Welcome members of the watch! I have a couple of tweaks I'd like to suggest/request for some of your characters which I'll post (or maybe PM) this afternoon. In the meantime please take a moment to say hi and introduce yourselves, and then go read each other's backgrounds. I know that's not always something that players do before a campaign but in this case in particular, you all know each other from work and to some extent have grown up together so you should know a bit about each other. Also, aside from my suggestions, if you look at each others skills (or abilities) and see something with a big gap or too much overlap feel free to talk about tweaking your choices, if you want to.
I'm heading to work right now but I'll try to get a throw away post up in gameplay soon so that you can all dot and delete.
Flatfoot Thrushberry, reporting for duty.
Jaymin has no face skills and never will. He is a classic outdoorsy ranger who happens to be wise enough to know he has no face skills and so never will pretend he does. He will, however, soon start to develop some insane outdoors skills which through companion bond, terrain mastery, and terrain dominance, he will start to be able to share with his companions in a limited way.
Also, he hits things hard with a big axe (not sure how many goblins can stand up to 1d12+9 coming at them).
Vael Grimblade, Paladin of Abadar, reporting as ordered. Sir.
I’ve opened the gameplay thread. Feel free to post a dot there to add the campaign to your tab, but please remember to delete it afterwards. I’ll have a post up to officially start gameplay once we finish introductions and any tweaking.
Thanks for picking Nico GH!
Nico likes you all very much. She will make sure you get something nice on your birthdays. If she doesn't know your birthday yet, she's working on finding out!
Hi all! Super excited about this group! I've already read all the profiles, but I'll read them again just to be more familiar.
Orin can cover face skills, but any overlap is welcome.
He won't be a stellar combatant, but can offer decent support.
Between Vael and Jaymin, we have melee brute covered, and except range support with Nico.
Orin will give the party bonuses through the Teamwork ability and Jaymin will give the same bonuses but since they’re untyped, they’ll stack. Our party is going to have absolutely insane Initiative and Perception abilities (by the time my ability in this area comes on board, we’ll be combining for a +5 to initiative and it goes up from there. Jaymin is going to spend the second half of this campaign with an initiative modifier of around +15 and the Perception check to spot a tick on the back of an eagle. If we have the space for it, we might want to consider all taking the Lookout teamwork feat.
I have Lookout on a Vanguard Slayer in another campaign and it's very nice!
Vael will have some of the usual paladin "quirks", you know, the honorable/noble stuff, but since it's being established we've known each other for a while, you'll all know that he's not totally uncompromising.
He's loyal and won't overlook anything evil, but he is compassionate, and has a sense of humor. (i.e. Not Lawful Stupid) He won't knowingly tell a lie or disobey a direct order from a superior, but he may be willing to keep his mouth shut, or act against indirect or unspecific orders but only IF the situation is dire, and lives are at stake. ...and then he'll do penance.
As it seems he's the only one currently going to have any healing potential, as we level, I'll be working to increase his capacity in that area.
Thanks for the invite GM Giant Halfling and well met to everyone else. I will work on adding Diego's profile tonight so that I can dot in on the game play tab. I look forward to this interesting game mechanic and the role play that it will likely inspire.
I am here.
For what it matters: Diplomacy 6, Intimidate 7
Nico doesn't really see her job as involving much in the way of violence or combatting evil. She's much more a talker and mediator. It's a small town after all, and most people are familiar with, or know each other. She tends to see things as mostly small breaches among a big family.
Sure, sometimes people need to be punished for doing a bad thing, but really these are minor breaches where someone needs to learn a lesson. Usually though it's about figuring out how to make things right so everyone can be satisfied and get on with their lives. She's a Mayberry cop.
Mechanically she's a ranged fighter of course, otherwise she's decent at diplomacy now, but won't really keep up with others who have high charisma scores over the long run. Her best ability scores are in Dex and Wis so she's not going to be much of a skills character outside of those areas.
Alistair is content to be helping his fellow citizens but dreams of dealing with major issues in the future. He is friendly with everyone on the watch and does what he can to assist to include willingly rotating shifts with people when they need it.
Nico thinks Alistair is SO suave and impressive! He's a real artist!
Alistair appreciates Nico's attention but feels he is often the fool in front of her. Particularly when they are practicing marksmanship. He enjoys fencing with the Jaymin and Vaeldin. Meanwhile he hopes to learn to gain the attention to detail that Orin has shown at crime scenes.
Alistair appreciates Nico's attention but feels he is often the fool in front of her. Particularly when they are practicing marksmanship. He enjoys fencing with the Jaymin and Vaeldin. Meanwhile he hopes to learn to gain the attention to detail that Orin has shown at crime scenes.
Not sure if it counts as fencing when one person uses an axe three feet wide. Maybe they worked on their knife skills together.
Sparring, shall we say.
Description: Diego is a six foot tall Human with a fairly lean athletic build. He has long black hair that hangs just below his neck. Most of the time he keeps the sides of his hair pulled back and tied off in order to keep it out of his face. He generally wears a rough set of scale mail, which he tries to keep clean. Aside from a couple daggers that are strapped along the side of his belt he keeps a large falchion slung over one shoulder.
Personality: Over the years Diego has become somewhat of a lone spirit. His entrance into the city watch has forced him to temper his standoffish personality in order to work with others. To date he is still struggling with this problem and comes off as a quiet individual who tends to spend a lot of time off on his own. He more than makes up for his cold personality when push comes to shove. First and foremost, Diego has a warrior’s spirit. He seldom backs down from a fight and has been more than willing to put it on the line for the good of the group. On the rare occasion when he has voiced an opinion, he comes off as a fundamental realist. He has a hardened (“It is what it is”) perspective. He seems to be absolutely void of any concern about offending people when pointing out the facts.
Sorry I was so quiet today- I got violently ill. I seem to have turned a corner (was able to eat some toast about an hour ago), so I should (hopefully) be back to regular posting tomorrow.
I hope you're feeling better GH!
@Orin: I THOUGHT you were familiar somehow! We were both in a Jade Regent campaign a ways back, Randall and Vigny. That was a good campaign, I wish it had laster longer.
Ah, so nice to see you again! That was, indeed, too short an adventure!
Take care GH, no rush..I hope you feel better.
Definitely feel better, GH. No worries. We'll be here.
;)
Indeed. Violently ill is unpleasant, to say the least.
Take your time halfling man. Get well soon.
So, Ranger > Fighter > Paladin > Swashbuckler > Bolt Ace > Bard
Looks like 3 front line, 1 skirmisher, 1 dedicated archer, and 1 archer support.
Many seem to be mentioning their height, Alistair is a trim 5'6", athletic and quick.
Nico is 5'1 and a bean pole.
Alistair appreciates Nico's attention but feels he is often the fool in front of her. Particularly when they are practicing marksmanship. He enjoys fencing with the Jaymin and Vaeldin. Meanwhile he hopes to learn to gain the attention to detail that Orin has shown at crime scenes.Not sure if it counts as fencing when one person uses an axe three feet wide. Maybe they worked on their knife skills together.
While Vael's favorite weapons are his warhammer and greatsword, he's proficient enough in a longsword for some sparring.
And he's about 6'2".
It looks like maybe some of what I was going to mention as potential tweaks have already been made. As I said before, if anyone feels like they want to tweak their skills at all now that they've seen the whole party, feel free (please let me know though).
The brain-haze of being sick hasn't lifted yet, but I think I see 2 things still to address (and they're both kind of good things, I think).
Nico, it looks like maybe you forgot that I changed the human stat modifiers? I believe you should have +2 to any one mental stat left to apply.
Orin, it looks like maybe you're built on a 20 point buy? This is actually a 25 point buy game.
Oh right! I forgot about the human bonus. That will be going on Wisdom.
Thanks for your patience all!
I’m feeling considerably better today. I have a ton of work I need to catch up on this morning but I’m hoping/planning to get gameplay going at some point today. Also, I heard from Orin’s player and he got stuck with a ton of overtime at work this week; he asked that I not wait for his updates if/when I’m ready to start the game, so I won’t.
If any of you haven't read through the player's guide for this AP before please make time to do so soon. You can download the pdf for free from the paizo store or (unless its been taken down) look at it online with a quick google search. Being locals, you should all be familiar with the people/places/events it mentions, especially the "Late Unpleasantness" which most (maybe all) of you were around for.
Edit: also, I've added a map of Sandpoint to my profile banner; please feel free to refer to it often (you live and work here and show know the streets like the back of you hands).
Roger, ready when you are
Gameplay is up!
Annnnd of course, I'll be unavailable for the weekend JUST as we start. lol Guys, I have a rare full weekend off, (I work 6 day weeks regularly) and my wife surprised me with plans to go away to a bed and breakfast til Sunday.
I'll do my best to post something, but no promises til Sunday at the earliest.
Enjoy your family time!
I see most of you already have a good amount of helpful information in your banners- thank you! If you haven't already done that, please do. And, it would be helpful for me if everyone could please include their perception and sense motive bonuses along with the combat stuff.
Also, (aside from stalling a little while one of us is out of town) the point of these patrols is really so you have an opportunity to RP with each other more so than really having any interesting encounters with NPCs, so please feel free to banter back and forth without waiting for me to get you to the action. We'll probably wait until Vaeldon's back on Monday for any real action.
Oh, and I changed the link in my (GM) banner. It now leads to a map that is slightly harder to read but this one's on a site that includes the key to all the locations, including links to brief descriptions. I haven't read every single link but so far it looks like its all spoiler-free so you can read up any of the places that show up in gameplay.
Alright, I changed my GM profile banner... again. As useful as the location links were, the map was just too hard to read. So, now the link in my banner takes you to the most legible map of the city I've ever seen. I put the link to the map that's linked to place descriptions in my profile if you want to look at it still.
Here's a nice 3-D "map", really more of an illustration, that does a great job of giving one a feeling for what it would be like to walk around Sandpoint.
It's not much good for navigation although it is numbered. It complements the regular map well by showing what buildings look like, topography, and so forth that isn't captured on a standard 2-D map.
I can't get the new map you've linked to enlarge so I can't read the lettering. I'm going to use this one instead. Big Sandpoint Map
It doesn't include descriptions to accompany the numbering unfortunately. If you want though you could use the materials from my old Jade Regent campaign, which includes descriptions. Feel free to rob anything and everything you might want from it. After all I mostly robbed it from someone's yet earlier campaign as well.
Lol- that's the original map I started with! The one that's in my banner now enlarges for me (that's actually why I picked it, its super easy to read blown up), has anyone else tried it yet?
My apologies to JaymIn for misspelling your name every time! I actually know a Jaymen IRL, but I will do my best to spell yours correctly from now on.
I couldn't zoom in on it. I have one on a roll20 game but linking to it wouldn't be easy.
Perhaps you need to be signed in to get it to zoom.
Would it be browser specific? I am using safari.
I can zoom in your map, GM. Looks good to me.
I opened the pic in its own tab, it zooms that way. Very nice labeling.
Ah, yes. Opening in it's own tab lets me enlarge it as well. Thanks!
Great, thank you all for helping to troubleshoot that! Since it seems to be working now (and is so easy to read when it does) I’ll leave it linked.
Last call for visiting stands or prelude RP. After work I'm going to move us along to the opening ceremony.
Also, sorry Nico for not posting about your pancakes! I could have sworn I had but I just looked at gameplay and noticed that I didn't; I'll get a quick response up for you in my next work lull.