[OOC] Surwall - South of the Wall

[VPA_Shadow00]

Q: How big are the towns? Are they villages, towns, small cities? Is one of them a capital in the region?
A: The settlements vary in size. I'd say Paston and Laketown are large villages (population ~300), Byford is a small town (population ~600). Palisade is a small wood fort-town, essentially an outpost and lookout that developed into a small village (population ~150), while Vergil's Keep is medium sized stone keep (population ~200) supported by a small village.

Q: How far from Paston to the next city or town to the south? What is it's name?
A: The mountain range is 90 miles wide, So, we'll say, oh, ~120-~150 between Paston and let's call it (keeping in the trend of naming towns after geographic features) Southwall.

Q: Do you want another map with a different aspect ratio (zoomed-in) on any area?
A: Maybe something zoomed in on the area bounded by the two chains of mountains and the coast?

Q: How many islands off the coast? How big? Where did you want them? Names? Settlements on them?
A: It doesn't really matter, just draw whatever looks or feels natural to you. They would not be settled.

[WildKnight]

Yep, Cantrips/Orisons are free, but in order to keep that from being abused they did some alterations to the functions of some of the standard D&D 3.5 stuff. For instance, the Cleric 0 Lev that used to heal 1 HP, now simply stabilizes the dying automatically. This is to stop people from being fully healed between battles (sure, it might take you 60 or 70 rounds, but you could theoretically get everybody to full using free Orisons...)

[VPA_Shadow00]

Yeah, I noted that myself, because the first thing I thought of when I heard "Unlimited Orisons" was "Spam Cure Minor Wounds" and then as the DM I thought "Oh Crap" and then I checked and I sighed with relief.

[Aitrus]

Meh, for me I think the biggest thing would be unlimited Light (no torches or candles needed) and the ability to not have to carry a bunch of sling stones or darts around all the time.

I just hadn't noticed it before and thought that it was an interesting change. Makes it a bit cooler to play a magic-user.

[Rinjo]

I will try to have my stuff up asap. I fly to florida tomorrow for a 7 day class but will be regular after that.

[WildKnight]

Originally Posted by Aitrus

Meh, for me I think the biggest thing would be unlimited Light (no torches or candles needed) and the ability to not have to carry a bunch of sling stones or darts around all the time.

I just hadn't noticed it before and thought that it was an interesting change. Makes it a bit cooler to play a magic-user.

Always having light really isn't nearly as powerful as always being able to fully heal between battles without expending any actual resources.

At any rate, the way Light (and Darkness) work as spells now somewhat reduces the effectiveness of being able to cast Light unlimited times.

[Aitrus]

I agree with the healing vs. light thing as far as power goes. I was just trying to say that I've never played a cleric before, and that I like the way Pathfinder deals with 0-level spells.

As far as my character concept goes, I think that Light and Acid, along with a couple of other things, are the strengths for the character in this game.

[WildKnight]

Cleric is my favorite class, and I definitely like the unlimited Orisons thing. Pathfinder more or less raised the bar for every class, with the possible exception of the Druid, which was already arguably the most powerful class anyway.

Rogue still needs some work though 8(

[Aitrus]

I'm partial to Rangers myself. I've only ever played 2 magic-users, and neither of those a sorcerer. This will be a good learning game for me.

Feel free to nudge me in the ribs if I'm making a serious mistake. I take constructive criticism well. That goes for you too, Ringo and VPA.

[WildKnight]

I'm sure Rinjo can help you with that. I'm more of a "cool concept" guy than a "the best way to play it" guy. My first D&D 3E character was a Dwarven Sorcerer who wore armor (penalty to Charisma, and Arcane Spell Failure... bad combo), but I loved it.

[VPA_Shadow00]

The character didn't really ever go anywhere ,but, I remember my racist half-orc paladin very well. He hated orcs and he hated being half orc and he expressed his discontent best with a big big sword.

[WildKnight]

LOL sounds like a fun guy at a party.

[Rinjo]

VPA I made a racist orc barbarian that hated his barbarian rage and was overwhelmed with guilt every time it came out. It only came out though when his friends were in danger. He was probably my favorite character of all time.

SOo much RP depth there.

[VPA_Shadow00]

Next to a humans, orcs are my favorite characters. I tend to portray orcs sympathetically and humanize them. I am usually annoyed by rpgs, video games, and movies when the heroes slaughter dozens of orcs, storm troopers, nazis, commies, terrorists with no regard for their 'humaness' and how it's generally 'okay' for the heroes to kill them so long as they are bad guys. I especially hate it when the 'bad guys' faces are hidden from the audience, knowing that if they presented them as individual characters that the audience would be skeptical of the heroes use of violence.

But, I don't think I will be playing too heavily on that theme in this game. This game is focused on the characters, and will be oriented around the characters' beliefs and perspective, so if they do not regard orcs as being anything more than violent animals then I will not treat them as anything more than that.

Also: How attached to your characters are you? What do you guys think of death? If your character died would you be willing to keep playing as a new character? I mean, I'm not going to kill your characters intentionally, but, often as I dm my characters get themselves into trouble and get close to dying, and at that point I often 'fudge' the rolls and make the conflicts work in their favor. Another time when a character died I had them sent to the afterlife where a goddess said a few cryptic and prophetic statements before giving them a chance to fight their way back to the mortal world. That actually was really well done, because the said character was able to get through this encounter before the encounter that had killed him had ended, and he crawled up from the rubble and returned to the fray killing the giant that had killed him.

SO: What do you guys think of your characters dying? Should I 'cheat' to keep them alive if the orc chieftain rolls a one in a million critical hit, or should I just let the games mechanics take their course and expose your characters to a very real danger of dying?

[Aitrus]

I tend to get attached to my charactes, but I also try to play more cautiously and realistically out of the desire to keep them alive as well. I don't have a poblem with letting the dice fall where they may, after all, that's how life really is. But giving me the chance to survive by the method you described above (divine intervention, etc) is enticing, especially if the character is to play a big role in the history of the world.

I knew a DM once who allowed a one-time "Save vs. Oblivion" roll when a character faced death. It had a base DC of 12 and involved modifiers depending on the circumstances: heavy for things like Dragon's breath or falling off a cliff, medium for crits or traps that resulted in death, and light for disease/poison or not stabilizing from wounds. There were no bonuses, unless the character had "Divine or Karmic Favor" in the form of fulfilling quests, pulling a child from a burning building or the like. Survival meant a permanant loss of a Feat or points from a stat (a save against poison would result in a -1 Con, saving against a crit might get you a facial scar, the loss of an eye and -1 Cha, and save against a fall from a cliff to get -3 Dex from broken legs or back). This roll was to simulate the hero-like effect of playing RPGs - one of the qualities heroes posses is that they stand a decent chance to cheat certain death, normal people don't.

I don't have a problem coming back as a new 1st level character tagging along with the others, so long as the others don't go out of their way to "help" me by giving me goodies and the like. I forget what it's called, but that's one of the things I hated about online MMORPGs: low level characters having way too much power.