Full Round Casting Time vs AoO

[Nail]

Yeah, as I said before, no one dropped, but I think we used an appropriate amount of our resources facing a challenge of EL=APL+2. Our Wizard basically pulled the rest of us out of the fire with his AoE spells, and the undergrowth hindered one of their biggest advantages: moving fast to close within thrashing range.

My thinking was, when designing the encounter: "If the PCs attack at night, they're hosed."

That turned out not to be true.

Barely.

 

[irdeggman]

The barbarian was moving thru heavy brush, thus charging was not possible. Sigh.

FYI: It was an EL 9 encounter (at night!): 3 5th level orcs, 6 1st level ones, all with PC classes. The party consisted of a Rgr 4, Rog 5, Clr5/Rog1, Wiz 6, Pal 4, & a Drd 6. That's APL of 5. With their stats and numbers (more than 4 characters), I'd bump that up by 2, I think, and say they are ~ APL 7.

Anyway, they won, rather handily. It was a challenge, but not nearly as much as I thought it would be.

Thanks for the help!

Actually the EL for the party in this case would be APL 5 +1 = 6.

It is APL and then add +1 for every 2 PCs more than 4. I got that from Skip in an e-mail to Sage Advice.

 

[DrSpunj]

Actually the EL for the party in this case would be APL 5 +1 = 6.

It is APL and then add +1 for every 2 PCs more than 4. I got that from Skip in an e-mail to Sage Advice.

I agree with that and use it in my games as well, however, Nail allows a generous 36 point buy for stats, and I'd agree with him that the difference between us and a similar 6 PC party made with only 25-point buy is significant enough to merit another +1 APL.

He's been building encounters based upon our APL with +1 for a couple extra PCs and another +1 for the stat boost for nearly a year now, and that's worked out very well. We don't tend to have too many challenges with ELs below that number, but the challenges we face of equal or higher EL seem to come out just about how they're supposed to, IMO.

Thanks.

 

[Hypersmurf]

The rules carefully avoid saying what happens if the casting time is 2 or more rounds, leaving us for a bloodlust debate...

They don't avoid it at all. "at least one full round".

A spell with a one-hour casting time provokes an AoO at the start of round one. Any damage taken for the next 600 rounds will force a Concentration check, but no more AoOs are provoked.

-Hyp.

 

[Darklone]

Would you have to roll that Conc check every time you take damage or will it add up for one big roll?

 

[Hypersmurf]

Would you have to roll that Conc check every time you take damage or will it add up for one big roll?

One per, to the best of my knowledge. The rule under the Magic Overview for Concentration checks resulting from injury refer to "the interrupting event", which suggests that you roll per injury, not per round.

If it's not once per attack, it's once per round - the Concentration skill has a slightly ambiguous entry for "damaged during action", where it's unclear if the check is "per damage source" or "per action"... and casting a one-hour spell requires 600 full round actions.

I think the Magic Overview clears up the ambiguity to "per source of damage", but even if you decide to sum it "per action", that's still only once per round, not once over the whole hour.

-Hyp.

 

[Nail]

We don't tend to have too many challenges with ELs below that number....

I'll work on that.

From observation, the party has been tackling ELs several points above their APL, and getting away with it. So +1 to "APL" for high stats, +1 for having more than four people. Sorta.

 

[youspoonybard]

Yo, Nail & Co.

I'm sorry, I know this doesn't pertain to this thread, but I just noticed Nail's location is Cedar Rapids, IA.

I'm a college student in Grinnell, IA, without much transportation ability (ie I can borrow a car...sometimes). Do you know of any gaming stores in the Iowa City area?

Sorry to ask on this thread...

 

[Nail]

I'm a college student in Grinnell, IA, without much transportation ability (ie I can borrow a car...sometimes). Do you know of any gaming stores in the Iowa City area?

Hey there!

I don't, actually. The local one (in CR) closed up. I *believe* there's one in Iowa City....DrSpunj would know. He's a friendly guy: email him.

 

[DrSpunj]

I'm sorry, I know this doesn't pertain to this thread, but I just noticed Nail's location is Cedar Rapids, IA.

I'm a college student in Grinnell, IA, without much transportation ability (ie I can borrow a car...sometimes). Do you know of any gaming stores in the Iowa City area?

Hey! If you'd like to some evening let me know and you can play IMC if you'd like. We're always happy to have another gamer, even if it's just for a single evening cameo. Nail & the rest of the company would have to extend the vote to Nail's game, of course.

Anyway, here's the only two stores I know of left in the area:

MidAmerica Hobbies, 185 Hwy 965, #2 Liberty Plaza, North Liberty, 319 665-9655
www.midamericahobbies.com (but nothing's up yet)
This guy just opened a small store here, and his store sells mostly to modelers (rockets, remote control cars & trucks, etc.) but he does carry some CCG stock and he has access to most everything through his distributor (though they couldn't get me Diamond Throne, I'm going to see if they have better luck with BoEM 3.5). The only time I ordered from him was just after Thanksgiving and he gave me a 10-20% discount on each of the items I ordered, which he indicated he'd be able to do with most RPG stuff. He doesn't have any RPG stock, but you can contact him for something you actually want to order. I'm planning to buy Unearthed Arcana, BoEM 3.5 and a couple other things here shortly (I need to do that...). Anything you order from him is Fed Ex'd within 2 days (at his cost), so it works out very nicely for me being only a few blocks away.

The Hobby Corner, 1672 Sycamore St, Iowa City, 319 338-1788
They are in Sycamore Mall and also carry all sorts of train, RC cars & trucks, planes, but they actually carry a lot of RPG stuff, dice, CCGs, CMGs, board games, puzzles, etc. It's nice to go there occasionally and browse. My only real beef with them is that they only ever order 1 of any given RPG item, so if someone buys it it's out of stock for quite a while. They have ordered something for me on demand, but it took quite awhile to get (and honestly, they're quite some distance away from where I live, so I only get there when I'm going to that Mall for other stuff).

Anyway, if you get to the Des Moines area, one of the best places I found is on University, between 8th st and 22nd st in West Des Moines in a strip mall, but I can't remember the name right now, sorry.

Hope that helps.

DrSpunj