General Chatter

[sulldawga]

Marullus, help me out with a rules question.

Your Accursed Blade has Shock 2/15. You get to add the attribute modifier (+2 for Magic) and any damage bonuses explicitly noted as adding to Shock (+2 for Armsmaster). I get to 6 damage. How are you getting to 8 damage?

[Marullus]

Marullus, help me out with a rules question.

Your Accursed Blade has Shock 2/15. You get to add the attribute modifier (+2 for Magic) and any damage bonuses explicitly noted as adding to Shock (+2 for Armsmaster). I get to 6 damage. How are you getting to 8 damage?

A question I asked myself as well. I just went back through to crosscheck the answer.

Accursed blade has a base shock of 2 (in its description), and then also adds the Magic skill for +2 (which is a special rule in Accursed Blade, most weapons don't add skill here). All weapons add attribute modifier, which here is +2 for Charisma (again, Cha instead of STR/DEX is an Accursed thing). Then Armsmaster allows adding the skill a second time, which is +2 Magic. (The accursed notes this exception at the bottom of page 168, that the bonus damage explicitly stacks from Armsmaster, which means the skill is added twice.) Total of 8.

[sulldawga]

I don't see, in the description for Accursed Blade, where it explicitly says you can add your Magic skill to the Shock damage. It only says you can add it to the damage roll.

The rule for Shock is "any damage bonuses that are explicitly noted as adding to Shock. Other damage bonuses do not increase Shock". I don't think you're supposed to get that extra +2 to get to +8 total.

[Marullus]

Okay, I see what you're saying.

I see it going one of two ways:
* The phrase "along with any magical bonus to the weapon" (p.43) in WWN applies to the Accursed Blade in Atlas, which adds Magic as a Bonus to the weapon and gives an 8, or
* That doesn't apply and it is a 6.

Whatever you say is fine.

[sulldawga]

I think the "any magical bonus" phrase is referring to if the weapon itself has a +1 or higher. That doesn't apply here.

I thought the spell was fairly overpowered but I read up on Reddit and found a comment from Crawford that said he allowed the bonuses to stack because he wanted it to still be effective when other fighters got magic weapons with pluses.

Anyway, Shock 6 is still pretty damn hefty, especially at this level.

[Marullus]

Sounds good. I'll update macros.

The Accursed's magic doesn't do much (especially compared to real mages) but it does do this remarkably well and I leaned into it heavily with a lot of picks. I'm also weaving the story that way with his story that the bloodline is bred to be necromancer-king bodyguards long, long ago, so that's cool.

[sulldawga]

Sorry for another underwhelming battle. I will dial it up even more for the next one and see if I can give you guys a real challenge.

[Rex]

It is the one that you don't expect to give us a challenge that will.

[Marullus]

Part of a Hex/Point crawl is that encounters exist, they aren't always balanced to the party. I am fine with varied difficulty. You recommended we retool to be heavy-hitting warriors, so it is nice to be successful at that angle.

[The_Wanderer]

...You recommended we retool to be heavy-hitting warriors...

Hey! You never told that to the new guy! Lets just say that Sleepy's talents do not lie in this direction.

[Rex]

Good thing I am good at fixing up people then.

[Enoch]

Agreed! If all the planned battles are easy that will become a problem, but there's nothing wrong with wiping the floor with a random encounter!

[sulldawga]

For the party, I am supposed to take the party's total levels (4 PCs at 2nd level each = 4x8 = 32) and compare to the total hit dice of the opponents times total number of attacks.

The last encounter was two 3 HD enemies with one attack. That was 6 HD x 2 attacks = 12. It should have been no surprise to me that it was a rout.

I will adjust. Thanks for being patient with me!

[The_Wanderer]

Do the items give any indication of age? Nothing specific but days old...months old...years old...decades old...centuries...etc.

Typing this comment reminded me...why exactly are we exploring this place? <--Important questions you should ask when joining a new group

[Marullus]

Typing this comment reminded me...why exactly are we exploring this place? <--Important questions you should ask when joining a new group

TL:DR - because it is there.

The overall premise is that the west side of the river was forbidden, unreachable, and unexplored (in this era) before the town built the new fortified bridge. We joined into the rush on opening day to find and acquire good stuff from ancient ruins, unknown monster's hoards, etc. The hexes immediately adjacent to the bridge are for in-rushing settlers and are protected by three new forts at their perimeter. We're adventurers, so are delving in beyond that perimeter. (Whereupon we immediately discovered the land to be occupied by others, and we must decide whether to kill them and take their stuff.) We're exploring this place because we found it, we hope to be the first to have found it, and that there's good stuff.

Gars specifically has personal motivation as an Adventure Archaeologist, so ancient tombs and ruins are totally his thing. He has Know and Magic, can read dead languages, and is very excited right now. Ostensibly, he recruited Lavin and Ciarra (who doesn't love chicks with polearms?) to form "Ruprect's Rangers." You heard we are awesome and sought us out.

[sulldawga]

Good news, bad news.

The bad news is that my other WWN sandbox game at RPG.net has ended. The WWN ruleset was not to their liking and I also blew it by trying to install some downtime rules once they returned to town but instead we lost a lot of momentum. Momentum is huge with PbP games. I'm sure my inability to produce a balanced combat encounter wasn't helping either.

The good news is that hedonismbot from that game is going to join this one. I have added him to the forum.

[Marullus]

Welcome hedonismbot!

[hedonismbot]

Hi all! I'm new to Unseen Servant, but have played PbP games on RPG.net, rpol.net, and discord, so I'm sure I'll figure it out. Let me know if there are any unique features here that I should be aware of immediately!

I'll try to catch up on the reading this weekend and hopefully get a character proposed on/around Monday.

[Rex]

Welcome Aboard hedonismbot!

Keep in mind I think your first 2 posts need to be moderator approved.

[The_Wanderer]

Welcome!