Dead Reckoning - sorry, meant to get to your town business today, but I'm kinda exhausted. Had an awesome live session of D&D today (via Hangouts/Roll20).

The party took part in an arena combat, where each round if they won they could drop out and take their prize, or continue to the next round but risk losing it all. I roll randomly on the wilderness encounter charts (in the Expert Set) for the creatures, including number appearing by the book. They went six rounds, some easy, some hard (there were 8 PCs, between 2nd and 5th level).

Round 1: 2 giant black widow spiders
Round 2: 10 Traders, 20 Caravan Guards, 2 Officers (2HD) and 1 Captain (4HD)
Round 3: 7 mules (my favorite)
Round 4: 4 frost giants [initiative and a wand of fireballs made this easier]
Round 5: 8 gnolls
Round 6: 3 flame salamanders

The round 4 prize was a random assortment (1d6) pieces of jewelry to each PC, so I spent a lot of time this evening rolling up jewelry, tabulating values and XP, and sending messaging all my players.

Luckily, there's a typhoon on the way to Korea tomorrow, so I should have time to get a post up then.

No worries.

Jeff and I are just debating joint ops to go get ourselves killed. =)

The Whores have a level 1 illusionist with 4 HP and a thief with 12 HP, and the Party Posse has a thief with 9 HP.

I have a pretty good thief too.

I mapped as I went.  There was a good sized cave we could use as an ambush spot.  Maybe we have the thieves take a look to see what we are up against and then lure whatever it is into the big cave to ambush it?  Spread out so, if it is a dragon, it can;t kill us all in 1 big cone of fiery death?

We can splurge and pick up Potions of Fire Resistance for designated fighters too.

Ready to make some purchases whenever you are, Mr. DM, sir.

I hope everything is OK.

Sorry, guys, been in a bit of a mental funk. Finishing up a paper, and imposter syndrome is rearing its ugly head, telling me this paper is crap and will not get published. And that's what's keeping me from the game. I need to submit it by the end of September, so hopefully I'll get it finished up soon, and then once it's out, nothing more to worry about. And I can get this game going again.

No worries, we've all been there.  If it helps any: I love this game.  You and Jeff do a fantastic job here on RPOL.

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Mental exercise time (brought on, in part, by the Twins and obvious greedy self-interest.)

In D&D: Treasure XP -Is the gold to XP value based on the literal value of a treasure / item?

For instance, The Twins sold wooden toys at the bizarre for 200 gp.  Is that 200 xp for them?

What if a thief gets a 10 gp gem in a dungeon, but convinces a mark that it's worth 100gp.  Is it worth 10 xp or 100 xp?  Or the reverse, if a merchant gives only 10 gp for a 100 gp gem?

When does treasure become XP?  Let's say a group gets 1000 gp in treasure from a dungeon, but the thief steals 100 gp of it?  Does the group get the 900 xp or the 1000 xp?  Or if the party is robbed in town before they spend or stash the treasure?

If I ever had a personal ruling on these they are long since lost to time.

Open question to you too, Jeff.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:46, Wed 26 Aug 2020.

I like the idea of a supergroup. The first thing we need is a killer name. I suggest the Dead Party Whores.




Or maybe not.  ;^)

The paper has been finished and sent off to the publisher for review. For the next few weeks I've got to prepare for a presentation at the end of the month, but that is no where near as hard. There's very little scrutiny of academic conference presentations, so the work goes a bit faster. So more time to devote to this game. :D

Let's get your town business wrapped up and get you in that next supergroup adventure!

Welcome back!

I think I'm ready to roll out.

Is this going to be all 3 groups in the supergroup?

I'm planning on it. I still have some things to buy, then I'm set.

We'll need to figure out the logistics for this.

If we plan on sneaking up on...whatever this thing is we'll need a plan.

Do either of your groups have invisibility or silence?

Nope. I have a wand of paralyzation, and we might get lucky if push came to shove.

To get things rolling I'm going to lay out a pseudo-plan and you tell me what works and what doesn't and we can hash it out from there.

We take the combined group down to the entrance.

We leave a rear guard at the entrance (I have a small squadron of hirelings for this)

The main parties go down to the big cave (I made a map, I'll see if I can scare it up)

We station the group in there (I found the half-eaten corpse in the big cave and heard the snoring in another tunnel)

We send scouts down to check out the snoring (I have a thief that will "volunteer") and then assess the situation from there.

The issue I see is, if it is a dragon, we have no way to survive a blast of dragon breath.

That works for me. You're right - if we see a dragon, we have to get out of range as fast as possible.

Question about scrolls:  Can you transcribe it into your spell book and still use it as a scroll or is it lost when it's transcribed?

It's lost if transcribed. You'd then have to memorize it to cast it.

My dragonborn can speak Dragon - should we include one or two up front just in case the dragon's in a talking mood?

If so, they don't have infravision, do they?

I also thought we'd send only infravision users first, but what do you think?

Dragonborn do not have infravision.

That's what I thought.

In reply to The Party Posse (msg # 229):

My thief is human.

I have a dwarf fighter and elf bard.

Do you have any scout types with infrared vision?

Not with any hit points to speak of. My gnome illusionist has 4 hp and my elf MU has 6. My halfling thief has 12, but I've been playing AD&D too long, and thought he had infravision, but he doesn't.

I have a dwarf fighter who could go in unarmored that I'm not too attached to....  ;^)

In reply to The Party Posse (msg # 231):

Does the illusionist have phantasmal force?

I can have my thief scout with a candle and the illusionist can cover them with an illusion showing the area as if it’s dark.

No sorry - just 90' of infravision instead of the typical 60'.