Indeed. Now we all need to find an excuse to meet up with Dulae just east of the Rockies.
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Yellowstone is right around there, yeah? I'm sure there's some sulfur dragon or something there that's stealing tourists. We could fight that. I have a tiny knife.
Indeed, I think that's about right.
Apparently it's in the low 50s there right now, so aside from reported exceptional natural beauty, that sounds very tempting.
(It's not even 9am and it's over 90F here. How do you survive this, Alaina?)
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I work in an 'air conditioned room'. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was a freezer.
@Alaina, that actually made me laugh out loud. (My office is comfortable in shorts, but I've heard that's the case in other buildings on campus. My roommate has two sweaters at work and always wears long jeans.)
I might have to throw a wrench in the geography bit. I may be in Seattle now, but I was born and raised in Hell Indiana.
It's the opposite for me. We have like two portable fans we have on, as well as the overhead fans and it's still hot!
Yellowstone is crazy awesome, and I personall prefer the forested part. Very green and pretty, with lots of animals. Like herd of moose numbering above 20 every mile or so.
Idaho is a lot less extreme than you guys. We're usually mid 90's in the summer, and dry. I would melt if it was 100+ here, so thank the potatoe state for that I guess. We just get wild fires instead
Cel, you air bending bastard, how dare you throw said wrench. :P
You made good life choices Cel.
@Xizoh - wild fires are still very new to me and they seem scary as all get out. I was at an outdoor movie screening a couple weeks ago (also weird that it's consistently dry enough that this is a thing you can reliably do). There was a giant fire eating a neighborhood a few miles away and it was raining ash on us. It may have been my New York sensibilities but I was thinking, shouldn't we help? Maybe run away? And the Californians were like Nah, it's cool.
Sounds about right.:D I remember watching the mountain across the valley from my house burn one summer, and drinking ice tea as we watched the fire department bring in the choppers. Ah good times.
We don't have fire near the city often, but we got some sweet sunrises during that fire down south! It also made me realize what that whole "a red sun rises, blood has been spilled this night" line that Legolas said - it was cause of the burning of the bodies! Or at least, that's what I now infer.
Huh, speaking of watching a mountain burn from your house, here's LA's contribution to pretty sunrises today.
You know the beauty of a contest like this? Doesn't really matter the level. It's an Ability test, which means 1d20 + relevant stat mod. Since I'm a +2 Str mod and Dulae's a +4, it's reasonable to assume Sanaa is a +3. That means we're practically equally matched for this contest.
That being said, I sure as hell wouldn't want to dual her. She's stomp me into the ground. Lol.
I bet the 5 of us could take her, at least. Action economy is KING. I'd probably put some money on Xizoh beating her, too, were I a betting woman :P Doctors know how to use knives very well, you know.
Perhaps, but 'never rule out what experience teaches others. They may know your weakness before you do.' At least that's what my Dad used to say.
She could probably kill you with her pinky or some minimal number of digits, yes.
Alaina will get a better read on Sanaa's strength during the contest - she's observed what can be observed from physical appearance.
@Henri - is that your very character-consistent underestimation of foes, or do we need to talk about how CR is calculated?
@Alaina - wise dad.
(Also I was going to suggest Dulae use her admirable posterior to diffuse the situation, but, hey, arm wrestling. Apparently that works too.)
Mostly Column A ;) althoughhhhh
I could care less about the upstart Elf. If he leaves me alone, I'll leave him alone.
And yes, judging from appearance, she's not that strong. But, that doesn't mean she wouldn't have a special belt or gauntlet. ;)
@Henri, that does sound pretty brutal. I will give what you say some careful thought. (For now my teleconference is over and it's time to do science.)
While we're on the subject, I'd also be interested in hearing expectations for and experiences with effective CR of NPCs from others, if you care to share.
I like having the random assortment of CR's. Within reason of course.
Personally, for the 'Main Story' I'd keep it traditional and keep it within equal to our APL or our APL + 1. But for random encounters? Having things appear that we can in no way beat every so often keeps us humble.
I mean, I'm sure some ice drake is gonna come out of nowhere and kick our asses during the middle of this adventure, but yeah, having the general strength of people/things is nice so I can brazenly ignore it and fight something 4x as strong as me - but I still would like to win fights most of the time (and knowing the strength of things makes it easier to engage.
The ridiculous campaign that I was running before it fell apart was exclusively based off of CR calculations, and to be entirely honest, my players were CRUSHING enemies that were rated as "difficult" via CR. Granted, I was super lenient on builds, so there was rare races and 3pp classes and such. Still, though, it was not a challenge for them. I imagine it won't be quite so bad here with the creation restrictions we had, but I can also say my players weren't overpowered either. Their builds were more for comedy, so not exactly combat optimized.
That said, I love the perceptions of people we meet's CR. It is a nice way to visualize something deeper than just what you describe.
Actually, this doctor prefers a little whiplash, Sharp things lead to cuts, which lead to bleeding, which leads to more work to clean up and heal. CR 8? This doctor wants no part of that whupping. Only way of avoiding death I can see would be a lucky grab by Anathema, then tying her up. I don't think I pack the fire power to put that down even with the dice gods backing me up.
As far as CR goes, I'm in accordance with the rest. Nothing way out of left field, but I don't have an issue with a challenge. We had one fight in a home game that pitted my Dhampir Samurai vs a equal leveled barbarian, and it was a rather intense combat sequence, but if every single fight was like that it wouldn't have been so fun. So pepper average CR with a few tough fights I suppose.
@Henri, you bring up a very good point - it’s important that the CR I’m reporting is conveying what I mean it to convey.
I am indeed calculating CR based on the NPC level -> CR rules, but any NPC I’ve reported a CR for is a custom build that’s close to a PC in stats. Wealth probably introduces a +/- 2 error on reported CR. An NPC's position in society governs their effective wealth (for example, Captain Vazquez has the full resources of the military, including the local armory and a unit of mages, at her disposal.)
I think this party is smart and competent. That being said, even on your best day and with a bit of luck, for a single foe with a reported CR of 8 I’d expect there’s a high chance at least one of you would get knocked out or die.
Speaking of death, this reminds me to tell Henri something she would almost certainly know given her background (I did remember to mention this to Dulae way back in May):
Henri knows that clerics of Altien will refuse to resurrect anyone who dies “in darkness”, or who has “achieved their time in the light”.
“In darkness” means while striking down a mage, while using magic for ill or gain, while championing an unjust cause, while practicing necromancy, or if the subject of necromancy, and for one strict sect, literally at night. It’s also a guilty-until-proven-innocent type system, and requires a high-level paladin or cleric to speak on behalf of the dead.
“Achieved their time in the light” means natural causes and/or old age.
As a result, resurrections are quite rare, but not unheard of.
In terms of distribution of CR, there won’t be truly random encounters. The part of the world of interest to PCs is already fully populated based on the current events of the story, geography, weather, etc. Anyone and anything in it that’s not a PC has a Mikkel-brain algorithm that dictates behavior and some location probability distribution.
Of what's out there, what you encounter will depend mostly on what you decide to do, and your ratio of winning fights to losing them will depend on what you decide to fight. (Unless we're counting running away as a loss, in which case, well, hopefully you're getting enough representative clues as to what you're in for.)
If that's not agreeable, then now is a really good time for me to make some tweaks.
While its always possible for us to win with an ambush and luck, I would suspect a CR8 npc to be able to kill a PC with 95% probability each turn. Or with an anti-crowd build 2-3 each turn.
As to the world being populated with various nasties which are not scaled to the party: running is fun!
Also, sunlight is overrated. I'm in western Massachusetts myself, but I tend to keep to pacific time.
Thanks for posting on Terrible Tuesday, Dulae. (Also, I enjoy that you dubbed her 'Sanaa Bodyguard'. One day, when that is as common an NPC surname as Baker, Fisher, or Potter, we will think back and remember.)
I'm still very interested to hear what people think about CRs, but here's a curiosity-driven segue: does anyone read OOTS?
Well, that makes a lot of sense on the death-related stuff, thanks for sharing!
I think Adventurer would be a common surname, too. Or maybe not, because 90% of them die before they get old.
I read a little bit of it back in highschool/college but I haven't kept up with it at all (one of my friends bought like the books and we played the board game they made, which wasn't bad). The forums are nice for hunting down build suggestions and stuff, though :P
Adventurer would be a badass RL surname.
I'm going to throw it out there that the distribution of collected tidbits thus far is very uneven amongst the party, depending on who stumbled on what. (Not to say any/all of the information is good, but some of it is interesting.)
If you've considered sharing but decided to play it close to the vest (for now, at least), then by all means carry on as you were.
Anybody happen to be following the UK's EU referendum? (Holy @#$%.)
I didn't even know this was happening.
Fair enough, I probably wouldn't have either if I didn't work with Brits. We'd all been pretty sure the UK would vote to stay, but I remember having an eerily similar confidence in who would _certainly not_ be the Republican nominee in the US.
The drop in the pound is probably expected, but I'm really surprised Cameron resigned. (Lots of surprise out there today, it seems.)
Henri already knows this, but just to let everyone know, Alaina is actually Bisexual. However, she does lean a little towards men. I'd say she's 55% towards men, 45% towards women.
As long as we are outing our characters, Henri is bi/pan with strong leanings towards women (mostly as a romantic, long term thing, in general it is a little less strong).
Dulae scowls. "I don't see how my preferences are any of your business."
Also, this new dark mysterious stranger is like Alaina all grown up! <3
Go team LGBTQ, however many PCs are on it.
In principle, you have the full support of myself and the Universe. (In practice, whatever's in the mist thinks all PCs and NPCs are equally crunchy and taste good with ketchup.)
Ketchup? Not hot sauce?! That thing truly is a monster. From what I remember, pretty much everyone who's actually come out for their characters are on the spectrum so that's good :P
Y'all should google 'crunchy and taste good with ketchup' if that's not a familiar reference. (Disclaimer: you should always assume I'm not above deliberately feeding you misinformation. =D)
@Henri: Yes, you guys did great with diversity overall. I'm really happy about it.
Semi-related RL poll: is 'guys' an acceptable gender-neutral term where you've lived?
My own experience says:
New York - yes
Massachusetts - yes
Louisiana - no (although they have a pluralization of 'you' that is growing on me in its practicality)
California - indeterminate (I haven't been here long enough to meet many natives yet)
I'd be curious to know about other parts of the US I haven't lived in - that came as a surprise to me down south.
Oh damn I missed that reference, I used to be good at that.
Up here I think generally it's been all right. At least all my friends are cool with it.
Guys is a pretty universal term, but a lot of my friends will add a girls to it. So I'm not entirely sure where if falls here.
@Xizoh - I'm going to infer that Xizoh says nothing during this exchange and move on.
I spent the morning convincing a friend of mine to watch the latest Mad Max (she wasn't excited about it, but I think she is a convert now). Now that this important work is done, a new post should be up soon.
First off, belated thanks to Henri and Xizoh for answering the poll. That's interesting, particularly the Idaho take.
Also, if anyone is waiting for Dulae to react to Blaine being Blaine before posting, Thaago had to pick today to go to bed well before midnight Eastern. (Teasing - I hear he is under the weather. Get well soon.)
Apologies, I am indeed under the weather and putting together a coherent post may not be until later tonight when I am out of work. Please don't wait for me - assume that Dulae is rather put out and if she were not lawful good would have gutted the a&&%%%% on the spot. I'll post as soon as I can.
@Dulae, I assume you are no longer a fan of Blaine's? =D
Fair enough. I figured it was time to keep things moving along, but please post any reactions and/or questions up to where you left off. (Also, hope you're feeling better.)
Question for the party: Soon you'll have a ~3 hour hike ahead of you. How would you prefer to handle travel?
Here are some options:
- 1. You role play the three hour hike including everything you observe.
- 2. You role play at 10x speed while walking, and observe anything interesting (i.e. 18 game-time minutes of conversation vs. 180 minutes).
- 3. You jump straight to the first interesting thing, resolve it, and jump to the next. (Repeat.)
Also, we’ll be entering a new phase of the game where it’ll be important to not assume the outcome of actions, even on inanimate objects. I’ll try to be as quick as I can about resolving any actions taken.
If you have any feedback about pacing, maps, or anything else, I’d be happy to hear it.
Personally, I think it should vary from 2-3. Roleplaying the entire thing, I'm sure, could be quite fun, but while part of the reason we're here is for character interactions, the other part is for the story! I think in some cases we will have more to talk about than others, and if people are feeling it, then it might be good to let that play out for a bit - but in some cases I'm sure we won't have much important to say other than shooting the breeze, which might slow us down a lot, so we should definitely stay on a malleable timetable.
I tend to agree with Henri. I think a mixture of 2 & 3 would be the best way.
Sorry for my absence. These 10 hour days I've been working have been busy as all nine hells, and it's been taking me all my weekends to recover. I seriously need to find another job.
I'm sort of more towards number 3 for sure. I'm not negating number 2, it's more that sometimes the RP conversations that are triggered by something interesting, which leads to all the character interaction. I can easily see some conversation starting up on the road, burning questions between everyone, get to know you stuff, etc., then it petering off until there's a trigger for something else. The blend of 2 and 3 makes sense, but letting everyone's typing flow organically then fast forwarding to the next "thing" as it comes up as opposed to setting it to a specific amount of time passage before something happens. I'm sure there will be plenty to talk about, though. I don't know about anyone else, but I haven't been reading anything anyone posts that Cel isn't there for so any new stories they bring up would certainly be fodder for chatting.