Practical PC Butt Kicking 101

[Lisa Padol]

This past Cthulhupunk session went reasonably well. Oh, some bumps, of course, but lots of fights and info dumps, and a reasonable break point. And in two cases, a PC's butt was kicked in said PC's strong suit, and in both cases, it worked well.

I structured it the same way in both cases. First, the PC uses the strong suit to kick butt. This shows that the PC is indeed effective. Then, someone kicks the PC's butt in the strong suit.

The first case was Avram's PC, Harry Kelton. Avram designed this character with customized martial arts, carefully detailed for me. Harry has Snake Kung Fu, basically, and it works best against large groups of mooks. The bigger the group, the worse they do, as Harry uses their numbers against them. (Mechanicswise, they get larger penalties.)

So, when the Secrit Base of Xanadu was invaded, Harry found himself facing about two dozen mooks. He mopped the floor with them, as was appropriate.

Then, a woman came out of a basket in the hall and attacked him. She was using Mongoose Kung Fu, which beats Snake Kung Fu. Well, not automatically, but she got heavy bonuses, and he got a penalty. So, he got knocked out and put into the death trap.

The players said this worked not only because Harry got to be effective first, and not only because the NPC was a Mongoose Kung Fu fighter, but also because she had clearly been watching the fight before attacking, studying Harry's moves, and because Snake Kung Fu just isn't as effective against a single fighter.

Later still, Harry found himself facing her again. This time, he did not use Snake Kung Fu. He used Norgroid Brute Force, tearing off a section of railing on a catwalk, forcing her against the edge, breaking the catwalk so she fell off, and descending on a rope that made a sandbag go up, fully prepared to let the sandbag hit her if she came up from the ground still ready for a fight. She didn't, because I didn't realize what Avram was setting up, but he didn't mind that.

The second case had a different ending, but, as I said, same basic structure. Jay Cooper is an apprentice shaman, partnered with a Really Powerful Spirit. Xan's band, The Elementals, attacked her and her friends, and she was the actual target for reasons explained in a previous convoluted post on the Death Traps thread.

Each of the Elementals had different cool stuff he or she could do, based on my poor understanding of the Chinese element system. So, Water attacked Jay, trying to stun her with a paralytic strike. Jay asked her spirit for help, and it knocked Water across the room. Jay mentally noted that she owed said spirit some raw meat,

Then, Wood, who, I'd previously decided, had an even bigger spirit,  sent his spirit after Jay's. It won. Jay was dismayed. Wood was surprised that her spirit had been so big. Jay did consider shooting Wood, but didn't, at least partly because she realized that an injured or dead Wood would likely result in his spirit being Very Angry and Out of Control. Bad idea.

Jay got captured, as I'd hoped, with various PCs and NPCs helping and hindering. Unlike Harry, Jay did not get to kick butt back in a third stage. But this seemed to work just fine because of what else was going on.

First, Jay got to use her telekinesis to loosen the straps binding one of her fellow prisoners. Second, she got to call her teacher -- he's a sidhe, and she knows his True Name. He got the message, and was able to alert two other PCs that Jay needed help. One joined the third PC (another was off in another plot, but glad for the update), who was already helping. The sidhe teacher fought Wood offstage -- basically, the people with Really Big Spirits, who are NPCs anyway, were written out of the onstage fight, making that fight properly PC centered.

The PC outside the wagon where Jay was being held did cool things with electricity and magnetism, downing two powerful foes, Fire and Earth, though getting her wrist crushed by Earth in the process. Fortunately, she'd picked up some healing herbs for her boyfriend earlier, and one of the other PCs knew a powerful healer.

Inside the wagon, Jay was able to combine her telekinesis with another PC's crossbow skill. That is, the other PC, Regina, was told to surrender, and someone held a knife at Jay's throat. Regina dropped her crossbow in such a way that when Jay set it off with telekinesis, it would hit the guy holding the knife in the throat -- Josh rolled really well for Regina. So, Jay got to be effective in her own rescue.

Jay also learned that the project that created her also created her fellow prisoners, so she's learned she has family, sort of, except it's insane. (Beth's favorite Jay line to her fellow experiment as said FE attacked the person just killed by the crossbow bolt: Attack someone who's alive!)

So, while she didn't personally kick the butt of Wood or his spirit, and did have the powerful NPC ally hand her her spirit back, she did get to be effective with it first, She did get to free a fellow prisoner and help kill someone attacking her. She did get interesting information about the project that created her and two new insane family members.

And best of all, finally, finally, we had a logical reason for the NPC she's in love with (and vice versa), Ron, the FBI agent, who was also effective in the rescue, to kiss her. About damned time!

So, these are two practical examples of how to kick PC butt and have the player enjoy it.