GM, if you’ve got a few bucks to spare I suggest you take a look at the two Spheres books. They rework spellcasting and martial combat in a way that I think would fit very well with your world building style. D20 style spellcasting doesn’t fit well in general with a middle earth inspired world.
The battle tracker is all askew.
1. The giant should be more injured. It doesn't appear that Garidan's strike has been recorded.
2. Niyut is all out of flight.
3. Gruskorb is now at 18 hp.
4. If the giant has fire vulnerability has that been accounted for?
I find it very fascinating that both of you would prefer to roll the dice to determine the existence of essences. If I were to leave the dice in the game and require extraction of the essences, what do you think about putting a timer on all types? Currently, I have a timer running on life essences but none of the others.
The battle tracker is all askew.
1. The giant should be more injured. It doesn't appear that Garidan's strike has been recorded.
2. Niyut is all out of flight.
3. Gruskorb is now at 18 hp.
4. If the giant has fire vulnerability has that been accounted for?
Fixed, and yes, I have been tracking the additional fire damage from his vulnerability
The timer for life essences always feels so punishing -- there are often some real costs in terms of action economy to get them, but that seems fair because they are hands down the best essence. I would keep the timer as is on the others, being a hand wavey -- you cannot wait hours to do this.
I find it very fascinating that both of you would prefer to roll the dice to determine the existence of essences. If I were to leave the dice in the game and require extraction of the essences, what do you think about putting a timer on all types? Currently, I have a timer running on life essences but none of the others.
Uh, I thought you already had a duration in effect for all essences, to be honest, and we're just so effective at brute-force slaughtering most anything we run across that it never became a real issue.
GM, if you were interested in Spheres of Power or Spheres of Might I can send you the PDFs. I own both of them.
GM, if you were interested in Spheres of Power or Spheres of Might I can send you the PDFs. I own both of them.
Spheres of Power is really good. I haven't looked into Spheres of Might as much. One of the draws I have for SoP is it really lets you customize the theme of your casting tradition. The book also gives a reduction to the overbearing power of full mages while increasing variety in spell diversity. My hope is SoM would provide similar diversification while reducing the gap between martial and magic further.
GM, if you were interested in Spheres of Power or Spheres of Might I can send you the PDFs. I own both of them.
I'd be very interested in reading them. I've looked at it on the PFSRD and it looks promising.
Shoot me an email address.
ValjoenTheGM@gmail.com
Garidan, did you ever do another journal entry?
Garidan, did you ever do another journal entry?
Not yet, actually, we haven't had a proper bit of downtime for it. I'm thinking after our visit to the Circle and return to Haemil. Can't do one where we are now anyway, on account of ink likely freezing solid, lol.
Going to be a heck of a slog through the game thread to round up details, and I'm probably going to have to borrow a laptop so I can write the entry on a proper keyboard in a saveable document instead the tablet-and-paizo method I generally use for posts.
Since we have 9 essences, I'm going to roll to see who does not get a second essence.
1: Garidan
2: Gruskorb
3: Malthazir
4: Niyut
5: Truk'tosh
I'm sorry Truk'tosh. You are cursed by the dice gods. You get one EE and everybody else gets 2. On the bright side, you are assured the next one.
I want to save my two ethereal essences to pair them with the arcane essence that I want to change to Necromancy.
When we stop to rest and I research that ritual would it be possible for me to choose the order I get to learn the components for that ritual? It will take months or years oog for me to roll for Shadow or Necromancy and those are the two I care most about.
If nobody minds, I'd like to call dibs on the essences from the particular wolf that Garidan and Malthazir put down. Seems oddly appropriate, and I'd like to feed them both to the rapier, and work with Valjoen to get a particular secondary effect that I feel fits both the weapon and the source.
Nope. I don't mind. I would prefer hag essence myself. :-)
The air elementals have precise strike too.
Indeed, but I figured they should fly above the giant in order to leave some space available for other party members to close in.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
Yes, I hope deliciousness is in everyone's future.
@Valjoen: Did you see my question about research last night?
Happy, happy turkey day to one and all.
@Valjoen: Did you see my question about research last night?
Yes, I gave you a perception check and some information based on that check. I'll allow you to ask a question of your grandmother if you like. Although her answer will, as always, not be a direct, specific answer but rather an observation from the spirit world.
Malthazir would have some training that may be pertinent and I'll give him some information based on his arcana check when its his turn.
I want to save my two ethereal essences to pair them with the arcane essence that I want to change to Necromancy.
When we stop to rest and I research that ritual would it be possible for me to choose the order I get to learn the components for that ritual? It will take months or years oog for me to roll for Shadow or Necromancy and those are the two I care most about.
No, I meant this. But I'm grateful for the perception check.
Sure. I'll let you pick the order. Although I hadn't thought about the sub-schools or whatever like Shadow. If you learn the Illusion ritual, you can convert an arcane essence to shadow, etc.
I've been reading through the Spheres of Power pdf. Very interesting. I think it would fit right into this world.
From your experience is it better to require SoP or allow both magic systems to co-exist?
Spheres of Power can be used alongside normal d20 magic but from my experience it's better on its own.
Have you had a chance to look at Spheres of Might? Mechanically it's very similar.
How much play experience do you have with it?
I've heard of the two Spheres books, and noticed that they have a consistently high reputation, but never gave them a look. If they might be added in, though--and I have no objection if they are, by the way--then I guess I need to start digging through the wiki material for at least Spheres of Might.
That would be my guess. Allow original classes but require the SoP archetypes and convert them to SoP magic system.
Just glanced at it so far. I’ll try to get a longer read this weekend.
Would anyone be interested in play testing it on a short, one-shot adventure? I’d want to do that before using it in the next campaign. I really do like the flexibility of the system.
I haven't played with either, but spheres of might looked better to me than spheres of power. Maybe it's one of those things that I would need to see in action, but when I read through it, I was like, "that's it?"
I think play testing it is a good idea. Maybe, I would be more wowed.
That would be my guess. Allow original classes but require the SoP archetypes and convert them to SoP magic system.
Just glanced at it so far. I’ll try to get a longer read this weekend.
Would anyone be interested in play testing it on a short, one-shot adventure? I’d want to do that before using it in the next campaign. I really do like the flexibility of the system.
I'm game to test it. Would we use our current characters with Spheres grafted on, or purpose-built characters? If the latter, I can recycle an unused alias for that.
And looking over the SoM stuff, I've already figured out a few things Garidan could make use of; Alchemy Sphere's Alchemy package (salve formulae) offers a pretty good return for single application of the Extra Combat Talent feat; should Valjoen approve Spheres for use, I'm going to definitely make this my next feat slot/life essence choice, because it'll make Garidan's alchemy a hefty asset to the party. And the Athletics, Duelist, and Fencing Spheres are all full of quality choices naturally suited to swashbucklers.
For spellcasters, Spheres of Power is generally a net loss of power but that's by design. The purpose of the Spheres systems is to close the power gap between spellcasters and martial characters in the mid-late game without dialing up the power levels into the stratosphere in the way Path of War does. For spellcasters this means less save-or-lose mechanics but easy access to at-will tricks that let the spellcaster do magical stuff all day long.
While from a game design perspective one doesn't want massive variation in class power level, it never made sense to me that magic should be equivalent to hitting somebody with a sword thematically speaking. One requires manipulating the fabric of the cosmos, while the other requires upper body strength. :-p
From a purely narrative perspective I might be willing to agree but when it comes to game design and gameplay that notion is just absurd. Hitting people with a sword should be relatively equal to cosmos manipulating because nobody likes committing to a long term campaign of being a side kick. d20 typically finds a middle ground in this regard by making spellcasters weaker and limited by their resources in early levels until they have enough spells per day/slots to get through a working day later on. That model doesn't really apply in Talanor because wands readily break any kind of game balance based on limited resources.
It's also worth noting, by the GM's admission, that the tone and mythos for Talanor is heavily inspired by Middle-earth. Middle-earth's heroics have always put martial heroics in the spotlight.
Read a good bit of Spheres of Might. I think it could add a lot to boost martial characters.
I'm really intrigued with having a quick playtest of both.
Before playing them, my instinct says to leave SoP out of this campaign. We're too far along to make such a massive change. But perhaps for the next campaign. They way magic is explained in Talanor with both arcane and divine pulling from the same source with just slight differences, SoP with their casting traditions could make sense.
As to SoM, if it goes well, I might be inclined to open it up for both campaigns. It seems to layer on top of the current system.
Would you like to try play testing with just some battles or would a little one shot adventure based in the Vale of Talanor be better?
I'm only using the Spheres' wiki for reference, but SoP seems too complex to retrofit here; it strikes me very much as an "in from the start, or not at all" system. That said, it does look interesting from what I've seen of it, though I'd have to play it before making a final decision.
SoM's various elements, on the other hand, could well be essence abilities in their own right, they have that feel. I think those'd fit even as a late-game addition, and I've been spending a bit of serious thought on how I could juggle Garidan's character bonus feats to accomodate the weakest level of talent progression to his swashbuckler class.
For the playtest, I'm good either way.
I would be down to participate in a short one-off in the interest of testing Spheres of Might/Power.
I understand being leery of retrofitting this campaign with Spheres of Power but I suspect it's going to be necessary eventually. I suppose we'll see how things feel after implementing Spheres of Might. Would you be okay with some rebuilding in light of the new content?
Apologies, for I'd sent a out-of-town post which I guess never truly made it; I was doing Thanksgiving in the Upper Peninsula. It would be generous to say signal was spotty there.
Though I'm catching-up now, I'll be distributing Gruskorb's essences at the end of this battle. I had a RP post saved to go for it, but after the surprise encore we seem to be having, the resolution might edit what's written.
Regarding SoP/SoM, I think it would be cumbersome to alter to SoP in this campaign given the essences' correlation to levels of spell power in some cases. However, I agree with what Truk'tosh said; the overall reduction in caster power for a boost in martial parity was sorely needed. In my opinion, the customization is better with SoP too. SoM isn't something I've looked into too heavily, though I doubt I'll have any issue with it being directly incorporated - even skipping a playtest - if it reads to be on similar quality to SoP.
I should not have any outages over the winter holidays. Politics over this Thanksgiving has caused smaller, closer gatherings to ensue going forward.
Politics over this Thanksgiving has caused smaller, closer gatherings to ensue going forward.
Translation: Someone said some s@$!, someone else didn't like that and said some s~~# right back, and any further gatherings where this s#%+ could proliferate were summarily s!*+canned.
Sorry your family and/or friends can't get their s~*& together enough to remember the important stuff. Hope it doesn't blow up your holiday plans.
Politics over this Thanksgiving has caused smaller, closer gatherings to ensue going forward.Translation: Someone said some s*!+, someone else didn't like that and said some s$%$ right back, and any further gatherings where this s+~& could proliferate were summarily s#++canned.
Sorry your family and/or friends can't get their s$!* together enough to remember the important stuff. Hope it doesn't blow up your holiday plans.
If anything, there were some conflicts that needed to be addressed for a while finally resolved. While I didn't particularly care for the outcomes, the lose/lose situations were more-or-less unavoidable for a while now and have at least closed their chapter.
Instead of blowing-up my holiday plans, I'm going to take a page out of the reason for Thanksgiving and say I'm thankful I now have the open calendar to make new ones.
Avoid the long-ass car trips by kicking back at home in your most disreputable--but, conversely, most comfortable--lounging clothes, a big cooler full of snacks within arms' reach, and the entertainment of your choice ready to be enjoyed with the company of your choice :D.
That right there should be your #1 plan, lol.
I have a lot of sympathy for dealing with unwholesome politics during family gatherings.
Out and can't check map: Is our icy friend out of it now, or is it set to explode again?
He exploded. We need to melt the remains before he re-forms and explodes again.
Garidan, alas, has no fire available at the moment. Going to need a good stretch of time to rectify that with some alchemy if these giants are going to be encountered again.
Sorry to hear about the drama for you this weekend, Gruskorb. Hope things turn out the best for you going forward.
@Malthazir, I would recommend that you use some of the wax to standard action summon when it re-coheres.
I think I’ve read enough of spheres of power and spheres of might in order to make a play test reasonably viable. I will make up a separate, closed campaign. The next question is the general idea of the party and the adventure.
Here are some options I’ve come up with:
1. Dwarves (or possibly non-dwarven residents) from Eastgate;
2. Travelers who were caught in Eastgate during the Shaping;
3. A band of adventurers from the Vale who have a common connection to Bærwynnd;
4. Members of one of the Theives Guilds in the Vale;
5. Pilgrims to the temple in Dasyra’s Landing; and
6. Members of the court of one of the Duke’s of Esteparon.
Let me know your preference. Once I see two players agreeing on one of these options, I’ll go with that.
You will start at level 3, so everyone gets an extra talent or two to assign. You get 1 life essence and 2 other essences of your choice to fully design, including secondary effects. All other character creation rules can be found at this link: Character Creation.
I am interested in
#2, #5.