Seed 8815, four players — Ashcroft, Bhattacharya, Renshaw, Braithwaite. Every
rating pulled from roster.mjs before rolling, which is the direct consequence
of pass 4 having typed six of sixteen from memory.
The cut is the most measured thing in this project and had never been played.
EXPOSURE prices its fights, check-firstblood holds its swing, check-attackers
holds what each of the four contributes -- and no pass in four had run a
session with Pollard and Okonkwo off the table.
THE RESULT IS NOT ABOUT COMBAT. The fights were never the problem. What breaks
is the party's eyes: POLLARD'S SPOT 53 IS THE HIGHEST IN THE ENTIRE ROSTER AND
HE IS THE FIRST PERSON THE SCALING NOTES DROP. At five players the party's eyes
go from 53 to 40; at four they stay at 40 with a 35 alongside. This run missed
the stump (79 vs 40) and the six at the back (67 vs 35), both Pollard's lane in
the six-player game, both clues the scenario leans on.
check-rollable cannot see this, and the reason is worth keeping: it asks
whether every named skill is reachable at 25% or better, and Spot 40 clears 25
comfortably. It is a rollability check, not a competence check, and the cut is
where the difference bites. The scaling note's only stated cost of dropping
Pollard is that "the cordon loses its shield", which is about a fight, in a
scenario whose first two acts are almost entirely looking at things.
Second finding: FOUR OF THE FIVE PARTY-SPLIT ROWS NAME PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT
THERE. The table is introduced as the fallback for a table that will not choose
its own splits -- and at four players the fallback does not exist, which is
exactly when it is most needed.
Timing runs the other way from pass 4: ~3:15, twenty-five minutes SHORT, because
four people ask fewer questions. Nothing in the Pacing Note says the cuts are
player-count dependent, so a GM following it at a small table finishes early.
The unsettled countdown fired for a second pass running. Recorded with the
caveat that both passes had Ashcroft accept THE OFFER, so both used the
Difficult branch -- 14.5% unsettled against 3.8% if he refuses. Not two draws
from the same distribution, and the document prints only one of those figures.
Five fixes listed, none applied. Also listed: what five passes have still never
tested -- the Swinburne fumble, the re-cut-the-peg fumble, a failed Xenology,
and any fight at all.
npm run check: 17 guards, exit 0.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
