Corey Falls, You Die

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the_taken
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Corey Falls, You Die

Post by the_taken »

A short time after Frank introduced the 4 stat-system, I started developing an 8 stat variant that I would ultimately use as prototype for another attempt at an Avatar RPG. It didn't work out that way, but the resulting gaming sessions turned out rather amusing to choreograph.

The guinea pigs for the session were my younger brother and two of his accomplices. While the three of them have varying life goals, levels of intelligence and backgrounds, they love pen and paper RPGs, and couldn't resist trying something new.
While I left the players to figure what kind of stat set up they'd like, I devised a few simple monsters that I could throw at them without fear of a TPK.

Goblin: three points into evasion to make them hard to hit, and a 12 dmg attack. Also has one point in Earth element, starts with a status condition we called Frail, which meant that the creature didn't get a soak roll, and only 10hp. These things were to be one shotted, and easy for a DM to play.

Grotling: Fat goblins. Instead of evasion, they had three points in toughness. Also frail.

Giant Centipedes: The standard critter you will find in many. fantasy RPGs. The creature had three points in accuracy, was not frail, and it's 12dmg physical attack would cause poison half the time, but still only had 10hp. I didn't end up using this creature.

As well the boss monster: Evil Eye
Accuracy 3, Toughness 3, magic damage +3 and magic toughness +3, and the full 20hp for all characters.
I though that a stat spread would allow my boss monster to sit around and fling attacks around with impudence. The end result was not what I'd hope due in large part to how I set up its attacks.
Stare of Evil: An auto-hit magical attack, but only 8 dmg.
Pulse: This attack got extra damage points from a high accuracy roll on a 1 for 1 basis. Also base 8.
Fire Swipe: A physical fire attack the had a base 17 dmg. The Eye took 10dmg every time it used this attack, however.

-----

Getting the three payers together, we stated discussion their character's background and modify some of the background flavour of the campaign.

In regular D&D, a level 1 character is nothing but a commoner that decided he doesn't want to trade turnips any more, and wants shiny metal to trade. My players hate this aspect of D&D, so we start the game off at epic level. And by epic, we mean the PCs get paid in souls, magic swords and sex slaves.
The societal level of the game set, we go back to working on the cast.My brother decides he's going to be the teams defensive expert, and decides to fixate on Earth element and his toughness score. In addition to his five combat moves, we devised three abilities that would act as his stances. One would completely negate any physical attack against him on roll of 1 of a d6. The other would allow him to take a physical attack from another character and apply it to himself, with 2 of 6 chance of working. The third gave him a chance to retaliate when physically attacked with an auto-hit move we called Shield Bash. He also had a super defensive action which gave him +4 toughness for one combat round. Definitely a defensive expert.
To other two PCs made two physically offensive characters. One I called a Flamezerker, as he had most of his points in dealing more physical damage, fire damage and concentrated on attacking all the time. He had the Evil Eye's Flame Swipe attack, which he hated after the second "skirmish".
The other player made a lesbian matriarchal dragoon. He named all of her attacks to involve jumping and stabbing with a lance or spear. He also envisioned getting a suit of armor he created for the game, which he name Grant's Pile Driver, for her.

----- The plan I had for the game:

The premise for the game, the PCs are a trio of merceneries hired by a wealthy adventuring couple to help out with a treasure hunt/monster hunt. The big evil monster had enslaved/brainwashed a tribe of goblins, feralized them and organized them into a viscous guardian tribe around his lair. The PCs were hired to distract the goblin tribe and leave an opening for the elite adventurers to go in and assassinate the BBEG.

The first one-to-three fights would involve about a dozen goblins/grots. The PCs had a choice to bypass two of the fights and head strait for a mountain pass that would lead to the goblin village. The PCs chose to take on all three groups of enemies. After making quick work of the two "guard posts", the Flamezerker realized his incredible Fire Swipe was imbalanced, and envied the Dragoon, whom had developed an AoE attack that could one shot three goblins/grots at once.
I wasn't too worried about the offensive characters, but my brother's defensive expert was just spamming toughness and soaking a third of the hits against his friends. This combined with the fact that the green shits weren't dealing a large amount of damage made the fights way to easy, in my opinion. So after the third fight I used almost exclusively grots (the tougher ones that could survive a hit) and gave them the Cover ability (the one on my brother's character). Whenever a grot blocked an AoE attack with the ability, it was the only one to take damage. The fourth fight still went by quickly, as the offensive characters witched from their counter-attack stance to their Cleave stance.
At this point we realized that the dragoon-chick was air born all the time, bouncing off of the grots, and decapitating the grots that jumped up into air to block the dragoon's attacks, all while she's singing "BOUNCE! Pogo-pogo-pogo-pogo! JUMP! Pogo-pogo-pogo-pogo!"

With the PCs rampaging I needed to step up the difficulty. Instead of doing the smart thing and sending out orcs (goblins without the frail condition and the full 20hp, still needing alpha testing) I added more goblins to the fifth fight, and sent out fifty goblins with the boss monster for the sixth fight. At this point the PCs had gained a level, and were twice as powerful as before.

The Flamezerker's player went to bed before the final fight, but we decided to give him an AoE attack. The fight took a half-hour, with the shielded grots blocking attacks on the boss, and often only dying one at a time. The evil eye was horrendously underpowered, and the sheer mass of goblinkind defending ensured that it would not die. The PCs rolled, rolled and rolled, the eventually popped enough grots to land hits on the Eye. After popping that thing, the grots lost moral and dissolved, ending the fight and session.
My two remaining players were a llitle disappointed from the lack of excitement, but were sufficiently satisfied with the depiction of how awesome their characters were. Hundreds of goblins murdered and only one KO on the team.

The after math of the battle was supposed to have one of the elite adventurers walk down the mountain all epicly, and hand out shnazzy loot he picked up after the fight with the BBEG, then mutate into the BBEG and end the session in a cliffhanger, but I decided to Just got to bed instead. It was almost 3am and I could count my eyelashes.
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