The same thing we do every (ten)day... plot to SAVE THE ISLES (planning thread)

[HEEGZ]

The party has lesser restoration pots, and clerics that can cast the spell as well. There should be no need to do mail runs really. There is loot to be distributed as well, so there is money to be had, we just haven't gotten around to it yet.

[orangetree]

(( Dude! I'm not trying to be funny! Well- yeah it is a somewhat funny situation, but I'm honestly not trying to be funny here.

Lunette burns through a lot of potions- when she had them. I actually went into the session with far less potions and scrolls then a reasonably sane (debated- I know) person would. I didn't even have access to stoneskin from arizma, or elemental buffs from Toby.

ICly we encountered some really really- -really serious traps. I'm talking wall crushing, gas chambers, acid burning insta kills. Anyone in Lunettes position would replenish her supplies before doing that again or face an extremely high possibility of dying outright with no saves possible- and no aid possible on the first door.

I don't begrudge the situation as I have encountered it many times and thought it quite normal. I think even Aglaril had a consumables issue at some point and needing to do things to make gold rather then adventure a few weeks ago?

So... I'm really confused at your confusion on it. If there is something I'm missing, by all means tell me. I could sell my skill boosting items for potions, but then I would reduce my effectiveness as a trap springer/lock picker in a high level environment. I was looking at selling my ice-wand before the session, which is the only thing I got to penetrate monsters that have damage reduction on normal weapons but havn't encountered a shop that would take it- and I might be really foolish to part with my only other means of attack in such a situation- yet I was willing to do so given the more immediate need for a potion.

so in all honesty, the main run looks like the only viable solution if I can keep it up for a week or two.

edit: ... there was loot? I thought we found nothing.

[Ithildur]

[orangetree]

((I honestly thought we were all down on gold. I just thought we could replenish stuff before doing anything seriously hard again. I'm really really sorry. I didn't mean to cause frustration I just wanted to get some potions to give my char a fighting chance in the encounters. I thought it was reasonable and I'm honestly very sorry if I was wrong to skip the session for rest/replenishment. I hoped things would be better next week before rushing into it again. I can see you consider this a serious matter now and that does worry me a lot.

In RL I'm currently going through a move so I guess I'm stressing about that too. It is hard to woke up at 3am for this, especially as the last session was long and I had a busy day. I woke up an hour too late and thought it best to let this one go given the issues last time lateness caused combined depleted resources that reduce the effectiveness of my character. Please consider that before judgement on my dependability. Though I think rushing into such judgement isn't very sporting, I acknowledge your right to decide if I am worth playin with.

Without those potions I felt my chances were almost zero on survival. I get that all adventure is risky but is it Ic for me to throw caution to the wind when a bit of patience improves the odds? At lower level play don't you remember having had to run sometimes, or wait until you could afford that ring of healing, or prepare for an under water encounter by slowly saving up for a breathing helm?

I had a lot of fun with you guys yesterday and I thought you had fun with me too, (I was meticulous in how my char spoke and tried to be pure professional- barring bad dice rolls.) again I'm really sorry. I don't know how Alfa works... I don't know, I just keep trying and trying all the time trying to make a worthy character. I'm sorry.

The worst thing here is If I had known the party could provide such items I would have asked for them and avoided this mess of ooc frustration.

I also can only ask you to let this one be another learning experience for me.

Edit: on a hopefully lighter note... It's nice that Lunette was needed. And I feel bad to have let you down on that. Guess I can't complain she has little value at this point.

[orangetree]

I think I've had a revelation and can see why the frustration happened. There's some miscommunication here and hope I can set it straight.

First I was not in any way suggesting doing mail runs instead of RPing with the group. I actually get annoyed when people do that.

The context here is that due to time zone issues I have the server to myself most of the time and mail runs are the money maker, by design. So that's what I do to get items and it's the only thing a single PC can go. I do that for the week then sacrifice an evening for sleep to see you at night on the weekends.

However each day When I sleep the server comes to life and you can do a lot more things together but that's not a part of the world I can physically interact with (until I retire anyway.) so I don't get the same level of support with PCs and I'm just generally used to sorting out item needs on my own by habit.

I hope this at least gives some understanding that I'm not a total wewe here.

[HEEGZ]

Rhone has lots of potions that she never uses, plus the ones the party looted, plus saleable wealth, plus her own stash of coin which she would freely spread around to her party if she knew people needed cash. Just bring it up IC next session. There should be no need to miss DM'd campaign events in order to run statics. In my view, static quests should really only be used when there is a lack of DM coverage, which hasn't been an issue for this group.

[orangetree]

That's fair enough heegz. I didn't see any spread of wealth so I just assumed we were all skint.

I would rather not miss a DM session but I was honestly too tired to pull off a second night on Saturday. DM coverage is unavailable to me for most the week due to RL demands which puts me half in half out of a lot of stuff and I often feel like a parasite. Believe me I try to contribute meaningfully when I'm on and see you.

I agree people with DM coverage shouldn't do statics... But one would hope the gains are shared

[HEEGZ]

Yeah. I logged in for two hours last week (to share loot) and no one could meet with me so I finally logged off. I didn't know it was an issue for anyone as this is the first I've heard of anyone having wealth issues. We can sort it out in short order though.

[Arianna]

Yeah. I logged in for two hours last week (to share loot) and no one could meet with me so I finally logged off. I didn't know it was an issue for anyone as this is the first I've heard of anyone having wealth issues. We can sort it out in short order though.

Do remember there is the box at the group hall that loot can be dropped in if you know your not going to be able to connect . . . I know it doesn't work for coin but other stuff it would

[orangetree]

I did see the box, but I didn't touch it. I didn't know what the situation was ICly with it.

[HEEGZ]

I have a key to the house, but I don't remember how to find it on the map (or which map it is).

[Ithildur]

My main frustration is that there's consistent lack of communication and consideration towards others. It's not just you OT... although your post did make my head explode (yet again).

When people have work, family commitments, or really any other RL priorities that keep them from participating, that's completely understandable and a higher priority than playing ALFA. However, when there is a session planned/scheduled/agreed to, it's basic courtesy to communicate that you won't be able to make it. Simply blowing off the other people waiting for you where I come from is considered extremely rude.

It was my understanding that we would have a session last night to try and finish things up. I set aside time, time that I could've put towards other things in RL, made money doing, had fun doing, etc. Or I could've been DMing on TSM. I was disappointed and frustrated to find out that out of the entire group that was present last night when we'd agreed we'd finish up the following night, only Arri the DM and I showed up. When I saw OT's post which sounded like she'd decided last minute to blow off the group because of quibbling over fairly minor consumables (which additionally were handed out for free the prior session...) and something about grinding mail runs to buy said consumables, I was literally speechless. It didn't help that it was quite clear both last night and the previous night that we were going to be dealing with obstacles that her PC is specifically meant to address.

In the end, Mick, Arri, and I made (I think) some decent use of our time and got some things accomplished, but essentially we waited for people to show up, and didn't get very far partly due to said obstacles.

The truth is, said obstacles CAN be navigated without certain PCs. When people blow off sessions for reasons like 'I need to spam mail runs for consumables' when said consumables were clearly given out on a as needed basis for free (like people in a collaborative/group effort do), it makes me think we should just navigate said obstacles without relying on that PC, especially if they tend to repeatedly stand in the back and watch a less skilled character try and deal with said obstacles.

[orangetree]

I never got the feeling my PC was ever essential. I am really sorry again for making you feel angry and I can see how it looked rude of me.

my initial message was written when I was very tired. I didn't mean for it to look like i blew you off, I got up too late and thought I missed the session. I thought you usually got on fine though. I never perceived my lowly char as able to get involved in the plots, and there's never been any interest to involve her so I thought my absence would not even be noticed. Whenever we find a stone she ends up unconscious and has to be picked up and dragged off. She was not very effective against the expert traps or perceiving the dangers. She's got non magic bolts (though she does have a magic dagger now). ICly there was no reason to think she was needed and was probably better staying away so you wouldn't have to keep using magic saving her from dying, at least three or four times in the last session.

If it was communicated my PC was essential I would have made a deeper comitment and go through it even tired and itemless. The general perception was that most people were too tired and there might not be a session. I only knew there was one when I saw you and Arri on in my tired state. I should have asked icly for help on gold and potions... But keep in mind there is an IC perception that my char already asks too much from the group whenever they are forced to spend resources helping her.

[Ithildur]

There's level discrepancies in the group; that's been obvious from the start. I repeatedly considered dropping Aglaril from this campaign and brought such up with Arri because of this early on, and was told it's meant to be a high lvl campaign. From what I understand currently it's now more a mixed level thing, by which I take it things are toned down somewhat, and opportunities are present for people like Lunette and her skillset to be utilized. There's always opportunities for people to gather clues and put them together regardless of levels or skillsets; if you RP a PC with decent INT or WIS, you can talk to people and help put pieces together. If you intentionally RP a PC that regularly says things that people have to ignore to retain their sanity, that's perfectly fine from a RP perspective, but the consequences are that characters will eventually ignore much of what the PC says.

It is what it is. For the most part frankly things have not been that difficult for Lunette. How many times has she hit negative HPs compared to say, Sai'ok or even high lvl Toby? She (wisely) stays far away from melee range combat and contributes mainly by dealing with traps. The traps are a stretch for her but really, they're the only thing that put her in danger, and in a group with high lvl PCs, some traps are going to be quite dangerous. The real problem as I see it is when you start to have her stand in the back not even dealing with traps, letting others that are less skilled than her fiddle with them (and set them off); that poison gas trap last night might've been capably dealt with by Lunette, who knows? We never will know because she didn't try, and the end result was that she got poisoned and nearly killed while watching someone else do her job.

On a different note,

[15:52] <Zelknolf> ... ALFA implements the "aid another" action for disable device.
[15:52] <Zelknolf> Just have a second person disarm while the leader is working

Aid Another can be used to give a +2 bonus to skillchecks in 3.5e; not sure if Arri would take that into account for RP traps but ACR traps (not NWN2 traps, ACR traps; there is a difference) are mechanically designed so that a secondary trapper with Disable Device can Aid Another the primary trapper to attempt to grant the +2 bonus.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/usingS ... aidAnother


These are the kinds of things that someone that's RPing a rogue-ish sort can find out, research if needed, to supplement their RP. It's out there, people are around with info, there are resources. You don't have to stand in the back and feel helpless/useless especially if people around you are trying really hard to make it so you don't feel that way. You're definitely not helping yourself if you regularly expect every player and DM to be mean oocly or stingy ICly with loot/needed consumables, while RPing a trapper that stands in the back and lets others do her job. That's a good way to assure you'll end up feeling useless.

[Arianna]

I have a key to the house, but I don't remember how to find it on the map (or which map it is).

Callidyrr
High District
Hunters Hall [ I will enable the map point for those that don't bother to learn where shit is]