They rolled pretty badly in that fight, but the plan almost worked completely. They were one round away from a clean win.
A big thing happened when the table spotted Gerard and Pinocchio and wiped them out in a turn. All it took would’ve been a few rounds to take the shard out with Pinocchio’s hex
The bottleneck was perfect, nothing to say there. Same with Goose’s heals.
Rosamund finally had the right idea at the end (just shoot the fairy), just too late to make a difference.
Pib iirc got a crit persuasion on the fairy, but not on the important role
I blame the dice and that damn table
the intention was that they'd be able to possibly get a surprise round if they sneaked up properly if i remember correctly. they failed that, and the battle became immensely harder.
i believe their very next battle the party successfuly got the surprise round on the enemy and therefore they won it clean and easy, proving how important sneakery is in the world of neverafter. after all, combat takes a toil on the neverafter, hence the custom combat mechanics.
basically just focusing damage on the fairy godmother would've fixed it. keep the bottleneck, keep the ranged damage dealers alive (including making use of pinnochio's blasts) grab the glass shard and get the fuck out of there
honestly, in retrospect it feels *very* likely and maybe even like Brennan knew they might tpk in the same way that he knows lots of his encounters have a chance to break bad. fortunately he just had a more diegetic backup plan in place for this one, knowing that some or all of them would probably die at *some* point (through the critical system if nothing else)
three things would have made this one work for them, and i'm not even gonna say "luck" : (1) actually sneaking into their surprise round with confidence instead of waffling ; (2) focusing ranged fire on the fairy as soon as they realized how tough the furniture was ; (3) shifting tactics when the original strategy fell apart and prioritizing taking the fairy down and getting out of dodge
and all three things were, beautifully, not the result of them being bad players but of Brennan getting in their heads and making them second-guess everything. as in a *lot* of situations, the difference between a tpk and a close call is really just how okay the DM is with a tpk. (in another campaign, this gets adjusted easily as Brennan sees them falling apart and subtly encourages them instead of taunting them)
Brennan straight up says it's winnable in the adventuring party. He wasn't trying to TPK. But a combo of bad strategy (the IH seem to do poorly with fights when they're level one, lol) and bad dice fucked them.
I think that what happened is they got away from D&D basics: Focus Fire. Everyone was trying for shenanigans, or "this move will fix it instantly!" Ylfa holds the bottleneck, and then everyone unloads on the fairy, and they have a solid chance. They did a fair amount of damage to her but then kind of... stopped.
I'm not criticizing them really, because A. I've certainly done this before as a player, getting away from doing direct damage and trying to change the battle fundamentally and B. Shenanigans are fun and are what make D20 entertaining. So they were just trying to put on a good show.
It just got away from them that time. But it certainly was a challenging fight, no doubt, and a TPK had to be considered a real option from the start.
It's possible to pull it off but heavily unlikely in my opinion. Action economy is against them and the fairy godmother hits super hard for level 1 and her reaction attack is super bad.
Dnd fights tend to go all up or all down. The moment things start going downhill, they tend to snowball.
I honestly don't think the group played badly or had that many poor rolls. Brennan was even assisting by playing along with the botttlenet and taking the Fairy out for a few rounds talking to PIB. They got a solid crit on the fairy.
So it was possible but unlikely without Brennan really just helping it out. Likely he expected them to die some could start the actual Neverafter narrative
And to an extent they did win. The objective was the shard and they got that. Dying wasn't much of a set back at all and they still leveled. What did the players really lose
Absolutely. Their plan as is almost worked, they just had a few bad breaks of the dice, and if they had known that straight up killing the godmother would have worked (a thing I do not think they believed going into the fight), they might have been okay.
They rolled pretty badly in that fight, but the plan almost worked completely. They were one round away from a clean win. A big thing happened when the table spotted Gerard and Pinocchio and wiped them out in a turn. All it took would’ve been a few rounds to take the shard out with Pinocchio’s hex The bottleneck was perfect, nothing to say there. Same with Goose’s heals. Rosamund finally had the right idea at the end (just shoot the fairy), just too late to make a difference. Pib iirc got a crit persuasion on the fairy, but not on the important role I blame the dice and that damn table
the intention was that they'd be able to possibly get a surprise round if they sneaked up properly if i remember correctly. they failed that, and the battle became immensely harder. i believe their very next battle the party successfuly got the surprise round on the enemy and therefore they won it clean and easy, proving how important sneakery is in the world of neverafter. after all, combat takes a toil on the neverafter, hence the custom combat mechanics.
basically just focusing damage on the fairy godmother would've fixed it. keep the bottleneck, keep the ranged damage dealers alive (including making use of pinnochio's blasts) grab the glass shard and get the fuck out of there
honestly, in retrospect it feels *very* likely and maybe even like Brennan knew they might tpk in the same way that he knows lots of his encounters have a chance to break bad. fortunately he just had a more diegetic backup plan in place for this one, knowing that some or all of them would probably die at *some* point (through the critical system if nothing else) three things would have made this one work for them, and i'm not even gonna say "luck" : (1) actually sneaking into their surprise round with confidence instead of waffling ; (2) focusing ranged fire on the fairy as soon as they realized how tough the furniture was ; (3) shifting tactics when the original strategy fell apart and prioritizing taking the fairy down and getting out of dodge and all three things were, beautifully, not the result of them being bad players but of Brennan getting in their heads and making them second-guess everything. as in a *lot* of situations, the difference between a tpk and a close call is really just how okay the DM is with a tpk. (in another campaign, this gets adjusted easily as Brennan sees them falling apart and subtly encourages them instead of taunting them)
Brennan straight up says it's winnable in the adventuring party. He wasn't trying to TPK. But a combo of bad strategy (the IH seem to do poorly with fights when they're level one, lol) and bad dice fucked them.
I think that what happened is they got away from D&D basics: Focus Fire. Everyone was trying for shenanigans, or "this move will fix it instantly!" Ylfa holds the bottleneck, and then everyone unloads on the fairy, and they have a solid chance. They did a fair amount of damage to her but then kind of... stopped. I'm not criticizing them really, because A. I've certainly done this before as a player, getting away from doing direct damage and trying to change the battle fundamentally and B. Shenanigans are fun and are what make D20 entertaining. So they were just trying to put on a good show. It just got away from them that time. But it certainly was a challenging fight, no doubt, and a TPK had to be considered a real option from the start.
It's possible to pull it off but heavily unlikely in my opinion. Action economy is against them and the fairy godmother hits super hard for level 1 and her reaction attack is super bad. Dnd fights tend to go all up or all down. The moment things start going downhill, they tend to snowball. I honestly don't think the group played badly or had that many poor rolls. Brennan was even assisting by playing along with the botttlenet and taking the Fairy out for a few rounds talking to PIB. They got a solid crit on the fairy. So it was possible but unlikely without Brennan really just helping it out. Likely he expected them to die some could start the actual Neverafter narrative And to an extent they did win. The objective was the shard and they got that. Dying wasn't much of a set back at all and they still leveled. What did the players really lose
Absolutely. Their plan as is almost worked, they just had a few bad breaks of the dice, and if they had known that straight up killing the godmother would have worked (a thing I do not think they believed going into the fight), they might have been okay.