This thread is for OOC discussion.
Lets work out any kinks with the characters and decide whether they know each other and how.
Bruden - Needs to convert to Armor as DR and Wounds/Vigor. See the links in the first post of recruitment page for the rules.
Rale - Needs a background.
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I'll be putting up a map of Kassen and of the campaign area on the campaign info tab shortly. Each player should have a sort of mentor in town.
Tyr, you would have been mentored by Guard Captain Gregor Wisslo
Guard Captain Gregor Wisslo (LG male human fighter 4): The town of Kassen has never truly known the horrors of the war with Molthune, but occasional raiding parties from Belkzen do sometimes pose a threat. As such, the town has been watched over for many years by Wisslo, who serves as guard captain. Gregor is a staunch man who believes in schedules and regiment over ingenuity and spontaneity, much to the chagrin of the town’s residents. As an aging fighter, Gregor is a qualified teacher, but his lessons are rigid and his discipline harsh. The guards he has trained are quite skilled, but they secretly detest the old man, calling him names behind his back (Captain Is-Slow is the current favorite).
Malzuket, you're all old and stuff, but you'd have some kind of relationship with Moltus Vargidan.
If you ask a dozen folk in Kassen who the strangest family in town is, you would get the same answer 12 times: the Vargidans. This old family has a touch of magic in its blood, with each one of the children showing some sorcerous talent. Where this magic comes from is a mystery, and the family refuses to speak of such things in mixed company. Lording over the family is the wealthy and eccentric patriarch, Moltus Vargidan. This aging man has white hair that trails down to his knees, and he can often be found wandering the halls of the estate, muttering to himself. Living with him are almost a dozen children (each from a different wife) and a pair of lifelong servants. Sorcerers who come from this house have been forced to learn things for themselves, because the old man shares few of his secrets, and many of the children are starting to believe that his grip on reality is slowly slipping.
Rale, you would have been mentored by Father Rantal Prasst.
Father Rantal Prasst (NG male human cleric 2 of Erastil): The small town of Kassen has only one temple and it is devoted primarily to Erastil, but Father Prasst allows those who worship other friendly gods to pray at the temple as well. While Father Prasst does not offer services in the names of these deities, there are small shrines to other gods set up in some of the alcoves, including Gozreh, Sarenrae, Shelyn, and Torag. Father Prasst is a kind and understanding man, but he is hard when it comes to the defense of the community. He is quite young, only 24, and many in the community do not put too much faith in his council, except in spiritual matters. He was trained as a soldier in Tamran, but he left after his first battle to become a priest, and refuses to say why.
Bruden, you'd have learned some things from Jimes “Short Change” Iggins.
Jimes “Short Change” Iggins (CN male halfling rogue 3): Those who frequent the Seven Silvers tavern know to count their coins before they leave the table, especially if they have been served by “Short Change,” the halfling waiter who has a propensity for giving less change than is due (although he insists the name is due to his short stature). Although Jimes is genuinely kind and helpful to all the locals, he just can’t help but end up with some of their possessions at the end of the night, be it a few coins or a loose dagger. Most of the townsfolk are quite aware of this and do not take too much offense if something goes missing. After all, they know where the missing goods went. Anyone who works with Jimes at the Seven Silvers is sure to get a host of tips and tricks from this good-natured thief, who thinks that a little petty theft is all in good fun.
GM- Adjustments are done.
I think Bruden would know Tyr the best, mostly because he would have served a small stint as town militia before leaving for the national militia. I think the reason for this was a conflict of personality with the Guard Captain whom he felt didn't utilize his potential. Actually, with Bruden being two years older they might not have been in the milita together because he would have left before Tyr would have been allowed in, as he would have gone in at the minimum age and left before two years had passed. It's kinda cool we both picked Armor Expert... Maybe we can work with that.
He would not have much dealings with Malzuket, except he might have bought some Acid from him a couple times for some offense against swarms. He would have been polite and respectful of the strange man but not overly forthcoming.
Bruden is pretty religious, but likes Erastil a bit and Kurgess is his hero. Not knowing quite what to do with Sarenrae would make him more standoffish with Rale. He wouldn't have a problem with your Aasimar physical traits, because he has a few traits of his own that make him a bit unlike most of the human populace.
@Bruden well bruden might know Tyr a little bit. Tyr would have been the apprentice that is shapening and maintaining the miltia's arms. He wouldn't have started training with the militia until he was 14 or 15. I think we can blame the armor expert trait on Captain Wisslo and his training methodes. I can see him as the type of man that insists on his trainees being in overweighted armor all the time.
I adjusted my backstory a little to include Wisslo and may write some more in character when I have time.
I don't know how Tyr might be involved with the others besides through the Blacksmithy. Possibly did some work on Rales armor and weapons. He would have been the one to pick up any acids or chemicals ordered from Malzuket by the smith. Things used for etching or coloring metals.
Hey everybody, very excited for this game.
I think I can probably work in Moltus Vargidan to my background, perhaps as some of the motivation for Malzuket to want to go into the crypt. Maybe he sees the old sorcerer muttering to himself and comes to the realization that he doesn't want that to be him, particularly because he has several hundred years left in his natural lifespan. Could be just what he needs to spur him onto a quest for adventure.
There are two blacksmiths in town, Braggar Ironhame and Renet. There's also the town Wizard, Holgast.
Holgast: On the eastern edge of town is a single tower, leaning slightly to the south, made of bricks and timber. This is the home of Holgast, the town’s local sage and mystic. Although Holgast is very knowledgeable, he is old and quite forgetful, meaning that the townsfolk (the mayor in particular) only consult him if the need is truly great. Holgast spends most of his days wandering about his tower, reading books, smoking his pipe, and taking naps. Once a week, he wanders into town to purchase supplies and provisions with his seemingly inexhaustible reserve of perfect golden coins, which he claims came from an immense hoard some years ago.
Bragger Ironhame: Braggar is one of the two blacksmiths that service Kassen. This dour dwarf runs a small business on the south side of town. Although he is outpaced by his competitor(Renet’s Steel, near the town square), Braggar’s goods are of higher quality. Braggar is a surly mentor, capable of incredible fits of anger if one of his pieces is not turning out as planned. As such, he often has to spend time repairing his workshop, which only further slows down his work. Braggar’s teaching style focuses on craft and artifice, but he can also teach pupils about controlling their anger and unleashing it when the time is right.
Ralen Darkvayne was born on a particularly stormy night in a small town in Taldor known as Faldamont. His mother was a paladin of great reknown who served Sarenrae well. His birth would prove to be an insurmountable battle for the young, but weathered paladin as she succumbed to death shortly after his birth due to complications from it. His father was a local priest of Sarenrae in Faldamont. Rale longed to see his mother again and looked up to his steadfast father, but could never understand how someone could be so gentle and kind with members of the community, yet so callous and stern toward his only son.
Rale's father harbored growing resentment towards his son which only grew as he grew and his father began to notice unusual things about him. while Rale posessed the usual bronze skin of a Taldan,his metallic green irises and his oddly silver locks of hair stood out as the most noticeable features. This led to much speculation that Rale's father was not his father at all. Rale's father kept him extremely busy transcribing texts,lore and historical documents about Sarenrae at the town's temple. He had little connection with the outside world.
Concerned for his development, Rale's maternal uncle took him off of his father's hands and up into a nearby mountainous monastery where he learned the art of combat and practised his devotion to Sarenrae daily. He trained alongside his cousin Yovan, who was really more like a brother to him. His uncle sent him and his cousin on several church errands to gain field experience.
When Yovan was ready, he took a vow as a paladin of Sarenrae to serve and protect her followers. His first real assignment came when Yovan was delegated to protect and promote a mission to establish a temple to Sarenrae in a small town in Ustalav. Rale's uncle grew anxious as months passed and he had not heard from Yovan. Finally, word came from Caliphas that there had been some trouble north of town as the mission ran into an inquisitor of Rovagug and a band of orcs.
Many were injured and Yovan was in fact missing. Rale jumped at the chance to find his "brother" and leave behind his small community of bittersweet memories.
After a long and arduous journey filled with trixters and near-death experiences, Rale was much wiser, but the trail seemed to grow cold once in Ustalav. His search brought him to rest in a town called Kassen. Desperate, he spent time in local taverns asking questions about Yovan and the mission. This had usually brought him trouble in many places, apathy in others.
Rale found support in a local priest named Father Prasst, who became sort of a mentor to him. He spent time getting to know his community and studying Ustalav and Rovagug respectively for more insight. He enjoys being helpful to Father Prasst whenever he can as he maintains a deep desire to help others. while he is quick to put the needs of others before himself, his main goal will always be to find Yovan and deliver justice if necessary.
Rale is most certainly familar with short change as he has visited the Seven Silvers during his rounds of investigation. Rale is a quiet and unassuming fellow who comes to life when he feels that someone might have some information about his brother Yovan. Perhaps, he has spoken about the matter with Bruden a time or too?
Rale also spends his free time at the smithy researching weapons and how they are crafted. He is curious about which ones are the most damaging as well as the alchemical silvering process, although he currently does not have enough coin to satisfy his martial desires.
I am happy to be playing this campaign with all of you. Thanks again DM Jelani.
I am thinking that Renet's steel might be a better shop for Tyr to be apprenticed at. Braggar may be the better smith but from your description he doesn't sound like the kind that would have patience to teach an apprentice. I would think Renet more likely to have an apprentice if not more than one. Possibly a journeyman or two as well. He would be getting most of the work from the lumbermen and the Militia. Braggar would get most of the custom artistic work.
@DM Jelani-Can I make up some details about Mastersmith Renet or would you rather Tyr be apprenticed to Braggar.
Tyr is too young to spend much time at the Seven Silvers and Rale would likely be spending time at Braggar's smithy since he is the best smith in town. So he and Tyr may not know each other.
Malzuket - Cool. Sounds good.
Tyr - You could have a job at Renet's. but you would have learned to fight from the guard captain. Renet is no warrior. He's not given a description in the book, but I'm gonna say he's human, a level one expert. Other than that you can make up what details you like.
I think that Bruden might have gotten himself into trouble in the forest at an early age. He probably is pretty familiar with Arnama who had to go find him when he got lost once or twice. Since I am planning to multiclass, it would make sense that I might have more than one mentor.
If approached about Yovan, Bruden would volunteer to help search for him as it sounds like a good thing to do. But until they had a lead to look for, they would be in a bit of a holding pattern.
Okay made some changes to Tyr's backstory.
He is apprenticed to Edard Renet who owns Renet's Steel. He is also something of an apprentice guardsman. Renet turned him over to Wisslo in hoping to have his lust for adventure beaten out of him, also it can't hurt to have another trained warrior if orcs come to call. Two years being mentored by Wisslo in addition to his work in the smithy hasn't cured him yet. It has probably made it worse actually. If Wisslo had been willing to accept a lower level of competance, and stuck Tyr with only dull, dirty work it might have worked. Wisslo insisted on his becoming as skill at arms as the rest of the town guard and put him through a strenuous training schedule.
This story works out great. I don't know why I thought it said Ustalav.
Apologies for taking long on the backstory. I wanted it to really drive my character . I will make your suggested adjustments as they work great. I will say that Rale somewhat gave up and found a home in Kassen and a mentor in Father Prasst.
This is cool--I think we have a good group here, a good mix, everybody's working on tying their backstories to the town. Very cool.
Ralen Darkvayne was born on a particularly stormy night in a small town in Varisia outside of Janderhoff. His mother was a paladin of great reknown who served Sarenrae well. His birth would prove to be an insurmountable battle for the young, but weathered paladin as she succumbed to death shortly after his birth due to complications from it. His father was a local priest of Sarenrae in Janderhoff. Rale longed to see his mother again and looked up to his steadfast father, but could never understand how someone could be so gentle and kind with members of the community, yet so callous and stern toward his only son.
Rale's father harbored growing resentment towards his son which only grew as he grew and his father began to notice unusual things about him. while Rale posessed the usual dusky skin of a Varisian, his metallic green irises and his oddly silver locks of hair stood out as the most noticeable features. This led to much speculation that Rale's father was not his father at all. Rale's father kept him extremely busy transcribing texts,lore and historical documents about Sarenrae at the town's temple. He had little connection with the outside world.
Concerned for his development, Rale's maternal uncle took him off of his father's hands and up into a monastery in the Mindspin Mountains where he learned the art of combat and practised his devotion to Sarenrae daily. He trained alongside his cousin Yovan, who was really more like a brother to him. His uncle sent him and his cousin on several church errands to gain field experience.
When Yovan was ready, he took a vow as a paladin of Sarenrae to serve and protect her followers. His first real assignment came when Yovan was delegated to protect and promote a mission to establish a temple to Sarenrae along the Tourondel River. Rale's uncle grew anxious as months passed and he had not heard from Yovan. Finally, word came that the party had been intercepted in the Fangwood by raiders from Belzken.
Many were injured and Yovan was in fact missing. Rale jumped at the chance to find his "brother" and leave behind his small community of bittersweet memories.
After a long and arduous journey filled with trixters and near-death experiences, Rale was much wiser, but the trail seemed to grow cold in the Fangwood. His search brought him to rest in a town called Kassen. Desperate, he spent time in local taverns asking questions about Yovan and the mission. This had usually brought him trouble in many places, apathy in others.
Rale found support in a local priest named Father Prasst, who became sort of a mentor to him. He enjoys being helpful to Father Prasst whenever he can as he maintains a deep desire to help others.He helps out community members with healing and by feeding those who hunger.
Rale settled into Kassen, making it a base town for his search. He kept in close correspondence with his uncle. After receiving the news of his uncle's passing, Rale sort of lost hope in finding Yovan and decided that he had made a decent life for himself in Kassen enjoying the townsfolk and their hospitality, especially the mentorship of Father Prasst. Rale even learned to keep a tight hold on his purse strings when visiting the Seven Silvers due to the amusing antics of a local trickster nick-named "Short Change."
Tyr is right. Rale certainly is interested in Braggar's weapons and armor appeal greatly to him. Rale can barely tolerate his personality though. Rale is
also interested in crafting healing elixirs, so he could have met Malzuket.
I'm gonna open up the gameplay thread tonight when I get home from work (about 11-12 hours from now). Looks like everyone's pretty much ready to start.
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Gameplay is live. Lets get it on! :)
The campaign map makes it look like Kassen is in Lastwall.
It does. That's because I put it there manually. It's just on the Nirmathi side of the river, very close to Lastwall. In fact if you look at the town map itself, you'll see it straddles the river. So a little chunk of the town is technically in Lastwall. But they are culturally and politically Nirmathi. Especially since there's a ton of dense monster infested forest between them and Vigil.
I suppose before we go too crazy I should mention some things.
I prefer the following posting conventions:
bold for speech
italics for thoughts
Pretty standard but worth saying anyway.
In combat I will call out people to act in blocks. Should your action no longer be valid when it comes up (IE you want to attack an enemy that's already dead) I will act in the spirit of your action in your best interest. So in the above example I would either have you attack another enemy with the same roll, or move you towards attacking an enemy.
I prefer in combat you post like this:
Round X
Sir Bob runs forward and attempts to snatch the lollipop from the infant.
I am on Greenwich mean time here what time zones are the rest of you all on.
GMT+8
CST U.S
Central US as well
In Pbp, is it safe to assume that party members will want to be healed and buffed? Or is there a proper manner for asking?
Battles go slow in PBP. Mostly it's better to heal outside of combat, unless someone is bleeding to death. Buffing is perfectly acceptable, and I'm sure everyone would appreciate it. Just do what Rale would do.
Once you guys assemble the map I'll put it up. The crypt is 40 miles away.
gonna wait for some of the rest of you to post your actions before I post since I am low in the initiative order. would dropping my baby elephant of a pack be a standard action,a free action, or a move action?
I'm not aware of an official rule for packs, but dropping a weapon is a free action so we'll do with that.
Okay sounds good. I really should have tried to grab the pony pulling the cart in town. Then none of us would have to be lugging our gear. You probably wouldn't have let me do that though.
Well, it was a hand cart, and yeah. It was staying there.
You should have mentioned something, Donkeys are 8gp and pack saddles aren't bad either. Of course, there's no one to watch them when we go inside a crypt, so who's to say we would have our stuff when we came out?
I didn't think of it until now.
Ah, fair enough.
did you mean to step behind me Bruden because that is where moving to AH 27 puts you
I forgot to ask this earlier, but it may affect my future actions, so here goes: Do the enemies have Vigor and Wound Points too, or just regular HP? Either way, my turn for this round remains the same so I'll post it.
I'm attempting to give them Vigor and Wound points as well. It may not work right with certain enemies (ones that don't have Con). It's my first time using this subsystem, so I'll be learning it too. If it turns out to be sh*t I might have us switch back to HP after the first module.
I don't want the orcs to run away Mal so stop trying to scare them.
Bruden thanks for remembering the AoO I completely forgot that the Lucerne hammer was a reach weapon too.
I should have buffed Tyr, but I initially chose Bruden because he was next and didn't want to cheat after seeing posts. Lawful Goods, I tell ya!
I really hope we keep wounds/vigor. It seems more realistic to me. Same with damage reduction. Called shots would be a fun add-on, although they can skew the game sometimes.
I'm attempting to give them Vigor and Wound points as well. It may not work right with certain enemies (ones that don't have Con). It's my first time using this subsystem, so I'll be learning it too. If it turns out to be sh*t I might have us switch back to HP after the first module.
I thought about that too, and I figured that a different stat would be used. For example, undead use Cha mod instead of Con, right, since they have 0 Con? So I assume with the wounds/vigor rules that undead would use Cha to determine their number of wounds.
I think that PCs using vigor/wounds makes sense because, though it appears as though you have a lot more hitpoints at low levels, throughout the course of an adventuring day it can actually be more dangerous/more realistic. It takes more resources to heal wounds, whereas under the regular rules if I'm hit for 15 and dropped to negatives, a couple channels/spells can bring me completely back to fighting form.
The main potential issue I see is that applying these rules to enemies that we fight, along with the armor as DR rules, will make encounters very tough and time-consuming. Now, in this particular fight, Tyr could potentially blast all of them for a lot depending on their actions. But suppose he had no reach weapon or rolled poorly. We're going to need to do a LOT of damage to take down 3 orcs, even if they are lightly armored. And if they are wearing chain shirts or breastplates, we're talking, I don't know, 50 damage required per orc?
And I know the armor as DR rules make it easier to hit so that might mitigate things, and I'm by no means trying to complain--I'm interested to try out these rules myself. Just posting my thoughts/observations.
I don't want the orcs to run away Mal so stop trying to scare them.
Bruden thanks for remembering the AoO I completely forgot that the Lucerne hammer was a reach weapon too.
No worries on that front, I'm just going for giving one of them a -2 to hit for a round or two. Pretty sure if they run it'll be due to you cutting them to ribbons with your AoOs ;-)
Yeah, the Wounds/Vigor system along with Armor as DR is why I went with a Strength based rogue. A dex based rogue, even with precision damage wouldn't do enough damage to be able to overcome DR in a regular fashion. Besides I always wanted to try it.
Also, if they do have chain shirts, I might be trading up.
If so, I can prestidigitate the Orc blood off for you, hehe
I've played with Armor as DR before, I found that it slightly favors power attack builds but other than that is pretty much the same. The fact that you almost never miss balances out that you're doing lower damage. The guy you really have to worry about is the dude in fullplate with an armor skirt and a shield. But that's what SOS spells are for.
The orcs were an illusion. I am so disappointed. if this is one of the towns people playing a trick I am going to punch them in the mouth.
*there.
Well, as far as Bruden is concerned, they are still real and you are all delusional. Nat 1 on a save doesn't really help things a whole lot.