Yeah. It wants to kill the leader of the slavers. Enemy of my enemy is my friend kinda thing.

In reply to Grock (msg # 986):

I understand the in-game reasoning. It's the out-of-game effects caused by an unintended and imbalanced change that concern me.

As a compromise, I'll offer this: Dral goes away and I make a goliath fighter of some kind that is mechanically the ogre. That keeps Grock's in-game goal intact and doesn't significantly change the game.

Hold on a second before you go rerolling.  I'm confused.  What is Dral's goal and how does adding the ogre (probably only through the end of the dungeon, mind) thwart this goal such to render him unplayable?

I mean, "I'm bored with Dral and need to change things" is one thing, but if events in the story have rendered Dral "unplayable despite me wanting to keep playing him" then we need to discuss this further.

Dral's goals are not important here. We can make up anything we need for either him staying or him leaving.

Dral is not unplayable and I'm not bored with him, but I'm concerned that I will get bored with this ogre as part of the group. If it's just for the next couple of encounters, I can probably just deal with it.

If it's longer than that, then I'd rather restore the game to state it was more designed for, and take over the ogre. Dral would go away in a way that makes sense to everyone.

To clarify. The ogre is a chaotic creature by nature, and has been enslaved, once it has done it's task, as clarified in GIANT to grock, it will depart. It is not a player, it is merely a way to reward a clever way to go about an encounter and foe. You passed, you get rewarded, but not permanently.
That said, I hope you feel better Dral, but otherwise do PM me and I will advise further, as I do not wish for this to cause issues.

Updated with an overview map in Grocks latest post. The room east of you goes to the throne room, north is unknown and south and east is the crypts as previously detailed.

In reply to Storyteller (msg # 990):

OK, thanks for clarifying. I generally have very mixed feelings about "rewards" that make the game easier, since part of what I enjoy is escalating challenge that requires more strategic use of inherent PC abilities and resources, and involve higher stakes. Merely winning, while obviously what the characters would rather do, and the easier the better, doesn't make for the best game for me as a player, I've found.

As it's temporary, I can go with it. It might be good for us to discuss, at some point, our individual preferences. Have a Session Zero, in other words.

Happy to talk about this more in some context if wanted. Personally, I dislike having to run too many NPCs as a DM but when I do, I assign the monster to a PC temporarily so they can have fun with it. I also to scale the encounter to make it a bit harder to compensate, though not too much--don't want to punish the players for being creative, after all :-)

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I think we're ready to move on, yes?
This message was last edited by the player at 23:42, Tue 31 Mar 2020.

Yep

Yep.

Yep.

That was actually my intent. I do not offer you a brute and the same encounter. I add it for flair, fun and to add something here. I do so by scaling it as well as possible. I want you to do stuff out of the box and have to support it when you do if I want to enforce it.
I will offer you lot a statbox within the IC thread and let you handle this fella for the coming encounter. But rest assured, he is there for fun and flair and to add to the story, not to skew things.

In reply to Storyteller (msg # 997):

That makes sense to me and it's more or less what the DMG2 advises when it comes to companion characters. I wanted to make sure everyone was one the same page, as there's a school of thought that gaining advantage to make challenges easier is part of the fun. Most people seem to hold at least a little of that view, but it varies. I wanted to know where we all stood and stand.

Update from me tomorrow.

I have spend a large part of my RP "career" if you would in terms of GM'ing in warhammer fantasy, where combat is, and should be ugly, dangerous and risky.
I want to ensure that boss encounters if we should call them that, have high risk, and require some degree of logic and tactics and force clever use of abilities. The enemies are seldom completely mindless and should reflect so in how they act. Outnumbered? Run to advantageous ground etc..

Never played WH40K roleplaying. Been watching a lot of lore with my 17-year-old son, who's now obsessed with the tabletop game, though. Looks brutal.

In reply to Greyband (msg # 1001):

I wouldn't want to play any character in it who I was attached to in any way, but I love the tone of it, the way everything is grand and over the top, but just awful. It's like Fury Road but without any heroes.

I am tempted to create a WH40K campaign where one player is unkillable and eventually destablizes the entire empire. :-)

FYI, pretty much offline today and tomorrow; next update from me over the weekend.

Go get 'em, Dral!

Dral Dral he’s our man! If he can’t do it, no one can!

I aim to post this evening.

Based on those numbers, Dral isn't bloodied.

Correct, I was off by a bit

This message was deleted by the player at 20:28, Thu 16 Apr 2020.

I will get a post in later today.