[PnP] Predestination - Talk

[octagon]

Knock him even downer, to the Platonic ideal of all grounds.

[ShellShocker]

He picks his sword back up and charges at the goon with full force, attempting to knock him to the ground.

Interesting battle tactic when the guy is already on the ground being pinned by you and Veles.

Thank you.

[Agent of Dread]

I'll just have you elbow drop him or something.

[ShellShocker]

No, I plant him through the ground.

Also it's your fault for making me post at midnight

[Agent of Dread]

Your fault for not posting unless I bug you!

[Agent of Dread]

Anyone else have input? I want to move on soon.

[Agent of Dread]

If no-one gives half a flying halberd about what he's saying, I can continue to the boss.

[Shade]

Well, I kinda already went down there, so...

[Agent of Dread]

Ditto, post at all?

[Shade]

De-spell while being unable to act? Hax.
Also, why in the seven blazes did I not get a defense roll against his spell? Afraid that I might dodge it with my amazing +8 AGI? :|

[Agent of Dread]

"Adept Spark: Opens a wide-bore laser, hitting up to two targets for 5 + 1d8 each, if an attack roll misses a target is chosen at random to be unmissably hit."
If Cime can pull giant sea-serpents I can pull this.

[Shade]

Dude, this is only our second fight. Or, considering that we haven't even gotten Exp for the first fight, it's technically still our first encounter.
And this is just a random guy, not a freaking 100 meter serpent. Pulling out unmissable attacks right off the bat is just cheap (and screws over my character because I rely on not getting hit).

[Cimeries]

What's next? Insta-kills on the very first encounter?

[Shade]

What's next? Insta-kills on the very first encounter?

Cutthroats

[Shade]

Basically, what I'm questioning, AoD, is your way of providing us with "challenge". There are good ways to challenge the players and bad ways (mostly the unfair ones).

Good ways to challenge players:

• Make enemies similar in strength to the players themselves. This can be achieved by giving them good (but not overpowered) stats and a variety of abilities and skills that allow them some resemblence of tactical combat.
• Make enemies act intelligently (without them being clairvoyant and approriately countering everything the players do with just the right skill/spell, especially when it isn't even their turn*).
• Short and rough fights are better than long, repetitive ones.

*I feel bad for Ditto. His spells would be devastating and he's using them well, but apparently they never hit when they'd actually make a difference (or just get disspelled instantly under circumstances when that shouldn't even be possible).

Bad ways to challenge players:

• Giving enemies the ability to ignore the players' stats. Unmissable attacks screw over characters that rely on dodging attacks and not getting hit (as they usually pay for this by having very little HP) and is generally just unfair. Insta-kill attacks similarly screw over characters that rely on taking hits instead of dodging them, rendering all their HP useless if they drop dead in one hit anyway. I used to do this in some of my early PnPs as well, but if anything, that should just give you an idea of what not to do, because it was bad.
• Always giving enemies abilities that explicitely counter certain of the players' abilities.
• Never giving them the opportunity to heal up.
• Not giving them any resources to work with in general.

Mostly I just don't want you to turn into a Killer Game Master, which you are currently showing signs of doing.