[The Last Gasp] Heian Twilight Playtest

[Sciencezam]

So I've been doing some test battles in preparation for an upcoming Heian-period fantasy action game. This time around I've decided to give The Last Gasp a shot, because I want to go for a Bloodborne/Nioh/Sekiro kind of feel to combat. Just about all the expanded combat options in MA are on the table, such as ruses, beats, and expanded retreats. I'm also letting people retreat more than 1 yard at a time, at a cost of extra AP.

Our PC for these rials was Reina, a user of Chinese Elemental Powers and unarmed martial artist. Reina uses Technique Mastery: Low Fighting extensively, and has a high IQ to help along some Shinto abilities and pressure point strikes. Her most notable abilities in these combats are Skin of Bronze (DR 10 with Tough Skin, Conscious Only) and Touch the Heart (a 4d fatigue attack that requires contact on bare, unarmored flesh). Reina's Karate skill isn't that high in the grand scheme of things, but she can float it to her high IQ when using a Ruse for good effect. She doesn't have High Pain Threshold, so shock penalties remain relevant for her.

The first fight pits Reina against a Killer Dire Deer, the Koroshika. It's got high move, fairly tough, and very ornery. However. It gets in some damage via blunt trauma, but is quickly felled by the Touch The Heart attack. Since gradual impairment is in play, the deer is down for the count. Reina then uses some enthrallment skills to convince it to move somewhere else later, and I resolve to pay more attention to PC attack methods. This also raises the question of how physiology modifiers should interact with Touch The Heart and such, still unresolved for my group.

The second fight has Reina go up against a bandit. He starts off using a naginata to fight from longer reach than her arms, but quickly loses control of it due to an ill-timed crit. While he's got a sword and good mobility via retreat options, attacking at reach 1 puts him within Reina's step range. Reina doesn't have especially high skill, but her high IQ means she can Ruse people very effectively, and her DR means she's often willing to All-Out-Attack (Double) or the like.

For the third fight, I've got a better idea of Reina's abilities so I try to make something that will give her a hard time. Her weaknesses seem to be things that get past Tough Skin, things without FP or with armor, things that are highly mobile and large groups of enemies.

The third fight features 3 zombies and a Yuki-Onna. The zombies are built with fairly average stats and are set to go down in two hits or 10 damage or so, whichever feels more right. The Yuki-Onna is the boss; she has no FP, powerful attacks, good skills, and two AOE spell moves. All of her attacks do 1 follow-up burning damage that gets past tough skin, due to the extreme cold of her icy weapons and spells. Finally, since she's a flagrantly supernatural creature, I decided to give her AP regeneration for 1/3rd of her max AP each turn (also to account for her not being able to spend FP). This had a nice emergent property where her 10 AP spells were powerful, but could only be used every few turns.

Reina starts off 5 yards from the zombies and 9 yards from the Yuki-Onna. While the snow spirit was willing to let the zombies handle Reina at first, once they started being dispatched she summoned an icy naginata and prepared for combat. The zombies themselves didn't do much, but they inflicted some blunt trauma and got Reina to spend some of her early AP reserve.

Once the last zombie was down the Yuki-Onna joined the fight proper, opening with an AOE line spell of icy spikes. This took 10 out of her 12 AP, but it forced Reina to dodge and drop in an attempt to defend. It struck home but didn't penetrate DR, just inflicting its burning follow-up damage.

The Yuki-Onna then settles into attacking with her polearm, while Reina defends and tries to get in a good pressure-point strike. One hits home, disabling the sprit's arm for several minutes - forcing her to drop the polearm and switch to an ice knife. There's a back and forth of knife slashes and pressure-point strike attempts, with the Yuki-Onna using her second spell when she can: a circular AOE burst of ice spikes, centered on herself. That move ends up doing quite a bit of damage over the fight, as Reina can't dodge out of it due to her crouching and close-combat use; 1 follow-up burning adds up. After each use the spirit is more vulnerable, and tries to retreat/dodge a few yards away to recover, while Reina tends to AoA double her. A physiology modifier of -2 and some lucky rolls on the spirit's part mean not all of the pressure-point strikes manage to cripple limbs, but the damage from raw punching adds up.

Eventually the spirit is reeling, and Reina's able to land a pressure-point strike on the torso (causing suffocation & associated constant AP loss) and the leg (crippling its movement). The damage is enough to take the monster below 0 HP as well, so I end the fight there. Reina's at 4/10 HP and has had to spend 2 FP over the course of the fight; it'll take her 8 hours of rest to recover the FP, and longer to Esoteric Medicine the injury healed.

Overall I like the addition of The Last Gasp to combat. It's not as prevalent in shorter fights, but it adds some interesting dimensions to longer ones. Bosses that regenerate AP - but not their full amount - settle into a pattern of bursts of heavy activity separated by more calm ones, as intended in the rules. I also got some ideas on how to make boss fights fun for a group. Something like the Yuki-Onna with fatigue instead of burning follow-up, better skill levels, and better defences or a fun Injury Tolerance could be a real hassle for a party to handle.

Mook enemies are a quick way to tire martial PCs out. It takes at least 1 AP to dispatch them, and probably more to get into range. A caster type could possibly do better, using explosions to take out several all in one go. Stage hazards also seem a realm worth exploring - it didn't come up over the short fight, but the Yuki-Onna's realm was freezing cold, so Reina would lose FP if she stayed too long. An adventure through a poison swamp or up a freezing mountain could add some real tension to the fight at the end.

Regarding Chinese Elemental Powers, Skin of Bronze is fine - it's flexible and tough skin, so there's many ways around it even if it's higher DR than the best mundane armors. Touch The Heart (and is accompanying other organ attacks) seem too close to 'I win' buttons for me to really like their use, so there might be a lot of enemies that are immune to it or I could otherwise discourage it. Pressure-Point strikes were actually more fun than I thought they'd be; each one that lands home helps you win, but it doesn't seem like any one strike immediately wins the battle for you. It' a way to attack a non-HP resource on enemies: limbs and AP.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Sciencezam

a 4d fatigue attack

This is gonna be even stronger than normal using rules for slower healing of FP.

1 follow-up burning damage that gets past tough skin, due to the extreme cold of her icy weapons and spells.

10 per die x 0.25 = 3 points (rounded up) with +300% (irresistible attack) for 12 points?

Reina's able to land a pressure-point strike on the torso (causing suffocation & associated constant AP loss)

Normally I'd assume creatures without FP would lack other metabolic issues like requiring to breathe, aren't yuki-onna basically ghosts?

[Sciencezam]

Originally Posted by Plane

This is gonna be even stronger than normal using rules for slower healing of FP.

It's not as important within a single fight, but would come up for a retreating enemy. The bigger issue is gradual impairment, since pretty much any fatigue damage starts penalizing all their attributes.

The Yuki-Onna didn't use points (just kind of a monster stat block). Here's what it's like:

Yuki-Onna (Mid Tier)
ST: 12 HP: 12 Speed: 7
DX: 16 Will: 13 Move: 7
IQ: 13 Per: 10 AP: 12
HT: 12 FP: 0 SM: +0
Dodge: 12 Parry: 13 DR: 0
Naginata (Polearm) (17):1d+4 Cut reach 1,2*. U parry
Thrust:1d+2 imp Reach 2
Follow-up: 1 Burning damage (Freezing); wounds never bleed until this is treated
-3 to target the Naginata; it has DR 2, HT 12, but is Brittle; any hit for 4 injury or more shatters it.
Knife (Shortsword) (17): 1d+1 cut, Reach 1
Thrust:1d-1 imp, reach C,1
Burst Spikes (14):2d Piercing in a 2-yd AOE, 1 Burning damage follow-up; Selective. Always targets an area. 10 AP
Line Spikes (14) 2d Piercing in a 7-yd line AOE, 1 burning damage follow-up. Always targets an area. 10AP
Traits: No FP, regenerates 1/3rd of AP each turn instead; High Pain Threshold
She can replace broken weapons as if quick-readying them from a sheathe; this takes 1AP per attempt and is at SL 14

The burning follow-up damage is like a poison; since her weapons nick people a lot, it directly exposes flesh to extreme cold. It does prevent her attacks from causing bleeding, at least until they're treated.

Normally I'd assume creatures without FP would lack other metabolic issues like requiring to breathe, aren't yuki-onna basically ghosts?

I figured since she was weak to other pressure point effects that one would apply too; TLG has suffocation damage AP directly instead of FP (If I'm remembering right). Either way it didn't matter too much as she was at negative HP.

As for the mythology question, there's more than a few stories where they end up marrying a man and even having children with him, but leave once he breaks a promise. That's what the movie Kwaidan went with. It makes it a little hard to pick what type immunities they'd get.