Ellesar's Initiative: REA (4) + Lightning Reflexes (2) + INT (4) = 10 Dice >>> 3 Hits; Initiative 13

Wonderful, he's as quick as a dog.

A quick question; would Ellesar have time to blast one of the men in his sights after hearing the gunshot or would he need to wait?

Or maybe get a surprise roll, since he has them lined up?

Five years in and I still don't have a complete grasp of the surprise rules. I'm going to say "no" to a strict surprise scenario, since the same sound that gives Ellesar the green light (Stogie's gunshot) is a sound that would potentially alert and warn the target.

What I'm going to do is have everyone roll initiative. Ellesar will go in his proper order, which may or may not be before the target in question.

If the target goes first
If the target is properly trained, he'll hear the gunfire at the same time as Ellesar (actually, a bit before, since it has to cross the valley to get to Ellesar). If the target has a military background / proper training, he may go prone at the sound of gunfire. If the target is not properly trained, he will turn and gawk, at which point Ellesar will shoot him in the back.

If Ellesar goes first
Ellesar gets to shoot at someone mid-nose-pick.

Atropos, which target did you want, location-wise?

The forum was down yesterday and part of the previous day. At least it was on my end. Were either of you able to access it?

And to answer your question, Tecumseh, Ellesar will be firing at the man closest to him. I'll get a general IC post up shortly.

It was down for me, too.

It was down for everyone. I sat down on Friday all ready to do rolling and adjudicating and then the site wasn't even up.

Atropos, while looking over Ellesar's sheet I was reminded of his Pacifist quality:


Given that an ambush is obviously not self-defense, I will say that the quality is in jeopardy of being infringed. You can roll Willpower+Charisma (3) to overcome it, but otherwise I'm going to rule that Ellesar has to attempt a non-lethal shot. If you still plan to shoot, go ahead and roll (9 base + 1 red dot sight) and I'll add and subtract dice as needed.

Ah, but of course. Ellesar's more of a leg kind of guy anyway. I can't remember him shooting anyone in this campaign other than Toothy. Well, there was the drone but I'm hoping there wasn't some sort of small pixie creature inside it.

The real question comes down to is shooting someone in the leg a called shot?

Ellesar's shot: AGI (4) + Longarms (3) + Specialization in Sporting Rifles (2) + Red Dot Sight (1) = 10 Dice >>> 3 Hits

Yeah, I've played several Pacifist characters. Fun for character interaction. Not so much fun when the guy you took out humanely comes back next week with friends. It is a very believable Quality, though. A common human trait that I suspect gets beaten out of people in many places.

The reality is, if I were to put myself in SR terms, I would probably have that Quality. Part of the reason I work for Greenpeace.


In my old age I'm working on it, though.

Look at that front-loaded dice roll. I can take six dice and not touch any hits. So much for el señor's kneecap.

Give me a bit to resolve this. I'm plotting out things in my head about how the opposition will react, but it will take me a while to do all the rolling and write it all up. I'm also debating whether I want to use a map to plot out relative positions, especially since the battlefield is so large. Does anyone have experience doing something large-scale via PbP?

Take all the time you need. This is the first pbp game I've been in that lasted more than two months without the group splitting up so I don't have much experience outside what we've already done.

Why... why do I do this to myself. Why do I put myself in a position where there are effectively 15 NPCs that need thoughts in their heads and dice rolled. Anyway, we continue. Here's the initiative order, with a certain degree of coding to mask who is Mr. Quick and who is Mr. Dead:

#6 - 17
#1 - 13
#3 - 13
ELLESAR - 13
JAKE - 13
Air spirit - 12
Troll Sister - 11
Fire spirit - 11
#2 - 11
STOGIE - 10
#4 - 10
#8 - 10
#9 - 10
Water spirit - 9
Ork Sister - 8
#5 - 8
#7 - 8
Ellie - 7

Atropos managed to pick a target below Ellesar in the initiative order. As such, he shoots before the man can act.

Even subtracting dice, Ellesar gets to keep all three of his hits. Base damage is 7P, -1 AP. Our amigo here gets to soak 10P. He soaks... 2 boxes, and nearly glitches. Knockdown! His leg gives and he's sucking dirt too.

I'll get an IC post up soon, sometime when it is not 12:30 AM. Pbangarth, since Jake is fairly high in the order, what would he be doing next? As a reminder, the man Stogie just shot had a spirit on the astral somewhere. It is not currently materialized.

Jake has the top level training that would allow him to overcome the typical reaction to gunfire. Nevertheless, Stogie has trained him to find deep cover when bullets start flying. So Jake will find a good log to hide under and keep alert. He's a lover, not a fighter, if he can help it.

Jake can help it.

Action is happening elsewhere that the PCs are not immediately a part of so that will happen off-screen. Stogie is up again!

Can Stogie still see the magician?

I'll let Stogie continue to coast on his 9 hit Perception roll for the moment: Stogie can still see the magician. Because the magician is now prone and Stogie is further than 20 meters away (currently 50 meters) the magician gets the benefit of "good cover" (p. 160, SR4A). If Stogie fires again the magician will have +4 to dodge the attack.

Awesome! If I don't use Stgie's last point of Edge, he gets a whole 2 dice. Oh, wait, with the laser sight that is 3 dice.

Hmmm.... with an aim action he could get 4! But with Edge that would be 8, with exploding 6s.

Let me think a bit.

EDIT: So, shit for brains late at night again. This is all wrong.

Brain is flushed now.

One can only hope the wound the mage received counters to some degree the bonus he gets for dodging. He will probably get 2 more dice. Dodging a second shot would take one of those away.

So, AGI 6 + Longarms (shotgun) 5 + laser sight 1 - shooting from cover 2 - long range 3 = 7 dice. I could Aim to get one more die or take a second shot with 6 dice.

Since he is so badly injured, I'm going to try two shots this time. If even one gets through, he should be out of the picture. Let's see after the first shot if Edge needs to be spent.

7 dice ==> 5 HITS!!!

Uhhh... OK. Give me a moment to adjust the horseshoe up my ass. It's a bit uncomfortable.

5 Hits, DV is 7P, Ap -1.

Second shot, 6 dice ==> 2 HITS

2 Hits, DV is 7P, AP -1.

5 hits is going to be tough to evade. Let's see if Karl Kombatmage here can do it! 3 hits = nope.

That stages the damage to 9P, -1 AP. Can Karl mount a dramatic come-from-behind victory? Soak roll = 4 hits = nope.

That's 5P on top of 8P = 13P = critically wounded, bleed-out imminent.

The target does not get to actively dodge the second shot but he does get his 4 "good cover" dice. Survey says... 1 hit = nope.

1 more box of damage and he's going to the shadowrunner bar in the sky. Can he soak 8P, -1 AP??? 3 hits = nope.

Bad day for Karl Kombatmage here, who expires with 18P damage. Chalk one up for Stogie.

Back into pause mode as I separately resolve the lower half of the order.

Stogie, Bessie. Evidently Jake is the only member of the family whose name does not end with a long vowel.

It's a good idea for a dog name to have at least one long vowel in it. Easier to recognize and elicit response.

Latest post is up. This concludes the first Combat Turn. Roll for initiative again and give me a clue to your general intentions for the round. Let me know if you have questions about the general situation, although - combat being inherently chaotic - you won't know everything that's happening. Observe in Detail (as a Simple Action) may be required to make sense of some things.

Initiative roll for Stogie 8 dice ==> 5 HITS ==> Initiative 13, 1 IP

Initiative roll for Jake 8 dice ==> 5 HITS ==> Initiative 13, 1 IP

Huh. They seem to be really Attuned!

Stogie's general intentions:

1) Mentally instruct Jake to stay hidden.

2) Set up an ambush, with cover, for the approaching noise maker. He will set up where he can clearly see the body of the magician (he assumes that is where the source of the noise is headed) and where he is not in between the magician and the approaching noise maker.

######

I don't know if Stogie had time to notice anything like this, but while astrally perceiving the magician, did he see any sign of a focus of any kind? This may be part of the reason an 'ally' is coming.

Here's a perception test if you want to use it: 2 HITS. New I'd pay for those 5s sooner or later. Still, I hope that's enough to see something is there.

I'll wait till it is Stogie/Jake's turn to post IC.

Ellesar's Initiative: REA (4) + Lightning Reflexes (2) + INT (4) = 10 Dice >>> 3 Hits, again. Initiative: 13

I won't have stable internet until the 11th but I will do my best to keep up.

The main goal for Ellesar currently is to suppress anyone that might try to harm him. He will let the spirits fight each other as long as they leave him be. He'll also check infrared for any signs of the missing man.

Well it looks like my dicebot is demonstrating a strong bias in favor of the PCs.

Initiative rolls for the opposition = 17 hits on 70 dice. There's a 4% chance of rolling that badly, or worse.

Initiative rolls for the PCs and their allies = 33 hits on 73 dice. There's a 2% chance of rolling that well, or better.

So we have a 98th percentile rolling for the PCs and a 4th percentile rolling for the goons.

You each have scores of 13 and that ties you all for the top of the order. Feel free to make your IC posts now.

EDIT: That's a lie. The fire spirit actually has an initiative of 14. Atropos, you indicated that you would let them fight. I'll resolve the first round of that.

Fire spirit attack = 3 hits
Beast spirit defend = 2 hits
Beast spirit takes 4 boxes of damage.

I'm going to rule that its materialized form doesn't have anything to catch fire, so no ongoing damage. The forest, however...

OK, Stogie is going to try to hide and surprise whoever is coming through the bush. If you want to roll something to see how well he hides, he's got 8 dice for Hunting, and 10 dice for Infiltration.

I'm AFC till Monday night.

It occurs to me that I didn't have the beast spirit soak last time: 2 hits, so it's actually at 2 boxes right now

Next exchange:
Beast spirit attack: 2 hits
Fire spirit defend: 4 hits

Water spirit engulf: 1 hit
Lieutenant dodge: 0 hits
Lieutenant soak: 3 hits, takes 1 box of stun damage

Gunny's strike: 7 hits, kapow!
Water spirit dodge: 2 hits, and almost a glitch
Water spirit soak: 0 hits on 11 dice! (Odds 1.16%) This water spirit does not have the will to live. It soaks 11 boxes and promptly croaks. Gunny (literally) beat its immunity to normal weapons.

Stogie hunting: 4 hits
Infiltration: 1 hit, waa waa

Jake's perception: 3 hits

Oh, well.

But, gotta love that dog!

I'll post when I am more rested.

Not sure what to roll for that, if anything. Let me know, or surprise me!

Sorry for the delays - work has a very disappointing habit of getting really busy just as the weather is getting nice. It's been this way for the last three summers and it's not my favorite pattern.

I have to remind myself where we are in the initiative order and who should be going next.

Again, my sincere apologies for the delay. Work has been busier than it has been since last summer.

I'm going to say that Stogie was holding a Simple Action to use in his ambush. Per Jake's warning, he will now use it for an Observe in Detail action instead.

Good news! Stogie rolled 7 hits!
Bad news! The roll was heavily back-weighted and he loses 4 of them to a mysterious modifier that will remain a mystery for about sixty seconds until the time you read the IC post. Still, 3 hits covers a lot in the Perception Threshold test.

At this point I'm going to call for a new INITIATIVE roll. Pbangarth, might want to make this one count!

Good to have you back. Also, in case anyone was wondering I now have stable internet and relatively stable work hours so posting for me shouldn't be a problem for the foreseeable future.

New Initiative roll for Ellesar: REA (4) + Lightning Reflexes (2) + INT (4) = 10 Dice >>> 4 Hits

Rollplaying rules developed after almost forty years of playing:

#1. Always take the GM's hint.

#2. Shooting second loses.

So, Stogie is scared out of his gourd by this thing and the adrenaline runs high. I will use the last point of Edge he has to get a good initiative roll.

INT 5 + REA 3 + Edge 4 = 12 dice, exploding sixes ==> 5 HITS

Well, better than the 1 hit I would have gotten with the first 8 dice. So INIT = 8 + 5 = 13.

Jake's Init roll 8 dice ==> 5 HITS

Jake, without Edge, also gets an INIT = 13.

Holy crappola, it's been a week already? Where did the time go? The honest answers are "World Cup", "Father's Day", and "Wife's Birthday", but Monday/Tuesday last week were murder at work too.

Pbangarth, per your stated goal of "Scared Stogie wants to go first", I should remind you that there is a specific Edge rule just for that. Namely, "Edge can be spent to go first in an Initiative Pass." See pages 74 and 145 of SR4A. Let me know if that's what you want to do or if you want to go with your roll. Edge would guarantee that you'd go first but sometimes it is better to see how the situation develops. (Is this a GM hint or a delicious red herring??)

On the other half of the battlefield, the fire spirit and the beast spirit will continue to rumble. Ellesar will have the opportunity to contribute to that fight, or to shoot at the large ork/troll approaching him through the trees, or to fire at one of the three men in the middle of the river (Gunny, his lieutenant, or a dwarven drone rigger). Atropos, let me know what you want to do, within reasonable limits of your Pacifist quality of course.

I should have known that Tecumseh. I am very familiar with the rules. I just screwed up.

Let me live with the consequences. When I create a new PC to replace dead Stogie, (Maybe a sentient Jake?) I will put that rule in bold at the top of each page.

Another week went by! How does this keep happening? In my partial defense, I was all ready to do this yesterday but then my internet went out. It only came online about an hour ago.

Pbangarth, the bad news is that you've lost the battle of initiative. The good news is that Sir Derps-a-Lot rolled poorly (3 hits on 18 dice). Here are the rolls.

First roll = 2 hits
Second roll = 1 hit (second hit dropped due to recoil)

This is SMG fire, two wide bursts. -2 to dodge the first one, -3 to dodge the second. That makes it seem easy to dodge then I remember that we're playing SR4A, so the dodging pools aren't as generous as they are in SR5. That means that Stogie will only have 1 dice for the first roll and 0 dice for the second, so both shots will hit but won't get staged up much.

I went ahead and rolled your 1 dodge dice for expediency sake. Not a hit, sorry.

Base damage is 5P with no AP. That leaves us with one shot at 7P and one shot at 6P.

Looks like Stogie has been trucking around a full wardrobe of armor with him. I'll leave it to you figure out what he would most realistically be wearing for this situation. I might suggest the camouflage suit (6/4) plus the PPP (+2/+4) but I'll leave the final decision up to you, mostly because I can barely remember how armor stacking works in SR4A.

Odds are good that the armor value will exceed the damage value of gunshots, staging the damage down from Physical to Stun. Go ahead and roll Body + Armor when you figure the armor out. Odds are good you'll soak about 8 of the 13 boxes, leaving you in a position (on your butt, most likely) to revenge yourself suitably.

OK, this will be fun.

1) The Stats for Stogie show 4 dice for Dodging ranged attacks, so with the -2/-3 for the wide bursts, should he have gotten 2 and 1 dice? Not likely to make a difference, but this is a life we're talking about!

2) Stogie does have camo suit and PPP on right now. I would have to search to see where I said that. Won't do it tonight, though.

So, with BOD 4 he has 12 dice to soak.

Shot 1: 12 dice ==> 5 HITS, so 2S damage. 2 is less than BOD so no knockdown.

Shot 2: 12 dice ==> 3 HITS, so 3S damage. 3 is less than BOD 4, so no knockdown.

Total of 5S damage, so -1 to most Actions. All things considered, he got off pretty luckily. Let's see how he does in return fire. I don't know where Stogie fits in the larger order of Initiative, but here in the woods it's just the two of us, so I will roll Stogie's return fire and let you handle when it shows up, Tecumseh.

Two shots with the Enfield AS7, base 7P with -1AP; I'm assuming this is short range for the shotgun if the SMG was in range.

First shot AGI 6 (still Boosted!) + 5 - 1 damage = 10 dice ==> 4 HITS

Oh, yeah!

Second shot 9 dice ( -1 for recoil) ==> 3 HITS

Looks good, too.

On vacation, typing on a tablet so this won't be long.

Pb, I see Stogie's reaction as 3. I looked for other dodge dice but didn't see any. Doesn't look like you used Attribute Boost on Reaction either. Let me know if you have another die I don't know about.

Otherwise, it looks like you soaked 8 of 13, just as predicted.

We don't have to do strict Initiative order since Stogie and Ellesar are far apart and working on their own personal projects at the moment. I will resolve those shots once I am back at a proper computer on Sunday.

Yeah, no problem. It's just me forgetting the rules again. I should write nothing in the next little while without having the manual beside me.

The range is actually 20-25 meters, so Medium (-1) for a shotgun throwing slugs. (Your target enjoyed the same modifier.) The first shot is unaffected but the second shot loses a hit.

The bad news is that you're firing at Sir Dodge-A-Lot, the twitchiest of the combatants. You'll like this:

First roll = 5 hits
Second roll = 3 hits

Stogie's not out of the woods yet, nyuk nyuk.

ATROPOS, I need your action now, even if it's just to hold. You have someone approaching your position per the description in this post.

Well, shit. I had hoped one of the shots would hit. Stogie is in real trouble, and knows it. So does psychically connected Jake.

So, Jake knows it has come to a fight. As trained, he will use the Attribute Boosts Stogie with which Stogie has endowed him, and at the next Combat round attack the assailant who has hurt Stogie.

Fuck.

Well, this is then a time to ask the GM if Jake would use one of those 3 Edge points to leap quickly into action.

Hey! He's like Stogie's Ally Spirit, fer cryin' out loud!

Attribute Boosts: MAG 7 + Boost 1 for both STR and BOD = 8 dice ==> HITS 3 and 3

So Jake has STR 4 and BOD 5 for 6 combat rounds.

Alright! Lookin' forward to that stability, man!

Yes, quite right, quite right. I sent Atropos a PM last Tuesday but that didn't find much traction. I'll drop him another line tomorrow, maybe by e-mail this time. Hopefully that will shake the tree.

I sent Atropos an e-mail last night. Of course, that was the account he was using three years ago when we were setting up this game, so it's possible that it's inactive or he's migrated to a new account. Or, of course, he could just be in one of his Internet blackout periods.

I'm hoping my May/June delays didn't get him out of the cycle so completely that he drops. I'd feel bad if that happened after almost 3 years of this.

Is it the 12th already? Where did time go? I'm really sorry about not saying anything earlier but I didn't think it was going to be this bad. Either way, it's my fault for forgetting. I've been mentally exhausted for the past few weeks due to working overtime every day in order to get trained up on my job. I honestly didn't even think about Shadowrun. I've still got another two weeks of additional training but this is the first weekend where I haven't had to manage setting up my new residence.

I'm writing up a post as of now for Ellesar's actions. He's going to attempt to take the man's legs out with his rifle.

Ellesar's shot: AGI (4) + Longarms (3) + Specialization in Sporting Rifles (2) + Red Dot Sight (1) = 10 Dice >>> 3 Hits

One quick question. Would his thermographic goggles allow him a greater chance to hit? He's going to use them either way, but I'd assume that the guy's body heat would show up well against the foliage.

Welcome back, Atropos. I missed a good part of both May and June so I'm certainly not in a position to judge.

The rules don't have any benefits for thermographic vision in situations like this, but nor are there any penalties. Aiming at the knee is a called shot which nixes 4 dice (and 2 hits) but odds are good that Ellesar will be stealthy enough to avoid detection and make it a surprise attack. Let's confirm:

Bozo here only has about 2 Perception dice left after all the various bonuses and penalties, including Ellesar's camo suit: 1 hit!

Ellesar has to roll Infiltration after all: 4 hits. Well that was easy.

Even knocking off 2 hits from the shot, Ellesar still has one hit left. Damage staged from 7P to 8P. No roll to dodge since it's a surprise situation.

Bozo's roll to soak: 9 hits! waa waa

Bozo's attempt to identify the source of fire (threshold of 2): 2 hits. Dice have swung back to the NPCs, neh?

I'll get a post up, and then the action will be back to me to resolve the bajillion NPCs. I'll try to do that this week, in steps if necessary.