I like the idea of a combined strategy roll if that's possible, considering we're all just sitting about talking over our plans.

In that case, Atropos go ahead and roll your 8 dice for Leadership. I'll take care of Phlapjack's roll and will add the results to yours via a Teamwork test.

So, not too shabby: 3 Hits

Hopefully all goes well.

Here's Smohalla's initial roll, then rerolling those successes as additional dice for the Teamwork test.

Here's the resulting post in the IC forum.

For reference, the walking rate for elves and humans is 10/meters per turn (SR4A p.149) versus 15/meters per turn for a shifter in wolf form (Runner's Companion p.86).

Once Stogie gets a picture drawn, he may have something to say about the travel distance. Or maybe not.

Pbangarth, Stogie is drawing a map? Is there something I should be doing? I'm not sure what you're thinking happens next.

I'm trying to figure it out myself. I believe they all have a general map of the area (paper or electronic), and I think Stogie would be plotting the locations on his copy. I don't know what will come of it, or what Skill to use if one applies. He's got Skills: Cascade Area Geography, Tracking, Navigation. I figure he can make a map one way or another. I know I get a better idea of things if I have a map or a picture. Use it or not, Seth, I'm OK with whatever.

Here's INT 5 + Navigation 3+2 = 10 ==> 2 HITS

Yeah, well, at least it keeps him busy till he gets sleepy.

Who's Seth?

Yes, everyone has a map of the area. Plotting the locations is relatively easy. However, there is no discernible pattern in the locations of the strikes.

Sorry, I had been posting in Seth's game earlier.

Any last posts before nightfall? I'll move the game to morning within the next day.

I'm good if everyone else is

Busy at work this week, so my posting will be less than it's usual greatness

Nice touch!

thanks

New post, #150 for the game.

Phlapjack, I was unclear on whether you wanted to summon a low-force spirit or a watcher. I chose the latter. Summoning a 1-hour watcher is largely a formality so I skipped the rolls. I suppose you could have glitched on the drain roll but that would be a long-shot.

Here are Smohalla's rolls for Zoology and Parazoology to try to identify what might be lurking in the woods. Phlapjack, don't look at the spoiler.



It seems that Smohalla's knowledge of woodland wildlife is limited to the small and edible. Conversely, things that are large and looking to eat you are outside of his experience. He doesn't have much valuable input, but based on the wolf's description his best guess is that it's paranormal or magical instead of mundane.

Pbangarth, feel free to roll the same if you like. 5 dice and 4 dice, respectively, I believe.

aw, c'mon! Don't put a spoiler, then tell me not to look! It's torture!

Don't worry Phlapjack, this is the good form of torture.

OK, I'll give it a shot. In the spirit of keeping phlapjack77 in the dark:

Stogie pauses to reflect, taking a moment to strike a match and light his pipe. Adjusting his glasses and swirling his snifter of brandy, he begins to discourse at length about the fauna and parafauna native to the region, listing off several interesting species in alphabetical order by their binomial nomenclature, including several curious anecdotes and acute observations about each.

I'll PM pbangarth directly, so that Stogie can say what he knows. Or not, if he presumes Smohalla would certainly know the same. Stogie certainly wouldn't want to patronize Smohalla by stating the obvious, would he?

...

...

you didn't tell me not to look this time. great rolls!

Summoning 3 watcher spirits, 2 hour lifespan (so he can auto-soak the drain)

Then summoning a F4 Beast spirit, optional power Guard.

I apologize for my slowness in posting. My home internet recently bit the dust and I'm currently having to post at work. Should be back up in a couple of weeks. Until then I shall try my best when work is slow.

"Usually, but it can be a deadly mistake to count on it. And it could be able to wield magic, too."

At which point Smohalla will declare counterspelling on the team, including the wolf shifter. He'll probably have to move to the rear of the group to keep everyone in LOS.

No buying hits at the moment, as the situation is no longer "non-threatening and non-stressful" (p. 62, SR4A). Here are Smohalla's rolls:


Unless someone informs me otherwise, I will presume that the shifter is in the lead, Stogie and Jake behind, Ellesar next, with Smohalla at the rear to provide counterspelling. Phlapjack, please give the beast spirit some instructions. Do you want it materialized with the group, chilling out on the astral waiting for orders, or actively checking the perimeter, etc. (None of those require a service.) If you want it to use Guard, it can cover the team members plus Jake, but it doesn't have enough Force to cover the shifter.

Oh, and great posting this last week, everyone. Guess I should have throw a life-threatening situation at you sooner! We're on a roll; let's keep it going.

Will do - I'll add the instructions to my latest IC post...

I shouldn't bring this up - but there's always a minimum drain to summoning of 2. So even if the spirit doesn't get any hits on the resistance roll, 2 drain still have to be soaked.

Can you give me a page number? I was looking around the book for that but I couldn't find anything other than "double the spirit's successes". I thought I remembered something about how there will always be drain to resist, but I couldn't find it and wondered if it only applied to spells.

To be clear on the spirit, you're requesting it to use the Guard power (one service), and then just asking it to stay close?

SR4A, pg 188:
Summoning Drain
The Drain Value for Summoning is equal to twice the hits (not net hits) generated by the spirit on the Opposed Summoning Test (minimum 2 DV).

I could be misinterpreting what this is saying, not sure. But I think it's saying there's a mimumum drain of 2, no matter what the spirit rolls.

About the spirit, yeah, asking it to use the Guard power. Also asking it to kind of "be on the lookout", like actively patrolling near us for danger. I'm cool with that being a 2nd service.

Thanks. I think the confusion is that I have a PDF copy of SR4A but my hardcover copy isn't the anniversary edition. The original SR4 doesn't include the line about minimum drain for summoning.

Having the spirit patrolling the area doesn't qualify as a service until it's actually required to do something, like fight or defend.

Interesting that that's one of the changes from 4 -> 4A. It seems kind of silly: 2DV is so easy to soak, it's a very very unlucky roll that doesn't resist that.

The change where sending spirits off on remote services still counts against your max summonable spirits - THAT was a good change

Hmm, what to do, what to do. Eenie, meenie, miney, mo...

The anticipation is killing someone

In response to Ellesar's question, Stogie will consider:

INT 5 + ( I guess this one is the best, though he has others that are higher rated) Hunting Knowledge Skill 3 = 8 dice ==> 4 HITS ! Holy shit!

Nice!



Jake has astral perception ?!

Sorry for the holdup, gents; the delay is entirely my fault. I've been debating how to proceed and reading up on potentially relevant rules. (Severe wounds and heavy damage from Augmentation, p.120-121, if you want to follow along at home.) I'll try to get something more substantial up within the next 24 hours. Feel free to continue posting in the meanwhile.

Now I'm kind of worried

Yeah, the grammar could have been clearer. No, It's Stogie's Astral Perception.

Sorry about that, I wasn't trying to be a grammar nazi. Just being stupid and misinterpreting that Stogie has a quivering, wet nose on purpose

The sense sharing that goes on between Stogie and Jake is all one way. Stogie can sense through Jake, but not the other way around. Otherwise, Jake could have astral perception.

EDIT: Actually, now that I think about it, Stogie could Endow Jake with Astral Perception. Hmmm... likely have to work on the poor dog for a while before he would handle that with any kind of comfort.

Tecumseh, are there available birds or other tree dwellers in the area? Using an Observe in Detail to look up

Oh hell, this is complex; what have I gotten myself into? Perception rolls for multiple participants, including Jake and a spirit, each with his own bonuses and specializations, to which there are negative modifiers applied, including the opposition's attempt to avoid detection, the cumulative effect of which could mean that a secondary sense actually has more dice, on top of which Stogie and Smohalla have Assensing, with its own list of positive and negative modifiers...

Add to this the rules for Surprise Tests, which - quite honestly - baffle me even while I'm reading them. I might as well turn to Heart of Darkness for clarity and guidance on the situation. I don't promise that I've done everything 100% correctly, but I've done my best and I think that any errors - such as they are - should equally affect both sides and thus cancel each other out.

Here's how it plays out:

Phlapjack, here is Smohalla's search for birds, if you want to know.

Pbangarth, the dice love you. Every time I put "Stogie" in the Character Name box on Invisible Castle, I get a bajillion hits. I'm starting to think you hacked the system. Here's your assensing roll: 5 HITS

Nobody else beat the critter's attempts to stay hidden. The result is an ambush/surprise test (p. 165, SR4A), with Stogie receiving a +3 bonus for being alerted in advance. If I'm reading the rules correctly, there are actually two initiative checks: the first to determine who surprises whom, the second to determine actual initiative order. For the first roll, nobody beat the ambushers so you're all surprised. See below:

Ambusher #1: 6 HITS
Ambusher #2: 6 HITS
Stogie: 3 HITS
Beast Spirit: 4 HITS
Ellesar: 2 HITS
Smohalla: 3 HITS
Jake: 3 HITS

The rule says "a character who is surprised may not directly act toward or react to characters who have surprised him." Now I can make the second round of initiative rolls but even if you have higher initiative than the ambushers you won't be able to do anything other than spend free actions to clear your throat and simple actions to pick your nose. As such, I'm going to rule that the ambushers delay their actions until the end of the first initiative pass and act then. The spirits will their second IP (oh geez, the watchers technically get three), after which we'll roll initiative for the second combat turn and proceed as normal. Did that make sense? I've been spending ages trying to think this through.

First things first, I need everyone to make a Willpower roll. I'm debating whether or not to allow Phlapjack to roll counterspelling. On one hand, he did declare it, but on the other he's breaking line-of-sight to search the trees for birds and the hunter was waiting for exactly that. But counterspelling is a free action and Observe in Detail is a simple action, so Smohalla should be able to do them both during his turn without being interrupted, but how can he look in all directions at once? And then under Counterspelling it says that it always applies to the magician himself unless he's surprised, but does this really count as surprise because you knew something was there you just weren't sure which direction ... I've spent the last three hours debating things like this.

Phlapjack, right now I'm going to say roll counterspelling for the group. Roll it separately from your Willpower roll so that we know how many hits to apply to the other character's test results. What it comes down to is that this is supposed to be a warmup, not the main event, so I'm not going to get too strict here. But I reserve the right to do so later!

It's 1:40am for me now so I need to post this and get some sleep. I'll try to put up an IC post tomorrow. Once we get some rolls in place, we'll have the spirits bang on each other during the second initiative pass. Sound good? Let me know if you have thoughts or questions.

Head...spinning...

Thanks for the bird-watching roll. I was going to try to have Smohalla borrow some bird senses to see if they could spot our attacker, but as the proverbial shit has hit the proverbial fan, he will abandon that course of action

About the mage and counterspelling and surprise - I would think that if the mage has declared counterspelling (Active), the mage can counterspell (including himself) whether or not they are surprised (seemingly backed up by pg 185 and "jamming" the mana). If no counterspelling has been declared (Passive), the mage can still use counterspelling to protect themself, unless surprised.

Counterspelling roll for group (using Edge before the roll) : 1 HIT + 2 HITS a little better
Including Willpower for Smohalla: 1 HIT

*grumble* pbangarth is hogging all the good rolls!

The rules are less than clear but I believe you get to add your Magic dice to the Counterspelling roll. I know the book just says "Counterspelling dice" but I can't think of any instance where you roll skill dice alone. All skill tests are paired with an attribute roll, unless it's an odd situation where you pair it with something else (like when you roll Data Search + Browse). Besides, you add your Magic dice to dispel a sustained spell, and I don't know why a freshly cast spell would be harder to counter/defend against than an already established spell.

Go ahead and add the extra dice, or I can do it if you like (i.e. if you think I'm luckier). We can try it with and without Stogie's name in the Character Name box too, just to see what the system thinks.

Cool - I'll add the Magic roll above

Mwaaahahahaaaa!


It isn't actually Skill dice alone, as the Counterspelling dice are in effect added to the Attribute in question, so it still works out to Attribute + Skill. Furthermore, the text for Counterspelling a sustained spell explicitly tells us to use Counterspelling + Magic, which makes sense as in this case there is no other Attribute involved and it is an Opposed Test vs. the spell's Force and the Magic of the opponent. Using both Magic and Counterspelling will make spell defense really powerful for whoever has it.

Here is Stogie's WIL roll: WIL 4 ==> 2 HITS

Here is Jake's WIL roll: WIL 3 ==> 2 HITS

Mwaaaahahahaaa!

[Fuck, I'm gonna pay for this later!]

EDIT: By the way, team, we did notice that there are TWO ambushers, right?

Let's hope that holds true even with my bad rolls

I acknowledge the point and had the same thoughts about what the book was explicitly saying versus what I was reading between the lines, but I can't think of any other precedent for taking one person's skill and adding it to another person's attribute. The way I've played it in my table top games is for spell resistance rolls to be 1) the defender's Willpower + 2) the Magic attribute of counterspeller + 3) their Counterspelling skill. Yes, it often means that those on the defense are often rolling as many dice as the spellcaster, but I think I prefer it that way. Otherwise spellcasters just mow down everyone in their path. And besides, it's logical for Magic rating of the defending magician be relevant. Skill-level aside, it makes sense for a Magic 6 professional to more effective at defending his companions that a Magic 3 wizkid.


Well Stogie notices that there are two ambushers. The other characters will figure it out soon enough. I'll post something to that effect when I find a few moments.


Smohalla, you have a power focus, so one more dice. Third time's the charm, right?

Well, I think I finally did something right Power Focus specifically says it doesn't add dice to Counterspelling

Damnit, that rule completely undermines my previous post. The book does say, "A power focus adds its Force to all tests in which the magician’s Magic is included," and then specifically excludes counterspelling as a spell is being cast.

I have to brew on this a bit. Maybe the alternate reading makes sense, since a magician has to soak drain if he dispels an sustained spell, but not if he counterspells a spell as it is cast. Or maybe I'll add to the growing list of Shadowrun rules that don't make any sense to me and rewrite my own version. In either case, what we've rolled to this point will stand.