Betrayed by ghost fungus
Jun. 17th, 2019 07:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sc0urgeFor a rat very fond of both fungi and dead things, Asper has recently not had a super great time with either.
On the one hand, my hunch was proven correct: the Jane Eyre situation was not only 100% a Jane Eyre situation, Jane Eyre turned out to be capable of doing 27 points of damage in one swipe and she seems about as ready to kill Mr. Nice Guy as we are.
On the other hand, it was mostly luck that allowed this hunch to be proven correct. Asper had no way of communicating this hunch, you see, because in the course of arrogantly swooping off to go do Important Things while the rest of the party fucked around with trying not to let our monk drown in a hole, Asper flew face-first into a haunt, rolled a comedically bad Will Save, and... spent the next four rounds ripping chunks out of their own face in a fit of delusional parasitosis.
Suffering only a handful of points of actual damage...
But taking thirteen points of Charisma damage. For the folks keeping track at home, their Charisma is fourteen. This is not the shittiest it could have been, but we're pretty fucking close.
So now it looks like we're gearing up to do the Boss Battle of this chapter. Hopefully Jane Eyre actually is on our side, and hopefully our fucking monk doesn't continue in his quest to punch every woman with claws who crosses his path.
I'm just not exactly sure what Asper is going to do.
While flailing about trying to figure out what having a Charisma of 1 all of a sudden would look like, because we couldn't find any precedent-setting bestiary entries for a creature with 20 Intelligence and 1 Charisma, our GM ruled that the catastrophic and sudden nature of the Charisma damage was partly psychological, and partly the result of just how badly fucked up my face is, swollen and torn. Puffy eyes. No Evil Eye hex. Torn lip. No spells with verbal components. Flat affect. No clear communication with anyone... but patchy and scattered twin telepathy, and still basically able to communicate with Koji, because she's my familiar and that empathic link is weird.
The problem here is that not only do all my prepared spells have verbal components... literally every spell I know has verbal components. I can't use Evil Eye. I can't use Flight for much of anything, because the three spells it mimics still have verbal components. I get one Fortune on each party member per day, and I've burned one of those already. Cauldron is less than useful in this situation. I may or may not be able to use Cackle, for what good it might do me, because at least that one doesn't need anything but ugly laughing, sound quality not specified.
I have nine crossbow bolts left.
I'm really scrambling for what I can possibly do to be useful here.
I know that our GM's ruling is harsher than the RAW for Charisma damage, but I'm totally fine with that. She's been pretty gentle on the rat twins and I more or less explicitly said 'just fuck me up.' I'm not complaining, really. Does this suck for Asper? Oh yeah. Does this suck for me? I mean, sure, maybe a little, but over the past couple of sessions I have been clawing at this challenge more intently than I've ever had to do in this game, and I love that.
I might ask if there is some possibility of trying to cast even with my swollen mouth and torn lip and distant, flat affect. If there's a check I might have to make before being able to cast the spell? No idea what skill or save that would possibly be. But I'm just going to assume that no, there's nothing I can do - I can't use Inflict Wounds to heal our Jane Eyre. I can't use Evil Eye to make Mr. Nice Guy an easier target. I can't use Detect Magic to try to hunt for fun loot while the others are fighting.
Nine crossbow bolts. One claw attack at +2 to hit and the other at -3 to hit, both doing probably 1 damage. No spells. One hex.
I have to figure out a way to make Knowledge, Spellcraft, Stealth, or UMD checks worth their weight in gold. Oh, and despite everything, somehow I still have a +4 to animal handling checks with our two pack rats. If I can somehow make that work. (Probably not.)
One particularly bonkers quirk of the game that I noticed a few days ago is that quadrupedal creatures have a better carrying capacity than bipeds. A Tiny biped's carrying capacity is reduced by half. A Tiny quadruped can carry three-quarters of the normal load. Koji has a Strength of 2. Just like an Unseen Servant. Which has a maximum carrying capacity of 20 pounds, and a push/drag of five times that. So Koji, a literal rat, has a maximum carrying capacity of 15 pounds, and a push/drag of 75. Asper weighs 70.
I'm not saying I'm going to dump all my assorted garbage so that if all else fails my loyal rat can drag my ass to safety, but I'm not saying I won't.
On the one hand, my hunch was proven correct: the Jane Eyre situation was not only 100% a Jane Eyre situation, Jane Eyre turned out to be capable of doing 27 points of damage in one swipe and she seems about as ready to kill Mr. Nice Guy as we are.
On the other hand, it was mostly luck that allowed this hunch to be proven correct. Asper had no way of communicating this hunch, you see, because in the course of arrogantly swooping off to go do Important Things while the rest of the party fucked around with trying not to let our monk drown in a hole, Asper flew face-first into a haunt, rolled a comedically bad Will Save, and... spent the next four rounds ripping chunks out of their own face in a fit of delusional parasitosis.
Suffering only a handful of points of actual damage...
But taking thirteen points of Charisma damage. For the folks keeping track at home, their Charisma is fourteen. This is not the shittiest it could have been, but we're pretty fucking close.
So now it looks like we're gearing up to do the Boss Battle of this chapter. Hopefully Jane Eyre actually is on our side, and hopefully our fucking monk doesn't continue in his quest to punch every woman with claws who crosses his path.
I'm just not exactly sure what Asper is going to do.
While flailing about trying to figure out what having a Charisma of 1 all of a sudden would look like, because we couldn't find any precedent-setting bestiary entries for a creature with 20 Intelligence and 1 Charisma, our GM ruled that the catastrophic and sudden nature of the Charisma damage was partly psychological, and partly the result of just how badly fucked up my face is, swollen and torn. Puffy eyes. No Evil Eye hex. Torn lip. No spells with verbal components. Flat affect. No clear communication with anyone... but patchy and scattered twin telepathy, and still basically able to communicate with Koji, because she's my familiar and that empathic link is weird.
The problem here is that not only do all my prepared spells have verbal components... literally every spell I know has verbal components. I can't use Evil Eye. I can't use Flight for much of anything, because the three spells it mimics still have verbal components. I get one Fortune on each party member per day, and I've burned one of those already. Cauldron is less than useful in this situation. I may or may not be able to use Cackle, for what good it might do me, because at least that one doesn't need anything but ugly laughing, sound quality not specified.
I have nine crossbow bolts left.
I'm really scrambling for what I can possibly do to be useful here.
I know that our GM's ruling is harsher than the RAW for Charisma damage, but I'm totally fine with that. She's been pretty gentle on the rat twins and I more or less explicitly said 'just fuck me up.' I'm not complaining, really. Does this suck for Asper? Oh yeah. Does this suck for me? I mean, sure, maybe a little, but over the past couple of sessions I have been clawing at this challenge more intently than I've ever had to do in this game, and I love that.
I might ask if there is some possibility of trying to cast even with my swollen mouth and torn lip and distant, flat affect. If there's a check I might have to make before being able to cast the spell? No idea what skill or save that would possibly be. But I'm just going to assume that no, there's nothing I can do - I can't use Inflict Wounds to heal our Jane Eyre. I can't use Evil Eye to make Mr. Nice Guy an easier target. I can't use Detect Magic to try to hunt for fun loot while the others are fighting.
Nine crossbow bolts. One claw attack at +2 to hit and the other at -3 to hit, both doing probably 1 damage. No spells. One hex.
I have to figure out a way to make Knowledge, Spellcraft, Stealth, or UMD checks worth their weight in gold. Oh, and despite everything, somehow I still have a +4 to animal handling checks with our two pack rats. If I can somehow make that work. (Probably not.)
One particularly bonkers quirk of the game that I noticed a few days ago is that quadrupedal creatures have a better carrying capacity than bipeds. A Tiny biped's carrying capacity is reduced by half. A Tiny quadruped can carry three-quarters of the normal load. Koji has a Strength of 2. Just like an Unseen Servant. Which has a maximum carrying capacity of 20 pounds, and a push/drag of five times that. So Koji, a literal rat, has a maximum carrying capacity of 15 pounds, and a push/drag of 75. Asper weighs 70.
I'm not saying I'm going to dump all my assorted garbage so that if all else fails my loyal rat can drag my ass to safety, but I'm not saying I won't.
