[OOC] Heroes of the Feywild

[Nai_Calus]

Hail and well met. This'll be the OOC thread for the game, which for now has a rather unoriginal placeholder title until we can think of a better one.

The PCs are:

Shadow_Elf - Baruk Blackhand, Half-Orc Cavalier
Servbot - Tajal, Eladrin Warlock
Condundrum - Dredge. Revenant(Elf) Sorcerer
Twilight Muse - Tabita, Shadar-Kai Skald
Lemonus - Sparrowhawk, Pixie Wizard
Sol - Rumble, Genasi Berserker

Introduce yourselves and claim a color for your PC to talk in.

If you need to get in contact with me for any reason, it's usually best to @ me on Twitter or IM me, the information is in my sig.

And the IC thread is here. You can introduce yourselves IC for now, and I'll get the thread updated tonight after I arrive home from Encounters with some actual Things Happening, but I wanted to get it up so you'd have some time for your characters to meet each other. :)

[Shadow_Elf]

Hello all! I shall claim Blue for Baruk.

[Conundrum]

Dredge will speak in a suitably gravelly grey. Cos he's hardcore like that.

Followed you on Twitter, too

[Servbot]

Pixies. There's always pixies. Fairy godparents.

I guess I'll pick green, as I always do. Colours!

Resident Warlock checking in. I cast spells and don't afraid of anyone.

EDIT: Also noting I am invoking my False Blood Amulet so I appear half-elfish, with a bluff check. Should I roll it for each person/group/instance of deceit, once for the entire duration of the disguise or what?

[Conundrum]

Haha wow, four arcane classes, too. xD

[Chainsaw Hobbit]

Tabita shall talk in Blue. Cool and rich, just like her voice.

I hope its okay if I re-flavour my leather armour into a corset.

[Servbot]

Originally Posted by Conundrum

Haha wow, four arcane classes, too. xD

Well, we have some synergy there, at least. And since your Chaos Bolt targets Will, it works with Dreadful Word!

[Shadow_Elf]

Originally Posted by Twilight Muse

Tabita shall talk in Blue. Cool and rich, just like her voice.

I hope its okay if I re-flavour my leather armour into a corset.

It may be confusing to have multiple chars with the same speech colour. Would you like me to switch to DarkRed?

[Sol]

Rumble would like Sienna, a most earthy tone.

[Chainsaw Hobbit]

Tabita will now talk in Dark Red.

[Lemonus]

Sparrowhawk shall speak in this color.

[Nai_Calus]

Sorry about the lack of update last night, Encounters ran long into a TPK, and then 'I'll just lie down for a couple minutes' turned into 'Oh hell I needed to be at work an hour ago!' XD What I get for not sleeping worth a darn three days in a row.

I'll update tonight after work, on the bright side I will now be awake when I do it.

[Servbot]

Originally Posted by Servbot

EDIT: Also noting I am invoking my False Blood Amulet so I appear half-elfish, with a bluff check. Should I roll it for each person/group/instance of deceit, once for the entire duration of the disguise or what?

:P Mind answering that for me?

[Nai_Calus]

Herp, sorry, totally missed that. I am assuming you're doing a proper disguise as well, since the amulet doesn't actually alter your appearance and Eladrin eyes are rather different from half-elf eyes. Just roll one bluff check for disguising yourself per 'day'.

[Servbot]

Eladrin eyes are normal unless they are born in the Feywild, actually! Since Tajal isn't from the Feywild, I think that means his eyes are normal - at least according to the Forgotten Realms Player Guide... and I don't recall half-elves having different eyes.

Rolling Bluff for False Blood disguise, then: (1d20+15)[24], 13 for Bluff and 2 for False Blood bonus. Dice, be kind to me.

Well that fools the entire party at least. I just realise none of us have high Insight (18 tops, passive), and our Perception isn't much better! Time to grab Skill Training (Perception)...

[Conundrum]

Welp, Dredge won't be seeing through that! Why's it so important that everyone thinks he's a half-elf, anyways?

[Servbot]

Half-elf males look a fair bit manlier from eladrin males. Since he's short, and eladrin females are short, Tajal runs the risk of being mistaken for one. Thus: short hair, half-elf disguise. No one'll make the mistake of thinking he's a girl again! ... unless they note his lack of facial hair and still find him pretty waif-like.

Then Tajal goes

[Nai_Calus]

Originally Posted by Servbot

Eladrin eyes are normal unless they are born in the Feywild, actually! Since Tajal isn't from the Feywild, I think that means his eyes are normal - at least according to the Forgotten Realms Player Guide... and I don't recall half-elves having different eyes.

Rolling Bluff for False Blood disguise, then: [roll0], 13 for Bluff and 2 for False Blood bonus. Dice, be kind to me.

Well that fools the entire party at least. I just realise none of us have high Insight (18 tops, passive), and our Perception isn't much better! Time to grab Skill Training (Perception)...

That applies only to Forgotten Realms, actually, because it pre-dates 4e and Moon/Sun elves became 'Eladrin'. In core 4e, which is what I use for Eladrin fluff, all Eladrin have the glowing eyes, regardless of where they're from. Nobody is quite sure what a half-Eladrin looks like, though (well, I am, but there's like one and he doesn't live here), so at worst if they don't insight it they'll think you're that. Most people aren't even going to check. ...Or mistake you for a girl in the first place regardless, actually. :)

Basically, I'm not going to make a big deal out of it, so don't worry.

@Shadow: Eladrin directions and measures are vague, but a moonbeam width is usually about 10 or so feet, and if a direction isn't specified in Serestal, it usually means in the direction of Tairil Cor, an island in the center of the bay formed by the crescent moon-shaped crater Serestal lines the sides of. The entire island is a temple sacred to Corellon.

[Nai_Calus]

There we go, sorry for the delay. Yell at me if the text color is too hard to read. XD;

[Sol]

I've got a question re: refluffing vs homebrewing one of my powers.

I'd like to explain away Unseelie Eyes (which grants encounter-long darkvision as an encounter power) as Tremorsense instead of Darkvision, showcasing Rumble's deep, longstanding connection to the Earth.

Mechanically, they're quite similar, with the chief differences being that Tremorsense can't sense flying creatures, is unaffected by Invisibility and Line of Sight, and has a specific range of functionality.

Would it be okay to just switch it to Tremorsense, so that no one gets confused by fluff vs crunch? Not trying to game anything here so feel free to veto! Just trying to not overly complicate the bookkeeping.

Crunch in a spoiler:

Spoiler

The original power:

Unseelie Eyes
Encounter** **** Arcane, Shadow
Minor Action******Personal
Effect: You gain darkvision until the end of the encounter. Additionally, as a free action, you can cause your eyes to glow, shedding bright light in a 2-square radius. You can end the glow effect as a free action.

My proposed replacement:

One With The Earth
Encounter** **** Primal, Shadow
Minor Action******Personal
Effect: You gain tremorsense 5 until the end of the encounter. Additionally, as a free action, you can sink your feet into the ground, reducing your speed to 0 but increasing your tremorsense out to 20 squares. You can end the secondary effect as a free action.

[Conundrum]

Out of interest, was the power still granted to you by the unseelie fey? If not, do you even have a pact with one of them, or are you just using the theme for crunch rather than fluff?

[Servbot]

I don't exactly see how the Tremorsense Free Action clause provides a downside. Free Action -> Tremorsense 20, remember where you want to go to, Free Action -> Tremorsense 5, move to where you want to go, Free Action -> Tremorsense 20.

I'd be inclined to leave it to the DM, though were I the DM I would (if I allowed it) stipulate that sinking your feet in is a Move Action or Minor Action, as right now it provides gameplay-related benefits without having negative effects.

[Sol]

@conundrum: interesting question. Probably not, in this case, at least not directly. The Unseelie Fey did bind me to my current form, which crunch-wise is Genasi, but fluff-wise is an earthen construct made up of debris from the mountain I used to be. I don't really trust them, but recognize that I owe them a debt for saving my life; pact would be too strong a word, but I am willing to have a business relationship with them. I'm using the theme for fluff, but am changing that fluff a little bit, in terms of what my precise relationship with them is, and the stock fluff of this utility power would be in weird contrast to the rest of my character, who is decidedly not arcane.

@Servbot I was actually thinking much the same, but was hesitant to change the mechanics around even more. The original power has no mechanical downside either, though I suppose the bright light could alert creatures to your presence. As-written, it's pretty unclear if the secondary power is optional to begin solely when you use the power, usable once while the primary effect is in place, or at-will while the primary effect is in place - and which reading the DM lands on changes the power-level of either effect quite a bit. I think they meant it to be an optional additional effect you can apply at the same time you start the power, and end separately; in this case, it wouldn't make much sense to charge additional actions for sinking my feet in, but it absolutely would make sense if it cost a move action to step back out.

Last night I wasn't really thinking about the frankly really large scouting implications of tremorsense working through walls and around corners, so at this point I'm thinking re-fluffing it is the way to go.

[Nai_Calus]

Mmm, yeah, Tremorsense can cause all sorts of weird issues. For now I'd say just refluff the darkvision, and if it's a problem later we can work on finding a balanced way to handle it.

Celestria's a little out to lunch, and tends to ramble.

[Conundrum]

Is Caelin's father's name missing from the list intentionally?

[Nai_Calus]

Yes, on the parchement it's obviously written as a placeholder mark. For whatever reason, Celestria's neglected to list the name of her son's father.

[Servbot]

>All around 12.
Toddlers! They kidnapped eladrin toddlers!

Well, this is looking to be quite the mystery. I wish "throw more magic at magic" was a workable solution... in any case, unless one of us is 12, I don't think we can effect a reasonable disguise of an eladrin kid.

[Chainsaw Hobbit]

Originally Posted by Servbot

unless one of us is 12, I don't think we can effect a reasonable disguise of an eladrin kid.

I was thinking the D&D equivalent of the Pollyjuice Potion. I'm sure something like that could be purchased.

[Chainsaw Hobbit]

Would our characters know who the Masked Lord is?

[Nai_Calus]

Possibly not, but from what you know about Kerazt here, you can work out that it's likely one of Vhaeraun's titles.