OOC A Tide of Discussion: the d20 ToF OOC thread

Prop 11:

General prep for battle: your gold is fairly well down, of course, but maybe there's some stuff to craft.

I propose an addendum to Prop 4: Corrath goes and engages the Thieves' Guild without telling anyone what she's really doing.

If so, then, your proposition necessarily gets up since nobody but you can vote on it!

Seriously: addendum added.

Maybe you can give me a better educat-ion on that.

Also, this is an excellent use of the Like system; thumbs up Saint!

Oh, I forgot to tell you -- once we've decided here, I'm going to insist we RP out all of the arguments for and against every single prop and the party's acceptance or rejection of each option.


...Kidding!

Quick update - I'd say going to the Hammerfist Holds or at least seeing what happened to Durin Shieldbreaker now gets up, since that's four in favour and there's only seven of you playing right now. In case it weren't apparent, this is not a situation where you only get to work with one proposition; if multiple props get up, then multiple props we shall have ... assuming, of course, there's sufficient time left before the Red Hand's projected arrival date to do all of them.

I'm also guessing this is a pretty potent illustration on how limited people's time is. Exactly half the party has had time to click the "Like" button.

Depending on time and other such things, it might be that if we hired ourselves some mercs, some of the early ones could be put to use helping train people. That way, more people teaching at once, more people learning - if we got our first few soon, they could be used to give tips including to the Last Resort bunch and so on; anyone going there who could be given even a skerrick of knowledge would probably make them safer on their journey.

Just as an update, and waiting on @Penguinator to cast his vote/s, it looks like the following propositions are getting up given each has four votes or more:

• Going to the Thieves Guild for assistance.
• The Company interdicting the Red Hand on its way to Brindol, bloodying its nose somehow.
• Checking to see if Durin Shieldbreaker made it to the Hammerfist Holds to obtain the Shining Axes' aid.
• Escorting or somehow assisting the foraging parties west of Brindol that are trying to gather in a harvest ahead of the coming storm
• General training of the garrison.

Strictly speaking, unless a couple of you wind up changing votes then Peng can only vote two additional measures in on his own: finding additional spellcasters to support Brindol and scouting or gathering intel on the Red Hand. Looks like teleporting mercenaries in for any purpose and digging moats is now out of official contention.

The next consideration I think you guys have to spend on these measures are time management and staffing. In other words, who are you going to assign to these jobs, and how long do you want to spend on these tasks?

Time Management
Today is 23 Mirtul, and the projected arrival date of the Red Hand is 30 Kythorn. That means there's 37 days (7 left in Mirtul, 30 in Kythorn) between now and the Red Hand's projected arrival at Brindol, give or take a few days. You also know that Brindol is due for evacuation about two weeks hence, say 9 Kythorn. (Intel could possibly narrow down this estimate.)

Will foraging parties be out past 9 Kythorn, since Brindol's evacuated after that point? In short, yes - though they'll be all guardsmen and militia at that point. Brindol Keep's got decent stores, and just about every stalk of wheat or early apple is precious. Most likely the foragers will work their way back to Brindol from Terrelton, stopping at each major town to harvest what they can there before moving on. As they get closer to Brindol, they'll be likely cutting their retreat finer and finer, since the best and largest orchards and fields are around Brindol.

Durin Shieldbreaker left 3 days ago. Assuming he was on a light horse, he could get about 40 miles in a day. He's not likely to have been able to ride as the crow flies, so odds are on he took the roads: either south to Prosser, Dauth, and on to the Holds from there, or back west to Talar or Nimon Gap before turning for the south. If he went by the south road odds are on he's close to the Holds, and if he went west he could well have reached the Holds already, assuming nothing intervened along the way.

The Shining Axes' travel time has to be considered, too: with the Red Hand at Drellin's Ferry, any company of dwarves will likely have to avoid heading directly north for fear of running into Red Hand scouts. Dwarves can move at about 2 miles per hour, so 20 miles per day, which means a good 5 days travel to reach Brindol from the northernmost settlement in the Hammerfist Holds. That's your absolute minimum. If they don't set out quickly, it'll be longer since they'll have to avoid using the Dawn Way at all and go via the back roads. And who knows whether they have scouts out or what intelligence they might have - possibly they saw the smoke from Drellin's Ferry burning, possibly not.

Assuming Koth's estimates of the Red Hand's advance are right, this should mean the following rough "itinerary":

Foragers pull back from Terrelton fields -- 25 Mirtul.

Absolute earliest possible date the Shining Axes could reach Brindol -- 29 Mirtul.

Hand reaches Terrelton -- 1 Kythorn.

Foragers pull back from Nimon Gap fields -- 4 Kythorn.

Hand reaches Nimon Gap -- 8 Kythorn.

Brindol is evacuated -- 9 Kythorn.

Foragers pull back from Talar fields -- 11 Kythorn.

Hand reaches Talar -- 14 Kythorn.

Foragers pull back from Brindol's fields -- 28 Kythorn.

Hand reaches Brindol -- 30 Kythorn.

I've given all of that material in the hope it helps you decide how much time you want to assign to these tasks. Some will be easier than others. For example, trying to recruit the Thieves Guild one wouldn't expect to take look long. Training the garrison, though, potentially is time-dependent; the more time you spend with them, the more useful your training might be. And this itinerary may help you decide where and how to try and slow the Red Hand down, which you haven't discussed as yet. Bear in mind, too, that spellcasting takes time and you only have so many Scrying spells per day; this may make the calendar somewhat dynamic as well.

Staffing
This is potentially significant since you can potentially achieve some economies of effort here by splitting the party. Maybe some of you can protect the foragers while others head to the Hammerfist Holds; maybe William can stay back to help train people. I'm not fussed about how you split it up, it's all up to you, and I can always go in split time. Rest assured I don't believe you'll have to RP out every little fight or battle you might potentially have; I have some ideas about that. I only mention splitting the party because as I said you do have some fairly potent punch in the 8 man group right now: Skadi's a freight train of destruction, Ragnar's an express train, Zanaek is a passenger train of destruction, and William is just an atom bomb. A four man D&D party is considered competent if it's got a cleric and a mage in the party, and you have two clerics, a mage, an upgunned bard, a combat brute barbarian, and three shank-y types who could easily make up offensive punch if they needed to.

As I said, some of this might have to wait Peng's vote, since he potentially can add other tasks to you guys, but I'd suggest you start thinking about this. I will be asking who and how long you assign to the propositions you get up.

And that's why this 'likes' business doesn't seem to work very well. I don't think it's a very good substitute for real discussion. Real discussions don't tend to have the same 'vote to keep the ideas like they're competing on X-Factor' deal going on.

I'd happily support further discussions if people wanted it. It's not necessarily a closed conversation. The "remove like" button allows people to change their votes, so if you guys do want to discuss any of these possibilities at length, go right ahead. The issues I have with long discussion are that where we get halfway into a conversation, some good ideas come up, and the we get a pause so pregnant I'm looking around for the obstetrician. Or we spend literally three months talking through a single possibility. I'd thought by throwing these out here via 'like' people could get their views across without even having to type a single OOC. I'd thought this would be handy to do since some people seem to be having problems putting in long or extensive posts on this issue. At least there's been some narrowing down, which is really all I was trying to achieve.

Look, speaking solely as your GM I'm perfectly happy to play out any strategy you guys want to give a whirl, but I'm also conscious to try and keep things from getting tedious. If you want split time, tell me. If you want to run a particular character hook down, tell me. I'll do everything I can to accommodate people so long as they're still having fun with the game.

The narrowing down is the bit that's bugging me.

I'm with Rilwen. For me I feel we've hammered this enough. We convinced the leaders to defend and need not drag out anything else further.

Many of the things we 'liked' can be done all at once. Don't need the whole group to train the defenders, recruit the thieves, or scry. How many days we train is up to Skadi, Ariel and Ragnar since they are the trained warriors. Corrath is the only one that can talk to the thieves. I'm the only one that can scry and William and Evelios are likely to convince the wizards to stay and fight.

As for freeing up Skadi, Ariel and Ragnar, there has to be a city Master of Arms whom they can work with and pass on the pointers and he can continue the training of the soldiers while we head out to intercept the Horde and defend the forgers. As for Durin; Evelios, Corrath, William and Maz can go look into that.

And if I need more time to scry, I can stay behind in the city and if not I can go with the Intercept party.


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Seconding these comments: we know what we've decided to do, let's assume we're going to go ahead with the upvoted options and move on to actually doing them, if we've persuaded the city council to accept them. I'm happy to have William take part in whichever missions it's decided he'll be needed in. Skirmish/scout attacks on the horde will likely be one, given he packs large arcane punches these days and is also a handy transport option. I'm also happy for him to go along to check on the situation at the Hammerfist Holds, and to talk to the local wizards if everyone decides we need them (aside from Immerstal the Red, as I get the impression that he will be staying by default - correct me if I'm wrong, Saint.)

Mitth, William has Scrying, if we're set on the magical peekaboo route. Personally I feel that if we're going to be going to annoy the Red Hand anyway, we might as well scout that way rather than bombard them with magical watching.

I also have to wonder, Saint, probably because it was such an integral part of my first fight in this campaign and thus memorable: are there likely to be any more repercussions from the Haskinars regarding their deceased relative?

Well thing is we might be able to easily scry on the Red Hand, but its a big IF. I went through the notes and noticed that Kharn had captured the Druid and then later killed him. If they kept anything of the Druid's we could focus on that just to get in. I think there is also a spell that would allow a scrier to basically jump "eyes" once they are initially in. I'll have to look it up though.

All right, well, Peng's given us his votes which don't actually change the upvoted items. So these are the definite things you're doing for Brindol:

• Going to the Thieves Guild for assistance.
• The Company interdicting the Red Hand on its way to Brindol, bloodying its nose somehow.
• Checking to see if Durin Shieldbreaker made it to the Hammerfist Holds to obtain the Shining Axes' aid.
• Escorting or somehow assisting the foraging parties west of Brindol that are trying to gather in a harvest ahead of the coming storm
• General training of the garrison.

I'll come back to summarising these options in a bit. And once again, if people want to do things individually that are off the list, come talk to me and we'll look at split time.

Dealing with queries to date--

Yes, Immerstal would be staying in the city. I think it pretty likely that the Lords of Brindol will impose on him to try and convince his fellow spellcasters to aid the effort. It's up to you whether you leave that negotiation to him or get involved there.

To which my considered, measured, thoughtful reply is:

Mitth (and Cass, actually), when it comes to Scrying we might want to look a little more carefully at the spell.

First, it operates against a single creature, so "The Red Hand" as a target for the spell is out, but "Wyrmlord Kharn" or "Avarthel the Druid" is legit.

Secondly, the only difference between casting against Wyrmlord Kharn and someone like Kerden Jarmaath is that Kharn gets a +5 to his Will save because you only have secondhand knowledge of him, and you've met Jarmaath. If you had possession of one of Kharn's teeth or clothes, etc, that only nerfs Kharn's Will save against the spell by up to 10. The spell doesn't stop you casting against someone you've never met - all it requires is that you have some knowledge of the subject, which you unquestionably do since Koth, Saarvith, and Ulwai have all identified Kharn as Azarr Khul's general in the field. You would only need a connection of some kind to a creature if you had no knowledge of that creature.

(This is where Scrying is sometimes used for campaign breaking: the DM has not disclosed the identity of the BBEG to a party, so the scryer simply argues that the party has a narrative "connection" to whoever the big boss is. Silly DMs allow that argument to fly. Also, most amusingly, by the literal rules as written you could theoretically look in on whatever afterlife the dragons you've killed are occupying. Ariel's been channelling Dexter in that she's taken trophies from every dragon corpse you've created, which nerfs the subject's saving throw by 10 if you use it for a Scrying spell. The fact said dragons are dead and therefore on another plane of existence only increases the Will save by 5. )

A +5 to Will save sounds like a big bonus, but metagaming it, melee types usually have low-ish Will saves already. And because Zanaek is a Divine Oracle, he gets a +1 to Scrying spells. His spell attack roll -- to which action points apply if you're minded to use them -- is 1d20+14: 1d20+8 [WIS] +5 [Spell level] +1 [Scry Bonus] = 1d20+14. William himself, being a mage and therefore a class with some of the best Will saves in the game, has a Will save of 26. If you're rolling 1d20+14, that's getting on a fifty-fifty chance of being able to scry on him. If Kharn has a Will save comparable to a level 10 mage (or indeed a level 10 cleric) then odds are on you're in serious trouble no matter what.

And consider the downside: if it fails, you can't cast Scrying against that person for 24 hours. Doesn't stop William punching off his own spell. Or trying another Scrying on, ooh, say, the big, flappy red-scaled lizard who you've been told is with Kharn and goes by the name of Abithriax. (Of course, some dragons have spell resistance, which defeats Scrying or has a chance to do so, but anyway.) Unless the target is paranoid and cast Detect Scrying this morning, they can't take countermeasures against you. They aren't even aware you cast the spell.

One last proviso: casting Scrying is a lot cheaper for clerics than it is for mages. If William wants to cast Scrying, he'll need to go find a finely wrought mirror 2 feet by four feet worth no less than 1,000 gold as the spell's focus. If Zanaek wants to cast it, he has to go find a font of holy water worth no less than 100 gp. How does he do that? Cast Bless Water (Cleric 1) on four flasks (25 gp per flask) and tip it all into a pot. Done.

More later, but those are the queries for now...?

All right, moving on to the situation with each of the options as I see them...

Going to the Thieves Guild

• More or less a solo mission for Corrath almost by definition, unless she wants to invite anyone else along.
• Need to pick a date. In any event, Corrath would realise it has to happen by no later than 9 Kythorn, since the city's to be evacuated (along with the thieves, presumably) on that date.

The Company interdicting the Red Hand on its way to Brindol, bloodying its nose somehow.

• Need to pick a date
• Need to pick a place (tell me if you want more information about the Vale. We can do this IC or OOC.)
• Need to decide what you're going to do.
• Need to decide who's going to do it.

Checking to see if Durin Shieldbreaker made it to the Hammerfist Holds to obtain the Shining Axes' aid.

• As discussed, need to pick a date. The longer it's left (if something went wrong) the more chance the Axes will go the wrong way and the longer it'll take them to get to Brindol.
• Present suggestion from Mitth is that William, Corrath, Mazarun and Evelios go check it out while rest of the group attends to other things.

Escorting or somehow assisting the foraging parties west of Brindol that are trying to gather in a harvest ahead of the coming storm

• You've got the timeline for the foragers at each of the settlements along the Dawn Way. Up to you when and where you intervene. On that, one might note the Hand is at or marching from Drellin's Ferry and the foragers are due to pull out of Terrelton on 25 Mirtul, two days from now.
• Present suggestion from Mitth is that this ought to happen a few days after commencing training the garrison, leaving most of the training in the hands of the man at arms (that'd be Captain Ulverth.) Little bit unclear on this one...

General training of the garrison

All right, I'm going to go into this one since there's some rules surrounding it.

When you're in Brindol, you' ll have the option to train the soldiers and militia. Your characters can do so in one of five ways - giving out pointers in melee combat, ranged combat, defense and tactics, first aid, and magical defense. In terms of how this matters in mathematical terms, you might like to know you may well be working in cooperation with NPCs during a battle at the city. Unless of course you stop the Red Hand in the Vale, in which case this is all moot.

For each day of training a character leads, they make a roll to beat DC 25, with the following modifiers.

• Melee combat: 1d20+Base attack bonus + Strength modifier + Charisma modifier (and must have relevant proficiencies)
• Ranged combat: 1d20+Base attack bonus + Dex modifier + Charisma modifier (and must have relevant proficiencies)
• Defense and Tactics: 1d20+Base attack bonus + higher of Int or Wis modifier + Charisma modifier
• First Aid: 1d20+Heal skill + Charisma modifier
• Magical Defense: 1d20+caster level + relevant ability modifier.

A successful check means that the character banks 1 point into that category. A failed roll means that they can retry in the same category at a cumulative +2 DC, or change categories for the next day of training.

How those points can be spent by characters are as follows:

Melee combat:
* 1 point: NPC ally gains +1 to hit / +1 damage on a single attack roll
* 2 points: NPC ally gains extra 10 feet of movement for a single round
* 3 points: NPC ally gains one additional melee attack for a single round

Ranged combat:
* 1 point: NPC gains +1 to hit / +1 damage on a single attack roll
* 2 points: NPC gains +1 to the damage of a standard volley per archer (volleys as per p. 68-69, Heroes of Battle)
* 3 points: NPC gains +1 to the damage of a concentrated volley per archer

Defense and Tactics:
* 1 point: Before a combat, PC can mark a single square as filled with rubble (difficult terrain)
* 2 points: PC can delay the arrival of enemy reinforcements for 1 round in one combat
* 3 points: Before a combat, PC can place a single 5-foot section of waist-high palisade.

First Aid:
* 1 point: NPC automatically succeeds on a single DC 15 heal check.
* 2 points: An NPC gains 10 temporary hitpoints for one round.
* 3 points: A NPC wakes up instead of having to roll on the 'death and dying' table.

Magical defense:
* 1 point: Add +1 to an NPC's saving throw against a magical effect.
* 2 points: An NPC gains the effects of Evasion or Mettle for a round.
* 3 points: An NPC gains the effects of Improved Evasion or Improved Mettle for a round.

Make sense? For each day of training you can build up a balance of points in any of these five categories, then during the battle (assuming there is one) you can use those points at the costs described.

This obviously will impact on your calculations for time spent in training.

Again, solely in the interests of stopping things bogging down, might I suggest that you put some concrete plans in place for interdicting the Red Hand first? It seems to me once you've got the specifics of that sorted out, the rest of your planning for everything else will fall into place surrounding it.

It'll be somewhere west of Brindol, obviously, so you can synchronise it with the forager escort missions. You know, down to a day or so and even more precisely with appropriate scouting or Scrying, where the Red Hand's main force will be on given dates. Planning your interdiction will also let you slot in the training on either side of the 'westward missions'; in no way does your training have to be consecutive days. You could happily drop a few days in Mirtul, head off into the Vale, and then run back to Brindol and spend your days training Brindol's defenders while waiting for the Red Hand to catch up (assuming you haven't obliterated them.)

If you want more information on the Vale, the Dawn Way, or the towns on it, just ask. Most of the party passed through all the towns the Hand will go through - on your way east from Drellin's Ferry when you were headed for Rhest. Mazarun's probably had even more opportunity to look over them assuming he joined the Ferryfolk's refugee column at an early point - I haven't gone back to check exactly when that was.

Hey you guys I'm really sorry for disappearing; I've had an incredibly exhausting couple of weeks with work and other real life things including a surprise houseguest (long story). It's probably not going to let up anytime soon but it's getting ridiculous and unfair to everyone so I will be sure to carve out at least a couple of hours every weekend to post and things.

Re Thieves Guild:

Corrath is going to do that immediately. Probably without telling anyone. What I'm thinking is - and I'll get an IC post up soon to this effect sometime this weekend - is she'll sneak out of the keep, let the rest of the Company know she's safe, and go straight to looking for Cragg (I think that was his name?) ... how exactly she's going to find him is something I have to think of, but maybe something along the lines of staking out the Thieves' Highway near a populous area and waiting for him (or another thief) to find her. Maybe scouring the marketplace for the kid she lured out the last time and having the kid take her in. Haven't decided yet.

She'll also happily join the others in looking for Durin, but I'm just conscious of how the Thieves' Guild mission is potentially a long one in terms of number of back-and-forth posts (even though it's potentially not long in ingame time, depending on whether it's gonna be a short "Bad things coming you guys," "Got it," conversation or a "Bad things coming you guys," "Omg help us over the next few days," kind of deal). So: either Corrath appears in the Thieves' Guild and the Durin scenario in split time (kind of) or Corrath's Thieves' Guild mission stretches out over several days while she helps them do thievery things.

I don't think we were very specific about it, but I think the home of the old woman he was staying with, Bruneld, was not far from Drellin's Ferry.

I think we need current intel first..to find out exactly where they are, so we can plan where next to attack them. Also need to know, are they all coming in from ONE direction...or is it different branches, that are coming together to meet up in one area... and THEN coming over in mass..

Need to do that first, just IN CASE..these guys have some way to block our attempts at scrying