Dungeon 13 Turn 9
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The remaining enemies, now leaderless, don’t fight as well as they did a minute ago. The two guards attack Cordy, but don’t manage to deal any damage. Cordy sacrifices 1 HP to make a Spore Touch attack alongside all three available mushrooms, and senses that they can be a little nastier with it than usual. This causes mushroom 45 to spawn as the guard is thoroughly “demoralized” and stops fighting.
After dropping her oven mitts (things are too serious right now), Ricki takes out her pain and anguish on one of the skeletons, destroying it and taking no damage in the process. The other skeleton steps on a mushroom rather than focusing attacks. The spores from the mushroom deal 1 damage to the remaining guard and cause a second new mushroom to sprout from the “demoralized” one.
Speaking of Amadeusz, he steps away from the fight, returns to his human form, and considers the current situation. Ricki is awfully attached to this drider, and it may be difficult to make her see reason with her out of the picture. Maybe Amadeusz had better do something about this…
Mushy #45: Start a countdown to this Dungeon’s Destruction.
He better!
Cordy: spore touch last guard. Drop your potion of echtoplasm with Lara’s stuff.
All shrooms: attack the last guard
Ricki: kill the last skeleton. Pick up dropped staff
Amad: Rez Lara. Drop the tower shield with Lara’s stuff.
Lara: if you get an action, pick up your chain, siegesword, helm, and everything else you had before.
Not sure if Lara gets an action when she wakes up (I doubt it) but just in case it’s there.
Did she get to unequip and drop her Upgraded Chain Armor as a free action as a result of being “demoralized”? Ah, I see the Chain Armor there under her helmet.
When we have time, or when we cross through the upper middle (Death Owlbear) screen again, I suggest getting the Tower Shield from Molly to Lara because then she can send her Def much higher by switching from Siegesword to Tower Shield. That may make a difference when she’s forcing her way past enemies or using her Venomous Sting spell (or any other spell).
The ideal time for Amadeusz/Molly to drop the Tower Shield may be now, especially if Lara doesn’t get an action next turn… if she does get an action, consider getting the keys.
If there’s anything from Lara’s inventory that we want to transfer to another character (golemcorebomb, rope?) then that item should be left on the ground so it hasn’t been contaminated by being touched and thus can be picked up by someone else. Similarly, since we’re probably going to be in this room another couple of turns any items to be transferred should be dropped this turn so their Turn of intangibly is next turn, Turn 10 (when new wisps spawn), and the item can be freely picked up by anyone on Turn 11 without requiring both characters to spend an Action to trade items.
In general, think ahead about what we want our inventories to look like when we leave this room.
I recommend that if Amadeusz is going to revive Lara immediately on Turn 10 then Amadeusz should drop the Tower Shield that is on Molly on the ground beside Lara so that she can pick it up and have an impressive Def if she needs it when she’s still at 1 HP on Turn 11 (especially if she cannot pick up her gear on Turn 10 anyway).
Remember that Turn 10 is when the Wisps spawn according to the dungeon description and we don’t know how exactly that is going to work yet. Can Wisps spawn in the same area we are on Turn 10 and “!” that turn and be ready to ranged attack on Turn 11? We don’t know yet. We’re probably about to learn more about one of the big mysteries of how this dungeon and its Time Limit works.
Time Limit: More Elemental Wisps will spawn every 10 turns. Additionally, every 20 turns a Guard patrol will enter the dungeon to collect the dungeon’s output. If they find anything amiss, they will begin to search for intruders.
I think we may need to specify who the two new little mushroom pets created on Turn 9 go to, unless that was Cordy’s mushie that got stepped on and not Ricki’s, in which case Cordy is the only one who can take them right now, or if the mushroom that was stepped on was Ricki’s #43 and there’s no choice of who the mushroom created by Death Spores goes to (unlike one created by Infestation).
Sigh, mushroom accounting (dungeon#13, Turn#1-9):
Mushroom #42 was created from the Winter Wolf on Turn 3, assigned to Cordy and exploded in a purple mushroom cloud on Turn 4 fighting the Magicrows, killing all 3 of them (RIP Mushroom#42, we hardly knew you but rest assured your valiant sacrifice was not in vain) and sprouting Mushroom #43.
Mushroom #43 was created from the Magicrows on Turn 4, assigned to Ricki and apparently just died on Turn 9 (RIP Mushroom#43, you fought bravely against superior foes but barely lived longer than #42), sprouting Mushroom #46 in the process which seems to have been automatically assigned to Ricki to replace the squished #43 without asking us.
Mushroom #44 was sprouted from the Justiciar on Turn 8 and since Ricki already had Mushroom #43 at the time and Lara had just been rendered “demoralized” the only one who could take #44 was Cordy.
Mushroom #45 was sprouted from Cordy’s Spore Touch of Guard #1 on Turn 9 and seems to have been automatically assigned to Cordy.
Mushroom #46 was sprouted from the corpse of, uh, I mean “demoralized” Guard #1 after Mushroom #43 bravely got stepped on and crushed by a reinforced skeleton nearby in the same melee zone on Turn 9. It looks like #46 was automatically assigned to Ricki to replace brave #43. Long live Mushroom #46!
I think in theory both mushrooms #45 & #46 could be assigned to Cordy, leaving Ricki temporarily petless, but perhaps Death Spores doesn’t give a choice of who that mushroom goes to and it always replaced the pet that died. I guess I didn’t really pay that much attention to the details of the mushroom bombing process back at the Poisoned Well. It can seem like something of a sick joke to someone mostly just used to reading the webcomic.
Maybe I’ll quit trying to play the game and just keep track of all the mushroom pets, their birthturns, what they were created from, and circumstances of their creation. Maybe I’ll give them nicknames and assign them favorite colors…
… maybe I’ll just go to bed now.
mushroom genealogy might be a very intriguing research domain 😀
Take a careful look at the mushroom on top of the Guard’s head. I think that is Mushroom #45. Now look at the mushroom pets on the artwork for Turns 10 & 11. Do you notice anything?
I had to LOL at the text description of the guard being “demoralized” and mushrooms sprouting from the “demoralized” guard. I guess that (partially) answers my question from Turn 7.
I’m not sure if I want to know if being “demoralized” involves ceasing to breathe. Perhaps jokes about Lara being just “demoralized” and can be revived by good music, or about her just being “mostly dead” (as in “The Princess Bride”) would be in bad taste.
The party doesn’t kill, not even Cordy. This has been mentioned a few times, but Cordy specifically in the Caravan.
If he was killing he’d be spawning a whole lot more mushrooms per corpse
See https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-13-turn-7/#comment-15733 for my Comment from Turn 7 that I am referring to. The text description of Turn 9 appears to be something of a response to that.
The idea of the party not killing Drunks, Guards, Merchants, Thugs, Necromancers, etc. is at odds with the descriptions of the Infestation and Death Touch abilities (that create new mushroom pets), both of which specifically mention the words “killing” and “killed” (and “corpse”). Perhaps the descriptions of those abilities needs to be updated to mention that a sapient opponent being “demoralized” also counts and will create a new mushroom pet… or perhaps Cordy should drag the “demoralized” guards somewhere out of the way where Ricki won’t notice them while Amadeusz looks the other way.
I know you arrived late, so here’s a relevant page:
https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-8-turn-2/
I suppose the Infestation text uses nonstandard definitions of “killing” and “remains”?
Thank you for the reference to the relevant and helpful explanation page.
I was reading the webcomic back when that happened, but it has been a long while since dungeon 8 (D8) and I haven’t reviewed that dungeon recently in the Archives so I didn’t remember that particular interaction. I did review D11 before we started this dungeon since they seemed to be closely related but guess I should have reviewed D8 as well once we knew Cordy would be going to this dungeon to refresh myself on how they and their Abilities work. The two sentence description of Cody’s Ability was never updated to reflect that page (D8T2) or to reference it so that new people or those who had forgotten what had happened a year ago would know about it.
Non-standard definitions of words can be a significant hurdle for new or infrequent players.
I’ll go back to bifurcating now.
The explicit in-canon discussion the party has had during the dungeons is that the party knocks out sapient opponents (some bugs/animals/monsters may be killed rather than KO’d, see various panels of things being beheaded/skewered/etc). In addition to the panels of Ricki
mindcontrollingconvincing Cordy not to kill, Ricki and Kamau talk about not killing things in an early dungeon. You can also reference the discussions between Lara and Ricki in Lara’s bond dungeon regarding whether or not it was appropriate to actually kill the drider mobs.The rule mechanics use “kill” as a descriptor to simplify the rules and avoid having to spell out long “kill or knock out” caveat text everywhere.
I knew the group has talked about not killing repeatedly (we can add the Necromancer at D9T56 to the list of examples), that’s obvious to webcomic readers, but I’d forgotten how that was reconciled with the descriptions of Cordy and his pets’ Abilities that specifically mention killing.
The two sentence descriptions of Abilities like “Infestation” and “Death Spores” should probably be using words like “defeated” or “vanquished” rather than “killed” to help avoid confusion.
Non-standard definitions of words can be a significant hurdle for new or infrequent players.
I will go back to sesquipedalianly laconic circumlocuting now.
fingers with little legs running around us. fingers everywhere
from prev page
Yup, I’m pretty sure that would be like that. Justicar isn’t “vigilant ever since we entered” (a few enemies had this “!” on the very turn we entered a room), and would first get “!” and do nothing, and would act aggressively on the following turn – just like the guards on bottom level did.
I’ve been paying more attention this dungeon about how enemy detection range and activation works than I used to and I think the unwritten “rule” is that unless an enemy is aware because we previously activated them or they are a guard patrol of some sort (e.g. D2, D5, D11) or already active because they are mobile enemies like the wandering drunks (D2) or skeletons trying to leave the dungeon (D3) or the wolves (D8) or zombies (D9) then they will activate with a red “!” over their heads without taking an action that turn and act normally the next turn (guard patrols and mobile enemies may follow the same rule regarding getting a “!” first but I haven’t gone back through the old dungeons to figure that out yet). Then there are some special cases like the undead knight (D6). The large number of situations of either mobile enemies or already activated opponents is what probably confused me as a reader of the webcomic who wasn’t trying to play.
Activation range for unactivated opponents who are just standing around varies and can depend on the direction that the potential enemy is facing and whether they have ranged attacks or are melee-only opponents. If they are facing one way then they generally don’t activate for characters passing behind them and even for characters in front of them the activation range is often fairly short (a quarter of a screen?) or possibly even as specific as trying to mess with something they are guarding (like a chest) but it can be line of sight (which includes Guards and the Elemental Wisps in D13 apparently). If unactivated enemies are melee attacked (from behind or from the front) or if a character tries to just run past their location while they are unactivated they will get actions to attack normally that turn, otherwise they just get a red “!” above their head.
I’m not certain what would happen if an unactivated enemy that was melee-only was attacked only by ranged weapons; I don’t know if they could run up and melee attack in response or if they would be unable to counterattack until the next Turn — the answer to that might increase the utility of ranged attacks. [There is a crossbow lying around here in D13, maybe we should find out if we get the opportunity.]
Does that about summarize it and does anyone have anything to add or correct?
I think it happened once with rats. Someone shot a small rat from afar, hoping for one-shot-instant-kill, but the rat could actually get on foot to the attacker, and we got a very special panel of a rat being decapitated by the shot and his head flying towards the shooter and landing on them and biting them for 1hp, incidentally that was the small rat’s melee damage. Or something like that.
In general, “all actions happen on the same time” during combat, so if a melee enemy can get to the shooter, the enemy gets a chance to retaliate even if that enemy would get killed in first hit.
But, I’m pretty sure we actually were told that if we shoot from a place to where the victim cannot easily ran within reasonable short time (which I understand as “same turn”) (so i.e. path is totally blocked, or the path is not blocked but they would need to exit the room or do something complicated) then we get a free shot, no retaliation, but of course the victim will become alerted.
No idea what would happen if the victim additionally would have no way of knowing from where the shot came or who shot it, etc, like, i.e. dropping or shooting something from several rooms up on a victim below.
Thanks for the explanation.
Ah, I think that’s D4T8 https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-4-turn-8/ that you’re referring to, Ricki threw a sword at a rat and killed it but the nearby rat pile charged forward and she took 1HP from the fight that Turn. What exactly happened there on D4T8 from a game mechanics standpoint was probably more clear when it happened than going back in the Archive. I think someone needs to figure out what Ricki’s Def was and know the Atk of the rat and the rat pile to be able to figure out that Ricki wouldn’t have taken any damage from the rat pile alone and that the slain rat was still contributing its Atk to the melee.
I guess that answers my question about whether ranged attacks somehow occur before melee attacks.
Thank you for taking the time to answer and explain what we know and how we know it.
D4T8! yup, totally that, can’t mistake that one 😀
Thank you for finding it!
Yes it was exactly like you said. Ricky wouldn’t take any damage if it weren’t for the small rat melee retaliation. Also, if I recall well, we threw that sword from afar at one enemy to see if we can do that at all, and would throw melee weapon do any damage, and would accompanying enemy join the fight, or maybe just get “!” and so on
The result was this ridiculous panel, drawn this way just so we know that “the game will find a way to enforce its rules”. I think that LSN even said something like that on a stream 🙂
I’m confused by this wording. Does it mean, contrary to the ability description, that +1/2-dmg also applies to minion mushroom attacks? Or does it only mean that the Cordy discovered that it/they (meaning genderless ‘Cordy’) can get a bit more dangerous when attacking?
It’s cuz Cordy kicked ’em in the nuts.
LOOOOOOL 😀 I didn’t notice that 😀 thanks!
Reasonably likely that it’s fluff text to indicate we rolled a 2 on that attack, hence Cordy booting the guard in the nards.
edit: Deleted since Claudious’ plan at https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-13-turn-9/#comment-15764 is now identical…
…and if I include multiple links this should get caught in the spam filter and just conveniently disappear:
https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-13-turn-0/
https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-13-turn-1/
https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-13-turn-2/
https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-13-turn-3/
https://dungeoneyes.com/dungeon-13-turn-4/
They get caught and then I have to review them manually, don’t make more work for me on purpose please.
Sorry, I didn’t realize that the Spam filter is actually checked regularly. Is there any description of how to avoid the Spam filter when posting? So far I the have discovered by trial and error that it seems to allow one link but automatically marks a Comment with two or more links as “Awaiting Approval”, even if all the links are to the Dungeon Eyes website. There also seems to be some words that trigger the spam filter include the thing Lara got at the start of every dungeon. There may also be restrictions on how frequently a Comment can be edited, and possibly other restrictions that cause the dreaded red “Awaiting Approval” to appear.
A “conservative” plan, for those who want to wait until it seems safer before resurrecting Lara:
Since nobody has posted a plan for Turn 10 that waits until all active enemies are gone before resurrecting Lara, I guess I’ll do it:
Since we know that ladders are no obstacle whatsoever and that Guard (and even the Skeleton I suppose, if that’s what the random “who do I attack” roll says) could come down and attack Amadeusz (or a newly revived Lara as far as I know for not being a Discord member with access to preferred esoteric knowledge about how resurrection works before we’ve tried it) I’d prefer to wait until the Guard is “demoralized” and the skeleton is “disarticulated” and we know what happens about Wisps on Turn 10 before “rezzing” Lara, so here is an alternative plan that has Amadeus loot the chest this turn instead.
Cordy: drop your POTION OF ECTOPLASM with Lara’s stuff and use Spore Touch I and Infestation on the last guard.
All shrooms: attack the last guard.
Ricki: kill the last skeleton, with prejudice.
Amad: drop the SHIELD, TOWER that is currently on Molly with Lara’s stuff, then go loot the unlocked unguarded closed Chest to your left (and hope that it has a Staff of Resurrection, just for the irony).
Totally this. First we should clean current enemies, and also on T10 “more Wisps” will spawn, so they with some bad luck could show up and attack our just-revived Lara.
We just had turn 9. It happened. We plan actions for turn 10 now. In incoming turn wisps will spawn. Let’s wait this one more turn and revive Lara on turn 11.
Something that I hadn’t really worried about before but that the combats that nearly killed Lara at D12T6 and did kill her at D13T8 have made me more curious about is whether and to what degree the “enemy AI” (or our “intelligent opponent”, if they are in fact being played intelligently) gets to know about our actions before selecting their own actions. For example, back on D12T5 the players needed to specify the characters’ actions for Turn 6. The players had Lara double swim left but could have had her swim down and melee attack the two reinforced skeletons armed with harpoons instead, however as I understand it conditionals are NOT allowed, such as, “double swim left unless the skeletons attack in which case melee them”. When Turn 6 was resolved the skeletons threw their spears to attack Lara at range as she swam left (presumably because she had entered the water) but if on D12T5 the players had chosen to have Lara melee attack the skeletons on Turn 6 then would the skeletons have been able to melee attack her with their harpoons rather than using the harpoons as somewhat inefficient ranged thrown weapons? If the skeleton behavior depends on knowing the actions we have already selected, then they have a distinct advantage in combat. That advantage would be somewhat mitigated by a rigid AI behavior that could (eventually) be learned, HOWEVER, if any opponents were being played intelligently then they would have a SIGNIFICANT advantage if they didn’t need to specify their actions until after they knew our chosen actions. In essence, they could use unlimited conditionals and we couldn’t use conditionals at all. Just think about how things would be if it worked the other way around and on D13T7 we knew that the opponents had declared they would all be attacking Lara on Turn 8 before we decided on our actions for Turn 8, we could have buffed Lara’s defenses in every way available if we’d wanted to. If our opponents were to be played intelligently on a regular basis then a fair and even system would require them to specify their actions on the prior turn without using conditionals and without knowing the results of the voting, just like we have to.
I assume something like this has probably been brought up before, so if someone could point me to that I’d appreciate it.
Conditionals in general are not allowed, and if they happen, they can be (a) ignored (b) used in a way that will not really follow them and screw us up for fun (c) accepted and executed. This last option is for certain special very simple small conditionals that make totally sense in given situation and our DM has the right mood to process them. Like “Ricky, attack that golem. Then, if you are still alive, go left” 🙂 Nah, I’m joking. But I think something really simple and tied to other game rules like “use that rusty sword, then if it didn’t break, pass it to Lara. if it broke, pass the shield to Lara” was still acceptable, but narrowly. What is absolutely not acceptable are LINKED conditionals, when one is dependent on outcome of other, creating a chain/tree of dependencies and multiple totally different results..
In general, they don’t. They have their own simple agenda(s) and certain rules. Some enemies target always the weakest atk, some the lowest hp, some pick the highest, and some at random “unless coordinated by some leader”. The pattern/tactics is always the same for each type of an enemy. But “leaders”, apparently more intelligent – I think we dont know (yet). I guess that leaders simply have their own strict set of rules how to lead their minions, just because it’s relatively reasonable, easy to “design & implement” and also pretty hard for the players to deduce and learn and exploit.
It’s not true we can’t use conditionals. We will just be punished if we over-exploit them, and have no guarantees which conditionals are acceptable at all, and the tiny red line on the axis of “amount of conditionals” and “conditional’s complexity” telling what is “ok” and what is “too much” is quite wiggly and pretty close to “(0, 0)” 🙂 OTOH, for enemies, we can guess/assume the rules are relatively simple, the DM has free hand in making the game more interesting on the fly, but at the same time, we were assured we won’t be punished and screwed up for no real reasons. Yes, enemies may have “complex scripts”, especially the most important key characters and enemies, like bosses, recruitables, etc. Sometimes in an after-adventure stream, LSN explains some of the scripts/ideas/paths that could have happened if we did something the other way, and that included some decision trees for enemies that are revealable – i.e. that was unique enemy that won’t ever show up, so its “ai logic” can be revealed, etc. But I have really vague memory of that, can’t quote nor tell which stream was that, sorry.
No, we specifically know that most of the opponents are NOT intelligent, and that they just follow their own simple rules, which we don’t know and have to learn. One way of learning them is i.e. scanning them – we then sometimes learn i.e. “attacks twice, and prefers to spread attacks over multiple targets” for the Owlbear, or “attacks the heaviest-armored enemy” for someone I don’t remember. MagicLens/etc are VERY useful in that matter, and I personally think we use them too sparsely. Once such rule is revealed, if we meet that kind of enemy again, it really helps.
Some, rare, intelligent opponents – we just don’t know. I think I’ve heard on a stream that “intelligent opponents do not have strict script, but have options and skills and will pick actions that will screw you the most, at least in their view”. I personally think they act as if they didn’t know our actions, but then, usually our actions are exactly in contrast to their goals, so it’s usually similar to “they act as if they knew” just because we do what they kinda expected. I.e. we want to break X, and they want to guard X and prevent it from being broken. But that’s a guess. Also, that part “at least in their view” is important. Enemies are not omniscient. If we have a concealed magic-mirror that reflects spells, intelligent enemy spell-casters would still cast that Terror(1)(B) upon us, simply because they don’t know.
I think that’s where’s DM/GM/LSN’s agency to make things interesting and challenging and story-tellable/etc. It’s not a PC/Console game where all the rules are hardcoded and set in stone and have to be always followed. Heck, in the earlier dungeons we kinda abused inventory mechanics, so the inventory mechanics were changed, and if I recall well, LSN actually was friendly/fair enough to change them during the intermissions after the ‘offense’ happened, not right-after-in-the-next-turn.
whaaa.. that grew longer than I intended. I hope I managed to clearly state what I’m pretty sure about, and what’s just my guesses.
Thanks for taking the time to write a long reply and to try to explain the limitations on using conditionals when specifying character actions. That was very helpful for me (and possibly for lurkers or other newbies who are sincerely trying to puzzle things out in a game of very sparse written rules and lots of house rules and “tribal knowledge”).
The reinforced skeletons with harpoons at D12T6 were a particularly good example of opponents that seemed to be reacting to our actions and very apropos since that was the previous time where Lara almost got killed (inadvertently resulting in a certain lurking webcomic reader getting involved in the Comments section, much to some peoples’ annoyance). From what you’ve indicated I expect it was just the skeletons in D12T6 reacting according to a flowchart/script/AI but that flowchart does seem it likely allowed them flexibility in how they attacked, by ranged weapon if that was the only way they could but by melee if that was possible, unless they were just ‘programmed’ to always throw their harpoons at the first target to enter the water, which is something we cannot know.
This might actually be relevant if we ever actually used Coccyx since it sort of implies that we could possibly specify something like, “Coccyx attacks the leading black Bolem, with either his Longbow and an Emergency Arrow if not engaged in melee by the Bolem next Turn or with the Deadly Greataxe he is carrying if he is engaged in melee.” Conserving arrows (especially when they are HP) may be very important for playing Coccyx.