One of the better mechanics in It Came From the Late, Late, Late Show: as it was an RPG simulation of bad movies, whenever your character was about to be stomped by Godzilla or whatever you could call in your stunt double to take the damage for you. 
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A Thwip note for new… and maybe old… players:
Stuff between the double dashes is his inner monologue. --My arm really hurts and this tea is making me want to pee.–
Anglish is the one with the missing letters and e and i switiching, “Tis is Kinny. He’s mi ken. Kin?”
Arabic is the stuff that looks like someone trying to do a German accent but keeps slipping into French. “Ziz iz zee best part off und story.”
Goblin is a mishmash of pidgen English with some Korean and Japanese tossed in. “Mi penga issda. Mi applega issda. Ugn. Applepengayo.”
Strong Accent is one of his quirks. And I’ve gotten a better handle at writing them since we’ve started but I still forget what I did previously for his language quirks so apologies if it gets confusing.
PS These are entirely based on my real world inability to do a half decent accent when I play an RPG.
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Tredroy is a city on the Cardiel/al-Haz/al-Wazif border, jointly ruled by all three nations (Tres Droits, three laws). It’s where the campaign began.
You’re currently about halfway between Tredroy and Hadaton, just north of the river.
It was really hard to not use Darwin’s terminology here.
To clarify for the dwarves:
You’re seated on the western edge of a small grove (about 30m across) of trees. Thwip is indicating hoofbeats approaching from the east; you’d need to move through or around the grove to clearly see what they are.
Wotcha all doing?
Sasha is moving to a comfortable position and preparing to cast Terror with the expectation that he’ll panic the horses, if that fails he’ll then cast Blackout at the edge of the copse because charging into trees when you suddenly can’t see will cause them far more problems than it will him.
Keep in mind that the functional range of most of your spells is only a few yards; you get -1 to skill per yard of distance. A staff can reduce this penalty by two, but Sasha doesn’t have one. Even with the staff, most spells are short-ranged; you need effective skill of 11 or better to have less than a 50% chance of a fizzle.
Fireballs don’t have this problem, because you’re casting at zero range to create the fireball, then tossing it at the target. They get the same range modifiers as an archer would.
Terror is an area spell, so the listed fatigue cost is for a one-hex area of effect. For double cost, you get that hex plus all the surrounding hexes; a 3 yard diameter sphere, in real terms, as a “hex” is one yard across. Triple cost gets another ring of hexes for a 5 yard diameter, etc.
Unless they’re standing stirrup-to-stirrup, getting all three horses will take a fairly large area.
While I’m at it, to clarify how fireballs work:
On the first turn, you declare that you’re casting Fireball. Roll under skill and you immediately have a fireball in hand, of up to 3d6 damage potential.
Next turn, you either aim (same as you could with a bow), throw the fireball (same range modifiers as a bow), or enlarge the fireball by up to 3d again. You can only enlarge twice, so your maximum blast is 9d.
You can hold a Fireball ready in hand for as long as you like, but if you get hit there’s a chance you’ll drop it on yourself.
Okay, questions then
- how long until they reach us/the running person?
- are they converging on him, or are they going on each flank with the central rider running him down, or are they too far away to tell yet?
- If fear costs 1 point and I have it at 15 does that mean that I can cast it for free as long as it’s in a 1 hex area?
- what’s the casting time for a spell?
- Shape Earth has a duration of 1 minute and has a move of 2. Can I use this to create pits in front of me to cause the horses to stumble? Can I do this quick enough to be useful at the last minute to take them by surprise?
The person is sprinting at 5yds/second; the horses are galloping at 10yds/second (the horsemen are not small men, and they’re armoured; their horses are slowed by their burden. Unencumbered, they’d be doing 18yds/second).
The runner will be on you in about fifteen seconds, the horsemen will get here at about the same time. Maybe a bit before, maybe a bit after.
It’s a stern chase; all three horsemen are fairly close together.
Yup.
You can also get a fairly huge area for not much cost. The discount comes at the end, though; an eight-hex radius would cost 7 fatigue etc.
BTW: Terror wasn’t quite the spell you wanted. Fear makes the target nervous, Panic makes them run away, Terror gives them lasting psychological damage.
Use Fear to aid intimidation, Panic to make enemies go away, and save Terror for interrogation or revenge.
Also consider that these Mind Control spells are mostly Resisted. You roll vs skill, the target rolls vs Will, and you have to succeed by more than they do for the spell to succeed. Long-range casting makes that harder to achieve.
BTW, once you get around to it, you could probably have Sasha’s prodd enchanted as a wand, for -1 to spellcasting range penalties. And range penalties for area spells are measured to the nearest edge of the area; if you cast a big spell, the centre of it can be quite some distance away.
Usually one second, but variable; it’s listed on your character sheet. The numbers in the “time” column of your spell list are casting time above, duration below.
You can always get a +1 to skill by doubling casting time and using a big, conspicuous ritual. The cost discount is based on base skill, though; this won’t let you cast skill-14 spells at discounted cost.
If you were to make a pit underneath or in front of a slow-moving horse, it would have time to avoid the pit. Directly in front of a fast-moving horse and it can’t avoid hitting it, although they’d have a chance to jump over it. A barricade might be better than a pit; higher jump required.
Again, though, range is limited. By the time they get to within a few yards of the woods, they’ll likely have slowed to a trot.
Could he make a couple of channels say a foot wide and deep and 3 or 4 inches below the surface? Firm enough that a man could run across it but a horse (especially a heavily loaded one) would go through?
He wants to even the odds by taking out the horses as effective either by forcing the horses to stumble, possibly break a leg, hopefully throw a rider.
Making an underground cavity that lasts as long as the spell persists before immediately collapsing can be easily done on the fly. Doing one with lasting structural stability, especially finely calibrated pit-trap stability, would require a bit of time and a skill penalty, with the penalty reduced by skills like Traps or Engineering (mining).
Basically, the Shape Earth spell is designed to be a useful construction spell, which can be used for trap-building in some circumstances. But it doesn’t let you casually entomb enemies at will; there are more expensive spells for that.
So, for the horse-trap, you could create an underground cavity, then have it collapse as you cancel the spell in order to make a sudden pit. You’ll have the same range issues as mentioned upthread, though; the pit needs to be within a few yards of the caster, and the horses are unlikely to enter the woods at a full gallop.
–
BTW, a thought. If you’re planning on having the horse actually fall in the pit rather than just being deterred by it: horse fallen in pit = horse with broken legs = dead horse.
If you’re doing that anyway, why not just shoot or fireball the thing? It’d be simpler.
OTOH, if you’re hoping for a peaceful resolution, killing their horses may not be the best way to start.
Waiting on input from Thwip and Ranar before moving on. Could I get a vague outline of your intentions? Talk, fight, threaten, all of the above?
Ranar is taking the “Shoot first, axe and questions later” approach.
Using his shield as a pavise/brace, he’ll take careful aim at one of the riders (if one looks like an apparent leader, he’ll target that one, otherwise, the closest that he has a clear shot at). Fire once, then reload, aim, and fire again. After the second shot, he’ll sling his crossbow, draw axe and pick up his shield, and prepare for whatever comes next.
Just for reference:
- Crossbow reloading is a four-second job.
- The horsemen are moving at 10yds/second.
- Dropping the bow and grabbing the axe takes a second. Equipping the shield for melee would be another two seconds.
First shot at 80 yards or thereabouts?
You add speed to range before taking the penalty, so a target moving 10yd/sec at 80yds would be 90, for a -10.
The size of the horse gives a +1; all-out attack (no dodge) gives +1; bracing the bow gives +1; aiming for one turn gives the bow’s accuracy bonus of +4; further aiming is +1/sec, to a maximum of +2.
Ranar has Bow-12, so an 80yd shot, all-out and braced with four seconds of aiming would be 12+1+1+1+4+2-10 for a roll vs 11. And the horse has about a 30% chance of a successful dodge.
Shooting for the rider instead of the horse is the same, but without the +1 for the horse’s size. The rider would also have a slightly better chance to dodge, as he isn’t burdened with a rider.
You’ll have time for a second shot, but probably no time to aim.
Thwip is a better shot than Ranar, but his rifle only has an accuracy bonus of 1 (so a maximum 1+2 aiming bonus), and he’s got a -4 at the moment due to his broken arm.
That sounds good enough. 
Thwip was waiting for a better view of the group so he could determine if shooting was needed or not.
If it looked like they were going to take their hooman non-lethally he’d go out there and try to get to the bottom of things. But since it looks like the shit will hit the fan before he can gather enough data… Which has been his main bugbear since leaving port. Science is a slow and steady process, people!… he’ll follow Ranar’s lead.
If the opportunity presents itself to warn the riders off by using their ignorance of our numbers he’ll do that.
Aiming for horses or riders?
I’ll be running the fight as usual, handling most of the dice myself. But since Ranar is kicking off the action and it’s an important shot…
@DaakSyde, roll some dice for me. 12 or less to hit the central horseman.
Trousers of time options;
Should Ranar miss his shot Thwip will quickly announce that it was just a warning shot and all four of them are in the sights of the squad of archers hidden in the trees and everyone should hold still lest they get shot. We’ll see how things go after that.
Should Ranar hit, Thwip will go for the lead rider in the hopes that taking them out will send the other two into retreat. If not he’ll try the squad of archers warning again.
I think maybe sparing the horses might be a good idea if at all possible. The nearest city is a long walk.