AIMhack Postmortem: Selos and Blood Marsh

[Ephesos]

Originally Posted By: Khashen, the Oracle of Selos

"All tales come to an end. But for every end, there are dozens of beginnings."

Yes friends, it is time to draw the first of the Mote campaigns to a close. I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I did, and here's to many more! As of this thread's posting, Selos and the Oracle has come to a conclusion. Epicness abounded, lessons were learned, and many many fumbles were endured.

There are many things to take care of now that the final die has been rolled. First and perhaps most importantly, it's time to think about character epilogues. I welcome any and all players (even those who dropped out) to submit an epilogue for their character, one which can be posted to the my site. However, you might want to bear in mind the fact that future campaigns might call for higher-level characters, such as the ones you have now. Don't write up your happily-ever-after retirement if you want to join in the next campaign... or be ready to have your vacation interrupted.

Second, I welcome any and all questions and comments about the finished campaigns. Pretty much everything is fair game. I want to know what you liked, what you hated, what could be better, what intrigued you, any and all opinions. And remember that I have huge piles of .txt files crammed with campaign info, so fire away. (I reserve the right to give cryptic/unhelpful answers if you ask about things that influence future/current campaigns)

Third, there are some things I intend to do for the next campaign(s) I run. These are just going to be procedural changes, but they bear mentioning:

• Scheduling will be taken care of by email. Some people don't check the boards enough, and the faster we can schedule sessions, the happier everyone will be.
• I will be compiling a page of all the player-created spells we've generated so far, to help compare things.
• Magic schools might be changing, because the ones I borrowed from D&D 3.0 are clunky and mesh poorly. I will be discussing this with the other DMs at some point, and don't worry, this won't invalidate past characters.

Finally, and this one is kind of important, it's time to start thinking about future campaigns. I'm open to any suggestions, and while I have thoughts as to where the plots of Selos and Blood Marsh can go in the future, I am not bound to continuing them. In fact, I'd actually prefer to run at least one brand-new campaign. But, there are a few specific factors to consider with new campaigns:

• Character Level (affects whether past characters can join)
• Setting (obviously somewhere on Mote... for now)
• Theme (horror, gritty, survival, exploration, dungeoncrawl, intrigue, etc)
• Plot Requests ("Imaunte's disciples", "Land Shark hunting", "Gaunik-Da's sanctuary", "that rock over there", etc)

...so, yeah. Once more, I hope everyone enjoyed this campaign, and I hope that there are many more ahead of us.

[Sarachim]

I'm not sure what to post here, except that tonight's session was an appropriately epic ending to an awesome campaign.

 

I'll have an epilogue for you soon, as soon as I figure out just what happens to Vitze. As for the next campaign, I've really got no idea what I'd like to see next. I think I'll see how the summer campaigns develop first.

[Triumph]

I really enjoyed the campaign, and had a lot of fun. Some of my questions/concerns have already been raised, but I'll mention or summarize a few thoughts.

 

--------

 

I think some of my difficulties came from never having played a game like this before. Sometimes I just really didn't know what I was doing. Lessons:

 

Don't make unnecessary diplomacy rolls; you'll ask if they're need.

 

There are no visual cues (like in computer RPG) that anything/anyone is important, so it's best to pay close attention to detail and assume everything is important.

 

Sometimes a party member's diplomacy will lead to disaster and must be stopped, other times intervening to disagree will really make things worse and it's best to be silent (I failed the first way with the mob in Quera, and the second way in the session where we got to Sarden).

 

In Eph's games, shops actually apparently carry GOOD equipment, and we are expected to look there to acquire stuff, rather depending on enemies to drop loot (as happens in just about every computer RPG I've ever played).

 

Also, don't assume the first shop you visit is only available.

 

Also, badger major, friendly NPCs about training??? They might have something to share.

 

-------

 

In terms of dissatisfaction, nothing of these takes away from the great fun I had playing...but I did have issues with the plot/ending. I hope this criticism is entirely constructive.

 

I have no idea how we could possibly have determined that Chak-Tha was the guy sent assassins to Khashen, Hakkel, Rikkla, and Trassak. He was just a random a lacewing we suddenly encounter and start fighting. Beside not knowing that HE was the leader of the assassins we fought, we never learned why he was doing anything, either. I totally understand the desire to leave plot hooks for the future...but I really felt like very little was resolved and that the campaign seemed to just arbitrarily end, rather than reach any kind of resolution. Leaving a return to Quera/meeting with Zarusa out of the ending was also unsatisfying...if our goal in going to Sarden was working for Zarusa, it seemed weird that we would not get see our characters reporting back to her.

 

Again, none of this should be taken to be taken mean that I did not have GREAT FUN playing this game. Because I did. But it's hopefully constructive criticism.

 

------

 

In terms of future campaigns: reusing Lanrezac and continuing the Oracle story would be interesting, but I'd also like trying out other characters. Bringing in the old Labyrinth characters rocks. Exploration sounds most interesting to me, followed by intrigue. I've no interest in gritty or horror...I play for fun, so I prefer something tends toward the lighter side. No particular thoughts regarding plot right now.

 

 

Well, I hope this is helpful. I'll post again if I think of more.

[Triumph]

And the final level-up of the campaign for Lanrezac, balanced and not super-excelling and any one field to the end, but hopefully a valuable contributor nonetheless(?):

 

Click to reveal..

Lanrezac, the historian (Level 8)

Occupation: Historian and Mage

Alignment: A Bit Eccentric

Race: Lacewing

Deity: Sliros

 

Strength: 3

Dexterity: 3

Intelligence: 5

Max Health: 31 HP

Stamine: 10

Speed: 5

 

Magic (Abjuration): 6

Martial (Staves): 5

History: 5

Diplomacy: 5

Perception: 1

Thievery: 1

[Triumph]

More thoughts:

 

Shopping: I tend to favor what Nioca has chosen to do by making shopping a purely PM activity. Every single time shopping came up in either campaign, it just seems to bog down the session and add little, if anything, of interest. Now, the shopping take place by PM in session, or outside of session, and can still rely on the players to take initiative in asking the DM to shop. But it won't bog down the sessions as much that way.

 

Sense of direction:

 

This varied widely. I have no answers here, no solutions. Sorry. Just reflections.

 

Sometimes I felt like we had a clear sense of direction and freedom to achieve it; for example, in the canopy-drake-hunting session we met Khielek, giving us the "mission" but I felt we had a degree of freedom in exploring the jungle and how we chose to hunt the creature. The final session set a clear course of action too; we run in to a crazy murderous lacewing and we start chasing him. The traveling sessions (e.g. the one that began in Quera and ended with us meeting Khielek) were good; definite goal/sense of direction, and some freedom in how we got there.

 

However, several times in the campaign I felt really lost. The Quera-challenge session, yeah, I didn't fully understand what we were supposed to be doing. I really, seriously, thought our goal was to put out fires for a while, and was kind of confused by the other stuff that kept seeming to get in the way of that. So yeah, I missed the point. But even at the beginning of the session, at E'Tarn...we seemed to dawdle with no apparent purpose (unless there were people/shops that we failed to exploit???) before getting on our way. The session when we reach Sarden...oh, fail. Once we got there...I don't think we had any clue what to do, which probably part of why we failed. After the failures with the slavemaster outside Sarden, I felt like the rest of the session was a railroad ride. I tried to stop clashing with others and just support finding, oh, whoever, Rikkla, I think; it didn't seem like there were any other options, or if there were, that no one was considering/aware of them. Oh, another example of failed sense of direction...the session in Bloodmarsh after the party first returned to Mekos. I was playing Alexander most of that round...and felt so clueless. We seemed to just be standing around town, and had no idea what to do. The circus showed up...did it mean anything? I just had no sense of goal or direction. So, at the beginning of each session, and throughout major turning points, it is important that the party have a clear sense of direction (or else know that they are just supposed to wait or aimlessly explore).

 

I LOVE having a sense of exploration, and freedom to choose from a variety of means to achieve our goals. But it's no fun to feel lost and helpless because I have no clue what I'm supposed to be doing, or what is possible. If I'm just supposed to explore aimlessly, cool! If I'm pursuing a specific goal, cool! If I'm just waiting for important event to happen, cool! I know this isn't all the DM's job...part of it definitely relies on the imagination of the players, an area I can improve in.

 

I suspect this is a very difficult thing, balancing giving the players a sense of direction with not railroading them. Getting railroaded is no fun, of course. But feeling lost is not much fun either. This is not meant to be a complaint, but a reflection on things did or didn't seem to work. And I still want to emphasize that I had a lot of fun along the way. Again, I hope this is constructive.

[Nioca]

I had a lot of fun with the finale, and can only hope Bloodmarsh is just as fun. That said, I do have some thoughts.

 

1) Magic. There's just too many classes, each of which tend to be strait-jacketed into a singular role. Abjuration? Nice, but investing in it takes away from other classes that can have a bigger impact on combat. Illusion? Good in theory, but someone specializing in it tends to get steamrolled by others. Evocation? An excellent blasting class, but it's about limited to just that. There tends to be five ways in each class to do things that belong in other classes, and if you want variety, that's pretty much what you have to do.

 

So my thought is to condense the magic classes down a bit. My personal choice would be to meld Abjuration into the other classes (e.g. physical barriers go to conjuration, force shields go to evocation, etc.), and assimilate Illusion into Evocation. That brings the number down to six. Or, forego the D&D style classes entirely and do something else.

 

2) Healing. I still don't quite like how it works, especially being on the DM-side of it. To break it down a bit:

-2A) It Might Cost Stamina. I'm sorry, but that part really bugs me. It's not that there's a potential stamina cost; it's that there's a stamina cost that's only partially applied. I'd personally be happy if it was just a flat stamina for each healing spell (stamina potions are becoming more common, so it's not like a person would be strictly limited to 9 heals per day, plus there's healing potions...). It'd force the healer to act more strategically with the heals, rather than throwing them out there and hoping to get lucky.

-2B) Healing Is Conjuration-Only. This one also bugs me (and my conversations with you suggests it bugs you too). Healing spells could easily get spread out to a few classes, rather than confined to just one. Transmutation and Necromancy could easily have just a flat heal spells, and I imagine Abjuration could have some sort of Healing Shield that ran off hostile spells or some sort.

-2C) The Black Knight Effect. You know, that guy that was shrugging off missing limbs as, "Only a flesh wound!" I feel that the parties are sort of acting the same way. What does it matter that I just got knocked down to 1 HP? The healer can just patch me up in a jiffy... This isn't really a complaint as much as an observation, but still, it's odd.

 

3) 2D Warriors. Let's face it: 100% of my characters have been mages. About 75% of all characters have been mages, and 90% of all characters have had at least some training in a magic school (also, about 90% of these statistics are rough guesstimates). And while I can't speak for the other players, I know why I avoid warrior classes like the plague: They're linear. They only do the one thing, and that's hit an enemy with a piece of metal. And I know that by session 3, I'd be going out of my mind with boredom. Boregloaf got spiced up by learning some techniques, but I say, why not treat techniques like spells and martial classes like magic classes?

 

Basically, my thinking is this: EVERYONE gets a number of spell slots equal to Intelligence. However, non-mages can fill those slots with techniques based on the weapon skill they're using. Naturally, the stronger the technique, the more skill they need in the weapon to use it. And some epic techniques have to be taught, rather than just selected. IMO, it'd do a lot to spice up a rather drab class.

 

4) Combat Gets Priority. And everything else is just flavor. Seriously, Martial and Magic make up two skills in the skill list, yet they get more screentime than all other skills combined. Basically, in the future, I'd like to see some of the other skills actually come up as useful on a regular basis. Perception shows up fairly often, and Diplomacy... Well, it's used, but we suck at it anyway. Anyway, none of the other skills seem to get a chance to shine, and I'd sorta like to see them show up more often. Otherwise, it just feels like I should have put all my points into Martial (Beat People Up).

[Ephesos]

Alright... so I'm slowly coming out of my post-finale coma, and I'm getting to where I can actually respond to these. (On a related note, the log of the finale should go live in the next 24 hours... the past week has not been a good one for me, outside of the sessions)

 

Originally Posted By: Triumph

Also, badger major, friendly NPCs about training??? They might have something to share.

 

Just generally don't assume NPCs are only there to advance the plot. They can be interesting, and often have a bit more going on than is immediately obvious. Er, unless it's one of those Randomly Generated Generic Shopkeepers... those are pretty much just what they seem to be. (I think Amadan bought arrows from one of those)

 

Also, with the ending criticism, two things. First, I am taking it constructively, don't worry. Second, I'll admit I'm not 100% happy with the ending either. Note how I added a bit to the end 2 minutes after I typed it.

 

The ending of Selos was intended to be less of an ending than a setup for potential adventuring hooks in the future. If in fact this is all some elaborate Kyrophian conspiracy, it isn't going to be solved quite in one adventure. And I kind of wish I'd done a scene with Zarusa at the end, but it would've basically just been the party re-hashing what they just did, and Zarusa saying "I have no idea what is going on, here's some gold". And I feel kinda lame making the party re-hash things they've already said/done, because it's just extra typing (it's one aspect of RP-ing that I feel doesn't translate well to the medium we're in).

 

Shopping will now be handled in-between sessions, no question about it. It's just cleaner. Except for bigger things like spell training and major NPC interactions, as seen in Blood Marsh. Mundane stuff, though... yeah. Clutter.

 

As for the concerns of linearity/direction, some of the concerns raised just stemmed from bad luck or bad choices. It was definitely possible to evade Trassak's guards in the city, the party just failed spectacularly at it. It was also possible to make a stealthier approach to Sarden, and to gather information without raising a ruckus. The path the party took simply involved exploding heads, and I can't control that. Sarden could've been an entirely different challenge. But generally, I understand the concern, and I'm learning to improve that in my sessions (it was even worse in Labyrinth sometimes).

 

Nioca raises a lot of interesting mechanical/system concerns, most of which have been very much on my mind. To address them in order:

 

1. Magic. I do plan to condense the magic system, and make it less awful. For one, I'm thinking of just combining Enchantment and Illusion, since the line between them never quite sat right with me. But at some point, I want to explore shaking up the whole thing and making new schools, 'cause the D&D 3.0 ones were abandoned for a reason. Think of it as an experiment... and now we have results.

 

2a. Healing & Stamina. Agreed... this needs a revamp, and I'm looking at alternatives. I am leaning towards always costing stamina, but boosting the power. There might be a one-shot in the future to test some of this stuff out.

2b. Healing & Schools. Also agreed... I can think of ways to do healing in most of the schools, and given that I want to revamp all the schools anyway... this will be changed.

2c. Healing & Death. Yeah. Notice how close the party came to dying in the Selos finale. I'll be doing more of that, and expect even more as I refine healing mechanics. Also, watch out Blood Marsh.

 

3. Warriors Are Boring. Also agreed, which is why I started introducing the combat maneuvers that Boregloaf learned. I dunno about the spell slots thing... but I like giving players at least one maneuver from the start. We'll see... again, a one-shot test game might be in order.

 

4. Combat Combat Combat. Hey, I'm not the one who told everyone to only level up their attack skills. When people start doing that, what am I supposed to do? Keep including skill challenges that everybody always fails? A lot of the time, I would prepare the results for skill rolls that nobody ever used... and that kinda ticks me off. So as people keep investing in attack power, I tend to assume people want combat. If people hadn't scaled it up so quickly, maybe combat would've been more reasonable, and we could've had more skill usage. So that is not entirely my fault, and in fact, I would say that the majority of the problem is not my fault. I hate to sound mean, but dang... look at some of your skill ranks! If you leave your Thievery at 1, do you honestly expect me to include a bunch of Thievery checks in the game, when the rest of the party can outdo you untrained?

 

...sorry if that ended on a harsh note, I honestly had fun running the games. Obviously there are things I want to change for next time, but I really did have a blast doing this. Otherwise I would've quit shortly after the jungle burned down.

[Nioca]

Originally Posted By: Ephesos

4. Combat Combat Combat. Hey, I'm not the one who told everyone to only level up their attack skills. When people start doing that, what am I supposed to do? Keep including skill challenges that everybody always fails? A lot of the time, I would prepare the results for skill rolls that nobody ever used... and that kinda ticks me off. So as people keep investing in attack power, I tend to assume people want combat. If people hadn't scaled it up so quickly, maybe combat would've been more reasonable, and we could've had more skill usage. So that is not entirely my fault, and in fact, I would say that the majority of the problem is not my fault. I hate to sound mean, but dang... look at some of your skill ranks! If you leave your Thievery at 1, do you honestly expect me to include a bunch of Thievery checks in the game, when the rest of the party can outdo you untrained?

It's part of a vicious cycle, really: Combat tends to be the deadliest thing to fail in, so players tend to invest heavily in it. To keep things interesting, the DM scales the monsters to the combatant's skill level. Players fight those monsters and think, "Oh, crap, I need to stay current in combat skills", and put levels there...

Furthermore, if these skill challenges never come up in the first place, the players will likely never use those skills anyway. Therefore, no points go to those skills... Catch my drift?

Selos is an interesting case because yes, the only thing they actually ever seemed to invest in WAS combat. But there were still some opportunities to use, say, History a bit more often. Furthermore, you also have Bloodmarsh that has quite a few different skills that could be challenged, but only rarely are.

As for untrained skill checks: Personally, I've been employing a "No Attribute Bonus" penalty to those. That way, no matter what your base attributes are, the only way you're going to beat someone actually trained in that skill is if you roll a natural 20 (or they roll a natural 1, which is more likely).

(And as for including skill challenges that everybody always fails because of low non-combat skills... Hell, I'd do it. )

[Rowen]

I'm still working on Nixak's post story but I do have a few comments about the game.

 

This was my first time ever having played anything D&D like. I came in not knowing what I was really doing and I think that showed. One place it showed was in the fact that I dumped my levels into Enchanting. Looking back I was not sure how to use the other skills I had in an effective manner so I took the easy path bumped my magic. One propblem I had (and still do) is to see the benefits of putting points into Str, Dex, Int. Seems like those might help in the long run but putting points into say, Enchantment, seemed to have immediate effects.

 

Armor. I was at a loss of what good armor would be or were to get it. As Triumph already said, I too was expecting the people we fought to drop better gear, but looking back that would just be rather unrealistic. If I stab you with a sword and it goes through your chest, what ever armor you have is now compromised is a good idea that you did but I just wish that I knew the importance of armor before or even as we started.

 

Battle-grid. I loved it. Doing fights without made it hard for me to visualize how they happened and where people were during the fights. The way that Eph used the battle-grid with the canopy-drake fight was a great way to put a large area into a small grid I thought. Negative note is that font size does matter with how the grid shows up to the players. Maybe we can make some sort of default font to get around this? I hope that the battle-grids are here to stay.

 

When a roll is needed and when it is not. I never knew if I should be rolling for something or not. I'm trying to talk to this NPC and I have points in Diplomacy, does that mean that I need to roll when I talk to him or not? This problem might be from how green behind the ears I am but I know that I most likely wont be rolling anything unless the GM tells me to from now on.

 

Things we never see. The fact that Eph told us afterwords that we missed some things was nice for me in trying to figure out what I should be looking for in the game. The fact that the things that we missed were not crucial to the game is even better. I never gave the rook a second thought until Eph said that it was special and never would have if he didn't say anything about it.

[Dintiradan]

(Please note that these comments come from someone who has yet to play a session, and whose only source of information is the logs.)

 

Combat: Perhaps change the level up rules? Maybe have maximum skill ranks, a la D&D 3.x, so that PCs are forced to branch out. Or you could remove the ability to improve a skill twice per level, or add a rule stating that you can't improve the same skill for consecutive levels. It's clunky, but it stops players from min-maxing (of course, min-maxing, on occasion, can be awesome).

 

I'll be presently surprised if this works, though. All game systems seem to have the same imbalances relating to combat-oriented PCs, and Ephesos is far from the first GM to deal with this sort of arms race.

 

The Black Knight Effect: I don't think there's any clean way around this problem. I've seen a couple systems that have things like shock and bleed rules, but they end up being a lot of paper work, and make things very difficult and tedious for the GM. Something we did for one D&D 3.0 campaign was the Clobbering rule: whenever you lose over half your remaining hit point in one hit, you're clobbered, and you only get a partial action on your next round. It didn't have a huge impact on the game, but it did have some. Don't know if it will work for AIMHack, though.

 

Magic: Healing being part of Conjuration always struck me as odd, but then in D&D 3.x, the only classes who had to care about the school were the arcane spellcasters. I dunno, maybe check out the Nethergate circles for inspiration?

 

Shopping as a side activity: This is something my tabletop group really needs to start doing. Most players do their research between sessions and bring a wishlist, but there's always one or two players who waste well over half an hour as they pour over sourcebooks looking for items. Arghhhhhhhhh.

 

Non-mage classes: Nioca's suggestion looks very clean to me, and seems balanced (as long as special abilities don't consistently do more damage than the average attack or spell does). It also stops Intelligence from being an easy dump stat for fighters.

 

Barring that, there are a bunch of different ways to spice up the fighter. Maybe if every couple of levels, they got access to some amazing feat of strength, or perhaps they should get abilities that they can use at will...

 

My prediction: over time, AIMHack will grow in complexity until it finally becomes D&D. It's like the roleplaying version of Greenspun's Tenth Rule -- every homebrew system contains an ad-hoc version of D&D/Rifts/Cthulu/whatever. At this point, we might as well solve the Stamina problem by replacing it with Healing Surges ;-).

 

 

 

It's been interesting reading this thread. There's a lot of conflicts (like the railroading/directionless debate) that tabletop roleplayers are just used to and take for granted. Anyway, I'd like to congratulate Ephesos and the players for piloting the system and producing entertaining results, even for spectators like me.

 

(Also, I've said this before to Ephesos, but I'll say it again: the Bloodmarsh circus was hilarious... but only if you were playing the Avernum Reloaded RP during March of 2006.)

 

EDIT: Also, an apology for spamming the final Selos session by constantly entering and leaving the room. I think I finally located and fixed the problem: one set of wireless phones in the house were on the same frequency as the router -- which explains why I wasn't always kicked when a phone call was made.

[Sarachim]

Originally Posted By: Nioca

It's part of a vicious cycle, really: Combat tends to be the deadliest thing to fail in, so players tend to invest heavily in it. To keep things interesting, the DM scales the monsters to the combatant's skill level. Players fight those monsters and think, "Oh, crap, I need to stay current in combat skills", and put levels there...

QFT. In both campaigns, I started with a mix of combat and non-combat skills, and found that the combat ones got used more often, were more likely to fail, and carried higher consequences for failure. Since those seemed to be my character's obvious weaknesses, I invested in them pretty much exclusively at every level, but still found myself lagging behind characters who'd invested even more exclusively in combat skills and feeling useless.

Eph and Nioca hit on important aspects of the problem, but I think another is that we've failed to account for the differences between the tabletop roleplaying we're basing this system on and an AIM chat. At a table, with only one person speaking at a time, it's pretty easy for players to coordinate their actions effectively and carry out the kind of complicated plans in which Thievery, Stealth, History etc. would be critical. At the very least, they won't actively work at cross purposes, while with AIM we often see one player trying stealth, another diplomacy, and a third attacking because they all started typing at the same time. And since the sessions move slower than meatspace roleplaying already, people are understandable reluctant to slow it down even more by discussing everything carefully before they act. If that's going to happen every time, and the usual result is a fight, why invest in anything but combat skills?

Fortunately, we players seem to be getting less clumsy about this. It's a slow process, but I doubt we'd pick a fight with the octopus again.

[nikki.]

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

(Also, I've said this before to Ephesos, but I'll say it again: the Bloodmarsh circus was hilarious... but only if you were playing the Avernum Reloaded RP during March of 2006.)

I played in that RP and am a Bloodmarsh player, and I didn't get it til somebody mentioned it afterwards. I fail.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Ephesos

Also, watch out Blood Marsh.

Gulp.

I'll probably come back and edit this post later after I finish up BM. I'm unwilling to speak my piece quite right now.

[Dintiradan]

Another possibility is splitting up combat and non-combat skills, and making every character level up in both for each level. This way no character is over or under powered in combat, and every character is useful outside of it.

[Nioca]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

Originally Posted By: Ephesos

Also, watch out Blood Marsh.

Gulp.

I say, bring it!

I also say, use Kurex as a shield!

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

Another possibility is splitting up combat and non-combat skills, and making every character level up in both for each level. This way no character is over or under powered in combat, and every character is useful outside of it.

I think part of the problem is simply that levelling up doesn't get you very much, so players feel obliged to put every point into what will make them most effective. For example, it's almost never worthwhile to forgo raising your current skills to put a point in a new skill, especially when that means you only get 1 skill point instead of 2.

Suggested revision to the levelling-up mechanics:

On levelling up, a character raises one of his/her three primary stats by 1 point. They also gain two skill points, which must be put into two different skills. Neither of the skills raised may key off the stat that was raised.

This forces characters to be a little bit more well-rounded, although maybe it goes a bit too far.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

Another possibility is splitting up combat and non-combat skills, and making every character level up in both for each level. This way no character is over or under powered in combat, and every character is useful outside of it.

I think part of the problem is simply that levelling up doesn't get you very much, so players feel obliged to put every point into what will make them most effective. For example, it's almost never worthwhile to forgo raising your current skills to put a point in a new skill, especially when that means you only get 1 skill point instead of 2.

Suggested revision to the levelling-up mechanics:

On levelling up, a character raises one of his/her three primary stats by 1 point. They also gain two skill points, which must be put into two different skills. Neither of the skills raised may key off the stat that was raised.

This forces characters to be a little bit more well-rounded, although maybe it goes a bit too far.

The way to get around that for mages would be to simply dump points into STR and your magic skill. Sure, it would create a mage tank, but I could see that as a viable way of munchkining.

[Triumph]

Rambling ahead...

 

Originally Posted By: Nioca

-2C) The Black Knight Effect.

This was a problem to some extent, but I felt like Eph actually averted it a number times, narratively rather than mechanically, by attributing action failures to the "wounds" characters had taken.

 

 

Originally Posted By: Nioca

3) 2D Warriors.

I too like the abilities Eph awarded Boregloaf. What they reminded me of, and what your comments remind me of, are the Battle Disciplines (or whatever they're called) in A5 and A6.

 

Originally Posted By: Nioca

4) Combat Gets Priority.

Partly this depended on the campaigns. Eph said at the beginning of the campaigns that Bloodmarsh was to be more combat-focused and Selos less combat more intrigue focused. And think Bloodmarsh has emphasized combat a lot more.

 

And the vicious circle someone brought up, regarding skill distribution: I felt it. By the final battle of Selos...Lanrezac failed to raise his combat skills to anything like par with the other characters...and the effect of this was that he seemed to be by far the least useful in the final battle, since everyone else's combat abilities/key attribute (INT or STR) so far dwarfed him. Even while I was putting points in Diplomacy and History, I consciously worried that I would fall too far behind in my combat skills. By the end, I actually did learn a variety of interesting details thanks to history, although nothing game-altering. Part of my difficulty using History was thinking in terms of expecting some challenge to come up where I'd roll for history to deal with it, rather than looking for topics on which I could try to gain information. Once I started doing that, it got more useful. One thing I found helpful in raising Lanrezac's stats was to focus on the my concept for the character, and not just on becoming more powerful. He's a bit of an historian, so he needed history. He liked to act diplomatically, so I needed to raise Diplo. to reflect that. Perhaps having more fleshed-out character ideas would help give people the motivation to raise the skills their characters should logically have, and not focus so exclusively combat power? ...of course, there are exception: for example, in the case Kurex, MORE POWER is the character's goal. I know that I definitely hope do better with skill allocation in any future games I play...

 

Regarding skills: Would I be correct in estimating 10+ in something is mastery of a skill, and 4-6 is a competent or professional level of training? This is based on a couple comments Eph made and the levels of his epic spells. Having a guideline like that would really help me in developing a character's concept (e.g. if I want I competent Dwarf Thief who knows how to deal with all sorts of locks and traps, 5 Thievery and 4 Artifice would be good levels to aim for) from role-playing point of view. I don't want to "waste" skill points by getting 2 in some skill if it'll never good enough for me to use it effectively. So I tend to focus on just a couple skills trying to make sure I can do them well. If I know in advance that getting 4 points in a skill = competence, and gives me reasonable chance of succeeding (as long no one else way over-maxes that skills and breaks the challenge level) I can develop a comfortable level of ability in multiple skills. If I think that I MUST have at least 7 in a skill to have a chance of it working...then I'll only end up raising two skills.

 

Something that could help character development is just having us all realize that we tended to overinvest in combat, and try to dispel the "arms race" mentality that thinks we have to load on combat skills to get ahead. Unlike a computer game, where the challenges are fixed, Eph has made it clear that this is an adaptable game. When everyone raises combat, he includes more and tougher combat, and leaves out opportunities for thievery, etc. If more people neglected combat for multiple level-ups and raised their other skills, presumably Eph would scale back on the combat and give us other kinds of gameplay challenges.

 

Originally Posted By: Paraphrasing Dintiradan

Complexity is coming

I hope not. One of the things I liked most about this system is that it isn't complex. I don't want any intricate and complicate class systems and branching talent trees and convoluted calculations to max out characters. I know a complex system can do things a simple one can't...but I'd prefer to stick with the simple one.

 

Part of my experience is definitely tied to the fact that I, like Rowen, was playing this sort of game for the first time. I know inexperience was definitely an issue for me in terms of how to use my skills.

 

Regarding Eph's comments about there being other paths: good to know they were there. I'll try to keep on the lookout for them in future. Although...that raises a challenge I struggled with in the game, that I'd love to hear other people's answers to. How does one balance imperative against splitting the party, and of not disrupting the choices of others, with feeling that the party is going the wrong way? One example: when the slave-driver was talking to us after we accidently blew up the prisoner's head (that just sounds wrong...) and we failed in talking to him, he asked for a bribe. I wanted to give a bribe, but had idea what to pay. Others in the party dismissed the idea of buying him off as useless, and decided we needed to just visit Rikkla. From that point on, I just tried to support that decision, even though it seemed like a bad idea (why couldn't we bribe the slave-driver? Or just disappear in the crowds of the city? why did we need to go apologize to Rikkla?). Ye more experienced RP-ers: any advice on how when to just along with the party versus when to take some kind of stand? Other examples: Nixak going off on his nearly killed him, but just moments later, Vitze made some poor choices in dealing with the mob where it seems other characters probably should have stood up and stopped her. Yet outside Sarden, dissension (along with bad dice roles) hurt our diplomatic efforts. I realize there's no one magic answer, but surely experience offers some lessons?

 

Originally Posted By: Ephesos

Otherwise I would've quit shortly after the jungle burned down.

LOL. Well, it was one of the more spectacular Fails in AIMHack so far.

 

Hmm...this is long. Yeah, in case you couldn't tell, I like to talk. Sometimes I do it...a lot. Hopefully, if you read this, you found it intelligible, intelligent, and constructive.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

The way to get around that for mages would be to simply dump points into STR and your magic skill. Sure, it would create a mage tank, but I could see that as a viable way of munchkining.

Actually, come to think of it, is there any real reason we can't get rid of stats altogether and just have skills?

[Lilith]

Part of the problem is inherent to the way d20 systems work. Since your bonuses are added to the die roll, having 10 more points makes you 50% more likely to succeed no matter what. So the difference between 80 and 100 points in a skill is exactly the same as the difference between 1 and 21. As a result, the difference between a character who invests moderately in a skill and a character who invests heavily in a skill becomes greater and greater at higher levels; a 1-point difference isn't so much, but by the time it's ballooned out into a 4-point difference, even if one character has 10 points in that skill and the other has 14 points, it's hard to set a test of that skill so that both characters can contribute.

[Lilith]

One way to deal with this would be to have skill costs increase in proportion to the value of the skill. Maybe on each level-up you get skill points equal to your new level, and raising a skill costs skill points equal to the current level of that skill?

 

(sorry about the triple post, I'm sort of thinking on the run here and I don't want people to miss parts of my post)

[Sudanna]

Quote:

Warriors Are Boring.

I've managed to avoid the pretty much completely by detailing exactly what Sawbones does when he attacks, making it as awesome as I can, and imagining that it makes a difference.

[Monroe]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

Actually, come to think of it, is there any real reason we can't get rid of stats altogether and just have skills?

This is how the World rp works. There don't seem to be any stats at all, not even health. Just different abilities that you have to use cleverly along with a role of the dice.

[Nioca]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

Originally Posted By: Dantius

The way to get around that for mages would be to simply dump points into STR and your magic skill. Sure, it would create a mage tank, but I could see that as a viable way of munchkining.

Actually, come to think of it, is there any real reason we can't get rid of stats altogether and just have skills?

Simple. Attributes handle a wider variety of things they can handle than skills, and several base statistics (dodging, HP, etc.) are based off those attributes. However, they're also more powerful; hence they need to be regulated a bit more tightly.

Originally Posted By: Lilith

One way to deal with this would be to have skill costs increase in proportion to the value of the skill. Maybe on each level-up you get skill points equal to your new level, and raising a skill costs skill points equal to the current level of that skill?

I like this idea, but there's a catch. What happens at low levels? You get 2 skill points to invest in... the skills you don't really care about? Odds are, any skills you want to invest in are already above 2 skill points.

Or look at the other end of the spectrum. What happens at level 20? Or level 30? Sure, it'd regulate skills and keep them from getting to high... but you could also turn around and proceed to go bonkers on low level skills you haven't been paying attention to till now.

[Sarachim]

Originally Posted By: Nioca

Originally Posted By: Lilith

One way to deal with this would be to have skill costs increase in proportion to the value of the skill. Maybe on each level-up you get skill points equal to your new level, and raising a skill costs skill points equal to the current level of that skill?

I like this idea, but there's a catch. What happens at low levels? You get 2 skill points to invest in... the skills you don't really care about? Odds are, any skills you want to invest in are already above 2 skill points.

Or look at the other end of the spectrum. What happens at level 20? Or level 30? Sure, it'd regulate skills and keep them from getting to high... but you could also turn around and proceed to go bonkers on low level skills you haven't been paying attention to till now.

A simpler solution would be to have levels give twice as many points and occur half as often. People will be more likely to spread their skill points around if they come in a big pile.

Mechanical solutions may help, but ultimately I think that if people want more balance between combat and non-combat skills, the most important thing is that GMs know this and orient campaigns accordingly. The vicious cycle some people alluded to is the product of twin misunderstandings- players, thinking Eph is emphasizing combat above all else, put all of their points into that, and then Eph, interpreting this as a demand for a combat-heavy campaign, obliges. If we're all clear that's not what we really want, there's no reason it should keep happening.

[Nioca]

Sarachim, I think that just might be the trick.

[Ephesos]

Originally Posted By: Nioca

As for untrained skill checks: Personally, I've been employing a "No Attribute Bonus" penalty to those.

Yeah, I've been toying with a flat -5 penalty on untrained checks. Might go that route, because I do see the obvious problem of "well, having 1 rank is pretty useless".

Originally Posted By: Rowen

Negative note is that font size does matter with how the grid shows up to the players. Maybe we can make some sort of default font to get around this? I hope that the battle-grids are here to stay.

I believe they are here to stay, and I would like to figure out what's making them display weird for some people. I might just end up changing fonts and seeing if it helps.

Originally Posted By: Rowen

This problem might be from how green behind the ears I am but I know that I most likely wont be rolling anything unless the GM tells me to from now on.

Probably not a bad idea, really. Unless you're really feeling lucky, or you want to use your awesome modifiers.

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

Greenspun's Tenth Rule

...yeah, I hope to death to avoid that. I want transparency, and elegance. The whole point of this system is for us to be able to play quickly with minimal rules conflict, and for there to be as low of a learning curve as humanly possible. Though I understand where the idea is coming from, I want AIMhack to be an exception to the rule (hah, famous last words).

Originally Posted By: Sarachim

...we've failed to account for the differences between the tabletop roleplaying we're basing this system on and an AIM chat...

On the contrary, I keep that in mind with everything I make. I know there are some things that will work well, and some things that just can't work quite right (chasing Chak-Tha, for one, would've worked much better with a physical board in front of everyone). In part, these campaigns were meant to stress-test what all we can do over AIM. And you're right in that it's certainly cleaner than in Labyrinth, even if that means less calamari for the party.

Originally Posted By: Dantius

I'll probably come back and edit this post later after I finish up BM. I'm unwilling to speak my piece quite right now.

First, please don't just edit it, because I will never see it. This thread got 15 new posts just while I was at work today, so I'm not going back to read old posts. Also, to be perfectly honest, you have made your opinions pretty clear to me, between in-session conduct and the facets of the Imperium system.

Originally Posted By: Triumph

Lanrezac failed to raise his combat skills to anything like par with the other characters...and the effect of this was that he seemed to be by far the least useful in the final battle, since everyone else's combat abilities/key attribute (INT or STR) so far dwarfed him.

I actually saw Lanrezac's endgame performance as an issue of tactics. His use of Scramble was great for the ritual circle segments, and was something I hadn't actually accounted for in my plans, so kudos there. But in the final fight, Locking Spell was not the best shot he had... Mirror Gauntlet and Bridge Repair would've had interesting defensive uses. Playing Abjuration as an offensive school is also not terribly effective. But overall, I'd actually have to commend Lanrezac's skill distribution... it was far closer to what I would like to see in the future, as it let me make history tidbits available, and let me do diplomacy challenges (which failed for entirely different reasons). But overall, strong character concepts tend to lead to balanced-ish skills, in my opinion.

Originally Posted By: Nalyd

I've managed to avoid the pretty much completely by detailing exactly what Sawbones does when he attacks, making it as awesome as I can, and imagining that it makes a difference.

Amen to that. I have certainly enjoyed and appreciated Sawbones's combat presence.

Originally Posted By: Monroe

Originally Posted By: Lilith

Actually, come to think of it, is there any real reason we can't get rid of stats altogether and just have skills?

This is how the World rp works. There don't seem to be any stats at all, not even health. Just different abilities that you have to use cleverly along with a role of the dice.

Yeah, the World RP works like that, in theory. But there is zero transparency in how it works. At that point, the only control you have over your actions is the d20... particularly since your choices are frequently rather constrained.

I prefer the open path AIMhack has taken... everyone is 100% able to haggle out abilities with me, so that they make sense for both parties.

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

Another possibility is splitting up combat and non-combat skills, and making every character level up in both for each level. This way no character is over or under powered in combat, and every character is useful outside of it.

See, originally attack bonus was supposed to partially depend on level anyway. But then people started pumping attack stats to 10, and that fell by the wayside. If we can make leveling up more sane, we can make attack/defense scale with level again.

Originally Posted By: A Bunch of People

FIX LEVELING UP

Yeah yeah yeah yeah, I know... it's crazy-inelegant right now. I've been considering a lot of other approaches, and Sarachim's idea of leveling up less frequently is definitely one I like. I know everyone likes leveling up, but it is definitely one of the bigger weaknesses in the system right now. With that in mind, here's a potential solution:

For each level, level up a main stat by 1. Then, take 5 skill points and go nuts. New skills cost 2 for the first rank.

...I dunno, we'll see. Thank you everyone for the feedback so far!

[Lilith]

I don't think you really need an extra cost to discourage people from getting new skills. People seem reluctant to spread themselves too thin already -- if anything, they overspecialise.

[Dikiyoba]

We may have moved past this already (I am tired at the moment) but combat abilities should definitely not compete with spell slots.

 

Also, as someone who has created 100% warrior characters, everyone who is constantly running magic-users are needlessly complex. Or maybe Dikiyoba is just boring.

[Student of Trinity]

There are numerous ways to fight the Black Knight effect, but it's hard to do without making the game focus altogether too much on everybody's sprains and contusions. A system I used to use was to decree that health points even right down to zero represented virtually no significant physical injury, just fatigue or psychic stress or depleted luck and stuff like that. Then actual wounds began when you went below zero.

 

You can get fancy and figure out exactly what the injuries are, or you can just do something simple like saying -N health means -N levels, including losing all the abilities of those levels, until you get some really serious healing or rest. Going below -(your level) could be death.

[Lilith]

One problem with having wounds incapacitate a character is that it leads to death spiral syndrome: whoever gets the first serious hit landed on them is at a disadvantage for the rest of the fight, which leads to more wounds, which leads to further disadvantage. That may be realistic but it's not great for dramatic tension -- at least not if every fight is to the death, anyway.

[nikki.]

Originally Posted By: Dikiyoba

Also, as someone who has created 100% warrior characters, everyone who is constantly running magic-users are needlessly complex. Or maybe Dikiyoba is just boring.

No, I think I preferred Conall to Esstra, which is probably why I made Esstra fight face-to-face whenever I could.

[Dintiradan]

To clarify, I agree with the rest of you: AIMHack should remain simple as its primary goal, and we don't need another D&D clone. I'm just stressing that some problems can't be fixed without introducing too much complexity into the system. Everyone seems to understand this, so I'll just shut up about it.

 

Another thing: 20s seem to always be critical successes, and 1s are always critical fumbles. D&D 3.x had confirmation rolls for criticals, so crazy stuff wasn't always happening 10% of the time.

 

I don't think this is a bad thing though -- krazy kriticals help make a session memorable, and the players seem to be enjoying them. Also, as the latest session showed, Ephesos injects a crapload of flavour into crits.

 

Still, if any GM was to tone down the kraziness, there are simple ways to reduce the number of criticals.

 

(Really, the biggest thing confirmation rolls did was stop bad players from trying impossible things, knowing they'd succeed 5% of the time anyway.)

[Ephesos]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

One problem with having wounds incapacitate a character is that it leads to death spiral syndrome: whoever gets the first serious hit landed on them is at a disadvantage for the rest of the fight, which leads to more wounds, which leads to further disadvantage. That may be realistic but it's not great for dramatic tension -- at least not if every fight is to the death, anyway.

Agreed... this is one of my few issues with the Deadlands system. It's fun and gritty, but we had a party member who basically kept making really stupid decisions, culminating in getting a leg shot off... penalizing all of his rolls by 4 until he retired from the game. Which wasn't very long after that.

And with the critical/fumble thing... yeah, I agree that it can get a little crazy at times, but I kinda like it. It's very fun, even if it puts some burden on me as the DM. And I'm still not going to let people succeed at everything on a 20, like when Nixak shouted for Rikkla to not come and fight everyone... it wasn't going to work fully. But stall a little, making it easier for the party to escape? Yeah, sure.

Mind you, someone could by all means DM in a way that every single 1 failed catastrophically, and every 20 succeeded catastrophically, but I like leaving that difference up to the DM. So I am not inclined to add a confirmation roll.

[Nioca]

Originally Posted By: Ephesos

For each level, level up a main stat by 1. Then, take 5 skill points and go nuts. New skills cost 2 for the first rank.

...I dunno, we'll see. Thank you everyone for the feedback so far!

I think this could work, but I'd tweak it a little further than that. Basically:

• Leveling a normal skill you already know costs 1 SP.
• Learning a new normal skill costs 2 SP.
• Leveling a Martial/Magic skill costs an extra skill point (e.g. leveling a Swords when you already know it costs 2, while picking up Enchantment when you don't know it costs 3)

Also, something I'd like to see is being able to spend all 5 skill points to add an extra point to Speed. It'd make fragile speedster classes (e.g. Sniper/Archer (Amadan), Thief (Erika, Lietha), Dodge Tank... etc.). But that's far from necessary, and may be more trouble than it's worth.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Nioca

[*]Learning a new normal skill costs 2 SP.

Seriously, people, why do you want to discourage players from learning new skills? Spreading yourself too thin is punishment enough in itself.

[Nioca]

Etris Tanner, Kurex, Erika Johnson, Amadan Rayton, Harosh, Xuan, and several others would like to have a word with you regarding that.

 

Anyway, there's good reason to add extra cost to new skills. In order to make having a low level in a skill worth it, you have to impose a penalty on untrained checks. Problem is, by removing the skill point penalty for a new skill, you practically encourage any min-maxer worth his/her salt to invest in every skill in existence. You could effectively just plop a single point into every skill, then continue pumping combat skills while the others get artificially bloated by your ever-increasing stats.

 

So why not remove the untrained check penalty? Because if there's someone out there that's got a character decked out in a single attribute (e.g. Eva with 8 INT), that character could effectively beat out someone with 5 points an in INT based skill. It's not fair to the person that has major skill points invested in a skill only to get outclassed by someone that simply has a higher attribute associated with that skill.

[Ephesos]

Pretty much what Nioca said.

[Lilith]

One problem is that there's a penalty for learning new skills during play, but not at character creation. So one character can be strictly weaker than another at the same level simply because of the order in which they picked up skills. I think ideally it should be our goal to rejig the rules to eliminate that kind of path-dependence.

[Ephesos]

Yes, character creation is definitely up for revision as well, particularly if I'm going to try and run higher-level campaigns later on. Creating a character up to level 10 would be a pain, and it would be even worse for the DM who had to verify it.

[Dikiyoba]

Originally Posted By: Nioca

Because if there's someone out there that's got a character decked out in a single attribute (e.g. Eva with 8 INT), that character could effectively beat out someone with 5 points an in INT based skill.

Presumably someone with 5 points in an intelligence-based skill is also investing at least somewhat in intelligence, particularly if we move into a system where you raise attributes and skills at the same time. There's also the fact that someone decked out in a single attribute will suck at the other two attributes and any skills based on those two attributes.

Finally, Dikiyoba has a brilliant solution for any relentless min-maxers: land shark pits!

[Triumph]

Bloodmarsh finale: way to go, Eph! Well done!

 

Low points in Bloomarsh finale: the length, "Are you sure?" and all the poor rolls.

 

High points: pretty much the rest of it.

 

I'd like to highlight some of the differences where you improved in the Bloodmarsh conclusion compared to things that bothered me about Selos.

 

In Selos, for the finale, we fought this lacewing. We basically bumped into him and then BOOM final boss fight. We knew his name only because we heard hapless victims crying it as we chased him. We saw that he wore a green spiral, and had glimpsed a lacewing when assassins attacked earlier, so we could assume he had something to do with the assassins we were investigating. And based on the red flower he summoned, we figured out he was working for Kyrophius. After we killed him, we were unable to discover anything further about anything. There was no sense of this guy's goals, motivation, identity, importance, or any sense of high stakes in the final battle. We only knew he was supposedly the leader of the earlier assassins because Eph said so in the final cutscene. I was truly surprised that a random totally unknown lacewing turned into a final boss - for a while I kept thinking he was going lead us to something important. That didn't make the final fight any less epic, but it did make it less meaningful, less satisfying.

 

By comparison, Yunelias was foreshadowed throughout the Bloodmarsh. A mysterious reference to him here or there. Then meeting the constructs for the first time. Then figuring out he was a lieutenant of Chamulsep (Camelsnout, I like to call him), then teleporting to encounter his army and mobile fortress, then figuring out he was trying to open a portal to invade, sneaking into the fortress, finally facing him. While there plenty of mysteries, and Eph clearly left loose threads from which to weave further stories, when the party finally met Yunelias, they had a sense of who the guy was and of how high the stakes were if they failed - decidedly epic. All of this helped make the conclusion: having the final battle have more meaning meant that at the conclusion, there could be a final cutscene with more of a sense of accomplishment, I thought. Granted not all this (the earlier foreshadowing) happened in the finale, but quite a bit of it did.

 

I hope this breakdown and pointing out the differences will be helpful with story-telling in the future.

[Ephesos]

Yes... at this point, I feel pretty embarrassed by my attempt at a conclusion to Selos. I tried to do too many things at once. Thank you for the breakdown nonetheless, Triumph.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Triumph

Stuff about Selos

I didn't follow Selos too heavily after they got to the Oracle, but here's what I would have done had I been DM'ing it. After the Oracle basically tells Zarusa that she's going to become the next ruler of the city, I'd have had her thank the party for their services, pay them, and then teleport back to the city by herself. Then, as the party and the pilgrims made their way back, they'd hear rumors along the way (maybe they'd travel along the coast) that Zarusa had installed herself as the virtual dictator of the city, executing all who opposed, crushing the populace, under the boot, etc. Then, the final boss would be her, and the PC's would have to fight through the city, the palace, and then confront her in an epic duel for freedom.

And don't tell me she's too high a level to dispose of. the Bloodmarsh players made short work of the second most powerful necromancer in all of history, so clearly one high-level wizard wouldn't be too difficult.

[Triumph]

Hehehe...interesting alternative story, Dantius. It would have made Vitze really happy to see all her suspicions of Zarusa validated.

 

As far as killing Zarusa (or Yunelias) goes...I have my doubts. Selos is quite a bit squishier than Bloodmarsh (with the notable of AIMHack's mightiest tank thus far, the great Boregloaf), and not as effective combat overall, I think. We also only have one healer. One the plus side, Selos had no characters who repeatedly attack their fellow party members.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Triumph

One the plus side, Selos had no characters who repeatedly attack their fellow party members.

Yeah, Sawbones!

[Triumph]

Sawbones? I don't remember that...??? I was thinking of Amadan...and Kurex.

[Sudanna]

Gah, yes, that goddamn bow. . .

 

And, Dantius, everyone attacked you.

[Dikiyoba]

Zarusa taking over Quera would have been far too predictable, though.

 

Dikiyoba.

[Ephesos]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

the Bloodmarsh players made short work of a Dream Plane version of the second most powerful necromancer in all of history

FYT. Real thing would've smoked you all.