freerunning training to get our mobility up and we'd have one hell of a mundane foundation to build on. Add in some cane-fighting styles and we've got a very nice aesthetic that should be very effective for personal defense.
 
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Walliseatscheese said:
Do we want to learn something Modern and Practical, Ancient and Spiritual, or try to figure out something from first principles that takes full advantage of our Reforged status? We went from sub 1 BB to 3 real 5 effective, off of two things becoming Bronze, so assuming the same rate of growth continues and there's no Completion Bonus, we'll end up at 7 real 14 effective, which sounds....kind of insane?

Rolling an average of 49 on any BB using action feels very intense, for the scale we're working on.

We might want to see about picking up Tai Chi for its reputation for slow deliberate movement anyway, to preemptively work on our control...
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Tai Chi is not a great martial art in terms of practical uses. If we need to work on our control (which we've thus far had no indications of, Black Bile includes physical precision not just raw strength...increasing it should not inherently come with control issues), then maybe, but for actual combat training we want something practical. Which, to be clear, does not necessarily preclude something with ancient spiritual elements, there are several martial arts that fall into both categories.

Alectai said:
Modern and Practical, the entire draw to Camilla's original character writeup was "Lost Magic applied through a modern lens." Not someone who impulsively goes "The Ancient Ways are inherently better." They had the disadvantage of being insanely easy, so people had no reason to optimize like they would have had to in a post-Masquerade setting.

Modern combatives are very fucking effective because they've had quite literally centuries to be optimized to a fine sheen. That + some freerunning training to get our mobility up and we'd have one hell of a mundane foundation to build on. Add in some cane-fighting styles and we've got a very nice aesthetic that should be very effective for personal defense.
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This is also fair. I will note that we probably want to reforge our legs before doing either, but this is reasonable.
 
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Alright, sorry about the disappearance, learned there was an assassination attempt and thus my night was consumed by politics, whenever we're ready, I want someone to roll 1d6 to see how well Camilla's first spell cast in hot blood goes
 
Got it! And yeah, that caused drama even here in my place, and we're not even there.

EDIT: 2, rerolling as we contingencied.

EDIT TWO: 3, still not great, but it's still another 3 defense dice on an already stacked area. Hopefully we're getting those bad rolls out of our system nice and early.
Alectai threw 1 6-faced dice. Reason: Windwall! Total: 2
2 2
Alectai threw 1 6-faced dice. Reason: Windwall! Second Attempt Total: 3
3 3
 
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Round 1: Fight!
  • Threadmarks
    • Whispering calls for the wind to shield you brought forth a pair of sylphs eager to aid you. Unsatisfied with the numbers, you repeated your call and brought in an additional sylph.

    (Gained 3 dice for your occult defenses, now 11d6) (Expended two favor, new total is 10)

    Drawing forth the last Mote from your inner sea. You crushed it in your palm and shuddered as stone plates grew into position all across your body.

    (Enemies must reroll successful physical hits and take the lower result, physical damage reduced by two dice) (Expended one mote, Motes Exhausted.)

    The approaching flurries coalesced partway down the street and rapidly began to approach. In the instant before you acted, it had covered a little over a hundred feet. There was perhaps seventy feet between you and the outermost edge of the unnatural snow storm. You could see hints of something hiding within the snow storm, but it kept popping into different places, seeming to teleport within the boundaries of the snow storm. If you were left with purely physical weapons it would be difficult to directly hit the spirit, assuming it could even be hit by mortal weapons, but magic isn't so limited.

    What do you do? (You have five units of time to spend.) (You have 7 Embers, 10 Favor) (You are uninjured ) (Defenses: Occult 11d6 Physical: 2d6) (Enemies must reroll successful physical hits and take the lower result, physical damage reduced by two dice)

    Spells: I cast...
    [ ] Blastburn: Apprentice: Costs one Ember: Roll Yellow Bile + Blood to hit (6d6): Inflicts 6d12 fire damage on all targets in a 3 foot radius of the targeted location.

    [ ]Arsonist's Escape: Apprentice: Costs one Ember (May use multiple): Causes a bright flash of Light that blinds enemies, sets nearby cloth not worn by the caster on fire, and covers the local area in soot. Spending multiple Embers results in a stronger effect.
    - [ ] Specify number of Embers expended

    [ ] Poison Kiss (Water) : You command the Undines to lavish the target with the painful touch of their kiss, sapping the Target's vitality. (Roll your Phlegm against a Target's Elemental Mystical protections (Defaults to their phlegm if no protections are present, some protections apply regardless of the Magical attack type). If successful, roll 1d6 to see how many Undines follow your command, then multiply that by half your phlegm to determine how many physical damage dice you roll (For example: roll result equals 3, so you roll 6d6 of damage.)) (Costs 2 favor)

    [ ] Wrath of Stone (Earth) : You command the Gnomes to break the spiritual bones of the target of your ire. (Roll your Black Bile + Yellow Bile (8 total) vs your oponent's elemental mystical protections (Defaults to their phlegm if no protections are present, some mystical protections apply regardless of magical attack type.) If successful, roll 1d6 to see how many gnomes follow your command and add that to your Black Bile (5), then roll that many d4's to figure out how much physical damage you deal to the target. (Costs 3 Favor))

    [ ] Windwall (Air) : Send the Sylphs to ward away hostile efforts. Adds 1d6 additional dice to deflecting hostile spells in pitched combat. Sylphs are fickle so this spell is useless outside of active combat. Spell lasts to battle's end, but you can recast this spell if you feel unsatisfied with the dice provided. (Costs one favor) (Stacks with passive defenses)

    [ ] Conditional Spell casting: Each spell costs one time unit, you can set specific conditions under which you will cast a spell and reserve time units until those conditions are met.

    Physical Actions: I...

    [ ] Gain some distance: Advance... backwards as it were, roll your real black bile (-1 from your still wrecked legs, so 2d6) and move that amount of feet in a direction away from the oncoming Spirit.

    [ ] Approach: So, you're approaching it? Guess you can't hit it from all the way over there. roll your real black bile (-1 from your still wrecked legs, so 2d6) and move that amount of feet towards the Spirit.

    Social: It doesn't seem to be interested in talking...


    No voting moratorium for the duration of combat, Calling the vote at 5pm.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • [X] Plan: Oh, you're approaching me?
    -[X] Wrath of Stone 1x (-3 Favor)
    -[X] Wrath of Stone 2x (-3 Favor)
    -[X] CONDITIONAL: If he hasn't closed to CQC by now, or is showing no signs of it, Wrath of Stone x3 (-3 Favor). If he has closed to CQC, move to step 4 (And use this to move if we have to)
    -[X] CONDITIONAL: When he enters CQC, use Arsonist's Escape with 3x Embers and get enough space and hopefully purge his cloud with the thermal bloom (-3 Embers)
    -[X] CONDITIONAL: After Arsonist's Escape, hit with Blastburn (-1 Ember)
    -[X] MOVEMENT: Remain Stationary Unless enemy closes to CQC. After Arsonist's Escape, use Movement to gain distance as part of getting space for Blastburn

    Is this a viable Plan that fits the strategy I posted a bit earlier @Useless Writer ?
     
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    Alectai said:
    [X] Plan: Oh, you're approaching me?
    -[X] Wrath of Stone 1x (-3 Favor)
    -[X] Wrath of Stone 2x (-3 Favor)
    -[X] CONDITIONAL: If he hasn't closed to CQC by now, or is showing no signs of it, Wrath of Stone x3 (-3 Favor). If he has closed to CQC, move to step 4 (And use this to move if we have to)
    -[X] CONDITIONAL: When he enters CQC, use Arsonist's Escape with 3x Embers and get enough space and hopefully purge his cloud with the thermal bloom (-3 Embers)
    -[X] CONDITIONAL: After Arsonist's Escape, hit with Blastburn (-1 Ember)
    -[X] MOVEMENT: Remain Stationary Unless enemy closes to CQC. After Arsonist's Escape, use Movement to gain distance as part of getting space for Blastburn

    Is this a viable Plan that fits the strategy I posted a bit earlier @Useless Writer ?
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    That works. Here's hoping your dice hold out.
     
    Useless Writer said:
    That works. Here's hoping your dice hold out.
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    I mean, that's really all anyone can hope for when you're in the thick of it. We've prepared fairly well and have the Empousa on hand ready to intervene, as well as an 11 die occult defense which should put us in good stead for an artillery duel, but at the end of the day, if it turns out to be absolutely bonkers--or if it rolls like a god and we roll like arse, there won't be anything much we can do about it. Any chance of an earlier update if nobody has a differing plan?
     
    Sounds good! Eagerly and anxiously waiting! I don't think this'll last more than a round or two given how this is still relatively low level combat, huh?
     
    Alectai said:
    Sounds good! Eagerly and anxiously waiting! I don't think this'll last more than a round or two given how this is still relatively low level combat, huh?
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    more or less, things should resolve one way or another very quickly. Neither of you are very sturdy compared to what i have statted up. The Blizzard spirit is substantially weaker at the height of summer. Still a nightmare for a mortal spellcaster, but even they have ways to manage such things.
     
    Useless Writer said:
    more or less, things should resolve one way or another very quickly. Neither of you are very sturdy compared to what i have statted up. The Blizzard spirit is substantially weaker at the height of summer. Still a nightmare for a mortal spellcaster, but even they have ways to manage such things.
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    And we actually know what works from our divination, so we're not wasting Favor using spells that don't work, huh?

    And presumably, if my "Flashbang his ass and nuke him" flip if he hits us, that'll give us either a substantial bonus to our attack roll, or a large penalty to his defense?
     
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