Volcano's Land - Mercury Morn

Game Master Miner Cotren

Good to hear from you! :)

I've got most of your plans/actions now, so I will plan on posting tonight.

Phew, long week. Will post tomorrow (hopefully with a map)

lost power for a few days, and my work blocks paizo.com :)

I will update tonight!

ok, last power again while they were doing extensive repairs to nearby areas I guess. I'm back again - attempt to update tonight!!

One more round of power loss, and a kid with a badly poked eye (she's ok, but we're doing antibiotic eyedrops, etc). Ok! Optimistic about a weekend with no further mishaps. Look for something tonight or Sunday.

no rush. You are worth the wait and real life seems rather hectic for you right now

Hi All,

With this little hiatus, I've had a chance to realize how busy my upcoming year is going to be (more responsibilities at school, continuing piano lessons alongside the kids, and I even started a D&D club at the school where I teach, with yours truly as one of the primary DMs).

I've always enjoyed the PbP format, but with such a full year, I'd rather be DONE with the day when I get home (just read a book, be with my kids, then basically go to bed, lol)

I know myself well enough to know this is the right decision for now. If any of you wish to check in, I will give an update in the Discussion, likely for the new year (Jan. 2023)

I'll be around for the rest of the week, and give you an appropriate cliffhanger based on the combat I was envisioning.

While I can't say I'm not disappointed by the events, I'm certainly not disappointed in you! Real life always comes first, and this game has been excellent while I've been in it. Thank you for taking a chance on me as a replacement. it has consistently been my favorite game that I've been a part of. I wish the best for you, and if you do decide to return, I will be one of the first to greet you back.

"No matter how far you are from Hearth, its fire will burn in your heart forever."

-
Abnaki v'Cardi, AKA Kazmanaught.

"Figures." Samen always knew it would end suddenly and in futility.

All joking aside, I echo everything Abnaki said. It's been a joy playing in this sandbox for the past few years. Thanks for being the man behind the curtain. Enjoy this new season in your life, and maybe traumatize a few kids with some epic TPKs. ;)

Real life defiantly comes first. And I'm sad to see you go I'm hopeful that is only temporary. I was thrilled when you contacted me for the chance to return to the surly Kallik. I defiantly want to see her story though if you feel up to. And if it never happens then it was an amazing ride and I know you are out there sharing your wonderful worlds with others

Thank you for letting me play in your world.

Twas fun, but agreed real life must come first. If i ever restart gming I'll be sure to give you guys a ring. This was great

Wow, and it's the end of the week suddenly. Yep, this will be a great year, but it is taking more of my mental resources.

I will still plan on giving an update one way or another in January. I'm going to keep the game as "active" for now, but let me know if you want me to take you off the "active player" list.

I will give one more post before I go --- look for a post over the weekend.

-----

PS Thanks for the kind words all! This has been an amazing campaign, and your unique voices helped make it special.

Ha, and another week. But hey, this weekend is quieter, so here's hoping we get our final post(s) before we hibernate officially. Thanks for your patience, those who are still checking :)

Still checking! (Waiting for the closing parenthesis

Are we mushroom people? Cause that is a fascinating turn of events. Still checking in and already hoping things settle for you in time. Fascinating story as always. Wasn't sure if this was the end or if we can do posting or if it was the closing posts

for now, I'd prefer no posts -- we will pick it up here (if indeed we do) in December-ish 2022.

I am declaring "I have no comment" on narrative speculations of any kind :)

There we go. I will keep the campaign active if thats ok with everyone, but I will not be checking it after 9/23 (one round of farewells, etc)

Works for me. As always thank you for the fantastic game. Even when I an not playing in this game it ranks as one of my favorites. I hope things go smoothly for all of you. I'll be around :)

Hi All!

Well, it's been a busy time! I'd say the biggest hurdle of the semester was having an official Visit from our school's authorizing board (whose opinion would be the difference between getting our school's charter reauthorized for another decade or not, no pressure)

(it went really well!)

In other news, my D&D Club is over 30 people, which for our small-ish school is like 10% of our high school. Yay!

Which ALSO means there are enough new, excited DMs that I'm a PC for the first time in like 10 years!

Which, finally, means I need a creative outlet in MY world again...

WHO IS IN? :)

Hooray! Welcome back! Was hoping to see something here in the coming weeks.

Wow, 30 is quite a few, especially for so small a sample size. Congratulations! What kind of character are you getting to play?

If we can get a quorum, I'd be happy to turn things back on here.

No one wanted to play a cleric, so here I am! Thankfully 5e is way more fun than 3e when it comes to clerics (amazing, a "channel divinity" that does more than 2d6 damage to undead or whatever!)

Those with experience in dnd generally i recommend playing a support caster to give experience to the new players and casters can be a bit complex your first time. Thats just what i do though. Other than that im still in

Thrilled to return.

30 is amazing. You are a fantastic GM for the newbie storytellers to learn from! Glad you get to be a player again.

Im typically the GM with my group but things got hectic, and my laptop broke then 2 of the replacements failed. In between all of that I am getting to be a player. Granted we are all little wyrmling dragons trying to escape captivity instead of the normal humanoids. But its been fun.

Wow, we've got 4! Sounds like a quorum to me! I will wait to see if Sequoya also responds, but in the meantime:

You all died, but the mushroom people brought you back somehow. Your task, right now, is to decide how much of "you" came back, and how much came from the compost heap.

(I'll give an example -- Samen is used to changing his form nearly at-will, so I would imagine him "coming back" pretty much the same as he was before, with an additional "Fungus" form for his transformation spell)

(If, however, any of you want to take the opportunity to re-invent your character somewhat, NOW is the time to do so. This is OPTIONAL. There will be RP consequences for what you've been through, but what happens to your character sheet is your choice!)

I'll have a look over the sheet, but I was pretty happy with how things had turned out!

I may... Rebuild Gabriel actually... In the time we've been gone I've done a dueling sword build and am satisfied.

Feel free to reject this idea out of hand, but if we're wanting to toy with the idea of coming back the same, but different, how well would your setting survive an update to 5e? I could be an actual warlock instead of just cosplaying as one.

I am... less than fond of 5e, but if it's the way the group wants to go, I will roll with it, because Hubristic Efreeti is a good enough GM that I would want to play anyway. I would want to not be a bard though.

Ha, no, we'll be sticking with Pathfinder. :)

It's funny, because we do play 5e at the D&D Club. It's truly excellent for new players, and I have no issue with how it plays - it's clean, and fun. The high schoolers are having so much fun interacting with each other and exploring dungeons. Everything is new for them! I'm having fun just by virtue of being a player and how much fun THEY are having.

I'm a bit spoiled I suppose when it comes to character choice - I feel like the dials of "clean play" and "diverse, meaningful character choices" are at odds with one another. Fortunately, I've been playing pathfinder so long that (for me at least) the friction of the system has gone down, especially since I deliberately got rid of my least favorite parts (for example, having 9th level spellcasters eradicated from both the mechanics and the lore of my world was one of the best decisions I ever made)

Gabe, this is also totally optional, but I noticed you are the only non-oread in the party. That is interesting, because these beings would be much, much better at recreating oread bodies (which is why it's fine for Kallik, Sequoya, Abnaki, and Samen to remain 'mostly' unchanged)

Here's what I'll say, and let me know your thoughts:

--You are more orean in nature now (this would NOT require you to completely rebuild your race, I would likely just take away 5 ft from your speed and give you +1 Str and +1 Con)

--OR you instinctively leaned into your shadowy nature while being revived, at the expense of some of your coporeal being. In that case, you would no longer be recognizably an "ifrit" anymore. You would lost fire resist 5 and gain a small amount of DR (because your semi-illusory body is tougher to hit with weapons). Exactly what that looks like in-game would be up to you.

Yeah, it doesn't bother me to stay with Pathfinder, especially since Abnaki prefers it. I find 5e often allows for more focus on RP, which this campaign is much heavier on anyway, but Pathfinder certainly allows for more precise fine-tuning of characters.

I suggested it because it would be a interesting challenge to do a character rebuild in another system, as it would force a different feel (Samen would need an actual charisma score to be a warlock, for example).

I'll consider if there's anything I'd like to change about Samen.

I was actually thinking the opposite. The revival took away the darkness, purifying him rather. Like the purifying qualities of nature and all that

I don't know how I would even rebuild Kallik in %e. I love pathfinder and Im happy to keep with it.

Only rebuild I would want for Kallik is either druid which is not an option or a spiritualist, but then I would wanna kill Kallik and make her the phantom.

I do think something should change from this but im not sure what..

Gabriel - so you're saying that you're an unmarked ifrit now, but you still have your shadow? As in, you've found a way to dance through the shadows without being touched by them?

No no, like completely ditch the shadows. New class build, like he lost the shadows.

Just like... Rogue fighter basically

Oh wow! Ok, I'd love to hear more about it - I want to make sure you have roughly the same power level as the others (all of whom have spells)

Kallik - sorry to disappoint, but to confirm I'm sticking with no druid (I don't want to relearn how wildshape works, all that nonsense) , and spiritualist looks complex and I really don't like messing with ethereal rules (like ever), so I will be vetoing that as well (I'm always open to discussion, but all the occult classes seem overdesigned and unnecessary to me)

---

What about this? Tell me what your basic idea is, and we'll see if we can make some tweaks to an existing class. Once I know what you're looking for, we can go from there.

Examples:

Samen is a class magus that hits single targets REALLY hard, but maintains a decent AoE and utility list.

Gabe (was/is) an unbeatable sneaker, gave himself flanking, and had a great reflex save.

Kallik also hit hard with her axe, but went more for "druid" spells like entangle, rough terrain, confusion etc.

Sequoya is a hunter with a strong animal companion, good with a bow, and a versatile druid/ranger type list.

Abnaki does a TON of different stuff (lots of buffs, help, etc) , being a bard of course.

Looking through the classes, the one that sticks out the most to me is Paladin (hear me out). My thoughts include:

---A "Green Knight" kind of neutral figure, that you grow into as we travel deeper into Forest

OR

---A 'champion' of one of the Courts of the Fey (like the magician Julian Opal is a champion of the Court of Gems). This could also be more of a "knighthood" flavor rather than worshipping a god.

OR

---You mentioned Kallik dying and becoming a phantom--- we could have Krz take your place on the material plane, while Kallik takes the form of a (presumably grumpier) axe. Could be fun to RP, and that would explain the change in focus.

***
Anything that looks promising?

***

In terms of the big picture, I'd like everyone to have a basic concept of whether you are rebuilding or not submitted soon, preferably in the next day or two.

The exact mechanics can wait, see we will definitely be RPing to begin.

I do love paladins. probably my favorite class so that is tempting because I'm a heavily biased. But I really like the rp with the axe and I dont know if there is an archetyoe that would replicate it

Im fairly familiar with the spiritualist. And would be happy to lose the ethereal form if that is your big reluctance. Though had not thought of playing the brother. My thought was maybe one of the mushroom things. Kind of reflavoring some of the oread with something like a leshy. Would likely have been the haunted archetype and there fights over who is in control.

The forest warden is an awesome option. And I could go straight into that as a magus. Potentially retraining a little. Very attached to keeping the axe if Kallik is alive

So I've thought about it some, and I've got an interesting idea for a complication, but I'm not sure how to play it out mechanically.

Basically, when I died, Abby and Stof used my elementally attuned corpse as a last ditch shelter from the magic nullifying power of the bone road as their tokens lost their power. Upon resurrection, they remained.

Samen had thus far done his best to gather power without letting it infect him and take over his life, so this would an interesting direction to take.

Again, not sure what effect that would have mechanically, or even if it works with the story beats you had planned. Let me know if you can work with that.

Kallik - I'm always willing to listen to players, so if you are familiar with the class and you want to try porting Kallik over to it, you can give it a shot.

I would say "ethereal" is my biggest concern...if we stick with "invisible and only able to be damaged by magical weapons" as a simple substitute, then --- YES, send me a write up and we'll go from there!

I would also be very interested in seeing a hapless mushroom person haunted by Kallik....

Samen, I can definitely work with that. You are the elementally-infected warlock everyone has been accusing you of being since Rokerenge!

It also occurred to me later that this is exactly the completion of the ritual Stof taught Samen way back when, albeit accidentally.

I was thinking pure Stygian slayer. Similar flavor to what he was doing so play style doesn't change really plus slayer has some cool talents to play with

Gabe - that's fair enough - looks fine to me!

All - I am going to be posting tonight, and I'd like you all to respond. Remember, all you need is a rough idea of what has changed in you, not the finished product.

What would the mechanics of the mushroom people be? Along with some extra info about their culture.

And will this close off the Krz story path? Cause I still want to try to solve it. Cause the forest warden is neat and i never get to use prestige classes.