Book 2 – Page 96

[Chit Rule Railroad]

I see «Wanda,» but where are Jack and Sizemore? Everyone is concentrating so much on Parson that a bit of foolamancy should have been possible.

In an earlier thread, it was puzzled out that "Wanda" might be a veil on the predictamancer with glasses, who also hasn't been seen lately and was standing in that position when Wanda was in the back.

As for juice, Jack could have had a scroll or more likely entered a duo-link with a GMTTA member. I don't think the GMTTA really want Parson going in without his casters, they just want to pretend that they don't know about it. That's called politics.


Re the difference to Parson of capital-change vs. capital-capture: if Charlie can arrange for Parson to be in Spacerock (or in a nearby hex - no flying for the heavy) without Wanda, that would be a huge win for anti-GK. Maybe he intends to time the portal move that precisely via a thinkagram to Slately.


Re fighting at night, recall Caesar and Jillian almost throwing it down. "If you break alliance, we'll drink your blood while singing campfire tunes", or something like that, was the threat.


Re hobgobwin betrayal, do we know if Jetstone is still allied to marbits? I don't think we've seen any references to their alliance since JS got a bunch slaughtered and uncroaked.

[noname_hero]

All of Jetstone's units should have landed on their own spears and swords and been killed long before they got to that lake of poison gas and fire... no, more than that... every unit that we've ever seen go down a flight of stairs should have a >99% chance of being pulverized to a pulp! This is an outrage. I HOPE THAT SHARK LOOKED GOOD FROM ABOVE ROB, I AM OUT.

Now you're simply being an ass.

I never said we should see piles of dead bodies. I was simply commenting one little detail of the scene, I said we could be seeing things like some units having sprained their ankles. I was commenting the irony of the fact that first GK and now Jetstone units were falling towards their doom.

And this little detail has no impact on the result of the battle. The infantry losing one or even five percent of their hit point total has no impact on the result, especially since the result is plot-driven and all those Jetstone units expect to die anyway.

[Koliup]

It would appear there is a difference between a fall, and a purposeful fall. In the first, you don't expect it, and like on Stupidworld you can fall wrong and die. On Erfworld your mount will collapse and you fall wrong and croak. Then there's a purposeful fall, like jumping those last two steps on the stair well.

I think that no matter how 'serious business' the Erfworld rules are, they yield to some common sense, such as units who are 'at peace(not in combat)' or engaging in a fall behavior of their own initiative have such a low chance to suffer a fall it is for all purposes 0%. The logical exception to this is obviously suicidal maneuvers for example; jumping off a tower, or launching oneself from an airborne mount onto another mount, and missing, which probably have the same chance as they normally would for accidental falls.

I'm amused by the armor argument, though. While their armor probably does weigh something, has anyone else noticed that most of the armor(except for FAQ and Haffaton armor- notably different) unnamed non-caster units wear what looks essentially like a T-shirt(sometimes with cape), boots, and cap of some sort? They probably have much the same effect on encumbrance as the actual cloth articles themselves. And, from what we've seen, offers about the same protection. "Roll your T-Shirt save."

[Hidden Sanity]

So if you get dismounted, it's a fall. Knocked off a tower or a wall? Fall. Your flying mount is shot out from under you? Fall.

None of those are a controlled jump. They are falls brought about by enemy action. There is a big difference. Or do you really believe that a hopping plushy invites death for itself and it's rider on every damn hop?

A unit intentionally dismounting from its own flying mount, a mount hovering three feet above ground, counts as suffering a fall and can die from it. No enemy action involved.

Actually, the wording is 'if you get dismounted' not 'if you dismount'. Getting dismounted implies that it's something that happened to you, not something you decided to do.

[junovalkyrie]

Panel 10: Stanley tempts fate in a death-defying stunt! Will he survive, or is this the end of Gobwin Knob as we know it? Tune in next time for the thrilling conclusion!

[noname_hero]

Actually, the wording is 'if you get dismounted' not 'if you dismount'. Getting dismounted implies that it's something that happened to you, not something you decided to do.

Yes, but by then I was quoting that part to show that we know about several different situations that invoke the fall mechanics. So let me quote another part of Parson's notes:

So then we got into the rules about falling people. Because I was like "why can't mounted flyers just fly down close to the ground and jump off their mounts to cross zones?"

Answer: it counts as a "fall" in the physics of Erfworld.

So fact is, when you intentionally dismount it can still count as a fall. An intentional action *can* count as a fall.

I'm not screaming about huge plot errors or anything, people. All I did was to mention a small unimportant detail. Now I'm beginning to feel as if I have to explain everything I say and back it all with references while some of the other posts have been, shall we say, less accurate. And it feels as if the main reason is my low post count, as if having a high post count prevented one from making mistakes or misremembering things. Well, we are not entitled to our own facts. Rob is.

[Werebiscuit]

Actually, the wording is 'if you get dismounted' not 'if you dismount'. Getting dismounted implies that it's something that happened to you, not something you decided to do.

Yes, but by then I was quoting that part to show that we know about several different situations that invoke the fall mechanics. So let me quote another part of Parson's notes:

So then we got into the rules about falling people. Because I was like "why can't mounted flyers just fly down close to the ground and jump off their mounts to cross zones?"

Answer: it counts as a "fall" in the physics of Erfworld.

So fact is, when you intentionally dismount it can still count as a fall. An intentional action *can* count as a fall.

I'm not screaming about huge plot errors or anything, people. All I did was to mention a small unimportant detail. Now I'm beginning to feel as if I have to explain everything I say and back it all with references while some of the other posts have been, shall we say, less accurate. And it feels as if the main reason is my low post count, as if having a high post count prevented one from making mistakes or misremembering things. Well, we are not entitled to our own facts. Rob is.

No one is asking you to defend a position...well at least I'm not. We're only speculating on what the mechanic might be.
An intentional action to cross zones...as it reads from the quoted part, counts as a fall.

So maybe it *is* the action of crossing zones from the airspace to another zone that *is* the precursor for a fall.
How does that work with falling off a wall ? Are the Outer walls connected to the airspace ? Would jumping off one or being pushed count as an attempt to move to the airspace ? If so Erfworld physics makes you automatically cross back from the airspace if you do not have a flying mount. Maybe flying mounts and jumping mounts are immune to the cross zone mechanic as you suggested. We don't have enough information to define the mechanic precisely... but we can speculate and apparently love to do so

[Smoker]

My understanding is that the only way to cross the airspace/garrison zone off turn was to "fall" through it. So it's not the (intentional) dismount that triggers the fall, its the part where you allow gravity to drag you through a hex boundary that you couldn't ordinarily cross.

Following this logic, it would be quite safe for a unit to make a reasonably flashy leaping dismount from a low-flying mount, provided it was either in a hex they controlled, or on their turn in an enemy city hex.

Similarly, a controlled jump (or scramble, or whatever) down a ledge seems equally safe.

The comment about the armour was an interesting thought, but since we are actually seeing it happen, I think its safe to say its possible.

[Morni]

Re hobgobwin betrayal, do we know if Jetstone is still allied to marbits? I don't think we've seen any references to their alliance since JS got a bunch slaughtered and uncroaked.

I could be mistaken (i can't find the reference*edit*found*edit*). But i though Jetstone cancel all his alliance to neutral side because they were out of money.

**Edit found the reference**
http://www.erfworld.com/wiki/index.php/LIAB_Text_41
http://www.erfworld.com/book-2-archive/ ... -02-18.png

Pierce was Chief Caster by dint of his levels. Jetstone had become too poor to support natural allies, and had eventually sent even the Altruist Elves off to fend for themselves.

**end edit**
---
Falling dudes Klog.

http://www.erfworld.com/book-2-archive/ ... -06-12.jpg

[noname_hero]

No one is asking you to defend a position...well at least I'm not.

And I'm happy to hear that, because not everybody here was this friendly and I've found myself more or less being accused of complaining for not seeing Jetstone units dying en masse. And with me being a relatively new poster here I was sort of angry at seeing my arguments being twisted and taken ad absurdum. Let me quote *myself* from a post way back near the beginning of this debate, for those of you who think I'm being unreasonable/bloodthirsty/favoring GK:

We could be seeing a few hitpoints missing, the equivalent of sprained ankles, people falling one on top of another and so on.

I was not calling for those jumps from that wall to be fatal.

I was curious whether the fall mechanics in Erfworld are so detailed that they would take say 1% off the hit point total off a force that, should they perform a similar action in stupidworld, would end up with those aforementioned sprained ankles and so on.

[shamelessmerc]

Go ahead and try a stunt like that. Find a group of several hundred people, load every one of them with at least fifteen kilos and have them jump from a two-meter wall while running in a tightly packed formation suitable for medieval infantry. And let us know how many of them limp away instead of rushing onwards.

How about I up the ante and have them carrying 35kg and have them jump from a 2.4m high wall into half a metre of water filled with rocks? Because that's exactly what me and a couple of hundred other guys did after a five mile run, and yes, there were strained ankles and whatnot and one guy was invalided out with a smashed knee, but the vast majority were fine and moved on to the next stage of the course, and would be expected to do it agin the next day.

The falling mechanics are that there is a non-zero chance that any fall might kill you, just as in real life there is a non-zero chance that a shallow fall might kill you, but the crucial thing is that the odds are slim. Certainly some of those Jetstone infantry will have been incapacitated but that jump, but it is probably in the >1% range. Certainly not enough to be worth including in any kind of tactical calculation.

[edit: I just saw your most recent post, and yeah maybe people are a little harsh, but they probably weren't TRYING to be mean, just funny (they failed in that respect) or didn't realise they were coming on too strong]

[effataigus]

Now you're simply being an ass.

Quite true, quite true... I was being an ass and having fun with your post. Normally I wouldn't pick on a new poster, but it seems I confused you with [insert name here] or No One in Particular, or one of our other nameless long-time posters. I prefer to pick on those that have been around for awhile because most of them have seen enough to know that I don't mean anything by it! Sorry about being an ass!

As I said, one of the subsports on this forum is finding ways in which the story is self inconsistent. People like myself that are looking for such ways rationalize our being jerks in the context that we are providing a service for Rob in pointing out bits that are potentially problematic or just confusingly presented... the phrase "can't cast on the enemy's turn" is an example of one such statement that Rob later went back and clarified. Needless to say, people can get a little bit hysterical about this stuff... I didn't think you were getting hysterical, but, as others have pointed out, there are a lot of rules unknowns that mean we can't say whether units should indeed being getting sprained ankles in the first place, so I decided to have some fun with it.

[bladestorm]

Ahh, the forums. A place where three paragraphs of brilliant intellect get debunked if you use questionable wording in an unrelated sentence at the end of your post. Even if you do have references for your statements, someone can (and probably will) find counter-evidence somewhere. Barring that, someone always has the option of tangentially arguing about something unrelated, tying it into a conspiracy theory, pet theory, -ism, or something they saw on the sci-fi channel that they take as absolute truth, thereby proving you wrong, incompetent, or at least less right than their own viewpoint.

Fortunately, these forums are active enough that you don't have to defend your points. Either someone else will, or the topic will shift even further, or the troll will find other bait. Other times, it's just fun to watch counterpoints continue rolling away from the original topic.

[Raviollius]

Ahh, the forums. A place where three paragraphs of brilliant intellect get debunked if you use questionable wording in an unrelated sentence at the end of your post. Even if you do have references for your statements, someone can (and probably will) find counter-evidence somewhere. Barring that, someone always has the option of tangentially arguing about something unrelated, tying it into a conspiracy theory, pet theory, -ism, or something they saw on the sci-fi channel that they take as absolute truth, thereby proving you wrong, incompetent, or at least less right than their own viewpoint.

Fortunately, these forums are active enough that you don't have to defend your points. Either someone else will, or the topic will shift even further, or the troll will find other bait. Other times, it's just fun to watch counterpoints continue rolling away from the original topic.

You forgot to mention that one guy who tries to act superior by going all meta in the thread...

Spoiler: show

Don't take it seriously

[drachefly]

That ONE guy? I can meet meta with meta, so that makes three of us, it seems.

[noname_hero]

OK, everybody, from now on I'll bear in mind how things are around here
No hard feelings, and I'll feel free to be an ass myself once in a while, at least once I better understand the local flavor of netiquette

How about I up the ante and have them carrying 35kg and have them jump from a 2.4m high wall into half a metre of water filled with rocks? Because that's exactly what me and a couple of hundred other guys did after a five mile run, and yes, there were strained ankles and whatnot and one guy was invalided out with a smashed knee, but the vast majority were fine and moved on to the next stage of the course, and would be expected to do it agin the next day.

Can you believe that that is exactly the sort of post I hoped to see? Of course, I only ever play at being a soldier, but sometimes I do it wearing things like chain mail and hobnailed boots and sometimes we do more than just wear it so I do have some experience with what I was talking about. And I'm happy to see someone else confirm what I was trying (not very successfully at first, I admit) to explain. Which is that it would be nice (as far as judging the level of detail Erfworld mechanics deals with goes) if some of the Jetstone units suffered (mostly minor) injuries because here in stupidworld, that's what I would expect to happen.

And that it would be ironic if their heroic charge failed because their final push would miss those few limping men, especially considering the method GK's forces used to enter the fray.

***********

Well, I'll try to move to a different topic.

Is it just me, or is it Sylvia on the last panel, to the left and above Fakely's shoulder, mounted on a decrypted red? Because if it *is* her, neither of those heaved rocks is likely to actually hit the leadership stack.

[MarbitChow]

Which is that it would be nice (as far as judging the level of detail Erfworld mechanics deals with goes) if some of the Jetstone units suffered (mostly minor) injuries because here in stupidworld, that's what I would expect to happen.

Please note that Erfworld units are able to act normally after losing an arm and a large portion of their side to acidic battlecrap (click). A human suffering similar trauma would be completely incapacitated. Minor injuries like sprained ankles and the like would be completely ignored.

[WaterMonkey314]

Has anyone pointed out yet that Jeftichew's speech on "testing the Titans" strongly implies that Queen Bea of Unaroyal was not blasted by a secret squad of MK Enforcamancers?

[effataigus]

Has anyone pointed out yet that Jeftichew's speech on "testing the Titans" strongly implies that Queen Bea of Unaroyal was not blasted by a secret squad of MK Enforcamancers?

Not that I've seen. Good point! (This having been an oft-speculated-here idea about how portals really kill non-casters)

[bladestorm]

So which would actually be stronger -- a stack of eight reds, or a stack of four reds and four greens?