sinanju: The Shadow (Default)
sinanju ([personal profile] sinanju) wrote2008-12-13 02:10 pm
Entry tags:

I killed a fellow PC last night...

I've been playing in a weekly face-to-face Champions game for a few months now. First one in years. The campaign ended this week with a double (two night) wrap up, since the GM is traveling to China for an indeterminate period for work. He wanted to wrap up the adventure we were having before he left.

So we confronted the Big Bad Boss Monster, a vampire who was stronger than any of us, faster than any of us, and had vast mental powers.

I was playing the Black Knight. He's based on the Kurgan from the original Highlander film. He regenerates like an SOB (I have 20 points of rPD and rED armor to represent the fact that any wound smaller than that heals so fast that it effectively doesn't even slow him down. Plus some Damage Reduction (even larger wounds heal really, really fast), and Regeneration. STR 50 and a huge sword for lots of HTH KA damage.

In short, he's a combat monster who's very, very hard to stop.

Did I mention that he's got 2x Effect from Mind Control attacks as a disadvantage? And that the vampire had Mind Control? Yeah.

First thing the bad guy did was an area effect Mind Control command "Kill yourselves!" I was the only one who succumbed and I impaled myself on my own sword, to little effect.

So the vampire's second command--to me--was "Kill your friends."

The Black Knight ripped the sword out of his own torso and immediately attacked the nearest player character. As my friend John in Virginia could tell you based on the years I played in his campaign, I have a policy regarding my characters being mind controlled. And that policy is: do your damnedest to carry out your orders.

If my PC is under someone else's mental influence, I don't dither, or try to be deliberately ineffective. I fight just as hard and just as enthusiastically as I do when I'm in my right mind. Anything less is cheating.

Alas for Ben, his character was closest. And he had virtually no resistant defenses. I sliced him nearly in half in one shot, and on my next action kicked his bleeding (but not quite dead yet) body into the next nearest PC. Which killed Ben's character and knocked the other character out.

Another player managed to disarm me and knock me down with martial arts at that point. (He was savvy enough to know he couldn't rally hurt me, but he could keep me out of action.) And before I could do anything else, the rest of the group managed to take out the vampire. But Ben's character was dead as disco.

So next week we start a new game. Ben's the GM. Gee, I hope he doesn't hold a grudge.

I have to say, though, that that was the most fun I've had gaming in a long, long time. Most of my gaming for the last three years has been online. Which is fun, don't get me wrong, but it's not the same. Sitting around the table, rolling dice, and making wisecracks and riffing on one another's jokes--it was loads of fun. I laughed more (and frequently harder) than I have in a long time.
ext_26142: (Default)

[identity profile] beccadg.livejournal.com 2008-12-14 03:39 pm (UTC)(link)
I killed a fellow PC last night...

*Winces.* That can be messy. I nearly took the head off a character my brother was playing once. Fortunately a) it was accidental. The GM at the time was big on using the rules for things like weapon breakage and what happens when someone who has no skill with a particular weapon tries to use it anyway. b) My brother was playing a dwarf and the sword that slipped out of my hands went by over his head. My brother did kill a fellow PC once. The murder wasn't OOC. He was playing Chaotic Evil. What was OOC was his warning the murder victim he was pissing him off twice before he went for his head. The fact he managed to get the roles to cut the target's head clean off brought the session to a screeching halt.

Ben's the GM. Gee, I hope he doesn't hold a grudge.

That would be the important thing. My brother would likely have forgiven me if I'd accidentally killed his PC given why my PC was trying to use the sword. The kid who's PC got beheaded by my brother's CE character however had a fit as only a hormone laden adolescent male could.
ext_12572: (Default)

[identity profile] sinanju.livejournal.com 2008-12-14 09:28 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm not really worried about Ben holding a grudge. He was cool with the whole thing. :D
ext_26142: (Default)

[identity profile] beccadg.livejournal.com 2008-12-16 07:05 am (UTC)(link)
He was cool with the whole thing. :D

Awesome! In my case the fit ground the particular game session to a halt, but the campaign went on. We generally played with one of two kinds of parties, good aligned ones on missions, or evil aligned ones out to make a fortune. When we played the evil parties PCs killed PCs. Backstabbing was part of the game. He played in the good games after, but no more evil ones.

Heh

(Anonymous) 2008-12-15 01:45 am (UTC)(link)
Lol, that's great. -Bryan