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It's fine. Val gets around. She's like the Wolverine of the Young and the Righteous.
If this campaign is set about three years before Wrath, then Val could totally be around.
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And now to channel my inner Lando Calrissian. :p
I tried to post to no avail a couple of times. I'll try again later.
Sorry for the delay. I'll push us along once I get my break today. ;P
No worries! Has been an entertaining evening in the Rusty Dragon ;)
Sorry (again) about the crawling pace, guys. I wanted to get one post up a day, but it's been getting harder to sit down at a computer for long enough at work. They've been changing up the way we do things here. xP
No worries. I ended up trying to post everything from my phone for a while this last summer when I didn't have access to a computer for a while at work.
I like getting to be the one in the party who hits like a truck. It doesn't happen often.
In other news, I also played Baalrak in a short post-apocalypse campaign a friend of mine ran. I re-skinned him to a CG paladin (holy tactician) of Cayden Cailean.
Every game I'm in with you that you're a player, you have control of a two-handed fighter. So not sure what you mean :P
I mean, that's two games. And my actual PC is one of them is a sorcerer.
I suppose I also have Tobias, but Tobias is no full martial.
Pretty much all of my PCs have some melee ability, sure. I suppose maybe it's just the barbarian-ness.
Yup. The 'I don't really have anything other than transforming it into fossil fuels' is kind of nice... for a bit. Luckily, Barbarian grows outwards on it's own, and also, luckily, you're going Skald which will expand options quite a bit. :)
I will probably need to adjust the encounters more in the future, but it's a bit hard to adjust for "it explodes when hit by minimum damage." ;P
And then the mate came roaring out of the woods, impaling Baalrak!
I have serious problems with adjusting based on one person's damage, as a DM. Yes, it sucks to have my creatures get exploded... but compare it sucking for me setting up an entire encounter and then it just explodes... to that player missing a few times, and all the other players chipping away at it to no real effect. It's just not really a good idea in my experience.
Then again, I made a larger mistake: Rather than buffing HP, I buffed AC, which made it thoroughly unsatisfying for my players on that test run. Because it became a whiff-fest... which took half again as long to get anything done during.
Edit: Basically, if someone optimizes for raw damage, it will unfairly punish everyone else to make things live longer for them. Likewise, with their character being focused on that, removing the thing that they put most of their 'points' into is really unsatisfying.
That being said, the other PCs should start to catch up in usefulness in a few levels. :)
What Ash said. All Baalrak does right now is roll Intimidate and roll for damage. And just because he happens to deal 18 average damage (quite middle-of-the-road for an 18 Str barbarian) on a hit doesn't mean we as a party are more powerful.
Baalrak only hits one person at a time, too. For now.
I think the solution is to add additional things to fight such that the heavy hitter can't really keep up with it all. He gets to do serious damage, but all the other players get to help out too.
Just be wary. I added one wriggly pile of flesh monster to the Fair Fortune... and it added something like three days of combat. Had all that damage been on one target, the second wiggly would have died. And at the end of the day, they weren't smart enough to be anything other than walls of flesh, soooo... it didn't really add anything.
I feel like spending a few encounters on not adjusting anything, seeing how your party handles different types of things with different amounts of luck, is really important.
Find out what your party's capable of before you try and adjust things to match your party.
On the other hand, Rise is notoriously easy except for a couple of TPK-worthy fights, so..
Yeah, I'm not too worried about it just yet. This is only like, your fourth encounter. Nothing so far has really been meant to be all that dangerous, so maybe I probably shouldn't worry about the encounters being too short.
We've also been very efficient with encounters. Disabling spells, ganging up in melee, etc. We'll see how things go as we progress.
I feel like Baalrak gets progressively more interesting the higher level he gets. Especially considering how much multiclassing I want him to do - it's quite a bit.
Barbarian 1/Skald 8/Chevalier 3/Ranger 3 at 15th level seems pretty cool... but PbP takes FOREVER.
Oh, you've changed some things since the last time I saw your build. I think we go to 18th level in this game though. It's a little higher than some other APs.
Ivy just wants to be a 15th level Eidolon when she grows up! Also a pony.
Well, I guess I decided I wanted Baalrak to be a little more martial. I doubt I'll need more than like 30 raging song rounds per day, and the favored enemy/free Endurance/combat style/extra skills of the ranger appealed to me.
I also took down my whole build, but I think I want to re-assemble my planning spoiler. Just so that if I find something cool I can write it down.
Like Big Game Hunter! It's even from the RotRL players' guide, and it's perfect for Baalrak.
Now that sounds exactly like something that Baalrak would be great at.
I'm unsure what you mean. Isn't Baalrak great at everything?
Perhaps I should have phrased it as 'that's something I can totally see Baalrak doing'.
Nope. He was very bad at being bait a few seconds ago. :)
That wasn't my fault! Aldern should have waited!
The bait has to be the one that's in FRONT.
A true orc minion would have lead the charge!
Stole work computer to move myself, then learned that Glaive Guisarme is a reach weapon. So no diagonal abuse! Hooray!
Yep! Reach weapons. Reach weapons everywhere. :P
The thing I like about reach weapons, is flanking as a knight. <3
I'll be updating once I get off work today. (Ew, Sunday work.)
In the meantime...! Random self-conscious GM time!
I know we aren't exactly all that far into the game, but is there anything that stands out that I could do differently? Any questions? Concerns? Suggestions? Grievances? Declarations of eternal loathing?
I've got nuffin to complain about. :)
I'm pretty much satisfied. I'm looking forward to the next plot point so Shara can flex her scholarly muscles.
Pfft. Ivy will show all of you. :p
I too am satisfied with everything roleplay-related.
I'll tell you this about PbP: There's some things that it will be better to skip, because their time consumption in-real-life won't be worth the gain we get narratively. Conversely, there's some things worth including more in PbP. And I hope you can quickly learn that.
There's already one encounter I skipped. No, not that one (skipping that one would be a damned shame), but another. I mean, I could tweak it, but as written it just seems like a cheap shot.
We talking about Ameiko's sh*thead dad or the monster in the closet?
The monster in the closet.
The entire first encounter is supposed to show you how silly and incompetent the goblins are, and then I'm supposed to beat you over the head with the fact that "oh, they're terrible, wicked monsters after all." But I figured you guys already got the picture.
And I didn't want to kill another dog off. :P
Ah. Yeah. That encounter is a little odd. I always liked it because at least it gave a little weight to the goblins as a threat after they spend the first fight acting like buffoons. But the next big plot point does that too, so I can see why you'd write it out.
This is a bit redundant, but as I posted in Ary's thread, I am super swamped at the moment. Since WotR is priority, these campaigns have been suffering from a lack of posting from me. I am not entirely sure when things will ease up, as work has really started in earnest now for me. I am hoping things calm down, but I might need to go on hiatus in this and Ary's campaigns if it gets much more hectic.
Heh. The feeling is mutual. WotR-related anxiety has kept me from concentrating on my next update. I really hope things settle down for you at work, but I would understand if you feel the need to step back for a while.
This pretty much is my hobby. Which means if my posting slows down, either something is very right (I'm out with my friends) or very wrong. I do think my posting has gone down a little in the past few days, though. Emotionally drained. :|
The last few days have been long indeed.
Gorum's Divine Fighting Techniques may be worth a look for Baalrak. It looks... painful.
That looks pretty good, yeah.
I might have to fit that in here somewhere.