Episode 12: A Fortress, A Turtle, And A War Doctor’s Dilemma

A fortress rides in on the back of an elder mountain tortoise. The grass dies ahead of its march. Our lighthouse hospital—powered by a star-drawn barrier of blue roses—has hours before dusk, and a withering mage on the ramparts is already carving rot into the wall. We’re in charge, like it or not, and the choices aren’t pretty: fortify the gate to funnel the fight, or seal it and dare them to scale the walls. Count boats against bodies and hope the math bends. Arm a medical camp without losing its soul.

We pull the camera tight on Lyra, seven years wiser and suddenly the highest-ranking medic on site. Volunteers line up—a brusque Goliath, a twitchy smuggler, a one-legged draconian with taped scalpels—and we get to work. Acid vials from the lab. Shrapnel bombs packed with syringes. Drip fang and gorgon root poisons ready for last resort. Ravens scatter with pleas for help while storm-prayer stitches lightning into the clouds. The barrier brightens with fertilizer and fades with fear.

Then the line breaks in the most direct way possible: a sprint into the sea of steel. We showcase how to run mass combat that stays cinematic and clear—spotlighting clusters, using environment cards, and letting minion math carry tempo. Knights charge and get staggered. Elites crumple under combo spikes. A syringe-bomb detonates mid-command. The mage’s beam scythes the wall. Boats belch black smoke on the horizon. It’s tactics and storytelling in lockstep: how to use terrain, time, and fear as resources, and when to trade pride for people.

We leave on a razor’s edge. Reinforcements hit the dock as the turtle fortress presses closer, the barrier flickers, and the field swarms with conscripts and archers. Next up, we choose: retreat to save the camp, hold for a siege, or gamble on a counterstrike up the shell. If you love story-driven TTRPG combat, improvised defenses, and hard calls under pressure, this one delivers.

Enjoyed the ride? Follow, share with a friend who loves actual play, and drop a review with your answer to the big question: retreat, hold, or assault the turtle?

Transcript

Banter, Weddings, And Weird Mail

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Welcome to a new year or an old year, depending on where you are in the cosmos. I'm Richard, Dungeon Master, Snappy Dresser, greens of new gray hair every time I mark an assignment. And I am one of the two hosts of Richard and Carl Play Daggerhardt.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Well, I guess that's my cue to introduce myself as as Carl. I mean you could have.

SPEAKER_02 0:24

That would have messed with me pretty good.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

I don't have the illustrious VM credentials of Richard here, but but I I am a tabletop RPG player and um and uh you know who knows who knows when you're listening to this. Maybe this maybe this isn't old year when you're listening to this.

SPEAKER_02 0:44

You know what's funny about that? Is it's entirely possible that I could introduce myself as a doctor and be retroactively correct based on how long this stays on the internet? You could. Although, to be fair, if I went around calling myself a doctor without one in my day-to-day life, I'd be throat-punched by like elderly professors. So, before we get into daggering some hearts, tabletoping some roleplays, what is new in the Carlverse? And if you go into mini-movie review, I'm gonna move you to our other show. You like you have like a flak fiction amount of space to talk about movies, but only if you think that'll be relevant during the game later somehow.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

No, no, no. Um I don't think we watched any interesting movies so far this in the past couple weeks here. Yeah, take that avatar, idiot. Well, you know, you off-stream, you and I already talk about Avatar 3 because me and my fiance went to see it on Christmas Day. Uh, but that that's old news. That's a couple weeks ago already, uh, as of the recording of this video. What's less old news? You know, obviously I said fiance, so I'm getting married.

SPEAKER_02 2:01

Um, is it supposed to be really tragic in the middle of the stream? Because that would be so so weird to move.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

No, no, no. Um uh I've also off stream I've I've mentioned to you that uh my gift to my groomsman and best man uh is That's me the suit that my my gift is the suit that that suits we'll be wearing to the to the wedding.

SPEAKER_02 2:30

Man, if you're Tony Stark, that'd be such a sick gift.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

Well, I mean I I you're right, I'm not Tony Stark. I'm I'm kinda cheap. Um and I I've been uh So let me clarify, that's still a sick gift.

SPEAKER_02 2:43

I just think if it also had blaster hands, it'd be a sicker gift. Okay. Like, no disrespect to Ted did here.

SPEAKER_01 2:50

Well, no, so I I bought um super cheap ties, cufflinks, and uh handkerchiefs off of uh Alibaba, which is a service that uh connects you directly to uh Chinese warehouses. And I mean I certainly hope uh that they're not like sweatshops or something there. But man, you know what's funny?

SPEAKER_02 3:13

I was about to give the disclaimer, it's like not sponsored, and then I was about to like just say something unhinged to get me sued. So just no, I was about to go into full tirade about sweatshops versus current political neighbors and what once actually like sketchier as like companies are out here like straight up union busting, but that's a whole other story.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

Um, but uh I have also decided I was just gonna buy like the whole suits on Alibaba and uh you know got measurements from all all my wedding party people, and uh I hopefully I picked the right size and I ordered them, uh and they said it would take like a month and a half for them to show up. Yeah. Like, okay, that makes sense. Coming from China, whatever. Um I was happy with the quality of the ties and handkerchiefs and and uh cuff links, which by the way, I don't even know how to use cufflinks, so that'll be an adventure, but that's not the point. But the point is uh they're you know, these uh suits are supposed to arrive in like a month and a half. Uh like maybe two weeks later, my fiance is like, oh hey, you have one of those package notices from from Canada Post. I'm like, what? I mean, my suits aren't supposed to be here for like a month, like a month ago. Like, what's going on here? It's like, well, yeah, maybe it's your suits, maybe you're two suits. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, okay, I'll I'll go get them on one next day that I can. So like so I I go to to the post office, which unfortunately is one of those crappy post offices in uh uh shopper's drug mart. Um and uh you know they only have one worker and they're working as slow as they possibly can, so you there's a lineup of like five people at all times.

SPEAKER_02 5:07

Yeah, that was a solution. Let's cancel our set passive source of income known as a Crown Corporation and instead outsource it to a private company to give us worse service. That's a great strategy for a primary network communication system that citizens are required to use by law to prove they exist to citizens. Anyways, uh you can't rent a car if you can't prove that you've received a piece of email mail from Canada Post these days. It's wild.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

But so I I finally it's my turn to get up to the counter. Uh a couple people actually the the Amazon return packages were really quick. She the person just had to like scan three things and then they're like, hey, you're good to go. But I get up to the front counter, I hand them my little slip that says I have a package. Like, yeah, I need to pick up this package, and they're like, okay, and they go on and they grab a cardboard envelope. Uh, and I'm like, oh. Well, I mean, I didn't really expect it to be suits, but I was kind of hoping it would be suits like that that somehow they like managed to just have some in stock and send them right away or something.

SPEAKER_02 6:16

No, no, no, they have to like it takes a while for the sweat to solidify into the suit.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

Anyways, um so I get that cardboard envelope um and I open it up, uh, and I was a little bit annoyed because it was a uh notice from SGI uh Saskatchewan uh insurance a Saskatchewan government insurance? Um that must be what it stands for. Anyways, they they're the insurers for vehicles and and they do other forms of insurance, but primarily vehicle insurance. Uh and I had gotten to a fender vendor in a parking lot, and uh the other party filed their claim uh faster than I did. Uh, and I was in the process of filing my my claim as well, uh, but they decided I'd taken too long and sent me a warning note saying that, you know, if I don't re- don't file a claim within 30 days, they're gonna go after me for all the damages that they have to pay out for this claim. It's like, well, I'm already submitting my claim. I don't know why I got a letter that that said I was I needed to submit a claim already. Like, why did you feel like you had to send me this like certified mail or whatever it is when they put it in a cardboard envelope? Oof. Very disappointing.

SPEAKER_02 7:36

And that's the story of how my co-host went to jail.

SPEAKER_01 7:41

I just threw it in jail for not filing a claim. Uh they they just uh the letter says that that they will come after you for all the damages, all the all the uh money they have to pay out for damages related to the claim.

SPEAKER_02 7:55

We later learned that you simply had to put a toilet plunger over the dent and pull up. So you owe them $13 and a toilet plunger.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

Hmm. Could be expensive. Uh but so, I mean, on a slightly happier note, I mean, depending on how you feel about sweatshops.

SPEAKER_02 8:17

Um, I want it to be very clear, I feel negatively about sweatshops.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

But I I I am happy that the suits are ordered and hopefully they will be as high quality as the ties were, because the ties are actually pretty nice.

SPEAKER_02 8:33

Fair. I've been laughing at this idea to be like, so this podcast is ambid is like, well, they seem to have like pretty woke values, they're pretty inclusive, they love people, but their stance on sweatshops leaves a lot to be desired. Like, I'm just out here giving like a two-hour-long live play session that's just pure anti-capitalist messaging, and then ends with me supporting our sponsor today is Sweatco. We make sweaters with human flesh. No! Anti-sweatshop.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

Sweatshops are uh unequivocally uh bad.

SPEAKER_02 9:11

It's also, though, to be fair, mildly racist to assume every shop that isn't in Canada or the United States is a sweatshop, so there's a ground to this.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

Yeah, well, I mean, uh a lot of uh I I don't necessarily agree with the style of governance in in China. Um but the fact that they don't shift between you know liberal and conservative every four years uh means that they can actually build long-term plans and have infrastructure that we don't have, which drastically reduces the cost of goods. So it may not in fact be a sweatshop, it may just be that China's more efficient because they have a less democratic uh government.

SPEAKER_02 9:59

So I kind of enjoy this concept of shorting or sweatshop, because it's like unless we actually research it, we won't know how ethical these suits are. Because right now it could just be, oh, they're employing citizens in skilled labor so they can pay for goods and services. And I'm like, yeah, looking at stagnated wages in North America, we can't really pay for goods and services with a job. So it's like, yeah, until we actually look at into the details of where this comes from, and specifically like, I don't even know for sure that it's coming from China. That might have also been racism. It might be coming from India. It might be coming from Venezuela for all I know.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

When I see advertisements for Alibaba, it does specifically say that they connect you to uh Chinese suppliers.

SPEAKER_02 10:49

Okay. Traitor, trying to bring down a country with the red wave. This is satire. Oh yeah, or normal disclaimer. Welcome to Richard or Carl play Daggerheart. Nothing we say is fact. Don't trust us. Just don't.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Or you know, trust us, but verify on your own. Because don't trust us and verify on your own.

SPEAKER_02 11:14

Like, we have active vested interests. I'm like, like, half the point of this podcast is like, hey, they liked me enough to download my free character kit on itch.io. Woo! And then I'm happy and get a dopamine bite. Like, that's the point of this. Also hanging out, I suppose. But mostly my own dopamine.

SPEAKER_01 11:33

Uh, okay, so how what gave you dopamine this week there, Richard?

SPEAKER_02 11:38

Oh man, I have such a goaded semester, it's not even funny. So, like, pre-stream I was complaining about all my beautiful jobs that people would kill to have, making me have to work slightly hard. But it's like, so I start up this semester, and not to go into specific details of classes to limit people's ability to spy on me a little bit. Not a lot, but a little bit. The first class is on writing creative fiction. I've been in a lot of creative fiction writing classes in my life. That is my degree, that is what I am trained in. So when the prof said the sentence, so if you're writing sci-fi fantasy, here's some like, huh, we're doing the thing! We're actually gonna talk about my genres! It's been five years! Other than like one sci-fi elective. People are like literary fiction, it's like, if you're not talking about how the crest uh the cloud looks like an elephant and the dead skin reminds you of abortions, you're not a real artist. I'm like, make my elf better. And they're like, hey, here's how you can make your elf better. I'm like, yay! So that's just awesome. They're like, yeah, we want an outline in three chapters of your book, and every week we're gonna do little writing exercises and workshops. Like, that's fun, that's great. Then my second class is video game writing. Okay. So our final project is an itch.io game jam. Nice. But we're all about like these like really like retro style game writing or game-making software. So the thing we were playing around with week one. Uh, did you ever play Zork?

SPEAKER_01 13:08

Doesn't sound familiar.

SPEAKER_02 13:09

So we were looking into parser games, which are games where you basically have to type in your action and it's completely text-based, like, the room is dark and full of dangers, what would you like to do? And you go, light torch. And it's like the torch is lit, and you're like, go forward, and then you go forward. So it was like we were playing with the software that instead of using a programming language, you kind of write it in like a specialized paragraph form, which is still a programming language, but you literally be like, the room is a cave. The cave contains four exits, and then the language is smart enough to be like, You're in a cave. I want to go north. That is one of the four exits. Okay. So we were playing around with like the concept of how to tell stories this way.

SPEAKER_03 13:54

Hmm.

SPEAKER_02 13:55

And yeah, each week we play around with a different tool for a bit like the twine, choose your own adventure novels, the this like uh eight not even eight-bit, I think like two-bit game where you just like color in squares to make your sprites and move around and talk to things like a top-down adventure game. Okay. So, like, it's a every week we spend two hours in class playing around with these tools to like make little game projects and then make a big project at the end. This is great. Like, I have such an unfair advantage, it's not even funny. Because it's like, Prof. Hello, literary students. I know you're afraid of technology, but today we're going to talk about itch.io, and I'm like, oh no. And then they're like, hey, this is twine markup language. And I'm like, I handed in a paper written in that last semester. Do you know about visual novels? I'm like, oh boy, do I.

SPEAKER_01 14:48

Okay, wait, so your other class members, uh, are they actually as technologically illiterate as the professor suggests?

SPEAKER_02 14:57

The curve. So, like, I'd say about half of them. So, two people are on my level, three people are about a step below, and three people are like, oh no. Computer. Okay. So, like, basically the class, like, the mo our most complicated software runs in browsers. Like, you'll be fine. And then you get to pick whatever tool you want at the end to make your interactive game. Next week we're doing web play, uh, one-page self-player TTRPGs, like. Not care, nah, I'm drawing a blank on it. Uh, there's one that'll come to mind in the middle of the stream. But basically, this idea of making a rule sheet with random tables so you can play a one-player TTRPG by yourself.

unknown 15:43

Huh.

SPEAKER_02 15:43

I have one of those published somewhere. So, like.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

It's not on H.io.

SPEAKER_02 15:51

Uh no, this one was back when I was doing the Ramen Pack a gaming thing a while ago. Ah, right, right. So it exists out there, people want to hunt it down and find it. But that company, everyone went their separate ways, like things are to do. But yeah, so and then I think my last new with me is I went on a date to a local tea shop that I really love. And the tea shop was delightful. The date was okay. But then after the date, me and my friend met up to go through s a bunch of split fiction, which is sick. So split fiction? So split fiction. So there's a couple games that come out recently. There was It Takes Two and then Split Fiction. The idea of an asymmetrical co-op game where you're playing a two-player, but

Ethics, Sweatshops, And Satire Disclaimers

SPEAKER_02 16:40

each character gets separate abilities. And it's like really designed as a story-driven game. So the concept of the split fiction game is an evil company hires a bunch of authors for a book deal. Mm-hmm. And throws them in this like weird Matrix-S pod to steal their stories. But our two characters end up in the same pod together. So they're because the idea is like you play through your story in VR as they're they train their story making machine on like all your ideas. Okay. So it ends up having portals that warp you between the one person's fantasy stories and the other person's sci-fi stories. Hmm. And like it's not like it's full of collectibles and things, but it's exactly challenging enough to be a good two-person game to play, especially if you're playing with like uh experienced gamer and not less of a non-gamer. Or just like two experienced game. Like, it's not quite a hallway simulator, it has more gameplay than that, but it's definitely like a story game. But because you're jumping through these portals to different stories every like 20 minutes, and the mechanics flip on you, it doesn't get boring. But I put it on par with like a slightly harder than a Lego game.

unknown 17:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 17:54

But it like doesn't have collectibles, it doesn't punish you, it's all about like you just play the game.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

As a as a slight side, slight side tangent.

SPEAKER_02 18:04

You're mad that I'm allowed to give impromptu game reviews and you can't give impromptu movie reviews?

SPEAKER_01 18:09

No, no, no. Uh my my brother. Uh the good one or the bad one, or the neutral one? Uh well, firstly, I only have two brothers. I said what I secondly, I mean I I would say neutral. I don't know. Anyway, more to the point.

SPEAKER_02 18:26

If you don't know, they're probably the bad one. Ha ha. I like how I just threw an extra person in as one of your brothers, and I think you know who the extra person I just threw in against your will is.

SPEAKER_01 18:38

But the the point is uh that my brother uh he was living with someone who who has a child, and the the child is like was like four or five or something. Um they have a Nintendo Switch. They have a Nintendo Switch, uh, and they downloaded the game called Brothers, I believe it is. And it's one of these cooperative two-player games. Um uh where it's all like it's about the story of these two brothers, and they're on a quest to like find this medicine for their dad. Um and uh my brother is like, okay, I mean that's kind of like this game, you're playing with this this little kid. Uh but then the story turns like super dark. Uh and apparently at the end of the story, uh my brother's character was like killed by a giant by a giant spider, and the little kid's character uh had to like bury the body.

SPEAKER_02 19:37

That's amazing. Like, I do believe we're we try too hard to not traumatize kids anymore. Cause like, I was fully being traumatized by my media as a kid, and I turned out the a perfectly functional person who writes T T RPG rules till four in the morning in a basement suite. Uh but I am serious that kids media definitely used to try harder to traumatize kids. Yeah, now it tries harder to sell stuff to kids. Yeah, because I'm just like, Fern Golly was just telling you that life is miserable.

SPEAKER_01 20:14

Or like the lamp of her time? Oh. Oh, I was just thinking about that. The first one's so dark compared to all of the subsequent ones. Ridiculous.

SPEAKER_02 20:25

That's what happens when a marketing board gets aboard after you tell you're incredibly dark. You know what I was actually going through recently? So someone ran an AI upscaler on all the episodes of reboot to put them into 4K for some reason. Okay. And because it was early CGI, it turns out if you run an upscale for it, the show actually looks pretty good still. Like the animations are still a little shift and janky at places, but like it was the first CGI show ever made. Right, right. But the writing is so good and weirdly dark. What? It's literally been an evil dictator trying to steal people's ID codes so they have to work for its fascist empire. And then someone who accidentally handed over these I got scant-tricked into handing over these ID codes. And then has like a full-on depressive episode. And then they end up in a post-apocalyptic future that's basically concentration camps everywhere. And then they get chased through a funhouse by an evil clown. Like Reboot wasn't pulling any punch. There's literally a scene in Reboot where, like, the kid's like the main character now, because the actual main character got shoved into a demon dimension, basically. And at the end of the episode, he just loses the title game in the game over scene. And then the next episode he comes back Jack Muscle with a robotic eye and a machine gun, being like, I've been a vagabond suffering for the last 10 years trying to find my way home. And you get back and it's like actual dystopia, people coughing on the street, someone just finding a bunch of arms in a dumpster. And I'm like, this is This show's great. The show's amazing. They have an Evil Dead reference, like episode 2. Yeah, they literally like are just playing the game Evil Dead with the groovy and the shotgun and everything. Great TV. Ugh. Like, there's no way the 12-year-old watching the show is gonna catch the straight up Agent Scullion Mulder reference talking about how the user doesn't exist, it's just propaganda. Good stuff. But yeah. We need to traumatize kids more, is what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_01 22:42

Well, I mean, hopefully we can traumatize kids with our uh kids should not be watching our podcast.

SPEAKER_02 22:48

Good segue, but no. No, they should not be. I tried to do a 1F bomb per episode rule and fail miserably. Oh I mean, so far I don't think we've used any, so that's that's good. Yeah, I'm saving it. But like, no, kids shouldn't be listening to this. This is for adults. If you can't vote, turn this episode off, wait till you can vote, come back, vote in your first election, democracy is important, then come back and start listening. Right. Reasonable, right? That would be hilarious, by the way. This is my new system. After you vote, you get a QR code. And you need that QR code to be allowed to access any websites to say, are you 18 plus click here? You have any idea how much it would spike voting numbers that you couldn't access porn without voting? Uh uh, I'm gonna run on that. It's gonna be wild. So, last time on Daggerheart. After successfully murdering a bird companion, and then stumbling into was effectively

Classes, Game Writing, And Solo TTRPGs

SPEAKER_02 23:55

the Nation of Haven's Doctors Without Borders Camp, searching researches for diseases, treating both sides of a tense conflict. Haven, the empire to the north, the god-fearing, god-killing empire, was a powerful force in the region until a horrifying illness, serpent sickness, spread throughout the area and decimated their population. A cure was discovered to this serpent sickness, a crimson lily petal or flower that could be used to unpetrify those infected. Haven, desperate for this cure, marched his remaining forces further and further south, colonizing land, setting up farms to try and grow this plant as a vaccine, but also as a justification to invade neighboring lands, to claim their resources, and to, in some cases, settle the savages. Trigger warning. So after I would say about five years ago or so, not Elroy, but Leroy, a former fallen adventurer, had encountered a young girl Lyra under a bridge. He was under missions to try and hunt down the Fane race, an agent trying to steal something of immense value. The god of the woods, the owl, whose eye both grows nature, and his other eye reaps and sows it, had one of its eyes stolen by Haven to create a never-ending spring in order to facilitate the growth of these plants. The growth of wild, which has resulted in uncontrollable. Basically, nature became cancerous to a certain extent with infinite growth, infinite repetitions. Things such as plant monsters start possessing these petrified people and walking them around like mech suits. What would be a regular size bee would become weaponized exploding bees. And the danger curve just kept growing. Leroy, after being separated from Lyra on the top of a mountain after many adventures, and was just grabbed by an eagle and taken several days to the south, died seeking information for this vein wraith. In a series of spying missions went good, he had some pleasant interactions in the village of Alora, but was driven forward to try and reunite Livyra before he met his end by being stomped to death by furniture. So Lyra adventured her way to this camp. Many years have passed since that day, as, quite frankly, being accepted into this haven camp was the first time Lyra in her life was not being stalked or hunted. For many of the people of the Feinwick, the Wicklings, believed that Lyra was a cause of the protective charms and words around their villages fading, increased monster attacks, and a sign of ill omen, a child cursed by the spirits, where Haven found her to be an interesting asset. Through some straight-up murder, blackmail espionage, and mild tax fraud. Many years have passed since. Tell me, what does Lyra look like now, seven years after arriving at this camp?

SPEAKER_01 27:20

Uh what does Lyra look like now? Uh well, I mean, uh in terms of uh race, Lyra appears uh to uh mostly be human. Um their backs of their hands are a little bit scaly. Um but uh they have uh long black hair. And uh they're a little bit on the short side, probably like around just just over five feet tall. Uh but mostly unremarkable.

SPEAKER_02 28:14

Alright. So what's interesting is you've been working in a relatively neutral location, but over the s last seven years, Haven has been slowly expanding south, setting up new settlements, repurposing existing shrines and temples into small cities, expanding the trade networks. And when the Haven first attacked, it wasn't really a war between two factions. For the Wicklings weren't a people united. There were several groups of independent villages and towns. There was no feudalism, there was no empire. However, since a large invading force has moved in to share the territory with them, many of these smaller towns and cities have started to unite, becoming more of a organization, not quite a formal republic, but closer to a unified nation of city-states, to try and give themselves the bargaining power and the military power they need to strike back. And in essence, a Cold War has been going on in the background. You've noticed that over the last seven years you've had various spikes of incidents, be it monsters burning down cities, zombifitation plagues, deaths of mentors. But full-scale combat has not really broken out yet. But it's almost like the lack of business, the lack of news, the lack of supplies has everyone in the camp on edge. But the thing that makes today the story. What's interesting and something that you have not seen before at this point. As you're beginning your morning, walking across the walls that guard the moonlit bastion into the distance as the sun begins to rise. You see something odd. You see a turtle. A turtle. A turtle.

SPEAKER_01 30:15

In the distance. So it's assumably a very large turtle, then.

SPEAKER_02 30:22

So go ahead and roll a knowledge or instinct check for your first roll of the session.

SPEAKER_01 30:30

I am feeling knowledgeable. I got a six with help.

SPEAKER_02 30:37

Six. It is a very big turtle, and it looks like there's buildings on its back, and it's stomping forward. And around it, you see a lot of people are marching alongside this turtle.

SPEAKER_00 30:51

Oh dear.

SPEAKER_01 30:56

Um uh, are there any other guards on the on the walls?

SPEAKER_02 31:04

Yeah, you see one looking in the other direction, and like so you know those pretentious people that instead of just sipping coffee like a sane person, you see them like using their like grinder to grind the beans. They have like those beautiful reverse caraphaz where they're like packing the coffee down to the bottom to put it on top so the water boils up through the coffee grounds. Like, this is someone who is fully focused, as you are a medical camp in the woods on the coast in the middle of absolutely nowhere. This guard is going through like a 30-minute plus coffee making ritual right now.

SPEAKER_01 31:39

Uh I'm gonna go tap the the guard on the shoulder.

SPEAKER_00 31:44

Um, excuse me. Are

Childhood Media Was Darker Than You Remember

SPEAKER_00 31:47

we expecting any any deliveries today?

SPEAKER_02 31:50

Oh, um, morning. Um at this point, like the guards don't really rotate here, and neither do the staff, so though about 100 plus people of the ten guards, the like eight, ninety various staff members, other than the occasional retirement leave grad student finishing a reworkshop. You're pretty familiar with everyone in the space at this point, so they know you, you know them, and they look and go. Um nothing major comes to mind. What why do you ask?

SPEAKER_01 32:23

Uh, I'm gonna point at the the turtle and people marching alongside it.

SPEAKER_02 32:28

He just drops his fancy carafag. I was like! And then runs and starts like hitting a gong. And you see, like, the two, three other guards on morning, because like there's ten guards, so there's like three on shift and they just kind of rotate through the day. And you see, two are running up full speed. And along with them, it's nobody because of shift changes right now. You're technically lead doctor on site at the moment. So you're technically in charge here.

SPEAKER_01 33:12

So they're coming up to me for direction.

SPEAKER_02 33:14

They seem to be heading in your direction. Because as you're aware, after your mentor passed away, after some internal politics and some spite, and after working there consistently for eight years straight without missing a day, you're actually pretty high up on the chain right now. Yeah, it's kind of weird. A lot of your bosses have just a weird habit of turning out to either be traitors or dying in the middle of the night to savage rock light bludgeoning claws tearing through their flesh. It's weird.

SPEAKER_01 33:56

Right, right. Uh look. Uh what's going on? Who who are those people watching with home size that circle there?

SPEAKER_02 34:08

And what appears to be the head guards, like just he like climbs up, like this is a simian, like almost like a half monkey of sorts. And he basically like climbs up the wall effortlessly, pulls out a spy glass, looks at the distance, and he like whispers over, he's like. Uh they're not friendly. Tell you that for free. I'm guessing. Hopefully. Uh and he just seems to like be stuttering. The implication here being that a large attacking force seems to be heading in your general direction. And the guards, who occasionally like scare away a dragonfly monster. Or robbers, and like, and occasionally, like, there's been a few times where Lick Wicklings had to have to break in through the barrier, steal medical research. You've had a few turncoat doctors as well, who have been caught stealing information, stealing virus cultures and sending them back. But as a general rule, no one's actually like launched an attack on this bastion in the eight years you've been here. But just looking at the scattered, even with your own eyesight, you see the mixture of like cat folk and dragonborn humans and elves and dwarves. And it's like their uniforms don't all match. Except for all of them seem to have like a red banner that seems to be like an Ouroboros of three raccoons.

unknown 35:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 35:47

But one thing that you notice is deeply upsetting is as they're marching, it's like the trees and grass in front of them are dying. And they're just marking what would normally be like So part of what makes war full-scale war nearly impossible in this area of the world, in this part of the continent, is because of the Witherbloom and the infinite growth, marching a full-scale army through ever-shifting, ever-growing woods with horrifying monsters has been difficult. Small strike teams, elite wizard cabals, what have you has been reasonable. Like guerrilla operations of moving a group of like 20 people through the woods. Sucks, but it's doable. And like, you've had some trade to the town uh town of Allura to the south. And that's usually like sending four people in maybe a cart. And when it comes back, the cart's clearly been rebuilt three or four times. But a large-scale mark army walking directly through the woods with like a castle in the middle of them. There's probably a hundred plus people in that cloud of people moving through in an even march.

SPEAKER_01 37:01

Uh can I tell how long before they reach the bastion?

SPEAKER_02 37:06

Normally it would take them about a w Hmm. You're trying to do some calculations. Roll a knowledge check for me. Knowledge villain knowledgeable?

SPEAKER_01 37:17

Ooh, twelve with fear.

SPEAKER_02 37:24

Twelve with fear, I'll happily take that fear. So if you're looking at someone with far eyesight, roughly the horizon. You're gonna be looking at about Thankfully, so if you were a normal person with normal eyes, they'd be about an hour away. But with the business era on the horizon and just the sheer size of that castle uh probably maybe a day. I see.

SPEAKER_01 38:09

Uh well uh I guess uh uh I guess I guess we we should probably uh begin trying to fortify, make sure the the barrier is still still fully functioning and and and uh ensure that we have uh all of our equipment is is is uh taken care of and maintained before they arrive. I say to the head guard.

SPEAKER_02 38:40

He puts a shoulder hand on shoulders like ice sounds good. Um sorry this has to happen to you before new support arrives. Uh we'll be fine. They're they're not gonna murder a bunch of doctors, right? And he just runs away to do his job. Hmm.

SPEAKER_01 39:01

Uh well I guess I'm gonna go uh start checking on uh I mean I assume there are like uh specific points that help to maintain the function of the barrier.

SPEAKER_02 39:14

So the barrier is interesting. The main core of the barrier is the large lighthouse on the coast. And the crystal at the core of the lighthouse how it works, and it's kind of fascinating, is around the walls of the base, blue roses and vines have been planted. What the lighthouse effectively does is it doesn't actually shine light, it pulls in cones of light from the stars and the sun in the shape of a beam into it. So every time it doesn't sweep around, it's actually drawing in magical energy

Content Warning, Recap, And World Stakes

SPEAKER_02 39:48

from the light and then feeding that to the vines to create the barrier. Okay. So the barrier is much stronger during the day when it's pulling in more light, and at night the barrier. gets substantially weaker. Whereas powered by moonlight and stars instead.

SPEAKER_01 40:06

That makes sense. Uh so do the flowers around the uh around the base feel seem to be um healthy?

SPEAKER_02 40:17

Go ahead and roll a instinct or knowledge check.

SPEAKER_01 40:22

Let's go with I'm feeling instinctive. 15 with hope.

SPEAKER_02 40:27

15 with hope. They feel good and strong and healthy. Nothing's really been hitting the barrier much lately. Although it does give you nerves that the sun will be setting around the time this army arrives. And at this point another guard's come out to correct you and it's like um sir? Yes. So um I was doing some math, you know I uh I'm the stats guy. Yeah. And I don't think we have a day. Oh? How long do you think it'll be till they're here?

SPEAKER_01 41:04

Uh probably about eight hours seven now I mean are the weapons being maintained are we already sure that everything is sharp and ready to go well no no we're not ready to do that oh god go ahead and roll a presence check for me presence check could you imagine if you said that to one of your delivery drivers I'm rolling a presence check in my team with hope they they calm down they're like so um the guards are ready to go um what do you want us to do?

SPEAKER_00 41:48

Some of us have basic training um I can I I many of us have sworn oaths to not kill specifically to do no harm well uh we should gather up anyone who who is willing to fight uh and and anyone else should should uh stay in the lighthouse and and uh be on uh keep in safe save in safety got it so they run off to try and gather people up with that roll it takes about an hour and you have about twelve so you have your 10 guards who are prepping getting prepared checking the walls lining up weapons you have about 12 volunteers and then the rest of them are all hiding in the lighthouse yeah at least 12 volunteers are some of the sketchiest co-workers you've ever seen there's like a uh Goliath who's known for not really having bedside manner and snapping shoulders back into place.

SPEAKER_02 42:57

There's this one dude that you are certain runs drugs through this place. Like you are certain they just buy and sell illegal drugs and their eyes twitching a bit you have a one-legged four foot tall dragon folk draconian that seems to have like taken like taped medical sculpts to their fingers and has a massive grin on their face. And they're a look of pure bloodlust in their eyes. Right. And you see most of these seem to be other than the sketchy drug guy several of them were veterans that after taking injury in battle themselves got retrained and redeployed as medics. So many of them are like injured and weren't able to be in active duty so they came here instead to serve the Empire. One just seems to be a druggie burnout and this one guy just seems to be a straight up sociopath. You've done their employee reviews and their favorite part of surgery is the cutting them open part you describe two more of these volunteers for me that you would like to be in your squad here that I would like to be in my squad squad um one of them uh is is a rat is a rat with patchy fur uh that appears to be wearing a bathrobe. Nice I see what you did there um and um one of them uh is uh well he's got a peg leg for sure um oh yeah he's just a peg legged catfolk uh but he has uh navy blue fur very unusual fur alright so at this point you have about five hours left they've been armed and equipped to the best of your ability your mighty fighting force of twenty two individuals people have evacuated into the lighthouse all of the labs containing like experimental things have been sort of locked down and you see this army approaching is there any other actions you'd like to take to prepare for this massive scale battle um and remember right now they outnumber you 10 to 1 minimum because there's at least 200 people marching and a giant castle turtle uh well I mean I guess I want to quickly inventory uh do we have any vials of that acid that I used to break into the lab last session? Oh no issue at all but it will take you like if you want to like stock up on acid vials that'll be one of your remaining five hours of prep time well I mean yeah I want to stock up on acid vials and make sure that we have slings so that we can actually like hopefully throw these acid vials at people. So I'm gonna say for like you have we'll have access to about 10 usable vials of straight up acid as a squad. It's not like you stock a ton of acids but you have some you have to remove moles and things you actually have a fair amount of really dangerous things if you think about it in a hospital. Alright you have four hours left of rough time. And just to give you a reminder of what kind of resources are available to you. So in this camp you have a sterilization tent at the entranceway you have many small triage tents set up with patients. As mentioned you were actually pretty low on patients. Your patients are kind of in like I'm gonna say about roll a d100 for me.

Seven Years Later: Lyra At The Bastion

SPEAKER_01 47:21

Roll a D100 let's see there's no option for a D100 on this website. Alright roll two D20s set uh no no no um something I didn't mention in the what's new with me segment uh is that I received a set of novelty dice uh for Christmas uh and I have an actual D100 which is basically just a ball I don't even I don't know how it actually I mean technically we just roll two d10s but yeah no but I have an like an actual D100 it's like the solid size of a golf ball.

SPEAKER_02 48:00

So I was talking like dagger heart design with a friend of mine a while back and I'm like you know what would be great I should make cursed weapons that use the D3 the D5 the D7 the D9 the D13 because like the very act of attacking with those dice makes people unhappy and then gives them a set of those like unnatural dice to roll for the weapon and the curse is just you have to roll a seven sided dice to for damage which is mess with people so much that that's the curse.

SPEAKER_01 48:25

I got a 47.

SPEAKER_02 48:27

There are currently 47 patients here.

SPEAKER_01 48:30

Oh that seems like a lot yeah that's why we let that's relatively low.

SPEAKER_02 48:36

So if you think about it there's typically more patients than doctors at a hospital yeah yeah yeah at a point where there's about as many patients as doctors do we have any nitroglycerin?

SPEAKER_01 48:49

I'm gonna say yes because it's fun um so uh could I fashion um like uh shrapnel grenades by like taking the the vials of nitroglycerin and then basically just like gluing um apples to them go ahead and roll a finesse check for bomb making or presents if you want other people to make the bombs actually yeah yeah I'll go with presents because I I uh don't want to blow my hands off mostly kidding critical success alright I'm gonna say you had some of these doctors because some are still attending the patients even though you basically told everyone when the fighting starts retreat to the lighthouse and you ask some of the ones that are don't want to fight but like seem to think this is a moral gray area where they're allowed to make bombs and you do end up with and note this down somewhere ten shrapnel bombs sorry how many shrapnel bombs I'm gonna say ten. Ten feels pretty good just as a random side note you mentioned the D3 I was a little bit disappointed that the novelty set of dice uh it just includes a D6 that has the Roman numerals one through three on it instead of one through six yeah that's fair fair and reasonable well I mean you know and uh a regular D3 is is like a football shaped with the three sides that it can land on but anyways so I will say just for my own notes they function as the fireball spell like DD fireball?

SPEAKER_02 50:36

Uh no there's uh domain card called Book of Nori which let's ha one of its spells is fireball which is the daggerheart equivalency that's basically it's two it's a d20 plus five using a proficiency and they make a reaction roll of 13 if they succeed they take half damage so it's functionally a fireball spell sorry what was the name for the Nori?

SPEAKER_01 51:02

Yeah Book of Norae Book of Nori Alright let's see make a spellcast roll against a target within far range on the success they're tetherly restrained and must mark a stress line creature restrains them.

SPEAKER_02 51:37

Oh no okay we want fireball not just uh make spellcast roll very far target and all creatures within very close range of them make a reaction roll DC13 those who fail take a d20 plus five or in your case because of proficiency if you throw it it's two d20 plus five but if a regular doctor throws it it's one d20 plus five okie alright so you have explosions and about four hours left until this army invades you so just to kind of give the recap again you have greenhouses for growing medical plants synthesizing labs a locked and key tent that has a five petaled weather blue uh crimson lotus blossom one vial of plague culture culture the office attached to the lighthouse the lighthouse itself little tent set up it's on the edge of a clip and there is an elevator down to a port that you can use to receive supplies by boat and a shack that contains the Ravenmaster who sends messages out with his ravens and one fat pigeon that's painted black but mostly ravens.

SPEAKER_01 52:50

Hmm okay

The Moving Fortress Turtle Appears

SPEAKER_01 52:56

well so can we uh do we have any poisonous plants that we could fashion into uh files of poison that we can either apply to weapons or use as throne weapons go ahead and roll a knowledge check. And if you have any experiences that could apply to this feel free to mark a hope and apply the experience well we uh we didn't go over my experiences how they would change so I still I haven't you may rewrite any experiences as you see fit once and then they're stuck with the new experience well okay so I do feel like doctor would be an easy one you could add here.

SPEAKER_02 53:37

Yeah yeah medical experience for sure I'm gonna I'm gonna mark us I'm gonna mark a stra uh hope uh go for knowledge and my doctor ability and 13 with hope okay so you absolutely have poisons no issue at all you're a hospital like you're just like oh yeah I'ma just inj basically things that real world Carl has taken for your medical problem would absolutely kill real world Richard you'd just die from that so the first item that go ahead and add how can I put this you have effectively an infinite supply of drip fang poison drip fang poison so if they can s if someone consumes it they take 8 d10 direct magic damage if you coat a weapon with it it's like you don't really have poisons you would coat weapons with but if you can manage to get this inside somebody so like for example if you coat a weapon with it I'll reduce the damage it does reasonably.

SPEAKER_01 54:51

If you pour it down someone's throat or like walk up and syringe them with it it'll probably do full damage ripping poison D-R-I-P F-A-N-G-I see it any a creature who consumes this takes 8 d10 direct magic damage which means that you can't reduce it with your armor slots yes no correct okay alright alright um so we got poison we got explosives the cards are already um oh also you can go ahead and add it isn't listed in Nexus so you can put it in the notes you also have gorgon root poison and what that does not in yeah it's not in it but what it does is it gives a minus one penalty to the difficulty of somebody you hit with something with that poison on it. Gorgon root poison that poison comes off the assassin poisoner subclass reduces BC I'm a enemy I guess by one yep alright you have three hours remaining till this army arrives um all right uh I guess we should make sure that our escape route is uh is clear so I'm gonna I'm gonna send uh one of the guards to ensure that uh the harbor is clear and everything is set up and ready to go for us to evacuate if it comes to that. Go ahead and roll a presence check please roll 22 with fear.

SPEAKER_02 57:07

So I'm gonna happily take the fear. What this role was to determine is whether or not some of your doctors got spooked, stole boats and fled. Your leadership has been pretty strong so far. Your boats are there. However your boats will not fit 90 people you have three boats that fit about 12 people and one door that can fit Leonardo DiCaprio and a woman so if you want to evacuate 1224 you're only getting 36 people out via C with your current supply of boats.

SPEAKER_01 57:42

Because they're not for that they never thought we need to evacuate this entire camp I probably should have thought about this first but I should also send a message to see if I can reach out to a nearby uh to anywhere nearby they can send uh reinforcements andor uh additional votes for evacuation.

SPEAKER_02 58:03

Roll a knowledge check to have preemptively done this

Alarm Raised And Command Falls To Lyra

SPEAKER_02 58:14

12 with fear. So I'm gonna say you did do it and you have two hours left but that's what you did in your first hours you sent these messages to nearby people asking for boats and support and troops and help oh god okay actually you tell me what does the letter say well so the letter uh states that uh what what are uh the mission statement of the camp uh and uh says that there's a army marching forward uh that has uh some sort of ability to wither the dude well yeah I mean they call it the Wither Wild but the wither is the best description for how you're describing that the ground in front of them just dies, right? Yep. So as you send out all the ravens literally to every nearby settlement even some of the further away ones like Cobbler's Cove, you do see like the one that's just a painted pigeon just a large dragonfly monster swoops down and eats it? But the rest all head on their direction successfully the fat pigeon it was delicious. Just from your personal experience walk making this walk you did spend about three days to get here from Wormsheart Crossing which no longer exists but it's been eight years you tell me what has happened did they rebuild Wormshouse Crossing and what did they rebuild it into if they did

SPEAKER_01 1:00:01

Well see the Leroy's ex escapades um made that uh area uninhabitable, I think, because there's no longer any protection against the the elements on the swamp. Um So I think it would be more likely that they just uh are uh building and maintaining some sort of covered walkway that goes across the swamp.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:37

Okay, so they've replaced it with a bridge.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:40

Basically, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:41

Excellent. Good to know, noting that down. So you have two hours left. At this point, no one's fired a shot at you. But within two hours, it's not that they'll be at your front door. Within two hours, they'll have moved from very far range, A, you can see them, to far range where things can start shooting at each other. What would you like to do for your last two hours alive? Um But you do notice something. In the distance, on the coast, you do see plumes of black smoke. Haven boats are moving down the stream from Cobbler's Cove. Because Cobbler's Cove and this camp do share a coastline. And it is much faster to send boats than to walk. Especially these like burn goalie-ask, pollution-emitting, vulcanized boats. Uh you feel like those boats will get here in about four hours.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:54

Um, actually, no, roll a d6 for me. For how long the boats will take. For how many hours these boats will take to arrive.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:07

A boring D6.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:09

D6 is the iconic dice. It's the one people picture when they picture dice, unless they have anaphasia and can't actually picture things. And even still they'll assume that's what a dice looks like.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:22

Yeah, a lot of people probably can't even picture my golf ball D100.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:26

No, but they can picture a six-sided dice because they've been forced to learn life lessons through shoots and ladders at some point in their life. And the lesson is life is an unyielding beast that doesn't love you.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:37

Well, uh, my unyielding beast of luck rolled me a two, so.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:42

Beautiful. So they'll arrive at approximately the exact same time. Ooh, that's pretty handy. You got two hours left still.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:53

Hmm. Okay. Um. So well, see, I want to spend at least one of those hours uh praying to this to the gods and spirits for protection.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:14

Go ahead and roll a presence for me.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:19

Presents?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:20

Uh 18 with hope. So as you drop in prey, for a moment everything goes black. Then blue, then magenta. And as you open your eyes, you see yourself, but you look, and it's like your body is a cloud. And across from you is two koi fish that only have eyes on the left side of their body, swimming in a figure eight. And they're swimming around what looks like Well, it's like several wispy clouds are being stitched together by lightning. But it has the face of a bunny rabbit.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:04

The cloud does? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:06

It's like the clouds have been it's like the clouds have been woven together by lightning into a plushy rabbit.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:13

And the koi fish are circling this rabbit that's staring at you.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:21

Um do I recognize this beauty?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:29

You recognize

Barrier Mechanics And Daylight Math

SPEAKER_02 1:04:30

seeing this shape of clouds when immense amounts of rain and lightning descended upon Wormshark Crossing while racing it into oblivion. Aha. The big thing that comes to mind is you remember seeing a fairy with its eyes and mouth zoned shut. And similar stitching motifs seem to be in this cloud, but a more pleasant, optimistic way, as its mouth is stitched into a smile with braided lightning.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:06

I mean, that's only slightly more present pleasant, that's very creepy. Good.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:13

Like we said, we need to traumatize the children.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:22

Uh well, yeah, I mean, I'm I'm just uh Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna pray to this this toy fish rabbit god that uh that they bring their wrath upon these uh attackers. Roll a presence check for that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Roll presence check.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:50

14 with hope. So you close your eyes. Have this very, very vivid daydream. Open your eyes and just hear pitter patterns as raindrops are hitting the barrier above you. Alright. You got one hour left. Um Crackle as a bolt of lightning goes in the distance. Storms of ruin. Well, let's see.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:36

I'm looking to see if I have any. Uh I guess I'll spend the last hour reinforcing the doors to the camp.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:03

Alright. Go ahead and roll a finesse check for me. Or strength, your choice.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:08

Uh I am more finesse. Uh uh, you may recall I made this a uh strength dump build from every brawler.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:17

So I do recall, which is why I've been nice and I've been throwing out a lot of giving presents as an option to a lot of these dice rolls here as you became a leader of sorts. There is a kindness here. It turns out going to eight years of med school did not make you more jacked. That makes sense. I am not more jacked than when I went start before I went back to school.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:38

But yeah, I rolled a 20 with hope.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:41

You're just like just like, okay, let's batten down these gates. And because there was like, your camp is pretty good at quarantine. And you have enforced this gate very nicely. Like welding was involved, like. This is a solid reinforced gate. And you've also, like, effectively put, like, a magical fertilizer on all of the plants to strengthen the barrier as much as you reasonably can. My question for you is, do you have the barrier surrounding the entire camp? Or do you have it open where the gate is? So here's some pros and cons to this Sophie's choice of sorts. If you have the barrier's normally active everywhere except the front door and the elevator down to the harbor. If you put the barrier over the front door, it will make it harder to breach the front door. But it'll also mean that there's no longer more. Effectively, it takes away any incentive to attack in that way, because if the front door is as protected as the walls, they might as well go for the walls. So, like, not having a barrier on the front door might encourage them to take the front door.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:53

I I was thinking that we would uh attempt to we would not have the barrier over the front door because we want we want to try and funnel them as much as possible towards the front door.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:03

Understood. So your final hour is up. The boats are coming up to the dock. The enemies are now within 300 feet. Very far range. That means in theory, you could make an agility roll and get to melee range of something. On an insane as but this is about as far as possible. You see from this range the castle turtle, and all its majesty, the mountain Taurus, whose slow stopes and bites could it's about the size of your camp.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:36

Okay. Uh you said they're very far range? Correct. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:45

Uh, very far range. And there's 200 soldiers. And now within this range you can see, like, on this castle fortification on top of this turtle. Standing at the like on the effectively, like picture Hyrule Castle in your mind's eye. Now picture like the little like little fancy off area where like you'd stand to like give a royal speech. That's like up above like the stained glass window. And you see a woman in a red trench coat

Triage: Volunteers, Gear, And Morale

SPEAKER_02 1:10:13

with a massive braided silver wooden staff with what looks like an eyeball floating in the middle, and what the eyeball the grass, the eyeball is staring at is dying.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:23

I see. Well, that's not a good sign.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:27

And 200 soldiers have mixed various varieties that I'm not gonna describe one at a time, because I believe in some brevity. So the battlefield contains the mountain tortoise, a woman with a staff, and two hundred soldiers. Behind you, pulling up to your docks right now, is an industrial steam frigate containing about 50 of Haven's best.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:52

Okay, so we can almost evacuate everybody if the soldiers just abandon the ship and we get everybody else on there.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:59

Yeah. It'll take them a little bit of time to dock, get off the boat, run up and help you. It'll take you about. Well, we'll see how long it takes during the action, how this plays out. But things are about to go down. However, with all of your preparations in place, you effectively I'm giving you the spotlight. This is not a surprise attack by any means. So spotlight is yours until you drop it.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:27

Right. So uh the the fireball. Uh you said I have ten of those. Um it says make a spellcast roll against a target within very far range. Yes. Uh so you built slings. That they are in fact close enough for me to start throwing my shrapnel bombs at them. That is correct. Uh and my spellcast roll is just well me, my spellcasting modifier is presence. Yep. So it would just be a presence roll then, yes? That sounds right. Okie dokie, throwing the first bomb. A 16 with spear.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:09

So I'm gonna say, with the density of this battlefield, as we're in quite literally the pitch battle environment card. As you go ahead and throw your first bomb. I make my first roll of the session of a reaction roll, and I need to beat a 13 here.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:35

And any creature within very close range of the target. So I don't know how many.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:42

Yeah, I guess you uh you've determined the density of the battlefield, but sorry, my dice roller is fighting me for some reason. It's like it says it's rolling 1d20 and didn't give Ah there it goes. It got a seven. So I'm going to s you tell me, out of these 200 soldiers, how many do you think would be reasonable to be within a very within 10 feet of each other?

SPEAKER_01 1:13:08

Within 10 feet of each other.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:09

Yeah, because very close range is within five to ten feet.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:15

Okay, well, we assume that a person is two feet wide.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:19

Uh no, these are the exact measurements I'm gonna use when they start bombing you back.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:26

Right, right, right. Um but I would say uh for an army marching that would probably be fifteen people.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:42

Damn. Alright. Go ahead and roll damage to it, 15 people.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:48

Uh so that is uh my proficiency of two times two d20 plus the five, right? Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:03

So for context to one-shot these soldiers, if you manage to get a 26, them just many of them are just dead. And I roll uh only 18. 18? So that was enough to hit the severe threshold of the elite elite soldiers. So boom, some of them are rattled, some of them are shaking a bit. One of them didn't move an inch. But out of these 15 soldiers, there's 15 intersoldiers. As the battlefield begins to intensify, chaos begins as you fired the first shot. You just stood above the gate where the barrier was down and just lobbed a grenade as far as you could. With a slingshot.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:49

With a slingshot.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:50

Turn order goes back to me.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:53

Right, because I rolled with fear.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:55

So the first thing I'm going to do is the mage. It's gonna see an explosion cave from this camp. You can't hear what they say, they're too far away at this point. But I am going to spend the first of my four fear to use the battlefield environment's war magic feature. I pick a point within very far range. All targets within close range of that point must make an agility reaction roll. How many guard people are within close range of you?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:23

Well, I mean, we're spread out along the wall. Um so I would say there's two people within close range of me? Because that's within ten feet, is that right? Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:36

Alright, make a revision agility reaction roll for yourself and the two people.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:42

Agility reaction roll for me. Twenty-two with hope. Twenty-two. So guard number one, twelve. And for guard number two, eight.

unknown 1:15:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:56

I guess the hope and fear don't matter. You set right, because it's a reaction roll. Yeah. So Okay, so yeah, I got a twenty-two, the guards got twelve and eight, respectively.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:06

I see. So how this plays out is there is no half damage on the success, you just dodged. So you see this mage on top of the turtle raise their staff, and you see what looks like. Remember when Kafka had a laser like go across the continent and just Okay. So it's this laser just cuts across the gate, you do like an arms cross, backwards, vampire jump down off the wall. Uh-huh. And your two guards just explode. Oh my. They took. I rolled really well. They took 36 magic damage and each mark to stress. So you just saw like. So when this wave of magic hit them, you watched their skin, their bodies instantly age. And you just watched them rot and decay from this. But what's concerning is around the

Improvised Acid And Shrapnel Bombs

SPEAKER_02 1:17:10

point that was hit, some of the flowers on the wall have also started to rot and decay as the bubble wiggles a bit.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:17

Oh dear. That's not good.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:19

But Spotlight goes back to you. Because I want to keep some of this fear from blasting.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:25

Uh, well, I mean, have they moved any closer? 20 troops left. But but have they moved any closer?

SPEAKER_02 1:17:32

Yes. So at this point, the entire army has moved from very far range into far range.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:39

Okay. Uh so I have death maneuvers. Once per rest, I may mark a stress to sprint anywhere within far range without making an agility roll. Uh if I end this movement within melee range of an adversary and immediately make an attack against them, I gain a plus one bonus to the attack roll. Okay. So I'm going to mark stress. Uh and uh I mean I'm gonna tell the guards to keep whopping bombs uh while I run up and uh begin punching people.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:22

Okay. So are you r so you're just gonna run into the cloud of people?

SPEAKER_01 1:18:30

Uh well, I mean, I think I'm gonna start by running into the cloud where I where I actually hit people because they seem like they might actually go down fairly quickly and leave me some space to breathe.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:40

Okay, so you threw a grenade, they fired like a battlefield spell at your base, and you jumped off the wall, did a three-point landing, ran full speed towards an invading army of 200 people in a castle turtle, and at least one maid. Yeah, and started throwing hands.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:00

Yeah, that's that's my terrible plan. Well, hopefully the guards are throwing their own, um throwing the rest of the grenades. Um that's cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:16

Go ahead and freely make your attack against the 12 dude. For context now that you're close. In this group of 12, there are four that look like just regular armored squires or experienced commoners that are considered elite soldiers. There's about four conscripts that are just shittier people. Actually, wait. So in the 12 that you hit with a bomb, I'm gonna say two are dead. Yeah. They were just conscripts. The the elite soldiers are looking pretty injured. The archers are looking extremely injured and confused. So, for the sake of just some abstraction, picture there being three armored soldiers. Three archers. And one like spellblade looking guy and one cloud sword looking guy. So three normal dudes, three archers, one cloud, and one wizard sword guy.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:11

I'm gonna go and punch the wizard sword guy in the face.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:14

Alright, go ahead and make your attack. You know what's crazy is the wizard sword guy took four points of damage from that grenade because he doesn't have a ton of HP thresholds. But just had more HP and lived.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:28

I roll my attack. Uh roll 15 with hope.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:38

15 is what you needed. You needed 14 technically. I probably shouldn't tell you these things.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:46

Alright, so then I can roll for damage? Yep. 2d10 plus 2d6. Wow. Roll that is 20 damage.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:57

20 damage. So you just walked up to this mate. So just to play the scene, you fling a bomb, a spell shoots towards your base, you jump down off the wall. I'm changing it now that you kind of did like the swim or dive off thing where you like kicked off the wall for momentum. Did a shoulder roll, ran up, and then like Bruce Lee one inch punched this first guy in the throat before they could cast a spell, and his neck just goes limp. So now, as I pull up my notepad to keep track of this, because in my brain this was gonna be cinematic rather than like an actual battle, even though I had everything prepared, there is 198 enemies left. Uh 197. 197 enemies left as that spellblade's next snaps. And you're all with hope, right? Yes. You may go again.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:54

Well, okay, so are my guards uh are they starting to sling bomb sling bombs?

SPEAKER_02 1:21:59

So how am I gonna mechanically work this instead of taking 200 turns? Your 22 guards will negate 22 of my troops. So them throwing bombs and living their lives means that 20 people on this roster will be unable to do anything because they're busy dealing with explosions and guards. Okay, okay. And you do have, I believe I said 80 reinf uh 80 reinforcements on the boat. Right. Um so you can assume that your 20 guards and your 80 reinforcements will effectively keep about a hundred people in this fight busy. That's kind of how we're gonna do that, is if you weren't here, they would just one for one kill each other for the sake of convenience. Hmm. Okay. And if you want them to do specific things, let me know, and then we'll make sp if you use your action to have them do something special, I will then zoom in. So assume that they're fighting off through crossbows and bombs and things normally, but if you say, I would like to specifically have this guy throw a bomb at my location, then we'll use the specific fireball mechanics. Does that make sense? Is that a hundred units are considered engaged, but if you tell them to do something, they work on a more granular level.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:21

No, no, yeah, I just want them to throw bombs and and uh I mean I I don't know.

Poisons, Boats, And Raven Messages

SPEAKER_01 1:23:30

Um, I'd say I probably took most of the poison files with me because I want to force people to get strength poison.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:42

Uh that is a great sentence, sir.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:46

But first, um I have this juggernaut feature. Uh powerhouse. Increase the d8 damage from your unarmed strikes to d10s. Additionally, you can mark stress to target two creatures within melee range with a single attack roll. Okay. If I mark the stress, is that just applying to the next attack, or how does how long is that apply for?

SPEAKER_02 1:24:10

It applies to just the next attack.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:13

Just the next attack. Okay. Um well, yeah, because I kind of want to like as as I I mentioned, you know, my character fights mostly with with presence, which is you know part of the whole badass for you running right into the into the combat to be as terrifying as possible. It's pretty terrifying. And uh, you know, when you throw the punch and it's that like terrifying uh death punch that that Saitoma does against Genos. Uh but not actually punching him, but um yeah, this kind of connected. I kind of want to do that against two of the armored guards. I just want to run like attempt to punch them, uh Mark a stress to increase my damage to D10s and attack two of them at once with a giant death punch.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:03

Go ahead and make the giant death punch.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:06

Alright, so giant death punch. Mark a stress for that, and yeah. Oh no, okay, so the D10s is a permanent thing, but the mark of stress is is to do the target people. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:28

Yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:30

Uh roll.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:33

Ooh, a 22 with hope. 22 will hit. Go ahead and roll damage on these already somewhat singed elite soldiers. Um, okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:49

Well, I'll roll for damage. Okay, wait, so when do I have to after making a damage roll? I have to mark a stress to do a combo. Okay. But let's uh let's start with uh our damage roll. Uh 18 damage. I probably don't need to combo off of 18 damage. That's pretty So a little mechanical thing I'll let you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:21

So in a mass scale combat like this, if you do enough damage to kill somebody, but go over a threshold. Like, for example, this elite soldier has a threshold of 18. Okay would take one damage, and then those remaining two damage would get carried on to the next target. So you're hitting two people, but if you overkill those two people, I will let it snowball. If you hit the next creature's minimum threshold.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:49

It would be worthwhile to uh combo strike then.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:53

Yes, but it's only if you overkill by like enough to break the next guy's threshold. So, like, for example, if you hit for 19, the next guy wouldn't take one damage, but if you hit for 27, they would. Does that make sense? Like there it's like they do one less damage when you have to carry it on to the next guy.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:13

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:15

So it might be worth it. So I'm not you can get hit more than two people here is kind of the point.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:23

Hmm. In this case, then it's like, is that high enough? So that's true. I'm gonna try and combo off. Alright. Mark a stress and begin. So roll our first one. Ooh, that's a plus six. Okay. So I guess I roll my second one and see if I can roll a six. K-ka combo. Ah no, I only rolled a four.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:56

And that brings your total damage too?

SPEAKER_01 1:27:59

Uh, okay. Continue rolling until the latest combo die roll is less than the amount of preceded it. Oh, so that brings my damage to 28.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:10

So as you go and do the death punch, you throw a punch to these two people. Your fist actually pulls a Luffy and like grows in actual physical size. And you punch these two people so hard that they tumble and kill a third one. Nice. So you're currently sitting at 194 soldiers left to kill? And the guards around you are looking like, because there's a couple more here that are still pretty injured, like the guy with the cloud sword and one other soldier. And the fully armed soldiers are like starting to turn around and look and like move their eyes away from the cast like the place they were going to invade.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:49

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:50

And the mage looks down towards your general direction. Right to spend a fear to activate rays and pillage. So at this point, several of the frontline guards that like aren't within ring that couldn't really get to you because there's too many people around you, just start running towards the castle. And you see like there's like ten beat guys with like a literal battering ram trying to smash through the front gates.

Storm Prayer And Final Fortifications

SPEAKER_02 1:29:20

And a few of them start whipping grenades typing devices at it. And your outer wall is slightly on fire. Uh-oh. Turn order returns to you. Okay. Um They have not got through the barrier yet, but like the grass around, like, there's a hole that the main mage shot in it, and then fire's kind of spreading outward from that hole. Um bum bum. And the passive ability a drift on a sea of steel has triggered in. Traveling, versing during a battlefield, during active combat is extremely dangerous. A PC must succeed on agility roll to move at all, and can only go up to close range on a success. If an adversary is within melee range of them, they must mark a stress and make an ability roll to move. There's so many enemies around you right now, your movement has been drastically closed off. So to move, you have to uh mark a stress and make an agility roll if you want to get out of the melee. Except no one else is here in this battle yet. Right. Um You're kind of making Lu Boo look like a punk right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:51

I'm I am just gonna uh So you said that the cloudsword looking guy is pretty injured looking?

SPEAKER_02 1:31:00

Yeah, so the only two that are have injuries from your initial bomb are there's two archers, a guy with a cloud sword. Yeah. Two archers, a guy with a cloud sword are the only ones that are still injured. You killed all the normal guards already.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:16

Uh, I'm gonna punch the guy with the cloud sword.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:19

Alright, go ahead and make your attack.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:23

Uh roll for attack. Let's see if I can keep this going. 18 with hope.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:29

18 with hope. So, go ahead and roll damage. Roll damage. I roll 26 damage. Oh damn. That was are you gonna do anything else or you happy with 26? Uh I'm happy with 26. So, after you death punch two of them, you go around, heal first, and do a spin kick towards this weapon master. You clock them inside of the jaw, their jaw goes almost parallel to their shoulder. They're looking pretty rough. Was that with hope or with fear? That was with hope. I'm gonna spend a fear to interject here. Okay. I'm gonna use its adrenaline burst action that once per speeding I can spend a fear to clear two HP as he snaps his neck back into place. Oh dear. And then I'm going to use his goading strike on you. Oh as I roll? That's disappointing. Does a three hit you a three does not hit. I rolled a one. So he goes to like swing at you. But like he takes one step with his giant sword and starts to wobble, becoming apparent that he is suffering from a concussion.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:54

Yeah, uh, I mean I I am definitely just gonna like just like kick him in the jaw again. Alright, go ahead and make your attack. Let's see if I can keep this going. Apparently. 22 with hope. 22 with hope will hit. And that's another 27 damage.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:24

So 27 damage will put him in close range to death. But it won't quite get him across the line thanks to the power of an adrenaline burst.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:39

Do I want to mark another stress to try and combo off?

SPEAKER_02 1:33:43

Thankfully, because this is a new class, new character, I'm giving you a little more information than I might normally. So, for context, also because this is a play-along series, and part of it is so our viewers know how to use this environment battlefield card and like how to run this mascale combat, because we kind of do mini tutorial, I will straight up tell you what's going on here. So the weapon master's difficulty is 14, and its thresholds are eight and fifteen. It has a max of six HP. You hit it for three with the original explosion, and then for two with your attack, putting it down to one. I spent a healer to heal two, it's sitting at three HP. If you double its threshold, I use the bonus rule. If you double your threshold, it does extra damage. So if you break 30, you break him. So that does mean that if I were to combo off. The odds are about 50-50 shot it would kill him, because you'd have to get a three on the combo dice or higher.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:42

No, no, no. Um you roll the die. Yeah. And then you roll it. You're always gonna roll at least two dice. Oh, then you'll probably kill him. You'd have to, I don't think you can not kill him. Uh yeah, because as long as I roll equal to or higher than the previous dice roll, like my odds are pretty good of actually.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:04

And like I said, with the mass combat rule I'm implementing, if you manage to overkill him by eight, some damage will move on to the next guy.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:12

I so I rolled a one. Alright. And then I roll a four, so that makes it to 32. Uh okay. And I can roll another die. Which, if I roll a four or higher.

The Army Closes; Mage On The Ramparts

SPEAKER_01 1:35:28

Uh no. So I only got an additional eight damage, which brought it uh now the other 32, I think you said you were at? Yeah, I think that makes 32. So It only shows me the previous three rolls.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:42

So uh So how do you beat this guy to death? You tell me.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:50

Well, I mean, I I'm pretty sure I just Well no, so I I kick him up into the air uh by his jaw and then just like triple punch him straight in the chest and send his body flying. Beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:03

Oh, I love that. And Spotlight's still inexplicably on you, and I only have three fear left. Uh well. And there's 193 guys left to kill. No one else has fought yet.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:23

Uh okay, so to get out of combat, I have to make an agility roll. And Marcus Stress. And Marcus Stress. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:33

Uh because I spared you the trouble of moving a hundred tokens, but a lot of guys started charging when the magic spell fired. What they weren't expecting was to be charged back.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:47

But no, so uh I'm going to uh so there's still two archers, yes no?

SPEAKER_02 1:36:54

Yes. And they're looking concerned as you just kicked this person three feet taller than you into the air, punched them three times, and sent them flying into the horde of fights.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:05

Well, I mean, yeah. I mean, next. I am going to uh I'm gonna mark a stress to try and punch both of them. Okay. Uh and attack both of them. Hopefully, I can't. Oh, 15 with hope.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:27

15 with hope. Will hit.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:31

Will hit.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:32

Yeah. Archers aren't good at not being punched. I rolled 23 damage. 23. So, 23 damage. Are you doing anything special? No more hints for you. No, I'm I'm not gonna combo off on this one. So that was enough. So it was a horde of archers, effectively. Okay. And what happened here is there is no longer a horde of archers. Like, you killed those two archers, no problem. They're dead. Like, I like to imagine that you kick the fur like you grab the bow off one of them and use it to choke the other one out. And like you Actually, no, you caught an arrow and then stabbed the person in the face with their own arrow. So I like that. Now there's a little bit of breathing room around you. The ten guys that originally swarmed you are no there's no longer anyone with melee range with you, but there are people in close range. And you're looking at 191 targets left. But no one's injured anymore. Right. Uh dun dun. And at this point, there's like you can you can visibly tell. I'm not gonna give you the exact population breakdown, but you can spot that there's m conscripts, which are like the regular looking so at this point you'll just kind of tell me what kind of enemy you'd rather go after. So the types of enemies, there's conscripts, which look like poorly trained civilians. There's elite soldiers that look like they're trying to get uh command looking to advance in promotions. There's archers. Right. There's weapon masters that have large swords. There's spell blades that look like they lead squadrons of ten, so there's probably only nine of those left. There's harriers, little guys with javelins. Yeah. And there's actual knights on horseback. About ten of those scattered across. And by horseback I mean one's on a hippo bear, one's on a hippogri, like various animals. And then the giant fucking turtle with the castle on its back.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:46

Well, I'm not gonna fight the turtle uh without some sort of siege weapon. Oh. But I am uh going to Uh run up to one of the elite guards and uh attempt to pry open their helmet and force a violent poison down their throat.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:10

You know, it's not even gonna be a strike. I'm gonna let you use pure charisma for this. So go ahead and roll a presence check to pry open their mouth and pour poison down their throat. So funny. Uh 13 with hope. Do you have an experience you'd like to pitch towards this? Because you need a 15.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:34

Uh, okay. So my one experience is Doctor.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:39

Um I feel like your other one might be serial killer. Well, you're not serial killer. But like, in the backstory you sent me, you've definitely murdered people. It might just be murderer.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:52

Murderous intent? Yeah, okay. Uh, so yeah, I like that. Murderous intent as an experience. There's as that alright, so murderous intent. Uh I'm going to add the plus two to

First Volley: Bombs And Death Beam

SPEAKER_01 1:41:12

make it the 15.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:13

Alright, go ahead and roll damage for your poison. Which, like this poison, by the way, is like a chemotherapy drug? Like, that's just mean.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:25

Uh, 8d10.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:28

Yeah, you're pouring down something that you pulled out of a cabinet in a hospital used for medical purposes.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:35

8. 8d10 direct magic damage. That's 49 direct magic damage. You tell me what was in this vial, because they're dead.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:50

They are absolutely dead. Their threshold was 18. So, like, you doubled it to 36. And uh 46.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:02

That's rough.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:06

What was in the the vial of poison? Uh, I mean it just uh I I think it just causes their whole body to liquefy in the in the armor, and the armor just collapses.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:22

Oh! You're like here, drink this tasty, tasty beryllium shot with some uranium in it for good measure. Like, oh I'm gonna mark a stress on the soldier next to him. And spotlight is still inexplicably yours. Uh, well, I mean down to 190 yards.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:52

I'm just going to uh I'm going to take the helmet that I ripped off the other guy and use it to punch the guy next to him that mark the stress.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:03

Nice.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:09

Oh, critical success.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:13

Go ahead and clear a stress and gain a host.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:17

Clear a stress and gain a host.

unknown 1:43:19

Alright.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:23

Is the novelty of these novelty dice that you cheat?

SPEAKER_01 1:43:27

No, this is this is the uh dagger heart nexus dice roller. It's really clear.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:32

I must have overheard that this is 200v1. Also you prayed, and it seems to be the god hasn't even done anything yet. I have a counter going.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:42

Okay, uh, on a critical success, uh, what happens to my damage roll? You do the maximum damage plus the roll. The maximum damage plus oh man, this guy's exploding then. Yeah, so 22 damage plus 32. So that would be uh 54 damage.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:01

Alright, let me see how many people die. So he has four hit points, and to knock all four, you would have had to do 36 damage. And you said you did how much? 54. So you hit this guy with a helmet, like a like you hold the- put the helmet around your fist, punch into this guy's helmet. You get the other guy's helmet so hard that it breaks in the shrapnel that stabs the guy behind him from skull shrapnel. 189 guys left. The next one has marked a hit point. It wasn't quite like enough to like do more than one extra carryover damage, but it was enough to like oh, oh no. You hit for the four hit points you needed, for sure.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:04

Well, yeah, I mean, uh I'm going to uh Okay, so um prone is not a condition in Daggerheart. Correct. So, um I don't I don't think I'm gonna actually do the pull this move, but Well, tell me what's your intent and I'll see what I can do. Well, I'm just curious, uh where did it go? Well formed or not overwhelm. Uh on a successful attack, you spend a hope to force the target to mark a stress or throw them within close range. Yeah. Um what would be the benefit of throwing an enemy?

SPEAKER_02 1:45:52

So I will so if you throw them with close range, a if there's a cliff or something, you could throw them off cliff because all damage is a thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:00

To throw them off cliff.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:01

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. B, you could like wind them up with a teammate, especially with like asynchronous turn order, if you were to like shove them towards a warrior so the warrior can get to them in their turn. Ah, you couldn't have to go. Or if you were really wanted to shove do something with it, you could try and shove them under the giant slowly advancing turtle. Am I close enough to the turtle? Uh, you tell me. You you flew into this hundred person why like the battlefield's big enough that like the full far range is filled with dudes. If you were to tell me that you were within you said you can shove them how far? Close range? Within close range, yeah. Alright, I'm just gonna. I keep accidentally minimizing my range tabs. But close range. Yeah, if you told me you were within close range of the turtle, which I had that in feet somewhere.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:58

Hmm.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:58

Yeah, if you told me you were within 30 feet of the turtle, I would allow you to be within 30 feet of the turtle. But that also means that you are within 30 feet of the turtle.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:07

Right, right. Uh, but so I made a successful attack roll, killed the guy in one hit. Um, the next guy took damage. Yep. Would you allow me to grab that guy because I dealt damage to him with my previous attack roll, or so is this a grapple or a shove? Uh, it just says on a successful attack, you can spend a hope to throw them within close range.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:33

I will absolutely let him be k ping pool. I'll let him be pool ball launched.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:39

Alright,

Lyra Charges The Horde Alone

SPEAKER_01 1:47:40

I'm gonna spend the hope uh to uh throw him into the giant turtle.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:48

Okay, so as you throw him into the giant turtle, go ahead and roll 4d12.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:55

4d12.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:57

Alright. One two four roll. Twenty-four! It takes twenty-four points of damage as the turtle steps on it.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:09

Ugh, stepped on pretty good then. That's dead.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:17

Okay, and spotlight is still yours. You have taken a decent chunk out of this army, I'm being honest. Uh so what, nine hundred and eighty-eight left? Yep. And a turtle, and a mage on top of the turtle.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:34

Yeah, I keep waiting for the mage to try and shoot me with that death beam again, but So do I.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:39

But I can't. Because games have rules.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:45

Okay. Um, well, I haven't marked any hit points, so I can't even transform if I want to. When you cause an adversary to mark one or more hit points. Okay, okay. Alright. Anyways, uh, I am going to uh I'm going to attempt to attack the next uh I'm going for all the elite guards. Alright. Um, and I'm just gonna run up and attack attack the next one. Uh and I'm gonna like just try and throw a haymaker at his at his uh I'm gonna try and punch him in the liver. Go ahead. Another critical success!

SPEAKER_02 1:49:44

Are you kidding me? Uh so yeah, you do maximum damage plus a damage roll.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:52

Uh damage roll? Uh 14, uh, so that only makes 46 damage.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:01

So the thing is, it takes 36 damage to one-shot one of these tier 2 elite soldiers. It is wild that you're one-shotting these tier 2 elite soldiers.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:13

Uh, but I am also uh I I can uh use my um ferocity ability. Uh how many hit points am I marking on this guy? Four. Uh so uh when you cause an adversary to mark one or more hit points, you can spend two hope to increase your evasion by the number of hit points they marked.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:36

Ooh, spikes.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:39

This bonus blasts until the after the next attack made against you. Okay, okay. Damn. My luck's not around eventually, so I'm I'm I'm I'm preparing to get ganked.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:54

Yeah, but this is like watching someone win like I was playing Fast Star online years ago and I was betting on two-thirds on roulette, and I won like 12 times in a row, and it was just starting to get ridiculous. Um for context, at this point, the reinforcement counter has ticked down, and you see that your front gate has opened, and your 80 reinforcements are like pouring out of this gate, with there's like 10 or so more archers that reinforced your guards, and then about 80 are pouring out of the gate. The entire invading army, other than the few that branched away to start attacking, are kind of distracted by you and haven't made it to the gate yet. Yes. I want you to know you've delayed an entire attacking army.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:43

Uh, sorry, just just one second. Um hopefully this doesn't ruin things, but I I for the first time I've been very careful about my earbuds, but I gotta exit the call and join back real quick.

SPEAKER_02 1:51:54

You can do this, I believe in you. Whilst Carl Rekon connects. Note, this was designed as a cinematic battle. I was not actually expecting him to fight the battle or win the battle. This is delightful. Welcome back.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:11

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:12

To like go better for a bit, I was expecting this to be like uh you hold out inside the city until reinforcements arrive. Kind of situation. This is great.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:23

Uh well right, so I I mean I'm I'm uh so I punched that guy so hard that his liver straight up exploded. Correct. Um I'm the I'm gonna uh uh attempt to uh punch two more guys because I can mark another stress to uh go ahead and attack two people at once.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:48

As your critical hits refuel your stress.

unknown 1:52:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:54

Oh, only an 11 with hope. Eleven doesn't do it. Uh does spotlight shift or is it still Spotlight shifts. Yeah, yeah, okay. So as you're just on this ridiculous assault. I'm going to have the elite soldier that you tried to hit is gonna go ahead and make an attack against you. Okay. Doesn't 16 hit you now? 17 is the threshold right now. So he stabs at you and misses. I'm gonna go ahead and spend a fear. Okay. And I'm going to have the horseback knight rush up to you, who's been marching for like blitzing towards you because you're clearly dangerous. And it's going to make a cavalry charge. Okay. Does it 12 hit you?

SPEAKER_01 1:54:04

Ooh, even with the reduction to my evasion, 12 does not hit.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:08

Damn it! So this like horse knight just charged at you and you just sidestep. I only have two like two fear left.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:18

Yeah, you haven't been getting any fear from me. I'm I'm just like, no, you can't have fear today.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:23

So I'm going to spend a fear here. Mm-hmm. Now that this knight did a full for the realm dramatic charge, cavalry charge, and it didn't do shit. He's just gonna attempt to stab at you with his Halbrid.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:40

16.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:42

Ooh, 16 does hit.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:46

You take 15 damage.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:50

15 damage. Okay. I am going to mark an armor slot to reduce that damage by one, because that's my major damage threshold, is 10. Yep. Uh and then I'm going to.

Breaking Lines: Elites, Archers, Knights

SPEAKER_02 1:55:05

That's check your inventory to see that your armor's equipped.

SPEAKER_01 1:55:10

My armor is equipped. I am just wearing regular leather armor.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:15

Alright, so we're gonna take a meta pause for a moment. You had an eight year time skip. So give me one second. Because there's no way you're just wearing a shirt. So we're going to fix this here. Doo do do do. I just have a thing loading. Give me like a minute. Tier two. Type armor. Alright. You get the following armor options. Are you wearing improved chain mail? Improved full- Wait, your character. I thought they had an unarmored defense feature of some sort.

SPEAKER_01 1:56:00

Unarmored defense? Maybe not. Uh yeah, you gain a bonus to your vision equal to half your agility. And it's if you're not wearing armor or no, that's that's that's just uh static thing. Oh, that's for weapons.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:15

Leather armor. Oh, I was thinking about that like tough bones card that you don't use because you're not strength-based.

SPEAKER_01 1:56:22

Although I do wonder if I'm actually if it's actually applying that bonus for me.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:29

Either way, you have your choice between improved chainmail, improved full plate, improved gambesin, or improved leather. Um I would grab improved Gambison armor for I would recommend that.

SPEAKER_01 1:56:45

The improved Gambison? The improved Gambison Thresholds 7, 16, flexible plus one to evasion.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:56

Uh sure, I'll be wearing that Gambison. I just have to imagine you've changed your shirt in eight years.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:06

Uh so that raises my threshold to 11 instead of 10. Which does still mean I need to mark an armor slot, and I am also going to So you're major or severe? That is that is to major damage. Major damage is between 11 and 20. Okay, that feels better. Alright, we're good. Uh okay. Um but I mean I don't really need to yet. But uh. Oh no, that's only if I take severe damage. Never mind. Mark a stress.

SPEAKER_02 1:57:50

Uh so I think the misunderstanding is I thought your severe threshold was 10, and I'm like, yeah, that's not right.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:57

Oh no, no.

SPEAKER_02 1:57:58

Okay, we're good.

SPEAKER_01 1:58:01

But I can be nice to you. Uh I'm going to mark an additional armor slot, which gives you a fear.

SPEAKER_03 1:58:12

Oh, thanks.

SPEAKER_01 1:58:13

Octarine. My Octarine Brace, when I mark an armor slot to reduce incoming damage, I can give the GM a fear to mark any additional number of armor slots.

SPEAKER_02 1:58:21

That was a choice. Thank you. Happily take that fear. But Turn Order goes back to you.

SPEAKER_01 1:58:29

You have been hit. Yeah, yeah, like you said well, I mean, if they hit my armor, I dealt no damage. You've been hit? Alright. Uh well, see now I just want to try and kick this guy off of his horse. Ah, that's mechanically relevant.

SPEAKER_02 1:58:49

Go ahead and make your attack.

SPEAKER_01 1:58:54

Roll 18 with hope. That's what you needed. Oh.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:01

Uh, to like literally kick him off his horse or kinda, I'll explain afterward, because I enjoy like this is more meta than most campaigns.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:09

Okay, okay, anyway. Um, so I roll for damage then. Yeah. Roll for damage, and I get 16.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:18

16? Gonna do anything to increase that damage?

SPEAKER_01 1:59:24

Hmm.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:26

Because 16 is not killing a full armored knight.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:31

No, uh, but I am going to spend three hope to stagger him.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:36

So, uh, he marks the stress and he has disadvantage on tackle on attack rolls while staggered.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:42

Noted. So he is staggered. I believe spotlight is still yours.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:48

Um hit him. Uh I'm also going to spend a s a stress or spend a hope uh to throw him off his hole. In case he doesn't fall off his horse. Unless it didn't.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:04

So here's how this worked out mechanically. So it has a chevalier ability that while it's on a mount, it gets plus two bonus to its difficulty. When it takes severe damage, they're knocked from their mount and lose this benefit until they climb back on. I'm saying I am happy to rule that when you throw it, it counts as being knocked from their mount. Alright! While it's not on its horse, it can't do its cavalry charge ability. And its difficulty went down to 15.

SPEAKER_01 2:00:36

Uh so uh yeah, I mean, like I said, I I my my mental image is that I literally kicked him off his horse.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:44

Yeah, absolutely. I see no issue with that.

SPEAKER_01 2:00:49

Uh and then uh since I kicked him off his horse, I'm gonna, you know. I'm assuming I kind of fly with him and I land next to him and just start humbling him some more. Beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:59

Go ahead and make your attack.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:02

And 17 with fear. Uh oh. 17 will hit. Yeah, I don't know, but the dice are are uh turning against me now, maybe. Another mere 16 damage.

SPEAKER_02 2:01:20

16 damage. So you're beating him. And you're taking more than one damage, but he's heavily armored and you're using fists. Right. But you are definitely MMA mounted on him pumbling him.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:38

Um, do I try to combo off? Yeah, yeah, you know what? I am gonna try. I'm gonna mark a stress and try to combo off to increase my damage. Roll to two. So the original damage was 16, so now I'm at 18. That makes I rolled a three, so that makes 21. Get a roll again. Rolled another three, so that's 24. We're gonna roll again. Uh rolled a four, so that's twenty-eight. Get a roll again. Rolled a six, so that's thirty-four.

Turtle, War Magic, And Burning Gate

SPEAKER_01 2:02:20

Get a roll again. Roll a two, so only thirty-six damage.

SPEAKER_02 2:02:25

So that was enough to get an extra hit point in. As your knuckles harden and spike. As your hands turn into organic brass knuckles, and you're just pummeling this poor knight. So spotlight's mine. Because this knight is in a bad place, I'm gonna mark a stress to use as four of the realm action, which lets me spotlight 1d4 plus 1 allies, but they deal half damage.

SPEAKER_01 2:02:50

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:02:52

Do do do do.

SPEAKER_01 2:02:54

Do do do.

SPEAKER_02 2:02:58

Haha! Five.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:01

Five does not hit.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:02

No, no, I rolled to activate five guys.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:06

Oh, you get five. Okay, so. I get five half damage attack. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:12

So the first one's coming at you. 14.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:17

That is my evasion.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:19

Alright, so it's dealing three points of damage.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:26

Uh, so that's one hit point marked.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:29

Second one's attacking you. 21. I'm allowed. I'm apparently allowed crits too. Which is ironic because I'm dealing half damage doubled, so 14. Uh oof.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:48

Well, uh. No, that's still not severe damage, right? Okay. So I take two hit points.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:59

Alright, the next one's attacking you. Does nine hit?

SPEAKER_01 2:04:07

Nine does not hit?

SPEAKER_02 2:04:08

And the last one's attacking you.

SPEAKER_01 2:04:11

Eleven? That was only 11 doesn't hit, but that was only four dudes.

SPEAKER_02 2:04:16

Oh yeah, there's a plus one. I respect your honesty. Does 15 hit?

SPEAKER_01 2:04:23

15 does hit?

SPEAKER_02 2:04:28

That one is for seven points of damage.

SPEAKER_01 2:04:34

I take one hit point.

SPEAKER_02 2:04:35

Mark one hit point. So, to play out the scene, you're on this knight, this commander, this noble of the wastes, probably a former leader of one of these small Witherwild communities, fully armed, was thinks they're a pretty big deal. And you're beating them in a sense, they're squealing a high-pitched whine of HELPE! The guards are trying desperately to like pull you off and like stab and cut at you. Because I want you to know that four people are trying to stop five people are trying to stop you from beating their boss to death. With mixed results.

SPEAKER_01 2:05:10

With mixed results. Uh so is spotlight still yours?

SPEAKER_02 2:05:18

Back to you. I mean, I was allowed to use one spotlight to spend a stress to move five dudes. I'm happy.

SPEAKER_01 2:05:27

Uh okay, so I still need to mark a stress uh and make an agility roll to move out of range. Correct. Because you're in the middle of the battlefield.

SPEAKER_02 2:05:39

However, you'll notice that no one's able to really like shoot arrows at you safely or like fire explosions at you. Because you're in the middle of the battlefield.

SPEAKER_01 2:05:49

Well, I'm gonna try and get out of this out of the way.

SPEAKER_02 2:05:53

Uh 18 with fear. Turn order goes to me, but you've got it up, and you're just trying to get out of the clusterfuck. Yeah. Alright, you've made it to the outer rim of the carnage. Okay. Which means you'll have full movement speed on your next turn, but because it was with fear, it goes back to me. So the four dudes are gonna try and chase you, so I'm going to mark his last stress of that knight as he gets himself up. As like he screams go after her. Mm-hmm. See what I get. Damn, he's rolling real good. All five activate again. Okay. So these five knights, who also have to follow the same rules as you to get out of the battlefield, by the way. So they need to get above a 17 to even get to you in this cluster, fuck, of not tripping over themselves. Right. Did that wrong. Wrong button. One. Nope. Nope. Nope. Yep. Okay. Yep. So two of them managed to actually keep up with you. Uh again, you said you got five, right? Yeah. So out of the five, only two of them were able to get back up to you. Ah, okay. Because they had to roll to get to you. Right, right. And that was their action like it was your action, so spotlight goes back to you. So you've got out the like clusterfuck, but two of them are running at you. And the dude just looks up to say get her with like his teeth knocked out, eye swollen. Okay. Um. And there is a wave of soldiers who are almost within close range rushing into the enemy horde. Because your reinforcements didn't get the memo that this was a guard operation, because they see you violating out there and are storming into the give you backup.

SPEAKER_01 2:08:04

Um, uh so. Uh would you allow me to have carried at least one explosive with me into the battle?

SPEAKER_02 2:08:15

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 2:08:17

Because I just want to throw another explosive at the guy that has his teeth knocked out. Uh I go ahead and make your fireball roll. Roll my spell attack roll.

SPEAKER_02 2:08:32

18 with hope. Woohoo! Well, you need that because he's not on his horse.

SPEAKER_01 2:08:40

Uh, but so then uh the fireball dub.

SPEAKER_02 2:08:44

2d20 plus something?

SPEAKER_01 2:08:46

2d20 plus 5. D20, D20, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. That's pretty big variance, but big money 30!

SPEAKER_02 2:08:58

30! So as he's yelling, get her! A bomb full of syringes explodes in his mouth.

SPEAKER_01 2:09:06

And everyone within very close range of him must make the th DC-13 reaction roll. Okay. Targets who succeed take half damage. No one succeeded.

SPEAKER_02 2:09:26

They all gotta share the same roll. I'm not rolling it 10 times. So they all take 30 magic damage? Yep, so all five of them are looking like even the two that made it out of the cloud to get to you took some shrapnel to the back. It wasn't enough to drop them. That would have taken 32 damage. But all five of them are down to one hit point. And the guy in the middle is just dead. And spotlight is yours, is you just watch these guys running, get her, and a bomb explodes in his face, and sh syring like a ball of syringes and scalpels just has covered the backs of these two guys.

SPEAKER_01 2:10:19

Okay, am I Marcus dressed attack? Well, so two of them made it with me. What do you mean? At me. Yep. Um, I'm I'm only gonna attack one of them. Alright. I'm gonna roll for my attack. And 25 with hope. That'll it.

Conscripts Swarm; Numbers Game Turns

SPEAKER_01 2:10:45

And roll for damage. 27.

SPEAKER_02 2:10:53

So you definitely kick that first guy. 27 is what you needed to hit the next one's threshold. So you like they're both rushing at you and you just double throat punch them both. 184 troops remaining in this war of attrition. And you do have a wave of about like 70 dudes storming out of on horseback, out of the castle towards this battlefield. Not here yet, because of how ridiculously fast this has been going.

SPEAKER_01 2:11:25

Right, right, right. I've just been beating the crap out of people.

SPEAKER_02 2:11:29

Hmm. You're not- don't have a ton of situational awareness of how this is going, honestly. But like I said, if the number of troops is lar becomes lower than the 80 reinforcements and 18 guards, that means the fight would win. Basically, if the number of enemies becomes lower than the number of your troops, they would win the battle, not counting the giant turtle in the midge. Right. So you're kind of like adjusting the odds of who wins this battle. Or just gonna win the battle by yourself, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 2:12:06

Well, I mean, I am gonna drink a minor health potion.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:08

That's a freebie. No action required.

SPEAKER_01 2:12:11

No action required. Roll I only clear one hit point. Dang it. That seems impossible. Uh is it a d4 plus one? It just says immediately clear one d4 hit points.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:26

Oh, never mind then. I was thinking short rest or something.

SPEAKER_01 2:12:31

Uh in any event. Um, so the the Gorgon root poison is something I apply to my weapon? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:44

Or how does that So you apply it to your weapon, and the next person it hits loses one to their challenge rating for the rest of the battle. It's free to apply it, you just use it up.

SPEAKER_01 2:13:01

Okay. Well, I mean, I guess I'm gonna put some Gorgon root poison onto my knuckles.

SPEAKER_02 2:13:10

That seems smart. I hope I don't get a cut in my hands.

SPEAKER_01 2:13:23

Because yeah, I I am definitely um. So there's still like a whole bunch of the uh conscripted villagers. Yeah. I guess actually, how many of the elite guards did I actually manage to kill?

SPEAKER_02 2:13:41

So, in the original 200 troops, I'd say about 50 of them were elite soldiers. And you've killed about 10 of them, if not more. Killed both Well, I mean, what's what I've I've killed You've killed 16 people, yeah. I think about 10 of them were elite soldiers.

SPEAKER_01 2:14:02

Right, right, because a bunch of them were the there were at least two archers. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:14:07

And I'm not tracking this fight super granularly. So if you tell me intent, I can better understand. Are you just simply trying to remove every elite soldier from the fight?

SPEAKER_01 2:14:16

Well, I mean, that was my original goal, but I think uh just reducing numbers now would probably be smarter. So I'm gonna start trying to pick off the uh the poor conscripted villagers.

SPEAKER_02 2:14:27

Okay, like because of like how the Daggerheart fiction went, if you like straight up say, just for like future reference, I'm gonna try and kill all the archers. I'll make a note of how many archers there then are to kill, because I know that's what the objective is.

SPEAKER_01 2:14:40

Well, my objective was to kill as many of the elite guards as possible, but uh it they make up about a quarter of the army. Uh my hands getting a bit uh tired. A little. So uh perhaps punching uh a weaker punching bag would be uh to my benefit for the moment.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:04

Sounds good. So for context, about I'd say about a hundred of these troops. So it's like fifty of them are the elite soldiers, fifty were like unique ones like archers and brawlers and spelllights and shit. And I'd say about a hundred are these regular conscripts. Alright, well. Above tabletop, conscripts are minions. What the minions do is this adversary is defeated when they take any damage, breach six damage a PC deals with his adversary, defeat additional minion within range that this attack would succeed against. Let's do this then. Let's uh let's attack a minion. Yeah, for context, I'm saying there's a hundred of them, but that doesn't mean there's a hundred of them within range of you unless you try. But there could be about 20.

SPEAKER_01 2:15:48

Well I mean I roll a 23. Well, I'll hit it. That'd be one hell of a generic runt. And I roll a 18.

SPEAKER_02 2:16:06

18. 18 damage? Yeah, 18 damage. So, six, twelve, eighteen. Tell me how you just kill these three conscripts, which are just like one's like a bird folk with like a pitchfork. Another one seems to be like a skeezy dwarf that has like barbed wire wrapped around his fist. And one just looks like a florist.

SPEAKER_01 2:16:33

Uh, well, I mean, I I grab the one with the pitchfork by the throat, and I just flail his body to smash the other two in the head.

SPEAKER_02 2:16:41

Like, the grabbing- so like grabbing someone by the arm or the leg and using them as a weapon is one thing, but grabbing them by the throat and beating two other people to death with them. It's a special kind of brutal.

SPEAKER_01 2:16:53

Um. Yeah, yeah, Lyra's Lyra's kind of a savage when it comes to battle.

SPEAKER_02 2:16:59

Yeah. I'm gonna spend a fear to take an action here. Okay. Bring me down to one fear. Thanks for the gift. And I will spend my last fear to use the conscripts group action. Spend a fear to choose a target and spotlight all adversaries with this name within a certain range of them. These minions move into melee range of the target and make one shared attack roll. On success, I deal X damage each. Combine this damage. So my question for you is how many conscripts are within range within uh close range of you, would you say? Within close range? Of the hundred total, well it 98 total, 97 total. How many are in range of you, would

Reinforcements Sighted From The Sea

SPEAKER_02 2:17:52

you say?

SPEAKER_01 2:17:54

Um how many are in range? I would say uh there's probably nine.

SPEAKER_02 2:18:04

Okay. Such a double-edged sword for me. Like, how many guys do you want in punching range to all swing at you right now? Is a wild thing for me to ask.

SPEAKER_01 2:18:16

Oh, this is not gonna be good, but you know, we'll see. Does a five hit you? A five does not hit? And you said 20?

SPEAKER_02 2:18:25

I said nine? Nine, okay. So these nine people, nine, charge you and are like stumbling over themselves, failing, one elbows another in the face. So there is nine people pressed against you trying to hit you and failing. All nine failed. It was only the one roll.

unknown 2:18:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:18:44

Spotlight is yours, I only have a singular fear left.

SPEAKER_01 2:18:49

Okay, just out of curiosity, um, I I know it was a bit of knowledge, but how much did it cost you to shoot that laser beam?

SPEAKER_02 2:18:58

So to shoot the laser beam, to use war magic, spend a fear as one mage from one side uses a log scale destructive magic, pick a point within very far range. All target within close range of that point must make an agility reaction roll. Those who fail take 3d12 plus 8 magic damage and mark a stress. Just one fear. The problem is I pick a point on the battlefield within very far range, and all targets within close range of that point make the roll.

SPEAKER_01 2:19:25

Alright, so so you're having trouble targeting me.

SPEAKER_02 2:19:28

If I had shot that laser right now, those nine people would have died. And you might have been hit, because there's no ha on fail, you take damage, there's no half damage rider on this ability. Which means you just run as I nuke a bunch of my troops. Like I said, you being in like the middle of the brawl has huge downside and reasonably useful upside.

SPEAKER_01 2:19:59

Anyways, I

SPEAKER_02 2:20:02

Oh yeah, you're welcome to have meta knowledge during this fight.

SPEAKER_01 2:20:06

Obviously, my plan is to continue punching these poor conscripts. I feel bad for them, and I'll probably treat them later in our medical camp, but will you?

SPEAKER_02 2:20:15

Are you going for lethal intent or not? You tell me, because it's as a battle, they are armed and they are trying to kill you.

SPEAKER_01 2:20:20

Oh, I'm definitely going for lethal intent.

SPEAKER_02 2:20:22

So I guess the live it's on them. Got it.

SPEAKER_01 2:20:26

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh 22 with fear. Uh oh. I'll take the fear.

SPEAKER_02 2:20:31

Go ahead and roll damage.

SPEAKER_01 2:20:34

Roll in damage.

SPEAKER_02 2:20:38

20! So I'm 6, 12, 18. Three more die.

SPEAKER_01 2:20:45

Uh yeah, I mean, so they're like they're trying to jump me to punch me, and I just punch straight through three of them in the gut.

unknown 2:20:53

What?

SPEAKER_02 2:20:56

Okay. Damn. Alright, so I'm gonna spend my final fear and I'm gonna have two more move in, so they're gonna be.

SPEAKER_01 2:21:05

You have uh you have one more fear because my attack roll was with fear.

SPEAKER_02 2:21:08

Yeah, so it sends it to me because you rolled a fear, and now I'm going to spend that fear. Okay, okay. I thought you had one more on top of that, but that's- I think I do actually. So I'll have one fear left after this maneuver. But making another group attack for nine people to try and hit you. For nine more people? Twenty. Natural. Ooh, that's because they're minions, I don't don't roll, so I can't technically do maximum damage.

SPEAKER_03 2:21:42

Hmm.

SPEAKER_02 2:21:44

Instead, so the critical hit doesn't do extra damage because they're mooks. Be grateful. Yeah. Okay. Because you are taking 54 points of damage. It would have been 100 and something. So if it doubles your big threshold, you take four points of damage. Okay. Does it double your major threshold?

SPEAKER_01 2:22:10

Uh, it does. My major threshold. My severe threshold is 20.

SPEAKER_02 2:22:15

Okay. So it doesn't triple it, so that's good. But you do take four points of damage as after you punch the two guys. Nine people are just stabbing at you with various sharp instruments and a ball around you in a savage frenzy.

SPEAKER_01 2:22:29

Um, so I am going to uh mark a stress to uh activate my homunculus scales. Good shot. If I would take some of your damage, I can mark a stress to take one pure hit point. Uh and then I am going to mark another armor slot, so I only take two hit points.

SPEAKER_02 2:22:46

Okay, but there is nine dudes trying to jab at you. I just the visual are like, okay, I'm on my back and I punched up through two, and more are swarming in.

unknown 2:22:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:23:00

Oh man, if that was double damage, that would have been a truly stupid amount of damage.

SPEAKER_01 2:23:05

Yeah, that would have been pretty absurd. Uh well, four hit points would have been my I only have two left right now. No, dude. Uh, but I am going to uh assume spotlight back on me. Yeah, and friendly reminder you're a werewolf. Yeah, yeah. No, see the thing about being a werewolf is that it marks stress.

SPEAKER_02 2:23:33

And you can't want you can't lose that right now. You gotta So after eight years of training, you're very focused on keeping your shit together. Got it.

SPEAKER_01 2:23:42

Yeah, I mean kind of. I'm I am absolutely beating these people death. But um roll for my attack.

SPEAKER_02 2:23:52

13 with oh that'll hit these mooks. Barely. Alright. But it does. Roll for damage. 18 damage. 18 damage. 612 18. Three more drop. 175 troops remaining. Spotlight's still on you, as you like, got up and did like a chungly spinning bird kick.

SPEAKER_01 2:24:18

I like it, I like it.

Retreat Or Hold: Next Moves Framed

SPEAKER_01 2:24:20

Uh I mean. Yeah, I gotta just like try and keep punching at these guys just repeatedly. While I try and uh whittle down the troops until my reinforcements can get here and hopefully turn the tide of battle for me.

SPEAKER_02 2:24:40

You've definitely shifted the numbers, having killed 25 men.

SPEAKER_01 2:24:45

I rolled a 16 with beer. 16 will hit. Go ahead and roll damage. Roll damage. Come on, victim. Oh, only ten. Yeah, kill two.

SPEAKER_02 2:25:06

Wait, no.

SPEAKER_01 2:25:07

Yeah, you Yeah, you killed it. Yeah, six because the first one died, six one six killed the second one. Yeah. Well, wouldn't that mean that 18 kills four?

SPEAKER_02 2:25:19

Yeah, so I'm gonna go ahead and kill two more dudes that were like fighting you and just realized their own internal damage and collapsed. Okay. You are correct, I was doing that wrong. Good good good save. So you've killed almost a quarter of the invading army. Just to put into context what's happening here.

SPEAKER_01 2:25:41

So when there's uh 172 remaining. 170 remaining. Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:25:50

So at this point, how many mixed inf uh so uh elite soldiers and conscripts would you say was within close range of you?

SPEAKER_01 2:25:59

Hmm. Uh well, I mean, probably about 11, we'll say.

SPEAKER_02 2:26:08

Okay. So the archers in the back are going to fire a focus volley on this spot, and they just simply don't care if they have to hit your friends to do it. Okay. So I'm gonna spend a fear to choose a point within far range. I make an attack with advantage against all targets within close range of you. Okay. Does a 15 hit you?

SPEAKER_01 2:26:33

A 15 does hit. Ah, but wait a second, wait a second. If I'm targeted by an attack made beyond melee range, I can uh mark a stress. Mark a stress? Because when you're uh capped out on stress, you become vulnerable, right?

SPEAKER_02 2:26:58

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 2:27:00

And that means that targets have an extra d6 to hit you. Have an extra d6 to hit me. Right. Hmm. And if an attack would mark stress, I take a hit point instead. Correct. I think it's funny. I'm gonna mark the stress and I'm gonna roll the d4. Because uh now my evasion is 16. Fuck bitch.

SPEAKER_02 2:27:33

So oh that everyone around you takes 14 points of physical damage, which means in that like mixture of guys, which you said how many again? I said 11. So in that mixture of eleven, I'm gonna say three conscripts die and seven elite soldiers take a damage.

SPEAKER_01 2:28:01

Ooh, the elite soldiers, they're really after me now, all elite.

SPEAKER_02 2:28:05

They're running lower on minions. Also, they just kind of shot at you hoping to hit you and failed. As you're just dot ultra instinct dodging these arrows left and right.

SPEAKER_01 2:28:18

But Lyra is looking very tired, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_02 2:28:22

As she should. So, here's my offer to Carl the person. You have two choices available to you. Well, three technically, or any other choice because it's DD. Option the first. We wrap up here, move to a post-wrap-up, and pick up the fight in the middle of it next session. Option the second, we let the second horde hit the first one, and we pick up with that next section. So basically you're two options. My allies hit the hit the enemies. So we either start next session with you in the middle of this cluster, fuck, because I assume you're probably running low on time with who you are as a person, and we're getting close to the two and a half hour mark. Right, right. So either you can start with the battle and the exact situation it's in. Or we start next week with the two armies having met completely and it being a cluster. Or we keep going, and eventually I'll run out of troops or you'll die. But that's my question to you is do you want the forces to have met successfully? Or do you want the army to still be charging in at the start of next session?

SPEAKER_03 2:29:33

Hmm.

SPEAKER_02 2:29:42

Okay. So what's in a crazy twist of fate is if you manage to take down 70 more dudes, then your reinforcements in like 12 doctors outnumber the invading army. But basic what I'm really saying above table is if you continue to fight, we'll play out the fight. If you let the armies hit, the next week starts off in more like a roleplay scenario of how the battle goes situation. So we'll make a few roles at the start of the next session to see how the battle went, basically,

Meta Debrief And Next Session Setup

SPEAKER_02 2:30:20

rather than having you granularly fight your way through 170 more guys. Or you can commit to the bit and next week keep fighting. So, like, a little table talk is if you were to say, okay, I'll let the battle begin next session, it becomes less of a here's the number of enemies, and more of a you fight things depending where you're going. Like if you're trying to make it to the turtle, you'd have to fight your way through, climb the turtle. If you're trying to retreat, it's about escaping. So it kind of changes the scene from a fight scene to a story scene that takes place in a fight. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 2:30:55

My general intent. My general intent is actually to start retreating. Alright. Uh, so I think the second option is probably the better option.

SPEAKER_02 2:31:06

Alright, so next session's gonna start with like a bit of a story recap, and then, like I said, I'm switching it from a fight to a puzzle type situation. Or, like I said, you could keep going next week, but I think that's what we'll start as. Expect next session to start with the backup has arrived, the full battle's going, and things become more abstracted. Yeah, yeah, okay. And at the start of next session, if you yell everyone retreat, you can switch this into a siege situation, everyone advance, you can switch this into a you sacrifice a bunch of haven soldiers to get away situation. Like, there's a lot of options available to you. But know that you bought enough time that they probably boarded all the in uh sick, injured, and doctors onto the boat. Cause this has been about even at anime like fucking DD time. So if we go with like the DD method of each turn being about six seconds. We won't, but say we were to. You've hit about two mi you've hit about five minutes of real time. If we're using DD time. I'm saying cinematically you've been fighting for like just the sheer number of cool shit you've done. For like ten minutes.

SPEAKER_01 2:32:25

At least, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:32:26

Like you've bought at least a full ten minutes of combat time to figure out what happens next time.

SPEAKER_01 2:32:33

Because no one expected the brawlers just run into the frame.

SPEAKER_02 2:32:38

I was prepared for it, by the way. Like, it's not that I didn't expect it, it was that I didn't expect you to do this well.

SPEAKER_01 2:32:49

I was on a roll for then, like, three-quarters of the session. And even still, like, my I don't think I've missed any attack rolls.

SPEAKER_02 2:32:57

Because yeah, like, now that we're out of the combat to go above board. So the pitched battle is a tier 3 event, a massive combat between two large groups of enemies.

SPEAKER_03 2:33:06

Hmm.

SPEAKER_02 2:33:07

The difficulty of the battlefield is 17, and it's full of mercenaries, sellswords, harriers, spellblades, weapon masters, and noble forces, archers, conscripts, elite soldiers, knights. Hmm. How this is designed to be used is the battle has so many people that you're not actually fighting the people so much as I'm making battled encounters for smaller encounters in the battle, right? So I'd like to count out because you're one person, like, okay, you can fight a spellblade, five conscripts, and an archer. Okay. And then the passive features of it's harder to move through represent the other soldiers. The war magic represents a massive battle hitting. Raise and pillage is you can have the attacking force rage the stakes by lighting a fire, stealing a valuable asset, kidnapping someone, or killing the populace. And reinforcements is I can summon more knights. Where it's summon a knight, a number of tier 3 minions equal to number of PCs, and two adversaries within far range as of the chosen PC as reinforcements. So basically what happens is for this battlefield as written, the number of guys I get to summon are like I spend a fear to get a knight, one dude for each one of your players, and then I can also summon reinforcements for both sides. So it wasn't designed for me to actually put 200 dudes on the map. That was abstraction for scale. Right, right. It stopped being abstraction when it became possible for you to win. So the pitch battle is there, and I was just using the like potential adversaries to spawn guys in from this pool of counters. And then I had a stat block open for each of these types of guys. And then the two guys I brought in from outside are the mage, even though I'm using the battlefield to represent them, they do have a stat block, and the elder mountain tortoise. Yeah, yeah, I kind of figured. For concept for the turtle, the turtle's actually a tier two enemy. Really? But it's big. So it's difficulty's 10. It's easy to hit. Its thresholds are 16 and 26. But it has 16 HP. Oof. Four stress. Minus one attack. And deals 1D20 damage. Its abilities are it cannot be moved. Reduce all damage it takes by one threshold, and if the damage is reduced below minor, it takes no damage. And it can mark a stress to attack all targets as it moves through that as it physically moves through the battlefield. And they take 1d20 damage. And it starts with a slow token where I have to spend an action to clear the slow token for it to move. And when it takes magic damage, it reflects it back at you, and you deal take half the damage back. That never came up.

SPEAKER_01 2:36:05

I didn't try to poison the turtle.

SPEAKER_02 2:36:08

But that's how the turtle works. But it's really easy to hit and you can't hit shit. Right. That makes sense. There's also a tier 4 version of the turtle that's more aggressive. Hmm. But the turtle is actually a reasonable fight for you. Because you don't really fight it, right? Like it's a map that's moving at you. To kill the turtle, it would take you what? If you rolled it's dealing the crazy amounts of damage you were doing, because it's reducing each time it takes damage by one, you still have to hit it. Like if you were to beat the turtle to death, like just run up to its face and start punching. It'd be roughly the same length as this fight. Mm, right. I did have some really high rolls. That's just. Which means I think you could have run up to its face. It is feasible for how the dice played out, that you could have knocked the turtle unconscious and like by punching it repeatedly in the face, killed the turtle so the fort stopped moving. Just so you're aware, the math was there that you could have killed the turtle. I could have killed the turtle. Okay. But the druid probably would have done something if you were just beating the turtle. It probably would have had to do a thing. Because turtle. But what'd you think about starting a campaign? Because we basically did a soft reset. How do you feel about this for a session one?

SPEAKER_01 2:37:47

Um. Well, I mean, the dice were really in my favor, so it was super enjoyable in that way.

SPEAKER_02 2:37:53

Because realistically, if you went down, I don't even know if I would have given you the Glaze of Glory object and be like, and you were kidnapped. And I moved to the next narrative beat. Yeah, I definitely would have just chosen the fallen unconscious. Right, so how I was gonna do it mechanically is you're gonna fallen conscious, and then I was using an artificial dice roller, I was gonna roll one dice size for the number of enemy soldiers that were left alive, and one dice side for your number of soldiers, and whatever higher number would have been who won the battle. So I would have like rolled a D170 and a D98 to see who won the battle, to see who picked you up after the battlefield. So it still would have been random chance, but waited random chance. Right. And then yeah, you would have woken up on one side or the other, and the story would have continued.

SPEAKER_01 2:38:44

I I think this is the most in-depth combat session that we've had for quite a while where I I used the most abilities. Like I think aside from wolf form. Oh, and I didn't get I didn't get a chance to use my brave face ability uh because you didn't make me mark any stress. Yeah, you made you mark all your stress.

unknown 2:39:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:39:08

But I cleared like three of it, so and for the record, I'd always attended for reinforcements to come so I could rationalize using the pitch battle. I just it's weird because like you started the fight before the massive combat between two groups really started. So I like had to slightly adjust the premise to be like, oh, it's not you running around on a busy battlefield. You are the only person on this battlefield. That I wasn't expecting. I shoulda! And I legitimately above table delayed like reinforcements running in and changing the story beat, because I kinda wanted to see how far you'd get first. I'd kill like 30 dudes. But uh like above table, I was literally gonna be as soon as it looks like you're gonna drop, like, say I was running this scenario for a party of six. The only prep I did was the pitchback. Battle event, the stat blocks for the units, and my little description of what the bastion is, right?

unknown 2:40:06

Right.

SPEAKER_02 2:40:06

And if I was running it for them, it would have been everyone I would have still done the the enemies are out, you have a countdown of eight. You each get to do one thing to prepare. And then it would have been a reason like if someone wanted acid or to build bombs or train troops, that's fine. Then the number of troops you have.

SPEAKER_01 2:40:25

Unfortunately, uh these wireless earbuds are dying.

SPEAKER_02 2:40:28

Well, I timed this perfectly. So to wrap up the session, assuming let's pretend we played for one more hour like it was in person, and we then like switch to the story of how the battle plays out, do the dice rolls to C1, and like roll up in the aftermath. How do you feel the session went?

SPEAKER_01 2:40:48

I feel like it was a great session. It was a lot of fun. And it was it's it's one of the more interesting ways to do a uh a big large-scale battle like this.

SPEAKER_02 2:40:58

So yeah, because I just used the terrain card, gave you six actions so that way in a party each player would get to do one thing to prepare. And like, just to keep the math from being absurd, if I was running this for a group of five, I would have like pulled up Cobalt Fight Club, uh, fresh cut grass fight club, mathed it out so you'd fight an appropriate number of soldiers in the pitch battlefield, and then if they win, just reduce those number scores I was using in both skies for the final dice roll at the end of the fight. Right. And that's how I was planning to play it out. And then I was gonna, even if it was in person, I would have ended it, be like, and we'll roll dice, and then I'll tell you next week who won, and do that little bit of like railroading of at the end of the fight, you guys fought as hard as you can. We then do a dice roll, and then I tell you how the rest of the fight went rather than playing out the 200 person fight. Right. Yeah, that was my plan for this. I truly enjoyed it. Excellent. And with that, thank you all for tuning in. And self care and whatnot, you know. Yep, and don't try and beat up 200 so people by yourself. Don't do it. Don't do it. Bye. Bye.