Demon's Rule

[quozaxx]

For a while now,  I have been using the supplements, Demon's Rule. 

 

It's a good game to start off with.  Although,  I did make Runt a lot more powerful to go toe to toe with the heroes. 

 

It starts out with demons gathering steet thugs together to work for them.  Let me tell you,  street thugs are easy to defeat.   Unless they have a gun on an NPC,  or have something tricky up there sleeve that is..

 

The street thugs are stage 1.   They are to introduce the demons and their schemes.   

 

The second stage is the demons attacking a museum.   This is where i learned that Runt needs a power boost. So i added Lack of Weakness (since a hero had Find Weakness) , upped his defenses  and even put a damage reduction at 1/4 

 

There is one more section. Where the demons battle the heroes on an island.   We haven't played that part yet.  And I don't know if I will add the additional items search yet. 

 

The heroes have the scythe.   The demons have the books.  But if the heroes want to unbind the NPCs. They will need to take along the scythe. 

 

It's a pretty good supplement and I can't wait until we finish it.  That's all for now. 

[1corpus christopher]

Demons Rule re-revisted:

 

I have used the Demons Rule adventure twice in the past with superhero team PC's that were fairly accomplished.

 

The first run of Demon Rule i GM'd was long ago when the 4th edition was still fresh. A group of five, 300 pt supers had their hands full because one of the players had designed himself a "ghostman" type hero that could possess the bodies of npc's or even other pc's. I decided possessing the body of one or more of the Chaos Demons was too much of an edge for my heros. I modified the Clock Demon taken from "Challenges for Champions" to be what awaited this body thief hero in a pocket dimension when he tried to possess one of the demons. 

 

Recently, I have a lone PC in my  campaign who has made contact and teamed up with another superhero group. This PC was fairly familiar battling gangster npc's taken mainly from Dark Champions supplements before i restarted Demons Rule, after more than 25 years. This PC hero has been going up against sinister gang members before the demons come on the scene. So the youngster aspect (teens and early 20's) of the demon's human gang member followers presented a challenge to this powerful hero who "doesn't want to hurt the kids".

 

I beefed up ALL of the demons- Runt has 3-shot autofire with his strength and the martial maneuvers of grab, crush, throw, sacrifice lunge, etc. Morgalis has a 90 pt cosmic PP and 15pts stand-alone mental def. Psycho has a 4 1/2 d6 AP HKA and MA maneuvers that have lvls, as well as a couple all-HTH combat lvls independently. All the demons were given some onboard mental defenses. Even dumb Runt gets 5pts worth of mental Defense.

 

I find that running every particle of the plot of Demons Rule is rewarding. The role playing that carried over from Dark Champions flavored scenarios that have already set the stage of this campaign- like the Angels of the Demons Rule supplement are painted as "more a social club". But with Hail Mary from Underworld Enemies being the leader of the Angels, and she's even being seduced and brainwashed with not only Wire, but Exocain, and riches and power, through the promise of "young gangs united" by Wizard... Excellent!😀

[1corpus christopher]

On 8/14/2020 at 2:39 PM, quozaxx said:

For a while now,  I have been using the supplements, Demon's Rule. 

 

It's a good game to start off with.  Although,  I did make Runt a lot more powerful to go toe to toe with the heroes. 

 

It starts out with demons gathering steet thugs together to work for them.  Let me tell you,  street thugs are easy to defeat.   Unless they have a gun on an NPC,  or have something tricky up there sleeve that is..

 

The street thugs are stage 1.   They are to introduce the demons and their schemes.   

 

The second stage is the demons attacking a museum.   This is where i learned that Runt needs a power boost. So i added Lack of Weakness (since a hero had Find Weakness) , upped his defenses  and even put a damage reduction at 1/4 

 

There is one more section. Where the demons battle the heroes on an island.   We haven't played that part yet.  And I don't know if I will add the additional items search yet. 

 

The heroes have the scythe.   The demons have the books.  But if the heroes want to unbind the NPCs. They will need to take along the scythe. 

 

It's a pretty good supplement and I can't wait until we finish it.  That's all for now. 

I didn’t tell you the conclusion of Demons Rule in Shamaness’s campaign. Like I said, I’ve run the Demons Rule adventure 3 times now:

 

The first time my PCs (5 heroes- 4 live people, I let one person run two PCs) lost to the chaos demons and our campaign fell apart, coming to a halt afterwards.

 

The 2^nd time I ran it with a PC team it went more positively (5 heroes, all real people running the 5 PCs). This team beat the chaos demons and the campaign went on much further after that victory.

 

 

This go around in the “final battle” of Demons Rule, as Morgalis (Wizard) has quite a bit of stun yet to be knocked off in the battle (over +30) yet 3 of his 6 henchmen demons are dropped (like Frag, I added Blood Stone of the Crowns of Crim. There’s some meddling from DEMON, the Circle of the Scarlet Moon and Tezcatlipoca going on that I won’t go into explaining) and just about all of his gang helpers were down too.

 

I decided that after some very close battles with Cherokee Shamaness and the 3 Omega Legion members before this battle (Crimson Hawk, Cricket and then Nastarius; Nastarius who flies in with PRIMUS’s 2 agents on a V22 Osprey earlier in the adventure, but the agents were killed at a refueling spot for the V22 at an airport to the North of Serpent Head Island).

 

Morgalis was going to take a reality check and call a retreat.

 

He’s got 3 heroes left standing against him.

 

Shamaness has just dropped below 0 stun, but she’s barely unconscious. She is getting back up soon after a back and forth, tit for tat, 10D6 vs. 11D6 EB, area effect cone, duel with Morgalis that has just taken place.

 

I allowed Morgalis to use his VPP as the seal is being broken, but he has to stay in place for the entire seal destruction. He cannot move.

 

He can attack in just about any form. He has 6 clawed limbs in the picture of him, so with six arms he should have plenty of free arms to make gestures and cast spells while holding the fork.

 

Morgalis can also increase his armor and aid himself; and throw up force walls to protect himself and others. But for magical reasons he may not turn intangible, or aid anyone else's characteristics on the battlefield.

 

BUT HE ABSOLUTELY MAY NOT MOVE OUT OF PLACE UNTIL THE SEAL IS COMPLETELY BROKEN, or the spell will dissipate and stop.

 

Once the fork has been struck upon the altar stone, and the banishment spell has taken 1 turn to be invoked, Morgalis must hold the stone fork the entire duration of the seal’s destruction. While Morgalis holds the stone fork a magical, dimensional vibrational tone is flowing through the stone tuning fork, Morgalis, the altar stone and the stone pillars the duration of the opening of the seal.

 

That’s the mechanics of this ritual as I am playing it.

 

Morgalis has set himself up with -10 to knock back as part of his armor. That’s the only reason he was still standing (really levitating, as he has no legs, he moves with a whirlwind torso) in the same place after the EB area effect duel with Shamaness. Most of the Backstreet Brawlers and Angels who were standing near to him were blown back anywhere from 2 to 8 meters after this duel.

 

6 giant snakes (4 out of 10 snakes summoned had been dropped) and 5 wyverns (Sham started with 6 wyverns) are closing in on Morgalis too. The wyverns have just dropped Bloodstone.

Also, Crimson Hawk is in a back-in-forth, trading-hits battle, with a crazed Torch (Conflar). Enforcer (Alzol) is effectively being overrun and ignored by the giant snakes. The snakes figured out they couldn’t touch him after he dropped 2 of their kin.

 

Runt (Mennigrasz), Psycho (Zoligahr), Blade (Shargaas) and most of the gang kids are down (all below -20 stun, a couple below -40) and out of the battle. Nastarius has grabbed the cube (this won’t stop the spell, only if Morgalis is knocked unconscious or out of place, or the stone fork is removed from his claws, will the spell stop) and Nastarius is about to attack Morgalis. Cricket is closing in on the axe that is now held by a Photon Shackled Hail Mary; so Cricket is coming into position for an attack on Morgalis too.

 

Stick is crouched down close to and trying to defend Morgalis. Stick and Hail Mary and their gang charges are all fixed up with Exocain- Mary’s Wired out on top of the Exocain!

 

All of Stick’s Backstreet Brawlers are down. Only 2 of Hail Mary’s Angels are left standing, but they’ve run for the edge of the Island to hide behind and hold onto bushes because of the winds. Mind you that these young gangstas were all wearing thick kevlar and carrying sub machine guns too.

 

Only the best and most loyal gang fighters made it to the Island of the Serpent Father. These kids are the cream of the crops. The storm winds are raging strong by the start of the 5^th turn of battle.

 

All this I describe above and PRIMUS Command (Col. Vasquez) has also received the last transmission of doomed agents Peterson and Kobayashi some hours ago (about 4). It is video that confirms the chaos demons in battle with Shamaness (the demons had escaped PRIMUS’s positive i.d. eye up to this point, is how I played it).

 

Glenn forwarded the video that was sent to him and PRIMUS HQ in New York City, directly to Col. Vasquez himself, just to make sure.

PRIMUS has 3 air troop transport vehicles, and 3 Silver Avengers closing in on Serpent Head Island. The transports are loaded with 30 assault and 10 Iron Guard agents altogether. They’re having trouble with their approach to the island of course.

 

Morgalis can vaguely sense the reinforcements coming.

 

Anyway, just to make it a 3-way split, Morgalis decides to teleport away, and telepathically orders Alzol and Conflar to run away to regroup and try again later.

 

 

Before the heroes and summoned creatures can get their bearings; as the wind and rain and lightning subside, Bloodstone sneaks away too. He flies in the opposite direction from the chaos demons. He is done with the chaos demons.

 

Morgalis was still holding the stone fork when he teleported away. He loses the axe and cube. PRIMUS destroys the two artifacts and arrests Stick, Hail Mary and the other gang members (a few kids had to be administered first aid on the scene). They also destroy the bodies of Psycho, Runt and Blade post-haste.

 

 

 

If you read The Legend of Cherokee Shamaness it all makes sense how Luther Black of DEMON may just want this outcome to be in his interest of harnessing the powers of the Kings of Edom.