Duvors

"That may be, but that doesn't indicate that this pair were the ones to remove it. Unless you have reasons for suspicion that go beyond the circumstantial then threats of vigilante violence are unwarranted. In fact I would say that they should be a last resort. Tell me, what is this doodad you're fighting over anyways? what does it do?" Enson smiled at the armed rodent. "I am not an ape," he said, "or a monkey, or a simian or even a mammal technically. I am a member of the phylum Hexapodia, and I'd be obliged if you keep that in mind. As for your gun, I will release it either when you start being reasonable or when you kill me, so if you really have no qualms about this then I suggest you go ahead and shoot me. If you would rather not risk injury, death, and criminal charges - that goes for you too by the way" he pointed one of his free hands at the elf, "- then I suggest you all be a bit less racist and hormonal and behave like sane people instead. Firstly, if you do not have this gewgaw of theirs, then why not just show them?" OoC: Just so you're all aware, just because me and Decker both failed our perception checks doesn't mean the rest of you can't attempt them.

Enson would like to grab their guns by the barrels and keep them pointed at himself. "Now now gentlemen, do you really want to be killing each other over a missing part? That seems... wildly excessive. It's not like it is a matter of life and death. Though you seem determined to make it one for some reason." Addressing the... Human? Elf? - the man in the parka, he said "I am giving you the benefit of the doubt here, but I am assuming you did actually look for the dongle and did not immediately accuse a random passerby of theft?" Just in case, Enson will briefly scan the Cricet to try and determine if they have the thingy.

"Oh for..." Enson vaulted out of the sled, his face an unreadable mask. "Ronin, with me. The rest of you search around for whatever bobble they're squabbling over, it probably got blown off by the wind and landed in a snowdrift or something equally banal." Keeping a weather eye out in case they were about to be bushwhacked by a bunch of polar bears or something equally absurd, Enson strode over to the bickering clowns and deliberately inserted himself between the two with drawn weapons. "Hello," he said with an uncomfortably polite inflection, "what seems to be the trouble?"

"The Guffa Flats, according to the map. Why do you ask?"

"Perhaps." said Enson, turning the flare over in his hands. He was contemplating what course he would recommend to the party. He knew that allowing the group to dwell overmuch on failure would cause a degradation of morale, and he hoped that by giving them something to do he'd be able to forestall any such malaise. Normally he'd accomplish this by throwing the group directly into the preparations for the next fight, but this situation was different. For once, failure would not mean increased precautions, summoned reinforcements, or additional defenses. Indeed, aside from an increased wariness, it was unlikely there would be any additional complications. For once in he life he was presented with n unprecedented opportunity, the chance to refight a failed battle. That could not be allowed to go to waste. "I think," he said, turning to his companions, "that we should return to the lake. If what Sigrún says is true then we are obliged to make a second attempt at some point, and the longer we leave it the more depleted our supplies will become and the less chance of success we will have. The reason we were defeated before was not because our enemy was invincible, but because we had no plan, and were not aware of our full capabilities. I believe that, if we take the time to form a plan of attack beforehand, victory shall be ours."

Enson had been up well before the others, spending most of that time engaged in basic calisthenic exercises. For the last few minutes however he had been simply been standing at a distance listening to his companions discuss their next move. Declining to immediately join in, he instead chose to address their guide. "Sigrún," he said, "may I have a look at those flares you mentioned?"

"Erm... you're welcome." Enson shifted a bit closer to Ronin. "Listen," he said, "what happened there was not your fault. None of the rest of us would have done any better or had a better chance at surviving that attack than you. It... it can be hard to face your own mortality, to really feel the immediate presence of death, but I think the important thing here is that you are still up and walking and not dead. Defeat is simply unavoidable in life, and all we can do is live with it." He shifted slightly. "Do not think I don't feel bad about it, having more-or-less installed myself as the leader of this group our success or failure is ultimately my responsibility, and I feel that, if anything, what happened is down to my failure to establish a proper strategy." He sighed. "Ultimately dwelling on it overmuch won't help. The best I can recommend is to learn from the experience and try to do better next time. Sorry." OoC: @Peppermint_M, Yzalirk, unfortunately only one of you can use the Cocoa. While Aysu asked for it first, I'd actually prefer if Ronin took it, as I feel the defense/speed boost would be more useful on him. Especially since I'd like Aysu to have the lowest initiative they can get when we go after the gator again.

"Personally I'd rather make camp, we're in no real shape to do anything else."

"The plan was to circle the lake clockwise, so the Guffa Flats would be our next stop. But I think there are a few things i think we should deal with before we go anywhere. Firstly, you need a ranged weapon, you're simply not durable enough to be a frontline-er. Polaris, do you think you could lend this man your boomerang?"

They're still part of the game, but they currently only happen if an enemy in melee range attacks a non-adjacent target.

"Why would anyone want to take that route in the first place? I thought the route of the race was straight from Vindkoss to the pass and then north, out of this area. Passing through the lake seems like it would take longer than going over land." Enson will meditate and cast Sustaining Healing on Ronin.

@Waterbrick Down Thank you. I'm perfectly fine with Rally/Defend having some additional limitations, but I feel personally that giving them a one round duration makes them awkward to use.

As written it was clearly intended to be used outside of combat, the intent here is to see if it can be used in combat. I'm also trying to see just how high WBD would set the DC, since per the original text combined checks can exceed dice pool limits and this is an absurd way to win a fight anyway. Personally I feel this is just shy of outright cheating, but I'm trying to prove a point here so I'm ignoring the little twinge of guilt that would normally prevent this.

Nowhere. It was accidentally deleted in a recent revision, but it's been a thing for longer than I've been involved in the project. I distinctly remember a very contentious argument about it during development. Also, I seem to have missed that Ronin has a Skill of three. Hrmph.

NEW PLAN Enson: Sustaining Healing - Ronin. Decker: Try Something - Contribute to Combined Nature Check to pacify Gator Polaris: Try Something - Contribute to Combined Nature Check to pacify Gator Aysu: Try Something - Contribute to Combined Nature Check to pacify Gator Ronin: Position - B2, Try Something - Contribute to Combined Nature Check to pacify Gator OoC: Are you all willing to try this plan? Or do you want to go with fleeing?

Eye twitch. You know what? Fine. Old college try it is.

"This may shock you, but I don't enjoy violence. Quite frankly I've seen enough killing in my life to be rather sick of the whole thing."

I was mainly referring to Illusory Clone and Warding Bond, which do indeed work much the same way as Rallying/Defending. Maybe, but the statement you quoted wasn't responding to that suggestion to begin with. It was a related suggestion, but it was still distinct. It's not that the fight is hard or that we're losing that I'm annoyed by, under most circumstances I'd be perfectly equivocal about that, but the fact that you've chosen this particular battle to complain about the complexity of a system you designed and attempt to nerf a tactic that you're outright admitting is the one we're supposed to use is laying it on a bit thick. You know, I probably would've adopted this strategy, but quite frankly the dice in this battle haven't really been on our side enough for it to be worth the risk, one of our heaviest hitters is hovering on two health, our best Rally-er and our best Defender are also our heaviest hitters, and I'm so far the only person who's managed to remember that there are more actions in this system than move/attack/spell. Seriously, so far I'm the only person who seems to have made any effort to strategize or coordinate with my allies, everyone else either blindly does what I tell them, becomes palsied with indecision, or just Leroy-s themselves into the jaws of death. It's just frustrating, especially as I don't find combat particularly interesting to begin with. You know we have no way of knowing that Sigrún is passively making this easier if you don't tell us to begin with. When you told us she had 'danger sense' I thought there were environmental obstacles she help us bypass or make easier, not that fights would become easier by having her tag along. I do appreciate it, but it's kind of odd that you didn't explain the mechanical effects of the various guides when we were choosing them. Seriously, what was that bird guy supposed to do anyway? As for keeping the gator on land, only one of us has any Athletics proficiency, and I don't want him anywhere near the gator because his skill is awful and he's already gone down once (and I also dismissed the possibility earlier because I thought the gator's athletics were higher than they were, that's my fault), we don't have any chains and rope and nobody's going to think of grabbing something from the sled because we didn't even know that was an option, and while I kind of thought of that last one, things have gone badly enough for us that I'd rather just cut our losses and give up whatever CP we'd get from this fight. Also, if we could cross the lake without fighting, then there's no reason to do this anyway. I genuinely thought we had to defeat the gator before we could cross the lake, but if we're already on the other side then there's no point.

"We're not going to try crossing, we're going around. I refuse to fight this thing in an environment where it has an advantage over us."

So do you also intend to alter spells to work this way? Because I can't think of at least two that work similarly to Defend/Rally, as well as a bunch with durations that the MM has to keep track of. And it's not 'adding complexity' because it already works that way, it's the baseline complexity you're objecting to. I was referring to what you said in the post I actually quoted, i.e.; the effect of a rally/defend being lost if the player who took the action goes down, not to whatever this idea is. You never mentioned this specific idea until just now, so I can't possibly have been objecting to it previously. There's more to this than some speculation-in-a-vacuum potential rules manipulation. I'm genuinely worried about the possibility of a party being obliged to take this strategy because the MM wildly overtuned a specific enemy and they can't defeat it otherwise. Referring back to the gator fight, this is the second time you've thrown a party against an enemy with a skill too high for most of them to reliably damage, and you've added armor that screws over one of our calibrated weapon users. And then you gave it two calibrated weapons that it doesn't need to switch between, gave it 4 levels in both associated weapon skills, and gave it the ability to heal whenever it downs someone. I admit that a lot of our problems are due to the dice, but the fact that you're fretting about how rallying and defending may potentially be overpowered and difficult to keep track of, seemingly because of one round where we did a lot of that because the strategy we adopted left us with nothing else to do, and after Aysu got zero successes despite rolling six dice, and it feels a bit like you're pouring lemon juice into an open wound.

I personally think this goes well over the line between 'preventing cheese' and 'punishing the player for things they have no control over'. In all honesty I think you're being exceedingly overzealous about this, I feel it's better to let the rules stabilize so people can actually learn them instead of whipping ourselves into a paranoid frenzy of rule-bloating in the futile pursuit of a perfectly balanced system. Anyway, the effectiveness of rallying and defending is heavily contingent on the players rolling well to begin with (see, this round).

"Right, we're leaving." All combatants flee (pending player agreement).

Then I'd recommend making changes to the rules targeting the most egregious abuse of the system (see above) and designing enemies and encounters to counter the strategy in general. I personally think it's a perfectly valid tactic when it's viable, its only issue is that it's sort of boring if allowed to go unimpeded, which is exactly what you didn't do last round I may add. By the by, I'm assuming Ronin will be able to act this round?

Personally I don't see it as an issue. I'd much rather let it persist and minimize the chances of it being 'wasted'.

"Yitervanter'kai!" Enson shouted as he moved to assist Ronin. "Hit it!" he said, pointing at the gator, "Everything you have!" If doing so will stabilize him, Enson will use a Plasma Potion on Ronin. If not, he will attempt a Medicine Check.