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Re: Maecius Plays BG:TSCC

Posted: Sun Jan 06, 2019 4:15 pm
by Maecius
I'm feeling pretty good about the server's staffing situation at the moment, now that the holidays are over, so I will probably blow the dust off this experiment again. I have some big real life changes coming up that may well put a pause on this again, but we'll see!

With the story continuing, I decided to give Teddy his own bio:

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As always, comments are welcome, but please try to put them here (so that this thread remains clean for the design items): viewtopic.php?f=136&t=66900

Re: Maecius Plays BG:TSCC

Posted: Thu Jan 10, 2019 4:32 pm
by Maecius
Image
Image Courtesy of: http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/alt_comps
Synopsis

I managed to get Teddy to level 11! He has now taken his first Techsmith level, too. This is very good news for me: Poor Teddy has been stuck at a Base Attack Bonus of "5" for four levels now, so it'll be nice to, even indirectly through the summon, have a second attack per round. :violence-swords:

In character it's been fun, too. Last night, Teddy paired up with a definitely chaotic evil psychopathic murder-gnome who frequently spoke with his invisible friend (not a friend who just happened to be invisible mind you). By the end of the adventure, Teddy wasn't sure if he was more anxious of the bandits all around them or his alleged "ally." Normally he's so quick to trust gnomes, too!

Teddy trying not to set off the gnome: "Oh, heavens no! I wasn't vomiting because of what you just did. Must have been something I ate. That was some world-class face-melting acid magic there, Mister Gnome! :whistle:"

The night before, he met a rather unusual aasimar woman, and wound up buying some components and ingredients off her, including a goblin's finger, a jar of ectoplasm, and a curative mushroom. He paid way too much for these items of limited mechanical value, but they were of interest to him, and they did inspire some thoughts on crafting for me, as teased out a little further in the design notes below.

Design Notes
  • DMing Note: Not too many notes this time around. Teddy and his gnome friend were able to pick up a random DM event, which really spiced up their errand. Great job to the DM in question. Little random events in dungeons are a great way to make a "known" dungeon more interesting for the players. For players, it's worth noting that we were walking through the dungeon (not running), and we were RPing. This was something that always enabled me (as a former DM) to run random dungeon events (since the grind-time grinders never gave me enough time to set up encounters with their rushing about -- I might drop a couple of unusual spawns if I was feeling generous, but then I'd usually just portal out to find someone who was actually roleplaying, which would always better ensure that I was having fun as a DM too, watching them react to the story I was weaving, rather than just smashing and bashing their way through it all).
  • Crafting Note: Teddy's acquisition of some neat (but mechanically not very useful) items made me think about crafting again. We had a DEV-side discussion on making gems useful for wand crafting, and maybe even having different types of wands available (not just bone wands, but other varieties) that would impact the cost of the wand based on the school of magic or something (bone wands might make it cheaper to produce a wand with a necromancy spell on it, for example). All of this is very preliminary, of course. I'm not quite just blowing hot air, but also maybe don't go investing in gems or anything just yet. We just are thinking about ways to make the flavor items more out-and-out useful outside of their current role as "token rp items" or "vendor trash."
  • Area Note: I noticed that some of the buildings in the Baldur's Gate Palace District are still rubble. I wonder if we're waiting for the players to take further initiative rebuilding here, or if we've gotten to the point where the city would take care of it without them? Normally we do try to delay any map changes to respond to player actions, but it has been a few years since the undead siege now. :D
That's all for now!