It's a rant all right. But... against Sean? What, what, what?!

 

So game went fine last night, in the sense that, things happened, plot moved forward, we discovered the Tree Of Mana (always a welcome sight in any world) no problems there. It's just that Carlita lost.

 

 

To someone who was specifically created to beat Carlita. And who cheated. By which I mean, Sean cheated. Maybe it's my Asperger's or maybe I just like playing by the rules, but when people, especially GMs break their own rules, it makes me... unhappy. How did he do so? Let us count the ways:

 

1) Spirit Stepping. Before, spirit step, (a technique he stole from Bleach letting a practitioner move instantly from place to place in a straight line) was very nice. Carlita developed a fighting technique based around it whereby she would spirit step up to a foe, do a slash, then spirit step away again, thus placing her beyond the reach of retaliation. This worked. Sadly, it worked too well, as Sean then took it away from me, changing how Spirit Step worked. It now works by serving to reduce delay from moving from one place to another. You roll, and you subtract from your movement delay a certain amount based on your roll result. 

 

Sean was just spirit stepping around like I used to. No rolls, no calculating delay, nothing. Oh, it also costs one energy per use, he did not keep track of energy expenditure. 

 

2) Weapon Powers: At character creation, you decide what powers your weapon has. You choose from a list of "Half-Demon" abilities like attacking with electricity when you hit or being tougher like you had armor on. (the weapon can give you powers rather then taking powers itself) But my opponent's weapon was quite curious. I got scratched by it (taking off 1/24th my total "health") and suddenly I can't use my weapon anymore!  Wait, what? There's no power in this table called "make Carlita lose her power". My weapon is a whip, and suddenly when I try to use it, it doesn't snap around any more it just goes "blah". Okay, I have other avenues of attack, right? Nope, I get scratched in the body (3/24 or 1/8) and suddenly I can't use any powers AT ALL anymore. Uh, double what? 

 

See, Sean is very careful to give every ability a counter. Case in point: In the last game I was being fired upon by a cyborg. I am an ESPer, so naturally I want to toss him back with telekinesis. Natural, right? Well, I make the roll, and though I could, in fact, have picked up a car and tossed it at the guy quite easily, he made a STRength check and just stayed where he was. I accept this, grudgingly, because as a cyborg he may have an insane strength. How he avoids being picked up when he has nothing to hold onto is beside the point (apparently). So, fine. The point is, my power had a counter- some way to avoid what I was doing to him. Magic has a counter. Dreamer skills have a counter. But this bizarre "take Carlita's powers away" power? No counter.

 

And that's not cool. 

 

3) Weapon Count: One weapon power you can take is to make multiple weapons. The difficulty is then a plus 2 per additional weapon you have. Thus, my spirit hunter with two daggers pays the point cost for the dagger, and then +2 and has another dagger. Done. If she paid another +2 she could have one down her boot in case she dropped one. Simple, right? My opponent's weapon seemed to be a never ending supply of spears. That sort of floated around after her. He said I saw at least 5 on either side of her "like wings" in his words. Okay, so just that number makes her difficulty of conjuring the weapon a 25. If she's lucky, Sean's maximum dice roll might be a 28. No spirit hunter would have such a difficult weapon to call out, they would only have a 3/25 chance of doing it! Also, she did not need to grasp these weapons to throw them, she just make a throwing motion with her hands. Fine. But once she did, another two appeared in their place while the thrown ones stayed where they were. So, she has an infinite amount of these weapons? But doesn't that make her difficulty of conjuring them... INFINITE?  

 

Apparently not. 

 

3) Knowing thy enemy: Sean has fought Carlita through various monsters many times. So naturally, he knows she is a mid-range fighter because of her whip's length. (one of it's powers is to extend up to 7 meters) So naturally, he makes her opponent a long range fighter to counter her. That's fine, but had my opponent fought anyone else, like my bow user or the guy with the Ring of Returning, it wouldn't have been any contest. You specifically make a character that plays to my weaknesses, can turn my powers off by scratching me, and then are surprised when they win? When Carlita had no reason to be fighting you in the first place and thus, didn't go all out anyway? Sure, Sean, sure. 

 

So apart from all that, game was fine. We (the only group not captured) saved the Tree of Mana from the blood being injected into its roots to kill it, and are about to bust up from the floor and bust up the guy responsible. No sweat.