D&D 5E Out of the Abyss OOC

[CanadienneBacon]

The drow seem to have made use of a natural feature of the cave; the inside of your cell is a dead magic zone. Magic can neither be initiated inside the cell nor reach inside the cell if cast from outside the cell door. It's a modified form of faerzress. Stronger.

Non-magic abilities (e.g. Sneak Attack) should work just fine.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[CanadienneBacon]

Someone brought up the excellent question of XP and level ups. I don't do XP; instead, I award levels at milestones (both in- and out-of-game). Perhaps leveling up for an out-of-game reason sounds counterintuitive to some of you. I promise, it's not. There are a number of tools in my DM toolbox to insure the long term survivability of my PbP games, and a level-up is one of 'em.

 

[CanadienneBacon]

[MENTION=40413]GlassEye[/MENTION], I'm going to put you on the spot, and I apologize for potentially making you uncomfortable. Everyone take at look at how GlassEye formatted his post for Raza. What he's done is really helpful to me when we start combat rounds. The salient points are that he's included a smaller sized pic of his character and has sblocked AC, hp, spells prepared, spell slots used, a link to the Grimoire, and special ability uses remaining. I've done something like this myself in previous games I've played in, and it's easy to do. GlassEye's is beautifully formatted with a pic, lovely colored font, and alternating font size, but I don't need all that. The bits I most need are the mechanical tidbits I list above, along with something like "Inspiration: 1" or "Inspiration: 0," depending on whether your character is currently inspired. Currently, everyone is inspired.

If you elect to rely on this format, what you do is either quote GlassEye to riff off of what he's done, or you spend some time (when you have it, do NOT press yourself to do this) creating the first formatted IC post, then the next time you post for your character (and every time thereafter) you'd quote your last post. All the formatting stays intact and carries over. All you do is edit out the text for actions and speech, replacing with whatever your character does that round. Easy peasy. If you adopt this format and decide to include an image, make sure you resize the image so it isn't ginormous. I often use tinypic.com for image storage, but photobucket and any other site that generates a link (especially if it'll generate a link with tags) works. Tinypic allows you to decide what size image to create.

If anyone objects to doing it this way, no problem. It makes it nice for me, helps speed up my ability to post because I need to do less cross-referencing, but it's absolutely not a demand. Hell, it's not really even a request. More, just pointing out something really well-done that is functional and will see use. I am highly cognizant of it taking a metric ton of time to format stuff on the site, and we're all working adults here. If it's a choice between nifty formatting and posting in the IC, always opt to post in the IC!

 

[CanadienneBacon]

All of this leads me to my next point. You, the players, are going to be in charge of awarding and tracking inspiration points. I think it'll be fun. Inspiration is binary; either your character is inspired or not. You can have only one inspiration point at a time. It can be stored and saved, trotted out for use whenever you want, and used to gain advantage on an attack, saving throw, or ability check roll. If you like what someone's done and see their character doesn't currently have an inspiration point, give them one in the IC. It occurred to me that people could game the system and operate constantly under a revolving door of inspiration; I trust that won't occur here.

 

[industrygothica]

Just testing some formatting... don't mind me.

---

[B]AC:[/B] 18; [B]HP:[/B] 21/21
[B]Initiative:[/B] -1
[B]Saves:[/B] WIS +4, CHA +2
[B]Passive Perception:[/B] 12
[B]Languages:[/B] Orc, Common, Goblin
Darkvision 60 ft.
[B]Skills:[/B] Athletics +5, Insight +4, Medicine +4, Survival +4
[B]Stats:[/B] Str 16 (+3), Dex 8 (-1) , Con 13 (+1), Int 10 (+0), Wis 15 (+2), Cha 10 (+0)

-[B]Inspiration[/B]? [[COLOR=#FF0000]X[/COLOR]] Yes, [ ] No
-[B]Channel Divinity available[/B]? [[COLOR=#FF0000]X[/COLOR]] Yes, [ ] No (recharge after a long or short rest)
-[B]War Priest[/B] (bonus action, 2 uses per long rest): 1.[ ] 2.[ ]

[B]Spell Slots:[/B] 4, 2, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0
[B]Slots Used:[/B]  0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0
[B]Spells Prepared:[/B] (5) [URL="http://ephe.github.io/grimoire/"](Grimoire)[/URL]
[LIST]
[*][B]Cantrips:[/B] Sacred Flame, Spare the Dying, Thaumaturgy
[*][B]Domain Spells:[/B] Divine Favor, Shield of Faith, Magic Weapon, Spiritual Weapon
[*][B]1st Level:[/B] Command (*), Cure Wounds (*), Guiding Bolt (*), Healing Word (*)
[*][B]2nd Level:[/B] Prayer of Healing (*)
[/LIST]
(*) can be cast at higher levels

 

[CanadienneBacon]

Solace growls at Ront, the harsh syllables of Bronck's tongue rising from her gorge as she vomits the words onto him in [sblock=orcish grunts]"Lame pis/spot of a tuskless weasel, kill something that fights back. Or call me a name and walk away, so I don't mock you so the rest will hear." [/sblock]

This blew my socks off. That's an amazing use of metaphor and word choice (gorge!), comparing Orcish to vomit. It's also unlike anything I've ever seen you post in character before, [MENTION=23484]Kobold Stew[/MENTION]. Made me laugh, so thanks for that. I'm not tracking XP, but if I were, this is the kind of thing that would get an XP bonus for the entire group.

Tuskless weasel. Good one.

 

[CanadienneBacon]

Assumedly, this area is too dark for Brinn to see- either completely or effectively. Although I am unclear about the glow of the faerzress, if any. If Ront approaches and attacks Brinn, Brinn cannot be surprised due to darkness (alert), but if dark, combat will be at a disadvantage on Brinn's attack rolls (but no advantage for Ront, again from alert, I think? - third bullet point under feat).

Confirming that, yes, this faerzress in the cell does not glow, and that that is an aberration from normal faerzress. It's pitch black in the cell. And also confirming that, yes, due to Alert, Brinn cannot be surprised, and that in the cell (or in darkened areas) attackers would not gain advantage on Brinn. Also, yes, a character without darkvision or the means to see would have their attacks suffer disadvantage if the attack was made in darkness, as is the case here.



I'm off to Indy for my conference. Laptop and books are going with me. I'll check in later today to see what's up in the IC. Do we want a Google Hangout for chat for this game? Polling the crowd here. I've never had one for a PbP game, but OotA is special to me, so maybe we do. Then again, maybe we like the idea of distance and separation and being unplugged! Potay-to, potah-to.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[GlassEye]

What he's done is really helpful to me when we start combat rounds.

I'm glad you'll find it useful. Most of it is for myself, so I don't have to continually refer to my character sheet, and can easily track things. I can't take credit for it, though. I borrowed the format from someone else long ago and have been using it ever since. Just so you know, I've added Inspiration, Saves, and a link to my character sheet which I didn't think possible in the group format.