Drow War Team 1

Game Master Tarlane

If he agrees to live we could use him as a diplomat to talk with the others, maybe make them understand the danger in continuing here and returning the kids to us as a gratitude, if they are still alive

Hope things are smoother in your world now Mogwai, no worries about things being a little slow. I've been trying hard not to let it affect things here but my RL has been pretty nuts too. Happens to us all, we've still been keeping up a pretty impressive pace so I have no complaints.

I am interested in seeing this hobgoblin ambassador idea proposed to Mogwai in character though.

Seems as though we should capture him. Unfortunately I don't speak Goblin. so translation duties fall to you, Mogwai.

Hobgoblin also speak common, don't they?

I loved that Mogwai!

Suk'uo ko' ouu u' dos' p' ruuunupm'. D'mm Suk'uo

I think it is hilarious that Mogwai in goblin is Suk'uo... I don't even understand how that makes sense lol. Thats like a guy named Jose in spanish being named Frank in english lol.

I used This from NWN. but yeah, it is weird. I should have left it as Mogwai, since his name would be in the Goblin language already. I don't know what I was thinking.

Haha, no biggy, I just thought it was funny :) Plus, goblins are nuts, so its totally okay.

Obviously hobgoblin's are untrustworthy so Mogwai is flying under a pseudonym.

Mogwai has a pen name... this makes me happy, I would read that book by the by

Am I mistaken or are we waiting for Tarlane to answer his own NPC question?

Oh, Morton was letting Mogwai handle the interrogation. He just speaks goblin too, and so he was letting Mogwai know that the hobgoblin's hadn't contacted the village for any trade or anything.

I'm super glad that I didn't just murder this hobgoblin. Apologies if I'm temporarily hogging the spotlight. :-/

Hog away, I figure in a game like this, each person will have their moment in the spotlight :)

Spotlight is all yours! You're doing great so far!

I've been trying to make sure that the fact Morton has been translating so everyone(except Aetherni in the other room) could get get the full information and interject if they wanted to. But as Brutus said, a wide range of skills and abilities will have moments to shine. Be it just being in the right place at the right time, knowing the right language or the right knowledge, or just having a talent or bit of gear be exactly what is needed at the time everyone will have chances to step forward.

Though I just reminded myself that Aetherni is standing out in the hallway alone. I had been planning something a little later, but it might be a perfect time to pick on the poor dwarf a bit.

LEVEL 2 HELP ME!!!

Ahh, poor yittle dwarfy poo. Side note, I am assuming that we can see him, based on his interaction with Mogwai before the scary ghost appeared. So I assume I could turn and see the ghost thing from where I am standing, if not, I can correct

To be honest, I'm somewhat at a loss as to when I am going to give you guys level 2 at this point. You have done enough RP based experience gaining things that I was intending to level you after the next real fight, but now I'm not sure whether you are going to get past the hobgoblins themselves without much of a fight. It may come to leveling when you all take a bit of a breather.

Brutus, you and Morton would have a hard time seeing it clearly just due to the fact that Aetherni isn't too close to you, he's back in the doorway and you are using torchlight. But having only a vague image of what is there fits fine with your post.

I'm definitely not intending to fight the Hobgoblins, I have a pretty... interesting plan. Especially now with the Apparition, though Mogwai is frankly not terribly interested in it (one crisis at a time).

But if we were meant to hit level 2 after that fight, it might still make sense to hit us there after that "encounter", regardless of how we handle it?

I don't really mind when we level, I'm having a blast.

Well, i spoke to Mogwai whenever he got close, probably after the talk with the Hobgoblin. Anyway, if Mogwai's plan (which now I believe differs from mine) doesn't work I might have one.

Not that I'm telling you how to run your game Tarlane, but according to James Jacobs over in his Ask me anything thread, he has stated that each encounter overcome, regardless of how, awards the same XP.

Rather than keeping track of individual xp points I was just going to level you at particular points. My expectation had been that you would question this hobgoblin a bit and then fight the hobgoblin guards and I would level you before you went down to the lower floor.(The adventure more or less would expect you to be level 2 at the end of the mine, but it also doesn't expect you to have found the sword already) However, if you are walking through a lot of this without combat it may make sense to wait until you are finished to level you, not due to delaying you, your ability to be social and talk your way through things is something I will reward rather than punish, but because if there isn't a break in action it will make more sense to have it happen when you rest or its between story scenes.

The leveling question to me is less about when, mechanically, whether we have earned it or not doesn't really matter to me. My question is how do you handle the leveling? Do we take some time to train, cut scenes of new skills, etc, or do we just poof have new abilities? Either way is fine, but to me the continuity of the story is important and throwing in new levels and new abilities with no explanation can be a bit confusing. (Though don't get me wrong, I like new levels :) lol)

Most of the story is going to have fairly steady time deadlines that aren't going to allow for much in the way for training, points where there are gaps between deadlines normally mean you aren't adventuring as much at those points(or more likely doing adventures that are your own wants rather than for the storyline) so you wouldn't be leveling.

I think that a lot of what is being learned can be explained through you all practicing during your time off camera and learning new abilities, at least as much as would be explained by longer training montages. When you level at a point where you aren't already resting, I normally will have you automatically gain inherent abilities right then and anything that would require rest(new spells, daily abilities, ect) coming in once you have slept.

Another option, for the first few levels at least, could be that as we level, it is almost as if portions of our memory come back, or atleast, portions of our muscle memories. So say I was a level 9 Zen Archer in my previous life, and then I got transported to this reality/time frame, and now I am level 1 again. As my experience grows, either from divine intervention, or through the process itself, my body remembers things it used to be able to do in previous life?

Just a thought.

Yes, it would be like "trying something new to win that impossible challenge, or maybe applying first time in combat what you had trained last week...

I do GM a AP group and we level anytime we (mostly I) deem necessary. No big deal, as there aren't many things that could be "misteriously obtained" from one moment to the other. You just become best at what you do, better at defending yourself, nasty cuts are now well avoided by you. Only thing we do differently is about spells, which you may by that time you CAN cast them, but did not had the time to get them ready to go (need rest/sleep).

After all we have plenty of time while not adventuring, and possibly having some heroic examples about what would we like to train, so it's just a matter of time to adapt our abilities and get them ready for combat. Check me for example, I'm a full fighter but I'm going Cleric next level. I know about religions, have been praying and wondering about who would guide me in the times to come. I can ALMOST feel divine power flowing through me, but I'm not able to manifest it yet. Tomorrow morning I may "connect" to a god in a real meaning, learning some new abilities and gaining the confidence to use them.

A fighter would finally be able to use that mighty cleave or power attack he's been training in logs, and so on...

Otherwise, there are the 3.5 system we used, in which you need to spend 1day/level you are gaining at full training. I remember once I found out that the mother of my character was a fey, and I spent a couple days in the woods with her, learning stuff.

And there are also the heroic items, which we might level anytime, depending on the circumstance. One time I had a powerful sword, much like John's Sword. I had found one of the gems required to awaken it, but had not managed to do so, until we found a Black Dragon. The party were almost screwed when i negociated with the GM the awaken of my item (paying the gp price, of course) which turned into a Dragon Bane Sword! It was memorable!

My oh my I do write.

I'm easy either way, since I've done leveling both ways. For spontaneuos casters, I just roleplay that I have been trying new spells for a while and it all just 'came together'. Bit cheesy, but it works. Same with new abilities, etc.

Now I'm the wisest dwarf ever or the foolest!

Hey, my class abilities are all divinely gained, so when I level up, I'm just given new powers from my god. Same with our Inquisitor.

Mogwai is taking Fighter the next two levels, because while his fluff is awesome, he is sadly rather absurdly feat-starved. I have an idea of working it into the story, though it depends almost entirely on how this "quest" goes.

I actually had a question for you all out of curiosity, but I'm not sure how it would work on a play by post. Is there any interest in using the critical hit/fumble decks in this campaign? I feel like it adds a lot of fun flavor to battles and I have the app so even when I'm not home I can just pull a card for you on my phone, but because of the nature of posts I don't realize how it will go when multiple attacks start to come into play.

Having the first attack be a fumble or a crit and not knowing how that will affect things before the second attack could cause some confusion, but I suppose that since I tend to flesh out the actions when I do my summaries I can apply any modifiers that may have changed then and if there is something wild like dropping your weapon or whatever I will give you a chance to alter your actions.

The general rule is simple is better for play by posts I know, I just wasn't sure if the fluff and flavor of it all can make up for it. As a general rule, everyone would use the fumble deck and only named and important NPCs would use the crit hit deck.

I'm always interested in trying something new for a game, as long you you're ok with scrapping the idea if it gets too confusing.

Also:

500 IN GAME POSTS!!!!

I'm always interested in trying something new for a game, as long you you're ok with scrapping the idea if it gets too confusing.

My preference would be to second this statement. I like trying new things, but am only committed to them as long as they work lol.

What comes works for me, we may try it, and if it's too confusing we may drop it. Anyway, we could work the critical and fumble deck based on a probability dice same as the deck, like a d60 or however many cards the deck has.

I'm all for trying new things.

Sounds good, I asked the other group as well and one of them didn't know how the decks worked so I wanted to give some examples. Sounds like we are going to go with it though.

In both decks there is generally one effect that is extremely heavy for each attack type, a couple that are very mild and then a lot in the middle. It would just be a fumble for attack rolls, where you rolled a 1 and then missed with a back(just like how you confirm a crit). Fumbles can be anything from dropping your weapon, to striking the nearest ally, to damaging your weapon or dazing yourself, lowering your AC for a couple rounds, provoking AoOs ect. Crits will often alter the multiplier on the damage, do ability damage, cause different effects(target is deafened for some rounds, takes some bleed, blinded until receives healing, ect).

The general rules for the decks are that if you have weapon focus with the weapon you are making an attack with, you get a second card and get to use whichever one is most beneficial for you. If a critical fumble doesn't apply to you for some reason it is simply a miss, if a critical hit doesn't apply you just do a normal crit. If there is a save involved, its DC is the damage on a crit or targets AC on a fumble.

I'm going to pull up a few random examples of each to give a better show of it in a spoiler below.

Let's take bets on how many rounds it takes for Aetherni to hurt himself. Bonus points if the first time he draws someone's blood, it's his own. :P

I suppose I can't get in on this bet or I'll be accused of stacking the deck.

If it makes you feel any better Aetherni, in my in person group whenever we start passing around stories and reminiscing, the vast majority of our most memorable deaths in any game(and we have played together for about 15 years) all happened to the exact same character in the drow war campaign. It feels like the group has decided you are going to fill that role so you will be one of legend in tales for years to come.

Yeah yeah everybody loves Aetherni.... I'll remember that when people need healing ^_^

Anyway I'll take your bet Mogwai!

I love you, Aetherni (suck, suck).

Remember me when I need healing.

Hey, I've been in LA for a VtM con/party, and have had no internet access save for my cell.

Well, at least we know you're alright!
Yes I will remember you Drombar!

My Internet died and I only have my phone for the time being. Don't wait for me then.

This could easily go very poorly for our little Goblin.

If everything goes wrong put me on the game and let's go for plan B.

Thank god, I'm just about done hogging the spotlight. >_>

I'm totally expecting some backlash from the other members of the party about this decision, so feel free to act out surprise / distrust as you please. It's a hell of a risk, but Mogwai has this very idealistic view of different races working together, being better than they are. Whether it's something that would work or is even possible is up to the parties involved, but he can't not try. Hell, even if Talks-With-Fists agrees, it's going to take quite a bit to get the humans onboard.

I'm going to give others a bit of a chance to respond since Morton is still running translation and he would certainly be a little shocked by it, though stick to just translating at the moment. Also, Mogwai if you want to get a diplomacy roll in there we can see if the dice are in your favor right now.

Ugh if I have to. A skill I don't have ranks in that is also keyed off my lowest stat. >_>

Really wish I had taken Diplomacy instead of Intimidate. Though it would still only be like a +3. Which would still be bad, and probably not nearly high enough for what I'm trying to do.

Your hobgoblin buddy Leth was at a -1 on his diplomacy due to being drunk and not particularly charismatic and he made two different checks against the guards on the way down here and rolled and 18 and a 19. I think that the dice might be favoring the uncharismatic talker.