OOC Thread

Thanks Daykinator! Everyone did a pretty great job. After the character building discussions, I wasn't expecting any of these to suck or anything, but I was kind of surprised how well a group of new players did with them. And the fact that everyone has become so invested in their characters already! I'm playing with a guy in my RL game who has two characters that I can't tell apart, even though one of them is a woman, and I've played with the guy for a year! They're pieces on a game board to him. It's frustrating, especially when I see what a group of new players who are enthusiastic can do.

Anyway, I noticed a couple things on some of the character sheets I thought I'd point out to everyone. Mostly good news. Mostly.

@Daykinator:
You should write down your Half-Elf abilities so you have them handy: Darkvision (within 60' dim light appears as bright light and darkness as dim light), Fey Ancestry (advantage on saving throws against being charmed and magic can't put you to sleep), Skill Versatility (you get to pick two more skills to be proficient in--I would recommend Stealth and Athletics), Languages (Common, Elvish, and one extra).

@Ramen:
The bad news is your AC is 17 not 18. Unfortunately, you have to subtract 1 because of your Dex.
The good news is that you have several more spells available to you. You should have a total of three cantrips and four 1st level spells to choose. On top of that, because you chose the Life Domain, you automatically have Bless and Cure Wounds in addition to the four 1st level spells.

@Jacketch:
Aside from your cantrips, you should have two different lists for your spells: one is a list of the spells in your spellbook (the six you started with); the second is the list of spells you have memorized (which for a 1st level Wizard with 16 Int is four spells). You can only cast a spell if you have it memorized. The good news is, unlike a sorcerer, you can change your spell list every day, and you can add any number of spells to your spellbook, as long as you come across them and have time to copy them. I would recommend leaving Identify and Detect Magic in your spellbook and not memorizing them. As a Wizard, you can cast ritual spells straight out of your spellbook, it just takes longer (10 minutes for Detect Magic and 11 for Identify). Also, you should add Arcane Recovery to your Feats/Abilities section.

@G3rmanicus:
You should add your Outlander Feature (Wanderer) to your Feats/Abilities section. It doesn't always come up, but you don't want to forget you have this ability. You should also add your Barbarian abilities (Rage) for the same reason. I've seen even experienced players forget to add their rage bonus if they're raging (not to mention their damage resistances) because they didn't have it on their sheet.

@McDunno, I had it pretty much set up as you described it, I just had most of the information on that spellbook app that was mentioned several days ago. I went ahead and added the information to my spells, though. It should be helpful if anyone's interested. Also added the arcane recovery, which I forgot to add before, thanks for the reminder.

As for the story post, it sounded like they had fun! I can imagine this being a past event the party references every now and then. Pageflap would definitely have loved it, and would study the creativity of it to see if he can gleam anything off of it. Rhyming is new to him, though I believe he is more fond of alliteration. Getting coin out of it is also a big plus.

@McDunno
Thanks! I will do so.

Question, While a barbarian is in Rage and takes an attack action his next turn, would a bonus action also benefit from the +2? For example, the Polearm Master Feat allows for a bonus action to attack with a 1d4 bludgeoning attack if hit.

The entry for Rage reads: "When you make a melee weapon attack using Strength, you gain a bonus to the damage roll that increases as you gain levels as a barbarian, as shown in the Rage Damage column of the Barbarian table."

The entry for Polearm Master reads: "When you take the Attack action and attack with only a glaive, halberd, pike, or quarterstaff, you can use a bonus action to make a melee attack with the opposite end of the weapon. This attack uses the same ability modifer as the primary weapon."

Since Rage does not use any limiting language (once per turn, etc.), it would apply to every melee attack (which will also come in handy at 5th level when you gain Extra Attack). Your bonus action is a "melee attack," so the Rage bonus would apply to both attacks, along with your strength bonus, if you attack while raging.

Great! Thanks for clarifying!

Thanks for assisting with the mechanical stuff while I get the story rolling, McDunno.

Ramen, I believe you asked about taking Hand of Radiance. I'm fine with it. The book that would contain the spell is now published (Xanathar's Guide to Everything), so we will switch to using the official version once we have the book (if it has changed at all). In the event that they have decided to not publish the spell, I'll take that as meaning they decided it was OP and I'll ask you to choose a different cantrip.

I'll let you know once I have it, which might be as soon as tonight.

Happy birthday to G3rmanicus :)

HBD G3rmanicus!

Fortunately/unfortunately/ironically, I have to wait for Christmas for Xanathar's. Fortunately, I won't have to pay for it. Unfortunately, I have to wait another month and a half. Ironically, my mother who banned my from D&D in '85 will be getting it for me! (I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a 50-year-old man waiting for a D&D Christmas gift from my mommy!)

I just want to echo McDunno's comments about how great those writeups were. I really feel like this is a party of adventurers with a bit of history now. There is a lot of great writing skill in this group and I'm excited to see where you all take this adventure.

I may've messed up my roll in that last post. I tried to do 1d20-1, but my -1 modifier didn't seem to take effect. At least not in any obvious visible way.

That makes sense, Thanks for clearing that up!

Thought I would throw this out there, so you guys know about some more options with rolling ability checks:

Help Action

"You can lend your aid to another creature in the completion of a task. When you take the Help action, the creature you aid gains advantage on the next ability check it makes to perform the task you are helping with, provided that it makes the check before the start of your next turn."

It can't be just anything you do; it has to make sense that another person helping would actually be helpful (DM's call). I believe Iman and Barendd are the only PCs with darkvision. The rest of us would have to roll perception with disadvantage. So you would have to make the decision of who will help and who will roll. Advantage (roll two d20s and take the highest roll) and disadvantage (roll two d20s and take the lowest roll) cancel each other out, so if someone helped Kit, he would roll at disadvantage because it's dim light, but he would roll with advantage because someone is helping him, meaning he would roll one d20 (and subtract 1 because he's neither wise nor proficient).

You only get advantage if someone helps you. Darkvision, in this context, just means you don't have to roll with disadvantage in the dim lighting.

This would be up to Len, but because of the way play by post works (varying posting times and not sitting around a table), some DMs will allow you to do something along the lines of "My character says, 'Hey, can someone give me a hand looking around here.' I'm going to roll a perception check with advantage in case someone gives me the help action. Ignore the second roll if no one helps."

Would that be okay, Len?

OH my bad I didn't realize that was specifically with help

So that means that Pageflap should have rolled with disadvantage then. All I need to do is edit my posts to add a second roll and take the lowest, I believe

Don't worry about it, Jacketch.

In general, I'm much more interested in the game and story moving forward at a smooth pace than worrying about the nitty-gritty details about the rules at the moment. To be honest, I don't want anyone to roll perception with advantage or disadvantage at this point. To keep things simple, I'm giving characters a -5 to their rolls if they are rolling perception checks in the dark without darkvision, which is a mathematically reasonable approximation of the effects of disadvantage.

I plan on simplifying the mechanics a bit while the story gains momentum. As we get further along, I'll be giving you guys more and more rules knowledge / responsibility.

I'm guessing the two on the log are on opposite sides of the log, and the bandits on the ground are two on each side? And Pageflap should be around 10 feet away from the center of the log.

As we were ambushed and Iman has his Halberd drawn I would think that it's reasonable that Barendd currently has both handaxes out, as he was in the process of offering one of them to Iman while he already had one out. Are there any objections to this?

No objections here!