Follow the Bouncing Brick

This post comes to you courtesy of the Ogden Gaming Consortium.

Last Thursday brought one of those rare gaming moments that's so unusual that it just begs to be documented. The scene: A prison break is taking place at the paranormal correctional facility located on (or under, more specifically) an island off the coast of Freedom City. The New Champions, a group of young superheroes and the city's newest sensation, arrive just in time to see villains start to emerge from one of the bunkers. Jeopardy, the team brick, has jumped from the team jet and disabled (read: obliterated) the villains' getaway vehicle. Now it's time to smack down anyone lacking the good sense to go back to their cells. In other words, all the villains.

While the bunker from which the villains are emerging is fairly small, it provides three ways out. There are two doors, one each along the east and south walls. The west wall features an elevator shaft that the villains have also blown open and from which any that can fly are trying to escape. My character, Morningstar (think Hawkgirl from the Justice League cartoon, at least tactically) is covering the elevator shaft, being the only flyer on the team. Deadboy (an energy-draining Goth hero) and Blindside (a darkness-wielding mutant) are covering the east door, Jeopardy is at the top of the stairs on the south side, and Terminal Velocity ('TV', a speedster) is zipping around hitting whatever target presents itself. Defender II is presumed to be somewhere close by, but is not having much of an impact on the actual situation. As usual.

Morningstar has been trading blows with a villain named Flamestrike. I've tagged her pretty good a couple of times but haven't managed to put her down yet. About this time, another villain pops up out of the shaft: Lady Freeze. And my mind starts to work: one ice character, one flaming character, both up off the ground and within easy reach. So I fly around Lady Freeze and try to knock her back into Flamestrike. It works. End result: I take a little frost damage, Flamestrike takes some damage and is knocked back several hexes, and Lady Freeze is out cold (so to speak). And TV, in that English accent he uses, shouts out, "'Ey, everyone, Morningstar's playing billiards!"

Now, I told you that story so that I could tell you this one.

While this has been going on, Jeopardy, TV, and the others at various times have been dealing with a villain named Bulldozer—no, not the obnoxious, pro wrestler-cum-supervillain from Champions v.1-4, but a reasonably powerful and dangerous brick. Dealing with him is bad enough, but the other villains haven’t the good manners to wait for us to put him down before coming out themselves (in alphabetical order, no less). We had determined by this point that we needed to find some way to start blocking the exits. So after my little pool shot, someone suggests, "Knock Bulldozer down the stairs!" Jeopardy obliges, and Bulldozer disappears down the stairwell. On the next phase, Bulldozer comes flying back up out of the stairwell (not under his own power, mind you). And it still isn't enough to put him down. So, on his next action, he returns the favor and knocks Jeopardy down the stairs, with similar results.

By this time, Jeopardy is tired of this guy. (Jeopardy is not the most patient hero in the business to start with.) So she adjusts her tactics, picks up Bulldozer, and throws him down the stairs. He hits some nameless schmuck at the bottom, and Jepoardy's player rolls an exceptional damage roll. Result: Bulldozer and schmuck #1 are both down for the count. But wait, there's more. Consider that at the bottom of the stairs we have a narrow hallway packed with supervillains hoping to get a whiff of fresh oxygen. In other words, there's nowhere for them to go to get out of the way.

Jeopardy had rolled well enough on her knockback roll to send schmuck #1 flying backwards into another unsuspecting villain. So she rolls again, scoring another exceptional damage roll, resulting in enough damage to schmuck #2 to knock him flying backwards into yet another unsuspecting felon. The knockback from that roll (which probably violated Conservation of Momentum, but we weren't complaining) results in a knockout of schmuck #2 and a general mess that anyone who still wants to get out that way has to spend considerable time and effort trying to climb over/through. Three knockouts for Jeopardy on a single attack, plus a custom made traffic jam. The game had changed from billiards to dominoes.

This was made all the more remarkable by that fact that Jepoardy’s player does not traditionally enjoy great dice rolls, especially where damage is concerned. Curtis reminded me that they had tracked this once, and found that her rolls were below average often enough to be statistically interesting. Worse, she has this tendency to roll low at the worst possible times. It’s as if the player (rather than the character) has a die or two of Unluck. She makes up for this by being creative in the way she fights and by having more dice of damage than anyone else. Unfortunately, this is usually only moderately helpful. But on this day, she managed to roll high, and the results were impressive—scary, even.

The moral of the story: Good tactics are useful, but good die rolls are indispensable.