That looks good to me, but I'm not a caster.
How would we handle Donovan's feats?
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Spell Like Abilities are different than spells. I'll adjust my donovan doll.
Also, you don't keep your Int, Wis and Cha, I missed this the first time through. So becoming a doll made some of us dumber? That means any Wisdom or Charisma based casters can't even cast spells since they require a minimum stat of 10+ spell level.
I'm here too, though I will be busy through the weekend. I'll post as often as I can. This fight seems like it's about over though. Feel free to switch over to cinematic-narrative to wrap it up.
"Get. Off."
Donovan is hesitant to stab his friend, and he pays for it.
Donovan backs into the doorway, whipping out a handaxe and angrily hurling it at the demented puppet on the stairs. "Die, creature!" he snarls.
Still trying to weave a defensive pattern but rapidly running out of allies, Donovan snaps and slams the hilt of his sword into Gregorio's head. "You started this! Tell me how to stop it!"
Don't worry about losing me. I'm in for the long haul. As long as you're willing to run the game, I'll be in it.
I know we're supposed to go down, but I don't plan on making it easy for you. :)
That's pretty normal for complex PbP fights. I'm also an advocate of "party initiative", but it does suck to so badly nerf initiative bonuses, so I came up with a system for my games that maintains the benefit of initiative bonuses- DH's Block Initiative System: Block Initiative: This is an optional initiative system that speeds PbP games up a lot. It relies on one simple fundamental: All the enemies go at the same time. The GM makes one initiative roll for all the bad guys, using whatever bonus they think is appropriate. For mixed groups, averaging the bonuses might work. The players either go before the bad guys, or after them. Higher initiative players get put in group A. Lower initiative players get put in Group B. Initiative order then looks like this: Group A
Within a given group, players may act in whatever order they want. This means that for the most part, players don't need to wait for anyone else before posting. They can just post according to when they are able to.
"Nico, I don't want to hurt you..." he growled, restraining the urge to slam the basket of his rapier into his friend's face. Donovan was angry. His blood burned at these tiny terrors, but his desire to protect his friends ran stronger. He moved past Ylva and between Rannveig and Dimitro, lashing out at the little puppet in front of him.
No, just trying to figure out how the heck we're going to make it out of this.
This fight is pure hell...
Donovan's leg burned. He could feel the numbness beginning to spread, but he refused to stop. he shuffled past Nico and refrained from lashing out at his possessed friend. Instead he tried to attack one of the little wooden terrors, mostly just trying to ward them off with a jab. "Regroup. Move to the doorway!"
hope you feel better soon.
Donovan feels his arm start to go numb, but manages to shake off the feeling and slash at the little monkey.
As an aside, my favorite Ravenloft module was a 15-18th level adventure called Thoughts of Darkness, which revolved around Vampiric Illithid. At the time no one had ever seen that before. It came as a huge shock in the middle of the adventure when the party learned what it was dealing with. It was very well written, but the writers went completely off the deep end with the difficulty. As if the entire idea of vampire mind-flayers wasn't bad enough, the whole land was essentially a deathtrap. One of the random encounters was a fully geared party of high level Drow Nobles, specifically geared to kill the party, who were encountered in magical darkness, during a giant lightning storm. Oh, and at the very end, the party faces off against the Illithid master vampires, an entire army of controlled vampire spawn thralls and fracking Strahd Von Zarovitch himself, who was statted in that book as an 18th level Necromancer, 5th level Fighter, Master Vampire Darklord. I've run it twice. Both times the only reason the party survived was because I flubbed a ton of rolls in their favor. TL;DR, Ravenloft is mean as hell.
At one point i had every single 2nd edition ravenloft module. I only got to run a few of them. I vaguely remember this one, so getting to play in it is like re-reading a book i enjoyed as a kid but forgot most of the details of. One of the things I remember most from every single one of those modules was that the designers consistanty confused difficulty with fear-inducing. This was the days before CR, but there was still a basic outline of what encounters were appropriate for any given level. Ravenloft encounters consistently threw that whole concept out the window. I have no problem at all with what is essentially a "no-save, now you're evil" ability. There are plenty of spells that do similar things (magic jar, dominate, etc) The thing about these encounters that makes my inner-game-designer twitch is the combination of high AC, high HP and Damage Reduction. The only thing that I can think of that gets that are Fae, and they have an extremely well known weakness. Combining their toughness with a very damaging ranged attack that hits often because of their size and dex, and we have a fight that goes beyond challenging into potential TPK territory. I'm enjoying the game, but these fights are brutal.
That sounds correct. Here's hoping they don't beat my CMD.
Hope that helps. Personally, I don't mind taking things rules-light for the sake of flavor and atmosphere. I can understand why people who are used to a certain kind of gameplay would get upset about a GM-Fiat ambush, but to them I say: Come on guys, it's Ravenloft. It isn't supposed to be fair to us. :)
Sure, that sounds fine. Whatever works best for the story and ends up with one less back-monkey.
It takes only a surprised blink for Donovan to figure out what is happening to his friend. He snarls in a way that would make Rannvieg proud and reaches over Nico's shoulder to knock the little puppet off his friend's back.
Paladins don't fall from being forced to do things while Dominated, Charmed, Confused or any other kind of magical coercion. The puppets are trying to use us as puppets. It's a theme thing. This module was adapted from AD&D, which had a much less crunchy and more cinematic approach to combat and movement. That approach lends itself well toward creating an atmosphere (which is what Ravenloft is all about) but can be frustrating in terms of rules coherency. (notice that we didn't get Perception checks vs. the ambush, and the enemies took full round actions during what would normally be a surprise round. If we had followed the normal rules there would be a good chance the whole situation, which creates the atmosphere, would have turned out very differently) Basically, we should expect the beginnings of most encounters in this game to feel a little railroady. Try not to get frusterated.
Donovan maneuvers around Boote and engages the little wooden monsters, ready to intercept incoming attacks.
"You lead, Boote. We'll move in right behind you. Everyone try to keep close."
"Good." Donovan said grimly. "Lets get this over with."
"I have my horse at the inn. I think I should probably go get him." Donovan says simply.
Listening to Dimitrio liberally mix his tenses made Donovan smile. He could practically hear his aunt snapping her fan in annoyance while she gave a much younger Donovan lessons in grammar and etiquette. She'd have absolutely hated the charming rake. Maybe that's why I like him. Donovan chuckled to himself. "I'm not sure we should split up. If Mari is an unwitting pawn, she is still unwitting and in no danger. If she is part of the plot we should not seek her without our full compliment."
"It is definitely worth looking into. Even the best case scenario is that she is unknowingly aiding a terrible evil. Not a very pleasant thought for a young girl."
Donovan lets Ranveig lead the way, both so as not to get in the way of her impressive nose, and because the injuries received in the previous fight made him doubt his own abilities as a point guard.
Palace of the Vampire Queen is still going strong and is awesome. Don't beat yourself up over games that die. It happens. Finding the right PbP takes a kind of social alchemy that relies a lot on luck. A great GM is about half of it. Dedicated players are about a quarter. The rest is a bunch of pretty intangible nuance, any of which can kill momentum and make a game stall out. I once had a game die because a player playing a priestess of Calistra spent all her time insulting the other PCs and trying to seduce the NPCs. At one point she actually started having a soft-core porn moment in the middle of combat. I'm not joking.
Donovan looks pale but resolute as he focuses on slowing his breathing and checking over his own wounds. "Is everyone alright?"
Back now. Sorry about the absence. Bluedove, thanks for NPCing me.
I'm back too, mostly. I ended up hurting my shoulder somehow. I had a bad reaction to the pain killers I was given. Took me out of action all of yesterday and half of today.
Frustrated with the durability of the puppets, Donovan reached for a handle nestled at the small of his back and drew a club made from a very pale wood, dotted with metal studs that alternated dark and light. He swung it at the tiny awful creature.
Sorry, very busy this weekend. Posting now. I won't have reliable posting time until tuesday. Please NPC me if I am slowing things down.
Yes. Then, on the next map update I saw that he'd been moved back. Since I'd planned on moving back anyway, I just left it be. (I assumed it was just map-jumbling and you had enough on your plate so I figured it wasn't important enough to bring up) Since then, I've been making my actions assuming I was where I was shown on the map (which is why I didn't apply flanking) If you want to put me anywhere, go ahead. I'm going to try to get where I am adjacent to the most allies and defend them no matter where I end up.
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