Been doing alot of double posts lately. But this one is important enough to warrant its own post because there is a lot of stuff I want to cover, and go over things that I think worked and what I think didn't work. This was basically just me figuring out how combat will go and how to make it better in the future. Which is why it only lasted one round and I had Otto clean up house afterwards. I didn't wanna get bogged down for something like this, especially when we got more fighting to do in the future.
But before I get more into all of that, lets go through the Dice rolls!
Jeanna was going to be given two rolls. The first to see if she killed the guy she charged at, and the 2nd to see if she would break through the group and charge at the crossbowmen.
Her first roll was a 14 but I gave her a combat modifier of +6 due to her skills as a warrior as listed in her strengths plus the general weakness of the opponent she was facing. Which gave her a natural 20. So she cleaved right through the guy and decapitated him. Due to that good roll I would have taken anything that was a 10 or higher for her to break through and melee the crossbowmen. Unfortunately she rolled a 1, with the combat modifier only gives her 7 so she got bogged down and whacked around a bit. But hey, she managed to insta-kill one guy.
Selia rolled a 10 and I gave her a combat modifier of +4 due to her skill and the fact that her opponent's back was turned as he was preparing to attack Jeanna. So he was dispatched well enough.
Henry decided to take on four people and I decided to roll for each foe he fought. If he rolled a high enough number he would kill his first opponent and move on to the next one. If he rolled low he would get push back by the remaining enemies. His dice numbers looked like this:
13 with a combat modifier of +6=19, insta-kill
12+6=18, another insta-kill
6+6=12 his rampage stops here as a punch to the face halts him. But it's high to let him deliver a injury to the opponent. Now that he has been halted he loses the opportunity to roll against the fourth enemy. If there had been a 2nd round he would have rolled then.
Now I gave both Henry and Jeanna the same modifier due to the fact that even though their fighting styles as our "fighters" are different, they are still both effective against an enemy as weak as these ones. This will change in the future depending on the enemy and you may find yourself at a disadvantage.
Renvar, since his weaknesses state that he isn't much of a fighter actually gets a combat modifier of -2. Thankfully he still rolled really well with an 18. So a total of a 16 is still enough to wound and bring down the enemy to serve as interrogation later. Nice Job!
Coby's attack with her sparkflash bolt is what really turned the tide of the battle. I gave her a combat modifier of +3 so with her dice roll of 13, it was more than enough to kill one of the crossbowmen and slow down and distract the other archers from firing.
Erin also has a combat modifier of +3 with her magical support. Expect her modifier to get larger the more experienced she gets. I know that applies to everyone but it especially applies to her. Everyone should know from DnD that mages get OP the more they level up >.> Either way it was enough to fuck with the archers and make them miss their shots. I rolled for the archers as well though I didn't record those down. Just know that they all sucked and missed.
I'll talk more about Nuit in a moment, but a combination of his good stealth, plus the distraction from Coby's sparkflash bolt resulted in him getting a combat modifier of +7. With his roll of 15 it was insanely easy for him to sneak up behind Henry's remaining opponent and kill him quickly. Because his roll was so high (22) I decided to give him the kill for the man Henry had injured earlier.
Now onto our final two, the archers that put an end to the battle. Both Triversia and Keevah fired three shots and here were the results
Triversia had a combat modifier of +3 due to the blue potion he drank
1st arrow was a 6 +3=9 complete miss
2nd arrow was a 8 +3=11 wounded but not life threatening
3rd arrow was a 16 +3=19 killshot.
Keevah had a combat modifier of +5 because of her experience and training as an archer
1st arrow was a 1 +5=6 clear miss
2nd arrow was a 9 +5=14 respectable hit
3rd arrow was a 19 +5=24 critical hit. I added pinning his head to the tree as a cool visual because crits are cool.
Now if you're wondering if I rolled anything for Otto. Lol no. He's insanely strong and there is really no reason to roll for him. I think this is the only time he will ever fight directly by your side so don't rely on him.
Now I asked a friend what she thought of the post and she gave me some pretty good criticism. Namely that those players who just decided to spam attacked were always more effective than those who planned our a single lethal attack. Basically discouraging tactical thinking and roleplaying. Which is something I'm against and have written about in one of my essays on roleplaying. However, she did have good point.
salty sent me a number of PM's about how he'd go about a backstab but it seemed to be no more or less effective than Triversia or Keevah who show arrows. All that effort really was a wash and that's not what I want. I want the players to think tactically and work as a team because down the line there will be insanely powerful, nightmare inducing opponents who you will have to fight where a perfect crit will only dent them. You'll have to think smart and this IC post I put up, while having a lot of nice fluff of dudes dying to your badass skills, isn't a good method of nurturing that mindset. This isn't supposed to be the
Morrowind school of combat where you hit the attack button and let the RNG in the backround do it's thing until the giant mudcrab dies. So I have to do better.
I also think that at some point as the players get stronger I'll have to up the Dice to match your skills. Instead of a D20 I'll use a D30... or a D50... then finally a D100 (I have seen those things, super cool but are like 14 dollars).
I have also edited the IC post and fixed it up a bit. Mainly so I won't be cringing at it when I read it. Even though this combat IC was far from perfect, I had a lot of fun writing it and I hope you had a lot of fun reading it and are looking forward to more fights that last more than one round. I have a few shit-your-pants ideas for combat scenarios in the future that hopefully I'll be able to implement. Some are super serial, while others are taking the piss but I think you'll all enjoy them in the future <3