[X] ω₁, The Long Count
Shards of a Broken Sun [Deprecated; see link in final post for remake]
- Thread starter Baughn
- Start date
- Crossover Sci-Fi
Dragonloli123
Bonedad
- Location
- Fifth Layer of the Abyss
So that means the girl still has her phone and the bull has one of the dead peoples phone.
Helping Hiro and girl to safety is good, but we might want to take a picture before we kill it so that we have an explanation for the police if the body disappears likes supernatural stuff sometimes does.
The world has turned on itself in an impossible geometrical shape with most of it disappearing, and just the previous day an ice cream cone shaped demon passed through town. I don't think we'll have too much of a hard time getting them to believe we were attacked by a bull demon, especially with witnesses.
Which is why we'll only need the photo, instead of it being dismissed as fake. Not saying we couldn't get out of it anyway, the photo will just streamline things.
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Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
It's supposed to be the girl's phone. In-game, this scenario would probably have her already dead, but I'm obviously tweaking things a bit.
You see, Gozuki has a bit of a problem: He wants to stay, but the girl isn't a sinner, so he can't just kill her.
And that we might have to keep mythological roles in mind when dealing with demons.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Maybe, maybe not. Maybe they were, but were still Yui's friends. Maybe they were, but it was years ago. Maybe they attacked Gozuki first, thereby making it self-defence. Maybe they stole a chocolate ice-cream yesterday. Or maybe they were bullying her, and she dragged out a demon more or less by accident. If she'd done it on purpose, that would definitely be a sufficient sin for him to kill her.
Gozuki isn't nice, don't ever make the mistake of thinking he is, but he has rules to follow.
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Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Ugh, stupid shady situations.
Well, here's hoping plan "Rock Cannon to the Knees" works out.
[X] ω₁, The Long Count
[X] Shoot it. In the knee.
-[X] Help Hiro and the girl escape to safety, then snap a quick picture with your camera phone before finishing it off. You want the police to believe you after all.
Well, here's hoping plan "Rock Cannon to the Knees" works out.
[X] ω₁, The Long Count
[X] Shoot it. In the knee.
-[X] Help Hiro and the girl escape to safety, then snap a quick picture with your camera phone before finishing it off. You want the police to believe you after all.
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Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Maya's dislike of Teddy didn't tell you as much?
She has reasons for disliking him. Not good reasons, since none of that was his fault, but... reasons. Strong, long-lasting, painful reasons, which she couldn't forget even in death.
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Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
[X] ω₁, The Long Count
[X] Shoot it. In the knee.
-[X] Help Hiro and the girl escape to safety, then snap a quick picture with your camera phone before finishing it off. You want the police to believe you after all.
[X] Shoot it. In the knee.
-[X] Help Hiro and the girl escape to safety, then snap a quick picture with your camera phone before finishing it off. You want the police to believe you after all.
So, I've been thinking about which combat charms we should purchase, assuming that Amu is going to get into more fights eventually.
I'm going to assume this is after hell week is over, as 4-6 charms simply isn't enough to compete with actual military equipment. I'm also going to assume that harmonizer equip forces can handle anything weak but numerous, so this will be focused on handling single powerful enemies, like Samael, or other bosses.
I've restricted this to war, thrown and archery for now, since there are so many melee and martial arts charms. I may do them later.
@Baughn Are we using the official Solar Hero Style, or are we using the Fist of the Daystar rewrite?
War
Since the Dawn solution, war has also served as a sort of generalised combat ability, with several charms that apply to personal scale combat, rather than whole battle fields, in particular:
Elegant Dance of Bow and Blade
War 3, Essence 2
Allows Amu to reflexively (mid-action) switch between any weapon she has available, including nothing for martial arts. The first switch in any action/flurry is free, all subsequent ones cost 1 mote.
This is not an amazingly useful charm, except that it's the prerequisite for the next two:
Dawn King's Strife
War 4, Essence 3
This charm allows all Dawn caste Excellencies and Infinite (Ability) Mastery's to be cross applied. Unlike the next charm, this does not even come with a surcharge.
Combined with an Infinite (Ability) Mastery, probably in war, this would allow her to maintain peek human (8-10) dice pools in every combat ability for the whole scene. With the next charm as well, or appropriate training, Amu would have dice pools in the 18-20 range.
The comment below this charm in the original Ink Monkies blog post strongly implies that this is supposed to allow one invocation of Infinite (Ability) Mastery to enhance all Dawn caste abilities at no extra cost:
Supreme Martial Instinct
War 4, Essence 3
For 1 mote and 1 willpower, this charm raises Amu's rating in all Dawn case abilities to match whichever one is currently the highest, for the rest of her current action/flurry. These increased ratings also increase the dice caps on excellencies accordingly.
With this charm, combined with the previous, Amu will automatically reach the limit of excellency enhanced competence at every method of fighting, even with no training whatsoever, for as long as she can pay the willpower cost.
We definitely need to get the first two charms and an Infinite Mastery, but the third one is less obvious. If we intend to use an ability lots, we would still need to buy charms for it, which means purchasing the dots like normal.
Thrown
Joint Wounding Attack, which we already have, is the big one here. For two motes, it imposes a penalty for the rest of the scene equal to the amount of damage taken. Unlike raw damage, this is something that can't necessarily be duplicated by e.g. tanks. Since most things powerful enough to need Amu are going to have much larger quantity of health then dice, this charm allows her to utterly cripple an enemies ability to attack and defend well before she could deal enough damage to kill it, in turn making it much easier for both her and the JP's to hurt the target.
The two other potentially useful charms are Observer-Deceiving Attack, which makes the target pass a difficult check to notice the attack in time to respond and Falling Icicle Strike which doubles damage on an unexpected attack. Neither of these can be applied to other abilities.
The best throwing weapon in the core book is a javelin, which give a bonus of 1 to the attack roll, has base damage of (Strength+3) and ignores the first 4 points of soak.
Amu, when merged with Ran and using the above war charms to apply Infinite Mastery, would get 20+1 dice to attack. As this is a surprise attack, the opponents Defence Value is 0 and she gets 10.5 threshold successes. The damage dealt is 6 (base damage) + 4 (against armoured opponents) + 10.5 (accuracy bonus) - Soak. This would normally be halved by the damage roll (on average) but Falling Icicle Strike reverses that. Joint Wounding Attack can then turn this into a penalty for the rest of the battle.
This charm combination takes total of 4 motes to use, requires one more dot in Thrown and none of the charms used have extraneous prerequisites. There Is No Wind can also be used to remove all penalties to the shot, for another 3 motes.
Unfortunately, the difficulty to notice Observer-Deceiving Attack is reduced by one each time it is used, so this strategy is only useful for the first four attacks at most.
I believe that Amu's heart beam counts as a throwing weapon, in which case it would negate the need for ammunition and would probably do more damage.
Archery
Archery has two main damage enhancers: Essence Arrow Attack, that adds (Essence+4) damage to an attack, and Lambent Bolt of Annihilation, which explodes dealing (Essence) damage within (Essence*5) yards.
As with throwing attacks, a bow has +1 accuracy, so Amu+Ran gets 21 dice to attack. Unlike the throwing attack, this is probably not a surprise attack, as she has a very poor stealth rating, so the accuracy bonus averages (10.5 - DV). Piercing ammunition for bows has a base damage of (Strength) and ignores the first 4 points of soak. The total damage dealt by the initial attack is then (3 + 4 + 8 + 10.5 - Soak - DV)/2. The explosion then deals (4 - Soak)/2 damage.
This causes significantly less damage then the corresponding thrown attacks, largely due to a lack of surprise attacks, and for a much higher cost of 7 motes plus three more if using There Is No Wind.
This implies that archery is inferior to thrown when fighting a single target, at least for the first few shots.
I'm going to assume this is after hell week is over, as 4-6 charms simply isn't enough to compete with actual military equipment. I'm also going to assume that harmonizer equip forces can handle anything weak but numerous, so this will be focused on handling single powerful enemies, like Samael, or other bosses.
I've restricted this to war, thrown and archery for now, since there are so many melee and martial arts charms. I may do them later.
@Baughn Are we using the official Solar Hero Style, or are we using the Fist of the Daystar rewrite?
War
Since the Dawn solution, war has also served as a sort of generalised combat ability, with several charms that apply to personal scale combat, rather than whole battle fields, in particular:
Elegant Dance of Bow and Blade
War 3, Essence 2
Allows Amu to reflexively (mid-action) switch between any weapon she has available, including nothing for martial arts. The first switch in any action/flurry is free, all subsequent ones cost 1 mote.
This is not an amazingly useful charm, except that it's the prerequisite for the next two:
Dawn King's Strife
War 4, Essence 3
This charm allows all Dawn caste Excellencies and Infinite (Ability) Mastery's to be cross applied. Unlike the next charm, this does not even come with a surcharge.
Combined with an Infinite (Ability) Mastery, probably in war, this would allow her to maintain peek human (8-10) dice pools in every combat ability for the whole scene. With the next charm as well, or appropriate training, Amu would have dice pools in the 18-20 range.
The comment below this charm in the original Ink Monkies blog post strongly implies that this is supposed to allow one invocation of Infinite (Ability) Mastery to enhance all Dawn caste abilities at no extra cost:
Supreme Martial Instinct
War 4, Essence 3
For 1 mote and 1 willpower, this charm raises Amu's rating in all Dawn case abilities to match whichever one is currently the highest, for the rest of her current action/flurry. These increased ratings also increase the dice caps on excellencies accordingly.
With this charm, combined with the previous, Amu will automatically reach the limit of excellency enhanced competence at every method of fighting, even with no training whatsoever, for as long as she can pay the willpower cost.
We definitely need to get the first two charms and an Infinite Mastery, but the third one is less obvious. If we intend to use an ability lots, we would still need to buy charms for it, which means purchasing the dots like normal.
Thrown
Joint Wounding Attack, which we already have, is the big one here. For two motes, it imposes a penalty for the rest of the scene equal to the amount of damage taken. Unlike raw damage, this is something that can't necessarily be duplicated by e.g. tanks. Since most things powerful enough to need Amu are going to have much larger quantity of health then dice, this charm allows her to utterly cripple an enemies ability to attack and defend well before she could deal enough damage to kill it, in turn making it much easier for both her and the JP's to hurt the target.
The two other potentially useful charms are Observer-Deceiving Attack, which makes the target pass a difficult check to notice the attack in time to respond and Falling Icicle Strike which doubles damage on an unexpected attack. Neither of these can be applied to other abilities.
The best throwing weapon in the core book is a javelin, which give a bonus of 1 to the attack roll, has base damage of (Strength+3) and ignores the first 4 points of soak.
Amu, when merged with Ran and using the above war charms to apply Infinite Mastery, would get 20+1 dice to attack. As this is a surprise attack, the opponents Defence Value is 0 and she gets 10.5 threshold successes. The damage dealt is 6 (base damage) + 4 (against armoured opponents) + 10.5 (accuracy bonus) - Soak. This would normally be halved by the damage roll (on average) but Falling Icicle Strike reverses that. Joint Wounding Attack can then turn this into a penalty for the rest of the battle.
This charm combination takes total of 4 motes to use, requires one more dot in Thrown and none of the charms used have extraneous prerequisites. There Is No Wind can also be used to remove all penalties to the shot, for another 3 motes.
Unfortunately, the difficulty to notice Observer-Deceiving Attack is reduced by one each time it is used, so this strategy is only useful for the first four attacks at most.
I believe that Amu's heart beam counts as a throwing weapon, in which case it would negate the need for ammunition and would probably do more damage.
Archery
Archery has two main damage enhancers: Essence Arrow Attack, that adds (Essence+4) damage to an attack, and Lambent Bolt of Annihilation, which explodes dealing (Essence) damage within (Essence*5) yards.
As with throwing attacks, a bow has +1 accuracy, so Amu+Ran gets 21 dice to attack. Unlike the throwing attack, this is probably not a surprise attack, as she has a very poor stealth rating, so the accuracy bonus averages (10.5 - DV). Piercing ammunition for bows has a base damage of (Strength) and ignores the first 4 points of soak. The total damage dealt by the initial attack is then (3 + 4 + 8 + 10.5 - Soak - DV)/2. The explosion then deals (4 - Soak)/2 damage.
This causes significantly less damage then the corresponding thrown attacks, largely due to a lack of surprise attacks, and for a much higher cost of 7 motes plus three more if using There Is No Wind.
This implies that archery is inferior to thrown when fighting a single target, at least for the first few shots.
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Giygas
Cutest Sawk i could find. Lucario is a nice extra.
The piercing tag is less powerful now: it only decreases the soak of four points.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Sooner or later I'm going to call the vote for Amu, folks.
[X] Shoot it. In the knee.
-[X] Help Hiro and the girl escape to safety, then snap a quick picture with your camera phone before finishing it off. You want the police to believe you after all.
Edit: Got the dice mechanics wrong. Subtract the last 2 dice from the first attack, last 3 from the second one.
[X] Shoot it. In the knee.
-[X] Help Hiro and the girl escape to safety, then snap a quick picture with your camera phone before finishing it off. You want the police to believe you after all.
Edit: Got the dice mechanics wrong. Subtract the last 2 dice from the first attack, last 3 from the second one.
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Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Shadow Over Water and Seven Shadows Evasion means that we are never caught off-balance and can spend a very small amount of Essence to negate all penalties to our dodge, or just straight up Dodge, no matter how accurate the oncoming attack is.
That being said, persistent area of effect attacks would still require us to move out of the field, but functionally, if you push Seven Shadows Evasion, you avoid the hit, barring a murderous GM like one I played with who's all "A Sidereal goes crazy and blows up your manse in one flurry, then Ducks Fate to teleport 10 miles away out of the blast radius. You have until your Essence runs out to escape the blast zone... Oh, you don't have three kilomotes? I guess you're dead"
Because, you know, good tactics and effective use of my abilities means nothing when the other guy goes "THEN I WILL DESTROY YOUR MANSE" (Claws the walls for 30 lethal damage a hit, flurry of six attacks, teleports out at the end of the flurry)
Just us? What about other people?
and wouldn't some high level megaten spells count as persistent AoE? RPG spells are usually pretty scary like that. And it can be assumed that high level enemies will toss them out like candy and their MP pools miiiight be bigger than our mote pool and oh god we're so fragile I hate dodge tanking
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
[X] ω₁, The Long Count
Oh, parrying AoE effects with Guarding Star Tactics is also a method they can use. But, again, Melee.
Investing in Thrown or Archery doesn't really provide access to methods of protecting others that aren't "kill the other guy".
(Also, unless that was a really impressive manse, you should have had hours, if not days, to get [Manse] miles away - assuming this is 2e and after Oadenol's Codex, otherwise it was just dickery.)
A Solar with Fivefold Bulwark Stance can defend anyone within (Dexterity) yards of them without taking a hit to their defenses by flurrying Defend Other. They won't be able to hit much while doing so, and it requires investment in Melee, but that's about the extent of how a Solar defends others. There is a Dodge charm that lets you Defend Other costs 4m/action, but if I'm reading this right you can apply a (single) Dodge-based Defend Other to all willing allies within (Dexterity*3) yards. It's a Reflexive (Step 2 in the attack process) charm.
Oh, parrying AoE effects with Guarding Star Tactics is also a method they can use. But, again, Melee.
Investing in Thrown or Archery doesn't really provide access to methods of protecting others that aren't "kill the other guy".
Your GM was kind of a dick. I'm sorry.
(Also, unless that was a really impressive manse, you should have had hours, if not days, to get [Manse] miles away - assuming this is 2e and after Oadenol's Codex, otherwise it was just dickery.)
OBT is always useful, it's just so rarely more useful than other charms. It's easier to just prevent damage entirely than it is to get to a level where being a damage sponge is safe. Especially with the way Wound penalties work (and we're 2 dots and an Excellency away from having access to any negation).
[X] ω₁, The Long Count
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Especially with high damage output demons running around. I'm having a fun time trying to balance that.
So... I've already decided, but what do you think the difficulty of a called shot on the knee of a charging demonic bull is? Because that has become an issue.
He has an awfully thick leg with noticeable joints
Shouldn't be that difficult given he's charging in a straight line