IC: Dichotomy's Age of Worms Redux, Part V(b)

[Dichotomy]

"Well met, mortal," the creature replies telepathically. The creature "voice" still seems harsh, and the duo has a hard time determining what emotions, if any, are belied by the creature's "tone."

"You have freed me from my bondage, and for that, I will allow you to live." The creature pauses, and glares first at Kushnak, then Erdolliel. As the creature continues, its "voice" lowers, becoming more ominous. "But you will leave here, now, and you will leave the treasurers of this place to me."

 

[TiCaudata]

Erdolliel looks at the contents of the shelves, flexing her fingers at the lost opportunity to touch and examine their contents, and clears her throat nervously. "Fearful creature, we will abide by your request. I ask but one boon for freeing you, and that is the doll on the shelf. Its likeness has slipped beyond my grasp, but I would prefer to keep it none-the-less."[sblock=oc]This is for the Neth doll of course[/sblock]

 

[o3caudata]

Kushnak looks quizically at Erdolliel as she stammers through her formality.

"Your gratitude is humbling. The girl is right though, the only thing we require is that doll which mimics our fallen companion. The remaining 'treasures' of this place are yours to claim in your 'victory'." Kushnak says almost dismissively, his voice thick with sarcasm.

 

[Dichotomy]

The air fills with a pregnant pause. The creature's eyes shift between the doll and the duo as it appears to consider the request.

The creature suddenly lets out a sound like a cross between a bird screech and a snort. "Agreed," the creature mentally shouts.

The creature looks at the doll, which suddenly lifts by some unseen force and moves to hover in front of Erdolliel's face.

The creature stares at the duo, alert and clearly suspicious, while waiting for Kushnak and Erdolliel to take the doll and leave.
[sblock=OOC]Kushnak and Erdolliel both suspect that the creature used telekinesis or a similar power.[/sblock]

 

[TiCaudata]

Erdolliel takes the doll and continues on her way. She briefly stops to look around in the room where Nethezar died, particularly at the liquid in the vat and gathering Nethezar before continuing out of the room.[sblock=oc]spellcraft +17 to ID what's in there, take a sample in a vial if it's cooler than water. Put Nethezar in the Bag of Holding if he fits through the mouth, put all his stuff in the Bag if he doesn't. Then...

Search (+17) the room thoroughly , then search (including traps and locks and whatnot etc...) the shelves in the "museum", then search the shelves in the room where Nethezar died, then carefully search the brain thing on the way out. Then she will search the bodies of the smaller multiarmed eye things beyond the destroyed doors. Once we leave this area, she'd like to hide (+15) and silently move (+15) back to the room where we faced the drow cleric and cronies. There she would like to search bodies 1,2, & 4-6 as well as check the door the the south for traps and locks. She'll also look at what appears to be a haystack in the SE corner of the room to verify what it is.[/sblock]

 

[o3caudata]

Kushnak shakes his head at the bird creature before turning and following Erd.

As they make there way along, Kushnak keeps his attention on their rear, anticipating an attack.

[sblock=oc]

Not sure how the bag of holding thing works, but it certainly seems like with some effort we could get Nethezar in one.

[/sblock]

 

[Dichotomy]

The duo begins making their way out, stopping to "collect" Nethezar's remains. The vulture-like creature stares from the doorway of the museum until the duo is out of sight.

Aside from the scholar's body and the unknown green liquid in the vat, a thorough search of the room suggests that it is a laboratory of sorts. The table contains some standard equipment, such as beakers and the like, and the shelves are filled with books. Some appear to be notations written in the same unknown language as the ledger. Other books appear to be manuals dealing with anatomy and "arcane fusion techniques."

As they continue on their way out, Erdolliel's search of the entry room to this sanctum reveals that the stone brain is actually a magical trap. The elf manages to disable it.

The duo continues, and Erdolliel searches the dead drow guards for anything worth keeping.

Finally, after taking a quick look at the livestock that must have served as the drow's food, the duo turns to the south, where a wall of iron bars running from floor to ceiling blocks the way. An iron door is set into the wall. Just on the other side of the door stand four rotting corpses with large gaping holes in their heads. Beyond them can be seen a chamber full of debris, scraps of cloth, mounds of straw, and pools of filth. Dark corridors stretch out to the side.

[sblock=OOC]In the room where Neth died, Erdolliel can't tell what the green liquid is. It isn't for example, acid or something. If you want a sample, you can have one. The room also has generic lab equipment, and the shelves in the room have only books on them. I'm okay just saying that you somehow get Neth in the bag.

In the brain room, Erdolliel's search (14+) reveals that the brain is a magical trap. She disables it easily (20+).

The smaller multiarmed things outside the brain room don't have anything on them.

On the random drow you find 5 sets of the following:
masterwork rapier
masterwork x-bow
chain shirt
heavy steel shield

You also find a total of 3 potions of cure moderate wounds (whenever you take the time to ID them, Erdolliel fails all three rolls, but Kushnak succeeds), 2 tanglefoot bags, and 5 alchemist fire.

Back in the next area (through the tunnel) the "haystack" thing is a pen with a half-starved cow and a couple pigs.

The gate to the south is locked, but the key found on the drow cleric opens it, but I'll stop here before you open it. Kushnak can tell that the four corpses are "just" ordinary human zombies.[/sblock]

 

[Dichotomy]

[sblock=OOC]Hope you are ready for one of my infamous ramblings... Regarding death and XP...

ISSUE #1
I combed over the entire OOC thread and chat discussions I had with both of you. I simply don't know what we decided last time (which was, sadly, again a death for Nethezar.

[As an aside, after re-reading the ENTIRE OOC thread, I'm really surprised that you two keep putting up with me.]

So... Level 1 starts at 0 xp. After that, you level up at 1k, 3k, 6k, 10k, 15k, 21k, 28k, 36k, 45k...

Under RAW [scroll down to the "Bringing Back the Dead" section]

Any creature brought back to life usually loses one level of experience. The character’s new XP total is midway between the minimum needed for his or her new (reduced) level and the minimum needed for the next one. If the character was 1st level at the time of death, he or she loses 2 points of Constitution instead of losing a level.

In the past, we (or some of us) had decided that this, in some cases, is too harsh. (E.g. if a person died with 35,900 XP (100 XP shy of level 9), their XP would be reset to 24,500, making them lose almost 1.5 full levels of XP.)

Shea and I had first discussed a houserule whereby:
(1) if you are more than half way to the next level, you lose half of that level's XP (e.g. if you have 35,900 you lose 4,000)
(2) if you are less than half way to the next level, you lose half of the previous level's XP (e.g. if you are at 37,000 you ALSO lose 4,000)

BUT we then realized that it some cases this doesn't make sense. (E.g. two people die; Guy A has 31,900 XP, so he goes down to 28,400; Guy B has 32,100 XP, so he goes down to 28,100; Guy B ends up with less XP, even though he had more when they died.) I think we also thought that this simply seemed like too small an XP loss.

Then Cochran suggested that we simply use a percentage. If you were, for example, 75% of the way between level 8 and level 9, you should just have your XP reset to 75% of the way between level 7 and level 8.

BUT in any case where the character was less than halfway to their next level, this would result in more XP loss than RAW. (E.g. if you were only 25% of the way between level 8 and 9, under RAW your XP would reset to 50% of the way between level 7 and 8, instead of only 25%.)

I don't know what I actually did with Neth's XP last time. When I last awarded XP (in August 2009!!!!) he was about 3,000 behind Erdolliel. IIRC, for a time he was more behind than that, but he caught up some because for awhile he was a level behind you two (and, therefore, he earned more XP in each encounter).

Would it make sense for the houserule to simply be: use either Cochran's percentage idea OR RAW, whichever results in less XP loss?

ISSUE #2
Do I award Neth XP before or after taking out his deduction from XP loss? Should there be a flat rule? Should it be determined by rigging the numbers to determine which would ultimately leave him with the most XP?

ISSUE #3
I think I confirmed this with both of you before. I think that, when I award XP, I should always split the XP as if there was one more of you than there really is. (E.g. if a group of 4 level 8 people kill a CR 8 monster, they earn 2,400 XP, which is divided to 600 each; but if the three of you (while level 8) kill a CR 8 monster, I'd still only give you each 600, rather than 800 each.) I think this will be necessary because otherwise you will quickly be higher level than you "should" be for the adventure. In theory, the fact that there are only three of you is already being compensated via making you gestalt, so having you be higher level would be overly-compensating... or something.

Does that make sense? (I'd also do that for the XP you got killing the mind flayer, dividing it by 3 instead of 2. Neth doesn't get any. )

ISSUE #4
This isn't really an "issue." Just sort of a heads-up.

I just wanted to mention that we will be moving to a new thread soon, and I WILL be awarding XP soon. So be prepared for the leveling up. (You guys will actually already be close to getting TWO levels.)

I will be posting a summary, like I have before, AND I intend to post a summary of the summaries, 'cause the summaries are getting quite long.

Also, when I re-read the entire OOC thread, I made notes about all the house rule discussions we've had. For reference, I intend to combine all that stuff and throw it into one of the first posts in the OOC thread so that we don't have to go searching through that stuff again.

I think that's it for now...[/sblock]

 

[o3caudata]

[sblock=oc]
Agree about the house rule being whichever's 'better' for the character.

In favor of Neth getting the most advantageous allocation.

The not-full allocation makes sense, and the mind-flayer suggestion seems logical considering the circumstances.

And, thanks for doing the stuff with all the things. We appreciated it, lots.
[/sblock]

 

[TiCaudata]

[sblock=OC]ISSUE #1
I'm all for a house rule that uses either Cochran's percentage idea OR RAW. Whichever results in less XP loss is probably greedy, but better. Also, this ties into #3, see below.

ISSUE #2
Personally, I think that XP should be awarded before the death because the notion that all of a sudden a character is way better than before is a little silly to me. I always envision that the character gets gradually better over time, but since that is really really hard to track and display in a gaming setting without a computer. So, it totally makes sense that xp gets awarded at set time intervals, but I think that in the case of death the xp still has been accumulated and awarded prior to the death.

All that said, I also think that it makes calculating the xp WAAAAAAY easier if you award it prior to leveling up, but I dunno for sure if that's true. If as DM you just calculate it based on what level everyone is when you award it instead of trying to calculate what the difference would be for each encounter, by all means do so. (Does that make any sense??)

Finally, I'm all for just assigning the xp that's most advantageous to the group and Neth for the same reason as in #1. This also ties in with #3 though.

ISSUE #3
You have confirmed it and I'm fine with doing as such. Since we are in the midst of an epic adventure, there are milestones where we should be at certain levels and I have no doubt that DI will get us to these levels at the appropriate times. So all of the talk in #'s 1 and 2 are kind of mitigated by the fact that often we will be held back a little from getting the next level, and that's totally cool with me as I don't want to skyrocket in level and then either have this be a walk in the park (HA!) or have Di try to match the difficulty with our new levels and risk messing with an already complicated adventure scenario.

ISSUE #4
Sweet[/sblock]