Psychoneights (Begun) (PbP)

Zamuel: The GM notified me via PM that such a check won't be needed; apparently all I need to do is pop the lid.

Actually, that's all you'd need to do to wake yourself up. To force it up a belligerent colt's nose you'll need to make a check. The DC to just wake everyone up in the fight will be fairly low, but you can try for a higher roll to only wake up the antagonists.

I'm going to just say no. It's over is OP enough and being able to bring a tactical nuke like that into combat every time is just too much. Sorry.

Edit: and beyond that, since this is my first time GMing, I think it would be best if I took it easy on the house rules just because I could screw things up really easily.

The way it is now, there's a 99% chance that that skill will never get used. Combat just doesn't last long enough. If we were up against a tough boss where that could conceivably be used, it's more likely you'd find yourself using far less costly -negative pip moves. Even the one you're currently using, "It's Over!" costs a whopping -17 pips, and would be in the same category. What I suggest is to look over some of the weapon skills, or other high pip moves and re-flavor one of those. They're not as damaging, but they'll see more use.

Here's a suggestion that you may not have thought of. If you don't like this, I'll see if I can come with some others.

Summon Psychic Entity(Summon Fire Giant) In your back story Grey lost consciousness and wound up to find all the villagers dead. Why not have had her summon a portion of her psyche that attacked in her behalf. With the right combat talents, you could bring it out on the 2nd or 3rd turn.

Besides, even if you could pull it off in a reasonable amount of time (It can be done, but it takes a lot of specializaton) it makes combat much less fun. Imagine:

GM: Round three! The dragon scrapes the ground with his feet, and lets out a blast of flame against Pyro, Cloud, and Marsham! You are all horribly burned.
Zamuel: Marsham pulls out a vial of algae and treats everyone for burns with Saving Grace! Except Pyro, because he's a di- I mean, fireproof.
Crys: Well, ouch. Pyro uses Blood Is Power and lets loose a fireball towards the dragon's eye, hoping to find a weak spot! He then uses Craft Acidic Addendum to prepare for the next round.
Din: I have enough PiPs! I use It's Over!
Kal: Aaaw, I didn't hardly get to use my cool moves...

And as combat is pretty challenging to make fun already, we really don't need insane It's Over builds.

(Combat doesn't really look like that on the forums, but you get the idea.)

... If combat has lasted long enough to build up 25 PiPs, without insane PiP-building chains, and you're doing badly enough to warrant actually needing that, then A) the GM is in all likelihood actively trying to get rid of you (in which case he won't give you the chance) B) there are still better Last Ditch moves than what you're proposing (Healing comes to mind) and C) Where's the rest of the party?

GamerGoddessDin wrote:Not using the power is more or less the idea. It's meant to be a high-risk only-if-all-else-fails ability and as each triggering drops the HP setting by 5 and there's no way to bring that back up there's a limit to how many times this skill could 'safely' be used before the next one is guaranteed suicide. (During an earlier write-up the HP set came back up by not using it a while too but I thought that didn't fit my idea for a psychic self-destruct nuke-curse.

It's cool you want to RP and want your moves to reflect that. If you're fine with having a power you're never going to use, I'm okay with that as well. But somehow I think you could probably re-flavor a more useful move and place it into your backstory. Reyvateil-style combat just doesn't work very well with the Pony Tales system.

Cardbo wrote:Reyvateil-style combat

What's that? I more or less never even planned to need the normal It's Over anyways. I actually wrote the backstory without looking at combat moves first.

GamerGoddessDin wrote:

Cardbo wrote:Reyvateil-style combat

What's that? I more or less never even planned to need the normal It's Over anyways. I actually wrote the backstory without looking at combat moves first.

Reyvateils are from the videogame Ar Tonelico. The way combat works in those game is that there are front-line fighters and squishy wizards and while the fighters can do damage, fighting an enemy is mostly dependent on the mages in the back preparing their spells, finally casting them, and finishing the battle. There's usually a direct relation with how long they take to prepare their spells with how much damage they do.

Crystalite wrote:Besides, even if you could pull it off in a reasonable amount of time (It can be done, but it takes a lot of specializaton) it makes combat much less fun.

Depends on speed and how it's handled.  I tend to play support and I'm okay with some high damage builds as long as the player isn't complaining about every tiny status effect that comes their way and the build isn't just ridiculously broken.

(Combat doesn't really look like that on the forums, but you get the idea.)

Of course combat doesn't look like that.  The algae's not for burn wounds, silly.

GamerGoddessDin wrote:Not using the power is more or less the idea.

I think there's ways of representing that with what's already in the system, ranging from It's Over, to some of the berserker buffs, to damaging your enemies when you get knocked out.  A -25 is gonna be super difficult to reach under any circumstances.  The others at least allow the chance of making it, especially since standard rules means that you lose pips on KO.

Also, looked at your character sheet for the first time and saw an error.  You have Book Forte as an option under the Element of Magic.  Without Derp, Spellchild, the Whirlygig boon, or a GM that generously gives out Magic Points, Book Forte is impossible to activate since you burn your sole MP on activating the Element of Magic itself.

I thought Magic Points in this system were like Action Points in 4th Edition D&D in that you gain one after every two encounters between extended rests... Also, I may have just failed to notice that, I'll take a look at that later.

System default is that you gain one daily and that they refresh at the end of the day/extended rest. Outside of specific circumstances, you're only ever able to have one MP at a time.

Well, I'm fairly new at this system too, so not really. A few other people are moving before you so you can see what they do. It'll probably be more helpful than any rambling I can accomplish.

Generally, flavor description and IC dialogue will be posted as usual. Actual combat talents + save ends rolls will be placed in the spoiler blocks with players keeping track of their own HP, energy/pips, and status effects they've been hit by.

I believe it's Elacular/Hauler with the first move, yeh?

Yeah, but since I had the first move and I was posting already, I already made it.

Also, Here's some campaign posts that should serve as a good example of combat.

Oh! That's the 1 damage biz. My fault then, thought that was some sort of enter-combat thing just for Pyro for reasons.
Ah yes...AA...I still get anxious about if I might have missed additional triggers in that campaign. 8 players is definitely too many.

Does Regen go over 30 HP.

Not traditionally, similar to how regular healing doesn't put you over 30.

OK, just making sure. There was something about removing/having-removed the HP cap within that April Fools post so I wasn't sure if that was part of the joke or an actual thing and if it was a thing whether it would effect Regen or not.