RoW: Let's Thaw the Frozen Stars! (Inactive)

Game Master Daxter

Let's see... that would be an arcane trapspotter?

How about an arctic trainspotter? Might eventually come in handy in this AP...

Is this a bad time to say "Howdy"? :)

Hey guys, I started posting on the boards a few days ago, and got the two games I GM up and running (slowly). Honestly the 500+ gameplay and 180 or so Discussion thread posts had me a little daunted. I thought 'no way those groovy guys posted 500+ times without Bugsby!' But you did.

I'm now caught up on the discussion thread. If you've got a replacement already I understand, I have been out for 6+ weeks. If Bugsby's not replaced then I'd like to worm my way back into the game.

*He bows artfully humbly impatiently despairingly hopefully and awaits the Word of Judgement from his compatriots*

Howdy back at ya, Bugs! Great to see/read you again!

Sven was going to look into a replacement, I don't know how far he got on that. I know we'd all love to have you back, let's see if Sven promised your spot to anyone. If he did, then you guys can have a duel!

Or we could come up with some other (boring) way to resolve it.

No no, a duel does make the most sense. :)

Lana gave you a scroll of feather fall, so just grab any prospective replacement(s) and jump off a cliff. And make sure he doesn't land on top of you... we don't want a squished gnome.

BUGSBY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
welcome back!?

Good advice Lana, I will definitely use it.

Thanks Ankih! I am back... I think! Status pending evaluation ;)

I never actually managed to find a suitable replacement so you’re off the hook! =)

How’s fatherdom?

Sven, I'm disappointed. You could have told Bugsby the only replacement you could find was some mythic Trickster/Archmage gestalt abomination who was super-excited about joining the game. It would have been a brief, but entertaining, duel.

Ah, well. Welcome back, Bugsby!

Missed opportunity.

Well, I'm sure Mez can set something up for Bugsby, in exchange for having to DMPC the little guy.

Fatherdom x3 is busy! I'm happy to say my wife and I made another good one. I'm excited for when the days (nights) of collic (sp?) are over.

I was happy that Bugsby got to jump off the tower, thanks for that snippit of Bugsby flavor Mez. But who was responsible for keeping his eyes from getting scratched out? I feel like that should have been someone's job while I was gone.

It was your newborns, but it kept getting distracted by milk producing organs.

Are we waiting on anything in particular, or can we just say the Ankih does his consecration and we move on?

I was waiting to see if we had any encounters before I changed my spells and used consecrate.

Hello, sorry for my unannounced absence. I had an unplanned medical emergency that resulted in a few days spent at my lovely local hospital. I am more stable now, and should be able to get back into the swing of things. Fingers crossed, it shouldn’t happen again.

Wow, Mez, very sorry to hear it. Glad you're out of the hospital, hope everything's okay.

Nothing that a change in diet, exersize, and a few different medications isn't supposed to keep under control.

The site's getting hammered today.

Indeed. I think it's the spammers, honestly.

Evil moss seems more likely.

Yeah, it's definitely dropping in and out a lot. I'd guess you're right about the spammers, Lana, or maybe Paizo's efforts to combat them.

Nah, moss is delicious and tasty and harmless. Just ask my RotRL goblin...

Glad its not just me then, its been in and out for a while for me, was getting worried the work firewall was getting smart.

Meant to comment earlier, but the site fought me off:

3000 posts! Woot!

Thanks for taking us through the horrors of Irrisen, Mez!

Maybe its a sign that I'm not an evil enough DM, but I find the fact that my plan to turn Kalt into a minion of evil is getting spoiled by a curse placed upon him by another evildoer immensely amusing.

Karmariffic!

I'm with ya, Mez, very funny. It's great to be cheering on my curse, so it keeps me from killing my friends. Nice that I'll have to roll an 18 next round to break free.

But don't worry, the moss will eventually take over Sven, and then I'll just try to kill it with my sword. Or something.

Very sorry about your loss, Ankih, and what your dad had to go through on top of it.

Thanks Kalt.

Sorry, Ankih, for your loss.

Thanks Avora

Sorry for your loss Ankih.

Also folks, my in laws have been town all last week and will be this week. I'm just trying to get rid of them at this point. So I can have more free time to post and walk around in my underwear again. ;)

So am I reading the NL rules correctly that lethal damage has no impact on NL damage and the only time NL damage becomes lethal is once you exceed total HP values in NL damage?

Maybe I'm thinking of a an old system, but I've always thought they stacked on each other. IE: Kalt would be unconcious right now because his lethal + NL exceed his HP total. I makes very little sense to me that you could be at 1 HP left, but then take 45 non-lethal damage (in kalts hypothetical case) and still be completely functional.

He's unconscious right now, but they don't stack. Here's how it works:

NL equal to current HP: unconscious
NL equal to total HP: any further NL damage becomes lethal

Ok, so I'm right, it's just my backwards way of thinking about things that got me confused. In effect if lethal + NL = total HP you go unconscious because no permutation wouldn't have NL greater or equal to remaining HP.

The easiest way I've found to think about it is you count Hp going down and nonlethal damage going up. When the two numbers meet, you're unconscious. When your value of nonlethal damage would be enough to kill you, it starts becoming lethal.

The question is, what becomes of the moss once it's host is incapacitated.

My money is on it dying immediately... :O

Or, when the last vestigates of mental resistance go away and it can dance Kalt like a marionette.

Um, mental resistance? When?

Sorry Kalt, I thought for sure this thing would be dead by now. It's taken ~40 damage.

Um, mental resistance? When?

I had to think of something snappy to make the group think the thing is still alive. Lana's last burning hands dropped it below 0, so its dead unless for some reason you guys heal it up.

Just to be safe we should keep burning it.

Burn it on or off of Kalt?

If it's fallen off of Kalt, burn it off him.

So I have to come clean, I royally messed up the way that moss was supposed to function. All the things it did, it could have done, but it should have been over more rounds and suffering from a number of attacks of opportunity that it didn’t. I could go into all of my excuses over why I did what I did, but that doesn’t change the fact I screwed up. I just wanted to say I’m sorry for that, and will try and do better on the more complex monsters.

Now, I have noticed that it seems a lot of encounters seem designed to kick sand in the PC’s face so to speak, and perhaps the other AP’s are like this too (this is the only AP I’ve been really involved in) but with all the hitting while you are down, I wanted to ask the group: Are you enjoying the game? Are you enjoying your character? Outside of getting better with the rules, what would you like to see me do differently?

Something I’ve noticed, and it could just be my perception, but it seems like the group as a whole lacks a lot of damage output. You guys can soak it up like crazy, having like 12 channels plus LoH/Spells, but if Kalt or Sven have a run of bad dice rolls, the damage drops significantly. Have others noticed this too, or is it just me? How does the group feel about that if it is true? Is there anything that should be done?

Meh. From my standpoint, it was a good fight and was exciting enough to keep us guessing. Yes, I am enjoying the game and my character, as much for the plot as for interaction between the characters.

I thought it was a tough but fun encounter, so I don't have a problem with it. But I appreciate your owning up to it, and checking in with us on the game. I think that is very important in PbP's, since we get so little personal interaction - you can't look around the game table and get an immediate sense of whether everyone's having fun.

That said, I am having a good time, and enjoying my character and the others. I think if you're unclear on an aspect of the rules, checking in with the players (some of whom have far more knowledge of the PF ruleset than I) would help clarify things and involve everyone in how the game plays out.

I guess I'd agree on the damage output, though I haven't felt it to be a major issue. I'd say the simplest thing would be to give Kalt an awesome sword (preferably not cursed) and some way of re-rolling any bad rolls. ;)

Thanks for the heads up on the moss, but it didn't really bother me that it went a bit long. As a pbp GM I mess up all the time, probably more than I realize, and just chalk it up as part of the game.

I am having a great time, Bugsby is probably my favorite character to play, and the group is great. I've been feeling a bit disconnected lately, but that's 100% on me and my inability to get to the boards as much as I'd like. I think we have a great set of folks here, definitely including our GM, and am as happy as a happy clam.

As for damage, we don't hit hard that hard, but I don't know if it means we need to adjust the game. I feel like we're more of a character/story driven group than combat anyways, so I'm not bothered. When we all die a horrible death at the hands of a too-tough monster... ask me this question again. :)

Too soon Kalt? ;)