Tower of the Moon: Coming Sept 3 for TFT

[phiwum]

Originally Posted by hcobb

The wizard ran away for a few turns leaving the obsessive (due to his nature) big bad to his own devices.
In that time the wizard chugged four healing potions to cure wounds and fatigue then returned to finish off this final enemy.
Then a healing potion was administered to the priest who physickered the other two back up from dying.
It was a very close thing and it would have been much easier with goblin and apprentice.


Instead this was the sum total of our magical capabilities:
Hittok, Human wizard, age 20
ST 8, DX 11, IQ 15, MA 10
Talents: Knife, Literacy (mundane), Naturalist
Spells include: 3-Hex Fire, 4-Hex Illusion, Aid, Drain Strength, Lock/Knock, Magic Rainstorm, Staff III
Language: Common
Weapons: Staff III silver dagger (1d-1), silver dagger (1d-1), brand (1d-2)
Attacks and Damage: Punch (1d-4)
Armor: robes
Equipment: backpack, belt pouch, order book of body parts and campaign diary, pen and ink, 4 healing potions, 2 rations, waterskin, 18 silvers, 20 coppers, jars and bags on loan from the guild pre-marked with the body parts to fill these with.

When you say it would have been easier with goblin and apprentice, are you thinking of the apprentice as an extra character or would he have replaced one of the other characters? Because adding a character does make things easier, but replacing a fighter (or priest?) with an apprentice could make things harder. The wizard becomes that much more important.

Sounds like you had healing potions out the wazoo. I tend to ration them more in my games. It would be very unusual for five healing potions to be available. (But that is, of course, a fact about my campaign, not a fact about how TFT ought to be played.)

[hcobb]

Originally Posted by phiwum

Sounds like you had healing potions out the wazoo. I tend to ration them more in my games. It would be very unusual for five healing potions to be available. (But that is, of course, a fact about my campaign, not a fact about how TFT ought to be played.)

I held off, but had to burn healing potions at the end to make up for a lack of Aid spells (or a second staff zapper). The thief could have been replaced by a wizard with Alertness and Lock/Knock. (And Summon Myrmidon (with DX 16) for detrapping.)

[phiwum]

Originally Posted by hcobb

I held off, but had to burn healing potions at the end to make up for a lack of Aid spells (or a second staff zapper). The thief could have been replaced by a wizard with Alertness and Lock/Knock. (And Summon Myrmidon (with DX 16) for detrapping.)

Can you summon a myrmidon with remove traps? I know that illusions are limited in the skills they can have. I can't find any rules suggesting myrmidons are similarly limited, but a myrmidon with remove traps is kinda gamey from where I sit. I'd also reckon that disabling a trap often takes a little while.

[larsdangly]

Presumably he's imagining some scenario whereby a myrmidon triggers a trap by walking through it, like an old-school D&D hireling. Hard to imagine that tactic being worth the ST cost and risk of failure, but perhaps better than falling into a pit.

Anyway, that's a pretty epic turn around! What, specifically, did a wizard with just a few ST left do to win that fight alone?

[phiwum]

Never even thought of triggering the trap with a summoned myrmidon, Lars. Stupid me.

Summoned myrmidons are people, too. That's just wrong.

[hcobb]

DX 16 (untalented) myrmidon vs 3/DX trap:
ITL 39: Doubled for untalented is 6/DX, 14.46% chance of success

Therefore get an elf caster to summon a DX 18 elf myrmidon for 27.94% chance of success

Just don't push high IQ myrmidons out of tower windows. (c.f. Master’s Thesis at TFT Companion page 27)

Re: TotM, we had the last enemy down to very low ST, I just needed to refill to put in the finishing zap. (As the wizard was also a Naturalist he understood the generally obsessive nature of such creatures.)

[phiwum]

It all depends on the trap, but it would often take a few turns (at least) to disable a trap.

But let's suppose it takes just one turn to disable. A 27% [1] chance to succeed costs 3 ST for the first attempt and 1 ST for each attempt thereafter. It takes an average of four tries to succeed, if I'm not mistaken[2]. Hence, you're spending 6 ST for that trap on average. You have a little more than one in four chance of spending more ST for that trap[3] (and also a little more than one in four chance of spending only 3, obviously).

Which is fine if you can rest for two hours afterwards, of course.

Mind you, I'm not positive that there's any rule disallowing a summoned myrmidon with Remove Traps. Just smells fishy to me.

[1] This site puts the odds at about 28%, not that it matters much.

[2] More precisely, it takes 3.57 attempts on average, so 5.57 ST on average. This is calculated by a convergent series whose sum satisfies the equation

x = 2 + 0.28 * 1 + 0.72 * (1 + x).

[3] Obviously, I took 0.72 and raised it to the fourth power for this, giving about 0.27.

I sure could've made a mistake in the above, but I don't think so.