DM Nagging: It's pretty much my job

[Nephrite]

Don't forget my question about disjunction!

*Gets out whip*

[Corwin]

Mind deleting the post from my IC thread?

[Nephrite]

Okay.

[Anastasia]

Magic Disjunction
Abjuration
Level: Magic 9, Sor/Wiz 9, Clr 9, Drd 9
Components: V
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Area: All magical effects and magic items within a 40-ft.-radius burst
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No

All magical effects and magic items within the radius of the spell, except for those that you carry or touch, are treated as being affected as by a targeted dispel attempt. The dispel check uses a modifier equal to your caster level, maximum+30.

You also have a 1% chance per caster level of destroying an antimagic field. If the antimagic field survives the disjunction, no items within it are dispelled.

Artifacts and divinities are unaffected by mortal magic such as this.

Note: This spell replaces Mage's Disjunction.

Relevant parts that Eb pasted. Were there other questions, Neph?

[Anastasia]

Okay.

Also, generally, a post in your thread works best. I usually lurk on this board and refresh, going to posts which are marked as new. A new post trips that, and most of the times when I lose track is because it's a post waiting on me that isn't new.

[Nephrite]

I'm good, thanks.

[Anastasia]

Bonus IRC discussions being cross posted for reference.

> Incidentally, I did prep for B6 stuff. I showed Cor some of the plot chain for Moore's current adventure, for example, since there was no way Seira gets involved barring tremendous shenanigans.
<Lucille> I would've abstained anyhow
> One thing I didn't cover was a Lixer attack since I was figuring post B3 we'd have a longer break from Hell. That's part of the strain.
<Lucille> Prolly done the Alicia thing
* Kotono nods.
> Which is fine, it's been a really interesting adventure, just a ton of work to run for me.
<Lucille> It's been important!
> It has been.
> Once this settles I'd like to go back to giving Hell a nice break, though. I let this one go since y'all had a good IC reason as well as an old plot thread to chase down, so fair enough.
<Ebiris> Covering an old B1 goal is useful for getting back into the swing of these characters. Like I'm rediscovering how Alicia likes to talk shit to ancient and powerful immortals.
> Oh yes.
> It's been a good adventure and a good choice, I'm just sayin'.
<Lucille> B1 goal! Cute fallen angel rescue! Also kicking Hell's teeth in.
> Precisely.
<Lucille> And I bet all the planar twitter will explode
> The closest thing is telepathic conversations with alter reality, which are fairly common as needed.
<Ebiris> Yeah, the celestial TV's obsolete now, it's all planar twitter these days.
> So close enough.
<Lucille> :)
> To shift gears here since I'm planning to paste this discussion into nagging and there's another part I wanted to cover?

> PC balance is a tough thing and really a combination of a lot of things working together. Moore's very good at boosting others, but fundamentally that's a lot easier to take in stride because it's enabling. Likewise Afina's defenses were superlative, but those kept her alive more than anything else.  When I talk about something being unbalanced, it's usually implied or outright is unbalancing in some way. Not automatically powerful, per se, though it often is. Something that impacts the game in an ultimately negative way from a mechanical perspective. Often because the escalation that it tends to provoke at that level of play may be untenable or undesirable, since I generally optimize in line with my players. Like in a game where level drain and ability damage are a big deal since it's a low level undead fest, something that blocks or mitigates that may be unbalanced in the balance there.  So if I'm saying I'm worried about Alicia's damage, it's not that she's hitting too hard, per se, but that dropping potentially 4-5k damage a round goes past being powerful offense and into causing mechanical issues. I think it's mostly the channeled spells boosted by metamagic that's adding most of the damage, right?
<Ebiris> Maximised generally works out to doubling what you'd roll on average, and Vivacious doubles again vs undead/evil outsiders. So those combusts would be quartered and the flux grasps halved - and also completely dinged off the resistances and immunities everyone at this level has.
* Kotono nods.
> I'm not gonna do anything until this adventure is over regardless and I'd like to make as little changes as possible. This is an epic campaign and a divine campaign, power is expected. I just don't want it to become out of line enough to cause mechanical headaches for everything else, or make other PCs feel they need to escalate to keep the damage up.
> I'll see how it all shakes out once it's done.
> As for the resistances that's also a really fair point. Hm.
<Ebiris> Still that potential 5k damage ends up only being a tenth of that because everything gets dodged anyway. But fundamentally the whole concept is full attack -> kill. Alicia's defences aren't that great so she needs to be able to kill stuff before it kills her in effect. She can't spend a couple of rounds whittling something down with impunity the way Afina could.
* Kotono nods.
> To be fair, Lixer and Glasya are scaled up a bit since the intent of this adventure was to make a world establishing point. As I mentioned, you two are both overperforming.
> Your full attacks getting dodged a lot shouldn't be routine.
<Ebiris> Yeah, my expectation was going in and making a statement by performing well. "I'm a badass war goddess, this is what I do, respect it."
> Which you're doing. Pushing in a Lord of the First's shit is something Zquujaj did and look at the hype it got him. It's also meant to show you two have a lot of room to grow and spur you on. Your looming Vegeta to take an early DBZ reference.
<Ebiris> Zquujaj was also in mind actually as a reason why this is do-able. He was an epic pit fiend but I mentally hadn't pegged him as being where Alicia currently is.
> At absolute worst I'd just rule full attack channeling only affects each target once per round. RAW it's a smidge unclear the way it's written but probably works as you're running it.
> Well, he's 50 HD and had Pale Night supporting him.
<Ebiris> That'd kinda suck alright.
<Ebiris> 50 HD now, sure. But when Seira and Shamal and Deme met him who knows!
> So he was a least equal to Alicia overall there if not better but pure dint of HD. It's hard to really approximate what DvR's worth vs hit dice.
> So you're doing about as well, albeit the two of you had entirely different goals in Avernus.
> He was about the same. He dropped some super potent wishes and he's over hit diced for his DvR, remember.
<Ebiris> Power creep is a thing, expectations from early B1 may not match B6's current reality. But what Zquujaj did against an entrenched Bel I figured would be easier against a newbie Lixer.
> That is a factor, yes, even with Asmodeus having boosted him for precisely that reason.
> The White Voice said to one of you he's competing with Asmodeus, and in today's posts he mentioned in Seira's thread Lixer's stalling because he's wondering why his father isn't intervening. So obviously there's a lot going on with other players involved here.
> http://www.soulriders.net/forum/index.php/topic,104064.msg1108292.html#msg1108292 May makesome more sense with what was mentioned here in tinytext.
> Anyway, that digression aside, it's pretty much that. We'll see how it goes post adventure and move from there.

[Iron Dragoon]

I have a lot of problems with judging power levels, too. Lief and Surraruthru were my first characters over level 12, I believe. Or the first one I remember being over level 12. I think the level 12 character was Thaeos way back in that 2e game with Serith. So jumping into a 20+ character with Lief was something I had problems with, even though he was already built for me.

Surraruthru was half a failure on his own what with the failed Nightmare Spinner build and then having to rebuild for True Dragon. The Monk version of him gave me the ridiculous damage that was fairly in line with Muirfinn and Afina, which were what I had to judge off of. The True Dragon rebuild crippled that but gave me huge boosts to group play, so I never really figured out where the acceptable balance point was with him.

I'm sorta running into similar issues with Alyssa, though I haven't done any *real* combat with her. I look at some of the other character sheets and see HPs of 700, ACs of 60+, attack bonuses of 50+ and then look at Alyssa. HP: 288. AC: 38. Attack: 43. It makes me a bit nervous and feels like I'm using a really flawed build, like back to the Nightmare Spinner thing. I know it probably isn't that horrible or flawed and is likely due to bonuses that come with primo gear and divinity, but man, go back to that pit fiend fight and it took me like four rounds to establish a solid routine and even then I still was low on HP the whole rest of the time. Stack on that I entirely lack SR, and I feel like I'm a bad Wizard/Fighter Gish.

I know it'll all work out, but still. When Tryll and Alica can dump just massive damage and I'm swinging for 4d12 and a possible 2-8 negative levels per round, man... Makes me feel like I studied history for a math test. =)

[Nephrite]

I'm sure this was DM arbitrated at some point in the past so my apologies, I'd like to ask about Shades.

Does it work the same as the other Shadow-based spells and only works on (Creation) and (Summoning) spells, or does Shades work on any Conjuration School spell from the wizard/sorc list? I ask because Greater Shadow Conjuration still has the specification but Shades does not.

[Anastasia]

I'm sure this was DM arbitrated at some point in the past so my apologies, I'd like to ask about Shades.

Does it work the same as the other Shadow-based spells and only works on (Creation) and (Summoning) spells, or does Shades work on any Conjuration School spell from the wizard/sorc list? I ask because Greater Shadow Conjuration still has the specification but Shades does not.

It says works as shadow conjuration, so it follows any rules in that spell that it doesn't directly amend. It only mentions the spell level, not removing that limitation, so it would still apply if it's in shadow conjuration.

[Nephrite]

Doesn't it directly amend it by saying "except that it mimics sorcerer and wizard conjuration spells of 8th level or lower." ?

Greater Shadow Evocation says the same, like so: "except that it can duplicate any sorcerer or wizard conjuration (summoning) or conjuration (creation) spell of 6th level or lower."


I'm really not trying to be pedantic here, I promise -- are you saying that it'd need to say "Except that it can mimic any sorcerer and wizard conjuration spell of 8th level or lower" or something like that?

[Anastasia]

Doesn't it directly amend it by saying "except that it mimics sorcerer and wizard conjuration spells of 8th level or lower." ?

Greater Shadow Evocation says the same, like so: "except that it can duplicate any sorcerer or wizard conjuration (summoning) or conjuration (creation) spell of 6th level or lower."


I'm really not trying to be pedantic here, I promise -- are you saying that it'd need to say "Except that it can mimic any sorcerer and wizard conjuration spell of 8th level or lower" or something like that?

Tell you what, lemme do some googling on it after session and sort it out there, unless you need it for this battle you're currently in?

[Nephrite]

Please take your time.

[Anastasia]

I know it'll all work out, but still. When Tryll and Alica can dump just massive damage and I'm swinging for 4d12 and a possible 2-8 negative levels per round, man... Makes me feel like I studied history for a math test. =)

You're right in that you have the most room to grow by a mile. I wouldn't worry too much quite yet, just see how things shake out.

I am trying to avoid the keeping up with the Joneses mindset with the way nodes are set up and independent, on another note. It's inevitable to some degree no matter, and moreover, I've seen it from pretty much all of you within 2 and a half weeks of gaming. That hope was pretty much a fantasy in retrospect. Fortunately I set it up so gains can be made and growth can happen fairly well.

Also regardless of power, I'm trying to give each of you stakes in the plot and things going on. I think that's working quite well - from Io to Lixer, to the White Voice to node bonds.

[Iron Dragoon]

You're right in that you have the most room to grow by a mile. I wouldn't worry too much quite yet, just see how things shake out.

I am trying to avoid the keeping up with the Joneses mindset with the way nodes are set up and independent, on another note. It's inevitable to some degree no matter, and moreover, I've seen it from pretty much all of you within 2 and a half weeks of gaming. That hope was pretty much a fantasy in retrospect. Fortunately I set it up so gains can be made and growth can happen fairly well.

Also regardless of power, I'm trying to give each of you stakes in the plot and things going on. I think that's working quite well - from Io to Lixer, to the White Voice to node bonds.

Yeah, I'm not meaning so much that I want to be on par with them, but what I'm anticipating is that we'll be facing the same sorts of threats. After all, we're all going to be going after Shar. So while I don't mind being behind them, I'm just concerned that mechancially my build might not be able to keep up, so to speak. It's mostly a nagging concern left over from Surraruthru v1. That build didn't work out simply because of the mind-affecting immunity. There just wasn't space in the build to make up for it. I just don't want to run into the same issue here and have to completely change things up to be viable.