^Yep, that's what I mean. Better safe than sorry, whether I like it or not.
It's fine, nothing meant by my comment but friendly teasing~
Outpost III player sign-ups are open! Go git u sum!
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Thanks for the reminder!
Even so I missed out on one of the tables I wanted. The 5 characters already signed up for it are all solidly high tier, and my character just made it into the bottom of the low tier. So Lady Vanessa is going to sit this party out. At home. In her shrine to Zon-Kuthon. With her many playthings....
But Zarnel got into the Special (that I GM'ed at PaizoCon Oz), and my Envoy is in a Starfinder table. Those 2 plus this group is probably all the bandwidth I have given my travel and availability.
Yeah, I'm just doing the Special with Corona on the player side of things. Maybe by the time Gameday rolls around this fall I'll have a little more bandwidth to let some of my other characters out to play, especially my race-boon babies who really need some love beyond the occasional GM chronicle.
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Soooo, before it comes up, mage armor specifically states that it adds an "armor bonus to AC," but also says that "Since mage armor is made of force, incorporeal creatures can't bypass it the way they do normal armor."
But if the incorporeal creature is making a "touch attack" then mage armor's "armor bonus" wouldn't normally apply to Touch AC.
However, it seems to me that logically it would still apply, since it's a force field that the incorporeal creature's fingers need to get thru.
I bet I'm just overthinking this, but want to make sure that I'm not missing something obvious.
I put an asterisk next to Quang Chi's Touch AC number in his header.
As depicted it does not include the +4 from mage armor since the armor bonus to AC wouldn't normally add to Touch AC.
Mage Armor will function as normal vs. an incorporeal touch attack as noted here. Makes sense, considering other force effects like Magic Missile work normally against incorporeals as well.
No problem! It was a good reminder for myself as well :)
Posting may be a bit delayed today/tonight as it's another painting day (hopefully finishing the kitchen, woo) and I'll be going to bed for awhile once it's done since I've been up all night. Thanks for your patience!
@Frankie - Thanks for the reminder! Even though I rarely play rogues I usually see Evasion/Improved Evasion come up enough that I remember to account for it; Uncanny Dodge is a different story. So yep, Frankie avoided that attack after all and is still undamaged.
@Meredith - I'm going to say Spider Climb has faded because you guys have covered a lot of dungeon since then and the group is taking more time than usual to inspect the passages and search the rooms as you move around. So I'll let you redo Meredith's action/move action if you wish.
In other news, apologies for the really gappy initiative order. While I know general PbP conventions are to group enemies into blocks for faster combat rounds sometimes there are some enemies that could really wreck a group if the dice favors them and they all get to go en masse, so I revert to F2F methods and roll individually for my baddies.
Oh and since this is my campaign thread and I can multi-post as much as I want...
Just wanted to say (again) how much I appreciate everyone's good attitude and good cheer and patience, not just with me but with each other. The TL;DR table have been talking among themselves at how nice it is that they, as players, all seem to get along even when their PCs disagree and it's a state that I see here at this table as well. No tensions, no ego issues, just chill all around.
It's great.
Thank you guys :)
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You're welcome!
In response to your apology for the initiative order messiness, I'd say that this particular table is less affected by it than a normal Society PBP table or PBP AP would be. Since they're all committed for the long term, we're not all trying to finish up and move these characters to the next PBP session, local game night, or Con. So a less-than-optimized order that causes fights to take a little longer isn't a big deal for us.
OTOH, I imagine it makes more work for you having to do multiple combat posts for your separate baddies.
Taking on more work for yourself to prevent a party wipe? Dat's why you da' best! (Wait, I used that one already. Ummm...)
Three cheers for such dedication to her players! Hip hip hooray!
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You're welcome!
On a more personal, serious, and non-game-related note...
(RL stuff, spoilered if you'd rather skip and I understand if you do.)
If you've watched any US-based news outlets in the last 24 hours or so you'll know that tornadoes touched down in Middle Tennessee late last night/early this morning. Nashville got hit but Cookeville (about 80 miles to the east) got hit as well and that's where the majority of the reported deaths have happened.
I've got a lot of friends and family who live in Cookeville. My husband is from Cookeville and his parents and much of his extended family live there. Thankfully, they're all okay though there were some very close calls, close as in, 'tornado passed within a mile of their house' close.
But the current death toll is 24/25 and last I checked, there are nearly 80 people still unaccounted for. It's hard to see all the pictures on Facebook and see posts where someone's loved one has been confirmed as one of the dead. If any of you are spiritual in any way, please keep all those folks affected in your thoughts. And in a more general sense, not just related to this specifically, if you can ever donate your time or your money or your blood to help out in situations like these, please do. Every little bit helps.
Sorry for the bummer post but I needed to share with someone. The proximity and the close calls some of my loved ones had have me rattled a bit.
Aw, you guys aren't letting my guys beat up on you like I'd planned :(
Why was I concerned about potential party wipes again? ;)
(Feeling better today, heh.)
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@GM: Yes, you executed my intention correctly. Sorry for being so complicated. Would have been a lot easier in F2F resolving each roll one at a time. For future reference, is there a better way I could have done that?
@Jan, I intend to 5' to the West at the start of next turn. He doesn't benefit by being in flanking, although he does threaten. Then you can step forward and use that fancy sword on her.
No worries. Still not as complicated as the case I had at one of the Solstice Scar specials a year or two back that involved a hunter riding a large ape companion, reach weapons, and a bunch of AoO-provoking conditions.
(And afterward I understood why one of my (not-PFS) table GMs had banned AoO-fishing builds during character creation.)
Anyhoo, as long as you're sure to clearly specify all the IF>WHEN conditions of what you're doing then I'm not going to complain :)
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Apologies, GM. I just reread my last post, and realized his selection of an undead bane arrow might be seen as too meta. No, I've never played or run this version of Tome.
In my defense, the team was warned of the possibility of undead, she's hanging out with wraiths, and she didn't like that bright light spell earlier.
But we never actually identified her as undead, so it's equally possible that she's a necromancer or just a really creepy and very old elf.
I'd like to think that with the evidence cited above, a seasoned adventurer might jump to the same conclusion and at least see how effective a special undead-killin' arrow is in order to test it.
But if you deem my actions to be unjustly meta, please adjust the dice rolls of his first attack to reflect a silver arrow instead, since he did have direct evidence that silver works.
I haven't actually caught up on the last few posts yet, but you're good. Given the circumstances and the information you've learned, I don't consider the use of undead-bane arrows against Red to be too meta. Not to mention I make it a habit to deliberately call out when a certain tactic, weapon, spell, etc. seems like it's working REALLY well, working normally, only partially working, or not doing a dang thing against a foe. Like...if you're beating on something and your weapon isn't doing anything/much because you're up against some form of DR, it seems pretty obvious to me that you're going to notice that fact pretty darn quick.
(This isn't directed at you specifically Quang Chi, you just made me think of it.)
Is rampant cheating and/or metagaming really that big of a problem in gaming/PbP?
Maybe I'm too naive/trusting of people but I've never really understood a lot of the worry I see from both players and GMs about metagaming/cheating and I say that having sat with a player in my old home group that used to be bad for trying to metagame - usually when it came to the party running into traps, ambushes, or other hazards.
"Oh, well my character actually would've done X, Y, and X to prepare for this sort of thing before we set out, so..."
And it wasn't just a once or twice occurrence, either. So yes, I have seen metagaming happen. But when I see some GMs and fellow players react in a downright hostile manner to the slightest possibility that someone might be trying to metagame, I can't relate. To me, it signals a distinct lack of trust in your player(s). Even though I understand some folks might've been burned in the past by a bad player, I just can't get on board with the idea of running games for players that you don't trust. It can't be fun for the GM and it's probably not that fun for the players, either. I certainly am not going to stick with a GM who consistently acts as though they think I'm always trying to pull a fast one on them.
It's just not the sort of relationship I want with my players, as a GM. I'd much rather choose to be trusting and then adjust accordingly if a player proves themselves unworthy of that trust. And I want my players to feel that they can trust me as a GM to do my best to be fair to them but also to treat them like adults. It's why I angle for transparency on my rulings and why I sometimes explain my thought process behind handling my games the way that I do. It may not be necessary, players may not even care, folks may think that I 'talk' or worry way too much, but maybe it does help. At the very least, it helps my peace of mind.
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To answer your other question, you're playing up with the 4-player adjustment. I know it may not seem like it given the foes you're fighting but there are a few differences I'm taking into account; some I won't share just yet but one that I will - this fight would normally have 3 wraiths instead of 2.
Oh and all of that's not to say that I don't appreciate people taking the time to ask me if something they do/did/want to do in a game would be okay - I do! I appreciate the courtesy! I just don't want that courtesy to come from a place of, uh, fear or unease, for lack of a better way to put it. GM-player relationships should not be adversarial in nature. That's all.
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Oh, don't worry, it's definitely not from a place of fear of you. I mean, whatcha gonna do, kill me? Ummm, wait, please don't take that as a challenge!
In all seriousness, I got chided (and almost booted) from a table of Emerald Spire Level 1 about 2 years ago for making a character meta-optimized to kill ... the things that make up 90+% of the foes. (I don't know if everyone's played it.) For those that haven't, it's an evergreen 3 XP module that you always play at 1st level, so you always rebuild the character afterwards before playing them again at 2nd. The guy wasn't usable outside that level of the Spire, and the GM took exception to his build. Okay, fair enough. I retired him, and built something compatible with some but not all of the challenges and not OP.
So, it's just that I've been improperly meta before and wanted to make sure I wasn't having a relapse.
Thank you for the trust!
^Gotcha! Now I have a better understanding of why you might ask about those sorts of things. Yay for communication!
And don't worry, I'm pretty firmly on the 'Hmm' end of the GM scale when it comes to killing characters. It's way more fun to occasionally just make the group put on their brown pants :3
That said, I'm still kinda sad that I didn't get to throw anyone around with Telekinesis during my Haunting of Hinojai game...
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Is rampant cheating and/or metagaming really that big of a problem in gaming/PbP?
I don't know if I'd call it rampant because I really haven't experienced it that often, but...
I did run a campaign where I was sure a player was deleting posts if they rolled poorly and posting the roll again, since the value changes in that case. I noticed one day, PM'ed them with a warning, and they stopped after that. Great! ... I guess. No, not really. Not long after, they started doing what I call "roll buffering". We've all seen it before, because a lot of people don't even realize they're doing it (which is why Saves should always be rolled first!):
"Oh, you need a Will Save? Okay, but let me preview my roll first. Damn, I rolled a 2. It's alright, I'll instead use this roll of 2 as a Knowledge check, then roll the Will Save. Sweet, an 18!"
In the end, I got fed up of trying to stop it. I didn't want to kick them out of my game because it was a long-term one and I felt it would create drama or otherwise kill the group's inertia. No other players complained about it, so I assumed most were okay with it. It wasn't enough that that player had the sort of min-maxed character that never fell KO throughout the years long campaign, they felt they had to cheat rolls as well. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Needless to say, I don't play with that player anymore, or run games for them. To actually cheat in a roleplaying game when you're not really competing with anyone in any practical sense of the term is mind-blowing to me.
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So, you noticed I've been using my Silver Magic Mace.
Meredith's initial plan was to use Spider Climb to help Denair flank, and so I couldn't use my 2 handed longspear while climbing.
It turns out we're fighting a vampire, and she's weak to magic and silver weapons. I'm glad you pointed out her mace was doing very well, so Meredith will keep using what works. I hope it didn't look like I was metagaming there and thinking "Vampires. Magic and Silver. Oh look, I conveniently have a Magic Silver mace lying around!" It does help that this team has played together so you know I have the mace and longspear as my main weapons.
I've definitely seen players who are trying to "win" the game. Minmax a low Str Wizard or low Cha Barbarian who was the last survivor of The Evil Thing (TM) and so he's going to kill da badguys and get da loot. Works from a single player game mindset but Pathfinder isn't a solo endeavor. All I can do is make a note to not play with them again or give the GM a heads up when they fail to miss 5 attacks in a row and make a bunch of superflous knowledge checks.
(And sorry, GM Ladile, Cirri got in that creepy vampire's face in Haunting of Hinojai before any magic shenanigans could occur. But CIrri's good at that.)
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I've had some players who meta-game, usually it's a clear sense that they've read the scenario before playing it, always having exactly what they need, when they need it; rolling through some spaces, then abruptly getting cautious when a difficult encounter is about to take place; always choosing the best several options, etc.
The other sort of 'meta-gaming' that annoys me are Gameplay thread posts filled with a lot of ooc chatter. Lots of folks don't mind at all, but I find it too jarring, breaking my sense of immersion in the PCs, the fantastical world, and the story we're creating together. My personal preference is to encourage everyone to have such 'table-talk' in the Discussion thread.
In high-level games, I sometimes get the sense that players use some sort of wealth-by-level table to equip a PC for a session. I look at what they're carrying and compare that with my own PC's gear, and my jaw drops. I suspect they're forgetting that a simple wealth-by-level calculus overlooks the cost of selling many of your acquired items at a 50% loss, a significant hit over time. I confess, I'm guilty of rarely auditing PCs before a game I GM.
Min-Maxed PCs aren't the sort I like to play, but I have no objection to those who do, especially if they stay engaged in active role-playing, even when they're otherwise ill-suited to the current situation.
All that said, I never get that impression with our small group of players. It's one of the reasons you're my favorite friends to play with.
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I like to think I specialize in frequently ineffective characters :) Or perhaps sometimes overly specialized characters that thrive in a narrow window but aren't super great otherwise.
I find it easier to avoid any meta gaming as I've not GM'd games before so I don't have to be conscious of that info in the back of my mind. Another thing I often try to do is to avoid having characters prepared for issues they've never experienced, especially characters that are dealing with something outside their speciality:
A full base attack character may know to have different weapon types available, while someone with reduced BAB may not pay so much attention to that.
A character without knowledge ranks, or maybe low mental stats just isn't going to be equipped to deal with different DR types, or resistances unless they've run into it before or been told about it. (FRANKIE!)
I have a hard time with splash damage weapons. Depending on my character's background I put a bit more stock in being prepared for swarms since its assumed that some of the pathfinder training deals with that issue (Confirmation). But if a character background comes from someone that wouldn't have had that training or grew up in that region then they're likely unprepared for that swarm of centipedes/beetles/rats/spiders.
I also try to remember to put out there that I post rolls in chronological order, unless the GM requests saves first, which is fine.
That being said, I'll try to do better with OOC chatter in your gameplay's Larry. I do rarely post purely OOC posts in gameplay. If I feel like I need to post something along those lines in my games I put in both IC and OOC text.
I admit that I'm sometimes bad to post OOC stuff in Gameplay threads (my own and others) because, in my experience, people usually read and sometimes even respond to Gameplay before they ever go check out Discussion.
That said, I'll try and do better about that across all of my games.
@Cirri - Actually no, it was the other baddie you guys fought. (Vague to avoid spoilers since I don't think GM Red has played that one.)
The wayang wizard fight. One of his listed tactics was to throw someone off the balcony via Telekinesis but he never got the chance because he came down with a dangerous case of Arrows-in-the-Face and had to get to a doctor stat.
Serge, I understood from your OOC note that you were just doing the LoH and saving the roll/smite for later but please let me know if I misunderstood.
Also, I apologize. Wraiths are intelligent and you were the only foe within immediate reach so I couldn't really come up with any reason why it would've ignored you to go after someone else.
Sure Serge, we can do that - makes more sense anyway!
I promise, the next scenario should be easier...and also a bit more RP-heavy!
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I had never noticed Holy Weapon Balm. Certainly something for Quang Chi to invest in given its ability to bestow ghost touch to 10 pieces of ammo if it's already magical. And I presume that would apply to mundane ammo fired from a magical bow.
And on a related note, I failed to annotate that the boon I expended only requires a move action to use. It's one of those random Con boons I acquired at some point. This is his first use (3 remaining).
Thanks for the note on the boon action, Quang Chi!
I think Frankie's handler has been out of pocket so I'll give him until tomorrow (afternoon/evening probably) to post.
The below stuff is spoilered since I know some of you may just be here for the distraction of fun games and would rather avoid Covid-19 talk right now.
Hope everyone's still doing well and taking preventative measures in your areas, especially those of you who live in Washington state or travel often.
I live in a rural town so things are still somewhat business as usual around here, though we've of course put restrictions on access to places like the local nursing home and have set up to offer coronavirus test collection at the hospital where I work. It's still a bit surreal to read of all the cancellations and closures in other places. That said, those are legitimate and sensible preventative measures to be taken. Hoarding TP/baby wipes/etc. is not, even if the resulting memes about it are pretty hilarious.
I'm also counting myself lucky that I'm not particularly bothered by the strong recommendation of social distancing. While I *do* enjoy going out with friends and doing things I tend towards being a homebody anyway when there's nothing going on. I also had to learn how to keep myself entertained as a child (books, video games, crafts) so staying at home except for going to work or running essential errands isn't nearly as much of a hardship for me as it seems to be for a lot of folks.
That said, I'm admittedly and probably selfishly a little bummed by the very likely prospect of PaizoCon being cancelled since I was really looking forward to going and getting to meet a bunch of folks from the forums. Hoping for the best, of course, but I'm also being realistic and trying to decide on alternative plans/ideas in the event of a cancellation. And by alternative plans I basically mean trying to decide if I'll just take my requested vacation time anyway (barring a mandatory 'all hands' situation at work) and just chill out at home or what.
Am I scared? Not really. Am I concerned? Yes, but not for myself. I'm concerned for the patient population in my area, most of which are elderly or immunocompromised in some manner. I'm concerned for my friends on Paizo that fall into those categories. I'm concerned for my parents who are elderly and likely to insist on taking their planned trip over to the Smokies next month, despite my attempts to talk them (or rather, my mom) out of it.
But I know there's not any use in stressing myself out over things that I can't change. My usual response to stressful situations is to distract myself with other things and/or try to find the humor or silver lining to it. I've seen a lot of cool ideas shared on Facebook for passing the time while folks are stuck at home and the kids are out of school. The Online VO team is working to help Meatspace VOs transition their conventions and local games to online play, so we may see a big influx of new folks - primarily for VTT and the Discord lodges but those might eventually open the gateway to more folks jumping in to PbP, too.
So...things are kinda crazy right now but we'll weather them in the end, as we always seem to do.
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Obviously, Covid has had an impact on the life of a dedicated Nomad like me, but you might be surprised by how little. I’ve been to Shanghai, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Singapore, and Korea all in the last 6 weeks. I’m back in the US for the rest of March for training, regular medical appointments, and to visit my parents. I don’t know my schedule for April so I can’t speak to what impact the pandemic will have on my life going forward.
But I’m not at all concerned about it at a personal health and safety level. Sure, my continuous travel lifestyle puts me at a higher risk for contracting it. If I get it, and it’s more serious than a 3-day flu, then I’ll end up in the hospital. Even if it’s not that bad, it’ll still really suck extra since I have no one to help take care of me while I’m laid up in a hotel somewhere. But I’m not afraid of it. The mortality rate for someone my age and health is less than 1%. I have good insurance and plenty of sick days, so other than the immediate suckiness of the sick-i-ness, I’ll get back to my life shortly thereafter.
My job isn’t going to change any either. Cargo is still flying globally, and in fact the demand for cargo aircraft has skyrocketed as the normally available cargo space in the belly of passenger jets has dropped. The big airlines are furloughing pilots, and if their layoffs last very long some of those passenger pilots will come fly cargo as we continue to hire. Little things like airport medical screenings commercial flight cancellations, food venue closures, and continuously changing international restrictions on travel will have an impact, but that’s just stuff we work around all the time.
I am a bit worried for the people I know that live in Asia. Not the places we’ve heard of that have already dealt with it, but the places that haven’t yet, particularly Indonesia and the Philippines. They’ve both had few cases reported and few deaths, in spite of having low-quality healthcare systems, poor populations, and crowded urban living conditions. I have to wonder how accurate their reporting is. But if any of the girls I know over there get it, they’ll be hard pressed to make ends meet and obtain good healthcare. I wish them the best.
I am worried about PaizoCon canceling. Not from a financial perspective, since the airlines and hotels have all said they’ll let me cancel flights and rooms at no cost. But I was really looking forward to seeing everyone again, most especially some of y’all! If it slips to later in the year, that would be okay, as long as most people can actually attend. As much as I enjoy PBP, I don’t see online conventions as “conventions.” Online cons are just an easy way to schedule a bunch of games at once. They’re not the social event that a F2F con is, and thus are simply not a substitute. Hopefully, though, I’ll get to see everyone out in Seattle at some point.