Oh I can get it; just got my wires crossed there for a minute.

Alternately, you can put up a post for Jack to contact the team if you think it would make more sense for your support dude to do the heavy lifting of arranging logistics while you focus on not flinching from 11ty billion roaches crawling over you.

I don't see how that's any different from how he feels when he's got a craving!

You can probably fast-forward.

Amy doesn't have anything special to do. Her gear is just an armor jacket and the usual stuff she brings with her. She'll hop on behind Overkill since I assume we're taking his bike again.

I think Amy's out of spirit for the evening and it could really come in handy.

Let's have her try to summon a level 4 Man Spirit with the Movement optional power.

Ok

Summoning Test:
12d6.hits(5)=6 - reduced by the limit to 4

Spirit resistance test
4d6.hits(5)=2

Drain
13d6.hits(5)=4

So 2 services, and no drain.

Ok; I'm liking where this is going. I feel like we have a lot more options available now that the mage is here!

So once we get him into the cab, we drive someplace to talk to him. Frankly, (and this is OOC), we may be able to turn him to help us wrap this thing up. One more body doesn't do us any good compared to catching the ring-leaders.

-DrZ

Just remember that this is a dude that straight up shot a cop in the head at point blank range without a second thought. He may be a little tough to turn.

@Lobo: My plan is to follow him out.

Ok - again, what is your plan to deal with the fact that you should still be unconscious for another 30 minutes?

Also, check the dropbox Sourcebooks - I've uploaded a new goodie - should be of particular interest to Chrome

If confronted, I'll come up with a line for any curious zombies; otherwise I plan on shuffling out along with Stinger.
-DrZ

EDIT: I am particularly liking how off the cuff I am playing this as Grease, and how much it is irking Jack

Yeah, I like that Jack is developing into a pretty regimented guy. I think it makes sense given he knows so little about his past and the only thing remaining are the skills he has downloaded, almost all of a military nature. It's so much better with Grease around, LOL.

Just a heads up, I won't be around again before late today, and I don't have much time. So you can RP my character until tomorrow irl, it's fairly straightforward what needs to be done.

I mentioned this to Lobo already, but I figured I'd let everyone know while it's on topic:

I am going to be camping from July 9th through the 20th, without internet (the horror, the horror!) Lobo has full authorization to do Greasy type things with Grease; I don't want to trip up the game just because I'm unavailable. Lobo told me he was going to be at a Con during some of that time anyways, so hopefully I won't miss too much. Just figured I'd give everyone a heads up!

-DrZ

IC post is up. I think mechanically I probably would have been advantaged lying to the guy, but my read of the situation was this was the best course to get out the door. We'll see if it works!

-DrZ

So just to be clear, the skill set you are looking at here is Intimidate, right?

I could see that argument. I'd argue there's some element of Negotiation; I am attempting to bribe him (with the unused chips, a nominal value of 100 'yen).

Also, I find it slightly odd that tailored pheromones don't influence intimidate- I should smell dangerous! Or at least foul.

Overall, I'd defer to your judgement of the situation / context. There's an implicit (although weak) threat in my statement, so that leans towards intimidation. However, I'd think the tone isn't threatening, more leaning towards, "listen, I'm not buying anymore chips, don't worry about me, just let me out".

EDIT: Man, it'd be nice to have more than 1 edge! I think I am going to hold off on using edge, unless the roll goes terribly. 1 edge is basically "save so you don't get gutshot"; and is tough to work around

5 Edge is nice... if I could ever regain it.

I'm worried for you here, buddy!

Ok - here is my take on it. Since Grease doesn't have the skill, and he isn't, I wouldn't think anyway, suicidal, he would know better than to try and go that route with his skill set, but rather try and negotiate with them. However, I'm going to shift the guard's attitude to Prejudiced (Hostile is probably a bit too much) since that last sentence is going to piss off the guard (which is something that Grease seems to excel at, despite being the Face of the party )

So, as I see it:

Negotiation 5, Charisma 6, Tailored Pheromones 1=12 dice.

Attitude: Prejudiced -2 dice
Going to say that the result is Annoying to NPC -1 die

So Grease rolls 9 dice:
9d6.hits(5)=3

While the Zombie rolls his Negotiation + Charisma of 5 dice
5d6.hits(5)=0

So Grease will walk out of there - although I wouldn't recommend coming back soon.

IC post up soon

As soon as I see him get into the car, I'd toss my fly spy in the air to tail him as best it can.

-DrZ

It's too bad we couldn't see Stinger get out of the house, I was hoping to Influence him when that happened.

Hmm - ok - Jack had parked the taxi down the street - I'll leave it up to him.

Jack, where were you parked? I sort of had the idea you were out of sight of the chip house around the corner on S. Dunkirk (based on post#1208).

I could be wrong - Jack, where did you picture parking the car?

It would have been out of sight of the chip house. Even gangers are going to get suspicious about an ork parking in plain sight of their drug operation for multiple hours. Jack was relying on Grease's notification to determine when to move and Stinger just moved really quickly. Given that there was only a minute to react to it, I think we're going to have to chase him.

At least we have surprise on our side, it's much easier to chase after someone who doesn't know he's being chased.

Also... that spirit Amy summoned has powers useful to us, like movement and guard for pursuit, or accident if we try to make him crash or just slow him down.

Should be fun!

Ok guys, what is the plan?

DrZ said he was tossing a Fly-Spy as soon as he saw Stinger get in his car. Rather than following it, it could probably simply gain altitude to get a good view of the streetgrid to follow the car until we catch up. That feed could be piped to Overkill for him to follow. Simultaneously, Grease can call the taxi over, hop in, and plug in to cover lost ground.

I think we hit him somewhere north of Smoky Hill and south of Hampden or E. Illif.

I'd be cool with Lobo editing his IC post to that effect, since he's got the first half of it set (does that make sense?). That was my plan, for the most part.

EDIT: Jack is available to shoot out the backseat, too!

Ok - it is fixed

So, if you plan is to intercept him en-route, who is going in what car? Is Grease going to even bother getting to the taxi? Or is he just going to control it via AR (or go hide in a corner somewhere and jump into it and control it via VR?)

Overkill will be on his bike, what about Amy?

For right now, I don't think we need initiative yet, and stuff can be posted IC as to what you are doing.

I think Amy should rush over to Grease's taxi. Grease is the better driver and will likely catch Stinger before Overkill can catch up. She'll be better able to have the spirit use his powers on that vehicle as well.

The Taxi will meet Grease as he runs towards it, after which he will get inside and jack in directly to eliminate any noise penalties (and also prevent it from being bricked wirelessly)

-DrZ

Ok - so do you guys want me to put up an IC post of Overkill getting on his bike, while Amy jumps into the front seat of Grease's taxi, with Jack in the back seat, and the taxi will drive down to meet Grease and then execute a k turn on Dunkirk and start following?

Overkill will probably just forge ahead on his own, trying to not let him get too far ahead.

Does that sound good?

Sounds good to me. I wouldn't know about where to attempt the intercept though. We should probably discuss what we'll do at that point IC, too.

That sounds good. You could end the post with Overkill asking where we're going to try to take him down. That would let us discuss is IC.

Where is the Rotodrone? Can I send a message to it to come join the party (realizing it will probably take a few minutes, at minimum?)

-drZ

That is an excellent question. You never actually said what you were doing with it when you left the Arsenal. My guess is you would have flown it back to your house?

If so, then you can absolutely send it a message, and it will take quite a while to show up.

Happy 4th of July weekend everyone - hope everybody had a good time - my birthday is the 5th, so this weekend is always big at my house

Where were we?

What can I do to move this along?

I would like to get the chase portion finished between now and the 9th when Grease leaves so we have a definitive scene change.

Grease would call the rotodrone to the area (knowing it probably won't get there in time), try to track him with the fly-spy, and try to catch up in the cab.

Do we have a plan for getting this guy without him calling his friends? That seems like a pretty key point that I (and by extension Grease) neglected to work out.

So, you have basically two options:

1) Knock him out before he has a chance to take a simple action and call for help.
2) Have Overkill find and brick his deck in one attack so that he can't call out (and hope he doesn't have a commlink as a backup).

I think the best option would be to try both. IF Overkill could manage to hack three MARKs on the guy's deck, he should have a decent shot of bricking it in one go. At the same time, if we can get close enough to him without him really noticing, Grease could try one of the manuevers in the book that forces a crash test and hope he doesn't make the test (ie forcing him into a wall or something).

That works - it also means that you will need to have Grease be in position before Overkill starts to do anything, in case he fails and it alerts Stinger that someone is hacking his deck.

I agree with this.

I think that Amy can offer magical support in this situation, to give us an extra edge. Some ideas:

1) Have the spirit use the Accident power, for a chance to provoke a crash test.
2) Have the spirit use the Guard power on us, to help prevent a crash.
3) Have the spirit use the Movement power on the taxi, in case we need a speed boost to help us catch up with Stinger.
4) If Amy can see him, she can try to cast Influence on Stinger, that could have various uses. It's resisted by Log+Wil though, so it won't be certain to work.
5) Amy could try to create an illusion by casting a Phantasm spell, which could force Stinger to make a very sudden move, and probably incur a crash test. This is risky in a different way, in that several people are likely to notice that something odd just happened, and that magic was probably used, depending on when/where this happens. If we go fast, she might not have time to erase the signature immediately either. If used in the Warrens, it might not be as much of a deal.

Good ideas - I think that #1 might be the most useful, since with his CR Grease will not likely crash his car, and he should be able to outmaneuver a non-rigger driver.

4 and 5 are also good possibilities

@Lobo: Can you check up on the damage to passengers in vehicles from crashes section of the rules? From my recollection, they're unrealistically fatal and I'd rather we not take an option with a high likelihood of killing our target.

I like Option 1 executed at the same time as Grease makes his maneuver or immediately after Grease's maneuver if he fails to force a crash. I can't remember the rules for preventing crashes, but there might be a point where he can't even make a check anymore...

Since this is a Mercury Comet, Stinger would take 11DV AP6

If you think that Stinger has an Armor of 18 or higher (unlikely) , then it will be Stun damage.

Bear in mind that although this is unlikely to even knock him out if he can get a couple of hits on his resistance test.

I didn't realize that it can add up like that. If so, it would be great to time the accident power and a maneuver from Grease.

I can't remember if they do or not, to be honest. It's been a while since I read the rules on making crash tests. I think they are a reaction and deduct from initiative though. If you get to the point where you have no initiative, you can't make the test (IIRC). I'm away from my books at the moment.

ETA: Taking a quick glance, I'm not entirely sure how it works. Making a Vehicle Test is listed as requiring a complex action, but it doesn't indicate if the defense Vehicle Test opposed to a trick/power in this case requires a CA. With that said, the Cut Off trick is still phenomenally powerful when used by a skilled rigger versus an unskilled or moderate driver without a CR.

EATA: It isn't exactly clear whether the Defense Vehicle Test that Stinger would have to make would require a CA. I'm leaning towards no, although I think that ruling should probably apply to any Rigger who is remotely controlling a Drone as well (allowing them to take "no action" defense tests for their drones while they are under their command). With that said, if the Spirit succeeds on its test, it can force a crash. If Grease can succeed on a solid Cut-Off maneuver, he can force a crash. The interesting question is whether the two could work together. Grease uses the Cut-Off ability, succeeds, then the spirit forces the Vehicle Test to avoid a crash to glitch. If they worked together, it's basically an automatic crash. Then we would have to whittle the rest of his hit points away without killing him.

The way I see it, I think the way it would work like this.

Grease does a cut off maneuver, which forces him to make a crash test.

The spirit could use the accident power and if successful, make him glitch that test.

That's what I was hoping.

Makes sense to me. Let's try it! Even if the spirit isn't successful, he can still fail on the crash test.

Now, another question is whether the car has tinted glass. If not, that opens the door (no pun intended) to trying to influence him first.

For a more out-of-the-box approach, I could have the spirit appear inside the car to surprise and scare the hell out of him, and at that moment Grease attempts the maneuver.

I had thought of rear-ending him slightly, and when he got out to exchange information (or shoot me) we take him out.

I like this plan better though! I'm on board!

-DrZ