/vx/ - Videogames and Paranormal

>>193949
You have put in the legwork and I respect that. Alright, go for it.
>Unless I'm gravely mistaken with the damage of a torpedo
Torpedoes are designed to sink ships. That said, we have no idea on how capable the pirates' torpedoes are (you can just ask them about that) and the warhead we took from the airplane's torpedo has no detonation source for itself, being a sort of plastic explosive.

>>193950
>and the warhead we took from the airplane's torpedo has no detonation source for itself
.... Then why did we bring it?

>>193951
We were going to use it as an "it's the only way to be sure" option by blowing up the Fellow Traveler. The explosive yield is far in excess of the explosive harpoon, so if we get it into a vulnerable state it should work.

>>193952
The torpedo does nothing if we have no way to detonate it.

>>193950
>being a sort of plastic explosive
If it's actually like plastic explosive, it would be detonated by electricity; slingshot some fresh 9v batteries at it.

Sorry, sorry just passing through.
But if you need a bit more juice, maybe wire about sixteen 9v in series (or parallel? One builds amperage, the other voltage) duct tape them to a crossbow bolt that way, and have metal probes sticking out as the bolt's head.

If you need to be sure, nuke it from orbit; assuming you have a ballista for the harpoon, duct tape the arrow to stick out a bit from the head of the harpoon. Slather the plane's explosive in maple syrup or whatever sticky stuff you can find, catapult it at the side of the extraplaner final boss, then shoot the detonator at it via the harpoon. Batteries discharge into the PE beginning its rapid decomposition a split second before the more conventional explosive is detonated, causing all torpedo devices to explode in full simulcast.

Or shoot it with a laser? Do you have lasers? Maybe forcibly redirect the Kostromo's radar boom to dump its full million-watt sweep straight down at the tinfoil covered explosive pancake. Even if it doesn't cause the pancake to explosively decompose, it should at the very least cause some decomposition of Sleeping Beauty's current physical form, being as that energy output is (probably) not that far from a microwave oven's wavelength.

2nd image was the best I could find for an example of 'wing razors'. With that I'm out for the day so have fun discussing exploding pancakes and undead dueling whales!

>>193954
When I get to lvl 12, I'm going to make my explosives haunt-shifted so that they intelligently fire and detonate themselves ala poltergeists.

>>193954
>explosive
Well the harpoon has an explosive harpoon, which should set off the warhead. Alternatively, we could find the equivalent of a car battery and set up an improvised switch. However that would take a skill check and I'm hesitant considering the danger.
>Do you have lasers?
No but it's possible a magical weapon might be onboard the Kostroma.
>Maybe forcibly redirect the Kostromo's radar boom to dump its full million-watt sweep straight down at the tinfoil covered explosive pancake.
Fun idea but I doubt any of the characters have the technical knowledge for that. We'd also need enough power.

>>193957
>I doubt any of the characters have the technical knowledge for that
How would we even quantify this? We're all 3.5e classes, and the only non-NPC core character classes with (Engineering) as a class skill are Bard and Wizard.

It would work in d20 modern, but d20 modern character classes have a lot more skill points per level than most 3.5e characters.

I waited a week to see if I could get into a better mood. It didn’t work.

>>193897
>I never play 'dating sims' because they're dumb
Well fuck you too

>Every group I've been with, player or DM, has been of the murderhobo variety
We don’t do that here.

>>193901
:(

>>193905
>What’s holding you back from playing Amber as a full magical bard?
I had a whole set for a spiritual, magical awakening of Amber’s powers and… it was ignored. If he doesn’t want to he doesn’t want to. Which I guess is fine.

>>193907
>I don’t care about yaks
The point was to rescue rich equestrian emigres in Yakyakistan, not ponies. But people don’t really have any interest in the quest ideas anyways so it doesn’t matter, really.

>Gloomy (100 gp) slave
NPCs are underrated as loot and equipment

>>193919
>you're playing Call of Cthulhu at best
Well fuck you too

This is a comparatively low magic setting. Spellcasters as enemies tend to be more of a specialist class or the actual boss-villians.

>>193922
>GM Pony, like me, has never heard of these classes
Correct. Everyone, please take note of this. I don’t really care about class building. It does not intrigue my autism. If I were building a character, it would likely interest me, but I’m not and so it does not. The question of “will a Molotov cocktail filled with diesel light effectively?” is more interesting to me than whatever class

>>193919
>if you're all roleplaying as fursuiting humans I want out
And if you’re going to be rude as fuck all the time for no fucking reason constantly like you have in these several snide little shitty remarks then I want nothing to do with you. Jesus Christ, I’m not a student in school and I’m not a minimum wage service employee. I don’t have to put up with people being shitty to me, and so I don’t.

>But we are all shitty, extremely rude people on 4chan or roll20 or discord or whatever shithole I am familiar with
There is a reason why everyone there hates everyone, hates the website, hates themselves, and hates their lives

>>193930
>I get the distinct sense this recent line of questioning has accidentally killed all discussion by the cause of how awkward the air in the room just got.
Correct. When I read your above comments I thought to myself that I should put the phone down and not respond that day annd wait until I’ve calmed down, so I can be more polite and just generally be better. Unfortunately that didn’t work.

>>193930
>>193936
I had a whole rant on why I hate flying characters and just generally don’t like flight, but honestly, what I hate is specifically when flight is used to scout ahead into new areas by a single character. I could explain why but… why?

>>193937
>I mean, we tried that, but here we are all these weeks later with no progress.
:(

>If we go back to debating who goes where, we might just spend another three weeks arguing
>I don't actually care what we do in the end.

>>193939
>Imo, it's a bit late to care about "balance" when races that fly at-will at lvl 1 are on the table
No shit

>>193950
>the warhead we took from the airplane's torpedo has no detonation source for itself,
Why would you not take the contact detonator from the original torpedo?

Also remember the torpedo boat has four torpedos

>>193954
Ooh, these are clever

>>193959
>I had a whole set for a spiritual, magical awakening of Amber’s powers and… it was ignored. If he doesn’t want to he doesn’t want to. Which I guess is fine.
I do want to...but can she be a wide-eyed, clueless mare for a couple more in-game days? I know MLP tends to have magical powers manifest within a very short time, but Amber has not had the chance to do much as her mundane self. Why not live a mostly ordinary life for a short amount of time, have her go on a couple short adventures, have her talent noticed, and get some music lessons? It would be very much worthwhile and at the end of it she would be a clear-cut bard. All it takes is time, but roleplay is fun as it is. At least it is for me.

>The point was to rescue rich equestrian emigres in Yakyakistan, not ponies.
I shouldn't have been so negative. Rereading it, it sounds appropriate for Cavaliere to embark on and like a fun quest. Les Meridianes is also fun if it's rewritten slightly. Rather than have foreign nations intervene, let conflicts and power struggles be more domestic in nature, with Cavaliere having to resolve this mess of a situation.

>what I hate is specifically when flight is used to scout ahead into new areas by a single character
Noted. Was it bad that Cavaliere looked in the aft deckhouse of the Kostroma? Flying scouts are fairly intuitive, but I get how they can throw a wrench into quest design. It's the easy way out of gathering intelligence compared to asking locals, for example. But you could introduce downsides to flight. Maybe Baltimare has a strict "no flight by unauthorized creatures" law or the quest is in daylight where fliers are an easy target.

>Why would you not take the contact detonator from the original torpedo?
Maybe we did actually. I'll have to go back and check. All I remember is that the explosive is soft and pliable.

>>193959
>>193960
>I had a whole set for a spiritual, magical awakening of Amber’s powers and… it was ignored. If he doesn’t want to he doesn’t want to. Which I guess is fine.
Me when Amber:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2YExuGLJ9ns
>But people don’t really have any interest in the quest ideas anyways so it doesn’t matter, really.
I am interested.
>NPCs are underrated as loot and equipment
Agreed. That's why I want to collect wild undead like they're Pokemon.
>I had a whole rant on why I hate flying characters and just generally don’t like flight
Agreed. The balance of flight one of my biggest dilemmas in pony-based ttrpgs, but the wider ponyfinder/homebrew/etc community has me beat, so I just try to accept it.
>what I hate is specifically when flight is used to scout ahead into new areas by a single character. I could explain why but… why?
I splitting the party just complicates everything in general, especially if it's done with movement abilities where the rest of the party can't just rush in.
>:(
Sorry... I was being excessively negative due to stress that week.
>This is a comparatively low magic setting. Spellcasters as enemies tend to be more of a specialist class or the actual boss-villians.
Yeah, it's a bit like d20 Modern Arcana.

It's an interesting blend, because Equestria is a very high magic setting in the show, but this is more of a down-to-earth realistic military setting. I have come to appreciate the nuance and the intrigue, despite my character being a bit of a sore thumb in it.
>>193960
>I know MLP tends to have magical powers manifest within a very short time, but Amber has not had the chance to do much as her mundane self.
You are a Bard. Your powers are inherently esoteric. You only need a moment of inspiration:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rQVZZ8ktaew
Literally just sing in public, or climb a mountain and sing into the wind to attune yourself with the primal music of the universe.
You are the character that kings look to for advice in times of crisis. You are the one who gives desperate armies hope in the face of grim odds. You are a legendary warrior-poet chosen by the gods to sing legends of heraldry. You are a peerless tactician who's presence on the battlefield changes the course of history. You a the keeper of the sacred words of creation, weaving fate itself with your voice. You have the power to start and end wars. Animals bow to your glory. Angels descend from heaven to hear you sing. You are a legendary polymath, collector of stories, and savant in the arts. The world is your oyster.

>>193960
>Was it bad that Cavaliere looked in the aft deckhouse of the Kostroma?
When I was planning on writing a 1000 word essay on why I hated flying (it was always specifically scouting and not flying itself), the key example was going to be Brie. And especially, Brie scouting on the island. Cavaliere on the ship was not as bad, in no small part because I expected him to do it.

The main thing I wanted on the ship was for the party to encounter the torpedo boat, for which, I needed them to approach around the ladders. I expected fliers to just skip the whole process, but I figured that since most of the party cannot fly they’d need to go up the ladders anyways.

When Cavaliere scouted I wanted him to encounter… well, kind of nothing. It’s a derelict ship on a dark, rainy night. There are no people on it. Just signs that people were there, and they left in a hurry. If Cavaliere encountered anyone, it would have destroyed the derelict atmosphere. Unfortunately because Cavaliere didn’t encounter anyone, Posey assumed that almost the whole ship, if not the whole ship, was actually abandoned… which isn’t what I wanted to imply. There was a description of blood on the deck but it wasn’t noticed.

What I did dislike about Cavaliere’s scouting was the infirmary room. I had it as empty. That was a massive kissed opportunity. If I did it again there absolutely would have been a weird, wounded pony there, presumably an early victim of the Traveller. Also I would have added more health potions. And both of these would have been added if the infirmary were visited later. But now, because it’s already been visited, I’m locked down to that description.

I hate scouting because:
1. I have to describe the whole fucking area. That isn’t always easy. It often is 500 words to describe a new area.And then when the main party arrives… do I just copy paste the description again?
2. It locks me into what is in an area. It doesn’t actually give me time to think of what is in an area. It doesn’t let me add stuff later
3. It spoils cinematic reveals. This is hard to describe, but Sea Stone on the beach is the best example
4. It spoils ambushes and surprises generally

>Les Meridianes is also fun if it's rewritten slightly.
Lee Meridianes was less of a quest idea and more of a region where quests can take place. There was going to be a griffin princess who is royal blood of Aquelia, trying to hold onto power in the islands while in exile. An equestrian captain who is now the fillibusterer president of one island. There was an entire series of encounters involving a pony-eating leviathan that was damn near a myth to the natives, not entirely believed in by the equestrians, and could actually be directly encountered in… I had three different situations. That really was a whole planned quest. It got partly reused in this one, but still. And there was going to be a whole heart of darkness quest of an island owned by an equestrian pineapple magnate who turned it into a pineapple plantation with Kirin workers. But he’s made a cult of the pineapple and the whole island is dominated by the pineapple cult.

>>193962
And also in the Meridianes there was supposed to be a rebel group of natives (I assumed donkeys at first, but I think EAW implies ponies) who are genocidal communists who want to ethnically cleanse the islands of foreigners.

It’s islands. Every island is different. This island is run by griffins, this one by equestrian pirates, this one by natives, this one by the pineapple cult, and so forth. Also hippogriffs show up

>>193962
>I have to describe the whole fucking area. That isn’t always easy. It often is 500 words to describe a new area.And then when the main party arrives… do I just copy paste the description again?
>2. It locks me into what is in an area. It doesn’t actually give me time to think of what is in an area. It doesn’t let me add stuff later
>3. It spoils cinematic reveals. This is hard to describe, but Sea Stone on the beach is the best example
>4. It spoils ambushes and surprises generally
Ugh, tell me about it. It's quite the struggle.
I hate describing things when I'm unprepared, because I always forget something and then either have to commit to it or retcon my descriptions.
It can help if you type out your descriptions ahead of time though. Basically just divide your dungeon into a numbered list which each room having it's description paragraphs and encounter level. Basically try to just plan ahead as much as possible, write out your encounters/rooms in a compartmentalized fashion like an official module would write them.

In my campaign, I also have a Psion that automatically detects nonmindless creatures within 40 ft, and a Druid who likes to cast Detect X Creatures spells, which often forces me to describe the creatures they detect before I get to describe the room itself, which is counterintuitive and messes up my attempts at dramatic reveals. I'm still trying to figure out how to handle that.
The Psion also has an army of enthralled Rogues (they were pirates) that he is telepathically linked to and can send ahead for scouting, but doesn't do it all that often because he doesn't want them to be killed (how gracious).

>>193958
>How would we even quantify this?
One day we'll sort all this out. For now though, it's safe to say none of the PCs have the know-how. Maybe one of the scientists do.
>>193961
>You only need a moment of inspiration
You're right. GM Pony, if you want to come up with such a moment I'm all ears.
>What I did dislike about Cavaliere’s scouting was the infirmary room.
Awwww
I had no idea about any of that. I was specifically looking for medical supplies because we had none. I do like the desolate atmosphere you developed.
>That isn’t always easy.
I love these descriptions but I know how hard they are for you. Have you tried using AI to make the process easier? You could revise it as needed.
>Lee Meridianes was less of a quest idea and more of a region where quests can take place.
I like Baltimare and I would hate to leave but this is a great concept.

>>193965
>GM Pony, if you want to come up with such a moment I'm all ears.
Ngl, it low-key sounds like more of a thing for you to just commit to and roleplay. You can describe your own spiritual epiphany. It could be something as simple as contemplating the setting sun while humming a ballad. You don't need to wait for an opportunity to decide to take being a hero seriously.

>>193963
I would be interested, although I was also planning on setting up shop in Baltimare, so maybe I would need some kind of hook from the University to send Posey over so that she would change locations.
Posey has only been in this country for about a week in universe. It feels a bit awkward for her to move so quickly, but I will do my best to comply with whatever direction you would like to take the story in.

>>193964
>just already have everything in the next area prepared
Yes but… I don’t have everything in the next area prepared. I almost never have every tiny detail of a next area prepared before hand. Maybe most of what’s there but I often add things or change them.

Another thing is that aerial scouting of an area is a really fucking good way to get your character killed in a campaign where rifles are the most common enemy weapon, and machines guns are often present. There’s no cover or camouflage in the air. There’s a reason that in modern combat, going prone or even digging trenches are common. It’s better to be below ground than above it.m

>>193965
I really hate that the bed was empty. That’s the biggest regret.

>Use AI to write
No.

There probably is quite a bit more I could do with Baltimare. Really the leviathan was the only very developed part of the Meridianes idea. I had three distinct scenarios involving it.

>>193967
Yeah, fair enough

>>193960
>can she be a wide-eyed, clueless mare for a couple more in-game days?
Okay…

She is really cute like that

>>193968
>Yes but… I don’t have everything in the next area prepared. I almost never have every tiny detail of a next area prepared before hand. Maybe most of what’s there but I often add things or change them.
Yes, it is easier said than done. I say it as advice, but I don't always follow it. Pic related.
It really does help to plan ahead though, if you can find the time (I often can't). Most challenges in DMing can be lessened by planning things out more. It also lessens the stress of having to type things out on the spot.
It's part of why I usually just stick with pre-written modules in my games, because my work schedule makes it hard to find time to write stuff out in detail.
>I really hate that the bed was empty. That’s the biggest regret.
I mean, it's not too late to say that there was an unconscious pony that fell behind/under the bed unnoticed. Nobody would complain.
There could also be another infirmary on the Kostroma with the same thing.
>>193965
>Have you tried using AI to make the process easier?
Don't do it. It's a trap. I tried it, and it creates more problems than it solves.

>>193960
>>193969
>I do want to...but can she be a wide-eyed, clueless mare for a couple more in-game days?
Tbh, a way to do this could be just to recreate her character sheet as a lvl 1 character, and then reinvest all of her lvl 5 XP into XP related mechanics such as virtual Bloodline Levels, inborn gifts, prestige race altercations, and possibly a bought-off template with dormant abilities (Firesouled would be appropriate). That way she could go on lvl 1 adventures, but still have an enormous amount of "hidden potential", but would also be able to level up very quickly when joining the party.

I was actually planning something similar for Gloomy, who needs to be low level to be my Apprentice.

>>193971
Wait, actually, this is sort of what I did for Posey, and I still regret it because I deleveled myself mostly just so that my character would have an excuse to look sexy while undead...

>>193969
>She is really cute like that
She is
>>193971
>Tbh, a way to do this could be just to recreate her character sheet as a lvl 1 character, and then reinvest all of her lvl 5 XP into XP related mechanics such as virtual Bloodline Levels, inborn gifts, prestige race altercations, and possibly a bought-off template with dormant abilities (Firesouled would be appropriate).
What...? I don't know what those are. No offense but this sounds metagamey. If Amber got these powers and then leveled up she would be overpowered, even if she was a level or two behind.

>>193959
>this recent line of questioning
INcorrect
The line of questioning I was talking over was Kira asking if Posey had a soul.

FWIW, I've never played an online game. In-person only, with people I knew. That way I could get a feel for the world, for the DM, before putting a bunch of time into a character that would be cockblocked at every scene and roll.

>This is a comparatively low magic setting.
Yeah I'm out.

>Ooh, these are clever
So, am I dumb or am I clever?
Don't know, don't care; I have my answers I wouldn't like actually playing here.

>>193974
Bye Nigger

>>193973
D’awww

>>193974
Instead of lurking (faggot), (you) came here to bait with interest and then snidely react when a long-running game isn't what you usually play. We dodged a bullet with you if this is how you react to hospitality. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

>>193974
But seriously,
>am I dumb
I never called you dumb. I pointed out that you were making an ass of yourself by being needlessly rude and insulting in multiple occasions. Did you expect that that would go down well? Did you think you wouldn’t get push back? Did you think we were not going to insult you back? If you can’t handle being insulted, why insult us?

You’ve had multiple actually good ideas here, like how to detonate the torpedo, and I think that having the party encounter a crazed griffin in the hold of the Kostroma is an interesting way to introduce a character. I just wish you knew how to interact with people.

>>193977
It would have been a bit complicated and tedious to introduce him right now anyway.

>>193978
Not really. He could have just been locked up in a room among the crew quarters. Or chained upright in the cargo hold. If he had no interesting explaining backstory, why he’s there, or generally integrating himself into the setting - which I’m sure is exactly how he would have played it - all of those questions could have been handwaved away with amnesia or a crazed demeanor, which could have been blamed on the Traveller.

>>193956 →
Four torpedos. Two in launch tubes, then two more, one behind each launch tube. Best guess is 3,300 pounds each.

>>193979
>3,300
That is more than Monstro's light load. We will have to just use the plane's torpedo we brought.
Thank you for clarifying.

>>193965
Admittedly, it's not as if we would need to leave Baltimare permanently. In fact, going to the Meridiennes would be a great way to progress certain storylines in the city. Say we do something that completely changes the power dynamics of the factions in the city, such as wiping one of the factions out or installing new leadership. The effects might not be noticeable immediately, but if then we went to the Meridiennes for a bit to complete the various opportunities, quests, and activities in that region, enough time will have passed that when we return to Baltimare we see either the end result of those changes or get to witness these changes in full swing.

>>193970
I second the infirmary idea. Perhaps an additional room was hastily converted into a second infirmary when things started going bad, with this one having signs of more gruesome activities and atmosphere. I also don't think there would be anything wrong with finding the unnoticed pony behind/under the bed.

>>193981
>Say we do something that completely changes the power dynamics of the factions in the city
Do you have something in mind?

>>193980
I think that weight probably is kind of close to accurate. The warhead alone is 600 pounds. That’s why the first torpedo was disassembled

>>193982
Well, the Waterfront Gang is likely still after White Orchid and Mint Marine. And they're probably still slightly upset about Silver accidently murking Bargain Strength in his own restaurant, so they may be after Silver too. Thank goodness the ghoul that Posey has watching over Gloomy is there to kill and cannibalize any unwanted intruders for this mission, but he won't be there forever. Of course this means that the Waterfront Gang needs to go if Silver and his household wants to be safe, but removing the entire gang would result in a power vacuum and significant instability in the city. That's bad.

So what if Silver recruits the rescued Kostroma survivors as his Druhzhina, and together they take out the Waterfront Gang's leadership, assure the loyalty of the underlings, and assume control of the Waterfront Gang themselves? Silver can have Black Heel and the rest of his Druzhina run the gang for him, ensuring both that his household is safe and that the city won't fall into gang warfare.

>>193981
>The effects might not be noticeable immediately, but if then we went to the Meridiennes for a bit to complete the various opportunities, quests, and activities in that region, enough time will have passed that when we return to Baltimare we see either the end result of those changes or get to witness these changes in full swing.
I'm in favor of this. Amber could use a time skip to train her musical ability and have an opportunity for an inspiration. Cavaliere needs to recuperate and train. Also, Baltimare has been in late January for a while and it would be nice to be closer to spring.
>>193982
>The warhead alone is 600 pounds.
That would easily blow apart the Kostroma's cargo hold. But it could do some decent damage to the destroyer if we could rig the warhead to explode.
>>193983
>So what if Silver recruits the rescued Kostroma survivors as his Druhzhina, and together they take out the Waterfront Gang's leadership, assure the loyalty of the underlings, and assume control of the Waterfront Gang themselves? Silver can have Black Heel and the rest of his Druzhina run the gang for him, ensuring both that his household is safe and that the city won't fall into gang warfare.
Fun idea but there is a lot more to running a gang than merely being the toughest, and Silver would run into those issues headfirst.

>>193984
I know, that's why Silver would have Black Heel lead it. He's far better suited to the task already having been a commissar, making him both a military leader and a politician, roles which combined would make for a good gang leader (fun fact, many prominent communists such as Stalin were originally gangsters). Silver was a sergeant in the Great War, but he has no political experience whatsoever, and leading the gang would mean he wouldn't be able to chase other pursuits as much, such as questing, waifu collecting, and foal making.

>>193982
Mostro can fly carrying only about ~2.2 K, which is what I determined the aircraft torpedo to be based on research.

>>193982
How many dice of damage does the torpedo do?

>>193987
does some quick math

A lot

>>193981
>Admittedly, it's not as if we would need to leave Baltimare permanently.
I would agree, but you should also consider that no matter how time passes in universe, it also passes in real life. We have been on this one-day mission for a year irl.
I'm not saying that we should never go exploring or go on adventures, quite the contrary actually, but we should consider what our plans are before we commit to long-term changes in location.
I am interested in this adventure locale though. I would be glad to move there or towards other frontier regions where I could raid with impunity.
>Say we do something that completely changes the power dynamics of the factions in the city, such as wiping one of the factions out or installing new leadership.
Taking over Baltimare or subverting infiltrating/subverting its political hierarchy was on my to-do list.
>The effects might not be noticeable immediately, but if then we went to the Meridiennes for a bit to complete the various opportunities, quests, and activities in that region, enough time will have passed that when we return to Baltimare we see either the end result of those changes or get to witness these changes in full swing.
Ah, I see. You are proposing a timeskip for political developments, with a change in locale to facilitate it. I would be on board, whether or not I am part of the adventure.
Posey has lots of downtime activities planned, and she could be set up shop and grind for years it need be.
>>193982
>Do you have something in mind?
Hmmm, what if Posey were to become mayor?
>I think that weight probably is kind of close to accurate. The warhead alone is 600 pounds. That’s why the first torpedo was disassembled
According my my research, torpedos carried by those kinds of planes weigh about one ton, which is what Monstro csn carry while flying. It's actually kind of convenient that Monstro is just barely strong enough to carry a plane's torpedo.
>>193983
Posey is interested in raising her profile with the Blackhooves, as a mercenary and an expert in war magic. Once she gets maximum affiliation, she will solicit them for funding for the Manehattan Project.
>removing the entire gang would result in a power vacuum and significant instability in the city. That's bad.
Hmmm, sounds like an opportunity for a certain charismatic sorceress.
>So what if Silver recruits the rescued Kostroma survivors as his Druhzhina, and together they take out the Waterfront Gang's leadership, assure the loyalty of the underlings, and assume control of the Waterfront Gang themselves? Silver can have Black Heel and the rest of his Druzhina run the gang for him, ensuring both that his household is safe and that the city won't fall into gang warfare.
I think you would need more feats if you want that many followers.
>>193984
>Amber could use a time skip to train her musical ability and have an opportunity for an inspiration. Cavaliere needs to recuperate and train. Also, Baltimare has been in late January for a while and it would be nice to be closer to spring.
Posey could use a timeskip too, to set up her research lab, army, projects NPC contacts and job.
>That would easily blow apart the Kostroma's cargo hold. But it could do some decent damage to the destroyer if we could rig the warhead to explode.
Yeah, we do not want to use that thing for the Intruder. The explosive harpoon should be enough if any explosives work at all.
>Fun idea but there is a lot more to running a gang than merely being the toughest, and Silver would run into those issues headfirst.
Leadership builds can be tedious. Might need more feats to pull it off.
>>193988
To reiterate my question, would it be enough to destroy one hull section of the GRU's ship (up to 150 HP, maybe)?

>>193989
>would it be enough to destroy one hull section of the GRU's ship (up to 150 HP, maybe)?
Could the existing explosives penetrate the armor of the destroyer? Yes. Would it be enough to sink it? ... Eh...?

Armor and hull is penetrated when the forces against it are too much for the metal to handle. But a ship is lost only when the amount of water in the hull exceeds buoyancy, the ship's structure is physically broken in half, a fire is completely uncontrollable, or the ship is disabled and likely to be captured if not scuttled. This is a much, much higher threshold to meet than simply penetrating the hull with a single (relatively) small explosion in a single watertight compartment. Remember that if water comes through from a single hole in the hull, just close a couple bulkheads and the damage is contained to a single compartment. Just limp the ship back to port and repair it. If a fire is started, there are onboard firefighting crews. And if the explosion happens above water, so what? It won't cause the ship to take on water, the ship can just fight on, even if a massive explosion kills people. That massive explosion on the USS Forrestal that killed 134 people and burned literal tons of jet fuel? It didn't sink the ship. The I believe literally two thousand hits from battleship and cruiser guns that hit the Bismark? It killed many people, sure, but it was the crew of the ship scuttling the ship that sunk it. Those shots hit the hull above water and thus failed to actually cause the ship to take on water.

Remember that the RMS Titanic sunk because it had gashes past 100 feet of bulkhead that caused something like five different compartments to be penetrated and fill up with water. There's a reason that when you read about battles in the Pacific and Atlantic in WW2, most of the ships that are actually sunk receive multiple hits from torpedoes, and why most submarines would fire multiple torpedoes. The Wilhelm Gustlave was hit with three torpedoes.

Of course you can sink a ship with a lucky hit if you hit the magazine or otherwise cause an explosion that is vastly larger than the size of the bomb. The Arizona famously sank with a single hit. At least one of the Japanese Carriers at Midway were hit in tanks storing aviation fuel and thus burned until they were lost with a single hit. The Lusitania seems to have suffered a boiler explosion after being hit by a single torpedo. And then Bismark's rudder was disabled by a lucky hit from a swordfish, and this is what really turned the battle. But these are lucky hits.

Think of it sort of like shooting a person with a bullet. Can a person die with a single gunshot wound? Yes, if they are hit in precisely the wrong place, or if no medical attention is given and they bleed out over time. But most of the time, most people can survive one or even multiple gunshot wounds, so long as they are not hit in a critical location, and they have medical care to prevent death from blood loss or infection. And ships are kind of similar.

>>193991
I have been operating under the assumption that the Stormwrack style rules for ship combat were the default, which I guess was a hasty assumption to make.
Do you have another homebrew document or source I could read regarding the logistical mechanics of sinking a ship?

>>193991
Very good explanation and comparison.

>>193992
Not a document but visual cues may help.

>>193994
I think I will wait until after we do our business in the Kostroma then, so we have time to clarify ship combat/sinking rules before then.
This isn't the only time Posey is going to want to use her minions to destroy naval vessels and other military installations, so I would like to figure things out sooner than later.

All that's left is to hear the response from the NPCs on where they want to go.

Boss enemy idea: the party is hired to take out an experimental Wingbardian "Land Cruiser" tank that's causing hell for New Mareland in the Hoovesplain. Invulnerable to damage and bristling with deadly weaponry of all types, the party has to find ways to disable the tank's various systems like the tracks and the guns in order to make it vulnerable enough to destroy.

>>193996
What would make a tank invulnerable to damage? It should just have high hardness, damage reduction and energy resistances.

Sounds like an interesting encounter otherwise.

>>193997
Mostly just through the shear size of it. This isn't just any old tank, this is a tank that's capable of mounting a heavy cruiser's 14 inch main gun as it's primary armament, and still be able to mount various AA guns, demolition guns, and flamethrowers as well as equipment like its own RADAR system.

>>193998
>Mostly just through the shear size of it.
Collosal sized ships and Epic Constructs are still vulnerable to damage. Just give it high HP and damage reduction proportional to its hardness.

>>194000
You wouldn't be able to use it with the current group of PCs and NPCs, and Silver could probably mention it to Posey IC sometime, but: I've thought of a pretty good cover story to explain Posey's powers to others without the truth coming out, if you want to hear it. If you'd rather not or if you'd rather Silver mentioned it IC, then I completely understand.

>>194025
Let's try to get through this mission before we divide our attention elsewhere.
I just want to enter the boat.

Did we ever determine if those prayer beads were magic or not?

>>194066 →
I really like the idea of the church of Celestia having Secret Police, and that they would be uniquely mobilized during these dark times. Maybe Special Agent Sweetie Drops could be a Shadow Guard (Complete Champion).

I do think Shadow Sun Ninja (Tome Of Battle) and Shadowbane Inquisitor should also be classes affiliated with the Shadow Guard, as they represent good aligned characters who delve into the darkness to snuff out evil while resisting the temptations of evil themselves.
Tenebrous would be a good Shadowbane Inquisitor, because it's a Batman-like Aesthetic that is still close to the OG Paladin (no casting progression, but other good abilities)
Virgin Flame would make a great Shadow Sun Ninja, because Shadow Hand and Tiger claw maneuvers can fit the Barbarian-like aesthetic her player liked, Desert Wind gives fire powers, and the Setting Sun is great for grappling and tripping. It's overall a good upgrade from Monk, and has a theme about channeling ones dark impulses into the path of good.

Perhaps if either character rank up their affiliations with vestiges of the church, they could meet secret agents who might give them special missions and maybe promote them to Shadow Strikers or Shadow Spies.

Also GM seems to be fond of moral grays even among clergy, and this really fits that niche.

>>194067
Also, I just love how in the Adaptions paragraph they said that these organizations with the initials "SS" can serve the role of "Secret Police". The Burning Hate of Pelor smoulders.

I'm tempted to change my characters personality and class with it to a malkavian form vtm. I thinking something like monk/cleric but then just a bunch of divination spells.

Though I won't because first off I remember GM not liking divination spells, secondly then I need to make the sheet. And, I don't really enjoy the process.

Besides, the only reason I'm thinking about it is because the idea that she'd get sudden insights along with her craziness would be appealing but I really jsut wanna play a crazy character... and nothing is stopping me from jsut doing htat.

>>194067
Btw, I appriciate you enthusiam. Sorry, if I made you feel dismissed or something (if that happened), it's just I don't really know or understand much about dnd mechanics... and I guess I didn't wanna pretend i know what you talk about ig idk ^^

>>194106
If you would like help with your sheet or character ideas, I can help anytime.
>>194105
Monk/Cleric is decent with the Sacred Fist prestige class. Clerics are powerful, and Divination is incredibly underrated.
>I need to make the sheet. And, I don't really enjoy the process.
I enjoy the process. I could help you with that.
>she'd get sudden insights along with her craziness would be appealing but I really jsut wanna play a crazy character...
You could also do this as a Swordsage/Crusader, who may rely on flashes if divine inspiration to fuel their martial arts, particularly with the Devoted Spirit discipline. The Setting Sun discipline is also all about insight, the Diamond Mind Discipline about Clarity Of Thought, and the Tiger Claw discipline is involves flashes of feral anger. Would be good as a Shadow Sun Ninja too, which involves channeling ones violent impulses into holy martial arts.

This could also work as a Monk / Psychic Warrior, or Monk / War Mind build. Monks and Psionics go well together.

>>194107
Thank you, that's very generous of you.
Is there something... like wild magic sorcery exist, which takes control over your magic. Perhaps, I could work in a mechanic like that so I have to throw a dice to see if I get an insight or not. That sounds cool.

How would you make a, as close as possible, malkavian in dnd 3.5, do you think? I understand that this is bit of a big endeavor but do you have any idea pop up on how you would go about it?

>>194108
>Is there something... like wild magic sorcery exist
Yes. Several forms of "wild magic" sorcery exist. There's the Anarchic Bloodline Sorcerer feat. The Wild Mage prestige class (works ala random effects and chaos), the Wild Soul prestige class (Fey related), and the Anarchic feat group (a couple of which go well with Wild Mage, because they let you reroll d100 tables).
>Perhaps, I could work in a mechanic like that so I have to throw a dice to see if I get an insight or not. That sounds cool.
Oh, you mean for your martial character.
Well, there is the Crusader, a Paladin-like Martial Adept which gets it's maneuvers granted randomly.
There is also the Chaos Monk variant monk, which has a random number of attacks in place of flurry of blows.
But really, there's no end to "random" or "wild" mechanics. The real question is what you want your character to be able to do, and what sort of power systems you are interested in (Divine Magic, Arcane Magic, Sublime Way Maneuvers, Psionics, Incarnum, Soulbinding, etc)
>How would you make a, as close as possible, malkavian in dnd 3.5, do you think?
You mean like the vampires? It's certainly possible in multiple ways, but you'll need to be a bit more specific about what you want so I can find resources on it. The Sacred Fist Cleric/Monk or Shadow Sun Ninja Swordsage/Monk can easily accommodate that niche already, but it depends what you really want your character to be able to do.

>>194109
Thank you for this information you provided. Don't feel like you owe me any spoonfeeding but I'm grateful.

I think, what I want is just a strong horse that can fight with her hooves well but also has flashes of insight of different types so I can speak in gibberish, prophecies, and riddles without having to make sense but sometimes I do.

>>194111
Okay, we have unarmed combat, but what do you want the "flashes of insight" to do? Do you want to cast spells? Use Psionics? Use martial arts? Something else?
What abilities do you want?

>>194112
>Okay, we have unarmed combat
Indeed we have. ^^
>but what do you want the "flashes of insight" to do?
I want them to give her random information about the world. Knowledge of the past, present, or future. I want information about what's in a random bag. Or what someone random is thinking or feeling. Esoteric knowledge that I personally have no use for.
It's not so much to serve a purpose but to roleplay I guess. I mean, it would be fun that random tidbits of information can be useful in someway. That sounds fun to.
I guess I wish I had divination spells that gave me info about stuff so I could ask the GM about irrelevant things connected to important things. Like, I meet this important pony, and I ask what he ate for breakfeast and then use that information to mess with him, or something idk.

Sorry, if I'm unclear and fickle. I guess I haven't really figured out myself what I really want.

>>194113
Well, Clerics are good at divination. You could do Cleric Monk 2, Cleric 3, Sacred Fist 1. Clerics have fully flexible lists that you can swap out every day, so you can experiment with different divination spells.

The Lunatic Insight feat comes to mind, but it's simply a mechanical bonus to skill checks, and I'd rather suboptimal while requiring a lot of investment.

A psychic warrior specialized in Clairsentience (Divination) powers could also work. Alternatively, there's the Truthseeker prestige class for Monks, which natively grants Clairsentience and Telepathy powers. It does need to be updated though. I'm actually rather fond of that class right now, because I'm running a game that features the Scarlet Brotherhood. It has potential to do a lot of unarmed damage if you stack it with Tashlatora. It also has good diplomacy and insight related abilities you can use to act like DM inquisitor. It only gets Clairsentience and Telepathy powers though, so it's not quite as strong in combat.

Imo, the Shadow Sun Ninja Swordsage is the most thematic for this setting, but it doesn't do a lot in the vein of divination. It does get the best martial arts though.
Sacred Fist would be the strongest option overall, probably just because Clerics are so strong, and it also gives the most spellcasting.

The Knowledge Devotion feat is good for combat, and involves gaining insight bonuses to attack and damage based on knowledge checks.

>>194114
Oh, I think the Dragon Prophesiser feat could work. It's all about random insight and prophecy. It could also be a very powerful open-ended feat with Prophecy's Hero, although it might be annoying to GM since the rest of us don't have action points (then again, d20 Modern characters have Action Points by default).
It would fit on any build too. It's based on Wisdom and Monk has the Arcana skill.

>>194115
>Oh, I think the Dragon Prophesiser feat could work.
That sounds cool.
>>194114
^^
You know what's funny. I'm kinda tempted to ask you to make the entire character sheet for me, if you wanted to that is. But I don't wanna put that burden on you nor can I really request it yet because I'm not sure what I even want yet. Like a fickle mare. ^^

>>194116
I could try to make a character sheet, although maybe say which of the ideas you like the most before I start.
I will also need your starting ability scores, alignment, and other inflexible information.
>But I don't wanna put that burden on you
If I decide I don't want to do it, I'll just put it off.

>>194117
Thanks fren. ^^
Lets see what happens. Before we do anything, it would make sense to learn what divination spells he allows.

>>194118
What were Vir's starting ability scores, before racial bonuses?

>>194121
I don't remember. I think I pushed her str score as high as it would go with point buy and then don't remember.
That's probably how I would do it today too, just pump str as high as it will go and but the rest equally, maybe more wis than int tho.

>>194122
>point buy
How many points?
What are her stats now?

>>194067
>I really like the idea of the church of Celestia having Secret Police
In the setting, the Celestial Church was supposed to have operated an Inquisition of its own, though it never acted as the political police of the nation in the way that the Griffonian Inquisition does there. It was founded presumably to root out worship of Nightmare Moon that still lingers after the Scouring, and probably took on monster management as its primary role over time. Something a bit more like the Witcher than Warhammer 40k or the SS. I don't think that cults/hostile religions would be that big of an issue outside of the bat ponies. However, with Equestria having so many unicorns, there is a decent chance they'd have to hunt down dark magic users. An in-universe fiction series was supposed to reference an Equestrian "Office of the Witchfinder General," so maybe that was a thing, Warhammer Fantasy style or otherwise.

In more modern times monster hunting is supposed to have been delegated to S.M.I.L.E, who function as an intelligence agency for Equestria and most likely as a political police as well. However, the Celestial Church should still operate a "Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith" which is a hoof in the door for an official secret police. In show and comic canon Equestria has the "Secret Monster Interdiction League of Equestria" which hunts monsters and changeling infiltrators.

It's a little difficult for me to imagine that the Celestialist would feel that they need to act like ninjas or "delve into darkness" to take out evil. I imagine a more Solomon Kane like figure. Someone whose moral values don't necessarily align with modern moral values, but most certainly he has strongly held values. But maybe that's not accurate, I am not sure. I've put more thought into a fictionalized version of the Equestrian Witch Finder General

>>194105
>I remember GM not liking divination spells
It's fine, just don't expect me to be as interested in fictional magic spells as I am in at what temperature Bunker Oil solidifies, or whether marine diesel is suitable for molotov cocktails.

>the idea that she'd get sudden insights along with her craziness would be appealing
Vir could most definitely have an adult onset of schizophrenia brought on by Toxoplasmosis induced psychosis infusion of religion insight

>>194123
I honestly don't know where her sheet is anymore, maybe on my external harddrive.
I'm partly thinking of just making her sheet again. Afterall, it really wasn't that special. She was basically a monk with high str and had knowledge of religion. So that's probably what I will do again. We'll see.
>>194124
>It's fine, just don't expect me to be as interested in fictional magic spells as I am in at what temperature Bunker Oil solidifies
That's completely fine, we all have our interests.
>Vir could most definitely have an adult onset of (schizophrenia brought on by Toxoplasmosis induced psychosis infusion) of religion insight
^^
Yeah, I'm thinking it would be fun if you controlled the time it happens and I have to make a wisdom save to stop it or something. And, I like there to be a drawback. Like, good info but also bad somehow. Perhaps debuff? Not that important info. Or perhaps info that Vir doesn't wanna know like, that the nice nun she meet is actually the bay harbour butcher, or something.
Regardless, if I control it, its not as fun i think.

>>194124
EaW is a lot more grimdark than the show (obviously), with vast and sometimes absurd degrees of political complexity, and there are themes of rising extremism in every region/run of the game. Although ponies have never been depicted as devout in the show, perhaps sectarian extremism and zealotry could recently be on the rise in context of the fall of the kingdom and the war in general. It's a context that any paladin/monk/Cleric/etc character dedicated to the princess should consider. If the Princesses were ever at all considered to be the center of Equestrian religion (which is a big if), hearing that they have been cocooned by changelings could have affected the devout in very severe ways. Some might've lost faith, others might have grown more zealous. It's actually something I would have liked to discuss with Tenebrous, because I thought he would make a cool Batman-like Paladin/Rogue/Shadowbane Inquisitor, but alas.
>However, with Equestria having so many unicorns, there is a decent chance they'd have to hunt down dark magic users. An in-universe fiction series was supposed to reference an Equestrian "Office of the Witchfinder General," so maybe that was a thing, Warhammer Fantasy style or otherwise.
Perhaps agents of the office are still trying to uphold their responsibilities, knowing that ambitious necromancers might be moving in with the exact intent on taking advantage of the political chaos and lapses in faith to practice their art.
>In more modern times monster hunting is supposed to have been delegated to S.M.I.L.E, who function as an intelligence agency for Equestria and most likely as a political police as well. However, the Celestial Church should still operate a "Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith" which is a hoof in the door for an official secret police. In show and comic canon Equestria has the "Secret Monster Interdiction League of Equestria" which hunts monsters and changeling infiltrators.
Yeah, that a good canonical example of special forces. Even in the show the joke was basically the idea that there could be hidden political complexities operating in the margins of society.
S.M.I.L.E was dissolved in disgrace after the Bugbear escaped Tartarus, but perhaps it may have risen again since the fall of the kingdom, as the chaos and war makes the continent a breeding ground for monsters (as Posey says, there is always work for a Necrologist where there is war). Perhaps some of them joined the ELF (an organization that has already been depicted has employing former knights), taking on the role of inquisitors, and spies. It wouldn't make them all that different from Pelor's Shadow Guard.

There's also the possibility of sectarian extremists who technically work for the church but are so secretive and politically/ideologically removed from it that they are functionally a separate entity entirely. These could be foreigners from equestrian enclaves like Farbrook, originally formed in the middle ages and being so far removed from modern equestrian society that their extremism festered to absurd degrees. There could also be corrupt templars and renegade knights, convinced that they are still honoring their oaths despite resorting to common banditry and heretical apostasy. Opus Dei, from the The Da Vinci Code comes to mind as well.
>>194125
>I honestly don't know where her sheet is anymore, maybe on my external harddrive.
I'll just assume she would have had at least elite array.
>Perhaps debuff?
Iirc, there's some mention of mental illness/PTSD/delusions in Forge Of War. The book says they could be treated as character flaws (meaning a bonus feat).

It could also be another way to fluff Action Points, especially if they're used to temporarily emulate feats such as Dragon Prophesiser, or Domain feats from the complete champion. Action Points are sometimes described as "flashes of divine insight).

>>194067
>>194124
>>194126
Fascinating! This was well-researched I should read Solomon Kane. In EaW, Equestria is both harmonic and more open-minded than other nations, so a literal Inquisition in the modern day would be out place. Celestia is not Daybreaker, after all, even if some of her followers might want her to be. Also considering Celestialism's inherent relationship with the now defunct political state of Equestria, any overt backing of armed groups would be quickly stomped out.
Of course, Equestrian harmonism and Celestialism are so deeply intertwined that even if there is no overt backing, ELF and other paramilitaries would both defend the interests of their churches and receive donations from them. This also means that such churches would be watched and targeted by opponents of the ELF. Think of Irish Catholics, the IRA, and the Troubles, as an example.

How is firearms proficiency distributed in this game? Do classes come proficient in firearms, or do they need to take the feats for them?

I've been looking at the d20 modern firearms rules to better engage with the setting. There are some decent feats that ranged characters should consider for this setting. The Gunslinger and Soldier classes can be entered pretty early too.
Autofire weapons are tempting, but the non proficiency penalty would mean I might just do no damage at all in most cases.

For those of you interested in crafting magic guns, the Enhance Item feat applied to Extraordinary Artisan could be used to produce a machine gun with a higher autofire Reflex DC. That info is probably only useful to an Artificer though. Hopefully I could call up an arcane gunsmith to help equip my army once I create my guild.

>>194145
I remember talking with GM pone about this a couple of times, and I think we figured out a good list of which proficiencies various firearm types in the game would fit.

Simple: Handguns, Single Action Rifles & Shotguns (bolt action, lever action, break action, muzzle-loader)

Martial: Semi-Automatic Rifles & Shotguns, Submachine Guns, Light Machine Guns (prone)

Exotic: Fully-Automatic Rifles, Magic/Spark Rifles, Light Machine Guns (standing)

Despite this I'm not so sure Posey would know how to use even simple firearms effectively given she's from the Dread League. Maybe she'd know how to use muzzle-loading firearms?

>>194146
As a Dread Necromancer, Posey is proficient in all simple weapons and one (1) martial weapon. She is also proficient in archaic weapons (select medieval martial weapons).
>I'm not so sure Posey would know how to use even simple firearms effectively given she's from the Dread League
Posey can use a heavy crossbow. A gun isn't that difficult to use.
>Maybe she'd know how to use muzzle-loading firearms?
A muzzle-loaded gun would be MORE difficult to use than a modern one.

The in-character reason Posey doesn't use firearms is just because of her vanity.

This list looks decent.
>Magic/Spark Rifles
What is this?

>>194147
It's more than just the difficulty of the weapon. Posey is a Dread Necromancer from the Dread League, a technologically backwards nation that starts EaW with their only unlocked infantry equipment tech being Pre-Gunpowder Equipment, and with a massive research speed malus due to their isolation from the world it takes them a while to research anything better. Probably by this point in the game they've learned how to make muzzle-loaded rifles, but there's a good chance Posey has never held one before much less fired one.

>Magic/Spark Rifles
Magic Rifles, also called Spark Rifles by some nations, are rifle-shaped weapons that use crystalline ammunition to fire bolts of destructive magic. Heavy, requiring rare magic-capable crystals to produce, and more prone to malfunction than traditional firearms, early magic rifles nevertheless have unmatched destructive potential which makes them a good choice for support units, such as Mage Corps support battalions, and special forces units. Though perhaps only slightly off from the current game year, magic rifles do get refined as time goes on, becoming both more effective in combat and more reliable which allows them to be used for normal infantry battalions.

>>194148
>there's a good chance Posey has never held one before much less fired one
Maybe. Posey would prefer to use her bone bow in most instances anyway (it's part of her prophecy), and she does more damage with a bow than a gun in most instances. Even with her newly reduced Str/Dex score, she's predisposed to rely on her physical and magical prowess over mundane weaponry, because she is an arcane-supremacist. It's more of a vanity thing than anything else. Pic related. She might change as she learns more about warfare though.
The same can't be said for her minions though, who might retain weapon proficiencies they had in life.
>Magic Rifles, also called Spark Rifles by some nations, are rifle-shaped weapons that use crystalline ammunition to fire bolts of destructive magic. Heavy, requiring rare magic-capable crystals to produce, and more prone to malfunction than traditional firearms, early magic rifles nevertheless have unmatched destructive potential which makes them a good choice for support units, such as Mage Corps support battalions, and special forces units. Though perhaps only slightly off from the current game year, magic rifles do get refined as time goes on, becoming both more effective in combat and more reliable which allows them to be used for normal infantry battalions.
Ooh? What are the statistics of these weapons? Are they specific magic weapons, or are they base weapons that can be independently enchanted? Magic weapons are definitely something that Posey would be interested in, coming from a society that revolves around magic; in fact, it's part of her job as a spy to research them, and with Graveborn Warrior she would be glad to equip her army with them.

As far as Background related proficiency goes, that reminds me of a section from the complete warrior. Pic related. Maybe certain weapons could have different proficiencies for different cultures, such as the Serpent Bow being a martial weapon for lamias, or spark rifles being martial for magically-inclined cultures. My sunday game has Space Marine inspired Elan Psychic Warrior who was frozen in time from the age of Atlantis who uses futuristic weapons, but he still has to manifest Call Weaponry to summon them (he prefers to use his relic "Clockwork Macuahuitl", aka chainsaw, and only summons guns when he needs to hit something that flies).There's also potential for expanded weapon familiarity.

>>194116
>>194114
I forgot to mention that the Sacred Fist prestige class has an anathema against using any kind of weapon in combat, which can be limiting because it means relying on spells to fight flying enemies, which is something to be considered before entering. It is strong though.
Shadow Sun Ninja has no weapon restrictions, but requires Good alignment to advance.

Tashlatora Psychic Warrior/Monk, or any other psionic fusion, has no roleplay prerequisite. Idk how well Psionics fits into the setting though (although the aesthetic would fit well in the Crystal Empire).

The best kind of unarmed build (or any other non-broken melee build) tends to be a tripper, which Monks can do well because they don't need 13 Int for Improved Trip, and therefore can easily take both Improved Trip and Knockdown. The limitation to tripper in this setting is that the majority of characters have 4+ legs, which gives them +4 to oppose trips: this by extension makes the Setting Sun martial discipline weaker, because so many of the Setting Sun's maneuvers involve making checks to trip the opponent.

>>194145
>Do classes come proficient in firearms
Some would, I think, yeah

>>194147
>The in-character reason Posey doesn't use firearms is just because of her vanity.
I've been thinking about writing this massive post about the... how do I say? The fundamental philosophical disagreements between Posey and probably you as a player and the main factions in the setting in terms of how conflicts are to be fought/resolved. Basically the factions of the setting for both practical and moral/philosophical reasons think the entire nation should be fighting a war with popular armies that are as big as 12% of the entire population conscripted, and a large portion of the rest supporting the war effort in some manner. Meanwhile Posey's view is... more Heroic? Noble? Where a small caste of individuals (and possibly even just a band of heroes) are responsible for fighting wars/solving other conflicts and problems. Posey's view leads to an emphasis on weapons that are expensive, hard to produce, and hard to use, like complex magic, while the view of the major factions places an emphasis on weaponry that can be mass produced and easily used by people whose real jobs are as being farmers or trolley drivers. It's a product of philosophy and intent more than technology. I could go on about this

>>194148
Magic rifles are more expensive to make, but have better penetration and hard attack. They are mostly used by special, magical troops.

However, in certain recent versions of EAW, magic weapons have a new special feature that makes them extremely useful and I think relevant to this campaign: they have a non-lethal "stun" setting. Because of that, they may actually be mass produced and distributed to occupation soldiers.

>>194149
>osey would prefer to use her bone bow in most instances anyway
Bows don't automatically alert everyone within two miles that you are there and a threat, so that isn't necessarily the worst thing

>Are they specific magic weapons
They are weapons built from the ground up to shoot bolts of magic like a unicorn horn. they use magic stored in crystals as ammunition.

>frozen in time from the age of Atlantis who uses futuristic weapons
I did have an idea to have basically Atlantian futuristic weapons like direct energy weapons or railguns, yes. Just an idea

>Magic weapons are definitely something that Posey would be interested in, coming from a society that revolves around magic
Posey is from a Mageocracy where the right to rule is predicated upon magical skill. This means that the aristocratic and highborn unicorns must study for years, then deploy out to the cold fields to fight the griffin hordes, while the commoners stay at home. Contrast this with the new pony kingdoms where there is a greater emphasis on the equality of ponies. This means that the highborn unicorns toast in their mansions while the earth pony laborers take cover in muddy trenches. It's a philosophical disagreement. One philosophy requires a warrior to study and train for five years. The other requires ten farmers to train for six weeks. Magical rifles belong to the latter school of though. A magical rifle isn't designed to let a unicorn mage do its work better. It's designed to allow an earth pony with a cutie mark in farming to do the role of a unicorn mage after six weeks training.

>>194154
I remember discovering that in a recent playthrough. Personally it makes sense that magic rifles could be used for more than just pure destructive capability. Perhaps the crystal ammunition can be enchanted with different spell effects for specialized purposes, such as with Military Police support companies having stun spell ammunition.

>>194154
>The fundamental philosophical disagreements between Posey and probably you as a player and the main factions in the setting in terms of how conflicts are to be fought/resolved.
Well, I intentionally wrote Posey's vainity as a character flaw: it's something she may grow out of as she develops as a character and learns about the world.
>Basically the factions of the setting for both practical and moral/philosophical reasons think the entire nation should be fighting a war with popular armies that are as big as 12% of the entire population conscripted, and a large portion of the rest supporting the war effort in some manner.
I am aware. The Dread League has an even higher recruitable population.
>Meanwhile Posey's view is... more Heroic? Noble? Where a small caste of individuals (and possibly even just a band of heroes) are responsible for fighting wars/solving other conflicts and problems.
Posey wants to be a leader, a ruler and a conqueror, with her own army of followers chanting her name alongside her undead hordes. Mass combat is part of her dream, but before that she has to develop her personal powers to make any of that possible. She wants to become the hero that others will follow.
The heroic trope was intentional, because it's part of her false savior theme.
>Posey's view leads to an emphasis on weapons that are expensive, hard to produce, and hard to use, like complex magic
This comes from Posey's limited and archaic perspective on warfare. In her experience, she has witnessed vampire mages personally laying waste to entire armies with a single swipe, and monsters who were impervious to anything but the enchanted silver swords wielded by the paladins of the Arcturian Order. Her understanding of warfare is fantastical and outdated, and not exactly grounded in modern history. Aside from the Arcturian front, her only other experience in warfare has been guerilla raids on Farbrook, attacking ponies who were basically defenseless.
Having been in New Mareland for less than a week, she has had little context to develop a modern understanding of warfare or appreciate the importance of things such as technology, supply chains, noncombatants aiding the war effort, non-undead infantry, transportation, etc. This was a deliberate flaw in her character that I wrote with the intention of representing a character from the Dread League. It is a flaw that I hope to develop as Posey has more experience with warfare.
If her character flaws are "it's what my character would do" tier annoying, then I could just stop roleplaying them too, if you want.
>They are weapons built from the ground up to shoot bolts of magic like a unicorn horn. they use magic stored in crystals as ammunition.
Cool. What are their stats/prices? I might like to buy or craft a few later. If they're made cheaply enough to be distributed to nonelite farmers, my minions could certainly use them.
Actually, I think I still have a magic crystal that was for a rifle. I was wondering what it did.
>One philosophy requires a warrior to study and train for five years. The other requires ten farmers to train for six weeks.
The former school might also involve killing the farmers and turning them into undead monsters under the elite mage's control, who may or may not retain their military training.
But from Posey's perspective, she has not even gotten to that level. That's why developing her personal powers is her priority.

>>194156
Oh, furthermore, as Posey develops as a character and learns to appreciate the importance and value of technology in warfare, she would grow increasingly fascinated and excited about the interactions between necromancy magic and technology. Skeleton legions armed with rifles and surviving indefinitely in trenches. Haunted Shifted planes and tanks animated by vengeful spirits, crewed by soldiers, and fueled by sheer hatred of life. Incorporeal spirits serving as spies to acquire military and technological secrets. Zombies loaded up with explosives and detonating when they reach their targets, or burying themselves like target seeking landmines. Zombie pigeons with grenades strapped to them like drones.
Using Monstro as a bomber and the Dreads as flying artillery is an early example of Posey's attempt at necromantic innovation.

>>194124
You know what, I threw that premination stuff onto you but only do it if it's not too much work. In fact, I'm completely okay with just continue on the story with my normal, average monk.
I think the reason I sought the supernatural element was that I was inspired and a bit confused about who Virgin is these days, since it had been a while since I played. So I guess I felt I wanted more identity for her, but a superpower doesn't make a character; it's their heart. ;P

>>194154
>Meanwhile Posey's view is... more Heroic? Noble? Where a small caste of individuals (and possibly even just a band of heroes) are responsible for fighting wars/solving other conflicts and problems.
Makes sense given she comes from a society frozen in medieval times. Though, by medieval standards necromancers practice a form of mass warfare.
>However, in certain recent versions of EAW, magic weapons have a new special feature that makes them extremely useful and I think relevant to this campaign: they have a non-lethal "stun" setting. Because of that, they may actually be mass produced and distributed to occupation soldiers.
That is very useful. It beats our present tactic of shooting enemies to near-death and spending all our medical supplies to keep them alive.
>>194156
>Having been in New Mareland for less than a week, she has had little context to develop a modern understanding of warfare or appreciate the importance of things such as technology, supply chains, noncombatants aiding the war effort, non-undead infantry, transportation, etc. This was a deliberate flaw in her character that I wrote with the intention of representing a character from the Dread League. It is a flaw that I hope to develop as Posey has more experience with warfare.
That's pretty cool!
>Oh, furthermore, as Posey develops as a character and learns to appreciate the importance and value of technology in warfare, she would grow increasingly fascinated and excited about the interactions between necromancy magic and technology. Skeleton legions armed with rifles and surviving indefinitely in trenches. Haunted Shifted planes and tanks animated by vengeful spirits, crewed by soldiers, and fueled by sheer hatred of life. Incorporeal spirits serving as spies to acquire military and technological secrets. Zombies loaded up with explosives and detonating when they reach their targets, or burying themselves like target seeking landmines. Zombie pigeons with grenades strapped to them like drones.
Scary stuff

>>194154
>I did have an idea to have basically Atlantian futuristic weapons like direct energy weapons or railguns, yes. Just an idea
Once you have something in the game, it's very hard to take it out. Futuristic weapons in a WW2 setting not only feel out of place (yes I know EaW has a technology tree all the way to nearly modern levels of technology) but they would be game-breaking. But maybe they could be locked to a setting like an automated weapon system, and not something one could simply pick up. Magic would serve the same purpose for that however.

>>194160
>muh genie bottle
Don't discourage the GM from giving us cool loot.

>>194160
>they would be game-breaking
This isn't really true. The majority of damage 3.5e martial character does comes from their feats and glass features, not their base weapon dice.
Case in point, Silver, an unoptimized fighter with a greatsword, still consistently out-damages the rest of the party when power attacking, because the flat bonus he gets from power attacking with a two handed weapon makes the world of difference. If he used a quarterstaff instead of a greatsword, he would still do a lot of damage. If he used a heavy mercurial full blade, his damage increase would be marginal.
That's not saying that weapons don't matter, there's are many martial/exotic/futuristic/magic weapons that can I crease damage overall, but for 3.5e they're still marginal in comparison to class features. Weapons make more of a difference in d20 modern though, because d20 modern classes generally don't have class features that deal enormous damage to account for ballooning monster HP and instead focus on tactical and utility features.

>>194162
I do very much love pulling off a successful Power Attack and absolutely obliterating whatever I hit

>>194154
>It's a product of philosophy and intent more than technology. I could go on about this.
I am actually still interested in this topic if you're willing to talk about it.

>>194170
It's difficult to talk about because it is a very complicated set of subjects. There is a great deal of nuance to be had, and it's easy to be distracted by tangents on related topics. I can try, though

Much of human history follows a certain pattern: a region is reasonably densely inhabited by an existing civilization. An outside tribe or nation conquers them. The leader of the conquering tribe distributes the land of the conquered area to the soldiers who fought for him as a payment for the conquest, but also for their continued support of the leader. With the passage of time, the descendants of the soldiers become the nobility of the country, with an obligation to fight for the king, and the original inhabitants of the land become a peasant or serf class with less political power and fewer rights, but without necessarily an obligation to fight. The most obvious an extreme example of this is ancient Sparta, with its warrior citizenry class and the indigenous helot class, but this is also the history of France, or Norman England, or spain and portugal after the reconquista, or of brandenburg, silesia, Hungary, Prussia, the Livionian states (Lativa and Estonia), Finland, most of Indian civilization, and so many other states.

The essential point is that in the classical as well as the medieval world, a majority of societies could be divided into "those who fight," a nobility that is only a small portion of the population, and a class of "those who work" who are a plurality of the population, but are not necessarily obligated to fight. Generally, those who fight have more privileges (and especially more wealth) than those who do not, so there is an inequality in the population where those who fight are higher than those who do not. So what justifies this inequality? Just about every possible answer that could be given has, from better blood of the nobility, better upbringing and education, greater intelligence, greater virtue, divine order, and reciprocal obligations of the classes. But the essential points are these: The few fight, and the few must be an expression of quality and usually need to justify their position somehow.

Then came the modern era. To me, the modern era begins with the writings of one man: Niccolo Machiavelli. Machiavelli helped oust the ruling elite of Florence and establish a republic, and was a part of the Republic's government. But the Republic was defeated by Spanish troops, who reestablished the old ruling party. Machiavelli wrote his Prince while in captivity. In that work and his Discourses on Livy, he explores the questions "Why was the Roman Republic able to last as long as it did? Why did it so consistently win wars, and why did it finally fall?" The answer he came to was the Popular Army. By a "Popular" army, I mean an organization of society wherein the largest class of people have an obligation to fight in wars on behalf of the society. This contrasts against Noble armies, where a privileged or landed class fights, or a mercenary army, or the use of foreign auxiliary forces. It was Rome's use of the Popular Army, he argues, that gave the proletariats so much power within the Republic, and forced the ruling elite to give them reciprocal benefits. This army was large and it was easier for the Romans to replace their losses than it was for their enemies, which gave them an advantage in war. And then Machiavelli argues that the singular change in the Roman Republic that ultimately lead to its downfall was when it expanded in the campaign against the Samnites. The distance to march was greater than could allow the army to return in time for the harvest season, thus meaning that the soldiers of the army could not be the local farmers of the republic, ultimately forcing the existence of a professional army where the soldiers received their pay from - and owed their loyalty to - their generals, and this lead to the collapse of the Republic. And thus is at least the philosophical birth of the Popular army in modern political thought.

A popular army is intended to do two things. First and most importantly, a popular army is intended to give more political power to "the many," with the theory that an armed citizenry is a freer citizenry. But it is also intended to be a stronger army, with the theory that a larger army will tend to beat a smaller army. A popular army can replace its losses. When France loses ten thousand nobles and the king of Burgandy in Argincourt, it is a disaster. When France loses a half million of its best soldiers in an invasion of Russia, it simply drafts an entirely new army. There's also the theory that popular armies improve the discipline, patriotism, and virtue of the common citizenry, but that's an entire tangent.

Whereas a noble army relies on a theory of quality and difference as the fundamental philosophical justification for the inequality of the society that supports it, a popular army does not. Rather, the theory behind a popular army is that the many, the plebian class of the society, ought to dominate it by shear virtue of its number. Quantity over quality. It is based on a theory of human equality, that the nobles do not possess an intrinsic or earned superiority over those who work. Machiavelli's justification for equality was that everyone is in need. Hobbes' justification is that everyone can be killed. Whatever the justification, that is the theory.

I haven't even gotten to the wars of the French Revolution yet, holy hell

>>194171
Continuing

Liberalism, and Liberal political theory, is more or less the origin of the popular army in modern political thought. If you read classical sources like Plato or Aristotle, you'll see that these philosophers favored an aristocratic class as the fighting class. Whereas, for example, the United States constitution includes the idea of a "Well Regulated Militia," which has been argued to mean the citizenry as a whole, disciplined and able to act as an army in a time of need, but do not serve as a standing army.

But it was the Wars of the French Revolution that established the popular army as a respected or even dominate practice. The Levee en Masse allowed France to field an absolutely massive army and fight against the professional armies of multiple European great powers, and win. It allowed Napolean to replace heavy losses in combat, with essentially the entire fighting force of the military being replaced.

The special, new element of the Wars of the French Revolution was Nationalism. Nationalism, and Collectivism/Corporatism more generally. As mentioned before, the societies that utilize Noble armies are based primarily on relationships and class-based obligations. What an individual noble owes to the king. This arrangement works well with feudal societies, and territories may be added or subtracted without much fuss. The country may thusly be polyglot and multiethnic. A uniting religion is desirable but not always essential. The ruling class often was of a different national origin than the ruled. But the types of societies that could make use of a popular army are a bit different. Humans have an inate ability to subsume the individual identity into that of a greater whole, and in doing so, willingly undergo sacrifice for the sake of this greater whole. This was a whole new, previously untapped source of motivation for a fighting force when the French made widespread use of it. And when they did so, they (for practical purposes) invented the concept of the nation. A collective identity that the people of France belonged to, and that is its own corporate entity. Warfare changed dramatically after this point, with countries increasingly relying on conscripted or volunteer armies of what would otherwise be the peasant or proletariat classes. Mercenaries almost entirely fell away.

The nature of wars changes as well. Whereas in the time of professional armies wars were almost like litigation between nations to resolve questions over small pieces of territory or the balance of power, wars became about moral questions, and the destiny of entire nations. When wars were conducted on behalf of professionals who fought for the king, "because the king said so" was often a good enough reason, so long as there was pay. When a war is fought by a common laborer, the reason behind the war must be very great for such the laborer to be invested in its outcome. I do not think that it is any kind of coincidence that post-French revolution warfare has higher stakes than most medieval and early modern wars. There were of course, high stakes wars of the medieval and early modern eras, like the 30 years war or the Mongol wars. But even these are wars of nations and religions at least somewhat analogous to the clashes of civilizations we see in the modern era. What is less common in modern times were the prolific wars of succession and other minor wars of the medieval and early modern eras.

>>194172
>>194171
Interesting takes. I largely agree with all of it. I have written several papers echoing these points throughout highschool and college for history classes about how warfare has changed, specifically in the sense how the concept of an elite warrior class has all but vanished in place of civilian armies, and how technology enabled that transition.

Moreso, however, I am interested in how this relates to the current setting, and how it should reflect on our perspectives as D&D characters from our various backgrounds.
>So what justifies this inequality? Just about every possible answer that could be given has, from better blood of the nobility, better upbringing and education, greater intelligence, greater virtue, divine order, and reciprocal obligations of the classes. But the essential points are these: The few fight, and the few must be an expression of quality and usually need to justify their position somehow.
See, this is where fantasy settings get a bit tricky, because most fantasy settings have at least in some regard the concept of scaling power levels and individual heroes. The most obvious example is magical power, which is personal to the caster and cannot be widely distributed to the populous because it depends on the genius of individual heroes. Mid level Wizards can instantly turn the mightiest fortresses to rubble, and high level fighters are unlikable Eldritch bulwarks who can cleave mountains in two with a single stroke.
But fantasy societies aren't exclusively led by high level wizards (even though Equestria was), in fact, it's often the opposite, with court mages serving as advisors rather than leaders. This is in part due to the fact that arcane technocrats who dump Charisma aren't necessarily oriented towards leadership or bringing people together organically.
>Popular army
About her reason why the popular army is so important is because of the concept of total war, where the entire country is in one way or another mobilized to aid in the conflict, militarily or economically, which gives it an enormous advantage over a country that only fights with its elite class.
Posey does recognize the importance of a popular army, in her own twisted evil way. In Magehold, there are no civilians, only masters, monsters and slaves: everyone is either a necromancer, a vampire, or a monstrous servant thereof, all ready to rip and tear at a moment's notice. I will state again that the Dread League has a very high recruitable population for this reason. Posey has been raised to see any and all bodies, living or dead, as her potential soldiers, or materials to make more. As they say in Thay "Our army is already here. We just need to wake it up."
In the Dread League, the lowest caste are the ghouls, but even a lowly ghoul is inherently a ready for battle, and is easily mobilized too because they're so desperate for fresh meat.
>The ghouls provided the unglamorous backbone of the empire. Intelligent and undead, they needed to feast on flesh, especially brains, to prevent decay into mindless zombies, and provided the labour, manufacture, and intelligence needed to run the empire.
This is the Dread League's equivalent to a popular army.
>theory of quality
Posey doesn't really believe in equality, due to her upbringing. She had a bit of a reverse Glimmer character arc. The horrible brutality of existence and the nature of power was hammered into her when she was just a filly, and she has formed her entire worldview around it. For this reason, she values personal power above all else, and the means to control others and bring them under her command, because she trusts nopony.

She could probably use some friendship lessons.

>>194171
>>194172
This was a fascinating read and part of why this game is so great.

>So what justifies this inequality?
Outside the consideration of power dynamics which can be reduced to "Grug beats up weaker Grug," the clear answer is that as society grows, specialization arises. You need a lot of people making things so they're better off or at least can stay alive, but when you make things there is an incentive for bad actors to steal as an alternative to production. Therefore, you need some people to be specialized toward protecting the rest. If producers are the only ones defending themselves, they run into several issues. First is that if they protect themselves as they're attacked instead of coordinating with a group, then even a small group of aggressors can target them piecemeal with little hope for resistance. Second is that even if they do coordinate, they simply won't be as good at defending themselves than dedicated soldiers or guards. Third is that any investment in improving their own defensive capabilities comes at an opportunity cost for producing more stuff, and is dead weight if it's not used. When it is used, any casualties taken will impact the general economy because there will be fewer productive people. Therefore, it's more efficient overall to have a few dedicated soldiers or guards protecting a much larger productive group. Except in the most dire cases, there are generally far fewer than producers because one dedicated to fighting can't support himself economically except in service to the producers, and therefore whatever is invested into defense long-term has to be equal to or less than the surplus produced over what producers need to support themselves. They are also fewer because they are much better and more coordinated at defending, and unless if there's an offensive campaign not that many are needed in defense. Finally, and this is the reason why dedicated fighters tend to be prized over producers, is that putting oneself out there to fight involves martial skills and virtues that may be absent in others. The rote toil of work and production is all good and absolutely necessary, but it does not typically result in endangering one's life like being a soldier does. Moreover, being a trained soldier places special value on cohesion, duty and leadership to the degree that veterans can often sense other veterans merely by a military sort of bearing.

It should be noted that the degree to which this separation exists is never constant in history but changes owing to technology and sociopolitical realities. Mass armies like what Rome had were impractical and unsustainable after the rise of a feudal sort of structure, which was far more efficient at defending a local area of producers in an era when communication was slow and unreliable. Technology didn't actually play much of a role in this; late medieval plate armor certainly was sophisticated and no doubt extended this status quo, but early medieval times were no less stratified and certainly didn't have better armor technology than the Romans. However the introduction of gunpowder and faster communication certainly brought about mass armies which preceded liberalism, though they were still largely professional under absolutist kings. Arquebuses and even muskets weren't individually better than other weapons, but they were easier to train with and compounded well in mass formations. The Industrial Revolution brought this to the logical conclusion with massive armies of conscripts: not only was a far smaller number of producers able to sustain a much larger army, but interchangeable, mass-produced parts meant weapons on an individual basis were trivially cheap.

What's interesting is that this trend toward mass warfare reversed starting in WW2 and has continued today. As weapon systems have become far more sophisticated and rifle infantry are just one component of a combined arms apparatus, sheer numbers of basic weapons will lose out on an open battlefield to a decent number of advanced weapons. The average rifleman's kit has also ballooned in cost in terms of weaponry, armor protection, and utility items like night vision. Later advancements will likely put even more emphasis on fewer, better trained and better equipped troops.

>the United States constitution includes the idea of a "Well Regulated Militia," which has been argued to mean the citizenry as a whole, disciplined and able to act as an army in a time of need, but do not serve as a standing army.
Sort of but this is much more relevant to the concept of English yeomanry than to the political concept of liberalism, at least in the French sense. For centuries England was unique in the practice of recruiting especially skilled archers from free farmers. While they weren't as skilled in other forms of combat as other noble retinues, their specialization in archery made them useful and allowed for some upward mobility, which in turn gave rise to the more moderate form of liberalism that Britain adopted. Jefferson and his peers saw the advantages of this system, but with yeomanry being less of a rigid social class and more of an idealized self-sufficient farmer. Professionalism and voluntaryism revolving around local militias was at the core of it, as opposed to the centralized Levee en Masse that France practiced. Mass conscription really only took hold in America starting during the War Between the States.

I do agree, as do many others, that war in its nature has changed like you said.

>>194173
>See, this is where fantasy settings get a bit tricky, because most fantasy settings have at least in some regard the concept of scaling power levels and individual heroes
I was thinking about writing an entire post on the subject of Heroic fantasies and contrasting them with what I'm trying to do with Occupied on a thematic level

I'm just not a fan of extreme power scaling... at all. Just... I don't know, it's really not something I care for.

The Lord of the Rings is very obviously the inspiration of most of the Dungeons and Dragons setting, yet oddly its a relatively low magic and lower power scaling setting. In the Lord of the Rings, the only wizards that exists are literal angels, the Maiar, Sauromon and Gandalf (and Sauron for that matter). Elves, Dwarves, Halflings and Humans cannot be wizards. Almost all magic we see that is performed by someone other than the three Maiar is done by means of a ring of power, and even much of the magic performed by the Maiar is done through rings of power, like Gandalf's fireworks through his eleven ring, or the manipulation of the water to fight the nazgul. And even with all of that, relatively little magic is used. Gandolf isn't lobbing artillery at Helms Deep. As for Eldrich Bulwark fighters, well... "Even the mightiest warrior may be felled by an arrow. And Boromir was pierced by many."

Superheros have just never appealed to me. Or any kind of anime that's the same thing. Like someone punches another person, they fly back and hit an object with no visible damage to themselves, or a beam of light hits them and does no visible damage. I'm supposed to believe that that's much more damaging than a bullet? Eh? I have no point of reference to connect with it. I cannot imagine it. It has no meaning to me. It's just punches and light beams that do nothing and signify nothing happening to plastic figures. It's the same thing with magic. What is this magical thing? It's some kind of arbitrary bullshit made up on the spot. How does it work? It's magic. Has the author thought through the implications that the existence of such magic would have on the larger world and society? Not just no, but hell no. And how do we defeat such powerful magic? With equally arbitrary magic that we just pulled out of our asses so that we can defeat this completely arbitrary magic. Actually. the later seasons of My Little Pony have this problem. It's a completely self-made problem. Take for instance Discord and Starlight Glimmer going to fight Chrysalis. How does Chrysalis fight against a god? "Fuck your magic, I have a rock." I can rant about this but I probably shouldn't

This discussion relates to something similar I've wanted to talk about for a while: what I'm trying to do with Occupied Equestria, in terms of themes.

I think a good place to start is, what is the purpose of heroic fantasy in general? That is, what is it about?

Fantasy is of course composed of diverse literature from the ancient heroic epics like the Illiad and Beowulf, to medieval literature like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, to Tokein's works, to My Little Pony. And yet, I think there are definite commonalties.

I will never forget hearing former producer on My Little Pony Jim Miller say "My Little Pony is a Morality Play. Either the Good Guys will win because they are good, or the Bad Guys will lose because they are bad. And yeah, that's exactly right. What is my little pony? A morality play to teach children what behavior is good. Oddly I've actually heard almost exactly the same phraseology in regards to Tolkein's Lord of the Rings. "The Good Guys will win because they are good and the bad guys will lose because they are bad." Obviously there is much more going on in the Lord of the Rings, but at least a major part of the Lord of the Rings is to say "This is what virtue is, this is what defines goodness, this is what defines evil, these are the limits of goodness, these are the limits of evil, this is what will happen if you lead a virtuous life/do good, and this is what will happen if you do evil." Medieval works like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are much the same. Certainly they reflect on human weakness and the limitations of human nature, but they are still very much about virtue and doing good. The ancient epics are less focused on virtue, to be sure, but its still a major focus. The Illiad opens with the Wrath of Achilles over being cucked by Agamemnon, then moves on to Achilles being enraged by his friend dying, and then ends with him finally calming down. The larger reflection of both the Illiad and Beowulf is how we find purpose in a universe where death looms over all and everything seems to be fated.

There are of course other reasons why certain fantastical epics were written. For example, The Aeneid is mythological telling of the origin of the Roman people, and to a very large extent, Tolkein's various works are exactly the same thing for the British and Northern European peoples. And yet still, overwhelmingly, fantasy is about what it is like to live as a human in a world full of struggles. How to be good, what is good, what is evil, and what to do in the face of evil and the inevitability of death. It is about becoming a better person.

You'll notice that this meshes well with ancient concepts of Nobility, in that the struggles that must be faced by society are faced by a narrow band of people, and this narrow band of people must prove themselves - they must prove that they were fit to lead. Sir Gawain must prove himself in facing the Green Knight. Aragorn must prove that he is fit to be the air of Isildur and Twilight Sparkle must prove herself to be the Princess of Friendship. All of these people are born into, fated to be in the role they are in, and yet, they must prove themselves by facing trials to earn the position. They are elite warriors facing threats no one else can.

The stories are (almost) always about individual people, and good and evil, even when not immediately apparent, have a definite form.

That is not what Occupied Equestria is about.

So if it isn't about heroism, then what is it about?

Well, Occupied in the convergence of three things. Dungeons and Dragons, My Little Pony, and Hearts of iron 4. If both Dungeons and Dragons and My Little Pony are about heroism, then what is Hearts of Iron 4 about? Well... It is a map painter of World War 2. But this isn't about painting maps. So then, what was World War 2 about?

Well... Have you heard of the Hegelian Dialectic? The gist is this: history has a progression to it, with each era being defined by a central conflict and learning from the last, with history advancing as time progresses. The era defining conflict is between two ideas, a thesis and its antithesis. Eventually, one idea defeats the other, but in doing so, they create a new synthesis that merges parts of both concepts into a newer, better whole.

Hearts of Iron 4 actually has this kind of dialectic as an essential part of its game mechanics through ideology. There are three, technically four, ideologies. Each nation may chose one of the three (four, whatever) ideologies as its path, align with likeminded nations, and ultimately come to dominate the world. In doing so, it proclaims the victory of its ideology. World War 2 was in part an ideological struggle between Fascism (and similar ideologies), Liberalism, and Communism. Fascism was destroyed, shamed, and removed from history, leaving Liberalism and Communism as the victors, until eventually through the Cold War Communism was destroyed and shamed, leaving Liberalism as the sole victor, here at the End of History. Or at least it was until this new era has revealed the contradictions in Liberalism, and a new thesis and antithesis will emerge.

Of course World War 2 was about much more than ideology. It was about great power politics, ethnic rivalries, the predilections of individuals in power, and so much more. But it was above all the clash of civilizations. And that is what I want to explore. A sociological rather than individual psychological examination of the human experience. The way that humans behave in groups more so than as individuals. And I am especially interested in the philosophical aspects.

In Tolkein, what is good and what is evil is firmly established. Good is what his version of Catholicism or Liberal Christianity says is good, and evil is what it says is evil, and there isn't all that much of a question to it. The problem is that not everyone agrees on the same set of values as good and evil. People disagree. People have vehement disagreements over many aspects of morality. To what degree are we allowed to favor our own kind over outsiders? To what degree is social conformity necessary for cohesion and to what degree is it a source of unacceptable exclusion? To what degree is freedom in sexual behavior acceptable, and to what degree is it unacceptable licentiousness? Are the various races of mankind to be treated exactly the same? All of this and more was in dispute at the time. It still is. Even if people can agree on 95% of what is good and what is evil, they are willing to kill each other over that last 5%, and that is what I wish to focus on in Occupied.

Where does this leave the individual? Where does this leave heroism? I mentioned in my last post of the advantages of Popular Armies, where an army of the common people can be lost in its entirety and replaced, where the individual's identity is subsumed into a greater whole for whom the body as well as the soul is sacrificed, and how wars fought by such armies are clashes of civilizations, where entire nations fight to the death. Stop for a minute and think of how fucking awful it would be to be a warrior in such an army and such a war. Wars are no longer a set of professional warriors fighting with honor for the sake of honor to achieve the very limited objectives of their superiors. Wars are now total. Every man, woman, and child - every lump of coal and blade of grass in the empire - is a part of an industrialized war literally 50% of the population may somehow be involved either directly as a soldier or in the supporting economy. And the stakes are impossibly high, with the very real risk that if your side loses, not only will you be dead - that was a given even if you won - but your entire race, your civilization, your country, your way of life, your language, may all be eradicated or at least relegated to serf status.

Consider that last paragraph of the opening text of Warhammer 40K: "To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the most cruel and bloody regime imaginable." Those words could be said, switching out billions for millions, for soldiers of the Soviet Union, or of Nazi Germany, or Imperial Japan, or Nationalist China, or even to a lesser extent of the various allied nations. When you are a part of the 34 million Soviets, 18 million Germans, 16 million Americans, 14 million Chinese, 9 million Japanese, or of any of the other soldiers of the 100+ belligerent nations placed in a uniform, you truly are "one amongst untold millions." Individual identity is completely lost.

In the Lord of the Rings, the warriors of Rohan lost 2000 horsemen in the Battle of the Pelanor Fields, that big penultimate battle in Peter Jackson's Return of the King. That's as many soldiers as the United States lost ferrying airplanes to their destinations. The number of American aircrew lost to training accidents in WW2 is 15,000, probably not far from total losses for the coalition of Free Peoples in all of The Lord of the Rings. Never mind the losses of a battle like Kiev or Leningrad or Kursk.

>>194177
There are of course many tales of heroism in WW2. There's that American dive bomber pilot who sank not one but two Japanese Aircraft carriers in the same day. There were multiple Finish, Russian, and German snipers who shot 400+ people. There's pilot who shot down 400+ planes and several more with more than one hundred. Audie Murphy, who fended off 50 Germans and two tanks with the machine gun of a burning tank. Those are heroes. Those are heroes with kill counts and accomplishments on the same level as Legolas, or Gimli. And when you expand the list of heroes to include politicians and generals, some are arguably on the level of Aragorn. But these were real men who lived and died, were decorated or disgraced, and remembered or forgotten for their deeds. And these men are the equals of even fantasy heroes.

But what you do not have is a hero who, through tossing a single ring into a volcano, instantly ended the war. Then again, even Tolkien didn't have such a hero None of these people brought the war to an end single handedly. The outcome of the war does not change if they all collectively were removed. All of them could have been replaced by others - some of them were - and the needle barely moves.

But consider the final two lines of the Warhammer 40k introductory text: "Forget the power of Science and Technology, for so much has been forgotten, never to be relearned. Forget the promise of progress, for in the Grim Dark Future of the 41st Millenium, there is only war." That is decidedly not what we have with a World War 2 setting. In fact those two statements are more true of most fantasy worlds, were technology is more or less in statis and societal structures most certainly are. World War 2 is unique against such settings in that there really is a fast pace of technological advancement, such that technology upon the war's conclusion was noticeably advanced compared to the war's beginning. But it isn't just technology. There was a genuine belief in human progress that is hard to understand now. There was a belief that we can change society for the better through laws, institutions, and economic development. There was a genuine belief that your children could have a better life than you could have, or for that matter, that you could have children. There was a belief in the possibility of utopia - or at least, of a better world than the one we live in. And it could be achieved. Fantasy settings very rarely have that kind of hope. Our modern world most certainly does not.

I like the World War 2 setting in no small part because in my generation - I am certainly at least slightly older than all of you - World War 2 was the fabled war of the recentish past, the one everyone was fascinated with and wanted to study. But beyond that, World War 2 is the last great crossroads of history. Where we are now, it feels as if somewhere down that long road, we took a wrong path, or at least, that something has gone horribly wrong. In World War 2, there seemed to be a genuine choice between multiple, distinct outcomes. There was hope for a better world. If the world was doomed already, that was not obvious at the time.

That is what I wanted to capture. This feeling of historical crossroads, and a clash of ideologies and philosophies. Not a triumph of good over evil necessarily, but a definition of the terms.

>>194174
>as society grows, specialization arises.
That's why I mentioned magic, which is specialized by nature. Only more powerful mages can cast high level spells or craft world-changing magic items. The need for heroes is especially true in fantasy worlds that have nigh-indestructible monsters who can lay waste to entire armies and are immune to mortal weaponry.
>As weapon systems have become far more sophisticated and rifle infantry are just one component of a combined arms apparatus, sheer numbers of basic weapons will lose out on an open battlefield to a decent number of advanced weapons.
Yeah, especially with drone warfare. A flying zombie strapped to a bomb can skullfuck conventional conventional infantry.
>>194175
>extreme power scaling... at all. Just... I don't know, it's really not something I care for
Extreme power scaling does exist in Equestria. That's arguably a flaw in the later seasons.
>The Lord of the Rings is very obviously the inspiration of most of the Dungeons and Dragons setting, yet oddly its a relatively low magic and lower power scaling setting.
I actually think that Conan is the bigger inspiration for D&D, not just in the world building but also in the basic adventure design. People invoke Lord Of The Rings more often because it's popular. A lot of the world building for the monster races and classes in D&D is derivative from Conan, which is a relatively high magic setting that happens to feature a martial protagonist. This was especially true in the Mystara era of D&D.
Lord Of The Rings is low magic overall, but not low power, imo. It's at the very least as high power as Equestria, because Gandalf basically has the same power kit as Celestia (he could literally move the sun to make it daytime). Even the martial characters could be considered to be quite high level, especially the elves.
>Superheros have just never appealed to me. Or any kind of anime that's the same thing. Like someone punches another person, they fly back and hit an object with no visible damage to themselves, or a beam of light hits them and does no visible damage.
You shouldn't think of HP as physicality, or you will frustrate yourself and break immersion. HP is a narrative device that represents how many near-misses and grazes a hero can take before their story ends. HP represents luck, skill and even divine blessings more than it does any measure of physicality.
Think of John Wick: there's nothing magical about him, but he represents a high level d20 Modern character with high HP.
>I'm supposed to believe that that's much more damaging than a bullet?
The one place where the mechanics of 3.5e differ from d20 modern is the massive damage thresholds. In d20 modern, massive damage thresholds are at a base only equal to a character's constitution score, so a single crit from a bullet that does 14 damage can in fact kill a mid-high level characters with 70+ HP if they fail the save. This is the one mechanic that enforces realism in d20 modern.
That being said, d20 Modern characters use Action Points by default to represent their heroic luck.
Eberron uses action points by default too, and it is generally a low level setting.
>the later seasons of My Little Pony have this problem. It's a completely self-made problem. Take for instance Discord and Starlight Glimmer going to fight Chrysalis. How does Chrysalis fight against a god? "Fuck your magic, I have a rock." I can rant about this but I probably shouldn't
I agree completely.
>>194177
>Occupied in the convergence of three things. Dungeons and Dragons, My Little Pony, and Hearts of iron 4. If both Dungeons and Dragons and My Little Pony are about heroism, then what is Hearts of Iron 4 about?
I would really encourage you to check out the d20 modern SRD. The DMG says to refer to it for all issues regarding modern settings. D20 Arcana has tips on using magic in a modern setting too.
>Where does this leave the individual? Where does this leave heroism?
Another question though: where does that leave us, individual heroes, as the protagonists of this game? What is our role in this world? If it's not about heroism and destiny, what is it about?
I actually thought it was going to become a map-painter game at higher level, which is why I made a charisma based character with an emphasis on leadership mechanics and rulership, but my character would need to prove herself before she can even start.
>That is what I wanted to capture. This feeling of historical crossroads, and a clash of ideologies and philosophies. Not a triumph of good over evil necessarily, but a definition of the terms.
Well, I didn't think that much about what Posey believes in when I made her. Actually, her worldview could be summarized as a rebuke of all of the ideological modern nuances posted above. Posey is obsessed with personal power and vainglory, and she also believes in heroism and destiny, albeit in a twisted and villainous way. She would have grown up somewhere around the beginning of the equivalent of the Victorian era, witnessing the end of the medieval lifestyle. The Victorian era likewise ended around this time period as well, so she's an undead character who has witnessed the end of two eras with the advancement of modernity, but Posey never believed in modernity, because the antithesis thereof was was hammered into her at such an early age.

Ran out of space.
Wanted to say I drew a bit of inspiration for Posey's ideological worldview from the Scarlet King SCP article:
>But beneath this lay a fury. A cry for authenticity, for a reality, even as we expressed ourselves more and more in their language and their categories, even in our struggle against them. It lay in our literature, in Tagore and the others; it lay in our adda4, in our menial jobs as clerks. The endless, struggling tension between old and new, between modernity and premodernity. And in those fault-lines, in that cry of rage and fury, in our hatred of the old and the hatred of the new, there rose a hybrid obeying nothing but the law of the howling. There rose the Lāla Rājā.
>Because what is he but the cry for a forgotten age? He is the British peasant staring up at the red sky, the Bengali widow's weeping and shaven head, the Aztec priest ripping out another's heart. He is all of those things transformed, as modernity does to everything, into modernity's own destruction. He is the resistance, the fury, the hatred of all that was for all that presently is.
>What we were was full of good and evil and all else mixed together. The happiness, the beauty of the world, the struggles and heartache and reality of it all. But now we have lost almost all of it to the machine- except our rage. That's all that's left. And thus comes the King. The howl of the destroyed and forgotten and oppressed. His only purpose is to destroy, rape, maim, enslave and smile, smile that smile of a king whose enemies weep before him.
>He cannot exist where there is no modernity, because his entire purpose is given to him by modernity. He is a god of blood, a god of spine and bone and sinew, to remind the denizens of this world that it is not good. It is cruel and hateful and that is good, that is right. Modernity is a sin and he is the correction, so that we can once again live as we must: cold, and hungry, and starving, and very, very afraid.
Yeah, edgy and generic, but Posey still believes that she's the herald of the apocalypse destined to bring and end to this unclean world.
Maybe her worldview might change if she has done friendship lessons though.

>>194181
But, again, I am open to changing this worldview depending on what role GM wants us to play in the story.

>>194175
>I'm just not a fan of extreme power scaling... at all.
>Superheros have just never appealed to me. Or any kind of anime that's the same thing.
>I'm supposed to believe that that's much more damaging than a bullet?
>Stop for a minute and think of how fucking awful it would be to be a warrior in such an army and such a war.

GM, I have noticed that this mindset has informed the way you run the game. I think that's a good thing, because it makes this game unique. However, I think what you're trying to do could work more smoothly if you used additional materials made for it, because nerds figured this out 20 years ago, particularly how to preserve that low-level gritty realism of early levels and reigning in caster supremacy. As a DM, I can sympathize with being uncomfortable with players leveling up too quickly, but in the d20 system individual heroic character progression is essential to the experience of the game. To solve this, some nerds developer the e6 variant rule:
https://www.enworld.org/threads/e6-the-game-inside-d-d.206323/
Read this link. It explains it easily.
What e6 does is cap real level progression at a point between the first two quartiles of play, at a minimum of lvl 6. However, players still progress as they level up through feat progression, and variant feats are made to accommodate numeric progression of character abilities without HP bloat and caster supremacy. There are also variant feats that accommodate for high level abilities being made accessible at the lvl 6 cap, such a a feat that allows a lvl 6 character to cast Flesh To Stone once per day with an expensive material component. Players don't progress in spellcasting, BAB, or features, but they get other perks more slowly as they level.

The benefits of this system is that it allows characters to progress, and it also creates the sort of grounded low-magic world with gritty realistic combat that you described, and monsters remain scary at all levels due to bounded accuracy and arrested HP because man is mortal.
I would actually recommend this system if this is the sort of game you want to run. There are variants to the system based on where power in the setting is supposed to be capped at, like e7, e8, or e10.
If you actually decide to do this, I would BEG you to use e8 or otherwise make the Dread Necromancer's class features accessible at lvl 6 through feats, because I built my entire character around the lvl 8 feature and I don't think I can keep playing this character if I can't keep up hope that I will get to cast Animate Dead with Undead Mastery.

If you want more grounded combat, particularly with guns, you can adopt the d20 modern massive damage threshold. D20 modern uses a Constitution-based threshold:
https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/MSRD:Death,_Dying,_and_Healing
This enforces the "get shot in the chest and die" aspect of combat. It's what makes combat realistic. It's actually one of many variant combat injury systems available for 3.5e, and probably the one to use to make even high level characters fear death. Unearthed Arcana has a few more combat injury variants worth looking at:
https://srd.dndtools.org/srd/variant/unearthedInjury.html

If you use constitution based massive damage thresholds though, you might also want to use Action Points, which are a default in d20 modern (and also Eberron):
https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/MSRD:Action_Points
Action Points are the "hero points" that allow characters to define themselves as the protagonists of the story even when the rest of the system enforces gritty realism and high lethality. They represent a pool of uncanny luck that allow players to modify dicerolls rolls (particularly the roll to not die after being shot) or use limited use abilities (Smite, Turn Undead, etc,) additional times. Action Points are a per-level resource, so they go well with e6 because the opportunity to refresh the pool gives an additional reward for leveling in place of actually leveling.

>That is what I wanted to capture. This feeling of historical crossroads, and a clash of ideologies and philosophies. Not a triumph of good over evil necessarily, but a definition of the terms.
D20 Modern has an optional rule to use Allegiances in place of alignment:
https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/MSRD:Allegiances
And d20 Arcana even presents options for paladin-like class features and feats to work based on allegiances.
You might also like the Eberron setting, which is a war-themed mileau made to be nuanced in the sense of d&d's alignment system.

Really, there are a lot of variant rules that represent what you are describing, and many of them are default rules in d20 Modern. Most if not all of them are accessible through the SRD:
D20 Modern (highly recommended)
https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/MSRD:Modern_System_Reference_Document
D20 Arcana stuff is more easily read here:
http://dmreference.com/MRD/Arcana.htm
https://spellbooksoftware.com/d20mrsd/arcana.html
Unearthed Arcana:
https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/UA:Variant_Rules

Maybe take a long look at the d20 Modern stuff or the e6 rules and consider using some of it when this adventure is over.

>>194175
>lower power scaling setting
Is it though? Lord of the Rings has much lower power scaling than the Silmarilion, because it's a world in decay, but the heroes involved are explicitly superhuman. We see the very best that humanity has to offer in the likes of Aragon, Boromir and Faramir, but aside from Legolas (who by elf standards is a youngster) elves are mainly in the background. The very few elf-lords left around are the stuff of legend, and orcs (who are the degraded descendants of elves and are stronger than men) mention them with trepidation. Read the Silmarilion and the power-scaling becomes much more extreme, with elf-lords living through hundreds of years of near-constant war and dying only in some climatic battle or to treachery. Only a couple of humans approach that power level and they are marked with especial destiny, the culmination of perfect breeding among warrior peoples and with determination that awes even elves.

It should be noted that Tolkien personally fought in WW1 and was intimately familiar with its dehumanizing horror, and deliberately structured his universe as a living contradiction to it. When there is war, some of his personal experience leaks into it, but there is focus on the heroic actions of individuals as the deciding factors, and a sense of meaning and fate behind every event. It's an interesting reversal to take fantasy campaigns and settings intellectually descended from his work and turn them back into a grounded, gritty, depersonalized world.

I know what you mean though. Superheroes stories and anime are notorious for maximizing spectacle in fights, so it's unfair to compare any genre to these. Some anime resemble a children's understanding of power scaling with absurd depictions being handed out nonchalantly. I hope it's not insulting to treat that as unserious but it is what it is.

>Have you heard of the Hegelian Dialectic?
pic related
Sorry, not sorry. I couldn't help but hear John Doman's voice when reading this. I do agree btw. It feels almost meaningless what side in these conflicts the PCs pick, outside of personal interest and risk. That's not a bad thing and I like the moral quandaries that come with it, at least for the mundane characters.

>That is what I wanted to capture. This feeling of historical crossroads, and a clash of ideologies and philosophies. Not a triumph of good over evil necessarily, but a definition of the terms.
I like that, though it's hard to get in the microcosm of OE. I can certainly see it in how the Fellow Traveler has seized on a definition of communism and twisted it toward its own ends, though that's not really a crossroads for the PCs to choose unless if we decide to not do our jobs and let Stalliongrad deal with it. I think it's best captured when navigating the factions in Baltimare itself: the Blackhooves, the ELF, the social democrats, communists, anarchists, and the Waterfront Gang. I made a joke about New Vegas earlier but that game had the same goal and it worked beautifully. The main difference is that in that game, the Courier is a nigh-unstoppable superhuman who absolutely has power to shape events in the region.

>>194179
>Conan
I swear everyone knows about that series but hasn't read it, myself included.
>You shouldn't think of HP as physicality, or you will frustrate yourself and break immersion. HP is a narrative device that represents how many near-misses and grazes a hero can take before their story ends. HP represents luck, skill and even divine blessings more than it does any measure of physicality.
The problem is that this is copium because it directly overlaps other game mechanics that represent this, most notably AC which represents either uncanny dodging ability or armor. And then there are various feats and whatnot that fill that role as well. If HP wasn't meant to be physicality, then physically tougher classes like fighters and barbarians wouldn't have more HP than weaker but more agile/divinely blessed ones. Also John Wick does get shot sometimes in the movies, but he is usually wearing armor and has insane toughness.
>Another question though: where does that leave us, individual heroes, as the protagonists of this game? What is our role in this world? If it's not about heroism and destiny, what is it about?
I can't speak for every character, but for most it's heroism or fulfillment in smaller ways. Cavaliere is good at a particular set of skills and he will keep using those skills in a way that follows his moral compass. Paladin in the TV show exists in the context of the Old West and although his presence affects many small locales, he never impacts history in any major way. I need to rewatch the series but he never arrests a governor, for instance, or does anything that would make history books. His deeds are small-scale and affect persons, not nations. Cavaliere might be different but doesn't need to be.
Amber is even more extreme in this regard and has done nothing heroic yet. It's impossible to imagine her rescuing a princess or couping a government. Yet, playing her is satisfying to me because it's living vicariously in this richly detailed world with interesting characters. Sometimes I don't want anything more than that.
This is hard to reconcile with a character intended to become a map-painter but I hope it's possible. It would be easier if said map-painter was a good-aligned idealist who other PCs can assist or at least coexist with, rather than be an embodiment of evil who will be hostile as soon as she reveals herself.

>>194181
>>194183
>scarlet king
Sounds like a fantastical Ted Kaczynski
>D20 Modern
>e6
>action points
>etc.
>Maybe take a long look at the d20 Modern stuff or the e6 rules and consider using some of it when this adventure is over.
I really want to do that because while this campaign is build around vanilla 3.5e it's obviously outgrown the possibilities afforded by that sourcebook. I've daydreamed for a while about collaborating to make this a fairly cohesive system, maybe even one that can be published and shared around. However, it's the sort of thing that would take several weeks at least of sitting around a metaphorical table to discuss and hash it out in committee. My hopes for that have dimmed since that's obviously not very fun, and we've had trouble with motivation just for the actually fun part of playing a campaign when these mechanics aren't that much of a problem yet.
Please let it be possible to incorporate some of this, but if it's not it's still acceptable to play with an incomplete and imperfect system.

https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/tag/e6
This blogpost about e6 opens with a few paragraphs referring to the struggle in mileau that GM referred to earlier:
>I felt that people were struggling with a dissonance between what they thought high-level D&D was supposed to be like (Conan or Lord of the Rings) and what high-level D&D was actually delivering (mythological demigods).
Tbh, not sure I completely agree with this take (and apparently commenters on his previous article had skepticism), but the blogger seems to agree with GM. He proposes e6-e10 as a solution.

>>194185
>However, it's the sort of thing that would take several weeks at least of sitting around a metaphorical table to discuss and hash it out in committee.
I mean, it's not like we don't do that already in between advancements in the actually game.
E6 isn't hard. Neither are the d20 Modern mechanics I mentioned. We could talk about it.

>>194187
Yes but between everything else I don't know how I can find time to pore over sourcebooks and homebrews and think about how those mechanics can be incorporated. I don't know if GM pony will either. Just my response today took more time than I was comfortable spending, but that's a problem with me.

>>194184
>It feels almost meaningless what side in these conflicts the PCs pick, outside of personal interest and risk.
It doesn't have to be like that, imo.
>That's not a bad thing and I like the moral quandaries that come with it, at least for the mundane characters.
What is a "mundane character" to you?
>The main difference is that in that game, the Courier is a nigh-unstoppable superhuman who absolutely has power to shape events in the region.
That's what being the protagonist of an RPG means. It applies to most of not all games. Taking action that have consequences in the world gives meaning to a game.
>I swear everyone knows about that series but hasn't read it, myself included.
Iirc, Marvel owns it but would rather sit on the IP and do nothing with it. They would probably just fill it with trannies anyway.
>this is copium
It's literally what they tell you in the Player's Handbook:
>What Hit Points Represent: Hit points mean two things in the game world: the ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one. For some characters, hit points may represent divine favor or inner power. When a paladin survives a fireball, you will be hard pressed to convince bystanders that she doesn’t have the favor of some higher power.
Just because it overlaps with AC doesn't mean it's not an abstraction. Even AC is an abstraction. Some games even treat AC as damage reduction.
>If HP wasn't meant to be physicality, then physically tougher classes like fighters and barbarians wouldn't have more HP than weaker but more agile/divinely blessed ones.
It can be fluffed any number of ways. Frontline fighters have higher HP because being in the meatgrinder is part of their job description.
>Amber is even more extreme in this regard and has done nothing heroic yet. It's impossible to imagine her rescuing a princess or couping a government.
In this world, Nightmare Moon was defeated by a librarian, a baker, a wannabe athlete, a seamstress, a pet-groomer, and a farmer, and those mares saved the world dozens of times since then. Idk what it is that makes you think that your horse isn't special enough to be a hero. Amber is a more powerful spellcaster than Posey, ffs.
>It would be easier if said map-painter was a good-aligned idealist who other PCs can assist or at least coexist with, rather than be an embodiment of evil who will be hostile as soon as she reveals herself.
I mean, part of the point of Posey is that she's supposed to present herself as a hero and a false savior. She wants ponies to follow her, convincing them that she can save them in these desperate times, even if she has ulterior motives.
>while this campaign is build around vanilla 3.5e it's obviously outgrown the possibilities afforded by that sourcebook
The DMG straight up says to refer to d20 Modern for questions concerning modern settings.
>>194188
>pore over sourcebooks
The e6 homebrew is only like three pages long.

Most of the d20 modern stuff is in the SRD. The only notable difference between 3.5e and d20 modern is that d20 Modern uses the aforementioned two 3.5e variant rules (Constitution based massive damage; Action Points) by default.

>>194186
>TIP: A lot of class abilities would work just fine as feats. Even more class abilities would be appropriate as epic feats (or as part of an epic feat chain). The DM is encouraged to be flexible in helping players achieve the effects they want, as long as they would normally be achievable for the level range that the DM is shooting for.
I could be content with never actually leveling beyond 6 if Animate Dead were made a lvl 3 spell (like it is for Clerics) and the Dread Necromancer's Familiar and Undead Mastery were both made into epic feats.
D20 Modern Arcana incantations can also fill the role for situationally limited higher level spell effects that require ages of research and hours to cast, like Create Undead.

Idk about the other player's ambitions though.

Some more easily-read e6 rules:
https://dungeons.fandom.com/wiki/E6_(3.5e_Sourcebook)/Rules

I also linked the PDF rules document. It's only a couple pages long.

>>194189
>What is a "mundane character" to you?
Non-caster characters and those who don't have grand ambitions. That applies to every PC except for Posey, Spark and maybe Tenebrous.
>Just because it overlaps with AC doesn't mean it's not an abstraction. Even AC is an abstraction. Some games even treat AC as damage reduction.
>It can be fluffed any number of ways. Frontline fighters have higher HP because being in the meatgrinder is part of their job description.
Ok. There's just no hard-and-fast definition.
>Idk what it is that makes you think that your horse isn't special enough to be a hero.
Good point. Maybe it's just reluctance on my part.
>The e6 homebrew is only like three pages long.
>I also linked the PDF rules document. It's only a couple pages long.
That's pretty good. I'm sorry if I've come across as disinterested. I'm just going through the middle of a productivity crisis atm. What you've shared is genuinely very useful.

Now that I finally have a day off from work, I just wanted to say that something I find really compelling about this game is the conflict between the ideals of heroism or "noble armies" as it's been called that is extolled by D&D and the ideals of ideology and "peasant armies" extolled by EaW. To use my characters as an example, Silver as a colt grew up hearing stories about heroes and adventurers from days past and he idolized them, to the point that he begged his father to train him as a warrior and when he grew into an adult he struck out on his own as an adventurer, only to find that the world had largely moved on from those stories and that the best he could hope for to be an "adventurer" was to basically be a bounty hunter and mercenary. Kira comes from a pre-industrialized tribal civilization in the wild savannahs and forests of Southeastern Zebrica, a caste society where each lamia has their role that they fulfill to better the whole of the tribe, where she was born not just as a hunter and trained as a hunter but also born into a noble hunter family where the expectations of her role was even greater, and how she struggles internally with some aspects of her role in that society despite how much she prides herself in being one. To me it's compelling seeing how my characters react to this world they're in, a world that makes them seem almost like characters out of time despite being from this time. It also makes missions like this more interesting in my eyes because these are cases where these characters can be something that is otherwise disappearing from the world: heroes.

>>194191
What would you describe as a grand ambition?

>>194179
>>194181
>>194182
>>194183
>>194186
>>194187
>>194189
>>194190
On a long car ride I’ve had some time to reflect. I’ve come to realize that it isn’t Posey’s world view, or power scaling in D&D 3.5, or the rule set, or power gaming/balance in general that I am concerned about.

There is one thing, and one thing specifically that feels like an issue with Posey. I started to write about it, wrote 1700 words, realized I wasn’t close to done and started to worry that the series of posts may be too mean. So I’ll just try to summarize it.

Posey is kind of non-responsive to the environment around her in general. But in particular, she never really seems like she believes that she is in danger, that her task is difficult, that there is a chance of failure, and just in general doesn’t seem to suffer or hurt from the conflict she faces. This is evident from her words to other characters, her body language, attitude, and how she choses to approach encounters. I don’t like that, and I think the fact that Posey consistently acts like she’s over levelled and too powerful for the campaign has lead me to believe that she is overlevelled and too powerful for the campaign.

>>194193
>I started to write about it, wrote 1700 words, realized I wasn’t close to done and started to worry that the series of posts may be too mean.
Oh.. I am sorry to waste your time.
>Posey is kind of non-responsive to the environment around her in general. But in particular, she never really seems like she believes that she is in danger, that her task is difficult, that there is a chance of failure, and just in general doesn’t seem to suffer or hurt from the conflict she faces.
This was by design. I made Posey hubristic and vain, and most importantly relentlessly confident to disguise her own insecurities. She believes that by acting as though she is great and powerful, she can wish manifest her dreams into existence. As a Sorceress, she believes that magical power comes from force of personality, so she puts on the persona of a great and powerful mage.
While other necromancers travel to Magehold, Posey was born there. In Magebold, there are no friends, only masters and slaves. Posey is a former sex slave to the vampire coven, and she has a deeply-rooted belief that weakness attracts violence. Her mother murdered her for reasons unclear, and to this day she still ponders why she was so brutally discarded in that act of wasteful violence. Her masters condemned her to a century of demeaning servitude after she failed to meet their unrealistic goals in creating a god of destruction. Her entire life and unlike has been a spiral of weakness and failure, but she is for the first time being given a real opportunity to make something of herself since coming to Equestria. She acts confident in her powers, but she is painfully aware that she is only capable of casting lvl 2 spells despite being over a century old, and so long as she remains weak she remains a slave to her masters, so she is absolutely desperate to grow stronger. That is the reason why she responds so viciously when her powers are called into doubt in posts like this >>192693 →
To put it shortly, she's as narcissist, intentionally flawed, except it's ironic because when Posey looks in the mirror she doesn't see anything at all...
>This is evident from her words to other characters, her body language, attitude, and how she choses to approach encounters.
Well, she did acknowledge the limits of her powers and was forced to flee on that last monster encounter we had: >>192857 → (pic related)
>I don’t like that
I did design her that way, but if GM thinks it's annoying I guess I could try to approach things differently.
>Posey consistently acts like she’s over levelled and too powerful for the campaign has lead me to believe that she is overlevelled and too powerful for the campaign.
GM, you do realize that Posey is only lvl 4, right? She has lvl 2 spells, just like Amber. Do you remember the last time she cast a spell in combat? It was Chill Touch, over a year ago. Her main class feature is her spellcasting ability, and I really don't think her spells have been disruptive in this game; almost all of her spells do some variation of the same thing, which is cause fear, deal pitiful damage with negative energy, or summon a minor monster. She is not "over leveled"; in fact, she is underleveled because spent two levels worth of XP in character creation making her half vampire because I autistically needed a mechanical justification for her corpse to remain sexy after death, and I thought she could earn that XP back quickly, but alas. She has ended half of every non-trivial encounter she's been in at single digit HP, surviving the fight with Luminous at literally 1 HP, whome she "honorably" handed the +2 Silver Sword to in an act of self-destructive confidence because she esoterically believed that defeating a paladin fairly would allow her to reach a new level of power.
Barely anything about the way Posey plays is related to her being over leveled; I have just been pressured to get creative with roleplay, tactics and desperate gimmicks (like summoning amoebas to counter an otherwise invincible hydra that she had to fight 1v1 while treading water) to try to represent the mighty sorceress I imagined in my head.

If me roleplaying her as a cocky brat and a glory hound is actually what's preventing you from letting me level up, I will amend that. Often in milestone games you only level up after the GM decides you've done feats that are sufficiently sufficiently "cool enough" to warrant a level up to represent your character, but I guess in this game it's the opposite.

>>194194
Well, I did not get across what I needed to in just a few words. I’ll either use some of what I’ve written, or I’ll just drop the whole matter.

>>194193
>Posey is kind of non-responsive to the environment around her in general. But in particular, she never really seems like she believes that she is in danger, that her task is difficult, that there is a chance of failure, and just in general doesn’t seem to suffer or hurt from the conflict she faces.
Do you feel the same about how I roleplay Virgin now? Should I tone down the silliness?

>>194196
I like Virgin Flame

>>194192
>What would you describe as a grand ambition?
Taking over a territory and commanding a large force of hundreds or thousands, or otherwise influencing geopolitics to a measurable degree
>>194196
>>194198
I like her too, and we need silliness. Amber has had silly moments too.

>>194199
What are your characters' goals?

>>194200
Cavaliere just got into the game and has no long-term goals. He's seeking employment of the kind he's good at and otherwise lives for himself.

Amber still wants to make enough money to support her family back home and to get into music school. On top of that she also has a longing for adventure and to develop her relationship with Mustard Trim.

>>194199
Would Kira trying to bring her people over into Equestria as refugees count?

>>194195
Is there anything else you want to say?

>>194198
>>194199
Thank you, guys c:

>>194196
Well, look at it this way. A game like this is basically a collaborative writing venture. Basically I write several parts of a story, you write another part, and the other players write respective parts. The point is to produce a hopefully decent piece of literature. But to do so, we kind of need to be on the same page.

Ponies are cute. I like the cuteness. And silliness is fun too. Is Virgin too silly? Uh... I'm not sure? She can be silly, just be sure that... at least some things that happen around her are responded to sometimes. I can work with silly or crazy. But moderation is probably best, at least for now, as the world around her is very serious. Her being silly in a serious world isn't necessarily a bad thing. We all have heard of and seen the "crazy guy/straight man" comedic duo where the contrast is a part of the joke (like Spongebob and Squidward). Just... Be mindful. But silly on. Virgin Flame is a cute character and I like her.

>>194205
I try to roleplay Posey as silly too. Sometimes I break her glorious/serious demeanor by making her do silly things like fall down the stairs, forfeit the element of surprise to knock on doors, or demand that ponies rub her tummy for attention. Posey dreams of being a supervillain, but as of now she's just a lowly apprentice mage trying her best, and is very much still a silly cartoon horsie.
Being out-of-touch with the mileau is also part of Posey's character, because she's a member of the Dread League, which is a D&D faction in a WWII setting. Posey is a Victorian era character with Medieval ideals. I was originally going to have her only speak in middle English like Luna, but I decided it was a bit too much effort to be worth it because when I did test chats I thought it came off as annoying.
>But moderation is probably best, at least for now, as the world around her is very serious.
I don't think so. I think your character is fine just as she is.
She could have some interesting development as a martial artist action hero, but she would need to enter combat for that to happen. Just wait for the situation to become serious and react to it accordingly.

>>194201
>He's seeking employment of the kind he's good at and otherwise lives for himself.
If he were just seeking employment, he would be better off making Profession checks in the city than risk life and limb doing secret mercenary work on a desert Island in contested territory. Maybe consider what he wants to acquire so much money for.
>Amber still wants to make enough money to support her family back home and to get into music school.
She should just roll Perform for this. Not only does making Perform checks earn you enough money to live off of and then some, it also has a chance of attracting patrons who are impressed by your talents.
>Great performance. In a prosperous city, you can earn 3d10 sp/day. In time, you may be invited to join a professional troupe and may develop a regional reputation.
>Memorable performance. In a prosperous city, you can earn 1d6 gp/day. In time, you may come to the attention of noble patrons and develop a national reputation.
>Extraordinary performance. In a prosperous city, you can earn 3d6 gp/day. In time, you may draw attention from distant potential patrons, or even from extraplanar beings.
You can make a perform check in a hour, depending on the context. Once you hit that DC 20, money and plot developments will come to you. Use your spells to buff your skill checks and cast an illusion for a circumstance bonus to performance.

>>194203
Too much.

>>194205
>Just... Be mindful. But silly on. Virgin Flame is a cute character and I like her.
Aww, thank you.
Also, I think I'll play her more reactive in the future as you wanted. That way we are both satisfied. I get where you are coming from. ^^

Btw, you haven't replied in a while, which you obviously know. I'm just worried that I have caused this in some way but since you didn't make a statement about that in your last post and said tht you like my character it seems unlikely.
But I'm not here to stress you. Take you time. Like, I'm the last person to criticize someone for procrastination or whatnot. ^^
Just know that I'm ready when you are again.
>>194206
Also, thank you for liking my character. ^^

>>194216
I meant "reply" in the game thread for the game.

>>194205
>A game like this is basically a collaborative writing venture.
It's not ERP, it's "collaborative erotica"
>We all have heard of and seen the "crazy guy/straight man" comedic duo where the contrast is a part of the joke (like Spongebob and Squidward)
This is sort of the dynamic between Amber and Mustard. I hope we get to see more of that, as well as more of Virgin Flame.
>>194206
>Posey dreams of being a supervillain, but as of now she's just a lowly apprentice mage trying her best, and is very much still a silly cartoon horsie.
Invader Zim would be a nice inspiration for that kind of character. Have you seen that show? You could combine that with the Addams family for a more gothic approach.
>If he were just seeking employment
Not his only motivation.
>She should just roll Perform for this.
Having her be a busker is an option I might go for, but it has more risk from both hooligans and the law. What am I saying, that's a great idea.

>>194203
Alright, I have quite a lot I want to say, and I am going to put it into words. I hope that what I say will be understood rather than dismissed, as I believe I am saying it in good faith. I am saying it because I want the Posey character to succeed and become better, not because I hate her and want her gone or replaced. I assure you that if I wished that, I could accomplish that in far fewer words. I have absolutely no idea how much of this is Posey as a character or you as a player. I would assume that it is some combination of the two, but I don’t believe I will ever know the answer to that. I am going to approach this as being my problem with the Posey character, given that everything I have to comment about are her in-character actions or inactions. I don’t know how much of my issues are actually based on recent observations. I know it’s the same issue I had more than a year ago now. I’m not sure if it has gotten better or worse. The vast majority of the examples I will be giving are from more than a year ago. Maybe that means that there are not so many issues in the recent past and things are better now. I hope so. All the same, I think I have at the very least finally figured out what bugged me a year ago, and I am now putting it into words. Why? Because it’s stuck in my head, and I think that typing it out will, if nothing else, allow me to move past it.

So, I think I should start the same way as I did with the Vir character. What is this here? This is a collaborative writing venture. We are writing a story together. You have one character, I have several characters and most of the world, and then a few other people have their own characters. Everyone is a writer, and what everyone writes is important to the whole. It is all important. It cannot work without me, and it cannot work without you.

But above all, what we are doing here is writing a story. It isn’t quite textbook story telling, given that the ending and length are a bit unclear, and so structure doesn’t work in quite the same way. All the same, any story of any kind definitionally needs at least two things. It needs at least one main character – a protagonist. And it needs a conflict. But what exactly is a “conflict”? Something that the main character needs or wants or is trying to prevent, some main goal to obtain or avoid. Something that is desired or needed is absent for at least part of the story, some good thing is at danger of being lost, or some object of aversion either may come, or is here and needs to be removed. Quite simply, the main character experiences something bad. Want or fear. They are not in a state of perfect goodness the whole story.

Every work of literature requires overcoming adversity. It doesn't matter what it is. There are no exceptions. None. It's definitional to what a story even is. It's about the struggle. It's about the pain and the problems. The philosopher Hugo Weaving once said that humans, as a species, define their reality through misery and suffering. I am not certain to what degree that is true of the normal human life, but I can say with certainty that that is what defines all storytelling. Stories are about struggle, conflict, and in most but not all instances, overcoming the adversity. In doing so, something is proven or demonstrated. Your main character(s) don't need to win in order to have a story. There are stories where the main characters fail and the story is functional. You don't need your main character to be at all heroic for the story to function. There are stories with villains as main characters and they are functional. Your main character doesn't need to be an actual conscious person in order to function. There are stories with villages or nations or other impersonal things as main characters. But every story of any kind must necessarily have the main characters suffer, or otherwise experience problems in obtaining what they want.

And now, what is a player character? A player character is a protagonist of this story. Posey, thusly, is a protagonist.

So. Now that we’ve established that characters must be subject to adversity, how do you show that in writing? And let’s say in the context of adventure, fighting, or fantasy especially.

Well, you can kill off main characters. This shows that the danger and adversity faced by the main cast is great and that the stakes are high. It is generally advisable to kill off a few main characters to show that you are serious, and this is why Boromir or Ned Stark are killed off relatively early in their respective story’s runs. But the problem is that you cannot simultaneously kill your characters and have them there to serve as characters in the story. Well, you can see Gandalf and John Snow, but still, you can’t have your characters there for development and be dead. You can kill them at the end, sure, but that leaves most of the run time that you need to show the audience of the danger faced by the protagonists.
You could have the main characters be defeated or inhibited directly in their immediate short-term goal. This is advisable. However, it is still limited by the needs of the plot, as at some point, the action must advance.

>>194203
>>194222
So, the best thing to do is to have the main characters act like they are in danger or facing adversity. See in Lord of the Rings the Fellowship of the Ring (movie), where a few characters want to leave camp and cross the river. Legolas, who doesn’t emote much, tells them sharply that they must not cross the river until nightfall, as the orcs that have been following them will see them cross and will be alerted to their presence. That would place them in unacceptable danger. This is how danger ought to be written. When we see the main characters kill orcs and Uruk Hai by the score, it’s easy to think “No, orcs are not that dangerous.” But when the main characters take orcs seriously and think they can be a danger, its easier for us in the audience to believe that they are, in fact, in danger. The fact that its shortly after this scene that Boromir is killed by Uruk Hai just adds to it. And we see this again and again. The forces of Sauron and Sauromon, despite consistently losing and being repelled, are always taken seriously by the main characters, who go out of their way to avoid being in pitched battles with them when they can.

Could you image what the Lord of the Rings would be like if Legolass just said “nah, the orcs will be fine”? The orcs would be a joke and the audience would be bored. How can we think the main characters are under threat if the main characters don't think or act like they are under threat?

In Occupied, the character who does this best is Cavaliere. Cavaliere always takes the forces he fights against very seriously and acts like they can be a danger to him. Before fighting them, he always first asks himself the question “is it necessary?” and “can we actually win?” Posey, however, doesn’t seem ever to act like the opposing forces against her are actually dangerous. I get that she’s supposed to be bloodthirsty or something, but I’m trying to write a story where the main characters are in plausible danger. Could she maybe play along?

I remember you once said OOC that “players are supposed to win.” This statement is true. But it’s impolite to say aloud. I heard that Gary Gygax was once quoted as saying something along the lines of “Players should win 70% of the time. But it should feel like they are going to win 40% of the time.” We’re kind of all engaged in a collective suspension of disbelief here. I mean yeah, the players are probably going to win (probably), but like… this is a show. The illusion of danger is the point. It’s why we are here. There is a reason people like to play souls-like games, or set games to the hardest difficulty. The challenge is the entire point.

There is another way that characters can show that they are suffering adversity, and that is through the expression of emotion. This can be actual fear, pain, sorrow, or anxiety. They can express it through screams, crying, facial expressions, or their words. In The Lord of the Rings, expressions of fear, doubt, and adversity are absolutely everywhere. Legolas before the battle of Helms Deep is concerned and speaks about it with the other characters. Frodo wears a thousand yard stare almost the entirety of the last two movies. Aragorn expresses skepticism of the chances of survival in the diversionary battle before the Black Gate at the end of the Return of the King. When Aragorn thinks he’s lost Pippin and Mary, he kicks a helmet and screams admittedly partly from fracturing a toe kicking the helmet. The otherwise indefatigable Sam expresses uncertainty of the likelihood that he and Frodo will survive Moroder. Sauron is described as experiencing “doubt” when the heir of Isildur returns and he does not know the location of the One Ring. Even Galadriel is troubled by the One Ring. It’s constant fear, doubt, and pain all around in The Lord of the Rings, and I do not think that it is a coincidence that both the books and the movies are so fondly remembered.

But no one agrees with my interpretation of Lord of the Rings, so let’s forget about that. Let’s talk about another series where the protagonist character is constantly emoting. In Kitchen Nightmares, chef Gordon Ramsey must go into a failing restaurant, observe its bad practices to try to understand what is wrong, then attempt to correct the bad practices so that the owners may place the restaurant back on track. In order to establish that Gordon Ramsey does indeed have a hard task ahead of him, it must be established that the current state of the restaurant is quite bad. How do you do that? Well you can just show what is on screen, and they do that. But more than that, chef Ramsey reacts to what is on screen. And he reacts very strongly to what he sees. He yells at poor quality food. He makes insulting jokes. He curls his lips back in disgust when he sees a dirty kitchen. If Gordon Ramsey had kept a stiff upper lip when he, for example, saw cockroaches in the basement in Dillon’s, rather than reacting with the visceral disgust he did, I think the episode would have been poorer. I believe that chef Ramsey’s strong reactions are very important to why the series is so fondly remembered today.

Posey will react physically and emotionally to running water, and I believe a few other things. This is fine, I just wish she would occasionally react a little to other things as well.

>>194215
>>194194
>I made Posey hubristic and vain, and most importantly relentlessly confident to disguise her own insecurities.
Okay, let’s explore this. What is the difference between someone who is just entirely out of touch with reality on their own abilities, versus someone who puts on a façade in order to hide from themselves and others that actually, they believe they are fairly weak? The answer, of course, is that the latter actually believes themselves to be fairly weak. Now how does anyone know this? Obviously, we can’t see inside the head of another person. The only way we could possibly know that this is so is when we get a glimpse behind the façade. So then there must be some kind of look behind the façade. This may be small acts or expressions of emotions that may be noticed by no one except for the audience. This may be a complete nervous breakdown all at once. This may be the character’s confession to a confidant, or even when speaking to herself, or writing a letter to no one.

For an example of a small expression of emotion, I think of Breaking Bad, where the character of Tod, after shooting and killing a 14 year old kid, holds onto the tarantula in a jar that the kid was carrying. This shows his guilt. I will go into nervous breakdowns later. For examples of confessions to confidants, think of Tony Soprano in The Sopranos, speaking to his therapist. Or the main character in The Good Shepherd confessing that actually, his father killed himself, when he is confessing a secret to the Skull and Bones Society. Occupied has a good example. Kubana Kirafiki is afraid that she may be too soft, weak, and generally too much of a precious cinnamon roll to accomplish her task of saving her people. She confesses this insecurity to at least one other character, I believe it was Mala Mata.

You posted a picture of Flawless Sparklemoon from Tamers12345’s series. I don’t think that that is a coincidence. I believe you are trying to draw a parallel between that character and Posey. Flawless Sparklemoon is introduced as a sort of magical creation spawned between two characters. When she is first met, she is an antagonist who absolutely insists that she is superior to the two protagonist characters and is immediately hostile. She is defeated at the end of the episode, but returns later, hostile again. She eventually has an emotional breakdown where expresses that she has no identity as she is a sort of Frankestein’s monster. Like the monster she has no given name. “Flawless” was a fan name. Look at that picture you attached. Look at her eyes. Those are not the eyes of a pony who is completely confident in her abilities. Those are the eyes of someone who has been defeated. By her third appearance the other characters are outright treating her like a scarred or confused child.

Flawless Sparklemoon is explicitly very heavily based on a similar character from My Little Pony Friendship is Magic: Trixie. Trixie, like Posey, is bragadocious and tries to put on the appearance of being strong and powerful. When she is first met, she acts an antagonist to the main six, talking herself and her act up. The first time she experiences danger, she breaks down, screams, runs away, and admits to being a fraud. In her second appearance she is also an antagonist, continuing to be proud, but also showing signs of mental instability from an artifact she is using as a source of power. When she is defeated, she acts somewhat humble and is obviously much weaker. I’ll get to what happens when she is brough back to be a main character later.

Something that both Flawless and Trixie have in common is that when they are introduced in their first two episodes, they are antagonist characters, who only later become protagonists. It must be emphasized that the rules for antagonist characters are different than the rules for protagonists. The only thing an antagonist must do is to create trouble for the protagonists. Unlike protagonists, there is no requirement that an antagonist suffer or experience trouble. They do not need to suffer. They do not need to show weakness, flaws, or vulnerability. They do not need to be morally right or wrong. They do not need to win and they do not need to lose. They do not need to be conscious people. The protagonists do not need to be able to fight back against an antagonist. A hurricane, for example, can be a perfectly fine antagonist in a story, just so long as it creates problems for the protagonists.

Both Flawless and Trixie start off as proud and powerful in their respective stories. That is fine, because both are in the role of antagonists. Even as antagonists, both are defeated, and both suffer nervous breakdowns of one kind or another. They are both humbled and show the audience that they have been humbled. More importantly, when both are brough back later to act as protagonists they drop the act. Flawless is like a child, but Trixie gets it worse. In Trixie’s third appearance, the first time she is seen, she is complaining about how bad things are for her, and she is confiding in Starlight. And then later in the episode when Starlight abandons her, she has a full-on suicide attempt. A suicide attempt. In the entire 219 episode run of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, there are only two suicide attempts, and Trixie in “No Second Prances” is one.

>>194194
>>194224
Let’s try another cocky protagonist. Puss in Boots of Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. He starts off afraid of nothing and extremely confident in his abilities. Within 15 minutes he fucking dies. Sure, he gets better, but he’s on his last life now. Then less than 15 minutes after that, he gets defeated in a fight. He then withdraws into hiding, painfully aware of his weakness. Later in the movie, we see him suffer a full-on panic attack.

Or consider Walter White from Breaking Bad. That protagonist is certifiably a villain by the end of the show, and is also very arrogant generally and confident in his abilities, and unlike the other examples he remains so throughout the course of the show. He seems to genuinely believe that he is at least smarter than almost everyone around him, and usually believes himself to be more dangerous, that he is the one who knocks. I don’t want to give a full summary of that show, but that show, from beginning to end, is full of Walter White suffering. Walter cries, sits in silence of how his life has fallen apart, throws a pizza on the roof in frustration, and has a tantrum with a police officer pulling him over that results in him being thrown in jail. His son hates him, his adoptive son hates him, his wife hates him and cheats on him – the entire show is Walter White suffering. I think that the fact that Walter White so visibly suffers so greatly in the show is a strong contributor to why so many people sympathize with him and remain on his side by the end of the show, even though he is clearly the villain.

Imagine if you had a cocky, arrogant protagonist who never showed any kind of vulnerability or flaw. You couldn’t say that the protagonist is simply hiding insecurities, because there would be no evidence for that. We have a name for this kind of protagonist. They are called a “Mary Sue,” where they do not serve as characters in a story, but the story serves only to make the protagonist look good. These are not good protagonist characters. But a Mary Sue exists in a sequence of words – it cannot properly be called a “story” – only when they actually win. What do you call the same when they remain arrogant, never express vulnerability, but also don’t have the strength to back it up? “Stupid” is the only thing I can think of.

The idea that you speak of for Posey is a pretty good idea. An apprentice who probably still technically ranks as a slave who needs to prove herself and is afraid of showing weakness. I don’t think her actions and scenes quite mesh with that, however. I don’t recall her confiding with anyone. I don’t think I’ve seen a nervous breakdown (aside I suppose from her fear of water). I don’t think she will occasionally briefly widen her pupils, pull her lips back, and lower her ears when a new threat arises, only to catch herself and return to a stoic expression. I don’t think I’ve seen her run away from anything in fear (except as a clear tactical retreat). I don’t think I’ve seen her laugh nervously, or look for excuses for why she’s trying to avoid engaging in a specific fight. I think it would be good to add some emotional reactions to show that while she likes to pretend that she’s a mighty sorceress, she’s still a scared little slave girl underneath.

> GM, you do realize that Posey is only lvl 4, right? She has lvl 2 spells, just like Amber
I made that remark because when I insisted that Posey be nerfed, I think what motived me had far more to do with the absolute refusal of Posey to act like anything could be a danger to her, than it did with her character actually being overpowered.

Did you notice that when you insisted that your character is weak, you had to refer to math and actual results of battle? You can’t refer to roleplay, because she’s always roleplayed as if she’s way overleveled. Here is what you would do very well to understand. I don’t always immediately see the math. I don’t always see the spell list or the numbers. And I don’t always care. I don’t care if your character has 2 hp left or 32 hp left. What I care about, and what I notice, is the vibes of the combat as a whole. I am trying to create a story, an experience, and a world, where some things in the world are no threat at all to the player characters, some are a low threat, some are a medium threat, some would present a great challenge, and some are such that the player characters would be best off avoiding them. This is about the general emotions and tone and atmosphere. I’m trying to create a sense of danger. I’m trying to, sometimes, create a spooky environment. Or unease. Or of a heroic fight. If I can do that with Posey being level 7 then I’d probably do that.

>>194203
There is one thing that Posey did that stands out to me as especially bad or insulting to me. It is the worst thing that she has done that I have not already covered, but also representative of a pattern. It happened more than a year ago, and it still lives in my mind. It is her aside to Gloomy in this post right here: >>176099 →

>"I hear Baltimare has some excellent diners; we should visit them before they're gone."
Where do I even begin with this one?

If Posey were saying this line to the Kaftar priest, or to any of the Kaftar present, I could just say that she’s trying to puff herself up or to reassure them. A false display of bravado. But she isn’t. She’s remarking this to Gloomy, whom she has no real reason to be dishonest to. It really seems like an honest expression of her inner feelings. Posey is making little quips about how super easy it is to conquer Equestria. Like it’s a foregone conclusion. No uncertainty, no doubt, no real challenge. It’s like waiting for a check in the mail. No more complicated or interesting. This is after a year of me trying to craft an experience to show that conquering Equestria is not easy and it absolutely should not be boring.

Could you imagine if any character – anyone – from Lord of the Rings spoke about defeating Sauron that way? Could you imagine if Luke Skywalker talked about defeating the Empire this way? Harry Potter of killing Voldemort? John 117 about defeating the Prophet of Truth? Twilight Sparkle about defeating Nightmare Moon? Walter White of Killing Gus Fring? Gordan Ramsey about fixing Amy’s Baking Company? No writer would ever have their main characters discount the difficulty of the task, unless that character were very quickly proven disastrously wrong, or the character is very obviously lying to himself as cope, and neither is obviously the case with Posey here.

This line is the exact opposite of the “One does not simply walk into Morodor.” The audience is supposed to think that the main goal of the main character is hard. That’s why they are reading/watching/playing. Because they want to see the struggle in the process of accomplishing the goal. If the main character doesn’t think that the process of accomplishing the main goal is any less certain or more difficult than waiting for a check in the mail then is the main goal actually interesting?

What am I supposed to do with this line? I had spent an entire year crafting an experience for Posey showing what has become of dark and evil magic in a world where light and the good guys have already triumphed. That was the whole point of Posey’s grand tour of Baltimare in the first year.

>>194226
The idea behind Posey's grand tour of Baltimare was to show the fate of dark magic in a world where light and goodness has already triumphed. Every new faction met has a different approach to the problem. All have failed. The point was to show that Equestria is and was extremely powerful, especially in resisting dark magic. With the defeat of the Alicorns and the withdrawal of the armies that defeated them, there is an opportunity. However, even just the existing forces of the ELF and the New Mareland Revenue & Customs force are shown to be powerful enough to continue troubling dark magic users.

The first character that Posey meets is Lament, and Posey can see that he hides in the shadows and has in large part stopped partaking in the occult. Mostly he lives a dissolute life, and in fact, to some degree he is trying to blend into normal society. Then there are the true occultists who tried to carry on with their practices, but do so in secret. These are the voodoo zebras, the Crocutta, and the Kaftar. They failed. Customs agents discovered them, and sent in mercenaries to kill them, and now their strongest magic practitioners are dead. The Kaftar and the Crocutta are both boxed in in a ghetto where the military maintain a cordon. They sit waiting until a final push expels them from the country. Then you have the approach taken by the last vampire. He practiced his deeds in the open, and as a result, he was tracked down and destroyed even more quickly. This last example is probably the closest foil to Posey, given her lack of discretion.

The very last set of dark magic practitioners that Posey encounters, or was supposed to encounter, was the licensed necromancers of Jim Haykins. In my mind, it was like a xenofiction film, where the main characters were wild animals resisting the encroachment of humans on their land. They meet with the domesticated household pets of the humans, who explain to them the benefits of having quality, free food delivered to them in great quantities, and of sleeping in cushions in air conditioned buildings. You’re still getting your balls chopped off by your masters. The necromancer Ersatz Orgone was supposed to be a necromancer perhaps the equal of Posey’s master, but so lost to harmony that he may as well be counted like a Paladin. Diligent Debride was supposed to speak with a lisp, have an odd baby craze and just generally be weird.

When Diligent Debride gives her speech hyping up the Licensed Necromancers of Equestria, I had hoped Posey would respond to that with revulsion, or rejection at what Debride was suggesting. Instead it was “poor little pony must be tired after that.” Just “too long, didn’t read.” I remember I made that long post on the same day that I went with a friend to the movies to see ISS. I remember thinking “What was the point of writing that? Why did I post that?” When I had better things to do with my time. At least Cavaliere’s player responded to it with some praise. So there is that.

Not terribly long after the line I dissected above, Posey decided that she was going to sacrifice the very obviously ill diamond dog bitch that she has captured in an earlier mission. Posey never expressed any curiosity about her illness, it was just another unimportant detail. What Posey did not care to find out was that she was infected with a fungus of a monstrous nature. When Posey tried to sacrifice the bitch, the fungus transformed her into a monster that Posey had to fight. Posey dumped all of her offensive magic into the monster to kill it. The whole fight was just annoying to Posey, because it got in the way of the task at hand. The purpose of the fungal monster was to show that there are older, more dangerous things in Equestria that you can’t simply fuck with. You can compare it to Shelob or the Balrog in the Lord of the Rings if you like, the point is that I was trying to see if I could get Posey to just take Equestria seriously. She did not. There was an OOC remark about too much HP on enemies or something. I was defeated in my goal. This happened when I stayed up until 3 AM local time in my hotel room, simultaneously doing a session for Amber that went worse than the session for Posey, and knowing that I had a flight back to the United States leaving in just four hours. I was left knowing that I had accomplished nothing good and that I was the idiot for staying up and doing that, when any intelligent person would have not run the session and would have just gone to sleep.

>>194215
That isn't all I had to say, just all I could write down so far

>6+ posts about how the character I made is annoying and out of place
Give me a while to read through this...

>>194229
Awwwwwww...I need to head to work right now, but once I get the chance I wanna type out why I personally like Posey. It probably won't be 6+ posts but don't take that as an admonishment about her, I'm just limited by time and availability.

>>194222
>I am saying it because I want the Posey character to succeed and become better
What exactly do you mean by "succeed" in this case? I made a villain character, knowing full well that villains are supposed to lose while still wanting to contribute to the plot of the game. My idea of a successful character arc was contributing to a long and brutal mass-combat military campaign and liberating Equestria from Changeling occupation before Posey's own greed and lust for power eventually led to her own downfall (something like the ending of Game Of Thrones, but less sausage). Now, I'm getting the sense that the mass combat military campaign isn't going to happen, so idk what success is.
The other idea I had of a successful character arc was the "redeemed villain" arc, where Posey's alignment becomes non-evil after leaning the value of friendship. Thing about being a redeemed villain though is that it requires prior villainy, and so far the only truly evil things Posey has done is sacrifice a couple diamond dogs for power.
What is success to you? I am willing to go along with whatever plot developments you have planned for my character.
>what we are doing here is writing a story
I am very much interested in being part of the story. I'm just not really sure what that story is right now. I thought it was going to be an EaW-inspired military campaign, but now I am not so sure. Seems more like a location-based slice-of-life daily world-building project that isn't really story-driven so much as it focuses on describing whatever scene it falls on.
>And now, what is a player character? A player character is a protagonist of this story. Posey, thusly, is a protagonist.
Maybe I'm replying too soon, but didn't we just have the discussion about how this game was supposed to subvert the "heroic" expectation of d&d where characters decide the fate of the world? Maybe I am reading too much into it.
I think I get your point though.
>you can’t have your characters there for development and be dead
Well, you can also have the memory of deceased characters appear in flashbacks, or refer to those characters when dealing with relics or other objects they left behind, especially when one character is trying to follow a deceased character's legacy.
I get the point though.
>>194223
>In Occupied, the character who does this best is Cavaliere. Cavaliere always takes the forces he fights against very seriously and acts like they can be a danger to him.
Cavalier's player also often seems the most concerned about being ineffective or underequipped. Idk though.
>Posey, however, doesn’t seem ever to act like the opposing forces against her are actually dangerous.
I mean, she had all of those monologues referring to her training as a cerebrant and how the Intruder constituted a planetary threat if it wasn't dealt with swiftly.
I also usually describe in detail how her body falls apart and the flesh melts off her bones as she gets to low HP, and also stated that the apparent condition of her body is tied to her confidence and sense of self.
>I’m trying to write a story where the main characters are in plausible danger. Could she maybe play along?
Okay, I will try to play along. How would you like me to roleplay her engaging with the danger? Do you want me to make her act afraid? Or do you want me to make her hesitate before major decisions instead of acting confident?
I struggle with PbP roleplay, so any suggestions are welcome.
>I remember you once said OOC that “players are supposed to win.” This statement is true. But it’s impolite to say aloud.
I said that to another player who was spending weeks being paranoid about the next encounter to a degree that was drastically slowing down the game. I didn't mean to give the impression that I wasn't taking the threat seriously, but at the time I was frustrated that the paranoid tactical discourse was taking the plausibility too seriously, and the weeks delay was breaking my immersion.
>“Players should win 70% of the time. But it should feel like they are going to win 40% of the time.” We’re kind of all engaged in a collective suspension of disbelief here.
It's felt very close to me so far. The fight with Luminous, the Hydra, and that last monster all ended with Posey at single-digit HP.
>There is another way that characters can show that they are suffering adversity, and that is through the expression of emotion. This can be actual fear, pain, sorrow, or anxiety.
I mean, I tried to express Posey's fears in whatever ways I could. Her fear of stagnation, fear of failure, fear of her dark masters, fear of facing the reality of her own powerlessness and the possibility that she might just be condemned to another century in the obsidian mines if she doesn't succeed. I tried to illustrate part of that with the seal skull scene, although it seems like you didn't really like that.
As for pain, and also fear, I could roleplay that, but Posey isn't supposed to be a living character but instead an undead character, which is what I usually take in mind when roleplaying her interactions with fear and pain. She's also a masochist, which is it's own discussion, but the point being that on top of her torturous upbringing pain is a welcome experience because it reminds her of what it was life to feel alive.
>Posey will react physically and emotionally to running water, and I believe a few other things. This is fine, I just wish she would occasionally react a little to other things as well.
I will keep this in mind. Are there any ways in particular you would like me to approach her?

>>194224
>What is the difference between someone who is just entirely out of touch with reality on their own abilities, versus someone who puts on a façade in order to hide from themselves and others that actually, they believe they are fairly weak? The answer of course, is that the latter actually believes themselves to be fairly weak? No how does anyone know this? Obviously, we can’t see inside the head of another person.
That is a major flaw in my character design, now that I think about it... I had hoped that posting Trixie reaction images alongsude my posts to suggest dramatic irony would be enough, but alas.
>This may be a complete nervous breakdown all at once.
Well, Posey does throw hissy fits whenever her powers are called into question, the last one being the conversation with the Intruder through the corrupted soldier body.
>Flawless
Yeah, I did make the reference on purpose. Posey is also a Frankenstein's monster driven by hubris and vanity, and has little sense of self outside her delusions of grandeur.
>Those are not the eyes of a pony who is completely confident in her abilities. Those are the eyes of someone who has been defeated.
I posted that gif to illustrate Posey's expression after having been turned into Swiss cheese in the last encounter.
>humbled
I can do that if you want, but consider it from Posey's perspective: Posey hasn't even been in Equestria for three days. The past 2.5 years irl have been 2.5 days in character. It's a bit early for drastic changes to her core beliefs, isn't it?
I could do a 180 on her character, but it would feel a bit forced.
Posey's priority all this time has been proving herself, as aa leader and as a war mage, with the purpose of growing her powers to complete her apprenticeship and end her enslavement. That's the reason why she's facing the Eldritch God instead of just fleeing. It's not because she doesn't recognize the danger, but because she believes that only by showing confidence in the face of danger can her powers grow.
>>194225
>The idea that you speak of for Posey is a pretty good idea. An apprentice who probably still technically ranks as a slave who needs to prove herself and is afraid of showing weakness. I don’t think her actions and scenes quite mesh with that, however.
I had really hoped scenes >>181808 → , >>192693 → , >>192857 → served to characterize her shortcomings, but idk.
>I don’t recall her confiding with anyone.
Realistically, who does she have to confide in? She a monster and a spy.
She has Gloomy, but I left him at home during this adventure.
>I don’t think I’ve seen a nervous breakdown
There was the scene where she freaked out a when the Intruder called her weak.
>I don’t think she will occasionally briefly widen her pupils, pull her lips back, and lower her ears when a new threat arises, only to catch herself and return to a stoic expression.
In that same linked post, and a few others, I have described the appearance of her lips ears and teeth, and the way she appears more like a bat or a wolf when she loses her composure.
(For the record, characters with vampiric heritage have bat-like or wolf-like features if they have low charisma)
There's also posts such as >>191449 → >>178502 → >>190343 → >>172882 →
I'm not trying to minimize your criticisms, but I would like you to appreciate the efforts I make to roleplay her when I actually try to.
>look for excuses for why she’s trying to avoid engaging in a specific fight
GM, in what scenario is it appropriate for Posey to run away from an encounter you wrote? Would that not be frustrating? Call it metagaming, but I approach every encounter and obstacle as content you worked hard for me to engage with, which is why don't run away from fights except when they're against obviously-impossible odds (like when she was met with a giant machine gun aimed at her after the close fight with Luminous).
Was I supposed to run from that Hydra fight? I barely made it. I wasn't confident in my ability to flee while it attacked me underwater, but it did feel like a fight I was supposed to run from because it was such an overleveled encounter. I fought through it anyway because Posey had previously expressed wanting to fight a hydra some day (because they make very good zombies) earlier in the story, and there was her chance.
She did crawl away from that last monster fight:
>"...B-B-BUCK...!" she gags, as she finally sees the limit to her strength.
...
>You can’t refer to roleplay, because she’s always roleplayed as if she’s way overleveled.
Okay... See, I think I have fundamentally misunderstood your approach to milestone leveling. I thought my path to leveling up would be acting glorious and confident so that my character would come off as "deserving" to level up, like 1v1ing a Paladin nemesis or howling in glory on top of the corpse of a dead hydra, but I see that my roleplay was counterproductive and annoying to boot and instead of leveling led to my character apparently needing to be nerfed. I see that now

>>194226
>Where do I even begin with this one?
I'm just going to say that that was not my proudest moment in roleplay. I was trying to be silly by casually talking about her apocalypse-cultist ambitions while also trying to illustrate the perspective of an old necromancer with vampiric who sees life as a transitive thing to be consumed and enjoyed in the brief period while it lasted,as well as a means of expressing her utter confidence in the eventual victory of the Dread League, but that didn't go well. I thought it would make me look edgy and cool, it it was just sausage. I was sausage. I am sorry. I'll try not to do it again.
If it's any consolation, I have in the years since revised Posey's nihilistic outlook on life.

>>194227
>They failed. Customs agents discovered them, and sent in mercenaries to kill them, and now their strongest magic practitioners are dead.
See, I interpretted that as a list of potential NPC contacts and powerful mage that Posey should aspire to out-do and eventually raise from the dead. The gnolls in particular seemed like potential allies who would sooner lash out and join the Armageddon than go quietly into the night, which is why I brought back their head priest as a ghoul and instructed him to do the same to his rival.
>Instead it was “poor little pony must be tired after that.” Just “too long, didn’t read.”
That was rude of me. I'm sorry.
>What Posey did not care to find out was that she was infected with a fungus of a monstrous nature.
Well, it's only been like 20 hours since Posey encountered the fungus, but I assure you that if she discovers mold growing on her she would be very, very, very alarmed.
>This happened when I stayed up until 3 AM local time in my hotel room, simultaneously doing a session for Amber that went worse than the session for Posey, and knowing that I had a flight back to the United States leaving in just four hours.
GM, even though I do act impatient to roleplay, please don't be pressured to stay up late if you don't want to. My roleplay capacity withers when I have to post late at night anyway, and it results in me making posts that come off as standoffish and rude because I made them past midnight after my normal-pills wear off.

All I can say is that I will try harder. Almost everything in this post really just refers to instances of me being a bad player. Sometimes I suck. Oftentimes even. I have no excuse.

>>194231
You don't really have to do that. It's not necessary.

>>194232
>What exactly do you mean by "succeed" in this case?
Uh... be a good and memorable character, I guess? Mostly what I mean is that I want you to keep playing and stay around.

> I made a villain character
I think that this right here is the source of all of the problems. This. You wanted a villain as your player character, and so you looked to archetypes of mage-villains. The trouble, I bet, is that you looked to antagonist characters as a model and then tried to replicate worked well for antagonist characters. The problem is that Posey is a protagonist. The rules for protagonist characters - even villain protagonists - are not the same as for antagonists. A villain protagonist may be a villain, but they are still a protagonist. As I said, the main difference is that a protagonist must suffer, while an antagonist need not. Most antagonists cannot simply be placed in the role of a protagonist without major modifications to their characters and experiences.

I would recommend looking at examples of villain protagonists in media. Walter White from Breaking Bad, Tony Soprano from The Sopranos, Arthur Fleck from the 2019 The Joker, Yuri Orlov from Lord of War. I'll repeat that the key is that the villain protagonist character must visibly suffer under adversity.

>Now, I'm getting the sense that the mass combat military campaign isn't going to happen
Well it's a neat idea, but when I suggested mass combat it was an unpopular idea... so maybe not.

>Thing about being a redeemed villain though is that it requires prior villainy, and so far the only truly evil things Posey has done is sacrifice a couple diamond dogs for power.
I promise you, everyone knows that you are going for Posey as a villain character

>What is success to you? I am willing to go along with whatever plot developments you have planned for my character.
I mean, mostly I just want Posey to... how do I say... exist within the world as a reactive part of it? I want her to pretend like she feels like she's in danger when I place her in danger, I want her to interact with NPCs, and I want her to notice things in her environment. Basically I want her to play the game. The problem I've had is that I feel like she doesn't respond to things around her, and it is most obvious and problematic with regards to danger.

Should it be scaled up to mass combat? I don't know. Maybe? I think I'd kind of like to keep things smaller scale but at the same time there is an appeal to leading a small ary of undead in a raid against a base, or something like that. Its not a terrible idea. The main thing is that Posey is going to be a protagonist character in the lead up to that, and she needs to emote to show that she is experiencing adversity during the lead up. A villain needs to be threatening. A protagonist, even a villain protagonist, needs to be threatened. These are not the same thing.

I'll admit that I'm not super into the whole acts of villainy thing. It would be very easy to, for example just do unethical things with the prisoners taken in quests like the current one, like take the Kostroma survivors and sell them into slavery in Nova Griffonia, or keep the zebra mare as a sex slave. I wouldn't really have a problem with that. But I don't think that that is what you have in mind when you speak of villainy. Just going out and terrorizing the general civilian population of the Equestrian population centers just because lol evil doesn't really appeal to me.
>so far the only truly evil things Posey has done is sacrifice a couple diamond dogs for power.
You literally just said "all she did was kidnap and murder a few people in an occult sacrifice." What does a person have to do to qualify as "evil" in your mind? I don't have an analogy for this. It is a race to the bottom. I will admit that while reading the Epstein files I have thought "oh, this would be a good idea for a villain. But at the same time it's kind of... draining and unfun. I get the definite impression that you/Posey would read the Epstein files the same way that Patrick Bateman looks at Paul Allen's business card, like it's a challenge that you have to outdo in a race to the bottom. Edge is one thing. A race to the bottom just does not appeal to me. I do not want to see that, I do not care to see that. I stopped watching Tamers videos, and it is mostly because his videos wanted to just kill random people in the world and present it like it's some kind of joke. Just killing random people is horrible. I hate it. It isn't funny. I don't want to watch a show about an extremely unlikeable, asshole serial killer. It is unpleasant to me. It isn't for me. I liked his videos better when they were about fart jokes.

Personally I'd recommend acting as the token evil character of the party, wherein Posey is sufficiently """good""" or allied to the party such that the party tolerates her presence, but she's very obviously not actually completely reformed and is certifiably evil. See my gal Trixie. I absolutely love her, and while she isn't liked enough to be allowed to be a part of the main cast, she would be the token evil character if they let her. This is also more or less what I did with my older Blue Skies character, and to some degree, what I still do with characters like Neela or Mala. But at the same time, my standard of what constitutes "evil" is very different from yours, so maybe that isn't satisfying.

>Seems more like a location-based slice-of-life daily world-building project that isn't really story-driven so much as it focuses on describing whatever scene it falls on.
Uh... I'm working on that

>>194239
>I think that this right here is the source of all of the problems.
Well, I guess that's what I will focus on.
To be a bit more specific, what I was actually going for was a false hero who would play the role of a hero and only later be revealed to be a villain, but that's just nitpicking.
>antagonist
I don't mean to be an antagonist at all. An antagonist, by definition, opposes the protagonist(s). I don't mean to get in the way of anyone else in the party. Quite the contrary. I was hoping the whole party would be interested in squashing bugs and liberating Equestria from Changelings. Idk though.
> I want her to pretend like she feels like she's in danger when I place her in danger, I want her to interact with NPCs, and I want her to notice things in her environment.
I can work on that.
>Just going out and terrorizing the general civilian population of the Equestrian population centers just because lol evil doesn't really appeal to me.
Posey would know better than to do that in Baltimare, or any other civilized area. You don't shit where you eat. Posey is trying to build a reputation and bide her powers, so she can't just be killing ponies at random. If that's what she wanted, she would have done it already.
Would be interested in trying it in Changeling-occupied territory or no-mare's-land though.
>What does a person have to do to qualify as "evil" in your mind?
Not a lot.
I'm not contesting that Posey is evil, just that her actual villainous acts, or actions in general, have been few so far. Then again, she has only been in the universe for less than a week.
>I get the definite impression that you/Posey would read the Epstein files the same way that Patrick Bateman looks at Paul Allen's business card, like it's a challenge that you have to outdo in a race to the bottom.
Nah. I originally wrote a version of her that way, but edge for the sake of edge is just boring. I also thought I mentioned that Posey isn't fond of vampires, because they remind her of where she was born, which isn't that different from Epstein Island.
What Posey wants is to conquer. Not just edge for the sake of edge, but evil for a higher purpose. To be the fail of fate. A mighty conqueror.
>Personally I'd recommend acting as the token evil character of the party, wherein Posey is sufficiently """good""" or allied to the party such that the party tolerates her presence, but she's very obviously not actually completely reformed and is certifiably evil.
That's kind of what I have been going for so far, actually.
>Uh... I'm working on that
It's not really necessarily a bad thing, but if you want us as players to be engaged with your plot you might want to make our roles in the plot and expectations thereof a bit more clear.

Gonna throw in my two cents addressing the two of you simultaneously, because I think both of you make good points. So many, in fact, that it's impractical for me to quote what I like and say "I agree" so just assume I do agree with just about everything not mentioned.
>See in Lord of the Rings the Fellowship of the Ring (movie)
Let me reference the book for something that Tolkien did poorly. He made very few missteps in his storytelling so this one stood out to me. Also, spoilers, but if you're a GM you should have read the books by now. There's a certain enemy/steed that keeps being referred throughout Fellowship as a dire, unearthly threat that's in pursuit of the fellowship. We don't see it directly in that book (which is a smart move) but along the river Legolas shoots it with a bow from the sound it made and it goes down in one hit. While it would have messed up Tolkien's plot progression for a standard encounter to take place, this diminished the apparent threat in the eyes of the audience.
>“Players should win 70% of the time. But it should feel like they are going to win 40% of the time.”
Also keep in mind that Gygax was considered especially brutal in his quest design. A 30% loss rate sounds generous, but consider it can take only one loss for a player character to be killed, or a total party wipe if retreat isn't possible. This quest we're on is hard by the standards of the campaign, but we still have something like a 90% win rate even if you count Kira's and Cavaliere's disastrous sortie.
>This is about the general emotions and tone and atmosphere. I’m trying to create a sense of danger. I’m trying to, sometimes, create a spooky environment. Or unease. Or of a heroic fight.
>Maybe I'm replying too soon, but didn't we just have the discussion about how this game was supposed to subvert the "heroic" expectation of d&d where characters decide the fate of the world? Maybe I am reading too much into it.
These are solid points and therein lies the problem with writing a campaign according to "vibes." It works well until there is a misunderstanding. GM Pony wants a campaign where the PCs aren't terribly significant on a global scale, yet has given a quest where the outcome of what the PCs do is just that. There is an intrinsic conflict to what the intent is here. I know that's ancillary to creating an environment of fear and urgency, but other misunderstandings have arisen because of that too. I've kept pushing for us to get quest objectives done, to the neglect of certain details and worldbuilding, because of these "vibes," but that creates a perception of wasted effort on GM Pony's part.
In fact, it seems like every major delay we've had in the game is because of these misunderstandings some of which are my fault, because even though we all want to move forward one of us gets sad and loses motivation to keep writing. I get it, it happens, but this has been such a common occurrence that it has seriously stymied progress for months at a time. If all this time and effort spent writing OOC had gone into the actual quest itself, we could already be a quarter of the way through the Kostroma at least. Still, it's better to square away this conflict if it's at all possible so we don't keep coming back to this. I hate having to write in this thread if it's not about future plans.
>Posey hasn't even been in Equestria for three days. The past 2.5 years irl have been 2.5 days in character. It's a bit early for drastic changes to her core beliefs, isn't it?
>I could do a 180 on her character, but it would feel a bit forced.
That's a problem too, the difference between in-game and real time. We've spent so much time at the figurative table that it feels like we should have more progress and character development, but it makes no sense from a narrative standpoint. I was initially against time skips but that would be the only way to resolve this issue.
>GM, in what scenario is it appropriate for Posey to run away from an encounter you wrote?
This is a common problem in DnD. How does the GM make it clear that an encounter is meant to be fought or to be fled, without outright telling the players as such? In video games it's a little easier because game mechanics can do that job for you (in OFF, the Batter also explicitly tells you that running from Enoch is the only option), but in tabletop it's more obtuse. You can make the enemy ridiculously powerful, but if we're dealing with unknowns like the Fellow Traveler's summons that's less apparent. Posey was given some encounters she was meant to flee from, but that wasn't apparent and she won by the necrotic skin of her teeth.
>Well it's a neat idea, but when I suggested mass combat it was an unpopular idea... so maybe not.
It's just not something our characters are written for. I don't mind being left out if you go forward with it.
>Patrick Bateman
"American Psycho" is one of the best books with a villain protagonist ever written. Fun fact, I pitched the idea of a PC who would be a serial killer in the same vein, but GM pony quickly shot that one down.
>This is also more or less what I did with my older Blue Skies character, and to some degree, what I still do with characters like Neela or Mala.
They also are not totally evil but have skewed moral standards to favor an end, with that end not being the destruction of all life. Neela's different, but is just a lovable rogue slut.
>Would be interested in trying it in Changeling-occupied territory or no-mare's-land though.
GM pony mentioned the world having changed and this is a factor. These powerful nation-states are in a tense stand-off and neither is in favor of a border flare-up which would very quickly be brought to the attention of either side's leadership. It's more akin to the Cold War than WW2. Neither side wanted to start an overt war so they stuck to covert missions and proxy conflicts.

>>194241
>Also keep in mind that Gygax was considered especially brutal in his quest design. A 30% loss rate sounds generous, but consider it can take only one loss for a player character to be killed, or a total party wipe if retreat isn't possible. This quest we're on is hard by the standards of the campaign, but we still have something like a 90% win rate even if you count Kira's and Cavaliere's disastrous sortie.
It was also for a conpletely different version of the game, where there would be twenty players, and one "referee" for every four players, and each player was playing three characters, and each character had fifty henchmen. Proto D&D was very much a mass combat military campaign style game where characters got deleted left and right.
It was also before d&d games had linear story progression or standardized leveling processes. The creation of 3.5e is what led to the four-person party standard.
>I know that's ancillary to creating an environment of fear and urgency, but other misunderstandings have arisen because of that too. I've kept pushing for us to get quest objectives done, to the neglect of certain details and worldbuilding, because of these "vibes," but that creates a perception of wasted effort on GM Pony's part.
For me, quest objectives getting done is important just for the feeling of having accomplished something.
>If all this time and effort spent writing OOC had gone into the actual quest itself, we could already be a quarter of the way through the Kostroma at least.
This.
Tbh, I kind of regret making the OOCthread sometimes. It feels like ever since then we've spent more time talking about the game than actually playing it.
>That's a problem too, the difference between in-game and real time. We've spent so much time at the figurative table that it feels like we should have more progress and character development, but it makes no sense from a narrative standpoint.
I've said it before that drawn-out pacing really complicates immersion. It's difficult to develop character when your character has been in the country for less than a week. Strong-willed characters don't have existential crisises or moral epiphanies after only a few days travel.
Tbh, when all of this is said and done, we need to figure out a way to fix the pacing in these quests if we want to be able to keep doing them. I really want to do more quests like this, so I think it's important to try to figure this out so we can keep adventuring together. It shouldn't have to take this long. There must be some solution to this.
Less than half a year ago I started one of my own campaigns, and I'm three and a half chapters through it already; my PCs leveled up six times. I don't mean to throw stones, PbP games always take longer, but I'm trying to put it in perspective when we're talking about just a single adventuring day (about 8 hours in universe) in twice as much time irl.
The unannounced weeks-long hiatuses don't really help either, tbh. I shouldn't complain, but it would be nice to know when/if the game is actually active. Just telling us "sit and wait for a few weeks" would make it better, so I'm not constantly refreshing /vx/ for updates.
>I was initially against time skips but that would be the only way to resolve this issue.
I'm going to want to take a few months of downtime after this quest. I have to blockbust a property, defraud a realtor, get a grant from the university, move into a new lair, pay back my patron, open a shop, start a business, enroll my son in school, etc.
I think everypony else could use some downtime too. With no overarching plot to keep us busy, there's nothing to stop us from grinding downtime activities for several months while we can.
>It's just not something our characters are written for.
I specifically wrote my character with mass combat in mind.
>These powerful nation-states are in a tense stand-off and neither is in favor of a border flare-up which would very quickly be brought to the attention of either side's leadership. It's more akin to the Cold War than WW2. Neither side wanted to start an overt war so they stuck to covert missions and proxy conflicts.
Posey doesn't work for any of the factions involved, so unless she were to intentionally stage false flag operations, there's little reason it would affect the relationships between nations.
And even if it did... Aren't we the protagonists? Changing the world through our actions and choices is what protagonists do.

>didn't we just have the discussion about how this game was supposed to subvert the "heroic" expectation of d&d
Merriam Webster's dictionary defines a "protagonist" as
"(1): the principal character in a literary work (such as a drama or story)
(2): the leading actor or principal character in a television show, movie, book, etc. b: an active participant in an event"
It adds this fascinating detail
>Struggle, or conflict, is central to drama. The protagonist or hero of a play, novel, or film is involved in a struggle of some kind, either against someone or something else or even against his or her own emotions. So the hero is the "first struggler", which is the literal meaning of the Greek word prōtagōnistēs. A character who opposes the hero is the antagonist, from a Greek verb that means literally "to struggle against".
Maybe the stakes are world-ending high-fantasy or maybe they are not. Either way, the character that a story focuses on must suffer some kind of adversity. Changing the scale or the themes of the story does not change that fact.

>I also usually describe in detail how her body falls apart and the flesh melts off her bones as she gets to low HP,
This is true. I just wish she'd emote more

>How would you like me to roleplay her engaging with the danger? Do you want me to make her act afraid? Or do you want me to make her hesitate before major decisions instead of acting confident?
Well, I tried to give an exhaustive list of possible ways to show adversity. If I really had to give a recommendation, it would be to start with facial expression. Horses have ears that mostly stand up, but will flop back in moments of fear or annoyance. Pony characters have massive eyes and lips that can convey quite a bit of emotion, then you have the ability to lower the head, move the tail, paw at the ground - there is quite a lot you can do with non-verbal expressions.

She can also use her words. Think of Emile at the end of Halo Reach saying "I am ready. How about you?" after he's been run through by an energy sword and before he stabs the elite in the neck. He knows he will die, but he's making sure that he's taking the elite with him. This statement does not convey fear. It does convey an acknowledgement of the danger. Or consider Gimli's remarks before and during the battle before the battle before the Black Gates in The Return of the King. He says "Small chance of success, certainty of death? What are we waiting for?" and at the Black Gates, "I never thought I'd die fighting side by side with an Elf." Both of these statements likewise do not convey fear but they do convey to the audience that Gimli is in danger.

I know that when I've had an especially stressful day (or just morning) at work, I'll go into my car and just sit in silence, or listen to music.

>tried to illustrate part of that with the seal skull scene
I recall that it was weird, but not much else. I think I was still upset about the tiara at that time, but I am not sure.

>Posey isn't supposed to be a living character but instead an undead character, which is what I usually take in mind when roleplaying her interactions with fear and pain. She's also a masochist, which is it's own discussion, but the point being that on top of her torturous upbringing pain is a welcome experience because it reminds her of what it was life to feel alive.
Just do something that makes her seem like she's doing something dangerous and she knows that she is doing something dangerous

>>194234
>I could do a 180 on her character, but it would feel a bit forced.
The "humbled" was in reference to example characters. I just want Posey to seem like she's experiencing danger or adversity.

>Realistically, who does she have to confide in?
I do not know

>GM, in what scenario is it appropriate for Posey to run away from an encounter you wrote?
The only one where I really wanted her to move away was the machine gun. I had thought earlier today of writing up everything around the killing of Luminous, but that is many words.

The reason I mentioned running away was because I wanted to attempt to be logically exhaustive with possible ways of showing that a character perceives that the adversity against them is great. I thought of Cavaliere avoiding fights as one such way. But I did say weeks ago that Cavaliere avoiding every fight was somewhat frustrating, so I can't really have it both ways.

I don't know and I don't really care. I just want something to suggest that Posey knows that she is on a battlefield and not in a library. I just want interactivity with the environment.

>She lost a battle and was close to losing a couple more
I know

>misunderstood levelling
Just look at it this way. When your organization is spending more money than it is taking in, and another person in the organization says "Hey, let's spend more money" are you going to agree to that? No, you decrease spending and increase income until the problem is solved, then you look at increasing spending. Likewise, Posey has in many cases just kind of seemed to not take the world very seriously, and that was a problem to me. So I wanted to solve the problem, and it seemed it was because the character was strong enough that she didn't really need to take the world seriously.

>The gnolls in particular seemed like potential allies who would sooner lash out and join the Armageddon than go quietly into the night
The Kaftar stand out as being the faction Posey most connects with. I was thinking of making a post but decided against it

>>194243
>I just wish she'd emote more
Well, Posey has the "Paralyzed Face" taint symptom, and I was roleplaying to honor that, which coincidentally matched the aesthetic of the expressionless stoic goth bitch I was feeling horny for when I wrote her. I could fix it to fit your tastes better and engage with the content more proactively though.
Just fyi, it's also not always easy for me to roleplay my character's emotions or expressions through this medium. It's hard enough for me to roleplay irl, let alone through text. It's just a shortcoming of mind. I can try though.
>start with facial expression. Horses have ears that mostly stand up, but will flop back in moments of fear or annoyance. Pony characters have massive eyes and lips that can convey quite a bit of emotion, then you have the ability to lower the head, move the tail, paw at the ground - there is quite a lot you can do with non-verbal expressions.
Got it. This part is fun, and I have been working on it.
>She can also use her words.
Not as easy for me, but I will pay more attention to how I phrase her dialogue.
>Take threats seriously.
Understood.
>>194244
pets the pony
This is a fixable problem, GM. Let's figure out how to progress the story together and figure out the pacing. Pacing is a thing I struggle with too, even when I'm just reading off of a pre-written module. It's no reason to feel ashamed, but maybe we could discuss how we could work things out in a productive manner.
Or we could shelf that for now and just focus on continuing the game as is and keeping things moving. I am really interested in seeing what awaits aboard the Kostroma.

>>194238
I want to, though. I really do like Posey, how weird she is and how out of place she seems, since she very much is. I like her backstory, her colt, her overly ambitious plans for Equestria. I like many of her eccentricities and quirks of how she interacts with other characters. Honestly the only issues I've had with her have been a couple of...interesting RP decisions (vomiting several quarts of blood was actually kinda funny and silly in a Posey sort of way, it was just not the best action at that current moment) and her current cover story for her powers, but even then I still don't really mind because I've been thinking of ideas relating to it for interactions between Posey and Silver. I don't know what you think of the idea, but I think there could be a good dynamic between the two that could lead to a genuine friendship between them. I feel like they're similar in a lot of ways. They both have similar ambitions for the whole of Equestria (Silver would deeply desire to see Equestria liberated from Hegemony control), they both are a bit out of place in this world and in this time (Silver less so than Posey, but he still based much of his early life off of old stories of heroes and adventurers and continues to use a greatsword in an age of rifles and machine guns), and both went through pretty intense training as foals (again, Silver definitely didn't go through anything like what Posey did with her descriptions of honestly torturous training, but he was drilled pretty relentlessly by his father as a young colt). In addition, while Posey is a dark character with a bit of light inside her that could be nurtured, Silver is a light character with a darkness inside him that could be exposed. I could see them getting along, with it starting slow with the truth of Posey's true origins being told to him and gradually growing stronger as they talk and start to influence each other, with either Posey being pulled into the light or Silver being pulled into the dark.

Also I do want to say that I personally wouldn't mind the mass combat.

I was going to reply to GM's post, but it looks like it's gone now.
That's fine. I think I was beginning to lose my temper as I typed anyway. It's been a really stressful week at work.

>>194252
Not encouraging

>>194253
Who?

I didn't hallucinate the warcraft skill after all. I just for some reason remembered it from the second party Dark Sun book. That's not much better though....
I think there was a version in a 3.0 book buried somewhere, but idk.

I invited someone who followed me on fim fiction, or linked to this specific thread, who had written stories in EAW verse. I thought they might enjoy it here. I hope that was okay.

>>194257
New friends are always welcome

>>194258
Nice that's good to hear. ^^

>>194255
Me. It was a reference to this >>194241
>even though we all want to move forward one of us gets sad and loses motivation to keep writing
Although I think post is deriding the phenomenon, it’s genuinely true. I really do get sad and lose motivation.

And then this >>194252
>That's fine. I think I was beginning to lose my temper as I typed anyway.
In response to a post I made and deleted, where I guess you had to reply anyways to let me know a post I made pissed you. Like no shit. Yes, I know what I wrote was faggy. That’s why I deleted it. If I thought what I had posted was fine or needed to be said, I wouldn’t have entirely deleted it. What could I even possibly have written in response except “well fuck you too”? I figured u would just cancel my plans to continue the game that weekend (which I did do) and just not respond. But I realized that silence is too ambiguous because there are many possible reasons for silence. So I wrote “not encouraging” in reference to what I stated above. In retrospect, just writing “well fuck you too I guess” would have been a much clearer statement and would have been better.

>>194257
That’s good, but I feel like this isn’t the best of all times.

>>194256
That's a neat skill.
>>194262
>Although I think post is deriding the phenomenon, it’s genuinely true. I really do get sad and lose motivation.
It's not derision. You have my sympathy and I don't think anyone is totally immune to that effect. I'd like to find a way out of it.
>That’s good, but I feel like this isn’t the best of all times.
Yeah....

>>194262
>Although I think post is deriding the phenomenon, it’s genuinely true. I really do get sad and lose motivation.
I get this feeling when GMing too, often right before the session when I look over the content I spent a week preparing and suddenly hate everything I wrote; or when it's time for me to prepare content for next week and lose all of my energy. All of that pales in comparison to the sinking feeling I get when I detect disappointment in my players' voices and conclude that I have once again fumbled a session (failure to properly roleplay NPCs, forgetting the stats of NPCs I spent 3 weeks making, wasting a third of the session stuttering and looking up basic rules, etc).
My strategy for that is to just try to prepare as much as I can ahead of time so that when I do run out of steam I have a decent amount of content prepared, focusing on what I need to prepare immediately and what needs to be done that session. Then when it's time to run and I get cold feet I bite the bullet just focus on advancing the plot so that the party accomplishes something, just to keep things moving.
It's not a great strategy, because I'm not a great DM, but it's how I try to tackle the issue of motivation-drain.
I probably missed the point here though, let me address in detail:
>Although I think post is deriding the phenomenon, it’s genuinely true. I really do get sad and lose motivation.
I don't think he's deriding the phenomenon, just observing it. Although the player may be frustrated, he's just pointing it out so that players know to be more sensitive, because how we treat each other, especially GM, does affect how the game runs.
>I guess you had to reply anyways to let me know a post I made pissed you
Yeah, sorry about that. I just shouldn't have replied at all. I was kind of pissed at the time, but there was no need for me to mention it after the post was deleted.
>fuck you
Not the way I meant it, but I guess it's too late for that.
>I figured u would just cancel my plans to continue the game that weekend (which I did do) and just not respond. But I realized that silence is too ambiguous because there are many possible reasons for silence.
Tbh, being a bit more transparent about session plans and your motivations (or lack thereof) and apprehensions could do us all some good.
>>194264
It's second party material, but potentially useful in a game that features mass combat and military stuff. Dark Sun made it exclusive to Fighters (they love high CHA fighters for some reason), Templars and Bards, but it could logically be extended to Warblades, Paladins, Crusaders, Factotum and most of all Marshalls. Marshalls in particular would appreciate a full-round-action ability that buffs allies based on their Cha, especially in an e6/e8 game where lvl 1 allies remain relevant in combat forever; adding Cha to attack rolls means they could actually hit consistently. It could also be a substitute for the Local/History skill for military related topics. It could even be a primary skill for running a militia-related business (if your Warcraft mod is higher than your BAB, which would only be true for Marshalls and Bards).

>>194269
I'm sure that once we get the ball rolling we'll be able to have regular sessions due to the fun we'll be having. Apprehension is a strong demotivator but once you overcome that everything gets easier.
That warcraft skill could also be very useful for some quest ideas.

So, what is everypony looking to spend their quest reward on?
I was thinking of using some of it to buy off Curwhinny's dungeon from Glass Towers (after blockbusting the property value with the help of the ghosts, if I can persuade them), and set up a research facility to open my business and stow the resources I will need to eventually equip my army.
I was thinking of buying adventuring gear (Cape Of Charisma, Rod Of Undead Mastery, Ring Of Desecration, Scrolls, Nightcaller, Robe Of Bones, etc) and spellcasting components, but idk what level I will be at the end of this. I do think we could persuade/pressure Captain Waters to requisition some equipment loadouts appropriate for our level if we remind him that slaying the eldritch god and fighting an endless army of monsters was not part of the job description.

If we are able to relight the boiler, we could sell the Kostroma for a significant sum. If we split that between us, we could afford some good gear.

I feel like we don't really talk about the game here anymore... I guess that's because we haven't been playing frequently.
Anybody have plans they want to share?

>>194284
That, and that life has a lot of us being quite busy. I'm not quite sure what my characters will spend their quest rewards on. For Silver I'm definitely thinking of a workshop so he can make custom weapons and armor. For Kira...she might start saving money so she can afford to hire the ships to bring her people to Equestria.

>>194281
I will probably enchant my revolver and that would take the lion's share of the reward. The rest would be useful for miscellaneous equipment, but I will likely save it in case any future expenses pop up. I wouldn't mind doing some charity missions.
>I do think we could persuade/pressure Captain Waters to requisition some equipment loadouts appropriate for our level if we remind him that slaying the eldritch god and fighting an endless army of monsters was not part of the job description.
You mean for a different mission? If you mean keeping equipment as personal property, unless if the NMN (New Mareland Navy) is very corrupt that's improbable. Militaries are sticklers for keeping tabs on equipment and even soldiers who serve for years are expected to turn in issued gear after years. There's a reason why soldiers get called "government property." Whatever goes unused for this mission will probably need to be logged and turned in. Iirc that's how it works in DnD Modern too.
>sell the Kostroma
I'm not against that except, of course, the destroyer that could chase us down and destroy us.

>>194284
>plans
I want to enjoy the experiences Baltimare has to offer before doing some minor quests. It may be easier to keep the ball rolling that way since there's less stress regarding every encounter. The problem with big quests like this is that when things do stop, it takes a lot more effort to start again. It's like pushing a cart up a hill.
That said, GM, if you need any help with getting things in order, let us know. We all want to continue.

>>194286
>improbable
Well, I plan to get compensation for the extra work/danger, even if I need to make some Charisma checks.
>the destroyer
I intend to blow that up with the torpedo.
In fact, if we draw it out, we could have Monstro ambush it from underwater.

>>194347
That is both cute and silly

So as you may have guessed, there are some scheduling issues. Fluffernoodle's player works night shift about six days a week, which does not leave many openings for sessions with all three players. This combines with my schedule which makes me work in the morning on weekdays, and also I'm out of town often. Very often. So it's hard to coordinate the players for scenes like combat.

I had planned for more combat to happen before getting to the boiler. Maybe that's a bad idea? Maybe I should cut out much of the combat, or most of it? I'm not really sure...

>>194572
I am fine with whatever. I don't mind excessive challenge where I die or nearly die, nor do I mind easy encounters where I get to wipe the floor with the enemy.. I am okay so long as the game progresses.
As a DM, I also do find it painful to cut content after having spent days or weeks preparing encounters because I scheduling issues forced me to not run them for the sake of progressing the story, so I sympathize with the dilemma.
I wouldn't mind fighting the encounter myself if Silver/Kira were given a reason to be forced to address something in the rear of the herd "off screen". Whatever moves the story forward.

>>194572
>>194573
I’m with Posey here. Also, I like combat but as we saw I’m frustratingly useless at it while I’m away. After Thursday I should be back in the swing of things.
We haven’t established who should be the negotiator to defuse encounters, or even if we should defuse them, so that complicates matters

>>194574
>>194573
>>194572
The last encounter wasn't too hard, and only took so longer because players decided they wanted to take the pacifist route halfway through. I think we might be able to get through the next one with a reduced party. Bring it on.

>>194575
>pacifist route
This was from the start. I gave a message, Posey immediately gave a more threatening message before any response came back, and they turned hostile. Then Posey tried to kill them when the party hadn’t agreed on lethal force. I don’t want to blame you, but it was confusion and we need to decide before the fact.

>>194576
Posey said those threatening words to test if they were free-willed individuals who valued their lives, because she is used to handling thralls and mindless monsters, in addition to prisoners and glory hounds. Rational actors would have either surrendered in the fact of greater numbers, or else barked back curses and proud declarations of defiance. The fact that they wordlessly attacked us was really all the evidence we needed to tell that they were already the Intruder's minions: they were already hostile.

>>194576
>Then Posey tried to kill them when the party hadn’t agreed on lethal force.
You know, I also didn't really agree to going out of my way to save the lives of enthralled pirates, pirates I intend to fight later for their ship. I did come with the default assumption of fighting whatever threats stand in our way to our objective. Unlike the Stalliongraders, whom we have a temporary pact with, we have not made any kind of agreement or alliance with the pirates. Posey is a hired mercenary who has already performed above and beyond call of duty to protect her charges; she is not being paid to save pirates. Furthermore, her nonlethal charm and fear spells are seemingly ineffective on the thralls. It's easy for you to preach pacifism when you are a monk with the feats to do it, but if I want to do nonlethal damage my melee mod is +0. To top it off, Posey is playing the part of her pirate disguise seriously, as Captain Waters ordered, and as a "pirate" she should have no reservations against killing whatever opponents try to stop her from taking the ship.
Posey checked if they were capable of communication before attacking them, not because she wouldn't have killed them if they were free willed, but because that is what we agreed to do. She upheld her part of the agreement.

If you wanted Posey to switch to nonlethal tactics, you should have convinced her to do it in character, not assumed that we agreed not to kill anything in the dungeon by default.

>>194574
>We haven’t established who should be the negotiator to defuse encounters, or even if we should defuse them, so that complicates matters
I am a Cha-based character. I have +10 Diplomacy, +14 Bluff, and +15 Intimidate, +9 Hypnosis, as well as a Charm Gaze that I can use on any humanoid or monstrous humanoid creatures once per day per target. I thought I would be qualified to be the party face, but language barriers got in the way for most of this adventure, and for the rest the enemies were seemingly immune to any other methods. I would have delegated my starting languages to something else if I knew that this would be an issue.
I can still try to charm/intimidate creatures without a shared language though.

>>194579
Doesn't she speak Imperial?

>>194580
Tbh, I don't even know. I listed her languages as "Ponish" (what I assumed to be common), Infernal, Abyssal, "Griffon", but later I found out that that apparently didn't make sense. I was waiting until she leveled up to amend her sheet.
Posey is supposed to be a spy and a mage. I selected languages I assumed would be most suitable for that, but idk.

>>194581
I assume I automatically start with "common", and get three bonus languages for my Intelligence modifier. I don't know bonus languages are available to Unicorns though. Maybe I don't even have access to those languages. I would assume Posey at least speaks languages that would have been relevant to her time as a scout in Farbrook and a warrior on the Arcturian front. I would like her to be able to read ancient manuscripts as a scholar in the arts, but idk what languages those would be.
I'm not even completely sure how many languages exist in this setting,or which ones I as a unicorn am allowed to start with.

>>194577
>The fact that they wordlessly attacked us was really all the evidence we needed to tell that they were already the Intruder's minions: they were already hostile.
We’ve established that there is an in-between state of not fully being a flaw yet influenced to some degree by coercion and fear. We haven’t ruled that out but they wouldn’t be fully rational in the same way that a wounded animal isn’t rational. Diplomacy can still work but takes greater care, or so I assume.
>>194578
>she is not being paid to save pirates
Neither are we paid to kill them. This can be argued along moral alignments so I won’t bother with that. Practically speaking, Posey doesn’t gain from killing them other than the unlikely prospect of reanimating, and other than combat risk it doesn’t hurt her from going along with the party if they agree.
>but if I want to do nonlethal damage my melee mod is +0.
Don’t take offense for the suggestion that Posey hangs back while our subduing party members do most of the work.
>To top it off, Posey is playing the part of her pirate disguise seriously, as Captain Waters ordered, and as a "pirate" she should have no reservations against killing whatever opponents try to stop her from taking the ship.
Considering our paltry “crew” shouldn’t she prioritize capturing experienced pirates she could impress into service? Piracy is not all brutality.
>If you wanted Posey to switch to nonlethal tactics, you should have convinced her to do it in character, not assumed that we agreed not to kill anything in the dungeon by default
You’re right and we didn’t get to have that discussion. Should we have it now?
>>194579
>Ithought I would be qualified to be the party face
Checks help but they shouldn’t be a magic win condition. What you actually roleplay is important. When she’s not seductive, Posey has been too direct and aggressive which hurts diplomacy efforts. This is why I never wanted her as the face.

>>194583
Plus, Kira's planning on trying to free the possessed creatures from the Traveler's influence, so keeping them alive helps us in the long run.

>>194583
>We’ve established that there is an in-between state of not fully being a flaw yet influenced to some degree by coercion and fear. We haven’t ruled that out but they wouldn’t be fully rational in the same way that a wounded animal isn’t rational. Diplomacy can still work but takes greater care, or so I assume.
That would entail using Intimidate instead of Diplomacy. I am a specialist in that.
I was going to roll it at the beginning of the last encounter, but I elected not to.
>Posey doesn’t gain from killing them
Well, it does make it easier to steal their torpedo boat, since we would not have to fight them for it.
We need to seize at least one of these ships to get home, and I would preferably like to capture them both. Posey already implanted her Mark inside Blackheel to make him easier to coerce later if push comes to shove.
>going along with the party if they agree
Yeah, sure.
>Don’t take offense for the suggestion that Posey hangs back while our subduing party members do most of the work.
This conversation started with GM being concerned that he would have to cut back the combat encounters he prepared because not enough players can show up for them at the same time. Having present players not participate is counterproductive.
Also, I like combat. I want to participate in combat. Fighting is part of the game.
>Considering our paltry “crew” shouldn’t she prioritize capturing experienced pirates she could impress into service? Piracy is not all brutality.
I mean, yeah, it they comply, but it also helps if we outnumber/outpower them, or otherwise have leverage.
>You’re right and we didn’t get to have that discussion. Should we have it now?
I guess so, but tbh I have grown a bit weary of these long OOC discussions and would rather roleplay/plan in-character.
>Checks help but they shouldn’t be a magic win condition. What you actually roleplay is important.
I somewhat agree, but if Diplomacy checks fail after a roleplaying attempt was made, that signals that the creatures were not really predisposed to being persuaded in the first place. This is common, because Diplomacy is a skill that should have reasonable limitations.
Intimidate/Bluff are opposed checks though, so they are more reliable.
>When she’s not seductive, Posey has been too direct and aggressive which hurts diplomacy efforts.
Well, this is by design, and it is the personality that I wrote for her, subject to change through character development. Posey is quick to resort to brute force when her charms fail, due to her upbringing.
But again, maybe talk about it in-character.
>>194572
All of those tangents aside, how do (You) want to proceed, GM? As I said, I am okay with whatever way you want to move forward. If you make your narrative intentions a bit more clear (or just hint at them), we could work to realize then better.
>I had planned for more combat to happen before getting to the boiler. Maybe that's a bad idea? Maybe I should cut out much of the combat, or most of it? I'm not really sure...
I love combat, and if you spent time writing encounters I would suppose you want to use them.

There are cases against it though:
1. Narratively, the Traveller has no actual reason to prevent us from fixing the boiler. Having a working ship would allow it to sail across the world and land in a country with more creatures for it to enslave. It might intentionally withhold its minions in the lower decks in an attempt to use the party to repair its means of transportation, biding its powers to unleash on us later when we are no longer useful. This is actually what I assumed when we arrived on the deck and were not immediately attacked.
2. As you said, it's difficult getting all of the players together in this PbP format with all of our schedules, particularly for combat. That coupled with the fact that the adventure has run well over a year means it may be necessary to minimize unnecessary encounters to keep the story moving forward. The longer the adventure runs, the more difficult it becomes to keep all the players together in it.
3. Mechanically, we are well over the XP budget for this adventure, several times that actually. I am not complaining about that, because I have my unlimited self-healing gimmick and have shrewdly been very stingy with my spell slots, but most of the other characters have run out of healing potions and daily use class features. Couple this with the fact that few of the enemies have dropped standard treasure, particularly healing potions, it makes the adventure increasingly difficult over time as resources are chipped away and the XP budget continues to grow beyond what the game is balanced for, particularly from the perspective of the low-op characters. The XP budget is more than a leveling tracker, it also tracks how many encounters are appropriate to put in a single adventure.
4. The other two players seem to want to go the pacifist route, and I am out-voted 2-1 on that plan. This means limited combat options for the enthralled enemies, or that the other players who want to minimize bloodshed may not appreciate or enjoy having to fight so many enthralled creatures. It also means that some of the encounters might be slowed-down as party members try to assess the enemy's sanity and hold back their turns trying to speak before proceeding to change tactics, like they did last encounter.
5. Encounters you prepared for the boiler can always be recycled and used elsewhere on the ship. This makes it less painful to cut content. Narratively, the traveller could be redirecting its resources to defend more important places, like Light Water or its body.

But don't mistake these points as lack of enthusiasm for combat. I relish in combat, and I want to engage with those encounters. Blood for the blood god, skulls for the skull throne. Combat is fun. I am just laying out these points to make you feel less hesitant/remorseful about tossing things out, because I had the same problem with having to cut encounters in my own campaign recently.

>>194585
Actually, I cannot actually say I know anything about that XP budget thing, because just last week I just discovered that I had been calculating XP the wrong way for nearly a decade (I had been using the 3.0 encounter-based version instead of the 3.5 adventure-based version because my first adventure was written for 3.0 and never fixed the error because I had a habit of just checking the SRD instead of actually reading the DMG... I need to apologize to every DM whom I annoyed by asking "how much XP do I get?" after every individual encounter like it was a default assumption)...
Anyway, GM. You should do whatever you are comfortable with. I would just like to keep the game moving forward.

>>194585
>>194586
I am just now suddenly realizing that this sort of back-seat DM comment was completely uncalled-for. Idk what got into me at the time to think that that was acceptable. I can't delete it, so just ignore everything I said here.

>>194585
>That would entail using Intimidate instead of Diplomacy.
Let's decide on which one we use first, in-character. Unless if you do a good-cop-bad-cop scenario, trying them at the same time will undermine each other. At the time I was irked not because you used a particular method to get them to stand down, but because you did this immediately afterwards and it seemed to turn the griffons hostile.
>Well, it does make it easier to steal their torpedo boat, since we would not have to fight them for it.
We all have an interest in escape, and while we cannot trust pirates, we can strike a relatively bloodless deal.
>Posey already implanted her Mark inside Blackheel to make him easier to coerce later if push comes to shove.
scrunch
>This conversation started with GM being concerned that he would have to cut back the combat encounters he prepared because not enough players can show up for them at the same time. Having present players not participate is counterproductive.
Also, I like combat. I want to participate in combat. Fighting is part of the game.
More fights against summons, then.
>I guess so, but tbh I have grown a bit weary of these long OOC discussions and would rather roleplay/plan in-character.
I'll write something up.

I agree with the rest of what you wrote, except I don't want to rush through the Kostroma. There could be a lot of interesting things to see.

>>194588
>Let's decide on which one we use first, in-character.
You know it takes an entire minute (10 rounds) to modify a creature's attitude with a Charisma check, right? I didn't roll Intimidate before last encounter because there was not time.
>it seemed to turn the griffons hostile.
They were already thralls. That means they were hostile before we arrived.
>We all have an interest in escape, and while we cannot trust pirates, we can strike a relatively bloodless deal.
Aside from the workers like Zara who are useful in maintain the ship, the pirates aren't really of any use to us. The enthralled pirates also are zero use so long as they are mine controlled, and are a danger/liability. And once the Intruder is defeated, the need for combatants will have already passed, so all that would do is leave more creatures to argue with about our escape.
There is no real benefit in risking our own lives to prevent them from dying in combat, except for that it might impact Zara's productivity in repairing the boiler.
Also, I want to sell the ships to fund my research lab and army.
>scrunch
Posey plans ahead.
Do you really trust the communists not to turn on us after all of this is done? You think they would rather be deserters in fleeing to foreign country and not instead roll the dice trying to negotiate with the GRU? Posey considered this, so she took precautions, either to make their leader easier to control or to detonate the tumor if control fails.
Also, if I level up enough, I could try using Necrotic Domination for the first time.
>More fights against summons, then.
Doesn't that contradict what you said in the previous post?
>I don't want to rush through the Kostroma.
I don't want to "rush" either. I am a completionist. I know that there is treasure on this ship, and I intend to find it. I just want to get through it at a decent pace.

>>194589
>You know it takes an entire minute (10 rounds) to modify a creature's attitude with a Charisma check, right? I didn't roll Intimidate before last encounter because there was not time.
I don't know what GM thinks but should it apply to life-or-death situations? I'm thinking when we're in that sort of situation, that time requirement is waived. Think of "Come with me if you want to live" from Terminator. You could argue it's intimidation but it's not a threat, it's a genuine offer of rescue. There are other examples from media of course where an unwilling character is convinced to cooperate in a dire situation, and those don't take ten minutes. Of course, any attitude adjustment is temporary and after the danger is passed you would have to make a genuine diplomacy check.
>They were already thralls.
But do we know for absolutely sure?
>There is no real benefit in risking our own lives to prevent them from dying in combat, except for that it might impact Zara's productivity in repairing the boiler.
This is a genuine concern since we know she's mentally vulnerable. Hurting or killing her mates has already done a number on her.
>Also, I want to sell the ships to fund my research lab and army.
Your pragmatic concerns are valid, but rather than focus a conceptual, expensive army, why not have a short-term group of goons recruited off the pirate ship? It's not like they would have anywhere else to go after we take their ship, so they may be of use to you.
>Do you really trust the communists not to turn on us after all of this is done?
I don't, and from your character's perspective it was a smart move. You waited for the right moment when all the PCs were distracted because some of our characters would nonetheless take issue with such dark magic.
>Doesn't that contradict what you said in the previous post?
I mean, if we are fighting summons we don't have to worry about non-lethal damage. Posey could be more directly involved instead of being a third wheel. Personally, I don't mind fighting to subdue living creatures, but if it's not fun for you then that's a concern. This is a game for all of us.
>I just want to get through it at a decent pace.
I understand. Sorry for my insinuation.

>>194592
>should it apply to life-or-death situations? I'm thinking when we're in that sort of situation, that time requirement is waived. Think of "Come with me if you want to live" from Terminator. You could argue it's intimidation but it's not a threat, it's a genuine offer of rescue. There are other examples from media of course where an unwilling character is convinced to cooperate in a dire situation, and those don't take ten minutes
I mean, I guess? In that scene, everything that preceded with the liquid metal terminator is doing quite a bit of work. But... sure?

>any attitude adjustment is temporary
That's how intimidate works anyways. The NPC doesn't like you once you leave.

>>194593
If diplomacy doesn't work then let us know and we can stick to intimidation. I would however like to get the pirates on our side for the near future. It just seems to me that the last encounter could be interpreted as diplomacy and intimidation cancelling each other out and causing hostility. It'd be best to avoid that situation.

>>194592
>But do we know for absolutely sure?
Yes, because, like I said, they made no attempts to communicate with us or with each other. No angry shouts, no begging, no curses, no desperate cries, nothing.
And that was pretty clear from the time initiative was rolled. A conscious person would have made some kind of reply, or at least spoken to their ally.
>This is a genuine concern since we know she's mentally vulnerable. Hurting or killing her mates has already done a number on her.
Point taken.
>why not have a short-term group of goons recruited off the pirate ship?
The goons can't really contribute anything while they are mind controlled.
>It's not like they would have anywhere else to go after we take their ship, so they may be of use to you.
Why would they just let us take their ship? They are pirates.
>You waited for the right moment when all the PCs were distracted because some of our characters would nonetheless take issue with such dark magic.
Nopony else in the party has any ability to identify a spell being cast, or the nature of the magic. The spell had no discernable effect. Posey said he mark would allow her to contact him again, which is true.
>I mean, if we are fighting summons we don't have to worry about non-lethal damage.
I mean, sure I guess? I think fighting Humanoids is supposed to be expected in a war themed game though. I'm also more effective against humanoids.
Also, summons don't drop any loot.
>>194595
Diplomacy has pretty clearly not worked on the mind controlled creatures, and all of my fear effects have so far been ineffective. It is not worth it to attempt to negotiate with the thralls.
>It just seems to me that the last encounter could be interpreted as diplomacy and intimidation cancelling each other out and causing hostility.
They were already mind-controlled. That much was obvious. They attacked us without a word.
If dialogue were the trigger, they would have said something to us or to each other before they attacked.

>>194596
You might be right on the thralldom part. Sill, other crewmembers we encounter may not be enthralled and we should have a plan for how to deal with them.
>The goons can't really contribute anything while they are mind controlled.
I mean afterwards. You could smuggle them into Baltimare. You wouldn't be the first to do that.
>Nopony else in the party has any ability to identify a spell being cast, or the nature of the magic. The spell had no discernable effect. Posey said he mark would allow her to contact him again, which is true.
Cavaliere has ranks in arcane knowledge and Blackheel visibly responded. It would've caused questions at least.
>I mean, sure I guess? I think fighting Humanoids is supposed to be expected in a war themed game though. I'm also more effective against humanoids.
Pirates aren't good-aligned to begin with but if they cannot make a conscious choice, good-aligned creatures will not want to kill them. Think of that episode of Samurai Jack where he has to fight a horde of people mind-controlled at a music festival.

>>194597
>Sill, other crewmembers we encounter may not be enthralled and we should have a plan for how to deal with them.
We shout something at them to a goat a reply, and if they respond intelligently we go from there. Easy.
>You could smuggle them into Baltimare.
Why would we do that though? What use do we have for uncontrolled pirate NPCs?
Tbh, I would much rather have their corpses.
>arcane knowledge
You use Spellcraft to identify spells being cast.
>It would've caused questions at least.
Maybe. I did bluff Blackheel. He's a unicorn, so he might be suspicious, but he won't know for sure until or unless it affects him.
>Pirates aren't good-aligned to begin with but if they cannot make a conscious choice, good-aligned creatures will not want to kill them.
I am not good aligned.

>>194598
>We shout something at them to a goat a reply, and if they respond intelligently we go from there. Easy.
Diplomacy or intimidation, or just "respond if you can hear me?" Let's decide on this, either here or in-character.
>Why would we do that though? What use do we have for uncontrolled pirate NPCs?
>Tbh, I would much rather have their corpses.
sigh
If you're remaining undercover, surely you understand the appeal of amoral but still-living henchmen? I know Posey prefers going solo so far, but there's all this talk about a hypothetical "army" yet even a small number of undead would trigger widespread panic if discovered. Meanwhile gangs are everywhere in Baltimare and while having one might trigger a police response it wouldn't completely expose her mission like having a bunch of undead would.
>Maybe. I did bluff Blackheel. He's a unicorn, so he might be suspicious, but he won't know for sure until or unless it affects him.
Posey's odd nature has already inspired a lot of suspicion from multiple characters.
>I am not good aligned.
Cavaliere and Kirafiki are, which is my point. Silver is neutral but he also goes out of his way to spare enemies.

>>194599
>surely you understand the appeal of amoral but still-living henchmen?
I mean, that's a plausibility, but I was going to attract my own henchmen when I took the feat.
Posey is making connections with living creatures already though. She is already cultivating extremism within the gnoll community, Lion King style.

>>194600
>I mean, that's a plausibility, but I was going to attract my own henchmen when I took the feat.
Yes but this is a cheap and easy opportunity right here. This can save you time and effort. Also, griffons are more accepted than gnolls and if you can forge some paperwork you can get them to do errands for you in the daylight. I'm just spitballing here but the advantage is obvious.

>>194601
Posey hates griffins. She wears armor made of griffin bones for a reason. Her spell component pouch is filled of preserved griffin fingers, eyeballs, hearts, feathers, etc. It's due to her upbringing, fighting griffons on the front, and also diffusion from spending time among ponies in Farbrook who were surrounded by hostile griffins.
I will consider it, but I already had some plans for my followers. I will see if these characters show any remarkable traits that would make them worth keeping.

>>194602
Btw we can discuss some of this in-character >>194591 →

Also pls don't explode any implanted tumors in the creatures, I'd still like the Kostroma survivors to become Silver's retinue.

I assume Cavalier wants the other frag grenade?

Posey took a grenade, a couple flare guns (fire damage is good to bypass damage reduction at a range), and anything else that only requires simple/archaic weapon proficiency.

If the harpoon comes with a spear gun, she takes that too. It could be useful with the Fight with Light Water.

Even if it doesn't come with a spear gun, Silver or Kira (the ones with the highest melee/range mods) should take it. Even with the penalty to hit, it has the potential to immobilize its target and prevent Light Water from escaping or casting spells.

I think the whalers were proficient in harpoons, but they're not following us right now.