Post/Author/DateTime	Post
fizzbang 02-11-05, 10:41 AM	If people will permit me, I've got to share a brief combat exchange our party had in the most recent session. It just summed up the pulp style of combat so perfectly. Traveling on the lightning rail, two of the party are drinking at the bar at the lounge. One's a shifter ranger and the other is a kalashtar rogue/psion, and both are trying to drown their sorrows for various reasons. Out of the corner of his eye, the shifter notices that halflings on glidewings are attacking the ship. "I'll be right back." he says to his drinking pal, stepping to the balcony doorway and readying his bow. The Kalashtar pours them both another shot. Loosing a few arrows, the leader of the raiding group pulls even to the balcony. With a battlecry and foaming mouth, he leaps off of his mount and grabs onto the shifter. Unprepared for the assault, the lithe ranger tries to shake the little bundle of rage, but can't get him to budge, and they roll around the cabin floor. With an incenvenienced sigh, the kalashtar picks up the bottle and breaks it over the halfling's head, knocking him out cold. On the way back to the bar, he kicks the runt out the balcony door. "Thanks." the ranger says, as they both take their shots and turn to face the rest of the raiding party.
Golbez57 02-11-05, 11:23 AM	Classic! It's cases like the breaking of the bottle over the halfling's head that, for the sake of exciting storytelling, a DM should feel entitled to "fudge" and not worry whether he has 9 or -9 hit points--have him go down like a sack of potatoes with eyes rolling back in his head rather than a 12-second exchange of blows. There was a time recently where one of the heroes of our game, a human paladin, was locked in mortal combat with a human-hating neanderthal (Ranger with favored enemy as human). After being grievously wounded by a critical hit, the player of the paladin responded by pulling out all the stops, swinging around the edge of the stalagmite that'd separated them and using Power Attack, Smite Evil, and an Action Point and made a dramatic statement of his intent to strike down his opponent with finality. The attack brought his foe down to 1 Hit Point, but heck, what fun is it to have him fall backwards, barely breathing? I had his opponent be run through, finished for good. Note that, no matter how spectacular the scene might be, I wouldn't fudge things in the player's favor if things were desperate or the enemy's defeat wasn't certain. It was also fun, in the same adventure, to have a 0-HP white dragon make one last lunge at the curious halfling who, thinking the beast was dead, came close to investigate the fallen beast. "WAAAH!" Thanks for sharing, fizzbang.
fizzbang 02-11-05, 11:26 AM	Thanks for sharing, fizzbang. Always glad to do so, and thanks for your story, too! Anyone else have good examples of pulp combat?
Von Ether 02-11-05, 11:43 AM	Classic! It's cases like the breaking of the bottle over the halfling's head that, for the sake of exciting storytelling, a DM should feel entitled to "fudge" and not worry whether he has 9 or -9 hit points--have him go down like a sack of potatoes with eyes rolling back in his head rather than a 12-second exchange of blows. My suggestion for helping things along this way is switching to a mission-based XP vs. kill-based XP (I know that DnD is supposed to have "encounter-based" XP, but it seems that few DMs are catching on to what that really means ... ) If the combat become secondary to completing the mission in style, then more players seem laid back about how combat goes. For my own last pulpy fight: It wasn't DnD, but I was recently in a high-level vampire hunter game and my PC was a "Green Arrow" crossbow type guy. We'd just finished cleaning out Coffee House Nosferatu when we heard noised on the roof. We ran out side to see a cloud of vampire bats descending on the roof. I asked for them to bring the car out front as I aimed at the sky with a "sunburst" quarrel. Suddenly it was raining little winged flameballs. Used one to light up my cigar and then climbed into the mustang with the rest of the party. To touch my point again, no one even thought to ask "How much XP!!!" for that stunt. We all knew we get our XP for the mission, not the kills. If anything, too much combat with these tough undead is a bad idea for us.
Makabriel 02-11-05, 12:24 PM	Haven't started running Eberron yet, but I have a plan on how Saber will meet his end in Forgotten Forge. Or will he? :D :cool:
Sharn Inquisitor 02-11-05, 01:44 PM	During the Whispers final showdown with Lucan, the party ranger and psion had the exact same initiative. The psion did a consussion blast that took Lucan to exactly zero hp. Lucan flew back against the far wall, and as his body struck the ground the ranger landed on top of him plunging the stake into his heart, thereby incapacitating him. It was awesome.
fizzbang 02-11-05, 02:07 PM	Haven't started running Eberron yet, but I have a plan on how Saber will meet his end in Forgotten Forge. Or will he? :D :cool: Goodness knows our party still hasn't effectively stopped Saber. We ran into her under Sharn for the second time, but our characters were still young and idealistic, and we thought we could convince her that not all "fleshbags" were hateful monsters. So after we had disabled her, we tied her up and tried talking with her all night, attempting to fix any brainwashing, give her new understanding, or even just show her that non-Warforged weren't automatically horrible people. Then, over the night, she escaped, and she's been hounding us ever since. This was something like the fourth or fifth time we've run into her, and our characters are much less idealistic. I believe the soulknife (also a warforged that she keeps targeting and calling a traitor) wants to turn her head into a hat.
Nos-4-A2 02-11-05, 04:25 PM	I've set up so many free form encounters for my PCs to do things like this, but they never take the bait. Instead they just rush the villains without saying much of anything. During the fight with the fire elementals in Shadow's I even placed the elementals in the far room and took the time to describe it and all the controls in it. They just attacked. Well, I try.