I don’t know if people are reading here, so I’m posting in both games. I’m feeling pretty ill today, so I’m not going to be able to run the game. I’m sorry for getting this out so late.

So I finally found the rules about creatures that take up more than one square and falling, it was in “Forced Movement and Terrain” of all places. Turns out, if you can’t push every square the creature occupies off a ledge, then you can’t push the creature off the ledge. Even if it’s a 5×5 monster, if it’s got one toehold on a corner square, it doesn’t fall. It is forced to either squeeze or move back on its next turn, but it does not need to save, does not fall, and it is not prone on the edge.

Interestingly, on the same page, it says forced movement ignore difficult terrain, but not challenging terrain. So if the mud ice is just slick enough to take extra moves, pushes ignore the effect, but if the ice is slick enough to force checks to avoid falling down, then if someone pushes you onto the ice, you have to make a check to avoid falling down. Totally makes sense, really, and makes forced movement powers a lot more fun (if the DM ever uses challenging terrain, which I haven’t seen often. We tend to forget the category exists.)

by Roland

Hey all, I have to go to a once in a great while meeting at work at 7pm Sunday. I’ll be leaving our game around 6:30. Sorry for the inconvenience. I’ll have my level 1 character up on here by then so if somebody wants to print it out they can use that to play for me, or I can loan somebody my character sheet.

Our still recovering DM asked me to post that as you are making your new characters, if you find something that the errata has nerfed or broken unnecessarily, or if you would just like to make the argument that a power or feat should be used in its pre-errata form, please post in response to this or PM him. This has come up once already with my Shaman and the Sudden Call feat, which he has ruled should be used in the pre-errata form.

And to recap in case it was overlooked in the comments section, we are starting with level 1 characters, no magic items, 100 gold pieces to spend on armor, weapons, and adventuring gear.

Office of the DM, secretary

Hi everyone!
Our dashing DM is currently recovering from oral surgery, so I thought I would do the honors and post what we discussed yesterday evening. JohnnyB, this will be new info for you as you had to leave early. I hope you’re feeling better :)

After much discussion and back and forth, we realized we had enough people wanting to roll new characters that it made the most sense to start a new campaign. Here’s the pertinent info:

*We are starting at lvl 5 in the general D&D world (not Darksun). This should make it a bit easier learning and building the character while still giving them some fun stuff to do.

*You can choose a lvl 6, lvl 5, and lvl 4 magic item and have 840g to spend on whatever else you would like.

*We spent some time talking about the party composition. As of now and from what I remember (Bayashi correct me if I’m wrong as I didn’t think to get a copy of your notes), we have myself in the role of leader, Dwarframpage in the role of defender, and Bayashi playing dps. I think Omniscientlyme had a couple different builds in mind and was thinking of perhaps dps or a dps controller (I may be way off on that, sorry!) and if I understand correctly, Weiye will not be joining us for this new campaign, leaving either controller or more dps as the needed roles, although really, as our DM is fond of saying, play what you think would be the most fun to play. Also, if we need to do more shuffling now that we have 5 players instead of 6, I am flexible about adjusting roles if needed.

*As our DM has a school schedule that is making running a game every week difficult, we will do two more weeks in a row and then switch to an alternating every other Sunday game.

That’s the basics. There is more I am sure, but our DM will be out of commission for a few days while he recovers. In the meantime, if I missed something we discussed, feel free to post it. Also, feel free to ask questions here or private message me and I will try to get answers when he is coherent :)

-Office of the DM, Secretary

Will,

What is the name of the program you use to manage combat?

Ben

So there seems to be some difference of opinion about how things are going to play out this time around. Some people are confident, and some people are convinced that at least some people are going to die. So, in light of that, here are some things I’d like people to think about over the course of the week:

• How many survivors would it take to maintain campaign continuity?
• Would certain individuals surviving or dying change that number? (Which subsets of people make sense to carry on the story and which may as well go their separate ways?)
• If the campaign is completely wrecked, what do we do about it?

I’m more than willing to run another game, or to play in a game if someone else wants to start running one to get their revenge and kill me off. If you do want me to keep running, I could start a new game in another world or at low level, if that’s what people want. Alternately, we could just put together however many new characters are needed (up to all of them) and soldier on as best we can.

Of course, if you guys do come out on top and walk away from this one, these are still useful things to keep in mind as the game goes on, since it could come up again at a later time.

Not trying to make you feel bad for not being at last week’s game or anything. I just want you to know how much we missed you at the last game! You’ve always got an answer for anything Will throws at you, and as much as Brian tried to fill your shoes, you were sorely missed. You are currently bloody and about to be beat down by a bunch of trolls, if nobody has given you an update yet. I know we’ll turn the encounter around, but I just wanted you to know how I felt. I MISS MY TANK! :(

So last night, I noticed something about the way we handle combat: We backtrack a lot. I mean a whole lot. There was not a single round of combat during the last session in which no one backtracked. I’ve been very lenient on this, and it’s been getting worse. This takes up valuable time and interrupting what’s happening makes it much harder to keep track of things. In the interest of keeping things flowing, I’m implementing a new rule: Once you end your turn, your turn is over. No going back to spend your minor action, no adding status effects, no dealing more damage, and no rolling saving throws. There will be very clear divisions between turns, and once your turn is over, that’s it; it’s over.

Yes, this will take some extra time while people think about whether they’ve done everything before they end their turn, but hopefully it will save more time by avoiding revisiting turns more than once.

by Roland

Well I finally got a suitable container for my mini’s (thanks to Theren for the insistence that I go to Jo-Ann’s). I’ve got quite a few doubles of some mini’s that I would like to trade for other mini’s that I’m missing. If anybody is interested in trading mini’s, or just wanna check out each others’ collections, I will come to the game a bit earlier than 2 so we have time.

I’m hoping to collect Harbinger, Dragoneye, Archfiends, and Giants of Legend mini’s (with cards hopefully). I have doubles from the same set to trade, along with cards for each mini.