Dotting.
Dot
Okay, Arianna is up and ready to roll! Best part is I don't even have to go looking for a new avatar to fit her description! :D
Dot.
@GM Red: My thoughts regarding Arianna's memories and her past would be that as the game progresses, she'd start to remember more and more about what happened, and be horrified by it. Since coming to after getting attacked, she's been raised to be good, while her parents were most definitely not. I'll leave the specifics up to you about what she did, though i will say that I picture her being a pretty little monster. Feel free to torment her with her past deeds. I know that I'm going to have fun playing her mental breakdown as she remembers what she did. >:)
As for killing Arianna to get me to play Aranithax, well, if you want me to play him that badly, I'm all for slipping him in while Arianna gets a moment to play damsel in distress. It wouldn't be the first time I've done that for the sake of a good story.
Character profile page all set-up and ready to go! Touched up the bio (I wrote it really fast initially) and added a little more to the end to give you a little more closure =P
Apparently those three guys that killed Arianna's and Eska's families hate elves.
Another dot with Brax himself. Profile page has been set up as well.
Yes, use emojis all you'd like OOC! :)
It's likely too late for most to delete their initial dots, but that's okay, they'll disappear off the page soon enough.
Can you all make sure your header line includes the following info at a minimum: Race, Class, Level, Alignment, AC, Init, Passive Perception, Saves, HP. You can add any other stats you'd like.
The tagline code template here is good, but it's built for Pathfinder so you will need to change the saves and remove CMD/CMB.
@Arianna, Ok, I'll keep that in mind regarding Arianna's history. I think we can work something out to give Aranithax ample opportunity to shine at a few points throughout the campaign without having to kill Arianna.
Greetings to all!
Do I see blue dragon ancestry!!! So it begins...
Ke-He-he-he!
*Snaps at Raak*
By the way, Navarre is not generally as pessimistic as his inner monologue might currently be sounding - but as far as he is aware your characters are just random people running in to fight a dragon, which is a fairly suicidal act. He'll have more confidence in you once he gets to know you. :D
Regarding the crowbar, I had neglected to ask for physical descriptions and details about what your characters looked like, so I was forced to comb your equipment lists and look at your avatars to get an idea of a way to refer to you as an observer. :)
Don't worry Raakuzedu’lon’ros has little faith in any you since you are not true dragons...it's his flaw don't hold it against me.
@Navarre it's a reasonable thing to be pessimistic about. I know my character is straight up terrified right now.
@GM i have a physical description of my character in my profile page. i try to use avatars close to the description anyway.
I'll move us along once Arianna has also checked in.
I'm really enjoying everyone's posts so far.
I'm here. Will be posting in a bit. Just gotta catch up with everything. Sorry for holding things up!
DM Red, I have a background question - not terribly important but as it might come up figured I would ask in advance.
From his backstory we know that Navarre and Talis are from a village or small town. Is there anywhere in particular it would make sense for them to be from?
If not I'll just say it was a village along the Coast Way between Baldur's Gate and Beregost, I guess. Fairly close without being so close that Navarre would know much about the region around Greenest.
Talis would be from the Graypeak Mountains. They're northeast of Greenest, quite some ways. I haven't got a specific town location in the mountain range, but the region should be specific enough. It would make sense Navarre grew up with her there.
The mountains were bordered by the Marsh of Chelimber and the Forgotten Forest to the south, the Lonely Moor in the east, and the Fallen Lands in the northeast. The mountains separated the Fallen Lands from the Delimbiyr River.
Two rivers emerged from the Greypeak Mountains: the Grayflow in the south and the Loagrann (from three tributaries) in the north.
Ah, ty ty. Very helpful.
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I'm really enjoying getting to interact with all of you through Brax's speech, thoughts, and senses. I'm carrying the idiotball in terms of knowledge of D&D 5E, but so far, I'm enjoying that task and I'm learning as I go.
Hope you all are having as much fun as I am right now and I'm excited to see what happens to the group next!
Raakuzedu’lon’ros might use you as bait for the dragon :)
I am indeed enjoying it.
I'm looking forward to getting into the story a bit more. "OMG emergency!" is great for getting the ball rolling but plot is what hooks me.
Glad you're excited and enjoying the game so far! There's lots of plot to come. We've just started but if I can do anything differently, just let me know.
Oh, I didn't mean what I said as a criticism - you are doing great.
Getting a random group of strangers working together in a deep story line is always an awkward process.
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I'm sorry guys, I know we keep bringing up the "sneak" possibility, but, looking at this in both Meta and in-game, I just don't see how that can possibly work.
It seems like it would depend on the stealth ability of BOTH five scared kids--not likely--and a beast pulling a wagon--also not likely.
If we didn't have NPCs with us, even then I don't think all of us have stealth as a proficiency.
Whenever I've seen a party try group-stealth, it doesn't go well, and they end up in a fight with the enemy often coming down on them at an awkward angle (like, on a flank, with casters in melee, and without an advantageous round of ranged-attacks or a melee-line.)
well we would only need 1 sneaky person to create a distraction. So others could slip past. GM said we could also just try and avoid all together.
Whenever I've seen a party try group-stealth, it doesn't go well
In my experience that often depends on how the DM handles group stealth checks. If everyone has to pass, then I agree, it is almost impossible (I plead guilty to taking that perspective when I was running games back in 3.5). Even if most or all of the group are skilled at stealth, all it takes is one bad roll to ruin everything.
More recently I have seen (and liked) the idea of a group checks - either a certain percentage of the group has to pass, or the results are averaged, or something similar. It's a sacrifice of verisimilitude for (in my opinion) a more enjoyable game experience. Having effectively no chance of success just takes the option off the table altogether, which just isn't as interesting.
I am not the DM of this game, however, and will accept without complaint however DM Red wants to handle it.
well we would only need 1 sneaky person to create a distraction. So others could slip past. GM said we could also just try and avoid all together.
I was thinking along the lines of total avoidance. I was under the impression that if we can see them then they could see us too unless we can avoid detection - a stealth check.
A distraction could work too, but is in some ways the highest risk - if the distractor(s) fail to get away, they would be stuck in the fight alone. Now, if we had the means to create a distraction without someone needing to get away, that would be great - but all I can think of is Minor Illusion and that only has a 30' range.
EDIT: As a final note I would remind everyone that we have very limited healing resources - I believe that Navarre is the only source of HP recovery (excluding taking an hour or more to rest), and he has already used up about 40% of what he can do on Linan. I'll get my singular spell slot back after a short rest (yay Warlock), but if I use my Healing Light dice those don't come back until a long rest.
With such limited resources, it seems best to pick our fights carefully...
Done. Arianna may have a bit of a hero complex. She also wasn't joking about making the bastards pay either. Two kobolds and two cultists are going to get creamed if we can get the drop on them. Here's hoping their INT checks stink!
Correction, four Kobolds and four cultist. Still shouldn't be too hard if we ambush them and manage to thin them out before they can act.
@Navarre oh the troubles of the No Heal-Bot team. Characters are going to have to look after themselves.
Fighters at least can heal themselves (once) i believe and i can shield myself from damage on reaction. But yea we'll try not to over-tax the healing resources especially when we become a team rather than a motley of people heading in relatively the same direction.
I did forget about the Fighter's Second Wind ability (still a 5e newb lol), that will help significantly.
I still think that this fight is a mistake, but Brax and I are overruled so the fight is on.
Well, things didn't work out like I had planned. I hadn't realized that Kuze and Eska had slipped ahead of us, and I was kinda hoping that we could get an ambush set up really quickly.
Ah well. C'est la vie.
So, here's hoping Arianna can sow some confusion among the ranks!
Well, at least we have some time to soften them with ranged attacks. I for one can hit most of them already...
It may not have worked out like you planned, but a dragon appearing out of nowhere is sure to make some kobolds and run-of-the-mill cultists very, very confused. Even moreso when some can hear it, some can see it, and others can't do either. They aren't the smartest creatures, either.
Oh I'm not complaining. It did get them nice and confused for two rounds so I say the shenanigans were worth it.
Well, they would have been worth it anyway since it'd be a fun story to tell no matter what happened. :)
I know moving like I did is going to draw two attacks of opportunity, but I think I'll chance it. I may regret that later, but I'm hoping that they'll either roll low or be too intimidated by what just happened to the last person that tried to attack her to even try.
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So, I know that everyone was kinda hoping for some kind of "perfect" ambush, but, this right here is actually, mostly, a -really- good battle plan.
My personal name for this kind of fight is "Infinite Range". That is, if my side has greater effective range damage, either by having weapons that fire farther than the other side, or just doing more damage at range, then that FORCES the other side to run, headlong, through the damaging hail of fire to close to melee. This does 3 things:
1) It forces the enemy to take damage from ranged attacks by closing the distance. When someone is closing, the usually are not looking for cover, etc.
2) It gives the melee-preferred characters time to close ranks, and prepare actions or spells. AND when they do close to melee, they are fighting a decreased enemy.
3) When the enemy is double-moving trying to close, they are NOT standing and firing at us, inflicting damage.
Obviously this isn't perfect--no plan is. But as we go around saving the town, please realize that if I'm firing at long range at everything, there's a reason. =)
I agree, it's not bad... so far we've only taken one hit and it's on a fighter so it needn't take any long-rest resources. Hopefully we can take the last 2 down without further injury.
The biggest improvement I can think of (other than not fighting at all) would have been starting with some sniper shots would have been a little better, as the illusions (a good idea generally) had a far shorter range, putting Arianna in unnecessary danger. We could have started at a full 120' away (my range with Eldritch Blast) and had the rest of you ready shots for when they got in range.
Honestly I think we've had pretty good tactics, I'm just concerned that this seems to be a siege situation, and that we might find ourselves running low on resources and facing tougher fights later.
We were warned that this game could be deadly... I'd rather not make that too much more likely than necessary. :D
Well, I'm hoping that I can get a longbow at the garrison and use that at range. I wasn't wanting Orin to get into melee anyway. We've got two or three of us that are decent frontliners. Ideally, the baddies would have walked up to the killbox, Brax and Raakuze would have blocked them from getting to the ranged fighters and they would have rained death on them before they got into melee. Arianna would have come up and taken care of the stragglers.
I do like how things have developed so far. Arianna's definitely got some fire in her belly. I'm also liking how Brax and Arianna are probably going to interact. Wouldn't be the first time I've had a character that should have known better challenge a dwarf to a drinking contest. ;)
Speaking of, I'm liking Linian. She's feisty. :D
That was the goal :) I definitely wanted to paint her as the Action Mom.
For this encounter, I wanted to reward the resource expenditure and creative solution. Above that, it made a lot of sense that these sorts of mobs would be fooled by an image, so you had a big advantage in this fight. It may have been dicey otherwise!
I apparently neglected to put it on my sheet, but I should have 20 crossbow bolts if you need them Orion. I'm not going to need them anytime soon (though I do slightly more damage with a crossbow than with Eldritch Blast right now, though it is less accurate).
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"Someone has a stick up their arse," Arianna mutters to no one in particular before continuing on ahead to make sure the way is clear.
lol.
Such arrogance these dragons!
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:P
To be fair, Arianna is more worried about the dragon coming down for a snack than running into cultists. Hiding in shadows and under eaves should make it harder for the drake to spot us, hopefully, and give us a decent chance of getting to keep.
But yeah, me thinks that Raakuze and Arianna are gonna have some words at some point.
Same, Arianna, though we have been lucky not to be outnumbered. Even kobolds can be deadly if here are enough of them.
Also, I have a feeling that sooner or later Raakuze is going to get a big dose of eating crow... i just hope we all live through it. :P
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Raakuze in a nutshell
lvl 1 Character
Step 1: "One V. One Me, Dragon"
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit?