DM Voomer's Age of Ashes

Game Master Voomer

Yeah, it sounds like we have ourselves an adventuring party again.

Now let's go see about taking down a couple of CR +3 Vrock without getting TPKed. Because seriously, taking over the game just in time to have the party wiped out would suck.

I think Voomer has yet to assent 100%?

Voomer, let us know when you officially wish to take on the Helm of Game Mastering and we shall greet you with a joyous wassail!

On a side note, it's interesting to get insights on people's brains. I'm neurotypical but oof, that doesn't mean my brain seems 'normal' by any means. :P I'm somewhere in "Organized Disorganized" and "Chaotic Dreamer, but with Lists" territory.

Hello, Voomer! I apologize for being so silent, my laptop decided that it was going to give up the ghost on Saturday (in the middle of my IRL game no less!) so I've been silent as I find using the forums on here to be more than a bit difficult on mobile.

That being said, it would be nice if you chose to swoop in and save our game and I'd gladly continue on.

I think Voomer has yet to assent 100%?

Voomer, let us know when you officially wish to take on the Helm of Game Mastering and we shall greet you with a joyous wassail!

On a side note, it's interesting to get insights on people's brains. I'm neurotypical but oof, that doesn't mean my brain seems 'normal' by any means. :P I'm somewhere in "Organized Disorganized" and "Chaotic Dreamer, but with Lists" territory.

This made me smile :)

Hearing no objections from current PCs, I'm officially expressing my willingness to place upon my head the Helm of Game Mastering, which I can only hope will offer a +2 to PbP GMing checks! You seem like a great group and I'm excited to get to know you in this context and grow my GM'ing skills in the PbP arena.

I've been in touch with Fern, and we will figure out the right timing and process to officially transfer over control of the game.

I will also try to figure out a list of questions I would like to know about the campaign. I want to give a little ramp up time before starting the assault on the quarry, since that will be major.

A Request

One request I have, if people are willing, would be for each of you to write here in the discussion thread a short (or long if you like) description of your character and significant relationships (such as NPCs the PC has special affinity to) or themes or objectives (both short and long term) that have emerged for your character during the campaign so far. Tell me anything you like, with the idea that I want to be able to continue to enable those personal relationships, themes, and objectives. If you want, you can also share common approaches to exploration and combat, but that isn't required, since that will also emerge in game.

I'm also curious to hear from each PC about what their motivation is in undertaking this adventure? It isn't entirely clear to me what you all know about the overall story arc at this point, so it might be interesting to spell some of your thoughts and speculations.

I know I can try to distill some of that from the gameplay thread, but, as Yasami mentioned, that would be an overwhelming task. And, really, I'm especially interested in your reflections at THIS point. Some of you have some information in your profile -- especially pre-campaign backstory -- and feel free to point me to that as part of your summary.

If someone doesn't have much to say, don't feel obligated. Some characters have relatively straightforward motivations and not a lot of schemes cooking, and that's totally legitimate. But I want to enable your character development, so I want to provide this opportunity for you to share with me, since I was not able to learn about your characters organically as the initial GM.

Finally, feel free to send me a private message if there is something more appropriately shared in that way.

I hope that all sounds good to you and makes sense! I'm hoping this kind of reflection will be fun for you and a good way to transition into a new phase of the campaign.

There are probably some things to say publically, and some things to say privately, and some things to put in spoilers ...

Gratitude, however, is generaly best expressed in joyous celebration :)

THANK YOU!

Awesome.

Yeah, I'll be sending some things by PM so as not to spoil them even in spoiler tags.

Caiten got into this adventure because his familiar pushed him into it. However, he is somewhat naturally drawn to being involved in conflict, being a Warrior Android. He also feels rather protective of good aligned cities and settlements. He will go toe to toe with anyone if it involves protecting children.

At this point - after seeing the threats coming through the portal, getting a taste of what is trapped in the portal, and hearing about Dahak and the cult that is associated with it - Caiten is all in. There are some things that need to be destroyed and he is going to make sure that it happens. He would take the challenge on completely on his own if absolutely needed, but he knows his own limits too. He is too methodical to recklessly throw his own life away.

Caiten has an eclectic assortment of skills, spells, and other abilities. So it is hard to tell what he is going to do in any given situation. He also tends to over-plan and overthink things.

Thank you so much for taking over. I’m really looking forward to playing with you, Voomer. <3

I have pretty detailed stuff in my Alias under Backstory/Appearance/Personality, but here’s some extra stuff from the brief time I’ve played her.

She’s a thaumaturge using the mirror and weapon implements. The weapon is her dueling pistol, which plays into the gunslinger free archetype I made her with. Way of the pistolero. She’s heavily inspired by Bloodborne and The Witcher - monster hunting, a bit dark, a bit weird. She lives and dies by her Harrow deck predictions. She did a Big Harrow Reading back when she officially joined the group. These are honestly just flavor, but if you want to do anything with them, please do. <3

Catalina is a big giant goth angelkin woman with metallic skin and glowy eyes. She’s relatively good-natured. She was with the Ekujae because she visits once every couple of years or so because they rescued her from a ruin (see backstory) and pulled her from the brink of madness. I believe the implication with Catalina knowing Nketiah (the Ekujae linguist with the tree arm) was that Nketiah’s family was who rescued her.

Catalina feels indebted to the Ekujae for their rescue, so when they asked that she, alongside the rest of the group, go investigate the presence of the Cinderclaws and Dahak’s influence, she jumped at the chance to be able to repay them for saving her life. This is her motivation for being part of the adventure.

Her overall goals are the pursuit of more esoteric knowledge and to find herself some kind of family. These revelations come from the questions Ose Panini and Ose Atsu asked the group before telling them Ekujae secrets and sending them off on the adventure. Here are Catalina’s answers.

She is very fond of Yasami (platonically), fascinated by Caiten, and has a crush on Dario. Catalina and Dario have tentative plans to have a drink together next time there’s downtime.

As she’s such a new character for me, I am still getting the feel for her in a lot of ways! She doesn’t have any connection to Breachill and the NPCs there.

Let me know if you have any questions or want me to expand on anything!

Thanks for the welcome Cevendyll and thanks for the info, Caiten and Catalina.

That all makes sense Caiten, and I appreciated and responded to your message.

Catalina, I super appreciate the gameplay links and will read them closely. The fact that you were with the Ekujae makes your motivations very clear.

I may ask for more information as I muse on your characters, but for the moment this level of character-orientation is great.

Huzzah! Here's to Voomer!

Lisi is a tall half-elf druid who is not a front-liner at all, although he does occasionally stealth and scout around in animal form, and is supposedly good at diplomacy and legal oration and bluffing his way through things. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't. His familiar, Guba, doesn't say much and is generally cute. He also oversees the two NPC warglets, Rocco and Shadow, and instructs them in this and that without commanding them too much. In a fight, he's casting spell after spell.

He's very much about restoring damage done to Isger during Cheliax occupation and is concerned about Breachill's river and forest, and has a complicated, although apparently pretty resolved, romantic relationship with Narine Howerdell...he'll teach lumberjacks to restore the forest. He's a bit of a social activist, having done barrister work that didn't lead to any great strides, and so when the Call to Heroes came up he decided to go for it in order to make a change.

He also has helped oversee the Bumblebrashers a bit. He's probably been friendliest with Joran, whom he's known the longest, and Cev, but he gets along with everyone.

Any resemblances to Lisi's player's life are PURELY COINCIDENTAL :P

Since it seems like it is a go, allow me to thank you for taking over.

Here comes the Yasami info dump, although it might seem a little complicated. But only at first glance, I assure you.

The basics

Yasami (Yasamina Risva) is - as far as most of the party is concerned - an entertainer, blade and/or fire dancer, and possibly a courtesan (implied, not confirmed) back in Breachill. She did not live in Breachill her whole life, but considers it home since moving in a few years ago. She lives at Shelyn's Smile, a Breachill temple dedicated to - well, Shelyn, unsurprisingly.

If I were to describe her personality - to the external observer, she is outgoing, curious, and generally jovial. Although she was born in Brevoy, she traces her origins back to the nomadic Shoanti tribes from northwest Avistan, which is where her occasional stubbornness and hot-headedness stems from.

She was at the call of heroes out of curiosity, and to chat with the new arrivals to town about what they might have heard on the way to Breachill. No better place to pick up on juicy gossip than there, really. After the town hall fire, she decided to put her skills to good use and join the travelling circus.

Now, peeling the onion, most of the above is a facade. I will get to you with a private message later today. I just need to condense the information.

Visual

As far as looks go, I will just copypaste the description from the profile page. That doesn't really change that much.

Yasami is a human woman in her late 20's. Her light brown hair grows down to her upper neck, and the front is usually fixed by a ribbon or band, to keep it out of her eyes. Just above her amber eyes, she has a single piece of jewellery - seemingly a small ruby embedded in gold - decorating the bridge of her nose. A delicate, if a little flat, nose is adorned with a large golden nose ring, and her narrow chin makes her lips seem rather wide. Her long, silk clothing covers her shoulder to ankles, with the exception of the neck and forearms. At the first glance, she has a dancer's figure - slender but toned. The dress contains many colours and is clearly meant to capture the eye and emphasise movement. On top of the visual component, she has a chime belt around her waist, usually announcing her presence as she walks.

Party relations

While being a daredevil, Yasamina likes to act as the older sister to everyone else, and takes care of the party's medical needs, alongside protecting them, sometimes at the expense of her own well-being. She will go to great lengths to save and protect whoever she considers dear. This behaviour originates from guilt in her past - she lost a friend due to her being reckless. More on that in the private message.

All right, thank you for taking over!

So Oren, he's not too physically spectacular. He's a large man, 6'3 and muscular too. He's a citizen of Isger, but not Breachill. At the moment, he doesn't have any special relationships with the NPCs (to be honest, he's rather taciturn compared to the other members of the group) but his motivation for answering the Call to Heroes was a series of dreams he had during his youth about a fiery disaster, which he later learned were influenced by Dahak.

Currently, he still receives visions on occasions when he goes to sleep (or one time when he got knocked out) of things that are pertinent to the adventure path, though the exact significance of those dreams are not immediately apparent.

Thank you for taking over Voomer! I got a bad headache today but I'll get a rundown of Dario soon enough. If you want to get his backstory, appearance, personality, and such, it is in my profile here at the bottom underneath spoilers.

Thank you again!

Thanks, everyone. It all sounds good and gives me enough orientation for the moment. Dario, the summaries on your profile page are great. Just a brief update based on the campaign so far would be great when you have a chance.

Fern gave me the go ahead to ask Paizo to transfer the campaign to me, so I'll send them an e-mail and ask them to do that.

Summarizing main events so far.

The group attended the Call to Heroes and the fiasco that happened there. They went to the citadel, befriended a couple of warg puppies, killed an enormous lizard, and had a standoff with Calmont. Calmont was taken into custody and brought back to Breachill. The goblin tribe was set up in temporary quarters just outside the city for a few weeks. Calmont was given trial and imprisoned.

The group went back to the citadel, met up with Alak the Hellknight, and cleared out the lower level, but couldn't get past the blockage of the stairs lower than that. They found out about the caverns that lead down to the lowest levels instead and followed those after an initial encounter with Voz and her mercenaries. They encountered Renali and the Barghest. They got thoroughly spanked by the Bargest and were only able to retreat because Alak led the Barghest away from the party farther into the caverns. The group went back to Breachill and upgraded all of their equipment over the course of the next week and went back for round 2 with the Barghest. They defeated it that time with the help of a poisoned tribute snack and the upgraded magical weapons.

They then had a final standoff with Voz who was keeping Alak prisoner. She survived the battle and was also taken back to Breachill and imprisoned.

After that, the party took control of the citadel and reactivated the portal - minor change to official AP, the portal was completely functional, just missing a key to activate it that Renali had inadvertently stolen when she came through the portal accidentally and found herself unarmed in hostile territory.

The group then went through the portal, leaving Alak behind to care for the citadel after he decided not to go back to the Hellknight group that he had taken leave from. They encountered a trap/apparition of a dragon head that nearly killed Sulee (who was a poppet familiar at the time). The party investigated quickly, but eventually simply ran the remaining way through the portal to the opposite side. There they met with the elves and were taken to the elven city nearby. Cevendyll had a bit of an interlude with one of the elves there, and the party had a spice eating competition and a heart-to-heart conversation with the city elders.

After that, they left and went to the elephant tribe. Along the way they encountered a group of sick kobolds who had been afflicted with arsenic poisoning. They cared for the kobolds as best as they could in the short time that they had, and continued on - learning some information about a quarry in the area and a kobold leader in the process. The kobolds said to mention them to the leader in order to gain assistance from the kobolds in the quarry.

They also had a first encounter with Gerhard. After some blustering, he left mostly peacefully. Cevendyll got punched in the face, but that isn't something that he can't handle. The party learned of the existence of the totem pillars that have magical defensive abilities.

When they got to the location of the elephant tribe, they found the place destroyed and abandoned for the most part. There was one person there along with a couple of angry elephants. They released the trapped person from the building that they were in and together they all calmed the elephants. He told them that there are two more baby elephants that had been captured.

The party left to go investigate the quarry. Along the way, they recovered and destroyed the pillar that they found with Gerhard. They find another pillar in their travels that was being guarded by some jungle drakes - and maybe was originally guarded by Cinderclaw cultists, but they were not there at the time. The party defeats the jungle drakes and destroy that pillar also.

They also meet Gerhard and have a standoff with him in a temple that he was trying to destroy. The party subdues him, confiscates all of his gear and explosives, and sends him nearly unarmed back into the jungle.

As they near the location of the quarry, they are distracted yet again by a trail leading to a Fey monster that had captured a Choral Angel. Our new Angelkin party member took severe exception to that. After freeing the Angel, he left with a promise to return with some scouting information.

And the party has finally reached the quarry. They did some initial scouting when they first arrived before it became dark. They retreated and slept for the night and are making plans for how to deal with the two Vrock that they see patrolling the area as well as the other hostiles and sick workers at this location.

So so helpful! That all makes sense to me. A lot of parties had trouble with the barghest. A few questions:

(1) Where are the Bumblebrashers (the goblin tribe) presently?

(2) Am I correct in assuming you killed the kobolds in the lower area of the citadel, the hobgoblin on the first floor of the citadel, and all the bandits at Guardian's Way?

(3) You say "who was a poppet familiar at the time." Is Sulee no longer a poppet familiar?

(4) So, Alak is holding the fort at the Citadel? Anyone else there with him? Any work being done there? Any party plans vis-a-vis the citadel yet?

(5) What scouting information did the angel promise to bring, and did they give a timeline?

Thanks!

(1) Where are the Bumblebrashers (the goblin tribe) presently?

I think they are still mostly living in their tents outside of the city, but they have been invited to move back in to some of the rooms in the citadel.

(2) Am I correct in assuming you killed the kobolds in the lower area of the citadel, the hobgoblin on the first floor of the citadel, and all the bandits at Guardian's Way?

Pib and Zarf were also befriended. We fed them a recently killed Emperor Bird. They are with the Bumblebrashers currently.

The hobgoblin was defeated and sent packing, but alive.

The bandits were all slain except for one that ran away wounded during the battle. We didn't chase after him. The rest had their heads brought back to Breachill and had bounty claimed for them.

(3) You say "who was a poppet familiar at the time." Is Sulee no longer a poppet familiar?

Sulee was switched to a standard familiar. She is currently a dog. It was a rather emotional event.

(4) So, Alak is holding the fort at the Citadel? Anyone else there with him? Any work being done there? Any party plans vis-a-vis the citadel yet?

Well, the Bumblebrashers are with him. I don't think there are any definite plans being worked on, but I could be wrong on that.

(5) What scouting information did the angel promise to bring, and did they give a timeline?

There was no definite timeline, but it was sort of implied that it wouldn't be more than a few days. I think we left it up to the GM to decide exactly what information we would get - we just gave general guidelines of any more of these Totem pillars that we are not already aware of, or other encampments of Cinderclaws.

We did do the cleaning and basic repairs of the citadel for at least the main level, the lower level, and the stairs down to the portal room. We used Alak's ring to gain acceptance of the Door Warden as well. It still exists and is continuing to guard its particular door.

I think also there was a giant bat that survived the assault on the citadel, as well as Big Bumble - he was lured out of the room with a trail of carved up Bird meat while we all hid in a different room. The rats, skeletons, spiders, imps, and Cinderclaws were all killed. As well as whatever those spiked turtle things were. They died too.

We did raid the crypts in the lower level and ran afoul of the undead guardians there. We also discovered the passage between the lower level of the citadel and the bar in town.

Edit: Oh, and the creepy doll was destroyed and its gem obliterated. The ooze also died.

We don't have a specific Citadel plan yet as we don't have sufficient skill levels to do much.

All good. Thanks. I assume the bat flew off. Not that it's of critical importance, but is Big Bumble still around or did he go off into the wild as well? And the goblin dog? Just trying to inventory the menagerie at the Citadel...

I see the warg puppies are with you. Do they engage in combat or are they just kind of along for the ride? My general approach with familiars (or other animal companions), since they are so much more fragile, is that they aren't affected by area effects (so a spider in a pocket doesn't have to roll a reflex save from a fireball). Otherwise, I feel like familiars would be dying all the time and that's no fun -- but maybe they've solved that in PF2e (there are no familiars in my home game, so I haven't had much experience with them in PF2e).

Also, I won't have foes target the wargs or familiars, unless they attack or otherwise directly get involved in combat (say by delivering a spell to a foe -- not if they deliver a heal spell or other assistance to a fellow PC). I don't want to go around killing familiars/companions if there's no reason for the foes to view them as a significant threat.

Does that make sense? Am I missing anything? I'll let you know if my thoughts on those matters change as play proceeds, but for now that's where I'm at.

That's approximately what we have been doing with pets previously as well - they don't get targeted unless they are actively participating in battle. I have in the past used Spell Delivery back when Magic Weapon was still a useful spell. And Sulee does sometimes carry our light source around for us in no-light areas.

Yes, familiars are still really fragile. Sulee was just about one-shot (saved only by Phase Familiar) by that trap in the portal corridor - to a saving throw that I probably wasn't required to roll (the other pets didn't) but it added to the story a lot.

Shadow and Rocco are the names of the two Wargs. One of them is a bit more energetic and outgoing, and the other is a bit more thoughtful and intelligent - but I can't remember which one is which. Both of them are now early adolescent age, but I am not sure what stats they have. Fern was allowing any of us to give them commands like a minion once per round. I think we used that a total of once in a random encounter in the jungle. For the most part they are just along for the ride. They are too sentimentally valuable to us to risk them in combat.

The bat did fly off somewhere. Big Bumble is probably still hanging around in the forests outside the citadel, but we haven't met him again since releasing him.

Oh, and the goblin dogs were all killed. The Bumblebrashers weren't very upset about that - the dogs were useless at defending them against the other threats.

Sounds good. I think we're on the same page on all this stuff.

While I'm waiting for Paizo to transfer everything over, I'm going to work on setting up a new Roll20 page for the campaign. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like Fern can just transfer hers over to me -- but if anyone knows different, please let me know because that would be awesome. So it will be a bit of work setting up the map and all of your icons and associating the icons with your respective accounts... Any suggestions about that process are welcome.

Everything I know about Roll20 I learned from Fern. She has a thoroughly amusing crash course instruction file that goes over the basics.

If Fern is the Roll20 master, then I assume she's right there's no way to hand the campaign over to me. I've made good progress on the map but I will need to add all of you, I guess once Paizo gives me control and I can add a link to it to the top of the page.

Even though I don't have control of the campaign yet, I went and made my first post in the gameplay thread. Please let me know if you have any concerns with what I put in spoilers or don't, or if you think I need to be using out of character commentary more than I do. Or let me know if there is anything I do that seems wrong/confusing/annoying! As I said, PbP GMing is new to me...

From the look of things, you are doing fine. Get a few more of these 'gotcha' moments from the forums itself out of the way and we will be rolling along nicely.

Also, in case it is important, the trap in the portal corridor was temporarily subdued, but we don't know for how long.

Hey all. Fern was able to hand over her Roll20 campaign, so that's great. I still haven't heard back from Paizo. I'll ping them again to see if they can transfer over the campaign. Seems like we should wait for that before launching the battle to come, but we can re-assess if they don't get back to me.

I agree that we should make sure you have control of the campaign, GM Voomer!

Sounds good to me. :)

Yeah. I can be patient ... though it isn't always easy.

And for getting things going again, we would only need the links to the resources like the Roll20 campaign. Which could be posted here in discussion, but after an hour they couldn't be removed later.

I assume Paizo will currently have a load of work on their hands - with the current surge of sales and issues they need to look into.

Voomer, if the link to roll20 is the only thing holding you back, you can always just put a link into your post header. Similar to what characters have.

And to be fair, we just need to use the invite link once, and after that, the game would then be listed in the games we all joined.

But if you need more time to actually get started, all fine by me.

Paizo made the transfer! So, we will be ready to go soon. I want to take some time to look back and see how Fern handled combat to see if want to handle it exactly the same (I know there is some variation in how DMs handle combat). But this does mean that we can probably get started up again in the next couple days...

Looking back a bit, it looks like Fern used initiative blocks of 2-3 PCs and opponents in order to structure the fight, and I'm willing to try that out. It also looks like she did all the initiative rolling, which makes sense in terms of keeping things moving. I will say that in my home game I rarely find it makes sense to roll initiative off anything but perception. So, if you think your PC should get to roll initiative off something else in a given situation, I would appreciate you letting me know.

Please feel free to give me any thoughts on the above and if there's anything else you want to share about combat management. This upcoming battle will be a doozy, so please be patient with any awkwardness on my part.

One question. Could someone please explain why Fern has all these activity indications in this initiative block in the fight with the barghest? Those don't look like different skills for rolling perception, but what is their function? I've never seen that before, but I'm not very rigorous in my home game in precisely identifying exploration activities -- I've never found it necessary.

Yes, Fern would roll all of the initiative. Mostly because she was the only one who would know when battle was breaking out. She did want to let us roll different skills for initiative if it was appropriate, but we weren't always very good at setting that up before hand. But that is why she was listing out the Exploration Activities that we were assumed to be using - so that we could correct things if we felt that initiative was using the wrong skill and it would be important to have that changed.

After initiative was rolled, we were grouped into blocks - paired up with others who rolled similar initiative. Things were sometimes fudged a bit to get fewer numbers of blocks. Then when each block's turn came up the people in that block could go in any order. Which does cause a bit of rules strangeness regarding effects that end at the start or end of a particular person's turn - can someone else in the same block consider their turn to be before or after that other person's effect ends? Generally we just run it that once you post, that is the order that the individual turns go in, so if an effect ends at the end of your turn, anyone else who wants to use it needs to post before you do.

Thanks. The most important of those exploration activities seems to be scout, because it gives the +1 on initiative. I assume you will always have someone scouting. And then also avoid notice, because it allows stealth for initiative. I guess what would be helpful would be for people to put a default exploration activity in their summary statblock (the one I can see from this screen). I see Catalina has a place for that.

Also, could you please let me know how Fern did hero points?

She liked the idea of awarding hero points for exceptional things done in-game, but usually forgot to do that.

So we just gained one during daily preparations on any non-downtime adventuring day.

Thanks. That makes sense to me. It's pretty burdensome for the GM to try to equitably hand out hero points.

Looking back a bit, it looks like Fern used initiative blocks of 2-3 PCs and opponents in order to structure the fight, and I'm willing to try that out. It also looks like she did all the initiative rolling, which makes sense in terms of keeping things moving. I will say that in my home game I rarely find it makes sense to roll initiative off anything but perception. So, if you think your PC should get to roll initiative off something else in a given situation, I would appreciate you letting me know.

Please feel free to give me any thoughts on the above and if there's anything else you want to share about combat management. This upcoming battle will be a doozy, so please be patient with any awkwardness on my part.

One question. Could someone please explain why Fern has all these activity indications in this initiative block in the fight with the barghest? Those don't look like different skills for rolling perception, but what is their function? I've never seen that before, but I'm not very rigorous in my home game in precisely identifying exploration activities -- I've never found it necessary.

** spoiler omitted **

Also, if you look at that encounter in the AP itself, there are multiple thresholds for multiple activities for several different situational results: my instinct says that Fern was aggregating dice outcomes to determine what results she would reveal, related but not limited to, the barghest's actions AND the treasures the party was able to find afterwards.

Quick ruling question: do we have our reaction action available before our turn comes up on the first round of combat. It makes quite a bit of difference for reactions like ↺Glimpse of Redemption, ↺Opportune Riposte, and ↺Nimble Dodge.

It's cool, guys. They'll all be dead before they get to act.

Quick ruling question: do we have our reaction action available before our turn comes up on the first round of combat. It makes quite a bit of difference for reactions like ↺Glimpse of Redemption, ↺Opportune Riposte, and ↺Nimble Dodge.

and do we need to reviewing standing orders for reaction & character botting? Just based on real-life posting availability, it was incredibly helpful to have agreed that Fern would just bot Cev's Glipse of Redemption reaction

The reaction rule definitely is confusingly written, as it both says "The GM determines whether you can use reactions before your first turn begins, depending on the situation in which the encounter happens" and "Once your first turn begins, you gain your actions and reaction."

I think the way I will handle it is that as long as the PCs are in reasonable expectation of combat with weapons drawn, you can take your reaction even before your turn. Most of the time that will be the case, but there could be situations where you are surprised and cannot take a reaction until your turn. But the default rule is that you can use your reactions anytime.

And, yes, it would be helpful if each of you posts here and adds to your character profile standing orders for reactions and botting.

Several of us have botting instructions in our profile. I know I do. Though I don't think I have updated it in a while. They also get less relevant at higher levels when we have a ton of different options. Though if we are being botted for our actual turn, then just having our character do the basics is better than nothing.

As for my reactions, I have so many of them that I have just gotten in the habit of posting which one (or which one to use when) to bot the use of at the end of my turn in combat.

↺Nimble Dodge is a pretty safe bet if I forget to specify though.

I think the way I will handle it is that as long as the PCs are in reasonable expectation of combat with weapons drawn, you can take your reaction even before your turn. Most of the time that will be the case, but there could be situations where you are surprised and cannot take a reaction until your turn. But the default rule is that you can use your reactions anytime.

Oh, and that sounds great as a general ruling.

I will make up Botting instructions as soon as I can; being sick all week means my school work has been backed up too. I'll post again when I have it ready.

Feel better Dario!

Sorry about the wait. I wanted to post earlier, but the site was acting up.

Alrighty, I'm super late about this but I'll give the best bullet points I can for Dario's story so far.

• Dario is essentially my cowboy gunslinger fantasy made sentient. He is a wanderer that came into town seeking treasure, glory, and evil to stomp on. A good man but prone to "frontier justice".
• Dario really like Caiten and respects the android as he lived alongside crafters all his live. He is a student of crafting under the man, learning how to create magical armaments for his compatriots.

Sorry I have been quiet, I will be updating today/this evening - I spent all weekend cleaning my house in prep for a guest and then picked my friend up from the airport yesterday. Been really exhausted!

We might even finish the planning here in discussion rather than in-game.

Lisi, when are you wanting to release the big guy? And do you want the rest of us up there too, or are we just hoping he will get a few licks in on the Vrock before having to retreat?

If the rest of us are fighting up with the dinosaur, is Dario going to hit the barrel and then run north to join the battle there afterwards?