In reply to Farwalker (msg # 935):

Oh, right, duh. I forgot about that. So you'll have it handled after a rest.

All things considered, I think Farwalker would actually be less dangerous/effective as a Werebeast.  ^^;

I'm not entirely clear on the rules regarding the Lycanthropy Curse as far as mechanics are concerned, but I think there's a time delay before it takes effect, or at least a chance for the infected character to resist being taken by the curse.  That'll at least give Farwalker a chance to hotswap spells out after 24 hours to switch in "Remove Curse" for later.  Admittedly though, it would've been pretty funny to see her slap the Lycanthropy out of the Reghedmen.

Also, now that we know Lycanthropic Reghedmen are a thing to contend with in the wilds, I'm tempted to get all us spellcasters together and craft a "Rod of Remove Curse" so we can just go around whacking the evil out of these guys later.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:15, Thu 07 July 2022.

Hey now, it’s a giant pillar of Dim Light. :p

That actually does raise a curious question of visibility mechanics.  If the "Moonbeam" generates Dim Light, but the environment itself is already perpetual Dim Light because of the weather/perma-twilight, how does that shake out?  They don't stack because that's not a thing in 5e, so I guess it's just a different color of Dim Light?  Does it override mundane light but not magical light, such as forcing a Torch's Bright Light down to Dim, while a "Continual Flame" or "Light" cantrip would override it?  Or does a brighter form of light always override a lesser form, unless a spell states otherwise such as with the "Darkness" spell?
This message was last edited by the player at 20:17, Fri 08 July 2022.

I’d assume it works as any other magical light. Maybe not snuffing it though, but overpowering lowered level stuff. It is funny that’s it’s just this dim spotlight though.

And boo. Making saves. For shame.

It would depend on the Spell, I suppose. For Moonbeam, I could totally buy that the pillar was filled with Dim Light even if Bright Light surrounded it.



It's far from definite, but the phrasing is undeniably different. I'm of the opinion that the former would override existing brighter light sources while the latter would not.

But what about two overlapping magical lightsources? For example, if you cast Moonbeam on top of a Dancing Light orb, which wins out? Higher level? Order of casting?

That does remind me, you guys are very quickly running out of Dim Light. As in 'it might happen during the next few rounds of combat' quickly.

Also, Khulekani is up. Do you feel like posting? I'll certainly say that you guys on the Astral Plane know that something is amiss by now. Not only can you glean the action, the pillar of Moonlight and Astre's appearance would do more than enough to clue you in that a fight is going down. What I'm saying is that if you so desire, it's time to jump into the fray.
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:13, Fri 08 July 2022.

Actually, the spell "Darkness" offers a bit of potential insight on that.



"Darkness" itself is a 2nd level spell.  While magical light will illuminate it, any light-creating spell of equal or lesser level that crosses into the 15' radius of magical darkness is dispelled/snuffed out.  For example, Mallory's "Continual Flame" lantern (a 2nd level spell effect) could shed bright and dim light into the area since it has such a big radius of effect, but if the lantern actually entered that 15' radius it would be snuffed out until it left again.

So this element means light-producing magic of a higher level than "Darkness" would overpower its light-snuffing nature.  We could reasonably extrapolate that outward and say that spell effects that directly counter one another are prioritized by level, unless the spell text specifically states otherwise.


Worth mentioning, in case folk didn't quite realize, but sound carries through the entryway into the "Rope Trick" space.  Since everything going on is pretty nearby, it's likely everyone can clearly hear what's going on with the battle outside since nobody out there is trying to be quiet.

Wow, y'all put a lot of thought into this. Here I was just imagining a shaft of lonely moonlight illuminating a small part of the forest, like you might see in a werewolf movie during an early transformation scene, not something that could tactically limit vision and lightsources where it travelled.

It's a cool analysis, don't get me wrong.
This message was last edited by the player at 00:56, Sat 09 July 2022.

You should see the discussion/worldbuilding PM thread the DM and I have going in the background.  We wildly overthink things on a regular basis.  ^^;

I'm glad to see your character bio filled out!  On the young side for an Elf, but given the time frame of her lifespan, Idri's lived through some especially noteworthy events in regional history.

Also, Mallory continues to be the half-pint of the group.  She's going to strain her neck having to look up at everyone.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:13, Sat 09 July 2022.

Overthinking is fun, I do a lot of it! Just... Not always to good ends. ^^;

Do you think she's young? I did a sort of loose ratio between elven and human aging to ballpark how old I wanted her to be, worked out that ~250 would put her at about 30, by human standards. She's definitely lived through interesting times, though, and I hope nobody rolls their eyes too hard at her bio!

I blame dice! Did a little roll for her stature with a table I found, she wound up both towering and sturdy (by elven standards).

You mentioning my bio also made me reread it, and I found a whole bunch of annoying typos and weak sentences. The perils of typing stuff on a phone in the wee hours of morning!
This message was last edited by the player at 02:16, Sat 09 July 2022.

Elf age ratios are always wonky, especially when there's a bunch of different official tables covering the age spectrum.  But given the general notion that Elves aren't considered post-adolescent until they at least break 100 years old, anything younger than 300 tends to skew more toward the "fresh faced youngster" sort of area.

Of course, mental maturity is a very different thing for Elves too, depending on how much of her past lives she recalls through Trancing and how far she's gone into self-actualization on her own.  So, basically, if you say you intend her to be in her 30s then that's what she is.

I haven't assigned an actual age for Mallory aside from "Young Adult", but I figure she's in her early 20s.  Certainly no older than 25 at most.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:31, Sat 09 July 2022.

Valid points!

My understanding is that elves physically mature at about the same speed as humans until about 15-16, then their physical ages slow to a crawl (at least, that's my reading of their fluff). They don't hit social maturity, however, until 100 -- doesn't matter if your growth plates are settled, less than 100 years of life experience ain't piff when your people generally live to 750.

From there I screwed around with ratios a little bit (which aren't a clean 1:1 with human aging, obviously, but helped me ballpark some things) as well as estimating how much their physical aging must slow down for a 750-year-old elf and an 80-year-old human to be equally venerable. The gist of all my amateur math is that, after they hit their teen years at the same speed as a human, elven aging slows down to something like 7-10% the human rate per year (I didn't keep notes when I did it, so I've been trying to redo the calculation while I typed and edited this). Ultimately, the conclusion I came to was that 240-odd years of living after hitting the eternal youth phase shook out to 15 or 16 year-equivalents for Idri and landed her comfortably in her late 20s or early 30s.

The easier, lazier way to factor it is that 250 is 1/3rd of the average elven lifespan, and 25-30 is 1/3rd of the less concrete average human lifespan!

Again, this is just my nonsense attempt to rationalize the math they gave us, but I think it worked out okay. Puts the start of elven middle-age in the ballpark of 400. And it makes more sense to me than what older editions did, like 3.5 saying that an elf is venerable and ancient at 350 even though they will then live for another 4d100 years.

I respect the ambiguity! I thought about doing the same, but I had to do all this silly math to figure out what an acceptable 28-32-equivalent was and thus ended up with a solid range, so why not put an official number on it? Plus, since she's lived through a whole era of history, it helps to know how much she could feasibly have participated in any given event.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:24, Sat 09 July 2022.

My personal shorthand for Elves is to draw a correlation to Human aging, on the notion that Humans in the Forgotten Realms will broadly cap out at 80 years old max before the rough nature of the world itself does them in somehow.  I likewise round up Elves from 750 (which seems oddly arbitrary for some reason) to 800 years, because it doesn't make that big a difference for them and it makes my shorthand easier for me.

My broad gauge is that Humans and Elves age at a 1:1 rate up to the point of physical post-adolescence, at which point Elves physically stall out and their body stays at its prime until they're old enough to be considered elderly many centuries later.  Biologically, there's little to no difference between a 20 year old Elf and a 500 year old Elf, and even an Elf at the very end of their lifespan is still likely in great condition rather than being a shriveled old raisin.

So while a 20 year old Human and a 20 year old Elf are both functionally adults, the Elf is still considered a kid by their societal standards because of their race's long life span and capacity for repeated reincarnation.  Basically nothing prior to 100 years of age counts to them.  At the point of Elf Adulthood post-100 years, I track it as a general 1 Human Decade = 1 Elf Century sort of ratio.  So a 400 year old Elf would be their version of a 40 year old Human, where an 800 year old Elf would be considered the same level of venerable old granny that an 80 year old Human would be.

Not perfect by any measure at all, admittedly, but it works for me as a quick shorthand since I can just tack on a zero to the Human age get the idea across easily enough.  The relevancy of Elves' past lives and how much of their previous reincarnations they recall isn't counted because it's such a massive can of worms.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:36, Sat 09 July 2022.

Yeah, past lives are a mess. I barely considered them for Idri, to be honest; I'm more interested in playing the character I've made than the characters I could have made, you know?

Ah, the round-up explains it! By your metric, yeah, she's only about 25, but using 750 as the expected average brings Idri up to 27.5. Factoring in that she's lived a pretty hard life compared to most non-adventurers (and harder than many adventurers, too), I figure the years have cost her a little extra.

I really hope people underestimate the one-armed elf from time to time. It'll make it a lot more fun to suddenly have a magical, metal fist that she uses to knock them into next Tuesday.

Elves are weird. They shouldn't be low levelled anyway. But that's a whole conversation.

I feel you there. Our gracious DM had a lot of wonderful backstory ideas for Idri, but I had to politely turn some of them down because I didn't want a level 5 character to have lived a level 10 life. I also compensated a bit for her comparatively lower level-to-age ratio by making her backstory involve many years of more mundane stuff, like spending years helping a village rebuild by blacksmithing and doing masonry for them for dirt cheap, and about a decade doing library work for her sect. And lots and lots of lost fights. Can't get XP if you got your ass handed to you on a silver platter! ^^;
This message was last edited by the player at 03:57, Sat 09 July 2022.

I'm generally not fussed about Levels in correlation to lifespan since it never makes any sense regardless.  For Level 0 NPCs, there's functionally no difference between children and adults if they don't have a job.  A NPC can be a 60+ year old war veteran who's fought in dozens of bloody campaigns over a long, colored career and still be a Level 0 Soldier who'd get absolutely rocked by a Level 1 Fighter with a stick.  Meanwhile, a fresh-off-the-farm teen on their very first adventure can rack up to Level 5 in no time at all if the DM is generous with their pace of encounters.

I basically view it as only PCs get Levels and PCs are, by nature, exceptional in-setting by every measure of the word.  We're a bunch of anomalies that totally throw off the bell curve and shouldn't be counted in the general power tier census.

I have a few Elf characters in my back pocket for other games.  One I call on often is a Wood Elf who literally just spends centuries hanging out in the forests, walking the byways, and nigh on forgetting civilization actually exists most of the time.  She just spends her current lifetime chilling and not doing much of anything (hence her low level in starter games) and any skills she picks up by means of Leveling Up are just her regaining muscle memory from her past lives where she was previously more accomplished.
This message was last edited by the player at 04:03, Sat 09 July 2022.

I absolutely adore the "remembering old skills" way of explaining rapid level gain in a game. It let's you tell a much more exciting story in their past as long as there's a good enough reason for a character's prowess to have faded -- retirement, imprisonment, injury, trauma, the list goes on. I'm halfway using that for Idri, although it doesn't work as well for prepared casters. Since more of their class abilities are rooted in knowledge than physical conditioning or raw magical power, they need to literally forget how to do something to explain why they, for example, can't cast spells of a certain level anymore.

Still, 150 years is a lot of time to forget things. Living long lives doesn't necessarily come with crystal-clear recall, as your Wood Elf well knows. ^^

I was in a game previously with a player who ran an elderly veteran Wizard and managed the concept of being experienced yet low-level very well.  The way he did it was that his Wizard was a retired high-level Adventurer who had to get back in the game despite his age.  He still "had" all of his skills and spells, but was a huge curmudgeon who hated getting his hands dirty and thus put in the barest level of effort necessary.  In addition, his experience allowed him to accurately gauge threats so he could figure out the exact level of power necessary to deal with them.

It was a sort of reverse-engineering for how power levels normally work.  While his character is mechanically Level 2 and tossing around Firebolt cantrips because that's what he's got on hand, in the lore it's explained as him going "What, a bunch of Skeletons?  Feh!  That's not worth whipping out a big spell on!  You, with the sword - go hit them!  It's what you're here for!".  So by the time we got to be higher level and he gained access to bigger spells, we were likewise dealing with threats that actually required a Fireball or two.  Thus he started using those big spells he "had all along" because the severity of the moment finally justified their use.

I really liked that take.  It was an interesting way to spin the situation.
This message was last edited by the player at 04:18, Sat 09 July 2022.

In reply to Mallory Bonheur (msg # 954):

Yes, that's quite good. Definitely specific to that concept, though, and the lack of actual stronger spells if the situation ever went direly south throws a wrench into the whole thing, but that's a niche case; generally, the party in a game isn't seriously in danger of a TPK unless the GM wants them to die or the dice are breathtakingly cruel.

A big part of it was transparency on the behalf of the entire group.  Everyone was on board with the type of character this person wanted to play, so we did proper suspension of disbelief when it came to our characters not just demanding he whip out high-level spells he mechanically didn't have.

I certainly do appreciate when a player takes the time to make their character's experience align with their level. It makes the world feel more grounded if this is contextualized and consistent. You do run into the oddity now and again with the farmboy who just picked up a sword and wham, two weeks later he (and many, many sessions) he's a level 8 Fighter. It all depends on how fast-paced the adventure is, and such a character would theoretically have gone through the same amount of encounters as someone who spent an equal amount of sessions dragged out over two years of in-game time. But to me, there shouldn't truly anything separating a PC from NPC. At least not when it comes to what logic they adhere to.

But hey, Forgotten Realms is ripe with high-level NPCs, which is one way to solve the problem. In my mind, the army veteran Mallory spoke of should not be a level 0 NPC who gets whooped by anyone and anything. If not getting a proper character build, he should at the very least get a statblock with some more hp than your average commoner.

I see that Khulekani hasn't checked in for a couple of days. Here's what we'll do; I'll roll initiative for Mallory, Rhydd, and Khulekani, and then it might not even be her and Zula's turn. And I'll roll for the Halfling, unless he gets to stay in the Rope Trick? He has no desire to fight Reghedmen and Lycanthropes.

Also, time for OOC III. Gonna get that set up.

It looks like Rhydd is up first in the nrewly-rolled Order of Initiative.

A couple of questions, please, Bears:

1. Is it a normal Move Action for Rhydd to exit the Rope Trick "space" and land on the ground?

2. If so, (unless you see any reason that this won't work), he will exit the hidey-hole space and hit the ground ready to fight.

3. Rhydd will target one of the Reghedmen, since his arrows will have no effect against the Lycanthrope. Does any of the Reghedman have the appearance of a shaman or spellcaster? If not, is there anything else that would suggest to Rhydd that he should target any particular barbarian with his arrows?

Thanks, as always.

PS. I just took a look at the Battlemap. Will Rhydd have any movement available after he exits the Rope Trick Space? If not, I'm not sure that he will have a LoS/LoF on any of the Reghedmen. Can you clarify for me, Bears? Thanks!
This message was last edited by the player at 20:01, Sat 09 July 2022.

As a note on Climbing, as far as I'm aware: Rhydd presumably should be able to descend to the ground (both tossing the rope down and zipping down it) as part of his Movement phase.  That should only be 10 feet of movement (depending on whether it costs extra movement to descend a rope as it does to ascend it), and the trees at ground level presumably wouldn't obscure his view of the Reghedmen.

---

Question of my own, DM - You mentioned in narration that the Beastmen were big and beefy looking.  Presumably still Medium-sized creatures, but how chonky are these guys?  Over 500 lbs kind of bulk?  I hate to rely on the same Levitate-and-Destroy tactic too much, but when it's so effective and there's an active "Moonbeam" on the field...

1. No, falling does not count towards your movement. It does, however, incur 1d6 bludgeoning damage for every 10' you drop and you'll land prone. But that does sound a bit silly to always happen on a measly 10' drop . . . so let's do an Acrobatics DC 10, or you'll take the damage and fall prone. If he does end up falling prone, it appears to me that he'll have just enough movement (10' remaining after moving to drop down and standing up) to eek out the shot.

2. Go ahead.

3. No, from what Rhydd can glean they're matched in fighting prowess. None of them seemed to be spellcasters.

EDIT: Yeah, you can choose to toss the rope down as Mallory said.


Oh, definitely not. They're medium sized and slightly larger than your average man. Imagine them just barely short of Farwalker! :)
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:34, Sat 09 July 2022.