[OOC] Banter and OOC conversation

[Fil kearney]

I'd rather necro witch remain the exception, not the fulcrum

[Admin Dirk]

Rhoma is NOT a horde of undead army kind of necromancer. In fact, she doesn't have a single undead minion around her. She's just not opposed to putting the dead to good use, if needed, kind of person.

[Fil kearney]

minion builds are just a pain in the arsse anyway.

[Admin Dirk]

Fil, Rhoma is (and has been) linked in the character thread (for about 4 days). Let me know if the link isn't working for you, but she's public and all, so it should work.

[spikehed]

Same with Raven

[Fil kearney]

Nope.. I'm just stupid and don't recognized colored underlined text to mean "click me"
Looks like I'm still looking for Evil's and Battle's sheets, unless I've overlooked them as well.

[Grenadier]

I was just looking over my sheet again, and I realized I did not take any CHA skills. I want to drop my CHA to 8 and add +2 DEX with this in mind.

Early on, I considered persuasion and intimidate, which is why I left it at 10 originally.

[Battlechaser]

Sheet

[Fil kearney]

awesome! thanks!

Okay... so as I've posted elsewhere, the mechanics are getting cinched up and start is imminent.
I haven't seen nearly as much discussion as I would like regarding how folks see themselves interacting and getting along.

SO...
We will be starting on the Wayward. I need everyone to come to an accord as to how you got to be a steady member of the crew.
At least 1 or 3 levels need to have been spent working together.... preferably 5 or 10.
Even though as players you'll be a bit shaky on how to work together optimally, I would like to have an ambiance of everyone having confidence in each others' commitment to the team and have us bash out some team priorities.

I will reward a cumulative 10% xp bonus for every player that participates in this challenge.... if everyone comes to an agreement about their origin and current standing with the team, then everyone will get 60% needed xp with the first ingame post.
if one of the team skips, then the other 5 will get 50% needed xp.
If no one bothers then no xp bonus... but everyone loves fat xp rewards, right?
I'll interject liberally.

Discuss it in this thread, and update your character post in a spoiler with the current proposal so folks can find it easily... I'll expect to see us all modify things as this conversation proceeds (most of all, the campaign ambiance, focus, and immediate threats)
This is super-critical to me. It can be simple and open ended, but it has to be plausible and compelling for the team to remain together.

[Admin Dirk]

Well, I think before we can agree on how we all bonded, I think we need to know a little about each other, so...

Rhoma is a wanderer, with a tragic past. She's secretive, untrusting of most, and definitely, uncharismatic (both in appearance and dialogue). She's pretty quiet, mostly because she has learned that people don't want to hear from her, and that suits her fine. She's more at home with magic and such, and spends her time quietly experimenting. Rhoma has no family, and it's likely, you are her only friends. She's accepting of her fate in life, but horrified of her appearance, and its effects on others. She'll use that, to her advantage, to prove to herself that people are not as accepting and honest as they claim.

Possible motivations: the group is the only people who accept her, or most of the group, perhaps (doesn't need to be 100%). She could be adventuring to find power to heal herself. Or, for some altruistic reason, to save other women, perhaps. She has pretty loose definitions of good and evil (most ends justify most means), but nothing prevents her from wanting to do good for others.

[Fil kearney]

Okay... Nice Dirkoth.
Worth mentioning: I am a HUGE advocate of ritual magic variant from UA... meaning you can research and attempt any magic up to and through epic tier (level 21+) effects. This is using the skill check mechanic, where a slew of DC's are targeted in various skills or Level-sensitive mechanics.. if all the DC's are passed, the desired effect occurs.. if something goes wrong, then depending on what got botched along the way will flavor the "blowback" of the failed ritual.

for example, in my Skype Darksun game, the party got dinged by undead permanently draining strength, and the party healer had not spent a level to be able to cast restoration... the thief was down to 4 str from the encounter, and the only way to get it back was to get this shaman-witch to perform a ritual of restoration for them. They were able to "aid another" to kick +2 bonuses in along the way, but the ritual had barely failed a DC... so instead of getting back to 14 str he only got to str 10. Initially, they thought he'd get a point back per day resting afterwards, but that didn't happen. (it did happen for the gladiator who only needed 2 days of rest to restore to full.. but they didn't have a whole week to sit around, hence the ritual..) So not only did the ritual not restore full strength, it had halted the healing process completely.
It wasn't until a few days later that he realized that it was actually WORSE than that, because any day he took damage or became fatigued (like, in a forced march across the salt flats) he would LOSE a point of strength-- and that, too, would not restore. So his str was slowly being whittled away.
Funny follow up: they went back to the shaman-witch to find out WTF happened, and when they found her she was 6 months pregnant.... and the thief was down to 8 str... so each point of str he was being drained made the thing inside her develop a month faster... so the ritual she used called on some spirits to do the healing, and instead they bound his life force to the ... whatever... it is that was growing inside her.
They had crit failed one of the checks, and failed another during the 4 roll ritual, and I made up the above on the fly.

So... you guys can research anything you can imagine, and I'll put DC's to it (and I might not tell you what the DC's are, depending on the quality of research).. but if things go wonky, I get to play sandbox with everyone involved.

... So Rhona could easily be into rituals (and I'd allow a hex cauldron to give bonuses to certain rituals) .. and one of those rituals could have turned her face into ground chuck. It takes a stronger ritual to overcome a botched ritual, and if she was playing with really potent business to begin with, it could take her a while to find a possible solution.

The magus work off this principle.. a good mage factory has all the workers aiding another to pull off really strong DC's to produce impressive magicks, like producing flying boats or warforged, even though we're in an E6 environment. These High Fantasy components can be produced by very organized crafting guilds... which is what a good chunk of Eberron was built on as an original campaign setting (they just didn't use the even-better-than mechanic of rituals)

so.. if this jives with you, Dirk.. it puts a really great pin on the map for your character being involved... hell, it could be linked to the same demon that Gren has a backstory with... or not. but I'm sure Ox knows a few things about nasty curses and rituals worth hunting him down over...?

[spikehed]

Raven would have integrated himself with the ship's company as a boarding party member and away mission scout. His stealth and teleportation abilities means he can bypass most security and disable other ships before they know he's onboard. He prefers solo missions or engaging the largest threat seperately while others deal with crowds.

He's quiet around most other people, dark and brooding, which tends to make others judge him as unreliable, but he is very dedicated and seems to have a real zeal for dealing with anything demonic or extraplanar in a swift and brutal manner, though he refuses to speak about it. Some regular crew whisper that he's some kind of assassin because of how he acts and fights. He doesn't dismiss or defend those claims.

[Eviltedzies]

Got my sheet posted in the active character thread.

Marius would have sought out the captain himself in search of answers to who killed his former crew and stole their ship. He is also curious about how his previous captain knew captain Ward. With nowhere else to go, Marius would have offered his services in exchange for any information captain Ward might have known. Since no immediate leads on his hunt came about, Marius stayed on with the ship because he believes enemies of his previous captain might one day hunt down captain ward as well. It is a far off theory, but really it is all Marius has to go on at the moment.

During his time on the ship Marius would have quickly become appreciated for his healing abilities and his giving nature. Marius protects those who cannot protect themselves and prioritizes the safety of his crew over his own well being. Along with his drive to protect his fellow crew, Marius exhibits a feigned politeness around everyone he meets. (Those with a high sense motive would notice his fake smile almost constantly.) In reality Marius is still coming to terms with his past and this causes him to emotionally distance himself from the crew while his own desire to see them safe forces him to interact and put on a happy demeanor for the benefit of the group. It is a tug of war within his own mind that only those who have fought with many times would begin to notice. (Aka the players)

Marius doesn't have much of a care for political, social, or cultural norms. While he may have grown up with them, his time as a slave and a pirate taught him that people can only be judged by their actions and not by their looks or affiliations. So he would get along with just about any of the players and treat each with equal respect assuming they showed respect to him as well.

[Admin Dirk]

So far, three secretive, reclusive loners.

I hope someone comes in soon with some bonding glue we can use...

[Eviltedzies]

Marius isn't a loner externally. He is quite social. He just has internal issues. If anything he much rather prefers to be among company. It helps him not dwell on the past.