Thrane game - kicking around ideas

[Torillan]

Action points

One other thing - for those of you who've played in Eberron PBP games before, did anyone come up with a good way to adjucate action points? I can't see PM'ing people in the middle of rolling up combats and asking them if they want to spend an action point..

I'd say it would be up to the player to state something in their post along the lines of:
"...if so-and-so fails the DC by less than 5 points, then I want to use an action point.."

Obviously, the range might be higher with higher level characters.

Any other ideas?

 

[Branding Opportunity]

One other thing - for those of you who've played in Eberron PBP games before, did anyone come up with a good way to adjucate action points? I can't see PM'ing people in the middle of rolling up combats and asking them if they want to spend an action point..

In the Eberron game that I GM here I tell the players to let me know when they want to use it. I also use them myself at story-appropriate times or when the character is about to die. Since I know the target number the roll is trying to reach, it makes Action Points a bit more powerful, but I'm willing to deal with that in order to not make them overly complicated. If a player had to specifically tell me every time when s/he wanted to use an AP, it would drag combat down even more. IMO normal D&D combat in the PbP takes too long already, no need to add fuel to that particular fire.

 

[Ferrix]

Playing as part of the Argentum could be really fun, and less of a crusading thrane type campaign (which while fun would have less complexity I think).

 

[drothgery]

In the Eberron game that I GM here I tell the players to let me know when they want to use it. I also use them myself at story-appropriate times or when the character is about to die. Since I know the target number the roll is trying to reach, it makes Action Points a bit more powerful, but I'm willing to deal with that in order to not make them overly complicated. If a player had to specifically tell me every time when s/he wanted to use an AP, it would drag combat down even more. IMO normal D&D combat in the PbP takes too long already, no need to add fuel to that particular fire.

Okay, I'm thinking that what I'll be doing is asking characters to give me a general philosophy on when their charcter uses APs (in attack, in defense, often, rarely, etc; it may be that some of you will mostly use APs for non-standard things like extra smites), and then autmotically use them in a few scenarios (auto-stabilizing dying characters who can't be saved by other PCs in time, or when a failed save has drastic consequences).

 

[drothgery]

Playing as part of the Argentum could be really fun, and less of a crusading thrane type campaign (which while fun would have less complexity I think).

Hmm... I think I've got a basic idea of how to go with this, and I found one of WotC's free adventure downloads that I think will work for the first adventure. So I think I'll be posting a recruiting thread in the next week or so.