I asked this a while ago and it turned into a pretty good thread, so I'll ask it again and see if that's the same.
How does one defend against a threat that can groundhog day a scenario over and over again?
>>44398770
Does anyone else (ie the players) retain memory of the previous iterations? Who or what exactly is the "threat"?
>>44398770
That movie where Tom Cruise dies 47 times
>>44398804
in this case, it's probably darksouls man. Though that's really a standin for whatever else.
And whether or not people remember it was a good factor to consider, and can be one of the conditions needed to fight such a threat. Or having someone able to at least inform the party time travel shit is afoot.
>>44398770
Pretty simple. You kick their ass until they give up. Doesn't matter if they can reset the timeline if you are an insurmountable obstacle to their progress. Maybe if you can stonewall them hard enough they'll eventually try to find another way around?
Being good at extrapolating information from expressions and body language is a good bonus.
From the perspective of the defender, they only need to do it once.
In actuality they've been fighting the thing countless times, but you only remember the last time, so effectively you only really experience the time you finally lose or they finally give up and stop resetting the timeline.
The best thing you can do is make it take as looooooong as possible. Drag it out, use cheap tactics. Don't even try to win that hard, just piss them off so goddamned much they ragequit and never come back.
>>44398770
That depends. Would the Heroes, or atleast one of the heroes, have knowledge of the resetting? If so, he could do his best to counter the enemy's counters.
Example
>The first time around, the Chrono Drake breathes fire at the heroine archer. She dodges, and fires an arrow that lands the killing blow.
>Next time around, the monk is the only one aware of the repeat in time, and watches as the Chrono Dragon fires TWO blasts of fire. The heroine dodges the first, but right into the second fireball. Then, The Berserker, engulfed with rage, leaps to the Chrono Dragon, and uses his axe to gouge out its throat, and then weeps at the parties loss
>Third time, the monk watches the Two fire blasts, and shouts for the archer to dodge in a different direction. Chrono Dragon dies from arrow again
>The Dragon would spend eternity trapped in that single fight, since the monk can always counter his every move.
Depends on how far back they can loop events(Clock King in The Batman had this power, but he could only rewind time a minute or so), what the limitation on the power is(in Radiant Historia, the main character has to be alive to redo events, so even in bad endings he survives, if barely), whether or not anyone else can remember the events of the loop(s), how powerful the character is outside of their timelooping power, and what their goal is.
A lot of factors to consider really.
If there's some limit to how far back they can go, an easy way to deal with them to set events up that would cause their defeat, and then stall them until they can't possibly go back far enough to stop those events from happening(as with the Clock King example, he was going to poison and kill a shitton of people, so Batman had his son brought into the kill zone and fought him until it was way too late for him to possibly do anything about it).
If there's no limit, then the only real way is being able to defeat them no matter how many times they loop or having an absolutely perfect plan to stop them that no amount of replays will find a weakness in.
All of these assume whoever's against them retains their memories as well though.
>>44398921
Dragging it out and using cheap tactics is good.
Bonus points for healing yourself, summons, and excessive dodging
Don't hit their HP, hit their SAN. Once they're in a state of irreversible, anguished catatonia they're not very likely to do anything, including hitting the reset button.
Get better at time shenanigans than them.
Make sure every run through the loop they make hurts. A lot. An unbearable lot. But leave them a way out, they might not achieve what they're aiming for, but if they simply let time plod along then they won't have to face the pain again, and things beyond that will be acceptable at least. Throw them a bone you know, carrot and electrified, white-hot concertina switch crawling with heat resistant bullet ants.
>>44398835
Not really a time reset there, just eternal resurrection. Toss the fucker in a meat grinder until it's a mindless hollow, then lock it up securely. Like in a sturdy bronze cage, that you bury fifteen feet under ground. That should suffice for the rest of you natural lifespan.
>>44398770
Rule 3 of /tg/: Don't repost a thread. It just makes for stale conversation.
>>44398770
Meatgrinder.
Make them suffer for every single loop they choose to fight you in. Grind down their will to take up that sword until they can no longer bring themselves to try.
Of course, this relies on your being strong or tricky enough to beat them, or at least mutually annihilate, until they lose the will to fight.
Assuming some limits on the ability, deception followed by xenocide. They can succeed against all odds, buthey cannot decide what is hidden within the fortress they penetrate or facility they subvert. Get them to blow their load their and Exterminatus/nuke\Project Odin them out of existance in the cooldown.
If the consciously resets things, take him out before they're even aware of shit going down. Smash his skull in while he sleeps, headshot form behind, ten pounds of pentrite under their car seat.
>>44398770
Smack their shit.
And keep smacking their shit, no matter how many times they come back.
Until they just stop coming back.
>>44398770
Easy, make them feel they've won, then keep leading them further and further until you can catch them in a situation where the reset itself takes them into an impossible situation. Not hard, literally impossible, every move or no move leads them to a loss.
Seriously, it's the only way, and it'd usually be successful should you find out about their powers peacefully then have time to plan ahead. Every way that relies on mind breaking or having them give up is simply a 50/50 chance.
by killing the thing that keeps it coming back
the problem here is that if you don't loop along with the guy you probably won't realize that you're dealing with a looper to begin with.
If you're planning on implementing this as a DM the best way is probably what >>44398921 said, the time the party succeeds against the BBEG or even whatever has this power is the time they remember
The easiest way to represent it would be giving the creature a bonus to most everything, an insight bonus, with the occasional remark of "Oh you were better last time" "That was the 564th time that swing missed" depending on how blatantly you want them to know this has been going on.
At best if might give the players a little sense of wondering what the hell it is and a grain of satisfaction more when they do beat it.
>>44399306
For the sake of argument we can probably assume that the defender here has either worked it out before the confrontation and thus will never lose that knowledge to a reset, or is incredibly good at reading people and will know or guess what the looper is going to do based on their words or body language, possibly even going so far as to work it out in every single timeline just from how frustrated the looper looks.
>>44399306
Pretty much this.
From your perspective, you'd basically be dealing with some sort of unstoppable man that always seems to know how things are going to happen before they do, and o amount of changing your plans is going to help as he just seems to adapt instantly.
Maybe the best way to do it is to deal with the enemy in a random manner. If you simply took steps which did have consequences, but whose choice and order were determined by something beyond your control (and thus, beyond their precognition powers).
>>44398922
Until the Dragon realizes what is going on and roasts the Monk first.
>find the person/thing causing it
>DORARARARARA
>>44398770
Really the only way to do it wrong is to quit.
Think about the logic behind this kind of thing.
1. Are they doing it just to torture you?
Then giving in gives them the win. They reset things so they can have the joy of hurting you over and over while keeping it fresh. If you let it get to you, if you scream and cry, then they have their satisfaction. Toughing it out denies them that and gives you more power. Turn the tables and make them think twice about resetting because it will bite them in the ass.
2. Are they trying to teach you a lesson?
Then giving up only perpetuates the cycle or worse they give you up as a lost cause and you lose out. So keep going and try to think about what's really causing it. Fall back on the old text adventure strategy of try every action in every situation until you progress. Archaic and boneheaded? Yes, but I'm no wizard.
3. But in tabletop they're usually doing it because they can't just kill you.
Why would they go through the trouble of resetting the timeline if killing you was the easier option? If it's for shits and giggles then you're looking at 1. In this case the bad guy is kind of showing their hand. They're scared of you enough to mess with time just to set you back. So the best way you can fix this is to turn up the heat so to speak. Keep going the way you are. Force them to keep doing it until they realize how futile it is. Never stop coming for them. Beat into them that you aren't an adversary. You're a goddamn force of nature that they will never overcome or survive. Keep being the Terminator until they give up on resetting because it just doesn't work. Go get 'em champ.
>>44398770
1: Deploying your own groundhogger
2: Anti-groundhog magic/tech.
>>44399173
>kill them
Both the Dark Souls and Groundhog Day from the OP have the central figure be almost immortal, they can't even kill themselves.
>>44398874
I approve.
>>44398770
Put them in a trap that doesn't spring until their time horizon expires. So if it's a 24 hour reset, lure them into a hotel, lock the doors for 24 hours, and then kill them.
If they reset, they're still locked in their room. Ideally, by the time they realize they SHOULD hit their reset button, it's too late for resetting to put them far enough back to prevent the attack.
