Opinion poll!

[Anastasia]

Time to get some feedback on your PCs! This is focusing on in battle and mechanics, try to focus on those and not your relative luck as much as possible.

1. How do you feel your character is performing out of combat in regards to mechanics and effective-ness?

2. How do you feel your character is performing in combat?

3. How do you feel about your builds? Do you feel too strong? Too weak? Just right?

4. How do you feel about the other PCs?

5. How do you feel overall about your character's mechanics?

[Carthrat]

1. This is hard to answer. We haven't exactly been in many stress situations where our out-of-combat skills really came into play. Yes, there's been lots of talking and wandering around and such, and in that I'm doing fine, but not much Solid Snaking or espionage going on. (Where, of course, Knight would be out of her depth, unless the discussion is military-focused, animals are being handled, or people are gambling.) The only thing that springs to mind is the recent devilry, where getting charmed sort of precludes taking proactive action, you know?

I think I can handle myself out of combat, at any rate.

2. My performance in combat is overshadowed by Kamvakua. Perhaps when I get Bell, things will be different. Still, I feel like I should be more dangerous to be around, even on foot. We talked about this before, right? >_>

3. I think my build is mostly fine. It kind of needs to grow sideways so I have more options more than grow in raw power, hence my experimental feats and hope for trippy cards. My damage, defenses, etc are all roughly where I feel they should be; the keen rapier is awfully helpful. The only place in which I'm both lacking and genuinely feel I deserve a boost is in speed. Bell takes care of that (and how!). I guess I'd kinda go for stuff that gives me more options whilst using a shield, even offensively. But to do that I need to sink a feat into improved shield bash, which is just useless by itself.

When I get Bell, he may overpower me. We'll see. Cavalry are respected and feared for a reason. I'll be sure to take note of all the little flight rules (for instance, did you know it takes me like a turn just to *turn around* in midair with average manueverability?)

4. I keep thinking Mari needs something to keep her alive in combat. If it's not AC, it should be concealment or crazy movement or *something*. She's just so frail that I'm scared for her in pretty much every fight. I do feel she's the most personable of all of us, though, probably the most fun character to just hang out with. Let's get some sneaking or intrigue or whatnot going so she can shine already! (metaphorically speaking, of course.)

Gate seems happy with Adail. I dunno if I would play a character like that, but to each his own, right? I prefer having more impact to being untouchable, but hey. He's got stunning fist and magic missile and godly defenses, so although I wouldn't be adverse to him having a bit more punch, he's still got tactically useful moves, and I'm all about tactics. I wonder if he'll have disagreements over methods with us again, it'll be interesting if a Card is at stake. A bit of conflict spices up any relationship.

Nikki's a bit odd. He has an okay selection of spells but lacks any of the *really* hard hitters. This may be a relief to Dune? It feels like he's a bit constricted for options when it comes to fights. I'm interested to know what he thinks. His backstory provides delicious tension. He's an emerging personality, just like me, but he's actually had an upbringing of a sort, unlike me. Let's trade life stories sometime~

It's been really hard for me to stay unbiased w/Kam since on foot he just dominates me, and he sort of overshadows other people there, too. This will likely change soon due to Bell. Then it will be him *and* me cleaning up fights in short order. When it comes to a straight battle, we will easily make up like 75% of the parties actual power. As things stand, that's just a fact.

5. See 3. Knight doesn't have all that many choices to make each round, but I have small-unit D&D tactics down to a science as is and as I said, have plenty of fun just thinking about how to pool resources to do things.

If I have any input into cards, btw, I'd like them to provide downright weird niche effects, like, I dunno, a slowing aura that slows everything within 30ft of me, no save, self included? Stuff that takes a bit of thought to use and isn't useful all the time, basically. Flexibility rather than power.

[VySaika]

1. If we get any chances to do sneaky stuff, that's kinda where Adail dominates, so that's fine. RP wise, I'm almost always the least talkative person in a group game, so his lack of diplo skills aren't a huge problem. They may end up being one if I need to convince someone that Mari isn't evil now, but we'll burn that bridge when we get to it.

2. Frankly, Adail's a project character. He sucks now, but has the survivability to get the levels he needs to be effective. Once I get more buffing spells I can start contributing to the party a bit more and once I get Sacred Flames I can actually start damaging things.

3. The answer for 2 pretty much applies here as well. As we go I'm likely to start focusing more on cleric spells and such, as that's basically my real niche in the party as Adail will never be a powerhouse. My build is pretty much exactly what I expected it to be: really really lopsided. What Adail's good at, he owns face at(AC, Saves, certain skills) and what he's bad at, he's honestly unsalvagable at for a few more levels at least.

4. Re: Mari - See Rat, basically. She feels way too fragile for my comfort as well. Especially as her concrete durability is now worse then mine, and that's impressive.

Re: Nikki - Feels more like the kind of mage I prefer for the games I run, being an interesting spell selection but avoiding the whole Mages > Stuff thing that goes on in so many games. I'm cool with that, but when you put him shoulder to shoulder with a twinked out guy like Kam, it starts to seem like not such a great idea. Dunno what to suggest here, though.

Re: Knight - Needs more time on her horse before I can comment, really. The shrink-wrap barding was a good move and will let us have more fun with that. ANd he'll almost certainly have a disagreement on methods with her again at some point in the future, which is part of the challange of playing a celestial for me. I personally don't like party conflict and try to avoid arguing with other PCs whenever possible. But Adail can't be so passive about some stuff, so we'll see how this ends up going.

Re: Kam - Definately the powerhouse of the group. Is the primary target of attacks as well, but that's pretty much the point of playing any flavor of barbarian. Probably overshadows Knight/Mari/Nikki a little too much, but he and Adail don't actually compete in any department so it's fine from my angle at least. <_<

5. Again, project character. Adail's going to take awhile to come into his own, and honestly may never be as good as a normal character would be. But that's fine, I'm one of those weirdos who is cool with playing the support characters. I do need to use his aggressive AC whoring a bit more, though. Mage Armor + Full Defensive = whee I run around in your threat range to soak up your AoOs~ Should talk to Nikki IC about keeping Mage Armor on me as we travel as a rule to make this easier. It lasts 8 hours for him, right?

[Zephyrus]

1. Nikko is a contradiction in terms of personality and stats. While he's beginning to become less of a cold, socially inept power monger and more of a real person, he's still the ugly duckling when it comes to social interaction. That being said, I find it amusing that he's such an OP'd CHA tank. There hasn't been someone I couldn't talk to and manage to get my way, even if only slightly. I feel that when it comes to epsionage, intelligence gathering, and general diplomacy, I do very well in those situations. I haven't really tried to manipulate people via Charm, either. All in all, I feel very happy with this aspect of Nikko's character and look forward to every chance that he has to open his mouth.

2. Combat is...well. To be perfectly honest, I just feel that I haven't actually *seen* enough combat to actually comment on my effectiveness. Oh, we've done many a combat round, but that's mostly just watching everyone else be awesome. For example, I used a total of two spells last night: Haste and Mage Armor, during a battle that lasted at least an hour. Everyone keeps killing stuff before I get a chance to break out any of my facemelting spells. =/ I simply don't have enough experience fighting. It's hard to learn how to use caster tactics effectively when I barely get to use them.

3. See 2. I will comment that I feel that some of my spells are completely useless, seeing as I've popped Wall of Smoke maybe once and haven't even exhausted the extent of my spellcasting over the course of 1 session, which I fully expected to do. I feel that I should have taken greater care in my spell choosing.

4. Mari: Mari is the character that everyone wants to be buddies with. I feel like she's the PC I can relate to best, as we both share a fondess for witty banter and cutting humor. We're both realists in our own way and mostly look out for number one. Even now, I suspect that we both feel that if/when this party had outlived its usefulness, we'd split in a second. I can't help but feel that Nikko should even attempt a romance with her (Purely out of interest in social mechanics, I assure you!) but I don't think that would go over well. >_>

As far as her build and whatnot...she's just ridiculously frail. One solid hit and she goes the way of Eva the Bard. I really don't want to see our sexy Drow get Ko'd.

Adail: Even if Adail is quiet, I consider him my mentor. He's like the stern uncle I never had who, even when he admonishes me, attempts to drill some wisdom into my thick skull. Adail is nigh untouchable. While this is a good thing, I'd like to see him do more damage. With his martial skills, he should be able to throw quite a punch, so to speak.

Kam: Kam and I haven't really connected. With Kam, I feel like we're just really good acquaintances. He is knowledgeable and wise like Adail, but Nikk simply can't 'get' him. Maybe some IC bonding will help that and I hope it does. I still worry about him and consider him a comrade but he isn't quite in the friend zone just yet.

That being said, Kam is godly when it comes to pure DPS. I'm so glad that he's on our side and volunteers to stay on the front lines most of the time. I truly think that without Kam's Mighty Beating Stick (not to be confused with the Stick of Mighty Beating) we wouldn't have made it as far as we have. I can't really comment on his build as my knowledge of hand to hand combat rules in D&D is still near to non-existent.

Knight: Nikko still finds Knight an oddity, even after all of this time he's spent with her. In his limited social experience, it's *unthinkable* that a woman would don armor and act like a man, disdaining womanly qualities and activities. While he's come to view her as a treasured companion, he's also highly interested in her origins and powers. Something as powerful as the fully assembled Deck could help him face and destroy the Lady...

All I have to comment on concerning her DPS is that SHE NEEDS A STEED. I think that speed is her biggest problem at the moment. It's only because of her armor that she's not a red smear on a rock (or in the air) by now.

5. Overall, I feel content with Nikk, aside from the things I mentioned. He's the first character that I've stuck with this long and I'm growing quite fond of him. It's been hard to qualify his personality; one session I'll feel positively human and the next session I'll feel closed off and uncommunicative. Gradually changing him is a difficult process and I fear that the return of the object of his fears has set him back quite a bit.

[Anastasia]

1. This is hard to answer. We haven't exactly been in many stress situations where our out-of-combat skills really came into play. Yes, there's been lots of talking and wandering around and such, and in that I'm doing fine, but not much Solid Snaking or espionage going on. (Where, of course, Knight would be out of her depth, unless the discussion is military-focused, animals are being handled, or people are gambling.) The only thing that springs to mind is the recent devilry, where getting charmed sort of precludes taking proactive action, you know?

I think I can handle myself out of combat, at any rate.

I'm going to address this point first since it'll come up more than once. I'm trying not to go to stealth heavy if it means half the party goes to plod off while 1/2 PCs sneak around. This isn't really desirable in a weekly game, it's too much of a time drag. Adail's example of sneaking in the Dao camp is what I'd be aiming for.

3. I think my build is mostly fine. It kind of needs to grow sideways so I have more options more than grow in raw power, hence my experimental feats and hope for trippy cards. My damage, defenses, etc are all roughly where I feel they should be; the keen rapier is awfully helpful. The only place in which I'm both lacking and genuinely feel I deserve a boost is in speed. Bell takes care of that (and how!). I guess I'd kinda go for stuff that gives me more options whilst using a shield, even offensively. But to do that I need to sink a feat into improved shield bash, which is just useless by itself.

Agreed. A fighter can fight well enough, the cards should expand your options. Options > hitting a little harder or taking a few more HP before going dead-emo.

When I get Bell, he may overpower me. We'll see. Cavalry are respected and feared for a reason. I'll be sure to take note of all the little flight rules (for instance, did you know it takes me like a turn just to *turn around* in midair with average manueverability?)

Good, keep up on these.

4. I keep thinking Mari needs something to keep her alive in combat. If it's not AC, it should be concealment or crazy movement or *something*. She's just so frail that I'm scared for her in pretty much every fight. I do feel she's the most personable of all of us, though, probably the most fun character to just hang out with. Let's get some sneaking or intrigue or whatnot going so she can shine already! (metaphorically speaking, of course.)

Mari needs HP. She should grab toughness or borrow a con booster or something. Anything. Drowification hurt her fragile con even more. PAst that, some form of defense. Anything. Something. She's fragile like a pretty pretty drow big tit queen.

Nikki's a bit odd. He has an okay selection of spells but lacks any of the *really* hard hitters. This may be a relief to Dune? It feels like he's a bit constricted for options when it comes to fights. I'm interested to know what he thinks. His backstory provides delicious tension. He's an emerging personality, just like me, but he's actually had an upbringing of a sort, unlike me. Let's trade life stories sometime~

Kinda-sorta. I can limit the real cheese, but I think the main thing is that Nikkolai's still learning the ropes. More on this below in Nikkolai's reply.

[Anastasia]

1. If we get any chances to do sneaky stuff, that's kinda where Adail dominates, so that's fine. RP wise, I'm almost always the least talkative person in a group game, so his lack of diplo skills aren't a huge problem. They may end up being one if I need to convince someone that Mari isn't evil now, but we'll burn that bridge when we get to it.

I'd recommend you and Mari coordinating your talents in this area. Synergy always helps, y'know? If you two end up the party sneak combo, I figure the two of you can compliment each other pretty well.

3. The answer for 2 pretty much applies here as well. As we go I'm likely to start focusing more on cleric spells and such, as that's basically my real niche in the party as Adail will never be a powerhouse. My build is pretty much exactly what I expected it to be: really really lopsided. What Adail's good at, he owns face at(AC, Saves, certain skills) and what he's bad at, he's honestly unsalvagable at for a few more levels at least.

Cleric spells will be Adail's main thing in a few levels. He'll be an okay fighter and a good pro-active tank, but it'll be the healing, buffing and anti-status that's his main role. As you gain levels, status becomes a bigger concern and far more debilitating.

Re: Kam - Definately the powerhouse of the group. Is the primary target of attacks as well, but that's pretty much the point of playing any flavor of barbarian. Probably overshadows Knight/Mari/Nikki a little too much, but he and Adail don't actually compete in any department so it's fine from my angle at least. <_<

Agreed and I've said as much to other people, but I'll wait for Drac to post before getting into this point.

5. Again, project character. Adail's going to take awhile to come into his own, and honestly may never be as good as a normal character would be. But that's fine, I'm one of those weirdos who is cool with playing the support characters. I do need to use his aggressive AC whoring a bit more, though. Mage Armor + Full Defensive = whee I run around in your threat range to soak up your AoOs~ Should talk to Nikki IC about keeping Mage Armor on me as we travel as a rule to make this easier. It lasts 8 hours for him, right?

Yep, 1 hour/level. Most travel days are over 8 hours, so once you do, work out a time when it's cast each day so I know if it'll be up or not.

[Anastasia]

1. Nikko is a contradiction in terms of personality and stats. While he's beginning to become less of a cold, socially inept power monger and more of a real person, he's still the ugly duckling when it comes to social interaction. That being said, I find it amusing that he's such an OP'd CHA tank. There hasn't been someone I couldn't talk to and manage to get my way, even if only slightly. I feel that when it comes to epsionage, intelligence gathering, and general diplomacy, I do very well in those situations. I haven't really tried to manipulate people via Charm, either. All in all, I feel very happy with this aspect of Nikko's character and look forward to every chance that he has to open his mouth.

Nikkolai's going to be the party face once he grows into the role. A few follibles Nikkolai ran into ealry on with socialization are good things as far as I'm concerned. He's developing into the role over time and it's a fun process to play out. He's clearly a natural talent.

2. Combat is...well. To be perfectly honest, I just feel that I haven't actually *seen* enough combat to actually comment on my effectiveness. Oh, we've done many a combat round, but that's mostly just watching everyone else be awesome. For example, I used a total of two spells last night: Haste and Mage Armor, during a battle that lasted at least an hour. Everyone keeps killing stuff before I get a chance to break out any of my facemelting spells. =/ I simply don't have enough experience fighting. It's hard to learn how to use caster tactics effectively when I barely get to use them.

Some of this is optimization levels and a few people being offensive juggernauts. Another part of it is you still learning the tricks of combat. What I'd like to do with you is run you through a few combat demos where you can fuck around with combat and work out some tactics. I'm also open for any questions you have about fightin'.  Ask away.

3. See 2. I will comment that I feel that some of my spells are completely useless, seeing as I've popped Wall of Smoke maybe once and haven't even exhausted the extent of my spellcasting over the course of 1 session, which I fully expected to do. I feel that I should have taken greater care in my spell choosing.

Well, I wouldn't beat yourself up too much here. I'm running this as fairly battle light without a much of a resource grind. (Dungeons tend to be resource grinds, see my comments on dungeons in the gossip board a few days ago.) Your spells are generally good, but it's a matter of the situations you run into and figuring out ways to use them. That said, you're new and figuring out what sort of spells you favor. I'll cut you slack on changing spells whenever you have downtime as you learn. You're new and it's damned hard to play a caster in your first game.

5. Overall, I feel content with Nikk, aside from the things I mentioned. He's the first character that I've stuck with this long and I'm growing quite fond of him. It's been hard to qualify his personality; one session I'll feel positively human and the next session I'll feel closed off and uncommunicative. Gradually changing him is a difficult process and I fear that the return of the object of his fears has set him back quite a bit.

I don't see this as a bad thing at all. Nikkolai's a human being, he's not a static entity that's always the same and doesn't have moods, feelings and desires. He's going through a period of change in his life, backsliding is normal. He's not an outsider who has no doubts and is a near monolithic expression of a primal force. He's just a guy with some magic and a hot drow hanging over him.

[Dracos]

Eh.  I've been holding off on this intentionally to see others and well, just because I more than half feel nothing good will come of me answering.  Ahead note above, I both talk too much when I'm bugged for feedback and am enjoying most of the time the game in play.  I may be reading subtones that aren't there, but I hear them anyway and they kind of make me miserable so will comment on them.  A lot of this is underlying frustration at that and I suspect will come across negatively and snipey and it is, but at the moment, it's what is gotten when I'm bugged for feedback. :(  I apologize for the poisonious of it.

1. How do you feel your character is performing out of combat in regards to mechanics and effective-ness?

Not well.  Stepping back a second as some of the answers on both sides irritate me :(.  I first rolled eva.  She had bad luck throughout, below average significantly stats to the party, and was plain.  She was a diplomancy character, but this didn't matter because we had Nikkolai who outclassed her in that area despite her being pretty much maxed out in that area.  I didn't complain then as I don't see that you have to complete rule the roost to play well with others and have fun, as seems to be a pretty strong subtext I've gotten flung at me lately.  Fine.  She interacted well with the other party members, and I generally feel folks liked playing with her.  Then she got into combat and was swatted like a fly.

Kamvakua is not an immensely social character.  He does already have the problem that three of his potential archetypes are simply overshadowed by others (Knight out naives him to the point no one even notices him being a country hick at points, Adail already stepped into mentor type, and even the quirk I decided on of him being a language nut is going to be overshadowed as Nikkolai has decided to do that too~, yay).  From a pure mechanics standpoint, he doesn't have a tremenduous amount of social skills at all or stealth skills.  Eying any 'metal gear solid' stuff makes me choke because I'm so bad in that area I might as well stay out. 

From a mechanics point, I don't mind this though.  I accept that you aren't good in everything and you shouldn't expect to shine in every or even lots of arenas.  D&D doesn't give you enough to be a combat god and a stealth god and a magic god and a dipomancy god and a knowledge god.  That's for the best generally as it lets people slide in and out of the spotlight to me.

From an interaction standpoint, Mari is everyone's favorite person to interact with and Kamvakua is their least with the others moved around as is.  That god damn sucks :(.  I'm not playing a wacky character so I'm not as funny as the others and haven't run into funny situations like knight.  The character I'm most related to is pretty quiet, so there isn't much camraderie felt in character on it.  Tossing out small scenes generally is waved off, so I don't really develop it much.  Part is probably I'm not assertive enough in going out and grabbing social interaction scenes and part of it is I'm playing a stone giant that is a foreign notion and not a cute wacky gal that everyone can easily relate to.  Anyhow, having that subtone I was aware of brought straight into the light wasn't much fun :(.  I should probably take this as a note to go scene grab more and do more unparty things in general, to provide interesting things for the party members to follow along on at some point, but I haven't been doing that and I tend to suck at it anyway. :(

2. How do you feel your character is performing in combat?

I rolled above average.  I built a combat beast.  This is a Sin, Apparently and the subtone of that frustrates me more every time I come across it because it wasn't a sin to be below average and overshadowed by others in my main areas, but it's a total sin to have higher stats and better on foot combat with way worse out of combat stuff.  The stats bear out that I do the most damage, hit the most often, swing my spear the most often.  I also take the most damage, am constantly at the front of the party, and have had more near death and death experiences than anyone else.  The near death experiences actually really suck, though they're common both for my play style and barbarians.

Anyhow, I intended to play more conservatively with Kamvakua.  His rage was intended to be sort of a 'we're in trouble' thing.  I did that the first several combats.  It was fun and how I sort of pictured taking advantage of a character that had lots of combat prowess to spare (some of it could be spared~.  it could be narrative in that he doesn't go all out on weaker foes~).  I'm pretty bad at this really, so it was something that I figured would be interesting.

Problem is after that, between the results of sense motive and generally the danger level, he's had little opportunity to do so.  Not using trip last battle had me nearly dead after a single strike.  The salamander thing, where it would've been pretty fine to not do it, was lead in with sense motives that said 'these guys are super dangerous'.  And they prefaced themselves with a pretty dangerous thing.  Unfortunate.  Basically, for as much as I'm playing a super combat badass that outdoes knight, I can't really hold back any of my abilities and hope to survive anymore.  That is the message I'm getting from the game at the moment.  Whether its being calibrated to me, or whether its my own bad luck, or whatever, I see it as near impossible to pull Kamvakua back toward where I wanted to be with him: enough of a combat badass that he wasn't going all out every time someone pulled a dagger.

Also, I generally feel somewhat obliged not to push further into tactics as a group here, despite building my character around doing so, because that'd shut out knight even more. :(  Which is fine, I've got plenty I get to do as a single combat monster in fights.  Just another minor frustration.

Anyhow, I'm hoping for the next level soon where I can then boost my ac a fair bit and in hopes be less 'every hit will connect', but that's generally the deal with barbarians is that the huge damage is matched with the fact that you get chewed up like going through a meat grinder if you stay at the front.  Sadly, knight is too slow and adail doesn't get in front (and is too small) to use their higher ACs to make it troublesome to get close and do damage while being stabbed.

I don't get to cooperate a lot in combat, which makes me sad.  We had some early on, and I got my comment that the salamander fight was the first time I've gotten to flank in the game, but yeah.

3. How do you feel about your builds? Do you feel too strong? Too weak? Just right?

In combat, my build is stronger than the others.  I also rolled higher on stats so I flipped around from being below average considerably to simply having a good stat base lead.  Again, frustrated that random rolls in my favor seem to be begrudged and random rolls against it seem to be 'play as it falls'.  There is the above though *points up to last time*

For all my character's combat strength, the impression I get is that to hold back is to die.  I'm too weak defensively, which is odd, because for a CR 9 barbarian, I've got a fairly decent ac.  Thanks for the boost there, and looking to hopefully boost it further since I'm not getting much syngery with spreading about attacks taken.

Side note, I know you were tired, but it was a huge downer watching you try and prove kamvakua was dead last session.  Really. :(  I mean, it's bad enough being one blowed, AGAIN, to near death but yeah... ;_;.  That it's followed by this makes me extra sad and probably is part of the tone. :( 

4. How do you feel about the other PCs?

Kam has struggled to have much non-combat interaction with the other PCs.  Despite being there for a good portion of the sessions, he hasn't had many sit downs with them that aren't strategy based.  He's primarily sat around being helpful toward other people's goals (Knight needs x, granny tam needs y).  I should probably stop doing that since it overshadows his own character, but in any ways it makes it harder to comment in character about it.  That inn scene that was half finished was about the only social scene he's gotten, and it was really knight's scene again (a common tale really with his out of combat scenes).

Mari's fun to interact with, wacky both in character and out and her player does a lot to help involve folks.  Thanks.  At the same time, everyone says that, so she's overwhelmed with it, and there's not much room for interaction there it feels like.  Sadness.  I'd like to hang more with her, but she's like the generic popular gal with two folks fawning over her at all times.  It feels like a closed social ring.  It's a pity as I suspect Kam would have a fair bit in common with time on the road with her.

Adail is quiet.  That's a side effect of the player, but more it's hard to pull out that we known each other at least a year because there's so little conversation between us.  We had some fun interactive synergy early on, but I haven't felt that we've had much lately.  Would love to do more there as we're both pretty far from our start planes.

As a character, Kamvakua is sympathetic to Knight.  She's another odd creature he's met on his journey's with experiences that are far removed from his and an origin that is fairly unique.  Interaction wise though, Knight has seemed completely uninterested in holding any real conversation with kamvakua, with the few occurances being total brush offs and in general little follow up given when socially she's given aid to accomplish her goals.  As a player, I have trouble because for the last several weeks, every conversation ooc that has involved knight has basically been 'knight is cool and special and deserves yet more screen time being awesome, and you are a terrible person for overshadowing knight in her primary role'.  Rat doesn't think like this, but it keeps coming up.  To me, knight dominates the importance on the game and easily leads screen time wise.  As I overshadow her combat wise, she so powerfully overshadows kam being a country hick that it becomes irrelevant.  Kamvakua is a side character on knight's quest.  Joy.

Nikkolai is 'that guy'.  He and kam interact so little, that if one or the other vanished from the party, it'd probably be days before they noticed.  My favorite scene so far with him was in the Dao dungeon with him negociating while we were adding the muscle to the scene.  I'm annoyed that as a character his response is 'I run away now' rather than 'oh god, I nearly got folks killed' to kam nearly dying to defend his right to freedom.  He's never said his background to Kam, and kam has never asked.  I should do that more, but anyhow, that contributes really to him just being that guy who tags along and talks fast when needed.  I should probably corner him next session or two on why he has giant air elementals after him, but that's somewhat overshadowed by a near death experience really.

Overall, as said, I'd like to interact more, but I'm basically the strange less interesting foreigner who never got opener meet and greets as everyone was done with them by the time he joined the party and sadly my inspiration has been crushed with frustration of late.  and yeah, I suck at interaction.  We can say that.  Can we change this lack of interact here?  Meandering over it I see several opportunities.  Nikkolai and kam could share their language studies.  Nikkolai could actually feel guilt, and we could make scene out of it as I'm trying to recover from deadly poison.  Adail and I could have some comrade like scenework or tales of Elysium or the arborea groves.  Not much that can be done with oversaturated mari I suppose :( but knight and I could have talks on different styles of warfare and combat, the opposed philosophies of being so heavily armored versus not.

5. How do you feel overall about your character's mechanics?

meh.  I'm late to work.  I'll answer this later.

[Anastasia]

I don't have time until tonight to reply in depth, but this point I want to talk about now.

I rolled above average.  I built a combat beast.  This is a Sin, Apparently and the subtone of that frustrates me more every time I come across it because it wasn't a sin to be below average and overshadowed by others in my main areas, but it's a total sin to have higher stats and better on foot combat with way worse out of combat stuff.  The stats bear out that I do the most damage, hit the most often, swing my spear the most often.  I also take the most damage, am constantly at the front of the party, and have had more near death and death experiences than anyone else.  The near death experiences actually really suck, though they're common both for my play style and barbarians.

This is essentially a meta-game problem. The objection isn't that you rolled well or that you made a combat centric character. It's that you made a character a bit too strong and optimized for this game. This isn't exactly a point of you being better than the others, though it does play into things. It's a matter of that Kam's gotten a bit too strong for this game. This leads to overshadowing others in combat and me having to adjust encounters to compensate for Kamvakua.  The only fact that's stopped this from being worse is that you've had hideous dice luck from day 1 of Planar.  Even then though, I'm mostly building encounters around a question. It's not, 'How can this be a good encounter for everyone?' but 'How can it not be a pushover with Kam around?'.  Kam's the most threatening, draws the most attention, deals the most damage and so on.

I'm not saying you can't have a character that's combat centric and good at it. What I'm saying is that right now Kam's starting to distort the game balance. That's why I've said he's too optimized here. What obscures the issue is your terrible dice luck. By all rights those wyverns weren't a threat to you, until you rolled a natural 1 for the save - the only result that failed the save - and then I rolled 12 on 2d6 for con damage.  The string of rolls and luck that lead you there would've killed any other PC in the party, likely. It feels like you're getting both bad ends of the stick. You're getting mauled in combat while being too good at it. That sucks.

[Dracos]

No rush.  The post is kind of nasty.  I apologize, but you're getting raw opinion rather than massaged over diplomacy.

Of course, designing encounters like that leads to the result that Kam doesn't ever get the chance to hold anything back.  I can't say "Well, I don't need to use Rage here to beat it.  Or maybe I shouldn't use trip to denial everyone, or I don't need to use travel domain here" because it seems like if I don't, the encounter becomes intensely deadly (In fact, its intensely deadly for me even if I do).  Yes that's tossing RP into combat, but I was intending to do that and did that up until I was suddenly surrounded by things trying to push me to the limit.  Your last line is kinda accurate?  My luck is bad sure, but statistically, I pay in blood for the opportunities to do more damage.  The kind of exchange we see with knight and kamvakua would be mostly the same if I was a standard barbarian using power attack rather than denial for my build, where I rack up higher damage and hits AND significantly damage taken while knight enjoys her almost completely safe 20ish damage an attack.

I hold that knight has a similarly build if she was ever mounted (and possibly better if flying mounted as a flying fighter is very difficult for many things to counter effectively), but this has ceased to be the case since just before Kam joined and continues not to be the case, despite knight working hard to change that.  But it also shouldn't matter as much as knight gets plenty of other opportunities to shine and battle is more fun working as cooperative groups anyway then measuring each character.

In either case, yeah, frustrated.  There's such an intent to make sure kam is challenged that kam can never treat anything as a pushover encounter, despite theoretically being a traveling physical genius.  For being the only area kam is really shining in, it's doubly frustrating that it's perfectly fine for others to shine in their areas powerfully but I feel I'm also the only one that gets guilt tripped for overshadowing, which does make me a bit snipey :(.

I've suppose continuing down this road will eventually kill kam, ignoring the random luck, because whenever we actually do over-estimate I probably won't have anything left to pull out of the bucket and will have the choice of using my skill to escape to the deteriment of the party or stay and get slaughtered to keep them back, and kam would choose the second.  It's hard to say its just chance when it's not one time, but regular occurrences that shows up practically every third fight.  For a fighting build that has a phenomenially deep bag of tricks for a barbarian, I feel I'm practically asked to use every last one of them every fight or else get killed. 

Beyond all it, I'm not given much of a chance to ignore it since it keeps coming up, so instead of pondering neat scenes I ponder being miserable that it's going to be taken bad that I did an awesome charge attack that did more damage than knight fighting with her crossbow and never reaching the fight. :(

[Sierra]

Ninja'd by Drac post. Will read afterwards.

~

1. How do you feel your character is performing out of combat in regards to mechanics and effective-ness?

I have a lot of skills that aren't getting used, but I understand why this is so. Being stealthy isn't something a group can do, and having the group wait on one person for a significant portion of a weekly game's session = no. Being a lying cheat is probably the best way to get use out of Mari and we have had some chance to do this (dao camp) though again that risks giving lopsided screentime to one person. Sometimes I feel like I should just steal some random shit, though, just to justify having all those skill points in thievery.

Honestly, though, as long as I have opportunity to insult someone, I'm usually pretty happy.

2. How do you feel your character is performing in combat?

The damage is good, at least, as long as I have flanking to take advantage of. I've been lucky in not having the heavy hitters target me more. She's a solid but not exceptional melee unit, which fits since Mari's really not a warrior and genuinely prefers to avoid trouble unless it's simply not possible to do so (or unless it's sufficiently entertaining for the risk).

3. How do you feel about your builds? Do you feel too strong? Too weak? Just right?

I fully expect to get squashed like an insect eventually (either of the huge elementals surely could've done this). There's not a whole lot I can do about this, really--the bot gave me shitty HP rolls and the drow Con penalty isn't helping any. I could take toughness, but that requires me to get a level (and I wanted Improved TWF over that anyway, at least until the recent transformation happened). That doesn't happen as long as Mari's in drow mode. Not level 10, at least, on account of level adjustment, and I have to spend level 11 on the air bloodline (last one I need to use for that, thankfully). Short of reverting to human mode (which I don't plan to do because this is fun) her durability's not improving for a very long time without some manner of Con-booster (which I should probably look into getting).

I'm sort of okay with being dangerously fragile, really. It fits her. Mari lives in the moment. Really, it's the AC that's shamefully low for someone who's supposed to be fast and sneaky. Which also isn't likely to change because heavier armor = no, Dex penalties would ruin me. She's a glass cannon and the most we can do is try and mitigate the risks a little. They'll never go away.

4. How do you feel about the other PCs?

Adail: Someone I need to talk to more. I'm not sure if it's just Gate being a quiet one, but Mari's impression here remains pegged at "Very large, friendly, occasionally lethal rodent." Should make an effort to get to know him more. They're completely different, but there should be something to talk about. More discussions along the lines of the debate over what to do with that surviving salamander could be fruitful if they could be kept from slowing things down (I know Gate hates party disagreements, so I'm skeptical here).

Kam: Drac! Stop stressing out, man. You built a combat-heavy character, it's no surprise that he excels at murderizing things and I really don't think anyone holds it against you. I personally don't feel annoyed at being overshadowed in fights (Mari does not like gears and fighting) and I think you're taking the occasional comments too seriously. After seeing you in the Iron Heroes game, watching you stretch the system to do crazy shit isn't any kind of problem; it's just Drac being Drac. If Kam's skewing GM planning, that is an issue, but one that's out of our hands and I think not something we can really change our playstyle to circumvent.

Socially, however, I do admit that it's hard to know what say to Kam. You've covered some of the reasons for this yourself (falling into a party with established relationships is rough). All I can really say is what you've already said: speak up for yourself more. Hell, if I can play a motormouth (and you can't possibly be more reclusive and antisocial than I am in real life), then I'm sure you can take the initiative sometimes if you really want to. It sounds like you might not be 100% sure what you want to get out of the character; I know lapsing into the background is what I tend to do when I lose track of where I meant to go with a PC. If it's required, I will make an effort to pry you out of your shell.

Knight: Is basically our plot right now. I personally don't have a problem with this given that I made a character who's explicitly devoid of plans, goals, or any kind of persistent family/social connections. I'd guess Knight gets a lopsided amount of my interest, but it's hard for it to be otherwise: the inexperienced construct/sentient tool/artificial lifeform puzzling out the business of life is a massively favored trope in the world of the Cid. For Mari, it just makes Knight an object of curiosity (and potential mischief). Perhaps more importantly, though, Knight's the only other girl in the group now. It's natural in-character and out for me to stick to Knight like glue.

This is a roundabout way of saying I have trouble being objective here.

Nikkolai: I think I said to Dune a while back that Mari views Nikkolai as basically a very confused stray puppy that wandered into her yard. This mostly holds true, though he's getting better. I don't know where Mari would be without her whipping boy (she would probably have 50% less dialogue). It should be interesting to see next session how he reacts to being found. Hopefully we can make this a constructive discussion that draws in the whole group?

In terms of gameplay, I kinda feel guilty asking him to cast haste at the start of every damn fight, but it helps us so much.

5. How do you feel overall about your character's mechanics?

Mari's pretty one-dimensional, really. She lives and dies on SA damage. Basically the only thing she can contribute in a fight as her offense without it is worthless and she has no real tricks. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; it's actually sort of appropriate given that she's all about avoiding fights in the first place whenever possible. It does mean I want to do everything I can to boost it, though, even if it costs in overall survivability.

Inner Fire was a neat bonus and the sort of thing I suspect I'll be going for both in and out of character from now on. Switching species might seem entertaining now that she's (mostly) past the shock of it happening unexpectedly. Given Mari's apparent refusal to settle down anywhere, it seems appropriate that she take a little of each plane with her when she leaves. God only knows what she'll look like by the end of the game if she lives long enough for it. One day she WILL be Captain Planet.

[Dracos]

Captain Mari~  She's a Hero, Gonna take the planes down to zero... :P

Anyhow, I'd like to be misreading, but I don't think I am.  :(  I am terrible about stressing over such things when it sort of feels like a swat I can't meaningfully do anything about.  Positively terrible about over reacting to subtle overtures.

The basics is that this got fired out as a raw comment from ko weeks ago and has been going up and down around since then and its exhausting and I start begrudging it. :(  I'm tired of it, which is why I groaned at hearing the opinion poll because it felt poisoned.  SOrry dune for being so hypercritical really.

Oddly my guess that it'd not matter to cid was on (Thanks cid).  And you're totally right that I should take more social initiative.  I'll try to do so.  I probably should just go with a different social theme as the ones I've chosen simply aren't flying and I'm not being inquisitive enough.  I had decided kamvakua wasn't going to be a chatter box, but effectively being the silent wise type just is working pretty terribly anyway.

[Dracos]

aside, collective apology for being an oversensitive ass.  General vibe or not, I dislike spreading misery.

[Anastasia]

It's cool Drac. I wanted feedback and I got it. I did have the impression you weren't happy and it was making something of a downward spiral.

[VySaika]

I've tried to make it clear both here and in the couple times we've chatted in PM that I at least don't really care if you mop up combats like Jackie Chan in a janitor uniform while I plink away with single digit MMs. So long as I can contribute *something* to the party, which I can in the form of aggressive AC whoring and scouting and such, I'm fine. I'm hoping that all got through, but I'm guessing it probably didn't. Sorry if I was adding to the negative vibes at all.

And I will admit that the quiet part is entirely me. Typing is awkward for me, I don't think with my fingers at all, and I type so slowly that I swear 80% of the time when I finally get a line nearly finished, whoever I was about to respond to has moved on so I just delete it. This all boils down to "I don't talk much in online games". I can try to talk more, though.