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Eryda, you might want to put the info on things like Forgemaster's Blessing into your profile. I know it's pretty simple ability at this point but as you add more abilities it will be helpful for your own reference if you have them there. Here's the avatar for a Forgemaster I have in a (dying) Legacy of Fire campaign that might give you some ideas. (This is Michael/Boneyard btw)
I'm still here and would definitely pick things up again if Rafael wants to continue.
Oh, I see. Here let me help you." Beinir leans his shoulder into it. Completely misjudging the angle, he tries again. "Better, let me try once more."
Beinir begins catching Bahram up on everything he has seen, but then notices that Ghiruk had wandered off, "I'll explain it all once we all have a few moments together to concentrate. Let's catch up to Ghiruk." Seeing Vardishal again, Beinir quickly relates that he seems to be a saint of Sarenrae to whom this monastery was dedicated. "What do you see there Ghiruk?"
Meanwhile, back in the cloister, Beinir has become consumed with looking over the carvings. He slowly makes his way through each of the ordinal directions, barely registering that Bahram and others have made their way into the courtyard, "Fascinating." he murmurs. "This Vardishal..." he goes on still failing to notice the others have moved on. I'm not familiar with the whole story, but he was some sort of genie, part of a group called the Templars of the Five Winds, was slain in a great genie war that took place in this area hundreds of years ago." He pauses to look further. "But, he came back. Either risen from the dead or more likely as a servant or saint...yes, it must have been as a saint of Sarenrae. He continued to provide guidance to the monastery for many years. Right up to whatever happened here thirty years ago. I wonder if he knows what happened. I wonder if there is some way we can reach him." Excited, he turns around to see that everyone (or most everyone at least) has vanished into the courtyard. Moving through the closest opening he looks around for everyone else and calls out. "Where did you all go? I think I've found more about the history of the monastery. Perhaps even a way for us to figure out what happened here thirty years ago!"
After promising Saresha to help bury the villagers properly later, Beinir joins the others upstairs. He takes great interest in the triptych sculpture, curious about the story it represents.
"Look here. Some of these bodies are clearly not from the monastery. It looks like a mob of villagers descended on the priests here." He looks up and sees Saresha tending to the skeletons. "Saresha. Would you bury those who destroyed the Sarenraens side by side with them? You may be inadvertently sowing evil in a holy place. Torag preaches our patience. Please, we will reconsecrate this crypt. But let us do so properly."
Beinir joins everyone else congregating near the door, ready to start swinging his hammer again if trouble emerges.
"Doesn't look like anything else here. Since Bahram seems to be all right, should we go back upstairs?"
"Definitely doesn't look like a temple of Sarenrae, even a splinter group. Glad you're ok Bahram. You might be right, maybe a later development. Let's see what else we've got here." Beinir helps to continue searching the area.
Beinir lays his hammer down and kneels at Bahram's side. "That's strange. It looked like it barely grazed him. Do any of you know what this mold is?" Without waiting for an answer, Beinir begins tending to the rogue. "I'm going to see about healing his injury. Maybe that will bring him around. I don't have any experience with poison though."
"Look out Bahram!" Beinir hefts his longhammer and swings it with a thunderous crash onto the slime within his reach.
Beinir puts the page safely away and joins the others on the stairs. "I don't suppose any of you recognize what this is do you? Anything dangerous? Should we be burning it off or something?"
Beinir takes a look at the intact page to see if he can read it and brings it over to Ghirhuk to take a look if it looks meaningful.
Beinir joins the crew searching the library, lending his own eyes and magics to the search.
"Well done everyone! Are you all well enough to continue or do some of you have wounds requiring tending?" Beinir reaches into his belt and pulls out a wand which he quickly uses to heal the damage inflicted in trying to catch the pugwampis. "Ah, Rauve, it looks like you've been nicked up as well." "Now this statue here...what do we have?"
Status: HP 11/11 2 charges used, now 18/20
Beinir uses the reach of his longhammer to smash at the remaining baboon within his reach that is still on its feet.
Oooh, like the new avatar Rafael!
Option 3. Should be only a minor tweak to what you're already doing to just put us into the blocks. That way we can tell who is where and the folks investing in initiative get to take advantage of it.
I think we're all struggling a bit with this method for initiative. I know PbP has its challenges, but let me throw out a couple suggestions. First, 24-hour rule needs to apply in combat. If you don't post in 24 hours, GM posts for you consistent with your typical actions. I'm also quite open to this being an even shorter window if you prefer. Second, GM rolls all initiative. I know you're trying to avoid rolling initiative, but its a big part of the game. I've found that if the GM rolls it, you can quickly sort out who goes where. The games I'm in where the players roll initiative really bog down. I think you can leave it at this if you don't want to muck around too much with what you're trying to accomplish. This way, you would sort people into the groups and we can go from there. I think that will be more efficient than having us self-sort by order of posting and it respects the players who are making investments into initiative. If you want to tweak things further, I've seen different GMs apply a couple different methods once the initial initiative is sorted out that I think work well. Option 1: Stick in initiative order. This does work, but can bog down a little. Some players wind up having to wait for players taking a while to post. But, with the 24-hour rule, it keeps a lid on how bad it can get. Option 2: Post in any order, but GM resolves by initiative order. IMHO this is a better version of Option 1. You don't slow down as much. Players can post an option or two depending on what happens before them (for example the way I just said that I would attack a different one if Saresha killed the one I was attacking). A lot of the time, its pretty easy for the GM to redirect the action. If there is a question about what would happen, you can just post a question to the player. Options 3: Use initiative blocks. This is similar to what you're doing. Use initiative rolls to sort people into player and monster blocks, but allow people to go in any order they post within those blocks. If you wind up with a single person (like Bahram) who is out in front of the monsters with the rest of the people behind, you can even move him into the PC block once he has had his first action so you go PCs-Monsters-PCs-Monsters. I also would strongly recommend that you put all monsters in a single block except for BBEG fights.
Hearing the baboons come racing toward the party, Beinir rushes back out into the hallway. Taking up a position just behind Saresha, he swings his longhammer at the injured monkey.
Status:
hp 8/11 Attacks of Opportunity: I'm also going to give you rolls for attacks of opportunity since Beinir has reach and Combat Reflexes
Beinir laughes, "Not in the middle of battle for sure Rauve, but it may not be long before we're using this as an outpost and unbroken dishes and unbent forks might be helpful. Now if only we could hit these elusive nuisances!"
Beinir curses at his poor luck and moves to try to smash the unharmed pugwampi. "At least I can put this mess back together later if we need to." He swings his longhammer again, certain that plates are more likely victims than the tiny fey.
Beinir shares his observations about the monastery quietly before moving into the corridor. He nods toward the pugwampis and gets ready to charge in and bash them with his longhammer.
"Yes, someplace up high for a lookout. Perhaps with a barracks for troops? Shall we see about the old living quarters? Probably off through that doorway over there?" Beinir gestures toward the opening across from the one where we entered.
"Reckless? Do you take me for a priest of Angradd? No, he is the reckless brother. Torag guides and rewards the patient."
Beinir wakes before dawn and comes over to soak in the warmth of the cookfire. He lowers a metal ingot into the hottest coals and meditates with Torag while the soft metal turns a glowing red-orange. An hour later as the camp begins to stir, he extends a long metal rod into he flames and draws it back out, placing it on a small, portable anvil and spends another hour hammering it into a smooth thin ring before joining breakfast with the ring of Hadrah's bell. He nods good morning to Bahram and turns his attention to Father Zastoran, "Say Father, I have some healing ability as you may have seen last night, but is there any chance you have healing potions here? I don't know what we'll find in this monastery, but it seems like a good idea to prepare for the worst."
Before turning in for the night, Beinir heals his wounds and tends to Bahram.
Can everyone put up some form of status bar? You add it to your class line in your profile and can spoiler it if you prefer. While Beinir isn't built to be a healing machine, it will help him and others who can heal to keep you alive. Also might cause fits of kindness for Rafael if he realizes he's about to kill you and generally makes his job easier.
Beinir smiles, "Thank you lady." He signs the documents without question.
Beinir smiles in return, "Interesting. How apt then that I believe his forge to have been the Flameforge. It would appear that Torag's hand and hammer may be shaping this endeavor in more ways I have yet to understand."
Beinir listens to Almah's offer. "My lady, if Rauve is correct and your offer is to assist you with taking back Kelmarane, it is most generous. However, more than the gold, I would like to ask a boon of you in exchange for my assistance. I believe my father's forge, a relic of my people, to lie in the town's ruins. I seek an opportunity to reclaim the forge, assuming it is still present, and to restablish the church of Torag in the town. Would you grant me this boon?"
"I think so. Think I'll drag his ugly carcass back to camp. Any more luck with that goat Rauve or should we knock it out so we can drag that back too?" Beinir takes a look over the dead creature and then hoists its frozen body onto his shoulder.
"Gotcha Bahram! Can't have you plummeting to your doom already." Now tangled up with the rogue, Beinir tries to spin his head when he hears the highest pitched gnoll-speaker he's ever heard.
Gnoll: "We'll see who's funny now...whoa, maybe I should've closed my eyes. You've got to be the ugliest gnoll I've ever seen!"
Beinir makes a grab for Bahram, trying to keep him from falling off into the ravine.
"Well Snowball, looks like there is only one way through here and its going to hurt." Beinir pulls as many exposed areas inside his armor as possible and proceeds to bull his way through the field of cactus.
Beinir looks skeptically at the field of cactus. He picks a foot up and then sets it down with a clang of armor. [b]"Picking nimbly through a field of cactus is not my mug of ale. How well do you think they squash."[b] He unslings his longhammer from his back and takes a tentative swing at one of the cactus frozen by Snowball.
"Well, we hear you're an expert on gnolls. How about these pugwampis? None of us had any luck finding evidence of them. Where would you start? Perhaps some tracks or don't they leave any?"
Beinir scratches his head, "My family came from this region, but I don't recall hearing about these pugwampis. Do they start fires or something? Why do you suspect them?"
"Exactly. You seem awfully defensive though. Making dinner of those sent to assist is only going to lead to trouble for you."
"Sure. Of course he may just be a lonely scout who hasn't seen a woman in months. Shall we go see what others have to say about the event?" |
