It wasn't just for your sake.
Thanks for the game, Terquem. I enjoyed it.
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An awesome halfling paladin.
"Pull yourself together, girl. You ain't got time to blubber. Get this ragtag group in line and start movin'!" Hal's spirit growled. "Tell that nutty goblin you gotta go talk to the eye!"
I think the only one who doesn't have a 20' movement rate is Miagnik.
I think what he wants is to give the original party a bit of travel montage, then set the scene in the two taverns where we'll be holding "auditions" What Moralane is thinking right now is that she'll post a flier that says when and where to meet for those who are interested (tomorrow, sunrise, behind Dwarbon's shop), she'll talk a bit to get gossip going, then do the meet and greet stuff the next morning where we'll have a couple basic tests set up for you new folks to show off a bit.
At least it's a crew of proper Dwarves comin' after me an not another bunch'a psychotic goblins. So here's what yer gonna do- Get yer asses over t' the Gameplay thread, make a placeholder post, then delete it. That'll fix you to the game so it shows up in your Campaigns tab, but it won't make Terquem cranky by uglying up his brand new thread. He's very sensitive. After that, report in to Discussion and get the party started. ...an' I swear t' the Helmsman hisself that if any o' ye turn out t' be some kind'a princess, I'm just gonna stay in this g%&@%@n cell...
Hal gave the ancient goblin a look filled with exasperation that bordered on contempt. "It must be handy to be able to walk through iron bars and cold stone like that." he said. The goblin tossed something. Hal caught it. "Oh, it is." the goblin said, sounding amused. Hal looked at the thing in his hand, his eyes slowly widening.
I am not, never have been, a fan of dwarves having accents all the time. My dwarves (all the dwarves in the previous game as well) do not have accents. BLASPHEMY
Don't tell him that. We'll end up with Miagnik's twin brother Niagmik joining the eternal goblin quest to light Hal on fire...
Ohgoddammit. >.<
Happy New Year. :)
I've never played 5E. I don't have the books and I'd rather not try to learn a new system in a PbP format. I've tried it before. I found it frustrating.
I'm trying to decide if I want to make a character for the rescue mission game or not. I have a lot invested in Hal after 5 years. It would feel strange to me to make a new character that I knew I would be retiring as soon as Hal was rescued. I also can't see Hal just sitting politely and waiting in jail. I have an interesting idea, but I'll need your to help me make it work. Given that Hal has his whole "death-priest monk" thing going on, what if Hal was able to meditate and send his own soul on a "spirit quest." My thought was, I could play Moralane as a Ranger (which I think is what she is right now), but replace the Animal Companion class feature with a Phantom (as per the spiritualist class). That phantom would be Hal's disembodied spirit. He'd basically be using his emotional connection with Moralane to create a tethering point for his soul and pitching in for his own rescue. Thoughts?
See that is where I think things are skewed, Hall works in this game, but only when there are other Damage Dealers in the mix, and we lost those, forcing hall to try to be two things, a wall, and a ballista, and he was great at one, but lousy at the other. Yep, that's my assessment as well. Nicely put.
And let's not forget that the last magic items I placed in the game, were flat out ignored. I'm not sure this is a fair statement to make. I was under the impression that our casters were working on identifying them. A large part of this game has been the pressure of feeling that we need to beat the clock of the Vampire Queen's ritual. It's a hell of a motivator to keep things moving, but the drawback is that things like identifying items have to wait until we finally stop to rest. So unidentified magic items get packed up for later. In PBP games, "later" can be weeks or months. How many times have we stopped to rest since we entered this tomb? Three?
Don't get me wrong, I love the "under pressure, out of time, low on supplies" feeling of gameplay. Miagnik can tell you that I ran a game that kept the party in those same circumstances for years. What I learned from running that game is that it works for about the first 4 levels, and then after that the mechanics of the game change so fundamentally that the characters need to be allowed to change too. Enemies right off the page come with flight, energy resistance, damage reduction, invisibility, attribute damage, debilitating touch attacks and other abilities that will completely wreck an unprepared party. That's where the combination of "low magic, low-tech setting" and "no time to stop to rest" combine to create a problem for players and GM alike. The game assumes that by 5th level the players can handle that stuff. I honestly completely agree with you that the "magic item mart" feel of Pathfinder is a design flaw. The problem is that it's a design flaw and you can't ignore it or change it without compensating for it in some other way. The system itself relies on the party having magic items to function, and without them, well, the system breaks down. That's what the Automatic Bonus Progression rules are intended to help with. They aren't a perfect fix, but they help.
Sorry I put such a kink in your plans. I didn't realize I was causing a problem. I'd always planned on Hal being as untouchable as possible. It's the only defense a non-spellcaster has against the undead. Ghouls paralyze by touch, and it just gets worse and worse as they get more powerful. I wanted to play a character who could stand in the middle of a horde and not get touched. I can see how that would be a problem from a GMing perspective. I used to have a problem with "soft tank" style characters in games too until it was pointed out to me that those characters tend not to be heavy damage dealers. What they really do is gum up the works in combat by being zone controllers, and they aren't any better at it than spells like Web or Black Tentacles. I never wanted it to become an arms race, which is why Hal is way underpowered for his level. A dwarf monk swashbuckler with an axe is just about the least synergized build I've ever played. If I had to go back and re-build Hal, he'd be a Warpriest. Of all the classes, it fits him best. t just didn't exist when we started this game. If you want me to rebuild him I'd be happy to (not that it will matter for a while.) Thank you for bringing this to my attention.
My only suggestion is that we address the gear deficiency in this game. We are 5th level, but we are equipped like we are somewhere between 2nd and 3rd level, and routinely facing monsters that are higher than our own CR. I think I brought it up when we were 4th level and warned that we didn't really have any way of dealing with the damage reduction, defensive abilities and spells that we were going to start running into. Now we are seeing what that looks like. I'm all for a challenging game, but it is very frustrating to feel like you can't do much of anything against the creatures you run into.
"Go!" Hal barked. "It's got me, it aint gonna kill me! It's just gonna throw me in a cell! Better me than the rest of you."
I would be fine with that. It's a good story hook.
They're hard under the best of circumstances, and we are incredibly underpowered for our level. If something drastic doesn't happen this next round it will be time for a tactical retreat.
Hal swung his axe at the monstrosity.
Same here. Still not feeling great. 'Tis the season.
Hal just barely slipped bast the second bony fist and brought his fists into the creature as hard as he could.
When moving into a room with coordination, I'll try to organize things better as well.
GM, I'm kinda confused why I was the only one who went into the room during the surprise round. I thought the whole point of what we were trying to do was coordinate our actions. Hal wasn't trying to surprise his allies. We were all waiting at the door, Mixz went in, Hal waited to give Mixz a few moments and to let everyone else get ready, and then moved in. What can we do to avoid this in the future?
Hal nodded, letting Mixz move in, and then bursting through the door and charging straight at the creature.
Hal put his head against the slab, trying to make out any voices or movement.
keyhole to look through?
Do we have any way of recon'ing the interior of the room?
The corners of Hal's eyes tightened in a stoic wince as the healing energy flowed into him right through the wraith-scar beneath his armor. "Well that's new." he said, rubbing his chest when Chuffer was done. "Thanks."
"I ain't a knight." Hal grumbled, a bit embarrassed. "I think it's worth the risk, Chuffer. There's prisoners who need help somewhere close. Know how to use a crossbow?"
Hal rolled his shoulder where the creature had struck him. It hurt like hell and something in there was grinding. "It's gonna bruise, that's for sure." "Mixz, you wanna check out that lab for another secret door? Maybe the shrine and the prisoners are in there."
Rest sounds good. Hal is still pretty beat to crap right now. GM, as for motivation stuff, yeah this is a bit hard. We are in dungeon crawl mode, which means while we aren't in combat we only move as fast as our scout (who is new and hasn't gotten much opportunity to practice pushing the narrative forward), and every time combat ends there's a necessary transition that has to happen back into exploration mode. No one wants to push things forward too early in ase tehre's discussion that needs to happen, so I think everyone ends up waiting for everyone else out of politeness. Lets try a rest and recap scene, then move forward.
Hal looked over the gear that hadn't been broken. "I'm guessing, magical?" he said, looking to the two spellcasters.
Hal painfully rubbed his arm and shoulder where the monster had battered him. "Good work, Miagnik."
I'm pretty sure your interpretation is accurate. It's immune to spells, but Fire spells, instead of any of their usual effects, Slow it instead.
"The fire's making it slow! Kite it! Move away, do not engage it, just throw fire!"
"Go! I'll hold it here until eveyone's clear!"
Hal took the first blow but managed to deflect the second and slam his fist into the creature's arm as it passed.
Oh, that's a typo. I was trying to head for AC8. Thanks for catching that.
Hal sprang forward and took a defensive stance.
"Just hold it in the doorway!"
Oh, I thought Mixz was the only one in combat so far. Sorry for the delay.
"Good plan." Hal nodded. "Go. We got this."
"What a Necromancer thinks is always dangerous. Doesn't matter if it's said out loud or written down." Hal said to Mixz. "But that don't mean all words, or all writings are dangerous. Most aren't. The trick is learning how to recognize the evil stuff from the stuff that isn't evil." "Miagik struggles with that sometimes, so it's good that you're here to help look out for him. Gotta learn it yourself to do a good job at that though."
"Writings are just like speaking. Same information. The only difference is that you use your eyes to make out the meaning instead of your ears." Hal shrugged. "Let's let Chuffer and Miagnik take a look, see what they learn."
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