[Non-PFS] [3PP Class Only] Shadowed Keep on the Borderlands (Inactive)

Game Master djpika

I'm assuming people have been busy with the holidays. I won't be able to post the first week of the New Year due to holiday plans, so it's safe to say things are on pause for now.

Enjoy the rest of the holidays, happy New Year, and stay safe!

Yep, hoilday season is a lot of working hours and then trying to help folks haha. was hard to mind set switch.
Holiday mini break sounds good boss.

Yep- been decompressing myself since the end of the extended holidays and such- Merry Xmas-past and Happy 2023 to all- so I don't mind the break at all. :)

Will help out to keep the rp'ing going as well. ;)

Would be hard for me to even describe today ... or the icing of coming home to the COVID test on the counter which absolutely reads positive.

Sooooooooooo I may have some extra time to post also.

Would be hard for me to even describe today ... or the icing of coming home to the COVID test on the counter which absolutely reads positive.

Sooooooooooo I may have some extra time to post also.

Yep, with all the covid variants out there that exist now or will pop up in the future, always a good idea to take the usual reasonable precautions.

Just a nudge, I THINK we're waiting on GM input here, not sure if you're waiting on us?

I'm back and slowly starting to catch up. My family caught the flu (the A strain going around) and it's kept me down for most of the week, although the Tamiflu prescribed did just as much. Who knew that an antiviral could cause lower back/muscular pain to the point where sleep isn't possible?

I'm back and slowly starting to catch up. My family caught the flu (the A strain going around) and it's kept me down for most of the week, although the Tamiflu prescribed did just as much. Who knew that an antiviral could cause lower back/muscular pain to the point where sleep isn't possible?

Sorry to say I might have known this ... more recently though, I have neglected my thyroid disease. Not smart. Not smart at all.

That sounds pretty rough, DM rel20 and Nathan. :(

Not sure if any of the mentioned herbs and vitamins will be of help, Nathan. Hopefully can't hurt to try.

I heard from a relative whose friends with a retired Chiropractor that these massagers from Wahl are useful to have. The Spot Application attachment- the one that looks like a nipple- can be used on the back muscles in a 1" parallel away from the spine. They can be found pretty much at any reputable drugstore too.

Thanks. I haven't tried one of the gun-type massagers but I'll keep that in mind. I have an old football injury from college where my freshman self went to block our senior gorilla fullback and my upper body snapped back funny. I think the Tamiflu just inflamed everything around it. I'll have to dig around to see what else the neuraminidase enzyme does, since that is what Tamiflu is supposed to block.

Heyos. I got caught up in life for a hard min there haha.
ALso switched to 4/10 work week for the moment while i find another side gig.

but back and back into the pattern!

Looks like Andru's player is okay but did have things very rough going earlier though.

You caught tht too huh.
Yep roughsauce.

He did send me a DM with the same message. Agreed, his scenario was abysmal. I was going to update everyone here but Chigao beat me to it with the link. All we can do is hope his situation gets better.

Heyos. I got caught up in life for a hard min there haha.

ALso switched to 4/10 work week for the moment while i find another side gig.

but back and back into the pattern!

What was the old side gig?

I used to work at the city a my main job, record clerk. Then also did Hotel shifts at a big rich hotel/golf place.

Pulling up old posts like the Dwarven Door Game makes me realize just how frighteningly long I've been on this forum with one account or another.

Giving a little ping-poke to the DM, bad guys should be up now.

Ok, so before I process the roles, it's time to have a little discussion.

How do we want to handle player deaths? Would people prefer DM interjection? Does that change if I were to say that we're nearing the end (thus the option of rolling a replacement would have sever diminishing return).

If Xephkiel meets his demise, let it happen. It's sad, but will be a great RP moment for the survivors. Think of Boromir.

Death is death, not much a level 2 character can do against a Smite crit. There's a reason "Orc, Common" is the most common cause of death for low level PCs.

When nearing the end of an adventure, death is the least impactful. We can just bring the character back to life.

I would worry more about a TPK. Even without the crit (or the Smite for that matter), the ogre was capable of dropping Randall in one hit. He can easily oneshot everybody else in the party too.

I recommend y'all skedaddle, since your characters aren't super combat-optimized. He's got an AC of at least 18, so I think most of the party needs like a 15 (minimum) to hit him, and he's gonna have enough HP to easily tank any lucky hits as well.

Mulling over what Randall's replacement should be, what kind of character would you prefer as far as party role?

Options I'm considering:

The "BIG DAMN HERO": just a dong dong never die frontliner who can wall enemies out and protect allies from attacks.

The "Flesh Wound Eraser": a healer-type that can protect allies from attacks...retroactively.

The "Mook Eliminator 9000": a blaster-y caster-y to give us some more AoE ability instead of us getting mobbed constantly.

The "God Wizard": classic battlefield controller, buffer/debuffer character with a focus on "stacking the odds".

The "Psycho Streamer": okay, if I... if I chop you up in a meat grinder, and the only thing that comes out, that's left of you, is your eyeball, you'r- you're PROBABLY DEAD!

I'm always a fan of letting the dice roll. Chaos happens. What should be easy can suddenly kill you. Anyone can slip and get impaled, etc~!

so, To Wit;

We could try to escape, could also fail to escape~ I think Chigao could get away with enough clones for herself.
BUT! I'm fine with anything at all. Let the characters ride.

I'll be checking but I'll wait to post to see what reaction or who dies. though i'm guessing that would be Randall, there goes the tasty buffs!

RPing how you die is always fun and gives folks reactions to it.

I do have one thing that would be fun to do. but Nathan would get hit given where he is standing~ (tldr? can unload the rest of my ammo firing in a line effect)

Mulling over what Randall's replacement should be, what kind of character would you prefer as far as party role?

Welll, we are in for a ride first~

I will note, for the latter options you were looking at, casters will have some trouble at this low level with uses, and we don't rest too often. So they might have a hard time? I think Nathan has felt some of that at this level. Though I haven't a clue how psimons work and just assume limited uses per day like a caster.

Zupon will do his best to live~ though if he dies I'd look into a machinesmith w/ a crossbow probably.
but i like the hard chaos of these dice rolls lately

I was going to make a "death post" for Randall later today, but wanted to get home first. I have an easier time jiggering with mechanical stuff while at work than narrative; the former is easier to drop in the middle and come back to later.

As for caster sustain, wouldn't really be an issue with Spheres. You get a fair number of spell points, and a lot of talents are usable for free. Eg. the blaster caster build would be heavily specced into Destruction, which gets a good, scaling single target blast for 0 SP, and only needs to pump SP into it for fancier stuff.

The issue Nathan is having is that psionics inherently doesn't scale. His 1d6 damage attack didn't go up to 2d6 at this level, you need to pump extra Power Points into the power to juice it up.

Psions make AWFUL blasters as a result, with Wilders being the better option since they (like a 1st party Kineticist, or the Destruction specialist I mentioned) get an at-will, scaling with level damage ability so they can save their PP for when it really matters.

Psions are better at battlefield control and summoning type effects overall.

Oh "Meat Grinder" as well isn't a caster. It would just be an ultra-turbo-DPS martial character. If the enemies are dead they can't hurt us :rollsafe:

An easy way to bring a new character back into the fight would be to use the prisoners. If the replacement PC was one of the prisoners sitting with the goblins, that makes the combat a change of pace as you seek out the reinforcement.

...

Crits in general are more lethal to PC's. They have to endure more of them over time and quickly change the pace of combat. Although one-shot deaths are an unwelcome side effect, I do think the threat of them keeps PC's in check when pushing encounters too far, as well as creating interesting encounters when all of a sudden the theme of the encounter changes from murder hoboing to protect the injured.

This is the BBEG, so at least the timing is appropriate.

Ehhh, I wouldn't go that far. Crits are not, to me, particularly interesting, especially at low levels.They're literally just the dice deciding that a character dies with zero recourse. Even with a lot of 3rd party material, crits cannot eg. be parried or blocked short of forcing a reroll.

Interesting deaths usually come about as a result of poor tactics on your part or good tactics on the part of the enemy. Crits represent neither, unless you consider allowing an enemy to act in general to be a mistake.

I don't think anybody here would particularly enjoy the level of optimization and tryhardiness that comes with building a party that strategizes to the level of never allowing the opponent to have an action.

I like both. I enjoy the utter chaos of dice. but I also like when its your own fault~

On the 'enemy has no action" topic! My main game we accidently seperately built and ended up doing that, we all happen to snag a debuff and now with the right set up generally the enemy has no actions (the main one or two, the smaller adds do).
Though reined that in cause that isn't fun for the GM even if its very sound tactics for he player character's lives.

How do we want to handle player deaths? Would people prefer DM interjection? Does that change if I were to say that we're nearing the end (thus the option of rolling a replacement would have sever diminishing return).

I'd be fine with letting the dice-gods decide upon our character's fates if it comes down to that; had been mulling over making an akashic ruleset [via Dreamscarred Press] character, if allowed to, as a back-up second character... ;)

I recommend y'all skedaddle, since your characters aren't super combat-optimized. He's got an AC of at least 18, so I think most of the party needs like a 15 (minimum) to hit him, and he's gonna have enough HP to easily tank any lucky hits as well.

Not to mention that the 3 goblins accompanied with the ogre also seem to require hits of 18 or better, it seems like. :(

An easy way to bring a new character back into the fight would be to use the prisoners. If the replacement PC was one of the prisoners sitting with the goblins, that makes the combat a change of pace as you seek out the reinforcement.

Another avenue towards getting a replacement character to join the party might involve that character being in the area as a competitor to getting the tapestry for our Olfden employer or somebody searching for the party/the keep for reasons all their own. :)

Are there character profiles for the existing NPCs? Or are they all just blank slates?

I would also be happy with some kind of metamorphosis happening ... would love to redesign Nathan as a 3rd Level Wilder when the time comes

Are there character profiles for the existing NPCs? Or are they all just blank slates?

They're pretty unexciting warrior 1's and 2's. You could just make your replacement and call him one of these warriors if you really wanted to.

@Randall - do you still plan on posting a death scene post?

I had thought about it but honestly it's too depressing to narrate the final thoughts of a character I actually liked quite a bit. Go ahead and hit me with it.

I shall forever miss the lovely team buffs and martial prowress of Sgt Harkness

You know, if we didn't want to worry too much about introducing a brand new character, I could retrain Randall as an Unbodied, with GM permission.

His capabilities would change a lot, but it would still be him.

If so, I can write up a "going ghost" post tonight.

Sure, why not. If that's the direction you want to go.

I’m assuming you want the death post to be the transition to the wraith post? Something like Bleach?

Probably a bit more traumatic than that, yeah. I had planned to write that today but I'm in an all-day meeting so if you're in a posting mood, feel free to pre-empt me so we can keep things moving.

I had figured there'd be a brief moment where he doesn't even realize he's dead...until he realizes nobody can see him, and all his attacks just pass through people.

That's all right. Player (re)introductions should be done by the player.

Given the state of the fight, I think it makes sense to have undead Randall rejoin combat... maybe with a round delay. It's probably gratuitous, but it'll hopefully lessen the chances of a TPK.

Bring forth the chaos

Alas, no chaos. You needed to roll a smidge lower. =p

Oh! Before I forget, this is important for Zupon:

Unless otherwise noted, creatures are aware of a failed possession attempt, having a feeling of a hostile force, but gain no other information.

Given the presence of a ghost already existing in the keep's upper floor, the idea of spontaneously becoming an Unbodied isn't too farfetched a thing. ;)

@Storm Dragon/Randall:

Would an Unbodied be able to possess enemies too or are they only limited to possessing fellow party members?

They can also possess enemies, yes. Once we have a chance to talk things over, possessing allies is easier though, and grants the possessed a lot of protections.

Would you feel hostile presence? or is it jus always feels such?

Yeah, it just always feels like that. Something is invading your mind and body, and you're rejecting it.

This is actually just a restatement of a general rule BTW; your character ALWAYS knows if they have passed a saving throw, they just don't necessarily know what they saved against.

The ogre is CR 4 so you can possess him for 1 round / level.

STR 25, DEX 12, CON 17.

FEATS: Diehard, Endurance, Iron Will, Toughness, Weapon Focus (falchion)

RESIST: COLD 5, FIRE 5

REF +1, FORT +9

48 HP

Yeah. He also gets a new save at the end of my next turn BTW.

Shame we aren't closer to the giant cube doom! that'd be funny to make it leap in.