DM Mathpro's Jade Regent Campaign-Table 2

Game Master Almagafor

Just curious here but we will be using the fast XP track or the medium XP track? Personally I use the fast track if I have parties over 4 but I'm good with whatever you decide gm.

For APs, I prefer the "GM tells the party to level up at the appropriate times" route.

Oh? How come? Just curious.

Because each of the APs provides a suggested leveling path right within them. Sort of a "your party should be this tall before they face this encounter." But I have played in APs where we circumvented the "expected" route to the big battles, thus leaving us, 1 or even 2 levels lower than the AP expects when you face the battle. This is classified as "bad" and has lead to a TPK or two.

I see. Well I usually prefer the fast track as it gives players a bit of extra power just in case they run into any battles that might be a bit too tough. But that's just me.

A won't be using xp I will be letting you guys know when you can level.

That's okay with me. Just curious that's all. Looking forward to seeing what happens next for our brave band of adventurers. :)

That is if Paizo would stop bogging down so much lately.

Yeah I know its been really bad this week...

I've barely been able to get to the site at all. Seems better today though.

It's been off and on today. But it's a bit better today. Still let's hope it even gets better tomorrow.

Anyone knows what happened to our rogue?

Maybe hiding?

Sorry y'all. I dropped the ball on that one. :(

Didn't realize that 5 step prevented me from halting its approach. I was always under the impression that any approach to you or past you while you're readied against approach let's you attack whoever approached. I know it came up in several games I'm in where an enemy approached me and I halted its movement by being ready for approach letting me attack. I guess I never thought that 5 step keeps me from doing that. I just don't it in the rules though. But I trust the gm on this.

Hopefully I don't die before this adventure is over. And I apologize if it sounds like I'm whining about this. I just feel bad that I let the team down.

So why did my action get pre-empted?

I'm not sure. But that battle could have gone from bad to worse in seconds. In my experience, when the party's fighters go down in the first round, then it's all a matter of luck if the party wins or TPK happens.

Well, I'm confused when this happened? We were going, right? Then, presumably the bad guy goes. He bad guy hurts the good guy. Round 1 finishes.

For round 2, I could then declare an action to heal the good guy.

I'm just unsure why there was a need to preempt my action.

Also, I'm not convinced I would heal the good guy, who was at 0 hit points, and has 40 rounds (4 minutes) of the sickened condition and a desire to kill all of us.

Well, I'm not sure of what the init was for everyone, but yeah that is a bit odd.

Although it is my mistake that I didn't roll for an attack after I declared that I was doing a readied action.

Now that I think about it, Shaeda you don't have Cure Light Wounds listed under your spells do you?

While I'm grateful that the GM helped me out there (since the dice rolled in my disfavor), I'm still unsure of what happened as well.

I can spontaneously cast the Cure spells,

I've never read the specific rules involved, but the way I've seen it done is that a readied action occurs when a condition is met regardless of how. So 5' of movement versus more won't make a difference.

That said, I'm familiar with the critter involved from another life (ROTRL) and if you had made the attack, it was successful, and you had done good damage, it wouldn't have changed things that much. You wouldn't have prevented it's attack or the results. They're tough and the add ons to damage like the sickened condition are very unforgiving. With you out of the fight, it would probably have shredded the rest of us except for Shalelu depending on her luck and level.

The point being, your attack or not we'd probably be in the same place right now, or alternately dead.

Ah. That's right. I forgot warpriests can do that. XP

I see. That's a good point. So what you're saying is regardless if I had hit or not, we might still be in trouble?

As for my readied action, it doesn't matter if an enemy does a 5 step or charges at me, correct?

Not to mention the sickened condition is bad. Dang, 4 minutes. We might have to camp till the condition goes away as I won't be much good with a sickened condition if we get into trouble. Depending on what part of the day it is IC.

Also, GM, did you include the bonus to my character's saving throws from his Childhood Crush trait? I ask because I have a bad habit of forgetting to include such things in my Quick Stats.

I have to admit, this whole thing gives me a headache.

1. Readied Actions with specific declarations ("I hit it if it comes close to me" or something similar) trigger regardless of the circumstances. If it comes close to you, and you are able to hit it, the action triggers. That's how I've been playing it for the last however-many-years its been.

2. Sure. Warpriests can spontaneously cure...but taking control of a PC to reaffirm that action instead of specifically asking the player if that's what they'd like to do (well, unless they're Dominated anyway) is not something I appreciate unless you've agreed it ahead of time. PbP or not.

3. Also familiar with those critters from another life. Did not expect one to show here, and this early. Yikes.

Sorry for the bad experience in our first battle everyone. I messed up by denying Derric his attack, that was my mistake. I believe most of the confusion lies in the double posts I made, as I think some of you believe its two different rounds happening. It isn't its the same round but the site kept crashing when I was trying to edit the first post. I've noticed dice rolls changing when you preview them sometimes between the preview and post so I wanted to post the init rolls before I resolved the round and was able to do that and then Paizo started glitching major every time I went to finish the post.

As for preempting the warpriset, I figured since she was "Readying for battle" this would be the best course of action since it all happened in the same round. The monster won init, acted first, and in those actions critically wounded the poor samurai.

As for the sickness that he is currently suffering from I believe he has an ability what will remove that status. I believe the Determined ability will allow you to remove Sickened Derric so you'll be fine as long as you spend the point from your resolve pool. You could have also spent a point from the pool to roll twice on the save, but I didn't see that until after I had posted. Again my mistake.

For future notice all spoilers, exept the one I title DM eyes only, are viewable by characters to see what inits were rolled and how round actions are resolved. I run combat the way I do to try to speed up what bogs down most PBP's and its a system that works for most of my groups once they get used to it. If there are posted actions that no longer are viable or make sense or another better option is presented, to keep things moving I reserve the right to take the best path possible.

Hopefully we can move on from this and continue the game with no further issues.

No problem. It's cool. Everyone makes mistakes.

And I actually like this form of doing combat in regards to pbp. As combat does tend to bog down people.

And everything's fine. And I was having trouble with the messageboards and Paizo acting up as well as it took a while for the page to load so I could the newest posts. :(

And in regards to my character's ability to use determined and reroll his saving throw, I actually forgot about that ability myself as well so it's cool.

I'll use it to remove the sickened status from my character.

And yeah the monster did win init, looking back the post with the init rolls.

And while our first battle did start off bumpy and the monster got away, story wise this is good as it makes the swamp a bit creepier than it already was plus it keeps us on our toes.

So I'm good to carry on the adventure!

and not to give anything away but usually when things run away they reappear lol...so you know its best to be on alert and on your toes now that you know what the swamp has in it.

That is true now! Let's hope we get him/her/it/not sure if that thing either has a gender the next time around!

I'll go ahead and post my character's response to the battle and getting healed by Shaeda.

One question I will raise about the combat system is that, as I understand it, it's going to make spell selection difficult. For example, in the last combat I would have chosen a different spell if I known that I would best the opponent's initiative. Magic Missile isn't a great spell, but it will work regardless of the opponent's location.

If I knew I would be acting before the opponent, I would have used grease. It might have stopped it's advance. But grease is an AoE spell, which makes targeting an issue. If I don't know when the spell will activate within the round, I can't target a location. If I target an opponent regardless of location I risk catching allies on the AoE. It seems like a serious gimping of controller abilities for spellcasters.

How to account for this? I suppose I could write If/Then or Either/Or actions, but that seems awfully clumsy and complicated.

I really like how you've portrayed Shalelu. She's a jaded, experienced adventurer who cares about people, but expects them to pull their own weight. She helps them out, but she doesn't baby them. She wants them to learn and do things themselves, but Shalelu is there to pull their butts out of trouble when they bite off more than they can chew (which she doesn't like to do as she wants to be smart about how they adventure).

Excellent work GM!

Not a problem

You're welcome! Oh and don't forget to answer Leokian's question.

One question I will raise about the combat system is that, as I understand it, it's going to make spell selection difficult. For example, in the last combat I would have chosen a different spell if I known that I would best the opponent's initiative. Magic Missile isn't a great spell, but it will work regardless of the opponent's location.

If I knew I would be acting before the opponent, I would have used grease. It might have stopped it's advance. But grease is an AoE spell, which makes targeting an issue. If I don't know when the spell will activate within the round, I can't target a location. If I target an opponent regardless of location I risk catching allies on the AoE. It seems like a serious gimping of controller abilities for spellcasters.

How to account for this? I suppose I could write If/Then or Either/Or actions, but that seems awfully clumsy and complicated.

Yes that is one of the few inharent issues with doing combat this way. The other ones are AOO's and Player Saves. If mobs do things that generate AOO's from Players I will generally roll them for the player but by doing that I'm taking action away from said player and same with saves.

I'm not really sure how to solve this issue and I think my system works well enough for this method to work.

I hope our gm, Rhis, and Caerwyn are alright. Haven't heard from any of them. Or am I the only one here? Cringes at the thought.

I'm here.

I'm still around.

Okay cool. Got worried for a moment. I'm really enjoying this campaign so I was worried that it had died. Thankfully I was being paranoid. :)

Sorry guys spring break and then family issues have kept me busy and unable to post. Things will get back to normal Monday I hope...

It's cool. Thank you for letting us know. Hope to see you Monday then!

Okay has anyone seen the other members of our group? We seem to have lost our two healers and rogue. Which isn't good.

I'm here! I'm a healer, right?

Derric and Leokian went inside, and we stayed outside, so just waiting to see how things go.

I'm still here, but yes it's starting to look more and more like it's just the three of us now.

I'm here! I'm a healer, right?

Yes yes you are.

Just haven't seen you post in awhile. I forgotten that you and the others stayed outside while Leokian and I went inside.

Should reopen recruitment in case? I hate to do that but we do need a rogue.

I will reopen recruitment and probably only bring in one player.

Have you messaged anyone you think isn't playing any more?

No but I will do that real quick and give them 48 hours before offically replacing them but seeing how Carwyn hasn't posted in over a month I don't think he'll be back, but in the interest of fairness I'll give him a chance to.

That makes sense. Hopefully they'll respond. I would hate to lose them.

But maybe we should have five characters as that'll give us one extra in case something happens.

Hey guys just a heads up I have family in from out of town and tomorrow is a designated family day so I won't be posting at all. They've been here a week tomorrow so Saturday and Sunday will be spent saying goodbyes and then recuperating from their visit. What is it about spending time with ones mother in law that is so stressful lol. So I probably won't post again until Monday.

Skills with a "No" in the untrained column cannot be used untrained, except with certain exceptions. For example, Bards can try Knowledge checks untrained.

Maybe a house rule, but I've played differently. Don't have time to research it now.

No need to research it, I provided a link to the page containing the appropriate rules.

Trained Only: If this notation is included in the skill name line, you must have at least 1 rank in the skill to use it. If this notation is omitted, the skill can be used untrained (with a rank of 0). If any special notes apply to trained or untrained use, they are covered in the Untrained section (see below).

Well done, Ignore the roll.