Author Topic: The Beauty of Stealth - Ambushing  (Read 1783 times)

Offline KOFFEYKID

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The Beauty of Stealth - Ambushing
« on: May 15, 2010, 07:55:08 AM »
Ok, so I was perusing the skills section a few days ago, and I was flabbergasted by how awesome the ambush trapping of stealth is. Let me give you an example situation to illustrate (because this shiz is good).

Quote from: Ambush
Ambush
With the Stealth skill, you can set up an ambush by rolling to hide as per the Hiding trapping, below. Given time to prepare, you might even create aspects on the scene to set up the ambush. When you decide to strike, the victim gets one last Alertness roll to see if he notices some- thing at the last moment. You have the option of keeping your hiding roll or rerolling your Stealth in response to this last Alertness roll. If the victim succeeds, he can defend normally (but not take a normal action in the first exchange). If the victim’s roll fails, he can only defend at an effective skill level of Mediocre.

Ok, so Im working on a character named Isabella Hargrove, she's a red court vampire who managed to hold onto her soul.

She has: Stealth at Great (+4, Fantastic +6 with Cloak of Shadows). Fists at Great (+4, Superb +5 if Might factors in, which it will in my example). She has Inhuman Speed and Strength, and Claws (weapon: 4).

Her High Concept is Red Court Rebel, and she also has an aspect of:

In Silence and Shadows
Isabella prefers to avoid direct confrontations. She would rather take to the shadows, wait, watch, and strike at the best opportunity. She has the patience of a spider, and weaves webs of deceit.
Invoke: Bonuses to stealth, attacking from an ambush, and lying.
Compel: To get her to wait, plan, slow down, or to get her in trouble for waiting too long, not acting fast enough.

So she has finally found the faerie responsible for beating up her boyfriend, Vidar, and she's found out where he lives, a Manor surrounded by twelve foot high walls.

So here is the setup:
Isabella knocks out the lamp around the corner that the target will be walking by, putting the scene aspect of "Dark Sidewalk" on the scene. She also climbs to the top of the wall and waits, putting the aspect "From Above" on her.

She rolls a 2 on her stealth, making it a +8, and decides to tag Dark Sidewalk to make it a +10.

The target walks by, on his way to the front gate whistling, without a care in the world. (He had to roll a 10 or better on his alertness).

Isabella strikes, tagging the aspect of "From Above", and spending two fate points her aspects of In Silence and Shadows, and Red Court Rebel (she is taking full advantage of her vampire strength). She rolls a 2 on her fists, making it a 11 shift fists attack at Weapon: 4. The target does ***not*** get a chance to use his defence skill, his defense is ranked at 0, since he is caught completely off guard. He rolls a 2 on his athletics. She hits him for 13 Shifts of damage.

Holy crap. Ambushes are sexy.

-edit- Fixing the errors Deadmanwalking pointed out.
« Last Edit: May 15, 2010, 08:16:44 AM by KOFFEYKID »

Offline Deadmanwalking

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Re: The Beauty of Stealth - Ambushing
« Reply #1 on: May 15, 2010, 08:04:05 AM »
Indeed they are. Ambushing someone is a quick way to kill them very, very, dead. Though this specific character is a bit optimized for them (in fact, she should have Stealth +6 with cloak of shadows).

Also bear in mind that Enchanted Item defenses can apply even to ambushes, as does all armor. And they do get a defense roll, it's just at a base of Mediocre (ie: 0), but they can roll and even add appropriate Aspects.

I'd also be very skeptical of Might adding to Fists, and pretty much universally disallow that in my games, not that it matters much in this case.

Offline KOFFEYKID

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Re: The Beauty of Stealth - Ambushing
« Reply #2 on: May 15, 2010, 08:10:04 AM »
Ahh, good point with them still being able to roll, its a little less powerful, but still pretty impressive. I think Im in love with Ambushes. Also, I think would be an excellent example of a new skill trapping for guns "Sniping". Basically follow the same setup here, add aspects to the scene, they have to make an alertness to "feel like they are being watched" and if they fail they dont get to use their defense ranking to avoid getting shot.

Offline Deadmanwalking

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Re: The Beauty of Stealth - Ambushing
« Reply #3 on: May 15, 2010, 08:31:39 AM »
Actually, you can already do that with Guns in terms of adding Aspects ("In My Sights" is a listed example of a Maneuver). And to get the Mediocre defense, they really should need Stealth, I mean, who's heard of a sniper without Stealth?

Offline Victim

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Re: The Beauty of Stealth - Ambushing
« Reply #4 on: May 15, 2010, 08:48:36 AM »
And it's really serious if someone is ambushed by a high power evocation.

Offline KOFFEYKID

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Re: The Beauty of Stealth - Ambushing
« Reply #5 on: May 15, 2010, 08:51:57 AM »
Yeah I guess a wizard can pull off this trick way better, now that I think of it. They dont even need a high stealth, just a nice powerful veil (evocation or thaumaturgy, depending on the time table).

Offline Archmage_Cowl

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Re: The Beauty of Stealth - Ambushing
« Reply #6 on: May 16, 2010, 03:47:55 AM »
Quick question. If you set up a special type of spell with thaumaturgy(not saying all or even many of the violent spells would fit into this) that attacked the target with like a car or something via a really bad luck spell (like the evil eye curse in blood rights) would they get to defend if they didnt know it was coming? This could be totally redundent i'm just curious.
"I who stand in the full light of the heavens, command thee, who opens the gates to hell. Come forth Divine Lightning! This ends now! Indignation!" Jade Curtis Tales of the abyss

Offline KOFFEYKID

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Re: The Beauty of Stealth - Ambushing
« Reply #7 on: May 16, 2010, 04:10:08 AM »
Thats a good question, id say that that type of spell ramps up to bigger and bigger stuff. So they would have warning as smaller bad things happened to them. Then when the car came they'd be real twitchy. It depends on how the player is handling it, I think.

Offline crusher_bob

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Re: The Beauty of Stealth - Ambushing
« Reply #8 on: May 16, 2010, 05:09:44 AM »
Quick question. If you set up a special type of spell with thaumaturgy(not saying all or even many of the violent spells would fit into this) that attacked the target with like a car or something via a really bad luck spell (like the evil eye curse in blood rights) would they get to defend if they didnt know it was coming? This could be totally redundent i'm just curious.

I'd guess it depends on exactly how you are going about it.

Example 1 (Like big hammer killing curse in Blood Rites?)
You want to cast a killing curse (big hammer version) at the guy, and the immediate effect will be "he's run over by a car".  Then the guy gets to resist with Discipline, just like any other hostile thaumaturgy effect.


Example 2 (Like Barabbas curse?)
You've already hit the guy with the killing curse (big hammer version) and now, hours later, it's actually getting around to killing him.  Probably not, the guy had a chance to resist the curse when you laid it on him, and you've already gotten enough shifts to kill him, so the car is just the game world catching up with the game system.

Example 3:
You've hit the guy with the curse (small hammer version), enough to give negative aspect(s) but not enough to qualify as fully fatal.  Then the car trying to run him over is handled as a compel on an aspect.  In this case yes, he can refuse the compel, or maybe just dodge the car after having been surprised by it, or something.

Example 4 (Like various magical mind bombs in Turn Coat)
You aren't targeting the guy you want run over, you are targeting the guy driving the car.  You mind control the guy driving to try to run over the guy you want run over.  Then it should be handled as an ambush by the guy driving, with the potential road pizza getting an alertness roll.