#He figures out the whole psychic thing but does silly stuff to try prove the science behind it

[lordsireno]

Okay people enjoyed these two interacting, excellent! More then! Senku wants to know what a little psychic squeeze feels like. For science.

[shonikado]

Warning: Contains "Shonikado Does Tabletop: Episode 6"

I waited all week for this, this was basically my experiment with doing D&D fights in a more engaging way (with mixed results, good feedback though)

First up, there's some stuff that the human barbarian went through that wasn't RP'd out, but instead I just sent the player the stuff that happened so we could get to the next session where another player would be joining in. Here's what that all was:

The barbarian and the frogs traveled onwards, reaching the mountain range between them and their destination. But a magic storm hit (those happen this time of year) and they took shelter in a cave to wait it out. She got bored waiting in the cave though and explored, and found a peaceful cult town full of blind cultists and bat-winged beholders. She didn't really care to find out what was going on, although the cultists were niced and offered her the opportunity to trade her standard eyesight for the ability to have a vague psychic sense of the whole continent. But standard eyesight is useful, so she declined

The storm passed and the party continued onwards, a day behind schedule, taking with them an old dwarf cultist who was meaning to go on a supply run later anyway. There was a tribe of orcs-and-miscellaneous that watched the group from afar but they didn't make any moves, they just scared the frogs a bit. But the mountains were left without issue, at which point the party ran into a giant who collects the toll to enter the city. They paid the toll, but the giant saw the merchant frog's amulet and was like "hey gimme that too" and it was reluctantly handed over. And then they went onwards

So then they arrived in the city, at which point the frogs and cultist departed and Ulyana went to the giant-hunters guild. There was a giant who seemed to be helping run the guild, which was confusing, and also he was a bit condescending. Anyway, Ulyana learned that the guild only accepts 100 members total and they're careful about who they pick, and the most convenient way to tell them "hey I'm a good pick" would be to win the Azure Tournament happening in a few days. So Ulyana was like "sure I'll go have fun fighting people to prove I can fight even more people" and went off.

OKAY SO THAT'S WHERE THE SESSION BEGINS

Started off introducing an elf monk, who used to be a sailor but got into boxing. He's very old. He wanted to enter the tournament so he was tasked to fight three little anima (my world's word for animated constructs, pretty much simple robots) and display his fighting prowess. He used flurry of blows or something to destroy them all in a single turn.

Later in the day, the barbarian applied, and smashed one with an axe and had her displacer beast destroy another, and then finally tore the last one apart. Which was maybe excessive but definitely displayed ability.

But since a lot of people had been applying to the tournament and they didn't want to overdo it on applicants, they were both asked if they'd be cool with partnering up, and ended up getting teamed up with each other. So a monk, a barbarian, and a displacer beast all show up to kick some butt

but first they were like "hey let's spar" which gave me an opportunity to do a silly joke regarding the arena I had prepared, and then I sat back and let two players basically drive things for me and get some character development going on. (The monk won because the barbarian forgot to rage and dodge and stuff at first and the monk is GOOD at damage-dealing.)

so at this point I introduced the system where they got double EXP for going into a fight without researching their opponents prior to the fight, the idea being "figure it out on the fly" is more challenging than "know what you're getting into". To start off, the monk went off to try and figure out who they'd be doing their tournament-entry-culling match against (there were too many applicants still so they were being pitted against each other to determine who the public-audience-getting fighters would be), and ended up finding a place where bets were being put on the fights. The person running the betting booth said it wouldn't be fair to divulge that sorta stuff to a fighter but offered to tell in exchange for a bit of gold. As it turns out, the monk is very cheap and immediately walked out of the roleplaying closet. (We went into the closet so the barbarian's player wouldn't know what went down.)

they needed 3 EXP blocks to reach level 4, 7 to reach level 5. Going in blind meant 2 blocks, going in prepared meant 1.

i gave them half a block for their spar since neither of them tried to actually kill the other

Anyway, having failed to research their opponents, they went in blind and encountered a bugbear who seemed dressed for much colder weather than was actually present, wielding a malicious-looking green longsword. The other creature was a new race they didn't learn the name of, that looked somewhere between a lobster, a cockroach, and a fish, with eight arms and totally decked out with weapons. The bugbear was super nice and said hi.

then they proceeded to curbstomp them both, meaning I never got to even show off the bugbear's special abilities and the other combatant just barely got to hint at what their moveset was

ALSO the bugbear looked at Ulyana weirdly but then decided it was probably nothing. That was before the fight. The bugbear was unconscious after the fight. So was the monk, which was fun!

Also, some extra stuff about the arena: there's some height-advantage parts of the arena, also you can only have as many potions as you have team members, also there's these clerics called the "angels" who are there to let you fight lethally because they prevent anyone from dying. The way it works is that they focus protective magic on people, and if they'd die, they instead go into a sort of near-dead state that it takes a few weeks to recover from. So they'd be out of the tournament, but not out of life in general.

anyway, the party won, the monk didn't die so he got to continue fighting (I basically explained the death rule to the barbarian in an effort to convince her to stabilize the monk since he made two death fails)

ANYWAY they went on to the next round, and the barbarian decided to investigate who the opponents were - she ended up interviewing drow twins who had been in the entry-to-actual-tournament fight against two dragonborns (the next opponents) and lost. They explained one was a paladin with healy stuff, and the other was a warlock with spooky spells. The barbarian nodded and half-understood and then left.

when they got to the arena the next day I introduced the fact that the grass in the arena has flowers planted in it to make mosaic ads, the first of which was "Rope! You Can Never Have Enough" which was a reference to a character I made for a campaign that never really happened, in which my char owned I think several miles worth of rope because we were given a lot of starting money and I didn't know what to spend it on.

anyway so the fight happened, the paladin proved to be ridiculously hard to kill, and also made it very hard to target the warlock because of two tiers of protective stuff going on. So the paladin got downed, then was revived by the warlock's potion, then the paladin was downed again and the warlock revived her with her own potion, and then she was downed a third time and the monk was very mad about the whole thing and curbstomped her face. Seeing defeat was already gonna happen, and not wanting her to get dead'd or himself to get curbstomped, the warlock surrendered and the party won.

also the warlock cast a spell that had a bunch of grabby tentacles that was supposed to do damage but when the drow twins were explaining it they were like "oh but it doesn't do damage it just grabs you" SO WHOOPS I FORGOT. WHOOPS. WHOOPS. I don't think it would have been more fun if it did do damage though, maybe just more frustrating

anyway the party was like yaaay we won and then they leveled up and it was too late to move on to the final 8 fighters (so 3 more fights, although the final fight is gonna be a bit weird) so the session was ended, more like paused but basically ended.

~DING~ SO WHAT WENT WRONG

missing happens a lot and it's frustrating for the players. Also I didn't really get to show off what made most of the fighters cool because they immediately got pummeled by the rush-and-deal-all-the-damage team.

My current ideas are this: since everyone begins at the same time, the first round of combat lacks any movement, and is just what you do IMMEDIATELY as the fight begins. This means my enemy characters can set up any fancy interesting fun fight-changing stuff that they've got (for instance, the warlock had a weird spell that would deal a lot of damage but required casting it/some prep time, and the paladin was gonna defend him while that happened, but then the party rushed up and immediately attacked so he was like "I'm getting out of here" which was not the best tactical decision maybe. There are things I could do differently.)

My second idea is that, if you miss, you can choose to automatically hit instead, but this invokes an opportunity attack. I don't know if the attack would happen before or after (so miss -> opportunity -> autohit, or miss -> autohit -> opportunity?) and this would just be a mechanic in the world. I think I'll consider it the "baiting" mechanic, like, you get the opponent to strike at you, giving you a chance to land your own hit.

Maybe I'll make it so the opponent can either opportunity attack, or take half damage. Maybe make it so that you can respond in one of the following ways: 1. Defensive. Take half damage. 2. Neutral. Opportunity attack, then take full damage. 3. Aggressive. Opportunity attack. Take half damage if you land the hit, get critted if you miss.

Both of these ideas are things that ANYBODY can use, player or enemy, making it fair but also making it easier for me to deliver on better experiences overall.

also I think I'm gonna inject a bit more roleplaying into the sessions. I was planning on skipping it to mostly experiment with combat, and it was mentioned this hurt things a bit - the fights were largely just "okay we're fighting these people now". I have ideas on how to make the fights more engaging on a narrative level (basically having the party MEET the other combatants, though learning what they can do is another story entirely and retains the EXP thing).

overall I think it was decent but I'm definitely glad it ended earlier than expected because that gives me time to refine what I have coming next.