Shipwrecked OOC thread

[Theis2]

Definitely!

Any skill check, saves, attack rolls or damage rolls!

[thinkslogically]

Awesome saving that for later!

[M0rtimer]

So I'm guessing we're heading towards the camp, me and Cranberry in the lead with the others following behind..?

[M0rtimer]

Haven't specified a target for shield yet, since while it'd make sense for Jasper to use it on himself, I'd figure I'd ask first if any of you guys think they could use it better right now.

[Theis2]

Shield is personal only so, you only got one target to choose from

[spiderwrangler]

If someone needs +2 deflection bonus, I can toss a shield of faith on them.

[M0rtimer]

I should probably have prepared mage armor instead...

[M0rtimer]

Jasper is totally excuses since they likely don't speak common and don't know Henry is a name...

[Theis2]

Hey, so easter and preparation up to easter took longer than expected so no update during this time and I may have trouble posting in your games during this time too

[thinkslogically]

Do we have anything magical that might help remove this mist?

[GathersIngredients]

would a simple dispel spell work? not that Henry has one.

[Jacon]

I don't have any spells of that nature.

[spiderwrangler]

Nor do I.

[Theis2]

soooo... in the interests of finishing SOMETHING around here, shall we go and find the dwarves again?

Also theis, would you mind giving us (i.e. me) pointers on what you were expecting from us in terms of strategy etc. on some of the old encounters you set up (like the stuff that's not relevant any more - our very first battle with the villagers, the windy mushroom cave etc). I feel like I've got no idea what I'm doing with "proper" D&D and any general tips are always appreciated (from the other players too if you feel like it)

I don't mind at all! First thing is learn to follow plot hooks! I guess I could lie about there being a tavern where I want you to go if I really wanted you somewhere..
I have been considering a bit if I've taken a bit of the D&D feeling away by handling all the rolls by myself, but I don't mind if you use an online dice roller like coyotecode.net to do the dice rolling for you.

As for any strategy in terms of earlier encounters, I remember I used the villagers to help you create an ambush where you used readied actions to get an advantage when the undeads came at you. You also had a strategic placement considering that you blocked them from all attacking you unless they stormed past you and took attack of opportunities. I'm not sure how much more you could do to improve your odds, since you didn't know about the ghoul counter ambush that took you by surprise and hit the weakest members of the party.

The cave with the windy mushrooms, had quite a few encounters actually, the first being the rust monster if I remember correctly. Ala should definitely have fled from that creature and have Jasper block it's path for you. But that depends on how the gm wants to play the creature. I decided to go for a hungry, friendly and curious yet cautious which is why it didn't stay away from you and why it didn't just attack you straight away. Any character with metal armor would have attracted its attention.

The stirge room was planned as a bit of an endurance fight for you. Every other round 2-3 stirges would arrive and attack till you've killed a total of 20. You could dispatch of them quickly enough that they couldn't deal any damage to you, if you weren't unlucky. Since they deal damage at the start of their turn if they are attached to someone, you had something like 2 rounds to deal 5 damage to each of them and you were 6 people at the time so it should have been feasible and you would have gotten amazing xp and loot but it's gone forever now!

There was the big mushroom encounter that would have gotten Cranberry killed if I didn't heavily hint that he shouldn't be charging alone. The strategy for you there was to just stay out of reach take them down at range.

The bottomless pit/invisible creatures room was more of a skill challenge than anything. The creatures are there for a reason I will not talk about yet, but you have found similar places like this won't say how they are similar though
The way you tried to communicate with them was a blast for me (and your characters faces) and I think you dealed with it as any D&D player would.

Here's a map of what your characters have heard of and partly seen on a map from the orcs. The map is very poorly drawn but it's there to give you roughly an idea where stuff is compared to each other. I marked the stone with the devil inside and the end of the kobold map where you suspect there'll be a dragon god worshipped by the dwarves and kobolds. Also marked the orc city and where they've told you the dwarven base is, also according to their map in the vargach's war room.

► Show Spoiler

That's all I can think of at the moment but please do ask if you feel like you forget some in game info or think that you should have it. University have made me super absent minded so it's quite likely that I simply might have forgotten to include something even though I planned to do it (or because the forum ate my post and I didn't put in the same energy to recreate it)

[M0rtimer]

"Hey guys, I just noticed something on this map. Just below the dragon... Is that a tavern icon?"

[GathersIngredients]

I don't want to complain, but a lot of the spell-thief's worth (from what I have read online on various RP source/discussion pages) stems from being able to flank and/or sneak attack people. Since we never get a grid/map of any fights, I don't know if Henry is able to do that as much as possible/at all.
In the last fight he was suddenly a lot more efficient than any time he tried to fight before, but that might have just been the dice favouring him for once. So... not really knowing a lot of what is going on (in a fight) ... is a little ... impending to my... ability to try and think of something clever.

So if you could reduce the "undefinedness" of combats altogether a little, I think I would be thrilled. All we know as a numeric value is if our health points get less. Everything else is blank. If you don't know what's going on, you have a hard time... learning to do it better the next time - in case you made an error - and if things went bad just because of bad dice rolls, you don't take defeat to the heart so much.

Don't get me wrong: I don't know a lot of the rules, so I'd have to do research on D&D fighting and probably pester you a fair amount in order to be(come) efficient. I don't begrudge you making the rolls for all of us, rolling the dice is not important to me. I just - most of the time - have no clue what's going on, going wrong, or going right. I can't gauge the "danger" of any encounter at all (though, to be fair, that might be from my lack of knowledge of the D&D universe and how much HP an average kobold, dwarf or what have you got), or how far we are into beating those guys, or what could best be done to overcome them. I suppose it's a lot more like reality than most other games in that way, but it's not exactly what I would have expected from a forum game.

► Show Spoiler

While writing, I realized that in e.g. The Island from TL you don't know the stats of your enemies, as well. But in her game, you don't need to roll to attack (at least as far as I know) and the damage is a lot less random, too. You just attack and deal damage. According to your attack minus their defence values. So if you, e.g. can't hurt a foe, you know that you need to either bring down his defence value (try to get them to drop their shield, cut straps of their armour,...), or up yours (attacking in team, better weapon, ...). In D&D you got so many more options.

Again: I'm not trying to complain. I'm just stating some facts as I perceive them, to provide some (hopefully constructive) feed back.

[Theis2]

"Hey guys, I just noticed something on this map. Just below the dragon... Is that a tavern icon?"

I forgot to mention that?

So I've been a bit lazy with trying to make grids lately, partly because my artistic abilities are very limited, but I can try to be better at making those. I've definitely given you flanking bonuses when it's been available for you.
So during the last fight, you went up against kobolds which don't have a lot of hp, compared to some of the other opponents you've been up against they were weaker (no armor and no class levels for most of them meaning they are easier to hit and have lower hp). But most of the time it's been a bit about luck. I can try to reduce the undefinedness of the combat, but that could also be done by you guys if you want to do the rolls yourself. That would perhaps help with understanding when you use different skills and maybe give a better sense of you are the one doing it and thereby also know a bit more of what you need to roll for a success.

As for gauging the danger of encounters, I think it'll be a bit hard without really knowing the opponents stats and especially hard for opponents that can have class levels as they might have more hp and abilities than you expect if you know the standards for that opponent. I'm not sure how I can help with it at the moment though, might think up something later then.

[thinkslogically]

Personally, I'm happy to RP along with it as long as we keep getting reasonable indications of the rough difficulty of the encounter (e.g. if it's way too hard for us, I'd like the opportunity to figure that out before we get TPK'd). Ala is pretty naive, so that works fine for my lack of knowledge and her modus operandi is basically to get in close and chop stuff. I get that that might not work if you want to have a more sophisticated or nuanced fighting style though

I'm finding the skills tests a bit harder to deal with, but as long as we're not completely missing the point or doing really dumb stuff I'm ok to continue as we are (like I'm not sure what I was meant to make of the dude in the cave... but I doubt I'll find out soon either since he ran off to become a recurring "villain").

[Theis2]

I'll make sure to give some indications if you are about to be stomped into the ground, granted I'll try to avoid having it come to that situation (unless you start challenging the wrong people )

And yes, he did some of the most heinous acts you've seen so far! Or something..

I'm missing definite actions for what you are going to do and Jasper raised a question about the path you should take

[GathersIngredients]

Henry still got no strong opinion whatsoever.

[thinkslogically]

Wherever we go, we'll get our assess kicked. Let's go and finish off the dwarves since we're here. If nothing else, we should try and finish what we started at least once...

[M0rtimer]

We're not "here", as in "here" being "near the dwarves" at all. We went south, while the dwarves are supposedly west. If we want to "finish what we started", it'd be to continue travelling south, towards wizard city. I'm fine with doing that, if that's what we wanna do.

Plot hook land (Which Jasper just suggested we at least scope out) meanwhile goes south-east. So maybe we can follow that, so if we end up disappointed we can safely ignore Theis' plot hooks for the rest of eternity.

[thinkslogically]

Well, the wizard city is still thru a desert that we still have no guaranteed way of crossing (save for funding merchants I guess and tagging along)...

I don't mind. Ala doesn't really care about wizards, and doesn't like the orcs much. I'd really like to finish one of these dwarf / kobold quests just so we aren't leaving everything completely unfinished all the time. Ala is rapidly becoming the flakiest paladin ever to quest and it's kind of annoying.

Why we're we going to the wizards again?

[M0rtimer]

Because wizards are awesome.

...I didn't think we needed another reason?

[thinkslogically]

It's as good a reason for anything we do I guess You know what, I'm just going to keep Ala's default personal quest as keeping an eye on Cranberry. He's probably a bigger potential threat than anything else around here anyway...

It would be REALLY cool to go and kill a dragon though so I vote for that