A chatter/gossip board :P Always should be one.
Anyhow, at a glance at our characters, the generic statement that saving throw type enemies are going to be weaker than normal seems true. I'd bet anything without an hp buff will probably have trouble sticking around. Single enemy type setups are going to be much more fragile than usual due to the high amount of team tier buffs that happen in that case (Everyone at least getting +5 or +6 to hit for instance). We've got a large ac difference going on, so anything likely to hit me is going to nail the others frequently (27-10=+17 for a 50 percent. 17 versus a 20 ac means only a 3 is needed). So a variety of enemies may assist there as well.
Arcane magic is non-existent in our repetoire, so the classical batman problem of preparation won't exist likely. What we've got won't be super flexible based on what we know. We're a generally short range group. I should put a bow on but mostly we vastly drop in effectiveness on anything 40 feet out. Our party tends to have very good hp for this level, so it should be fine with enemies that can do about 15 or so a hit. High mobility will probably serve well as it hits at my weak point, and none of us are particularly mobility fiends, but we've got a surprising number of teleport things as well.
Counters would generally involve some degree of ranged and melee folks. Possibly some arcane stuff. None of us can fly, but at level 6, that's a very rare thing to see and I don't think it will appear at any time anyway. Fire resistance is more valuable than normal with desert wind in play offering a lot of fire attacks.
Anyhow, let's see, randomness. Debuff spells have a lot of potential. Lots of mobile enemies to split us up and avoid full attacks and flanking. Generally, at least 10 enemies.
nyum.
Your AC is insane for the level. Really, that is the only thing I can say on that.
And that is why I am thinking of taking that PrC, to expand my magic selection to something potentially more useful; it still won't match an actual arcane blaster, but it would be better regardless.
Also thinking of maybe making an arcane character, seeing as we've got roguish-types up the wazoo. Or not. Still undecided..
Yeah, it's really surprising we have no full arcane caster, given that hey, no arcane spell failure from armor due to class defense.
I'm actually messing with a warblade/wizard/bladestorm blade build to replace crusader maybe (depends on what Zeph plays too, I guess).
Navi's earlier question about warforged composite plating trait and warforged body feats actually becomes relevant if so, though.
One of the things I'm playing around with for that is a warforged if I did that, so wondering how that'd fit against the class defense bonus.
It's kinda lame right now because warforged have to deal with a 5% ASF from it, and being armor, I'd assume it doesn't stack with class defense bonus, so existence of spell failure in a game with class defense bonus just bites big time. And really, who in their right mind would take that Unarmored Body feat that's recommended for casters? You have to PAY a feat to LOSE armor? What the flippity fuck? Who was the genius at WotC that thought that beauty up?
I do like my crusader build too, so I might stick with it instead of switching to warblade. Warblade is more of a "well, how many crusaders -do- we have, anyhow?" thing, since I think Zeph was thinking of a sorcerer caster (which has synergy with crusader), and you have a bard/crusader. Three crusaders seems a bit much, especially since I'm focusing on devoted spirit and you're on white raven. That just leaves being stoned for Zeph.
Roguish type isn't really a big deal however, as Drac is the only traditional rogue type, with sneak attack and stealth-mode camoflauge. You're a bard, so you're a generalist with leadership buffs/manuevers, and I'm a only a rogue in the sense of skill numbers, otherwise I'm almost purely a tank (and sadly, Drac has +1 AC, despite me having better manuevers/feats for tanking).
Also, if Navi decides to go the arcane caster route instead, I'll probably switch changeling combat rogue for shifter bard to go with crusader.
Right now we should probably wait and see what Rin and Zeph plan on though. Rin hasn't updated his sheet in a good while (he is still using armor instead of class defense) and he was originally planning a tank I think (not sure though, since his character has low/average CON). And Zeph is probably still looking through book.
Will they be done by sunday? =/
Additional note in case you didn't notice in IRC, Drac: You don't get the racial halfling rogue substitution level anymore, since you're not a rogue. So no Thief's Luck. =)
Also, you have Jump as having a dex bonus instead of the str penalty in your skill ranks.
Magic boots for the jump thing.
Good point for the thief's luck thing.
I'm technically not a rogue really at all anymore. I'm almost pure fighter type.
Wait, only +1 AC now?
Whee, I don't feel so guilty anymore about being ridiculously over party AC~
Yeah, I forgot to take multiclassing into account when I did my class defense bonus. It upped my armor class by two points.
And you're still ridiculous. You're the highest damage and defense (in particular, higher than the two shield-tanks), and pretty damn high health.
To be fair, that's due to the fact that class defense bonus renders "max dexterity bonus" penalty obsolete, and you're a dexterity build with no restrictions on that while essentially wearing plate.
Yup. I'm a single attribute fighter. The limitation I would've had being armor vanished, and instead of having something equal to it, your own suggestion to go fighter instead of rogue had me wearing plate.
Given, for those 3 points of AC, I'm way more vulnerable to spells, flatfootedness, etc, but that's a for now thing since swordsage gets those rogue benefits eventually
Yeah, waiting to see Zeph's build 'fore I decide to switch over; thankfully, can butcher all the flavor text of my current character over to a caster with relatively little changing.
And if he does take a full castah, I will probably not worry about a PrC to expand casting capabilities at the cost of buffs; dat's kinda my thang.
Jon did a quickie mod of the Warforged class.
<Jon> ok. warforged don't have built-in armor. they're also no longer immune to poison, sleep, etc. they can heal normally, but don't get benefits from repair wounds.
<Merc> I assume that they remain vulnerable to rust and the wood/metal affecting spells, correct? Just for healing purposes, they don't have a problem with healing spells and don't benefit from repair spells.
<Jon> yes
<Merc> *nods*
<Jon> that's my best quick attempt at a balanced conversion of 4e warforged to 3.5e
<Jon> oh, and you give up the slam attack
<Jon> (that's from the built-in armor)
Was okay with it at first, but in hindsight, not sure if it's balanced. Still have light fortification, true, but also have two ability penalties, and overall it feels like it's weaker than a dwarf. Given that we're not really dealing with food stuff and I've never really seen a character end up right between 0 and -10 and having stability concerns, those abilities don't feel particularly worthwhile in comparison to what other LA+0 classes get with one good stat and one bad stat, and here a warforged has two bad ones. Also, light fortification would probably also come from built-in armor, so feels weird to keep it without some sort of built-in armor, but if you add some armor, race starts becoming too good instead.
***
Warforged
Racial Traits:
* +2 Constitution, -2 Wisdom: Warforged are resilient, but are only recently starting to experience life outside of waging war. As such, they sometimes take actions that are less than wise.
* Living Construct Subtype (Ex): Warforged are medium-sized constructs that have been given sentience and free will. As a result of powerful and complex enchantments, they have evolved into creatures that combine aspects of both constructs and humanoid creatures, as detailed below.
~ Warforged lack most of the traits normal to constructs. For example, they have a constitution score, they do not gain low-light vision, darkvision or immunities, and they can be raised or ressurected, etc.
~ Warforged do not need to eat, sleep or breathe, and require. Although they do not need sleep, they must still rest before preparing spells. Similar to elves, warforged can meditate for 4 hours, and gain the same benefit as other creatures having rested for 8 hours.
~ As living constructs, warforged can be affected by spells and effects that target either living creatures or constructs, whether helpful or harmful.
~ When a warforged's hit points drop below 0, but remain greater than -10, a warforged automatically stabilizes as he goes 'inert'.
~ Warforged gain a +2 racial bonus on intimidate checks, but suffer a -2 penalty on diplomacy checks. Their difficulty in relating to other creatures makes them seem aloof or even hostile.
~ The mind of a warforged does not work like a living creature's, granting them a +2 racial bonus on Will saves.
~ The plating used to build a warforged provides them with a +1 natural armor bonus.
*Automatic Languages: Common. Bonus Languages: None.
*Favored Class: A warforged's favored class fits whatever role it was built to fullfill. YOu may choose any one class as the warforge'd favored class, but once you make this choice, you cannot change it.
***
Thoughts:
-I actually considered keeping -2 Cha instead of -2 Wis, but then they'd be too much like dwarves. Regardless, if warforged is losing a lot of stuff like composite plating, light fortification, slam attack, and all the immunities it had, it needs some less suck. Reducing it to just one penalty stat is getting there, and it's closer in line with other races. Alternatively, could have added a +2 Str, since the original description for the racial ability mods states warforged are 'powerful'. Still, having two good and two bad stats seemed a bit much. Seems better to have one good and one bad instead, with some minor bonuses like most other LA+0 races.
-Repair spells use d8 instead of Cure spell's d6, so it's just on average +1 HP per spell rank, and you can't say, metamagic chain the spell to hit 2+ allies unless there's a group of warforged in party. They are still vulnerable to stuff like disable construct, heat/chill metal, repel metal/stone/wood, rust spells, etc. Wouldn't say repair spells are overpowered then, in fact they kinda lose more than they gain here due to the number of vulnerabilities. Minor penalty then.
-Warforged don't really sleep, so needing to rest for 8 hours to prepare spells seemed weird. Hey, if elves can do it in 4 hours, so can they. It's really more flavor than really helpful anyhow, unless a DM plans on a lot of nightly ambushes, and even then, warforged suck at perception unlike elves. Minor upgrade then.
-The skill effects added essentially cancel themselves out balance-wise, but reflect the race's status in eberron realm as a creature of war, while also reflecting how they have trouble relating to other races. Seemed decent replacement for losing charisma penalty in terms of flavor, and doesn't really break balance in any way.
-Light fortification and the immunities are pretty darn good. Not sure if the removal of cha penalty and getting +2 will saves and +1 natural armor is a good balance for that, but it seemed to fit, so something to play with there maybe. Natural armor is still not 'great', as it's just +1 bonus, bu it doesn't interfere with class defense bonus, and even though you can't get bracers of natural armor, you could get something else in that arms slot instead really. +2 will saves also seems reasonable when considering halflings get a +1 to all saves (so a total +3). If you assume the other racial traits are balanced to give no overall benefit, then these are the ones to compare to other classes. I'd actually say they're just a little bit weaker than some other LA+0 races, but they get a lot of varied stuff, so it feels okay.
-As I'm considering playing warforged and designed this modification, I might be biased about it's balance in relation to other core classes like elf, dwarf, shifter, etc. I do think it's fairly balanced, but would like thoughts from other players and Jon.
Other non-racial thoughts/changes:
-Remove feats: Adamantine Boy, Ironwood Body, Mithral Body, Unarmored Body, Second Slam. They don't really make sense anymore.
-Modify feats: Improved Fortification now requires BAB+10 and Fortified Plating feat. Since you don't get light fortification as a racial, it seems obvious this would have to either be removed or modified. I chose to modify it, by increasing the level at which you can get it (from +6 to +10, and requiring a new feat being added to represent the light fortification).
-New feat: Fortified Plating (requires Warforged and BAB+4), improves natural armor by +1 and gives 25% chance to avoid critical strikes or sneak attacks. As mentioned, just getting straight out immunity would be overpowered probably. Since the BAB of the prior ability was raised by four, made this require BAB+4. I figured this would give the light fortification effect, but seemed a little weak to only give the equivalent of a +1 enhancement (1000gp) for a feat, given feat economy. Since it was originally due to plating, makes sense to 'improve' the racial plating by making the +1 NAC into +2 NAC. Since you can't get it at level 1, either, it doesn't seem overpowered either. By level 4 if you were another race with good BAB, you'd be able to afford the same effects as magic items, and have a feat free unlike a warforged, so trade-off seems decent for power.
15:41 Merc Hey Drac. You have any goldilock comments on the warforged thing? Powerful, weak, just right?
15:42 Merc Also, Zeph: Go work on your character if you're going to join. Game is sunday, you know. =p
15:42 Dracos_at_work mmm.
15:42 Dracos_at_work I'd say borderline too weak.
15:42 Dracos_at_work I dunno, +1 NA is pretty nice.
15:43 Dracos_at_work But it seems there's almost too little benefits going on.
15:43 Dracos_at_work I'd toss a skill thing, or that 25 percent fortification thing or something.
15:43 Dracos_at_work Not anything big, just a small boost.
15:43 Dracos_at_work Preferrably not combat related.
15:44 Merc No, the fortification thing feels like it'd be too big a boost. And yeah, I did feel it was a bit weaker than normal, but wanted opinions before I tried boosting it.
15:44 Dracos_at_work Like perhaps a +4 on opposed Sense Motive: Warforged are foreign and difficult to get a read on due to their ability to simply lock their mechanical faces?
15:45 Dracos_at_work On a random thought, I suspect my build will make fortification more common in this game than any game I've ever seen.
15:45 Merc I was thinking going with something similar to what they get in 4e. They can attach/embed things into their body, making it harder to disarm them, and they have bonuses to sleigh of hand on concealed weapons and such.
15:46 Dracos_at_work Yeah, both of those are kinda reasonable.
15:46 Dracos_at_work I'd still error on the side of non-combat type bonuses to bring it up to average
15:46 Dracos_at_work Dwarves for instance get stone sense type stuff and poison resistance.
15:47 Merc Yeah, I don't want to really tread on the dwarves' toes though. Which is part of why I stuck to the -2 wis instead of -2cha.
15:47 Dracos_at_work I agree there.
15:47 Dracos_at_work Technically, dwarfs have an extra disad in movement speed.
15:48 Dracos_at_work and I suppose you do as well in vulnerability to additional spells
15:49 Merc Yeah, I'm mostly using dwarf as guide on balancing race, but at same time don't want to be too similar.
My thoughts.
*laughs* "Warning - while you were typing a new reply has been posted. You may wish to review your post."
I look, and go "Wait...that's what I'm posting. No wait...the times are wrong, they're two hours back. Oh, posted by Dracos."
Anyhow...Can't really think of anything not really combat-ish for a warforged race though...
Also, hrm...3.5e actually has warforged attach/embed rules already.
Boss/Setting info? :3
*is slow at writing background, more time is welcome to do it*
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=133619 <-- Interesting thread on artificer question that I hadn't thought of.
Note that I would probably take the warforged racial substitution "Tools of War" instead of "Craft Homunculus" (though I might grab Craft Construct at a later level, although unlikely) if I switched to playing artificer.
Still, the question about how early level craft reserve pool is handled is interesting. The first reply's suggested answer is interesting, but feels overpowered. The one by DuskEclipse/Zagan seems interesting and more balanced.
Is someone actually playing an artificer?
I am considering it, Drac. I might stop if Jon starts crying and telling me to stick to captain america because it's making him work too much though, what with the warforged and the artificer and oy vey... =)
But yeah, I was considering warforged artificer 6//warblade 6. Which is part of what has been bringing up warforged and artificer questions. Warforged, I'd take even with a charisma suck, as long as the rest of racials don't suck too much, hence questions there. Artificer looks interesting, and hey, when in rome (or eberron as the case might be), might as well not just explore new races but also explore the new class I've never really seen before.
Plus, really, I built 'captain america' build, mostly as an expected tank, but a tank isn't really -needed-, per se, so I'm leaning more and more hat route.
I'll probably stick with Kap, only if Jon decides warforged/artificer is too annoying to get it into play in gestalt or if we run out of time and it's game time, so I don't have a choice.
Artificers are nice, although they tend to lack combat-use with the casting length of their infusions (at least, I think I recall their infusions casting in minutes rather than actions; will checka). They get some nice abilities, though, not limited to the XP pool for crafting. And the reduction crafting feats are affordable when you get the crafting feats for free.
Debating if I should make a full caster, then, or not? Basically, leaving it up to you lot.
Play whatever you want. =)
And a lot of infusions are 1 round or 1 standard action. The -good- ones such as weapon enhancement, are all one minute, though.
Which you can reduce to a round by either spending an action point (Ugh...) or having the Rapid Infusion feat from one of those other books that Jon put up, which allows you to do it without spending an action point 1/day, I think.
I agree, play whatever you want, though i kind of would rather not have a crafter in the party :P
But I guess they are different and I can hardly rebuke someone doing that in this kind of game :3
*sniffs* If I play one, I totally won't make any items for you. Only for Navi and Rin. =p
Quote from: Merc on December 03, 2009, 12:57:23 AM
Play whatever you want. =)
And a lot of infusions are 1 round or 1 standard action. The -good- ones such as weapon enhancement, are all one minute, though.
Which you can reduce to a round by either spending an action point (Ugh...) or having the Rapid Infusion feat from one of those other books that Jon put up, which allows you to do it without spending an action point 1/day, I think.
You are the opposite of helpful. I'm indecisive by nature, hense placing the decision out of my hands. I have a wizard mostly made (excepting equipment; didn't want to do that at 9 in the morning with no sleep when I was finishing the character up).
Huh. At least they have really long durations, though. Makes the buffs somewhat more appealing. And frees up spells for other casters!
3.5e warforged do still have warforged components. check the books.
That warforged writeup is approved, Merc.
If you want to play an artificer, you can make items using the 'previous levels' craft reserve. If you do so, however, 20% of the points you use must be spent on consumable items, which will be thrown away, to represent partial use during the adventures you've presumably had. (You still have to pay the gold cost for these thrown-away ones.) And, of course, since the reserve doesn't carry over between levels, you start with no more than 150 reserve points.
Given your occupation, you may expect people to try to stop you from achieving your objectives. In cities, many of these people will basically be rent-a-cops (when they're not the city guard). I think it would be beneficial for you players to decide your attitude towards lethal damage in such cases, now rather than later.
I'm a hired killer to my plan. I deal with problems for my employers.
I'm jotting up a background regarding that. Given we're working for a city lord, I assume that even when we kill folks, we'll have a safe haven to return to, and that absolutely, folks might be hostile.
Of course with rep, folks who are hostile and do recognize us on sight might not want to tango with us. They might rather want to not meet our eyes and hope we don't stab them to death. They might instead generally send off for local big bads to take us out. Whatever. :)
Sim probably wouldn't care much either way; on her own, she would tend toward avoidance or mind-effecting spells but she isn't going to stand in front of the homicidal halfling for some random guards; they tend to know what they are getting in to by enlisting and it isn't worth her life at the hands of a short murderer.
Quote from: Dracos on December 03, 2009, 04:37:37 PM
Given we're working for a city lord, I assume that even when we kill folks, we'll have a safe haven to return to
You're working for a pirate lord. He's rich, but very much a local power. Your "safe house" is just going to be an inn that doesn't ask too many questions about where you got the money. At least, that's the case when you're not in his town or near his sphere of control.
That sounds like a safe house to me. :)
What I meant is: I assume when we're in his terrain, we're relatively safe and when we aren't, well, we're the badass agents of a foreign crime lord. Nobody is gonna like us or want us there anyway. I wasn't even really assuming we'd get safe houses when we're outside his territory. Inns that don't ask questions is a pretty nice step up.
Quote from: Dracos on December 03, 2009, 09:18:11 PM
I wasn't even really assuming we'd get safe houses when we're outside his territory. Inns that don't ask questions is a pretty nice step up.
Well, they're relatively easy to find in the larger cities (like Sharn) or the rougher cities (like Stormreach). Might be harder in rural Breland.
Good of Session 1:
No interparty conflict right off the bat. We meshed acceptably. Way to go.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FiveBadBand We're these guys. That's hillarious and awesome.
A scenario in which we both got to kill things and approach an issue like a puzzle. We were also rewarded for treating it like a puzzle, putting a plan into play, and executing on it. Coolness. I like that kind of stuff.
An enemy encounter that wasn't, 'you are in battle, roll initiative'? Good stuff! Missable encounters? Good stuff.
A lively first session with puzzles, some intrigue, NPCs being people, and some combat action. :)
I think everyone had a good time. Can't argue with that!
someone else did loot splitting and logging and I didn't have to. That was pretty cool
Observations:
Some differences in expectation between DM and players on the mission. This went smoothly though and the DM handled it relatively well.
Incentives for performing things in a cool fashion may be nice. As opposed to penalties for slaying everything and whatnot.
I took charge like a beast from the getgo and didn't give anyone a chance really to lead. It was kind of awesome, but the opposite in a way of how I sort of intended. It felt kind of right for Alis though. What do others think on that?
You reduced xp as we steamrolled them. That's not a bad habit really. Enemies that aren't much challenge don't deserve much xp.
Naming NPCs is kind of interesting. Not sure what I take of it for flunkies really.
a full surprise round, I believe, is an effective '-2' to EL. They have that jotted down somewhere. Just for the observation anyway. I don't think it would've gone much differently without, but it might've let some of the bad guys act, instead of being dead before they got to move.
Bad of Session 1:
We didn't rob the van because we didn't have any reason to be interested in it yet, so the DM's plot there wasn't taken advantage of. We were too much into succeeding whatnot. Suggestion here is look for hooks for us to go do what you want. A letter from the boss saying to accomplish x has us accomplishing x. If it'd included 'loot what's possible' rather than leave no notice' we would've totally savaged the place, killed the guys knocking on the door in awesome fashion, and driven away on their armored truck.
Dramatic descriptions of enemy death is fun. Lack of so, not so fun. The enemies were quickly realized to be totally insufficient and the DM felt bored running them. They didn't try to run, be scared, etc.
The armored van coming up. I appreciate that it was foreshadowed, but eh, coming off a bit from other DMs that tend to use that stuff to force conflict when teams go a different way. Really just felt pet peeveish :P I'm glad no encountered ensued there caused by any sudden expectation. :)
You should've made us all work harder to surprise the halflings, and definitely shouldn't have just given us a full party surprise round. Four full round actions is a huge leg up economy wise, especially with all the enemies being flatfooted during it. I was hoping to try and get just 1 full action surprise round. I was amazed that we all got it, especially with no opposition to my sneak rolls.
Getting XP only for killing things encourages amoral killers. Sure, I'm playing one, not much of a problem, but just noted. If you would like us to keep playing other solutions, it's good to have some scenario xp representing such. We spent most of the session strategizing around and achieving a cool break in, steal, and get out. We got xp for the last few minutes of steamrolling.
We're gonna be really hard to balance enemies for. A lot of range, high damage dealing. I gave my remarks in IRC about suggestions here. The elite array was actually probably pretty clever given how twinking and gestalt boosted power otherwise.
Loot, boo. Man I'm tired of 'here's random treasure, play math until you turn it into something you care about'. Nothing on you at all, you did it totally validly. It's just something I've grown tired of. Both Merc and Dune's game being almost lootless so far have left me wondering at how awesome it is not spending x hours after every big battle sorting treasure for the party.
Adjustable economy values are cool RP things, but really painful on whoever is doing the math for the players.
Session ended short :( Prefer longer sessions.
and that's enough yammering.
Quote from: Dracos on December 07, 2009, 01:11:39 AM
Getting XP only for killing things encourages amoral killers.
We didn't truly do anything other than kill, though. Well,
you did the killing. :p I actually figured the break-in XP was rolled into the combat, considering we killed all four and took a whopping total of 2 damage.
Quote from: Dracos on December 07, 2009, 01:11:39 AM
Loot, boo.
Without personalizing hauls (which would strain credibility somewhat that they just happened to have one item of relative value for each member, etc or simply handing over a pile of gold, it is hard to avoid having loot hauls. Especially as D&D is primarily an equipment-driven system whereas Iron Heroes is not (to the degree they have an optional abstract money system once you actually hit rich).
Quote from: Dracos on December 07, 2009, 01:11:39 AM
Incentives for performing things in a cool fashion may be nice. As opposed to penalties for slaying everything and whatnot.
I second this. Ad hoc XP awards for fast-talking (and not simply a die roll, either; it is easy to fall into the trap of letting a die talk you out of a situation which strains credibility to a degree) or avoidance or even fighting with your head are a definite step in the right direction.
Quote from: Dracos on December 07, 2009, 01:11:39 AM
You should've made us all work harder to surprise the halflings, and definitely shouldn't have just given us a full party surprise round.
I was incredibly surprised that the two of us who circled around got a surprise round. And I also did Summon Monster incorrectly as they act on the round they get summoned. 'Tis not MtG.
Quote from: Dracos on December 07, 2009, 01:11:39 AM
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FiveBadBand We're these guys. That's hillarious and awesome.
You are the evil one, not us!
My thoughts:
I enjoyed the session; the intro was a little abrupt, but that can be forgiven. I would have liked more rear-end interaction with that unfortunate gnome, but I will live without.
All-around, an enjoyable game. And isn't that the true measure?
Quote from: Navilee on December 07, 2009, 01:25:20 AM
Quote from: Dracos on December 07, 2009, 01:11:39 AM
Loot, boo.
Without personalizing hauls (which would strain credibility somewhat that they just happened to have one item of relative value for each member, etc or simply handing over a pile of gold, it is hard to avoid having loot hauls. Especially as D&D is primarily an equipment-driven system whereas Iron Heroes is not (to the degree they have an optional abstract money system once you actually hit rich).
I actually really liked the salary idea because it was something that handled both the 'why do you always get gold' and abstracted away the loot concept.
Ignoring my own general gripes for a moment, there's a really good reason to want to abstract that away. It positively cripples normal humanoid opponents if you don't give them reasonable magical equipment for their level (10 percent effectiveness drop at least, more as levels go higher and your wealth is a bigger part of your character). A level 6 character with magic armor and weaponry does more damage, dodges things easier, and hits easier than one without such. But what happens if you give them reasonable magic equipment? Then the players get it afterwards and as they already have reasonable equipment, their wealth skyrockets. It's why a lot of DMs do tend toward monsterous opponents (aside from them being easier to make) because monsterous opponents are powerful without necessarily swinging around a whole set of things the players instantly get. I know, the archetype: it's really cool to see an enemy use a magic toy you'll get after the battle! but it means that wealth tends to grow quickly.
Abstracting it away means that enemies could hold more magic items and shit all the time. They can come at us with all kinds of neat stuff...and if we don't get it when they die, its not a big deal.
But I'm too whiny on loot :P
Anyhow, feedback on last session and the intermediate time:
You're an amazingly flexible DM rulewise. That's really cool. Hope that ends up resulting in a good game for all. You say you keep calibrating, and I guess you are. So far we haven't had very exciting combat though, and I think that's possibly because our enemies don't show enough intent when they have the option to and there are few of them (Equal to less than the party size).
In the game, we're perhaps being too special agent style for jon, who I think is expecting us to be more wild killing style. I know while I was quite unhappy during the first encounter, it was also that I felt I'd be interferring with the others trying to be cool. I was really quite confused at Merc's reason to not kill them right away in the OOC room, and I waited longer trying to figure out thinking the rest of the party was doing something. Anyhow, I'll kill them more frequently in the future. As merc said, I aleph'd myself. Just generally to the others, much more up to playful teasing when I'm having fun then when I'm not. Hearing jokes about it when I'm mentally going "If I stab these now, Sim won't get to do her cool swap thing she's trying to do" was really irritating :(. Anyhow, I'm rusty at playing evil and been erring on the too good side. I'll err more on the people dead side :P
As to how long it took, scenes will expand to fill the time unless they are time boxed by npcs or Dracos >_>. Well, just meaning anyhow, most players will take as long as our given. If there's no time pressure to figure something out, they will take a long time deliberating both OOC and IC about it. There should've been more risk about it. Having one of the two warforged (or having more warforged so they could do this) wander around, be able to potentially overhear, and or other pressures on not taking forever would've aided here. As it was, those guys were fixtures. They didn't move or act as people at all really outside of when we talked at them. At the least, they get to keep making checks while I'm shadowing. For them (and most), it is irrelevant, they can't roll that high, but just saying. There was lots of ways they could've added non-combat challenge into the event.
Anyhow, the second encounter started poorly in a few ways. The first of which is that, as Impulse and Alis both said ooc, there wasn't a visible value behind killing the titan outside of killing the titan. There's lots of ways to do this. Having the titan visably offense, a menace, smashing buildings and things is a good one. Just being a giant isn't quite good enough. Having such things in the way to our end objective is a lot more effective than after we've gotten it (and thus want to avoid combat because combat is the only way we get a lose condition after that point!). Any passive encounters should generally be before we hit our objective for the boss. If it isn't, then it needs some stuff to make our characters not want to skip it (We don't. I'm a combat nut :P). Other ways we could've been incentivized here IC could've been having him pass us first while we were yammering and the little one order the titan to watch and guard the lakefront and smash any boats coming in. Instant conflict of interest. He could've had him search or patrol or whatnot. Now he's a nusiance. At the distance he was at, he was an oddity and he should've closed it quickly while we were yammering.
I'm surprised as well, the two other warforged did not come outside or join in. It seemed a very reasonable side result to us not killing them earlier that they might notice fighting outside with a titan.
Somewhat disappointing was that the titan ignored terrain. When I saw it, I lead us into the nearest small alleyway. This wasn't intended as evading the combat as was luring the opponents to more favorable terrain for us. The idea here being that if the titan rushed us, there wouldn't be enough room. Maybe it was simply large, in which case it only takes 10 feet rather than 15 or 20, but it would've been neat if there was some reaction to that. Even if it was just sending the buildings skittering as it went around them or even having them collapse at us, reaction would've been nice. Sort of worried about the focus on calibration. It's going to change and frequently based on the environment really.
Anyhow, spells and save based attacks are probably a very good way to go right now for actually doing damage, especially to Alis. The risk of course with them is that they always do damage (We don't have any relevant defenses that reduce the damage to zero in the party yet for such things), so any prolonged combat with such characters is going to be brutal. With fighter types there's a miss chance. Usually with mage types that are using save or damage, save or suck, or save or die spells, it's usually a chance for rogue types to shine, but we don't have any really, and so its just damage for us. Not a bad thing (enemies should threat), but also not something that we can do anything about presently. Where possible, combat is more interesting when we've got options to do things about the setup. If we flipped it around, I'd have the titan trample Alis or Impulse the first round (and both the second) while suddenly being untargetable to the other two because they have a building in the way. This would've acknowledged the terrain effects, but also used them against us at the same time.
I suspect that the EL was probably quite high, though not quite feeling it. I'm glad you're starting to take advantage of the fact that loot doesn't have to match at all with what we encounter. The enemies could've used some of that love. I suggest the MiC book as a place to grab random low cost boosts for enemies.
Random curiousity:
Does vampiric type stuff work in the Mornlands?
You're right about all the parts where you said I did well and wrong about all the other parts. (http://files.inklesspen.com/emot/emot-smug.gif)
Quote from: Dracos on December 21, 2009, 12:58:56 PM
Does vampiric type stuff work in the Mornlands?
If by that you mean "steal HP from this other dude", then yes. Natural healing doesn't work, and spells of the healing subschool don't work. (That's where your whole 'recover HP each night' was handwaved to come from.) Other modes of HP gain, like repair damage or goodberry, still work.
Are there any kinds of world-threatening menaces (the Lords of Dust, the Dreaming Dark, the Halfling Mafia, the Tarrasque, Spelljamming Neogi, undead plague) that you guys are not interested in? Or any sorts that you prefer?
Impulse wants to fight halfling barbarians riding t-rexes and bears with warforged grafts that shoot lasers.
Other than that, he's not picky.
Quote from: Merc on January 01, 2010, 01:00:00 AM
Impulse wants to fight halfling barbarians riding t-rexes and bears with warforged grafts that shoot lasers.
Well, sure. I mean, who
doesn't?
I'd more rather be part of the halfling mafia than opposed to them really, if that wasn't evident. :P
At the moment, I think it's a bit early to be worrying about such menaces and more around what merc suggested sounds fun :P
[19:49] <GM> would you guys prefer Xen'drik or Sarlona next as a destination? Xen'drik is like Africa in pulps. Sarlona is gonna be more like China or India.
[19:49] <GM> Sarlona is also Karu's homeland
[19:49] <GM> well, a small part of it is.
[19:50] <GM> but that's the part you'd be going to
I don't really care that much, but let's say Sarlona. There better be some of those psychic guys in a wheelchair and bald for us to kick over!
Heh. Indifferent here as well... But I half wonder if both are a bad option presently...
I gotta comment on last session though. Felt it went extremely badly. Da how so? In yammer form~ Yeah, I critique harshly, sorry.
For a trend, this is two sessions in a row of nothing but combat. This might be acceptable if we were really pulling off awesome combats, but we aren't really. We're not getting a good balance really of out of combat and in combat play. And I don't just meant talking but play in which we're not actively stabbing at things. This is hurting the general invitation of combat. It's not being part of the flavor, but the entire experience.
Alis had a clash with an NPC here...that went totally non-reactive. The NPC practically brushed it off a second later, his crew was never visible save in a post combat 'oh and half of them were dead'. From the player side, it was kind of annoying because it was just posturing really and instead of being a roll into the combat proper, it played out as a counter incentive: The NPC just pretty much asked you to wait and watch a few die first to get him back. It wasn't even relevant from a get something standpoint since we get standard loot anyway. There should've been an offer to hire extra guards on the fly given that he had dragons flying at his ship. Yes, we were obligated out of self interest to fight anyway, but that shouldn't have mattered to a captain wanting to not suddenly have the flight be super costly with his airship damaged and his crew half dead. Taking it that, for some reason, he wanted to spare paying anything to random folks offering to pitch in, he immediately handed over his cabinent of magical doohickeys to Sim for nothing. Why? He should've been annoyed and handing them out to his crew or pet mage. In either case, it really hurt the opening believability of the game that the NPC cast for the entire time consisted of one captain with a flipping personality who was neither terrified, or bold or trying to swing the ship randomly to flee or anything else. The NPCs are a fairly important part of setting the tone and they've just sort of failed to be there for it so far during the campaign. Our boss hasn't gotten a scene, the warforged two sessions ago pretty much sat as statues while we bamboozled them, the enemies have generally come at us without purpose or intent, just sort of 'we're there, let's fight!'. At least since after session 1.
I'll admit, I also come from the GMing school that prefers subtle handicaps to the enemy when misbalanced versus player death...but that was a terrible job of it. :( Let's see, we started with two adult white dragons, ECL 12 versus an ECL 11 party (at my present guess). That's almost sure odds of a player death there, ignoring that dragons tend to be stronger than their CR merits with more durability due to their tendancy to be used as solo encounters. Most relevantly, base adult white dragons needed a 4 to hit the highest AC in the party, generally sizing up for power attacking madness with more than enough hp to sit by in a hitting battle. I was betting from early in round one on a total party wipe. It's clear you realized it early on too, which is why you began nerfing... but things went oddly.
For one, the dragons relied mainly on their breath weapons, which are supposed to have a cooldown, but didn't seem to have one at all for some reason. This actually would've been a fairly clever bit to silently nerf out of their ability list since our defenses against them suck, but it didn't happen.
Next, for some reason they were flipping sides every round. I understand this was something to simulate their mobility but in reality it made them come across as amazingly dumb as they never got to full attack and were aggressively allowing AoOs. If you have to weaken enemies, don't go for their iq points first or it just sabotages any sense of victory. They could've easily just drifted alongside it without involving aerial manuevering or could've used a withdraw action every other turn or something. In general, they avoided using damaging stuff o_O
Dragon SR looks funky until you realize that characters <= level 6 usually don't have much of a way to deal with SR at all and a generally small spell/ability pool to work with, so even a small failure chance can almost remove a mage at that level from the encounter. Anyhow, as a direction to nerf? Not a bad choice, but made a bit too obvious.
Dropping their hp was the best choice of the set, and it could've even been done subtly using airship cannons or whatnot to explain it...
Dropping two adult whites statistically down to juveniles? Too much. It's not subtle at all and robbed any real sense of interest from the fight just as effectively as their initial overpowering had.
Saying that you were nerfing them in the ooc room? That's really not a good thing to do. It obliterates the chance that any player had not noticed your clever machinations. I made a mistake as a gm is better for between session comments then during since the world is built upon your arbitration.
Advice for next time? Go after the hp first, abilities/spells second, and actual statistics last as we almost immediately figure them out from a couple rolls, while the rest is hidden information. Be additive rather than subtractive to solve overbalancing. Using other adventurers, fire cannons, a handy mage, or anything from the crew would've been an easy way to do it. Revealing wounds that weren't obvious before when we got near would've been another. Adding a tastier target to draw one away would've been a possibility.
My observation, bluntly, is that while you're comfortable with the setting, you're not comfortable running with a cast of players this powerful and so the combats come off as nothing more than experiments (STILL) with little real substance to them. You're also really uncomfortable running characters of your own, so the only interaction we have outside of in group chatter is to stab things.
I'm unsure how I feel in regards to those, and they're pretty harsh to toss out, but dems what I see. It definitely makes it hard to care as what it sounds like you're asking is "What encounter set do you want next?"
These seem like fair comments. In my defense, I was rolling for their breath weapon to recharge, with real dice on my table. It's just that with a d4 and dragons having other attacks to use, it's not terribly noticeable. (Also, they were young-adult, not adult, originally.)
I avoided using crewmembers for the simple reason that I didn't want to stat them up, and that combat already takes forever.
But I can't argue with your conclusion; the truth is, I have been dissatisfied with the setup I've given myself, and it's apparent you are too. I am, in fact, having doubts about my capability as a GM; I don't think I have the knack for improvisation that's required. An aerial fight versus dragons seemed like a neat set-piece, but it didn't work. In fact, I think the heist in the first session is the only thing that did.
So where do we go from here?