Just as long as there's no running around shouting "Bankai!"
Lol
As a reminder for the sake of fluidity, the action I have from page 20 is the one queued for my upcoming turn.
I know.
I'm thinking about shortening this palace a bit and moving back towards some story.
Whatever works for you. Combat generally takes a while with people posting once/day, so time can be an issue.
Yeah, that and the fact that the encounters with the cultists are pointless now. Yes, they hate you. What else needs to be said about them?
Pretty much. We've established that they're evil and they don't like us.
I tend to get pretty aggressive about NPCing people when it comes to mook fights.
I can't say you being aggressive surprises me!
Rawr!
I'll try and get something up tomorrow. Running on little sleep and getting back into running a campaign with the wife and a friend again. I've been doing PbP's instead of table gaming for quite a while so it's a bit tiring.
Updated map.
Oh, and holler if you're here. It's monthly check-in time since a couple people haven't posted recently.
Present!
Here!
Present.
Here
Da.
Here will post soon.
Sorry for the delay, didn't have time to post when I first read it, and forgot about it later.
Really gotta rethink 5' hallways...
Who's here and not talking? I've got a question/interest check.
I'm always here.
I want the old pacing back. =(
I figured you would be :) I kinda miss the old pacing myself. It's gotten eerily quiet here as of late. Unfortunately, I don't have an acceptable solution for that.
But my "question" is in regards to something completely unrelated (well, not directly related) to the game. My PFS game is about to end and I always need to keep myself busy. I'm probably not going back to PFS for a long time (just not my cup o' tea). Been toying with an idea of a game with PCs starting with NPC class levels (aristocrat, adept, expert, warrior or commoner). I was thinking about just doing a 2-player campaign, so I wanted to see what you guys thought and if you'd be interested.
Present
O hai!
I tossed around an idea like that back in high school. I based it largely around Final Fantasy Tactics and the idea that the NPCs classes would 'unlock' full PCs class which in turn would unlock prestige classes. The only tough part was that, in order to be rewarding, level progression would need to be pretty aggressive... but enough about my random game design thoughts from 10 years ago.
I might be interested in such a game. It really lends itself well to the 'unlikely heroes' sort of story.
I'll have to think on that.
That was what I'm shooting for: ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. It'll probably be much less gritty than this game aspires to be.
I'm here.
Changed the map to accommodate a larger party (15' hallways and doubled the bedroom doors). Hopefully, this is more conducive to faster encounters :)
I'm here. Sorry I've been so silent ...the Doc doesn't have a lot he can do in these instances, and I've temporarily had a change in positions at work that means I can't even take my phone out ...Thursday or Friday I'll be back to full-time posting.
And I've always thought an npc-to-pc game would be interesting.
While I also like stories that begin with truly uncommon heroes, I also like stories that underscore all that is common about them - including their mortality. I was never much a fan of things like Sword of Truth due the monolithic "protagonist is God" mindset. Whereas in the usual fantasy setting, while the players begin to seem like demigods, there are others of the same power level, others with greater powers, and actual gods in the setting - like in Greek myths. Other stories, such as Dune and Song of Ice and Fire, are more to my liking as they actually involve some death here and there of characters beyond the red shirts.
In the campaigns I run IRL, my players know there are no punches pulled, and death is a distinct possibility in every encounter. This is a double-edged sword as while they take more realistic actions (less charging into ridiculous situations), there are player casualties with a higher frequency. The last cmapaign I ran had only one of the four original characters present at the end of the game, yet the dynamics of the character were very rich from his experiences with allies both present and deceased.
With something like you've described, it sounds good to me as an IRL medium, but I don't know how it would endure as a PBP; with the lower pace online, it seems to me dealing with casualites would be quite cumbersome - especially with such a low number of players.
Yet, the persistence of several PbP's here (Avalon Chronicles, comes to mind) suggest that it can be done with a revolving cast of PCs. Though I would love to take this concept to a RL table, my wife prefers things of a mythic (and less-fatal) nature. The less-than-stellar gaming community out here coupled with the fact that I am very much the wallflower makes it hard to try new ideas.
I think I'd be interested giving the common NPC to heroic PC. I call Adept.
If we survive this, we're going to be pretty haggard going into the next encounter.
I pick low CR enemies and they turn out to be the most challenging.
This guy is CR 3?
2
Really?
From what I can tell, he’s a level 4 ranger.
Yeah, he's really a 3rd level ranger.
Rangers don't usually get an animal companion until 4th level.
Wasn't his companion.
Heh.
Well in any case a level 3 ranger and a wolf is pretty close to a CR 3 encounter which is rough for a group of level 1 characters - especially when half of them are walking around at half HP.
Assuming Skaar doesn't get dropped this turn, we should be okay but it's going to be painful.
You've faced a CR 4 with less issues :)
Actually, you've faced 2 CR 4's already.
If that's the case, why are we still level 1!? =P
It's the bottleneck that did it. Mix of smart and dumb opponents. The jacked up ones who were overconfident and dumb got killed.
Hunting a ranger in his own territory....bad idea. We live and learn...or don't ....and don't.
If anything the bottleneck helped us.
Because of the bottleneck, he spent two turns shooting his crossbow for 1d10+0 instead of swinging in melee for 2d8+6 while we focused down his not-companion.
Yeah but we could have been hitting the crap out of him, each with a 10% higher probability of hitting (+2 flank) and dogpiled him. Even better once grappled he'd be getting a stabathon.
Yeah but we could have been hitting the crap out of him, each with a 10% higher probability of hitting (+2 flank) and dogpiled him. Even better once grappled he'd be getting a stabathon.
Correct, the bottleneck was much worse for us than it was for him. When you have 6 opponents, it's much better to fight them one by one than all at once.
Unfortunately, while Skaar might need the heal, Harakhty is low on divine power for the day; scared simians save themselves.