Real World Date: 4/26/2026
Game Date: 4/11/2026
Weather: Mild and sunny.
Characters
Chop, human cleric (367 points)
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (355 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (360 points)
Persistance Montgomery, human knight (347 points)
Rogar Thane-Blood, human barbarian (259 points)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (373 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf scout (333 points)
We picked up with Hannari, who tops the speed order, drawing a spellstone (it would turn out to be Blur 5) as golden swordsmen approached him slowly.
Some foe threw a smoke nageteppo to the front edge of the fight, right in front of the PCs, covering up the hallway between Rogar, Percy, the blinded Thor, and the wave of "Gith" and trorkers.
Percy kept smacking trorkers, but lacking Affect Spirits he wasn't managing much. Thor was blind and unable to find a foe, and wasn't willing to swing wildly to hope to hit one. Rogar was getting swamped in close combat by more trorkers but thanks to Enraged he wasn't backing off to make space. He tried to check one down with his shield but his foe rolled a 17 and fell - good enough.
Meanwhile Vlad spent a few arrows on the golden swordsmen, wounding one with a critical hit but otherwise watching them bat his arrows aside like swordsmen in a Zhang Yimou movie. Hannari was hit with a spell by the lead Gith. A second later, it was clear what it was - Levitation. The Gith moved the slightly-elevated (Walk on Air) Hannari three yards back, leaving only a hovering Vlad (Walk on Air) in the hallway. Five of the six golden swordsmen ran in and filled in the gaps between both sides of the fight - Thor, Percy, Rogar, Chop on one side, Vlad and Hannari on the other.
Hannari tried to move out of sight and into a good fighting spot, but the Gith spun him around and out of the way. The golden swordsmen rushed in, but the one right behind him took a shot at Vlad instead of Hannari's back (see below for a note on this.) Chop used Restore Sight on Thor, and Duncan cast Soul Rider on Chop so he could see without fixing his own vision.
Meanwhile Chop tried Command on the golden swordsmen but wasn't able to get it off the first time and failed to overcome resistance the second time. More foes piled in. Trokers went down under Thor's blade. Then gith moved in to back them. One golden swordsman hacked Rogar in the arm. Hannari took out a kama and did swing/impale to a golden swordsman, and used his grip on his all-metal meteoric iron kama to keep himself anchored to the ground to avoid the Levitation of the Gith. He inflicted 19 control points in the process with a hard hit - he's amped up on a strength potion as well as a dexterity potion, so he's ST 20+ and IIRC DX 26. The swordsman tried to pull himself off and managed to get a few CP off, but then tried to chop the kama to break it. It was parried (ugh, rules issue here). A few seconds later, after Hannari lopped off his left arm, a golden swordsman crippled Hannari's arm on a lucky critical hit. Naturally, a second later Chop healed him completely, but the weapon in that hand was released all the same.
As this happened, Vlad wounded one gith in the eye with an arrow, and Percey smashed one down with a skull-shattering hit.
Duncan started to rip off Great Haste spells, our newer version, on Thor and Hannari . . . and they began to roll.
We left it there.
Notes:
- I dislike how often my NPCs have issues from the VTT. DR 0 when they clearly have DR, especially common when I use the Mook Generator to create foes. Torso DR but nothing else when they're imported from GCS. Oh, and it ran like a slug today for a couple of hours - and basically made the first two runs through the turn order take 50 minutes or so each until I figured out the techical problem.* Aargh, VTTs.
- The GURPS module is doing a good job of adding in the effects of Status Effects. Yay, VTTs.
- Because someone asked, no, you don't get any kind of sense or cue to what effect a spell has on you when you fail to resist, if it has no otherwise visible effect. That's what Identify Spell is for.
- Vlad wondered if these Gith/Masters/Bales/whatever have anything written, so he can learn more about them. You know, they never talk about themselves. They fight and fight and fight and he doesn't really know them. Heh. Anyway, I know all about them. How much is something the PCs can find out? Probably a fraction, but the secret to good characters is to understand things about them not everyone can see, in my experience. We'll see how much they learn.
- MVP was Duncan for his two Great Haste spells that are turning the fight.
- We had a rules disagreement about that turn-Hannari-with-Levitation move and what constitutes a back shot. More another day. But related rulings:
1) You can Wait and use your step to undo some of the movement of a Levitation spell. If you want to attack as part of that triggered Wait, you need to specify what you'll do ahead of time. If you want to use a ranged attack and you want to cover multiple possible targets, it's Opportunity Fire.
2) Immovable Stance doesn't affect Levitation. Immovable Stance just does what it says - and nothing additional. Keep this in mind when someone asks about using this to resist getting picked up after a grapple.
3) Levitation has ST 0 for purposes of moving through resistance. A handhold is sufficient to keep you from being moved around. A hand against a wall will keep someone from moving you up or down while you have contact with that wall; it wouldn't stop them moving you away from the wall. Giving it ST or making it a Quick Contest suddenly makes it a potent grappling spell. No thanks.
* I run in Chrome, which seems to handle Forge best. I eventually logged off, cleared my cache, turned off hardware acceleration, restarted, cleared my cache, turned hardware acceleration back on, and restarted Forge. That worked. No, I don't know why, but I do know I've had the occasional issue with hardware acceleration doing weird crap like this so I just suddenly realized I hadn't tried that. Thank goodness I did. I wish I'd remembered immediately and gotten a few more seconds of combat done.
No comments:
Post a Comment