white dracolich. I guess it's gonna be fire this time

with holes for allies

That would be reasonable.

and the cleric's conna cast mass haste

so it's gonna be 30d6

@MartinSojka Yo.

Hi. :)

@besw@ the dragon has 106 hp, vulnerability to fire and an awful initiative and ref save, the wizard has improved spell penetration (+20 to the check). Guess who's gonna win?

I guess I need to prepare a second encounter

Sounds like you may need to do a little more custom tweaking of your monsters to make them challenging.

@JonathanHobbs I can't remember if you're into Doctor Who, but I've always thought these guys could be ueber-Primordials with very little tweaking: tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Gods_of_Ragnarok

Just a thought.

"The Gods of the End of the Gods" has a nice ring to it.

Ah, had a nice enjoyable evening GMing for a totally non-magical group of fighting men involved in some deeply mystical crap. They had to deal with necromancy, evil ice magics, mind control and illusions and the fact some of them caught their CO doing some seriously weird stuff and confronting them about it, without anyone being sure if what they saw wasn't yet another illusion. Good role playing from my guys there. :)

In the end, in a big battle between a huge ice dragon and a whole orc army, they wisely decided the best place to be was not anywhere nearby and managed to slip past the whole mess. :D

Very cool.

It's always satisfying when you can successfully convey to your party that They Should Run.

Oh, it wasn't supposed to be a campaign; they had pre-genned chars just for that. It would be totally cool if they went out in a blaze of glory too. :)

@MartinSojka Excellent, then!

I once had a trio hags who used illusion magic to convince the party they were about fifteen levels higher than they actually were. The party was shocked when the actual main villain showed up and splattered the hags everywhere in a single turn.

... and then I had to sit down and explain WTH was going on in the background for about half an hour - stuff their characters couldn't know or find out without several sessions of investigative work, which we don't really have time for, but the players were curious about. :D

@besw playing an adventure by the book.

@MartinSojka Heheheh.

@Zachiel Ahah.

most frustrating thing ever

after doing worse than the book when planning enemies alone

You've seen my fine sense for good builds

@Zachiel It takes experience to really get a feel for it, and it's exponentially harder to come into it at higher levels.

I'm intimidated by starting to run level 21+ encounters in 4e, and I've been GMing the system for more than a year, and running 3.5 for at least eight years prior to that!

...yanno, I think The Greatest Show in the Galaxy could be turned into a FATE plot pretty darn easy.

[plots DFRPG shenanigans]

Aloof, godlike beings take over a famous traveling circus and hold 'talent shows', promising fans the chance to join the circus. In reality the fans are held captive to entertain the being who make up the Audience, reduced to ash when they become boring. The PCs go to try out and become captives, interacting with the other captive performers and the frightened circus workers to figure out what's going on and how to defeat the Audience.

Solutions might include learning the Audiences' True Names and commanding them; finding and wielding the talisman that a circusman used to summon them in the first place; and killing the circusmen to break the Audiences' hold on the circus.

And the party keeps having to go out and entertain the Audience at regular intervals...

@BESW I am super into Doctor Who and just finished watching the Christmas Special a couple of hours ago. I'll take a look!

Oh dear. Not those guys xD

I know nothing about them other than some scenes in which the Doctor was doing some silly tricks to buy time, in which those three were getting impatient and making things explode with their hands

and what that wiki article says about them

Apart from the appearing in various forms I am not terribly impressed by any part of them, and if I were to have some gods that came before the actual gods or the primordials, it sure wouldn't be them!

@Zachiel that is very interesting

@LitheOhm what's interesting?

@Zachiel the idiom for climbing a mirror

:thumbup:

@BrianBallsun-Stanton I found out why adding a few levels of wizard to my build is not a bad idea after all. Arcane Strike. (I agree the whole build is a complete disaster)

@Zachiel more power to you, man

not so much. XP gain during missions is related to the CR of the monsters. And the DM tries to gauge my power to determine that

I can only hope in high GS but easy to kill enemies <.<

@Zachiel Well, you already know my advise

which one, to change game or to change my PC?

@Zachiel Bit from column A, bit from column B. Honestly you need to talk to your DMs, explain your situation, and ask for advise

mostly it's "don't worry abut the build, just play. Level is not important in this game nor is strenght, stop being paranoid it ruins all your fun

...and stop bothering me (if I asked a woman)

@Zachiel have you actually gotten that response?

Becuase, having played in a larp that used 3.5 and had sayings like that, I can only amplify my prior advice to "run, run now."

I don't want to run. I want to become like them

I had a talk with one of the DMs today

@Zachiel Then find someone, literally, to apprentice yourself to.

Find one of the players who is willing to teach you and learn from them.

here's the strange thing

@BrianBallsun-Stanton LARP with 3.5 rules? Eww.

@SimonGill ::shudder:: One of the things that just completely ruined 3.5 for me. It was... eew

everybody seems to be fully convinced that it's a skill you can't learn with teaching

while I can't learn anything except by being taught

@Zachiel Bullshit. The ability to work within a world is absolutely something you can learn through an apprenticeship

The art of optimization is generally taught using apprenticeships, though it's not normally framed that way.

@BrianBallsun-Stanton Monstering for Lorien Trust did that for LARP itself for me. And thtat's vastly less complicated than any kind of 3.5 port. I'll stop bringing up bad memories now.

There is always a student and a master... and one day the student may surpass the master's cheese.

(I knew that would be starred)

@BrianBallsun-Stanton Starred for recent Star Wars marathon :P

That was fast.

@BESW wasn't it?

But yes, when I say apprenticeship, I mean it literally.

err

Yeah, sure.

Let's see just how bad this is.

@Zachiel There are many skills which require experience to gain expertise, and there will always be people with innate talents for certain skills. But when someone says "This can't be taught," what they mean is "I can't teach it."

At the end of the day, the process is simple: Find someone who's style you admire, and say "I want to help you achieve your goals. I want to serve an apprenticeship to figure out how you do that. Let me assist you while I learn so that I may understand and that you may correct my errors."

If they are someone who is worthy of being your master, they will see the utility of having an intelligent, PC, minion, and accept you.

"Let's see just how bad this is." hahahaha

If they're someone who cannot see the utility of a PC minion, you shouldn't apprentice to them anyways.

@BrianBallsun-Stanton and they already have a whole lot of people with more skill than me already doing that

aaand I'm going to BRB, need to set up a recalcitrant access point.

did I tell you about the girl i envy?

oh ok whe you come back if I'm still here

@Zachiel you were going to translate an example?

the example I have now is from a quite wordy player

but I think it gets my point. It's so full of feelings and "she stays back to avoid invadin the personal space of the woman"

I really like how it's written

and I really like how it portrays the character

I'll be slow, I'm also playing

@Zachiel Is it permissable to ask your age?

almost 28

@Zachiel ::nod::

That neatly avoids one failure mode.

why?

which one?

Trying to teach a teenager requires far stronger positive and negative reinforcement. Just making sure I wasn't misaiming.

I think I'm still a teenager inside

I don't think I'm able to provide a good translation, I'm gonna do my best

I just looked at the compendium's size rules... is there any reason I shouldn't just houserule away the Small race restrictions on 2h & versatile weapons, and bullrushing and grabbing? Apart from realism.

@JonathanHobbs Realism in D&D? What are you talking about? :P

@SimonGill nothing serious I suppose XD

@JonathanHobbs I really don't know, aside from the fact that there are some advantages to being Small which would have to be removed as well.

They're much more situational though.

Every player race in 4e is Medium, bar five Small races and one Tiny. There aren't even Large ones. I can only imagine two reasons for keeping them: (a) it's realistic, but 4e picked balance over simulation, so this is WEIRD; and (b) because 4e picked balance over simulation, they must have felt the Small races were good enough that they were worth their limitations.

@JonathanHobbs I got nothin'. Need to ask someone with a better theory grounding in 4e.

Originally I suspected the small races must just have really nice racials.

I guess I'd better open a question on it.

@SimonGill Well, simulation! :P 3.5e was all about simulating realistic stuff (except the magic)

@JonathanHobbs You've answered the question already :P

@SimonGill That's a different question, and in fact the one that got me wondering about this. My answer to that one is effectively this: they get racial benefits, and you just avoid playing roles for which those limitations will be devastating. There is no counterbalance to those limitations, you just avoid making a character where they would be a problem.

Ahhhhh, I see your meaning now.

@JonathanHobbs none whatsoever

AFAIK, there's a feat tax to do the huge weapon thing

don't remember the feat

@BrianBallsun-Stanton What's the "huge weapon thing"?

@JonathanHobbs small doing fiddly weapons