Dungeon Master Forum

Updates for all tonight, or lunchtime if I squeeze it in then

Very stressed at work at the moment, stuff has come up. Stress-inducing stuff.

I might be able to post later on today/this evening if I get it sorted out!

The beauty of being split off is that you can post when its fun, not when it adds stress!

Umm, well, hope the stressy stuff is short lived!

oh_brother wrote:Very stressed at work at the moment, stuff has come up. Stress-inducing stuff.

I might be able to post later on today/this evening if I get it sorted out!

Blimey, that's two of us. Always can fit in a few words though. Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

@Beo: Yes, it was short-lived. Sorted out now, will post shortly. It was a real "omg, shit is hitting the fan, and some of it is mine!" mood up until an hour ago, but thankfully it is over now (for me, at least).

@Ian: I thought in Spain people didn't get stressed? Hottest summer in 30 years + good food + cheap wine = ? If only you had a beach you would be sorted.

Good to know! Tomorrow might explode or not for me too...but then it's the weekend either way, so that's all good. Although it has been a roguh week for others at work!

And I'm always understanding when you guys can't manage to post, and always grateful when you squeeze in the itme even if busy Won't stop me from trying ot kill your characters, but at least I'll feel bad about it :p

ian_scho wrote:OOC - And herein starts the hivemind exchange that noone can be bothered to roleplay, explaining the most interesting bits of the last forum-year of events to the dwarf.

I'm so hearing that in the voice of Tom from RPPR!


Anyway, you might spot from Deephold's narrative one of the things I meant when I said 'the dungeon moves'. You could map Deephold's betrayal to just before ther party woke up. Taht means Deephold was not captured until roughtly the time the party were sleeping after the mummy encounter. It would have been possible - thought perhaps not adviceable - to have pushed on through the dungeon, and therefore caught up with Deephold and Umgold (afetr finding Helm and persuading him to go back, of course).

Similarly, if the soldiers had taken the party directly to Soorec, instead of the break where the party had gotten free, they may have run into Deephold once more in Soorec's room!

There are far too many actions and variables to say which option would have been 'best', just wanted you to know that even if you couldn't see it, your actions were always having consequences in the background.

Similarly, I hope you therefore realise that many actions that spawned plot threads that seemed to have been dropped - liek the soldier Passin semi-turning, Ardur and Farel's escape, and the fate of Helm and the soldiers at the front door - are still gently flowing along in the background

Still waiting for Ian's actions, which is probably a good thing as I got not much sleep and might head to bed early afer relaxing for a while. Will give me a chance to properly map out the room tomorrow once I know what's what..

Lol, as if throwing one of the dungeon's more uber bosses at us wasn't bad enough, now we get to fight an undead whilst stripped of all our stuff, lol - good job we're in the presence of a (hopefully quite high-level) cleric!
I'm presuming I probably have the most crappy Initiative out of everyone for this fight, which narratively suits me fine as Ameena probably won't even notice Umgold's in the room till blows start being traded or something. I think I may have asked a couple of questions regarding this fight in one of my last OOC segments over in the other thread...can't really remember atm but let me know when it's my go anyway .

Don't recall anything, restate them here and I'll answer them

Oh, and due to Ameena's disposition, and your intiiative roll, she's out of the firts round of combat effectively - but you alreayd did that yourself with your last post. I'll do the same trick as I usualyl do, where a really slow person instead gets to act at the start of the next round to bring everyone back in line of acting. If you want to say what move she is likely to do then I can slot it in - otherwise, just waiting for a clarification of Haynuus's actions, and then I'll update. After which, you are free to update again. So really, nothing lost.

Okay, that's fine. I don't really know what she could have done this round anyway .
I think what I asked before was something I've probably asked on a previous occasion anyway - can I BS while unarmed? I know I can choose between inflicting lethal or non-lethal damage due to my Improved Unarmed Strike feat I took last level, but I can't remember whether I can Sneak Attack with it as well - probably not gonna be a whole lot of use in this combat otherwise, with my currently wonderful little 1d3 damage I can do wiv my teefies .

Funny, I don't know why you call it backstab, because sneak attack is available in fourth edition to, I think backstab is the feat that gives you d8 instead of d6 for sneak attack.

Anywya, yes, you can do sneak attack damage unarmed as long as they are flatfooted or flanked, that's just part of sneak attack. But you can't do sneak attack damage to the undead.

You can't do sneak attack damage if you are swapping damage type of an item, but improved strike I believe makes your strike lethal if you want, so you can sneak attack for lethal damage.

Combat tactics: Ameena has a higher AC, especially if she is fighting defensive;y (I think you have the acrobatics high enough to get +3AC from fighting defensively or +6AC from total defense). You can therefore try to draw attention away from the others, or better yet draw AoOs so Haynuus can try to grab or grapple the thing without dying.

Ooh yeah, crap, I forgot about the can't-BS-undead thing. And I think I call it "BS" even in DnD 'cause that's usually the name that type of attack gets in games anyway - hitting someone from behind and doing more damage, that is. And anyway, "Backstab" is easier/quicker to say than "Sneak Attack" . But you know what I mean, so it doesn't really matter too much, does it? And yes, BS is the feat in 4th edition that lets you upgrade your SA dice to a d8 from d6.
Didn't really understand what you meant by "You can't do sneak attack damage if you are swapping damage type of an item, but improved strike I believe makes your strike lethal if you want, so you can sneak attack for lethal damage." - does that even apply to this situation? I'm not using any items to attack since I don't have any - it'll have to be unarmed attacks only. I get that I can't BS for non-lethal damage but I wouldn't want to do non-lethal against undead anyway (apart from the fact I can't BS them in the first place due to the bastard being undead, of course).
As for the fighting...lol are you really sure that I should be trying to draw AoOs when I have the grand total of 3hp left? This guy has a bloody greatsword or something, doesn't he? I dunno whether damage is increased when hitting someone of a lower size but even so, I'm pretty sure it wo'nt ake much to knock me down again, and the last time that happened I woke up with a bloody possession-stone thingy in my side which seems to partially turn me into some weird murafu version of Lord Chaos. So I won't be taking any major risks, thank you . I think about the best I can do would be to try and get around the other side to grant a flanking bonus, but I think Haynuus and Deephold have already got that covered. Since I think I'll probably prove to be a one-hit-kill for the-walking-corpse-that-used-to-be-Umgold, and my damage is almsot worse than negiligible, I think it'd be easier to just try and come up with something else. I have no idea what, but I'm really rather hoping that Deephold can just do some uber Clericy stuff to get rid of this guy. It seems obvious that Dolo has only sent him in here to piss Deephold off so he can leap on that negative emotion and use it to control him, though he also hinted (by his "one way or the other" comment) that he's happy to let everyone die so he can control all our corpses instead, the same way he's done so with Umgold and those mummies.
So yeah...looks like it's down to Deephold or a surprise jailbreak on the part of Westian and Aurek, who are probably deep in Blue Troll kingdom now but you never know .

Backstab appeared my DnD version back when I was 15 years old

Yeah, backstab was back when it really was a backstab, the enemy had to be unaware and you had to attack them from cover.

The reason to think of it as sneak attack is because it's a sneaky attack - you can do it to someone who knows you are there, as it is more of a 'called shot' alloweed if you are able to take an extra moment to strike. Either because they are distracted by being surrounded, they are slow on the uptake, they are distracted because they are climbing, or they are distracted because you've feinted them.

And you got take down last time because you got hit by a superior foe who you allowed to have three attacks and also Haynuus had been left with for a round or two so was on his last legs and couldn't get you back up. Ameena can still dodge a blow much better than Haynuus, especially since she can take an action to increase her AC bonus too.

Anyway, just pointing out the options!

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The thing about the damage:

You can do non-lethal damage with a damaging item, or lethal damage from a non-damaging item, no matter what - you just have to take a -4 penalty to the attack. In this circumstance, you CANNOT then add sneak attack damage. So you can't do sneak attack damage while inflicting non-lethal damage with a dagger, for example.

Your improved strike is fine, and you could do sneak attack damage.

What constitutes a "non-damaging" item? Surely any item can do damage if you try to hit/poke/stab/bash them with it? I get that I can't do Sneak Attack damage if was trying to, say, clonk them on the head with the pommel of a dagger to knock them out rather than spew their guts all over the floor, for example.
When attacking unarmed, can I only do SA damage if I choose to inflict lethal damage, or does it not matter due to my feat?
Anyway, I think I get to post in the IC thread now - there's been another update from both you and Haynuus so I think that means it's come around to me now. Arrgh, I still have no idea what to do, lol.

Giving non-lethal damage is part of the weapon description. So the default damage for an unarmed strike is non-lethal, as is the damage from a black jack (for example). You can deal sneak attack damage using them normally. If you try to shift the damage to lethal with a -4 penalty to attack rolls, then you cannot deal sneak attack damage.

Obviously, with your improved unarmed strike feat, that no longer applies as you can deal non-lethal or lethal at your choice automatically (you aren';t concentrating on doing somethign weird, that negates you also concentrating on dealing sneak attack damage)

Umm, I haven't updated yet (as in actually writing a narrative for the undead and Deephold), just OOC stuff! I was waiting for Ian's clarifications, and then I fell asleep - but I can incorporate your new update into the mix.

Ahh okay...well, I've posted a new move. I dunno how much of it I can actually make this turn, but in the event of you replying I won't be reading it till quite late tonight (after eleven, probably) due to having both work (hence my being up at this hour ) and club today . The whole lethal/non-lethal thing isn't really of high importance when fighting an undead creature, and then of course there's the evil nasty no-backstab thing, booo . Oh well...maybe Ameena will get a funky wep at some point, or her butterfly will come back and she can use it to distract people while she raids their pockets or something .
And why is it that whenever I have club and have therefore put my dice box in my bag downstairs, I then nearly always find that I have to go back downstairs and dig out my d20 because I'm making a roll-requiring post here, lol.

To answer the question in the other thread about the holy symbol (yes, I have been following it!)

oh_brother wrote:It probably should be made of wood or something natural, but in my head Westian's order was slightly removed from nature. Maybe giving it lip service, but actually living in fancy buildings. So a gold symbol would fit in nicely.

Cool, glad I didn't alter the original intent And cool you are checking out both threats OB, I promise I can see a few ways the two groups will round back into each other...and it would be good if you, as a player, don't have to read backwards later!

And wow...Thirsday night already! Man this week's gone fast.

Off to bed, will update tomorrow after work!

Weird work and sleep stuff atm, will try to update everyone when I can. Apologies!

No problems. I hope it sorts itself out, and that it is nothing too weird.

Maybe running 4 individual threads is too much for you! At least with Falkor and Westian meeting up it will be one less worry for you. Now just send us Petal, kill off Haynuus and Ameena and you will be sorted!

Day was both weirder and less weird than before. There's still a danger of some weirdness to my schedule and energy levels for the next few days, but should be able to keep up.

Don't worry, all you guys are fun to write for, so it's a pleasure to let you all have some breathing space to flex your muscles.

Still, I'm sure you guys enjoy bouncing off each other and facing dangers and sistuations as a group (and Raixel hasn't had the chance yet) so don't worry, I'll be merging you lot hopefully soon! I kinda missed getting you all back at the start of September. And yeah, Haynuus and Ameena - not so easy to kill!

Well take it easy, if you miss an update or two we will understand!

Speaking of which I won't be around tomorrow, I am going away for the weekend. I may or may not have internet access (and time to access it) over the weekend, but assume that Monday will be the next post unless you see otherwise.

That might work well, I really hoped money could post once or twice to sync you guys up!

Have fun!

Poor Falkor. Is he roasting over a pit of hot coals, I will never know. Still, I bet he hasn't been sat on by an undead paladin though.