[Let's Play] Fighting Fantasy 28 - Phantoms of Fear

[JourneymanN00b]

If an area is fenced off, that means that there is something valuable inside right? My vote is to go into the fenced-off area and check it out.

[Queen of Swords]

Are we a trespasser?

Forgive us our trespasses.

[Darth Rabbitt]

If an area is fenced off, that means that there is something valuable inside right? My vote is to go into the fenced-off area and check it out.

This.

[Thaluikhain]

Penetrate the fenced area.

[SGamerz]

The holly bushes are very prickly and may well be poisonous, but you find that there is enough space between the lowest branches and the ground for you to hope to crawl through. You would have to be lucky to make it unscathed, however. If you want to make the attempt, turn to 277; if you change your mind and avoid this fenced-off area, turn to 321.

Lots of "are you sure" for this particular encounter....

Are we sure we want to penetrate that hole in the bush?

[JourneymanN00b]

My vote is to make the attempt. Of course we're sure. After all, we can take a little poison, right?

[Darth Rabbitt]

I mean we have Provisions and a healing potion so I think we'll survive any poison.

[Thaluikhain]

If we didn't want to risk our characters to die pointlessly, we'd be Escape from Tenopia.

(The Escape from Tenopia book I have isn't all that bad, actually)

[Queen of Swords]

I want to see if we actually succumb to holly poisoning, so crawl through.

[SGamerz]

You start to wriggle through, pressing yourself into the ground. Your backpack tends to snag on the branches, but you leave it on your back as protection. Test your Luck. If you are Lucky, you receive no scratches; if you are Unlucky, the slight poison of the holly reduces your STAMINA by 2 points.

Considering how puny that damage is, it's unfortunate that the PC isn't given the choice to forego LUCK test and just eat the 2-point damage, saving the LUCK for a possibly more important test that might come up later.....

Dice roll = 6 (Lucky).

The holly bushes, you find, form a protective perimeter and come to an end before long. To your astonishment, you see within the circle of bushes a ramshackle hut. There is no sign of life. Will you go up to the hut or lie for a while where you are, under the hollies, and watch?

Approach or wait and watch?

[JourneymanN00b]

Just because there is no sign of life, doesn't mean that there isn't some evil being inside the hut waiting to kill us. I feel that if we go up to the hut, we will be ambushed by said evil being. My vote is to lie for a while where we are, under the hollies and watch.

[Darth Rabbitt]

Watch.

[Thaluikhain]

I vote for approaching the hut.

[Queen of Swords]

I wonder if there's someone clinging to life in that hut, and if we wait to approach it, the person will have died.

So I'll go with approach.

[Darth Rabbitt]

I wonder if there's someone clinging to life in that hut, and if we wait to approach it, the person will have died.

So I'll go with approach.

Hmm. Good point. Also we've been warned so many times that there has to be something good there. Changing my vote to approach.

[OgreBattle]

Go for the hut

[SGamerz]

You are wiping the grime off a window when the cracking of a twig behind you alerts you to danger. You whirl round to see a strange sight. Before you stands a stocky human, hefting a brilliantly polished two-handed axe. What is strange is the contrast between the care with which the axe has been maintained and the man's wild and unkempt appearance. His clothes are little more than rags; his long hair and beard are matted; his bare arms are ingrained with years of dirt. Suddenly, he bursts into a cracked cackle of glee, and you realize that he is completely insane. At the same time, he launches himself towards you.

WILD MAN SKILL 8 STAMINA 12

If you win, you may take his magnificent axe, but if you do, you will have to leave your sword behind, since the two weapons would weigh you down. The man evidently has nothing concealed about his person: his tattered clothes hardly cover his body. You decide to search the hut.

COMBAT LOG:

Wild Man 18, DVS 18. Tie.
WM 19, DVS 19. Tie.
WM 12, DVS 18. WM is at 10.
WM 17, DVS 22. WM is at 8.
WM 16, DVS 17. WM is at 6.
WM 18, DVS 16. DVS is at 13.
WM 13, DVS 19. WM is at 4.
WM 12, DVS 18. WM is at 2.
WM 16, DVS 18. WM is killed.

Before we move on, please decide whether you wish to drop Telessa for the big axe.

Adventure Sheet:

Name: Dickolaus Von Scrotunheim
SKILL 12/12
STAMINA 13/19
LUCK 8/10
POWER: 20
Equipment: Telessa (sword), Leather Armor, Backpack, Water Flask, Potion of Strength (restores STAMINA to Initial value), Wild Boar's tusks, Antler-horn (12 branches), Elder Tree Branch (22 branches in the tree)
Provisions: 6

[JourneymanN00b]

Axes are unwieldy, and the axe doesn't seem to be any more magical than our sword Telessa is. I vote not to take the axe. Oh, and having 13 STAMINA is a tad on the low side for my tastes. If it is allowed, I also vote to consume 1 Provision before we proceed.

[Queen of Swords]

Yes, I don't see what benefit the axe gives us that our sword doesn't, so let's keep the sword.

[MisterDee]

Yeah, we don't really need an Axe of Obsession.

[Darth Rabbitt]

The axe is probably cursed given that its bearer is a ragged man who attacks anyone who shows up in his house. So ignore it and eat a meal before searching the house.

[SGamerz]

DVS sticks with his pointy penetrator, munches on a meal, and enters the hut to continue his search for loot:

Roll one die. If you roll 1-4, turn to 220; if you roll 5-6 turn to 316.

Die roll = 3.

You find nothing worth keeping among the dust and debris of the Wild Man's hut. Since it is now evening, you decide to use the hut as a refuge for the night.

We just missed finding a numbered item....and this being FF numbered items are important.

While there's no strict "one true path" in this book, we have thus far mostly been what can be considered the "optimal path" thus far.....until we made the option to approach the path immediately. That was the first "wrong" move we made in this game, and the fact that we only had a 1/3 chance of finding that numbered item as a result was one of the reasons why it turned out to be a bad choice. Other negative results of that option will become apparent soon as well......

You feel perfectly safe in the hut now. You lie down on the floor, cover yourself with some sack-cloth, and fall asleep. But even though you are in an oasis within the blighted forest, your dreams are troubled. You seem to see a vast serpent, coiled around the forest and squeezing. As the forest contracts, it turns into a mocking face, whose mouth is Ishtra's pit and whose laughter becomes the chilling shriek you heard from the hillside.

You wake up to find that the scream was your own, but you soon return to your dreams. You are walking through the forest and a tree blocks your path. You step aside, but it is still in front of you, though you did not see it move. Wherever you go, the same thing happens, until you realize that you will have to fight it. Immediately, its branches try to throttle you, and you can feel yourself suffocating. The tree has a POWER score of 16. Roll two dice. On a roll of 2-7, it has reduced your POWER score by 2; on a roll of 8-12, you have r4educed its POWER score by 2. Continue until either its or your POWER score reaches zero. If you defeat the tree, turn to 23; if it defeats you, turn to 287.

Yes, that's our first "dream combat". They all pretty much follow the simple structure above, and as you can see it's not a very well-implemented system for the player, because chances are always slightly slanted more towards of the player losing (6/5), so we don't stand a very good chance even if we have higher POWER. There's nothing we can do to change that ratio.

COMBAT LOG:

Die roll = 9. Tree is at 14.
Die roll = 9. Tree is at 12.
Die roll = 6. DVS is at 18.
Die roll = 5. DVS is at 16.
Die roll = 7. DVS is at 14.
Die roll = 6. DVS is at 12.
Die roll = 6. DVS is at 10.
Die roll = 4. DVS is at 8.
Die roll = 2. DVS is at 6.
Die roll = 6. DVS is at 4.
Die roll = 8. Tree is at 10.
Die roll = 8. Tree is at 8.
Die roll = 8. Tree is at 6.
Die roll = 10. Tree is at 4.
Die roll = 7. DVS is at 2.
Die roll = 10. Tree is at 2.
Die roll = 11. Tree is defeated.

Case in point, just look at how close we came to losing that last battle. If our POWER were 2 points lower (which would still be higher than our opponent's) we'd have lost.

However, this flawed system isn't quite as brutal as some found in other FF books, since losing dream combats are usually not lethal.

It is now morning, and you wake in the Wild Man's hut. Restore your POWER score to what it was before the dream fight, and add 1 for your victory. If the Wild Man is still alive, turn to 215; otherwise, you crawl back through the holly bushes and continue on your way.

The result of winning or losing dream combats in this book is generally pretty standard as well (with the occasional rare exception): we gain a POWER bonus for winning and lose a point for losing the combat. So every dream combat ends with our POWER being restored to either 1 point above or below our score before the combat.

And yes, as you can see, if we'd chosen to wait and watch earlier, there's a chance that we could have avoided fighting the Wild Man (and if we succeed in turning it into a friendly encounter, he'd end up giving us the numbered item that we missed).

The closer you get to Ishtra's pit - or Ishtra's mouth, as you are beginning to call it - the worse the pestilence becomes which has ravaged the forest. even the brown and swollen leaves, which had given the trees some sort of covering, die out, and you walk silently among the dead shells of once magnificent oaks and beeches.

Ishtra's mouth? So apparently the Demon Prince has the power of killing entire forests with his bad breath?

You pass another of clearings which afflict the forest like open sores. To your astonishment, there is a perfectly ordinary, peaceful deer grazing in the middle of the clearing. The sight is like a breath of fresh air in a sewer. Will you investigate this remarkable phenomenon or not?

Do we investigate this remarkable deer which appears to have developed immunity to bad demon breath?

Adventure Sheet:

Name: Dickolaus Von Scrotunheim
SKILL 12/12
STAMINA 17/19
LUCK 8/10
POWER: 21
Equipment: Telessa (sword), Leather Armor, Backpack, Water Flask, Potion of Strength (restores STAMINA to Initial value), Wild Boar's tusks, Antler-horn (12 branches), Elder Tree Branch (22 branches in the tree)
Provisions: 5

[Thaluikhain]

Talk to the deer.

[JourneymanN00b]

A perfectly ordinary, peaceful deer in the middle of a clearing caused by the same evil that is ravaging the forest? That is a textbook definition of a trap in my opinion, and it is not worth running into just to satisfy our curiosity. My vote is not to investigate this remarkable phenomenon.

[Queen of Swords]

Investigate Bambi.