I find myself engulfed in a perfect storm of work craziness, baby fussiness, household appliances on the fritz-iness and family member illness. Nothing insurmountable, but the next couple of days are going to be BUSY. I'm going to shoot for a post moving things along on Sunday, but don't panic if you don't see something until Monday.
Thanks for your patience!
sounds good. besides skyrim recidivism, spouse re-entering the workforce, volunteering at the animal shelter, and general work stuff i also find myself with too few hours in the day.
Thanks for letting us know - TCB.
Yes, thanks for letting us know. It's all good, this story is worth waiting a few days for!
I will post tonight when I can update the map.
Folks, I'm gonna be out for a day or two. An old buddy died and it's kind of knocked the wind out of me.
dang, take all the time you need
Condolences for your loss mate.
Sorry for your loss, pal.
Sorry for your loss. I am having lunch with an old friend today who is dying of cancer. Docs give him 6 months to live. Most days he feels fine but sleeps a lot.
At a work conference and my laptop is giving me fits. Will post when I return home tomorrow night.
Just a point of order.... Doesn't hitting a sleeping target inflict double damage or something?
Slammed at work today and running a game tonight so I need to be on pause too. Sorry for my delay.
I am headed to a local con this afternoon and will be gone through Sunday. I am unsure how much time I will have to post or if there will be good internet. Please bot me if needed.
I am headed to a local con this afternoon and will be gone through Sunday. I am unsure how much time I will have to post or if there will be good internet. Please bot me if needed.
Will do. Thanks for posting the Status spoiler in the other thread.
Swamped at work, so will likely be tomorrow before I can update.
Just so you know, I chose to make crits lethal damage to reflect how hard it is to do non lethal damage with a ruddy great whopping sword. If the hit that took him down was a non crit, it would have been non lethal
The bit with the head... too much?
For Koralyn, but you already knew that. :)
I guess I am playing up too much the mayor's request to spare as many people as possible based on the idea that they are controlled or compelled and do not have free will in attacking us. She will kill any of them to protect herself or any of the party or bystanders but does not want to kill if not needed. I am thinking she will not be able to continue on with you guys after this...
That bit with the cutting of the throat was a bit too much. The decapitation? Crits happen.
I do get your point though.
Dragomir sees this as a way off avoiding more bloodshed.
What Koralyn likely sees is a scary cold blooded psychopath with a head.
Right. And OOC Rolen is even a larger problem for her. But I fully get its his problem. Its hers.
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Hey all,
I encourage everyone to go ahead and respond to the most recent events in the in-character in the gameplay thread. But I'm glad you brought up the issue here, out-of-character, as well.
The whole moral quandary about whether to kill cult members has gone waaaay farther than I intended. While this sort of debate can spice up party interaction in small doses, it's not meant to be the focus and I don't want to see the game run off the rails as a result.
A big part of the issue here is that adventure I've drawn from for this dates back to the 1E/2E era, and charm/dominate spells worked much differently then, putting the target under the control of the caster indefinitely, until they were dispelled.
In the original adventure, members of the cult are very clearly controlled by an evil force. Even so, the module doesn't even discuss the morality of killing them -- In D&D ethics, they're basically monsters in a dungeon, to be slaughtered by the heroes at will.
In 5E, both spells are MUCH more limited. Charm merely makes them friendly to the caster for a short while. Dominate grants a greater degree of control, but doesn't last much more than a day. There's a lot more gray area as a result -- they've been magically influenced and corrupted, but the evil actions they commit are of their own free will. The magical control allowed them to be brainwashed more readily, perhaps, but they're still responsible for the evil they do once the spells have worn off.
On top of this, I think there is a strong argument to be made that your party is perfectly fine, morally, to kill the cultists when they pose an immediate threat to you or others. The mayor and others have asked that you refrain from killing unnecessarily, but that doesn't mean you are expected (or morally obligated) to avoid killing altogether. The cultists are not innocents, and you have evidence that some of them have embraced the darkness and continue to do very bad things long after any direct magical control expired.
Now, an added wrinkle here is that in-character, you don't necessarily know all that. You haven't researched the nature of the corruption, and you don't know much about the level of agency the cult members retain. But characters with magical knowledge would know about the limitations of charm and dominate spells, which would make it highly unlikely, if not impossible, for the cultists to be forced into bad behavior against their wills for any extended length of time.
If it helps, I will find a way to make that all apparent in-character in short order. I never meant for it to become such a distraction and I'd like to move on.
Interesting. Much of this I really did not understand. Let me consider it.
It's definitely a weird situation, and I didn't immediately catch the difference in charm/dominate effects between editions. Given the temporary nature of the modern spells, I look at is a sort of psychological indoctrination (think the storm troopers in The Force Awakens). They were initially enchanted, and perhaps persuaded or even forced to do some bad things. Some stuck with it half-heartedly after that due to the brainwashing or guilt, some fully embraced it, and a few might resist.
In my mind, the brainwashing is a mitigating circumstance -- it's a good reason to show leniency, but they're still responsible for their actions. Sort of like someone who murders an abuser -- they committed murder, so you punish them, but maybe give them 10 years instead of life. But if they tortured the abuser and killed his grandma, you don't pull any punches.
I know how charm works. But also know how dominate works. And I was allowing for something new and unknown to be in effect. But if you are telling me that is what my character knows I'll go with it.
Well, you've got a couple of captives now, and a simple detect magic would tell you whether they were actively charmed or dominated. Koralyn also know that keeping even one person continually charmed or dominated would require almost all of a (relatively powerful) spellcaster's resources. Keeping half the town dominated would require a cabal of powerful casters in the town, of which you've seen no evidence. Instead, the information you have is that townsfolk are kidnapped, taken into the swamps, brainwashed (aided by magic) by some 'scaled mistress' and returned. Testing as I mentioned above would determine whether they remain under active control or are operating relatively autonomously (aside from psychological training/indoctrination).
That's not to say Koralyn wouldn't prefer her comrades be a bit more lenient. But it wouldn't seem that they were killing complete innocents, either. You don't have any direct evidence at this point whether or not they could be redeemed, with or without magical intervention.
For my own part I did say I would be inflicting non lethal damage unless I rolled a crit, which represents the difficulty in doing non lethal damage with a ruddy huge sword. You'd have seen me trying to do non lethal damage.
The cutting of the sleeping guys throat though? Thats something that I can't walk back.
Speaking of which, have we lost the other players? Haven't seen them post in a few days.
I am going to remain silent on this discussion, as everyone knows that I am an assassin by trade. It is simply the nature of his character to be an efficient killer. It is simply his profession of choice.
I can at least imagine an assassin that would be hesitant to kill except when necessary. But, now understanding that these people are less compelled to act and more acting on their own free will changes Koralyn's opinion dramatically.
Sorry but I have to say that its somewhat suspicious that all these neutral or good people have been rep-educated, and pretty quickly, to worship some evil deity and commit vile acts. I do wonder at the conversion rate. It seems near 100% from my limited data but I am willing to run with that.
As I noted earlier, there's a bit of a plot hole when converting this adventure from 1E to 5E due to the way charm and dominate spells changed. And if it helps you suspend your disbelief, not everyone who disappears returns -- Rolen's sister mentioned she would have been killed/eaten when she resisted the brainwashing, if the corrupted cleric hadn't taken a fancy to her.
Roger that. Good point. Ready to move on and get with the program. :)
Hey, everyone. I am checking in to let you know I am still here. I have been very busy at work. Thanks for your patience!
working on the level up now. hopefully i dont miss anything
should be:
+6 HP
+1 spell (up to 3rd level)
+1 Invocation (took the one that lets me attack twice)
+1 proficiency bonus
anything else?
Eldramin and Rolen look good. Dragomir -- don't forget you now have the Extra Attack feature.
For the others, try to get leveled in the next day or two. I ended up a bit delayed myself this weekend, due to family visits and recovering from heat/mowing-induced lethargy ;)
I'll get a talky/backstory post up this afternoon, so you'll have some conversation to engage in as you continue leveling.
Its in my status bar.
Ok. Lets see here.
Hit points increase by 4+2 or 6.
Proficiency bonus increases by 1 to +3
Spell slots increase to 2 Third level spells. Looks like I get to add two spells to my spellbook for free. Alister, want to coordinate? I am thinking maybe Counterspell and Fireball.
Did I miss anything?
I was thinking fireball and Dispel Magic....is it OK with the DM if we can scribe from each others spell book?? If it is then, I could take something like lightning bolt, or fly instead of fireball...but evocation spells are my bread and butter!
Kierdan 5th level increases:
HP: +7
Proficiency Bonus: +3
New Ability: Destroy Undead (CR 1/2)
Spells;
+7 to hit, DC 15
2 3rd level spell slots
new domain spells: Beacon of Hope, Revivify, Daylight
AListair 5th level increases:
HP: +4
Proficiency Bonus: +3
New Spell Slots: 2
3rd Level Spells available
Will wait to see which spells I will add to my list, but will both be 3rd level
No problem you taking the evocations and I can take something like fly. But I would like to learn Fireball at some point. Looks like we had the same general idea.
Coordinating new spells is fine. You've established a level of trust, so sharing your spellbooks with each other certainly makes sense.
Sweet. I have actually liked it that Koralyn does not know sleep. This gives Alistair a change to do something that the spell singer cannot.
But I do want to be able to throw some fireballs. :)
I will say, on the subject of sleep -- with no save, this is getting into "needs a nerf" territory. It's been problematic in my home game, as well, but the resident mage died and was replaced with a warlock, so no one is using it at the moment.
I have a feeling it may be less an issue as your opposition "levels up" to mostly Challenge 2+ enemies. Monster hit points advance more rapidly than the spell's damage dice, so it will probably become a less attractive option. I'm still in wait-and-see mode, but if it remains as the "always best" option, I'll probably look at adding a saving throw of some kind, or cap the total Hit Dice (not current HP) it can affect.
The only real reason Alistair is using it so much was that they wanted the villagers taken alive....he much prefers the "Flash and Bang" of evocation spells!! I see it as a good way to strip low level creatures from a fight, but it really does nothing to the BBG...usually. In most of the games I have been playing, sleep is more of an afterthought or "soft" option....magic missile and such are the norm...but maybe I just play with bloodthirsty PCs!!
just to make sure i am reading this right, a Warlock doesnt gain spell slots at 5th level.
So i still get two spells per short rest? and they can be any level up to 3, determined as I feel like at the time?
i feel like i dont get much in the way of spells, but i guess that's because i have the blast.
If you regain 2 spells of any level per short rest you are much better off than a wizard. We get half our level in spell levels. That means at 5rh we can recall 1 second level or 2 first level spells.
hmm, that sounds familiar, but that might just be because my other 5e character is a wizard and i am getting confused. I should not have made two casters as my first two characters, haha
Sleep was an issue in another game but it sort of loses SOME utility around this level.
Sleep definitely begins to lose its luster as you increase in level. Good utility at low levels, but not very good right about now and moving forward, especially.
OK. I have finalized my spell choices and will take Hypnotic Pattern and Counterspell (if Counterspell is available in this game. I am not totally sure of its source.
Also I'd like to purchase and add the cantrip Booming Blade to my book if I can find it. Or even trade a cantrip I know for it. I just learned about this spell. Seems like something Koralyn should have had all along.