Monsters and encounter for review

[Suicide King]

Hey there, I am new to these boards and new to the dresden rpg (and fate/fudge in general).

We are running a game set in Denmark, where the primary bad guys are White Court Clan Skavis. The characters are investigating a case of theft, where someone has stolen a major magical artifact from a church, to use in a ritual to influence the voters for the next election.

Anyway, the characters have just stepped through a portal into a demesne in the NeverNever, where the guardian of the church was sucked in. The Guardian is a magical creature, inspired by the Museum Guardians from China Mievelle's "Kraken". So they are supernatural heavyweights, guarding important relics and places of power that resonate with the people somehow.

In this demesne, a small deepening within a circle of hills, the ground is scorched and freezing wind blows. There is an overwhelming sense of despair and there are whispers on the wind - telling them to abandon hope, to give up, to let go, to submit. In the center of this deepening, the Guardian kneels, apparantly holding on to his greatsword for dear life. As he kneels there, before him stands a shining knight in white, covered in metal. The white knight's face is a marble mask, remniscent of classical statues: Androgynous, beautiful and cold. The knight's hands ends in claw, looking like a twisted amalgation of metal and flesh.

Now this guy is obviously something affiliated with Clan Skavis and is in fact a potent outsider, somewhere between walker and noble class. He is bad news. He is eating the Guardian, slowly, and when he has consumed it fully, he will step through the portal where he sucked the guardian in. He will be inside the threshold of the church and he will be free.

The group consists of 5 characters, submerged level. They are all supernaturals of good power - 3 have evocation and/or sponsored magic. One has thaumaturgy and is going to be milking potions and one shot items for all they are worth. One is a bad-ass werewolf detective. They have all optimized their characters somewhat - their skills, powers, etc make them very good at what they do. I am expecting discipline 9, power 6 offensive spells. Fists 7, weapon 4 from the werewolf. They can dish out a lot of damage. We are allowing defensive blocks - small evocation blocks with 1 attack duration as reflexive actions, costing mental stress based on power. They can take a fair amount of damage.

These are the monsters that await them.

The White Knight of Despair
High Concept:White Armoured Incanation of Despair
Trouble: In the Face of Hope I Must Despair
Other Aspects: No Flesh Beneath the Mask, I Must Feed Upon Despair or Become Inert, When They are Weak I am Strong, I Can Only Understand That on Which I Feed, So White It Hurts the Eyes

Skills:
Lore +5
Alertness +4
Fists +5
Deceit +6
Discipline +4
Conviction +4
Intimidation +4
Empathy +0 (+4)
Rapport +0 (+4)
Presence +4
Endurance +5
Craft +0
Contacts +0
Resources +0
All other skills default to good (+3).

Stunts:
I Know Despair When I See It: Empathy counts as great (+4) for detecting aspects related to despair. Rapport counts as great (+4) for imposing aspects related to despair or making social/mental attacks related to despair.
Defence Is For Mortals: May take -2 defence to gain +2 attack on fists. As per the "Swing for the Fences" stunt.

Powers:
Claws -1: No hands, just claws.
Mythical Toughness -6
Inhuman Stoicism -2 (custom power from this board, mostly just for 1 mental armour and 2 extra mental stress)
The Catch (True Hope) -0
Incite Emotion (Despair) -7
- At Range
- Lasting Emotion and Potent Emotion
- Aura of Despair: Every character in it's zone is each turn subjected to a weapon: 0 mental attack, using Deceit.
Feeding Dependency +1
affecting...
Supernatural Strength -4
Supernatural Recovery -4
World-Walker -2
Demesne -1: The Empty Hills That Hope Has Abandoned
Channeling -2: Despair Magic. He can bind people that despair, he can drain their powers, he can make them his pawns, he can eat them out and leave only a specter behind.

Notes: He is a powerful outsider, one of the original sponsors and creators of Clan Skavis. He is powerful, but also limited in several ways. When he cannot feed for long enough, his armour falls away and just his marble mask remains. Inert and harmless. If given despair too feed on though, the mask will awaken and he will rise. When defeated completely, he returns to being just the mask. Only if the mask is broken can he be returned to the Outside. The mask is virtually indestructible, easily withstanding a nuclear blast. Only a big magic ritual, involving lots of True Hope (tm) can destroy it. Or perhaps just hitting it with a Sword of The Cross will suffice, who knows.

Total Cost: -24

I haven't given him any powers to represent the whole "can only be rendered inert" and "mask is virtually indestructible" thing. The mask can of course be used as an Item of Power, but that would probably eat the wearers fate points and inflict mental conquences on him, feeding the white knight and eventually awakening him once again. He was used as a trap for the Guardian by basically throwing the mask on the ground and releasing a big burst of despair - similar to the hankerchief of sunlight that Dresden used. He then sucked the Guardian into his demesne and started feeding.

Now that the players are here, he will of course call up some flunkies to make the fight more interesting. He is, after all, facing 50 points of refresh.

Echoes of Those Who Despaired in the Face of the White Knight
High Concept: Ghosts of Those the White Knight has Consumed
Trouble: Bound to His Will
Other Aspects: When He Calls, I Must Come; Hope Will set Me Free; Remembering What I Was Brings Only Despair

Skills:
Alertness +2
Fists +3
Athletics +3
Endurance +3
Conviction +0
Discipline +0

Stunts:
Unliving Ash Bound By His Will: May use endurance for social stress track.

Powers:
Inhuman Strength -2
Inhuman Speed -2
Claws -1
Vulnerable to Hope: Any attack utilizing True Hope somehow gets +2 weapon rating. True Hope can compel their high concept to scare them away.

Total Cost: -5

Notes: Human shaped figures with claws, made of ashes. They are quick and hit hard, but fall relatively quickly. They are what is left behind when the White Knight consumes a human fully. Who knows what kind of servant the Guardian will eventually make.

These guys purpose is just to tie the players down and deal some damage. They are fast and hit hard, but they fall apart easily.

For this whole scene I think there will be the White Knight and a handful of these guys, 5-6 of them. Giving the scene a total of 49-54 points of refresh in the opposition. Additionally, and I had honestly no idea how to represent this with powers, the Guardian is being fed on. There is some kind of spell holding him in place in the middle of the deepening, where the White Knight feeds upon him. Turning the White Knight's attention away will stop him from feeding temporarily, but to free him the spell must be broken. I imagine it's a strength 10 or so spell binding him, meaning that with a round or two of dedicated counterspelling it will be brought down. Spirit element most likely appropriate for this.


Not sure if this is quite hard enough, so I am considering to make the White Knight able to dumb consequences and stress onto the Guardian, as long as he is bound. This will make it even more important to free him ASAP. Of course, once he is freed, he wants vengeance and will join the fight against the knight. He is actually a very similar type of being - an animated suit of armour, mixed of elements from all the ages in which there have been kings in Denmark. An armour with viking runes, latin inscriptions, etc. Probably stat him out as a smaller version of the knight, sans the despair abilities.

So does this sound like a reasonable "balls to the walls" combat scene? The White Knight, plus 5 or 6 bound servants. The Guardian trapped by a ward, feeding him, perhaps protecting him from harm. A few different zones - the portal they came through, the deepening in which the knight has trapped the guardian, a few hillsides around them. Scene aspects include: Barren Hills Covered in Ash, Freezing Winds, Despair is in the Air.
If it turns out that the players are tearing him apart too quickly, he will start dumping stress and consequences onto the guardian. If he seems tough enough, he won't have that option.
Oh yeah, he fights until a Severe Consequence is taken, the servants will only take a mild consequence. Including his endurance and recovery, this guy can take 6 mild consequences. That is a lot, so eventually I might downgrade his toughness to supernatural. Still on the fence about that.

Any comments, criticism or insights are welcome. I would appreciate it, this is only the second fight I am running in this system.
Oh yeah, the silly and overly wordy aspect names are on purpose. For some reason I just took that naming scheme for him, it seemed to fit. He is almost silly enough to be a Death Knight in Exalted or a bad guy in a boys manga/anime.

[crusher_bob]

My first impression is that the fight is slightly featureless.  It sounds like it's going to take place in the bad guys place of power, but your main mechanical focus is on the bad guys themselves.  It'll be just like meeting the guy on the street somewhere and throwing down.

If you have to fight someone in their place, you'd better bet that they will have stacked the odds in their favor ahead of time.  I'd spend some time dding scenery that gives bonuses to the bad guys, and can be burnt down.

Next, checking on your stats...

It looks like he has:
Attacks:
targeting 6, weapon 4 at range (mental attacks; resisted with discipline)
(do the attacks generated by lasting emotion get the +2 bonus to hit from emotion touch? I'm assuming they don't)
targeting 5, weapon 6 close combat (claws; resisted with weapons or athletics)

Defenses:
+5 fists (physical)
+3 athletics (physical)
+4 discipline (mental)
+4 rapport (social)

--------------

Against almost any build but a wizard, he'll be able to send them deep into consequence land with a single mental attack.  They'll have maybe discipline 2, So they'll be looking at an 8 stress mental hit.  Assuming that they only have 3 mental stress boxes, they'll need a mild and a moderate to stay up.

At submerged, almost everyone should be able to manage a great or better physical defense, so the claws aren't as dangerous, but that still going to be a mild or moderate consequence on the first attack.

-------------

The best tactic would seem to be an aspect dogpile, where everyone does a maneuver and the pass it to the spellcaster.  If he's able to generate a shift 15 attack (targeting + power) adding 4 aspects from the other characters and subtracting the monsters good defense and 3 points of armor from toughness gets you 17 shifts of stress in the first round.  That's good enough for a mild and a moderate on the first turn.  Then the party just has to risk the one turn of attack from the big bad, and then do the same thing next round for the take out.

Any protracted slugging match with the big bad will see the party hammered under when their consequences are tagged for a follow up attack.

This is not the kind of guy you can have a protracted fight with, once he gets a second attack in on you and tags your consequences, you get taken out.

The aspect stacking tactic could probably also be used to extend the fight, where everyone passes around their generated tags so that whoever gets targeted can use them for defense, but that makes the fight much longer.  The spellcasters aren't going to have the mental stress to keep it up for that long.

[Belial666]

The mask: a living-dead analogue should be sufficient. Perequisite for "destruction" is the breaking of the mask (via a major ritual or the swords of the cross). The result is banishment from the world instead of death. Doesn't realy matter because, as a great poet once said, the world's banishment is death, effectively.

Build:
He has feeding dependency but, as he has no "Emotional Vampire", he cannot feed to satisfy it. No worries though; you got the cost of his Incite powers at -7 which is -4 for Incite Emotion, -2 for a zone-wide attack (more on this later), and -1 more which does nothing and can be used to add Emotional Vampire.
His Mythic Toughness is not written down as affected by his feeding dependency. If you want his starving to affect his toughness, add it under the rest.
His zone-wide emotion attack should cost -2 (as it takes 2 shifts to turn an attack zone-wide) and seems to reduce weapon by 4. That's OK so far but it does not mention if it is an attack, it is a sort of aura that is always on in his own zone, whether it can be used at range like the rest of his Incite Emotion powers and so on.


Combat:
He attacks at range with to hit +8, weapon 4 mental (yes, the +2 applies to this as "at range" is an upgrade to emotion-touch, not a separate power). Vs discipline of +3 he does an average of 9 stress.
He attacks at melee with to hit +8, weapon 4 mental and, once he has Emotional Vampire, also able to do a feeding on the same action. Vs discipline of +3 he does an average of 14 stress. 
He defends vs fists/natural attacks at +5, with armor 3.
He defends vs weapons at +3, with armor 3.
He defends vs energy or ranged physical attacks at +3, with armor 3.
He defends vs gravity/forcefield/poison attacks at +3, though poison would not affect him once/if he gets living dead.
He defends vs mental/spiritual attacks at +4, with armor 1.
He has physical perception of 4, magical perception of 5
He does not need to defend vs melee grapples as that would actually help him land his devastating emotion touch.
He has a normal move speed, a sprint speed of 3, and he cannot fly.

As a preliminary assessment, a standard submerged wizard can use a gravity, force or wind spell to apply a "levitated off the ground" as a sticky aspect or a block vs movement (pathetically easy vs his defense of 3), use his second exchange to extend duration by 5-6 shifts and then the other guys in the group shoot him to death from 2 zones away. As he can't move and his attacks only got a reach of 1, he can't do anything. Like with the giant Antaeus (or anybody else) your melee strength doesn't matter once you're not touching the ground.
If the group isn't smart with tactics or goes into the fight without doing any research, they are dead as soon as he closes into melee cause he has the touch of death.

[Suicide King]

Good points, I'm changing my opinion on this slightly... need to work the numbers more.

The fight is intended to be somewhat featureless. They went into the Cathedral, found the guardian gone, found the portal, placed a powerful ward on it to prevent stuff from getting out, then they went in. The characters are all submerged, it's supposed to be a challenging fight and an interesting one... but mostly just a fight, as they need the guardian's information.

The idea is that the knight can't really stack the deck anymore. He has the guardian there, he is eating it, he is trying to get out. The whole thing is actually an attempt by a clan Raith leader, as she wants to implicate both clan Skavis and a powerful family (the wizard who is doing the big ritual belongs to this family, he is a fool in love with a political activist). She intends to kill him in the middle of the magical ritual, thereby causing another disaster. If the knight eats the guardian and gets out, that's another disaster she can use to smear clan Skavis. The mask is an ancient clan Skavis artifact that she has... acquired and is using for this purpose.

I take the points about his mental attacks, they are getting scaled back heavily. His deceit should also be a little lower, he is a clan skavis incarnation, but storywise almost anything can be excused by him not being at full power.

I am hoping it will be an interesting fight, but just a fight. Things I hope are going to make the fight interesting:
- The classic of a big bad sorrounded by mooks that will tie the characters down.
- The option of freeing the guardian from the spell to have him join the fight and weakening the knight.
- Scene aspects that the wizards can tap into and screw him over.
- It's the NeverNever. Two guys have sponsored magic, one by summer court and one by a Nordic mythological creature... They should be able to invoke for effect and get some reinforcements if they really need them.

[Suicide King]

Take two on the knight and his minions.

The White Knight of Despair
High Concept:White Armoured Incanation of Despair
Trouble: In the Face of Hope I Must Despair
Other Aspects: No Flesh Beneath the Mask, I Must Feed Upon Despair or Become Inert, When They are Weak I am Strong, I Can Only Understand That on Which I Feed, So White It Hurts the Eyes

Skills:
Lore +5
Alertness +3
Fists +5
Deceit +5
Discipline +4
Conviction +4
Intimidation +4
Empathy +0 (+4)
Rapport +0 (+4)
Presence +4
Endurance +5
Craft +0
Contacts +0
Resources +0
All other skills default to good (+3).

Stunts:
I Know Despair When I See It: Empathy counts as great (+4) for detecting aspects related to despair.
Despair is Mine to Inflict: Rapport counts as great (+4) for imposing aspects related to despair or making social/mental attacks related to despair.

Powers:
Claws -1: No hands, just claws.
Supernatural Toughness -4
Inhuman Stoicism -2 (custom power from this board, mostly just for 1 mental armour and 2 extra mental stress)
The Catch (True Hope) -0
Emotional Vampire -1
Incite Emotion (Despair) -2
- At Range
Aura of Despair -2
- Custom Power.
- At the start of his round, every creature in the same zone as him is subjected to a mental attack, using deceit vs. discipline, with weapon 0. This is raw despair, so mental damage and despair related consequences.
Feeding Dependency +1
affecting...
Supernatural Strength -4
Supernatural Recovery -4
World-Walker -2
Demesne -1: The Empty Hills That Hope Has Abandoned
Channeling -2: Despair Magic. He can bind people that despair, he can drain their powers, he can make them his pawns, he can eat them out and leave only a specter behind.

Notes: He is a powerful outsider, one of the original sponsors and creators of Clan Skavis. He is powerful, but also limited in several ways. When he cannot feed for long enough, his armour falls away and just his marble mask remains. Inert and harmless. If given despair too feed on though, the mask will awaken and he will rise. When defeated completely, he returns to being just the mask. Only if the mask is broken can he be returned to the Outside. The mask is virtually indestructible, easily withstanding a nuclear blast. Only a big magic ritual, involving lots of True Hope (tm) can destroy it. Or perhaps just hitting it with a Sword of The Cross will suffice, who knows.

Total Cost: -20

On second thought, there are only 4 of these guys, leaving them to tie the knight's opponents down and letting him face one alone. I think that if they fail, he can call up maybe two more... but that should cost him an action and he only has two more.

Echoes of Those Who Despaired in the Face of the White Knight
High Concept: Ghosts of Those the White Knight has Consumed
Trouble: Bound to His Will
Other Aspects: When He Calls, I Must Come; Hope Will set Me Free; Remembering What I Was Brings Only Despair

Skills:
Alertness +2
Fists +4
Athletics +3
Endurance +3
Conviction +0
Discipline +0

Stunts:
Unliving Ash Bound By His Will: May use endurance for social stress track.

Powers:
Inhuman Speed -2
Claws -1
Vulnerable to Hope +1: Any attack utilizing True Hope somehow gets +2 weapon rating. True Hope can compel their high concept to scare them away.

Total Cost: -2

Notes: Human shaped figures with claws, made of ashes. They are quick and hit hard, but fall relatively quickly. They are what is left behind when the White Knight consumes a human fully. Who knows what kind of servant the Guardian will eventually make.

Crunching the new numbers:
Melee attack at +5, weapon 6 in total. The werewolf will reliably be dodging this, with his athletics effectively at +6. The wizards will need a great block to survive this.
Mental attack at range +5. Enough to hurt the wizards a little, enough to hurt the werewolf so he can feel it.
I wasn't thinking that feeding and another attack than incite could be combined. It only allows explicitly for incite emotion to be combined... at least the attack skills must be the same, imo. He cannot make both a fists attack and a deceit attack in the same round.
There is nothing in the emotional vampire power suggesting that he gets a massive bonus to his attack. So even when touching people, I can't see why he should get +5 extra weapon damage there (giving the 14 stress mentioned). Am I overlooking something here?

As for what he is facing...
He is going to be taking skill +5 to +7 attacks in melee, at weapon 4. They will hurt, even if I end up giving him mythical toughness again.
He will be blasted with skill 10, weapon 7 magical attacks. They do not need to satisfy his catch for this. A player bought a +4 focus item and has a +1 specialization. He kills things with his mind.
Without his minions, he would start the first round by getting hit with likely...
- a skill 6 power 4 attack mental attack spell. Doing about 5 mental stress.
- a skill 10 power 6 attack. Doing about 9 physical stress.
- a skill 7, weapon 4 melee attack. Doing about 4 physical stress.
- a skill 5, weapon 5 magical attack (enchanted item: Lazor). Doing about 3 physical stress.
- a skill 6 power 6 magical attack. Doing about 6 physical stress.

So a 9, 4, 3, and 6 physical stress hit. Filling out half his stress track and giving him his first minor consequence and filling out half his stress track.
As I see it, without the minions and without a lof of luck, he will be facing an extreme consequence in round 3. He won't take that, so there he goes out. It is intended to be a challenging fight, where they need to use their brains at least a little. And if the wizards are willing to take extra mental stress through powerful spells and backlash? He is down in round 2, at the very latest.
The minons should tie the players down a bit and make the fight last 5-6 rounds... giving him time to take one or two players out or at least make them take consequences. Perhaps even make them think of freeing the guardian to help end the fight.

The kind of encounter I am hoping for is one where the characters can see that they are facing a lot of consequences to win this one... unless they free they guardian and make him join them. That means getting the knight away from the guardian somehow, breaking the spell.

Are my numbers wrong? I hope I got this right. And thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it.

[crusher_bob]

Unless you can come close to the top of someone's stress bar with your attack, you are much better off being part of the cheering section.  You generate a free tag and you either pass it off for defense, or you pass it to the designated hitter.

So, to use your example:

Instead of the other 4 guys just doing stress damage, they all form voltron instead: they do maneuvers and pass he tags up to the wizard.  Then, the wizards 9 stress damage hit jumps up to 17 stress.  That send the baddie deep into consequence land, and then you can use the free tags on the consequences to wrap up next round.

It's generally better to have one or two designated hitters, with everyone else passing them free tags.  That way, you overflow the stress bar ad get into consequences as fast as possible.  If you don't want to have the PCs form voltron right away, then the big bad needs to be much less threatening, or the goons need to be more threatening.  Be careful with powerful goons though.  If you throw too many of them out, then you are just waiting for a PC to roll bad on a defensive roll and get taken to consequence land.  A much better way around the PCs forming voltron right away is to give them something else to do:  rescue hostage, blow up the macguffin, keep the building from burning down, stuff like that.  Or, if you want them to attack the goons instead of the big bad, then you have to have the goons doing something bad, like eating bystanders. 

As for the touch of death:
The emo vampire power (under vampirism) implies that you can also make a feeding roll when you touch someone, at the same time that you use invite emotion.  So you'd get your base targeting 8, damage 4 incite emotion attack; plus a targeting 8 feeding attack with the same touch.  Personally, I'd throw dice at people who tried that, but that's how the rules seem to be written.

[Suicide King]

Good points.

We ended last session with a cliff hanger, as the players stepped through the portal and into the demesne. I have the guardian there, I have the knight there. I want this to be an interesting and somewhat challenging combat encounter. For a few of the players, this will be their first combat.

By interesting, I mean that I want there to be other factors to consider than blasting him away. There has to be other objectives than just taking out the opposition. So I need there to be some other factors. I'll be brainstorming some ways to make freeing the guardian more essential. (Perhaps the white knight has physical immunity as long as the guardian is being eaten? That would work, but it would be a little heavy handed.)

Any other ideas on making this more interesting?

[crusher_bob]

OK, things off the top of my head for the PCs to want to do something other that beat p the bad guy:

Protect others.  If you haven't overused it already, protecting others can give the PCs plenty to do.  For example, the bad guy puts the ehammy on about half of a crowd of people.  Then he tells the half of the crowd that he's put the whammy on to kill the other half.  Since they are regular people, the really have no idea how to kill each other that quickly, so you have a bit of time to come up with a plan to do something about it.  But they are very eager to share the revelation of inner nothingness, or something, so don't take too long.

Next idea is loot.  The PCs are probably not motivated enough to try to give the same amount of protection to, say, stolen church treasure as they would to endangered church-goers, but maybe some that stuff is easily weaponizable holy artifacts, that it might be handy to have stuffed down the front of their pants later.  So letting that stuff just be burnt down in the fight will come back to worry you later.

Next, is some objective to do other than beat up the bad guy.  For example, it sound like they are really there to get the guardian back.  SO, for example, if they kicked the guardian awake, and then took it back through the portal, they maybe they could just shut the door behind them. and maybe occasionally make funny faces at mask boy while he's trapped in his own pocket dimension with no way out.

This sort of thing also lets you power down the bad guy while still keeping the challenge of the encounter the same, so you don't have to explain why he's not out slapping around Godzilla instead.

[Suicide King]

Good points, I think I'll keep the Knight as described above, but make the encounter work thusly:

The Guardian is trapped in the middle, he is bound by a spell and the Knight is clearly feeding on him (winds are tearing pieces of him away, whirling them into the knight where he absorbs them). With a lore roll or after doing damage the first time, they discover that the Knight can apparantly dump stress and consequences onto the Guardian, as long as he is bound.

The Knight has minions, initially 4, that he spends an action calling forth the first time he is damaged or majorly inconvenienced by the - ie. the moment he realizes he is facing supernatural heavy weights.

He'll likely do something like leave the Guardian behind and wade into close combat, taking advantage of his aura of despair ability, leaving a minion or two to keep them from freeing the Guardian.

The "solutions" I can see for the players are:
- Tie the Knight down, have some of the free the Guardian. They have to fight him defensively, as hurting the Knight means hurting the Guardian.
- When the Guardian is free, they could run away or blast the Knight to smithereens. At this point he likely spends an action calling up more minions, clearly becoming desperate, but he also looses access to a few of his powers. His Aura of Despair is likely switched off immediately. Still a tough fight, but now they can win without killing the Guardian.
- They can put a hope related aspect on his minions, Invoking that for effect that to turn them against him. (lore rolls or info-dump by me opens this option).
- It should be obvious that his minions are his victim's souls. Freeing them may become an objective.
- They can decide that they don't really need the Guardian and just blast him down, taking out both of them. Or just run for that matter, though it has been made clear the Knight can use the Guardian's power to drill out through the NeverNever and appear inside the Cathedral's threshold.

Not trying to script the fight here, just trying to consider if there are enough options to make it interesting. The church treasure only comes in later, once they are on the trail. Also, I am hoping they will make it a priority to protect the poor thieves, once the players become aware that they are just sacrificial pawns used by Clan Raith to stir up trouble.