The Gossip Board

[Anastasia]

Notes:

As mentioned in chat, the lightning demons were will o' the wisp rogue 1s. If they come up again IC you don't know this, but OOC you do. Nasty fuckers all the way, that extra die of sneak attack really makes them extra dangerous. They damn near got Mari! They only reason they didn't finish her off is because while intelligent, they weren't intelligent enough to pick between dying and dead. 'sides, Mari wasn't going to be doing anything after that shock combo.

Mari came within 2 HP of death. Hatebotting all the way until the end of time. Managing to botch that tumble check was epic hate.

This entire area is very Gygaxian in design, with frequent death traps and unceasing danger. I'm not a huge fan of this style of design, but it fits the Abyss to a T. Good luck!

[Anastasia]

Cleaned up the board a bit! Party status is now stickied, loot and away thread are now unstickied.

(Drac, don't resticky them.)

[Anastasia]

Also:

I pushed the party to be faster in combat last night and I'm going to keep doing this. In a situation where there's a lot of small battles versus one big throwdown, a certain efficiency is essential to a good game flow. Have what you want to do lined up before your turn and be ready to execute once you're up. Have your values ready, long pauses while you look them up just slow everyone down. In particular, once you act, pay attention to the game channel until I resolve it. I often ask follow-up questions and these can often hang long.

This isn't meant to speed along out of combat or roleplay, just to keep combat moving as fast as possible. If you're uncertain or want to discuss your next move, do it OOC before your turn in #elysium.

[Sierra]

Mari came within 2 HP of death. Hatebotting all the way until the end of time. Managing to botch that tumble check was epic hate.

Seriously, 90% chance of success on that roll. Fuck you, Hatbot.

Speedier combat is approved by Cids. We did a lot last night and it was all pretty fun.

[Sierra]

Idly, can whoever's been keeping track of healing supplies post whatever we've got left to stave off (or confirm) my fears that we're going to run out before we leave the Abyss?

[VySaika]

asdf. On that subject, I've been keeping fairly good track of my wand charges, except I forgot last session. I'll need to comb through to see how many I used. bleh.

[Carthrat]

Incidentally, I think most of the decisions for any given fight are really decided before we get there most of the time.

I think I need to talk about strategy IC somewhat, both in a combat-right-now style and for when we're generally roaming around. The abyss is sufficiently dangerous and weird that I don't really want to split up, and the benefits of scouting are somewhat obliviated when stuff just magically appears behind you.

In particular I really must tell Yulia not to bother casting magic missile, the effect is trivial, blocked by SR a lot, and I don't like the idea of her being, well, noticed by stuff that oneshots her. I don't know how good she is with that bow; it could be viable. However faerie fire is a must on *any* and *every* demon that can turn invisible. She has the skills; gaps in her knowledge can be filled in by others with K:P; it has to be her first action in any such case. Also, shouldn't she spend most of her time in her alternate ball of light form while wandering around? We need a light source, it makes her much harder to hit, and while I suppose she can't shoot things she can still cast spells (and really I still think her ability to shoot must be near-useless, unless the arrows put things to sleep or something? outsider saves lol.) The most important thing she gives is the aura anyway, don't want to compromise that.

I was about to talk about how myself and Mari should take point, but then I realized Kam is tougher than me and has better perception than Mari, so I guess he should. Adail should probably go at the back so if anything really harsh sneaks up on us, the one who can actually dodge it/make the save is there to do so. Nikki would go in the middle, probably flanked by me and Mari, so...

    Kn
Ad Ni Ka
    Ma

star formation GO. Usually our enemies will determine our strategy. Basically, as far as random encounters go, it's pretty simple:

-Does this fight look like it'll take a while? If yes, spend the first round hiding and buffing, I think just about everyone has something they can do here. If no, just go straight in for the attack.
-Are there many enemies? Either tentacle them, fireball them, or put Kam in the middle of them.
-Are there few enemies? Surround one at a time and beat the crap out of them.
-Are there enemies that summon other enemies? Kill them first.
-Are there invisible enemies? Yulia-chan~
-It's more important to survive than take chances. If you're on low HP but the party seems to have it handled, disengage immediately and hide until it's over if you can. We've got healing, but we can't cure you if you're dead. On that note, if both Adail and Kamvakua manage to bite it, the rest of us are basically fucked. So let's not have that happen.

If for once we're actually the ones getting the jump on someone then we can plot all kinds of nastiness beforehand.

Kam has a big stick. This is a gygaxian dungeon. I'm sure he can see where I'm going with this, test every square before stepping on it. I already got burned twice for not doing that and consider myself to have learned a lesson, I'm sure it'll recur. @_@

Spellwise, next time we rest, I think Kam should prepare shield other (it lasts a couple hours and is a pretty obvious pick on Mari or Nikki, the former in particular has defense issues, is in melee a lot, and is kinda squishy, I don't think a session in the abyss has gone by without her suffering some grevious wound.) Given the amount of poison we've run into so far in this short stint, stuff that helps against that would be nice from the divine casters, too.

For particularly dangerous-looking areas we can always have Nikki summon some creature to go ahead of us and see what happens to it.

[Anastasia]

In particular I really must tell Yulia not to bother casting magic missile, the effect is trivial, blocked by SR a lot, and I don't like the idea of her being, well, noticed by stuff that oneshots her. I don't know how good she is with that bow; it could be viable. However faerie fire is a must on *any* and *every* demon that can turn invisible. She has the skills; gaps in her knowledge can be filled in by others with K:P; it has to be her first action in any such case. Also, shouldn't she spend most of her time in her alternate ball of light form while wandering around? We need a light source, it makes her much harder to hit, and while I suppose she can't shoot things she can still cast spells (and really I still think her ability to shoot must be near-useless, unless the arrows put things to sleep or something? outsider saves lol.) The most important thing she gives is the aura anyway, don't want to compromise that.

She can be in ball form if you guys like; she defaults to her fairy-like form with no guidance. She can also Faerie Fire away as you like, but do note it hits SR so she'll struggle with that. Since she has it and plans to fire it sooner or later, the damage is 1d4+1d6+1d4, with the damages being arrow/lightning/sonic.

Kam has a big stick. This is a gygaxian dungeon. I'm sure he can see where I'm going with this, test every square before stepping on it. I already got burned twice for not doing that and consider myself to have learned a lesson, I'm sure it'll recur. @_@

You're free to do this, but bear in mind it'll slow down your pace and make a little extra noise.

[Anastasia]

Attention:

I have the next 2 Tuesdays off due to various whims of fate. I have the potential of being able to start earlier if you guys like this weekend, either aiming to end earlier in turn or run longer altogether. Do either of these interest you?

It wouldn't be permanent, but just for the next two sessions.

[Sierra]

More time is always good. Or starting earlier if other people can't afford more time.

[Anastasia]

This is primarily to give Gate/you/Zeph a chance to avoid the sleep cycle wrecking and/or sleepiness to a degree. If all of you want more time I'm okay with that, though.

[Dracos]

With work, I generally get home as soon as I can get home.  Recently this has been 6-6:30 (1-1.5 hours early) on tuesdays and I'm glad to try hard to do that the next two weeks, but I really can't promise that strongly.

[Dracos]

On combat strategy mid-combat, I actually always overthink things so I tend to be slow.  It doesn't matter that I've usually decided on a target, I can't usually guess how folks will move before they do.  Since my attacks tend to be so position based, a lot often changes on the circumstances.  Do I move 10 feet or 15 or 30?  Which will set me up to put up a solid wall of denial?  I generally try to be fast on these, but really, that sort of stuff is also what I like about combat.  I don't mind generally timeboxing it, but equally even when I prepare a move a couple moves ahead of time, it ends up being invalid half the time, so I tend to start each action usually adjusting to who just got killed, or who just got heavily damaged or who just vanished one action beforehand.  I dunno where there's a sweet spot between being much faster than I go and having fun picking a strongly tactical mid battle action.

Personally, not really that interested in poking every which route with a stick.  It is kind of worthwhile as a full gygaxian dungeon, but I dunno.  One of those sub-optimal tactics I take every so often like not wielding a bow.  I think we can take the step between and simply make sure we scan thoroughly each new passage before going along it with spot/listen from the whole team.  But yeah, kam came through unscathed and knight got bitten repeatedly, so maybe my view isn't cautious enough.

I liked the original pattern as it put a tank on either side and had Adail providing spot/listen stuff in front and Kam doing it in back.  I think it was effectively chance that it did go as badly as it did for knight up front.  I assumed bad shit was going to come behind us but it never did.

I don't mind a star pattern I suppose, but I think having Mari in the center is more sensible in one.  She has less hp than nikki, equal defense, and can then apply her spot capabilities easily in both directions.  I think reasonably Adail can only provide invisibility protection in one general direction at a time.  I think this pattern strengthens our front and weakens our rear a bit, but I guess kam can reach everywhere anyway so he can quickly tank from any location.

I agree on Yulia, as much as I think its cool and want to encourage her being brave courre, she should try and survive first.

Yeah, I've never been a big fan of martyr spells, but you're probably right.  It makes tactical sense.  It does have a 100 gp focus (2 gold rings).  Not sure what Dune's ruling on that is.  http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/shieldother.htm  Dune? 

On healing, I seem to be better off that I thought with about 35 spells remaining.  I thought I had used more, but on counting that wasn't the case.  I don't know how Adail is going.  Practically, we are burning through them fast though.  We take damage in pretty much every encounter, often 50 percent or more of at least one player's hp.  We don't have a cleric primary and simply didn't bring enough CLW to keep up with this level of getting hurt.  We should be good for at most 3-4 more sessions in the abyss, then we'd likely be completely out of healing and struggling along.

And yeah, seconding the don't get killed line.  The odds of us getting out of here while hauling a body are not good.

[Dracos]

And we totally should've retreated rather than stood there dumbly with the will-o-wisps last session.  Not taking notice was an okay idea, but not nearly as good as just not being there for them to change their mind.  If we booked it, adail could've followed or kept them occupied in safety.

[Anastasia]

I liked the original pattern as it put a tank on either side and had Adail providing spot/listen stuff in front and Kam doing it in back.  I think it was effectively chance that it did go as badly as it did for knight up front.  I assumed bad shit was going to come behind us but it never did.

The spider-mane did come up behind you, which your blindsense did catch. Otherwise you're correct as far as this session went.

Yeah, I've never been a big fan of martyr spells, but you're probably right.  It makes tactical sense.  It does have a 100 gp focus (2 gold rings).  Not sure what Dune's ruling on that is.  http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/shieldother.htm  Dune?  

I'm normally very related on material components, but those are above the 1 GP rule and require some foreplanning(Both parties wearing them). So yes, you'd need to procure the material components and deal with getting the rings on them. Not such a big deal out of combat, trickier if you need the spell on someone mid-battle and they don't have it on.