DM Nex's Age of Ashes (Inactive)

Game Master NeoEvaX

I think I would prefer to stay here for now, just for consistency sake if nothing else. I have access to Discord, just not as proficient with it yet. A new game? Sure, I wouldn't mind starting one there.

I would prefer to stay on this platform.

Personally, I'm fine either way, but I think we'd all need to be on board for a move and it looks like we are not.

I do have a question about access to firearms: by default, they're uncommon, but I happen to think they're pretty neat! What's your opinion on their availability for us?

Level 4(Finally):

HP: +8 (6 Class+2 Con)
Sorcerer Feat: Arcane Evolution
=> Trained in Medicine
Skill Feat: Lie to Me

1xLevel 2 Spell: Telekinetic Maneuver

Archetype: Basic Trickery => Minor Magic => +2 Arcane Cantrips:
Mage Hand
Light

+1 to pretty much anything courtesy of adding level.

I took the liberty of throwing a 20 foot burst template on Bertrum. Looks like you get 4 of them as described, though you could get 5 if you moved it further in

Im happy with 4.

The DC for Bertrum's spells is 19: His proficiency bonus is 6, and his Wisdom modifier is 3.

Ah yes you are right. Thank you! increasing damage taken by s6

Apologies, as written in the other game, several kids were ill sequentially. Going in circles there :P

The flat-footed is nice, though: it gives you the same effective to-hit as a fighter.

Aye, I appreciate the flat-footedness :D For all that stuff that makes me use Spell Attack roll.

But I do like "Control"-Options with casters, and then a.: going early gives you better options, and b.: going before the bulk of enemies(compared to going after them) is effectively an extra turn at the start - which is always great, no matter if I get to make use of the flat-footed or not :D
But I didn't mean to sell that short, just that in this case it won't matter :)

I don't know if it will make a difference, but Bertrum should have either a +1 or a +3 to his fort save against the poison, depending on if the treat poison was a success or not (it has the same DC as the poison)

Ah it does! Thank you. Will update.

I can't remember, after casting a 2 action spell, can I use my remaining action to perform a regular melee attack? If so...

You sure can! Combining an attack with a spell that targets saves is a good combo, since a multiple attack penalty never enters into the equation.

Yeah @Bertrum, that is a great combo. Rolled a 5, but still a good combo!

Nov 1st so Hero point!

I assume there will be some sit and heals before continuing. Give you guys a second to sort that out before going deeper. That one spider that got away is no danger and will stay hidden in the webs, unless you want to seek it out. If you do its not going to be hard to take down.

As Enara said, Druids are no longer proficient in scimitars. Doesn't make sense, but there you go.

That is just weirdness!

We can transfer the Striking rune to Bertrum's weapon, once we have time.

Yeah they go from being associated with them, to not being able to use them.

I never really understood why they were associated with druids to begin with, to be honest.

Re: clumsy condition: hunting spider venom has a max duration measured in rounds, so even if you never passed a single save it would eventually wear off. So, no, you shouldn't be clumsy anymore.

We can transfer the runes later, it just takes a day of downtime and 10% of the price of the runes. We can spend more time to reduce the cost down to 5%. For a +1 potency rune and a striking rune, the cost would be between 5 and 10gp in total, depending on how long we spend transferring them.

Yes clumsy is gone now. The only real lingering effect is the damage from the poison. Not a disease that lasts a long time.

There should be downtime coming up too.

Thanks :)

Ha! Im old school. I know why… scimitars are curved and so when they created the original Druid class back in 1st Edition they tried to keep with the original historical concept of them. The only weapon known to be associated with Druids were ritual sickles that were crescent shaped. In order to limit the class for balance sake, (I guess) they added scimitars along with ‘natural-simple weapons’ like slings and spears. Ridiculous, but it makes sense under the right circumstances.

So Scimitars were simply the stand-in for sickles?
Because honestly I wondered about that as well - because with sickles existing in-game scimitar simply did not make sense.
(Honestly, I would rather have seen some classes getting a watered-down basic fighter "weapon training" with some class-specific weapons-)

Bertrum got it. They were supposed to use sickles to gather a specific leaf. This leaf was their"holy symbol". This was AD&D 1st edition, then I think they got scimitars in Unearthed Arcana 1.5 edition. I think the leaf was holly.

Not mistles? Pity...and the sickles make sense, no question there. But if those existed, then why scimitars?
It sounded like they had no sickles back then, so they just took Scimitars as a stand in. But if those came later and sickles existed before then they make even less sense-

Mistletoe. It was mistletoe.
Sickles were just oddly curved dagggers. Scimitars gave them a decent melee weapon.

Thanks, Bertrum, for making me feel old...I meant that, but seems I'm outdated.

mistle

Pronunciation IPA(key): /ˈmɪsəl/
Etymology 1
From Middle English mistel (“basil; mistletoe”), from Old English mistel (“basil; mistletoe”), from Proto-West Germanic *mistil (“mistle”), from Proto-Germanic *mistilaz (“mistle”).

Noun
mistle (countable and uncountable, plural mistles)
(obsolete) mistletoe

I'll just blame it on the proto-west germanic and it's all good.

(Honestly, I would rather have seen some classes getting a watered-down basic fighter "weapon training" with some class-specific weapons-)

We do have this to some extent. Bards, rogues, and alchemists all get proficiency with specific martial weapons. Clerics can too, but it depends entirely on their deity. There's others I'm probably forgetting, those are just the ones I remember off the top of my head.

Aye, but proficiency just means to hit, right?
What I meant was going beyond that so that the druid actually WANTS to use the sickle, because he is both more likely to hit and doing more damage than with the alternative.
Kind of like "Finesse Training", or "Gun Training", just for a class-specific set.
Because if I hit on a 10 or better and can do 4-8 damage, or alternatively hit on a 12 or better and do 6-12 damage, then statistically I'll want the second weapon, still, even if I have better proficiency with the former one.

Oh, I see what you mean! Kinda like the cleric's Deadly Simplicity feat.

I think I'd still rather go for the one with a higher to hit bonus, since that directly translates to more crits. Granted, in your example they both still only crit on a nat 20. However! If you normally hit on a 10 then getting into a flank means you crit on an 18, but the attack that hits on a 12 still only crits on a 20.

Again, I think Bertrum got it. They had to give them something to do in a dungeon. A lot of their spells like Call Lightning had to be cast outdoors.

They also wanted to make them different from clerics. Who at the time, could only use blunt weapons.

Yeah, right, because crit range is no longer weapon dependent. So higher to hit would be better. But still, if your base damage on a hit is 50% higher then crits on 15% of hits won't redeem the other weapon - just make it more swingy and less reliable. But I understand the proficiency will raise and eventually make it the only option to reliably hit. It just seems...backward, slightly.
As in, the novice is versatile and will opt for a more efficient different weapon, then as he becomes more experienced he is locked into the 'traditional' weapon because he becomes inefficient with the weapon he has been using.
To me, it would make more sense the other way round - if the novice is "locked" into the traditional weapons and the experienced master has the valid choice of staying with the traditional weapon because it is efficient in his hands, or swapping to something different to mix things up.
*shrug*

@something to do in dungeons: So didn't they have wild shape back then?
I mean, even if it's outdoor stuff they excel at, they did have options - it simply seems odd that they had to give them a great melee weapon to even the field, seems the most uninspired way of handling class disparity.

Wild Shape didn’t kick in until 6th level i think, then u were limited to one mammal, one reptile and one bird each day…or something like that.

You also need to remember this was before feats were invented. Whatever your class gave u was what you got. Heck…Ranger spells included Magic Missile if I remember correctly.

Plus you were limited in other ways. 1 time per day at that level, for 1 hour and that is all you could do then. No spells, no magic items. So basically a normal bear, including that armor class. So even at high level, it wasn't that great of an abilty. The most powerful thing was you healed some when you returned to your normal form.

Thats all good, but even so "hey, we run out of other ideas so instead of making your animal stuff a bit more flexible we'll give you a better weapon so you can play fighter" seems rather uninspired.

I mean, they HAD something to work with that they could have given earlier or made better, so saying "hey, here's a better weapon to use for when your other kit doesn't cut it" seems like a cheap cop-out.

One you are arguing with the wrong people. Two being able to use scimitar, doesn't mean you wanted to. Things were a lot tougher then. You could have as low as 1 hp per level even first. No con bonus until 15. This applied even to fighters. Not as likely with 10 sided hd, but possible. Unless you were a fighter, ranger or paladin, your chance to hit was way lower. You would need a 17 str for a bonus to hit of +1. Which is the most you could get as a non-warrior. A wizard, there were no sorcerers, often did nothing until the boss. Because they had so few spells. Oh all these attributes were probably lower. Because the primary way of assigning them was 3d6 6 times in assigned order. Str,int, I don't remember the order after that.If you were lucky, you got to roll 4d6 drop the lowest, then to place them where you liked.

I am not arguing with you. I am just saying that scimitars make no sense to me then. I believed they were a stand-in because sickles may not have been a thing, and I didn't feel like looking up a complete list of weapons available back then, simply assuming that it is less exhaustive than the one we have now.

The other arguments simply don't convince me that adding a weapon proficiency was the best course of action they could have taken. I am not questioning your statements, I am saying the decision to 'fix' shortcomings like abilities only working outdoors or abilities coming online very late and/or being weak by means of adding a semi-random weapon proficiency is not sound argumentation in my opinion.

I am well aware the game mechanics were different, as well as the classic 3d6 method to assign stats, but that doesn't really play into the thought process if scimitars make sense for a class or not.

I do not disagree with you. Just trying to play devil's advocate for Gygax, the creator of the genre. Although thinking about it, I don't think the druid was on him. Druid was late to the game.

As for sickles, they were in the game as Bertrum said. They were considered daggers, the weakest weapon in the game, at that time. So you are saying they should go into combat with a dagger and be barely better than a wizard? I think according to you a druid should not have been played. Again not arguing, you maybe right. But then they wouldn't have been improoved later.

What I am saying is that they should either have made sickles more valid for the class or looked at the other features.
Even saying something like "A druid wielding a sickle may use either the values for a sickle or those of a scimitar for any calculations"(of course worded in a rules-relevant way for that edition) would have felt better.

It's like saying unarmed punch is too weak, so lets maybe give the Monk Greataxe Proficiency so he can properly do damage. And not wearing armor really makes him easy to hit so maybe he should be able to wear full plate.
Instead, there is flurry and unarmed damage progression, as well as a second stat-to-AC and armor bonus progression.
If there is a new class, then it should have mechanics that make the class work. If I am unwilling to include those mechanics or special rules to make the class work as it should, then maybe the class should not be made like that.

I am not saying they should have been incapable in melee by wielding a dagger, I am saying if they understood that was an issue they should have taken care of it in a more inspired way than randomly giving them a proficiency with a weapon very remotely similar to what they might have used, and forcing that non-canon choice to become the de-facto standard because it is the only valid option.

Ok so.. My life has been hella crazy lately.. Applied for 3 new jobs. Got accepted to a new job though! Good offer.. Does not start for awhile.

My work/home life balance has been f***ed up for awhile.

This game has been really hard for me to get back to. The notifications have been sitting in my RSS for days/weeks.. Just adding stress.

So I have decided to take a month off from forum games. I want to see this story through, I just am giving myself too much stress. I am going to set a TODO item for December 15th to come back. But I am going to take it off my plate. I need not stop stressing about it and give my brain a break.

Congrats on the job, and don't worry about the game. I don't think anyone would want you to be having stress, enjoy the break!

You do you. As long as you come back, I don't have a problem.

=)

I understand. I have been cutting some of my own games recently also. During the initial Covid, while laid off, I did get a bit PbP happy. Now that I have been back to work, I am finding that it is more a chore than a pleasure for some games that I am in. I still need to cut a few more, but this one was NOT one of them that I am considering to cut.

Taking a break is fine. Just to let this group know, I am desiring to continue this game.

I am absolutely enjoying PF2e. I have 3 goblins currently with another ready for SoT...lol!

Ok.. Back! I dropped off one of my games, but I am going to do my best to keep this game going, as if I leave this I leave a lot of people hanging!

Before I jump back in, can I get a roll call to make sure everyone is back.

Happy December all.

Still here!

Here.

The little-big goblin begins flexing....

Red Five Standing By