Icarus's blog: "Augurs, Martyrs, and Agnostics"

Alright, I keep listening to holy forces ... and its still not preparing me for a great dragon cyber zombie.

 

Leeeet's put things in perspective

My character is a street samurai human

I have

Strength (how hard I hit stuff) S

Body (how well I stay alive) B

Quickness (how fast and agile I am) Q

Charisma (how suave or convincing I am) C

Intel (how smartz I am) I

And all humanoids have a fixed essence of 6 *unless they're some freaky zombie/ghoul/vampire/ level draining freak which... good luck playing one*

And essence effects my maximum potential with magic, or bodily enhancements (its a game where lopping off your arms can be advantageous since you can replace them with cannon arms or hydraulic powered supar fists)

 

Alright

 

so 6 is the highest rating a human can have in any stat at character creation(and there's trolls, orks, elves, dwarves, and variants of the previous mentioned)

and 9 is the highest they can have from leveling

I knooooow

Maximum stat ratings? Bleh.

Well... it is a Fasa game, and Fasa never wants you to actually be totally awesome.

 

Anyway

let's assume that my character has a 9 in ... pretty much every attribute

I'm pretty sure I can only go 150% higher on my skill scores of my base attributes

skills like "use assault rifle" would be capped by my attribute of quickness (Q) and I could only ever get a rating of 14 or 15

 

these scores are how many dice I get to roll versus a target number, and often an "opposed test"

 

so

here's how a normal combat round goes

 

roll initiative (based on quickness and reaction- reaction is a composite score of int and quick)

highest score goes first

 

I won initiative

I declare that I want to shoot the well dressed elf in the back of the room

I declare what ranged weapon I want to use, and roll any associated skill or attribute (if I never trained in the weapon I would roll a related skill like sniper rifles for assault rifles with a penalty to my target number, or no ranged skills whatsoever I roll quick with a BIGGER penalty to my target number)

let's assume that the target number is 4

I have to roll 4 or higher on a six sided die to succeed

and I have the assault rifle skill

it is 6 so I have six dice to succeed with

I declare that I'm going to use full automatic/burst/semi automatic- I choose 8 rounds of fully automatic

 

my assault rifle's damage code is 8 moderate- that means a single bullet from this gun shoots a bullet that requires a body success of 8 to stage down/ignore if it hits.

Armor can lower my bullet's damage number significantly.

 

But first

we're rolling my rifle skill versus the target's quickness

They have a quickness of 6 I have an assault rifle of 6

so if the target rolls more successes, I miss outright

this happens all the damn time

 

if I win I get to do a formula for how many of my 8 rounds hit, and those 8 consecutive rounds hitting my target will actually amplify the damage code of my assault rifle

The "damage codes" are about 3 levels of light, moderate, serious, and deadly damage

1 moderate goes all the way through the levels of light

1 serious goes all the way through moderate

1 deadly goes all the way through serious

like a linear graph that you draw a line through.

 

Light damage is basically a fleshwound- a graze it hurts, it distracts, it makes everything you try to do a little harder +1 to all of your target numbers

Moderate damage is an oozing, bleeding wound, but you're still on your feet +2 to your rolls

Serious damage if dealt in one round of combat could mean a severed limb if you fail a dice roll for that effect. You're bleeding out, you're very hurt, and everything you do is on your last leg.

Deadly- if you get up to this level and fail a roll you die or pass out. If you fill every box of deadly damage you are dead, no ifs ands or buts.

 

There are also stun ratings that operate on the same principle, and if you stack stun penalties on top of injuries, you're often having to roll 12's just to see if you remembered where your keys are

 

if you roll a 6

you get to roll and add to that score

if you roll a 6 you add to that score

repeat until you stop rolling 6's.

Fantastic successes like 36 (or my legendary 64) can dramatically effect a campaign and often come with experience rewards.

 

Back to armor though

alright

so

 

I'm shooting at this elf

I rolled rifles higher than his quickness

he only managed to dodge two shots

so 6 8m shots hit him

He's wearing a kevlar vest, and that has an armor rating of 4

so I'm shooting something more like six 4Moderate bullets at him

buuuuut

those six 4M bullets stage up, let's assume to... say, a serious wound with an 8 check

so

he has to roll six eights to ignore the damage. He has a body of 5.

He only succeeds twice so basically 2 bullets are ignored out of all six.

Four bullets pass through his armor and torso and he suffers a pretty serious seeping wound.

Next combat round everything he tries to do will be that much more FAIL!

 

But wait

what about COMBAT POOL!!!

Combat pool is a composite score of ... Int, Qui, Bod?

you combine the scores, divide them and you get some ridiculous amount of extra dice to use depending on the end score

I think I have a combat pool of 12

and it refreshes every combat phase (where everyone has taken their turn and rolled initiative again)

 

So if some dood is trying to tenderize me with a gatling gun

I have the opportunity to add combat pool to any check I think I need help on

If I want to dodge it

survive it

or return fire

 

I also have the option to burn karma (experience) to save my ass, and I'd rather not because karma is a currency to improve my character

or since I've been playing forever, I can tap into my daily karma pool (about 9 dice I can use for catastrophic failures, to keep myself alive, to add a dazzling success to a check) that refreshes daily.

 

Let's put this another way

 

I'm about the strongest nonmagical human that has ever existed.

Strongest- not most connected

not most influential

not richest (and money is power in this game)

 

I have 9's for most of my stats, and at 9 or so- you start to glow, or make people pee their pants.

 

And by the time all the cyber enhancements are done

I'll have 3 initiative dice (which can give me usually 3 actions to take in a single round of combat)

around 12 body (this is good for even a troll, and they weigh 900 lbs of bone and muscle and don't fit through most conventional doors)

around 11 quickness (I'd put Bruce Lee at a 7)

And around 12 strength (again, good for a 9 foot steroid infused bull-troll)

 

This will take up nearly all 6 of my essence.

 

 

A great dragon is

40-60 meters long

Has a body of 25 (25 dice to roll against any damage), with natural armor of 12 (shrugs off anything less than a 12 and can obviously roll higher)

 

Has a Quickness of 17 (how can something that big be so damn fast?)

 

Has a flight speed of at least 60 mph, run of 30 mph

 

Charisma 13 (smooth lil bastard)

Int 13 (smart lil bastard)

Willpower (forgot about willpower, its the check to see if you resist a drug, toxin, or magic, or if you melt someone's brain with "melt brain spell") of 13

 

Essence (remember that my max is 6) of 12.

 

Reaction 10 (pretty damn high)

Initiative 3 D6. (They get as many actions naturally, as I do with $200,000 improved nervous system and adrenaline glands)

 

+7 reach (this factors into melee combat, he basically has an automatic +7 to any of his attack rolls)

 

16 Deadly damage on their claw/bite attacks (this is roughly the damage code on an anti-tank gun, or an anti tank missile)

 

And the cherry on top

50

f i f t y

strength.

 

He rolls fifty dice, with +7 to see if he squishes me. If he rolls 50 1's I still have to have an armor rating of 8 to live.

 

He rolls 25 dice with +12 to check if my teeny tiny bullets hurt him

 

He has 17 dice to check if I missed outright.

 

He has twice as much essence as me to improve his stats even higher.

 

Yes Virginia

we're fucked.

 

There's a reason no one has ever heard of a campaign that killed a great dragon.

 

I'm not even taking into account magic which... is probably the most broken system in the game.

 

My plan now?

 

...

 

Does it matter?

 

Okay-

stat boosting drugs with horrific side effects and withdrawal

 

Strike first or die.

Rocket powered combat armor.

 

Bond a greater spirit to me, and have it constantly cast protection and stat doubling spells on me, getting me to 20's on my dice rolls.

 

I still haven't done a math check on this thing

but I know if it gets within 30 meters I'm dead.

 

I have a heavy weapons user

demolitionist

and a light tank driver with me.

My brother said it -might- be possible to hire out a mage for stat boosts/protection, and possibly a drone rigger to launch a fleet of tiny RC helicopters with railguns on them.

 

There is no tomorrow to this campaign.