Ermengilda Sаnz's page

The goal from the outset when I first created Lucida was to create a character who healed without using magic. A mundane doctor, if you will. I was not terribly successful, on my first go of it. However, I later discovered a feat interaction that would allow me to accomplish this, and be somewhat viable as an actual character. While not on the same level as a proper Cleric, Lucida can restore Hit Points competently using just Heal skill checks.

Most would describe Lucida as being reserved. It isn't that she can't engage in conversation, but more that she doesn't generally take the initiative to start one. She's also pretty cagey about talking about herself or her past. Some might also describe Lucida as a consummate professional. In business, she is firm but fair, unafraid to voice her opinion. Those close to her might even describe Lucida as a bit of a workaholic, having little social life outside of work.

Lucida was born in Vyre to a Dwarven slave woman, a bastard child. She stayed with her mother, receiving food and lodging from her owner. However, when she was deemed old enough (32 years old; narrowly post-puberty in dwarven terms), she was made to work. After a year, with the assistance of several of the other slaves, Lucida fled Cheliax by ship.

With stolen coin, Lucida was able to buy passage as far as Magnimar. Life was better there, but not great. Still a child, Lucida took to begging. It was here that she met Koya Mvashti. Koya took pity on the poor orphan, and adopted Lucida. Lucida became interested in healing, but didn't believe herself worthy to channel divine energy, and so instead studied traditional medicine.

While Lucida has remained in Sandpoint up to this point, and even opened a small clinic, the recent goblin and gaint attacks seem to have set her on edge, and she's been looking for an excuse to set out, ideally further north.

Lucida is a female dwarf. She's always been somewhat gaunt in appearance. Even after she was adopted and started eating well, she was always thinner than most other dwarves, and her face has a bit of a sunken element to it, as though it were just skin and bone. Despite barely being an adult, her hair is already gray.

I was introduced to D&D a little over a decade ago, via 3.5e and some of the Forgotten Realms novels by Salvatore. Too few of my friends were interested for me to play reliably in-person, and I was already steeped in a number of forum communities, so I turned to play-by-post pretty quickly. Sadly, I have had pretty terrible luck thus far. I have a lot of experience building characters, and a bit of experience playing low-level characters, but I've only gotten to play at higher level a couple of times.

At some point, I started keeping track of details about campaigns I've participated in. Not counting campaigns to which I applied but then wasn't accepted into (or which otherwise didn't make it past the recruitment step), or campaigns that I GMed, I've participated as a player in 34 campaigns of varying length. Two ran to a satisfying completion, and three more technically ran to completion, but in a I-don't-want-to-keep-GMing-this-so-"the-end" sort of way. I abandoned one game, the fourth attempt at Goldoth, largely because I felt that the GM didn't respect our time (he no-showed for several sessions without warning or later explanation, and I got the sense during the one session he did show up for that he didn't really care about the players so much as about telling his story), but also at least partly because I was uncomfortable talking in-character as Goldoth over voice.

I've generally found that I engage with a few sometimes disparate elements of D&D. During creation, I've found that I trend towards min/maxing, solving the game-within-the-game that is the rules. I've found that this tendency is harmful to the game, so I've generally tried to make a conscious effort to build flaws into my characters, both narratively and mechanically, to rein in this impulse. Likewise, when combat starts, a part of me wants to "solve" the encounter. This is, I think, less harmful, but I still try to deliberately set rules for myself in combat based on which character I'm playing so that I don't lose sight of the larger game. Beyond that, I enjoy roleplaying characters. Constantly building the same few characters over and over in the hopes of finally getting into a game that lasts means that I've spent a great deal of time thinking about some of these characters.

Time-wise, I generally check the site at least once a day in the afternoon, but I often can check in the morning before work, or at lunch during work if it's slow (which is most of the time). I'm currently in one other campaign, which runs weekly for about two hours. I generally don't travel often, and I'll notify you if anything does come up.

I've attempted to run my submission in the past three times under various names, two of which I got into and left logs I can reference: first attempt (I joined around page 25) and third attempt. The second attempt was a game to which I applied but did not get into. Of all the PbP campaigns I've been in, the first attempt ran the longest, both in general and for me in particular, being 2 years 3 months and 1 year 2 months respectively. Consequently, I think this campaign is possibly the best representation of my commitment to a PbP game, and a good look at my general posting style and level of activity.

For other characters I've run in the past...

My first character, Delanor, I've attempted ten times before finally finding success and getting into two different campaigns running at about the same time that both ran to completion. Sadly, I have almost no logs to reference here. I largely ran Delanor in campaigns that took place over instant messenger or voice, and two of the sites I ran him PbP on were lost in some server fire nearly a decade ago. I do have records from bits of the third attempt (which also ran partially over instant messenger), as well as the seventh attempt (for all that's worth) and the ninth attempt (where I joined around Session 51). The ninth attempt is one of the two aforementioned complete games, running for 2 years 10 months total, with me participating for the last 1 year 9 months. I also ran a character named Tanfirim in that campaign, largely as a backup character during extended periods were Delanor was dead (once after a TPK and a second time after after splitting the party). I'm probably happiest with Delanor in my tenth and final attempt, a face-to-face campaign and the other that ran to completion (ran for 2 years 5 months, of which I participated for 2 years 3 months), but I'm overall pretty happy with the ninth attempt as well. I rather don't like the third attempt, though it was for quite a while (until the ninth attempt, actually) the longest campaign I had gotten to participate in. It took place before I really understood that I ought to be looking for a character's "voice" to begin with, so the Delanor of 2009 was a sort of disjointed, inconsistent mess of a character.

I've made six attempts to play a character named Goldoth: second attempt and third attempt. The first was over Skype and fizzled before the game really began, the fourth was purely over voice, and the fifth and sixth represent games to which I applied did not get into. I'm probably happiest with the third attempt anyway.

I've made four attempts to play a character named Abbicka: first attempt, second attempt, and third attempt. The fourth attempt was a sort of in-person (I was participating via video chat, but everyone else was physically present), so there aren't really any logs. I'm generally happy with all of my attempts at Abby thus far, at least from my end of things.

I've attempted Wilhelm (formerly Wolfgang, but I have another character I also call Wolfgang, and that got confusing) five times: first attempt, third attempt, and fourth attempt. The second and fifth attempt were games to which I applied but did not get into. I'm strangely happiest with the first attempt. But all three were so short that I worry I haven't really found Wilhelm's "voice" yet.

I've attempted Wolfgang (not to be confused with Wilhelm above) three times, but don't have any logs to point to. The first attempt was the only game I actually got into, and the forum it ran on was lost in some server fire migration thing back in 2012. Probably for the best, though, because I'm generally unhappy with my performance in games from that era.

To round out my Paizo aliases, I have Zaszy, who I've essentially attempted thrice: second attempt. The first attempt, I was to substitute into a game, and my initial character idea was rejected, so I threw Zaszy together on something of a whim. The GM of that game then flaked before I ever posted, and at around the same time, a friend asked if I was interested in joining a game he intended to run set in the same area, so I just recycled Zaszy for that game (the second attempt). For the third attempt, the GM of Abby's fourth attempt got busy, so one of the other players decided to run a "zany one-shot" in the meantime, and I decided to run Zaszy because it's a weird build and low effort character. I'm... not super happy with him as a character. I threw together Zaszy as a sort of challenge to see how high I could get my Bluff skill, and I think I spent more time focusing on that and giving him a funny accent that I never got around to really finding his voice.

That's about it for stuff I can actually link to.