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The Dresden Files => DFRPG => Topic started by: Cadd on May 04, 2014, 09:03:27 PM
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Yeah, I've still not worked out how I want to handle the issue with hunger/powers/etc for a Red Court Infected, but now it's actually going to happen in my game, so I guess it's time to sort it out.
Not being able to pin down what mechanic to use to handle it between Feeding Dependency (either book or wiki version), Limitation or some use of Sponsor Debt, I decided to first back up and look at what I want to be able to do with it narratively and ask you peoples advice on how to get that through mechanically. The Catch for Thougness and Recovery got mixed into these thoughts as well, so here goes:
Hunger and Power use for a Red Court Infected:
- Using Vampiric powers makes the RCI hungry for blood. This hunger can cause distractions and at the extreme end a loss of control bad enough to kill and thus turn completely.
- While the hunger can be quenched with blood without killing (like Susan in Changes) this is both incredibly risky (the RCI him/herself will not be in control) and will make it easier to fall to the hunger again. The hunger does however diminish with time of not using Powers, meditating etc, but most effectively by spending time in sunlight.
- Tattoos given by the Fellowship of St Giles can help here, both raising the bar for when the hunger is problematic and giving clearer signals to the RCI of how close they are to loosing it.
- Direct sunlight completely prevents use of vampiric powers.*
- Holy items (and weapons empowered by Faith) burns them and ignore the vampiric resilience and healing
*Not clear in the novels, but seems appropriate that the reason the hunger can be controlled by spending time in sunlight would also block any power use. This is probably not terribly important, so ignore if you think it unnecessary.
Also - I'm leaning towards not requiring the player to take either Addictive Saliva or Blood Drinker. In my mind, the narcotic venom of an RCI is so weak that it'll only come into play during mucous-membrane contact (essentially, kissing) and in those cases only be a hindrance or complication - thus a compel. Blood Drinker is so incredibly fringe as to be practically useless - drinking any blood at all is going to be very, very rare and a strong downward slope to killing; killing means NPC-dom; and hunger-related compels can be made anyway.
So, how would you go about doing this mechanically?
Option 1: Sponsor Debt has been discussed - exactly how would it be used? Invoking relevant rolls for debt instead of actually having Inhuman St/Sp/To/Re? Paying debt for Temporary Powers? How to handle the hunger being reduced without actually feeding - Spending X time in the sun can reduce debt by 1?
Option 2: Rebate powers - How would this be valued as a Limitation? I like the "losing access to powers" part of Feeding Dependency, but how do I handle the not-usable-in-sunlight part? Just a compel on sunlit scenes? What is a Catch of "just" Holy/Faith-empowered Items worth (it's fairly uncommon after all) - 1 or 0?
Thankful for input on merits and drawbacks of either options, and opinions on what will be simple yet still cover the various limits on power use.
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Option 1: Sponsor Debt has been discussed - exactly how would it be used?
You can take a point of debt to boost a roll whenever drawing upon your vampiric powers would be helpful. Then you get Compelled to feed or something.
How to handle the hunger being reduced without actually feeding - Spending X time in the sun can reduce debt by 1?
The only way to reduce debt, normally, is to accept a Compel. But spending time in the sun could be a Compel.
Might also be fair to let people reduce debt by spending FP under some circumstances.
Option 2: Rebate powers - How would this be valued as a Limitation? I like the "losing access to powers" part of Feeding Dependency, but how do I handle the not-usable-in-sunlight part? Just a compel on sunlit scenes?
"Not usable in sunlight" is a textbook Limitation. Wouldn't work well as part of Feeding Dependency, so you might need to use both Powers.
As for the Limitation value, that depends on implementation.
What is a Catch of "just" Holy/Faith-empowered Items worth (it's fairly uncommon after all) - 1 or 0?
As a Catch, 2 or 3. They're uncommon, so that's 1 for availability. And it's common knowledge that vampires are vulnerable to holy stuff, so that's arguably 2 for knowledge.
As a Limitation, mild or moderate (that's a 1/6 or 1/4 rebate) depending on the game.
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You can take a point of debt to boost a roll whenever drawing upon your vampiric powers would be helpful. Then you get Compelled to feed or something.
It does undeniably have the merit of both flexibility and simplicity during play. There's two things I'm struggling with though:
1) The resilience and healing - how do you handle that with invokes? For the resilience I guess you can flavor a debt-increased defense roll as the hit connecting but not doing anything instead of a miss, but for the healing I'm stumped...
2) The Tattoos. They aren't going to come into play immediately, but both I and the player want a noticeable effect when the character gets them. Something that makes the debt invokes give more bang for the buck? Some kind of "reservoir" of free invokes?
I'm also a little worried that the debt might cascade a bit during fights. A single fight scene might very well see 5 or 6 rolls that are justifiably increased just on the speed (defense, movement) and strength (hitting harder, improvised weaponry) and that feels like a lot of compels to take for just one fight.
Big thanks for the input! I want to work out the kinks of each option to present them clearly to the player, so we can decide together on which will work best.
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1. There's no perfect solution, but you can use an invoke-for-effect to do anything. Starting healing without medical care or healing a consequence faster might be fair invoke effects.
You can also describe their injuries as worse than they "really" are. Like, a broken arm wouldn't normally be a mild consequence. But if it is a mild consequence for this character, then they'll recover from a broken arm much quicker than most characters.
Or you could just buy Recovery and use normal Compels.
2. A stunt that boosts rolls for a certain skill when you take debt might be possible. Buying a debt reserve is tricky because a point of debt is almost equivalent to a Fate Point - but not quite. Maybe tack a debt reserve onto some other benefits as part of a multi-Refresh Power?
Again, no perfect solution.
3. You can take actual Powers and use them with the debt. Or you can just invoke an appropriate Aspect with normal FP. Or you can describe your skills as the result of vampire magic. Give a scrawny character Good Might or something.
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Hm.... Can you spot any immediate holes in this setup:
- Use Inhuman Toughness and Recovery to show resilience/fast healing (stuff that doesn't neatly fit invokes).
- Invoke for Sponsor Debt to represent strength, speed, reflexes, skulking, etc. Basically all of those stuff easily boosted with an invoke.
- Getting the tattoos and training with them is then the in-story effect of purchasing powers boosting the above stuff (example below). Boosting via debt is still an option for that extra push.
- The "losing access to powers" I wanted from Feeding Dependency is just debt-related compels. "Sorry, you've drawn too much on your vamp side - it's just not capable of knitting that wound together right now, you have to recuperate a bit".
Example of the tattoos - Vampiric strenght, because it's easy:
Prior to tattoos: Invoke for debt on Might, Fists, Weapons. This can rack up debt fast in a fight.
Getting the tattoos is mechanically purchasing Inhuman Strength (maybe attaching it and other powers to Human Guise as the "warning to others" part.)
IC she doesn't get as hungry when drawing on the vampiric strength anymore, because OOC she gets a bonus in strength-related situation without having to increase debt.
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I think that would work pretty well.
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That looks perfect, yeah.
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I think the way that the book has it written up under the feeding dependency power is a really good way to go about it. At the end of a scene you roll discipline to defend(control) yourself against a hunger attack equal to the refresh of the abilities used. If you use inhuman strength and toughness in a fight, you have to defend against an attack of 4. You roll discipline against that, and everything you don't defend hits you as hunger stress. The hunger stress doesn't go away at the end of a scene depending on what happens after. You must actually spend time to get rid of your stress. Like someone else said. Meditating, spending time in the sun, stuff like that.
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The RAW "Feeding Dependency" is pretty unclear though. The interaction between "lose powers" and "take stress" is not very clear, and with RCI there's the issue of how to handle regaining powers/reducing hunger without actually consuming blood. There really isn't any RAW way to do that, but it's definitely something in the novels, and mentioned in their blurb in OW.
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Yeah. Feeding Dependency really isn't a very well-written Power. I try to avoid using it and I wouldn't recommend that other people use it.
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The RAW "Feeding Dependency" is pretty unclear though. The interaction between "lose powers" and "take stress" is not very clear, and with RCI there's the issue of how to handle regaining powers/reducing hunger without actually consuming blood. There really isn't any RAW way to do that, but it's definitely something in the novels, and mentioned in their blurb in OW.
You take stress. You absorb the stress with any combination of stress boxes, consequences and powers. If you suffer an attack and don't have any of the above(or don't wish to use any of the above) to absorb the damage, you are taken out.
I'm not sure how it would work with RCI. They eat cute, tiny, puppies instead of people.
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It isn't that complicated. You draw upon your powers in a fight and at the end of it you roll your discipline to defend against your darker nature trying to control you. Example in the book, you use inhuman strength+toughness. Those have a combined refresh of -4. You roll a 4 shift attack against your discipline. Now say you roll an effective 2 on your discipline. That means you have to take the 2 stress. Now you can take the stress hit, take a mild consequence, or you use your powers as if they were consequences. By losing inhuman toughness, which is -2. You effectively use that as a feeding consequence until the next logical time you could have cleared your hunger track.
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Now say you roll an effective 2 on your discipline. That means you have to take the 2 stress. Now you can take the stress hit, take a mild consequence, or you use your powers as if they were consequences. By losing inhuman toughness, which is -2. You effectively use that as a feeding consequence until the next logical time you could have cleared your hunger track.
That's one way of reading that text, yes. Another way of reading it is that you at that point check off your second stress box and lose 2 refresh worth of powers.
See what I mean with unclear? ;)
I also find it a bit strange that you can actually clear out your hunger track by using a little of your powers rather than not using them at all since you clear out your stress track when you successfully defend against a hunger "attack". How this interacts with lost powers are also unclear, since the relationship between power loss and actually taken stress is unclear.
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Some people think that you take stress and lose powers, you don't get to choose one or the other.
As I understand it, the book can be read to support either interpretation. Which is a problem.
Other problems include the way that Feeding Dependency can either be free Refresh or a crippling weakness depending on what it's attached to and the perverse way that its recovery mechanisms encourage you to behave.
Argh, ninja'd.
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I agree it's not clear. Although, with soaking stress it does say that you can use "any combination from above."
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That sentence seems to be meant as clarification, but really just muddles it.
I'll quote what's just before that, bolding stuff for emphasis:
If you fail, you take hunger stress as
though you’d suffered an attack. If you
have physical or mental consequence
slots open, you may use them to buy
off the stress as per the normal rules
(page 203). If you cannot or do not wish
to spare consequences, then you must
lose access to a number of your powers,
up to a refresh cost equal to the amount
of stress taken.
There is actually nothing indicating that losing access to powers reduces stress in a way similar to consequences. Instead, it specifically says you lose powers equal to the stress taken. And then that darned line "These options can be combined however you choose." comes in and just makes the whole shebang confused. ;)
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That sentence seems to be meant as clarification, but really just muddles it.
I'll quote what's just before that, bolding stuff for emphasis:
There is actually nothing indicating that losing access to powers reduces stress in a way similar to consequences. Instead, it specifically says you lose powers equal to the stress taken. And then that darned line "These options can be combined however you choose." comes in and just makes the whole shebang confused. ;)
But the ruling you quoted describes losing powers equal to the refresh as buying off the stress, which is exactly what a consequence does
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Not to my reading it doesn't. It says you can take consequences to reduce stress and then says you lose powers equal to stress taken, i.e. the remaining amount after consequences. It never says that stress is further reduced by losing powers.
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I think the simple fact that people argue about it means that it's ambiguous or at least vague. People don't just pretend to understand things differently.
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I'm still agreeing it's unclear. But to clarify, Cadd, you missed the last line of that quote:
These options can be
combined however you choose
So it seems to imply that you can use stress, consequences and powers (combined however you choose) to soak up damage.
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So it seems to imply that you can use stress, consequences and powers (combined however you choose) to soak up damage.
That's exactly what it's saying.
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Taran, I never missed that line. I specifically said that I quoted the text immediately before that line. I quoted it to show that while that line indicates that you can mix and match, that is actually in contradiction to what is said before and the RAW never actually states straight up that you can lose powers instead of taking stress.
To be clear, I'm not asking how Feeding Dependency works, I'm only debating that RAW is unclear since the alternate reading didn't seem to have even occured to Killking72 and he thus seemed to wonder why I needed to houserule it.
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First off what do you mean RAW, and what alternate reading
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I think the confusion comes from the next line down "If you have no powers left to lose and are
taken out by a feeding failure, you are actually taken out"
The line before seems quite clear, you can lose powers or take consequences. The issue for me is that they don't seem to mesh because it never says that you take stress except after losing all the powers and refusing (or being unable) to take consequences.
My inclination has changed the more I read it. I would basically treat hunger as a regular attack, with each power treated as a consequence of appropriate value for the purpose of hunger only. So you have Mild, Moderate, Severe, Extreme, Inhuman Strength, Inhuman Recovery as all possible consequences, with the exception that you HAVE to use the power ones before you reach taken out.
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First off what do you mean RAW, and what alternate reading
RAW = Rules As Written, as opposed to Rules As Intended (which we really only know when a writer chips in with the underlying thoughts behind a specific rule).
What I meant by "alternate reading" is alternative to how you seem to read the power. Your reading is definitely not wrong, but it's not the only way to interpret the text either.
An example: You use 6 refresh worth of powers and completely bungle the the Discipline defense against hunger, for an end result of Mediocre (+0). This means you have 6 hunger stress incoming.
Your reading: Take a Minor Consequence (-2 stress) and lose Inhuman Strength (-2 stress), leaving 2 stress. You check off the second Hunger Stress box.
My "alternate" reading: Take a Moderate Consequence (-4 stress), thus leaving 2 stress. I check off the second stress box and thereby have to lose Inhuman Strength. (This is the "lose powers equal to the amount of stress taken" part. I haven't actually taken the stress prior to checking off the stress box.)
Both of these readings are supported by different sections of text within the same power. Neither reading is definitively wrong, thus the power is unclearly written.
I think the confusion comes from the next line down "If you have no powers left to lose and are
taken out by a feeding failure, you are actually taken out"
The line before seems quite clear, you can lose powers or take consequences. The issue for me is that they don't seem to mesh because it never says that you take stress except after losing all the powers and refusing (or being unable) to take consequences.
My inclination has changed the more I read it. I would basically treat hunger as a regular attack, with each power treated as a consequence of appropriate value for the purpose of hunger only. So you have Mild, Moderate, Severe, Extreme, Inhuman Strength, Inhuman Recovery as all possible consequences, with the exception that you HAVE to use the power ones before you reach taken out.
Which is basically Killkings reading, and I think it might be the intended reading. It is however unclear, because for every one who finds that reading absolutely obvious, there's one who finds the other, harsher, reading obvious.
This lack of clarity is a part of why I've chosen to not use it in the specific instance of my game featuring Red Court Infected as PC's. There are other reasons as well, but the confusion as to how it's actually supposed to work is what sparked me taking a hard look at it. That hard looked made me realize that there were other things about both Feeding Dependency, the RCI template, and how they interact that I didn't like, and have since house-ruled with input from the forums. (The result is essentially the first section of this thread, before it became a discussion on the merits and confusions of Feeding Dependency.)
I may still use Feeding Dependency (in one form of another) with other hunger-affected beings, but that is for future games to show.
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My "alternate" reading: Take a Moderate Consequence (-4 stress), thus leaving 2 stress. I check off the second stress box and thereby have to lose Inhuman Strength. (This is the "lose powers equal to the amount of stress taken" part. I haven't actually taken the stress prior to checking off the stress box.)
Huh. I never even considered this. It's interesting.
The reason why I never considered this reading is because, when I'm a gm, I say "you get hit for 8 stress"
The player takes stress before they click off stress boxes, take consequences etc... "stress" is the term for damage in DFRPG.
You then soak stress using various methods: Stress boxes; consequences; armour and, in the case for hunger; powers. Or that's how I see it, anyways.
It's silly. Has anyone ever asked for an official clarification? Do they do that anymore?
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My "alternate" reading: Take a Moderate Consequence (-4 stress), thus leaving 2 stress. I check off the second stress box and thereby have to lose Inhuman Strength. (This is the "lose powers equal to the amount of stress taken" part.
That was my original take as well, and I find nothing terribly wrong with it.
The only problem left is what happens if you have more powers than stress. If you have say 8 points of powers but only 3 boxes (6 points total) do you always have access to 2 points of powers?
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Uh, the books are already four years old. Some of the authors (Fred Hicks at least) are active on these forums. Has really no one of them clarified this? Maybe we should just ask...
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You can ask here (http://www.evilhat.com/home/contact-us/).
But why bother? Even with the ambiguity resolved the Power isn't really worth using.
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And here's what the template might look like with those changes....
Red Court Infected
(all flavor text same as canon template)
Musts:
Sponsor (Vampiric Hunger) [-0]: allows you to take sponsor debt to boost Athletics, Fists, Might rolls
Either Inhuman Recovery [-2] or Inhuman Toughness [-2]. Catch is Holy items, sunlight [+1, or +2 if you have both powers]
Options:
Beyond the above, the following powers are available:
Addictive Saliva [-1]
Blood Drinker [-1]
Cloak of Shadows [-1]
Inhuman Speed [-2]
Inhuman Strength [-2]
Important Skills: Athletics, Deceit, Fists, Might
Minimum Refresh Cost: -1
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It does seem odd to me not to have Blood Drinker by default.
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There's very little in favour of having Blood Drinker anyway, because the main gain from it is the free scene of recovery upon killing someone through feeding. Given that if a Red Court Infected does actually kill someone they make the full transformation to NPC vampiredom, it doesn't really benefit them to have it. The +1 to people you've made bleed and GM Discipline rolls are both adequately modelled by Sponsor Debt.
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Because the actual mechanical function of Blood Drinker essentially requires full speed toward NPC-dom, in my eyes. Actually consuming blood in any quantity is (from my reading of the books) a Really Bad IdeaTM for a RCI, turning the power into essentially refresh tax.
Sweet job on writing out the template! I was thinking of summing up my ideas properly, and you just did it perfectly!
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You can ask here (http://www.evilhat.com/home/contact-us/).
And I did, thank you for providing the link. If I get an answer I will post it to the forums.
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There's very little in favour of having Blood Drinker anyway, because the main gain from it is the free scene of recovery upon killing someone through feeding. Given that if a Red Court Infected does actually kill someone they make the full transformation to NPC vampiredom, it doesn't really benefit them to have it. The +1 to people you've made bleed and GM Discipline rolls are both adequately modelled by Sponsor Debt.
Ah, OK, I was really thinking of the +1 as the main benefit...
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Sure, it looks useful mechanically, but what is actually happening in the narrative when say a Red Court Vampire uses that part of the power? It's them drawing blood to drink. That doesn't seem very useful to a character who risks losing control and becoming an NPC if she drinks too much blood.
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Not to be totally thick here, but isn't that the point? Your supernatural abilities come at a cost and if you run too low on willpower it consumes you. If you drink you better be comfortable with your control or have a non-people source.
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Sure there's a cost - struggling with the hunger. But actually consuming blood is past playing with fire for RCI - it's practically juggling nitroglycerin while doing pirouettes - you're going to fail. A RCI just can not keep control while consuming blood, it's hard enough just smelling or seeing it.
Losing control in the presence of blood means there's a struggle to avoid attacking someone. Losing control while drinking someones blood means ripping their throat out before your friends even realized you lost control. Incredibly close to zero marginal to recover.
Basically:
Get actual use out of Inhuman Strength - get Hungry, risk becoming an NPC.
Get actual use out of Blood Drinker - become an NPC.
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Well, being cursed with such an infection might mean you have powers of the being you don't want to become. The infection WANTS you to complete the change… It's useless because you are not meant by your condition to remain an RCI forever. You are meant to turn. You can see it either way, I think.
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Seems about right, the Blood Drinker power is basically a very flavorful extra cost to having supernatural traits.
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I find that kind of "extra cost" to be, quite simply, less fun.
In a group, why should a RCI effectively play with 1 refresh less than the rest of the group? Because that is the effect of forcing a player to take a power the character gets absolutely nothing out of.
Of course being a RCI is a downhill slope, just like playing a Changeling, only steeper. But that is easily, and more dramatically, taken care of with compels.
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Sure there's a cost - struggling with the hunger. But actually consuming blood is past playing with fire for RCI - it's practically juggling nitroglycerin while doing pirouettes - you're going to fail. A RCI just can not keep control while consuming blood, it's hard enough just smelling or seeing it.
OK, but if they rip out the throat of some non-human creature, I don't think they turn. Blood Drinker isn't limited to humans -- it probably wouldn't work on creatures totally without blood like a chlorofiend or other constructs, but Fae, ghouls, animals, and so on should be fair game IMO.
The RCI restriction on killing to feed is more like the First Law, IMO -- it only really applies to humans.
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Hm... Interesting point of view... I hadn't really considered the drinking of non-human blood. Definitely an option for how to run it... I have always focused on the killing part, not really on what was killed. I'll have to talk that over with my players to get their view...