So, Brannart's profession (sailor)+8 vs. Vexas Perception+15 but vs a much harder DC.
Do we have a sense of how "much harder"? If it's +5 vs. +10?
Sho also has a very good Survival here (+13).
But, just about everybody can Aid Another on Perception on a Nat 1 (Brannart needs a 2+). And Sosche has already specified that he is Aiding Another for Vexas on Perception. So I will do likewise.
As cool as it would be to get some use out of a niche Profession skill, I think Perception is our best bet. Don't forget about Hero Points if you think you need them.
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I definitely feel like I'm pushing hard right now in order to keep the story moving forward. If I'm pushing too hard let me know but I don't want what would be a 5 minute exercise in a face to face game to take over a week to resolve.
Although I'm somewhat varying things when one roll doesn't make sense to me, most of these obstacles can also be overcome by one character rolling well.
Some mechanics take especially long in PbP. I find we are moving at a good clip.
Us deciding what skill to use and whether to lead or Aid is a good thing. Better than you rolling for all of us.
I had one PFS GM who was absolutely horrible at PbP. He hand-waved huge sections of the game to the point of denying us any agency in exploration and investigation. It was just "Okay you are in a room with these monsters now fight."
But then there are other games that are paralyzed by player indecision or delays. So there's a balance to be found. I think things are going well.
I agree with Brannart. Pacing during things like this are tricky. You want to err on the side of player agency, and I think you are, while still pushing the story along and not getting bogged down in the process.
Well done! I'm enjoying it.
I had one PFS GM who was absolutely horrible at PbP. He hand-waved huge sections of the game to the point of denying us any agency in exploration and investigation. It was just "Okay you are in a room with these monsters now fight."
But then there are other games that are paralyzed by player indecision or delays.
It've seen some real extremes in both directions here.
One game I was in for a very short time was so beer and pretzels that the GM got frustrated with us trying to talk to NPCs. We were told straight out by him that he would not write replies from anything that did not have its own statblock in the AP books, and he would let us know when we encountered one. I don't think more than two sentences of description were ever given for anything.
In another game, actually a Call of Cthulhu campaign, we were given almost nothing to work with when writing posts. The GM would only tell us things about the environment, etc. around us if we posted we were specifically going to or looking around somewhere. This gets really tough if you don't know anything to base a post on. In the first location in the game, we were given a general description of the place we were at. So we looked around and did everything we could possibly think of and there wasn't really anything of note to act on. Once we'd been and done everything there, we were out of ideas about what to do next since nothing to that point had given us any clues about anything.
It kind of reaches the point where you're tempted to post "I'm walking south until I see or run into something". ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ If you don't happen to be aware, that's not a great strategy for doing anything at all in a Lovecraftian horror game. Posting slowed to a crawl because we didn't know what to do. I mentioned that filling us in a little more could help. The GM replied he wasn't going to do any hand-holding.
Didn't stay in that game very long at all either, even though I absolutely adore Call of Cthulhu.
Oh whoops, we didn't get a chance to do preparatins again so he's already cast that today (it's been a long day for the party :) ).
I do agree it is best for the GM to roll the PCs' Initiative checks as well as reactive Perception checks. Speeds things up a lot. That is why in the campaign header there is block-code to copy and paste to roll all of those as needed. Also Spellcraft for ID'ing items. I think the Hero Points spoiler may be out of date and will check to see how many I have.
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Is there anything that I should be doing differently with this battle? It seems to me to be dragging a whole heck of a lot but maybe that is just my lack of experience with PBP?
Note to self - I should probably eliminate some of the "filler" battles (which this one pretty much is) and concentrate more on the story relevant ones.
Who's turn are we waiting on? The thing that best keeps PbP combat humming along is a turn tracker with clear indicator of who is up right now. Then we have expectations such as, or similar to getting 24h to post once your turn is up or... (GM's choice) you get delayed or botted.
I suspect we can iron out some things like that before we get to eliminating encounters altogether, because we want the essentially ones to not drag out as well :)
Agree on the initiative tracker - it is hugely useful.
Round 1
Brannart
Vexas
Monsters
Sho
Fenna
Enemy leader
Sosche
Something like that.
Last I saw, you had said that Vexas and Sho could make another attack, which they did, so I thought it was back to the enemies' turn.
I got myself confused. When I merged the creatures initiative it caused characters to change to delay actions. I was waiting for haste actions that you don't actually get :-( :-(
My bad. Combat round posted.
Sorry for my mistakes, it is going to take a bit of time to get my PBP groove back. Thanks for bearing with me.
No worries at all, whatever we can do to help.
On trackers we can also have active conditions (like inspire courage), durations of spells (e.g., haste, invisibility), damage counters for individuals.
Hello! I'm traveling right now and don't have regular internet access. I'll try to keep posting whenever I can, but please bot Fenna as needed. I'll be back home on the 23rd.
Sorry the notice is coming late, but I wasn't expecting the difficulty.
I'll be away in nature next weekend, Friday (4/25) evening to Sunday (4/26) late afternoon, US/Pacific time). I'll have signal but phone posting will be spotty. I'll catch up and resume regular posting Sunday evening.
Well, Fenna stated return *today*, so either they'll post late tonight or hopefully by tomorrow sometime.
Generally, this is where a timeout policy helps (e.g. 24 hours?) So yes you should bot as you see fit to keep momentum, OR we can divide up botting responsibilities amongst the players so that it doesn't always fall to you. E.g., if he agrees, Brannart could bot Sho (fighter adjacent), and I could help with Fenna (but again, I think they may return imminently).
Yeah, I did get back on the 23rd, at about midnight so I guess I should have said the 24th. But, that wouldn't have mattered much as it turned out.
About 2 hours before time to leave for the airport I received a call from the kennel where my dog was staying. She was on the way to the vet hospital. There had been a big dog fight that broke out and she was mauled badly. By the time I got to Portland, she was out of surgery and things looked good. A friend brought her home for me so arrived straight into taking care of my dog while she recovers and getting caught up on the backlog of work a missed week caused. It's been a wild few days but I'm back now.
Try getting 6 pills twice a day into a dog who hates pills, has no appetite, has at keener sense of smell than most dogs, and is very clever. Ugh.
Oh wow. That is a lot. I'm glad to hear things are good after the surgery.
Yeah, our dog recently weathered a severe emergency, and pills are totally the worst. Good luck!
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Sorry for being away. Being out of town left me very backlogged at work, and also taking care of my dog while she recovers has been just wiping me out. She's about back to normal now though, at least as far as she's concerned. She'll just need to take it easy a little while longer.
Glad to hear she is doing ok