I've been running Tattered Fates over the last month or so and the players have generally followed along the main plot line. Saturday night was the climax with the Steel Clock striking the 12th hour, the Widower and the Beloved getting ready for their confrontation, and all hell going to erupt when the clock strikes thirteen. Then my players sent the plot sideways.

With the clock having materialized due to the addition of Haarlock blood to it so the Widower can unleash hell, one of the PCs decides to **** with it.. And by **** with it I mean use the Incinerate power. He starts up, but the Widower attacks him before he can do much damage. Since it isn't the 13th hour, the Widower still has his upgraded stats and is almost impossible to defeat. I'm expecting to pummel the psyker down a fate point and beat up some other party members as well.

The psyker unleashes Holocaust. He rolls 43 damage.

The two players near him burn a Fate Point not to die. The Holocaust slags the Steel Clock and the Widower. The Black Sun never shows up. The Beloved is pissed and starts his massacre, only to get blown away in one burst of autopistol fire. His minions last slightly longer.

It wasn't quite what I imagined.

This is a great example why DotDGs has official rules for giving NPCs fate points. Nothing derails a plot like lucky damage rolls.

Well...the end is kinda anti-climax... but the holocaust shoud have wreaked enoug terror on its own and the face can still be there, moaning and murmuring.

Personally, I really like what happend to "Heron Mask" in your game. To me, he is the first cardinal sin of GM-dom incarnate: egocentric love for your major npc. Thereby, it makes me smile to thinkg of him being put down like minor nuisance while the pc struggled a little more to "mob up" his followers.

It wasn't really a derailment. It was the PCs going "We've seen this **** before. All hell is going to bust loose at the 13th Hour. Let's prevent the disaster from happening instead of playing clean up." And the pistol shot was by a PC who had already been torn up pretty bad during the adventure and hadn't been able to make a big contribution. I wasn't going to rob him of his big moment just to keep the Beloved around for just another round or two as my PCs and their allies unleashed death.

Cynical Cat said:

hehe, that's sort of what happened when we played TF as well. First we killed the guy in the Heron Mask, then the Widower turned it's attention on us instead. My PC used Holocaust and quite simply erased the Widower from existence.

After that, it was mostly a matter of mopping up the last of the minions.

Our GM didn't expect that either. However my PC was punished for it. Due to the fact that he was a nascent psyker and the Adept in the group just had to tell the Inquisitor what he had seen. Which meant the summary execution of my PC. (ingrateful bastards the both of hem, since we wouldn't stand a chance against the Widower had I not used holocaust on it. We would've been slaughtered instead)

Oh well, at least my PC got to save a world before dying. Quite few people can have that written on their tombstone...

double post

While using holocost is quiet effective...
... doesn´t this mean that you pretty much wiped out the whole room (with a lot of nobles in it) ?

Gregorius21778 said:

We really couldn't care less about them, since they were being systematically slaughtered by mad cultists anyway.

Gregorius21778 said:

At the time there weren't many nobles within range (the players had already established themselves as a trouble magnet). Two PCs were within the blast radius and did have to burn Fate Points to not die and then the exploding clock almost killed the psyker.

I once had a player do 90 damage with a fire storm. But I mean he did 20 Damage to himself in Corpus conversion. And that was the last time I ever let a Biomancer, and a Pyromancer in the same party. And that was the last time I let an overbleed start at 5 points over. And that was the last time I ever saw that npc. And that was the last time I EVER, EVER, EVER put important NPC's within 6 meters of each other.

The Emperor willed their destruction. Who are you to deny the Emperor's will?

Lord Keloque said:

He sacrificed 20 Toughness for uberl33t dps? hats off

vogue69 said:

Or.. this is the last time he used this without the errata