The Good
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- It actually happened! And what a turnout! Between increasingly demoralized players and IRL obstructions, I expected to go to battle with less than half of the people who have historically attended the planning meetings, if we even managed to force ourselves to keep going... instead we got all of them (minus a couple of Shea's alts who never really joined in the first place), and a few more on top!
- Plot hook, plot hook, plot hook! That artifact couldn't have gone to a more deserving player... he's already scheming with the rest of the gang to figure out what heinous acts he might use it for.
- Although strictly redundant for reasons I mentioned at the time, the fall token was a nice touch.
- After terrifying us on two separate occasions (so many of us feared we might be buried in über-mobs until we either died or ran away, and when you then gave details on the permastrike risk the night of the event, we thought it was going to be less a risk and more a certainty), it was nice to see the village guards really were what the reconnaissance said they were.
- Though strictly an accidental improvisation on my part, the threat of permastrikes and the relative abundance of ranged combatants drove me to play slightly more in line with my character's morals (already stretched to their limits just to give me an excuse to fill out the roster), though even she isn't sure if it was morality or fear that made her a de-facto noncombatant.
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- I'm not gonna lie, I'm still miffed about the second round of scouting not amounting to anything. IMO it would not have been difficult to appease us with a simple "your findings tell you X (e.g. Fist patrols come by every now and then)" or "your findings allow you to do Y (e.g. timing the attack to when the nearest Fist patrol would be as far away as possible)" instead of saying it'll be done during the event; this was made more egregious by the fact that there actually wasn't any opportunity to learn some of the things we were trying to learn (like the ideal timing for the attack, or how likely we were to be interrupted by nearby reinforcements).
This was a particularly dire issue in light of the fact that it nearly drove us to scrap the raid; we persevered mostly only in a bid to save face, lest our decision be used as an argument to discourage DMs from running UD events in the future. It turned out okay in the end, but it was too close for comfort! - On a similar note, while we were able to ICly play it off as Malodia's whimsy (god knows she's not a very good planner, nor particularly capable of sticking to her own plans), we did feel that we were being railroaded away from our initial scheme of caravan raids to a village assault. In tandem with the abovementioned scouting issue; a historical fear among the more veteran raiders that the DMs hate the UD (though hopefully that fear will have been dampened a little by the final outcome); and a long-standing DM tradition of throwing out hordes of beefed-up mobs everywhere, we got the impression that not only were we being railroaded, but the ideal and intended outcome was for us to be TPKed by a Fist regiment and hopefully choose unprompted to overlook the distinction between a permastrike and strict permadeath on the grounds that our return to life would have been implausible. (As I certainly would have done, unless and until player or NPC actions explicitly brought me back!)
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- As is rapidly becoming typical for our ramshackle crew (with the Soubar rumor thread showcasing some of the most glaring examples), we goofed up big-time when it came to any stealth or subtlety.
But the initial failure was largely mechanical - we suspect an expiring invisibility potion - and it occurs to me that there was a way to at least uphold the RP side of our camouflage. IIRC from my time with the DM client, just as there's a button to turn all NPCs on a map hostile, there is one to turn all NPCs friendly. Given that the invisibility spells were just a final layer of icing on top of our other stealth mechanisms, this might have been appropriate... and it would have allowed us to go on with our initial plan instead of just going "screw the plan" and starting the battle early. - That alignment bump. I didn't even shoot the armed guards! (It's fine though; I've already got some ideas on how to bring my sheet back in line with my characterization in future installments... or maybe die trying. One of those two.
) - Was an unconditional permastrike for grievous injury really necessary? It rendered Bloodstaunch, Stabilize, and Revivify virtually irrelevant, as even if the wounded/killed PCs were successfully rescued (as opposed to being left behind in a hasty retreat, or otherwise captured by the defenders), the permastrike would remain. It probably only made us more eager to extract every mechanical advantage possible (e.g. my staying invisible lest I get shot into the Fugue by an enemy archer, super-underoptimized pre-30 that I was), and while I was able to ICly justify my reactions (... at the cost of making the alignment bump seem a little weird...), we really don't need to be herded towards more powerbuilds.
