drats...

I desperately needed to kill something tonight

Assuming enough folks can show, I intend to run a short game tonight (til 11:30 or so) since I've got to get up early for more grad school project meetings until the end of November every Sat morning.

Now the party has been returned to Rifts: Earth, but things are still in turmoil with and the party has made friends with some folks on the western coast.. somewhere in what used to be California. They've befriended a village overseen by a LLW named Gerald who evidently fought at Tolkeen and elsewhere. He has hired the party to deal with several Splurgorth Slavers that raid his village and the neighboring 2 villages.

Day: Friday Nov 4th, 2011
Session #57
Game Time: 9:00 pm to 11:30 pm
Room: RIFTS: Merctown
Server: Mayhem Gaming Server
Backup: Blackstar Games

Party
Jason - Dog Boy named Tibbs
Fathom - Changeling Mind Melter
G.T. - Lily Dawn Flower Spotted Hawk Human Female Ley Linewalker
Athos-Dimitri (Human Cyberknight)
Falcon-Human/Mutant Glitterboy
-True Atlantean Tattoo Archer
Opening-??

MIA
Starmage-Juste Ahrimane True Atlantean Shifter

RULES
Core: Rifts: Ultimate Edition
Sourcebooks: MercTown, MercOps, Mercenaries, Mercenary Adventures, various other RIFTS supplements (I own a great deal of them).

Character Level: 4th
Stats: roll 4d6 for humans, takes highest 3, reroll 1's
D-bees per specific D-bee's, No evil alignments (no demons/monsters).
Starting Gear: Per OCC/RCC with possible weapons/armor and such approved by me.
Starting Funds: Maximum starting funds, including black market goods x2
Character sheets should include background/story leading upto your arrival in Merctown. Sheets should be in rtf, word or pdf format for readability/printing. I have good sheet files if needed. I also have OpenRPG nodes.
Email completed pcs: landothearchmagi at comcast.net (replace at with @, no spaces.

Alright, here's what I need answers to from folks:

Who all can handle blades besides Dimitri and myself?
What driving skills do folks have?
Who has what kind of recon/tracking skills and equipment?
Ideas on how to counter live-capture weapons and spells, like nets and magic bubbles?

The initial recon should probably be a small affair, distant and no engagements of any kind.

To answer for myself, I can only handle hovercraft, has a mixed bag of wilderness/recon skills and a nice bit of equipment for such. Some of which is also passive-based, which is good for stealth.

I don't think it's a good idea to scout physically...

Let our mage scout astrally instead, if she doesn't have astral projection, the 4th level spell, maybe Gerald has it and will sell it to us. If Gerald doesn't have it, maybe Fathom can scout astrally using psionics.

Splitting the party and going close to the slavers is just asking for trouble though. What happens if some of the party gets captured?

I have find traps / detect mines, although I don't think slavers would set traps or mines, they are probably fairly cocky.

Once we scout astrally, we can go in as a group and hit them hard. When it comes to bubbles and nets, better have good dodge, cuz they are resistant to damage iirc.

Assuming enough folks can make it, we'll play tomorrow from 9-11:30 pm est.

Now the party has been returned to Rifts: Earth, but things are still in turmoil with and the party has made friends with some folks on the western coast.. somewhere in what used to be California. They've befriended a village overseen by a LLW named Gerald who evidently fought at Tolkeen and elsewhere. He has hired the party to deal with several Splurgorth Slavers that raid his village and the neighboring 2 villages.

Day: Friday Nov 11th, 2011
Session #58
Game Time: 9:00 pm to 11:30 pm
Room: RIFTS: Merctown
Server: Mayhem Gaming Server
Backup: Blackstar Games

Party
Jason - Dog Boy named Tibbs
Fathom - Changeling Mind Melter
G.T. - Lily Dawn Flower Spotted Hawk Human Female Ley Linewalker
Athos-Dimitri (Human Cyberknight)
Falcon-Human/Mutant Glitterboy
-True Atlantean Tattoo Archer
Opening-??

MIA
Starmage-Juste Ahrimane True Atlantean Shifter

RULES
Core: Rifts: Ultimate Edition
Sourcebooks: MercTown, MercOps, Mercenaries, Mercenary Adventures, various other RIFTS supplements (I own a great deal of them).

Character Level: 4th
Stats: roll 4d6 for humans, takes highest 3, reroll 1's
D-bees per specific D-bee's, No evil alignments (no demons/monsters).
Starting Gear: Per OCC/RCC with possible weapons/armor and such approved by me.
Starting Funds: Maximum starting funds, including black market goods x2
Character sheets should include background/story leading upto your arrival in Merctown. Sheets should be in rtf, word or pdf format for readability/printing. I have good sheet files if needed. I also have OpenRPG nodes.
Email completed pcs: landothearchmagi at comcast.net (replace at with @, no spaces.

That's an idea, but i worry about several things. Ap is pretty short in duration and may not give who does it enough time to make a good tatical assessment of the route from here to there, of the area around the rift and of the slaver forces. To me, it seems like a waste of time and power to make them burn isp/ppe with multiple tripps to make sure we have enough info. There's also the fact that they would have to memorize every detail without any way to take notes. We need a lot of solid details to get this right ane not just blunder in.

My plan for a recon team would have only been 2 at most, not half our group or more. I'm willing to do it alone, as i've got the skillset and speed and would minimize losses if something goes wrong.

I'm also thinking that we may be better off with gurrella tatics on this one. I've got the feeling that trying to go toe to toe will only end in tears.

With astral projection, you move much faster than physcially possible and you can move through solid objects, like cave walls. I think it lasts like 5-10 minutes per level per casting, so they could cover much more ground than you could.

Plus, they won't fall in a trap and won't be visible to the blind warrior women's radar...

If you want to go alone, noone can stop you, obviously, but it seems like using magical/psionic powers here would be more beneficial for the group.

As for guerilla tactics, I think that is probably the worst thing we can do, soon as their damages start to mount, they will call in reinforcements and then we will have to take on an even larger foe. Best to wipe out whatever presence they have quickly and completely.

I don't think we're quite on the same page, let me try to clarify my reservations a bit. I understand they can move up to 600mph, but think about this: You just covered the distance to the rift area at top speed to have time to scout the primary area, can you tell me everything you flew over/past with usable detail to know the lay of the land and spot signs of previous trails they may have used?

It's also only 5 minutes per level. If they've only got one level into it, that's only 5 minutes to scout total. Subtracting travel time, that could leave like 3 minutes to find the slavers if they're there and get a usable feel for their numbers and setup, find the rift, note the lay of hte land for tactical advantages/disadvantages and remember it all. That would be kind of like trying to plan Normandy with someone describing what they saw in a couple of photographs (and that's hoping the person knows how to interpret the photographs to tell us the right things.)

What might work is to use AP to see if the area is clear and get some preliminary info, then do a physical recon at a distance for better details. Once we have a comfortable working knowledge of the situation, then a combination of physical and AP could drill down deeper into the details.

I'm also not talking hit and run stuff. I'm talking classic trap and/or confusion multi-prong attacking to keep them off balance and try to cut off any roads of retreat and reinforcement. Walking straight up into them with guns blazing will probably end badly. Beyond the GB, we're not outfitted to just tank in like that, especially with all the items we lost to our emergency jump.

Just fyi, for those of you who are True Atlanteans (like Juste who would've told you before he left for Asgard) or have Lore: Demons & Monsters or Lore: Magic might know something about the Atlantean Slavers.

They do use magic/psionics themselves, could be why it has a base at a ley line nexus/rift.

Well, I think you might be confused on Astral Projection, it's 5 minutes a level, so if Lily is 6th level, she can project for 30 minutes per casting. Assuming we are within a mile or two of the cave, she should have no trouble getting there and back and having 28 minutes to scout it all out. If she is still 5th level, then it's obviously 25 minutes, but that should still be enough.

Not sure what your prowl is, but against the blind warrior women's radar, I would think you would have little chance of getting in and out unseen. And tipping them off that we are coming is probably not a good idea.

By all means, if there are more than one, and we can attack them individually, we should, that is only common sense. But up til now, Gerald / the GM has been referring to the creature as "a" master slaver, not "those" master slavers, so assuming his use of the singular was intentional, there is one big bad slaver we have to take down, along with his "crew" of warrior women and eyeballs.

Deona thought as a tattooed archer, they would be interested in recovering her, so she has volunteered to lead the sploogies away from their cave / ley line nexus point. It might be a good idea if we take her up on that. Their psionics and magic won't be as powerful some distance away, although if things go poorly for the slaver, he will probably retreat back to there, but at least by that point we may have whittled down some of his crew.

I know you are worried about a fight with a powerful slaver, but we have little choice. Unless you know some way to get him to surrender, we are going to have to kill him. Using Deona to draw them into an ambush seems like our best chance to get the drop on them, assuming they will actually chase her, the rest of us can be set up and waiting for them. If we concentrate fire on the slaver himself, especially with our GB dishing out the damage, we might be able to take him down in a round or two, before the warrior women bubble and net us all up. The other option would be to go after the blind warrior women first during the ambush, knowing the slaver will be able to retreat, but after killing his crew, the fight in his lair might be more doable.