Seeing as my character is neutral, it is sort of fitting that he's interested in a compromise. The thug-level criminals we might show mercy, but there should still be some sort of punishment. We might go with a branding or loss of a finger or something like that, something that marks them. That being said, loosing a finger is relatively minor compared with loosing your life. If they swear fealty and are willing to abide by the new law of the land, they can go with that. Banishment would be acceptable I suppose as well.
But for the ringleaders, mercy isn't warranted. I also don't think this would conflict too strongly with a paladin's code. As Ilamin said, WE may see it as murder, but most of human history would call this justice. We can even say "as long as there is some degree of proof or significant witnesses to a significant crime" so that it's not just meted out without regard to the significance of an execution.
I think the "mercy" we show through lesser sentences could actually help build us a reputation as fair and just in the land.
In a matter of days guards from Brevoy will be arriving and will take this issue out of your hands, if you cannot come to one mind about it.
It is worth noting that there is a bounty for SIX or more bandits brought to justice, of 400 gold. If you wish to collect the bounty there is more work against the bandits to do...
It doesn't conflict with a Paladin code - Dommer even made clear some people have to hang and what's the law is the law and fine. Torag, in special, isn't much about mercy at all. It's still lawful good, though. Keep in mind that stuff like coup-de-grace, for example, might be considered evil by some - even though I don't necessarily think it applies in all cases. Don't use the whole middle ages thing as an excuse for such.
One thing is to kill a man in a fair fight, dispatch evil back to its plane or hang a condemned man. Another completely different thing is to just outright murder unconscious people. Keep that in mind - and RP as supposed.
EDIT: My remark on the "murder hobo" thing was to try to get people to remind this is a role playing game, not a video-game (as much as I love both). As in, let's try to play the characters and not use out-of-character knowledge or whatever is more practical mechanically. Not that anyone is particularly doing it.
As to the above, Ryker coincidentally said his piece in the gameplay thread (y'all posted this while I was writing it! What are the chances?!).
GM, I forgot to purchase a couple of basic religious items. Specifically an iron holy symbol of Pharasma (5gp) and her holy text, The Bones Land in a Spiral (which I'd only have a 2gp version of). Is it ok for me to make a retcon purchase of these items? No worries if not, I can be on the search for them!
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Btw, I'm all for making sure party loot long term is as balanced as it can be...but a Composite Longbow would be very nice...!
Of course I offered it to the two non spellcasters who could make full benefit of it first. (Apologies to our Magus, I forgot when posting that as an elf you're proficient.) But as someone who will never hold a blade or want close to the baddies...I'll at least take the normal Longbow and if everyone else is alright with it the Composite just to do a little more damage.
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Btw, I'm all for making sure party loot long term is as balanced as it can be...but a Composite Longbow would be very nice...!
Of course I offered it to the two non spellcasters who could make full benefit of it first. (Apologies to our Magus, I forgot when posting that as an elf you're proficient.) But as someone who will never hold a blade or want close to the baddies...I'll at least take the normal Longbow and if everyone else is alright with it the Composite just to do a little more damage.
You can retcon to buy items until you leave the trading post.
so, still figuring a little bit about these prisoners, waitin til everyone chimes in, who wants to go raid the camp before suspicion sets in?
I'm all for it, but only if the casters are comfortable with their current layout. Idk that it'd be plausible for us to try and dupe them (showing up when another group was supposed to is highly suspicious imo) but I'd be willing to try it.
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I've got 6 rounds left of bardic performance (Should last all of another combat.) and...one spell left (I always save a CLW for in case the better healer goes down.) so I'm as good as I can be. I can attempt a bluff but it's probably not gonna work. Ilamin would advise to go in possibly stealthily but with the intent from moment one to kill everyone in the area.
Ha! That's a plan Ryker can get behind.
I had brought the issue of prisoners up in the previous thread as I knew it would come up and potentially can create a lot of arguments.
Azul will have kind of a weird outlook because he has spent most of his life in Axis where laws are obeyed. A being that is convicted of a crime there submits to punishment without argument. But most "crimes" that occur there are inadvertent or due to a loss of self-control. He would have heard of chaotic places, of course, but likely has a skewed concept of them.
Humans will want people held accountable for crimes, but Brevoy is a Chaotic Neutral country, which means that justice is uneven and arbitrary. Some people (namely nobles) probably get away with things that peasants would get executed for, and the opinion of the overseeing judge likely has more influence than any legal formula. Commoners probably settle scores between themselves rather than going to the authorities.
The River Kingdoms are also CN so they will be similar. Numeria and Iobaria are both pretty chaotic too.
In my most recent post I attempted to format text like I see you all doing... can anybody tell me what I'm doing wrong?
Use square brackets [ ] brother.
thank you!
Don't forget to designate somebody in the party to keep track of xp and random loot shared by the party!
In my most recent post I attempted to format text like I see you all doing... can anybody tell me what I'm doing wrong?
FYI below the text box is a little button that says "How to format your text." Click that for more detailed instructions.
Do be kind and keep a tally, but milestones might be used to level up as well.
My ability to track the loot and manage a spreadsheet is entirely dependent on how we want to split it (I've seen some fancy excel stuff that I simply can't replicate). I prefer keeping things as balanced as possible, but I'm willing to take a more free-formed approach if we can come up with a way to help people out who haven't been the recipient of any items.
My fear with giving items to people in such a way that benefits the party as a whole is that characters will likely have way more wealth than others. Having hashed it out with Andreas in another game and a variety of people in other games, I've come to learn I am 100% comfortable with this approach if we come up with a way to:
1) define what "beneficial for the party" means for loot purposes (are we trying to make the weak stronger or the strong stronger? what about items that fit strongly with a character's theme? etc)
and
2) are comfortable with occasionally funneling gold to other characters to help alleviate disparities in wealth. One of the games I'm in we decided to do a "wealth diagnostic" every two levels. If a character was found to be below their wealth by level, we would give them extra shares of future gold piles to compensate. Otherwise, we all take what we want from the loot. We don't have to be as formulaic as all that, but an agreed upon safety net would make me comfortable with this approach (even if we all just make the promise to help out our less funded party members at some time). This isn't as important at lower levels, but I find at mid to high levels, characters without a certain amount of wealth simply can't compare to their well equipped peers.
It sounds like you'd have a good handle on it.
I further put this idea out there, just in case too many items are "no brainers" for certain characters which leads to an imbalance in loot.
At Oleg's trading post, any magic item can be traded for a magic item of equal or lesser value (and change if applicable) -- that way if somebody finds say, a cloak of resistance +1 (1000 gp) they can exchange it for item(s) that they actually want.
I may limit or void this option if it becomes somehow subtractive to the game, but it definitely solves the problem of all the loot going to the same people because "it just makes sense"...
Opinions?
I'm comfortable with that. Sounds good to me.
Please throw dice when attempting diplomacy, Intimidation, Bluff or I will be forced to roll such dice behind the screen.
I will also slowly begin to lose my mind.
Thank you. Just bringing this up at the start before it becomes an issue! <3
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Yikes...that was a bit disturbing of a revelation about that bandit.
But on the comment made before this post.
"Please throw dice when attempting diplomacy, Intimidation, Bluff or I will be forced to roll such dice behind the screen.
I will also slowly begin to lose my mind.
Thank you. Just bringing this up at the start before it becomes an issue! <3"
I know that roleplay is important and I think that the GM has been taking that heavily into effect so far, which is awesome IMO because it gives even those who aren't "face" characters a chance to change and interact with the story.
This helps because there is rarely a party with every character having + Charisma and skill points left to spend in a talking skill to be "good" at it.
But it's also good for us as players to roll something when we're trying to do something of influence (not every post of course, but at least the first post. And then asking if another roll is appropriate or having the GM tell us to again.) and it also helps the other players know that something other than just roleplay is happening in the scene.
Don't worry -- If you think things are cool the way they are going -- I'm happy if players are happy -- just leverage your skills and don't make me do it! :D
Sorry guys - but I'll step out. I'm not "feeling" the game. Apologies to all, but I don't believe you'd miss me much at least mechanically on the party (it's already a big party even without me). Again, not the game for me - but I wish you all the best of fun.
@GM Vicon, thanks for hosting.
Ouch. Should we see who we can get from the standy recruitment thread? :(
That's too bad, Dommer... but better to drop out now than in the middle of stuff.
I do feel like we need someone to counterbalance all the elvy-ness we have in the party. :) A Dwarf or Half-Orc would do that.
@Azul:
only two bandits were CONSCIOUS until one was killed with an arrow.
The only awake bandit is Tassle -- Happs and two other bandits are presently unconscious, so they will not have anything to say to your inquiry, unless you endeavor to wake them.
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Huh...I could've sworn I couldn't use my bow. Oh well, that was more cinematic?
I feel a bit bad that he felt the need to leave but I think given that his character was the only one who was against possibly killing the bandits, I think he made the right choice for his character.
I think long term it would've forced him to be make very out of character decisions to conform.
I would've thought about possibly making a different character but if he personally just didn't feel it, I get that too.
~scratches head~ I'm not opposed to another player joining. To be honest, this game is both helped immensely by a larger party...but also can cause minor problems. I would be in favor of another joining.
as long as it's another elf! ha ha!
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~Taps chin~ To be honest I don't see any glaring weaknesses in the party at present.
It probably wouldn't hurt to have another ranged character as Ilamin is the only Ranged at present. (Ryker is of course capable and prepared but me thinks the rogue would prefer to be in melee 9/10 times.)
We have a mounted/melee, a bowman/buffer, an arcane/melee, a healer/melee, and a skill/melee/ranged.
So I mean, obvious notes would be Ranged, Arcane, or Divine. But in the end anything is possible.
I did see someone who wanted to play a kobold...but I don't this is the party for that? (Ilamin would not be against it fully...but the introduction would be horrid at best and the kobold might die before he'd get the chance to speak given everything that's happened to Oleg and family.)
Skill notes, Charisma is in high supply still, so Wisdom as far as possible leadership scores is missing in our current group. (This of course can easily be slotted by NPCs so this isn't the biggest worry.)Other than that, we still have pretty open fields for the rest of the scores positions. (I'm sure we have room for another Charisma somewhere still but if we can be a bit choosey then prefer someone who didn't focus charisma as well.)
I'll leave it to you folk to choose somebody to join us. :D
Totally fine with another person, although I don't think we really need another (just voicing my opinion, I see that I am in the minority here).
I would prefer a wizard or sorcerer to round out the arcane. We have plenty of melee and a full divine caster, an arcane caster seems to be a natural fit. Bonus points if they are utility/buff focused (as opposed to an evoker).
How do we want to go about recruiting someone else? We should also consider another medium to discuss applicants. I would not be comfortable discussing them in this thread.
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I mean here's the thing. It's true we don't have a full caster, but no role is actually truly necessary.
The hilarious thing is we have like every base covered skill wise and what is typical of an adventuring party.
I'm pretty much ok with any concept, so long as it would fit in with our group.
Personality is more important to me than what class they are.
My only preference would be no Occult classes.
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Eeek, lol I can see how Andreas could arrive to those thoughts but I wasn't trying to make it quite so...hard and aggressive I guess?
Granted Ilamin does have 100 years on the man and has probably seen a lot more terrible things happen in his life, most particularly by bandits, poachers, and all around a*+~#&*s in the woods.
But, above board he isn't unhinged just saw no point in delaying it and letting the man spit on good people or continuing ranting like an unhinged person and possibly hurting the psyche of Oleg and his wife.
Map of bandit camp posted to d20 site. FYI
Approved an applicant to join the game, both for reasons of long posting history and giving me the most information to work with. I'll get him on board asap -- he'll storywise have been a day or two behind the carriage leaving Restov but managed to catch up shortly after the party freed Oleg's trading post. :D
Ready to kick this game into the next gear!
-Vicon
Would it be convenient for the purposes of the game to have us wait at the trading post for another day? We are pretty good for spells but that would get us back up to full for the next encounter.
My concern with waiting is that we won't be able to handle the fight. Right now, we have reason to believe there will be five bandits at the camp. Our bandit frenemy has informed us that if the group we defeated doesn't return by tonight, they will be on high alert. From what we have heard of Kressle, she is going to be a tough cookie to crumble and, frankly, I don't think we can handle ten bandits AND a tough cookie at this level. What do y'all think?
Will our new party member be joining us for this fight?
If we wait, we lose the element of surprise. I always love going into a fight fully charged, but part of the rush was to make sure they didn't have time to know what was going on
My concern with waiting is that we won't be able to handle the fight. Right now, we have reason to believe there will be five bandits at the camp. Our bandit frenemy has informed us that if the group we defeated doesn't return by tonight, they will be on high alert. From what we have heard of Kressle, she is going to be a tough cookie to crumble and, frankly, I don't think we can handle ten bandits AND a tough cookie at this level. What do y'all think?
*Casually Steps in and nods in agreement.*
I agree I think that getting in there ASAP would likely be the best bet. Consider the spell Color Spray, it 'could' take out several rather nefarious bandits. But is it worth getting it back in order just to try and take them out of the fight, when they could just not be there?Think of the action economy gains. Those sweet gains.
Will our new party member be joining us for this fight?
I too would like to know the answer to this question.
*Walks off to take a seat while discussion unfolds.*
Oh! *Lightbulb*
Hello everyone! Apologies for the delay. I shall have my first post up tomorrow. It's been a busy day so I've just gotten the chance to get on here and really do stuff.
My character is mostly done crunch wise. I just need to spend a bit more gold.
This profile is older and not entirely up to date.
Mythweavers Has all of the updated crunch so far.
Golwen is a bastard Human Noble who was sent to Wizarding school (The Academae) in an attempt to silence his mother who was a well known "Companion" for many noblemen. She was respected enough and well known enough to draw such favor (and silence).
Though Golwen was aware of his heritage from a letter of his mother's he found of her partially written to a friend, he s too chose to remain silent on such matters. Attending school worked just fine for him, as he was bright and curious and magic had always fascinated him. He wished to eventually use his magical tutelage to make a name for himself and to take care of his mother.
Unfortunately, his mother contracted a lethal disease while he was still in school. Gowen's mother was everything to him, she was his only direct family (barring his heritage) and so he went to great lengths to cure her once he started receiving letters from her. But, seeing how neither were particularly rich and clerical services aren't cheap, he was left to his own ends (she was much too sick). Golwen had always taken an interest in Conjuration magic, the ability to bring forth something from nothing (much like how he wished to become something from nothing) or to use powerful beings and entities (or copies of them), much like a king might use his pawns, was very enticing to him.
Thus Summoning is where Golwen turned in order to cure his mother. See, Golwen had read about powerful Wizards and Priests who use higher level Conjuration-Calling magic in order to summon forth powerful Outsiders which possessed the sort of healing magics needed in order to cure his mum. Pure Summoning magic wouldn't do the trick of course and that level of Calling magic was greatly out of his reach. So Golwen set to work and acquired scrolls of Magic Circle against Good and a souped-up scroll of Planar Binding from the restricted areas of the school. This process took several months as such powerful magic was of course quite guarded and took him a great deal of time to properly research and prepare. He also got his hands on a very valuable diamond kept for spells such as Limited Wish by the Academae, planning to use it as an offering.
Finally, Golwen began his ritual, managing to properly activate the circle against good due to his preparation. Unfortunately, the Planar Binding spell failed and instead of Calling an Astral Deva he brought forth a Hezrou. Given that he had prepared with a Magic Circle against Good, it didn't do much to stop the creature from running wild. Perhaps luck was on Golwen's side in this case though as the magisters of the college had detected the powerful magic and had come to investigate. Several students were nearly killed and powerful magical scrolls were used to quickly dispatch the dangerous creature before it could do great harm.
Golwen was summarily dispatched, expelled, and dishonored from the Academae. He was brought before a trial held by Inquisitors, Wizards, and Paladins for his reckless actions and theft. Perhaps there was a reason Golwen worshiped Desna. A particularly sympathetic pair (Paladin and Inquisitor of Sarenrae) were on his trial and had been swayed by Golwen's tenacity and his reasoning for his reckless actions (ie: his mother's disease) and decided to spare him any more punishment.
So home Golwen went, he traveled from Korvosa to New Stetvan, where he headed to meet his mother and continue finding a way to treat her. Unfortunately, her disease had progressed greatly and he was unable to find, or afford, a cure for her before her eventual passing. Devastated by her loss, Golwen took up serving as a scribe for a small amount of time in order to earn an income while dealing with her belongings.
Golwen is a practical fellow and sold most of the belongings in order to pay for a decent funeral for her. The funeral served another purpose as well, he had found a letter amongst her belongings that indicated his father to be from the House Khavortorov, one of the Knightly sons had stayed with his mother while in New Stetven. His mother had briefly exchanged letters with him (let's call him Brevard) leading up to her pregnancy. The letters then discussed a meeting with no further information (where it was agreed in person to send him to become a Mage). Thus the funeral was to attract Brevard, relying on the sense of honor to show up.
Golwen had enough respect and love for his mother to avoid anything more than kindness for Brevard when he showed (as he did show). Following the funeral though, Golwen sought a meeting with his father at a local inn, showing him the letters. He was granted a meeting, where he claimed his heritage to the household and wish to join fully. Brevard told Golwen that he met his honor's due by paying for Golwen's schooling and questioned why he didn't put to use his degree. There would be no formal joining of Golwen to the family.
Golwen persisted, sending letters to other members of the household, but the family made it very clear that no such dishonor would be befalling them (owning a bastard). At first, they politely but sternly declined him, claiming no knowledge or a mix-up publicly. Then when Golwen persisted in a more legal manner they dug into his exploits at the Academae and worried that association with Golwen could link the family to the demonic Summoning that occurred. Something other families could use as political leverage against them if their association with Golwen ever got out.
It's no surprise that House Khavortorov's fear quickly turned into their characteristic hot-headedness. Threats and defamation floodedin in Golwen's direction, leaving him with little to do. He was barely able to find work as a Scribe from that point on. Golwen eventually made his way to Southern Brevoy, Restov, hoping to distance himself from his defamation. During his journey, Golwen heard of a potential expedition being sent South into the Stolen Lands. Hoping that he might reclaim or forge his own honor by joining in on the exploration of the Stolen Lands Golwen has decided to join in. He hopes his arcane talents, his training in summoning will aid a group to clear the area of bandits and maybe forge his own name.
I was thinking maybe he was going to be part of the same expedition but got slightly lost along the way and is why he is late. I'm open to suggestions and ideas how to fit in though.
Personality:
Golwen is a man of driven interest and passion. From his arcane studies, his mastery of conjuration, and his love of his deceased mother, Golwen persues any activity he engages in with a great intensity. He is willing to pursue many different options, even those more daring in nature (such as Calling powerful outsiders) to accomplish his goal. Some might call this madness, but Golwen knows that true success must be grasped and a path taken must be followed with confidence and certainty.
Golwen is somewhat (read "a lot") entitled. He has always known that he had noble heritage, even if it was never available to him. His training at the prestigious Academae, his formidable intellect, and his master of conjuration magic have all made him somewhat arrogant about his talents.
Despite this, he does strive to be kind, courteous, and respectful to others. He just sometimes lets his arrogance pomp out when he isn't careful.
Golwen has next to no training in matters of the outdoors or survival. He has book knowledge of the natural world from reading, especially of animals (for summoning purposes). But he is like a fish out of water in the outdoors having spent most of his adult life in study.
He considers himself to be somewhat lucky (and fate has certainly been kind to when it counted) and venerates Desna for this. Thus he does have a desire to travel and see the world if only to learn about it.
My plan was to have my first post find him stumbling upon Oleg's.
Just asking here because it does seem we're moving at a relatively slow pace -- is everyone still having fun? Is there anything I can do to get things rolling? Just asking and no pressure, I am just hoping we can get into the exploration phases!
I too would like to get into the next step of our adventure, BUT I am more than happy to let the RP happen. If there is some extensive RP going on, I may not post every day, but I promise you all that I am enjoying and still following the game!