General Discussion

[Dracos]

Nnn....

Maybe we could do a weekday evening one to get us started and move to weekends after the pitch of trips ends?

[Merc]

A reminder: This sunday is first session.

I'm going to look over all the sheets in detail today to check mathy stuff, and then start up on the town/kingdom stuff like I should have a week ago but got busy/distracted and didn't.

So should have some more info sometime soon.

[Dracos]

De Awesome. :D

[Merc]

CHARACTER SHEET NOTES
Apologies for not doing this sooner.

Dracos
-What's that tumble attack/charge thing? Where's that +2/+4 bonus coming from?
-There is a tumble attack where you affect their active def, but that's slightly different. Is this what you meant?

-Medium Load with just sword/armor for you right now is 36lb. Remembered that sword double weight by being large size?
-You can only wear Padded armor (combined 26lb), otherwise have max dex of +3, ACP -3, Speed -10
-Other option is switching str/int stats.

Navilee
-Not really important, but keep in mind that there's no exp in game, and you have an exp line in your sheet. =p
-Reflex is +1(+2)= +3. Think you used the +4 from int/tactics of the mind, which only applies to attacks.

-Don't get specialization: Knowledge (Planes). The planes don't really exist here.
-If I do bring in stuff like outsiders/elementals, they'll count as arcana/religion/nature/etc.
-Besides the Planes skill point, you also have one extra skill point you didn't use. So you've got two to use somewhere.

-Keep in mind, Geography/History/Local/Nobility are all region specific.
-I'm gonna assume you're picking Adallia as your region for your existing specializations, for obvious reasons.

Cideon
-Looks like you missed the change to the masterwork system. I modified it a bit the day before you posted your sheet.
-With the current masterwork system, you can only buy a masterwork 1 maul, not 3. It'd cost 16gp to your current 64gp one.

Namagomi/Ataru
-I've got nothing to say.

[Sierra]

Fixed.

[Dracos]

Resolution of Destruction.

[Merc]

Everyone's sheet is good. Meanwhile, I am killing myself by making a map of Ferune and typing out relevant background for it (I'm gonna skip on general Adallia stuff for now).

...Sadly, I just know that once I finish map, not only will it never be used, you'll all tell me "Let's head out of town!" after session one. XD

Oh well, I'm still having fun. Except for the part where I cried tears of bloody agony when I lost 4 hours of the work due to program crashing. That part sucked balls.

Sneak Peek as I go zonk out in bed:


If you looked at the Adallian map in the other thread, you'll recall that trade path between Adallia (capital) and Kelarin/Masares/Savon's Prayer all go through Ferune. As can be seen in this map, Ferune is a nested city between two mountain ranges. While originally a farming community, the need to support the borders against invasion from Vyrdam necessitated an upgrade in security as a garrison grew in the south-west corner of the village and large walls enclosed a large area of the community. As time passed, the garrison eventually lost use as such, and was rennovated into a housing community. Some arcanist blowing up a large part of the garrison probably also helped with the decision. I've mostly finished doing the general residential zones. Also done: graveyard (southeast corner), fishing lake (north), and a few of the farming areas are shown.

Primarily, there's 4 farming areas within the walls of the city, everything else is located outside the city walls (and are marked by #3 for zones I haven't put in yet). Zone 2 is the livestock area for that little farm area to the northeast. It'll pretty much be like the fenced area inside Ferune.

Zone 1 (which I still need to fill in) is the primary area of the city that's the town center, where the plaza, marketplace, shops, and inns are located. Two inns are located near the east and west entrances, and have little fenced areas for mounts.

Zone 4 is the new military school, moved to the opposite corner of the town. Because war isn't as likely to occur in these days outside of some skirmishes, it's not as serious or large as the old garrison used to be. Part of it is shown already, the buildings with the bluer tile roof.

Finally, areas with #5 are just where I need to put in the edges of the forests.

[Sierra]

Obligatory compliment regarding awesomeness of maps.

[Merc]

Channels are up.

irc.lunarnet.org

#truesteel (game channel)
#truesteel_ooc (ooc channel)

I'm just iddling there until tomorrow. Penuche is a dicebot. Game channel is moderated, I'll voice people when we start.

[Dracos]

Nyum.  To be continued for sure.  I am longwinded for sure.

Thoughts, at least a preliminary:

Stunts/Challenges/ETC are really complex and somewhat battle slowing.  They also allow for some neat things.  After using them all of last session, I've concluded that there is some stuff that can be used to speed it up: Almost all of them are countered by Base Attack Checks.  This btw is BaB+Primary Stat, not just BaB.  Both challenges and stunts are supposed to be called out ahead of time.  I suspect all of us will find that challenging given how complicated and piece by piece resolution they often end up being, so we should probably be kind on that front.  

For the stuff I did:
Tumble Attack: Requires me moving into or out of at least one threatened square, no full attack.  This is pretty much always usable by those lines.  BAC to block.  This can go for others as well if they've got a good tumble check, but usually its a struggle to be that BAC and you only can do a single attack with it.  No iteratives.  That's though what the harrier does and since we lack iteratives, there's still good opportunity for it for the next several levels.

Dodging through/around foes: Basically, I have to roll a tumble blocker against AoOs any time their possible.  It's always going to happen, always going to be a BaB bonus.  You may want to just handwave it for anyone who doesn't have combat reflexes as they are going to almost always need a critical hit to manage to AoO me anyway.  This is the harrier modus operandi and it's going to be seen all the time from Maya as its how she basically gets around the battlefield and doesn't stick around getting crushed.

Leaping Strike: This has a weird setup.  It basically (by the rules) gets harder every time I get faster because its dc (for me) goes up 5 and my jump score goes up 4.  I'd really prefer a raw DC of 15 or something for this ("jumping half of a normal person's movement") as really, by level 6-10 I shouldn't be having more difficulty doing a +2 to damage because I'm able to run further.  I have to do a charge for it anyway.

Defensive/Offensive stunts: page 208, they're almost always against a BaB challenge, which means they only work for skills that are heavily tweaked.  kinda sad there, as I'll be able to rock that, but I think others may find those really a flip of the coin to use.  Their mechanical descriptions kind of suck.

Offensive are basically a Full Round Action in which you get a 'move' action limited by how far you can move while doing a skill and a standard action.  They're definitely problematic as they also are descriptively doing things that are normal skill checks.  That more means that doing 'normal good combat moves' counts as a stunt if you're only delivering a single attack and there's no real penalty for trying.  They cost an extra 5 dc to try and use them with a full attack, but then don't allow moving (so they behave exactly the same really).

For instance (using their examle) rolling through an ogres leg to stab him from behind is a normal skill check for tumble that would grant flanking bonuses AND count as a tumble attack that denies their ADB.  It'd also be an offensive stunt doing nothing more than that, meaning I'd effectively get to roll an extra skill check that is basically "Do I get a bonus?".  That's probably the thing that makes it most confusing.  That example usage triggers two different other bonuses and offers no real penalty for just 'yeah, I'll toss a stunt bonus on top of that.  Why not?'

By the way, what I did at the start of the battle qualified for using a stunt...but as I didn't figure out how they worked then and didn't ask to roll about it, it didn't actually count as one.  It was just a complex set of movement and nothing more.  I almost certainly should've rolled something (it was awesome), but I didn't think to say "hey, this is an offensive stunt, let's add an attack bonus there for awesome".

That's me playing the bad guy.  The good guy?  Stunts are awesome.  I suggest the exalted method where as long as a stunt is accompanied by awesome description that enlivens the battle, let 'em roll for it.  Maybe even give a bonus for the rest of the party that doesn't have the skill value for beating BaB checks consistently.  Yes they're a stupid bonus a lot of the times and hard to remember.  I suggest a 'do you want to stunt that' anytime someone does something cool in addition to the normal.  Sadly they do kind of have to be additional rolls, as otherwise folks will just ask for whatever bonus their roll earned or there'd be risk of failing added due to stuntage (and as the good side, penalizing trying to be awesome leads to less being awesome).

Charge: I did some stuff toward the end that wasn't legal.  They always have to be in a straight line.  Sorry about that merc.  I pretty sure I'm legitimately allowed to use tumble to charge through hindering terrain (as I'd treat it as not and have no move restrictions on using tumble), but that's more a GM call.  Either way, straight line or go home.  I don't see anything that lets me avoid that rule.

More to come.  I'll yammer lots and hopefully some will be interesting.

[Merc]

Okay, general session thoughts:
1) NINE FUCKING HOURS! While it was long, and I apologize to hell and back to Ataru, I would like to think thatyou guys enjoyed yourself since you didn't call "Okay, I need sleep, I'm ditching -now-". I technically could have cut off right before combat started, but I did want to have combat in first session rather than pure roleplaying. Again, I apologize for that Ataru.

2) Combat was a monster. If I ever do combat with multiple NPCs, I need to find a better way of running them all and keeping track. Perhaps single health pool for multiple mooks, ala 7th Sea and other such mechanics. Mooks are fun in that they die easily, and make things a bit more epic, but yeah, they took a lot of time to handle, and I had to spend a few minutes checking who was still alive here and there. Tracking all the characters was a nightmare. I actually forgo'ed adding some more guards that were supposed to be there, in fact.

3) Dracos fucked my planned encounter route to pieces. My expected encounter route: Aleph shoots at Kenmore, making him duck back and have one of his goons (upgraded mook), the other two goons having traps readied within the building. (I will later post a thread with allof the condition zones, enemy sheets, and such, if people wish to see that)

You guys were supposed to clean up everythign in the plaza while Kenmore kept hiding safely away, then go into the trapped building, possibly killing one of the goons before reaching Kenmore, and then having a nice hard fight against Kenmore+2 goons.

Dracos fucked it all up, and made Kenmore make mistake after mistake after mistake. He's a villain class character, a warleader. He's so-so alone, but when he has toadies adjecent to him or just within 30ft of him? He could have made some serious damage. And Kenmore just kept fucking things up by -not- keeping a toadie within reach except for when they temporarily had Maya boxed in.

Things could have gone either your way or against it, as a result, as a lot of next session rode on things such as survivors/escapees, Kenmore making it out alive, when the horn event triggered, etc. I was also admittedly beginning to expect Drac to die when he made the rather rash decision of locking himself in a building with six enemies, and no assistance. He got lucky the dicebot likes him so much.

4) Anassia was really fucked over by class mechanics. It's something I'll want to brainstorm how to fix, but I think one thing off the top of my head is that eldritch darts won't require concentration checks anymore. I'll also allow it to crit on a roll of 20 for x2, same as magical rays. It does much less damage than everybody else's attacks, and still requires an attack roll, with her having the lowest to-hit bonus. That they go through armor doesn't particularly help her much.

5) Dracos' use/abuse of stunts gave me a headache, I've told him as such. I'm going to allow them still, because, hey, they're damn cool, but I need to (a) set a good mechanic to use them (b) Look up the stunts people are most likely to use and get familiar with them. As I told him, I honestly allowed half of the shit just because he rolled high, over a 20, and I decided, okay, fine, it works, let's move on. One thing I'm going to ask is that, if a stunt has a mechanic behind it, you follow your typed action by stating a list of stunts you plan to roll for, and when you roll, you type the name of the stunt as well. Also, I won't allow stunts that aren't described fully. Drac did describe most of 'em, but there were a few that were lacking and just really a bunch of rolls stringed together.

6) How important is tactical ground information to you guys? I can make maps with 5ft squares for encounters if needed, and it certainly looked like it was important in this encounter, due to the large area the whole thing took place in.

7) Elise was my favorite character. While I probably couldn't stand to interact with her on long periods in real life, she was cute in a naive sense, yet as blunt as her instrument of destruction.

8) I'd forgotten that there's no such thing as a critical failure/pass in Iron Heroes, except with attack rolls (and that's just for passing). To be fair, it worked out well enough, you wouldn't have succeeded on a roll of 1 or failed on a roll of 20 anyhow, either. Still, as it does tend to present certain effects, such as requiring Maya to keep her balance after a bad attack, Aleph getting a climbing bonus, as well as tripping over his shoelaces, do you guys want to keep them/take 'em out? If we keep them, I'd just say that if you roll a 1, it's only a critical failure if you wouldn't have succeeded in the first place, and same with a roll of 20. I also allowed one of Jack's critical attack rolls to do max damage when he rolled a 20 on the threat confirmation. Interested in this, yay or nay?

9) Please share any other thoughts over things you both liked about the session and disliked. The feedback helps tremendously, as I don't have much experience GM'ing over IRC.

[Merc]

Additional note:
Navi, what are you hoping out of your character? One thing I noticed is that the school of magics you selected are not particularly built around doing damage. Necromancy is both a healing school, and pet skeleton/zombie school. However, it takes 1 minute/10 rounds to animate dead, and you really don't have a reason to animate a good soldier or two to serve as minions. Also, two medium-sized skeletal minions following you around is really going to make people stay out of your way, but it's primarily how you can be capable as a necromancer, unless you become the group healer with healing hands. And you'd only be surrounded by more and more skeletons, as necromancy mastery levels simply let you get more undead, not better ones. Admittedly, this is something we can work with, and your background makes sense to be primarily necromancer.

Likewise, Transmutation is built around buffing/debuffing characters, not damage output (which is Evocation).

Again, don't mind the necromancy/transmutation build, hence why I didn't mention it before, but like I said, you don't get much out of it casting eldritch darts and that's what you were stuck doing mostly during last session, so want to make sure of what you want out of Anassia.

[Dracos]

1) NINE FUCKING HOURS! While it was long, and I apologize to hell and back to Ataru, I would like to think thatyou guys enjoyed yourself since you didn't call "Okay, I need sleep, I'm ditching -now-". I technically could have cut off right before combat started, but I did want to have combat in first session rather than pure roleplaying. Again, I apologize for that Ataru.

5) Dracos' use/abuse of stunts gave me a headache, I've told him as such. I'm going to allow them still, because, hey, they're damn cool, but I need to (a) set a good mechanic to use them (b) Look up the stunts people are most likely to use and get familiar with them. As I told him, I honestly allowed half of the shit just because he rolled high, over a 20, and I decided, okay, fine, it works, let's move on. One thing I'm going to ask is that, if a stunt has a mechanic behind it, you follow your typed action by stating a list of stunts you plan to roll for, and when you roll, you type the name of the stunt as well. Also, I won't allow stunts that aren't described fully. Drac did describe most of 'em, but there were a few that were lacking and just really a bunch of rolls stringed together.

6) How important is tactical ground information to you guys? I can make maps with 5ft squares for encounters if needed, and it certainly looked like it was important in this encounter, due to the large area the whole thing took place in.

8) I'd forgotten that there's no such thing as a critical failure/pass in Iron Heroes, except with attack rolls (and that's just for passing). To be fair, it worked out well enough, you wouldn't have succeeded on a roll of 1 or failed on a roll of 20 anyhow, either. Still, as it does tend to present certain effects, such as requiring Maya to keep her balance after a bad attack, Aleph getting a climbing bonus, as well as tripping over his shoelaces, do you guys want to keep them/take 'em out? If we keep them, I'd just say that if you roll a 1, it's only a critical failure if you wouldn't have succeeded in the first place, and same with a roll of 20. I also allowed one of Jack's critical attack rolls to do max damage when he rolled a 20 on the threat confirmation. Interested in this, yay or nay?

1)Yeah, let's avoid that.  I'd much prefer if we find we have an oversized session to have it split over 2 weeks in a row if possible than 9 hours of play.  I was really dropping off for the last 2 (and it showed) and I bet the east coasters were dying out there... BUT

It was awesome. :3

5)Yup.  And commented a bunch on top and will put more later.  I got shitty on it later as frankly it was exhausting going so long.  Sorry, fair nailing on that.  That said...

I didn't do many stunts.  Most of what I was doing was actually just normal skill challenges.  that's really something to be aware of.  I'll need those to be functioning whether or not we do a lot of stunts because the harrier class is heavily built around it (Otherwise I draw a ton more AoOs moving around for instance and the massive buffing of skill rolls my class gives goes to doing nothing).  I did only 2 actual 'stunt' stunts in the whole night because largely I didn't understand them that well either.

I'll be glad to help you table some of these and get a cheat sheet.  It'll be useful to have us both on a sensible page.  If you want changes on how I'm playing it, definitely best to hash it out casually beforehand than hammer you like last session :)  Narrowing the 'what they can do' down a little may help as well as collectively there are over a hundred challenge/stunts in IH and nowhere are they listed in a sensible scanable manner.  A standard harrier build depends on about a half dozen of them as you saw last night, all around jump, tumble, and balance.

6)I vary on this.  I don't require much detail as long as I get to have props on the side to work with.  Technically, I don't need props...but it's much more fun if I can have 'em! :3  I made up a bunch of props during last night during the first wild bit.  I think what's most valuable is some tactical sense of the scale of everything.  The harrier class is built along flying across the map and gets all sorts of bonuses based on that.  If you want to have obstacles and whatnot around that's probably important as well but that's what can be generally expected of me to do :)

8) Boo, hiss.  As a skill heavy character, critical fails or 'instafails on 1' suck terribly.  It weakens feats like Skill Focus even further as they don't let you drop below a 5 percent fail rate.  And as we saw last night, it's feasiable for me to be rolling 2-4 times a round with any of them failing being a significant hinderence.  Critical success also don't tend to do anyone any good on skill checks unless they don't have any business using the skill to begin with.  (1d20+0=20.  That's still a great roll and they didn't have any talent or training).

I like little challenges (Maya's balancing bit was fine and dandy...My only 'boo' on it was it was caused by a missed attack rather than a bad jump), but instafails and no-chance-to-recover-that-round stuff sucks.

Critical damage success maxing (For PCs) I like.  Because its almost always extraneous on a killing blow anyway and is a bit like we all have the bloody mess perk.  That's cool. :3

Critical damage success maxing (for NPCs) I don't like...because a crit is already pretty likely to be very damaging to a PC and adding to it only makes it worse.


As far as death, Maya probably would've died without the hp boost...

But also without the HP boost, the number of goons would've been insane for us to handle.

Just a thought, but it looks like Warleaders only get that bonus to AC IF their toadies get AoO attempts that round (In exchange for sacrificing them).  If they do not get them, then there's no bonus.  They should probably get to sacrifice a normal action for it too (because it's a cool concept for villians), but it isn't free just for standing next to them.  Generally they're going to get that chance for anyone but a harrier (self-interest obvious :P) because a harrier can deny them that opportunity at all.

anyhow, that's a response of craziness.  I'll keep jotting down thoughts to continue later. :)  I'm noisey and opinionated as ye know, so don't take it to heart (but do to consideration!)

[Merc]

5. Well, when I said stunts, I meant everything in general. Skill tricks, skill challenges, attack challenges, etc. But yeah, I kinda need to have a better way to keep track of things of what people expect to use. It's fine if something new pops up here and there, but when every round someone makes 4-6 rolls that I have to keep track of the effect/legality/DC/etc...yeah, messy.

6. I was mostly just thinking prettybasic maps, nothing like the worldbuilding maps so far. Some MS Paint art with a grid overlay or something.

8. Well, as I said, the crit effect is something that would only apply if it misses/hits in the first place. If you roll a 20, and you'd have missed with the skill, it's not a crit, it's only a crit if it had succeeded. Similarly, a roll of 1 isn't an auto-fail and auto-disaster. It's only so if you'd have missed in the first place. And yeah, on the 'disasters', I'd still add some sort of recovery method, at least for PCs, such as the balancing because of a bad attack, or Nama getting a reflex save when he tripped over his shoelaces, or the like.

I do like the idea of PCs being the only ones who get the max damage effect on a threat confirmation roll of 20. Unless other players say anything against it, I'll give this bonus effect just to players, not NPCs.

Just a thought, but it looks like Warleaders only get that bonus to AC IF their toadies get AoO attempts that round (In exchange for sacrificing them).

Not quite. They can sacrifice their AoO for Aid Another action, giving a +2 bonus, yes....

However, they can also take a standard action on their turn to do a normal Aid Another, but with a bonus of +4 instead of normal +2, which is what that goon did when you attempted to hit Kenmore that one time. He basically spent his entire turn just to give Kenmore a +4 defense bonus. (Page 24-25 of Mastering IH book)

As you can see, that +4 bonus can also be an attack bonus (lethal!), which is why I said Kenmore could have been a badass, but player's razor blew him up.

[Sierra]

I would've bailed somewhere around midnight were I currently employed. Staying up in front of the computer until 4AM is ow pain. Length of the fight was my main beef with the session, yeah. Things seemed to lag at times once we were engaged in combat (though that may have just been people being tired). Generally, a few versatile enemies > a horde of simple ones for keeping a fight interesting. Granted, when the enemy's goal is apparently to overwhelm and massacre the civilians of a town, it's hard to think of how else the fight could be presented.

Spatial relationships could stand to be more clear sometimes. Grids aren't always necessary (and I know from experience that they're time-consuming to make), but they are convenient.

I need to read into stunts more because I honestly haven't done so thus far.

Otherwise, I had fun. I usually have trouble sorting out how a character talks the first session. Was pretty easy this time.