Temporary Absence

LiTS will be out of town saturday August 12 and sunday August 13... oh wait, I'll be out of town, not that I post much on weekends anyway.

I'll be in Indy Saturday by lunchtime. Room 206 is the meeting place for all DS and LitS, I think it would be fun to get together and share lunch and dinner meals, and possible late evening refreshments with all of you. I've never been to the con in Indy, so I am interested in what is recommended.

I hope Street Magic copies are still available when I get there.

Reading through the forums in general makes me wonder how many other Dumpshockers we missed meeting while at GenCon.

El Orco's Angelic Flowers shall be a fond memory...

WinterRat and TiredRonin do you guys do Dim Sum?

Back online. Back up to speed. Posts forthcoming.

Warehouse Group: Results for R1 - IP1

First, let me apologize profusely for the delay in my reply. Between looking for a new job, moving, an unfamiliar combat system, and the simply massive scale of the combat involved, it took me far longer than I thought to get through everything.

Just doing the rolls took me about 3-4 hours, and that's without changing the map! Hopefully with practice I will become faster and more efficient at it. I started picking up speed near the end, but I constantly needed to reference the various statistics and rules still.

A side result of this experience that will be addressed in more detail shortly will be the creation of a mechanism to hopefully speed up the times of larger combats and keep the turnaround to a minimum and the flow smooth and crisp.

Nonetheless, all those reasons aside, the bottom line is that there was a significant slowdown on my part that held up everyone and I apologize again for that. Forgiveness please.

From a strict statistical standpoint (obviously the flavor text will be posted IC) here is the results of R1 - IP1

Cao Jaan – Runs and dives through the shelves by Scrapheap, Max, and Knight. Hit by a Powerball spell for 7P (see below).

Blaze – Casts Increase Reflexes Lev. 3 successfully, shouts to ETG to cover the stairs, runs towards the stairs.

Scrapheap – Lobs smoke grenade which will detonate on 19 of IP 2, begins climbing shelf.

Knight – Yells at Cao to ‘Get the lady and get out’, casts F6 manabolt at A5. Goon A5 gets 4 hits on resistance roll, no net hits for Knight, spell has no effect. It is obvious to Knight Counterspelling was used, but it is not clear where it came from.

A1 – Begins sprinting up the NW stairs.

Nora – Tries to pull herself up. Holds on but cannot make progress.

A9 – 2 Wide Bursts at Scrapheap: 1st shot is a grazing hit, no damage. 2nd shot has 1 net hit, resistance roll nets damage down to 0 Stun.

A2 – 2 Narrow bursts at G1, 6P for 1st shot. 5P for 2nd shot, G1 dies.

A5 – F5 Powerball centered on Cao Jaan: 4 hits. 9 damage to shelf that Scrapheap is climbing, which begins to fall and will fall over at the beginning of IP 3. Drain: 5 hits on 5S Drain, no drain.

Results of Powerball (4 hits, force 5)
Counterspelling from Knight: 1 hit
Cao Jaan – 2 hits, net 2 hits for attacker, damage of 7P

G3 – Begins running forward to support friends.

A3 – 2 Narrow Bursts at ETG. Between the range modifier and ETG's massive armor, body, and cover modifiers, there was no way in heck this would hurt him so I didn't even bother to roll. Knocked down later in the IP by ETG.

A6 – Suppressive fire at Knight, Max, Scrapheap, and Cao Jaan. Guns down the three civilians in front of them.

A12 – 2 Narrow Bursts at G4, 9P for first shot, 5P for second shot, G4 dies.

Lady Dove – Runs to Nora and tries to help pull her up. Does not do much other than stabilize her grip.

ETG – Goes to cover in Interview room, yells instructions to Blaze. Hits A3 with a Narrow Burst for 5P damage, Hits A4 with a Wide Burst for 4P Damage.
Note: I rolled horrible for ETG (1 hit and 2 hits) and excellently for my goons. 5 hits on both of their resistance rolls! Both A3 and A4 are automatically knocked down. Finds time to let out a ferocious roar.

G1 – Killed before his action.

G4 – Killed before his action.

G5 – Falls back to cover; killed later this IP.

A4 – Staggers to his feet from Knockdown. Takes him both Simple Actions to do so.

A8 – Suppression fire, guns down everyone in the corridor in front of him.

G2 – Falls back to cover

A7 – Suppression fire, guns down everyone in an arc in front of him.

A10 – 2 Narrow Bursts at G5; 5P for 1st shot, misses second shot

A11 – 2 Narrow Bursts at G5; 4P for 1st shot, 5P for second shot, kills G5.

Max – Stays prone, surprised and cannot respond.

G6 – Runs out side door

If there are any questions, comments, or clarifications needed, please feel free to state them. For the sake of expediency I will be moving on to IP 2 immediately.

Warehouse Group R1 - IP2

Same as last time, everyone please roll for initiative (don't forget injury modifiers), then post your actions and any necessary rolls.

For the most part, the NPCs are doing the same thing as last round: Nora and Lady Dove are trying to pull Nora back up to the second floor, citizens are running around trying to get away, and the Opposition is gunning down everyone and everything in sight.

A few notes for IP2:

1. Scrapheap's smoke grenade will go off on Phase 19, creating a smoke cloud with a diameter of approximately 20 meters. It has been marked on the map with 6 diagonal lines in about the center of the map.

2. The shelf Scrapheap is standing on will collapse at the beginning of IP 3. The shelf is about 6 meters high and therefore per pg. 115 the threshold number of successes is 9 to climb it entirely.

I rolled an extra dice for you due to a +1 modifier I gave you for 'Easily Climbable' surface and scored a hit.

Therefore you now have 4 out of 9 required successes to reach the top of the shelf.

Before any other actions you take, roll Agility + Climbing to see if you lose your balance and fall as a result of the shelf being rocked by the Powerball.

If you wish to continue to climb the shelf, you have two choices:

a) Climb as much as you can this IP and then jump in an attempt to grab the floor of the catwalk.

You will obviously face a penalty for what is essentially two skill uses this phase (Climbing and Gymnastics), not to mention a penalty for probably having to jump a fairly high distance to grab on to the floor of the catwalk. Additionally, if you miss, you will be consider to be jumping off a several meter high object, with all the problems that potentially entails.

However, on the plus side, since you go first, you'll be able to get up there before anyone can do anything if you succeed.

OR

b) Climb as much as you can this IP, and then jump in an attempt to grab the floor of the catwalk during your Phase in IP 3, right before the shelf collapses.

The downside to this is that if anyone so much as breathes on this shelf (i.e. damages it for 1 more box of damage) it will collapse before you can jump...unless I'm feeling generous and give you an opportunity to jump and you make an absolutely MONSTER roll to jump off in time and grab the catwalk. I would not feel good about betting on this possibility, just so you know.

The upside to this is that you are much more likely to succeed in climbing to the catwalk, as you'll have an entire action (with no/very little penalty) to climb the shelf this IP and then another entire action to make a Gymnastics roll (with no/very little penalty) to jump to the catwalk.

3. Because of where the Powerball hit the shelf, if it collapses it almost certainly will fall East, on top of Knight and Max. Just something to think about. And yes, you can definitely see it wobblng.

4. All characters in RED on the map are dead. Maps have been emailed to all of you since Shadow is currently gone and unable to post the maps for me.

General GenCon Update - All I can say is WOW, it was an absolutely fantastic time. I absolutely loved meeting everyone, and it was really fun hanging out with fellow LITSers and getting to know them better. We missed everyone who couldn't make it, especially BC, who was called away on work at the last minute.

We're definitely going to work on making this an annual event, and next year we plan on going for at least a couple days. Hopefully, we can see more of you there next time around! I'm horribly incompetent at technology, but Ronin has pictures from the Con that I imagine he'll post when he can. Start bugging him and you may see results sooner.

Warehouse Group - Go ahead and start making your rolls and talking strategy. IC post will be up sometime tomorrow.

DireRadiant - I do eat Dim Sum, but I don't know about Ronin.

Vegas - You're up. Sorry about the delay, in the future feel free to prompt/remind me if your storyline is dragging. I've been busy, but I try to keep up on the storylines that are quick and flowing, so even if I was slow with the Warehouse Group because it was such a massive effort, it never hurts to see if you can get me to push your story forward.

Blaze's initiative rolls for warehouse combat round #2:

Winterrat: Do you want us to wait until you have compiled the iniative scores before declaring actions?

Warehouse Group - Wait until the Initiative Scores have been compiled before declaring actions and making the rolls for your actions for IP 2.

Bandit -

I need to use more Edge for Cao, or he's going to be a nice side of fire-roasted salsa pronto.

Initiative:


Also, now would be a good time to start chunking up some counterspelling, 'cause getting wacked with a F5 Powerbolt makes baby seals cry.

Knight and Lady Dove are the best sources of counterspelling for us at the moment. Right now Blaze is running towards the stairs, and then up them, since that puts his back to all of you (out of LOS) he cannot extend counterspelling over you

As soon as he secures the second level (and Lady Dove) he will be in an elevated position where he can cover any of you.

Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the resistance roll for Cao Jaan was including counterspelling. I gave you the benefit of the doubt and assumed that Knight would be covering those he could see with Counterspelling. One of your hits on the resistance roll was from his Counterspelling.

And just fyi, it was a Powerball, not Powerbolt. That's why it hit the shelves behind Cao Jaan as well and did severe (9 boxes) damage to them, hence their impending fall.

Heh. I did ask for the "I am the wujen, please kill me," sign.

Remember, the (probably) best location for us to hold our ground in this warehouse is the area by the stairwell that Blaze is running up, the one that ETG has set up his 'pillbox' near.

We need to keep that stairwell open so that Blaze can guide Nora and Lady Dove down to the first level, even if Nora is rescued by John, we still need to get Lady Dove down.

From that location we have tremendous coverage from ETG, and clear shots at anyone approaching. We will also be able to focus our counterspellling in such a way that some of us will be covered by more than one mage. Remember, we have to keep some counterspelling protecting ETG, because if the enemy mage takes him out, then we have lost our most effective tactical weapon in this fight.

One other note BC. Since the attack did more damage in one hit than Cao Jaan's Body, he is automatically knocked down and needs to make a Body + Willpower (2) test (injury modifiers do apply) to stand up again. That's probably pretty relevant to your first action.

Here's the rolls for that test:

Knight's initiative roll for IP 2

Warehouse Group - Argh, my bad!!!

I misread the Combat Sequence procedures, and a few clarifications are needed.

1. We do NOT re-roll Initiative for IP 2. Order remains the same, except for characters who had a direct change to their Initiative Scores (such as from Wound Modifiers or Blaze's Increased Reflexes Spell)

2. Characters who added Initiative Passes to their Combat Turn in IP 1 DO NOT receive additional passes until the NEXT Combat Turn. So Knight still has 4IP because he was already sustaining the Increased Reflexes Spell before combat started. On the other hand, since Blaze cast his Increased Reflexes spell in Combat Turn 1, IP 1, he does not get the extra Initiative Passes until Combat Turn 2.

I will make the appropriate adjustments to the Initiative Order and post them later tonight or tomorrow.

OK here is the initiative order (modified for injuries) for Round 1, IP 2. Everyone on the list, please post your actions for this pass and any relevant rolls needed.

Note 1: Due to the staircase railing design and other factors, no one has a very clear line of sight on A1 (who is still moving up the stairs). A9 is shooting at whatever opportune targets present themselves, same as last round.

Note 2: The smoke grenade will go off at the beginning of the round on 19.

Note 3: The shelf will collapse at the beginning of COMBAT TURN 2 (unless something happens between now and then to cause it to fall sooner), not at the beginning of IP 3 as I previously stated. I have edited my previous post to reflect this. Max is trying to scramble out of the way, I will send an edited map to reflect this as well.

Note 4: Slipshade, you should be back approximately now, feel free to jump in and resume control of Max whenever you're ready.

Combat Round 1, Initiative Pass 2

Initiative Order:

19: Scrapheap, Smoke Grenade
18:
17:
16:
15:
14: Knight, A1
13: A9
12:
11: Cao Jaan
10:
9: ETG
8:
7:
6:
5:
4:
3:
2:
1:

Quick question: if Knight was to rush to Cao's side, does he enter any supressed area?

WinterRat1:


Cao is going to run (as best as he currently can) toward the stairs, seeing that most of the people that he had been trying to warn have been mercilessly gunned down.



EDIT: Heh, save yourself Mister Juan!

BC - Cao Jaan began the Combat Turn at 14, and he has 7 boxes of damage. -1 per 2 boxes of damage is a -3 modifier. 14 - 3 = 11.

Which stairs is he running towards? Please specify NW, NE, SE, SW.

Mister Juan and others - Sorry if it wasn't clear from the IC and OOC posts, but there is no suppressed area in mechanical terms. All the bullets were essentially used up gunning down the civilians in the area. I simply used the term suppression fire as a flavor text to describe his intent. I thought I made it clear but this should clear it up.

So yes, Knight can run to Cao Jaan without entering any kind of suppressed area. And btw, you might want to specify at this point which characters you have under your Counterspelling protection. So far I assumed it's only Knight and Cao Jaan from the previous posts.

Does anyone know if there's a limit to how many people you can have under Counterspelling protection at one time?

General Announcement

Everyone - During the next two weeks, the GM staff will be working on structural clarifications and improvements to the LITS-verse. If you have any suggestions that you think would make the game smoother, better, easier to run, more fun to play in, whatever, please give us your suggestions.

Some of the things we are working on are a wiki to make keeping track of combat easier (which I can say with certainty after running this Warehouse Fight is an absolute necessity!), cleaning up the website, bringing Shadowland back to life, and other various projects. So feel free to chime in with your thoughts since after all, LITS belongs to all of us and anything we can do to make it more enjoyable is something we want to examine.

Ooh, missed that. Been awhile since I did the original.

He's running toward the stairs where Blaze is, the Northeast stairs.

Aw, are you sure you don't wanna run to the SW stairs? Just to be cool?

Maybe if Cao hadn't been quite so interested in an accurate recreation of the Charge of the Light Brigade

Knight will s summon a Force 8 Earth Elemental (I feel like we could use the backup) with the optional powers of Fear and Elemental Attack



Of course, Knight will extend his counterspelling to the spirit.

"What do you think happened here, Sarge?"

"I don't know, trooper, but it must have been one mean spirit to leave such a large astral impression for so long."

++

Sweet Jebus that's a monster.

Well, I'd sure like us to live a little more. It should buy us some time.

Damn that is a large spirit . . . go team runner! By the way, didn't John have a spirit on-call when he walked into the warehouse? I seem to remember reading that. If so, it's time to call out the big-guns.

Max has a spirit on call. You guys sure you want to break out the big guns so soon? This party's just getting started, and I'm only warming up...

Umm...not that I have anything else planned other than these guys. Oh no, of course not. Yup, what you see is what you get. No other surprises. None whatsoever. Honest.

ETG Actions:

1.Simple:
Long Narrow burst at A5 (i.e. ETG's spell defense, assuming he saw that A5 was the one who cast the spell...).



2. Simple
Short wide burst at A4 unless he misses A5, in which case he will shoot A5 again (can we do this?)


Alternate roll:


3. free action - err.. delay?

Dire: yeah I do eat dimsum, and I always find it strangely filling. It's strange b/c it doesn't seem like I'm getting full while eating.

Pictures: where would you like them posted? I am only slightly more tech savy than WR1 when it comes to this sort of thing.

Oh yeah, and in case you rule that ETG can't know A5 fired the spell, his actions will be 2 short narrow bursts at A2 and A4 (A3 is still knocked down I believe)

Modifers and Rolls:

Out of town for a wedding this weekend, I'll be back Monday or Tuesday.

@Grendel

I just went reviewed the previous posts, and I wanted to check, there are security cameras, but are the other exits/entrances to the apartment building actually locked?

Long overdue Karma

grendel:

(7-17 thru 8-21)

5 + 5 GM + 3 Quality:

13 karma

Yes, the entrances and exits are secured using card reader type maglocks. Litany doesn't know from this level of casual observation whether or not they're protected by anti-tamper circuitry. The fire exits on all floors are alarmed, and open from the inside only. The front entrance has the usual buzzer panel to allow residents to admit visitors.

Learn to swim, indeed

Karma awards for my players

Morgannah: 4 pts (Jul 26th - Aug 22nd)
BClements: 10 pts (Jul 26th - Aug 22nd) [GM Bonus]
WinterRat1: 10 pts (Jul 26th - Aug 22nd) [GM Bonus]
BanditF50: 4 pts (Jul 26th - Aug 22nd)
TiredRonin: 4 pts (Jul 26th - Aug 22nd)
Shadowrunner13: 4 pts (Jul 26th - Aug 22nd)
DireRadiant: 6 pts (Jul 26th - Aug 22nd)

Hey everyone. The move to Oregon went pretty well, but I have no idea when I will be able to start posting again. Right now I just can't seem to find the time.

Slip

Litany is attempting to human engineer her way intothe building. Let me know if my IC post is okay, I'llbe happy to change or edit as needed.

Rolls that may be needed, let me know if you want some others. Adjust pools, results ae in order rolled.


Not using Edge to offset the minor but no doubt evil setback.

Would Tony know what that finger-brushing could signify?

While Tony knows that there are mages who use ritualistic gestures during casting, Reign's motions appear like a personal ritual, perhaps an unconscious gesture of a previous trauma. Besides, Tony has no supporting information that she's Awakened. After all, if she were, why would she be asking him to come along on this errand?