OOC Thread

King Leonidas was strong. Pageflap and Kit are not. The pusher has to roll a strength check contested by the pushee's strength or dex check. Barendd could do it, but he would have to risk an attack of opportunity.

Although I just checked our new cleric. Torden could do it. I don't know if you can use the help action. The shove is an attack action, so I would imagine so.

I agree with Jacketch -using the hole is a good plan. Even with the Night Blade's +2 vs. Kit's +0, that's still a 40% chance of eliminating a guy in 1 action. And you can easily get a better than 50% chance if you get advantage through Tides of Chaos or Pageflap's familiar or something.

If Torden was still up (I believe he went down last attack), he could try to Thunderwave again and try to knock 2 or 3 guys into the hole. Would require surviving an OA, unless N2 was dealt with.

There are other battlefield features too. What could you do with the Tangleweed outside? What could you do with the staircase? What could you do with the crumbling stone statue? rWhat could you do with Strangleberries the giant plant monster?

I'm not sure if there is still time to use those features now, honestly. Might just be hoping on a high roll on a sleep spell or something like that.

Welp, looks like this is going to end in the demise of the party.

Failure is not the end of the game in D&D, however. If we want to continue, we can decide what goes down. My preference would be for the Night Blades to take the party prisoner rather than having killed them. There is precedence in the story that Red Beard thought that your characters had valuable information. This is known as "failing forward" and happens in movies all the time - the plot advances despite the heroes failing. There will be in-world consequences of course. Your characters could wake up in the Lonely Tower's dungeon and have to figure out a way to escape. You might be joined by new party members to replace Iman and Aegar.

However, a total party kill can be a fairly big emotional downbeat and people might be less enthusiastic to continue. Perhaps this is a good place to end this story and move forward with new stories.

How do people want to deal with this?

Part of me doesn't want Pageflap dead and wants to keep going forward, but I'm not sure how often this kind of thing will happen. Is it normal for bandits to attack twice per turn and have advantage in every attack? Or was it because it was a fight made for 6 people but we only had 4?

The Night Blades used the "Thug" monster stats. As the link mentions, they are considered a challenge rating 0.5 creature.

Five 0.5 CR creatures is considered a deadly fight, but just barely, for five level 2 characters. You also had Red Beard on your side, so it should have evened things out to make it hard but fair. So I would say yes, this is normal. A big disparity in the quality of rolls on each side tilted the scales, but some more involved planning on everyone's behalf would have given the party a better advantage from the outset.

Yikes. I'm cool with failing forward with Barendd if need be. Would it be possible for me to roll a new character within this arc though? I really like this story, and I liked using Barendd to learn, but I'd like to give a different character a shot if possible.

Yeah, or rolls have been bad recently. I'd like to fall forward, meeting new party members would be great too.

I'm okay with whatever. I'm confident it'll continue to be fun, regardless. :-)

You mean like not posing as prisoners with battle axes and halberds strapped to backs?

Ha! But I think that ruse worked well enough - it got us past the shambling mound and in the door. Granted, having the option of waiting until we were in front of the boss before starting shit may or may not have been preferable.

Yes, Starrbeardo you can roll up a new character and lead the rescue mission. Anyone else want to build a new character?

I do have a few concerns before continuing.

First, post frequency has fallen a lot. We need to bring that up to the original 1 post per weekday per player.

Second, everyone has graduated from being a beginner now. Everyone is an equal player. For veterans, don't worry about stealing the spotlight. For newer players, your ideas have been as good and sometimes better - your fresh perspective and creativity is valuable. Jacketch and Starrbeardo, your RP is on point, as good as anyone on this group.

Let's regroup and come back with everyone on their A game, me especially. I've put in less and less work into this game as participation has waned, but I think the current core group is a solid foundation.

First order of business: people learn as much, or more, from failures as mistakes. Characters are now level three. Feels free to ask leveling questions in this thread.

Second: we are going on a short hiatus to fill those 2 player slots. Thanks for your patience.

Sweet I'm working on a dragon born paladin to let me access some magic but to also have some fighting capability. It will take me some time to get that together so the hiatus is great.

Awesome Starrbeardo. The Dragonborn is a very evocative race to play and paladin is one of their sweet spots. Let me know If you have questions!

I agree. I really liked Barendd, and I'm sad to see him go. Jacketch has done a great job roleplaying Kenku speech.

I posted an ad new adventurers!

@Starrbeardo: Sulprax is looking rad. Quick tip that is pretty inconsequential but might be worth considering:

Currently you have Str: 17(+3) and Cha: 15(+2). If you put your 14 in strength and 15 in charisma, then you'll end up with Str: 16(+3) and Cha 16(+3). That means all your charisma skills get a free +1 bonus, and future abilities / spells that key off of charisma will be a little stronger. Ultimately not a big deal.

Great tips thanks!

No problem, Starrbeardo!

Hey folks, welcome our two new players, HypCo and Naatkinson! These guys along with Jabes really taught me the ropes about PbP gaming. Super good people.

Doing a few renovations on the game forums, adding some info forums to help HypCo and Naat catchup but also to help everyone to keep track of all the details. Stay tuned.