DF Eastmarch: Boss Fight and House Rules

Last night we executed the attack on what we knew going in was going to be a Boss Fight, running through the adventure from You All Meet at an Inn (Pyramid 3/98).

This was to be my second game. I’m playing a Martial Artist (An-Men Xingzhe) with a Thief lens, built on 275 points with only 25 points in Disadvantages. We all like the outcome of having fewer things to remember, as you really need to stack up 5-10 different disads to hit the -50 total you start with. AnMen Xingzhe means something like “passes through doors”

In any case, we had approached a door, and heard a voice chanting from within. We were joined by two new characters – folks keep crawling down the well – and we first went to investigate the new voices. Turned out it was a 6″ tall pixie (a Sage, I believe), and also a ranger-type (a Scout).

So now we were more. We have Chuff, a Triger warrior, Toby, a Saint who is a pretty fair combatant, a Bard, a Martial Artist, a Scout, and a pixie spellcaster.

Game On

I don’t know why, but I was convinced that past the door would be some sort of spellcasting cultist and a small army of mooks. Well, turns out I was very wrong.

Our pixie cast Haste on me: +1 to Move and Dodge. Then it was time. At some point, the Bard sung a song of protection, too: a force field that provided either 8 or 12 ablative DR

My guy opened the door, only to be greeted by two thrown harpoons. Parry Missile Weapons for the win, and a reminder that unarmed parries with Karate are one-handed.

I couldn’t retreat because we were stacked up too tightly, negating a huge advantage of Karate/Judo: the +3 bonus to Parry on a retreat. Nonetheless, I managed to bat both thrown missiles aside.

I ran into the room, only to find myself blasted by a cone attack from a statue, some 15 yards or so to my left. This was a FP attack, no chance to get out of the area of effect for me due to the width of the cone. That hit me for 5 FP…which was basically half my total. I could only spend 3 more before I was over the “less than 1/3 FP” threshold.  And the Martial Artist uses FP the same way spellcasters do: most of the Kool Stuff they can do is powered by chi, which is based on FP.

Oops.

Also, turns out that our foe, seen slithering away as she reeled in her harpoons, was not a chief occultist plus a small army of mobs. It was a six-armed demon-snake: a Peshkali. If you’re thinking ‘a small Marilith demon’ you’re not wrong.

Very quickly we realized that there was a blue statue, a red statue, and a green statue. We all immediately thought “ice, fire, poison” and eventually were proved correct.

We moved into the fight zone. The pixie and I moved directly towards the blue statue; others moved into the middle of the room, which was divided roughly in thirds by horizontal, full-height, foot-thick walls. They got blasted by a 15-yard long, 5-yard wide fire cone. Ouch.

In later blows, they were saved thanks to the Bard’s song of protection. That forcefield would go on to save the day one more time, later in the fight, too:  Song of Protection ablative DR vs physical attacks. While it didn’t protect against the cone of cold or the fire breath, it did save the  Scout when he got too close to the Peshkali and she stabbed him in the heart with two spears: he could have been as badly wounded as Snowflake but the DR shield absorbed 100% of the hits. [thanks to ML for better details than I remembered originally]

Also, there was a giant, flickering, wide, world-of-warcraft style portal open on the west wall. This became important.

Whack a Mole

Pixie and Martial Artist proceeded to try and kill the statues. They were just hollow clay, but we didn’t know that. They were also small: SM -5, which we did know. We were using Martial Arts options: Committed and Telegraphic attacks, so we could basically Committed/Telegraphic attack to offset the size.

I figured “attack ice statue with fire” was a good idea; turns out clay statues were vulnerable to crushing damage, so my telescoping weapon imbued burning seven secret kicks attack was much less effective than just a plain old kick. It took a few moments (turns) for us to figure out the best way to destroy these things was just plain old crushing…but each turn, once the statues had been triggered/enabled, they attacked wide areas with ice, fire, poison and that was taking a toll. Area effect attacks can’t be dodged unless you can step out of the area, and the room precluded that fairly effectively.

Snowflake the Pixie and I fairly effectively took out first the ice statue, then fire fell pretty easily. We decided to slam the poison one, and the dice were not my friends. I managed to basically run full-force into the 4-foot-tall pillar on which the statue was placed. Thanks to Immoveable Stance this did not wind up with me having basically nutted myself, writhing on the ground. It was, however, both hilarious and embarrassing.

Each time we destroyed a statue, though, the portal rang, flashed, boomed, or otherwise reacted. Wound up deafening something like three characters. The poison statue had a variable effect, so a few of us wound up drunk, nauseous, itching, or some combination thereof. Each of these is “only” a -2 or so, plus some behavior conditions…but they add up.

In any case, once our Keystone Cops escapades with the statues was over, I’d been frozen once, my compatriots had been saved by the song of protection’s ablative DR at least once, and now it was six on one vs the Supernaturally Durable peshkali.

Edit: I got Supernaturally Durable wrong in the original writeup. It doesn’t allow crippling until HP drop below zero, and then even so there’s a thing that has to happen before creature actually dies. In this case, the arms were key.

Before we (seemingly) all went deaf, our saint, Toby, had shouted out that the key to victory was crippling the peshkali’s arms. She was very mobile, and with two shields, two demon-forged swords, and two harpoons…that was a lot of badness to throw our way at any given time. And Team Goodness had scattered themselves all over. Walls were effectively used by all parties to protect flanks and sides for a while, and turns spent running around to get eyes on target while still avoiding being harpooned.

We also really, really rolled poorly in several instances. This is the way the cookie crumbles, but that last fight was somewhat ugly.

Highlights?

Lots of fumbles and crits on both sides. We thought when peshkali crit failed an attack on AnMen and wound up spinning with her back to him, that was the end.

Some nice chunky cripples by kick (me), sword (Chuff), and bow (Chistopher the Scout; character’s name, not player’s).

AnMen grappled the snake from behind. This occupied her for two or three turns, allowing several more arms to be crippled in the process. In the end, I spent most of my control points not getting hit, but . . .

…then she reversed her sword and stabbed behind her. Since I was grappling her, this contact allowed targeting, and even with the Wild Swing she impaled AnMen for 12 HP of injury through his DR 2; even with HT 12 he failed his KO roll. Zzzzzz. And he’s out.

Peshkali also critted on a hit vs the Pixie, causing enough injury to have him roll for consciousness and death. Flew to another player, KO’d mid-flight, said “catch me” as she did, but he biffed his roll and wound up spiking the pixie to the ground instead. Oops. Eventually we got the little tennis ball to someone with a healing potion; a bit of shaken-not-stirred later, and death was no longer imminent.

We called the fight at game-end, with some of our big hitters still in the fight, three or four arms crippled, and finally bringing major force to bear. The Saint was using Smite, which brought the creature to lower than 0 HP, which was needed to enable crippling those darn arms. Once that happened (and Chuff’s flaming broadsword and Christopher’s cutting arrows made it a matter of if, not when, as the shields were taken out of the picture), crippled arms plus a whole lot of Smite, and by the time we accomplished all six dis-armings (get it?) we’d have likely done enough injury that it would also be the end of snek-lady.

Even so, the Force was not strong with us this fight, so it’s possible it could have ended badly.

Rules and Observations

One thing about this game that is different is that Kevin, the GM, has a few house rules in play. Not many…but they really make a difference in the feel of things.

Firstly, and perhaps sort of obviously: whenever we have to choose between the Dungeon Fantasy RPG and Basic plus the Dungeon Fantasy worked genre examples, we choose the Dungeon Fantasy RPG.

Templates are guidelines and template discipline is relaxed; thus Martial Artist-Thief. Non DFRPG templates (sage, saint) and Nordlond and other races (triger, pixie) are allowed.

The biggest one is a re-tune of ST-based damage. Thrust is unchanged…but swing is “just” Thrust+2 points, mimicking the effect of an all-out attack, really. This has a profound effect on template balance. More on that later. Weapon Master is also tuned to a flat +1 or +2.

Trained by a Master also includes Imbue 2 and Weapon Master (Unarmed) at no extra cost.

The practical effect here is that the (rough) doubling of swing vs thrust at ST 14 is tuned down a bit. Weapon Master not increasing damage by +2 per die means at ST 17 or 18 . . . usually easily in reach for Barbarian, and Knight if they try hard . . . is no longer looking at a base damage (including WM) on the order of 3d+5, then add weapon. They’re still impressive: 2d base swing, +2 for WM, ain’t bad. It’s the same damage as a 9mm pistol, and then you add +1 cut or +2 cut for a broadsword or axe. But again, it means that the top end damage with a regular attack is more like 2d+4 rather than 3d+7. And compared to the typical martial artist punching at 1d-1 base, adding on for WM (only +2 anyway at this ST level) and kicking with karate (also +2) of 1d+3 without heavy boots, the knight with the axe is only doubling, rather than tripling, the output of the Martial Artist. It brings the templates closer. It also means you can throw strong monsters at a party and not just paste the little guys. Lower front-line damage means the little hitters get to play more.

This is a GOOD change.

Martial Artist and GURPS on Hard Mode

That said, playing the game is a matter of knowing your strengths, and I’ve never played a Martial Artist character before. Some observations:

If you’re a Karate-18, Judo-16 guy like I am, do not grapple. Judo is nice to parry-throw. But do not mix it up in close combat. That’s the job of a much stronger Wrestler, either with just Wrestling skill (which has ST bonuses you need, is easier than Judo as well) or even better with the Wrestling Master template.

My guy not once elected or had the option to utilize retreat as part of his parry. That takes what really ought to be something like six Weapon Master/TBaM parries at 15/15/14/14/13/13 and starts it at 12. That’s a huge deal, as the last few parries are only 50-50 and (roughly) 35%-35% effective. Facing a peshkali and NOT enabling my retreat was near-suicidal.

Strike, do not grapple. See above. I don’t have the ST to apply sufficient control points to . . . anyone . . . relative to the impact of those points. Striking from a distance is the way to go for me, specifically using my Trademark Move, plus Seven Secret Kicks to basically play olympic TKD tag with folks torso and face. Damage is a respectable 1d+4, and if I don’t walk directly into a 5 FP attack on turn 1, I can play the game of kicking from range 2-5 using the Telescoping Weapon imbuement. One MUST close in to Close combat to grapple; I can boot to the head from U Can’t Touch This distance.

Do Not Get hit. I have DR 2 thanks to Tough Skin, but that really isn’t much of anything. I’m not strong enough to armor up. So I need to stay mobile, and use my parries to keep my formerly pristine skin less punctured.

Parting Shot

So really good lessons learned here, but honestly, without some of the house rules keeping the swing-weapon folks from completely outclassing the thrusters, and without TBaM including Imbue and WM(unarmed), the Martial Artist is indeed GURPS on “hard mode.”

But with the rules in place, I feel quite viable. I need to play to my strengths, and the boss fight in question above didn’t allow that. I had to make much use of move-and-attack to prevent the statues from crushing us early in the fight. That cost me my skill (Wild Swings on Move-and-Attack capped at 9). Close quarters in many places cost me my parry. And a few sub-optimal choices (I should have released the grapple and retreating-parried that near-fatal sword thrust, not tried to hand-free parry my way out of it) made it school of hard knocks and bowel resections.

But there’s nothing wrong with AnMen that loot and experience won’t fix.

My goals?

I want some sort of enchanted armor with Deflect on it, ideally Deflect +2. That is the equivalent of a medium shield, and if I go low-DR, I need that.

Another 40 points in ST will help. Not all at once, but instead of ST 11 (Basic Lift 24 lbs), a more respectable 45 lbs at ST 15 would allow a full suit of Lightened Mail or Segmented Plate (or more, if I get Lighten 50% instead of lighten 25%), boosting my DR to a more-respectable DR 4-6 depending on armor choice and attack type.

I have 19 Character Points to spend out of the gate. I’m thinking of dropping 8 right into Karate, giving Karate-20. That makes my base parry (I have enhanced parry/unarmed 1) a highly respectable 14.

That leaves me 11 points to go, which is probably (for now) best as +1 to overall ST. I could do Mantis Strike (striking ST 2, chi powered -10%) and eke out another full point of damage, but I feel like the extra HP and basic lift that come with full ST is where I need to be.

So basically, more ST and some loot to turn into DR and DB is where he’s going next. Once I have a better level of protection here, I probably should boost Perception if I’m going to play party pathfinder…though now that we have a Scout, that role might not fall to me. He’s +1 Per relative to me, but I have Traps. So probably even up.

I look forward to this guy’s progression over time. Martial Artist has tremendous room for growth, especially with the breadth of chi powers available. Dropping 120 of 275 points right into DX means you start out imbalanced (I mean, it’s needed) and grow into more. So each and every game I will see notable improvements in capability.