Apologies, have you posted boss 4? The folks who key off enemy actions may need to see them to decide, but my memory is shit so maybe they’re up there somewhere lol.
Yeah, way back. I’ll repost just for easier reference.
Oh, keep in mind that you’re now on Easy so there will be a random Opponent Mutation and +1 damage on everything. In this case, Lightning Fast for +16 to vitals and they use their first ability before combat starts. (but you’ll get an additional 5 gold per person if you win).
Woah, ok. No favored opponent for this. I’m gonna fire my Sphinx Blood Booster if that’s ok and see if I can get a better mutation. (I don’t have to pay the energy cost again, right?)
My recommendations:
- I’ll trigger my racial ability (heath regen of 2 per round; costs 3 energy; gives 1 EP)
- I’ll Leather Grip T’Grong with my whip for 23 damage
- Akbar target Syph with Specialty Trip for 19 damage (x2 if she rolls 3 or 4)
- Chiminy target one each with Whirling Blades for 18 damage each (+ one more 18 damage hit if you’re not targeted.)
- Orion do Mind Trap against Defend and First Mastery? Boss 2? (First Mastery is potential 8 health damage each to most of the party. Boss 2 is not as bad, but Mind Trap would give us all the skill test bonus, though Chiminy and Akbar can use their racials to help with those too.)
With Orion trapping their Defend action, we should be able to one-shot them.
Do we have a list of party equipment somewhere?
Those mutations seem pretty strong, what’s the downside? Missing the booster cards when you don’t have one? I’m all about having five tails or something.
On the sheets. And I don’t see any ruling on how replacing a Mutation affects the energy loss - I think I’d be inclined to rule you replace the energy loss from the original Mutation with whatever the new one is - and most I’ve seen are -2 or -3, FWIW. It doesn’t seem fair to leave the energy loss from the original mutation and inflict fresh, but it also seems kinda janky to get a cheap -3 mutation out of a -1. So swapping out seems the most sensible to me.
They permanently reduce your energy and they may not be at all relevant for your character. Also, some game effects harm you if you’re mutated (e.g. Tarri can throw you into slave labor in the Mines). And yeah, the Purity Power Ups don’t give you bonuses anymore - Mutations do partially replace that bonus, but not as broadly.
They still seem like a pretty no-brainer move to me, but I guess there are probably circumstances where you might want to skip them.
I’m down with the Chimminy suggestion there, and am happy to spend energy on keeping teammates from getting nasty lasting conditions with a skill roll bonus if need be.
OK, we can treat it just like when you discard a mutation upon death. Discard and regain energy loss, then the new mutation causes new energy loss.
If we are going with my plan, we need @Ormus to guess Syph’s attack for potential trap strengthening, and we need @Thraeg to choose actions to target with Mind Trap.
Also, @malkav11, what equipment is the party carrying at this point? We have a resurrection contract don’t we?
No resurrection contract. Items you’re individually carrying are on the character sheet. I don’t think any of the party-wide items you have are relevant for the boss fight. From memory, you have a couple of movement boosters, the refilling waterskin, extraction tools and that item from Valley that boosts your base Favored Opponent die to a d10 but nobody’s got Humanoid as a favored opponent. I’ll post a shot of the Battle Mat again when I go in to process.
OK, we should have a Revival Ritual I think though.
I suggest if we don’t hear from @Thraeg and @Ormus , have Orion roll a d6 for trap strengthening and Akbar choose Defend and First Mastery.
Yes, the Ritual you do. And which Defend and First Mastery? Remember, they count as separate opponents. (Also you’ve got the characters mixed up - Akbar has the traps, Orion is the psion).
(I’m not just waiting on their input, btw, I also anticipate this is going to be time-consuming to process and haven’t had a good chunk of spare time to do it in. Hoping later today.)
Oh right, Orion is the Psion. Mind Trap actually works if any opponent chooses the action, so Defend and 1st Mastery for either.
That sounds reasonable. I’m good with trapping Defend.
Actually you might be right. The actions have different names depending on which of the twins uses them. Does Orion’s Mind Trap target the type of action or the named action? If the latter, yeah I agree with @Thraeg and just target the two Defend actions.
Since (generally speaking) all foes (and roles!) in-game have different names for each of the 6 principle abilities (and many foes don’t even have all 6), and the ability specifies “any opponent” instead of “the chosen opponent,” I think it’s safe to assume Attack/Defend/First Mastery/Second Mastery bare minimum would all be appropriate qualifiers. We got lazy and just said “1-6” on the enemy-action-choosing-die when last we played IRL, which more or less works out to the same, though it gets woo-y around 3-action basic foes.
Yeah, I think this is correct. I’d just missed that it was “any opponent”. I think that dice result might make the most sense since it is 100% possible to be fighting a regular Encounter and a boss at the same time (both the mummy and Astonal summon regular encounters and probably there are others) and they don’t have equivalent ability structures.
Cheya uses a Sphinx Blood Booster. Here are the options, @Matt_W:
Here’s the updated party wide gear:
The wording on Psychometry is a little confusing but I think what’s meant is you get the standard accumulating bonuses from multiple turns of Camping, but Psychometry’s bonus on top of that is only added once.
I will take Energetic Core please.
The battle with the Twins begins!
As they are Lightning Fast, they start with 51 Health/56 Energy for Syph and 58 Health/41 Energy for T’Grong respectively. They also open with their basic attack. Syph Aerial Kicks Orion (target dice 6, 7, 8, 3 down the line), who suffers 6 health damage and gains a +3 penalty to target dice next round. T’Grong Downstrikes Chimminy (2, 1, 3, 10) for 6 health damage and the same +3 penalty to target dice.
Round 1
Declaration:
Cheya begins regenerating, costing 3 energy and gaining one Trait Point towards Empowered.
Cheya uses Leather Grip, costing 1 energy. It will deal 23 health damage.
Akbar deploys a Specialty Trap , costing 1 energy, which will deal 19 health damage (the bonus damage is only if you select energy damage). No action was specifically guessed, so rolling randomly: 6. Damage will be strengthened by 3 if the target uses Boss 2. Akbar uses his extra arm to attack for another 4 health damage.
Orion activates a Mind Trap on Defend and Boss 2 for 1 energy. Additionally, he chooses to Defend for 0 additional energy. (I know First Mastery was specified but I looked at the reasoning and you are misreading it - First Mastery is up to 2 single target hits of 5 damage. The damage to everyone else is energy damage - not Energy Drain, just energy damage. Boss 2 is potentially 8 piercing health damage to the group if they both do it, plus energy damage, plus maybe getting Surrounded.)
Chimminy activates Whirling Blades for 1 energy, generating 6 Defend and dealing 18/18(/18?) health damage.
Opponent Phase:
Syph rolls 1d6 to determine attack: 5. Wind Spear. One target suffers 6 Piercing Health and Energy damage and must make a Survival check (at +2 penalty since she is Energetic) or take double.
T’Grong rolls 1d6 to determine attack: 2. Earth Barrier. Defend 5 for both Twins this round (+4 if T’Grong remains energetic.) There’s also a damage boost component but it relies on the Twins not taking damage, and that is not going to be the case!
Resolution:
T’Grong has tripped Orion’s Mind Trap and takes 18 energy damage, reducing him to 23. Unfortunately this is still above the Energetic threshold, so the Defend is increased and then reduced by 4 because of the Mind Trap for a net Defend 5.
Checking for Syph’s target: Cheya 6, Akbar 3, Orion 6+3, Chimminy 9+3. Rerolling Chimminy’s roll with one of the party Weighted Dice. 4+3. Rerolling Orion’s roll with the other Weighted Die. 4+3. Target is still Orion. Orion cannot currently succeed on the Survival check with the penalty, so takes 10 Piercing Health and Energy damage.
Orion was defending, so while the Piercing blows through his massive Defend, he can pop his Ironscale Potion and restore himself back up to 4 Health.
Cheya’s Leather Grip deals 23 - 5 Health damage to T’Grong, reducing him to 40 Health.
Akbar’s Trap hits Syph for 19 - 5 Health damage to Syph, reducing her to 37 Health. His extra arm attack just bounces off.
Chimminy focuses all three hits on Syph, dealing 18-5, 18-5, 18-5 damage or 39 in total, just barely finishing her off.
Round 2
Well, seems like your math was a little off, so I’ll wing it on this one.
Declaration:
Cheya Sustains Leather Grip for 1 energy (he’s still Energetic) and prevents Boss 1, as well as granting a 14 point damage Boost to all allies, and Defends.
Akbar uses Specialty Trap again for 1 energy, guessing First Mastery. And why not, throw in that extra arm attack too.
Orion uses Mind Trap and Defend again for 1 energy, Mind Trapping Second Mastery and Boss 2.
Chimminy uses Whirling Blades again for 1 energy.
Opponent Phase:
T’Grong rolls 1d6 to determine action: 1. Downstrike. We’ve already seen this in action.
Resolution Phase:
T’Grong targeting: Cheya 3, Akbar 4, Orion 3, Chimminy 10. T’Grong picks on the poor Fairy again…but this time it’s not before combat’s started and Chimminy has 6 points of Defend up, blocking the entire attack. And then electrocutes the boss with his Conductive Flesh for 13 energy damage, reducing T’Grong to 10 Energy.
Akbar connects with 19 + 14 points of damage, reducing T’Grong to 7 Health. His extra arm follows up with another 18 (4 + 14) and finishes him off.
Chimminy hacks the corpse for 18 + 14, then 18 + 14 damage to make goddamn sure.
Hopefully you approve of my choices above - I used rerolls to try to get the hits on the less vulnerable party members for the big piercing hit (and failed, but at least Orion was salvageable, Chimminy would have straight died and could only be revived after combat. You didn’t end up needing that damage, I guess, but it’s the biggest in the group so I felt like that was unsafe.). And then once it was down to one Twin the Gripped damage boost meant there was no point in Cheya attacking. You might want to buy more healing items for any future boss fights. I tried to make sure there wasn’t anything that could take anyone out in that second round, but Orion and Chimminy were both sucking fumes so a second piercing hit would have been real bad.
Rewards: +1 Fame. +3 attack (dice off: Orion and Akbar tied with 10, rerolling: Akbar gets 6, Orion 2. Akbar gets the attack!). Weighted Dice (dice off: Chimminy wins with a 9). 4 Platinum. 1 Ravager Crystal (difficulty). 10 gold per person. (mutation adds 5). 8 food per person. And last but not least, two power ups a pop.
Cheya gets:
+1 additional Second Mastery from Energetic Core. No Purity, though.
Akbar gets:
@Ormus , stash or take? You have 3 stashed cards.
Orion gets:
No purity bonus, but that’s a third copy of the extra eye!
Chimminy gets:
+1 Second Mastery from Conductive Flesh. @ArmandoPenblade , stash or take? You have 1 stashed card.
Ravager Phase
The Ravager emerges on top of you. Where do you flee to? (I’ll take it as read you flee.)
Turn 12
Camp, Cautious, Normal or Reckless? Where to?
I’ll stash. Let’s flee northeast to open up new tiles and get closer to Boss 5, hah.
Totally good with the choices in the combat. Thank you!!
Are you sure you want to be closer to Boss 5 right now? You’ll get a little healing from the movement phase, but there are several attacks that boss can do that will immediately murder either Orion or Chimminy currently and you have no healing items that can compensate while in combat. (There are admittedly a couple poultices that could be used before combat but that’s only gonna fix one of the two.) Also, hopefully I wouldn’t roll the same mutation twice but if it gets Lightning Fast like the Twins did, you could get killed before combat even starts.