How do the obediences work? Do you jutake a feat and do the gods thing?
The obedience feats require that you take 1 hour every day to perform a ritual for your deity. As long as you have performed this ritual that day, you get the benefits of the feat for the rest of the day. At higher levels the feats also give you access to some special abilities. The first appears at 12th level, then 16th, then 20th.
If you take one of the prestige classes from INNER SEA GODS (which all require you to have the feat) you get the boons at earlier levels. If you haven't taken any of the PRCs then you get the boons from the Evangelist list.
Looks good! This looks like an all-around solid character.
Yes, when you get the Leadership feat you could use that NPC as a cohort. Though you are not bound by that and could pick someone else too if you change your mind. That's 4 levels away anyways.
Note that Student of Humanity won't enhance your diplomacy checks to make other humans friendly. It only affects abilities that result in gaining information. But the Heroic Echo ability looks pretty good for a bard later on.
I also note that you have the armor expert trait even though your armor has no armor check penalty. Is that deliberate?
Looks like you plan on switch hitting between a shortbow and a longsword. If that's the case, you might want to consider a buckler shield instead of a heavy shield, since you can use a bow and still wield a buckler shield, and also if you have your sword in hand, you can hold your sword with your buckler hand and cast a spell with your free hand. If you have a heavy shield you have to either drop your sword or sheathe it to cast a spell.
You also might want a silver light mace instead of a silver dagger, since blunt weapons made of silver don't have a damage penalty like the sharp ones do.
BTW the "Woodsy" trait lets you pick a druid orison that you can cast once a day. Which one did you want?
Did you choose a patron deity? It's not required.
With the picture of your character, I kind of thought you would go for an archaeologist type armed with a whip. :)
We don't need a hard deadline for characters but I am mostly ready.
For the record, we can also start thinking about the composition of the expedition as a whole.
We will be assuming that there will be about 500 colonists along on the first voyage to settle the new colony. But what professions they will be will be up to you. So you could decide that you want X farmers, Y fishermen, Z miners, and so on. Some can be soldiers if you want to start with a military unit, but this is not required.
I'm also going to get you to come up with three NPCs that are accompanying you. They can be people that you rescued on your last mission or people that you know in other ways. One will be a 2nd level character with a PC class but the other two will be first level NPCs. You don't need to stat them out, just give the basic details. "Bob Jones, Carpenter (Human Expert 1) is enough, though a few personal details about them would be good.
This is to compensate for the fact that in this type of campaign you normally would have accumulated a number of NPC "contacts" between first and third level which can fill NPC kingdom roles.
Your characters will get two normal traits and then one campaign trait. No campaign trait may be taken by more than one character.
"Campaign Traits" for this campaign:
Lycanthrope Hunter - +2 to identify lycantropes and a monster's DR/silver is reduced by 1/3 your level (minimum 1) against your attacks. Your alchmeical silver weapons instead gain a bonus to damage equal to this amount against creatures with DR/silver.
Dashing Rescuer - you have a reputation for coming to the aid of those in need. Any circumstance bonuses for charisma checks based on the fact that you are coming to someone's aid are doubled, and when dealing with normal people who repect efforts to liberate or rescue people you get a +1 to diplomacy checks. Against those who would resent this (such as enemies that people need rescuing from) you get a -1 to diplomacy checks instead, but a +1 to intimidate checks.
Forest Stalker - You get a +2 on perception checks to avoid surprise in forests and jungles, and any miss chance to your attacks caused by concealment or total concealment due to foliage is reduced by 10%.
Woodsy - +1 to survival checks in forest or jungle, and +1 to knowledge (nature) checks to identify creatures native to these terrains. One of these skills becomes a class skill; if that skill is already a class skill for you the trait bonus increases to +2 for that skill. Choose an orison from the Druid spell list; you may cast this spell as a spell-like ability once per day.
Historian of Ruins - You gain a +2 to knowledge (history) and knowledge (engineering) checks pertaining to ancient ruins, and one of these skills becomes a class skill for you. You also gain a +2 on spellcraft checks to identify magic items from ancient cultures when you are using detect magic, and if you cannot cast detect magic you instead may identify such an object using knowledge (history), using the bonus above, though the DC will generally be 5 points higher.
Hardy Marcher - you gain a +2 to Fortitude saves to cope with hot or cold conditions and you only take half the normal amount of nonlethal damage from hot or cold environments, force marching and hustling, and starvation and thirst.
Treasure Seeker - You gain a +2 to appraise checks, profession (prospector) or (merchant) checks, and to perception checks that allow you to find hidden treasure. You may take 20 to analyze the value of non-magical things made from gemstones and/or precious metals. Appraise is a class skill for you.
Cult Breaker - +2 to knowledge (religion) checks to identify details of evil religions, and you may use knowledge (religion) to identify creatures summoned by divine casters with summon monster spells. You gain a +1 to hit priests of religions that oppose your alignment, and your caster level is one higher for your spells that affect such priests.
Dengorin Kaltaneos wrote:
Okay. Were we going to go with the swap of Superior Summoning for Sacred Summons?
Yeah, I don't see a problem with that. Note though that your Aura (assuming that you go with Abadar) will be LN, even if you are LG or N yourself. So the only creatures that benefit from Sacred Summons will be LN creatures, and the basic summon monster list doesn't have any of those.
I will allow the Abadar-specific summons listed here: Abadar but aside from those there aren't really any summoned creature types that I can find that will get any benefit from this.
Okay guys, I will be leaving on vacation on Sept. 30th for two weeks. I'll be back by the 12th of October, and I'd like to aim to get started then. The main hurdle I am having is making up a map. I know what I want to do but it is a time-consuming process. Once the map is done the main obstacle is overcome.
So... I know I want to change her to an Aasimar... but I can't settle upon her new bloodline. That and a busy weekend has kept me from doing much. I was leaning towards the Maestro Bloodline though. Thoughts?
You should build your character with two things in mind. You will mainly be doing two things:
* Exploring a wild and untamed land, and
* Establishing and administering a colony.
So you need some versatility there. For sorcerers this mostly involves your choice of spells. The Maestro bonus spells mostly seem to be good for dealing with humanoids, but your other spells don't need to do that.
Not every character needs to be "woodsy" and not every character needs to be "social."
If you have an RP reason for going with the Maestro bloodline then go for it. But if you just want a kind of build that supports enchantment, there are many.
If you want to play an Aasimar, I don't mind, though you do see them a lot. So I would ask that you make sure you come up with a description that clearly shows that you are an Aasimar. you can get inspiration from the Alternative Physical Features Table though rolling is not necessary. You also need to have a bit of story about how it affected your life growing up among humans.
The main way I would play Superior Summons is by only using the level appropriate summon list each time I cast Summon Monster. So, if I cast summon monster III, I would summon two things off the summon monster III list.
Superior summons doesn't work like that. It only has an effect if you are already summoning multiple creatures with one spell.
Dengorin Kaltaneos wrote:
If you'd prefer, we could modify the archetype to, instead of giving Superior Summons, give Sacred Summons instead.
So basically, Aasimar are required to have the Scion of Humanity alternate racial abilities. The Tiefling equivalent is Pass for Human.
Yes, but not quite.
Aasimar and Tieflings still do look weird. If they want to take the "Pass for Human" or "Scion of Humanity" trait to look human they will have to give something else up, either their SLA or the remaining energy resistance.
It's a little broken for Planetouched races to be immune to a whole group of spells for a mere 1 RP (since the Outsider type comes with Darkvision for free). And at the same time, they get considerably more stuff than most races.
For the record, other planetouched races get this treatment too, though for the elemental ones I give them a bit of an extra bonus to compensate, since they have less abilities.
Dengorin Kaltaneos wrote:
Since this is a tropical land, I'm guessing heavy armor may cause problems while we're exploring. Lighter armor may be called for.
This is not a bad idea. If anyone plans to be a heavy armor type, you should think about how you will mitigate things like heat exhaustion. The simplest way would be the endurance feat, but there are others.
Dengorin Kaltaneos wrote:
I am currently leaning towards the Herald Caller archetype. This does focus on summoning, so I thought I would ask about it first.
Hmmm... this puts things fairly heavily dependent on your deity. Planning to stick with Abadar?
It also has an 8th level bonus feat that only matters if you summon multiple creatures. I'm kind of leery of that as it seems that the whole point of the feat is to lay down a swarm of summons.
Do you have any thoughts as to how you would play this?
Varden Baile Phuir wrote:
I don't think Var is even viable as is. I'm going to keep the RP intact, but I will be doing a major overhaul on the character crunch.
Question on the races, why nerf Tiefling? It follows the same +2, +2, -2 that most other races follow only Aasimar has the +2, +2 with no minus.
I'm not worried about the ability scores. But Tieflings get a lot of fairly powerful abilities. They have considerably more RP than most player races.
If you plan to make an Aasimar, the nerf is this:
They are normally outsiders. This changes to humanoid (outsider) instead, which means you can be affected by -person spells. You don't get Celestial as a bonus language. There are also three energy resistances - just pick one.
Out of curiosity, are we the guinea pigs on this Point Buy? I'm not complaining, I'm just curious since I don't think I've ever seen similar used before.
Yeah, more or less.
For the record, the traditional "elite" array of 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 can be bought with these points exactly.
But, you could also go for 14, 14, 14, 12, 12, 10. Under the normal system, this would be a 19 point buy, whereas the elite array is 15. The idea is to make it easier to buy low-level points in multiple scores.
Dengorin Kaltaneos wrote:
I just took a look at the house rules, and I thought I would mention that the Arcane Duelist gets a Bardic Performance similar to your "Intimidate to Rally" rule. See below.
Yes, and if someone wanted to play one we would have to houserule it.
I do feel that there are a lot of game mechanics where you get a class ability or feat to do something that should require no training at all.
Dengorin Kaltaneos wrote:
Also, have you ever looked at the Feat Tax house rules?
I have. They are neat but I think he overdoes it. I remember building a character for a game that had those house rules and thinking it was Christmastime. My rules are kind of like a compromise between those rules and the official rules.
FYI guys I am making up "campaign traits" based on the previous adventure you are making up. I should have those ready soon.
We might as well start to talk about character builds.
Firstly, if you want to re-theme your character, or even play a different character, that's okay.
The previous GM in my mind went kind of overboard with character power. The three ranks per level and high point buy made it really hard for us to fail kingdom checks. As a player I will take what I can get, but it seemed that we didn't have to worry about the challenges posed by the system. We made all our kingdom checks on a roll of 2.
In my mind that takes some of the challenge out of it. The kingdom building rules are intended for an AP with four characters at 15-point buy.
VARIANT POINT-BUY
We're going to do something similar, but we will use a system that is a bit more forgiving to MAD classes. It goes like this:
Using this system you get 45 points. You are allowed to gain no more than 10 extra points by dumping scores. This is roughly equivalent to 15-point buy, but it punishes you for trying to put a single score too high at the expense of others.
Before you argue that this will make your character too weak, I'll mention that I plan to give the party certain advantages. For example, in combat you will generally know the AC and HP of your enemies. This speeds things up (which is good for PbP) but gives the party an edge since they have a much clearer understanding about how tough their enemy is.
I will also point out that in hexcrawl exploration you have a lot of one-encounter days. You shouldn't assume that you will always be able to rest after every encounter but you will be able to use renewable resources a lot more frequently.
Other things:
The Not-Quite Ban-Hammer:
1. Please, avoid abilities that allow retcons, i.e. "the monster that just hit me now has to re-roll." I find that these disrupt the flow of PbP and I'd prefer to avoid them. If your class gives you something like this, the only way you get to use it is if you specify in advance in your posts "I will use my super-duper dodge power if the orc hits me for 10 damage or more." If you don't think you are organized enough to include posts like this, please don't take abilities like that.
2. Also, please avoid mass summoning abilities. I am not opposed to summoning but if you want your character to do that please make sure you are organized enough to manage this smoothly. In particular, I really don't want to see people use the 1d4+1 creatures or cast multiple summons in the same combat. Keep the speed of the game in mind.
3pp? Nope, sorry. There is enough Paizo material to drown in now and I have my hands full already.
Classes: Basically any Paizo, with a few exceptions.
* Barbarian, Monk, Rogue & Summoner should all be unchained
* No guns (so no gunslingers except bolt ace)
* Alchemists & investigators are re-themed (ask for details if you plan to play one)
* Occult classes are probably not a good fit for this campaign, though if you are really keen you can make a pitch for them. No kineticists.
* Fighters gain Combat Stamina as a bonus feat at 1st level.
Check out these Campaign House Rules. I am using them in another game and will also use them here.
Races: Most Paizo, but No "monster" races such as orcs or goblins. Also no high-powered races such as Drow. Planetouched races will be modified slightly - Aasimars and Tieflings will get nerfed a bit to make them roughly equal to other races.
Background Skills: Yes.
Hit Points: Max at 1st level. After that, as a group the party should decide whether they want to go with rolled HP or average round up.
Starting Wealth: 3000 gp. No crafting discounts (see Featless Crafting in house rules if you want to craft your own stuff).
Traits: Two, plus one free Campaign Trait. No drawbacks.
* BTW Fate's Favored is kind of broken. The fix is this: the Fate's Favored bonus only applies to one kind of thing, i.e. attack rolls, damage rolls, saves, skill checks, and so on. You decide this when you take the trait.
I'm guessing, based on reading the first section of the document, most of these changes involve better reflecting medieval society and government structure?
So, we have a dark forest with a forgotten temple. The lycanthropes could have been a pack that lived in the forest and were displeased by the encroachment of the bandits and cultists into the area. They could have attacked us, thinking we were with the bandits, but we were able to convince them we were hunting the bandits as well, and were able to talk our way out of them killing us in exchange for dispersing the bandits.
I'd say the most dangerous thing would have been summoned dretches that the cultists brought up - that or a quasit, but as Rise of the Runelords taught me, those are annoying for level 1-2 PCs to deal with.
Still thinking about a greatest moment in the adventure for myself. I may need to rework Dengorin before I decide on that - it'll help to know what he's actually capable of.
Remember that Lamashtu is a patron of Lycanthropes (at least evil ones). Some of the cultists could be lycanthropes themselves.
For the record, there will be a certain amount of exploration at the beginning before you guys actually found a settlement. You will be in command of a sea expedition with the first wave of colonists on board, but will be roleplaying where you want the ships to land, etc. So there will be a little bit of time at the beginning before you need to decide on roles, though it doesn't hurt to plan ahead.
I also intend to house rule a number of things in the kingdom building system that I didn't like. One of these things will be refining the kingdom roles. The reason I am taking my time here is that I am working on these rules.
THIS DOCUMENT has the revised kingdom roles. Note that this system adds a lot of minor officials at higher levels.
The "Big Six" roles that will need to be filled at the beginning are:
Ruler Lord Chancellor (Justice Minister, did not exist in original system)
Lord Chancellor of the Exchequer (Treasurer)
Lord Privy Seal (Spymaster)
Lord Chamberlain (Grand Diplomat)
Lord Pontifex (High Priest)
Obviously with five of you at least one of these will have to be an NPC. With her current concept, Abalia might be a good Lord Chamberlain.
The settlements will also need a Lord Mayor. This is not a good one for a character to fill, and should be an NPC.
Once your kingdom gets to be size 11 or more you will need to add more (though you can add them earlier):
Lord High Sheriff (in charge of constabulary)
Lord Magister (Chief Magician)
Forester Royal (Monster Control Officer)
Lord High Admiral (Navy - the kingdom will be on an island or archipelago, so this is the chief of the military)
* A conspiracy by a group of cultists of Lamashtu.
* Enforced by a group of bandits.
* Abandoned Shrine
* Some of the bandits are convinced to desert the cause.
Not bad so far.
But let's expand. Here's some suggestions:
Where would this hideout be located?
* On a rocky seacoast
* In a dismal swamp
* On a mountain crag
* In a dark forest
* In dusty badlands
* In rugged hills
What type of stronghold? Where is this shrine?
* In a ruined castle
* In a forgotten temple
* In the sewers beneath a city
* In a natural cavern
* In a dark tomb
* In a seemingly innocent village
Aside from humanoids, do you face any monsters? Such as:
* Lycanthropes
* Summoned Demons
* Trained Guard Animals? What kind?
What was the most dangerous thing?
This one's important:
What was your character's greatest moment in the adventure?
The idea here is to craft some common memories for you guys.
For the record, the game will not be set in Golarion, so we are not tied to the normal Golarion deities. By all means use them, but if you want to import deities from other mythologies (other than Earth's, of course) feel free.
Lamashtu is a demon queen and any sort of demon lord makes for good villains.
Norgorber works also since she is a patron of undead.
Asmodeus or some other Arch-Devil could be a patron of slavers of some sort.
Whatever you choose, I may have villains from your past return to haunt you, so choose well!
Also, were the bulk of your enemies human? Or some other race?
What kinds of things did you have to do to defeat them?
What was their stronghold like?
You don't have to write a novel but I am hoping for a bit of creativity here.
I have always found it funny how ineffective the crossbow is in games, when it is a holy terror of a weapon in reality.
Various popes tried to ban the weapon's use in Christendom, saying it was a vicious weapon, suitable for use only against devils and infidels. :)
However, the only real difference between bows and crossbows in Pathfinder is the rate of fire, and the difference is perfectly realistic. Actually, it would have been very hard to reload a real medieval crossbow in the 6 seconds of a single combat round. But you can shoot arrows faster as well, so I suppose it's a wash.
Other than that, Deadly Aim is the main vector of missile damage growth and it applies just as well to crossbows.
Sorry, not willing to run Spheres of Power. I don't have time to learn a whole new magic system on top of all the other work I will be doing for this game.
I don't have a problem with with the bolt ace archetype per se. For the party's primary divine caster though, you should think carefully about diluting your casting abilities with other class levels. But I'd rather not get into mechanics right now and just have people think about the overall concept.
The concept behind your hypothetical adventure is fine, though if the people you are rescuing are "youths" they might not be old enough to join your expedition.
I'm not going to post much about the game world yet. But you can assume that your characters will be sent by the ruler of a nation that is a fairly vanilla fantasy realm. It is dominated by humans but has plenty of halflings and elves and gnomes, and some dwarves also. It is in a warm temperate climate and while it has a settled and well-populated core it also has lots of wilderness, mostly forests and hills and a few mountains. Other than some evil humanoids and monsters in the wilds it is basically at peace with most of its neighbours.
If your character is not going to be from this country there are plenty of other nations they could be from. There is a fairly typical "elven kingdom" and "dwarven kingdom." There are also a lot of human nations that for the most part are vaguely based on medieval nations from Earth. So if you would prefer that your character came from "Germany" or "Egypt" or "Norway" or "Greece" or something the world can accommodate that.
So Your First Assignment:
Your characters will already be an adventuring party. So I would like to you to come up with ideas as to how you came together.
I also want to assume that you have completed an adventure that has brought you fame and the attention of the local ruler. You get to decide what this adventure was, so we have a bit of background that is in common to all of you. The main Caveat will be that the adventure would still have to be suitable for 1st and 2nd level characters, and you have basically just made 3rd level.
I will be allowing you to generate NPCs to come along so this adventure could involve a rescue of some type, and some of the people you rescued have chosen to join your expedition.
Your Second Assignment:
You will also need to revisit your character concepts since you will be more involved in combat and exploration. I'm not going to get into build rules just yet but you should have an idea of where your character will be going and what abilities he should have. But a few notes:
At least one character should be familiar with ships and sailing, since a fair bit of the early exploration will be by ship. This might be good for Samuel but I will leave it up to you.
At least one character should be a "woodsy" type of character will skills and abilities attuned to the wild. Elijah could switch to Ranger if he wanted. Or Kurhat likewise could switch to that also (he currently has 1 level of ranger). Kurhat's existing mercantile skills will be useful though so that's something to think about.
You will be adventuring in the tropics and some of the adventure will be maritime, so characters based around a heavy armor fighting style might not be a good fit.
There will be ruins of a lost civilization so some dungeon-crawling will likely happen. Building a character focused on disarming traps would probably be a mistake, but it would still be good to have at least one character that can disarm traps. Likewise, characters with an archaeology bent will periodically be useful.
For the record, I will probably be toning things down somewhat in terms of character abilities. It is easier to make a challenging game if the characters are not too powerful. We will definitely be getting rid of the 3 ranks per level house rule, and only one leader role will be allowed per character. There won't be a "Co-Ruler" role either. I will also be houseruling the Kingdom Building rules a fair bit.
If you wish to change your race that would be allowed as long as your concept doesn't change too much. Note though that I will nerf some of the stronger races, and particularly powerful ones won't be allowed.
If you wish to completely change your character concept you can do this too, but try to make the character fit with the rest of the party.
We're going to take our time here because there are a lot of things I will need to prepare. So no hurry.
No, what I am thinking would still have Kingdom building elements as the basis for the mission the players are sent on. But if I am doing that I would rather have the players be the ones doing the exploring and so on.
3rd level is probably about right though. Might need to revisit the build rules, but the character concepts don't need to change.
The overall concept would be very similar to what is currently in the thread; the players are selected to lead a mission to found a colony. As with the existing game, the colonists will arrive by sea and the new colony will be in the tropics.
It's going to take a little while to pull this together so I'm not going to post any kinds of rules or anything yet. It's also going to take a fair bit of work so I will also predict that the posting rate will need to be only ~3 posts per week on average.
I'd be tempted to take over as GM myself, but I have a fair bit on my plate right now. And if I did a game like this I'd probably want to start from scratch. Since this is not based on published material, finding a new GM will be tricky.
As long as no one objects I guess it's reasonably good bang for your buck.
Samuel: All the promotion edict does is improve stability and our stability is pretty good right now; even if we lose 4 points of stability or have 4 unrest we still only fail a Stability Check on a natural 1.
I'd rather wait until we have the spare farmland that can support such an edict without paying any BP for it before we do it. The edict doesn't really help us right now.
What we really need to boost right now is Loyalty (and Economy for more money).
With the discount from the Lyre we will be spending 13 BP, so we will have 4 left. So if we want to send out explorers we can still afford them. But do we want to?
I would love to know more about what is to the southwest, but we have lots of space to expand into right now. So it can probably wait if we want to build more things next turn. Like a granary.
Dengorin Kaltaneos wrote:
Woohoo! We're Consumption neutral!
Next turn we go for a Granary, I think. This turn a Mill.
Do we have any Unrest?
EDIT: We good with where I put the Mill?
Once we get into negative consumption you can also think about adding more holidays. It's worth it to keep building farms for that reason.
We have no unrest. Actually, we haven't done the stability check for Month 4 yet, so that will probably net us an extra BP.
The mill is fine... we will probably build a second one next to it when the city is bigger.
It's Month Four. Month Three we only had 3 BP and built 1 road with it.
Samuel Kerensky wrote:
Opening Treasury Balance: 23
Actually this should be 17 BP. See posts above, but here's a recap:
End of Month 3 Edict Phase: 0 BP
Month 3 Income Phase: +17 BP taxes. +1 BP Mine. Total now 18.
Month 4 Upkeep Phase: -1 BP Consumption. Total now 17 BP.
So we can't afford a granary yet but we can afford a mill. A mill gives +1 ECO, +1 STA.
Note we still get a 1 BP discount on construction for the Lyre of Building.
Our size goes up by 1 but the farm we are building reduces consumption by 2 so next upkeep we will have no consumption.
Varden: the rules actually assume the same thing you are assuming. A unit of BP is mostly in the form of labor and materials.
In feudal kingdoms most taxes are owed in the form of labor or goods anyways. For more advanced economies we could be taxing things in coin but then paying for all these things, so the money goes in and then out again.
Some Future Ideas:
I've been looking at the map, thinking about where we should expand.
From a military standpoint Qazag would think that securing the mountain pass to the south is a priority, since the mountains divide the continent into two parts.
So I imagine that after claiming all the hexes adjacent to the capital we will start claiming things to the south.
I envision the first 10 hexes we will claim will be the ones I have outlined in red. Note that there are a lot of mountains in this area, but it is worth mentioning that all these mountain hexes are either on the coast or on a river, which means that fisheries can be built there. Inland mountains without rivers will be less valuable.
Once we have those hexes we could start a second settlement at X (hex J-4). At this point our kingdom size will be 11 (12 once the second settlement is built) and this bumps us up into the next category; we can build more improvements per turn and claim 2 hexes per turn. So we want to get to that kingdom size quickly.
After that I envision that we would spread west and site Y (hex G-3) would be our third city. After that we could spread south from Y or east towards Z (which is another good city spot).
"You can give up some of your precious time to discuss a matter that has come up."
Qazag raises an eyebrow. "Can I now?"
Varden Baile Phuir wrote:
"I do not have much dealing with short lived races, and in dealing with the young rabble-rouser I have come up to the edge of my knowledge. So, might I ask, how has your mixed heritage effected your life sir?"
Qazag scratches his chin.
"Hmmm... I suppose there aren't many half-orcs living in elven lands. So it makes sense you would have little experience with them."
"For a half-orc growing up in human lands, things can be difficult. Many humans, when they see a half-orc, do not recognize the difference and assume you are just like an orc. This can mean a lot of things; savage and violent, strong, stupid, primitive, and so on."
"As a child it is difficult growing up with these assumptions. If you are playing a contact sport with other boys, and one of them is hurt by you accidentally, the human parents will say 'See? The half-orc child is too violent! We must keep him away from the other children!', even if the human children would sometimes make the same mistake, and when they did, oh, it was just a mistake. Or the other children play tricks on you, and when you fall for those tricks they say 'look how stupid the orc is!' even though human children fall for the same tricks. Or when a human child is hurt in a typical child's brawl everyone assumes that the half-orc child must be the culprit, even if you weren't even there."
"Overall, a half-orc child living among humans learns to believe that the world is unfair."
"For some of us, this is a good thing, because the world really isn't fair, even for humans. Some get more than they deserve, and some less, and who knows if it is fate or chance. So you learn to fight for the chances you get."
"For others, they begrudge the world for its unfairness, and determine that there is no reason they need to treat with others fairly. That it is only through being unfair that they will get what they want, because this is the example set for them by the world."
Qazag shrugs.
"I suspect your Kael is in the latter category. He feels no shame for what he has done because he was just trying to give himself what others seem to have. And he has no reason to ask for mercy because he does not think it would be granted in any case, so there is no point in humiliating himself for no benefit."
"The reputation of half-orcs is not all negative. Some of it proves useful. Since we have a reputation for being strong and tough many of us are encouraged to join the military. This was true in my case."
"At the same time, the reputation for being savage, violent, and undisciplined made it very hard for me to advance in rank. I had to show twice as much discipline to get the credit a human soldier would have."
"If I wanted to take advantage of that reputation, I might have ended up in the criminal underworld, where intimidation is important and the reputation for being homicidal is useful. Sadly, that kind of like doesn't give you much of a future. I wonder if Kael has had that kind of life. Sadly, I don't know a lot about bringing people out of that life and into a life that is productive. You might ask our high priestess; that seems to be what Sarenrae is about."
The exploration party did end up costing only 1, so at the end of turn 2 you guys should have had 3 BP left.
* At the end of the edict phase of turn 2 we did have 3 BP left.
* The income phase of turn 2 gave us 1 BP (from the mine) so we were at 4.
* The Upkeep phase of turn 3 we had consumption of 1 so we are back at 3 BP.
* In the edict phase of turn 3 we spent the 3 BP on one hex of road (it was all we could afford). That left us with 0 BP.
* So going into the income phase of our first taxation (turn 3) we had 0 BP in the treasury.
Qazag: the extra +5 to Economy comes from the Spymaster. I forgot to ask Varden where he wanted to put it before I had Kurhat roll for taxes, but there's no reason that I know of for him to put it in either Loyalty or Stability, so I stuck it in Economy. Varden, if you really want to you can stick it somewhere else. Just let me know.
In that case it looks like you applied it twice - once to the tax roll, and then again to the total wealth afterwards. This is the line from your post:
Eragar wrote:
So +18 BP from Taxes. 47+5=52 -> 52/3=17.33 -> 17 -> +1 from Mine = 18. Treasury is now at 23.
In bold is the adjustment from the spymaster. According to your calculation this brings us to 18. But then you say "treasury is now at 23." Since we had 0 BP left before the tax roll, we should still have 18. Then in turn 4 consumption will be 1 and bring this down to 17.
Kurhat rides back into the upstarting settlement. One of the scouts of the army men approaches Qazag, "Sir, there are large, feline-like beasts roaming the south-east area. Their teeth are sharp, sir! Predators like that won't let us safely be if we are to build in the area."
"Hmmm... we could set aside the area as a nature preserve. If these cats could be tamed... and trained... they could make fierce guard animals."
I actually put ranks in Handle Animal on the off chance that this kind of thing would come up. :)
If we do build a tenement, this causes 2 unrest. With our building limits it is really hard to build improvements that can get rid of 2 unrest in one turn. But this is how it can be done.
Since we can only build one other thing in a town the second unrest point would have to be absorbed by something we build outside the town.
Such as:
Town:
1 BP: Tenement +2 unrest
2 BP: upgrade existing tenement to house -1 unrest
Rural:
12 BP: Watchtower -1 unrest
So after building a tenement you need to spend at least 14 BP to get rid of the unrest you just created. The upgrading the house part can be replaced with some other building that reduces unrest but anything else is more expensive.
Qazag would be happy to start building watchtowers all over the place but we can't really afford it just yet.
I'd be in favor of adding any of the following: Walls, Inn, Shop, Smithy, Stable, Monument, or Graveyard. We should also build a House every turn, since we can do that without it counting against our build limit. All of those are relatively inexpensive, which means we can have plenty left over for expanding and exploration.
Firstly, aside from our free house we can build one building per turn. We can also build terrain improvements so if we are claiming a hex this turn we need to divide our money between the things we are building in town and out of town.
Strategically, we should try to maximize the opportunities we get for building discounts. Smithies, Stables, Monuments, and Graveyards all have ways we can get discounts on them.
We can't build a house yet; right now we can only build a tenement or upgrade to a house. And building a Tenement costs us 2 unrest. I would prefer to hold off on building a tenement until we know that we can get rid of that unrest right away. And I would rather not upgrade a tenement to a house unless we need a reduction in unrest.
We can only build 1 wall segment at a time, and we need 3 to complete the wall and gain benefits from it. We have a barracks and a contingent of soldiers so I think we can do without for now until we can build 3 things at once.
There is nothing wrong with Inns or shops, though they are somewhat expensive and also there are fundamental needs here. I think the food resources come first.
The granary is a good idea, and the other idea which is similar would be a mill. Both have to do with processing food.
If we are claiming a hex this turn, here's what I envision:
Rural:
1 BP Claim Hex (I'd prefer to claim a hex as often as possible)
4 BP Farm
3 BP Road
That is 8 BP and is the maximum we can do since we can only build 2 terrain improvements per turn. Despite claiming a hex the farm reduces consumption to zero.
Town:
12 BP Granary (+1 LOY, +1 STA, stores food)
OR
6 BP Mill (+1 ECO, +1 STA)
We can only build one thing right now. If we have 17 BP to work with as I suspect then we cannot afford the granary. But if we have 22 BP we can.
So +18 BP from Taxes. 47+5=52 -> 52/3=17.33 -> 17 -> +1 from Mine = 18. Treasury is now at 23.
Where did the other 5 come from?
At the start of turn 3 after consumption we had 3 RP.
Then we built 1 section of road for 3 RP so we were at 0.
Then there is taxation and income. So +18... was that a math error or did we receive the other 5 from some kind of event or something?
We will also have to pay consumption in turn 4 (which should be 1 BP) before we get to spend anything.
so I will rule that as long as you build 1 road segment you'll hold off any penalties for that turn.
Since we are talking about building in turn 3 before we we even hear about the event, and the possible penalties are in turn 4, We are okay even if we waited, as long as the road is complete in turn 4.
The thing is that we jumped ahead and had the event of turn 3 before the edict phase was finished.
Actually, since the demand for roads happens in the event phase after the edict phase, we can build them on Turn 4 and satisfy the people. This is because we jumped ahead a bit.
Though I would still be inclined to spend the 3 BP to build a road in the turn 3 edict phase since from now on we can only build two terrain improvements in any turn for the next while, and it is what we can afford.
