I'm rather tired of things like 'faceless, nameless thugs'. Have you read anything about Gilgamesh? It is an organization of trained soldiers, not useless thugs or mooks. They are real people from around the world, not mindless minions manufactured as fodder by heaven or hell. If you're so fixated on them not having names, I'll give them names. They're like the EXALT from Xcom; they start at a higher level than the other factions start out with, but don't grow as much, and ultimately don't hold up to the other factions' stronger units. They weren't supposed to be fought yet because of this.
The generic Gilgamesh Reclaimers you described-- the ones who weren't Macbeth and Tickler and the like-- have no names given, have not had their faces described in any way, and talk like thugs. Faceless, nameless, thuglike. I was under the impression that, since you hadn't even bothered to give them names and distinct personalities like the
other agents you introduced in that very post, you were treating them like the tier-1 mooks they appeared to be. The only thing that makes these soldiers different from others is the fact that two of them are wielding unorthodox melee weapons, and one of them is wielding a pair of greatshields. The rest have no names, no personalities, and no unique weapons.
If they weren't supposed to be fought yet, then why did you send them out literally the first chance you got? You could have sent in more security guards or unaugmented soldiers, like we've
been fighting.
You're the one who escalated the situation up to where we're fighting Reclaimers, and you're the one who's gotten incensed at the fact that we're treating a five-pack of unnamed soldier men like a warmup before we fight the
named characters with unique personalities and unusual loadouts you've decided to send out alongside them.
Furthermore, it aggravates me to see you as well as Bee flat-out ignoring things that I've written. Tickler, who is directly attacking, still hasn't been addressed. She is approximately equal to Macbeth in power, and both will be fighting together--why is she not being given any credit? Bee said something about a 'liver shot' but the word 'liver' doesn't even appear in a search of the IC.
That was me. Because Tickler was very noticeably distracted and directed her attacks straight at Antonio, Gene could sneak a hit in that would logically take her out of commission. I'm not going to comment on the whole "ignoring" thing, considering what just happened.
By the way, I specifically described a large soldier whose weapon was dual greatshields, and whose primary task is defending allies. Does it seem like a difficult situation to get out of without autohitting and bending reality to suit your characters? Yes, that's what you got yourself into by openly attacking a supernatural army. That's the beauty of it: a difficult situation should challenge your inventiveness and skill as a writer. Of the top of my head, Gene could have used his heightened strength to tear up a section of floor to use as a shield, then send it flying as a distraction.
I myself think that
@IncredibleBee's post could be reworded to be more descriptive in how it deals with the opposing soldiers, and I believe that the faceless unnamed Reclaimer with the greatshields would most likely survive Antonio's onslaught. I'd say that he should rewrite his post to suit that-- kill or incapacitate the gunmen and the two melee fighters using sweeping attacks that they'd have little defense against, and leave it so that it's a fair two-on-two between Antonio & Gene versus Macbeth & Stonewall (that's the name I came up for your shield-wielding man, I like him).
The "shield" solution would have made very little sense. Office building lobbies commonly use tile flooring, yes, but the tiles are either far too small or far too
large to use as a shield. Gene could
possibly use them as projectiles to harass the soldiers, if he had telekinesis (to fire a bunch of them at once) or super speed (to fire a bunch of them one at a time). He does not. Beyond that, throwing a big slab of rock at the soldiers wouldn't fix much either, because as you said the Reclaimers are
spread out. The best and most logical solution was to use the weapon we had that most fit the job, and so we did.
You faced us with an overwhelmingly negative situation: six gunmen and two specialized heavy soldiers, oriented in a generally featureless room. I capitalized the fact that Gene wasn't drawing any fire and that one of the heavy soldiers had placed herself in a tactically-unsound position, thus taking her out of the fight. Antonio capitalized on the fact that only one of the soldiers had any passive defense (Mister Stonewall) and used a wide attack with a large, difficult-to-avoid weapon to beat the others down and even the playing field. That's a fairly creative solution.
@IncredibleBee, I'd definitely rewrite your post to better describe what you're doing, who you hit, and how they got hit.
This is a story, not a game. You all, as players, must take queues about how things work from us, the managers of the story, not from whatever idea you have about the games. If we decided that there's no such thing as blessed weapons, or that every Gilgamesh soldier is equal to one of the named operatives in skill, then that's what goes. In this RP, it's creativity, effort, and cooperation that get the job done.
I fully understand that. I suppose it was wrong of us to assume that player characters would be at any level above the factions' most basic troops, and it was even more wrong of us to assume that, when you place three unique characters next to five generic characters, you fully intended for the five generic characters to be as memorable and important as the unique characters.
We've used a relatively creative solution to bypass a tactically unsound situation, using the magic of cooperation. I wouldn't say that my posts are of the same length and verbosity as what Lazo or I-Am-X have been putting out, but I
have been putting as much effort as possible into them. I can only assume IncredibleBee is doing the same.
This situation seems to be stemming from the fact that you hate seeing Gilgamesh Inc. take any noticeable losses. Here's the thing: Gene and Antonio still have a lot of building to traverse, and you didn't have to bring in the Reclaimers as soon as possible. A far more reasonable escalation of threats would be to send in mundane soldiers, the ones that would
logically be closest to the ground floor. You could definitely send in your named Reclaimers so that they'd stand out even more against the "dudes with guns" backdrop. As it is, the current situation is too easy to interpret as "Gene and Antonio Versus Tickler, Macbeth, and Some Other Reclaimers". Ideally, your badass private army with unique weapons and cool powers should be comprised
only of named characters, and delivered only in small doses. That's just basic narrative construction, and when you
fail to do it you end up cheapening the name of your elite soldiers to your intended audience-- as was demonstrated here. Because you sent in a bunch of Reclaimers at a time and didn't give us a chance to see how badass a single unnamed Reclaimer is, neither of us treated them as a threat above a pack of Hell Prides or Blessed.
If you wanted to build them up as a force that's undeniably powerful regardless of whether they've got a unique weapon or not, you shouldn't have had a gaggle of them pile out into the lobby to act as the
second fight we've ever had. If you'd intended for majority of them to be dealt with quickly and escalate the threat later, then you have no right to complain. If you'd intended for each of them to be as deadly as a player character, then I have to complain at how drastically you'd react to even a relatively small breach in the main plot.
