DM themed play-by-post D&D game : OOC thread

[beowuuf]

This is the OOC character thread for the DM themed D&D play by post game! See this thread for the actual story posts, and this thread for an explanation of it all.

Use this thread for all questions, comments, general chit chat and out of character tactical debates. Feel free to post your character's general thoughts here on what he wants to do if there will be any debate about resolving actions in fast-paced situations.

Oh wow, I thought it was the end of next week that this game has started.

But it's not!

It's this weekend!

You guys have been abused, run around, confused, stabbed, blown up, and generally messed about with by me for a year! Woohoo!

Technically it's the 30th August the game opened for entries, which is Monday (and the game itself started a year ago on Tuesday). So we should have OB back to go 'woot' properly!


Anyway, thank you for a year of entertaining play, facinating characteristation, cool moments of drama and humour and creativity, a solid commitment to keeping the game flowing with your posting, and basically everything you've consistently brought to the electronic table here.

Hopefully I can - at some point soonish - pay it all off for you

[Ameena]

Wooo, a year already - cool . I'd been thinking that I've been going to my gaming club for nearly a year now, but had totally forgotten that this game shared almost the same birthday . I have no idea when exactly I started going to club, but I think it was around mid-September-ish.
With regard to the game's curent situation, when I made my IC post I'd completely forgotten about the existence of the Disarm mechanic (since it's not like I've ever tried to use it before ). In terms of attacking Garax though, I'm presuming the only parts of him that aren't armoured are his head and hopefully his hands (though the latter hasn't been specified yet). But hopefully the air elemental can help out in some say, if it should feel so inclined .

[ian_scho]

No, thanks to you man. It's been fun. Especially as there is someone around to do the maths for us!

[beowuuf]

Maths is fun! You seem to have a very good grasp of the tactics of the system, so I have no problem with doing the final number checking if needed

And yeah Ameena, the original D&D question thread that got you to look into clubs and spurred me into hosting the game was not long around before both happened.

Garax's hands are free of gloves, though remember what I said about it being two handed Still, even if it fails it's a good way to draw agro away from your tank if nothing else! And an even better way to force him not to power attack - if he's focusing on hittign you, he needs precision not power!

It's late enough I'll

[ian_scho]

If I've understood correctly Ameena causes an AoO. And you can't do that twice in the same round, so a grapple might work here. Could all go horribly wrong if I misunderstood but hey.

[beowuuf]

That's correct, if Ameena wants to make the disarm attack - mechanically very unlikely to work, narratively might have some nice effects - she will draw the AoO Haynuus feared. That leaves Haynuus free to try his won disarm attempt, or grapple, or anything else his heart desires. Unless Ameena says otherwise, I think that was what was happening here.

Spoilers - the air elemental might knock Garax to the floor. It makes hi ma little more vulnerable in terms of AC, and gives him a penalty to attacks, but he can still threaten AoOs and vulnerable to sneak attack nor anything else odd.

It will also cost him a move to stand up, which isn't shabby either.

[oh_brother]

Woohoo! Happy Birthday DM based D&D game!! (Should this be posted in the "Happy Birthday" thread?!) A year...wow. I don't know if it feels like a year or not, in some ways it seems like not long but in another so much has happened that the beginning seems quite distant.

Anyway as you probably guessed I am back, getting through the bits I missed out on, will post later on.

[beowuuf]

Welcome back! As you will find, Westian is entirely unharmed, and has in no way got the second in command of the blackskull army trying to slice his head off. Cottom wool kid gloves, just as you asked

[ian_scho]

If it takes us 5 days to do a bit of grappling and hugging then 1 year doesn't seem too long really!

[beowuuf]

Lol, that is very true! Tehn again, you don't wanna rush such a heartwarming scene as a tear-filled hug-filled reunion of Ameena and Haynuus, and the bad guy they recognise who they have never actually met before

[oh_brother]

BTW, how high level do healing potions have to be to cure ability score losses? You mentioned it somewhere but I cannot find it now (Westian will have had OH VI potion(s) at the water fall).

For flasks, Westian has two on his character sheet (plus three brown ones, but I think Haynuus actually has those). How many more do we have? Just so we can arrange them between the groups.

[beowuuf]

Ee level (4th) I'm afraid!

Will check up on the flasks tonight. You lost two to the elementals giving you back the pure air/water elements in new flasks. Those are with Aurek. You can of course dump the contents and use those.

I seem to recall you having four flasks in total, one of which went away with Falkor.

[ian_scho]

Haynuus nabbed two, but now I assumed they're shared out between Ameena and Haynuus.... Who has just consumed his. Westiaaaaaan!

[Ameena]

I mentioned it before somewhere upthread, but Ameena still has an Um-Vi potion which Westy gave her...I think it was shortly after they both descended to the lower level of the cave and fought the leeches, or thereabouts.

[beowuuf]

Updating now by the way, don't go nowhere

[Ameena]

Hehe groovy, I'll be around for a bit while I wait for my dad to finish in the bath so I can have one .

[ian_scho]

@Ameena I really don't know how to take this guy out (i.e. Stop his attacking). If Haynuus tried a grapple then he'd get a free AoO and would surely hit him - and he'll only need one hit.

Not sure that Garax is non corporeal so you won't need the vorpal blade... Still sharp though mind
The doll you should pick up in the long term and bury somewhere, in my opinion. It may have your name on it!
The shiny metallic round stones however....

[beowuuf]

Yeah, one of the days Haynuus will get to pick up decent armour and be a proper tanky fighter

A little late now perhaps, but of course one of the pains about Garax was the triple attack. Finding ways to get him to move towards you (so single attack only) or need to use a move action for something else (him being prone was great for many reasons) kept you much safer. Not sure if the wildly swinging huge damage Garax is better or worse than the precise hitter.

Basically, he's just a bugger and I like being on this side of the encounter :p

[Ameena]

As soon as Ameena can grab something useful, she'll be back in the battle - it's just a matter of how much of a risk she's willing to take with all this weird stuff she's just found - she'll probably suspect a lot of it of being magical (and not in a good way - Garax isn't exactly the kind of bloke who'd probably have anything nice laying around, and anyway I'm not entirely sure this is his room we've stumbled into - I think it more likely that it may belong to someone else known to inhabit this region of the dungeon...), and won't want to accidentally blow anyone up, or whatever.

[beowuuf]

Brain a little fried tonight, updates tomorrow!

[ian_scho]

lol, it is a friday after all.

[beowuuf]

Ok, just so you guys can check my working out, here's the hit poitns of Garax, and a tally of the wounds...

Code: Select all

93
-1 non-lethal (hitting ground)
-13 Haynuus hit
-12 non-lethal anti-YA potion
-1 glass damage (potion)
-14 haynuus damage
-15 haynuus damage
-18 Ameena damage
-14 haynuus damage
-------------------------
18 (13 non-lethal)

Yeah, he had 93 hit points, So sue me, he is one of the three top guys, and his speciality was being the third (now second) in command who was a) a resiliant brute, and b) perceptive (hence why you couldn't really bluff him nor sneak up on him too well).

Anyway, yeah, 93 hit poitns was alot. Just over Ameena and Haynuus combined. He was designed to be the equivalent of a 4th edition brute to back up Dolo should a fight come. I expected you guys to be together, with a few distractions to balance out. So I figured him on his own with two of you was not outside the bounds of possibility, but I knew you'd have to get creative or lucky to do anything.

So I'm pretty impressed (infact, very impressed) that you got him to as low as 18 hit points, with only 5 more damage knocking him unconcious! But for one more landed blow with that AoO or Haynuus's second attack, this might have gone differently and you guys would have a high level prisoner. Still, for something that awesome to happen and to earn it, you needed to be able to fail I guess . Though being 5 points shy isn't failing as far as I'm concerned!

Anyway, like I said since this was an unbalanced encounter (and a priest being close) you might guess you guys aren't going to die. I can still run the two of you together in the main thread, which is what I'll do after Ian's reacted and you guys are satisfied with the maths.

See, you guys had to be the hero. You couldn't have run away, or just get knocked unconscious. You had to make a brillaint showing. Now I have to do something evil that hopefully you guys will appreciate instead of hate me for.


I wonder how Westian and Falkor will do.... and I wonder when Petal might make an appearance...

[beowuuf]

Actually, while I personally have very strong narrative reasons to bring back the characters, they aren't my characters, they are - of course - your characters.

So like I did for OB when I temporarily killed off his character, if either of you as a player want the chance to get your real life back and not continue with the game, now is a very heroic end for your character's life.

Similarly, if you want to keep on playing, but would like to change character, now is also a perfect time to ditch and switch.

My sincere hope, of course, is that both of you will want to keep playing, and keep playing the same characters - I've enjoyed playing with you too much, and enjoyed seeing your characters grow too much, to want to send them off now.


Anyway, the choice is there!

[ian_scho]

I'm very happy to continue. A bit upset about the AoO miss as well but lets face it - he's had a lot of other lucky rolls though!

[beowuuf]

You don't know the half of it.... But let's wait until Ameena chimes in. I guess next update tomorrow.

And glad you (and Haynuus) will be carrying on


Heh, I think I've now managed to down each of the four original characters now. Falkor went first, a very temporary set-back as he bravely went toe to toe with the dread Sergeant Arbrut, killing the guy berfore falling. Next was Westian, cornered by grak-graks and actually properly killed by a coup-de-grace along with Sir Farel when the grak-graks went insane from Soorec's death. Of course, Westian managed to come back, and while on the other side got important clues from his own sub-conscious or his High Lord, and also managed to keep Sir Farel's spirit bound long enough for the knight to be ressurected too!

I almost had Haynuus before, of course, when Captain Drommal knocked him to negative hit points. Still, the fact Haynuus didn't fall seemed to break the Captain's thirst for combat, and certainly scared the crap out of the bully Brohur.


I daresay bringing one of the commanders of the blackskulls close to death will have some fun consequences.... consequences you guys might take advantage of...

[Ameena]

Well you're not bloody killing off my murafu without letting her actually get back outside into the world she loves at some point (which, I'm quite sure, will be after the Endgame, when all the nasties are dealt with and everyone is finally free to get on with their lives and stop worrying about saving the world and all that malarky ). I was hoping we wouldn't get beaten by that arse-in-a-tin-can Garax, but considering he was so uber, I agree with you that we did pretty damn well against the fooker . If I'd managed to get a few better attack rolls, we'd probably have knocked him out - I think I attempted at least two non-lethal attacks which both missed .
I figured you weren't just gonna automatically let us die in the event that he beat us, for the aforementioned reason that he was such a high level in comparison to us. I suppose now we're gonna be revived by Dolo and probably find ourselves locked up or otherwise restricted in some way, possibly in the same location as Deephold and/or Umgold, since of course they're prisoners too, unless either of them have managed to escape at some point.

[beowuuf]

Good! And yes, somehting like that for the bringing back..only partially as evil as previously decided....

All the answers tomorrow!

[oh_brother]

I assume that in order to keep the game as faithful to the original DM as possible there will be no monster regeneration? So next time we meet Garax he will have 5 hit points, and we will be able to finish him off by throwing some leather trousers at him.

Also, I hope Haynuus managed to swallow the holy symbol before he was captured...

[beowuuf]

Lol, yes, and copies of monsters will suddenly spawn right beside you if you stand on the wrong tile

Well, as you might spot from the latest main thread hints, Garax might have means to heal himself (just like you guys) and certainly the priest is no slouch at healing (just like you guys) but there are good in-character reasons why Garax might be a little slow of the mark to start getting healing. And of course, being an NPC he doens't know he's at 5/93hp - he just knows he's had the crap kicked out of him.

Now, the real question is exactly how many heals does it take for a person to feel ok-ish, how many would a busy priest give out if he's distracted, and how long will that take?


Oh, and Ian actually had the holy symbol be detatched from his neck during one really bad hit. It was symbolic (haha) I think when he thought he was goign down the first time. I plan to bring that back, but for the moment, that's where the symbol is! Not a chance to hide it right now...

And awww, throwing trousers? Don't give Ian ideas! Remember his trousers are orcish trousers. Those are NASTY!

[Ameena]

I don't think it's the trousers so much as what's normally in them that would be the threat - Haynuus might take them off and kill Garax through sheer horror and disgust .