Rajah requested the last watch. Also, I'm not sure it's wise to put Corinna and Gilfroy together; shouldn't the "weak links" be paired with someone a little more combat-friendly?
Whoops, missed Rajah's request. There didn't seem to be many people stepping forward to request specific watches, so I just randomly suggested combinations. However, good point about the "weak links", Gilfroy's "buffness" notwithstanding. :)
So, shall we switch Rajah and Gilfroy or Rajah and Corinna?
Doesn't matter tonight, as Corinna didn't cast any spells. Long term, she's going to need 8 straight hours of rest, but she could take the middle watch tonight.
Sorry for the quiet weekend. It was unexpectedly busy. My Saturday ended up filled with students prepping for exams, followed by time at the in-laws for my mother-in-law's birthday (the birthday was known in advance, just the busy students weren't). Then my in-person group went overtime yesterday due to a TPK (totally their fault; they walked straight into something they knew in advance they couldn't possibly handle). They spent the extra time discussing and creating new characters. :)
Anyway, back to Jade Regent...
Yeah, busy weekends abound these days! No problem as I wasn't particularly available either.
What is your in-person group playing, anyway?
They're not doing an adventure path, but a more open-ended campaign of my own design. However, at this particular moment, I was using the module "Masks of the Living God". The premise is that the party is supposed to infiltrate a temple of Razmir by pretending to be new recruits to the religion. The party discovered last week that the recruitment priests were trying to drug them, so attacked and defeated those priests. That's where we left off. This week, they decided to simply don the robes and masks of the recruitment priest and walk straight into the heavily defended fortress-like temple. Even as they were doing it, they were saying to themselves, "This is never going to work." Sure enough, they failed their Bluff and Disguise checks and were found out. Instead of surrendering right away and possibly negotiating for their lives, they decided to try to fight their way out. They died. They did go down valiantly though.
Oh, and sorry about Tevyn. :)
Yeah, that's unfortunate. I've always heard about TPKs but I've never actually witnessed one.
Pretty funny that Tevyn got so badly mauled by the thing he wasn't talking about because he didn't want to frighten Corinna. Oops. Maybe Aago won't be gone for as long as I thought! :)
Not only are all her spells useless in combat, but every resource she uses now is one she won't have all day tomorrow since we were ambushed in the middle of the night and she hasn't even taken her watch yet. :P
Not only are all her spells useless in combat, but every resource she uses now is one she won't have all day tomorrow since we were ambushed in the middle of the night and she hasn't even taken her watch yet. :P
That is the main reason I rarely play wizards or sorcerers. Especially on pbps, where it means you're not able to do much for days on end. Always really frustrating at the lower levels.
Well, I don't think Corinna's actually done anything in combat yet anyway. The few times she's cast a spell, it hasn't served any purpose, and even her ranged touch attacks haven't rolled high enough to hit. I think the only useful thing she's done was to roll high enough to decipher the goblin map -- and we're not following that now anyway.
I keep thinking that at some point she'll do something that actually contributes and that will give her the impetus to go along on the caravan's journey, but at this rate, she'll end up teaching in Magnimar, after all. :P
(Yeah, arcane casters are the worst at low levels; clerics at least heal people and thus make a valuable contribution. Which I guess is why no one in my RL group ever plays a wizard. Which is why they get destroyed by Paizo adventures over level 10 which assume the group will have a full arcane caster.)
That's why I - when forced to play a caster - play an 18 Strength caster. 12 Int is enough to cast all wizard spells until level 4, and then the level 4 stat boost and a +2 int item keeps you fine til level 10, or one level later if you a sorcerer.
I'm nervous about being that gear-dependent. Probably comes from spending my formative gaming years under DMs who routinely took everything the party had at least once a campaign.
I don't think I'd ever play an 18 strength Wizard, unless I happened to roll two 18's. I would play an 18 strength sorcerer if I rolled well enough to make that possible. But I don't like to play gear dependent characters either. And I'm not a min-maxer.
I hate playing wizards. Which is probably why I never do. I have always wanted to play a dragon disciple though.
And speaking of an 18 strength Wizard, my brother actually had one at one point. Of course, this was back before point buy(which he still knows nothing about... yet), and he always rolled his characters at his house with no one around. He never, ever, ever, rolled less than two 18's.(More often than not, he rolled 3) And his lowest was always a 15. It was somewhere around a 78 point buy, or some outlandish crap like that.
He's gonna kill over if he ever rolls up a new pc and we tell him we're using a 25 point buy. :)
I will sadly admit, I have some pc's as well that are almost equally outlandish. So, when I had to adjust to point buy, my first thought was, "How does anyone survive with such pathetic numbers!" And I'm talking about a 25 point buy!(So you must understand why I laugh a bit when I read about a 25 point buy being "overpowered". Compared to what we had, that's just baby stuff!) :)
Anyhoo, I come to realize how ridiculous our pc's are and how the point buy system is greatness.(I still hate 15 point buy, though, and will never play with that standard. I'm sorry, but as far as I'm concerned, you just can't do squat with that. At least there's some wiggle room with a 20 point buy.) Interestingly enough, because of it, I now hate the majority of my pc's because I feel like I'm a big cheater for having such insane numbers.(The characters are fine, the numbers are sickening) Every time I run one of 'em, all I can do is sigh. I keep wanting to break 'em down to a MUCH lower point buy, but then the change is soooo massive; it's practically changes the whole character. It's just way too much at this point.
And, apparently, I have rambled on, chasing a ton of rabbits, down several trails. When the 18 wizard was mentioned; I guess it was like a trigger mechanism or something.
I'll shutup now.
An 18 strength wizard isn't gear dependent. As a wizard you don't need any feats, really. So the level 1 feat is Improved Unarmed Strike.
Javell: I've never been in a group that allowed people to roll out of sight of the DM. That's just crazy talk!
I've been playing since the mid 80's and until about 2006, I never used point buy. In all that time, with all the characters I've created, I only rolled an 18 once. I've known people who have, but I've only seen one character with two rolled 18's. So I've never experienced the sort of crazy power levels that you're talking about.
Maybe that's why I hate point buy. I use it when I have to, but I still roll up my characters first and then try to mirror the point buy as best as I can to what I rolled. That's not always possible but I do what I can. :)
LoreKeeper: You just said that you'd create the Wizard with a low intelligence and then buy stat enhancers to make it possible to cast the higher level spells. That's gear dependent in my experience. Like Joana, my DMs are not kind to items the PCs carry.
Well, even if Corinna can't contribute much to the combat, I enjoy the roleplay with her a great deal. Hopefully we'll be able to persuade her to go on the great journey somehow!
Navior and I played a few games over that ancient medium known as MSN Messenger, and I had to roll up characters out of sight of the DM. For some reason (I think it's just fate or luck taunting me), I always rolled crazy stats with three or four numbers 16+. I always ended up just lowering a bunch of the numbers to something that looked more, shall we say, legit (keeping any 18s of course).
Most DMs these days allow you to reroll stats if you get terrible ones (I think Navior's rule, and the one I use too, is that if the total modifiers are in the negatives, you can reroll). As such, you can very rarely get below average, mostly above. I've played some pbps on this board with crazy rolling methods, the most overpowering being 3d6+6, drop the lowest (somehow, I still only managed to get a 28 point buy with that method, really bad dice). I find all the games with crazy power character building die quick deaths, though I don't have enough data to decide if it's because the crazy power bores people quickly, or because the types of players that prefer uber-characters get bored easily.
I hated the idea of point-buy when I first read about it, but now wouldn't go any other way with a game involving multiple people. It's not good being the one player with the really weak, poor rolls, and the other end of the extreme isn't much fun either. Point buy puts everybody on an even footing there.
Of course, I still prefer rolling hp, so I'm a bit of a dice-rolling hypocrite.
I don't think I've ever played a wizard with 18 Strength (though I've played so many characters over the years, I can't really be sure of that). However, I have played one with 16 Strength. For me, playing a high-strength wizard would have to be a flavour choice. If I have a concept that works for it, great. If not, then I don't play one. But that sort of goes with any character, really.
I still use dice-rolling for stats for my in-person games. And yes, I've had people show up to games having "rolled" their stats at home and then proceed to present crazy high results. I have seen crazy high results legitimately rolled, too. I've watched at least one character get rolled with nothing lower than 15. So dice-rolling can have its downsides if one person gets lucky and everyone else has bad luck, but for whatever reason, I do have a soft spot for rolling dice.
After the TPK on Sunday, the group made new characters, and everyone had rather lacklustre luck on the rolling. They all ended up with characters with equivalent point buys close to 15 (I didn't calculate them exactly, but they're definitely in that range). They were all pretty happy with the results though. One person was a bit unsure about his at first, but by the time he had distributed them and designed more of the character, he was loving the results. Ironically, the rolls that the group unanimously considered the "dullest" were probably the highest point-buy (I've just now calculated them to 18-point buy). My wife rolled (in this order): 13, 14, 13, 14, 13, 9. By the last roll, everyone was both routing for and dreading a 14. :)
If my in-person group were reading this campaign, they'd be jokingly calling me "Killer DM" at the moment. You've had horrible luck in the opening moments of this battle, or more precisely, the monster has had incredible luck. Ouch!!
I've got two groups at the moment, one that I only play with a few times a year because I no longer live near them and another one that's somewhat local. The long-distance one is primarily a bunch of old-timers like me who like rolling dice and so they're cool about the rolling for stats I insist on when I'm DMing.
The local players, however, are all a good ten + years younger than I have and have only really known point buy. They can't quite get their heads around the concept of having their primary stat lower than an 18 and the only way I could get them to roll up their characters was by allowing them to roll multiple sets and choosing the best. One player picked the high average set and the rest all chose the set with the highest single roll. They totally think I'm an old grouch gamer.
See, I'd totally go for the 13, 14, 13, 14, 13, 9. That's an awesome set of stats for me, though it's too bad she couldn't get that last 14!
(Ouch, by the way, is right. The dice are disliking us this week!)
Had a fun real-life Jade Regent session today (I'm GMing it); the party had nearly totalled their resources, expended nearly everything including life and still had to deal with a tough opponent. Having finally run out of every possible inventory item that Cassey (she plays a paladin) could throw at the flying enemy, she took heart and tried to suicide jump-n-grapple at it, hoping to push the battle far enough into her party's favor to make the difference.
They're level 3 currently and very close to finishing part 1 (one more session should do it). I decided that this was suitably epic paladin behavior, to allow her to be carried by Iomedae's light as she leaps and to level-up mid-flight; thus granting her (among other things) one additional use of smite evil; which she promptly declares against the target and proceeds to roll and confirm a critical with her power attacking great sword. That settled it with certainty.
Actually, it's a miss, so she's still a non-contributing member of the party. It seems odd to think of someone on the ground and staggered as in melee, but Tevyn just picked up his weapon before her turn, meaning he's threatening the monster, even if he's prone, so she should have taken the -4 on the attack roll. :(
If I'd realized he counted as being in melee, she wouldn't have wasted the Acid Dart. She barely hits even without the shooting-into-melee penalty; the -4 makes it ridiculous. :P
EDIT: I did forget the bless, but even with it, that's only a 10 to hit, and an 11 missed last round. And I forgot the AC and hp, but they haven't changed since her last turn.
Yeah, I didn't think of that. Technically, he is engaged in melee and so that's a miss. It is kind of odd though, like you said. Oh well. The rules do occasionally do weird things. I'm tempted to override it in this case and let it hit, but I'm leery of setting precedents I may regret at a later time. :)
No, I hate to break her record of unrelenting futility. Thanks a lot for picking up your weapon, Wander. ;P
No, I hate to break her record of unrelenting futility. Thanks a lot for picking up your weapon, Wander. ;P
Sorry! Tevyn just thought that if he was going to die, he'd rather it were with a weapon in hand.
You're missing all the fun of being filled with wrath, you know. I have a sweet, shy librarian type in RotRL who got bit by what I assume is one of these and failed the save. Went off on her whole party, unloading all the anger at being overlooked and underestimated that she'd been repressing her whole life. Then again, I guess Tevyn has just met us and doesn't have much of a reason to be angry at any of us yet. There's got to be some anger from his childhood he could displace on the people who are here when he's forced to vent, though. C'mon, he had an unhappy childhood, and Corinna's a representative of one of the stuck-up founding families, albeit by distaff; you know he wants to yell at her. :)
Good point. I have plenty of use for that.
Only, I assumed my wrathful feelings went away when he got knocked unconscious. Are they still there, Navior?
Yes, the feelings are still there, and will be until a full minute has passed. I pointed out in the thread that the sickened condition still applied, but forgot to remind you that it's linked to the wrathful feelings. He's not literally sickened; just the distraction caused by the wrathful feelings causes the same mechanical penalties as the sickened condition.
Good to know! I'll take advantage of that next round.
Pssh. Like Tevyn will still be standing then. ;)
[rolls eyes]Yeah, this will be a great way to help overcome Gilfroy's suspicions of Tevyn![/rolls eyes]
Let's hope 15 is enough to trip it; maybe that buys us the time to unload on it thoroughly.
Corinna can totally go and in panic toss rocks and other small debris at the creature. If she's spooked enough. ;)
Yeah, that's fun. :P
If she's really panicked, she'll cast a mount and take off to try to find the road. Which also leads to 'not fun,' as she either gets lost in the swamp and dies or ends up split from the party again. Plus, it makes her even more useless tomorrow by burning a spell, not that she has anything useful for fighting skeletons in a swamp in her spellbook anyway.
Honestly, she's just terrible at this whole adventuring thing.
bahahaha - she can totally cast mage armor on Melon (for absolutely no obvious reason) (except maybe that Melon's unarmed and in direct combat with the beastie). Or summon monster, which helps as a distraction at the very least. That's what arcane bonded items are for :)
Or if we're desperate, use a mount to draw attacks of opportunity from the beast. Or unseen servant can carry some fire underneath beastie's feet.
Nope. Every spell she casts now is one she won't have tomorrow. She's not casting anything unless she's forced to.
You really think one round of a fire beetle with a +1 to hit and a d4 of damage is worth a first-level spell in this situation? Or that she'd let a mount that could be carrying her to safety for an hour get killed in 6 seconds? Why doesn't she just throw everyone's food and water at the monster? It's the same upside for a similar loss of long-term resources.
Stingy! hahahahaha
My husband says I build the most useless characters ever. And I really must, because I'm running into the same issue in several games right now: I love my PC right up until initiative is rolled, and then I realize I have nothing to do. :P
You must embrace your inner minmaxer and play something of the monk-y persuasion :)
Monks are one of the classes I have never gotten. Them and druids. I don't understand why they do what they do, how they think what they're motivated by, and have never had a desire to play them.
It's not that I don't know what the generally-accepted 'optimized' spells and ability scores and race/class combinations are; I just don't see the point in playing yet another iteration of them. Oh, look, it's another halfling rogue or elf ranger or half-orc barbarian or wizard with color spray. I got tired of all those tropes back in 2e. The problem is that there's actually a reason why they're generally accepted as optimized: They really do work better. They're just no fun. :P
The good news is that, unlike some of my other characters, Corinna actually will get more valuable as she levels up. I have a halfling barbarian in the same party as a gnoll barbarian, and as we level, the disparity just keeps becoming more and more ridiculously pronounced.
Perhaps if you got a sudden phase of watching certain types of anime and Chinese action movies, you'll find some character concept that could work for you.
Speaking of which, if you haven't had the pleasure, consider taking a look at Kung Fu Hustle (action comedy) to find a whole slew of directions that a monk could go.
Actually, I should give a more fair account:
Ip Man
Hero
Chocolate
The Legend of Drunken Master
And a movie called "Chocolate"? How could you resist? And best of all, your hubby will probably love to watch these (more so than that Abba movie, for sure).
Perfectly willing to posit that one of the reasons I don't get monks is that I don't enjoy anime or kung fu movies, either. Don't understand why ninjas and samurai get to be cooler than rogues and cavaliers just because they're faux-Asian.
I did like Avatar (the series, not the blue-people movie), but it doesn't make me want to play a martial artist of any kind. I just don't get the fascination with unarmed fighting. Come on, I'm not trying to convince you to play a wizard with a 10 Str. ;)
Anyway, past the list of classes I don't get (monks, druids, inquisitors, to a lesser extent, rangers) are the classes I just find boring: paladins, fighters, bards, cavaliers. Honestly, if it's not a full caster or a rogue, I'm basically not interested.
It's not that I don't know what the generally-accepted 'optimized' spells and ability scores and race/class combinations are; I just don't see the point in playing yet another iteration of them.
Oh, I SO get that. That's exactly why Lorenz was designed the way he is. I'm not looking to do a ton of damage or succeed with every hit. I just want to have fun with a character who happens to occasionally do damage in combat.
In fact, that's also why Tevyn isn't a muscle-bound switch-hitter. Sure, he'd be more effective in combat that way but it's not really what I'm looking for. I've already done that for many, many years.
The reason I like to occasionally play monks and I created Aago is that I like the idea of not needing much in the way of equipment. Unfortunately, with Pathfinder that doesn't last for long but I like the idea of dancing in and out of battle, striking or tripping or disarming. I don't like anime or kung fu movies either, though, so my appreciation for them is solely related to their lack of gear.
Anyway, past the list of classes I don't get (monks, druids, inquisitors, to a lesser extent, rangers) are the classes I just find boring: paladins, fighters, bards, cavaliers. Honestly, if it's not a full caster or a rogue, I'm basically not interested.
Well, at least you know what you like!
heh - ironically I didn't like Avatar (either of the two).
What you describe is what I'd consider a challenge; in the sense that if I don't like, say, the paladin class, I'd challenge myself to make a paladin that I did like. One sample would end up being a quarterstaff wielding paladin that shuns armor in favor of faith.
There's no reason why you can't take a fighter, bard or whatever, and play it like a rogue. I mean, you don't like the rogue for sneak attack (or do you?), in that sense there's not much difficulty in making any class do rogue-ish things.
I played this paladin. Pretty stereotype-breaking. Still ended up being bored out of my mind, in addition to never being able to do anything in combat. I'm trying to play a street performer bard right now; her, I actually like, but she's still useless in combat.
I've played everything except some of the APG classes, monks, and druids. I just don't enjoy the melee classes. At all. Hit, rinse, repeat is not fun for me.
There's no reason why you can't take a fighter, bard or whatever, and play it like a rogue. I mean, you don't like the rogue for sneak attack (or do you?), in that sense there's not much difficulty in making any class do rogue-ish things.
There's every reason I can't play a fighter like a rogue. Six skill points per level reason. A fighter can't have the versatility I value in the rogue. I can't play a fighter with Acrobatics, Bluff, Stealth, Use Magic Device, and several Knowledges. I like the rogue for the skill points; you can't make "any other class" give you extra skill points.
Honestly, I decided years ago that life is too short to play games I don't enjoy. Dropped out of a few campaigns that drove me up the wall at the time. Every game I play that's no fun is taking time I could be devoting to a game that is fun. My time is not an unlimited resource. There's no more point in "challenging" yourself to play PC after PC you don't like just so you can find some magic configuration that makes it bearable than there is in eating a different Brussels sprouts recipe with every meal when you hate Brussels sprouts, on the off chance that you'll find one you like. Why not just eat what you like in the first place?
EDIT: Point in case, a barbarian is neither a full caster nor a skill monkey. And yet I'm playing her. Of course, the fact that she's not a standard Medium barbarian is also what's causing her to be dead weight in the adventure, added to the fact that the DM allowed monstrous races so side by side with the gnoll her performance looks even worse by comparison. So I found a way to play a barbarian I like -- but the longer the game goes one, the further behind the power curve she falls.
Gilfroy casts guidance on Tevyn.
Shouldn't this involve unsolicited touching of Tevyn's nether regions? Or do only the girls get the special attention? ;)
Gilfroy casts guidance on Tevyn.Shouldn't this involve unsolicited touching of Tevyn's nether regions? Or do only the girls get the special attention? ;)
It can't be just girls. He's slapped Malan on the ass before, I'm pretty sure. I think it's just a sign that he doesn't trust Tevyn enough for personal contact.
You're missing all the fun of being filled with wrath, you know. I have a sweet, shy librarian type in RotRL who got bit by what I assume is one of these and failed the save. Went off on her whole party, unloading all the anger at being overlooked and underestimated that she'd been repressing her whole life.
THAT'S true! Man she was a real crank! :)
It's funny, all the characters you can't stand, I like. And all the ones you like, I can't stand. I'm sooo not a straight spellcaster person(barring clerics of course). I'm strictly a combat oriented type. Any kind. Well, except cavalier. Just from reading on it, it doesn't appeal to me. But I did like the cavalier in 2nd edition rules(Unearthed Arcana). I like to be able to do some form of damage in combat. Rajah's the one exception.
Of course, in my RL games, I always play a cleric. Mainly because no one else will/wants to. Also in my RL games, I always play 2 characters because... well I just always have.
Sorry, was in a huge rush at the time, and just didn't want to hold up the game. Consider Tevyn completely molested as Gilfroy delivers the spell via a good tea-bagging over the ranger's head.
You're missing all the fun of being filled with wrath, you know. I have a sweet, shy librarian type in RotRL who got bit by what I assume is one of these and failed the save. Went off on her whole party, unloading all the anger at being overlooked and underestimated that she'd been repressing her whole life.THAT'S true! Man she was a real crank! :)
I'm hoping we run into all the other deadly sins out there, and she fails her saves against all of them. Who wouldn't want to see Sophy overcome with lust? The only question is, which of the party members would be her target? And how upset would Victor be if it wasn't him? ;)
It's funny, all the characters you can't stand, I like. And all the ones you like, I can't stand. I'm sooo not a straight spellcaster person(barring clerics of course). I'm strictly a combat oriented type. Any kind. Well, except cavalier. Just from reading on it, it doesn't appeal to me. But I did like the cavalier in 2nd edition rules(Unearthed Arcana). I like to be able to do some form of damage in combat. Rajah's the one exception.
It's like I'm always telling my kids: Different people like different things. If everyone wanted to play a monk, or a caster, or a fighter, or whatever, it wouldn't be a very well-balanced party and would probably end in a TPK.