Discussion open:
@Tkk-Tkk -- what was the survival check for in your first post. I'm not clear what I need to adjudicate as DM.
Any questions from the players' side?
Just seeing how my hunting was.
We need to clarify something about the casters -- if you're a divine caster, we need to be clear that there are no gods on Athas. It's cut off from the outer planes where the gods live (see the chart in campaign info). It is only connected to one side of the inner planes which differ slightly from those of the great wheel.
All clerics and druids worship elements. The templars draw their power from the sorcerer kings. I could a see allowing worship of a concept/ideology, but under no circumstances can anyone be worshiping, say Zeus, etc., since there are no gods.
Magic is either defiling or preserving in most iterations of the game. I'm open to making some things like Akashic mysteries some variety of life-shaping arts from the ancient halfling and pyreens of the Blue and Green Age. Please take a look at the conversion rules for defiling and preserving magic if you use arcane magic so we can be clear how that works before we come to an instance where you're using spells and spell like abilities.
For the psionic/magic interface issue -- for this campaign, they are separate things, as they are in all versions of Dark Sun of which I'm aware.
Hmm. I suspect I'm the slow poster. Does everybody expect that they'll keep up at this speed and volume?
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I'll probably only post 1 a day unless my character is addressed directly or there is a nice conversation going on.
On a side note, we should propbably talk about how combat is gonna be resolved. There is allot of cool stuff here and I wouldn't want the game to become a unreadable slog of conflicting actions yeah?
@ Kuro -- that's a good idea too, what are your specific concerns. I'm looking through some options for alternative rules that might help things but I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts.
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Nothing really specific, just, we should try to keep in mind the initiative order and try not to contradict each other you know? Though that would mean waiting for people to post so you can post and that's not really the best way in my experience. It can slow the game down to a snails pace if some one forgets to post.
I guess my advice would be, untill we learn how everyone operates in combat, everyone should just post, and if someone posts before you but goes after you on initiative, you should make sure whatever you're action is, it won't contradict a earlier post, even if they technically go after.
That's my 2 cents anyway.
I'm thinking of replacing the standard combat system with a phased combat system where there is no initiative and everyone just announces their actions for the round and they occur at different points in the round -- sort of like in miniature wargaming where you have a move phase, etc.
This is all written up in an early 3.0 supplement from Sword and Sorcery Studios, and I will make it available to everyone.
Is everyone willing to try that? I think that would be much easier for pbp.
I need to look at it to see how to blend them, but yes, that's basically the idea I had
I'm looking at it some more -- basically what would happen is everyone would have a certain amount of AP to divide in the phases. There are like 8 phases, such as movement, first attack, etc., and they always happen in the same sequence. So, you can just announce what you're doing, and everyone does that, then we roll the dice. We're not waiting for someone else to go to make your decision, you have to decide at the outset what's going on.
Also, this gets rid of initiative, so we don't ever have to roll it. Combat just involves everyone announcing what they're doing each round.
It also means you have to think strategically, since you're not reacting to someone else's turn. You have to guess what the monsters will do, etc.
No, no, a thousand times no.
I've played in games where you had to do actions in a certain order and I didn't enjoy them. It felt like an artificial restraint. I also think that with PBP, this would be much slower, as we are splitting each round into 8 rounds and have to go through everybody's actions.
Right now we are already playing not-pathfinder, and I'm not sure how using all these alternate rules is going to work. I suspect the alternate action economy screws my character in more ways than it helps him. But not by much. I can live with it because I went into this knowing that.
Changing the alternate rules for a system we don't all have access to isn't good. I also don't want to start a game that is constantly changing rules.
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My suggestion for initiative is to group people into like 2 player groups and 2 monster groups. That way we aren't waiting for too many people. We can let actions in that group happen in any order to make it easier.
No, no, a thousand times no.
I've played in games where you had to do actions in a certain order and I didn't enjoy them. It felt like an artificial restraint. I also think that with PBP, this would be much slower, as we are splitting each round into 8 rounds and have to go through everybody's actions.
Right now we are already playing not-pathfinder, and I'm not sure how using all these alternate rules is going to work. I suspect the alternate action economy screws my character in more ways than it helps him. But not by much. I can live with it because I went into this knowing that.
Changing the alternate rules for a system we don't all have access to isn't good. I also don't want to start a game that is constantly changing rules.
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My suggestion for initiative is to group people into like 2 player groups and 2 monster groups. That way we aren't waiting for too many people. We can let actions in that group happen in any order to make it easier.
Explain a bit more how the second part would work with the group initiative
Or group initiatives, and first come first serve? Basically, roll initiative, find your group, and go with it? That way, at the very worst, we'll only ever be waiting for the last action in a given group...?
I'd like to hear some more thoughts about this, and how it would work.
I'm going to post the phased combat file link to document -- pages 89-93 if people want to take a look -- I'm not entirely sure if it's the same issue Tkk-Tkk is talking about hating or how it differs from what's being suggested.
It has a combat example and you can see what you think.
Also take a look at the defense system on 96-97. That would control armor class values more so monsters (but also PCs) are more vulnerable.
I'm open to devising some rules to speed this up, and not set on anything in particular. It would be helpful to have group input to think through how things would work. In understand the idea of not constantly changing rules, but I do want to leave the door open to trying stuff to resolve issues -- like if combat etc. is just seriously not working, I'd like to experiment to figure out something that will.
I think the AAC for Tkk-Tkk will be beneficial because it allows the best natural attack to be used three times a round, which isn't possible the old system. It generally makes martials more maneuverable. What are your concerns -- we might be able to tweak the system or work out a compromise.
I'd like to wait for others to weigh in -- it's hard to anticipate all the ways different approaches might play out in practice and I'd like to brainstorm for a bit and get a variety of inputs.
That said, I'm hoping to keep combat to a minimum outside of boss fights, as I don't think it will be very enjoyable in this format.
And please don't worry anyone, I'm not going to enforce my fiat something to which any one player is violently opposed, I'm just still trying to get a sense of the possible solutions.
I think the AAC for Tkk-Tkk will be beneficial because it allows the best natural attack to be used three times a round, which isn't possible the old system. It generally makes martials more maneuverable. What are your concerns -- we might be able to tweak the system or work out a compromise.
Huh? That's not right. With both systems I get all 6.5 natural attacks if that's all I'm doing. Four claws, a flurry claw, a bite and probably a rend. It's a full attack action in the normal system and a "Make All Natural Attacks (Attack; 3 Acts)" action in the revised economy.
Revised action economy does help me in moving and attacking.
The part that hurts about the Revised Action Economy is swift actions. I'm a warpriest, so this really hurts. My fervor and blessings run off of swift actions. Swift actions used to be in addition to the normal actions. I could get all my attacks and the additional effect. Now I lose three attacks for using one of those abilities. This also affects Fleet Charge. While it used to be something really useful, now it's only useful in a few situations.
Since we're all mythic, this hurts most of us. It also hurts Malkaer, as his Lay on hands and lots of magus abilities are swift actions.
As I've said, I'm okay with this. I knew it coming in.
I'm looking over the advanced player's guide. I'll give more reactions later, but right now, both modifications look like they'll really slow down PBP games.
My input:
At any time I'm in about 50% more PFS scenarios than dedicated campaigns (such as this).
So far in my experience I see two styles and they both seem to minimize action-retcon'ing churn.
1. group the enemies together in initiative so that they always either: go first, go last, or (most usually) partition the party in some way. Then you always have three groups that can post actions together and generally be sanely ordered.
2. all initiative rolls, GM declares new rounds, people tend to post as soon as they can, GM uses discretion and orders actions reasonably conveniently (I tend to see favoring the party). This is a bit chaotic and requires more work for the GM. Caveat is that strictly-rolled initiative order is generally not kept. I guess it's more "use rolled order as best as it works, otherwise resolve things as it works".
This is just my experience so far on message boards, and it seems to yield two *viable* options. One allows more distinct initiatives to *potentially* take effect but requires more work, the other forces the enemies into their bucket but requires less work overall.
There are certainly other options I haven't experienced on the boards.
My input absolutely does not address the advanced options that are being discussed, because I simply don't have practical experience with them.
I think the AAC for Tkk-Tkk will be beneficial because it allows the best natural attack to be used three times a round, which isn't possible the old system. It generally makes martials more maneuverable. What are your concerns -- we might be able to tweak the system or work out a compromise.Huh? That's not right. With both systems I get all 6.5 natural attacks if that's all I'm doing. Four claws, a flurry claw, a bite and probably a rend. It's a full attack action in the normal system and a "Make All Natural Attacks (Attack; 3 Acts)" action in the revised economy.
Revised action economy does help me in moving and attacking.
The part that hurts about the Revised Action Economy is swift actions. I'm a warpriest, so this really hurts. My fervor and blessings run off of swift actions. Swift actions used to be in addition to the normal actions. I could get all my attacks and the additional effect. Now I lose three attacks for using one of those abilities. This also affects Fleet Charge. While it used to be something really useful, now it's only useful in a few situations.
Since we're all mythic, this hurts most of us. It also hurts Malkaer, as his Lay on hands and lots of magus abilities are swift actions.
As I've said, I'm okay with this. I knew it coming in.
I'm looking over the advanced player's guide. I'll give more reactions later, but right now, both modifications look like they'll really slow down PBP games.
My interpretation of the natural attack issue is that usually a creature with one really awesome natural attack like a bite can use it 3 times in a round, instead of 1 under the conventional system. So, a fire drake could bite three times, and that would be better than just using all natural attacks which is also possible using 3 AP.
I'm open to discussing the issue with the swift actions -- this wasn't a complete system when it was released in Unchained, and I've seen some tweaks to it to deal with some of the unanticipated issues.
My first thought is to make swift actions .5AP. Do you think that would work?
Here are some suggestions I found on the swift action issue:
"We houseruled swift actions. If you leave them entirely alone, I feel that swift actions do get hurt slightly. Our only houserule is that most 1-round duration swift actions (Arcane Strike, "Litany" Spells, etc) can simply be used once a turn as a Free Action. Everything else falls into place nicely."
"Swift actions are problematic as written. We use a house rule that swift actions that are used every round and those that are a speed up (move -> swift) are free actions usable once per round. All others are a Simple action. This works quite well and seems to maintain class balance."
What do you think of these fixes?
Swift actions at .5 action only helps when people have two swift actions to use on the same round.
I like the other ideas. I also think that swift actions that have some other limit should be free actions, once per turn. This would include things like uses per day or mythic points. Since they are inherently limited, using them for free should not be an issue.
I was able to look over phased combat. It requires each player to post 11 times for each combat round. Many of these posts will be that you aren't doing anything this phase, but you need to check before moving to the next. That's a very bad idea in PbP.
The defenses are interesting. It slows down PbP because every person who gets targeted has to choose what defense to use against each attack and roll it. The GM can't roll for you because many of the defenses have a penalty for using them more than one time or you give up attacks. You may need to have two posts for each one because if a parry, block, or dodge doesn't work you still get an armor defense roll. You could speed this up by having the DM roll the armor defense for each attack in the original post. That way we'd only have to slow down the game for people who failed the armor defense roll. It is a bit backward, but it keeps things moving.
It's hard to judge how effective this will be. It looks like most people's best defense will be a little lower on average, but getting two rolls might balance that out. Malkaer is likely going to take a big hit in defenses. I seem to be slightly ahead if you count the monk wisdom boost to dodge defense. I'm also likely the only person who will parry for the next couple of levels because I have multiple limbs to attack with.
Ganging up will be really deadly on any of us. When you combine this with the wounds and vigor system, It's going to really hurt badly. A lot of monsters will be harder to hit. Most big monsters are largely armor and natural armor. They'll get a dodge check without much of a bonus but hoping for a good die roll and then an armor check that's close to what their normal defense is on average.
I will admit, the phased combat seems like a mess for a PbP format, though I'm only familiar with block initiative and traditional initiative. Honestly, I'm not sure I have enough system mastery to debate the fine points of the two.
I guess my conception of the phased combat was everyone would post their actions for every phase in 1 post, instead of 11 different ones.
My interpretation was that it made things go quicker because you're not waiting to react to someone, you have to make up a strategy and post what you're doing.
I was thinking of having like 24 hrs for a round, and if you don't post you pass, and I can adjudicate everything at that point.
I was also wondering if it could speed some stuff up based on the kinds of common strategies I observed people working out in the recruitment thread -- so one person could just get PMs from everyone else and summarize all the actions for the party in one post, and I could do one for the monsters.
But as I said, if people are violently opposed, I'm not going to force the issue, I'm open to other suggestions.
The issue with the defenses is at high levels making it no instant crit or instant miss. If people hate it, I'm not going to force it either.
If everybody is posting all phases at once, then it's just like posting all actions at once. You lose the benefits of phasing and you introduce the limits that you have to do certain types of things in certain orders. It seems like all drawbacks to me.
The problem with things that reduce defenses is that it affects the players much more than the bad guys because the players are in every fight. If the problem is at high levels, that's going to be years away.
There's a much simpler way to add randomness to defenses. Instead of getting 10 as your base for your AC, touch AC and flatfooted AC, just have us roll a d20. We get the benefits of the extra swinginess and it doesn't slow things down or alter the normal effects.
No pressure dudes and dudettes -- but I've made several posts and things seem to be lagging a tad on the player end.
I'm try to add in little plot hooks for all the characters, but several of you are still working on backgrounds, so I'm trying to go slow so everyone can finish those details.
Do I need to throw is some kind of dramatic action or are people just busy?
I've just been busy personally.
A little busy, but also struggling with writing very much about internal reactions to hearing the tales. If this is a time to use that as a launching point for backstory I can take a stab at that.
I'm trying to start adding in some intrigues for each character -- the mumblers were supposed to be yours.
The common complaint in these boards is that the paizo APs have lots of plot going on behind the scenes that the players never have any inkling of and is mostly for DM entertainment. I'm trying to lay out some of the lore that will get explored in-game.
Caveat -- these are all in-game stories, which will have different admixtures of truth. The history of Athas is rather obscure, and even the canon versions have significant differences.
This won't go on forever -- unless the player's have a really different idea than I'm imagining, there's going to be a fun world-hopping scenario with a lot of factions in the ruins of Kalidnay before they get to Kelmarane.
I see. In character, Rokan would have been trying to concentrate on the stories being told. I can let him be distracted by the mumblers and engage them.
The idea is that all the characters can be having side conversations etc. while the background info is coming up. My concept of Athasian story time is it's kind of noisy and people mumble during it, thus my comments at the beginning that people can talk during it etc.
I don't know if you saw in the last post, but I indicated that the couple are part of a Tyrian group that your character might be able to identify with the appropriate skill check.
Yup, I did see that. Give me a few hours and I'll sneak a response post in.
I've been a little busy and just got back from the gym. I'll get a post in tonight for sure.
Sorry, I've been busy with finals and moving out of my dorm.
The idea is that all the characters can be having side conversations etc. while the background info is coming up. My concept of Athasian story time is it's kind of noisy and people mumble during it, thus my comments at the beginning that people can talk during it etc.
I don't know if you saw in the last post, but I indicated that the couple are part of a Tyrian group that your character might be able to identify with the appropriate skill check.
Posted. I like how explicit you're being about your expectations, so keep it coming if it's not quite what you're looking for.
Can’t remember if I said this yet: due to national guard training my posting will be spotty this week. Bot me as necessary
Can’t remember if I said this yet: due to national guard training my posting will be spotty this week. Bot me as necessary
Thank you for your service!
I should add too -- it may seem from what the bard is saying that he's revealing stuff that's already just canon material you can look up. My version of Athas is going to expand the canon history with a few more delicious twists that I think everyone will really enjoy -- so the whole issue of the Blue Age and its history is a lot more complex than in might seem at first glance.
Posted. I like how explicit you're being about your expectations, so keep it coming if it's not quite what you're looking for.The idea is that all the characters can be having side conversations etc. while the background info is coming up. My concept of Athasian story time is it's kind of noisy and people mumble during it, thus my comments at the beginning that people can talk during it etc.
I don't know if you saw in the last post, but I indicated that the couple are part of a Tyrian group that your character might be able to identify with the appropriate skill check.
Will do. Also, I'd appreciate feedback from all the players on if something isn't working. I'd much rather have you tell me 'this is boring' than just drop out without any explanation.
I'm really more interested in making up characters and other lore, and drawing maps than the game-within-a-game of combat optimization, and that will probably come out in how I DM. I'm very unhurried and like to go slow so I can develop distinctive personalities for different NPCs and slowly generate foreshadowing for multiple possible plot threads. I'm trying to move along e a bit since I have the sense people were tired of the performance scene, but I still need some more clarification of several characters' background, so I hope we work through that a bit before we go traipsing off to likely explore the ruins of Kalidnay. I'm trying to weave a lot of potential plot threads for each player and have several options for each character in sort of a sandbox from which they can choose to follow up on what seems interesting to them.
Slow pace isn't a problem for me.
Ultimately don't let me speak for the others (and others please do speak up), but I suspect the performance scene wasn't tiring (I'm enjoying it!), but that perhaps not all of the hooks were 100% clear to all players (but, that might have just been me).
Okay, well, there will be more opportunity to get lore out of Savathras later -- since we're headed up to the observation deck, let's do that scene and we'll see where it goes.
Araska, Gaanon, Memnon, and Kuro are all from a village. How would you all feel about me making it the same village and tying the stories together? I'll give you each a little timeline that explains how the character stories are tied together, and in what order the events occur, if that sounds good.
The current hook you'll all have to be okay with for that to work is that the village was recently wiped out by slavers -- some of you were gone when it happened and don't know that yet.
Im not opposed to it if others are fine with that.
let me hear from the others and I'll come up with some details of the village, major characters, and the timeline of how your different stories interact so you have something to look at if it comes up and we can all keep the story straight
Hey, where was that post you made where you described each city, with a little bit of information and real life culture themed to each city state?