I Don't ~Feel~ Tardy [OOC]

[Bishop]

The Marshal and others confront a viking berserker rampaging through campus!

Events occur Friday, July 20, 2012 at about 9am.

[Bishop]

No takers yet. Okay. Folks get to see me trash my own character, then.

Roling for initiative:

9 Viking Guy

8 The Marshal

The Viking-guy runs away at all-out speed. While at ground level, there is no clear shot at the running Viking suspect, from a higher vantage point, there would be for this first round before he gets out of sight around a building.

The Marshal elects to fly straight up 100' and fire a stun shot at full power attack. The flat-footed target is Def +2. Marshal has ATK +13, but -5 for the Power attack and -2 for the range. He rolls a +6 vs a DC of 12. He hits with a 14. Viking has to make a fortitude save against a DC 22. He rolls a total of 26 and shrugs the shot off completely.

The next round begins with Viking-guy making another all-out move and is out of sight.

[Cubist]

How do you feel about a feline speedster butting in on the Marshal's action?

[Bishop]

Hell, yeah! Bring it on! Otherwise, Marshal Conners is probably about to have his butt handed to him, at least in the short run...

Combat is broken off at this point. The Marshal is going to try to fly (slowly) to intercept the Mad Viking Dude.

[Bishop]

And now combat starts back up. Please roll initiative.

[Cubist]

Jube's Initiative roll (1d20+31=38) is unlikely to be exceeded by Horny Guy…

Jube's response to Horny Guy's threat: Break out the duct tape to try for Snare 5. The plan is to start by taping HG's legs together, and move on to taping his wrists together behind his back, and finally tape his wrists to his ankles. No, there's no snarky dialogue here, because Jube's operation at his max tempo of 40 and HG's tempo is 1.

We shall see how well this gambit works.

[Bishop]

Yeah, I should've known there wouldn't be much sense in asking you to roll initiative, but I didn't actually check your sheet.

As for the slowpokes: Marshal rolls 1d20=13+5=18, and Viking rolls 1d20=9+6=15.

So, for the record, we have:

38 Jubatus

18 Marshal

15 Viking

Mr. Viking here is TrollThumper's Berserker.

So, go ahead and roll vs. his Def 8. BTW, why is the save for your snare a 20DC? Isn't it supposed to be DC 10+5 instead of 15+5?

[Cubist]

Hmm. I could've sworn that I read it was 15+[power ranks], but now that I re-check it, it seems that you're right. Given how poorly-organized the Core book is, perhaps it's not surprising that this error was not detected by anyone who saw the sheet before now... ah, well.

Jube's Attack roll for Snare (1d20+12=26) is going to hit. Given HG's Reflex save of +7, it is unlikely that he will be more than mildly inconvenienced (if even that) by the duct tape, but it's worth a shot anyway.

[Bishop]

Yep, he saves: Helmet Man's Save (1d20+7=18)

The Marshal is going to try to get some info about you (Move to command Hudson) and fly down to be near the action (move action).

And, of course, Viking Dude is going to take a swing at you: Swings at Jube with a concrete bench slab (1d20+10=19) and barely misses.

Go ahead and post, then I'll post their turns, then go ahead with your next turn.

[Bishop]

Suffice to say, he's not taking the "easy way." I'm assuming that we both a readied an action to see what he'd do. He's definitely attacking you again, so, go ahead and do your thing!

[Cubist]

Jube's evil plan: zip on over to Horny Guy, stand on HG's back, and pull the friggin' helmet off HG's head. If the helmet isn't strapped onto HG's head, this should be fairly easy; if it is strapped on, removing it will be more difficult, but should hopefully be something Jube can manage to do in one round (especially if he Takes 20 on this task!)

If this works, we then get to grapple with the question of whether or not the helmet's malign influence can affect a cheetah…

[Bishop]

I was assuming that the helmet was easy-to-lose and that removing it would, indeed, end the fight quickly.

Looking at the rules, it looks like removing any easy-to-lose item involves a strength contest, but that doesn't make much sense in a case like this (assuming, as you said, the helmet isn't strapped on, which was my original assumption, too) and the rule seems to assume the easy-to-lose device is hand-held.

But, without the strength roll, removing the helmet would be a little too easy. So, I'm going to stick with the basic rule here: it is easy-to-lose and can be removed with a disarm (with, yes, a strength roll - maybe the helmet itself is holding on!)

Or, if you can pin him as you seem to be suggesting, that could work, too.

But, as fast as you are, you don't get to pin him for free. You still have to make your rolls against his DEF, or for grapple, etc. (Going to have to review the grapple rules. I've never used them.)

[Cubist]

Jube is 6 feet tall and 100 pounds—in other words, he's a spindly little freak whose primary defense is Not Getting Hit, and he knows it. Accordingly, he's not even going to try to grapple/pin a guy who's strong enough to tear concrete slabs loose from benches. Pull the horny hat off of the guy's head, yes; pin him like in wrestling, no.

Okay... dude is using TT's Berserker sheet. So he's pretty tough as is, and he gets worse in the 'alternate form' of his berserker rage.

So. Jube's going for a Disarm, and if he succeeds, he'll have the horny hat in his forepaws. Jube thinks it should be fairly eaqsy, because how much effort does it take to pull the hat off of someone's head, you know?

Jube's Hit roll for Disarm (1d20+12=31) exceeds the living crap out of Horny guy's Defense, so that's a hit; now Jube needs to do an Opposed Check, his attack's damage vs the target's Strength. Jube's 'attack', in this case, is his unarmed strike, so he's rolling against HG's Strength of… 24 (it it's just HG's base STR) or 30 {if HG's got his berserk on).

Looking at the Opposed Check rules (pg 9 of the Core Book), Jube's 'damage' roll must exceed HG's Strength of 24 in order to successfully pull the friggin' hat off HG's head. And since this is 1d20 plus Jube's own STR bonus of +4… yeah. Well, there might be a +2 bonus from Conditional Modifiers (pg. 10), as Jube's feet are on HG's shoulders and he's pulling the hat upwards? What the heck; the Disarm 'damage' roll (1d20+4=10)… is a complete and utter failure.

So now Jube is aware that much, much more than the simple force of gravity is keeping the helmet on HG's head, a fact that was not evident to him before.

[Bishop]

Yep yep...

Seems to me the "Easy to Lose" flaw is less and less of a flaw the stronger you are. And in situations like this where strength might not be (barring mystical forces beyond our understanding at work) an issue, it really makes no sense.

Maybe a contest of dexterity is more sensible in those situations. For example, an easy to lose item is in a belt holster (like a pistol). A super-speedster like Jube should be able to pull the pistol out of the holster without strength ever being an issue.

Ah well, let's just play this out and see what happens. It's "magic." I'll go ahead and post Magic-Hat and Marshal, then you'll be up again.

Marshal is wasting a hero point trying to end this quickly, then shooting at the guy.

The Marshal spends a point for Fast Intimidate and tries to intimidate Horny-Hat. It's a waste of time because, unbeknownst to the Marshal, Hat-Man is immune. He then tries to settle things the old fashioned way by shooting him. But, his ATK is 13, -4 for shooting into melee, against a DEF of 8. (1d20+13-4=17) He misses.

So, Jube still has angry-slab-swingers attention. He lets go of the slab and tries to grab Jube by the ankles (on his shoulders). No modifiers, since Jube can just leap off to dodge. Unfortunately for our feline hero, Hat-man rolls 1d20+10=29. He makes a Grapple Check (1d20+20=29). Jube needs to roll an opposing check, but it doesn't look promising.

[Cubist]

Fortunately, the House Rules on combat explain the Grapple rules rather more clearly than does the Core Book [pg 156-7]. What we got here is, a Grapple-vs-Grapple opposed check, and Jube's Grapple is +16. Since Jube needs to exceed HG's roll of 29 (because ties go to the highest bonus), he needs a 30 or better, which means rolling 14 or more. Not the best situation, but also not hopeless. And… Jube's Grapple roll (1d20+16=26) doesn't quite make it. Fine—I'll burn a Hero Point for a re-roll (pg 121 in the Core Book). Since a die-roll of 1-10 gets 10 added to it, a re-rolled die is effectively 1D10+10, not 1D20. And Jube's Grapple re-roll (1d10 + 10 + 16=32) is a success, yay for the good guys!

[Bishop]

Excellent. I'll edit in the result and then you're up!

[Bishop]

I would think that it would be as hard to twist as to remove, but I'm game. If you can spec up a suitable attack, go for it.

What are your thoughts on representing your attack mechanically? The hat twisting thing sounds like a dazzle to me.

Also, you don't seem to have any hero points to stunt with right now, but this sounds too funny not to try, so have a hero point to give it a shot. :)

[Cubist]

Okay... I got a hero point to play with. I'm thinking it gets burned to provide the "heroic feat" (pg 121, Core rulebook) of Alternate Power, and the AP is applied to the Enhanced STR in Jube's Timeshift container. He is, after all, going to be exerting his full Strength to swivel the friggin' helmet around, right? So the AP is Dazzle. And… hmm. "Visual senses count as two sense types" (pg 81, Core book). So it's 2 pts per rank. But Dazzle is a ranged power, and this attack ain't got no range at all, so there's a -1 Flaw; this, Jube has 12 ranks in Dazzle, for this purpose.

So.

First: Roll to see if it hits at all. Jube's attack roll for 'dazzle' (1d20+12=23) means this is very much a success.

Second: Horny Guy needs to make a Reflex save now. If he makes this save, the Dazzle doesn't work. Otherwise, HG can't see. Every round after this, HG gets to make a Fortitude save to recover from the Dazzle, with +1 added to this save every round after the first round. On the first round after he makes his FORT save, he gets -1 on all rolls involving visual senses; this penalty goes away on the second round after he makes his FORT save.

Since HG's FORT save is +11, this means he's probably going to recover real fast. We'll just need to take him out quickly…

[Bishop]

Very cool...

So, he does his reflex roll, DC 22. (1d20+7=14) and fails. Go ahead and post it.

[Cubist]

[accidentally managed to post this to the IC thread, when it should really have gone here… sigh…]

Groovy. Jube's next trick: Grab hold of the helmet's horns, and (try to) turn it 180°, so that HG can't see. Since Jube isn't trying to remove the helmet this time, hopefully the weird magical hoo-hah that resisted Jube the last time won't apply here.