Murder, She Rolled (D&D 5th Ed)

What does GMT +8 mean?

Are we having a difference in opinion on what 'first floor' means? In some places it means the first floor above the ground floor, e.g. the second floor.

Ah, CRAP! I knew there was going to be a problem. In my part of the world, "ground" and "first" floor are used interchangeably and inconsistently. This tower has a ground AKA first floor, a second floor (which Al-Qina was on, and where most of the party is), and an unexplored third floor.

Time zones. It means I'm located in a zone that's 8 hours ahead of Greenwich Meridian Time, in the same way that your Eastern Time corresponds to a time zone that's 4-5 hours behind GMT. In other words, I'm about half a day ahead of you players - it's Sunday morning right now in this part of the world.

edited 21st Nov '15 6:07:53 PM by Pyrite

Ah, thanks

Roll20 wouldn't work because it would be improbably for all six of us to be online at once, but having to post in order of initiative is going to take a dog's age. I think doing initiative by side rather than by character would be better for a PBP, but the current method is still viable if we use the discussion more.

What we could do is post in discussion what you would want your character to do under a general set of conditions. For instance, right now we have three skeletons, and our initiative orders, but having to wait for five of us (and possibly Miron sometimes) would take forever. We know that everybody (except Faux?) has to post, and the skeletons won't have their turn come up for a while.

The way that could work is I could say for example, "Vondal will cast Sacred Flame again on the skeleton closest to Adelaide", dalt could say "Adelaide attacks the closest skeleton with her glaive", Kyef could have "Daren attempts to sneak attack the farthest skeleton", etc. Then when deadpool (who is the "first" character in the queue) posts, then Pyrite could just process those four turns in a row. If Adelaide happens to kill the skeleton closest to her, you can just redirect my post for Vondal to a different skeleton (the one that is now "the closest skeleton to Adelaide"), keeping with the spirit of my post, but without having to shoot me a message and wait for me to reply with "yeah dude just change the target".

What I meant about general, though, is that we're operating under our current assumption of the combat scenario. If an elder dragon smashes through the roof, then obviously we're not going to want to do what we posted in the discussion. But for the majority of cases, we're probably not going to have the scenario change drastically on our own turn. It would likely occur when the enemy is taking action.

Good plan.

Also just to check, right now Daren is up? Since it seems Faux already went ahead of time?

I got confused by the out-of-sequence action. Right now, Al-Qina would have Moved to the arrow-slit and used a Free action to direct his familiar, but he still has an Action remaining. I need to confirm if Faux wants to use Al-Qina's action to see through the familiar's senses, which I'm assuming is the point of the previous actions.

As an aside, familiars move independently of their master - I actually should've rolled for the spider's initiative, but that would screw the sequence up even more, so let's just assume that the tarantula shares its master's initiative roll.

Also, I support nman's idea - I don't mind you all doing that pre-planning if it'll help facilitate play.

edited 22nd Nov '15 12:27:42 AM by Pyrite

It is; I'll clarify that Al-Qina is sending his Familiar ahead to get a look at the visitors.

If you can confirm that I could get a visual and they are within range, I could try communicating with them.

Al-Qina can get visual, but he won't be able to communicate telepathically with the two outside unless he himself, and not his familiar, is within 30ft of them. It'll take them a couple of minutes to actually reach the central tower. (I draw the line at using spider brains for telepathy.)

So, what will you spend your action on instead?

edited 22nd Nov '15 3:51:25 PM by Pyrite

Okay, while we're waiting for Faux, I think we should just carry on with the round since the action isn't likely to affect combat. Kyef, can you take your turn?

Remind me tomorrow to harass Faux on Steam and I'll see to getting him to post.

Got distracted with a busy work day and then Civ5.

I was thinking of firing off a bolt, but I don't think that it'll affect combat much.

If I took too long and you don't think , I'm happy to simply have Al-Qina commanding his spider forward and being serene.

Kyef: As per PM, your proposed action is invalid. Please decide whether you want to shove or attack and update accordingly, or I'll have to choose one myself and move on.

In the interest of hopefully not having every combat round take a week, just have Vondal use Sacred Flame again when his turn comes up, on whatever enemy target is closest to a party member (if multiple meet that criterion, randomly pick between them).

I edited it to make an second attack!!

I'm starting to think that Roll20 or something similar is a good idea if we can sync up schedules.

As has been mentioned plenty of times, our timezones are so diverse that roll20 wouldn't work. But things would go a lot faster if we didn't take three days per person to post.

Like Daren's turn is up now, but that doesn't mean you can't start queuing up what you want Ander and Adelaide to do after he goes.

Skeletons have resistance to slashing and piercing damage, So the damages made with Smashing and piercing weapons are halved to them. Because no flesh.

They don't in 5e. I have the Monster Manual. They're also vulnerable to bludgeoning which also makes no sense. They can also be charmed but... how!?

edited 27th Nov '15 5:46:24 AM by deadpool616

For what it's worth, I've already rolled for Adelaide's next actions, since vanilla Fighters are (hopefully) predictable by nature. I'd rather have daltar write her actions out, though.

Vulnerability to bludgeoning makes sense, since you would probably find it easier to crush bones while there's a distinct lack of flesh to slice or pierce - but I guess the problem is that if you made skeletons resistant to two out of three common sources of damage in the early levels, when non-magical weapons are few and far between, martial classes would just die horribly.

No idea about the charm, though.

edited 27th Nov '15 2:55:50 AM by Pyrite

Probably so Necromancer P Cs can control them and feel badass about it?

(As a joke, I'd like to use my reaction on this round to high five Ander. One down, two to go?)

edited 27th Nov '15 5:50:52 AM by Kyef

I'm cool with that. DM?

Eh, I'll give it to you for free as an "Other Activity On Your Turn".

Double post. You thought it was over?

Anyway, if you all want to try planning out your rounds in advance, this would be the right time to give it a shot.

edited 30th Nov '15 7:38:38 AM by Pyrite