Reckonings: The Overlook

[DeepShadow of FoS]

My biggest frustration is probably from playing Balin; Playing someone that good is a bit of a struggle for me. But that is my own problem that I am trying to rectify.

If I may suggest something, the phantasmal killer your PC was just hit with might be an opportunity for you to delve into Balin's dark secrets. You can use the character's "low points" from the survey and expand on them, or you could make up something new to give you a better grip on the PC. This "brush with fear" might leave a lasting impression regardless of whther Balin saves or not.

What's your greatest source of pleasure with the game?

A while back Ilene (Tessius) and I were comparing our characters and what they could do. While Tessius was far and away better at many skills, we discovered he was incapable of killing Balin. Even if Tessius coup de grace'd Balin in his sleep.

Wow. I was certainly impressed by this, but I must flatly deny that I took that as a challenge to kill Balin as quickly as possible. The subsequent ambush was planned long before the survey was written.

Balin I think exemplifies the sheer invulnerability of our characters compared to the majority of the population, and his displays could lead to him being considered a near-god by the locals. Anyway, to directly answer your question I am loving the reactions Balin is getting from what are thus far casual acts.

I totally agree, and I think it's some of the funnest stuff to roleplay. So far both Balin and Cortez have got some version of the, "that's easy for you to say, us mere mortals have to make tougher choices" speech, but I think there are many more dimensions to this.

What's the most epic thing your PC has done in-game?

Balin flew out to meet the ghost captain. He gets surrounded by solid fog and attacked. He falls out of the cloud, takes no damage from any of his attackers, then goes and cuts through the main mast of the ship with casual power. Thats the only real epic thing he has done, at least under my control.

Let's fix that right away, shall we?

What's one thing you'd like your PC to do before the game ends?

Well, finding the royal family and protecting his comrades are two high points for Balin. As for me, I'd like him and Stradh to have a get together. Frankly I think Stradh is the only melee guy around capable of challenging Balin, and I'd like to see such a test.

I appreciate--and share--the respect for Strahd, but he's far from the strongest DL out there in terms of game stats. Ankhtepot, Anton Misroi, Gwydion, The Illithid God Brain, Meredoth, and even Tsien Chiang are all more powerful strictly in terms of stats, and that's just off the top of my head.

On top of that, there are powers in RL other than darklords...but I've said enough on this already. Suffice it to say you may get your chance to throw down with a comparable bad guy or two.

How have encounters challenged your PC emotionally?

Sadly I can't think of any. While the children asking me to go save their father was a little heart-wrenching, I think Balin has probably dealt with the same or similar situation before.

I totally agree. If you're really struggling with what to say, I'll understand if you just pretend you said something appropriate and apply your skill bonus.

How have encounters challenged your PC's abilities?

While the ghost ship encounter used several of my abilities, it was definitely not a challenge.

My how I've neglected your character's education! Let's fix that, shall we?

I could eliminated all of the ghosts with very little effort, and only didn't due to Ciera's warning. If we run into that ship with these refugees around, it will be heading for the ocean bottom.

Speak of the devil...and here he is for a rematch!

That said, I know ghosts can be dispersed by violence but don't vanish until some event happens, usually focused on how they died. I think trying to lay these ghosts to rest permanently would be something Balin would like to do, and could be an interesting challenge.

I hope you still think so after this ambush.

For whatever reason, Balin strikes me as the type to pity and wish to put to rest most undead.

Sounds to me like you've got a good grip on the character already. Perhaps expanding on that would help you get into Balin's skin.

The whole Morninglord thing has me quite a bit confused, because I thought Lathander was referred to sometimes as such. That will be an interesting conversation.

[Nathan of the FoS]

What's one thing you'd like your PC to do before the game ends?

Well, finding the royal family and protecting his comrades are two high points for Balin. As for me, I'd like him and Stradh to have a get together. Frankly I think Stradh is the only melee guy around capable of challenging Balin, and I'd like to see such a test.

I appreciate--and share--the respect for Strahd, but he's far from the strongest DL out there in terms of game stats. Ankhtepot, Anton Misroi, Gwydion, The Illithid God Brain, Meredoth, and even Tsien Chiang are all more powerful strictly in terms of stats, and that's just off the top of my head.

I think Gurthoron means that Strahd is the only guy who might fight Balin toe-to-toe in a swordfight and not get blown away in the first two rounds. From the strict melee standpoint, I think he might be right (assuming that Strahd could do it). Vlad Drakov and Ivan Dragonov are the only other two fighters I can think of who are anywhere near tough enough to hang with Balin longer than it would take him to get his sword out.

[Nathan of the FoS]

Hey, Ciera's back with Cortez--can she do something that will let the two of them communicate directly? Or, better yet, get one of them into the presence of the other?

(Lieutenant Uhura, open a hailing frequency, please.)

[MatthiasStormcrow]

IIRC, Ciera doesn't have any teleport spells - the original player specifically decided that as a roleplay choice. She's got those crazy ring gates (the ones I tried to wear ) but I don't think that helps, since both gates are over here.

Anders and Sariel are both back, too, though (and Kinketsu, and Shadross - whoa, is everyone present and accounted for except Balin, Tessius and Peregrine?)

Interestingly, I made the same choice for Arcadius back when I was writing him up - no teleport spells, as a roleplay thing (though he's a bit less limited, since he's a wizard and could always just find one and learn it). But I figured he prefered sailing around instead of just teleporting everywhere.

But I think that unless Anders has some crazy tricks, the onus for magically crossing vast distances falls on Peregrine. Better get a good night's sleep eh?

[DeepShadow of FoS]

I thought Arcadius had Boots of Teleportation...

Yeah, Anders is a possibility. The griffon figurine might help with some of that.

The ring gates are closed for the day after one of them went underwater, but there are ways around that. Hey, could you use a short-range teleport such as dimension door to travel to the far side of a ring gate without adding to the weight requirement? I'd rule that you can. Now all we need is to get one of the ring gates to Peregrine.

[Nathan of the FoS]

But I think that unless Anders has some crazy tricks, the onus for magically crossing vast distances falls on Peregrine.

So now Ciera is Uhura, and Peregrine gets to be Scotty?... In a party of six epic level characters, you'd think the cleric wouldn't be the one stuck with mass transport duties.

Better get a good night's sleep eh?

Yeah, that ain't gonna happen. BTW, when do I get my spells, DS? Dawn?

Peregrine still has plenty of time on the mist walk, so if Ciera could figure out where he is, and then where he is relative to the Bane, he could just walk over and walk back. It wouldn't be real great to leave the Liberte undefended, but a round trip would almost certainly take less than an hour (I think--unless it's more than 60 miles round trip between the ship?) and Peregrine could bring back a ring gate or something to ease further efforts.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

So now Ciera is Uhura, and Peregrine gets to be Scotty?... In a party of six epic level characters, you'd think the cleric wouldn't be the one stuck with mass transport duties.

Anders has his thought-jumping power, but that only works for him. If you can geet the ring gate to Peregrine, and reunite the party, the person best suited as a telejumper might be Tessius, shadow jumping through the ring.

OTOH, you could just persuade Ashkar to join the group....

Better get a good night's sleep eh?

Yeah, that ain't gonna happen. BTW, when do I get my spells, DS? Dawn?

Sounds reasonable.

Peregrine still has plenty of time on the mist walk, so if Ciera could figure out where he is, and then where he is relative to the Bane, he could just walk over and walk back.

I thought they already did that with sextants and whatnot. You had the bearings on the Bane when you first set out, but you didn't go because it was a ten-minute trip, IIRC.

It wouldn't be real great to leave the Liberte undefended, but a round trip would almost certainly take less than an hour (I think--unless it's more than 60 miles round trip between the ship?) and Peregrine could bring back a ring gate or something to ease further efforts.

I think it'd be around twenty minutes, not including conversation time, but that could be handled through the ring gate if necessary.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

I'm at a critical juncture in the game. The logical thing for the baddies to do from a strategic viewpoint is to keep the PC's awake enough that their spellcasters can't restore spells. Yet I'm worried that this tactic, if successful, will also eliminate a lot of the fun from the game--kinda like roleplaying your character slowly starving to death.

So far I've thrown everything at you, and let things fall as they may, and I'm quite pleased with it. Some of you may recall that one of the reasons I wanted to play epic is so I could stop holding back or letting PC's get lucky. In an epic game, you don't just happen to be carrying the sunsword blade when you stumble across the empty hilt. You have to scour the globe for the blade, find out it was destroyed by Strahd ten years ago, go back in time and swap it with a fake, then steal Strahd's artifact-sword and remove the hilt from it via a ten-hour ritual. Low-level games are riddled with serendipity; epic ones IMO should have tough luck at every turn. Ciera's contraction of cackle fever would be an example of this--I wasn't going to let Draga go so easily.

With that in mind, I'm going to stay true to storyline, and this is exactly what Saragossans do to put themselves on a more even footing with neighbors. Still, that doesn't mean things have to turn out their way. Now that you all know what they have planned, there's every possibility that they'll be partially or wholly unsuccessful in keeping you all awake.

One possibility that I'll volunteer right now is to have one spellcaster stay awake so the others can get their rest. The stuff they will be throwing at you is intended to require spellcasting help to defeat, so it will be a versatile array. Cortez isn't very versatile, and at any rate he ought to restore his healing in case Balin and Peregrine are delayed longer. Peregrine may or may not have his own problems, but the chance of him jumping over to rescue the Bane is pretty slim at this point. Ciera's getting pretty tapped out as it is, so she'd be a bad choice. That leaves Anders. With magical items to enhance their versatility, Kinketsu or Sariel might be able to serve instead.

Any thoughts are appreciated. If anyone thinks they would truly hate this game if I did this to you all, please speak up now. Otherwise, feel free to plan who will sleep and who will take one for the team...or any other counter-tactics you can think of.

[Nathan of the FoS]

I thought they already did that with sextants and whatnot. You had the bearings on the Bane when you first set out, but you didn't go because it was a ten-minute trip, IIRC.

Huh...what I remember is trying to use discern location to find the Bane so we could go, and then discovering that it wouldn't work, and that the battle would be pretty much over before we got there anyway...so we never did find out where the Bane was. I was just trying to find the thread on MSD's board, but I couldn't find the right posts--I think I said we were going to the Bane and then changed my mind and edited it, and some of the information was lost.

I like your version better, though. And if they could do it once, they can do it again, anyway.

[MatthiasStormcrow]

I thought Arcadius had Boots of Teleportation...

Now you've made me go look him up. Yeah, he does. Probably decided to give him those for emergencies; three times a day is a lot less often than he could do it if he actually knew the spell. But for general purpose getting around he does have all manner of spells granting flight (nothing like being able to cast Overland Flight when you wake up in the morning and then fly all day...)

Another thought I had looking at his sheet is that, while I can understand not wanting to steal Ciera's thunder, Mirage Arcana could be all kinds of fun in Saragoss.

As for sleeping - well, if they're spending a bit longer sleeping, they can do rotating shifts. "Normal" adventuring parties, in my experience, almost always sleep in shifts, so there's at least one person awake at any given time. (Or maybe the parties I play with in PnP D&D are just extra paranoid?) If you've got three people, in a twelve hour period you can each one sleep for eight hours and pull a four-hour watch... With more people it's even easier (or you can have more than one person awake at once), plus we have at least one elf who only needs two hours of meditation. And if any of you guys have a Ring of Sustenance by any chance, you only need two hours sleep, as well. And there are all kinds of spells for that too - Magnificent Mansion anyone? Or even just Rope Trick?

I guess the point is, "We don't dare sleep, we'll get attacked" is a fairly common problem for adventurers of any level, and has lots of solutions, so I don't see any reason to not hit us with that one just because we're epic. Particularly since it makes sense - if it were just, "Well now that you're epic, things just happen to always go wrong instead of how things used to just always happen to go right when you were lower level, so a random demon happened by while you were sleeping" then I might object, but when it's obvious and logical, I don't see a problem with it.

edit:

Better get a good night's sleep eh?

Yeah, that ain't gonna happen. BTW, when do I get my spells, DS? Dawn?

Speaking of how people in our PnP games get interrupted sleeping quite often, it's actually come up before that this is one of the differences between arcane and divine spellcasters. Divine spellcasters actually get their spells at X time every day, regardless of whether they've slept or not; the only catch is that any spells you cast within the 8 hours before dawn will count against your daily limit for the next day. So all you really have to do is make it through the night without casting a bunch of spells.

Ciera or Anders on the other hand need eight hours of rest; but the advantage for them is that the eight hours of rest can come at any time. If Anders has to stay up all night to repel attacks from whomever, he can sleep from 10am to 6pm the next day and be ready to go again the next night, if necessary.

[Fuzzball]

Hey everyone...

Malcolm and I will be posting for the Sea of Sorrows soon...I forgot to e-mail our character sheets to us last time I was in Denver. I'm going tomorrow and then we'll see if Balin can manage not to die and Tessius can manage to make a Fort save.


I have a suggestion for spell-caster-iness...but Invictus isn't there...unless something was posted and I haven't read it yet...I should go check that...

[DeepShadow of FoS]

I have a promise from Fuzzball and Gurthoron that we'll have a post from them soon on the Sea of Sorrows. Cortez, I'm waiting on you to pick things up with Peregrine and let Ciera know where and how to land. I'll be working on cut scenes and stuff--let me know if there are going to be any serious delays.

Come on, folks! Once Ciera lands we'll have almost the entire party together!

[DeepShadow of FoS]

Random tidbit: I had Metallica's "Unforgiven" running through my head as I was composing Invictus's tour of the Nightwalkers. I think it's a good theme for the scene, or even for Saragoss in general. Hmmm...should we bring over DP's casting call and add this to the Reckonings soundtrack?

[Nathan of the FoS]

Random tidbit: I had Metallica's "Unforgiven" running through my head as I was composing Invictus's tour of the Nightwalkers. I think it's a good theme for the scene, or even for Saragoss in general. Hmmm...should we bring over DP's casting call and add this to the Reckonings soundtrack?

How 'bout Iron Maiden's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner"? And "Row Boys Row" from Richard Thompson.

[MatthiasStormcrow]

Sorry 'bout the delay, guys. I should have settled into my new apartment (more or less) later this week; at the moment I'm sitting in my mostly bare previous apartment, because it still has internet and the new one doesn't yet. (On the other hand, that one has all the furniture now... ) I'll try and get that response up in the next few days.