Will have a post tomorrow on my thoughts. Internet has been out since Saturday so I'm trying to get caught up on games.
To be clear (unless the GM has other ideas) Grace is going off screen (think of it as she's got a one-shot getting published elsewhere). There's no help needed. Trying to take a break and a backseat to the other magical stuff you folks are doing elsewhere, and she'll rejoin you at an appropriate moment after a plot breather.
In character you know her girlfriend gets in trouble all the time and she periodically has to go rescue her and this is sort of old hat.
Fine. I’m confused
This is a comics series by a comics publisher explanation: (This is how I tend to think of the campaign when I'm working on plot arcs.)
War of the Vampires is a Big Event with ties to lots of ongoing series and special series. Eldritch is a comic about the team. Good Knight Gracie is going off to do the thing she does in her own solo series or mini-series, then rejoin the Team in Wallachia/Transylvania.
IRL Player-GM explanation:
DQ/Gracie was feeling an untenable tension between what she wanted her character to do (fight/lock up Ragnarok), what the character was capable of surviving, and what the plot seemed to need/the direction Max wanted to go. So I gave her an in character reason to peace out for a bit while the rest of the team (Max and Cesarina) dealt with Ragnarok. If Black Dow gets his bovine together, which is pretty much ready, he could come in with Gracie in this side plot.
In character explanation:
Gracie pretty much covered this. She goes off to deal with a Win/UNISON problem and catches up with the team at the castle.
Understood. Waiting on Ragnorak reply to move forward.
Cheers
Sorry team. I've a business trip leaving Tuesday afternoon returning Friday night. And, I've visitors at my house leaving next Tuesday. So, my posting will be limited for a week starting this Tuesday. Bot me of course.
cheers
The Sacred Bull has arrived :)
Using Tamil as a stand-in for his Mesopotamian tongue (since its an ancient language in its own right).
Not sure how much Gracie wants to role-play the meeting, but hoping to get his voice nicely in place before meeting the rest of you!
Dealing with #JustHurricaneThings right now, will try to post soon.
Oof, hope you and yours stay safe and well.
Good luck. Looks like a bad one.
@ST I found that Eldritch had 5 XP for 155 power points. I rebuilt him and put the rebuild in his profile. Would you please review and approve?
thanks
@ST I think I lost track of power points. I think Eldritch is at 160 based on this post, seven months ago. Does that make sense to you?
Also, I had a Benefit of being in Eldritch for 1 point. Does everyone have that? If you can't tell, I'm scrounging for points. Even considered throwing away his iPhone for 1 point.
cheers
Oof, hope you and yours stay safe and well.
Ironically, I ended up getting it (very slightly) worse due to where I evacuated to. Storm diverted at the last minute basically and completely whiffed my place; it didn't even lose power as far as I could tell. So I spent an uncomfortable night with no power on a hole-y air mattress for nothing.
But better safe than sorry. My mom's place is built a lot heftier than mine, so if either place HAD taken a direct hit, it was way safer.
Ian storm tracker showed the eye literally go right on top of my parents house. Fortunately, they are not so close to the coast in a new development, so they got very lucky.
I think that everyone should have 160 power points plus a free 1 point Benefit for being a member of Eldritch.
I'm fine with Cesarina and Gracie using their powers to create a light source. Probably worth a 1 point Feature RAW, but really not that big a deal.
I actually thought it was RAW that certain powers with certain Trappings got extra effects; like a Fire Blast power can start fires for no extra cost.
Edit: Sorry, Trappings is Savage Worlds. But Descriptors work the same way.
Work and RL over last couple of days have emptied my tank folks. Going to get my head down and recharge, will likely be weekend before I'm up and posting again.
Bot me as necessary please.
Really struggling with a combination of physical health and mental health things at the moment. Sometimes these games are a refuge and sometimes they are like the worst stressors ever, so I apologize if I am especially slow or erratic, I know this group well enough to know you will give me some grace. I'll do my best to keep things plodding along.
Take your time. Thanks for the updates
cheers
Indeed - as someone whose tested the charity of the group and your good self ST can heartily assure its reciprocated in kind.
Echoing Max - take your time chief, we'll be here we you're ready
Work is now insane for me and will be for a few days. Am running on fumes so I might be slow. Bot if needed.
I'm starting a 3 day biz trip tomorrow anyway with limited posting time.
cheers
Just a heads up gang - I'm slammed operationally with work at the moment. Have leave booked for Friday but time will likely be sparse before then. Please bot me as required.
Hi, everyone. I think it is fair to say that this adventure is a failure. I wrote it to take some of the focus off of Gracie, who seemed to be getting to much attention (and feeling some pressure) and focus on Cesarina and Oswald. It isn't a big deal. I was just combining Marvel's Vampire Wars with the adventure from the adventure path. Most of what I needed to accomplish to stay on task has been accomplished. One element I would have to deal with, but I could manage that.
We seem to have lost OZ, and Cesarina doesn't seem to be particularly present and certainly not wanting to be taking the spotlight.
Not sure at this point whether to toss the whole campaign (which is not what I'm wanting) or just dump this vampire war scenario and move on to the next thing.
My guess is that Gracie, Max, and Sacred Bull are game to continue and that Storm Dragon is a maybe and we've lost EM/Oz.
What say you?
Sorry about the disappointing adventure. I understand how that feels when it doesn't go as planned.
On the other hand, I'm ready to go.
I wasn't trying to push things ahead since it seemed like everyone was dealing with life stuff ATM and wanted to take a short break, apologies if I misread the room on that.
I'll also admit I'm not particularly good at taking the lead in PbP, especially if my character has neither the abilities to do so or the authority to just order other people to.
It's why I do stuff like ask BD's character "hey can you navigate in mazes" but it seems like the general answer to any specific problem is "Eldritch can do it" which kinda leaves me feeling like a 5th wheel much of the time anyway out of combat.
Hi all, sorry I've been coming off a crazy time of work and then took a few days off to recover and wanted to think about this a bit.
Storm Dragon, your character is crazy suited to deal with undead and is basically the "Chosen One" from a massively authoritative religious organization, so it seems to me Cesarina has loads to contribute to and would see herself as asserting divine authority when necessary. I appreciate not wanting to take the lead all the time and it's not like we said in game, "Okay, Cesarina, tell us what to do," but nonetheless I feel like you have a lot more to contribute should you choose.
And to everyone, including myself, I'd like to remind folks that it's always helpful in PBP that if you have nothing to say IC, posting ooc "I'm still here, just not sure what to do," or "I'm here, just have nothing to contribute at the moment," or "I'm waiting for so and so to do thing." That way the other players aren't waiting or thinking you've flaked (or are sick or dead). It makes sense in this case as a number of us were out due to work stuff to wait a bit, but we've also had long lulls prior where folks weren't gone, we just weren't posting and I think it was a case of everyone else waiting for another person to initiate. PBP can't work if we're too "polite" in that vein.
This said, to be brutally honest, I'm not feeling this game much and feel like I am phoning it in, personally. I want to support SuperT and try to make this work and will try to stick it out, but I also worry I am not supporting the team in a cohesive sort of way. I'm not sure what I can do to make things better, or even if it's appropriate for me to say I should.
I'm sorry we lost Oz. This said, he seemed to write himself out. I'm not sure what happened there.
If we're all back from break I'll make a post in a few hours. FWIW I'm enjoying the current mystery and am interested in seeing where it leads.
Re: Authority: More what I meant was is that we have a pretty definitive team lead in this group (the eponymous Eldritch) so it felt weird to take command. Honestly I hadn't considered the "divine mandate" angle when it comes to that, but I can definitely work with it.
I think I was in a down mood when I wrote that last comment. I think stuff like my Expertise: Magic being fairly redundant kind of got to me, because it sort of comes back to like narratively it makes more sense to ask "Hey, magic man, what's with the magic?" but game-wise it's good for multiple people to be able to make the check?
There's something about M&M, or maybe the way this game is set up, that makes me more congnizant of narrative flow than I otherwise would be. I've been reluctant to make "frivolous" posts or rolls when I probably shouldn't be, and definitely wouldn't be in most other systems/campaigns.
I may have kind of subconsciously put myself in a box as a "supporting character" instead of a PC, not sure what led me to do that for this game.
Maybe erroneously, but FWIW I've never actually seen Eldritch as the team leader, and I recall when Max's player asked if he could name his grown-up hero Eldritch, I remember the discussion involved keeping clear lines that we're all equal team members, but that simply both the team and the character are named after the departed Eldrich. We all put points into the Nexus so it is as much ours as Max's. My sense was whoever was the expert on the situation present took the lead. Dealing with undead is primarily Cesarina's thing so we would look to you for guidance.
For a simple solution -- we could rename the team, and retcon that whatever we name it to has always been our team. The module/AP requires our team is called Eldritch but is there any particular reason why for our own game's purposes? We could be Freedom League Dark or the Mighty Mystics or Warders of Earth or something.
Just to be clear, I'm not trying to throw shade at anyone or anything. I just want everyone to have fun, and I was trying to bend the prewritten stuff toward that end. If that works, great! If not, we can go a different direction.
Commenting on the conversation and trying to air my own perceptions:
I built this adventure as a Frankenstein's monster of the published adventure in the adventure path, Marvel's recent war of the vampires, and some threads from the Mutants and Masterminds horror book and the stories of your characters. I'm completely willing to believe that all of that is too much and too complicated. The original adventure included Transformer expies and inflatable dolphin enemies, and that seemed more silly that what I've been going for with the whole campaign.
The campaign as written can be played with heroes with any sort of descriptors. I am the one who wanted to run it with magic and magic adjacent characters, an Avengers of magic vibe. Freedom League Dark isn't completely wrong, though ya'll aren't quite as dark as that team.
Storm Dragon in particular (again, this is no kind of accusation or anything). I try to run things inspired by what I see in builds, and maybe I'm just misunderstanding this. Cesarina has lots of cool powers provided by a divine source, but when I look at the character I'm trying to also tap into the person. She has a +18 investigation. That is higher than the canonical Batman build and higher than most fan builds of Sherlock Holmes. And she has the background of being a cop. So she would routinely succeed at some pretty crazy cluefinding and analysis checks, the crazy s!$! that Bruce and Sherlock come up with. She would make CSI: Vegas characters look like chumps. Is that what you actually intend? The same thing with the Expertise: Magic at 20. I don't see that as redundant with Max. That is a crazy score. Jab's builds put Reed Richards Expertise: Science at 10. So Ces is twice as good at magic as Reed is at science. (Note that Max matches this).
I don't carry the load on this, by the way. The two of you with your combined senses and knowledge should know everything about every magic effect you encounter almost instantly. It is hard for me to think at that level, and I apologize.
I'm happy to continue on with this adventure. There doesn't have to be that much more of it unless you guys push it.
Also, I may go ahead with my plans for Oz since we've been abandoned there.
And as for Max, I don't think of Max as the current team leader. I'm not sure there is one. Max is more on a journey to become the new Master Mage and fully inhabit Adrian's mantle, but isn't confident enough yet to truly lead the team.
And as for Max, I don't think of Max as the current team leader. I'm not sure there is one. Max is more on a journey to become the new Master Mage and fully inhabit Adrian's mantle, but isn't confident enough yet to truly lead the team.
Yep. That’s how I’ve been trying to play him.
But I can also see it being narratively interesting if not everyone perceives that in Max. Maybe you see him as already wearing the mantle, and the causes friction.
torm Dragon in particular (again, this is no kind of accusation or anything). I try to run things inspired by what I see in builds, and maybe I'm just misunderstanding this. Cesarina has lots of cool powers provided by a divine source, but when I look at the character I'm trying to also tap into the person. She has a +18 investigation. That is higher than the canonical Batman build and higher than most fan builds of Sherlock Holmes. And she has the background of being a cop. So she would routinely succeed at some pretty crazy cluefinding and analysis checks, the crazy s#~% that Bruce and Sherlock come up with. She would make CSI: Vegas characters look like chumps. Is that what you actually intend? The same thing with the Expertise: Magic at 20. I don't see that as redundant with Max. That is a crazy score. Jab's builds put Reed Richards Expertise: Science at 10. So Ces is twice as good at magic as Reed is at science. (Note that Max matches this).
Being honest, I don't really have a good grasp on the scale of stuff like this for M&M. My thought process was basically "I figure she picked up a few magic tricks and knows how dark rituals work, smash that Max Ranks button", same with Investigation.
If you look at pregens and builds for existing characters you can get a good sense, by comparison, of what characters of a certain power level or theme should be able to do. The DC Adventures Rulebook (which is M&M3e with DC branding) gives the stats for most major DC characters, and there's also a lot of builds online. It's easy to think you're average at something but you have to remember that most people in the M&M world are PL 1-3 (meaning the caps are around 1-3 with skills maxing at something like +6, I think).
I think one thing that makes it hard to get a scope of scale is the way numbers are capped per power level, and you can't get higher than your cap without tradeoffs, which works very different from original d20 games (D&D 3e and its spinoffs, including Pathfinder), where your bonus is only a start and the game is really about adding uncapped temporary bonuses until you can more or less guarantee your success. So if you're used to playing Pathfinder (which I would assume is likely since we're on the Paizo boards, you might feel weaker in M&M compared to, say, Pathfinder, because of how swingy the d20 is and you can't add temp bonuses, and your only mitigation is hero points which you only have a few of. (Which as an aside, is why I think M&M should run on a 3d6 system, with triumph and catastrophe effects for high/low results--so you generally likely perform average for you--which is consistent with how supers work, they generally succeed on things that should be an average difficulty for them--but when something really goes wrong, it goes dramatically horribly, and vice versa).
Anyway, the thing is to remember how your character functions compared to most people, who are of a significantly lower PL than you. As PL 10 heroes, comparing us to stats in DC Adventures, we are at the same level as Black Canary, Green Arrow, Nightwing, and Catwoman---extraordinarily super-capable, not as powerful as Wonder Woman or Superman (PL 15) or Batman (PL 12) but still eligible for the Justice League. Zatanna, who is the only magical hero in the book, is listed at PL 11 (which is about right, she is more magically flexible and powerful than we are but not extraordinarily out of our league).
@Storm Dragon
I use the this site to set the standard of my builds FWIW. While some of the links are broken, it has most every character in and out of comics built in M&M3. It also starts with a Build section to set reference levels that Jab uses in his builds.
Here's Batman with an Investigation of +18!
Enjoy!
@ST Can you bot BD such that his Super Bull leads the way to advance the story? I'm sure he wouldn't mind.
cheers
Being honest, I don't really have a good grasp on the scale of stuff like this for M&M. My thought process was basically "I figure she picked up a few magic tricks and knows how dark rituals work, smash that Max Ranks button", same with Investigation.
torm Dragon in particular (again, this is no kind of accusation or anything). I try to run things inspired by what I see in builds, and maybe I'm just misunderstanding this. Cesarina has lots of cool powers provided by a divine source, but when I look at the character I'm trying to also tap into the person. She has a +18 investigation. That is higher than the canonical Batman build and higher than most fan builds of Sherlock Holmes. And she has the background of being a cop. So she would routinely succeed at some pretty crazy cluefinding and analysis checks, the crazy s#~% that Bruce and Sherlock come up with. She would make CSI: Vegas characters look like chumps. Is that what you actually intend? The same thing with the Expertise: Magic at 20. I don't see that as redundant with Max. That is a crazy score. Jab's builds put Reed Richards Expertise: Science at 10. So Ces is twice as good at magic as Reed is at science. (Note that Max matches this).
The way you have her built made sense in my head, but it sounds like the character you are conceiving is different than the character I'm conceiving. Down the road maybe we want to re-jigger some numbers.
Work has continued to ramp up, likely be the weekend before I see any kind of respite.
Apologies all, appreciate the collective patience.
Are we waiting? Botting?
cheers
I am waiting for Cesarina. I'll bot the bull if necessary.
Gracie: I'm assuming that Calesvol meets the descriptor of a "holy" weapon based on its position in the Arthurian stories. If you disagree with that let me know. I know you are going with a more fey oriented Avalon and etc.
Gracie and Cesarina: Lots of potential here to power stunt your light based powers. Just a thought.
Yeah, I was mulling over whether I wanted to do that or not myself. Maybe lower the damage a bit, increase the radius to "unreasonably huge" and obliterate all the smallfry, if that's feasible?
These are intended to be a bunch of fairly stereotypical "comic book" vampires. Almost all of them would be very susceptible to sunlight or similar. From a rules perspective, that means their enhanced toughness and regeneration don't apply to sunlight.
If that's the case, could I do something like Environment Control: Light with something like "Feature: Counts as actual, real sunlight"?
Given a lot of Gracie's design is akin to a paladin (though oddly I never want to play a paladin in PF/D&D), and indeed given the place of Excalibur in the Arthurian Cycle, I'd say "holy" for these purposes applies. The fey became the sword's guardian, but I always have a sense fey items reflect the human belief and creativity around them, and the sword would have been wielded with--and absorbed--previous users' faith. And Grace herself has her own sense of faith, although she is not religious in a traditional sense.
I still have never spent my additional power points, because I'm a dingus (it's actually because every time I think of it, i don't have access to Gracie's spreadsheet). I had intended to boost the Dazzle to a cone, selective effect. That would come in handy about now... I'll post later today. I'm late for work!
Paladins are actually SUPER fun in Pathfinder, I definitely recommend giving one a shot. Much less so in 3.5. You think Monks are MAD? They have nothing on the 3.5 Pally lol. Not sure what they were thinking on that one.
Sorry. Came in last night to get started posting and then passed out on the couch. I don't think you would actually need the feature. Pretty sure that is covered by descriptors. There is a super fun comic where Dracula bites Superman and explodes because Superman is just jam packed with solar energy. I don't think that is a feature, just a descriptor of how Kryptonian physiology works.
Given a lot of Gracie's design is akin to a paladin (though oddly I never want to play a paladin in PF/D&D), and indeed given the place of Excalibur in the Arthurian Cycle, I'd say "holy" for these purposes applies. The fey became the sword's guardian, but I always have a sense fey items reflect the human belief and creativity around them, and the sword would have been wielded with--and absorbed--previous users' faith. And Grace herself has her own sense of faith, although she is not religious in a traditional sense.
I still have never spent my additional power points, because I'm a dingus (it's actually because every time I think of it, i don't have access to Gracie's spreadsheet). I had intended to boost the Dazzle to a cone, selective effect. That would come in handy about now... I'll post later today. I'm late for work!
Once we get to the end of this adventure there will be a big reward of power points, so be prepared.
As for the Holy, I agree. Just didn't want to mess with your ideas about your character.