poesraven8628's page

Name: Friend Jack
Race: Human
Class/Levels: Druid 1
Adventure: Snows of Summer
Location: High Sentinel Lodge
Catalyst: Zombies

The party kicks in the door, beats all of the prepared bandits at once, charges upstairs and encounters the frost skeletons. They beat them, although they manage to knock out the party rogue. Downstairs Rohkar uses animate dead on the bandits, and five zombies start marching up the stairs. The barbarian charges down the stairs at them, and gets slammed into unconsciousness by the zombies in one round. He manages to stabilize on his own, however

Jack, the kindly hermit druid, charges down the stairs to save his friend despite being down to a single hit point. He and Baldric, his bear animal companion, fought hard, but he soon fell on the steps and began bleeding. The only standing character was the wizard, who managed to solo Rohkar, but by then the druid had bled out on the steps.

First death of the campaign. I get the feeling that more are to come...

I always award full XP for enemies that got away -- if they ran, they were still defeated.

Consider what happens if you DON'T give XP by defeat rather than kill. The party ends each battle with rational foes by hunting down and slitting the throats of every cowering goblin that tries to escape, maybe even the ones who surrender.

Why would the heroes do such a terrible thing? Because you forced them to. If they don't, they're handicapping themselves -- expending resources and time at the table, and getting nothing for it. Enemies that award nothing for fighting might as well just be thieves that rob the party of expended resources after a lengthy but meaningless play they were forced to act out with die rolls.

Long ramble short, you should always give XP for enemies that are overcome, even if that means enemies that fled or surrender.

The 'problem' with fighters is actually in the culture of the modern gaming table. It is the '20 minute adventuring day'. If you have 10+ combat encounters per day, then the fighter and rogue are the best classes at the table. Why? Because casters have to pick and choose when they use spells until upper levels, and even then can't cast many at a go, and most other classes abilities are limited uses per day as well.

If your party starts to revolve around the 20 minute day where everyone blows their abilities in a couple of fights and then goes home and rests, then whoever is responsible for the dungeon should do something about that. Reset every night? Why not, just hire/acquire more guards and monsters every evening to replace attrition, and the party soon notices that every day they clear the same rooms for no treasure.

Or the villain notices someone messing with his stuff, and tracks down the party and attacks them that night. A group of assassins storming the scry or die wizard's tower after his foray into the dungeon (when his spells are mostly exhausted) would be the reasonable thing for the villains to do. Feats are 'less useful' than most spells because they are always on, so you always have them.

I ran a year or so campaign of Anima, and it includes implications in the back story about the setting being settled by people from our future. They actually have a Catholic church, which was created to be a sort of opiate of the masses by the super high tech puppet masters. Otherwise, on the surface, it seems like a normal fantasy setting with anime influences. One of my most rewarding experiences running a game was the session where they found some strange magic items, and partway through the description they realized I was describing a circuit board. Until that point it had been standard fantasy, and my group was blown away.

If the trip to Earth is done right, then it could be a fantastic moment at the table. If you do end up running it and you walk into expecting it to be terrible, your players will probably notice and respond in kind. If you show up and try to 'convince them' to follow you even though its a bad idea, then it probably won't work out. If you jump into it with a gusto, possibly only dropping a few hints, and describe the first tank they see as fantasy characters would see it, well... it could be fantastic.

Hey, I've never done the play by post thing before but I'm interested. Is it too late to join?