WotL OOC Thread

[JadedDM]

A good real-life person will never role-play evil person perfectly.

I think that can be expanded, that in general, people don't roleplay any trait they don't possess themselves as well as a trait they do have. Not just in terms of alignment. A player who grew up an only child might not understand the mindset of a character who is the oldest of several siblings. A player who is atheistic might not understand the mindset of a character who is very religious.

Still, it's a generality. If a player does research, they can be quite believable in their portrayal of any character. If they don't, then yeah, you get some weirdness. Like someone who doesn't understand an evil mindset playing an evil character will have them killing orphans for no reason other than 'because they're evil.' Alignment influences outlook, but it is not personality. I think that's why alignment has such a bad rep. Too often, players reduce their characterizations to their alignment only. Thus we get two-dimensional cardboard cutouts. If I ask you to describe your character, and all you can say is "Uh, well, he's Neutral Good" (or whatever), then there's a problem somewhere.

But one thing I disagree is to offer your ideas on the OOC thread to let someone else use it.

Well, I won't mandate it, but I won't disallow it, either. I'll leave it up to you guys, the players.

I know you wanted to get rid of Kynaston, but I tried to prevent it with the suggestion she will go to the Tower. Kynaston has nothing to do there.

More than that, Kynaston wouldn't be allowed in the Tower at all, being a non-mage. This would necessitate me coming up with an entirely new reason for him to leave the group.

Tulbas has healing and herbalism skills. Can he use them? Should I roll something?

I actually forgot he had those skills at all. I guess we do have a healer in the group, after all. Pity he never mentioned those abilities to the others until now.

The healing proficiency can be used actively or passively. If used actively, you can bandage up a wounded character. On a successful check (12 or lower on a 1d20), you heal 1d3 damage. However, you must do this shortly after the wound in question is inflicted. The rules dictate that specifically, you must do this within one round of the damage being inflicted. I always found that overly harsh, though, so I generally allow around 5 rounds or so, depending on the situation. Nevertheless, as the battle happened 8 hours ago, suffice to say, it's far too late for Tulbas to do anything now.

If used passively, this means Tulbas remains with a patient (or more; up to 6 total) while they are resting. If this is done (no check is needed), the patient(s) recover more HP than normal. However, it's already the next day, so again, too late to use this now. Although if Tulbas convinces the wounded to stay at his house all day (or return that night), he can care for them then, if he's willing.

Healing can also be used to treat poisons and diseases, but nobody has either of those afflictions at the moment.

Another thing, if I'm not mistaken Tulbas has now 4 1st level spells and 5 cantrips and not 6 cantrips and 3 1st level spells, right?

Yes, I've added the extra spell slot granted by his magic ring.

BTW, I forgot to mention it in the OOC thread, but the Charm Person on the Cavalier didn't work so much as I hoped. I thought the Cavalier would be compelled to protect me from the 'wizard' and therefore would not engage in battle with the others, but seek that wizard.

Charm Person isn't a mind control spell and it cannot be used to override a person's normal personality. All it does is tweak the victim's perception slightly, so that they view the caster as a friend.

The problem was, the party was attacking the cavalier and his men. Thus, he was forced to defend himself. Yes, Tulbas asked for his protection, but the cavalier couldn't see the mystery mage, for one, and for two, he was being attacked. Since Tulbas did not appear to be in any danger, as far as he could see, but the cavalier was in immediate danger, he decided to protect himself instead.

After all, if you were being attacked by several people and someone you care about was just standing there, being attacked by 0 people, but yelling, "Help me, help me, I'm in danger!" What would you do? Drop your defenses and turn your back on your attackers to help someone who doesn't appear to need any help? Or keep fighting for your life? Especially if that person you care about is also helping your enemy to attack and kill your own men?

Also, the cavalier was really big into duty. His duty was to recover the girl and bring her back home. To abandon her, even to protect a friend, would have disgraced him. So even if Tulbas did appear to be in some kind of visible danger, he might not have helped anyway if it meant leaving Daxia unguarded.

Tulbas did manage to help distract the cavalier a few times, with Haahqae's help, and even convinced him to shield punch one of his own men. But the only way he could have made him stop fighting the party is if the party stopped fighting him first.

[Haahque]

I figured the charm person worked about as well as one could have hoped.

Previously I've had very little experience with 2e, but I have read the PHB a long time ago, and played one or two gold box games, coming to the conclusion that magic is fairly overpowered in D&D, especially once you get 3rd level spells and above. This is one of the reasons why I rolled up a Haahqae for this party. (Two more being that I've never played a gnome before, and that I rarely play mages. I often like to try out new things.)

However even given this background, I've played enough D&D to expect a level 1 spell cast by a level 1 mage to do rather little against a level 5+ boss who's designed to be a challenge for the whole party, even in 2e.

I've also experianced in gold box games how pathetically weak level 1 mages can be in 2E, they start with 1 spell which could be a spell that deals 1d4+1 damage to 1 target. It sounds like a mage who chooses that would have a better chance just picking up a bow and hoping to deal 1d8 damage without expending a spell slot.

I considered it a victory to have us two mages prevent the boss from acting for multiple rounds while giving our teammates time to do useful stuff.

[BishGada]

Pity he never mentioned those abilities to the others until now.

Well, I forgot all about it myself . Myth weavers are changing their profiles DB, so I copied the character to the new sheets repository and only then was reminded of the skill.
Anyway, it is reasonable he didn't offer the help before the battle, even though he saw they were hurt, but I think he would have helped actively after they cleared off to a safer alley.

I know the limitations of Charm Person, and I actually considered that everyone will lower their weapons to avoid the battle, but there were few problems:
1. What to do next.
2. Tulbas might have been looked like a traitor to the other people in the group. First, he captures Daxia, next he is a friend of the Cavalier and tells them to lower their weapon?!? This could turn out to be a complex conspiracy.
3. Everyone was already in the heat of battle and it is never a good idea to change plans at that stage. It causes confusion and you lose all advantage if you had any. The only acceptable change of plans is to run for your life if necessary.

And of course I noticed the few distractions Haaque and Tulbas caused the Cavalier. I think we really did good. Still, there was great danger to Kynason and Kendra (which was expected) but also Darga which risked himself too much to my opinion.

Eventually all turned out to the best

[JadedDM]

I've also experianced in gold box games how pathetically weak level 1 mages can be in 2E, they start with 1 spell which could be a spell that deals 1d4+1 damage to 1 target. It sounds like a mage who chooses that would have a better chance just picking up a bow and hoping to deal 1d8 damage without expending a spell slot.

Yeah, mages start out as the weakest class in the game, by far. But if you are very patient (they take a loooong time to level up), they eventually become the most powerful class in the game. So it's a trade-off. On the opposite side, fighters start out very powerful at first, but over time the other classes surpass them. So at level 2, Kendra kicks ass and Tulbas can be taken out by a housecat. But at level 10, Kendra will still be swinging her swords for 1d8+2 damage (maybe more if they're magical), but Tulbas will be altering the very laws of physics.

Incidentally, which gold box games have you played? I've been slowly going through them myself. I did Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds. I'm working on Secret of the Silver Blades now. (Not gold box games, technically, but I also made it through all three Eye of the Beholders, Hillsfar and Blood & Magic, as well.)

Well, I forgot all about it myself . Myth weavers are changing their profiles DB, so I copied the character to the new sheets repository and only then was reminded of the skill.

Well, to be fair, Tulbas does have a ton of skills thanks to his massive INT score.

Everyone was already in the heat of battle and it is never a good idea to change plans at that stage. It causes confusion and you lose all advantage if you had any. The only acceptable change of plans is to run for your life if necessary.

Yeah, had Tulbas told the party about the spell ahead of time, they might have planned for it. Like Haahqae's Audible Glamer, nobody knew about it, and so did not expect it.

[Haahque]

Well actually, thinking back on it I can only remember 2 of the A D&D games that I poured tons of hours into.

The first was "Unlimited Adventures", which as far as I can tell IS a gold box game, although it's main attraction for me was the ability to create my own adventures (One of the first world editors I've ever come across, and a fairly good one at that). I only remember it having 1 premade adventure, which was fairly short and ramped up the difficulty very quickly. (You started as lvl 7ish, fighting orcs, lizard men and ettins, by the end of the game you're fighting rakshasas, drow, salamanders, purple worms and vampires. I only won the last encounter because a vampire charmed a party member that killed the rest of the party, ending the battle. But since I had a party member alive at the end of the battle (the charmed guy) we won it.

Another was Stronghold (the 1993 game by Strategic Simulations Inc. Not the newer one). Although this was a 2E game and ate a fair number of the hours of my early years, it was not using the gold box engine. I recently found this game again and played a couple hours of it, and while it does seem to have some good ideas, the controls are fairly clunky, it felt somewhat slow for me. I might put some more hours into this sometime, but I'll likely put more hours into the other 2E game that I started playing this year.... Balder's gate.

I'm fairly new to Balder's gate, (only beet a couple of dungeons in it so far) so I won't pass any judgements on it yet.

[JadedDM]

Oh, man. Baldur's Gate! I hope Tiax doesn't give you any ideas for Haahqae.

True story: It took me years to finally finish that game. I would get to a certain point, my attention would be diverted to something else, and when I finally came back to it, I'd forgot what I was doing, so I'd start all over again. I first bought it when it was originally released, back in '98, '99, I think. But I didn't actually finish it until 2011.

Not to say it's a bad game, or anything. It's wonderful. I just couldn't seem to get through it without wanting to make a new character. It's fun to experiment with the different race/class combos.

[BishGada]

When I only started playing the computer I played a lot in Curse of the Azure Bonds and the old Pool of Radiance. Also some Dark sun games. Menzoberranzan.
Those days I spent long weeks on the computer. No sleep was required. I was young, free and happy.
I really liked these games.
Back at the day we used floppy disks and I stumbled by accident on a bug/cheat, (That obviously programming a solution for it is very easy), that could let me at start duplicate items. Later I figured out I could transport characters in time. Back to the Future and the past. Then I figured out that if you create a new character (where you can change their ability scores before they get any EXP) and you use magical items that increase their ability scores (and I was able to duplicate items) I could create characters with most of their abilities at 25!!!
(As DMs and also as honest people I'm sure you wouldn't approve, it was only an intellectual test. )

Anyway, later I played Dagger falls, and Eye of the beholder, but I had not the patience to track the huge dungeons with all the teleporters. And I think in Eye of the beholder 2 you start in a mansion with two vampires casting fireballs like crazy in a ridiculously high speed. All I managed was to run like hell in the room, seeing my characters fall one after another like flies.

Later I played Baldur's gate series. And there was something similar called Ice something I think. Same engine. I like the diversity of the plots there.
I also touched Ultima 1,2,3,4. But lost my patience. (Yes, I became old and grumpy).

Later I played only slow games, like Kings Bounty and all the series of Heroes.

Then I abandoned everything.

Now I don't have time for computer games at all. Raising my daughter literally consumes every free minute. (But no regrets there. She makes me laugh like nothing ever did. Especially speaking in her own Vulcan dialect )

[JadedDM]

And there was something similar called Ice something I think. Same engine.

Icewind Dale, yes. I've finished the first one and intend to move on to the second one eventually. Baldur's Gate 2 is still on my list, as well.

[BishGada]

That's right! Icewind Dale. Brings back memories...

Baldur's Gate also have an extension. Swords Coast.

And looking at wikipedia there are a lot of games in the series...

[JadedDM]

Oh, yeah, the Dark Alliance series. I have the first one on my PS2, I think. It was more of a button-masher action RPG, closer to Diablo than the original Baldur's Gate. But still kind of a fun diversion.

I'm looking forward to Pillars of Eternity, which will be on a similar but modern engine to Infinity, which was what Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale used.

[djhyland]

With my family having a Macintosh SE/30, I was extremely envious of my friends whose families had PCs because they could run the Gold Box games. (Never mind that I'd kill to have that SE/30 again today...) The guy who introduced me to D&D in the first place (with Dragonlance, no less!) had some of them, and I'd watch him play them for hours and bitterly wish that SSI made games that'd run on the SE/30. But the game that I was most envious of was the Bard's Tale Construction Set. I mean, who wouldn't want to make their OWN RPG using it?

Much later, I got a PC for college, but by then, I'd lost interest in the Gold Box games. D&D-wise, I tried playing Planescape: Torment, but I never got into it even though I've heard it was excellent. I figure that I should go back and finally try some of the old Gold Box games, but I've recently relapsed on World of Warcraft, and that takes up far too much of my time as is.

[JadedDM]

Ironically, nowadays it's fairly common for games to be released on PC and Mac, and even Linux at times.

Planescape Torment! Forgot about that one. It's also on the Infinity Engine, like Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. It's extremely unconventional. You can pump up your character's INT, WIS and CHA and basically talk your way through the game, avoiding nearly every battle. Plus, Planescape is such an unusual setting, and they really took advantage of that to create a strange, beautiful, alien setting. If you can get your hands on it, I absolutely recommend it.

The Gold Box games can be fun, but they haven't aged well. I'm not even talking about the primitive graphics, but the user interface is difficult to get used to, especially if you are used to the standard 'WASD point and click' interface common to modern games.

[Haahque]

I was just looking over Haahqae's inventory and thinking about what he would really want to carry around with him. IRL I know I carry a ton of stuff around with me because I like to be prepared, but even I don't carry everything that Haahqae is packing in his pack.
Haahqae on the other hand is kind of weak and frail, so I don't expect him to desire to carry around too much heavy gear if he doesn't need to. Furthermore, Haahqae has a room, which although it was given away earlier, he does hold the key to the room on his person, and having given a gold to help secure it makes him feel somewhat safe in keeping the room.

So here are the things I would expect Haahqae to want to leave in the inn room.
7 days rations. (He'll keep the dried fruit on his person if he wants a snack before going back to the inn for the night).
Bow, Quiver and Arrows (Is it really necessary to be packing the heat every day he's in town? If a big event comes up he can fetch them, if not he's got a sling to protect himself.)
Sekla's Spell book (It serves very little purpose for him until level 2, and there's no point hiding it from others in his secret bag compartment)

I considered also leave behind some of his thieves gear or scrolls, but I think even Haahqae would realize that these things are rather rare/valuable and wouldn't want to part with them unless he's back at Mount Nevermind, or perhaps in another place he feels completely secure.

His armour he's likely to be wearing today since he's not performing or actively on a mission, so he'll take the perception of being better defended over the need for flexibility.

The question comes in that would you allow me to retroactively leave these items behind?

[JadedDM]

The question comes in that would you allow me to retroactively leave these items behind?

Well, he's just one floor down from his room right at the moment, so, I guess we can do that, sure. It's not like it'll massively change things or anything. I'll make the adjustments to his inventory.

[JadedDM]

Hey, guys. Today is August 31st. That means War of the Lance is now officially one year old.

Wow, a whole year and the average party level is still only 2? But to be fair, we have had on average 7-8 party members and so XP gets split up pretty thinly. Now we're down to 5, so advancement should start to pick up. Also weird, it's only been 5 days in-game. That's play-by-posts for you, though.

Speaking of XP, as a reward for those of you who have stuck with us this long, I award everyone 1,000 XP to be added at the end of the current chapter. Congratulations.

I want to personally thank the five of you for sticking with this game for this long. And I hope you will continue to stay around to see what year two brings.