@somori wat? chatting with us isn't an important part of DMing?
@BESW good call. I made our DM look up stuff in the compendium several times tonight...he was kinda pissed at me by the end (Glowering threat on his 2 monsters wasn't well received)
One of our players has been leaving 'any week now' for a few weeks, so we wrapped up his main PC's story and he's been running a redshirt barbarian designed to die easy and spectacularly in place of 'main characters.'
This session, he officially resigned. "This is my last mission! What could go wrong? Also, I have strong theological convictions and pictures of my wife and children."
When a PC has been designed to do devastating reactionary damage on being dropped to 0 hp, and the adventure calls for multiple duplicate copies of PCs...
[watches the party duck and cover when the wizard opens fire]
Somewhat impossible CR Traps which were easily disabled by the artificer.
and a few Dificult enemies. Including a Bearded Devil with class levels and magical gear who had a Massive Damage hit against the Warblade whom also Hit for massive damage. Both had made their save. then the artificer out of nowhere takes a +1 Sling of Corrosive and Shoots a Silver Peice into the Devil Killing him stone dead.
Ive asked the artificer to sculpt a maidenhead of the ship in the likeness of a bearded devil with that silver peice sticking out of his head.
I had to Time Hop the warblade to get him out of the way and into safety.
@somori There's a Rozencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead joke in there, but I'm not sure I can make it concisely.
So, I'm looking into Even More Ways to minimize my turns in combat. I'm going to try standardized damage on all monsters next: one flat damage for hit, and a higher one for crits.
(I don't know what more I can do, Wizards! I've ripped out all the filler combat, taken tedious solo battles designed only to frustrate and drain resources and replaced them with fast and furious high-damage terrain encounters, disavowed recharge powers except in the most dire of circumstances, lowered hp and defenses drastically, and I'm still lucky to get two encounters a session!)
This evening I had a solo who only took one action on his turns and made a single attack at the start of each PC's turn!
To finish the story we have to: travel to the Astral Plane and defeat the Devourer in Pluton; get yanked 70 years into the future by the dragonpope to fight a corrupted dragon; discover the imminent arrival of Cthulhian starbeast in the enemy capital; travel there; defeat it (taking out the city as collateral damage in the process); and then play both sides of a fight to kill the dragonpope.
From that outline I've dropped: rescuing a paladin from the Crawling God; infiltrating and then escaping the enemy capital (to familiarize the party with it before the endgame); engaging in pitched battle on a field of thousands; and purifying a Far-Realm-tainted artifact.
@somori ...March.
My rpg.se profile says "Never short on overambitious ideas."
I also had a planned character arc to weave through all this that I instead condensed into two sessions a few weeks ago because the player didn't know when he'd be leaving.
I shouldn't have tried so big with my first 4e campaign, but I was excited.
I really can't blame 4e though. It's my group; they were slow in 3.5 too, and it's a little late for me to be realizing that.
(I firmly believe that it is the duty of the GM to provide an atmosphere and game for the party he has, not the party he wishes he had. If this makes him miserable or he can't or won't do it, he should step down.)
(I just sometimes have trouble figuring out what it is I should be giving my group.)
I was going for insight since its human iteraction, and what else could tell better about other humans, but I am not sure I should allow it to be used like that
humans are natural beings, finding out about their stats is a nature check
@somori I wouldn't give away stats anyways. I'd give general idea of abilities, class and power level at DC 15 and resistances/vulnerabilities and any extra gotchas at 20.
@waxeagle I think I like this better, since hitpoints are to specific info to find out, but my old GM used to do that, so I still do. I think I will say just general stuff
@TheBW tbh HP and defenses are things to be figured out over the course of the encounter, not the outset. (my wife likes to track how much damage we've done over the course of an encounter to try to get a rough idea of bloodied value), but it's not a value the DM just gives us
@TheBW you mean tracking damage? If it's making combat longer they're doing it wrong tbh it should be making combat slightly shorter as it should help you focus fire via a balance between most dangerous and most likely to die.
@TheBW yeah, our DM uses that as well. We have two other players tracking damage. My wife tracks monster damage, and our cleric tracks PC damage (we keep our own sheets as well, but he wants the easy reference). I haven't found it slows us down at all. But whatever suits
@waxeagle Of course, when I say generally, I mean when I get to. For some reason, my friends prefer a homemade system I once made to play some light free-roam roleplaying over a weekend, so we're usually playing that. It's a loose hybrid between Dungeons and Dragons and something called Drakar och Demoner from Sweden.
@Novian Leadership annoys me every time it sees play; it's almost always banned in groups that I play in. Absurdly broken, annoying to actually run, stupid feat-for-something-you-should-roleplay, etc. etc. There's really nothing good about the feat.
In the Ten Commandments of Char-Op, "Thou Shalt Not Lose Spellcasting Levels" is First Commandment, and then again the Sixth Commandment because it's that important
that said, the Cleric class offers little-to-nothing unless you're relying on Turn/Rebuke Undead, which you shouldn't probably
so yeah, go for prestige classes
oh well, some Domains do rely on Cleric level; avoid those if you're PrCing out
@Novian what sort of Cleric? Cohort to the Legendary Captain, or?
I just don't like it because it breaks one of the rules of Psionic design – it's got full manifesting – and it also gives a Psion a better version of the Wilder's schtick
anyway, Psions get more powers known, a larger list, a more-generally-useful primary stat, and a skill list that allows them easier entry to a lot of things
Wilders get Wild Surge, which... Overchannel is better
@Novian can see that in an emergency, but most of the time you want to take out threats more than you want to protect allies; you'll prevent more damage/risks by eliminating threats than you can by trying to cover allies
alongside polymorph effects and action economy destruction
the most important limitation on what a character can do are his actions; things that give you more actions or let you take actions you otherwise couldn't are automatically very powerful
this is why contingency, celerity, and time stop are three of the most powerful spells
That's why LARP organisers take weapon checks very seriously. :)
@MartinSojka, A friend of mine told me that after an event, they were cleaning up around a forest, and they found an arrow stuck in a tree. :P
They also did a weapon check on a Ducttape Machette. Turned out that it was an actual machette wrapped in a thin layer of ducttape. They hit a table with it and it went through the ducttape and got lodged in the table.
@TheBW I would use Nature for basic human information (as you guys established), OR: Arcana for things about the mage, and Nature for things about the barbarian (barbs are primal).
But RAW I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be just Nature because they're human.
