Shining Peacock, being an NPC, was entirely unable to spot the PC halos of everyone else and so underestimated them :p


So Shadow, have you actually said how you assumed the game would end as we went along, and which decisions had a major effect that changed how you saw the game ending? It sounds like Vyctar's plans weren't on the radar until our group took an interest in him, Valador's fate was only sealed because of Laughing Shark, and Sun Fox was most likely to have turned evil (so Blue Snake's plans would really have come undone).

One of the other big ones was killing Haxadrom so early in the game. If he'd managed to survive, his presence would have substantially changed the situation, giving somebody who would have acted to try and keep Sun Fox from reverting to your side, an additional player in the complicated situation at the chasm, and possibly even have precipitated an earlier confrontation with Valador, depending on how things played out. So that changed a lot.

Another thing I didn't expect to happen was you all fully managing to convert Alyne to your cause. I don't know if I've said so, but in my original conception of the game, Alyne and the high priest of Vashna were meant to be the same person, but I changed it shortly before you met her, when I realized it didn't really line up well with the rest of what I'd planned. Even so, she was very loyal, so the fact that you managed to turn her really changed things; if you had failed to turn her, then Alyne would have been a spy in your ranks, and that would have severely changed how things went down when you started interacting with the Acolytes.

Rain Feather stabbing Zhira in the back I honestly hadn't expected; I mean, Zhira was an Helghast, so it wasn't that surprising, but I expected the two of them to work together. If Zhira hadn't been killed, Vyctar might have stuck around for longer, and you all would have definitely had better shot of negotiating some sort of truce with him, although as I said before, Vyctar was never going to give up on his plans to become a Darklord. So, that'd have been mostly in your hands; you are correct that I didn't expect Vyctar to make it as far as he did.

A huge one was Rain Feather's IC death. If she hadn't disappeared, than that would not have happened, and in the game as it actually went, I decided to make her IC death meaningful by using it to stop the summoning of Vashna. Without me giving you that one for free, from how things were otherwise going, I honestly expected that the High Priest would have managed to succeed into his plan, and obviously if that happened things would have developed very differently.

Peacock honestly thought Sun Snake was the only person he had to worry about; and in the end it was Sun Snake who forced him to concede his plans, so perhaps he was right? It's hard to say how things would have gone if things went into a fight - you saw what Peacock was capable of in battle, both when he took control of Dusk Rat to help you fight the Nadziran and when he scattered the Acolytes of Vahsna, so don't assume he'd have been an easy kill just because he was not a physical threat. That said, I honestly didn't expect a fight with Peacock to happen.

One that I didn't expect to happen but would have been very impacting if it did was if the second group had failed to find and destroy the Nadziranim camp in the Darklands, which likely would also have included Silver Raven being turned into a Kai-hybrid; that would have likely led to a second attack to the Monastery, probably after you'd gone back there, and a big huge fight with them, although that was avoided long before it became a possibility. This would have likely been compounded if the failure to save Silver Raven was because Swift decided to actually try her hand at killing Colin; that would have probably led to a early confrontation with Valador as it'd have absolutely wrecked his plans, and if Laughing Shark had still been in the game when that happened, I have no idea what she could have done. There's a lot of things that could have caused the situation in Toran to go in different directions, but it's difficult to say for sure what'd have happened without having played it; what the team did was one of the most likely scenario in my head, but until it happened, I had no idea it that'd be the one to win over the other more likely ones.

I can't think of anything else in particular right now that I didn't mention before, but if you have any doubts, feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer! ^_^

I vaguely recall that Silver Raven got fixed based on me OOC asking the GM something like "So this game doesn't seem to have knowledge rolls but is there any chance I would know about some kind of cure for this?", and then being told "Well, there's this super rare leaf thing called an oede leaf..." or whatever it was called, so I just had Dusk Rat mention that since that was all I had...and it turned out someone in the group actually had one of those that they'd picked up from somewhere, so that was handy :D.

If things had ever come to a fight with Peacock I'm really not sure what Dusk Rat would've done - she'd've wanted to assist Peacock, of course, but at the same time wouldn't have wanted to get involved in any fighting, not Kai versus Kai. So we wouldn't really have known what to do there...

Swift knew Peacock was dangerous, Moon Shadow had always warned her of that from Day 1 (which I now realise was based on her own direct experience of his methods).
But ultimately, there was only one person in the world that Swift was truly afraid of, and he was dead (I had wondered if he'd somehow escaped his death and would turn up later as a plot twist, becoming Swift's personal nemesis).
So really, while she knew that Peacock would be no pushover, she wasn't actually afraid of opposing him if she thought it necessary.  What was the worst he could do?  Kill her?  In her early years she'd actually hoped to die, so death was one thing that she wasn't afraid of.  Psychically torture her?  She'd already experienced that, it was nothing new to her, except that now she had the means to fight back.  That would only have made her more determined.

The only thing that really had any power over her was threatening those she cared about, primarily Moon Shadow and Silver Raven.  And I suspect Peacock knew that that was really the only hope he had of exerting some sort of control over her.  But at the same time, that made her see him as a threat and made her more determined to find a way of stopping him.  Ironically, if he hadn't promised to bring Moon Shadow down, Swift might have been content to just leave him for Sun Snake to deal with.

She wouldn't have tried to fight Peacock directly.  In fact, she likely wouldn't have fought him at all, unless he pushed her into a fight.  (And she knew that wasn't his style, so felt fairly safe from direct harm from Peacock himself (though she was alert for the possibility of him mind-manipulating someone else into killing her or setting Red Dawn loose on her)).
Swift's entire skill set (mainly the parts of her inner power that had been awakened as the 'Ghost of Anskaven') was based around infiltration, evading guards and traps, seeking out weak points in the enemy or their infrastructure and striking at those with intent to weaken or destroy the enemy in a single attack.  When she was thinking tactically, she preferred to avoid fighting unless she knew the target was in a weak enough position to take it down instantly before it could raise an alarm or damage her.  And she would never attack an enemy directly head-on unless she had no other choice, her fighting style just wasn't suited to that, like Sabre's was.  Stealth and exploiting weaknesses were her main weapons.
And she was tenacious too.  Though she often seemed to lack patience, she knew the value of waiting for the right moment.  Unless something forced her to act quickly, she could hold back and just watch and wait ;)

(The times when she seemed to go berserk and fight angry was due to mental damage she had suffered early in her life giving her a 'darker personality' based on the Ghost of Anskaven, and that was mostly triggered by some form of stress or heightened emotion or psychic attack.  By the end of the game, her mind had been healed considerably, and she was working tactically rather than angry).

Also, once she started learning crafting from Silver Raven, as well as being a new purpose in her life, it would have also given her another means of creating and exploiting weaknesses in enemies, by creating items and equipment to cover her own weaknesses and enhance her strengths, as well as disrupting or countering enemy abilities to some degree.  She'd already been looking into ways of neutralising Peacock's abilities, as a Plan B in case Sun Snake couldn't talk him around.
And she had Moon Shadow and Silver Raven to talk to about how to defeat or destroy a particular type of magic or craft (such as the means of gaining immortality!)  I doubt either of them would have been enthusiastic about letting that go either.

So yeah, that was a bit longer than I'd expected, but hopefully helps in figuring out if Swift could actually have posed more of a threat than she seemed to.
There was more to her than just an unstable invisible stabby nutjob :)

She was extra-wary around Dusk Rat anyway, since, not knowing about the Seeing Stone she carried or Peacock's ability to act through it, she'd gotten the impression that Dusk had mastered some kind of intensely powerful unstoppable magic.
And she definitely wouldn't have done anything to hurt Dusk.  She did believe she owed her a favour after all.  (Maybe help in breaking free of the Order and settling down in a forest somewhere if things didn't go to plan and Dusk didn't want to stick around any more?)  :)

EDIT: Almost forgot to ask...  Did Peacock ever explain to Dusk exactly what was powering those Seeing Stones?  Kind of wondered how she'd have taken that  ;)
This message was last edited by the player at 17:32, Sat 20 Feb 2021.

I think Swift Fox and Sun Snake spotted Shining Peacock's acolyte illusion had flaws, as Shining Peacock was not one for fine details and was more a big picture thinker. At least that was how it was communicated to me, I believe?

I think Sun Snake was always looking for ways to neutralise Peacock in fear of what he might be, but would not actively have attacked him unless it was revealed he was in some way 'evil'.

I think back in the Maakengorge Sun Snake was trying to feel him out with the area Sun Fox had  purged. It was like 'if he's not false, there's a really cool area he should feel that might make him happy about Kai's power, and if he's false and tried something to sun Snake's defenceless mind there's this nifty ability burning Vashna bit that Snake could hold Peacock too so both Snake and Peacock's their powers get burned, or at least reduced. Which even then, would force Peacock to act through other Kai, not take away his ability to contribute, so it wasn't about taking him out.

Of course, Peacock refused, so it was hard to tell if he was false - so was warned of the danger - or was just paranoid. Since Sun Snake didn't know Peacock thought Snake dangerous, and also was very shielded with his mind by default, he didn't know what to think about that!

If he was eventually shown the light place, Peacock would have found the experience interesting, and probably thanked Sun Snake for it, but as I think I made clear earlier when I answered Swift Fox's Sommerswerd question, he wasn't anywhere near as far gone as to be hurt by the light. Of course, as you noted, Peacock was very much worried about Sun Snake, and thus was not inclined to trust him, certainly not enough to open his mind to him.

And the illusion wasn't imperfect, so much as it was calibrated for non-Kai; Peacock had no reason to expend the effort required to fool you, especially with a potential battle ahead, so he didn't try. Also, he was augmenting the illusion by pushing images into the Acolytes' minds, to cover for the imperfections in the illusion; they didn't saw them because he was shoring up what they were perceiving with psychic attacks. To the Acolytes, the dragon looked 100% real and with no visible defects at all. Which is why he wasn't bothered when the two of you mentioned the illusion wasn't perfect - it hadn't meant to be good enough to foll the two of you. Doing that would have required a lot of effort out of Peacock, as well as likely necessitated that he attack you psychically, and at the time he had neither good reasons nor the inclination to do either.

Peacock himself also would not have initiated a fight, himself, unless he was forced into it; as an actual politician, his first instinct would always have been to try and find a way to beat you with words, and fighting was very much a last resort he didn't want to, especially because he knew that even highly trustworthy disciples of his like Dusk Rat and Rain Feather would have balked at supporting him in such a situation, and he really didn't want to ever authorize Red Dawn to cut loose on a fellow Kai.

So, you know, just as Sun Snake was wary of Peacock and planning against him, so too was Peacock always doing the same. It was one of the most fun things about the whole experience, to be honest; not everyday can I play a true "battle of the masterminds" against such a skilled adversary! ^_^

Interesting that the backstory is that Sun Snake and Shining Peacock had worked together previously, and so apart from Peacock's willingness to pull levers like blackmail, and the reputation with women that Sun Snake had never actually seen, there was nothing to pre-dispose Sun Snake against Peacock really. However, Rain Feather really did hint at a darker picture of Shining Peacock. She seemed to hint that Peacock had basically insinuated  'get rid of everyone else' to get the Sommerwserd. Although I think Rain Feather mentioned it was to do with instructions in a dream, or some such, and Sun Snake had questioned if that was to do with her engaging with her Right Hand magics.

So what was the truth of all of that/ Skimming through Peacock related threads to see what's he's like with others does reveal him to be less evil than painted, and proved that people such as Banedon and Sun Fox who had good things to say about him weren't being fooled :p

Edit: Oh, and showing Peacock the light area wasn't a weapon, it would really have been a 'isn't this cool' thing. It was jusyt from Snake's own personal experiences knowing how dangerous the Vashna bit was close by, he thought if Peacock was false and tried anything he could have used that to stop any attempt. It was certainly a 'be open and friendly but have a nasty backup if you get played' idea.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:50, Sat 20 Feb 2021.

I did wonder at the time if the dragon illusion wasn't something like a cardboard cutout with a lifelike image on the front.  When viewed directly from the front, it looks perfect, but from the side, you can see it's just a flat image.

Swift really didn't like him as a person either.  With Moon Shadow's warning, she was likely at least a little bit biased, but deep down she kind of hoped that another Kai wasn't about to directly oppose them, and maybe even if he is dangerous, that doesn't mean he's out to get us.  The very first time they met in-game, she was like: "Ok, he showed up just in time to save us from getting turned into pincushions by a few hundred acolyte archers.  I suppose that earns him some leeway."
But he just seemed to keep rubbing her the wrong way with everything he said.  Then again I doubt he really cared about what she thought of him.  Seeing the whole picture now, I'm guessing he was just playing nice for Sun Snake's benefit :)
(Should have tried group-hugs maybe!)

Out of curiosity what was all the magical gear he had on him?  Definitely curious how much of his power came from that rather than his own abilities.
I'm guessing the refilling dagger container was a WP potion, and he did say his gloves were more magic resistant than Korlinium, but not sure what else he might have had that was less visible.

Ok, so... this is embarrassing to admit, but I lost the Character Sheet for Peacock; I'm not sure exactly why or when that happened. That said, I have a general idea of what his equipment was supposed to do, so I can give you a general idea of it all.

The most important item was the crystal dagger that was enchanted to be an ever-refilling container; basically, a liquid inside of it would regenerate itself to fill the dagger after it was drunk. As it happened, the dagger was filled with Pure Shrueberry potion - which, if you remember (or check the Herbalism thread) refills the user's WP to max, and then raises the max by 1. As you can imagine, since Peacock had that dagger for a long time now (about four years), and every time he drank from it his WP cap grew by 1, he had a WP total in the hundreds - as I said, I lost the actual number with the sheet, but it was somewhere around 600 or so.

The cloak was Alverian, the same as Alyne, which meant it was magic-immune and could be used to repel it. I believe the two golden chains were each imbued with different defensive spells, but I'm unsure as to which ones; similarly, the armor was enchanted, that one I believe with something enhancing agility and reducing fatigue. The gloves were lined with platinum and had a spell-amplifying effect, making anything he would cast more powerful, and the boots were enchanted to improve movement to some extent.

I'm not sure about everything, sadly; I honestly hadn't realized I'd lost his sheet until just today.
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:21, Sat 20 Feb 2021.

Aww.
Hmm, even with those ones, it sounds like if it did come to a fight with him we'd have needed the entire team.  And there would probably have been a few fatalities...

On the plus side, powered-up spells would have been useful for us if Swift reflected them back at him :)
And we were already trying to prep everyone with anti-magic gear for taking on Valador.

Ah well, was just curious anyway.  I suppose we'll never know if we could have beaten him now :(
This message was last edited by the player at 21:37, Sat 20 Feb 2021.

You could have; it would have been difficult, but possible. He didn't really have any real physical combat capabilities, and his END was still that of a normal human (compare to Vyctar's absurd amount).

This holds true for every enemy; even Vashna, if you happened to fail badly enough that he was resurrected, would have been possible to defeat if the whole team worked together, although he would have been the hardest of the lot. Same if you somehow found your way to Sejanhoz. None of the enemies were invincible, just different flavors of "very hard".

Note that, when left the time to do it, you and Sun Fox were able to pulverize a fortress; you shouldn't underestimate the amount of power you had available to you. :)

Yeah, the fortress didn't fight back though, so not much of a fair fight.  We just set it on fire and watched it burn :)  hehe.

Curious what kind of stats Vashna would have had.
I did imagine he'd have been a lot more powerful than Vyctar, being a proper Darklord rather than a 'manufactured' one.

Vyctar was a bit more versatile, with the various tricky abilities from his equipment, all the magic, and the multiple limbs with different effects. Vashna would have had more raw power and a couple of brutal area-of-effect disabling effects, as well as higher stats (especially CS and END), and of course he'd have had the unique ability to turn anybody he killed into an Helghast immediately, which would have made him stronger (especially if you fought him with disposable Acolytes of Vashna or the High Priest lending support), but it wouldn't have been so big of a difference. I would say Vyctar was a full-on Darklord in terms of strength, if one who had not yet had time to get familiar with his own powers; if I'd had stats for Gnaag or Zagarna, they would have been similar to Vyctar, although not identical since each Darklord has their own personal powers.

How did you find running the combat system anyway? The basic LWRPG always seemed odd when trying to have multiple combatants around, and I never really got on with the Zipp rolled CS idea. It was disconnected from narrative - for no good reason one day you could be significantly better or worse than another, far exceeding other bonuses - and mechanically the decision on whether to reroll CS or concentrate on WP when resting was not interesting. While I liked the fatigue aspect to CS, WP was far more important, so if you did take the CS reroll it was just a case of being punished for a low roll for a second time or punished for having lots of combat, both of which would have left you low on WP anyway so it's just a feel bad.

I'd actually never considered that aspect of it, to be honest; it's certainly a valid point to make.

One thing I really like about the combat system is that it really allows for the ability to have a single enemy be a reasonable threat for multiple opponents, which is actually a very hard thing to achieve in most RPG (D&D/PF is very bad about this). This also works in the other sense, allowing large battles with multiple combatants on both sides, or a single player fighting multiple enemies, in a way that feels realistic without horrendously heightening the workload.

A second thing, which I also like but is only really relevant in a PbP environment, is how fast a combat goes by; going in batches of five rolls each turn generally let us go through a battle in a single post, and thus usually a single day, which allowed for including a lot more combat than in most other stories. Plus, when I broke out the battles that went one roll at a time, like the one with Vyctar, I got the sense those felt much more epic due to the comparison with the normal ones. Having that available as a GM tool is nice.

On the other hand, even as I tried to inject more strategy into the combats, it still doesn't come even close to the level of granularity that a system like Pathfinder allows, and now that you brought it up, it very much doesn't have the same flexibility and breadth of options when it comes to character creation either. So, in that sense, it leaves somewhat to be desired.

I'm not sure if there's really a way to solve that problem without losing the other benefits, however... do you have an idea how you'd go about it, Sun Snake?

In terms of tactics and character creations options, it is harder with a set of simpler stats.  I always wondered if trying to make CS, EP, and WP be the 'average' of two substats would be an idea in character creation. So like D&D/Pathfinder six bonuses in total to play. So you have CS is the average of an agility and a melee bonus, EP is the average of a strength and a fitness bonus, and WP is the average of an intellect and perception bonus. So you could have average stats for your three main stats, but still have interesting strengths and weaknesses underneath that for your normal Tests. And then there would be more balance and fine tuning if you then syphon off points from one stat to another - you areaffecting more non-combat bonuses for example pulling a point of average CS to your average EP, for example.

In terms of tactics, it seems like raw CS bonuses are a little limited, and that splitting up the four ways damage can be affected - you give more/give less and take more/take less - might allow more flexibility.

So you can have basic tactics that are like +1 or +2CS in attack but -1 or -2CS on defense (sovice versa, and are net neutral), and then on top of that have more complicated tactics where you can commit more resources for blanket +2CS, or a good tactic only buying you (or an ally) a attack damage boost/received damage reduction.

It obviously makes combat tactics harder when you already have a whole host of disciplines to make useful first. So you don't want to let a tactic do for free something that a discipline does.

I think the way the system is set up, it makes CS much more valuable than everything else, which is why I had so few +/-CS abilities against a lot more +/-damage ones. I feel like having too many ways to modify CS would weaken that; after all, a difference of 6 CS can bring you from a bad outcome (say, taking 5 damage while inflicting only 3), to a quite good one (say, taking 3 damage and inflicting 6). Whereas with the damage increases or reduction, things tend to get more equalized.

I'm not sure how much it's worth it to have attributes; the idea in itself isn't bad, but there's not really much to be affects by these traits in the system. END and WP are more of a pool thing, and I think moving CS more toward a pool system (instead of the hybrid that it is with the roll thing) makes it clear that these are resources, rather than attributes; in that sense, the game doesn't really has any attributes at all. If they were added, then having something for them to affect would be useful, but in a d10-based system, even just a +2 is a huge bonus (each +1 is a +10%, so +2 is a 20% increase in success chances), and with both Disciplines and items already providing some bonus, adding an extra source of bonus might cause the pileup to lead to making rolls meaningless due to bonus overload. The only way I can see to avoid that would be to switch to a d20-base, but even if that could be made to work (it would require reworking the combat results tables at least a little bit, if nothing else), I'm not sure it'd be enough.

So... overall, the idea isn't uninteresting, I'm just unsure if it'd be possible to work it in while retaining the simplicity that is the system's greater strength.
This message was last edited by the GM at 00:10, Sun 21 Feb 2021.

Basically because disciplines take up all tactical space (i think you even made weapon difference a discipline thing), and the damage splitting being the only way to nuance combat (which is what disciplines are doing), I don't think you can do much to add tactics to combat.

I think you'd just need to pare back how powerful disciplines are, so they either allow you to do ready available tactics for less 'cost' or provide an extra boost.

I would have loved to see the High Priest's reaction if we'd killed Vashna right in front of him, hehe :)

Always been interested in ways of tweaking the system a bit.  Particularly in ways of 'customising' characters more.
For example, a character built more as a 'front line fighter' with Weaponmastery and all the other physical boosting disciplines might be weaker in psychic combat, but would hit harder and be more resistant to physical damage.  A character built with Psi-Screen, Psi-Surge, Nexus and so on would be more powerful in psychic combat but might be weaker physically, dealing less damage with physical weapons.  An 'all rounder' character might be average at everything, but more balanced and able to take on any role as needed to cover any weaknesses in the team.
Maybe something like D&D stats that affect the main scores like CS, END, and WP.

Also I'd been thinking of having 'psychic duels' be possible too.  Similar to Dusk Rat's spirit form fight with the ghosts in this game.  Still tinkering with that.
Maybe having magical battles work similarly, some spells can overpower others or block/counteract others.

Also I think I'd remove the "instant kill" results.  Maybe just knock the affected character out of the fight for a bit, leave them stunned and vulnerable for a round or something.
If it was a special effect that was actually designed for an instant kill critical (like the Kagonite Arrows) then maybe, although it would only be possible with magical weapons designed with that ability, or ones that took advantage of a weakness, like fighting a Helghast with the Sommerswerd, for example.
Using that against PCs would definitely be a rare occurrence.  End of story arc boss fight stuff at the very least, and I'd likely have some kind of signal (Sixth Sense alert or something) to warn the players that the enemy was capable of that and let them work out some way of countering it.

Got some ideas anyway :)
This message was last edited by the player at 01:50, Sun 21 Feb 2021.

Yeah, any combat system which results in you instantly dying at the single roll of a die can sod off, basically. It's the same with save-or-die (or at least save-or-get-fucked) mechanics in, as far as I can tell, every edition of DnD except Fourth - your entire character, all their progress, their personality, motivations, skills, everything that's happened to them up to this point become entirely irrelevant as their continued existence is abruptly reliant not on something they can do, but something their [i]player[/] has to do - roll above a certain, arbitrary number on a single die. Sure, that arbitrary number might be a bit lower if they have some kind of stat that contributes a bonus to the roll, but it still renders the entire character, and all the other work put into them, basically worthless. That happened to one of the NPCs (the main one I liked, even if Dusk Rat found him kind of annoying) in the "prequel" side-thread that I did with Sabre Fox. Got a bad roll in combat - boom, instantly dead :P.

It was one of the only things I kind of hated about the original LW books- you're pretty much required to keep working on spiking your CS through the first batch of books for the two fights we all think about when we think of unfair fights in Lone Wolf- Kimah in Book 9 and the Chaosmaster in Book 11.

If you don't go out of your way to spike your CS, then there's a good chance you're going to end up on the bad side of the combat record and get yourself squished in one shot- I think it's like a 20% chance per turn you could get squished in each of those fights if the RNG you used was just any sort of cranky that day?

Though it makes me wonder, just what is the absolute highest CS score you could have at that point in each book, I wonder...?  I used to hold onto the Adgana I found just for those specific battles, pretty much...

I remember I almost lost Rain to one of those sudden death mechanics with the Agarashi in the chasm, but that one I'll take responsibility for. :)

Those fights are one of the reasons that I say I don't really like the "increase CS" effects, because they tend to create this "scaling upwards" effect that I feel makes mooks pointless. I do think I managed to keep that one in check into this game, more or less - and speaking of Swift Fox's question about psychic duels, Rain, I believe you can confirm for me that there were situations I presented to let psychic abilities get around CS differentials where this game is involved, yes?

As for the specific CS, I can't remember right now, but there were certain threshold to be met to be able to win those, especially the Chaosmaster. Although I personally never found Khima to be that difficult - I think there was a ring that could be used against him, or something else which made him manageable? - but had a lot more trouble with the timed Kraan+Vordaks fight at the end of book 8, as that one is literally unwinnable if your original starting CS is less than 16.

About Dusk Rat's point over one-hit-kills, this is a long-standing argument between me and Dusk Rat, made even more weird by the fact that I mostly agree that save-or-die mechanics are mechanics that should be used sparingly if at all. However, I believe that, if there's no risk, then the game is pointless; your victories would have been diminished if there hadn't been a very real risk of you getting killed as you won them. I also believe that a RPG only has sense when the choices have consequences, and that has to include bad consequences following up from bad choices.

Of course, in Stalwart Trout's specific instance, he was killed by the equivalent of what in D&D would have been a critical hit from an enemy higher in level than he was. I don't know a thing about D&D 4E - does it not have critical hits available for the enemies, or is it absolutely impossible to die at all? Because a crit on a low-level opponent that doesn't have a sturdy build tends to be very lethal in most systems.
This message was last edited by the GM at 12:04, Sun 21 Feb 2021.

Well the way I would have worked instant kills would have been to restrict them mostly to magical weapons specifically designed with an instant kill mechanic.  Those would have been tough to get hold of, either being extremely expensive (thus requiring you to put all your cash/trade items into acquiring that one item at the cost of anything else useful you might have picked up then) or else just hidden or otherwise hard to find, requiring a very difficult challenge to get your mitts on the item.  Crafters might have an easier time making them, if they can find the right materials.
Also items that take advantage of some kind of weakness in an enemy would still be able to hit with critical instakills.  For example, rolling a 'K' result while fighting a Helghast with the Sommerswerd, to use the same situation as mentioned above.  It's specifically created to kill creatures like them, so should have a very powerful effect on them.
Using items that way would be more of a tactical detail for players though, rewarding them for taking the time to research/figure out an enemy's weaknesses before rushing in to fight it.

But normal weapons wouldn't do the instakill critical.  More likely they'd just stun the target for a round or otherwise leave them vulnerable, perhaps with damaged equipment or a lingering injury or something similar just to represent that it was a pretty nasty hit.

Also, I liked the example that Sabre used in his game when we fought against the Nadziran.
For those not following it, the enemy there had a spell or ability that gave him an instakill attack for one round, but it was clearly signalled, so that became a tactical thing where we could go on the defensive and try to avoid or block the attack, or use our own special abilities to try to stop him using the attack at all.

End of story arc bosses (Like Gnaag in the LW books for an example), would be more powerful than others, so might have the ability to instakill an enemy.  But I'd only use that as a single round thing that cost them some resources to use, so they'd use it once or twice at most.
And it would be clearly visible to the players in some way.  Either a Craftsmanship like ability that warned a player that the enemy was 'charging up' some kind of powerful magical weapon with the potential to kill the target.  Or a Sixth Sense alert in the case of a natural ability.
Either way, it should be visible, letting the players make a tactical decision to avoid or neutralise it.  If they ignore it and charge in anyway, well, they can't say they weren't warned!

Psychic duels, I had in mind as being something like establishing a mental 'link' with an enemy and essentially fighting them in a kind of 'arena of the mind', where each character can use their psychic skills to create attacks and defences.  The down side being that being so mentally focused would weaken your physical senses, so you wouldn't be able to fight physical enemies coming at you, making you rely on the rest of the team to protect you while you concentrated on taking down the psychic enemy, kind of like spirit walking.
And it would mostly be used as kind of a 'boss fight' mechanic.  As an example, the leader of an enemy army, who was a powerful psychic who could mentally boost the fighting strength of his troops on the battlefield, but who was physically hard to reach, like behind a barrier or inside a castle.  Engaging him in a psychic duel would force him to stop boosting his troops or risk weakening himself against the attacker, and could potentially take him down and remove him from the battle if the attacker won the duel.
(I'm always in favour of multiple solutions to a problem though, so that would only be one way of dealing with that example situation.  Another could be sending some stealthy character in to assassinate the leader during the battle!)

Magical duels would work in a similar way, expanding the spell lists to give various ways of attacking and counter-attacking and defending.  Still tinkering with that.

Most of this is from my experience of playing D&D too.  Playing a Wizard class character requires very different tactics to playing a Fighter class character, so I'm trying to think of ways to bring that over, letting each player pick their own style of play and develop their character from there along their own path.
Technically the Kai would only be a single 'class'.  But individual people have their own talents and areas of expertise, hence why you could always pick and choose Disciplines from the start.

I suppose I'm just experimenting really.  The existing system is fine for the gamebooks, where there's only ever one player and getting killed basically just teaches you what to avoid next time around 'cos you can start over again anytime.
But when there's a longer storyline with multiple players involved things get a bit more complex.

Anyways, most of my own stuff is kind of a permanent work in progress anyway.  I'm lousy at balancing things, I keep tweaking one thing and finding that broke something else, hehe.
This message was last edited by the player at 12:59, Sun 21 Feb 2021.

Yeah, to be fair to Lone Wolf it's supposed to be instant kill in the same way that taking the wrong path is instant kill. And it only kicks in if you are ridiculously outmatched by an opponent - you have to have a combat ratio of -9 or more and roll a 1 (or 1 or 2 for -11 ratio or more).

Those gamebook fights just show how hard it was to balance for the Sommerswerd - if you take the non-Sommerswerd route they were doable, but possessing the Sommerswerd put them almost entirely out of your ability to pass unless you started with a high CS.


I think low level characters are just squishy in many systems. Dice rolls aren't something the player is doing though, they are a way to arbitrate the effect of the world vs the effect a character has. A low level (and so low skilled and low experience) character shouldn't have so much plot armour they can shrug off the difficulties of the world. But it does mean that doing things as if they are a 'standard' hero tends to get them killed quite easily.

4th edition basically made low level characters less squishy and a little bit more like starting heroes in books/films, with more skill and staying power from the start. It also made the bonus progression and difficulty smoother, so you were always in the sweet spot of things being roughly your level of difficulty both in terms of fight and skill challenges, so narratively you're always presented with obstacles you can overcome, rather than stumbling in to many skill checks and fights you are outmatched for unless specialised.

Edit: 4th edition critical hits are pretty brutal, it's automatic max damage on all dice (no messing around with confirming crits), and magic weapons get to roll extra dice for their pluses. And fourth edition has more encounter freshes and daily powers that roll multiple dice. However, as said, even starting character have more hp (it was a standard amount plus actual con score). It also helps that there are far more ways to refresh hp (it's played more as stamina, so you can have a 'second wind' during combat to restore a quarter of your hp, and after a battle if you can take a brief rest you can spend additonal of these 'surges' to restore hp. These healing surges become your low level hp that are being wittled down fight to fight, and battles themselves you're less likely to be one shotted.
This message was last edited by the player at 13:05, Sun 21 Feb 2021.

Oh sure, there should be risk, and decisions should mean something. But that's the point - a situation where "A Bad Thing is attacking you, roll 1d20 and score above 12 to not die" has nothing to do with decisions. There are no tactics, there is no choice. You just arbitrarily have to roll a thing and score a certain number and if you succeed at that then congratulations, you can continue playing. Otherwise, oh whoops, you died, game over, you have zero continues, goodbye.

The combat in this game can't really be compared to something like DnD, because there you actually have tactics, positioning, initiative, etc. If you have magic armour or weapons or whatever that do cool things, you can use them. If you want to hide behind cover and get extra protection as a result, you can do that. And that's without getting into all the inter-party stuff that can go on with different members synergising with each other and generally co-operating. It's not just a roll-off between two dice and then comparing the results on a table. Yeah, if you get hit too many times, you'll run out of hp and die but being on the receiving end of a crit doesn't mean you instantly die - as Wuffy has explained, Fourth Edition a crit deals max damage on all dice that would be rolled for the attack (plus extra if the attack was dealt with a magical weapon...but that's more from the player end since monsters have their own attacks as part of their statblocks). But you can fight stuff a few levels higher than you and still smash its face in, it depends what it is. And if things look to be going badly you should (hopefully) have the option to retreat. And if a fight looks like it's gonna be too tough going in, then the GM should ideally scatter some clues about that indicate such, so the players have the chance to go "Hmm, hang on, should we be doing this?" in order to possibly just nope out of it entirely, or at least not charge in recklessly when diplomacy might be a better approach.

Even in DnD you generally can't be one-shot by stuff through outright damage, not unless you're already really low on health and get hit by something that deals tons of damage. In Fourth Edition you only die to damage if you go below your Bloodied value (half health) in negative digits. So say your max hp is 50, you die if something smacks you down to -25 or lower. Otherwise you fall unconscious at 0hp and start making Death Saving Throws each turn, and just need to not fail (roll under 10) three times. Being hit while unconscious will automatically give you extra failures as you can be coup-de-graced but you can also be revived if you manage to roll a Natural 20 or if an ally can chuck you some healing, or at least use a Heal skill check to stabilise you or something.

But then, DnD isn't based off a single-player gamebook series which is, if it's anything like other gamebooks I've seen, generally pretty heavily weighted against you already. I've seen gamebooks where picking Option A early on instead of Option B means you don't end up getting some obscure-seeming item which turns out to be the one thing required to beat the final boss, and therefore you get insta-killed with no means of knowing how you could've done anything differently, short of reading through all the pages to try and figure out what went wrong. DnD is all about being part of a team (well, unless you're playing solo, in which case you may still get NPC allies ;)) and putting your resources together in order to figure stuff out and face down adversity. If all that can come to nothing because the character's player didn't roll above a 12 that one time, then what's the point?