[OOC] Last Words

[Lormador]

OK, with 3 matches up and running, we have 1 player waiting for a poster in the Matches column and 2 players who haven't posted there yet. Which is fine.

I get the sense that we could be having more matches though. Is anyone up for simultaneous matches? By which I mean simply having more than one match at a time, not having 3+ players in a single match.

Or perhaps someone would like to play 'against the computer' and fight a creature from the Mindflayers campaign creature vault...

[Ithamar]

You can throw Ump into 2 fights if you'd like.

[Inem]

I think I might be willing to do simultaneous fights in the future, but it would be better for me to start with one at a time for now, until I'm sure I have a hang of my own character

[Ithamar]

Depending on Freemo's AC, and if he is susceptible to crits or not, Ump just potentially did 525 damage to him.

[davide15]

Well, there's no crit, as Freemo is immune to them. Also Freemo is invisible, so it is a little bit of a mystery as to what it was Ump was throwing at unless he has true seeing as a natural ability. I am not certain of what your stats look like, but you may have just thrown your spear randomly, however the seeker quality does make me a little bit worried as to what the effects of that invisibility are or whether you can just attack an invisible opponent.

[Ithamar]

Well if Ump knows what square you're in, the seeking property does the rest. Though if Ump couldn't see you and Lormador indicates he could not know what square you're in, then his first round actions would've been different.

[davide15]

Regardless of Crit, if your attacks are considered a And you did beat my AChit then you auto-kill (I am more than a little unlikely to make those bull-rush saves) and win in round 1.

[Ithamar]

OK, well 1 round battles aren't much fun. Sorry about that. But let's wait and see what Lormador says. Perhaps Ump's actions were invalid after all.

[davide15]

Yeah, I just can't believe you beat a 27 initiative...I mean I swift actioned a wild shape, so you must have a truly prodigious init score.

[Ithamar]

Err... I didn't beat a 27 intiative. I rolled crappy initiative. Perhaps Lormador mixed the two of us up?

[davide15]

Lormador...what's going on?

[Ithamar]

And I just noticed you actually snuck your post a few minutes before I did my rolls and whatnot. It took me several minutes to get my post typed up and so I completely missed the fact you indicated you were invisible in your post, since it popped up while I was previewing / editing my post.

So yeah, I guess we need to rewind and figure out what's happening.

[davide15]

Ahhh!!! All this min-maxed PvP is making my head hurt

[Lormador]

Perhaps we should be having this discussion in the Game Thread.

Here's what happened, from my perspective. Character initiative was 27 (Freemo) and 14 (Ump) with the door opening on an 18.

Freemo used a Wild Shape. davide15, if you actually wanted Freemo to use a Swift Wild Shape and declare his remaining actions otherwise (such as Delay Action for after the door opens or Ready Action for when the door opens), stating that would have been very helpful. I'm not going to out your secret text, but it's not quite clear to me just what sort of action you were taking. Specifying Swift: Wild Shape (source of ability) and Full-Round: Delay (for the door to open), or whatever, would have prevented this confusion.

So, from the post it seemed that Freemo was using his whole buff round to Wild Shape, the door rudely opened right after he used said buff round, and Ump came out with his spear attack.

It also would have been a great help to post the basic Quickling information in the initial post- when the shift to Quickling occurred- as it would have helped me describe to Ithamar that he didn't see anything. This confusion was partly the result of a mere 8 minutes passing between davide15's post and Ithamar's, and since Ithamar's is long and detailed, I'm sure it took more than 8 minutes to write.

I will post my proposed solution and ruling in the Game Thread, I hope it's fair and works for everyone.

Also there is going to be a reaction from the crowd to invisibility used in this (and other) matches. This is NOT a snide DM remark on anyone's play, which would be childish and inappropriate. It's just that these foul, drunk, and mainly unintelligent creatures paid money (money which some of them probably stole from their friends and family) to see the match. They watch from behind an Invisible Prismatic Wall that blocks all magical and psionic powers whatever. Hence no vision-enhancing magic or divinations will allow them, even if they are powerful enough to possess the ability, to watch the match.

So, please take the reaction from the crowd in the light-hearted spirit of comic relief with which it was written, and let's get on with the match!

[davide15]

I didn't realize the gate was operating on its own initiative count. If I had I would have readied actions accordingly. I figured that the gate opened at the start of the round before any actions were taken. In the future I will know better.

Edit: Mantle of the Beast allows wild shape to occur as a swift action. Also it applies a +1 bonus to natural weapons in wild shape form. From Complete Champion.

Edit2: In the future I will also include base stats and special information about shapes in the initial post. The problem was I wasn't sure what shape Freemo was going with initially and so I didn't think to include it in the post, especially if the gate was going to open before a buff round occurred. Again, this largely springs from the fact that I didn't realize the gate operates on its own initiative count.