Mike Cuccaro's page

I made all the updates on the inventory tracking sheet, distributing and splitting up taken gear. I spread the gold from the bandits and Kressel to the party members (25gp each, including Brumir who is not on the sheet). I kept the other money and trade goods separate, thinking that maybe that was Oleg's and we should return it. Then we'd sell him the extra weapons and such and just get it back, haha. It would be great if Cry would try to identify that potion. (Detect Magic plus Spellcraft roll.)

Before we waste any healing on bandits, let's see if one wakes up on his or her own while we're retrieving horses, binding them, searching the camp, distributing gear, looking for tracks of any other bandits, etc.

Can Muadhnait's Brain Drain power be used in more of a roleplaying-y way where it might be used in interrogation rather than just, say, being able to use Kressel's superior Knowledge: Nature or what have you to learn that we found beaver tracks? So it isn't just a good power against scholars? I'm wondering if it could be ruled that knowing there are five bandits in a cave a half mile away could be construed as a Knowledge: Local?

I think the Obsidian Portal is going to be a lot more useful once we start collecting NPCs that we've met. We don't have to use it for maps. We can also use it as a wiki for keeping track of clues towards solving problems... I don't know? I was going to make use of it too with journal entries. It's just that the speed of the game means we haven't had too much interaction.

Listening to a Kingmaker podcast (I'll not listen to spoilers)... two conclusions have come to mind... One, people play very different than I do -- their paladin just coup de gras'd all the fallen bandits at Oleg's -- and Two, I am glad to play with you guys and not "regular" roleplayers. There's no personality in this game at all.

I think it will be slow whatever we do. Theoretically, we could waste healing on them enough that they could walk. Muadhnait can do a few heal spells a day.

Or, we just heal three of them to non-disabled and make them carry the disabled ones.

Or we could make a travois and just heal two of them to non-disabled and make them drag the others.

Bigger question. Are we all ok with not cutting their throats and taking them to the Trading Post? I know we could hash this out in character.

Wren, what's Kressel's condition? She's still just noted as "dazed"... I'm assuming unconscious, dying?

Guys, Colin's going to want to stabilize the fallen. Two of them are already stabilized on their own so we'd already have a dilemma. Might as well take it all the way.

I guess what we'd have to do is truss them all up and force march them back with us to the Trading Post. We were going to go back there anyway (after searching for radishes, maybe).

Cutting people up in the heat of battle is one thing but Colin won't execute them in cold blood, even if that is the letter of the charter.

Here's some general combat advice from me:

1. There is no right answer. There's always a kind of pressure, I think, for newer players to want to pick the "right thing" like if a fight in D&D/Pathfinder is one of those old puzzle-solving games like King's Quest. Use the wand on the 3-headed dog, get the sword, use the sword on the dragon, etc. But D&D/Pathfinder battles are generally not solved like that, because so much depends on the random elements of rolls -- the best plan in the world goes awry based on a single 20-sided die. Instead they are more like.. a pile of paperwork. You work through it a bit at a time and it's almost always over quicker than you think it will go. In my kids D&D game the party had a 5-on-1 against a monster. When it was the cleric's turn, he wanted to "do something" even though he wasn't close enough to attack, because, that's why you play right? You don't want to "waste your turn!" So he cast his True Strike spell on himself which means that in the next round he gets to attack with an additional +20! So, what happened? Before it got to his turn, the raging barbarian with 3 attacks in the round (each of which did more than twice what the cleric could do with his attack) had killed the thing. And that spell, which he only had a couple spells per the whole day, was wasted in the first encounter.

That leads to two other points:

2. You don't have to act just because it is your turn. "Wasting a turn" means, in reality, often just waiting 6 seconds for a better opportunity. You can even just say you'll delay your action until later in the round when someone comes close enough to hit or something like that.

3. Guard your limited resources well.
Spellcasters seem to always, ALWAYS, use up their spells as fast as they possibly can. Like, they'll cast all their spells against a room of goblins whom they could just as easily swat with a quarterstaff, and then they won't have their good spell against the tougher bosses where spellcasters are more needed. That being said, it may be in wilderness encounters like we're having, we may not be piling up 3-4 encounters per day so this may not be as big of an issue. But still, blowing spells meaninglessly, especially if they might be useful later, is foolish but all too commonly done.

As far as the not wanting to waste a turn, even experienced players do this. The first time I ever played with Wren and his friends, one prominent player's turn came up at the end of the fight. There was one wounded enemy left and he was surrounded by other characters. Not wanting to do the boring thing, this player risked an opportunity attack by the enemy so that he could hit it one last time. Well he got hit and he got dropped and was bleeding to death. Then the other characters killed the enemy easily before it got its regular turn. Just because of this pressure to "do something". That's one of my other rules...

4. If possible, never give the enemies extra opportunities. Opportunity attacks are provoked most often by moving past armed foes to get to a different position. It gives that foe a chance at an extra attack, which basically amounts to doubling their forces. Don't do it unless there is a good reason. The corollary rule is 4A. If you can take away opportunities from enemies, even for just one round, that is great. Your enemies in a fight will exist in your character's life for usually at most 30 seconds or less. The most powerful ones will get 4 or 5 actions against you. Taking even just one away is huge.

5. Sometimes playing a role is boring. The game is designed so that fighter-types deal and receive the most straightforward damage. Let them. The game is designed so that wizard-types hang back and buff allies, annoy foes, or do big powerful things a couple times a day, like winning an entire fight on their own with a fireball. Let them. The game is designed so that rogue-types work best with a little bit of separation and doing isolated strategic strikes and also do well with a lot of the in-between encounters times like searching, scouting, opening. Let them. The game is designed so that cleric-types work best before and after fights, buffing people and healing people, or doing social interactions with strangers. Let them.

Everyone is the hero of their own story in this game so you want to be there to take part in everything. It's boring not to! But sometimes you just have to be bored and let other people have the spotlight, especially when it strategically makes sense. In the kids D&D game the rogue got annoyed that he didn't get to attack in the first fight so he insisted on going first and got cut the heck up by the next encounter. Then he was mad about that. But him being bored as a player meant that the monk spent time not punching the heck out of a monster but trying to stop the rogue's bleeding and the cleric had to use up two spells healing the rogue, spells that they will probably need later. But anyway...

6. Be in character. This supercedes all my other advice. We're not playing a board game, even though it is kind of a board game.

I'm thinking we could stick with the plan we talked about. Colin can be speaking to them in plain sight while the two groups sneak around to get into a position to attack the platforms.

I updated the map with three lines. A big fat blue line to represent Colin's approach and fainter red and green lines for the two sneaky groups.

There's a road?? No wonder this had taken so long! Great job, Brumir. ;)

So, Wren, we'd be coming in on the top of the battle-map, right? As if we've been following the river down? How far away are we? Is it still not dawn yet?

Are the two things that look like shipping palettes the tree stands? Are they, say, 20' up? Can you place any figures?

Amber and I were chatting a little bit about strategy re: bandit camp. From what we know now, theoretically, we could aim for a dawn raid or a midnight strike.

Dawn Raid (positives):
We can all see the enemy. No miss chances in the dark.
They're unprepared.
No dangers in trying to approach/stumbling horses, etc.

Dawn Raid (negatives):
The enemy can all see us. No miss chances in the dark.
Colin Factor. If he insists on challenging them to surrender first, rest of team can't really sneak up.

Midnight Strike (positives):
Muadhnait and Brumir can both see in the dark.
Muadhnait's and Crytalis' abilities won't be affected by miss chances.
Muadhnait can be Mage Handing torches around lighting up the enemy for us to attack.
Presumably some of us could stay in the dark attacking lit-up enemies.
They're unprepared.
Colin Factor. If he insists on challenging them to surrender first, rest of team could be sneaking up in dark.
Miss factor plus high armor on Colin challenging them from darkness means maybe less chance of becoming pincushion.
If we kill them, we can sleep in their beds since we forgot to bring bedrolls.

Midnight Strike (negatives):
Hard to find each other if someone's in trouble.
Miss factor for us in the dark.

Colin's not big on details and cooking... mushroom, radishes, what's the difference?

What do we want to do next?

It seems we'll need to interrogate Happs. If he's tended to, in an hour, he can maybe become conscious but still tied up and disabled.

If their lair is not too far, or if they are expecting him, we might want to hit it asap, though Cry is down her spells.

Or, we can depart in the morning.

We should ask who this Vezzek person is with the reward for the boar and how far he is.

We may have time to ride to the place with the mushrooms (3 hours?), gather some, and ride back and then all have a nice mushroom dinner... sleep and then go get the rest of the bandits in the morning. If we're not rushed because of info we get from Happs, that's my choice. If Brumir wants to join us, this is a good test before we deal with bandits.

Is there a way to get an alert when there is a new post, do you think?

That might be tough for me to coordinate time for but I could do it. You mean with video and audio, right? I'm not sure about what Amber's computer's capabilities are.

Just what is base attack for, because mine is 0 and I find that a tad worrisome?

My base attack is only +1. That's the best it can be for a 1st-level character. Fighter-types (like me) have the best progression for base attack where it goes up 1 for every level. Secondary fighters (like clerics and rogues) go up like 2/3 as fast. Tertiary level fighters (like wizards and witches) go up like 1/2 as fast.

When you attack with a melee weapon, it is your base attack plus your strength bonus to hit. With a ranged weapon, it is base plus dexterity. So, I attack with a +4 in melee but a +1 with ranged because I have no dex bonus. Your total melee attack is still a +0 and ranged is same as mine, +1 because you have a small dex bonus.

Remember though that this is added to a 20-sided die so 20% of the time I would make a higher melee attack than you, but otherwise we are at par. So, don't worry. At any rate, as Wren said, if we're depending on you (or Crumbs) in melee, that's not a great situation.

Cool. Good job, Wren. I was actually playing around with the rolls, being the programmer that I am. I thought, wait, if I can preview a post, will it re-roll every time? Or if I put lots of rolls in a row until I get a high one, can I just delete the lines with the bad rolls?

Turns out the rolls get cached, so as soon as you preview, that's the same roll you'll get when you post. And the sequence stays the same so if you write out five d6 rolls and get 2, 4, 4, 1, 6... if you change it so it is only two rolls, it's the 2 and the 4.

I'm sure you could do something like post from another browser if you really wanted to cheat but it's cool they were able to block this.