Opponents with more than 2 arms

[MonkeyWrench]

can you still try terrain rolls to avoid fighting all of her at once, or is this not possible because it's one creature, or is it possible with a penalty?

You could easily dart to the side to get out of the way of some of the arms. There should defiently be a penalty though, any ideas? I might also make it that you have to make seperate terrain rolls for each set of arms you want to avoid.

Just how fast is it anyway?

Well it's got a move of 6 (This makes it slower than it should be according to the rules for calculating Move, but I added the Tail attribute from oBaM) However in comabt it's extremely fast (AG 8, Ref 7).

I'd still like to know what the penalty is for switching proficiencies in the middle of a round. Or is there any penalty at all?

[Brian Leybourne]

I'd still like to know what the penalty is for switching proficiencies in the middle of a round. Or is there any penalty at all?

It doesn't seem to come up often :-)

What I usually do is give the player whatever worse CP he would have left from either proficiency given the number of dice he's already spent in the round.

Thus is he starts off with a pool of 12 and spends 7 dice (5 left) then switches to a pool of 10, he now only has 3 dice (10-7 being worse than 12-7). If he had switched to a pool of 16, he would have 5 dice left (12-7 being worse than 16-7).

By the way, I think that with your 6 armed creature, evasions should automatically work against all attacks from the creature as they're all coming from the same place, if you catch my meaning.

Brian.

[Mike Holmes]

By the way, I think that with your 6 armed creature, evasions should automatically work against all attacks from the creature as they're all coming from the same place, if you catch my meaning.

Good thought. This is fun!

I think the key, whatever you do, is to playtest the rules before hand. Play a combat out, and be very clever. Decide on the adjudications for as many situations as you can before hand, using extensible principles whenever possible. With a little prep this way the encounter will likely be quite memorable, IMO.

Mike

[Jeph]

I would NOT want to fight that thing. One evasion and two attacks with the full CP. EEK! Damn, it could take down one heavily armed, armored, skilled, and SAed character a round without breaking a sweat...

[Brian Leybourne]

Actually, I wouldn't let it evade unless it was only evading (evade uses the whole body) but two attacks and a defense, sure. :-)

This isn't something you would want to fight alone unless you were the worlds best warrior (or it killed your father, raped your sister, blasphemed against your faith, and it was both your destiny and drive to kill it. And you're lucky. And killing it is the right thing to do.) :-)

Brian.

[kenjib]

It seems pretty vulnerable to missile weapons, relatively speaking.  You've just got to keep out of reach.

[MonkeyWrench]

I ran through some combats last night. Here are the results....

Combat #1 The demon was armed with a scimitar, a cut and thrust sword, a morning star, a short sowrd, a hand axe, and a dagger. The 1st PC was in a chain shirt with a doppelhander. The 2nd in leather and chain with a longsword, medium shield, and a longbow. The 3rd had full chain with a scimitar and buckler and a short bow.
What Happened - red/white was thrown. The doppelhander couldn't get a hit in with all the parrying and the demon won initiative. After a rather successful bind and strike the doppelhander had very little dice to defend with the next exchange. I had the demon go on full offense and used 3 double strikes. Needless to say the doppelhander died a messy death. The archers had failed to hit it with their first volley and were in the midst of reloading when their friend was cut down. The demon ended up being very wounded at the end, but none of the PCs survived.

Combat #2 - The demon was armed the same way, but this time all 3 PCs are armed with pikes
What Happened - The PCs beat the demon with very little injury. She only closed range with one of the PCs once and he drew his arming sword and went mainly defensive while the other two poked her.

So the lesson is keep out of reach of the thing. Whenever it would close range with the PCs death was close. Another thing, the PCs weren't using any SAs so I suppose that it would gone differently if they were using them.

All in all it very well and there are only a few minor tweaks I'd like to make. I'll post them later (damn job hunting). Now I'm turning my eyes to some other Planescape demons. Somebody stop me.......

[Mike Holmes]

Victory for the TROS system. I can totally see the differences in the battles. I'd call that Monkeywrench's Rule #1 - Use lots of pikes to kill big nasties if you're not invested in it.

(or it killed your father, raped your sister, blasphemed against your faith, and it was both your destiny and drive to kill it. And you're lucky. And killing it is the right thing to do.)

Yeah, an extra 20 CP or so can really be a motherfucker. :-)

How SAed up were the attackers? Would a righteous group have had an easier time with the smaller weapons?

BTW, to make the fight really claustrophobic, I'd have the thing hiding in a cave where archers would be little to no use. Heheheh.

Mike

[MonkeyWrench]

I'll let you know how it goes with SAs after tonight. The PCs have been hunting down a group of Sslassk for the last few adventures and tonight they will attempt to rescue some people from the camp. They'll be in for a big suprise when it turns out this demon has been the object of worship for this group of snake men.

As a side note I think tFoB should have some thoughts on wearing armor in sweltering heat, like rain forests and deserts. I've been doing it that they get a Fatigue point every ENx 10 min for metal armors and every EN x 20 min in leather or no armor.

[Mike Holmes]

Sweet. Can't wait to hear about it.

Mike

[Brian Leybourne]

The PCs have been hunting down a group of Sslassk for the last few adventures and tonight they will attempt to rescue some people from the camp. They'll be in for a big suprise when it turns out this demon has been the object of worship for this group of snake men.

See, that just rocks the kazbah. I haven't had the chance to use Sslassk in one of my games yet. Cool to see someone else using them.

How intelligent is the "demon"? It occurs that with the Sslassk breeding practices, it might really be some kind of demon, or it could just be a seriously inbred Sslassk because they ran out of humans for a while. (or maybe they captured something else and bred with that... a Gol perhaps, now *there's* a scary thought...)

Or maybe they found some actual troll blood somewhere... :-)

Anyway, Looking forward to hearing how it goes. I'm liking this beastie. One question though - you said that at one point in the first battle the demon got initiative - did all three sets of arms get or lose initiative at the same time, or were you handling them differently?

Brian.

[MonkeyWrench]

One question though - you said that at one point in the first battle the demon got initiative - did all three sets of arms get or lose initiative at the same time, or were you handling them differently?

Ya know this isn't something I thought of. At the time all 3 sets lost or gained initiative at the same time. It would be more realistic to have them each with a different initiative but I think with the way the rules are set up now it would be overly complex. I dunno does anyone have any ideas?

In my game it's an actual demon. A Sslassk sorcerer summoned one up a long time ago and since then they've been worshipping it.

[Brian Leybourne]

In my game it's an actual demon. A Sslassk sorcerer summoned one up a long time ago and since then they've been worshipping it.

Cool man.

Brian.

[MonkeyWrench]

Unfortunatly I never got a chance to see the demon in action last night. It sucks....big time. I'd still like to work on this monster though so at least some people can get enjoyment out of it. How would anyone out there handle the initiative problem? Does each set of arms get it's own initiative or do they only get one? Lemme know what you think.



Next up.....a fifteen foot tall wolf demon with a set of lobster claws!

[Mike Holmes]

I'd give it one initiative for each pair. Again, this is no more complicated, really, than running three NPCs. OTOH, this would again all be trumped by things like evasion.

Mike