[Zweiblumen]

I'm gonna rule that it won't poof until all tasks are complete.  Lets see if the mage dodges.
Dodgy Dodge: ?d6t5 4  Spirit hits.  Lucky for the mage all of his damage has been physical so this will just add more modifiers instead of taking him out of the fight.
Soaking 9S: ?d6t5 4 for a total of 5S.
Mage is at 6/?? P and 5/?? S for a supposed -3 to all actions.  WHEEE!!!
Init time everyone

And I'll get an IC up in my morning.

[Tecumseh]

Initiative for Knucks' CT2: Initiative + Cram - Wounds: 2d6+14 23

[badneighbor]

For Expo:

Initiative: 7+1d6 11

[rednblack]

Uffington: Initiative: 9+1d6 12

Spirit: Initiative: 12+2d6 15

[Tecumseh]

Red, half of that went astray.

[Zweiblumen]

CT2 IP1:
------------
Knucks 23
?? 17
Spirit 15
Uffington 12
Expo 11


WTG Expo, you'll get 2 passes this Round (if the mage makes it past Knucks).

[Tecumseh]

Knucks On Cram is not the intellectually-curious type who would like to know more about investments and how he is the fool. If he had been clubbed or shot, he might take a chance on clinching the man and tying him up, but what he knows is that he just got cooked from the inside out, which he has no real defense against. An eye gouge would be interesting, but Knucks figures that if the man can target him while Knucks is invisible then the man could target him with Knucks' thumbs in his eyes too. So, to that end, Knucks will just go for the KO:

Uppercut of Doom: Agility 9 + Unarmed Combat 6 + Spec 2 - Wounds 1: 16d6t5 6 hits

6 hits is pretty good but 3 shy of his Limit. As previously stated, he's pretty freaked out. (It's not so much the pain, although the fact that he feels pain with NoPaint on is a good clue that he's taken some damage.) Let's see if we can squeeze the remaining 3 hits out of the other 10 dice.

Edge reroll: 10d6t5 4 hits, capped at 3 by Physical limit

That's 9 hits total. Base damage is Str 8 + Bones 2 + Striking Callouses 1 = 11P + net hits.

If this doesn't work, I would ask rednblack to spend a Free Action to provide Counterspelling. ...

Knucks is at 6P with 2/5 Edge remaining.
... which Uffington apparently doesn't have. Damn, red, way to leave a brother hanging. If Knucks' brain boils in its skull then its going to reflect poorly on Uffington's performance review.

[Zweiblumen]

I'm not going to bother rolling.  Only way he can dodge is by pre-edging, and then getting for all intents and purposes getting all of the dice worth of hits (either but getting all 5s or exploding enough times etc etc)... so, mathematically rare enough that I'm not gonna bother doing all of the rolling.  You've killed him.  Deader than dead.

I owe you guys an IC, then Tech can finish the fight in his wonderful style.  I'm going to give the mage a free simple action to stand before he dies.
BTW, the last Technoid failed his composure test and shit himself.  If he gets a chance, he'll try and run away (well, into the Chulo's if they decided to investigate the giant explosion from the ball lightning that went off).  When the mage expires, the Spirit sends his salutations to Uffington and asks for more of a challenge next time.  If you have any way to stop the kid other than killing him, lemme know and we can drop out of initiative sequence and move on.

[Tecumseh]

Oh, let's see how he does. He's at 6P. Let's say he has Body 3. That means he can stay alive up to 13P, so he's got 7 boxes to spare. He needs to soak 13 of Knucks' 20P to stay alive, at least for the moment.

He rolled a lot of dice to dodge the lightning ball. Who knows, maybe that was Counterspelling, but even if it was we'll say that he's on Full Defense now and/or that he's using Edge. We'll give him exploding 6s for lolz, which should get him an extra success statistically speaking.

Dodging Knucks: ?d6h5 8 hits, including his one extra hit from an exploding 6, as predicted

So far so good. He needs to conjure up 5 hits on a soak roll. Knucks doesn't have AP, so that's in ??'s favor. Game date is 8/15/2075. It's after dark so it's probably cool in San Francisco, especially in the evenings. Average August temperatures just after sunset in San Francisco are 12-13 C (mid 50s F) so it's chilly. We'll say ?? is wisely wearing an armor jacket, both because it's cool but also because he's rolling into a rumble. With Body 3 + Armor 12, he's got 15 dice to dig up 5 hits to stay alive. Should happen, statistically. Even if he's wearing less armor we'll say that he's using Edge to make up the difference. Either way, we'll roll exploding 6s again for fun.

Soaking Knucks' knucks: 15d6h5 8 hits, including 3 extra hits off exploding 6s!

So! That's 16 boxes of Knucks' 20. Combined with his previous 6P he is now at 10P. So, not only is he not dead, but he's not even in overflow. He can take 3P without croaking. Good thing Knucks didn't use Finishing Move! ?? is nice and ripe for interrogation.

I'll let Uffington and Expo take a pass at the kid who is running. Otherwise, I am fairly certain that Knucks can either run him down (Agility 9, plus Strength 8 for sprinting) or can peg the kid in the back of the head with a thrown object Crocodile Dundee-style...



(This is the first gif I have ever made and I am very proud of it.)

... or a knife into his leg Ace Ventura-style:

[Zweiblumen]

So, for the lightning ball he had counterspelling as well (which may have been a miss-use of it, but didn't help all that much either way), as well as being un-injured, un-electrocuted and standing up (the "free action to stand up" was for story purposes not crunch).  His total die pool for dodging your fist is 8.  He'd get 4 more dice for Edge  That's 12 dice, getting 8 hits on 12 dice even with explodes is statistically almost impossible.  For funsies here you go:

Dodgy Dodge plus Edge: 12d6h5 5  So, 3 net hits, he's got to soak 14P as DV exceeds armor
Soaking 14P: 11d6t5 1 lets use that last point of edge to re-roll misses
re-rolling misses: 10d6t5 2
So, he's eating 11P, he's got a body of 2 giving him 2 boxes of overflow.  Being at 6P to start, he could only survive five more P before expiring... he took 11. Shmoooshed face.

FWIW, he's wearing a long coat armor 9 (now slightly singed so armor , so I technically gave hime 2 extra dice on soaking anyway.  Though he rolls so statistically poorly (which they've been doing the whole encounter) that I could have given him 4 extra dice and re-rolled the misses and he *still* would have died.

Some extra insight here:  when I designed the encounter (6 months ago), I didn't take how effective ball-lightning would be into account and had the idea that the 10 mooks would keep Knucks and Expo at least a *little* occupied for at least 1 CT if not two.  Simply in the number of times they each had to punch things .  The mage would have made things interesting, and he has(d) Masking which is why Uff's assensing trips didn't pick him up.  The dude is actually a pretty badass mage, but not much for physical defense.
Also, you guys came up with a good plan and executed well.  I don't think its fair for me to completely change the encounter based on your successes.  So, advantage players.  It just went a little easier than expected, however you guys miss out on some extra stuff because of an overly large amount of death
I also learned a lot about scene building, or lack there of.  You guys handled the Chulos really well also.  I probably under-estimated the capabilities of the various characters and made things a bit too simple.  But, done is done.  The title of the story was more for me than it was for what was happening in the story, especially as you guys didn't really get much in the way of "fire"... well except for a little internal microwaving of Knucks, but he probably does almost as much damage with his drug use

[Tecumseh]

There's a 2% chance of getting 8 hits on 12 dice. It's probably a bit better with exploding 6s but I don't know how to do the math. Given that he's at Initiative 17 he should be going on Full Defense. I presume that his Willpower is good given that he's a magician, so that gets him up to 17-18 dice. That moves the odds of getting 8 hits up to 17-22%.

That said, I can't argue with the soak roll. That was poor.

??'s counterspelling could have applied to [Magic rating] goons. I won't pretend like that would have changed the outcome, but it might have slowed us down and made the spell a little less of a bowling ball against helpless pins.

Z, were you going to post ICly before Knucks?

[rednblack]

Uffington should still have 1 remaining service from his spirit, since he never commanded it to use a specific power like I was thinking about.  Let's keep it around for awhile, just in case.

Uffington will also not be stopping the Technoid from making good with his escape.  At least one survivor can be a good thing for telling the tale of what happens with you frag with the Chulos.  Whether the spirit feels differently is up to GM discretion.  The order given to it was "Sic him" emphasis added, so it may take that to mean geek everyone we're fighting, or geek this particular chummer. 

Uffington is going to Assense the mage.  I have: INT (5) + Assensing (5) + Aura Reading Spec (2) - Sustaining Penalties (2) = 10 dice.
Assensing: 10d6t5 4
Well that was a really good roll to pretty much just see if the mage is dead-dead, or only mostly dead.  So, does Uff know if he's past his overflow?  If his aura is still there, I'd also be curious to know if Uffington can see past his Masking with that roll, and if so what he can gather about the man's magical capabilities.

Free action will be to speak with the team. 

[Zweiblumen]

Good point on not using the second service.  As for the action, the spirit was focused on the mage as that's my interpretation of "him."  I had assumed you had identified the target astrally.  If that's inaccurate let me know.

As for the assensing, I'm gonna have to review the books a bit.  Short answer is, dude is doing an extremely accurate portrayal of a doorknob.  And my knee-jerk assumption is that once dead the aura is gone so there's nothing to read.  I'm open to thoughts on the validity of that assumption.

RE: waiting on my IC, I see that I said that but can't for the life of me think of why I would have.  I'm sure I had a good reason at the time, but my notes don't mention anything.  So, Tec, go for it.

BN, anything you want to do before we drop out of Initiative phases?

[rednblack]

If he's dead dead, there shouldn't be anything for Uff to read.

[badneighbor]

If that one surviving kid tries to take off, Expo is not going to try to stop him. He *would* try to prevent anyone else from stopping him either, but he's not dumb enough to get between Knucks and The Thing Knucks Wants to Kill.

I forget, does attacking end magical invisibility? Can everyone see each other again?