General conversation/OOC commentary

Have any of you had any interactions with Kilikina recently? I haven't heard from her in weeks; hope everything's OK.

8 days of inactivity.
Don't know this person outside GP, so I don't have any insights sorry.
After 14 days they get the Zzz icon and at that point I feel its justified to kick the player and make room for others.

Don't worry about it :) There are thousand wheels to keep track of as a GM. We all slip up a few times.

This! No worries!

I will reach out on Discord to see if she’s okay. I know she was dealing with some family stuff recently that was tough.

I have a rules convention question to ask you all to vote on:

When there are multiple effects that occur at the end of a turn, do you want to have the player-caused effects to happen first, or do you want the environment/enemy-caused effects to happen first?

The specific example we have now is Elowin's Twilight Sanctuary and the Lord Mayor's Hunger of Hadar spell. Either the player character gets temp HP first, THEN the player makes the DEX save (and possibly their PC takes damage), OR the player makes the DEX save (and their PC takes any resulting damage), and THEN the PC gets temp HP.

Feel free to discuss, but do eventually vote.

Xanathar's Guide to Everything includes an (optional) rule for exactly this situation. On page 77, it contains a section entitled "Simultaneous Effects":
So I choose environment first

forkbeard have locked himself out of GP. Site owner have been notified. But that's the reason he hasn't been posting

OK, thank for ferreting that out. Depending on how you look at it, it's either fortunate or unfortunate that he's been absent right now, when his character has dropped and is dying. All he's missed so far is a death saving throw, and I hope that when he's able to log on again he's happy with the roll I made on his behalf (a success!). I figured that Elowin, Morik, and/or Eozindra - the people with healing capability - should know if one of the two dying characters was closer to death or not before they choose which character to assist.

For that reason, Elysia Nightthorn / @Kilikina will be the one I real next round.

EDIT: Well Kilikina have been offline for 16 days :(
Might as well heal the barbarian instead

I haven’t heard back from @Kilikina on Discord either. I don’t know what happened to her. :( It worries me.

I still have to play Zin the way she would react and she would try to save her sister.

Yeah, @Kilikina's absence does correspond kind of distressingly with the hurricanes in the southeastern US. I hope she's OK, too.

For the time being, I will continue playing Elysia (until/unless @Kilikina returns, of course). Usually I phase out the PCs of absent players on GP, but if Elysia survives this battle, I don't see phasing her out making sense, given how attached the two sisters are to each other. I've been thinking a bit about different methods I employ for absent-player PCs in face-to-face games; when we finish this encounter, I'll post some options for the group to consider.

I had another user reach out to me in parallel about @forkbeard, that they'd talked to @forkbeard on Discord. I'm going to try to connect with @forkbeard on Discord (if I can figure out the username), so that I can at least relay what's happening and maybe get some moves when/if Ishi is revived.

His discord username is forkbeard_67640 I think

I have family in that region. Communication is very tough right now.

I also have been trying to come up with some (hopefully temporary) options for phasing Elysia out to the sideline. Just until things stabilize for Kili. If worse comes to worse and we do have to remove Elysia entirely, I apologize in advance to the group for the absolutely emotional shitshow you will have on your hands when Zin loses her sibling. But hey. The RP will be great?

This fight with the Lord Mayor and his men may not be the most epic fight in the campaign, but every time I've run it, it's been the most tense, nail-biting encounter of all. Everything seems to end up balanced on a razor's edge, every time, even though each group makes wildly different choices and approaches. This run-through appears to be following that pattern, even though you all defeated the thing in the water first (which no other group has done in my experience). My heart's in my mouth every turn.

Of course, the improbably swingy rolls (crit fail - crit - crit fail - crit) don't help matters.

Well, after our initial conversation, @forkbeard hasn't been responding in Discord, so I'll post for Ishi in the meantime.

Whew, the suspense of these turns is really strong. So much depends on each roll. I cheered when Morik's Entangle Restrained all three of the bad guys, and I was terrified that LMM2 was going to hit Elowin before he moved (and was killed by Booming Blade). I've been combining all the NPC/enemy turns into one post, just editing it and re-editing it over and over again, but I realize that this may diminish the tension for the rest of you, if you read the post hours later when all the rolls have been made. Unless you object, then, I am going to start posting each turn as a separate post, so that it may preserve some of the tension of the uncertainty of how this combat is going to end.

Let me know if that's too much.

Do as you see fit. I am enjoying the suspense of seeing your game post and wondering if this is when Elowin gets murdered to death. I have been sure that she would die, so many times this encounter, that I have already considered her replacement character. :)

But seriously, do as you see fit - this encounter is one of the best PBP nail biters I have played.

I'm happy with however you want to run it. This fight has been insane in the best ways.