[D&D][OOC/Sign-Ups Closed] Valkyria: Scales of War

[Jace Stormkirk]

On 7/21/2017 at 7:30 PM, Cronos5010 said:

@Jace Stormkirk

First of all...why did you post something that is OOC in the IC thread? And second of all the four of you do in fact look quite suspicious, there really isn't anything about two men and a woman walking down the street with a free and unshackled goblin the day after every single goblin in the town that isn't dead or running out of the town or hiding out is either being chased by the city guard or in prison due to the whole "A large horde of goblins just invaded us and for the most part the goblins in the area seem to be bandits and raiders. Also you abducted seven of our people for purpose unknown to anyone but the party members and everyone around that hobgoblin".

 

There is nothing not suspicious about that, mostly because executions are a good way to make the public feel that justice is being served because a decent amount of people just want simple "An eye for an eye" solutions despite that not leading to anything but two blind men.

 

That and why would you be leading a goblin out of town to interrogate them? This is why we have prisons for, and other dark and uncomfortable places where you can interrogate people that isn't their home territory.

 

And let's face it, the only real justification I need is "Oh wait I recognize those people...and they are doing something weird that the guards seem to be ignoring with a free Goblin".

mostly to get you attention. because the goblin may not be in cuffs it IS still being held tight by a BARBARIAN and a wizard drow is close behind. and how do i look suspicious? i AM NOT WITH THEM. i am looking for the monk. as for leading the  goblin out of town it is because of the eye for an eye mentality that we need to leave the city for its safety. prisons can only do so much against an angry mob plus goblins live in caves so a prison is it's natural environment. they are out of place in wide open places and all alone. as for the last part HOW DID YOU SEE US WHEN  THEY LEFT WHILE YOU WERE SHOPPING?

[Yours Truly]

Because the GM specifically mentioned that we saw the three of you in the market square before we started shopping.

 

That is the only justification I need to see all three of you.

 

Also prisons allow you to edit the surroundings to your liking, and bringing a prisoner out of the city by yourselves is a great way to lose a prisoner.

Edited July 22, 2017 by Cronos5010

[Jace Stormkirk]

On 7/21/2017 at 8:36 PM, Cronos5010 said:

Because the GM specifically mentioned that we saw the three of you in the market square before we started shopping.

yes that is true but....

you left us at the market square and when your return you would not see us there. (well maybe me cause i am looking for the monk) you would have no idea were they (or us if you do not see me) went or that they brought (i think dragged would be a better word) a goblin with them

[Yours Truly]

And again, the description is just literally "You see Rei, Yautja and Yissan drag a goblin by its arm as they enter the square from the east ", I am actually sorry about assuming that I could see the goblin be unshackled, but it is still a noteworthy thing either way.

[lifesapity]

If DragonRage would like to take a break for his real life problems, this would be a good spot since I can just say yisan cant find him. Then he can join whenever he wishes. Otherwise when combat comes back up soonish it may cause problems.

[Megagun]

I agree with the idea of dragonrage joining back up later at a better time for him. RL should come first after all. Furthermore, Rusty is right. We should work together as a team. That said, the character Yisan is a bard. And my character Yautja is a barbarian. Both of us are strong interagation choices. A paladin should not be, while a cleric (at least ours) doesn't have the stomach for it. Which to be honest is fine and fits well with said character. (Good job CoolGirl) But, even if I fully agree with Jace and his problems with the paladin character, this has nearly torn the game. We need an in character reconciliation, as well as a party leader.

[Yours Truly]

Actually the bit about the barbarian is provably false, in this party you are the second worst interrogation choice, beaten only by the Monk and his low charisma and non violent demeanor. As the only real advantage you have would be your violent nature...which literally anyone can have RP wise.
A ranking for interrogating would most likely be:
Rei, Yisan, Richard, Althae, Yautja, Maris. Simply because of stats, proficiency, and what their personalities are like, basically Rei would be good due to her skill in using lies to intimidate (And the fact that she will definitely have 20 Charisma no matter what, and will IC become a force of personality by simply becoming stronger), Yisan (If he is taking lore bard he gets expertise and jack of all trades, officially making him one of the best skill monkeys around), Richard (Intimidate and Persuasion along with high charisma, also known as the keys to the kingdom), Althae (The only time she would be there for interrogation would be as a classic "help me help you" technique), Yautja (Middling Charisma and proficiency in Intimidate, and we all know that intimidating someone to do what you want is less effective then persuading them), and Maris (He can lie, but not much else).

 

That and Paladins should be strong interrogation purposes, especially Paladins of Vengeance...have none of you read the Powder Keg of Justice story yet? And have none of you heard of what a classic medieval knight was like? Saying that a Paladin should not be a strong interrogation choice is like saying that a Wizard shouldn't be noticeably stronger than a Fighter at high levels, I mean let's face it, if we are talking about intimidating people; there is nothing against it in my code...and there is nothing helping Yautja be particularly good at it either.

Yisan might succeed more often tho, if he takes Intimidate proficiency (Bards get those right?) as part of his +2 skills from lore bard thing and raises Charisma to the roof and uses one of his four expertise slots on it.

 

tl;dr: The Barbarian is a weaker choice for interrogation unless they have a Con is used for social checks instead of charisma.

Edit: I vote for Maris as the leader, because that would be hilarious.

Edited July 22, 2017 by Cronos5010

[DragonRage]

I'm back and confused.  So very confused.  It sounds like something went boom tho.

[LucidRain]

I came over here just to see the 'barbarians are good at Intimidate check' claim.

I have nothing to say, but I'll be saving this for future use. Keep calm and carry on.

[Yours Truly]

@DragonRage Chaos, lawful stupidity and Stupid Goodness, and we are apparently thinking of splitting the party, would you rather go with the barbarian, the bard and the sorcerer or the Cleric, and the Paladin? :p.

Edit: In all seriousness something that makes no sense whatsoever happened, so you are right to be confused...do you still have the time to play btw?

Edited July 22, 2017 by Cronos5010

[rustytengo]

Look first and for most is this no matter what resorting to out right attacking a PC should never be an option....well unless there evil arch wizard bent on ruleing over everyone in a kingdom of the dead. 

 

Further more a paladin of vengeance is basically Batman. 

 

But yeah let's try to do our best and move past this because if we can't the game isn't going to be fun for any of us. 

[Megagun]

Allow me to reiterate my points more clearly. I am uncertain at this point ICly if Ragash is a Sorcerer or a wizard. (And also uncertain OOCly purely because I don't remember lol) That being said, yes a Sorcerer is a great Speech. Bard is also an obvious Speech. Barbarian can be a decent Speech. Cleric should be but the given situation/character personality is probably best to avoid intimidation. Punching a thing is NOT intimidation. The threat of pain is far worse than the actual pain. Now, moving on from this, a paladin who insults his teammates, attacks prisoners, abandons fights, leads civilians into ambushes and gets them killed....should probably rethink his position and life choices. 

 

Now, fact is this. Our characters know little about each other and the motivations of the others. As players, we know even less. There are bound t be hiccups among us. We should have been talking ideas through on this forum when it came to the interrogation and how to properly handle it. 

 

I am currently not voting who should lead. But, I will state these facts about my character as to why Yautja might make a good choice.

 

1. Served as an officer in a halfling war against goblins several years ago. This has given him a proper hatred and appreciation for their tactics and methods.

 

2. Hates to fight. Meaning, if he believes a combat to be pointless, not serve our objective, or not prevent some innocent from dieing, he will find a way around it.

 

3. Can fight, and is good at it. Proven.

 

4. Is wise enough to know that others have knowledge he does not and is not against asking advice, seeking help, and getting party input. However, as an officer, he understands that sometimes, such things have to wait until after the or throwing firebombs is dead.

 

I also have no problem not being in charge 

[Jace Stormkirk]

On 7/22/2017 at 2:58 PM, Megagun said:

am uncertain at this point ICly if Ragash is a Sorcerer or a wizard.

unless i am mistaken i believe Ragash is a blue dragon linage sorcerer because she was described as a "blue skinned drow"

 

as for who should be the leader i will put down pros and cons for yisan

 

pro: is level headed and does not crack under pressure.                        con: slow to fully trust others due to his past

       due to his training as a bard he is able to use every skill there is.           needs to be mostly out of combat to perform his best

       always has a backup plan                                                                  has issues with nobillity

       knows he needs a party to survive                                                     will leave a party or party member(s) if he deems them a burden on his survival

[Yours Truly]

I am sorry, but I am entirely sure that no kind of Paladin would be rethinking his life choices for choosing to serve and protect instead of charging blindly towards an Ogre , and when have I in the entirety of the IC insulted my party members more than in one bit where I said that the Barbarian is "a bastard" as part of my ploy to convince the hobgoblin that you are badass enough to be an actual threat?.

 

Also are you forgetting the bit where I decided that since I was nowhere near the fight in the first place, and that since I was helping to escort literally everyone inside of the bar who wasn't a PC that the whole idea of attacking an Ogre who is being handled by a sorcerer, a Barbarian, and almost a full squad of guards instead of sticking with the mostly unarmed and definitely unarmored civilians I actually promised to protect is more important? Because while that is less glamorous than attacking an Ogre and barely winning with the help of an entire squad of unfortunately expendable guards, it is well..just about as heroic.

 

"Leading a bunch of civilians into an ambush" Now let me make this absolutely clear, unless the GM specifically added in an ambush there just because I decided to protect the civilians, that ambush would have been there in the first place and killed a larger amount of civilians, and you know what the worst part would be? We would know that we could have prevented it if we didn't chase after some silly heroics!

 

 

And no Barbarians have never been a particularly great speaker or even a particularly good speaker in any edition of D&D, and they are always considered to be worse at speaking than an equivalent level Paladin or in fact, any Cha dependant characters because realistically unless you roll for stats (In which case I'll roll my eyes since the following is very unlikely) you just won't have the charisma for any speaking, this has been true since 1e when the class was first introduced and everything was still a bit wonky, and it is still true in 5e which to me seems like it is trying to harken back to the "Good old days" of 2e.

 

In fact I'll continue by stating that this party cannot support a leader, and it cannot generate one without some contrived IC circumstances, as we are stuck with a choice between an incompetent leader, or a leader that a third of the party hates. I suggest that we go with an unstructured anarchy as it is the option that makes the most sense when we bundle up a bunch of highly opinionated free spirits together and call them a party.

 

But failing that, I will now commence my pros and cons for @DragonRage's character Maris.

 

Pros:

Wise and knowledgeable about the criminal underground.

Tough and self sufficient, won't ask the party for too much.

Humble and willingness to serve for a greater purpose, probably won't cause any interparty conflict and won't use the leadership opportunity as an excuse to fulfill his ego.

Neutrality, which in here is defined as an IC unwillingness to join any side in the interparty conflict and lacking in enough extreme opinions to trigger any party members

 

I will think of more Pros and actual Cons later.

[Megagun]

No offence to @DragonRage, but, he has not exactly shown much of a presence in the game. Also...(my fists can't hurt it so... I'll tell the ogre throwing explosives at people to forgo his worldly possessions, then run away to the paladin.) 

 

And just to point out...am I even close to being the best at Intimidate. Nope, not even close. But, I have used it's functions successfully at multiple times in this game.

 

In my (highly opinionated) opinion, the safer option would have been, get the civilians inside a safe building, (plenty around) and either, stay with them to keep them safe or help the party with the ogre. Then, have full party help in the escort. This would have served many functions, keep civilians safe, not split the party too much (1, maybe 2 if the cleric runs inside too) rather than half the party and a third the guards.

 

That being said, I have digressed into a shouting match. Which has not been my purpose. My purpose is simply this. Do we continue as a party, united in the task before us, proving the value of hiring "adventurers" to the town. Or, do we split the party as you yourself have indicated is the direction of events? Inspite of the fact Yisan seeking the monk, and Ragash going off to get the lovebirds. 

 

I will admit this, I am partly to blame for the loss of cohesion. However, both Yautja, and I the player are fully capable of realizing that what has already happened once, should be prevented. That a team will be needed to succeed on this mission. 

 

So, the options I see before me are as follows.

1. Play as a group, working things out, discussing ideas. 

2. Select a team leader, who may or may not (depending on individual) take input from the party.

or apparently your option...

3. Anarchy, change nothing and let the game progress as it has, only building more anamosity amongst the players, as each does what they feel is best and ultimately lead to TPK.

Edited July 23, 2017 by Megagun

[Yours Truly]

Hindsight is always 20-20, everyone knows that attacking the ogre is a very viable and in fact perfectly safe option now, but when we first set off for the market square all we know is that none of the buildings in the area would be safe enough, and that our only hope of getting to a safe zone is to head to the market square and be surrounded by fortifications and members of the town guard who will do their best to protect the group.

 

And the thing is, we now know that the invading force had several ogres carrying caskets of alchemist's fire that they are using to set buildings and people on fire, and even if we stick inside of a building we would still have a very good chance of needing to get out of a potentially burning building.

 

So why is that the "safest" option when all of our powers combined still failed to keep all of the civilians alive anyway?.

 

I mean if we are talking about "Wise leaders" I still think that Maris would be the best option, they demonstrated their Wisdom by not choosing to fight against an enemy they can't do anything about, and instead going out to find something they can actually do, which is help by fighting other party members.

 

That and they are the only completely and utterly neutral party that will help prevent this from turning into what you wrongly define as "Anarchy".

 

Option three is still the best option because the extreme you mentioned wouldn't happen in the first place, the only people in this group that has actively attacked another party member would be the two of you actually, both Yisan and Yautja, literally everyone else has yet to even consider attacking anyone in the party.

Edited July 23, 2017 by Cronos5010

[rustytengo]

okay to clear things up Rei is a wild Magic Sorcerer 

 

look can we just get past this things where done and its over. we had no clue how anything would of worked out no matter what we did. so please let this go.

 

and lets face it at this point both IC none of our characters will agree on a leader mainly because no one had proven there self as one and do to the party being charisma based all the characters are going to have strong personalities. 

 

Edited July 23, 2017 by rustytengo

[Megagun]

5 hours ago, Cronos5010 said:

I suggest that we go with an unstructured anarchy as it is the option that makes the most sense when we bundle up a bunch of highly opinionated free spirits together and call them a party.

 

4 hours ago, Megagun said:

3. Anarchy, change nothing and let the game progress as it has, only building more anamosity amongst the players, as each does what they feel is best and ultimately lead to TPK.

 

3 hours ago, Cronos5010 said:

That and they are the only completely and utterly neutral party that will help prevent this from turning into what you wrongly define as "Anarchy".

[Megagun]

Stupid phone. Ok my point is, how am I the one miss-using the word Anarchy....when my reference was to your use to begin with. 

 

Next...half the party already believed we could handle it. Simply put, and I am just as much at fault as the rest, all of the difficulties could have been avoided if like any other group of players, we talked our options through. There is a valid point on the "whose in charge" argument given the problems with our characters as stated by @rustytengo. 

 

So, new inquiry. Since gathering the party up has already been put into play, can we agree to at least having either us as players talking things through here, or our characters talking through things there? To atleast be able to discuss ideas, tactics, what should be done, and the like.

[Jace Stormkirk]

On 7/23/2017 at 0:09 AM, Cronos5010 said:

which is help by fighting other party members.

i do hope this is not what you wanted to say. i do believe that you wanted to say "which is help by fighting with other party members"

 

On 7/23/2017 at 0:09 AM, Cronos5010 said:

So why is that the "safest" option when all of our powers combined still failed to keep all of the civilians alive anyway?.

the only time all of our power was together was when we were in the tavern after that you split party

 

On 7/23/2017 at 0:09 AM, Cronos5010 said:

Option three is still the best option because the extreme you mentioned wouldn't happen in the first place, the only people in this group that has actively attacked another party member would be the two of you actually, both Yisan and Yautja, literally everyone else has yet to even consider attacking anyone in the party.

i only cast a spell that would have made you laugh,no damage at all. yautja only tried to take you away from the defenseless hobgoblin you were punching cause it was pointless, no damage would have happened 

 

On 7/22/2017 at 9:48 PM, Cronos5010 said:

whole idea of attacking an Ogre who is being handled by a sorcerer, a Barbarian, and almost a full squad of guards

i was there also cause i knew in order for this to work they needed more people to kill it faster so it would kill less people

 

On 7/22/2017 at 9:48 PM, Cronos5010 said:

so are you forgetting the bit where I decided that since I was nowhere near the fight in the first place

we all came out the same door so everyone was at one point just as close to the ogre

[Yours Truly]

Right I am going to address the both of you at the same time because let's face it, your points are close enough that I might as well be talking to a single strawman by this point.

Are we nitpicking grammar now? Because if we are then I find the fact that you very rarely capitalize the first letter in your sentences/paragraphs to be quite disturbing, but in all seriousness I feel that this discussion is completely and utterly ridiculous by this point, as we all know using valuable resources to attack other party members is also pointless, because unlike me your actions failed to prove or cause anything to happen, me punching the hobgoblin revealed the motive for his crime and cost nothing, you casting a spell on me failed to do much of anything and cost you a valuable first level spell slot, it seems like one action was worth a lot more than the other one right? Because it does.

 

 

But anyway to continue with the argument about whether or not attacking the ogre head on would have been worth it to "save lives" or "to do it faster" my answer is still no, if a barbarian, a sorcerer who has spent their entire starting character resources to be better at dealing damage, and a bard who can at the very least serve as a useful distraction can't do it with an almost full squad of guards, then we weren't going to do it with a monk that has a very good chance of dying in one hit, a Paladin that doesn't have access to his nova skill, and a cleric wearing no form of armor and wielding no form of shield who is focused entirely on healing and dealing 1d6 damage per round isn't going to help much.

 

There was one door, but rather unfortunately one group was composed mostly out of vulnerable civilians who a certain someone decided was worth protecting more than the squad of guards who specifically charged the ogre to distract it from said group of vulnerable civilians, now let us not forget that we had a grand total of three NPCs in that group, NPCs that were mostly lightly armored at best and not very well armed or trained, and we should not forget that the ambush that said group of civilians found difficult with an addition of Three PCs could certainly have been too much for them to handle without heavy losses, sure we lost less than a finger's worth of people even with the help of said PCs, but who knows if any of them would make it alive if we hadn't helped? Would there even be a surprisingly cheerful small child in the market square after you killed the Ogre? I mean sure you can always say "No The GM wouldn't be that depressing" in response, but the mere possibility that a child is in danger should, and was enough to convince three different PCs that this group of civilians was in fact worth protecting.

Right okay then so saying the word "Anarchy" was wrong, people associate that word with idiots running around attacking their former friends to get their valuables these days, a better word would be an Inoffensive Decentralized Direct Democracy, which means that we still have no leaders, and we still have the freedom to do what we want, but that we can always talk about said actions with the other party members. So for once Megagun is saying something OOCly that I agree with, all of this would have been a non problem if other people actually bothered to respond to what I was saying as opposed to ignoring everything and grumbling about it afterwards.

[Megagun]

Except, no OOC conversation was started until @rustytengostarted it. For which I am very grateful. Yautja grumbling about not liking what you did, yeah that's his character style. 

 

But, the point remains, are we ready to move forward?

[Jace Stormkirk]

On 7/23/2017 at 11:14 AM, Cronos5010 said:

me punching the hobgoblin revealed the motive for his crime and cost nothing,

i could have done the same without violence

 

On 7/23/2017 at 11:14 AM, Cronos5010 said:

Are we nitpicking grammar now?

only when it interferes with clarity

 

On 7/23/2017 at 11:14 AM, Cronos5010 said:

But anyway to continue with the argument about whether or not attacking the ogre head on would have been worth it to "save lives" or "to do it faster" my answer is still no, if a barbarian, a sorcerer who has spent their entire starting character resources to be better at dealing damage, and a bard who can at the very least serve as a useful distraction can't do it with an almost full squad of guards, then we weren't going to do it with a monk that has a very good chance of dying in one hit, a Paladin that doesn't have access to his nova skill, and a cleric wearing no form of armor and wielding no form of shield who is focused entirely on healing and dealing 1d6 damage per round isn't going to help much.

we would also have an archer, the bar man and 2 more guards. on average ogres only have  52 hp ac of 10 and having that many more people hitting it would have killed it a lot sooner

 

On 7/23/2017 at 11:14 AM, Cronos5010 said:

There was one door, but rather unfortunately one group was composed mostly out of vulnerable civilians who a certain someone decided was worth protecting more than the squad of guards who specifically charged the ogre to distract it from said group of vulnerable civilians, now let us not forget that we had a grand total of three NPCs in that group, NPCs that were mostly lightly armored at best and not very well armed or trained, and we should not forget that the ambush that said group of civilians found difficult with an addition of Three PCs could certainly have been too much for them to handle without heavy losses, sure we lost less than a finger's worth of people even with the help of said PCs, but who knows if any of them would make it alive if we hadn't helped? Would there even be a surprisingly cheerful small child in the market square after you killed the Ogre? I mean sure you can always say "No The GM wouldn't be that depressing" in response, but the mere possibility that a child is in danger should, and was enough to convince three different PCs that this group of civilians was in fact worth protecting.

but you had no idea if you were going the right way. if we all ran then one unfortunate turn into a blockade of goblins or rubble would have been disastrous 

[Megagun]

I would also point out, killing the ogre sooner would have saved several lives, including the guard captain. Those would have been more men to fight for the defense of this town, should it come to that. But, can we please move on

[Yours Truly]

Just now, Jace Stormkirk said:

i could have done the same without violence

 

only when it interferes with clarity

 

we would also have an archer, the bar man and 2 more guards. on average ogres only have  52 hp ac of 10 and having that many more people hitting it would have killed it a lot sooner

 

but you had no idea if you were going the right way. if we all ran then one unfortunate turn into a blockade of goblins or rubble would have been disastrous 

Did you know that for sure? The only time you actually talked to the hobgoblin in an attempt to convince them to tell you something all you managed to do was fail to get any answers to your questions and in fact none of the first two goblins we tried to interact with seemed receptive to your tactics at all, up until we found that one little goblin that was completely and utterly fine with the idea of spilling his guts because unlike the other goblins, he actually has no love for the Red hand.

 

And wait a minute...you wanted the civilian NPCs to attack the OGRE and abandon the unarmed civilians? Seriously? Why would you want to use mob tactics against a thing that can set a large section of the ground on fire? And why would you want to put two more guards, a bar man, and an archer in the line of danger in order to save their lives from the ogre and the goblins riding him? That...makes no real sense whatsoever, I feel like you should have used better grammar for that sentence, it's interfering with the clarity a bit.

 

But in all seriousness we are not supposed to metagame, yes I as a player knows that an Ogre "only" has 52 HP and an easily hit AC of 10, but I also know that it has a high strength bonus, and that it could potentially kill me in a single hit like it almost killed the halfling barbarian, and I also know that I don't know anything about the NPC's stats, but I do know that they are at best wearing medium armor ICly and OOCly, and that the barman has a daughter to protect and no real reason to join in the melee against the ogre, and that the two guards were assigned to help the NPCs get from the bar and to the market square. For all we know the barman, the Elf, and the two guards would see that protecting a bunch of civilians heading to the market square would have been more important than attacking the ogre like almost an entire dozen people were doing.

 

And the thing is I was led to the market square by two town guards who had just patrolled the area, and a barman who has presumably lived here for all of his life...at the very least the two guards would have known about any rubble, and we did meet up against a blockade of goblins technically, and we proceeded to kill them.

 

4 minutes ago, Megagun said:

I would also point out, killing the ogre sooner would have saved several lives, including the guard captain. Those would have been more men to fight for the defense of this town, should it come to that. But, can we please move on

I would also like to point out that abandoning the civilians would have cost even more lives, possibly including the small child we were obviously supposed to protect.