I realize it's a little unclear what counts as cover for the island fight, and I apologize for any confusion.  In general, I'll be pretty generous with giving you cover as long as there's any part of a tree in your square.  The exception this round is Harald, who specifically mentioned leaving cover to bait an attack.

I'm not complaining; sometimes the dice go against you regardless of how much you stack the odds.  I wasn't expecting to be in cover for that round either.

Though the note says you still have me carrying the dwarf body.  I dropped that fellow back in square L9.

Right, I forgot to update the statuses when I copied the statblock.  Is fixed now.

@Vrenna:  I should mention that the "away team" is in Morast, the site of the first murders, not Hergstag where the children died.

Assuming Felix and Vrenna are done with the interview (if you're not, just let me know and I'll backtrack,) I guess it's a matter of picking your next target.  The three obvious choices are the Torvald sisters (witnesses to the Hergstag killings), Karl Eisen (witness to the Karb Isle arson), and Dr Crowl/the university.  All are in Lepidstadt.

Oh god, I've been such a dunce haha
Whatever. She's flustered by the slip. It happens to the best of us. And Vrenna's going to push for Croyl as soon as I steal some time to post.

Had a storm knock out power and internet for me, sorry to say.  Suppose that's what I get for living in the woods in the middle of nowhere.  Back online now, and going to get in an update tonight.

@Harald: Dang.  A bad time to be with no power, if your winter weather's anything like we've been getting where I live.

I can't believe how well that manticore is rolling.  Dodging Kara's flaming spheres is basically a coin toss, and it's made it five times in a row.

Also: In melee, the trees aren't going to provide effective cover.  Moving through squares with trees counts as difficult terrain for the large manticore, however.  Meaning it moves at half speed and can't take a five-foot step.
This message was last edited by the GM at 06:21, Thu 06 Jan 2022.

Yeah, Kara is getting a little irritated with it consistently dodging all her stuff. Solution: more fireballs! (Just kidding, she does have some spell diversity.)

The worst part is that throwing those flaming spheres at it was absolutely the right move.  With average rolls, it would be almost dead by now.

Also, I should mention that Kara's in melee range of the manticore.  She can easily take a 5' step to avoid provoking an AoO from spellcasting, and I'll let you edit one into your turn if you want.  Of course, you could also roll to cast defensively or just take the hit, if for some reason you want to stay in melee range.

Eh, I'm accustomed to it.  Get storms here every winter.  Heating is firewood and furnace, water is from a well.  I'm good.

How are we handling Attacks of Opportunity?  If it tries to stand from Prone it's going to draw one from everybody in melee range.

Generally, you'll be rolling attacks of opportunity on your turn, and if the AoOs kill or stun the enemy, we'll retcon it's actions.  It's not perfect, but I think it's better than pausing the game to resolve the AoO's as a separate turn.

On the subject of pausing the game: I'll try to post the results of important saves mid-turn, like with the grease and the stunning fist.  I'm debating with myself whether that should reset the "72 hours to post in combat" rule or not.  On the one hand, it might make a single round take a long time to resolve if everyone is waiting to see the results of the last player's actions.  On the other hand, knowing whether an enemy is stunned or whatever can have a big impact on your own turn.  Thoughts?
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:16, Sun 09 Jan 2022.

How I've handled AoOs here in RPoL has been to roll the attack as GM while handling the enemy turn.  Then include it as part of the action sequence.  Interrupting abilities like that are always a chore, but the smoothest implementation of AoOs in I've found was to roll them on the player's behalf.

For the result of saves, it could be simpler to post the results in a quick Out of Character post rather than putting it into the game thread.  One thing I've seen done was to post a short stat block for the monster which includes its defenses and saves.  Then the players can know immediately if their attacks hit, and roll saves themselves to know whether the creature failed or not.  Drawback here being that the players have to be told the AC and saves of the thing, removing a bit of tension from the battle.

Posting saves and letting the players roll to see if their spell lands makes a lot of sense.  It takes away some of the mystery, but I'm already doing it with AC.  Besides, I think a lot of people look up the monsters they're fighting anyways (it's a bad habit of mine, I'll admit.)

Auto-AoO's might be a bit more complicated, depending on the character.  It can involve decisions like whether to use power attack or stunning fist, whether to do a combat maneuver instead, saving their AoO for a different opportunity, etc.  I suppose we could just make the rule that you have to specifically mention how you're handling any AoOs beforehand, or it defaults to a regular attack?
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:21, Sun 09 Jan 2022.

@Vrenna and Felix:

I'm not sure exactly what you're looking for.  Judging by Vrenna's mention of a spiritualist, I'm guessing you might be looking for someone to cast the occult spell Object Reading?  Vrenna got a very high roll on knowledge(local), so I'll say you can find someone like that if you want.

Hiring him will cost 100 gold, though, a significant markup due to the rarity of occult casters, the fact that he'll have to come with you across town, and the general uniqueness of the situation.

If you had something else in mind, just let me know.  I don't think there's any arcane or divine spells that can do what you want.

  Oh, yes, that's actually perfect.  I knew it was something psychic, but I couldn't actually find it.  And I wanted to stay open to the chance that hiring a tracker is more appropriate to the situation.  Right now she has a plausible motivation and a large portion of the means clarified.  But she doesn't have a suspect, only a place they have surely been.

Just to check: you're planning to find and hire Rotte now?

I guess so!
This message had punctuation tweaked by the player at 16:56, Wed 26 Jan 2022.

Things seem mostly wrapped up at the Morast side of things, too, and given how high I rolled for the time to locate Rotte, Liviana and the others would be able to make it back before they found him.

Should we bring the party back together, or is there anything the away team wants to do while they're there?

Lazlo seems to be avoiding some questions that I would prefer the answer to but I don't think that's mandatory. Livi doesn't have the expertise to push him into revealing it. I'm good with Morsat group heading back.

Is there already a reason Harald will continue to work with us? Livi can ask if she needs to.

This game has definitely slowed down a little bit.  A lot of that is my fault: I certainly haven't been holding up to the "four posts per week" schedule I set when I made the game.  But we've also lost a lot of people, and posting has gotten a lot more sporadic for some of us.  I'm not judging obviously, I've probably been the worst offender in terms of unreliable posting.

I'm going to skip ahead a bit, and reunite the party, but first I'd like to see how everyone's feeling about the game.  First and foremost: who all's still here and interested in the game?  Secondly, is there anything you think I could do to improve the game?  I don't often run play-by-post games like this, and I've mostly been playing by ear.  Is there anything you think I could be doing better?

I'm still interested in the game.

As someone guilty of posting sporadically I will try to post more consistently.

Unfortunately I don't have any suggestions. It's a very common phenomenon in play-by-post games to lose people and for the game to sometimes slow down. I think you've done a fine job so far as a DM.

Sorry Liviana, looks like you're the only one who wants to keep going.  I'm officially shutting the game down.

I'm not entirely sure what went wrong with this game, it feels like something just didn't *click* the way it needs to in order for a game like this to work.  Part of it might have been the investigation theme of the campaign, part of it might have been splitting the party so early.  Who knows.  I've got some ideas on how to change things up next time I run a game on here, when and if I try again.

In that case best of luck on your future games whether they be on here or elsewhere.

Sorry to see it go. I can see that players have been logging in but no posts. I will have to say that there has not been a reply from my post from last week.

Will you have to? Really? What positive effect does that lead to?