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Just to give you a heads up, the heat rules work slightly different in this scenario. Its one check for the whole day. And sSince we are high tier (3.6 APL), there is actually a chance that the heat can out-damage Rhu's fire resistance if he fails the Fort Save. Its a small risk, but a risk none the less.
There is a -4 penalty to heat dangers when wearing armor or heavy clothing of any type. It doesn't matter if its light or heavy. Wearing a haramaki has the same penalty as a suit of full plate. It might not make sense, but thems the rules.
Also, unless anyone has any animals companions or familiars that need protection, there's only five people in the party right now, since Eredur backed out.
I will make a more substantial post later this evening.
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It seems like we might be getting slowed down by the great January CookieApocalypse. I'm not sure what to do about it, but for now, let's do a quick roll call.
Post a show that you've been watching recently. Or if you don't watch tv, what HAVE you been doing instead. For mine, I will say that I just binged Search Party recently. I liked it.
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I finally caught up on the Mandalorian, and then the first two episodes of WandaVision. Fun.
I also have been watching Chuck on Amazon Prime, because I remember liking the series back when it first aired. It lost steam around season 3, I feel like. Also, despite only being a decade old, it seems really dated.
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I have to say...I'm pretty much on board with most people in thinking that the Mandalorian is really, really good. And yeah, I think I only got through the first season of Chuck when I tried to watch it and couldn't put my finger on why it didn't catch me. It definitely had elements that I liked for sure.
Okay, I looked up "This is How You Lose the Time War," and I think I'm going to put that book on my reading list. I can't think of anything written with two authors before like that.
Boo....anime isn't very specific. I'm not huge into anime but I'm always interested in what other people like because occasionally a show will really hook me. One I really, really loved was Vinland Saga.
Okay, so the only one I'm worried about is Kroone at this point. Unfortunately I don't have a way to contact him. I didn't see an email on his profile... Hopefully he figures out how to get back in on his own.
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Re "This is How You Lose the Time War," epistolary novels have been around for a while, but AFAIK it's not a common thing in SF. There are a few fantasy examples out there, though--Steve Brust and Emma Bull wrote "Freedom and Necessity" in that style, and Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer wrote three of them (starting with "Sorcery and Cecelia").
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Okay, I've never really thought about epistolary novels as a sub-genre of literature. I've definitely read a few books written in that style but never in SF and nothing with multiple authors. That's the part of it that seems really cool to me.
Anyways, I think we have everybody, which is great. This is kind of an annoying fight with all the auras to keep track of, but hopefully what I'm doing on the initiative tracker is making sense to people.
Would you recommend Our Girl? I have friend who I deployed with in Iraq in 2004 who was a medic and his stories are a lost crazier than anything I saw. And yes, definitely watch the Boys!
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For this season of new anime, I have to say my favorite so far is Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation. They finally made an anime adaptation for the Light Novel which was what brought the current Isekai trend in anime popular.
As for saying what my favorite is or whatnot, hard to say. I've been watching anime since the early 1980's and there is just too many to consider.
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Sorry this is going to be a longer post, but I feel like this game is starting to slow down and lose its momentum. Especially because I volunteered to run all three parts and would like to honor that. I think I want to start with posting expectations, which I usually ignore because its generally not an issue.
One post per day, with maybe only one over the weekend is generally the expectation for most games. And I'm not super strict on following that because I know that can be hard to do all the time, but I still think its a good baseline to shoot for.
Your posts don't have to be anything dramatic or big. A really easy thing to do is to simply react or respond to something another character just said or did. It can as simple as saying, "Great idea, Therin!" or "grumble, grumble, I hope you know what you're doing." A post like that can help characterize your PC, while giving other PCs something else to react to in their posts and even help push the action along.
The last room had some really confusing mechanics and I think that might have lead to people hesitating to post. Don't be afraid to ask me questions if you aren't understanding my descriptions. If an encounter has a unique mechanic I prefer explaining how it works. I don't want your PCs to suffer because they didn't understand what was going on or some mechanic works differently than it normally does. It is fair game if they suffer due to bad luck or poor decisions though. (insert evil GM grin)
I open to an suggestions or feedback that you may have. I'm happy to admit that I make mistakes and am always trying to learn to be a good GM. I usually only run these scenarios 1 time and there's always something I wish I did a little better.
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With the last room, it wasn't just that the mechanics were confusing--I think I got those (at least, once I figured out that Acrobatics was going to be useless--at this tier, who has characters with the Fly skill?), but I wasn't sure of the goal. Were we trying to get across? How urgently did we need to check the chest? Was there anything else we should be doing? Maybe that was just me being oblivious, but ISTM that in the absence of a clear goal the tendency is going to be to hold off and follow someone else's lead. Unfortunately, that's a vicious circle problem: if most of the party is waiting for someone else to make a move, that slows things down, and the passage of time makes it more likely that a player will misremember or lose critical details. Which will make it more likely that they'll at some point wait for someone else to make the first move.
As for what to do about it, maybe put a synopsis on the slides?
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From my side - I am probably in fault. I don't post much at all during weekends, and even during the week I'm limited to about a post per day. I also reckon that my character my be a bit underleveled here, and therefore not as useful / fun as the others might be. My apologies, GM! I think you're doing a fine job.
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Yay, Rhu those are fair points. The only real indicator that you need to get that chest is that Iyasset does tell you that you need to retrieve the chest as a test of your mastery of air. Also, what party worth their salt would leave behind an unopened chest?
But the scenario does allow for you to give up on this goal and get out of the room. The consequences are that the party would disappoint the elemental and it would reduce the gold you earn at the end. But the main thing you need to do is to get across the room, by flying or falling. And not that I wanted to tell you this, but if someone was knocked unconscious the elemental would rescue that PC., so you won't actually die here.
Yeah, most PC's won't have points invested in Fly at this level because there isn't really a use for that yet. But if your character was a rogue, that untrained Fly skill might still be better than a Will save for some players. And there are few PCs that might feasibly put points into Fly early. Tengus can get some use out of it it they have the gliding wings trait (and that trait could be super useful in this room!). But yeah, I think having Fly as a skill that you can use in a tier 1-5 scenario is very weird.
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OK, I will be working on the chronicle sheets soon. Technically you have to make a choice about whether you want the wind fan or the sandals on your sheet. If you don't have an opinion, I will default to leaving the sandals on there as it seems like the more useful item to me. I could actually see some characters taking it. The fan is pretty lackluster, as it just lets you cast a level 2 spell (gust of wind) once per day.
You guys just barely made the criteria for your 2nd prestige point. The 2nd point is based on whether you gathered evidence from the Sandflow Source. Balentiir asks for you to do this, but its easy to miss because he just says it in passing. Luckily, Therin happened to make some notes about the hieroglyphs so you can thank him for that second prestige point. And you were able to identify the statues. I think the other things you could do for credit was to get cuttings from the flowers that the sandmen were guarding or collect a sample from the river of sand.
Basically, the moral of this is to never pass up a chance to make a rubbing, because there is a good chance your second prestige point hinges on it.