Huzzah! I can write up the post. Give me a little bit.

Before I do that though, the guard can actually try to break my hold. All he has to do is roll Unarmed Combat + Strength [Physical] with a threshold equal to the number of successes I scored (1). With that said, if I did surprise him in the shack, I probably would have had another IP to improve my hold and get more net hits before he attempted to break the lock (I may also get the Superior Position bonus since I believe he was sitting down and I probably grabbed him from behind). My guess is that this would go on for a few IPs with Jack alternating between improving his grip as the guy generated successes and causing stun damage until the guy goes down, but it's up to you how you want to roll with it. I'll start working on my post and leave off the guard shack until you let me know how you want to handle that.

That is funny - I read the part on subdual this morning and I could have sworn he had to beat your strength plus net hits, but I just reread it and clearly you are correct.

That being said, you are correct, you get at least one more IP to improve your hold - let's see what happens there:

11d6.hits(5)=4

And he resists:
6d6.hits(5)=2

Which means when he goes he would need 3 hits to escape - let's just make that one roll

6d6.hits(5)=3

Lol - ok, now we actually have to roll this out.

So:

ETA - sorry - screwed up the surprise rules.

First is the guard's surprise test:

6d6.hits(5)=1

Which he fails.

So, Initiative

Initiative:
Jack 2d6+7=11
Guard 1d6+6=7 - 10 so no action.

So, on 11, you Improve the Hold

On 1, you get to go again - you can improve the hold again.

11d6.hits(5)=6

There you go

He resists
6d6.hits(5)=2

So, now it would be initiative again, at which point you can apply damage, and he isn't going to get away.

Hope that wasn't too confusing - sorry I screwed up.

No problem. Dumpshock just shit the bad on me. Let me break up these posts so there isn't a massive double post issue going on.


WTF IS WRONG WITH DUMPSHOCK!?!?!

So sorry, I am not sure what is wrong with those posts. I think I'm going to close my browser first and come back. I'm just going to delete the text. Sorry about whatever the hell that was, I didn't do anything differently than I normally do. 12 duplicate posts...

No worries - sometimes it just gets glitchy.

Seriously. It duplicated four posts, so I went ahead and split the first post into four posts, which then somehow tripled the total post count. Ugh... if i had something I thought that would be worthwhile to post in those eight blank posts, I would.

I think it's STR + net hits compared to the opponent's physical limit that determines if they are grappled or not. Then to break, you just compare it to the net hits. No worries though, that's way easier to deal with than 3.5 D&D grappling. Lawd...

Awesome, that worked out pretty well, I think. Is there anything else we can accomplish without Grease? I'm not sure and am happy to wait until DrZ gets back.

I will admit that I played the original D&D (Basic, Expert, Companion, etc) then switched to AD&D, and then 2nd edition. I pretty much never went back to it after that (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Ok, so, here's what we've got left.

1) Grease meets with Chapel (which can be a throwaway scene I write)
2) Grease meets with the team and does the disguises (which I've already rolled for)
3) Your recon of the apartment.

Up to you guys what, if anything you want to do before he gets back.

I played 3.5 in PbP on the Wizards main boards for a while. It's where I cut my PbP teeth. Let's just say that the grappling rules were a little complicated.

I think we wanted to do a quick recon of the complex before heading back to meet with Grease and the supplies. Just to make sure it squares with what we expect. Overkill could do a Matrix Perception check to see if he picked anything up (cameras, drones, etc).

Just threw a quick communication in there. I think we're ready for a transition, or you can do Grease's bit with Chapel (or both).

Cool with me too.

P.S. Shadow Spells was apparently released today. It's one of those short PDFs and is apparently basically an expansion of Street Grimoire (more spells/adept powers/traditions).

Several OOC things that have occurred to me:

1) While you have secured a truck, this was done in order to allow you to bring a cart into the apartment in order to drag the bodies out.

We have failed to actually acquire said cart.

2) Given Amy's use of spirits to provide overwatch, it seems remiss for me not to remind the team (Amy would think about it if nothing else) that Falcon could use one in a very similar nature. I'm not sure there is much to do about it if he did, but I didn't see any of your planning address having a spirit outside the apartment looking for strangers. (I might have missed it).

I was kind of hoping the truck would have some sort of cart in it. Alternately, I had suggested we hit a laundry company.


That's kind of what the disguises are for, although given that it can assense, it might wonder about Amy. Nothing we can really do since she can't mask. Considering the foot traffic in the area, I would think (hope, probably) that Falcon would have a spirit reporting only things that are of significant note and close proximity.

Ok - since I should have been more on the ball about the cart - we will assume the truck has a cart in it (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

With regards to the spirit, since it is an apartment complex, it can't very well report all activity, otherwise it would be warning him all the time (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I think once you get to their specific door, however, that is something that will probably trigger an alert of some kind. As I said, not sure what exactly you can do about it, but I wanted to give you fair warning.

I'm good with that. The apartment complex might have some kind of garbage cart that we could use, but that might raise some eyebrows. We could always reply that we didn't realize the infestation was going to be THIS bad...

Amy mentioned that recently:


But no plan was devised regarding this. When we get there, Amy will explain that we need to pretend to be going to another room and when we're in front of Lynx's room, it will be somewhat surprising that we suddenly barge in.

The only plan we really had was to take out Falcon first. The honest truth is that, unless the door locks are controlled by the Host, there's really no way to get into their apartment without Overkill directly hacking the door, which is going to take a few seconds. While we suggested that we could make the work order apply to the apartment one down from their apartment and hopefully fool the guards if they aren't highly observant, that's not going to work for a spirit. The rules are honestly not particularly kind to us here, between trying to fool guards and moving quickly enough that the spirit doesn't warn our targets before they act.

The other problem being that spirits are, IMO, kind of OP. Not necessarily in their power (although that gets a little insane), but the fact they can easily provide security to an area and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. Disrupt them and their summoner knows immediately. On top of that, they have perfect telepathy with their summoner, so even if you somehow manage to tie them up with a mana barrier or something, they can still raise the alarm. There's really not much we can do with a spirit other than try to move quickly and hope it doesn't happen to be in the hallway when we're setting up. We could maybe try to fool it and cause a distraction somewhere nearby, but we're stretched thin as it is and it would probably STILL raise an alert to Falcon.

ETA: Not that we can really complain much, we've certainly used spirits with a relatively high frequency.

My character has 16(!) skill points in spirit-related skills, so it's no surprise she tries to make use of it in the game.

Spirits do have surprisingly powerful side effects, but they're more vulnerable than they have been in the past imo.

Oh, no complaints, I think you've definitely used them effectively. It's just something of a reap what we sow kind of deal. I can't wait until we get ambushed. That's going to suck. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cyber.gif)

I think Grease mentioned at some point ic we should look out for spirits. That said, I'm cool with everything happening. Thanks for moving stuff along without me!

Jack and I's post's overlapped a bit. I edited it to make sense.
-DrZ

Sorry! I didn't realize you were posting. I think this works out.

I will write a quick IC post, along with a gear list, and then I'm ready to transition inside.

Thanks,
-DrZ

As for Gear, if I think I can get away with it, I'll stow the AR, SMG, and helmet in the cart (If I can't get away with the AR, then at least the SMG). If the coveralls we got won't cover our armor, I'll drop the armor jacket in there as well. Just have to gear up as quickly as possible when we get to the 5th Floor (or just cross my fingers and go in unarmored and hope for cover).

Otherwise, gear list is identical to what I posted before the Free Zone Couriers side-job, plus the restraints. All munitions are non-lethal (I have 39 S&S rounds left in the Colt and several magazines worth of gel rounds for the H&K).

@Grease

The RCC is the size of a briefcase - I'm assuming you have that in the cart as well?

@Jack

The coveralls will go over an Armor Vest, but not an Armor Jacket.

The cart is big enough to hold your stuff (after all, it is big enough to hold a body).

Can I have a little more of an idea of what you guys are doing?

Are all four of you entering through the main doors with the cart, and then splitting up? I wanted to make sure only to avoid confusion on my part.

Just letting Grease doing the talking right?