Nathan of the FoS wrote:What I don't get is, why doesn't Shadross retreat and call in the cavalry, or just go underwater entirely (since it's waist deep) and force Harrin to deal with him down there?
I'll admit that it was with Shadross's motivation that I was taking the most liberties. This is why I wanted a player! Nevertheless, I still have some backing:
* Shadross has gone out on a limb defensively before, despite Cortez's repeated urgings not to. I'm thinking he thought he could handle things abovedeck, and when the troll washed downstairs, he realized his mistake but it was too late. This brings us to...
* Shadross can't pull the unconscious troll up the stairs while maintaining a defense, and he can't leave it down there to hurt his men. Thus, he wanted to get rid of Harrin before lugging the troll back up.
* Shadross knows that that killing Harrin will fix the domination, and he has a clue that the sinking ship problem will go, too, based on what they saw with the other phantom ship.
* Going underwater fully was an option I didn't consider: that would block LoS. Looks like I'm gearing up for a rewrite! Still, Shadross would be doing half damage to Harrin after several penalties.
Harrin can avoid him at will in this scenario, so he gets no advantage at all from conducting the battle here. He can't do any lasting damage to the troll, either, and it's incredibly stupid to fight two enemies you can't hurt in close quarters...surely this would occur to him? He's not taking Int or Wis damage, after all!
True, but he's undergone a Malign Paradigm Shift upon realizing that this is his nightmare that's killing his men. Adding modifiers for being inadvertantly responsible (-4), being alone (-1) in close quarters (-1), and of good alignment (-1), he has a DC 32 Will save, which would require a natural 20. Some of his men are safe and participating (-4) while others are clearly endangered (+4), so I could argue that these cancel out...but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, he's got to realize that his "safe" men are endangered in the long run.
So that's a DC 28 save. He needs a 17 or above.
He rolled an 8. That's a failure by 9 points, a moderate effect, and Rage seems appropriate. But I might as well roll...
hey, Revulsion! That could be interesting as well. More fodder for the rewrite!
Surely he feels responsible for his men, but getting himself killed (much less possessed by Harrin) doesn't do them any good either.
And yet he's been foolhardy this way before. I'm thinking he was foolhardy up on deck, and after that, it was too late, and he had to follow through.
Also, it seems really unfair that Harrin gets both to treat the ethereal as physical (the water drowning the sailors) and ethereal (popping in and out of the bulkheads), whichever is more to his advantage at the moment. Is that really how the phantom shift ability works?
EDIT: Well, I guess that really is how it works, which is a monstrous pain in the neck.
Perhaps it's unfair, but that's the way the rules read: in a phantom shift, everyone interacts with the ethereal resonance of the ship. Harrin can pass through lower ranks of ER, thus he can pick whether or not he's affected.
The real question for me is, could Shadross do the same thing? I keep thinking the solid ship is still there underneath, but that's not necessarily true.
EDIT: Turns out I already considered this. Shadross's original Charisma drain prevented him from doing this. The sailors should figure it out soon.
BTW, what happened to Ander's astral construct? Surely all this peekaboo has given it time to arrive on the scene?
Well, it's got to break through both hulls with its normal attacks. These are pretty tough ships, but I'll check the timing when I do the rewrite.
Whew! Well, if this is how it's going to go--me posting encounters and others commenting on the fairness--that might not be so bad. We'll still get to evaluate the effects of RL on epics on multiple levels.