Mended Wall's PBP for beginners (Inactive)

Game Master Hoary and Wizened

Ok.

Do we have any idea what's in 26?

Kerrdremak said it was the hatchery. Presumably, we've already fought everyone that was guarding it, but all the plans I can think of that take advantage of it veer decidedly toward the evil side of the alignment grid.

The Dark Side has its allure, doesn't it?

It's almost a shame I can't let Kairon be swayed by it that much. Yet.

But think of all the future evil acts you would be stopping! :D

By taking their young hostage and threatening to burn them all if we don't get what we want? It should be effective, but compared to wiping out the adults, that plan would probably result in more evil acts in the long run.

Of course, if we wipe out the adults, we'll be left with an ethical dilemma as to what to do about the surviving young.

I'm quite sure that Kairon is going to give as many of the kobolds a chance to surrender as possible.

Maybe stow them in the cells where young Vade was cowering?

. . . .

Hmmm. No. Too difficult to move them all in that manner.

May have to . . . "decimate" isn't right . . . . What *is* the word for eliminating 90% of a force? "Nonecimation"?? Ha!

EDIT: Though capturing the hatchery could be an effective form of leverage . . . .

"To a dark place this leads us." (I think I got that right.)

Well, if you decimate (kill 10% of them) 22 times, you are left with just shy of 10% of the original number. 0.9^22 = 0.098477090218361

I'm feeling some chromatic impulses . . . . :D

Some good news? I've been (along with my gamer son) working on a homebrew setting of my own for about the past two years. It is entirely possible that I will be running a 5e PbP campaign in that world once this game ends. If/when that happens, you would, of course, all be welcome to apply for a position in that game. Obviously you'd all get preferential treatment. :D

Your friend,
MW

I've just been looking over the 5e PHB, and I want to call dibs on playing a rogue (arcane trickster). I'm thinking Gnome, with the Urchin background. I know I'm probably getting ahead of myself, but I enjoy coming up with characters, and I think I have some interesting ideas that wouldn't have worked as well in Pathfinder.

Notice to all participants

Let me start off by saying that I have had no end of fun being the GM of this campaign. It remains one of, if not the, favorite campaigns I've ever had the pleasure of partaking in. However, several things have conspired to lead me to bring to an end my GMing of this campaign. Among the culprits are: the recent shoddy-ness of Paizo.com in general, a noticeable lack of posting by some of the game's players (due to RL things for which I do not ascribe blame to those players in any way shape or form), a foreseeable end of this particular "chapter" of the story, and, and this one might be very bothersome to some here, I am making the switch to 5e permanently. [smaller]

I am sorry if I contributed to this.

I had a lot of problems with my internet connection until 17/11 when I finally got my provider to sort it out. Can't say exactly but it was a week or a bit longer before that.

I too have enjoyed the campaign and am sorry to see it ending.

As for Goruck, he was a student facing end of semester last I heard. Don't know what happened since. I will make sure I check this thread for activity.

Dolok- your campaign seems a bit stalled, but not for very long fortunately.

MendedWall12 wrote:

Some good news? I've been (along with my gamer son) working on a homebrew setting of my own for about the past two years. It is entirely possible that I will be running a 5e PbP campaign in that world once this game ends. If/when that happens, you would, of course, all be welcome to apply for a position in that game. Obviously you'd all get preferential treatment. :D

Your friend,
MW

I've just been looking over the 5e PHB, and I want to call dibs on playing a rogue (arcane trickster). I'm thinking Gnome, with the Urchin background. I know I'm probably getting ahead of myself, but I enjoy coming up with characters, and I think I have some interesting ideas that wouldn't have worked as well in Pathfinder.

Well, you'll have to retool that just a titch. My homebrew setting has some racial restrictions: no gnomes, no tieflings (or aasimar obviously), no dragonborn. :( Nothing wrong with rogue (arcane trickster) or the urchin background though.

FYI, I have a bit of work to do this morning, so not sure I'll get to the in-game stuff until this afternoon, but I will get to it today, so we should be able to push things forward towards a conclusion here in short order.

Well, you'll have to retool that just a titch. My homebrew setting has some racial restrictions: no gnomes, no tieflings (or aasimar obviously), no dragonborn. :( Nothing wrong with rogue (arcane trickster) or the urchin background though.

Good to know. Any other details that will be important for character creation? I naturally gravitate toward small races, but it looks like they got hit with the nerf stick in 5e (actually in 4e, which carried over into 5e in this aspect). Not even a stealth bonus? Really, WoC?

Since I wanted to get away from my default of halfling anyway, I'll probably take a closer look at the Elf/Half-Elf/Human spectrum. The Tabaxi race also looked interesting, basically 5e's version of catfolk. Would those work in the setting, or is it more of a "humans of various sizes and various degrees of ear-pointiness" thing?

I'm giving this enough thought that I'll want to roll stats before long. Same rules as this game?

No Tabaxi, yes it's basically "humans of various sizes and various degrees of ear-pointiness," of which I count halflings to be part of. Other notes of interest would be PHB material only ('cause that's all I have access to at this point). As far as stats, I'm going to go with the book proposed 4d6 drop the lowest. Still with my variation where you can roll three separate arrays, choose the one that you like best, and assign into abilities as you like. Alternately you could take their pregenerated array: 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8, or use the 27 point buy method. However, as last time, you must choose before you roll. Meaning, you can't roll and then say, I'd rather take the standard array. Once you've decided to roll you are locked into one of the three arrays. Rolling, though, at least provides the chance of having an ability over 17 including racial bonuses. The other two options do not. Why? The PHB says: "Using this method [point buy], 15 is the highest ability score you can end up with, before applying racial increases. You can't have a score lower than 8." After reading all that I sort of felt like the designers really wanted people to go back to the old school rolling method. At least, like I said, it provides the chance of 18 plus numbers in ability scores.

I am not going to move now. I won't be leading, probably following behind Goruck.

Ummm ... yeah, I'm thinking that the western route, so room 25 and then up to 29 looks more appealing on the map at least. But I'm fairly certain Illiam that you have some reason for going through 27 to get to 29? Looks longer to me. Is there some reason to avoid 25 that I'm not aware of?

My bad, I was assuming we had already narrated entering area 25, and were deciding where to go from there. That's why I said "north".

Ah! Okay then. That makes a whole LOT more sense to me now!

No Tabaxi, yes it's basically "humans of various sizes and various degrees of ear-pointiness," of which I count halflings to be part of. ...

So I guess this means no Thri-kreen (Praying Mantis like race) monk? Rats! 4 arms to use his attacks and at least back in 3.5 they had a +30 racial modifier to jump checks!

I haven't looked at the 5E stuff yet. I'm hoping there's an SRD on-line somewhere?

MendedWall12 wrote:

No Tabaxi, yes it's basically "humans of various sizes and various degrees of ear-pointiness," of which I count halflings to be part of. ...

So I guess this means no Thri-kreen (Praying Mantis like race) monk? Rats! 4 arms to use his attacks and at least back in 3.5 they had a +30 racial modifier to jump checks!

I haven't looked at the 5E stuff yet. I'm hoping there's an SRD on-line somewhere?

There's a very basic ruleset that's a free downloadable PDF. The biggest problem with 5e in my mind is the fact that WoC really wants you to pay for books, so they don't release stuff under a license that allows great resources like D20PFSRD to be compiled, and thus it's a lot more difficult to find rules because you have to know what book they're in (and their PDFs also have some errors that tend to break the search function).

Ok, let's roll some stats...

stat: 4d6 ⇒ (4, 6, 4, 2) = 16 14
stat: 4d6 ⇒ (6, 3, 2, 1) = 12 11
stat: 4d6 ⇒ (1, 5, 4, 6) = 16 15
stat: 4d6 ⇒ (6, 6, 1, 3) = 16 15
stat: 4d6 ⇒ (6, 6, 6, 3) = 21 18
stat: 4d6 ⇒ (3, 1, 4, 1) = 9 8

stat: 4d6 ⇒ (5, 2, 2, 5) = 14 12
stat: 4d6 ⇒ (5, 4, 1, 4) = 14 13
stat: 4d6 ⇒ (3, 6, 6, 5) = 20 17
stat: 4d6 ⇒ (5, 6, 1, 3) = 15 14
stat: 4d6 ⇒ (1, 5, 5, 1) = 12 11
stat: 4d6 ⇒ (4, 1, 6, 3) = 14 13

stat: 4d6 ⇒ (6, 1, 2, 2) = 11 10
stat: 4d6 ⇒ (1, 4, 2, 4) = 11 10
stat: 4d6 ⇒ (4, 4, 6, 3) = 17 14
stat: 4d6 ⇒ (3, 3, 3, 5) = 14 11
stat: 4d6 ⇒ (4, 6, 3, 1) = 14 13
stat: 4d6 ⇒ (4, 2, 3, 1) = 10 9

That first one looks pretty good. Even has a low stat, which I think helps with roleplay...

C'mon! I dare ya to take the 3rd set! Hahaha! Just kidding! Please DO NOT take the third set!

I'm also going to go ahead and roll my stats that same way.

Stat: 4d6 ⇒ (2, 2, 1, 1) = 6 5
Stat: 4d6 ⇒ (3, 5, 6, 6) = 20 17
Stat: 4d6 ⇒ (5, 3, 4, 2) = 14 12
Stat: 4d6 ⇒ (2, 3, 2, 1) = 8 7
Stat: 4d6 ⇒ (3, 1, 4, 3) = 11 10
Stat: 4d6 ⇒ (5, 4, 5, 6) = 20 16

Stat: 4d6 ⇒ (2, 2, 4, 5) = 13 11
Stat: 4d6 ⇒ (6, 6, 2, 4) = 18 16
Stat: 4d6 ⇒ (6, 2, 5, 4) = 17 15
Stat: 4d6 ⇒ (6, 6, 1, 4) = 17 16
Stat: 4d6 ⇒ (2, 5, 2, 6) = 15 13
Stat: 4d6 ⇒ (5, 5, 6, 3) = 19 16

Stat: 4d6 ⇒ (5, 2, 4, 4) = 15 13
Stat: 4d6 ⇒ (2, 1, 5, 4) = 12 11
Stat: 4d6 ⇒ (1, 4, 5, 6) = 16 15
Stat: 4d6 ⇒ (5, 3, 2, 3) = 13 11
Stat: 4d6 ⇒ (3, 3, 5, 2) = 13 11
Stat: 4d6 ⇒ (2, 2, 5, 4) = 13 11

WOW!!! FOUR 11's in that last array? What are the odds? (Yes stupid of me to ask knowing the math lovers we have in this group!) I think I'll have to settle for that 2nd set though. Very nice, just nothing maxed out - but then 3 16's and a 15 is pretty good!

What class were you thinking of playing. That second array would be good for a very MAD class, but I'm not sure if that's really a thing in 5e...

In my experience with 5E, you can ride on two scores and be fine. The only exception comes in with multiclassing (which is nothing short of rampant in my roll20 group).

We've got a deep gnome barbarian/rogue (Sentinel feat, Reckless Attack, beast totem, sneak attack, arcane trickster), a cleric/wizard (armored casting both ways, 'cuz proficiency rules), a dragonborn/dragonkin pyromancer (sorcerer, technically, but he just lives to burn stuff -- sound familiar?), a greatweapon fighter, and me, an archer ranger.

I mentioned this bit to Mended last week, or the week before: the three games in which I've been involved (plus one 10th-level one-shot) have not -- in even the most remote of ways -- been anywhere near as roleplay-driven as our efforts here. That being said, balanced scores in a MAD fashion may help bring out a deeper (read: BETTER) game experience, so I'll simply say -- choose your strengths, and play to them.

Mended is the only DM/GM I would trust to run a good 5E game; I don't know if I can well express how strong a compliment I mean that to be.

It seems to me that it's easier to make good use of three good physical scores than three good mental scores. I'll have to look at how these classes work in 5e, but with an array like that, I would be looking to build a tank who also has some kind of magic. Paladin, Cleric, maybe a melee-based Ranger or Druid. As Syrus mentions, it also sets you up well for multiclassing.

FWIW, my arcane trickster is shaping up to be a pretty strong party face, in addition to being a scout and sneak attacker. I'm looking at putting my negative into WIS, which means perception will suffer, but I'll probably choose that as one of my class's expertise skills to double the proficiency bonus.

I really have no idea on classes yet. Like I said I have not even looked at any 5E stuff yet.

FWIW, my arcane trickster is shaping up to be a pretty strong party face, in addition to being a scout and sneak attacker. I'm looking at putting my negative into WIS, which means perception will suffer, but I'll probably choose that as one of my class's expertise skills to double the proficiency bonus.

He sounds a bit like Illiam Illiam. :P

Just noticed this. MUCH nicer than the PDFs I've been using: https://open5e.com/classes/index.html

Edit: well, maybe not. It's missing two of the three rogue archetypes that are in the PHB, probably a lot of other stuff missing. Oh well...

Illiam Taal wrote:

FWIW, my arcane trickster is shaping up to be a pretty strong party face, in addition to being a scout and sneak attacker. I'm looking at putting my negative into WIS, which means perception will suffer, but I'll probably choose that as one of my class's expertise skills to double the proficiency bonus.

He sounds a bit like Illiam Illiam. :P

Illiam is not a damage dealer, and especially not one for melee. Given that it's my first game in the system though, I don't want to play TOO far off from my natural play style :P

So I guess this means no Thri-kreen (Praying Mantis like race) monk? Rats! 4 arms to use his attacks and at least back in 3.5 they had a +30 racial modifier to jump checks!

There is a real martial arts style called Praying Mantis Kung Fu aka Tong Long. And I trained in it for more than four years. I am a fan, it works quite differently to most martial arts and that makes it hard for others to meet.

Dolok look here . I don't think it has everything, but it has a lot of the rules and stuff.

I am just joking Illiam. Most people gravitate to certain classes or kinds of characters.

I have 8 Pathfinder and 5th Ed characters going at the moment of which 7 are spellcasters. And the 8th, my ninja Fu Khu Lot was a deliberate attempt to play something different.

Thanks Chillel! That site certainly looks interesting/promising.

I did do some looking around last night and I'm considering going with an Elf Monk. Thoughts anyone?

Yikes! If I didn't know any better I'd say you were all more excited about starting a new campaign than finishing this one...? Not that that bothers me, since I'm the DM of both. Syrus, I am extremely humbled by your compliment, I shall do my best to live up to that expectation. I will say this, my desire to switch to 5e is because I think it lends itself more easily to good narrative. The character background rules (ideals, bonds, flaws) all make every player have a very solid grasp on their character's ideology right from inception, and solid base for narrative roleplay. Sometimes I think Pathfinder gets in the way of the narrative because there are so many rules that need to be applied. For me, 5e takes everything difficult and handles it one of four ways: for numbers, double it or halve it, depending on the circumstances, and for dice rolls, use advantage, if it's good, and disadvantage if it's bad. It's such an easy guideline to follow that it makes adjudicating on the fly a breeze. Now, certainly, in this venue, with time between posts, I'll plan to check and double check rules so hopefully I'll get them all right the first time, but, if I ever get a face to face game going it will make those table adjudication moments so much easier. :D

Illiam, that first array is exactly why I like rolling more than point buy. You have the possibility of getting a 20 at character creation with racial bonuses. You also have a low score that needs to be applied, which, as you pointed out and I agree with, creates the opportunity for great roleplay.

Dolok, that second array is brilliant! Three 16's and a 15, and nothing lower than 11!? Spectacular, those stats lend themselves to playing just about any race and class well. There are many things about the elf race that are appealing, and many things about the monk class that are appealing as well, plus that would come with the added bonus of being a completely different concept than you are playing currently, which stretches your roleplaying muscles. :) I will probably have enough time today that I might just go ahead and fire up the recruitment thread, which will have a link to the google site my son and I created that has all the world info in it. I'll be very interested to hear all of your feedback on what we've done there.

Now back to regularly scheduled programming. :D

Ah! Almost forgot.

If you are looking for basic rules info Roll 20 actually has a decent set of information. It's not complete, but it's got a lot of stuff. WotC wants everyone to use DNDBeyond.com, which, of course, means you're going to pay for info. Their price points, by my way of thinking, are ridiculous, because you can buy the physical books from Amazon for about the same price, and then you have a nice hard cover to add to your collection. There is the appeal, of course, of the digital access, but I've heard, and I certainly don't condone this as it is roguish at the least, but I've heard that if you just type in the name of the various books and use Google's advanced search option to locate only PDF files, you can find free digital PDF copies of all three of the major source books... Use that information as you will...

All right playas!!! I went ahead and set up the recruitment thread for the new 5e campaign, and in so doing, I made a choice, based off of Illiam's desire, to allow Gnomes as a race. It's my desire for the players to have a very active role in fleshing out the world of my, now only skeletal, homebrew setting. I couldn't think of a better way to convey that message than to allow Illiam the chance to show me how Gnomes might fit into Eafphqu. :D

Here's the link to the recruitment thread. Look forward to seeing those that are interested put in a submission. Also really hoping that if you do submit, and I don't pick your character that it doesn't derail our ability to finish this campaign!!!

If you read the recruitment posting and are no longer interested, trust me when I tell you, there will be no hard feelings on my end.

Mended, it has nothing to do with not wanting to finish this campaign! By NO MEANS! It's just always exciting to roll up new characters and get to play new concepts.

And I FULLY AGREE WITH SYRUS YOU ARE A GREAT DM!!!!! That is the ONLY reason I'm willing to give 5E a try (again)!

Mended, it has nothing to do with not wanting to finish this campaign! By NO MEANS! It's just always exciting to roll up new characters and get to play new concepts.

And I FULLY AGREE WITH SYRUS YOU ARE A GREAT DM!!!!! That is the ONLY reason I'm willing to give 5E a try (again)!

Well, it might be a little about not wanting this one to end...

But yes, rolling up new characters is always exciting. Plus, I don't know 5e very well (and the docs aren't as searchable), so it requires a lot of reading.

And I'll also agree that I probably wouldn't be joining a 5e game if I didn't already know that we had a great GM and (at least partially, since we will presumably have some new blood) a great group.

All right playas!!! I went ahead and set up the recruitment thread for the new 5e campaign, and in so doing, I made a choice, based off of Illiam's desire, to allow Gnomes as a race. It's my desire for the players to have a very active role in fleshing out the world of my, now only skeletal, homebrew setting. I couldn't think of a better way to convey that message than to allow Illiam the chance to show me how Gnomes might fit into Eafphqu. :D

I made my character the son of a tinker who travels around in the Byrthelm area. I'm imagining that gnomes are a people without a land of their own. Some live in forests, some in cities, many of them are itinerant tinkers/performers/traders/etc. If you've had a chance to look at the backstory I posted, you probably noticed that there are a number of details that are based on stuff in The Name of the Wind. I'm thinking the Edema Ruh would be gnomes. (This is also similar to something in the description I read of the Tabaxi race, which was part of what made me want to play one of them, as well.)

These are my ideas about how gnomes might fit in, but of course it's up to you whether/how they actually fit your setting. Above all, I was trying to introduce them in a way that didn't step on the toes of any existing lore about the world. By basing them on some existing fiction that I already know you're familiar with, I hope I've made it easier to weave them into the world. By only introducing characters with no particular home rather than trying to carve one out for them, I've at least left it to you to take or leave my ideas as you see fit.

Love Quint's backstory Illiam. And I really appreciate your "delicate" approach to throwing Gnomes in Eafphqu. I really like the idea of the Gnomes being like the Edema Ruh from Rothfuss books. That sounds like a great way to have a race without a home, "have a home." :D Looks great, and I think you've got the potential there for not only great roleplay, but being a capable damage dealer as well! :D

Thank you to all for the compliments. *Blush* I continue to be humbled by your praise, and I will continue to do my best to make sure everyone is having fun, and enjoying playing their characters.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!!! :D

Felicitous Field-Dressed Fowl Festivities, people!!

Mended is the only DM/GM I would trust to run a good 5E game; I don't know if I can well express how strong a compliment I mean that to be.

Btw, if you want to jump on the new game, you might want to post something over there. About a dozen characters have already been submitted.

If anyone is looking for another Pathfinder PBP, I've decided to try running the one I've been developing for my in-person group as PBP as well. I'd love to have any of you join! Link.

I will have a gameplay post up in a few hours. Now that the relatives have returned home, I have time to think more clearly.

*crickets*

*crickets*

My thoughts exactly. I'm getting the feeling certain people (who shall remain nameless) aren't vested enough in this game anymore to even check in... Perhaps it's time to just squash it and move on?

It's probably just RL getting in the way -- school pressure, and such. It *is* that time of year, after all.

It may simply be "delaying the inevitable", but I would much rather find some way to tie this off neatly. With your approval, Mended, I'd be willing to contact at least one certain individual to see if building a bot-alias would be acceptable. But that would have a ton of baggage associated . . . .

I really don't know, chief.

I'll be sending *you* a PM presently, though. :)

Message sent. Will notify of any developments.

Yeah, we're so close to the end that it would be a shame not to finish, even if if means one of us taking over a character.