The Eye of Anubis: OOC Thread

[NeoTiamat]

That would be what a Death Ward does, yes.

[lostboy]

quick question. If you have a scimitar with a crit threat range of 18-20 and you then take improved critical (whihc doubles the threat range) what does the threat range become? 16-20 or 15-20?

[NeoTiamat]

15-20, though remember you need those Deathstrike Bracers to crit undead.

[NeoTiamat]

Alright, since it's a long weekend and it seems that most people are celebrating (to judge from the posts, or lack thereof), I'll hold off ending the combat round till tomorrow afternoon.

[NeoTiamat]

It's Feedback Time!

So... thus ends our shortest and most violent Book to date, and my great Experiment. As you might have noticed, I was experimenting with several things in this Book, in no small part in response to previous suggestions.

• -Larger fights
  -PCs getting forewarning and a chance to plan
  -PCs actually getting the drop on an enemy
  -Less beating up on the rogues/scouts

Anyways, I have some of my own thoughts on this Book and on the big fight that made up about half of it. So, here's the elements I'd like you to consider in your feedback.

-Thoughts on the Climactic Battle and the preparations leading up to it, from a DMly perspective. What worked, what didn't, did you actually like it at all, etc, etc, etc. You guys know the drill by now. 500 XP.

-Thoughts on the rest of the Book, which was fairly sparse this time around, but we had some unique moments. Ianthe, Neci, and Cavendish all made appearances or reappearances in this Book, so what did you think of them? 250 XP.

-A bit of a change, but thoughts on what you guys did. This Book focused on letting you people create a big plan, so do you think you guys did a good job? What was well done, what wasn't well done, and how would you guys try to improve future planning? 250 XP.

[Kaitou Kage]

1.) I'm a touch amused at how you took our suggestions rather to the extreme. I speak for myself when I say I wasn't expecting "more enemies" to be an entire army, nor was I expecting "preparation time" to be a whole slew of tactical options. I was certainly anticipating more modest changes -- and I still think a couple-three rounds of pre-battle prep time in smaller skirmishes would be welcome. In the end, it all worked out, though. I had a good feeling going into it and while things didn't go exactly as planned, they went well overall. It was nice to actually have a feeling of satisfaction.

The Devourer kind of confused me. I'm not sure why he got such fragile "big guys." It seemed a little disheartening to watch the vampires systematically decimate his blood giants or whatever they were because of the weird weakness. That being said, the Devourer's group certainly did what it was supposed to (occupy the enemy).

I was very pleased to see many "nontraditional" elements incorporated into the preparations. By this I mean things from the Souragneian Rum Cocktails and gunpowder to the alliances forged with the undead. Always fun to see this kind of innovation and improvisation on the DM's part!

That being said, I certainly do not look forward to doing battles on this scale again for a while. They're vast and difficult to coordinate for the PCs, and as you have mentioned, can become hectic for the DM, too. They're easier to do in a PbP style game than a tabletop but I see why mass battle is rarely used by DMs. I am glad you brought it to the ending when you did. It was starting to feel like it was just dragging on -- similar to the complaint you lodged against my game

In short: It was fun, but probably a "once in a campaign time" sort of deal.

2.) Ianthe was moderately interesting, but at the same time, we didn't get to know her too well. Now, granted, we knew her all of two nights' time, so we're not going to be BFFs or anything. Also, we spent more time dealing with preparations than talking to the woman. So basically what I got out of Ianthe was "ranger woman from a remote domain who can shoot a rifle." I'd like to learn more about her, like what was going on when she ended up in this place and why she decided to stay, but we never really got around to that part.

Neci...It's not very often when you get to sympathize with undead and it certainly made for an experience. Most undead, even those you know are unfortunate victims of fate, are ones that people care little for beyond creatures to be destroyed. So it was unusual to feel sympathy for her.

Cavendish was interesting to see again. It was refreshing to see him without seeing that really irritating smugness. I appreciate the break from that, I really do because I do not like to feel driven into annoyance and anger by the character every time he shows up. For Kuzan to get angry is fine, but when dealing with Cavendish, it's very hard to keep detached from my character's feelings. Not that I do a terribly good job of that anyway

3.) I think overall we did mostly fine. Things didn't go exactly as planned, but they rarely do. A few key points I think bear mentioning are as follows:

- Should've put a melee character with Andre and Lia. In hindsight, it would've worked better for them. That being said, their end of the fight didn't have to be thrown into the dire straits it reached. There were some major tactical blunders and their situation could've been considerably less dangerous if not for those. Maybe it would've been better to position Lia and Andre with all the melee and just come at Cavvy from two angles. But we could also "what if" about this all day.

- Probably would've been better to just start with the cannon and light the barrels, THEN unload with crossfire. The ship still worked out well in the end, late explosion notwithstanding. Many thanks to Whistler for all the plotting, planning, conspiring and mostly for aiming and firing the cannon.

- This bears mentioning again even though I stated it in one of my IC posts. If you are melee and you are in danger of dying, please be aware of the healer's positions. If you're being brought down to single-digit HP, it's probably not a good idea for you to stay in melee. For heaven's sake, back off if you have to. Don't expect me to be everywhere at once because I can't. You need to have the sense to know when enough is enough and when you should step back to await more heals.

Finally, this book has me wondering if Kuzan passed over this place years and years ago when the storm took him. If the Ruse was possibly underwater back then, it'd make for quite a place for the Mists to grab someone and throw them into Sri Rajian oceans some thousand years in the future, wouldn't it?

[lostboy]

Hmm this is a weird one, I dont know quite what to feel about this book. In some respects it was refreshing but on others Im not keen to see the like of it again.

The Good:

Well it was a change of pace from previous books. This book had combat skills as paramount rather then the more social or investigative skills we have seen in the past few. I think Khalil rolled only two spot checks all book whihc must say soemthing.

Jackals ruse, dead ship graveyard, atmospheric and an interesting setting, lots of sceneray interaction in battles whihc is always nice rather than a straight fight on flat terrain. The planning element was especially nice as it gave us all time to work together not only as characters but in real life too. I also rather liked the large amount of options you gave us to put something into action, and the unuusal items to play with molotovs/gunpowder etc.

Cavendish always nice, particularly the one-liners, opera listings and the fanatastic hammock (did I make the colours up on the map NT or did you ask for a Kathmandu hippy style one?)

lots of low hp enemies = a happy Dervish

The deadliness of the final battle was nice, its good to feel mortal which is often difficult in D&D where all your feats / magic etc gives you a false sense of security. Squaring up to that vampire showed me that death is certainly possible and increasingly likely. New found respect for life preservation has been acheived....

It was also nice to see all the expedition npc's getting involved, some of them you tend to forget about.

Oh and the added interest to combat s with the camels and cannons was excelelnt, it meant you had more to worry about than just rolling to hit.

The Mediocre

The NPC's whilst had potential got a bit lost as KK says, this book was dominated by two huuuge combats which meant everything else got put to one side a tad. Neci was a nice touch though and yes actually showed undead as more than mindless death machines or intelligent evil death machines.

The nightmare pit, what exactly was that all about? Again I think the combat orientation made it all a bit anti-climatic (no offense to Nathan and Kaitou for their work in taking it down). Things will probabley get revealed in the next book, but I havent a scooby what it all meant right now, and frankly it seemed less important due to the proximity of lots of vampires and smiler things.

Combat in general got a bit tedious after a while, giant battles are an interesting experience but shoud be kept pretty scrace. After killign the 9th zombie I foudn myself wistfully rememebring the investigative monents of books 2 , 4 and 5.

The bad

Jervis offerign to show you his trophy collection (bodak skin ewwww!)


Our Plan

Hmm actually although it seemed good at the time we are very very lucky to even all be alive. Whether we didnt consider the relaities of the fight, or didnt respond as well as we should have (or whether our DM just enjoys p***ing on our bonfire) it was a bit of a flop. Still things that perhaps need to be pointed out (not that Im trying to get anyones back up, just things to think about maybe):

-WHY did we attack at night again? Daytime and sunlight would have been more sensible surely?
- As KK says we shouldnt have left two spellcasters without backup
- Slightly selfish but it would have been nice to send some kind of healign backup with the melee group, there was a lot of big damage being taken and no real opportunities to heal.
- We should have blown the ship when the two vampires got on board
- Cannons although cool werent reliable enough to tie up all our best ranged attack guys on for the large part of the battle. The amount of resources needed for the return wasnt worth it IMO. (Of course if dice had bene kinder the cannon could have made the battle very very short so I guess it was a trade off)

Overall tthe book was fun but perhaps lets not have another one just liek that for a little while eh?

[Nathan of the FoS]

Let it never be said that the DM does not respond to player feedback.

It was a rather peculiar Book, for the reasons already outlined above. Essentially no NPC interaction (as a group, anyway, several of us did stuff via IM) and lots and lots and LOTS of fighting.

Thankfully, things fell out in such a way as to give Charles highly useful and amusing things to do (especially in the first combat--ghoul lord u iz pwnzred!). I think that little glow of achievement will last a good long while.

Regarding the second combat, I have no idea what the significance of the circle was, either, in terms of the combat itself--my understanding of the big picture is that Cavendish was using it to power some kind of horribility, as a kind of experiment/dress rehearsal for when he gets the Eye--but having been told to take it down I took it down, and since it was Victory Condition A I got to feel like I had done a good deed. It's not quite as exciting as killing things, but that's life; we all do what we're good at, and sneaking around and disabling traps is something that Charles is very good at, while fighting scores of undead isn't (ghoul lord notwithstanding).

I am amused to note that the DM swore he wouldn't do another big battle anytime soon, and then promptly gave us--an even bigger battle! It was a nice change to have a "combat book" but I wouldn't feel sorry if we didn't have another. It was kinda fun to know what to expect and plan out the fight, so that was also a nice change.

I thought both battles worked well in terms of "cast of thousands" conflicts with interesting combat options, terrain, etc. Apparently it's really true, one cannon by itself is just not much good in a real pitched battle. We definitely didn't make enough use of the Molotov cocktails, I think, although Charles didn't take any cuz he was afraid Cavendish would zap him with something horrible and he didn't want to be festooned with inflammables when/if this happened. The whole gunpowder thing was a bit of a wet firecracker; I still think we could have arranged that to be more effective. Leaving Lia, Andre, and Devereux together without someone to tank for them was also not a wise decision, although I'm just a little disappointed in Devereux...surely he could have whipped out the ol' watch again, or something, and not just been a bystander who had to be protected? Our plan was quite effective, I think, especially since we underutilized our resources and still cleaned up, serious injuries to Khalil and Lia notwithstanding. (Tomas got his fair share of getting beat up too--thanks for screening for Charles, DB!--but never arrived at death's door, and the rest of the PCs, as best I recall, escaped totally unscathed.)

Cavendish was more bearable this time around, mostly from lack of screen time, I suspect. Ianthe is a Woman of Mystery, and, well, I'm frankly not sure who Neci is. So, "rich NPC interactions book" it warn't. That's OK, they don't all have to be talky.

I have to say, also, that Andre has a knack for befriending the oddest people. If you are an hideous undead creature tortured by the memory of your lost child, or a bloodthirsty nature goddess mourning the days when worshipers honored you by human sacrifice--Andre feels your pain!

[The Whistler]

1) Big Final Combat! There were just *enough* options here to give us good brainstorming fodder without making us feel paralyzed by choice. (i.e. we knew *someone* would be well served to work the cannon, we had considerable latitude in where we deployed people but had to funnel everyone through one of three choke points, we had a limited amount of undead factions to work with, and so forth) That's probably the best way to handle an event like this, and it was carried off quite well. Everyone had their niche, and a lot of neat stuff to do within it; I would've liked to see some of the NPCs spotlighted a little more, (Jervis had a couple great moments to shine) but since we voluntarily stuck a bunch of them with loading the cannon and following orders, I guess I can't really complain.

I'm with prior commenters on the length issue; the fight did have its own interior pacing (punctuated by the destruction of the pit), but by the time the auxiliary undead had been animated for a while it started to drag on a bit.

2) NPCs and the rest of the book! Okay, literally touched by Andre's and Neci's bonding moment. Who knew plague-ridden walking corpses could be so dang sympathetic? Ianthe I have less of a handle on and would like to get to know better, but presumably she's not staying outside or anything, so we have a whole 'nother book to do it in.

Also, and this is reaching further back, I'm rooting for Samael's continued good health. That short story was a really good read, but now that we've saved him once, it'd suck to have him snuffed by slow-acting shadow scorpion poison or whatever while we're gadding about in a monastery. Pull through, dude!

3) Kicked myself for this repeatedly--we should've fired off our first shot with the heavy cannon while we had an unlimited amount of time to load it, then switched to the light cannon afterward. For that matter, I wish we could've herded more undead into the blast radius for when we lit things up, which would admittedly have taken a good deal more synchronization than we could handle while trying not to die. Still, though.

I'm with Kaitou on having a melee dude in with the casters, although who knows what would've happened on the East side of the field were that the case. Still, having two out of seven combatants effectively neutralized off in a corner for multiple rounds is bad news no matter how you look at it.

Oh, and Kaitou? Some background on the Jackal's Ruse, because I have clearly read too much Ravenloft supplementary material: this campaign setting has a Bermuda Triangle-equivalent in one of its oceans. The back end of it dumps out here.

[Kaitou Kage]

*chuckles* Thank you for the information! I am, as I have mentioned before, quite a Ravenloft newbie. I know very little about the setting beyond what Kuzan himself knows.

On that note, I've been having Kuzan spend some time occasionally with NPCs, learning about their homelands through them, so if anyone wants to teach me about their character's homeland or places the character has lived, feel free to look me up.

Also, since you scratched my back, I'll scratch yours Sam will be fine! Kuzan made him pay a visit to the medical tent, diagnosed him, and gave him some treatment that fixed him up quite nicely. When we get back to the camp, Sam will get another treatment and he should be in much better spirits.

And speaking of Sam and back-scratching, word is probably starting to spread around camp that Kuzan is one hell of a masseuse. He's been handling complaints of sore muscles and upper body sprains from some of the guards lately, so word is probably spreading.

[Nathan of the FoS]

Much better spirits indeed. And more cooperative.

[NeoTiamat]

Book Eight is up, as is the map of the Monastery of Stilled Nightmares over in the map thread. I've also logged XP for the first four Feedbacks.

I'll keep Book Seven up a little bit longer, if anyone wants to do stuff, then close it later.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

I'd appreciate it if someone were willing to pour a Cure spell into Lia and wake her up. ^^;

As to the Abbot: Is ... is that what I think it is? o_o;

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Feedback.

-Thoughts on the Climactic Battle and the preparations leading up to it.
Big battles are interesting from time to time, but I do hope they won't be a regularly recurring event. Or at least not on this scale. While it's a good exercise for our strategic skills to try and plan for battle over a larger area, the execution is ... somewhat problematic. I think our team is a bit small to engage a whole army, especially when that is spread out over a large area. The idea of splitting up our own forces to create a crossfire was pretty well-thought out, but it spread us dangerously thin in some ways. The next time we need to do something like this, I'd like to either have more backup troops that can make a difference where we need them most, or that we have much better weaponry to give our enemy trouble with. I liked the challenge. The way things turned out was less than ideal for me personally, but I admire the way the rest of the party managed to turn the battle around when they needed to, without having to rely on some deus ex machina. I appreciate the fact that we weren't just plowed under, which could have been so easy to arrange. But let me add this: I loved being in a position to plan ahead for a battle this time! It made a lot of difference, and if we learn to plan ahead better, we could get through our future battles with a lot less trouble.

Thoughts on the rest of the Book.
The rest of the Book was fine, though personally I enjoy more rp between battles. The newly introduced characters were interesting, though I didn't get a very strong feeling for Ianthe just yet. Maybe in the next Book? Cavendish is the same as always, and he's managed to mystify me yet again. It seems he has some really big plans, considering his threat as he departed. I enjoyed the interaction with and greater insight to the undead trapped in the Ruse as an observer. I think the Devourer and the Vitreous Drinker are detestible, but Neci was a very poignant, sad character. And of course we now have a group of unbound vampires wandering around the Ruse as well, unless they're smart enough to up sticks and leave. That could make things interesting. I regret people were so busy near the end, though; the climactic battle felt a bit less impressive because some of us had to limit their actions to statements of action before they left again. I'm looking forward to the mysteries of the monastery and Mary from Mordent, however. All in all, this Book has a very strong 'bridging' feeling to it, or at least it does for me; it is more a connection between two chapters than a chapter in itself.

Thoughts on what we did.
I messed up, pure and simple. Got confused which option to choose when I was caught in battle, and I made the wrong choice. Such is life ... I rather enjoyed the planning stage, trying to figure out the best way to position our forces, but we made a few oversights there as well. In the end, though, we all pulled through and we all had a chance to make a difference in this battle. That feels pretty good. Our planning wasn't all bad, and I liked how all available resources were tapped, in as far as we could tap them: diplomacy, gunpowder, Souragnien cocktails, magic, metal and muscle, we all put them to use. We might have done it a little better, but we live and learn. I trust that the next time we have to do something on this scale, we'll use what we learned here to our advantage.

[Kaitou Kage]

Wow, nice Otto My short-lived memory and I totally missed that connection.