In Which Everyone Escapes but the Bugbear

[the_gneech]

Last night's Silver Coast game entailed the final smashing of the Redcloaks.

Comments

[sirfox]

I haven't had much of an argument with the XP progression so far. I think it may feel like a lot else of what goes on gets rolled into the xp with or alongside combat, so it all feels like combat. However, finding/defeating a trap, tricking a guard, or setting up a table to fall on somebody all end up being calculated up with the combat engine calculator, but really happen outside of hackyslash time

[sirfox]

I think that of the base classes, clerics really get spun the hell around a lot with how their mechanics work and how they're effective. 3.5e how-the-fuck-do-i-calculate-this-again Turning becomes pathfinder's Channeling divinity which just damages undead and/or heals friendlies with one roll that tells everybody how many HP they get or lose. Making the undead flee or effecting other targets were all special options you take as feats, to whatever the hell 4e did, now in 5e, your channel divinity is back to making undead flee or just autodie if they're low CR and the cleric is high level, and any other effect is 100% reliant on your domain, only life seems to heal with it. others do blasts of radiant damage, or charm animals, or get max damage on specific spell effects. Of things i don't care for, good god the life domain healing channel is nerfed to hell. used to get a d6 per level or two that would apply to everybody. now you have your level x5 hp to distribute in total, and only up to half a character's health. Granted, you

[the_gneech]

Looking at the life domain, it seems to be built pretty much to heal and do little else. Your domain powers are "heal MOAR and wear heavy armor." But since at this level you can only channel divinity once per rest, you have the choice of "heal once or turn undead once." But given the reduced role of healing, given everyone's ability to spend hit dice during short rests, that's of limited utility. If you wanted to "retrain" Gimlet with the war domain (given his soldier background), I'd be fine with that.

-The Gneech

[the_gneech]

In theory at least, the reward for trickery and "defeating" your foes in noncombat ways, is that you don't have as much risk of your own heads getting lopped off because the combat is over faster. ;D I'm open to suggestions as to what additional rewards might be. I considered ditching combat-based XP all together and switching to quest-based, e.g., "Rescue Brannar From Goblins: 200 XP," "Clear Out Redcloak Hideout: 1200 XP," etc., but with this campaign I particularly wanted you guys to control your own fate, rather than me setting what the goals were

[sirfox]

Nifty. I wasn't expecting a little bag of gold to show up each time we shoved a prisoner into the shed we're keeping them before shipping them out, but something up the line is brewing and that's cool. :}

While it's probably inconvenienced the party thoroughly, Gimlet seems to make a point of offering a chance to surrender to his foes whenever he can. Character-wise, i think it's from his days as a mercenary.