Pokemon Umbral Theatre 20: Where Logic Goes to Die

[Dracorion]

Originally Posted by Menarker

EDIT: Also, Drac, Renny should have 50 rage at the point that Togekiss hit two foes with its Heat Wave attack. 2 damaged foes = 2 instances of 5 rage.

'Kay, missed that.

Originally Posted by Menarker

Also, pokebrids who are under paradigm shift like Renny currently is immune to status changes and debuffs and such. So he cannot be poisoned like he currently is.

That too.

Originally Posted by Menarker

Also, Aria should not have defeated Gliscor by electrifying it since Gliscor is part ground type, meaning it is completely immune, even despite having a flying typing which would normally be weak to it. (I know you were being free-form, but it's completely inaccurate to how it would normally work)

Can we just explain it as the same reason Pikachu can damage Ground types in the anime?

Yeah, didn't think so.

Originally Posted by Menarker

Also, Kyrie's Entei's Lava Plume is an AOE attack similar to Earthquake. Hit two foes and hits an ally.

Tell Bard about it. I'm going to just go on ahead and edit my post to say it was Focused.

Originally Posted by Menarker

Also, Renny hit the soldier B to 9%. The Health fountain supposably gave it 60 hitpoints back. So why is it that the soldier's health is 79? 9 + 60 is NOT 79.

My bad.

Originally Posted by Menarker

Similarly, Impact knocked the Medic down to 15%. The health fountain also supposably gave 60% back. Why is the Medic now at 225%! Quite a gross error from the real value of 75 to 225!

The Medic healed himself.

Originally Posted by Menarker

Also... while saying this hurts our chances, Mirror has 40 rage now. But building a construct is 50 rage, right? So she should have been at 0. Then when she got hit 3 times by the wretches, gained a total of 30 rage. Seriously! Your math skills are suspect!

Mirror attacked once.

All issues have been fixed now.

Originally Posted by BardTheFifthLightWarrior

If Charlotte shot Hammond would it solve any problems?

No.

[Bard The 5th LW]

Curses, violence cant help here.

Also, fuck you with a spoon Drac.

[Dracorion]

Love you too.

No, I'm afraid the only way Charlotte's getting Hammond back is through the power of Love and Friendship.

[Menarker]

First, not all errors were fixed. Just ones I noticed the first run-through.

- Psystorm: Melanie -31% (19%). Matthias has been defeated. Psyshade Charlotte -106% (504%).
- Charlotte’s Team Formation Update:
[Melanie (3%)] [Hammond (Dominated)] [Pike (Defeated%)] [Kirie (19%/BadPois)] [Entei (Defeated)] [Matthias (14%/BadPois/Paral/Conf/Disable)]

You supposably knocked out Matthias with that Psystorm. So why is he showing as 14% and statused in the formation?

Also, I do feel this battle is very much unfair for Bard.

First, there are around the same number of foes to fight as there was the last time we fought Moera (and it was still a difficult fight) and Charlotte's side is half the size as back then. AND THE ENEMY FORCES ARE INCREASING EVERY TURN on top of that.
Statuses and debuffs are totally uneffective, so the only thing that is viable is sheer damage. Yet...
The ability to press the offensive and any manner of Medic support to stay alive is being neutered by the psytellites rage draining ability. (It also doesn't help that the rage draining happens AFTER the allies might have gotten any rage from being attacked)
I don't recall them getting Second Wind or any sort of support like that. Heck, this situation calls for Bard suddenly getting a Deus Ex Machina and learning how to use Phantomere's ability or something like that. (Maybe Thief could be used on that Chroma Fragment when/if we get rid of Moera's potected status?)

Keep in mind, we all agreed that Charlotte and Matthias are the currently the characters in most need of character's strength development.

I'm willing to give my all to help Bard out with the future battle plans, but this is really one-sided. >_>

[Dracorion]

Well that's fixed now.

And yeah, I meant it when I kept saying that Bard is screwed.

[Bard The 5th LW]

I agree with Menarker completely.

[Menarker]

Proposed battle plan for Bard, since I discussed with him and Drac a bit.


Melanie: Spends 75 of her 80 rage to use 5 items. 2 healing items on herself and on Kyrie (Heal the two up to full), and 1 revive on Entei (which also gives Kyrie 25 rage for being a leader). Shift to Honchrow form for immunity to psychic type (and avoiding 2 quad weaknesses)
Charlotte: Switch with Mio.
Mio: Paradigm Shift > Harpressor Form. Attack with Corpse Bomber, ignoring the charge up time due to Paradigm Shift. Target Psyshade Kirie directly for 350 power with splash damage on the psytellites on both side. Boosted Power due to Paradigm Shift. Attack is poison type and thus does neutral damage against psychic types.
Kyrie: Spends her 50 rage to use Endless Waltz on "Psyshade Charlotte" for 500 power with whatever damage is super effective (Probably Bug/Ghost/Dark).
Cecilia: Spends 50 rage to use Great Escape. Is Invincible for 3 turns. Attack Psyshade Charlotte. If she is knocked out, target Psyshade Kyrie. If both are knocked out, target Psyshade Matthias. Use the weapon "Murder of Crows" with any of these.

At end of turn:
Matthias: Revive with 1 hitpoint according to enforcer rule which everyone has forgotten but I found in my researching the discussion threads. Should stay in the back row until he gets the rage he would get on turn 3.

http://www.nuklearforums.com/showpos...2&postcount=30

EDIT: Drac mentioned that since Bard's team has no Second Wind and rage did not carry over from the previous battle, Mio doesn't have enough rage for Paradigm Shift. In that case, was thinking of using Cluster Fall from her Raikner form to attack 4 random targets for pretty good damage and gain 40 rage. (It is not a sync tech, but a normal attack of that ruin type pokemon which she is a pokebrid of.)

[Geminex]

Wait. Drac, that...
Oh for the love of...
I thought we were cool! I thought the guys who were supposed to die were actually going to die! One soldier surviving is okay. All of them surviving is no better than it was before.

But, y'know what, screw this. We'll do it your way.

But after this mission, we remake the combat system in a way that actually lets us use math to determine damage. Because, with apologies to AB, in a combat-centric system, guesstimates just don't cut it.

I don't even care about the mission right now. But guesstimates are just so arbitrary. Pokemon was all about numbers, and Umbral has inherited that. And in that context, arbitrary damage calculation, based on what the GM thinks is appropriate... bluh. It's inconsistent, there's massive potential for unfairness, and, well, it removes a lot of tactical depth. If a certain strategy is ineffective just because the GM thinks it should be ineffective, rather than the strategy just being flawed in some way... That just removes all incentive to plan out anything.

Look, AB, I know you don't want this. But if you want this RP to be combat-centric, there have to be actual rules govnering combat. And that includes some sort of coherent system for determining the effects of character's actions. If you didn't want that, you should have made this free-form. And you probably should have told us before we started.

And I have a few ideas on how to set this up. We don't have to use the pokemon system, that's just overcomplicated. There's better ways to do it, simpler, quicker. ANd hell, if you don't want to do the work, I will.

[Astral Harmony]

I shall be guided by you, Geminex.

And no, that isn't sarcasm.

Dracorion sent me a PM about the one-sided battle against Moera. It think that battle is going to end a lot shorter than the one Impact's team is fighting, so it couldn't hurt you to put that particular engagement on hold for now.

Bard also sent me a PM, so I need a bit of time to bend the plot a little to suit them all.

Hey, Menarker, d'ya think there's some kind of online Pokemon attack calculator? Maybe Bulbapedia has something to that effect.

I'm sure they've got something like that. After all, I saw an equation in there about a Pokeball's catch rate.

Or hell, just some equations would help, like Strength/2 + Power = Total Damage. I'd do some hardcore research and we'd have a statistically sound combat system.

But I still want to hear what Geminex has in his head.

[Dracorion]

AUGH RAUGH I DONT WANT GEMINEXS TO DO ANYTHING BLUH BLUH HE HAS TOO MUCH POWER ALREADY BLUH

Originally Posted by Geminex

Wait. Drac, that...
Oh for the love of...
I thought we were cool! I thought the guys who were supposed to die were actually going to die! One soldier surviving is okay. All of them surviving is no better than it was before.

But, y'know what, screw this. We'll do it your way.

... What? Footsoldiers A and C, Sergeant B and the HPG Engineer died. That's about half of the enemy deaths you had planned anyway.

Or are you saying Impact should've killed the Medic too?

AB, I'm okay with Gem's idea, but I feel we should leave an element of randomness when it comes to dealing damage. Like, sure, you can do all the math and have a rough idea of what the damage is going to be, but in actuality it could end up being a little more or less than what you calculated.

I just want to avoid combat turning into a great big "use only the bare minimum power to defeat an enemy" fest. Or to put it another way, I'd like to make it so that the players don't have the last word in who dies and when and how hard.

Y'dig?