Wow. Responses. This board is pretty awesome, I need to come here more often.

Alright... Initiative: I believe I have that in hand; between what I found for said combat, and your explanations, it makes sense.

Combat:

Attacks is made by opposed test of [attacker's attack] vs. [defenders dodge/parry]. Damage is the weapon's class plus any modifiers (ie., unnatural strength) Defense... Armor is reduced from damage, soak style, and the rest is tallied up as 'stresses', temporary hitpoints. If it ever exceed stresses, then players can reduce stresses in exchange for a consequence. Consequences do NOT heal between each encounter.

Evocation: I saw three examples of it, and yeah, it seemed ded killy. Hadn't seen quite enough to come to an opinion, but in retrospect, it did seem to have a 3/3 overkill rate.


@ninja_Penguin: Ah, that does make sense, in retrospect. Thanks.

And @ Raum: I had no intention of actually brining him back, (ye gods, no.) I have an ingrained aversion to DMs doing.... things with official characters. I figured at best, they're going to conveniently prevent his reincarnation/resurrection plans from succeeding. Perhaps keep in conflict with his minions/nu-cult. (As his old one might very well wipe the floor with them.)

Also, wondering about whether bumping a Black Court is within reasonable accomplishments for the group I described, or whether it was due to horribly erroneous combat running.

Finally, I'm not just willing, but desperate for any plothooks or potential ongoings that I could work in this setting. I'm still getting the feel for how storytelling works here.