The Gossip Board

[VySaika]

I mentioned to you in PM awhile ago that Adail would have offered to teach her either martial arts or clerical magic or something during those long night watches anyway. So leveling as cleric would kinda make sense IC?

[Anastasia]

Eh, cleric it is then.

[Dracos]

I'd encourage as many levels as you think are reasonable.  In fairness, a single blow right now would likely kill her.  Our enemies last adventure dished out 60 hp AoE effects.  Additionally low level healing magics aren't really adding much at all, thus Adail's challenge filling that role.  Either way, having her able to fly around and not have us be so worried that a single poke will take her past -10 would be nice.

[Dracos]

Loot post is up! As for levelling, find me on IRC and declare what class you're taking and roll HD with me around.

Drac, hold off on levelling until we have your resurrection shit in order.

Sadness.  Well we know where we're going.  Really wish one of us (self included) had the presence of mind to recognize kam's hand as his hand and not another death trap. 

Anyhow, it seems like I'll be raised, then we'll travel somewhere where I can pick something up.  Then I guess I level then?

Knight I'll probably need to borrow a sword.

[Zephyrus]

I'll vote cleric as well. We really need some extra healing options, methinks.

[Carthrat]

If I get a mount, I can switch to using my lance for a while and loan you my sword. Dependant on if I change my build or not.

[Anastasia]

Yulia is now a favored soul 3 specializing in healing.CLW from her is 1d8+5 and lesser vigor restores 3 HP per round while cast.

[Dracos]

Was looking over my spell list and just concluding it feels so rarely I can really use them effectively, aside from just putting cure and restoration spells on hand.  Was going to ask for opinions here (and still interested in any who care), but starting to lean toward a different route.  Maybe I'm just fiddling though.

So... kinda thinking of retraining Vexing Flanker. 

Vexing Flanker - Positive: +4 when flanking is awesome.  Negative: +2 is still good and it's really only come up twice so far.  It doesn't really have any effect outside of that specialized case.

Battle Blessing - Provided Dune would rule that Paladin and CoG are effectively the same for its req, it'd actually make a way for me to cast spells and it not be a costly action.  I could toss cure lights as part of moves to help keep me standing or bull strength for added hit and dam, or splendor for higher saves or smite.  Downside, I have 4 spells total of an 8 max.  As a feat it makes a class feature usable, but doesn't leave much to use.  Maybe it'd be better to keep sticking backup support stuff in there for after battle.

or sort of pondering Armor Spec:  +2 DR/-.  Would bring me to 4 DR/- which is pretty beefy.  Downside is Kam doesn't fall from number of hits.  He falls from gigantic blows that do half or more of his max hp in a single action and usually from magical bypass DR/- stuff anyway.  We do though run into folks that nip though.

Thoughts/opiines from party?

[Anastasia]

Just take toughness, +1 HP per hit die will do you more good with the abuse you take. <_<

[Dracos]

Kinda depressing.  I already have more hp than the rest of the party and even ignoring god-smite session Kam kinda gets targeted by everything and takes 2+ points of damage for every 1 point that our other tank takes.  If toughess and its 9 extra hp over my 121 (or 141 while raging) is really saving my life well... I suppose more hp is never bad, but its just seems more of an incentive to be the opening target for every attack in actual combat.

bleh.  Now look, I actually looked at it.

Damage taken by Kam to date: 1826.
Damage taken by the entire rest of the party to date: 1617

[Sierra]

Hey now, a third of that is from your god smacking you around!

[Anastasia]

Well yeah. Some of it is the situation working against you. Big meaty target gets attention, you know? This isn't strictly intentional so much as the situations just resolving that way.

[Anastasia]

Yeah, I wouldn't could the Gwyn damage in a serious analysis, that was essentially meaningless.

[Dracos]

warn: whiny post. :P
Removing Gwyn puts it at

1200ish
1600ish.

Still an o_o bit.

Anyhow.  Nominally don't mind but just get a bit petulant when it seems like I'm encouraged to try and take tiny steps to improve survivability in context of an already superior survivability to the point its whined about every feedback cycle.  The problem is more inherent in a combination of Biggest Target + Protect the Others playstyle.  I can toss on hp and hp, but really it feels like its ignoring that Kam regularly takes hits that would instantly kill the other party members already, often as openers or just as a result of taking on the primary dangerous enemy combined with wild dice like.  There's of course an easy way to survive.  Just stand back and let knight go take the damage instead.  Pick off the enemies after the fact.  Just stop playing the damage sponge game.  It's kind of silly when Kam is so frequent to take it that it makes the whole martyr set of spells he's automatically decked out with pointless because he never has to really worry about others being targeted much in the first place.

 Just a bit frustrating to shift a discussion from 'hum, what would be more fun to play with' to 'how do I act as an even larger hp tank as enemies attack with even higher damage thresholds'.  Sorry I got petulant about it but I when I'm poked with 'get toughness' while already topping the hp set and dying anyway, I really can't help it.  I yeah, I could really picture the side effect if I went and got toughness and some con boosters and next feedback its 'oh and kam totally owns us all on hp too'.  *sighs*

the short of it is I don't mind being the primary target as much as I mind being told that I should optimize being an hp tank even further to be more of one.

[Anastasia]

So Drac, you've DMed before, right? You know prepped up encounters, analyzed the party to figure out what they can handle. You figure out what makes a good challenge for the party and various PCs, right? So why don't you ask yourself: If you're constantly facing these sort of threats, what does it say exactly?