The Gaming Den

I'm vacating my spot on the party, someone else can fill it in or the game can run with a smaller group of people. It's already enjoyable reading through other people's games on here.

I can drop if people feel the game is too large.

I'd feel pretty shitty about having to drop out of a game I went looking for and found because we want to throw an army at a module designed for 4-6 characters of ECL 5-10, keeping in mind that Paizo expects basketweavers to play their APs so 6 Denners are literally overkill, to say nothing of 7 or 8.

I'm also a pretty strong proponent of four person parties over five-man bands (or more), as it helps keep the focus on the characters and not the jumble of class abilities being used in combat. Despite my personal feelings on the matter, I would prefer maglag picks four, maybe five people that seem to want to play the same game he wants to run, over throwing everyone into it and overwhelming the encounters. Keep in mind that 7-8 creatures frequently pushes a threat level of an encounter to "Overwhelming", as well as bogs down the combat more than it already does, so having 7-8 players means that the opposition has to scale up to match, which means we wind up having 4E-style combat slogs instead of much more tightly focused encounters.

I like the idea of Mag just picking the four characters he feels best fit the kind of game he wants to run. I think it's a great solution to several issues.

RelentlessImp wrote:keeping in mind that Paizo expects basketweavers to play their APs so 6 Denners are literally overkill, to say nothing of 7 or 8.

Small point of note, Paizo has nothing to do with Red Hand.

Kaelik wrote:

RelentlessImp wrote:keeping in mind that Paizo expects basketweavers to play their APs so 6 Denners are literally overkill, to say nothing of 7 or 8.

Small point of note, Paizo has nothing to do with Red Hand.

Authors: James Jacobs and Richard Baker. James Jacobs, aka Editor-in-Chief of Dungeon, who later described himself of the "chief architect" of Paizo's Adventure Path concept, and now the Creative Director for Paizo's AP-focused monthly.

It's fucking Paizo, or at the very least proto-Paizo-terrible, because it's actually good and interesting but has some of the same mindsets.

RelentlessImp wrote:

Kaelik wrote:

RelentlessImp wrote:keeping in mind that Paizo expects basketweavers to play their APs so 6 Denners are literally overkill, to say nothing of 7 or 8.

Small point of note, Paizo has nothing to do with Red Hand.

Authors: James Jacobs and Richard Baker. James Jacobs, aka Editor-in-Chief of Dungeon, who later described himself of the "chief architect" of Paizo's Adventure Path concept, and now the Creative Director for Paizo's AP-focused monthly.

It's fucking Paizo.

You hurt my brain. All the same, the company had nothing to do with it and Richard Baker was co-writer.

I like hurting your brain. It's spongy. But yeah, definitely a brain fart there.

Net is back working, been reading the last posts.

RelentlessImp wrote: I'm also a pretty strong proponent of four person parties over five-man bands (or more), as it helps keep the focus on the characters and not the jumble of class abilities being used in combat. Despite my personal feelings on the matter, I would prefer maglag picks four, maybe five people that seem to want to play the same game he wants to run, over throwing everyone into it and overwhelming the encounters. Keep in mind that 7-8 creatures frequently pushes a threat level of an encounter to "Overwhelming", as well as bogs down the combat more than it already does, so having 7-8 players means that the opposition has to scale up to match, which means we wind up having 4E-style combat slogs instead of much more tightly focused encounters.

Ok, so 4 member party it is. Ogrebattle and CapnTthePirateG both said they were fine dropping so that makes choosing the final team easier.

Alicia Disimone Female Illumian Theurge (played by RelentlessImp)
Valzeller, Male Feytouched Soulborn (played by DarthRabbit)
Malakar, Male Air Genasi Kaelik Wizard (played by Kaelik)
Zeph, Male Human Elemental Siphon (played by radthemad4)


IC thread should be up later today.

Ok, cool. Have fun, I'll read.

Btw, Darth,

Soulborn wrote:Whenever they gain a level, they may trade one of the Soulmelds they know for a different Soulmeld.

so I think you can swap out one of your soulmelds for an additional Better Soulmeld.

radthemad4 wrote:Btw, Darth,

Soulborn wrote:Whenever they gain a level, they may trade one of the Soulmelds they know for a different Soulmeld.

so I think you can swap out one of your soulmelds for an additional Better Soulmeld.

Derp, completely missed that somehow.

Darth Rabbitt wrote:

radthemad4 wrote:Btw, Darth,

Soulborn wrote:Whenever they gain a level, they may trade one of the Soulmelds they know for a different Soulmeld.

so I think you can swap out one of your soulmelds for an additional Better Soulmeld.

Derp, completely missed that somehow.

That's an ability absent from Totemist, but I think Soulborn was made later. Having 6 Better Totems at level 5 seems fair.

Darth, you have an item of Electricity resistance 5 and a soulmeld that gives +2 to Charisma.

Instead you could have an item of +2 to Charisma and a soulmeld of 10 Electricity resistance.

One of those is better than the other.

Yo maglag, if you are waiting on something, you should say what it is, because he have no idea what it is, since we accepted quest and began journey.

Kaelik wrote:Darth, you have an item of Electricity resistance 5 and a soulmeld that gives +2 to Charisma.

Instead you could have an item of +2 to Charisma and a soulmeld of 10 Electricity resistance.

One of those is better than the other.

Good point. I'll change that now.
ed: shifted a few soulmeld bonuses around. Hopefully that's OK? I can change them back if needed. double ed: I don't intend to do that again in the future--this is a one time thing.

Kaelik wrote:Yo maglag, if you are waiting on something, you should say what it is, because he have no idea what it is, since we accepted quest and began journey.

Sorry for the delay, had a busy day and had to get the map ready.

Also just to make sure, it wasn't your purpose to make Commune with Winds a super real-time radar, right?

maglag wrote:

Kaelik wrote:Yo maglag, if you are waiting on something, you should say what it is, because he have no idea what it is, since we accepted quest and began journey.

Sorry for the delay, had a busy day and had to get the map ready.

Also just to make sure, it wasn't your purpose to make Commune with Winds a super real-time radar, right?

No absolutely not. It could probably detect an actual army with campfires and shit in the immediate area, or even longer with a wind coming in the right direction, but it is supposed to be about as good for for long range detection as Stonetell is for tracking, which is to say probably not much most of the time.

Is this a surprise round? Should we be rolling init? Keep in mind, that even if I am surprised, I still get to act in the surprise round.

Thanks, what I tought.

No surprise round. They saw you coming, but then Zeph spotted them with his passive +23 spot before you got close enough for them to spring their ambush. So just roll initiative and everybody acts in order.

Also, IC you say you have a raven familiar, but character sheet says bat. Is it disguised or a typo?

I'm assuming I can use my change shape ring to disguise self my familiar with myself as share spells. If that isn't okay, he can switch back to looking like a bat.

He is a bat either way.

22 Init: http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4869567/

Edit: you should just roll init for the players and give us the order in the future, no reason to wait for everyone to roll, and then declare actions. Technically someone could still roll higher than me and then do something that makes me change my mind, not likely, but why introduce and extra period of waiting.

EDIT2: While we are on the subject of init, probably have group init for enemies. Should not be me then one hob, the rad then another hob ect. Unless you plan on posting as often as the four of us combined. Better to have all the enemies act on one init (or have some of them that rolled high go before the party, but then have the entire party go before any other enemies, so that next turn all the enemies act as one).

Just to actually progress at a reasonable speed.

Kaelik wrote: Edit: you should just roll init for the players and give us the order in the future, no reason to wait for everyone to roll, and then declare actions. Technically someone could still roll higher than me and then do something that makes me change my mind, not likely, but why introduce and extra period of waiting.

I've met some players who are quite picky about rolling all the dice for their characters, but if you're fine with it, I'll roll your initiatives in the next combats right away.

maglag, also check my second post about condensing initiative so you don't have to post actions inbetween each one of us.

So that would be:

Enemies who managed to roll higher than the party's highest go first.
Then party acts together on their highest initiative.
Then remaining enemies act, and the cycle starts again.

If nobody else has complains about that, we'll roll with that to speed things up then. In this case it means everybody in the party can act right away since Kaelik's wizard iniative is better than the best hobgoblin's initiative.