Val can come along with Markus on his nighttime hunts for Sosiel's body!
If she asks/tells him that she's gonna be doing some burglary, he'll absolutely come along for some support as well. He's still got that potion of invisibility and he can disable pursuers.
This is actually kinda disappointing (the Sosiel thing). I was really looking forward to meeting that character. (This is supposed to be a harmless complaint, not a formal one).
Feedback on the encounter: Without having read the K.Planes, I can honestly say I was not expecting the fight to be so brutal. But that's not really an issue. What dumbfounded me was that the Ezrous spent all their resources killing 5 people when they were in the middle of an enemy city. It felt like an overkill. Unless, of course, demons have no care for their own safety.
I think we were operating under a very faulty premise, namely the assumption that Sosiel was still within the temple, with one or more other priests. Since we (or at least, I) was under the impression that the attack just began, I (and by extension, Ehren) didn't even bother to consider the possibility that the priests were not even in the temple. None of us did, actually. Isilme did here in discussion, but by that point our characters had no reason to come to that conclusion
Seeing the hezrous in front of the temple, even though they were preoccupied, I got the impression that there might still be people within that were in mortal peril, or that possibly couldn't get out because there were demons in the way. Hence the entire idea of providing some kind of heroic distraction, to rescue some priests that ended up being purely imaginary.
I don't feel like you misrepresented the situation... I think I was just acting under a rather huge assumption that we had no chance to correct. Or at least, by the time we could, it was already too late.
Yeah, my feedback on the encounter is that I understand it was supposed to be difficult. Here's my thought:
-I was under the impression that we thought there were helpless priests in the temple that the hezrous might kill.
-I wanted the party to lead the hezrous off for a bit, to buy Aron and Annabelle time to search the temple and lead the priests away. Maybe two or three rounds.
-We had absolutely no room to actually escape once they engaged combat with us. We were all paralyzed for 3 turns in a row once they engaged and the deaths happened during that same duration. There was basically nothing we could do to disengage.
TL;DR: We should have had at least some opportunity to actually retreat even after we made the mistake of engaging. We had none until they were out of blasphemies, and I was the only one alive after that.
One more thing: Annabelle had no opportunity to notice what was happening. How were we supposed to notice the illusory wall or the invisible rogues?
One FINAL thing: When in melee with a hezrou, you have no chance to escape. If you try to move-action away, you get AoO'd and grappled. If you try to Acrobatics away, you don't get far enough. You can't withdraw because they have reach.
I wouldn't complain normally, because it was kind of a f*#$ up, but you also actively prevented us from leaving the fight once it started, which is kind of a sh*tty thing to do.
Hmmm, did I keep you from leaving the fight? It went down really quickly, true, but that's kinda what blasphemy does when you engage a caster much higher level than you.
I suppose I could have ran the entire side quest toned down for a group of 3, but that would have been over a month of encounters the other 3 players couldn't engage in.
The entire goal of the mission was to save Sosiel, and you guys failed on the first encounter, so I think it's an appropriate repercussion :)
It's sad, but it's not like you guys have a shortage of NPCs. And I actually think it's a more interesting turn of events for Aron in particular.
Yes, but just because it's logical doesn't make it fair. There are acceptable breaks from logic to make a game actually fun and I think it's safe to say that everyone just feels like this encounter was bad.
I still want to go looking for his body and robbing some rich assh*les to pay for him to be reincarnated. You forget, Val plays Robin Hood professionally and she is in a bad mood.
And again - Markus also wants to go looking.
I've already stated my personal thoughts. I think Annabelle should have had a chance to see the thieves, to determine the actual events that transpired.
I also think that a single hezrou and several weaker demons would have been more appropriate.
I disagree pretty strongly. The encounter was pretty clear in intent and warned us quite obviously that messing with Hezrous was a death sentence. The description of the demons made it clear no one was in immediate danger and so our MO should obviously have been stealth. We inflicted this on ourselves despite clear warnings and vehement objections from Val and isilme.
I pointed out pretty clearly that fighting them was a bad idea and that we had other options. Scouting with invis, or using invis sphere to bypass the Hezrous and find a back way in should have been our priority. Failing that we needed to commit to fighting them properly, which means that the first round should've been a surprise action from Val with Ary and Hina charging shortly afterwards, with the intent of damaging both demons to prevent summons.
I know y'all think I am exceedingly fatalistic, but the last three quests we've had fights where we lived through sheer luck, and fared significantly worse because we did not take it seriously. This fight was a culmination of that. We didn't think it through in character or out of character and we paid an appropriate price for it. I had expected 3-4 deaths from the beginning with a serious possibility of TPK since they can teleport at-will. It is only because Ehren landed the blind that we ever had a chance of escaping after the pull, and the successful summon ruined that. In the end we only managed to save three because the imp got two out. Both Val and Isilme would have died otherwise.
This site traffic is frustrating me more than anything about the encounter. There is stuff I want to say, dammit. :(
I'm always happy to get feedback so thanks :D
Hope this clears up anything odd:
Feedback on the encounter: Without having read the K.Planes, I can honestly say I was not expecting the fight to be so brutal. But that's not really an issue. What dumbfounded me was that the Ezrous spent all their resources killing 5 people when they were in the middle of an enemy city. It felt like an overkill. Unless, of course, demons have no care for their own safety.
Well, from the hezrou POV, they're used to rolling up into armies of lowish level crusaders and killing all of them with a single blasphemy :) So when they failed to insta-kill all 8 of you, they actually started taking you guys a lot more seriously.
Also, you guys had good aligned weapons, so they were fully aware you were capable of killing them if they didn't put in their best effort. So they in fact staggered blasphemy because they cared about their own safety ;)
I think we were operating under a very faulty premise, namely the assumption that Sosiel was still within the temple, with one or more other priests. Since we (or at least, I) was under the impression that the attack just began, I (and by extension, Ehren) didn't even bother to consider the possibility that the priests were not even in the temple. None of us did, actually. Isilme did here in discussion, but by that point our characters had no reason to come to that conclusion
Yes, you guys assumed there was a group of priests in immediate peril despite having no proof of this happening other than the fact that Aron assumed that they were there.
The attack had just begun but remember you had to travel a bit to get to the temple from the Hunting Vrock - during this time Sosiel and the other priests escaped, locked the door, and left a helpful note for you guys to determine where they went.
I don't feel like you misrepresented the situation... I think I was just acting under a rather huge assumption that we had no chance to correct. Or at least, by the time we could, it was already too late.
Yes, this is true, but I honestly feel that if I held back with the hezrou that would have been playing them dishonestly, or "coddling" you guys to make room for a mistake. You guys made a poor decision, and now have suffered consequences for it.
The alternative is of course to have a game with no (fatal) consequences - that is not something I set out to do - but if you guys are interested in such a game we can do things differently. I do want you guys to have fun, that is the point.
Yeah, my feedback on the encounter is that I understand it was supposed to be difficult. Here's my thought:
-I was under the impression that we thought there were helpless priests in the temple that the hezrous might kill.
-I wanted the party to lead the hezrous off for a bit, to buy Aron and Annabelle time to search the temple and lead the priests away. Maybe two or three rounds.
-We had absolutely no room to actually escape once they engaged combat with us. We were all paralyzed for 3 turns in a row once they engaged and the deaths happened during that same duration. There was basically nothing we could do to disengage.TL;DR: We should have had at least some opportunity to actually retreat even after we made the mistake of engaging. We had none until they were out of blasphemies, and I was the only one alive after that.
One more thing: Annabelle had no opportunity to notice what was happening. How were we supposed to notice the illusory wall or the invisible rogues?
One FINAL thing: When in melee with a hezrou, you have no chance to escape. If you try to move-action away, you get AoO'd and grappled. If you try to Acrobatics away, you don't get far enough. You can't withdraw because they have reach.
The encounter was actually meant to be really easy, hehe. Because it didn't really cross my mind that anyone would want to fight the hezrou :) My other group certainly didn't, and they are the grand-king-champions of fighting things I don't intend for them to fight.
Getting away from the hezrou is very very difficult, this is true! Mostly because of summons and blasphemy and grab and nausea and at-will teleport. But these are all abilities you were aware of before engaging, you guys succeeded at revealing all of the knowledge checks. And they were difficult to get away from because they were too difficult for you guys to engage. That's kind of the nature of the demon.
I'm mostly sorry that it was so drawn out - in a f2f situation the fight would have been over extremely quickly, on pbp the tpk was drawn out over many days, which sucks.
As for the illusionary wall, in this post Annabelle was given a free perception check to notice the illusionary wall, but she failed it. I even unspoilered it even though its totally a hidden roll ;)
I also would have given the will save to anyone who took the time to inspect the back wall, since that meets the requirements of "interacting" with an illusion for the will save.
Yes, but just because it's logical doesn't make it fair. There are acceptable breaks from logic to make a game actually fun and I think it's safe to say that everyone just feels like this encounter was bad.
I still want to go looking for his body and robbing some rich assh*les to pay for him to be reincarnated. You forget, Val plays Robin Hood professionally and she is in a bad mood.
I think in the past I've shown that I try to run encounters as they'd play out logically - that way you guys can actually use logic to determine what will happen. Assuming that I will tone down an encounter to make it "playable" is a form of meta-gaming.
The point of the encounter was to give you an enemy you could not defeat with brawn, but with wit, so I think it was a fair encounter.
I also think that a single hezrou and several weaker demons would have been more appropriate.
I think what I've taken away from this is the hezrou was in this awkward grey area where you actually thought you had a chance of defeating them in normal combat. If I were to re-run the fight, I would utilize even more difficult demons, not less difficult ones, in order to make this more clear. It's just that the main issue here is the more difficult demons tend to have some kind of true-seeing attached, making the whole "sneak past" part of the encounter impossible.
I'm perfectly capable of producing fights you guys can defeat ;) A single hezrou and a squad of weak demons would have certainly been a fight you could have defeated in combat, but combat was not the point of the encounter.
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non sequitur: Also, Isilme is correct, my bad, the scrolls of restoration are 800 gp :)
One thing I want to add is that everyone should be reading the knowledge checks when we succeed on them, and if we get all of them we should be looking at the stat blocks. The knowledge checks are supposed to convey a lot of info, and just the RP text from whomever made it is not enough to go by sometimes.
Yeah, I agree - this...what is it, humble sale? It's bringing in too much lag.
I understand that the encounter was meant to be fatal. But for the purpose of fun, mistake corrections should be possible. And they weren't.
Thank you for your reasoning - stronger demons would indeed have been much more appropriate. Or even three or more hezrou to start with. A CR 13 encounter is not actually beyond us as a party (I've thrown APL + 8 encounters at my own party of 6) so it felt sorta like we could take it.
Of course, CR varies greatly by the creature. Seugathi, for instance, are brutal for CR 6, and apparently hezrou are quite brutal CR 11 creatures.
As for Isilme - I certainly look at the statblocks when we succeed at the Knowledge checks, but I know a couple of us (READ: Ary) get upset at that kind of thing and won't want to do it.
I think we've taken everything very seriously so far. The issue is that it doesn't seem to matter.
Prophecy hunt? We were constantly hit with spells that exist solely to lock down a battlefield from an enemy that no one in the party could hit because we have few ranged options. That's not our fault, that's Kiora hitting our weakest point as hard as possible. And when we finally started to succeed, he ran to a demon infested city that we couldn't hope to survive following him into. When Val was willing to risk her soul to deal with her demonic tag-a-long for a solution, the party shot that down, so we failed.
Ghalcor's tower? We were barely given enough time to activate the weapon at all and not informed that the prisms were needed to run it until right before the timer started. Which again is Kiora not giving us enough time or warning to prepare.
This last fight? We were told that the temple had a bunch of priests inside that were being menaced by high level demons. There was nothing 'no one in danger' about it. There was a clear and present threat to multiple innocent lives. We were never told that there was no one inside until it was far too late. I suggested teleporting out, but nope. We get paralyzed and the Horror decides to leave without half the party. A decision made entirely by Kiora.
Yes, you guys assumed there was a group of priests in immediate peril despite having no proof of this happening other than the fact that Aron assumed that they were there.
The attack had just begun but remember you had to travel a bit to get to the temple from the Hunting Vrock - during this time Sosiel and the other priests escaped, locked the door, and left a helpful note for you guys to determine where they went.
So what you're saying is that we should automatically distrust every NPC we meet because you're going to have them lie to make things harder for us. You can't expect us to question everything you have an NPC say and still expect us to be able to function in the campaign world.
The encounter was actually meant to be really easy, hehe. Because it didn't really cross my mind that anyone would want to fight the hezrou :) My other group certainly didn't, and they are the grand-king-champions of fighting things I don't intend for them to fight.
Getting away from the hezrou is very very difficult, this is true! Mostly because of summons and blasphemy and grab and nausea and at-will teleport. But these are all abilities you were aware of before engaging, you guys succeeded at revealing all of the knowledge checks. And they were difficult to get away from because they were too difficult for you guys to engage. That's kind of the nature of the demon.
You know what kind of players we are by now. Did you honestly think that Ary or Hina would leave the priests to their fate?
Additionally, you were under no obligation to use demons that are particularly hard to escape from. Nor were you under any obligation to make full use of their abilities. As I said, breaks from logic are acceptable to increase enjoyment. Instead of killing the entire party, offing a major NPC and making everyone unhappy, perhaps having them decide to toy with us for a round or two to make it clear that they don't consider six people a threat, therefore actually allowing us to escape when it became clear that they were too powerful, would have been a better idea. In fact, I feel confident in saying that yes, it would have been a much better idea. Breaking from your plans for an encounter when the party does something unexpected is kind of a necessity of being the GM.
Allow me to share a story. Once I was GMing Skulls and Shackles and I planned an encounter with a Manticore. A ship the party was raiding had a trained one on board for defense. The party was supposed to have a dramatic battle with it, then the other ship would surrender when it died. The ship alchemist attached twenty alchemist fires to a ballista bolt and killed it on his first initiative pass. So I changed my plans and had a squad of marines (ostensibly the beast's handlers) 'appear from below deck' and fight the party in a swashbuckling duel on deck before falling and the crew surrendered. Point being: I ran with the party doing something unexpected and made a different encounter instead of making the fight a massive anti-climax since I was caught off-guard. The moral: it is acceptable to alter encounters in the middle to make them more enjoyable.
Of course, CR varies greatly by the creature. Seugathi, for instance, are brutal for CR 6, and apparently hezrou are quite brutal CR 11 creatures.
Remember that fight I complained about with my in-person GM a while back? We didn't lose a single party member. Despite it being mathematically a CR 13~ encounter per party member, we were mostly fighting people with NPC level equipment, therefore making them weaker than they probably should be.
On the other hand, orcs exist. Orcs are CR 1/2. Orcs have diehard as a racial feature and +4 Str, making them melee monsters, as well as innate weapon proficiencies. Point being, Markus is right. A lot of Pathfinder monsters do not have an appropriate CR at all, and I feel like Hezrou are closer to CR 12-13 each. Which was definitely not taken into account.
About the spoilers, I usually read them when it is directly stated that one character shares the information. However, if Kiora agrees, I don't mind always considering that it is the case!
Thanks for the clarification on the fight Kiora. Makes sense!
Finally, one option which I use in my game when people die, are imprisoned and so forth, and the surviving ones want to go on, is to let the other players impersonate NPCs that might be helpful, and who would follow the PCs. That way, no one is left behind.
Valaria - I don't think that Aron was lying or that anybody thought that. He's an NPC with limited information.
I do think that it was definitely unclear from the start whether or not there were any priests in the temple. We had no line-of-sight and no way to confirm that there were definitely not until Hina was already dead and Ary was doomed.
If there WERE priests in the temple, I can assure you that our reasoning and course of action were entirely reasonable.
The issue isn't that Aron was lying, he didn't know. The issue is that why should I trust any information that Kiora gives me if she's going to manipulate us like that? If I can't trust any NPCs because I don't trust Kiora to let them have information on what's actually going on, what am I supposed to do? Am I just supposed to walk into every trap she sets because her NPCs are all working on misinformation? That's not fun. I might as well just go off an ignore the plot if the NPCs are all wrong about everything, because I certainly can't expect any quest or mission they give me to not get me killed.
I disagree about the last two sidequests.
Caggrigar was on us for not positioning properly, when we had several rounds of preparation, and had a general idea of what class the guy was. That being said, we still almost got the guy. Us not using the Bound Horror to our advantage was entirely reasonable, and to be honest, did not even need to be a group decision.
The tower, with full disclosure, played out almost exactly as written in the scenario. Ehren pointed out right away that the ley was powering the tower, and right after that, Markus identified the energy in the prism as being identical. Ehren collected it knowing that. The journal mentioned power sources. That being said, compared to what could have happened, we did amazing during that encounter, so I don't know what the problem with that was.
This... this is us failing for the first time, utterly and catastrophically, and I honestly think it's the real reason why this is so upsetting.
It's upsetting because the failure was completely unavoidable as soon as the first round of combat began. Which isn't fun. As I've already established. Which is a problem, because the point of a game is to be fun.
Also, I solidly disagree on Carriger. Did you see how much of the battlefield was hazards? We were spread out, it just didn't matter. We were also nowhere near 'almost got him'. He barely hit half health, then ran like a b*tch.
Honestly, I am not mad with anything that happened. Our characters are soon going to be reincarnated, people actually escaped the battle (which Kiora did not have to do, I feel like the bound horror is a deus ex machina), and we are going to reincarnate at least one NPC that died.
On the priests within the temple, I seems like it was a misunderstanding, which happened well after Kiora had put the demons. I don't think it would have been okay for her to weaken them because we made a mistake.
As for the priests in the temple, I never got the impression that they were still alive, no one was screaming, the demons were just defacing stuff. The reason why I decided to jump in was that I got the impression we could take them on, and in the worst case escape. sooo.... I guess I should apologize to you all (showing my canadian nature :P) for starting the battle. Sorry. However, I'll definitely be playing Hinagiku differently (much more careful) in the near future so as to show how this battle changed her. Should be fun!
Also, unless Kiora says it's impossible, Val's going to go find Sosiel's body and she's going to steal a lot of sh*t to buy more oil. Last chance to shoot me down flat.
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Things that I believe maybe should have gone differently, but they're just how I would expect things to happen. You're ultimately the narrator, so no harm done. :):
• You also prefaced the other fight with the big demon monster in the tower with 'This is too strong for you', but then added a mechanic that made it manageable: A high level set of crusaders (which is a logical expectation in Nerosyan).
• They couldn't summon, because upon arriving in the Crusader-filled city, they summoned as many brothers as they could to get the party started. It still makes 0 sense to me that while not engaged they didn't do so, if their goal was to wreck the world. I have no complaints about overuse of exploding our faces. I have complaints that they made it that far, with all blasphemies intact and with summons available, etc. If the demons are going to throw everything they have at -us-, they probably should have used -some- resources before meeting us.
• Fulfilling the expectation that there were high level crusaders in the area (or sending in a contingent of men to the area), and that we'd only be there long enough to draw allies. We were in the capital, so it was easy to expect this was a point where a Big Damn Hero would show up to save our mutual bacons, while we went in over our heads to save someone else's bacons. You can't say Isilme wasn't loud about fighting the blasphemies :p
• Assuming that we would use invisibility on less than half the party to sneak past Hezrous and possibly into demons with trueseeing after we'd lost a player to splitting the party and relying on invisibility... Iunno...
• Not making it so terrible that we had failed by punching us in the gut with 'the temple is empty' followed by 'oh, and that quest line is completely dead.' would help as well. :( I understand the thought behind it, and it makes sense that the world doesn't change just because our decisions did... but ugh.
• The Night Hag managing to find Val after a slaughterfest in which she could have been teleported hundreds of miles away (and thus find another victim instead)... is another sucker punch.
• Adding in 'dealing with Sleazebag #9' is a bit of icing on the crappy cake. If part of the goal is to get everyone back into action (instead of doing a side quest), asking us to barter with a jerk goes against this almost directly.
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I'll echo the others that it would actually be cool to investigate what happened to Sosiel (and it's in character), while trying to rush to save them. It's what we'd do, yeah? So if you can adjust the quest with that in mind (that the players do not accept it as a failure!) then we're good to go on that one!
I feel a lot of frustration, at least on my part is due to RWBY ending (especially the way it did), Ary dying a violent (but heroic, and thus fitting) death (for nothing), and finally the website kersplosions, that always make me angsty.
The following @'s are for everyone, but specific responses to specific people, too.
@Markus: Re CR: Looking at the blasphemy spell, the CR is hardtuned to be much more difficult for inappropriately leveled characters. Couple a lower will-save and instant death with long duration paralysis, and it's just something that was easily overlooked at a glance, but that very quickly skyrockets the encounter several CRs just by virtue of the level-based effects. I personally didn't notice Blasphemy was AoE. :(
@Val: It really does suck. I entirely agree. I do agree that the character who was terrified for their lover may have overreacted to the possibility of them being in the temple. They probably could have mentioned there was a back door we could swoop to in oh... four turns by just avoiding those roads. They're the local, so they could have done these sort of things. But it's not at all fair to say that a character who believed something was lying. They were just extremely less helpful than they could have been. Noting what you've said, it would have made things much, much better if the hole hadn't been disguised, or the door had been left open due to sudden Hezrous, or what have you. This would have been a clue much earlier that the temple was either empty, or should have been, allowing us to at least get one person out that didn't make it.
As for Cagriggar... Cagriggar was perhaps the worst encounter I've ever had in a PBP. Not only was my most active game reduced to very limited interesting things going on, but my character's entire turn, which only happened every other day, for two solid weeks, was making a single dice roll to see if Ary could move, and then when she didn't, try to come up with how to flavor that it was perhaps the worst minute of her life (TWO WEEKS. AKHGYHAKRYHF :p)
@Hina: I agree on just grabbing an NPC. I'd have totally been cool with Anevia having come to meet us in town, and me getting to testrun my future cohort. Avi being in town would just make sense for the above 'Quasit is a d-bag note' I made earlier, though that would be more of an Isilme thing than an Ehren thing. That could have been a really good way to handle it.
I also agree that I'm not angry or upset. If I'd been DMing it would have gone differently, but I tell a very different story than Kioralady does. I like her stories... even though I don't always agree that 'her' logic is 'the' logic.
You should use absorb blow more. It's not as amazing now... but later it becomes ridiculously good at giving you a blank HP check. :)
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There are a lot of really good suggestions here, both from you, and from the players, that I'll try to keep in mind in the future.
I think that looking into what happened to Sosiel is a reasonable course of action to take over the three days. At the very least, to tell him about Aron. Assuming we do find out he's dead, well, any unscrupulous action on Valaria's part would be in character. Even if it weren't, with this being as traumatizing of an experience as it was, maybe desperate times would call for desperate measures.
Failing that, I can afford to sell more crap. Seeing Aron and Sosiel dealing with their romance in new forms could be interesting to watch... but only if that's something Kiora wants to venture into.
Maybe there is blame all around here, and it is selfish, but I just want to move on. Tell an interesting story. Do what I can to take advantage of this trainwreck, because I've already seen some narrative gold come out of it.
Edit: That being said, I am very eager to get on with this freak-show.
"You got your ratfolk in my tengu..."
Yeah, it's not about blame, in my case. It was about pointing out where communication fell apart a bit, and where my logic went compared to where hers did. Like she asked for. :)
I do believe that something good can come out of this. But I refuse to not point out when I feel there was an issue with the story telling. I'm graduating with a degree in creative writing in May. It would be against my professional pride to let issues in narrative slide.
There are opportunities to see this be very interesting, and I'm not asking Kiora to change anything. But I am not afraid of making my grievances known if I feel there's an issue that needs to be sorted out. That being said, I'm going to be significantly more pissed if we basically get nothing out of this trainwreck and ultimately can't do anything to try to fix some of our mistakes. Because that's both sacrificing narrative potential for nothing and unnecessarily dark. Frankly, this is supposed to be the AP about being epic heroes, more so than any other. Making it too dark and gritty completely defeats the purpose of the story.
EDIT: I apologize for holding things up, but I'm not posting in gameply until Kiora gives me a reply on doing something about Sosiel and until I finish an essay I have due tomorrow.
Well, I actually think something good came up from your grievances, for what it's worth. If you hadn't mentioned going to find Sosiel, this player wouldn't have thought of it, even though it's very in character. We're also on a time limit to rez Sosiel, adding another layer of rush-rush-rush. :)
Something I'm learning (thought that I never seem to remember) is that complaints are there to improve things, not tear them down. Probably part of my upbringing that makes me fear complaints... and by extension, offering them. :P
As for 'Dark and Gritty', maybe a little. Written as it was originally written, it was 'good guys win!' by virtue of CR (according to everyone who talks about it). But that doesn't mean it can't be Dark or Gritty. Being good is hard. It's just a different kind of story.
There's different types of 'dark' in story telling. Multiple character deaths because of one bad decision is, in my mind, the wrong kind of dark to go for. Moral conflict and emotional strain is much more fitting for this kind of story. Instead of adding drama and dark themes to a story by inserting death and violence simply for the sake of darkness, insert it through drama. Say, let us find a villain who has the potential for redemption. Let us recruit them and slowly work them toward being a better person. Then when push comes to shove, let them chose evil. The idea that sometimes people don't want to be good people is a wonderful gut punch because it feels dark and depressing without depowering us as players.
That's also true. But... I don't really agree with us not being able to fail. But, with Ary -always coming back- for as long as she can, it sort of highlights that we only fail as long as we allow ourselves to fail. Which you're highlighting with the search for Sosiel. :)
Dying sucked. I know better than to bank on the logic of an enemy having had to actually use (or simply having used) some of their resources to get into the heart of Crusader territory from now on, though.
I do agree that dramatic conflict is a lot more satisfying... but ultimately, it's dramatic conflict that caused this to happen. Isilme wanted to go in quietly, which reminded Ary of Li'an dying in precisely the way she was suggesting to go in. Complete with a temple that was under attack by the bad guys.
It wasn't going to happen. So... Ary made a bad call, recognizing we stood a better chance than any normals that came along, hoped for backup, hoped that the demons had used something, anything, hoped that we hadn't sacrificed ourselves in vain... and had none of her hopes confirmed.
Even just leaving the back door open, to make it look like the priests had taken the opportunity to escape would have eased a lot of the burden and allowed someone else to get away.
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Now if Kioralady sticks with 'you can't go find Sosiel', then yeah. I agree that it's just really distasteful, in that case.
I think there is a certain amount of dissonance when you consider the narrative in the context of a game, as opposed to prose.
As for Sosiel... Kiora did ask you what you wanted to do with the three days. It was an open statement. There is no need to hold her hostage over that.
On an almost completely unrelated note...
If I'm not mistaken, this is the first we've heard of the RL crew in a while. How are they doing? :P
Like I said, death and violence for the purpose of darkness is pointless. We should still be able to lose, but throwing things entirely too powerful at a party just to beat them down to accomplish that is bad writing. Now, I know that Kiora didn't do that. I'm not accusing her of that. I'm speaking in general terms.
I'm not trying to hold her hostage, but I would like a 'sure, go ahead' before I do something that could have long term repercussions.
I was gonna post a whole list of points, but at this point it's pretty clear I have a very different view of things than the rest of the party, so I'll spare you the point-by-point refutations.
All I'd like to say at this point is that what I hear y'all asking for is a campaign in which Li'an didn't die, because the encounter was dumbed down on the fly to account for the stupidity of her action. That campaign isn't one that would make me feel as strongly as I do about the characters and NPCs.
I love this campaign because, for instance, when we were in Dawnton I knew that if we failed Annabelle would die and be gone permanently! I love it because if we'd done poorly in the tower, Ser Albright could've been killed and it would've changed things down the road! (Hrut in charge of the guardians? Maybe!) It's a world in which Isilme's death frightens me because of how Aravashnial would take it. None of these things would be possible without consequences for our actions. Fighting two Hezrous (and similiarly, fighting the Nabasus that we skipped) should result in deaths.
I am completely uninterested in a campaign in which we choose to fight two Hezrous and win because they have been completely dumbed down. We aren't creating a story in that world. We might as well just read the AP books at that point.
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No, that is not at all what I want, and you're misinterpreting.
From my perspective, Ary did something that had roughly 5 90% likelihoods, and they all came up negative, while the enemy's 35% came up positive. I'm just pointing out that there are knobs she didn't adjust that could be adjusted, that we had expectations going into the fight.
I don't want a game where my character cannot die.
I do not want a game where death does not have consequences.
I want a game with a strong narrative, but there comes a point where kicking your players while they're down will upset people. I'm no where near that point (it takes about two weeks of standing in place for that :p).
Now, I get that you think I was asking for the Hezrous to be 'dumbed down', but I didn't. I asked that the Hezrous in the middle of the crusader capital not be as dangerous as Hezrous in the middle of the Worldwound.
I believe that if we had followed Cagriggar, we would have assuredly had to fight demons coming out of the woodworks to wreck us. Yet when the Hezrou came to town, no Crusaders came to help.
We'd have arrived without some of our resources. The demons would have had all of theirs (as evidenced multiple times).
It isn't dumbing down an encounter to have a creature have already spent resources and thus not have access to them. It's the creature living in a realistic world.
It's vaguely insulting that you think I want for the narrative to be bunnies and flowers (which, admittedly was true for Ary in the tower :p). I just want for things to make sense. If they do to Kiora, awesome. But those were something like 7 things that all came back to back that kicked us in the teeth, that really, really could have came up heads. Even down to needing to use diplomacy to get the guys we expected to show up to help us to do their jobs.
*shrugs* If you think that's asking for fluffy rainbow bunnies and lack of consequences, then you have a different idea than me of what zero consequences is. And likewise, I'm not all that upset, as I'm able to compartmentalize a lot of my current angst as not having anything to do with this game. So... your statement strictly is not the case.
I don't believe that Li'an should have survived. Or even that we should have won against the Hezrous. You seem to be falling into a common logical fallacy. You're polarizing the debate. Either it has to be a highly gritty, everyone is at risk of dying every fight and we're losing people all of the time or it has to be a light happy, the heroes always win, kind of game. There is a middle ground. Simply allowing us the ability to retreat in the last fight would have solved all of my grievances. Which is my problem. Taking things too far in either direction is bad and I feel like this went too far toward the dark, gritty, everyone is weak and going to die path. If I wanted to play a game like that, I'd play a human in World of Darkness or go play Call of Cthulhu. It's not about always winning. Suffering losses and making mistakes is what shapes a game, but one mistake (and it was one mistake) leading to five characters dying (six technically, since apparently if we hadn't fought the demons, that would have saved Sosiel) is way too far. Especially since the mistake was caused by the GM intentionally misleading us on the context of the encounter.
Let's be honest. Who would have taken more time to think things through and make sure we had a better plan if they hadn't thought that there were innocent priests in the temple about to die?
It's about not making us feel like we always lose and not making us feel like all of our victories are based on luck rather than our own skill or power.
Things that I believe maybe should have gone differently, but they're just how I would expect things to happen. You're ultimately the narrator, so no harm done. :):
• You also prefaced the other fight with the big demon monster in the tower with 'This is too strong for you', but then added a mechanic that made it manageable: A high level set of crusaders (which is a logical expectation in Nerosyan).
• They couldn't summon, because upon arriving in the Crusader-filled city, they summoned as many brothers as they could to get the party started. It still makes 0 sense to me that while not engaged they didn't do so, if their goal was to wreck the world. I have no complaints about overuse of exploding our faces. I have complaints that they made it that far, with all blasphemies intact and with summons available, etc. If the demons are going to throw everything they have at -us-, they probably should have used -some- resources before meeting us.
• Fulfilling the expectation that there were high level crusaders in the area (or sending in a contingent of men to the area), and that we'd only be there long enough to draw allies. We were in the capital, so it was easy to expect this was a point where a Big Damn Hero would show up to save our mutual bacons, while we went in over our heads to save someone else's bacons. You can't say Isilme wasn't loud about fighting the blasphemies :p
• Assuming that we would use invisibility on less than half the party to sneak past Hezrous and possibly into demons with trueseeing after we'd lost a player to splitting the party and relying on invisibility... Iunno...
• Not making it so terrible that we had failed by punching us in the gut with 'the temple is empty' followed by 'oh, and that quest line is completely dead.' would help as well. :( I understand the thought behind it, and it makes sense that the world doesn't change just because our decisions did... but ugh.
• The Night Hag managing to find Val after a...
I just wanted to pop in and mention that I agree with absolutely everything you said here, Ary. Really good job phrasing that s@~%.
I also wanted to say how interesting it is that it's only coming out fairly recently how differently we each are as players, and how different we are (and where we're different) from Kioralady.
I also think that we're getting closer to resolution now. I wanted to mention that we make sure we're phrasing our arguments so as to actually end the argument rather than to prove the other person wrong.
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I disagree slightly on that point. I don't think we just 'win by luck' or what have you. We've made a lot of excellent decisions, we've won a lot of things by the skins of our teeth, and I feel like we've made a very real difference in the setting.
My only grievance is that our 'heroic sacrifice' cost us 3500+ gold and was performed for zero reason. We could have won a little... but we didn't. Everything in that encounter was a lose. Every single thing. Everything turned out wrong.
I don't have any problems with my character dying, or Hina, or Ehren, or Li'an.
I have a problem with it making us look foolish for having even done it... especially when it was always the only choice my character could have made.
The only thing I'm asking for is that the enemies play by the same rules as us. And even then I'm happy to keep playing without that being the case, because I love the game, and I love my Kioralady, and I love my Ary, and I love my fellow storytellers. :)
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I agree with Ary's most recent post with the following exception:
If we're expecting enemies to play by different rules than us, we should be told.
For example, I'd appreciate a notice of "You should expect that all enemies you face will always be at full HP and will have all of their resources available."
Ok, this whole "The priests were obviously in danger from demons" thing ends here.
His musings are interrupted by the sound of a distant explosion, and the sounds of war horns in the city. Then finally, the ringing of bells. Aron stands with a jolt, drawing his shortsword, and several of the patrons rush to the windows to see outside. Several buildings in the distance have been set ablaze, and while there are no immediate threats outside, it is clear that the city has come under attack.
"Oh gods, Sosiel," Aron mumbles, staring at Ary pleadingly. "My partner, Sosiel, is a cleric at the temple of Shelyn just a few blocks away. Please, I need to see if he's okay. Can you help me?"
THIS is what started us off to the temple. There was an explosion off in the distance and war horns. Aron, who had been with us the entire time, immediately worried about Sosiel and wanted us to go with him to check on him.
There was *NO* mention of priests in danger. *NO* mention of demons assaulting the temple. Aron didn't even know if Sosiel was in danger or not.
The temple appears to have been attacked. There are a pair of enormous Hezrou demons in front of the temple, defiling a once beautiful statue and garden of Shelyn - the vile demons' mere presence is enough to cause the flowers to wilt and curl up dead around them.
*THIS* is what we saw when we got there. The temple was attacked, in the *PAST TENSE*. The Hezrous were busy s&@!ting on a statue for fun. If they were beating on the doors you might have a point, but there was no indication that *anyone* was ever in danger.
Now, I get that you think I was asking for the Hezrous to be 'dumbed down', but I didn't. I asked that the Hezrous in the middle of the crusader capital not be as dangerous as Hezrous in the middle of the Worldwound.
This is *explicitly* dumbing the encounter down. The Hezrous literally could have teleported to that spot mere minutes before we arrived. There is no reason to expect them to have used *any* resources to get there when they have access to at-will greater teleport.
Furthermore, going into battle expecting this is metagaming. A crusader captain who went into battle assuming the demons had used their abilities ahead of time and got their squad killed would wind up before a tribunal and likely court-martialed.
Simply allowing us the ability to retreat in the last fight would have solved all of my grievances.
Hezrous are a fight from which there is almost no means of escape. Firstly, they have at-will greater teleport. You *cannot* outrun them. Secondly, they have grab on all their attacks, plus nausea. Thirdly, they have blasphemy. We knew all this going in, and there is no excuse for ever having believed we could escape once the fight started. In demanding that there be an avenue of escape, you are demanding the fight be dumbed down.
But we were given a way out. The quasit volunteered to port us. If we had all grabbed hands when the quasit offered, we would have made it out. But we didn't. Not *ONE* person attempted to grab hold of anyone else to prepare for the port (myself included). Once we were paralyzed, there was no way for the group to be ported out. That isn't Kiora's fault, it's *ours*. Porting requires all those being teleported to be in contact. The fact that she allowed the quasit to port one person out is already a big gimme, because a quasit has 0' reach, and hence couldn't actually have touched Isilme at the same time as Val. So exactly how was he supposed to tag everyone?
Yes to everything in Markus and Ary's posts.
THIS is what started us off to the temple. There was an explosion off in the distance and war horns. Aron, who had been with us the entire time, immediately worried about Sosiel and wanted us to go with him to check on him.
There was *NO* mention of priests in danger. *NO* mention of demons assaulting the temple. Aron didn't even know if Sosiel was in danger or not.
Except you're ignoring that there's context to the situation.
*THIS* is what we saw when we got there. The temple was attacked, in the *PAST TENSE*. The Hezrous were busy s*~~ting on a statue for fun. If they were beating on the doors you might have a point, but there was no indication that *anyone* was ever in danger.
Yes, and we knew that Sosiel was supposed to be at this temple. There is nothing that implies that they're not in there either. You're re-examining the context when we know everything and applying new context to it. Did you think that at the time, or do you realize that now?
Hezrous are a fight from which there is almost no means of escape. Firstly, they have at-will greater teleport. You *cannot* outrun them. Secondly, they have grab on all their attacks, plus nausea. Thirdly, they have blasphemy. We knew all this going in, and there is no excuse for ever having believed we could escape once the fight started. In demanding that there be an avenue of escape, you are demanding the fight be dumbed down.
But we were given a way out. The quasit volunteered to port us. If we had all grabbed hands when the quasit offered, we would have made it out. But we didn't. Not *ONE* person attempted to grab hold of anyone else to prepare for the port (myself included). Once we were paralyzed, there was no way for the group to be ported out. That isn't Kiora's fault, it's *ours*. Porting requires all those being teleported to be in contact. The fact that she allowed the quasit to port one person out is already a big gimme, because a quasit has 0' reach, and hence couldn't actually have touched Isilme at the same time as Val. So exactly how was he supposed to tag everyone?
Then a demon that can be run from would have been a much better opponent at the time. Again, you are applying context we have now to the time and saying 'oh we knew this already'. What you're actually saying is 'oh, we could have realized this at the time', and acting like we were idiots for not knowing the game inside out and avoiding all of the issues with the encounter.
We could have. Except we were paralyzed before we could actually do anything and then they got an entire turn to wail on us for free. Which made us forget that we had a way out because we were trying to keep the people who got grappled alive. Context. Context is the key word. You do not think of everything entirely logically when you are under stress, which we were. I do not blame anyone for not grabbing hands when they were more worried about Hina dangling from the thing's jaws. I don't even blame Kiora for putting us in that situation (though I kind of wish I did). But it's human nature so don't act like we were idiots for not acting with Vulcan level logic when we were panicked.
Valaria isn't asking that the encounter be dumbed down from hezrous to weaker hezrous. She was suggesting that in the future, perhaps creatures that are easier to escape from than hezrous would add to the fun of the group.
As for grabbing onto Valaria, I considered it but I didn't for three reasons:
1.) I was paralyzed as soon as it was suggested any my turn came around.
2.) Valaria was in melee with a creature that had reach. Standing behind her opened me up to dying instantly from a full attack (62 damage and I go from full HP to being dead)
3.) I believed we could actually beat them until I realized after-the-fact that blasphemy paralyzes for 1 round even on a successful save.
Now, I have to address the priests thing with my own thought process:
-We receive request to check on Sosiel.
-We arrive at temple, we find demons but no visible priests.
-First reaction: Maybe there are no priests? We might just be able to walk away? No, that's not good storytelling to simply arrive at the quest location and then leave.
-Second reaction: There are priests, but they are hiding. We have limited time to find priests, which becomes Aron, Isilme and Valaria's job.
-Third reaction: Hinagiku is visible to the creatures, locking us into combat to save her, and then we all die with no chance of escape save deus ex machina and waiting out the blasphemies (which only I survived - and I did so by simply running. The hezrous COULD have pursued me (and caught up to me easily and then killed me), but didn't because that would be dumb)
If it never appeared that there were going to be priests inside, you should have mentioned that, in character. Because your only suggestion in character was to sneak into enemy territory using invisibility to 'secure the priests', if I remember right.
-I- was under the impression that the priests were just bunkered down and the Hezrou were taking their time and enjoying themselves - which makes some degree of sense, given that the knowledge checks told us they delight in spreading their filth.
Suggesting that Ary believing that any soldier in enemy territory would have sustained some form of loss is logical not metagaming. Greater Teleport into a blind space gives a very good chance of just getting spliced inside of something and getting wrecked by damage they can't soak. To believe that they would do that is just odd to me. That's why Ary would think that way, because what she knows about teleports is that blindly teleporting is a good way for a demon to kill itself.
As for not grabbing on to someone... I'll remember to do that the next time I'm nauseated, denied a standard action, and grappled by something ripping me apart. :P
Weren't we basically just paralyzed from that point on, as well?
This post came just after Ary's last action before she was nauseated and then the entire party was Paralyzed until they died.
***Edit*** There was a post a little earlier about grabbing each other.
"I can get us out if we grab on!" from Val
Countersong from Isilme to keep us from not dying.
Ary prones the creature attacking Hina to try to get her free.
Hina gets KO'd and dropped.
Ary gets picked up.
"Grab on!" from Val
*BLUUUGHGHGHG* from Ary.
*Please don't die while unconscious* from Hinagiku.
Everyone is paralyzed.
Hinagiku is coup'd.
Ary is knocked to critical, and then coup'd.
Isilme and Val take the teleport from the Quasit.
Everyone is paralyzed again.
Markus tries to save the two that remain.
Belle tries to distract them and gets killed for it.
Everyone dies but the teleports and Markus, because Lazy Hezrou is Lazy.
I'm not saying we shouldn't have died to that. Again, I'm only suggesting that things did not make sense from my character's perspective, nor mine.
We got to the temple just over five minutes after the attack on the city began. There was zero expectation for any demon to have already used any resources. And faced with crusaders wielded with the means to harm them, there was no reason for them not to go all out.
Hezrous in particular, while not stupid, are dense and direct in the way they act. They are not schemers. Blowing their proverbial load on the first enemies they engage is not unbelievable. They might not even have any sense of self-preservation.
The insistence that there were priests in the temple was, in hindsight, a faulty assumption on my part. I still think it was a fairly logical one, given the short amount of time that passed (that the looters had already blown the place open in that time and cleaned it out is some crazy coordination on their part).
It was a stupid fight because it was one we never should have gotten ourselves into. We had every means of avoiding it; hell, even Valaria's failed Stealth check didn't blow our cover. Kiora gave us a good deal of time to think our plan over, and at one point, Aron even pointed out that it was a bad idea.
Yeah, I agree with all of that, Ehren.
In hindsight, it was a bad idea.
In hindsight AoE blasphemy kills us all instead of just getting the demons staggered by Ary's awesomeness for trying.
In hindsight, getting paralyzed for a full round by creatures I had no way of knowing were that much higher CL than us was something we should have avoided.
In hindsight, we now know the temple was empty of allies.
In hindsight, we now know that looters were inside and that the Hezrous didn't notice the objects inside floating around, and wouldn't have attacked us inside of the building, and just happened to have landed where a heist was being performed, at the same time that the clergy had all disappeared. During a raid, rather than buckling down. And even took the time to lock the back door.
We definitely made mistakes, based on assumptions that we made, based on the only information we had. It's just gonna happen, it's part of the game. It's part of stories.
Also, it's super critical that you guys understand I am not upset or angry at any of you. In fact, I'm very thankful for the discussion as it has lead to a bit of relief of my angst, and I hope you guys received the same amount of catharsis.
Furthermore, going into battle expecting this is metagaming. A crusader captain who went into battle assuming the demons had used their abilities ahead of time would wind up before a tribunal and likely court-martialed.
Does anyone else agree with this? If so, I'll adjust my character's actions from here on to back that up.
Except you're ignoring that there's context to the situation.Yes, and we knew that Sosiel was supposed to be at this temple. There is nothing that implies that they're not in there either. You're re-examining the context when we know everything and applying new context to it. Did you think that at the time, or do you realize that now?
I never once thought there were priests in danger.
The context you speak of is the same one Markus mentioned. It's narrative meta-context and is a form of metagaming. You assumed because something was happening with Aron and we were seeking out Sosiel that Sosiel must be at the temple and in danger.
The context the characters saw was precisely what I'd posted there. The city was under attack, and all we knew was that Sosiel was a cleric *at* the temple, and that Aron wanted to check on him to see if he was ok. Any context you read into it beyond that is as a result of your knowledge of the genre. As a person in that situation there's no reason to believe from that description that the temple of Shelyn is even affected.
Then a demon that can be run from would have been a much better opponent at the time. Again, you are applying context we have now to the time and saying 'oh we knew this already'. What you're actually saying is 'oh, we could have realized this at the time', and acting like we were idiots for not knowing the game inside out and avoiding all of the issues with the encounter.
No, we were given all the information necessary to make that decision then and there. You even came to the same conclusion! But you're right, I made a serious mistake in that I didn't flat out say I'm not participating in a fight against two Hezrous as Isilme. In retrospect I should've been far more assertive on the fact that it was likely to result in a TPK.
I don't blame people for forgetting to grab on. But you explicitly blamed Kiora when you said: "We get paralyzed AGAIN and the Horror decides to leave without half the party. A decision made entirely by Kiora." The quasit was going to port you out no matter what. It was our mistake not capitalizing on that.
Ary: Re: Escaping - By the time teleporting was an option, you and Hinagiku were both guaranteed to be dead. There was pretty much no way in which we would've been able to make contact with you to port you out.
There was no option from the point of teleport being brought up in which anyone but you could have.
The actions were literally: "Grab on." Ary hits the creature right next to Ehren and Hina. Isilme sings. Everything goes to hell.
Let's pretend Ary did grab Ehren (the only person in range), and didn't get grappled, but was still paralyzed. At best, that saves one life. If Isilme had grabbed Ehren, that just leaves Markus and Hina to die.
So, yeah. We could have saved roughly one person if we had done everything just right, and nothing at all had gone wrong.
It is not metagaming to -believe- that clerics of Shelyn would stay in a temple to defend it against demons, and then discover they couldn't leave when really bad things showed up. Even Klarah did so while entirely alone in Sarenrae's temple.
Please, please, please stop accusing me of metagaming, unless you truly, completely feel that I have done so. It is absolutely vital to me that my integrity as a player come before anything else on these forums. I play this game to be in character. If I wanted to analyze a book from the top down, I would be reading a book. I enjoy this medium because I can explore a character, develop a character, and react to a world in which that character lives to the best of my abilities.
Night everyone.
Kiora,
Just lettin' ya know I'll be busy most of tomorrow, and probably won't get a chance to post until later in the evening.
One final note: You assume that Ary was going in simply to protect the priests in the building.
Instead, let's pretend that the Hezrou were not the only demons in the city. Let's assume that a dretch was chasing a civilian. Let's assume that civilian wound up in the same area as the Hezrou. If we could have ran them off, then that civilian would have never been caught by that one dretch. But they'd have died assuredly with the Hezrou around. Now pretend that happened in the hundreds. It is Ary's job to do her best to protect the people from Demons. Says so in the oath. :)
I'll look forward to finally knowing what I'm being reincarnated in after I get back from tabletop, then. Have a good day, Isilme-face.
Alright... and one last thing:
The temple appears to have been attacked. There are a pair of enormous Hezrou demons in front of the temple, defiling a once beautiful statue and garden of Shelyn - the vile demons' mere presence is enough to cause the flowers to wilt and curl up dead around them.
I didn't remember seeing that. I didn't remember having been told that the temple had been attacked already. I felt like such an idiot for missing that one line.
So I looked it up to see where it was stated, so I could see how in the world I had missed it. That I'd killed half the team by missing that one small sentence...
So I searched for it in the gameplay thread. It was in a spoiler to you and Val. Literally no one else knew (at least in character)... so I looked to see if either of you had shared that. Neither of you had. In fact, Isilme's very next action was this, in which your character says that we need to go in and save Aron's friend. In which Isilme plans an alternate way to gain entry to do so using invisibility to enter the building.
So... ultimately, the party lacked information that was not shared, and Isilme also thought the exact same thing as everyone else with that information. It was an in character mistake, not a meta mistake.
Good night Isilme.
I don't think you should beat yourself up about it Ary (your character probably should, but not you). Looking back on the posts, there are so many things that went wrong (won't list them to avoid more polemic), oriented us toward the fighting, at some point it just seemed that a decision had been reached (whether or not that was the case). I seriously think that its a group thing, I know that I partially blame myself.
On another note, it seems to me that we are wasting our time on trying to find out whether there was metagaming or not. What we should be focusing on is what bothered us, and what we expect of the future.
What bothers me: Nothing. I have to say that my home games are filled with bunnies and walking flowers. That is, in 18 years, only one of my character died. It's not because I play well, but because my f2f games are pretty chill. However, joining this group I have learned that I should not expect this to be the case. So, I minded myself for that.
Future: I think we should take as stance as a group about spoilers. When someone succeeds, does everyone read or not? That would seriously help. Also, do we check out monster stats? I am personally of the stance that we should mention to others whether their characters share the spoiler, and that we should not look at stats... but that's my own way of doing things.
For me, being told I'm metagaming is very much bothering me. :) Like I said, I understand that it's sort of ridiculous... but different people care about very different things. Integrity is one of my big things.
I don't like looking at monster's pages. But, Kiora suggested that she intended that we do so when we succeed well enough on the roll. There had been many points that other folks understood demons much better than Ary, where she was providing bad information (because I was relying on my interpretation of what I was reading in the spoilers). It was my mistake that I wasn't doing so.
As for looking under spoilers, unless specifically instructed to, I don't... or when searching for other information (with the search function), it tends to happen incidentally. I can't really help that. :(
I did find it a little odd that the church wasn't really described at all, despite Kioralady tending to give very vivid descriptions (and Shelyn's temples being a really good place for her to get her write on.)