Want to learn more about how combat works in Vrahode? In this episode, we fight a battle with a Thunderhorn in the plains of Renduur. Listen to a full play-by-play of how that works in this week's episode!
Vrahode will be coming to Kickstarter most likely in quarter four of 2023. When that campaign goes live, you will not only be able to buy the core game, Vrahode: The Calteeryn Ascension, but its three expansions as well.
Learn more about Vrahode on the website, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Want to learn more about how combat works in Vrahode? In this episode, we fight a battle with a Thunderhorn in the plains of Renduur. Listen to a full play-by-play of how that works in this week's episode!
Vrahode will be coming to Kickstarter most likely in quarter four of 2023. When that campaign goes live, you will not only be able to buy the core game, Vrahode: The Calteeryn Ascension, but its three expansions as well.
Learn more about Vrahode on the website, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
See the full transcript with images and notes on the blog here: https://www.vrahode.com/this-is-how-battles-go-down-in-vrahode/
Jeff Irving: No, missed with a 19. He's a, this guy's a dope.
Brandon Rollins: I we we, just, we we picked a, we've, we are getting attacked by the runt of the Thunderhorns.
Jeff Irving: Yeah. This is, this is like.
Brandon Rollins: Boy this guy, this freaking guy.
Jeff Irving: My name is Jeff Irving and this is the Vrahode Tavern Podcast. I am the creator of the Vrahode Game System, and in this podcast, we're going to do a deep dive into the lore and gameplay of Vrahode. I'm joined by Brandon Rollins, will be acting as your stand in asking many of the questions you might be curious about yourself.
Brandon, what is our topic today?
Setting the Scene
Brandon Rollins: So let me set the scene for you.
Okay.
All right. So right now we are soloing as a Drelrhune, specifically the Rook named Rukus. We've got a handful of things going for us.
We've got a staff, we've got leather armor, we've got a torch, all of which is very nice. We've got a handful of skills that we can employ later in battle. Veil Walker, which essentially gives us the ability to move further and faster than normal. We've got Stone Mantra, which gives us the ability to handle attacks better. That is, increased mitigation.
And we've got Flurry of Blows, which essentially improves our ability to attack. We'll get into the specifics later. And we also have some racial abilities. The only one of which matters here, um, is going to be Watery Noose, which will also talk about what that does in a bit.
So we are wandering the plains of Renduur and that's when, and Jeff, why don't you tell us what happens next?
Travelling and rolling the threat die
Jeff Irving: So, all right, so we have the Drelrhune Rook Rukus, who's traveling into a new plains region. What that means for him is it costs him one fatigue per overland region to travel.
So he moves his fatigue counter on the dashboard one for this new region he's entering. He draws an overland exploration card and places it face down next to his dashboard. Because Rukus is traveling alone, he doesn't generate a whole lot of threat cuz he's quiet and he's by himself, but he still has the chance of elevating the threat in this new Plains region that he just entered.
So he is gonna roll his, his threat die and it's, we use the die six for a lot of things. We have a, a custom modifier die and it works for modifying damage up and down and it also acts as our threat die. And so because he is by himself, he only has a one in six chance of increasing the threat in this new region.
And so he's gonna roll that die. And he rolls a negative three, which is the only thing he could have rolled that would've increased that threat. So he has done so, he has drawn the attention of, of enemies in the area, we think. So he has a choice with that threat die, he has to resolve it. So he can resolve it in one of two ways, Brandon.
He can either place it on this face down card for this new region, or he can place it not on a card, but on the tabletop surface. What does that mean? Well, he can resolve this however he wants. If he places it on the face down card and an enemy is revealed, instead of one enemy, it will be two. If he chooses to place this threat die on the tabletop. Okay, he's by himself. So maybe he doesn't want to have the chance of, if that's an enemy at being two, he can place it on the tabletop. And what that means is if it's revealed, then that enemy would have a special behavior. So it's gonna act differently and increase the challenge of the enemy. So he does, so he decides to play it on, uh, place it on the tabletop. Okay? And he's going to go ahead and reveal the Overland Exploration card. And it was an enemy. Okay.
A wild Thunderhorn appears!
Jeff Irving: So no, he has, uh, drawn the attention of, it looks like a Thunderhorn here. So what we're gonna do.
Brandon Rollins: And so what, what's a Thunderhorn look like? Just to set the scene.
Jeff Irving: Yeah, it looks like a six legged bison. Basically it's a big bull, kind of hulking bull looking thing with horns. It looks quite intimidating and it is probably about twice his size.
Brandon Rollins: And kind of looks pretty intimidating relative to the Drelrhune, which is essentially like a lizard man.
Jeff Irving: Yeah, human sized reptilian. It, it, he, it's probably pretty intimidating. Um, so we...
Brandon Rollins: So pretty, yeah, off to a bad start. Freaking Mondays.
Jeff Irving: Yeah. So we take the Thunderhorn card from the enemy deck, right? Uh, that the ex, the Overland Exploration card told us, it told us what the enemy was. So we hope have to go get it from the enemy deck. We place it in the enemy dashboard.
It's a real simple little rectangle. Thunderhorn goes in. But what we've gotta remember though, is he placed that die, the threat die on the tabletop, which means that this Thunderhorn, in addition to being a a Thunderhorn, is also let's draw the card... a Crusher. So what, let me read this crusher card.
A successful me melee attacks by this enemy variant cause the target to discard a random inventory item of a roll, uh, of +3. It excludes equipped items. So I think earlier you went through what he's carrying. He has a staff, he's wearing leather armor and he has a torch. So the staff and leather armor is safe from that crusher effect cuz he's equipped those.
But the torch is in his inventory. So this behavior says that if the, the Thunderhorn successfully attacks the rook, he gets to roll a D6. And on a +3 he can break this torch. So that's a danger.
Brandon Rollins: Yeah, that could be bad. I can imagine that'd be a lot worse if we had some more high value items and there was a chance of one of them randomly being dropped.
Jeff Irving: Oh yeah. A torch. Not a huge deal. He's not, you know, he's not, uh, in a dark place. So he's not in no, in immediate danger if that torch gets...
Brandon Rollins: We're we're lucky. It's early game.
Jeff Irving: Yeah. So, but Rukus has 14 life and 6 movement. Looks like this Thunderhorn has 16 life. Um, he also has six movement. Um, so that's basically the enemy that we're facing.
We're gonna place the Thunderhorn, uh uh, we're gonna pull out a plains encounter map, stick it on the tabletop.
Brandon Rollins: Which is like an 18 by 18 board, essentially a flat.
Jeff Irving: Yeah, this one's round. Uh, most of the under, uh, the overland maps are circular, and there's two, two markings on these. One of them is for the spawn region, for the the enemies, and the other one is a rally point for heroes. So we're gonna place the Thunderhorn in the enemy spawn region, and we're gonna put Rukus around the hero rally point.
Okay. So we've got the, we've got the table set for this battle. So the next thing that we do is what, Brandon, what do we do?
Rolling for initiative & the first round of attacks
Brandon Rollins: Well, it sounds like we're gonna have to roll for initiative to see who goes first.
Jeff Irving: Well, we don't have to roll. We have this lovely velvet bag. It's, it's a, a good size bag. Big enough, fit your hand in and it has initiative tokens in it. And so we're gonna go ahead and draw initiative tokens for both the Thunderhorn and Rukus. Who should we draw out first?
Brandon Rollins: Uh, let's go ahead and do Rukus first.
Jeff Irving: Rukus gets a seven. Okay.
That means Thunderhorn goes next. He gets a 14.
Brandon Rollins: Okay, good. So we get to go first then, cuz we got the lower number.
Jeff Irving: Got it. Okay. So we know Rukus goes first, so he's got some choices here. He can move, he can, um, he's a long way away from the Thunderhorn so far. He doesn't have anything that'll reach the Thunderhorn, except it looks like his Watery Noose ability, which gives, it says, -1 to target enemy attack rolls this battle.
So from here all the way over to the enemy spawn point, Rukus's magic, racial magic will allow him to stick a watery noose around the neck of this Thunderhorn. And so it's gonna be bothersome to him and it's gonna affect his roles in a negative way.
We can do that. That's the only thing we can do right now that will reach the Thunderhorn. Do you wanna do that?
Brandon Rollins: Yeah, let's go ahead and do that.
Jeff Irving: Okay. So he, he spends an action point in doing that, okay?
Uh, he's still, he still has one action point left and now the Thunderhorn's rolls are 10 or less instead of 11 or less. So that Watery Noose around his neck is just kind of acting as an annoying distraction to him. But I think Rukus would probably want to use his other action point to close the distance on the Thunderhorn.
You agree?
Brandon Rollins: Yeah. I, I think so too, cuz they're gonna have to meet up to actually attack. How many spaces are they apart at the current moment?
Jeff Irving: Um, let's see. 14.
Brandon Rollins: 14. Okay. And, okay. Gotcha.
Jeff Irving: So he's gonna move his, he's gonna move his six that's gonna um, uh, take us down to eight spaces apart.
Brandon Rollins: Okay.
Jeff Irving: And he's gonna end his turn because he's used his racial ability to noose, noose the Thunderhorn. And he's moved his maximum distance of six.
So it's the Thunderhorn's turn.
Brandon Rollins: And I think we might have, might have skipped this, but the Watery Noose basically reduces the amount that the Thunderhorn can mitigate damage. Is that right?
Jeff Irving: No. Um, it, this is, this is making it harder for him to hit.
Brandon Rollins: Okay. Okay. Yeah, I got that backwards then it... okay.
Jeff Irving: Yeah. So he's, he's gotta ruhl a 10 or less now to, to successfully attack or, yeah. So instead of an 11, it, it only is a -1.
Brandon Rollins: Okay. Okay.
Jeff Irving: Um, but the nice thing about it, it lasts the whole battle.
Brandon Rollins: Okay. See that's good. So it already puts us off to a slightly bitter situation.
Jeff Irving: Yeah. So, so now it's the, the Thunderhorn's turn and he's 8 away. Okay. He has an action called Raging Charge. So he can charge at a target.
Brandon Rollins: That sounds awesome.
Jeff Irving: Yeah. He can charge at the target and do six base damage plus knockdown. Okay. So that means he can do his maximum movement. And at the end of that movement, if it's, you know, obviously if Rukus is in range, he'll hit him for a base damage of six and knock him down, which means he's gotta, he's gotta spend an action point to get up from a prone position.
Um, but that action is just beyond his movement rage, and so he can't use it yet. So the Thunderhorn is gonna go ahead and move his maximum movement of six. He's only two spaces away from Rukus now, and he has to end his turn.
Battle Round 2
Brandon Rollins: Okay, so now we basically, we're gonna draw for initiative again. See who goes first.
Jeff Irving: Okay. All right. Who's going? Who do you want me to draw first?
Brandon Rollins: Let's try for Rukus first on the Thunderhorn.
Jeff Irving: 7. Thunderhorn gets 14.
Brandon Rollins: Okay. So Rukus gets another lucky day here. He gets to move first.
Jeff Irving: He sure does. Um, let's go ahead and close the distance.
Brandon Rollins: All right, let's close that distance and let's try and get an attack in on this guy.
Jeff Irving: I'll tell you what's bothering me.
Brandon Rollins: Hmm.
Jeff Irving: This Thunderhorn can do six base damage on his attacks on us.
Brandon Rollins: I don't love that.
Jeff Irving: No. If we cast Stone Mantra, we become stonelike and it gives us two more mitigation versus physical attacks for two rounds.
Brandon Rollins: That mitigation's gonna come in handy cuz this guy's got more life than us and we can't keep an counting on getting initiative.
Jeff Irving: Yeah, he's got 16 life. We've only got 14.
Brandon Rollins: Yeah. Okay. We need that. So we're gonna, and plus we might end up in another battle later on in the game, which wouldn't be in the podcast, but still. So yeah, let's do that.
Let's mitigate some damage.
Jeff Irving: You want to, go ahead and let's go ahead and cast Stone Mantra first and then close the distance.
Brandon Rollins: Now that, that's a skill and therefore doesn't require ruhl. Right.
Jeff Irving: No, this is a skill. So it does require ruhl. Now, when he cast Watery Noose, that was a racial ability for his race. The Drelrhune, that doesn't cost him ruhl. It just costs him time.
Brandon Rollins: And will Stone Mantra last for the rest of this battle?
Jeff Irving: Sadly, no Stone Mantra will only last for two rounds.
But since Rukus is going first by casting this now, it will block it, it will block, um, the next two attacks. The Thunderhorn would attempt. So let's do it. Let's do it. So he ca he spends his ruhl, he has to move, uh, one of the ruhl from the available side to the spent side, and their little crystals does that.
He is now under the stone mantra, which means with his leather armor and staff, which each give him one mitigation. This gives him two more. He now has four mitigation for two rounds, which is good.
That's really good.
Brandon Rollins: Yeah, that's, that's gonna come in handy.
Jeff Irving: Yeah. Okay, so, and he's done, he's well, he's gonna close the dis-
Should we, should we close the distance and, and use those two movement to close to melee arrange for the Thunderhorn? Or should we make them the Thunderhorn spend his two movement to get closer.
Brandon Rollins: I think. Make the Thunderhorn move.
Jeff Irving: Let's do it. Let's stay put. We're gonna cast Stone
Brandon Rollins: We, uh, like, we can't, we can't attack and use this, uh, Stone Mantra in the same turn, can we?
Jeff Irving: Uh, no, you can't, you can't use Stone Mantra and attack physically. You can only choose a skill, a physical attack, or a racial ability. One of...
Brandon Rollins: Okay. So we're not gonna have any attack options. Yeah. Let's make the guy move to us. We'll stay put and we'll use Stone Mantra.
Jeff Irving: Good idea. Okay, so we're at mitigation four now with Stone Mantra. It is now the Thunderhorn's turn. He is going to, okay. He's gonna attempt to use his action. Okay.
He has this action that's to charge at a target, so it's movement related. It does six base damage plus knockdown. So we know he can get there. Okay. But he's got to, he only has a 50% chance of being able to use his action each turn.
Okay. It doesn't cost him any ruhl, but he, he only has a 50/50 chance of being able to use it. So let's see if he does it. So we need a, we need a plus roll and he does not get it.
Okay. That was just his attempt to try to use his... so now he's gonna go ahead and spend his movement points to move into melee range and do his normal melee attack. Okay, so he's gonna roll to see if he hits and he's gonna roll to see what his modifier die does to that base damage of six for him in the melee.
He rolls a 14. The other roll is irrelevant cuz it's a miss. So he does not hit.
Brandon Rollins: Okay. So that ends that turn, he can't do anything else. We draw for initiative and hope that we go first again.
Jeff Irving: Yeah. Yeah, we got, we got...
Brandon Rollins: we have. We've gotten lucky so far.
Battle Round 3
Brandon Rollins: Let's see what, let's see who goes first this time. Draw for Rukus, then for the Thunderhorn.
Jeff Irving: Rukus gets a 3.
Thunderhorn gets a 14.
Brandon Rollins: This is, this Thunderhorn needs some coffee because he is moving way slow.
Jeff Irving: He does, he does.
Okay. So what should Rukus do? What do you wanna do? Do you wanna attack with the staff? His staff?
Brandon Rollins: Ah. I mean, we've got that in Flurry of Blows, and I feel like we've got a prime opportunity to use Flurry of Blows.
Jeff Irving: With, um, with, with Stone Mantra in place, we know that we're not gonna take a whole lot of damage if he does hit, you know, um, Flurry of Blows is gonna give us two rapid blows of hands and or feet to one, to one enemy that do four base damage each +1 for each point of focus over 14.
Brandon Rollins: So just really quickly, this versus the staff Flurry of Blows gives us two chances to attack using the staff gives us one.
Jeff Irving: Correct.
Brandon Rollins: Gotcha.
Jeff Irving: You wanna spend another ruhl and do the Flurry of Blows.
Brandon Rollins: Yeah, let's put that ruhl to good use. And this is as good a use as any.
Jeff Irving: Okay. So, but because this is, because this is a physical attack. So in other words, he's holding his staff, but he's kicking it with his feet twice.
Okay?
It doesn't say on here that he, that he has to be without a weapon. So he's basically using his feet.
Um, he's gonna roll, okay?
He's gonna roll two dice for the first attack. His, his role to hit on the D20, which needs to be at a 12 or less because he's a focus fighter. And the D6 is our modifier die. That's gonna modify the damage up or down.
Okay, here we go.
Okay. He rolled a nine, which is 12 or below, so that's a hit. And then he rolled a five. Um, actually he rolled a +2 on the first attack, okay? Which means he did a four base damage +2, so he did six on the first attack. Let's go ahead and roll the next one and see if he hit okay. He rolled an eight and a four. That's another hit and a +1. So that's five damage.
Brandon Rollins: Okay. And then the Thunderhorn's got mitigation of some...
Jeff Irving: right. And he's gonna mitigate, he's gonna mitigate each of those hits individually. So the first one we did what,
Brandon Rollins: Mm-hmm.
Jeff Irving: Or was it seven?
(It was six and then a five.)
Okay. So six. So he did a, an adjusted 6 damage to the, to the Thunderhorn who has a mitigation of three. So instead of six, that first hit did three, the second hit did five.
Brandon Rollins: Minus the three. Yeah.
Jeff Irving: Minus the three down to two. So we did a total of five.
Brandon Rollins: Yeah. Taking him down from 16 to 11.
Jeff Irving: Yeah. Six, 16 to 11. That's good.
Brandon Rollins: Mm-hmm, considering that we have 14 and, and that's already puts us a kind of a disadvantage, we have already positioned ourselves ahead of this guy.
Jeff Irving: Yeah. I think we've leveled the playing field as it were. Um, however, you know, we, we can't keep spending ruhl endlessly. We have a limited supply of it. And we know that when we spend our, our ruhl down, which is our what powers our, our skills that we're pushing ourself towards needing to rest to recover it.
So we've gotta kind of, kind of weigh out how much ruhl do we wanna spend versus just normal physical attacks that only cost us time.
Right? So that's where we are in, in that thought process. But it, it is the Thunderhorn's turn. Um, to attack us. And he is going to attempt to use his Raging Charge here right at melee range to hit us again because he wants to do that base six damage plus the knockdown. So he is gonna roll for that. No, missed with a 19. He's a, this guy's a dope.
Brandon Rollins: I... we, we just, we, we, picked a, we've, we are getting attacked by the runt of the Thunderhorns.
Jeff Irving: Yeah. This is, this is like.
Brandon Rollins: Boy this guy. this freaking guy.
Jeff Irving: He is. This guy. Hit a ball. Drag Carl. Hit a ball. Drag
Brandon Rollins: Batting average of 115.
Jeff Irving: Exactly. Okay. So he misses and that's wonderful for Rukus. Rukus is happy about that.
Battle Round 4
Jeff Irving: So we're gonna put our initiative tokens back in the bag and we're gonna, I'm telling you what we're gonna, we're gonna go again. Should we, should we give Carl the Thunderhorn a chance to go first in the draw of initiative?
Brandon Rollins: Yeah.
Jeff Irving: Should we? Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's just let him draw first. Here we go. Okay. Carl, the Thunderhorn draws a one, he finally succeeded and, and Rukus gets a 10. Okay, so Rukus got a 10. So Carl's going first, the Thunderhorn, and. He is going, he, since he has still hasn't used his action raging charge, he's gonna try to do it again.
Brandon Rollins: Okay.
Jeff Irving: Yeah. Because he wants to knock him down and do that massive damage. So here we go. Okay. He got a 15 on his, on his roll, so he was not able to do an action.
Brandon Rollins: Okay.
Jeff Irving: But, but he can do, he can still do a regular melee.
Brandon Rollins: Okay. Let's see if you can land at this time.
Jeff Irving: Now here's the question. We have to remember that Rukus cast Stone Mantra to give him more mitigation, but it just ran out before this turn.
So we have to, we have to recognize that because the Thunderhorn went first, Rukus was not a, and his, his stone mantra expired and he was not able to get it back in place.
So he only has a mitigation of two because of his leather armor and his staff. So the Thunderhorn missed with his action. But here is his role for a melee attack on Rukus, and it is an 18. It would've been a -3 on our modifier die.
He did not hit, however, and so poor Carl, even though he was the star of the show and he was able to go first, he had a big woof on that, big oof. Okay, so it is Rukus's turn, I say, what do you think? I think, I think it's just a turn where we, I mean we've humiliated Carl.
Brandon Rollins: If we, we can't, we don't wanna blow through all our ruhl because we, there... if this battle were to continue beyond this podcast, of course we would want some of that for future battles. It should they occur, otherwise we're gonna have to rest. And that can create all kinds of problems as well.
Jeff Irving: Let's smack him with the staff. Okay, here we go. And it's got a base, it's got a base damage of four. We got a 12, which is exactly what we need and needed 12 or less. And ready for this, we got +3 damage to it with our...
Brandon Rollins: Seven and plus there's a three mitigation. So we land four.
Jeff Irving: Okay. We got four attack on Carl, so what's he down to? (Seven). Down to seven. Good deal. Awesome. So, um, Rukus, I think Rukus, I think Rukus is feeling pretty good and decides to just end his turn here. What do?
Brandon Rollins: I think so too.
Jeff Irving: Let's do it. Okay, so the initiative tokens are back in the bag. We're gonna go ahead and draw for, let's draw for Rukus first.
He got a one this time. Okay. And Carl gets a, an 11 on this one. Okay. So, uh, let's wanna smack him again with the staff?
Brandon Rollins: Yeah, let's do it.
Jeff Irving: Okay, here we go. Ah, yes, we got a four and a two. He hit and a +2 on damage.
Brandon Rollins: Oh my God. This poor thing.
Jeff Irving: Oh -3. Mitigation.
Brandon Rollins: Okay.
Jeff Irving: So what's, what are we down to?
Brandon Rollins: You said we got +2 on that?
Jeff Irving: We got a total of, we got a total of six minus is three mitigation. So he took three more points of damage.
#PrayForCarl
Brandon Rollins: Whew, putting them down to four. #PrayForCarl.
Can we get that trending? Let's try.
Jeff Irving: Pray for Carl. #PrayForCarl. Okay, so it's Carl's turn. He still has been unable to land his Raging Charge, so he will attempt that now. It's time for Carl's luck to change. Okay. Ready? Carl? All right. Yes, he got a seven and a -1. So he does five damage. Rukus is knocked down.
Brandon Rollins: Okay.
Jeff Irving: He is also down to nine.
Brandon Rollins: Five damage, no mitigation.
Jeff Irving: Oh no, we got mitigate. We've got two mitigation
Brandon Rollins: Yeah. We've got one mitigation cuz of the staff and one for the leather armor. So that puts us down to 11 here.
Jeff Irving: Yellow. Okay. Which we're good shape.
Brandon Rollins: But we lost our torch.
Jeff Irving: Um, no. Um, he, he got us. He used his action.
Brandon Rollins: Oh, right. He didn't use, okay. He didn't use his enemy behavior. He just used his action.
Jeff Irving: Yeah. He did not use a normal attack. It says successful melee attacks. This is an action that he used so he doesn't get to roll to see if he breaks a, um, an inventor or, yeah. Made him discard. He didn't make him discard, but he knocked him down instead.
Brandon Rollins: Okay.
Jeff Irving: Okay. Say, okay. So at that point, Carl will end his turn. All right. You're keeping track of the life.
Brandon Rollins: Yep.
Jeff Irving: Okay. What do we, what do we got again?
Brandon Rollins: Rukus has 11 and Carl has four.
Jeff Irving: Okay, so who should we draw for first?
Brandon Rollins: Poor Carl obviously.
Jeff Irving: Carl 11 this time, trust me, I have 20 tokens in here, and seven for Rukus.
Brandon Rollins: We might just send this thing.
Jeff Irving: I think we might, um, you wanna finish him off with a Flurry of Blows, or do you want to...
Brandon Rollins: flurry of Freaking blows. Let's do this.
Jeff Irving: Here we go. Um, successful. We need our successful, um, physical attacks on this one.
So to land them, so first attack, a seven, so that's a hit and a +1 on our modifier. Next one is a 12 and a +3.
Brandon Rollins: Okay, so we get a five, um, cuz we had a modified +1 and the seven cuz a default attack of four +3 is seven. So that's a five. An attack of five, an attack of seven mitigates each one by three.
So that's a two and then a three. And yeah, we killed him.
Jeff Irving: Yep. Carl, Carl was not what I would call a worthy opponent. He went down.
The Battle Ends
Brandon Rollins: I gotta say he was a weakling. Um, but I, but this said, if we didn't get so lucky on initiative rolls, there is a chance we could have died there. And I'd say the median outcome of that is probably just barely scraping away with our life.
Jeff Irving: Yeah. Well, let's talk about, then, let's talk about the result of that. You know what I mean? What, what does that mean to us? Um, you know, we, we've killed Carl. Okay. So he's got, um...
Brandon Rollins: #RIPCarl
Jeff Irving: Yeah, exactly. Rip, rip Carl. He gives us the ability to roll from loot table. For a reward for killing him. Um, we do have to up our fatigue by one because we went through a battle, so we're upping our fatigue again.
Um, you know, we came into the region, we had to pay a fatigue then, and we've been in battle, so we had to, we had to, uh, increase our fatigue again. So ruhl wise, I think we spent four of our six ruhl for the day.
Brandon Rollins: It's either, we either spent two or three.
Jeff Irving: I thought we spent four cause of that last blows.
Brandon Rollins: I think. Okay. I think you're right. I think you're right. So I think we've got two left. It might be three, but either way, we'll, we'll just assume it's two.
Jeff Irving: it's good to remind everybody that all this stuff is tracked in the dashboard.
Brandon Rollins: Exactly. Like we're doing this on index cards and scratch paper for the podcast, but we have dashboards. It'll take away all this math for you.
Jeff Irving: Yeah. But, but Rukus made it through this battle with his life. Cost him a little fatigue. He gets to roll a D 20 on a loot table and he finds that he, um, on the, uh, Thunderhorn, maybe he was protecting it. He gets to draw from the basic items deck. Okay. And cool. Okay. Uh, Rukus draws a fine hand axe.
And so this is a fine hand ax that is, it's a, it does five melee damage or four if he chooses to throw it. So a ranged attack, it gives him a ranged attack as well if he chooses to throw it. Um, so this is probably a pretty good weapon for Ca- for Rukus. For Carl! Carl's doing nothing.
No, man, it's a pretty good weapon for him. It's better than his staff. Um, the only downside to this little fine hand acts that he found, um, is that it doesn't provide any mitigation.
It's not a long weapon, like the staff that you kind of hold out in front that can kind of protect you. This one is more about damage output than protection.
Brandon Rollins: Okay. Well I that, you know, that's a good thing though because it gives us an alternative to the staff, which...
Jeff Irving: Yeah.
Brandon Rollins: ...a battle.
Jeff Irving: And so, uh, if, if I were, if I were Rukus right now, I think what I would be thinking with my life level where it is, what would you, what do you think you would do? Would, would you play it safe and, and just camp here or would you press onto the next region? What would you do?
Brandon Rollins: Probably camp here.
Jeff Irving: Okay. Uh, if, if we're gonna camp here, then we're kind of gonna change modes. We're gonna leave the, um, the encounter map on the table. We're gonna place our campfire. Okay? Which is isn't necessarily indicative of us lighting a fire. It does not have to be that. It's just showing you, it's giving you the ability to place kind of the center of where you will camp.
Does that make sense?
Brandon Rollins: That makes sense.
Jeff Irving: And my advice is don't place your camp on the enemy spawn region.
Brandon Rollins: Okay. Yeah, cuz that would mean they don't even have to travel to get to
Jeff Irving: Yeah. And so, because in in the rest situation, ambushes are even possible. Um, yeah. You kind of want to, uh, you just, you just wanna place it probably somewhere near the hero rally point or close to the edge of the encounter map. That way if you have to flee in the event of an ambush or something, it's a, it's very accessible to flee that map and just pay the fatigue.
Brandon Rollins: That makes sense.
Jeff Irving: Yeah. But that gives you an idea of a very, very basic battle.
Brandon Rollins: Very cool. Yeah, I understand this a lot better now that I've talked this through. For anybody who likes a written version of this, there is also a combat blog post out there. Um, we go a little bit less into like what each of the skills and abilities do, but it does also cover all this stuff and you can actually see it as well.
Jeff Irving: Yeah.
Brandon Rollins: All right. Well I think this is a good place to leave off. What are you saying?
Jeff Irving: I think, I think it sounds great. I, I can't, I can't wait to do more of this stuff with you because battles are so dynamic and change so much based on the enemies involved, the heroes involved, even the terrain you're on. We didn't get much into the, the way terrain modifies movement, but we have various types of, of movement modifiers that change the battlefield.
We also have a complete set of terrain miniatures that, um, if you're not playing straight procedurally, um, can make an encounter map different every time you play on it because you can place obstacles and things that channel the battle and move people around in different ways, which is also fun.
Brandon Rollins: And I think all that stuff is gonna be good for future episodes. Like we could probably get several out of terrain alone.
Jeff Irving: Yeah.
Brandon Rollins: Very cool. Well, do you wanna take us out?
Jeff Irving: Alrighty. I can do that.
You can learn more about Vrahode on vrahode.com. That's V R A H O D E .COM. Link in the show notes. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, where we are @Vrahode. Thank you again for listening. We really appreciate it. Keep an eye out for our next episode in two weeks.