A followup to my previous Actual Play post. As before, this is an actual transcript of the message game on Dreamlyrics.com
“Quick,” Hollis muttered in mild disappointment. But now without the crossbow pointed at her, she could grab the whole person and slam him into the ceiling head first a few times. Which is what she was going to do if he was still visible…
He seems to instinctively understand what Hollis is trying to do; he drops the crossbow and concentrates on trying to avoid being dragged ceilingwards by hanging on to the stair rail. He’s pretty strong, and Hollis doesn’t have quite the right psychokinetic grip on him. But the wooden stair rail begins to creak and splinter.
“Get down here!” he cries, “Mad wizard!”.
“Not mad,” Hollis murmured. “Merely annoyed. I get that way when people try to kill me.” She shifted from trying to yank him skyward, to whipping him back and forth like a rag doll in the hands of an angry child. Since he’d tried to kill her, breaking a couple of wrists or his neck from the whiplash effect didn’t bother her in the slightest.
Sooner or later he would come loose — the sounds from the rail made sooner sound likely — and then he would be *hers*.
“We might think about backing out in just a moment …”
She could use the man to stop up the entryway while they escaped, but they needed to get him loose and get moving.
But he’s not hers just yet; she can feel him struggling, and he’s strong. Somehow he manages to brace himself, and avoids getting twisted around. That handrail isn’t going to last long, though.
Another man, this one small and wiry, appears at the top of the stairs. He’s got another crossbow.
“The woman!”, cries the big man, “Be quick”.
He aims the crossbow.
With the new arrival Hollis couldn’t wait to wear out the handrail; she had to let go of his — so she could twist the new arrival so that his crossbow was pointed at her first assailant as he released.
“Gath, you can jump in here anythime …”
“Stop!”, says Gath, “I can explain
The man with the crossbow pays no attention.
“This is for Rik, bitch”, he says, as he looses the quarrel.
The big man lets out a strangled gurgle as he rolls down the stairs, to lie sprawled at the foot of the steps with a crossbow bolt sticking out of his neck.
By the time he reaches the bottom, the crossbow man has gone,
This starts out with a couple of opposed rolls between Hollis’ Superb psychokinetics and the unnamed NPC’s Good Strength. Both rounds ended in ties; my NPC was lucky with the dice; I really hadn’t expected him to live this long. When the new arrival turned up on the scene, his luck ran out. This was Crossbow vs. Psychokinetics, and the result was Terrible vs. Great. That’s a difference of -5. Since I’m not using the extended combat rules fo this, that’s a near death, and because he’s an unnamed NPC and mere canon-fodder, it’s game over for the big man.