OOC Chat

He everyone, I switched to a new chapter thread in the game. Feel free to post in the old game thread still if you have unfinished business.

CancerMan, I kinda lept forward in the story without you having a chance to take in your prize. Feel free to post in The Game forum and your decisions will retcon forward into chapter 2.

We can just play that I found it, but left it where it was.

Hey gents,

I'm on spring break for 2 weeks, and will be doing some sporadic travelling and generally be further away from a computer than usual. If I will absent for an entire day or longer, I'll let you know. I think I can keep up with the game via my phone, but my post frequency may dip at times. The biggest thing that will suffer is if we get into a interesting, complex combat it may be hard for me to manage from a phone but I will do my damnedest to rain quality violence upon your characters in an organized, clear fashion.

I know this is the death knell of PbP, but I have confidence in this game and you, the players, that it shall survive. Hopefully everything will go smooth and you will barely notice. I'm having a great time at any rate :)

No worries, Mr. DM, posting from a phone can be hard under the best of circumstances. Do your best and I'm sure we'll make it through :)

Pretty sure we retrieve the barrel in record time :)

Yeah! I was going to call it a 4 hour trip and have you arrive at night but you rolled so well you cut it down to three. So, there is still some visibility.

Not yet. You are about 150 feet from the entrance, concealed by dense foliage. Moving closer will definitely require stealth rolls, unless you want to try to snipe the watch trogs pre-emptively. Attack rolls will be at advantage because attacker cannot see you.

I should also mention that the watch trogs will have 3/4's cover (+5 AC) because of their platform, although that doesn't matter to Jarveena.

I've added attack rolls to my readied action. I stated before that Jarveena is waiting for everyone to get into position, or for when the trogs spot them (whichever occurs first) but she just might lose her patience and attack sooner.

I just realized that it's still the first day and I've already used Action Surge, so Jarveena will only be able to shoot one arrow. Unless we're considered to have taken a short rest?

We didn't help move the barrel, I don't think, so three hours is more than enough for a short rest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_xgecR0ifo

Technically you can't ready attacks outside of combat. I feel pedantic bringing this up, but there are situations where it matters.

Before going further, I just want to say that nothing needs to change for this combat because you got the drop on the Trogs and we can use your rolls as your first turn of combat attacks. In fact, having your attack rolls during initiative is a pretty slick way of doing it in PbP. However, I am uncomfortable using the term "ready action" outside of combat because it implies using your reaction outside of initiative order, which can cause problems.

For example, if anyone had failed their stealth rolls, then it should come down to who acts fastest to decide if the alarm goes off. If you can ready actions outside of combat then:

A. the players have readied actions to kill the watch trogs, and
B. the watch trogs have readied actions to hit the alarms

So who's readied action goes first? We should just roll initiative to decide. This is the classic "Han shot first" scene from Star Wars: A New Hope. Greedo failed his sleight of hand check to pull his blaster out, and it came down to an initiative roll, and nobody beats Han Solo in an initiative roll. Had Greedo been able to ready an action before combat began, he could have used his reaction before Han shot (even though Han won initiative) and killed him. Han stands no chance in a world where you can ready actions before combat, or EVERYBODY in the cantina would have to have actions readied. And then who's readied action goes first?

This is especially problematic in a turn-based group combat situation because you can alpha-strike so hard on a first turn. In short, readying actions outside of combat devalues initiative and makes things more complicated.

The way I prefer to do these things is to

1. determine surprise with appropriate ability checks compared to perception
2. roll initiative
3. take turns in initiative order, skipping creatures that are surprised on the first round

If you want to preroll your attack while rolling initiative because you know what you want to do already, that is fine. But it's not going to happen at reaction speed.

So, there's my pedantic rant ... in the end, it doesn't really matter for this combat :) But, hopefully I was able to describe why it could matter and it makes sense why I want to make that distinction in the future.

^ So much this! Many people don't understand the way readied actions work, especially with surprise :)

Another thing: Short rest can only be done if you are not travelling. I assumed that you were all together; somebody has to do the navigating, watching out for monsters, etc. Imagine trying to move a sofa through a hostile jungle :) After all, we were rolling random encounters, so had you rolled a 5 or 6, I was assuming you were all going to be in the combat.

If that wasn't clear, then feel free to have taken a short rest. In the future, if the party is moving and you want to opt out of that movement and stay put to do a short rest, then let me know :)

That makes total sense. Just to be clear, I wasn't trying to game the system, just stating my intentions. Just treat my rolls as my first turn whenever that might occur in the initiative order. :-)

As for the short rest, Jarveena did go with the others. So just ignore my 2nd aet of rolls. :-)

Jabes, I know you weren't gaming the system :) Nobody more honest on these forums than you! But, DMs run things differently and it is kinda unclear in the rules, so I wanted to be clear with how I run things.

I ended up not ignoring your 2nd rolls because it looked damn cool and I have to make lunch, so there :P

Another hectic weekend at work + I'm coming down with something. Probably won't be hearing from me til Sunday.

Sorry to hear that Jabes. Feel better! Hope you don't mind if we keep Jarveena in the fight. I'll run her as a sniper bot with strong self-preservation instincts until you get back.

Hi, guys! I'm back. Still not feeling 100% but I've got some free time. Thanks for running Jarveena while I was gone! :-)