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Post by Daos on May 5, 2020 17:01:07 GMT -8
Re: Aguru wouldn't let you interrogate the prisoners, thus denying you a chance of learning more of what you would be facing First, Imrich really made it sound like he was talking about torturing the prisoners, specifically, when he brought it up. This was why Aguru shot him down. It was not an OOC decision to deny the party anything. Imrich was implying he was going to torture prisoners to a law enforcement officer. Of course the sheriff wasn't going to sanction an illegal act. Even if that's not what you meant (in which case, I do wonder why you worded it that way), I'm curious what you did have in mind then. I'm not sure what you could have offered them to make them betray their leader like that. If they are willing to fight to the death, why would they cooperate at all? Okay, that was a miscommunication on my part then. I didn't mean Aguru was going to bring a priest there to raise Johannas, I meant they were going to fetch someone to bring his body to the temple to await raising . He never specified a timeline on when Johannas would be raised (the implication is that there is a queue and he'd have to wait his turn to get raised). My thought was that it probably wouldn't happen until the next morning at the earliest. All the priests were asleep at that hour, and it wasn't exactly an emergency to raise him right then and there. To be honest, I had no idea when Gravity would be returning, and I felt weird about raising his character off-screen and without him being present. If Gravity had returned during that time, I would have considered it, just to get him back in the game, but I would have lamented losing such an opportunity for roleplaying (assuming he survived it in the first place, that is). I sent back an acolyte because I felt that was probably the best Aguru could do at that hour. Most of the temple is asleep, it had already been established that the church doesn't take him very seriously. I mean, if it was possible for Aguru to fetch a bunch of high level clerics, why would he need the party? They could have sat out the rest of the quest and let the church handle it all. Wouldn't a scenario where a 9th level priest or priests just uses Hold Person on everyone while the party sits and watches would have been even more frustrating? The XP you guys were getting was pretty thin as it was (the average slaver was only level 3, making them around 65 XP; splitting that up between Kalana, Imrich, Senllip and Jaeron drops it down to around 16 each. Throw in some deputies, and you barely got anything at all. Which is why I always had the deputies show up after the fight was over, when possible. Only when I felt you guys really needed the help did they show up beforehand. Even then, the deputies were only level 1 so they couldn't help that much anyway. Again, I could have made the deputies stronger, but then it would have raised the question why the party was even needed. What is ironic is that the most common criticism I get as a DM is that my games are way too easy. That every encounter is a push-over, that the party is never really challenged and never needs any kind of strategy. So I put some effort into making this quest actually difficult, and yes, about a dozen times I considered offering the party infinite healing or weakening all of the slavers so the party could easily push through this, but I stopped myself because I was trying to force myself to stop falling into old habits. And now I'm being criticized for making it too hard. Perhaps I'm just terrible at judging encounter strengths in general. I seriously botched that white dragon in Past Glory, after all.  I did. They were in the room the party never went into (remember right after you fought the elven archer, there were two doors?). They were meant as a backup in case the slavers needed them, but the only ones who passed by that way were under a fear spell, so they never bothered to pick them up on the way. Thus, they were still untouched if the party had gone in there. If the party took too much time to get there, this would have happened. I was keeping track of time, so I'd know exactly when they'd be gone. You were actually really close. Another 10 minutes or so would have done it. |
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Post by HorizonsDream on May 5, 2020 18:12:31 GMT -8
I've been through the stat blocks of each of the characters multiple times to try to figure out a way to accomplish what we have set out to accomplish. I've ran into something kind of confusing when looking at Imrich's stat block.
Imrich still has a hold person spell according to the stat block. Is this a mistake? I know that we were told both IC and OOC that Imrich was out of spells, but apparently not? I'm confused. I know that Imrich used it in the hospice and the apartments, but when was the third time?
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Post by Bishgada on May 5, 2020 21:22:42 GMT -8
Hi, First, Rax, nice bookkeeping of the game. I usually post either at nights when I'm tired or at work when many times I'm a bit distracted, and besides I have horrible memory, so thanks for that. I agree with most the points you raised, but these are well met with Daos answers. It also seems "luck" or bad choices on our hand contributed much to the desperate situation we got into: there are tons of critical hits and critical fumbles in my opinion. I didn't check the statistics, but it's a hunch. Sometime we do good. This time less... Also if we had taken the time to search all the rooms we might have found the potions. We pushed through because we thought time is essential. I thought we could search the basement after we finish the fights, and since in real time it took forever, by the time we got to the leader I forgot we have another room to search, here indeed I think it wouldn't matter for the settings if Daos would move the potions from the room in the beginning to the barracks to help us out a bit when it was clear only a miracle will make us win the battle. I wanted to mention that in the fire corridor, indeed in real life running through the fire while most of the company had low HP was stupid. But in Senllip mind we are heroes willing to sacrifice themselves for justice, and he doesn't really thinks too much of consequences and just that they are so great team that nothing can't harm them. That's why he takes deaths so badly. Not only he is sad and cares for the people died as the rest of normal people do, it also shatters his understanding of reality a bit and baffles him. So with that Senllip is somewhat reckless, as you have noticed already, he acts by the rush of emotions and indeed I think I had contribute more in this episode to lead us to this desperate point. Sorry for that. In the current position he will also accept defeat. He will probably complain a lot about it later, and might even, annoyingly repeat the party uselessness but he wouldn't run alone only to be shot to death after several steps. On the other hand he might be immediately carried away by the investigation of the refugee camp and dismiss their failure completely in a heartbeat. I just wanted to quote one thing Rax mentioned that Aguru said: "He makes it clear that he won't allow us the chance to gain any extra intelligence on what we're actually dealing with, makes it plain that access to healing is going to be severely limited, and insists that we must hurry to complete the objectives." And I wanted to comment to that: Don't all real life bosses behave the same??  Bottom line, in respect to the basement episode, I don't want easy fights, but I don't want desperate situation to linger over months of posting either. As for the current situation I'm ready to back off with the group, unless there are other people in the street, guards/adventurers, or crewed ships in the harbor, that we can rally for a balanced fight or ship pursue that can end in several in game hours (and not in game weeks). |
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Rax
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Post by Rax on May 6, 2020 9:33:02 GMT -8
I've been through the stat blocks of each of the characters multiple times to try to figure out a way to accomplish what we have set out to accomplish. I've ran into something kind of confusing when looking at Imrich's stat block. Imrich still has a hold person spell according to the stat block. Is this a mistake? I know that we were told both IC and OOC that Imrich was out of spells, but apparently not? I'm confused. I know that Imrich used it in the hospice and the apartments, but when was the third time? That's weird. I do my day-to-day bookkeeping on mythweavers and according to the sheet there, Imrich has no castings of hold person left for the day. I had Imrich cast hold person twice at the hospice (second casting in the closing round of the combat) and once in the apartments. But checking back, it looks like Daos never recorded the second casting or had it activate in the combat. I guess that does mean Imrich has a use of hold person left. Sure would have been nice to have noticed that earlier...  |
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Rax
Dicemaster
Posts: 2,263
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Post by Rax on May 6, 2020 10:44:50 GMT -8
Re: Aguru wouldn't let you interrogate the prisoners, thus denying you a chance of learning more of what you would be facing First, Imrich really made it sound like he was talking about torturing the prisoners, specifically, when he brought it up. This was why Aguru shot him down. It was not an OOC decision to deny the party anything. Imrich was implying he was going to torture prisoners to a law enforcement officer. Of course the sheriff wasn't going to sanction an illegal act. Even if that's not what you meant (in which case, I do wonder why you worded it that way), I'm curious what you did have in mind then. I'm not sure what you could have offered them to make them betray their leader like that. If they are willing to fight to the death, why would they cooperate at all? You inferred that Imrich was going to torture a prisoner from that statement? Yowza! What I meant was that Imrich has the Intimidation NWP, which literally says that "NPCs who are intimidated are quite likely to do what they're told, out of fear". It can be used with Strength when " threatening immediate, personal bodily harm". Imrich has Str 19, so I felt pretty confident it would have some effect, even if you penalized the roll in some manner. Had Intimidation not worked - or maybe as an alternative to lead with - I hoped that just performing an actual interrogation might provide some clues. Maybe it wouldn't have - maybe you would just have played the slavers as refusing to say anything - but I couldn't very well know that without trying. Re your point above that their willingness to fight to the death meant that the slavers wouldn't cooperate at all... Well, firstly this was our first encounter with the slavers so it wasn't an established pattern that they all fight to the death. Only one of them even got to fight to the end because Imrich paralysed the rest. Secondly, just because one person is fanatical enough to not surrender, it doesn't mean they're tough or smart enough to resist a decent interrogation, unless of course you as DM decide they are.
If that's how you planned to play out an interrogation then I must say I feel vindicated in saying that there was a strong element of railroading in the quest setup - we were put on a timetable, not allowed to gather intelligence because no one would talk, and no way to get to the boss man without grinding our way through multiple fights. The sheriff of Serenity has just uncovered a major slaving operation in the city, he expects that the slavers are about to disappear with a shipload of slaves and the clergy of Octhanus wouldn't consider that an emergency worthy of their assistance? This is what your Octhania handbook has to say about the faith of Octhanus:
I don't mean that Johannas needed to be resurrected on the spot, but given that the raison d'aitre of the priests of Octhanus is to help people who are suffering or need help, then I absolutely expect them to mobilize more than one sleepy acolyte to help the people trying to stop the slavers. A bunch of high level priests? No. But definitely someone who could keep us topped up on the hit point side.
Well, you designed the quest and the encounters. From the look of things, the XP rewards for fighting were always going to be low, with or without NPC assistance. If your worry is that the quest won't provide enough XP, then you have the power to adjust that if you want. Just hand out liberal XP rewards for quest completion, good ideas and entertaining play. For my part I wouldn't have cared if I got less XP because NPCs helped out in combat - I want to complete the mission and I want my character to survive. XP comes in second after such concerns. I also can't help but notice that you're repeating an earlier point about stronger NPCs making the party pointless. If you read through my earlier analysis again, I think you'll find I never suggested you should have made allied NPCs stronger. I suggested that you could have deployed them much earlier than you did. IMO, having Aguru and his deputies show up when we first entered the warehouse would have made a difference, if only by providing the slavers with more targets. We could have gotten through one or maybe two fights in much better shape that way.
I don't recall ever having complained that your fights are too easy.  Nor have I said this quest was always way too hard. I have said that given that we started out in a weakened state (Kalana low on HP, Jaeron with no spells, Johannas killed in the first fight) the remainder of the quest became much harder than you probably intended from the start and that it would therefore have been a good idea to adapt your original plan, for example by making more (not infinite) healing available from NPCs. I've also said that I feel that you made any strategy but fighting very difficult by not allowing us to interrogate prisoners for information that might have enabled us to come up with a plan that would mitigate our poor HP and lack of healing. In addition, if it's the case that you also would have had the prisoners refuse to divulge any information, no matter what we tried, then I do feel you would have killed the strategy part of the quest stone dead.
That's good to know! But we didn't go there and instead went straight through two fights. It's perfectly legitimate for you to declare that we didn't search the premises properly so that makes it our own fault, but as DM you had repeatedly stressed that we needed to hurry and the swordsmen had clearly stated that they were going for reinforcements. Speedy action to try and prevent them from massing their forces certainly seemed more important to me than going back to search an area which didn't appear to contain any immediate threat.
However, if - as you said before - you too were frustrated by the way things were going and you noticed that perhaps it wasn't all smiles on the PC end either, then why not just move the healing potions to the barracks after the fire-trapped corridor? It would have given the party a morale boost and strengthened our position in dealing with the last encounter. I certainly would have gone in with a more positive mindset and a feeling that we might still succeed. In short, it would have made things more fun for me.
Honestly, I think that level of time keeping is a weakness rather than a strength in scenarios like this. You're the DM, so you decide how long it takes for them to get away in the first place and only you know how fast the clock is ticking. From my side of the screen it wouldn't have made a bit of difference if you decided to change that timetable to account for the state of play, or even if you'd never had a timetable from the beginning.
As players, we knew we had to hurry because you had NPCs repeatedly say so, but we didn't know what the exact timetable was, so we could never have called you out on "not playing fair" by having the slavers be gone when we made it past the corridor - especially since we took our time deciding what to do once we made it to the barracks.
And with all that said, it now appears that Imrich has a final casting of hold person available after all. That changes things up a bit...  |
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Post by Daos on May 6, 2020 17:37:54 GMT -8
I had Imrich cast hold person twice at the hospice (second casting in the closing round of the combat) and once in the apartments. But checking back, it looks like Daos never recorded the second casting or had it activate in the combat. I guess that does mean Imrich has a use of hold person left. Sure would have been nice to have noticed that earlier... The guard you wanted to use Hold Person on was knocked out by Kalana before Imrich's turn came up. Generally speaking, when a caster uses a spell and combat ends before they get a chance to, I tend to assume they don't cast it. If that is not the case, and he would have still used Hold Person on an unconscious guard, I can update my notes to reflect this. But at this point, does it matter? If everyone is this unhappy with the game and how it's going, I question whether it's even worth continuing. Either the party fights and most likely fails, in which case everyone is disappointed and frustrated, or they give up and walk away, in which case everyone is disappointed and frustrated. Or I have a bunch of high level NPCs swoop in and save the day, or have the slavers inexplicably give up for no reason, and the party 'wins' but it's an empty, hollow victory that the players know they only got because of my intervention, leaving everyone still feeling disappointed and frustrated. Even if the absolute optimal outcome comes to pass--the party fights and wins against all odds--I wonder if anyone will even believe it was earned, or question whether I fudged things anyway. So real question time--is this even something anyone really wants to do, or should we just end it here, and start over with a new game? |
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Post by HorizonsDream on May 6, 2020 18:05:00 GMT -8
I really don't think something like this is worth giving up on the whole game completely. Mistakes were made. We learn from our mistakes, and move on.
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Rax
Dicemaster
Posts: 2,263
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Post by Rax on May 6, 2020 23:35:48 GMT -8
I'm in complete agreement with Horizons. I have issues with this one quest, not the entire campaign. Investigating the refugee deaths is engaging and interesting - I really want to see where it goes - and dealing with the Red Hawks was a fun little side job.
I'm genuinely sorry if you feel I've been unfair to you or that I don't appreciate the hard work you put in as DM. I appreciate it very much and I'm very happy that you've allowed me to join your games. So please don't take my problems with the execution of this one quest as a blanket condemnation of your work as DM.
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Post by GreyWolfVT on May 7, 2020 2:09:37 GMT -8
I by no means am giving up on the game just pursuit of the slavers in the moment. Unless this was the last adventure for the game then I guess I might rethink that.
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Post by Daos on May 7, 2020 11:59:23 GMT -8
Maybe I'm just overreacting then. Sorry. I've been under tremendous stress of late, being forced to work during a global pandemic that's killing thousands a day, knowing full well that if I contract it myself, I can't possibly afford treatment. All of that, on top of a bunch of other recent misfortunes (cat died, car broke down, lease will be ending soon, etc.), has my anxiety and depression levels through the roof.
If we are continuing the game then, we should decide on a course of action. It's been over a week now since the last IC post.
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Post by Bishgada on May 7, 2020 12:56:23 GMT -8
I also don't think we should give up on the game. We missed one quest. That happens.
Imrich told the party several times it is suicide to continue and we pushed on. Next time the in game character will listen to him more carefully.
We had many adventures during the game. Sea battle with slavers. Fight with frog man. Under water quest. Capturing slavers ship. And now there are indeed good leads to continue. I think the quests are very creative and the game has a lot of fun. I wouldn't like to let one misfortune to take the whole thing down.
I think in game we need to face we have no way of winning. We can quickly report to the church administrator that I forgot his name (the one we encountered on another adventure) and hope he can somehow track the ship and save the slaves. We should focus now on the refugees camp and whatever other quests that will pop up in the city, and in our next battle make sure we are more prepared.
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Rax
Dicemaster
Posts: 2,263
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Post by Rax on May 7, 2020 14:32:22 GMT -8
I agree that retreat is probably the most reasonable solution. Imrich will hate it, but he'd rather be alive and able to kick slaver/wizard/slaver wizard butt in the future than dead or captured now.
With that said, we've just discovered that Imrich has one more use of hold person available. A possible plan to make use of this would be for Imrich to target the slavers on the boat, including the leader. If it works, Kalana can try and rouse the slaves to push the slavers overboard or at least jostle any that make their saving throws enough that they can't shoot their crossbows or (if the leader is unaffected) cast spells.
In the meantime, we all jump in the stream and swim to the boat, preventing the swordsmen from getting to us. From the water, Imrich can toss darts at them while the rest of you either try and knock down the gangplank or cut the boat loose from its moorings so as to keep the swordsmen stranded on the docks. It will be difficult to board the boat without either the gangplank or help from the slaves on board, but maybe if we cut the boat loose there'll be a rope hanging down to shimmy up... On second thoughts, if the slavers on the boat are paralyzed or kept busy by the captives, it might be a good idea to knock down the gangplank, climb up the mooring rope - if there is one - and then cut the rope.
Of course, all of this depends on Imrich's last hold person going off as effectively as it has so far, so this plan is still a Hail Mary effort any way one looks at it.
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Post by HorizonsDream on May 7, 2020 17:23:41 GMT -8
Once again, I think we should retreat even though Imrich does have that last Hold Person spell at his disposal.
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Rax
Dicemaster
Posts: 2,263
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Post by Rax on May 8, 2020 1:08:03 GMT -8
Sounds like a solid majority in favour of retreat then. 🙂
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Post by GreyWolfVT on May 8, 2020 2:53:14 GMT -8
I am going to post Jaeron retreating back to the prior room.
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Nor have I said this quest was always way too hard. I have said that given that we started out in a weakened state (Kalana low on HP, Jaeron with no spells, Johannas killed in the first fight) the remainder of the quest became much harder than you probably intended from the start and that it would therefore have been a good idea to adapt your original plan, for example by making more (not infinite) healing available from NPCs.
