industrygothica
Adventurer
Well, if there's anything I can say about my luck with dice, at least it's consistent! 
[VtR] [OOC] Born into Darkness
- Thread starter Graf
- Start date
Graf
Explorer
It's one of those things that would be relatively obvious to the characters but much tougher for the players to figure out.industrygothica said:Well, if there's anything I can say about my luck with dice, at least it's consistent!
Fantastic picture War. I think we'll start handing out xp soon I need to establish something first.
(I use that line so often I should probably put in my sig...)
industrygothica
Adventurer
Graf said:
Damn those pesky equinoxes.
industrygothica
Adventurer
Graf said:
Google is our friend. While Beth doesn't have access to it, I certainly do.
Graf
Explorer
Here's the what's what.
Q: Why were some of the combat rolls made -before- post that apparently triggered combat.
A: After Diego's first post I said to myself "OK. They'll respond with violence". So I sat down, wrote up a combat post, rolled all the fricking dice, started to adjudicate, etc. At one point during editing I re-read Diego's post and realized that maybe I'd mis-read Diego's post, maybe he didn't want to fight (he'd been fairly conservative, warning the group about Freeman's warning, trying to get out quickly, etc.), the rest of the group had made it pretty clear they didn't want violence (putting Cole out front, etc etc).
So I scrapped the post and left to go home.
Of course the next post from Only made it clear that he knew what he was doing was dangerous, but that he was dealing with the situation the way that he would in prison, etc.
(i.e. the original combat post was probably the situation after all).
But I wasn't fast posting the combat block and Cole and some other people posted too.
Which confirmed that at least some other members of the group wanted to try to talk their way out.
Q: Why did Diego go in front of Cole
A: Even though Cole was obviously prepared to speak, there was nothing that prevented Diego from leaping out. Especially since he was just speaking a few words.
Q: Why didn't Biggs?
A: His speech was a lot longer, it didn't' seem likely that if Cole's intent was to defuse the situation he'd let Biggs go on for too much longer.
And Biggs had initially seemed to indicate that he was willing to let Cole speak first (taking the gun and standing behind him, etc.).
Also, Biggs speech wasn't going to last very far before the fight happened. Even if he was talking fast words like "retard" aren't going to dissolve the tension.
(not that you have to dissolve the situation.... you are vampires, they are, or appear to be, human, I'm not asserting you have to be polite to your food)
Q: Why did Cole jump initiative?
A: ST fiat.
If somebody gets ready to do an action then I want to respect that.
Cole obviously was prepped to do something about the situation, he'd spent a post or two getting ready, etc.. I don't want to invalidate that preparation because he rolled at 2 on his init instead of a 7.
And I liked his speech. He correctly sussed out just how useless excessively dominated pawns can be (with no help from me).
As the only person with Dominate, and the only one of two people who'd interacted with these heavily dominated agents before and the oldest vampire it seemed like a good point to let him step up a bit.
Oh and he made a great roll to get the first ghoul from trying to maul Diego.
Q: So you used the original numbers for the combat.
A: Yeah. The situation hadn't changed.
Q: If the goons go on a 12, and their first action is to grab people, why did Diego get grabbed earlier?
A: ST fiat.
But I will argue that it's just a "storytelling change" not an actual change.
It made more sense to me that the goon, who's right up in front of Diego, would get his hands on Diego sooner.
[sblock=Specifically]I.e. The goons go second, (after Beth).
It's unlikely that Beth is going to be able to stop the one going after Diego, she was in the back of the conflict when it started, Diego was in the front, she doesn't have a ranged weapon, or any kind of weapon, doesn't have much of a reason to help Diego particularly, etc).
Then the goons go, along with archer. But archer's only got a 12 because he's got CombatMarksmanship and a gun in hand. So his only choice, if he wants to go on a 12, is to shoot someone.
I didn't think, given that he's got a guy charging him he's going to shoot the goon next to Diego.
So, by the time that Diego would go he''ll be grappled by the goon no matter what. I just put it first because it made more story sense to me.
I could have made a surprise round with the goon going first, blah blah blah, but it was a lot of rolling, I don't think anyone was really surprised anyway, so this just made more sense.
[/sblock]
Q: Some people (Beth) were skipped!
A: Reality is in flux! You can take actions retroactively. (see below)
Q: How come we're all in the elevator
A: See above. You can take actions.
Character specific comments
Archer: I've already mentioned that not shooting will push your initiative down. Since you're high in the initiative order I'm assuming whatever you do you'll also turn down Auspex before the gunshots.
Beth: The <<you can take an action here>> is completely true.
You could take cover, grab one of the bags Archer's left on the floor (and touch of shadow it if you wanted to), try to tackle one of the goons, or whatever you like. I'll happen before anyone else.
Biggs: Your statements did happen, if it's OK we'll just put it after Cole's (i'll move it in now). I hope that the explanations above make sense to you, if not let me know and we'll try to work something out.
Cole: Dominate is the bomb. But it's fiddly. The biggest problem is the one of "getting attention" and there is no built-in solution to it. (I.e. there is no dominate power that allows you to get a people to stop and look at you -- As I said I'm not familiar with any glamor power... There may be some sort of presence/dominate devotion that does this, but I can't think of it off the top of my head.)
You can spend a willpower to try to dominate the lead ghoul (i.e. right now you just have a chance die, which produced a failure, but since 5-5=0 if you spend a Willpower you'll get the full 3 dice to roll, with ten again that's a 65.7% chance of getting at least one success.
Diego: You're grappled. That means that there strength is subtracted from your combat pools (their strength is high, so this is a significant penalty).
Since you're knife is touch of shadow'd I'm making an arbitrary ruling that the first knife attack won't suffer the strength penalty (so you'll get your full str+weaponry+equipment), since the goon won't know you've got six inches of steel in your hand.
After that the knife will become visible and you'd suffer the usual penalties.
Of course you're a vampire, you can spend blood to increase your strength, heal wounds and you're basically immortal. It's overwhelmingly likely that you'd eventually kill the guy if you got into a fight.
Plus you have Nightmare.
Any other questions/comments/etc just post them here or in IC.
Q: Why were some of the combat rolls made -before- post that apparently triggered combat.
A: After Diego's first post I said to myself "OK. They'll respond with violence". So I sat down, wrote up a combat post, rolled all the fricking dice, started to adjudicate, etc. At one point during editing I re-read Diego's post and realized that maybe I'd mis-read Diego's post, maybe he didn't want to fight (he'd been fairly conservative, warning the group about Freeman's warning, trying to get out quickly, etc.), the rest of the group had made it pretty clear they didn't want violence (putting Cole out front, etc etc).
So I scrapped the post and left to go home.
Of course the next post from Only made it clear that he knew what he was doing was dangerous, but that he was dealing with the situation the way that he would in prison, etc.
(i.e. the original combat post was probably the situation after all).
But I wasn't fast posting the combat block and Cole and some other people posted too.
Which confirmed that at least some other members of the group wanted to try to talk their way out.
Q: Why did Diego go in front of Cole
A: Even though Cole was obviously prepared to speak, there was nothing that prevented Diego from leaping out. Especially since he was just speaking a few words.
Q: Why didn't Biggs?
A: His speech was a lot longer, it didn't' seem likely that if Cole's intent was to defuse the situation he'd let Biggs go on for too much longer.
And Biggs had initially seemed to indicate that he was willing to let Cole speak first (taking the gun and standing behind him, etc.).
Also, Biggs speech wasn't going to last very far before the fight happened. Even if he was talking fast words like "retard" aren't going to dissolve the tension.
(not that you have to dissolve the situation.... you are vampires, they are, or appear to be, human, I'm not asserting you have to be polite to your food)
Q: Why did Cole jump initiative?
A: ST fiat.
If somebody gets ready to do an action then I want to respect that.
Cole obviously was prepped to do something about the situation, he'd spent a post or two getting ready, etc.. I don't want to invalidate that preparation because he rolled at 2 on his init instead of a 7.
And I liked his speech. He correctly sussed out just how useless excessively dominated pawns can be (with no help from me).
As the only person with Dominate, and the only one of two people who'd interacted with these heavily dominated agents before and the oldest vampire it seemed like a good point to let him step up a bit.
Oh and he made a great roll to get the first ghoul from trying to maul Diego.
Q: So you used the original numbers for the combat.
A: Yeah. The situation hadn't changed.
Q: If the goons go on a 12, and their first action is to grab people, why did Diego get grabbed earlier?
A: ST fiat.
But I will argue that it's just a "storytelling change" not an actual change.
It made more sense to me that the goon, who's right up in front of Diego, would get his hands on Diego sooner.
[sblock=Specifically]I.e. The goons go second, (after Beth).
It's unlikely that Beth is going to be able to stop the one going after Diego, she was in the back of the conflict when it started, Diego was in the front, she doesn't have a ranged weapon, or any kind of weapon, doesn't have much of a reason to help Diego particularly, etc).
Then the goons go, along with archer. But archer's only got a 12 because he's got CombatMarksmanship and a gun in hand. So his only choice, if he wants to go on a 12, is to shoot someone.
I didn't think, given that he's got a guy charging him he's going to shoot the goon next to Diego.
So, by the time that Diego would go he''ll be grappled by the goon no matter what. I just put it first because it made more story sense to me.
I could have made a surprise round with the goon going first, blah blah blah, but it was a lot of rolling, I don't think anyone was really surprised anyway, so this just made more sense.
[/sblock]
Q: Some people (Beth) were skipped!
A: Reality is in flux! You can take actions retroactively. (see below)
Q: How come we're all in the elevator
A: See above. You can take actions.
Character specific comments
Archer: I've already mentioned that not shooting will push your initiative down. Since you're high in the initiative order I'm assuming whatever you do you'll also turn down Auspex before the gunshots.
Beth: The <<you can take an action here>> is completely true.
You could take cover, grab one of the bags Archer's left on the floor (and touch of shadow it if you wanted to), try to tackle one of the goons, or whatever you like. I'll happen before anyone else.
Biggs: Your statements did happen, if it's OK we'll just put it after Cole's (i'll move it in now). I hope that the explanations above make sense to you, if not let me know and we'll try to work something out.
Cole: Dominate is the bomb. But it's fiddly. The biggest problem is the one of "getting attention" and there is no built-in solution to it. (I.e. there is no dominate power that allows you to get a people to stop and look at you -- As I said I'm not familiar with any glamor power... There may be some sort of presence/dominate devotion that does this, but I can't think of it off the top of my head.)
You can spend a willpower to try to dominate the lead ghoul (i.e. right now you just have a chance die, which produced a failure, but since 5-5=0 if you spend a Willpower you'll get the full 3 dice to roll, with ten again that's a 65.7% chance of getting at least one success.
Diego: You're grappled. That means that there strength is subtracted from your combat pools (their strength is high, so this is a significant penalty).
Since you're knife is touch of shadow'd I'm making an arbitrary ruling that the first knife attack won't suffer the strength penalty (so you'll get your full str+weaponry+equipment), since the goon won't know you've got six inches of steel in your hand.
After that the knife will become visible and you'd suffer the usual penalties.
Of course you're a vampire, you can spend blood to increase your strength, heal wounds and you're basically immortal. It's overwhelmingly likely that you'd eventually kill the guy if you got into a fight.
Plus you have Nightmare.
Any other questions/comments/etc just post them here or in IC.
Last edited:
OnlytheStrong
Explorer
lol yeah......... OnlytheStrong was screaming "No! Don't say that Diego!" but he didn't listen. I was thinking about using nightmare but realized my dice pool would be like 2 lol.
Graf
Explorer
It was very Diego.
I'd probably want to give you the third die (for the 2nd dot of Nightmare you haven't developed yet -- you have paid for it.)
It might be a touch low to use against powerful opponents but you have 'ok' odds of affecting a normal mortal. (With 10 again the math is a bit complex for me to try to work out on 3 dice).
In terms of increasing your pools for nightmare the choices are OK but not great.
A dot of Intimidate would be 3 xp, but, it would only affect * (** and *** are empathy)
Presence would affect all three levels and cost 10 xp.
Empathy would actually affect **, *** and ****.
*** is basically the same as * in terms of effect but it's more powerful, uses empathy instead of intimidate and it requires a blood point and eye contact.
Don't know which one you want to focus on.
PS * has been errata'd to only affect one target but it doesn't require a physical display of fangs, your visage is just horrifying (so it's not really a breach of the masquerade to use)
I'd probably want to give you the third die (for the 2nd dot of Nightmare you haven't developed yet -- you have paid for it.)
It might be a touch low to use against powerful opponents but you have 'ok' odds of affecting a normal mortal. (With 10 again the math is a bit complex for me to try to work out on 3 dice).
In terms of increasing your pools for nightmare the choices are OK but not great.
A dot of Intimidate would be 3 xp, but, it would only affect * (** and *** are empathy)
Presence would affect all three levels and cost 10 xp.
Empathy would actually affect **, *** and ****.
*** is basically the same as * in terms of effect but it's more powerful, uses empathy instead of intimidate and it requires a blood point and eye contact.
Don't know which one you want to focus on.
PS * has been errata'd to only affect one target but it doesn't require a physical display of fangs, your visage is just horrifying (so it's not really a breach of the masquerade to use)
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