[GM Arcadius Blue] On The Fourth Day, We Kill Them All (Inactive)

Game Master B S 207

I don't think you've got anything to worry about at this point. I wasn't trying to railroad you into sparing his life by having the kid there - I added it in because I thought I made the whole situation more interesting, and I wanted to make sure Tyv had people to talk to. :-P Part of my reasoning behind having you guys select PU's Loyalties instead of Alignments is to make these ambiguous situations easier to explore - we can have Clan Ránulfr serve as your main antagonist without the baggage of fairy-tale evil, and they can even be sympathetic here and there. Likewise, we don't have to worry about "But we're supposed to be the good guys!" when things like this happen.

All that said, it's hard to know what would or wouldn't bother people in a game without it coming up first - the post above was just to say, "Hey, didn't like that? Don't be afraid to say something." And in another light, some people (myself included) may find new ways to understand and process traumatic events by exploring it in the safety and fiction of an RPG. :-D The important bit is that people speak up.

The boy looks to his fallen father, blinking tears and not truly.

On lighter subjects, I shouldn't post so late at night. I haven't the faintest idea of how that sentence was supposed to end. :-X

Oh yeah. Defeating Ølgyr was 1600 XP. So 533 XP/person.

I figured now is good of a time as any to start this conversation:
At the beginning of this adventure, I gave you guys the big disclaimers that went along with my first game; namely "I'm not sure I'll like GMing PBP/have time for it," and "I'm not sure I'll want to stick with this setting." Well, I've started to get the hang of it, and while my taste is generally geared towards both higher & weirder fantasy than the Northlands of Midgard, the setting's grown on me (in no small part due to your awesome characters). I'd love to continue after the adventure officially wraps up (I'd say we're a little past halfway done at this point - hard to gauge, it's a lot further by page count), and so I figured I'd check in and see if everyone else is on board with that too. What do you guys think?

Additionally, provided that the above receives a resounding yes, what are our thoughts on any combination of the following:

• Reopening recruitment to refresh the ranks. (In this department, I do have a F2F friend that I was talking to about it this past weekend and he seemed really interested. The sum of his roleplaying experience is about an hour of random Pathfinder dungeon-crawling, but he's been interested for a couple of years - just isn't able to make the 4-6 hours blocked-time commitment needed for live games).
• Reworking character builds for a little more power: either something minor like just upping to a 20-point buy, or allowing you to spontaneously-gestalt them. There is probably an opportunity for some in-fiction BSing for such a change, if that's important to you.
• I come up with a GMPC-ally that compliments your party. (My gut's pretty averse to this, but I'm willing to give it a shot, because I have no grounds for that - I think it's just a knee-jerk reaction.)

Finally, and on the same condition as the previous question, are there any game-styles I should stay away from as we look forward, or any that you would like to see in action? Please answer only as it pertains to personal preference: as I have and will continue to do regardless, I like to mess with rules and find the best-fit. For example, if you like larger-than-life mythic gameplay, go ahead and say so even if you don't like the Pathfinder mythic rules themselves. A few more examples of the sorts of answers I'm looking for, but whatever you can think of: Leadership/Kingdom Building, Horror, Planar Travel, Undersea Adventures, Diplomacy & Intrigue, Dungeon-Crawling.

Hmm, lots to mull over there...

First off, I'm all for continuing beyond the scope of this adventure! You've proven to be a gracious, fair and dedicated GM and I'd apply to any other game you choose to run here in a heat beat.

Recruitment: I know being down to 3 PCs, two of which are rather squishy is a recipe for disaster no matter how awesome a wrecking machine Havark is. But re recruiting is such a pain in the butt. If you've got a friend whom you think would be a good fit you should do that. I'm good with new-to-the-game players. Imagination and good narrative are more important anyway - the rules can be coached through.

Reworking characters: You mean after the current adventure, yes? Yes I would appreciate that. Tyv's been lots of fun but I wrote his crunch having never used the spheres system before and many weakness in his design have become apparent. Though admittedly most of those may be because he was in an all-dungeon, all-undead first chapter. I'm sure Glowen feels me on this one >:
I do prefer 20 pt builds am fine if that doesn't change - Tyv's unobservant as a blind dodo wisdom score has been fun to play.

GMPC: Please don't do this. If necessary to prevent us getting slaughtered in the final part of the story I'd rather see you handle it like the oarsman in the first scene. Perhaps three 2nd lvl Havardr warriors, one run by each player. Or something more tailored to the characters - animated dolls for Tyv, proto-plasm shadow for Havark etc, renewable mirror images for Glowen etc.

Game-styles: Kinda hate gestalt. Never tried mythic but everything I've heard about it has been troubling so I'd rather not go there.

Genre and theme-wise I enjoy high fantasy with a dark edge. I wouldn't want planar travel or undersea to be the focus of the game though as set pieces I'm sure they would be fun. Kingdom building by PbP I've found to be dry, and hard to keep all the players equally engaged in.

Cool. I'm happy you want to continue. I like Havark he is too blessed to be so short lived :)

Recruitment is fine: My longest game is now over 3 years on here and we have not had to recruit more though there was a few months of inactivity we are going strong now. It is gestalt.

My next longest at over 2 years is one of Rednal's I believe it was his first game. Forgotten God. I was the first player selected and it is a solo game, but we had really good submissions so it became a 2 person game. We have had to recruit players 3 other times in that one. It is triple gestalt and mythic.

4 out of the 9 games I'm active in our gestalt. I love it. I play your run of the mill guys all the time in other games and in live games my buddies run. PBP lets you go grand scale. The issue really comes to what work you want and can put in as the GM. Gestalt at lower levels is probably about CR+1 or 2 depending on the strength of the builds. Havark wouldn't change much at all he would just be Soulknife/Psywarrior instead of multiclass.

Genre I like epic scale. Huge story arcs like Lord of the Rings, or Star Wars. You know a big unfolding story. I like feeling like the world is depending on what your characters do no matter the setting. High fantasy is what I prefer as well.

Look forward to continuing.

I plan on continuing discussion the above once Glówen reappears, but I don't know where he is. His last post on the forums was a week ago, and two days before that on this game; I PMed him on Sunday. His Facebook (predictably) offers me no insight. So uhh, I guess we'll keep an eye out?

Sounds good.

So sorry for disappearing. Kept thinking I'd just post tomorrow.... No good excuse. Just been busy and distracted. Plus, with this being such an incredibly rich, full flavored game, I feel compelled to keep up with the role play. It just feels wrong to post anything less than a full paragraph or three.

Yes, I'd love to continue. But my play and attendance are likely to be worse than my die rolls for a while. I do not want to kill the group by leaving, but I also do not want to torture you with less postings than I committed to at the start.

-Posted with Wayfinder

Alright, fair enough. I don't feel you did a poor of a job keeping up on RP, and I've gone easy on the '1/day' posting because I dialed back my posting a bit as well. The lack of communication is what's killer though - a ten word PM to say 'hey, it might be a bit before I post' would have allowed me to move the game forward without having to guess if I'm cutting you off.

So we'll let you bow out gracefully. Thanks for playing Archmage; it was a lot of fun, and if you think you can make the commitment work someday, I'm not opposed to finding a way to bring you back in. In the meantime, we'll make due. No hard feelings. :-)

Alright, so, responding to discussion topics!

RE: Recruitment
I'll ask my friend and poke around for interest with other friends of mine, now that we're down another. I like building my GMing chops by playing with people I don't see in my F2F games, so I don't know if I'd have anyone else under that criteria that would be interested, but I'll give it a shot. Failing either of those? Unless you guys got somebody you know that would want in, I'll reopen recruitment.

RE: Gestalt/Rebuild
Yeah, to be clear, I'm not meaning to offer a straight rebuild of the characters, but more of a 'reimagining' your build with an increased power level. That said, I'd absolutely allow a free retaining of anything you thought you'd get use out of, but haven't touched. I was sure Havark would be cool with gestalt (seeing as this isn't the only group I see you in :-P), but I'm a little surprised you're not so hot on it, Tyv, because (warning, tangent time) the problems I have with it wouldn't apply to your character. As a player, I don't always like gestalt because I play goofy classes and weird systems, it feels really forced to make, for example, a gestalt truenamer//medium, and its a challenge to blend those very distinct flavors. But as a First Folk, you can just gestalt the Fey Racial Paragon class and not have that problem! (tangent done) Again, not saying you should or shouldn't, but thinking aloud about all this. If you'd rather not, Tyv, we won't gestalt because it's not the game you signed up for - for that reason, the decision to change should be unanimous.

RE: GMPC
Fair enough, Tyv! When I've had to do it, I've absolutely hated it - I only have interest in running a PC if that's the ONLY thing I'm doing. Despite all the horror stories of other people's GMPCs, I've recently read some insight on what generally goes wrong in those cases, and why I even brought it up, but we'll pass on this anyway.

RE: Underlings
The idea of giving you guys some underlings was something I was already thinking about. Wouldn't expect you guys to go and pick up the book out the door, but I had wanted to blend in most-if-not-all of the rules from Ultimate Charisma into this game, if you two would be amenable to it. It's relevant here because one of the big overhauls is that Leadership is no longer a feat - it's instead an assumed part of a character that anyone can invest time into. You gain 'perks' at even levels, which are like feats related to the system... and if you don't want your character to have a cohort and/or followers? There's perks you can only gain for opting out.

What do you guys think about this? Like I said, I'd guide you through it at first while we try it out, but it could be implemented immediately, and I think it should offer some opportunity for breathing-room regarding recruitment. I also think it opens up a lot of cool opportunities for after this adventure ends.

RE: Mythic/Kingdom Building
Yeah, I've never done mythic, but I've looked a lot into what it's problems are and possible solutions in each case. Kingdom building/downtime management rules would definitely take a backseat to awesome adventure, and if it still got bogged down, I'd be cool with running the mechanics in the background and/or just handwaving all of it! With these specifically, that's why I mentioned to worry less about whether the rules work and are fun, because I get a lot of fun from strangling them to make them work, if they don't. (Laying Waste, Alternate Chase Rules, and now suggesting Ultimate Charisma... I think you guys might have picked up on that bit.) :-)

RE: Genre
High fantasy, with a dark edge, on a grand scale? Done.

Did I miss anything?

RE: Gestalt/Rebuild Well, mixing in the fey paragon is an idea that I can get excited about, and might make that class actually survivable ( I love the ideas behind the class but the execution seems very weak). My experience with gestalt has been poor - power gamer characters with more options at their fingertips than they know what to do with. They overlapped each others specialties and lacked, well, character, or narrative logic. But under the eye of a good GM and with responsible players, I suppose I could give it another whirl.

Re Ultimate Charisma - I'm intrigued... Never liked leadership as a feat but this sounds fun.

I can see Havark attracting people for his prowess but why would they stay. I think they would still see he lacks strength and chalk his ability up to magic or blessings. I don't see him being a leader.

Thanks for understanding.
Good luck to you all! (Sorry, Havark, that I'm not around to karma-balance the dice :) )

Tyv:
Cool and cool, on both accounts. I can understand the powergamer concern with gestalt, but this definitely isn't the game for that and I don't think anyone will sneak by with something utterly broken. Even if they did, I've got a knack for creating balanced encounters where characters of wildly different power can all participate and contribute.

Havark:
Right. You get a Leadership Score as before, which (sans any perks) is level+CHA, so your ability/lack-there-of would be fully represented. So for your character, there could be two paths to take with this system. 1) If being a leader doesn't fit with your vision of Havark, there are 'loner' perks that you can only access when you don't have any cohorts or followers; the most notable of these being one that grants you a bonus feat instead. Starting at 6th level, you could grab one that grants an animal companion instead of a cohort. Stuff like that 2) If you don't see Havark as a leader for "in-fiction" reasons, the perks will let you work through that too, if you desire. There's a perk for each of the other 5 ability scores to let you substitute that score for CHA in your leadership score, such as 'Renowned for Wisdom'. There's another where being aloof gets you a bonus to your score, rather than a penalty. There's a lot more of them too, but because of the way the book overhauls some systems & interacts with others, it's not easy to give a thorough summary. So, while I can't speak from experience because you guys would be the first group I'm trying this out with, Ultimate Charisma seems really well-rounded. Same as I said to Tyv regarding gestalt though, this wasn't in place when you signed up for the game, if you want to pass on it, we will.

As an aside, in-fiction, Havark so far has been proven to have fate on his side. Even with his small stature and callous attitude, folks would find reason to follow Havark if only for how well he fights, so culturally, it's not a stretch. I mean, if you had the choice to follow 'the chosen one', wouldn't you do it even if he was sort of a jerk? Keep rolling like you have been up to Glowen's departure, and that's how Northmen will come to look at it.

Sounds good I will give the book a look.

! You could have sneezed on Lady Twin-Blades and she woulda been your friend. Hush up.] ;-)

Well, that's because Tyv has ridiculously cute fairy sneezes that no one can resist...

:-P @ Tyv
Get a chance to pore through Ultimate Charisma yet, guys? What do we think?

In the meantime, I'm still asking around in my friend group if anyone's interested, but no leads yet. If do pull someone(s) from that group, they'll almost certainly be a newb. So with that in mind, rather than having them roll up a 4th-level no-stalt at a 15-pt buy that will change in a couple of months, why don't you guys go ahead and switch over now? Upgrade to a 20-point buy, gestalt, and free-retraining of any feats/class abilities/skills you haven't yet used in play. If we go ahead with Ult Cha, then you will also have two perks to select. Sound good?

Ok, so I went and bought Ult Cha. I'm still wrapping my head around it. I get uncoupling leadership form the feat. The psychological maneuvers seem, I don't know - unwieldy. Tyv would be oppurtinistacly affronting everybody all the time!

Relationships and reputation didn't excite me much- just seemed like extra layers of book keeping for stuff that can be accomplished with good role playing instead.

The perks system - without the reputation, army, contacts etc stuff there isn't much there. Without knowing what will be relevant to the campaign, I'm kinda lost as to what to take.

I see that this is a celebrated product and I don't mean to sound like a wet blanket, but I'm just not getting it yet. I am totally open to whatever you want to do with it though...just might take a bit of hand holding at first.

Edit...maybe its because I haven't read Ultimate Campaign that I feel like I'm missing big gaps of relevancy here

Works for me. Being without Ultimate Campaign definitely would leave a few holes, but I think there's also a bit of what's spinning in my head that would be good to share here. And I do not mind hand-holding with this! So, point by point:

• Psych Maneuvers - I'm not sure I follow the unwieldy line beyond random guesses... But please! Take those affronts of opportunity! Mechanically, I feel like characters become automatons once combat starts; even if you RP your way through it, it doesn't bear on combat's outcome. I'm hoping that PM's will amend that a bit.
• Relationships - This can be as transparent or not with the mechanics as you like. Though there is opportunity for you guys to gain a bonus trait from being awesome at relationships, I think this will play to my benefit much more: a codified system for how much an NPC likes/dislikes you, why they do, and how to appropriately change that over time. (As an aside, I'm one of those guys that likes extra book-keeping.) :-P
• Reputation - Everything I said about relationships applies here, but there's an addendum. The Midgard Campaign Setting was released before Ultimate Campaign and contained very reputation-esque rules for tracking 'status' of players, so this layer will definitely have some in-game effects.

I haven't looked at it yet. I will go ahead and Gestalt up today and give it a look. I'm fine using it without looking yet.

How did we do HP. Min is not max and it's not average. Did we roll? Can't remember.

Found it looks like I rolled in the recruitment thread.

HP level 4: 1d10 ⇒ 7

So how do you want to handle soulknife and automatic bonus progression? There is no clear cut rule and seems up to GM. Opinions seem to be all over on it. Thanks.

I think what we'll do is 'refund' you that part of the progression. You don't ever get to attune other weapons with ABS (e.g., no picking up a crossbow at 9th level and 'deciding' that it's your +2 weapon for the day), but at the levels where you'd normally benefit weapon attunements, I'll make sure that your WBL is adjusted accordingly. Obviously, this will be wealth the party comes across as a whole, but care will be taken to ensure that there is at least a slight bias towards things that Havark would find useful. Sound good?

Yep seemed to be what most suggested. The Jarl could certainly reward Havark for how well he has represented the house in these duels and for keeping his children safe ;)

Also need to reroll for level 3 as it was a psychic warrior level and a 1d8 instead of d10

HP: 1d10 ⇒ 7 netted one more HP.

So this seems weird or maybe it would be too good, but why can't a Psy Warrior use call weaponry to call a Mindblade. It seems like the Mind Knight Path was made for such but they didn't spell out you can do it. I know the Dark Tempest prestige class lets you use your blade skills on a called weapon. What do you think GM Seems pretty clear it's not allowed but am I missing something?

Yeah, while a little weird, I'd say that RAW, you can't get the bonuses to your mind blade from call weaponry. Of course these rules aren't written with gestalt characters in mind, and you should be able to get some mileage out of the trance. The compromise I'm thinking is this: you can retrieve your mind blade with call weaponry as long as you spend the PP for it - you can't get it by expending your psionic focus. You get the Mind Knight benefits as well as the +1 ML when you do this, but I think it's too much to allow you to spam focus all day to stack your Psy War benefit ON TOP of the usual soulknife stuff.

Also, I'm exactly as familiar with psionics as needed to understand Havark's abilities (and a couple of my own theoretical builds). As such, I'm reserving the right to change my mind on this ruling if it turns out to bite me in the ass. :-P

So I've been playing around with lots of different gestalt options and can't settle on one. Can you guys help me spitball some ideas?

I do like the idea of the racial paragon class, but it just seems so underpowered, or rather, its powers are mismatched to its chassis. It tries to hang all these melee and short range powers on a d6 1/2 BAB frame. I love the idea of Tyv actually having claws etc, but combined with his no-str build it would by pretty pointless. Gestalting isturning Havark into even more of a combat juggernaut than he already is, and I'd like Tyv to stay at least somewhat relevant in combats.

So that leaves me with the seasons aspect, which gives him a middling but versatile all-day blast. Beyond that he would gain 4 more skills/level, better ref saves and DR 1

Other combos I looked at were swashbuckler, or the sphere versions of witch, bard or oracle. All would net better BAB, more HP, more weapon proficiencies and a host of neat spells and/or abilities.

Please share your thoughts on which direction I should take him

I agree, if we do something and it ends up being super powered then change away.

@Tyv. I'm not real sure what would go well off hand. I haven't looked at your class. I will try and give it a look today if I get a chance. Swashbuckler is never bad. You can look at it as giving your more survivability. I have no intention of Havark soloing things besides for these duels. I was and still am a bit surprised at how strong of a combat build he is for the level.

This Feat May be why you can't call the mindblade with call weaponry. I mean on a normal multiclass it would be fine but in Gestalt it will break it. This would give me a trance now of +2att/+2dam or +2 worth of abilities. At level 7 it would be +3 and at level 8 a +4.

Maybe I would be better off just going weapon master. I chose mindknight purely for the ability to have inertial armor up all day by using focus. This won't be an issue now since it last 4 hours when used. So the question now is how do we handle the above or do we just say forget about it and I switch to weapon master?

Tyv, I like a lot of the other In the Company of... classes, and I really WANT to like the fey's racial class... but yeah, I agree it isn't great. Sphere Witch sounds like a good choice thematically, but I don't know how effective it would be when your hexes would still be based off of Int. Otherwise, swashbuckler seems like it'd get you to your goals, but it didn't seem to me like it fit Tyv's character. Bard and oracle are a bit closer on both accounts. To make the best use of your Dex bonus in combat, the unchained rogue would do well (Weapon Finesse + selective Dex to damage), on top of improving Reflex saves and giving you skill points. Finally, picking through my 3PP library, a couple other classes come to mind:

• Bard (Talented): The Talented series takes classes and breaks their class abilities & archetypes into a couple of menus of abilities - edges & talents. You get bardic performance automatically, but you only start with counter song. Other than that, you select additional performances, class abilities, and spellcasting all through the edge & talent system. I've yet to roll up a talented character for gestalt, but it seems smart: since everything is pick & choose, you can avoid doubling up on similar abilities, and more intelligently compliment your build. If desired, I've also homebrewed edges for the talented classes to grant spherecasting in line with how spell edges were written. Source: The Talented Bard by Rogue Genius Games
• Dread: Maybe be a stretch for the theme, but between CHA-based manifesting, inflicting fear-themed debuffs, and the 3/4ths BAB prog plus an all-day touch attack, this would bump up both Tyv's combat prowess & the creepy factor. Not to mention 6 skill points/level and good Reflex saves too. Source: Ultimate Psionics by Dreamscarred Press
• Legendary Rogue: If Tyv were my character and my only goal was to make him as effective as possible, this is how I'd do it. This class argues that the unchained rogue wasn't enough of an improvement and pushes the power level a little bit further - attacks and saves improve (but don't quite reach the next progression), and you get abilities that build on & take advantage of your sneak attack dice. (For example, starting at 3rd level, you deal +1 damage/sneak attack die on a critical hit, and multiply that number by the crit multiplier.) Combined with a 'talented-esque' system of choosable abilities - 'avoidances, instincts, & talents' - this class is very powerful, without (I think) crossing the line and being OP. Don't know if rogue fits your ideas for Tyv, but you couldn't do wrong by this mechanically. There's also a Legendary Swashbuckler that does similar things to that class, though not to the same extent. Source: Legendary Rogues by Legendary Games
• Luckbringer: CHA-based, buff/debuff/skill monkey. Manipulates the powers of luck & fate, forcing rerolls, granting luck bonuses, stuff like that. Some of the abilities are pretty thematically awesome, and fate, as you are well-aware by now, is a strong presence in the Northlands. Source: The Secrets of Adventuring by Rite Publishing.
• Survivor: D12 HD, Full BAB, good Fortitude saves, and 6 skill points/level - this class is about being tough to kill. Uncanny dodge, grant yourself & allies bonuses to saves, add your level to your Con score to determine your death threshold, a sixth sense that allows you to 'know that you're being watched', and you can grab DR 3/-. That's a little over half of what the class grants you by 4th level. Great thematic choice from Tyv's backstory I think, and great for gestalting because most of the class's benefits are passive. His few abilities that are based on ability scores are CON-based, so going this direction means you'll want to at least think about putting some of the improved point-buy into Constitution. I would say the only other downside is that it's not available on SRD and it's in a decent-sized book with you'd have to buy... but IIRC, you tossed around the idea of rolling up a demiurge at the beginning of this game, which would mean you already have Liber Influxus Communis. :-P

Havark, I had seen that feat. Figured it wasn't worth worrying about until you tried to take it. :-P

Regarding Retraining
Alright, since Havark's asking about his path and I know Tyv wasn't entirely happy with his soulweaver's spheres, I'm adding an addendum here.

Upgrade to a 20-point buy, gestalt, and free-retraining of any feats/class abilities/skills you haven't yet used in play. You may also retrain any abilities that have been used in play at this time, with the understanding that when your character has downtime, they will pay the cost and spend the time required to retrain that ability by the end of that period. You may also retrain class levels in this way.

Hmm...survivor. I hadn't considered that.

Do you have a deadline for getting these redesigns done? I'd like to read up on the dread and legendary rogue, time permitting.

I'm not in any huge rush - I've got a couple of personal projects that I'm near wrapping up, and I'm still trawling my friend group for potential new players before giving up & starting a new recruitment thread. I can make good use of a short break is what I'm saying, so take your time. :-)

I'm not worrying about retraining. We can revisit it later if I try and take the feat. I think I will just try it as you put forward and may just ignore that feat exist.

He is already a combat beast. With just using Animal Affinity now will push his AC to 30 with a +13 or +14, or +15 to hit depending on situation and if weapon was called with call weaponry. Will be looking over Ultimate charisma to add that. I put a skill point in diplomacy and took it as my +2 for my skill boost from Psy warrior so I have a +4 to Diplomacy ;). Maybe the longer he spends around people he will be able to talk to them better :)

Yeah, Havark is appalingly gross to go up against in a fight. Fortunately, he's not the first of such melee combatants I've had to GM for - the orc barbarian that rolled extremely well on ability scores has turned out pretty menacing as well. Though his player doesn't crit quite so much. :-P I dunno though, I might miss Havark hopping around on one foot with the other firmly secured in his mouth. :-D

Oh he will remain blunt and sorta mean, it just may be people start to respect or accept him based on fear of his reputation ;)

Yeah damage isn't hard to achieve in a lot of different builds. This may be the best I have done with great AC and Damage for his level. Usually it takes triple gestalt to achieve such.

Mhm. Alright, so update for you both: an old college bud of mine has not only mentioned interest but is following through on learning Pathfinder, reading up on the game, and getting a character made. He's got a couple kids & two jobs, so it may be a few weeks before he's completely ready to go, but I'm confident at this point that he'll be joining us before too long. So you know a little of what to expect, he's rolling up a swashbuckler (inspired blade)//bard (spherecaster, wit). I think the extent of RPGs he's played is a D6 Star Wars game he ran one session of ~7 years ago, but he's been interested in them for a while, and we're going to run a mock combat or two so he learns what his character can do and how the game plays a little before he joins up, so it should be good!

Do we want to try to track down a fourth player then, or do you think, given everything's gestalt now, that three players should work? I don't currently hold an opinion either way, so you're feedback is appreciated. From what he tells me, his posting will be very similar to Havark's - he'll post while he's got downtime at work Monday to Friday.

Yikes! Throwing him in the deep end aren't you?

Eh, I mean a bit, but I did explain the complexity of the options he was selecting, and he's not unfamiliar with fiddly rules and their complex interactions (see: Magic the Gathering). Though it's been a while since I introduced someone new to the game, so is there something that you think might be a bit too much for him? I've admittedly not rolled up a swashbuckler before, and I'm certainly not looking to scare him away from Pathfinder. :-P

Oh I'm sure he'll be fine - its a lot to digest at once though. PbP is probably a good forum for it as the pace is slower and he has time to consider all of the many options he will have from round to round.

Yeah that was part of my angle too: "If we were doing a live game, I'd say something else might be easier to understand, but given the pace you'll have some time to think it over." Your post seemed a lot more alarmed than I guess you actually were. :-P

Given the nature of my job, he'll also be able to get get a hold of me at most any time (that I'm awake) if he needs help with rules questions before a post, so that's also to his benefit. Anyway, what was your thought on another PC? Hunt down one more, or see about carrying on with the gestalt three's company?

Guess I should have prefaced that with a smiley :>

I'm game for three - especially if we are using the leadership stuff, firepower shouldn't be an issue, and it is one less person to wait for posting, so thing should move pretty briskly ( by PbP standards anyway )

***

So I've been enjoying batting around different builds for Tyv and thought I'd share where I was so far. Thanks in advance for listening to my ramblings...

I've only played gestalt once before and it was a bit of a mess, so I started by asking, "what's the goal of a gestalt character?" Is every character supposed to be self sufficient ( melee/caster), with overlapping roles, or is overspecializing the way to go ( melee/melee or caster/caster). From the forums it looks like players generally prefer to build generalists. Which raises the next question - "What's the goal of a gestalt party?" If each PC is relatively autonomous, how does that change the way they operate as a team? Guess I'll just figure that out as we go.

Next I went back and revisited what I wanted Tyv to be and what kind of character I wanted to play. I originally planned him as a full caster - using the plant sphere to exert control of the battlefield and death to affect enemies directly, with life to support/heal allies. So do I want to build on that or use gestalt as a mean to do different stuff?

Through playing him there was this spooky aspect coming through that I enjoyed - For example, I could totally see Bardr waking up his first night of exile with a clawed little deomon-fey grinning at him from the foot of his bed ( cut to blood-spattering on tent canvas). And he wasn't really equipped to go investigating the Thing bullies on his own when the occasion presented itself. So maybe something with melee capabilities and stealth would be a good add on. Its also not something our party currently has in its arsenal.

That all leads to the following possible build:

1 Fey Paragon / 3 Legendary Rogue: the paragon is there to get the aspected form with the claws. Rogue gets him dex to damage, and all the stealthy goodness that goes with roguery. Absolutely no improvent to his spellcasting though

Okay, so I gotta learn not to post right before leaving for work - never enough time to finish. So, ramblings part 2...

4 survivalist (LIC): definitely makes him tougher ( theoretically doubling hp excepting bad dice rolls) and gives him a good skill and save boost, but even with full BAB his combat performance would be mediocre at best without a STR bonus. No spellcasting improvement.

4 Metamorph (LIC): Okay now this has some flavour potential, essentially letting me created a better aspected form than the fey paragon. Lacks the skill pool of the survivalist and rogue, and with no path to dex to damage, may suffer the same problem as the survivalist o not packing any real oomph. might be able to build in some other neat maneuver based tricks, but again, no str equals poor CMB.

All caster options:

4 sphere oracle or sorcerer: big boost to spell casting and so cool little powers from bloodline/mystery. For Oracle I'm thinking haunted/Occult. For sorc bloodline, meh, none really interest me.

4 Fey Adept (SoP) or Hedge Witch(SoP): these are 3/4 BAB casters with some cool and thematic secondary powers. While Fey adept seems like a logical choice, I'm not too keen on the illusion focus. There is the unseelie variant that trades much of that out for sneak attacks and rogue talents that might be interesting though.

I thought the SoP shifter might be great, Giving Tyv that fey fighting form I'm looking for and giving him the ability to turn people into frogs! But its WIS based, so no go.

Thanks for listening - just typing out all the options helps the process.

No problem listening! I don't have a 9 GB 3PP folder on my hard drive because I hate sifting through options. :-P Before I talk build-stuff, my impression of the popularity of gestalt on the forums, and why I'm including it here, is for the wide skill set. Especially when the party is undersized, it means they won't crash and burn. I dunno about self-sufficient (that's probably tristalt territory), but wearing many hats a goal. Fortunately, magic in itself (even spheres) is a number of hats.

Now, based off of taking 3 levels of Legendary Rogue (aka, what looked like the path you were on as of only the first post :-D), I fiddled around with a few other options for a one-level sphere dip that serves you a bit better than fey paragon - provided you don't need claws all day and didn't care about the DR 1/cold iron.

If you want my input on what you tossed around in the second post, there's a little bit relevant above, but you'll have to wait 30 hours for more. I got sorta carried away and should have hopped in the shower two hours ago to be in bed one hour ago. I'm going to be at the MN State Fair all day tomorrow, so I likely won't be able to pull coherent thoughts together again until Tuesday.

If you're ready to finish your build and don't want to wait for more input from me... cool! It's your character. Go nuts. :-D

3 is fine. Kind of the model Rednal runs his games on as you know. That is another reason pretty much all of his games are gestalt as well. Less people should mean more posting. I'm here a lot through they day as well if you buddy has questions.

Yeah. Azul wasn't a super consistent poster, so it didn't set up a great baseline in my head, but when it went full speed, Glowen+Havark+Tyv moved pretty quick. We'll keep the group at 3, then. And I'll make sure Josh knows he can ask you for help with posts whenever. :-) Have you chosen perks yet, Havark?

Also, as far as your stat blocks go with UC rules, will you make them look something like this, and please include your Psy DC in your quickbar?

Only awake out of sheer necessity - I literally slept 15 minutes last night through no fault of my own, but currently doing some work to do at home that I can multi-task with this. Thus, I'll continue with the Tyv-ening tomorrow as stated.

Yeah finished the change this morning. Went with Loaner perks: Loan Wolf and Honed Skill.

Seemed to make sense for Havark based on his backstory and personality. I think at 6th I will pick up renowned for wisdom as he gains notoriety and then shift from the loaner stuff and attract follower down the line if it works out that way. Felt like a more natural evolution of his character. I like that Loaner included in it that you could drop them and attract follower later on if things changed in your life :)

Everything should be in profile

Havark,
That bit about loner perks IS cool, isn't it? Options that encourage rather than stifle character maturation/growth are always awesome. Yup, looks like you got everything put down except for the addition of PDC to the quickbar. I'm going to plug it all into Hero Lab tomorrow so that it can double-check the math for me, so if anything comes up there I'll pass that along. :-D

Tyv,

Of course, if you focus on spheres, that gives you a lot more talents to get alteration up and running as you'd like, especially if you wanna run with the idea of transmuting your allies and enemies too. Even without leveling in shifter, there's still a lot that the sphere itself offers you. :-P There were to other ideas I played around with: another shifter+binder style class that I thought could be a good fit, but it's based off WIS, so it's the same problem. The other is CON-based and while it's really cool and has *some* flexible options, it's very animal-based a la Animorphs and not at all what you're trying to do. So, metamorph or Alteration sphere is definitely your best bet for working that angle.

With that in mind then, as I played around with above for claws, here's a way to achieve Dex-to-damage with a 1-level dip.

Blaergh! So many good options - my head's gonna explode!!

:>

Working up a couple of builds over the next couple of day to see what looks best on paper. Alteration sphere looked promising but it takes a standard action and a spell point to activate. That makes it tough to use in a tight pinch and yet another drain on Tyv's SPs.

I think part of my dilemma here is that I'm trying to do too much with the character: nat weapon combatant, stealthy sneaker, diplomat/intimidator, nature/plant themed spells, healer, soul-stealer, reliable ranged attack, and now guy who turns his enemies into frogs and donkeys. I've got to sit down and focus back to my core concept for this guy.

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