TTJP Season 1 Session 4 Bring on the Thunder!

Our wounded party camped in town to help Shen Feng heal a bit more then headed after the Dark Stranger with him resting in the wagon to finish healing.  Three days later we catch up...

Your Too Late!

So there he is!  Unfortunately he had already sacked the small temple and gotten what he wanted. He was pretty far away when we saw him but we could clearly hear him taunt us. Then behind us appeared a 9 headed giant bird thing (SM+4). Does not seem to be our day...

Let the Fight Begin!

First up the giant bird, because you know 9 heads and giant size not being enough of a threat. It screams and everyone except Xhai Kiyun failed the HT roll and is stunned, Gushou fails by enough that he shits his pants. eewww.

Turn 1: Scary bird bites Xhai Kiyun 5 times - going for each limb and his torso, I guess to just rip him apart. It spits acid at each of us with the remaining heads. Xhai Kiyun is only hit once but it hurts pretty good (crippling his shield arm) and Gushou being stunned does not dodge and takes a hit to the chest for almost half his HP. Xhai Kiyun steps to attack it but it does a Feverish Defense and Retreating Dodge, avoiding most of his hits - though he does hurt the leg a bit. Shen Feng opts to try and stop the Dark Stranger before he gets his spell off and doesa full move. Gushou fails to recover from stunned. An Rang looks for vulnerable spots and calls them out to us. Our traveling companion gets off to the side.

Turn 2:  Xhai Kiyun  takes anther step, slashes at the leg, Shen Feng closes in on his target, Gushou is still stunned, and An Rang figures his shuriken will be more effective on the sorcerer so heads that way. Scary bird bites itself in the leg, crippling it and hits Xhai Kiyun again.

Turn 3: Yu Furen casts a healing spell and runs to use it on Xhai Kiyun, nearly fully healing him! Xhai Kiyun tries a stab at the vitals An Rang pointed out and hits twice but does little damage through its thick hide. Shen Feng tries to slam the sorcerer who dodges and continues his spell. Gushou figures this is not going well and opts to go all out. Calling on his shenshou Stormcaller he borrows energy from it and does a Rapid Strike for 5 attacks, plus fueling extra lightning damage. All hit but the first parry is a crit. Spending wildcard points to make it a normal success he is able to land the other 4 with a -7 to its Active Defense. He does solid damage and suddenly there is a bludgeoned and charred bird! The Dark Stranger finishes his spell and teleports away.

Xhai Kiyun says to Gushou"Next time, lead with that" (funniest line of the night). Gushou tries to explain he was scared and shocked, took him a bit to get his wits together. Xhai Kiyun simply repeats himself and Gushou runs to the lake stripping off his clothes and hoping to wash the acid away and clean up.

Session Over

That pretty much ended things for the night, the GM was unprepared for the fight to end that quickly. I'm not sure how we could have survived a few more rounds though!  Well worth spending all that FP on Flurry of Blows to halve the penalty for those Rapid Strikes (already quartered from Weapon Master and magic weapon), though the extra lightning damage turned out not to be needed.

Not something he can do all the time, but  I think circumstances warranted it.

What could we have done better?

After the fact it rather belatedly occurred to me that Xhai Kiyun could have used his Wildcard to help Gushou recover from being stunned, or maybe An Rang could have too. However I think Xhai Kiyun could have done it as a Free Action. Xhai Kiyun regretted going for the vitals, his Swing would have penetrated the armor better than his thrust.

I didnt think about using 2 wildcard points to replace that crit, it had to be suggested to me.

Overall I think we did very well and no one made a major error or could have done much different.

The bad guy got away, next session we will check out the temple for clues or maybe get a visit from the lakes dragon. Who hopefully will be understanding about Gushou washing up in the lake.

Were probably going to be chasing this guy down for a bit.

This was the first time I was able to use Kusari against a serious opponent and it worked well. That -4 Parry and -2 Block is nice for getting around cinematic active defense scores, though I expect to be fighting more who rely on Dodge. Testing continues!

TTJP - Season 1, session 3 - The Vampires that go Poof!

Note: I did not report on Session 2 because I was dealing with a death in the family and simply not up to it. Its been several weeks though and I'm coping better, so here is Session 3 of Ten Thousand Jade Petals!

Session 2 Recap

We had come across a town beset by plaque and mass deaths a month before that due to flooding.
An Rang adeptly handled healing the town from what was determined to be a negative Chi plaque while the rest of the group stayed just outside of town.
The next day we decided to follow the trail of the stranger who had brought the plaque.

Session 3 On the Trail!

We traveled with Shen Feng leading the way as he has the highest Sense Chi skill in the group. An Rang has a nice wagon and the rest of us ride horses. We travel a a decent clip, using grain to supplement forage for the horses so they need fewer breaks.

I think the mermaid is riding a horse too, but she might still be on An Rangs wagon. Oh, did I forget to mention we picked up a mermaid last time? Maybe catch up here...

Ok, so shes some kind of water spirit, not actually a mermaid. But she lives in the water, is pretty, and makes great music. Close enough. FYI her name is Yu Furen

Ambushed!

After a days travel we come across some old ruins that radiate really bad chi. As we look the place over and discuss ideas before getting on the grounds a cloaked stranger appears, tells us we will not survive the night (its evening now) and summons a bunch of chi vampires we later are informed (by the helpful mermaid) that they are called Hopping Vampires. These suckers are fast! They appear some distance away but quickly reach us using Super Leap (Move 20). He then flies away.

Xhai Kiyun charges forward on his horse to meet them halfway and Shen Fend comes up by his side. Before the rest of us can move the vampires easily close the distance and partially surround our two forward members with one each on the two still in the back.

They try to knock Xhai Kiyun off his mount using slams but with his huge size and horsemanship he stays mounted. Everyone else dismounts as soon as they can.

The vampires hit hard and parry very well, though some of that was the GM rolling really well.

Xhai Kiyun takes some hits but his armor stops most of it and he goes for his signature move of decapitating his foes.

Shen Feng hurts them pretty good but maybe half his attacks are parried and he takes a major wound, going negative HP but staying on his feet.

An Rang gets hit hard with an opening crit to the leg, crippling it and is taken out before he can do any real harm to them.

Gushou uses Stormcaller in smallsword mode so he can have the fencing parries because the group is outnumbered. It does less damage but slightly better with Rapid Strikes so the idea is to hit more often for less damage and with a better defense. He puts some energy into its lightning attack though to compensate and finds out that is extremely effective against the vampires.

He tries Feints combined with Deceptive Attack and Rapid Strike and though they manage to parry several of his attacks he does a very credible job. He tried to move up to Shen Feng after dispatching the vampire on An Rang but they move in between so he cant assist. Luckily Xhai Kiyun is more than up to the task and covers Shen Fengs back after he got hurt.

The Sorcerer (Thats what Gushou thinks he is for now) flew off after sending the vampires after us but we will see him again.

Another Town Besieged

The group bandaged up and rested before heading on and coming to a town on fire with dead bodies everywhere.

We quickly pull people out of burning buildings and Gushou summons rain to help with the fire. Xhai Kiyun was quite surprised by this (a personal high moment for me) and asks if he was responsible fir the previous storm. Gushou quickly says that wasnt him, though maybe Stormcaller attracted some of the lightning.

After rescuing the few survivors we could we find out the Stranger came here demanding they lead him to a nearby magical grotto. When they refused he kidnapped a child and unleashed the vampires.

The fires were from the villagers using fire to kill the vampires.

The group advises them to head to the town we left a few days ago which lost many of its people but is in far better shape than this one and decide to track the sorcerer and rescue the child if we can.

Aftermath

Despite this being a heavy combat game it went surprisingly fast. Everyone was paying attention, no significant technical problems, and everyone pretty much knew the rules so no looking things up.

We made one big tactical error in splitting the party but that was simply a matter of underestimating their speed. Its harsh when your surrounded and outnumbered in GURPS, as it should be.

We need to discuss tactics for the next fight but unless Gushou appears to be really outnumbered I think Ill go with chain whip over smallsword.  His magic one does not have the U for Parry so he can parry almost as well as with smallsword and do about double the damage. Also it has range 1 to 4 and is harder to parry,

We shall see.