Path of Fire: Hero Point

Now, by this point we’re actually not doing so hot. Two members of our group have sustained major injuries, one guy is seperated and barely looks like he’ll make it back, one of them is scraping by with incredible luck, and i’m holding the demon-boss’s attention by battling him in the swimming pool. (note: 30 ft tall robot vs 20 ft tall demon, so swimming pool is just for looking cool).

So the GM calls a quick 5 min break so one player can do math and he can grab a snack. We chat for a bit and i crunch a few numbers on my own.

I realize after checking a few attacks and defense rolls the demon-boss made before i got it’s attention that this thing is literally eight times stronger then any one of us. And there are only four of us by this point.

So, i begin chatting with the party about options, talking about what we can do since we’ve all used our two allotted extra effort actions and the few hero points each of us had. Finally, after a little more than 5 minutes, the GM comes back, and i settle on an idea.

A turn in, i call on my back-up mech. A flight capable unit that has less armor but ranged attacks. Once the demon-boss is occupied with wailing on my main mech, i hop out the rear and into the Mk 2.

Finally, i do what i’ve been planning. lunging forward in the air-mech, i roll to grapple the demon. Barely scraping by with a 22 vs 23 roll, i grab him and immediately launch straight up.

A round goes by before i make atmosphere, and in this time the demon-boss gets a POWERFUL shot off on my mech, dealing a lot of damage, but not enough to stop me.

So finally, we break orbit, and once i explain what i’m doing, the GM grants me the opportunity to Narrate the event after popping on some epic final moments music.

It went something like this:

“The mech roars into the sky, becoming little more than a speck to those on the ground. The jet boosters screaming as the vehicle reaches heights it was never meant to achieve!

bending and breaking from the demon’s constant attack, they finally break atmosphere just as the head is smashed off, leaving the pilot face to face with the demon as they reach the point in the sky where the sun and moon are both visible.

James is badly injured, bruised, and exhausted, but he returns the demon’s glare as he stands in his cock pit. Reaching to the side, he punches in the code to the self destruct, and looking the demon dead in the eyes, flips it off, steps back and falls off of the back of the mech.

In the silence of space, high above the surface where his companions stood, the mech begins crackling. Energy sparking around it and the demon roaring in it’s arms, it flies only a second longer, letting james watch his achievement for only moments before, in the void of space, it explodes.

An erruption of enormous power fills the sky, matching the sun for only a split second before the tremendous sound and shockwave are heard, leaving james to smile as he plumits towards the planet, content.”

After this point, the group spent a bunch of actions to, first of all, see james falling from like a few miles up, then to try and catch him which we discovered was actually a lot easier than we expected.

So, i play in a mutants and masterminds campaign which is a tabletop and if you’re already confused this probably isn’t for you. But for those of you that are still here, i play as a rich mech pilot named James Wakelin.

Up until this point, i’ve basically been the wise cracking super hero doing stupid shit like convincing opponents to stop fighting me because A: i’m in a mech and B: i’m in a god damn mech. 

But last session when we finally made it to the super villian’s hideout we discovered that he had this magical key that unlocked a gateway to hell. Unfortunatly for him and us, this brought out a giant demon-boss guy and turned all his minions into demons with guns.

So naturally, we get to work with fighting. EXCEPT that i had walked there. 

See, we arrived in his mansion through a tunnel, a small tunnel, so my mech didn’t exactly fit which forced me to walk. Thankfully, i can call it up and say ‘yo get over here and help asshole’, but that was gonna be a turn or two.

So for a little while, James Wakelin just gets the shit kicked out of him by demon minions. But, eventually, my turn finally rolls around and my mech arrives... Outside the back door, behind where the demon boss was.

By this point i’ve taken a good few hits, i’m not looking so hot, and i have to get there in one turn. But at the same time, between me and my mech are two people fighting for the demon key and the demon boss guy himself. So i talk to the GM, and this is what we figure happens:

James, mustering up all the strength he can, rushes forward, leaping up onto the pedistal next to the two fighting over the key. To try and be cool, of course, i throw in that i wanna try and steal the key from the two fighting. I have a +0 to disarm and melee in general, so you can guess how that went.

Or you can’t, because as James leaps up and reaches down for the key, he snags it with a natural 20, leaving the two fighting bewildered. Step two though, was the demon boss. This was the easy part.

Quick acrobatics check and a good jump from the battered james, and he lunges forward, kicking off of his giant demon face and into the open hatch of my mech.

In one turn, i went from being the weakest member of the group to having the all valuable key, a giant fighting robot, and the demon boss’s attention.

I told him “sup little man”