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Post by at on Feb 10, 2017 13:16:54 GMT -5
I think the search, check etc is just what Goarge and ka'lion ar looking for. Well, that can be done - if Georges player is also up for that kind of game. |
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Post by (George) 3.5./ ZEM ( 4.0) on Feb 11, 2017 17:29:37 GMT -5
This will be long just a far heads up:
I was about 15 to 16 years of age when i first stared gaming. It was a pre gen module from dragon magazine and no matter what it felt railroaded.
I played a rouge with a lot of skills they did not do me much, hand crossbows but no one told me i could not sneak attack. So the tick tack combat rulles made me hate 3.5 combats. In other versions its better, but i never really liked 3.5 combats. Wizard and cleric high lv spells won every time. Rest of us got to do jack shit, that was no fun at all.
So i get need for balance of lv, magic gear, spells as a dm. Yet we should be let to think outside the box and be rewarded for doing so. I like games i can be creavive in, if i feel no solution will work i end up not carring to the point its just not fun. Its why when the same argument came up in team game: my eyes rolled and george a peace keeper went this will never work.
There needs to be in party reasons, backstory to keep together. We have that with the 3 of is now. As u saw we said out solutions and we found ways to get them to work. Yet if you let is set oil on fire per say: yes that might be higher lv spell but in a 3 man team thats how we have to fight we will die or come so close to death we cant recover.
Yet when u as a dm change what the classes and perstige classes can do or not allow them or put them out of reach do to never lving : the monsters you face factor what lv your at, your individual hps and acs your magic gear you have. If you say you get only xp from combat: we will play on here for years and never lv much.
I like tossing xp out window and lv the party when they accompish character growth in thier own way.
In that first game i was in, i had a party member tell me he would kill my character in his sleep yet told we could not play evil.
Not a great experience in that time i realized that d&d is an individual yet team game because
u a character have set goals but as does/hopefully team goals you need them to coninside if they dont u have issues such as the team spliting off more then once now .
So far teams goals are, get out of tower alive, go to ka'lions family.
Individual goals: George to teach Shamious how to be a man, set good example best he can. Keep party alive.
Shamious : To live up to The kind being George is, to make him powered of him.
I want to be able to trust my party in making decisions that wont get us killed/tpked, I want my party to respect eachother. That does not mean always agree but respect in and out of character is a must.
Right now we have that.
Rping to me is going with what i think my character would, but taking thier backstory into account. If My character does not what i would want and in that case i do what character would do not what i the player wants. I get that can be frustration in that and some dont understand and think im doing to to be difficult. when i first looked at ka'lion i saw ot was frustrating. and we sat down and saw everything was in character. in that moment i realized i would be forcing him to not rp in a rp game, being unfair to both his character and him.
I get there needs to be connsenquencess of our action. Start bar fight, a local get the gaurds. Yet we need opertunity to possible see the man run off in direction of gaurd station that sort of thing.
Tho if there just so unrealistic its gets to why bother walking outside, or rest if we are just going to be screwballed for doing anything or having any interactions with npcs.
Thats how i felt most of this game, why bother keeping the team together why bother talking to the new pcs who made no effort to talk to george while he was there.
If the npcs are just so over powerful in the world there is zero point in helping them or doing anything because "they can just do it"
i want npcs to not just soly be self interested, some might be yes
but not the majority.
Example Baker steve might have a loff for 4 silver. He has a nagging wife and 3 kids. Trying to make ends meet. George then helps him find ways to make better loff.
To me npcs are useful ways to developing what my character and party cares about. If we meet blacksmith and do him a solid. We come back with a broken armor " hey i could take a look free of coin" that makes us trust the world way more. When ka'lion feels he gets lowballed he as a character cant trust others to me thats understandable.
making npc interaction/info getting/ teaming up with us hard.
i dont see our party given who we meet thus far being able to trust them this should and needs to change.
Among the ones George has meet thus far he realized that back home others would come together and unit. So far the beings here wont and out for themselves. Its why he wanted to rebuild the broken town, to give them hope.
I hope this helps.
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Post by sageaqua on Feb 11, 2017 20:51:40 GMT -5
One note here Ka'lion has a low charisma but he has a number of ranks in deplomancy to off set them
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Post by at on Feb 11, 2017 21:51:36 GMT -5
Proposed changes first, answers further down - Adventure premise - Ka'lions family/acadamy is relocating and George/Ka'lion are being sent on to help establish the new site. Typical adventures - construction, resource gathering, pest control, scouting, exploration, research, fetch and carry, escort, trade, etc Characters - 8th level, standard wealth by level, some skill/feat retraining available. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To cover a few of the points individually - Wizard and cleric high lv spells won every time. Rest of us got to do jack shit, that was no fun at all. It's a problem as the game level increases, around level 7 and up in general which is part of the reason advancement has been slow - see below. This has come up several times in the past few combats alone with Ka'lion trying to kill the spiders by freezing the water with his sword, or wipe out the entire zombie group with a create water spell. And I do take these things into account, but I think the problem is that you both are looking for some kind of spectacular reaction to you actions whereas i've been playing close to the rules. And this goes back years - I remember when you joined the game your got hugely annoyed that throwing an object from your cart at a wyvern just did d10 damage, rather than cracking it's skull. Now that it's just the two of you and it's not going to be stepping on the toes of other players I can let you play more 'fast and loose' with the rules, but it's not something I could have done while you were in the same party as players who wanted to play by the book. I don't track xp, parties level at game milestones or after time if they haven't accomplished anything. Nor do I use CR as a system to set encounters. As mentioned above though advancement has been slow. Ka'lions player in particular has been talking about a builds and npcs stretching into the epic levels and IMO the game falls over rulewise long before that point. That's fine as player RP goals - but nothing I can act on as a DM. They are both your characters. This has come up many times in game and is a conflict of what you are asking for and how you are reacting. For instance at Burr Town when looking to trade for items rather than trying to interact properly with the npcs you both started on at _me_ for the NPCs not bending over to take your proposed trades and not having every item you wanted to hand. I had to write this huge post listing your characters wealth and item value that took three whole days to hammer out and even then you two weren't happy about the fact that an NPC was (correctly) disputing your valuations. You can talk about consequences but you are both so unrelentingly negative about any kind of challenge or pushback, I actually reduced the number of NPCs you two get to deal with after the whole farce with Xana and others a couple of years back. The point is that you don't in my experience want consequences unless they are good consequences. Welcome to Ka'lions extended undead family of epic level spellcasters and their vast resources, and remember why he hasn't been able to contact them up until this point. I don't think you've ever actually asked an NPC what their goals and drives are. Zuno and Vados for instance, the two you met in the last city, were dismissed as soon as it was clear they wanted to be paid for embarking in a hugely dangerous task for your benefit. Megumi, the crow girl, was ignored entirely (and she had quite the backstory). You barely said a word to Berith. You didn't even meet the other NPCs I had written out, holed up in that inn and sneaking out of the city. |
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Post by sageaqua on Feb 11, 2017 22:52:46 GMT -5
Ka'lion was worried about getting robbed in the city - if he had gone out to look around he had no way to carry his gear with him. So he didn't ingage the city
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Post by sageaqua on Feb 11, 2017 23:21:53 GMT -5
Zuno and Vados came across as evil aligned - something both goerge and Ka'lion avoid if they can. Ka'lion liked some of the npc's so far, It's true both Goerge and Ka'lion do over react at times. I don't agree that epic characters are are broken. Just more fun to play. I played in a rotation gm epic game of 30 to 35 level using epic charcters - now their where problems the rogue in a doubleganger fight ended up didapearing from his own fiht but most of the demon and devils where hard fights. What hard about epic play is many creatures have AC of over 80 - so it needs some repair. I will agree the epic pristage classs are broken in most cases so I never allowed them. In trurth I think the epic book was designed in part to justify 4th edition and they lost custamers - so to regain them they created 5th edition - which is fuctional but to powerful for what it does.
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Post by (George) 3.5./ ZEM ( 4.0) on Feb 12, 2017 15:13:28 GMT -5
( You asked what i like in a game, i gave u what i want/like. and like in a game. I was not trying in making direct shots or coments as to your dming style. I used examples in games i have been in the past as well.
I use to be in ka'lions games.
The hole way to powerful npcs was actually minly his games and if felt we the party were ants in power compared to them. Then given such unrealistic tasks that seamed like nothing we did worked or would get us killed if we tried anything. However he did teach me the value of not metta gaming. To this day i try extremely hard not to. We all do it sometimes but we try not too.
As to the rest npc stuff: In the city we just left, i saw a caster fly down in a cloud of birds meaning to him she could take him out when hes out by himself. George tried his best to figure why she was there and up to but got nothing to indecate what her intent was. then he recalled his interaction with many beings on his way here and knew ka'lion most likly would not be able to trust her. He trusts his party over stangers because of interactions in the past. We are not a party seeking out npc help, yes those two wanted a lot of coin, we could not afford them. Meaning yes they could have been hired but hiered mercenary can be bough off with an evil person with way more coin. That does not sow seeds of trust. And that's why we keep running into npcs we dont trust, we stop trusing npcs. Its a continuous cycle at this point. We need reasons to trust them. Like blacksmith willing to teach Shamious some advanced blacksmith skills. That guy george will trust if he lives up to the word of taking shamious on for a while. That kind of action instills trust.
We decided to leave because the climate was better to leave in the night and the town/city seamed bit on the shady side why walk into bad parts of Oakland or Richmond CA late at night?
Shamious actually spent a lot of time in his room having "fun". So he did interact with an npc up there. Yet somehow that npc became not important, yet had a direct impact on shamious as a young man. That experience should change him and ive tried to show it. So yes the npc did help him grow in character development and thats what npcs should do. I never liked npcs in the hole " lets adventure with you" thier skills and abilities end up with " wow they cant do anything or wow they just one shooted a big monster." I know dms use them to fill out party yet
As to consequences, yours only seem to be bad ones no matter what we try. We tried to get the druids help and somehow ka'lions info was completely wrong, and they got wiped out/attacked? Like ok then but then you kept saying o there are armies running around, goatmen are attacking etc. Then when they went to silver flam ( was not here for that) its " no go fight the demon" um there are armies with no one teaming up on them to fight them and i counted more then one bad evil army, we we finally got help to face said army the druids with a flick of a wrist " wiped out or will be" there are powerful durids how the hell could they just be wipped off the map that easy? Im saying the local ways of yiur explained ways of things happening make us not want to go get any help at all. We tried to raily troops and o hey wiped out... o why both then trying to stop the evil armies if there just going to win by dm caviot. At that point its why even try getting npcs to help if there just going to die to unstable evil armies.
Bring up The npc guy who fled on his hourse got shot, just happened to fall off in one shot,brake his neck and die just when evil guys on horses road by? A scout travels miles to find info not a few yards from the army. He was maybe a few yards away from his army im unsure of exact but it was way too close to his own army.
So the consequences of fighting/shooting were so outrageously steep, it made me feel like i was back in ka'lions games of wow we got screwed all because he died in a single shot at the exact wrong time.
There also has not been much good that has come out way, when we rebuilt the town not a single one npc thanks george for his cart not one. He went into the med bay only told o we have it handled. Then a Cleric/caster he felt might help just told us to hand him our magic shit, worse the npc with us just all of the sudden turned on his party what we feel was a good ally and we felt stabbed in the back. What possible action did we do to warrent being stabbed in the back like that? To me none. So yes we complain when no matter what actions we do bad shit fallows, and when we say hey why is this bad happening its " u guys stop your complaining." Im trying to find a way we in this game can all be happy, do we think at this time thats do able?
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Post by sageaqua on Feb 12, 2017 20:01:05 GMT -5
The differnce between my games and this one is I just set the stadge to make players paraoid. And my Npcs are either powerful enough to stand alone in most cases or are servents or slaves with non combat spells acting as guides. For instence one slave was 5th level sorceress to a second level party. Her spells where mount, alarm, comprehend languges, erace, contenuel flame, rope trick. and she had peaked charisma wise. Her job was to create horses for the party so they could get where they where going quickly. Because she worked for the Kid - human paragon that had been trained for combat from birth the party always assumed she was their to spy on the party. She was cotic good aligned (Kara Tur culture) where wemon are second class people and used to a male domanete world. To fight she carried a magic missile wand and it would be replaced when it ran out of charges - so where she didn't miss she only did 1d4+1 damage. All of the party could do more damage then that. The trueth was she only got in six fights in the game. As far as the stage? 30 zombies in a dead zone on slippry mud with a party of 8. Now the zombies where spred out around an hilly areas of about 200 feet. It should of been a cake wake for the party but the party needed to make balence checks every round at +4 but for the life of them couldn't stay on their feet. In another game I had 2 intelagent flesh golems sent with the party to carry heavy things in a dead zone during a droubt - that battle usd rats to attack the party but the golems woudn't fight. They had been sent with the 6th level party to capture large stone golems and to tie them up and bring them back. The party got upset about the rats swarms and the golems being strong enough to fight but refusing to do so. It should also be pointed out that most of the party had AC of 23 or higher. So they gave up. I had playtested the games before hand by myself and everything looked okay. But when a party is rolling poorly there is not much you can do about it.
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Post by at on Feb 12, 2017 20:01:33 GMT -5
As to consequences, yours only seem to be bad ones no matter what we try. As you've heard / read most of these events 2nd hand, perhaps if I elaborate on what actually happened you'll see that i'm not out to get you in general - Ka'lion encountered npcs from both sides in the druid civil war. The first asked directly that Ka'lion meet with their elders. Ka'lion told them that he was busy but perhaps someday they could teach him their secrets, and then he rode off without another word. She tried again later with an offer of help and was rebuffed again. The second was a young druid, around 12 years old on picket duty of sorts, who sought to turn Ka'lion back from the druidic lands as an intruder. Ka'lion told him in no uncertain terms to get bent, threatened and insulted him at length and before his peers. So no the druids weren't wiped out. Ka'lion met a few, pissed in their porridge (metaphorically speaking), and was eventaully thrown out. A small force from Merebas was marching on Clearwater with representatives to speak with the mages there. The pair that the party met were outriders for the main group. They asked who the party were, Ka'lion asked who they were, they replied, he called them spies and told them to go away. When Vadania then identified herself to strike up more of a conversation Ka'lion started on a lecture to Vadania about not talking to strangers during which the lead scout, who had had enough of all this, turned to ride back to his companion. Having detected evil at this point Brennen used his magic to cause the guys weapon to explode at his side, his horse threw him, and he died (luck of the dice - 6 damage, 5 hitpoints) Ka'lion then shot his friends horse in the ass and the party chased him down and killed him. The rest of the army was miles away at the time. Party basically walked away without consequence. Eldon? Way back before you joined the game the party found an old shrine to the heroes of the last war, created by the precursors to the current order of the silver flame. Ka'lion found a book there, a relic of the old order, which he hacked free with an axe and claimed as his own. The book described (in a cryptic way) how the demons were originally defeated and imprisoned. Eldon, a priest of the silver flame, hoped that with the guidance of the book a new generation of heroes could track down the demons and stop them before countless thousands were killed. Ka'lion had other ideas. To quote him directly from the post - "So where does he intend to go? He knows where he’d hide the book if he had to hide it. No one would ever find it. That said, when they found him he would not have it on him. This is what he’s been afraid of all along. That someone in need would see the book as their salvation and do anything they had to get it."So to answer your question as why an NPC suddenly turned on the party - it was because Ka'lion had the one known thing that could be used to fight the demons and rather than use it or give it to someone who would he stated his intention to swan off around the Steadlands writing love letters to himself for the explicit purpose of pissing off said NPC. So you see these 'bad' consequences are not arbitrary or unwarrented. The party gets plenty of good consequences too when it overcomes adversity - heroes of burr town, blessed by the silver flame, wealth, power, and a whole folder of allies past and present. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Now regarding the alternate style of gameplay - a switch to a more exploration / worldbuilding type of thing with no looming threats - are you interested? |
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Post by (George) 3.5./ ZEM ( 4.0) on Feb 12, 2017 20:59:15 GMT -5
( I'm willing to try it this new way yes, I think with our play style that should work out better, ty for clarifying a few things. )
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Post by at on Feb 12, 2017 21:48:09 GMT -5
On to the new thread - kmansadventures.proboards.com/thread/8957/episode-iv-new-hope----------------------------------------------- If you were curious : The first clue as to the story behind the stone house would have been found on the very top level, a stone body and a final cryptic message left as warning to any who found it as to some of what was going on. Their amulet, not turned to stone, allowed safe passage past the gargoyles and other rooms on the top floors contained items, clues, and the odd encounter including a sword matching that carried by the guardian construct (used later with the constructs to open a secret door) and an alchemy lab of stone vials that still contained liquid - potions to protect against various things in the adventure stuch as antivenom, healing, restoration, etc in limited quantities. On the lower floors the amulet could be presented to the ghost of the woman (ghost of the now stone statue in the attic) for futher background and aid in the form of her power imbusing the magical flame in the fireplace, useful for piercing the magical darkness in other areas of the adventure. The library itself was accessed through the trapped hallway at the front of the house (via the corridor to the left on that floor), though keys for various rooms were scattered around (skipping over the details here as there was more to the lower floors - items, zombies, secrets, etc). Having defeated the ghost in the library the adventure continued on into the catacombs beneath the building, various monsters and hazardous terrain to navigate, boss fight, beat the evil ghosts true form, free the trapped spirit, break the key down here to split the building above from its connection to the far plane below, grab loot, good end. |
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