I'm treating it more like a half-hustle each round instead of literally alternating. Seeing as it goes hour by hour rather than round by round, you'd end up reaaally far behind before catching up. It's easier to just let there be a half-hustle.
Yeaaaaaaaaah. XD This world can be pretty brutal, and being THAT far away just seems... uh... unwise of us.
Thank you Mercy!
Hahaha that was great!
And the forums live again! I'm moving this weekend, but we'll be able to finally move on again come Monday. Finally a delay that wasn't our fault!
Hey all, I've decided to get back into DMing on the boards. If you're interested check out my recruitment thread :)
They're up? Nobody breathe ;)
Indeed. New post up, let's hope the forums are in better health going forwards. Also great to see you're DM'ing a new campaign, Kienyach. I can't join in (I'm already in two and DM'ing two, that's about my limit), but I recall reading through a good portion of your Geoffrey's Finest campaign when I first started thinking about joining in on these forums. Lots of fun.
Whoops! I'd been waiting on Luca and missed that she posted over the weekend. New post up later today!
There we are! Oh, and by the by, you got trubs. :)
Just realised I'm going to need to know how long we have been travelling so I can work out how many spells Tyrus has used, and what HP he is on (including potentially more than normal thanks to the way he is using False Life).
Sorry to slow things down.
Ah, good point. Let's leave it to chance!
7 hours.
This fight is taking place after a long day of travel, as it turns out.
:(
Ah well, can't argue with the dice!
So, not sure if this is ok.
If Tyrus memorises three more false life spells, then he can get 3x(1d10+10) hp. On average 45hp. He has 27hp, so maybe 72?
Hustling doubles speed, but does 1 damage, doubling for each hour.
1 hour = 1 damage = 1 total
2 hour = 2 damage = 3 total
3 hour = 4 damage = 7 total
4 hour = 8 damage = 15 total
5 hour = 16 damage = 31 total
6 hour = 32 damage = 63 totalThere's an implication you can mix'n'match speeds.
To match his companions 30 speed, Tyrus would need to hustle every second hour (20+40)/2=30 - this assume you can do walk & run to hustle, and stretch the walk distance.
This means he could keep up for 8 hours at the cost of 15 damage, which is covered by false life.
Okay, so assuming we are only doing 8 hours, and half and half hustle.
hour 1: +FL -1 = 15hour 2: = 15
hour 3: -2 = 13
hour 4: = 13
hour 5: -4 = 9
hour 6: = 9
hour 7: -8 = 1
Wow, so one false life down, and one temp hp left.
So spells should be:
1 (3+2+t): Obscuring Mist, Mage Armor, Mage Armor, Burning Hands, Alarm, Chill Touch, blank, Enlarge person(T)
2 (2+1+t): Boneshaker, False Life, Extended Mage Armor, blank(T)
3 (1+1+t): Clay Skin, Extended False Life, Extended Levitate(T)
With False Life and Extended Mage Armor cast on himself.
Tyrus, I don't actually understand what spell you meant to cast in the latest round, assuming you meant to cast a spell? Your post seems to indicate that you did.
Spell was Clay Skin, sorry.
Means he can soak a bunch more damage.
Hi all! Life is busy after being sick earlier in the week (and also still kinda recovering), so I'm taking a hiatus from the forums until this monday so that I don't always have it on my mind. Apologies!
No worries GM, thanks for letting us know. Feel better soon!
no problems.
*Pokes with Life From Beyond* o wo?
At last our battle lurches on. Man, does adjudicating you guys take some time. Looking at you, miss one-woman army! At least my orcs did me proud in the surprise round.
I will ALSO tell you, that, due to a reflection on our campaign, the time we've spent, the difficulties I've thrown at you, and my relative stinginess until now with experience points, I'm probably going to be leveling you again fairly soon. Not directly after this battle, but much faster than you might be accustomed to, so you might want to have your plans in mind!
It's true, Luca can throw a lot of bodies at people while her powers last. XD Level 6 won't be especially exciting or complicated. Level 7, on the other hand? That's when things will really get going for her, both as a Summoner and as a person.
I'm particularly looking forward to summoning Nightgaunts. o wo~ THAT will be funny.
Woohoo!
Oh NO! Not Levelling! Anything but that! ;P
Woo-hoo! Thanks for playing alone Mercy :)
I thought I had a trick to lead the rank and file over the edge, but now I'm not sure it is worth it. I guess 2d6 is a lot against low level guys... Is there anyway to guess at how dangerous it'd be for them?
Also: Should I assume Dante has the same spells memorised he's been memorising for the last few days?
The orc you dropped over the cliff was pretty messed up. Tyrus would be able to tell that he was AT LEAST (in game terms) below 50% health before he healed himself a bit.
I allowed Dante to have Missiles memorized - I didn't want to bother trying to prepare a new list for him. If you're going to take over controlling him, yeah, best to assume he has his normal list.
The orcs firing at me are up a cliff, correct? How high is it?
Man that arm injury is disgusting. I think Kien is at a +0 to his climb because of that.
I'm melee and I'm helping :')
20 foot cliff, and a fairly difficult climb on this side. That's why you were descending on the other side.
Ooph. Guess I can stand here and soak arrows.
Or at least stand next to the others and soak arrows since the orcs are stupid, not mindless.
...On the bright side, they're also suffering. 8D I can't do too much damage yet, but I can debuff the heck out of foes. Is nice. I like this much better. XD
Are we... are we winning?
After Luca's went supernova with the Look into The Void ability and you managing to dump the shaman off a cliff, it seems so. But it's not over yet!
Hey GM, I was looking to build another character and I came across the nightmare fist feats. Nightmare fist and nightmare weaver. I was wondering if possible Kien could pick up the alternate half-elf trait that allows him to cast darkness. It's only 1/day, but I think it would be a really neat trick.
Kien: Go ahead and grab the trait on your next level up, we'll just call it part of your character growth.
Apologies for the delay in my posts, I was planning out exactly what I was going to do to with you guys in our next phase. :)
Tyrus, I'm going to be running with our little disease plan from awhile back. Every so often I'll be rolling 1d6, and then applying a penalty to a random mental stat. This will start happening soon. It is potentially a fairly large penalty to important stats for you, but I hope you'll trust me. :)
I'll explain the mechanics more fully when they start setting in, unless you have any specific questions for me now.
Sounds good!
I'm okay with Clay Skin not helping with travel damage. The new spell (which I still have to pay to research) would help more anyway.
That said, I think Tyrus is going to be false-lifeing his oversized heart away trying to stay ahead of those orcs. He'll periodically drop alarms behind them as they get near camping time.
In theory he can do 5/day, at 1d10+9 each. That's 45+5d10, or about 72hp. He should be able to do 6 hustles in an 8 hour day, and still have enough left over to do a few death marches. He'd need 30hp healing just to be conscious after the 7th hour though.
Still, that's more like an average speed of 35ft, and his companions would need to hustle an hour or two to keep up, which would make him feel better.
I'd've been very tempted to just push on and death march that last day, but if we can get there anyway...
So - is there a plan with Dante?
Yep! As to Dante, I've got his reason for parting the group's company. Pretty simple - he decides to devote himself to fighting the evil of Keldradt. Seemed to resonate with Dante (the player) back when you guys got here, I see no reason not to make use of it.
And then there were three, again. Did we want to 'find' one or two permanent NPC companions, as we'd discussed? I personally feel like the group as-is is fine, and I rather enjoy groups that have weaknesses - makes you more careful in what you tackle. :D But I don't want you guys to feel overly limited.
We've been scraping to gather a bit of silver for awhile now - honestly, I'm up for something that's a bit more of an adventure. XD I'm also up for anything that gives good XP, since I'm closer to my goal of hitting Level 7 and Luca really starting to come into her own as both a Summoner and a person. (That's been my main goal since the very start of the game, so I'm lookin' forward to it. ^^)
RE Dante: That makes a lot of sense.
I could go either way on companions. I like the healer you were describing - but with Luca's new healing power I am not sure we have as big a need.
I think if we go cross country we should definitely get guards and porters - but I'm thinking hirelings rather than companions. People to set up camp, guard us while we sleep, and carry things. Of course eventually magic can do all that...
How interested are you in portraying one? Forgelight was a good NPC to have - gives a nice way for you to give "local knowledge" and "attitudes" without it just being an info dump. Come to think of it I liked... damn, the guy who came with us into the ruins who we got killed. And the fact we got him killed meant you had someone you could kill who wasn't a PC. That's a plus!
I think I'd like to vote for hiring "local guide NPC companions" and "occasional hirelings".
Luca's no substitute for a Cleric (that'd be her sister), but she can at least put a band-aid on injuries. XD
Kien: Go ahead and grab the trait on your next level up, we'll just call it part of your character growth.
Awesome, thanks!
Apologies for the delay in my posts, I was planning out exactly what I was going to do to with you guys in our next phase. :)
No worries! This game is a bit slower paced than I am used to, but the dedication and quality are definitely impressive, and I don't want to rush you when the time is obviously well spent :D
As a side note, how aware of Tyrus's condition is Kienyach? Does he know there is something medical going on, or does he just think the guy is old?
As far as more characters with us, I agree that I would prefer hirelings and helpers rather than actual GMPCs. I realize that makes us a rather small and not-versatile party, but I'm alright with that as long as you think you can balance the encounters appropriately.
I think a dedicated healer would be great. In fact, we are coming up on level 7 soon...what would we think about using leadership? Failing that, the entire party is neutral which means we may be able to reasonably make use of infernal healing.
I'd like to wait a level before we get a dedicated healer. I'm hopeful between Tyrus' skill, Luca's powers and a much better defensive loadout for spells we can recover a little better.
I do like the infernal healing option, though.
And if nothing else, I have meatsacks to throw in front of the enemies. XD They are highly disposable and Luca really wants you to think of them as such.
As to the Leadership feat, it's unnecessary for most types of help unless you want to personally control (at all times) the follower.
For instance, if you really wanted to plug some holes in your party (dedicated healer) I can easily cook up an NPC who'll have good reason to join you on a fairly permanent basis. During combat and for most simple things, you're free to dictate their actions - but they are still an NPC and ultimately under my control when I choose to exercise it.
If you take the Leadership feat and gain followers that way, I'll leave all control of the characters so-acquired entirely up to the player.
This game is a bit slower paced than I am used to, but the dedication and quality are definitely impressive, and I don't want to rush you when the time is obviously well spent :D
Yes, I keep failing to pick up our pace. Hope springs eternal! But so long as you guys are enjoying things, that's something.
Please don't worry yourself. I would much prefer a slow and steady high-quality game than for the GM to push themselves too hard, either creating a bad story or (even worse) getting burnt out and giving up on the game.
You're doing great GM Mercy. Keep up the good work :)
As for a healer, I'm totally fine with picking up an NPC healer. Of course I think one of the advantages of doing the cohort route is that we could take them into combat with us.
Yeah - normally I would worry that the slowing pace was indicative of a game about to falter, but you're solid as a rock Mercy!
I like the game, and what you've done with it. I think it is imaginative, and well crafted.
Normally it WOULD be indicative of that. Part of the reason I made the Pledge to my players was to keep myself from doing just that. I take keeping my promises fairly seriously, and if I hadn't announced that promise at the beginning it's entirely possible we wouldn't still be going.
But I do see the pace as part of the beauty of the format. We can have delays and such and pick right back up - everything we've already done is right there to remind us.
Plundering a lost temple full of summoned creatures and surrounded by orcs? No problem. Getting a gate guard to open the door for them? Stumped. :)
Dropping OOC for a moment.
20 months (!) ago we made a deal with Junder Horl.
He gets 20% of our take, and an exclusive to "he only copy we make of the layout as far as we explore. Even notes on possible traps, paths we can't follow, archaeological discovers we can't take, structure and integrity."
The implication was that we would also help convince the Order to fund an expedition - and a portal to another plane might help with that.
Interestingly; "My research on the Makon spans nearly fifteen years. Five of those focused on this temple site in particular. I was never one of the leading experts on the civilization, but I do believe I'm one of the only ones to take a deep interest in this region."
So - I doubt Horl has reason to mess with us.
I suggest we take a day to recover (and make sure our goods are safe during that time) then approach Horl. He expected us to be a week or so, so he may well think we're dead. Given we're down to four he's not all that wrong.
* Go to an inn. Recover, but post 2 guards at all times.
** Party (Tyrus) does some very quick research on what they have during this.
* Go see Horl.
** Bargain with him over prices for stuff. Tyrus has appraise, and Luca has social skills.
** Anything he's low-balling us on (assuming this is because he doesn't have the capacity to deal with truly rare, truly valuable items) we look at 'buying back' - i.e. we count it as what he was prepared to pay for it, but don't actually sell it to him (we need to keep this in mind for working out shares, including his). Once we have worked out what everything is worth we sell what we can to raise capital.
* Split shares. I believe at the moment Horl gets 20%, and Tyrus, Kien, Dante and Luca get 20% each. Some of that will be shares in the hard to move items we kept. Ideally I'd like those split 33% between PCs. I don't think there's any actual items we want to keep, though.
* Luca works with Horl to document what happened and help him to put together an application to the order. Let's try to make him a fan.
* Kien spends money on a good time (as per plan) but checks in for questioning on what happened.
* Tyrus does research for his spell, but stays close to provide answers. This may be mainly buying stuff.
* Book transport back to our last city, where we have a contact with the guy who runs the antiquities store. This'll need to be by boat. Travel for Kien, Luca and Tyrus.
* farewell Keldradt and go see other contact, try to sell items.
* Hire Forgelight (if we can), a cart and some shovels and head out to go find the spot with the magic roots.
Hmm... I suppose all those those markings Luca took copies of count as "archaeological discoveries". Hopefully they'll be worth a good chunk of change - it's one thing to hear a history was written down and another thing entirely to get a fairly large chunk of it copied directly AND translated by someone. XD The plan sounds pretty good to me and I have no issues with it.