DM Talomyr's The Lost City (Inactive)

Game Master Talomyr

It would seem you were all busily posting while I slept last night. I'll move things along this evening after I get home from work.

Sorry for the delay, the waterpark yesterday wiped me out.

Meebo's lousy perception rolls are so in character. =D

She's still entranced by all the gears and such. :)

Ooof, lack of Mobile feat on monk stinks. XD

Utsuri

Would I be able to cast burning hands from where I am on the map without burning myself and Utsuri to death?

You - probably safe.
Utsuri is gonna have issues from the oil on the ground.

Avoiding that then for now, we'll stick with the good ol' classic of Bless.

...and of course forgot to add Bless bonus to my rolls that actually didn't happen. XD

Shoot. I think I forgot to add the bless as well. Next time.

I've retconned my post to include the bless for Tek (which I rolled). I didn't bother with Utsuri since they choose a different action than attacking.

We tend not to get too busy even on days where folks post a lot, but just in case, I'm out of town tonight for a bachelorette party & may be slow posting.

If you're in other campaigns with me, sorry that you're seeing this twice. :P

Have fun!!

Have fun!!

Normally, being the designated driver at these things is not the most fun, but there is a special sort of joy in watching your drunk friends sing their hearts out... especially when we're all pretty dang good at the singing part. We went to a karaoke bar, lol.

Utsuri, who was still standing on one foot for some reason, offered Myev a bright smile and slow nod at her suggestion...eagerly expecting Tek's forthcoming analysis.

This gif popped into my head for some reason.

Only missing the rock hard abs that you see your face in, and the biggest hickey of all time from the stirge attack.

All this treasure...must be from the days when gp=xp. Not complaining, major loot fiend here. ;)

Utsuri on the other hand rejects material wealth, of course.

The beeline joke had me cackling irl

Just putting it here to keep track of:
2,000 sp, 500 gp, the garnets are 100 gp each, and the chalice is worth 700 gp.

Out of curiosity, how old is the chalice? In Character due to the Archeologist background "In addition, you can determine the monetary value of art objects more than a century old"

All this treasure...must be from the days when gp=xp. Not complaining, major loot fiend here. ;)

Utsuri on the other hand rejects material wealth, of course.

I mean I'd be surprised if there are that many places to spend it down here.

I see you have braces, I have braces too

I see you are a fellow person of distinction, with only the finest taste in movies, uh huh huh. Huh huh. ;D

Sure, but with out the venom sacs attached, it would only function as a normal needle.

Thanks, I'll mark on my inventory. I just wanted a ranged option when I go kensei. The blowgun (Basho) will do monk damage instead of 1 damage. :) I really can't wait until they start rocking that with the katana.

I see you are a fellow person of distinction

Yep, teenager (with braces) from the 90s here...always been my favorite pickup line. I had forgotten though that was about Chelsea Clinton, lol.

I won't likely update the gameplay thread tonight as I have to work late tonight. On the upside, I am off tomorrow, so I will update then.

Boooooo working late, but yay having a day off. I'm enjoying this a lot, DM.

Please bear with me for the next few days. Dealing with some really intense life stuff. Don't let me hold anything up.

Hope things get better and you have a good support system around you.

Don't forget to breathe.

By the way, I really like this 5e jump calculator. I mean the rules are fairly simple but its nice to just punch in some numbers and turn the crank.

(again)

Yikes. Don't worry about wasting spell slots, remember I can just spend HD on a short rest.

I misread for a moment. My attack would be against the living one (ground)

Got it. As a side note, there are no confirmation rolls for crits in 5e, simply double any dice rolled for damage, but not double any static numbers.

okay. Thanks

To be honest I think a short rest now would be a waste as no one else has expended any of the resources we would regain on a short rest. It also kills a number of hours that we could use to finish the exploring of this level, and we just started.

It would make more sense to just heal Utsuri than sit around doing nothing because a single party member got injured.

Just my $0.02

I tend to agree. It makes more sense to just heal.

Fine with me either way of course.

I will say though imho its Silas' resources that will determine our adventuring day, not the hours in the day. Eventually everyone will be tracking short rest resources except him. Warlock slots, fighter SW/AS, monk ki...all will keep us going with shorts. Rogue is always good to go.

I mean I think RP-wise it makes sense to heal as well. I was just trying to save Silas' slots...he only has 2. They don't recharge on a short rest like Warlock slots. Not-my-slots(TM)

Myev and I both have sort of low AC atm to form a good frontline. Silas might be better to step up, at least in these early levels, with his 18 AC and Warding Flare. I dropped this time from a crit, which is something only Silas can negate with Warding Flare right now.

But yeah, tactical considerations like that are pretty boring/meta. Probably best to just do whatever is fun and makes sense RP-wise.

A party member dropping to zero is a good use of a spell slot, imo, but Silas can for sure make that decision if he's worried about resources. I'd feel differently if more people were injured.

Dungeon crawls do demand a certain level of resource management, to be sure.

That was my thought too. 3 or 4 people injured or 2 or more dropped, short rest makes sense. 1 person down and everyone else barely scratched seems like wasting the short rest.

Utsuri - for what it's worth, I know my online voice can come off as kind of robotic/cranky/whatever. A side effect of the autism. So, I wanted to be sure you knew that I think you bringing it up is a great idea - it's a good point of discussion, and the resource stuff is definitely something to keep in mind for the future.

Hehe, yeah if this was a previous edition I would agree with you guys. With HD though I mean every PC has a way to heal out of combat...I'd burn those before slots. HD can't be used during combat, but slots can. 2 or more dropped in a tough combat is when I would want to pull out the slots for heals.

Imagine that happens and we all have full HD but empty slots...oof regerts. That's where my calculus is coming from I suppose. I guess I'm going to get yelled at either way, for wasting a slot or wasting a short rest/time. Therefore I give up and concede to the party. ;D

edit: Myev, all good and no worries, I find your robotic online voice rather soothing. ;) Jk, I wasn't taking it that way.

:P It IS only two of us saying something. We could easily be outnumbered if others chime in.

I had a DM at one point who punished our group for "overusing" short rests (he made some house rules mid-campaign to make it really difficult to rest, period) and some paranoia over that lingers.

Meebo can prepare cure wounds going forward, too, and help out. It is on her spell list. I just didn't think to take it. She can see how dangerous this place is and whip up a dermal regenerator, star trek style.

Can swap it out next long rest!

Yeah the whole take a short rest everytime someone gets hurt kind of screams meta to me. In the immersion of exploring, is everyone likely to sit around for 4 hours 3 times a day?

I do get where you're coming from though.

Yup...trust me I hate groups that overuse short rests both as DM and as a player. Its the stupidest thing ever, as you say really frustrating for immersion.

DM: Gratz, you killed all the royal guards...uh-oh the BBEG hopped on a boat and is rowing away...
Party: Short rest, right here on the shore.
Me: *eyes roll into back of head, severing optic nerve*

Wasn't trying to imply we take a short rest anytime someone gets hurt or loses a resource.

In general, my thoughts on short rests are anything more than two in an adventuring day is over-the-top (as suggested in the PHB). Most of the 5e games I've been in seem to only use one per adventuring day -but that's just my personal experience.

I tend to look at HP more like stamina points, thus the reasoning that on short rests you can recover some (provided you have the hit dice to spend) and all of your HP on a long rest.

As we eventually go up in level, just remember that when you take a long rest you only regain half your level (rounded up) in HD, so it is kind of a diminishing resource.

I appreciate the looking out for my more finite sources, you lucky short-rest bastards.

It makes sense to heal for now because we don't know how friendly the rest of the floor is or will be for us; there could be a wandering something that could strike us before we rest fully. We could pull them back, wait, heal up, and then head out, but that does seem a little too meta.

Silas is willing to be upfront all the time; he has good eyes and he is hard to hit when he is prepared.

Myev will have Silas' back........when she can hit something.

Myev just keeps rolling like ass for every perception check, rofl.

With as many doors as we're dealing with, I'd love to come up with a way to handle it a little quicker/more efficiently - it's starting to feel really repetitive. Perception, open door, see what's behind it, lather, rinse, repeat. I'm all for careful exploration since we're level 1 and this place is dangerous, but I'm wondering if there are more engaging ways to handle a dungeon crawl on pbp.

Since tone doesn't always translate well, I am not intending to rudely criticize the way it's going so far.

I'm open to suggestions.

One route would be establish a standard operating procedure. Something like always check what's behind the door, starting with a door on the party's right. Now this requires one of two things 1) A bumch of investigation and perception rolls up front that stay in order or 2) I keep things moving by handling some of thise rolls. But that reduces player agency, which I'm not overly keen to do.

Thoughts?

Yeah it is tricky! We had the same issue in my Age of Ashes game, the citadel they explored was like a million endless doors. I think what we ended up doing was we got into a set routine, with the person or two taking the lead being snappy with the checks. Big long hallways with no traps I would just narratively skip through, describing the group traveling to the next part that mattered. Basically if there was no danger in opening a door I assumed the rolls happened and they checked but didn't wait for it.

Not so bad irl because it goes fast, and not at all your fault DM, just the nature of the PBP dungeon crawl. You're doing a great job!

Yes, I think you're doing a great job, too, Talomyr. You're fun as a DM and a fellow player. :)

I like the idea of the set routine - whoever is taking the lead being snappy with the checks.

Takes away the issue of player agency.