[OOC] Sage's Debates

[Tsukos]

You're right. But I was thinking that a brick wall of armor and a spear over his shoulder would be about equal in effectiveness to the "Mageblade"; thus whichever direction the Cleric and Fighter are facing is the direction Alkese should not, and since Gunther is going to be much more effective in the front than in the back...

[Bio]

True, and you've brought out some good points. Not sure about the 90 degree turn though, as we're just as likely to have to turn left as we are right....

Yes, the bard can make a passable melee combatant, but the point I was trying to make is that he's probably just as capable, or more-so from range, and ... well, he doesn't have the best of HD.

Also true, the cleric can make for a highly effective melee combatant as well - but I'd be pretty scared all of a sudden if our cleric falls. Number one rule of dungeon exploration: Protect your cleric!

[TheUltimateHammer]

Well, I wasn't suggesting leaving the cleric on his own, nor was I suggesting that the bard should charge straight onto melee combat(Which goes against the build). If the cleric is attacked, the bard can provide temporary backup when someone with actual melee skills arrives, and with heavy armor the cleric can last one or two rounds without decent backup.
My point: the order seems fine. Both of them, really.

[Bio]

Yeah, I suppose there isn't a whole lot of difference, things will probably disintegrate fairly quickly in any case as soon as we enter combat. I'd mostly just like to see an elf in the front, at least in darkness conditions, with the wizard in the middle.

But we still should probably have an 'official' marching order for the DM to default to so he knows who gets killed first who stands where.

[Tsukos]

The guy in front is carrying the lantern, and a lantern doesn't do much for low-light vision. Gunther is proposing his order from a martial background and yours appears to be a scouting solution.

If Dancer thinks she can handle being in front, I think I could work with having her up front and the cleric back with the wizard and bard.

[Bio]

ha ha! Yes, Dancer thinks she can handle being up front!

... whether she actually can is another matter.

Why would a lantern not affect Low-light vision? That's exactly when it would benefit Low-light. Doesn't' effect Darkvision, but works perfectly with Low-light. ... I think she has an Everburning Torch too, which will take a Move action to drop and draw her sword, but that's going to be the case for anyone.

[TheUltimateHammer]

Yeah, low-light vision is for poorly illumination, torches included.
Damn dwarves!

[OingoBoingo]

I think Tsukos' formation is fine, I can do the middle row.

[TheUltimateHammer]

I vote for Tsukos', but maybe exchange 1 with 3? Alkese, being a single classed fighter, is the most competent melee combatant and should stay in the front. I think Calahir (the bard) should stay in the back because he's less melee, and the back row still gives him decent range for spells and songs.

[Lovecraft]

Eh, all of them work so long as I have a meatshield, er... companion protecting me Plus when we get up a few levels I can start casting healing spells too...

[Jocularity]

I apologise in advance, there will be a delay before i get the next post up. Experimenting with new mapmaking software, and i'm out of time before work. It'll be up soon.

On a related topic, who likes Hex grids?

[Tsukos]

You're looking at Hexographer, right? heck, you could stick the maps in Gunther's journal.

But I would use Dungeonographer for battle grids and dungeons (duh) XD

[Bio]

I've found that hex based maps tend to distort appearances of distance and direction in the DnD setup. When I drew out buildings for example, they would look incredibly 'squashed' due to how hex's stack next to each other - which leads to the distortions. Also messes with what areas spell and movement effects take up.

[Bio]

heh, so anyone notice that using a hexgrid makes most of our marching orders pretty well a waste of time now?

The thing about PbP and combat - New guys maybe haven't seen this yetand we all should know this - is that if you try to run battles as was designed to operate in a tabletop setting, you might as well sign the death warrant on your game then and there. No one wants to take 1-2 weeks per round of combat! I like this way of doing it; a collective roll that is made both for the heroes and one for the monsters. Whichever group wins goes first, then the loser group - simply for simplicity's and expediency's sakes.

However, we have Alkese's Flaw to contend with. I see two ways of dealing with this. Either:

1. The Hero's group gets a total -6 to their cumulative roll
   • Has the unfortunate effect of 'punishing' all of us so one person can be even more ridiculously powerful
   • Simple to implement
2. Alkese simply skips the first round of combat every combat
   • Doesn't punish everyone for her flaw
   • It IS a flaw after all!Still counts as a drawback for Alkese
   • I guess this would also be pretty easy to implement

Also, can we have some kind of Key to the map?

[Jocularity]

Idea #2 works for me. Absolutely, we can go with that until when/if i ever get around to making something more elaborate. We'll go with that for this battle instead.

And we'll go back to normal grid maps after this fight. I just kind of wanted to try it. I had also already started before i noticed dungeonographer.

Sorry about the lack of a key. The grey squares are movable squares inside the cave, green is grass, brown is dirt road. Trees are trees, and the squiggly line hexes represent impassable terrain. Grey ones beingthe cave walls and orange being the dirt piles.

G# is the goblins
D# are the dogs
L is the goblin leader
other letters represent the first letter in each characters first name, except for Ganch who had an H for his surname since there are to G names.

The "Current encounter thread" Will be regularly updated, and has been so to track the stats for this battle. That thread should grow progressivley more sophisticated as a work out more and more things that it needs.