The many Trails of Elrith

Game Master icehawk333

You try to design a system to mathematically simulate every action a human can make
And then try to add a magic system on top of that

I know. It just irks me that for all the demi-god power you get, I am in real life capable of things that could let me defeat even those fighters that are supposedly 4 times better than the greatest warriors humanity ever spawned in reality.

Is also irks me that on one hand the system is designed for naturalistic balance and designed to represemt the fictional world, yet the combat portion seemed to be made as though the designer was confused about what philosophy to follow.

Then you get things like pathfinder that keep confusing things further by clearly following an entirely different design philosophy from the core system they are building on.

And then, nobody wants to try anything else that attempts to do the original concept of naturalistic balance. Everybody seems to want either more gamey like stuff, or more collaborative writing like stuff.

I guess I'm just tired of not getting the experience I actually want.

Except you totally couldn't.

You'd never, ever, ever hit them. That's why they have ac.

You'd never be able to dodge them.

That's what to hit is for.

Combat teqniques < abosulte statements of dodging ability and to hit.

Because to hit and dodging are supposed to be described vividly and with actual teqniques, instead of just "I swing my sword." One attack does not equal one swing of a sword, it represents one attempt to damage the enemy, in whatever form it might take.
For a dagger, repeated shanks are just as good as a single perfect strike.

It's about how you describe it, more then anything else.

But whatever. If you don't like it, why play? I just...
Ugh.

Even HP is something of an abstraction the effort expended to avoid dieing putting strain on the body in addition to the damage received

Are we graveyard folks waiting on something to move on?

You or the DM to announce that you've arrived I think.

guys, i'm sorry about my lack of p[lay this last week i'm getting over a cold. not that that's really a reason not to play, i just couldn't think oif what to put down

Apologies. I was sick, to the point that I didn't even touch the xbox, nor even movies. I basically slept and snoozed my way through.

No worries!

Glad you're feeling better.

Likewise

Then she basically describing a scroll?

Basically, except reusable.

The core rulebook has rules for making items that basically just cast a spell yet one of the construction options is for "X-times per day" items.

So spellcards are basically scrolls usable a number of times per day.

Also, being made of a fabric-paper (similar to american paper money), they are durable and don't have issues with getting wet.

I'm keeping a close eye on them.

That chart has notorious balance issues, but I have already approved these for what amounts to a playtest.

Do you have to have the proper spell casting list to activate them?

They would count as any other command word magic item unless the gm wants to make a special call.

I have certain limits in place for my games that I'll discuss with the gm should I decide to make any spells that I would limit. For example, one spell I found allows you to unerringly teleport to a particular place you have attuned yourself to. In that spell, as well as others with preset targets, or linking targets such as telepathic bond, I generally require a card to be made for each of the targets in addition to the spell itself. But I haven't gotten around to trying anything like that in this game so it hasn't been brought up yet.

Right now I will be looking for scrolls, or willing casters, of spells I can't cast, such as cure/inflict wounds.

I'm playing it as Morrigan hasn't gotten the specific spells yet and is merely preparing the base materials such as the silk paper card stock.

Well, by now you would know that Jo'Vassa has cure spells, and that Anthony is known to have some sort of divine magics, though they're limited in scope

1) where is your actual list of gear?

Second spoiler in my profile. It was named "Stuff," but I changed it to "Equipment" for you.

Actually I need to add the silk scraps now that I think of it.

Kay. Sorry.

I'll be moving things along later today.

Sorry for the delay, holiday was a bit hectic for me.

Completely understandable
My other games are also running slow right now, so rest assured it's not just you

Are the zombies near Morrigan's house milling around or actively causing damage/harm?

That is a good question.
Not one that La'Vassa would actually ask, but still

The ones hear morrigan are shambling into town.

The town is filled with violence and zombies, once people actually head out into it.

Also!

The zombies are considered trivial opponents. Unless you are in combat with somehting stronger at the same time, feel free to defeat them as you see fit, without rolls.

I aplogize once again for the delays, and once ruby wakes up, I'll move on...

Lastly, I'm going to ask if people are still interested proper? Starting to worry I've burnt people out with my periods of absence.

I'm still really excited

It is not so much absence, but substance. I find that a piece of advice for writing books can pretty much extrapolate to rpgs quite well; "a story is a series of heart-clutching moments." I would translate this to rpgs as, "a campaign is a series of crucial choices in a variety of flavors (narrative, combative, meta, etc)."

There is a need for stuff in between these choices to establish context, exposition, and rest, but too much time spent in between and boredom sets in, strangely, too long without such breaks or when things get repetative, can be just as bad.

I think though, that different players have different tolerances, some like more of the inbetween, some less.

Personally, I don't mind the posting speed so far, but the gameplay pacing, long-lasting and repetative combat mixed with too long between important choices, is my only critique so far, but even that hasn't become enough of a problem to make me say goodbye.

i would actually say the opposite, while the posting take longer than i would like, mostly because i am not used to play by post, the pacing of the campaign been great so far. Definitely still excited to play.

Just in case you didn't know, morrigan, that actually is pathfinder standard for what zombies are.

At least, in golarion

Another thing the designers didn't entirely think through.

You rez or reincarnate people by bringing their soul back and shoving it in a body. The soul remembers their life and keeps the mental stats. Therefore, it doesn't make sense that sticking a soul inside a body makes something that is mindless.

Beyond that though, I was simply implying that souls aren't used like that where Morrigan comes from.

And that's fine that they aren't like that in your world
Or that they aren't like that in, for example the erberon or salt in the wounds setting

They are like that in golarion

Didn't realize we were in Golarion. :)

Didn't realize we were in Golarion. :)

We aren't, but galorion lore is a summed to be default, as far as I know.

Also, it's totally fine to have undead made a difrent way from demention to demention.

But mindless or controlled undead- undead made by any standard necromancy spell- are improosned souls. While Rez and reincarnate do bring the soul back, necromancy twists it with negative energy.

The devs thought it trough rather well.

It's the desecration of a soul, preventing it from passing on.

This does something very important- prevents undead from being a viable PC option, and avoids the exact thing morrigan was mentioning- if undead can fill every simple labor force, that requires a whole rework of the economy. This would be very complex.

Also, if fufills the standing tradition of evil undead.

In this setting, though, undead can be raised without improsionment, but all such undead are sentient and free willed, and new creature- the soul has passed on, and a brand new one has been made.

But this is all neither here nor there.

Constructs can also fufill the labor force requirements but they take much longer to be worth the money

... You know, this Probobly coudlve been avoided by me just not saying anything.

Undead filling in for labor also depends on culture and circumstance.

Besides, I wouldn't worry so much about trying to prevent an option from being totally superior to the options that are used by default in a society.

Just look at how stupidly inefficient and unneccesary things are run in the real world. Too many folks that are willing to trade away the future or the lives of others for their own gain. I.E. We have cures for several types of cancer, but you can't get them in the US. In fact it is illegal for doctors to even tell you about them in the US. But they wouldn't make nearly as much money as chemo or other mere treatments.

Efficiency for the society is bad for business, and business is warfare so brutal that it makes the world wars look tame. The only difference is that business is vampiric, it sucks everything it can get from you instead of straightforward killing you.

Pharmacutical companies don't make money from healthy people, they make money from sick people, therefore they don't want cures, they want ongoing treatments. It doesn't matter to them that a healthy workforce would be more efficient.

i think we are getting off topic

Horribly so.

you should hear some of the conversations ice and I have in real life, one second we're talking about pathfinder, the next we are discussing how toilets work.

Also if anyone wants me to put my inventory, equipment, and etc. on pazio just ask, i just have felt like it since it is fairly basic, arrow count and the only odd skill is knowledge architecture.

and about the zombie thing, it changes a lot, especially for writers, I have read a story where zombies are a soul ripped in half, part in to its previous body and the other half is bound into a single chain link.

In one series zombies are fully intelligent people whose physical appearence is directly related to how much they are loved. A zombie and another character look into a pool of love then at each other, thus falling in love. By the end of the book, the only clue that the zombie is an undead is a slight blue tinge to her lips.

That book was rather amusing. The rest of the series is on my list to read (a very long list).

so i was thinking about, what if i could make more transformative weapons? such as a peppershot rifle that also works as a spear.

Apologies for my absence for a bit.

Ruby, that works.

I'll be moving things along tonight.

Read the target for campfire wall.

And what happens if the target is moved.

ah so I have to like shove the pimp cane into the ground to make this work?

More or less, yes.

i also apologize for my absence the past few days, some stuff came up and i had to go out of town for a bit.

I somehow missed the post asking for initiative
Sorry

Sorry, I expected to have my phone on my trip, but it didn't work out that way. Posting momentarily.

Morrigan the flame wall is gone