Homebrew tabletop game system thread the II

[Simon_Jester]

Larric has phobias; spiders are not among them.

"Don't worry, if it's not as big as you we won't mistake you for it, and if it's as big as you, it's all yours."

Larric sizes up the spiderball, decides against loosing the arrow into it- as noted, no obvious center to target. Instead he zig-zags out with a swirling crackle of high-tension electricity, forking and fanning into the mass of insects- probably no individual arc is all that dangerous to a man-sized target, but as a bug-zapper the aggregate effect might do.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

They're not interested in live and let live either, unfortunately; given the raw numbers Dirt is probably fastest and gets to act first, much to Lisanna's grumbling as she had been about to incinerate them, but Dirt moves before she can say anything. There is a definite friendly fire hazard here, actually- Lisanna's choice of words was unfortunate, but cut her some slack, it's been a very long day already.

Things get frantic for a couple of seconds, and when the dust clears, what happens is this; Dirt drops on the baitball before it can get fully unpacked. It doesn't squish that easily. Some go crunch, and smell horrible, like flesh dissolving in acid; more try to swarm all over him. Fifi tries to fend them off, picking them up in her beak and throwing them away or smashing them off each other, but she can only reach so much.

Lisanna makes an eduated guess about how thick Dirt's skin is and tailors it accordingly- apparently tracing the runeforms with the tip of her blade; snowflakes of fire fall into the melee, the spiders shriek and die when they are hit, there's not enough power behind each of them to do much more than singe Dirt's hair. The ones that try to break away, Larric's lightning fan can take care of.

We...could have coordinated that better.' she admits. 'You hit the big things?' she suggests to Dirt.

[Simon_Jester]

IC:

Looking at Alfred, who would probably have charged in much like Dirt did given a few heartbeats more time, Larric nods. "Anything you can see where to hit to kill it, warrior's work for certain- but killer bugs, ghosts, green clouds of eating-fog, that sort of thing... more of a magery line." He inclines his head deeply to Lisanna.

OOC:

What does our party's resident officer corps have to say about tactics?

[Panzersharkcat]

(OOC: Kill it with fire. I'll make an IC post in the morning. Kind of tired right now. Finally started work and I was kept pretty busy for most of my shift today.)

[Panzersharkcat]

(OOC: I left ROTC after two years, by the way. Feral stayed the whole way. Anyway, onto the IC stuff.)

"Indeed. I want all close-range fighters to stay close and protect the spell-casters and archers. Dirt nearly got roasted getting in the way of their spells. I don't want that happening again. Form a shield around them and proceed to move towards the exit."

[Feralgnoll]

Rohal will gather the archers together and make a firing positions.

[Kaelan]

With a crossbow in one hand and an axe in the other Dirt will look at Larric and shrug.
"loose over head or you want box to stand on behind dirt?"

[Simon_Jester]

OOC:

Uh, why's he looking at Larric? Larric was mostly suggesting division of labor- that the guys with swords and bows concentrate on humanoid targets where you can smack it in one place and make it go down, while the wizards concentrate on more... nonhuman things that need an area effect to handle.

Alfred's the one trying to line up archers and swordsman/axeman/hammerdudes.

[Kaelan]

Because if dirt is going to cover a spell caster he'd rather it be one that he trusts.

[Simon_Jester]

IC:

"I think I'll have to duck out to the side, or... arcing over top could work, but I'd rather duck out to the side. Just don't go rushing in before the rest of us get our shots off again, next time those spiders might be nastier."

[Simon_Jester]

IC:

To Dirt: "Let's go over to that end, so nothing creeps round and gets behind us." And, he thinks, so you don't end up getting in the way of anyone's arrows...

OOC:

Okay, so from the sound of it, the formation that emerges from this (Dirt is the obvious one to disagree, if anyone will) puts the three knights and three men at arms in a rough line, with gaps for archers to shoot through. Rohal, the two yeomen, and the crossbowman are forming a "firing" line behind them, while Lisanna and Larric mix into that to provide actual fire if need be.

Dirt would hopefully be anchoring one flank of the front rank, with Larric behind him and half a pace off to the side, in the direction of the center of the line. Personally I visualize Dirt on the right flank, but he'll have a lot to say about that since it's not like Larric can or would pull him over there by main force.

No idea where Alfred and Rohal would want to stand, exactly.

Obviously words like "line" and "rank" must be interpreted a bit loosely, given the disparate weapons and styles of the people involved.

This assumes the cave is wide enough for that; given the number of people milling about in it earlier I would think so. How short are we on illumination?

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Ah, that was fun- away at another short show, but one far away that it was necesary to go up the night before for prep time.


You're still arguing about this- Lisanna has no intention of having anyone stand in front of her- when the next problem arrives. Three men- one frantically waving his arms above his head, yelling and screaming, apparently fending off invisible insects; two back to back, frantically scanning for threats, twords twitching and waving.

The lighting; the wall of the fortress glows, faintly, in an elusive kind of way- they are backlit, and looking into faint illumination. The more people there are in the area, the more brightly it's lit, remember? They add a little brightness. They also look at you, scream and charge.

Even if they are supposed to be on your side, the people you're trying to hold the way open for, they don't seem to know it.

They're a little way across the cavern when a strange magical construct emerges- it looks like a hollow shell of blue fire, sized to fit around a dwarf. It stomps it's way toward you too.

[Simon_Jester]

Larric's not going to argue with Lisanna. More ot the point, I doubt Tamarin or the knight and men-at-arms deVerett detached to guard her will either. Since that makes up five sevenths of our front line right there, she wins her argument about position almost by default.

The screaming maniacs are someone else's problem. Larric concentrates on the construct, his supernatural radar out and pinging actively, with a pulse of Insight magic to try and clarify matters. What is it? Can he tell? Are there any parts of it worth shooting, or trying to dispel somehow?

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

There's an odd sort of doughnut- shape about the magic, that's the best way to picture how it flows; familiar with fire, that is not actually what it is- just looks it.

At a guess there was an item, a relic, a piece of enchanted armour designed to project a field, a shield against hostile magic around the wearer something like this, that was coerced or nobbled into doing so, then itself dissolved into the field; that's the shape of it, although the powers that flow through it are not familiar at all.
(They belong to an entirely diferent system, the very, very old system of the fortress. Going to take a while to figure that out- first guess rather than highly specific would be almost exactly the opposite; broad and highly interpretable, but logically fragile.)

So it is a walking hollow of deceptively not fire inspired to protect itself. For values of protect ranging up to search and destroy. Zap it.

[Simon_Jester]

IC:

All right, let's see what one of his lightning/crossbow bolts does to the thing.

Larric puts a bolt into the thing's center of energy density (I can't very well say 'mass,' now can I?)

OOC:

Although given past performances, I get the feeling the lightning arrows' most effective attribute is their tendency to summon all the other archers onto the same target; every time Larric lets go with one, it either accomplishes very little, or is just one part of turning the target into a pincushion.

[/joke]

[Kaelan]

Dirt will hold is fire until he can see any noticable effect from physical damage. It appears in this place that magic is the main weapon of choice (it may be worth getting the drums out after all.....).

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Hey, Cool. Board's back up, more or less.

The short version; Lisanna deals with the two who have mistaken you for the enemy- does the trick of casting healing magic on her blade, so the wound it makes closes behind it; leaves the stabbed one- and they are both taken down, fluidly and elegantly- alive and unharmed but unable to resist, in post operative shock.

The one fighting invisible bees, that you'll have to deal with.

The lightning arrow hits, causes the blue hollow fire mannequin to react as if it were indeed shot- it spasms, convulses, but then blazes brightly, pulls itself back together- diminished and weakened, that did some damange, but not enough to put it down. Perhaps it can be resisted?

[Simon_Jester]

Larric leaves the crazy man to Alfred and Rohal, who are good at that sort of thing.

"It doesn't fancy being shot, I wonder how it likes being chopped in two- Dirt, could I get a look at your axe for a spell?"

[pun intended]

What he has in mind is something rather like the 'plasma hammer' trick he did on Alfred's maul back at Caer Edric- axes are good for that too, assuming this is a typical metal-head-on-wood-stick construction.

Assuming he has access to the axe, he pulls out a stick of wax and marks his good old cathode runes on the blade, then pushes power into them. Get the conduction electrons swirling around, effectively charge up the axe-head with the mana to keep it giving off static electricity until it strikes and discharges. That's going to manifest mostly as blue-violet filaments of corona discharge dancing off the sharp edges and vertices of the axe-head.

"That might do the trick."

[Panzersharkcat]

If Alfred gets close to him on the move, the crazy guy gets smashed by hammer. Otherwise, it's left to whoever is closest.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

All of that is doable and should work, but it doesn't phase well; that casting takes time during which it can act, and the one who's hurt it so far is, guess who? Someone's going to have to keep it off Larric while he does that.

Tamarin moves out to intercept it.

Alfred has a chance to move towards the bee- plagued one, who is distracted by this; one of the invisible bees gets him just before Alfred's hammer could. He jerks, screams and starts trying to tear his own skin off; it looks as if there's something moving under there.

Alfred can now hear the sound of bees.

Actions?

[Simon_Jester]

IC:

Larric's doing this as a rush job- hopefully Tamarin can last a pass at arms with the thing before Dirt shows up; I don't know how strong it is.

OOC:

Oh crap, there really are invisible bees. Or some kind of parasitic wasps.

Swatting bees with a sledgehammer. Fun!

[Panzersharkcat]

He calls for a halt and an order for fire in that direction. Well, chain lightning will do but he doesn't exactly get that out.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Lisanna yells at Alfred- 'Don't kill him, he's cursed, knock him out.'

Which is odd- Larric's really too busy to notice this, but Rohal isn't, and there's a kind of circularity about the magic here too; recognisable to a good observer, but something only a skilled wizard and an evil git could achieve...

the trick is to start with a simple sensory illusion, and a seed. Use the victim's power of belief against him; a buzzing, little more than that, to make him think he's being attacked by invisible wasps- and tap into his fear so that the stronger he believes it, the more the spell drains from him and the more he actually is.

Whacking him outright- moment of death, swarm of wasps, probably.


Tamarin leads in with her shield, and crouches- so that the lower rim of her shield touches the ground as the upper rim touches it. There's a spark, but it doesn't earth, not that kind of magic.
It swings at her, an edge of the hand strike, she blocks, physically with the blade, mentally with the strictures of the Code; they remain locked in a battle of wills for a couple of seconds- long enough for Larric to scribe a hasty runeform, before it pushes her aside.

[Kaelan]

Dirt will hit the enchanted armour with his axe

OOC before the board goes down again and I can't post

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Dirt swings at it; connects. Right in the chest- it's a damage result and a good one (it's better than two thirds gone)- but it isn't quite done yet. After the light of the flash clears, it's clinging to then end of the axe blade, trying to pull itself along the length of the shaft to get at Dirt. Leaving a trail of blue fire as it goes.

Alfred, Rohal?