I don’t think you understand how grab works. When you grab someone they are allowed to try and break your grab in an opposed STR roll. That means if you are not paying the END for your full STR your grab is going to be less effective. Martial Grab gives you a bonus to your STR for holding someone. Assuming you have not bought any extra DC your STR for holding someone is 60. To utilize the 60 STR you have to pay the END for your full STR. You could of course choose to use less STR and then would only have to pay the END for however much STR you used. So let’s say that you only use 30 STR, you would pay 3 END for the STR and have a grab of 40 STR.
Like Pawsplay said you only pay for END once per phase no matter how often you use it. What normally happens is that when a character is using STR they pay the END for their full STR. This allows them to use their full STR for any purpose during the phase at full.
I actually AM planning on a fairly high powered game, except characters start with only 175 points.
Here's what I have so far. This is very much at the inception, sidetracking at the end into a lot of detail on slavery.
Aether
A great magical war has torn a planet asunder, every civilization in the world was utterly decimated, no civilization survived. There were individual survivors however, and over the course of thousands of years, they adapted to the ruin left of their world. Some semblance of civilization has returned, with villages and towns walled against the dangers, and even the occasional city states.
Many parts of the world remain too dangerous to travel, and even in the safer areas, ancient weapons slumber. Many ruins of the old world are untouched since the war, as they lay within those areas too dangerous to travel, and who knows what lurks within, waiting to awake.
The war tore holes through dimensions in many places, and things not native to this world now are. Often they prey upon the human survivors. A few are friendly, or at least not hostile, such as the Dwarves and Elves, and there is a usually peaceful coexistence.
Magic exists in the world, but most people are understandably frightened by it, for using too much of it risks wakening ancient dormant powers.
The players are quite special in the world, even though they start out unknown. Fate has brought them together for who knows what purpose. Players can be reluctant heroes, they can be anti-heroes, but in the end they are heroes who will do the right thing. This is not a game of evil or villainy.
This will be high fantasy with regard to the sorts of characters that could exist. The characters over time could well evolve to the super heroic, albeit still with a fantasy flair. Starting characters are 175 points including 50 points of matching complications. There are NO characteristic maxima, you can build Hercules if you want. (If you hit with a weapon strong enough to do 'more' than double it's listed damage, it will break. You could buy a weapon that could take the abuse, but you have to pay character points for it.)
There is NO active point limit for starting powers and stats. However using any power with more than 60 active points risks awakening "things". The probability increases depending on how much you exceed 60 active points. Be careful when and where you use such extreme power. Note you could buy a power that exceeds 60 but when using it declare you are 'only' using 60 and you would not risk awakening things. Note too that this threshold could change depending upon where the character is. If you are close to a rift or a dormant power, even lesser power could awaken it.
You can buy a talent called Magic Acuity that allows you to safely cast magic exceeding 60 active points. The talent costs 1 point for every 1 point of excess power. Note this is a threshold bonus, not a power reduction. Normally using say 2 points of extra power would have a rather low chance of awakening anything. If a character had 2 points of Magic Acuity they could safely cast a 62 active point spell with no chance of awakening anything. If they cast a power with 63 points, they would still exceed the threshold by 3 points with the same probability of awakening something as would someone who had 'no' Magic Acuity.
Magic is bought straight up as powers, no frameworks, with as many limitations as are appropriate and thematic. Any character who spends more than 50 points in powers gains the right to apply an additional 'Custom Modifier' called 'Initiate' that is worth a -1/2 limitation on any and all their powers. This represents their effort devoted to their craft. Taking 75 points in powers changes that to 'Adept' and is worth a -1 limitation to any powers. Taking a full 100 points in powers changes that to 'Wizard' and is worth a whopping -2 limitation. Players may at their discretion use different words to describe this. It is the limitation granted by the devotion to magic that counts, not the label.
This is not quite a post-apocalyptic world in that enough time has passed for civilization to more or less re-establish itself, and for many of the world scars to have healed to some degree. The Great War however unleashed titanic magics that utterly obliterated the societies that were warring, and many remnants of the use of those magics litter the land. Gaps between worlds were sometimes torn. Numerous races hitherto unknown in the world, now live within it, some friendly, some not. Most such places are well known to locals and easily avoided. A few however are restless, an even fewer wander.
There are no large empires. Large empires tend to waken old weapons and are quickly reduced by those forces. While there are a good few quite impressive city states, most people live within walled towns and villages that tend to be independent. Most of them simply impose a land tax on those who own property inside the walls with most of the revenue collected going towards guarding the walls and the local roads. Occasionally a few towns and villages ally and create a common force that patrols the roads even more effectively. That is largely the limit to kingdom structure.
There is trade between towns, a good bit of it actually. Caravan guards however is also a thriving profession, and traders usually travel in packs. Adventuring is also a common profession, with various bounties and missions often posted in taverns. Law enforcement is often aided if not in some places almost wholly relied on with bounties, also posted in taverns.
Punishments for crimes can be harsh, depending upon the communities. It is usually some sort of restitution, and if the guilty party cannot pay it, they are indentured as slaves to do so. Those they are indentured to for restitution may keep the slave themselves, rent them out often to mines and such for pay, or sell them at their discretion.
The closest thing to a prison would be mines and the like where the indentured slaves work off their restitution. One can be indentured for failure to pay debts as well. Dead or alive bounties are rare, as they do not allow the prisoner to work restitution to their victims. Sometimes though, victims prefer revenge over restitution, so dead or alive bounties are not unknown.
There are two classes of slaves, those solely indentured who owe a sum that could be worked off, and the life indentured. Solely indentured have rights in most societies and can be legally abused only to the point necessary to compel their obedience. Life indentured are true slaves, they can be killed at the whim of their owners and they have no rights at all. Usually only murderers, bandits, and the like are made life indentured.
Children born to indentured slaves are in some places considered free and wards of the owners of their parents, but their support costs are added to the indenture. Such children can help work off the indenture for their parent. It is in most places illegal to force sex upon indentured slaves. For the life indentured, there is no such prohibition.
Stolen slaves, those who committed no crimes and were simply captured by raiders, are legal in some societies, not allowed in others. In societies where they are not legal, there is usually some bureaucracy with paperwork to trace the crimes and obligations of the indentured, and a slave without such paperwork would be freed. Things can get a lot less legal in places without such bureaucracies.
That's true enough I guess. I've just never seen the allure of playing the utility character I suppose. I want a Gandalf in my party.
Ghads! A reply from a veritable god of Hero! I am in awe! Yours is a name I have known for decades Chris!
Another issue I have with most people's magic systems is that they are simply, overly complex. I would kill (well, not literally) to play in a game run by Chris Goodwin, but there is again zero chance I would play a mage. Way too many criteria to meet and match to gain any sort of real power at all. Another jack of trades that can only shine when everyone else is lackluster.
A huge number of players, at least the players I have known, have a hard enough time knowing what to do in D&D let alone the complexity of Hero. I would prefer to find/create an elegant, simple to implement and understand approach that newbies to the Hero system can comprehend with relative ease. I fully expect most of my players to have never seen Hero before. Most will ask me to build their characters for them based on their conceptions and it has to be simple to not just understand enough that they can easily spend XP, but also understand tactically.
That's true enough I guess. I've just never seen the allure of playing the utility character I suppose. I want a Gandalf in my party.
Ghads! A reply from a veritable god of Hero! I am in awe! Yours is a name I have known for decades Chris!
Another issue I have with most people's magic systems is that they are simply, overly complex. I would kill (well, not literally) to play in a game run by Chris Goodwin, but there is again zero chance I would play a mage. Way too many criteria to meet and match to gain any sort of real power at all. Another jack of trades that can only shine when everyone else is lackluster.
A huge number of players, at least the players I have known, have a hard enough time knowing what to do in D&D let alone the complexity of Hero. I would prefer to find/create an elegant, simple to implement and understand approach that newbies to the Hero system can comprehend with relative ease. I fully expect most of my players to have never seen Hero before. Most will ask me to build their characters for them based on their conceptions and it has to be simple to not just understand enough that they can easily spend XP, but also understand tactically.
It is going to be at the very least several days before I nail anything down at all with how I'll build the game. I would prefer to build the myth, history and geography slowly, in a manner that works 'with' player conceptions, rather than have player conceptions fit within the world I have pre-created. I would like to offer players the chance to play characters they might have a hard time playing in a less narrative game. That is not a requirement, just an opportunity. For instance, I'm attaching a character that absolutely could not be played with a normal group in a standard table top game, but 'could', perhaps, work in a narrative game such as I am suggesting.
Note this is not necessarily an NPC in the game, but she 'might' be.
Posted character can now be found on this thread; Ref: Hecate
One stipulation about which I am adamant. Players can play reluctant heroes, they can play anti-heroes, but in the end they are heroes, they fight on the side of good to the best of their ability. I cannot and will not run a game in service to evil.
So I've recently been exposed to Play By Post (PBP) gaming, hitherto being blithely unaware. (Thanks HeroFan.) I am discovering that it has a distinct strength with regard to role playing games, and a distinct weakness. It is not simply an inferior way to game, in at least one major way, I have to my delight discovered it is superior! PBP is quite a bit superior with regards to the investment in role play by the players. It is vastly inferior with regard to the tabletop wargame aspect. It lends itself very badly to turn by turn, initiative ranked, rolled dice combat resolution.
Despite this, I believe Hero System may work just fine anyway for such gaming, on the condition that players forgo the detailed turn resolution of combat, and allow such things to be adjudicated off screen by the GM, with the results narrated. A combat encounter might be divided into three acts with a narratively described setup, followed by players describing anything they intend to do if and when things get violent. The next post from the GM would narratively describe the consequence of the initial encounter and await any further posts from the players as to any changes they might make to their character's tactics. Resolving that off screen, the GM would narratively describe the results of that, and wait for final updates in the actions players might wish to change to. This of course would be followed by the narration of the conclusion.
The combat would be dice rolled out by the GM assuming best possible tactics on the part of the players, erring always on the side of the players. This would change the PBP gaming from taking weeks to resolve a large encounter to being maybe a day or two. The game would cease to be a fighting game and become much more a character game of story telling and character development. Characters would of course still be built with Hero System, experience would still be spent, and of course the improved stats, skills, powers, etc., factoring into any future combats the players get into. The only difference is the players wouldn't be designating exact hex placement, calling individual shots, and rolling the dice themselves slaved to a phase chart.
Outside of role playing, which can be done with any system, my own personal greatest joy with Hero System specifically is character creation and character growth. The combat resolution part of the game while fun, is really more of a means toward either furthering the role playing plot, or garnering experience points to spend, at least for me.
Experience point rewards would have much more to do with frequency and quality of written posts and the furtherance of the narrative plot, than how tough the enemies were.
Are there any Hero Gamers out there who would be interested in such play? Is there any obvious glaring problem with what I have outlined.
Too cost effective, that makes sense. Of course one could just rule that slots cannot be ultra slots, and that should address the expense rather nicely I would think. It would also make it worth the while for a player to add extra limitations to slots when appropriate, further differentiating various spells.
I've never noticed much difference between the editions from first to fifth. Sixth I am emphatically NOT a fan off, and play it only because other people do.
Well, if you don't have a circle of friends who can play tabletop in real life, that pretty much relegates you to online options. The advantage of on line is that you have a lot more potential players. The disadvantage is that it is nowhere near as social nor as simple as just drawing on a hex mat and using figurines while everyone chats and shares books.
Online options would include gaming utilities like Roll20, Fantasy Grounds and Tabletop Simulator. Roll20 might be the easiest, as long as you aren't expecting it to do much more with it than provide a chat service along with a basic map, character figures you can move and basic dice rolls. Fantasy Grounds has better map functions, but even less support for game systems outside of D&D.
Tabletop Simulator due to the efforts of one very dedicated modder may ultimately be the best option. It may require a bit more brain power to get started with, but long term would probably provide the most enjoyment. Check him out through his YouTube site and then follow the links he provides in his video descriptions.
Finally there is the option of playing Play By Post, which involves the least learning, but is also the slowest option with regard to actual game play. That said, there seems to be an awful lot more character role play in Play By Post than in other gaming methods, including RL tabletop.
If you do get something going on line, please do consider me interested. I have plenty of time in my week and apparently a bottomless enthusiasm for Hero System.
I've never noticed much difference between the editions from first to fifth. Sixth I am emphatically NOT a fan off, and play it only because other people do.
He's not dead, he's just 'mostly' dead. I like the ability to buy the defy death thing for five points. If they buy it, they can use it to force something miraculous to happen to intervene, which can also be after the fact if the player wishes (after the fight and danger is past). One could perhaps also allow a 'dead' character to buy it post mortem. They buy it for the price of 'owing' five character points, basically sacrificing their next five XP. There might however be more consequences imposed for buying it after the fact, depending upon the method of death. There may be scars, physical disabilities, etc., added to a character.
The adventure resumed at the derelict sound studio w/ dead Slip & dead Dai, exactly where we left off last session.
Murgatroyd put together a spell to help break Joey out of the mental paralysis Slip had put him in
Jack was not present, but was driving towards the general vicinity per earlier instruction and was notified via phn by Harker where to go
It was established that Jack is one of Harker's assets, and has been working on the op all along, but was responsible for some aspect of the mission happening further south and was not present when the attack at the night club by Dai and his bandmates went down.
Having helped Joey, Murgatroyd wanted to use the bodies of Slip & Dai for material components to cast a retrocognitive spell
Baretta fixated on watching Slip's car like a hawk per Harker's phn directive
Drew looted Slip's wallet and called in Slip's license and car plate to Section M dispatch for lookup
Joey tried to hack Slip's phone but it turned out to be encrypted
Jack arrived in his armored van as Killroy was moving Dai's headless corpse into the sound studio to get the body out of view
Jack and Killroy interacted, then Jack joined the crew inside the derelict building
Murgatroyd's spell worked; he was looking for the most powerful entity Slip had most recently interacted with in the last few days.
The spell allowed Murgatroyd to see (not hear) an obvious argument between Slip and a powerful vampire lady of hispanic appearance at some kind of fancy / dressed up event approximately 3 days ago.
Murgatroyd retained a vestigial sense of awareness of the direction in which the altercation occurred.
Joey hacked Slip's car and was able to get a dump from the nav system. The car turned out to be less than a month old. Joey grep'd thru the data and cross referenced it to eliminate uninteresting locations. The derived set included an office on Sunset Strip which was easily determined to be Slip's offices at Slip It To Me Records, a residential address in Venice Beach and an office in Malibu. Or maybe the residential address was in Malibu and the other office was in Venice Beach. Difficult to say, really.
Harker arrived via helicopter, pissed off, and roundly chewed everyone out.
Drew gritted his teeth and suffered thru it, despite it obviously irritating him to take $#!^ from Harker
The rest of the team let it slide off of their backs
He instructed the team to put a bag over Slip's head and "perp walk" his corpse to the helicopter, making it look like he was "alive" but incapacitated.
He instructed Baretta to drive Slip's car back to the Section M facility.
He instructed Jack to take Baretta's place with the team and "ride herd" on them.
Harker instructed the team to haul ass to Slip's office and grab everything of "actionable value", and to be very obvious in the doing of it
He explicitly instructed them to be "be seen" taking Slip's stuff in an official way
He strongly suggested that they were probably already being watched
He explained to them (in his own way) that his "brilliant plan" is to make other vamps think that Slip has been taken into custody and is being questioned. He wants the team to further that illusion.
He hopes that the prospect of Slip giving up details of vampire identities and operations within the city will cause a panic / cause some of the vamps to lose their cool and out themselves.
Harker departed via helicopter w/ the corpse of Slip posed so as to appear still alive.
The team, minus Baretta, saddled up in their vehicles and drove off to Slip's office
Baretta's POV was left at the derelict sound studio as she had left driving Slip's car.
Jack took some kind of alchemical potion to grant himself enhanced awareness for the evening. Drew wanted some, but Jack was not in the sharing mood.
Arriving at Slip's office, it was decided that Drew, Killroy, and Murgy would go in directly flashing FBI consultant badges. Jack and Joey would stay outside as their appearance does not jive with "FBI Consultant"
Killroy opted to leave his sniper rifle in the gov SUV to avoid drawing notice to it
Drew bulled through the initial wariness of the security guard in the building and eventually gained access to Slip's offices upstairs and left Killroy and Murgy to loot / case the joint and got the security guard to take him to the video surveillance control room where Drew was able to scan through a week's worth of security footage
Drew didn't find anything of interest in the security footage other than confirming that Slip only came and went after sun down, and that Dai and his bandmates had visited once a week ago slightly before sunset.
Killroy found info about the record company's legitimate business activities but nothing of interest to the investigation. However, he took the laptop from the desk of the company's business manager to give to Joey.
Murgy worked some magic and confirmed that Slip's office was absolutely inundated with the typical magical residue common to places where supernatural creatures spend a lot of time, but nothing of immediate use. However, looking more deeply, he discovered that the trash can under the desk had a single thing in it, a ripped in half invitation to a "gala" hosted by Glitterglam Industries several day's prior. Murgy remembered Joey saying something about an association between Slip and Glitterglam Industries earlier in the evening.
Joey was in the back of the gov SUV doing internet related stuff in pursuit of more clues, Jack was basically sitting in his van contemplating his navel or sharpening a knife or something
A sniper shot penetrated the gov SUV, narrowly missing Joey's head.
the screech of tires converged from both sides of the parking lot was followed immediately by the chatter of assault rifles as gunmen in both vehicles opened fire on both the gov SUV and Jack's punisher van.
Jack's armored van bore up well, but the gov SUV got shot to hell and its windows are more or less kaput
Jack and Joey disembarked their vehicles and took cover in between them.
Jack braced himself on the hood of the van and fired his massive pistol at one of the gunmen in the vehicle on his side.
Jack called Killroy and told him that he & Joey are under attack.
The truck re-positioned, coming around to the side so that the rear passenger side shooter could fire directly at Jack without his van in the way.
Jack executed a combat roll, closing the distance between where he was and where the truck currently was, coming up near the rear tire of the moving truck essentially at point blank range to the rear passenger side shooter .
Jack snapped off one round at point blank range; the shooter managed to get his arm up in to the line of fire which saved his life but the .50 pistol round destroyed the gunman's lower arm.
Killroy told Murgy that Jack and Joey were under attack and ran out, taking the stairs two at a time
Murgy opted to take the scenic route...the elevator, calling Drew and nonchalantly telling him of the situation.
The truck attacking Jack took off.
Joey ran out into the open, initially to shoot his shotgun, but then just went all in and sprinted across the intervening distance and launched himself through the open rear window of the truck, plowing through one of the gunmen with bone breaking force.
Joey clawed across the seat and punched the gunman in the other rear seat in the shoulder, breaking their collarbone and staggering them. The shooter in the front passenger seat whirled around and tried to shoot joey in the back of the head, but Joey ducked it and the round instead killed the shooter with the broken shoulder / collarbone.
Joey and the front passenger fought inconclusively across the front and back seat divide
The driver panic'd and took off driving, Joey still in the car.
Joey got tired of flailing around, and instead just pushed forward hard on both the driver's and passenger's side chairs, breaking the gearing and forcing both men face first into the dash. The passenger's head was smashed, but the driver was able to brace himself on the steering wheel and avoid getting crushed.
Joey ordered the driver to pull over or get killed horribly. Having seen the incredible strength of the spindly teenager, the driver pissed himself a little and pulled over.
Joey took the wheel, forcing the driver to cower in the floorboards amidst dead former friends, while Joey drove the truck back to the parking lot of Slip's office building.
Meanwhile, back at the offices of Slip It To Me Records, Murgatroyd's elevator reached the ground floor as Drew was passing by, on his way out from the security monitoring room. The two of them walked out of the lobby onto the forecourt of the building overlooking the parking lot where Killroy had managed to make it to the shot-to-hell gov SUV to retrieve his sniper rifle and Jack was in the process of telling Killroy what had happened.
Murgatroyd noticed a penny on the ground and bent to pick it up (a 1947 Wheat Penny, what luck!), and a sniper round shattered the plate glass window behind where his head had been a moment ago. The report of a high-power rifle was heard. Oh yeah, the sniper!
Drew wasted no time, grabbing Murgatroyd and bodily pulling him to safety over and then behind the security / reception desk inside the building.
Jack took cover behind his van
Killroy grabbed some cover while unlimbering his own sniper rifle. Two can play the shoot you in the head from a long distance game!
But no one could see where the shot had come from.
Drew, grinding his molars a bit, risked a longer look and was fortunate enough to spot the sniper very far away laying down up in the hills above the office building, unluckily illuminated by the navigation lights of a plane passing over head on landing approach to LAX. Unfortunately, the sniper was well beyond the range of Drew's pistol (he can do the improbable, not the impossible) and he had no way to communicate the information to Killroy. Drew ducked back before the sniper could take his head off.
Drew and Murgatroyd hatched an ad hoc plan, sort of. Not getting into the full details of his brilliant stratagem, Murgy told Drew to grab a stack of paper from the desk drawer and get ready to throw it into the air between the desk they were hiding behind and the front entrance, which Drew did. On Murgy's command, Drew tossed the pile of papers into the air like confetti, Murgy ignited it with his Ring of Blasting creating a flurry of flaming papers, and Drew made a mad dash for the door under the cover of that distraction...it seemed to work as a sniper round slammed into the back wall behind them, narrowly missing Drew.
Drew ran full out like the former football player he is to Killroy's position, trusting to luck that he wouldn't get shot.
With Drew's guidance Killroy used his own rifle's scope to find the sniper's roost in time to see the sniper rolling out of frame and presumably making a break for it, which he told Drew and Jack.
Jack jumped into his van and hauled ass in the general direction of the sniper's position, but realizing they were up against the hills and there was no direct route, he deftly maneuvered his vehicle around and started tacking towards the snipers location via side streets as best he could.
Joey, driving his appropriated vehicle like he stole it (which he kind of did), roared back into the scene and seeing Jack's van tear off decided to follow along.
Jack and Joey, engines roaring, navigated around the landscape and came to the lip of a canyon. Realizing they wouldn't have time to go around and still catch the escaping sniper, they dismounted their vehicles.
Joey could smell the sniper, and quickly telling Jack that he had captured one of the shooters and he was in the truck, Joey took off running into the canyon at obviously superhuman speed. Jack was a bit nonplussed by that, and glancing into Joey's stolen SUV and seeing the state of the three dead bodies and one terrified survivor, Jack reconsidered his first impressions of the seemingly out-of-place teenager and mentally upgraded Joey from a curiosity to a possible threat.
Jack pulled the hapless captive out of the vehicle and coldly questioned him. According to the captive, Jeremy Gardener, he and the other shooters had been hired by someone named "Benny"...$5000 each up front and another $5000 promised on completion. Jack found an envelope with 5k tucked into the man's jacket pocket and took it. Jeremy asked plaintively if Jack was going to kill him...Jack visibly thought about it and decided not to.
While that was happening, Joey was racing through the canyon, sniffing the wind and tracking his prey. Quickly overtaking the merely mortal gunman from behind, Joey launched himself off an embankment and landed squarely, feet first, on the shoulders of the sniper. Joey's intent was to disable, but he again miscalculated the frailty of normy's and with a sickening spine splintering crunch the sniper was essentially crushed and died moments later from extreme trauma. Oops.
Not to be deterred, Joey realized the sniper was retracing his own path, going back to where ever he had been before going up to the hill to take up a snipers position. Joey tracked the sniper's backtrail up and out of the canyon on the other side, emerging next to another office parking lot and a motorcyle which he could tell by scent belonged to the sniper.
Joey was checking out the motorcycle to see if he could get anything of interest off of it, and called Drew on his cell phone to update him on the situation. As he was talking a dark silver BMW X6 M pulled up and a trio of men dressed in tailored "casual" suits got out. To Joey's sensitive senses they were obviously vampires and his hackles were raised...this was dangerous.
Rather than tell Drew something useful like, "Three vampires just pulled up and are approaching me", he instead said, "...gotta go, bye!" and hung up. Teenagers...¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Initially the bad guys didn't seem to realize that Joey wasn't the sniper, but realization dawned after Joey turned fully around. Wasting no time, Joey pointed his new shotgun at the front-most vamp and finally pulled the trigger on it, hitting the bloodsucker solidly in the torso! Yay!
The front of the vampire's suit and high quality button up silk shirt was shredded, somewhat ruining his casual chic style, but the buckshot did very nearly nothing to the dead flesh underneath the overpriced clothing...most of the pellets failed to penetrate and the few that did made barely noticeable red divots of bloody flesh that immediately began to heal over.
Joey was like...uh oh...
The bloodsucker Joey shot growled angrily, popped fangs and visibly vamped out...springing at Joey and trying to grab him. Joey shook him off, surprising the vamp with his strength. The other two vamps pounced as well, trying to latch on and overpower Joey.
Realizing that the odds were very clearly against him, Joey ran away, back through the canyon, approaching 90 mph. None of the three vamps he had encountered turned out to have vampire speed as one of their abilities, and they did not pursue.
In the interim, Jack was driving back to the Slip It To Me Records parking lot where Drew was in full swing locking down the scene, getting local law enforcement to set up a perimeter, and being official like.
Drew, obviously concerned about Joey's absence and a bit distracted, did have an uncharacteristic flub with the first cops on the scene, seeming at a loss for how to spin the story. Murgatroyd stepped in and fixed it with some patter. Killroy remained on alert, just in case the sniper circled back.
Jack rolled back into the scene in his van. Drew, Murgy, and Jack huddled; Jack updated them that Joey had run off by himself, and the info he had gotten from the goon Joey had captured.
Drew was incensed that Jack let Joey go off by himself, but Jack was kinda of like...not my problem, I'm not his babysitter...also I can't run as fast as a car so whatev.
Drew started motivating the group to get organized and go find Joey, when Joey reentered the scene, cresting the same hills the sniper had been up on having followed the same path up the back side of the hills. Remembering that he's supposed to not be seen doing superhuman things, Joey slowed down to normal human running speed for the last leg of it, and jogged down to rejoin the group.
More or less giving the adults the necessary information, he finished with the existence of the three vamps that he had run away from. Jack's eyes light up and he was already on his way to his van to go find the vamps. Drew, cursing a bit, slowed him down and the group got organized...Killroy would ride w/ Jack, Joey and Murgy would ride with Drew in the shot up gov SUV. Jack would follow Drew.
Jack was more or less like..."whatev, so long as I get to kill some vamps, cuz that's my jam man."
Letting the cops know they were in pursuit of some "drug dealing human traffickers" spotted in the area on the way out, Drew and crew took point and Jack followed behind in the armored van w/ Killroy as shotgun and they all rolled out, leaving Slip It To Me Records in the rearview.
Heading west on access roads, with Joey doing his best to try to interpolate where to go despite having taken a very different route to get there, the two vehicle caravan was ambushed by a pouncing BMW lurching out from a side street and trying to t-bone Drew's gov SUV.
Drew saw the on coming vehicle at the last moment and stomped on the gas to surge forward, causing the Bimmer to miss. Jack, a pretty good driver himself, also stepped on the gas and barreled forward to t-bone the BMW has it narrowly missed the gov SUV and passed in front of him, the reenforced ram bar on the front of his van squarely hammering into the luxury sedan. Pushing the gas all the way down, Jack rammed the BMW into the back of Drew's gov SUV, squishing the BMW between them.
The three vamps inside the vehicle were damaged, though one of them...the same one shot by Joey...less so than the other two. But, they were in full on vampire mode and were not incapacitated.
All hell broke loose.
The van screeched to a halt, the BMW wrapped around its front. The gov SUV kept moving forward, three vamps exited their ruined vehicle in various creative ways...one basically brute forced his way out through seatbelt, metal, and windshield like it was made of tissue paper, another dive rolled out with superhuman dexterity, and the third extra tough vamp pulled himself out through the sun roof on top of the car.
The strong vamp hurled himself at the armored van, on the drivers side, shoulder checking it like he expected the van to give way. The heavy, armored vehicle actually resisted the massive force and moved very little, but the driver's side door was damaged.
The tough vamp drew a pistol and shot at Killroy through the van's windshield, but the armored glass stopped the bullet, the bullet spiderwebbing the glass.
The dexterous vamp drew a fancy silver dagger and threw it with incredible precision at Killroy through the passenger's side window. Killroy smirked at the vamp, thinking the armored glass would surely stop a dagger after bouncing a bullet...but with a sharp cracking sound the dagger chipped out a narrow gap in the window right next to the jam, passed through with unerring accuracy. Looking down Killroy was surprised to find the dagger sticking in his beefy left deltoid.
The strong vamp brute forced the drivers side door of the van, with the sound of bending metal, and one armed Jack back into the drivers seat. "Dinner!", the vampire said with vampiric presence rolling forth and causing Jack to feel fear and hesitate (PRE attack).
Joey launched himself from the passenger side of the still moving gov SUV, hurling himself at the dexterous vamp, but missed completely and shot past.
In the back of the gov SUV, Murgy aimed his ring of blasting and shot the tough vampire still standing on the roof of the ruined BMW, scorching the vamp with UV-enriched arcane energies. The vamp turned his attention from the van to Murgy and the ruined gov SUV.
Murgy nervously let Drew know that they now had a pissed off vamp looking their way.
Grimacing, Drew did complicated things with the steering wheel and parking brake, sending the tortured SUV into some kind of power sliding tactical u-turn and got the vehicle pointed back towards the van and BMW.
The dexy vamp ignored Joey and superhumanly leaped clear over the van and BMW to land on the otherside near the drivers side of the van, where Jack was struggling to shake off the strong vamps frightening presence while stealthily palming a holy water bomblet and getting ready to throw it. Looking past Jack thru the cabin at Killroy the dexterous vamp said, with full vampiric scare on, "give me back my knife!"...but Killroy was unphased; "Don't worry, I will!" he growled back.
With the SUV pointed back at the fight now, rear tires smoking and seeking traction, Drew released the brakes and barreled forward. Things got really complicated for a moment.
The tough vamp on the roof of the BMW calmly watched the approaching gov SUV and timing it just right sprang high into the air, flipped around, and came down feet first through the shattered windshield of the SUV, landing in the passenger seat vacated by Joey earlier.
Drew braked hard at the last moment to control the collision with the front part of the BMW in an attempt to get the broken car to scissor around to hit the driver's side of the van.
The BMW jackknifed around the van's ram bar with a screech of metal on metal, around to the van's front panel and then into the open and already damaged driver's side door. The van's front driver's side frame crumpled a bit under the abuse but held out.
The super strong vamp on the other side of the door braced himself for impact...the driver's side door hit him and snapped off its hinges with more metal screeching sounds. Then the BMW hit him, and that stopped too.
However, the van itself was also pushed back several feet, and this caused the strong vampire to lose his grip on Jack as he...still seatbelted in...moved backwards along with the van.
The dexterous vamp grabbed onto the side of the van and lifted his feet off the ground and into the lip of the door, riding along with the displaced van.
The vamp that jumped into the gov SUV leered at Drew. "Nice driving!" he said, then shot Drew in the face at point blank range. Luckily, Drew was able to lurch out of the way a bit and caught the bullet on his right chest where his armored vest caught most of the damage...but it still hurt.
Joey, having recovered himself from his failed tackle, power leaped across the battlefield and landed feet first on the upper chest of the super strong vampire, who was now more or less standing in the open as the van had moved back but he had not. Counter to the prevailing wisdom around the table, Joey surprisingly did not bounce off the vamp but instead seemed to catch him flat-footed. Strong vamp went down, his chest visibly compressed and blood oozing from his mouth and eyes. Still "alive" but much more damaged than he had been by the various automotive related impacts he had suffered (Joey's reduced negation doing good work).
Standing on the depressed chest of the super strong vampire, Joey yelled "Boo yah!"
The dexterous vampire noticed this and Jack heard him mutter, "what the hell is that kid?". The tough vamp didn't notice that their heavy was in distress.
The store was closing so we had to stop mid-battle. Everyone got 3 XP, Joey was voted MVP. No XP can be spent between this session and the next.
@Durzan Malakim @King Red @L0rd_Magg0t @Steve @Scything @WilyQuixote
In defense of a flashlight, it is just as difficult to explain how someone bursts into flames spontaneously 'without' a flashlight. The difficult explanation is not avoided by having an invisible beam power. The flashlight merely creates the illusion of a possible technological reason, however implausible, rather than one that almost by necessity, be supernatural.
Actually Murgatroyd was also one of mine. I seem to recall that Killroy was the first one I wrote up for that setting,
I have a number of check marks when creating a character, and all of them have to be met for me to be truly satisfied with the character. First and foremost is they have to have an interesting background story connotative of their personality. I also prefer for characters to not be too typical of stereotypes. They have to be combat capable in some critical role within a group, in addition to being reasonably survivable. They also need to be useful in at least some capacity outside of combat. Finally I like to ensure they at the least have a minimum of non-combat ancillary skills/knowledges appropriate to their backstory. I don't always perfectly nail those check marks, but I try.
Now, now my snark is worse than my bite, which is why I need capable warriors to do my biting for me, but since I'm playing a wizard, the good news is I can teach you all defense against the snark arts. Once you've mastered it, I'm sure each of you will leave your snark on the game. In fact, I fully expect us all to be Raiders of the Lost Snark by next session.
I finally got around to actually reading all the threads here. I do want to thank especially KS for making the effort to post the writeups. As much as I was invested in the development of the Here There Be Monsters setting, I have never had the opportunity to run it, let alone play in it. (I have brought up the notion to my existing gaming group, but at least a couple of them have a hard enough time grasping D&D and find Hero too intimidating.) Anyway, reading the threads here allows me the ability to at least vicariously experience it.
I finally got around to actually reading all the threads here. I do want to thank especially KS for making the effort to post the writeups. As much as I was invested in the development of the Here There Be Monsters setting, I have never had the opportunity to run it, let alone play in it. (I have brought up the notion to my existing gaming group, but at least a couple of them have a hard enough time grasping D&D and find Hero too intimidating.) Anyway, reading the threads here allows me the ability to at least vicariously experience it.
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