To defend myself if you had told me I needed to make a climb check I would have done it myself and there is a good chance I'd be on the balcony and things would be very very different than they are. I've been fuck busy lately and I keep missing skills when we're supposed to collaborate so had had that been different plus Gordok being up on the balcony with the plan I had in mind I'd never gotten a second strike. Gordok isn't a fucking punching bag but he tends to get that way and we always get him out of it and back to kicking ass and taking names. However pretty much every time that has happened Cal is nowhere to be fucking found. It's tiresome. Really fucking tiresome. As much as Zerg wants to argue that Cal gets a stealth bonus for hiding 10 spaces off in the darkness where only one enemy can't see him it just really pisses me off when we're getting our asses handed to us and he's diddling waiting for his conditions to be just perfect. So yeah Fey Switch was completely deserved. And Skills and I saw Zerg edit his post so that he moved away from the pack yet again. He originally had Cal going 2 squares north towards us. That would have been fine. Cal could have been part of the team then. But no Zerg moves him 2 squares northeast and I'm sure he would have moved more in that direction the next turn because apparently any volleys Cal has to give just have to be more than 2 squares of distance between him and an enemy to fucking work. So he sits all pretty away while we get fucked up. Yeah little bitch can become a human missile and distract the big nasty monster for once.

If you guys are so bent out of shape for this long time coming event then sure I guess if you all outweigh my opinion I can redo my turn and deal out some damage towards enemies instead. Voice it now or leave Zerg to figure a way out of this one.

What the hell?

In my first turn, I dropped a monster with a nova.
In my second turn, I had a couple of bad rolls that wouldn't hit anything. I used a standard, a move, and a minor, what "diddling around for conditions to be perfect" are you talking about?
In my third turn, I had to get away from the position you put me in.

Can you tell me exactly when Cal has not been contributing to team damage? Because frankly, If I can concentrate on dropping the enemies one at a time, while the defenders keep them at bay, the battle can be over much sooner!

And the shift northeast? I have 15 HP left. Pang is going to focus fire the manglers on me. Skills has slowed one of them. Since I'm dazed and only have one action in my next turn, it's logical for me to put as much distance as I can. My damage output is the same, five or twenty squares away. And if the team healers don't have to worry about healing me, that helps the team in the long run.

I am most perplexed at your resentment here. It is my job as a striker to damage a single enemy as much and as quickly as possible. I'm not a defender like Garrmondo who can soak up the punishment. You made a character whose most potent attacks are close bursts, which need you to get in melee range. And you wonder why you become a punching bag?

>> he moved away from the pack yet again. He originally had Cal going 2 squares north towards us. That would have been fine.
And also, why the hell do you want the team to be all bunched together? That's a surefire way of getting an area attack on our asses.

IT IS A FLAW I KNOW.

this is partially why i got fey switch so i could get out of dodge when need be

Additional Spam:
Alright, well I'm gonna draw something silly up to help with the transition and roll up a new post with a different strategy. Don't go yet, Pang. This may take a couple hours depending on how busy it gets around here.

you guys

you guys are silly

silly geese, that's what you guys are

For the record, I fully support killing zerg.

Start your ShadowRun game and you can have the personal honor!

Killing players in Shadowrun isn't even challenging, though.

You have to work pretty hard to find people smart enough not to die in shadowrun.

But you see, Deni isn't even about the challenge of killing me. He just has an irrational (?) desire to kill me. So...

Though mind you, I totally intend to employ every rule in the book to prevent him from killing me, just to spite him. My good friend nuttyturnip can testify as to how hard I try to not lose.

What does this even mean?

Acer's just roleplaying, dude. If I was in a group of five people and every time we got in a fight one guy ran and hid and threw stones, I'd get bored of him after a while too. You've got to remember Zerg that some people (i.e. everyone else) is playing the game for fun and laughs, not as a statistics exercise. Sure your posts are peppered with colour and filler but your calculated approach is completely at odds with the fun-loving, chaotic nature of the rest of the gang. In RP terms that's fine, Cal can be a cynical killer but he shouldn't expect the others to be too happy playing meat shield all the time.

Using the kind of terms you're so fond of, the first party had a striker with no weapon, a leader who never got involed in any fights, a rogue who prefered head-on combat and a controller who deliberately looked for more enemies to fight. You're pretty much the first person to take the game even vaguely seriously and try to "win", rather than just making silly posts for laughs.

Basically it means you go all out and expend resources (dailies, action points, item powers) in a single round. You just saw a Hulkbusting nova done by Gordok, for example. Perhaps I've been browsing the WotC Character Optimization Boards too much...

I suppose the point's been driven rather bluntly. We'll see if Cal gets the chance to effect a change of personality, perhaps driven by Denny's death.

Well, Argumentus was no striker, though I guess with the way Pang built him, he probably was dealing out that much damage. Rogues are melee strikers so they do have to go head-on; I do believe Zeph dished out much pain on one of the enemies with his backstabbing capabilities.

Though I am curious (and not in the mood to reread Dungeon of Doom at this time). Bob was a ranged striker too, how did you play him in melee?

Make silly posts for laughs? That can be arranged. I have just the thing, just wait till after the battle :)

Of course, with my lack of wit, it would probably fall flat. Oh well.

There you go again with your insistence on using the "proper" phrases and shit. Arg did more damage than any two other team members combined therefore he was our striker. When I say Zeph went head on I mean literally, he only once ever pulled off a meaningful flanking move and spent most of his time shooting crossbow bolts or attacking on his own. Bob wasn't a ranged striker, he did fuck all damage to anything. His role was to exploit elemental weaknesses from time to time, cause status effects and solve puzzles, which is as I understand it the role of a controller on nerdy websites. Also, he once punched a halfling, it was epic.

If anyone else was trying to create and efficient, balanced party, do you think Acer would have gone triple-class?

I'm not suggesting that you should suddenly have Cal charge headlong into combat all the time, just that you'd fit in a lot better if you took your nose out of the rulebooks for five minutes and allowed yourself to get caught up in the character. Stop analysing the game so much and just do what you think your character would do, and leave the others to do the same.

At the moment, from an observer's point of view, the game has changed a bit from watching someone play Monkey Island, to watching someone over-levelled playing SMT. Sure it's technically impressive but it's really boring and the only way there's ever any excitement is when the game throws an unexpected boss at you that's immune to all your best attacks, plus with your rulebook shenanigans it's a bit like you're playing with a walkthrough so there aren't any surprises. Pang could kill you but only by chucking ridiculous monsters at you and that'd be no fun for the rest of the party if they were just enjoying the RP side of things.

Of course I'm assuming here that Skex, Garr, Skills and Acer would rather play for fun than as an alternative to maths homework, if I'm wrong then I apologise for putting words in their mouths.

No, no.

Go ahead.

You are doing a better job of explaining this than I did.

By typing "Bob melees the evil monster"?

That's how it looked to me, anyway

NEVER DO THIS

Bob had a staff. In melee, he would whack things with this staff. It was less effective than casting a spell, but more effective than running away. We'll get you a spiked gauntlet or something, you can punch things. It'll be fun!

If after that little tirade you think my desire to see you die is irrational, you're completely off your fucking nut.

P.S.

Pang is much nicer than me. Rules nazis like you die in my campaigns the moment they start ruining tone with idiocy. Amazing how often buildings just fall down with you in them.

Looks like another fight with no casualties. :(

Zerg, have you given any more thought to running an arena combat style side-game? I think I'll die of old age before the back-up list for Pang's game gets round to me again.

How sure are you Pang doesn't have any reinforcements coming? :3:

Anyhow, I still don't have a good enough grasp of the rules to do it, I think. I got martial characters down, but I'm not really sure how Psionic characters play. Power points in lieu of encounter and daily powers sound weird.

Tell ya what. Let's see how many people are interested. Still teaching myself how to work with Maptools, and I'm not sure if the interest warrants the investment for it.

Quite. But well you see, Deni, you indicated a desire to kill me even before Cal had a chance to do anything. Naturally I thought you hated me for no reason whatsoever, since we have never directly interacted before!

You only really need the combat rules though. There wouldn't be anything other that a party standing in an arena getting attacked. Ban Psions if you don't like the rules for them.

I'm sure there'd be a few people up for it, just the people on Pang's reserve list would make for an interesting enough set of campaigns if you based it on teams of two, seeing who could get to the highest "level" of the arena. Each game wouldn't take that long potentially and it'd be fun to try out different character combinations.

It was unfortunate that this squad we got ended up having two healers and a nuker, because it's doubly hard for Pang to try to kill one or two of us without killing us all.

Of course, you and knk both retired right about the time I was lined up for play, so you only have yourselves to blame :mad:

Not really, the hard part is killing one of you without making it look like he singled out that person for death. You'll notice that Pang never really presses home the advantage his monsters have on one person. If one character is dying, he'll attack others rather than having all the monsters pile-on with coup de grace attacks. If he wanted to kill someone he could have done so in pretty much every fight the present group has had, only whoever it was would feel rather aggrieved.

What he could do is hit you with a succession of smaller fights with no time to rest in between to burn off all your surges, combined with bad guys who can daze people or put people to sleep, to stop you being able to use healing powers. Is there a silenced status in DnD? There's also been no traps in the game since everyone nearly died falling into a hole in Crusader, that's always a good way to use up healing surges. I think Bob healed more trap damage than monster damage over the course of his career.

Also which one of you is supposed to be a nuker? None of you can dish out that much damage alone in a single turn, your fights drag on for months. ;)

Well, not a nuker, I guess, but Cal's got a lot of damage he can bring to bear if he hits. And Gordok's skills have been working out pretty well too. (off-nuker?)

I am planning to put more traps in, it's just been hard to justify in this adventure since it's basically about pursuing people on the run from place to place. "They were here for 45 minutes and left behind this chute full of razorblades" strains plausibility.

I could have very easily killed Zerg that last turn if the Manglers had rolled better. They have a huge mechanical incentive in pressing the advantage that dazes give them, and so I'm going to look out for more combos like that.

I almost killed Zerg! It was the dice. The dice, I tell you :(

Just a reminder, Pang, I moved down to P-49 on my turn also.