Character Building Discussion

Play By Post No Maps For These Territories
100

I'd like your thoughts on this matter:

I'd like to deal with supply the way Domains at War does it.  With the PCs and henchmen, we will abstract supply with the monthly cost of living charge.  We'll assume this covers food and drinks and horse fodder for the PC, their henchmen, and all their mounts.  With mercs, the Supply Cost charge covers their food, drinks, and fodder.

Note that these supply costs assume pack horses and handlers to carry the food, etc...  I need to calculate how many of each so that you know what your entourage looks like.

If you want to bring a supply train, either pack horses or wagons or both, to carry any loot you find, there's a supply cost there as well.  This would be in addition to the pack horses which are carrying your food, water, and fodder.  I don't know what the cost is just yet, as the D@W rules are unclear and I have a question posed on the forums, but I'll get that info to you as well.

We'll operate in terms of months, where you pay the fee at Day 1 of every month and then you can operate in the wilderness for a month without needing to resupply.  At the end of the month, if you're in the wilderness and it's not safe for your "supply train" to go back to a town and get more supplies, you suffer the penalties listed on p 58 of D@W-C under "Consequences of Lack of Supplies".  For those of you who don't have this book, troops lose 1 HP per day and suffer a cumulative -1 to attack throws and damage rolls.  They lose the ability to heal normally.  Every week a unit is unsupplied, it counts as a calamity and a morale roll must be made.

Note that you may find places to resupply in the wilderness but at the start of the game, the only places you'll know about are the frontier settlements on the edges of Ket's domain.  You can also choose to send your supply train back to civilization with mercs for protection but I'll still be making encounter rolls.

I think this is better than counting rations and dealing with how many stone of food and drink everyone has in their packs.  However, it does mean you have a vulnerable supply train with you and if they are killed or run off, you could starve or at least suffer the consequences.  It's harder to say "I spend the day hunting for food" when you have 60 mercs to feed as well.  As intelligent foes encounter you more often, they may identify and target your supply train, especially if you don't take steps to secure it.

EDIT: Further clarification: if you don't resupply after one month, not only do you run out of food but you run out of arrows and bolts and military oil, etc...

What do you guys think of this?

101

I think the supply rules make sense if we bring a larger number of troops into the wilderness.

 

Also Egil is now finished. He will probably get one or two more level 4 thiefs besides Leila the level 7 thief as henchmen but they will all be stay-at-home thiefs for now.

I would like Egil to work as Alistair's henchmen, including normal wages and the 15% gold share. Egil is too headstrong and would still mooch off a full share of XP though. Is that ok for you?

 

102

You can roleplay the relationship between Egil and Alistair any way you like but I would prefer to keep Egil's status as full PC.  For a game of this nature, keeping the simple things simple is important to me.

Also, I have tried to give you guys hints before we begin but let me spell it out for you right now: the wilderness is dangerous.  Even super- weak enemies like kobolds show up in very large numbers.  If you don't bring a decent amount of mercenaries with you, you're either going to run away a lot or die or both.

It's entirely possible I'm mis-reading your comment Rodriguez, and you are fully cognizant of the dangers of a hexcrawl, so please don't take offense. I figure I'd rather be blunt now and not feel guilty the first time you run into a tough wilderness encounter.

103

Quick note on character sheets: I stole the format for those sheets from thirdkingdom's game over on RPG.net.  The asterisks at the start of every line are a remnant of the formatting on the wiki over there.  They are not needed.

I've deleted them from the sample sheet so any new sheets will be missing them.

Do not feel the need to sit down and delete them immediately from your sheet.  But... maybe every time you edit your sheet, you could delete a couple and pretty soon they'll be all gone?

I appreciate that this sounds very anal-retentive (it is!) but I get fixated on stupid shit like that.  

104

Sounds good. Makes tracking supplies easier, honestly.

105

[quote="sulldawga"]

thirdkingdom's MI rolls

1k and 3k rolls are busts.  10k rolls result in 2 MIs, a potion, and a scroll.  Going to roll the 30k chances first, and then roll for the actual items.  1 potion, 4 scrolls, 3 MIs.

Ok, 10k items.  First two rolls are for type, next two are for item, last two are for potion and scroll.

9, 93 is Potion of Sweet Water.  99,68 is Shield +2.  12 is Potion of Climbing.  23 is Scroll of Ward against Lycanthropes.

Now the 30k items.  

65 is Potion of Invulnerability.  10 is Scroll of Ward against Elementals.  34 is Scroll of Ward against Undead.  75 is Scroll of six arcane spells.  66 is Scroll of two arcane spells.

Ignore the six d100 rolls, meant to do six d24 rolls.  4,24 is Wizard Eye; 6,4 is Death Spell; 2,5 is Detect Invisible; 5,19 is Scouring Wind; 5, 5 is Cone of Paralysis; 5, 14 is Mass Infravision.

Other scroll is 5, 23 Wall of Stone and 6,16 Programmed Illusion.

Since all but one of the items so far have been potions or scrolls, I will ignore all pot and scroll rolls from here on out.  3 magic items.

93, 74 is Shield +3.  57, 13 is Staff of Healing.  31,36 is a scroll but I'm switching to Ring of Fire Resistance.

[/quote]

 

So, these items are largely useless for my character and are all up for trading, as far as I'm concerned, both from a tactical standpoint (I want the spellcasters to take my scrolls and the fighters to take the shields) and from a purely selfish standpoint.  Is anyone interested in trading for anything?

106

tk, are you definitely playing a Venturer?  If so, I see the issue with the shields.  

Do you intend to have any henchmen who could use these items?  

If no henches are forthcoming, nor any decent trade with a fellow party member, we can work out something so that you get useful items and not the shields and spell scrolls.

Also, don't forget the house rule where I allow you to trade any one Ward Against X scroll for a Ring of Protection +1 or Armor +1 or Weapon +1.

107

Yeah, I’m going Venturer. I’m also disinclined to start with a hench, largely because I’ve been so busy and don’t want to slow things down even more.

108

You may want to make at least one, and take advantage of my offer to spend 40,000 gp for a 40,000 xp hench.  After we begin, finding a hench over 4th level will be rare.

109

[quote="thirdkingdom"]

So, these items are largely useless for my character and are all up for trading, as far as I'm concerned, both from a tactical standpoint (I want the spellcasters to take my scrolls and the fighters to take the shields) and from a purely selfish standpoint.  Is anyone interested in trading for anything?

[/quote]

 

I'm certainly interested in spell scrolls.  Sword +1, Locating Objects?  Not that you want to be mixing it up if you can help it, but possibly Locate is up your alley.  Alternately, Ring of Prot +1?

110

[quote="Dave R"]

 

 

So, these items are largely useless for my character and are all up for trading, as far as I'm concerned, both from a tactical standpoint (I want the spellcasters to take my scrolls and the fighters to take the shields) and from a purely selfish standpoint.  Is anyone interested in trading for anything?

 


-thirdkingdom

 

 

I'm certainly interested in spell scrolls.  Sword +1, Locating Objects?  Not that you want to be mixing it up if you can help it, but possibly Locate is up your alley.  Alternately, Ring of Prot +1?

[/quote]

 

Let me think on this today.

111

I'm interested in the scrolls too. What'll you give me for drums of panic?

112

Are you sure you want to give away that one? Its certainly one of the stronger items rolled up so far in my opinion.

113

Rodriguez, I believe Susan is talking about trading the Drums of Panic to thirdkingdom, not to me.  The party would still have access to them.

114

^This. If another party member wants to be CUSTODIAN OF THE PANIC BOOGIE and I could get a couple sweet spells, that seems like a good trade to me.

115

If its easier for you, no problem. Egil will be a full PC then and I figure things out with Susan!

 
I am aware of the dangers of ACKS wilderness encounters but considering our current group size and composition I was not really concerned. Now if you plan on ramping up the difficulty thats of course a different matter. Was not really planning on Egil being a leader of some sorts but I guess I can work something in. :)
116

I actually don't know how things will work out.  You have some tough melee combatants and some solid spell casting ability so encounters against a few tough opponents could go your way.

And while you may be at a disadvantage against lots of weaker opponents, the Drums of Panic are a nice equalizer.

So you may TPK the first time out, or you may end up steamrolling the wilderness.  We shall see.

117

How likely is it that we can get everyone's characters ready to go by the end of the weekend?

I've got the campaign map sketched out.  I need to plant some areas of interest but I have some ready to go and others I will likely just mark the hex and then randomly roll it up as you discover them.  

I have a couple soccer games in the next couple of days but I plan on getting you hooks and an IC thread no later than Sunday night.

118

If nobody's taken you up on it, that +3 Shield would be a major boon to my PC. You sure you don't need it for a henchman?

I got crap on my rolls, so there's not much to trade, but you can have that ring and anything else you want:

[quote="sulldawga"] 25, 34 is a Ring of Fire Resistance, 92, 99 is War Hammer +2, 47, 42 is a Scroll that I change to RSW.  Wand of Detecting Enemies (swapped with DM for +1 armor).

36 and 35 are Potions of Flying x2, 64 is scroll of 2 spells, 48 is scroll of 1 spell, 89 is Miscellaneous Weapon.

Scroll of 2 divine spells and scroll of 1 arcane spell.  15 is Arrows +2.  I judge that to be a crappy roll and arbitrarily change it to Bow +1.

Since there's a chance Atlic may play a Witch, I'll roll the divine spells on the Witch tables.

1, 6 and 1, 5 is Scroll of Faerie Fire and Detect Magic.  1, 24 is Scroll of Wall of Smoke. [/quote] I was also imagining, TK, that your Venturer and my Fighter might have come in to this operation together. My guy is traveling with around 105 cavalry, and if your guy is coming in with a caravan (including some non-cavalry caravan guards), I could see my guy and troops as escorting your character and goods as we venture into the Wilderlands.

 

119

I'd intended on playing this way with my mercs. I think it raises the importance of either creating a stable supply chain, or finding one in the wilderness, which is a strategic element of taking forces into the uncharted wilderness.

Expanding it to PCs and henches seems fine.