After forging, sharpening, hardening, and finishing the long sword that Santio ended up buying, Tusk uses the leftover scraps of metal (that he paid for!) and a nice, solid limb of wood, to make himself a much simpler handaxe.

-2gp total materials, spent two DTU's, and rested (-3 gp at the inn)

Santio had sat quietly, riveted, by the tale.   While Tidelan had spoken, and eaten, Santio had done neither.
When the story-song came to an end, he sat unbreathing for some time also, just staring at nothing and considering it’s entirety.
Then, he nodded, “I am … honoured … to have witnessed this lore.  Thank you, friend Tidelan”.

When the moment had passed, and it seemed that the world (miraculously having vanished) coalesced again around them, only then did Santio begin to eat.
He did so as Tidelan spoke of his home, and his people … and Santio nodded in acknowledgement.

When his plate was done, Santio looked at the remains a moment, then with a slow, deliberate gesture, he said to nobody in particular, “A giving of food to Annwn, for the honour of witnessing her lore”.
He knew that this couldn’t mean as much as the Ganesi’s offering … but maybe, in some way, Annwn might receive some small respect from the offering.


“You cherish nature”, he said, “You cherish it as Life, above even people?” he asked, without judgement.

Tidelan nodded approvingly to the sacrificial offering made by the quiet man.

He also answered the man's question, "I believe my heart is with people more than it is with the nature of Gaea or the nature of Annwn. But, I believe in the nature of Gaea and the nature of Annwn more than I believe in even my most liked people... The greatnesses of the two are not even near the same, but the Hearts of all people are no the same as their knowing, yes?"

Tidelan seemed to be saying he would choose his people over both nature and the fey, yet he has total faith in the supremacy of the latter. He explains this is not a contradiction nor a 'bad choice', because all people carry biases - especially emotional ones - and the genasi predicts the two entities that he worships would encourage him to follow his heart.

It may be seen as unfortunate that Tidelan cannot speak common fluently, because he sure has been given a lot of very incredible stories to share.

Santio nodded.   But seemed sated; food for thought, and for stomach.  And didn’t seem to have much more to say right now.

“Excuse me a moment, please”, he said, and cleaned up their plates rather than wait for another to do it, and returned them to this establishment’s kitchen/counter as appropriate.

When he returned, he said, “I am in need of meditation, and sleep.
If you wish, you may join me for the former, before we part to seek our beds”.

His thoughts were as full as his tummy; and some quiet contemplation before retiring would help settle them both.

Tidelan waved away the offer with a hand, not saying anything. The genasi saved words when he could, since his sentences were hard to construct in his mind anyway.

Nodding to Santio and standing as well, "I am happy we did this. I feel that I know you more, now. For now... We both go." the genasi seemed a bit contemplative as he realized he had no idea how to say farewells in the common language...

Perhaps feeling the farewell was a bit too awkward, Tidelan put both his hands into fists and gently tapped their knuckles together an inch or so in front of his sternum. With a small nod he said, "Va belmenapar vao darconguro"

Santio simply put his right fist into his left palm.  Then nodded, which seemed to constitute his own parting salute.

Then, he left to find a quiet place to meditate, then sleep.

Since Nutcracker doesn't do crafts, would it be possible to use some of his Downtime to help with the hunting for Fierce Heart's Village?

Absolutely! For one downtime unit, you get two survival checks to find prey!

Sounds good. I'll burn one unit now and will add however many more can be burned in the time available.

OOC: Spend 1 DTU for 2 rolls: 9 & 17
03:46, Today: Nutcracker rolled 17 using 1d20+4.  Hunting Trip roll 2 of 2.
03:46, Today: Nutcracker rolled 9 using 1d20+4.  Hunting Trip roll 1 of 2.

Nutcracker, the first half of your hunt you find nothing, but later in the day you manage to find a giant stoat. Choose whether to have an encounter for the xp, or just assume you won and only get the skin. You will still need to roll one more survival check (this one doesn't cost a downtime unit) to determine how much meat you get. You may additionally make separate rolls for antlers, hide, etc.
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:01, Sat 11 Sept 2021.

I finally hit the personal milestone of 100 Downtime Units!!!

To celebrate, Tidelan finna rampage and massacre the whole forest!

Hope you don't mind how I flavored this post

As the sun began to set, Tidelan was wandering around town. He had not gotten the chance to speak with Smith that he had wanted. And, the mission that the very thought of had made his blood boil was taking an agonizingly long time to arrive...

The town guardian was feeling antsy... He recognized this feeling by now. He had to blow off some steam... He had forgone so much rest and relaxation in the months he had been in Town...

Had it been a year yet? The genasi did not know, he had been working nonstop to improve himself and the small bits of the world around him that he called his own.

One thing had long bothered him, however... The meager beasts of this forest... They always attacked his group. Why? Did the beasts in this ever-frozen land lack a sense of self-preservation? Could they not sense the aura of their superiors? Did Gaea forget to give them a sense of fear?

Tidelan did not know. Perhaps, the forest was too large, and word had simply not gotten around yet. Sure, animals did not speak. As a druid, he knew that well enough. Yet, they still communicated. Even after death, signs would remain of their scuffle, and other animals would bring back to their herd, pack, horde, or cubs the scent-truths of what they had seen

Those would eventually become racial memories, and would be inherited during rearing by future generations. Gaea was an evolving nature, while Annwn was one of preserving information. The differences were endlessly complex yet perfectly harmonious.

Nature and Sylvan. Those words to Tidelan meant more than even if a God stood before him.

He had long pondered the meaning of Gaea's Nature... And his connection to it. As a son of a deadbeat water spirit, should he not have connection to the worldsoul of the Water Plane instead? Yet, he did not even know whom that was. He could surmise they would be the embodiment of all that was 'liquid'... As the earth would be all that is solid, the air all that is gaseous, and the fire all that is energetic...

... Thus he knew of the existence of six truths of the cosmos. Yet, almost all that he had ever touched or sensed was of nothing but the one...

The places he could visit... If only he were stronger...

His tension had given way to wanderlust... And he had found himself already walking. His feet moved relentlessly, as he crossed into the woodlands.

It was cold, but he did not feel it. The nightbirds were loud, but he did not hear it. The whole place stunk to high heaven, but he did not smell it.

He only had a single sense now. All his Five Senses, which perhaps themselves were aspects of Nature, as Honor and the Heart (among others) were aspects of Sylvan, had merged into one. The Hunt.

His thoughts soon vanished... if he had been more aware, he would have wondered why the Fae had changed The Wild Hunt to The Black Hunt... could it have had something to do with the fact that it's essence had changed from Nature to Sylvan? What a thought...

Before he entered an almost trancelike state of bloodshed, for the sole purpose of reminding the lame-brained animals of the forest to use their beastly instincts instead of acting like mindless plants, Tidelan's last thought was on the absolute beauty he found in such concepts as Nature, Sylvan, Pyro, Aero, Aqua, Terra; and their expressions of Sense (Eye, Mouth, Hand, Scent, Sound, Self, Sixth), Instinct (Apex, Lust, Hunger, Survival, Intuition), Life (Growth, Evolution, Genesis, World), of Honor, Heart, Information, Dream, of nil, of nil, of nil, and of nil. All, respectively.

Then all went black for Tidelan as he went about his good work.

---

A woodsman walks out of the forest. A scholar watching may harken back to the days of The Cult of Cromm Cruach... for the forest behind him was dyed red.

Blood makes the grass grow greener

With that thought, Tidelan snapped back to awareness. With a sniff and a glance over his shoulder, he knew he had done well.

He began the process of bringing the corpses back to town. The animals would catch on more quickly if there was nothing left to scavenge.

It would mean that they could attribute to the lingering sense of death, an imagined predator which had consumed even the bones of every one of its kills.

... There were a large quantity of fresh corpses, so there was much for Tidelan to do

Don't forget that after spending every 2 DTUs you will need to either make camp and do a Constitution save or return to your home and spend the lifestyle expense. By my count if you do a modest lifestyle then you will have to spend 60gp in expenses. 

I'll mark off the gold.

Yikes...thats 3000gp

So, here's how it works: On a survival roll of 10: You find a small creature. The size goes up by 1 at 15, again at 20, again at 25. No creatures bigger than Huge can be hunted, and only creatures whose CR is lower than your level are found.

I made a mistake declaring Nutcracker found an Elk, because Elk are large, I've changed that to giant stoat.

And after consulting with Narrator, we've decided: If we determine an encounter will be too easy, we will give you a choice: You win, without running the encounter, but gain no xp, or we run the encounter, and you get xp.

With that in mind, Tidelan, do you still want to kill every animal within miles of your home?

Please, what is this 'downtime' activity which is being participated in, gaining its actor gp and exp?
It sounds like something I'd like to look at ... but I think I missed the relevant posts, wherever they are.

Hunting. Though you only get GP if you can sell the meat. Since Darla now has a horn that can provide enough food to feed all of hers and Carmen's customers, and Jessop doesn't buy consumables (Though I think we've made exceptions for the rations players start with,) the only real use for rations is that they reduce your lifestyle expenses by 5sp for the day you eat them.

@Santio, you can consult messages 69, 71 and 76 ITT

@Conspirator



That makes sense. But, let me just be clear... Do you intend to set a level 4 character against a CR 4 creature? That would be an unwinnable fight, and I won't participate in that.

It should probably be something closer to CR divided by four or five, since CR is designed based on a party of about those many PCs.

---

Honestly, yuck. This is a whole lot of same-ish encounters to go through. Since I was doing this in a fair part for the XP, I'll definitely deal with the new rules anyway, if you decide to stick to them.



I genuinely think this was a funny and flavorful idea. I can't tell for sure, but it seems you may disagree about that. Hence the new rules?

To me, phrasing it like that only makes it more appealing due to the absurdity of it (which is perfect for a fantasy setting). This may have been your intent to rephrase humorously, again I can't really tell why it seems so important to change the rules as soon as someone dials it to 11.

Generally, mechanics needs to be scale-proofed before introduction. I'm not going to argue that I should get to be 'grandfathered' if you both are unwilling to allow that, but I'd prefer it over what will be a couple weeks of time-consuming encounters for both of us (also will bloat the hell out of this thread, unless we move [perhaps to Tidelan's Campsite, since it hasn't had any love in quite a while?]).

I will, thank you.
       Edit:  Oh yes, I was those.  I thought there might have been a more official 'thang' to look at

I dunno, sometimes when you go hunting, something bigger and nastier starts hunting you.   Sometimes, you gotta be able to run away, also.
Its a risk every hunter takes.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:50, Sat 11 Sept 2021.

In reply to Conspirator (msg # 71):
Nothing else on a stoat besides fur and meat, so we'll just assume the kill is clean and go for the goods; no XP needed.

22:58, Today: Nutcracker rolled 8 using 1d20+4.  Harvest giant stoat meat.

Will engage in a long rest afterwards to level up. Camp was packed up before leaving Smith's Gambit, so as long as Nuts has a spot to set up he's good on shelter and food.

Sorry, I meant a CR appropriate for your level. Also, technically, you simply won't find any CR 4 creatures close enough to town that you could hunt for 16 hours and make it back in time for bed!

Yes, I phrased it that way to point out the absurdity. You won't lose your druid powers or anything, I just found it funny that a druid would do that.

Look, D&D lacks mechanics for a lot of things, and we have to come up with something on the fly pretty often, with no time to test it. When I made that post for Nutcracker, I hadn't eaten breakfast yet, so I wasn't thinking clearly, and Narrator was still asleep. We received a complaint about granting that much xp for 1 DTU before I even saw your post (and quite some time ago, received at least one request not to do similar things when considering adding quests that required nothing more than DTU's to complete,) and this also curtails an upcoming problem I've anticipated for awhile now, but hadn't come up with a good solution for: How to deal with high-level parties needing to travel through low-level areas without bogging things down with combat no-one wants to take part in. The fact is, I really don't want to run any of those encounters, but it hardly seems fair to let characters who are proficient in Survival get the ability to earn hundreds of times more xp for their DTU's than everyone else, without any greater risk or effort.

When we run any combat for downtime, it will be in separate threads.

I can’t imagine how difficult it must be adjudicating a sandbox like this.
Good work, those awesome folk

I relate to this so hard -_-

---

Tidelan is a very special flavor of druid.

I took most of his inspiration from my own personal interpretation of the Feywild, if it had more pulls from Welsh, Celtic and Irish folklore/mythology, rather than pop culture (though there is still plenty of that, but I've withheld introducing it from this game mostly)

Wrote a big long thing but my post got deleted, so I'll just summarize with remarking that this IS a druid thing to do, just not how every druid would do it.

There is nothing more natural than animals killing animals. Even if Tidelan had no 'good' reason to do this (he does, because he is genuinely concerned that there is something wrong with the local wildlife, since big groups of armed humans keep getting attacked by beasts that are quickly slain and chased away) and decided to do as much harm to the environment as possible; he would not feel any guilt if he had a reason that could be justified by any of his other beliefs. Tidelan is absolutely aware that nothing he does will have any permanent damage to the world.

Sure, from a Human perspective; nuking the planet seems like a bad idea. But the world will recover after a thousand years. That is an incredibly short period of time, from the POV of an immortal entity (of which Tidelan worships or has lore of many)

That was the main reason I kept that exposition dump in my post. Because it implicitly explains his justification for doing such an 'off-brand' thing.

Tidelan is reverent towards nature because he worships Gaea, but he does not think murdering animals is a kind of blasphemy against her. And to the other entity he worships (Annwn), she wouldn't even flinch at the death of every living being. Why?

Because to the Fae, 'death is just a change of states' (yep stole this from To Your Eternity)

The fae are not humanoid. It may be more accurate to describe them as hardly even organisms. If I had completley free reign over extraplanar lore, I would go as far as to describe the ""BIOLOGY"" of the Fae as much like the Idaten Deities (other really good ongoing anime this season)

... To be honest, I could see even without barbarian levels or any strange worships, how any player could run an animal killing druid. Just have their motivation to be ''Apex Predator''

A lot like Garruk from MTG lore, if you will.

I certainly appreciate the effort that goes into running this number of characters and players. I've had a big group before (7-9 a session), so I know how much work it can be.

I like using the DTUs for immersion and reward than getting any XP out of it. Can't say I have seen any indication in any of the books that downtime activities grant XP, so completely up to the DMs if they want to grant any.

If there isn't a hard limit to how much DTU I can use (a'la Tidelan) I'd like to spend 10 more over the course of 5 days (if allowed) to get more food for Fierce Heart. And pelts. Pelts for possible profit or custom armor (Sai).

I always try and run games (regardless of system) with a cast of 4 to 6.

I don't enjoy solo RP, so that's out. Two players would be too few, and three is the same issue.

Honestly, is it weird that I feel like there are more possible connections between two people rather than three?

I mean with two, you could have endless feelings towards the other, endless interactions and such. But with three, you almost limit yourself by adding a third element, which is required to participate, but can only fit in neatly under certain conditions.

To me, five or six is the ideal point for a diverse cast. Seven would be way too much, as six is basically the most difficult I can handle. Four would probably be on the easier end of adjudication.

I can probably only run one game like that at a time. So yeah, these GMs are nutty bonkers to me as well.

BTW, if you search thru my game history, you will find most my games don't follow the trends I just explained I prefer. That is because I was a terrible GM when I first joined this start, and all my games died (except one, which I'm sure only succeeded 50% because I had a helper, and 50% because the concept was in such high demand)

Honestly, I feel like I've only ever run one game legitimately well. I would like to count another of those among them, but it died in the water too young to tell.



The GMs have shown that combat will reward XP, regardless of how it takes place. This was confirmed with the Battle Arena thread (wasn't my suggestion to add as an incentive, before anyone asks), which even surprised me.

Backtracking on that now would be counter-intuitive to the players who have been paying attention.



Not to be rude, but that's just your personal opinion, and not necessarily the main intent behind DTU.

In fact, originally I thought they introduced DTU rules (which I am not familiar with) to support players who wished to go the ECON route with their characters. This makes sense, because this is basically a 'cooperative town-builder' game in DND form.

Also, when you say you do it for "immersion and reward", you mean "story immersion" and "mechanical rewards". I'd like to point out that XP basically falls into that second category, and the way you split it up into three groups is arbitrary.

Not saying this to nitpick, but to point out that it would be a misleading narrative for players to not think of 'XP' as a game resource. It absolutely is, in the same way gold or magic items are. (IIRC, earlier editions of DND even tied leveling to gold somehow)



Again; scaleproofing matters.

If the GMs don't design mechanics to be scaleproof, they will naturally fall out of usage or even functionality, since even with bounded accuracy, 5th edition characters scale up over time.

I'm against limiting DTU usage. Nothing would be more cool a couple years down the line then the oldest players finally blowing off 200 DTUs for some ridiculous (noncombat) feats!

Of course, I made my post before the GMs decided that each encounter had to be acted out (I AM STILL INTERESTED), otherwise I may have not set myself up for a possible 40 encounters.

The only reason I posted was because I saw that you made 50 xp off 1 DTU, so I said 'damn, that is awesome. time to invest!'

That was hotfixed, and it doesn't look like I'm getting grandfathered. So, I accept the GMs choice that more XP from DTU needs to come with more risk and effort.

Thus, the mutually-undesirable predicament where we both get to SLOG through a two-digit number of one-or-two round combat encounters.

Not criticizing anyone here, since that's already been resolved by Word of God, and I've already given my take. Right now just clearing up any possible confusion over the circumstance from my own POV.

Funnily enough, if I were a masochist, I could burn another 80 downtime units (... stepping back for a second .... man, has it been close to two years I've been playing this game? ... What a ride, yo.) to do this four more times.

Yes, that would mean [using the average from above] a total of 150 encounters.

I'm pretty sure there is only around 100 total beasts in all of DND, and since we're getting only CR appropriate encounters, there would be a lot of duplicates.

Hilariously, if I do this every two levels (which would be possible with the posting rate of this game), I could get access to every single wildshape [pending them being native to the Rimewoods, of course] in the most epic way ever, by having killed them myself.

Probably should clarify that I mean Tidelan, not me personally [the human being], I just thought first-person pronouns sounded better there than saying 'my PC' or some derivative each time.

In real life, I feel bad for killing spiders or flies (well, only a little); and whenever my cat misbehaves, I am the one to apologize. what im saying is "I'm Not an Animal Abuser, But I Play One On TV!" haha thats my new shirt lolol

Edit: Also should mention vanishing into the woods mysteriously then returning with new powers is the most awesome thing imaginable so please sit down [I picked up dis sass from Carmen O_O].

Also, I don't know why I was worried about dragging bodies back. I would only be keeping the bits anyway (which would fit into the inventory, and thus pose no conundrum because in the pitch room, the devs said "screw logic and common sense for 5th edition" followed by a war cry of "let them be unencumbered!" [what a stupid pull])

Anyway, since we are going to be acting these encounters out; I'm going to make sure I purchase / Tidelan stocked up on torches before we start / he left

This is to burn the meat, so that the hungry animals cannot eat it, and the ones who notice the smell of disappointing barbecque will be put in their place at the thought of a predator that can eat so much.

Druidic deception is hilarious. Maybe if I get bored, I can have Tidelan start leaving notes around the forest in Druidic saying stuff like "I just slaughtered the Calydonian Boar. Out of temptation, I donned the bearskin to taste it's meat. It was mediocre, at best. A little too gamey, for my taste." and "Oops, was that a guardian spirit? Crap! Gaea is gonna be so pissed!" or "lol you call that a 'ferocious monstrosity'? silly farmer, a meager sire of jormungandr poses no threat to me. rest assured i am protecting this land due to my great benevolence" maybe even "gg ez. alpha dire wolf king plus the weakest raid boss ever bro just solod him like in sao haha im cool like kirito" let alone a trail of cryptic notes starting with "the wolves of this forest do not seem to fear me, though I am cloaked in the skin of their kind?" and ending, thirty dread-inducing chapters later with "of course. the curse of these woods. the frost never melts. it must have also affected the hearts of the animals... wait... what is that sound? the eyes in the woods... the sounds of claws... i- is this ... !... Ah, I see. You were responsible for this."

Sadly, Tidelan is not a creative writer smh (then again, he has talents I lack too... namely the whole reality-bending impossible magic and stuff haha)
This message was last edited by the player at 03:52, Sun 12 Sept 2021.