Odds and ends

[Merc]

merged Ves's arrival into the 24th then.

[Anastasia]

Thanks, Merc.

As for the safe? In the couple of thousands range. I'd have to do some math on it and that's just a casual guess. I'll do the number crunching and get back to you tomorrow.

[Yuthirin]

Cool.

[Anastasia]

Okay, Complete Scoundrel notes a false bottom is 50 marks. Let's go with that for the base price of having a hidden safe. The safe itself depends a lot on the quality of lock on it.  Check here and let me know what type of lock you want. http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/equipment.htm Beyond that there will be a price for the safe itself, which depends on how big a safe you want. For the sake of simplicity, do you want a particularly big or small safe?

Finally the Arcane Lock enchantment would need to be attuned to Arachiel. I'm going to assign this a value of 500 marks, purely fiat. So I'd be looking around a thousand marks all added up, pending your replies.

[Yuthirin]

I was thinking 1' by 1', just to hold my golds while not home. If I'm going to be leaving 5k or more at home, there's gotta be more than a wooden door keeping people from my hoard.

After all, if people are willing to stab me in the street, they're probably willing to rob me, too!

[Yuthirin]

And if it's going to cost that much, let's go whole hog. Superior quality.

[Anastasia]

Let's call it an even 1,000 marks then. If you want that, post it in loot.

[Yuthirin]

Alrighty.

[Ebiris]

Just realised I gave Veserya 8hp for level 1 instead of the 10 she was entitled to for being a bard/fighter. Corrected now.

[Anastasia]

Right-o. More HP is always good.

[Anastasia]

I'm looking at how combat works and toying around with a few things. Do you guys have any suggestions on combat? Ways to spice it up, make it flow better or anything like that are appreciated.

In unrelated news, there will be a full Feedback topic questionnaire in a month or so. Once this Senaril thing has had some time to settle I feel like we're due. Right now I feel like that would dominate replies, and we've been over it already. No sense in retreading ground.

[Corwin]

I would appreciate the tactical combat situation being clearer. I already commented on what can make it more fun if you're actually in combat (the various combat options like grapple/bullrush/disarm/trip/etc) and it seems like between myself, Eb and you pitching in, there's a solid enough idea to test in a couple battles. I'm talking about AoOs not stopping the combat maneuvers, and to me looks like it could work.

What I am talking about the tactical situation, then, means the overall board. If we were playing in person, we could have possibly had an actual board and figurines and distances. Too much of the math can be a drag, but not enough of it precludes coming up with an effective battle plan beyond 'we charge' or 'we hold', too, right? Because we are still limited by movement speed and by reach and by spell range and aura radius and all that stuff. To give a more specific example, the goons we fought in the puzzle dungeon that we could only damage from one side? That's something that would be neat to have, but it also requires careful attention to positioning. If you can always be positioned to hit the right spot upon a 5ft move, there's little need to think about it or plot, yeah? Likewise, knowing the distance between enemies in a spread helps, because it means the difference between a charge and a full attack upon 5ft step. Knowing the distances and positioning for us helps know who is covered by what defensive radiuses, and who can be affected by them. Now, if things were this detailed all the time, I don't doubt it would be a drag. But from time to time, or on key details, it would keep things more interesting for me.

Another suggestion is filling the combat area with objects we can interact with. The way this usually happens is with obstacles. So there can be a table between you and the enemy archer, and you can't charge him. You have to either go around (and use your action on that), or roll Jump to vault over the table, say. I think it would be fun if there were objects we could use favorably as well. For example, if leaping over the table gave you a circumstantial bonus. You did, after all, navigate an obstacle and even if they would expect flying death from above, it might still intimidate them enough to give you a slight advantage. Or, to go on an entirely different vein, if there is a boiling pot on the stove, and flinging it at the enemy is actually combat-effective. It could act like a grease effect on the ground for a round, say, or blind them briefly or what not. Cool actions are always nice, but I think that in a system like D&D people would take combat actions that are justifiable (ie, combat actions that contribute to your side winning). So they have to be viable mechanically, since if you repay 'stunting' you get more of it and have more fun. If, on the other hand, stunting delivers an outcome far inferior to a full attack with a sword or axe (or even to a charge or a blast of Magic Missile), people have an incentive not to do it.

[Anastasia]

Another suggestion is filling the combat area with objects we can interact with. The way this usually happens is with obstacles. So there can be a table between you and the enemy archer, and you can't charge him. You have to either go around (and use your action on that), or roll Jump to vault over the table, say. I think it would be fun if there were objects we could use favorably as well. For example, if leaping over the table gave you a circumstantial bonus. You did, after all, navigate an obstacle and even if they would expect flying death from above, it might still intimidate them enough to give you a slight advantage. Or, to go on an entirely different vein, if there is a boiling pot on the stove, and flinging it at the enemy is actually combat-effective. It could act like a grease effect on the ground for a round, say, or blind them briefly or what not. Cool actions are always nice, but I think that in a system like D&D people would take combat actions that are justifiable (ie, combat actions that contribute to your side winning). So they have to be viable mechanically, since if you repay 'stunting' you get more of it and have more fun. If, on the other hand, stunting delivers an outcome far inferior to a full attack with a sword or axe (or even to a charge or a blast of Magic Missile), people have an incentive not to do it.

There is a mechanic to do things like this. I brought Dirty Trick in for just that reason, but no one's shown any interest in it yet.

[Merc]

In regards to Cor's mention of circumstancial bonuses for leaping over a table or such, you could look at the Iron Heroes book and some of the rules it has on combat challenges and stunts.

They're pretty generic, but it does give a few more options in combat by letting you modify your attack/defense to get bonuses elsewhere or use skill checks to get circumstancial benefits or inflict some penalty on your target.

On stunts though, while I like what they do, having GM'ed with them I would point out that they're incredibly easy to use/abuse and have little drawback. While I'm fairly sure the idea behind the rules is to use them once in a while, as they're currently written they encourage using them all the time instead. You'd probably want to adjust them a bit if you consider adopting them.

[Corwin]

There is a mechanic to do things like this. I brought Dirty Trick in for just that reason, but no one's shown any interest in it yet.

Because you get AoOd if you use it now without taking on the feats that let you forgo that, right?