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Steve

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  1. Like
    Steve reacted to Gauntlet in Bringing the magic into magic   
    Like Mental Blasts that effect the caster if he/she fails to hit their target.
  2. Thanks
    Steve got a reaction from Doc Democracy in Bringing the magic into magic   
    Just rolling dice makes it inconsistent.
     
    Some form of triggered side effect might make things interesting.
     
    Example: Cast a fire spell defined as doing a certain number of damage classes, but side effect triggers if you rolled too low on the damage. The side effect is that the difference between the average of the damage classes and what you rolled affects the caster. Like a kind of rebound effect if you don’t project enough energy away (rolled too low on your damage dice).
     
    Something like this would make a wizard less eager to hurl a fireball, as they could burn themselves up if they minimum out on their damage roll.
     
    I’m sure creative minds can come up with other creative side effects for different spell effects.
  3. Like
    Steve reacted to Doc Democracy in Bringing the magic into magic   
    I am 100% behind you on this list and it does not need all of those things to be true in any particular game but they are indeed some of the things that make magic magical.
     
    So SFX are inherent here.  i think that there should also be some kind of social element to it.  Magicians are often either revered or reviled.  Sometimes Wizards are revered and Witches are reviled but open use of magic, unless you are in a magic heavy environment (at which point you might as well go with the magic as pseudo-science approach) then people should notice and react when you cast a spell.
     
    The biggest question is how you pack all of those things into a game, where not only might you want players to use magical characters, you dont want the magic use to take up a whole session or leave you, as GM, being castigated for being arbitrary or biased.  There needs to be an element of system in there around which you wrap the trappings of magic in the setting.  A player wants to have an element of understanding, a feel they can at least push the chances of things working in their favour and to have a reasonable expectation of knowing what should happen if things go well.
     
    THAT element of gameability is what I am hoping to talk about.
     
     
    That feels like an SFX solution.  How would it work in game?  Simply finding out the true names of things and then having absolute control over them? Degrees of control?
     
    What would the mechanics be?  Anything outside of the RAW?
     
    As you might note from my post in the other forum - I think I am reaching towards an Ars magica style solution here.  Ars magica however, for me, had all the trappings of Magic with the underlying philosophy of science.  I have always wanted to play a decent length campaign of Ars Magica but never had the time or the group (or the GM willing to run it for me!).
     
    Doc
  4. Thanks
    Steve reacted to unclevlad in Balancing damage and defenses   
    Mmm...that reminds me of something you might want.  It's damage-based END costs for defenses...AVP I, page 62.  You trade off END for STUN...so, ok, your head's not spinning per se, but after a while you just get beaten to exhaustion.  It's a -1/2 limitation if it's 1 END per 5 STUN or fraction thereof, by the book...so it doesn't use the rounding rules.  6 STUN blocked?  2 END, not 1.  It's a -1/4 limitation if it's 1 END per 10 STUN.
     
    You could use this with negation or reduction...at least to a degree.  You might want a complex combo like this...I'm assuming 12d6...
    10 defense
    2 Negation (no limits)
    then 5 or 6 dice of negation that's STUN only, and damage based END cost;  OR, 50% DR that's at least damage based END cost...may or may not be stun only
     
    The DR has the advantage that you don't get stunned...as long as you have the END to burn.  When that's gone?  Uh...oh..............
     
    If you go with the DBEC on the negation, the trick would be, you'd want to count the pips, not just the BODY, because that can alter the END you have to spend.  This isn't a case where I'd use "standard effect" principles.  If that'd be a pain, then go with the DR.  DBEC actually feels like it was made for DR.
     
    Note that there are details about how DBEC works that I haven't mentioned....
  5. Thanks
    Steve reacted to LoneWolf in Balancing damage and defenses   
    I created a spreadsheet that you can change the base DEF to compare an equal amount of points in DR vs DN.  
    DRvDN.xlsx
  6. Thanks
    Steve reacted to unclevlad in Balancing damage and defenses   
    An issue I have with Hero is, there's not much stun-only defense.  There's ways to do it, but they start out expensive.  One of my preferred methods is some Armor, for the BODY, and then Damage Negation, STUN Only;  that's not bad.  Something like 8 armor + 4d6 Negation, STUN only, is 25 points, for 22 total defense.
     
    The 2 starter questions:  
    --how much BODY defense do I need?  OK, I'm biased as heck here.  It's not 12d6 normal...it's 4d6 killing I want to address.  14 BODY is average, so my target range would be 12-18 resistant, total.  (If you have, say, 3 dice of Negation, I count that as 3 BODY.)  
    --stun...how often should I get stunned?  I'm REALLY biased here...because my preference is the more realistic one...just because you go down is a *better* reason to target you...so you don't get back up.  NOT the most common comic trope that a hero that goes down, gets ignored.  So...getting stunned, for me, is VERY, VERY BAD.  
     
    So...we start with the damage.  12d6...ok.  What's my CON?  Let's go with 23.  By my lights, a 10% risk of getting stunned is dangerously HIGH.  Anydice.com is a great help here.  On 12d6?  50+ happens 10% of the time.  51+ happens 7.6% of the time, 52+ happens 5.4% of the time.  So for me...I need to block 27 STUN, with my 23 CON...minimum.
    We can use other stun frequency numbers easily.  12d6, the damage percentages look like this:
        DEF Needed to avoid STUN Dice Total T % chance >=T CON 18 CON 23 30 98.34 12 7 31 97.46 13 8 32 96.23 14 9 33 94.57 15 10 34 92.4 16 11 35 89.64 17 12 36 86.24 18 13 37 82.17 19 14 38 77.44 20 15 39 72.08 21 16 40 66.19 22 17 41 59.89 23 18 42 53.33 24 19 43 46.67 25 20 44 40.11 26 21 45 33.81 27 22 46 27.92 28 23 47 22.56 29 24 48 17.83 30 25 49 13.76 31 26 50 10.36 32 27 51 7.6 33 28 52 5.43 34 29 53 3.77 35 30  
    And obviously, you can tweak the 2 right hand columns easily, as that defense to avoid being stunned is just Damage - CON.  So if you only want to be stunned by 1/4 of the full-strength strikes...you're looking at 23 total DEF with a 23 CON.
     
    The 3rd question is more complex...how many hits can I take?  Note that the 27 total defense vs. STUN there...I'm taking 15 STUN per average attack.  Well, am I easy to hit or hard to hit?  Am I likely to be a focus of multiple attackers, or just 1 or 2?  If we're outnumbered, how many of em will have real, worrisome attacks...if there's 3 grunts on me, but they only have 8d6 attacks, well, they're barely gonna affect me.  Also note that the ease with which you can take an extra recovery is a factor...how easy is that for you?  SPD is an issue, but what, if anything, do you have to drop, since you can't take a recovery if you're spending END.  BUT, note that if you're taking 20 STUN a pop, you're not lasting very long unless you've got a LOT of STUN.  And getting KO'd is extra bad.
     
  7. Thanks
    Steve reacted to LoneWolf in Balancing damage and defenses   
    I have to disagree with DR 25% being useless.   It is less effective vs low dice attacks, but more effective against high dice attacks.  25% damage reduction and 3 DC’s of damage negation will both mean that a character with it will take a 13d6 attack to stun a character with a 23 CON, given 12 PD.  UP to about 16d6 the results are fairly similar, above 16d6 the damage reduction provides better defense. 
     
    If we go up to 50% DR and -6 DC of damage negation the dynamics change.  The Damage Negation provides near absolute protection up to 9d6, but reaches the stun point at 16d6 vs 17d6 for the 50% DR.  Above that point the DR gives much better protection than the DN.
     

  8. Like
    Steve reacted to Doc Democracy in A Thread For Random RPG Musings   
    I thought I would have another go at this.  It has been playing in my head as something I want and, if I do, then surely HERO can accommodate me.  I reckon the big thing is whether you can introduce an element of uncertainty and "magic" without imposing an undue time or complexity "tax" in game terms.
     
     
    I think the key dichotomy of this issue is that the player has knowledge the character does not (the game rules), that the character has knowledge the player does not (the rules of the universe, and living in a world where mortals wield such power).  I am sure the characters are entirely unaware of their "level" and why, when they cast their six first level spells, they must only cast more powerful spells.  🙂
     
    What is missing here is that neither of them know what the GM (and thus the universe) knows.
     
    I was, to my surprise, reaching toward Ars Magica as that, tome us the epitome of magic as science.  But the game tries to provide a core game-comoatibkeway of codifying magic.
     
    Before I start, this is only worth the (GM) effort if you want to introduce an element of doubt and uncertainty to magic and that is only worth it if it adds depth and colour to the magic and the world.
     
     
    To me, the question is not whether Chris might gave an idea but whether Belzeboim, his magic-wielding character in the world, knows or can find out. 
     
    In Glorantha, everyone is aware, they understand how the world works and they do not pine for a world of bacteria and viruses, nor for a world where metals are inert chemicals with no link to the mythic history of the world. The player can learn the rules of the world but cannot expect their knowledge of this world biology is chemistry to deliver insight into that nautical world, or that the scientific method will reign supreme as it does in this world.  It us a different paradigm.
     
    In HERO, this is all bound up, I think, into the (boring) magic roll. The magic roll adds an element of unpredictability but no magic, wonder or setting colour.  I think it would be valuable for the world to introduce variety and colour to magic in the setting. I would make the magic roll a straight 10 or less but not allow people to but bonuses to the roll, that all comes from the cloud of knowledge, skills, and materials available to the wizard.
     
    So, players should have knowledge of what characters know (which is what they have been taught).  If the character is from a hedge witch tradition, they will have knowledge such as Plants, Weather, Animals, the Winds etc., and may have charms, potions and fetishes that enhance their magic.  If the character is from a wizardly tradition, then they will have knowledge such as Thaumaturgy, Evocation,  Illusion etc., and may have a staff, symbols and scrolls that will enhance their magic.
     
    The Fantasy Hero source book delivers a lot of the detail on which this stuff could hang. The question us how it might work in game.  Would a hedge witch trying to cast an "unseen" charm in a field have the same chance as a wizard casting an "invisibility" spell in the same field?  That is where the GM knowledge comes in. 
     
    The environment is an "unknown" to the player.  That unknown is what introduces variability, the difficulties the player will not know of (and character might be able to find out).  As such, I think there will be two approaches, prepared and unprepared. 
     
    In a prepared situation each spellcaster might use various skills to understand the environment, or it may be the home territory of the caster and thus "known".  That may counter some or all of the difficulties. The player might also proffer a skill and item that will deliver a bonus to the roll.
     
    In an unprepared situation only skill and item will help.
     
    The GM should have a range of environmental issues such as "wild magic area", "local nature spirits", "on a ley-line" and a variety of other things that have a variety of +/-2 modifiers.   It is subjective rather than objective.  The GM sees the hedge witch, in an area known to them, and decide that the "local nature spirits" are friendly and provide a +2 to their magic roll.  The GM might decide the same spirits deliver a -2 to the wizard, or perhaps are neutral to the wizard casting invisibility but might be unfriendly to them changing the environment.
     
    This should be a discussion with the players, the casters will be aware of positive or negative influences.  These should not be subject to rolls at the time of casting.  However, the player might seek to better prepare for magic by getting to know their environment ahead of casting (meaning more opportunity for either role play with active environment such as nature spirits or lore exploration with passive environment such as ley-lines or wild magic areas). Such preparation can turn neutral or negative elements into positive ones (and may entail rolls to "persuade" or "understand" the elements).
     
    This also means it is much more dangerous taking on a spellcaster on their own ground, all the environmental elements will be positive for the home-caster and likely, at best, neutral to other casters (unless they are of a similar tradition and know the location).
     
    I would also be open to a system where the magic roll delivers boons or complications.  I think that every six rolled in a successful cast delivers a boon to the caster while every one rolled in an unsuccessful cast causes a complication. These things do not change the spell but deliver additional benefits or complications to the caster, such as gaining a positive relationship with the nature spirits or understanding of the magical ambience of ancient ruins.
     
    I think this begins drawing the players into the setting by giving them game-relevant reasons to do that.  It also means that casting lightning bolt on the site of an ancient battlefield might be more unreliable than wgen cast in defence of a prepared campsite.
     
    All-in-all, I think this would begin to make magic more magical, as the unknowns of the environment have the potential to make things more unreliable, while the boons and complications blur the edges of success and failure.
     
    Doc
     
    Edit: I will cross post this in the Fantasy HERO forum where it probably belongs...
  9. Like
    Steve reacted to Drhoz in Quote of the Week from my gaming group...   
    Terzo's friend Bertuscio, lawyer with a night job of vigilante. The portrait was him 20 years ago, so the Beard of Awesome is no longer ginger.
     


  10. Like
    Steve reacted to Drhoz in Quote of the Week from my gaming group...   
    Pathfinder - Hell's Rebels : A Song Of Silver
     
    Rajira’s player: I must say I’m impressed by this module - not many reuse maps in a sensible fashion.
    Terzo’s player: Well, it’s probably going to be a museum of the Rebellion once everything settles down
    Rajira’s player: At least that’s a step up from tourist trap.
    Ayva’s player: It’s been a headquarters for evil cultists twice. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it’s happened twice. 
     
    Terzo and Rajira press their ears to the next door, and can hear some shuffling and invoking of verbal spell components. We all rush in before they can set up anything as nasty as we would in their situation. The remaining cultists have already retreated into the adjacent chamber, but that doesn’t stop Rajira neatly sniping somebody messing with a component pouch. They probably shouldn’t be gushing green blood, but that's more likely to be the result of Rajira’s venom rather than anything inherent in their own biology. Mahat rushes it to apply some more close-range violence and discovers that one of the spells the enemy were casting was Invisibility on some of the Skinsaw Cultists. The fight rapidly devolves into massed spellfire in and out of the doorway, and our respective combat monsters get into a scrum. Combat monsters like a Summoned Dire Tiger. 
     
    Civilla OoC: I summoned a Shadow Blender.
     
    One of the people on the other side looks familiar - we may have met her at that dinner party in Vyre. Mind you, she is currently in her Hybrid Wererat form, so we don’t know for sure.
     
    Shimza: I want to go home, I've got a craving for souls of the damned. Or pickles.
    Rajira: Why not both?
     
    Terzo does have to uncomfortably close to the melee to apply medical aid. Mahat certainly needs it.
     
    Mahat: I get by with a little help from my friends.
    Terzo: That may well be, but do you get high with a little help from a Euphoric Cloud?
    Rajira: Probably not, he’s got a racial resistance to Poison effects.
     
    Mahat: Set kukri to ‘frappe’.
     
    The mysterious wererat woman from Vyre does try to flee, and we catch up with her as she is frantically trying to open the door that Civilla Arcane Locked earlier.
     
    Hei-Fen: *rattle rattle rattle* SH**!
    Terzo: Have you tried ‘pull’ not ‘push’?
    Dire Tiger: BIG RODENT *POUNCE, CLAW CLAW BITE RAKE RAKE*
     
    Civilla abuses a few magical tricks to try and get some answers out of the Vyrish rat-lady, since the Dire Tiger got a bit enthusiastic with the gut-raking, but her departing spirit seems unwilling to co-operate.
     
    Hei-Fen’s Corpse: F*** yoooooou… *blegh*
     
    Shimza hands out little pieces of paper to everybody still bleeding from our various wounds.
     
    Shimza: Hold this until I tell you to open it.
    Ayva: This just says ‘Feugo-’*FWOOM*
     
    Having a Phoenix-blooded changeling in the party is so useful sometimes. Even though it’s always startling when a fireball goes off in your hand and you feel better afterwards.
     
    Shimza: What do I do with the other hundred of these Fire Traps?
     
    Maybe they’ll be useful in her and Civilla’s long term plans to become the Immortal Witch-Queens of Kintargo. They’re already attracting a coven. When these are the kind of characters playing on the 'good' side of the Rebellion, you're already right to be concerned by the players' plans for the Hell's Vengeance campaign, when the PCs are working the Chellish side of events.
     
    We’ll have to cart all these bodies downstairs to decapitate and bury (read: feed to a giant chthonic amphibian) anyway - it’ll make it much harder for anybody to interrogate them, for one thing. Especially if we dispose of the heads elsewhere. Of course given how many people we’ve got rid of down here previously, the psychic signature of the Hidden Monastery must be getting a bit polluted.
     
    Civilla: There may be a haunting problem here later. 
     
    We do find something of particular interest on Hei-Fen’s body. A contract, signed by Barzillai Thrune himself, promising that the Inquisitor and his underlings will turn a blind eye to the cult’s activities, as long as they use their ritual murders to destabilise the situation in Kintargo.
     
    Rajira: Oh ho, we’re going to get SO much use out of that.
    Ayva: Chelaxian bureaucracy wins again. They record EVERYTHING.
     
    Barzillai will probably guess that the Silver Ravens or most accurately the Ghosts of Kintargo are at it again when the entire Skinsaw cult vanishes off the face of the planet. Certainly, without the threat of horrible murder and mutilation for anybody breaking curfew his grip on the city crumbles still further.
     
  11. Like
    Steve reacted to dmjalund in Combat Value   
    Why are you shouting?
  12. Like
    Steve reacted to Christopher R Taylor in IYO why is GURPS better for Low powered campaigns and HERO is better for High powered campaigns?   
    I question the premise, I have no problem running low powered games with Hero and have done so for 30+ years.
  13. Thanks
    Steve reacted to assault in Starting Spider-Man = Teen Champion?   
    With Superboy, you could go back to the 1945 version, where leaping over a barn or outrunning a deer were amazing feats. He was weaker than the 1938 version of his adult self. Even the world's greatest superhero has to begin somewhere...

    The Smallville TV version is a more modern (and powerful) take.

    I thought about the Marvel family, but omitted them to keep things short. Still, Captain Marvel, Captain Marvel Jnr and Mary Marvel are all potential teen heroes.

    I skipped the Legion, because they are such radical outliers. Still, there were enough stories where individual members came back in time and did things, that they could be used as a source. In the first appearance of Ultra Boy, he only had (used?) his vision powers. His full power set wasn't mentioned until his second(?) appearance. The result was Cyclops with X-ray and telescopic vision. (And a flight gizmo, because the Legion.) Perfectly fine.
  14. Like
    Steve got a reaction from Mr. R in Pointless Champions in a Fantasy Campaign.   
    The best literature example might be Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring. Gandalf and Aragorn on one end of the scale and Frodo and the other hobbits on the opposite end.

    However, I think it could be said that the top end in power characters didn’t seem to gain as many XPs over the course of the campaign as the four hobbits did. Sam and Frodo both showed quite a bit of growth. Aragorn seemed to be mainly gaining perks along his storyline. And Gandalf didn’t seem to be more powerful, but more like he had his restraints removed.
     
    Maybe not quite pointless, but fantasy seems to favor growth in power and ability more than superheroes seem to emphasize. Peter Parker hasn’t seemed to change a lot in his powers from when he was a teenager, but Frodo and Bilbo both changed in their abilities over the course of their heroic journeys.
  15. Like
    Steve got a reaction from tkdguy in Pointless Champions in a Fantasy Campaign.   
    The best literature example might be Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring. Gandalf and Aragorn on one end of the scale and Frodo and the other hobbits on the opposite end.

    However, I think it could be said that the top end in power characters didn’t seem to gain as many XPs over the course of the campaign as the four hobbits did. Sam and Frodo both showed quite a bit of growth. Aragorn seemed to be mainly gaining perks along his storyline. And Gandalf didn’t seem to be more powerful, but more like he had his restraints removed.
     
    Maybe not quite pointless, but fantasy seems to favor growth in power and ability more than superheroes seem to emphasize. Peter Parker hasn’t seemed to change a lot in his powers from when he was a teenager, but Frodo and Bilbo both changed in their abilities over the course of their heroic journeys.
  16. Like
    Steve reacted to Mr. R in Pointless Champions in a Fantasy Campaign.   
    Just as it says in the title.
     
    Take the concept of Pointless Champions (As per the Article: Pointless Champions.  )  And apply it to you game.  
     
    How would you make it work?
  17. Like
    Steve reacted to Grailknight in Starting Spider-Man = Teen Champion?   
    Actually, The Legion fits very well with the typical teen hero campaign if you discount the Kryptonians and Daxamites. 
     
    They each had a single power, there's plenty of teen angst and romance and while they had less adult supervision, they were more integrated with law enforcement in the form of the Science Police and the United Federation of Planets.
  18. Haha
    Steve reacted to Dr. MID-Nite in Best Quotes or your Characters or Villains   
    " You cannot stop me! "
    " You know where every bad guy who ever said that to us is? "
    " At large? "
  19. Like
    Steve reacted to Lord Liaden in Best Quotes or your Characters or Villains   
    Deadeye, an undead detective, when the target of a PC's sarcastic comment: "Ha! You kill me... Oh, wait..."
     
    Bronze Knight, a Captain America paragon type: "Being super doesn't make us better than anyone else. Just bigger."
     
    Slammer, a brick whose father is a famous lawyer, when disparagingly compared to his sire by a villain: "My Dad fights injustice too, with great words. Here's my approach."
     
    Facade, a fantasy illusionist wizard, confronting an evil warlord: "You make the world a Hell for your victims. Let me show you Hell."
     
    As the god Apollo in the Champions Universe, when a PC called him just a figment of people's imagination (I had this one ready): "Indeed? And what were you before your parents rutted together? A streak of slime? And what tiny fraction of my lifetime ago was that, exactly?"
  20. Like
    Steve reacted to Hermit in Best Quotes or your Characters or Villains   
    I played Gaze in Winterhawk's Vegas campaign on Hero Central years ago. Gaze was kind of 'what if Batman had mind control?' experiment, mind you, with ethical restraints (of course, he didn't always TELL the villains of his ethical restraints and cultivated a fearsome rep when he could). At one game, Gaze got to 'question' a villain who was operating a killer robot from what said scumball thought was a safe location. The rest of the villain's team was out there, lives were endangered, that sort of thing.
     
    Gaze's line was: "You lay stripped bare of your illusion of supremacy, vulnerable, helpless... and yet, there is so much more I can take from you. Your mind, your knowledge of things technical, I can make you FEAR machinery as much as you fear the light, you cowardly wretch, you miserable quivering pile of refuse. I will ask this and you will answer, do not make me go into the pathetic pit of your mind and take it from you, and do not," He rears his open palm ready to strike while holding up the 'Annihilator' with the other hand, "make me sully my hands on you. Where are the other members of the Shift? What are their plans? Answer, before I get upset and... get creative."
     
  21. Like
    Steve reacted to Cygnia in A Thread For Random RPG Musings   
  22. Sad
    Steve reacted to Sailboat in The Most Grandiose Crime?   
    Back a couple of decades ago, I had a neo-Confederate group try to start a second US Civil War.  At that time it seemed far-fetched.
  23. Like
    Steve got a reaction from Christopher R Taylor in Always on- for Invisibility   
    There’s actually a 4th Edition Dark Champions villain with this sort of ability. As I recall, it’s invisibility versus all senses and is always on. Her crimes are drastic attempts to be noticed.
  24. Like
    Steve got a reaction from DentArthurDent in Monster Hunter 1855   
    After some delays due to holidays, illnesses and personal business, we had another session of the campaign.
     
    Sam achieved the trifecta by getting bitten by a zombie, in addition to his previous bites by a vampire and werewolf. The trio intercepted a message to ‘Lord Black’ and ended up accepting a bounty from him when he confronted them the next morning. He had some Pinkerton goons with him at the time, and he was quite put out because someone burned down the eucalyptus trees he was growing to provide railroad ties for his planned railroad from Texas to California.
     
    Most of the session was spent dealing with Bella Rosa, a headless witch with a sizable collection of severed heads she can use as her own. Her favorites were kept in a closet in her room.
     
    The womanizing Cortez gets quite willingly seduced by her, and he ends up increasingly enthralled by her witchcraft. Doyle and Sam tried to figure out what to do about the creepy but beautiful witch and Doyle ended up using a quantity of dynamite to blow up her hacienda, and himself. Fortunately, he is a revenant and will eventually recover his missing BOD and regrow his lost body parts.
     
    It is uncertain if the witch survived, but there was no body found in the ruins.
  25. Thanks
    Steve reacted to Drhoz in Quote of the Week from my gaming group...   
    What a relief, Hell's Rebels Season Four didn't end on a cliffhanger and actually got renewed. (sorry for the very long but unavoidable gap since the last session) 
     
    When last we met, Barzillai Thrune's fascist state was being rapidly unravelled by a coalition of artists, intellectuals, and sexual deviants. In particular the Skinsaw Cultists that Thrune imported are being demoralised and in some cases caramelised by our ambush inside Hocus' Phantasmogorium, and they're attempting to get behind us to counterattack. They don't know the building and its secret passages as well as we do. 
     
    They also don't know that Civilla has Arcane Locked the front and side doors.
     
    Rajira: We don’t want any of them escaping after all.
     
    Rajira: So, Civilla, how does this ‘Hungry Earth’ work?
    Civilla: Indiscriminately, as far as I know.
     
    SOMEBODY on the other side of the next wall knows about the secret doors, and is loudly abusing the rest of the cultists, as we get into position to ambush them again. 
     
    GM: I don’t think any of them have even SEEN you yet.
     
    Mahat throws the door open and everybody who can throws AoE spells into the room, regardless of any works of art or furnishings still left from the original business.
     
    Shimza: FIREBALL
    Ayva: Those belong in a museum. 🙁
    Rajira: This isn’t a museum, it's a tourist trap.
    Civilla: FIREBALL
    Ayva: Would a third fireball be a bit much?
    Rajira: I don’t think so.
    Ayva: FIREBALL. The solution to many problems.
     
    Mahat can see the Skinsaw leader - she’s a beautiful humanoid with spider legs behind her.
     
    Mahat: Well that's OK, I’m a snake man myself. You’re something, but I really don’t care what. Hey people, Spider Person!
     
    After the explosions a significant proportion of the next room is glowing a dull red.
     
    Ayva: We’ll consider that difficult ground, shall we?
     
    The surviving latecomers from the first room take note of the repeated KABOOMS, reconsider some of their life choices, and instead look for somewhere to hide. The Spiderwoman seems to have avoided most of the conflagration, however. She attempts to Web Mahat, which at least is thematically appropriate. Rajira attempts to Fly behind her, and gets bitten. Despite her species' naturally toxic nature, she is Poisoned, and now has all the mental acuity of a poisonous mushroom.  Bertuscio doesn’t achieve much either. Terzo attempts a Blistering Invective to set the Spiderwoman on fire.
     
    Terzo: Could you do us all a small favour and JUST DIE? *Intimidate check fails* I don’t think she’s going to oblige us.
     
    GM: The Spiderwoman attempts a ‘if I’m going down I’m going to take you down with me’ and is now realising she cannot, in fact, take you down with her.
     
    Rajira starts shaking off the venom while her cousin starts cutting off all extraneous limbs off the Spiderwoman.
     
    Rajira OoC: A Restoration would be appreciated right now.
    Civilla OoC: Shimza has a few bottles of Cleric in a Can.
    Rajira OoC: Useful when we don’t have a cleric in the party.
    Civilla OoC: Better! They don’t complain, b***h, or demand a tithe.
     
    Bertuscio and Terzo get repeatedly referred to  as Bert and Ernie. Which is less than ideal since Bertuscio skill with a whip now get him pictured as Bert in a Gimp suit.
     
    Terzo's player: Thank you SO much for that.
    Ayva's player: Now you know what it's like living in my head.
     
    Mahat and Bertuscio hunt down the cultists that think they can hide.
     
    Mahat: Did you HAVE to get their blood all over me?
    Ayva OoC: ‘Only when it’s funny’
    Rajira OoC: Which is itself amusing because Mahat has no sense of humour.
     
    Of course, there’s still half the museum to scour clean of murder-cultists. And we have no idea if they’re using the underground monastery for their own foul purposes.
     
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