We did it again – We went and leveled in a day!

So, time to pick new stuff. Level 5 is a feat level (squeeeee!). If we can pick stuff SOON (before wednesday night) I would be appreciative!

Asëa’s changes below (won’t post character pages for a bit)

So, when can we play next? I am going to just put the finishing touches on the PCs and convert Swii (taking the direct “don’t change anything!” approach, hopefully tonight, so we should be ready on the character front. But how goes the player front? My school starts on the 21st or 24th (half the website says one, the other half the other!), so my free time will be somewhat curtailed then. But until then, I am free any night.

I am in the process of updating characters for changes. They are many, it seems! I will post the exhaustive list of changes to each character here as they are changed, and also post updated character sheets.

Expected order of changes:

• Asëa (done)
• Eruanna (done)
• Flinn (done-ish: 4 skill points left, presumably Diplo, Handle, Intim, and Local?)
• Aether (done pending new Bestiary rules)
• Boots (as far as I can go for now, awaiting Will’s input)
• Miithi (as far as I can go for now, awaiting custom Bloodline)
• Swii (hopefully simple conversion, but pending rules review and new bestiary to check Air Elementals)

So, a company named Paizo has been working on an updated version of D&D 3.5 rules, called Pathfinder RPG. They’ve had a well-received public beta going for a while now, and just released a finalized version of the core rules. It’s designed to be as compatible as possible with existing 3.5 supplements, so it would be possible for us to switch to Pathfinder. Is anyone interested?

Looking at the PDF copy of the beta rules I have, it looks like we can expect changes similar to the following:

• Casters can use 0-level spells at-will
• Noticeably simpler and only slightly less flexible skill system. Also, cross-class skills are actually usable at higher levels
• All sorts of interesting bonuses to most base classes, e.g.:
  • Druid: Wild Shape earlier (lv. 4) and more often
  • Fighter: even more bonuses to AC and attack rolls
  • Sorc: assorted bag o’ goodies
  • Favored Soul: Will doesn’t have to learn anything new if he doesn’t want to, but might be able to convince me that he should get bonuses as well
• Simpler grapple rules! (I really, really hope)
• Feats every 2 levels instead of every 3
• See the entry in their FAQ detailing the sorts of changes there are

Anyway, feel free to discuss this. Also, feel free to ask me questions! I’d be willing to use either system, so it’s really a question of whether you guys want to switch over. Comments?

- Ethan

I realized something while I was away – I am fairly certain that I did not “charge” us for a trail ration each for traveling from Tinsville to farmer’s place. However, I cannot tell because we heavily fudged the equivalent total we gave to the dire weasels. I am pretty sure I need to take 1 off of everyone still, and I will check and update this sometime later.

HOWEVER, I have a request. Since it seems that keeping records of items has fallen to me by default, can we all make an effort to think about item usage when we play via map tool? I realize that we were rushed primarily due to my schedule this last time, so this is mostly my fault, but Ethan, maybe you could help there – like, ask us before we travel somewhere if we are going a’gathering (slow but no consumption) or eating our supplies ((cue flashbacks to Oregon Trail)). That will also help figure out how long it takes to get from A to B (to C to D to…). And everyone else, remind one of us in the unlikely event that we both forget entirely!

Since we are in a temperate climate and presumably near to small streams and such (and with a spontaneous Create Water caster!), I am far less concerned with water than food (though Ethan, feel free to enforce water rationing as well), but if/when we do prolonged adventuring in places with no obvious access to water, we need to be careful with that, too.

Also, we need a couple (dozen lol) new horses to carry all this new swag. Someone buy one before Asëa has to stea—err, liberate one. We don’t want to deal with guards (especially with Asëa insisting that they not be killed!). I mean, we all know that, no matter how apathetic the guards are, a PC can only set so many animals free before they call in the cavalry, and I think Asëa has already gone over her quota.

We are really close to level 4 now. People should start planning what they want? We should probably wait on rolling our HP die til we get the XP to level, but I can make up character sheets with all other changes as soon as people decide. Will probably have Asëa’s up sometime tomorrow, but she is an easy one to do.

I am making the following item assignments. Yell at me if this is wrong!

Flinn:

• Augment Crystal, Red
• Augment Crystal, Clasp-like
• Brute Gauntlets
• Rations, Trail (x7)

Miithi:

• Arcanist’s Gloves
• Augment Crystal, Black
• Rations, Trail (x7)

Boots:

• Rations, Trail (x7)

Asëa:

• Healer’s Kit she bought
• Rations, Trail (x7)

Aether:

• Feed, Horse (x7)

((Alright, it looks like there is a consensus, so we are heading back via OP. I am not sure if this is going to be a part of Chapter 2, or Chapter 3, or a separate stand-alone interlude part between 2 and 3. Depends on what happens. To save me time later, I’ll rehash a little.))

((Day 5: Morning: Following Dice. Fight with Asëa’s Dad.))

((Day 5: Midday: Traveling at half-rate towards town. Asëa’s survival roll to find food and water: 18+4=22, so sufficient food and water for the day.))

((Ethan, if you want to throw more at us, there are still hours left. Otherwise, we can fast-forward to tonight, when there is something I’d like to take care of, and then on into tomorrow morning, again I have a couple things I’d like to cover, and then we can move in to day 6 proper and I’ll post the level 3 character pages for real. If anyone else has anything they want to do in this time period, chime in! I think we should assume that, if nothing else happens, Boots will cast CLW on himself before sleeping tonight.))

Ok, so, it looks like we are leaving the forest, and our food supplies are currently “critically low”. It took 2.5 days to get to the village. If we travel at half speed, Asëa will probably be able to gather enough food for the party most days, and can use Goodberry to supplement meals.

For this first day of traveling (the day we fought her dad), I rolled an 18 (so 22 after mods) on the survival check, so was able to get sufficient food for us that day. Obviously, there are still hours left in the day for Ethan to throw crap at us, but the question is, do we want to continue moving at half-rate and trying to get food (so, 4 days after this one traveling to get back to town), or do we want to rush and go entirely on goodberry (which is nourishing but not filling) and the two Trail Rations that Boots has (in which case, I won’t be doing much in the spell department in any encounters)? (the hidden third option of “two days won’t actually screw with any of us, so run!” theoretically works, but Asëa would never allow it. I’m sorry, but she wouldn’t)? Or are we gonna chase Dice and so head in an unknown direction for an unknown amount of time with basically zero food reserves?

Also, there was some talk of eventually getting Boots a horse. Is that a solid plan? If so, should Miithi and Asëa start considering mounts so as not to slow the party down on overland movement? I’ve been talking with Ethan about it a bit, and I really don’t want Asëa to have a HORSE unless she is literally slowing the party down without one, and even then she won’t just go and buy some horse (meaning we’d need to find a wild one, or one that has an abusive owner we can liberate it from, or else just go release all the horses in a stable in town and hope the guards can’t catch us once we scatter all their horses to the winds). She could probably double up with someone, she’s fairly light.

She might ride a unicorn or some such eventually if we find one that she can make friends with (unicorn=her god’s symbol, so if it likes her and doesn’t mind, she’d have no problems), but I suspect they are better than any of us right now! So, yeah, what is the plan for overland movement in the short to medium term? Theoretically at level 8, Asëa can burn a wild shape to BECOME a horse for a full day of travel (for Miithi, maybe?) but I’m not sure if I want to burn 1/3 of her daily wild shape (at that level) for travel or not, nor am I sure we want all the puns that opens up.

SYS:
    MAP(
        http://homepage.mac.com/dylanryan/DnDMap/TopLeft.jpg(0, 0, 16, 12),
        http://homepage.mac.com/dylanryan/DnDMap/TopRight.jpg(16, 0, 16, 12),
        http://homepage.mac.com/dylanryan/DnDMap/BottomLeft.jpg(0, 12, 16, 12),
        http://homepage.mac.com/dylanryan/DnDMap/BottomRight.jpg(16, 12, 16, 12)
    ),
    PLAYERS(
        Asëa(dylanryan, http://homepage.mac.com/dylanryan/DnDMap/Asea.png, http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/unnamed-world/wikis/asea-level-3, 2, 2),
        Eruanna(dylanryan, http://homepage.mac.com/dylanryan/DnDMap/Eruanna.png, http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/unnamed-world/wikis/eruanna-level-3, 2, 3),
        Miithi(Cadin, http://homepage.mac.com/dylanryan/DnDMap/Miithi.png, http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/unnamed-world/wikis/Miithi-level-3, 3, 2),
        Swii(Cadin, http://homepage.mac.com/dylanryan/DnDMap/Swii.png, http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/unnamed-world/wikis/swii-level-3, 3, 3),
        Flinn(Flunky, http://homepage.mac.com/dylanryan/DnDMap/Flinn.png, http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/unnamed-world/wikis/flinn-level-3, 4, 2),
        Aether(Flunky, http://homepage.mac.com/dylanryan/DnDMap/Aether.png, http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/unnamed-world/wikis/aether-temp, 4, 3),
        Boots(theISPninja, http://homepage.mac.com/dylanryan/DnDMap/Boots.png, http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/unnamed-world/wikis/boots-level-3, 5, 2)
    )

Please ignore this entire post, it will be deleted when I am done testing things.