And, new thread open! Feel free to continue the discussion over the virtues and faults of 4E, or anything else you want to - I'm really enjoying it, and in general it's nice to have some activity on the OOC thread. :)

Gunna jump into this for one sec to say: I've never played 4E, I've played Pathfinder and 5E, and of the two, I like Pathfinder better. Call me crazy, but I like a ton of fiddly numbers and rules and generally how you can kinda fine-tune your character down to the exact specifications that you want. Yes, it's more work--a lot more work--but I like to research and go over rules (even if I forget half of them) and generally min-max characters.

I doubt I'd like 4E for the very reason Nothing likes it--but I'll let you guys fight over it XD

And that's 19 damage on Balin, so with all other things added in i think we've just about got him ^^

 

Hmm... Yes and no. Warleaders give bonuses to others in their party, but it strikes me more as a line infantry Sphere to keep the enemy attention on them rather than the Spherecaster preparing the fireball that will soon kill them.

Warlords are more like the Commander class, with access to the Warleader Sphere. The combination is pretty damn effective from what i can see at first glance.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:04, Mon 20 Jan 2020.

It is; hopefully you'll see it in play eventually - not like you've made enemies of a powerful military that would spot such individuals or anything like that. ;)

So, now that he's dead, even if you didn't see much of what he was capable of (only the barriers, really), any comments on Balin?

Classic paladin (even if he isn't officially one) and thus classic idiot. He had good reason to be confident about fighting us . . . but six to one isn't a fair fight, for him at least. Once we had one character in AoO range, his spell casting went non-existent; so his major way of doing damage to us was negated.  So . . . fairly good fight I'd say, I think we got lucky in figuring out how to hamstring him early and once he had vines around him and Adrika within AoO range, he was kinda toast.

Yeah, i do not regret Adrika having a Neutral alignment that would allow her to cross both anti-Good and anti-Evil barriers with ease, even if that means she can't actually attack said barriers any more than she could punch the air. I think we can all agree that it was good we managed to get someone in melee range, or the fight would have been a LOT tougher.

That, and the battle gave her some ideas, which she of course is going to make use of. But that's just common sense.

I don't think we honestly saw half of what this guy was capable of, myself.  We just managed to pen him in and not give him a way out, and the only things he could do was to try and protect himself.  If we'd given him the room to work with, I imagine the fight might have gone differently- but honestly?  This one is a feather in our caps.

Also anyone else calculating that we're 1 XP from level 3?

Yep ^^;

Anyone else feel like making a run for the other necklace if we're this close?  I mean, we still have a few more good rounds in us, and it would be a shame to leave points on the table if we're that close...

...on the other hand, I don't know what SF had waiting for us, if anything- anybody remember?

Also- how much time is left to us?  I mean, we have this one, we're close to a level already, we may as well at least consider it...

You have around 18 hours left; of course, Thorn would be very pleased if you proved yourself capable of being prompt and efficient in executing his orders.

Bring it up ICly and Adrika would agree we'd retrieve the other necklace as well, even if it's just to tell Thorn "Hey, you weren't specific about which necklace to bring back, so we brought both." and see how they'd react.

Yeah, like I said, boring because everyone was the same.

Honestly I love 5e. It's my favorite version of TTRPG yet. PF and 3.5 are fun because anything you can think to build or mimic or do has a way to do it (I built all the Avengers in 3.5 after the first movie came out), but... there's just too many options. It takes me hours and hours to make a 1st level character in those systems. 5e? Maybe 10 minutes and I'm rolling.

But at the same time, nothing feels the same, which makes it fun because my fighter and rogue aren't just doing the same things as a spellcaster. I don't want my classes the same.

It's not that they're the same, it's that they can all be effective. Older edition spellcasters were super OP compared to melée fighters once you got to the higher levels. All the fighters could do was walk up and hit something with their weapon (maybe even twice or thrice depending on level!), meanwhile the casters are busy summoning demons and teleporting to other planes and levelling cities with meteor storms or whatever. I've heard that a Fighter is actually one of the more complicated classes in Fourth Edition...I think it's because they (like other classes in the "Defender" role) spend a lot of their time in combat focusing heavily on positioning, getting enemies where they want them in order for other people to use their own abilities most effectively without having to worry about getting hit.

Fifth Edition seems to have just gone back to melée classes going "I hit it" again, while the casters just seem to have one great big spell list, from which a selection are available based on class and level, but spells aren't unique to classes the way Powers are in Fourth Edition, so you could have three different classes all casting Blight or whatever. I'm not sure how different you can make separate characters of the same class, but I think every edition has the means to make them different, like if you want a party of Wizards or Monks or whatever, I think there are different abilities/styles you can have to make them not all the same? Or do melée characters (in older editions) still suffer from "I hit it with my sword, that other guy hits it with his axe, but we're still basically doing exactly the same thing"?

I've heard that a lot of people who complain about Fourth haven't actually tried it, but I don't know how true that is. Certainly partly true, but that's hardly unique to DnD - plenty of people will say they don't like a film, or a book, or a game, or whatever, just because they've heard it's bad, but they never actually give it a try themselves to see if they like it. I'm not trying to say that's the case for anyone here, just to point that out. But "It's different, so I don't like it" doesn't mean that the differences are "bad" ;).

I mean, many of the abilities I saw in 4e were literally the exact same thing just with a different name for the different classes. YMMV though.

Does our level up take effect now or after we've rested or later?

We'll say that in-character it's the result of your training, but OOC it'll take effect immediately, and I'll be implementing it as soon as I have everybody's new stats available.

Mine is probably gonna take a few IRL days to sort as I always end up having to message back and forth with the GM a few times to figure out what I actually get and then ask if various changes are okay and all that before I actually update my sheet :D.

So... how's everyone doing in their private threads?? :)

Went pretty well, now i'm waiting for a few other people to be done so i can slide into their thread :)

You?

In reply to Adrika (msg # 20):

Still going well :)

It's just been quiet with everyone all in their private threads.

I'm not sure if SF told everyone or not, but there are a total of 16 ingots of mithral, so each person gets 3.2 ingots. We can negotiate with each other for more or less as wanted.

heyo so ive been out of action cause real life stuff but trying to get back in sorry for keeping you waiting

I'm not waiting for you, and I'm also not one to talk!

Hope you're RL stuff is ok!

No worries Carmen, just curious how you were doing since your posting rate had dropped over the weekend.

Myself, i had some other things to do as well before the meeting, so timewise i'm still an hour out in said other thread. No need to hurry ^^

Basically, I got a boyfriend now and have been a liiiitttttllleee obsessed . . .

In reply to Carmen Gorgon (msg # 25):

Just curious, but was this around the time you started sleeping with Carver? :P

Actually nope, this is new as of January 7th. Sleeping with Carver is entirely about controlling him actually—it’s to make him obey Carmen better.

...carmen bring more lovey dove recently might be related tho....

Hmm... I think i may have found an approximation of what Terran sounds like, as well as the general flavor of Adrika's tribal culture:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rClD6sf8wjQ

...not only is it a good listen, it reminded me I still needed to wishlist the new Hellblade sequel coming out.

So in terms of Being Evil, i've recently come across the following:

https://www.kickstarter.com/pr...ath-of-the-righteous

And oh my, am i looking forward to that one :P

I don't know that Pathfinder is well suited to being played as a video game; also it's generally not really my preferred type of videogame, I tend to favor older titles to newer ones.

Have you actually ever read the Adventure Path in question? I found it's an interesting one, especially books 1 and 4, but I feel like the ending is a bit lacking overall. It's still good, but there's others I like more.

Oh these are the same guys that did Kingmaker, and from what I know of the module it's pretty damn accurate. The company put a LOT of effort into recreating the battle and world systems in interesting ways, even keeping morality decisions and choose-your-own-adventure sections. I dunno, if you see it on sale, I'd pick it up.

I haven't tried the Kingmaker videogame either, although I did heard good things about it - and that's objectively one of the most interesting Adventure Paths too. Have you tried it yourself, Carmen? I'd be curious to get an informed opinion.

Alas, my computer can't exactly handle it, so I've only made it through the first module--but what I saw I really liked. It really does feel like a video game version of the game--not trying to make it a direct translation (no dice rolls, for one); but rather stay faithful to the spirit of the game. I dunno, I really liked it, and if I could actually finish the game without tanking my cpu I would.

(That . . . is the one major complaint I have. Its graphically intensive and I dont have a gaming pc XD)

I see; that would definitely be a problem for me too since my PC isn't really a gaming type either - honestly whenever I play I mostly use emulation to run older consoles and older games. So that'd be a pretty heavy limit for me too.

Of course, the very fact that I favor older games over new ones is probably part of the reason why I haven't gotten a gaming PC in the first place - I sort of never feel the need; the most recent game I've player is Galactic Civilization II (which is awesome) and that one is at least six or seven years old, I think (I do have the latest update they did before publishing GC3). So there's that.

Kingmaker... I played it, and in all honesty, it feels like it's a good module that's run by an inexperienced DM.

It can be fun, but random encounters end up all over the place (you have three goblins one moment and run into an Elder Water Elemental the next) and there's some other stuff that's badly indicated or doesn't make much sense, but in my experience it won't actually crash on you or feature a number of bugs.

In reply to Adrika (msg # 36):

That's more or less what I would expect - it's very hard for a computer to compensate for all the complexities a human player with access to even just a limited portion of the Pathfinder ruleset would be able to bring into play. Which would still make for a pretty good videogame, I expect, especially by today's standards, but does means that I'd be ever less willing to take a bet on the Wrath of the Righteous one.

Basically, Wrath is a more complex Adventure Path than Kingmaker in several respects, and from what I read, the new one is gonna include even more rules, including Mythics, which is hard to handle even for human GMs who really know what they're doing.

I've heard great things about Kingmaker, though I've never played it myself.

On the one hand I agree Wrath will take more rules for them to implement. OTOH, there are some aspects to having a computer manage things like Mythic abilities and Mythic feats/spells/etc that would probably be easier for the computer to manage than a Human GM simply because it is so complex and there are so many variables/things to keep track of when playing.

Fair point; it's certainly a wortwhile experiment to attempt if nothing else, and I might not play the game but I am definitely happy somebody out there is getting to enjoy these things in some form, who would otherwise never have tried to.

Oh yeah, i agree, which is why i said 'inexperienced' rather than 'bad'. Back when i played there were a few things of note i looked up (such as where to find the Treasurer the quest log was expecting me to already have found) and a certain boss battle that i was having trouble with until i figured out swarming them in summons is a perfectly acceptable and viable tactic. Then there was a couple of wisps on a story map i had to fight my way past that i had no idea how to actually hurt (a problem they did not have).

So yeah, the module is pretty good (keep in mind that, like the actual Adventure, you're on a timer throughout), but save often since at times the DM seems to consider CR some kind of sports drink.

Well, to be fair there's nothing inherently wrong with having high CR creatures around when the player is low level if it makes sense for them to be there. I mean this very game has you sharing a house with a group of people who, if they banded together, would probably make for a CR 12 or so encounter (Thorn + Wolfram + Tiadora + Redwood), but they're not going to just jump up and fight you out of nowhere. I expect a PC would have a tougher time adjudicating that.

Speaking of which, how does the game handles the more political "king interactions" portions of Kingmaker? Are they jettisoned entirely, or did the game find a way to include them?

Yeah, the high level Elder Water Elemental i mentioned a few posts back was a random encounter a couple of hours away from my capitol. It was faster than half my party, could one-hit my tank and had Cleave, so the 'battle' (i it could be called that) was watching it gib two or three characters per attack. This was right after a random encounter with like 5 goblins which i wiped taking zero damage. Then there's one occasion where the main story sends you to an area map, and straying off it for too far has you run into a group of level 18 Dire Boars... while you're level 6.

Politics... Never played the module, so i'll just describe how it works in the game. I recall you set up people as your advisers, and can then be sent out to deal with stuff. When in your Town Hall, they're shown as character cards which you can assign to mission cards. Said missions have a duration (say, 7 days) and an expiration date, with a roll being made at the end of it to see if it was a fail, a success or a crit success. Not sending someone on that mission is an auto-fail. The effects of missions is basically stats for your kingdom, and every 10 points in (for example) Culture unlocks a level up mission where you can get a +1 on Culture rolls, but takes up two weeks of you and your adviser's time, and forces you to eat a timeskip for some odd reason so you cannot react to any emergencies that might pop up in the meantime. Most stat increases to your kingdom come from constructing buildings.

If i may give some advice, try to get Arcane to level 3. It grants you the ability to build Teleportation Circles in your settlements, which should cut travel time down tremendously, especially over areas with more difficult terrain. As someone who tends to explore a lot, this is pretty much what you want so you won't end up running short on main mission time.

Anyway, it's like i said. Some derpyness on behalf of the AI DM, but overall an enjoyable experience. Just be sure to get a mod that unlocks all alignment based dialogue options so you don't feel you're not Evil enough to pick one.

As I said, I probably couldn't even run the game on my computer (which is a Laptop and thus inherently less powerful for games by default), but it's just interesting hearing about the experience nonetheless.

Although I must say I was a bit surprised they went with Kingmaker and now Wrath rather than starting with Rise of the Runelord or Curse of the Crimson Throne - both of those two have plots that are a lot better suited to a standard videogame experience.

Maybe it's because they are harder to convert to PC format. It'd make for a bigger Kickstarter audience...

Fair point - Kingmaker especially is enough of a fan favorite and up there with Crimson Throne for quality, so it makes for a reasonable first choice. But I'd still not have expected Wrath, of all things, to be the second; that one is a somewhat controversial AP, in terms of its perceived quality.

Rise of the Runelords has just been done to absolute death by a lot of other platforms- for example, the Pathfinder Adventure card game, the first story arc of the comic, the fact it's had two editions released (original and anniversary)...

Kingmaker's been the subject of one other game (the MMO is sort-of related to it, even if it is a pile of- well... let's just say I'm not a fan).

There are lots of other APs out there that could use the game treatment, but between Kingmaker and now WotR, well... I was kind of hoping for something like Jade Regent, but... if Owlcat gets to make a third or more... I could see them going with something like Hell's Rebels.

I personally dislike almost all MMO, so you're not going to offend me with that complaint. :)

Also, no love for Curse of the Crimson Throne? I always thought that one was among the best of the lot, quality-wise... although I must confess that my personal favourite is Serpent's Skull. It's a mess, but it's just my kind of mess, and I've put a lot of thought into ways to fix it so it'd be deserving of being played.

I think you said me before that you loved Jade Regent; I'd be curious to hear why! ^_^

Don't get me wrong, I like MMOs, it's just... well, for what they want for it, it completely stinks, and it's not really anything like actual Pathfinder- the story is pretty much "go here, kill twenty bears, find ten bear asses and bring them to said NPC" types of things.  The story is almost nonexistent, like the tutorial, and it's really hard to get motivated to do anything.

I think the big thing for me is the whole time-locked progression of character skills.  You don't get XP for killing things; you get money and loot, but XP is doled out in realtime- you get a steady drip of XP every day, and that's what you buy your skills with.  It doesn't matter how many bears or bandits you kill, you're not going to level up skills until you save up enough XP.   And given the fact the only other way to get XP is to buy if off the cash shop, well... *shrugs*  I think it's just going to crater pretty hard after it launches because there's no real advertising for it, and going up against PSO2, WoW, FFXIV, BDO, and everything else- I mean, if I had to compare the game to any other MMO?  EverQuest I, right when they were still hammering the kinks out.  It's not polished, it's just... I think it ought to be scrapped and given to a company that can make it work a lot better.  I mean, I have pages of ideas about it...

Jade Regent... it's more to do with the story, and yes, people complain that it's all about the NPCs, but then again, one of my favorite games is "Loren the Amazon Princess" where you also play the second banana, but in the end, well... I'd rather have a good story over a lot of everything else.  I don't want to spoil it, but I just really like the way the story goes and how some of the other characters turn out.

It does has a pretty strong NPC cast, I can agree with that. I think the primary problem people had it however was how it was a travelogue, which basically resulted in only the last two books being set in "the Orient", whereas one of the AP supposed point of appeal was it supposedly being "the oriental" AP.

But yeah, the fact the NPCs are more of a driving force is also a complaint that I've heard... I suppose it infringes a bit on the players' ability to determine their own path, which is a deal breaker for a ton of player. Honestly, however, I think a bit of direction is necessary - this AP after all has somebody giving you marching orders, so even if you'll be mostly self-directing once you're on the field, having something to give structure isn't so bad.

For me personally, the one thing I always answer to people who dismiss Jade Regent is "book 3 has Vikings vs Ninja as its primary plot element". It's really hard to consider something truly bad when it contains such an awesome element.

I mean... it's not Ninja vs. Pirates (http://drmcninja.com/archives/comic/2p16/) or anything. But, I guess that's cool :)

side note - I hate that players can't use hyperlinks in anything but their character sheets on here.

In reply to Cetaen (msg # 50):

What's the difference between posting a link like you just did and an hyperlink? I'm afraid I'm not literate enough in how computers work to tell the difference.

I mean I guess what I posted is a link, but the site has the <a href=" ... "> Text </a>

code for use, but only DM's can use it in games. That code would make the word "Text" have the link embedded in it so you don't need to see the whole "www.drmcninja..." part

Oh, I see. I think it's structured that way to prevent people from creating links without the DM noticing?

Actually, the difference is:

http://drmcninja.com/archives/comic/2p16/

^ That link gets converted into something clickable by the site.

Whereas:

<a href="http://drmcninja.com/archives/comic/2p16/">Click me!</a>

gets converted to a link with the text Click me!... but only when posted by a GM. Us mere players don't get to have that shiny ^^;

Personally, it's not so much as trying to hide links (i mean, the color coding is pretty much a dead giveaway) as it is adding a little functionality to make the GM's sticky posts look cleaner when they have links in them, which they tend to have. I've seen games with a Notice called 'index' that linked to a bunch of other threads, being able to name your links to what they are really helps keep things organized.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:31, Tue 10 Mar 2020.

For me it's just about my desire make things "clean", I don't like having full url's on display. So messy.

I can understand that. Though it's more of a cosmetic inconvenience for me.

Yeah, it doesn't seem that big of a bother, but being a lover of keeping things orderly myself, I can understand Ceaten's annoyance.

Completely unrelated, I was wondering, and I don't think I've ever asked any of you: where are you all expecting this game to go? I mean, currently I'm letting you have this downtime to iron out the relationships between the various team-member and to prepare, but afterwards there will be a lot of stuff going on, so it seems like the perfect time to make a check of what you each are expecting from the game, to allow me to tweak things accordingly going forward.

Hmm... Hard to say.

I've got plans, yes, but i'm a reactive player at heart. Much like Shylla, whether i get to follow through on said plans is purely due to circumstance and opportunity. Just like real plans :P

That's fine - I was more wondering from a player's point of view, rather then the characters. Basically, the question is how do you expect the narrative to develop, more than what do you expect your character to do.

Does that makes more sense?

I expect the game to go...whereever the AP and you take it? :P

More seriously though, I expect that we'll be taking on missions like the one we're about to do that are all very specialized and different but roughly equate to assassin/sapper type special ops.

if we can do enough of them successfully, we'll have removed enough of the mythran's key pieces to let us triumph.

I also expect that, despite the contract, there will be some sort of inner conflict at some point. Either we're going to have to fight and kill another Knot because they get in our way, or they try to do the same to us because we're a threat to them somehow... or something. I don't think we'll get to fight each other, but I do think we'll have to fight other members of our little plot/cabal/whatever before all is said and done.

I expect... very little in the way of political machinations or intrigues because... we're just here to wipe out the opposition, not parley with them.

Well, I expect there's going to be a mixture of Sneaky Bastard Tactics and "Fuck it, smash everything!" depending on the nature of each individual mission and the level of influence each of our characters will have in any given situation >:).

While we've obviously made a literal deal with a devil and signed away our souls forever and are likely going to show the Mythrans just what a bunch of hypocritical arseholes they are, I hope we don't end up being completely screwed over by some kind of mass insta-kill or other TPK or inescapable imprisonment or something just because "we're the bad guys and we should have expected it". I hope that if our characters do what they need to do, and succeed at Thorn's great big master-plan thing, that we all get appropriately rewarded and have satisfying endings that make us as players feel like we earned it. If something unavoidable and bad happens, it will feel more like "Well, what was the point in that?". But I suppose I could say that about any in-game situation which has potential for us being railroaded into a certain path regardless of whether or not it's what our characters would realistically do.

I hope there isn't too much inter-party conflict, either. There have been a few disagreements but hopefully those aren't a sign of things to come and that our characters will all get the hang of working together, listening to each other, and generally be willing to have a little trust in each other in order to achieve whatever it is we happen to be doing at any given time :D.

I've never played a D&D AP before -- at least nothing that survived its own first chapter -- but i have some things in mind.

Given that we're to be granted territories should we survive everything Talingrade's going to throw at us, will we be moving on to Kingmaker after this, or start a fresh AP?

No, I'm not running two APs in sequence; the last book of this AP has a bit of a kingdom-management aspect, but it's very very small compared to Kingmaker and it's mostly about preparing for the upcoming storm that is the story's Endgame.

Well, that and giving you the chance to enjoy the results of your conquest - the point of this game is to have fun as evil villains, and if I didn't give you the chance to enjoy the results of said villainy at least a bit, I'd be robbing you of the game's full experience.

We're still not even done with book 1 here right? We have a long... way... to go... if this is a 6 book AP like they normally are.

That said, I'd be down to play in another game with you all down the road where we're not all (or mostly) evil SOB's trying to murder and overthrow a government!

Maybe Wrath of the Righteous would be thematically appropriate :P

Yes, that's correct; book 1 is essentially divided into four parts, which are Branderscar, the Mansion, the sea Journey, and Balentyne. So we're about halfway through the first book right now.

As for starting another game, I might consider it (as I said, I've wanted to run Serpent's Skull for a while), but not right now, I just wouldn't have the time.

Oh, I was totally joking with the Wrath of the Righteous thing.

If and when we ever get there, I'd be down to do another one with you and this group, but I have no desire to try and get that rolling right now. Let's just keep this one going!

If we end up doing Wrath of the Righteous, i'm just going to come out and say i would totally expect to see our characters as bosses as we liberate territory one by one :P

I don't think I would want to run Wrath - I don't really have a good enough grasp on that one to run it. The one I really want to run is Serpent's Skull, really, but I won't be doing that right now; as I said, I really have limited time as it is.

What do you mean by "AP"? From context it seems to mean the same as "module" but I can't figure out any more than that.

"AP" Means "Adventure Path". It's a set of six modules which have plots that build on one another. So, for example, book 2 of this AP is about Thorn ordering a set of his servants to complete a new step of his plan, separated from what you're doing in this one, and in theory, you could start that module directly without having needed to play through the first one, although obviously playing them in sequence is more rewarding.

Okay, so it's the same as a campaign module, then - sounds like maybe they just call it something different in Pathfinder :D. I wonder what happens if we end up inadvertently diverting into some other random thing instead :D. I've never run a module before - I've always just homebrewed everything because I'd feel more restricted if I was following a pre-written thing and would probably feel more kind of "stuck" when the PCs decided to go off and do something not in the book (because they would - it's DnD, after all) :D.

In this particular adventure, that's not really a problem. After all, you're not self-motivated, you're receiving orders and being sent to a specific place to do a specific thing. You have absolute freedom in the "how" of doing that thing, but since you have a goal to accomplish and a location to accomplish that goal at, there's little risk of you doing something I'm unprepared for.

And having said that, the whole point of being a GM is to let the players to what they want and then react to it as things come - if you never did anything I didn't expect, it'd be no fun at all for me to run the game! ^_^

True indeed. But even in this setup you get to see what kind of weird ideas and loopholes we manage to come up with in order to fulfill our missions >:D.

Yep, which is one of the things I'm honestly looking forward to. :)

Personally Imma wait to see what game will be run after this until we get way further into this game; we're only 1/12 of the way done and it's been 6 months . . . so it'll be a few years before we complete this module XD.

Yeah, that's normal for play-by-post campaigns with any decent breadth to them - as Nothing can confirm, the other game I'm running here, which has been in its ending segment for the last year or so, I started in 2011. Playing an Adventure Path in a play-by-post environment is a commitment; it'll likely take around ten years to get it all done, if all proceed smoothly. However, you can be assured that I won't drop it unless something truly forces me to, so as long as you keep playing, I'll keep running it. :)

And speaking of speed, I want to inform everybody that for the upcoming two weeks I'll be staying home due to Hamburg implementing a general health-related shut-down of a number of things, so I'll have more time to post. Meaning if anybody wants to rush things with a set of back-and-forth post through one day of intense activity, now's the time! The game'll go faster the more we post in it, after all! ^_^ But please, nobody feel obliged or anything - post at your own time; the whole point of an RPG is to let people relax and destress, so if the experience stops being fun and becomes a chore, there's really no point to it anymore.

Every situation is what you make of it :P

https://www.twitter.com/restiv.../1238534135318265860
This message was last edited by the player at 15:46, Mon 16 Mar 2020.

So far there's not been any super shutdowns here. At least, not anywhere near where I live, that I know of. I've still been going to work and stuff (well, while I still have a job - my whole team is being made redundant at the end of the month, completely unrelated to the pandemic :P) but it's not super-majorly-messed-up here just yet. Even if I do end up having to stay at home for several days, I still have other things to do so would probably be sticking to roughly the same posting schedule here, but doing so in the morning (as I do at weekends) rather than the afternoon :D.

general question SF - do you anticipate having more of these extended solo thread play at any real point once we actually leave the mansion?

Just curious, I like them don't get me wrong, we've just been stalled in the same week for almost 2 months of RL!

. . . I feel that might be slightly my fault for slowing us down so much . . . but I dunno.

Don't feel like that! It's just what happens when everyone is spaced out like that, people move at different speeds in their threads.

I've spaced for days at a time on threads too, it really is a group effort. Except maybe Nothing. They're very regular :)

I'm just curious if this is a thing that is exceptional to this part of the adventure, or if it'll be something with some regularity (once a year, whatever).

In general, every book includes a little bit of downtime; the adventure is structured that way so you have a chance to build connection with each others outside of direct adventuring as well as, more importantly, give you a chance to enjoy the results of being evil while preparing for the challenges ahead.

This will likely become more clear in future books, but even in this, consider: you made it out of prison and passed Thorn's tests, so you now have a mansion where you're free to do whatever you want to relax as a compensation for your successes, but at the same time, all of you are gathering resource, gaining abilities and forging connections that will be important to help you face the upcoming challenges.

Having said all of this, I can easily cut back on the solo threads if you dislike them; I can make them shorter and try to keep you together as much as possible. However, preventing any splitting up at all wouldn't really be possible without reducing your ability to make your own decisions, which I don't want to, and every single one of you should know that you learned things in your own thread (or if you haven't yet, you will soon) that you only could have learned by being alone in those circumstances - so a bit of it might well be necessary.

Basically: individual threads will show up from time to time, but not too often and in general only when I feel they're necessary, unless you players split up on purpose.

I hope that clarifies things! ^_^

Yeah, not to worry. In my case, i'm still waiting on a private thread to free up (no Carmen, not ours :P), and decided to cut back a little on the posting rate in order to not run out of solo content too fast. To me, it's basically a question of whether to deliberately hold back now, or end up doing stuff for the sake of doing stuff later, and i'd rather use the last part to pick up steam in preparation of the main threads starting up again.

I'm still here, don't worry :)

I don't mind the mini-threads - it's nice to just have an IC chat one-on-one (or at least in a smaller group) rather than a mad dash of loads of us all posting stuff at once that then needs responding to. It can be awkward trying to construct a post that contains multiple responses, each to a different other character who may have said or done something that I might want to respond to.

And it's nice in general to have some downtime to get to know each other's characters a bit better in between the more action-filled sections where there may be more time-pressure due to bad guys trying to find us or whatever - there was understandably not a whole lot of time for chit-chat whilst trying to sneak out of Branderscar, for example ;). That said, I can sort of get around that through the fact that my character is telepathic so could in theory have a private conversation with any nearby character(s) at any time, with no-one else any the wiser >:).

It also makes sense that some of us will split off from time to time - for example if we're trying to infiltrate a secret base or something, we could potentially come up with a plan that has the shouty-loud people (such as Adrika) going and causing a distraction round the front while us Sneaky Bastards head in round the back and mess stuff up. And that would require planning both as a whole and in our separate mini-groups to pull off such a thing, presumably with added assurances that it won't go like the Balin fight wherein we all come up with a plan and then one or two characters decide to do something else and almost end up having to face the bad guy all by themselves ;).

Hi! Very little activity these last few days - clearly everybody is a little busy. How are you all holding up? Everything fine?

Ack sorry, I just fell behind cause of life.

Yeah, not many issues here. Corona ironically having me go out more than usual, but keeping a close eye on exposure either way.

@Carmen

That's fine; as I said, it wasn't anybody in particular, just a general lack of activity from everybody, and I know none of you is missing on purpose, so I understand it's just a result of the generally messy conditions things are currently at. I was just making sure that nobody was having more serious problem than normal life interference - with the times being what they are, one can never be certain, so I'd rather ask than worry. :)

@Adrika

If you're going out more, I would guess you're either in retail or transport? Those seems to be the people who're working overtime these days, while everybody else is doing their best bear/squirrel impression (accumulating foodstuff and then hibernating to wait the whole thing over).
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:01, Sat 28 Mar 2020.

Yeah, nothing crazy here, just keeping life moving along as I can.

Well, and I posted last in all the threads I'm in, so waiting on response from others ^.^
This message was last edited by the player at 21:40, Sat 28 Mar 2020.

In reply to Cetaen (msg # 89):

Ah, but your last post in one of those threads says "this post isn't finished, I'll complete it later", so in that one particular case, it's the other player waiting for you, isn't it? ;D

Don't worry, it's really not a problem, as I said before - I was just making sure everyone was fine and that nothing bigger than normal problems was keeping people from posting. I'm glad to see everybody's fine!

In reply to Security Feature (msg # 88):

Neither actually. I've got a friend who works social healthcare, and his wife's a nurse, so they're both needed at work. They have kids though, and since the schools are closed, they need someone looking after them.

Oh, I see. That's very generous of you.

I'm still working, too - I work in the head office of a bank dealing with incoming/outgoing post so I can't work from home. We had an e-mail at work yesteday saying we are officially "key workers" and to print out said e-mail in case we ever get asked by the police what we're doing outside. It's been a bit of a weird couple of weeks, and not just because of Covid-19. Still, all we can do is just get on with it, I suppose.

In reply to Security Feature (msg # 92):

Hey, you know how it is, we all step up in our own ways :)

It has been mentioned by several of you that things have slowed down a bit on the game, and I agree. I'm not faulting anyone here; it's normal for games to have periods of slower activity and ones of faster activity, everybody has real life obligation, and besides everybody still agrees that they're having a good time and enjoying the game. So, no real trouble there.

That said, it is true that we've now been two full months (all of February and all of March) completely paused on the general plot progression. Once more, I want to stress that other things have progressed a lot - in fact, I think a number of you all have a much better grasp of your fellow players' personalities, not to mention much stronger relations with a number of NPCs and a general framework to build up future armies of minions from. And of course, those who have finished their discussion with Thorn should also have been provided with some long-term personal goals to work towards as the game progresses.

Still, things do need to go on; we're in no hurry, so I'm going to give everybody all of April to finish anything we've left to do in the Mansion, including private threads with each other, interactions with NPCs, seeking information and beginning to make serious plans. Once April is over, however, I'll be pushing things onward with the main plot, even should all the private threads not be over. Again, this is no indictment to anybody, and indeed, I will have no problem with continuing to run any unfinished private thread separately to their conclusion, so no need to worry too much about it. I just want to shift gear for the story and get it back into motion, and I though it fair to give everybody a solid month of warning about that. I will also want everybody to confirm their level up information by then if they haven't already - this is also your notice about that, which I think one month is a reasonable timescale for.

In fact, I was planning to have the announcement tomorrow, before I realized that making the announcement on the first of the month would mean making it on April 1st, which I know sounds idiotic as a realization, but I just don't care about these things outside loved ones' birthdays. Now, the mere concept behind the idea of "April's Fool" is something I would very deeply prefer if it went to die in a fire and was completely forgotten and erased from all knowledge and history, but sadly reality doesn't conform to our wishes; thus, since I wanted to make sure this announcement was taken seriously, the choice was between one day early or one day late, and since I'm announcing this earlier for player convenience, I thought earlier to be the preferable choice.

Anyway, this was no more than an informative message; no need to panic about it, just making sure everybody is informed, that's all. If you have complaints, let me know (even in PM), and otherwise, I hope everybody's happy and in good health, and I look forward to continue playing with you all! ^_^

If it helps, I'm reading it on the 1st April, so in a way you managed to achieve both things - posting it on a day that isn't the First but having at least one of us see it then anyway :D.

Hah

And grats on 5k posts everyone!

It is a nice milestone, to be sure. I hope everybody is having fun so far? As always, if you have any complaints or anything you're unhappy about, let me know and I'll try to fix them as best I can. :)

It's good so far - the one-to-one conversations are nice, a chance for some RP between us and a chance to get to know each other without people trying to compare the sizes of their weapons or whatever ;). And I'm sure I'll think of more "What if...?"s to PM you about regarding my powers. Because of course I can't pick anything straightforward and have to go instead for the stuff that has a billion tiny uses :D.

Just leaving a friendly remainder to everybody that tomorrow we'll be resuming with the main plot; I'll let the currently unfinished threads (basically every player has at least one at the moment) continue to run in parallel until they're all solved, but I think it's time to get the main plot rolling - the current low level of activity is making me worried, and hopefully having a main story they need to contribute to will encourage everybody to post more often.

For those of you who haven't finished giving me their choices for level 3rd yet, I'll need something now - if you are unsure, just tell me what general type of progression you're looking for IC and I'll suggest some abilities that might fit.

If anybody has any comments or request to make, either here or in PM, let me know; I'm always open to suggestions and ideas from you all! ^_^
This message was last edited by the GM at 09:22, Thu 30 Apr 2020.

Yeah I think my level-up finally got done...I do still need to update a few things on the sheet (like my Caster Level and how it's worked out, because it's kind of important and I keep forgetting ;)), but the actual adding of new skills and all that stuff is done. I hope ;).

I think so, but it's never bad to remind everybody to double-check everything. :)

Pretty sure I did all my level up stuff about 3 months ago now :)

As I said, I was addressing everybody to make sure; there's no need to make a roll call, I know who is at which point of what, but double checking is always a good idea. :)
This message was last edited by the GM at 17:51, Thu 30 Apr 2020.

Gettin' started, yay! Heh, even tho Ive been one of the low posters, itll still be fun to talk with everyone again in one thread :)

I'll double-check level stuff myself, but ye, thatll be for PMs

Glad to hear everybody's looking forward to restarting the main game in earnest! That makes me really happy. ^_^

Just tossed this on the RPoL Discord as well:



For example, when quoting Nothing's latest post, i get the following:



As you can see, hovering over the spoiler or clicking on it does nothing, but quoting this post reveals it as per usual. So yeah, please try to avoid italics within spoiler tags and PLs for now. I've noticed it breaking color tags as well yesterday.
This message was last edited by the GM at 12:03, Tue 05 May 2020.

Thanks for the information, I'll keep it in mind; I'll also edit Nothing's post, since I expect she's not going to be around to do it herself until tomorrow.

The spoiler was working normally for me, by the way - also, now that you've proved your point Adrika, I'll be removing the spoiler text from your quote, but I can confirm for the others that it was indeed there.
This message was last edited by the GM at 12:02, Tue 05 May 2020.

Yeah, that may be due to you being a GM, and any viewing restrictions to players would simply not apply to you.

Thanks for the edit, wasn't sure whether to add it but the main point was that i could read sections of PLs definitely not meant for me :)

Thank you for pointing it out! ^_^ Not being on any Discord, I wouldn't have known without you making me aware.

Various words

- "This is a line in red, with the word red italicized."

Other words

---

Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)
And something in a spoiler tag

---

Edit: Hm, seems fixed, perhaps?
This message was last edited by the player at 20:17, Tue 05 May 2020.

I couldn't say - as we established, it wasn't giving me any problem at any point, probably because of my GM status. Maybe one of the other players can try to quote your post, in case you can do it but the others can't? That might prove it, especially if you include a private line addressed to me for them to possibly copy.

I don't have any issues seeing spoiler tag stuff and haven't had while I've been on rpol.

Glad it seems to be working for you again though!

I think that's it then. Adrika, maybe is something to do with a particular browser, or something? I know you're more computer literate than I am, so you'd probably know better than me what it could be.

Just checked, it's Firefox. Chrome doesn't give me issues with spoiler tags, and it's not due to Adblock Plus or NoScript i've got running here as i've disabled both.

Oh well, not much of a problem.

Hmm, the message from Adrika above with the red italicised text and spoilers and everything looks fine to me, and I'm on Firefox. It did get an update yesterday though, I think, so maybe that broke something for some people? Bit awkward if suddenly everyone can see all my telepathy, lol - should I not put italics in my speech any more, or something? I don't think I do it that often - Nothing doesn't seem to be particularly emphatic most of the time.

Nah, from the Discord it seems i was the only one running into that particular issue, so i'm guessing the code messed up on a closing bracket somewhere in your post. It happens very rarely, and the post is usually fixed by removing the offending > and replacing it at a different point, so the GM going in to remove the italics pretty much fixed it for me.

Spoilers are still borked on Firefox, though it updated when i opened it this morning so it may be a known issue. No biggie.

@SF - is there a rough idea/limit to what we could have requisitioned for the journey itself from a GP perspective?

If it's non-magical, or magical but under 500 gp in price, you can have it, so long as you don't exceed your carrying capacity. I hope that helps?

In reply to Security Feature (msg # 120):

sure does!

Ehh... The ring i've brought up is 1k, am i still allowed to bring it with? Redwood said he could do it, but with the limit being said at 500 i feel i'd need to double check.

I think SF just means that you dont need to ask for mundane or <500g magic items; after that we have to discuss it with them in order to get it approved.

Cause like, can't have us all just having end-game loot at the start XP

Well in that case...

http://legacy.aonprd.com/ultim...drousItems/head.html



Let's get a set of these then! Passing secret messages won't matter anyway since we can speak with our minds anyway ^^

---

Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)
Don't worry, this was latter errata'd to cost 8k XD

---

In reply to Adrika (msg # 124):

I don't think I'd let anybody get something like that, even if the price wasn't a typo. :)

I should probably have said this before, but I forgot. So: if any item grants a bonus to skill checks (even just a +1), then I very likely will refuse to let you have it; I am very much against magical bonus to skill checks. I can make exception if the bonus are circumstance-based from the particular item (like thieve's tools), but in general, I'm opposed to permanent boosting of skills with magic.

So, Carmen is mostly correct - you'll still need to tell me what you're taking so I can confirm it, but if it's something small which it would be reasonable for Redwood or Tiadora to have at hand, you can get it.

I hope that makes sense?

I know, which is why i posted it XD

Anyhow, on to the actual advice. Note that i cannot bring these up ICly, because Adrika.

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic...-token/anchor-token/

For 50 gold, immobilize a ship for a day. Needless to say, i think we can all figure out a good use for this one ;)

I'm not sure how useful that'd be; it says that it creates an anchor, but not that the anchor is unbreakable or is secured to the ship through magical means. The way I'd rule it, it wouldn't be difficult to disengage your special anchor for sailors who know how to do that, and really, while this is going to be a sea journey, you're on a longboat, not a galleon, so any naval warfare will pretty much be limited to boarding.

Heck the more useful if the feather tokens would be the swan boat as a emergency measure—big boat, might only last a day but if something happens to the ship....

That would be useful indeed, I can agree. Also while we're at it, a bag of 10 tokens is gonna weight 1 lb. Just so you all don't go overboard with that stuff.

As a completely unrelated point, it has been brought to my attention that some magical items that cost less than 500 gp would normally require a CL above 6 to create. Now, as I'm sure you all remember, there exists no person with a natural CL above 6 in the setting, since we're playing E6. Now, the fact that we're using Spheres as our magic system means that there is some leeway, but even so, for items which have CL 6 as a requirement, I'll need to confirm they're allowed first; some will be, but others won't.

I've not even been looking at that kind of thing. I think in terms of roleplay/narrative rather than mechanics, so I have no plans to try and get hold of any specific magic items or anything else. Nothing wouldn't know about any of that stuff anyway, nor have much interest in it unless it was specifically useful to them. If I think of something I might want improving, maybe I'll ask if there's an item that can do that when we're at a place that can likely provide such, but for now I have no real idea. We've not done much yet, so any problems haven't had much chance to show themselves.

Okay, so, bit of calculation that i can't do IC here:

The ship is 6,000 feet deep.

If you don't have ranks in Swim, you can move a quarter of your base speed with a move action, or half your base speed as a full-round action.

So, assuming base 30 ft. land speed, that's 15 feet/round. At ten rounds to a minute, and 60 minutes to an hour, that's 9,000 feet/hour. So, your limit would be 15-20 minutes of searching before needing to head up. Assuming you make all your Swim checks, of course.

Adrika... wouldn't even need to try. Her base is 20 ft (so 6,000/hour) so even ignoring her curse she wouldn't even need to try ^^;

That said, her waterskin drought she brought along is actually a pretty good idea: A portion lasts for an hour, and causes you to automatically stabilize when at negative HP, lowering the odds of you going unconscious underwater.

In reply to Adrika (msg # 131):

That's a partially correct calculation, except it's ignoring a few specific things that only matters in extended underwater exploration.

The first of all those is air. Generally, a creature can hold their breath underwater for a number of rounds equal to their full Constitution score - if they are standing fully still. Every standard action taken (such as swimming) costs them one extra round of breath. A full-round action (such as that needed to swim at half your land speed), or a standard action that requires heavy breathing (such as casting a spell with vocal components) consumes three extra rounds of breath. That's not a problem for people using Air-Tanks, but even those need to be careful, since the air supply isn't unlimited and you'll likely need more than one trip to collect everything down there.

In addition, creatures have buoyancy, which can affect how fast they go down underwater if they stay still. In general, a land creature that is not swimming had a buoyancy of sinking, meaning that every round they do not attempt to swim, they sink 10 ft. That's important because it means that it's harder to go up than down. A creature with something of high density to themselves (like an anchor) or creatures that are naturally more dense (like, say, an oread) would have swift sinking buoyancy, meaning the sink at twice the speed (20 ft per round), but also meaning that moving upwards would add +10 to the DC of the swim check (so it's 20 rather than the normal 10 for calm waters). So... the sinking down would actually be faster, but the return would be harder.

Furthermore, as long as you aren't carrying something that'd alter your buoyancy otherwise, Air Tanks give a "swiftly rising" buoyancy until they're empty, meaning they grant a +20 ft speed in moving toward the surface, and reduce the swim DC to swim upwards by 10, while adding the +10 DC to checks for swimming toward the bottom. That'd greatly affect speeds as well.

And of course, can't forget water pressure. For every minute spent under a depth of 100 ft, a Fort save with a DC equal to 15 + the number of minutes you've been underwater is required, and you take 1d6 pressure damage whenever you fail a check. That's gonna accumulate pretty quickly.

Finally, don't forget that I added that rule that, when there's a lot of swim checks to do, I'll just use one, and simply grant you extra movement speed based on the amount by which you beat the swim DC. And according to the same logic, I won't make everybody roll two dozens Fortitude saves to see how long they take to fail - instead, we'll just roll one, and however much you beat the DC 15 by, that's the amount of minutes you can remain underwater before you start rolling for damage, and you just tell me how many extra minutes you want to stay there and we'll roll the damage all at once afterwards.

So, Adrika, you want to redo your math now that you have some more accurate information? ;)

Personally I'm a bit skeptical on our chances of surviving this simply due to water pressure--IRL, a depth that deep would kill you, that's why we invented subs. Anything over 400 feet is dicey--much less 6,000 feet!

That's why Carmen asked about dive-suits; even in Victorian (dont quote me) age they had ways of deep diving with specialized suits (the dorky ones you see in movies). They weren't just for air--IIRC, they were steel-reinforced to keep the swimmer safe--up to 2,000 feet.


I hate to be That Guy . . . but the real-world mechanics make this so impossible its almost laughable. I mean . . . sorry, that's mean. But personally, this seems a little too unrealistic--maybe adjust the depth to six hundred feet? 1,00 is the world record for free-dives, so it's still a risk to get the boat, without it being . . . well, like we're made of steel.

I'm not sure if the depth is to make the swimming difficulty a certain way . . . I also don't know if anyone else cares, Im sorry.

As I said, water pressure damage is there, is just that, much like a number of other forms of damage in the game, it's structured so that you can (potentially) survive it. And even then, only so much - eventually, water pressure will kill you, since the DC for the save keep getting bigger the longer you stay underwater. It's just gonna take some time.

That said... yes, I am fudging the rules on pressure somewhat; the damage scales with depth, and if I was using the actual one, at 6000 ft depth I'd need to be rolling 60d6 of pressure damage every time you failed a save - but if I do that, any kind of underwater adventuring would be impossible.

If the situation would be more believable for you as players with the depth being 600 ft rather than 6000, and using the pressure damage of that depth instead (6d6), I can definitely do that; it's not a problem to change some numbers if they break suspension of disbelief.

Can I get a round of opinion on this, everyone?
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:03, Fri 22 May 2020.

I don't even know how far 6000 feet is (I'm terrible at making sense of any measurement when given numbers - I much prefer a real-life comparison like "It's as far as from X to Y" or "It's as heavy as Z"), but it sounds pretty far and I'm basically out from this one anyway as my character has no choice but to constantly "breathe" directly through their outer membrane, hence getting so edgy around water all the time and being so immobile on the current journey. Even rain is highly unpleasant. I imagine Nothing has just been sitting there enduring all this horribel watery yucky stuff flying all over the place whilst also maintaining enough concentration to keep up the performance of being an actual human-ish creature of some kind wearing clothes which at least need to appear as though they are reacting to this environment (getting wet, etc) in order to not tip off the arseholes in charge of the ship that I might be more than I seem ;).

I wonder how they even know there's a ship down there anyway? Or did the captain say they'd previously had word the ship had been wrecked in this vicinity, and scoped out its location on a previous visit in order to know where to "park" now. Well, okay, obviously we're not exactly parked motionless because...well, it's the sea, and we'd need to have dropped an anchor or something in order to stay in place. Or did they do that already, I can't remember...anyway, it'd be interesting to see how this moody bint was planning on getting the treasure without us.

They did drop anchors.

They heard that there was a shipwreck from contacts in a nearby port as the survivors of the wreck were trying to convince the authorities to mount a retrieval expedition; due to bureaucracy, said retrieval hasn't been launched yet, and Odenkirk used her contacts in office to get the shipwreck's position. Not that you would have any way to learn of this in character.

6000 ft is about 1,8 kilometers. 600 ft would be about 180 meters. 6 ft is 1.80 meters. In general, using the 6 ft = 180 cm as a general "rogue estimate" for visualization of stuff is the best way to get a sense for the scale of stuff.

And in fact, after checking back on the actual book rather than my notes, the depth was supposed to be 600 ft in the first place, I just typed an extra 0 in there without realizing it.

So... yeah. I'll just be editing that in the main thread, and apologies to everyone for getting that wrong in the first place, and thanks to Carmen for pointing it out!

I almost never go back to check the actual pdf since working from my notes is both faster and easier, but I guess some time double-checking is just the right thing to do, isn't it? :P

See? 600 is much more doable. ^^

It'd still be dicey on pressure of course, but heading up is 4 minutes now, so that would at least be possible. 60d6 pressure damage would pretty much have crushed the ship and anything on it. The good news is that it's per minute, but still, 6d6 can be pretty dangerous if it drops you from full to negative in one roll.

Feet: Meter to feet i usually multiply by three and add 10%. Officially it's multiply by 3,28-something, but that narrows it down enough in most cases anyway.

Pressure can actually be reduced in danger by descending gradually. Pressure damage increase by 1d6 every 100 ft, but if you pass five Fort saves at a specific depth, say, 350 ft deep, when you would take 2d6 damage for failing the save, then you move down and fail a save at a deeper depth, say, 600 ft, (where it's actually 5d6 and not 6 because the first section, 0 to 100, doesn't have pressure damage, so the 6d6 starts at 601 ft down), the pressure damage you take is reduced by 2d6 - basically, with slow descent/ascent, you adapt yourself to the changing pressure. So, if you spend more time going up and down, it can make the trip less dangerous.

And the swimming up-down period, of course, also counts for the "1 minute underwater" count for pressure damage.

By the way, creatures with the Aquatic subtype can ignore pressure rules when they're at their native depth range (of which there's six, with everything from surface to 600 ft being the first such depth range, called the "sunlight zone"), and Water typed creatures are fully immune to these rules.
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:04, Fri 22 May 2020.

Yeah, I was thinking "6,000 feet down?  So it's more than a mile under the surface, and a two-mile round trip? ...are you sure you don't have those numbers all wrong?"

But yeah, 600 feet is more manageable... to a point, I would say.

Given that we don't have much of a team to go down and deal with it, though...  I mean, it's not a place I could honestly send Lilah- 30 max HP means I'm a good save-fail away from being in trouble, and if there's an encounter down there, and my fort save is only a +3.

I mean, you'd need muscle, a healer (does magic even work underwater?) and someone to keep a lookout for various toothy sea creatures desiring lunch, at least.

Indeed, most of you aren't well suited to this particular challenge - but then, it was your choice to go there; you knew before making the choice that it would include "salvaging from a sunken ship". So... I really don't feel bad that you choose a path you weren't really well prepared for, and are now reaping the results of that; I am sure it will be a valuable lesson for the future. After all, collecting information about future obstacles doesn't really help much if you don't make sure you have the ability to face these obstacles, now does it? :D

Yeah, the irony is that in terms of sustainability, Adrika would definitely be able to do it... Were it not for her curse.

Had it been a spell, then yeah, jingle all the way. But it's an item, and while being 'broken' would do nothing to it mechanically, it'd still be inconsistent from an IC point of view, so....

It wasn't so much conversion I was having a problem with, since whether metres or feet it's all just a bunch of numbers to me :D. I just tried Googling for the heights of some stuff and apparently the Eiffel Tower is a very convenient (for this situation) 300m tall, so two of those is how deep we have to go. So that's pretty far.

The Tour Eiffel is indeed 300 m tall - which is not 300 ft; as I said, 600 ft. is actually 180 m, so you need to go about two-thirds of the length of the Eiffel Tower downward. I hope that helps!

Lol oh yeah, derp. I read it and then forgot and then searched for the wrong unit because I tend to think of metres first :D.

I do too, and in general metric is the superior system, which is why in a fantasy pseudo-medieval setting using the imperial measures feels better to me - they convey a certain sense of backwardness that helps with immersion, at least to me.

Ya . . . I personally won't be sending Carmen or Carver into this whichever system we go with, it's just too risky? They have like no health at alllllll.

WHELP.

I mean, despite your crime being theft, you're essentially the team's wizard (well, Nothing is too in a sense, but their non-human nature make them a bit harder to project on traditional class roles), so your being squishy is in no way surprising.

And anyway, there's no reason why everybody should go; the point is to see how you're able to handle the situation with the abilities you have. So, if you don't feel like doing it, there's no need for you to; in the end, the decisions are yours to make! ^_^

Heh, good point! And as wizard, I just realized I have an ability to make me safe to dive--Hierophant. I just need someone with high HP to help me out XD

See? You shouldn't discount yourselves - you're all more versatile and capable of facing complex situations than you think, you just need to learn how to use your powers to the fullest! ^_^

In keeping in line with the whole Hell theme, i can recommend the following:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1289310/Helltaker/

Fun was had. Secret pancake recipe was obtained.

I don't know that we've had that strong a hell theme yet - more of a subdued one, I would think. Still, that seems interesting.

Doesn't really look like my kind of game. And hey, it's only our boss NPC and his immediate subordinates who are specifically "Hell"-themed (well, more kind of "Abyss"-themed, this being DnD ;)). Not all of us want to bring fire and destruction upon the mortal folk, some of us just want to kind of...wander around looking at everything and enjoying the view. If any mortals want to bring about their own ends by interfering with that, that's their problem ;).

Question: is there any way I could sing telepathically to help Carmen out, or is it more that I have to verbally sing to inspire?

You don't necessarily need to sing; every performance type would do, so you could dance, or recite poems (acting), or anything. You generally use Dance because that's the skill you have the most points in, I believe.

What is necessary is that the target of a performance would need to perceive the performance. So... dancing would not work, but singing might, if we say that you can sing through the telepathic connection. Not all telepathic connections are the same, however.

I would say that Nothing's and Raj's telepathy are of a different type than Carmen's mind link; I will now rule that normal telepathy prevents a performance from translating properly, but the mind link, due to being a shared space rather than relying on a single individual's perception, can be used as if it was reality for the purpose of translating a audible-only performance correctly. So, with Mind Link, I would allow performance to apply. You can note this down for future reference.

However, Carmen's Mind Link has a 60 ft range. Even if I was allowing this to work through Raj's telepathy (which I'm not), that'd only have 100 ft range. The ship, as we remarked, is 600 ft down. So... unless somebody has a way to expand the range of Carmen's mind-link, this can't really help her once she's underwater; I suppose you could dive with her if you wanted to to allow it (since it's a telepathic song, you could use it without needing to actually speak), but at that point I'm not sure if it's worth the effort.

EDIT: disregard that - it says in the ability that the limit is only for when the ability is activated, but once it is, there's actually no range limit - so yes, Lilah, you actually CAN use performance to boost Carmen's skills, so long as it's an audible-only performance. Apologies for that.
This message was last edited by the GM at 10:43, Fri 29 May 2020.

Heh, there's a reason I wanted to boost the mind link--it's a niche power, but quite the versatile one. I plan on making good use of it when we get to the Lastwall--we'll be able to coordinate quite a bit better there than we have in the past.

Indeed, it is quite a good ability; I just forgot that it had that particular "limited activation range but unlimited active range" detail to it. It happens.

And I'm confident you'll find a lot of ways to combine your abilities to great extent; this whole journey is a test run for that, after all, and you're already coming up with some nifty combos, aren't you? :)

I suspect I've done all I can for the time being, but the scouting feels like a decent contribution, at least :D. Anything else I could do would require me to be closer to the action, and sod that with my breathes-through-their-skin-and-can't-ever-stop character in this particular location :D.

Oh ya, to be specific, does anyone have stuff to boost fort saves, since that will be the main one determining how long I can dive?

Don't have one myself aside from the aura you'd be out of range for, but the auto-successes when rolling to stabilize might help there as well. If you're unconscious for any reason, and stabilize, you'd have to make hourly Constitution checks to see if it stays that way. And with the masks having a one hour supply, it should keep you alive long enough for us to figure something went wrong and follow after you, rather than 'Oh crap, i rolled badly a couple of times and now i'm dead'.

I mean, not the biggest of consolations, but there it is. Plus, you have Darkvision now, so you can actually see what's trying to eat you.

I do have darkvision normally but this will help to extend it, so thank you! ^-^

And ya, if I fall unconscious, it's teleporting to surface time afterwards, but auto-survival is really nice thank you!

Oh yeah, I forgot you could teleport - well, that's handy if you get into trouble. The speed-boost thing is basically the only thing I can do that would be useful - I could give you temporary darkvision but you already have it, otherwise I'd've offered to do that instead :D.

As for Fortitude...well, best not ask me. I mean, I can affect your Fortitude, but not in the direction you'd want :D.

Pffff well I appreciate the speed boost, that's a great get-away tool!

In reply to Carmen Gorgon (msg # 163):

The speed boost would combo nicely with an action that's tied to your movement speed btw, so it's a great panic button for stuff like Run, which quadruples that further.

If you had a swim speed somehow, you could actually 'run' underwater :P

Anybody could easily get the equivalent of a Swim speed by taking the Athletics Sphere of Might and focusing on the "Swim" package and talents from it; really, I don't think any other sphere could compare to that one in terms of granting extra mobility in all sorts of environment. And failing that, I do believe that there's a feat for it, too.

Not hat I think you'll have much use for swim once this journey is over, and you're unlikely to get to level 3rd before then, but I just wanted to point out that there are a number of options; and there might be a number of other reasons why somebody might want to get a swim speed regardless. But in the end, as with everything, you can generally get any ability you want if you focus on it enough - it's just that you can't focus on that many things at once.

But then, that's why you are a team; so that, when somebody doesn't have the skills for a job, the others can help with it. Like you're all doing now! ^_^
This message was last edited by the GM at 14:18, Sat 30 May 2020.

You'd be correct, as the only way for any of us to become level 3 again is if you break out the level draining enemies :P

But point taken regardless. There's some workarounds in the Nature Sphere as well i believe ^^

And I would bet Alteration has something as well, since that's sort of its wheelhouse. But yes, obviously I meant level 4th - unless you manage to do something surprising and earn more XP that way, I don't think you'll make it there before the journey's over; although I do think you should manage to reach level 4th before you start the infiltration of Balentyne proper.

Still, we'll need to wait and see; right now, as you all can see, I'm just giving you a chance to really get a feeling for each other abilities and practice some teamwork in a more relaxed environment. Hopefully you'll also be having fun along the way! ^_^

Ha, yeah I was gonna say, I'm sure Alteration allows swimming - it allows pretty much any other kind of physical...well, alteration, so I'm sure that if it can do flying, it can do swimming. The two are basically the same movement, after all, just through a different medium :D.

And the definition of "relaxed environment" probably depends on whom you ask - if the current environment was solid ground, clearn air, and absolutely no light, I'd likely agree with you ;).

I can see how Nothing's definition of "relaxing" might differ from other people; that's really not surprising, honestly. :)

It's just all ths horrible yucky water everywhere that these mortals seem obsessed with, they are so strange :O.

Hey, question for you all (that normally the DM does)-- how did you feel about this section? I wasn't trying to overpower and take over the show from everyone, so I hope it didn't seem that way? Carmen was just oddly suited for the adventure because of her thief-wizard build, but was there a way I could have included you guys more?

Nah.

We all got to participate in some form or another, everything went according to plan so all things considered, i'd say things went rather well.

This time the focus was on Carmen, next event the circumstances would be different and it's someone else's turn to get the spotlight. That's what being in a party's all about.

Yeah, exactly - there will be times where one or two of us get to excel and really come to the fore and show off all our cool toys, and times when those same characters have little to do but sit back and let other people do it. Like right now, Nothing really isn't enjoying themselves. There's this horrible "water" stuff all over the place, which Nothing detests for its lethal, smothering (to them) nature, everything's always going up and down, there's stupid arsehole mortals tromphing around the place (the crew, not the party ;)), the environment is always the same, nothing new to explore and see. I was actually a little surprised I managed to find a way to help out in the shipwreck dive, actually - I had almost been feeling guilty that I was just sitting around doing nothing and unable to pitch in somehow :D.

I expect if we get into the northern lands and have to interact with any of the barbarian tribe people, Adrika will suddenly get to show off. And if there's any diplomacy/deception-type social interactio stuff then someone like Lilah would probably do pretty well. Meanwhile I get to mostly hide at the back until you need someone to help out with stealthy stuff, generally creeping people out, and/or killing people in subtle ways without them potentially even noticing... >:)

I mean, I would say Nothing was very relevant in this particular mission, wasn't they? After all, they used the shadow lurk twice, once for exploration (without which Carmen wouldn't have been able to pick the right location to loot) and once to make it so the recovery of the stuff was done without further risk of awakening the sea monsters below (and believe me, you would not have enjoyed the results if you had awoken those things).

So, all things considered, I would say that, even if Carmen had the bigger role, Nothing at least played a very important role in how things turned out in the end. And Adrika and Lilah did contribute in their own ways, even if they were comparatively minor.

And yeah, I think that a lot of the future challenges will give everybody a chance to shine more or less, but really, as I think this latest situation proved, you're most effective when you're working together.

Also, post incoming to move the journey forward, but this doesn't mean you can't keep IC talking with each other; I just want to keep the game going, but that doesn't mean you can't keep roleplaying while it does. The point of the game is to roleplay throughout! ^_^
This message was last edited by the GM at 17:32, Fri 05 June 2020.

Just to confirm, Dryssa's berries were +12 now and +4 AC until hit, and i believe they could cause one's HP to go above their max, correct?

The stats for the Temporary HP ones are actually at +14 HP now. The complete formula is Caster Level (which is now 3) +2 (because Dryssa has 2 abilities that raise her Caster level) x2 (for one of her magic talents) +4 (her Charisma modifier, from another talent). And then the +4 to AC, yes. They can now also be eaten in advance, and activated at any point in the following 4 hours.

Additionally, the "actually healing ones" (which cost 1 SP each for Dryssa to create, so she can only makes these in cases of emergencies) heal 3d8 +5 HP, which averages 18 HP or so - I think that's about two-thirds of the HP total for most team members, if I'm not mistaken.

And she has the ability to cure some conditions too (which also costs 1 spell point, so she can only do it 12 times a day), in case that should be necessary.

Honestly... as long as you ensure she doesn't get killed herself, or somebody just get one-shot, I don't think it's gonna be possible for your team to get more damage in a day than she's able to cure. She's a very high efficiency healbot, as these things go.
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:31, Wed 24 June 2020.

This might be a slow weekend for stuff- Saturday the 4th is our Independence Day here in the U.S., and despite everything going on in the world, it's still going to be a time of some celebration, so things might be slow from any of us in the States.

I'm planning on a small cookout with the family- nothing really all that much, but some time out in the sun would be really welcome.

I see! I honestly forgot about that. I can delay the start of the exploration to the 5th then, if people want me to, so that we can start the action when everybody is here, and also so you all have the time to come up with a proper plan of action? What do you all think?

I don't mind - I hadn't thought about such things either, being on the other side of the Atlantic from such frivolities ;). I'll post any time there are posts I feel I can reply to :D.

Wait, does Carmen have darkvision?

Because when we explored the sunken ship, i recall using one of my potions on her, but that would only have lasted a day and it'd have expired a good couple of days ago by now.

Carmen gained dark vision back at Thorns mansion—on the ship it just made her normal 60 ft of DV increase to 120. She is human, but has Tiefling Heritage and a fear she picked up at second level that gives her dark vision and natural armor.

Ah okay, think i missed that earlier but oh well, it gave me an opportunity to RP some so it's all good :)

I didn't really announce it to be fair, that's my bad. But ya, she's basically 1/4 Tiefling? That's what the red glowy eyes thing I do comes from--that and a little spooky effect.

As for the 4th of July thing, I'm going to be active, but I keep getting stuck on how best to proceed--theres likely nothing at the ruins, but I worry :P

Honestly, my primary problem is that you all can't seem to just commit to a plan of action; I really can't move things along if there isn't a clear "ok, GM, this is what we're going to be doing" for me to follow. I think everybody needs to be more decisive; you all have made characters that are very interesting but lack in decisiveness except for Adrika - but I can't simply let Adrika decide on her own, that'd be unfair to the rest of you and create part conflict (we know this because it already happened, remember?). I need you all to figure out a strategy for making decisions in the game; generally, the best way to do this would be to have a procedure for decision-making in place.

To make an example, something like this:

(1)GM present a situation.
(2)EVERY INDIVIDUAL PLAYER provides a suggestion
(3)EVERY INDIVIDUAL PLAYER offers constructive criticism on ALL provided suggestions
(4)IF information is found to be lacking, information is sought (WARNING! DO NOT TARRY HERE!)
(5)IF information is acquired, go back to (2)
(6)IF no new information is acquired, proceed to (7)
(7)EVERY INDIVIDUAL PLAYER proposes a plan of action, OR
(8)EVERY INDIVIDUAL PLAYER agrees to a plan of action that has already been proposed
(9)IF a single plan of action has been agreed upon, great! Proceed to (13)
(10)IF multiple plans of action still exists, proceed to (11)
(11)EVERY INDIVIDUAL PLAYER explains why their preferred plan is best
(12)IF multiple plans of actions still exists, the most supported is agreed upon
(13)GM is informed of decision and plan is implemented

In the current situation, you can acquire no more information (this is what I mean when I say "do not tarry", that sometimes there's no further information to be found and seeking it will get you nowhere), and yet you are still stuck on 3. Wasting too much time on 3 will never get you anywhere.

This is, of course, a schematic exaggeration, but my point is that you have already hashed out all the pro and cons of the situation and of your abilities, and you now need to pick a plan and implement it. It's the most important part of making a plan; you don't want to be like those politics who hems and haws their entire terms and never get anything of substance accomplishes, do you? Be decisive! ^_^

Yeah, Adrika's pretty much as subtle as a concrete boot to the face, and she's trying to be less... dominant in her conversations as it is. She'd have no problem issuing a plan of action, but like Narrator said, that has literally led to some in-party friction in the (recent) past, so that may not be the best of ideas.

That said, i think Lilah is the current party leader, so wouldn't she have the final say in what goes?

Yes, she would, but seeing as you are a group, everybody should contribute to the decision making; I'd be fine with her saying "we're going with this plan", too. But even that needs for a plan to be made in some manner, which requires that you have a way to come up with one plan quickly.

I think for now we are still, at least to some extent, getting the hang of what each other can do, especially since we've recently levelled up and gained even more things we can do which the others may not know about just yet. Eventually I think we'll learn what the specialities are of the other members of the team and no longer need to ask things like "Hey X, can you do Y?" or whatever. We're bound to forget stuff here and there because this is a very fiddly system with lots of little ins and outs and things to remember even on our own characters before we get to anyone else, but at least we can eventually each amass a general idea of what everyone else is both capable of and willing to do.

Better we spend a while now when we're outside some old ruin that's not been touched for however many years (and is therefore hopefully unlikely to change while we sit around deliberating and therefore not disturbing it) rather than when we get to that Balentyne place and have to kill that guy for the thing ;).

Oh, indeed; this journey's primary goal, from an OOC POV, is to help you build up some solid cooperation and group strategies going forward. I just want to make sure that "an efficient decision-making process" is one of those strategies you'll develop, that's all. :)

Well, put it this way - if it isn't, I'm sure we'll all be suffering for it soon enough as soon as we hit any real challenges ;).

Indeed you will, but I'd rather you didn't - I'm very kindhearted after all. ;D

In reply to Security Feature (msg # 190):

Considering we're playing an Evil Party, that should be worrying us the most :P

Just you wait, I have the best set of heroes ever ready to go once you start getting infamous.

I was thinking a formerly cursed psion who's been filled with the power of cleansing light, a telepathic ranger, a druid with a group of companions consisting of two white mice, a big black dog and a griffin, an invisible thief in search of redemption, and a boisterous warrior with a scar on his face and wielding two flaming swords would make for a nice opposition, maybe?

And if that sounds like a suspiciously specific description... it might just be because that's Nothing's party from the other game I'm running here. They are incredibly effective heroes and I would find it really amusing to see how well you can measure up to a team whose synergies I know inside and out after nine years of having them used against me. ;)

Well, we'll just have to gather some more villains then:

https://youtu.be/wO3BxPAVR98?t=255
This message was last edited by the player at 18:41, Thu 02 July 2020.

White mice? Pff, nooo, no tiny little mice. Proper big friendly lovely gorgeous rats. And they're not white - one is brown, the other is more of a sandy colour. And they both have names, not that that's ever come up. Well, one has a name...I can't remember if I came up with a name for the other...

I feel like the "griffin" would be cooler as something bigger and, well, cooler, too, but DnD is so full of possible options that I'm not sure what I'd settle for. The humble griffin is at least far too small, anyway, isn't it? ;)

I always forget that the rats are actually not white; for some reason I have them always pictured of that color in my mind.

And I never said anything about the griffin's size, did I? ;)

But I'd be more curious of what you'd think about Nothing and the others having to face that particular group as opponents - how would you foresee such a confrontation going? Would it be interesting, in your opinion?

Well, I suppose it would be interesting to see them just met - after all, no guarantee all of them would instantly attack each other. Dusk Rat is probably (one of?) the least inclined to violence out of her group and Nothing would find these telepathic mortals rather interesting and likely with to learn from/about them if possible. I don't think there's a size limit on Shadow Lurk, though, so...shadow-Cloudcatcher versus everyone...? >:)

I'm pretty sure Sun Snake would insist that the group stop being evil, and then decide to attack when they don't. But that might just be me. ;)

Oh yes, I'm sure we would get the obligatory wall of text, which someone like Adrika would most likely cut short if this wasn't a forum-based game which makes it basically impossible to interrupt anyone :D.

Not so much actually.

Attacking to interrupt a speech means you don't think you can take him on when he's done preparing. She did that with Balin as well, for all their dueling until the rest of the party could get there, he attacked her first.

It's basically a "Prepare all you want, if we fight we're still going to win" attitude. Other than that, she'd make pleasant conversation as long as they don't actively try to stop her from doing what she wants to.

That'd be a very long conversation, but I'd enjoy reading it. :)

Ahh, well, fair enough - I was just trying to think of someone who'd more inclined toward "Shut up. Bored now. Time for you to die." :D. Maybe that's more Grumblejack's area ;).

In reply to Nothing (msg # 201):

Oh, definitely. I have no doubt in my mind Grumblejack tries to roll intimidate for everything.

Ok, so here where I am it's officially the 8th of July. That means that it has now been two months to the day since the last time Cetaen posted in this game. As you all can check in the RTJ/House Rules threads, two months is in fact the limit after which I'll remove people from the game, so this means that, at the end of today (ie, in about 24 hours from making this post) I will be removing Cetaen's player from the game.

Now, the character will still be around as an NPC, at least for a little while, but this still leaves your team reduced to only 4 PC. As such, I can see the rationale in seeking a new player. I could look for somebody to take over Cetaen, or possibly Grumblejack or (if Carmen wants) even Carver; or I could look for a person to bring in a completely new PC, even. The latter would be FAR more likely to entice people to join a game already in progress, but either or neither or even both options (if you want me to get more than one person) are entirely fine for me.

However, I feel, this isn't my decision to make, but rather yours, as a team. I will leave it up to you all to discuss here in the OOC if you want a new player or not, and if you do, what option you feel would be more easily integrated into the game. If you have concerns that you don't want to share with the other players, which also would be perfectly reasonable, you can always PM me as usual.

Obviously, the sooner you all as a group can collectively reach a decision, the better it would be for getting the new player on board, assuming you decide for that, but even so, take the time to make sure you are happy with whatever you decide to go with - and of course, if you have a preference, making a solid speech to persuade your fellow players of why agreeing with you would be better for the game is a great idea.

In the end, you're the players and this is your game, so I leave the decision fully in your hands! ^_^
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:23, Tue 07 July 2020.

I'm all for a new player, myself- I would say offer them a few roles- maybe Cetaen, Grumblejack, and Carver (with the potential caveat that maybe Carmen's player gets some say on that given her own character's involvements with Carver), with also the potential to just let them create a new character from scratch.

When it comes down to it, I'd prefer a new character, but I'm just hoping for a new player, period.

Personally, I vote for another player--as our team needs a solid melee dps/tank to round out our group, as our current team is. . . lacking.

No offense to anyone, I love all ya'lls characters, but here's how I would break down things.

We got good utility between Nothing (darkness stuff) and myself (teleportation), good support with Lilah (and EVERYONE has some support IMO), good crowd control between Nothing and Adrika, and good fighting with--no one.

I mean, I have (1) attack (sonic blast) and that's the only ranged option we have--yipes! Adrika I would call half dps and half crowd control and she does hit hard--but she can't take down everyone alone.

In most fights, we have Nothing set up a trap, Lilah do some buffs, Adrika pop her luck and go punch stuff, and me ranged snipe from different angles. But that's still two fighters in our group--and if the hero group is six people, that might start to be an issue.

Cetaen WAS our main dps guy, being able to do range and melee and do both well. But even with him, we have no PC tanks.

Now. I know we have a tank in Grumblejack, a healer in Dryssa, and a good fighter in Carver -- but they're NPCs and not allowed to be too useful. They level at 1/2 speed to us, and thus will always be 1/2 as a useful (IMO).


Honestly . . . I think we need either Grumblejack or Carver to become a PC; or a new character come in with a tanky build in mind. Or even just straight damage, but as is--we have a hole in our team.


And even outside of that . . . um . . .

I feel we need another poster to move conversations along.

A lot of our talks have gone . . . slowly recently. And not like literally slow, content slow.  Nothing doesn't speak unless they need to, Lilah rarely speaks at all (not to either player's fault, I understand the reasons), leaving Adrika and myself to hold conversations--but only so many iterations of 'I wanna do this' 'but I wanna do this' 'but I wanna do th-' you get the idea.

I don't dislike the banter of course--but another chatty talker to bounce off of us would help imo.


I dunno, this is a long post, but I really think it could help . . .


edit: also, I give the full go-ahead for Carver being a real person, it'd be interesting to roleplay whatever results from that.

Ehm, small correction there: Adrika isn't a crowd controller. She has no area attacks (not counting the once per day ground stomp), and is at her best fighting a single opponent. She's tanky and hits hard, but can't spread that damage to several other opponents in a round, so she runs the risk of potentially getting swarmed if she's not holding a choke point since she can only hit one person per round (barring AoOs).

So yeah, i think we'd be best off if we add someone more specialized in ranged combat, preferably being able to hit multiple opponents since most of us focus fire on single targets.

That said, there's no harm in NOT adding a ranged option, which would create an interesting situation where we'd need to compensate for our lack of ranged hitting power. If a new player decides to join, first and foremost they'd be free to create whatever kind of character they'd want -- within the rules of the game, of course -- and we'd all take it from there.

I'm fine with a group of four people, and I think in terms of narrative, not meta-tactics stuff/mechanics, so any powers I pick are chosen mainly due to two factors - how cool I think they sound, and whether I can come up with ways they might be useful. So the latter reason does cover combat to some extent but I don't exactly make major tactical plans like we're plotting a raid in Everquest or something :D. If we got a new member I wouldn't want them to feel "forced" into playing a certain kind of character just because people think we need one. It's up to us to use our abilities to the best of our, er, abilities, but we should also hope the GM won't punish us for our earlier character choices (and for the fact that other people have left) by throwing encounters at us that are unbalanced for our party make-up ;).

The game does not consist of only combat encounters, after all, so we need to take into account what is going to the majority of the game, ie everything else :D.

True, but most of that is unfortunately player intelligence vs. character intelligence. A character can have 20 Intelligence, but if the player doesn't have any good ideas, then it only comes into play with combat rolls and skill points.

I've once had a high Int Heretek character come up with an elaborate plan in a Black Crusade game, where we were exploring the ruin of a ship that had crashed a long time ago. We found an intact stasis pod and woke up a new player, and the GM said that he had been the last survivor of the original crew members. Cue my character reasoning that if he was the last crew member, that also made him the highest ranking one, which in turn would give him the authority to access the ship's systems and set the rest of the party as temporary crew members, so the automated anti-boarding defenses would switch us from enemies to friendlies. We then lured some major enemies into a corridor with said defenses and basically set up a killzone. Good times.

Similarly, a Monk/Sorceress of mine also got herself petrified in the first combat round fighting a basilisk... because i simply forgot that i had the Blind Fight feat and could fight with my eyes closed.

Moral of the story: You can't predict a character's behavior based on their character sheet alone, but combat is a much simpler thing since it's all about stats, abilities and rolls. Adrika's abilities mean that she's at her best up in the opponent's face, so that's regardless of her personality and whatnot. Likewise, someone that's specialized to fight at range isn't going to wade into melee with a dagger every combat. It makes it easier to anticipate.

So yeah... If we get a new player, they can be whoever they want to be. Sure, there are preferences based on current party weaknesses, but in the end, we'll manage. :)

In reply to Adrika (msg # 208):

Remember, with the way I'm handling it, you can use high INT to have me suggest you a plan, or high WIS to notice when you're about to make a mistake, or high CHA to have me point out the best way to approach a social situation - so having the stats can matter out of battle as well, if you feel like it.

And on the matter of combat, I believe Lilah was planning to get some ranged skills, which she would be particularly well suited for, since her character doesn't tend to get into melee much. But I believe she can elaborate on that on her own; I'm only bringing it up to make it clear that, if we get a new player, they won't need to force themselves into being ranged, necessarily.

In any case, it seems to me that the group consensus is that everybody agrees on wanting a new player, and the preference would be for them to come in with a fresh new character of their own, as well? Is everybody in agreement with this, or are there any objections?

No objections here, aside from that it would be entirely their decision whether to create a new character, or adopt an existing one :)

I see Adrika's point, so ya, no objections here!

Now if only i could get you to do that more often IC :P

Yes- one of the things we seem to be missing as a group is someone who can hit from a distance.  I can stand back and ping away with some little stuff- wouldn't be all that much- and a few other things I can do, but we need someone who can turn and go long-range and blast away.  It would give me something better to do between keeping my performances going and trying to just trick things.

So I'm thinking of moving towards support/ranged damage instead of just pure support.

I think the most important thing to ask yourself is: "What does Lilah want to do?"

Remember, as important as being part of a group is, in the end she, like everyone else, has her own goals and future plans ahead of her. And while adjusting to the circumstances is a fairly natural thing to do, it wouldn't change who she is. What goes for a new player -- you can make any kind of character you want within the scope of the rules and setting -- goes double for you. So have Lilah be who she wants to be: Her own person :)

Alright, it seems like the consensus is to get a new player with a new character, so I'll be putting up the "looking for a new player" ad in... let's say four hours or so? If anybody has objections to getting a new player on board, let them be know before then.

I have no objections to getting a new player, but similarly no objections to not getting one, either. If you do get a new person, I think offering them the chance to make a new character is only fair, rather than potentially sticking them with a pre-made one that they have no attachment to. Maybe they would've been with us originally but their wagon got held up/waylaid en route to Branderscar and they got rescued by Thorn's people separately once he found out where they were or something :D. I dunno, I probably shouldn't try coming up with those kinds of ideas when I'm not the GM :D.

You'll likely find somebody hanging to a plank of wood in the remains of a shipwreck as you keep sailing northward, probably some pirate whom ship was destroyed by the coastal guard and barely managed not to drown, so they have a grudge with Talingarde to settle. It'd be the easiest and fastest way to get somebody to join you without overly complicating things.

I also have other ideas, but those'll depend on the type of player we manage to get, so I can't really make any guess about them right now.

It's a bit hard to tell from the map, but if we're heading in from the top, wouldn't we be having walls on all sides aside from the hole we'd have walked in through?

In reply to Adrika (msg # 218):

Remember how I said most of the houses are burned down or otherwise destroyed? I didn't have a map for this particular location, so I'm borrowing a different one, but you can assume that any house nearby one of the openings in the walls is damaged enough to be effectively "difficult terrain" (of the "broken furniture and debris" variety), and broken walls providing partial cover/concealment, rather than actual buildings.

Basically, the only buildings that are whole enough that you can't simply walk through their walls are B10-B11 and B12-B13-B14, and even those are substantially damaged.

I hope that makes sense?

Ah yeah, wanted to be sure.

That means i can 5-ft step in it since it's earth- or stone-based difficult terrain. Definitely something we could use to our advantage here. :)

Just to be sure before i inevitably post marching in...

...Everyone's okay with the plan, and ready for combat rounds?

I’m ready!

Sure, let's do this - it's you melée guys are the ones going into danger, after all, since it seems so far as though these undead don't seem willing/able to leave the boundaries of the outpost ;).

Mmhm, ready to go!

The icons on the map are kind of...



That said, why are we in B6? I thought the walls on either side of the corridor between it and the outer wall could be climbed over? Was i wrong?

There is a maximum size limit to the map, I would need to cut the image apart to make it bigger. I do think you can tell who's who, so it shouldn't matter too much, should it? It's not like you're fighting something capable of tactical movement like the snakes in the dungeon or a flier, you just need to know when the enemies will be sufficiently grouped together for Carmen to pulverize with her sonic wail, and for that, I think the map is enough.

As for the walls, yes, they're broken and ruined, thus you can move through them, but they also offer partial cover/concealment, without which you'd be unable to use Stealth - you can't use stealth without some source of concealment available unless you're invisible or have some equivalent ability. Carver moved first and you followed him, so Carver determined your position on the field. You can move through the walls if you wish to; you just haven't so far.

Ah okay, just confirming. I though the Stealth part was the rubble strewn about, not actual chest-high walls :)

Also, maximum size limit? We've had bigger maps, right? Or does the main game map have different restrictions?

The image maximum size for each map is 1 MB; that's true of all images. While I'm not sure that's the main issue, the main game map is jpg, while the battle maps are png, which probably makes them larger, but I've no idea why that's the case; when I added the numbers to the main map (which was not made be me) and saved, it still saved it as a jpg, but when I modify the battle maps, it saves them as png, yet I used Paint to do it both times. I suspect that the fact the map itself was given to me as jpg is the reason, but I really understand next to nothing of image modification.

The main map is 396 kb, for reference; the current battle map is 1 mb, because with the battle maps I always resize the image until I have it as big as I possible can get it.
This message was last edited by the GM at 17:27, Thu 16 July 2020.

It may be that's the issue then.

In simplified terms, .png supports transparency, whereas .jpg does not. While that makes .png images blend into the background better (because every pixel has an opacity value), all that extra information also makes those images bigger.

For example, the battle map is 719 Kb. when i downloaded it. Opening that image in Paint and saving it as a .jpg drops it down to 162 Kb for me.

So if you're going for square or rectangular maps anyway, no reason not to use .jpg if the maps are size limited.

...just knowing how to change the file format when saving in paint would be enough, to be honest - I can't seem to do that. How would I do it?

EDIT: Ok, I found it; I'll see if that helps.

EDIT2: and now I've replaced the old battle map with a new, gigantic version. I still don't think it changes all that much, but hopefully it's of some help anyway?
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:01, Thu 16 July 2020.

My glasses wearing self thanks you ^^

In reply to Adrika (msg # 231):

I'm glad it was of some use.

You do know that the next post in the main thread is yours, Adrika, right?

On it :)

Oh wow, that new map is enormous! I don't suppose it would be possible to still have the more zoomed-out version up as well, as a separate image or something? The new one is huge and blurry and requires a lot of scrolling to pan across the whole thing...

I'm starting to think there's no way to make everybody happy. :)

But in an effort to try, I'll have the smaller map accessible for you as the group B map, Nothing. I hope that works?

Actually, you could do both:

Nothing, go to Map 0, right click on the image and select "View Image". That should have the image show up separate from everything else, but more importantly, it'll scale the image down to fit on your screen. Click on the image to switch from real size to shrunk to fit when needed ;)

Of course, disregard if you're trying to see it on your phone since right clicking isn't a thing on there, but for PC, that should work just fine.

Ahh didn't know that, Adrika - that works :D. Yeah, I like being able to see the whole thing without it being a big blurry mass that I have to scroll around in order to try and see where everything is :D.

Good day, y'all! I am Ashaia, Tiefling Samurai here to fight forces of good and earn some shiny coin along the way! All the coin, in matter of fact! Hope you don't mind.

Looking forward to getting to know you and playing with you bunch!

In reply to Ashaia (msg # 238):

And welcome to the game :)

'Course, there might be some trouble in welcoming you ICly, but that's par for the course in an Evil game, right? Promise the hazing won't be too bad (as in: you'd probably survive. Probably.)

Nothing to worry about. Really.
This message was last edited by the player at 12:40, Sat 18 July 2020.

In reply to Adrika (msg # 239):

What if I come bearing cupcakes?

Hello fellow coin lover! Youll have to compete with my thief for the monies, but other than that, welcome!

And all cupcakes must be examined for poison first—wouldn’t want an accident would we ;)

In reply to Carmen Gorgon (msg # 241):


I love competition! I'll wrestle you for the coin in that case!

Heya, welcome to the game :D. Don't worry, I'm sure some of our characters won't try to kill you and/or take your stuff, or at least not without good reason. Depending on what constitutes a "good reason", naturally ;).

So i was thinking:

Given that our mission concerning the ship is literally "Kill everyone that is not us", and Thorn actually stated outright that no exceptions were to be made:



I'd say the first real chance we'd have of running into Ashaia WITHOUT having a contractual obligation to shove a dagger in her back would be once we arrive in the North, right?

Ashaia is not a part of the smugglers' crew, so she's not included in Thorn's orders.

I don't want to give away much, as it'll be much more interesting for you to discover stuff about her by playing, but Ashaia is a worshiper of Asmodeus, in a fashion (certainly more than any of the rest of your team is, at any rate), and hurting her might well be considered as "reducing the power of Asmodeus on this plane", since you'd be removing a powerful servant of Asmodeus from existence without a good enough reason.

Furthermore, if you want, you can use your rings to contact Thorn and tell him you have somebody who wants to sign the contract, or at least ask for direction on how to act. That'd be much smarter than risking breaking the contract's first clause due to a misunderstanding.
This message was last edited by the GM at 11:07, Sun 19 July 2020.

I dunno, I just rolled 3 on Stealth and 1 on Diplomacy checks.

I might not survive long enough to even meet you guys x)

Pfff do try to, it'd be kewl to have another Tiefling on the team. (Tho I won't tell who it is ;) )

Nah, Ceaten's not going to kill you without checking with the team first; you'll have time to come up with a good strategy to justify being rescued.

You'll just need to find something other than relying on people's good heart to do it; when Adrika's not around to provide it, this team really doesn't have any of that, I'm afraid. :)

Well now, that doesn't mean we're all happy to just murder random people who've not given us any trouble - some of us need a pretty good reason to start resorting to violence, and even then it might not be the kind that's intended to just kill you ;). Just, you know, freak you out and mess with your head and leave you jumping at shadows and stuff...

When the barbarian is mentioned as the party's moral compass...

...Be afraid. Be VERY afraid :P

Sorry if I wasn't very present today - cleaning the entire house took a while longer than I thought. I should have posts up in a couple hours or so, complete with updated map.

Adrika, just to confirm, you've not activated Serendipity at any point, right? Since I don't see it in any of your actions during the battle, I'm just double-checking to make sure I haven't missed anything.

Actually, it is, i used its bonus when making my Stealth roll.

Serendipity is one of those things that she keeps on, unless it isn't. For example, during the trek through the jungle she had to take her movement into account, so it was turned off because she couldn't afford to restrict her movement.

Any other situation, and there's no reason she wouldn't have it on, really.

Ok; that would have given Carver a bit extra power, but since he hit anyway, it doesn't really matter - I was just making sure for your turn. All's good. :)

Great :)

Oh, by the way, since your post mentions two of them were charging at Carver and found me in his path, does that mean i get AoO's against them, or was that just a narrative effect?

And, just as a refresher, do my Destruction Dice apply to AoO's?

No, it doesn't. If you check the Elemental Strike talent, it says "as a standard action"; this means it also doesn't apply to full attacks. And as I'm sure you remember, using it still provokes attacks of opportunity, since you're casting; you're not attaching the spell to an attack, it's the attack that is a rider / additional effect of the spell.

The best way is to think of it as a touch spell, except the attack is a part of the casting - specifically, it's the way by which you are picking your target and confirming whether you hit them or not.

As for the enemy, they started a charge to attack the first enemy they met, it just happened that you were the enemy they hit instead of Carver, so there's no attacks of opportunity.

The creatures, now that I checked them again, are actually BOTH shades and zombie - they have both templates attached - so they can't both move and attack in the same turn, unless they charge. Given that they could not charge at Carver because you were in the way, it made sense to me that the charge would be redirected to you instead.

It's the same ruling I would apply to an invisible opponent being in the middle of a charge lane, given that the combat rules don't really have any indication on how to act in such a corner case. Because, how would a character know that they can't initiate a charge if they don't know an obstacle is there? And I think we can agree that having "I declare a charge" be a good way to discover where hidden/invisible enemies are standing to be a bit silly.

So... that's the reason you were attacked. I hope it makes sense?

Oh sorry for the delay guys, been busy/depressed. Anyways, GM, Carmen is in the wrong spot on the map--I meant for her to be two down (our view) from Lilah, not to the side. I'm going to  move her again, but from the assumption she is there, ok?

In reply to Carmen Gorgon (msg # 256):

Of course; I'm sorry if I misunderstood your initial intentions. I'm also sorry that you're feeling down; you're amazing and don't deserve it, so if there's anything that would be of help, just say so!

In reply to Security Feature (msg # 255):

Actually, there's no AoO to me using Energy Strike. Entropic Sage class ability :D

That said, i figured that since they were trying to charge at Carver, they'd be entering my threatened squares without being aware of me, thus opening them up for an AoO. Oh well :)

By the way, what's "80% = 16"?

Edit: And posted. It was a bit of a list, but i think i got everything summarized now.
This message was last edited by the player at 00:40, Thu 23 July 2020.

The shades only have 80% chance to hit. They only have 80% of a zombie's normal AC. They inflict 80% damage. The DC of their abilities are 80% of what they'd normally be. Every ability they have has only 80% chance of working. It's a result of them being semi-real, and you being aware of that and able to time your attacks to match it, thanks to Lilah warning you about that fact.

16 is 80% of 20, which is what the shade rolled. They're really only a threat if they can swarm you and start using flanking bonuses to improve their hit chances. And even so, some of you have high enough AC to be in "hit only by critical" territory.
This message was last edited by the GM at 06:50, Thu 23 July 2020.

14:47, Today: Adrika rolled 15 using 1d20+6.  Know (Arcana) vs. 15.

ding dingding

Can i be assumed to share my findings with the others through the mental link?

Sure!

The closest enemy to you - not the one in front of you, that's the one you destroyed last turn, the one right next that would have been in the line of fire of Lilah - currently has 8/14 HP. The two paired just behind it both have 11/12, since these are the ones Carmen hit with her sonic blast.

The one closest to Lilah's lurk has 9/9 HP, while the pair right next to each other that are half in darkness and half without both have 14/14. The one close behind has 11/11, while the two that are in a line behind each other both have 8/8.

Finally, the lone straggler at the back has 13/13 HP.

Outside of that one bad roll for the one that attacked Carver, I've overall rolled pretty well for HP with the things - although, of course, since this is their HP after if has been reduced to 80%, they're a bit less resilient than the 2d8 + thoughness they got would suggest.

I hope that helps! ^_^

By the way, the DR 3/slashing part... Is that information included in my Knowledge: Arcana roll?

Because Tear Flesh allows me to also make piercing and slashing attacks with my fists, but i don't want to metagame it.

Hm... I think it should be, yes. Even if not, Adrika would have noticed with her punch that it was a bit less effective (not that it'd have mattered with her 19 damage attack anyway) if it was a bludgeoning attack.

Yeah, the tricky part is that she knows they're part shade, and never having punched Nothing she doesn't have anything to compare them to, so i was kind of iffy on it.

Either way, if i know, i'l pass on that information to the others :)

sorry reply will be delayed hurt my right arn

In reply to Carmen Gorgon (msg # 265):

That's totally understandable, and I want you to have the best of my well wishes to recover soon and safely. Take care of yourself!

So, question- could my lurk get off two attacks right now?  What with Carmen's attack, I might be able to dust a second one with the lurk's physical attacks.  I'd just need to do four or better to one...

Sure; can't see any reason why not, myself. Move action to close in, standard action to use your dual wielding for two attacks. You don't need to aim them both to the same opponent either; they do need to both be within 5 ft range from you, however.

Now that it's close to the enemy turn, obligatory mention that the first shade stepping into my melee range gets hit with 14 (17-3) damage ;)

I am very aware; it's pretty clear that you and Carver, with ranged support from Nothing and Lilah, are not going to have a hard time right now. :)

In case it wasn't clear, I'm waiting on Lilah's lurk action and a possible edit of her post from Carmen due to a miscommunication between the two of us.

Okay finished editing my post so Im good to go!

Great! Next post should be up in ten minutes or so; the map is already updated. :)

Which shades are still up?  I think 3 is, and 7, 8, and 9?

Nope, 9 went down between me and Nothing, and 3 i think died to my readied action.

Just the ones over at the shadow zone remaining, i believe, so that's 7 and 8.

Posting here so as not to clog up the IC thread...

Yaaay, I killed one with the crappy crossbow! :D
And yeah, it does seem I'm doing well on the damage (you know, considering what I'm using and all that). I normally don't like rolling automated die rollers 'cause I'd rather do it myself with my own dice, but it seems this one is being kind to me for now. Just wait till I'm trying to do something that's more substantial/useful than plinking vaguely at crappy undead thingys :D.

Well of course.

I mean, you're a shadow. Not being substantial is kind of your thing :P

Not really. I'm a creature of living shadow with a sort of outer membrane thing that absorbs things like air and nutrients within the air directly. If I was actually a shadow I wouldn't need to worry about such things as "gravity" or "physical objects" because I'd be both weightless and two-dimensional :D. If Nothing lacked substance I expect the idiot zealots would've had a much harder time getting their hands on them in order to chain them up and put them in prison ;).

In reply to Nothing (msg # 277):

And that's a good thing. Leave being two-dimensional to the murderhobo parties :P

Will another full move get me in range of either of the two shades as far as my chakram goes?

With one move action, you would end up in one of the squares adjacent to Nothing; I think the one underneath her current position would be the best for you to reach right now.

That'd get you 1 range increment closer (if you check, you'll see the chakram range increment and your moving speed are the same). Meaning, instead of -8 (as you would take shooting from where you are), you'd only take a -6. If you spend your entire turn moving, using both your standard and move action to move through, then you remove another range increment and it goes down to -4. Then your next turn, one single move action would become enough to bring the penalty down to -2, which, considering the enemies are already taking a -2 penalty, would basically cancel itself out and give you the same accuracy you had when shooting those who were fighting Adrika.

If you'd spent your last turn on taking those two move actions, then you would have been able to take a move action this turn and then use your standard to throw.

You actually didn't actually give me any actions last turn, which would suggest you were standing still, even if your narrative did mentioned "press forward into the area". If you want, given that you didn't contradict the narrative with a IC post that actually said "Lilah herself doesn't take any action", I'm willing to let you retcon having spent the last turn heading for the fight so that you can finish closing this turn and attack; after all, it is in part my fault for not asking clarification at that time. That said, in the future I will try to be more careful, so going forward make sure to consider such things in advance.

But for now, count three move actions and tell me yourself from where you're going to shoot, keeping in mind that you need a clear line of attack - ie, one that doesn't pass through other people's area - to avoid having cover problems.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the GM at 13:27, Mon 03 Aug 2020.

No, that one was my fault- I should have been clearer, my bad. It’s almost finished, anyways- if it gets to where I need another turn, I’ll attack then.

Pretty sure we can write off that last shade.  I think we have Nothing coming up followed by Carver, and then Lilah gets another few whacks at it- I'll get my full attack at it and then both lurk swings at it, so barring some disastrous rolls, I think it ought to be down after my turn at the latest.

That seems the most likely result, yes. If you all want me to simply end the fight without going through the motion of it, I can do that; we don't need to go through the motions of the rolls unless you all want to.

Although I was a bit curious to see how the kill count would shake up - right now, I have Adrika at 1, Lilah at 1 (+3 if we assign the Lurk's kill to her), Nothing at 1 (+3 if they get the lurk's kill instead), Carmen at 3, and Carver at 2.

It's not like it means anything, it just was amusing to me to keep score. :)

I'm on 2 actually, there's the one from the readied action as well ;)

...let me guess- we just attracted Mr. big-bad dragon who was in the area.  Oh, wonderful.

But... at the same time, well... maybe we could work a little magic, hm?  If he doesn't like the Mythrans, well... maybe we could pull a little "enemy of our enemy" idea, here?

Many possibilities exists, but I don't want to spoil anything - it's more interesting if you discover things through playing. :)

Not trying to break the turn order, but because i was specifically keeping an eye out it made sense for me to send a quick thought off. In terms of combat it's not my turn yet though, so i've made no actual actions :)

Hey guys so an update-- remember when I said my fever broke? Turned out I was two days too soon to say that. Turns out I might have Covid, or a really bad flu, we're not such which. Upshot, Im--really out of it?? so apologies if my posts remain off for a bit, Im having a hard time thinking.

That's perfectly understandable, take all the time you need. You've my best well wishes for a fast and complete recovery; take good care of yourself!

Yeah, I think recovering from Covid-19 (or, indeed, any other illness or such thing) is a higher priority than posting in some RPG online ;). Go to bed and cheer on your immune system!

Quick question, but how do you identify magical items again? Most of the time it's just assumed to be identified offscreen, but is it a Perception, Spellcraft or Knowledge Arcana?

Spellcraft is the sure way to do it; depending on the type of magic, one out of Knowledge Arcana, Religion or Nature will also generally work.

Also, I want to point out that the new rules for the Cantrip feat (for those who have it) allow it to be used to identify magic items (with a DC of 15 + CL) as long as they user is touching them; originally, this wasn't a feature it had. It still requires 3 full rounds of study and is a "once-per-day" check, but I'd let you have a +2 bonus for consecutive day the task was attempted, so by studying an item long enough, eventually the powers of every magical item can be identified, it just takes time. I'd also let anybody attempt the check, even if they didn't have a specified ability, so long as they were trained in the skill and had spend at least one week studying the item beforehand.

In the particular case of the blouse, the item was easier to identify because the effects is very obvious - by moving the item around, the knick-knacks tied to it clack together in a obviously magical way that sounds like evil, echoing laughter; while the characters would not be able to simply say "oh, that's a Cackle", since abilities don't work that way, they'd be able to recognize the blouse magic as "create creepy magical laughter when moved" by simply moving it around, such as would be necessary to remove it from a dead body that was wearing it.

Basically: not every magical item is the same, but overall it takes either long study or physically attempting to use the item to see what it actually does, unless a specialized ability is used, and not all specialized abilities will tell you everything you want to know about an item; less powerful ones (such as the Cantrip feat) are less effective.
This message was last edited by the GM at 14:08, Mon 17 Aug 2020.

And speaking of "less effective", it seems i won't be figuring out what potions they are.

15:57, Today: Adrika rolled 11 using 1d20+10.  Spellcraft.

Don't worry, much like the wands you retrieved from the sunken ship, they'll keep; you have all the time you want to figure them out. :)

Then again, maybe either one of Lilah and/or Carmen will just roll a 20 and handle it; that's a perfectly valid possibility as well!

That, or i'll try again tomorrow. It's once per day per item after all :)

10:41, Today: Carmen Gorgon rolled 22 using 1d20+8.  spellcraft.

That good enough to identify it?

Yes; unsurprisingly, the team's primary caster is the best at recognizing magical items. Who'd have thunk? ^_^

Speaking of, Carmen, when you get back to the ship, remind me that you should get your rolls for the stuff you recovered from the wreck with the +14 bonus from a week of studying them, to determine what those do.
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:04, Tue 18 Aug 2020.

The First two school days are behind me, yay. Introduction days and competence level tests pretty much. Next week will be an interview for the personalized study plan and real work can begin. Sadly not much to do before next Wednesday unless someone dumps more tasks into learning platforms to do.

Good stuff, regardless!

Good luck with it then! :)

Oh hey Rpol lives!!

Yeah, it was apparently down for one day due to upgrades to the servers or something like that, from what I gathered.

Yeah, it can happen. There was a brief period of uptime two days ago when i slipped in a few posts, but it's been a mostly RP-less weekend for me :S

Oh yeah, it's been down for me the last two days I've checked. Well, yay, at least it's back now :D.

Well, i'm going to wait for Lilah and Carmen to post first here, since they're the ones actually checking the room.

Also, the game seems aware i failed the Knowledge (Arcane) roll, since Spoiler tags are now completely broken on Firefox for me. Can't even get them to show up when quoting posts anymore, apparently.
This message was last edited by the player at 14:22, Mon 24 Aug 2020.

In reply to Adrika (msg # 304):

That's because the post is formatted in a different manner for different players; it's not a fault on your end, is that you're trying to quote a post that includes private lines addressed to other people and that means you can't visualize it correctly.

What target number are we looking for to get past the trap?

That would have been DC 17, but Carmen has disarmed that trap.

I'll give everybody a chance to update their action to say if they're going to follow Carmen down the stairway or not before I give you a description for what's to be found down the stairs.

...Not quite, as those are tags i'm not supposed to see to begin with.

I'm saying that when quoting the post, the Spoiler tag and everything inside it doesn't show up, and previously that was the only way for me to read the contents of spoiler tags as clicking or highlighting hasn't worked for a while now.

Oh. I didn't know (did you tell me? If so, I forgot) that you couldn't read Spoilers. Have you tried asking in the tech support forums for some way to solve the issue?

As Carmen can confirm, she can't see the spoilered knowledge text, because that's not visible to her - I used secret lines to give each of you players individual descriptions of what was going on, because you have different perception scores. I've done it in the past, too; you in general tend to get more stuff than other players because your passive Perception bonus is higher than everybody else. It just had never happened before that you could notice something that would trigger a knowledge check that somebody else would not be able to notice, so I'd never had to put the spoiler text under a secret line before.

So, yeah, as I said, the problem was very likely with the tags - because the spoiled text was folded inside the secret tag, that likely made it impossible to quote for you. At least, that's what I think.

Basically, I didn't understand that you couldn't read the knowledge under the spoiler; in this case it was not important because you didn't roll high enough, but I'll try to keep it in mind going forward.

Yeah, for a long long while Spoiler tags have looked like this for me:

Knowledge Arcana 24

---

    Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)

---

And no amount of clicking or highlighting will get the text to appear. Normally, i'd press Quote and then i'd be able to read what was in it, but now, Spoiler tags no longer appear in quoted messages.

Normally, it wasn't much of an issue so i never really brought it up beyond mentioning it, but with my workaround gone, i'd need to open the thread in Chrome in order to read what it says.
This message was last edited by the player at 22:23, Mon 24 Aug 2020.

Ok, let's try an experiment:

Dragon

---

Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)
A dragon is a lizard with wings

---

How much of those can you read?

Broke the tags to show what i can see quoting a post -- what's the difference between the two?
This message was last edited by the player at 10:50, Tue 25 Aug 2020.

The second spoiler is under the "secret" header.

You can see at least the title of the second spoiler, even if not the content, right?

Nope, what i quoted is what i'm seeing while quoting. The entire Tiger tag isn't showing up for me when quoting at all, though i AM seeing it in the original post... which means i have no way of reading its content without switching browser.

That's fine - I was making sure I correctly understood what was going on.

More than me then XD

Out of curiosity though, what was the difference between the two? Because in Chrome i'm not seeing any differences in the text displayed within the spoiler tags... Though quoting there doesn't make the contents of the Tiger spoiler show up either.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:46, Tue 25 Aug 2020.

The tiger spoiler is under the "Secret" tag.

The secret tag makes it so that you can see thing, and another player cannot, but unlike the "private" tag, you, the reader, aren't aware about the fact that other people aren't seeing the same you do. I use it a lot for descriptions, since your character wouldn't realize that they'd noticed something nobody else has.

Ah, i see. I knew the Secret tag doesn't show up in posts when quoting even if you could see the contents, so that would explain the disappearance of the spoiler tag when quoting the post. :)

Sorry... ^^;

It's fine - if no-one feels like responding to Nothing's suggestions, they will just feel free to react to any situation the way they see fit, whatever that might entail >:D.

Oh hey! Just wanna make sure you know, Aisha (sorry if i misspelled XD) that we’re all glad you’re here, and welcome to the team! Our characters are just, well, evil and suspicious and arguing (you’ll see later so don’t meta gams this, but Carmen has a group telepathy going). Well include you in a bit, or you can go up to Carmen or Lilah and we’ll chat!

Yeah... I'm not really that bad, and honestly, I hope I'm not coming off as too harsh and things... I just hope we haven't been that bad, is all... sorry again, Ashaia!

Seconding what the others have said, and... well, what i can say is that the main source of Adrika's irritation is due to something before your time: Early chapter 2 i believe.

None of it is actually aimed at you as a player, so don't worry there. Just a 'right place, wrong time' kind of moment i suppose. :)

Nothing to worry about! I'm quite enjoying the dynamics going on so far ^^'

My morning / Day has been a bit too busy to reply today between calming my partner due to their tests and making Gyoza from scratch for lunch... ish time x).

I do read what's happening all throughout the day so do not be alarmed of me logging in but not posting. This is more of me being weird and nothing about you putting me off. Sorry if I left such an unintended impression!

Well, once you become a part of the group, be sure to bring it up and we'll probably have a laugh around the campfire over it.

Hehe don't worry - I only log in once a day myself, so at least you get to read the posts as they're happening. It's a good job I didn't make a more talkative character, or these long silences of their would be really weird right now. Well, I mean, as another character has pointed out, mine is clearly mute...but...well, you know, if my character has any other means by which to communicate with you, I'm sure they will show you in due time if they feel it relevant/necessary to do so ;).

I'm giving Carmen a chance to reply, but I will make a post tomorrow don't worry ^^!

You probably want to clarify in your post which sentence is addressing her, and which Dryssa? I personally can tell, but I think after your edit it became unclear which one you were speaking with at any given point.

Oh thanks sorry, Ill get on that right away!

Sorry that took so long to get out!  Had a bit of a misadventure in the kitchen- but on the plus side, I've finally gotten around to cleaning everything out.  (I also know what a three-month-old potato looks like now... and no, it's not pretty.)

Also- I know the rest of us know already, but I'll restate: Lilah can be a bit much at times- if you ever feel that I'm taking things a bit far with how I play her, let me know, or let SF know and they'll let me know to tone it down.

I know you guys are tired of hearing me say it, but I'm just wanting to make sure everyone has fun and I don't go making anyone uncomfortable and things. :)

Oh I hope you're okay!

And don't worry about being too much ^-^  If anything, I think I can come across as too much due to Raj, but no one seems to worry--and Ive never felt uncomfortable with any of your posts.

We are villains, and we are evil >:D  I think as long as no one is too graphic its okay? Like the difference between saying 'I dismembered them' and describing how one might go about it.

(Not sure if thats what you were referring to honestly! This was my best guess.)

I'm guessing, this being Lilah, that it's more about any suggestions relating to clothing, the removal of such, and any acts that may result between two (or more?) people soon afterwards ;).

Incidentally, I have nothing further to add IC for now - I'll wait till we're underway again before taking any further actions, unless anyone wants to ask me anything before then.

More like being who she is, maybe beiung a little flirty (but nothing really in-your-face about it- though I tend to go a little overboard with things sometimes, anyways), so like I said, if it happens, just push me back and give me a whack, or a poke and say 'hey, I'm not comfy with this, just... maybe ease it back?'

I mean, it is who she is, but she's not going to be that way all the time...

So basically, something like this then?

Well, I can't say I'm particularly worried about anyone ever trying to flirt with Nothing, at least ;).

In reply to Nothing (msg # 335):

That sounds like a challenge!

More a statement on the utter uselessness of any such gesture in their direction. It just wouldn't work. Your character could try, but as a player I have about as much interest in sex and romance as any of my characters (well, I mean, they have as much interest in those things as I do ;)), so no-one will ever get anywhere with any of my characters, in any game, even if my character actually has a sex and/or a gender ;). But since your character doesn't know that yet, I suppose there's nothing stopping her from trying if she should decide she wants to start dropping hints (or whatever), for whatever reason.

In reply to Nothing (msg # 337):

Hmm...

Well, subtle hints are unlikely to work due to Nothing lacking the required frame of reference to pick up on them, so... Start off with a body pillow, and work your way up from there?

First off: I am very sorry for my shit-head of a familiar. Its nothing personal, its just--gack. Sorry.

On a more fun note, loot time~! In-character this will happen in the next leg of the voyage, but out of character I think a little discuss wouldnt hurt?

Most stuff is sellables, and honestly I don't know if we wanna divide those up or just divide the gold later? Carmen will carry shit around as long as is needed, but IIRC you guys weren't comfortable with her being the group treasurer?

If we wanna do the list of sellables, I'll list them, but for now, here's all the magical gear!


1) Wand of Magic Missile (not really, just borrowing the name)

Stored SP: 3/3, Caster Level 2

This wands contains the base Destruction Sphere ability, and always apply the "Force Blast" talent to it, meaning any shot costs 1 SP; by spending a second SP the damage is increased from the base of 1d6 to 2d6. Note that Force damage can be extremely useful against certain enemy types that are otherwise difficult to harm, such as ghosts.

2) Wand of Protection

Stored SP: 0/3, Caster Level 2

This wands contains the base Protection Sphere, but only with the "Ward" ability (and the associate base "Barrier" power), in exchange for also having the "Distant Protection" talent.

3) Wand of Prying Sight

Stored SP 4/4, Caster Level 4

This grants the base "Sense" ability of the Divination Sphere (but not the "Divine" ability), as well as only granting the "Prying Sight" talent (and thus not the "Read Magic" basic sense).

4) Wand of the Tribal Warchief

Stored SP 2/2, Caster Level 6

This grants free use of the War sphere, meaning both the base Totem (with Totem of War) and Rally (with the Commanding Aid effect), as well as the Mass Rally magic talent.

5) Wand of Counterspell

Stored SP: 2/7; MSB +5

This grants free use of the Counterspell feat, but the effect can only be paid for with the SP already into the wand.

6) Wand of Cantrips

This is a wand that lets the user benefit as if they had the Cantrip feat, even if they're not capable of using magic; it has unlimited uses.


Then, the statuettes!

Short explanation:

They will light up with different flashes in order depending on the main attributes of each characte. Str = dark blue, Dex = light blue, Con = Purple, Int = red, Wis = orange, Cha = gold.

Also, each statue is related to a attribute, and grants a +2 buff to it when held.

dog = str, snake = dex, elephant = con, monkey = int, owl = wisdom, and peacock = cha.


There's also some text that relates them to the mithril tablets that maybe will allow for a ritual to a permanent boost? So Carmen will keep those tablets until we figure out how they work--and no selling the statues either for that exact reason.


But ya, personally I'll want the monkey statuette, but other than that Im not sure who should get what? Sooo ya. discuss time!

Of note: activating the statuettes' boost takes a standard action, and the boost last for one minute, so long as the statuette is held - which obviously take up one hand. This wasn't in the explanation I gave Carmen because I forgot to clarify it, but it's very much the intended way they work. Also, they stay alight as long as they're providing the boost, which might be important.

Well, i'd like the Owl one myself (though having Carmen keep it safe until we get to the point of the ritual). I've got several things triggering off of WIS.

Also, this may not come up, but i'm mentioning it anyway: Due to everything i'm holding counting as having the Broken condition, that means that when i fire a wand or staff, it uses up twice the charges. The Wand of Cantrips circumvents that since it has technically infinite charges, but i figured i'd mention it all the same.
This message was last edited by the player at 00:44, Fri 18 Sept 2020.

As far as the statuettes are concerned, that won't be a problem. Although I don't know how practical having one hand filled with a statue in battle is going to be...

Clawhand Shield: https://aonprd.com/MagicArmorD...me=Clawhand%20Shield

Spare Hand (3.5): http://eberronunlimited.wikidot.com/spare-hand

Monkey Belt (5 min/day): https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic...ems/a-b/belt-monkey/

I mean, where there's a will, there's a magic item, so if you're really determined to...

You will need to find something like that first, though, and that might not be easy. Not to mention all of those items have a CL of 8th or more...

Yeah, and that would only make sense, given that they mimic a racial feat: Grasping Tail for Tiefling, or as a Grippli i suppose you could use your 10 foot tongue to hold a statuette.

My guess is that, given their appearance, a Grippli character would tick Raj off pretty badly though :P

Actually probably not--I imagine that Raj in his original form is just really alien, since Lumas are originally from the Outer Planes? Lizard is just what he's stuck with.

Also, Adrika, can you grasp the statue/a wand with your hair and use it? Might be a way around the breaking thing.

So...it turns out the most relevant stat boost to my dark-themed character out of all these "shining" statuettes is the peacock? I can't help noting a theme here, GM ;).

Well, you know, Charisma is the stat of people who are good at talking - and that always brings Peacock to my mind, for some reason. ;D

In reply to Carmen Gorgon (msg # 346):

Nope.

I mean, i technically could, but the grasping with hair is basically reflavored permanent Mage Hand, and Mage Hand specifically can't be used for held items.

The long hair grapple stuff is a Hex, and while i could hold the statue using that, it's restricted to level x minutes per day, and i'd rather use those for tripping and grappling opponents that don't want me getting close to them :P

Oh ya! We forgot some more loot:


Crystal ball:
Base Divination Sphere (Divine ability only, no Sense ability)
Expanded Divination: Divine Weather, Divine Illusions, Divine Life
Greater Divine
Dowsing
Viewing

when held with both hands.

As for potions, there's:

2 Potion of Amphibian (color: azure)

grants the Amphibian sub-type, 40 ft swim speed, and the ability to breath underwater for 1 hours each

and one

Potion of Water Walking (color: grey)

grants the ability to treat the surface of water as if it was solid ground; sinking into the water at will is possible, in which case the drinker land speed is treated as swim speed


These sell for a lot and we won't need them after this, so I think we should sell them to some sailors later?


I will also ask you guys this, if we don't claim magic shit, do we wanna sell it or keep it for a rainy day?

Hmm... Going by our escape from Branderscar, i say keep it, so the weaker swimmers can just walk over the sea floor in case we need to hurry.

Potions are... Well, you never know when they could come in useful. Sure, if we've got like 20 of them there's no need to hold onto that many, but we could keep an assortment available exactly for situational use.

The potion of water walking makes you walk on the sea surface, not its floor.

There seems no harm in hanging onto stuff in case it comes in useful some day - we have plenty of carrying capacity between us including those of us with the means to carry and/or equip stuff in such a way that it doesn't physically get in the way. We can sell/trade stuff if we feel we need whatever we'd be getting in return (money or other magic items or whatever), but unless we're in danger of running out of space, why not just hoard every magic item we end up getting our hands on because maybe one day it will be useful...and also, if we have it, our enemies don't. Even if it's something really minor :D.

Between everyone we surely have enough space, but Carmen herself can only carry so much XD I can carry the magic items to hoard if everyone wants, but some of the more monitary items I think should be split up?

I'm sure you'll be able to find a solution before it's time to leave the ship, since right now that is doing all the carrying for you.

Speaking of, if nobody wants to discuss anything else before you depart from the island, I'll be updating you with a post for voting about the next leg of the journey later today.