First of all, it is totally your call, but not sure why you made the food shortage follow us... if we are able to avoid some bad consequences because we are leaving anyway, why not let us?
Second, yes, she has enough, but she's trying to save up for something, the game you describe sounds like poor odds, and since she already has a private cabin on the boat, she'll likely just stay there.
In terms of everyone else ... if you want to stay at the inn, it is fine to pull it out of the party fund, but make sure you let me know how much so I can keep track. Zarine will make sure everyone is settled and safe before going back to the ship.
I meant the gambling game to sound like pretty good odds, at least of coming out slightly ahead. Each win is worth 7/- due to Lord Goldhaber's extra buy-in and it only costs 6/- to enter for six games.
I'm not misremembering right? We have a party slush fund, correct? I remember having one but not how large it is.
If so, what amount appropriate to tap?
We have more than 6 gold in the group fund. I assume the amount will be whatever you need to spend.
FYI, I am on Christmas break December 16-January 2. I might get on somewhere in there, but the likelihood is not high. I will have zillions of relatives here taking up all my availability. Apologies. Please bot me or have me lapse into a coma or whatever for the duration, and I'll check back in in a couple of weeks.
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Almost all of my games have bogged down. 'Tis the season!
Happy holidays!
Sorry to hear that. Get better soon!
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Merry Christmas everyone!!
I'm back, but it looks like we are still on wound treatment. Just wanted to note that I am here, and reading. :)
Happy holidays to everyone! Likewise, I'm here. Vacation is over and it's time to pick up on all the campaigns.
Sorry for the delays in picking up after the New Year. I've been sick and harried over a couple of issues. Some of that is continuing but hopefully I'll be able to pull everything together again.
We're working on wound treatment where Magda is at, but there was something to respond to in the rest of the tavern back at the bottom of this post. For Zarine specifically, it's her choice whether she is still in the tavern or left already.
Sorry... I had already determined that I left already, but wasn't sure what to post about that since the focus of the story isn't on anything I am interacting with at the moment.
It's totally fair to question whether the game has faded out. I've been bad about posting on all of my games since the beginning of the year. Which is doubly frustrating since I was doing well at the end of last year.
I don't have any credibility here, but I would like the game to continue. Hopefully in saying that I can get things together to actually post.
It's been a bit unclear whether you guys are even liking this Stromdorf section, so I'll lay my cards out on what I have planned here.
I wanted the Stormdorf visit to be a nice break after the battle with the beastmen, with some idle, mostly non-dangerous activities you could pursue.
1. The noble is a knight and would be willing to have a mock cavalry duel with Alphonso. He's a pretty good-natured sort more interested in building goodwill with the people than anything.
2. The rat-bite subthread that Magda was exploring is finished, but opened up the possibility of a side job for the PCs if you want to investigate the shed. The innkeeper is talking about getting a rat catcher because he isn't thinking of you as potential help for the job.
3. The gambling game was meant to be at least at least a semi low-risk way to make some money, but it's fine if no one wanted in.
4. The man at the other table (not the noble) is the mercenary captain of the group in the area. He wouldn't be a bad person to meet in general, but you could also provide a warning about your encounter with the beastmen since they are active in the area.
5. One remaining easter egg sort of encounter later on.
If people are still willing to play, I'm willing to try continuing. I've been so weird about posting lately that it's hard to promise much beyond trying, but the intent is there at least.
All of the Stormdorf stuff is skipable if people are interested in continuing the campaign generally but not in that material.
Still here, but don't feel strongly either way about continuing or not. I have a lot of games and so if people want to let this one go, no worries from my end.
Still here too, but things have gone to a standstill, and even if I like Warhammer, I understand if that game must be stopped. I have less time to play anyway, as I just started a new job.
I came in late and never really got situated. But if we continue I’ll be here!
Thank you for the replies, everyone! It's encouraging enough that I think I'll try to get us moving and see if I can keep up with it now. Looking at where the game is at, the big thing to decide is if the party wants to volunteer for the job of cleaning out the rats in the inn's shed.
Are people interested in that? If not, we can just mosey along and get to the next thing.
It's only somewhat relevant to this campaign, but it looks like my in-person group is going to run a short WFRP segment and one of the players rolled...a Witch. I think one thing this campaign has taught me is that even at the risk of some fidelity to the setting it's best to just pull off the band-aid and get the rest of the party aware of (and somehow fine with) a Witch's witchery. Otherwise you spend a lot of the campaign dancing around the issue and the Witch can't even be a Witch.
That isn't to say that all the legal/danger/Witch Hunter ramifications wouldn't follow, of course.
Back
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will be away for Easter, back tuesday
We skipped over some time. There likely isn't a point in rolling it out. You can all be at full Wounds.
In case it got missed earlier, we also had a fortune refresh here, right after Stromdorf.
Had a health scare and a brief hospital stay. Apologies for delays.
I hope you are doing better! No worries about delays. Take care of yourself!
Sorry, been resting.
I'd been avoiding it for a while, but I've been checking on Alphonso's status and it doesn't look like they are responding on any of their games since November. Until I find someone to take the slot, I'm going to start botting him more frequently. I have a few ideas to check on for the replacement part of things before I go public with it.
If their player comes back, Alphonso is welcome to jump back in.
I found someone I know IRL that is interested in trying the game out, so we'll be going through some character creation here.
First, roll for Species. Most of the table is human, so it won't be a surprise if you get that. If you keep what you roll, you get +20 XP (not very much). If you want to just choose your race and it isn't what you rolled, you can but don't get the 20 xp.
That roll is for Human, but 90% of the table is. If you want to drop the +20 xp, other options are dwarf, halfling, high elf & wood elf.
After you stay human or choose something else, roll 1d100 again for your Career.
We're doing this half in the forums and half over a messenger app. He's going to pull the rest of his character together from here. We don't have any high elf sailors right on hand, so this new guy likely won't appear instantly anyway.
Gimme a bit to post... you posted something juicy and I want to do it justice.
Due to Axel's question, let's have a review of how Fate, Fortune, Resilience & Resolve work.
Fate: can be used to survive an encounter when you would otherwise die. You are removed from the scene, but you survive somehow. Alternately, you can negate one attack completely, but remain in the scene normally. Fate never refreshes, you very rarely will get more and is your maximum Fortune.
Fortune: can be spent to reroll a failed test, add +1 SL to a test after it is rolled (I'd allow +10 on a simple test) or to choose when you act in a Round after initiative is rolled. Fortune refreshes every session, which in play-by-post is whenever the GM says so.
Resilience: can be used to automatically succeed on a test and choose the result on the dice. You get at least +1 SL. You can do this on a test that is already failed. You can also spend a Resilience to avoid a rolled Mutation (but your Corruption does not decrease). Resilience never refreshes, you very rarely get more and is your maximum Resolve.
Resolve: can be used to remove a Condition, ignore Psychology until the end of the next Round or ignore all penalties from Critical Wounds until the beginning of the next round. You recover a point of Resolve when you act according to your Motivation.
I left out a little nuance. You can get the full version in the appropriate section, which starts on page 170.
So I started running a face-to-face campaign of WFRP 4th edition the other night and one of my players rolled up an Outlaw. Then he rolled nothing below 30 on his characteristics, including a few high results. I think they got one 40. Then while rolling his human random talents he got: Hardy, Sixth Sense & Warrior Born.
I was just floored. Such bonkers luck.
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That party also has a Witch.
I had to do some bookwork for the new player coming in, and I think we hit a few experience snags along the way. In particular, I got lazy when Zarine was asking how much experience she started with and got a number from Hans. After checking things over, I found either:
* that number was just wrong
* I did something funny with Hans's experience that I don't understand now at all
* something else?
Anyway, we'll even everyone up on experience. If I'm reading Zarine's character sheet correctly she gets some more experience. It's probably worth the time for others to double-check what they've spent against the total. All characters should have the following advances & talents:
* +5 characteristic advances from character creation
* +5/+5/+5/+3/+3/+3 skill advances from species list at character creation
* +40 skill advances from your career list at character creation
* species talents and one career talent from character creation
* those who were playing at the end of 2021 got an extra holiday season random talent
* anything you spent experience on: total experience available should be 455xp plus your xp from character creation
* also any xp from completed personal Ambitions I might have missed
If you want to see the experience awards I'm aware of, I put a spoiler for it on the front page of the campaign. The xp total includes one party short term ambition award. I'm not aware of any other ambition awards granted, personal or party. There should be two personal short term ambitions available per player and one party short term ambition that hasn't been used. We've never defined a long term party ambition.
Some goals that could be ambitions
--Zarine wants the whole party to become her followers, and she already has recruited a couple.
--party wise helping these undead could be an ambition
--Getting Axel to wizard college could be short term
--Getting him trained completely could be long term
So, it looks like that additional XP will give me just enough to raise the last of the skills required and then get to the next level of my career path... so can I spend 100 xp and become a Noble rather than a Scion?
Don't have the trappings, but it doesn't say anywhere that I can find that you need them to level up... in fact, that whole idea seems very nebulous in the handbook. It warns GMs about the Noble career because it "comes with" a lot of trappings and temporal power. Not sure how anyone ever would have the money to buy a "Fiefdom" at the next level either. Surely some of it has to be hand-waved and just assumed to be part of the role, like paying the servants?
Am I missing where it talks about needing the stuff to be able to look the part before I can change jobs, or any other details about trapping requirements? I'm guessing in story that Zarine's family has just heard of her exploits from last time they stopped at an Elven enclave in the city, and from her former companion going back to the forest to report, and has smiled more favorably upon her, so even though she's wearing less bling than she deserves, she still has more influence.
In any case, if I can use 100 xp to move up, I will. Getting that bump in "salary" will help the group significantly, I think.
Some goals that could be ambitions
--Zarine wants the whole party to become her followers, and she already has recruited a couple.
--party wise helping these undead could be an ambition
--Getting Axel to wizard college could be short term
--Getting him trained completely could be long term
If you guys want to have something like 'Destroy the darkness binding the undead to the Teufel' as your second Party Short Term Ambition, that works perfectly fine.
I'm not as sure about Zarine having an ambition to have the party become her followers. Just to begin with, Ambitions don't seem very ambitious if the other players can fulfill it just by simply agreeing. There's also some hesitation from a GM side of things about putting one player in a position of authority over the rest (even if I'm not the one doing it). If everyone agreed to an in-game social arrangement as players but there was difficulty/conflict with getting them to do so I could see it working. You might want to consider other options though.
When I played a Noble, my personal ambitions largely centered around the needs of Landolf's noble house. In their case, that meant clearing off the family's considerable debts. He spent a bit of time trying to set up trade agreements for the family to benefit from at one point as well (before that plan went belly-up). This might be somewhat different for Zarine since her family isn't in the Empire, but something similar could still work. If I recall correctly, we decided that her family would have been from the Laurelorn forest to the north (the other closest major Wood Elf settlement is Athel Loren and they are substantially more xenophobic). The Laurelorn elves are at least somewhat allied to parts of the Empire if that helps to spur ideas. Of course a Noble could have other non-family related interests as well.
Broadly speaking, I think it makes sense if Personal Ambitions are not tied into the main plot of the campaign while Party Ambitions are. This gives people some non-party interests to pursue while in towns (or wherever their interests could be fulfilled) without taking on much risk that the party will run off on a side quest for the sake of a Personal Ambition.
I will note that Zarine has a note on her character sheet for Short-Term Goal to evaluate the trustworthiness of the party. She's been doing that for long enough, it probably could serve for one of her Personal Short Term Ambitions and arguably could be complete now (which would be an additional 50 xp).
About trappings: in prior editions of the game, I believe it was required to have the trappings for a new career (tiers didn't work quite the same way) before you moved into it. That doesn't apply here.
If you don't have the trappings for your current career tier, there is a downside in that people won't take you seriously as a member of that career tier. See the 'Customise your Trappings' sidebar on page 48.
You are right that some trappings in Noble aren't realistically obtainable just by spending money. Fiefdoms and Provinces aren't casually bought and don't have price tags in the Core book anyway. Even with things that do have price tags, though, some things are so expensive that you'd need to drain an inordinate amount of money from the group's coffers to obtain them on any reasonable schedule. For things like that, it's best to rely/lean on the GM for some help. Whether that means getting some assistance from your family or having major items fall in your lap from the campaign may vary. The Coach option from Noble tier II probably falls in that category.
Even outside of Noble, though, there are things like a Library for a Bailiff and a Crew of Miners (for the Miner career), so it isn't like these issues are specific to the Noble career.
If you move up to your second career tier now, the immediate effect is that people would still be treating you as a Scion rather than a Noble. What that means in practice can be really mushy, but there it is.
Returning to the Ambitions above, I could easily imagine Zarine having an Ambition to find a new & reliable servant (an NPC would be my instinct) to fill out part of her trappings. We handled Landolf's servant by creating a second character for him that was intentionally not-combat focused and that didn't get full xp progression. I ended up using Yvonne's posts to help track the party's funds. You can see her profile here if it is interesting to you.
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You might want to consider staying in the Scion tier for a while longer, however. If I remember correctly from when I looked over your character sheet, Zarine doesn't have the Noble Blood talent. It isn't required to be a Noble, but it's a bit odd to not have it. I could see someone not taking it on purpose in Zarine's position if they wanted to say 'I'm a noble, but I'm not a noble from here and the people I meet (especially my peers in the Gold tier) will recognize that distinction'. Even if you don't highly value the text function of the Noble Blood talent, the Tests entry might see some value. For an idea of when tests would be influenced by your Status, I'd see the Effects of Status section on page 50.
Perhaps much more important though is the Luck talent. It simply adds to your maximum Fortune (not Fate). I sank a lot of xp into that talent when I was playing my Noble, and eventually bought three ranks of it so I could reroll more often & such. The need might be even more acute for a Wood Elf Noble since your Fate limit is smaller in the first place.
I didn't see a need for the Etiquette (Nobles) Talent for my character, but I could imagine seeing an interpretation where it would be more effective for Zarine. Arguably, you could say that the talent would let you fit in better with Empire/Reikland nobility than you otherwise might. Like getting all the benefits of being exotic while still avoiding any faux pas that don't need a Test (which might be all of them). I still don't know if this one would be worth sticking around in Scion for (this campaign doesn't look to be Noble heavy in the short-medium term), but it is an interesting thought.
If you do stay in Scion, nothing stops you from working on your trappings for the next tier of course.
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Final note for this post: It still looks like Zarine spent 125 xp on all three characteristics. You might still be missing the character creation advances to characteristics. It's the very last part of Step 3 of character creation on page 35 and I've seen people miss it before. If you weren't counting that, you'd have 125 more xp to spend.
For Hans: you said that you missed some updates, which makes me curious in how you look for them. Lately, I've bookmarked the campaign tab for my main account (my name rather than any alias). I'm sure it would fail in one of those weird events where you get logged out of the Paizo forums entirely, but I haven't had any problems so far.
Not trying to harass, just wondering if there was any way we could help.