DM Nagging: It's pretty much my job

[Corwin]

Alicia is interested in the behemoth stuff too. Syala's an epic druid, she probably has good insights to share!

I'll stop by with Sanzha for a chat, it'll be fun~

[Anastasia]

HEY LISTEN!

From now on when casting spells and setting up spells to be cast on people, include basic summaries of what the spells give. After experimenting with stat block formats, I've found that's faster than a pre-sorted list that you copy and paste in. I work a lot faster just typing it raw and pasting it then hunting down everything to paste instead. Like if you're casting bless on everyone, add an OOC note like this:

+1 morale attack rolls and saves versus fear.

Please don't copy and paste the spell unless I ask for it. Just a summary of the benefits is more than fine. Consider this my new policy going forward, so please remember to do it. I think this will be the fastest way to speed up spoiler blocks and prevent bottlenecks with them.

Toss a reply in here that you've read this once you have, please.

[Corwin]

Read

[Ebiris]

Read it.

[Iron Dragoon]

Read it

[Nephrite]

I have read and comprehend this.

[Yuthirin]

I NEVER LEARNED HOW TO READ!

[Anastasia]

I NEVER LEARNED HOW TO READ!

That sounds like Sharran talk.

[Anastasia]

Alicia

Rough start to the week - the Air battle really suffered due to the way it was partitioned. Everything was good past that. The home defense battle was good without being too long, mostly a chance to smash some shadows and a social encounter within. Points for solving that the best way possible, this will have positive repercussions next week. Also I always enjoy Alicia getting teased a bit.

Moore

Great week for node development. I felt most of the week was exactly that, getting your new members in and adjusting to them. The card game mid week was a throwaway but was excellent ot let the node's characters' breath and interact with other. Great stuff I though, and the raid on the slavers should be good grist for next week. That's really just starting, it should pick up more once you break through the initial defenses and traps.

Tryll

Really, this week was all about finishing up that mansion, getting loot and finally dealing with Ebony. That's an interesting subject, so I'm gonna do an IRC paste since we chatted about it there. Otherwise, I felt it was a solid week and the node's back together, so time to go wreck shit. By the way, I'm really enjoying Benyen so far, he's like one cup of paladin mixed with two ounces of Dekar from Lufia 2. Totally unintended, but his voice reminds me of it now that he's found himself.

Alyssa

This week felt like incremental progress. Good all over, albeit incremental. The stuff with Emily's been good as well, that's just now really breaking so that situation will tell more soon. I'm enjoying writing Emily, and your choice to pounce on her for your node was a little different from the prompts I usually offer for this. That's on purpose, it's worth keeping that in mind for later. That might be a background detail, it might be important.

Seira

See Alicia for my comments on the Air battle. From there it was all wind down and some fun - I really enjoyed all of it as character building. Sanzha in particular feels like she's found her voice again, while Amaryl intentionally soft-pedaled it. She's coping with Emily's stunt and fretting over it. The reactions to that entire thing were great as well, so that's more fun to work towards next week.

Bonus IRC log paste re: Ebony.

> I feel bad for Ebony, I really do. That was just a mess all around for her.
> Not a bad thing OOC - amusing plus I think it iced any remote chance of Ebony joining Tryll's node, which I was against since she doesn't have the temperament to be the straight woman for that group.
<Ebiris> I want her on Aurora anyway.
> Yuth said so and I agree - she's really not a fit in that node at all.
> So I'm glad everyone's getting what they want there.
<Ebiris> But I really don't get her issue here over some dude she just met shacking up with some woman she's literally fought and bled with.
> To a degree the entire thing is being a hill to die on for her. Sometimes you work yourself up over something.
> I mean, Dana? Legitimate reasons to say hey hold it, think twice before you tap crazy. To be crude about it.
> I like Dana but she's Dana.
<Ebiris> Like she was super shitty at the start of the game but for the period Ebony's seen her here as well as back in B3 she's generally alright.
* Kotono nods.
> Benyen's a young, promising paladin. Do you really wanna put him with someone who is...well, Dana? I mean, y'know. It's not really personal, she just worked herself up over it and needs to unclench.
<Seira> I don't see the problem either
* Kotono nods.
<Ebiris> Like she's kind of a bitch but she just had a major role in a crusade against hell. That's paladin-tier waifu material.
> Y'all aren't wrong - and I don't think Ebony's wrong to say 'hey slow down a sec' and some other things. She's just over worked into it, and the accusations of her being interested in Benyen and jealous didn't help (she's not remotely interested in him).
> I mean, going from meeting to fucking in less than half a day is worth a woah, woah, woah.
> Probably need to take a breath and assess at that point.
<Ebiris> Adventurers move fast.
> So I guess what I'm saying is that there's legit reasons for Ebony to voice concerns over the situation, but she's also gone a bit far and worked herself up. It happens.
> Indeed.
> She's still fairly new to being a celestial, she's still mostly human in her mindset there. If anything, I view it as character work for her - she rarely showed any flaws or lacked composure in B3. So it's a switch to see her in situation that reminds you that yeah, she's human.
> Sometimes she gets pissy over something. Such is life. She'll get over it.

---

This weekend's agenda is going to be catch up work. I have some family stuff in so I'm not sure how much I'll do, time available will influence what I work on. I'd like to get a few todo list things done, catch up nagging and hopefully knock out Xera. We'll see how that goes.

If by Sunday afternoon I haven't done critical nagging things and haven't tossed up any posts about being delayed, drop me a poke in nagging.

[Iron Dragoon]

Alyssa

This week felt like incremental progress. Good all over, albeit incremental. The stuff with Emily's been good as well, that's just now really breaking so that situation will tell more soon. I'm enjoying writing Emily, and your choice to pounce on her for your node was a little different from the prompts I usually offer for this. That's on purpose, it's worth keeping that in mind for later. That might be a background detail, it might be important.

Yeah, this week was weird for both of us. Didn't get a whole lot of posting done. I liked Emily, too. I actually really appreciated the note for it since I figured there was a way to add her, but I wasn't really sure about how to do it. Jarem was kind of a gimmie since the Red Knight flat out said she was going to give me a personal aide, so Emily was the first real solo recruit.

Alyssa was pretty eager to pull favor with Emily; this was partly due to her shaky power base and the politics I imagine she's had to deal with in regards to the other regents. She kind of figured having Emily there would afford at least some peripheral support from Seira, though she also expects at least a few hard feelings about it from the Seira congregation. She was also sort-of-double-speak upfront about it with Emily; she told her she was angling to get some benefit out of it. After Emily didn't pursue that, which I was expecting her to, Alyssa decided to just let it go under the bridge so to speak and felt she gave enough of a heads up on it. Politics and all.

[Ebiris]

Two weeks of feedback!

Things on Air started off well, the whole party had a good rhythm going as we fought the behemoth ravens and forced our way in - it felt like we were an inexorable tide washing over their defences which was really gratifying, each round making progress rather than getting tangled up and stalled. Letting Guster's army retreat, Alicia probably wouldn't have been so kind if it was demons or devils but even evil elementals aren't that hateful and the whole attack had a sort of 'nothing personal' feel to it so I was fine with that. If we'd brought along our own army then I'd have insisted on them actually surrendering but just a few PCs can't police that many prisoners and we had the rest of the place to conquer anyway.

Besides that silent mist would've killed our army just as much, so for the best we didn't bring one! Dealing with the mist and having to shift around our preconceptions as to what Palave was doing was neat too - his shifting up and down on priority based on what other factors Shar was introducing was amusing to me. I'd kind of hoped that the crystal that dropped when the mist was destroyed would've been something neat, but there was too much going on to bother checking it.

The Shar symbol thing was a lot less satisfying. It had the feel of a puzzle boss but without any real feedback to help figure out what we should be doing. It wasn't a creature so it couldn't die, it wasn't a spell so it couldn't be dispelled, it wasn't an object so it couldn't break... but there wasn't really any clue as to what it was for us to formulate a plan beyond 'hit it until it stops'. Which ultimately worked anyway, so yay?

We probably could've gotten more detailed with the attack on Sylica but it more or less worked. Syala was doing her thing leading the army, me and Antenora attacked from the rear, and the two avatars basically hung out by the gates as a last line of defence so I could benefit from my avatar's abilities without actually throwing her in as a second set of actions. I wasn't planning on asking for any outside help even after Syala prompted me about Mystra and Red Knight, since I wanted to show we could protect ourselves. Lixer couldn't call on Daddy for help when the boot was on the other foot, so Alicia calling on Mystra would've felt lame and was really left for an utter last resort in the face of disaster. But Selune approaching us to offer, it would've been churlish to refuse.

I enjoyed the social battle inside the cloud. I mean sure I was all set to lightning leap and full attack, and I'm pretty sure that would've killed her no matter what power ups Shar was offering, and likely before she'd have a chance to taunt me over our similarities, but it's nice to poke holes in that genocidal nihilism too. Plus Alicia's generally the straight man of any group she's in and typically all serious business, so it's good to emote and speechify how she really does have a zest for life and doesn't just act out of simple dutifulness.

Once Emmaline wavered and the battle ended, I admit I was hoping she'd be recruitable so I'd have an epic mortal person to send out to prime material planes for stuff in the future, so there was a bit of pique when she casually dropped that Shar had turned her into a spirit. Still though, she should be good to have around and it's genuinely good to finally see that sort of misguided soul as a Shar worshipper. I've always liked Shar as a goddess ever since I really got into D&D - blame Viconia from Baldur's Gate for that, and the fluff about bringing numbing comfort to those stricken by loss adds a really interesting dimension to her evil nature. It's kinda like 'Papa Nurgle loves you' for another example of that sort of twisted benevolence that makes it so much easier to understand just why people could devote themselves to something so vile. But pretty much across all Balmuria games every Sharran we've met has been a raging psychopath with a boner for torture.

[Corwin]

Just some random thoughts.

I'm glad my research is progressing, and I even got to see it culminate in Omni. Chatting about it with Sanzha was also cool, although I'd appreciate more details. So far I mostly get 'I need to study this more' and no real idea of when I'll have something concrete to work with, IC or OOC, so having that answered would be nice.

Speaking of OOC, I facepalmed when an anti-Shar paladin had to be reminded that knowledge is all good and well but there were people suffering from Shar's curse right this instant so maybe it's not the time for it. Also why are people going anywhere on their own, augh. I still can't believe Shar's watching that place, saw her use Miracle so that she's now all defenseless (and no one knows where she actually is) and didn't act. Still, even Shar can drop the ball sometimes?

I agree with Eb on the emblem thing. It felt designed to be punched very hard a lot and to frustrate most of our efforts. That I could only dispel a spell from it on a 20 with a +7 booster to dispels is ridiculously specific, and felt meta due to being tailored to my exact abilities. Compared to the mist, where I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, none of what I thought of was any good, so it makes me worry for solo adventuring since I never seem to pick up the same channel you're thinking on. On the other hand, I felt it demonstrated quite well that Seira is sometimes too knowledgeable for her own good, and without someone to focus her can spread into too many directions to come up with useful information.

The evil elemental army and the behemoths were more of a thing for me, but I do like Chan more and she wanted to see me more than Alicia, so it was more personal for me. I'll chalk down being more violent there to bloodlust from using the dragon combat form for the first time. In the end, things went pretty happily, including with Palave and Yan-C-Bin. As a happy bonus, it felt nice to be treated as a true power instead of merely a powerful adventurer.

The Waukeen thing is a mess. I'm just going to ignore it and see about striking the anti-slavery deal anyway, so hopefully it won't be impeded by idiot kids. Still, it was not cool, Waukeen, so you reap what you sow.

I'd like Amaryl to be more active, to talk more or have opinions if she's there. She seems to do it just fine when I'm not around. Hope this works out? I'll probably ask her to come to Limbo with me so we can see a slaad about a job.

Sanzha continues to be fun, although I had a mild scare she was going to leave me and seize power somewhere. At the core, I'm only secure in Kascha's ties to me, and there was the Aurora to counter that, too. Nothing really stops Sanzha or Donald or Elle from leaving or retiring, and despite vague assurances I don't really see who would step into their shoes, either. Something that the Sylica battle showed to me is that followers keep on being reincarnated into Sylica, it's a whole bit of the writeup for the plane, but I never get to see it actually happen for the Cauldron. Add that to how aside from the steam elementals and Omni my forces are made of elementals that last I checked were on loan or gifted from the other elemental powers, and it can sometimes look like a house of cards. It was a suitable basis for starting out, but I'm really hoping to see the fruits of it after that timeskip. Hope you can find a few opportunities to show it?

I wonder, from time to time, about delegation. Intellectually, I surely have the priests and such outlined in my realm writeup that look after prayers and follow-up on my heroes. It would be nice to put a face and a name to the organization, however, perhaps using some of the 'minor allies' I'll have one the rest of them are ported over from B1. For example, someone I could hit up for daily/weekly reviews of what plots of Shar's we've spotted so I decide if it needs a more direct touch, or taking over the training of people like Richard. I think my Node's people are overqualified for this, and it's also a full-time job, hence why it's best if I don't do it all myself.

On Node rewards, I feel it would be better if they were all innate bonuses. Having items appear out of whole cloth feels external, whereas a deepening connection and trust between myself and one of my closest friends driving them to a breakthrough in magic or in perceiving the world feels organic. To borrow an example from Alicia's Node, giving Jessica the ability to ghost touch her strikes would've served just as well and felt more unique than a ring of it. Artifacts imbued with powers are different, I liked what we did with Amaryl's armor, for example. But a mundane bonus, less so. If that makes sense?

I'm still trying to see for myself where I stand. Mechanically, I think I'm fairly solid at what I do, and fields to improve are likewise easy to see. In presentation... I'd know more after my efforts to free the Inner Planes, a chat with the astral dragons and another with Vlaakith. I realize that I'm too young to be anything but a footnote, whether it's in regards of trade or worship or politics, but it's not like I want to wait millennia to get there so I'd like to see for myself where I'm lacking and what to do about closing the gap.

I had a lot of fun discussing Primes and efforts to elevate them. Seems like I'll be joining the Competition in earnest soon enough, and that would benefit from having more options presented before me. OOC, IC, both, so long as it's a starting point.

[Anastasia]

Alyssa

This week felt like incremental progress. Good all over, albeit incremental. The stuff with Emily's been good as well, that's just now really breaking so that situation will tell more soon. I'm enjoying writing Emily, and your choice to pounce on her for your node was a little different from the prompts I usually offer for this. That's on purpose, it's worth keeping that in mind for later. That might be a background detail, it might be important.

Yeah, this week was weird for both of us. Didn't get a whole lot of posting done. I liked Emily, too. I actually really appreciated the note for it since I figured there was a way to add her, but I wasn't really sure about how to do it. Jarem was kind of a gimmie since the Red Knight flat out said she was going to give me a personal aide, so Emily was the first real solo recruit.

Fair enough all around. Jarem was part of the draw to accepting Red Knight's offer, a counter balance the alignment and obligations it may invite later. Emily's your choice - albeit with a bit of a drawback due to the ring thing, but that should be good plot grist. (The existence of the ring itself is a plot point, as that sort of artifact would be undoubtedly valuable for deities, who normally have to use proxies for that sort of thing. That'll be touched on later for sure now.)

Alyssa was pretty eager to pull favor with Emily; this was partly due to her shaky power base and the politics I imagine she's had to deal with in regards to the other regents. She kind of figured having Emily there would afford at least some peripheral support from Seira, though she also expects at least a few hard feelings about it from the Seira congregation. She was also sort-of-double-speak upfront about it with Emily; she told her she was angling to get some benefit out of it. After Emily didn't pursue that, which I was expecting her to, Alyssa decided to just let it go under the bridge so to speak and felt she gave enough of a heads up on it. Politics and all.

All I'll say that why Emily is great at a lot of things, politics isn't her forte, by temperament or upbringing. Her political position in the Cauldron is absolutely unassailable and it's still a young divine realm, plus she's one of the first born children. I didn't see much range for her to have to deal with politics. Now I'm sure she's had some formal lessons on the matter, but is countered by not having to do it much actively and the fact that she's not politically minded.

That and she was panicking a bit internally over the entire thing, so admittedly she wasn't at her best.

[Iron Dragoon]

Yeah. Alyssa figured out that she wasn't exactly politically savy. She did take a bit of advantage of it, though it wasn't with ill intent. She just sort of saw an opportunity to get a little more backing, however indirectly.

The other part is that she was being honest with Elle about enjoying Emily's eagerness to learn. Here's someone who's in the same realitive power bracket who wants to learn and explore. Someone who, possibly, could become a contemporary. She's super excited about that, even if she hasn't had the chance to really show it yet with everything going on.

[Anastasia]

Two weeks of feedback!

Thanks. I was gonna let last week go since I needed the downtime, but this is more than okay.

Things on Air started off well, the whole party had a good rhythm going as we fought the behemoth ravens and forced our way in - it felt like we were an inexorable tide washing over their defences which was really gratifying, each round making progress rather than getting tangled up and stalled.

Agreed, this was as intended. I wanted the behemoths to be a credible epic enemy but also something you could easily wash aside. After starting with Hell, one of my main design goals for this adventure was 'encounters that make the PCs feel powerful, even if challenging them'. I think most of them did well enough at it, with one exception that was an exception on purpose.

Letting Guster's army retreat, Alicia probably wouldn't have been so kind if it was demons or devils but even evil elementals aren't that hateful and the whole attack had a sort of 'nothing personal' feel to it so I was fine with that. If we'd brought along our own army then I'd have insisted on them actually surrendering but just a few PCs can't police that many prisoners and we had the rest of the place to conquer anyway.

I thought it was perfectly reasonable under the circumstances. You could have smashed through them like the previous encounter, but I added some story and reputation to them with the Blood War. I thought it may make you more likely to consider them more carefully. Also see the comments about the liches from a few weeks ago. While not a serious threat to y'all - I put the entire encounter there at CR 25 or so - it still had a bit of gravitas to that and reason to chase them away.

One point of Balmuria is that deities are a big deal and treated as such. This was meant to coax y'all into using that leverage and reflecting it back on you. Sure, the behemoth animals were too trained and too stupid to retreat, plus the riders were along for the ride. But common soldiers are much more likely to understandably go NOPE. Guster was worried about his soldiers possibly fragmenting or surrendering unprompted - it's one thing to face demon hordes, it's another to face divinity.

Besides that silent mist would've killed our army just as much, so for the best we didn't bring one! Dealing with the mist and having to shift around our preconceptions as to what Palave was doing was neat too - his shifting up and down on priority based on what other factors Shar was introducing was amusing to me. I'd kind of hoped that the crystal that dropped when the mist was destroyed would've been something neat, but there was too much going on to bother checking it.

Palave was fun for what he was - just making you reassess on the fly and dealing with the lesser of two evils. He's evil aligned, don't get me wrong, but he wasn't the true enemy there. It was a nice way to introduce an NPC. It kept your minds active and realizing that there was more shit afoot, someone decided to cut into your dungeon stomp.

The Shar symbol thing was a lot less satisfying. It had the feel of a puzzle boss but without any real feedback to help figure out what we should be doing. It wasn't a creature so it couldn't die, it wasn't a spell so it couldn't be dispelled, it wasn't an object so it couldn't break... but there wasn't really any clue as to what it was for us to formulate a plan beyond 'hit it until it stops'. Which ultimately worked anyway, so yay?

That was intentional. I don't want to get too much into this for spoiler reasons, but it was meant to do about what it did. That's why I wanted to get through it in one gulp - it worked as a single day thing, before it had time to set it that it was really a gimmick tying you up and expending some resources, putting you in a particular mindset.  It was also decidedly unbreezy to deal with, in contrast to every other encounter here. That was on purpose, to use the change to further adjust the tone and make you wonder what was going on.

My only issue was that it got split (and yes, this is my fault) into two sessions, and the second session really felt bad to me. The rest of the week rebounded well, so I'm fine with the adventure overall. It was a speedbump and meant to give you a feeling of resource attrition before Shar's second act.

We probably could've gotten more detailed with the attack on Sylica but it more or less worked. Syala was doing her thing leading the army, me and Antenora attacked from the rear, and the two avatars basically hung out by the gates as a last line of defence so I could benefit from my avatar's abilities without actually throwing her in as a second set of actions.

Pretty much. I was mostly relying on descriptions of the battle and how your actions were impacting it. I thought it worked well enough, rather than making it a direct mechanical thing, I just focused on making it reactive to what y'all did. There was some on the fly tinkering after Tuesday's army discussion, so with that in mind I'm more than happy with the outcome. I think there was a slightly...mmm, on the fly quality to it? But in spite of that I was content with how it worked out.

I wasn't planning on asking for any outside help even after Syala prompted me about Mystra and Red Knight, since I wanted to show we could protect ourselves. Lixer couldn't call on Daddy for help when the boot was on the other foot, so Alicia calling on Mystra would've felt lame and was really left for an utter last resort in the face of disaster. But Selune approaching us to offer, it would've been churlish to refuse.

Fair enough. All of that was a chance for politics and to interact with other forces there. Selune intervened since that's her thing with Shar, but primarily that was a chance to have reason to treat with other powers. Choosing to stand on your was more than a fair choice.

I enjoyed the social battle inside the cloud. I mean sure I was all set to lightning leap and full attack, and I'm pretty sure that would've killed her no matter what power ups Shar was offering, and likely before she'd have a chance to taunt me over our similarities, but it's nice to poke holes in that genocidal nihilism too. Plus Alicia's generally the straight man of any group she's in and typically all serious business, so it's good to emote and speechify how she really does have a zest for life and doesn't just act out of simple dutifulness.

Yeah, that battle was a lot of fun and reinforced those themes, as well as another theme that hits home to Alicia: You can always pull out of a downward spiral and do better. She did it in her life, she helped Antenora did it. She freed Latha from the Halls of the Vanquished, she saved her sister's soul. She helped Syala find a life outside of guarding the Tree of Idun. There's a good reason her weapon is called Bonds - that's really her greatest strength. I think that, more than anything else, is a lot of why she's LG instead of NG.

Once Emmaline wavered and the battle ended, I admit I was hoping she'd be recruitable so I'd have an epic mortal person to send out to prime material planes for stuff in the future, so there was a bit of pique when she casually dropped that Shar had turned her into a spirit.

Can't win 'em all. That was just planar politics talking. She transformed her because that's what usually happens to epic mortals. Someone like Jarem's a bit unusual, since at his power level he'd almost certainly be tapped for a better position already and transformed. There's more to him than just being a bit of a horndog and good warrior, after all. He just doesn't see the need to flaunt it - he's secure about it. He's put in his time.

Still though, she should be good to have around and it's genuinely good to finally see that sort of misguided soul as a Shar worshipper. I've always liked Shar as a goddess ever since I really got into D&D - blame Viconia from Baldur's Gate for that, and the fluff about bringing numbing comfort to those stricken by loss adds a really interesting dimension to her evil nature. It's kinda like 'Papa Nurgle loves you' for another example of that sort of twisted benevolence that makes it so much easier to understand just why people could devote themselves to something so vile. But pretty much across all Balmuria games every Sharran we've met has been a raging psychopath with a boner for torture.

Oh yeah. The thing with Shar is this: I want her to be horrible, rotten and corruptive. Let's put it to a fine point - Shar likes making people suffer. This is seen over and over again, but first hand accounts like drive it home in a way that all the dungeons and horrors don't. It also shows how people end up in it. It's really cultism 101 - take people when vulnerable and twist them. Use the pain as a lever, use it to recondition them and turn them into something different. This is meant to show another way of how she's horrid while also explaining why she is good at recruiting people.

Chancing into someone like Emmaline was good luck on Shar's part, but all deities have those sort of lucky finds. Talent is talent, sometimes it pops up unexpectedly. Ebony was one for you, even if she came to you.