“The Bovitaur himself glances your way from behind your desk. ‘Ah, you must be the unscheduled tour group I’ve heard making a ruckus.’ The monster addresses you all. ‘I’m busy with nefarious deeds today. Please leave immediately, or you’ll force me to change my schedule. You won’t like me when I have to change my schedule!’”
“Are you the one stealing the world’s milk?” Drim asked him.
“‘Obviously,’ Brutacious answers. ‘If you have no more pointless questions. Leave, or I will churn you into the next batch of butter.’”
“I’m guessing intimidating the big boss probably won’t go in my favor?” Phon threw out that idea.
“Hmm, I’d say you’d need at least a 25 before modifiers,” Rezin did a quick math check. “And if you failed, he’d retaliate and probably kill you on the spot since you don’t have much natural health or defense.”
“Well, I guess we should get the fighting started then,” Drim said and then rolled some dice. “I perform Void Tear to teleport behind him and then perform Stealth Stab. It doesn’t have the Void Rip, but should do four-times critical damage if both my claws hit.”
“Okay, you rolled an 11 and a 19, both would hit with your modifiers. And they do both count as stealth since Brutacious doesn’t have high detection. You sink both your claws into the Bovitaur’s hind-quarter doing… 77 damage. That’s a great first attack, one of the highest damages I’ve seen, but it is the boss, so he has a lot of health.”
“But you also made one crucial mistake that a lot of new players make. You should never attack a Bovitaur from behind. You trigger his passive, Buck and Cover. He defends from the front until his next turn and kicks wildly with his back legs. That’s definitely a hit, too.”
“Drim takes a hit from one hoof and goes flying across the room, slamming into the back wall… doing… Well, it’s way more than your maximum health. You are now prone and in Teetering Death mode. If someone doesn’t use a health potion or spell on you before your next turn, you’ll die.”
“We’re now in combat, so Roll for Sequence,” it was time to really start. “Okay, the order is Brutacious, Kada, Xard, Phon, and then Drim. He definitely lucked out since he has the most opportunities to be saved.”
“To start, Brutacious is going to do Trampler’s Trot. He tramples in place, destroying most of the furniture around the room and doing area damage. Drim is fortunately out of range, but the rest of you take 7 damage. Then, he’s going to use his second move to summon Cheddarmor that completely protects him until it’s destroyed. ‘I’m going to Mozzerelish your demise!’ he roars at the party.”
“I don’t have any health potions, so i’ll distract him for now,” Kada decided. “So I’ll run to his right side and do Whirling Wonder—a spinning attack with a high chance of knockback. Damn, only a 12, but that should hit, right?”
“Yes, that does hit,” the Farm Master confirmed. “It does a decent dent in the armor, and the knockback is triggered as well, sending him stumbling towards the left side of the room. However, the Cheddarmor is strong against blunt attacks, and as such, your club gets stuck in the cheese and goes flying along with Brutacious, leaving you weaponless.”
“Phon, you have a potion, right?” Xard asked her at the start of his turn. “Okay, then I’ll leave it to you since you can move more anyways. And I’ll cast Pay Your Fondues—Any source of cheese that you cast this spell upon is melted. If it’s melted successfully, it can be turned into a sticky trap that can slow or halt movement. And I rolled a 20.”
“Alright, that would normally melt it for sure if it was just an object, but I have to take Brutacious’ defense into account. We’ll say that the armor melts it a bit over halfway. So it’s definitely weakened but not gone entirely.”
“Damn, and that’s my last offensive spell token gone,” Xard was left disappointed. “All I have left are dairy buffs, but we don’t have milk to drink. Guess I can whack him with my staff if nothing else.”
“I’ll obviously do my sisterly duty and save my foolish brother from certain death.” Drim gave Phon a look after that, but she just gave a smug shrug as if it was something she’d always wanted to say. “I’ll use double movement to get over to him and give him a potion.”
“And Drim, I take it you’ll drink the potion?” Rezin laughed to himself. “Since your only two options are that and death. You gain back some health, but you’re still fairly low. And you’re still prone, so your action would be trying to stand. Which you do. So you can’t do anything else, but you can still move if you like.”
“Sure, I’ll start moving towards Brutacious but around the perimeter to stay out of range.” Drim had a whelmed look since he couldn’t really do anything of note.
“Okay, back to Brutacious. He loses one of his moves because of the knockback. For his other move, he’ll ready Raging Bull—A charged up move where he’ll rush across the room and can’t be stopped once he starts moving, doing massive damage to anything along the path. And to be fair, I’ll roll a 4-sided dice for the target… Xard. Now we’re back to Kada in the turn order. Brutcaious yells ‘I’m just about Feta-Upped with you all!’”
“Welp…” Kada shifted her face to a look of self-righteous acceptance and pride. “I guess it’s on me to save this party. Drim’s almost dead, Phon can’t attack, and Xard will totally die if I don’t stop this. So I’ll be the leader I always should have been and put my own life on the line.”
“I use the Warmonger’s ultimate move, Death Must Earn Me—Reduces my health to 1, but I gain a massive boost to all stats including movement. It also lets me attack four times in a row. So for starters, I run over to Brutacious and grapple him.”
“That’ll be pretty tough, but you have a lot of chances,” Rezin did some checks. “And nice, you got it just barely on the first try thanks to the stat boost. How do you want to do the rest of your attacks because you can’t use your arms?”
“Perfectly fine, since I’ll be using my face!” she boldly declared. “I eat the cheese armor! Rolling… damn, only a 6.”
“You eat away a bit of the armor, but have to stop quickly when your jaw gets tired. Next attack?”
“I eat the cheese armor again!” Kada was persistent if nothing else. “Hahaha… 27!”
“With that, Brutacious’ Cheddarmor is nullified and he can be damaged again. But you do get the constipation debuff from eating too much cheese. So your movement will be halved until your next rest or the next time you use the bathroom.”
“Well, I don’t need to move, because I’m not going anywhere,” she was just getting more pumped about the situation. “I bite into his exposed stomach!”
“Okay… uhhh, biting,” Rezin had to look up the rules. “Apparently biting counts as attacking with dual daggers. Even with the buff, you still have relatively low dexterity, so it won’t do too much. Yeah, only 11 damage, but it does inflict bleeding. You’re up, Xard.”
“Well, now that Kada has eaten some cheese, I can be useful again,” he was glad he could actually do anything at all. “First, I’ll move to the opposite end of the room as Drim and Phon to try and get them further from my target, and then I’ll cast Dairy is the Best Food Group—It lets me heal the user or buff any of their stats if they’ve consumed dairy. I doubt healing Kada would help if the boss gets to move, so I'll boost her strength instead.”
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“Not that it matters, but Kada loses her movement debuff since the cheese has been processed,” the Farm Master added. “Phon, you’re up.”
“I guess if we’re going for gambles, I’ll try one of the Thespian’s called Missed Connections. It lets me summon any sentient being we’ve come across in our travels. If I roll high, they’ll be charmed and do my bidding, but if I roll low, they’ll be aggressive and attack me.
“Who are you going to summon?” Rezin asked.
“Mooticia! Because she’s the only character whose name I remember. Rolling…Oh wow, a natural 30! Probably the only great roll I’ll have all day!” Even Phon could enjoy the game under certain circumstances.
“Yes, a perfect throw. And she’ll get two moves right away since you got a critical roll. What do you want her to do?”
“Attack him, obviously,” she seemed annoyed that she even had to be asked
“The receptionist, Mooticia, suddenly bursts through the office doors and shouts ‘You should have approved my time-off request!’ She then runs over to Brutacious and stabs him in one of his eyes with her resignation letter. It does 34 damage and permanently reduces his hit-chance by half.”
“For her second move, she notices that you’re trying to restrain him. She pulls out a stapler and runs behind him, but not all the way, and grabs his tail, stapling it to the wall. This will count as four ‘bound’ debuff stacks when he tries to use his move. Are you going to move, Phon?”
“No thanks,” she refused. “I’ll stay as far away from the rampaging monster as possible.”
“Alright, time to get revenge on those legs!” Drim decreed when it was his turn. “I use Old Void, New Friends—Open a portal to the void and pull in one enemy with you. The portal will close at the end of the enemy’s next turn. If they are still in the void, they will continuously take damage each turn they’re stuck in the void based on their resistance.”
“If the enemy is too big to pull through the portal—it specifically mentions boss monsters—limbs and body parts can be pulled through. They will be severed if they are still through the portal when the portal closes. The Void Ripper takes no damage in the void but must use another action to leave it on their next turn. So I move next to Brutacious, open a void rift under his legs, and then jump and pull his legs down with me.”
“Since Brutacious is busy charging, he can’t fight it,” the Farm Master explained, “But that brings us back up to his turn. You’ve all done a very good job damaging and debuffing him, but let’s see if it's enough. He’ll roll seven times to determine whether he can break free, and if he does, he’ll unleash his charge attack. So if he succeeds even once, Kada will die no matter what.”
“Alright, fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, and fail! Brutacious has been fully restrained. Wow, I’ve never actually seen anyone completely stop a boss’ supermove successfully before. You guys did amazing for your first time, and there’s still some effects to play out.”
“First, the void portal closes, and Brutacious’ rear legs and… other bits… are severed off completely for major damage. It also halves his movement and disables several of his attacks, and it adds another stack of bleed. That along with Kada’s bite does double bleeding which does another good chunk of damage. He’s now very close to death. One more good hit should do it.”
“And that honor belongs to me!” Kada couldn’t sit still in her seat with anticipation. “With my innate strength, my buffs, and the power of friendship from Xard’s spell and the other two, who I know believe in me even if they won’t say it. I suplex this cow onto its head! A 17… Kind of anticlimactic, but it’s gotta be enough, right?”
“More than enough,” Rezin nodded. “And we don’t need to bother rolling damage since your minimum at this point is all we’ll need. Kada hoists what remains of Brutacious’ body over her head and slams it to the ground behind her. His horns pierce the floor and his skull cracks against the ground. Brutacious has been defeated!”
“Oh, since you haven’t played, I should also let you know that bosses and story-relevant enemies don’t automatically die when they are killed. They might spout some exposition or answer some questions. You can also choose to heal and spare them, with some possibly becoming party members. Not this one, though.”
“Brutacious bellows with his dying breaths, ‘You all got me Gouda… He who controls the flow of milk, controls the world. We made a deal with the CatCats to provide them unlimited milk in return for power. Go to the Catican, that’s where you’ll find all the dairy reserves that were stolen. So much for my Brie-f reign.’ The last light then fades from his one remaining eye.”
“And that’s it, the end of Part 1 of this campaign. Obviously, we won’t get to Part 2 today, and that’s an even longer campaign. So we can either call it good there or try and find time in the future to continue.”
“Yeah, I think it’s probably best to end it there,” Drim said his feelings flat-out. “I’ll admit that I had a lot more fun than I expected, and we could probably find time to schedule the other part, but that’s not how I’d want to play if we did this again in the future. I’d rather start a character from scratch and from the beginning of an adventure that’s not railroaded where we actually had the freedom to do what we wanted.”
“I agree,” Phon chimed in. “I didn’t think I’d like this, but if we’re playing again, I definitely won’t be a Cosdamned Thespian. But I wouldn’t mind trying out something else.”
“Unfortunately, I doubt that we could hold the regular sessions required with our schedules,” Xard beared the bad news. “I wouldn’t mind flying back once a week to play, but the odds that all of us could reserve several hours routinely each week just isn’t in the cards. Not until we finish our main goal, right Drim?”
“Well, if we’re stopping there, I at least want to open the mawhging mystery box!” Kada looked around for resistance from the others but didn’t get any.
“One second, I need to pull it up,” Rezin got out his phone. “We didn’t print it out since there’s 1000 possible outcomes, and that’d just be a waste of paper. Okay, roll these three 10-sided dice, then we take the numbers for 000-999 to figure out what happens when you open the box. Let’s just hope you don’t roll a 555.”
“Why, what happens then?!” she was immediately interested.
“Well, it opens up a vortex and the world just implodes on itself,” the Farm Master said with a straight face. “Though, if we’re ending the campaign, I suppose that wouldn’t be the most tragic outcome in this case. But it would mean all of your time and effort just now was for naught.”
5. Kada made the first roll, and there wasn’t much reaction.
5. Kada made the second roll, and eyebrows were immediately raised.
Everyone around the table was leaning forward in their stools a bit when she made the third roll. There were audible sighs of both relief and disappointment when she rolled a 6.
“Oh, 556, that’s an interesting one,” Rezin found it after much scrolling down the list. “It’s called View of the Great Bovine. You open the lid of the box, and inside, you see wide open space as far as the eye can see—stars twinkling in the distance. In the center, you see Cheddatia, all of it, the entire planet, floating in the cosmos. If you move the box around, you can change the angle at which you can see the planet.”
“Cool, so what can we do with that?” Kada seemed a bit perplexed.
“Whatever you want,” Rezin shrugged. “I should clarify that it is the actual planet inside, so anything you do to it will affect the world around you. The fate of the world is literally in your hands.”
“Oh, I’ve got an idea,” the girl suddenly perked up. “Would my character know where the CatCats live?”
“Yes, she would.”
“And would the Catican stand out on the globe?”
“Probably, it’s the biggest and fanciest building in that realm.”
“Okay, then I move the box around until I find the Catican and squish it with my finger. Now there’s no need for a second campaign! I’ve defeated it with just a single finger. Hahaha! I’m the best B&B player in the world!”
“Well, that would certainly kill everyone in the building and everything nearby,” Drim mentioned something as unimportant as genocide.
“And if all the milk reserves were there then it would be destroyed as well, it doesn’t really solve anything,” Phon pointed out the most minor of details.
“Not to mention that something from space with that level of force would probably just destroy the planet entirely…” Xard really just couldn’t let her have her fun. Kada’s arms slumped down mid-self-cheer and she got rather quiet as she curled up in her stool.
“Alright, great stuff everyone,” Chorus started the wrapup. “Since it’s already tomorrow, we’ll start the next day's activities in the midmorning so everyone can get a decent amount of sleep. Goodnight!”