Horizons of the Vast - OOC thread

[ShadowPlay]

Well this is the Horizons of the Vast OOC thread and it's vastly out of character

The Cast of the Vast

GM: @ShadowPlay
Players:
@Evendur
@Ironuyh
@K-Fox
@Mosos

Charter

PC income

50 credits/month

		Charter Details​
Name	Cortexia	Size	1	Unrest	0	Event Chance	15%
Patron Type	Experimental			Max. Item Level	4
Patron	Zenniledie Labs	Resource Dice		Threshold #	1
Initial Focus	Aesthetics	Resource Points		Settlement Dice	0d4	1d6	0d8	0d10	0d12	0d20
		Trait Scores
	Accord	Culture	Economy	Magic	Technology	Free Points
Base	1	0	1	0	1	Base	2
Charter Patron Bonus	0	0	0	0	1	Patron	1
Charter Patron Penalty	0	0	-1	0	0	Spent	3
Charter Focus Bonus	0	1	0	0	0	Remaining	0
Charter Project Bonus	0	0	0	0	0
Settlement Project Bonus	0	0	0	0	0
Total Score	1	1	0	0	2
		Projects
Notes should include Hex Location
Charter Projects	Benefit 1	Benefit 2	Benefit 3	Notes	Settlements				Die	Step
					Name		Location		d6	2
					Completed Projects	Benefit 1	Benefit 2	Benefit 3	Notes

 

[Evendur]

Fair enough

 

[K-Fox]

Also yeah I know it’s a long shot but Estelle is a gentle soul at heart
I thought Cayden’d have a little more faith!

 

[Evendur]

His post was made assuming they've already been bum rushed (not in the good way) and attacked

 

[ShadowPlay]

I don’t think a link is necessary as long as we can see that the roll was made in the dice room.

This

 

[K-Fox]

His post was made assuming they've already been bum rushed (not in the good way) and attacked

Yup fair enough

 

[K-Fox]

At least Estelle is close enough that she can stick ya with a syringe filled with goop to buff your AC or something

 

[Evendur]

Well, you do have a nice, big target that should be easy to hit.

 

[K-Fox]

At least SOME people seem to share the Doc’s sentiment, it seems

 

[Mosos]

Can Ashria land behind the beetle attacking Leda, and attack it?

 

[Evendur]

As a reminder to everyone, because of Cayden's Coordinated shot feat, if you shoot any of them within 10ft of him (reach of the infinity lash) that he isn't blocking your line of sight, you get +1 on ranged attack rolls.

 

[ShadowPlay]

Can Ashria land behind the beetle attacking Leda, and attack it?

Sure

 

[K-Fox]

Sorry Cayden
I wanted to give that buff this round but I’m unfortunately reminded that drawing a weapon is a move action if your base attack bonus is 0…

 

[Evendur]

Eh, meh. It happens.

 

[K-Fox]

Initiative is kinda awkward when I'm the healer/buffer and we're going by rounds... when I declare my actions I have to just guess what happened on the enemy's turn which isn't ideal when I kinda need to know who has been hit and who needs extra stuff immediately.
(for example, I'm buffing Leda but only AFTER the beetles have already gone, so I don't know how injured she will be when I do that action or if that beetle next to her is even still alive...)

Not sure how to fix it but its feeling very clunky to me

 

[Evendur]

Nornally it happens one of two ways.

1) Block initiative: everyone goes as a team basically. Heroes and monstes groups role intitiative, and the highest score goes first. Everyone in the team takes their actions together, then other teams go.

2) Regular initiative, where we go in order. I assume our DM was trying to avoid this to make things go faster, but it does make things more imprecise.

I would be up for either of these personally. I also have some support/ buffing abilities and it would be nice to be able to coordinate things better.

 

[K-Fox]

Nornally it happens one of two ways.

1) Block initiative: everyone goes as a team basically. Heroes and monstes groups role intitiative, and the highest score goes first. Everyone in the team takes their actions together, then other teams go.

2) Regular initiative, where we go in order. I assume our DM was trying to avoid this to make things go faster, but it does make things more imprecise.

I would be up for either of these personally. I also have some support/ buffing abilities and it would be nice to be able to coordinate things better.

Yeah either of those sounds better. As a GM myself I’m also familiar with playing a whole bunch of monsters going on the same turn. Not sure how it might affect game balance but we could at least give it a shot for the next combat if you agree Shadow.

Obviously going in-order is the ideal but that isn’t really in the interest of time unless we can all keep it very quick which… won’t usually be the case.

 

[ShadowPlay]

Of the two options outlined by you, the second with regular individual initiative is not feasible, in a PbP RP. It will slow the whole process down with a factor up to a multiple of the number of characters in the RP. It will make combat more or less a game ender if it takes multiple weeks to get through a few rounds of combat.

The block initiative will seriously handicap characters that have good initiative modifier or conversely hugely benefit those without. But it could be done without much hazzle.

The method that I have proposed does allow for a bit of freedom in choosing your actions. Say, you are the healer and go after a group of monsters. You can condition your actions on what happens on the battlefield. (A: If someone is damaged for more than 5 HP I will heal with .... B: If an enemy is within 20' I will move to them to attack .... C: Otherwise I will do ...)

The main thing however by doing it the way I do is that it allows us to use a map. With individual or block initiative I will need to update the map after each character (or block of characters) that act. That really doesn't seem like a good idea.

 

[ShadowPlay]

...Free action to silently cry as blood leaks out of her legs

Sorry for the aggressive wildlife attacking the good doctor

 

[K-Fox]

fair point with the initiative, but I think it would be easy enough to take all the character’s initiative into account by either averaging all the results, or just threshold-based (example being if 3 of us rolled higher than the monsters, the party block would go first; if most of us got lower, the monsters go first; if it’s 2 and 2 just take whichever character has the largest difference below or above).

If completely necessary I could try to write things with conditions set but it really messes up the flow of how I write… also still limits the options, just gives a few more.

And with the map as long as you just update it yourself and post the image at the end of the monsters turn like usual we can fill in the blanks, that is kinda what we’re having to do anyway since the characters may have moved from what was shown by the time our turn comes up- but doing it by block, we know everything’s position when we decide actions.

Not trying to rock the boat so to speak! Just voicing a big concern, I feel like doing block initiative would help more than hinder us ^.^

 

[Evendur]

Of the two options outlined by you, the second with regular individual initiative is not feasible, in a PbP RP. It will slow the whole process down with a factor up to a multiple of the number of characters in the RP. It will make combat more or less a game ender if it takes multiple weeks to get through a few rounds of combat.

Agreed, I didn't know how familiar K-fox or others might be, so I outlined both traditional ways.

The method that I have proposed does allow for a bit of freedom in choosing your actions. Say, you are the healer and go after a group of monsters. You can condition your actions on what happens on the battlefield. (A: If someone is damaged for more than 5 HP I will heal with .... B: If an enemy is within 20' I will move to them to attack .... C: Otherwise I will do ...)The main thing however by doing it the way I do is that it allows us to use a map. With individual or block initiative I will need to update the map after each character (or block of characters) that act. That really doesn't seem like a good idea.

Not to sound rude, it seems hard to try and predict X different possible futures, especially when random dice rolls are involved.

With the block initiative, the map would maybe just need like, letters across the top and numbers down the side so that we can say "I move to J4". That way, you know where our charcters are for when the monsters go, take their turn, and then post the map so we can take ours. So just 1/round like we are already doing in that regard.

Repeat until one side is out of HP or orgasms (depending on the type of combat xD).

 

[K-Fox]

@Ironuyh Small details but the caustoject isn’t a syringe pistol, as described its energy-based and transports a chemical directly into someone’s bloodstream (would be acid if I was shooting an enemy with it).

Just small things… she knows people hate needles, such a caring Doctor!

 

[Ironuyh]

Ah, gotcha. I'll edit it a bit then.

 

[ShadowPlay]

I've given the initiative stuff a few thoughts. That's why I've been delayed posting. I've decided to finish this combat with how it started, but will update the rules for the future.

How does this sound to everyone:

Initiative will be rolled normally and then split up in three parts:

Fast Players
Monsters
Slow players

The players that have are in the current phase will post in whatever order they like.
I will update the thread with map after each of the player phases.

I hope that will address some of your concerns.

 

[K-Fox]

Oh, I assumed we’d be finishing the combat normally anyway. Thanks for the consideration though.

If I may suggest, splitting the group into fast and slow players seems like it’d have some of the same issues, and requires those two groups + the monsters to post in order which might bring in some of the delay that we’d be worried about with doing initiative in-order.

I still think it’d be easier just to have everyone go either before or after the monsters depending on the average init, and you just need to post the map once every round right after the monsters have gone… since we all move at once it isn’t hard to fill in the details visually.

In terms of higher-initiative characters not having quite as much power, Ashria and Estelle have +3, Cayden +4, and Leda +5 which isn’t a huge difference (though I understand operatives get more of a bonus as they level). Also we could just ask; Is anyone concerned about their initiative if we use the all-players-go-on-same-turn method?

 

[Ironuyh]

Frankly, I'd be fine with us being used as an average and being made to go before/after enemies. Since it seems that all the enemies Initiatives are grouped, it's basically the case that it might as well just be a coinflip between us or them with the averages being taken into account.