Random DM nagging.

[Ebiris]

On the subject of Bel being our BBEG I will say this: Remember how in Balmuria 1 we always wanted to liberate/redeem Zariel? This is a fantastic opportunity!

[Anastasia]

On the subject of Bel being our BBEG I will say this: Remember how in Balmuria 1 we always wanted to liberate/redeem Zariel? This is a fantastic opportunity!

This.

I don't want to sound like I'm coming down on your guys too hard here. I'm hoping for things like this - reactions and working with it, not saying how it's impossible you'll ever win. Instead of seeing it as a problem you can't beat, see it as something you're going to work towards conquering. I'm giving you guys a tall order with the explicit understanding that I want you guys to take it, work with it and kick ass. You have an entire game ahead of you, saying something is impossible at game start is fallacious and foolish.

Imagine if I told Cor that at the start of Balmuria 1 your ultimate goal would be to defeat Agares or Glaciante Devarim. Instead of going and playing the game to reach that point, you dig in and say it's impossible. That's what bothers me. Instead of embracing a chance to be awesome and heroic, you're fretting it away and complaining it's not fair. I said the same thing about Shar awhile back - the ultimate goal isn't to make everything all emo and to make it impossible, it's to give you something to fight against and be awesome about. Seira and Alicia have Shar as an enemy to have something to rise against, rally Creation and ultimately destroy her(hopefully). You guys have Abigor and by extension Bel for the same reason. It's your chance to take things, work towards a goal and kick ass.

That's what I want out of you guys.

[Yuthirin]

-That it was a world where Good has won bothers me. I think it kinda ties into http://www.soulriders.net/forum/index.php/topic,101114.msg1023314.html#msg1023314 for me. Is anything we do meaningless? Say we save the world. Does it just mean a few hundred years down the line it'll happen again? Even though it was a virtual paradise, Bel (almost) personally invaded it, and only the natives fought to defend it. Does the Side of Good invade Evil-controlled worlds to turn them into paradises? Does it defend worlds directly challenged by Hell? The implied answers to these questions are very troubling for me.

The eternal struggle against good and evil is just that, eternal. Peace doesn't last. We had it for a while. I say "we" in that our characters enjoyed it right up until we started playing them. Let's go get it back!

-The starting position is right after the disaster. I imagined it to be more in the sense of Titan A.E. or any number of similar settings (where a timeskip took place after the disaster, and the survivors tried to rebuild their lives in exile). Our chars are shaped by those experiences and driven by the need to do something, but it is not an all-consuming, ever-pressing need. I can chill out in a bar on Astral and have a drink without thinking that OH GOD THE LESS FORTUNATE ARE STILL BEING SLAUGHTERED AS I WAIT. The war is still going on and I ran away and every moment that passes innocents die. So does it mean innocents won't be dying 10 years down the line? 20 years? Hardly. But it would mean that the war is over and that we lost, and the sense of urgency diminishes and allows us to be less singularly focused on one thing and one thing only.

I really agree with this. Some time to settle wherever we are and really come together on this would be much more plausible and would feel more, I dunno, organic? Refugees coming together over the course of a few years or so would make sense! Everybody getting dumped into one place all at the same time feels a bit contrived, to be honest. Give us something to really tie us together! Granted, getting Willim to go and hit things for fun and profit won't be that hard.

That thing is impossible.

Nah, we've got this. It'll be hard, but I'll bet we can do it. Even gods can die, as WoTC has so helpfully pointed out with their "novels." I'm an optimist, though.

-Minor gripe, but wouldn't it be cooler to meet up IC instead of having us already be a group? It would feel more natural to me to get to know my pals for real instead of having to be told OOC that here, these are your pals. It ties a lot into the timeskip issue, too.

I can actually go either way on this.

Rather than our world being one that fought the good fight and righteously kicked evil butt only to suddenly get it's own ass kicked ten times harder a few centuries later, having it be 'innocent' might work better. If you've ever played Dungeon Keeper you hopefully visualise it clearly, but basically make it a world that hasn't had to fight evil before. Or for another analogue, compare any 'Aliens invade modern day Earth' movie with any 'Interstellar Space Federation War Space Opera' movie. In the first Earth has no experience fighting these things, and thus it's no surprise it got taken down so quickly and easily, since it also has no space-borne allies. Maybe it's a world like Balmuria's used to be before those seals started getting broken, or like a 'nice' mirror to Dark Sun - basically cut off from the planes. There are legends and such, and characters such as ourselves indicate some level of contact, but it's basically not a part of life there.

Now there's an interesting idea. A paradise, never knowing real conflict, that was easily overrun by the hordes of Hell. I could believe that. Sure, Lifasa may have had minor banditry and evil before, but never, you know, evil empires or warring kingdoms.

I strongly agree that we need a 'the war's over, Jonny' vibe rather than a press for an immediate rally and counterattack. A timeskip works well for that, and it gives nice opportunities to roleplay either unwavering hope no matter how long it takes, or being dispirited and thinking it's all over before finding something to believe in again. I don't think it should be a huge timeskip of the sort that we could fully build new lives within, but a couple of months to a year could be enough.

Echoing what Corwin said, and I'm behind this as well.

Maybe when it starts we're all on plane X for whatever reason - passing through, looking for something, have already settled there, and we all hear rumours of other survivors from our world, prompting us to meet up. Then upon seeing fellow badass dudes it's easy to start thinking "Know what? We can do something!" Maybe one of us already has a lead on something that can kick us off on our first adventure and lead towards finding our mobile fortress?

Yeah, we gotta get ourselves an old, broken-down, dilapidated demiplane to work with here!

Imagine if I told Cor that at the start of Balmuria 1 your ultimate goal would be to defeat Agares or Glaciante Devarim. Instead of going and playing the game to reach that point, you dig in and say it's impossible. That's what bothers me. Instead of embracing a chance to be awesome and heroic, you're fretting it away and complaining it's not fair. I said the same thing about Shar awhile back - the ultimate goal isn't to make everything all emo and to make it impossible, it's to give you something to fight against and be awesome about. Seira and Alicia have Shar as an enemy to have something to rise against, rally Creation and ultimately destroy her(hopefully). You guys have Abigor and by extension Bel for the same reason. It's your chance to take things, work towards a goal and kick ass.

This. We now have this super powerful bad guy ahead of us, along with the idea of "Hey, how in the heck did they get into Lifasa anyhow?" kind of question that we should really be examining. I think there's a lot of potential for a good, strong comeback from the ropes for this. We're beaten, bloodied, and we've lost he war. It doesn't mean we can't start a new one. Abigor isn't an insurmountable enemy, and I personally don't believe Bel is either. If it has HP, it can be killed. BTW, I still think Shar needs a spanking.

[Corwin]

Let's skip a couple years and end up coming together on Plane X?

[Yuthirin]

Sounds groovy.

[Anastasia]

Okay, I'll tweak the story so far tonight or tomorrow to account for a time skip.

---

<Merc> Out of curiosity, is the planar stuff starting at roughly same time as balmuria 2 ends year-wise?
<Merc> or different time frame?
> Probably a little past Balmuria 2's end - a couple of years to a decade-ish. Let me post that. It won't matter much vis-a-vis since you wouldn't be using the same time scale, so it's all relative.

As far as it goes this really doesn't matter, but for self-reference. There weren't any huge planar events during Balmuria 2's run that came up.

[Anastasia]

NAG ALERT! NAG ALERT!

What world and planar information do you guys want? I'm preparing a general info post for you guys, so let me know!

[Yuthirin]

Holy Jesus Nipples.

WELL. Let's look at our handy dandy planar cosmology, shall we?


What about Limbo?

[Anastasia]

A planar write up and tourguide is on the agenda now.

[Corwin]

Posting here since you wanted me to, Dune. It's not really crucial, but there is an item I want for style reasons.

There is an Efficient Quiver (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/wondrousItems.htm#efficientQuiver) that lets you store weapons and ammunition and retrieve them normally as if from a regular quiver (meaning with a move action/combining a move action with it). There is a Glove of Storing (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/wondrousItems.htm#gloveofStoring) that lets you store and retrieve a weapon as a free action (or, presumably, swap between two weapons this way) but it limited to this 1/2 weapons configuration and has a weight limit. There is a Bag of Holding (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/wondrousItems.htm#bagofHolding) which doesn't have any limitations weight-wise that would impede me, and retrieving items from it is either a move or a full round action, depending on item size. Then, there is the Calling enchantment for armors that lets you summon your armor onto your person from the same plane (I think as standard action?). You also added the Recalling enchantment that does the same thing but in reverse.

Basically, I want one thing to do it all. Or, at least, one thing for armors and one thing for weapons. I think it's cooler to snap your fingers and be clad in your awesome armor than it would be to take it out of your bag of holding and then use Calling on it, even if the actual times were the same. And, of course, I'd be interested in quicker times if possible, and willing to pay for that. An efficient quiver that works at the speed and efficiency (pun unintended) of a glove of storing would be pretty awesome, even if realistically it shouldn't actually change much in the game (since my primary weapon is stored into my glove anyway).

[Merc]

Ditto on requests for reposting stuff:

My bow has the force property, which still requires ammunition and grants them the force property rather than just generating arrows out of force. How much would it cost so it -could- just generate arrows out of pure force?

[Yuthirin]

Sounds like a radiant energy bow.

[Anastasia]

Note for myself when I get here: Add rulings to house rules.

[Anastasia]

Holy Jesus Nipples.

WELL. Let's look at our handy dandy planar cosmology, shall we?

What about Limbo?

Planar writeup is coming. You can go review the fluff posting in Balmuria 2 about the planes for some details in the meantime. I suspect this'll take me a day or two to write up, depending on how other things go?

[Anastasia]

Posting here since you wanted me to, Dune. It's not really crucial, but there is an item I want for style reasons.

There is an Efficient Quiver (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/wondrousItems.htm#efficientQuiver) that lets you store weapons and ammunition and retrieve them normally as if from a regular quiver (meaning with a move action/combining a move action with it). There is a Glove of Storing (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/wondrousItems.htm#gloveofStoring) that lets you store and retrieve a weapon as a free action (or, presumably, swap between two weapons this way) but it limited to this 1/2 weapons configuration and has a weight limit. There is a Bag of Holding (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/wondrousItems.htm#bagofHolding) which doesn't have any limitations weight-wise that would impede me, and retrieving items from it is either a move or a full round action, depending on item size. Then, there is the Calling enchantment for armors that lets you summon your armor onto your person from the same plane (I think as standard action?). You also added the Recalling enchantment that does the same thing but in reverse.

Basically, I want one thing to do it all. Or, at least, one thing for armors and one thing for weapons. I think it's cooler to snap your fingers and be clad in your awesome armor than it would be to take it out of your bag of holding and then use Calling on it, even if the actual times were the same. And, of course, I'd be interested in quicker times if possible, and willing to pay for that. An efficient quiver that works at the speed and efficiency (pun unintended) of a glove of storing would be pretty awesome, even if realistically it shouldn't actually change much in the game (since my primary weapon is stored into my glove anyway).

I'd price something like that around 20 to 30k? It depends a lot on how you design it. Write up the item and I'll price it. I'm thinking in the range of 25k, but it would depend somewhat on how it's phrased and set up.