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Post by Hussar on Sept 25, 2003 3:06:46 GMT -5
THis thread is here for you to make comments about the game ooc. Anything you want to talk about is fine. Discuss strategy or tips. Even biatch about my DMing if you wish. Let 'er fly.
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Post by Melegaunt on Sept 28, 2003 19:29:45 GMT -5
I think we should decide before Wednesday what we want on the ship, and how we want it crewed. That should speed things up.
Oh, and any luck finding another player?
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Post by Hussar on Sept 29, 2003 23:32:40 GMT -5
Azzkigar
OOC: I thought I already sent it to you. Check your Personal Messages, if Grimnoor isn't there I'll PM it to you again.
Could we not buy afew of those magical ropes (Fharlanghn's Lines) that work by command to cut down on the price of hireing crew?
And another thing I thought of, instead of a bunch of regular catapults we buy one suped up magic one, set it on a rotating platform, and buy lots of Catapult Stones of Becalming. Then we can just load up the rest of the ship with cheaper balistas to fight off sea monsters/piceans and use the catapult to stop enemy ships dead.
We probably won't be able to aford it but a Cloud Keel would enable us to fly our ship to the island and avoid nautical dangers in the process.
If we have to sail the sea, some fireing castles would do nice to give our men cover against monsters/piceans. If we wanted to go fanatic about it we could armor our ship down with adamantine or lesser metal plating against hull-ripping kracken. And speaking of our friendly fishmen, will we be expected to pay a toll if we meet them?
Too bad we couldn't get the church to sponsor this expedition... you know, they donate a few prisoners and/or fanatics to steer our ship and we donate a good part of the treasue to Mithiril in return... We've already done alot for this church, and once we have the treasure we could use it to fix our ship up proper.
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Post by Hussar on Sept 29, 2003 23:33:04 GMT -5
Terran
What about designing a catapult load to be used immediately before a ship of pirates attempts to board us. Fill the catapult with a bunch of alchemist fire vials; all launched point blank at an approaching ship should "chill" (LOL) them out a little.
Also it would be a good idea for the players to coordinate nautical skills with each other. That way we each have unique skills helpful to sailing and not alot of overlapping skills. Obviously I am going to finally be forced to take some swimming skill ranks, but could use other ranks on a particular skill we might need. Any ideas?
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Post by Hussar on Sept 29, 2003 23:33:30 GMT -5
Well, some good skills to have would involve carpentry, navigation, rope swinging, and plank walking. Handle animal (Shark) would work pretty good too.
But what a Catapult Stone of Becalming does is kill all traces of wind in a 400 foot radious of wherever it hits. It effectivly renders sailing vessels dead in the water and enables us to make a quick get away or just rain more stones and spells down on the sitting duck.
The one item that would work best i think would be a Veil of Obscurity. It works pretty much the same as a cloaking device on a Klingon Bird of Prey. We could just sail to the island without worry of being spotted by ship.
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Post by Hussar on Sept 29, 2003 23:33:51 GMT -5
Ok, first off, considering that Adamantine is 5000 gp/ 10 foot section, and your ship is 100 feet long, I don't think you're going to get anyone to give you 1 million gp to armor your ship.
A catapult stone of becalming is 2500 gp per stone and is only good for 10 minutes, meaning 10 rounds of combat time. Since you cannot use it to board other ships, all it really does is buy you some lead time to escape. You'd need wind to close with a ship to board it and as soon as you got within 400 feet, you'd be stuck too.
The magical lines are worth 8000 a pop and only reduce crew by 5. If you look at the price list of crew, crew is still WAY cheaper.
Now the Veil is a good idea. At 25k gold though, it is out of your reach for this trip, but maybe the next one you might get away with it.
For a ship your size and cargo you are carrying (assuming you aren't carrying expensive spices or something like that, just simple trade goods), the Piceans will likely nail you for about 3% of your cargo value. Once in each direction. The Piceans maintain a very large communications network, so,if you pay, you likely won't have any problems. If you don't pay, they will likely kill everyone except a skeleton crew and to you back to the nearest port.
Oh, and the thing about the char sheet, that was referring to the new player.
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Post by Hussar on Sept 30, 2003 1:33:39 GMT -5
A few things occur to me.
You have representatives of all spell casters except druid and paladin. Investing in some wands would be far longer lasting than catapult stones.
Remember hardness rules. Fire damage ignores hardness as do a couple of other energy types. The alchemist fire loads for catapults can be particularly devasting since they start fires which have to be put out. Which means that crew have to be diverted to do so.
Any ship whose hull hits 50% is beginning to sink.
Ship combat will also be greatly speeded by the introduction of marines. Never mind boarding, simply hammering with arrows will deplete enemy crews fairly quickly. Damage done this way will function the same as deck damage when assessing casualties. For every 10 hp of damage, 1d6 is rolled. 1/3 of the total of the roll is dead, 2/3 is wounded and incapacitated. A successful Crew check (DC 10+number of dice rolled) will halve the numbers of wounded and dead (round down)
Thus, 100 archers fire and hit 20 times. 20d6 damage is rolled and comes up with 75 hp. That means that 8d6 is rolled (75/10) for crew damage. You roll 30 (say). That means 10 sailors are killed and 20 are incapacitated. A Crew check of DC 18 (10+8 (number of d6 rolled) will halve that damage if successful.
You are right, firing towers might be a very good idea. Note, the idea of a rotating catapult is silly, since the masts would get in the way. You do have 4 masts remember.
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Post by Melegaunt on Oct 15, 2003 17:47:25 GMT -5
I'm sorry guys, i can't make tonight's game. Family issues, and have to drive up and see my wife. Catch ya'll next week.
Kenneth Elias
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Post by CosmicHorror on Oct 16, 2003 1:17:43 GMT -5
Hello. I am the ship's helmsman (helmself?) Endil. Nice to meet you. Or rather will be nice to, I hope.
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Post by Hussar on Oct 16, 2003 2:55:13 GMT -5
Would've helped to check this before we started playing. Oops. Heh. Hope everything's ok Mel.
Is there anything else we can do to streamline play during the session. The shot clock idea isn't bad. Is there anything else we can toss in?
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Post by Melegaunt on Oct 16, 2003 15:17:39 GMT -5
Thanks, Hussar, everything is OK now...sucks when people start rumors like "your wife is cheating on you..." Scaring stuff. Which was totally untrue, thank God!
Um, What's a Shotclock?
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Post by Hussar on Oct 17, 2003 1:19:49 GMT -5
Hope you beat the perp who spread that rumour with a large and heavy object. Possibly his own leg?
The shot clock you might like. I'm going to say that during combat, when I call a character in order of initiative, they have 30 seconds to state what they are doing and do it.
For most things, you won't even need that long. How long does it take to type: Crush bad guy [1d20+10] ? But if you want to do something funky, you have 30 seconds to type it out and ask about it. Otherwise you go to the end of the round where you get another 30 seconds. If you still cannot act in that time, you lose the round. Note, I'm saying you, but I mean everyone. It's getting brutal that fights are taking SO much playing time.
Just as an idea, most of you should have an idea what order you are going in. Start typing your action on someone else's turn and then you can just hit enter on your turn.
To save time, I type out a fair bit of NPC dialogue and color commentary in Word and then just cut and paste to the chat window. Note, if you do this, you can only past one paragraph at a time. Might be an idea for you guys to do. Although, it may be easier just to macro your more common comments.
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Post by Kelly on Oct 18, 2003 0:07:06 GMT -5
Hi everyone. I am back from my clerical sabatical. I should be able to play most weeks on Weds. and I can post during the rest of the week. Sorry for the delay. Hope to play again soon. The move to NC is finished and I have the net in my home again (finally - don't even ask).
Arrrr....matey.......Me hook or me knife.....it makes me no never mind.
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Post by CosmicHorror on Oct 29, 2003 23:23:11 GMT -5
I was wondering about this world's cosmology and how the upper planes are organized (the good aligned outer planes) and how often celstials are encountered on the material plane, since i hope to have one as a backup char.
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Post by Hussar on Oct 30, 2003 5:14:34 GMT -5
As far as the cosmology goes, I'm not sure. I haven't really given it much thought. I had no intention of taking this campaign planar ANY time soon, so, unless there is something specific you need to know, I'm not going to worry about it too much.
As far as a celestial character goes, well, NO. This is a low magic campaign. Look at the current races, we've got an elf, a half orc and four humans. Tell you anything? The only races I will allow are from the PHB. If it isn't in there, don't worry about it because you can't have it. Sorry to be kind of mean, but, that kind of thing really doesn't fit with the campaign. Scarn is dark and mean. Mithril is about 99% human. Except for some very limited areas, the settled areas are about 90% human. I don't even have gnomes here.
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