Hey guys, nice to see you all again. I'll be asking all of you to get all of your crunch and fluff into your profiles and then I'll be looking them over with my criticizing all-seeing DM eye!
And then we'll get started. So check in and then get all your stuff into an alias.
Male Shadeling Shadowcaster Wizard 5(Shadow Subscool)
Hey Ry,
With the Nindalese Shadowcaster trait, I need to pick a Shadow spell that I can cast at +1 caster level. Could I pick a 1st level spell now, then "retrain" later one when I can pick a better one? Makes no sense to be able to choose a spell I can't actually cast, but eventually that +1 CL won't matter so much with a 1st level spell.
I think I just need equipment and spells and I'm golden.
Yeah that'll work. You can just retrain when you level.
EDIT: So far your only mistake is your ranged touch attacks, which should be at +2 for your DEX instead of +1, and the fact that you gain a bonus noncombat feat.
Ryuko, thank you sir for the selection. I look forward to our adventure together.
I think the only thing I need to wrap up is the extra feat. I'm most likely taking Alertness, but wanted to make sure Witch Knife and Toughness are off limits.
Thank you for choosing me. May I know what decided you on me? Not to put you on the spot, I'm just trying to figure out what DM's look for in a character. I'll post more later, have to run right now.
Thanks again and looking forward to a good game with all of you.
Anton: I'm not entirely sure. I enjoyed the simplicity of your character, and the writing in your backstory was excellent though one section made a heavy use of pronouns that was slightly confusing. I also enjoyed that you had a quick summary of what your character was like, as well as the fact that your character sheet was very well laid out and accessible (very helpful to me since I like knowing what you can and can't do at a glance) of particular interest is the regularly prepared spells section, which I may require for casters in the future.
Male Shadeling Shadowcaster Wizard 5(Shadow Subscool)
Was thinking Bluff and Perception. Honestly, if you won't allow Cosmo, I might take Additional Traits. Not sure if I could get both those as class skills, but I could at least get a bonus to them.
Thanks for picking me! I shall try to be worthy of your judgment.
I need to add all the fiddly little bits to my profile -- is there some program that handles that, or do you just want me to summarize. Also, equipment purchases: average core starting gold or some other value? Anything in particular we should know about equipment?
Probably using favored class bonus for a skill point for Survival (even if someone else has it, a wilderness campaign is likely to be one where this is a more important skill than in dungeon crawling). Diplomacy, Ride, Survival... just the basics for a noble.
Arkady has yet to learn that not all enemies are obvious ones.
Profile updated assuming 175 gold to purchase stuff. (Poverty-Stricken does not begin to cover it, for a young Brevoy lancer who wants a horse worth anything...)
Character generation isn't a chore for me; by doing all the stuff myself I end up knowing rather intimately what I can do and where all the numbers come from.
Arkady you've got half strength to damage on your dagger in your stats. No reason for that unless you're dual weilding which you don't seem to be.
EDIT: you also have your Handle Animal at +1. With Animal Affinity, 15 Cha and one rank it should be +5, +8 if it's a pally class skill which I can't check at the moment
I don't actually have a skill rank in it - right now, just the Cha and Animal Affinity bonuses, so I don't get the +3 class skill bonus till I have a rank in it.
Hi, Thanks for the info on background, rereading it I see what you mean about confusing pronouns, may rewrite later. Ryuko don't I need to add non combat feat? My keen sense scent is the Orc racial feat I took as my base feat for being a first level Half-Orc. And I added the weapon proficiency with greatsword to the cleric special qualities section (PCGen didn't for some reason) but still applied it mechanically. Gorum favorite weapon is greatsword so I get it free. Just let me know and I'll pick a little later. No need to hold things up.
And I meant the 4th paragraph, which is somewhat confusing to me, since I'm unsure whether there are just two people, Anton and his superior, or 3, him, a superior and the temple master. It confused me personally but maybe I'm just thick lol
Yes that's the paragraph I thought and the scene is even more confusing than I thought; there are two people in the scene, a temple instuctor of novices and the master of the temple, talking about young Anton who is not present. The purpose of the scene was to explain why Anton channels positive energy rather than negative and to show there were other influences in his life than mother so he did not grow up a psycopathic brute.
Also I'm taking Extra Channel so he will channel six times total per day which I hope will give enough healing power to the group so we don't have the 15 minute adventuring day. A cleric, paladin, and which should provide quite a bit but a cleric is usually the best, most of the time. Anton sees himself as a holy warrior, though, the "priest" part is important but secondary to him.
Anton - that helps. Right now I have CLW in one of my 1st level spell slots, but that is a pretty precious resource. Ideally, we'll find a way to procure a wand of CLW and have three of us that can use it.
I see you've included Enlarge Person on your regular spells list. Are you planning to use that on yourself or to buff other party members? I also have it on my list of regularly prepared spells, but can either swap it out or go with even more if we want to Enlarge you or Arkady on a regular basis.
Arkady - you should also let us know if you want Enlarge Person spells on you. Some players aren't fans.
If I'm fighting on foot, enlarging me works pretty well in most circumstances. I'll take it.
If I'm fighting on horseback, please don't enlarge me unless the horse also gets enlarged. (There must be some kind of spell that enlarges both mount and rider, maybe we could invent one and call it "Charge of the Thundering Elephant.")
With a cleric of Gorum and a paladin (who may even be rich enough to afford armor one of these days, warhorses are expensive) we should have some decent front-line fighters.
Hello Kata, I figured that you would not want to spend to much of your resources healing and Arkady is our main warrior with me as his backup.
I'm sure will we soon enough get a cleric-in-a-can wand but Pathfinder adventures tend to be tough and at low levels there is not much margin for error. I'm also playing a character that will not lightly retreat, so healing is a must. I've only two first level spells that can convert to CLW anyway.
For my domain spell my choices are only Magic Weapon which is only sometimes good or Enlarge Person, that is one of the best 1st level buffs in the game. For the wilderness Enlarge person is better, I think, and I was planning to buff myself and join combat, as a cleric of Gorum he does not bless from behind much. Pray and charge is the main tactic I'm planning on. It's a good choice for you if buffing is a major way you want to play. Also I can do it only once per day, it's domain only spell I cannot prepare it in normal spell slots.
Hi Arkady, I'm fighting on foot mostly, Anton doesn't much like horses.
I looked at his weight and his armor and thought not many horses could take that much weight for long. I'm not a fan of treating horses as ATV's, they need a lot of rest and even more food.
My, you are lightly armored, Anton's spare armor is heaver than that. How big are you. Maybe we should take this into roleplay soon, it's a reasonable in character discussion.
Oh and posted in character the way I did because I did not want to rewrite the post I had just adjusted it to account for your post Arkady.
I'm sure will we soon enough get a cleric-in-a-can wand but Pathfinder adventures tend to be tough and at low levels there is not much margin for error. I'm also playing a character that will not lightly retreat, so healing is a must. I've only two first level spells that can convert to CLW anyway.
This might be a bit of a bad attitude in a way. This adventure has a lot of random encounters, and some of the creatures on the table are... really nasty for a first level party to come across... or second... or fourth really. While you may just face a couple kobolds there are also options leading up to things like a shambling mound or 4 trolls. Some of these are near guaranteed TPKs without the group running for it.
Just for future reference, Marcus' likely progression will lead him to multi-classing into Inquisitor. I doubt this will happen in the first book unless an event occurs which drives him towards this, but I'm aiming to keep his affiliation with the Church of Abadar a secret until the town is founded.
Of course, should anyone in the group have suspicions as to who the letters that Marcus writes each week are going to, they're more than welcome to try and intercept them. ;)
Ryuko, are you adverse to me choosing Additional Traits as my non-combat feat? This would lead to:
Oh, I understand that. It just will be hard for a Cleric of the Iron Lord of Battles to retreat from a battle once engaged, but while Anton is not bright, he is far from a fool and will run from an unwinable fight. It would help if others called for his aid on the retreat though, he will not abandon battle comrades if they go, he goes.
My, you are lightly armored, Anton's spare armor is heaver than that. How big are you. Maybe we should take this into roleplay soon, it's a reasonable in character discussion.
Certainly.
The brief explanation is: after you buy a horse, and a lance, and a saddle, and a sword, there's really not much gold left over for any form of armor.
In-character, Arkady comes from a family where there isn't much money at all. He's out on the road to seek his fortune (and the basic plan is to ride anyone down with the lance before they can hurt him further.) This is ... probably suboptimal, but he hopes to do well enough to find, or buy, better equipment later. Horse and lance first, though.
Size-wise, Arkady is fairly average. I'll put details into the profile later.
I'm sure Arkady will be fine since he'll be able to get some armor fairly early on anyway. Just waiting for Kheldor to post before moving forward. I like to wait for most everyone to post in big story moments, such as the start of the adventure.
Good call, it is a big moment. We're all in that early sprint mode. Great first posts everyone.
Anton - buffing/debuffing is definitely the way I plan to play her. I may use Sleep some here at low levels, but that quickly loses effectiveness. Since you're both definitely open to Enlarge Person, will plan to make use of that
Male Shadeling Shadowcaster Wizard 5(Shadow Subscool)
Sorry sorry sorry for not posting yet. I was unable to while at work, and just got back not that long ago from dinner with my sister and niece. Catching up now, again very sorry.
It's cool buddy. I know how life is, I'd have been just as busy today if not for the fact that my air scrubbers at work went down and I can't work in poisonous chemicals all day, so I got a day off.
Well, it looks like we have some interesting personal times ahead of us... looking forward to the in-character discussions.
Arkady will be as courteous as he knows how, but he won't _notice_ things unless someone actually calls him on them (like, oh, sounding a horn...) and will probably assume that everyone ought to behave like a Brevoy noble of his ilk (bravery taken for granted, wits optional and somewhat suspect, his obvious course should be obvious to everybody) unless taught otherwise. He's reasonably competent when it comes to basic military stuff, not so much outside the field.
I haven't really had opportunity to bring out the paladin side of his training yet; he's new to it and will mostly filter the paladin-of-Erastil imperative of "defend your local community" through his training as a Brevoy noble lancer as to how to do the job. I expect I'll get a chance to show more paladin-ness once Oleg explains the situation.
(Arkady does NOT have the stick-up-the-ass class feature; he's quite willing to learn and change and he doesn't jump to judgment. But he is very much the charge-straight-ahead type... though he is aware that the world is a bit more mysterious and complex than he used to think, the lesson really hasn't quite sunk in yet. I expect him to be learning a lot as we go -- but he is willing to learn and grow.)
Oh boy, two charge straight ahead types. Going to be up to us more "intellectual" squishies to reel them in when we see trolls at first or second level level :)
Jk, looks like this is going to be a fun group to play out.
Male Shadeling Shadowcaster Wizard 5(Shadow Subscool)
There's going to definitely be some personality conflicts with Kheldor and the "nobles" but anything I say IG is just that, him reacting to overbearing, righteous, "do as I say or else" types.
But I agree with Kata, this has the making of being a very fun and entertaining group of PCs :)
Just keep in mind that anything the _rest_ of us say IG is also IG stuff. :)
I know that Arkady is very limited in some ways (lack of intellectual development and "tradition as incontrovertible as law" mental horizons -- read up on actual Polish nobility, or Magyars, sometime; Arkady is actually softened a lot by being a paladin.
I think our priest of Gorum is more the do-not-retreat type than the charge-right-in type, but we'll see how it goes.
Definitely IG is IG. I've had one PbP where we've managed our conflict IG beautifully (a combination of technologists and luddites in a Numeria campaign) and another that completely blew up because a character played a character so inflexibly that it got crazy. Definitely use the discussion thread here if you ever worry you're too close to the line.
I'm a big fan of in-character conflict personally, though as has been said, keep it IC. I do like how the group is shaping up and I'm interested to see the battle plans.
As an example of limitedness, Kata's sleep hex would be perfect for taking prisoners, but it doesn't even occur to Arkady that it would (he may not have seen it in action, but he's thinking of fighting and making sure some wounded prisoners survive, not of other means.) I originally wrote a chunk where Arkady asks Kata and Kheldor about it, but it's just too far of a leap for him right now.
On another note, Arkady has a lot of tactical ideas, but I don't want to get too far ahead of other players' contributions to the conversation. On the other hand, waiting for everyone else (or least the person you're talking with) to post could slow down progress tremendously?
How do we want to handle situations where one player has a bunch of free time at once but needs to wait for other players so as not to get way 'ahead' of them timewise? Go ahead and post, and adjust as necessary? Have the player postulate a couple of likely alternatives and just go ahed?
I've usually seen people post and then retcon like I did with the Blackthorn story (as necessary). If Ryuko wants to work it differently I'm fine with that.
