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Felinoid posted:Yeah you really only use those to occasionally try to bring some drama to fights. Because suddenly it isn't just the one last HP that's important, it's important not to get hit at all, which forces the players to create defensive strategies. As a DM you don't actually want the players to get hit by level-draining things, you just want them to worry that they might, which is why all of the few times I've unleashed such things I always drop the DM screen to let them know "this monster can level drain and that's really REALLY bad in this edition". The only time that's failed was a rather distractable player whose gnome I/T decided to facetank three wraiths without Mirror Image up. I've had some fun encounters with level draining undead under exactly that premise! Using other undead as meatshields between them and me, doing stuff like wrapping them in a blanket and kicking them down stairs to get away, and finally a desperate shoving match to get them into a fire so they'd finally die. Another similar encounter involved running around a corner and pouring oil on the ground so they'd slip into a pit filled with green slime which, hopefully, would instantly dissolve them. Of course, those kinds of tricks don't work at all against spectral undead... but hey, at that point you're pretty much just screwed if you encounter them at lower levels. Restoration is SERIOUSLY costly, because it (like some other very high value and power spells) ages the caster. I've never understood why they made it so heinously costly and high level, considering how early you are likely to encounter wights, if not the big nasties of level draining. What did the designers expect, that you'd just retire the characters after a single bad fight? I guess the GM can always come up with alternatives to that specific spell; I sure did, but I don't understand the logic behind it save as a 'haha your character is now level 1 and has to claw back up to their level again, guess you shouldn't have taken the last slice of pizza last time!'
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Jun 1, 2022 03:07
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And in that case he was so close to the next level I decided that he got just enough for it before getting drained, so no real XP setbacks. (Also that nation's prince was very fond of the party and was able to run interference with the local priestly bigwigs so earning the Restoration wasn't very costly.)
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My gold is on Gygax coming up level draining as a terrible way to screw his players, some of whom sound like they were power gamers. Leave them alone - our people are tired of war.
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Jun 1, 2022 03:11
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I'll say the primary reason would be simply that they didn't think about it. The idea about life-draining undead is a reasonably common trope really, so this is just another iteration of it. The thing about Restoration being so heinously costly also independently makes sense to try to stop magic being a panacea for anything and everything. The two together just creates this high lethality world. And that can be it's own theme. It just gets out of hand when life-draining undead are applied without careful consideration, which happens often enough to be a recurring story among players. For what it's worth, when later editions start to make Restoration more free, magic does indeed become a panacea that the world narratives constantly have to wrestle with. A lot of justifications have to keep being made to stop all problems from being solved by just casting X. It's like one of the Gold Box games which tries to have a dramatic death scene with the commander, when the party has access to Raise Dead pretty freely. The writing falls apart because of that dissonance.
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Jun 1, 2022 03:16
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Kacie posted:My gold is on Gygax coming up level draining as a terrible way to screw his players, some of whom sound like they were power gamers. Absolutely this. Early D&D was designed to be adversarial DM vs characters. That can work if the DM has limited resources to use against them, like encounter limits in 4e, but 1e did not have that. 2e was better in this regard and 3e was when the 'mutual storytelling' dynamic first emerged. I recently read up on the AD&D1 adventure Ravenloft, where Strahd first appears. Just seeing all of the major undead in that, including the very proactive villain Strahd himself, made me slightly ill and I never even played that version (though 2e was not really better). That's not even taking into account the unfair traps etc.
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Jun 1, 2022 03:26
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One of the reasons I'm a fan of mister lvl 9 Fighter hireling is because he's fortunate enough to have some shade of plate armor. For the most part though, melee types are just there to sit out front and eat hits so your casters can do their thing. Also, I'm not sure if it's Turn Undead or another spell I'm thinking of, but you might want to just toss out it out on the battlefield even when not fighting undead. I recall the game being janky enough that some spells which really should not have lit a large bunch of random armored dudes on fire lit a large bunch of random armored dudes on fire.
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Jun 1, 2022 03:36
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JustJeff88 posted:I recently read up on the AD&D1 adventure Ravenloft, where Strahd first appears. Just seeing all of the major undead in that, including the very proactive villain Strahd himself, made me slightly ill and I never even played that version (though 2e was not really better). That's not even taking into account the unfair traps etc. Ravenloft isn't the best example, as it was designed by a husband-and-wife team that was very interested in the "mutual storytelling" approach to D&D. The problem arose mostly because of the inherent lethality of undead in early D&D. Later versions (some of which involved the Hickmans directly, including the most recent reimagining, Curse of Strahd, often considered the best adventure module in 5e currently) better represent the original vision, which was somewhat hampered by the overly lethal design of 1e.
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Jun 1, 2022 03:53
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I think you could at least block most (all?) level drain attacks if you have access to negative plane protection.PurpleXVI posted:Both. The spell from a book is always random and always something you don't have yet, unless your spellbook is full? You can't get spellbooks with spells you already own, right? 
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Jun 1, 2022 03:59
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Been reading through this and your original FATAL post on the setting, and it's certainly a rather nice setting and system. And definitely an incredibly unique D&D computer game which I can't think of another example, even accounting for all the various obvious rushes and bugs. Interested to see where this goes from here.PurpleXVI posted:
This was a while ago, but while 3e itself didn't really have one (or at least a truly fully developed one - something might have been in Heroes of Battle or the like), there WAS one in the d20 System books, very obviously designed for integration with 3e games. Its focus was kingdom building, so designing entire units and armies came alongside that. Specifically this one: Fields of Blood: The Book of War.
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Jun 1, 2022 05:28
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Lord Koth posted:Been reading through this and your original FATAL post on the setting, and it's certainly a rather nice setting and system. And definitely an incredibly unique D&D computer game which I can't think of another example, even accounting for all the various obvious rushes and bugs. Interested to see where this goes from here. Actually, as I mentioned earlier in the thread, while Heroes of Battle has rules for adventurers participating in mass combat, the actual mass battle rules (which are fully fleshed-out, if not especially great) are in the Miniatures Handbook, which also includes smaller-scale skirmish rules.
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Jun 1, 2022 05:43
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evilmiera posted:Honestly there seems to be a bunch of mechanics you can exploit to break the game so I don't think banning knights in future runs is a good idea since everything works so poorly anyway. THAT'S IT! I've been trying to remember how I know about this game ever since the LP started, I've never played it and wasn't sure I'd even heard of it but it looked so familiar. I'd forgotten Kiko played it. Thank you. I was going insane. Time to rewatch...
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Jun 1, 2022 08:03
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Lawful good ain't lawful stupid. Conquer!
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Jun 1, 2022 09:12
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Evil Fluffy posted:I think you could at least block most (all?) level drain attacks if you have access to negative plane protection. It gives you a save against being drained but dissipates after one attack, whether the save is successful or not, and being a third-level spell, your cleric will need some decent Wisdom and some amount of levels before they can afford to cast that on the party's front-liner every turn, which is of course assuming there's only one level-draining undead in the encounter... Evil Fluffy posted:The spell from a book is always random and always something you don't have yet, unless your spellbook is full? You can't get spellbooks with spells you already own, right? Spellbooks are rare enough that I've never actually found out if you can get "dud" spellbooks, but each spellbook type only covers a short span of levels(like 7 to 9) and the resulting spell is random, so one way or another you're likely to find useless spellbooks. EDIT: CONQUEST is leading by two votes, so unless there's a sudden rush of votes for PEACE that's what I'll record later today. PurpleXVI fucked around with this message at 13:19 on Jun 1, 2022 |
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Jun 1, 2022 10:32
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I always understood that if you were level drained at level 1, and survived the attack, that you were now a normal person and not a cool adventurer. I say CONQUEST cause everyone is being quite rude to you.
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Jun 1, 2022 13:51
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I change my vote to Peace... through Conquering them. There, now you just need one more vote for peace, right? That's how this works?
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Jun 1, 2022 13:58
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Peace is the lawful good way
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Jun 1, 2022 14:00
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dervinosdoom posted:I always understood that if you were level drained at level 1, and survived the attack, that you were now a normal person and not a cool adventurer. No, you just perish. And, often, return immediately as some lesser form of the thing that killed you, enthralled to it's will. Level drain is nasty! EclecticTastes posted:Actually, as I mentioned earlier in the thread, while Heroes of Battle has rules for adventurers participating in mass combat, the actual mass battle rules (which are fully fleshed-out, if not especially great) are in the Miniatures Handbook, which also includes smaller-scale skirmish rules. People keep ignoring BATTLESYSTEM, which was designed for large combats! It didnt work that well, the first edition, and including the effects of a PC, but it was there! The 2nd edition easily incorporated pcs, being effectively a skirmish game of AD&D 2e at that point. The War sphere of priestly magic is all but useless unless ypu use BATTLESYSTEM (or the card system from Birthright).
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Jun 1, 2022 14:26
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Chronische posted:No, you just perish. And, often, return immediately as some lesser form of the thing that killed you, enthralled to it's will. Level drain is nasty! The coming back from the dead always happened 24 hours after you died from level drain, right? If so, that's a pretty nice nod to Restorarion's 24 hour window (or vice-versa).
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Jun 1, 2022 14:36
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Chronische posted:No, you just perish. And, often, return immediately as some lesser form of the thing that killed you, enthralled to it's will. Level drain is nasty! I love your beholder AV, looks like it just saw something truly gross.
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Jun 1, 2022 17:13
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To tide everyone over until the next update, I decided to record some of the music for the next adventure. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNJ4FQb1u1M It's... certainly something that is played as a BGM, alright. By which I mean it has some parts where it actually sounds like a fantasy adventure track, then some parts where it sounds like the composer got distracted by thinking of Marathon or something.
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Jun 1, 2022 18:31
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Noelon, be a dear and go cause some kind of false flag incident so we have an excuse to go conquering. No, no, Rogr doesn't need to know... e: vvvv The excuse is for Rogr's sake, not anyone else. disposablewords fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Jun 1, 2022 |
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Jun 1, 2022 18:58
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Considering how many times Medoere declared war on him last turn, I don't think a false flag is needed. "Hey, I declare war on you. Just making sure you know I declared war on you. Did you forget I declared war on you? How's that war I declared on you going?"
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Jun 1, 2022 20:58
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Randalor posted:Considering how many times Medoere declared war on him last turn, I don't think a false flag is needed. Diplomats in the Gorgon's Alliance don't have object permanence and thus you need to redeclare your war every turn to be able to move into someone's territory. You can still remain in their territory, occupy, siege and even divest their stuff, but you can't move in new troops without declaring war, that would apparently be unsporting.
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Jun 1, 2022 21:04
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Everyone's passports just say "declaration of war" on them.
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Jun 1, 2022 21:42
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Akratic Method posted:Everyone's passports just say "declaration of war" on them. <at the custom's booth> I hope that your visit to our country was a pleasant one. Do you have anything to declare?
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Jun 1, 2022 22:18
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PurpleXVI posted:Diplomats in the Gorgon's Alliance don't have object permanence and thus you need to redeclare your war every turn to be able to move into someone's territory. You can still remain in their territory, occupy, siege and even divest their stuff, but you can't move in new troops without declaring war, that would apparently be unsporting. It's how it works on tabletop too. You can continue to occupy seized land, which will still require actions to take to usurp it, but continuing to expand and move forces requires another Declare War action. In fact, taking and seizing land is pretty hard in tabletop if you don't capture the associated regents! You need to divest it from them, which is pretty hard to do without them in your grasp, and requires the aid of a priest willing to perform a divestment ritual. Military occupation alone doesn't mean the land or people accept you, after all; this is a semi-Arthurian setting! Mere force of arms does not make one a king of the land, simply a tyrant that the land and people reject and resist. Randalor posted:The coming back from the dead always happened 24 hours after you died from level drain, right? If so, that's a pretty nice nod to Restorarion's 24 hour window (or vice-versa). Not at all, sometimes it's outright instant, other times it may only take an hour or less. Spectres, for instance, instantly turn slain prey into spectres that obey them if they are drained to 0 or less. Wraiths, too, do the same, as do the bizarre wraith-spiders (which turn you into a wraith-spider, not a humanoid spirit, if slain by their level drain). Of course, you can run it with a delay, and that's a fine thing to do I think so I'll be using that now! Not that it's come up in some time in my games, as I rarely use energy draining monsters, but it could I suppose.
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Jun 1, 2022 22:59
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Felinoid posted:Yeah you really only use those to occasionally try to bring some drama to fights. Because suddenly it isn't just the one last HP that's important, it's important not to get hit at all, which forces the players to create defensive strategies. As a DM you don't actually want the players to get hit by level-draining things, you just want them to worry that they might, which is why all of the few times I've unleashed such things I always drop the DM screen to let them know "this monster can level drain and that's really REALLY bad in this edition". The only time that's failed was a rather distractable player whose gnome I/T decided to facetank three wraiths without Mirror Image up. Man, you would have been a much more fun DM to play with than most of the DMs I knew in my 2e days I cannot overstate just how prevalent the idea of Adversarial DMing was back in the day - it's like seeing pictures of people smoking on airplanes, it just seems so bizarre now but it used to be perfectly normal
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Jun 2, 2022 00:05
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Imagine having DM's, and not just being the DM, forever, and ever, and ever, and ever...
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Jun 2, 2022 00:18
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Chronische posted:Military occupation alone doesn't mean the land or people accept you, after all; this is a semi-Arthurian setting! Mere force of arms does not make one a king of the land, simply a tyrant that the land and people reject and resist. strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government supreme executive power is derived from a mandate of the masses sb hermit fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Jun 2, 2022 |
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Jun 2, 2022 02:13
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Man, you would have been a much more fun DM to play with than most of the DMs I knew in my 2e days Yeah I've got stories as well about adversarial DMs. D&D club in middle school was a mixed bag. One year a friend was DMing and he did a great job. The next year it was some adversarial prick (the friend DM wanted to *play* for once, goddammit) who tried to make his bullshit "okay" by giving us all a Limited Wish at the end of the year. I used mine to change my hair color, because gently caress if I was going to let him render the character unplayable with anyone else. 
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Jun 2, 2022 02:23
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Man, you would have been a much more fun DM to play with than most of the DMs I knew in my 2e days I just remembered that I played in one AD&D 1e campaign at school. I don't remember the year, but it flamed out right quickly and the only thing I recall from it was the cleric being a twat. The players vs DM dynamic I almost entirely missed having started with AD&D 2e, then retiring (so to speak) before 3e. I had the same DM in England all throughout the 90s: 'Uncle' Steve who was a friend of the family and a retired Jewish solicitor who just loved board, strategy and tactical games. I did very little on Saturdays throughout that decade besides attend synagogue and play D&D. There was nothing adversarial about any of it, but I've heard plenty of stories and reading any 1e adventure really puts things into perspecive. I only played 4, maybe 6 characters that whole decade, so people dying stupidly was not really a thing. I was very attached to all of my characters and so were the other players, so it wouldn't have worked. Again, though, I've heard many stories. I don't know how that kind of dynamic can exist without some kind of constraints on the DM like the encounter building guides in 4e... what's stopping the DM from just putting Asmodeus up against a group of level 1s right from the off? Fake Edit: We did once run the Myth Drannor 2e boxed set, which was somewhat adversarial or at least high tension/monty haul/tons of fighting. The module quite distinctly said that the players are supposed to find lots of treasure yet also be constantly hounded by monsters so that they have to use every potion/scroll/charged item to survive. That *was* a big shift from the usual tone of our campaigns.
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Jun 2, 2022 02:50
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Even adversarial DMs want to feel like they've "earned their wins". Dumpstering players is too easy, and too final. Pull out something ridiculous and the players won't let you DM anymore, but make something that's just slightly out of their reach and they'll try that much harder to beat you next time. They may even want a rematch. It's basically splashing around in a kiddie pool full of toxic masculinity. The example that always comes to mind from that prick in middle school was him throwing a roper (10 HD monster with the INT to act tactically) at a level 2 party. He also modified it so that it couldn't be hit by non-magical weapons, and only one person in the party had a +1 axe. I cannot remember how the heck we got out of that without any dead PCs (heck, maybe we did lose someone and have to raise them; I pretty much just remember the self-righteous anger and the fact that it went immediately for the person with the magic weapon), but it was a close scrape thing.
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Jun 2, 2022 03:42
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Update 07: "Music"   I used to dread these interminable interviews with my councillors, but for once it was a breath of fresh air, a moment of freedom from the debate raging between Alliene, Hubaere and Noelon about whether to prosecute a war against Medoere until they were no longer able to threaten the free folk of Ilien. While we still weren't first in line to claim the throne of Anuire, we were catching up. Though it was somewhat perturbing that our own vassal, Endier, was considered more electable than us. What was going on over there?You may note that our victory total doesn't quite line up with my calculations. There are two possibilities here: either I'm poo poo at maths or the game calculates victory points differently than the manual claims. I think it's pretty even odds of which one is the case.  The reports from the diplomatic corps still made my head spin. I could keep track of dozens of magical reagents while on an adventure, but I had no hope of keeping track of all these warring states and nations. I could only hope that someone would let me know if any of them tried to invade us again.The "opinion" changes implies that something alters states' opinion of you based on... something. My only guess is that accepting deals and staying allies improves it, while war lessens it.  And then, like a gift from the heavens, a report landed on my desk that would allow me to put off the fateful decision on Medoere for some time yet."The Shadow Realms" isn't just vaguely evil. A rarely-utilized aspect of Birthright is that there's actually a shadow version of the world, weird and fantastical, just under the surface, which can be reached by rare portals at sites of great death and... halflings. Halflings are actually refugees from this realm after Azrai blighted it. It's never relevant to the domain-level game, but for the adventuring game it can be pretty important, and while it lacks extensive detail, there are a lot of hints on how the GM can use it, including letting the players rally up with the shadow world's freedom fighters to liberate it.    Before we set out, I recruit some goons in Ilien to rid it of the Chaos spiders while it's still Warded. Despite seeming janky, raising troops in a province under siege is actually possible in the pen and paper base game, too, but they aren't able to act until the next turn. Something that's missing from TGA, however, is that in the pen and paper game you can raise troops in ANY province you have holdings in, meaning that having extensive holdings in enemy territory and a large war chest could allow you to suddenly put a lot of his nation under siege at once.   AN ADVENTURE? I THOUGHT WE WERE CONQUERING MEDOERE. Liberating, Noelon, liberating. Haelyn smiles upon just war, but he smiles on courage and chivalry as well. Rogr has yet to lead us astray.   Caer Calin drops us on the bridge leading over the moat of the titular fortification. It's a good example of an adventure where a lot of it can be skipped by being able to Fly or Levitate, since we can circle the outside and land on various terraces and balconies for a secondary entrance.  More than a lot of other dungeons, it also tries to look like a real place. It kind of makes me sad that this dungeon map design was wasted on such poor dungeon GAMEPLAY. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNJ4FQb1u1M Oh and for anyone who missed it, this dungeon has some weird but kinda cool music.    There's this central courtyard which, once again, offers a chance to shorten the game with magic if you can leap up to that balcony at the far side.   Though recoloured, the guards here are the same as the last adventure's royal guards.    Nothing inside the stable, not even a healing potion hidden in one of the nooks.    I kind of love that a good number of windows in the game are actually see through. They rarely reveal anything but here, for instance, we can see there's a badguy waiting in the room immediately on the other side.     Coming in, I decide to loop around clockwise, taking a leftwards turn at the first intersection and clearing the outside first before heading deeper in.    This guy was named a "lieutenant" which might make you think he was really tough, due to his higher rank, but he actually died faster than most of the generic goons. It's also interesting that the guard sprites here seem to be wielding a variety of weapons, even if they stat-wise seem identical. It's a nice little touch.  ...my sixth sense tells me this magic item could cause us some trouble.All this does is make our jumps higher and faster and make us move so fast we can't really control where we go. Not very useful in most cases.   WHY ARE WE CRAWLING INSIDE THE FIREPLACE? I'm starting to develop a sense for these adventures, we wouldn't be able to crawl inside it if we weren't meant to. And meant to we are, as it contains our first key. Once again, the problem is that now I have no idea what this opens so I can't say why it's useful or necessary. Which leads to a brief aside about keys: I actually hate them! They're usually boringly used! Generally in games you have to collect the keys anyway, so they just make you go down a side corridor, resulting in the player not making a choice, and it may as well just have been a straight corridor. For keys to be interesting, acquiring them has to be a choice, balanced against: Perhaps not going for the key at all, saving resources and ignoring what it might unlock(only works if the key does not guard something required for progress) Breaking open a door, perhaps expending violence resources and attracting attention Attempting to circumvent the door otherwise(thievery, hacking, athletics, etc.) which might consume other resources and contain other risks A key that you can't choose not to get is just an excuse to make a side path rather than a straight line and to annoy the player if the key is easy to miss.   The next room down the corridor has a party of guards who didn't notice(or didn't care) that we just cut down their officer in the room next door.   I wonder how much this is worth. ...is the budget that strained? Just... help me gather up all these.Just for shits and giggles I decided to raid a bunch of "mundane" items to see if it was actually possible to make some money if we took literally all of them.      Yes, even the cutlery.   At this point we're entering the long room in the mid-left section of the castle, as displayed on the map at the start of the adventure.   It actually makes me kinda sad that they made locations this good-looking and then hosed up the mechanics. The warm hues, the flickering flames, the plush carpets and the brooding skies outside really make it feel weirdly cozy even though a bundle of armed guards are trying to murder you for nicking the spoons.    I just snapped this because I thought it was a nice view.    This is another place you could potentially have busted in from with the right mobility magic.     I cut down some more guards as I advance clockwise and then discover something odd.   A demon statue I understand, it's normal for mad rulers. CLASSIC, EVEN. FINE DETAILING ON THE WINGS. But... even so I have to ask... ...why is this stone demon man positioned to moon everyone in the room? It's facing what looks like the lord's personal table, even! I don't know, this just struck me as unreasonably funny. I believe that this is what they in the adventuring business call "a bad sign."I wonder if CR Renkin is a reference to something. Does it ring a bell with anyone?     This large balcony off to the side of the regent's dining room is somewhat odd. You'd figure that it would have... something. Some items, a button, a key, a connection somewhere, but it doesn't. It does present another potential entryway for flying intruders, however.     The large square room up and right of the two dining rooms on the left side is a barracks containing a number of angry men with swords. They calm down after we kill them.   SIR, PLEASE CALM DOWN AND STOP TRYING TO STAB ME THROUGH THE KEYHOLE.The small room north of it once again features a guard with ESP, or perhaps just functioning ears, who starts viciously slicing at Noelon through the door the moment he hears the clank of heavy platemail.    Busting in, however, it contains two Ioun Stones! Excellent, right? Except... except... I got another Strength stone and tossed it on Noelon to see if it would double up. He could equip it, but as it didn't seem to make a difference, I tossed the second one over to Alliene. Except for once I decided to check her before and after stats, and it did nothing. It turns out the loving Stat+ stones, at least Dexterity and Strength, the most important goddamn ones, are bugged and have no effect! It's not just that they don't display the stat change, either, because a +1 Dex should have affected Noelon's AC, and it loving doesn't! This loving gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame.    This place certainly has a lot of thrones and throne-like chairs. Maybe the regent has a different one for each day of the week.This is the lowest room in the center block of rooms just above the courtyard. I originally thought it was purposeless except for flavour, but on rewatching the recording for screenshots, I discovered I was just blind.   It turns out there are hard-to-spot magic items, or at least some potions, in this "trench" behind the throne dais.    Next, I skip a few doors to go east along the corridor at the "top" of the map. I skip the doors because they're the heavy "bronze" kind that I reflexively expect to be locked, which would require me to remember where they are for when I get the right keys.  Behold my genius as I skip doors I expect to be locked and thus run into the only one that actually IS locked.    Right next to it, a bunch of guards are having a party in a room with a single huge bed, a single table and a wand. I imagine they were playing a really terrifying version of Russian Roulette. The "warped" surface in the back is, I think, meant to be a mirror. It's the same texture that was used for the treasury escape portal in Elfwash Keep.   The wand is useless, but the book is... kinda okay? Mage Lords teaches realm spells, i.e. strategic map spells, of which there's an extremely limited selection and we already have the most important one, Legion of the Dead. The rest only see limited use.    An entire wall just dedicated to a giant tapestry? How odd. CAN I PUT UP A GIANT TAPESTRY IN MY ROOM? It's coming out of your salary and it better not be something that looks like a heavy metal cover. YOU NEVER LET ME HAVE ANY FUN.  In addition to an ominous note and the blue key, this room also hosts another book, in this case Sorcerer Lore, which provides 3 spells of level 4 to 6, i.e. something that Rogr might actually be able to cast this side of eternity.   Right next to the giant tapestry is a very obvious secret wall that we can't open yet.     There are a couple of these little "changing rooms"(though only this one has a prize), and as is plainly obvious they also each have an illusory wall at the back.   The illusory wall empties you out on to this... stage? That's my assumption, anywy, that it's a stage, with two changing rooms and a few magic items tucked behind the curtains like a Wand of Illumination for the weirdo self-hating gamer who tries TGA without a mage or cleric to cast Continual Light. The Potion of Fire Resistance does raise some questions about exactly what kind of acts get put on here, however.   Now that we have the blue key, we can go through this door, but before I do, I take a right turn just before it to check out the prisons.     Inexplicably this one guy is locked up in a cell and will attack us if we get close to the bars, but we can just ignore him and leave him in there to sprint around frantically trying to path to us.   For now this is a dead end in any case, since we need the jewelled key to progress.     Behind the blue key door is a winding staircase leading to two doors.   On the right, there's nothing of interest.   The other is likewise empty at first glance, but has a mean hidden wall since you need to get through the jeweled key door to progress and can't get it without finding this secret door.   The Wand of Frost ostensibly casts "Cone of Cold," an offensive spell that fucks pretty hard in actual AD&D but here just hits a single target since AoE's apparently aren't implemented, because hey, that would take effort and competence. For gently caress's sake.    Behind the jeweled key door lies the extra bad prisons, the first on the left hides a secret passage behind a corner.    Say, who turned out the lights?Crossing over the threshold here has three effects: It reshuffles your party to the original formation, something I miss because I'm a moron. It turns off any persistent spells you have on. It creates a huge hitch which briefly convinces you that this jank-rear end game has crashed.  What's actually happened is that you've been transported to another map. I didn't actually recall that the game engine was even capable of doing this, and I recall very few adventure maps that actually make use of it.  I then walk down the stairs and promptly run Rogr face first into the first encounter with some skeletons. Skeletons are pretty uninteresting as enemies, except they're something your players can mulch without someone being concerned about their motivations. They take less damage from piercing and cutting weapons, which, uh, loving sucks since most players will pick up a sword as their starting weapon since they're stat-wise the best option in most cases.Rogr has no sword, though, so that's neatly handled.    DO YOU NEED ANY HELP? If you'd just scoot over I could Turn them! Please, I'm not some helpless old man.   As an interesting note, Flesh to Stone actually leaves a grayscale version of the target standing around in the gameworld. It's weird that they screw up so many other things and then this actually works as intended.    Per the map earlier, the underground level is a twisty maze of passages, where our goal is to reach the largest of the rooms.   CAN I PET THE DOG? Noelon, no! That's a hellhound! I BET HE'S STILL A GOOD BOY.Hellhounds are rarely used enemies that are kind of nasty, but thankfully seem a bit tuned down here. They range between a 4th and a 7th-level Fighter in health and combat ability, are thankfully relatively easy to hit(AC4) and can breathe fire. For each "level" or "hit die" they have, their breath weapon does one flat point of damage, being one of the rare damage abilities that involves no rolling whatsoever. The Monstrous Manual, in a bit of occasional razor sharp insight, includes the chances of finding Hellhound Puppies in their lairs and some rough rules for domesticating them.    They and skeletons are the main enemies here, neither are terrifically threatening though Hellhounds can do a number on Noelon when they do hit, despite his insane -8 AC, probably due to their bite rolling a 1d10 for damage, which is the same as a two-handed sword.   Also hellhounds loving EXPLODE when they die. Kinda rules.   This potion in the corner has an effect described as "the party's feet don't touch the ground." You might mistake this for M&M4/5 type levitation that just protects you from certain damage floors, but no, this is the actual FLIGHT spell in the game, Levitate, not Fly. It allows you to hover in mid-air, to control your ascent and descent, etc. but also makes your horizontal movement pretty slow, admittedly, but that's generally not a huge issue. Needed to complete this dungeon without crying, mind you.  Also check out how well-hidden this loving key in the corner is. I almost left the room without it and while, once again, I have no idea exactly what it opens, I suspect that would have lead to tears.     Opening these murals eventually leads to the room I was looking for and...   The "fiend" is yet another Spectre. This time it takes a lot more hits, however, even like three of four Turn spells, but still failed to drain any levels off Noelon so my assumption is energy draining is NOT in The Gorgon's Alliance. Thank gently caress.   The main difference is that this time I have a good angle on its cool death animation. For as janky as a lot of things in this game look, play and sound, sometimes there are parts that look undeniably rad. Still convinced that I'm going to be japed by the Potion of Levitation and dropped into a pit, I loop back some to a place I want to try accessing before being condemned to restarting the mission.  In the northeast section of the basement there are three niches which at first seem like they have secret doors, but instead are actually raised off the ground. Thinking I'm a genius, I twig on the Amulet of Springing and Striding and decide to try jumping up there.   It does not work well. Primarily because the jumping is much too aggressive and I keep bouncing off the ceiling before I can even make it into one of the niches, so I have no idea what's actually in there. Looks like a Ring of Regeneration in one of them, though.    Imagine my relief when this loving thing actually WORKS. I was dreading having to try and platform my way across those small islands, which I think is actually possible, just not something I want to screw up.  The reward is another book of Sorcerer Lore, i.e,. more spells to actually cast, and the artifact of the day.  Considering that the attack and defense ratings for most units are on a scale of 1 to 4, +1 to attack rating would be huge. There's a Blood ability, both in the pen and paper and TGA, called Battlewise which does something similar, except stronger since it provides a +1 to attack AND defense ratings for all friendly units in a battle the regent personally commands. It's a very powerful ability and anyone with it should be immediately stabbed and have their bloodline stolen.  I can't help but wonder where that stairway in the corner goes, though...    It leads back to the Tapestry Bedroom, to that hidden passage that wasn't accessible earlier! This makes me wonder if originally it was intended that you couldn't just "warp" out of adventures but had to actually fight your way out even after acquiring your objective item.  Of further interest is that the map transition apparently repopulates the map with items(and presumably also monsters), meaning that with a transition in the right place, you could use it to easily "grind" some good stuff.  It's also comically notable that despite scarfing down so many "mundane" items that I hit the item limit per character for 3/4's of the party, they still didn't amount to even a tenth of a Gold Bar, which I think is the smallest unit the game keeps track of.  Once we were back home and the Scepter of Cuiraecen was hung over the fireplace-   ...things honestly hadn't changed much. Except rather than declaring war on us, Diemed was now declaring war on Brosengae and Taeghas every other week.With the vote nearly split on conquest vs peace, I decide on a middle way to bring Medoere into the fold.   I told Noelon he could have the tapestry he wanted for his room if he convinced Alliene and Hubaere, and while he was arguing with them, I set out to pacify Medoere in my own way. With peace. It should be no challenge to convince them that we were worthier allies than Diemed.After I gave them the Permissive, they offered the Full alliance themselves, very kind of them. I have no actual idea what the difference is between the two as I don't think anything in the documentation says so.  Also, Taeghas and Brosengae harass me to become their vassal CONSTANTLY from this point on. I become convinced it's their most regular action.   If we wanted to do the opposite to them, it would be prohibitively, in fact impossibly, expensive due to the size of their territories. The way to vassalize the continent as an economic powerhouse, thus, is to use your money to pay for territories first, and then full vassalization after you've bought them down to size.    Endier keeps getting hit with wars from Alamie which...  ...really aren't working out well for Alamie.    What is Alamie doing? They're already failing to tackle one minor power, and now they declare war on another? That they aren't even bordering? Maybe they're trying to worry us by doing intentionally irrational things? I also suddenly realized that I could upgrade one of my Sources in Aerenwe's forest provinces and was at first baffled, until I realized that either Sielwode or Tuarhievel had held them, more likely Sielwode, and that when they died, all their holdings got deleted, so now we've finally got a tier 3 source accessible again! Hell yeah, now I can finally use and talk about Realm Magic some.  Father, what are you doing in there? Um, nothing just... scrying? Yes, scrying. Don't mind the rattling bones.In addition to Legion of the Dead, which creates skeletons, we have: Alchemy: Creates gold at a cost of 1 RP to 1 GB. Useful for mage regents since your Sources which create RP don't also create GB, like a thief's guilds or a cleric's temples. Mass Destruction: Deletes enemy troops, but we need a ley line or Source in the province targeted, which limits its power Death Plague: Reduces the province level Raze: Destroys a castle. It's absolutely a way to speed up offensive wars by Ley Lining a powerful Source into an enemy province with a castle and then using Raze to delete it.  ...did you really think eight legions of undead warriors would go unnoticed? ...I only meant to create two! Also I thought maybe we could save lives this way. It's not like skeletons will leave behind grieving families.However! Legion of the Dead is bugged to poo poo, apparently. It's only meant to create a single unit per casting, but instead seems to create FOUR each time, for inscrutable reasons. Four units of the strongest non-Knight units in the game, that do not require paying for their upkeep.In the pen and paper game, it can actually summon more than one unit, but it costs 4 RP per unit, rather than one per total casting, and the summoning mage must stay with the undead legions or they crumble away. Here, we can just send them away to gallivant around the continent as far as we can see and they'll stay in one piece.  Well, if you're going to keep them, at least use them to help out Brosengae. Diemed keeps attacking them!  Diemed promptly responds by rushing across Medoere, whom I think is still their ally, and into Braeme where they meet our skeleton armies.   It doesn't go well for them.  Meanwhile, Rogr, the lieutenants and all the living knights head over to Tier, the northeasternmost of Diemed's provinces. Unlike Medoere, where every province was fortified, Diemed's only fortified province is their capital.   Diemed doesn't even try to prevent us from taking it.    WHERE ARE ALL OF BARON DIEM'S TROOPS? Well, according to the courier that just arrived, they appear to be in Braeme.  I'm practically drowning the battlefield in skeletons. It's an unfairly effective strategy.  It might have gone better for them if they deployed their knights first rather than keeping them in the reserve.    I march onwards into Duene while I start the construction of a castle and some Law holdings in Tier. While we were camping out on the fields of Duene, organizing the construction of new fortifications and garrisons in the territories we'd just passed by, a pair of anxious couriers arrived bearing urgent news.  One reported on not one, but two opportunities for adventure. I was torn between the opportunity to deny the Gorgon a powerful magic item and the opportunity to challenge(or rather, to have Noelon challenge), a mighty Awnshegh like Rhuobhe Manslayer and banishing him from Cerilia forever. While the other reported that the war for Cerilia was drawing near its end. Unthinkable as it might be, the Gorgon was starting to look to many like an acceptable choice for the Iron Throne in the Imperial City.Who the gently caress did Medoere vassalize? That is a completely insane vassal score.  As always, we would have some big decisions to make if we wanted to avoid living under the Gorgon's yoke, and not all of them would be ones I'd like our options for.Our current point tally(according to the manual, anyway...): 12 for 4 provinces held. 24 for 8 provinces held by our Vassals(Endier has 5 provinces, Medoere has 2 provinces) 4 points for our 2 alliances(Brosengae, Taeghas). 60 points for artifacts held(Dierdren's Ring, Brenna's Favor, Regalia of Empire, Scepter of Cuiraecen) 100 points out of 300 needed to win. VOTE With two adventures to finish off, is the next update: Pure Adventure Pure Strategic Gameplay Half Adventure, Half Strategic (If so, please also vote for a preferred adventure of the two available)
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Jun 7, 2022 12:45
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The Shadow World, ahh... not discussed all that much even in the book that is explicitly about it, it is a great resource for adventure and encountering things that would be extremely unusual in Cerilia. It is, after all, a sort of planar 'filter' that keeps the real nasties from invading! Once it was part of Aebrynis, and the Seeming and Perception were part of daily life. Seeming is, essentially, fairy magic that lets you make illusions real and reality illusory with an act of will and innate power up to godlike effects. Perception is the ability to see through these extremely enhanced illusionary effects, and thus remain unaffected by them. These two attributes are what the Magicians study to learn their lesser magics, for they lack the innate magical blood of elves, dragons, or gods to cast true magic - Magicians count as specialized in both Illusions and Divination and can only learn those two schools after 2nd level spells (before which they are totally unrestricted). The Shadow World has a number of unique threats, too. Especially for elves, who have a strange connection to that place. Not a pleasant one, apparently, for those things that are connected to elves want to kill them. The Cwn Annwn, especially - super hellhounds that clearly could have been used here in place of regular ones. Though, their paralyzing howl would probably not have been used properly, so it's a wash. That, and without an elf or half-elf in your party, they don't usually care about you. You sure find a lot of literal divine artifacts in this game, pretty crazy how many are just laying around with nobody having talked about having them up until this point!
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Jun 7, 2022 13:06
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Adventures seem fun, and also get you artifacts, so Adventure until you drop.
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Jun 7, 2022 13:26
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Pure adventure. also let Noelon pet the hellhound, you monster
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Jun 7, 2022 14:01
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Adventure to a petting zoo. E: Also, Cone of Cold is one of those spells that sounds bigger than it is. It's drat near a beam until you get up to epic levels, and even then it doesn't get that big. The angle of the cone is just a smidge over 11.4 degrees, and only goes farther each level; while the end of the cone widens as it fires further, the actual arc of the cone does not change. The total AoE of Cone of Cold is roughly equal to Lightning Bolt at 16th level, and smaller before that. Its real claim to fame is not being damage-capped at 10th-level effectiveness like the big names back in the 3rd level spells, and having a tighter damage spread (2-5 per level instead of 1-6), so at epic levels you can toss out ludicrous hits if you can line people up well enough. So while Fireball or Lightning Bolt cap out at 10-60 damage, Cone of Cold starts at 18-45 damage for a 9th level wizard where you first get it, and goes all the way up to 40-100 (and theoretically 64-160). Felinoid fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Jun 7, 2022 |
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Jun 7, 2022 16:16
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Pure adventure Get more stupid strong artifacts! Become ungovernable!
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Jun 7, 2022 16:35
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Half and half. We still have assholes that keep making GBS threads up the place, so we should probably try to stop that.
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Jun 7, 2022 17:58
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Pure adventure and hopefully between the 6 spells you got from those 2 sorcery books there will be something useful to you...
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Jun 7, 2022 18:38
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I shouldn't have put it to a vote. I should just have ignored the adventures. I should just have ignored all the adventures, sob.
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Jun 8, 2022 01:03
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