D&D-Day: The Ballad of Echo Company (OOC)

[MrAbdiel]

Victory for Young Valor, and the Amcaran forces!

PartyOfRogues, we hit the 'critical threshold' before you got a chance to post, and I figured I'd move to the wrapup right away; but you're entitled to roll your attack to! I assumed K'ral was pouring on the hurt in the final push, however.

It seems like the danger has passed, for now! There's room for a little medical madness and camaraderie in the scene before it closes though!

[Continental Op]

Looks like Cavir and I picked the same color for our IC speech, so Wolf will be switching to Dark Green to try to avoid confusion.

[Waistcoatwill]

Wow, we did it with most of the party up and intact, well done folks!

I'm really enjoying this, even the horribly tragic bits. Hopefully the number of players will make it less of a headache for MrAbdiel for future missions too.

[MrAbdiel]

I'll be honest, I'm having a lot of fun but I was starting to dread the ritual of opening up so many tabs to pilot the unmanned characters. My goal was to get to the end of the Naphto beach arc and tie it off neatly to end it.

But with this reduced squad, and with missions I have planned for them that don't involve a sea of NPC tagalongs, it might be much more managable indeed.

Were you guys interested in proceeding past this initial, maximum chaos tutorial, to something a little more calculated and paced?

[JbeJ275]

I’d be down for that. This initial attack has been a lot of fun and there’s plenty more war to fight. Who is still here so we can get definite numbers?

[Cavir]

K’ral heads to the ruined bunker above, scanning the situation down on the beach, then looking for a vantage point in the rubble overlooking the beach and trenches.

Xilo meant watching the room overall, typical sniper's job making sure no one is trying something sneaky on us (someone was pretending to be dead, etc). Wouldn't send you up top alone. The thought is to get the prisoners searched and in one area so we can afford sending two people up top to guide our reinforcements down to us safely without them first throwing explosives.

Wow, we did it with most of the party up and intact, well done folks!

We were warned at the beginning the game was going to have a high character turnover. Somehow, especially thanks to Doc and Sal and some good die rolls, we avoided that!

Anyone else here follow The Adventures of the All Guardsmen Party (AGP). I love the humor. Chapter one is called "Darwinian Character Creation" which is what I assumed our first mission here was going to be more like in terms of PC death rate. The air drop and beach landings had to be extremely deadly. The extra NPCs plus the Players that went MIA handled that, even if by luck we didn't have active PCs meet their maker.

Hopefully we didn't lose anyone here into the rabbit hole depths of AGP. I am massively fighting finishing this post before rereading some more myself (in a good way!).

I'm really enjoying this, even the horribly tragic bits. Hopefully the number of players will make it less of a headache for MrAbdiel for future missions too.

I'll be honest, I'm having a lot of fun

I can't stress this enough. I really enjoy this game. MrAbdiel's storytelling and merging of D&D and WW2 is awesome.

Were you guys interested in proceeding?

Hell yes.
Hell yes.
Hell... yes.

Please!

[Continental Op]

This has been a blast, and I would love to keep going.

[MrAbdiel]

Well, that's enough positivity for me to keep on with it for sure. My posting ambition frequency was a little high, and the gambit of running two scenes and them merging them into one proved more taxing that I thought it would. But if you guys are adjusted to the casual pace of the game and that's alright, then I think we're golden.

And yeah, it was MEANT to be deadly! Not arbitrarilly - things like the shall that hit Spade would have been just very painful to a PC because it's not fun being wiped off the map without even rolling! But I expected to kill one or two of you. It wasn't for lack of trying. I shot a lot at you guys, and it's possible the stats on the general Kreigsoldat have been a little weaksauce; but mostly it's been good rolls (K'ral avoiding getting zzzorped by dragon lightning), bad rolls on my part (a hilarious amount of bad shooting from the squads in the Kreigshielder's den), Sparky being an absolute champ with his Temp HP fountain, Doc's mostly out of combat healing power getting everyone back up to snuff, AND generally good decision making from the party (teleport attack on the gun nests was good; getting out of the tunnel entrance to the Kreigshielder den was the right call because the move was always going to be Cloudkill turn 1 then Fireball turn 2.)

The Kreigshielder is a full on Lich (CR 21!) whose 7, 8, and 9th level spells were all tied up in the operation of the Shield mechanism, and who needed to devote his actions to maintaining the shield, and use only legendary actions to retaliate until he gave up on the shield. Technically liches are flat out immune to non-magical physical damage; but I merely made him resistant because of the bullet-and-bayonet theme of the game. Once you battered him down to under half his HP, he decided he would peace out before the LT could possibly glean anything from his mind.

I think that fight went well, except that with a fight with this many moving parts I'll always have atleast a sketch map available for the players. I might make a Roll20 thing for the next part, for visual aid.

[Waistcoatwill]

Woo, I'm excited for more Echo company action.

The fights have been great. This last one felt scary and there was lots for us to worry about other than just murdering the Kriegshielder. A quick sketch map sounds good for complex battles if it makes your life easier.

I have some alts in mind if the combo of Sal and Doc gets frustrating on your end. That's assuming he even lives much longer anyway.

[JbeJ275]

I’m also willing to rebuild or swap out Sal if that needs to happen, but I think a smaller squad does cut down on Sparky’a usefulness. The fact in can target everyone nearby is one of the things that made it so powerful.

Though this does conclusively prove you can’t beat New Titansberg.

[Waistcoatwill]

If you can sur-vi-ive here, you can sur-vi-ive an-y-where".

[Novabomb]

I am very much interested in continuing.

Answering another question, I am also well aquainted with AGP.

[Cavir]

Congrats everyone!

you'll be merged into an elite, small squad; and the surviving NPC's will be assigned to another. You may see them again in the field, but we'll be down to an all PC party.

No more red shirts

but I think a smaller squad does cut down on Sparky’a usefulness

Without Sparky it would easily have been a TPK. Xilo is going to be pushing for clones of Sparky to become standard issue (starting with all Skyknives of course).

L2-5: (4d10)[4][2][5][10](21)

Rerolling the 2: (1d10)[7]
HD6: (1d10)[2]
EDIT: hehe: just moved the 2 down the line.
EDIT2: +2 WIS. Max 62hp. Level up complete.

[Waistcoatwill]

So exciting!

Doc got 6, 2, 2, 6 for his hit dice so he'll reroll a 2
(1d8)[5]

Level 6 hit die (1d8)[4]

He gets more expertise, so I think he'll go with Investigation and Insight, as there are a bunch of folks good at Thieves tools and perception already.

[JbeJ275]

Without Sparky it would easily have been a TPK. Xilo is going to be pushing for clones of Sparky to become standard issue (starting with all Skyknives of course).

While a good idea there are presumably lore reasons based around Sparky being expensive, difficult to build and requiring more maintenance than the rest of the squad’s gear put together to prevent this from currently being how the entire army rolls out.

Anyway onto the level up [roll]18[/roll] and (1d8)[1]. I also get expertise on all my tool checks, so am all the more impressive with demolition tools. And another couple of infusions known, I might rejig the assortment I currently have depending on where we hit next.

[JbeJ275]

Going to format this correctly this time. (1d8)[1]

[Continental Op]

Wolf gets an ability increase this level. I know I should just increase his Dex, or take a feat like Sharpshooter, but I am thinking of taking the Chef feat. System-wise, it would provide a little extra healing, but the real reason is for the character and story. Food has been a big deal so far, and it would be fun to lean into that.

Rolling for new Hit Points: (1d10+4)[5]
And I don't have the original HP rolls, so I will forgo the free re-roll. Thanks, though.

[Continental Op]

Rolling for new Hit Points: (1d10+4)[9]
And I don't have the original HP rolls, so I will forgo the free re-roll. Thanks, though.

Yuck. Well, can he use his reroll on this latest 1? If so, here is his reroll: (1d10+4)[9]

[MrAbdiel]

You can. As for your previous rolls. Well, pick out an average spread of 5's and 6's so you can benefit from the reroll next time you get downtime. :)

[Cavir]

And I don't have the original HP rolls, so I will forgo the free re-roll. Thanks, though.

Found it for ya.

For Wolf's HP: (4d10)[8][3][7][3](21)

[Continental Op]

Thanks, Cavir! Its good to know my latest roll was the worst, and definitely worth the re-roll.

Also, I just looked up the rules on temporary HP and found that they do not stack. This is causing me to rethink the Chef feat a bit...I'm sure I'll make up my mind before we start our next mission. :)

[JbeJ275]

To be fair if we have another good source of temp HP that means I can put sparky on flamethrower duty for bunker clearance. It’s not the only way I can use that class feature.

[PartyOfRogues]

Can’t seem to find my old hp rolls so just a new roll for now
(1d8)[3]

[MrAbdiel]

Gents! I plan to (hopefully) have a new scene up tomorrow - the Ballad shall continue.

[Cavir]

Awesome! I'd hold my breath in anticipation but since we're talking hours away still I wouldn't be around for actually reading it if I did.

[MrAbdiel]

Thank you for not holding your breath - I know I'll get carried away in detail and I don't want to get to bed super late tonight, so I've elected to catch up on smaller post obligations and push back the scene introduction.

It'll be at an allied camp, mingling with other troops, visiting wounded NPC's, saying goodbye to them, etc; and also a briefing for the next operation. You'll be standing easy for this one, Echo Company.

[MrAbdiel]

I did it! I posted a thing!

Welcome back, 5th Squad. I've set up the scene with a few locations - if you make a little post about your characters heading or spending time mostly in one scene or another, I'll set those up for you and conjure the appropriate NPCs to light.

[Cavir]

Sweet! Here's the link to Episode 2 - Toujours En Avant

[Waistcoatwill]

Very exciting and thanks for the link!

[MrAbdiel]

Oh, yeah. I should have linked it, it being a new thread and all. Thanks Cavir! You have my back.