[Fighting Fantasy] Bloodsword v2

It doesn’t have a ranged attack and thus is susceptible to the usual tactics, yes?

Also: this series’ name choices are weird. I know that not all ghouls have to be D&D ghouls, but what about this creature is ghoulish?
 

log in or register to remove this ad

It doesn’t have a ranged attack and thus is susceptible to the usual tactics, yes?

Yes, it will, but there is a strong chance that Evading Trixie will bite the dust even this way. Or we need to expose the other characters to hope the beast divides its attention between us -- not but Salvia, since she can be one-shotted.

We'll need to move Winny and hope she takes a hit somehow, since the best possible case (the Nemesis Bolts fire on the first attempt), we need 3 rounds. And our chance of doing this is roughly 2/3, which is good but not great.

Also: this series’ name choices are weird. I know that not all ghouls have to be D&D ghouls, but what about this creature is ghoulish?

Actually, she was called a ghoul only by the Seer Ubara. In the stat block, she's depicted as a Guardian-Beast. It is possible the seer was misinformed about the exact nature of the monster. Or the book was lying to us...
 

I know the series had a bit of troubled history with the writing process, though I am thinking of the original books, and not sure if you're using the revised versions? I'm sure you said but can't recall sorry. I wonder if some of the lies are a result of writing process issues, or just trying to ensure as many fail states before successful completion as possible.
 

The first, first version had several problems. For example, the moving rules were missing or botched, so you couldn't move except to the "FLEE" square (I use a scanned version of them to get the picture of the battlemaps). There must have been other confusions, that were fixed in the paper version from my childhood, in French, which I use to quickly look for things like identifying paths and for the reminiscing pleasure (and cringe at some bad translation choices, like the board being chess and chequers depending on the section you're in). Later, there was an English revised edition that fixed more things, that I read about on reddit, where they added the restriction to Sage healing and added sections to streamline the experience. It is possible this later edition fixed a few things, but I think the lies were intended, since they are present in the French version.
 

We do like to accuse the gamebooks of lying to us when it possibly just sloppy writing and plotting.

Plus this is a medium in which part of the pleasure is being directed to your death over and over and over again. (It has to be really quite rare to make it though a gamebook flawlessly on your virgin attempt, right?) So some of the “lies” are part and parcel of that process. On subsequent playthroughs you know what advice to heed and what advice to ignore and what advice to do the opposite of.
 

We do like to accuse the gamebooks of lying to us when it possibly just sloppy writing and plotting.

Plus this is a medium in which part of the pleasure is being directed to your death over and over and over again. (It has to be really quite rare to make it though a gamebook flawlessly on your virgin attempt, right?) So some of the “lies” are part and parcel of that process. On subsequent playthroughs you know what advice to heed and what advice to ignore and what advice to do the opposite of.
I remember Forest of Doom fondly, up there with the Advanced Fighting Fantasy / Titan / Out of the Pit books in terms of fond memories for gamebooks and associated, that one i recall ability to work backwards, as you could generally get to the end in most cases, but then find missing something vital for victory and be sent back round again, so find where that missing thing may be, and work out again missing something else and so on.
 


We do like to accuse the gamebooks of lying to us when it possibly just sloppy writing and plotting.

Plus this is a medium in which part of the pleasure is being directed to your death over and over and over again. (It has to be really quite rare to make it though a gamebook flawlessly on your virgin attempt, right?) So some of the “lies” are part and parcel of that process. On subsequent playthroughs you know what advice to heed and what advice to ignore and what advice to do the opposite of.

There is also the temptation, on your first playthrough, when you identify some really, really bad choice, to just look at the section to see your doom happens... only to discover that you get a free hut, and you're bummed but remember it, increasing slowly your mastery of gamebook logic.
 

Anyway, we have a not so ghoulish ghoul to fight.


NOTE: from now on, we'll use the revised rule that when having several opponents to choose from, a monster will target the lower FP character first, only rolling when there is a tie. It is also introduced with the rules about limiting Sage healing, but I missed it. So basically, we don't get to prevent an enemy to focus on the weakest, or at least, same character in combat.

Applying this rule from the start make the Elf fight or Eislaken fight downright impossible to survive as they, as a result, concentrate fire on the wizard. Which is a sound tactic, but harsh in this gamebook, unless you consider that the instruction on using the healing salve "at any time" include while being peppered by elven arrows.

Round 1:

Trixie defends.
Beast attacks Trixie, and miss (11).
Winny moves behind the beast.
Salvia fires an arrow... and misses due to frostbite.
Esmeralda casts Nemesis Bolt (5+5, success), for a nice 34 damage, minus 3 for AR = 31. Still, the beast is down to 29.

Round 2:

Trixie defends.
Beast attacks Trixie and hits (8) for 13 damage. Trixie is down to 3 HP.
Winny attacks, a good roll of 8... that passes through thanks to her magic sword! Unfortunately, the 3 damage are absorbed by Gristun's scaly armour...
Salvia fires an arrow, and misses again (11)
Esmeralda recalls Nemesis Bolt to mind.

(I am proud of this one).
Trixie uses her extra action to disengage two square to the South.

Thus, the beast won't move since it is still engaged by Winny. And we have no risk to have Trixie killed. She doesn't incur an opportunity attack since her DEX, sorry, her Awareness is higher than her foe's.

Round 3:

Trixie fires an arrow (6) and hits for 4-3=1 damage. The beast is down to 28. Hey, it might make the difference.
The beast attack Winny -- who probably should have defended instead of trying to do damage, now that I think of it. It its (6) and inflicts a measly 8 damage, 3 of which are absorbed by our heroine chainmail bikini armour. Lady Winny doesn't stoop to wearing such a low-class outfit. But she's still badly wounded with 11 HP left.
Winny wimpily defends from now on.
Salvia fires (6) for 4-3=1 damage again... Down to 27.
Esmeralda casts her second Nemesis Bolt... Yay! A 4+5=9. That's 28 damage. Minus... 3 for Armour. The best still lives, with 3 HP.

Round 4:

Trixie uses her +1 bow (remember that one? It's the bow we got from the hands of Magus Tor the lesser). That's a 9... To bad. If she had had gloves, she would have killed the beast... So much for using a named item with a backstory.
The beast attacks Winny, redux. But misses against our defending knight (15). Pfew.
Salvia fires another arrow (2) and hits for too little damage to matter.
Winny still defends.
Esmeralda recalls Nemes... Wait no! Gristun is badly wounded. It's not smart to recall a spell that has a chance of failure, when the much easier Sword Thrust (complexity 2, 3d6+3 damage minus armour) is sure to suffice. Wizard smart!

Round 5:

Trixie hits the beast (6) for... 5 damage (including the +1 from the bow), reduced to 2 HP. The beast still stands valiantly with its single HP.
The beast attacks and barely misses (11) Winny.
Winny recklessly attack and misses... (so much for heroism... Imagine how cool it would have been to have the knight behead the beast by dealing the killing blow...
Salvia shoots an arrow... and misses (12).
Esmeralda casts Sword Thrust, 11 -- we were smart -- +2 = 13, easily within the psychic ability of our Enchantress on Steroids. The damage is very minimal (7) but it's enough to kill the beast.

Magic did win the day again.
 

Monsters that automatically focus fire down one character at a time are both tactically optimal and fit the dangerous Hobbesian nature of the gamebook world.

At least knowing this lets you exploit the monster’s algorithms to your advantage.



“Quaff a healing potion at any time, even during combat” seems legit to me. You could certainly do that in the TTRPGs of the time.
 

Trending content

Remove ads

Top