So, Atash has met the dwarves a while ago, and was planning this mission into the castle at a future date, which is now coming up. And Razaniel is a more recent recruit that I also grabbed to help with the mission, since it's coming so soon. Yes?
Apologies for the lack of posting - I started with the symptoms on Wednesday, and have been fighting off Covid for the past few days. I will try to post as soon as I am feeling better, since I am not doing much more beyond lying in bed resting anyway…
No apologies needed, real life comes first.
Hope you all keep it mild and pull out of it very fast.
No problem. Thanks for letting us know.
So, Atash has met the dwarves a while ago, and was planning this mission into the castle at a future date, which is now coming up. And Razaniel is a more recent recruit that I also grabbed to help with the mission, since it's coming so soon. Yes?
Yes. I appear to have completely not responded to this post. Sorry about that.
Just so we're all on the same page, you can learn more stuff, talk to more people, and add to your list of objectives once you reach the castle. But I there's really only one more thing that you need to be told before you get going.
Check! I thought about what else I'd want to know about the fungus, but nothing came to mind. We know what it does, what it wants (to consume us, ha), and what to expect when we encounter it.
Since it goes dormant in the cold and dark, I figured it would 'wake up' faster when subjected to the presence of fire. It's a good thing that Karti has a flameless lantern (I hope!).
I thought we determined that flaming torches keep it at bay?
I was curious to find out if there's perhaps a way to keep them dormant since they go inactive in cold dark places. The presence of fire, being warm, I figured might wake them up.
Perhaps a more useful question would be 'what can you do against the spores once they manage to attach to someone?'.
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It is somewhat counterintuitive that flames prevent it from attacking. However, it attacking is unrelated to its state of stasis. Warm, bright environments cause it to wake up and move into digestion mode, but they don't affect its ability to attack.
The spores are a disease, and are thus susceptible to anti-disease measures such as spells and antiplague. They can also be cured with two consecutive successful Fortitude saves. Resting in a particularly hot environment (e.g. right in front of a large fire) provides a +2 bonus on such saves.
Disease huh? Sounds like a non-Paladin problem, hahaha!
Shouldn't be too much trouble for you.
Aftonio mostly has info about the social structures and relationships with outsiders that developed in the wake of the Sundering (about 50 years ago now). This is a sensitive topic that most other dwarves don't like to talk about. It is not essential, having very little bearing on what is in the castle presently, but could become useful information later on, and may be interesting to your characters.
Edit: Thanks for sharing what you're thinking about pacing etc.
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Planning to mostly react to you for this week. I may have trouble posting a lot on Wednesday or Thursday, but I should maintain a night post like I've been doing.
If you want to push faster, let us know somewhere.
See, we have to ask ourselves, is Trifty trying to fake us out with some secret way to swim in, only to have it be the hardest way to get in ever?!!
You can totally swim in! Feel free to go for it!
For me to move you ahead, you need to state a course of action like 'attempt to rejoin the dwarves'. I'm also willing to try to 'skip ahead' to you being outside the dungeon if we're all on the same page about that.
Yup, I'm good with moving on ahead. If you have no planned encounters prior to the dungeon I'm fine with fast forwarding to that point.
Let's get it on!
Ok, which entrance do you want to go towards?
Apart from restocking supplies for their venture, Razaniel is good to go.
Should we get the group together IC, and discuss?
I'm happy to move you in that direction. Honestly, my goal right now is to get you to start choosing your own path.
Can I get a second vote for meeting up? I would love to push forward.
In the meantime, I can respond to a couple of things in gameplay.
Voted!
A bit of a Moria/Dammerhall thing going on here, but different.
@Razaniel Don't worry. The underwater portions are limited and mostly not strictly necessary. I also think cumbersome, poorly designed rules are bad and I'm not interested in lots and lots of stuff that features them.
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By all means, let us do it.
And it is not only underwater parts which are bad (those are just horrible, for fighting, casting, everything, unless you are packing Freedom of Movement for everyone, and spells to enhance swimming, and breathing) - I once played the role of a scout in a dungeon with flooded tunnels and learned just how bad it can get. The whole rules about visibility, casting, line of sight from above the surface if you are fighting creatures who come from underwater is just... Nasty...
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Seconded, I would rather avoid underwater encounters if possible. The system is just not well equipped for it.
Since it's coming up now, I'm going to give you a quick rundown of random encounters.
Each region has a different table of encounters associated with it. Some of them are more detailed than others. Each region also has a die associated with it. Once per day, I roll a random encounter on the table. In addition, if you do something that I judge to be particularly risky, noisy, or likely to attract attention, I also roll using the same table. In general, lower numbers contain dangerous encounters, while higher numbers are blank or not dangerous. If it's nighttime or another time with elevated risk, I use a lower die.
For example, you spent most of the day walking in the wilderness. I rolled a 20 sided die for the one day you spent in the wilderness. You decided to walk into the night, so I rolled an additional die, this one smaller than a 20 sided die. In both cases, I referenced my random encounter tables and followed the results.
In general, my goal is to try to make it so that random encounters are interesting and make the dungeon environment feel more living, while also not bogging things down with uninteresting combat.
Sounds good! I appreciate the balance between encounters and avoiding frivolous combat.
I will definitely make a map unless you tell me not to. Tomorrow morning, I think.
Yes please to the map :)
I sent some questions over via Discord also.
I envision 3 enemies in a line guarding the 4th, so I figured I can charge right up the middle and get maybe multiple attacks off.
No AoOs, they used readied actions. The front one adjacent to you and the one with the reach weapon were the ones who attacked.
Gotcha! But then... He elected to save the readied attack for me, instead of Torvi. Is that it?
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Torvi is too far away for their readied actions to go off.
Got it now - thx again ;)
I hope I mentioned this earlier, but I wanted to use XP for this game. A while ago, I looked over my encounters and the pace I wanted to keep and decided that medium progression would work best.
For random encounters, which this was, you will receive 1/2 XP. Historically I've gone with less for random encounters, but given that PbP is extra slow, I think 1/2 is more appropriate. I will also be doling out reduced treasure for such encounters. In general, the idea is that you're supposed to avoid random encounters, so the rewards for them should be reduced.
Additionally, while I noted the equipment carried in this encounter, you should stay on track for WBL if you never bother carrying around nonmagical weapons or armor. Furthermore, I have no interest in maintaining a spreadsheet of your treasure, so I ask that someone else take charge of that.
For this encounter, you receive 400 XP, putting your total at 23,400. To get to level 7, you need 35,000.
Trifty, why 1/2 XP for a random encounter when the challenge is the same, or maybe even higher (if it happens while some of us are asleep for example)?
If the challenge is higher, then that should be reflected in the XP rewards.
Random encounters are supposed to be punishing when you take risky actions or waste time hanging out in the dungeon environment. If they provide you with a pile of money and XP every time you fight one, you feel rewarded, not punished.
I don't have as good of an idea of how many random encounters you will have as I do for other types of encounters, so it's harder for me to appropriate XP and money for these events. If I reduce the impact a random encounter has on XP and money, this effect is lessened, making it easier to maintain a level progression.
If I make the XP and money rewards too small, then these events might take up too much real world time without being rewarding enough.
Just make sure to post a course of action when you are ready.
I'm assuming that you're talking in hushed tones all the time, let me know if not.
Anyone want to second and/or challenge Razaniel's plan?
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Hey Heroes! I'll be out of town for vacation for a week, so someone bot me as needed please!
Enjoy!
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Will do.
Ready to push forward, just wanting to let you direct things.
Ok, I am thinking that a more abstracted exploration method might be more useful, especially in this circumstance. I plan to post tomorrow afternoon and will attempt to move things forward to a more interesting point.
It's looking like this week is going to be quite a lot for me to handle at work. I'm teaching a weeklong summer intensive which is turning out to be very energy intensive for me.
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I go out of town for Boy Scout Camp this Sunday for a week. I will NOT have access to any internet.
So, there I was, at Scout Camp. I get a text from another adult telling me that a third adult had tested Covid positive today. Yesterday I had spent more than an hour sitting around chatting with that very guy.
I do the right thing, report the exposure, and long story short, I am home from Scout Camp. There were tears, from my son, and some of the other Scouts, and maybe, just maybe, from me.
Hopefully a false alarm, and an abundance of caution, but I'm sleeping in the basement tonight, the wife is upstairs with the dog.
Ahh well.
Yeah... It is a messed up world we are living in nowadays...
Hopefully you are all safe, and like you said it is nothing more than a false alarm. Fingers crossed from my end.
Hey everyone, just to let you know I will be traveling from the 29th June to the 9th of July. Should have internet access, but doubt I will have much time for posting. Feel free to bot me ;)